The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century

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From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kietroev.

This is the daily.

This summer,

The New York Times put out a list of the top 100 movies of the 21st century.

It prompted furious debate about what movies stand the test of time.

Why they matter and what those movies tell us about ourselves.

Does he make you laugh?

He doesn't make me cry.

My colleague, Kyle Buchanan, explains.

Are you not entertained?

Are you not entertained?

It's Thursday, August 14th.

Kyle, welcome to the show.

It is really wonderful to be talking to you about movies at this time when the news has just been coming at us like a fire hose every single day.

Thank you for this.

I'm happy to provide that relief.

You've been covering this industry for what, two decades or something like that?

Yes, I started as a child prodigy, if that's what you're getting at.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Here you are, 25 years old, talking to us here at the daily.

Okay, we are here to discuss something really ambitious that you and your colleagues at the Culture Desk did this summer, which is that you ranked the top 100 movies of the 21st century.

And this is coming at a pretty interesting time for the movies.

Some might say it's not the best moment for the movies, for the craft, for the business.

And yet you put out this list and people kind of lost their minds.

Millions of people read it.

It was commented upon.

There were TikTok videos made about it.

There was a separate reader list that we will get to.

It was a thing is the point.

It was a massive thing.

And honestly, very encouraging for me as somebody who loves movies to see just how strongly people responded to this.

You know, as you said, I think there's been some debate recently over, you know, the art form of movies.

Have movies lost their cultural influence?

They used to feel so primary when it came to art.

And I think this poll, this, this reaction to it, is kind of a refutation of that.

It proves movies still matter.

And I think one of the things that made this list really special is how you actually constructed it.

You called these filmmakers, actors, writers, directors, and asked them to tell you what their favorites were.

And the Daily actually called some of them and had some pretty amazing conversations about it.

So first of all, should I call you Steve?

You should call me Steve.

Just don't call me late to dinner.

But my name is Stephen King.

My name is Barry Jenkins.

My name is Sin Song.

I'm Molly Ringwald.

I'm Gina Prince-Bythewood.

I'm Benny Safde.

I make movies and I act in movies.

Writer, director, producer.

I'm an actor.

Writer, director.

And I've been fortunate enough to be able to write a number of books and stories that have been made into movies.

Okay, how did you collect all of these ballots?

Basically, we went to about 500 people who work in the movie industry and around it, and we asked them to submit their ballots for what they thought were the 10 best movies released since January 1st, 2000.

And we really went after an eclectic group of people.

We have the director and the star of the Last Best Picture winner, that'd be Sean Baker, who made Anora, and Mikey Madison, who starred in it.

We have other movie stars, Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, Shuatel Edgiefor, and an incredible array of Oscar-winning directors like Pedro Amadovar, Sofia Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Core Jefferson.

It's a really exciting list.

And as those ballots came in, I couldn't wait to see what they picked.

The idea of a 10 best or 10 favorite, anything, it's impossible.

Anything that makes me want to choose it because it's going to make me look cool, I won't choose.

I'll be honest, the only reason why I agreed to do this podcast is so I could get two more films onto my list.

You know, there's a part of you that just like wants to like pick the ones that nobody else picks, but but I didn't do that.

I actually picked the ones that I

thought were really the best.

And really the most exciting thing for me has been to see how many different people interpret that prompt.

The idea of what are my 10 favorite movies or are they 10 best or are they 10 most serious or 10 funniest?

You know, that can be anything to you.

I'll start with Moonlight.

The moonlight?

La Boys look blue.

I just remember being

so still at the end of it.

I didn't want to move.

At some point, you got to decide for yourself who you

tell you what.

We could have had a good life together, but you didn't want it, Annis.

So what we got now is Broke Back Mountain.

Broke Back Mountain, I think, was one that I remember just being floored by in, you know, in the movie theater.

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Yeah, just Dean.

Hey, it's me.

This guy from LA, Barry Egan.

Hush Drunk Love is on my list.

