ScreenAnarchy's Top 25 Films Of The 21st Century

This is the full list: all 256 titles people mentioned, in alphabetical order. This may be the longest 'bullet' I've ever put in a gallery, heh...
Curious which of these made it in the top-25? And which one ended up on top? Check the arrow on the right and see!

25th Hour
28 Days Later
35 Shots of Rum
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
A.I.
The Act of Killing
Amélie
American Psycho
Amour
Another Year
Antichrist
Ash is the Purest White
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Avatar   
Avatar: The Way of Water
The Avengers
Baahubali 1+2 (seen above...)
Battle Royale
Belleville Rendez-Vous (Les Triplettes de Belleville)
Best in Show
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A
Birth
Black Swan
Blade Runner 2049
The Brutalist
The Cabin in the Woods
Cache 
Catch Me If You Can
Certain Women
Certified Copy
Charlie Wilson's War
Children of Men
Cinderella Man
City of God
Clouds of Sils Maria
Code 46
Collateral
The Consequences of Love
The Counselor
Crimson Gold
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Crowhurst
Crumb
The Dark Knight
The Dead
Decision to Leave
Detention
The Devil’s Backbone
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Dog Days
Dogtooth
Dogville
Donnie Darko
Drag Me to Hell
Dredd   
Drive
Drive My Car
Drug Wars
Eastern Promises
Eega
El Planeta
Election
Enemy
Ennennum
Enter The Void
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Evangelion: 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon a Time
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once 
Ex Machina   
Exiled
The Fall
The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Fast Five
Faust
The Forbidden Room
The Fountain
Funny Games
Gangs of Wasseypur
Get Out
Ghostworld
Gladiator 
Godzilla Minus One
Gone Baby Gone
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Green Room
The Hanging Garden
Hard to Be a God
Head-on (Gegen die Wand)
Her
Hereditary   Holy Girl
The Host
Hounds of Love
Hundreds of Beavers
The Hurt Locker
I Saw the TV Glow
In Bruges
In My Skin
In the Mood for Love
In Vanda's Room
Inception   
Infernal Affairs
The Informant!
Inglourious Basterds
Inland Empire
Inside Man
Inside Out
Interstellar
Intimacies
Irreversible
It's Such a Beautiful Day
Jason X
John Wick
John Wick 4
Ju-on: The Grudge
Kill Bill 1+2
The Killing of a Sacred Deer
Kingdom of Heaven
Kung Fu Hustle
Lady Vengeance
The Last Circus
Let the Right One In
Leviathan
The Lighthouse
Liza, the Fox Fairy
The Lord of the Rings
Lost In Translation
Love Exposure
Mad Max: Fury Road
Magnolia
Man On Wire
The Martian
Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World
The Master
Meek's Cut-off
Melancholia
Memories of Murder
Miami Vice
Michael Clayton
Millennium Mambo
Mind Game
Molly's Game
Mommy
Monkeybone
Moonlight
Moulin Rouge!
Movern Callar
Mulholland Drive
Munich
Mustang
Mystic River
The New World
Nickel Boys
No Country for Old Men
No Other Choice
Nocturnal Animals
Nymphomaniac
Ocean's 12
Oki's movie
Oldboy
One battle After Another
One-Cut of the Dead
Ong Bak
Oppenheimer
Our Music
Pacifiction
Pan's Labyrinth
Paprika   
Parasite   
Penguin Highway
Phantom Thread
The Piano Teacher
The Pledge
Pontypool
Poor Things
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
The Prestige
Pulse
Pusher II
The Raid
Raw
Read my Lips
REC*
Redline
Requiem For A Dream
The Return
River
River of Fundament
Robot Dreams
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Roma
The Royal Tenenbaums
RRR
The Salesman
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
A Serious Man
Sexy Beast
Shall We Kiss?
Shaun of the Dead
Shutter Island
Sicario
Silence
Sinners 
Sirat
The Skin I Live In
Snowpiercer
Songs From The Second Floor
Southland Tales
Spaghetti Ramen
Speed Racer
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse   
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Spirited Away   
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and Spring Again
The State I'm In
Stories We Tell
Summer Wars   
Sundown
Sunshine
Symbol   
Synecdoche, New York
A Tale of Two Sisters
Tár
Tears for Sale
The Substance
The Thee Wreckers Tetralogy
There Will Be Blood
Three Times
Training Day
The Transporter
The Tree of Life
Trenque Lauquen
True Grit
Tumbbad
Twin Peaks: The Return Ep. 8
Un Lac
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Uncut Gems
Under The Skin
Up
Valhalla Rising
The Velocipastor
Wall-E
Watchmen
We Need To Talk About Kevin
Werckmeister Harmonies
The White Ribbon
The Wild Boys
The Woman
Wonder Boys
Zero Dark Thirty
Zerophilia
Zodiac
The Zone of Interest

