The Exceptional Movies Of 2001

Clockwise from pinnacle left: Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring, A.I., Ali, Audition, Mulholland Drive, Amores Perros, Moulin Rogue, Memento, The Royal Tenenbaums, Monsters Inc.Graphic: Natalie Peeples

Have the Oscars ever gotten it extra incorrect than they did in March of 2002, when Tom Hanks surpassed Best Picture to the treacly, forgettable biopic A Beautiful Mind? Okay, surely they have got—the Academy has been making boneheaded requires just shy of a century. But it’s still difficult to think about many Oscar-night time moments as deflating as Ron Howard’s victory over now not simply 4 worthier fighters however each superior film his wasn’t competing against. Because 2001 turned into extra than a extremely good year for films. It was an all-timer, possibly even filthier with masterpieces than the fabled 1999.

2001 gave us powerhouse studio films—a festival of hobbits, monsters, unhappy robots, and all-superstar heists, all classing up the multiplex. Musicals got thrillingly, eccentrically cutting-edge. Horror skilled a miniature renaissance. Major works arrived from Mexico, Japan, France, Hong Kong, and so many other points on the arena-cinema map. The triumphs got here in all styles and sizes, genres and languages. One even got here from (gasp) TV.

We considered going to 50 this year. That’s how deep the pool of superlative movies launched two a long time in the past runs. What, no Donnie Darko? No Black Hawk Down? No Zoolander? Consider them honorable mentions; each might have made a higher Best Picture, too. As common, we stuck to movies released in America at some point of the calendar 12 months in query, that is why you received’t discover Spirited Away or Y Tu Mamá También on the list (look for them subsequent 12 months, when we cite our favorites of 2002), and also why you'll find Memento and In The Mood For Love there, notwithstanding in advance festival debuts.

Keep studying for The A.V. Club’s list of the 25 great films of 2001, as selected by way of a dozen of our normal participants. Don’t agree with our alternatives? Hey, that’s okay, it turned into a treasure trove of riches in 2001—there were such a lot of true films that you may make a completely solid listing of the ones that didn’t make the reduce. Happy with how we voted? Beautiful minds think alike.

25. Code Unknown25. Code Unknown

The audience is the enemy inside the profoundly scathing provocations of Michael Haneke. But as a minimum as soon as, Austria’s choicest Funny Gamesman channeled his penchant to antagonize into some thing more confounding than merciless—a pointedly cryptic puzzle-field of intertwined Parisian lives. Beginning with a public war of words that has more and more devastating effects for the strangers involved, Code Unknown unfolds as a mysterious jumble of vignettes, presented out of order, elliptically sequenced. It’s an unlikely cousin to the we-are-all-connected ensemble pieces of the filmmaker represented two areas down in this very list, except that Haneke is much less interested in what unites us than what divides us—failures of communication, disparities in privilege. The fragmentary nature of the film offers its personal reward for connoisseurs of confusion, a bounty of tantalizing obfuscation and cognitive dissonance. What’s extra, it speaks to a bigger subject no much less relevant in our deceptively “connected” present: society itself getting misplaced in translation. [A.A. Dowd]

Formally innovative and narratively subversive, Cure proves that even a style as tired because the serial-killer movie can be multiplied with the aid of a filmmaker of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s self assurance. The Pulse director eschews whodunit conference through introducing severa murderers, all with one element in commonplace: They’ve crossed paths with Mamiya (Masato Hagiwara), an eerily calm amnesiac with robust powers of idea. Though detective Takabe (Kōji Yakusho) and his psychiatrist associate (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) seize up with Mamiya quickly, what follows is a pores and skin-crawling portrait of psychological decay that borrows from David Fincher’s Seven and anticipates his later Zodiac. Kurosawa’s best gambit is in no way cuing viewers to search for any precise locus of threat inside his frame. Instead, he fills each shot with indistinct anxiety and dread, and then just holds on it. Everything stays barely “off” even when nothing abnormal takes place. Until it does, of course. [Vikram Murthi]

