The Washington Post‘s Ann Hornaday has just addressed an obvious lacuna in movie criticism by declaring first that not only has the Great Movie Canon remained stubbornly fixed for too long (Vertigo, Citizen Kane) but that there are many movies post-2000 that stand up alongside all the greats of yesteryear.
Hornaday’s article “The New Canon” is an absolute must-read. She also selected a fairly unassailable list, excepting maybe Spike Lee’s adventurous but uneven 25th Hour and Kenneth Lonergan’s solid but somewhat unremarkable You Can Count on Me. Her list is here but it’s best reading her arguments are each of them as well:
- Children of Men
- 25th Hour
- The Hurt Locker
- Michael Clayton
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- There Will Be Blood
- Boyhood
- 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
- Old Joy
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Hunger
- You Can Count on Me
- No Country for Old Men
- I’m Not There
- Minority Report
- Dunkirk
- Mudbound
- Spotlight
- Son of Saul
- Stories We Tell
- The Fog of War
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- Spirited Away
Chris Barsanti 
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