Just about everyone agrees that 1999 was a great year for movies. We here at The A.V. Club do not beg to differ: We affirmed that consensus opinion last summer, when we revisited and ranked the bygone year’s finest films, discovering no shortage of old favorites that still looked like triumphs in the harsh light of hindsight. (Yes, Fight Club holds up. Really!) But if ’99’s reputation as a mini cinematic renaissance remains more or less undisputed, what can be said about the year that followed? What has been said about it?
There are fewer champions, certainly, of our new millennium’s first new movies, especially when you limit it to the ones that hit American theaters before Y2K become Y2K1. Plenty of critical appraisers in December of two decades past couldn’t help but compare the best movies of the year to the best movies of the previous year. The Oscars didn’t much help 2000’s rep: As Hollywood’s blockbuster version of an old-fashioned swordplay epic took on the unexpectedly successful-in-America Chinese version, the undercard painted a picture of an off year for the medium… even if a few of the nomination leaders were actually pretty good. (See below.) And then there was the sudden proliferation of movies shot on video—not the sleek, celluloid-approximating video we’ve grown accustomed to today, but the primitive low-grade kind seen (and never successfully unseen) in adventurous but butt-ugly indies like Chuck & Buck, Time Code, and Lars von Trier’s otherwise superb Dancer In The Dark. If there’s any such thing as a transitional year in the never-ending forward flux of moviemaking, Y2K might qualify, at least on technological grounds.
But if 2000 couldn’t compete, in the immediate estimations of cinephiles, with the treasures of 1999, some distance has done favors to the cream of its crop. Which is to say, yes, there were plenty of outstanding movies released at the dawn of the century. American comedy made a strong showing, with filmmakers like the Coen brothers, Christopher Guest, and even David Mamet offering up some of their most gut-busting features. “Unadaptable” books got superb adaptations. Von Trier made a musical. Jim Jarmusch made a samurai picture. Steven Soderbergh dropped two movies in nine months. Meanwhile, the arthouse was flooded with first-rate visions from around the world, not all of them featuring clashing blades on verdant treetops. And, in one positive development for the industry, plenty of movies by women made a splash with critics and audiences—by no means a common occurrence then.
To narrow things down, we as usual limited ourselves to films released in America sometime over the year in question. That means, once again, that a few holdovers from the previous year’s festival circuit (see, for example, No. 2 or No. 7) were deemed eligible, but also that a few that premiered in 2000 but didn’t hit theaters by New Year’s Eve were disqualified. (Check back next summer for a list featuring films from Christopher Nolan, Wong Kar-wai, and one of the greatest Cannes Film Festivals ever.) Otherwise, the list below reflects only the taste of the 13 contributors who voted—and, furthermore, how they felt a week ago, not 20 years ago. For a 2000 take on the 2000 year in film, consult Google. Just be prepared to hear how much better the movies of ’99 were.
25. Best In Show
A real documentary about competitive dog breeding would presumably feature some eccentric characters of its own. The mockumentary version, set in the kooky and warm-hearted world of Christopher Guest, is like a ThunderShirt for humans. Guest’s ensemble is at its strongest here, with Waiting For Guffman players Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, Michael McKean, Michael Hitchcock, Eugene Levy, and the director himself returning to the fold. The film also introduces some hilarious new faces to the Guestverse, like Jennifer Coolidge and Jane Lynch as, respectively, a dog breeder and trainer whose affair isn’t as clandestine as they think it is, and John Michael Higgins as the loving but high-maintenance hairdresser dad of shih tzus Miss Agnes and Tyrone. It’s the loving part that’s key to Best In Show’s appeal; even laugh-out-loud jokes like Fred Willard’s clueless color commentary have a sweetness that blends perfectly with the silliness, creating a comedy as cozy as it is hilarious. [Katie Rife]
24. Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai
“Is it true that you never talk to nobody and you got no friends?” Pearline (Camille Winbush) asks the hitman Ghost Dog (Forest Whitaker), shortly before his number of friends climbs to two, her included. The other, an ice cream man (Isaach de Bankolé), doesn’t speak English. It doesn’t matter that the pair can’t communicate with language; understanding arrives through feeling. The same can be said of Jim Jarmusch’s funny but undeniably mournful crime drama. Anchored by the magnetic Whitaker and pulled inexorably forward by a can’t-miss score from RZA, Ghost Dog tosses out tropes from Westerns, samurai pictures, mob films, and noir, all to drop us into the life of a character adhering to a code (or genre) no one else follows. Whitaker’s stillness acts as line breaks do in poetry: It allows Jarmusch to punctuate the sparse dialogue, bursts of violence, and surreal, almost cartoonish humor with tranquility, like a cardinal balanced on the barrel of a sniper rifle. [Allison Shoemaker]
23. Hamlet
Michael Almereyda’s eclectic, three-decade career is largely made up of inspired oddities, and his modern-dress adaptation of The Bard’s longest play is no exception. Starring Ethan Hawke as the moody crown prince of the Denmark Corporation, this Y2K Hamlet bursts with visual invention and witty anachronism, treating its contemporary New York City backdrop with a genuine sense of wonderment, while also capitalizing on the jarring disorientation of its ultra-modern setting. Well-known for his various experiments with the PixelVision camera, Almereyda juxtaposes a range of low-grade video formats with hyper-clear images of high-rise penthouses and Wall Street wealth. Running just under two hours, the film is too aggressively pared down to be a truly definitive Hamlet. But for its technology-driven transformation of the text, it’s among the most imaginative. [Lawrence Garcia]
22. The Wind Will Carry Us
The late Abbas Kiarostami closed out a decade of poetic cinema with a languid community portrait that doubles as an appreciation of life’s small ironies. The Wind Will Carry Us follows a four-person film crew—led by “The Engineer” (Behzad Dorani), the only member we meet—that travels to a remote village hoping to capture the mourning rituals of the locals following the imminent death of a 100-year-old woman. Unfortunately for them, the woman not only doesn’t die, her health actually improves, stranding the team in limbo. To pass the time, the Engineer invests himself in the townsfolk’s struggles. Kiarostami often keeps key information out of frame, relegating it to the dense, intricate soundtrack; he essentially invites audiences to fill in the visual blanks with their own imagination, and cues them to the rhythms of daily rural life. The director’s style was always unique, but rarely was it more intellectually and emotionally engaging. [Vikram Murthi]
21. Unbreakable
Although it was advertised as a supernatural thriller, M. Night Shyamalan’s follow-up to The Sixth Sense turned out to be an ingenious superhero origin story set in the writer-director’s mythic Philadelphia. A sense of mystery and regret surrounds its reluctant hero (Bruce Willis) and the wealthy comic book collector (Samuel L. Jackson) who helps him discover his powers, creating one of the most artful (and moving) statements of Shyamalan’s career theme of miracles and clashes of good and evil hiding in plain sight. While Unbreakable’s reputation as the realistic superhero anti-blockbuster has only grown since comic book movies and franchises achieved global domination, a large part of its eerie potency is owed to the fact that it still delivers on all of the quintessential pleasures of a post-Batman superhero film—from memorable costuming to a knockout score—with style. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
20. Traffic
The war on drugs is a failure, and almost everyone in Traffic knows it. Steven Soderbergh won the Best Director Oscar—beating his work on Erin Brockovich, for which he was also nominated—for this ensemble drama following the competing maneuvers of a drug czar (Michael Douglas), a Mexican police officer (Benicio del Toro), two DEA agents (Don Cheadle and Luis Guzmán), and a kingpin’s housewife (Catherine Zeta-Jones). Stephen Gaghan’s script, adapted from a British miniseries, explores how fluidly forces of greed move over the American/Mexican border, devastating both sides. Traffic is most interested in the heroism (and, often, the futility) of fighting corruption—a theme that would come to shape the rest of Soderbergh’s career; he’s since become one of American cinema’s most astute critics of institutions, and how often they’re at odds with the very people they were created to protect. [Roxana Hadadi]
19. High Fidelity
Maybe High Fidelity is supposed to look problematic today: a glorification of snobby gatekeepers, rockists, and bad boyfriends that’s predicated on reducing real life to top-five lists. But consider the considerable daring of John Cusack lending his sensitive-guy image to a self-obsessed record-store owner who is, all things considered, less likable than the murderer-for-hire he played in Grosse Pointe Blank. High Fidelity shares with that dark comedy a screenwriting team and an ambivalent relationship with nostalgia (along with, yes, another killer soundtrack). It’s also uncommonly perceptive about its characters’ moral weaknesses while understanding the walled-off allure of sitting around making pointlessly authoritative lists (ahem), whether of “side ones, track ones” or devastating breakups. These qualities were present in the Nick Hornby novel, here faithfully transposed from London to Chicago, but they gain resonance when placed into the Cusack canon of nerdy heartbreak. High Fidelity now feels downright prescient on the fraught relationship between the ecstasy of fandom and the agony of being kind of a bastard. [Jesse Hassenger]
18. Nowhere To Hide
Thanks to Parasite’s unexpected Oscar victory, mainstream America is finally discovering Korean cinema, but cinephiles have long known of the demented innovations emanating from that region’s southern half. Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere To Hide can be hard to stomach, especially at this historical moment—the film arguably celebrates police brutality, cheering on cops who think primarily with their fists—but few action movies have pushed visual abstraction to such delirious heights. A fistfight photographed entirely as shadows on walls; a wrestling match that abruptly metamorphoses into a tender waltz; black-and-white footage punctuated with what look like hand-colored freeze frames (synchronized to the musical score); an assassination set piece built around the atypical, non-disco Bee Gees hit “Holiday”—there’s scarcely a moment that doesn’t prioritize style over substance, often to the point where the latter feels downright irrelevant. Lee ultimately failed to create a new kind of cinema, but this initial attempt remains galvanizing. [Mike D’Angelo]
17. The Emperor’s New Groove
It should have been one of Hollywood’s most notable disasters: Years into production on an animated epic called Kingdom Of The Sun, Disney decided that the project wasn’t working, inspiring its director (Roger Allers, who co-helmed The Lion King) to quit. Several songs that Sting had been commissioned to write were scrapped, and the whole thing was hastily re-conceived as a broad, wacky comedy, with an obnoxious supporting character voiced by David Spade becoming the film’s new protagonist. It sounds like a sure-fire recipe for failure, but replacement director Mark Dindal and his crew apparently felt liberated by the chaos, adopting a what-the-hell attitude that embraced sheer lunacy for its own sake. The result is as close as Disney has ever come to Chuck Jones’ anarchic sensibility, exemplified by the moment in which villain Yzma (Eartha Kitt) orders dim-bulb flunky Kronk (Patrick Warburton) to pull the (wrong) secret lever, dropping her into a pit of crocodiles, and returns to wearily ask, “Why do we even have that lever?” [Mike D’Angelo]
16. Love & Basketball
Love & Basketball didn’t put too many points on the box office board. But looking back, its eventual rise to cult-classic status—and its influence on a generation of filmmakers—should have been predictable. Gina Prince-Bythewood’s directorial debut spans several decades, or “four quarters,” as aspiring pro players Monica (Sanaa Lathan) and Quincy (Omar Epps) try to balance their personal lives with their athletic dreams. One of the few sports movies to this day told from a woman’s point of view, the film is also a deeply nuanced portrait of Black love, with keen insights into evolving gender roles and Black affluence in the golden age of hip-hop and NBA superstardom. From its psychologically expressive gameplay scenes to its inventive sensuality (a game of strip-hoops stands out), Love & Basketball reinvigorated the sports drama, and paved a path for its reinvention. [Beatrice Loayza]
15. State And Main
David Mamet channels his caustic wit and cynicism into a Preston Sturges-esque ensemble comedy about a Hollywood production that takes over a tiny Vermont town. The big-fish-in-a-small-pond premise is nothing new, but a cast of ringers (William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Alec Baldwin, among others) livens it up, as does Mamet’s singular rhythmic dialogue. Line for line, State And Main is the funniest American film of the year, but its politics have aged curiously well, too—not something that can be said about many other works by this playwright-turned-filmmaker. The second half hinges on the production’s desperate attempts to cover up their star’s sexual abuse, and the film nails the moral cowardice from almost everyone involved, whose rationalizing rhetoric frequently plays like the most cringeworthy defenses from #MeToo’s worst offenders. Mamet’s conclusion is depressingly salient: When enough money and power is involved, “doing the right thing” has little real-world value beyond the protection of one’s soul. Turns out the film, much like the film-within-a-film, really is about purity. [Vikram Murthi]
14. Bamboozled
