The one thing that you’ll find in any era of movies is that the Oscars don’t always make the right call when it comes to the Best Picture award.
But since we’ve been given a second chance to reappraise the films of the 2000s, it means we can make different choices.
The Watch With Us team has selected our picks for the best movie of every year of the 2000s.
And out of the ten films, we only agreed with the best picture winners twice. Every other film on the list was denied the top prize.
The Best Movie of 2000: ‘Almost Famous’
Cameron Crowe has made some terrific movies, but Almost Famous is his greatest. The writer and director drew from his own life to craft this rock and roll fable of the early ’70s. Patrick Fugit stars as William Miller, a child prodigy who lands a freelance reporting gig from Rolling Stone at only 15 years old. He also gets a potential feature assignment by following a band called Stillwater on tour.
On the road, William becomes close to the band, especially lead guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup). William is also infatuated with Penny Lane (Kate Hudson), a self-proclaimed “band aid” who is in love with Russell and Stillwater’s music. After spending so much time with these people, William makes the mistake of thinking of them as friends. As the band’s internal strife comes to the forefront, they may not even stay together by the time William files his report.
Almost Famous is streaming on Paramount+.
The Best Movie of 2001: ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring’
If you were alive in 2001, then you may remember how much we needed this movie. In the shadow of the 9/11 attacks three months earlier, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring felt like a ray of sunshine. The lead characters’ struggle against darkness and despair wasn’t written for the era we were living in, but its message of hope felt timeless. When Frodo wishes that these dark times had never come, Gandalf replies, “So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” Who couldn’t relate to that?
This also happens to be an amazing fantasy flick and one of the best movies ever made. Peter Jackson‘s entire trilogy was deserving of winning the Best Picture award. Previous attempts to adapt J.R.R Tolkien‘s novels had fallen well short of the mark. Jackson captured the scope and grandeur of the story as a Hobbit, Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood) reluctantly accepts a mission to destroy an object of great power before it falls into the hands of something unspeakably evil. Gandalf (Ian McKellen), Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen), Boromir (Sean Bean) and four others form a fellowship to protect Frodo on his journey. Not all of them will survive.
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring is streaming on HBO Max.
The Best Movie of 2002: ‘The Pianist’
Adrien Brody has now won two Oscars for Best Actor for playing Holocaust survivors, but his first win for The Pianist is the one that feels like it will withstand the test of time. Brody plays Władysław Szpilman, a Jewish pianist whose life is destroyed as the German army takes control of Europe. Not even Szpilman’s skills can protect him and his family from the horror of Nazi rule.
Director Roman Polanski brought Szpilman’s desperate ordeal to life in vivid fashion. As Szpilman struggles to survive, he finds an unlikely ally in Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann), a German officer who provides aid when he needs it the most. It’s an emotionally moving story and worthy of being remembered.
The Pianist is streaming on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 2003: ‘Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World’
Let’s preface this by saying that The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was completely worthy of the 11 Oscars it won at the Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The problem is that the film was so dominant that it completely overshadowed two other movies that could have plausibly won: Mystic River and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. We went with the latter, because this adaptation of Patrick O’Brian‘s novels was a historical epic on a scale that Hollywood has rarely attempted since. It simply cost too much to make and didn’t come close to breaking even.
During the early 19th century, Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and the crew of the HMS Surprise are hounded by French privateers a long way from home off the coast of South America. The conflict between the two ships comes and goes throughout the film, but the story masterfully depicts Jack’s friendship with the ship’s surgeon, Stephen Maturin (Paul Bettany), and the rest of the crew. These men are more than just caricatures or expendable extras, and their triumphs and losses carry weight in this story. In any just universe, we would have gotten several films with these characters.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 2004: ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman has always gone for the weirder stories that aren’t easily classified. But there’s something about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that transcends the sometimes bizarre flourishes of Kaufman and his co-writer/director, Michel Gondry. This is a sci-fi story married to a love story about two people who are no longer in love: Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet).
Following an acrimonious split, Clementine has undergone a procedure to completely erase Joel from her memories. Heartbroken, Joel does the same, but it isn’t until he starts losing everything he had from his relationship with Clementine that he fights to hold on to it in the deepest parts of his mind. Even though it deals with the end of a relationship, Eternal Sunshine is oddly life-affirming and even romantic.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 2005: ‘Walk the Line’
It’s funny how many people retroactively hate Crash for winning Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain two decades ago. The sentiment was on the side of the latter, but it wasn’t until Moonlight in 2016 that an LGBT-themed film won Best Picture. But the 2005 contest wasn’t just limited to Crash or Brokeback Mountain, and Walk the Line didn’t even crack the Best Picture nominations. If not for the Best Actress win for Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash, this fantastic music biopic would have been completely snubbed.
