Unbelievably to those of us that the memories of the Y2K scare seem very fresh, we are now a quarter of the way through the 21st century.
It is easy to focus on the negatives, with the dominance of the superhero genre and the general dumbing down of mainstream movies as a result. But, it has also been a rich period with veteran directors still delivering. Martin Scorsese reached a near career high with The Irishman, Steven Spielberg delivered the brilliant The Post as well as Lincoln and Bridge of Spies and Ken Loach rounded off his career with a series of impassioned dramas, including The Angels Share, Sorry We Missed You and I, Daniel Blake.
There have been deserving Oscar winners like Nomadland and The Hurt Locker and foreign language cinema has flourished with titles like Anatomy of a Fall, Dear Comrades, Quo Vadis, Aida?, Hidden, Pain & Glory, After the Storm and Our Little Sister. The British film industry has continued to punch above its weight with Locke, Blitz, The Outrun, Aftersun and Ali and Ava. In the last couple of years, Ireland have given us The Quiet Girl and Small Things Like These.
Not in contention for the top 25, but on the genre side of things, there has been a resurgence of action movies, with Daniel Craig’s Bond stint, the excellent Bourne series and the improvement in the Mission: Impossible franchise.
Just missing out on this list is a title from this year, Civil War and 13 Days from the start of the century.
So, here are my 25 favourite films of the past 25 years, with the year of general release and the director’s name in brackets:
25: The Consequences of Love (2004/Paolo Sorrentino)
24: Code Unknown (2000/Michael Haneke)
23: Dunkirk (2017/Christopher Nolan)
22: Collective (2019/Alexander Nanau)
21: Origin (2023/Ava DuVernay)
20: The Man Standing Next (2020/Min-ho Woo)
19: Another Year (2010/Mike Leigh)
18: BlacKkKlansman (2018/Spike Lee)
17: Manchester By the Sea (2016/Kenneth Lonergan)
16: Inherent Vice (2014/Paul Thomas Anderson)
15: Frost / Nixon (2008/Ron Howard)
14: She Said (2022/Maria Schrader)
13: Good Night and Good Luck (2005/George Clooney)
12: Sicario (2015/Denis Villeneuve)
11: Spotlight (2015/ Tom McCarthy)
10: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019/Quentin Tarantino)
9: Oppenheimer (2023/Christopher Nolan)
8: No Country for Old Men (2007/Joel and Ethan Cohen)
7: Past Lives (2023/Celine Song)
6: Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (2000/Edward Yang)
5: Control (2007/Anton Corbijn)
4: Zero Dark Thirty (2012/Kathryn Bigelow)
3: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011/Tomas Alfredson)
Runner Up: Mulholland Drive (2001/David Lynch)
Winner: Boyhood (2014/Richard Linklater)