Not since his alter ego hurled a trashcan through the window of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria had Spike Lee tapped so directly into his own righteous anger. Combining elements of past showbiz indictments like Network and The Producers, this scathing satire follows a Black TV executive (Damon Wayans) whose scheme to free himself from his contract backfires spectacularly when his deliberately offensive creation—a throwback minstrel variety show, set on a watermelon patch and starring Black actors in blackface—becomes an improbable hit with viewers and critics alike. Lee overstuffs the film with subplots, broad supporting characters, and editorializing asides, but he never loses sight of his thesis: how dehumanizing stereotypes have evolved over the decades, taking on the cosmopolitan shape of “edgy” comedy and satire itself to wedge themselves deeper into the cracks and crevices of our pop culture. Grossly underrated upon release, Bamboozled looks timelier than ever as the lie of a post-racial America has crumbled in broad daylight; the only thing dated about the film is its hideous digital cinematography. [A.A. Dowd]
13. Jesus’ Son
Even though all the short stories in Denis Johnson’s 1992 collection Jesus’ Son are narrated by the same guy—a sloppy junkie known only as “Fuckhead”—the book seemed like unlikely fodder for a movie adaptation, given that its vignettes are often grotesque, surreal, and only loosely connected. But director Alison Maclean, a team of screenwriters, and star Billy Crudup (ably supported by an eclectic cast of top-shelf character actors) found a meaningful narrative in Johnson’s work, turning it into a picaresque story of life on the margins. The sweet, soulful Fuckhead—speaking throughout in Crudup’s quirkily halting voice—takes us on a tour through the strange and darkly comic lives of drug dealers and users in America’s heartland. Even as he himself tries to find a way out of addiction, the man remains a keen observer of humanity at its best and worst—never judging, ever-marveling. [Noel Murray]
12. George Washington
The North Carolina of George Washington is a liminal space between naturalism and romanticism, between the harsh realities of an impoverished America and the dreams of its young inhabitants. Following a group of mostly Black adolescents over one of those sweltering last summers of childhood that maybe exist only in the movies, David Gordon Green’s micro-budget first feature remains one of the great indie debuts of the new millennium—and for Green himself, a tough act to follow, which may explain the zigzagging course his career has taken in the years since, swerving from Hollywood stoner comedies to slasher reboots. If the filmmaker never returned to the earnest magic of George Washington—a young man’s movie in every sense—plenty of others tried to conjure it anew; just as Green drew from the 1970s triumphs of Terrence Malick and Charles Burnett, his own swoony style has echoed through Sundance sensations and jeans commercials. [A.A. Dowd]
11. Almost Famous
“What do you love about music?” teenage journalist William Miller (Patrick Fugit) asks Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), the “guitarist with mystique” in mid-tier 1970s rock band Stillwater. “To begin with, everything,” Russell says, cutting through the toxicity, ego, and hubris that Cameron Crowe depicts with simultaneous honesty and warmth over the preceding two hours (or two and a half, in the luxurious director’s cut) of his semi-autobiographical dramedy. William is supposed to maintain skepticism as he tags along on Stillwater’s cross-country tour, but he can’t help falling in love with the poetic fruitlessness of a struggling, occasionally transcendent band—and with world’s greatest fan Penny Lane, brought to life by a never better Kate Hudson. For that matter, has anyone in this movie ever been better elsewhere? Even heavyweights like Frances McDormand and Philip Seymour Hoffman match their best work in an ensemble that imbues every player with palpable joy and sadness as they live, breathe, and yell at each other. Crowe loves hokey 1973 rock ’n’ roll, sure, but he loves his characters even more. [Jesse Hassenger]
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where Art Thou? has a shaggy-dog quality to it, as if the brothers were still shaking off a White Russian-and-Maui Wowie hangover from The Big Lebowski. Or maybe it’s just the humidity, as the writer-directors gather up a whole mess of 1930s pop cultural signifiers, wrap them up into a bindle, and embark on a joyful ramble through the Depression-era South. The name of the film is a reference to Preston Sturges’ screwball classic Sullivan’s Travels, and the structure is cribbed from Homer’s Odyssey, but the true heart of the film lies in the more homespun art form of its bluegrass soundtrack. George Clooney brings movie-star charisma to the proceedings as Everett, leader of a bumbling trio of escaped convicts; he’s accompanied by John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson as Pete Hogwallop and Delmar O’Donnell, humble men whose obtuse dispositions can be readily discerned from their Christian patronymics (as the grandiloquent Everett would put it). Offstage, they’re wanted criminals. Onstage they’re the Soggy Bottom Boys, a singing group whose debut song, “Man Of Constant Sorrow,” is better than it has any right to be—both within the film and without. [Katie Rife]
9. Dancer In The Dark
Out of all the selfless women in the Lars von Trier oeuvre, none are subjected to more sadistic anti-karma than Selma (Björk), the nearly blind immigrant factory worker who escapes into imaginary song-and-dance numbers in Dancer In The Dark. Yet the Danish provocateur’s 1960s-set take on the Hollywood musical is one of his most fluid and compelling works. Despite the deglamorized video aesthetic (which includes complex musical fantasy sequences cut together from a variety of static, surveillance-like angles), von Trier’s signature blend of emotional manipulation and deconstructive distancing effects is as heightened as ever, drawing the film’s disarming sincerity to a grim conclusion. The behind-the-scenes relationship between the director and Björk was notoriously toxic, but good luck finding any evidence of it on screen in this vision of punished innocence. That someone like Selma couldn’t exist in our world is ultimately the point. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
8. Ratcatcher
Amid all the poverty and abuse and harrowing deaths typical of British miserablism, Lynne Ramsay salvages beauty, compassion, and precious life to reach a high-water mark of that pejoratively termed movement. In her debut feature, the 30-year-old Scot resisted the bludgeoning dourness that hangs over many superficially similar neorealist dramas, matching her unsparing depictions of trauma and hardship in ’70s Glasgow with passages of arresting lyrical wonder. A mouse tied to a balloon sails to the moon and joins a colony of its happy brethren; in the most transcendent scene, our boy James (a durable yet vulnerable William Eadie) climbs through a window and takes off into an Elysian field of wheat, fleet and free. He’s got plenty worth escaping, which Ramsay duly articulates. And yet like the protagonists of the other three films in the compact Ramsay canon, he has no choice but to forge ahead out of the darkness, one way or another. [Charles Bramesco]
7. The Virgin Suicides
Before Lost In Translation established Sofia Coppola as one of the foremost authorities on boredom and ennui, her dreamy debut—an adaptation of the celebrated novel by Jeffrey Eugenides—offered a radical, haunting portrait of girlhood and thwarted puberty draped in floral print and soft pink. Who were the Lisbon girls, and why did they decide to take their own lives? These questions linger in the minds of a group of neighborhood boys, whose perspective we adopt as they struggle to understand these mythical young women and their fiery ringleader, Lux (a luminous Kirsten Dunst). Countering the inadequate words of her male narrator, Coppola steeps the film in intoxicating, impressionistic imagery—white dresses with grass stains, a sweater clinging to a bare shoulder, glossy magazines and sluggish bodies spread out on a carpet. The Virgin Suicides is that rare coming-of-age film in which the mystery of the teenage girl coexists with a palpable understanding of what it feels like to be one, stifled and yearning for more. [Beatrice Loayza]
6. The House Of Mirth
Long overshadowed by The Age Of Innocence (which boasts bigger movie stars and a legendary director working against type), Terence Davies’ exquisitely odd take on Edith Wharton’s 1905 novel nonetheless ranks among the very greatest literary adaptations of the past two decades. Davies somehow recognized a hitherto untapped quality in Gillian Anderson, who was still known almost exclusively as Dana Scully at the time (the film was shot between seasons seven and eight of The X-Files); her performance as Lily Bart, a poor and independent-minded woman struggling to maintain her tenuous place in high society, is so intensely deliberate that it creates the impression of someone treating her very existence as a theatrical role, striving to keep it sufficiently diverting that potential benefactors don’t lose interest. The film opens with a tone of wry amusement and moves inexorably, almost imperceptibly, toward resigned devastation. [Mike D’Angelo]
5. American Psycho
When it first premiered, American Psycho was seen as a very specific satire of 1980s culture. But its story of a murderous Wall Street investment banker has only proven more and more timeless since. In adapting Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial 1991 novel, director Mary Harron and her co-writer, Guinevere Turner, pared down the book’s violence, upped its satire, and added a pointed feminist lens. And they anchored the film around the darkest of jokes: The average entitled finance bro is literally indistinguishable from a serial killer. Christian Bale’s egoless performance is key to selling the humor of Patrick Bateman’s vanity-obsessed, embarrassingly uncool world of competitive machismo, where business card pissing contests and restaurant reservation anxiety are the norm. (Good luck getting a table at Dorsia.) Thanks to Harron’s pitch-perfect mastery of tone, American Psycho is alternately disturbing, absurd, and laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also a prescient warning about the intertwining dangers of capitalism and toxic masculinity. [Caroline Siede]
4. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The Chinese film industry was in a state of flux in 2000, as the 1997 handover of Hong Kong and China’s impending entry to the World Trade Organization threatened to upset old balances of power. Still, no one expected a wuxia throwback from a Taiwanese director already ensconced in Hollywood to popularize the more romantic side of Chinese-language action filmmaking for the international masses. Ang Lee’s sweeping, balletic throwback enchanted viewers (and blew minds) around the world. Featuring a cast that included bona fide superstars Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, and Cheng Pei-pei—as well as standout newcomer Zhang Ziyi—this elegantly choreographed tale set in 18th-century China introduced millions of viewers to the exhilarating artistry of Chinese sword-and-chivalry martial arts epics. And they responded to the tune of more than $200 million worldwide. [Katie Rife]
3. You Can Count On Me
A wayward soul (Mark Ruffalo) returns to his charming but stifling hometown to visit his more responsible sister (Laura Linney). Together, the two reflect on their past, present, and future, working through their trust issues. The premise of this first feature from writer-director Kenneth Lonergan, who’d go on to make Margaret and Manchester By The Sea, sounds like the dreariest kind of indie drama. But Lonergan’s writing and staging—coupled with two heartbreakingly vivid lead performances—is so bracingly present, revealing who these people are through what they do, in scenes that are often short and to the point. You Can Count On Me expresses its themes in simple slice-of-life moments, where something as basic as whether a flighty family member can reliably perform a daily errand provokes edge-of-the-seat suspense. [Noel Murray]
2. Beau Travail
A reverie of physicalities and opacities transforms Claire Denis’ reimagining of the unfinished Herman Melville novella Billy Budd into an enigmatic ballet. At a Foreign Legion camp in Djibouti where recruits spend their days in training drills and their nights in local dance clubs, an officer (the singular Denis Lavant) becomes consumed with jealousy toward a young legionnaire (Grégoire Colin). Though rich in references and subtexts, this masterpiece is beautifully resistant to intellectualization. From its opening moments, one is simply invited to go with the flow, as Denis weaves her fascinations (among them male bodies, music, and the African countries of her childhood) into a frequently wordless movie that feels equal parts improvised and permeated with poetic double meanings, building to a transcendent final shot. Beau Travail remains Denis’ most celebrated work, and one of the essential art films of the turn of the millennium. [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]
1. Yi Yi
Edward Yang knew life was bittersweet. Why else would he begin his final film at a wedding and end it with a funeral? Yi Yi, a serene masterpiece of longing, regret, and commiseration, unfolds over the year (and three hours of running time) separating these events. The late, great Taiwanese director gracefully juggles the relationship woes of a middle-aged father (Wu Nien-jen), his teenage daughter (Kelly Lee), and his financially irresponsible brother-in-law (Xisheng Chen), in wide shots so artfully composed they could be displayed in a museum. He creates some beautiful rhymes, too, as in a passage that intercuts a reunion between estranged lovers with the hesitant courtship of a first date. If the filmmaker has an onscreen surrogate, it’s a little boy with a camera, snapping pictures of people’s napes to show them the world from a new perspective. But one can also see a little of Yang, who died of cancer a few years after the film’s release, in the parting, possibly imagined affection of an ailing grandmother, returning from the brink of oblivion to offer some solace before she goes. In a way, isn’t that what Yang gave us with this magnificent swan song: a farewell as comforting as a warm embrace? [A.A. Dowd]
279 Comments
I was ready to raise a fuss about the lack of “In the Mood for Love” until I went back and re-read the release date criteria (between that, “Spirited Away”, “Mulholland Drive”, “Memento”, “Fellowship of the Ring”, and “Amelie”, 2001 was a great year for movies). Other than that, I couldn’t think of any really egregious omissions, and the few films you’ve listed that I wasn’t familiar with are now on my to-watch list, both of which are probably the highest compliment I can pay to this type of endeavor. Well done.