It's just, it's my favorite movie by Paul Thomas Anderson.

Hello, sir.

My name's Barry Egan.

I called your service the other day.

Shut the fuck up.

Oh, what's up?

I'm not saying it's his best movie or whatever.

I don't care about that.

You know, it's, it's my favorite movie.

So you guys got 500 people to give a very personal take on the movies that move them.

And that's really the best way to sum up what this list means.

If I'm channel surfing and one of these movies comes on, I will do my best to stay and watch it.

It was really at the end of the day a guttural drive that got me to that 10 of films that really meant something to me and changed my life.

And in putting this ballot together, you're telling a story about yourself.

You know, the ballot is indicating something about your sensibility.

Even more than that, unconsciously, you're telling the story of your last 25 years.

You know, the 25 years that you've experienced, the movies that you've watched, the things that really stick to you that maybe you saw 23 years ago, but you can't stop thinking about them.

That says something about you.

And I think what's really been gripping about this is that these ballots, even more than just revealing something about the state of the movie industry, can reveal something about ourselves.

You know this world very, very well.

What

did you see when you looked at this list?

Now you've had time to analyze it.

There's movies that you wouldn't have expected to make the list or make it as highly as they did.

And then there's things that I thought were no-brainers no-brainers that were absolutely going to make the 100 that were left off totally.

And also, in addition to that, a lot of revealing themes that tell their own story of where the film industry has gone over the last 25 years.

We're obviously not going to be able to go through every single one of the top 100, but I am very excited to get into this.

Let's start by talking about a category that you wouldn't have expected to be on there.

Honestly, I didn't think we'd see as many comedies as we saw.

And I was delighted that we saw them.

There are movies like Bridesmaids.

You know what?

Why can't you just be happy for me and then go home and talk behind my back later like a normal person?

Borat.

This is a vikanti of Kazakhstan.

Best in show.

We both have so much in common.

We both love soup.

Even Anchorman.

I'm on Burgundy.

Damn it, who typed a question mark on the teleprompter?

For the last time, anything you put on that prompter, Burgundy will read.

And I don't know that necessarily we would have expected those because when you give people a prompt like this,

maybe the assumption is they default to prestige movies, you know, big Oscar-venerated classics.

Comedies at the Oscars often get short shrift, and I was pleased to see that on our list, they were well represented.

You know, even somebody like Julianne Moore, who we think of as the actress who would star in the prestige drama, is picking movies like the 40-year-old virgin on her ballot.

No, Kelly Clarkson!

Right, I saw that.

Amazing.

I loved that.

I loved the idiosyncrasies that we all have, if we're being honest, about what art we respond to.

And I really appreciated that people were honest about those things.

I want to talk about Superbad.

It's number 100 on the list.

It's the first one you see when you open the list up.

And I think that one is kind of important because it's the one where you say, like, wow, I guess I'm surprised to see that this movie is in the top 100 of the 21st century.

And yet it's a movie where I can remember specific scenes from it.

I really connected with it.

What do you make of that one being on here?

I mean, I was surprised too, but I think it's part of the fun of the list.

You know, when people are thinking of best movies, sometimes they're thinking of movies they've only watched once.

Sometimes those movies are so harrowing, you'd only want to watch them once.

Right.

And so you'd expect to be encountering that when you open up this list.

and instead number 100 is super bad.

Wait, you changed your name to McLovin?

McLoven?

What kind of a stupid name is that, Fogel?

What are you trying to be an Irish R B singer?

That is a film that honestly, I think once you see it on this list, it maybe hopefully recontextualizes how you think of this film.

But ultimately, you know, this is a movie that the fans of it have watched countless times and honestly minted a whole new generation of stars.

Hey, Jules, your partner didn't come today?

It's kind of a personal question.

What?

Nothing.

It's my attempt at humor.

I was just...

Including Jonah Hill, Michael Sarah, and Emma Stone, who this is a movie that's turbocharged her.

