Top 21 Films Of The 21st Century

[killienick]

As a fan of the books for years before these came out I was very apprehensive about them. I thought the books to be un-filmable if I'm honest. Jackson did a great job in knowing what to film and what to leave out. Him and Fran Walsh also did a good job of taking things out of the appendices to make a more rounded story.

Also - so happy they took Tom Bombadil out of the story.

[DA Baracus]

I wouldn't say Frodo was the hero. He was a wee fanny who constantly shat it. Sam was the boy, literally carrying Frodo at one point. In the end Frodo couldn't even destroy the ring (easy now!). Sam killed Shelob, rescued Frodo from Minus Morgul (in the process somehow being able to best loads of orcs at once) and even carried the ring when he thought Frodo was brown bread (which in the book means even he eventually has to f**k off on the elven boat).

[MONKMAN]

Correct, Sam is the boi. Frodo is a little fucknugget, who has no intention of destroying the ring.

[invergowrie arab]

Rotk probably the weakest of the three but ride of the rohirrim is one of my favourite scenes in any movie ever.

I was a bit annoyed that even in the extended version they left out the scouring of the shire even there was about an hour of movie left after the ring was destroyed.

[bhoy who invented weetabix]

Haw, fucks going on here?

Has this been abandoned

Some of us have a whole pound sterling bet on the winner here, we'll be in the fucking Euro by the time this gets done

Just saying eh?

[Albino Rover]

5. There Will Be Blood

"There are times when I look at people and don't see anything worth liking. I want to earn enough money I can get away from everyone."

For decades before he struck big and became wealthy beyond imagination, the protagonist of this story struggled in solitude, plumbing the deserts of the Southwest for minerals. In the beginning we see him on his own, mining with a pick and shovel, and in the end, after striking oil, extracting an ocean of it and selling it for fortunes at a time, we see him still on his own. He worked hard to make his fortune, but he made it his only priority. There Will Be Blood, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, looks deeply into that state of pure self-obsession and ruthless greed, and at how money can change a man's wits and morals to the point of total destruction.

He calls himself Daniel Plainview, a name convenient for doing business but not accurate to his personality: his view on everything is obscured by his lust for oil. Daniel Day-Lewis makes him a great, moustachioed monster, a force beyond classification in pursuit of a mineral monopoly; ferocious in scenes of terrifying intensity, equally unsettling in scenes of calm, restrained evil and ultimately explosive in bursts of fury, anger and ruthless, brutal violence. He comes to an inevitable descent for someone wealthy beyond measure but devoid of love or friendship.

The first ominous tones come before a word has been spoken, in an impending, electrifying score created by Jonny Greenwood, and minacious, unembellished scenes shot by Robert Elswit. For the first fifteen minutes we watch Plainview in the early years of the 20th century, using his nous and strength to pull minerals out of the dry, bare ground of Eastern California, scaling up gradually but ceaselessly.Even when he falls down a large mineshaft and breaks his leg, he somehow hauls himself out, clutching a sample of silver ore, makes his way to an assay office to certify his product, and then starts mining again.

He strikes small amounts of oil, which he and his workers extract a bucketful at a time, but gets his break through a visitor, Paul Sunday, who comes to him with information for sale. The location is the Sunday ranch, which Plainview obtains rather cheaply. He tried to get it even cheaper by bringing along H.W. and using him to pretend that he wanted the land for father-son quail hunting. Mr. Sunday has a second son, Eli, and here is the “ice box” question of There Will Be Blood, because we never see Eli and Paul at the same time. Are they wayward identical twins, or is there something more complicated going on?

Plainview has nothing but contempt for other people, but when travelling to meetings along with his 10-year-old business partner, H.W., he knows that he must develop a certain charm and silver tongue in order to negotiate good deals. His young partner, by the way, isn’t his son- in fact, Plainview isn’t even the boy’s legal guardian. After one of his workers was killed in a mine, his head crushed by a metal bucket, Plainview stole the man's baby and raised him, as means to prove himself as a man of the people whose land he wants. He wins most of the people over, but meets his opposition in the institutional power of the church.

