Some days @Corpsey thinks Gone Girl is the best movie of the 21st Century and on other days he thinks Interstellar is, but then we have to remember that he is also famous for coining the catchphrase, “On the other hand…”
@sus thinks that the best film of the 21st Century is Attack of the Clones, but then he is also a lunatic. (And we love him for it.)
100 years ago (i.e. in 1924) Douglas Fairbanks made The Thief of Baghdad, W.G. Griffiths made America, Henry Otto did Dante’s Inferno, Erich von Stroheim made Greed, Robert Wiene made the brilliant Hands of Orlac, Buster Keaton made The Navigator, Fritz Lang made Die Nibelungen, Lev Kuleshov made The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and D’Annunzio made Quo Vadis.
Michael Powell and Jean Baudrillard both thought that the Silent Era was responsible for the best films of all and that movies lost a certain mystery, magic and freedom with the arrival of sound.
Personally, I think the best era was the 60s and 70s, particularly in Italy, America, Japan and Hong Kong, the places where most of my favorite films come from.
The 80s kept itself going well enough with the Italian video nasties, the last great Shaw Brothers movies and the Hollywood Action-Comedy-Sci-fi-Horror Industrial Complex.
In retrospect, although it didn’t necessarily feel like it at the time, the 90s was abysmal. Most of the best stuff was released in 1990-92 and was effectively leftovers/hangovers from the most fertile bits of the 80s or one-off aberrations (Groundhog Day, The War Room, The Last Seduction, Forrest Gump, Showgirls, Heat). It was more like a laboratory for the films that would come in the 21st Century with a lot of the work being done by ILM and Miramax.
It’s 2024, over 100 years into movies and what do we have?
What are the best films of the 21st Century so far? What stands out? What are the themes, trends, cycles?
Some initial thoughts on a taxonomy of the 21st Century Film. Not definitive in any way and some important films didn’t fit into my schema at all (e.g. Inception, Bridesmaids, Son of Saul)
China Rising
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Hero
The House of the Flying Daggers
Kung Fu Panda
Wolf Warrior 2
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Seven Rings
Crazy Rich Asians
The neo-wuxia epics that stormed the Western multiplexes in the early noughties were misleading in their brief tenure, more complex politically, but did point towards a future of Chinese soft power in Hollywood and the rest of the world. See Erich Schwartzel's Red Carpet.
Business-Finance-Corporate Sagas
Margin Call
The Social Network
The Devil Wears Prada
The September Issue
Michael Clayton
Moneyball
The Big Short
The Wolf of Wall Street
Miss Sloane
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
Hustlers
BlackBerry
Pain Hustlers
Probably one of the most successful of the 21st C filones. Filling a wide open gap that had only previously been occupied by Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room, these films were given a boost by the 2008 Crash and the second wave of Non-Fiction Business classics led by Michael Lewis (well represented by The Big Short and Moneyball) but also fanned out, thematically and stylistically, into law, politics, fashion and medicine.
Neoconservative Movies
The Lives of Others
Zero Dark Thirty
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Incredibles
An idea inspired by a Commentary podcast discussion on “the most neoconservative movies ever made”.
Meta-History Epics
Alexander
Troy
300
Attack of the Clones
Syriana
Apocalypto
Kingdom of Heaven
Gomorrah
The Last Samurai
Exodus: Gods and Kings
1917
Dunkirk
The Hurt Locker
The sons and daughters of Gladiator: basically, big producers/studios working through the conceptual possibilities of CGI but with some other outliers on the same sort of theme/territory.
Biopics
Lincoln
The Wolf of Wall Street
I, Tonya
Milk
Elvis
Blonde
Oppenheimer
Ferrari
These overlap with Business and Metahistory films but have gone into overdrive in the last few years, being capped by Oppenheimer. It is its own category. Part of our obsession with the past as much as anything else. Talking of which…
The Time-Memory-Nostalgia Seam
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Rogue One
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Blade Runner 2049
Captain America: The First Avenger
Doctor Strange
Interstellar
Wonder Woman
WW84
They Shall Not Grow Old
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Top Gun: Maverick
One of the most powerful thematic continuums of the 21st Century that is also responsible for some of its most affecting films. A very rich seam that wraps up other key concerns (identity, family, etc.) and poses insoluble questions about filmmaking ethics in the era of CGI and (soon) AI. The superhero cycles are saturated with these ideas and obsessions
Apocalypse/Rapture Films
The Day After Tomorrow
28 Days Later
War of the Worlds
Revenge of the Sith
The Passion of the Christ
World War Z
San Andreas
Cloverfield
Pacific Rim
Children of Men
Battlefield Los Angeles
The Road
Arrival
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Endgame
This one overlaps with Meta-History and the CGI disaster movies of the 90s. An important trend that reflects the fear and paranoia and despair at the heart of our societies since the end of the last millennium.
Neo-Neo-Noir
Mulholland Drive
In the Cut
Collateral
The Black Dahlia
Drive
Sin City
Oldboy
No Country For Old Men
Gone Girl
I just put this in for @version and @Corpsey but it is definitely a thing, even if that thing is largely stylistic. A Golden Age for the Film Bro canon.
The Hallmark Empire
I can’t pick any films from this because none of them stand out but it is nevertheless an important and unavoidable part of the 21st C film industry and the most effective exponent of American soft power after Disney and Marvel.
