My 25 favorite films of the 21st century

From pompous newsmen to lords of rings to trees of life.

Last week, the New York Times listed its top 100 movies of the 21st century. It’s a good list, and myself and my fellow critics have had fun picking it apart and sharing our own top tens. I thought it might be fun to kick off the long holiday weekend with something for us to argue about and chew over, so I compiled my own list of the my 25 films of the last 25 years.

Note that, much like I do at the end of the year, I said favorite and not best. There’s a lot that’s gone unseen. And it’s more fun to look back on movies I enjoyed than to try to do the analytical – and, frankly, silly – work of trying to decide what’s best.

I was 21 years old when the century started, and looking back, it’s amazing how many great voices have been introduced in that span. We’ve seen auteurs develop fantastic filmographies, watched entire genres grow and wither, and watched as art grappled with massive cultural upheaval. It was fun to put this list together – it’s also extremely foolish. I’m sure there’s stuff I left out and the truth is that I could have a totally different list tomorrow. But, this provides a snapshot as best I can. I hope you enjoy it!

25. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

Has there been a more quotable film released in the last 21 years? It’s the big-screen start of one of my favorite comedy partnerships; while I’ve liked much of what Adam McKay and Will Ferrell have done separately, their work together over the last two decades has been consistently hilarious (Step Brothers, Talladega Nights and The Other Guys just missed this list). It was producer Judd Apatow’s first big-screen success story, and its cast is packed with some of the funniest people to ever exist – Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Fred Willard, Seth Rogen, Kathryn Hahn. It’s Ferrell’s finest hour, and a surreal, weird and very silly skewering of the battle of the sexes. I’ve been quoting this movie for the last 20 years, and in no way is that depressing.

24. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

You can’t talk about 21st century film culture without talking about superhero movies. X-Men launched the modern comic book genre in 2000, Spider-Man and its first sequel turned it into a phenomenon, The Dark Knight proved it could be art, and The Avengers confirmed it would never end. But superheroes have never been better than in this funny, smart, exhilarating piece of animation. Constantly topping itself with new characters and ideas, it’s as exciting as they come, with jaw-dropping animation and, most importantly, an understanding of why people love this character so much. More comic book movies should be animated.

23. Get Out (2017)

I was skeptical when Jordan Peele – then best-known for his sketch comedy work – announced he was directing a horror movie. Now, he’s one of the rare filmmakers like Christopher Nolan who’s a brand name unto himself. I’ve liked his subsequent films to varying degrees, but he’s never topped his debut. It’s a scary, funny and smart bit of sociological horror that doesn’t take the easy aim at MAGA racists but rather sets its sights on the smug white liberals who hide their racism behind friendly faces. Suspenseful, fronted by a great performance by Daniel Kaluuya and packed with symbolism, it’s one of the great horror movies in a century that’s been filled with them.

22. Gravity (2013)

Does a movie belong on this list if I refuse to watch it again at home? I wrestled with that. But Gravity is the single most amazing theatrical experience I’ve had in the last 25 years. Alfonso Cuaron’s space adventure is the best use of big-screen tools I’ve seen (and yes, James Cameron, I know Avatar exists). In theaters, this film nearly caused me vertigo as I spun and swung around with Sandra Bullock. It’s a thrill ride, but it’s also a deeply felt story of survival, grief and letting go. I haven’t seen it since – c’mon Warner Brothers, give this an IMAX re-release soon – but I’ve also never forgotten it.

21. The Irishman (2019)

It’s been a good 25 years for Martin Scorsese, who’s been on a tear particularly over the last 13 years or so. Wolf of Wall Street, his screed against corporate (and personal) depravity, has only become more relevant since its release. Silence is one of the great meditations on faith, doubt and suffering. Killers of the Flower Moon is a treatise and confession for America’s original sin. Even the film’s I haven’t liked as much – Shutter Island, Hugo and Gangs of New York – still ranked among their years’ best. But The Irishman feels like his final word on so many things. It’s a gangster film told with sadness and regret. It’s a film packed with feelings of guilt, confession and the fear of damnation. It’s led by some of our greatest actors. It’s Scorsese at full power, and it’s utterly fantastic.

20. The Act of Killing (2012)

Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Oppenheimer connects with the warlords who once carried out genocide in Cambodia, and asks them to recreate their atrocities for the camera. What we get is the closest thing we may ever see to a confession, told with stark boldness and surreal visuals, and the sense of danger and stark evil is palpable. Throughout, Oppenheimer asks them to confront their misdeed and see what they feel. The film’s final act is a devastating bit of emotional purging – I believe Josh Larsen called it similar to watching an exorcism, and it’s haunted me ever since. I also strongly recommend Oppehnheime’s quieter but no less powerful follow-up documentary The Look of Silence.

