I have a rather weird relationship with the 2000s as a whole. On one hand, I was a young teenager when the decade began and I was miserable. Middle School, in particular, was a very difficult time for me and I still consider it the worst time of my life (and hopefully it remains that way).
Then on top of all of that, you have 9/11, the War on Terror (which we are currently trying to end in rather poor fashion as of this writing), the War in Iraq, and the all of the bumbling and heinous mistakes made by Bush and his cronies.
Things got better for me in high school and into college, so by the end of the decade I was a lot happier on a personal level.
As a decade for film, I often bashed the 2000s for the longest time as being one of the worst decades ever. I was also a young guy who was desperately eager to appear like I knew what I was talking about when in many cases I didn't. However, I do think that the 2000s, much like the 1980s, still had its fair share of strong efforts...but it just didn't feel as immense as some other decades.
The 2000s were when I was truly able to experience most films right off the bat for the first time as they were released and then be able to read reviews and watch how well they performed either the box office or at awards shows and then be able to talk about them on online forums with other people.
Having that outlet made a huge difference to my well being at that time.
When doing this list, I was amazed at how much this list has changed had you asked me to do it 10 years ago...but I am sure it would change if you asked me again in another 10 years.
20 Honorable Mentions:
Almost Famous (2000)
Dancer in the Dark (2000)
The Piano Teacher (2001)
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
City of God (2002)
Talk to Her (2002)
In America (2003)
Memories of Murder (2003)
Before Sunset (2004)
Nobody Knows (2004)
Goodnight & Good Luck (2005)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
The Diving Bell & The Butterfly (2007)
Zodiac (2007)
Milk (2008)
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Mother (2009)
Up (2009)
The White Ribbon (2009)
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#10-Wall-E (2008)
Directed by Andrew Stanton)
I feel like Wall-E is one Pixar film that people either seem to really love or they find it to be boring and overrated. I may be able to somewhat understand the latter part but, as you can see, I am pretty firm on the side of the former.
Back during the 2008-2009 award season, some people talked about the prospect of Wall-E getting nominated for Best Picture but due to the truly obvious negative bias that Hollywood seems to have for animated films, it came as no surprise that this never materialized.
Wall-E might not be the most consistently entertaining Pixar film but I admire everything about its storytelling as its minimal use of dialogue and the sweet dynamic between the two robots almost made it feel like a silent film with heavy influences by Charlie Chaplin.
Set in the 29th century, rampant consumerism and greed and lack of care towards the environment has turned Earth into an uninhabitable planet. Humanity from Earth now live on various spaceships ziplining through space and people certainly don't seem to mind living in the lap of luxury.
The corporation behind these spaceships, Buy-N-Large or BnL, left behind thousands of robots to help clean up the waste. Only one of those robots is still active: Waste Allocation Load Lifter-Earth Class...or WALL-E for short.
One day, WALL-E's routine is interrupted when a white egg-shaped robot comes across his path called the Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluation or Eve for short. They seem to develop a bond and she encourages him to go on an adventure throughout the galaxy.
Wall-E is certainly a peak within the true peak of Pixar. The stretch of films from 2007's Ratatouille up through 2010's Toy Story 3 (along with 2015's Inside Out) represent the best of the Pixar canon.
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#9 - The Squid & The Whale (2005)
Directed by Noah Baumbach
When Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story came out in 2019, I sort of felt like that film was a more refined and polished version of Baumbach's earlier effort about divorce: The Squid & The Whale.
A lot of what really makes The Squid & The Whale very effective is how a lot of the focus is from the viewpoint of the two sons rather than from the estranged parents.
Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels) is a very prickly novelist who is currently struggling with his work while his wife Joan (Laura Linney) has basically checked out of the marriage and is already sleeping with another man.
The pair breaks the news to their sons Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and Frank (Owen Kline) who don't respond to their combative nature very well. Bernard moves out of their Park Slope, Brooklyn home and moves to the opposite side of Prospect Park. Joan starts officially dating Ivan, who is Frank's Tennis instructor and Bernard starts to see one of his young students.
