The films that defined the noughties

100 books that defined the 00s| 100 cultural moments of the 00s
100 songs that defined the 00s| 100 TV shows that defined the 00s

This decade has brought some extraordinary shifts in the way films are made, and the way we watch them. But it’s not always easy to pinpoint exactly when those changes began – or where they will end. Many of the best films on this list – long-gestating triumphs such as In the Mood for Love or Spirited Away – were in development in the Nineties; others, now in production, will only see the light of day in a few years time. More than that, some of the key trends of the past 10 years – the DVD boom, faster broadband, YouTube – mean that today’s film fans have been watching, legally or illegally, movies from a bygone age. A fragmented, pick’n’mix cinematic culture, represented on this list by highly referential films such as Kill Bill, Moulin Rouge! and Far from Heaven, is increasingly the norm, not the exception.

Big studios have continued to focus on blockbusters and franchise-fare to boost their profits. This hasn’t always been bad – the Bourne and Lord of the Rings trilogies are terrific fun – but it’s striking that artistically successful, award-winning features such as There Will Be Blood and Milk have under-performed at the box office: how sombre they must seem to audiences weaned on Pirates of the Caribbean and Spider-Man. How CGI-depleted! How zombie-less!

Documentaries – intimate (Être et Avoir), epic (the nine-hour West of the Tracks) and idiosyncratic (The Gleaners and I) – have flourished, in part because of cheap digital technology, but also because that genre is given increasingly short-shrift on television. Animation – from the reliable Pixar stable to the Israeli Waltz with Bashir – has moved mainstream.

The independent sector has become more international with the rise of Mexican drama, Korean horror, Romanian social realism. The succès d’estime of Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady bodes well for the future of art film. Cinema, claimed by many to be moribund at the end of the Nineties, is still hungry, furious and vital.

• 100 Avatar

James Cameron, 2009, DVD n/a: On the basis of a sneak 15-minute show reel, it’s not premature to predict that this ground-breaking 3D sci-fi epic will change the way we look at movies.

• 99 Together

Lukas Moodysson, 2000, £12.72: Astutely observed and delightfully delicate comic drama about a Swedish hippie commune in the Seventies.

• 98 Crash

Paul Haggis, 2005, £9.78: Oscar voters loved this multi-stranded depiction of contemporary LA’s combustible race politics.

• 97 Tropical Malady

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, £12.72: Thrill-seeking audiences rejoiced (while scratching their heads) at this mesmerising gay love story featuring soldiers adrift in Thai forests.

• 96 Shrek

Andrew Adamson, 2001, £9.78: Charming, witty computer-generated animation fairy tale about a princess and an ogre. Hugely promising, but its sequels have fallen far short.

• 95 Michael Clayton

Tony Gilroy, 2007, £8.80: In this intelligent, literate thriller, George Clooney, as a disillusioned fixer at a New York law firm, did his best acting work to date, proving that he’s a movie star for the ages.

• 94 The Brown Bunny

Vincent Gallo, 2003 , £7.82: Heckled at Cannes, the decade’s most reviled film is now destined to become a future lost classic.

• 93 Grizzly Man

Werner Herzog, 2005 , £8.80: Still fierce, still idiosyncratic, the German director’s superb documentary about two slain bear enthusiasts was riveting from first to last.

• 92 The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky, 2008 , £12.72: Comeback of the decade from Mickey Rourke, in a lacerating saga of steroid overkill and trailer-trash redemption.

• 91 Atanarjuat: the Fast Runner

Zacharias Kunuk, 2001, £12.72: This Inuit epic with extraordinary snow chases, based on a tale 2,000 years old, was a unique achievement that lingers.

• 90 Bend It Like Beckham

Gurinder Chadha, 2002, £8.80: A surprise British global hit, blending football with teen-girl comedy and cultural diversity issues. The launch pad for Keira Knightley, one of the decade’s biggest stars.

• 89 Munich

Steven Spielberg, 2005, £8.80: Dark, pensive thriller about Mossad agents bent on killing Palestinian terrorists who massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. A complex, unsentimental one-off.

• 88 The Pianist

Roman Polanski, 2002, £8.80: Polanski won an Oscar for this comeback of unexpected acuity, with Adrien Brody bringing haunted charisma to the lead role.

• 87 The Child

Dardenne brothers, 2005, £9.78: Europe’s finest purveyors of social humanist cinema outdid themselves with this Bresson-like portrait of a feckless young father who sells his infant son.

• 86 Let the Right One In

Tomas Alfredson, 2008, £12.72: Vampire movies have been 10-a-penny this decade. None was remotely as affecting as this snow-capped charmer about alienated Swedish teenagers.

