Chicken Run , the one movie of 2000 you could recommend to anyone from kid to codger, told the story of an uprising. A union of hens, sick of squeezing out eggs and being sent to the block, rallied and escaped. In this satire of workplace misery, Chicken Run opposed today's 1929-level faith that the market is the ultimate good, with powers that can fix anything. Most of the notable movies this year were, like Chicken Run and Battlefield Earth , nostalgic. Chicken Run was a tribute to the WWII adventure film, and Battlefield Earth served up the most inane kind of sci-fi movie of the 1950s.
Movies seem to be looking backward now more than ever.
But a nostalgic attitude toward old films is an excellent way to start off the new century. The competition between generations of artists is less relevant than the way artists of all eras harmonize. Truly creative spirits are unfixed in time. A young director can tell the world about how good Orson Welles or Lon Chaney was, while the work of Welles or Chaney gives the young filmmaker inspiration. The dialogue never ends.