The Decade's Best: #11-#20

Whether you hear Lionel & Diana or Luther & Mariah when I say these soothing words, it's all about endless love by the time we've climbed this high in my Best of the 00s Countdown.

Even in a week that keeps forcing me into carpy, dyspeptic grumpiness—because some holiday classics just aren't as good as I had expected, and some current holiday releases are inestimably worse, and even some tried-and-allegedly-true mainstays of the American cinematic canon, whether screened alone or in auspicious company, strike me as sturdy but deeply flawed, although most people disagree—I'll always have some films to revisit in an adoring way, just like Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris.

From Korea to the Yukon, from Pakistan to London, from Romania to Iran, from North Carolina to, um, Virginia, and on one occasion in eleven different nations at once, the world is a better place with moviemakers like these working at the top of their game, having this much to show us, and this much to say.