The Beach
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.