7. Fight Club (1999)
Director David Fincher's 1999 darkly comic Fight Club is easily one of the most polarizing films of the last 15 years. Audiences and critics were either blown away by the film's anarchist folly or found it to be a lackluster attempt at a homoerotic satire of corporate America. Either way it is perceived, Fight Club is one of the most visually stimulating films ever made, groundbreaking in the way the film progresses and how utilizing every film-making technique both new and old can heighten it's narrative. One of the finest examples of this comes in the film's final shot. As the audience as well as The Narrator (Edward Norton) have come to the realization that the exuberant Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) does not exist and is just an extension of his own sheltered personality, it is finally okay to take a moment to breathe. The Narrator blasts the personality of Durden away (literally with a handgun) and holds hands with Marla (Helena Bonham-Carter), his unrequited love, to bare witness to what would become Durden's epitaph, the destruction of all of the buildings that house the most evil materialistic corporations in the world. The shot, a incendiary blending of cinematographer Jeff Crenoweth's eye, dazzling visual effects, subtle sound design, and a brilliant underscore of The Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" allow the story and main character to come full circle, all at the hands of one of modern cinema's greatest masters.