The 100 Best Films of the 2000s: 25 – 1

After you’ve read this part, check out num­bers 100 – 76, 75 – 51 and 50 – 26.

Hunger is both off-putting and arrest­ing in its pow­er­ful imagery of IRA leader Bob­by Sands’ (Michael Fass­ben­der) resis­tance against dehu­man­i­sa­tion at the hands of his jail­ers and the British gov­ern­ment. Direc­tor Steve McQueen allows image and edit­ing to do most of the talk­ing as the film remains most­ly word­less, exclud­ing the film’s cen­tre­piece: a long, sin­gle-take con­ver­sa­tion between Sands and his priest. An aus­tere and frag­ment­ed film, as well as McQueen’s best. Kam­bole Campbell

Maren Ade became an art­house celebri­ty with 2016’s Toni Erd­mann, yet there’s nary a dud in her pre­vi­ous back-cat­a­logue of two. Chris (Lars Eidinger) and Git­ti (Bir­git Minich­mayr) are a cou­ple whose love con­tains barbs both com­ic and seri­ous. Over a sum­mer get­away anoth­er cou­ple crash­es in, induc­ing a com­par­i­son-induced melt­down. Their rela­tion­ship is addled beyond def­i­n­i­tion. Sophie Monks Kaufman

The cin­e­ma is clos­ing. King Hu’s wux­ia clas­sic Drag­on Inn illu­mi­nates the screen. A hand­ful of pun­ters roam its aisles and sub­ter­ranean pas­sage­ways, seek­ing a fleet­ing con­nec­tion with strangers. A dis­abled jan­i­tor goes about her duties for the last time. Tsai Ming-liang’s mourn­ful ode to the cin­e­ma expe­ri­ence cuts even deep­er when viewed from the tail end of 2020, its yearn­ing rumi­na­tion on death and loss aching with a bit­ter­sweet aware­ness of the fragili­ty and tran­sience of all but the shared dreams of the sil­ver screen. Matt Thrift

Dead women cast a long shad­ow over kinky ses­sions between a pro­fes­sor (Meg Ryan) and a detec­tive (Mark Ruf­fa­lo), who may or may not be a killer, in Jane Campion’s griz­zled and grown-up NYC thriller. Meg Ryan shed her America’s Sweet­heart image, along with her clothes, which lends her per­for­mance extra elec­tric­i­ty, and Mark Ruf­fa­lo – oh, Mark Ruf­fa­lo. SMK

Ter­ence Malick’s run­ning pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with puri­ty and its tar­nish­ing at the hands of human­i­ty fit per­fect­ly into this his­tor­i­cal fable of Euro­peans colonis­ing Powhatan land. A soul-deep bond flow­ers between strap­ping white man John Smith (Col­in Far­rell) and native ingénue Poc­a­hon­tas (Q’orianka Kilch­er), a love too spir­i­tu­al­ly uncon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed for our com­pro­mised world. Their sto­ry ends in tragedy, as it must, leav­ing behind it a tem­plate for trans­gres­sion and sin in Amer­i­ca. Charles Bramesco

Com­ments abound on the grim res­o­nance of Alfon­so Cuarón’s dystopia where immi­grants are held in barbed-wire pens and the world is wracked by envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter. Emmanuel Lubezki’s cam­era cre­ates a glid­ing con­ti­nu­ity, a han­dle on the chaos, as we are plunged into Clive Owen’s mis­sion: to pro­tect a preg­nant women, pos­si­bly the last one, from the destruc­tion every­where. SMK

For their terse yarn of vengeance along the Tex­an bor­der, both a salute to clas­si­cal West­erns and a mer­ci­less dis­sec­tion of the same, the Coen broth­ers earned three Oscars apiece. Of course, they couldn’t care less about awards; they got their jol­lies on the blood-chill­ing set-pieces that see Anton Chig­urh (Javier Bar­dem) blaz­ing a path of car­nage through the desert in hot pur­suit of his miss­ing mon­ey and the man who’s got it (Josh Brolin). Coin flips would nev­er be the same. CB

