The Best (Maybe?) 100 Films of the 21st Century - Part 1

 

Last week, the New York Times published its list of the 100 Best Films of the 21st Century (so far). 

Now, I'm going to take a crack at it. Be warned, my list is not their list. Oh sure, there is a significant amount of overlap (even though I've never gotten around to seeing 16 of their 100 choices). 

But...

As I I've noted here many times, I'm a serious film fan, but not necessarily an academic or intellectual one. I'm not above putting a few lowbrow selections on this list if I truly love them.

Also, I didn't name this blog PART-TIME Cinephile for nothing. I love films, but I love other stuff, too. I worked long hours at an often stressful IT job for years, frequently unable to fire up my brain cells for a complex or epic-length film in my spare time. Even in my retirement, I've made as much time for volunteer work, travel, and reading as I have for going to the movies. My experience of world cinema is spotty; I'm well versed in North American film and European films, but less knowledgeable about the cinema of the remaining continents.

So.. take this list with a huge grain of salt, if you must. I make no claims that these are the best films of this century, only that they are my favorites. My choices are personal and sometimes eccentric. The number one criteria for inclusion in my top 100 is that, if given the chance, I'd sit down right now and watch it again.

One more thing - I did not even attempt to give these films a numerical ranking. The very thought of doing so makes me want to lie down and take a long nap. I did manage to pick a Top Ten for the reader's ballot I sent to the Times, but within 24 hours I wished I could revise it.  Instead, the films presented here are listed in alphabetic, rather than preferential, order.

(Also, this list contains a few films released in the year 2000, which technically isn't the 21st century. But since the Times ignored that technicality in compiling their list, I did too.)

Here are the first 20 films on my list - watch for four subsequent posts in which I'll present the remaining honors:

35 Shots of Rum (director Claire Denis; 2008)

A beautifully and quietly observed story of the close relationship between a father and his adult daughter and how it evolves as the daughter moves into a serious romantic relationship. Denis has a nice feel not only for the main characters, but also for the community in which they live and the relationships between members of that community. This is a deceptively lightweight but profoundly felt 'slice of life' story with lasting emotional impact.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (director Laura Poitras; 2022)

A profound and moving documentary that touches on so many themes: art, activism, the opioid crisis (and the Purdue Pharma/Sackler family culpability for it), mental illness, dysfunctional families, and the functional, nurturing families we create for ourselves with people we aren't related to. A stunning portrait of Nan Goldin who, through her twin passions for provocative art and unyielding activism, transformed immense personal pain into a mission to remove the Sackler name from art galleries around the world. Her passion and sense of purpose are unforgettably captured here.

Almost Famous (director Cameron Crowe;2002)

Cameron Crowe actually did write for Rolling Stone as a teenager, as the lead character (Patrick Fugit) does here, and it's reasonable to assume this film is based on his own experiences.  Fifteen-year-old William goes on the road with a band called Stillwater, while his anxious mother (Frances McDormand, great as always) phones in regularly to remind him "Don't do drugs!" Crowe gets everything right here - from the sometimes contentious relationships between band members (Billy Crudup, Jason Lee) to the details of William's bittersweet loss of innocence to the infectious joy of great rock music.  Kate Hudson delivers a star-making debut as the "band aid" (NOT groupie, as she'd be the first to tell you) Penny Lane.

Annette (director Leos Carax; 2021)

The slightly (ok, totally!) bonkers rock opera in which a foul-mouthed stand-up comic (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard) fall in love. Their baby girl, Annette, is an animated puppet with a lovely singing voice. Things only get weirder from there. Leos Carax is a famously avant garde director, and this film was waaay outside most people's comfort zones, but I found it fascinating. The music, composed by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, is memorable and infectious.  It has a little bit to say about toxic relationships and a little more to say about the ways in which children can be exploited for their parents' glory. But mostly it's just nuts. You'll either love it or hate it.

Another Year (director Mike Leigh; 2010)

I can think of no finer example of ensemble acting in this century, and that includes other films by Mike Leigh, who is very much an actor's director. Here we spend a year with a long and happily married couple, their family, and two of their sad single friends. The performances feel so lived-in, the relationships between the characters are so nuanced that we can glimpse the whole history of a relationship in a furtively exchanged glance or a shared joke.  The standout performance comes from the brilliant Lesley Manville, as a fiftyish single woman who is slowly unravelling into despair. Manville's final closeup shot as she sits forlornly among a lively group at a dinner table maybe the most heartbreaking image of Leigh's entire career.

At Eternity's Gate (director Julian Schnabel; 2018)

During the pandemic, I gave myself a little assignment. I would watch every film and television portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh I could find, and rank them from best to worst.  I watched a staggering number of Van Gogh portrayals (including the character's appearance on an episode of Dr. Who and a wordless cameo by Martin Scorsese in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.) But I never got around to posting a ranking. If I had, this film - and Willem Dafoe's portrayal of Van Gogh in it  - would easily have topped the list.

