The Top 40 Films of the 2000s: 30-21

30. MARIA FULL OF GRACE, Joshua Marsten (2004). Those who swear off foreign films are missing movies like this. Catalina Sandino Moreno was Oscar-nominated for her portrayal of a pregnant Columbian teenager who takes a job as a drug mule to get to the U.S. One of the most terrifying films of the decade, filled with sadness, intensity and suspense.

29. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE, David Cronenberg (2005). Cronenberg and the fantastic Viggo Mortensen made two stunners this decade, but this one gets the slight edge over the more showy "Eastern Promises." It's a captivating look at how violence can affect an individual and a family that grows richer with repeated viewings.

28. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, Ang Lee (2005). Now often the butt of jokes, the cultural impact of this film cannot be denied. Slightly-long, a little slow, and deeply effective on a profound, emotional level. A revelatory love story of its time, whether you allowed yourself to be comfortable with it or not.

27. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, Joel & Ethan Coen (2007). Like my pick before this one, here's a film that took conventions of the Western and spun and updated them. Cormac McCarthy, an excellent writer, is the basis for Hitchcockian suspense and terror in the hands of an unforgettable Javier Bardem performance and the Coen brothers, who almost made my list two other times (with "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?").

26. UNITED 93, Paul Greengrass (2006). Waiting just long enough for America to be able to face the domestic tragedy of the decade on a movie screen, the electric Greengrass (a whiz with his Bourne films) casts a bunch of no-names and directs the hell out of this portrait of the hijacked plane that ended up in a field in Pennsylvania. Not one to watch multiple times because it's that hard to watch. But it's not like you'd forget it, anyway.

25. MAN ON WIRE, James Marsh (2008). The best tribute to the now-gone World Trade Center was this gorgeous, Oscar-winning documentary, my favorite of the decade. Recreating the plan to get French tightrope walker Philippe Petit to the top of the twin towers in the early 1970s, the film gracefully fails to acknowledge that the towers are now gone and, instead, highlights the passion of pursuing one's art to the rhythm of a fast-paced action/heist film.

24. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND, Michel Gondry (2004). With an imaginative narrative structure that helps to tell the story, this film cemented Jim Carrey's status as an actor to be taken seriously and is but one example of the power of Kate Winslet, perhaps my favorite actress of the decade.

23. MOULIN ROUGE!, Baz Luhrmann (2001). Though not necessarily my favorite musical of the decade, this film (to a greater extent than "Dancer in the Dark") deserves credit for reigniting the musical as a viable commercial art form in cinema once again. A dazzling specatcle, Luhrmann closed his red curtain trilogy with fabulous art direction, cinematography, costumes and lighting, and ushered in the era of serious actors trying their hand at a tune that Woody Allen poked at a few years prior with "Everyone Says I Love You." All shamltz and melodramatic goodness.

22. BEFORE SUNSET, Richard Linklater (2004). A gorgeous, quiet film reuniting Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy nine years after they first fell in love in "Before Sunrise." My favorite romance film of the decade, it's an 80-minute film about four hours out of the lives of two one-time lovers who, inexplicably, are able to see each other one more time.

21. Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, Alfonso Cuaron (2001). A fantastic coming-of-age film, albeit one filled with graphic sex, and a hard-to-forget male fantasy film as two teenage boys in Mexico embark on a road trip with a sexy, older woman. Caliente!