Hayao Miyazaki’s Spir­it­ed Away is beloved among chil­dren and adults alike – and with good rea­son. A pro­found and dream­like com­ing-of-age tale inter­twined with ques­tions of humanity’s rela­tion­ship with nature, it’s a per­fect real­i­sa­tion of both Miyazaki’s the­mat­ic inter­ests and the tal­ents of his col­lab­o­ra­tors. It’s hard to talk about the film with­out men­tion­ing the track One Summer’s Day from the score, as Hisaishi’s finest ever work cap­tures all the beau­ty and ter­ror and oth­er com­plex­i­ties of this world sprung from Miyazaki’s imag­i­na­tion. KC

Beneath pic­ture-per­fect 1950s Amer­i­can sub­ur­ban sur­faces dwell pas­sions too cowed to emerge. Such are the swollen sor­rows in Todd Haynes’ trib­ute to Dou­glas Sirk’s melo­dra­ma All That Heav­en Allows. The love that blos­soms between a white woman (Julianne Moore) and her black gar­den­er (Den­nis Hays­bert) prompts neigh­bour­hood big­otry, while her clos­et­ed gay hus­band (Denis Quaid) has an arc with a sliv­er of hope. SMK

Not to dis­par­age the often breath­tak­ing ear­li­er works of Por­tuguese mae­stro Pedro Cos­ta, but when Colos­sal Youth was released it felt like the apoth­e­o­sis of a career to date; a film that con­sol­i­dat­ed a decade and a half of for­mal explo­rations into a stag­ger­ing­ly sat­is­fy­ing whole. Set amid the ruins of Lisbon’s Fontain­has slums and a new hous­ing devel­op­ment, it’s a mir­a­cle of dig­i­tal film­mak­ing and of direct polit­i­cal address, one that only the big screen expe­ri­ence can do jus­tice to. The film’s pater­nal pro­tag­o­nist Ven­tu­ra, a Cape Verde immi­grant who lat­er starred in Costa’s Horse Mon­ey and Vitali­na Varela, stands as one of the great dis­cov­er­ies in either cen­tu­ry of cin­e­ma. MT

It’s fas­ci­nat­ing to recon­sid­er Steven Spielberg’s explo­ration of a robot child who feels even more than humans do in our Siri, Alexa and robot dogs era. Big Steve’s adap­ta­tion of Bri­an Ald­iss’ short sto­ry, ​‘Super Toys Last All Sum­mer Long’ maps a pri­mal son-moth­er bond onto a philo­soph­i­cal adven­ture epic with emo­tion­al results, while Jude Law is enjoy­ably sassy as Gigo­lo Joe. SMK

Is it pos­si­ble to be so wrapped up in your tri­fling bour­geois exis­tence that you might for­get that you’d run some­one over and dri­ven away from the scene of the crime? Lucre­cia Martel’s lugubri­ous puz­zle box movie sees Maria Onet­to as Veron­i­ca, har­ried moth­er and wife who, one day, looks down for a moment while she’s dri­ving along a desert­ed road, and then feels a bump under the tires. Believ­ing it to be at best a pot­hole and at worst a mangy dog, she dri­ves on. But the moment gnaws at her, and the film opens into one of the great explo­rations of class-based guilt ever made. David Jenk­ins

That poster image of Ray Win­stone sun­bathing in yel­low budgie smug­glers is Jonathan Glazer’s nod to the ami­able stylings of his cock­ney lead man, and a dis­play of con­fi­dence – he doesn’t strain to adver­tise the rich­es behind those trunks. Sexy Beast is a crime thriller, a love sto­ry and a char­ac­ter dra­ma rammed with bril­liant British per­for­mances and spec­tac­u­lar images. SMK

Near­ly two decades after it began with the 1982 port­man­teau film In Our Time, the Tai­wanese New Cin­e­ma move­ment effec­tive­ly drew to a close with this mag­is­te­r­i­al grace note. The final film from Edward Yang (who died in 2007 at just 59), it’s a panoram­ic urban fam­i­ly dra­ma struc­tured around three major gath­er­ings, begin­ning with the wed­ding that opens the film. Less point­ed­ly for­mal­ist than con­tem­po­rary works by the likes of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, it’s a gen­tly flow­ing film, heartrend­ing­ly rich in its ten­der human­ism, with a breadth of focus that spans gen­er­a­tions. It’s the per­fect entry point for one the great move­ments in world cin­e­ma. MT

