Cinema established itself as the art form of the 20th century and, despite the rise of TV, remained a dominant force in entertainment and popular culture throughout. But what of the past twenty-five years, with its technological shifts and renewed challenges from other media? I'll get into the highs and lows of cinema's recent history some other time. For now, here are some thoughts on my favourite films - one for each year of the century so far - hopefully illustrating that the medium is still tolerably healthy.
Okay, rules... I've made one definitive pick for each year, even when several films feel equal in my affection. All choices are based on the UK release schedule. And yes, I'm starting with the year 2000 - even though technically speaking it rounded off the 20th century - because it's the first recent year to start with a 2. I'm making no big proclamations about all these films being the best/most influential/most important... They're just (currently and therefore subject to change) the films I like most.
Here goes.
2000 - Magnolia(Honorable Mention - O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
With a UK release in early 2000,
Magnolia now feels like the end of the 1990s for me - representing the grown-up, challenging, and innovative cinema that made that my preferred movie decade. This kaleidoscope of human flouderings and failings is to date my favourite film
of all time and an example of what I once labelled here as an 'imperfect 10'. Any shortcomings and nitpicks stem from the bold, adventurous nature of Paul Thomas Anderson's storytelling. The way the camera, the editing, and the score weave a clutch of intimate human stories into a meaningful whole never fails to impress me. Plus, it includes my most loved performances of Tom Cruise (whose portrait of a misogynist self-help guru now seems scarily prescient), John C. Reilly (as a well-meaning cop in love with the wrong person),
and the late, lamented Philip Seymour Hoffman (effectively playing an angel in human form). Plus there's the way Anderson incorporates the songs of Aimee Mann. And a climax of literally Biblical proportions.
2001 - Moulin Rouge!
(Honorable Mention - Mulholland Drive)
How wonderful life is with this - Baz Luhrmann's third feature - in the world. The Aussie filmmaker's tale of love between a poet and a courtesan during Paris's
Belle Epoque is wildly silly and occasionally cringing (I'm thinking of you, 'Elephant Love Medley'), but overall feels nothing short of rapturous. Luhrmann reinvented the concept of the movie musical with his anachronistic use of Elton John and Madonna tunes in a late 19th-century setting, while overpowering audiences using his dizzying visual style. The way he can flip from comic to romantic to tragic on a French centime is, for me, unsurpassed, never more so than during the song (
It's a little bit funny...) with which Christian wins Satine's heart. Intoxicating, hilarious, heartbreaking.
2002 - Minority Report
(Honorable Mention - Memento; Monsoon Wedding)
Steven Spielberg has directed seventeen films this side of 2000, and this is up there with the very best.
Minority Report does all the things I love about speculative science fiction and does them well. The extrapolation of contemporary technology to create a convincing future world, one that's coloured in with
Blade Runner levels of detail (only much shinier)... The exploration of an intriguing moral conundrum - specifically, what if you could predict and therefore prosecute crimes before they actually took place? And reflection on the era in which the futuristic film is made. It's all here in a narrative powered by the director at the peak of his technical prowess. From the moment Tom Cruise's Pre-Crime detective falls foul of the technology he operates, the film barely pauses for breath, while remaining totally coherent throughout. It also boasts a typically great support performance from Samantha Morton as 'pre-cog' Agatha. Pure entertainment.
2003 - The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
(Honorable Mention - City of God)
Let me be honest here and subvert my own rules if only slightly. My favourite films for this year and the previous two were the episodes of Peter Jackson's phenomenal
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. But similar to what the US Film Academy did at the next year's Oscars, I'm letting
The Return of the King represent the entire hobbity project, thereby giving other movies deserved room to shine. Basically, the
Rings films are the ones I've watched the most in my life. Jackson and his co-creatives didn't just climb the mountain of J. R. R. Tolkien's gargantuan text, they carved it out, creating something as beautiful as it was epic. The results filled me with joy and gave me some of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life. (I watched all three at the cinema with my completely enthralled dad). They're precious memories, and indeed precious box sets, full of moments both intimate and sweeping. And despite the production team's experimentation with CGI, much of these films still feel gratifyingly solid in a way that the subsequent
Hobbit trilogy frequently did not. With the 25th anniversary of
The Fellowship of the Ring on the horizon, it's definitely time for a rewatch.