That was one of the defining teen movies of its generation, I would say, alongside Mean Girls, which I wish had made the list.

I know.

Huge snub.

Okay, so what other patterns did you notice here?

I saw a lot of auteur filmmakers through this list.

You know, honestly, there's a handful of people who made movies on this list list that take up a really outsized portion, almost a quarter of the hundred.

Well, okay, so just define auteur filmmakers for those of us who may not know exactly what it means.

Yeah, an auteur filmmaker is typically a writer-director.

It's somebody who has such a personal vision or a distinctive style that, you know, you could essentially call them the author of the movie.

And what are some movies?

I understand you're saying a lot of the ones on the list are made by people like that, but give me some examples of movies that fit that, Bill.

Well, for example, there's four movies on this list that are made by the Cohn brothers, Joel and Ethan Cohen.

You know, they've made No Country for Old Men, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Inside Lewin Davis, A Serious Man.

They have these films that they're shot a certain way.

They tend to have a similar bench of actors.

And also, there's just all these language idiosyncrasies that you find in their movies.

Even when they're playing with genre, you're seeing, you know, different themes and ideas keep cropping up.

I think that's the mark of a true auteur.

Right.

You know when you're watching a Cohen Brothers film, right?

Yes, just as you know when you're watching something by David Lynch or even Christopher Nolan, who has the most movies on this list with five.

And what do you make of that?

The fact that Nolan is so present on this list?

Yeah, you know, it's a true sign that if anybody could be regarded as the Spielberg of this century, it's Chris Nolan who manages to make studio movies like The Dark Knight and Inception that feel highbrow, that feel like there's something to them, and that connect in a major way with audiences.

One movie I immediately noticed was Mahollen Drive.

It's number two on the list.

David Lynch film, an auteur filmmaker.

I want to talk about that one because while this movie is not my favorite, just to admit that, I was so amazed and really happy that it was so high on this list in part because I felt like, wow, this is a weird film.

And yet it connected with so many people.

Like so many people out there loved this kind of really strange, dreamlike piece of art.

You know, it's not a movie that's for everybody, but I can guarantee you that everybody will have their own unique reaction to that movie.

I think that you could make the case that Mulholland Drive is too highbrow.

You know, if people didn't connect with it, that's probably the pejorative that they would fling.

I think I'm going to get that.

I'm already, my editors are telling me that I am lowbrow for not getting it.

So I agree.

We're all allowed to be a little lowbrow.

And honestly, at the same time, even if you don't like Moholland Drive, there's going to be images, vibes, scenes, and ideas from it that stick with you forever.

You know, it's not a movie that can be easily forgotten.

I think that's part of the reason it showed up on this list.

Even its haters were somewhat transfixed by what that movie was putting forward, and the people who really love it, you know, it's everything to them.

There's a man

in back of this place.

He's the one who's doing it.

I can see him through the wall.

I can see his face.

My name is Evan Moss Bachrach.

I'm an actor.

I am in the new Fantastic Four movie.

I work on The Bear.

I've worked on Girls.

And I'm currently making Avengers 5 Doomsday.

I hope that I never see that face ever outside of a dream.

Maholland Drive, number two on the list.

I can't tell you.

This great artist, David Lynch, and his unique renderings of the world and darkness and this sort of beguiling dream logic that so many people felt moved by this movie to vote for it.

I mean, like number two, David.

I mean, I feel like he might, he would be shocked.

What are you doing?

We don't stop here.

A surprise.

For me, what I like in a movie is not knowing what's going to happen from one moment to the next.

I am interested in sitting in the theater with a bunch of people and everyone having experience, and nobody knows where anything is going to go.

And certainly in the Mohollen Drive and all of David Lynch's work, it's like that.

He's such a great filmmaker.

You're in the hands of a master, you're taken care of, but you're taken on a ride that you really don't know where you're going.

Man's attitude.

Man's attitude goes some ways the way his life will be.

