This year, the film community is looking back on the quarter century that we’ve lived so far and picking out the defining films. I got this idea from The Big Picture and Filmspotting podcasts. One thing I learned from listening and then compiling my own list is that it is a fool’s errand to compile such a difficult list. Every film fan knows that these kinds of lists are liable to change in our heads on a day-to-day basis. The larger in scope the list, the larger those variations are. This list made up of movies that defined the century (so far) for me. These aren’t necessarily the absolute best films but they mean a lot to me and I wouldn’t be here without them.

Note: The only restriction I put on myself for this list is that a director is only allowed one entry.

25. Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance

Something that has defined my taste in my lifelong group of friends is that I am not as interested in “Anime”. I have no problem with it and a few of my favorite shows fall into the category but it is harder for me to be taken by the medium and I rarely seek it out. However, Evangelion has never been a hard sell for me. It’s about giant robots fighting “angels” and is all one big metaphor for birth and the hardships of creating life that randomly steals iconography from Christianity. What’s not to love?

For those unaware Neon Genesis Evangelionis a Japanese anime from 1995 that ran for 26 episodes. The original ending of the show is very controversial and the subject of many memes in the anime world because the animation team ran out of money and plastered on an ending that only makes sense if you want it to. The show ended up gaining international popularity so two years later a movie named End of Evangelionwas released to make up for the original’s shortcomings. Ten years later the auteur behind the show Hideaki Anno was given the chance to completely redux the entire show with a series of three movies. While every movie is actually pretty special to me, the second entry just takes me to a new place.

24. Titane

Few directors have excited me quite as much as Julia Ducournau has in the past few years. I caught Raw in 2018 and was floored at how she was able to tell the very relatable story of moving away from home in pursuit of education through the lens of canibalism. It was gross but also well crafted. It felt medical in its pursuit of shocking the viewer. In 2021 she was able to go a step further with Titane. There are swaths of time in this movie where “nothing happens” but Ducournau is laying the groundwork for a finale that left my mouth agape.

23. Bad Boys 2

As strange as this may sound, Michael Bay’s Bad Boys 2 is one of the reasons I fell in love with film. It was one of the first movies (after childhood) that I watched an uncountable number of times with my brother (who himself is one of the reasons I love film). While it is very easy to dunk on this movie and its regressive jokes, bad script, and cliched villain there is so much more to love if you play by its rules. The visual texture matches its Miami setting. Landscapes look hot, there is a layer of sweat on Will Smith that just won’t go away, and interiors are bathed in neon lights. The environments are made of papier mache that explode abruptly when any force is applied to them by a vehicle. Is it actually the 23rd best movie of the century? Probably not. But this is my list and it wouldn’t feel complete without Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett.

22. Paddington

Paul King’s charming and wildly funny Paddington movies really surprised me. When the original was released, I was still living in rural South Georgia and it didn’t play in theaters close to me. My local theater did have a poster for the movie at one point and without any knowledge that this was based on beloved source material, I said out loud “that looks like shit”. I cringe thinking back on that moment. I was an ignorant American who was a little bitter that I didn’t get to see all the movies I wanted.

Many years later when I got a Letterboxd account, I noticed that both Paddington movies were highly praised so I decided to put that jaded teenager in the past and watch them. I was delighted with that marmalade-loving bear. These movies are the definition of “comfort food” that is also insanely high quality. The script is tight, the jokes are cute, and the characters are so fun to live with. I would be hard pressed to think of a better two-movie series than this one.

21. Wet Hot American Summer

No movie on the list (except for maybe #19) has defined my sense of humor as much as David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer. It’s chock full of a bunch of people who are on the cusp of becoming super famous in comedy and beyond. There was a summer where I legitimately watched this movie around 3 times a week and just absorbed every ounce of comedy. It still makes me laugh to this day and the prequel / sequel series managed to maintain this film’s legacy.

