The 100 Best Movies of the 2000s

This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more.

Much like the decade that produced them, the movies of the 2000s were shaped in response to such profound and irrevocable change that it’s difficult to assign them a cohesive identity of their own; it can be tempting to think of them as a long suspension bridge between then and now rather than as a well-defined era unto itself. When the sun rose on the start of the new millennium, the vast majority of films were shot and projected on film, superhero movies were still considered an outlandish gamble, middle-class malaise was American cinema’s preoccupying crisis, and James Cameron was the biggest director on the planet. By the time the smoke cleared 10 years later, digital had pushed celluloid to the brink of extinction, Marvel was beginning to exert an iron grip on the multiplex, the listless men of Tyler Durden’s generation had found their own forever war to fight, and James Cameron was the biggest director on the planet (some things never change). 

In that light, it hardly seems like a coincidence that so many of the decade’s most essential films are themselves dislocated in time and/or uncertain of their own reality. Nor does it seem like a coincidence that it’s so difficult — and so rewarding — to try and determine which films those are. Fun as it was to look back at the ’80s last summer, and the ’90s the summer before that, relitigating settled history is a very different project than making sense of the recent past (albeit with enough distance to make the effort worthwhile). 

The list we came up with may not be all that different from the one we might have made at the end of the aughts (it didn’t suddenly occur to us that “Mulholland Dr.” is bad or anything),  but we found it fascinating to see how things have shifted over the last 14 years or so. 

“In the Mood for Love” remains a canonical masterpiece, but the disequilibrium of the 21st century has made its sequel feel even more essential. Spike Lee’s “25th Hour,” the first major film to address 9/11 head-on, has unambiguously emerged as cinema’s most lucid response to that moment in time. A handful of supposed follies — derided upon first release — have been reclaimed as bonafide classics, with the crushing sameness of today’s studio output making it that much harder not to appreciate the pop-artistry of films like “Funny People” and “Ocean’s Twelve.” On a similar note, the dearth of modern rom-coms has only deepened our conviction that “Love & Basketball” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as “Zodiac” and “No Country for Old Men.” Meanwhile, we’ve fallen in love with so many different Johnnie To gems that they all canceled each other out in the choosing (sorry!), and held fast to personal favorites that are still looking for the audience they should have earned a long time ago.

This list has been reshuffled 100 different times since we first cobbled it together, and there are at least 100 films that it pained us to omit in the end; our sincerest apologies to “We Own the Night,” “Millennium Mambo,” “Munich,” “Master and Commander,” “The New World,” “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” and any number of great movies that might have made the cut had we done this two months ago, or two months from now. But we’re happy to cop to that fluctuation, because the 2000s have always been defined by change, and that’s the one thing about them that probably never will. 

This article features contributions from the following writers: Siddhant Adlakha, Carlos Aguilar, Christian Blauvelt, Wilson Chapman, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Guilherme Jacobs, Eric Kohn, Ryan Lattanzio, Vikram Murthi, Tambay Obenson, David Opie, Katie Rife, Jourdain Searles, Adam Solomons, Natalia Winkelman, and Christian Zilko.

100. “Speed Racer” (dirs. Lana & Lily Wachowski, 2008)

The Wachowski sisters’ followup to their era-defining “Matrix” trilogy is a revolution in cinematic grammar and a prismatic reinvention of the big-budget family-friendly IP vehicle that builds to a transcendent climax powerful enough to induce astral projection. So why did it bomb? Because Lana and Lily Wachowski are innovators. They see beyond what movies are, and instead imagine what they could be. You have to have your third eye open to truly appreciate this aspect of their filmmaking, and critics and audiences had theirs clamped shut when “Speed Racer” debuted in 2008. 

