Join us on an unforgettable journey through the most remarkable films the 21st century has produced. Whether you’re drawn to stories that challenge your thinking or ones that warm your heart, this carefully curated selection represents the very best that modern cinema has to offer. These are the directors, writers, and performers who have left a permanent mark on culture — and the films that prove why storytelling remains one of humanity’s greatest gifts.
79. Asteroid City (2023)
A playwright’s elaborately constructed fiction unfolds around a bereaved father who packs up his gadget-obsessed family and heads to a tiny desert town for a children’s astronomy competition — only for a single, inexplicable event to upend his understanding of everything he thought he knew.
78. Hit Man (2023)
What begins as a side gig — playing a convincing fake assassin to help police catch criminals in the act — takes a sharp turn when a mild-mannered academic starts falling for one of the very women he was sent to entrap.
77. Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
Freshly discharged from a psychiatric facility, former teacher Pat Solitano (Bradley Cooper) moves back under his parents’ roof and throws himself into winning back his estranged wife. What he doesn’t count on is Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) — a woman carrying her own complicated history, who refuses to be ignored.
76. The Big Sick (2017)
A stand-up comedian from Pakistan and an American grad student stumble into something real — until cultural expectations and family pressure begin pulling them apart. When Emily falls gravely ill, Kumail is left alone with her parents, his conscience, and a question he can no longer avoid.
75. Call Me by Your Name (2017)
One long, hazy Italian summer in the 1980s becomes the backdrop for an intense and delicate romance between a teenage boy and the older graduate student working alongside his father — a season that will define both of them for the rest of their lives.
74. Civil War (2024)
A small team of war correspondents navigates a fractured, unrecognizable version of the United States, documenting the human cost of a nationwide armed conflict as it spirals beyond anyone’s ability to contain or comprehend.
73. Suzume (2022)
A chance meeting with a travelling stranger sends a spirited seventeen-year-old girl on an unexpected road trip across Japan, hunting down mysterious portals that, left unsealed, threaten to bring cata
strophe raining down on ordinary people everywhere.
72. TÁR (2022)
At the absolute peak of her field, Lydia Tár stands as a towering figure in classical music — a composer, conductor, and groundbreaker. But behind the accolades and the authority, something is beginning to fracture in ways she cannot control.
71. Challengers (2024)
A professional tennis tournament becomes the arena for something far more charged than competition when three people — once close in ways they’ve never entirely moved past — find themselves drawn back into each other’s orbit after years apart.
70. No Country for Old Men (2007)
A hunter’s chance discovery of a blood-soaked crime scene and a bag stuffed with cash sets off a brutal chain of events, drawing a relentless and eerily calm killer onto his trail across the desolate Texas borderlands.
69. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)
Before she became the warrior the wasteland feared, Furiosa was someone else entirely. This is the story of how she was forged — the losses, the rage, and the long road that led her to the moment Mad Max first crossed her path.
68. Memories of Murder (2003)
Rural South Korea, 1986. Two detectives — one local, one brought in from the city — find themselves locked in a grim and frustrating investigation as young women continue to turn up dead and the killer remains a ghost, leaving nothing useful behind.
67. Nope (2022)
Something strange is happening in the sky above a remote California ranch, and the siblings who call it home are the first to realize that whatever is up there, it is very much aware of them too.
66. Joker (2019)
A man the city has never bothered to see slowly stops trying to be invisible. What begins as the quiet unraveling of Arthur Fleck — comedian, nobody, punchline — becomes the origin of something Gotham will never be able to take back.
65. The Worst Person in the World (2021)
Told across four pivotal years, this is Julie’s story — a young woman who keeps arriving at crossroads, choosing impulsively, and wondering afterward whether any of it is leading somewhere that actually resembles the life she wanted.
64. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
A deeply lonely man’s reckless decision to reach out into the world sets off a chain of consequences he never anticipated — threatening both his safety and the one genuine connection he has somehow stumbled into.
63. When Evil Lurks (2023)
Deep in the Argentine countryside, two brothers make a disturbing discovery: a man in their village is hosting something ancient and malevolent, and it is almost ready to emerge. Their panicked attempt to deal with the situation quietly turns out to be exactly the wrong move.
62. The Power of the Dog (2021)
Phil Burbank runs his ranch with a quiet menace that keeps everyone around him slightly off-balance. When his gentler brother returns home with a new wife and her reserved young son, Phil sets about making their lives uncomfortable — until something he never expected begins to get under his skin.
61. Licorice Pizza (2021)
It’s 1973 in the San Fernando Valley, and Alana and Gary are doing what teenagers do — chasing opportunity, making poor decisions, and stumbling headlong into something that might be love, or might just be the particular madness of being young at exactly the right moment.
