Movie Forums Top 100 of the Aughts (the 00s) - Recommendation Thread

→ in
Tools    





Just to bump this thread a little, and considering today is my MoFo "anniversary", here are all the reviews I've written here so far for films from the 2000s, sorted by rating...

Maybe some of you can find something that interests you.
I did find something interesting, like copying your post idea! So give me a few minutes and I'll do that In the spirit of promoting the countdown!

Antwone Fisher was the best of those that I've seen.



OK, I tried! But I don't log my movie watches so I can't easily find my reviews for movies made in the 2000s decade. But I have a few that I think highly of:

Best in Show (2000) my review
In the Mood For Love (2000) my review
The Yards (2000) my review



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
OK, I tried! But I don't log my movie watches so I can't easily find my reviews for movies made in the 2000s decade.

If you search your thread by the years (2000 through 2009), it will only be ten searches, and you should be able to easily find all of your reviews. Just look for the posts that were posted by you, and that have the movie's title and release year, and an image link at the top of the post. Those should be your reviews.
__________________
.
If I answer a game thread correctly, just skip my turn and continue with the game.
OPEN FLOOR.



More rewatches from the period (that may or may not trigger an "Ooh, forgot about that one" for someone): Frontière(s); Suay Laak Sai; Sam gang 2; Shuttle; Dare mo shiranai; The Descent; Haute Tension; La Horde; Indigènes; Otis; Yeogo goedam 5: Dong-ban-ja-sal; Land Of The Dead; Shi yue wei cheng; Mystic River; Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World; The Mist



More rewatches from the period (that may or may not trigger an "Ooh, forgot about that one" for someone): Frontière(s); Suay Laak Sai; Sam gang 2; Shuttle; Dare mo shiranai; The Descent; Haute Tension; La Horde; Indigènes; Otis; Yeogo goedam 5: Dong-ban-ja-sal; Land Of The Dead; Shi yue wei cheng; Mystic River; Master And Commender: The Far Side Of The World; The Mist
A bunch I haven't heard of, but a bunch of good choices as well. Thanks!
__________________
Check out my podcast: The Movie Loot!



Among my favorites of that decade, the least likely to have been super obviously already seen by everyone here are (I think) :

The Mystery of the Yellow Room (2003) and The Perfume of the Lady in Black (2005)

Gaston Leroux and his detective Rouletabille are a big deal in France, a bit like Conan Doyle's Holmes, Agatha Christie's Poirot, or Maurice Leblanc's Arsène Lupin. They are old sleuth stories (seminal "closed room" ones, in fact), ridiculously complicated and melodramatic. And very old fashioned, in fact very outdated. But the Podalydès brothers (the director, and the actor) pulled a very clever trick. They kept the outdated melodramatic tone, and filmed it in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, which makes it both self-derogatory and respectful. The dialogues keep their very stilted literary style, but the delivery makes it look charming and naive. For instance, a dramatic fight would be filmed in a slapstic manner, but the narration and the music would stay terribly serious. It creates a very strange tone, a delicious distance that is a tad reminiscent of Polanski's Bal des Vampires in a way, but in a different, lighter genre. What I'm saying is that these movies' styles are quite unique. Or maybe Wes Anderson gets a bit close to that. Anyway, they are really worth checking out. Also it's got an incredible casting.



All About My Dog (2005)

It's an incredible little sketch movies, unrelated mini-stories about dogs and out relations to them. Some are extremely funny. Some are extremely not. If you don't watch the whole movie, maybe at least check out the "say, marimo" sequence. It's just one of these unrelated chaters, it's on youtube, and it will mess you up :



Poetical Refugee (2000)

It's just a nice little epic about being an asylum seeker in Paris. Wonderfully acted, touching, cynical, and upsetting. Elodie Bouchez, Sami Bouajila, Aure Atika and Bruno Lochet are incredible in it.



