Top 100 Films of the 21st Century (Four Year Anniversary Special)- Part 7 (40-31)

40. Submarine (2010- Richard Ayoade)

"Submarine is an important film. Watch it with respect. Fond regards from your protagonist, Oliver Tate"

Between writing books, presenting travel shows and making cameos in modern Brit classics like Paddington 2 and The Souvenir, it almost seems unfair to demand that Richard Ayoade return to filmmaking. But his absence has been felt in the seven long years since The Double, and rewatching Submarine in the years in between is a reminder that he's such a unique, essential talent when he's behind the camera. It's coming of age done right, untouched by adult cynicism and entirely driven by the misguided forces of the teenage mind. It was angsty and twee, but in a raw way. Ayoade didn't process it through the sensibilities that come with age, and as such it feels like a film driven by instinct, intuition, and most importantly, experimentation. It's a film made by and about the things we learn from cinema, an energetic tribute to the French New-wavers that Ayoade owes such a debt to. It's pure big-screen bildungsroman, gorgeously unpolished and jaggedly funny

The High Point: Paddy Considine's dodgy guru giving a bizarre talk on the powers of light

39. 25th Hour (2002- Spike Lee)

"No, fuck you Montgomery Brogan. You had it all and you threw it away, you dumb fuck"

Spike Lee's films are angry. We all know that, and we all know why, but I think less attention is given to how he articulates his rage. 25th Hour, a film that stops so its hero can say "fuck you" to everyone in New York, is undoubtedly Lee's most outwardly aggressive movie. The story of a man's last day of freedom before a seven-year sentence, 25th Hour is abrasive from the start and never lets up. It's the story of a city left reeling after unspeakable tragedy (no film has captured post 9/11 NYC better), but under the fury is something so profound and true, something I'm not sure he's really matched since. Every time the film punches, it leaves another stroke of feeling in the sting. It starts with rage, but there's sadness, and guilt, regret and shame and love and joy and fear and frustration and longing. It's the most emotionally nuanced Lee's ever been, and regardless of how you feel about him as a filmmaker or as a person, there can be no doubt that we'll never see his likes again

The High Point: The ending, where Monty sees a life he won't get a chance to live

38. Mulholland Drive (2001- David Lynch)

"It'll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else"

There's a debate that makes the rounds online every so often about the third season of Twin Peaks- TV or film? And while personally the answer's pretty obvious, it raises a good point about David Lynch and his ability to transcend mediums. Mulholland Drive started life as a TV pilot, before spending two years morphing into what it is now: an expansive, elusive Hollywood nightmare. The timeless tale of an industry that devours young women and spits them out as unrecognisable monsters, it's a film rooted firmly in dream logic and driven by striking imagery but what really lingers is the haunting eroticism. Lynch breaks down the Hollywood dream machine like his trademark curiosity is caught between a beautiful fantasy and sinful reality, and although the term "Lynchian" has been regularly (mis)used since, there hasn't been a purer example of his weirdness than this. He takes our obsession with cinema and perverts it before our very eyes, forcing us to submit to the dark truth- the shadows cast by the projector's light

The High Point: Winkies Diner: the setting for the greatest jumpscare of all time

37. The Favourite (2018- Yorgos Lanthimos)

"Some wounds do not close. I have many such. One just walks around with them and sometimes one can feel them filling with blood"

No one disrupts conventions better than Yorgos Lanthimos. With The Favourite, he reframes both queer cinema and the period piece with one gleefully weird stroke, and has a damn good time doing it. He loosens up a little after 2017's The Killing of a Sacred Deer, allowing his trademark surrealism to be a little more overt and a lot more playful. Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz are incredible as scheming rivals vying for the queen's heart, but it's Olivia Colman's Oscar winning turn that makes this film so special. She's a tragic, wounded figure, and ultimately, she just wants to be loved. Lanthimos always gives his stories quietly devastating undertones and here's no different, although it's hard to remember any of his film's feeling quite this heartsick. It's an expert arrangement of fish-eye lenses, gorgeous classical music and bizarre imagery (Duck races! Breakdancing! Men getting pelted with tangerines!) but under the quirkiness and the black humour is a lush reservoir of pure emotion. For his next trick? Who knows, but whatever he does, I hope he carries over the same level of delicately assembled feeling, because it really suits him

"This is not going to happen again" said Olivia Colman in her (incredible) Oscar speech, but I wouldn't be so sure. Hail to the queen

 

The High Point: Rachel Weisz' incredible insult to Nicolas Hoult. Does he smell like a 97 year old French whore's vajuju? We may never know....

36. Holy Motors (2012- Leos Carax)

"Trois! Douze! Merde!"

Holy Motors arrived as an oddity. It was Leos Carax's first film for 13 years, during which he tried and failed to get it off the ground in an attempt to regain his cinematic foothold. He hopped from financer to financer, breaking his own rule and shooting on digital to make his film more appealing. In the end, it all paid off. This is the work of a man on the edge, driven to madness by an idea that he needs to articulate. The result is impossibly weird, but oh so watchable. The story of a shapeshifter let loose in Paris, Holy Motors belongs to Carax. It's the film that resurrected him as an artist and defined him as one of the industry's strangest characters, but what's really striking is how much of himself he's giving over to the viewer through the screen. This is his relationship with cinema, pure performance that wriggles out of his brain and into the spirit of his go-to leading man- the formidable Denis Lavant. His Mr. Oscar gets up to so many nocturnal shenanigans that range from hilarious to disturbing to deeply sad, but the film never feels like hard work, refusing the Rorschach-test route taken by all too many filmés-du-Cannes (looking at you, JLG). It's personal, it's beautiful, and it's insane. There's only one Leos Carax, and we need to make sure he keeps telling stories