60. Dune (2021)
An ancient and politically powerful family is dispatched to oversee the most strategically vital planet in the known universe — and the heir to that family begins receiving visions of a future so dark he can barely bring himself to look at it.
59. Inside (2021)
Confined to a single space and armed with little more than a camera and his own restless mind, Bo Burnham spent a very strange year making something that is simultaneously a comedy special, a breakdown, and a document of a particular moment in modern life.
58. The Irishman (2019)
Looking back from the far end of a long and violent life, Frank Sheeran traces the arc from decorated soldier to mob enforcer — and arrives, finally, at the question of what he may have done to the man who was once his closest friend.
57. Weapons (2025)
In a single night, almost every child in one school class simply vanishes — simultaneously, without warning, without explanation. What’s left behind is a community with no answers and a fear that whatever took them may not be finished.
56. About Time (2013)
On his twenty-first birthday, Tim learns something extraordinary about the men in his family. Armed with this knowledge, he sets out to build the perfect life — and discovers, gradually and sometimes painfully, that perfection was never really the point.
55. Baby Driver (2017)
A young driver with an almost preternatural gift behind the wheel has been settling debts for a criminal organization. When a final job goes sideways in every possible direction, his only thought is getting out alive — with the person he loves.
54. Django Unchained (2012)
Freed from bondage by a pragmatic German bounty hunter who recognizes his usefulness, Django rides south into the heart of the antebellum South on a mission to find his wife — whatever it takes and whoever stands in the way.
53. WALL-E (2008)
Left alone on an abandoned Earth with centuries of accumulated rubbish and one very loyal cockroach, a small robot goes about his work with quiet dedication — until the arrival of a sleek probe from the stars changes absolutely everything.
52. Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
A replicant working as a blade runner uncovers something buried so deeply and so deliberately that simply knowing about it puts his life in danger — and sends him in search of a legend who vanished long before he was ever built.
51. Spotlight (2015)
A small investigative unit at the Boston Globe pulls at a thread that turns into something almost too large to fully comprehend — a decades-long pattern of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, protected at every level by the very institution trusted to prevent it.
50. Roma (2018)
Mexico City, early 1970s. A quiet, observant young woman moves through the rhythms of a middle-class household she serves — caring for children, managing chaos, and navigating a life in which her own hopes and losses tend to go unnoticed by those around her.
49. V for Vendetta (2005)
A masked figure who operates in the shadows of a totalitarian Britain has a very specific plan for bringing the entire system down. All he needs is one unlikely ally — a young woman who stumbles into his world and finds she cannot walk back out.
48. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
A painter is sent to a windswept island off the Breton coast with a secret commission: to produce a marriage portrait of a young woman who refuses to sit for it. What unfolds between them, slowly and inevitably, is something neither of them planned for.
47. Sinners (2025)
Two brothers come back to the place they grew up hoping for a clean break from everything that came before. What greets them instead is something rooted far deeper than their own history — and far more dangerous than anything they left behind.
46. The Lives of Others (2006)
East Berlin, 1984. A meticulous state surveillance officer begins monitoring a playwright and his partner on behalf of the regime. Somewhere in the hours of listening, something in him begins to shift — and a man who built his career on watching others starts to see himself clearly for the first time.
45. 3 Idiots (2009)
Years after university, two old friends set out to find the third member of their group — the one who changed how all of them thought about ambition, failure, and what an education is actually supposed to be for.
44. Memento (2000)
Without the ability to form new memories, a man is forced to reconstruct his own investigation piece by piece, relying on photographs, notes, and tattoos to hold together a pursuit of justice that keeps slipping through his fingers.
43. The Invisible Guest (2016)
A businessman wakes up next to a body he claims not to have put there. With a trial looming and barely three hours before a key witness goes to the authorities, he and a specialist in legal strategy must build a defense that can withstand scrutiny — fast.
42. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Every hero, every alliance, every sacrifice leads to this: a confrontation with a being powerful enough to remake reality itself, and the terrible question of whether anything — or anyone — can actually stop him.
41. Get Out (2017)
A weekend trip to meet the parents should be manageable. But something about the way his girlfriend’s family welcomes him feels subtly, persistently wrong to Chris — and the longer he stays, the harder it becomes to convince himself he’s imagining it.
40. Inception (2010)
Breaking into someone’s dream to steal what lives there is one thing. Being hired to go deeper — to leave something behind instead of take it — is something else entirely. And doing it while carrying guilt heavy enough to collapse the whole operation is the part no one planned for.