David Lynch’s labyrinthine LA love sto­ry is a film steeped in leg­end. The epony­mous road has long served as a pas­sage­way to the Amer­i­can Dream, cut­ting as it does through the spine of the San­ta Mon­i­ca Moun­tains – indeed, Lynch pays homage to one of Tinseltown’s most (in)famous res­i­dents, Eliz­a­beth Short, aka the ​‘Black Dahlia’, who was bet­ter known to her fam­i­ly as Bet­ty, the name giv­en to Nao­mi Watts’ char­ac­ter. As well as launch­ing Watts’ career, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve sees one­time MGM idol Ann Miller sign off her own, play­ing the land­la­dy of the apart­ment com­plex where Bet­ty stays. In the process of hark­ing back to Hollywood’s Gold­en Age, Lynch’s film cre­ates its own gild­ed lega­cy. Adam Wood­ward

Bong Joon-ho may have achieved wider recog­ni­tion with Par­a­site, but true fans know he’s been qui­et­ly mak­ing mas­ter­pieces for the past two decades. Based on the Hwaseong ser­i­al mur­ders which took place in South Korea between 1986 – 91, Mem­o­ries of Mur­der cen­tres around detec­tive Park Doo-man (Song Kang-ho) who is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing a series of crimes in his rur­al juris­dic­tion. Like all of Bong’s films, this has a bit­ing wit and social com­men­tary, focus­ing on police cor­rup­tion and bias pro­fil­ing, but also demon­strates the impact of the mur­ders on both the com­mu­ni­ty and the detec­tives charged with solv­ing them. It also fea­tures one of the finest clos­ing shots in cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry. Han­nah Woodhead

The moral com­plex­i­ty of sui­cide, and the ram­i­fi­ca­tions it has on those in its close vicin­i­ty, is the sub­ject of this blis­ter­ing and chaot­ic sec­ond fea­ture by Lynne Ram­say. Saman­tha Mor­ton aston­ish­es as Morvern, the super­mar­ket shelf-stack­er whose writer boyfriend decides to cash in his chips ear­ly, but leaves a strange gift in the form of a pre-writ­ten nov­el and a request for his beau to put her name on it and become the lit­er­ary suc­cess that he was sup­posed to be. The film cov­ers a mas­sive amount of the­mat­ic ground, from the glo­ries of hedo­nism, the stric­tures of class and the ethics behind author­ship in art. Some­one put this out on a big, juicy Blu-ray asap. DJ

Maligned upon release, Bam­boo­zled holds up a hell of a lot bet­ter than one might think – Spike Lee’s exper­i­men­ta­tion with dig­i­tal video achieves mixed results, but his dis­sec­tion of how the enter­tain­ment indus­try con­tin­ues to exploit and com­mod­i­fy Black­ness is as sharp as ever. Its blis­ter­ing final mon­tage of the prac­tice of blackface/​brownface with­in pop­u­lar cul­ture still holds real sting, as well as set­ting the tem­plate for a lot of Lee’s lat­er work. KC

I am tempt­ed to fill this slot by retyp­ing the same two words: Béa­trice. Dalle. The sexy, gap-toothed femme-fatale ful­fils the role she was born to play: a can­ni­bal who can’t have sex with­out eat­ing her mate alive. Claire Denis finds the melan­cholic flip-side to this predica­ment, aid­ed by a now icon­ic Tin­der­sticks score. Stark, dev­as­tat­ing, hor­ri­fy­ing, unruly; this film sat­is­fies strange tastes. SMK

Based on Bret Eas­t­on Ellis’ stom­ach-churn­ing nov­el of the same name, Mary Harron’s pitch-black satire of yup­py cul­ture made a super­star out of Chris­t­ian Bale, hith­er­to best known for sup­port­ing roles in Lit­tle Women and Vel­vet Gold­mine. His unhinged por­tray­al of Wall Street axe mur­der­er Patrick Bate­man still holds up as one of his best, while Harron’s sharp direc­tion (and the screen­play she co-wrote) turn Ellis’ bit­ter nov­el into a fas­ci­nat­ing, styl­ish exam­i­na­tion of male enti­tle­ment and misog­y­ny. HW

