The 25 best movies of the 21st century, so far, from Spike Lee to ‘Spider-Man'
Our 20th-century masters - Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino - continue to work at a very high level, while mixing with filmmakers who got their start around the turn of the century. (Christopher Nolan, for example, didn't break big until 2000's "Memento.")
In looking at the best movies since the calendar flipped to 2000, we've seen deeply personal works that look at modern life and its unique challenges, as well as facets of our humanity that have stayed the same no matter which century we reside in. We've seen great thrillers, hilarious comedies and stark dramas that ask questions and reveal truths about our world and the way we live.
How does one go about choosing the best films of the last 25 years? Gut instinct, mainly. The movies below are the ones that immediately stood out when I set about this exercise, the ones that took my breath away on first watch and continue to loom large both in my mind and in the culture. Some I've seen many times, others only once. But the impact they made was real and lasting.
There are two lists of honorable mentions at the end, and there could easily be another 100 noteworthy titles just outside of those. ("Spring Breakers," you were so close!) But there had to be a cutoff somewhere, because we've all got other things to do besides read lists.
Your list is not going to match mine, but I'd love to hear what movies made yours without hearing that I'm stupid for the ones that made mine. Let's be civil, let's have fun. We're just talking about movies, after all.
With that, here's my list of the 25 best movies of the 21st century, so far. Happy reading, happy watching, and hopefully we can reconvene here to add to the list in another 25 years.
25. 'Spider-Man 2' (2004)
In the old days, superhero movies were limited to the occasional "Batman" and "Superman" offerings. That all changed with 2002's "Spider-Man," which took the genre to a new level, paving the way for the modern superhero takeover that locked in when the Marvel Cinematic Universe kicked off with 2008's "Iron Man," changing the movie biz as we know it. But if "Spider-Man" set the template, its sequel upped the ante, with some of the most thrilling superhero sequences and richest storytelling the genre has seen to this day. Credit director Sam Raimi for bringing comic books to life and showing what is possible in the art form, and credit stars Tobey Maguire (in his second turn as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man) and Alfred Molina (as mad scientist Doctor Octopus) for bringing the story to life. None of what has happened in the genre happens without "Spider-Man," and "Spider-Man 2" is Spidey at his best.
24. 'The Banshees of Inisherin' (2022)
Male friendships are a tough egg to crack. Writer-director Martin McDonagh reunites Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, his stars from 2008's "In Bruges," for this extremely dark comedy, set a century ago on an island off the coast of Ireland, about two friends who are perhaps no longer friends. Rather than continuing their familiar pattern of going to the pub, grabbing a pint and talking about nothing, Gleeson's character decides to cut off the friendship, and maybe a few fingers to help make his point. McDonagh takes this civil war to dramatic heights, and ace performances from Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan add layers of texture to this pensive look at life, legacy and the epidemic of male loneliness.
23. 'Spirited Away' (2001)
This utter knockout from director Hayao Miyazaki is a magical, poetic story about youth, nature, beauty and the spirit realm, rendered in thrilling 2D animation and bursting with imagination at every turn. Miyazaki's movies are a universe unto themselves, a portal into an enchanting, mystical state of being, and the effect of watching his films is like being lifted off your feet and taken to another world. "Spirited Away" is like floating and not wanting to come back down.
22. 'Bridesmaids' (2011)
The 2000s boys club of comedy, which we will get to in just a second, cashed in on all manner of men behaving badly. What this uproarious comedy proved is that the girls, given the chance, could be just as raunchy as the guys. Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudloph and a scene-stealing Melissa McCarthy lead the cast in this wild comedy about friendship, jealousy, and the trappings of money. Director Paul Feig and screenwriters Wiig and Annie Mumolo stage a number of sidesplitting scenes, but "Bridesmaids" will always be best remembered for the image of Rudolph, in her wedding dress, squatting in the street after a bad meal runs through her like a race car. It's a scene that changed bridal parties - and wedding dress fittings - forever.
21. 'Step Brothers' (2008)
Will Ferrell went on a phenomenal five-year streak between 2003 and 2008, knocking out a slew of new comedy classics, from "Old School" to "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy" to "Wedding Crashers" to "Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby." "Step Brothers" was the peak of that run, a surrealist, dopey comedy with Ferrell and his frequent partner in crime, John C. Reilly, constantly one-upping each other as a pair of doofus man-children acting like idiots in a world that somehow tolerated their behavior. The culture soon shifted away from this style of comedy, and director Adam McKay pivoted to more serious fare, but "Step Brothers" represents the absurdly funny pinnacle of a comic style that defined the first decade of the new century. Long live the Catalina Wine Mixer.
