Favorite Movies of the Century (So Far)

100. Luca (2021) dir. Enrico Casarosa

Pixar’s lazy summer afternoon movie. When the studio's recent hits are about negotiating loss and finding your place in the world, a movie about friendship, identity, and life's grand adventure feels like a summer day in the Italian sun.

99. Coco (2017) dir. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina

Not only Pixar’s most recent masterwork, but their best (only?) A-tier film of the “way too heavy for children” era. Just an all-time great animated movie.

98. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) dir. Martin Scorsese

There is a list of movies that could be seen as essential viewing in explaining America, and it feels like Martin Scorsese has directed half of them. Killers of the Flower Moon follows in that lineage, taking Marty's career-long fascination with corruption, greed, and American decay and transposing it upon unmolested Osage land just as the nation we've come to know began to sink its fangs into it.

One of the best endings on this list.

97. Collateral (2004) dir. Michael Mann

There are few things I enjoy more than elevated trash. A few of my favorite movies pull this exact trick, starting with a rock-solid screenplay, slumming it down with over-the-top-characters and hilarious set pieces, and then reupholstering it with gorgeous filmmaking. I could list off a handful of elements that are completely ridiculous, but I could also list off a handful that are virtuosic. Occasionally these overlap.

The Foxx-Pinkett interplay here, set against a backdrop of violence, calls to mind Jackie Brown. Similarly to Tarantino's film, there's a sweetness and emotional urgency that you can't really get elsewhere in Mann's filmography.

Cruise hasn't done anything this adventurous since, nor do I think he plans to. Rest in peace to movie stars in weird movies.

96. Y Tu Mamá También (2001) dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Legacy-making stuff from Cuarón here. It has the kind of exotic, freewheeling nature you can only really get with young filmmakers but also the steady, delicate hand you typically only find from directors who've been around the block. This blend of youthful energy and expert judgment is super rare and worth watching 100 bad movies to find.

95. The Empty Man (2020) dir. David Prior

"We can't indict the cosmos."

It’s completely staggering how large this is going. "Horror epic" isn't really a genre, but nobody told David Prior. Horror traditionally succeeds because of its restraint—think of how incredibly contained classics like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre or Carrie are. But The Empty Man is incredibly sprawling, drawing in so many images and touchstones that you can't really blame it when it doesn't tie it all up. This is the kind of film that's almost designed to fray around the edges and not really lose any steam despite it.

I think one of the reasons I respond so much to this is because it's drawing on Cure, an all-time favorite. It's this idea of death as the world's most ancient transmittable disease, lurking within any one of us. It's truly nihilistic, but I think all the best ones are. It's my favorite horror movie of the 2020s so far.

94. Hit Man (2023) dir. Richard Linklater

"Seize the identity you want for yourself."

It's kind of my ideal movie—an intelligent crowd-pleaser spun together by an unassuming genius about a couple of hot people who let love lead them toward bad things.

The thing about the "elevated popcorn movie" is that they can live a double life. This is a fun little thriller starring a couple stars. It satisfies on a Friday night on the couch. And then there's all this other, more extended-release stuff weaved in here about identity and permeability and how maybe every bookish loser would kill someone if they were in love.

Linklater has made a few of my favorite movies of all time, but I'm a sucker for the poetic, so I'm always drawn back to Before Sunset or Boyhood. It's easy to forget this guy also made School of Rock and Everybody Wants Some!!. The most underrated American filmmaker of his generation.

93. Mission: Impossible III (2006) dir. J.J. Abrams

This doesn't get enough credit. No, J.J. Abrams isn't the image maker Christopher McQuarrie is, and as a result this lacks the ballet of stunt work and filmmaking of the recent (stellar) entries. But there's a strong domesticity here that builds an emotional groundwork the recent Mission: Impossible films are probably lacking. There's something novel about the dinner party scene (Cruise having to bore guests with Department of Transportation anecdotes is incredible), and Ethan explaining to his wife that loading a new clip into a handgun is like "replacing the batteries in the flashlight in the kitchen" is such a genius little detail that humanizes the character in a way nothing Cruise has appeared in recently bothers with.

So instead of IMAX glitz and glam (which, again, I adore) Abrams has crafted a kind of junk action movie that's still thrilling while also being much more successfully character-driven than McQuarrie's. Between Phillip Seymour Hoffman's performances, his truly creepy goons, and Hunt's general vulnerability, this is also a surprisingly frightening movie. This whole franchise is tense, but this truly feels like its most dangerous chapter, which is an achievement.

I saw this in theaters when I was 13. This is likely the first theater trip I ever made without an adult, and likely the first truly "adult" movie I ever saw in a theater. I remember my biggest takeaway was Hoffman's ability to portray menace. I've been a fan of his ever since. I miss him so much.

92. Moonrise Kingdom (2012) dir. Wes Anderson

“I love you, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Maybe it’s just because of its setting, but this is remarkably unmanicured by Wes Anderson standards. Shaky handheld camera shots!

So much of Anderson’s work is about parents and children. This one always surprises me in how sad it is, but it balances it out in an innocent earnestness.

91. Inside Man (2006) dir. Spike Lee

It rocks so hard that Spike Lee is a person with Spike Lee’s filmography and then he got sidetracked to make what’s basically a Tony Scott movie. Need more auteurs doing genre!

90. Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins

A defining 21st century Oscar film, not just because of its big awards show moment, but also because of its minting of Mahershala Ali and Barry Jenkins, and its role as the canary in the coal mine, signaling a shift in the voting body that would go on to make historical “un-Oscar” picks in subsequent years.

89. The Hand of God (2021) dir. Paolo Sorrentino

Life has funny timing. It's striking how so many of the best and worst chapters of my life directly overlapped. This duality feels cruel but I also think it's the purest essence of existence. I can honestly say it's in these crazy wrestling matches between joy and pain that I've felt the most alive. It's hard to feel that way in the moment, but with even a tiny bit of hindsight it's obvious. This movie proves Sorrentino feels the same way.

And it's my kind of movie: A story of life cast in a way that feels bizarre enough that it could only be autobiographical. One that rings so true that you can't help but believe every drop of the surreal. The Hand of God is beautiful, and not just visually. It does what the best movies do by managing to capture something intangible and play it back.

88. Training Day (2001) dir. Antoine Fuqua

It doesn't have some of the same heft of capital-G "Greater" movies like Heat, but it wields its smaller pieces remarkably well. It has the perfect number of one-liners, the perfect number of rapper cameos, the perfect number of twists, and the perfect number of blood-filled moments. And it's being piloted by Denzel in a 40-point triple-double.

87. Call Me by Your Name (2017) dir. Luca Guadagnino

There's a lot of deep, resonant stuff in here: coming of age, power in relationships, identity, vulnerability, suppression and indulgence. But—at the risk of minimizing how successful all that stuff is—it's also just a top-tier vibes movie. Guadagnino is very good at these.

Call Me by Your Name is one of the rare recent films to earn a place alongside the romance genre's greats (In The Mood For Love, Before Sunset, et al), though I think it's worth pointing out that this is quite a bit longer than those. If this film has an Achilles heel it's a verbosity that doesn't always serve its narrative. And it's a shame about Hammer being a weirdo/creep/criminal, because he's a very good actor.

