What the '00s in film meant to me - in 10 images (plus additions)

Late last year and early this year many folk - critics, bloggers, cinemagoers etc, online and in print - collected together their End of the Decade favourites, lists of what they saw were the very best of the '00s. It was something I meant to do in January but my own list of favourites for 2009 took up too much time and I left compiling my '00s list for another time - now, to be exact.

So here, belatedly and for posterity, are my selections for ten films which I liked the most from 2000 to 2009. (Although, adversely, no actual films from 2009 were included as I had covered the year's films in my annual End of the Year round-up from February to April, so maybe some revisions will be likely someday - but I'll throw in my '09 top ten at the end for good measure.)

These ten films, plucked from a list of hundreds, are essentially the ones which meant the most to me. There were of course many, many more films which could easily have made the list (indeed this list will undoubtedly change over time, if I ever feel like returning to it), so I've added below a plethora of further titles - other films that, for me, defined the '00s almost as much as the main ten.

The main list is in alphabetical order, as, unlike the yearly lists, ordering a whole decade's worth was quite an insurmountable task. And I guess they all collectively occupy the decade's top spot.

Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee/2003)

Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee/2005)

Elephant (Gus Van Sant/2003)

The Forest for the Trees/Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen (Maren Ade/2003)

Goodbye, Dragon Inn/Bu san (Tsai Ming-Liang/2003)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell/2001)

Inland Empire (David Lynch/2006)

Japanese Story (Sue Brooks/2004)

Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembène/2004)

Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis/2001)

Other favourites from the '00s - in no order, and all equally deserving of individual praise (though perhaps another time):

The Son, The Pledge, Dark Days, Blackboards, Café Lumière, Vera Drake, Serenity, The Libertine, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, The Piano Teacher, Still Life, Summer Hours, Under the Sand, Five, The Bourne Ultimatum, Junebug, Tropical Malady, Last Resort, The Proposition, Ratatouille, Hunger, Minority Report, The World, Flight of the Red Balloon, The Descent, Adaptation., Head-On, Bad Santa, Battle in Heaven, Kandahar, Dead Man's Shoes, Tony Takitani, Ten, Mulholland Dr., Right at Your Door, The Host, What Time Is It There?, A.I. - Artificial Intelligence, A History of Violence, The Page Turner, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Friday Night, Yi Yi, The Wayward Cloud, You Can Count on Me, 28 Days Later..., Old Joy, Session 9, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, Lorna's Silence, In My Skin, The Man Without a Past, Be Kind Rewind, Gerry, Werckmeister Harmonies, Far From Heaven , Love Liza, Spider, Russian Ark, My Summer of Love, Gozu, Zidane - A 21st Century Portrait, The Weather Man, Children of Men, Offside, Black Sun, Red Road, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Sisters In Law, Married Life, Margot at the Wedding, Syndromes and a Century, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Om Shanti Om, The Night of the Sunflowers, Zodiac, Daratt, Shotgun Stories, Private Property, Out of the Blue, The Gates, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Intruder - and the '09 ten: 35 Shots of Rum, Katalin Varga, Timecrimes, Wendy and Lucy, Two Lovers, The Invisible Frame, Martyrs, sleep furiously, Sugar, Bright Star.

Looking through all these films now I'm sure the list will change, and I'm certain I've missed several great titles off the list completely. Tomorrow things could all look very different...