#2000-2009

[threedee-memories]

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #679

Top Ten Films of the 2000s

As we draw towards the close of the year, I’m tempted to both look backwards at what’s gone, but also look ahead to what may be around the corner. We’ll be a quarter of a way through this new century, one which still feels like the future to me. It’s made me think about the films of the century – a topic I might return to next year – but in doing so I also looked back and realised that I needed to catch up with an old topic of mine. Which is: films of the decade!

A fair while ago now I ranked my favourite films from the eighties and nineties. And now, much belatedly, I return to the theme and rank my favourite films of the noughties. And it was quite a decade. The noughties felt defined in a lot of ways by films that came out around the turn of the millennium, but we also see the seeds of what would become popular in the following decade. The Matrix lead to loads of desaturated, bullet-time-heavy action films with goth-rock soundtracks; Pixar’s success kickstarted the CG animation boom; and a couple of fantasy-tinged epics helped usher in a new era of swords, sandals, and swollen runtimes. But we also saw the shoots of the later comic book boom; Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy made superheroes serious, whilst Raimi’s Spider-Man presaged the colourful, banter-heavy MCU films that followed.

It was a decade of transition as Hollywood moved away from star-led projects towards “IP”, in part fuelled by the success of brand-based, long-running film series such as Star Wars and Harry Potter. Meanwhile the heights of the DVD era not only allowed Disney to mine their back catalogue for stuff to sequalise, it also led to us all stacking our shelves with more diverse films, mopping up the kinds of foreign language movies, unseen classics, and niche genre fair that would have been expensive and more difficult to get hold of in the nineties.

It’s been really hard for me to rank these films, to be honest. Beyond the first three (technically five!) it was sort of anyone’s game; a lot of quality, but hard for me to sort it out the way I normally like to do. Ask me again in a couple of months and this might be structured a bit differently!

Anyway, that’s all the preamble, this is supposed to be a simple week. Let’s just go list ten films released between 2000 and 2009.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03): look, I don’t even think it’s cheating. Lord of the Rings – taken as a whole entity – is probably the cinematic achievement of my lifetime, certainly of the last thirty years. It’s astounding that these films where made, when they were, in the fashion that they were, by the people who made them; it’s almost inconceivable that they turned out as well as they did. These are flat-out full-bore masterpieces of the highest calibre. Absolutely nothing whatsoever comes anywhere near them. They’re pretty good.

WALL-E (2008): my favourite Pixar film. Yes, it’s beautiful, and moving, and funny, and clever, and all that; many Pixar films are. But this is about the triumph of the human spirit, about rising from the ashes. And more, it’s a Superman story: it’s about someone who’s just so damn nice all the time, he inadvertently inspires everyone to be their better self. And it’s a love story. It’s damn good.

Zodiac (2007): Fincher’s best film, an incredibly dark and forensic examination not just of a series of killings, but also of the determined – obsessed? – individuals attempting to uncover the Zodiac’s identity. Astounding performances from three future MCU stars, and one of the bleakest, most upsetting murder scenes in history.

There Will Be Blood (2007): in the battle of the dark neo-Westerns of 2007, the (excellent) No Country for Old Men beat this one at the Oscars, but the story of oil man Daniel Plainview is the elegiac champ in my mind. An intimate character piece painted on a broad canvas, it’s a mesmerising examination of one man’s mania. And he drank your milkshake! He drank your milkshake!

Spirited Away (2001): my third-favourite Ghibli film overall and one of the best animated movies of the decade. A surreal fairy tail full of oddball characters and often disturbing visuals, it’s a magical wonder that manages to be suffused with tension and darkness but is ultimately incredibly uplifting.

Hot Fuzz (2007): the comedy of the decade, taking the template established in Shaun of the Dead and perfecting it, both in terms of Edgar Wright’s directorial style, but also in performance and – especially – scripting, with multiple layered gags, references, and call-backs – making this a violent, sweary, live-action version of an Aardman film. Also has arguably the best line of the noughties: “You wanna be a big cop in a small town, fuck off up the model village.”