Walt and Frank both have their own ways of lashing out. Both taking to being more verbally abusive to their parents (particularly Joan); Walt claims to have written "Hey You" by Pink Floyd and performs it at a talent show and then has his first place prize revoked once that is discovered; Frank ends up drinking and also begins to chronically masturbate while at school...with one memorable instance being him rubbing the...umm...results of one such act onto a set of books in the library.
The title of the film comes from what is Walt's fondest memory of his childhood, particularly with his mother, which is when she took him to the Museum of Natural History and he would be terrified by the giant squid and whale exhibit; The only way he could look at it was through his fingers.
For a movie that is only 81 minutes long, I was amazed at how vibrant and full of life that it was...and I think a lot of that had to do not just with the personal attachment that Baumbach had to the material but it also just felt so real and raw. The fact that it was shot with a handheld 16mm camera really aided to that effect.
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#8 - Children of Men (2006)
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
In the 2010s, writer/director Alfonso Cuaron would win two Directing Oscars for Gravity and Roma, for which the latter was his passion project. He, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro G. Innauritu all won a total 5 Director Oscars in the span of 6 years which truly felt like a monumental achievement for filmmakers of Hispanic/Latino descent.
However, in the case of Cuaron, I feel like he didn't win for his best work. I still find myself more drawn to his films from the 2000s such as 2001's Y Tu Mama Tambien and my #8 film Children of Men.
Children of Men is set in 2027 (which we are far closer to now!) when the world is on the brink of collapse due to two decades of human infertility. The film is based in the UK where many are seeking asylum from the government would place them in detention and refoulment.
Theo Farran (Clive Owen) is a former activist but is now a cynical bureaucrat who is kidnapped by a militant-immigrants rights group called The Fishes who are led by Theo's estranged wife Julian (Julianne Moore), from whom he separated out of grief when their son died during a flu pandemic in 2008.
That storyline hits harder than it did when I first saw this film in 2007...
So anyways, Julian offers Theo money to acquire transit papers for a refugee named Kee, who Theo soon discovers to be the first pregnant woman on Earth in 18 years. The goal is to get her to a facility that is taking part in what is called The Human Project which hopes to find a way to find a way to cure human infertility.
Children of Men is an incredibly tense and slickly made film that still remains Cuaron's finest work to date. While we aren't facing any kind of infertility rate in society at the moment, sometimes I often feel like this movie feels more probable...and I really wish that weren't the case.
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#7-There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
When one hears the word "milkshake", they might think of the song that proclaims that it brings all the boys to the yard. One might also think of a truly psychotic Daniel Day-Lewis bellowing to Paul Dano that he is going to drink all of his up.
Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is another example of a movie that I certainly had to grow to appreciate over time. I could clearly see the brilliance of Daniel Day-Lewis who was typically brilliant in nearly every film he made, but I think that 2007 was a year in which maturity played a key role.
Sure, I had been loving many arthouse or foreign films for years at that point, but in 2007 I was more drawn to the likes of Atonement, Juno, and Michael Clayton than I was to There Will Be Blood or No Country for Old Men.
Now, it has flipped (though I still think Michael Clayton in particular is a very great film); I think There Will Be Blood is still the most ambitious film that Paul Thomas Anderson has made to date...and it felt like a huge change of pace after a film like Punch Drunk Love.
Loosely based on Upton Sinclair's novel Oil!, the film centers on Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) who is a prospector on the hunt for silver only to end up discovering oil circa 1902. Around this time, an explosion at one of his sites kills a worker which leads to Daniel adopting that man's orphaned son, who would eventually become his nominal partner.
The story then begins to take off when a man by the name of Paul Sunday (Dano) makes Daniel aware of an oil deposit under his family's property which doesn't sit right with Paul's identical twin brother Eli (also Dano), who is a preacher of the fire-and-brimstone variety.
From there, Daniel essentially ends up destroying the lives of the Sunday family as he continues his ruthless quest for oil.
