Best films of the last 25 years

Just 5 ELO points separate Joker from Mulholland Drive at the top of the Film ranking, after 10307 duels.

The top 3 are locked in a tight race, with Joker at 1417 points, Mulholland Drive at 1412 and The Dark Knight at 1409. The sharpest drop comes between ranks 4 and 5, where Django Unchained holds a 28-point lead over The Green Mile. That Joker, a comic book adaptation, edges out David Lynch's experimental thriller by such a slim margin shows how the VAINKEURZ community values different genres and styles nearly equally. The presence of both cerebral art films and crowd-pleasing blockbusters in the top 5 reflects a broad taste among voters, with no single aesthetic dominating the conversation. At the bottom, The Strangers sits at 914 points with a 37% win rate over 206 duels, while The Help ranks just above it at 919 points despite the same 35% win rate as Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the third-to-last contender at 969 points.

This ranking draws on 10307 duels judged by 26 players across 137 contenders, last updated on 10 October 2026. The volume of votes gives weight to every placement, though the narrow gaps at the top suggest opinions remain split on what defines the best film of the last quarter-century. Head to VAINKEURZ to cast your own duels and reshape the standings.

Updated on October 10, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →