21st century movies: First-quarter report

        To celebrate the quarter-century mark, the New York Times recently released a top 100 movie list for the 21st century. Duplicating that, for me, seemed too exhaustive a task; on the other side, limiting the commemoration to one per year cut out too many great ones. So, I went with the time-honored Kasey Kasem Top 40, with the caveat that I haven’t had time to revisit more than a few pictures in preparing this. That said, here’s my list:

  1. Faces/Places (Agnes Varda & JR)
  2. 2046 (Wong Kar-Wai)
  3. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
  4. Inside Man (Spike Lee)
  5. Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
  6. Sideways (Alexander Payne)
  7. American Splendor (Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman)
  8. Parasite (Bong Joon-Ho)
  9. Stranger Than Fiction (Marc Forster)
  10. Juno (Jason Reitman)
  11. Best in Show (Christopher Guest)
  12. Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
  13. Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Love)
  14. The Old Oak (Ken Loach)
  15. La Verite (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
  16. Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)
  17. Volver (Pedro Almodovar)
  18. The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-Soo)
  19. Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonso Cuaron)
  20. Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen)
  21. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
  22. The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles)
  23. I ♥ Huckabees (David O’Russell)
  24. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai)
  25. Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
  26. Wonder Boys (Curtis Hansen)
  27. After the Storm (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
  28. High Fidelity (Stephen Frears)
  29. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)
  30. Past Lives (Celine Song)
  31. Still Walking (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
  32. Mistress America (Noah Baumbach)
  33. Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
  34. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda)
  35. You Can Count on Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
  36. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
  37. Inception (Christopher Nolan)
  38. Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener)
  39. Get Out! (Jordan Peele)
  40. Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

Top director: the Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda is clearly my 21st century standard bearer, with a list-leading three movies (the top one primarily in French, featuring a smattering of English). These favorites aren’t the limits of his brilliance, either: Shoplifters, The Third Murder, and Monster are also first-rate, and there’s a significant portion of his catalog I haven’t seen yet. Runner-up is Alfonso Cuaron, tied with personal favorites Agnes Varda, Wong Kar-Wai, and Pedro Almodovar for second with two mentions. Of that group, only Cuaron and Almodovar have been prolific since 2000, and it’s a close call for second. Pedro’s top post-1999 honorable mentions (Julieta, Dolor y Gloria, Broken Embraces) are more numerous if slightly less earth-shattering than Cuaron’s excellent Children of Men and Gravity. Cuaron is certainly an American director, as the aforementioned pictures are both in English with U.S. based stars. But his best two movies are Mexican, so we’ll bestow the top American director for this period to the filmmaker who ran away with that honor for the last quarter of the 20th century: Martin Scorsese. Yes, he’s only got one film on my top 40 (Wolf of Wall Street), and even it’s nowhere near Goodfellas or Taxi Driver. But he’s made a lot of excellent films in the last 25 years: starting with Wolf, The Irishman and The Aviator, followed by Hugo and The Departed, and then a respectable third tier including Killers of the Flower Moon and Shutter Island. Plus, you can add his musical contributions: a couple of very good Dylan docs, a fine Rolling Stones concert film, and best of all the definitive cinematic portrait of New York Dolls’ singer David Johansen.

Just missed: My favorite director not represented is definitely Lee Chang-Dong. His films aren’t easy to take, but they’re all very smart and richly presented. If I did expand this list to 100, Poetry and Burning would be locks, and Secret Sunshine might make the cut as well. Greta Gerwig gets second honorable mention, with a really close call for Lady Bird, not to mention extra points for Little Women, Barbie, and her screenplay collaborations with Noah Baumbach which elevated him to a new level in Frances Ha and Mistress America.

My favorite year: Maybe it’s just that I was seeing more movies back then, but my top year was the first: six of the 40 are from the year 2000 (to compare, only four or at most five of my favorites from the exalted movie year 1999 would have qualified). None of the 2000 entries cracked the top 10, with Best in Show the pacesetter at 11. The next best years featured three movies: 2001, 2002, and a big jump to 2023. The tiebreaker goes to 2001, with three in the top half and two (Mulholland Drive and Gosford Park) in the top five. Every year from 2000 through 2023 was represented except for 2009 and 2012. The closest HMs for those also-ran crops are both foreign: Olivier Assayas’s borderline miss Summer Hours in 2009 and Isabelle Huppert’s collaboration with Hong Sang-Soo (who, let’s face it, makes a really good movie almost every year) for 2012’s In Another Country.

Recency bias in reverse: Some of the movies from the twenties (I’m thinking The Old Oak, Perfect Days, and especially the comparatively new-to-me Bergman Island) could easily move up the list with time. I suppose the opposite could happen as well, but second showings of Oak and Days generated additional resonance, and I absolutely loved Mia Hansen-Love’s Swedish venture to the cinematically famous island of Faro. I already like it better than any Bergman except Wild Strawberries and maybe Summer with Monika, so it could quite easily slide into the top 10 upon reflection and another view.

