The new Canon: The best films of the 2000s
For the most part, the Canon has remained an unchanged list of cinema’s most revered titles; the last time it was even slightly upset was in 2012
AS THE film world prepares to leave the childish things of summer behind and welcome the more serious, artistically ambitious movies of festival and awards season, it’s an opportune moment to consider the Canon: that list of revered films that helped form cinematic language, broke it open, captured not only their own zeitgeist but proved wisely prescient, and have stood the test of history to remain mini-master classes in aesthetics, technique, grammar and taste.
For the most part, the Canon has remained an unchanged list of cinema’s most revered titles; the last time it was even slightly upset was in 2012, when the respected film journal Sight & Sound announced that its Greatest Films of All Time poll of programmers, film professionals and academics had put Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 fever dream “Vertigo” at the top of the list, upending longtime pride- ofplace holder “Citizen Kane.”
That blip aside, the rest of the list was and continues to be a largely predictable — and unquestionably well- deserved — litany of familiar titles, from Jean Renoir’s “The Rules of the Game” to Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Lists from such august institutions as the American Film Institute and the British Film Institute have mostly hewed to worship of the classics, with Wong Karwai’s “In the Mood for Love” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” the only films released in 2000 or after to be added.
If the bias toward older films is understandable — it’s only in the fullness of time that we understand what possesses enduring artistic value and meaning that transcends its precise cultural moment — it gives short shrift to movies that, despite their youth, could take their place among their forebears with confidence. Even considering a Hollywood business model that has doubled down on comic-book movies, effects spectacles and all of the re’s (reboots, re-makes, re-treads and re- quels), the early 21st century has witnessed the emergence of breathtaking visions and voices, both in classical narrative and subversions of form and genre.
This list advances the modest proposal that, when it comes to the Canon, we expand our notions of permanence and connoisseurship to include films that are worthy of appreciation — even veneration — despite being so recent. (As for rankings, this collection is unnumbered, reflecting a loose, intuitive collection rather than a strict hierarchy.) No one is a prophet in their own hometown; sometimes we need reminding that many of the films we’re seeing right now are genuinely timeless. — “Children of Men” (2006) Alfonso Cuaran’s adaptation of the P.D. James novel evinced the perfect balance of technical prowess, propulsive storytelling, complex character development and timeliness when it was released in 2006. But its depiction of a dystopian near-future — what we ruefully now call the present — has proved to be not just visionary but prophetic. Its predictive value aside, it stands as a flawless movie — a masterwork of cinematic values at their purest, with each frame delivering emotion and information in equally compelling measure. — “25th Hour” (2002) Released a little more than a year after Sept 11, 2001, Spike Lee’s urban thriller, about a criminal (a superb Ed Norton) confronting his past as he embarks on a seven-year prison sentence, was the first bona fide post- 9/11 movie, evoking postWorld War II neorealism in its use of a shattered city as a backdrop. Although Lee never commented on the tragedy directly in the film, it suffused the film’s mood of numbed resignation (the ruins of Ground Zero can be glimpsed in the background). Lee displayed his usual talent for beginnings and endings, conceiving an operatic coda bursting with life, hope and the grief of a future reduced to ashes. — “The Hurt Locker” (2008) The director Kathryn Bigelow has always felt at home in hypermasculine, ritualistically aggressive subcultures. In this Iraq War drama, she plunged viewers into the world of technicians dismantling explosive devices in and around Baghdad with filmmaking that was viscerally subjective and formally thoughtful. Although the battle sequences were masterfully choreographed and executed, it’s a scene toward the end — when a cocky bomb tech returns stateside and stands dumbfounded in a supermarket cereal aisle — that’s the most memorable, conveying an entire interior landscape with no words or discernible action whatsoever. — “Michael Clayton” (2007) If movies can be evaluated as sums of their parts — script, performance, design, editing and sound — then this legal thriller is sheer perfection. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy, making his directorial debut, wisely subverts the native charisma of star George Clooney, whose portrayal of a man coming undone among Manhattan cutthroats stands as the finest of his career. It’s a master class in balancing craft, tone and star power with precision, finesse and, of all things, soul. — “Pan’s Labrynth” (2006) An eccentric, uncompromising artist pursuing his most personal obsession always courts risk: At their worst, such enterprises wind up being overworked, solipsistic and hopelessly opaque. With this surrealistic fable — the story of an intrepid young girl in Franco- era Spain finding safety in the most frightening reaches of her imagination — Guillermo del Toro created a film that qualified not only as one of the most dazzling visual pieces of cinema of the early century but also as a superbly effective political allegory regarding fascism, personal expression and the power of finding allies in our most secret monsters.
— “There Will Be Blood” (2007)
From its nearly wordless opening sequence, featuring the prospector Daniel Plainview bullying a vein of ore from a pit in the American Southwest, Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of the Upton Sinclair novel “Oil!” announces its ambition: to be the closest thing we have to the Great American Novel on screen. A wild, unwieldy portrait of greed, aspiration and self-belief, featuring an uncompromising performance by Daniel Day-Lewis, this chronicle of enterprise, exploration and Darwinian capitalism bursts with daring and emotion; even its bizarre final sequence — controversial for its brazen tonal shifts and outright weirdness — acknowledges the fact that the very best movies always have a touch of madness to them. — “Boyhood” (2014) The coming- of-age tale is a reliable genre precisely because of its reassuring linearity; the idea of discovering it anew is ludicrous, which is probably why Richard Linklater attempted to do it, filming the same boy over 12 years — along with Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as his parents — and then working with longtime editor Sandra Adair to sew the resulting assortment of moments together into a seamlessly flowing depiction of time at its most inexorable, corrosive and liberating. It’s not often that one can say a filmmaker has invented a new cinematic language, but that’s what Linklater did with this tender, openhearted portrait.
— “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” (2007)
Naturalism as cinematic style is nothing new — as the oeuvre of everyone from John Cassavetes and Mike Leigh to Paul Greengrass and Andrea Arnold readily attest — but the Romanian writer- director Cristian Mungiu reinvigorated the form with this portrait of a young woman in Bucharest working the latecommunist black-market system to terminate a pregnancy. Told virtually in real time with long, uninterrupted takes, the story is a harrowing, unforgettable portrayal of Darwinian survival, as well as female friendship, generational change and ethical complexity.
— “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004)
Michel Gondry, working from a script by Charlie Kaufman, limns a man’s desperate attempts to erase and then recapture a lost love in an audaciously imaginative, brilliantly staged psychic thriller that starts out as a thwarted love story but winds up being a deeply moving meditation on memory, consciousness and the construction of personal meaning. As an ever- enfolding house of cards, the movie manages to be cerebral and achingly emotional, freewheeling and meticulously calibrated, all at the same time.
— “You Can Count on Me” (2000)
The writing- directing debut of playwright Kenneth Lonergan is a masterpiece of subtext, on its face the story of an adult brother and sister coming to terms with their past, but teeming with the subterranean impulses of grief, abandonment, loyalty and forgiveness. Filmed with disarming directness, masterfully interpreted by Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney, this simple, often amusing human drama demonstrates the art of screenwriting at its most layered, honest and emotionally resonant.
— “No Country for Old Men” (2007)
With this adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, Joel and Ethan Coen created a technically perfect movie, a one-film master class in every element of cinematic style, from writing and acting to cinematography, editing and sound design. Viewers can be skeptical of the film’s moral universe — conditioned by McCarthy’s weary pessimism and overworked moral rhetoric — and still appreciate the Coens’ impeccable control of the material. A scene when Josh Brolin’s protagonist listens to an approaching foe in a hotel hallway is a tutorial in the use of sound to tell a story with excruciating tension and suspense. — “Minority Report” (2002) Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of the Philip K. Dick story stands as one of his finest elaborations on established genre conventions, in this case film noir put to the service of speculative science fiction. Casting Tom Cruise in a starring role as a man at odds with the surveillance culture of the not-too- distant future, Spielberg built a sleek, stylish, eerily convincing world of consumerist technology and corporate control that turned out to be breathtakingly prescient. — “Dunkirk” (2017) Since his breakout indie hit “Memento,” Christopher Nolan has played with notions of time, scrambling his movies’ chronology and creating densely layered narratives that barely skirt utter incomprehensibility. With this interpretive history of the World War II evacuation of Allied forces, Nolan deconstructs the time frame, doing away with linear narrative in favor of a sensory experience that is immersive and empathic. As an exercise in sound and image, “Dunkirk” achieved a purity rarely seen in contemporary commercial cinema, simultaneously returning movies to their roots and pushing them forward. — “Mudbound” (2017) In her adaptation of Hillary Jordan’s World War II- era novel, Dee Rees made a magnificent throwback of a movie, a multigenerational drama reminiscent of “The Best Years of Our Lives” and the literary work of William Faulkner that also felt distinctively of this era. Collaborating with cinematographer Rachel Morrison and an acting ensemble that included Carey Mulligan and Mary J. Blige, Rees embraced the classical values of sturdy, unfussy narrative filmmaking, shaking off the dust in the process and proving that even old-fashioned movies can feel urgent, new and quintessentially American. — “Spotlight” (2015) Another example of pareddown, classical filmmaking, Tom McCarthy’s dramatisation of the Boston Globe’s investigation of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church exudes quiet confidence, from its straightforward storytelling and McCarthy’s levelheaded control of tone to ensemble scenes of shoeleather reporting that with less accomplished actors and filmmakers would have been fatally talky and dull. This is a high-wire act in extracting taut drama from quotidian routine, and it never puts a foot wrong. — “Spirited Away” (2001) Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki seems unable to make anything but masterpieces; still, this epic tale of a young girl separated from her parents and thrust into a magical world stands as his greatest - not only for its transporting visuals but also for its bracing sense of adventure, terror, resilience and heroism. Full of whimsy, fantasy and childlike wonder - elements that would otherwise feel overbearing or unforgivably ersatz - Miyazaki’s vision is also earthy and profound, even at its most allegorical.