25 movies turning 25 years old in 2025

We’re still trying to get our heads around the fact it’s now 2025. Among other things, this just so happens to be a lovely round date for commemorating the millennium.

So what kind of movies were we all watching a quarter of a century ago? Looking back on the year 2000 in film, it turned out to be quite an eclectic selection.

We had landmark historical epics, heart-wrenching dramas, cinematic action, perfect pitched literary adaptations, and more.

Some of the films released into cinemas during the year 2000 have gone some way to setting the cultural tone right up to today. A handful have come to be regarded as classics, and have even entered the public discourse as everyday reference points.

We also had more than one modern movie titan taking their tentative early steps in the industry in 2000. Which of the following 2000 movies is your favourite?

Next up...

• Best movies of the 2000s: 39 best films of the 2000s, ranked
• Best 90s movies: 50 fantastic films of the 1990s, ranked
• The best '80s movies: the greatest films of the 1980s, ranked

Gladiator

It took the best part of 25 years for Ridley Scott to turn out a sequel to the original Gladiator. For a director who works so quickly and decisively, that speaks volumes for the sheer size of the job. Watching the first film back, it’s a way more effective slice of swords and sandals action than the follow-up, with a monolithic lead performance from Russell Crowe. Joaquin Phoenix is also on brilliantly unhinged form as the fatally insecure emperor Commodus.

Memento

Memento wasn’t Christopher Nolan’s first film – it was actually his second – but it did prove to be his Hollywood calling card. It demonstrated the British director’s fascination with (and mastery of) time, as our central character’s fractured mental state is ingeniously conveyed to the audience by a reversed scene order. Unpicking Memento’s core mystery is a worthwhile puzzle for any modern day Nolan fan to solve, while Guy Pearce’s compelling performance is up there with any of Nolan’s leading men.

In the Mood for Love

If there’s another film that’s shot through with such wistful yearning as In the Mood for Love, we have yet to see it. Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece sees Maggie Cheung’s Mrs. Chan and Tony Leung’s Chow Mo-wan consoling one another in a moodily lit ’60s Hong Kong after discovering their spouses are having an affair. One of the most sumptuously shot films of the 21st century (ever?), and backed by a hauntingly insistent soundtrack, In the Mood for Love will transport you to a completely different time and place for 98 minutes.

American Psycho

Bret Easton Ellis once considered his grisly 1991 novel about a high flying psychopath to be unfilmable, so grisly was its subject matter. Less than a decade later, Mary Harron’s film adaptation proved him wrong. That’s in no small part due to the breakout performance from a young and remarkably buff Christian Bale. The British actor absolutely nails the detached, narcissistic central role of Patrick Bateman, while the film smartly picks up on the surreal and darkly comic notes of the source material.

Almost Famous

Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical dramedy follows an aspiring teenage music journalist as he hits the road with his favourite band, the fictitious but oh-so-recognisable Stillwater. As we’ve come to expect from Crowe’s best work, Almost Famous wins us over with a combination of immense heart, a palpable sense of nostalgic longing, and an absolutely killer soundtrack. A talent-packed ensemble cast certainly helps, including Kate Hudson as groupie Penny Lane and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as real life rock critic Lester Bangs.

Unbreakable

The Sixth Sense might well go down as director M. Night Shyamalan’s enduring masterpiece, but it was his follow-up Unbreakable that he chose to sequelise. It remains a low-key and surprisingly prescient triumph, applying a fresh and grounded spin on the super hero movie well before the genre had even peaked, let alone worn out its welcome. Bruce Willis plays the survivor of a train accident who comes to realise he may be tougher than your average security guard.

X-Men

The first X-Men movie arrived five years before the start of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, and a full eight years before Robert Downey Junior quipped the Marvel Cinematic Universe into being. For better or worse, it played a major role in laying the groundwork for the 21st century obsession with super heroes. This was also the movie that made a star of Hugh Jackman as the reluctant mutant hero Wolverine – a role that’s still bringing in the box office gold to this day.