39. A Separation (2011)
A husband and wife who love each other cannot agree on a single, consequential question: do they leave Iran to give their daughter a different future, or stay to care for a father who no longer remembers who they are? The answer they reach pulls everyone around them into the wreckage.
38. Argo (2012)
Six Americans are hiding in a Tehran diplomatic residence while the rest of their colleagues are held captive. The plan to get them out involves a fake science fiction film, a genuine Hollywood producer, and one CIA officer willing to walk into the middle of a crisis and bluff his way through it.
37. I’m Still Here (2024)
When the Brazilian military dictatorship reaches into her home and takes everything she relied upon, a woman must figure out how to hold her family together — and how to keep herself intact — in a country that has become somewhere she no longer recognizes.
36. Oppenheimer (2023)
The man who helped end one war knew, even as he did it, that he was setting something else in motion — something that could not be undone. This is the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer: his brilliance, his contradictions, and the weight of what he built.
35. RRR (2022)
Two men. Two missions. One extraordinary friendship forged in fire — before either of them became the revolutionary figures history would eventually remember. Set against the backdrop of British colonial rule in 1920s India, this is the story of who they were before the legend began.
34. Up (2009)
A grieving widower in his late seventies does something impractical, magnificent, and entirely in keeping with a promise he made long ago: he fills his house with balloons and floats it to South America. He does not expect to bring anyone with him. He does anyway.
33. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Three decades of pushing limits have not slowed Maverick down — but they have left him with a complicated past and a generation of young pilots now depending on him for a mission where the margin for error is essentially zero.
32. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
In the occupied France of the Second World War, two separate and equally audacious plans to strike at the heart of the Nazi leadership are moving toward the same night, in the same building — and only one of them is being run by soldiers.
31. Birdman (2014)
The superhero franchise that made him a star is long behind him, and Riggan Thomson is pouring everything he has left into a Broadway play he wrote himself. Whether what’s happening inside his head is genius or breakdown is a question the film is not entirely willing to answer.
30. Inside Out (2015)
Riley’s emotions have always worked as a team. But when the family uproots to San Francisco and everything familiar disappears overnight, Joy and Sadness end up lost far from headquarters — and the remaining emotions are left running things alone, with predictably disastrous results.
29. The Raid 2 (2014)
The building has been cleared, but the work isn’t over. To reach the people who sit above the criminals he fought in the first film, Rama must go undercover into Jakarta’s organized crime world — and stay there long enough to gather what he needs without losing himself entirely.
28. The Prestige (2006)
Two magicians who began as colleagues allow a single tragedy to harden into obsession. Their rivalry escalates through theft, sabotage, and increasingly desperate invention — until each man has sacrificed so much in the pursuit of superiority that the cost of winning is barely distinguishable from losing.
27. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
After a painful breakup, Joel discovers that his ex-girlfriend has had him scientifically erased from her memory. He decides to do the same. But somewhere in the process of forgetting her, he remembers why he fell in love in the first place.
26. Coco (2017)
Music runs through Miguel like breathing — which makes his family’s absolute prohibition on it feel like being told not to exist. In pursuit of a legendary ancestor and the truth behind the ban, he crosses over into the Land of the Dead and finds far more than he was looking for.
25. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
A famed concierge with impeccable standards and a devoted young lobby boy form an unlikely partnership that will carry them through theft, forgery, a disputed inheritance, a prison break, and a Europe on the edge of catastrophe — all while maintaining exemplary service.
24. Children of Men (2006)
It has been eighteen years since a human child was born anywhere on Earth. In a Britain fortified against a collapsing outside world, a disillusioned former activist is handed the most dangerous assignment of his life: get a miraculously pregnant woman somewhere safe before anyone else finds out she exists.
23. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Miles Morales did not ask to become Spider-Man. But a bite changed everything, and now he must figure out who he is — and what that suit actually means — while standing alongside versions of the same hero from realities nothing like his own.
22. Whiplash (2014)
Andrew wants to be one of the greats. His new instructor, Fletcher, has produced some of the greats — using methods that blur the line between mentorship and cruelty in ways that are difficult to argue with, right up until they’re impossible to ignore.
21. The Social Network (2010)
In a Harvard dorm room, a website is born that will eventually connect a billion people. In a series of deposition rooms years later, the friends, partners, and rivals left in its wake are still trying to agree on what actually happened — and who owes whom what.
20. One Battle After Another (2025)
An old enemy who everyone assumed was finished has returned — and the only people with any hope of stopping him are a scattered group of former fighters who thought that chapter of their lives was long closed.