86. Asteroid City (2023) dir. Wes Anderson

“I don’t understand the play.” “Doesn’t matter, just keep telling the story.”

An obvious trademark of Wes Anderson's is the restraint of emotion. His style is so interminably formal, so perfect, that it makes those moments in which something more dangerous slips through feel exhilarating. His best films have these fleeting instants where things almost seem to come unstapled. Asteroid City wrestles free in a passage near the end, and it may elevate this film to my new favorite from Anderson.

It's intensely labyrinthine and almost needlessly dense, but it also feels like a director putting all the pieces together. It's got perfect music, but it's also, somehow, his prettiest movie. I adore this thing.

85. Lady Bird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig

An immediate entry in the High School Movie film canon alongside classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Mean Girls. And, considering this crew (Gerwig, Ronan, Chalamet), it’s gonna continue aging like wine.

84. The Taste of Things (2023) dir. Trần Anh Hùng

"Happiness is continuing to desire what we already have."

It's been said that one of the most intimate things one can do for another is cook for them, and The Taste of Things is intent on taking that ideal to its logical destination. This is a film where meal prep is sex, depicted with heavy breathing, soft whispers, and lustful looks. It's intensely sexy, romantic stuff with almost no physical intimacy—as if Tran Anh Hung set out to convey how much two people mean to one another in the quickest way possible and found it in the kitchen.

83. May December (2023) dir. Todd Haynes

A decidedly adult, slow-burn drama. Three monumental performances, a tightrope tone, and a whole grab bag of really fascinating nuances and character details form something that feels completely new and invigorating. It's hard to even know where to begin in a film this rich. As much as I truly do love huge, silly blockbusters, it's nice to get a movie like this to remind you of what's possible.

82. A Bigger Splash (2015) dir. Luca Guadagnino

This is one of those movies where, within a few minutes, you can tell the director's got it on a string. Guadagnino has his Kyrie handles here, with dialed-in control of every big swing and tiny gesture. Love a good rack focus. Love a good needle drop. Love a good snake, a good sandstorm.

This cast completely rips, too. Four good performers, each using their skills but relying largely on something more ethereal. Guadagnino is just making a vibes cocktail. He's one of the best at it.

81. Captain Phillips (2013) dir. Paul Greengrass

"Maybe in America."

Just a tremendously well-crafted movie. There's this subtle choice in the first act. Hanks is in his quarters, late at night, reading some alarming headlines about Somali pirate activity near the Horn of Africa. Smash cut to the sobering light of day, a wide aerial shot of his shipping vessel floating isolated in a vast, open sea. You're on your own, buddy. (Phillip Noyce uses the same shot in his seafaring thriller, Dead Calm.) It's just elemental filmmaking stuff and it works.

This movie is weirdly significant and I'm not sure it gets enough credit in terms of its legacy.

80. La La Land (2016) dir. Damien Chazelle

No, it didn’t win Best Picture, which was the correct call. But Chazelle may end up getting the last laugh. The Gosling/Stone pairing is going to stand the test of time and Hollywood loves itself some movies about Hollywood.

79. TÁR (2022) dir. Todd Field

This may be the most textured and specific movie I've ever seen. It's no coincidence a lot of viewers left the theater thinking Lydia Tár is a real person. What an achievement for a filmmaker to create a fictional world so lived-in and realized as to fool moviegoers.

This movie really hits its stride through the middle—Lydia knocked off her axis, finally hearing proverbial footsteps and living with (literal!) ghosts. At its roots this is a movie about politics. Not just talent and dedication but the shady and manipulative structures one must use to prop those up if they want to be truly omnipotent in a space. And, like anyone who's sold their soul, eventually the rent comes due.

78. Babylon (2022) dir. Damien Chazelle

Damien Chazelle is the future of Hollywood as the best director under 40. He’s got a perfect career going, drawing commercial success, critical applause, and awards glory. And so a studio gave him $80 million and free rein.

He cashed it in to make a movie that feels designed to be a smash hit with 100 people. Fortunately for me I am one of those 100 people.

There are a lot of ways I could describe this. A Once Upon A Time In Hollywood prequel. A roaring ‘20s Boogie Nights. The Irishman for Old Hollywood. Is it as good as any of those movies? Well, no. But then again, how many are? It’s an anti-La La Land with the best opening hour I’ve seen in years. Equal parts crass, ambitious, and beautiful.

77. Past Lives (2023) dir. Celine Song

Since turning 30, for the first time in my life I've been feeling old. I'm someone that's prone to reflection and flights of nostalgia as it is. Ordinarily those trips down memory lane have been about songs I used to like or places I used to visit. Recently I've spent a lot of time thinking about the series of choices that have led to my (very happy!) life today. I'm now to the point where these course-altering decisions were made by a version of myself I no longer recognize, which is terrifying to me.

To call Past Lives a movie about a missed romantic connection is selling it short. Yes, the two films I thought of while watching it are Before Sunset and Chungking Express, but Celine Song's movie is more about these versions of ourselves we've shed along life's journey. Hae Sung and Arthur are well-drawn characters, but this is wholly Nora's film. What would it be like to confront a version of yourself from a past life?

Nostalgia is a foggy window, the past is a locked door, and the only version of yourself you'll ever know is the one who's reading this right now. I guess this is growing up.

76. A Serious Man (2009) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Extremely cynical, even by my standards, but it's also throwing fastballs in my wheelhouse. I love this type of talk-y, absurdist, nihilistic, dark comedy. The dentist scene is one of the best of the Coens’ entire filmography.

75. Perfect Days (2023) dir. Wim Wenders

"Next time is next time. Now is now."

During college, I'd spend summers at home working crappy jobs. After my freshman and sophomore years, I drove a freezer truck in varying 100-mile loops around Greater Cleveland, delivering bags of ice to gas stations, mainly. It was an objectively lousy job. I worked too much—lots of weekends. I didn't make a whole lot of money. I remember being sore a lot. And yet, in many ways, it was the perfect fit for an avowed introvert. In the cab of that truck, I didn't have a boss looking over my shoulder. All my interactions with strangers were the way I liked them: predictable and brief. The A/C didn't work, and the company had ripped out the radio, so I'd spend long, hot hours with my thoughts, daydreaming about what life might be like in five or ten years. My work life now is better: more exciting, fulfilling, rewarding. I have what I imagine is the closest any average person could get to a dream job. And yet, I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes yearn for the honest simplicity of those summer days of sweat and diesel fumes.

74. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) dir. Alfonso Cuarón

The right director at the right time. Lord knows how many times I've seen this, and yet, in my head, it exists as "the moody/edgy" one. But I don't think that's quite right. Despite the muted colors and heavier tone, Cuarón doesn't shy away from the inherent whimsy of this universe. This film isn't gritty; it's just serious—adult, intelligent, nuanced, cinematic—and what a perfect thing to be at this moment in the series.