The Virgin Suicides

It may have debuted at Cannes in 1999, but Sofia Coppola’s dreamy debut didn’t hit theatres until 2000. It’s a suitably elusive release schedule for such a hauntingly strange and enigmatic film. Based on Jeffrey Eugenides’s 1993 novel, it focuses on five seemingly regular adolescent sisters in mid-’70s America who carry out a suicide pact, and the infatuated boys who struggle to make sense of the tragedy. Beautifully shot, and with a sublime soundtrack from French group Air, it’s a real treat for the senses.

Battle Royale

This bloody slice of dystopian action-horror from Japan has had an outsized effect on popular culture in the 21st century. The Hunger Games writer Suzanne Collins might swear off any previous knowledge of Kinji Fukasaku’s film, but the core set-up of teens battling to the death was seen here first. Meanwhile, an entire genre of online video games has been directly inspired by and indeed named after the movie. Meanwhile, the original film still packs a serious punch some 25 years on.

The Beach

Almost 20 years before he became a respected film maker, Alex Garland wrote a zeitgeist-capturing novel called The Beach. British director Danny Boyle chose to adapt it, casting an ascendent Leonardo Di Caprio in the lead role as a jaded young westerner stumbling across a boho island commune. While the resulting film lacks the thematic heft of the original book, the cinematography is genuinely stunning, while the hyperactive camera work and dance-heavy soundtrack serve as a sharp snapshot of the time.

Requiem for a Dream

Darren Aronofsky’s follow up to his critically lauded debut, Pi, didn’t attempt to make things any easier for his audience. This is as insightful and downright harrowing a portrayal of drug addiction as you’re likely to find in a vaguely mainstream film, as we follow four characters with varying types of chemical dependency. There are no happy endings here, as we witness our leads spiralling into a complete breakdown of their health, sanity, and relationships. It’s grim but essential viewing.

High Fidelity

Stephen Frears’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel seamlessly transplants the drama from London to Chicago, as John Cusack’s music obsessive is forced to contend with his stop-start love life. Given the nature of his hobby, not to mention his day job running a hip record store, our protagonist does so by coming up with a top five list of his biggest romantic failures, forcing him down a path of reconciliation and self-enlightenment. Sweet, funny, and painfully perceptive.

Traffic

Stephen Steven Soderbergh’s tenth film won the director his first and only Oscar, as well as handing the best supporting actor award to Benicio del Toro. You can see why it captured the Academy’s attention, with its clever use of multiple viewpoints, its high quality ensemble cast (Don Cheadle, Michael Douglas, Dennis Quaid and Catherine Zeta-Jones also star), and its multi-faceted take on the international drug trade. And to think, it’s all based on a UK Channel 4 series from the late ’80s.

Amores Perros

Alejandro González Iñárritu’s debut film forms the first part of a loosely aligned ‘Trilogy of Death’, which also takes in 21 Grams and Babel. Like Traffic (see elsewhere on this list), it cleverly intertwines three distinct stories through an ensemble cast. Using a horrific Mexico City car crash as the meeting point for three disparate stories, this intense drama shows us the complex lives of a poor young teen (played by Gael García Bernal), a model (Goya Toledo), and a hitman (Emilio Echevarría).

Sexy Beast

Jonathan Glazer had only made three films in more than 20 years before he achieved Oscar success with The Zone of Interest. The first of these was Sexy Beast, and it’s quite the calling card. This distinctive tale of British gangsters on the lam stars Ray Winstone as suntanned ex-criminal Gary, living out a harmonious retirement on the Costa del Sol. His peace is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Ben Kingsley’s Don Logan, a psychotic former acquaintance with a bold new idea for a heist.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

The Coen brothers were on a roll at the turn of the millennium, and chose to follow up on the brilliant Fargo and The Big Lebowski with an even stranger film. O Brother, Where Art Thou? combines elements of Greek myth, high farce, and bluegrass music into one hypnotic odyssey. George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson play a trio of escaped convicts during the depression era, who embark on a journey to claim a fabled hidden treasure. It’s a movie that’s impossible to classify, yet remarkably easy to enjoy.

