The Best Movie Of Each Year From 1925-2025

19. 2007 - Zodiac

Honourable Mentions: Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood

2007 was a frankly ridiculous year for cinema in terms of quality. In fact, it might just be the greatest cinematic year ever. The Coens directed a neo-Western masterpiece in No Country for Old Men, while Paul Thomas Anderson wielded a fiery Daniel Day-Lewis performance in the equally gripping There Will Be Blood. Throw into the mix Michael Clayton, a throwback conspiracy thriller for the modern age from Bourne screenwriter Tony Gilroy, plus Paul Haggis' redemptive In the Valley of Elah (the second Tommy Lee Jones-starring film to receive Oscar plaudits that year), a Pixar masterpiece in Ratatouille and other highlights like Juno and Atonement, and you have to ask just what exactly was in the water that year for everything to have landed as well as it did.

And then there's Zodiac.

David Fincher's historical thriller about California's notorious real-life serial murderer is a true tour de force in direction and performance, the director's laser-guided approach creating a perfect portrait of the Golden State milieu over the course of Zodiac's reign of terror - and long after.

Taken from Robert Graysmith's book of the same name and starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr. and Mark Ruffalo as the figures caught in Zodiac's horror story, Fincher's film explores Zodiac's impact on both a macro and micro level, resulting in a sensitively drawn adaptation that bucks true crime trends by placing the human cost of these myriad traumas - the estuaries and streams that bubble out from the river of violence - front and centre.

Zodiac was passed over for awards success at the time, but it still shows Fincher at the peak of his powers.