Yeah, In The Mood For Love threw me until I checked the dates again.
A.I and Moulin Rogue for 2001 for me as well. Damn, I’m hoping for a few great 20th anniversary re-releases next year.
The 3 year stretch of 1999-2001 was spectacular for movies.
Even the pure “non-serious” genre movies from that era are a lot of fun (The Brendan Frasier/Rachel Weisz Mummy, the 1st X-Men movie, Meet the Parents, Zoolander, Wet Hot American Summer, etc)
2001 wasn’t great for summer blockbusters but even then I’ll stick up for the B-movie silliness of The Mummy Returns and Jurassic Park III over some of the self-serious stuff we get these days.
I don’t know why the Mummy so quickly went down the memory hole as I remember it being a well-liked and very fun movie. I feel like it should be considered one of those movies that are endlessly played on cable stations much in the same way they do with Zoolander but it somehow isn’t
I will ALWAYS defend the Mummy as a top-notch action comedy. The cast knows exactly how much fun to have with it, the pacing is great, the action set-pieces are a blast. The mummy effects are dated but suitably creepy. Also, not to get too analytical, but the writers really effectively use the “rock-paper-scissors” technique with the three lead characters:
-Jonathan and O’Connell are alike because they are sneaky scoundrels, whereas Evie is naive and honest.
-Evie and O’Connell are alike because they are brave and determined, whereas Jonathan is cowardly and lazy.
-Evie and Jonathan are alike because they are prim Brits (and siblings) whereas O’Connell is a brash punch-em-up American outsider.
That analysis never occurred to me. Admittedly, it has been a long time since I saw it.
Kubrick’s stuff has slowly been trickling out on 4k, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were planning on releasing an anniversary edition of A.I. in that format sometime next year.There is also a Criterion box set of Wong-Kar Wai’s films supposedly in the works, which will hopefully include some new features for “In the Mood for Love” to mark the occasion.
I was thinking about Moulin Rouge recently and looked it up. In Australia the soundtrack was an absolutely inescapable hit and ended up the highest-selling album of 2001.I fucking love it.
Holy Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint from someone who probably
wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is literally the only movie you
got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At
no point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to
anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this
room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and
may God have mercy on your soul.
Stupid bitches. LOL! You think you can shadow ban me! LOL!Holy
Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint
from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is
literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is
literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At no
point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything
that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best
movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house
film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents
peach schnaps to get drunk.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.
Where is:
Cast Away
Gladiator
Memento
Billy Elliot
Final Destination
Gone in 60 Seconds
Meet the Parents
The Patriot
Pay it Forward
Pitch Black
Requiem for a Dream
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
This is an excellent parody post.
I immediately thought of Spirited Away as well, but, of course, you’re right–it was a 2001 movie…
I will never watch Amelie just based off that creepy image of her holding that spoon.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m a little salty that Almost Famous is only 11th.
Same.
That scene on the airplane is so egregious, it deserved to slip down the list for that reason alone.
Virgin Suicides is a movie that I still see popular with the new batch of youngsters. Something about that movie just easily takes me back to the strangeness of being a teenager and the frustration of not being able to communicate these feelings of wanting things that were intangible for the first time.I like American Psycho, but I always found it odd it became almost aspirational to some douche bags. I just don’t understand how that was peoples takeaway lol.
American Psycho much like Fight Club has a message, but the often loud fanbase seemed to have missed the point. High Fidelity and from 99′ Election seem to suffer from this too. The sort of thing that made Dave Chappelle run away and rethink he whole career in ways.
I haven’t gone back to it, but my initial reaction to High Fidelity was that I hated it: the asshole protagonist loses his relationship for being an asshole, mopes about it, and then his “timeout” lapses, and he’s back to his relationship.
Kinda like certain Scorcese movies (Casino, Goodfellas, Wolf of Wall Street). You get drawn in by the fantasy of being rich, well-dressed, respected, answering to nobody, and desirable to women. There are few men on Earth who are all set with the amount of money, sex and power they currently have.Then by the end, you snap out of it. “Oh right, if you live like that you lose it all, go to jail, and maybe get killed.”Some dudes fail to get the whole message.
I’m not sure the message is more about them going to jail and more like they’re really awful people who do really awful things. Of course, there’s a lot of guys who probably get off on their awfulness (including, I think, Scorcese)
WoW was insanely fun for much of its runtime, then you see the actual Jordan Belfort in a cameo at the end introducing Leo at a Learn How to Sell seminar for suckers.
Not sure what you’re talking about here. Goodfellas is a movie about cool guys hanging out and having a good time.
“Scarface” is another great example. Not Scorsese, but many of the people who saw it seem to view it as aspirational. It’s as if they stopped watching right after he says, “Say hello to my little friend”.
Yep. A lot of the people who love Scorsese fail to understand that as befits a good Catholic, Scorsese’s favorite theme is temptation. Henry Hill and Jordan Belfort are basically Jesus wandering in the desert, if Jesus gave in to Satan’s little reminders that unlimited gratification and power could be his.One of Scorsese’s biggest gifts (and curses) is definitely his ability to show just how outright awesome it would be to be a person with almost unlimited access to money, drugs, women, etc. If Scorsese couldn’t do this, his movies wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. The whole point is for you to want what the men onscreen have. You’re just as tempted as they are, you become almost complicit in their wrongdoing, and in the end, you realize just how easy it would be for you to become a mobster or to otherwise do terrible things.
Yeah; I feel like American Psycho has lived on more as a meme (business cards, Huey Lewis) than a great film we all gather ‘round the tube for a rewarding rewatch.
Was there really that many who took American Psycho that way though? I agree that there’s a bunch that found Fight Club cool (which it was – deliberately so) and missed anything deeper or contrary to that and yes, Psycho has been memed to deathbby folk who find it more lol funny than satirical. But I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone who’s found it aspirational, certainly not in the way Wall Street or Wolf of Wall Street could be seen. Maybe people don’t realise how pathetic, powerless and dweeby Bateman is but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t see him as a figure of comedy – in real life or on the internet. I may have just been lucky though.
Psycho works as surface level entertainment just like Starship Troopers; I’m sure there were a LOT of people who thought the latter was just a kick-ass space adventure. I think it’s safe to say many people miss the satire in any movie that’s less obvious about it than Idiocracy.
I know 2 people who found AP aspirational. One is a notoriously misogynistic douche-bro who went to law school, and the other is a hardcore Ayn Rand fan.Douche bro actually attempted to do the whole business card thing at Per Se in NYC Bateman style and documented it all on FB. Cringe.
Then I have been lucky. All I’ve experienced is people being described as Patrick Bateman-like, but no one consciously attempting to be him. Sorry to hear you’ve found two of them.
My graduating law school class was filled with a few guys who somewhat understood the joke of Bateman, but also seemed to love his ability to be a complete dick. I would say total narcissists walk away from a lot of these movies seeing a glimpse of themselves and don’t care that these are not aspirational people.
American Psycho, Wall St, American History X, and Scarface are pretty good movies to use when needing to filter out people you want to hang out with.
American Psycho is one of my absolute favourite films and one which ultimately holds up. It’s beautifully directed and is just an outstanding piece of filmmaking.One of the things I’ve most enjoyed from later revisits to it is stuff like Bateman’s speech about Genesis and Phil Collins, which is even funnier if you’re a fan of both. Particularly his really odd take on Duke (which I rate as the band’s best from the Collins era).
I don’t like American Psycho and always found it odd it became almost aspirational to some douche bags!
‘Best in Show’ was the worst movie I’d ever seen, but then I watched ‘Nebraska’ and ‘Best in Show’ became the second worst movie I’d ever seen.
That’s one charmed life you’ve led.
Granted I was probably 12 when I watched Best in Show so maybe I just didn’t get it.
ding ding
It is mostly about the way that adults tend to waste their lives with petty obsessions, so maybe your perspective will have changed.
It helps if you’d ever seen the Westminster Dog Show. Joe Garagiola, a retired baseball player, was inexplicably the color man for the show for years, had no idea what he was talking about, and 100% the inspiration for Fred Willard’s character. I heard Garagiola interviewed a few years later and he was deeply offended.
I’m honestly not THAT big a Best in Show fan — wasn’t anywhere near me own ballot — so much as I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds of movies that are better-suited for the “worst thing I’ve ever seen” title.
Ok you’re right, “worst” was the incorrect description as there are plenty of other objectively worse movies. If I had a time machine I would go back and change my post to something like “movie that I found most soul-crushingly boring.” Then I would use that time machine to go even further back in time and not watch “Best in Show.”