Inspired by the postmodern structure of James Joyce novels and the time-shattering possibilities of cubism (there are points in this film where we see a character’s face and the back of their head at the same time), “Speed Racer” prioritizes visual experience over plot … while still having a surprising amount of plot. The ultra-heightened artificiality of the film’s retro-futurist design flattens the frame into a series of colorful planes, onto which characters are placed and moved around like cardboard cutouts. It’s flashy, inventive manna for camera nerds, with the Wachowskis pioneering new levels of visual cheekiness throughout (see: the wipe transition of a guy on fire). But its biggest barrier to entry may be the sisters’ goofy, open-hearted sincerity, which translates here as wholesome mom-and-apple-pie family togetherness. The Wachowskis are as optimistic about people as they are about the possibilities of cinema. To some, that’s off-putting. To others, it’s home. —KR

99. “Battle Royale (dir. Kinji Fukasaku, 2000)

The rare film that somehow feels significantly more controversial a quarter century after it first came out, Kinji Fukasaku’s “Battle Royale” was meant to be a provocation, and, well, mission accomplished. There’s a good reason why “The Hunger Games” became a blockbuster phenomenon, but this similarly themed bloodbath — about a class of Japanese high school students who are forced to fight to the death on a desert island as part of a government program meant to keep the proles in line — wasn’t properly distributed in the United States until a full decades after being released in Japan. Where subsequent YA movies have relied upon their dystopian settings to distance us from the reality of the violence contained therein, “Battle Royale” is heightened just enough to bring us even closer to the truth of its carnage. 

Sure, Fukasaku preserves the star-crossed soapiness of Koushun Takami’s novel (which he was inspired to adapt because of his experience working at a munitions factory during World War II, where he watched his friends die for nothing), but his version only leverages those lighter elements in order to make the story’s premise more sickeningly familiar: Kids butchering kids at the behest of a society that has learned to live with it. Whatever the film’s legacy in the rest of the world, it’s no wonder that “Battle Royale” was considered to be unreleasable in America, where it became a staple of the early aughts’ DVD import market as a result: One year after Columbine, three years before the Iraq War, and well in advance of the countless recent instances in which our government — or at least some part of it — has effectively framed dead children as part of its greater agenda, “Battle Royale” feels more damning than ever in its refusal to explain itself beyond a few introductory title cards. Much as viewers might want to pretend otherwise, we know exactly what’s going on here. —DE

98. “In the Cut” (dir. Jane Campion, 2003)

Jane Campion’s most underrated film takes place in a humid, haunted, post-9/11 New York City full of worn buildings and dark side streets. Both a steamy erotic thriller and gory neo-noir, “In the Cut” was the last gasp of a cinematic genre driven by feminine mystery and desire. In the role that nearly ended her career, Meg Ryan proved herself as a sensual dramatic actress worthy of comparison to Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone, and Linda Fiorentino.

Perhaps the most unlikely choice for the role at the time (Campion originally intended to cast Kidman, who serves as a producer), America’s sweetheart bared her body and soul as Frannie, a witness to a sexual assault that may be the key to catching a serial killer. Ryan’s scenes with Mark Ruffalo continue to rank among the hottest and most risqué in modern American cinema, as the psychosexual portraiture that Campion traces with her actors’ bodies proves sharp and revealing in ways that movies seem increasingly scared to explore.Though maligned at the time of its release, “In the Cut” has enjoyed a well-deserved reappraisal in recent years, and is well on its way to canonization as one of the best and boldest examples of its genre(s). —JS

97. “O Fantasma” (dir. João Pedro Rodrigues, 2000)

An under-appreciated queer classic that still feels every inch as daring and unique as it did when it first came out, João Pedro Rodrigues’ “O Fantasma” is — appropriately for a film so fascinated with self-fragmentation — defined by its attention to duality. It presents desire as bothdanger and fuel. Garbage as both filth and freedom. Animals as characters, and, just as crucially, characters as animals.

A crepuscular masterwork that sees its way into the darkest corners of millennial Lisbon, “O Fantasma” plays with dual sources at every level of its filmmaking, as Rodrigues follows the sexual exploits of a  garbageman named Sergio — who only feels alive when enjoying the comforts of other, preferably anonymous men — with a mix of slowly unfolding long shots and feverish eruptions of action. Rodrigues ups the stakes for the character when a handsome but uninterested new co-worker threatens to disturb the careful division that Sergio has created between his various personas. The filmmaker’s patient but provocatively expressionistic staging illustrates takes frustrated pleasure in observing the process by which Sergio is dogged by his own desire, but that same refusal to look away is what ultimately allows Sergio to transcend the debasement of his unrequited lust, and maybe even rescue something beautiful from the trash heap of his own unfettered horniness. —GJ

96. “Miami Vice” (dir. Michael Mann, 2006)

“Miami Vice” is a dark, brooding crime procedural with a romantic pulse. Returning to the television show he executive produced, director Michael Mann takes the basic premise of that iconic series — two handsome cops solving crimes in Miami — and stretches it in every direction, greatly expanding on their personal and professional  relationships on both sides of the law. In Mann’s film, Sonny Crockett and Rico Tubbs are romantic heroes, motivated by their mutual devotion to each other and their respective love for the other people they hold dear in their lives. Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx make a perfect duo, with Foxx doing most of the talking as a guarded Farrell plays things sensitive and quiet.

