10 Movie Masterpieces made in the last 14 Years
10. Rescue Dawn (2006)
The first time I watched this I was completely blown away with Christian Bale's performance in it. Previously I had thought nothing he had ever done could ever touch American Psycho, this movie proved that wrong. This was my introduction to Werner Herzog when I first watched this movie, and it set a bar, a bar that none of his other movies have quite passed for me. I was astonished how desperate he could make actors become in this movie, not only Bale, but also Steve Zahn, and Jeremy Davies. This has some of the best and most unforgiving POW camp scenes in movies. It rivals the scenes in The Deer Hunter (one of my all-time favorites, if you want to call them POW camps, I can see an argument against it, but that's besides the point). This is a brutal and beautiful film that I cannot recommend highly enough especially if anyone is a fan of Christian Bale.
9. Shame (2011)
Michael Fassbender, man, what a performance. if you think Christian Bale is good in Rescue Dawn, wait until you see Michael Fassbender in Shame. This is one of the most gut wrenching, heartbreaking, and tortured characters ever put to screen. How he evaded an Oscar nomination and win, I may never know. But it doesn't matter because I own the movie and can appreciate it myself. Seriously, treat yourself to some of the finest acting you will ever see, then again, and again, and you will notice just how deep and complex the character of Brandon is. Not to mention the only performance that I like (even though I love it) by Carry Mulligan, she nails it in this film.
8. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Pan's Labyrinth is a movie that stays with you for a long time. So many unforgettable characters/things and visuals that are terrifying, disturbing, and mesmerizing. I remember reading about the making of this movie, and how it took years for Guillermo del Toro to make Pan's Labyrinth. He made and collected drawings, little dialogue bits, camera motions over a long time before he was even willing to make the film. And one day, he forgets all his drawings and stuff in a taxi cab in London. Thank God that the cabbie found them and went out of his way to find del Toro and give him his notebook back, for without it, Pan's Labyrinth may have never been made. Although the best part of the film is the fact that Guillermo del Toro took actors who usually did only one type of thing, for instance Lopez is known as a comedian, Verdu was known as a "sex bomb actress", and turned them into horrifying and desperate characters so outside their norm, yet they succeeded with flying colors. When a director can do that to all the actors/actresses in his film, they have talent.
7. 25th Hour (2002)
Spike Lee tried something no one else was willing to try, take on a post-9/11 New York. Did he succeed? You bet, and flawlessly at that. He knew exactly how much time to put in to talk about 9/11 and how much time not to. This is one of my favorite scripts to any movie, and the mirror scene. That mirror scene, is genius. One of my favorite monologues from every movie, I even have it set as my background on my computer. This movie hits me on such an emotional level, I actually cry during it, and that, that is really rare. The story of the 24 hours before one man goes to prison is a genius idea and execution. Perfect movie with an perfect performance by Edward Norton.
6. Babel (2006)
Everyone who ever talked shit about Brad Pitt and how he is just a pretty boy actor, have obviously never seen this movie. Not only him but everyone in this movie is brilliant down to every last kid actor or actress. What is so great about this movie is that it barely spends any time analyzing and showing the incident that is the centerpiece of the movie, instead it spends almost all of its run time to feelings and emotions of all these people after the tragedy. That doesn't happen often in movies, usually the tragedy is the big focus of the movie, not the aftermath. Also the title of this movie is brilliant, simply brilliant. The connections between the Tower of Babel and the movie are simply genius.
5. The Departed (2006)
A return to what everyone love Scorsese for, gangsters. A gangster epic set in modern day Boston, and is a remake, now how could that be good. Simple, it's Scorsese. He took Infernal Affairs and improved upon it, he made the people more real, and turned Leonardo Dicaprio into a nervous wreck, awesome. The soundtrack, the acting, the writing, the title screen, everything about this movie is just perfect. Not as good, but best gangster film since Goodfellas. Scorsese man, gangster movie king.