Fun fact: I watched Nebraska with my mom and at one point she fell asleep then farted and woke herself up. I’ve never told her, but I’ll tell all you internet strangers.
It’s about dogs in a show. Some of them win, some of them don’t.
To be fair, they’re right – Best in Show is a better film than Nebraska
I also hate movies that are good.
So you’ve seen two movies?
THERE ARE MORE THAN TWO MOVIES?!?
So many great picks on this list, and a nice balance of studio / indie. My standout “oh yeah, that movie!” moment is maybe Jesus’ Son? It’s so vignette-y and warm and heartbreaking. I’m surprised by how much I can remember: shaving Dennis Hopper and interviewing him with the razor, Jack Black plucking the knife out of an eye, quietly standing outside the Mennonite woman’s window and listening to her sing. Holly Hunter! As Stefan would say, it’s a movie that has everything. The thing that shocked me going down the list is how old the stills look. Like, when I was a teen in the 90’s looking at photos from the 60’s and 70’s, and they all had that aged patina. But these were just twenty years ago! My head is spinning (from being old).
Some of these are screenshots that don’t do the movie any favors (Crouching Dragon in particular). As time goes on I’ve become nostalgic for the look so many 90s movies have (and 2000 definitely is late 90s here). Is it just from still being on film? The lighting that’s been toned down from harsher 80s stuff but isn’t as warm and dirty as 70s movies? My own connection to growing up with these kind of movies is part of it too of course, but there is definitely a difference.
I think it must be (re: film stills)? That, and it’s not super easy to pull sharp images from this period as they may pre-date the higher-quality stuff you’d get in the later aughts (broadband started to replace dial-up in the early 2000s). But yeah- the slightly desaturated (cooler?) colors, the grain, the richness. That Traffic grab in particular is very film-y; I think there’s even a scratch in the upper left (or whatever you call those hair-like imperfections). Making me feel all nostalgic up in here!
I recently re-watched Twister, which I hadn’t really seen since it came out and had classified as amusingly dopey cheese, and it is that but it’s also a good movie and aside from a few effects not being state-of-the-art anymore really hit that sweet spot of 90s look.
I’ve got a big soft spot for that movie – I think it holds up surprisingly well
It really does! The supporting cast is great and the EVIL CORPORATE WEATHER GUYS are ridiculous villains but you also really want to stick it to those goons. Solid work from everyone involved.
Credit for making a slobs versus snobs movie about tornado chasers.
It’s my first memory of Philip Seymour Hoffman! Evidently he was also in Hard Eight that year, but I don’t remember his role. Anyway, I was 16 that year, so Hoffman’s goofy tornado camera guy hit me in the right place. I’m also just realizing that a 16 year old seeing Hard Eight in the theater says so much (about my nerdy-ness.) I would’ve seriously considered staring at an eclipse if Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs up.
Everything you need to know about Hoffman’s brilliance is right there in Twister, where he somehow takes a character who 1. loves Repo Man and 2. loves mid-90s Eric Clapton and reconciles these into a believable person.
It’s goofy bullshit until the end when Paxton and Hunt survive a F5 tornado by hiding in a clapboard hut and tying themselves to an exposed pipe with a belt. They’d have been chewed to the bone by all the shit flying around. That ending always just bugged me to no end. It was fun watching Elwes and his crew get sucked straight up into it, though.
If you’ve been watching it correctly, i.e. knocking back several beers and hollering and hissing at Elwes and company, the implausibility of Paxton and Hunt’s survival becomes less of an issue.
Elwes should definitely have grown back in a twirlable mustache for that role. Just a wonderful douchebag.
I remember catching George Washington when I was in high school on a random movie channel, maybe Showtime, and stopped to watch the whole thing. I’ve never really liked a movie from Green as much as George Washington. Green has more dramas in his filmography than non-dramas. Maybe because he did three straight comedies he has a reputation that he’s not doing dramas anymore.
Good to see Jesus’ Son on then list, a few that seem missing though (in my opinion):Billy ElliotBatman Beyond: Return of the JokerMemento (I think I watched this 3 times in a row the first time I saw it).Cecil B. Demented (any year with a John Waters movie is a good year)But I’m a Cheerleader (wide release 2000, does that count?)It’s not a halcyon year at the cinema but there was some really good movies.
I assume Memento is the Nolan film that didn’t actually get released in 2000 that is hinted at in the intro.Agreed that Billy Elliot is a big miss. That film is wonderful. Saw the musical a few years ago and it really didn’t work for me. The emotional scenes became cheesy songs, like the scene where Billy recites the letter his mom left for him. The film is far better at hitting those emotional notes than the show.
Using the festival circuit clause is a bit thin, because very few people will have seen it then, but that’s fair.Billy Elliot is a favourite, it’s nice to see us do kitchen sink drama with a (mostly) happy ending for a change.
I can understand Ginger Snaps and The Gift not making the top 25 but they would be solid Recommends. EDIT: And a little surprised but also not that Requiem For A Dream didn’t make the cut. Is that the movie that’s declined most in appreciation from then to now? I feel like it was overpowering and a big deal at the time, as far as super-depressing arthouse flicks go.
It hasn’t declined in my appreciation. I think it’s the clear best film of 2000, and a bad oversight on their part.
Requiem is basically a preachy, shitty Trainspotting. It’s embarrassingly bad and I hated it when I first saw it. But it’s legacy is even worse: a film about addiction that treat its subjects as bare functional adults from the get-go and ends in one of the worst sex scenes in history. It’s basically Reefer Madness for Gen Xers.
Agreed. Visually, it has a lot going for it (maybe too much), but strip away the overindulgent cinematography and editing, and you’re left with a sensationalist after-school special. And while some of the addict behavior portrayed in the film does ring true, most of it is so grotesquely exaggerated (Jared Leto shooting up in the same infected spot over and over when he could just, you know, switch sides), it’s hard for me to take it seriously.I’m generally not someone who feels comfortable publicly shitting on movies, nor is Requiem among the worst ones I have seen (the technique and the memorable score alone set it apart from a lot of similarly themed stuff) . But it’s so simplistic in its moralizing, and so gratuitous in its portrayal of human misery, that I just can’t comprehend why it ever had the prestige that it did (and apparently still does, if some of the comments here are any indication).
A friend in college knew I loved Trainspotting and told me I HAD to watch Requiem. He really could not fathom when I told him I didn’t enjoy it very much. But this basically nails my thoughts on it.I’ve found Aronofsky pretty hit or miss myself. I love The Wrestler and Black Swan, and I’m one that’ll go to bat for Mother! as one of the best of the year. But I didn’t like Requiem, The Fountain, or Pi.
I won’t go so far as to say that Requiem is a bad movie. It does what it’s trying to do very well, and it works on the level of plot instead of just the level of atmosphere (Not all Aronofsky films do. Looking at you Pi and The Fountain.). That being said, Trainspotting feels a lot more realistic. Obviously, many addicts are going to experience death, disfigurement, and other horrifying outcomes of heroin use. But some will get clean and others will continue to use for decades with some bad consequences, but nothing like what happens to the Requiem characters. Trainspotting wasn’t afraid to show the darker outcomes of heroin, but it stayed away from Reefer Madness-level screeds that Requiem dipped into.(Also, since it’s on the list, Traffic, while well acted, verged a bit on anti-drug PSA territory and is probably my least favorite Soderbergh movie for that reason.)
Keanu Reeves was genuinely menacing in The Gift, as I recall, and I love Cate Blanchett.
Yeah, it maybe anticipates John Wick in the way Reeves just sucks the light out of his eyes, he is a menacing dude here. A bad guy, but not The bad guy. But while the supporting cast does great work (Gary Cole! Michael Jeter!) the movie is carried by Blanchett, I like how the movie never doubts her abilities or shows her coming to terms with them, it’s more about how they are a burden and how she shoulders it.
I retried Cecil B Demented because I remember finding parts funny, but thinking it wasn’t too great. My opinion remains about the same and I love Maggie Gyllenhaal’s costumes. There’s a funny movie in there, but it kinda ruins itself a bit.
Memento wasn’t released in the U.S. until 2001, which disqualifies it from this list—otherwise I’m sure it’d be in the top 5.
Man I miss John Waters. I know he’s still alive but he seems to have given up on directing which is a shame. We need someone to pick up the mantle of full on gonzo weirdness (Sacha Baron Cohen kind of fits this tbh).
What seems to differentiate a good year from a bad is the quality of the second-tier films. We usually get a consistent 5-ish outstanding films per year. If the other films that year suck it was a sucky year. In the other films that year were above average it was an above average year. Does Mission To Mars, Charlie’s Angels, The Patriot and The Flintstones make 2000 a sucky year or does the good outweigh the bad?
Didn’t even realize Charlies Angels was from 2000, I rewatched recently and it really is just a blast of a film, so goofy. And I can say “the creepy thin man” to anyone my age and they’ll know who I’m talking about.
Charlie’s Angels is a good movie, in spite of Tom Green.
He was just warming up for Freddy Got Fingered, which damn well better be on this list next year.
Nathan Rabin said it was a Secret Success.
And he was right! I’d say more but I’m finding it hard to type with MY HOOVES! MY HOOOVES! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I remember 2000 being a decided step down from the previous year largely because of that phenomenon. yeah there were still good top tier movies (CTHD, Traffic in my book) but the next one down, particularly that summer movie crop, were pretty inferior. In fact it feels like it took a while for the 2000s to get going, movie-wise, and the next couple years were pretty thin. Edit: It’s probably not entirely fair, since 99 was an unusually strong movie year, but still, at the time it was a little disappointing that no momentum carried forwards.
Yeah, per your edit, I’d say it’s a reality that ‘99 was an EXTREMELY strong year. I mean, every year does have 5 or so great movies. But that doesn’t mean it has transformative films. ‘99 was unique because of how many films truly changed the future of cinema. I mean, here are just 4 from the list:The Matrix
The Sixth Sense
The Blair Witch Project
Fight ClubI could have added more to this list, but I just picked the “transformative” quality of them at the highest level. Blair Witch Project basically created a new genre. It’s obvious how The Matrix has massively changed the landscape of both sci-fi and action films. Sixth Sense both launched Shyamalan’s career and had influences that crept into multiple genres, because of the intersection it sat at. I think what’s also unique about ‘99 is that it had plenty of films that weren’t huge box office hits, or which weren’t critically celebrated (or both, but which have still been massive influences on film.Fight Club made good money, but it wasn’t a runaway hit, nor did it release to critical aplomb. But its cult influence has been huge. And this is just a few of them. Phantom Menace was ‘99. Which, much as many of us wish it hadn’t emerged, made a ridiculous amount of money and fundamentally set one of cinema’s most iconic IPs on an entirely new path (for better or worse. But in fairness, I think the Clone Wars show is some of the absolute best of Star Wars, and it fundamentally couldn’t exist without what Phantom Menace set up).10 Things I Hate About You for Rom Coms (plus Ledger and Gordon-Levitt’s careers, each of which would go on to give iconic performances elsewhere), Office Space for comedies, American Pie(!!!) for teen comedies? I’d argue Cruel Intentions was fundamental for the future of teen television, more so than earlier teen dramas, even if it maybe hasn’t made ripples in cinema. But Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Riverdale would be fundamentally different beasts (if they even would exist) without the legacy of Cruel Intentions. (Also, add in the Verve and their one-hit-wonder).I mean, there’s more from the year. But the reality of discussing the movies of ‘99 is that you aren’t just discussing the best films that year, but for many of them you’re discussing turning points in the cinematic landscape entirely (for both the best of the films, and the not-so-great of them – Office Space was basically a box office flop with a critical “meh” but it was hugely impactful for the future of comedy).Most years have 1-4 movies I’d say really change the course of cinema. ‘99 had at least 10, imo.