The film is also a showcase for the underrated talents of Naomie Harris and Gong Li, both playing strong women who are unafraid to mix business and pleasure, regardless of the risks. The push and pull of duty and desire propels each character towards their fate, that process achieving a velocity strong enough to render the plot almost besides the point. No, the beauty of “Miami Vice” lies in the slow, almost meditative experience of watching two charismatic men command the screen with a strong cast of character actors that bring rare gravitas to such hypnotically sordid events. Dismissed at the time of release, “Miami Vice” is now considered with the respect it deserves. —JS

95. “Moulin Rouge!” (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2001)

No words in the vernacular can precisely pinpoint the love-it-or-hate it spectacles of which Baz Luhrmann is a supreme purveyor. In fact, it’s hard to think of another mainstream 21^st century filmmaker whose work is as polarizing. His fans see his movies as conduits of pure emotion; works of art that mine real feeling from the stuff of unrestrained razzle dazzle. “Moulin Rouge!” refuses to be seen any other way. A tribute to romance, and to passion, and to music’s role in negotiating between the two, this orgiastic spectacle stands as a preemptive rebuke to the sexlessness of the studio filmmaking that has since become the industry standard. A loose reimagining of the Orpheus myth by way of “La Boheme,” “Moulin Rouge!” gave us Jim Broadbent doing CGI cartwheels, an Argentine tango version of “Roxanne,” Kylie Minogue as The Green Fairy, and the best damn performance Nicole Kidman’s ever given.  

Just don’t blame “Moulin Rouge!” for kicking off a new wave of jukebox musicals. The way its characters inhabit the previous four decades’ pop anthems, it’s like they’re pulling out of them out of thin air; the tunes exist as Platonic ideals just waiting to be discovered rather than work to be composed. And so, yeah, of course Ewan McGregor’s Christian can suddenly break out into “The Sound of Music” before a group of top-hatted bourgeois men intone “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It’s fluid and organic and energetic and inspired, the cleverest pop collage of preexisting songs since “Singin’ in the Rain” pulled off a similar trick for a very different era a half century earlier. More than just a spectacle, it’s spectacular spectacular. —CB 

94. “Linda Linda Linda” (dir. Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005)

Nobuhiro Yamashita’s 2005 film about a group of Japanese teens practicing for their school’s rock festival is a hidden gem, unavailable on Blu-ray in this part of the world and entirely absent from streaming services to boot. And yet, a low profile suits this understated charmer, whose sensitive depiction of teenage life makes room for boredom and awkwardness in addition to excitement and drama. Which isn’t to suggest there isn’t plenty of the latter: When our core quartet does finally hit that stage, the explosion of energy is too infectious to keep secret. 

South Korean actor Bae Doona stars as Son, an exchange student who gets drafted as the lead singer of high-school all stars Paranmaum through petty teen-girl politics. (The last singer quit after an argument, and the remaining members pick Son at random just to spite her.) Son ends up getting along beautifully with Kyoko (Aki Maeda), Kei (Yuu Kashii), and Nozomi (Shiori Sekine, of real-life indie band Base Ball Bear), however, and Bae’s heart-melting earnestness helps to sell her character’s elation at finally having friends.

