Ten years in our world clock is a small time, but for that pesky mass art form called film, ten years can be a long time. With a few major studio films every weekend, along with a number of smaller films, and hundreds more online these days, it can be hard to keep track of what cinema really is anymore. And now the medium itself—the filmstrips that pass through light—is disappearing from the theaters, as more of us skip the multiplex to watch on a screen inside our pocket. The cinema! What has become of you? And what has become of us? Movies right now are making more money than they have ever, but they have become also disastrously unprofitable; the amount of production cost, marketing cost, and everything else makes the cinema one of the worst financial endeavors one can take on. Yet we still made them, tracing from an epic recreation of the Colosseum in 2000 to an entire planet complete with its own ecosystem and creatures as real as one could ever imagine in 2009. And at the same time, they got even smaller—now five people can get together for a couple weeks and make films that are shown along the most important directors in the world at Cannes.

    But as I reflect upon the past decade in cinema, I think about how just ten years ago, I barely knew a thing about that magical screen. I was not even in high school at the time, and watched mainly action films. My father had shown me Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal once—it did not go as well as he hoped. Yet I soon grew passion for the medium. I wanted to understand it, control it, and explain how every bit of it worked. I watched Pulp Fiction for the first time in 2004, and was an awe of how Quentin Tarantino did not follow the formula I expected. My film passion grew not only because I watched so many movies from this decade, but so many from every other decade. And the more I knew about the cinema, the more I knew I knew absolutely nothing about it.  The cinema! Instead of asking what has become of you, I should ask what has become of me. You, cinema, made me defy my set path of life toward science, barreling me down a path that has carved much of my life.

    But enough about my own endeavors—I write my lists today, not to jump on the bandwagon (otherwise they would have been published weeks ago), but instead to give thanks to the movies and filmmakers that have made this decade worthwhile. I counted over 750 films I have seen from this decade—some I hated, but much more I have enjoyed. Who ever said the movies had become worse than they were years ago? Right now is the greatest time to be a film critic. We are discovering new filmmakers every day, and watching old masters grow in craft and skill. Cinema is just as it was 100 years ago, even if it comes out of the pocket—it still fascinates us the same way an audience was fascinated by the arrival of a train in a short from the Lumiere brothers.

    I present three lists in my recognition of the decade of the 2000s—My top 20 American films, my top 10 foreign films, and my top 10 filmmakers of the decade. I do not split American films from the rest of the world because they are better, but alas, I have seen too much from my home country, and instead wish to give a chance to the voices from around the world to speak as well. I have also written an article dedicated to my favorite filmmaker of the 2000s: Steven Soderbergh, who truly reflects the themes, aesthetics, and innovations of the new millennium. So click to the right, and learn what films from this decade, to me personally, are truly worth remembering.