25: Hundreds of Beavers (2022, Mike Cheslik)

A bunch of friends took a crazy concept and went all the way with it: a black-and-white slapstick comedy in the spirit of the silent classics, amped up to ridiculous heights. A trapper needs to collect hundreds of beaver pelts to achieve his goals and win the girl, but to do so, he basically has to invade the beaver's death star and "Buster Keaton" his way out of it again. It's a never-ending barrage of cleverly repeated escalating sight gags, leading to a very satisfying ending.

Kurt Halfyard said the following in his review:

"By the time the film rolls through its jaw-droppingly massive set-piece finale, you may have forgotten Jean’s humble early attempts to catch rabbits and fish, so thoroughly has the film ratcheted up what is possible. I am still in disbelief that the whole experience was not some kind of feverish dream brought about by the passion for high energy entertainment, and too much apple cider. Yes, Hundreds of Beavers is very good. See it with friends."

24: Roma (2018, Alfonso Cuarón)

Here is another black-and-white film, but it couldn't be more different from the previous one. Cuarón shows a year in the life of an upper-class family in early 1970s Mexico-city, and the maid who works for them. That may not sound too interesting, more akin to a documentary, but the attention to detail is amazing, the cinematography is stunning, and a lot actually happened in that year.

Read the review by Eric Ortiz Garcia in which he says the following:

" A work of many layers, equally hard that focused on humanism: every time the central family tells Cleo that they love her a lot, it's the most personal Cuarón so far showing his gratitude."

23: Inception (2010, Christopher Nolan)

WHOOOOOOOMP. The next entry arrives with booming horns. Nolan has never been afraid of high concept genre films and with this one he had to stretch exposition to its creaking limits, but... it was worth it! Basically turning into five action thrillers in one, it had visuals to die for (that bending city!) and a killer cast.

Kwenton Bellette explained it as follows in his review:

"I cannot recommend Inception highly enough and believe it is a serious contender for film of the decade. I have barely touched upon the elements of this masterwork for fear of spoiling, as it is wholly incredible experience that needs to be considered before viewing, felt during and then realized after."

22: R.R.R. (2023, S. S. Rajamouli)

As coincidence would have it, on number 22 we have our favorite film of '22! S. S. Rajamouli is one of the best visual storytellers on the planet, and if you allow yourself to be taken along with his almost goofy over-the-top execution of the many insane set-pieces, you are rewarded with a heartfelt tale of friendship and morality. Our very own J. Hurtado spent blood, tears, toil and sweat getting this re-released in as many cinemas as he could, and got rewarded with roaringly enthusiastic audiences across the United States. And it got the film an Oscar. W0000T!

21: Get Out (2017, Jordan Peele)

Comedians often turn out to be proficient at making scary films (more examples will follow higher up in the list) and that should maybe not be a surprise: both comedy and horror rely on mood and timing. Jordan Peele is VERY good at it though, and Get Out is one of the finest horror thrillers made in decades. In turns unsettling, creepy and scary, it also leaves you with plenty to discuss and think about.