Is that something you might agree with?

Sure.

Now, did you answer because that's what you thought I wanted to hear?

Or did you think about what I said and answer because you truly believe that to be right?

I agree with what you said.

Truly.

What'd I say?

Okay, Kyle, can you give me the rest of the top 10?

Yeah, number 10 is the social network.

And I'll bet what you hated the most is that they identified me as a co-founder of Facebook.

That's David Fincher's film about the founding of Facebook.

Number nine is Spirited Away, which is the highest-placing animated movie on our list.

Number eight is Get Out.

Ugh.

Where are those keys, Rose?

You know, I can't give you the keys, Ray Babe.

So good.

So good, and I was thrilled that it was in the top ten.

Number seven is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Joel, the eraser guys are coming here, so what if you take me somewhere else?

Somewhere where I don't belong, and we hide there till morning.

But try, okay?

Number six, no country for old men from the Cone Brothers.

What's the most you ever lost on a cointos?

Sir, the most you ever lost on a cointos?

I don't know, I couldn't say

Call it on my list.

Oh, was that on your ballot too?

Yes, number five, Moonlight.

But you ain't gotta love me.

Lord knows I did not have love for you when you needed.

I know that.

So you ain't gotta love me.

but you gonna know that I love you.

Number four, In the Mood for Love from Wong Car Wai.

Number three, There Will Be Blood from the director Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

I drink your milkshake.

Incredible, incredible.

And number two is Malholland Drive.

This is the girl.

Excellent choice.

Number one was Parasite.

Okay, let's get into Parasite.

I want to know why you think, I mean, you were getting at this, but why you think it is number one?

What about that movie resonated so widely?

Well, you know, Parasite was the first movie not in English to win the best picture Oscar.

And I think the reasons that it triumphed there have only become more pronounced in the years since it came out.

You know, in addition to just being a damn good movie, Parasite is about the issues that we're contending with on a daily basis right now.

In particular, that wealth gap, that feeling that the boundary between classes is only getting worse and we're only suffering more and it's stripping away our humanity.

That's something that we felt in 2019 when Parasite came out.

That's something we only feel more acutely about now.

It is a film that felt prescient at the time that speaks to our current moment even better than it did when it came out.

Totally.

I mean, and when you think about Parasite, a movie that is quite literally about class war in the most violent sense, it sort of feels like it's not just capturing inequities baked into Korean society.

It's telling us something about the world.

I mean, clearly, because it's number one for hundreds of people.

Yeah.

You know, honestly, in the specific, you find the universal.

And I think the films that made the list, especially the films that placed High Lee on this list, are a good example of that.

Yes, Parasite is very specifically about this section of South Korean society, but who can't relate to that?

You know, just as even, you know, some of the stranger films on this list, there's something that you feel, something you respond to that tells you something about your own life.

I'm Molly Ringwald.

Most people would probably know me from a lot of movies that I did when I was young.

16 Candles, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink.

And I'm also a writer.

I remember where I saw it.

I was in Topanga Canyon at the time

and I was watching it with my husband and we really didn't know anything about it.

I remember there is that long

sequence.

You know, they're walking in the house in the basement and I remember it like going down a hallway

and then when you discover this family living in the house.

I remember both my husband and I were just, what?

Like, oh my god, then you're just completely focused.

And there's just not that many movies, I think, that do that on that level.

We'll be right back.

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Kyle, we've talked about what is on the list.

I want to talk about what's not on the list.

Among the omissions that we at the Daily noticed, besides for Mean Girls, which I mean, justice for Mean Girls.

I can't believe it.

Stop trying to make fetch happen.

It's not going to happen.

Is that there aren't a lot of superhero movies?

What do you make of that?

There are two.

We have Black Panther and the Dark Knight on this list.

But you're right.

What do I make of the fact that there are only two on this list?

I think it's an indication that the movie has to be really, really good to stand the test of time, especially, you know, a lot of superhero storytelling.