No love on here for Gladiator?
I’m mostly with you on that, except that you seem to be suggesting that Charlie’s Angels is a bad movie, when it’s clearly awesome.
I keep on telling people that and everybody looks at me like I’ve lost my mind when, in reality, it’s a really fun movie and endlessly rewatchable movie
it’s a great action comedy, and people who say it’s not are discrediting it like it’s still 2000 and they can’t handle funny sexy ladies.
Yeah, for whatever reason, people just automatically discount it without having actually seen it. Maybe it’s because it stars three women (probably) or that it’s most definitely something that reflects a pretty crappy era of pop culture to the point it has Tom Greene in it or maybe it’s seen as yet another endless remake of a TV show but it’s really a lot of fun
Don’t try to make this about sexism. The movie is bad. It’s not a great action comedy. It’s a derivative shallow unoriginal action comedy. It’s only redeeming feature is Crispin Glover. There’s a reason people don’t still talk about it. Here are some good action comedies: Hot Fuzz, Big Trouble in Little China, Ghostbusters, Kindergarten Cop, 48 Hours.
I remember liking Charlie’s Angels back then, The Patriot was an entertaining watch.Bring it On is one of the best movies of 2000, as well as the 2000s.
One thing I noticed about the 1999 list was how many movies I loved that didn’t make the cut. “Galaxy Quest”? “Bowfinger”? There are a few for 2000 as well, but there are also some films that made the list that I’m just not crazy about. (“Traffic” is ok I guess, but I have felt zero desire to rewatch that film since I first saw it.)
Heh, interesting run of musical movies with Almost Famous/O Brother/Dancing In The Dark. I like Almost Famous a lot but that exchange at the end always rubs me the wrong way, it’s such a lame question and a seemingly all-encompassing but just vague answer, the movie’s already done a great job of showing what there is to love (and not) about music. Putting it next to O Brother clarifies things a bit, the Coens also thread their movie with music of joy and sorrow but they leave on a more wistful and undefined note, children moving into the future while an old man disappears into the past, singing a song about being ready for death.
2000 was a low-key great year for the experience of loving music in film (hmm, feel like I missed my opportunity to pitch an essay on that, huh), between Almost Famous, High Fidelity, O Brother, and Dancer. To be fair, the character asking the question in Almost Famous is a 15-year-old, and it’s the question he’s really been looking for this entire time with respect to the elusive Russell, and his response really is just a beginning, as the movie cuts away as he continues on.
Also, I think I learned this on the director’s commentary or some such, in the movie’s lore, “To Begin With” is the name of a Stillwater album. So, the full answer of “To begin with…everything” is a pretty revealing and narratively satisfying response, since William would totally get that reference and it’s a humble little demonstration, in just a few words, of Russell’s evolution from supreme ego to simply enjoying a human connection over a shared passion. You even hear it in Crudup’s tone – “to begin with” is this very knowing, performative start to an answer as he’s done thousands of times in interviews, then the much lighter tone of “everything”, as he relaxes into the emotional honesty of the conversation that, as Jesse mentions, is just getting going as the camera leaves.
If we’re talking about loving music in or on film, no one in 2000 did it better than Patrick Bateman.And yes, that end in Almost Famous works for the movie, but it’s also why I’d rather read Lester Bangs on music than Cameron Crowe.
Sure, but I’m not convinced Lester Bangs ever would have made a great movie, so, you know, it balances out.
Stupid bitches. LOL! You think you can shadow ban me! LOL!Holy
Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint
from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is
literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is
literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At no
point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything
that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best
movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house
film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents
peach schnaps to get drunk.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.
Where is:
Cast Away
Gladiator
Memento
Billy Elliot
Final Destination
Gone in 60 Seconds
Meet the Parents
The Patriot
Pay it Forward
Pitch Black
Requiem for a Dream
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
‘99 was the year I really became a film buff, but ‘00 was the year I graduated college, moved to Boston, and had numerous theaters at my disposal. I remember seeing Crouching Tiger and State and Main a few days apart at the Kendall, and I remember taking in Almost Famous and O Brother on Friday nights at the now-defunct Harvard Square theater. I’d probably choose one of the latter two as my favorite film of 2000, though I’ve seen much of this list and it’s an embarrassment of riches to be sure.Pretty sure the worst film I saw in 2000 was Pay It Forward, a movie so bad that at one point my friend jumped out of his seat and yelled ‘Oh, fuck you!’ at the screen. Maybe not as satisfying as when Patton Oswalt’s brother yells it at Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, but the theater seemed to largely agree.
That damn Kendall! I had just moved to Boston in 2000 and my new roommates and I decided to check out Requiem For A Dream and foolishly assumed the Kendall Square Cinema would be at the Kendall Square T stop, that was not the case and by the time we figured out where it was the only seats left were in the first row. Which is not an optimal place to watch Requiem from, but we did anyway. I still don’t like that theater.I don’t know if I ever went to the Harvard Square theater but for a few months I worked at the old Nickelodeon on the BU campus, it was lecture space during the mornings and then a theater afterwards. I could watch movies for free and saw You Can Count On Me, The Gift, Quills, State and Main … The Widow Of St. Pierre, I think? The projectionist was a bitter Great Society liberal who would go off on how LBJ was misunderstood while splicing trailers, he was the Bud from Repo Man of movie theaters. BU turned the whole building into lab space a few years later.I remember starting to go to the Brattle then too, caught Barry Lyndon there. Very glad they are still kicking. And the Coolidge! Another college group saw Donnie Darko there at a midnight showing a year later and that was a blast. So many options, and that’s not even counting all the video stores…EDIT: Oh yeah, this was around the time the Fenway theater somehow let a bunch of goons show midnight movies with zero supervision, I don’t know if they were under the Regal umbrella at that point. People would get blasted watching scratchy prints (Raiders Of the Lost Ark looked like it had been taken out of someone’s pocket, it was still incredible), the Big Lebowski screening could barely be seen for all the pot smoke. The organizers would have ticket giveaways for “whoever runs into the wall the hardest.” Good times.
I’ve never lived in Boston but I managed to see both Pi and The Blair Witch Project at the Kendall in successive summers. (And I think we were similarly way up front for Pi, though possibly more by choice.) Both tied in with a road trip to see the Warped Tour in Northampton. GOOD TIMES.
Good years for the Warped Tour, especially 98 — Bad Religion, NOFX, Civ, Snapcase, The Specials. Certain Bad Religion songs would pair very well with Pi, come to think of it.
You know, in my four years of Warped Tour attendance (1997-2001), the first and last struck me as the best line-ups. ’97 had Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, and Less Than Jake. ’01 had Green Day! BUT it’s possible that Bad Religion weren’t on the leg of the tour I saw in ’98. (And, to be fair, though I generally like them, I know way more Less Than Jake songs.)But it was always fun, even in ’99 where I’m pretty sure Save Ferris was the only band I actually liked and I’m pretty sure Eminem was there.
I wonder what the worst film in 2000 was, probably Battlefield Earth? I haven’t seen Pay it Forward, but I do have an elderly aunt with a Facebook account, so I assume I’ve basically seen Pay it Forward.
Battlefield Earth is a solid hate watch option though
I saw Crouching Tiger at the Coolidge. Got there late and missed the first 10 minutes.
I think, at age 16, Pay It Forward was the first time I watched a movie and realized it was straight-up bad. Which has something to do with the maturation of taste but also something to do with how fucking bad it was.
It’s always interesting to see someone’s first ‘wow, movies can be bad’ experience, because you always remember it. For me, it was The Great Panda Adventure, which was free as a Christmas showing at a local theater and yet still felt like a massive ripoff, way back when I was 10.
As strong as Spacey started out, he went on that terrible run of pablum with Pay It Forward, K-Pax, Shipping News (what a letdown that was), and David Gale. Just ugh.
“I think, at age 16, Pay It Forward was the first time I watched a movie and realized it was straight-up bad.” There are plenty of bad movies that you always knew were bad, but I think I know what you’re getting at (because I can empathize … I felt the same way). It’s more than just a straight-up bad movie. It’s the worst offender; a pseudo-prestige pic gussied up like an Oscar contender. But if you had half a brain and could see past the swelling strings and drippy child acting and golden melodramatic lighting, it was so transparently nothing more than a big bag of fucking “self-care,” “eat pray love” horseshit for all of the Karens to lap up.
Like most Coen movies, O Brother has continued to grow on me over the years. I thought it was a little TOO silly and broad at first viewing, but the little gags that the Coens pack into every corner of their movies made it a delight to watch every single time since. I get a lot of mileage out of this one:
My Crouching Tiger viewing experience wasn’t that great – there was a group of frat boys sitting behind me just busting out laughing when the characters began flying around. I expected a better experience being in a major arthouse-ish theater in a large university campus, but I didn’t luck out that time.
Your friend sounds like a narcissistic dick. Nothing more annoying than someone deciding to chirp loudly in a theater during a film. How about, “fuck you, buddy – I paid to watch a film, not your unwanted and over-wrought performance.”
The notoriously worst movie of 2000 – Hollow Man – was better than Unbreakable. Final Destination was better than Unbreakable. Hell, The Ladies Man was better than Unbreakable.
It’s so bad I can’t even hate-watch it like Waterworld or Showgirls.
It’s Ishtar bad.I’m looking forward to next year’s rave retro-review of 2001’s Glitter.
Interesting you bring up “Showgirls” considering the Paul Verhoeven connection, though I think even he would agree with you on the merits of “Hollow Man”.
Oh, I didn’t even think about that!
I will always agree Final Destination deserves more acknowledgement. It was great and a perfectly stupid premise for a horror franchise. Try to kill everyone in the most absurd ways possible and Final Destination led to the masterpiece that was Final Destination 2.
The opening of Final Destination 2 is so great – the franchise peaked there. Luckily the rest of the film nearly matches it in absurd fun.
Yeah the franchise went downhill after that movie. Some more watchable than others. Still fun enough mainly as campy horror in my opinion.
Retrospective critical consensus seems to agree that 2 is the best of the series, and I tend to agree, but the plane crash in the first one alone warrants its potential inclusion on lists like these.
I watched that recently and can’t agree on any positive assessment. There’s no reason to give a damn about any of the characters, so you’d be better off watching a Mr. Bill compilation, where the comedy isn’t unintentional.
It’s not really a movie about character development. Do you feel the same about Evil Dead 2 or do you think Texas Chainsaw Massacre lacks nuance? I feel like you’re just not a horror movie fan.
Horror is my favorite genre. I’m less keen on horror comedies (though I dislike the original Evil Dead enough to prefer the sequels) because comedy tends to diminish the horror (You’re Next is an exception). Texas Chainsaw Massacre absolutely makes the audience fear what’s going to happen to to those kids in a way that Final Destination doesn’t.