Schnabel, himself a painter, has a different feel for the material than others who have attempted it; you can tell that a painter was behind the camera in the way colors are captured or landscapes are framed. It's like we're seeing Van Gogh's subjects through the artist's own eyes. This version of the artist's life story doesn't pull punches about his depressive nature, but neither does it lean in to the sensationalistic aspects of that illness. (As opposed to, say, Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo which dives right into the ugliest and most off-putting aspects of Van Gogh's madness. Or Kirk Douglas' unrelenting intensity in Lust for Life.) 

Atonement (director Joe Wright; 2007)

A masterful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about family secrets and their legacy.  It's most impressive achievement is a single, seven-minute tracking shot of the Dunkirk evacuation in World War II. It also introduced us to Soirse Ronan, making an impressive debut as the young girl whose misinterpretation of a romantic encounter between her sister and their housekeeper's son has lasting consequences.

The Aviator (director Martin Scorsese; 2004)

I've never gotten over the injustice of its losing the Best Picture Oscar to Million Dollar Baby, and so I'll take any opportunity to lavish praise on it. To my mind, it's easily one of the best biopics of the century, featuring what may, arguably, be Leonardo Di Caprio's greatest performance as an ambitious, phobia-ridden and ultimately tragic Howard Hughes.  And I love the film's palette; those touches of sepia-golden-brown and vibrant aqua blue that suggest the tinted photographs I used to see in my grandmother's albums. 

The Banshees of Inisherin (director Martin McDonagh; 2022)

The setting is an island off the coast of Ireland, and the time is 1923. The low roar of gunfire can be heard from the mainland where a civil war is raging. But on the isle of Inisherin, the squabbles are far less consequential if, in their own way, nearly as brutal.

After years of sharing daily chats and pints in the pub, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) decides he can no longer be friends with Padraic (Colin Farrell) because he finds Padraic dull company. Colm dreams of writing music and making something meaningful of his remaining days, while Padraic, confused and hurt, keeps chipping away at Colm for rapprochement. Colm becomes so indignant that he threatens to cut off his own fingers, one by one, if Padraic doesn't leave him alone.

If you've seen any other of Martin McDonagh's films, you can probably guess where this is going. 

His dark, deadpan humor works brilliantly here, particularly as acted by Farrell and Gleeson, as brilliant a double act as we've seen onscreen in many years. The film is suffused with an underlying sadness and sense of loneliness, even in its most ridiculous moments. It's a tale of small things - petty grievances, idle gossip, fleeting moments of contentment - but it accords to those small things a deep emotional resonance.

Beau Travail (director Claire Denis; 2000)

This one's a bit of a cheat since it is generally considered a 1999 film. However, per IMDB, it was not in general release anywhere (meaning outside of film festival screenings) till 2000. It's worth cheating a little to recommend this odd but compelling drama. Denis Lavant plays a disgraced military officer who looks back on his career in Djibouti from his solitary home in Marseilles. His recollections of his obsession with a young, handsome soldier are scattered and impressionistic, but presented here as visually stunning. Levant's character is shown to keep tight control over his emotions and actions, but the final scene - in which he pulls out all the emotional stops on a secluded corner of a nightclub dance floor - is an exhilarating moment of catharsis.

Birth (director Jonathan Glazer; 2004)

One of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but unaccountably mesmerizing. Nicole Kidman plays a  widow who's about to remarry. A young boy who lives in her building shows up out of nowhere at a party in her home, claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband.  There's a terrific extended scene of Kidman attending the opera with her fiancé which consists entirely of her face in a tight close-up as she struggles to get her mind around the idea that the boy may actually be her husband. You have to see to believe it, but Kidman pulls it off beautifully. It may be the single greatest piece of acting she's ever committed to film.  There's a trancelike vibe to this film that pulls you in from the very first scene and seduces you into accepting its bizarre premise. It's like walking into someone else's dream.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (director Michael Morris; 2025)

Yes, there is a Bridget Jones movie on this list - deal with it! 

The Bridget Jones franchise has had its up and downs over the last 24 years, but the most recent installment is, far and away, the best of the lot. It opens five years after the sudden death of Mark Darcy, with Bridget slowly emerging from her grief, looking after her two small children, and tentatively re-entering the dating market.  Loosely based on author/Bridget creator Helen Fielding's own experience as a suddenly widowed mother, the new film keeps Bridget's buoyant, gaffe-prone spirit intact while handling her sadness with tender sensitivity. It's every bit as funny as the preceding films when it needs to be, but also heartbreaking and even profound at just the right moments. Renee Zellweger slips easily back into Bridget's skin.  And Hugh Grant is also back for a few brief scenes that deliver a kick of naughty humor at just the moments when it's needed, while humanizing his rascally Daniel Cleaver character. 

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (director Marielle Heller; 2018)

Melissa McCarthy plays real-life writer Lee Israel who forged and sold letters from the likes of Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward to make ends meet when her career as a celebrity biographer petered out. Director Marielle Heller infuses her story with a palpable sense of melancholy in everything from the low-lit bars that Lee and her drinking buddy (Richard E. Grant) frequent to the perfectly curated, jazz-inflected musical soundtrack. It's a character study with the rhythms of a true crime drama. But it's also a sad valentine to the end of an era in New York - a time when books and writers truly mattered and it was possible to live in shabby-genteel poverty on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Grant and McCarthy are wonderful together, their characters sharing both a closeted, queer identity and outrageously caustic personalities designed to mask their vulnerability and loneliness.

