2001: Training Day dir. Antoine Fuqua

Ah, 2001. The year I was born. For my first year alive, there were three movies I was between. It was either Monsters Inc., which is a childhood classic, The Royal Tenenbaums, a movie that incorporates my favorite Gene Hackman performance and Training Day. Ultimately, I picked Training Day because it features my favorite Best Supporting Actor winning performance with Denzel Washington as Alonzo Harris. And one of my favorite monologues in film history: “You motherfuckers will be playing basketball in Pelican Bay when I get finished with you. SHU program, n***a. 23 hour lockdown. I’m the man up in this piece.”

2002: Adaptation dir. Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze collaborating with Charlie Kaufman rocks. It’s plain and simple. The writer-director duo of Jonze and Kaufman jumped from the mind bending Being John Malkovich to Adaptation and the creativity never halts. This being a film about Charlie Kaufman writing an adaptation of a Susan Orleans novel, but struggling with creativity is genius. It’s a movie about a movie being made. A MOVIE IN A MOVIE! Performance wise, Nic Cage and Meryl Streep are very good, but Chris Cooper shines. His work was rewarded at the Academy Awards when he won Best Supporting Actor.

2003: Oldboy dir. Park Chan-wook

Last August, I had the chance to see Oldboy in theaters as it was rereleased for its twentieth anniversary. I have to say that outside of seeing Stop Making Sense on the big screen, this was a top tier theater going experience. Seeing a man traverse a city in hopes of figuring out who robbed him of his life was thrilling in itself, but when you factor in not one, but two insane twists that made me gasp, I knew that Park Chan-wook was cooking with fire.

2004: The Aviator dir. Martin Scorsese

I was in Maine a few weekends ago with my girlfriend and I dragged her into a Bull Moose store in Brunswick. While she waited patiently for me to hurry up so we could explore cute coffee shops and other shops that don’t carry vinyls, I was busy buying a handful of pre-owned DVDs. One of those DVDs was the extremely underrated Martin Scorsese flick, The Aviator. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie rocks so hard. DiCaprio portrays paranoia and anxiety in a manner that’s pure and real that you feel like you’re developing paranoia with his character. I’d say it’s either this movie or Silence that is Scorsese’s most underrated. Nevertheless, both bang.

2005: Wedding Crashers dir. David Dobkin

2005 is an odd year. No movies came out that I really love, but there’s a lot I like, like A History of Violence, Munich and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. However, my true favorite from 2005 is Wedding Crashers. It’s a guys guy comedy about doing the most to get laid. One thing I know for certain is that every friend group has at least talked earnestly once in their lives about doing what Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson did in this movie. It never comes to fruition, but dreamers are allowed to dream.

2006: Casino Royale dir. Martin Campbell

A few months ago, I gave Casino Royale a rewatch and was taken aback by how much I forgot that it’s great. Mads Mikkelsen was born to be a bond villain and this was the introduction to Daniel Craig as James Bond. It’s a booming introduction and revival to a famous character and franchise. Outside of being that revitalization, Casino Royale serves as an insane action flick that begins with the opening scene where Bond chases a man through a construction site and embassy. If you’ve got free time this week, I think that Casino Royale is streaming on Amazon Prime. Give it a watch.

2007: Zodiac dir. David Fincher

It’s essentially a three way tie for 2007 between Zodiac, No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood. Three movies that come from the brains of elite directors and include outstanding performances. For the sake of transparency, I picked Zodiac over the other two films because I’m a Fincher sycophant. I could talk all day about the great visuals of the film or the thrilling plot line, but my biggest takeaway is that this is Robert Downey Jr.’s finest performance. It’s right before he makes the full turn into being a superhero and around the time he got clean, so seeing him muster up this performance was unbelievable. Fincher works wonders.

