The Best Movies of the 2000s
The 2000s ranked by our composite score across 20+ authoritative lists, awards and polls — not one critic's opinion, but the weight of the whole canon.
The Pianist (2002) leads with a composite score of 7.15.
- 1The Pianist2002 · Roman Polanski7.15
Palme d'Or winner 2002 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2003 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2003 #1
- 2The Hurt Locker2008 · Kathryn Bigelow5.95
Oscar Best Picture winner 2009 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2009 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2010 #5
- 3Brokeback Mountain2005 · Ang Lee5.56
BAFTA Best Film winner 2005 · Venice Golden Lion winner 2005 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2005
- 4Gladiator2000 · Ridley Scott5.32
Oscar Best Picture winner 2000 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2000 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2000 #8
- 5Slumdog Millionaire2008 · Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan5.32
Oscar Best Picture winner 2008 · BAFTA Best Film winner 2009 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2009 #8
- 6No Country for Old Men2007 · Ethan Coen, Joel Coen5.03
Oscar Best Picture winner 2007 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2008 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2008 #4
- 7Million Dollar Baby2004 · Clint Eastwood4.00
Oscar Best Picture winner 2004 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2005 #1
- 8The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King2003 · Peter Jackson3.81
Oscar Best Picture winner 2003 · Letterboxd Top 250 #11 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #5
- 9The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring2001 · Peter Jackson3.72
BAFTA Best Film winner 2002 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2001 · AFI 100 (2007) #50
- 10Spirited Away2001 · Hayao Miyazaki3.71
Berlin Golden Bear winner 2002 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (Japanese) 2001 #3 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #75
- 11Still Life2006 · Jia Zhangke3.63
Venice Golden Lion winner 2006 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2007 #1 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2007 #2
- 12The Son's Room2001 · Nanni Moretti3.60
Palme d'Or winner 2001 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #9 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2002 #9
- 13Mulholland Drive2001 · David Lynch3.53
Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2001 #1 · Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #8 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #22
- 14The Departed2006 · Martin Scorsese3.52
Oscar Best Picture winner 2006 · Cahiers du Cinéma annual top 10 2006 #9 · Letterboxd Top 250 #117
- 15In the Mood for Love2000 · Wong Kar-wai3.47
Sight & Sound 2022 critics' poll #5 · Sight & Sound 2022 directors' poll #9 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2001 #2
- 16The Child2005 · Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne3.43
Palme d'Or winner 2005 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2005 #4
- 17The White Ribbon2009 · Michael Haneke3.43
Palme d'Or winner 2009 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2010 #4
- 18The Wind That Shakes the Barley2006 · Ken Loach3.39
Palme d'Or winner 2006 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2006 #5
- 194 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days2007 · Cristian Mungiu3.35
Palme d'Or winner 2007 · Letterboxd Top 250 #229 · Criterion Collection spine #958
- 20The Queen2006 · Stephen Frears3.33
BAFTA Best Film winner 2007 · Oscar Best Picture nominee 2006 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2007 #4
- 21Chicago2002 · Rob Marshall3.32
Oscar Best Picture winner 2002 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2003 #8
- 22Crash2004 · Paul Haggis3.32
Oscar Best Picture winner 2005 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2006 #8
- 23Dancer in the Dark2000 · Lars von Trier3.30
Palme d'Or winner 2000 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2000 #9
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28The Return2003 · Andrey Zvyagintsev2.50
Venice Golden Lion winner 2003 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2004 #3
- 29Lust, Caution2007 · Ang Lee2.43
Venice Golden Lion winner 2007 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2008 #4
- 30The Wrestler2008 · Darren Aronofsky2.39
Venice Golden Lion winner 2008 · Kinema Junpo Best Ten (International) 2009 #5
The canon goes global
The defining fact of the 2000s, visible in any cross-list measurement, is that the decade's most canonized films are no longer predominantly American. The 2022 Sight & Sound poll's verdict on the decade is startling: its highest-ranked films of the 2000s are Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) — sitting in the poll's top five overall — David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), and a cluster of East Asian films. South Korea arrived as a major film culture in these years: Park Chan-wook's Oldboy took the Grand Prix at Cannes in 2004, Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder (2003) built the reputation that Parasite would cash in, and the "Korean wave" moved from festival curiosity to durable canon presence. Japanese animation completed its own arc when Spirited Away (2001) won the Golden Bear — the first animated film to take a major festival's top prize.
Hollywood's decade was shaped by two franchises and a format war. The Lord of the Rings proved the mega-franchise could also be an awards juggernaut — The Return of the King's eleven-for-eleven Oscar sweep in 2004 remains unmatched — while the Marvel model was being assembled at decade's end. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) did something subtler: it made the comic-book film a vehicle for directorial prestige, and its snub in the Best Picture race directly triggered the Academy's expansion of the category the following year — a rare case of one film changing awards architecture.
Digital, for real this time
The 2000s is also when cinema's production base actually flipped. Digital intermediate color grading became standard, digital projection began replacing film prints, and by decade's end shooting on celluloid was a choice rather than a default. The effects on the canon cut both ways: the decade's American prestige cinema (the Coens' No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson's ascent) doubled down on classical craft, while the art cinema explored what digital looseness allowed. Documentary and animation both expanded their canonical footprint — Pixar's run through the decade put animated films into the National Film Registry pipeline at a pace no studio had managed since Disney's golden age.
Reading this page's list, notice how many films earn their composite score from multiple continents of sources — a Cannes prize plus an American registry plus a community canon. That multi-source, multi-region consensus is the 2000s' signature, and it only strengthens in the following decade.