In my review I said the following:

"All in all, Jordan Peele hands out a great lesson in creating eerie suspense. It helps that his cast is excellent, with Daniel Kaluuya, Catherine Keener and Betty Gabriel as stand-outs. If you haven't seen it yet out of fear for "Social Justice Warriorship Propaganda", please do set that aside, it's a perfectly entertaining genre flick in its own right. And if it does make you cringe or chuckle from time to time, hey, what's wrong with that?"

20: I Saw the T.V. Glow (2024, Jane Schoenbrun)

A timid, scared protagonist tries to make sense of a rather intense friendship and an obsession with an old television show. Doesn't sound exactly riveting, right? But Jane Schoenbrun shows a hard-to-explain look at reality and our interpretations thereof. The movie itself seems to be the best example of that: for every person who loves I Saw the T.V. Glow there seems to be someone who hates it. But those who love it? They LOVE it.

As Mel Valentin states in his review:

"Riddled with existential discomfort, surreal digressions, and fractured, irreparable identities, I Saw the TV Glow confirms Schoenbrun’s status as a singularly talented, risk-embracing filmmaker more than worthy of the accolades and acclaim that have come their way."

19: A Serious Man (2009, the Coen brothers)

What I love about lists like these is being surprised by the titles which show up on it. Of all the films the Coen brothers have made this quarter century, THIS is the one which ends up in the Top 25?! Neither the plot summary (successful Jewish teacher sees his life fall apart in 1967) nor the trailer show off this title as a must-see.

But, as our Todd Brown explains in his review::

"But more than that - much more than that - it is also a hugely entertaining black comedy, arguably their sharpest and funniest piece of writing since The Big Lebowski. This is brilliantly funny, brilliantly quotable stuff, all of it shot through with a biting black edge backed up by a surprisingly (ED: spoiler removed). This is the sort of film that could only have come from the Coen's and when taken in conjunction with No Country For Old Men and Burn After Reading provides a pretty compelling argument that the duo have reached a new career peak, a new period of brilliance and diversity in their work."

18: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, Michel Gondry)

Any movie scripted by Charlie Kaufman is worth having a serious look at. This one is a serious drama with some science fiction, a lot of hart, and Michel Gondry (who was then mostly known for visually splendid music videos and advertisements) directing. With a cast including Cate Winslet and Jim Carrey in serious mode, it became solid gold. Many directors, including Jane Schoenbrun two bullets back, mention this film as a big, BIG inspiration for them.

17: Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho)

We've been big fans of Korean director Bong Joon-ho ever since his first feature Barking Dogs Never Bite. His films show visual flair and a wicked sense of humor. Parasite is no exception: it's a fun film, switching genres from comedy to thriller, with plenty of twists and surprises for all characters in it. The story of an outsider invading a family and taking over control has been told before, but seldom this deliciously.

Winning the Golden Palm in Cannes and the Oscar for Best Film in Los Angeles is a testament to how successfully Bong hit his targets and different target audiences. Pierce Conran says the following in his review:

"Bong's complex, seamless script, the less known about prior to viewing the better, is brought to life by a stellar production crew, which includes the pristine photography of his Mother and Snowpiercer cinematographer Hong Kyung-pyo, and the contrasting and richly symbolic spaces designed by Lee Ha-jun (Okja). Where Parasite lands within Bong's filmography will depend on the viewer, but there's no doubt that his return to Korean filmmaking after a decade away is a triumphant one."