Fish Story (2009)

This movie is so insane. I don't want to spoil it (even the trailer spoils hilarious surprises). In particular, I don't want to spoil how clever it is, how much it makes sense. The premise sound completely random. An asteroid is about to impact Earth, cities are deserted, the planet is more or less doomed. A few very different people find themselves chatting in a music shop, discussing a fabled album's track, a rock song that is said to be able to save the world, and which features ten seconds of silence for unknown reasons. Everyone has their theory on that. The film is a series of episodes about the fabrication of the reception of that song, which are such a delight by themselves that you soon cease wondering where the film is going with that. It goes places. One of my favorite movies ever.



The Eclipse (2009)

I consider it the best film ever about ghosts, about what a ghost means, psychically. But that's not the main subject. The main subject is how to overcome mourning and live again. It's about a literature festival on an island, an encounter between a writer and one of the organizers, and, well, not much else. But it's so immensely delicate and touching that it also immediately became one of my top movies ever. And Ciaran Hinds is fantastic.



Mad Detective (2007)

This detective is either crazy, or capable of visualizing people's different personalities as separate persons. It's a cop movie, an action thriller. It's also a fantastic reflection on identity and people's different facets. It's a classic, and it's a must see. Must as in : must.



The Ax (2005)

Costa Gavras. Nuff said ? If not, it's the story of an unemployed chemist seeking a job in our ridiculously competitive society, and his decision to eliminate his competition physically, by luring them with a fake add. The atmosphere of modern economic despair in that movie is fantastically rendered, one very efficient detail being the omnipresence of big advertisement posters with no brands, only the flashy figures of beauty and success that are meant to promote them. It adds the city an eerie symbolic violence and pressure, with just that silent background. Costa Gavras is a big one.



The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

A very beautiful french animated film (that's rare), about a mother investigating the disappearance of her professional cyclist son. It's an almost entirely mute movie, with a style of its own, a thick melancholy and a very humane form of humor, reminiscent of Jacques Tati (Sylvain Chomet, the author, would later adapt an unfilmed Tati script as his next animation, The Illusionist).



Saint-Jacques La Mecque (2005)

Is another french movie, by Coline Serreau (the lady who filmed Three Men and a Cradle), about a band of people who do the Saint Jacques de Compostelle pilgrimage together for very diverse reasons. So, it's a film about differences, about knowing each others, and it's full of little nothings. But it's classy and touching, it just works, like few films of this french trend do. Except when they're scripted by Jaoui and Bacri, but that's precisely the next suggestions...



Look at me (2004) and The taste of others (2000)

Two movies by Agnès Jaoui, with Jean-Pierre Bacri. They're their own brand (also check Un air de famille (1996),Cuisine et dépendance (1993) or the lighter Same Old Song (1997), they're perfect movies). Terribly dark, cynical and accurate humor, ruthless and tender satires of society and everyday pettiness. Cruel deconstructions of our dreams, interactions, relationships and tunnel visions. They never leave us intact, and they just obliterate all our excuses for being us.



Kitchen Stories (2003)

A kitchen designer working for a big company installs a tall chair in a poor household's kitchen to study their movements and ameliorate the ergonomics of his company's products. And of course, the most important rule is to not interact with the inhabitants in order to not distort the experiment. Indirectly, maybe accidentally, it's a lovely satire of old school colonial ethnography. Anyway it's a very funny film about haughty dehumanization and rehumanization. And it's a film that doesn't resemble any other, which is always precious by itself.



Actors (2000)

Okay, this movie won't really speak to the non-french public, unless they're really ravenous cinephiles. It's a surreal love letter to the history of french cinema and french actors. All actors play their own roles, in strange dreamlike situations meant to caricature or distort and subvert their images. It's hilarious when know know them and their careers, and it features some very serious comments about their lives and acting decisions. I adore that film, but, again, it may be terribly boring or confusing without some background knowledge on the phenomenal list of classic actors who agreed to participate in it.



Plato's Academy (2009)

A great little Greek film about immigration and national identity. A racist and struggling shopkeeper is infuriated to see some Chinese family open shop on his street, but then, some doubts are suddenly cast on his own possibly Albanian origins, which dangerously threatens his ethnicist arguments, his relationship to his like-minded pals, and his whole thought categories.



