25 at 25: The Best Films of 2000
In the year 2000, I both graduated high school and began my freshman year at New York University. One of the most thrilling aspects of moving to Manhattan was the fact that I would now have access to most every movie released to theaters right away. In the past, I had to sometimes wait months for indie flicks to get to Hartford’s one art house theater where it would play for a week. By the end of that year I was living around Washington Square Park and within walking distance of some of the best independent screens around.
So imagine how pissed I was when I got to New York and the movie world was like, “Go watch Gone In 60 Seconds, you dickhead.” The turn of the millennium isn’t thought of as a great year for movies, but these are all old enough to rent a car and make a decent case for 2000 being a decent kick off to an oft-embarrassing decade at the movies.
25. Snatch
Big and loud and dumb and fun, with a convoluted plot that annoyed me at the time but now I consider a breezy excuse for Jason Statham, Brad Pitt, and Dennis Farina to flex like Popeye cartoons.
24. Cast Away
I was never super convinced of the drama of this one but it’s impossible to deny the Hanks performance and the old FedEx logos.
23. You Can Count On Me
So weird that Matthew Broderick was still the biggest star in the cast when this opened. Kenneth Lonergan has made objectively better movies since this but there’s a real purity to the drama and the humor here that is hard to deny.
22. Bamboozled
I remember sitting in the theater watching this deeply acidic Spike Lee take on the entirety of black entertainment and thinking, “Is it OK for me, a white guy from Connecticut, to be watching this?” I still don’t really know.
21. But I’m a Cheerleader
Natasha Lyonne has been putting up big numbers for so long. Also did you know this was produced by Leanna Creel, aka Tori from Saved By the Bell?
20. Traffic
I was really rooting for this to win Best Picture at the Oscars but time has been somewhat unkind to it and its facile takes on the drug war. Still, there’s a ton of Soderbergh style in there (I still dig the color filter gimmick) and there are too many great performances to ignore it completely (though I weirdly think the CZJ turn, which got so much praise at the time, is the flick’s weak link).
19. Way Down Town
A Canadian no-budget comedy with a delicious premise: Three office drones bet on who can go the longest without ever going outside. It takes place entirely inside Toronto’s interconnected offices, shopping centers and transit hubs and is funny and weird in a way that is only possible with universal health care.
18. Wonder Boys
Is this Tobey Maguire’s best performance? Of course, everybody seems exceptional when they’ve got a great Bob Dylan song playing underneath.
17. Keeping the Faith
Edward Norton likes to write this off as a lark (he dismisses it as an extended priest and rabbi joke), but there’s some real romance and sweetness that seems like it was made on a different planet. There’s an alternate reality wherein Norton made like seven more of these charming-as-hell First Wave Woody Allen joints.
16. The Gift
This was the prime era of a movie getting buzz simply because it had a topless scene in it (see also Halle Berry in Swordfish), but that distracts from the fact that this is a well-built supernatural scuzz-noir.
15. The Girl on the Bridge
Though it opens with an attempted suicide, this is one of the most optimistic French films I can recall. Vanessa Paradis became an instant object of affection and is so unbelievably good in this.
14. Girlfight
Mostly about Michelle Rodriguez yelling and hitting stuff; if you’ve enjoyed any of the Fast & Furious franchise you know that makes for deeply satisfying entertainment.
13. Cecil B. Demented
This is a bit of a sentimental pick as it was the first movie I ever saw as a resident of New York City. Still, it’s got some great latter-day John Waters weirdness and a bugnuts cast.
12. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The movie that probably should have won Best Picture (at least of the films that were actually nominated), this remains a gorgeously-rendered martial arts epic that still feels slightly ahead of its time.
11. Love & Basketball
An emotionally thrilling movie that functions quite highly as both a sports flick and a romcom. I thought Sanaa Lathan was going to be the biggest star in the universe but I was hypnotized by her electric chemistry with Omar Epps. Seriously one of the hottest on-screen couples there’s ever been.
10. Dark Days
A fascinating documentary I only initially pursued because it had a score by DJ Shadow. Draws some amazing portraits of groups of unhoused people living underground in New York, but never gawks. One of the more humanistic films I’ve ever seen.
9. High Fidelity
A bit of a cheat code in that it’s about a guy who is obsessed with music who can’t get his personal life in order, but this somehow manages to explore all those arrested development ideas without being strident or toxic. Plus, obviously, it has a killer soundtrack.
8. Shadow of the Vampire
Sure Willem Dafoe is transfixing as Max Schrek, the Nosferatu star who may actually be a vampire, but don’t sleep on Cary Elwes throwing nothing but fastballs as cinematographer Fritz Wagner.
7. American Psycho
This should have been impossible to adapt, but Mary Harron nailed it and all she got for her trouble was nothing at all. The scene where Christian Bale murders Jared Leto has only become more satisfying over time, for some reason.
6. Hamlet
This is the modern day one with Ethan Hawke as the definitive Danish Sad Boy, and was probably the last gasp of the “Let’s set classic texts in contemporary settings” wave. It’s weird and moody and Hawke legit has one of the best deliveries of the “To be or not to be” bit I can recall.
5. The Contender
A sturdy-as-hell political potboiler that tapped directly into post-Clinton questions of public morality and now feels like a quaint window into what the world was like when elected officials were capable of shame. Aided by an absolutely unhinged Sam Elliott performance.
4. Best In Show
Comedy ages like milk but this still has freshness locked in thanks to an exquisite balance of smiles and snarls and a cast that is as locked in as any ensemble in history.
3. The Virgin Suicides
Another adaptation that shouldn’t work at all, and yet it manages to capture the dreamlike quality reality gently slipping away as obsession grows.
2. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Forest Whitaker gives one of the greatest on-screen performances in history.
1. Chuck & Buck
An exquisitely-written no-fi masterpiece about arrested development and toxic nostalgia and how trauma informs both of those things without ever being heavy-handed. Of all the movies shot during the first wave of digital filmmaking, this one looks the least shitty.