20 Most Rewatchable Movies Of The 21st Century

10. City Of God (2002)

What Goodfellas was to the 1990s, City Of God surely was to the 00s. Stylistically the films could have been separated at birth, the pair of them directed at a similarly dynamistic pace, punctuated with bursts of violence and glazed in wall-to-wall tunes. Fernando Meirelles' City Of God is just as deliriously entertaining as Scorsese's mob classic, only with a uniquely South American energy and vibrancy thrown in.

Not that City Of God is some hollow exercise in style: the film tells a partly factual story of criminal life in Rio de Janeiro's slums, and finds a hero in Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the sparky protagonist looking to escape life in Cidade de Deus, and a ferocious villain in Lil Ze (Leandro Firmino), a sadistic psychopath who takes pleasure in killing. Lil Ze is the fascinating terror at the heart of City of God, the yin to Rocket's peaceable yang, and though Meirelles' movie has its brutal moments, the film flies.

It's one of the most accessible examples of foreign cinema.