20. 'Moonlight' (2016)
It's much more than the movie that beat "La La Land" in the best picture race during the biggest blunder in Oscars history. Barry Jenkins' poignant, poetic story about a young man's journey of sexual awakening unfolds over three chapters and features magnificent work from Mahershala Ali, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of a drug dealer who becomes a father figure to the film's young protagonist, as well as Naomie Harris, André Holland and Trevante Rhodes. Writer-director Jenkins is a born filmmaker and this was his breakthrough, and it continues to resonate because of the heartfelt intimacy of its storytelling.
19. 'Inside Out' (2015)
Pixar's late 2000s run - the animation innovators released "Ratatouille," "WALL-E," "Up" and "Toy Story 3" between 2007 and 2010 - made the company look untouchable, before "Cars 2" "Brave" and "Monsters University" brought them back down to Earth. But inspiration struck once again in 2015 with this comedy built on the ingenious idea of animating feelings, giving character to the different moods that populate the insides of our heads. Pete Docter and his team brought wonder, imagination and insight into the animation of our collective psyche, helping to normalize the growing conversation around mental health in the process. Plus, it's a really sweet, very funny movie about anger, joy, sadness and all the things we feel on a daily basis. Pixar movies often straddle the line of being for children or adults, and "Inside Out" is the team at its absolute best, getting to have it both ways.
18. 'Donnie Darko' (2001)
The world was introduced to Jake Gyllenhaal as angsty teenager Donnie Darko (apologies to those who knew him from "Bubble Boy") in writer-director Richard Kelly's monumentally trippy exploration of the intersection of youth culture, suburbia and interdimensional portals. Kelly manages to satirize the high school experience while giving us an awkward antihero to believe in, and his use of Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels" as an introduction to the movie's world set a standard for needle drops to follow. (Similarly, Gary Jules' dark cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World" set the mold for every slowed-down cover of a popular hit that would populate every movie trailer for the next two decades, and it still hasn't been topped.) Kelly took the blueprint for teenage coming-of-age movies and gave it a new spin for uncertain times. Out with the old, in with the anxiety.
17. 'Enter the Void' (2009)
Talk about trippy: director Gaspar Noé's neon-lit fever dream is a disembodied experience that feels like watching a soul hover over its own body. Set in Tokyo, Noé follows a drug dealer's ascent into the afterlife, framing it as a psychedelic freak-out and a gorgeously fluid work of technical marvel. Noé is a bad boy provocateur whose pretentions often get the best of him, and that happens here as well, but it's such a boldly audacious work that it hardly matters. The bonkers opening titles sequence alone delivers a bigger jolt than most movies in their entire runtimes.
16. 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' (2019)
In writer-director Céline Sciamma's romantic period drama, passion simmers like a kettle boiling over. In 18th-century France, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) arrives on a small island to paint a portrait of Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), who is soon to be married. But she's a restless subject, and her hesitancy to pose for the painting is rooted in her reluctance to be married off per her family's wishes. Meanwhile, the more time the pair spends together the more their connection grows, lust and forbidden love spilling over into obsession. Sciamma and her actresses create a work of deep intimacy, and cinematographer Claire Mathon shoots her subjects like she's seating them for a painting of her own. It's a work of art that belongs in a museum.
15. 'Frances Ha' (2012)
Writer-director Noah Baumbach's creative collaboration with Greta Gerwig began with 2010's "Greenberg" but fully blossomed in this daffy comic drama, which is singularly built around Gerwig's ineffable charms. Gerwig plays Frances Halladay, a New York dreamer who's too old to be as flighty as she is but too young and idealistic to have been beaten down by the world; "Frances Ha" is a dizzyingly delightful showcase for Gerwig and allows her to shine like a diamond. She went on to become an auteur in her own right (see "Lady Bird"), her partnership with Baumbach would blossom into a marriage - the pair was married in 2023 - and they'd go on to collaborate on "Barbie," one of the most successful movies of all time. Their creative bond was sewn on "Frances Ha."
14. 'Bowling for Columbine' (2002)
Rabble-rausing director Michael Moore took on the hot-button issue of gun control in his fire-breathing 2002 documentary, which came as school shootings were starting to become an unfortunate norm in American society. Moore took on the subject with his trademark mixture of wit, wisdom and humor, presenting an issue that should have been common sense but still remains heavily debated today. "Bowling for Columbine" even presents Marilyn Manson as a voice of reason, so OK, not all of it has aged gracefully. But it remains a seminal work that, if anything, proved itself to be way ahead of its time.
