2000s
Showing 1,216 works across all media from the 2000s
There Will Be Blood
Day-Lewis builds an American monster out of oil and resentment, and Jonny Greenwood's score scrapes at the nerves for two and a half hours without once letting up.
In the Mood for Love
Longing has never been filmed better than this: Wong Kar-wai gets more out of a stairwell and one repeated waltz than most directors manage with an entire script.
Spirited Away
The high point of hand-drawn animation: Miyazaki invented a spirit world so dense and so unexplained that it took the Animated Feature Oscar away from every American studio.
The Dark Knight
Adults started arguing about superhero films because of this one: Ledger's Joker is so unnerving that the Academy gave a posthumous Oscar to a man in clown makeup.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Eleven nominations and eleven wins, a clean sweep no film has bettered: Jackson closed a decade-long gamble with battles at an unattempted scale and an ending that earns its farewells.
Lose Yourself
Written between takes on a film set, delivered like a man with exactly one shot at everything.
Mulholland Drive
Lynch built a Hollywood that runs entirely on dream logic and trusted the audience to assemble it: the whole thing feels like a half-remembered dream, and people keep returning.
Seven Nation Army
A guitar pitched down to fake a bass, and the seven-note riff every stadium on earth now sings.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
No romance this century has come close: Kaufman's premise, that you could pay to have someone erased, turns out to be the most honest thing anyone has said about breakups.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Everyone said the book could not be filmed: Jackson shot three films at once in New Zealand and delivered a Middle-earth so furnished you stop noticing it was invented.
No Country for Old Men
The Coens made a chase film with almost no music in it at all: Javier Bardem's killer with a cattle gun became the most frightening figure of the decade.
Kid A
Singer Thom Yorke pulled the lyrics out of a hat because he could not write, and the band released it with no singles and no interviews.
Crazy in Love
Rich Harrison looped a Chi-Lites horn fanfare; Jay-Z turned up at three in the morning and improvised his verse.
City of God
Nothing else moves quite like it: Meirelles cast the favela itself, cut two hours into what feels like twenty minutes, and took a Brazilian crime film to four Oscar nominations.
Stan
The 45 King looped Dido under four letters, and Eminem's fan character ended up in the Oxford dictionary.
Ms. Jackson
Andre 3000 apologizing to Erykah Badu's mother, who liked it enough to buy a Ms. Jackson license plate.
Bad Romance
Written on a tour bus in Norway and premiered at Alexander McQueen's last show, all nonsense syllables and appetite.
Children of Men
It looked like science fiction in 2006 and looks like the news now: Cuaron's roaming takes put you inside a collapsing Britain, and the ambush in the car is astonishing.
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)
Beyonce found Bob Fosse's Mexican Breakfast on YouTube; three Grammys and a decade of wedding receptions followed.