I don’t think anyone pretends to care about the character development of people including the creators. When the lottery winner gets impaled through the eye by a fire escape I didn’t feel like I was missing out on his backstory or when Timmy gets liquified by a sheet of plate glass. Did Cabin in the Woods explore the inner most turmoil and fear Thor was facing when saving his girlfriend? In Army of Darkness I wasn’t scared for Ash. Hellraiser or People Under the Stairs didn’t make feel anxious for anyone particularly.
Cabin in the Woods and Army of Darkness are both comedies which aren’t really trying to be scary. I haven’t seen People Under the Stairs, but Hellraiser is trying to make you scared of what will happen to Kirsty.
Ladies Man is a great comedy.But yeah I’m not a fan of Unbreakable, personally.
You be quiet. It’s a glassterpiece.
HAHAHA you win!
This is my opinion on Dancer in the Dark.
My vote for worst movie of the year is Battlefield Earth.
I’m sorry, why are we talking shit about Ladies Man?
Ah yes, the universally despised Glitter-equivalent flop………Unbreakable.
I don’t think Ishtar is generally considered a valid point of comparison for bad movies anymore.
I thought Battlefield Earth was the definitively worst movie of 2000?
Would it do any good to ask why?
Waterworld is awesome brain-off entertainment. It just gets shit because it was so expensive that turning a profit became nearly impossible (though it did eventually pull this of)
Waterworld brought “pee-drinking man-fish” into the lexicon, for that alone Kevin Costner deserves the Irving G. Thalberg award.
Ironically that scene is my biggest pet peeve in a movie where you really just have to roll with it. The entire world is slowly swamped by rising seas and every single person doesn’t have some sort of desalinization device? Costner can make drinking water from urine but not get the salt out of seawater??
While I think you could make a case for Final Destination squeezing onto the lower rungs of this list, Unbreakable is hardly a critical or commercial disaster.
Stupid bitches. LOL! You think you can shadow ban me! LOL!Holy
Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint
from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is
literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is
literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At no
point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything
that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best
movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house
film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents
peach schnaps to get drunk.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.
Where is:
Cast Away
Gladiator
Memento
Billy Elliot
Final Destination
Gone in 60 Seconds
Meet the Parents
The Patriot
Pay it Forward
Pitch Black
Requiem for a Dream
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
I’m with you on this: I always called it “Unbearable.” It’s got everything I love, but the pacing is so dragged out it’s just no fun.
I loved Unbreakable when it first came out, but I admit I find it a harder watch these days. It really is in love with its own importance in a way that would become indicative of many M Night films to follow.
I’m just gonna state the obvious upfront and ask where the hell is “In the Mood for Love”?
If you’re a big fan of doing things upfront, maybe read the intro above. Might clear some things up in this regard.
Stupid bitches. LOL! You think you can shadow ban me! LOL!Holy
Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint
from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is
literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is
literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At no
point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything
that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is
now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have
mercy on your soul.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best
movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house
film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents
peach schnaps to get drunk.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.
Where is:
Cast Away
Gladiator
Memento
Billy Elliot
Final Destination
Gone in 60 Seconds
Meet the Parents
The Patriot
Pay it Forward
Pitch Black
Requiem for a Dream
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
Almost Famous remains my favourite of the year, by a ways. Such a wonderful movie.It also feels, twenty years later, very much like it should have been a fitting capstone for Cameron Crowe’s career; after he’d told this very personal story, maybe there wasn’t much more to say.
Agreed. Almost Famous is above and away my favorite film of the year and probably in my top 3 for the decade. It is a bit disappointing that Cameron Crowe hasn’t come anywhere close to its quality since, nor do I really feel that any of his earlier films are of its caliber. It’s a movie that, in a lot of ways, helped me through some hard times in high school and early college. Lester Bangs’s speech to Will at the end of the film (about being “uncool”) will always hold a place close to my heart.
I think Say Anything is as great, to be honest. A near-perfect movie for me, and doesn’t need the sprawl of Almost Famous. But yeah, for me it’s those two, then several more movies I quite enjoy, and then several more where it bums me out to think about them.
Personal stories were always his thing, though. His first movie “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” was based on his experiences attending high school undercover as a twenty-something.
Maybe he is better at being a reporter than coming up with original characters.
Watching it when I first came out, I remember feeling strongly that Kate Hudson, though age-appropriate for the role, was way too confident and jaded as Penny Lane. Might be worth a rewatch; I’m curious if I’d have the same reaction now twenty years on.
I think Penny’s worldliness was mostly appropriate for the character. As a teenage girl who’s been a groupie for several years, Penny has seen (and put up with) a lot. Also, given the character’s cynicism, it makes sense that she got tired of the whole groupie lifestyle and decided to go to Morocco to look for something more interesting. Furthermore, her adultness is one of the qualities that draws Will to her. He feels about her the same way that a 17-year-old girl feels about her creepy 38-year-old boyfriend, except the creepiness factor is absent since Penny is a much more age-appropriate crush for Will.The thing that really bothers me about Penny is the thing that bothers me about all of Cameron Crowe’s female leads: they’re so darn perfect. Not literally—Penny obviously has issues. But Crowe’s women are overall smarter, more put together, better people than their male counterparts (Think driven Diane Court and maybe I can kick box for a living Lloyd Dobbler.). Even in Penny’s case, her numerous problems are played down at the end to hint that she’s this amazing free spirit who’s far too good for Will. It’s certainly no coincidence that Elizabethtown was the inspiration for the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl” (even if Nathan Rabin has disavowed the term). In the end, Crowe’s men are well meaning guys who need women to help them figure out life, and women are higher beings to be worshipped.
Thanks for the response, I get that intellectually, that she’d inevitably be jaded by the life she was leading—I almost just didn’t buy her as a teenager at the time. But I think I’d probably more easily see the underlying vulnerability now, being so much older than the character at this point.I didn’t know NR had disavowed “manic pixie dream girl.” What was the basis? It always seemed spot-on to me, based on the types of characters showing up in movies at the time he coined it. (I suppose it could be sexist if applied to real people, but not to female characters invented by men.)
I used to, but my love for this movie has dropped off a bit, perhaps because of Crowe’s many follow-ups. A writer making a young writer version of himself the protagonist of a film came out a little too self-indulgent. His problems are not caused by him, everyone helps him, he saves Penny Lane’s life, etc. As we have seen from Crowe’s later films, he is maybe not that great a writer overall, so I did not really need to see his genesis. The character was a little too good, except for kissing an incapacitated Penny Lane while she was still swirling the drain.
Crowe’s made some mediocre stuff since, but this was the last of a number of classic films he was involved in; he’d already proven himself as a writer by this point (Jerry Maguire alone added like four different quotations to the lexicon).Beyond which, I don’t see why how good a writer he is or not would enter into it. A teenage boy tagging along with a rock band across America is a great story hook, and it’s a story that he lived. Autobiography has a pretty long history in art.
Same here.It’s easily my favourite Crowe movie, followed by Say Anything.I’m also weirdly a big fan of Vanilla Sky, despite its many, many flaws. It’s a movie which doesn’t work in many parts, but when it does work, it’s transcendent and incredibly memorable.
A Lee Myung-se movie in a top ? Am I dreaming ? Excellent choice Mike D’Angelo. I think Nowhere To Hide is one of the most beautiful south korean movie I’ve ever seen… And Duelist ! I’m so sad that he didn’t directed new movies after M… 13 years ago…
In my defense, your potions do all look the same…
O Brother is the movie that completely won me over on George Clooney. And it was because of his total, go for broke Looney Tunes mugging. A character angle that could easily be grating, but he had the confidence to pull it off.I love nothing more than a leading actor demonstrating that they’re completely down, and can give themselves over to character actor excess.
He’s the paterfamilias! It’s funny how goofy he is here and how it’s far and away the most sympathetic a character he is in a Coen flick (and he’s great and honest when the chips are down at the end), the three of them just love making him a dolt.
Don’t recall the source, but I remember reading an interview around the time that film came out wherein Clooney described his hesitance to take the role– “I’m not sure I can be that dumb.” To which the Coens responded: “…we think you can.”
I’d forgotten until this article mentioned it how damn good a song Man of Constant Sorrow is.
I credit the Coens with course-correcting Clooney’s career. He was good in several earlier roles, but overlaying his undeniable charisma with a goofy overconfidence was a stroke of genius. His willingness to not take himself seriously reminds me a bit of Timberlake, who definitely endeared himself to a lot of people who thought he was just a modestly talented pretty boy by mocking his own boy band past with Lonely Island.
Soderbergh started the turn with Out Of Sight, I think — Jack Foley is not a doofus but he’s not as suave as he thinks he is and gets foiled a fair amount.
True, that was sort of the first winking use of his leading man good looks and confidence.
I had a similar change of heart with Brad Pitt, whom I didn’t have much opinion on until I saw the Assassination of Jesse James, etc. Robert Pattinson had the benefit of premiering as Cedric Diggory, but his post-Twilight career has been an ideal study in how to artistically cash in on beauty and fame.
Pitt to me always dragged himself from the brink at just the right time. He’d been leaning hard into his pretty boy looks with most early roles, then turned in a great performance as the loser Floyd in True Romance; followed up Interview with the Vampire and Legends of the Fall with Seven and 12 Monkeys; Sleepers, Devil’s Own (an outlier), Joe Black and Seven Years in Tibet were followed by Fight Club and Snatch. The Mexican and Spy Game were both solidly entertaining, and since then he’s mostly just seemed to alternate between having fun and more prestige-y roles. With the exception of his complete mishandling of World War Z I’ve liked pretty much every one of his movies that I’ve seen since then. I wouldn’t call myself a fan per se, but he picks good projects.ETA: total co-sign on Pattinson, who is managing his post-Twilight career brilliantly.
Interesting how some of the darlings of the time like Requiem for a Dream have fallen out of favor. I get why it’s not on the list, but that was hot shit at the time.And interesting that the darling of the time that SHOULD have fallen out of favor – Dancer in the Dark, which might be obnoxiously cruel melodrama but at least it is visually dogshit – still stubbornly clings on.
The description here of Dancer in the Dark made it sound extremely unpleasant – it’s like when my husband, trying to explain what was so great about his favorite wine, used the word “composty”. I think we’re working off of different definitions of “good”.
Ha, sounds like your husband’s favorite wine is Scotch.
I like Requiem for a Dream a lot. I was unaware that it had fallen out of favor. Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite filmmakers currently working. His worst film, probably, is “Noah”, and that’s because he might have played it a little safe relative to his other movies. Biggest omission for me is “Gladiator”. People criticized it for being bloated and obvious, but I think it was a pretty smart film about the power that entertainers have. And even if I didn’t feel that way, I would still argue that the score, action scenes, and most of the performances were fantastic.
Its pretty much just the big 2000 movie that is conspicuous in its absence here, and there was no way it wasn’t on every list in 2000.
Gladiator hasn’t aged well.
I think it has.
I’m not a huge fan of Gladiator, though when recently prompted by some FB post that asked what my favorite movie of the year I graduated high school (2000) is, I was forced to select Gladiator as there’s not much else from that year. The first Coliseum scene in gladiator is one of the best action scenes of all time. While the rest of the movie after that is pretty tedious, that scene alone makes it my favorite of the year. While it may be my “favorite” of the year, it has to be one of, if not the weakest “Best Picture” winners of all time.