It's meant to set up the next chapter, right?

Like these are essentially cliffhangers.

They've got post-credit scenes saying, go to this movie, go to this movie.

Maybe at a certain point, it all starts to blur together.

So, what are the truly unique visions that come out of this, you know, corporate studio-mandated superhero storytelling.

Is it even possible to make a film that feels especially unique when you're serving all of those corporate mandates?

You know, it isn't easy to make an action film that feels distinctive.

There are only a couple people who are even capable of wielding the camera like that.

So when you see films made by, you know, superhero films made by Christopher Nolan and Ryan Kugler, that those are the only two movies that made this list.

Well, think of the men who made those, you know, Those are true auteurs.

Those are two of the people who you'd be most excited to see a new movie by.

You know, they're people with a point of view.

Y'all sitting up here comfortable.

Must feel good.

It's about two billion people all over the world.

It looks like us, but their lives are a lot harder.

Wakanda has the tools to liberate them all.

And the water tors are those.

Vibranium.

Your weapons.

Our weapons will not be used to wage war.

I'm Gina Prince Bythwood, writer-director.

Some of my works include Love and Basketball, The Woman King, and now the upcoming Children of Blood and Bone.

Black Panther just absolutely reset the game and certainly for black filmmakers and black artists, Ryan was able to infuse so much culture into the Marvel universe.

And most studios shy away from that because they feel like culture specificity pushes people away, but it actually pulls them in.

It draws you in and it makes these stories feel fresh.

And Ryan just puts so much of our culture in such a beautiful way on such a beautiful big canvas.

at the same time telling a story where we care deeply about both the hero and the villain.

You will destroy the world.

The world took everything away from me.

Everything I ever loved.

Like my two sons,

you know, they loved Killmonger and I could understand why.

To see my sons walk out of a theater, I think they were 12 and 15 at the time, like with their chests out and their shoulders back.

I mean, that's an amazing thing for them to be able to see themselves reflected like that.

Yeah, he just took Marvel and twisted it and made it into something absolutely worthy of praise.

Maybe we can still heal you.

What?

So you could just lock me up?

Killmonger's death when he and Black Panther were up on the cliff overlooking the continent and just his line about those of us who jumped off the slave ships and into the water.

Just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors that jumped from ships

because they knew death was better than bondage.

A line like that in a Marvel film.

It was ridiculous and the power of that.

And again, to see the emotion, not only for my husband and I, who could fully understand that statement, but my sons as well.

Kyle, I wanted to bring up that the highest ranking version, I think, of this thing you're talking about, where it's like like an auteur blockbuster type of movie is Mad Max Fury Road.

You wrote a book on this movie.

I could not believe the passion that this movie elicited when I talked to people in the industry about it.

So what do you think it was about this particular action movie that made people feel so strongly about it.

I just don't think there's any action movie like it, and I don't think there ever will be again, you know?

I think that's a particularly interesting thing to note because that movie was the product of a singular visionary, the director George Miller, but also the way it was made, where it was shot on location with real car crashes.

Yes, there were special effects aiding everything, but the amount of doing it for real is something you simply do not get at this scale and will not get at this scale, I think, ever again.

Almost everything is shot on green screen or, you know, in

much more studio-managed environments.

Whereas, for as fantastical as Madam Axe Fury Road is, when you see somebody fall off a car or a car flips over, you think, wow, I just watched people die.

Totally.

It is visceral in a way that almost nothing is anymore.

Most every superhero temple or action temple we watch right now, I'm not feeling very much because I think that car was computer generated and I'm just watching two people slug each other who aren't feeling anything and do not bleed.

Whereas Mad Max Fury wrote, I felt everything and continue to, even after having written a book about it, I could watch that and still still be transported.

Amazing.

You're making me want to go watch it right now.

Good.

That was my whole mission doing this podcast.

You success.

Okay, obviously, Black Panther and Fury Road are these huge action blockbusters, but those are not the norm on this list, as we've said.

