Top 50 best films from this early 21st century (2000-2016)<

Eclectic but not exhaustive, this top 50 of the best films of the early 21st century (2000-2016) is full of plurality and diversity: ranging from blockbusters to Mad Max Fury Road to experimental feature films that only Philippe Grandrieux can offer us.

Cinema is a matter of taste. A sensitivity that finds itself, an emotion that is unleashed. Exercise oh so difficult and random in its judgment as the films are numerous, the classification of films is a matter of personality. It was then that, with his passion, your editor here present had fun making a small assessment of the outstanding works of this beginning of the century, revealing a panel of films as varied as they are intimate. Most of the films that will be mentioned in this list have marked this beginning of the century by their visual and narrative richness. Searching, analyzing is a pleasure for every cinephile; and this beginning of the century will have seen, among other things, the appearance of future big names such as Jeff Nichols or Steve McQueen, or the critical and public ennoblement of visionaries as evidenced by David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson. Happy reading.

50. Enter the Void by Gaspar Noé (2010) with Nathaniel Brown, Paz de la Huerta, Cyril Roy, Emily Alyn Lind, Jessa Huhn…

A work as mental as it is organic, Enter The Void accentuates the permanent will of its author to go beyond his limits. It is then that the work builds its narrative structure on reincarnation, life, death, and drug taking. The garish colors of Tokyo shimmer, the grainy image blends the opaque and claustrophobic monstrosity of this evil lair. Visually, the feature film is an enthralling showdown revealing the talent of Gaspar Noé, as its fluidity imposes itself: frenetic syncopated editing, aerial tracking shots, camera spinning in the torrid Japanese nights, subjective twilight vision. Sometimes childish or childish in the reappropriation of some of its themes, Enter The Void wavers but never falls. Behind this suffocating filmic slump, an actress radiates the screen with all her voluptuousness: Paz de la Huerta. Hypnotic, sexualized to the core, and whose curves transform the film with all its erotic intent.

49. It Follows by David Robert Mitchell (2015) with Maika Monroe, Keir Gilchrist, Jake Weary, Olivia Luccardi, Daniel Zovatto…

Sex as a vector of melancholy becomes a deadly gesture in adolescents losing their own innocence in a world where adults are absent. It Follows is a horrific chase between a ghost and its victim who is the only one to see it. Despite a climax that is not as chilling as the rest of the film, It Follows reappropriates the slasher and teenage movie genres with passion and a desire to pay homage to a whole section of horror cinema. Behind its neurotic madness: It Follows has a cinematography that makes it a striking work as if the visual stiffness of Nicolas Winding Refn ventured into the middle of the American middle class of Sofia Coppola while reappropriating the codes of horror of the 80s

48. Holy Motors by Leos Carax (2012) with Denis Lavant, Edith Scob, Eva Mendes…

Schizophrenic sketch film, where a man changes his costume as his life, Holy Motors hides many secrets. In his lugubrious logorrhea which is a diatribe for his love and his hatred of cinema, Leos Carax exhausts himself in triggering surprise through the prism of this farandole of specters each as different as the other. We go from character to character, from one film genre to another, from reality to surrealism. We see two strangers who pretend to copulate, a primitive being horny in front of Eva Mendes, a man killing his double, limousines that communicate. Holy Motors is a film that seems evanescent, seeming not to exist, calling into question the veracity of the consequences of our own actions, making human beings a puppet whose identity is erased in the palm of their hands. The man plays a role or the cinema seeks a face. Cinema is life, life is cinema. A bit like humans, Holy Motors is both beautiful and ugly, sublime and ridiculous, self-centered and generous, soft and dark, dark and funny, imperfect and brilliant at the same time. And it's all just a role...

47. Miami Vice by Mickael Mann (2006) with Jamie Foxx, Gong Li, Colin Farrell…

With Miami Vice, Michael Mann does not revolutionize his cinema, made of action and lyricism as a John Woo but manages to create an intoxicating thriller, whose aesthetic class fascinates from start to finish. From a mastered and flawless plot on drug cartels, the American director immerses his feature film in his own universe to magnify the contemporary decorum that surrounds his protagonists. The HD camera still works wonders, whether during romantic nights out or anxiety-provoking daytime entrances. Miami Vice is an aesthete film, whose architecture presents very few action scenes, preferring then to interfere in the blood flow of its amorous intrigue.

46. Speed ​​Racer by Lana and Lilly Wachowski (2008) with Emile Hirsch, Susan Sarandon, Nicolas Helia and John Goodman…

Speed ​​racer is a playful artistic gesture whose creativity reinvents itself at every moment and holds this dichotomy that is intelligible to him: on the one hand the evocation of a childish imagery, shaped by its garish colors and its car races that one would think came out of a video game or an animated film which confront work of craftsmanship, of great mastery on the part of two directors presenting us with a hallucinogenic spectacle. Speed ​​Racer is an epic adventure gem. The usual themes such as free will or the penance of the oppressed are present with the Wachowskis, and make Speed ​​racer a crackling cinematic UFO.