I remember debating my friends as a teenager over whether Braveheart or Gladiator was the better film. I guess we compared them because they were violent epics, and thus perfect “guy” movies. In retrospect I think Gladiator may hold up better. I think Braveheart has great scenery and a good performance by Patrick McGoohan but not a whole lot else going for it.
Braveheart is better, though due to my extreme distate for Mel Gibson, I doubt I will watch it very much, if at all.
I’ve seen four of these movies, but much later in life since I was at the tail end of grade school during their release.
I honestly can’t remember much about “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. “Best In Show” had a fun, unique cavalcade of characters and was pretty funny.
“Unbreakable” was an intriguing film, a grounded superhero movie but also emotional where it counts. And “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is just wonderful. My agnostic dad has a particular affinity for Alison Krauss’ hymnic song.
Crouching Tiger should have been number 1. You put an Ethan Hawke-Hamlet movie on this over Memento? This list is abysmal. There is maybe three movies on this I genuinely enjoyed. To the sane people out there(if there are any left on this website), try these movies instead.Snatch, Memento, Gladiator, Requiem for a Dream, Cast Away, Quills, Meet the Parents, etc
Requiem For A Dream? Quills? Meet The Parents? I had forgotten how sadistic a year this was.
They said in the intro that Memento will be in their 2001 list due to its US theatrical release.
I know it’s not that weird because it’s on IMDB that way and plenty of people weren’t alive or aware of it back in 2001, but it’s so weird to me that there are multiple people STRIDENTLY angry that Memento is not on this list (beyond the fact, of course, that, as you point out, it’s practically promised for 2001). As an Old, it’s really hard for me to get my head around people not just REMEMBERING that no of course Memento didn’t come out in 2000! It was in theaters spring 2001! When you saw it three times!!! Don’t you all remember?!?!
I remember! I saw it with Sammy Jankis!
Jankis?! That guy owes me money!
“ It was in theaters spring 2001! When you saw it three times!!! Don’t you all remember?!?!”*looks at DO NOT TRUST JESSE HASSENGER tattoo* Nice try, but I’m not falling for this again.
Cast Away too
Was never a big fan of Meet the Parents etc.
Sorry, I thought this list was supposed to be about “best movies” not “movies I’m a big fan of”, etc.
So you’re saying that objectively speaking, Meet the Parents is just some fine cinema.
Nuclear take: I found Rocky and Bullwinkle more entertaining than Meet the Parents.
I know there’s only one of those movies I’ve considered buying for $6 at Rite Aid and it sure wasn’t Meet the Parents.
No In the Mood for Love? Really?Some other great films missing: Platform, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wonder Boys, The Circle, Code Unknown, Peppermint Candy, Songs from the Second Floor, Battle Royale, Joint Security Area, The Isle, Chopper, and Nine Queens. But really, how do you leave off In the Mood for Love in favor of The Emperor’s New Groove or Unbreakable. Crazy.
Their intro basically spells out that In the Mood for Love will be in their 2001 list due to the fact they go by US theatrical releases. Am pretty sure that’s s why Battle Royal didn’t make the list either -did that ever get an official US cinema release?
OK, this is a much better list than what I was expecting based on the list of top grossers. There are some definitely classics in there with amazing re-watchability. Best in Show, O Brother, Traffic, High Fidelity, Unbreakable, American Psycho and Almost Famous all hold up tremendously well and there are a bunch of indie gems.ETA: THANK YOU for not making this a slideshow. Much gratitude.
I’ll say that the Untitled Directors Cut of Almost Famous is a far better movie then the theatrical release, at least in my opinion.
I didn’t know until now that it exists, so I’ll definitely be checking it out. I’ve never been the biggest Kate Hudson fan but she is perfectly cast here. She’s always struck me as a bit vapid, which is perfect for a groupie.
I think my dislike of Kate Hudson attributes to my dislike of Almost Famous. There’s nothing actually wrong with the movie, but there’s a vibe with her that puts me in a foul mood when watching.
Interesting point about rewatchability — you’re right about the movies you mention, and this was really when DVDs had solidified their place in the market, right? So it was even easier to throw on a good quality version of a movie you liked and watch it a lot and love it even more, I would bet Almost Famous in particular benefited from this (memory says it did very well as a dorm room movie).
I’d probably bump Traffic up about 10 spots, but not a bad list.
Love & Basketball, State & Main, and Bamboozled is a great one-two-three punch. I think I like them all better than any of the higher-ranked ones that I’ve seen. Especially appreciate State & Main, which doesn’t seem as well-known as it should be – besides having a ton of hilarious jokes delivered by great actors, I think it’s also the first thing I remember seeing Philip Seymour Hoffman in it and he (and frequent scene partner Rebecca Pidgeon) are terrifically charming in it.
Of all these, State & Main seems to have largely vanished from memory. Which is a damn shame because it is flat hilarious as a straight-up comedy and the behavior of the townspeople getting sucked gradually deeper into Hollywood nihilism is fantastic.
I haven’t State and Main but I love the other two and would certainly push them up a little. Based on their selection. Crouching Tiger would be my number 1. You Can Count On Me is the one spot I wouldn’t move.
Nice list… but I will never understand the people who actually liked The Emperor’s New Groove. I never knew about the film’s production woes but I guess that explains a lot because the film is a sloppy mess.Of the films not listed here, I’m rather fond of Cast Away, Pitch Black, Shanghai Noon, Fantasia 2000, The Cell, and Meet the Parents.
Yesssss for Ghost Dog and Hamlet. The latter made me once again miss my PXL-2000 camera… It was in a box of stuff that disappeared during a move when I was a kid. 😥 I still miss it, which is just plain goofy, considering I have actual technology now…
Holy Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At
no point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to
anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this
room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and
may God have mercy on your soul.
“BEST OF list?!?! More like a… ::thinks real hard for a sec:: WORST OF list, amirite???!”
Genuinely torn right now between not wanting to indulge you, and curiosity about what kind of terrible Best of 2000 list you’d construct not using any of these movies besides a movie whose title you don’t even seem to know.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.Where is:Cast AwayGladiatorMementoBilly ElliotFinal DestinationGone in 60 SecondsMeet the ParentsThe PatriotPay it ForwardPitch BlackRequiem for a DreamShanghai NoonSnatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents peach schnaps to get drunk.
Where is:Cast AwayGladiatorMementoBilly ElliotFinal DestinationGone in 60 SecondsMeet the ParentsThe PatriotPay it ForwardPitch BlackRequiem for a DreamShanghai NoonSnatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents peach schnaps to get drunk.
Where is:Cast AwayGladiatorMementoBilly ElliotFinal DestinationGone in 60 SecondsMeet the ParentsThe PatriotPay it ForwardPitch BlackRequiem for a DreamShanghai NoonSnatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
Just for the record, I have spent all of 2020 saying, “Damn, we’re in a tight spot” every thirty seconds.
Okay, then.
In the parlance of our times.
No Requiem for a Dream OR Chicken Run? You guys are harsh.
Flip Best in Show with Almost Famous and I’m right there with you. Except for Yi Yi. Not cool enough to know that movie.
Was Gladiator too mainstream for this list?
When I saw Yang Yang on the header image, I thought “great, but please put Yi Yi at least near the top”! I was not disappointed.
In fact, I’m totally unable to say what my second favourite film is, but Yi Yi is for sure my all time favourite. Were I ever asked what it means to be human, I would pick this film to answer for me. To me, this is the universal movie, the one with characters anyone and everyone can relate to, at just any age.Thanks a lot for this list, really.
i thought it then, and even moreso nowalmost famous is a gawdawful movie.notable misses on this list:requiem for a dreambilly elliottwhole nine yardssnatchway of the guncast away
I disagree on Almost Famous, but am starring for Snatch and Cast Away. I’ll sit and watch the latter any time I’m flipping channels and come across it, but probably watch Snatch all the way through at least once every six months. Way of the Gun to me was just too bleak, and I normally like antihero crime films.
Way of the Gun was marketed as trying very hard to be a Tarantino movie when it’s actually trying very hard to be a Peckinpah movie. I don’t think it gets there and has some missteps but it’s pretty good in that bleaker mode.
And the opening scene delivers on that marketing, with Phillippe and Del Toro hilariously getting their asses beat after punching out Sarah Silverman. There’s very little humor in the rest of the film, dark or otherwise.
Emperor’s new groove? Ok zoomer Also high fidelity is problematic now? FoH. We knew those guys sucked from the start. That’s the point. Whatever you say.
I’m fairly certain the guy who wrote New Groove blurb is the oldest contributor to this list and I’m also pretty sure that I, who also voted for it, am the second-oldest.As for High Fidelity, if you read past my first sentence, or even read my first sentence correctly, you might figure out that I’m saying exactly that.
Hey now, Emperor’s New Groove is my favorite of the modern Disney animated movies. Sure, it’s silly. But silly can be a lot of fun.Or, in another language, “Squeak Squeaker Squeak Squeaken.”
It was easily my favorite Disney movie growing up. Was it the best? No. But I loved that it didnt take itself too seriously and had a great cast to boot
It’s actually one of my favorite Disney animated films. A lot of their classics—“Beauty and the Beast”, “Snow White”, “Lion King”– are fairly bland to me. “Lilo & Stitch” is the one Disney movie that I absolutely love, but “Emperor’s New Groove” is not far behind. It’s just a really good time.
Why the complaint? It was (is) one of the best movies of the year.
When I saw “Emperor’s New Groove”, it immediately reminded me of Jack Black in “Hi Fidelity” talking about throwing something like that into your lists.
You missed Varda’s The Gleaners and I. Sad face.
I just want to thank whoever did the posting of this for not making it a slide show.
I was very thankful when I opened up the tab and saw that. Those slideshows are godawful, does anybody actually click through them?
I repeat watch Yi Yi at least once a year.Fun fact: Director Edward Yang was a software engineer at Boeing for a number of years.
I think Cast Away really should have made the top 25.And I’ll be “that guy” who says Gladiator should have too.
Beau Travais, House of Mirth, Ratcatcher, Virgin Suicides, O Brother Where Art Thou. My god what a glorious selection. Superb. Almost Famous can fuck off forever tho. A rock and roll movie afraid of rock and roll.
Is ‘’Requiem for a Dream’’ counted as a 2000 movie? Because if it is, that’s a glaring omission.
Was gonna piss and moan about the lack of Blair Witch Project, but then I realized that came out in ‘99.
Fuck, it all blurs together the older you get.
Stupid bitches. LOL! You think you can shadow ban me! LOL!Holy Shit this is a terrible list. It oozes with millennial douchebag taint from someone who probably wasn’t even alive in 2000. Best of Show is literally the only movie you got right for a Best of 2000s list. This is literally the worse “Best Of” list I have every read in my life. At no point in your rambling, incoherent post were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
Any list that includes Donnie Darko as a best movie is automatically invalid. Donnie Darko is an incoherent art house film for teenage emo kids that skip school and steal their parents peach schnaps to get drunk.
Battlefield Earth was better than most of these movies.
Where is:
Cast Away
Gladiator
Memento
Billy Elliot
Final Destination
Gone in 60 Seconds
Meet the Parents
The Patriot
Pay it Forward
Pitch Black
Requiem for a Dream
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Hell I could even put Scary Movie on there and it is better than most movies on your list, but why bother.
