The Best Films of the Noughties: Intro

Everybody has a "best films of the noughties" list and they all suck.

So here comes mine. Earlier this year, I asked readers of the other blog to provide me with the titles of movies which ought to be considered for a best of the noughties list - thanks for responses! Having excluded films actually from the 90s, those I had already seen, those I knew I did not wat to see and documentaries and after adding the movies from this incarnation of the IMDb 2000-2009 Top 15 and the few 2000s films that made it onto the TSPTD list of the 1000 most acclaimed pictures in history I didn't know, as well as a few other titles I thought might make my top ten, I came up with a list of 29 films to consider. Of those I started 26 and finished 20. None of them actually made the list.

I have already reviewed two of those (Where the Wild Things are and Avatar) and will post reviews of the remaining 22 (preceded by an enumeration of the films I didn't finish) throughout the coming weeks. I'll post reviews of the actual top ten one at a time on Sundays and Wednesdays, starting tonight.

For the purposes of this list, a film is from the 2000s if it was generally released in theatres anywhere in the world for the first time in one of the years in question - festivals don't count (hence #7 counts as a 2000 movie). We're talking about fictional films of at least 45 mins. length. New versions of older films don't qualify - no Apocalypse Now Redux (which otherwise would certainly have made the list).

When I call this a list of the best or the greatest films of the decade it should be understood that we're talking about (a) the best of the subset of films I actually saw (b) according to my own personal taste - it emphatically is not a list of the most important or innovative, let alone the most popular or best-reviewed films.

Follow using the Best of the Noughties and the Best of the Noughties: Lists and Suggestions tags.