Joaquin Phoenix led the cast as legendary singer Johnny Cash, and he and Witherspoon performed their own singing in the film. That by itself was remarkable, but they also brought out the soulful side of the story as Cash struggled with addiction and his future wife tried to save him from his internal demons. They were both icons, but this film made sure to show them as people first. It’s also an inspiring story that doesn’t seem to get old even after two decades.
Walk the Line is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 2006: ‘The Departed’
The fact that Martin Scorsese has only won a single Oscar for Best Director is ridiculous. How many groundbreaking films does a guy have to make before he gets his due?! The Departed finally gave Scorsese his Oscar in addition to taking Best Picture as well. This is a remake of the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs, and it stands on its own as a masterpiece. Jack Nicholson gave one of the last great performances as Francis “Frank” Costello, one of the most feared crime lords in Boston.
Leonardo DiCaprio also stars as William “Billy” Costigan Jr., a cop who goes deep undercover in Frank’s crime family to bring him down. Frank prepared for this eventuality years earlier by recruiting Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) to be his eyes and ears inside the police. Once Billy and Colin realize that there’s a mole on both sides of the law, their cat-and-mouse attempts to discover and expose each other become riveting entertainment.
The Departed is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The Best Movie of 2007: ‘No Country for Old Men’
The Coen brothers were also long overdue for their own Best Director and Best Picture Oscar wins. They received both for their magnum opus, No Country for Old Men. Cormac McCarthy‘s story was brought to life through the Coen’s direction and by stellar performances by Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones. Of that trio, Bardem is the one who won an Oscar for his terrifying turn as mob hit man Anton Chigurh. It takes a lot to make violence shocking these days, but the way Chigurh dispatched his victims was especially brutal.
Rancher Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) unwittingly brings a firestorm down around himself when he discovers a drug deal gone wrong and a suitcase full of money that was left behind. Chigurh’s attempts to retrieve the cash lead to unpredictably harsh encounters between the two men, as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Jones) finds himself over-matched by the carnage they leave in their wake.
No Country for Old Men is streaming on Paramount+.
The Best Movie of 2008: ‘The Dark Knight’
Have you ever heard of The Dark Knight rule? There was such an uproar over the Academy Awards snubbing this film for the major awards that the Best Picture nominations were expanded to 10 the very next year. Why is this comic-book movie the best film of 2008? Because director Christopher Nolan found the right balance between the film’s fantastical elements and a grounded reality that was far more plausible than any previous Batman movies by other filmmakers. The Dark Knight moves at a relentless pace with compelling characters, an engrossing story and widescreen action like few films have ever delivered.
The late Heath Ledger‘s take on the Joker earned him a posthumous Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. And he really deserved it for such a mesmerizing villain. Christian Bale is also very good as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but the bulk of this film is carried by Aaron Eckhart‘s turn as the crusading district attorney, Harvey Dent. Harvey’s downfall is the stuff of legends, while Gary Oldman‘s Jim Gordon also gave the movie its human heart as he and the Batman pick up the pieces of Gotham City and try to transform it for the better.
The Dark Knight is streaming on HBO Max.
The Best Movie of 2009: ‘District 9’
Much like the 2005 Oscars, the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony was seen as a battle between James Cameron‘s Avatar and Kathryn Bigelow‘s The Hurt Locker. The fact that Cameron and Bigelow used to be married only made it juicier. The Hurt Locker was Oscar-worthy, and there’s an argument that can be made for Avatar as well. As a technical achievement, Avatar was breathtaking and Pandora truly felt like an alien world. But the reason we’ve chosen District 9 as the best movie of 2009 is that it brought science fiction down to our world in a shocking way.
Director and co-writer Neill Blomkamp envisioned an alternate timeline where alien refugees came to South Africa before they were immediately treated as less than human. It’s perfectly plausible that the alien “Prawns” would be subjected to the ugliest side of human nature, including racism and cruelty. Wikus van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) was a part of the system that oppressed these aliens until he was infected with their DNA and began mutating into a Prawn himself.
That gave Wikus a much-needed new perspective, but it was far too late to help himself or the Prawns. His quest to cure himself and aid a Prawn attempt to flee Earth led to a conclusion that works as a standalone story. But we’d still kind of like to see District 10 just to witness karma and retribution revisit this world.
District 9 is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
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