The glistening muscles of Hollywood pretty boys, British Empire accents and CGI alone couldn’t cut it. Something was missing. Call it a story — and gravitas. Crowe’s swagger and whispered prayers said more on-screen than all the battle speeches howled by the likes of Brad Pitt, Colin Farrell and Orlando Bloom. Sorry, boys. Liam Neeson was a convincing knight in “Kingdom” but was dispatched too soon, and Edward Norton might have helped more as the king of Jerusalem if he hadn’t been forced to act behind a golden mask. Lessons learned.

“Gladiator” inspired not only other films but also the HBO series “Rome” and, one could argue, other successful cable period series from “Deadwood” to “The Tudors.” Over the years, the producers of “Gladiator” tried to dream up ways of making a sequel for their hero who unfortunately went to his just reward at the end of the film. What if Maximus became a vampire…? No, Hollywood. Stop it.

Basically a remake of Anthony Mann’s “Fall of the Roman Empire,” starring Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren and Christopher Plummer, “Gladiator” handily surpassed its 1964 predecessor. The sets (at least half CGI), costumes and incredible score by Hans Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard created an atmosphere that transported the audience completely enough to luxuriate in. I was forced to coach my fearless 10-year-old nephew out from under his seat when the tigers showed up — we felt we were there in the Colosseum with the throngs.

But the element that brought the past to life for me best were the performances, the actor’s sandals planted squarely on digital terra firma. Led by the incomparable Richard Harris, Joaquin Phoenix, Djimon Hounsou, Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi helped to hide any flaws in the plot or script or CGI. Yes, we saw Rusty’s bike shorts under his tunic in one fight scene. But “Gladiator” also gave us Oliver Reed’s final performance as Proximo, the gladiator freed by a touch on the shoulder by Marcus Aurelius (Harris). CGI helped to complete Reed’s missing scenes when he passed away before filming was complete. But what a final call. Oliver, we salute you.

Even with those star turns, this was Russell Crowe’s film. Though he was nominated by the Academy for other performances in “The Insider” and “A Beautiful Mind,” he won his only best-actor Oscar to date for “Gladiator,” and rightly so. No one could have done it better, and no one has. Exactly a decade later, will lightning strike twice? Scott and Crowe are at it again, this time in Sherwood Forest with the latest incarnation of “Robin Hood” (slated for release next spring). As Chris Rock said when he hosted Hollywood’s biggest night some years after “Gladiator,” “If you’re doing a movie about the past, you best get Russell’s ass.”

Film Salon has invited a group of special guests to write about their favorite film(s) of the 2000s. To read the entire series, go here.

Set in the “Iron Triangle” of Willets Point, a Queens, N.Y., neighborhood of dubious auto-body shops and junkyards, “Chop Shop” immerses us in the daily grind of one of the great child heroes in contemporary cinema. Twelve-year-old Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco) steals hubcaps, haggles for work at a day laborer’s stand, hawks bags of candy on the subway with a salesman’s swagger — anything to raise the money to get his sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales) off the street and to hold on to the plywood hovel the parentless duo call home. Where a lesser director might crank the pathos of this gut-wrenching scenario to 11, Bahrani renders Ale’s small victories and crushing defeats without a hint of pity. The film is wonderfully alive to the sights and sounds and textures of Ale’s world, registering the boy’s fits of rage and disappointment, amplifying his indefatigable energy. Fluid, colorful compositions pit Ale’s slender build against the concrete jungle of his neighborhood, a constant barrage of subway cars and airplanes rumbling in the background, the frame occasionally widening to reveal landmarks like Shea Stadium or the Empire State Building in the distance. With masterful economy, Bahrani brings to life a place that is of our society yet still a world apart.

This sense that one is experiencing something familiar but foreign, evocative yet deeply original, is what makes “Chop Shop” such a revelation. In its technique and its subject matter, the film invites comparison to the work of Satyajit Ray and the classics of Italian neorealism, as well as to recent highlights of socially engaged cinema by the Dardenne brothers (“The Son,” “L’Enfant“) and Michael Winterbottom (“In This World”). But “Chop Shop” is a quintessentially American film, reflecting a nation where more people are losing their homes, more lack health insurance, and more children live in poverty than did a decade earlier. In 84 tautly structured minutes, “Chop Shop” evokes more vital currents in our national discourse than any of the bloated “issue” pictures offered by Hollywood filmmakers this decade (see Haggis, Paul) or the self-righteous advocacy films that have propelled the recent boom in American documentaries. The hallmark of Bahrani’s cinema is not indoctrination; it is exquisite observation. As in “Man Push Cart” and “Goodbye Solo,” the two other incisive portraits of immigrant life that Bahrani has made in the last five years, Ale and Isamar’s struggles for survival and their yearning for community speak for themselves.