Eli Sunday is a preacher, and in return for his family land he asks Daniel for money to build his Church of the Third Revelation. Daniel humours Eli, but draws a line when when he asks to bless the first oil well before starting extraction. Daniel doesn't object verbally but in the end he can’t bring himself to allow it, and starts drilling before Eli can say a word. A lifelong rivalry, if it hadn't already, begins then. The first wells soon become huge oil fields, overseen by Plainview, sitting and drinking on his porch. There are some serious accidents. Men are killed and great damage done, but drilling carries on. One day one of the wells blows, and strikes H.W. deaf. It angers Daniel, because he can no longer use the boy. He takes him onto a train, sits him down, leaves to have a word with the conductor and doesn't come back.

The origins of Daniel Plainview's rejection of religion are left unexplained, but he reviles it absolutely. His contempt reaches a silencing crescendo in Eli's church when, in order to reach a land deal with an elderly man, Daniel agrees to be baptised. Eli, with glee, makes him kneel before the congregation, apologise aloud for his sins and beg for forgiveness, before dousing him with water and slapping the devil out of him. As he thrives financially, through all the complications and troubles of his business, Daniel maintains his dichotomy with Eli more stubbornly than ever. Both of them strive for power, and both slowly lose what morals they may have had, in manners brutal and unforgiving.

Plainview achieves his ambition of becoming rich enough to need no one else in his life, but when a man named Henry comes to him and announces that he’s his half-brother, Daniel welcomes him, befriends him, shares his thoughts with him and takes him at his word willingly, which seems hard to believe. We soon realise, though, that it's an early sign of Plainview drifting into madness. Not much later, he rectifies his mistake in cold blood. Of all Paul Thomas Anderson's almost hypnotically-fascinating creations, Daniel Plainview is surely his most brilliant and iconic, and Daniel Day-Lewis embodies every inch of him. The performance by Day-Lewis surpasses "acting"- it’s pure behaviour.

The film follows Plainview from 1898 up until 1927, and in that sense, and that sense only, really, it's a period film, but when put before our contemporaries, released at a hot topical time for its subject matter, its message was as relevant as Upton Sinclair's novel Oil! had been eighty years previously, and begged a lot of questions, most prominently: how much has really changed? To help answer that, Anderson goes back to the beginning and shows us that, right from its origins, oil was always an industry fuelled by immorality and greed.

With each viewing you can rediscover the power of There Will Be Blood, on a number of levels. Of course it's an evocative and compelling character study, but you don't have to look too much deeper to see the religious corruption, (which is clear even in the promotional poster,) an experience of pre-depression America, a Steinbeck-era statement on the Californian edition of the American Dream and its consequences, and innumerable other interpretations, some bigger and more profound than the aforementioned, others smaller and more personal. It's both a history and a prophecy, so thoughtfully structured and layered that it works on levels beyond itself. It’s the work of an auteur, and the work that revealed the aged wisdom in the 37-year-old movie geek who masterminded it.

Technically, the film is undeniably perfect; as accomplished and photographically clinical as cinematography gets, with huge range in its shots, and in its locations across California. It's quite possibly the singular greatest and most groundbreaking film of this century so far; a genuine cinematic triumph in all aspects, a collaboration of real landmark achievements in its writing, acting, look and sound, admirable for all of its parts, and as a whole, a pioneering and time-defining masterpiece.

[11thHour]

I watched that and didnt like it at all. It didnt tell an actual story for me if that makes sense, obviously im too stupid to get it. DDL is obviously on his usual amazing form but apart from that I didnt like much else of it.

[JamieT1314]

I thought I had seen it but reading your summary doesnt ring any bells. I'll need to give it a watch.

[Ira Gaines]

Daniel Day Lewis can pretty much carry a movie on his back, but Paul Dano was on phenomenal form here too. Plus, there actually is some great stuff in here. The way Plainview can sell a freezer to eskimos is always fun to watch. There's some incredible scenery in it, and some great standalone scenes. When you add that to the great performances, I think you have a great movie.

[killienick]

It's a gruelling film in many regards and I'd be surprised if everyone says they love it. Daniel Day Lewis is just awesome in this but the character, Plainview, he portrays is a thoroughly dislikeable yet engaging individual who forces you to watch even though there is nothing redeeming about his character to empathise with. There is also the remarkably downbeat ending to the film to consider too.

Personally, I think that it is a brilliant film which stays with you long after you have watched it. There is also a thinly veiled allegory in there for the American Dream which is unlike any other interpretation you will have seen.

