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Top 10 Best 2000s Movies (2026)

The best 2000s movies still split a shelf between blockbusters everyone can quote from memory and quieter titles that critics have argued over ever since. Owning one is a different call from streaming it, because the edition you choose decides how the film looks on your screen ten years from now. Ten films from 2000 through 2009, and no two of them ask for the same mood.

Ten features released between 2000 and 2009, chosen so the set holds up whether you want spectacle, a slow-burn thriller, or something stranger. Formats run from DVD to 4K Ultra HD, so part of the decision is how much the image matters to you. Two of the picks play with subtitles.

1.Gladiator (4K Ultra HD) - by Russell Crowe

Gladiator (4K Ultra HD)
Two of the decade's biggest American films hang almost entirely on one actor holding a screen for two and a half hours. Both reward a format that can handle scale and very dark scenes. A Roman general is condemned, sold into slavery, and pushed back into an arena in front of the man who destroyed his family. Ridley Scott built Gladiator around that revenge line and staged the Colosseum scenes to feel heavy rather than weightless. It is still the decade's most direct crowd-pleaser, and the 4K presentation gives the dust and the armor real texture.
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2.There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray) - by Paul Dano

There Will Be Blood (Blu-ray)
Silver prospecting gives way to oil, and Daniel Plainview talks his way onto every parcel of California land he can lease. Paul Thomas Anderson lets There Will Be Blood run on long silences and Jonny Greenwood's scraping strings instead of plot beats. Widely regarded as the film of the decade in critic polls, it suits a viewer happy to sit with a character who never softens.
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3.Memories of Murder (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) - by Byun Hee-bong

Memories of Murder (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)
These three take their time. Each spends most of its runtime on the pursuit rather than the payoff, and each ends somewhere colder than the genre usually allows. Two local detectives and a transfer from Seoul chase a killer through 1980s farmland, and nearly every confession they force out of a suspect collapses. Bong Joon-ho directed Memories of Murder years before Parasite, and the swerves from slapstick to horror are already fully formed. Among these picks it makes the clearest case that a procedural can be funny and devastating in the same scene.
$29.99$39.95-25%
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4.No Country for Old Men (Criterion Collection) - by Tommy Lee Jones

No Country for Old Men (Criterion Collection)
A welder out hunting antelope finds a case of drug money in the Texas scrub, and a man with a cattle gun starts following it. The Coens strip No Country for Old Men of a musical score almost entirely, so scenes run on wind, boot leather, and a door lock being tested. Viewers who want tidy resolution will bristle at the ending, and everyone else will call it the tensest two hours of the decade.
$29.99$39.95-25%
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5.The Dark Knight - by Christian Bale

The Dark Knight
Heath Ledger's Joker wants neither money nor territory, which is exactly what makes him impossible for Gotham's institutions to plan around. Christopher Nolan shot long stretches of The Dark Knight on IMAX cameras, and the bank heist and the truck flip still look enormous on a home screen. It is the rare blockbuster that takes its own moral question seriously enough to end on a compromise.
$11.99$14.98-20%
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6.Mulholland Drive (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD) - by Naomi Watts

Mulholland Drive (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD)
Both of these 2000s films ask a viewer to accept an image before understanding it. Neither hands over a clean explanation, and both are better for that. An amnesiac woman crawls out of a car wreck on a Los Angeles hillside and takes shelter with an aspiring actress newly arrived from Ontario. David Lynch first shot Mulholland Drive as a television pilot, which is why the long opening stretch behaves like a series and the final act behaves like a nightmare. It is the one film here that improves on a second viewing, because nothing in it resolves on the first.
$38.99$49.95-22%
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7.Pan's Labyrinth (Criterion Collection) - by Ivana Baquero

Pan's Labyrinth (Criterion Collection)
Spain, 1944: a girl moves to a rural garrison with her pregnant mother and her new stepfather, a Falangist captain hunting resistance fighters in the hills. Guillermo del Toro cuts between that and a faun's underground labyrinth without ever letting the fantasy soften the war. The fairy tale and the firing squad carry equal weight, which is why it lands harder than most dark fantasy.
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8.Spirited Away (DVD) - by Daveigh Chase

Spirited Away (DVD)
Animation had a very good decade, and these three are a large part of why people stopped filing it under children's viewing. All three hold up at midnight with adults as well as they do on a Saturday morning. Chihiro's parents eat food that is not theirs and turn into pigs, which strands a sulky ten-year-old on a bathhouse work shift for a witch. Spirited Away took the Academy Award for animated feature, and Hayao Miyazaki never once stops to explain how his spirit world works. That refusal is exactly why it holds viewers who normally skip animation.
$14.99$19.96-25%
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9.Wall-E (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD) - by Ben Burtt

Wall-E (Criterion Collection) (4K Ultra HD)
Almost no dialogue is spoken for the first forty minutes, a strange thing for a Pixar feature to attempt and a stranger thing to pull off. Wall-E spends them compacting garbage on an abandoned Earth with a cockroach and a worn tape of Hello, Dolly! for company. It plays for a family audience and for anyone curious how far animation can push silent-comedy timing.
$38.99$49.95-22%
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10.Fantastic Mr. Fox (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray) - by Bill Murray

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Criterion Collection) (Blu-ray)
A reformed chicken thief takes one more job, and three farmers answer by digging his entire community out of the ground with excavators. Wes Anderson made Fantastic Mr. Fox in hand-worked stop-motion, so the fur visibly ripples between frames and nothing looks smoothed over. Roald Dahl's meanness survives the translation, which is why adults tend to finish it more entertained than the kids do.
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More Movies From the 2000s

Start with whichever of these ten matches the mood you are in, because none of them are trying to do the same job. The decade goes far deeper than ten titles, so keep browsing movies from the 2000s when you want more.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which of these should I watch first if I only pick one?
Start with Gladiator if you want the decade at its loudest and most confident. If you would rather be unsettled than entertained, No Country for Old Men gets there faster and stays there longer. Both play cold, with no setup and no homework.
What works for a room full of people?
The Dark Knight travels well in a group, since almost everyone has seen enough of it to stay in. Gladiator holds a room too, especially on a big screen with the sound turned up. Save Mulholland Drive for a night when you are watching alone or with one other person.
Are the subtitled picks hard going for someone who avoids subtitles?
Not really. Memories of Murder and Pan's Labyrinth both carry the story visually, so a viewer keeps up even when their eyes drift off the text. Spirited Away is the softer landing, since an English dub sits on the disc if reading is a dealbreaker.
Is Pan's Labyrinth safe to put on with young kids in the room?
No. It carries an R rating, and the worst of the violence is human rather than monstrous, which lands harder than the fantasy imagery suggests. For a younger room, Spirited Away and Wall-E both work without anyone having to leave.
What should I add if I already own the Nolan and Coen picks?
Go to Memories of Murder next. It runs the same procedural shape but lets the case sit unsolved in a way American thrillers rarely risk, and its tonal swings are unlike anything else here. Fantastic Mr. Fox is the palate cleanser afterward.

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