73. Sicario (2015) dir. Denis Villeneuve

This is, above all, a story about perspective. It's fun to think about how ordinary this would be without Emily Blunt's fish-out-of-water character. This story is filtered through the lens of someone who's in over their head, intended for viewers who are in over their heads.

What makes it special is the way Villeneuve wrings the most out of his chosen perspective. He's a director famous for his wide-angle approach. Blade Runner 2049, Arrival, and Dune are all infamously sprawling and airy. This one has those moments: The sun setting ominously over the desert and those leering satellite shots. But it's most effective in the scenes where he gets micro. There are lots of straight-up POV angles in which the viewer becomes a participant: Cameras mounted to trucks in Juarez and those absolutely dazzling night vision and thermal camera shots.

It would be easy to look at the surface and just get psyched about a cartel story, but this is a really, really smart and well-built movie. Probably Villeneuve's best.

72. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) dir. Martin Scorsese

"I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich."

I saw this in theaters when it came out and left feeling absolutely drained. Three hours of complete depravity starring some of the worst people you've ever seen on screen made more sickening because they were real—and still are—in a country that enabled them—and still does. It's fun, obviously. It's a behemoth of a comedy directed by Martin Scorsese. But anyone who thinks this glorifies this lifestyle is deluded. It's amazing that anyone misunderstands this film.

71. The Town (2010) dir. Ben Affleck

"I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people." "...whose car we gonna take?"

I'm coming to learn that, while some of my favorite movies succeed by subverting common tropes and forging new ground, there's still a lot to be said for playing the hits really well. The Town runs confidently down a well-worn path but doesn't settle for just one hallmark. It grabs them all.

There's an old girlfriend, there's a new girlfriend, and there's a questionable cop. There are crazy masks, there are near-misses, and there are grisly assassinations. There's the death of a brother, there's a Shawshank-esque ending, and there's some incredible, memorable dialogue. There's one last job, there's a diabolical villain who doesn't emerge until the third act, and there's a shootout in Fenway Park.

At the front of it all is a pitch-perfect Affleck who has maybe just enough street smarts and Irish luck to finally make it out of Boston.

70. Only God Forgives (2013) dir. Nicolas Winding Refn

"Wanna fight?"

I think I saw this in theaters for my 21st birthday. I loved it then and I still do. It's a dumb to try to explain why, because for me the appeal is both illogical yet completely natural.

I love it because it's repulsive and achingly beautiful in equal strokes. I love it because it's completely hilarious but is playing coy about it. (Among other things, a henchman gets bashed over the head with a wok like he's in a Three Stooges episode.) I love it because it's so clear Gosling and Thomas were told their roles required dialing it to 11 and they were more than happy to do so. I love it because NWR had a surprise mainstream hit with Drive and used all his momentum to make "Drive, But Without All The Things That Made Drive Accessible." I love it because it's got this charmingly overwrought motif with hands—tools of intimacy, weapons of destruction. I love it because it's just a Western—truth, honor, and justice carried out at the whim of a crazed, sinful, and deeply human population. I love it because it's almost unbearably ostentatious; it's slithery and languid but also exacting and oppressive.

But on a much more elemental level I love it because it looks and sounds insanely cool. If you disagree, I kinda just feel like you're lying to yourself. Only God Forgives is raw, sexy, and perversely fun without overplaying its hand at any of the three. This is Gosling peaking.

69. Aftersun (2022) dir. Charlotte Wells

I'm completely struck by this coming from someone directing their first feature. Edited to perfection and wielding a steady grasp of its pace, this thing literally strobes but is also is perfectly content to linger on a single shot for an entire conversation or neglect dialogue entirely, playing out extended scenes as textures of memory. It's as focused on big gotcha frames as it is on the almost imperceptible details that our mind holds on to: the sound of sleepy breaths or twitches of a finger.

For anyone prone to nostalgia trips or anyone who's spent time behind a camera, this is just a drone strike. Home movies as time machines and memories as purgatory, though—most crucially and painfully—hammering home the strict limitations on what can be accomplished in those spaces. Often the trite question is asked, "If you could say something to yourself _____ years ago, what would it be?" Wells takes that to a deeper level and pierces a metaphysical plane in doing so. It's a movie about coming of age staged like the apocalypse.

68. Certified Copy (2010) dir. Abbas Kiarostami

As a huge lover of the Before series the very setup of this is immediately alluring. The magic of Linklater's work is that it strips everything away to lay bare a kind of truth. Sure, some stakes are unspoken, but the films provide space for clarity, which is what makes them so magical: perfected, wounding, intoxicating realism.

But this has taken that same structure and filled it with trap doors and funhouse mirrors. Certified Copy is an impossibly tough nut to crack, though one considered and masterful enough to beg for the challenge. And it’s a phenomena that seeps into all of Kiarostami’s work. He’s a master.

67. La Chimera (2023) dir. Alice Rohrwacher

I discovered Rohrwacher's Happy as Lazzaro four years ago, in the deepest throes of the pandemic. I was quick to be swept up by a film so audacious because every risk worked. To relay the story to a friend, you'd sound like someone describing a student's creative writing essay. Yet, in the experience of the film, the way Rohrwacher treats her characters (and, in turn, her audience) is too understated and sure-handed to shrug off. It's so soft and quiet that you almost miss the moment you've stepped through the door to Oz. Is it possible to carefully swing for the fence?

In La Chimera, I'm thrilled to discover that original experience is evidently just part of Rohrwacher's toolkit. It's a story of graverobbers and ghosts lurking in the shadows of an encroaching world, of a man unstuck from home, from wealth, from love. And it's a story about what we should dig up, what we should leave buried, and of the things around us, within us, underneath us, that weren't meant for human eyes.

It's also minted a new favorite filmmaker of mine. I'm all in. She’s got the juice.

66. Boyhood (2014) dir. Richard Linklater

I still don’t even think this totally works as a movie. The nature of the film’s concept leads to some brutal pacing, especially in the final 30 minutes. It may be universal to a fault, and maybe trying to cover all its bases hurts its potency.

Yet I still think it’s some kind of masterpiece—a “gimmick movie” done right in that it’s an experience you just can’t get anywhere else and are unlikely to ever see another director take the time to duplicate.

I love Linklater, and I’m slowly realizing Ethan Hawke is one of my favorite actors. He is just incredible here.

65. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

"Do you understand? It's metaphorical."

I always forget how absolutely insane this is and how overtly set in Cincinnati it is.

I suppose it's because Lanthimos isn't a horror director and this probably skews a tad too far towards thriller, but there's really no reason this shouldn't be classified in the Elevated Horror genre of the past decade. This is put together with precision and also features three actors I adore in the middle.

64. American Psycho (2000) dir. Mary Harron

"Hmmm, I see they've omitted the pork loin with lime jello."

For as much as this is intrinsically a film of its time period (these are still the images that come to mind when anyone mentions the cocaine era on Wall Street), it's pretty impressive how much still translates today. I guess every generation gets their version of Patrick Bateman. Ours might be Silicon Valley bros in fleece quarter zips and Allbirds. I see Zuckerberg's weird, robotic mannerisms and proclivity for combat sports and surfing while lathered in sunscreen here.

Obviously the business card and Huey Lewis scenes are the hallmarks, but the Texarkana dinner is just as good.

