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2001 Movies

Take a nostalgic look back at the top movies of 2001, celebrating the films, directors and actors that defined the year and left a lasting legacy in the world of entertainment.

2001 Academy Awards

Hannibal
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta
Country: United States of America
Outline: Living in exile, Hannibal Lecter tries to reconnect with now disgraced F.B.I. Agent Clarice Starling, and finds himself a target for revenge from a powerful victim.
Pearl Harbor
Directed by: Michael Bay
Starring: Ben Affleck, Kate Beckinsale, Josh Hartnett, William Lee Scott
Country: United States of America
Outline: A tale of war and romance mixed in with history. The story follows two lifelong friends and a beautiful nurse who are caught up in the horror of an infamous Sunday morning in 1941.
Planet of the Apes
Directed by: Tim Burton
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Helena Bonham Carter, Tim Roth, Michael Clarke Duncan
Country: United States of America
Outline: In 2029, an Air Force astronaut crash-lands on a mysterious planet where evolved, talking apes dominate a race of primitive humans.
A Beautiful Mind
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly, Christopher Plummer
Country: United States of America
Outline: After John Nash, a brilliant but asocial mathematician, accepts secret work in cryptography, his life takes a turn for the nightmarish.
Donnie Darko
Directed by: Richard Kelly
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Holmes Osborne
Country: United States of America
Outline: A troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes, after he narrowly escapes a bizarre accident.
Mulholland Dr.
Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Jeanne Bates
Country: United States of America
Outline: After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a woman amnesiac, she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond dreams and reality.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Directed by: Ang Lee
Starring: Yun-Fat Chow, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Chen Chang
Country: United States of America
Outline: A young Chinese warrior steals a sword from a famed swordsman and then escapes into a world of romantic adventure with a mysterious man in the frontier of the nation.
Remember the Titans
Directed by: Boaz Yakin
Starring: Denzel Washington, Will Patton, Wood Harris, Ryan Hurst
Country: United States of America
Outline: The true story of a newly appointed African-American coach and his high school team on their first season as a racially integrated unit.
Training Day
Directed by: Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Ethan Hawke, Scott Glenn, Tom Berenger
Country: United States of America
Outline: On his first day on the job as a Los Angeles narcotics officer, a rookie cop goes beyond a full work day in training within the narcotics division of the LAPD with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears to be.
Black Hawk Down
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Ewan McGregor, Tom Sizemore, Eric Bana
Country: United States of America
Outline: 160 elite U.S. soldiers drop into Somalia to capture two top lieutenants of a renegade warlord and find themselves in a desperate battle with a large force of heavily-armed Somalis.
Traffic
Directed by: Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Michael Douglas, Benicio Del Toro, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jacob Vargas
Country: United States of America
Outline: A conservative judge is appointed by the President to spearhead America's escalating war against drugs, only to discover that his teenage daughter is a crack addict. Two DEA agents protect an informant. A jailed drug baron's wife attempts to carry on the family business.
Tape
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Robert Sean Leonard, Uma Thurman
Country: United States of America
Outline: Three old high school friends meet in a Michigan motel room to dissect painful memories from their past.
Finding Forrester
Directed by: Gus Van Sant
Starring: Sean Connery, Rob Brown, F. Murray Abraham, Anna Paquin
Country: United States of America
Outline: A young writing prodigy finds a mentor in a reclusive author.
Lantana
Directed by: Ray Lawrence
Starring: Anthony LaPaglia, Geoffrey Rush, Rachael Blake, Kerry Armstrong
Country: Australia
Outline: The relationships of four couples unravel after the discovery of a young woman's body in Lantana bush in suburban Sydney.
Monster's Ball
Directed by: Marc Forster
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Halle Berry, Taylor Simpson, Gabrielle Witcher
Country: United States of America
Outline: After a family tragedy, a racist prison guard reexamines his attitudes while falling in love with the African American wife of the last prisoner he executed.
Iris
Directed by: Richard Eyre
Starring: Judi Dench, Jim Broadbent, Kate Winslet, Hugh Bonneville
Country: United States of America
Outline: True story of the lifelong romance between novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley, from their student days through her battle with Alzheimer's disease.
Tigerland
Directed by: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Colin Farrell, Matthew Davis, Clifton Collins Jr., Tom Guiry
Country: United States of America
Outline: A group of recruits go through Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Polk, Louisiana's infamous Tigerland, last stop before Vietnam for tens of thousands of young men in 1971.
Edges of the Lord
Directed by: Yurek Bogayevicz
Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Willem Dafoe, Richard Banel, Liam Hess
Country: Poland
Outline: A 12-year-old Jewish boy hides with a family of Catholic peasant farmers to escape the Nazis.
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
Directed by: Kevin Smith
Starring: Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith, Ben Affleck, Jeff Anderson
Country: United States of America
Outline: The comic "Bluntman and Chronic" is based on real-life stoners Jay and Silent Bob, so when they get no profit from a big-screen adaptation, they set out to wreck the movie.