16: Oldboy (2003, Park Chan-wook)

And immediately after Bong Joon-ho we get his friend and mentor Park Chan-wook! Like Bong, Park has made many great films and was at the forefront of the Korean Wave of the early 2000s. The middle of three films with 'revenge' as their main theme (the other ones are Sympathy for Mister Vengeance and Lady Vengeance), Oldboy is probably the best-known and most-seen of that trilogy, and while all three films are magnificent, this is the one which is the most thrilling and shocking. The premise is simple: a regular guy is kidnapped, kept in a private jail for a decade, and suddenly released. He tries to find out who did this to him and why, but that investigation opens up one hell of a can of worms. And that screenshot above? It is part of one of the most vicious, relentless fight scenes in cinema history. One for the ages, and so is the film.

15: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, Ang Lee)

Speaking of fight scenes, the screenshot above is also part of a great one. Zhang Zi-Yi and Michelle Yeoh duke it out with a large variety of weapons, and it is a sight to behold, a ballet of blades. Upon its release, many people were surprised at the copious amounts of unrealistic wire-fu in it and dismissed the film as a childish fantasy. But those who accepted it as a wuxia trope were treated to a stunningly beautiful romance with luscious visuals, a haunting soundtrack by Tan Dun (featuring cello solo's by Yo-Yo Ma) and great performances by a cast of legends, including a terrific Chow Yun-fat.

14: Drive (2011, Nicolas Winding Refn)

Hey look! Another screenshot leading to a great fight scene! Nicolas Winding Refn takes a relatively simple crime story (stunt driver dabbles in crime but decides to help his neighbor get out of a difficult situation) and takes it for a spin. What makes it good? Well, a central romance between Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan works out exceptionally well, and Gosling switches constantly between being a romantic innocent and a brutal-as-hell fighting machine.

Critics were divided on the film when it was released: was there substance, or did we miss it? Matthew Lee was in two minds in his review, while Hugo Ozman loved it...

I'm going to quote Hugo as this list here is about love:

"After watching the film, I have become one of a large group of film critics who love Drive. To me, its juxtaposition of romantic tenderness and brutal violence is mesmerizing, and in the end, Drive manages to leave me completely breathless."

13: Dogtooth (2009, Yorgos Lanthimos)

A father keeps his wife and adult children at home and completely separated from the outside world, telling them it's for their own safety. Cracks appear when objects from outside get smuggled in and the offspring gets more curious. I was puzzled by seeing the Coen brothers represented in this list by A Serious Man, but I'm really baffled by Yorgos Lanthimos showing up in here with Dogtooth! Lanthimos is one of the current greats, a filmmaker who does his own thing (even when it is a remake like Bugonia) and who is not afraid to experiment. His The Favorite is a favorite, his Poor Things a marvel. And yet it is Dogtooth which got the highest rating in this list.

Mathew Lee reviewed it back in 2020 and said the following:

"Poorly scripted, much too objective, lacking in the exposition its own script seems to demand, Yorgos Lanthimos' third film comes maddeningly close to greatness, but ultimately cannot clear the bar it's set itself. Some audiences will undoubtedly take it very much to heart, but on the whole it's difficult to give it anything more than a very cautious recommendation."

Yet when our J. Hurtado reviewed the Blu-ray release he said this:

"Lanthimos has done one of the hardest things a filmmaker can do, he's made something new. There have been a few attempts at something like this, John Waters' Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living come to mind, but the characters interact with the real world too much to make it a direct cognate. Dogtooth is about as "cult" a film as there is ever likely to be, more on par with something like El Topo or Eraserhead than something more self-aware like Rocky Horror. I really hope it gets more exposure, as it is a truly original work, and extremely well made."

12: Speed Racer (2008, the Wachowskis)

Another big surprise in the list! Panned by many and a financial flop upon release, the Wachowskis dream project of making a live-action film of a favorite anime series became a bit of a bumpy ride. But as a spectacular, turbulent tunnel of colors and style, it's hard not to love it. The world of Speed Racer is so crisp and clean it hurts your eyes, and everyone seems to wander about through a series of utopian-dystopian set pieces. And the races... oh brother. They make your brain twitch. Just look at that screenshot above!