• 85 Erin Brockovich

Steven Soderbergh, 2000, £8.80: Julia Roberts got the role of her life – and a slam-dunk Oscar – in Soderbergh’s legal?crusader drama.

• 84 Sin City

Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, 2005, £10.76: Fanboys salivated over the noir fidelity of this super-stylised comic book transfer, with 300 and Watchmen to come.

• 83 Good Bye Lenin!

Wolfgang Becker, 2003, £8.80: A young man tries to shield his frail mother from the news that Communism is over in this charming exercise in “Ostalgia”.

• 82 Monsoon Wedding

Mira Nair, 2001, £15.65: The changing face of middle-class, urban India was brought to warts-and-all life in this freewheeling, thought-provoking drama.

• 81 Milk

Gus Van Sant, 2008, £10.76: Sean Penn wasn’t an obvious choice to play gay rights activist, Harvey Milk. His funny and seething Oscar-winning performance proved sceptics wrong.

• 80 The Return

Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003, £19.56: This emotionally subtle drama about two brothers dealing with the return of their missing father signalled a new dawn in Russian cinema.

• 79 Spider-Man

Sam Raimi, 2002, £8.80: The first hit for an amiable comic-book franchise set the tone with humour, a warm romance and Tobey Maguire’s likeable hero.

• 78 The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow, 2008, DVD n/a: The one Iraq drama that mattered, shaking us with the street-level view of America’s perilous occupation.

• 77 Children of Men

Alfonso Cuar”n, 2006, £9.78: This apocalyptic vision of a world in which man can no longer procreate gnawed at the imagination.

• 76 Antichrist

Lars von Trier, 2009, dvd n/a: Instant notoriety was the name of the game in von Trier’s lavish, rusty-scissored attack on bourgeois sensibilities.

• 75 The School of Rock

Richard Linklater, 2003, £7.82: The chameleonic Linklater teamed up with Jack Black to create a hugely endearing take on the rags-to-riches rock movie template.

• 74 Los Angeles Plays Itself

Thom Anderson, 2003, DVD n/a: Copyright issues mean it will likely never be commercially released, but this archive-essay

exploring cinematic depictions of LA was an underground smash.

• 73 Master and Commander

Peter Weir, 2003, £9.78: A magisterial seafaring epic from Weir, serenely adapting Patrick O’Brian and putting a brave focus on the quotidian.

• 72 Uzak

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002, £9.78: One of the great revelations of the decade was this Turkish auteur whose portraits of broody masculinity seduced art house audiences.

• 71 A History of Violence

David Cronenberg, 2005, £9.78: Cronenberg switched tack with a bruising study of dormant criminality, anchored by the ever-improving Viggo Mortensen.

• 70 Mulholland Drive

David Lynch, 2001, £9.78: From the wreckage of an abandoned television pilot, Lynch crafted a seductive dreamscape of fractured identity in Tinseltown.

• 69 The Class

Laurent Cantet, 2008, £19.56: A rare great Best Foreign Film, this pedagogical docudrama bristled with teacher-student brinkmanship.

• 68 Waltz with Bashir

Ari Folman, 2008, £19.56: Few animation features were as bold as this graphic and surreal account from Israel about the (true) mass slaughter of Palestinian refugees.

• 67 Little Miss Sunshine

Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris, 2006, £8.80

This light, offbeat, uplifting comedy about a dysfunctional family en route to a gruesome children’s beauty contest pointed the way for American independent cinema.

• 66 United 93

Paul Greengrass, 2006, £8.80: Could the events of 9/11 be filmed? More to the point, should they? This extraordinarily powerful film answered only the first question.

• 65 The Departed

Martin Scorsese, 2006, £9.78: An all-star cast – DiCaprio, Damon, Nicholson, Wahlberg – pulled together to make this twisty, underworld drama a total knockout.

• 64 Spirited Away

Hayao Miyazaki, 2001, £12.72: The film that finally made Japan’s master of animation familiar in the West. A moving story, exquisitely drawn.

• 63 The Piano Teacher

Michael Haneke, 2001, £9.78: Isabelle Huppert delivered the decade’s boldest performance in this portrait of the self-mutilating repression of the Austrian bourgeoisie.

• 62 The Devil Wears Prada

David Frankel, 2006, £8.80: Spearheading Meryl Streep’s reascent to mega-stardom, this bitchy fashion face-off was a female-targeted blockbuster like no other.

• 61 In This World

Michael Winterbottom, 2002, £12.72: This magnificent drama about two Pakistani asylum seekers confirmed migration as one of the key themes of cinema this decade.

