Spirited Away
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
2001 · Japan
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.
★ 9.3
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2001
Showing 142 works across all media from 2001
Mulholland Drive
Directed by David Lynch
2001
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.
★ 9.1
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Directed by Peter Jackson
2001
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.
★ 8.9
Get Ur Freak On
2001
Timbaland set a tumbi melody over tabla and left Elliott acres of empty space to fill.
★ 8.5
The Blueprint
2001
It was recorded in about two weeks and released on the eleventh of September 2001. Kanye West sped the soul samples up to chipmunk pitch.
★ 8.4
Last Nite
2001 · From Is This It
Built on the bones of Tom Petty's American Girl, which Petty confirmed without complaint, and recorded in Gordon Raphael's basement.
★ 7.7
Austerlitz
2001 · 298 pages
A stranger in an Antwerp waiting room talks about architecture, and over years of meetings tells how he was sent out of Prague on a train in 1939. The grief is never named.
★ 7.6
Harder Better Faster StrongerDaft Punk
Harder Better Faster Stronger
2001 · From Discovery
Edwin Birdsong's Cola Bottle Baby, found in a record bin, vocoded into a mantra Kanye West later borrowed wholesale.
★ 7.6
EtherNas
Ether
2001 · From Stillmatic
Ron Browz's beat, handed over before he knew its target, and a release date set on Jay-Z's birthday.
★ 7.5
Can't Get You Out of My HeadKylie Minogue
Can't Get You Out of My Head
2001
Dennis and Davis wrote it in three and a half hours, and Minogue committed after twenty seconds of the demo.
★ 7.5
Clint Eastwood
2001
Albarn built it on a melodica and an Omnichord's first preset; Del cut his verses in half an hour.
★ 7.4
In The EndLinkin Park
In The End
2001
Shinoda's piano figure under Bennington's chorus took nu metal to number two, and the RIAA finally certified it diamond.
★ 7.4
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Directed by Alfonso Cuaron
2001 · Mexico
A road trip with a narrator who keeps interrupting to tell you things the characters will never know: Cuaron slips a portrait of Mexico under a teenage sex comedy.
★ 7.3
Izzo (H.O.V.A.)Jay-Z
Izzo (H.O.V.A.)
2001 · From The Blueprint
A Jackson 5 chop, an arena chant, and Jay-Z's first solo top ten, courtesy of a young Kanye West.
★ 7.3
Fallin'
2001
Two chords, one piano, and Keys writing and producing her own debut single straight to Song of the Year.
★ 7.0
Discovery
2001
Daft Punk set out to make the music they had loved at ten years old, and had the whole album animated as a film.
★ 7.0
Amelie
Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
2001 · France
The most exported French film of its generation: Jeunet saturated Paris into green and gold and sent a shy waitress out to quietly rearrange other people's lives.
★ 7.0
New Slang
2001 · From Oh, Inverted World
Sub Pop pressed it as a one-off single in 2001; three years later Garden State made it a generational password.
★ 6.8
Monsters, Inc.
Directed by Pete Docter and Lee Unkrich
2001
Pixar built an entire energy economy out of children's nightmares: the joke is that the monsters are salaried professionals, and the film turns on one of them being frightened of a toddler.
★ 6.7