The true cinematic fallout wouldn’t happen for another few years (All the President’s Men is 1976), but the Watergate-based vibes are already on display in the same year that Nixon resigned. Did we, as a culture, ever really recover?

Thirty years ago, most people weren’t online yet, or at least hadn’t made Internet life a part of their regular life. It was still an intriguing novelty, a mostly silent virtual gathering space for X-Files conspiracy theorists and people earnestly searching for nudity. But Hollywood logged on, and even the movies that weren’t explicitly about the Internet had online-adjacent subtext. Pandora’s modem had been activated.

You can rarely judge the quality of a movie year by its Oscar winners, but 2002 is especially misrepresented by the victory laps from well-meaning homework like Chicago and The Hours. You’ll notice neither of those movies show up on the list below, but what does appear runs an incredible gamut of genres and styles and moods. Any movie year can have elite titles at the top of the year-end critics lists, but how many can boast such high-quality junk?