Edward's Best of the 2000s

I'm happy to join in! I've given my ten below, plus I've selected three male and three female performances from the decade which I think are especially noteworthy. Happy to do other lists as well - I've been trying to come up with top tens for each decade recently, so I'd be happy to share!

One of Andrew's is on my list too - Before Sunset - and I really liked the part of The Five Obstructions which I've seen (about the first thirty mins.) so I must see the rest of it. I didn't think much of Battle Royale, actually - I remember thinking that it was a film which could use a remake: I felt it wasted its premise. Admittedly I've only seen it once, and it was a few years ago, so maybe I'd like it better this time. I agree about Children of Men's dazzling long takes, and I think if I see it a second time I'll be able to absorb more of the characterisations. And though I have yet to see Happy Accidents, you won't get a complaint about Marisa Tomei out of me!

Here are my ten:

1. Wonder Boys (2000)

This is a very warm and witty film about a university lecturer, Grady Tripp, and the various crises, personal and professional, which he has to deal with over the course of a weekend at his college. Michael Douglas's performance as Grady is charming and loveable in its shambolic humanity. Perhaps it's all wrapped up a little too neatly, but along the way we get lots of insights into the way writers write, and it's great to see a film which finds non-angry things to say about the educational system. Lovely cinematography, too - cold and snowy - a colourful supporting cast of likeable actors and excellent use of Bob Dylan's music, especially 'Not Dark Yet' and the song he wrote for this movie, 'Things Have Changed'.

2. Our Lady of the Assassins (2000)

This is Barbet Schroeder's adaptation of Fernardo Vallejo's sardonic novel about a middle-aged writer falling in love with a young gang member in violence-stricken Medellín. The filmmaking is elegant, the script verbose, the actors awkward but ingratiating, and the situation rests on a knife-edge - their lives are in constant danger, and yet the film manages to make of their relationship an unashamed cross-generational homosexual love affair. Schroeder is one of the most worldly directors working.

3. Moulin Rouge! (2001)

I wanted to have a music on the list, and this is, I guess, the best one of the decade (to date). The first half hour is too hyper, but if you get as far as the moment where Ewan McGregor bursts into 'Your Song', you'll probably be hooked from there onwards. Richard Roxburgh has been overlooked in all the fuss, but he gives a very affecting performance as the loathsome Duke. And Baz Luhrmann has the courage to make a movie about love itself.

4. Mulholland Drive (2001)

A young wanna-be actress arrives in Hollywood and falls victim to its relentless dehumanising machine. And David Lynch makes it as odd and absorbing as you'd expect. This is a film which has its own dreamy momentum and which takes you along for its ride. Its very fascinating structure, born of its origins as an aborted TV pilot, leaves certain plot lines dangling or underdeveloped - the hitman's botched jobs, the film director (underrated Justin Theroux) at the mercy of his financiers - but don't listen to the people who say it doesn't make sense; it does, thanks to Lynch's commitment to emotional, rather than narrative, coherence.

5. Dark Water (2002)

Hideo Nakata, the director of Ring, here delivers another adaptation of a Koji Suzuki story, and it's another blood-curdler. But what makes this one of the best horror films is not just its nerve-jangling twists and shocks but the emotional undercurrent, which is made explicit in the film's moving coda. This is a movie about motherhood, and what a mother will sacrifice to protect her child. Intense and atmospheric, this shows yet again Nakata's deceptive style - it seems as if nothing much is going on but all the while he is pulling you further and further in.

6. Le Fils (2002)

A carpenter (Olivier Gourmet) at a reform school for delinquent teenagers becomes obsessed with his new pupil, who has in the past done untold damage. I believe this to be Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best film to date and one of the very best films of recent times. It's a perfect example of style and content in unison, the camera darting around after Olivier Gourmet as he grapples with the moral decision of what to do in a near-impossible situation.

7. The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanski's drama set in Warsaw during World War II was, as everybody knows, a very personal project for him. For this reason, it's the restraint which impresses the most - and this leads to some very chilling and sobering depictions of Nazi brutality. Stylistically not a ground-breaking film, it is a work which puts across its points with patience and lucidity.

8. Peter Pan (2003)

This is a very flawed adaptation of the famous story, but I rate it as one of the best of this decade because when it works, it works wonders. It contains some of the most original special effects I've seen recently, and James Newton Howard's music positively soars. I love the flight to Neverland, the night-time forest sequence, and especially the ending. Director P. J. Hogan always makes heavily flawed films (Muriel's Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding) but he can nonetheless hit the heights. I've never been interested in the Peter Pan story, but this film is well worth seeing, and grows with repeated viewings - because the flaws recede.

9. Before Sunset (2004)

I agree with Andrew's take on this. I was very concerned when they announced it, because the first film had worked and I didn't want them to ruin things with a sequel. Well, this one works even better, and dramatises that eternal conundrum: what if we had got together with the one that got away? There are exquisite long takes of people communicating with each other as they walk the streets of Paris in real time.

10. Match Point (2005)

This is Woody Allen's best film since Everyone Says I Love You. People said that it was a change of pace for Woody - it's set in London, it's a thriller - but they were forgetting how well organised and powerful his best films are, and how this continues in that vein. It's a modern morality tale, deliberately stylised so as to convey its weighty themes - hence Jonathan Rhys Meyers' rather abstract performance - and although it's got its flaws, it is fluid, it looks fabulous, and it ends on a most cautionary note.

Here are my choices for outstanding male and female performances of the decade (three each, again in chronological order):

Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys

OK, I am a Michael Douglas fan. I always like him and his flawed white man act - Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, Disclosure... but here, he is simply loveable as the respected lecturer and author going through all manner of mid-life crises over a single weekend. Whether talking to the police while wearing his ex-wife's pink dressing gown or stuffing a dead dog into the boot of his car, Douglas makes the character one to root for.

Olivier Gourmet in Le Fils

His performance works so well, it bears out the Dardenne brothers' claim that they wrote it only with him in mind. This is a towering achievement of outer appearance and inner revelation. And, incidentally, it is one of the best 'teacher' roles in the movies.

Maurice Bénichou in Caché

He has only a small role, as the nondescript French-Algerian man accused of sending threatening videos and letters to Daniel Auteuil's character, the complacent middle-class success story with the murky past. But Bénichou's sadness, his slumped shoulders, his end-of-the-line lack of energy, simply seem so real. If you've seen Caché, you may not easily forget Benichou's scenes or what happens to his character.

Charlotte Rampling in Under the Sand

Rampling plays a woman who is left bereft when her husband disappears while they are on holiday by the coast in France. What happened to him? And what does a middle-aged woman do when the man she has shared her life with is no longer there? It's heartbreaking to watch the character working this all out, and Rampling does it superbly.

Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Drive

Harring plays an actress who gets amnesia after being involved in a car accident on the eponymous road. Naomi Watts' young starlet helps her search for her identity, and then falls in love with her. Watts is wonderful in the movie too, but she had the slightly easier role - more emoting to do - whereas Harring had to be desirable and remote, and later a heartbreaker, and her performance works perfectly within David Lynch's sensual puzzle.

Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher

Intense, tortured - we really feel pity and sympathy for Huppert's pent-up music teacher who can only express her desires through masochism. That's two performances of my six from Michael Haneke films!