The 101 Movies of 2025

While it’s been quiet here since September, believe it or not, I have been watching and writing and working on things - including catching up with 2025 releases! After all, the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards will be announced January 22nd, just eight days hence….

The 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards Winners

Very late, but here they are! You thrilled at the Top Ten, pored over the nominations, and now - the winners of the 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards:

The 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards Nominations

After 122 movies and several months, here are the nominees for the 2000 Retro Hollmann Awards:

My Top Ten of 2000

Not to be too contrarian, but only two movies in my Top Ten were nominated at the Academy Awards, none of them for Best Picture, two nods and zero wins between them. Not to play favorites, but four of my Top Ten are not just films I'd seen before, but films I'd seen many times before. As for my almost-made-its, here they are, linking to my original reviews: Almost Famous, American Psycho, Billy Elliot, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Mission to Mars, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Red Planet, Snatch, Vatel, The Virgin Suicides, and What Women Want.

And now, the Top Ten...in alphabetical order:

Up for Grabs?: Best Picture, 2000

When Awards Season began, everyone said the race was wide open. The Los Angeles Film Critics chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as Best Film, the New York Film Critics Circle chose Traffic as Best Film, the National Board of Review named Quills the Best Film of 2000, and the Golden Globes gave Almost Famous its award for Best Picture - Musical/Comedy. As always, the race narrowed as the year continued. Gladiator won the BAFTA for Best Film, the Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama, and the PGA Award for Outstanding Producers of Theatrical Motion Pictures.

The final group of nominees came down to: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, and Traffic. And the film that kept winning, did so again:

As I fully reviewed all the other films of the year in order of their release, I shall do the same here, before ranking them:

A Double Dose of Soderbergh: Best Director, 2000

Only thrice has one person taken two slots for Best Director. Clarence Brown did it at the 3rd Academy Awards, Michael Curtiz did it at the 11th Academy Awards, and Steven Soderbergh did it at the 73rd Academy Awards.

One of the big stories of the season was Soderbergh's double whammy of Erin Brockovich, proving to be more than "just" a Julia Roberts vehicle, and Traffic, the all-star drug trade epic proving to be just as entertaining as it was Important. But despite being the critics' pick, it was believed he would split his own vote and go home empty-handed. Besides, there were two other more likely would-be winners. One was Ridley Scott, who helmed the movie that, after all, many believed would win, Gladiator. The other was Ang Lee, Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, who was winning the battle against foreign language bias: the Golden Globes, the British Academy, and even the Directors Guild of America named him the Best of the Year. He had the momentum, the industry vote. Rounding out the five was Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry, this year's representative of Audience-Friendly British Entertainment.

In the end was the beginning. That is to say, the critics awards got it right:

Had I a ballot, here's how I would rank them:

The Sure Thing: Best Actress, 2000

If you were betting in your Oscars pool in 2000 and picked anyone but Julia Roberts to win Best Actress, you'd look like quite the dummy. No win in any category this year was as certain as hers.

There was only one major awards body that made no mention of Roberts: the New York Film Critics Circle. Eventual nominee Laura Linney won Best Actress for You Can Count on Me, with The House of Mirth's Gillian Anderson and Dancer in the Dark's Björk as runner-ups, and eventual Best Actress Oscar nominee Ellen Burstyn among the runner-ups for Supporting Actress for Requiem for a Dream. Otherwise, Roberts ran through awards season like General Sherman: the BAFTAs, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, the LA Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Critics Choice Awards, the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the Teen Choice Awards, and on and on and on until the night of the Oscars:

Had I a ballot, here's how I would rank them: