The Best Movies of the 2000s

The headline says it all. The top choices are placed in order of preference, with their directors in parentheses. The runners-up are listed alphabetically. The list will be updated as I see more movies from the era. Get your Netflix queue ready and enjoy!!

2000:
You Can Count On Me (Kenneth Lonergan)
The House of Mirth (Terrence Davies)
Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier)
George Washington (David Gordon Green)
O Brother Where Art Thou? (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Requiem for a Dream (Darrin Aronofsky)
In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-Wei)
Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay)
Waking the Dead (Keith Gordon)
Chuck and Buck (Miguel Arteta)
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
Traffic (Steven Soderburgh)
Unbreakable (M. Night Shamalyan)
Amores Perros (Alejandro Gonzalez Inurritu)
Bring It On (Peyton Reed)
Cast Away (Robert Zemeckis)
Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson)
And I Will Not Leave You Until I Die (Maciaj Ademek)
The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola)
Best In Show (Christopher Guest)

OF NOTE: American Psycho, Beautiful People, Boiler Room, The Color of Paradise, Dracula 2000, Duets, Erin Brockovich, Final Destination, Frequency, Gladiator, Hamlet, High Fidelity, Jesus’ Son, My Dog Skip, Pollock, Shadow of the Vampire, Sound and Fury, State and Main, Thirteen Days, Tigerland, The Whole Nine Yards, X-Men

2001
Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann)
Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch)
Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly)
In The Bedroom (Todd Fields)
Memento (Christopher Nolan)
Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott)
Monsters Inc. (Andrew Stanton)
Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff)
Thanksgiving (Alex R. Johnson)
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
That Fateful Day (Eric Forrest)
Series 7: The Contenders (Daniel Minahan)
Buffalo Soldiers (Gregor Jordan)
Lantana (Ray Lawrence)
Wet Hot American Summer (David Wain)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson)
Friction (Robert Ellmann)
Amelie (Jean-Claude Jeunot)
Gosford Park (Robert Altman)
Japanese Myths (Eric Forrest)

OF NOTE: Ali, Bully, Conspiracy, Crazy/Beautiful, The Deep End, The Devil’s Backbone, From Hell, How High, Iris, Legally Blonde, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Man Who Wasn’t There, The Others, Session 9, Sexy Beast, Spy Kids, The Tailor of Panama, Training Day, Under The Sand, Waking Life

2002
Russian Ark (Alexandr Sokurov)
Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg)
Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Time Out (Laurent Cantet)
All or Nothing (Mike Leigh)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (Alfonzo Cuaron)
Max (Menno Meyies)
Signs (M. Night Shamalyan)
12 (Lawrence Bridges)
8 Women (Francois Ozon)
Enigma (Michael Apted)
Lovely and Amazing (Nicole Holofcener)
The Hours (Stephen Daldry)
Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore)
Born in Beirut (Liliane Matta)
Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
Spider (David Cronenberg)
Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes)
Adaptation (Spike Jonze)
Jimmy's Story (Billy Yeager)

OF NOTE: 28 Days Later, Ablution, About A Boy, About Schmidt, The Barbecue People, Blue Crush, The Bourne Identity, Changing Lanes, Chicago, Clockstoppers, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Femme Fatale, Frailty, Frida, The Good Girl, Igby Goes Down, Incidental Park Zones and You, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Minority Report, Morvern Callar, The Movie Hero, Narc, One Hour Photo, The Pianist, Rabbit-Proof Fence, Road to Perdition, The Salton Sea, Secretary, Solaris, Spiderman, Spirited Away, Stevie, Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election

2003
Elephant (Gus Van Sant)
In America (Jim Sheridan)
All The Real Girls (David Gordon Green)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
Mystic River (Clint Eastwood)
City of God (Fernando Merilles)
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir)
Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki)
The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
Bad Santa (Terry Zwigoff)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
Shattered Glass (Billy Ray)
21 Grams (Alejandro Gonzalez Inurritu)
American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini)
Goodbye Day (Dan Bush)
Phone Booth (Joel Schumacher)
Kill Bill (as one movie) (Quentin Tarantino)
House of Sand and Fog (Vadim Perelman)

OF NOTE: The Cooler, The Core, Dark Blue, Dirty Pretty Things, Down With Love, Holes, The Human Stain, Irreversible, Love Actually, The Magdalene Sisters, A Mighty Wind, Monster, My Life Without Me, School of Rock, Swimming Pool, Together

2004
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood)
Vera Drake (Mike Leigh)
Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess)
Sideways (Alexander Payne)
Before Sunset (Richard Linklater)
The Dreamers (Bernardo Bertolucci)
Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright)
Dogville (Lars Von Trier)
Broadway: The Golden Age (Rick McKay)
Blind Shaft (Yang Li)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
Primer (Shane Carruth)
I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell)
The Machinist (Brad Anderson)
Brave New York (Richard Sandler)
The Incredibles (Brad Bird)
Teacher’s Pet (Timothy Bjorkland)