45. Trouble Every Day by Claire Denis (2002) with Béatrice Dalle, Vincent Gallo, Tricia Vessey…

Shy, constantly seeking to understand the intimate, Trouble Every Day flies on its own wings, like this simple scarf twirling in the air of Paris. In front of us, a work then immersed in a latent frustration seeing two sick “vampires” trying somehow to channel a carnivorous demon growing inside them. Directly, by her ghostly construction, Claire Denis squares a padlock in instinctual temptations, a bodily evil that prevents bringing out the monster that is the human being, the calm before the storm. Claire Denis therefore films two distinct stories, two souls in pain chained in spite of themselves, so that they do not reveal their true bloody face to their own congeners. Mechanically, behind its disturbing and glaucous aspect, the feature film is often silent, and Claire Denis lets her camera wander in it, her breathless photography on the looks, on the bodies like prey, especially when she films intimate scenes where mix sexual passion and fear of losing control in the face of this bloodthirsty bestiality.

44. Inherent Vice by Paul Thomas Anderson (2015) with Joaquin Phoenix, Josh Brolin…

As in the adaptation of Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg, where man and his universe overlap, Inherent Vice is part of in an era, ranging from corrupt FBI agents to Nazi mobsters, one that seems fueled by the hippie movement, but unfortunately languishes in a kind of burlesque drollery, where the psychedelia of parties, the flashy of floral shirts s fades away in favor of the obscurity of a sectarian society and the esotericism of destructive movements. On this one, Paul Thomas Anderson is brilliantly simple in his relationship between content and form, hermetic without being cold, to give birth to snippets of unforgettable flashes in this police investigation which is not one. Inherent Vice is dazzling, proving to be captivating in the description of a fallen era, thus making the last breaths of its eroticism felt.

43. Three Times by Hou Hsiao Hsien (2005) with Shu Qi, Chang Chen…

Love. His irreverence, his impetuosity, his fragility. It is a vague and solid notion at the same time, which pierces the temporal strata to better codify the contours of an era. Love says everything about who we are and what surrounds us. It is a liberating act, emotional but with an almost political allure. Hou Hsiao Hsien understood this perfectly and through the journey of three couples during three different eras (1966, 1911, 2005), the filmmaker studies his environment, observes with nostalgia and melancholy the mutation of a country in its political symptoms and social, and scrutinizes the smallest detail of a universe that is changing and causing a variation in its transcription. From the beginning, Hou Hsiao Hsien plays with contrasts and magnifies his vision of the world through the meticulousness of his setting, his adoration for the ordinary and the everyday, the luminosity of his decor (natural light or incandescent neon), the phosphorescence of body and especially by its soundtrack where each era, each memory is attached to a particular song. And yes, Three Times is a small miracle of cinema.

42. Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg (2012) with Robert Pattinson, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche…

Cosmopolis is a film of hypnotic visual mastery and Cronenberg makes it an almost claustrophobic work, suffocated by the infinite expanse of its dialogues with surrealist symbolism engaged in situations of burlesque absurdity. What do the limousines do at night, Eric Packer will ask us. Cosmopolis is a film about immensity, with a fascinating game of mirrors where the director puts his staging in tune with all this wordy eccentricity, confronts his aesthetic audacity with the literary extremism of Don DeLillo, and brings the light about an actor, Robert Pattison. Behind its philosophical reflections, Cosmopolis hides an irony, a burlesque humor. Like this long final confrontation, the manipulation of words is all the rage, the dehumanization is the most total, and death hangs by a thread. Under its abrupt and almost impenetrable airs, Cosmopolis reveals itself little by little to reveal a great film.

41. The Neon Demon by Nicolas Winding Refn (2016) with Elle Fanning, Karl Glusman, Jena Malone, Bella Heathcote, Abbey Lee…

What stands out when you watch the film, as with Only God Forgives, is is this concomitance in the identification: Elle Fanning is NWR and NWR is the actress: a soul which fills with ego and which runs to its loss. The radical gesture is almost schizophrenic. Touching even. Its dichotomy is its fuel, the source of its beauty. The symmetry of Refn's cinema with its subject is scathingly true: this quest for perfection that disintegrates from within to give birth to an incarnate evil. Unconsciously, the director bristles with a mise-en-abîme of his own staging. Close to the genre film or even to the Series B, to the game of massacre, to the fantasy where the influence of Gaspar Noé will prevail through the use of an imagery of the primitiveness of feelings and the visceral iconography of human ties, The Neon Demon nevertheless retains its own fetishistic atmosphere and does not give a damn about the specifications of the exploitation film. And it is with a certain sneer that The Neon Demon becomes the opposite of the expectation aroused: a “horrifying” fashion film and not a horror film that appropriates the world of fashion. A dizzying sick film.

40. Django Unchained by Quentin Tarantino (2013) with Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington…

In this Django Unchained blows a wind of freedom, an almost primary and relaxed fun that floods the spectator's mind to see his transgressive verbal fights, to widen his eyes in front of his compulsive but enjoyable trashy gun fights, to play with pop musical anachronism where Tarantino has fun with his verbal jousts which put his actors, more charismatic each other, under the limelight. All this is perfect, we feel a real richness in this composite universe between fiction and historical reality, the fiction allowing Tarantino to embody the silhouettes of the past by real comic book characters, with all the excitement that this brings up in the viewer. Who says Tarantino says a series of cult scenes with dialogues written to the comma (the humiliation of KKK), incisive punchlines, graphic violence both funny and frenetic (“say goodbye to Miss Laura”). Django Unchained is a moment of bravery with an implacable rhythm (except at Candyland), which combines expert work and never-before-seen efficiency.