This really clicks into place once you've been Bateman's age. It's just as hilarious as it is disturbing, hanging on a Christian Bale masterclass and an incredible soundtrack. I'm not sure you could've made this movie any better than Harron did.

63. Licorice Pizza (2021) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

"You're sweet, Gary. You're gonna be rich in a mansion by the time you're 16. I'm gonna be here taking photos of kids for their yearbooks when I'm 30. You're never gonna remember me." "I'm not gonna forget you. Just like you're not gonna forget me."

Someone said this can never be PTA's best movie because it's something other directors can do. Much like Boogie Nights, it's Anderson (masterfully) using someone else's tools. On a second viewing I think that's probably right, but it doesn't change how much I love either of those movies and how much I welcome warm PTA.

I think this does a remarkably good job at capturing emotion. All the age gap discourse is silly because anyone who enters this with a generous mindset can see it's not the point. Alana and Gary each have something the other needs in that moment. The fact that it's with each other is inconsequential in the long run. Gary's wrong when he says he's met the girl he's going to marry, but he's right that he'll never forget her, yet too many people have convinced themselves the former is true.

This reliance on mood, feeling, and character sketching makes it far more rewatchable than a didactic, plot-driven movie would've been. There are so many little pockets and detours I didn't even remember from my first viewing. Throw in its craft—that brilliant use of light, incredible supporting characters, and immaculate score—and it's something I'll be returning to for years.

62. The Master (2012) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

A gorgeous piece of work—rich and saturated, the score ambling from melancholic to menacing and everywhere in between. It's also, once you get into its rhythms, a downright hilarious movie. Yet the other side of the coin is a sick story, less about religion than immediately seems obvious. A story of a stray dog, desperate for guidance, taken in by a master desperate to break him. So many of PTA's movies are these kinds of stories of people who happen into each other's orbit. In There Will Be Blood, the chemical reaction is explosive and Biblically violent. In Licorice Pizza it's almost gleefully carefree, basking in its own ultimate meaninglessness.

But this is far more beguiling. I love the kaleidoscopic poster art because I think it gets at something fundamental about the way this movie entrances me, even while it feels as though this movie is hiding more secrets.

61. Good Time (2017) dir. Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie

One of my favorite movies from a cinematography standpoint. And, despite the generally gross, anxious mess depicted in the script, it's kinda funny?! A few uneasy laughs. Love it.

Is Buddy Duress the MVP? Pattinson is the revelation and Benny Safdie provides something genuinely tender, but I'm not sure how well this works without what Duress is doing. His little flashback vignette may be the film's highlight. Just wonderful. Also maybe personal Mt. Rushmore final scene.

60. School of Rock (2003) dir. Richard Linklater

One of my favorite movies when it came out. Jack Black was hilarious, all the kids fit into recognizable stereotypes, and they got transformed into a cool rock band! I was 11 then. I didn't return to it for a long time and it hits so much different now that I’m past 30, can see my elementary school years with more clarity, and now have much more in common with Jack Black's character than I do any of the kids who were my age when this was released.

I'm a big fan of movies cut from this cloth. I'll always go to bat for these cheap and charming early-to-mid-2000s comedies: Orange County, Accepted, Fever Pitch. Some of them are made by some of the same folks that made School of Rock. Some of them are my favorite movies to rewatch.

But none of them are directed by Richard Linklater. And none of them center around a performance as strong as Black's here. It lends this an uncommon level of quality. This movie is very good and has aged liked fine wine.

Childhood and adulthood can each be a pain in the ass for a lot of the same reasons. They're scary, alienating, and tend to stifle expression. Not only is School of Rock a hilarious love letter to rock 'n' roll, but it's a movie about finding a home, finding a voice, finding a passion, and pushing back when The Man tries to take it away. That's something that transcends age.

59. Gone Girl (2014) dir. David Fincher

A gloriously sick story of two bad people eternally tethered. I love dark comedies, and this isn't that, but it scratches that same guilty pleasure itch.

I’ll never forget frantically reading this book over the course of a couple days in college before seeing the movie and wondering how much Fincher would adhere to the gnarlier moments in the novel. He didn’t back down, and it's a testament to both the story and its director that the movies twists and turns were no less thrilling when I saw them coming.

58. Interstellar (2014) dir. Christopher Nolan

Interstellar feels like the grandest movie of all time. It has the air of "Nolan's masterpiece", despite not being his best work. Is this the Nolan movie I'll be showing my grandkids? Sure it's nearly three hours long, but it feels like you’re in this movie much longer—like you really took some sort of intergalactic journey. Say what you want about its flaws, and they're nearly ever-present, but not many movies feel like a real odyssey.

It's the first thing people say when they critique this movie, but the exposition, especially in that third act, is absolutely suffocating. At the film's climax I still want to yell at my TV to just shuuuuut up. You're pulling it off! Stop trying to sell me! It's like watching the movie with a Reddit commenter.

Despite all of this, the last 45 minutes are beautiful mayhem, especially the passage that juxtaposes the escape from Mann's planet with the evacuation of the farm, culminating with the docking on the Endurance. Movie magic.

57. The Zone of Interest (2023) dir. Jonathan Glazer

Perhaps the greatest atrocity in the history of humanity exists on the periphery of something with all the excitement of a '90s home video: grandma's come for a visit, the kids swim in the pool, the dog got onto the table, dad's got a new job. These moments are casually interrupted with remarkably stomach-churning details—colors of light, bits of dialogue, background noises, or plumes of smoke across the top edge of the frame.

This single-minded, unflinching approach makes this an art film in the truest sense—something you might see projected on the wall of a dark room in a museum, not something you stock up on Sour Patch Kids and popcorn for. And because of this, I'm open to subjective reactions even more than I am with the average film. Some will find this to be one of our time's most outstanding cinematic achievements, some will find it unbearably arrogant, and some will probably be upset and offended at its unwillingness to directly engage with the evil it lives within. All of those are perfectly understandable reactions, and Glazer, a true one-of-one director, is smart enough to know it.

There comes a certain point in the film where it occurred to me that I had no idea how he'd possibly end it, and I found its conclusion gobsmacking. An audacious venture needed a conclusion to match, and Glazer found one.

56. Nope (2022) dir. Jordan Peele

"'Cause the word is getting out, and when it does, you know people are gonna come and do what they always do: Try to take it all for themselves. Well, let ‘em come. Ain’t gonna matter. It’s what we about to do. They can’t erase that."

Summer spectacle and family drama wrung from a story of American myth and the perversion of fame. I still find myself strangely unable to square up the climax, which is an admittedly large wart on what I otherwise think is one of the best major studio films of the century. There's a good 30 minutes through the middle here that's downright perfect.

55. Man on Fire (2004) dir. Tony Scott

“Creasy's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece.”

A sweaty, bloody Greek tragedy about sacrifice, justice, and atonement. Creasy is a killer who's found something worth dying for, but—very crucially—his sacrifice only comes after he's forgiven himself, learned his life holds value, and passed the bullet's judgement. This is not the story of a man whose life is dirty enough as to be disposable, but a man who's fought to salvage it, and then traded it in for another's. This is Biblical parable stuff.

