Collider has published a ranked list of the ten best films of the 2000s, chosen by writer Michael Block for combining artistic merit, wide acclaim, standout performances and lasting cultural influence. The feature frames the decade as one balancing big-budget blockbusters with bold independent projects, aided by advances in filmmaking technology, and argues the selected films helped reshape Hollywood.

Topping out the lower end of the list at number ten is City of God (2002), the Portuguese-language crime drama directed by Fernando Meirelles and co-directed by Kátia Lund, which traces the rise of organised crime in a Rio de Janeiro favela from the late 1960s to the early 1980s through the eyes of an aspiring photographer. The article praises the film's non-linear, cyclical narrative and inventive visual style—fast cuts, freeze frames, split screens and dynamic tracking shots—for capturing the chaos of the setting while exposing poverty and police corruption without glamorising crime, comparing its craft to the work of Tarantino and Scorsese.