UPDATE: Apologies this has taken me so long to get out, this will now be released weekly (mid-week) every week moving forward. Since it’s been so long let’s re-cap:

Top 100 Films of 2000s: Part 1 (#100-91)

Top 100 Films of 2000s: Part 2 (#90-81)

Top 100 Films of 2000s: Part 3 (#80-71)

Top 100 Films of 2000s: Part 4 (#70-61)

Top 100 Films of 2000s: Part 5 (#60-51)

MORE CONTEXT: Around the time I started this site, I did a “Top 100 of the 1990s” with the intention of doing a new decade every year. I had meant to do a new decade every year, but as with life, stuff came up. I got overwhelmed by my primary responsibilities on this site: reviewing new film and television releases. Hence, folks have some guidance when consuming new content.

Recently, I conducted a small poll on my personal Instagram (@fartgetis2) to ask what past decade I should do a “Top 100 Films” on. Overwhelmingly, the answer came back: “the 2000s”. Not the best decade for film, in my approximation; in fact, I was low-key hoping the poll results would be the 1970s or 1980s, but some beautiful gems came out of a post-9/11 mindset. Some of my choices are obvious and well-known, and others you may not have heard of. Please remember that art is subjective, and these choices are personal. 

Please don’t threaten my family cause I like Sideways. 

I decided to release this article in ten parts, covering ten films each, to not overwhelm the viewer and make the movies stand out more. This was an arduous ranking process, especially for selections #73-#100, picking 28 films out of nearly 150 possible contenders.

So, let’s continue with #50-#41:

50. The Wrestler

2008 / dir. Darren Aronofsky / 109 minutes

cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood, Mark Margolis, Todd Barry, Judah Friedlander, Ernest Miller

Remains the best film about wrestling I’ve seen (sorry Iron Claw, this better) and a great comeback vehicle for the very weird but very talented Mickey Rourke. It’s also my vote for the best film of controversial writer/director Darren Aronofsky‘s career, albeit it is the least flashy and most conventional of his movies. The Wrestler is simply a very well made, straightforward redemption story with a very flawed but very sympathetic character at its center. It manages to be heartwarming without ever being saccharine and has a wonderfully ambiguous ending perfectly scored by Bruce Springsteen‘s The Wrestler. (Streaming on Hulu)

49. Mother

2009 / dir. Bong Joon-ho / 129 minutes

cast: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yoon Je-moon, Jeon Mi-seon, Song Sae-byeok, Lee Jung-eun

I feel like Western audiences always forget how funny Bong Joon-ho can be. Even in the darkest moments of his narratives, the dude still cracks jokes. Mostly jokes are derived from astute observations about how society perceives what they deem “outsiders.” Such is the case in Mother, a gloriously strange and undeniably touching drama about a working-class mother who will do anything for her emotionally disturbed son. When the body of a murdered preteen girl is found, everyone suspects the weird boy but his mother will stop at nothing to prove his innocence. Kim Hye-ja gives one of the best performances of the decade as the titular mother, who is never named. This is a peculiar but surprisingly smooth blend of genres that work together seamlessly to create something unique in the film landscape. (Available for $4 rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and AppleTV+.)

48. Bad Education

2004 / dir. Pedro Almodóvar / 106 minutes

cast: Gael García Bernal, Fele Martínez, Daniel Giménez Cacho, Lluís Homar, Francisco Boira, Javier Cámara, Petra Martínez, Leonor Watling

Hitchcock would have loved this movie, Pedro Almodovar‘s shocking and multi-layered movie-within-a-movie murder mystery/queer love story about overcoming your trauma and reckoning with the past. Fele Martínez is a screenwriter who gets a visit from a childhood lover/best friend played wonderfully by Gael García Bernal. His friend has a screenplay about their troubled childhood growing up in a Catholic orphanage that he wants to make into a movie. Throughout their visits, they both reflect on their love for each other and the cruelty they endured under the hands of “men of God” who so effortlessly abuse their power. Bad Education is interesting because on one hand it’s about storytelling and how we can manipulate the details of our personal experience to speak to bigger truths, but it’s also a poignant reunion story about how the past is never through fucking with us, how it continues to mangle our self-worth sometimes without us even realizing it. (Streaming on Max)