Pulse (2000)

I expected a horror movie, some japanese ghost story. It's got bits of that, and efficient bits at that. But it felt more like a movie about depression, about social alienation in the age of internet. It's more bleak than frightening, and that confused me at first. But with time, its imagery stayed with me, as well as their evocative power : this movie captures something real that would have been hard to describe in a rational tale. And to me, that's the real point of horror fantasy.




Apart from these, I think my favorite movies from the decade are too familiar to the people here to require any introduction. Stuff like Goodbye Lenin, The Station Agent, Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers, [REC], OSS 117, Agora, Burn After Reading, Atonement, Darkness, The Others, Mulholland Drive, The Devil's Backbone, Cowboy Bebop, Master and Commander, The Wind That Shakes The Barley, The Machinist, Mystic River, The Bourne Identity, Spirited Away, City of God, Enemy at the Gates, Hot Fuzz, Pan's Labyrinth, The Lives of Others, The Last King of Scotland, Munich, Kung Fu Hustle, Million Dollar Baby, Shaun of the Dead, Moon, Waltz with Bashir, In Bruges, The Mist... and I expect Memories of Murder and The Pianist to join the list pretty soon.

Edit : And now for the unavoidable woah-didn't-know-they-were-from-that-decade. Already adding Atanajuat, The secret in their eyes and Lost and Delirious.
You definitely marked some great films, like lost in translation



Probably my favorite Cronenberg, although I really haven't seen much of his early stuff.



Some 2000s stuff that will be leaving the main streaming services in October 31, 2021 (unless noted)



Netflix
  • Legally Blonde (2001)
  • Catch Me If You Can (2002)
  • The Da Vinci Code (2006)
  • Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny (2006)
  • Beowulf (2007)
  • Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008) October 30
  • Yes Man (2008)
  • Angels & Demons (2009)



HBO Max
  • Final Destination (2000)
  • High Fidelity (2000)
  • The Family Man (2000)
  • Bandits (2001)
  • Cats & Dogs (2001)
  • Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001)
  • Save the Last Dance (2001)
  • Thirteen Ghosts (2001)
  • The Tuxedo (2002)
  • Dreamcatcher (2003)
  • Final Destination 2 (2003)
  • Gothika (2003)
  • Bad Education (2004)
  • Eulogy (2004)
  • Troy (2004)
  • House of Wax (2005)
  • xXx: State of the Union (2005)
  • Final Destination 3 (2006)
  • Firewall (2006)
  • Save the Last Dance 2 (2006)
  • Volver (2006)
  • Gone Baby Gone (2007)
  • Lars and the Real Girl (2007)
  • Norbit (2007)
  • The Bucket List (2007)
  • The Kingdom (2007)
  • The Last Mimzy (2007)
  • Snow Buddies (2008)
  • Black Dynamite (2009)
  • Broken Embraces (2009)
  • Santa Buddies (2009)
  • Space Buddies (2009)
  • The Final Destination (2009)
  • The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009)




Hulu
  • The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave (2000)
  • Hanging Up (2000)
  • Road Trip (2000)
  • Rules of Engagement (2000)
  • Snatch (2000)
  • Ali (2001)
  • The Hot Chick (2002)
  • We Were Soldiers (2002)
  • Under the Tuscan Sun (2003)
  • Code 46 (2004)
  • Exorcist: The Beginning (2004)
  • Madhouse (2004)
  • The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
  • Species III (2004)
  • Are We There Yet? (2005)
  • An American Haunting (2006) October 23
  • Sweet Land (2006)
  • The Perfect Holiday (2007)
  • Species: The Awakening (2007)
  • Slumdog Millionaire (2008) October 30
  • 21 (2008)
  • Revolutionary Road (2008)
  • The Taking of Pelham 123 (2009)
  • Watchmen (2009)

For what it's worth, I got the information from various sites like Hollywood Reporter, and The Wrap. I haven't seen half of these, and there are a bunch others that I certainly wouldn't recommend, but



Random recommendations for each year of the decade that might or might not make it on my list...