OF NOTE: The Assassination of Richard Nixon, The Aviator, The Bourne Supremacy, In Good Company, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Maria Full of Grace, Open Water, The Notebook, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Spiderman 2, Team America: World Police, Touching the Void, The Village

2005
The New World (Terrence Malick)
Nobody Knows (Kore-eda Hirokazu)
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
Cache (Michael Haneke)
L'Enfant (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Hustle and Flow (Craig Anderson)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach)
Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee)
The Constant Gardener (Fernando Merilles)
Good Night, And Good Luck (George Clooney)
Junebug (Phil Morrison)
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones)
The 40-Year-Old Virgin (Judd Apatow)
Capote (Bennett Miller)
Saraband (Ingmar Bergman)
2046 (Wong Kar-Wai)
Shopgirl (Anand Tucker)
Batman Begins (Christopher Nolan)
Bubble (Steven Soderburgh)
Wallace and Grommit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (Nick Park)

OF NOTE: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Everything is Illuminated, Head-On, A History of Violence, Jarhead, Kung Fu Hustle, The Matador, Me and You and Everyone We Know, Mirrormask, Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic, Stay, Syriana

2006
The Fountain (Darrin Aronofsky)
Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt)
United 93 (Paul Greengrass)
Children of Men (Alfonzo Cuaron)
The Lives of Others (Florian Henkel von Donnersmark)
Little Children (Todd Fields)
Borat (Larry Charles)
Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (Michael Winterbottom)
Inland Empire (David Lynch)
Munich (Steven Spielberg)
A Prairie Home Companion (Robert Altman)
Inside Man (Spike Lee)
Letters from Iwo Jima (Clint Eastwood)
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (Albert Brooks)
Maxed Out (James D. Scurlock)
Friends with Money (Nicole Holofcener)
The Departed (Martin Scorsese)
Casino Royale (Martin Campbell)
Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Adam McKay)

OF NOTE: Babel, The Break-Up, Closing Time, CSA: The Confederate States of America, Days of Glory, The Descent, Factotum, Find Me Guilty, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, Half Nelson, Hot Fuzz, Idiocracy, An Inconvenient Truth, The Little Death, Marie Antoinette, Notes on a Scandal, The Prestige, The Queen, Rocky Balboa, Sherry Baby, Who Killed The Electric Car?

2007
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominick)
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Grindhouse (Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
Sunshine (Danny Boyle)
No End In Sight (Charles Ferguson)
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog)
We Own The Night (James Grey)
Sicko (Michael Moore)
Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (Stephen Kijak)
This is England (Shane Meadows)

Day Night Day Night (Julia Loktev)
Jesus Camp (Heidi Ewing, Rachel Grady)
Away From Her (Sarah Polley)
La Vie En Rose (Olivier Dahan)
Ratatouille (John Lassiter)

OF NOTE: Alpha Dog, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Black Book, Jindabyne, Lars and the Real Girl, The Lookout, The Mist, Superbad, The TV Set, 28 Weeks Later

2008
The Fall (Tarsem Singh)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
The Wrestler (Darrin Aronofsky)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
John Adams (Tom Hooper)
Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman)
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
The Promotion (Steve Conrad)
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh)
Abel Raises Cain (Jessica Abel)
Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller)
What Just Happened (Barry Levinson)
Empire II (Amos Poe)
Red (Trygve Allister Diesen and Lucky McKee)
Smiley Face (Gregg Araki)
Blindness (Fernando Meirelles)
W. (Oliver Stone)
Changeling (Clint Eastwood)
Nights and Weekends (Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig)

OF NOTE: The Autuer, Baghead, Be Kind Rewind, Doubt, Dying Breed, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Gran Torino, Iron Man, JCVD, Last Chance Harvey, Mona, Run For Your Life, The Strangers, WALL-E, The Wild Man of the Navidad

2009
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino)
Bright Star (Jane Campion)
The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
A Prophet (Jacques Audiard)
Anvil!: The Story of Anvil (Sacha Gervasi)
A Serious Man (Joel and Ethan Coen)
The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow)
Somers Town (Shane Meadows)
Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda)
Julia (Erick Zonca)
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
Big Fan (Robert Siegel)
(500) Days of Summer (Marc Webb)
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
Trucker (James Mottern)
Star Trek (J.J. Abrams)
Up in the Air (Jason Reitman)
Collapse (Chris Smith)
Adventureland (Greg Mottola)
Drag Me To Hell (Sam Raimi)

OF NOTE: Away We Go, Beeswax, The Blind Side, Coraline, Crazy Heart, An Education, The House of the Devil, The Informant!, The Invention of Lying, Moon, The Road, Zombieland