Favorite Films of the decade 2000-2009

To kick this blog off I will lay out a list of 70 films from the 00's decade that I consider my favorites. The films on this list find their way there for various reasons: some I honestly consider great movies; others I have a lower regard for on technical and artistic merits, but somehow I connected with them.

What they all have in common is the joy and excitement I felt when first watching each one. Also, most of them are films I own or would like to own and would gladly watch again. That said, there are several films on this list I've seen only once and perhaps with several years' distance my opinion may have changed. But at this moment, these are the ones I remember most fondly.

How is this list helpful to anyone else? All lists of the "Best of..." are clearly subjective. Anyway, I'm not even calling this a "Best of..." list but a favorites list. The expression "my favorite" automatically suggests subjectivity the same way "best of..." suggests objectivity. But think of it as similar to Netflix recommendations. If you've already seen half the movies on this list and you enjoyed most or all of them, then you and I probably have similar taste and you'd most likely enjoy any of the others. Perhaps you can use it as a guide for a new film to check out that you might not have otherwise considered.

One note I should add is that I composed this list only a couple months after the decade ended. There are probably films from 2009, 2008 and possibly even 2007 that might well have ended up on this list if I'd waited a year to put it together. Sometimes these things need to gestate for a while.

I present this list alphabetically by film title with the year of United States release and the director's name. If you're interested in reading a paragraph's worth of thoughts on each film, I have previously written about these films on another blog, grouping the films by theme in many separate posts made between January and April. You can read the initial post here; several films from the year 2000 here; the crime films here; one of my favorite genres, the heist films here; broad comedies in two posts here and here; action, fantasy and adventure films here; animation here; the romance here; foreign films here; indie films split into two parts here and here and (within the next week) the prestige films here.

* indicates films I own on DVD

*Almost Famous (2000) – dir. Cameron Crowe
*American Pie 2 (2001) dir. J.B. Rogers
Bad Santa (2003) dir. Terry Zwigoff
*Before Sunset (2004) dir. Richard Linklater
Big Fish (2003) dir. Tim Burton
*The Bourne Identity (2002) dir. Doug Liman
Brick (2006) dir. Rian Johnson
*Caché (2005) – dir. Michael Haneke
*Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) dir. Ang Lee
The Departed (2006) dir. Martin Scorsese
*Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004) dir. Rawson Marshall Thurber
*Donnie Darko (2001) dir. Richard Kelly
Eastern Promises (2007) dir. David Cronenberg
*Elf (2003) dir. Jon Favreau
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) dir. Michel Gondry
The Fall (2008) dir. Tarsem
Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) dir. Wes Anderson
The Fog of War (2003) dir. Errol Morris
*The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) dir. Judd Apatow
Four Brothers (2004) dir. John Singleton
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (2000) dir. Jim Jarmusch
*Gosford Park (2001) dir. Robert Altman
The Hangover (2009) dir. Todd Phillips
*Heist (2001) dir. David Mamet
*High Fidelity (2000) dir. Stephen Frears
*A History of Violence (2005) dir. David Cronenberg
The Incredibles (2004) dir. Brad Bird
*The Italian Job (2003) dir. F. Gary Gray
Italiensk for begyndere [Italian for Beginners] (2002) dir. Lone Scherfig
Juno (2007) dir. Jason Reitman
Kill Bill (2003/2004) dir. Quentin Tarantino
L’Auberge Espagnol (2003) dir. Cedric Klapisch
Little Miss Sunshine (2006) dir. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
*The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson
Lost in Translation (2003) dir. Sofia Coppola
Love, Actually (2003) dir. Richard Curtis
*The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) dir. Joel Coen
Me, Myself & Irene (2000) dir. Peter and Bobby Farrelly
La meglio gioventú [The Best of Youth] (2005) dir. Marco Tullio Giordana
Minority Report (2002) dir. Steven Spielberg
*Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) dir. John Woo
Monsoon Wedding (2002) dir. Mira Nair
*Moulin Rouge! (2001) dir. Baz Luhrmann
*Napoleon Dynamite (2004) dir. Jared Hess
*No Country for Old Men (2007) dir. Joel and Ethan Coen
No Man’s Land (2001) dir. Danis Tanovic
*Ocean’s 11 (2001) dir. Steven Soderbergh
Once (2007) dir. John Carney
Pineapple Express (2008) dir. David Gordon Green
Roger Dodger (2002) dir. Dylan Kidd
*The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) dir. Wes Anderson
The Score (2001) dir. Franz Oz
Serenity (2005) dir. Joss Whedon
*Shadow of the Vampire (2000) dir. E. Elias Merhige
Shrek (2001) dir. Andrew Adamson and Joe Stillman
*Sideways (2004) dir. Alexander Payne
Signs (2002) dir. M. Night Shyamalan
*State and Main (2000) dir. David Mamet
Superbad (2007) dir. Greg Mottola
Thirteen Days (2000) dir. Roger Donaldson
Tillsammans [Together] (2001) dir. Lukas Moodysson
Tropic Thunder (2008) dir. Ben Stiller
*28 Days Later… (2003) dir. Danny Boyle
*25th Hour (2002) dir. Spike Lee
*WALL E (2008) dir. Andrew Stanton
*Wedding Crashers (2005) dir. David Dobkin
Whale Rider (2003) dir. Niki Caro
*Wonder Boys (2000) dir. Curtis Hanson
*Y tu mamá también (2002) dir. Alfonso Cuarón
You Can Count on Me (2000) dir. Kenneth Lonergan