“Linda Linda Linda” is a movie about friendship, and the joy of creativity for its own sake. With only three days to learn a set of covers by Japanese punk band The Blue Hearts, the members of Paranmaum spend late nights practicing together, talking about crushes and generally bonding. Yamashita films these moments with affection as well as an eye for composition, pulling back for artfully framed wide shots that give the viewer an intimate sense of the physical and emotional geography of these girls’ world. He makes Paranmaum seem like the coolest band in the world, and in doing so makes “Linda Linda Linda” the best advertisement for girls to pick up guitars this side of “School of Rock.” And it worked: The film’s most prominent pop-cultural impact (in America, anyway) is inspiring the L.A. based, all-teen-girl band The Linda Lindas. —KR

93. “Tarnation” (dir. Jonathan Caouette, 2003)

When “Tarnation” first premiered at Cannes in 2004, much was made of how Jonathan Caouette created his debut for just $218.32 using free Mac software. It was an impressive feat for sure, regardless of the subsequent $400,000 that was spent to approve various clearances for the film’s subsequent theatrical release. But as important as this was — a major milestone in the democratization of filmmaking that would later inspire everything from Sean Baker’s “Tangerine” to Vera Drew’s “The People’s Joker” — what’s more important is how this DIY approach informed what would go on to become one of the most searingly personal documentaries ever made. 

Using a trove of letters, photos, VHS tapes, Super 8 movies, and even answering machine messages, Caouette sifts through past trauma to better understand his mother, Renee, who has long struggled with mental illness in the wake of electroshock therapy. What ensues is a kaleidoscopic horror story that bravely confronts the pair’s fractured relationship via a frenetic rush of images and pop music interspersed with new interviews that ground these rapid-fire montages before they risk overwhelming the viewer completely.

In bringing his past to life with such raw, soul-baring honesty, Caouette pushed the boundaries of not just filmmaking as a craft accessible to all, but even the formalistic essence of the documentary itself. “Tarnation” isn’t the first to forego verité filmmaking to tell a more personal story and find inner truth, but you’d be hard pressed to think of another that transports us so completely into the fragmented mind, body and soul of another human being so readily. —DO

92. “The House of Mirth” (dir. Terence Davies, 2000)

In his adaptation of Edith Wharton’s 1905 acclaimed novel of manners, the late, great Terence Davies depicts Lily Bart’s fall from tentative social standing as a complex societal and interpersonal tragedy. Played by Gillian Anderson in her finest film role to date, Lily moves through New York high society with imprudent ease, valuing her social independence despite her relative impoverishment all but demanding she secure a rich husband. Though she pines for handsome outsider Lawrence Selden (Eric Stoltz), he lacks the finances to be an appropriate suitor; she views her other prospects as akin to settling for a comfortable but unfulfilling future. Alas, a cloud of false rumors about Lily’s character foments from her financial debts and her choice to consort with married men and social undesirables. Lily’s pride, combined with the socialite set’s refusal to forgive and forget — or, at the very least, ignore unfounded gossip — conspires to destroy her reputation and eventually leads her to ruin.

Davies could have easily coasted on the strength of Wharton’s excellent source material, but he imbues the novel’s opulent setting and biting social commentary with a raw, yet restrained feeling that only he could engineer. Menace courses through each of the film’s interiors as they slowly resemble prisons, each successively less desirable than the last, while the “choices” that Lily and her social circle begin to feel more preordained as the film goes on. 

The film’s entire ensemble successfully brings out the poise and passive aggression in Wharton’s characters, especially Dan Aykroyd as the slimy Gus Trenor, yet Anderson’s performance belongs to a class of her own. She not only brings to life Lily’s contradictions — a love of luxury but a desire to live outside of it, the need for a husband to retain security without wishing to capitulate to social obligation — but makes them seem noble, even as her shortsightedness contributes to her downfall. Anderson renders her character’s slow descent into virtual penury and laudanum addiction a genuinely heartrending experience, and her late-in-the-film breakdown about her uselessness stands as one of the decade’s great acting feats. Wharton brings plenty to the table, but it’s Davies and Anderson who serve the meal. —VM

91. “All About Lily Chou-Chou” (dir. Shunji Iwai, 2001)

For all the films we continue to get in the 2020s about living with (and on) the internet, few have been more astute than the one that Shunji Iwai made at the very start of the 21st century. “All About Lily Chou-Chou” begins with a flurry of characters finding solace in an online community that’s bound together by a shared obsession with the eponymous, fictional musician Lily Chou-Chou. (Her music was written and performed by Keiko Suzuki, who cut a full album for the movie, thus bringing Lily Chou-Chou into the real world as a result.) Strange and poetic ramblings about how her music comes from “the ether” are interspersed throughout floaty handheld photography of a boy in a rice field with a walkman. Iwai constantly returns to these images, emphasizing the anonymity of the online space through the simplicity of white inter-titles on a black screen; the void represents a respite from the characters’ painful and isolating existence, the allure that pop star idolatry provides for them made all the more clear through this contrast. There are signs of mutual understanding — and a sincere hope for earnest connection — amid these disembodied voices. Compared to the harshness of physical reality, the world of Lily Chou-Chou feels like an escape.

