20 BEST MOVIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY

The cinematic masterpieces of the past 25 years span thrillers, romances, satires, and more

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THERE WILL BE BLOOD
2007

Paul Thomas Anderson's origin story of American avarice towers like a derrick over our new millennium, its shadow as imposing as the silhouette that Daniel Day-Lewis' mad oil baron casts upon his own era. Though loosely pulled from the pages of Upton Sinclair, this character study of greed incarnate has twisted into a disturbing prophecy of right now. What could be more relevant to the 21st century than a drama about a vampiric capitalist coming into a world as a creator and leaving as a destroyer?

A.A. DOWD

IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE
2000

Set in 1962 Hong Kong, Wong Kar-wai's cinematic tone poem watches as two neighbors (Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Maggie Cheung) discover that their respective workaholic, AWOL spouses are having an affair. They're inevitably drawn together, but any attempt at real connection is destined to end in mutually assured alienation. Which, in Wong's cockeyed world of unfulfilled romantics, is exactly the point. Think of it as holy loneliness: rapturous, intoxicating, and bittersweetly sublime.

STEPHEN GARRETT

MOONLIGHT
2016

Charting a sensitive young Florida kid's rocky road to manhood through three time periods and three different actors, Barry Jenkins' sophomore movie (an adaptation of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney's little-known work In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue) refracts the agonies and ecstasies of Black life through a very subjective prism. Yet this tender, sympathetic look at a human being finally coming into his own couldn't feel more universal. Every shot looks ravishing. Every character contains multitudes.