With directors like Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, and Michel Gondry at the height of their game, the 2000s were a great decade for movies. From the corruption of oil baron Daniel Plainview to the gladiatorial career of Maximus Decimus Meridius, some timeless stories were getting told on the big screen, capturing the imaginations of audiences everywhere.

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Unfortunately, the decade was also rampant with Oscar bait. Studios and producers figured out the Academy’s criteria for a Best Picture winner — true stories, social issues, larger-than-life performances etc. — and made a bunch of disingenuous dramas to capitalize on that and win awards.

Best: Million Dollar Baby (2004)

Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby

Although it was marketed as a female version of Rocky, Clint Eastwood’s boxing drama Million Dollar Baby is a lot more sobering than that. Whereas Rocky is an uplifting tale of an underdog finding love, Million Dollar Baby is a heartbreaking story about an ambitious fighter with a bright future who’s disabled by a spiteful opponent.

After the iconic midpoint twist with the overturned stool, Million Dollar Baby turns into a harrowing tragedy about what happens to an optimist’s psyche when all their hopes are dashed in one fell swoop.

Worst: Amelia (2009)

After giving one of the best performances of the decade in Million Dollar Baby, Hilary Swank dropped the ball in Amelia, a dreadful biopic of Amelia Earheart told almost entirely in flashbacks before ending with the aviator’s mysterious disappearance.

The best biopics are character studies that go beyond history to dig into their subject’s personal faults, but Ronald Bass and Anna Hamilton Phelan’s Amelia script just rattles off all of Earheart’s achievements without rounding her out as a person.

Best: Requiem For A Dream (2000)

Requiem for a Dream

Darren Aronofsky expertly used cinematography and editing to capture the psychological nightmare of living with addiction in Requiem for a Dream. It was somewhat controversial for conflating an addiction to food with an addiction to drugs, but the performances by the central quartet of Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans are spectacular.

After making a strong directorial debut with Pi, Requiem for a Dream is the movie that really put Aronofsky on the map, paving the way for The Fountain, The Wrestler, and Black Swan.

Worst: The Lovely Bones (2009)

With lead performances in movies like Brooklyn and Lady Bird, Saoirse Ronan has since proven herself to be one of the finest actors working today, but The Lovely Bones didn’t give her enough of a chance to spread her wings.

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After helming The Lord of the Rings trilogy and his surprisingly awesome remake of King Kong, Peter Jackson finally disappointed audiences with a confused and lukewarm take on the afterlife.

Best: Brokeback Mountain (2005)

One of the biggest blunders in Oscar history — perhaps the second biggest, after “Envelopegate” — was Crash winning the Best Picture award over Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain. Whereas Crash capitalizes on a cheap “racism bad” message, Brokeback Mountain isn’t looking to preach about a social issue.

In simply following Jack and Ennis’ romance like any love story, set during a time when society wouldn’t let two men be together, Lee said everything that needed to be said about the plight of same-sex couples without cramming Crash-style “hot takes” down the audience’s throat.

Worst: Seven Pounds (2008)

With a great script and a director who knows what they’re doing, Will Smith can be a truly great actor — just look at Concussion, Enemy of the State, Six Degrees of Separation.

However, on many occasions, he’s been let down by less-that-stellar filmmakers who waste his talents. Seven Pounds is a prime example of that, botching its interesting premise.

Best: Monster’s Ball (2001)

Monster's Ball

There are some deeply complex ideas at play in Marc Forster’s Monster’s Ball. Halle Berry became the first woman of color — and, shockingly, remains the only woman of color — to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her powerful performance in this movie.

Billy Bob Thornton plays a racist corrections officer who starts dating Berry’s character, an impoverished single mother, unaware that he executed her husband. This movie is a masterclass in acting, while the screenplay is brilliantly thought-provoking.

Worst: Alexander (2004)

After many failed attempts at an Alexander the Great biopic, Oliver Stone finally managed to get one made... and it thoroughly disappointed. Its runtime pushes three interminable hours and, in all that time, Alexander never feels like a real person.

Stone’s film is certainly ambitious, aiming to be a giant cinematic portrait of one of history’s most fascinating legends, but it falls far short of those ambitions.

Best: There Will Be Blood (2007)

The oil rig on fire in There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is the ultimate American epic, charting the rise and fall of a corrupt oil baron, Daniel Plainview, played by Daniel Day-Lewis in one of the finest performances in film history. Anderson keeps the large scale of the movie focused on Plainview’s descent into madness.

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Robert Elswit’s cinematography achieves a naturalistic look that few historical movies manage to capture, while Jonny Greenwood’s Grammy-nominated score gives the film ominous undertones.

Worst: I Am Sam (2001)

Sean Penn hugging Dakota Fanning in I Am Sam

Sean Penn’s performance as a man with an intellectual disability in I Am Sam is the definition of Oscar bait. He might as well have ended every scene by looking at the camera and saying, “Hey, Academy, gimme an award!”

Jessie Nelson’s direction oversimplifies its challenging subject matter and plasters an annoyingly thick layer of sentimentality over the events of the story.

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