The Film Buff's Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 2000s to See Before You Die
139
The Film Buff's Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 2000s to See Before You Die
139Paperback
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Overview
Best movies, best films, best indies. Theaters around the world are dominated by comic book heroes, ice princesses, apocalyptic love-struck teens, and whatever masterpiece Pixar is rolling out. It’s clear that cinema is as healthy as ever. Oscar-worthy directors, indie geniuses and foreign artists are creating stunning, boundary-pushing work. Since the turn of the century, movie lovers have been enjoying a second golden age. But which films are the best of the best? What are the top movies since 2000 to see before you die?
Film buff. Chris Stuckmann, one of YouTube’s most popular film reviewers (70+ million views), gives us his best of the best! In his book, Stuckmann delivers his list of the very best 50 Movies since 2000 – with that style and punch that YouTube viewers have come to love. These are the films you must see before you die.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781633530959 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Mango Media |
| Publication date: | 03/05/2016 |
| Pages: | 139 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
About the Author
It wasn’t until his twenties that Stuckmann discovered reviewing movies on YouTube. From the very beginning he fell in love with it. YouTube critics and reviews have gone from a small group of “video bloggers” to a respected way of discussing film. Some YouTube reviewers are even recognized as press, and Rotten Tomatoes has opened the door for a handful of them to be certified. As a result of all this, Chris Stuckmann has created a brand of recognizable and respected videos.
600k subscribers • 128 million views
Chris Stuckmann: Film critic, filmmaker, writer: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChrisStuckmann
Official Website: http://www.chrisstuckmann.com
Winner of the 2014 ICG Publicists Guild Press Award (honoring outstanding entertainment journalism), Scott “Movie” Mantz is the Film Critic and Film Segment Producer for “Access Hollywood.”
In October 2000, Mantz joined the daily entertainment newsmagazine TV show, which is currently in its 17th season. In addition to his production and celebrity booking duties for “Access Hollywood” and its companion morning show “Access Hollywood Live,” Mantz reviews movies on-camera for both shows.
Mantz is also a regular contributor to NBC-TV’s “The TODAY Show” and is a resident film critic on “Just Seen It,” the acclaimed movie review series that airs every week on PBS.
When he’s not on-camera, Mantz can be found moderating Q&A’s with filmmakers and celebrities at special movie screenings, particularly during the busy Awards Season between September and February.
Table of Contents
American Psycho (2000)Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
Memento (2000)
Unbreakable (2000)
Spirited Away (2001)
Donnie Darko (2001)
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)
Signs (2002)
Minority Report (2002)
Oldboy (2003)
The Last Samurai (2003)
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
X2 (2003)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
The Incredibles (2004)
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Collateral (2004)
Hidden/Cache (2005)
The Departed (2006)
Casino Royale (2006)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
No Country For Old Men (2007)
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Zodiac (2007)
The Dark Knight (2008)
Inglourious Basterds (2009)
500 Days of Summer (2009)
Star Trek (2009)
Coraline (2009)
Inception (2010)
Toy Story 3 (2010)
Drive (2011)
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Django Unchained (2012)
The Avengers (2012)
Prisoners (2013)
Snowpiercer (2014)
Under the Skin (2014)
Enemy (2014)
Birdman (2014)
Whiplash (2014)
The Babadook (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
When Marnie Was There (2015)
Pending 3 movies for end of 2015
Preface
Introduction
The screen.
Why do we go to the movies? Why do we sit in dark rooms, digging our fingers into popcorn buckets, hoping for transport to another world?
I recall watching a particularly good film earlier this year in a packed theater. I glanced about briefly and saw a couple hundred heads, all transfixed by the screen. For most, it’s like peering into a parallel universe, a place where their problems don’t exist. But for a very select few, it’s not just about escapism, it’s about searching. These people seek something more meaningful, they want to be inspired, changed, altered. They’re looking for that moment when a film touches them so deeply, it was like it was playing specifically for them.
I remember that moment in my life. It was a warm Ohio day (August 2nd, 2002 to be exact). My mother and I went to a small town theater that’s since been demolished. Plaza 8 at Chapel Hill. I’ll never forget that place. The film my mother took me to was Signs, directed by M. Night Shyamalan. Since it was late summer, there was a sense that fun was winding down. School would be starting soon and I wanted to squeeze every last drop out of my summer vacation. Evidently, many others shared the same notion, because the theater was packed to near full capacity.