• 60 Kill Bill

Quentin Tarantino, 2003, £10.76: Tarantino split the film in two and his critics down the middle, serving up a delirious martial arts revenge saga.

• 59 Wall-E

Andrew Stanton, 2008, £22.50: Pixar trawled the debris of a disused Earth in this brave, breath-taking robot romance.

• 58 Donnie Darko

Richard kelly, 2001, £7.82: This darkly beautiful suburban fable was the cult sensation of the decade.

• 57 Sideways

Alexander Payne, 2004, £8.80: No Merlot! Everyone’s favourite wine-trip comedy, this was a rare buddy movie with serious wit, integrity and great performances.

• 56 Atonement

Joe Wright, 2007, £9.78: This flamboyant, visually ravishing adaptation of Ian McEwan’s Second World War novel put its British director on the map and confirmed Keira Knightley’s star quality.

• 55 Bowling for Columbine

Michael Moore, 2002, £9.78: Passionate, wildly funny condemnation of America’s gun culture. It inspired a wave of politically-minded young people to become documentary film-makers.

• 54 Talk to Her

Pedro Almod”var, 2002, £9.78: Beguiling top pick from the Almodóvar offerings, as the Spanish director went from strength to strength in his ongoing “mature” phase.

• 53 No Country for Old Men

Joel & Ethan Coen, 2007, £9.78: Fine adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s dark vision of evil in Texas, blending savage humour and genuine dread with stunning photography.

• 52 Hunger

Steve McQueen, 2008, £12.72: Recent history – and Bobby Sands’s starvation campaign – was brought to intense, visceral life by the Turner prize-winner’s feature debut.

• 51 Lagaan

Ashutosh Gowariker, 2001, dvd n/a: A stirring fusion of masala music and anti-colonial cricketing epic that opened many eyes to Bollywood.

• 50 Russian Ark

Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002, £9.78: Technically spellbinding, the film comprised one tracking shot through Russia’s State Hemitage Museum. The result is an extraordinary meditation on history and identity.

• 49 Far from Heaven

Todd Haynes, 2002, £9.78: Todd Haynes’s homage to Douglas Sirk’s melodramas, starring Julianne Moore, was both succulent and devastating.

• 48 Gladiator

Ridley Scott, 2000, £12.72: Russell Crowe’s grave, imprisoned Roman general wreaks vengeance. Implausibly, it revived the sword-and-sandals epic.

• 47 Gosford Park

Robert Altman, 2001, £9.78: Altman returned to peak form in his glittering country-house murder mystery.

• 46 Y Tu Mamá También

Alfonso CUar”n, 2001, £7.82: Sand and hormones eddied in Cuarón’s three-way road trip, which made a superstar of Gael García Bernal.

• 45 District 9

Neill Blomkamp, 2009, DVD n/a: Sci-fi was reinvented for the developing nations with this thrillingly inventive apartheid allegory set in South Africa.

• 44 Hidden

Michael Haneke, 2005, £9.78: Big themes – historical amnesia, surveillance society, postcolonial terror – were brought to terrifyingly thrilling life care of Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche.

• 43 The Dark Knight

Christopher Nolan, 2008, £10.76: The jet-black, immersive Batman movie everyone was hoping Nolan would deliver, was a blistering swansong for its late Joker, Heath Ledger.

• 42 Ratatouille

Brad Bird, 2007, £14.67: Who could have imagined that rats preparing food in a Parisian kitchen could have been so adorable? Pixar strikes again.

• 41 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

Chris Columbus, 2001, £10.76: Not the best, but the first: JK Rowling’s boy-wizard adventure introduced with terrific exemplary production design and fruity cameos by British acting veterans.

• 40 Moulin Rouge!

Baz Luhrmann, 2001, £9.78: Wildly ambitious attempt to reinvigorate movie musicals. Nicole Kidman’s singing dis-appoints, the plot falters, but its visual flair set the bar high.

• 39 Casino Royale

Martin Campbell, 2006, £9.78: Daniel Craig sizzled opposite Eva Green and proved the sceptics wrong in this muscular and intense reworking of the first Bond novel.

• 38 Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro, 2006, £8.80: The Spanish Civil War re-imagined as a child’s supernatural dream. Del Toro became the third Mexican director of the decade to receive global plaudits.

• 37 Billy Elliot

Stephen Daldry, 2000, £8.80: A Durham miner’s young son dreams of dancing ballet. This hit feel-good tear-jerker launched Jamie Bell and his debutant director.

• 36 An Inconvenient Truth

Davis Guggenheim, 2006, £9.78: Essentially a well-delivered PowerPoint lecture, Al Gore’s wake-up call to Americans about impending eco-catastrophe helped win him a Nobel prize.