Our Blake said this in his review:

"If the future of live-action anime will be anything like this, then anime perhaps has turned a new corner and I could easily see it becoming a dominant art form in cinema for quite some time to come."

11: Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Once upon a time, I hated film festivals. I was very much into Hollywood films, and festivals pushed all my favorites out of the city for a few weeks "...to show three hour long black and white Hungarian films...". Well, guess what? Jump forward three decades and my tastes have widened a fair bit. Still, I would never have guessed to see Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky pop up in our top 25, let alone at number eleven! But that just shows what an eclectic bunch of writers we are.

Werckmeister Harmonies slowly but surely shows the collapse of a village by following the only person who seems to care about other people. The arrival of a strange carnival works as a catalyst for everyone to lose their minds over nothing. In typical Tarr fashion, the entire film only has 39 shots, some of them more than ten minutes long. But this seems to pull you into the environment, making whatever happens hit harder.

Shelagh Rowan Legg says the following in her review of the recent Criterion disc:

"Werckmeister Harmonies is somewhere between feverdream and cautionary fable. Like the town it portrays, it exists on a precarious edge, strangely balanced yet constantly under threat from the inside. It weaves its magic like something ancient and immortal, a constant simmering sorrow that still reaches for the light."

10: Green Room (2015, Jeremy Saulnier)

We were all impressed by Jeremy Saunier's Blue Ruin, so guess what he did next? He made another excellent thriller! In Green Room, a band performs at a concert in the middle of nowhere and accidentally witness a murder. The killers are part of an extremist right-wing organization, led by a very sinister leader (an excellently counter-cast Patrick Stewart), and they know the band has seen them. After that, proceedings get VERY tense.

Ryland Aldrich said the following in his review:

"Awesome really is the best way to describe Saulnier's filmmaking style. Smart, assured, and clever are all accurate as well. Green Room is all of those things in spades and proves that Saulnier is one of the most exciting genre directors around. Now let's see what he can do next."

9: Shaun of the Dead (2004, Edgar Wright)

This was the film which introduced most of us outside of the United Kingdom to the utter geniuses which are Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Remember when I said comedians were often good at horror? Here is another prime example. Wright and his crew managed to get the level of satire, subtext and heart exactly right in this one, creating a zombie comedy which was more an ode to George Romero's Dawn of the Dead than a parody of it. Shaun of the Dead started international careers for many involved in it, and rightfully so. It's still one of the best horror-comedies ever made.

We don't have a review as the film pre-dates our site, but if you want someone else's opinion, check this: Romero himself loved the film and even gave Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg cameos (as living dead) in the next zombie-epic he made, Land of the Dead.

8: Pan's Labyrinth (2006, Guillermo del Toro)

Of course Guillermo del Toro is mentioned in this list, and this time the film representing him here is less surprising: the excellent Pan's Labyrinth. A young girl, Ofelia, gets entangled in the Spanish civil war when her mother remarries a cruel fascist commander. She also encounters mythical beings, some benevolent, some terrifying, but do they exist or is all of this just in her head? As Todd Brown says in his review:

"Pan's Labyrinth revolves around the loss of innocence, Ofelia's journey reflecting the war's toll upon Spain itself, the young girl retreating farther and farther into her magical land to escape both the malevolence of her step-father and illness of her mother, dangerous forces she cannot understand and has no control over. The production values, as you would expect from Del Toro, are positively incredible but it is not the images on screen that will linger, it is the horribly heart wrenching finale to Ofelia's journey, Del Toro proving yet again that he is one of those rare film makers who can mine his fertile imagination to bolster and enhance the truthfulness of his characters without overwhelming them.

The easy road to this material would be to treat Ofelia as a child-hero. A better, and more difficult, path would be to treat it as a coming of age story. Del Toro has chosen a third, higher, and more difficult path: this is not a coming of age but the end of one. It is masterful, heartbreaking and his finest work to date."