Donnie Darko isn’t on this list because it came out in 2001.Coincidentally, Memento is also not on this list because it came out in 2001. The rest aren’t on this list because they aren’t good enough. Hope this clears things up.
Jesse, why the fuck are you responding to and promoting this guy’s comments instead of dismissing them and banning his account? What is wrong with you?
I don’t have access to ban anyone’s account. I can dismiss individual comments in the grays, but I usually reserve that for hate speech or creepiness, not abject stupidity.
Jesse, wait, are you sincerely unaware of the fact that the account you responded to is a notorious A.V. Club troll who impersonates another user in order to spread virulent racism and misogyny? Hell, he goes to The Root and calls people stupid N-words while pretending to be this other user. This is all news to you?
I was faintly aware that this guy posts disagreeable comments and that it somehow involved a handle impersonation that I don’t really understand (and, as such, has made me a little foggy about who is the “real” guy and who is the creep; if it’s a permanent impersonation or one that a troll did for a while; etc). I didn’t know he was engaging in actual hate speech. (What the fuck! How is his account still around if he’s doing that?!) To be honest, I sometimes respond to comments before looking closely at the handle, because the people I remember on here tend to be the ones actually saying stuff that’s interesting/insightful/funny. The stupid (or in this case worse-than-stupid) ones tend to run together.
I’ll remember now, though, and can zotz his comments as I see them, though presumably others have done that in the past without much effect. Certainly won’t respond in the future, though.
OK, and just so you know I’m not making this up:https://www.theroot.com/1844652610https://www.theroot.com/1844678889The original commenter is at https://kinja.com/dremiliolizardo/discussions, making ordinary, reasonable, boring comments.
The impersonator runs the gamut of variations (e.g., dremilioijlizaardo, dremiliolizardoa14, dremilioclizaardo), and says things like “bitches” and “retard” and “SJW” and “LOL!” and “He MAd!” alongside the occasional nuclear racial slur. Recently he’s been arguing on the A.V. Club that it’s not rape for a grown man to have sex with 15-year-olds and that the girl who claims to be the victim of statutory rape by Jeff Ross is a “cunt”.He’s been doing this for maybe two or three years, and Kinja does nothing about it.
Gotcha. I didn’t think you were making it up! I just don’t always follow this stuff very carefully (I know, given how often I pop into the comments, it probably seems like I follow it way too intensely, ha). And I’m a freelancer, so anything I do in the comments is very much on my own time. Happy to keep knocking this loser’s stuff out, though, when I see it, so thank you for the background info.
That’s a troll you are responding to. Specifically, the racist, misogynist, troll that likes to impersonate me and has literally hundreds of accounts banned.
Ok, High Fidelity fans. I hate this movie, not because it’s poorly made, but because I hate John Cusak’s character and did not really see any growth that would justify the implication that he’s eventually going to get the girl. I’m willing to admit, I refuse to rewatch it because it makes my blood boil. So change my mind. Is just it just the implication that he may start to change at the end that justifies getting a chance with her? Because I’d have to see a lot more change than what I remember the movie showing to justify putting up with his bullshit.
Ghostdog should be higher. Dancer in the Dark was amongst Von Trier’s best work but maybe he shouldn’t be on this list at all. I can’t watch his stuff anymore even though I grew up loving it. Ironic misogyny seems so dated even though this movie only came out 20 years ago.
I couldn’t get all the way through “Breaking the Waves”, even back when I was really into dark movies, so if “Dancer in the Dark” is more sadistic than that, I gotta pass.
“Breaking the Waves” is a great film, and one of Von Trier’s best. It is pretty rough, though; “Dancer” might be more cruel, though. I hesitate to recommend his stuff, especially after the harassment allegations and his unwatchable most recent movie.
Dancer In The Dark fucked me up AND gave me a years-long Bjork crush.
Also got me into Lars Von Trier, who is still one of my favorite filmmakers.
No Memento!? No In The Mood For Love!? LIST INVALID!!!!
They’ll be on next year’s list.
And, in one positive development for the industry, plenty of movies by
women made a splash with critics and audiences—by no means a common
occurrence then.
Is that more common now?
In the Mood for LoveCrouching Tiger Hidden DragonRequiem for a DreamUnbreakableAmerican PsychoMementoGladiatorChocolatSnatchAlmost FamousThe Road to El Dorado
No love for Billy Elliott, Chicken Run, or Battle Royale?
Wait, no U-571?
Peppermint Candy is a really good Korean film from 2000. Korean directly “political” film from the 80s/90s is so much stranger, ambiguous and frankly depressing then the more recent. Probably because of censorship, the political victory of the more conservative elements of Minjung and the beginning of the end of the Korean miracle.
I won’t to reserve judgement on this list. I remember last time, I thought they had done a good job, then when I read the ‘what should have been on the list’ follow-up article I realised they had be so negligent it’s no exaggeration to say that the writers should have been arrested for treason.Office Space hadn’t even made the long-list for goodness’ sake!
American Psycho is very cool movie!
I am sure you are being inundated with comments about all the films you snubbed, but I do have to take exception with you ignoring one of the great hidden gems of the year: Wonder Boys.It has a brilliant screenplay adapting a great book, impeccable directing, and an ensemble cast to rival all others in 2000. Hell, I would say Frances McDormand’s performance is as good or even better than the one she was Oscar nominated for that year.I remember it was so beloved by critics and its very small group of fans, Paramount was pressured into re-releasing the film later that year after they callously dumped it into the cinematic doldrums of February. The audiences never materialized but it was nominated for a few Oscars, though it deserved many more.I would suggest your staff take another (or first) look at this witty and lovely film.
Bamboozled is something I’m clamoring to see, but it’s not streaming, not rentable, and I’m certainly not buying a DVD sight-unseen. Why is this movie so hard to find if it’s supposed to be so good?
This list took me back to a great time when I would go see every damn movie in the cinema, often knowing very little about them.
As opposed to now, when I know every damn thing about movies coming out and hardly ever go see them.
Some Artful framing aside, I think Yi Yi is a pretty shallow melodrama. There’s not a lot to it that’s any different from the sort of American movies this site would call Oscar bait bullshit.From the on-the-nose “open with a wedding/end with a funeral” packaging to lines like the photographer child saying “You can’t see it for yourself, so I help you”, watching this last year had my eyes rolling to the back of my skull. Different strokes, I guess, but not for me.
BRING IT ONYOU COWARDS
I’d personally rank “Traffic” at 1, but I have not seen either “Yi Yi” or “Beau Travail.”Count me in the number surprised that “Requiem for a Dream” has lost its luster for many viewers. Still the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
The millennium started on 1/1/2001!! There was no year zero!!!1!
Teenage me first watched Timecode and Hamlet the same day, after renting them from a Blockbuster I could get to by riding my bike. I liked Timecode more, then.That’s all. That’s the whole comment.
The Oscars didn’t much help 2000’s rep
I’ve only watched about 13 of these 25, so I can’t speak much on this list except to say that I’m glad Gladiator won Best Picture, and I genuinely found it to be better than the half of your picks I actually have seen, (including being more “Shakespearean” than the actual Shakespeare one).
People too often dismiss Gladiator because of the macho action, but it’s still filled with beautiful cinematography, great music, a deeper-than-expected story, and some amazing performances- The exact same qualities in Mad Max: Fury Road, which AV Club named its favorite film of the decade. I really don’t see the difference why it’s cool to praise one but crap on the other.
Exactly. I just feel sorry for people who believe rejecting a great movie makes them look cool. They look like childish tools *and* they’re missing out.
Is it really that unfathomable that a bunch of people might not collectively love Gladiator?! And does not calling something one of the best movies of its year really constitute a rejection? I didn’t call Happy Death Day 2 U one of the best movies of last year but I sure didn’t reject it!
It is kind of weird that a film that does as well as Gladiator critically and at the box office, and which is still widely watched, enjoyed and quoted two decades later isn’t even considered worthy of *top 25 of the year*, yes. I don’t personally love Titanic, or The Dark Knight or The Matrix, but I would raise an eyebrow at any of those being omitted without comment from a list of more than two dozen ‘top movies’ of their respective years.
I don’t want to belabor this (JK I kind of do!) but I feel like there’s a misunderstanding (not limited to you personally, of course) of how these things work. This list isn’t the result of people sitting down in a room and deciding which movies “should” be in the top 25, based on influence or reviews at the time (which were good but actually not *exceptional* at the time; 77% on Rotten Tomatoes now, and that probably includes some positive retrospective appreciations), box office (which, again, very good, but if we were really thinking about box office, this movie was not as popular as the Jim Carrey Grinch thing, and only slightly more popular than The Perfect Storm), or even the Academy Awards.How it works instead is that all of the people contributing to the list send a list of their top 15 movies of the year, and the master list is based primarily on what gets the most points in that system (I say “primarily” because how ties are broken can vary, IIRC). So actually, Gladiator could be on every participant’s imaginary list of the top 25 movies of the year (though I can attest it would not be on my mine, ha), and still not make the list, because it just needs 25 movies to get more points. I can’t speak for everyone, but for me the idea of conscious exclusion really doesn’t enter into it. Typically, in narrowing down a year to 15 titles, I’m concentrating much more on what I wish I could have included but didn’t have room for, rather than spitefully excluding something despite it being “important” for some outside reason. Maybe perceived importance could be a difference-maker for a squeaker between two movies vying for the final spot on my list, but for the most part these things are really judged so much more by likes than dislikes.
That’s a really interesting insight into the process, thanks, and it does explain how a film could be liked by everyone but still miss a list like this. There might even be an unconscious assumption that the big films don’t need any extra help from a given voter, leading them to underperform. I still find it odd that it didn’t make the 25 though. I mean, to pick a couple of examples, Almost Famous is fine, Unbreakable is certainly worth a watch compared to what Shyamalan would come out with later, but neither is as fun or as satisfying or as generally well-put-together as Gladiator.
Oh, but I disagree so hard. Almost Famous was actually my #1 pick. It’s such an open, warm movie, and I think the kinds of performances the actors are universally nailing in it are just a lot less conventional than what the Gladiator folks are asked to do. Deceptively tricky, I’d say. Look especially at someone like Jason Lee, who’s a very specific presence, and see how well Crowe writes for him, where he gets big laughs that have little to do with how he’s funny in Kevin Smith. And I find Unbreakable a far more interesting genre riff than Gladiator. Less conventionally satisfying, but way more on my wavelength with its gorgeous, deliberate cinematography and mournful (but still occasionally oddly funny) tone. So, y’know, different strokes!
Oh, I can field this. Because Mad Max: Fury Road is beautiful and strange action masterpiece, while Gladiator is a murky, mostly entertaining throwback that doesn’t have much to say.
*heavy sigh* Pretending Gladiator isn’t one of the top 25 movies of 2000 is so the AV Club in 2020.
As it happens, it’s also pretty consistent with the AV Club in 2000. From the original review: In the end, Gladiator is overdrawn and too insubstantial for its own good, just like the old days, but it satisfies as entertainment on a grand scale.Sounds like real best-of-the-year stuff, huh? The Old A.V. Club FOR SURE loved that movie way more than the stuffed-shirt choices here!
Being consistently wrong about something across two decades is an achievement of sorts I suppose.