The 16 Best Movies of the 21st Century, ranked

16. The Social Network

Fincher and his screenwriter, TV writer-god Aaron Sorkin, have made a seemingly modest picture that achieves something close to greatness the old-fashioned, slow-burning way: By telling a story with faces, dialogue and body language of all types, from awkward to swaggering. It also does the unthinkable: In a climate where many of us feel compelled to advertise our ever-changing moods, our hopefully not-so-ever-changing relationship status, our 'what we're up to now' scheduling minutiae, The Social Network slows down the clock, just for the space of a few hours, to ask, 'Why?'

—Stephanie Zacharek, Movieline

15. Ex Machina

Sizzlingly smart and agreeably sententious, Mr. Garland's film transcends some all-too-human imperfections with gorgeous images, astute writing and memorably strong performances.

—Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal

14. Under The Skin

This stark and intensely controlled film is the work of a powerful visual stylist and storyteller, one who looks like he belongs on the short list of directors who have carried the narrative methods of the silent era deep into modern cinema

—Andrew O'Hehir, Salon

13. Eternal Sunshine Of the Spoteless Mind

A wildly imaginative, hugely entertaining tour de force that asks big questions about life and love and fate while never ceasing to fully engage the viewer.

—Glenn Kenny, Premiere

12-9

12. The Hurt Locker

A small classic of tension, bravery, and fear, which will be studied twenty years from now when people want to understand something of what happened to American soldiers in Iraq. If there are moviegoers who are exhausted by the current fashion for relentless fantasy violence, this is the convincingly blunt and forceful movie for them.

—David Denby, The New Yorker

11. Get Out

Peele succeeds where sometimes even more experienced filmmakers fail: He's made an agile entertainment whose social and cultural observations are woven so tightly into the fabric that you're laughing even as you're thinking, and vice-versa.

—Stephanie Zacharek, Time

10. Million Dollar Baby

With its careful, unassuming naturalism, its visual thrift and its emotional directness, 'Million Dollar Baby' feels at once contemporary and classical, a work of utter mastery that at the same time has nothing in particular to prove.

—Dana Stevens, The New York Times

9. The Master

Nothing as big and strange and right as 'The Master' should feel as effortless as it does. That's not the same as saying that it's light. It's actually heavy. It weighs more than any American film from this or last year. It's the sort of movie that young men aspiring to write the Great American Novel never actually write.

—Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe

8-5

8. A Ghost Story

I rarely see a movie so original that I want to tell people to just see it without reading any reviews beforehand, including my own. David Lowery's 'A Ghost Story' is one of those movies

—Matt Zoller Seitz, RogerEbert.com

7. Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive is thrilling and ludicrous. The movie feels entirely instinctual. The rest is silencio.

—J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

6. No Country for Old Men

Many of the scenes in 'No Country for Old Men' are so flawlessly constructed that you want them to simply continue, and yet they create an emotional suction drawing you to the next scene. Another movie that made me feel that way was 'Fargo.' To make one such film is a miracle. Here is another.

—Roger Ebert

5. Inside Llewyn Davis

The most satisfyingly diabolical cinematic structure that the Coens have ever contrived, and that's just one reason that I suspect it may be their best movie yet.

—Glenn Kenny, RogerEbert.com

4-1

4.Caché (Hidden)

A perplexing and disturbing film of great effect

—Roger Ebert

3. Synecdoche, New York

To say that Charlie Kaufman's 'Synecdoche, New York' is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now.

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

2. There Will be Blood

The film is above all a consummate work of art, one that transcends the historically fraught context of its making, and its pleasures are unapologetically aesthetic. It reveals, excites, disturbs, provokes, but the window it opens is to human consciousness itself.

—Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

1. The Tree of Life

Better than a masterpiece—whatever that is—The Tree of Life is an eruption of a movie, something to live with, think, and talk about afterward.

—Nick Pinkerton, The Village Voice"