39. La Vie Nouvelle by Philippe Grandrieux (2002) with Zachary Knighton, Anna Mouglalis, Marc Barbé, Zsolt Nagy, Raoul Dantec…

Sombre had marked the spirits with the advent of its kinetic telescoping made of devouring madness and of an unstructured image, trembling and alienated by its animality. A dissolved work that oozed unease and made the body the primitive energy of a cinematographic style as prodigious as it was insidious. Yes, Philippe Grandrieux staged a cinema off the beaten track, composed of a more than vague narrative scheme even if the red thread of love stored around its protagonists followed one another effortlessly. But with La Vie Nouvelle, the director decides to amplify his profession of faith, to desynchronize even more his way of apprehending scriptwriting. The shock is even stronger, more pessimistic. Grandrieux's cinema is transformed into something transcendental, violent, mystical where bodies dance indiscriminately to live and experience. As with Sombre, the author abuses his image, makes cinema a panting machine, to make it crackle.

38. Gone Girl by David Fincher (2014) with Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Missi Pyle, Scoot McNairy…

As in Eyes Wide Shut, the thought of the couple, the spirit of the other, our place in a duo and our responsibilities are at the heart of Gone Girl where the only thing that matters is public opinion. Who are we in the microcosm of collective thought, how to manipulate our image wisely and have control of our own existence. A film that will highlight the immense talent of Rosamund Pike, an actress who is unfortunately all too rare. The director does not produce a simple thriller with multiple windows, but offers here a bewitching story with many reading tracks on the intentions and manipulations of his own protagonists, especially during the second part, where a game of cat and mouse goes become a game of massacre in which without going into a schizophrenic delirium, the ghost of Fight Club will haunt the spirit of Gone Girl: the destruction of a universe for the self-construction of a self in parallel with the society of consumption and appearance. A melancholic and sneering vertigo on a fascinating quest for identity, especially in a last part with almost outrageous black humor.

37. Steve McQueen's Hunger (2008) with Michael Fassbender, Stuart Graham, Laine Megaw, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon…

As in his two following works, Steve Mcqueen brilliantly explores the notion of freedom and confinement bodily. In Shame, Brandon's psychic and dependent destruction automates the use of his body by an all-consuming addiction. With Bobbie Sands, the reverse is different, where the free spirit detaches itself from its envelope and allows it to destroy its body for a cause which exceeds it. What are the limits of a man in the face of the deprivations imposed on him? He imposes new ones on himself to go beyond his own human condition. The seriousness is there, the visual pain accentuates it, a few shots are enough to create fear where the abuse, the scars become trophies of humanization. . It was then that through a grueling narrative coup, a fixed shot of about twenty minutes, Steve Mcqueen no longer makes the image speak but lets the words bring out all their purity and nobility. Hunger is a great film about the abuse of the body resulting in the elevation of the spirit and thus, makes Steve Mcqueen, the most fascinating director discovered at the beginning of the 21st century.

36. Spring Breakers by Harmony Korine (2013) with James Franco, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, Selena Gomez, Rachel Korine…

Spring breakers and its small armada of “girls” tumble like a storm with their cinematographic codes full of heads: “clippesque” staging, grotesque universe based on the 2000s MTV version, hype music with Skrillex dubstep. But the film does not hide it, the context falls apart on its own, Spring Break is just a simple subterfuge to make way for a film that takes on the face of a true ode to self-expression. even. Harmony Korine balances a film teeming with ideas of cinema and staging while desacralizing in its setting in abyss, the puritanical icons made by the American cinema industries such as Selena Gomez or Vanessa Hudgens. While the film could have followed almost step by step the drifts of a Miley Cyrus and her culture of superficiality, it is the ghost of Britney Spears who wanders throughout the film, like a fallen angel, representing the drift of an America that no longer knows on which foot to dance. Like Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, Spring Breakers is an assumed pop work, completely twisted and enjoyable.

35. Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky (2011) with Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Vincent Cassel, Barbara Hershey, Winona Ryder…

Ballet is raw art, leaving scars like a contact sport. Black Swan plays with this idea and moves into the realm of body horror. Darren Aronofsky reclaims David Cronenberg's The Fly, and slowly Nina begins to morph into something else, her fingernails cracking, her bleeding, her flesh coming off in shreds. Black Swan is a carnal, sensory, physical work, filming all the scratches, the slightest sprain, highlighting the slightest physical bruises of its dancer. From this neurotic nightmare of a great painful power, Aronofsky constantly derails his film by exorcising Nina's mind, filled with strong scenes between satire and horror (the masturbation scene) and sees the decadence and destruction of Nina, who sinks down to drink the chalice to the dregs. Hence the perfect deadly symmetry between the destiny of a woman and the role of an artist.

34. The Assassin by Hou Hsiao-Hsien (2016) with Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Zhou Yun, Satoshi Tsumabuki…

The Assassin is a magnificent creation, a martial arts film which voluntarily refuses the spectacular and disentangles from the primary pleasures of the genre to obtain something more beautiful, mysterious and slowly diffuses its meditative influence. Violence is not the climax of The Assassin: this impression is reinforced by the way Hsiao Hsien draws poetry from his fight scenes. But what is most extraordinary is how brilliantly Hsiao Hsien incorporates the cathartic release that emanates from these sequences. And it is therefore through this delicacy of the line, this monolithic intrusion into genre cinema that the author inveighs against this slowness, this staggering agony, this hypnosis which follows the same guideline throughout his film and which strips away all notion of escape: The Assassin retains its blows, until the end, through splendid sequences and becomes a cinema where it is difficult to penetrate, to clear up this opaque surface. But from this opacity, from these common places where the world is frozen, from this camera which tells us what to see but which leaves us the choice to scrutinize the slightest object, Hsiao Hsien keeps his mysteries while sharing them in a respondent. Hence an extraordinary cinematic freedom and dignity that leave you speechless.