Agnes/JR lap the field: Faces/Places, the culmination of Agnes Varda’s brilliant 60+-year career assisted by the provocative artist/photographer (yet cinematic newcomer) JR, is the only 21st century movie in my all-time top 10. It’s also the only non-fiction film on that list. The co-directors complement each other artistically and personally; some of the banter feels a bit forced toward the beginning, but they are skillfully building a relationship before our eyes. The photography is magnificent, capturing French people of all types in the fashion that Varda has been doing since her 1954 debut La Pointe Courte. JR is equal to the task, providing not only the artistic medium (which Agnes, who transitioned from photography into film, is well-versed in) but also a unique visual and conceptual perspective. He clearly shares Varda’s long-held belief that all of their subjects are stars whether the camera is on them or not. Of the other great films on my list, I’d say everything from 2046 through Parasite is an upper-echelon masterpiece. But Faces/Places (originally the equally catchy French title Visages/Villages) stands head and shoulders above, a true miracle of cinema by one of its greatest masters aided by a partner who’s a lightning-quick study.

Keeping up with The Times (or not): I’ve seen 87 of the movies on the NYT overall list, and closer to 80 on their readers’ poll. Fifteen of the Times films made my list; apples to apples, eight of their top 40 are in mine. Closer to the top, I’ve got half of their top 10 represented, and both of the paper’s top two choices (Parasite and Mulholland Drive) are in my top 10.

Genre pictures: I’m generally not a horror fan, so Get Out! making the cut is a major endorsement. Off the top of my head, it’s on my horror medal stand with The Shining and Cronenberg’s version of The Fly. I haven’t seen either of the other two in a while, but I’m pretty sure the Kubrick would be third, with Jordan Peele’s excellent debut having a pretty solid chance to displace The Fly as my personal pinnacle of the genre. There’s no science fiction on my list (the two Dunes and the middle LOTR are among the readers’ choices I haven’t even seen), although both 2046 and La Verite feature sci-fi elements and/or subplots. Finally, in this Marvel dominated cinematic century, my top comic book movie features a decidedly non-super hero, Harvey Pekar, from the quasi-regular guy adventures/travails/etc. depicted in the comic and film American Splendor. It’s by far my favorite comic book feature not only in this century but of all time. For the few Marvel-curious still out there, I highly recommend Black Panther.

Live action: In my adult years, I’ve seen just a handful of animated movies. It’s not that I’m completely immune; I like the few Miyazaki pictures I’ve seen (the only 21st century one I’ve caught, Spirited Away, is an immense work of art), and I was blown away by Waltz with Bashir upon release, though it didn’t connect quite as much on a subsequent view. Despite not being a big Pixar devotee, my top animation film of the past 25 years would be Ratatouille. I was liking the vibe all along, and Peter O’Toole really sealed the deal. I may venture more into the animation realm in the future, as the recent South Park episode Sermon on the ‘Mount looks in the afterglow like the best thing in the history of television.

Best short subjects: Two of the consistently terrific directors not mentioned here are Kelly Reichardt and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. While not even Wendy and Lucy or Asako I & II quite made the cut, both filmmakers have created episodic triumphs every bit as excellent as many of the pictures on this list. For Reichardt, it’s the third segment of Certain Women, as far as I can recall the first time I saw Lily Gladstone. In a movie with Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, and the fantastic Kristen Stewart in her own segment, Gladstone absolutely steals the movie. Her complex rancher character is someone who may be unprecedented in cinema, and her delivery is a cinematic triumph. She’s built on this promise as well, excelling in everything from a Scorsese epic to the recent Wedding Banquet reboot. Hamaguchi’s winner is also the third in his picture, Wheels of Fortune and Fantasy. The first segment is well-done, and the second is mesmerizing but intentionally creepy. But the third episode features the director at his most quietly poetic and sharply original. These movies are worth seeing in their entirety. Still, if you find it slow going or you’re pressed for time, feel free to forward to the best parts.

Best Actor (all-inclusive): My top three actors of the century are all European women. Juliette Binoche and Isabelle Huppert have the most excellent performances in good-to-great movies, but Marion Cotillard has the peaks. Her supporting performances in Midnight in Paris and Inception stand with Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona as my favorites in that category throughout the 25 years, and Cotillard has done tremendous leading work as well (not just the Edith Piaf biopic that made her an international star, but her more down-to-earth turn in the Dardenne brothers’ Two Days, One Night). Runners-up who’ve been prolific through all or most of these 25 years include Cruz, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lily Gladstone, Gael Garcia Bernal, Irrfan Khan, Saoirse Ronan, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, and Christopher Plummer (who late in life may have delivered more outstanding performances in notable films in this century than he did in the last one). In closing, here’s a special shoutout to three of my 20th century favorites who continue to do great and interesting work up to the present day: Denzel Washington, Catherine Deneuve, and Robert DeNiro.