Joint Security Area

Immediately before embarking on his landmark Vengeance trilogy, director Park Chan-wook made this incredibly tense thriller. Set in the titular real life demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, the movie’s central mystery concerns a violent confrontation between guards from opposing sides. When a neutral investigation is launched, it’s left up to Lee Young-ae’s Swiss Army Major Sophie E. Jean to get to the bottom of the incident and restore the fragile peace between these two warring nations.

Cast Away

The star and director of smash hit Forrest Gump teamed up again some six years later for a much leaner, more personal film. Cast Away has arguably aged a lot better. This period around the millennium saw Tom Hanks daring to stray outside of his lovable everyman schtick and exploring new emotional ground. While his stranded FedEx worker has charm and integrity to burn, there’s also a fair amount of psychological torment on display here, not to mention an extreme physical transformation.

Best In Show

Written and directed by Christopher Guest of This Is Spinal Tap fame, Best In Show follows a similar mockumentary format, but this time delves into the decidedly un-rock ‘n’ roll world of competitive dog shows. Its killer cast of comic talent features the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Eugene Levy, Michael McKean, Catherine O’Hara, and Parker Posey, who are all walking a tightrope of semi-improvisional silliness. They manage to reach the other side with a straight face, which is more than can be said for the film’s audiences.

Billy Elliot

Stephen Daldry’s warm-hearted drama was the most unlikely of breakout hits, concerning as it does the burgeoning ballet career of a young boy in the tough surrounds of North East England during the mid-‘80s miners’ strike. It’s a crowd pleasing film all about following your dreams, but it also has plenty to say about class and outdated ideas of masculinity. The film also features a star-making turn from a young Jamie Bell in the title role.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Ang Lee’s wuxia epic swept all before it in 2000, winning four Oscars and a whole heap of other accolades besides. It’s no mystery why even 25 years later, with its graceful high-wire martial arts battles often indistinguishable from finely choreographed dance numbers. The cinematography, too, is on another level to pretty much anything else released that year. None of it is remotely subtle, but this the kind of grand cinema that sweeps you along for the ride.

Wonder Boys

Adapted by Curtis Hanson from a Michael Chabon novel, Wonder Boys offers a darkly comic view of university campus life. Michael Douglas plays professor Grady Tripp, a novelist struggling over his second book while teaching creative writing at a prestigious US college. Tripp’s increasingly messy personal and work life gradually collide in a brilliantly offbeat yet incisive fashion. Wonder Boys is witty, impeccably tasteful stuff, aided by capable support turns from Tobey Maguire, Frances McDormand and Rip Torn.

Chicken Run

Ask any Brit what Aardman Animations means to them, and they’ll likely say Wallace and Gromit. Anyone else would be more likely to name Chicken Run, which was the company’s first full-length movie and breakout international hit. It’s essentially a classic wartime prison escape movie, but the inmates here are a group of claymation chickens led by the charismatic American rooster Rocky Rhodes (Mel Gibson). Aardman might have been shooting for a wider audience here, but Chicken Run retains its quirky British charm.

Snatch

Two years after Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels introduced us to his geezer-filled world, Guy Ritchie returned with a second British gangster romp. If anything, Snatch is even more ambitious, with A-list acting talent (Brad Pitt) added into the mix. This time the hyperactive plot entails a European diamond heist, underground boxing, and the Irish traveller community. All of it is shot through with Ritchie’s customary blend of snappy dialogue, cheeky humour, and lashings of violence.

Chopper

Seven years before working with Brad Pitt on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and more than 20 years before he released his controversial take on Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, Andrew Dominik made his cinematic debut with Chopper. This brutal biopic tells the true story of Mark “Chopper” Read, a violent Australian criminal-turned-author, and his time spent in and out of jail. Hollywood was clearly paying attention to the film’s charismatic lead, Eric Bana, who would go on to have quite the decade.

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