Best of 2000: Film

4. L'origine du XXIeme siecle (Jean-Luc Godard) Godard's first completed work of the new century wonders where the old one could have gone. A heartbreaker.

5. Arbor Vitae (Nathaniel Dorsky) and Time and Tide (Peter Hutton) New films from "two of the greatest silent filmmakers of the sound era," as independent curator Mark McElhatten put it.

6. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai) A work of consummate artistry.

7. Fah Talai Jone (Wisit Sasanatieng) A thrillingly unclassifiable, highly entertaining re-creation of various lost Thai genres--more fun than Guy Maddin.

8. Not Forgotten (Makoto Shinozaki) Beautifully written, structured, and acted, a sharp, moving portrait of contemporary Japan through the eyes of its lost youth and forgotten elders.

9. Taboo (Nagisa Oshima) Wry but electrifying, a movie only an old master could make.

10. Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe) Why all the complaints? Movies this fun don't grow on trees.

Runners-up: Yi Yi (Edward Yang), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee), and Space Cowboys (Clint Eastwood).

DAVID BORDWELL, film historian: The Mission marks a new high for the enterprising Hong Kong director Johnnie To, who once again pumps fresh life into the noir thriller. Running Kitano and Melville through a Hong Kong blender, The Mission is a triumph of abstract style, dark humor, and daringly fractured plotting.

J. HOBERMAN, critic: The year's best unreleased film (and the strongest Chinese movie in a decade), Jia Zhang Je's concrete but elliptical, superbly detached three-hour epic meditates on the mutation of the propaganda-performing Fenyang Peasant Culture Group into the equally cheesy All Star Rock and Breakdance Electronic Band: Platform is Pop art as history.

BARBARA KRUGER, artist: Bamboozled is Spike Lee's latest reckoning with the impossibilities of race in America. Despite an ungood performance by Damon Wayans, this powerful satire is loaded with gorgeously potent musical numbers. Lee again proves himself a compelling artist, bravely grappling with the stuff that counts. Let's hope his dedication to Budd Schulberg is kind of ironic.

RICHARD FLOOD, curator: Pola X by Leos Carax. Beautiful blond boy with beautiful blond mother and beautiful blond fiancee meets beautiful brunette who turns out to be a metaphor for Eastern Europe and, just maybe, his sister. A totally insane, brilliant, stupid film by an unquestionable auteur.

SHARON LOCKHART, artist: What could be better than watching members of the French Foreign Legion hang laundry, iron uniforms, and do calisthenics in unison? Agnes Godard's lush cinematography and the mixture of music, silence, and abstract narrative make Claire Denis's Beau Travail a film you could watch over and over.

PAUL PFEIFFER, artist: Tarsem Singh's The Cell. Cinematically unremarkable, visually mind-blowing--an indication that film aesthetics and storytelling have finally given way to pure visual intensity. It's not the movies anymore, but a cross between MTV, a thrill ride, and computer-simulated warfare.