7: Kill Bill 1+ 2 (2003-2004, Quentin Tarantino)

"What? Wait...", I hear you think, "... those are two movies!" And yes, they are... but made as a single production, and only split in post. The question came up when I was gathering lists how to deal with films made this way. In the end, we decided to allow it as a single feature. So no, we did not allow, say, Harry Potter or James Bond as films in those series were individually made. For that reason we would also not allow Villeneuve'sDune and Dune Part Two. But Kill Bill? Shot in one go, and then released in two parts. Indeed, a re-edited extended version will be re-released in cinemas soon.

Back to why it is in the list at all: Quentin Tarantino makes love letters to cinema he likes, sampling, borrowing or outright stealing stuff left and right to mash them together in ways he likes best. And with Kill Bill, this works wonders. An assassin wakes up from a coma and goes after the people who shot her. Her reasons are very personal: her enemies were her former team-mates, and she had a special relationship with the gang's leader Bill. So Bill must die for what he did to her. And that leads to an anthology of set-pieces, some quiet, some bursting at the bloody seams with action, all awesome.

There is no shortage of articles about this title on this here site of ours, but maybe Stuart Muller said it best in his recap after watching the films again for the first time in ten years:

"Kill Bill shouldn't work. It's a mess of tones that veer wildly, styles that rarely share the same film, and genres within genres. And yet, this never seems to cost the film any momentum or continuity; it's a 4.5-hr spectacle that follows it's own logic as it ricochets through the kaleidoscope of Tarantino's cinematic mind."

6: Antichrist (2009, Lars Von Trier)

Another famous director, and another surprise for which of his films ends up in the list (and damn high in it too). We all have our love-hate relationships with Lars Von Trier, but Antichrist turned out to be the one we liked the most. Or maybe the one we can't get out of our head. A heartbreaking story about a couple dealing with madness and grief after their child died, this is nowhere near a cheerful film. But it hits hard and in surprising places.

James Dennis wrote the following in his review:

"As a chronicle of grief, it’s traumatic but not depressing and often there’s mischief afoot. (...) It’s never exactly clear what he’s up to, but forget who’s directing this at your peril. Controversial for the sake of it? Maybe, but it’s a fascinating experience and what’s a shame is that it’s become known for a couple of fleeting moments of strong violence that are entirely apt in the context of what precedes them. But then again, I’m sure Von Trier, who wrote this in a self-confessed period of deep depression, knew it would."

5: In the Mood for Love (2000, Wong Kar-wai)

"Nobody films yearning like Wong Kar-wai" writes Theodoor Steen in his Sound And Vision column, when describing the Chinese auteur. Truer words are seldom written. In In the Mood for Love, two neighbors keep bumping into each other and grow closer, even though they never take the final step. Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Maggie Cheung Man Yuk may have never looked lovelier on the big screen than in this film, their happiness and unhappiness visible in fantastic detail. And Wong Kar-wai's style is so recognizable that in current days it would probably be turned into an A.I. meme.

Lia Matthew Brown wrote this in her 4K disc review:

"Very near the end of the film, an intertitle underlines Mr. Chow's recollections of his time with Mrs. Chan as blurred, indistinct, a memory he can see vaguely in his mind's eye, as through a mullioned window. It retroactively rounds off the film we've just watched, and its dreamy longing for a complete picture that never arrived. (...) In The Mood For Love is the sort of cineaste wet dream you only get to see for the first time once...

4: The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003, Peter Jackson)

Remember that we allow multiple films as long as it's one production? Well... tadaaaaa!! I remember that in the nineties we heard that the crazy dude who made Braindead/Dead Alive and the Bad Taste films was trying to get a film adaptation of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings off the ground, and we all thought: "Well, good luck with that!"