2004 - Shaun of the Dead
(Honorable Mention - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
There's a lovely story told on the
Shaun of the Dead Blu-ray of an unimpressed supporting artist (that's 'extra' in old-school phraseology) mistaking Simon Pegg for a crew member and commenting, "Straight to video, this one". The observer in question was no doubt deceived by the production's modest £4 million budget and steadily recycled hoard of undead shamble-ons. What they couldn't envisage was how Edgar Wright's ginsu-sharp editing would shape his and Pegg's loving homage to the zombie genre into one of the best British films of the decade, kick-starting their now-famed 'Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy' (more of which later). Both hilarious comedy and legit horror,
Shaun is far better than anything that might be labelled 'spoof'. It's a love letter to George A. Romero (
Night of the Living Dead), a love
story, a spot-on satire of Gen-X slacker culture, the first of multiple Simon Pegg/Nick Frost on-screen bromances, and one of those films that, should you stumble on it while channel-hopping late at night, you'll inevitably watch to the end. How's that for a slice of fried gold?
2005 - King Kong
(Honorable Mention - The Aviator)
It's another Peter Jackson production. (Call me a PJ fanboy, and I'll wear that t-shirt with pride.) Speaking once more of love-letters, this remake of the most iconic ape movie in cinema history is a homage to every aspect of Merian C. Cooper's 1933 original. Having lovingly recreated Depression-era New York and sailed his band of ill-prepared Tinseltown adventurers into the fogs of Kong Island, Jackson takes his audience on one of the modern era's most exhilarating cinematic theme-park rides. What makes this movie so memorable, however, is the reframing of the Kong/Ann Darrow story, establishing a heart-rending, empathetic bond between standard-sized woman and gigantic primate. It makes for less screaming from the radiant Naomi Watts and more sobbing from the audience, once Kong falls prey to human greed. You don't yell in fear of the 25-foot ape as he breaks free; you damn well cheer him on, right to that final, fateful showdown atop the Empire State Building. Such a shame beauty and this beast didn't have more time together.
2006 - Little Miss Sunshine
(Honorable Mentions - Children of Men; Pan's Labyrinth)
Some choices are brutal. I mean,
look at those honourable mentions. Any one of these three films earns a spot on my favourite-films-of-all-time list - this was one hella good year! But, finally, I've gone with the one that I've watched (and that warms my heart) the most. It's a narrative miracle that a story beginning with so much familial dysfunction, self-harm, and skewed thinking can end in a place of such deep, anarchic joy, especially given the sequence of disasters that occur along the way. But that's why the Hoovers are my favourite movie family of all time (apologies to the Addamses and the Von Trapps). With its deeply sardonic sense of humour, a handful of rich character performances, and the funniest vehicle ever to complete a movie road trip (apologies to Herbie and Jake and Elwood's Bluesmobile),
Little Miss Sunshine never fails to make me grin while feeling better about the whole human experience. And its wisdom is eternal: better to lose with style than never to try at all.
2007 - Zodiac
(Honorable Mention - Hot Fuzz)
It takes a skilled director (and indeed, skilled writers) to take a true-crime story, where the crimes in question were never resolved, and turn it into a satisfying thriller. But that's what David Fincher does with the story - not so much of San Francisco's notorious Zodiac killer, but of the obsession of those trying to catch him. It's a Ruffolo/Downey Jr/Gyllenhaal triple whammy, and they're all at their best as three very different men trying to crack the case, along with John Carroll Lynch in his creepy supporting turn as suspect Arthur Leigh Allen. Those expecting the horrors of Fincher's harrowing
Se7en get something much more purely psychological, as the killer's madness infects those in his pursuit. A taut script with direction to match, plus David Shire's eerie score, make this one of Fincher's best.