19. Lost in Translation (2003)

Sofia Coppola’s comedy-drama is a quiet story of found friendship almost entirely set in a Tokyo hotel. Bill Murray gives what might be the performance of his career as an actor sliding into irrelevance, in town to film some whiskey commercials. He strikes up a friendship with Scarlett Johansson’s character, who’s bumming around town while her husband heads off on photography shoots. It’s a tender, wry and sweet movie about two people who might never connect finding each other at the moment they need it most. Their relationship isn’t quite a romance, but more intense than a friendship, and I love the way Murray comes alive as he’s given a chance to be needed by someone. Coppola understands the language of the lonely, and Lost in Translation is both aching and joyous, sometimes at the same time.

18. Shaun of the Dead (2004)

I waffled between this film and Hot Fuzz. Honestly, I could put any of the Cornetto trilogy in this place – I think The World’s End is sorely underrated. But Shaun of the Dead is the start of this fantastic collaboration between Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. On the surface, it should be a disposable zombie comedy (or, as the posters called it, a “zom-rom-com.”). But Wright’s airtight script – full of wonderful foreshadowing – Pegg and Frost’s unmatchable chemistry and a willingness to go dark and emotional when called for make this not just one of the century’s great comedies, but one of the best zombie films ever made. It’s scary and funny – the zombie beatdown to “Don’t Stop Me Now” is maybe Wright’s finest moment – but it also effectively leans into emotion when it needs to. In a century of great zombie movies – 28 Days Later was in consideration for this list – this is still the best.

17. Take This Waltz (2011)

Sarah Polley did not miss this century. Her directorial debut Away from Her is a devastating portrait of a marriage in the shadow of Alzheimer’s. Her documentary Stories We Tell is one of the best of the form. Women Talking is a smart and harrowing story of curdled religion. But the film that sticks to my ribs is this small, unfairly forgotten relationship drama starring Michelle Williams, Seth Rogen, Luke Kirby and Sarah Silverman. Williams and Rogen are a happily married couple, but she’s thrown off her axis when she meets Kirby’s character. Polley captures the fear of settling into normalcy and missing out on life, and everyone gives fantastic performances. It’s clear-eyed but non-judgmental, and Rogen has a moment here that utterly breaks my heart. Told with bright colors and wonderful quiet moments, and ending on a haunting emotional note, it’s a great relationship drama in two years of great relationship dramas.

16. Zodiac (2007)

You could argue that it’s David Fincher’s finest hour as a director – except that I might have something further up on this list that refutes that. This is far from the first time Fincher delved into serial killer territory, nor would it be his last. But working from James Vanderbilt’s meticulous script, he pivots from our expectations and turns what could have been a standard thriller into a sprawling and purposefully frustrating tale of obsession. The film looks fantastic and Fincher is able to create horror from mundanity – a murder filmed in broad daylight is absolutely terrifying. And Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. give career-best performances.

15. Memento (2000)

Christopher Nolan has made some great movies over the last two decades, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for suggesting The Dark Knight, Inception, Dunkirk and even Oppenheimer for this list. But I don’t think he’s ever been better than Memento, his second film as a director and the movie that introduced him to audiences. This neo noir, told with a fractured chronology – it’s not quite told backwards, but rather has a hybrid timeline – scrambled my brain the first time I saw it and, on subsequent viewings, continued to amaze me with its narrative tricks, as well as its devastating emotional core. Guy Pearce is fantastic as a grieving husband searching for his wife’s killer, but Carrie Anne-Moss and Joe Pantoliano are maybe just as good. Nolan got bigger and more ambitious as his career went on – sometimes to his detriment – but he never got better.

14. Parasite (2019)

When Bong Joon Ho’s film won the Oscar for Best Picture in early 2020 – one of the few high points of that year – I jumped up from my couch in shock. I didn’t think it was possible that the Academy would award something that felt so new, shocking and smart. But how can you deny it? It works as a world-class thriller, but it’s laced with so much satire and insight about class warfare and the truth that for some to succeed, others must suffer. Superb.