And I think people who see that might say, well, sure, Hollywood Insiders made this list.

They're kind of the elite.

It's not surprising they didn't choose, you know, superhero movies.

What would you say to that?

Well, what I found very surprising is that ultimately we put together a separate poll.

That poll was drawn from the reader ballots.

When people were given the ability to craft their own ballot, eventually, those ballots got tabulated into their own master list of over 200,000 ballots from the readers.

Wow.

So, something that you would 200,000.

Yeah, something that you would think would be maybe

more populist or reflect different sensibilities.

And we did see some differences.

But what I was struck by is that a lot of those so-called highbrow films that are in the Hollywood top 10, we also found in the reader top 10.

In fact,

we had rolled out the ability to cast your own ballot long before we'd revealed the top 20 movies on the Hollywood list, which we did in batches of 20 every day.

And even, you know, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of that week, as people were casting their ballots, I was so struck to see both Parasite and Mulholland Drive leading the reader ballot poll.

And many of those same films like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Social Network, also in the top 10 for the readers.

Yes, there is more of a willingness to embrace action movies and genre fare.

You've got both Dune movies on the reader list.

You have all three Lord of the Rings movies, but not many more superhero movies, although you do see Avengers Endgame in the number 100 slot on the reader's list.

What were some of the other similarities you noticed between the two lists?

Well, again, you might expect a reader's list to reflect the current trends, which let's be real, the streaming landscape has upended almost everything about our culture.

But at the same time, there were no streaming movies in the top 100 of the readers list.

Wow.

And in the Hollywood list?

Only one on the Hollywood list, Roma by Alfonso Coron, who was one of the most represented filmmakers on the Hollywood list.

But I think that's revealing, you know?

I love the fact that you have a list like this of 100 movies.

And if you're curious about any of the films that you haven't seen, you can almost immediately go to one one streaming service or another and fire that movie up and watch it.

That is an incredible level of access.

And it really doesn't matter where you live, if there is a movie theater even by you.

But at the same time.

I think for the readers to not be choosing streaming movies may be an indication of how little they're really watching those movies when they watch them.

You know, you can fire up something on streaming and be on your phone.

You can be live tweeting it.

You can be checking your Instagram.

You can be doing laundry and folding it as something plays out in the background and I don't think that's the experience that people are going to remember when they're thinking about their favorite movies of the last 25 years like I said you know that theatrical experience can put such an impressive thumbprint on your memory of the movie and I'm not sure that streaming can replicate that But it's so interesting because this is something that came up a lot in the conversations that I had with, you know, the filmmakers and the actors and the writers is that pretty much all of them said that their favorite movies were ones they had seen on the big screen.

And obviously, these are people that literally do this for a living.

But I, too, you know, remember where I was when I saw, you know, some of my favorite movies physically.

Like, I could tell you what row I was in.

And I just wonder if there's something about that, the physical experience, the communal experience that makes it different substantively.

Well, can I answer your question with the question, question, Natalie?

Oh, I yes, you may.

If you had to put a movie that would be your no-brainer pick on your own ballot of 10, what do you remember about the experience of watching that movie?

Okay, this I'm so glad you asked.

Uncut Gems is the one I would put on there.

Uncut Gems, number 58 on our list, was not nominated for any Oscars, but made that list over many other films that won Oscars that year.

Okay, it's the best.

I'm so glad to hear that.

I saw that movie in the second row of the theater.

And it was such an intense, propulsive movie.

I loaned that.

I loaned that.

That being where I was in the theater made it feel like I was in a car that had no brakes and I was speeding down the highway.

It was just overwhelming as an experience.

My friend told me she has a picture of me.

She saw it with me in the movie just to speak to the communal part of this at the very end of it.

What the fuck did you just do?

With my hands like over my face, just kind of like grabbing my face because it was you it was palpable the energy of it and I think that energy is what you remember right there is just something about that experience of seeing that in a theater and this list is a real tribute to that

It's like entering another world.