The Dark Knight (2008): commonly thought of as the moment where comic book adaptations “grew up”, this is a sprawling Mann-esque crime epic where the cop happens to be Batman and the robber happens to be the Joker. Stunningly shot in what would become Nolan’s signature (cold?) style, it’s clever and mature and a ton of fun, even if it’s not quite as clever or mature or fun as it maybe thinks it is.

Moulin Rouge! (2001): a delightfully scattershot jukebox musical that’s like a glitterbomb going off in a student theatre society’s Christmas party. Energetic does not do it justice, it’s a rollercoaster of an audio-visual experience, but one that’s masterfully handled with two terrific performances at the heart of it, anchoring our emotional attachment. Should have won, like, half a dozen Oscars.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006): another dark fairy tale, as a girl enters a threatening fairytale world that offers dangers and monsters, but is also weirdly an escape from the real horrors – namely the Franco dictatorship and a brutal Captain Vidal. Del Torro gives us sumptuous visuals and gorgeous creature designs, but it’s in its underlying themes and motifs that it really sings.

Munich (2005): Spielberg’s later films – basically anything post-Ryan – often get given short shrift; for one of the most successful directors of all time, he’s surprisingly underrated. This study of violence and vengeance is one of his most political films, and he doesn’t shy away from the horrors inflicted. It’s a bleak watch at times, but it’s in how Spielberg adroitly ties the Munich attack and its repercussions to America’s then-current War on Terror that makes it feel really dark.

Watch this space for the best films from the 2010s...!

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Jennifer's Body (2009)

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HOT HORROR GIRL WALK

The Craft (1996) Ginger Snaps (2000) Jennifer's Body (2009) Lisa Frankenstein (2024)

[90s-2000s-barbie]

It’s Happy Bunny

Designed by artist & writer Jim Benton in the 1990s. Happy Bunny gained popularity in 2001 after stores like Hot Topic and Spencers began selling its merchandise.

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47°03'48.2"N 8°19'44.6"E

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[youre-dreaming-302]

2000s Anime girls

[theresistanceneverquits]

There’s not enough people talking about how important Stephanie is to Damian’s growth pre-Flashpoint.

Bruce had seen Damian as a beast to be tamed, Tim sees him as a ticking time bomb, and Dick is far better with him but he’s still an authority figure for Damian to combat with. But then he meets Stephanie, a college-aged girl who nobody trusts and he bullies her relentlessly and becomes inseparable from her.

She doesn’t interact with him based on his past, but on what she can see. This 10 year old just threatened to kill her? Wow he doesn’t get outside much. He’s not old enough to have seen Gremlins. What do you MEAN you’ve never been inside a bouncy house before we are fixing that immediately.

They are like cousins to each other. They poke fun at each other for being lame and stupid and Dick has to tell them both to shut up. She doesn’t see him as a project to be molded and redeemed, he’s just a kid with a crappy childhood like her and if he’s nice to her for 5 seconds she’ll do something with him to let him feel like a kid. And he doesn’t look at her and see a liability or a failure or a lost cause, like everyone she’s ever interacted with does. When he’s awful to her, it’s because he’s an obnoxious preteen boy.

And then you get the “there’s room in our line of work for hope, too” scene. Because Damian has gotten to know Steph and he can’t fathom why she’s here. She obviously has had to deal with crap and is still working through being kept on a leash by Nightwing and Oracle, but she isn’t broken like the rest of them are. Damian is surrounded by people who were molded and shaped and torn down and broken to become the monoliths that they are, and then there’s this girl who seems so at peace with herself and is constantly making quips, and it’s so foreign to him.

And she tells him that she’s in his world because she believes people are worth fighting for.

[classichorrorblog]

Jennifer's Body (2009)

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