13. 'The Irishman' (2019)
Ah, the Scorsese slot. This list was kept to one entry per director, and there's no way Scorsese wasn't going to be a part of the mix. The question was whether to go with the ridiculously entertaining "The Wolf of Wall Street," the wrenching "Killers of the Flower Moon" or the mournfully soulful "The Irishman," and this felt like the most meaningful of the three. "The Irishman" takes stock and looks back at a life lived doing dirty work, and where it lands you in the end. The answer is an empty room, as is seen in the movie's deeply haunting final moments. Scorsese, 82, has barely slowed down, and he could have another 10-plus years of filmmaking in him. (Clint Eastwood is 95 and is still going strong.) But when it's all said and done, "The Irishman" will stand out as his grand late-in-life masterwork, the one where the gangster life he's returned to so many times comes calling for answers.
12. 'Inception' (2010)
Christopher Nolan made this mind-bending action extravaganza in between two "Batman" movies, which is kind of like Coppola taking a break from "Godfather" films to make "The Conversation." Leo DiCaprio leads a stellar cast in a film about thieves, dreams and the nature of ideas, fertile ground for a heist movie that takes place across several planes of reality. Nolan's visuals are incredible - cityscapes fold in on themselves - and he presents a challenging narrative that can still be confusing over umpteen watches. It sure beats the alternative, movies that look flat and don't challenge viewers and don't have anything to say. Still thrilling, still grandiose, still visionary, "Inception" rules.
11. 'Moulin Rouge!' (2001)
The jukebox musical as iPod stuck on shuffle, before there were iPods and before shuffling was a concept. Baz Luhrmann's red-drenched musical masterpiece is absolutely out of its mind, with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blasting in a club in 1900 Paris, 67 years before Kurt Cobain was born a half a world away. Luhrmann throws everything at the camera and fills the frame with so much noise that it's like the movie is daring you to resist it. Do so at your own peril. "Moulin Rouge!" earns its exclamation point by absolutely going for it at every moment, and Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman are forever minted for strapping in, fully committing and going along for the whole crazy ride.
10. 'La La Land' (2016)
Writer-director Damien Chazelle's movie musical is an ode to the movies, Los Angeles and love itself. It leaps off the screen with bold visuals and the wonderful chemistry between stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, but it might have been simply an exercise in technical mastery had it not had the chutzpah to deliver a stark ending that pulls the rug out from underneath the viewer. Sometimes love isn't enough, sometimes external forces are at play, and sometimes life doesn't work out the way it does in the movies, and that is "La La Land's" masterstroke. Any movie can serve up a happy ending, but it's the poignancy of the downer ending, and what it says about love, that takes this movie from simply great to an all-time classic.
9. 'Mulholland Drive' (2001)
Another Los Angeles-set story, but David Lynch's noir is the inverse of "La La Land's" sunny dreamscape. The maestro looks at the dashed dreams of Hollywood in this puzzle box mystery thriller, which was originally envisioned as a TV pilot but later reconfigured into a standalone movie. It's Lynch's grand ode to the seediness of his adopted home, a place where dumpster monsters dwell and weird cowboys come calling and clubs feature lip-syncing performers who faint before your very eyes. More than 20 years later, its mysteries still envelop viewers, and Naomi Watts' performance - her Stateside breakthrough - continues to astonish. And with Lynch's death earlier this year, "Mulholland Drive" is perhaps the greatest key to his universe that he left behind.
8. 'Paddington 2' (2017)
The world would be a better place if we all lived by Paddington's playbook. The lovable, adorable British bear is our host for this lovely follow-up to 2015's "Paddington," where the marmalade-scarfing gentle soul is sent to prison after he's framed for a crime he didn't commit. No matter, he's soon got the prisoners marching to his drum, as writer-director Paul King creates a world of wonderment, whimsy and British charm that serves as an antidote to so much of the cruelty of today's world. And Hugh Grant is simply smashing as Phoenix Buchanan, the story's villain, a role he was utterly born to play.