20. The Departed

Bad Boys 2 was me waking up from a slumber but The Departed was me completely opening my eyes to the world of film. Martin Scorsese’s remake of the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs (which is one of my biggest blind spots) is a tale of cops and the mafia set in the absolute worst place on Earth: Boston, Massachusetts. The Departed is the prototypical great movie. It is directed by one of the masters, has a strong script with enough clever dialogue and interesting twists, and a killer vibe. One of my fondest memories is watching this movie with my brother (we had both seen it like 5 times) and when the credits rolled we decided to directly watch it again because it was just that good.

19. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

A major theme of this list is realizing what movies were important to me as a developing cinephile. This took place while I was in high school and if there was one thing I liked more than movies it was comedy. I liked comedy films, television shows, and sketch comedy. My favorite show, Saturday Night Live routinely featured “Digital Shorts” helmed by a comedy trio named The Lonely Island. It’s difficult to quantify what that group and the sketches they produced for SNL really mean to me. They were my entire life. My friends would quote all the shorts and we would sing every song from Incredibad at the lunch table. Just last year they came out of a soft hiatus and released a song called “Sushi Glory Hole”. No lie, that song made me cry from how happy I was.

Despite the movie having 0 marketing at all, my best friend and I were able to seek out Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. It even had a one week run at our local theater so we saw it on opening night. We were two of the three people in the theater and the one other guy left as soon as Hunter the Hungry started rapping. That didn’t bother us because the movie was like an electric current running through us. It is a perfect marriage of the musical talent and comedy directing that The Lonely Island has always been great at. It felt like a movie made by a group of friends who knew exactly what they all brought to the table.

18. The Raid: Redemption

One of my favorite genres of film is one I simply call “fights!”. These are movies where most of the story is told through hand-to-hand combat and pretty much all the big set pieces are fights. For most of my life, those movies have primarily come out of Asia but the John Wick movies were able to make them popular in the states. Admittedly those movies are more gun-fu than kung-fu but the general structure and amount of fights helped them fall into this genre.

The only problem with the genre is that the movie that got me hooked on it is still its best entry. Indonesian action flick The Raid: Redemption is a high I’ve been chasing since 2011. I’ve shown this movie to all of my friends and it still (every pun intended) packs a punch. Not only does it have a simple “fight your way to the top floor” structure but it has the strongest villain I’ve ever seen. I am 100% confident that Mad Dog could beat Thanos if given the chance.

17. The Nice Guys

2016 was a pretty rough year for a guy like me who craved original cinema when all the local theaters only played huge blockbusters and religious propaganda films. I normally only got to see actually good movies months or even years after their theatrical run on streaming or Blu-ray . However, it was also around this time that the local theater started opening up mid tier movies on smaller screens so I was lucky enough to catch Shane Black’s The Nice Guys on opening night. It was the happiest I’d been in a theater in years. Not only is the movie slick and stylish but it is funny as hell. It’s funnier than most straight up comedies and it manages to have a good old-school detective story at the center.

This was also the start of Ryan Gosling becoming my favorite actor (that award had been held by Paul Rudd for most of my life). I was not late to the game though. I first took notice of him in a very small role from Remember the Titans. I knew he had talent but I was unaware that he was this good of a comic actor. He is so good that it makes me mad actually. You shouldn’t be able to be that handsome AND be funny (a grudge I hold against John Hamm as well) but he is undeniable. Shortly after this we get La La Land and the rest is history.

16. Anora

Sean Baker stayed under my radar for an embarrassingly long time. A few years back I finally caught The Florida Project and while I was impressed, I never took the time to look into his filmography. Little did I know that he spent the entirety of the century making micro budget films that explored the conditions of people living in the margins of life by casting those exact people to tell their own stories. Before Anora came out I made sure to watch Tangerine and Red Rocket first. Saying I was impressed would be an understatement. Tangerine was a supernova of a film that was able to stay grounded through its realistic performances. Red Rocket told the tale of maybe the worst kind of guy ever and featured a lead performance that turned the guy from the bad Scary Movie movies (Simon Rex) into a contender for best actor in a leading role.