33. Donnie Darko by Richard Kelly (2001) with Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Drew Barrymore, Noah Wyle, Patrick Swayze…

David Lynch got into teenage movies? No, but it's like. With Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly brings out the puritanism of America in a work on the borders of genres. Pushing further the reflections and the confusion on time travel, Donnie Darko scratches his youth and his most primary form of schizophrenia. As bewitching as it is hypnotizing with his ability to arouse fear and extract emotions, Donnie Darko harshly clears up the adolescent dream under the musical jousting of a sumptuous soundtrack. Inviting the viewer to interpretation and imagination, Richard Kelly unleashes a captivating cinematic odyssey of madness.

32. Collateral by Michael Mann (2004) with Tom Cruise, Jamie Foxx, Jada Pinkett Smith, Mark Ruffalo, Peter Berg

In a Los Angeles transfigured by its deserted immensity, Collateral is a work of masterful virtuosity at mystical aura. The main character of Michael Mann's new film is neither Vincent, a grizzled and enigmatic hitman, nor Max, a taxi driver taken hostage in this nocturnal expedition. The star of the film is this city, filmed as a dense, atmospheric place, dancing in sober and brassy evenings with a jazzy atmosphere or in Night-Clubs with roaring music. Los Angeles is buried in eternal night, the city is strewn with lampposts following the luminous trail of cars on these endless roads, swallowed up by the grandiosity of buildings. It's fascinating how Michael Mann manages to make us feel the life that springs up in this city, this hazy atmosphere where the thoughts of each other vanish in an exhausting loneliness and where everyone follows their own path in indifference. the most complete. Michael Mann monopolizes the very essence of this city, to make it a living being at the heart beating with a thousand lights. Collateral, is a simple but not simplistic project, humble but not devoid of complexity, which lets the viewer soak up this twilight atmosphere in this thriller of formidable efficiency.

31. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Michel Gondry (2004) with Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson…

The sweetness of memory is a seed planted in the spirit and that never goes away. In this film, which assimilates the codes of anticipation and romance, Michel Gondry builds and deconstructs a work that mixes all the feelings of love: those who see each other and those who are buried in the meanders of the subconscious. Mockingly and romantic, Eternal Sunshine is a natural planet of overflowing sincerity where love becomes a rare commodity that should not be squandered by the nightmares of separation. Between initiatory quest and chase in the face of oblivion, Michel Gondry then uses an inventive aesthetic and a captivating mosaic on the labyrinth that is the human brain.

30. Irréversible by Gaspar Noe (2002) with Vincent Cassel, Albert Dupontel, Monica Bellucci…

Irréversible is an organic, carnal film, benefiting both from a perfect backwards editing where the scenes respond to each other others and a staggering sound work multiplying this nightmarish plunge into infinite chaos, and highlighting a brilliant production. The use of the camera is impressively mastered, with this accumulation of fixed or completely volatile sequence shots that go off in all directions. Gaspar Noé reappropriates the codes of the “rape and revenge” genre to extract a turbulent sensation that is difficult to enjoy but terribly magnetic. Instead of taking a look at a decay of violence taking precedence over a certain human luminosity, Gaspar Noé takes a side road, thanks to a particularly well-written reverse chronology narration, aiming to release the monster existing in everyone. of us to finally give birth to an overwhelming emotional purity.

29. Take Shelter by Jeff Nichols (2011) with Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon…

Don't get confused: Take Shelter is not a film about the end of the world but on the fear of the end of the world that drives human beings. What is interesting to note is the pyramid creation of the narration. Little by little, this personal fear will reap more global consequences. It will plague the main character, then his family unit, especially his couple, then the professional unit and then society. This film is anchored in a permanent economic and social reality, which is presented by a humble and unassuming direction. The end of the film, meanwhile, leaves us alone with our own questioning: does this fear have real reasons to be founded or is it only the object of our own imagination? With touching accuracy and palpable beauty, Take Shelter is a masterstroke in the landscape of American independent cinema.

28. Paprika by Satoshi Ko (2006)

Paprika is a life-size party "dream", a labyrinth of whimsical daydreams and grandiloquent nightmares, with shimmering colors overflowing with visual inventiveness and behind this constant fantasy, hides what is most human in us. In contemporary Japan, a group of researchers has invented a technology to enter dreams to understand the human unconscious. From the outset, the film inserts us into the psychic mind of this somewhat lost cop, clinging from branch to branch, going from strata to strata, where each piece reveals a very precise symbolism. Satoshi Kon sees in the illusion and the loss of degree of reality a main theme, to better tame his art and reflect the true reality of what makes the specific nature of his characters like this schizophrenic duo Atsuko Chiba vs Paprika .

27. The Wolf of Wall Street by Martin Scorsese (2013) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey…

The Wolf of Wall Street is not a checkered portrait of Wall Street or of the world of finance, we are not in Margin Call. The new work bringing together Scorsese and Di Caprio does not give a damn about moralizing the repercussions of the actions of these brokers on the world economy. The Wolf of Wall Street shows us the maddening and gargantuan daily life of Jordan Belfort, a Wall Street broker, like one of the first scenes of the film, where Belfort snorts a line of cocaine into the anus of a woman. prostitute, with gluteal breakdown as a bonus. Here we are not here to pity the rich who get screwed with millions of dollars in commissions or to feel sorry for the fate of the poor populace who have been engulfed in this hallucinogenic monetary slump. The Wolf of Wall Street is a film about our time, where cynicism is the high point of everything, where everything has a price, where life deserves to be lived only in excess, only in decay.