Capote (director Bennett Miller; 2005)

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is unforgettable, as is Catherine Keener's portrayal of his friend and fellow author, Harper Lee. But what I remember most is the haunting, melancholy vibe that thrums throughout this film from start to finish.  We follow Capote through his research for and writing of In Cold Blood, his great "non-fiction novel" about the brutal murders of a Kansas family. The process takes a steep emotional toll on him. Capote established a close relationship with one of the convicted killers (in fact, it's strongly suggested the two fell in love). Yet he needed the the killers' executions to take place in order to tie up and publish his story. His inner conflict nearly destroys him. 

Carol (director Todd Haynes; 2015)

I was unprepared for how beautifully screenwriter Phyllis Nagy adapted and even improved on Patricia Highsmith's odd, difficult stream-of-consciousness novella about the forbidden love between a young woman behind a shop counter and the older, affluent woman who meets her while Christmas shopping. Haynes and Nagy have created a classic love story in which both women's yearnings and heartache are distilled into the simplest, most subtle expressions and gestures, as the times they lived in would require. Ultimately it is a story about passion that is transmuted into genuine, mature love as both characters grow and sacrifice to be true to themselves while protecting the ones they love. And I'd be unforgivably remiss if I didn't mention how remarkable both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are as the lovers. 

Certified Copy (director Abbas Kiarostami; 2010)

Abbas Kiarostami's enigmatic, shape-shifting film is a fascinating fugue on the nature of authenticity in art and relationships.  And if that sounds intimidating, be assured the film is not.  An engrossing brain teaser with a lovely, emotionally supple performance by Juliette Binoche.

Clouds of Sils Maria (director Oliver Assayas; 2014)

I've recommended this film to a few friends; their reactions have been evenly split between "WTF was that?" and "That was AWESOME!" I can't predict which of those camps you'll fall into, but maybe, like me, you'll wind up watching it four times in the space of a couple weeks. How to sum up the virtually un-summarizable plot? Well, Juliette Binoche is an aging actress, Kristen Stewart is her assistant and Chloe Grace Moretz is the Lindsay Lohan-esque youger actress cast opposite Binoche in an upcoming play. Binoche and Stewart take a house in the Swiss Alps where they run lines, often while hiking in the Alps; they are electric together and fascinating to watch, sparks fly off their interactions. My friend Bill (who loved it) is much more eloquent: "It was disarmingly complex. It seemed simple and straightforward, but on a closer look, it was far more textured in its analysis of human nature, relationships and personal growth." If any of that sounds intriguing to you, watch it and lose yourself in it. 

The Congress (director Ari Folman; 2013)

The Congress imagines a deceptively candy-colored but ultimately chilling and soulless future world whose harrowing consequences will only be meaningful to adults. Along the way, there's some moderately trenchant commentary on the way Hollywood disposes of actresses over 40 as well as the potential dangers of the ever-burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, There is also a testament to the enduring power of maternal love.  And about a third of the way in, the film morphs from live action to animation, employing a dazzling, sometimes nightmarish style that recalls the work of both Ralph Bakshi and Max Fleischer. Audacious, ambitious and haunting.

A Dangerous Method (director David Cronenberg; 2011)

A film that dares to be "talky" and to trust its audience to be intelligent and sophisticated,  A Dangerous Method delineates the ideas that (in the memorable words of a friend) led to "the birth to the twentieth century." David Cronenberg's drama of the interconnecting relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Jung's patient, Sabina Spielrein (brilliant in her own right and an underappreciated influence on both men's work) was a film of ideas, driven by superlative performances.  It's thrilling even when it's doing no more than reconstructing actual correspondence between the doctors; Cronenberg finds a visual rhythm that keeps these frequent epistolary passages from stopping the film dead. And yes, there are spanking scenes, but please - Cronenberg's film is anything but dirty-minded.

The Death of Stalin (director Armando Iannucci; 2017)

You've heard of cringe comedy?  Well, Armando Iannucci is the master of 'gasp comedy' - rapid-fire comic patter so fast and so mean that you can barely process it or even croak out a proper laugh in the wake of its farcical nastiness. But even if you've watched one of Iannucci's television political satires (Veep, The Thick of It.), you won't be prepared for the undercurrent of true horror in this very black political comedy.  This time, the history is true (mostly) and the stakes are real; you can hear people pleading for their lives and/or being shot just off camera even while breathlessly funny bureaucratic squabbles play out before your eyes.  It takes a particularly masterful director to get that balance right - Iannucci is up to the task. With Stalin on his deathbed, the politburo goes mad, each man jockeying for position and power in the new government to come. Kruschev (Steve Buscemi), Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) rush to build alliances and kiss up to Stalin's daughter (a superb Andrea Riseborough). What follows is both antic and terrifying, and the actors (particularly Beale and Buscemi) are just about perfect.