Despite being over two decades ago at this point, the 2000s don’t feel all that far away. Maybe that’s because trends—from Y2K fashion like low-rise jeans to beauty looks like glitter—are back in style, or because the pop culture is just so timeless.
From Elle Woods reminding us all that we can do anything we set our sights on to Napoleon Dynamite teaching us to just listen to our hearts, the best 2000s movies just hit differently. It was the decade that initiated the superhero craze, launched a handful of major franchises (some of which have since launched spinoffs or received the reboot treatment), saw the golden age of the rom-coms, found more diverse voices take a seat in the director’s chair, and welcomed a range of stories into the multiplex, predating the streaming