26. Mysterious Skin by Gregg Araki (2004) with Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Brady Corbet, Bill Sage, Michelle Trachtenberg, Jeffrey Licon…

How delicate is the subject of pedophilia. With Mysterious Skin, Gregg Araki deviates from his joker side, forgets the irreverences of his Teenage Apocalypse to turn into a sweet, bitter director, painting his art with a tragedy, an unexplained or even inexplicable agony. In this way, Mysterious Skin will not become an analysis of a fact, nor a retrospective of a why, but will be the dissection of a trauma over time, during adolescence many years after the tragedy. Mysterious Skin is an initiatory story biased in advance, torn apart by a past that can never be forgotten. It is nonetheless an incomparable emotional rant, with lightning reality, tetanizing sexual graphics, unhinged amorous questioning but which builds its plots by small touches, transfigures its skin-deep empathy to point the finger with finesse and rage the tricksters of an America with cadaverous outlines, ubiquitous themes in the filmography of the American author: the dislocation of the family unit, the lies and the dishonesty of the television connection, illnesses, the face of love.

25. The Son of Man by Alfonso Cuaron (2006) with Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Charlie Hunnam, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor…

Even if Gravity will be an impressive critical and public success, it is especially the son of man who ennobles Cuaron as an outstanding director. Close to an exercise in style with the vigor of its long sequence shots, the son of Man is a bewitching work of anticipation sprinkled with the darkness of the human soul and its fragmentary utopian hope. In a decimated and almost post-apocalyptic world, where destruction and war are one, this chase for life and the continuity of the human species sparkles with its osmosis between symbolism and the energy of visual synergy. .

24. Her by Spike Jonze (2014) with Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Matt Letscher

In this form of anticipation film, Her takes the path of an initiatory love story, where technology will act as a vital catalyst for Theodore to learn about himself. Far from being a chronicle on the dehumanization of man, Her creates his own unreal reality to marry with delicacy, all the possibilities that technology offers to man. Technology is in the end, the very metaphor of what love is: an experience that allows us to see the world differently, a delectable space-time that opens unexpected doors for us. Jonze then wrote a terribly sensitive, intelligent film, an unprecedented but universal love story, which easily passes from hot to cold, never moralizing about the human condition, filming with humor and sadness the emotional loneliness of a man who does not asks only to free himself from the feelings which prevent him from advancing. It's just the story of a man who finally wants to start writing his own letters.

23. The Pianist by Michael Haneke (2001) with Isabelle Huppert, Benoît Magimel, Annie Girardot, Anna Sigalevitch, Susanne Lothar…

As often with Haneke, the director will cast his clinical gaze on this worldly and patriarchal bourgeoisie who sclerizes human impulses, which silences its own fantasies to turn them into unmentionable demons. Suffering his life like a burden, a perverse penance, where his melody makes him master of his body and his own desires. Behind the camera, a distance intrudes finely and will give right to the blossoming of a moribund, uninhibited madness. This cold production, made up of long sequence shots which lengthens the harshness of the scenes, establishes an austerity engulfing itself in the most disturbing absurdity, while accentuating the gap existing between the dryness of Erika's everyday life and the harshness of his private life. The pianist will prove to be a harsh work, of thunderous dehumanizing power, a descent into the abyss of solitary suffering. Haneke succeeds, because despite the harshness of the film and its physical and psychological violence, the last sequence of the film is a crushing torrent of loneliness.

22. The Tale of Princess Kaguya by Isao Takahata (2014)

The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a sad tale about the search for happiness, a fable about the purity of memory, about the fragility of our existence, a work of a rather pleasing freedom, changing paces at will between contemplative meditation and volcanic explosion. All this granted by a design in perpetual motion, both simplistic and detailed, light and dark. Graphically, it is an immediate pleasure for the eyes, it is of an unsuspected grace. Every shred of doubt falls before our eyes, where the sadness of a girl who no longer discerned her place has echoed in the ears of stellar lands in the face of a painful acceptance of an approaching death without memory.

21. Terrence Malick's New World (2005) with Colin Farrell, Q'orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer, August Schellenberg…

Malick signs a feature film that has only one small ambition : to see the beauty and the transformation of the world in the eyes of a young woman who will see her heart beating for two different men, her innocence and her childhood disappearing to better free herself, scattering to better rebuild herself. The New World is laid bare by its exceptional staging, this vision of the world through the opening of the frame, this voluntarily free almost omniscient editing, this sensitivity in action, this omnipresent movement. Here the story advances through the demonstration of movement, of the inner entrenchment of these souls in pain, in the grip of doubt, of these voice-overs in perpetual questioning about the nature of their roots, of the inclinations of these transcendental souls, of these men and women which are one with the environment. Then at many moments, the genius operates and the emotion cannot be contained in front of a magical work, of an illuminating purity.

