Total Film's 100 Best Movies of the 2000s

Although technically, the new millennium dawned on January 1st 2001, the new decade of films (and film history) began on January 1, 2000. It began with trumped fears over Y2K and major terrorists attacks on 9/11/2001, was marked at its midpoint with the devastating natural disasters of the Asian tsunami of 2004 and of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and ended with the financial meltdown of the economy (the second crash and recession of the decade). The end of the decade was punctuated by James Cameron's revolutionary and major blockbuster film Avatar (2009), the highest grossing (domestic) film of 2009 - and of the decade. [It became only the fifth film in movie history to exceed $1 billion in worldwide grosses, and did so in less than 3 weeks.] The film soon surpassed the highest-grossing (worldwide) film of all-time - Cameron's own Titanic (1997).