7. 'School of Rock' (2003)
Director Richard Linklater loves his pet projects. He followed up his '90s romance "Before Sunrise" with a pair of sequels that show how youthful love and attraction shift over the years. He spent over a decade making "Boyhood," following his cast as as they aged in real time. But in "School of Rock," his pet project is Jack Black, and he dials into Black's manic, childlike, rock demon essence better than any filmmaker before or since. "School of Rock," which was written by Mike White, is essentially a silly comedy about a substitute teacher who poses as someone else and teaches his students to play instruments. But what Linklater conjures out of Black transforms it into a heartwarming comedy about youth and belonging, and he makes it a towering testament to the sheer power of rock and roll. It rocks.
6. 'You Can Count On Me' (2000)
Writer-director Kenneth Lonergan's debut feature stars Mark Ruffalo, in his breakthrough role, and Laura Linney as a pair of grown siblings dealing with life's never-ending series of difficulties. Linney plays a loan officer at a small town bank, Ruffalo plays a drifter who can't stay out of trouble, or his own way. Both are reeling in their own way after the death of their parents, who died in a car crash when they were children. Lonergan tells a tender story of family and forgiveness, and Ruffalo and Linney are golden together as a brother and sister dealing with what life has thrown at them the best they can.
5. 'Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood' (2019)
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt lead Quentin Tarantino's late '60s Hollywood odyssey, as the filmmaker explores the dark side of the Summer of Love and the burgeoning dawn of a new American era. Tarantino's dialogue crackles and he captures Pitt in what may be a career best role, as a who's who of young Hollywood (Austin Butler, Sydney Sweeney, Mikey Madison, Maya Hawke, Margaret Qualley) springboard to big careers in the movie's wake. "Kill Bill" was Tarantino's action epic ("Vol. 1" remains a note perfect film) and "Inglourious Basterds" has him playing with history like he's moving around pieces on a chessboard, but "Once Upon a Time" is Tarantino firmly in his element, relaxed and cool, and having a ball.
4. 'In the Mood for Love' (2000)
Rarely has a movie been as punch drunk on its own sense of romance as Wong Kar-wai's stunner, about a pair of neighbors in Hong Kong in the early 1960s who come to realize their respective spouses are having an affair with one another. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung are the two neighbors, and their sense of yearning and the romantic tension between them is almost unbearable, as Shigeru Umebayashi intoxicating "Yumeji's Theme" repeats on the soundtrack like it's scoring their lives. The movie has a keen sense of style (Cheung's dresses alone are worthy of their own coffee table book), mood and longing that have lingered for years and will continue to for many more to come.
3. 'The Royal Tenenbaums' (2001)
It starts with "Hey Jude," which was sort of like writer-director Wes Anderson pointing to the fence and calling his shot. "The Royal Tenenbaums" is Anderson's third film, and it came as he was still developing his sense of diorama-like visual presentation, which hadn't yet fully taken over his productions. Anderson fixes his eye on a New York family, led by Gene Hackman's Royal Tenenbaum, whose failings as a father have cast a pall over his children (played by Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays his adopted daughter). Anderson tells a large, sweeping story on an intimate scale and locks in on his theme of family, particularly errant fathers, that continue to drive his work.
2. 'Lost in Translation' (2003)
Sofia Coppola's second film, after 1999's "The Virgin Suicides," is a dreamy romantic drama about a drifting actor (Bill Murray) and a young bride (Scarlett Johansson) who meet at a hotel in Tokyo and spend a few days getting lost together. Their connection is undefined, but they are drawn to one another, if only for this fleeting time under these odd circumstances, where they're both far away from home and feeling a sense of loneliness and isolation. Coppola captures that feeling of otherness, of feeling out of place in a foreign land, and Murray and Johansson are magic as the mismatched pair, who complete something within one another. The moment they share at the end of the movie when he whispers in her ear is a great unsolved mystery of film (what'd he say?!). But it's not what he said that matters, it's the feeling of the moment they share as their time together comes to a close.
1. '25th Hour' (2002)
Only a New Yorker as tried and true as Spike Lee could create the one true 9/11 film, and all these years after the tragedy, the only one that matters. Lee sets his story in the wake of the attacks, and they hang over the movie like a storm cloud. Edward Norton plays a drug dealer during his last day of freedom before going off to do a seven-year prison bid. He gets together with his pals (played by Barry Pepper and Philip Seymour Hoffman) for one last hang, and spends time with his girlfriend (Rosario Dawson) and father (Brian Cox). Norton, still in the zone as one of his generation's best actors, gives a captivating, full bodied performance, but it's Lee's depiction of New York, bruised but not broken, that still delivers chills. He's in the debris, shooting down into the empty site where the Twin Towers once stood tall, and his fury can be felt emanating through the screen. It's a breathtaking achievement in artistry, the initial gut punch from his can still be felt today, and no film has achieved the same level of impact since.