2008 - There Will Be Blood
(Honorable Mentions - The Dark Knight; WALL-E)
I didn't know what to make of this much-lauded Paul Thomas Anderson film, the first time I saw it. It was such a far cry from
Magnolia (see above) that I felt something akin to let down. But you've got to respect a director who can reinvent his own style as completely as this. Subsequent viewings have confirmed for me what a
tour de force this is, with its masterful cinematography, vivid recreation of the early 20th-century California oil fields, and barnstorming performances by both Daniel Day-Lewis
and (suck it, Quentin Tarantino) Paul Dano. Playing two very different types of self-made man in a world of capitalist excess, the escalating rivalry between them is raw, unfiltered, and totally mesmerising. It's a film deeply admired by Christopher Nolan, whose work resembles
There Will Be Blood in its scope and commitment to in-camera effects. But more of that later...
2009 - Slumdog Millionaire
(Honorable Mention - Up)
I went to an advanced screening of this one with my pal Jen, and it knocked us both out with its pace, its verve, and its originality. Then we laughed later about posters hyping it as 'the feel-good movie of the year'. This story of a young man's attempt to reconnect with his lost love through appearing on India's
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire deals with police torture, race murder, and child mutilation among other delights before delivering on any of the promised good feelings. That it succeeds in carrying its audience through such dark times is thanks to the screenplay's magical realism (this is a tale all about destiny), Danny Boyle's thrilling direction, and an invigorating score by A. R. Rahman. The film made a movie star out of Dev Patel, in a foolishly optimistic but undeniably compelling love story that drags you through the emotional wringer before plastering a smile all over your tired face.
2010 - The Social Network
(Honorable Mention - Inception)
David Fincher again. It says a lot about his style, I think, that my favourite film of his doesn't deal with serial killers (real-life or fictional) or bare-knuckle organisations you don't talk about. The creation of a social media site, however iconic, didn't seem to promise great cinema - but put a script by
The West Wing's Aaron Sorkin into Fincher's hands, and you get a result every bit as dynamic as
Se7en or
Fight Club. Sorkin's writing shapes the story of how Mark Zuckerberg launched
Facebook into a fast-talking study of friendship and betrayal, and Fincher's crisp direction matches the dialogue beat for beat. Jesse Eisenberg is cast perfectly as the website's co-creator, his character journey compelling and rich with complexity, but it's Andrew Garfield who supplies the story's heart as best friend and
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. It's sharp, witty, and endlessly quotable, and the soundtrack by Messrs Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross doesn't hurt either. That Sorkin has taken over directorial reins and is bringing us 'spiritual sequel'
The Social Reckoning later this year is reason for much celebration.
2011 - True Grit
(Honorable Mention - Bridesmaids)
Yes, I know that the Coen Brothers' other literary adaptation - No Country for Old Men - received all the plaudits, landing them a trio of well-deserved Oscars, but my preference is for this one. Maybe it's because of their dark take on the source material, Charles Portis' 1968 novel, or maybe because the characters allow them to be a bit more 'Coens-y' than in No Country. It could be due to the Brothers' reunion with the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, in the role of Deputy U. S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn on which John Wayne put his stamp in 1969. (Don't take me down with a Colt revolver, but I prefer Bridges' performance.) Or perchance it's the chemistry between the leads, with Matt Damon playing against type as puffed-up Texas Ranger Le Boeuf (his preferred pronunciation 'Le Beef'), and a 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld as precocious and vengeful Mattie Ross. Ultimately, I think it's because this True Grit is truer to the novel and truly representative of the western genre, while retaining a true Coen feel. Along with a lot of grit.
2012 - Moonrise Kingdom(Honorable Mention - Skyfall)
Director/writer/creator Wes Anderson inspires both love and hate from the film community. I'm in a position where I frequently feel the love but can appreciate the reasons behind the hate - sometimes his showy cleverness and theatricality are just too much. For me, Moonrise Kingdom and its follow-up The Grand Budapest Hotel pitch it just right in terms of content and style. Both are beautifully crafted shaggy-dog stories, and Moonrise has an especial charm along with genuine hilarity, telling as it does a unique coming-of-age story between a rebellious, book-loving girl and a runaway Boy Scout. Aside from its engaging 13-year-old leads, it has the usual gallery of deliciously deadpan adult performances (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Ed Norton, etc. etc). A particular delight, however, is Bruce Willis fully embracing the Anderson method along with clear-frame retro glasses, as Police Captain Sharp. Charming from start to meticulously crafted finish, this is one to wholeheartedly love.