There Will Be Blood is not a film that one could likely revisit multiple times. I've only seen it twice since its release but I may be willing to give it a third go. If for anything, you should truly witness Daniel Day-Lewis' performance as it is easily one of the best performances, if not THE BEST performance of his career.
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#6 - Lost in Translation (2003)
Directed by Sofia Coppola
Going into Lost in Translation, there were a couple of thing it had going for it: Bill Murray, immense critical praise, and a glamorous city locale as its backdrop.
Those things certainly helped but I was also enamored with the film's story and the interesting relationship that formed between Bill Murray's Bob Harris and Scarlett Johannson's Charlotte.
With Lost in Translation, writer/director Sofia Coppola managed to become only the third woman (and first American woman) to be nominated for Best Director...and she won the Oscar for Original Screenplay. With her solid debut film The Virgin Suicides to also back her up, it appeared that Coppola was finally able to shake both the stigma of being Francis Ford Coppola's daughter or...to be delicate..her infamous performance in the lackluster Godfather Part III which she got cast in by her father once Winona Ryder left the project.
Murray's Bob Harris is a somewhat washed up middle-aged actor who is in Tokyo doing whiskey commercials and he is feeling a bit of culture shock. Meanwhile, Johannson's Charlotte is in Tokyo with her husband who is busy with his work as a photographer...she, too, is also feeling a bit lost and lonely.
Chance meetings in their hotel lead to Bob and Charlotte forming a bit of a bond that seems sort of platonic but also has an intimate undercurrent.
Bill Murray is known for being a rather comedic and snarky and brash performer, but you could tell he loved playing this very subdued role...and he has said on multiple occasions that this is his favorite role. He should've easily won the Oscar for this role.
Lost in Translation is a beautiful film that was something of a beacon for indie cinema. Made for only $4 million and shot over 27 days ("It took Francis that long to wake up Brando!" joked Billy Crystal during the Oscars that year), the film went on to gross $118 million worldwide and even managed to do fairly well in rural markets that don't typically respond to this kind of fare.
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#5 - Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
If there was ever a movie that was the ultimate lesson in the old adage: "You can't judge a book by its cover", then the winner would be Pan's Labyrinth.
The trailers definitely gave off a vibe that likened the film to some kind of dark and horror-ish Alice in Wonderland kind of thing...but I have never often been the kind of person to be drawn to fantasy movies...but I knew Guillermo del Toro was a great filmmaker so that combo along with the fact that the film was rated R had me a bit intrigued.
By the time the movie was over when I saw it in theaters back in 2006, I was in tears.
I was very wrong when I prejudged this movie...and I do admit I can be guilty of doing that to this day.
Set in 1944 after the Spanish Civil War (so during the Francoist period), we meet the young Ofelia who is dealing with a pregnant mother who is very ill and her stepfather, who is a violent captain who is currently out to kill members of the Spanish Maquis.
One day, a large stick-like insect appears and leads Ofelia into an ancient labyrinth. While in the labyrinth, she encounters a faun who believes she is the reincarnation of a Princess Moanna, a tale about a young girl who was a member of the royal underworld who became mortal. He gives her a book and tells Ofelia she must complete 3 tasks in order to achieve immortality and enter back into the realm for eternity.
The film eventually became one of the highest grossing foreign films in the American market of all time...and as someone who was in my senior year of high school at the time, I can attest that the film managed to have a grasp on some of my fellow students that no other foreign film had ever really achieved.
The film rather surprisingly lost the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film but I will say that the film that beat it, The Lives of Others, was a great film in its own right and was on my list of top 10 films from that year.
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#4 - Yi Yi (2000)
Directed by Edward Yang
In my 90s post, I talked about a somewhat lesser known outing by Edward Yang called A Brighter Summer Day that I find to be a true masterwork...but I might actually consider Yi Yi to be the finest film he ever made.
When Yi Yi came out, it was instantly praised by critics and began winning major critics awards prior to Oscar season...however, it was another highly praised Taiwanese film that ended up getting most of the awards buzz and also becoming the highest grossing Foreign film of all-time: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
However, Yi Yi still managed to get singled out as the Best Film of the Year by such publications as The New York Times, The Village Voice, Newsday, Time Out New York, and The Denver Post.