The cinematography is spectacular. But the stars are it's actors. Daniel Day Lewis is incredible but is supported by a tremendous cast of characters who are, in the main, dislikeable but compelling, (Paul Dano in particular deserves praise and delivers a subtle, layered turn).

9/10 film for me.

[Co.Down Hibee]

It's a hard watch but as has already been pointed out the talent involved in the making of this film in front and behind the camera deserves huge credit...

Daniel Day Lewis is up with the greats in the world of cinema acting.

And as a footnote...still none of my picks mentioned yet

[Ludo*1]

Top, top film. As has been mentioned, it's not exactly an enjoyable film in the conventional sense and it's certainly not something I'll watch over and over again. It's the experience of the film, the journey which Plainview goes through that is utterly brilliant.

On a side note, does anyone else think DDL played Plainview remarkably similar to the way he played his character in Gangs?

[killienick]

On a side note, does anyone else think DDL played Plainview remarkably similar to the way he played his character in Gangs?

I know what you mean. I think the characters themselves were similar in that they craved wealth and power.

[Albino Rover]

4. The Wolf Of Wall Street

"Of all the drugs under God’s blue heaven, there is one that is my absolute favourite. See, enough of this shit will make you invincible; able to conquer the world and eviscerate your enemies. And I’m not talking about this. I’m talking about this.”

That’s what Jordan Belfort says as he unravels a rolled, cocaine-dusted $100 bill and holds it up for us to see, before scrunching it up and throwing it into the bin. He talks to us the whole way through the film, like a sleazy salesman pitching stock to a gullible sucker, and he's extremely good at it. He gives us a thorough first-hand account of his career as a stockbroker, and makes us laugh - a lot - but underneath the comedy this film tells the story of a loathsome profession, and a loathsome person at the heart of it.

These people are the highest of the high, and at the same time, the lowest of the low. Since the most recent recession Wall Street has once again become public enemy, but instead of engaging in a hate-filled attack, this film treats the stock trade as a laughing stock, focusing most of its attention on a hysterical revue of comedic acting and set-pieces, allowing very little time to consider its inherent evil until later when, eventually, the laughs and luxury are over.

Adapted by Terence Winter from Jordan Belfort’s own memoir, and directed by Martin Scorsese, this is cold-blooded comedy at its most extreme and excessive. It’s three hours long, apparently cut down from four, and it's a testament to Scorsese and Winter that it wouldn’t be unattractive to watch it for five. Shameless, disgusting, exhausting and illuminating in equal measure, it's possibly the most fun you can have watching despicable people. Leonardo DiCaprio compared it to the story of Caligula- and it’s really not much of an exaggeration.

The film depicts a lot of bad behaviour but never endorses it, and there are all kinds of clues as to that; moments where, amongst the hysteria, the ugliness becomes very visible. In an early sequence, at an end-of-week office party, a female sales assistant agrees to get her head shaved for $10,000- she looks almost like a chemotherapy patient as she’s given a big wad of green cash, while the office lights flicker and her colleagues take part in festivities too decadent for Eyes Wide Shut, with a marching band playing "Stars And Stripes Forever", dozens of hookers running around the trading floor and, as per most of the film, money all over the place.

Cash is like a toy to them: throughout the film we see women wrapped up in money, suitcases full of cash, Jordan and his wife having sex on a king-size bed of money, $100 bills getting poured over people and off the side of a yacht, as well as scrunched up and thrown away as waste. We're kept in the thick of it at all times, to suffocating effect, until pretty much devoid of any sort of moral anchors. It's hard not to get lost in Jordan's life story, partly because of the high intensity and partly because it’s so much fun to watch. It's almost non-stop, packed with moments so hysterical that it's easy to forget that Jordan Belfort and his associates were a band of scumbags.

The most prominent of those associates is Jordan's right hand man, Donnie Azoff, who is perhaps even less conscientious than Belfort himself. He first meets Jordan in a diner, and after one very quick conversation he quits his day job to help Jordan set up his own brokerage from the ground up. As a “thank you” present he buys Jordan some crack cocaine. They make their thousands by conning people into buying large numbers of penny stocks, and recruit an army of sleazy salesman to scam them in their hundreds at a time.

