The 21 best movies of the 21st century (so far)

It's a David Lynch movie. We probably don't need to say more, right? We will. Naomi Watts stars as a wanna-be actress who helps an amnesiac woman recover from a car crash, but soon finds herself caught up in a mystery that involves killers, doppelgangers, and some blue box. Many directors have tried to replicate what Lynch does here (the dream logic, the back-light, the twist) though no one has come close. 

To this day, Wall-E is an all-time great romance. A relationship blossoms between Wall-E and Eve like a plant in a landfill--the world has shipped off to space, but these two still find a connection on Earth. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll run to your kitchen for more tissues. 

This is the movie that established Wong Kar-Wai as a filmmaker to watch. Sure, it's another romance. Yes, it's another meet-cute. However, it's also one of the best of the bunch. Much as how David Lean's Brief Encounter took the genre to darker places, In the Mood for Love is so much more than just another fling. The whole thing is basically a trigger warning for blue balls--two neighbors spend a winter flirting with each other, but nothing ever happens. 

Mad Max: Fury Road is effectively the opposite of In the Mood For Love. It has a huge budget and lots of action. The movie is full of stars, and the camera lingers on massive, fire-ball explosions. George Miller's first attempt at Mad Max was solid, but this time he shifts into high gear. He makes Fast 9 look like Driving Miss Daisy.

A man taking revenge on the gang that kidnapped his daughter? That premise could be a little cheesy. It could easily devolve into another Taken knockoff. Fortunately, Old Boy trades morals for myth, coolness for perversity. This ain't your dad's revenge flick, no sirree. This is the kind of revenge flick in which someone bashes another person's face in with a hammer.  

The masterpiece his entire career seemed to have been building towards, Alfonso Cuaron's sumptuous reminisce of childhood and the housekeeper who cared for him takes elements of everything he had ever made--the scale of Gravity, the humanity of Children of Men, the intimacy of Y tu mama tambien--and wraps them into one majestic package. 

The plot of The Turin Horse isn't all that different from Satantango. Where that film was a waltz with death, The Turin Horse is a long, endless walk into the winds of fate. There's a bit of Chekhov, a bit of Beckett, and a whole lot of Revelation in this parable about a father and daughter waiting out a storm. The result is a masterpiece in existentialism. 

On the comedic front, we have Will Ferrell's greatest achievement. It's maybe the most "Will Ferrell" movie ever made. We know that means you are either super excited (and probably have already seen it 10 times) or you are steering clear. Either way, it's freaking hilarious. 

All right, so The Act of Killing can be a little much at times. It can also be as complex and chilling as any doc of its era. It tracks down the men who took part in the Indonesian mass killings of the mid-1960s and asks them to recreate and relive their crimes on camera. Flattered by the attention, these mass-murders dig into their roles like children at a talent show--they're just happy to show us what they can do. 

For our money, this is the scariest movie of the 21st century. In terms of just pure dread, this breakout hit from Ari Aster takes the cake...and stabs it to pieces. A blood-soaked, tear-stained update on Rosemary's Baby, Aster's modern classic mines screams not just via jump scares, but something several degrees more terrifying: a mother (Toni Collette) on the verge of a breakdown. 

Do you like action? Movie stars? Plots that make sense or stories that move fast? If you answered "yes" to any of these, you may be a little confused by the opening of Uncle Boonmee: a three-minute static shot of a cow in a forest. Don't worry, the movie picks up...sort of. This dreamlike evocation of life and death features a man dying of cancer, plenty of ghosts, forests, lakes, and trees, and a princess getting it on with a catfish. It's not for everybody, but it's definitely for me. 

It's not every day you see someone level-up like David Lowery with The Green Knight. The director somehow jumped from nobody to somebody, 6th man to all-star, rookie-of-the-year to MVP. The man gave us one of the all-time great Fantasies last year, in which a knight travels through a mystical forest to face a wooded demon. The journey is lush, adventurous, and exotic, a breakout for all involved.

Superhero movies aren't cinema? Did Scorsese even watch The Dark Knight? Christopher Nolan's take on the caped crusader is quite possibly the most cinematic movie of the 21st century: big, bold, and Holy Batman, have you seen the performances? 

This is one of those indies that feels 100% authentic. The plot is simple--a teenage girl goes through her final year of high school-- but there's something wonderful about watching someone you can relate to. Even if the heroine is nothing like you, her character is written so deftly that you laugh when she laughs, cry when she cries, and say "amen!" every time she raises her voice. 

The latest Barbie is made of anything but plastic. Greta Gerwig's box office sensation is made of hilarious jokes, incredible sets and some truly sublime performances. Margot Robbie is great as the lead character, but it's Ryan Gosling who steals the show as the love interest.

There's nothing easier to judge than a comedy: you're either laughing, or you're not. Tropic Thunder may not be well made, it may not be politically correct, but I can't think of another movie that made me split my sides, bust my gut, roll on the floor and wipe-the-tears-out-of-my-eyes more than Ben Stiller's satire. Think Apocalypse Now directed by Rob Reiner, with a script by Adam McKay, and you get something like Tropic Thunder. Oh, and did I mention Tom Cruise is in it? Tom Cruise is in it. 

Dildo fights. Alternate universes. A mother who kicks butt and a father who rocks a fanny pack. Rocks that talk. Emotions that speak, deeply, to the audience. Everything Everywhere all at Once really is everything everywhere all at once--a tornado of clashing styles, characters and feelings that makes headway with your heart.

A Christian movie about World War II? While most filmmakers focus on the battlefield--who doesn't love a good D-day sequence?-- Terrence Malick is more focused on the battle within. The crisis of faith is much more interesting than the Battle of Midway, at least in Malick's hands, and there's no shortage of poetic imagery to keep things chugging along. Waterfalls rain from the heavens; children frolic in the meadows. Even the torture scenes seem to have been graced by God.   

Asghar Farhadi has honed his persona to a fine point. You are in, or you're not. A Separation is another one of his dramas in which two people tread water while an entire nation tries to drown them. Nothing good ever happens to a Farhadi protagonist, and yet, it's impossible to take your eyes off a sinking ship.  

Did you really think we would forget about There Will Be Blood? Paul Thomas Anderson's magnum opus is also the 21st century's magnum opus, a hypnotic, poetic, downright prophetic deep-dive into the pipelines of American capitalism and corporate greed. Anderson struck oil by casting Daniel Day-Lewis in the role of Daniel Plainview, a man so evil you can smell his rot from across the room. There are more enjoyable films on our list, but none are better.