Ter­ry Zwigoff ini­tial­ly found acclaim for his doc­u­men­taries, but his black com­e­dy based on Daniel Clowes’ graph­ic nov­el of the same name (who wrote the screen­play with Zwigoff) is arguably his best work. Fea­tur­ing Tho­ra Birch and Scar­lett Johans­son as a pair of teenage out­siders who prank Steve Buscemi’s lone­ly blues fan, it’s a smirk­ing, cyn­i­cal take on ado­les­cent iner­tia and human lone­li­ness, and one of the few com­ic book adap­ta­tions to suc­cess­ful­ly – but sub­tly – mim­ic the vivid nature of the form in life-action. HW

With a run­ning time of just 80 min­utes, Kel­ly Reichardt’s third fea­ture is a work of bone-lean nar­ra­tive and emo­tion­al econ­o­my that, in its bound­less reserves of empa­thy, con­tains mul­ti­tudes. It’s an acute­ly polit­i­cal pic­ture, essay­ing our cap­i­tal­ist society’s lim­its of care, even as Reichardt holds lit­tle truck with dog­ma­tism, instead trust­ing her broad­er the­mat­ic schemes to our iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the itin­er­ant Wendy (Michelle Williams) and the dog she can no longer afford to feed. Reichardt remains one of the great­est film­mak­ers work­ing today, and with every pass­ing year, Wendy and Lucy looks increas­ing­ly like one of the Great Amer­i­can Films. MT

A har­row­ing account of the decades-long hunt for the ser­i­al killer who ter­rorised the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area in the 1960s and ​’70s, David Fincher’s Zodi­ac retains its spine-chill­ing qual­i­ties some 13 years after it was released. In a bumper year that also her­ald­ed Michael Clay­ton, No Coun­try for Old Men and There Will be Blood, Zodi­ac didn’t get much love, but its focus on the pro­ce­dur­al nature of crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion – and the impact of the case on those clos­est to it – set it apart as one of the finest true crime films of all time. The scene in which Jake Gyllenhaal’s car­toon­ist turned ama­teur sleuth Robert Gray­smith tracks John Car­roll Lynch’s prime sus­pect Arthur Leigh Allen to a hard­ware store? Heart-in-mouth stuff. HW

An avid chron­i­cler of his country’s per­son­al and polit­i­cal his­to­ry, Tai­wanese mas­ter Hou Hsiao-hsien trains his eye on the con­tem­po­rary malaise of alien­at­ed urban youth with Mil­len­ni­um Mam­bo, albeit with a struc­tur­al device that casts the present as past. Shu Qi’s Vicky nar­rates her sto­ry from 10 years in the future; a deper­son­alised, third per­son account of her life with a dead­beat boyfriend and would-be suit­or in the Taipei club scene. Cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Mark Lee Ping Bin effects a woozy, black­light vibran­cy for the numb­ing nightlife rit­u­als, as Hou pierces Vicky’s sta­sis with a shard of hope found at a snow­bound film fes­ti­val. A mas­ter­piece, whose restora­tion is long over­due. MT

In the Mood For Love made Wong Kar Wai syn­ony­mous with a breath­tak­ing visu­al grace that enshrouds char­ac­ters. Mag­gie Che­ung and Tony Leung are neigh­bours in British Hong Kong. They realise that their spous­es are hav­ing an affair togeth­er and form a friend­ship, pass­ing the time in dif­fer­ent rooms, mov­ing with delib­er­a­tion as smoke curls into an atmos­phere alive with unspo­ken feel­ings. They role-play inter­ac­tions between their cheat­ing oth­er-halves; as close as they allow them­selves to get to mir­ror­ing the betray­al. Time stretch­es into eter­ni­ty, until it is cut short. Shigeru Umebayashi’s indeli­ble string theme con­veys the del­i­cate emo­tions that hang in the bal­ance. They are both impos­si­bly ele­gant, gov­erned by a strange dig­ni­ty. SMK

Thanks for read­ing our count­down of the 100 best films of the 2000s. We’d love to hear what your favourite films of the decade are. Share your per­son­al Top 10 with us @LWLies