The Telegraph: The Films That Defined The Noughties

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This decade has brought some extraordinary shifts in the way films are made, and the way we watch them. But it’s not always easy to pinpoint exactly when those changes began – or where they will end. Many of the best films on this list – long-gestating triumphs such as In the Mood for Love or Spirited Away – were in development in the Nineties; others, now in production, will only see the light of day in a few years time. More than that, some of the key trends of the past 10 years – the DVD boom, faster broadband, YouTube – mean that today’s film fans have been watching, legally or illegally, movies from a bygone age. A fragmented, pick’n’mix cinematic culture, represented on this list by highly referential films such as Kill Bill, Moulin Rouge! and Far from Heaven, is increasingly the norm, not the exception.

Big studios have continued to focus on blockbusters and franchise-fare to boost their profits. This hasn’t always been bad – the Bourne and Lord of the Rings trilogies are terrific fun – but it’s striking that artistically successful, award-winning features such as There Will Be Blood and Milk have under-performed at the box office: how sombre they must seem to audiences weaned on Pirates of the Caribbean and Spider-Man. How CGI-depleted! How zombie-less!

Documentaries – intimate (Être et Avoir), epic (the nine-hour West of the Tracks) and idiosyncratic (The Gleaners and I) – have flourished, in part because of cheap digital technology, but also because that genre is given increasingly short-shrift on television. Animation – from the reliable Pixar stable to the Israeli Waltz with Bashir – has moved mainstream.

The independent sector has become more international with the rise of Mexican drama, Korean horror, Romanian social realism. The succès d’estime of Steve McQueen’s Hunger and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Tropical Malady bodes well for the future of art film. Cinema, claimed by many to be moribund at the end of the Nineties, is still hungry, furious and vital.