20. Kill Bill Volume 1 by Quentin Tarantino (2003) with Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, David Carradine, Sonny Chiba, Michael Madsen…

Abandoning his long ranges of dialogues and his particular interest in thrillers while polarizing his affect for Entertainment, Quentin Tarantino puts aside his clique of losers. No more anti-heroes, junk mobsters, boxers on the tightrope, or suburban drug addicts, it's a completely different mechanism, chanbara and Japanese cinema, which squirt on the screen. Forming a diptych, a mosaic of references shaken in a shaker, Kill Bill is diluted between a Volume 1 and a Volume 2, but the first of the name speaks for itself, and gains in stripe to accentuate its value, its carnivorous and jubilant identity where Tarantino never loses his talent for secreting memorable cinematic moments, notably this dazzling sequence with the Crazy 88s. A fight of rare generosity, both in color and in black and white, pitting his heroine against a hundred yakuza. Just that.

19. A History of Violence by David Cronenberg (2005) with Viggo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris, Ashton Holmes, William Hurt…

Cronenberg plunges us into total darkness, just like his character main where Viggo Mortensen seems completely inhabited by a chaotic inner violence. Before being akin to a simple parable of a society consolidated by a certain vision of justice and defence, A History of violence is above all a cinematographic object striking by its almost primitive atmosphere between torrid marital sexual jousts and bloody outbursts at sharp aesthetics. A commissioned film on human nature, A History of violence shows us that the natural quickly returns at a gallop despite the unspoken and the lies. What makes the strength of this feature film is to leave nothing to chance, to have no waste both in its characters and in its plans, A History of Violence is a block of marble with formidable efficiency and of magnificent stylistic elegance.

18. Drive by Nicolas Winding Refn (2011) with Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Oscar Isaac…

With this modern urban thriller, Nicolas Winding Refn finally tastes the success he was waiting for . Drive is a work cast in concrete as Nicolas Winding Refn seems meticulous with his overwhelming staging and materializing alone the power of his Driver. The suffocating aesthetics of Drive and that of Ryan Gosling are one: the slowness, the silence, catapulted towards irruptions of intractable violence. The mark of the director of the Pusher trilogy is there. Drive is a lesson in directing, a block of ice with little talk, where everything seems calculated to the smallest centimeter, where nothing protrudes, all the frames are orchestrated with precision, each shot is masterfully composed. The first minutes of the film, a nocturnal escape following a break in the asphalt, are impressively meticulous, whose chiseled editing incorporates an implacable tension. Drive is a genre film that is both simple and singular, preferring to install its dreamlike atmosphere instead of warming up the engine, a real formalist and almost fetishist film, where the feelings emerge more through the image than through the dialogue. A pure Hollywood film detached from any chain, a masterstroke.

17. There Will Be Blood by Paul Thomas Anderson (2007) with Daniel Day-Lewis, Ciarán Hinds…

There will be blood, is the destiny of a man, of a country, which will then understand the tricks of the trade to claim visceral success, setting aside moral values ​​that seem terribly abstract in this frenzied race for power. There will be blood is the film of a director, an artist capturing the essence of his art like never before. Paul Thomas Anderson masters his film from the first to the last second. Visually, the environment of these great dry plains seems infinite as the photography is so sumptuous with these sequence shots penetrating deep into the oil abyss. The director films the beginnings of man's submission to money and his living conditions without ever falling into a moralizing discourse of junk. There wille be blood is as rough as Daniel Plainview's gaze, a masterful and incandescent work, with burning breath, beginning silently but ending with madness and the macabre force of words.

16. The Village of M. Night Shyamalan (2004) with Bryce Dallas Howard Joaquin Phoenix Adrien Brody William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver…

Perhaps only an innocent look at the brutality of our world is capable of crossing the barriers that surround our worst anxieties. Through this remote and reclusive community, Shyamalan virtuously depicts the bitterness of guilt and the cracks of fear that dwell in each of us. Through the prism of the fantastic and with red creatures from the dark and haunted woods, The Village is told like a minimalist but almost romantic fable with refined delicacy. Despite its sweetness and contagious vagueness, we discover a feature film of extreme richness. Behind its fluffy aspect of a political parable, The Village is above all a film that transpires cinema where the fantastic makes it possible to mix fiction and reality and above all to manipulate the minds, both that of the spectator and that of this community. Fabulously romantic, Le Village is an ode to courage and love depicting, not without bitterness, the utilitarian twists and turns of lies.

15. Spirited Away by Hayao Miyazaki (2001)

In the disorder of humanity and the disenchantment of its materialistic living conditions going against nature and its values, Spirited Away is an initiatory story for the freedom of form and identity. In this urban world which is dying by its practices, nature must take back its rights. Between Japanese tradition, ecological message and spiritual myth, Miyazaki creates a protean world whose vitality splashes every level of the story and whose poetry ramifies all the specters.

14. Mad Max Fury Road by George Miller (2015) with Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy, Nicolas Hoult…

Fury Road, it's dirty, it's furious, it's a cinema of movement, of flight forward. Everything transpires cinema, action cinema in Mad Max Fury Road. Behind the outline of the screenplay, which is perfectly transcribed on screen, where the universe is self-sufficient to reveal a kaleidoscope of rich themes, George Miller and his entire team set up a veritable cinematic tour de force with an absolute abundance of detail in the image. A veritable shameless rock opera takes place on the screen, a concert of metal in monochrome colors, where the plans overlap in an improbable hallucinogenic mastery, a surgical dissection of the fight, a choreography even of the action which enchants many times, without getting bored or repeating themselves thanks to a string of dazzling graphic ideas (the acceleration of images, the musician with the fiery guitar). What a lovely day.