2013 - The World's End(Honorable Mention - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug)
Of the films making up the Wright/Pegg 'Cornetto Trilogy',
The World's End is sometimes viewed as the slightly disappointing final entry. Not in my book. If
Shaun of the Dead is the most heartfelt and
Hot Fuzz the funniest, then
The World's End is the smartest of the trio. It's also significantly more mature than the others in its central conceit - a group of middle-aged friends are cajoled into re-attempting a legendary pub crawl from their teen years by the one member who's never moved on, thus testing (like Jay Gatsby) whether you can repeat the past. And that's before the big genre twist thirty minutes in. What I love about this film is how even when events take an apocalyptic turn, the pub crawl and all it signifies for Simon Pegg's tragicomic Gary King remains the spine of the story. The central ensemble is great value, totally convincing as a group of estranged school friends in various gradations of drunkenness. Plus, the flipping of the established comic/straight-man roles (Nick Frost this time acting as Pegg's foil) works a treat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise - this film wraps up the ice-cream-flecked project just perfectly.
2014 - The Babadook(Honorable Mention - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; The Grand Budapest Hotel)
The term 'elevated horror' emerged around this time, expressly to describe films like this one. It's the kind of horror that rejects jump scares and gore in favour of unsettling ambience and smart, psychological concepts to cultivate fear. The first feature of Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent, The Babadook is one of the best-crafted and most rewatchable of the 'elevated' sub-genre. Essie Davis gives a magnificent performance as struggling single mother Amelia, whose latent resentment towards her own child (an unholy terror named Samuel) may or may not be manifesting as the terrifying creature of the title. Mister Babadook himself is straight out of a German Expressionist nightmare, and is all the more scary for the mere fleeting glimpses we see of him. A masterclass in slowly mounting dread, this is also a clever and psychologically coherent study in toxic parent-child dynamics that muddies the waters regarding who is driving who mad. The movie also includes the most disturbing child's pop-up book in the history of fiction. If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of...
2015 - Whiplash(Honorable Mentions - Mad Max: Fury Road; The Martian)
Director Damien Chazelle would achieve mainstream success two years later with the much-feted
La La Land, but many cinephiles rate this film as his best to date.
Whiplash is not what you might expect from its 'talented young jazz drummer goes to music school' premise. The main difference is J. K. Simmons' Oscar-bagging performance as Terence Fletcher, a band instructor whose pursuit of excellence in his students incorporates emotional and sometimes physical abuse. It's more Marine Corps boot camp than music conservatory, and the twisted dynamic between Miles Teller's protégé and his mentor/nemesis is pure electricity throughout. Chazelle shoots this drama as a thriller, and the coaching sequences will have you clawing the sofa cushions they're so stress-inducing. The director has revisited the movie's core theme - the heavy price of ambition - since then, but never with as much heart-racing intensity.
2016 - Sing Street(Honorable Mention - Arrival)
I enjoy the work of Dublin-born musician-turned-filmmaker John Carney. He doesn't make musicals, he makes dramas about music - the people who write it and play it and produce it and succeed or fail at it, who fall in love
with it and
to it and who try to make their living
from it... I love all his films, but none quite so much as I love
Sing Street. His story of Conor, a lad growing up in 1980s Dublin who starts a band to impress a girl and to survive life in the school from hell, is one of the best coming-of-age narratives I've ever experienced. Original songs punctuate the film, each paying note-perfect homage to a musical genre of the era, while Conor and his friends undergo a style and character evolution that's both funny and charming. It's touching as a romance, a
bromance, and a tale of brotherly love, while never shying away from the tougher aspects of teenage life. Endlessly rewatchable, this is - despite its heartfelt tribute to the '80s - a music movie for the ages.