“All About Lily Chou-Chou” is shot in raw digital handheld, but the the bloom of the film’s lighting combines with its jumbled structure to create a hypnotic dreamscape, the fragmentation of which reflects the schism that separates the characters’ physical and digital lives. Deuteragonists Yuichi and Shunsuke get to be entirely different people on their mutual fansite, with the latter in particular able to show vulnerability in a way he feels he can’t at school. Textured with a rare and probing sensitivity that still feels exceptional some 23 years later, that dichotomy cuts to the heart of a bleak and unsparing tale of disaffection — one brought to life by social technologies as new and unformed as the kids who search for themselves on it. —KC

90. “My Winnipeg” (dir. Guy Maddin, 2007)

There’s a collision of high and low in Guy Maddin’s films unlike anything else in 21st century cinema. Puerile sex jokes give way to images of stunning power, while obsessions over minutiae end up having cosmic significance. That’s especially true of “My Winnipeg,” an inimitably masterful tribute to Maddin’s birthplace, assembled in his collage-like black-and-white style. Resembling the kind of stream-of-consciousness ramble you might get by asking someone to share what they love about their hometown, “My Winnipeg” hopscotches from half-remembered legends — horses frozen in the river, their heads sticking above the ice; a group of old ladies forming a circle around a tree the city wanted to cut down that was mysteriously dynamited a few nights later — to lovingly recalled sports triumphs and heartsick laments about long-lost businesses.  

What’s so powerful about “My Winnipeg” is that, even as you’re watching it, you can imagine the version of this movie that could be made about your own stomping grounds. Maddin’s vision is so specific, so enraptured with idiosyncratic detail, that it becomes universal — in much the same way that all home movies tend to feel ineffably alike. Of course, few home movies are made by someone with the wherewithal to cast ‘40s film noir legend Ann Savage as their mother (since Maddin never had footage of the real one), or the vision to structure their remembrances like freeform poetry, complete with rhyming callbacks. There’s nothing quite like “My Winnipeg,” even if every singular frame of it somehow manages to seem as familiar as home. —CB 

89. “Casino Royale” (dir. Martin Campbell, 2006)

“The Mask of Zorro” is a great time, but let’s be real: Martin Campbell was put on this earth for the sole purpose of rebooting James Bond. He first brought the immortal spy franchise back in from the cold with 1995’s “GoldenEye,” a thrilling adventure that revitalized 007 by complementing the character’s usual silliness with high-flying setpieces and new depth of feeling. When the Pierce Brosnan era petered out and the Broccolis needed someone to reimagine Bond all over again, they reached out to Campbell in the hope that lightning would strike twice — and that a veteran journeyman, not a young studio upstart, would be the right person to shepherd a 20th century icon into the new millennium. Some would call it a safe bet. Others, a blinkered leap of faith. Either way, that decision was rewarded with one of the greatest blockbusters since, well, “Goldeneye.” 

Truth be told, “Casino Royale” is even better than that. From its exhilarating parkour chase through a Madagascar construction site to its surprisingly emotional climax in the canals of Venice, Campbell’s second Bond movie rewrote the rules by adhering to the same formula he established the first time around. Epitomizing the mix of raw grit and abject cartoonishness that came to define post-9/11 Hollywood’s efforts to reconcile the War on Terror with the need to sell popcorn, “Casino Royale” upped the ante on the franchise’s action while stripping James Bond down to the bone; the sight of Daniel Craig in a Speedo might be the least revealing part of a movie that ends by showing us 007s’ broken heart. 