13. Synecdoche, New York (2008)

For his directorial debut, Charlie Kaufman took a giant swing. The writer of Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind crafts a story full of prickly, somber whimsy about a playwright (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who attempts to understand life and his relationship with women by mounting a play that consumes his life — and an entire warehouse – for decades. It’s 8 ½ filtered through Kaufman’s lens of anxiety and self-loathing, a movie about trying to understand life and relationships and accept death as it all slips through your fingers. Hoffman is excellent, as is the supporting cast, composed of such heavy hitters as Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton and Jennifer Jason Leigh. Like most of Kaufman’s works, it’s not always easy or likable. It is, however, unforgettable.

12. Her (2013)

Let’s keep the Being John Malkovich crew in the conversation here – the film just missed my list – to lavish praise on Spike Jonze’s bittersweet romance. Joaquin Phoenix curbs his intensity to play a lonely man who falls in love with his artificial intelligence (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) in this smart, beautiful musing on modern technology, loneliness and relationships. This movie doesn’t work if you don’t buy the central relationship, and Phoenix and the disembodied Johansson are both fantastic. Yes, this a movie that keeps feeling timely as our relationship to AI evolves. But the truth is, it’s always timely because it’s rooted in conversations about human connection, the need to love and be loved, and the fears that accompany it. I’m well overdue for a rewatch.

11. WALL-E (2008)

Peak Pixar. Andrew Stanton’s sci-fi masterpiece is one of the great American animated movies – and before Pixar lost its way, the first half of this century was filled with movies that almost made this list, including Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Inside Out and Up. A simple fable about the last robot on Earth, it’s a funny and sweet little love story. WALL-E is an animated Charlie Chaplin character, a messy little bot who falls in love with an android way out of his league. The first half of the film is the best work Pixar’s ever done, a nearly wordless love story told through beeps and boops. The second half is a wry bit of social commentary about human lethargy and laziness. The centerpiece of the film – as WALL-E and EVE dance among the stars – moves me to tears. It’s a beautiful bit of computer animation that says so much about what it means to be human.

10. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

The truth is that, on their own, I’m not quite sure any one of Peter Jackson’s movies would make my list (although I could entertain arguments for either Fellowship or Return of the King). But together, the three make up one of the most audacious cinematic experiences I’ve seen. It’s one story told in three volumes, and Jackson’s decision to film them concurrently gives a continuity and propulsion that we don’t usually get from blockbusters. The entire cast is perfect, and Jackson’s combination of practical and digital special effects gives this a tactile quality that he couldn’t replicate in his interminable Hobbit movies a decade later. For better or worse, this set the stage for multipart movies that would dominate the Harry Potter, Twilight and Marvel franchises. But it’s the rare example where hundreds of millions of dollars resulted in something truly special and magical. I don’t even love the books — I’m overdue for a retry — but I could always be invited to get sucked into these movies.

9. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Speaking of audacious. The Daniels’ multiversal action epic is a weird, big swing that shouldn’t work and yet constantly tops itself. Michelle Yeoh, Key Huy Quan, Stephanie Tsu and Jamie Lee Curtis bravely handle everything the directors throw at them in this everything bagel of a movie, hopping through universes where different versions of themselves present a look at choices they didn’t make – and in one universe, they have hot dog fingers. The comic book multiverse movies look absolutely bland compared to this burst of energy, which has so much to say about regret, family, yearning and kindness. Creatively daring and deeply human, we haven’t seen anything like it since.

8. Boyhood (2014)

I debated a rule where I only allowed one film per director on this list. I’m breaking it twice (three times if you count the Lord of the Rings). This is the first of two Linklater films on this list. Boyhood is arguably his most ambitious work, following the same young man (played by Ellar Coltrane) from age 6 to 18. Linklater is one of our most thoughtful and curious filmmakers, who shapes with time better than any other director. He wisely keeps this film centered not on the predictable big moments but the small, quieter ones where life happens. It’s a movie of cumulative power, and I defy any parent not to be overwhelmed as the years add up. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke are both wonderful as the parents. I watched this when my son was just 2; I haven’t had the strength to go back because being reminded how fast this goes – and that I know I’ll be just like Arquette’s character, wishing there were more moments – will only wreck me. A truly special, once-in-a-lifetime movie.

7. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Cinema distilled to its essence: movement, light and sound. George Miller roared back to the Wasteland in his 70s for a film that I defy any filmmaker half his age to make. Tom Hardy steps in for Mel Gibson, but it’s Charlize Theron who runs away with the movie as badass Furiosa. The film is a there-and-back chase, told with psychedelic colors and surreal imagery. It has the greatest stunts sequences put to film, and I’m not the first person to wonder how nobody died making this movie. Detailed world-building with a political subtext that is apparent without ever being didactic, it’s one of the greatest action movies ever made.

