70 items
Cillian Murphy wakes from a coma to an emptied Britain: the Rage virus, grainy DV cameras, and infected that sprint. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland's $8 million nightmare reinvented the zombie movie's speed limit — even though, as every pedant will happily tell you, they're infected, not zombies. For a generation this was the scariest thing a friend's older brother ever put on.
Steve Carell gets his chest waxed for real, screams "Kelly Clarkson!", and a whole era of comedy begins. Judd Apatow's 2005 directing debut turned a sweet-natured premise — a middle-aged guy who never quite got around to it — into the decade's comedy blueprint.
Alrighty then. A pet detective in a Hawaiian shirt talks out of his own rear end, rescues the Miami Dolphins' kidnapped mascot, and turns a $15 million comedy into the launchpad of Jim Carrey's insane 1994. Critics hated it; recess quoted it for years.
The SNL goofball who became a box-office machine — Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy. In the '90s his man-child comedies and shouty voices made him one of the most bankable comedians alive.
"Stay classy, San Diego." Will Ferrell's mustachioed 1970s news anchor Ron Burgundy and his idiot news team gave the 2000s an endlessly quotable comedy — "I love lamp," "60% of the time, it works every time."
The Austrian bodybuilder who became the biggest action star on the planet. The Terminator made him iconic in the 80s; the early 90s — Total Recall, Kindergarten Cop, T2, True Lies — made him inescapable. The accent launched a thousand imitations, all of them affectionate.
Mike Myers as the swinging spy, the bald nemesis, and eventually half the cast — a three-film Bond parody whose catchphrases colonized every schoolyard in 1999. The humor ran racy for its era; the craft underneath is what stuck.
The blue-people movie that broke the all-time box-office record and put 3D glasses on the entire planet. James Cameron waited a decade for the technology to match his vision — then spent a quarter-billion dollars proving it was worth the wait.
Two slackers wander into what they think is a mall looking for a bathroom and get hermetically sealed into a year-long ecological experiment. Critics handed it a 1/100 on Metacritic — tied for the lowest score in the site's history; kids with cable memorized every line anyway. Bio-Dome is the purest specimen of the gap between what the industry decided and what actually lived on late-night rotation.
The blue-and-yellow torn-ticket empire where Friday nights meant wandering the new-release wall, hoping the big movie wasn't rented out, and dreading the late fees. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster dominated home entertainment with 9,094 stores worldwide—until Netflix and streaming dismantled the whole business model.
Disney sold you a Narnia fantasy, and you got your heart broken instead. Bridge to Terabithia arrived in theaters February 2007 with trailers promising whimsy, woods adventures, and an imaginary kingdom. The film lied—or rather, Hollywood lied for it—and a generation of kids learned that sometimes the magical ending is grief.
The physical-comedy wrecking ball of '90s SNL — total commitment, full-body chaos, every moment played like the funniest thing that had ever happened. From Matt Foley's van down by the river to the Chippendales audition opposite Patrick Swayze, nobody gave more to a sketch than Chris Farley.
![Video thumbnail — Die Hard - Official® Trailer [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2TQ-pOvI6Xo/maxresdefault.jpg)
The film that made 'yippee-ki-yay' a holiday tradition and launched an endless argument: is it a Christmas movie? Spoiler: yes, and also no—but watching it in December became genuinely ingrained.
Vince Vaughn owns a scrappy neighborhood gym, Ben Stiller owns a corporate monstrosity, and the only way to save Average Joe's is to win a Vegas dodgeball tournament against all odds. Rip Torn shouts training mantras. The "if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball" line became instantly quotable. A $20 million gamble that returned $168 million at the global box office.
The film that nearly died at the box office six weeks after 9/11, then rose from the dead through midnight screenings and DVD to become the 2000s' defining cult artifact. A nightmarish fever dream about time loops and a rabbit suit that you'd lend to friends with just 'watch it' and argue about until 3 a.m.
The Farrelly brothers' breakout comedy starred Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels as two hopelessly incompetent best friends on a cross-country road trip. Dumb and Dumber capped Carrey's historically unprecedented 1994—the year he also starred in Ace Ventura and The Mask—and grossed nearly $250 million worldwide on a modest budget.
One chaotic day at an indie record store, a crew of lovable misfits, and a washed-up '80s pop star named Rex Manning. It bombed in theaters — then home video made it a cult classic, and fans still celebrate Rex Manning Day every April 8. Damn the Man. Save the Empire.
Two teenagers dig up a frozen caveman while excavating a backyard pool, thaw him out, and enroll him in high school. Brendan Fraser as Link, Sean Astin, and peak "weasel"-era Pauly Shore — critics gave it thumbs down, audiences gave it an A, and every '90s sleepover gave it another run.
