Or just the last 25 years.
25: Take Shelter (2011)
24: Beau is Afraid (2023)
23: The Departed (2006)
22: The Northman (2022)
21: The Prestige (2006)
20: City of God (2002)
19: The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
18: American Honey (2016)
17 :A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)
16: The Green Knight (2021)
15: A Serious Man (2009)
14: The Lighthouse (2019)
13: The Brutalist (2024)
12: One Battle After Another (2025)
11: No Country for Old Men (2007)
10: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
9: Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)
8: Return of the King (2003) - all Lord of the Rings can just go here
7: Under the Skin (2014)
6: Django Unchained (2012)
5: The Master (2012)
4: Blade Runner: 2049 (2017)
3: There Will Be Blood (2007)
2: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
1: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
It was a ton of fun putting this together. It was like all my greatest hits since starting this blog all in one place! This is assuredly full of my jams and it was rewarding to actually have enough space for everyone. Now, will this change next week? Certainly! But right now this is where I'm at.
I am clearly a Paul Thomas Anderson fan, with three of his films in my Top 11, but who isn't? A lot of Scorsese and Coen Bros as well, but maybe not as much Tarantino or Nolan as I would have guessed. Obviously we aren't highlighting a ton of franchise movies, but my top two are big tentpole, franchise efforts, so that's that!
By year:
2000:
2001:
2002: 1
2003: 1
2004:
2005:
2006: 2
2007: 3
2008:
2009: 1
2010:
2011: 2
2012: 2
2013: 1
2014: 2
2015: 1
2016: 1
2017: 1
2018: 1
2019: 1
2020:
2021: 1
2022: 1
2023: 1
2024: 1
2025: 1
We're definitely concentrated around 2006-2012. I'm not sure if that is the right kind of nostalgia mixed with the heydays of this blog so I was really paying attention or what. Or it's just that when doing lists like this individual bits can really shine.
I did not have a ton from the early 2000s, not sure exactly why. I did have a lot from that era that I barely left off, which we'll get to soon. I do think some of the films of the past five years need to marinate a bit.
Can we try to rationalize why this is? Well, the early 2000s were really this era of non-stop franchises. We had the Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. It was after the 90s indie boom when all the corporations had latched on to that ethos for profit, and was pretty successful, if not ultimately soulless. It was at least emulating genuine efforts.
The late 2000s shifted to more like Transformers, monster superhero efforts like Iron Man (2008) and The Dark Knight (2008), as well as the ghosts of those earlier franchises like Harry Potter finishing up. Culturally we were facing the Great Recession and not really in any kind of mood for non-sense. The Writer's strike combined with the rise of streaming to create an endless need for content but required it to be cheap and not written, hence reality TV nightmares and terrible movies like X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009).
I think we got this spurt of great films right before the recession where studios had some money from the early 2000s franchise success to be a little more bold and all those filmmakers like Tarantino and the Coens who earned their sea legs during the 90s indie boom were able to both exhibit a finely honed craft but also had the budgets to do so.
This melts in the early 2010s as the recession hits in and we begin this era of migration to the south and to the west. We get the YA adaptation boom and then The Avengers (2012) is both the culmination of the past ten years but also sets the standard that everyone else in Hollywood is going to chase, even up to today and the 3D craze sets in after AVABAR (2009). I dig a ton of films from this era, you have some great new films as digital technology starts looking really good and combines with both film and digital formats, but I am more focused on smaller films in this era. We get this sort of Second Indie Boom, not from cultural interest but from proliferation of access to filmmaking which gives access to a ton of new voices like Ana Lily Amirpour. We get all these failed American Dream movies like Pain & Gain (2013), The Big Short (2015), American Honey (2016), and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
In the late 2010s we get a bit one - The Force Awakens (2015), which when combined with the same year's earlier Jurassic World really show that our culture as come full circle. Hell, I just watched the new Spinal Tap movie for some reason. These are never good EXCEPT for Mad Max: Fury Road which I named the best film of the past 25 years, but that's also because it stands completely on its own with no connection to earlier works. I argue that this whole thing started with Sylvester Stallone making Rocky Balboa (2006) and intra-franchise crossovers started with Fast & Furious (2009) but you can think what you like. So we're just totally bereft of new ideas. I have often thought of Pacific Rim (2013) as the last great franchise that started as an original film idea.
I notably don't have a ton from this era on my Top 25 list. Looking back at some of these years, maybe it's tough to have staying power? I wonder if that's because thanks to streaming, I really am just not really watching them all on repeat TV viewings, which makes for a greater cultural impact? I do think that some commercials stick in my head more than the actual movie sometimes. Still, some of these I do have ranked very high. This has really become a brutal era and I enjoy directors like Ari Astor, Robert Eggers, Yorgos Lanthimos, Denis Villeneuve, and Alex Garland out of this era. We see the indie directors being elevated to mainstream blockbusters, which are all just superhero movies, which obviously peak with Avengers: Endgame (2019) and on the other side, we have A24 which is a studio so good at creating good movies that it becomes its own style and creates this elevated horror.
Then we get to the early 2020s. Uhhhh....what the hell is going on here. The industry is rocked after COVID, we have another writer's strike, the rise of AI, the end of every movie star not named Glen Powell, the whole thing's a mess. I still threw about one good movie a year on here but it also just feels like a dying industry. I can't picture a mainstream film cracking this, there has been so many developments in special effects to the point that they become generic and muddy because it's easier to light and do post work. The whole craft slips because we can correct everything in post and not worry about the script, or frankly, even coverage. And so my most recent tentpole is an animated Spider-Man movie from 2018 and most recent live action is Blade Runner 2049, which did not do well in theaters at all. So my most recently tentpole that did well is....uh...not on this list.
There were a lot of others that I considered, so here is the rest of the Hit List, our runners up in no particular order but nearly enough to make another Top 25 List:
Oppenheimer (2023)
Gladiator (2000)
Memento (2000)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Stoker (2013)
The Place Beyond the Pines (2013)
mother! (2017)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Pacific Rim (2013)
The World's End (2013)
Pain & Gain (2013)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2018)
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
MacGruber (2010)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Inglorious Basterds (2009)
Uncut Gems (2019)
Midsommar (2019)
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Gran Torino (2008)
Wall-E (2008)
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Red Rocket (2021)
