The 12 Best Films That Turn 20 Years Old In 2023

Film buffs love to debate which year was the best in movie history. Partisans will stand behind 1939, the year of "Gone with the Wind," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," and "The Wizard of Oz," or perhaps 2007, when masterpieces like "Zodiac," "There Will Be Blood," and "No Country for Old Men" stormed arthouse theaters and multiplexes alike. Most of these debates are fairly silly; pointing to any year as the "best" means leaving out the hundreds of films released that year that were terrible or mediocre. Conversely, every single year sees the release of major hits, cinematic milestones, and films that will shape the course of the medium.

2003 is not often on the list of "best film years," but looking at the movies that were released then, one could make the case for it being a transformational year, for individual artists, for studios, and for the way in which films were marketed and sold. 2003 is the year that pointed the course for the next two decades of epic CGI fantasy films, the year that saw at least two majorly influential documentaries, and the year in which the predominant animation studio of the era figured out that it could entertain children and emotionally devastate parents at the same time. Let's take a look at the best films that turn 20 years old in 2023.

In the 2000s, a mini-genre of American independent film existed; dramedies about isolated men who are drawn out of their shells by a combination of pushy friends and some unusual hobby or job. Take, for example, 2002's "Love Liza," where Phillip Seymour Hoffman's grieving widower is rescued by a group of remote-control airplane enthusiasts.

Tom McCarthy's "The Station Agent" is one of the best entries in this field, a low-key comedy about a depressed man who lives in an abandoned New Jersey train depot. As much as he tries to withdraw from the world, he can't seem to shake an artist (Patricia Clarkson) who keeps nearly hitting him with his car, a pregnant young woman (Michelle Williams) with an abusive boyfriend, and a hot dog vendor (Bobby Cannavale) who insists on being his friend.

The man at the center of all this is named Finbar McBride, played by future "Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage in his first lead role. Dinklage had been kicking around film and television for the better part of a decade, often in roles that used his size as a punchline. McCarthy's script doesn't define Fin by his dwarfism, but doesn't ignore it either; he and Dinklage wring both laughter and pain from the small indignities he suffers from other people. The moment when he steps up on a stool and challenges a bar full of giggling yokels is wonderfully cathartic for the audience and announces Dinklage as a star on the rise.

If "Oldboy" were nothing but its brutal, four-minute single-take hallway fight scene — AKA "the hammer fight" – it might have earned a place on this list. Aside from the incredible technical achievement by director Park Chan-wook, its influence can still be seen in fight choreography decades later, most notably in Netflix's "Daredevil" series. When Spike Lee remade the film in 2013, his camera moved in more directions than Chan-wook's side-scrolling video game technique, but other than that, the fight was staged more or less identically. Lee knew not to mess too much with perfection.

But "Oldboy" is more than its shock sequences like the hallway fight, or star Choi Min-sik eating a live octopus on camera. It is a bold and uncompromising thriller, taking its twin revenge schemes to such Biblical (or Greek, rather) extremes that the very idea of vengeance becomes horrible to comprehend. Deadbeat dad Dae-su (Min-sik) is kidnapped in 1988 and held in a hotel room-like prison cell for 15 years. In 2003, after going mad from despair and training his body for vengeance, he is released and given five days to uncover his captor's identity and the reason for his imprisonment. The answers, when they come, are too terrible to live with — not just for Dae-su, but for his sadistic captor and for Mi-do (Kang Hye-jeong), a beautiful young chef who falls for him. The only escape for any of them is either a life of blissful ignorance or a bullet.

Errol Morris' Interrotron is an intimidating thing for its subjects. A bulky piece of equipment, it allows the Academy Award-winning documentarian to conduct interviews from a distance while his image is broadcast in front of the subject, allowing them to maintain eye contact with Morris and the camera simultaneously. In a 2004 interview with FLM Magazine (via Morris' website), when Robert McNamara first sat down to be interviewed for the 2003 Academy Award-winning documentary, "The Fog of War," he didn't like the machine and said so outright. "But then he sat down, and we proceeded to record over 20 hours of interviews," Morris said. "I guess he came to like it, too."