23. Amores Perros23. ​​Amores Perros

Reinvigorating Mexican cinema on the start of the millennium, this grisly triptych of blood on the pavement, human (and canine) suffering, and primal desires launched the profession of Alejandro González Iñárritu. Traversing the socioeconomic strata of Mexico City, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga’s complicated plot tragically connects the parallel plights of a Spanish version convalescing from a automobile crash, a homeless hitman lacking his daughter, and a reckless romantic performed with the aid of a younger Gael García Bernal, in his first film role. Flaunting a memorable soundtrack that reflects the evolution of rock music within the united states of america on the time, Amores Perros remains the Oscar-prevailing director’s most visceral paintings so far—a actual gut punch of a debut. [Carlos Aguilar]

22. Moulin Rouge!22. Moulin Rouge!

Baz Luhrmann’s Hollywood-via-France-via-Australia revival of the movie musical arrived just in time for the twenty first century—and yet perhaps nevertheless multiple a long time too early, judging from some of the contemporaneous reactions. Those lawsuits, approximately the freneticism of a musical in which the director cuts too speedy to see the dancing and—prepare the fainting sofa—now and again mixes and suits bits of various anachronistic pop songs, now feel key to the film’s legacy, reflecting Luhrmann’s willingness to really grapple with the song-video revolution and push the movie musical shape ahead. He’s making use of the same modernism that enthralls penniless creator Christian (Ewan McGregor) and gifted/doomed courtesan Satine (Nicole Kidman) in 1900 Paris. The movie’s love story is old-fashioned melodrama, but Luhrmann’s telling transcends cornball declarations (from time to time cribbed from Paul McCartney, Dolly Parton, and Elton John, amongst others), shooting the moment wherein pop schmaltz spins out into lovestruck delirium. Luhrmann’s decision to lease actors as opposed to singers can pay off brilliantly with shining-megastar paintings from McGregor and Kidman—and an unforgettable rendition of “Like A Virgin” performed via Jim Broadbent. [Jesse Hassenger]

Speaking of Nicole Kidman, she’s resplendent by candlelight, choking lower back gasps of terror, on this classically eerie outlier from an era when mainstream horror was otherwise operating in the metatextual shadow of Scream. Making his English-language debut, writer-director Alejandro Amenábar scored an sudden hit by way of sticking a recreation movie famous person and multiple light children into a foggy haunted residence in post-WWII Europe. There’s an evergreen elegance to Amenábar’s craftsmanship that suggests The Others might have been launched in any generation and nevertheless linked with audiences. Credit Kidman’s undying display screen presence, too; rarely has it served any such well-engineered tale, springing an handy (and trendy) trap of fright. [Jason Shawhan]

7 / 2720. Hedwig And The Angry Inch

20. Hedwig And The Angry Inch​​20. Hedwig And The Angry Inch

Few terms are as cringe-worth as “rock musical,” but John Cameron Mitchell’s model of his enduring level musical has the swagger to pull that dubious style off. The filmmaker reprises the starring role of a punk-rock singer whose try to to migrate from East Germany leads to a botched gender-reassignment operation, heartache, and an American concert tour shadowing the former lover who stole their songs. Light years beforehand of its time in its remedy of gender and the energy of drag, Hedwig is an agonizing love story, lent profound weight through the autumn of The Berlin Wall. It’s also pleasant, way to bawdy cabaret-style humor and Stephen Trask’s unique songs, which are every bit as audacious because the title individual. [Leila Latif]

The untimely loss of life of Princess Diana prompts Amélie Poulain (Audrey Tautou) to secretly soothe the woes of her Montmartre associates in French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s contemporary classic of magical sincerity. An idealized generation of Paris, tinged with whimsy and nostalgia with the aid of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, hosts the expressively mesmerizing Tautou and a supporting cast of decidedly eccentric characters. Leaving behind the dystopian darkness of his in advance sci-fi work, Jeunet unabashedly embraces romance born of kismet; to the tune of Yann Tiersen’s great accordion-and-piano score, he glides down photograph-perfect streets, introducing us to a touring garden gnome, valuable youth knickknacks, raspberries caught to young arms, and all of the other different minutia that render lifestyles valuable. [Carlos Aguilar]