47. Ocean’s Eleven

2001 / dir. Steven Sodebergh / 116 minutes

cast: George Clooney, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Elliot Gould, Carl Reiner, Bernie Mac, Don Cheadle, Scott Caan, Casey Affleck, Qin Shaobo, Eddie Jemison, Topher Grace, Joshua Jackson, Holly Marie Combs, Shane West, Barry Watson

My vote for the most accomplished and enjoyable film of DIY auteur Steven Sodebergh‘s career, and also the single most enjoyable to watch. I don’t understand how most critics were so seemingly lukewarm about this back in 2001 because it’s a non-stop entertainment party perfectly paced across two hours. Hollywood’s biggest actors play a rag-tag crew of con men who assemble to rip off a major Las Vegas casino and piss off Andy Garcia. What’s more to say? It’s Ocean’s Eleven! (Available for $4 rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and AppleTV+)

46. Pan’s Labyrinth

2006 / dir. Guillermo Del Toro / 120 minutes

cast: Ivana Baquero, Doug Jones, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Ariadna Gil, Álex Angulo, Manolo Solo, César Vea, Roger Casamajor, Federico Luppi, Pablo Adán

Although The Shape of Water ultimately won the Best Picture Oscar, Pan’s Labyrinth is what most people associate Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro with. And why not? It’s his best and most resonant film, a fantastical parable conjured up by the imagination of a little girl named Ofelia to escape the more threatening horrors of her real life. Like many Del Toro films, Pan’s Labyrinth takes place not long after the Spanish Civil War. Ofelia’s stepfather is a fascist nut bag (a Falangist?) charged with hunting down and torturing/killing resistance fighters (Maquis). Most filmmakers would have a hard time making just the fantasy world compelling, but here Del Toro succeeds in making both stories fascinating and engaging. Shout out to acting MVP Doug Jones, a character actor specializing in movement who plays two of the mystical creatures Ofelia must face.(Available for $4 rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and AppleTV+)

45. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

2004 / dir. Michel Gondry / 108 minutes

cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, Elijah Wood, Tom Wilkinson, Jane Adams, David Cross

Not my favorite Charlie Kaufman movie, but certainly his most accessible and widely embraced. First off, its protagonists are way more relatable than John Cusack‘s desperate puppeteer or Nicolas Cage‘s Charlie Kaufman, even if they are a bit quirky. Secondly, it’s about wanting to forget a painful breakup which almost anyone can relate to. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet play ex-lovers who undergo an experimental medical treatment to erase their memories of each other. However, in the middle of it, they kinda realize they’re still in love. Hijinks ensue, most notably three wacky medical technicians played by Kirsten Dunst, Mark Ruffalo, and Elijah Wood. It’s very funny and visually very unique, and for as “weird” as it is it’s tame compared to both Kaufman and director Michel Gondry‘s other work.(Available for $4 rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and AppleTV+)

44. Kill Bill

2003-2004 / dir. Quentin Tarantino / 248 minutes

cast: Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Michael Madsen, Vivica A. Fox, Julie Dreyfus, Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu, Michael Parks, Chiaki Kuriyama, Perla Haney- Jardine, Sid Haig, Samuel L. Jackson, Bo Svenson, Jeannie Epper, Helen Kim, Larry Bishop

Pardon me for counting both Kill Bill Volume 1 and Kill Bill Volume 2 as one movie, but let’s be honest, they are one singular piece of work. An impressive and wildly ambitious four-hour revenge action drama that’s half Western, half Hong Kong flick. Even if it doesn’t succeed in everything it’s trying to do, it does so much so well and it’s such a huge swing even for a filmmaker as ballsy as Quentin Tarantino. Uma Thurman gives her best screen performance to date as Beatrix Kiddo, a former assassin who tried to leave the biz after getting knocked up by her former boss, Bill (a delightfully sadistic David Carradine). Bill and Beatrix’s former colleagues (Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Michael Madsen, and Daryl Hannah) track her down months later and systemically slaughter her and all of her friends on her wedding day. However, Beatrix somehow survives the attack and when she wakes up from her coma, she goes on an elaborate revenge mission to cap all these motherfuckers saving Bill for last. This is a truly fantastical piece of work that takes place in a reality not our own, and it manages to make an extremely grisly story fun. After all, revenge is one of America’s favorite pastimes. (Available for $4 rental on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, YouTube, and AppleTV+)