While I love those two movies and either one would fit on this list, his 2025 Best Picture winning effort Anora is just too good to leave off my list. What’s impressive about this and Red Rocket is how Baker is able to adapt his style around the conventions of Hollywood that work. Instead of renouncing trained actors, he puts them in key roles and allows the border to be filled in with real people. This allows Mikey Madison to embody Ani (winning herself an Oscar as well) while his company players act as the heartbeat of the film. Anora is also absolutely hilarious. Both times I saw it the room was full of laughter as soon as the second half kicks off. The ending is one of those great movie moments that I expect to talk about for the rest of the century.

15. One Cut of the Dead

If Sean Baker works on micro budgets, I don’t know if there is a term for the pittance that ~Shinichiro Ueda~ had to work with on One Cut of the Dead. But like all good things, the production’s weakness is the film’s biggest strength. The bounds of creativity and the act of filmmaking are stretched by this tiny little movie. To say more would be to spoil something amazing. Do whatever you can to see this film. It makes a great addition to any October themed watchlists.

14. Top Gun: Maverick

I was, to put it mildly, extremely opposed to see this movie in theaters. Despite it’s ability to “save Hollywood”, I was happy to be the contrarian who “didn’t care about the original” and said that “glorifying the military is not what we need in the cinema”. The best part is, both of those statements are completely true but I was dead wrong. _Top Gun: Maverick__ is cinema made manifest. Tom Cruise wills every scene into a state of transcendental existence. Even when every line of dialogue is a cliche, I am riveted. The craft on display is bar none and the arc of the story is exhilarating.

Leave it up to Cruise to use this movie as a launching pad for your talent in Hollywood. Miles Teller, Monica Barbaro, Greg Tarzan Davis, and Glen Powell round out the cast as the young guns looking to take Cruise’s spot. The meta text running throughout the movie is a challenge from Tom Cruise: “If you’re next up; If you’re better than me: Prove it”. Even if the conclusion is that no one can top Cruise, the fight to the top is worth the price of admission.

13. Shaun of the Dead

If I haven’t made it clear in this list, my older brother was a big influence on me growing up. We still chat about movies on a weekly basis and help each other find good stuff to watch. When we were younger, nothing piqued his interest quite like zombies. That meant that I got to see a lot of movies I wasn’t supposed to as a child. Dawn of the Dead (original and remake), Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, 28 Days Later, the list goes on. After being force fed these films, it’s a little ironic that two very off-the-wall “… of the Dead”s made this list for me. The one that defined our relationship though, was Shaun of the Dead. It was a perfect mixture of zombies and comedy that got us to watch the film at least 50 times together. Each time we would find some new little detail.

Shaun of the Dead also marked the first film by Edgar Wright who quickly became a favorite of mine. One of my fondest memories is watching Scott Pilgrim vs. The World on opening night with four of my best friends…… and no one else in the theater. As much as I love that and his other films, I would be lying if I said one was better than Shaun of the Dead. It’s the perfect example of what happens when a person who clearly loves movies finally gets a shot to make one.

12. Get Out

If we were listing film moments that shocked us the most in the century I thing “One half of Key and Peele write/directs a Blumhouse horror flick that wins an Oscar for Best Screenplay” would probably be number one with a bullet. The absolute shockwave produced by this movie is hard to overstate. I was a big fan of Key and Peele and I love when comedians show off their skillset in other areas so when I saw the trailer for Get Out I was intrigued. I didn’t think “oh yeah, looks like it’s gonna be one of the best movies ever made” because that would be crazy, right?

Get Out turned out to be a wildly successful achievement in screenwriting and cultural commentary. People talked about it for weeks and it turned Peele into an over night “must watch” director. I’m not the most qualified person to talk about the cultural influence that this movie had but I will say that its message was an important one: people are being robbed of their culture for the profit of oppressors. We must either stop the oppressors, or become the oppressed.

11. Mission Impossible: Fallout

When reviewing films, it is always tempting to speak in hyperbolic because they are a shorthand for how you really feel about the film. Rarely is a film “the best [insert category here] of [insert timeframe here]” because those subjective metrics are hard to nail down. That being said, Mission Impossible: Fallout is the best action movie ever made. On its initial release, I was very hesitant to say that because recency bias is a real thing. I’ve seen it quite a few times since then and I am thrilled at every set piece every time. Most other action films (especially from this century) would be better if they even had one of the action scenes from this movie in their runtime.