2008: The Dark Knight dir. Christopher Nolan

The Dark Knight is the ultimate bros movie. It’s crafted perfectly by Nolan with an unbelievable villain performance from Heath Ledger, but what am I saying that you don’t already know? There’s no new points that can be made about a movie that’s this great and this acclaimed. It’s just insane.

2009: Watchmen dir. Zack Snyder

Say what you will about Zack Snyder as a director, you can’t deny that Watchmen rips. It’s a superhero movie about people who shouldn’t be superheroes due to their low code of ethics and morales. On top of that, Snyder doesn’t get nearly enough credit for executing a fantastic rewriting of history. He chronicles Vietnam and Kennedy losing his head quickly, but in ways where the Watchmen are incorporated. To be honest, I geek out a bit for a successful rewrite of history in a film.

2010: The Social Network dir. David Fincher

How the fuck did The King’s Speech win Best Picture over The Social Network? Down to the nitty gritty of the film from Reznor and Ross’ score to the unique storytelling through court hearings, it’s a smash hit that excels on so many technical and creative levels. I’d go as far as saying it’s the first or second best film of the 2010’s decade.

2011: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo dir. David Fincher

BACK-TO-BACK FINCHER! I need to insert a Mike Breen “BANG” for that. What sets The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo a part from other Fincher projects and makes me enjoy it, is how there are two storylines that don’t come weave together until about forty five minutes in. I have to say, the first thirty minutes of the Rooney Mara story line is disturbing. She gets raped, then rapes the person who raped her and tattoos “I’m a rapist pig” on his chest. That whole sequence feels like it goes on for an hour, but it’s only about five minutes. It’s crazy to think that a year earlier, she played a very small yet integral role in The Social Network and is then the lead in a Fincher film.

2012: Skyfall dir. Sam Mendes

Two Bond flicks made the list, but if you really know me, you’ll know this isn’t surprising. My dads James Bond is Sean Connery. Mine is Daniel Craig. So, I decided to pay homage to my Bond by incorporating him twice. The major differences between Casino Royale and Skyfall is the aura of Bond. In Casino Royale, he’s an untouchable spy with loads of moxie that can’t be denied. In Skyfall, Bond is battling demons and trying to get back to where he once was. Everyone loves a good comeback story. It’s just better when Javier Bardem is the villain and Albert Finney is helping Bond win the final shootout.

2013: The Wolf of Wall Street dir. Martin Scorsese

The same way that I have nothing new to say about The Dark Knight, I have nothing new to say about The Wolf of Wall Street that hasn’t already been said. Scorsese directs a masterclass, DiCaprio is exquisite and Margot Robbie looks great. My only somewhat new point is that Jonah Hill’s first five minutes on screen, might be the best character intro in any film ever.

2014: Whiplash dir. Damien Chazelle

No one should be shocked that Whiplash is my favorite film of 2014. Granted, 2014 is a good movie year. There’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, Big Hero 6 and Boyhood, but no film from that year, or really any year will touch my beloved Whiplash.

2015: Mad Max: Fury Road dir. George Miller

With Furiosa coming out this year, I revisited Mad Max: Fury Road and realized that it’s one of, if not the best action movie of the past fifteen years. The minimal dialogue made the mystique around the characters of Max and Furiosa so strong that you invented different narratives about said characters in your own mind, and that’s a fun thing to do. There’s so much that George Miller does great in Mad Max: Fury Road, but the best is undoubtedly putting a random guy dressed in red on a truck shredding guitar through the whole movie.

2016: Everybody Wants Some!! dir. Richard Linklater

This whole year of movie watching has taken me down a Richard Linklater rabbit hole. I’ve encountered the bad/not great with Fast Food Nation and Bernie, but the one film that’s become one of my all time favorites from Linklater is Everybody Wants Some!!. The easiest way to describe it is that it’s Dazed and Confused in the form of a college baseball team. As a former college athlete (three career plays in a D3 football game, no big deal), I found an immediate fondness of Everybody Wants Some!!, to the point that whenever anyone up at school asked me for a recommendation, I said to watch it.