43. Monsters, Inc.

2001 / dir. Pete Docter / 92 minutes

voice cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Mary Gibbs, Steve Buscemi, James Coburn, Jennifer Tilly, Bob Peterson, John Ratzenberger, Frank Oz, Bonnie Hunt, Jeff Pidgeon, Wallace Shawn

I fondly remember the 2001 Oscar season, the first year the Academy introduced the Best Animated Feature award. There were three films nominated, but the race was really down to two – DreamWorks’ Shrek and Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. Back then I liked Shrek more and didn’t find it to be the nauseating, cloying, overly referential slice of pop garbage I do today. I think Monsters, Inc. deserved to win. It’s a far more clever, touching, and enjoyable piece of animated filmmaking than any Shrek movie. Of course, come Oscar night, nothing was stopping that jolly green fart knocker from walking up the Dolby Theater stage to collect his gold. I think most people today appreciate Monster, Inc. more since every Shrek reference I see is about fleshlights. (Streaming on Disney+)

42. The Dark Knight

2008 / dir. Christopher Nolan / 152 minutes

cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Eric Roberts, Michael Jai White, Anthony Michael Hall, Ritchie Coster, Chin Han, Monique Gabriela Curnen, David Dastmalchian, William Fichtner

Of course, The Dark Knight is an overrated movie, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie. It doesn’t even mean it’s not an excellent movie and more so, it doesn’t mean that it’s not an important one that paved the way for not only superhero movies to be better but American blockbusters in general. Christopher Nolan‘s Batman Begins (also on this list) showed us a unique way to craft an origins story, but The Dark Knight improves and builds upon that work to create arguably the greatest superhero film of all time. Sure, it’s not as fun as Iron Man but it’s more compelling, and ambitious and gives us one of the best screen villains of all time in Heath Ledger’s Joker. Also, Maggie Gyllenhaal is a premium upgrade from Katie Holmes. (Streaming on Max)

41. Minority Report

2002 / dir. Steven Spielberg / 145 minutes

cast: Tom Cruise, Samantha Morton, Colin Farrell, Max von Sydow, Neal McDonough, Patrick Kilpatrick, Lois Smith, Kathryn Morris, Steve Harris, Jessica Harper, Tim Blake Nelson, Daniel London, Peter Stormare

2002 was a banner year for Steven Spielberg, his best since 1993. Not only did he make the gloriously entertaining Catch Me If You Can, but also the best Philip K. Dick adaptation of all time. Yes, it’s even better than Blade Runner, and way more fun and less emo. Minority Report is about the future of crime prevention where the Washington, D.C. police department depends on three autistic kids in an indoor swimming pool to predict who is going to murder who in the city. They’re known as the “pre-cogs” as in precognition. The cops then use this information to bust the perps before they even commit the crime, and then give them life sentences where their brains are frozen in time. Tom Cruise plays the lead cop guy, a staunch believer in the Draconian crime prediction system who is visited one day by DOJ Agent Colin Farrell, a skeptic to say the least. During the visit, the pre-cogs predict Tom Cruise will murder the guy who created that terrible HBO show The Mind of the Married Man, and HE BECOMES A FUGITIVE! The rest of the movie is brilliantly staged action and suspense of Cruise trying to evade being captured while trying to solve the mystery of who set him up…and why. It’s amazing how many levels this movie works on – a compelling drama, a high-octane chase movie, a smart sci-fi thriller, a serious mediation on the meaning of free will – this is Spielberg at his best. (Streaming on Paramount+ and Showtime)