TIME's Richard Corliss has created a countdown of the 10 greatest films made since the year 2000, from No. 10 (The Artist) to No. 1 (see for yourself) The Artist, 2011 Director: Michel Hazanavicius Year Released: 2011 Cast: Jean Dujardin, Bérenice Bejo, James Cromwell A movie set in Hollywood's silent era that is virtually wordless: a gimmick? No: sustained cinematic inspiration, deserving of every prize it received, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. This delightfully inventive comedy, about a swashbuckling star (supreme Gallic charmer Dujardin) and the peppy waif (Bejo) he befriends, echoes true-life Hollywood stories of the "20s and "30s - sort of, if Douglas Fairbanks had suffered John Gilbert's career dip in early talkies while Ginger Rogers was on the rise. Another way to put it: the movie is Singin" in the Rain, reveling in the same acumen and effervescence, but silent and in black-and-white. Hazanavicius, a master French pastiche chef, transported the two stars of his OSS 117 films to Hollywood, hired American actors (Cromwell, John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller) in supporting roles, had the cast speak their dialogue (shown in intertitles) in English and somehow achieved the impossible balance of antique parody and earned emotion. In retrospect, the movie's Oscar triumph may seem inevitable: an inside-Hollywood story with laughs, tears and an adorable terrier. Paying tribute in his acceptance speech to writer-director Billy Wilder, Hazanavicius acknowledged the font of inspiration that golden-age Hollywood provided to the rest of the world's moviemakers. So this très French film was also the most classically American picture of its time. MORE: All-TIME 100 Movies - Updated Next: Moulin Rouge! Moulin Rouge! 20th Century Fox Film / Everett Director: Baz Luhrmann Cast: Ewan McGregor, Nicole Kidman, Richard Roxburgh If a feeling is too intense to put into words, then put it into song. That's an artistic mandate that applied for millennia to all forms of drama (Greek tragedy, Italian opera, Hollywood movies), though later audiences found it laughably peculiar. Leave it to Luhrmann, the unreconstructed Aussie romantic who infused Shakespeare with an urban urgency in Romeo + Juliet, to go both retro and now-tro in a musical that blends MGM and MTV. It's a convulsive love story daubed in a giddily gaudy palette, with the never-prettier Nicole Kidman entrancing hunkily soulful Ewan McGregor in an orgasmic swirl of color, design and pop music. Wearing its soft heart on its fancily embroidered sleeve, Moulin Rouge! brought love stories back in fashion - though in the debased form of films from Nicholas Sparks novels - and cued the sporadic revival of musical movies and TV shows (Mamma Mia!, Hairspray, Glee). In the age of Media Cool, this recklessly amorous burst of kinetic excess offended cooler sensibilities even as it launched other viewers, including this one, into rapture. The movie asks, Moulin Rouge-ez avec moi ce soir? I say, Sure. All night long. Next: Devdas