For nearly the entire film, McNamara — former Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson, and in many ways the architect of America's involvement in Vietnam — stares directly at you, seated just right of center in the frame. The only break from McNamara's gaze comes from stock footage clips of the Vietnam War and World War I and II.

The film is structured as 11 "lessons" that McNamara is imparting to us, but the real subject is not his knowledge but the man himself. Morris allows us to stare into the eyes of one of the most consequential men of the 20th century and draw our own conclusions, whether he is tearfully quoting T.S. Eliot or candidly admitting that the United States committed war crimes in World War II.

What do we really know about another person? A close friend? A parent? How could someone who has loved us and cared for us for our entire lives have a different side to them, a monstrous side? And does that disqualify or taint the love that they may have shown us? These are the terrible questions that power Andrew Jarecki's true-crime documentary "Capturing the Friedmans."

In 1987, high school science teacher Arnold Friedman was arrested for possession of child pornography, and he and his oldest son Jesse were accused of pedophilia and sexual assault. The case made headlines and rocked the Long Island suburb where they lived. Arnold always maintained his innocence, though, and evidence of police misconduct in the case left room for a sliver of reasonable doubt.

It's a compelling, if awful, story on its own, but what makes it such a great, troubling film is the fact that one of Friedman's younger sons, David, had a camcorder and filmed nearly everything surrounding the arrest and trial. This treasure trove of footage, however, doesn't elucidate the facts of the case — in fact, it often muddies them even further, as the specter of the crimes makes any moment of Arnold on screen, even doing normal everyday things, feel sinister. When imagery can take on so many different meanings, how can the truth ever be uncovered? It's a question the film cannot answer.

If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.

With Disney churning out epic Marvel movies at a steady clip for over a decade, it's easy to forget what an incredible achievement Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy was. Not only did the New Zealand filmmaker, best known at the time for gross-out low-budget horror-comedies like "Meet the Feebles," successfully adapt a series of novels long thought unfilmable, but he also released each film annually, starting with 2001's "The Fellowship of the Ring" and 2002's "The Two Towers."

Armed with state-of-the-art digital technology and an ensemble that included Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Cate Blanchett, Liv Tyler, and Ian McKellan, Jackson brought the world of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth to vivid life. 2003's "The Return of the King" brings the fantasy epic to a close, concluding the story of young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Wood) and his quest to destroy the powerful, corrupting One Ring in the bowels of Mount Doom. (And then it concludes again, and again, and one more time for good measure.)

The film boasts chilling setpieces — as when Aragorn (Mortenson), the titular returning king, raises an army of ghostly soldiers to aid in the war against the evil Sauron — and thrilling battle scenes whose influence can be seen in the "Avengers" movies' massive team-ups. In a rare moment of critical and popular consensus, "The Return of the King" also won Best Picture (plus ten other awards) at the 2004 Academy Awards.

Before 2003, Bill Murray had already displayed his deadpan, melancholic side in his collaborations with Wes Anderson, "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," and long before that in the little-seen 1984 drama, "The Razor's Edge." Scarlett Johansson had graduated from child actor roles with mature performances in "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "Ghost World" two years earlier. Writer-director Sofia Coppola had already announced herself as an auteur in the making with 1999's sensitive, elegiac, "The Virgin Suicides." And yet for all three artists, "Lost in Translation" feels like a breakthrough, a statement of purpose that would define not just the next two decades of their respective careers, but the next two decades of independent film.

Bob Harris (Murray) is a middle-aged Hollywood star working in Tokyo who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Charlotte (Johansson), a similarly adrift young newlywed staying in the same luxury hotel. The two have potent chemistry together, and while Bob and Charlotte's connection isn't romantic, it's not not romantic either. Coppola films Tokyo as if it were an alternate universe, where everything is just familiar enough to be uncanny, but is ultimately more interested in her American characters' alienation than the setting that spurs it. And, it must be said, there are a handful of moments — like Bob's misadventures with a sex worker — that indulge in some tacky racial humor. Nevertheless, the film is a triumph for all involved and a high-water mark for film in the last 20 years.