2017 - Paddington 2(Honorable Mentions - Moonlight; Dunkirk; Get Out)
Okay, bear with me. That's one heavyweight list of honourable mentions - I even placed two of them above my current choice on my favourite films list for 2017. But time and repeated viewings provide greater perspective, and I'm ready to die on the hill that says Paddington 2 is among the greatest films of the 21st century. And if you don't believe me, see what Pedro Pascal has to say in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent: 'I cried through the entire thing. It made me want to be a better man.' I can't say I wept, exactly, but I found this film massively endearing and funny throughout. I've never seen a family film made with greater craft and attention to detail, nor have I seen one more attuned to the needs of the moment, with its message on the simple power of kindness. Sweet and sharp as the tang of an artisan orange marmalade, this is what happens when you make a child-friendly film with the care and passion of a Scorsese, a del Toro, or an Anderson (specifically Wes). It's like joy in a jar.
2018 - First Man(Honorable Mentions - The Shape of Water; Avengers: Infinity War; Mission: Impossible - Fallout)
Space travel movies appeal to me, and this one I find especially potent, based as it is on real events - those heady days of the Apollo program, where the sky was no longer the limit, and the cosmos had become the final frontier. Ryan Gosling is Neil Armstrong, stoic to a fault as the eponymous first man on the moon, with Claire Foy as his supportive yet far from meek wife Janet. The adventure and wonder of space travel is powerfully conveyed along with the height of its stress levels and its stakes. Writer Josh Singer's narrative has dynamism and grit, and Justin Hurwitz's rhapsodic score fuels the story the way liquid hydrogen fuelled Apollo 11 (I looked it up). There's also a sadness that permeates the film, not least because of the family tragedy Armstrong carries deep within him. First Man cemented the critical reputation that Damien Chazelle had built with Whiplash and La La Land. And while it proved a box office disappointment (along with his subsequent grand folly Babylon), at least it shot for the moon creatively speaking.
2019 - Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood(Honorable Mention - Avengers: Endgame)
Just when I thought I was never going to love another Quentin Tarantino film quite as much as Pulp Fiction, along came this one - his extended love-letter to the cinema of 1960s Hollywood. Leonardo DiCaprio gives a top-tier performance as action star Rick Dalton, whose career is fading along with Hollywood's Golden Age, while Brad Pitt has never been cooler in his role as Rick's stunt-double and loyal friend Cliff Booth. Meanwhile, Margot Robbie represents the doomed innocence of the cinematic era in her role as equally doomed Sharon Tate - although maybe not, with Tarantino in charge of her story... It's a sprawling and loquacious tale (as you'd expect), but what makes it stand out is how steeped it is in a specific kind of nostalgia - 1969 painstakingly crafted through the lens of the filmmaker's memory. Rick's endeavours to recapture a moment of his former glory on a TV shoot have both hilarity and pathos, while Cliff's odyssey into the home of the Manson Family is quietly chilling. As for the finale - it's perfectly set up, brutal, and brilliant. Plus, the QT needle-drops have never worked better. More real-world grounded (for the most part) than the auteur's other work, this is an immersive and often outrageous tribute to a bygone entertainment world.
2020 - Parasite(Honorable Mention - 1917)
1917 was the first title that I scored as 10 on this blog, so it was going to take quite some film to beat it as my favourite of that year. Parasite is that film. As a satire on wealth inequality, it's tough to match, and yet it's so much else besides. Director Bong Joon Ho charts how the scrappy, impoverished Kim family insinuate themselves into the lives of the Parks, who exist in the most privileged echelon of Seoul society. But that's only the start of this twisted, genre-shifting tale. Spiky social comedy morphs into Hitchcockian thriller territory, before this drama takes its most shocking turns. The contrasting rich/poor production designs are evocatively created, with the Parks' state-of-the-art super-home built from the foundations up for the film. But it's a third-act climate metaphor for the city's social divide that really steals your breath. As for that ending... wow. Brilliantly conceived and expertly executed, Parasite just stole it from Sam Mendes' First World War odyssey as my 2020 topper.