Several years later we were all awestruck. While I myself may have some issues with some decisions Peter Jackson the director made (ahem...), I cannot fault Peter Jackson the producer for pulling off the impossible. You cannot look at any of the behind-the-scenes footage and not marvel at the monumental achievements the crew(s) accomplished. Three films, all true to a single design vision, and with a nigh-on perfect cast giving its all. New technologies were invented to pull off some of the shots, nature reserves disturbed and carefully restored afterwards. The end result? An amazing epic, one which is beloved and endlessly rewatched till this day...

3: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015, George Miller)

After a decade of crazy stories, weird restarts, shit-talking actors, horrible rumors about test-screenings, expensive reshoots, re-edits, we finally saw a fourth Mad Max film. And what did George Miller manage to do? Make one of the best action films of all time. A great reminder of how fantastic genre cinema can be. It's also one of the best edited films ever. All in all it's a jawdropper of the highest order. A masterpiece.

Jason Gorber described it as such:

"This is buckle-up and hold the fuck on filmmaking in its purest form, yet beneath the spectacle there's actual character development and a streamlined yet effective narrative that's allegorical without being obnoxious or trite.

With a propelling score, some astonishingly beautiful locations captured in Namibia and South Africa, a slew of gritty characters and some of the best car chase sequences every captured for cinema, audiences have got from this fourth film in the series more than they could have ever expected. Fury Road is in the literal sense amazing, a wonderous blast of fun that's sure to warm the heart of even the most jaded anti-blockbuster audience member. Go see this film, and then go see it again... and again."

2: Spirited Away (2001, Hayao Miyazaki)

Hey, no top-25 without a Studio Ghibli film in it, right? And one by Hayao Miyazaki, no less. Princess Mononoke had managed to get into the top-100 most successful films of all time, on Japanese box-office alone, so when Miyazaki's next film actually broke Titanic's records, the West finally experimented with giving A Ghibli an unaltered wide release. Loads of money was made for all, and an Oscar won.

And rightly so, as at that point Studio Ghibli, at 15 years of age, had only produced stellar films without a single sour note in there. Three quarters of their output would be deemed a masterpiece on any scale. And Spirited Away is but an example of that insane high level of quality. A simple (fairy-) tale about a young girl who has to work for a witch to free her parents, this film piles glorious details on glorious details, truly a film to both love and be scared of for young and old.

1: Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch)

Maybe it's because we lost him early this year (a bad start for cinema if ever there was one), but David Lynch has been on our minds a lot and that may be why he bubbled all the way up in this list. His entire movie output of the past 25 years may not have been much, but all of it appears in the first bullet, and then some. Respect to the person who put Twin Peaks: The Return Episode 8 on there, you know who you are.

Mulholland Drive is our number one, and here is Shelagh Rowan-Legg to explain why, in her 4K Criterion review:

"It remains one of his most popular and financially successful films, which says a lot considering the opaqueness of its story. And yet, that very opaqueness is the center of its allure: to fully understand Mulholland Drive, one would have to lose too much of its beauty and disturbances to your film-viewing soul.
(...)
This sumptuous, erotic, and surreal thriller has become a classic for many reasons. At first, the story of Betty (Naomi Watts), the young actress with starts in her eyes, and Rita (Laura Harring), the strange amnesiac with whom Betty falls in love as they try to discover Rita's past, is enigmatic and enticing, a modern take on the beauty and pain of Hollywood. And then, when it turns, and Betty becomes Diane and Rita becomes Camila, and the casting of a film, the betrayal of a lover, and a rash decision regretted bring out horrifying creatures behind dumpsters and terrifying elderly Canadians from under beds.

If Los Angeles is the city of dreams, then only someone who loves LA the way that Lynch does, could make a film that taps into its beauty, it viciousness, and the sur-reality of existence both at its center and on the margins. The lushness of Mulholland Drive, the dizzying heights of ecstasy and anger expressed in its narrative, the sheer audacity and cruelty of those with power and money, versus the the grunge and despair of those left to rot in the gutter, all combine in this bizarre mosaic which purposefully eludes explanation."