13. Shame by Steve McQueen (2011) with Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale, Nicole Beharie…

Brandon is Michael Fassbender, Michael Fassbender is Brandon. Who better than him to play this role with a drawn skeleton and deep sentimental dryness. His charisma, his centrifugal force, his firmness, a kind of virility that fades with his violence, which perfectly transcribes the alienating cracks of this man. Locked in a vicious circle which robotizes his psyche, which clears his thought. Shame is a modern tragedy, a lonely enclave on an unresolved quest. McQueen speaks of addiction, of this unconscious attachment to a claustrophobic illness, but above all, depicts a consumerist society made up of solitary identities, which consume excessively without separating the human from the objects. Shame is a spectator of a loss of emotional bearings in modern society, which crystallizes the demons that inhabit us, without wanting to be the prosecutor.

12. No country for old men by Ethan and Joël Coen (2007) with Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Woody Harrelson…

No country for old men is an excellently written grid of men and women with fallen innocence and more or less different relationships with money. The Coen brothers serve us on a set a story of great quality that mixes with ease, scenes of pure tension with relentless suspense and intimate moments with almost macabre irony. No country for old men is of such quality that nothing becomes tense and dry like a cudgel taking you to the guts. Violence, money, values ​​which predominate and prioritize our modern civilization and which corrupt men to the point of bringing them back to their primitive state, will make No country for old men an uncompromising film noir with its false western airs. With this adaptation of the eponymous book by Cormac McCarthy, the Coen brothers offer us not just a simple chase against time, but a veritable collection both ironic and melancholy on the place of money in a society leaving aside his principles to satisfy his ambitions.

11. Love Exposure by Sion Sono (2009) with Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Ando…

Love Exposure tells the hellish story of true love, made almost impossible by a Japanese society that never ceases to curb his ardor by hiding behind an overwhelming religion, inhibiting his carnal impulses, driven by the fear of revealing his feelings and the dislocation of the family sphere, in a social model plagued by the malicious manipulation of a sectarian branch ready to do anything to to use the battered spirit of a disbanded population. Despite its long duration, 4 hours of film spinning at top speed in a stunning cinematic coherence, we come out of the film almost frustrated to see the credits end, so impressive is the empathy of symbiosis with the story of these colorful young teenagers and who discover the adult world through the stages of life in the emancipation of oneself and the discovery of sins and sexuality, which make the man or the woman that we are. Sion Sono magnificently embraces the radical gore and the sexual joviality of this somewhat crazy youth.

10. Oslo, August 31 by Joachim Trier (2011) with Anders Danielsen Lie, Hans Olav Brenner, Ingrid Olava, Anders Borchgrevink, Andreas Braaten…

Oslo, August 31 is not a work about addiction or abrupt act that is suicide, but diverts its story on more delicate side roads such as the fear of emptiness, the shame of having wasted one's time and of seeing that it is no longer possible to turn the pages of his own life in a good way. Guilt, this chimera, this spider that carpets the meanders of his psyche. From discussion to discussion, he seems resigned, lost in a boring human boiling. The last part of the film is more abstract, a fatal drawing, a joyful trip to hell, a last trace of him in the light of day, a pleasure finally overtaken by guilt and his definitive desocialization. A little gem, like Anders: making no noise, walking on the edge of the precipice like a shooting star galloping in an ephemeral sky.

9. The Dark Knight by Christopher Nolan (2008) with Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman…

The Dark Knight is a film of perfect cinematic quality, in the rhythm of its twists and the excellence of its imaging. Nolan keeps his fictional dramaturgy in suspense thanks to perfect writing and narrative editing, a well-honed mix between narrative and action scenes, leaving room for the iconization of his protagonists. The film lives up to its name: The Dark Knight. Batman is not there to be sanctified but to advocate justice while knowing that he can never be the face of the Order. He is like the Joker: a creation of disorder, which will push him to go against democracy, his fundamental freedoms and the rights of citizens. And in a breathless finale, the question becomes heavy and heavy: what face should justice take to let the Order rebound? Is the Order a hypocrisy that deserves to let live a state lie? But the Evil is already there. And through this, The Dark Knight then becomes the reflection of all the moral duality of America in the face of its worst demons.

8. Under The Skin by Jonathan Glazer (2014) with Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy McWilliams…

Jonathan Glazer writes and produces a work of pure plastic fascination, sometimes with a realism that borders on documentary form but with an aesthetic which leaves no stone unturned. Under the skin is in the image of Scarlett Johansson, with boundless consistency: an object film, simple as hello but terribly fascinating that goes off the beaten track, a real film proposal of omnipresent beauty. We could have expected a frenetic, sensory odyssey, it is almost nothing, just a fulminating and fantastic poetry that emerges from almost every shot of the film. This silent young praying mantis is the alter ego of Jean, a character in the fantastic Sombre by Philippe Grandrieux. Despite its silence, Under The Skin is a rich work focusing as much on feminine desire as on the limits of our humanity. A hybrid film between science fiction and a naturalist approach, Under the Skin pushes the cursor of cinematic hypnotization very far.

7. Old Boy by Park Chan Wook (2003) with Choi Min-Sik, Yu Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong, Ji Dae-han, Oh Dal-su…

Revenge is a dish that can be eaten cold. The only way to heal the wounds of the soul is to pass the time. But despite this, some things are not forgotten. With Old Boy, Park Chan Wook offers us a neurotic maze as romantic as it is immoral, as violent as it is haunting. A struggle to put an end to the memories that destroy us and that haunt a man until the end of his life. A race against time and monstrous love, which despite its radicalism, gives birth to an incandescent poetry.

6. Memories of Murder by Bong Joon-Ho (2003) with Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-Kyung, Kim Roe-Ha, Song Jae-ho, Byeon Hie-bong…

With Memories of Murder, the South Korean director strikes a blow in the sphere of thrillers. Equipped with a rather unique tone, where the rupture of the genre rages between burlesque hilarity and turgid dramaturgy, Bong Joon Ho bursts the screen with this police intrigue in the meager middle of the Korean countryside. Padlocked between the desire to describe an environment as rich as it is repulsive and the desire to stick to the genre, Memories of Murder holds, through the finesse of its staging, an unbearable suspense which establishes its journey through the prism of horror and sneer but ends up pouring out a torrent of emotion that leaves the viewer bewildered for many minutes. This last shot leaves the character and the viewer in the same position: tears in their eyes.

5. Lost in Translation by Sofia Coppola (2003) with Bill Murray, Scarlett Johansson…

Attenuated by these high Tokyo buildings, Lost in Translation camouflages itself in a bittersweet cottony blanket. Lost in Translation is about this loneliness, the one that sometimes forces us to make choices. Instinctive and heartfelt choices. Lost in translation is above all Bob and Charlotte, two beings lost in the middle of this immensity, of all this singular crowd in this multifaceted city of Tokyo. Only the looks, the smiles, the small discussions at the corner of a bed matter. Which immediately gives even more substance to this ambient spleen and this dehumanized detachment never shown in a mannered way. Because there it is, all the beauty of Lost in Translation, questioning boredom and its blandness, but Sofia Coppola is unparalleled in filming this smokescreen. The film ends in a delicate way and touches our hearts with its authenticity. A word in the hollow of the ear, like the most beautiful of declarations.

4. In the Mood For Love by Wong Kar Wai (2000) with Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Rebecca Pan, Kelly Lai Chen, Siu Ping Lam…

Wong Kar Wai examines the birth of desire with modesty magnificent, making In the Mood for love a touching film and of a class not always customary in the cinema. Failing to take love head on, In the Mood for love collects the beginnings of the first desires, of its stammerings that grab our hearts. Wong Kar Wai films the small gestures of daily life, the solitary routine, the monotony of feelings, the inner impotence in the face of emotional disarmament brought about by the loneliness of the feeling of love. This universe, in Hong Kong, bourgeois done in a good way, with its own characters on them, their perfect hairstyles, their dresses and costumes sewn to the millimeter, make In the mood for love a magnificent visual setting with rare finesse.

3. The Social Network by David Fincher (2010) with Rooney Mara, Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake…

The whole idea of ​​the film is encompassed in this first break-up scene: Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by her ex, two monologues splash against each other where incommunicability, egocentrism, opportunism, fame, competition, and the rule of the human jungle echo each other. Despite its more or less classic construction and its incessant lines of dialogue, The Social Network is nonetheless a deeply entertaining film due to the undeniable talent in writing of Aaron Sorkin and a particularly intense quality of editing between the walk in Mark Zuckerberg's earlier front and his current legal tribulations. The Social Network is not just a simple description of the creation of the Facebook site, but turns out to be much more than that, a quest for virtual identity with acid reality. David Fincher tells us about an asocial gifted man taken aback by the monster he has just created. It is literally a dive behind the scenes of the hierarchy of our universe which becomes aware of its strangeness. A work as intelligent as it is intelligible carried by the scenic elegance of Fincher, the literary precision of Sorkin and the musical magic of Reznor.

2. The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick (2011) with Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, Laramie Eppler…

Far from the proselytism denounced by his detractors, the American director delivers a work of an extraordinary poetic and metaphysical force, approaching Andrei Tarkovski's Mirror and Stanley Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. Without ever falling into the trap of propaganda, The Tree of Life is an almost Proustian ode, a humble message from a man who is not necessarily at peace with himself but who films, admires these moments of communion with nature, with the sun caressing the skin, these twigs of grass as a place to play. The Tree of Life ultimately questions the existence of god much more than it validates his presence. It is just a question of humanism where cinema is used only as a simple means of communication with others, in an incredible visual deluge of beauty. The beautiful story of a son who remembers his youth, who dissects through memories the collusion with his father, the majesty of his mother or the union of a fledgling fraternity. A cinematographic act of rare sincerity.

1. Mulholland Drive by David Lynch (2001) with Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Justin Theroux…

Mulholland Drive capsizes in troubled waters in a cynical symphony that revolves between the mirage of crime passion and the quest for dreamy redemption which withers to paint a Hollywood world with many faces: almost monstrous with cruelty where smiles fade into the shadows to engender tears of despair. Dream of an actress left behind by an unscrupulous Hollywood or nightmare of a great paranoid actress, Mulholland drive is one of the strongest love films that the history of cinema has been able to deliver. Impressive for the accuracy of its story and its vision of a Hollywood that creates misfortune and fallen angels, Mulholland Drive plays the balancing act between hot and cold, darkness and light, contemplative and horrific. David Lynch tweaks his art to offer his deadly vision of the 7^th art in which he no longer recognizes himself. Sensitive, incandescent, desperate, Mulholland Drive is the director's most masterful work. Mulholland Drive as the quintessence of cinema.