• 35 Knocked Up

Judd Apatow, 2007, £22.50: Foul-mouthed frat-boy humour retooled for the sensitive Noughties is Apatow’s forte; this made Seth Rogen an unlikely star.

• 34 Moolaadé

Ousmane Sembene, 2004, £10.76: The Senegalese director, a giant of African cinema, capped a glorious career with this stirring drama about a woman who revolts against ritualised brutality.

• 33 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ang Lee, 2000, £9.78

Lee married his trademark fascination for the complexities of family life with classic Chinese swordplay to visually bewitching,emotionally penetrating effect.

• 32 Oldboy

Park Chan-wook, 2003, £12.72

Korean cinema exploded after Park Chan-Wook’s visceral vendetta flick, like Titus Andronicus with octopus-chomping.

• 31 Pirates of the Caribbean

Gore Verbinski, 2003, £9.78: Relentless high-seas action-adventure that made Johnny Depp big box-office. So successful that its sequels essentially repeated its incoherent plot.

• 30 Downfall

Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004, £9.78: Bruno Ganz gives the best ever portrayal of Hitler on film in this intense account of the desperate madness of the Führer’s final days.

• 29 In the Mood for Love

Wong Kar Wai, 2000, £12.72: Exquisitely gorgeous romance set in Sixties Hong Kong confirmed Tony Leung’s film-idol status and made its director internationally famous.

• 28 The Queen

Stephen Frears, 2006, £8.80: Helen Mirren’s astonishing portrayal of Elizabeth II in the week after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales helped make screenwriter Peter Morgan a name to reckon with.

• 27 Star Trek

JJ Abrams, 2009, £19.56: Who would have guessed that this wheezy old franchise could be freshened up by a cast of unknowns?

• 26 Être et Avoir

Nicolas Philibert, 2002, £9.78: A documentary about a devoted schoolteacher in rural France was heart-warming in both its subject matter and its word-of-mouth success.

• 25 Up

Pete docter, 2009, DVD n/a: This wondrous animated Pixar fable about an old man who ties balloons to his house and drifts off to South America had more emotional truth and depth than almost any film this year.

• 24 The Gleaners and I

AgnÈs Varda, 2000, dvd n/a: Funny, melancholic and deeply political, Varda’s digital cine-essay about social outsiders scouring the French countryside for food has been quietly influencing young filmmakers all decade.

• 23 Shaun of the Dead

Edgar Wright, 2004, £9.78: There were lots of zombie films this decade, but only this super-smart, suburban updating of a once-tired genre featured gags about Eighties electro.

• 22 City of God

Fernando Meirelles, 2002, £10.76: Flashy Guy Ritchie visuals meshed with Ken Loach-style politics in this kinetic and stylised dispatch from the favelas of Rio.

• 21 The Bourne Supremacy

Paul Greengrass, 2004, £19.56: Greengrass took the wheel and the influential amnesiac-assassin franchise leapt into hyperdrive in this barnstorming sequel.

• 20 Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola, 2003, £9.78: Dreamy not-quite romance, about a young American girl wandering through Tokyo with a faded actor, made Scarlett Johansson a star.

• 19 Capote

Bennett Miller, 2005, £8.80: Genuine biopic gold, thanks to its sober elegance and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s masterclass in falsetto self-love.

• 18 Mamma Mia!

Phyllida Lloyd, 2008, £15.65: This cheerful version of Abba’s greatest hits became the highest-grossing British movie of all time. Indifferently sung, clumsily directed – but for millions of people, it was a grand night out.

• 17 4 Months, 3 weeks, and 2 days

Cristian Mungiu, 2007, £9.78: Romanian cinema was a powerhouse in the second half of the decade; this gripping drama about abortion and female friendship was a standout.

• 16 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Michel Gondry, 2004, £9.78: The dream team of writer Charlie Kaufman and director Michel Gondry broke our hearts with this ineffable, wildly clever valentine to sundered romance.

• 15 Before Sunset

Richard Linklater, 2004, £9.78: Before Sunrise’s Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reunited for a dream-parade through Parisian boulevards in the decade’s most gorgeous and affectingly romantic film.

• 14 Saw

James Wan, 2004, £9.78: The decade of Abu Ghraib found its cinematic equivalent in the torture porn aesthetics of this and the Hostel series.

• 13 West of the Tracks

Wang Bing, 2003, DVD n/a: Nine hours long with not a minute wasted, this portrait of a dying industrial district in China is a towering, epoch-defining masterpiece.

