Tyler: Norman, before we crack into our respective final threes, let’s offer up some favorites that didn’t quite make the top-ten cut.

I’ll start with the irresistible Charlie Wilson’s War, a Mike Nichols picture with a helluva cast, including leads Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Hoffman, incidentally, isn’t in any of my top ten—spoiler alert—which is unusual, given how much I enjoyed his work. Capote is a remarkable film, but it’d be nothing without its lead’s incredible rebirth as the notorious author. Director Bennett Miller was really onto something there, following up Capote with Moneyball; unfortunately, I found his subsequent film, Foxcatcher, to be a total snooze.

Norman: I liked Capote and Moneyball well enough, but haven’t had a desire to revisit since seeing them at the time of release.

One that I almost included was Kelly Reichart’s Meek’s Cutoff, a western set in Oregon starring Michelle Williams. She’s incredible, the movie is a dark meditation on trust and survival. Few people saw it, but I loved it!

Tyler: I recall the buzz around that movie. John Hawkes in that?

Norman: Nope. Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan make it on screen though.

Tyler: I’m thinking of Winter’s Bone. Whoops!

Norman: Also a good movie, though never considered for this project.

A few others I thought of.

No Country for Old Men, The Royal Tenenbaums, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. These were all very close, and in some cases left off only because of my “one title per director” rule.

Tyler: Almost Famous. I gave that one some thought.

Norman: Nice.

Tyler: Good Night, And Good Luck. is also a fantastic achievement.

Norman: A wonderful movie!

More recent movies that I considered are Killers of the Flower Moon, Tar, and Zone of Interest.

Tyler: I was knocked sideways by Killers of the Flower Moon, but would need to experience it another time before anointing it worthy of top ten status. Zone of Interest is something horrible to behold, a masterwork depicting genocide on an intimately personal level. I don’t know that I could ever revisit it.

Norman: I’ll show Zone of Interest to my kids one day, but probably won’t watch it again until then.

Tyler: Minority Report, The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby, Wonder Boys, and The Departed are all considerable films that merited consideration.

Gosford Park, too.

Norman: I LOVE Minority Report. All the others were good for me, but never under consideration.

Let’s see…what else did I think of?

Donnie Darko
Nightcrawler

A couple of Jake Gyllenhaal movies.

Tyler: Donnie Darko, eh?

Norman: Love it.

Tyler: Brokeback Mountain broke me up. There’s some Gyllenhaal for you.

Speaking of westerns, I was hypnotized by The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. That one cooks.

Norman: I also thought of United 93 and Dunkirk, both movies that relay intense historical moments.

Tyler: We could be here all night listing flicks. I think it’s time, should you agree, to unveil our concluding selections!

Norman: Let’s do it.

We’ve swapped early versions of our lists and it seems like we agree on two of our top three movies.

Tyler: And the first we’ll cover here is…

Norman: Inglourious Basterds!!!!!!!!!

Tyler: Love it. That was a cinemagoing experience from which I emerged ebullient. What an outlandish piece of filmmaking from good old Quentin Tarantino.

Tarantino would bend history to his eccentric will in pictures beyond Basterds, but never close to so thrillingly.

Norman: If you, dear reader, haven’t seen it yet, shut off your computer and watch it, because I can’t wax eloquent about Inglourious Basterds without giving away some spoilers.

There are few movie moments that gave me as much pleasure as watching Shoshanna’s face from a projector, a ghost from the dead, exacting retribution on Nazis as Hitler dies in a French movie theater. This type of alternate, deliberately cinematic, history was an experience I’ll never forget. And every time I see it, I get goosebumps.

Tyler: It’s a bombastic finale, to say the least, executed with booming righteousness and twisted wit. After the extreme-genre exercises of Kill Bill and Grindhouse contribution Death Proof, the idea of Tarantino taking on World War II was far from a safe bet.

Norman: Indeed. But Inglourious Basterds is still a great genre exercise. It’s a “men on a mission” movie. But Tarantino, at his best, is always having a blast playing with genre cinema. This time, he decided to play with history itself, and that was the shock. Glorious shock!

As an aside, I love the genre excess of Kill Bill.

Tyler: I do too! But, Basterds. That opening sequence. Mercy.

Norman: Yes, that opening scene, and numerous other scenes. One of the great things about Inglourious Basterds is that it is structured with these very long, tightly-wound scenes that all revolve around extended dialogue that eventually erupts into violence. The pacing in this movie is a marvel.

Tyler: Who knew that two of the most vital historical World War II fictions of 21st century cinema would come from filmmakers so stylized as Tarantino and Wes Anderson?

Norman: That’s a great point. Tarantino has continued to play around with history (slavery, Manson family), but Anderson has continued down a very Andersonian path.

Tyler: I’d like to see Tarantino compose his next, eye-rollingly-theoretically final film out of whole cloth. Django Unchained was decent, but Once Upon A Time In Hollywood did not hit for me.

Norman: Oh, I liked both quite a bit. He was going to make something about a film critic from the ’70s, which sounded cool to me, but I guess that idea has been dumped. Alas.

Tyler: Yeah, Brad Pitt was cast and everything. Tarantino trashed it.