Without betraying the spirit of a series that has never taken itself too seriously (the impossibly stupid poker scenes are a feature, not a bug), “Casino Royale” gave Bond the closest thing he’s ever had to a soul, only to torture him with it in a way so painful it could make a man nostalgic for the days of Goldfinger’s laser table and Blofeld’s shark-infested pool. That wound cut so deep that the rest of the Craig movies could only marvel at the scar it left behind, as the Bond series — understandably inspired to follow “Casino Royale” with the series’ first direct sequel — tried in vain to live up to the kinetic genius of Campbell’s action, or to the flinty perfection of Eva Green’s Vesper Lynd, whose death probably cast an even longer shadow than it was supposed to. Regardless of what came next, however, Bond fans can take more than a quantum of solace in a blockbuster so good it ensured that 007 would survive the onslaught of superhero movies that followed; if not forever, then at least for long enough to die another day. —DE

88. “Michael Clayton” (dir. Tony Gilroy, 2007)

A man leaves a poker game and drives toward Westchester from New York City. After visiting with a combative client, he pulls over to the side of the road and approaches three horses on a hill. Suddenly, his car explodes behind him. So begins “Michael Clayton,” a sleek and tightly wound thriller that sharply throws back to 1970s American cinema. Written and directed by Tony Gilroy — a first-time director who had previously written the “Bourne” movies — the movie resurrects the moody ambivalence and ethical complexity that defined works by directors like Alan J. Pakula and Sidney Lumet. Sydney Pollack, another from that world, even appears in a small role.

Like films by those predecessors, Gilroy’s legal thriller follows a tormented lone wolf navigating a sinister system. Michael works as a fixer at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, which means that his salary hinges on fulfilling the less glamorous — and occasionally less lawful — needs of the firm’s upper-class clientele. Things go south after Michael’s colleague, Arthur (the late Tom Wilkinson, colossal in his unraveling), suffers a mental breakdown; Arthur’s conscience gets the best of him after years of defending an agrochemical conglomerate responsible for the deaths of farmers. The late Wilkinson gives a career-defining performance, as does the chameleonic Tilda Swinton, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of the company’s casually evil general counsel. A modern marvel of suspense and ambiguity, “Michael Clayton” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it sure spins it with slick new power. —NW

87. “Morvern Callar” (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 2002)

Grief on film tends to be rendered in clear, linear terms: the death of X makes Y act like Z. “Morvern Callar,” Lynne Ramsay’s spellbinding 2002 sophomore feature, captures grief in a different form, as an event that seems to shatter and remake a woman into a form unknowable to herself. Played with deliberate remove by a magnetic Samantha Morton, the titular young supermarket worker responds to the suicide of her boyfriend on Christmas Day not with histrionics and clear-cut devastation, but by ignoring the problem entirely, stealing his manuscript for a novel to passing itself off as her own, chopping up his body and burying it in the woods, and taking off for a seemingly purposeless Spain holiday with her oblivious best friend. Ramsay, adapting Alan Warner’s 1995 novel, doesn’t let us into the nature of Morvern’s relationship or the motivations for her actions. Is this a woman in a toxic relationship reclaiming her freedom? Or someone who has become unmoored in her life without her beloved to tether her down?

Whatever her reasons, Morvern floats from a chilly, small-town Scotland to a sunny, spiritual Spain without ever seeming to belong in either world. A famously withholding filmmaker, Ramsay shoots both locations with an air of the surreal, drenching Morvern’s queasy odyssey in thick atmosphere, flashing neon lights, and a hazy fog that threatens to envelop her whole. “Morvern Callar” isn’t an entirely joyless affair — with a slight trace of dark humor and a soundtrack of classic rock acts ranging from Can to The Velvet Underground, it’s a movie with a defiant punk style in its own way — but the moody character piece is most vivid as a study of how the entire universe can shift and be rewritten after a trauma. As the film closes on a haunting shot of Morton bathed in red lights listening to her boyfriend’s old tape of “Dedicated to the One I Love,” you don’t know whether this young woman has found the peace she needs or is forever lost. —WC

86. “Waiting for Happiness” (dir. Abderrahmane Sissako, 2002)

Winning the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Waiting for Happiness” immerses viewers in a portrait of lives in transition set in Nouadhibou, Mauritania. A thoughtful examination of alienation and cultural identity, the film’s episodic narrative structure unfolds with enormous care, telling the story of Abdallah (Khatra Ould Abder Kader), a young man returning from Europe who feels disconnected from his homeland. Sissako’s distinctive visual style, characterized by long takes and minimal dialogue, complements the film’s exploration of isolation and the familiar tension between African tradition and Western modernity.

