"Crouching Tiger" and the Foreign Language Films of 2000

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000. 

Juliette Binoche and Jack Valenti announcing Best Foreign Language Film.

by Juan Carlos Ojano

Coming into the 73rd Academy Awards, the results of the Foreign Language Film category must have felt like the biggest lock of the night (this writer can only assume based on hindsight since he was only a five-year old bébé at the time). Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the perfect storm when it hit American audiences. The film came from an established filmmaker, Ang Lee, who had made several critical and commercial hits in English and otherwise, the storytelling was tailored to better suit Western sensibilities, it featured international stars known to the English-speaking film market, it received rave reviews and enormous box office returns, and it was both partially funded and widely distributed by a major American studio...

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Gladiator: A dormant genre awakens!

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000

by Cláudio Alves

One way to confirm a work of art's importance and influence - not necessarily its quality - is to see how much subsequent creations tried to imitate it. How many creators have attempted to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time, whether by blatant copy or freeform inspiration? This is especially true of mainstream cinematic successes. A surplus of movies can triumph at the box office any given year. Not nearly as many can claim to have birthed a string of copycats or revived a genre after decades of obscurity. Say what you want about Gladiator, but that Best Picture champion did accomplish such feats, for better and worse… 

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2000: The Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Eartha Kitt in "The Emperor's New Groove"

Team Experience is revisiting the movies of 2000 as we approach Thursday's Smackdown

by Nick Taylor

Is it even worth arguing that The Emperor’s New Groove is the last great animated comedy Disney has made? They’ve certainly made funny movies since then, but have they done anything as purely interested in being funny, let alone made a film that finds so many different ways to be that? Especially given the hellish status of its production history and patently lower budget as a result of all that mess, the success of The Emperor's New Groove is legitimately miraculous (I will not be going over that fraught history in any detail here, but please do check out The Sweatbox, the documentary of the production made by Sting’s wife Trudie Styler). Yes, sometimes it can feel a bit cheap if you look too close or stare too long, but the buoyant colors and unabashedly cartoony style give its absurd silliness exactly the right spring in its step. It’s the film the comedic parts of Hercules wishes it could be, or if the Robin Williams parts of were Aladdin stretched into a whole feature, nailing a culture and era-specific setting and form stylized art that’s somehow in sync with a thoroughly modern comedic sensibility. Coming in at a brisk 78 minutes, you get the feeling of a film that’s packed as many jokes into itself as possible while being exactly as long as it needs to be, walking away with an incredible laugh-per-minute ratio.

What feels even surer is that The Emperor’s New Groove has the last great villains to grace a Disney animated film since it debuted... 

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2000: The Top Ten Best Lines From "Erin Brockovich"

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

This is a place for legends only - (from left to right) Conchata Farrell, Julia Roberts, Albert Finney.

by Christopher James

The old saying “They don’t make them like they used to” is both tired and true. You won’t find another movie as quotable and inspiring as Erin Brockovich. Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 drama was the truest definition of a four-quadrant hit if there ever was one. Julia Roberts starred in the titular role as a blue-collar single mother who ends up taking on PG&E for poisoning the town of HInkley, California. Roberts deservedly won the Best Actress Oscar for her work in the movie, which perfectly uses her gifts as a movie star, rom-com Queen and dramatic actor.

Even more miraculous than the central performance is Susannah Grant’s incredible screenplay. It was nominated for Best Original Screenplay, losing to Almost Famous. Not only does she make a two hour plus procedural about water contamination feel riveting at every turn, she also makes it funny. Erin Brockovich is loaded with one liners that are guaranteed to make you laugh, cheer or cry. The movie works every one of your emotions, without every feeling manipulating or tonally inconsistent.  Relive the 10 best lines from the classic film after the jump...

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2000: "The Contender" and Three Varying Oscar Journeys

In preparation for the next Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

By Ben Miller

Revisiting Rod Lurie’s The Contender, the three primary performances of Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman still pop off the screen.  All three had been critically lauded before the political drama and earned rave reviews for their performances.  Oddly, the film serves as the unintentional catalyst for the Oscar trajectory of all three actors.  In the next 20 years, two would win Oscars, while the other has yet to be nominated again...

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