Best movies of the 2000s

The Dark Knight▲ Rising

Heath Ledger's Joker walked into a burning hospital and detonated the entire concept of the 'comic book movie' ceiling, turning Gotham into a genuine crime epic about chaos and order. It's the rare blockbuster that's also a tragedy, and its shadow still looms over every superhero film that tried and failed to match its weight.

Year: 2008Director: Christopher NolanIMDb: 9/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 11 rankings

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring▲ Rising

Peter Jackson took a 'unfilmable' book and opened with a Shire so lived-in you could smell the pipe-weed, then built to the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and Gandalf's fall, which rewired what practical-meets-digital epic filmmaking could look like. It kicked off the decade's most ambitious blockbuster gamble and won.

Year: 2001Director: Peter JacksonIMDb: 8.9/10Oscars: 4

added by IJRin 5 rankings

The Departed▲ Rising

Scorsese finally won his Oscar with a Boston crime saga where Jack Nicholson's rat-in-a-maze grin and that gutting final shot of a rat scurrying across a State House balcony summed up a film obsessed with identity rotting from the inside. Cop and criminal blur until neither audience nor characters can tell who's who — pure genre filmmaking at the top of its game.

Year: 2006Director: Martin ScorseseIMDb: 8.5/10Oscars: 4

added by IJRin 8 rankings

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King▲ Rising

Eleven Oscars, a battle at Pelennor Fields with actual scale, and an ending that refuses to end because Frodo's trauma deserves a real goodbye — this is the movie that proved fantasy could win Best Picture. The argument for its spot is simple: it's the single greatest capstone to a trilogy ever filmed.

Year: 2003Director: Peter JacksonIMDb: 9/10Oscars: 11

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind▲ Rising

Jim Carrey erasing Kate Winslet from his memory, only to fight his own subconscious to keep her as the world literally crumbles around him, gave heartbreak a sci-fi structure nobody had tried before. Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry made memory-loss romance feel like the most honest breakup movie ever written.

Year: 2004Director: Michel GondryIMDb: 8.3/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Gladiator▲ Rising

Maximus growling 'Are you not entertained?' into the Colosseum sand kicked off the decade by resurrecting the sword-and-sandal epic almost single-handedly. Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe made vengeance operatic again, and Hollywood spent years chasing its Best Picture shadow.

Year: 2000Director: Ridley ScottIMDb: 8.5/10Oscars: 5

added by IJRin 6 rankings

Inglourious Basterds▲ Rising

Tarantino rewrites history in a Parisian cinema fire, and Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa turns a simple farmhouse interrogation into the tensest ten minutes of the decade. It's a movie-lover's revenge fantasy that argues cinema itself can kill Hitler — audacious, hilarious, and dead serious about violence's catharsis.

Year: 2009Director: Quentin TarantinoIMDb: 8.4/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Kill Bill: Vol. 1▲ Rising

The Bride hacking through the Crazy 88 in the House of Blue Leaves, blood arcing in black-and-white silhouette, is Tarantino turning grindhouse revenge into pure kinetic ballet. It's style as substance — a genre mixtape of samurai film, spaghetti western, and anime that never once apologizes for being cool.

Year: 2003Director: Quentin TarantinoIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Finding Nemo

A clownfish crossing an entire ocean to find his son, with Dory's 'just keep swimming' becoming an unlikely mantra for anxious kids and adults alike, is Pixar's most purely emotional adventure. It's the movie that proved computer animation could carry real grief — that opening barracuda attack still guts audiences twenty years later.

Year: 2003Director: Andrew StantonIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 7 rankings

Up

Balloons lift a house into the sky, but it's the wordless 'Married Life' montage — a whole relationship's joy and grief compressed into four minutes — that made grown adults weep in a Pixar movie about a talking dog. Carl Fredricksen's grumpy grief becomes one of animation's most devastating character studies.

Year: 2009Director: Pete DocterIMDb: 8.3/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 7 rankings

No Country for Old Men

Anton Chigurh's coin flip at a gas station is the scariest scene of the decade precisely because nothing happens — the Coens made a Western where evil has no motive and the hero doesn't even get to fight the villain. It's a bleak, perfect thesis on chaos that earned its Best Picture win by refusing every convention it touched.

Year: 2007Director: Coen BrothersIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 4

added by IJRin 8 rankings

Spirited Away

Chihiro wandering into a bathhouse of gods, a No-Face spirit gorging on greed, a train ride across still water — Miyazaki built a world with dream logic that never once condescends to its audience. It became the first anime to win an Oscar and the film that made 'animation' and 'masterpiece' synonymous for a generation.

Year: 2001Director: Hayao MiyazakiIMDb: 8.6/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 5 rankings

WALL-E

A lonely trash-compacting robot falls in love watching old musicals, and Pixar spends its first act with almost no dialogue, just yearning — one of the boldest openings any studio ever greenlit for a kids' movie. It's a silent-film romance smuggled inside an environmental parable, and it earns its place by being unafraid to be strange.

Year: 2008Director: Andrew StantonIMDb: 8.4/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 9 rankings

Avatar

James Cameron built Pandora from scratch and made 3D a mainstream event again, with the bioluminescent forests of the Na'vi becoming the highest-grossing spectacle of all time. Say what you want about the plot — the tech leap and pure immersive scale changed how blockbusters were made for a decade after.

Year: 2009Director: James CameronIMDb: 7.9/10Oscars: 3

added by IJRin 4 rankings

The Notebook▼ Falling

Ryan Gosling standing in the rain begging Rachel McAdams to just choose him became the defining romantic image of the decade, spawning a thousand imitators and a permanent place in rom-com canon. It's shameless, swoony melodrama that earns its tears through sheer commitment to the bit.

Year: 2004Director: Nick CassavetesIMDb: 7.8/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 3 rankings

Anchorman

Will Ferrell screaming 'I'm in a glass case of emotion!' and the gang-fight-turned-news-team-brawl gave the decade some of its most quotable absurdist comedy. It's a movie built entirely on going bigger and dumber than seems reasonable, and it somehow works every single time.

Year: 2004Director: Adam McKayIMDb: 7.1/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 2 rankings

Million Dollar Baby▼ Falling

Clint Eastwood's boxing movie turns into something far darker in its final act, with Hilary Swank's Maggie facing a fate that forces Frankie into an impossible, devastating choice. It's a movie that lures you in with underdog training montages and then breaks your heart on purpose.

Year: 2004Director: Clint EastwoodIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 4

added by IJRin 5 rankings

Superbad▼ Falling

Jonah Hill drawing penises obsessively and McLovin getting a fake ID that says only 'McLovin' turned a raunchy teen comedy into an instant classic of adolescent panic and friendship. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's script mined real vulnerability out of dick jokes, and the genre hasn't topped it since.

Year: 2007Director: Greg MottolaIMDb: 7.6/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Iron Man▼ Falling

Robert Downey Jr. cracking jokes in a cave while building a suit out of scrap metal single-handedly launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe and rewrote the economics of Hollywood. That post-credits 'I am Iron Man' tag turned into a decade-plus dynasty — this is where it all started.

Year: 2008Director: Jon FavreauIMDb: 7.9/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 5 rankings