2017: Lady Bird dir. Greta Gerwig

Every time I write about Lady Bird, I always note that when I first watched it, I went in with extremely low expectations. VERY LOW. After my first viewing, I saw it as a beautiful look at growing up as a young woman. Saoirse Ronan, who plays Lady Bird, makes sure to show how difficult it is to maintain relationships while also figuring out how you want your life to go. At the time when I watched it, even though it’s from a girls perspective, I found it to be powerful.

2018: Hereditary dir. Ari Aster

Throughout my early years of life, I avoided horror movies like the plague. I saw no need for them. Why do I need to watch something that’ll make me want to sleep with the light on? I then matured and stopped being a pussy and started watching more and more horror flicks. In that process, I stumbled upon Ari Aster’s magnum opus, Hereditary. In a lot of ways, it’s a dual horror movie. On one hand, it’s scary because of gore, jump scares and suspense. On the other hand, it’s a scary look at dysfunctional family dynamics. Both terrifying in very different ways.

2019: Uncut Gems dir. Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie

All you need to know about Uncut Gems is that Sandler ROCKS in this. I could drone on about the plot intricacies that I like, but Sandler is unbelievable and should’ve won an Oscar for this performance. It’s the polar opposite of Grown Ups, Mr. Deeds and all the other cheesy comedies you’ve seen him in. At this point, if you haven’t seen the Sand Man operate at the highest level in Uncut Gems, what’re you doing?

2020: Druk dir. Thomas Vinterberg

2020 is a bad movie year. The main reason you can site for it being a bad movie year is Covid-19. Some projects like Tenet or Nomadland garnered cult audiences, but my personal favorite is Thomas Vinterberg’s Druk. I watched it on my flight to Denmark last year and saw it as both a keen look at the human condition and a film that explores what people will do to shake up their lives. One of the finest actors of this generation, Mads Mikkelsen, delivers a fantastic performance, but that’s par for the course, especially when he’s in a Vinterberg picture.

2021: The French Dispatch dir. Wes Anderson

Over the past few years, The French Dispatch as a whole hasn’t held up the best. When I first saw it, I was awed by the whole grand anthology. As time’s passed, stories in the film like The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner or The Cycling Reporter don’t work much for me. But The Concrete Masterpiece and Revisions to a Manifesto still rip. All in all, 2021 isn’t a great movie year, again, attribute that to Covid-19, but The French Dispatch rises to the top.

2022: Marcel The Shell With Shoes On dir. Dean Fleischer Camp

When I saw Marcel The Shell With Shoes On in 2022, I’m pretty sure I was in the midst of a mental breakdown, one that made me overly emotional. It didn’t help that in Marcel The Shell With Shoes On, the main shell, Marcel, has a great, loving relationship with his nana. This was a bit after my nana had passed away and I was super close to her. So when Marcel’s nana died in the movie, spoiler alert, I found myself crying in the theater. I look back and think that it was dramatic. But I still feel the same love I had for this movie when I first saw it.

2023: The Killer dir. David Fincher

Last year, I wrote a lot about The Killer. In multiple rewatches, it still plays. It’s aged so well. From Fassbender’s stoic performance to The Smiths soundtrack to Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ score, it’s great. It still stands as one of my all time favorite movies and will fo the foreseeable future.

2024: I Saw The TV Glow dir. Jane Schoenbrun

Despite the year still being young, my favorite film of 2024 thus far is I Saw The TV Glow. It’s a divisive film that borders the genres of science fiction, comedy and horror. Some how, Jane Schoenbrun never puts an entire foot in any genre, and that works. The entire time that The Pink Opaque hypnotized one character and felt like a harmless escape to another, I was enthralled. It’s one of the few times I’ve felt like a film has put me in a trance that was hard to shake when I exited the theater. That’s the mark of a great film.