And past all the trenchant, life-and-death stakes is Scott (and screenwriter Brian Helgeland) absolutely pulling up from the logo. Denzel, after spending the whole first half of the movie having his defenses melted by a 10-year-old girl, starts chopping off fingers and blowing up nightclubs. A lot of movies slot into this lane (Sicario is a fairly obvious one), but none of them are really able to match this one's dueling cosmic beauty and muscular acrobatics.

54. The Dark Knight (2008) dir. Christopher Nolan

For a while this was considered by many—myself included—as one of the very best movies of its decade. A five-star unimpeachable masterpiece. But 16 years in the rearview I think it’s easier to see it for what it is: Not a perfect movie, but maybe a perfect blockbuster.

53. The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) dir. Derek Cianfrance

Walking out of that theater in 2013, I’d have called this my favorite movie of all time. Having seen quite literally more than a thousand movies since that day, it’s luster has faded, yet I still think the script is a knockout and the cast is as loaded as any film on this list.

52. Birth (2004) dir. Jonathan Glazer

It's like Glazer wanted a rumination on love and the embarrassing and uncomfortable things that swim back out of the hole created by loss and intentionally sought out the most radioactive means to that end. Rarely does a screenplay feel almost dangerous in the way this does when it isn't veering into dark hilarity. Glazer may be the closest thing to Kubrick we've got.

51. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) dir. Nicholas Stoller

I adored this from the moment I first saw it in 2008, but I probably didn't appreciate its genius enough at the time. I guess maybe I thought these were common. Maybe they were.

Some have come close (Crazy, Stupid, Love. and The Big Sick come to mind), but I've been chasing this studio rom-com high for 16 years.

50. Top Gun: Maverick (2022) dir. Joseph Kosinski

"The end is inevitable, Maverick. Your kind is headed for extinction." "Maybe so, sir. But not today."

The subtext here is not subtle, but nobody comes to blockbusters for subtlety. This is a movie about an over-the-hill fighter pilot coming back into the fold to show the young guns he's still got it. It features the world's last capital M, capital S Movie Star. Cruise turned 60 the summer this came out, but he's still got the juice, following up perhaps my favorite action movie ever with the greatest climax since.

And it's in the final minutes, when you feel like front flipping out of your seat, that Lady Gaga's syrupy ballad kicks in. Hollywood magic.

49. Get Out (2017) dir. Jordan Peele

I’ll never forget what it was like hearing the dude from Key & Peele made a horror movie, or what it was like to hear it was going to be the movie of the year, or what it was like to see it in theaters and realize very quickly that I was watching something landscape-shifting. Few movies are monumental enough to shift the axis of the movie world. Get Out was.

48. Ocean's Eleven (2001) dir. Steven Soderbergh

It's the most rewatchable heist movie of all time and it knows it. By the end it's openly reveling in its own cleverness—perfect for a movie about a successful heist.

47. Moneyball (2011) dir. Bennett Miller

"How can you not be romantic about baseball?"

How illogical that Aaron Sorkin writing The Billy Beane Story is arguably a Baseball Movie Mt. Rushmore. It's an extremely crowded field, but this stands out. It's also one of the best types of movies: A "Hell yeah, this scene!" movie. Extremely rewatchable.

46. Kill List dir. Ben Wheatley

"It's not real though, is it?” "No, not anymore, no."

Ever so quietly one of the most successful and daring films of its kind I've seen. The perfect aesthetic blend of the type of dull, everyday lowercase-H horror we might experience on a daily basis (financial troubles, mental baggage, a corroded marriage) and the capital-H horror we come to the movies for (the occult, a rabbit hole far deeper than we'd imagined, a ravenous evil capable of exploding out of any of us at any moment).

However, the real trick of Wheatley's film is not just that it stylistically presents a 90-minute Shepard tone to hell, but that it's able to match it thematically. The third act is more jarring, sure. But the film wants us to dread the first act just as much. There are no torch-bearing cults, but the status quo of domestic resentment, anger, and rage may come for us all.

45. Oldboy (2003) dir. Park Chan-wook

If Memories of Murder is said to be the Korean Zodiac then maybe Oldboy is the Korean Se7en. It's a bleak story of a man out for justice who ultimately discovers he's been wholly, horrifically outmatched. It's just a tour de force, stunningly styled from start to finish, always hiding one more trick up its sleeve and one more unexpected artistic execution, slowly leveling up until you're completely blown away.

44. Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig

Nothing fancy or subversive, just an all-time classic story executed perfectly. We’ll all be watching this in 50 years.

43. Whiplash (2014) dir. Damien Chazelle

I remember seeing this in theaters in 2014 and thinking Miles Teller was going to be our next great actor. In retrospect it's obvious this was Chazelle's grand entrance. Yes, these performances vibrate. The editing is immaculate, and the cinematography and sound are pitch-perfect. But Chazelle is steering the ship at such a high degree for a debut.

This is always permanently coupled in my mind with Black Swan. They're stories of ambition as sickness set in the darkened hallways of New York's art schools. Whiplash, despite being far more grounded and contained, still manages to surpass Aronofsky's rabid tension and venomous dread.

It's a great movie because its moral can be transposed onto so many other facets of American life. But what's more American than jazz?

42. 25th Hour (2002) dir. Spike Lee

When people talk about tragedy inspiring great art, this is what they mean. In the epicenter of an unbreakable fog of malaise Lee paints an intimate portrait of the changing world through smaller stories of fate, regret, and mourning of a future that will never come. It's all sweaty and bloody but without an ounce of sexiness movies so often serve with it. It feels like the type of grime that will never wash off, making it perhaps the perfect 9/11 movie and the one I didn't know I was missing.

41. Ratatouille (2007) dir. Brad Bird

I'm such a sucker for anything set in Paris, and food is such a perfect vessel for Pixar's brand of sincerity. The movie also does a nice job of infusing some extraneous, but no less important, ideas. The last 10-15 minutes of this are perfect. Maybe Pixar's best passage to date.

40. Creed (2015) dir. Ryan Coogler

I saw this in theaters in 2015 and was completely blown away that a franchise reboot could be so good. But I think a decade later, and in the wake of Top Gun: Maverick, I have a renewed appreciation for this stuff. Coogler and Kosinski have made the rare kinds of films that are able to reaffirm convention and still stand as milestones. With the right performers and the right craftspeople, I can still be set ablaze by play-the-hits traditionalism.

I'll always have a soft spot for films with extra dynamics or nostalgic seasoning, like Moneyball or Sandlot. But as far as pure sports movies go, I'm not sure it's possible to make 'em much better than this.

39. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003) dir. Peter Weir

Dudes rock. Imagine sailing the high seas with the boys, playing some violin, drinking some booze, discovering some new species, performing surgery on yourself, and making pulp of your enemies. The dream.

It's so incredibly well-crafted—a Swiss watch of a movie. 140 minutes is certainly not a brief runtime, but there's a ton squeezed in here, all of it ultimately working in its favor.