• 12 Amelie

Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001, £9.78: France’s biggest-ever global hit – an idealised view of Paris, and a star vehicle for Audrey Tautou as a young do-gooder. Its droll tone and tricksy style almost mask its heroine’s solitude and tristesse.

• 11 The Lives of Others

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006, £9.78: Emotional, intellectual and immeasurably compelling drama about a Cold War surveillance operator who warms to the radical theatre director on whom he’s spying.

• 10 Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle, 2008, £12.72: Frenetic, savage but sentimental account of a young Mumbai man’s surprising success in a TV quiz show. A worldwide hit, its generosity of spirit and insistence on telling its story through Indian, not Western eyes, seemed to chime with new, tolerant attitudes to otherness, coinciding with the ascent of Barack Obama.

• 9 The Passion of the Christ

Mel Gibson, 2004, £9.78: Mel Gibson’s reputation has been tarred by anti-Jewish outbursts. Nothing, though, should take away from this phenomenal work of outsider art, a neo-avant-garde exercise in bodyshock violence that features an unknown cast and dialogue in Latin and Aramaic.Self-financed, and distributed to demographics normally beyond Hollywood’s reach, this reinvented the Bible for a torture-porn generation.

• 8 Amores Perros

Alejandro GonzÁlez I—Árritu, 2000, £9.78: Visceral, thrilling, operatic story set in Mexico City, with three colliding plots – all of which feature dogs. It made influential screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga a name to conjure with, and kick-started a series of audacious films by Mexican directors that dominated non-Anglophone films throughout the decade.

• 7 Borat

Larry Charles, 2006, £9.78: Is nice! Perturbing the world in a green Lycra thong, and parlaying this into unbeatable word-of-mouth, Sacha Baron Cohen’s mock-doc sensation overcame minimal pre-existing brand recognition to gross more than $250 million worldwide, and might just have defined US-Kazakhstan relations for all time.

• 6 Memento

Christopher Nolan, 2000, £17.60: Christopher Nolan could write the rulebook for how to emerge, in no time, as a world-class director. The model indie breakthrough, a fractured thriller, had all the ingredients to wow. Its time-splicing script, in particular, has proven more influential than any other for a new generation of screenwriters.

• 5 Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Peter Jackson, 2001, £9.78: If there was one franchise to rule them all, it was surely this. A hugely risky commitment for its studio, the outlay paid off more than anyone could have dreamed. It’s the enduring quality of the first instalment, leading us by the hand into Tolkien’s richly imagined world, that made our collective Hobbit-love possible.

• 4 There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas anderson, 2007, £10.76: It kick-started a catchphrase: “I drink your milkshake!” It featured the greatest performance of Daniel Day-Lewis’s already illustrious career. Its score – by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood – was hugely distinctive. P?? T Anderson’s epic about the birth of America’s obsession with oil was as ruggedly individual, frontier-pushing and darkly magnificent, as its subject matter.

• 3 The Incredibles

Brad Bird, 2004, £12.72:The revolution in digital cartoons had the same clear leader this decade that it did in the Nineties. No one, not even a smelly green ogre, could touch Pixar, who hit the peak of their miraculous creative streak with this dazzling caper about a superficially ordinary American family… with secret superpowers.

• 2 Brokeback Mountain

Ang Lee, 2005, £9.78: Director Ang Lee insists on calling this simply “a love story” but it broke new ground as a gay cowboy movie. Achingly moving, with career-high performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as the strong, silent, repressed lead characters. A stunning achievement, brilliantly executed, with an acute sense of time and location.

• 1 Fahrenheit 9/11

Michael Moore, 2004, £8.80: It may not have been the best film of the decade. It may not have been the best film Moore has made (that honour still belongs to 1989’s Roger and Me). Nevertheless, it’s hard to overstate the importance of this film, a modestly funded political documentary that was shunned by its Disney backers but went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, coin more than $220 million around the world, and boost the emergence of politically liberal, agenda-driven multiplex fare such as Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth.

A speculation: might the accessible and populist fashion in which it marshalled its denunciation of George Bush’s 2000 “electoral theft”, to say nothing of the scorn it poured on American neo-conservative support for the “War on Terror”, have helped create or at least re-identify a large chunk of the non-traditional constituencies who were later tapped successfully by the Obama campaign team?

Criticism that Moore played fast and loose with his facts misses the point. He’s an old-fashioned circus barker. He trades in passion not science. But these days, when Tony Blair gets dubbed a “war criminal” and when the US economy is still ailing after the trillions squandered in the Middle East, the questions he asks look like patriotism rather than treachery.

To buy any of the films listed, go to telegraph.co.uk/cdshop