Just missed the cut:
"Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" (2006), "Michael Clayton" (2007), "The Tree of Life" (2011), "Sexy Beast" (2000), "There Will Be Blood" (2007)
10 more:
"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022), "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" (2010), "The Florida Project" (2017), "Silver Linings Playbook" (2012), "The Descent" (2005), "The Act of Killing" (2012), "First Reformed" (2017), "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" (2000), "Oldboy" (2003), "mother!" (2017)
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If the storm itself was an assault on the city, most everything else — the broken levees, the flooded streets, the slow government response, the misinformation, the exaggerations and the mischaracterizations taken as fact — constituted an attack on the poor, which in New Orleans meant mostly Black people. ('The way they depicted Black folks,' says one survivor regarding sensational media coverage of the aftermath, when troops with automatic weapons patrolled the streets as if in a war zone, 'it's like they didn't see us as regular people, law abiding, churchgoing, hard working people.') Effective both as an informational piece and a real-life drama, 'Race Against Time' puts you deep into the story, unfolding as the week did. First, the calm before the storm ('One of the most peaceful scariest things,that a person can experience,' says one 8th Ward resident), as Katrina gained power over the Gulf of Mexico. Then the storm, which ripped off part of the Superdome roof, where citizens had been instructed to shelter, and plunged the city into darkness; but when that passed, it looked briefly like the apocalypse missed them. Then the levees, never well designed, were breached in multiple locations and 80% of the city, which sits in a bowl between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, found itself under water. Homes drown: 'You're looking at your life, the life that your parents provided for you, your belongings being ruined, your mother's furniture that she prided is being thrown against a wall.' Residents are driven onto roofs, hoping for rescue, while dead bodies float in the water. This is also in many ways the most heartening part of the series, as neighbors help neighbors and firefighters and police set about rescuing as many as possible, going house to house in boats running on gasoline siphoned from cars and trucks. A coast guardsman tears up at the memory of carrying a baby in her bare arms as they were winched into a helicopter. And then we descend into a catalog of institutional failures — of governance, of communication, of commitment, of nerve, of common sense, of service, of the media, which, camped in the unflooded French Quarter or watching from afar, repeated rumors as fact, helping create a climate of fear. (Bill O'Reilly, then still sitting pretty at Fox News, suggests looters should be shot dead.) More people escaping the flood arrive at the Superdome, where the bathrooms and the air conditioning don't work, there's no food or water and people suffer in the August heat, waiting for days to be evacuated. Instead, the National Guard comes to town along with federal troops, which residents of this city know is not necessarily a good thing. Many speakers here make a deep impression — community organizer Malik Rahim, sitting on his porch, speaking straight to the camera, with his long white hair and beard, is almost a guiding spirit — but the star of this show is the eminently sensible Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honoré(now retired), a Louisiana Creole, who was finally brought in to coordinate operations between FEMA and the military. (We see him walking through the streets, ordering soldiers to 'put your guns on your back, don't be pointing guns at nobody.') Honoré, who is free with his opinions here, had respect for the victims — 'When you're poor in America, you're not free, and when you're poor you learn to have patience' — but none for foolish officialdom, the main fool being FEMA director Michael Brown, mismanaging from Baton Rouge, who would resign soon after the hurricane. When buses finally did arrive, passengers were driven away, and some later flown off, with no announcement of where they were headed; family members might be scattered around the country. Many would never return to New Orleans, and some who did, no longer recognized the place they left, not only because of the damage, but because of the new development. The arrival of this and the upcoming Lee documentary is dictated by the calendar, but the timing is also fortuitous, given where we are now. Floods and fires, storms and cyclones are growing more frequent and intense, even as Washington strips money from the very agencies designed to predict and mitigate them or aid in recovery. Last week, Ken Pagurek, the head of FEMA's urban search and rescue unit resigned, reportedly over the agency's Trump-hobbled response to the Texas flood, following the departure of Jeremy Greenberg, who led FEMA's disaster command center. Trump, for his part, wants to do away with the agency completely. And yet Curry manages to end her series on an optimistic note. Residents of the Lower 9th Ward have returned dying wetlands to life, creating a community park that will help control the next storm surge. Black Masking Indians — a.k.a. Mardi Gras Indians — are still sewing their fanciful, feathered costumes and parading in the street.