The lights went down, and I was instantly taken by the thrilling musical composition of James Newton Howard, instructed by Shyamalan to create a piece similar in ferocity to Bernard Hermann’s opening theme for Psycho. The music warned me that something terrifying was coming, and the film kept its promise. In my fourteen years, I hadn’t seen a film that suspenseful, and I vividly remember peeking out over the tops of my curled knees during the “disturbing footage” scene.
As a child, movies were a humongous part of my life. I wore out my Star Wars VHS tapes so badly that no amount of “tracking” could fix the little bouncy white lines at the bottom of the TV. But it wasn’t until that warm day in the summer of ’02 that I had an epiphany.
Movies were made by artists.
Directors. Writers. Actors. Editors. Cinematographers.
Movies were shot and cut together by someone. A composer began writing music to seamlessly blend with it. Someone arranged lights and objects within a shot to create visual synergy.
I have a perfect memory of returning home that day and bounding toward our apartment while saying to my mother, “I want to do that! I want to make a movie like that.”
After seeing Signs in theaters five times, I became fascinated with filmmaking. I didn’t just watch movies anymore, I studied them. The shot structure, the moment where a character reaches their arc, how a clever editor can heighten the tension with just the right cut. Everything! I lived and breathed movies. My parents must have seen a kid who’d discovered his passion, because one day, a package arrived at home containing a small camcorder, which, as far as I was concerned, was the closest I’d ever get to being handed a dream, complete with bubble wrap.
The entirety of my teenage years were spent making countless short films with friends. If they weren’t around, I’d even make one by myself. It didn’t matter what the story was. If an idea popped into our heads, we just started filming it, sometimes without even knowing how it would end. It was blind inspiration, and a very wonderful time in my life. Of course, as we grew older, our films became more mature. One of my favorites was a tongue-in-cheek tribute to John Carpenter’s Halloween called The Marguerite Avenue Killings. Is it strange that with a title like that, no one dies in the short?
At the same time, my love for film as an art form began to evolve, with the creation of my first website called “A Critic’s Opinion.” Without internet at home, the library clerk saw me quite often during those few years. Mercifully, the free hosting provider shut down its services, and my novice site vanished from the net.
No matter what, my interest in filmmaking and movies never wavered. We tried our hand at two feature-length films, and to our credit, we actually completed a 70-minute film about a magical baseball diamond called Phenomenon Field, and an 84-minute horror film called The Woods. The latter took us two years to finish, and the lessons learned while filming was worth every minute spent.
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I had the idea of combining my passions. My love of film was glaringly apparent, and the hundreds of short films we’d created made my devotion to directing obvious. But I also loved analyzing film, studying the art form and trying to get in the head of the filmmaker. And, with the advent of YouTube, I suddenly had a place to express myself. My first video review was of Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo. Within a month, I had a small handful of subscribers, the majority being my very patient friends.
Seven years later, I have ________ subscribers, and growing. I’ve met countless film enthusiasts who share my passion, and I’ve been deeply inspired by their personal stories of self-discovery. Without them, I have no idea where I’d be today. To my sheer delight, I’ve had the opportunity to meet M. Night Shyamalan, shake his hand, and thank him for inspiring me. After telling him the story I’ve just told you, he gave an awestruck smile and said, “You’re gonna make me cry, man.”
What continues to inspire me today?
It’s the screen. That glowing, shiny rectangle.
I stare at it in awe, silently willing it to show me something incredible.
*
• * *
Now, I’ve been given the immense privilege to discuss a handful of films that meant something to me, the majority of which I’ve had the opportunity to see in theaters. The following fifty films released from the year 2000 to 2015 are movies that absolutely must be seen, because they were evocative of their era, they spoke to our culture, or perhaps they’re overlooked gems. These films are presented in order of release date. This is not a countdown. Not only do I find lists superfluous, but this also eliminates the temptation to skip ahead to the #1 pick. The goal here is to discuss and analyze filmmaking, not to choose an order of best to worst. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, please sit back, relax, and take a journey with me fifteen years in the past, as we examine some of the best cinema has offered.
- Chris Stuckmann