Before she became a name, Eva Mendes was the girl in the music videos—Aerosmith, Will Smith, Pet Shop Boys. Then she broke into film at exactly the right moment to become a defining screen presence of the 2000s multiplex.
Tom Hanks' Forrest Gump stumbles through history itself, unintentionally shaping 1960s and 70s America with innocent determination. Robert Zemeckis' 1994 phenomenon grossed $678 million worldwide, won 6 Oscars including Best Picture and Best Actor, and made 'Life is like a box of chocolates' part of the language.
A numbed-out actor comes home to New Jersey for his mother's funeral, meets a girl who lies compulsively and feels everything, and slowly wakes up. Zach Braff wrote, directed, and starred in his 2004 indie debut while playing J.D. on Scrubs — and its Grammy-winning Shins-and-Coldplay soundtrack became the mixtape of the mid-2000s.
A young Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller rollerblade through a neon-drenched, absurdly rendered version of hacking where code is visualized as 3D graphics and 'Hack the planet!' became an unironic battle cry. Iain Softley's 1995 box-office flop became a beloved cult classic on the strength of its aesthetic audacity and a landmark electronic soundtrack.
A puzzle-box novel that shouldn't have worked, a film adaptation that shouldn't have worked, and somehow both did. Louis Sachar's Holes won the 1998 National Book Award and the 1999 Newbery Medal — then became an honest-to-god good movie.
![Video thumbnail — Home Alone - Official® Trailer [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Fmih-zWIjGY/maxresdefault.jpg)
Kevin McCallister is accidentally left behind when his family flies out for the holidays — and when two bumbling burglars invade, the eight-year-old's creative defenses (ice, tar, paint cans, and a very hot doorknob) turn the house into a gauntlet of booby traps. It became the defining Christmas movie of a generation, making Macaulay Culkin the most famous kid on the planet.
Pauly Shore in dog tags: two buddies join the Army Reserves to bankroll their dream electronics store — one weekend a month, two weeks a year, right? — and get shipped to an actual desert war. Nobody's idea of a critical darling, but a mid-90s cable staple a whole generation half-remembers without ever having chosen to watch it.
Born into Hollywood royalty but broke through on his own terms—as the troubled daydreamer who became every indie film's favorite wunderkind. By mid-decade, he'd pivoted into blockbusters without losing the arthouse credibility, proving the 2000s' best leading men didn't have to pick a lane.
The Canadian comic who became the biggest movie star on the planet in a single calendar year. In 1994, Ace Ventura, The Mask, and Dumb and Dumber made Jim Carrey the hyperkinetic face of the decade — rubber-faced, fearless, and everywhere.
Robin Williams as an adult sprung from a magical jungle game — stampeding rhinos, vine-swinging chaos, and a board game that destroys your house from the inside out. Joe Johnston's December 1995 film combined state-of-the-art CGI and animatronics to bring a children's book to vivid, dangerous life, grossing over $260 million worldwide and proving games were no longer safe fantasy.
Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel brought dinosaurs to life using groundbreaking CGI and animatronics, forever changing what movies could show. The film made $914 million, unseated E.T. as the highest-grossing film ever, and launched a dinosaur obsession that sold lunchboxes, toys, and taught a generation how to pronounce 'velociraptor.'
Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods, the pink-clad sorority queen who follows her ex to Harvard Law and out-lawyers everyone. A 2001 sleeper hit that made "bend and snap" a catchphrase and launched a franchise.
A wisecracking, gold-obsessed leprechaun rampages through rural North Dakota, and a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston is in his way. Mark Jones's 1993 horror-comedy was made for under a million dollars, spawned a franchise that went to space and the hood, and became a video-store rite of passage.
An orphan finds a pair of beat-up sneakers initialed 'MJ,' takes a lightning strike while rescuing them from a power line, and wakes up able to dunk on NBA starters. Lil' Bow Wow's 2002 fantasy was every playground daydream with a soundtrack.
A lonely girl named Lilo adopts what she thinks is a small dog in Hawaii — it's actually Experiment 626, an alien on the run — and their chaotic, heartwarming bond redefines what family means. Disney went back to watercolor-painted backgrounds for the first time since the 1940s, Elvis Presley's music soundtracked the tropics, and the core message stuck with a generation: Ohana means family, and family means nobody gets left behind.
The hands-on-cheeks scream that launched a thousand parodies. As Kevin McCallister in Home Alone, Culkin became the most famous child star on Earth — and, briefly, the highest-paid kid in Hollywood.
