Hey, Watch It!

The film critics of The Times make their cases for 10 of the best movies of 2000

A Chinese Buffy, clay chickens, and a slightly cheesy Tom Hanks highlight some of the top films of the past year, according to New York Times movie critics Stephen Holden, Elvis Mitchell, and A.O. Scott. (Somehow Scary Movie didn't make the cut.)

Hamlet

In his Shakespeare update, director Michael Almereyda roots Hamlet in an actual place--Manhattan--and employs the dramatic contradictions of contemporary New York City for all of their tremendous possibilities. What better headquarters for rampant paranoia and epic depression is there? The visual strategies he brings to bear are matched by his staging of the actors; the soliloquies of Hamlet (Ethan Hawke) are now interior monologues, and characters keep tabs on their world and feelings through video monitoring. (R)

--Elvis Mitchell

Traffic

Steven Soderbergh's despairing film interweaves the parallel stories of drug traffickers and law enforcers to create a riveting panorama of greed, corruption, and social decay. Michael Douglas is a newly appointed U.S. drug czar (with a teenage daughter who freebases cocaine) investigating this treacherous territory. The brilliant cast includes Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Dennis Quaid, and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The movie makes absolutely clear why the war on drugs as it has been waged so far in the United States cannot be won. (R)

--Stephen Holden

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 

Few could parody the loony conventions of the Hong Kong action film and simultaneously give them dramatic weight. The director, Ang Lee, comes through on both counts, giving the martial-arts sequences the exuberant radiance of musical numbers and making each of them advance the story. The female characters aren't simply defined by men. They make their own decisions, and suffer for their choices. This is Jane Austen's Bully the Vampire Slayer. (PG-13)

--E.M.

Chicken Run

What could it mean that the year's best crisis-of-conscience melodrama should feature a cast of animated clay barn fowl? Who cares? Nick Park and Peter Lord, the claymation geniuses behind the beloved Wallace and Gromit shorts, make their feature debut in grand style, creating a world full of improbable gadgetry, unlikely heroism, and much madcap humor. A perfect movie. (G)

--A.O. Scott

Nurse Betty

In the darkly comic fairy tale, an aspiring nurse (Renee Zellweger) afflicted with traumatic amnesia after witnessing her husband's murder, travels to Los Angeles to marry her favorite soap opera character, a handsome doctor (Greg Kinnear). As the killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) pursue her, the movie becomes a hilarious and poignant reflection on the American addiction to Hollywood fantasy. (R)

--S.H.

Black and White

Writer-director James Toback's noisy and boisterous take on current race relations--and the romance with African-American culture--deserves note if only because he got much of the Wu Tang Clan to show up on the set at the same time. Black and White is a world where cultures and hungers collide. Everyone here has something that somebody else wants. Some of the film is spotty, but all of it is worth watching, especially Robert Downey Jr., and boxer Mike Tyson as Mike Tyson, the movie's voice of reason. (R)

--E.M.

You Can Count on Me

Kenneth Lonergan's film is a beautifully written story of ordinary life about a sister and brother working out their issues in upstate New York. The phony sentiment that corrupts movies like Pay It Forward and Bounce makes Lonergan's restraint, as well as the intelligence of Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo in the main roles, seem miraculous. (R)

--A.O.S.

Requiem for a Dream 

Lurid, splashy, and powerful, this is director Darren Aronofsky's all-American take on self-destruction, in a film that fixates on the rituals of drug addiction. Aronofsky--who may direct the next Batman movie--gets strong performances from his cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans, as unlikely a group as you can see. (Unrated)

--E.M.

Cast Away

The heart of this modern-day Robinson Crusoe drama about a FedEx employee shipwrecked after a plane crash in the Pacific comes as close as a Hollywood movie has ever done to conveying the loneliness, fear, and sheer craziness of being stranded on a desert island. But in true Hollywood fashion, it's bookended by a schmaltzy love story. (PG-13)

--S.H.

The Yards

Writer-director James Gray's dedication to craft and storytelling generates excitement in the tale of a young man (Mark Wahlberg) returning home from prison who ruins the lives of his friends and family by trying to do what's right. An artfully rendered descent into nightmare. (R)

--E.M.