2000: The Contender



Follows a female politician that's appointed as Vice-President, which sparks some backlash from conservative and slimy politicians that try to drag her down. Haven't seen it in a while, but I do remember this political drama to be quite good, if anything for the performances. Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges, and Gary Oldman are all great.



Random recommendations for each year of the decade that might or might not make it on my list...

2001: Ghost World



Coming of age comedy/drama about two teenage outcasts (Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) that befriend a shy older man (Steve Buscemi). I remember this being quite the talk around the indie circle back then, but it has sorta vanished from the conversation. Still, I found it quite good, charming, and well acted.



Probably my favorite Cronenberg, although I really haven't seen much of his early stuff.
Really?! Interesting!

I thought that A History of Violence was solid stuff (and a decent adaptation of the graphic novel), but I'd put several of his other films above it. Dead Ringers, The Fly, and even Eastern Promises (also with Mortensen) and Crash/



Really?! Interesting!

I thought that A History of Violence was solid stuff (and a decent adaptation of the graphic novel), but I'd put several of his other films above it. Dead Ringers, The Fly, and even Eastern Promises (also with Mortensen) and Crash/
I haven't seen Crash, but I like the others you mentioned quite a bit. I still need to dive into his 70s/early 80s stuff.



Really?! Interesting!

I thought that A History of Violence was solid stuff (and a decent adaptation of the graphic novel), but I'd put several of his other films above it. Dead Ringers, The Fly, and even Eastern Promises (also with Mortensen) and Crash.
I wasn't really a fan of History Of Violence, to be honest with you; I wouldn't say it was a bad movie by any means, and it didn't really have any big, movie-crippling flaws, but it still suffered from "death by a thousand cuts", with too many little things that didn't work, whether it be Howard Shore's inappropriately light score serving as a poor fit for the dark subject matter (Silence Of The Lambs had the same issue, but the rest of the movie more than made up for that), or a middle act that mostly just "spun its wheels", or an overall lack of depth to the experience, with the characterization and portrayal of Tom's supposed torment when it came to his dual nature ending up as psychologically unconvincing to me. And, while it's been a long time since I've seen it, I remember thinking that Eastern Promises was a significantly better Cronenberg/Mortensen thriller... but hey, History still provided the name of a superb retrospective series on the history of Action movies on The AV Club, so at least there's that.



Campaigning; I've got a feeling my fav Harry Potter; The Prisoner of Azkaban 2004 by Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Children of Men, Roma, Gravity) needs some help.




Latest batch of rewatches from the period (that may or may not trigger an "Ooh, forgot about that one" for someone): The Hurt Locker; Frailty; Kairo; Pulse; Ji jie hao; Eden Lake; Evil Angel; The Wind That Shakes The Barley; Storm Warning; Mesrine: Killer Instinct; Mesrine: Public Enemy No.1; Ju-On



I wasn't really a fan of History Of Violence, to be honest with you; I wouldn't say it was a bad movie by any means, and it didn't really have any big, movie-crippling flaws, but it still suffered from "death by a thousand cuts", with too many little things that didn't work, whether it be Howard Shore's inappropriately light score serving as a poor fit for the dark subject matter (Silence Of The Lambs had the same issue, but the rest of the movie more than made up for that), or a middle act that mostly just "spun its wheels", or an overall lack of depth to the experience, with the characterization and portrayal of Tom's supposed torment when it came to his dual nature ending up as psychologically unconvincing to me. And, while it's been a long time since I've seen it, I remember thinking that Eastern Promises was a significantly better Cronenberg/Mortensen thriller... but hey, History still provided the name of a superb retrospective series on the history of Action movies on The AV Club, so at least there's that.
You know, I had a sorta similar reaction to Eastern Promises in terms of thinking it was good and competently made, but for some reason not really resonating with me. Go figure. Haven't seen it in a while, though. A History of Violence, I've seen a couple of times and it actually improved for me.