Mel Brooks’ 10 favourite movies of the 21st century
If anyone can be living proof that laughter is the best medicine, that person might well be Mel Brooks. Responsible for some of the funniest films in history, the New Yorker is now pushing 100, but he doesn’t show too many signs of packing it in and moving to Florida just yet.
With four different projects currently in production, including the much-awaited Spaceballs 2, Brooks has simply never stopped since he took his first steps into showbiz back in the early 1950s as a writer for TV before releasing his own comedy albums at the start of the ’60s, getting nominated for several Grammys in the process.
From there he kicked on to writing and directing some stone cold classics, practically creating an entirely new genre in the form of Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs. If anyone has funny bones, it’s Mel Brooks.
But perhaps somewhat surprisingly, that isn’t entirely reflected in his choices for the New York Times ‘100 Best Movies of the 21st Century’. Rather than select films that echoed his own laugh-out-loud productions, Brooks put together an eclectic mix of spies, wartime and Wes Anderson in picking a top ten flicks released since 2000.
First up, he went with 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, the true story of a Nobel Prize-winning maths wizard played by Russell Crowe with a big twist in the tail. It won four Academy Awards at the following year’s Oscars, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ for former Happy Days star Ron Howard.
Next on the list was Bottle Shock, the little-known 2008 Alan Rickman comedy-drama about the shockwaves caused in 1976 when a Californian wine beat out a French rival at a Paris competition. It’s a film that has very mixed reviews and was described as ‘plodding’ on release, which perhaps makes it slightly puzzling that Brooks picked it as one of the century’s finest—but then taste is subjective.
That’s not the case with his third choice however, which is Hidden Figures, the critically acclaimed account of three black female NASA scientists who were the brains behind the mission to make astronaut John Glenn the first American to orbit the earth in 1962.
At number four comes the towering, Quentin Tarantino helmed, Nazi-eviscerating Inglourious Basterds, the 2009 hit that saw Brad Pitt’s mercenary troop of US soldiers rampaging around Europe in World War Two, dispatching Hitler’s SS in both gory and creative fashion.
Brooks’ pick at five went to Jojo Rabbit; another World War Two-based movie, this time with a much lighter tone, thanks to New Zealand comedian Taika Waititi’s writing and direction. Made in 2019, it was something of a spiritual successor to Brooks’ own Hitler-aping comedy The Producers thirty years previously.
“I just saw Jojo Rabbit, and it’s really a terrific and eloquent and beautiful picture.”
Mel Brooks
Next up on Brooks’ list is the Woody Allen film Midnight in Paris, made in 2011 and starring Owen Wilson. Brooks and Allen go back to the very beginning, right back to where they worked side by side as writers on the variety show Your Show of Shows, which aired on NBC every week between 1950 and ’54. Allen’s film won the Oscar for ‘Best Screenplay’, but opinion on it was mixed due to a perceived lack of diversity and (not uncommonly for Allen) a healthy degree of pseudo-intellectualism.
Coming in at seven is a real change of pace in the shape of Matt Damon’s The Bourne Identity, the Doug Liman-directed hit that came out of nowhere in 2002 and launched a globally successful franchise. Apparently, Brooks liked it so much that he and his late friend Carl Reiner watched it repeatedly. Asked why, he said: “We’re old, we can’t remember. We say, ‘Did he kill someone? Was he here? He was here yesterday? Is he back today?’”
At eight, it’s Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, the 2014 comedy that is now thought of as a modern classic and featuring Anderson’s usual collection of preferred actors including Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton. British icon Ralph Fiennes gives a revelatory performance as long-suffering concierge ‘Monsieur Gustave H’ and the film was nominated for nine Academy Awards, picking up four.
Brooks’ ninth choice is the brilliant 2010 historical drama The King’s Speech starring Colin Firth. Another of Brooks’ favourite films to have World War Two as a backdrop it tells the tale of then-ruling monarch King George VI and his attempt to overcome a crippling stammer in order to galvanise his country’s population in the face of Hitler’s onslaught.
And rounding things off, Mel Brooks’ pick as his tenth best movie of the century is a fourth World War Two film: The Pianist. It’s a work directed by Roman Polanski that swept the globe on its release in 2002, winning Academy Awards for ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Screenplay’ and ‘Best Actor’ for Adrien Brody. Based on the haunting memoir of a holocaust-surviving Jewish pianist, it’s about as far removed from Rick Moranis wearing a giant Darth Vader helmet as you’re going to get.
Mel Brooks’ 10 favourite movies of the 21st century:
- A Beautiful Mind (Ron Howard, 2001)
- Bottle Shock (Randall Miller, 2008)
- Hidden Figures (Theodore Melfi, 2016)
- Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)
- Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019)
- Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)
- The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002)
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
- The King’s Speech (Tom Hooper, 2010)
- The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)