The High Point: Mr. Oscar leads a band of accordionists through the catacombs

35. Little Miss Sunshine (2006- Jonathon Dayton, Valerie Faris)

"I want to fly, I'll find a way to fly. You do what you love and fuck the rest"

There's a moment near the end of Little Miss Sunshine where Toni Collette's jaded Albuquerque mother realises that, after a whole film of telling herself that everything's going to be okay, her put-upon family actually will be alright. It's a beautiful moment, and the kind of thing that makes Little Miss Sunshine stands out in a sea of quirky, post-Tenenbaum dysfunctional family indie-pics. Every Hoover is well drawn, each of them so immediately loveable and relatable and easy to root for. It's an underdog story in the truest sense, following a family of losers through a world of winners. They win when they concede- they'll never be the best.... but who cares? They have each other and that's all that matters. It's so warm and generous and unashamedly big hearted. In a time, world and genre where everything is broken down and held up against what's "normal", Little Miss Sunshine comes to a vital conclusion- it's all bullshit. 

It also made a star of Paul Dano, and that's no bad thing

The High Point: The final dance scene. Hang on, I just got something in my eye

34. Shutter Island (2010- Martin Scorsese)

"Which would be worse- to live as a monster, or to die as a good man?"

What's that about old dogs and new tricks? Shutter Island isn't exactly Martin Scorsese's horror film- he has yet to fully submerge in those waters- but it was a sign that this stalwart of cinema wasn't adverse to dipping his toe in the reservoir of genre. Shutter Island takes its cues from lush melodrama (Powell and Pressberger, Sirk), hardboiled noir (classic and neo) and gothic horror (there's a lovingly James Whaleian touch at work), but it's still classic Scorsese. After all, what is he if not the medium's most passionate archivist? Thrillingly, that comes through in his work, here more than ever: an engrossingly cineliterate blend of tones and nods that could only come from the work of a maestro. The first watch yields thrills and surprises aplenty, but the magic kicks in on repeat viewings and picking up on how the truth is translated into minute details and peppered throughout the film is a real joy. Often unfairly dismissed as "lesser Scorsese", the years have been remarkably kind to Shutter Island, and it still sparkles all these years later

The High Point: The film literally ends with a question. And then a thousand more

33. The Social Network (2010- David Fincher)

"You're going to go through life thinking girls don't like you because you're a nerd. And I want you to know, from the bottom of my heart, that that won't be true. It'll be because you're an asshole"

In 2010, The Social Network was a masterpiece, a dark-hearted zeitgeist that channeled all the anxieties of the early days of Facebook into a beautifully assembled modern classic. In 2020, it's equally brilliant, but much more disturbing- a horrible cinematic prophecy that we failed to listen to. Fincher and Sorkin saw through Zuck's loveable-nerd façade just as he was crossing into the mainstream, but the film doesn't play like an exposé. Instead, it's a modern tragedy, an attempt to understand the minds behind progress, before finally asking if the advancements were even worth it at all. It's kinetic cinema, powered by Sorkin's punchy screenplay and Fincher's clockwork-precise direction. The performances kill, the highlight being Andrew Garfield's tragic Eduardo, but credit to Jesse Eisenberg for capturing the cold, merciless precision of Zuckerberg, rejecting the geek who'd been thrust in the public eye and painting him as pure evil in a pair of flip-flops. 10 years later, it's hard to imagine a more perfect portrait of a 21st century monster

The High Point: Best. Opening. Ever

32. The Host (2006- Bong Joon-ho)

"I mean she died, but she's still alive"

The Host is not about America. Well it is, but not in the way the opening suggests. The USA isn't the monster in Bong's film, but it is the source- providing the perfect circumstances to birth the film's fearsome river beast. It's a scathing comment on America's foreign policy, where other countries become literal dumping grounds, and as for the disasters that follow? Well that's their problem. And yet The Host isn't an angry film. It deals with big, socially charged ideas but it's also shot with love- after all, it is about a father desperately trying to save his daughter. It's also a perfect monster movie, fast and thrilling and smart. It takes its cue from Jaws in how the monster exposes our greatest foibles and forces us to be better. It's one of the most roaring horror films this century, never sacrificing thrills for smarts and imbuing both with pure genre-riffic electricity. Watching this film now, it's no surprise that Bong blew up like he did; the film plays out like the energetic battleplan of a firebrand on his way to take over the world. And so he did

The High Point: The beast hangs on the bridges underbelly.... and then..... it drops!

31. Inglourious Basterds (2009- Quentin Tarantino)

"And y'all will get me one hundred Nazi scalps, taken from the heads of one hundred dead Nazis. Or you will die tryin'"

Quentin Tarantino has been making films for 28 years this year. That's a strange thought, isn't it? Love him or hate him, it's hard to think of a filmmaker who so distinctly announces his personality with each film he makes. Inglourious Basterds is still something of an oddity. By 2009, we knew who QT was: a needle-dropping, exploitation-cinema-riffing film obsessive who'd talk you to death if you met him at a party. But Inglourious Basterds suggested something wild: Could he be a historian? The answer is obviously not, but it's such a fun showcase of cinema's relationship with the past that the facts just don't matter. It's wildly, gleefully inaccurate; Tarantino didn't like the world's version of history so he just wrote his own. That's a frustrating, arrogant proposition, one that only an artist with QT's abrasive swagger could have pulled off. The film itself is stunning too: a best of compilation of Tarantino's trademark verbal warfare and some lovely Hitchcockian tension. It's brash, it's crass and it's insanely violent- but it's bold, striking and utterly unforgettable, too

The High Point: Fassbender in the pub. And he would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those meddling Nazis