Live classics: The 25 most impressive films of the XXI century according to The New York Times

One-sixth of the century is over. During this time, thousands of films of different quality and content have already been shot. The leading film critics of The New York Times, Anthony Oliver Scott and Manola Dargis, decided that this was a sufficient sample to summarize, let's say, interim results. In their list of the 25 best films of the XXI century, there are quite a lot of films that are little known to a wide range of viewers. But the material only benefits from this. Here are only works that will become classics for future generations, and not fancy pop.

Source: Cinemaholics

1. "Oil", 2007

Paul Anderson's picture filled with meaning about the fate of the American gold digger Daniel Plainview, whose life makes a sharp turn when he finds oil deposits. Gradually, he builds up an entire oil empire, getting richer day by day, until he crosses the road to a religious fanatic. The brilliantly shot film raises the eternal themes of the dialectic of faith and greed.

2. "Carried away by ghosts", 2001

A Japanese full-length anime film for adults tells about the fate of a girl Tohiro, who fell into another world inhabited by ghosts. "In "Gone with the Ghosts," we see first of all the formation of an adult girl, her development from a childish girl throwing her legs in the back seat of her parent's car to a girl who lost everything that connected her with a past version of herself, right down to her name," says Mexican director Guillermo del Toro.

3. "Baby in a million", 2004

Clint Eastwood, whom everyone knows as an impenetrable, iron shooter, opened up in the director's chair from a completely new side. "Baby in a Million" by and large is built on worn-out cinematic cliches about the power of the spirit and overcoming. However, for all its brutality, it plays on such sentimental strings that no other sports film has come close to.

4. "Touch of Sin", 2013

The deepest drama of the Chinese director Jia Zhangke. Undisguised realism, masterfully combined with surreal touches. The film consists of four independent short stories based on violent conflicts in the Middle Kingdom. The authors sought to show the face of modern China.

5. "The Death of Mr. Lazarescu", 2005

Mr. Lazarescu felt unwell, and the ambulance takes him on a real odyssey with contradictory diagnoses, delayed treatment and the utmost equanimity and stubbornness of doctors. In the best film of Romanian cinema, witty jokes only mask the tragedy of the Eastern European bureaucracy. It is very easy to imagine this tape in Russian scenery.

6. "One and Two", 2000

A three-hour canvas about the fate of a Taiwanese family whose head is torn apart by contradictions. The mother-in-law is in a coma, the wife is going through a mental crisis, the daughter has fallen in love for the first time, and the son is too wise for his eight years. Suddenly, ANJ meets an old lover, whom he abandoned many years ago. It gives him a chance to start a new life. Once again becoming a romantic, ANJ secretly goes with Sherry to Japan to try to correct the mistakes of the past.

7. "Puzzle", 2015

Everyone has their own favorite cartoon from Pixar studio. But the reviewers of The New York Times chose the "Puzzle", considering it the deepest of all. By far the most inventive representative of the genre undertakes to visually display human consciousness. And the main idea is not at all childish: sadness is just as important to us as joy.

8. "Boyhood", 2014

At the beginning of the film, we meet a six-year-old boy, Mason Evans Jr., and say goodbye to him when Mason is already 18. Usually stories about growing up are broken into chopped pieces, but director Richard Linklater managed to show the formation of personality very smoothly, exactly as it happens in real life.

9. "Summer time", 2008

The picture is about the thorns of family relations with a taste of invariable French Romanticism. 75-year-old Evan celebrates her birthday, and this is one of the few reasons for members of a large family to get together. The question is raised about the fate of the inheritance of their common relative, a famous artist, whose paintings, as it turned out, can have not only sentimental value…

10. "The Lord of the Storm", 2008

11. "Inside Llewyn Davis", 2012

12. "Timbuktu", 2014

13. "In Jackson Heights", 2015

14. "Child", 2005

15. "White material", 2009

16. "Munich", 2005

17. "Three times", 2005

18. "The Gatherers and the gatherer", 2000

19. "Mad Max: Fury Road", 2015

20. "Moonlight", 2016

21. "Wendy and Lucy", 2008

22. "I'm not there", 2007

23. "Silent Light", 2007

24. "Eternal radiance of pure reason"

25. "Forty-year-old virgin", 2005