New York Times Reader's Ballot Explained

Here's a little of what went into my selections for the New York Times Reader's Ballot for best films of the 21st century (release order):

Gladiator (2000)

Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott rocketed up my list of essential filmmakers upon the release of Gladiator.  Crowe had been a favorite since his supporting role in The Quick and the Dead (1995), but it was his turn as Maximus where everything seemed to click.  Certainly Hollywood took notice, and he became as big a star as there was in the years that followed, which were followed by the equally predictable backlash, both within Hollywood and pop culture, which Crowe has been struggling to overcome ever since.  Scott's career before Gladiator wasn't something that meant overly much to me, although I can pick and choose from it, and that's still what I've done since, but after Gladiator he realized the historical epic was something he was pretty good at, and while critics, and audiences, were muted at best with the results, and I tended to love them, up to and including The Last Duel (2021), which was a leading contender for inclusion in my selections, edged out mostly because Scott was already represented.  In the minds of many Gladiator is still a distant second to Spartacus (1960), but for me it's not even close. 

Alexander (2004)

What Scott and Crowe are for Gladiator, Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell are for Alexander, although moreso, for me.  Except for his earliest films, I've caught up with Stone's whole filmography, and, well, Farrell is my favorite actor.  Popularly and critically considered a laughingstock, I don't care.  I think everything about Alexander works perfectly, from Vangelis' score to the expansive and ridiculously generous supporting cast,: Val Kilmer, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Rhy Myers, Rosario Dawson, Jared Leto, Toby Kebbell, Brian Blessed, Christopher Plummer, and certainly Angelina Jolie.  The storytelling is the most complete I have ever seen in film, up to and including Citizen Kane, to my mind its only real competition, the advantage against being Stone having his whole career in the shadow of Orson Welles' cinematic breakthroughs it took decades for anyone to even begin to consider adopting.

Munich (2005)

Steven Spielberg has been considered one of the greatest directors in Hollywood for so long, it's sometimes difficult to parse the results, caught up in his greatest commercial successes and the WWII duology, Schindler's List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), that came to dominate his legacy.  But for me there's no question at all which is his best film, this century or otherwise, and that's Munich.  Completely free to pursue, at this point, the film and the message and the tone as he wanted them, he swung for the fences.  The results end on a note that baffled audiences (Eric Bana lost in a moment of passion), but are the sole commentary on the post-9/11 world the film was intended to address.  It doesn't hurt that it also captures Daniel Craig in the definitive transition moment to James Bond, the role of his lifetime.  Bana flared briefly but brilliantly in Hollywood, and at the exact right moment for Spielberg to capture what he needed for Munich to work.  Also doesn't hurt to have John Williams in one of his later moody masterpiece scores, perhaps his last great triumph.

The Departed (2006)

I haven't always admired Martin Scorsese, or Leonardo DiCaprio, but for me this is the perfect moment for both, except Scorsese's Silence (2016), which transcends just about anything he's done before or since, an achievement I still have yet to catch up with myself.  DiCaprio wants so desperately to be a classic Hollywood star, and he's remained the last star of the classic Hollywood tradition today, it's nice to be able to say he absolutely nails it here.  If it had been released in any other era, it would've been recognized as the achievement it was, and he would've lapped up the Academy Award for Best Actor.  Add in another amazing supporting cast, including Matt Damon in one of his perfect roles, and even a Saturday Night Live obsession that followed (You're a cawp!  No you're a cawp!), and, just spit-balling here, perhaps a nudge for a fellow New York filmmaker (Woody Allen) to step out of his comfortable trappings, which had begun with Match Point (2005) but led to the superior but overlooked Cassandra's Dream (2008).

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

The best Western I've ever seen, well past the genre's prime, well past the revisionist years that followed, so that we can simply relish a legend past his prime, when he's become ripe for the picking.  Brad Pitt is the only actor working today capable of challenging DiCaprio.  They starred together, appropriately, in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019), and it was Pitt who shined brightest, without seeming to try.  Pitt was the template Robert Pattinson later followed so acutely, a pretty boy who pursued roles that demanded much more than that, and most of the time, he opted for something grandiose (Twelve Monkeys) rather than subtle.  Well, Assassination is subtle.  It's calm, it's meditative.  It's still waiting its due.  Casey Affleck exploded after this, became a whole sensation (Manchester by the Sea).  Andrew Dominik still waits, himself, to be acknowledged, allowed himself to be absorbed by the white noise of Netflix (Blonde), from which he hopefully emerges at some point.  Another great supporting cast, including a pre-MCU Jeremy Renner.

The Fall (2008)

More than a decade on and still waiting for this to become at the very least a cult sensation, but anyway, this is a true work of genius, a labor of love that explodes the artistic potential of Tarsem previously demonstrated by The Cell (2000) to heights seldom seen in Hollywood, an expansive and hugely imaginative film about storytelling itself, and its potential to save a life, even if it's the storyteller himself.  Lee Pace, as a result of The Fall, briefly became a known commodity, which culminated, of all things, in an MCU appearance (Guardians of the Galaxy), but also the thankless task of appearing in the Hobbit trilogy, after Peter Jackson found himself completely abandoned by everyone who adored Lord of the Rings.  As I like to say, The Fall is the grownup version of The Princess Bride.  Tarsem's career since has inexplicably stalled, but I remain hopelessly devoted.

The Dark Knight (2008)

Christopher Nolan is the greatest director of the 21st century, and it's not even remotely arguable.  Although his first film, Following, was released in 1998, his breakthrough, Memento, crashed into 2001 as a complete revelation.  His first attempt at the Dark Knight, Batman Begins (2005) was good, but The Dark Knight was leagues beyond anything even he had done, in part because he captured Heath Ledger at his creative peak.  I'd been a fan of Ledger since Roar, a short-lived TV series, so I thought I knew him pretty well.  Nobody did.  He turned the Joker into a work of art.  Fortunately Nolan had a complete film around the performance.  If any film this century ever had a chance to unseat Alexander in my affections, it was The Dark Knight.  Where Farrell had plenty of other interesting projects to explore, Stone's career stalled after a while.  Nolan kept plugging away at the new heights.  Eventually he reached Oppenheimer (2023), a throwback to old Hollywood that Hollywood itself finally deemed worth acknowledging at the Academy Awards, still operating at levels well beyond anyone else.

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Otherwise known as the first time an actor truly stole the movie from Quentin Tarantino, to the point where he was essential to the celebrated director's next two projects (Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight), this is the spectacular Hollywood debut of Christoph Waltz, who plowed his way through the next decade or so until audiences less familiar with how he entered wondered why someone would bother making a fuss over him in a James Bond movie (Specter).  Also helped launch the career of Michael Fassbender, and hey! there's Brad Pitt again.  Difficult for fans beholden to his early classics (Pulp Fiction), this is proof that Tarantino could choose to be ambitious on a different scale.  With all due apologies to Spielberg, it's reasonable to suggest the scene where Waltz interviews the Frenchman does more to underscore the horrors of WWII than anything depicted in Schindler's List.  In this case, tell, don't show.  Because it's Tarantino, of course it works.

Warrior (2011)

With all due apologies to Pattinson, the competition for greatest actor discovered this century after Farrell begins with Tom Hardy, and while he appeared and starred in movies before Warrior, and had his breakthrough in Inception (2010), this should forever be known as his calling card, along with The Departed the closest anyone's come to Brando.  And somehow Joel Edgerton is every bit his match.  How is that even possible?  Gavin O'Connor crafts a masterpiece far beyond the fighting film achievements that preceded it, all the Rockys, all of it, in reaching the most earned cathartic climax ever captured in the movies, at once human and mythic in its dimensions.

Isle of Dogs (2018)

Admittedly, I was very late to Wes Anderson.  Rushmore (2009), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), I knew his films were beloved by critics, and it was absolutely that, just being contrarian, because most of the time, films loved by critics are hard to love by general audiences.  They love art house, they love their agendas being embraced.  But Wes Anderson is a master craftsman.  I started paying attention with The Life Aquatic (2004), but Isle of Dogs is really where it all clicked.  He can absolutely work the same magic with live actors, but his stop-motion animation, first captured in Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), is, I don't know, akin to Robin Williams in Aladdin (1992), pure creative id.  It's the latest movie released in the past twenty-five years I obsessed over and feel comfortable placing among the very best ever made, this century or otherwise.