A key work in Sissako’s oeuvre, “Waiting for Happiness” exemplifies his ability to blend documentary realism with lyrical storytelling, subtly addressing migration and the search for belonging, which ensures that it resonates beyond the specificity of its setting. In its sensitive and probing manner, the film asks vital questions about the impacts of globalization on African societies in the 21st century, and its nuanced depictions of African lives have only come to feel increasingly crucial to ongoing  conversations about representation and cultural authenticity in world cinema. —TO

85. “Tale of Cinema” (dir. Hong Sang-soo, 2005)

Hong’s slippery sixth feature introduces two elements that will recur throughout his filmography: the zoom lens, which he uses for emotional emphasis and a reminder of artifice, and a bifurcated narrative structure, a neat way to ruminate on doubling and reflection — especially with regards to art and life. The first half of “Tale of Cinema” involves an aimless boy whose serendipitous encounter with an old girlfriend leads to a boozy night, a sexual encounter, and then a suicide pact. At the last minute, the girl doesn’t go through with it, partially because she witnesses a beautiful snowfall before the pivotal moment, and she successfully saves the life of her fling, who’s thrust back into an ugly family dynamic and a life of unseen despair.

Hong fluidly and imperceptibly cuts away from this drama to a few people ambling out of a movie theater. It slowly becomes clear that what we have just seen has been a short film screened as part of a retrospective by a gravely ill local filmmaker. Our focus switches to Tongsu (Kim Sang-kyung), a struggling filmmaker in his own right, who leaves the theater at the same time as Yongsil (Uhm Ji-won), the actress in the short whose character goes by the same name. He introduces himself to her and slowly ingratiates his way into her orbit, partly out of desire and partly because he harbors a grudge against the short’s director, a former classmate whom he believes stole a traumatic episode of his life for the film. Eventually, Tongsu tries in vain to recreate scenes from the film with him and Yongsil, but all that arises are misreadings and misunderstandings.

A biting portrait of solipsism, “Tale of Cinema” meditates on spectatorship and perception as obscurants, how the act of viewing itself can cloud judgment rather than clarify. It’s unclear whether the short-within-the-film is the product of Tongsu’s aggrieved perspective or not, but regardless, his outlook only serve to alienate himself from his environment. He tries to manipulate life to reflect the art that he feels was taken from him, but only delusion — as opposed to clarity — bubbles to the surface. “I don’t think you really understood the film,” Yongsil firmly tells him at one point, which is just another way of saying he doesn’t understand himself. Hong would only continue to develop and deepen his cinematic style (the urban portraiture, the two shots, the deliberate but fluid camera movements), eventually paring them down to the bare essentials, but his view of human nature feels as if it fully formed with “Tale of Cinema.” —VM

84. “The Father of My Children” (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve, 2009)

Rich with raw emotion even as they unfold with the casual effervescence of a light summer breeze, the films of Mia Hansen-Løve display a rare gift for conveying the stuff of high drama with the texture of real life (and, inevitably, vice-versa). That particular aspect of her genius has never been as bracing or undeniable as it is in her breakthrough second feature, “The Father of My Children,” a frank but enormously sensitive family portrait inspired by the frenzied life — and sudden death — of French producer Humbert Balsan, who was set to work on Hansen-Løve’s debut before he committed suicide. 

Heavily fictionalized (but still full of easter eggs for anyone nostalgic for a certain era of the French movie business), the first half of Hansen-Løve’s version almost suggests a gentle French riff on “Uncut Gems,” the film racing to keep up with with Grégoire Canvel (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing) as he tries to save his production company from going under. His fatal flaw? Loving the movies too much. Too much to turn a profit. Too much to make time for his wife and their three young daughters. Too much to conceive of the man he might be without them. 