It's like being on a magic carpet, going into somebody else's dream.

You could be a hero.

What I mean is that you would go into the theater and forget yourself.

You would become part of the movie.

You would be scared for the people in the movie.

You would laugh with people in the movie.

I think watching a movie in a theater, it just transports you.

Where else do you get to have a sound blasting like that, right?

Or have an image that big in front of you?

It's a magical place because of that.

The physical requirements of the act of going to see a movie,

there's a set amount of time, the lights go down, you're with people,

you are taken on a journey and you have to endure it.

I mean, I suppose you could leave, but like, but that, but you are in the hands of the artist.

There's something about being in a theater with people, you know, where everybody's laughing at the same moment, everybody's crying at the same moment.

It's the shared experience

of people you don't even know, but we're all laughing at the same time, we're all crying at the same time, we're all feeling, we're all lifted, we're all scared.

It's an incredible thing.

It's a beautiful thing, the theatrical experience.

Okay, so I don't mean to rein on our parade of loving the theaters right now, but I don't think that the fundamental dynamics of this industry are really going to shift because of this list or anything else, right?

I mean, streamers are still going to be dominant.

Movies are still going to be competing with these short little bursts of video on our phone.

I mean, it does make you kind of wonder, you know, in 25 years, are we going to be listing the top 100 TikToks of the 21st century?

Is that possible?

I mean, I'd watch them.

It would be quick.

But, you know, at the same time, things do move at the speed of light.

Will TikTok even be around in 10 years for as dominant as it is now?

It's hard to tell, but I do guarantee you that movies will be.

They've been around for as long as they have.

The process of watching them may continue to change.

You know, the way the movie industry has changed over the last 10 years has been dizzying, but movies will be around.

And when you have that really wonderful, specific experience with a movie where you feel like a movie gets you and you get a movie in a way that is surprising and maybe even reveals something about yourself, well, who'd pass that experience up?

Kyle, this has been a lot of fun.

Thank you so much for coming on.

I'm glad that I could bring a little bit of fun to the daily.

We'll be right back.

At the University of Arizona, we believe that everyone is born with wonder.

That thing that says, I will not accept this world that is.

While it drives us to create what could be,

that world can't wait to see what you'll do.

Where will your wonder take you?

And And what will it make you?

The University of Arizona.

Wonder makes you.

Start your journey at wonder.arizona.edu.

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Here's what else you need to know today.

We had a very good call.

He was on the call.

President Zelensky was on the call.

I would rate it at 10, you know, very, very friendly.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and European leaders said on Wednesday that they'd worked out a strategy with President Trump for his upcoming meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

The agreed-upon parameters included insisting that any peace plans start with a ceasefire which wouldn't be negotiated without Ukraine at the table, and that any land swaps between Russia and Ukraine wouldn't be discussed before a ceasefire is put in place.

And on Wednesday, a federal appeals court cleared the way for the Trump administration to keep withholding billions of dollars in foreign aid that had already been appropriated by Congress.

The court found that the global health nonprofits that received government funding and had sued to recover that money didn't have the right to bring the challenge.

It was the latest in a series of decisions by appeals courts, which have overturned lower court rulings, curbing sweeping actions by the president.

Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Shannon Lynn, Rochelle Banja, and Sidney Harper.

It was edited by Brendan Klinkenberg and Mike Benoit.

Contains original music by Alicia Bet YToupe, Diane Wong, Rowan Nimasto, Michael Simon Johnson, and Dan Powell, and was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lanceberg of Wonderly.

That's it for the daily.

I'm Natalie Kitchrowev.

See you tomorrow.

At the University of Arizona, we believe that everyone is born with wonder.

That thing that says, I will not accept this world that is.

While it drives us to create what could be,

that world can't wait to see what you'll do.

Where will your wonder take you?

And what will it make you?

The University of Arizona.

Wonder Makes You.

Start your journey at wonder.arrizona.edu.