@sus thinks that the best film of the 21st Century is Attack of the Clones, but then he is also a lunatic. (And we love him for it.)
100 years ago (i.e. in 1924) Douglas Fairbanks made The Thief of Baghdad, W.G. Griffiths made America, Henry Otto did Dante’s Inferno, Erich von Stroheim made Greed, Robert Wiene made the brilliant Hands of Orlac, Buster Keaton made The Navigator, Fritz Lang made Die Nibelungen, Lev Kuleshov made The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks and D’Annunzio made Quo Vadis.
Michael Powell and Jean Baudrillard both thought that the Silent Era was responsible for the best films of all and that movies lost a certain mystery, magic and freedom with the arrival of sound.
Personally, I think the best era was the 60s and 70s, particularly in Italy, America, Japan and Hong Kong, the places where most of my favorite films come from.
The 80s kept itself going well enough with the Italian video nasties, the last great Shaw Brothers movies and the Hollywood Action-Comedy-Sci-fi-Horror Industrial Complex.
In retrospect, although it didn’t necessarily feel like it at the time, the 90s was abysmal. Most of the best stuff was released in 1990-92 and was effectively leftovers/hangovers from the most fertile bits of the 80s or one-off aberrations (Groundhog Day, The War Room, The Last Seduction, Forrest Gump, Showgirls, Heat). It was more like a laboratory for the films that would come in the 21st Century with a lot of the work being done by ILM and Miramax.
It’s 2024, over 100 years into movies and what do we have?
What are the best films of the 21st Century so far? What stands out? What are the themes, trends, cycles?
Some initial thoughts on a taxonomy of the 21st Century Film. Not definitive in any way and some important films didn’t fit into my schema at all (e.g. Inception, Bridesmaids, Son of Saul)
China Rising
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Hero
The House of the Flying Daggers
Kung Fu Panda
Wolf Warrior 2
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Seven Rings
Crazy Rich Asians
The neo-wuxia epics that stormed the Western multiplexes in the early noughties were misleading in their brief tenure, more complex politically, but did point towards a future of Chinese soft power in Hollywood and the rest of the world. See Erich Schwartzel's Red Carpet.
Business-Finance-Corporate Sagas
Margin Call
The Social Network
The Devil Wears Prada
The September Issue
Michael Clayton
Moneyball
The Big Short
The Wolf of Wall Street
Miss Sloane
Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps
Hustlers
BlackBerry
Pain Hustlers
Probably one of the most successful of the 21st C filones. Filling a wide open gap that had only previously been occupied by Wall Street, Glengarry Glen Ross and Boiler Room, these films were given a boost by the 2008 Crash and the second wave of Non-Fiction Business classics led by Michael Lewis (well represented by The Big Short and Moneyball) but also fanned out, thematically and stylistically, into law, politics, fashion and medicine.
Neoconservative Movies
The Lives of Others
Zero Dark Thirty
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight Rises
The Incredibles
An idea inspired by a Commentary podcast discussion on “the most neoconservative movies ever made”.
Meta-History Epics
Alexander
Troy
300
Attack of the Clones
Syriana
Apocalypto
Kingdom of Heaven
Gomorrah
The Last Samurai
Exodus: Gods and Kings
1917
Dunkirk
The Hurt Locker
The sons and daughters of Gladiator: basically, big producers/studios working through the conceptual possibilities of CGI but with some other outliers on the same sort of theme/territory.
Biopics
Lincoln
The Wolf of Wall Street
I, Tonya
Milk
Elvis
Blonde
Oppenheimer
Ferrari
These overlap with Business and Metahistory films but have gone into overdrive in the last few years, being capped by Oppenheimer. It is its own category. Part of our obsession with the past as much as anything else. Talking of which…
The Time-Memory-Nostalgia Seam
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Rogue One
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Blade Runner 2049
Captain America: The First Avenger
Doctor Strange
Interstellar
Wonder Woman
WW84
They Shall Not Grow Old
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
Top Gun: Maverick
One of the most powerful thematic continuums of the 21st Century that is also responsible for some of its most affecting films. A very rich seam that wraps up other key concerns (identity, family, etc.) and poses insoluble questions about filmmaking ethics in the era of CGI and (soon) AI. The superhero cycles are saturated with these ideas and obsessions
Apocalypse/Rapture Films
The Day After Tomorrow
28 Days Later
War of the Worlds
Revenge of the Sith
The Passion of the Christ
World War Z
San Andreas
Cloverfield
Pacific Rim
Children of Men
Battlefield Los Angeles
The Road
Arrival
Avengers: Infinity War
Avengers: Endgame
This one overlaps with Meta-History and the CGI disaster movies of the 90s. An important trend that reflects the fear and paranoia and despair at the heart of our societies since the end of the last millennium.
Neo-Neo-Noir
Mulholland Drive
In the Cut
Collateral
The Black Dahlia
Drive
Sin City
Oldboy
No Country For Old Men
Gone Girl
I just put this in for @version and @Corpsey but it is definitely a thing, even if that thing is largely stylistic. A Golden Age for the Film Bro canon.
The Hallmark Empire
I can’t pick any films from this because none of them stand out but it is nevertheless an important and unavoidable part of the 21st C film industry and the most effective exponent of American soft power after Disney and Marvel.