19. Gone Girl (2014)
On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne’s wife disappears without a trace. As the investigation deepens and the cameras close in, the portrait of a marriage that emerges is a great deal more unsettling than anyone — including Nick — is prepared to discuss.
18. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Across an endless, burned-out wasteland ruled by a warlord who controls the water, a woman called Furiosa makes a break for it — taking with her the people he considered his property, and picking up a volatile stranger along the way who turns out to be surprisingly useful.
17. Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
A bookish girl arrives at her new stepfather’s military outpost in the ruins of postwar Spain and retreats into a labyrinth that speaks directly to her imagination — where a faun tells her she is a lost princess, and the tasks he sets her grow steadily more dangerous.
16. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
The Osage people of Oklahoma became extraordinarily wealthy when oil was discovered beneath their land. Then they started dying — quietly, systematically, and with the involvement of people they had every reason to trust. What the FBI found when it investigated would take decades to fully reckon with.
15. Kill Bill (2003–2004)
She was left for dead on what should have been the most important day of her life. Four years later, she opens her eyes, remembers every name on her list, and begins working through it with a focus that nothing — not exhaustion, not superior numbers, not sentiment — can interrupt.
14. Spirited Away (2001)
Chihiro is sulky and small and completely unprepared for what happens when her parents make a wrong turn and stumble into a place that does not operate by any rules she knows. To survive it — and to get her family back — she will have to become someone she isn’t yet.
13. Before Sunset (2004)
Jesse is on a book tour. Celine turns up at one of his Paris readings. They have not spoken in nine years, and he has a plane to catch in a matter of hours. What follows is a single afternoon walk through the city, and everything they never quite finished saying.
12. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Daniel Plainview arrives in a small California town with an oil drill, a persuasive manner, and a hunger for everything the ground beneath it might be worth. What he builds is extraordinary. What it costs him — and the people around him — is the real subject of the film.
11. La La Land (2016)
Sebastian wants to save jazz. Mia wants to be an actress. In Los Angeles, they find each other and find themselves falling in love — and then discover that building a life together and building the lives they’ve always wanted may not be the same project at all.
10. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Jordan Belfort arrived on Wall Street with nothing and built an empire out of ambition, persuasion, and a staggering willingness to ignore the rules. This is the story of that ascent — told with all the velocity and excess it actually contained — and the federal case that eventually caught up with him.
09. Your Name (2016)
A boy in Tokyo and a girl in a mountain village keep waking up to find they’ve traded lives overnight. As they learn to navigate each other’s worlds, something more than curiosity begins to grow — until the swaps suddenly stop, and one of them realizes the situation was always stranger and more urgent than it appeared.
08. The Departed (2006)
Colin Sullivan is working for the mob from inside the Boston Police Department. Billy Costigan is working for the police from inside the mob. Each knows there is a mole on the other side. Neither knows who. The race to find out is one of the finest cat-and-mouse constructions in modern cinema.
07. Oldboy (2003)
Oh Dae-Su is taken off the street one night and held in an anonymous room for fifteen years — fed, housed, and given no explanation. Then he is released just as abruptly, handed a phone and a wallet, and told the clock is already running on the five days he has to find out why.
06. Mulholland Drive (2001)
A young woman who survives a crash on a dark Los Angeles road wakes up with no idea who she is. A perky aspiring actress with a spare room and a willingness to help becomes her unlikely partner in piecing together the truth — which turns out to be considerably less straightforward than either of them expects.
05. The Dark Knight (2008)
Gotham has never seen anything quite like this. The Joker doesn’t want money or territory — he wants to demonstrate something about the nature of people, and he is willing to burn the city down to prove his point. Batman’s response forces him toward choices that may cost him everything that defines him.
04. Dune: Part Two (2024)
Paul Atreides has found his people and his purpose among the Fremen — but the destiny they are asking him to embrace is one that fills him with dread. Revenge against the forces that destroyed his family is within reach. The question is what he becomes in taking it.
03. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
The final stand has arrived. While Aragorn, Gandalf, and what remains of the free world march toward certain annihilation to draw Sauron’s eye, Frodo and Sam are making the last, most grueling steps toward a mountain that may already be too far away.
02. City of God (2002)
The Cidade de Deus housing project in Rio de Janeiro in the 1960s through the 1980s: a place where growing up means choosing between the camera and the gun, and where the line between witness and participant has a way of disappearing when you least expect it.
01. Parasite (2019)
The Kim family is poor in the specific, grinding way that makes ingenuity feel like a survival skill. When an opportunity opens a door into the home of the wealthy Park family, they take it — one by one, with impressive coordination, and without any clear idea of where the plan ends. What follows is one of the most precisely observed and deeply unsettling films ever made.