And so the question becomes who they might be without him, as “a momentary act of madness” forces Grégoire’s personal and professional families to scramble for a new sense of equilibrium, a process that Hansen-Løve renders with the natural sensitivity that has since become her signature. Much like “Eden,” “Goodbye, First Love,” and Hansen-Løve’s various other things to come, “The Father of My Children” knows that life’s most seismic moments tend to be so destabilizing precisely because they don’t knock the world off its axis. The Earth keeps turning, the world marches on with blasé indifference, and the onus is on us to hold precious memories in their place. Few movies about grief are as low-key as this one, and even fewer can match the heart-stopping honesty of its final scene, in which Grégoire’s teenage daughter is confronted with an eternity of unresolved emotion, only to be told she just has time enough for tears. —DE

83. “Happy-Go-Lucky” (dir. Mike Leigh, 2008)

A delightful and subversive exploration of optimism in an increasingly cynical world, Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” stars an exuberant Sally Hawkins as Poppy, a primary school teacher whose infectious joie de vivre lights up every frame. An unusual heroine for a filmmaker known for more dire character studies, Poppy’s relentless — sometimes even grating — positivity isn’t portrayed as a sign of naivete, but rather as a genuine response to the very real challenges she faces. Challenges that include her struggling colleagues and students, and her rather less upbeat driving instructor (played with a sharp edge by Eddie Marsan).  

The film’s visual and narrative style enhances its plucky themes: the camera captures vibrant, bustling street scenes that mirror its protagonist’s ethos, while the naturalistic dialogue (which result from Leigh’s signature improvisations) lend a rich sense of authenticity to the people in Poppy’s life. The contrast between Poppy’s optimism and the grittier elements of her world — which we see by way of her interactions with the disenchanted and disaffected — highlights the resilience of her character and the value of maintaining a positive outlook in the face of adversity. Hawkins is so genuinely winsome in the lead role that it’s difficult to walk away from the film without wondering about the actual possibility that, while we can’t make everyone happy, it might be worth it to at least try. And what could be more revolutionary than that? —KE 

82. “Ocean’s Twelve” (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 2004)

Steven Soderbergh has always thought of himself as more of a synthesist than an originator, more of a collage artist than a bonafide auteur. Unlike Quentin Tarantino, Soderbergh tends to be more in service to his influences than his influences are in service to him. But if that’s true — as the filmmaker humbly swears that it is — why do so many of his best movies feel like they couldn’t possibly have been made by anyone else?

How fitting, then, that the most idiosyncratic studio picture Soderbergh has ever made was actually based on the script for a different film. Retrofitting George Nolfi’s “Honor Among Thieves” into a dazzling, go-for-broke sequel about the difficulty of making sequels, “Ocean’s Twelve” was a victim of its own ingenuity (a fate to which its director can certainly relate). Less of a heist movie than it is an abstract investigation of the genre and its expectations, this immensely fun caper has the audacity to make the audience into its primary mark, and that pissed off a lot of people. They’ll come around. Once you’re in on the joke, it’s so much fun to watch Soderbergh weaponize the glitz and glamor of his most incredible cast, using all of that plutonium-grade charisma as a means to distract us from the con at hand; not only is the Julia Roberts sequence the hilarious coup de grâce of a blockbuster that plays inside baseball better than “Full Frontal” ever could, it also gets to the heart of what the “Ocean’s” movies are all about: the seduction of star power. —DE

81. “Fat Girl” (dir. Catherine Breillat, 2001)

The title of “Fat Girl,” Catherine Breillat’s piercing study of female sexual awakening, is almost a provocation. Dare to say it aloud without shame and you might get a taste of the audacity and self-possession necessary to survive in the world as that most vulnerable of creatures: girls hovering between childhood and adolescence. The story centers on two such creatures during a summer vacation. We meet the lithe, coquettish Elena (Roxane Mesquida) and her younger sister, the defiant Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux), as they wander the woods, arguing about the best ways to lose their virginity. “Let’s see who can pick up a decent boy first,” Elena challenges.

She soon wins her own bet when she meets Fernando (Libero de Rienzo), an Italian college student who invites the sisters to sit with him at a cafe. As Anaïs wolfs down a banana split — her favorite, she declares with relish upon spying it on the menu — Elena opens her mouth to invite a different object of desire: the tongue of her new lover. “Fat Girl” traces the sisters’ time with Fernando over a couple nights, methodically revealing how their visions of romance and sexual gratification grind up against their reality. The film drew ire upon its release for commingling scenes of consensual sex and rape, but the disturbing episodes serve a purpose: They take the women’s efforts to achieve bodily agency to their dark logical conclusions. The title may startle, but by saying the quiet part aloud, it sets a brazen, unyielding tone for the onslaught of brilliantly troubling moments to come. —NW

Continue reading after the break to see the top 80 films of the 2000s.

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