They draft the original team from back home: Robbie "Pinhead" Feinberg, Alden "Sea Otter" Kupferberg, Nicky "Rugrat" Koskoff and Chester Ming, all of them drug dealers, become Jordan's "senior vice presidents", as he brands his brokerage "Stratton Oakmont" and writes a sexy telesales script to reel in the suckers as easily as possible. His friend Brad, the quaalude king of Bayside, turns the offer down, but turns up occasionally throughout the film to do the odd favour. At its peak Stratton employed over 1,000 stockbrokers and totaled over $1 billion in stock dealings, specialising in pumping up low stock and dumping shares en masse, before the value dropped again and the investors lost their money.

Jordan gets the title “The Wolf Of Wall Street” from an investigative journalist, who comes to Stratton to write an article for Forbes magazine. Initially the nickname angers him, but it’s a reputation he lives up to, and before long “Wolfie” becomes the crowd chant at his mansion parties, and the safe word when he visits a dominatrix. The article made Jordan a well-known Wall Street figure, but that included attracting the attention of the FBI. When Jordan found out they were on his trail, he tracked down federal prosecutor Patrick Denham and invited him and his partner on board the Naomi yacht. Their meeting is the centrepiece of the film: Jordan, masking his high anxiety, offers the agents lobster, caviar and sweet talk, while trying to work out some sort of agreement, but unlike most people Jordan talks to, Denham is no sucker- he just lets his suspect brag away almost enough evidence to be prosecuted there and then, before Jordan asks them, very impolitely, to leave.

Eventually, after some sneaky tricks with his associates in Switzerland and his aunt-in-law in London, Belfort beat the Feds in court. He could have left it at that, kept everything and been set for life, but instead he went back to do it all over again. He was indicted in 1998 for fraud and money laundering, made to pay back over $100 million to investors and spent 22 months in federal prison. Even then, he didn't abide by the terms of his restitution agreement and wasn't properly punished. He's now a bigger celebrity than ever, working as a motivational speaker and writer, and regularly appearing on US television. If you watch his interviews or read the memoir, it seems that his only real regret was getting caught.

In the 1980s, Jordan Belfort tried and failed to make it the traditional way, at a blue chip firm. Matthew McConaughey appears as Mark Hanna, Belfort’s first boss on Wall Street, who tells him that drugs and regular ejaculation are mandatory to stay sane in this business. Another broker explains that they do all the coke, 'ludes and booze "to stimulate our freethinking ideas." As soon as Jordan started, the stock market crashed and he lost his job, but he took his superiors' advice on board and reinvented himself away from Wall Street by joining a penny stock firm, and rising to the top of that game almost immediately.

When he got into stockbroking he was already settled down and married to a good woman, but as soon as he made it big he started having affairs left, right and centre, and eventually threw her over for a blonde-haired Miller Lite girl, Naomi Lapaglia, married her, bought her a gleaming white 167-foot yacht (named "Naomi") and moved into a humungous Long Island estate. Over the course of the 1990s Jordan led a life so vulgar it verged on unhuman: stockbroking illegally by day, then drinking, gambling, doing drugs and visiting hookers before flying, wasted, back to his mansion. Yet somehow, by a combination of physical and ironic comedy, it's delightful to watch. In one of Jordan's hangover flashbacks we see him waking his family up in the middle of the night by staggering out of his helicopter, falling into the pool and setting off all the house alarms. It's hard not to find that hilarious.

Leonardo Di Caprio is every inch the Wolf, sex-hungry and self-absorbed, narrating the sleazy screenplay with a constant cocky arrogance, almost taking pride in telling us how he made a fortune committing stock fraud, listing all the drugs he enjoys and why, and classing hookers into three categories, named after types of Wall Street shares. His comedic acting is wonderful, whether bashfully trying to tiptoe around admitting to paying prostitution rings with credit cards, completely out of control, screaming, swearing and feeling up stewardesses on a first class flight to Europe, or even in the paralysis of substance abuse, up to and including what he calls his “cerebral palsy phase” - a one-off quaalude binge that spirals into complete comic mayhem, with Jordan suddenly losing the ability to walk and talk during an important phone call about his money, then rolling down the stairs of his country club and crawling like a baby across the car park to his Lamborghini, which he drug-drives home to find Donnie Azoff in the kitchen, slurring his words on the phone before freaking out and fighting Jordan, then choking on a piece of ham and collapsing into a glass table.