Four spoiled zoo animals, one island, and a lemur king ordering everyone to move it, move it. Madagascar arrived on May 27, 2005, as a DreamWorks bet on pure silliness that landed with kids and never quite left.
The teen comedy that defined 2000s school social hierarchies — cliques, calculation, and the crushing realization that you might be the problem. Mean Girls premiered in April 2004, written by SNL's Tina Fey, and immediately became the movie every middle and high school student quoted obsessively for the next decade.
A 2,000-pound gorilla with a heart of gold, a young Charlize Theron who'd known him since childhood, and Bill Paxton along for the ride. Disney's 1998 remake of the 1949 classic bombed in theaters against a $90 million budget — then did what 90s family creature-features do: became a cable and VHS staple every kid somehow saw.
Your closet door really was a portal to a monster city — and the scariest part was that the monsters were just doing their jobs. Pixar's Monsters, Inc. imagined a metropolis powered by children's screams, then let one giggling toddler named Boo dismantle the whole economy.
![Video thumbnail — MY GIRL [1991] - Official Trailer (HD)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KSyKO0Lklmo/maxresdefault.jpg)
A coming-of-age story set in a funeral home, anchored by Anna Chlumsky's Vada and Macaulay Culkin fresh off Home Alone — and then the bee scene happened. For a generation of kids, this was the sleepover movie that taught them movies could break your heart.
Nicolas Cage as a history-nerd treasure hunter who decides to steal the Declaration of Independence — because the treasure map is on the back. Bruckheimer gloss, a premise played completely straight, and one of the 2000s' great cable-rerun perennials.
Oscar winner one year, action god the next — Nicolas Cage followed Leaving Las Vegas with The Rock, Con Air, and Face/Off, then spent the 2000s as the franchise guy in everything. Total commitment to every premise, no matter how preposterous.
Ben Stiller takes the night-guard job at the American Museum of Natural History and discovers the exhibits come alive after dark — Robin Williams as a chatty Teddy Roosevelt, a tiny cowboy named Jedediah, and a premise so charming the real museum's holiday attendance jumped by about 50,000 visitors.
Eleven thieves, three casinos, $160 million in one underground vault. Steven Soderbergh's 2001 remake of the Rat Pack classic put George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts in the coolest movie of the decade — a heist so smooth it made crime look like a hangout.
A camera on a tripod, a bedroom door, and whatever it is that moves while they sleep. The $15,000 haunted-house movie that terrified test audiences into walking out — and rode a 'Demand It' campaign to nearly $200 million in the fall of 2009.
The movie-memorabilia restaurant chain backed by Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and Moore — where you ate burgers under a display case of screen-worn props. Planet Hollywood was 1990s celebrity capitalism served with a side of fries.
Quentin Tarantino's nonlinear crime epic rewrote the rules of what indie films could be. Released October 1994 with a Palme d'Or win at Cannes, a $200 million global gross, and career resurrections for John Travolta and a breakthrough for Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction became the defining film of a generation hungry for something different.
Pixar's rat-in-a-toque masterpiece: Remy, a rodent with a chef's palate, secretly cooking in a Paris kitchen by puppeteering a hapless garbage boy by the hair. It ends with a single bite of vegetables sending a feared critic hurtling back to his childhood — the most devastating flashback in animation.
Stand-up comic turned Hollywood golden boy whose late-80s-to-90s run defined a generation's movie shelf. From Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) through Good Will Hunting's 1998 Oscar win, Williams embodied the comedic-yet-sensitive everyman that shaped 90s cinema.
Ghostface's taunting phone calls — "What's your favorite scary movie?" — and a cast of teens who knew all the horror rules and died anyway. Wes Craven's self-aware slasher reinvented the genre for the Blockbuster generation.
A London sales advisor stuck in a rut and his slacker best mate face the zombie apocalypse armed with household objects, a vinyl collection, and a plan that begins and ends at the pub. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg's "rom-zom-com" is the parody so precise and so affectionate it stands as a great zombie film in its own right — Romero himself phoned to say so.
The grumpy ogre who just wanted to be left alone, dragged into a quest to rescue a princess and discover his own capacity for love. Shrek arrived in May 2001 as a subversive fairy-tale comedy from DreamWorks, won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and spawned a franchise that defined early-2000s family cinema.
The dim little mall store where you bought the movie you'd already rented five times. Suncoast sold films to own in the age of renting — VHS, Laserdisc, then DVD — under a neon marquee that made movie collecting feel like a legitimate way of life.