2021 - Dune: Part One(Honorable Mention - Spider-Man: No Way Home)
2022 - Top Gun: Maverick
(Honorable Mentions - The Batman; Everything, Everywhere, All At Once)
A couple of friends, having been less than enthused by Top Gun: Maverick, asked me to sell them on why it's a worthy choice for film of the year. What could I say? There's no analysing the movie for deeper meaning - everything great about it is up there on the screen or blasting from the surround-sound speakers. What I really love about Tom Cruise's return to the TG military flight school, though, is how real it all is. With a clutch of Mission: Impossible films behind him, and a name rebuilt on doing the stunts for real, Cruise worked with director Joseph Kosinski to create a heightened and visceral action-cinema experience. They did all they could to fly viewers through the sunlit skies at Mach 10 along with the actors, the on-screen G-forces driving us deep into our luxury recliner seats. Undergoing such thrills as part of a laughing and gasping IMAX crowd felt liberating after the pandemic years. The movie was also a rattling good adventure and a superbly realised exercise in nostalgia, while providing something fresh and new. So if you came out of a screening feeling the same kind of buzz as me, that makes me happy. If not... well, I hope you found your post-Covid cinematic buzz somewhere else.
2023 - Oppenheimer(Honorable Mentions - John Wick: Chapter 4; Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse)
I hope that Christopher Nolan never stops thinking big (and I have faith he won't). The reasons Oppenheimer turned out to be such a critical and box office success are common, I think, to all his films. The first is that every Nolan movie is a passion project. Having been given a copy of J. Robert Oppenheimer biography The Modern Prometheus at the Tenet wrap party, he immersed himself in the book and saw biopic potential in it. Secondly, the filmmaker commits to big dramatic swings. Thus, his Oppenheimer takes two alternating viewpoints - first and third person, in colour and black-and-white respectively - and shifts partway through from scientific race-against-time thriller to full-on political drama, while never losing sight of the moral conundrum at the movie's centre. Finally, he knows how to find the dynamism and flow in whatever film he's making, whether comic-book adventure, science-fiction epic, or weighty historical drama. And so his three-hour story of the so-called 'father of the atomic bomb' has a momentum that carries you from those opening raindrops on water to that final, devastating Cillian Murphy close-up in what feels like half the time. That's got to be worth a few Oscars. Say, seven?
2024 - Anora(Honorable Mentions - Dune: Part Two; The Substance)
My introduction to filmmaker Sean Baker was 2017's The Florida Project, so I knew going into Anora the kinds of character that interested him - those struggling on the margins of American society, whether sex workers, street hustlers, or victims of extreme poverty. In the case of Anora, it's Ani (the title refers to her), an exotic dancer and escort in a Manhattan gentlemen's club who falls for Ivan, the son of a Russian oligarch. What begins as a decadent fantasy takes a twist into romantic territory, before Ivan's parents get wind of the affair and move to stop it, pushing the story into different territory altogether. If you approach Baker's award-winning film as a more raw, chaotic, and bittersweet take on Pretty Woman, you'll have some idea what to expect. Anora has wild eroticism and flashes of heightened romance, along with uncomfortably funny slapstick, ferocity, despair, poignancy, and an unforgettable Take That needle drop. It's all here in one film, and much of it (not the Take That part) is due to Mikey Madison's virtuoso, Oscar-bagging lead performance. Gal's going places. Whether or not Ani is... only watching the movie will reveal.
2025 - Sinners(Honorable Mention - The Ballad of Wallis Island)
2026 - ?????
So that, for what it's worth, is my list. It may not stay my list - there's any number of highly praised 21st-century films I've yet to catch up with. But for now, I hope it raises a few smiles along with a few eyebrows, and provokes a bit of good-natured debate. If it doesn't suggest to you the best that modern cinema has to offer, or if you feel I need a total taste-overhaul, then your viewing recommendations will be gratefully received. Aside from that, here's to the cinematic century so far and, more importantly, to what lies ahead.
