anything scarier in cinema this decade than the hideous Pale Man sitting at that food-laden table, just silently waiting for his victim to forget the rules of the game?35. Waking Life (2001)With Waking Life, writer-director Richard Linklater returned to the freeform philosophical meanderings, laconic rhythms, and college-town sociology of his cult debut Slacker, only this time the proceedings are a whole lot more animated. Literally. Linklater filmed the films spiritual seekers and amateur philosophers in digital video, then had Bob Sabiston and his team of animators trace and color the images through low-fi rotoscoping. Like Slacker, Waking Life is informed equally by its creators gentle humanism and insatiable curiosity about the world around him. Its a trippy, mind-expanding journey through the world of ideas, populated by a motley assortment of free-thinkers, eccentrics, actors (including Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, reprising their iconic roles from Before Sunrise), and crackpots. Linklater and Sabiston succeed in creating a hypnotic cinematic dream state that transformed a defiantly non-cinematic parade of monologues and abstract theorizing into a deliriously visual feast for the senses.34. American Psycho (2000)For a while, it appeared that Bret Easton Ellis controversial bestseller might never make it onto the big screen. Everyone from David Cronenberg to Oliver Stone to Stuart Gordon was bandied about as a potential director before the job fell to I Shot Andy Warhol director Mary Harron. Working from a script she co-wrote with Genevieve Turner, Harron gives the film a Kubrickian sense of sleek, deadpan detachment, a glossy sheen perfectly in keeping with the vacuous, image-obsessed spiritual emptiness of its characters. In a star-making performance, Christian Bale transforms Patrick Bateman, Ellis yuppie mass murderer, into an unspeakably cruel, hilariously funny caricature of Tom Cruises creepy, smiling, gung-ho All-Americanism. Hes a phantom impersonating a human being, a preppie monster whos the very image of upscale sophistication, but dead at his core.33. Punch-Drunk Love (2002)Leave it to P.T. Anderson to unravel the enigma that is Adam Sandler. After years of playing rage-filled man-children in the lowbrow likes of Billy Madison and The Waterboy, Sandler Punch-Drunk Love is both an unexpected revelation and completely in keeping with his screen persona. Anderson amps up the actors silly naivete and hair-trigger temper until theyre as sharp and vivid as his bright blue suit, casting Sandler as a novelty plunger salesman who overcomes tremendous obstacles to pursue a gentle, patient woman (Emily Watson) whos uniquely capable of caring for him. The discordant rhythms of the film, due in large part to Jon Brions radical score, give Punch-Drunk Love a dark, nerve-wracking tension that defies romantic-comedy convention, yet theres an overwhelming sweetness to Sandler and Watsons relationship that brings it into the light. 32. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)Realizing a long-in-the-works project left unfinished by the late Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg may not have made the film Kubrick would have made, but he stayed true to his friends obsession with how humans react when pushed to extremes. The film doesnt focus on a single character challenged by isolation, war, violence, or jealousy, but turns instead to a creation