Leonardo DiCaprio's post-Titanic swing: Danny Boyle's adaptation of Alex Garland's backpacker novel, shot at a real Thai bay that Fox literally bulldozed to make prettier. It opens dazzling and gradually loses the plot — which is exactly how the critics called it in 2000, and exactly how everyone who saw it at fifteen still remembers it. The soundtrack ("Pure Shores," "Porcelain") outlived the movie; Maya Bay paid the price for the fame.
A mistaken-identity bowling noir built on White Russians, nihilists, and the definitive 90s character: the Dude, a Los Angeles pot-smoking bowling bum who stumbles into a kidnapping plot. Its theatrical run was modest and critics were lukewarm. Then something strange happened: it became THE cult film of its generation, spawning a religion and a traveling film festival dedicated entirely to its worship.
Three film students walk into the Maryland woods to document a local legend; only their footage comes back. The Blair Witch Project cost less to shoot than a used car and grossed nearly $250 million in 1999 — because its marketing convinced a meaningful slice of America that the tape was real and the actors were dead.
Jim Carrey's dark left turn: an obsessive cable installer who hooks you up and never leaves. Ben Stiller directed, Judd Apatow produced, and Carrey took a then-record $20 million payday to unsettle the exact audience his goofball hits had built. Critics split hard in 1996; the cult came later.
Andrew Fleming's cult sleeper hit about four Catholic-school outcasts who form a coven and discover real magic. Featuring Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell, and Rachel True, The Craft codified the 90s goth aesthetic, kicked off the teen-witch wave, and made "We are the weirdos, mister" a quotable rallying cry.
Ssssmokin'! Stanley Ipkiss puts on a cursed green mask and becomes a zoot-suited cartoon come to life — eyes bugging out, heart pounding through his chest. The Mask turned Jim Carrey into a literal living Tex Avery gag and gave the world Cameron Diaz.
The Wachowskis' sci-fi thriller rewired action cinema with bullet-time, philosophical depth, and Keanu Reeves as an accidental messiah in a simulation. Released March 1999, The Matrix became an instant cultural landmark, launching a franchise and spawning endless "red pill" debates in college dorms.
Watch a cursed VHS tape, get a phone call, die in seven days. The Ring turned Japanese horror into Hollywood's next obsession, made TV static terrifying, and gave every sleepover a new dare.
A 1938-set superhero film made with practical effects and genuine affection for the adventure serials of an earlier era: a jetpack, an art-deco helmet, and wish-fulfillment so pure it predated the superhero-movie industrial complex by a decade.
The babies hit the big screen: newborn brother Dil arrives, the Reptar wagon careens into the woods, and the Pickles crew has to find its way home. Nickelodeon's first feature-length animated film, released November 1998, became the first non-Disney animated feature to cross $100 million at the US box office.
M. Night Shyamalan's breakout thriller about a child psychologist (Bruce Willis) treating a boy (Haley Joel Osment) who whispers the film's immortal line: 'I see dead people.' A cultural phenomenon that made the twist ending a permanent fixture of cinema and grossed over $670 million worldwide.
James Cameron's three-hour epic about the Titanic sinking became the movie phenomenon of 1997, driven by the chemistry of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and an unforgettable Celine Dion ballad. It became the highest-grossing film ever and captured 11 Oscars at the 1998 ceremony, making "I'm flying" a phrase heard in every theater lobby and school cafeteria.
Schwarzenegger as a construction worker who may be a secret agent who may be dreaming the whole thing. Paul Verhoeven's Mars mind-bender gave sleepovers 'Get your ass to Mars,' the three-breasted mutant, and an ending arguments were built on.
Pixar's Toy Story was the first fully computer-animated feature film, directed by John Lasseter and starring Tom Hanks and Tim Allen as mismatched toys Woody and Buzz. Released November 1995, it reinvented animation and launched a franchise that still dominates 30 years later.
Two divorce mediators crash every wedding they can find — until one crash strands them at a Treasury Secretary's family weekend. Wedding Crashers proved R-rated comedies could still pull blockbuster numbers, and the 'rules' of crashing became actual cultural shorthand.
For most of a decade, the comedy playing at the multiplex WAS Will Ferrell. From SNL's George W. Bush and More Cowbell to Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Step Brothers — his movies got recited line-for-line before the credits rolled.
Fresh from his Grammy-winning rap career, Will Smith became the biggest movie star of the '90s—charismatic, relatable, and seemingly incapable of releasing a film that didn't top the summer box office. By 1999 he was untouchable.
Rule #1: Cardio. Rule #2: Double tap. The 2009 road-trip comedy that made the zombie apocalypse fun — four survivors named for their hometowns, a nationwide Twinkie hunt, and one legendary celebrity cameo.