So what was all the raving about?
Yi Yi was a film revolving around three generations of a family living in Taiwan with the primary focus being on NJ (Wu Nien-jen).
A lot of the film doesn't truly have a plot so much as we follow various events in the family's life such as the fact that NJ is struggling at his job and is rather unhappy and ends up having a random encounter with an ex of his that he regrets breaking up with years before.
Then you have NJ's wife Ming Ming, whose mother recently suffered a stroke and is now comatose. In order to cope, she ends up leaving for a remote Buddhist retreat.
You also have their son Yang Yang who is relentlessly picked on by his own teacher and students who soon takes up photography as a means to cope which also gets him into more trouble.
The daughter Ting Ting ends up befriending a neighbor girl named Lili who has recently broken up with a boy named Fatty, who soon takes an interest in Ting Ting. She will learn soon enough that Fatty having an interest in her is not in her own best interests.
As you can see, Yi Yi is one of those films with several sort of meandering plots that only seem to come together when the right filmmaker does them. Someone like the late great Edward Yang was one of those masters...but I also know people who still find this film to be a rambling and somewhat meandering chore to sit through.
However, I am someone who often gets bored by superhero movies so perhaps you know where my loyalties are going to lie.
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#3 - Mulholland Drive (2001)
Directed by David Lynch
I still find it hilarious that David Lynch actually felt that ABC as a network would be any less easier to deal with when putting a TV show such as Mulholland Drive. It is even more hilarious when you consider that unlike when Twin Peaks was on ABC, the network was now owned by Disney.
So yes, David Lynch's critically lauded film Mulholland Drive originally began its life not as a movie but as a TV Pilot for a brand new series. In fact, Lynch's original intention was for the character(s) played by Laura Herring to not even be the character(s) she played. Instead, Lynch had devised Mulholland Drive to be a Twin Peaks spinoff with that role being filled by Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne character....and as someone who adored Audrey, that might've been truly epic.
Anyways, the Twin Peaks connection was scrapped and Lynch turned it into its own beast...and frankly, I think I could easily leave it there and call it a day. To describe a relatively thorough plotline of this film would be laughable but we begin with is as follows:
A woman is in a car that is driving up the windy hilly road called Mulholland Drive in LA, and the car gets into an accident. She manages to be the only survivor from the crash but she has no memory of whom she is. This is the character played by Laura Harring.
Meanwhile, a young blonde named Diane (Naomi Watts, for a performance that was robbed of an Oscar) arrives at LAX as a small town girl with dreams to become an actress in the City of Angels.
Diane will be staying at an apartment that is normally occupied by her Aunt Ruth but when there, she discovers a woman in her shower...the woman from the car accident who cannot remember who she is. They decide to refer to her as "Rita" thanks to a poster of Rita Hayworth in Gilda that was on the wall.
So....
There is a lot more to Mulholland Drive than what I just described. I think anyone who has seen it is probably laughing their ass off right now because they know all too well how describing this film is quite the process that would take far too long.
Much like most of Lynch's works, Mulholland Drive is a film that is rife for analysis and is up for interpretation...and believe me, many have tried.
I do feel the film requires repeated viewings and patience...but I can understand that it may not be for everybody.
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#2 - In The Mood for Love (2000)
Directed by Wong Kar Wai
Forbidden love is a concept that has been around in art for centuries and the idea of two people forming a bond out of the betrayal of their respective spouses sounds like it could potentially pulpy and melodramatic.
However, In The Mood for Love manages to take the idea of adultery and somehow turns it into a rather beautiful though rather heartbreaking story.
Set in 1962 Hong Kong, the film begins with Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung) and Su Li-shen (Maggie Cheung) who rent two adjacent apartments from each other in a modest apartment complex. They each have spouses who are both very busy with work and thus often leave the two of them alone.
They begin to develop a friendship but that friendship becomes more complicated and eventually deeper when both realize their spouses are having an affair.