I have so much respect for this brand of film, even if I can't quite explain what it is. It's large in scale and scope, modern in its execution, yet it's also rock solid in its assembly, lending it a sort of timelessness. This movie would fly in 1984, 1991, 2003, or today. We could probably use more movies where nine figures are spent with such a steady hand as this, yielding as much substance as style, never drawing attention to its own ambition.

38. City of God (2002) dir. Fernando Meirelles

The world in a movie.

Why isn't this talked about as one of the greatest gangster movies ever made? Just an incredible blend of style and substance with an array of sympathetic characters and clear, weighty stakes. I don't know what it could've done better.

37. The Prestige (2006) dir. Christopher Nolan

"Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled."

Nolan certainly has more bombastic movies, so if you come looking for the grand visual spectacles of those you're going to leave slightly disappointed like I was when I first saw it. But among Nolan's many tricks is writing that strange disappointment directly into the film. We want to be fooled, and this is a filmmaker who's built a career on mazes and rug pulls. This is, in many ways, a response to the success of Memento and its grand reveal, but I think it's also a film that holds greater power in the light of all he's done since. Nolan is a trickster, for better or worse, and the greatest trick he pulls here is tipping his hand out of the gate and revealing later that we've known all along that there is no trick.

Even Nolan's best movies have a tendency to be kind of breathless and mechanical, grasping too hard for narrative complexity to worry about the vibrance of storytelling you'll find here. There's a beating, tortured heart in The Prestige. Casting Bowie in this role is the kind of inspired move I don't think he's matched anywhere else in his filmography.

This is also, like so many of his films, about the weight men must carry on their quest for greatness. In that sense it's a movie making movies—another Nolan autobiography. "Obsession is a young man's game."

36. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) dir. Steven Spielberg

"How strange. How fascinating."

A fairytale modeled after the kind of long dream that stalks around your mind long after waking. To call this transgressive wouldn't be quite right. I think, like all fairytales, there's a beating heart of humanity at the center—perhaps the least transgressive thing you could insert into a film. (This is haunting, yes, but not sad or bitter.)

And yet it's still deeply, deeply bizarre and unscrewed for a blockbuster director at one of several peaks of his career. In the decade preceding this, Spielberg released Hook, the Jurassic Parks, Schindler's List, and Saving Private Ryan. Imagine being a fan of those and walking in blind to the millennia-spanning mommy issue movie with a Jude Law robot gigolo interjection.

This is one of just a handful of movies that I don't think I'll ever be able to get my brain around. It almost seems like it shouldn't be able to fit inside the screen like this, and I love movies that feel like that.

35. Dunkirk (2017) dir. Christopher Nolan

It’s incredible how torrential this is, beginning in a hail of gunfire and only twisting in on itself from there. Nolan's mainstream peak featured movies (often very good ones) with a lot of extra fat, but this is sleek as can be, not wasting a beat and cutting to black at the exact right instant.

It holds a weird place in Nolan's filmography. By its very nature it's a lot more narratively simple, and reads more as a patriotic detour than part of The Great Nolan Project. And yet, in revisiting, its impossible to imagine anyone but Nolan making this. I don't think it has the heft to hold up against Oppenheimer's internal and existential doom spiral or The Prestige's seamless parlor trick, but it's still a masterpiece of its own kind.

34. Mother (2009) dir. Bong Joon-ho

Mother has all the Bong hallmarks: The fallibility of justice systems, the mob-like behavior of family, the desperation created by poverty, and Bong's cynicism about all of it.

I have a hard time judging performances in other languages, yet Hye-ja Kim's work here feels like the best in any Bong film. She's absolutely carrying this, and she needs to. It's probably Bong's least-ensemble film.

Not only are there impressionistic flourishes like the mother's haunting dance in the field (a moment Bong returns to at the end of the film to brilliantly recontextualize), but there are stunning formal executions. Not many film settings have been more picked-over than a prison visitation room, yet cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong's work with reflection and depth here is nothing short of stunning, turning something of a film trope into perhaps the movie's richest visual moments. Then there's the final shot. In a career marked by genius closing passages, a shaky moment of poetry is the haunting grand finale Mother deserves and something you can't quite find elsewhere in Bong's brilliant body of work.

33. Memories of Murder (2003) dir. Bong Joon-ho

“Do you get up each morning too?”

I can’t think of another movie that swings so gracefully from humor to sadness. Memories of Murder depicts a society suffering from a deep-rooted illness. At first its symptoms (incompetence, anger, etc.) are hilarious, yet by the end it’s clear there are no winners here. Everyone is trapped in the boiling pot.

I think this score is objectively tacky by 2024 standards and yet each time I return here I love it more and more. So perfectly melancholic.

32. Under the Skin (2013) dir. Jonathan Glazer

I think I'm most in love with Glazer for the icy sterility he imposes on his films. What results looks very naturalistic but exists in an emotional vacuum, creating a negative space that will swallow you whole. When films craft an expansive, detailed world, we call that immersive. But what Glazer is gunning for is probably better described as consuming. These are films that feel like reality is being sucked back toward some uncanny valley. It's like we've caught a brief glimpse of something we're familiar with but at a new angle. There are several sequences here that are among the most striking, gripping passages I've seen on screen in months—something you quickly learn to cherish when you watch way too many movies.

31. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) dir. George Miller

"Yeah, well, I got unlucky."

Its plot can be boiled down to "run away, run back," yet it's two hours of perfectly stylized, unrepentant action. I'm not sure what's more impressive: Miller's ability to earn my attention with just the faintest whisper of narrative setup or his work splitting a hair for the optimal blend of rendered-by-computers mayhem and hot-glued-by-theater-kids arts and crafts. Just one of the coolest movies ever.

30. No Country for Old Men (2007) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

"What you got ain't nothin' new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's coming."

A quiet, chilling adaptation of an acclaimed neowestern novel, exploring the unstoppable power of fate and the creeping degradation of America. And it's funny. That's the part I always forget about this. I guess it shouldn't keep surprising me every time, as this is a Coen brothers film, after all. But it's such a lovely flourish on a weighty story—the kind of spice that helps makes the fatalistic rewatchable.

29. Synecdoche, New York (2008) dir. Charlie Kaufman

“I don't know what I'm doing." "Knowing that you don't know is the first and most essential step to knowing, you know?" "I don't know."

I first watched this in high school and it completely cracked me in two. Sixteen years later it's still the rare kind of thing where that adolescent reaction feels completely justified. For better or worse, nobody else makes movies this way. It's a unicorn—the blackest comedy I’ve ever seen and a masterpiece regardless of the fact that it doesn't completely stay glued together.

28. Uncut Gems (2019) dir. Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie

I remember when I first heard “the guys who made Good Time” were making a movie starring Adam Sandler and Kevin Garnett. Often times, these combinations are too good to be true on paper and the final product underwhelms. And then there’s Uncut Gems.

27. Ex Machina (2015) dir. Alex Garland

"One day, the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction."

There’s something deeply Kubrickian here, even beyond the obvious AI-inducted panic and freewheeling science fiction of 2001. There’s the isolation of the Overlook Hotel and the spiraling masculinity of Jack Torrance. There’s Eyes Wide Shut’s eroticism as terror. If you squint, there’s even Dr. Strangelove’s impending doom and Alex DeLarge’s raw perversion of humanity.

