After two rounds of tense voting, The Atlanta Film Critics Circle has selected its Top 25 Films of the Past 25 Years. The final list of 25 films includes everything from huge box office hits to smaller critical darlings. Every film theatrically released from January 1, 2000, through December 31, 2024, was eligible in the first round of the vote. The second round consisted of around 50 finalists then to produce the final list of the Top 25.

The AFCC’s membership selected “The Lord of the Rings” as the top film of the past 25 years. The 3 theatrically released Lord of the Rings films were treated as a single entry in this vote because the production of all three films took place at the same time. AFCC member Emma Loggins of FanBolt said, “Peter Jackson set a new standard for epic storytelling on the big screen,” and Brad Gibson of FilmThreat commented, “Peter Jackson did justice to beloved books that one would have thought all but impossible to film.”

Rounding out the top 5 were Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” The Coen brothers “No Country for Old Men,” Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite,” and David Lynch’s “Mullholland Drive.”

Directors Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, and Martin Scorsese were the only filmmakers to land 2 films on the list. Interestingly, “Oppenheimer” from 2023 was the only film from the 2020s to make the list, which could be an indication that recent films need more time for historical reflection to reach full critical appreciation.

AFCC Advisory Board member Jason Evans reflected on the vote, “This was both a ton of fun and also terribly stressful. I know our members spent a lot of time looking back at the past 25 years — revisiting some films and pausing for deep reflection on others — to come up with our individual lists. It was as hard as picking a favorite child for many of us.”

Simultaneous with the announcement of the 25 for 25 list, the AFCC has launched a new website at https://atlfilmcritics.org/. The effort, led by AFCC member Emma Loggins, has produced one of the cleanest and most complete websites in the film critic community. The complete list of all 25 films can be found there.

Here are the 25 films, in order: