The plot becomes riddled with ambiguities and bourgeois guilt mid the dismay of modern identity. It’s rare that a film takes an almost hostile attitude towards the audience by manipulating, provoking, teasing, and then revealing so little. Or is it? Haneke leaves ample clues for the viewer but he obscures them, too.

Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche) Laurent are the middle-aged upper-class French couple under attack by unseen forces out to intimidate them.Īs Caché unfolds and the Parisian family at its center weather the storm, a superbly crafted and at times extremely upsetting psychological endurance test results, and one that salts the wounds of Western contempt for the Muslim world as the unseen stalker in the Laurent’s lives may well be an abused figure from Georges past.

Enjoy!Ĭaché, the eighth film from Michael Haneke (and by the way, both 2009’s The White Ribbon and 2012’s Amour also rank with the century’s finest) uses surveillance and voyeurism as mechanisms for anxiety and suspense. A best documentaries list will be forthcoming.Īnd now, with all that said, here are the best films the 21st century has seen so far. PLEASE NOTE: While listing a mere 25 films means that many worthwhile films and filmmakers had to be left by the wayside, there is a lengthy honorable mentions section at the end of the list.Additionally, the following list does NOT include non-fiction films. The films on this list show a wide-ranging assortment which includes auteur-driven films, influential movies, astonishing international fare, a few blockbusters, plentiful arthouse gems, genre films, and many magnificent female-led projects, too (that’s truly been one of this century’s best progressions), each of which represent the very best of the cinematic artform. While we’ve been seeing less and less movies being shot on 35mm in favor of now ubiquitous and widely accessible digital formats, the following list doesn’t really delve into these trends and it also eschews the gimmicks and populist movements that have been dominating multiplexes as of late (3-D everything holds no footing here and there’s an absence of the enjoyable but often tedious Marvel movies, and while I love Harry Potter and Middle Earth, too, those films can be read about on another list). So far the 21st century has been an exciting, variable, and unpredictable period for cinema.

100 best movies 2017