One of the most striking and effective aspects of the film, aside from the visual aesthetics, is the choice of writer/director Wong Kar-wai for us to never actually see the two cheating spouses. It really does give the sense of true alienation on their part and all you want is for these two to actually pursue a relationship...and despite the fact they seem to be perfect together, they seem to both have too strong of morals to even go there.
A movie like In the Mood for Love is a prime example of how such a simple topic can be made into something truly emotional and powerful just by the right mix of talent involved.
Wong Kar-wai is a stellar filmmaker who gave us three fantastic films in the 1990s that showed immense promise: Days of Being Wild, Chungking Express, and Happy Together.
In the Mood for Love is certainly his crown-jewel.
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#1 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Directed by Michel Gondry
As I promised, we would see another offering from the brilliant irreverent mind of Charlie Kaufman so now I get to discuss the film I consider to be his other masterpiece: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
Frankly, I am actually a little surprised by the decision I made here. If you had asked me to make this list a year, I probably would've chose either my #2 or #3 films for this slot...but the more I thought about it and kept looking at the list, it just felt right to give it the crown (at least for today...who knows how I will feel tomorrow but that's not my problem currently...)
As I have with several of the films on these lists, I revisited Eternal Sunshine last year during the pandemic after only having seen it twice: once when it was released in 2004 and then again in college around 2009. Frankly, the film was even stronger than I remembered upon the rewatch and I actually bumped it up a couple of slots on this list. In previous incarnations of lists I have made, I normally ranked the film around the 5th or 6th slot.
In what might be his greatest performance, Jim Carrey plays Joel. On a cold blustery snowy day, Joel decides to take the LIRR out to Montauk...which of course seems crazy because who wants to go to a place like Montauk in the snow? Then again, he bailed on work to go so frankly if I had the choice between going to work or standing in the cold snowy landscape of the far eastern tip of Long Island then I think I know what I would choose...
On the train back, Joel ends up getting his ear talked off by the kooky Clementine (Kate Winslet, also giving one of her best performances), a self-proclaimed "book slave" who works at a Barnes & Noble.
Soon after though, we see glimpses of their tumultuous relationship and then Joel realizes that following their breakup, Clementine chose to erase Joel from her memory using a company called Lacuna which is run by a rather enigmatic doctor played by Tom Wilkinson.
Joel, too, then decides to go through the process of erasing Clementine from his memory which then allows us to sort of relive many of their moments together as if we are watching Joel's life in his head sort of fade away.
I think it is a shame that Eternal Sunshine wasn't showered with Oscars; it didn't even really get many nominations. Kate Winslet got a nom but lost to the undeserving Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby but beating the odds, Kaufman did win Original Screenplay which is normally a little unusual for a film to win a Screenplay award without a Picture nomination...and in the last 17 years since, no other film has achieved that in the category.
I think what was particularly amazing on my rewatch was how I actually FORGOT little details from the plot so it truly felt that I was discovering the film for the first time in a lot of ways. In fact, one aspect of the structure was one such moment I forgot and I am thrilled that I did because it was nice to have a fresh slate upon a third viewing; that doesn't happen very often.
I have left a lot of plot details out of this one in hopes that some of you haven't seen it will give it a watch with knowing as little as possible.
A lot of movies are better that way...but some are on another level just like this one.
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IN CONCLUSION:
So yeah...it is always kind of fun for me when this lists end up going a completely different way than I expected them to go.
In the case of Eternal Sunshine, it went from being 3rd to 2nd to 1st as I prepped this post in the last couple of days. The arrangement of films had become so convoluted that I actually erased what I wrote here explaining all of the different slots I placed certain films because it started to give me an even worse headache than I already have!
I guess that the moral of the story is that these lists truly can change on a dime. Next week, I might end up thinking the best film of the decade was Mulholland Drive...
So, we only have one decade left to go: the 2010s are still so fresh that I am sure the list would change if you asked me again in a year and especially in another 5 or 10 years. It even changed a good amount from when I first did a list last year!
....and I have a list currently drafted as I type this...maybe it'll change even more.
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