It gets right that tech billionaires are inherently immoral weirdos willing to chuck us all into the incinerators feeding their own god complexes.

26. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir. Michel Gondry

The flawless music—both soundtrack and score, the preposterously loaded cast, the way it doesn't take itself too seriously and isn't afraid to get weird, the genius use of lighting, the perfectly drab sets, the way it builds 'what-if' implications of its plot in as B-stories, the flawless transition between present and past and real and surreal, the daring ending, even the title.

25. The Descendants (2011) dir. Alexander Payne

“Nothing just happens!” ”Everything just happens.”

The perfect pairing of Alexander Payne and George Clooney—two filmmakers I adore who probably aren't getting the respect they deserve. Considering this won a screenplay Oscar I’m amazed it has virtually no reputation. It’s smart and moving but also hilarious and rewatchable, sort of everything I need out of a movie.

24. The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019) dir. Joe Talbot

"This was ours. And it wasn't."

A movie that's less about gentrification and displacement than it is about finding a home and an identity amidst an existence that's frustratingly impermanent. We all try different things to maintain the illusion, but these are just lies we've chosen to believe. At some point we have to make peace with the fact that the past is a ghost and the present is slippery. I've seen this movie probably half a dozen times and I think what I love most about it is the way it's able to deify the silly idea that we belong to a place while also acknowledging the fallacy of it. "Do you love it? You don't get to hate it unless you love it."

23. Catch Me If You Can (2002) dir. Steven Spielberg

"It's like Vegas. The house always wins."

It's not sexy, but the most rewarding part of this on return visits is the recurring theme of trust. The central conceit of the film is lies and deception, yet characters are constantly divulging the truth. Why do they make this decision? Who is the recipient? Does the recipient accept? And what happens when that shaky trust is shattered?

I'm trying to reconcile the obvious fact that Spielberg's greatest strength is spectacle (Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, even A.I.) with my sincere opinion that this is my favorite movie of his. And similarly, Hanks has had better performances, but this is the one I enjoy the most.

22. The Squid and the Whale (2005) dir. Noah Baumbach

"I don't see myself this way." "Well, this is how it is."

I don't know why, but this was the first true indie movie I ever saw. It seems silly now, but I remember having a moment where I thought to myself, "Wait a second, there's all these other movies that are different but still really good?" So, at 16 years old or whatever, a pirated version of The Squid and the Whale made me a Noah Baumbach fan.

I don't think I could've told you exactly what about this I found gripping at the time. I think I was drawn to the idea that a series of conversations can be thrilling, that trauma can be funny, and that you can sympathize with a bunch of characters you ultimately realize deeply suck for their own reasons.

Not only is it still one of my favorites, but it informed so much of what I grew to love about movies.

21. Inglourious Basterds (2009) dir. Quentin Tarantino

“I think this just might be my masterpiece.”

A movie that can do so many things at once. It exists in both protracted scenes and singular frames. It can make you say "I don't think I blinked for the last six minutes" and "Ha ha Brad Pitt talk funny." It will have you believing in the purity of sacrificial love and the sick pleasure of vengeance. It lingers on both pulpy blood splatter and Tarantino's foot fetish. It's a movie both about Nazis and about the power of movies themselves. Not many can have their cake and eat it too.

Inglourious Basterds is a movie with a beginning and middle that are so offensively good that, for years, I thought the climax, something at which Tarantino is masterful, was actually a bit of a letdown. Yet after however many watches, I'm finally ready to admit it's all great. When I watch Tarantino's movies, this is exactly what I want.

20. The Social Network (2010) dir. David Fincher

"This is a once-in-a-generation-holy-sh*t idea and the water under the Golden Gate Bridge is freezing cold."

Knowing what we know about the way David Fincher works, I find it fascinating that he makes movies about assholes and losers... assholes and losers who are right. It's all the reasonable, level-headed ones who've missed the boat, but his psychos—hate 'em or love 'em—successfully play the board.

I can’t believe we got top-tier Fincher and Sorkin in the same movie. I can’t believe that movie is about Facebook. I can’t believe that movie is this cynical about the future and yet ultimately not cynical enough.

19. Midsommar (2019) dir. Ari Aster

"Okay, Josh, I actually have an uncle with Lyme. And believe me, if you ask him, it was not worth the pleasant picnic in the park. He's f*cked."

This might be my favorite movie ever, from a design, art direction, and aesthetic standpoint. Every single aspect of this just looks phenomenal. The title screen, the poster, the cinematography, the credits. And it’s a movie that deserves all the fancy decoration because it’s a modern horror masterpiece.

18. Phantom Thread (2017) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

"Sometimes I jump ahead in our life together, and I see a time near the end. I can predict the future, and everything is settled. And all our lovers and children and friends come back and are welcome. And we have large gatherings where everyone is laughing and playing games. I am older and I see things differently, and I finally understand you. I take care of your dresses, keeping them from dust and ghosts and time." "Yes, but right now we're here." "Yes, of course we are." "And I'm getting hungry."

Love as a helpless power struggle. Vulnerability as scintillating terror. Matrimony as cosmic symbiosis. One of the definitive movies about marriage.

17. Déjà Vu (2006) dir. Tony Scott

"Whatever you did, you did it already. ... You cannot change the past. It's physically impossible." "What if there's more than physics?"

Every bit as cool and fun as Tenet, though this one's got a soul so it doesn't bother trying to convince us it has a brain.

The thing about the Denzel-Tony Scott movies is that my favorite is always whichever one I've watched most recently. Man On Fire is probably the easiest to argue for, but this one's vision of technology as a bridge between humans brings me to my knees. Thrilling, gorgeous, and deeply romantic. What more do you want?

A heart-on-its-sleeve masterpiece. It makes me miss Tony a lot.

16. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) dir. Christopher McQuarrie

“Fate whispers to the warrior...” “A storm is coming.” “And the warrior whispers back…” “I am the storm.”

My favorite pure action movie of all time. Every moment is pure bliss. Incredible in a movie theater. Incredible on your couch. Incredible on an airplane. Tom Cruise is an American hero.

15. Oppenheimer (2023) dir. Christopher Nolan

“They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used it.”

There's this quote by the French poet Victor Hugo: "Nothing else in the world...not all the armies...is so powerful as an idea whose time has come."

Oppenheimer is about a man, yes. And it's about a bomb. But this is a movie mostly concerned with this central idea: A man chosen by the cosmos, burdened with bringing to bear one of the most consequential ideas in the history of humankind. We see in the opening act Oppenheimer literally haunted by this idea—possessed by it. It has come without warning, it has chosen him, and its time has come. If framing the development of atomic weaponry in this divine way provides a tacit exoneration of Oppenheimer's moral responsibility, the film spares little in emphasizing the consequences of this burden on the man and his world. We see it in IMAX—scarring gorgeous vistas and sending columns of fire into the sky. We see it in closeups—his graying hair, rotting relationships, and visions of the dead. And we, perhaps most excitingly, see it at a literal atomic level, furious swirls of neutrons and the ravenous maw of black holes that send rattles through theater seats.