It is altogether fitting that “Chop Shop” should end on a note of cautious optimism. In one of the great final shots of the past 10 years, Ale and Isamar reunite after an innocence-shattering discovery, pausing to feed a flock of pigeons. The birds suddenly take flight and the camera tilts up, tracking their ascent into the sky. It’s one of those spine-tingling moments where any concepts of fiction and documentary recede into the cranial depths, leaving us utterly immersed in one of the rare moments of grace that give a life its meaning.

Film Salon has invited a group of special guests to write about their favorite film(s) of the 2000s. To read the entire series, go here.

Chihiro, the heroine of “Spirited Away,” is in the wrong shape. Grumpy and sour, 10-year-old Chihiro whines at her parents about their move to a new town; timid and apprehensive, she clings so that her mother, irritated, shakes her off. Trapped in the spirit world in which the film takes place, Chihiro is belittled by the staff of the bathhouse where she gets a job. “What a dope!” one character says. “You’re the most pathetic little girl I’ve ever seen,” another says, laughing, “a stinking, useless weakling.”

It’s a lot of abuse for a 10-year-old girl to take, but the wonder of “Spirited Away” is that Chihiro believably transforms from “a lazy spoiled crybaby” to a tough, resilient little girl whose determination suggests the strong woman she will one day become. It’s easy to praise Miyazaki’s movie for its visual delights — the radish spirits and river gods, the ancient bathhouse floating on the sea, the scenes of flight (as in most every Miyazaki film) so thrillingly realized — but it’s also easy to forget how touching a portrait it is of a modern child learning to live within herself, learning to be the right shape. Chihiro faces her fears and overcomes them, and finds within herself a strength she’d previously been unaware she had. And she does it so subtly that only afterward do you realize how profound that transition has been.

Late in the film, Chihiro takes a ride on a train through the cities and neighborhoods of this spirit world, the cars gliding swiftly across the endless sea, Joe Hisaishi’s lovely score a counterpoint as day turns to dusk outside. Shadowy riders disembark, and the train slips past another little girl, waiting patiently on a platform in the pale evening. Chihiro’s going to return something her friend Haku stole, and to apologize on his behalf, but she’s also headed out of childhood and into adolescence. It’s not a trip to be embarked upon lightly, and that’s what makes the sequence so moving, not only for children but also for adults. For I remember a time in my life when I yearned to be grown-up even as I reveled in childhood, never realizing what would be lost when I moved on. “The train used to run in both directions,” Kamaji the boilerman warns Chihiro as he hands her the delicate paper tickets. “But these days, it’s a one-way ride.”

Film Salon has invited a group of special guests to write about their favorite film(s) of the 2000s. To read the entire series, go here.

I also loved “Michael Clayton,” a wonderful thriller that exposes the greed and short-sightedness of a giant agrochemical firm. It certainly fed my paranoia while making “Food, Inc.”

On the documentary front, I loved a film by the Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang called “Up the Yangtze.” It is the story of a valley in China being flooded to create a dam. I wasn’t sure if I was watching actors or real people. It turned out to be all real people who felt very comfortable letting the camera into their lives. It had a very theatrical feel. It is a beautiful film.

From its opening moments, the tale of an orphaned human baby’s accidental upbringing in Santaland tugs at our nostalgia zone with its lushly orchestrated score and Rankin-Bass-homage winter wonderland setting. But this is no cheap reproduction; it’s a delight in its own right.

As the title character, Will Ferrell gamely, wholeheartedly throws himself into the role of a guy who really and truly lives in a world of candy-cane forests and talking snowmen. There’s no smirking irony, no undercurrent of hipster archness anywhere in his “human raised by elves.” Like Amy Adams’ similarly glowing performance in “Enchanted,” Ferrell lets us laugh at the guileless Buddy while he makes us grow to adore him — he may be a “cotton-headed ninnymuggins,” but he’s got more holiday spirit than a workshop full of toymakers. Whether he’s running himself sick in a revolving door or pressing every elevator button in the Empire State Building or sweetly crooning “Baby It’s Cold Outside” in a women’s locker room, he never lets Buddy be anything but authentically exuberant.

Then there’s the rest of the pitch-perfect ensemble — a flinty James Caan as Buddy’s long-lost, naughty-list-occupying father, Ed Asner as a savvy Santa who knows which Ray’s Pizza is the real one, Andy Richter, Mary Steenburgen, Peter Dinklage, Amy Sedaris and the ultimate pixie dream girl, Zooey Deschanel. And for good measure, there’s one of the all-time comic greats, Bob Newhart, as Buddy’s spectacularly droll surrogate father. Now throw in David Berenbaum’s quotably hilarious script — the phrase “throne of lies” never gets old around this house — and the romantic delights of Christmas-season New York and you’ve got yourself quite a keeper.

But what elevates “Elf” to true greatness is its warm-as-a-yule-log heart. Watch Deschanel’s rapturously smitten face as she watches Buddy fly off with Santa, or note the name that Buddy ultimately bestows on his own bundle of elfin joy and see — just like candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup, this is a holiday treat that’s seriously sweet.

Film Salon has invited a group of special guests to write about their favorite film(s) of the 2000s. To read the entire series, go here.