Browsing all articles in Best of the Aughts.
In December, Hollywood Prophets started a roll-out of our "Very Best of the Aughts" lists, which include several different categories like "Top Foreign" and "Top Independent". In January, this will culminate in our Top 25 Films of the Aughts series. Get your netflix queue handy.
Check back at this page to see how many lists we've added so far.
Best of the Aughts, In Summary
In December, Hollywood Prophets started a roll-out of our “Very Best of the Aughts” lists, which include several different categories like “Top Foreign” and “Top Independent”. In January, this ended with our Top 25 Films of the Aughts series. Get your netflix queue handy. There’ll definitely be at least one or two films you’ll want [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #1 – “City of God”
We’ve spent a lot of time on our Top Films of the Aughts series, and it’s a little surreal to see it finally come to a close. We’ve featured films from some Hollywood legends, exports by the world’s greatest auteurs, and cult favorites. But what’s a better way to end with a bang than with [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #2 – “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”
As independent film continued its renaissance into the mid-2000′s, a curious trend had emerged. There was a strong resurgence in New Wave production values, such as those pioneered by Truffaut, Godard, Chabrol, and their contemporaries. Films made back then were just becoming more self-conscious in tone. Now, filmgoers were experiencing some intense deja vu. Stylistically, [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #3 – “Munich”
In 2005, Steven Spielberg released two films. War of the Worlds made quite a financial splash, but it may be the last blockbuster of Tom Cruise’s career if public opinion doesn’t change for him soon. While everyone was busy watching Worlds during the summertime, Spielberg was hard at work trying to finish his passion project, [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #4 – “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
I wasn’t lucky enough to catch this film in theaters, (editor Adam Gold was the only one who managed to see it during its limited run) and in fact promotion of the film was so poor I hadn’t even heard of it until it came out on DVD. After seeing it, I wish I could’ve [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #5 – “Children of Men”
When you think of science fiction, what images come to mind? Spaceships, laser swords, time travel, mad computers, or ten-foot tall blue aliens? Starting with H.G. Wells, the genre has taken us to the farthest possible reaches of our imagination, if only to convey an often poignant truth about humanity. Be it distant galaxies, centuries into the future, or [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #6 – “The Wrestler”
Every once in awhile, you see a movie that completely takes you out of your concious state and places you onto a new plane of feeling, where you’re completely involved in what you’re are watching. This is how I felt when I saw The Wrestler, which, like Requiem for A Dream, is directed by Darren [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #7 – “Requiem for a Dream”
There are two films on our Top 25 list that prominently feature drug use, both topically and as a part of their respective plots. The first, which we have gotten to already, was Steven Soderbergh’s critically-acclaimed drama, Traffic. The second film on the subject and now #7 on our Top 25 is Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. Aside from [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #8 – “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”
Writer/director Cristian Mungiu’s somber reflection on life during the waning days of the communist and corrupt Ceausescu regime in Romania is perhaps the most astute summation of the effects of social and political repression (and transformation) on “actual people” since Philip Kaufman’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). It’s devastating, as it should be. The story [...]
Top 25 Films of the Aughts #9 – “Let The Right One In”
It’s a sad but true fact that the best horror flicks of the aughts were not American. Of course, in the U.S., horror is synonymous with torture porn or gory slashers where every hedonistic teenager is punished in a Survivor-style elimination. Even those movies were good at some point. Today, if you’re thinking of horror, you’re thinking [...]