10. Knives Out

It is hard to actually count the amount of times I’ve seen many of the movies on this list because they exist in my “Before Letterboxd” (BLB for short) era. I’ve certainly seen a few of them way more than I’ve seen Rian Johnson’s Knives Out. On Letterboxd though, I’ve logged this movie more than any other at a whopping nine times. For an adult with a full-time job who doesn’t get to devote as much time as he would like to movies, that is a lot. On first viewing in the theater, I knew that it was special but I didn’t anticipate how much my love for it would grow. I ended up seeing it a second time a few days later. When Rian Johnson released a “Theater Commentary track” on his personal website for freaks like me to listen to while watching a movie with strangers, I booked a third ticket.

The insights I gained from that commentary turned the movie into a classic for me. The amount of work Johnson and crew put into to get all the details (and the rights to so many songs no one cares about) made me see this film I already loved in a whole new light. After so many viewings, what keeps me coming back is Steve Yedlin’s photography. He made digital look like film. Format purists can argue with me but the movie is beautiful and the warm autumn colors pop right out of the screen.

9. Blade Runner 2049

Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to a Ridley Scott classic is a movie that no one wanted. It continued the dumb trend of big Hollywood studios trying to cash in on the name of a great movie from the past. It is an uninspired way to greenlight movies and at times it can dilute the importance of the original movie. What was an inspired decision was handing the reins over to a director who was busy making his name as the best in the business. Even with that, the film had a lot working against it. Blade Runner has a confusing history with a slew of fan theories and multiple director’s cuts for people to argue about. That’s what makes the end result so surprising.

Balde Runner 2049 is a beautiful film that expands on the philosophical ideas of the original while adding its own spin. Ryan Gosling is able to continue his streak as the best leading man in Hollywood by playing a solemn and inquisitive blade runner. The biggest revelation in film has to be Ana de Armas. She is deployed tactically to demonstrate the loneliness of our leading man and is able to capture the audience with her performance. Watching her star grow over the past ten years has been great for fans of this film.

8. The Grand Budapest Hotel

My self-imposed “one film per director” rule was put to the test by Wes Anderson. Martin Scorsese was the director that opened my eyes to the world of cinema but Anderson was the first person I could confidently call “my favorite director”. Not only do I love all of his films, but the bulk of his work is from this century. Choosing just one felt like I was being pulled in every direction. While movies like Moonrise Kingdom and The French Dispatch hold a special place in my heart, eventually I had to reckon with the fact that The Grand Budapest Hotel feels like his magnum opus.

If there is something you love about Wes Anderson, it’s on display in The Grand Budapest Hotel. It contains some of his best production design, his cleanest color palette, and maybe the single best performance in any of his films by Ralph Fiennes. I love showing people Wes’ movies. I especially love when they aren’t familiar with him. Of all his movies I’ve shown to people, this is the only one where they get it afterwards. They don’t need convincing. The film does all the work.

7. Mulholland Drive

The first time I watched Mulholland Drive I had no idea what to think when the credits rolled. I was unsure of what was real. I didn’t even think I liked it. This may be the only time in my life where seeking an “explanation” of a film made me appreciate it and turned it into a masterpiece in my mind. “Dream logic” is hard to execute on screen but no one does it quite like Lynch. Few directors were able to match his creativity and I the world is a less artistic place now that he is gone. RIP to a real one.

6. Lady Bird

There is a scene in Lady Bird where a high school football coach has to direct a stage play. In order to bring the medium to terms he understands, he draws plays on a chalk board and yells blocking at the students. It is hilarious. It might be one of my favorite movie scenes ever but what is more remarkable is how relatable it is. The film is set in Sacramento. It couldn’t be more different than the rural backroads I grew up in. And yet this football coach was just like all the ones who roamed the hallways of my school. I sat in the theater next to my best friend of (then) 15 years and we both cried from laughing at this one silly scene. A few months later I moved out of our home town and we didn’t get to see movies together for a while.

Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut is about what it’s like to desperately seek a way out of your home and all the little ways you will inevitably miss it. I don’t miss my hometown that much but I do miss seeing movies with my best friend.

5. Before Sunset

I watched this film for the first time two weeks ago. When the credits rolled I looked at my wife and said “That’s one of the best movies I’ve ever seen”. As the weeks have gone on, it has only grown in my mind. In Before Sunrise, we get to see an almost too accurate depiction of two people falling in love. The scene in the record shop is nothing short of breathtaking in how it handles those wordless moments between two people who just want to hold each other. It ends on what could have been an all time great unresolved question in film history.

With the weight of its predecessor on its shoulders, Before Sunset felt like an impossible task. However, the difficulty was outweighed by the creative collaboration between Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke. All three were able to bring a beating heart to the film that is beating under the surface the whole time. If it weren’t for a movie that is just a few spots higher on this list, Before Sunset would have the greatest ending of all time.

4. Parasite

Bong Joon Ho started this century as a completely unknown director. In 2003 he already felt like a fully formed auteur who was making movies well beyond his years with Memories of Murder which is a true crime film that combines the imagery of horror films with masterful blocking and pacing. He spent the next decade or so “elevating” genre fare to the festival circuit and working his way into Hollywood. At the 2020 Oscars his film Parasite became the first non-English language film to win “Best Picture”.

Parasite is a special movie because it manages to take one of the most central themes to all art, that of capitalism being a system that benefits from people suffering, and uses it to unite every aspect of the film. Our protagonists live in a slum that is dank but oddly cozy. The antagonists live in an architectural marvel but nothing about it seems like a home. It sits atop a city street and mocks all those who can’t afford to make it up the stairs. Every visual in the movie reinforces the differences between these people. The title itself drives the point home. Who are the real parasites?

3. The Handmaiden

I did not intend for two of the masters of Korean cinema to end up on this list right next to each other but it is a happy little accident. I have seen more of Bong Joon Ho’s movies but I saw Park Chan Wook’s Oldboy long before I ever dove deeper into foreign cinema. Oldboy was a film that got pretty popular in America based on shock factor. That’s not an insult, just a statement of fact. I was in high school and read a lot of online discourse about how crazy the movie was and how everyone needed to watch it. Those posts were correct but Oldboy is a tough watch. There is some dynamic camera work and a truly great fight scene but the ending is a real heat check on how much you can take as a viewer. When I finally got to watch another Park Chan Wook movie, I was certainly not prepared for something as slick, sick, and sexy as The Handmaiden.

Park Chan Wook fills the frame with detail in The Handmaiden. Every shot is precise and purposeful. I’m rarely a good judge of costume design but it jumps out at you in this movie. The texture and color of every outfit tells a story all its own. The story manages to pull off somewhere between three and fifty twists and none of it feels hacky. When a movie lies to you, it’s easy to feel cheated. The Handmaiden lied to me and I realized I like being lied to.

2. Whiplash

Damien Chazelle’s feature film debut Whiplash is jazz come to life. It’s a story of how far an aspirational person can be pushed in pursuit of their dreams. Blood, sweat, and tears do not begin to encapsulate all that Miles Tellers’ Andew Neimann is willing to lose in order to prove he is the best jazz drummer in the world. That ambition is what JK Simmon’s Fletcher feeds on. As the strings are being pulled, they eventually snap in a what feels like a final crash cymbal to their relationship.

The ending to this movie should be dissected and studied in film school if it isn’t already. It’s perfect. In all of three seconds it is able to explain exactly how these characters got here and what is going to happen next. In that moment they have done what they set out to do and it feels right. The sinister undertones aren’t made apparent until the credits roll.

1. Spirited Away

Spirited Away is a perfect film. I’ve seen it by myself, with my brother, with my best friend, with a crowd of people, with my wife, and with anyone who will sit still long enough. It is beautiful, moving, and one of the only films that actually feels like I am watching magic.