If this all sounds like a lot, it is. This movie is incredibly dense, lumbering around with a three-hour runtime most probably won't rush to repeat like I did. But the expanse allows a lot to develop, and Nolan doesn't waste any of it. This is not exactly a film that can be broken down on a scene-by-scene basis. It's a wheeling and frenetic beast. But I'd love to know, to what degree this could even be determined, what the average length of a scene is here. These 180 minutes are absolutely breakneck, and it lends a furor—first thrilling and then portentous—to what might otherwise be described as a character study meets courtroom drama.

14. Michael Clayton (2007) dir. Tony Gilroy

“I realized ... I had been coated in this patina of sh*t for the best part of my life. The scent of it and the stain of it will in all likelihood take the rest of my life to undo. And you know what I did? I took a deep cleansing breath and I set that notion aside. I tabled it. I said to myself, as clear as this may be, as potent a feeling as this, as true a thing as I believe that I have witnessed today, it must wait, it must stand the test of time, and Michael, the time is now."

A towering tale on the awakening from a slumber. An ode to destruction as a path to freedom. A monument to dudes who are good at their job.

George Clooney is not our best actor. I recognize this, and yet it can't be discounted that the guy is in three of my favorite movies of all time (this one, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and The Descendants) as well as a host of other films that lots of people would call their favorites. The dude's been in like a dozen undeniably great movies. Give him his flowers!

13. Old Joy (2006) dir. Kelly Reichardt

"No more Sid's. End of an era."

A movie that's very small in actuality but resonates on such a deep level that I have a hard time explaining everything I love about its 73 minutes. A mournful letter to friendship and youth. A meditation on little moments that seem uneventful but have the power to reverberate. It hammers home my belief that the only reason we don't spend time panicking over how steep and slippery the slope of time is is because humanity would cease to function if we did. Everything changes so fast, and no matter where we're headed it always seems like we're going there too quickly to bear.

12. In the Mood for Love (2000) dir. Wong Kar-wai

"You notice things if you pay attention."

A heartbreaking meditation on schoolyard emotions with real-world stakes. On shared isolation. On bad timing and missed connections. On the exhilaration of acknowledgment. On joy through pain. On even the unsteadiest of beauty existing at time's gunpoint. On love as something unattainable but still worth being devoured by.

11. Mulholland Drive (2001) dir. David Lynch

“It'll be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else.”

One of only a few movies I've seen that feel like actual magic. Inspired by some incredible stuff (see: Sunset Boulevard) and passing on the lineage to some pretty cool stuff too (see: Under the Silver Lake), yet on its own channeling something that feels beyond our plane of existence, unreplicated before or since, a tentpole of the medium.

I don't know how Lynch made this or how Watts' performance isn't constantly talked about as one of the all-time greats.

10. First Reformed (2017) dir. Paul Schrader

"Courage is the solution to despair. Reason provides no answers. We can't know what the future will bring; we have to choose despite uncertainty. Wisdom is holding two contradictory thoughts in our mind simultaneously: Hope and despair. A life without despair is a life without hope. Holding these two ideas in our head is life itself."

An absolutely titanic movie that is almost unbearable to watch and yet one I return to again and again, and think about more frequently than most anything else, especially recently. It's a virtuosic and daring meditation on the state of the world and the modern condition borne from living within it, and yet it's also remarkably hopeful—a kind of oasis in the desert—for how stomach churning it allows itself to grow first. And holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.

09. Superbad (2007) dir. Greg Mottola

“McLovin? What kind of a stupid name is that, Fogell? What, are you trying to be? An Irish R&B singer?”

Incredibly heartfelt and incredibly crass. I think it makes me laugh harder than any movie, ever. This hit my high school like an atom bomb in 2007.

08. 2046 (2004) dir. Wong Kar-wai

“When I think back, the whole thing was like a dream.”

Wong Kar-wai at his most obtuse and slippery. A director who made a career out of huge casts of helpless characters draws his broadest array of souls and sends them charging toward a destination they're each realizing is a horizon line they'll never reach. It's operatic, apocalyptic, and unbearably captivating.

07. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) dir. Quentin Tarantino

“What a picture.”

Pure fantasy and ecstasy. As much as I'm a sucker for Jackie Brown and Inglourious Basterds, I increasingly feel like this is Tarantino's masterpiece—a cinematic distillation of his artistic worldview.

06. Zodiac (2007) dir. David Fincher

"Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true."

This breezes by far quicker than just about any movie of this length. It's really not until you account for its narrative breadth that you realize how hulking it is, practically packing two films into one. The first is a cold, methodical police procedural. The second is about a vigilante detective's need for answers.

The crux of the movie lies in the fact that all of the actual killing occurs in the clinical half while Graysmith's portion, set years after the killings, is what's psychological, paranoid, and propulsive. Fincher doesn't care about a killer nearly as much as he cares about the toll taken on the people trying to find him. As a notoriously rigorous and obsessive filmmaker it's easy to see how a lot of this could be autobiographical.

05. Palm Springs (2020) dir. Max Barbakow

"Yes, I know that it's crazy odds that the person I like the most in my entire life would be someone I met while I was stuck in a time loop, but you know what else is crazy odds? Getting stuck in a time loop."

The decision to put more people into the well-worn movie trope is so simple and so obvious that it's incredible it hasn't been executed like this before. It creates a whole different type of movie, one that's concerned less with learning about one's self than it is with exploring the illogical magic that, in a world that's seemingly endless, some of us manage to stumble across one person to wake up every day forever with.

Marriage rocks.

04. Parasite (2019) dir. Bong Joon-ho

“Dad, today I made a plan.”

The perfect movie at the perfect time. I’m still shocked this won Best Picture, and yet it’s so undeniable as a piece of filmmaking that I guess it makes sense. A perfect Swiss watch of a movie—Bong doing everything he does well, all at once, and in perfect balance. And, like so many of the movies on this list, it’s only ringing more true as the years go on.

03. Before Sunset (2004) dir. Richard Linklater

"Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.”

An incredible chapter in an incredible trilogy and yet it’s here for those last 30 minutes, which give me the same kinds of feelings some people get from, like, the rap battle in 8 Mile or the Trinity Test in Oppenheimer. Linklater made a movie that’s just an 80-minute conversation and it makes me melt.

02. There Will Be Blood (2007) dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

The United States of America in 158 minutes. God and money. Greed and corruption. Opportunity and death—all centered on two of the best performances of a generation. Watching Daniel Day Lewis and Paul Dano volley back and forth feels like Ali and Frazier.

This is a list of favorites, but if it were a list of bests, this is #1 without any hesitation.

01. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

“It’s a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”

Perfect movie, perfect movie, perfect movie. Considering it has a narrative arc with dramatic stakes the joke density is unfathomable. Basically every line is funny in a world-class screenplay. It’s anchored by three incredible lead performances and a handful of your favorite supporting actors. The cinematography is by Roger Deakins. Oh, and the soundtrack won Grammy for Album of the Year.

Choosing a single favorite movie of all time is an impossible task but this is the one I default to.