My Top 30 Films of the First Quarter of the 21st Century

Match Point

The title sums up this up. I don't know if I'll be around for a list of my favorites for the first half of the century and barring remarkable medical breakthroughs I won't see the end of this century. So on that morbid note here are my favorite films released between 2000 and 2024. Exactly half are in English language films and half in foreign tongues. There are two Woody Allen and two Quentin Tarantino films in the top six and two Coen brothers movies in the top seven. But the director with the most films here is Finland's Aki Kaurismäki with three. The only other director with two pictures on this list is Pawel Pawlikowski. There were four films from last year on the list, nor surprising given that I've ranked 2023 among the better years in cinematic history. The next closest was  2011 with three pictures. All told twenty of twenty-five years had a film in my top thirty. I was surprised that there was nothing from Wes Anderson though if I'd expanded the list to forty both The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom would have featured.  Two more Coens' films, A Serious Man and O Brother Where Art Thou?, also just missed.

1. Match Point (2005) Allen

2. Once Upon a Time .... in Hollywood (2019) Tarantino

3. In the Mood For Love (2000) Kar-Wai

4. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) Coens

5. Inglorious Basterds (2009) Tarantino

6. Midnight in Paris (2011) Allen

7. No Country For Old Men (2007) Coens

8. Requiem For A Dream (2000) Aronofsky 

9. Mean Girls (2004) Waters

10. Drive My Car (2021) Hamaguchi

11. Y Tu Mama También (2001) Cuarón

12. Le Havre (2011) Kaurismäki

13. Fallen Leaves (2023) Kaurismäki

14. Zodiac (2007) Fincher

15. Oppenheimer (2023) Nolan

16. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Gondry

17. Zone of Interest (2023) Glazer

18. Habla Con Ella (2002) Almodóvar

19. Personal Shopper (2016) Assayas

20. First Reformed (2017) Schraeder

21. A Separation (2011) Farhadi

22.  Cold War (2018) Pawlikowski

23. Des hommes et des dieux (2010) Beauvois

24. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2018) Gan

25. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014) Iñárritu

26. Ida (2013) Pawlikowski

27. Godland (2023) Pálmason

28. Anora (2024) Baker

29. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012) Ceylan

30. Lights in the Dusk (2006) Kaurismäki