The Year in Paul: 2001

What I’ve Seen

A Beautiful Mind

A Knight’s Tale

American Pie 2

Amelie

Atlantis: The Lost Empire

A Beautiful Mind

Black Hawk Down

Black Knight

Cats & Dogs

Cowboy Bebop: The Movie

Donnie Darko

Dr. Doolittle 2

Enemy at the Gates

Evolution

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

Legally Blonde

Millennium Actress

Monsters, Inc.

Not Another Tean Movie

Ocean’s 11

Pearl Harbor

Planet of the Ape

Recess: School’s Out

Rush Hour 2

Shrek

Spirited Away

Spy Kids

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

The Mark of Cain

The One

The Princess Diaries

The Royal Tenenbaums

Zoolander

34 Total

The Best of What I’ve Seen

5. Moulin Rouge!—Though the film has its problems (as pointed out in one of the Nostalgia Critic’s best videos), the sheer artistic vision of Luhrman’s frenetic and opulent musical still never ceases to dazzle me. Visually stunning, musically pleasing, and surprisingly emotional, this is Lurhman’s best film to date a major reason why I have remained solidly on Team Baz.

4. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (Top 100)—I’ve already gone into some detail about why I love this sadly overlooked Disney picture, but suffice it to say that if I were to make a list of the movies that I think are most critically and popularly underappreciated, this one would be pretty damn high.

3. Zoolander (Top 100)—And if I were to make that list, this one would be on there as well. One of my favorite comedies, this is one I’ve seen in full at least a dozen times, and it still completely holds up. Like The Emperor’s New Groove, this is one of those movies that almost no one I’ve met dislikes, and yet is somehow surprisingly lowly rated on IMDB and elsewhere. Maybe memories have been a little tainted for people a bit older than me—a major reason Zoolander was a disappointment at the box office was the fact that it was the first major release after 9/11.

2. Millennium Actress (Top 100)—Going from movies that are just underappreciated to one that is almost totally unknown, this animated Japanese gem from writer/director Satoshi Kon is a masterpiece of complex, interlaced storytelling (there’s a reason Inception is compared to Kon’s work). It’s fascinating and deeply engaging from a structural standpoint, and gorgeously animated, but its real strength is the genuinely deep emotional beats it hits. A movie that deserves a much larger audience than it has gotten thus far—though I suppose then I’d have to come up with another answer to the question “what’s the best movie I’ve never heard of?”

1. The Fellowship of the Ring (Top 10)—Time to end on a more conventional note. Though I usually think of The Lord of the Rings as one movie, for the purposes of this list I’ll split them up—after all, I suppose they did technically come out in different years. It’s a question that I’ve changed my mind one at least a half dozen times, but right now if you asked me which of the individual LotR films is my favorite, this one would probably be my answer. It (unsurprisingly, for a first installment) features a better self-contained story, has my favorite sequence of the trilogy (Moria), and the strength of the most Ian McKellan and Sean Bean screentime. Regardless, this is a brilliant movie, and pretty damn close to a perfect cinematic experience. 2001 was a strong year in film, but nothing came even close to approaching the first installment of Peter Jackson’s masterpiece.

What I Haven’t Seen

A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Ali

Bridget Jones’ Diary

Brotherhood of the Wolf

Ghost World

Gosford Park

Hannibal

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

I Am Sam

In the Bedroom

Iris

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

The Majestic

The Man Who Wasn’t There

Metropolis

Monkeybone

Monster’s Ball

Mulholland Drive

No Man’s Land

Training Day

Vanilla Sky

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