It's a joke that Donnie is second-in-command of a Wall Street brokerage, because he's clearly a degenerate, but he is responsible for one of Stratton's biggest moments, getting hold of shares in the lucrative Steve Madden shoe company. When this happens, Jordan brings Madden into the office and delivers one of his trademark motivational speeches, including likening Madden to Willy Wonka, and dancing around like an Oompa Loompa. Then the audio is silenced, and a '60s party track plays while a massive aerial shot tracks into the middle of the corporate bear pit, and then back out again, watching the chaos ensue from above.

It’s almost taken for granted that a Martin Scorsese movie will be a work of technical genius, but this is supreme direction, as fluent and clinical as cinematics may get. Every shot is perfect, all of them assembled together seamlessly, and not only are there no false notes, there are all kinds of original tricks being pulled all over the place, from changing the colour of Jordan’s Ferrari mid-shot to slowing down the ticking of time while he throws a solid gold watch into the air. The filmmaking is as fun and extravagant as the content.

The whole story goes at a fast pace, only slowing down occasionally for some extended conversation scenes, which are like little comedy sketches in their own right. The most iconic of these is Mark Hanna’s lunchtime meeting with a young, nervous Jordan Belfort, where after talking enthusiastically about sex, drugs, alcohol and sleazy sales, Hanna starts humming and drumming on his chest, and tells Jordan to join in. The tune becomes an anthem at Stratton Oakmont, and a full remix plays over the closing credits. It's still a craze among people who have seen the film.

But it's not all fun and games, especially when we are left to consider these people's place in the world. They run the corporations who run the world, and the little people, their customers and investors, keep pumping them full of money. Occasionally people talk about reforms, but things can't change when guys like Jordan can influence anything they want, including governments. He even alludes to it himself: “You can give generously to the charity or political party of your choice. You can save the fucking spotted owl with money.”

Throughout The Wolf Of Wall Street, the big picture is always in full view. The film opens on the trading floor of Stratton Oakmont, with Jordan Belfort and his traders hurling dwarfs at a big velcro target - literally mistreating the little people - and it ends in New Zealand, on the other side of a world where everything is for sale, with Jordan teaching everyone how to sell it. At face value the movie is about the Wall Street mentality, which it treats like the joke it is, but it looks beyond that, at something even more elemental in human nature, which Scorsese overcame himself: addiction.

Scorsese is a master of portraying obsession, and money is the biggest obsession of our age. Jordan and his cronies aren't the only addicts in the story: all the big-timers on Wall Street are funded and cheered on by small-time addicts, who would be just like them if they could. Mark Hanna even mentions to Jordan that most people who invest in stock never cash their chips, they'll always buy more, because they’re addicted. Not only are they addicted, they pump more money into the system than the brokers, who just spend their days playing with numbers on screens, and eventually crashing companies, and therefore economies, into the disasters we get into from time to time. In the final analysis perhaps Wolf is not so much about one addict as it is about America’s addiction to cash and capitalism.

Just look at the film’s iconic promotional poster, an abstract yellow and black American flag with fifty “$” signs instead of stars. The American Dream teaches us that poor people are not to see themselves as little guys, but as big guys who haven’t made it yet. Belfort actually taunts Patrick Denham for choosing to live an honest life, and in a scene right at the end, as Denham takes the subway home, you can just about make out the jealousy even in him. But for all the luxuries and benefits of Jordan's life, like Daniel Plainview or Charles Foster Kane, he loses control of the things that money can't buy: his wife and kids leave him, his parents weep in court as he's imprisoned- and he even loses his friends on Wall Street.

The Wolf Of Wall Street is a crazy, drug-fuelled epic, but it comes to a sobering end, which reminds us what Martin Scorsese understands better than anyone: that those who burn the candle at both ends and dedicate their lives to themselves are those who ultimately suffer longest.

[Ira Gaines]

Fucking love that movie. Feels absolutely nowhere near three hours, and it's hilarious.

[happysouth]

Deary me

[Ludo*1]

Great film. Well placed.

[Christophe]

[invergowrie arab]

Wolf of Wall Street is fucking abysmal. Shame on all of you.

[The OP]

I thought it was only okay. Not great but not abysmal. I laughed a few times, Margot Robbie was hot and it felt like there was a more interesting film underneath the surface trying to get out.

Is there a list somewhere of what has been posted already to save me going through 14 pages?