6. There Will Be Blood (2007)

Paul Thomas Anderson makes his Citizen Kane. Daniel Day-Lewis gives what might be the performance of the century as an oil magnate with a calloused heart who meets his match in Paul Dano’s opportunistic preacher. A bold, brooding, magnificent movie about the greed at the heart of American Christianity and capitalism, it never pulls its punches. Anderson’s cinematic prowess, with Johnny Greenwood’s score thrumming throughout, is never overwhelmed by his actors but rather gives them a stage to deliver performances that are larger-than-life without being one-dimensional. And its final moment? Perfection.

5. The Social Network (2010)

Like many others, I rolled my eyes at what others dubbed “the Facebook movie.” And then I saw it. Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher vie for dominance, and it simply brings out the best in both of them. The screenplay crackles, the cast is absurdly good and Fincher doesn't give in to the desire other directors may have to go a bit soft on Zuckerberg; he leaves him in the cold, a brilliant man whose insecurities, pettiness and pride cause him to burn every bridge he crosses. I don't know that I truly appreciated how tremendous that opening scene is — every insecurity and grievance Zuckerberg carries is revealed from the get-go, and that quick breakup reverberates through the entire movie. A masterpiece.

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

A movie that gets better with age. As with Fincher and Sorkin in The Social Network, Michel Gondry’s whimsy and Charlie Kaufman’s cynicism balance each other out in this sci-fi romance. Jim Carrey plays a man who learns his ex-girlfriend (Kate Winselt) has chosen to erase him from her mind. He decides to undergo the same procedure in retaliation, and we follow through his mind as he has second thoughts. It’s a movie about the pain that mingles with the joy of relationships, and questions whether we can grow and change, or whether we just revert to our same mistakes over and again. Carrey and Winslet are great – she impresses me more with each viewing – and I love the subplot involving Tom Wilkinson, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo and Elijah Wood that delves into the ethical minefields (and mindfields?) of this technology. And while my twenty-something self initially saw the movie’s ending as a hopeful ode to second chances, the older I get, the more I wonder whether it’s truly as happy as I took it for.

3. No Country for Old Men (2007)

I typically prefer the Coens in comedic mode – Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski, Burn After Reading or Fargo. But they’ve never been better than this stark, chilling drama about a man (Josh Brolin) who absconds with cartel money and finds himself pursued by an unrelenting hitman (Javier Bardem) and a world-weary cop (Tommy Lee Jones). Working from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, it’s a tense, surprising and ingeniously structured movie that understands the greed that suffocates the human heart and the evil that we dare not engage with. My wife got me the Criterion Blu-Ray last Christmas; it’s probably about time I pop it in.

2. Before Sunset (2004)

Richard Linklater made possibly the greatest sequel of all time, and it was one no one asked for. His 1995 romance Before Sunrise received solid reviews but was a cult hit at best. And his tale of two young people walking, talking and falling in love one night in Vienna had an ending you wouldn’t want to undo, leaving us unsure of whether Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) reunited six months after that evening. But his second film builds on its predecessor, wrestling with issues of missed chances, regret and how perspective changes with time. For 90 minutes – nearly in real time – we see Jesse and Celine reunite in Paris one afternoon, walking, talking, reflecting on that evening, and doing nearly everything except acknowledging the emotions roiling under their surface. The longer Linklater keeps any physical affection or hints or romance at bay, the harder it hits when he finally leans in near the end, where furtive glances and aborted reaches pack more power than any overt display of affection would. And no film has ever ended as perfectly as this one – it’s a shot so wonderful that you never want to know what happens next (and yet, nine years later Before Midnight was another great addition to this series).

1. The Tree of Life (2011)

In his review, Roger Ebert wrote that Terrence Malick’s masterpiece is “a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives.” The Tree of Life is sprawling yet intimate, centered on the coming of age of a young boy in mid-century Texas but also bookended by scenes involving the creation of the universe, its eventual heat death and what might lie beyond. There are references to the book of Job and the film is structured less like narrative and more like poetry; viewed one way, it’s literally a prayer in cinematic form. You can watch this several times to unpack its spiritual and philosophical underpinnings; or, you can just play it loud on a big TV and let Emmanuel Lubezki’s awe-inspiring cinematography and the film’s orchestral score wash over you. This is big, bold and messy filmmaking of the best kind; it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to viewing a film as a spiritual experience.