4. Traffic (2000)
Traffic is the single greatest film to ever analyze the drug war in America/Mexico. The fact that Gladiator won best picture over this is absolutely baffling. Traffic is a gorgeous movie, that has three separate storylines that all analyze different aspects of the drug war and its effect on both sides of the border. The coolest part of it is, all three stories have a different color tone to them. This is a brilliant filmmaking technique, that is so stylized and actually helps to set the tone of each individual story. But the colors is not the only good thing about this, the acting is superb. Most of the people in this film have never been better, may be an exception for Michael Douglas, but almost everyone else has that one role they were meant to play in this movie.
3. No Country for Old Men (2007)
What can I say about this movie, that no one else or myself has said before? I mean it won best picture, it's one of the most thrilling and intense films made in the last while, has some really amazing performances in it, its all been said. Saying that speaks very highly of this film. The fact that everything good that can be said about a film has been said about the film, proves that. And like I said everything has been said about this film. But the film completely deserves it and more.
2. Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
About an hour and a half ago (from the minute I am writing this sentence, Friday September 5 at 4:30 pm, really shows how long I take to write these), I had to write an opinion/rhetorical paper on whether torture was alright for the United States to conduct. And where I will not reveal my position on the topic now (for that is not why I started this blog) the first thing I wrote about was this movie, seeing as the first hour of the movie is filled with torture scenes. I think it is funny for a grade I begin an important timed writing talking about a movie. Anyway, this is one of the most intense and epic movies made in a long time. A fly-on-the-wall view of the manhunt for Osama Bin Laden. That is a hard movie to pull off, but Kathryn Bigelow, fresh off her Oscar winning best picture The Hurt Locker, made this amazing piece or work of a movie. This was my favorite movie of 2012 (more than Django Unchained even), and I do believe it was a ton better than Ben Affleck's Iranian Hostage Crises movie, Argo, (which still was very good). This movie takes you for a decade long manhunt and keeps you in the movie through high and lows, through breakthroughs and dead ends, through emotion and gunfire, this movie does it all. And everything about the movie is perfectly done, sets, acting, directing, you name it.
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
I really should avoid talking about this movie, in fear of not doing it justice. But I believe that it should be on this list, and it is probably obvious that it was going to be number one, but hey it's where it belongs. This is another that I could say, what can I say about this movie that hasn't been said. I have already talked about the greatness of this movie in a previous blog post. And I cannot prove how perfect it is by a paragraph or two alone, but what I can do is this. Just like how the Godfather is often considered the best movie of the 20th century (and also of all time, I know), I will predict that There Will Be Blood will be the Godfather of the 21st century. 14 years in, this is my prediction. And where I may never live to see 2100 (I certainly hope I do) this post will hopefully be available to view in 2100 and it will forever be recorded on this blog.
This piece took me a long time to write, having to talk about some of my favorite movies, and talk about them well is a really tough thing to do. And these films are only some of the ones I considered. My friend and I debated what were better for a long time, ultimately these are all the films I wanted on here and in the order I wanted. I will list most of the other ones that I considered and my friend suggested. Keep in mind they all are not necessarily "masterpieces", but some may still be.
American Psycho
Django Unchained
Inglourious Basterds
The Dark Knight
Warrior
The Hurt Locker
The Social Network
Zodiac
Lord of the Rings 1-3
Memento
Requiem for a Dream
The Pianist
City of God
Million Dollar Baby
Brokeback Mountain
The Wrestler
Grizzly Man
Lost in Translation
And these are just to name a few. Numerous others were considered in the making of this list. If you think I missed a few or a certain one, let me know below. Also if you think one of my choices is not a masterpiece or doesn't deserve to be on the list let me know that too, and let me know what you would put on your list instead.
I literally could've written this review myself, that's how much I agree with it. When I made my Best of the 2000s list way back when, There Will Be Blood, Traffic, Babel, and 25th Hour all made the cut. Rescue Dawn is one of my favorite Herzog's (and contains my favorite Bale performance to date), and Shame, well, forget about it. GREAT work.
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks man, really glad you think this is a good list. I just had quite a lengthy discussion involving "modern masterpieces", and felt like it was a good topic to write about. Really hard to write this list, literally took me about a week and a half. Wrote basically the whole thing, then started over because I didn't do most films justice. Still think I could have done better on some but had to try my best for the film's sake. I could have honestly made a top 30 masterpieces made in the last 14 years but it just seemed like too much maybe, like I said, had enough trouble writing this anyway.
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