Best Movie of the 2000s Update #2
This set of movies ranges from a Hong Kong noir/romance film to a classic Soderbergh heist blockbuster to the movie that won Three Six Mafia an Oscar to a detective murder thriller to a wide-ranging drama about interconnection, communication, and globalization. What a weird list of stuff we watched in this batch! Anyway, hope you enjoy:
In the Mood for Love (2000)
Tom: This movie RULES. It’s a Hong Kong romance film that’s smoky and broody and the chemistry between the leads is palpable. It stars Tony Leung, recently Mandarin in Shang Chi, and Maggie Cheung, in a will-they-won’t-they drama. Of the movies we’ve seen so far, this one may have made the biggest impact on me. It’s just beautiful and ambivalent and filmed unlike any other movie I’ve seen. Any fan of film has to watch this one.
Erin: This is probably my favorite of the 2000s movies we have watched thus far. It’s really rude that it isn’t this humongous hit in the US, because it feels like a film that’s brand new even to this day. I could see how inspiration from this film seeped deep into the films we loved in the 2010s.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Tom: This is one that I can’t believe slipped by me. It’s such a polished, tight heist thriller that paved the way for so many others of its ilk. It’s the second Clooney-Pitt film we’ve watched to this point, and both actors are just electric alongside true treasures like Bernie Mac and Don Cheadle (with a British accent for some reason). I’m sure just about everyone reading this has seen this movie and its sequels, but the original still hits twenty years later.
Erin: This is a movie that is just plain fun. Looking back, I really think it is the last time that there was a true list of “big movie stars” out there. I’m trying to think of who would even be in this one… Timothee Chalamet, Willem Dafoe, Michael B. Jordan, and Adam Sandler? 🥴
Barbershop (2002)
Tom: Another classic that I just never actually sat down and watched. It’s less of a straight up comedy than I imagined, though there is no shortage of laughs, especially once Eddie (Cedric the Entertainer) gets worked up about the likes of Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson. And Keith David is such a great villain. This movie rules.
Erin: Cedric the Entertainer is so funny in this movie. I was actually surprised that this doesn’t have better reviews; it is both funny and heartfelt, touches on serious issues with a levity that is sometimes lost in film.
Thirteen (2003)
Tom: Nikki Reed…sheesh. This indie teen drama goes there. It’s about a twelve-year-old named Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood, based on Reed herself) who gets involved with sex and drugs after becoming friends with a “popular” girl in school named Evie (played by Reed, who wrote this when she was 14!). It’s a hard watch at times, but it’s pretty cathartic too, kept down to earth by a purely human performance by Holly Hunter and the realism of acting out as a teenager.
Erin: Thirteen FEELS like 2003. It really is a time capsule! And it’s so baller that Nikki Reed co-wrote this at age fourteen. Plus it’s Catherine Hardwicke with no vampires. I think everyone involved with Twilight has so much better work than Twilight.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Tom: As we’ve found with a few of the comedies from the 2000s, there’s the slightest bit of homophobia that would not be acceptable if the movie were made nowadays, but with a raunchy comedy like this, I honestly expected much worse. On the whole, it holds up and the great moments (the sections with Christopher Meloni as Freakshow and Neil Patrick Harris as himself, sorta, come to mind) are still great. It’s important that a blockbuster comedy starring a Korean-American and an Indian-American exists; it’s even better that it effectively functions as a deconstruction of the trope of those types of characters as sideshows in white- and Anglo-centric movies.
Erin: I had never seen this before and it was great!!! My favorite thing about it was that it took place in the great state of New Jersey. The best state, actually! We went from Hoboken to Princeton to Cherry Hill. Love it.
Hustle & Flow (2005)
Tom: This movie is crazy, mayne. DJay (Terrence Howard) says the word “mayne” no fewer than 822 times throughout the 116-minute runtime. For as nuts of a person as Howard is, he went deep into this role as a pimp who tries to get out of the game by becoming a famous rapper in Memphis. “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” is a CLASSIC and it makes me so happy that Three-Six Mafia won the Oscar for it. Icons.
Erin: Okay. I thought because this was a movie from MTV, it would be squeaky clean and slightly cutesy…like PG13-y. It definitely was not. I really enjoyed it though, especially the soundtrack.
Babel (2006)
Tom: I’m a fan of Inarritu’s work, though I understand that he can be pretentious and self-indulgent. I didn’t think Babel was perfect, but I loved the idea of creating a throughline between people of various cultures - Americans, Moroccans, Mexicans, and Japanese - as the world became more and more intertwined through the Internet and high-speed travel. It doesn’t always work for me, particularly in the Brad Pitt-Cate Blanchett scenes, actually, but I’m impressed by Inarritu’s ability to encapsulate the idea of increasingly rapid globalization into a sprawling, emotionally powerful film.
Erin: Inarritu is not my favorite director, with The Revenant and Birdman and Biutiful all falling flat for me. Babel was the same, unfortunately, because it’s all just so SAD and DARK. I will say though, his movies are all super ambitious. He tries new things and challenges the viewer, and that’s something I really appreciate.
Zodiac (2007)
Tom: Iron Man, Hulk, and Mysterio team up to find a serial killer. As a charter member of the Jake Gyllenhaal Stan Club, I missed this one in part because I wasn’t watching good movies when I was 15. It’s prime David Fincher, prime Gyllenhaal, prime Mark Ruffalo, and a prime-comeback-era Robert Downey Jr. Gyllenhaal’s obsession with the Zodiac and his descent into paranoia are just so entertaining to watch even despite the movie’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime. It’s one of those I will turn on any time I see it on TV now.
Erin: Ever since I watched this in high school, I couldn’t get the look of the film out of my head. It looks distinctly 70s but has the crispness of today. David Fincher movies always have this look of being really crisp. Do you know what I mean? I love that.
Rachel Getting Married (2008)
Tom: I had no clue what this movie was before we started watching, and I left an Anne Hathaway defender forever. She is excellent in this movie about a woman named Kym in drug rehab who returns home for the weekend for her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt)’s wedding. Hathaway plays a character who is simultaneously sweet, arrogant, self-destructive, introspective, genuine, and sympathetic. The acting all around is just top notch, and it’s a top-tier family drama for me.
Erin: This is a great family drama from a really skilled director. Anne Hathaway is excellent as Kym (even though I found the spelling of her name super distracting while watching with subtitles on…but that’s totally MY problem) and the movie was very watchable despite delving into some really dark places.
Fish Tank (2009)
Tom: This movie just makes you feel so grimy. It’s like The Florida Project without much of the charm or color. That being said, Katie Jarvis does a great job in her role as a rebellious teenager in East London. Her choices leave much to be desired, including her illicit relationship with her mom’s boyfriend Conor (a truly gross, skeevy Michael Fassbender), but it’s a fascinating watch as it deconstructs the dynamic between a depressed mother and a depressed daughter.
Erin: I was really looking forward to watching this but it kind of scarred me. The performances were really wonderful, but it’s only worth a watch if you can handle a tragic story without much humor or a happy ending.