As we reach the quarter-point of this century, some publications are taking stock of the films that the culture has deemed the “best” of the past 25 years. It’s a descriptor with no firm definition—one person may determine the “best” by analyzing pure technical merit, another may choose whatever inspires the strongest emotional reaction. Either way, it’s all subjective! We asked our crew and contributors to pen odes to their favorite pictures of the 21st century, though with a catch: they must have fewer than 50,000 watches on Letterboxd. That’s because we all know and love Top 250 staples like Parasite and Mulholland Drive, but what about the hidden gems that slipped through the cracks of an unpredictable industry? Be it due to marketing, social and economic climates, legal issues, timing or pure bad luck, these movies remain underseen. This is our attempt to identify them, to give them temporary homes on your watchlists, then permanent homes in your diaries. The following picks range from a 55-minute comedy consisting entirely of film clips of dogs, to a 352-minute adaptation of The Great American Play—something for everyone, no matter where you fall on the silly/serious spectrum.

Friday Night (2002) Directed by Claire Denis, written by Denis and Emmanuèle Bernheim, based on a novel by BernheimSelected by Mitchell Beaupre No one creates a sensorial cinematic experience like Claire Denis. Watching Friday Night is akin to a grounding exercise. How it works its way into your mind and then down into your skin, your flesh, your bones. You feel every sensation these characters do. The amount of attention she gives to close-ups of hands invites us to inhabit that textural rush. Your fingers connecting with the steering wheel of your car, body parts of your lover, cigarette boxes, removed watches, buttons on a blouse, the check at a restaurant, the keys to a hotel room, the knob turning on the radiator. The way yo