Regardless, Inglourious Basterds: top three of the 21st century!

Norman: Indeed. I only wish that Adam Sandler had been able to play the Bear Jew.

Tyler: Oh, Lord, how on earth does Tarantino pull off Eli Roth in that role. By the skin of his teeth is that casting permissible.

Norman: It manages to work, though. Whew.

Let’s move on to the next title. I’ve got one that I don’t think you’ve seen. Few did. Christian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills.

Tyler: I have not seen it, this is true.

Norman: This Romanian movie tells the story of two friends, Voichita and Alina, who met as girls in an orphanage. Voichita is living in a convent in Romania and Alina has come to visit from Germany. She wants to take Voichita out of the convent and back to Germany with her. Voichita doesn’t really want to go, but Alina does not back down. This causes major problems in the convent itself. Because so few have seen it, I don’t want to give much away, but I’ll say this. It’s a powerful movie that touches on friendship, sexuality, religious power, and spirituality. A lot of bad things happen, but Mungiu is the kind of filmmaker who will allow you to understand why people act as they do, even when they are acting irresponsibly or wickedly. I was absolutely floored when I came out of the theater. I’ve only had the chance to see it once since, but it has burned itself into my mind.

Tyler: Where did you see this one, out of curiosity?

Norman: Local theater in Asheville, NC. They had it for one week, I believe.

You can stream it on the Criterion Channel.

Tyler: Oh, the Criterion Channel. I could stand some of that in my life.

Norman: Everyone could, really.

Tyler: Well, the time has arrived. It just so happens that your top movie made my list. Before we approach that film, though, I’ll take this moment to unveil my own #1.

It’s a film that I feel stands head and shoulders above anything else I’ve seen over the last 25 years. I saw some movies that I really liked, too, but this one, for lack of less dramatic language, is perfect.

Alfonso Cuaron’s Children Of Men.

Riveting, devastating, yet subtle and even lighthearted. So prescient. I revisited it a couple of weeks back, and felt the way I did when you and I revisited Contagion, Norman—I was watching accurate modernity happen on film shot years before today.

I hesitate to give a single turn away. It isn’t just the finest cinematic achievement of this century; it’s one of the best films of all time.

Norman: I guess it’s my turn to be the asshole. It was, for me, fine. I’ve seen it a few times. It’s a movie I appreciate, but it has never clicked with me. I don’t have a specific criticism necessarily, it just didn’t really do much for me at all.

Tyler: As Siskel said of Ebert, or the other way around: “He’s an asshole, but he’s my asshole.” You are forgiven.

Norman: You hated Adaptation, so I guess we are even.

Tyler: From disagreement we turn to agreement, my friend.

Your #1 could very well have slotted in at #2 for me if I’d included rankings.

Norman: The movie of the new century for me is a procedural drama about a 1970s serial killer. David Fincher’s Zodiac.

Tyler: A masterpiece. Nearly three hours of immaculate craftsmanship.

Fincher is far from my favorite director. But he nails Zodiac.

Norman: Agreed. I regret not seeing it in the theater. When I did see it, at first I didn’t think much of it. But then Jim Emerson (Scanners blog on Roger Ebert’s website) started writing about it and so I decided to revisit. Over time, the movie got its hooks into me in a deeply personal way. Not because I’m into serial killers or have some deep affection for San Francisco or procedural dramas. What I began to love about Zodiac, aside from the impeccable craftsmanship and brilliant acting, is that it is a movie about what it means to know something, or to think you know something, or, in the end, being satisfied with not exactly knowing but are pretty sure you know. It is an epistemological thriller.

Tyler: It also, and I’m not the first to make this point, can be seen as a work very much to do with obsessive-compulsive disorder. I buy that.

Norman: Absolutely.

I’m not OCD and I don’t even have tendencies in that direction, but yes.

I think the thing for me, as a Christian, the subject of knowing when it comes to things that aren’t quite knowable in the scientific sense, has been very important. That’s what made it personal.

Tyler: It is so rich, so all-consuming, but it isn’t sprawling. It’s not even taking its time, but rather doing what needs to be done.

Norman: It’s a bummer that it had to come out right as No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both critical and commercial successes, had great cinematic flair and ambition. They overshadowed Fincher’s more restrained work.

Tyler: Restraint from David “Seven and Fight Club and 900 takes per shot” Fincher. Who knew?

Norman: I know, right? It’s a movie that has gotten better and better over the years, too. I’ve seen it probably a dozen times or so (a lot for me) and it keeps rewarding me in new ways each time.

Tyler: Have you seen the director’s cut? I’ve been sitting on a DVD copy for years.

Norman: I have. It doesn’t add much and doesn’t detract from the movie at all. I would recommend either version.

Well, I think we’ve hit the end of our list. The past 25 years have given us some great movies. I feel privileged to have lived through these years and to have seen so many of these on a big screen in their newness. This piece was a blast to write, and it has made me want to go back and watch all of these movies again!!

Tyler: Hear hear. Formative years, towering pictures. As viewers, Norman, you and I came of age over these decades. With apologies to Pauline Kael—we lost it at the movies.

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