The Room
Johnny, a successful banker, is betrayed by his best friend and future wife in San Francisco. Oh hai Mark.
Possibly the most enjoyable bad film ever made. Tommy Wiseau spent $6M of unknown origin to produce it. It has screened monthly in LA for over 20 years. The Disaster Artist made it immortal.
Wiseau insisted the film was a black comedy. No one believed him. Its sincerity in the face of total technical incompetence is its genius.
The web prompted questions about identity, simulation, and control. The Matrix, Strange Days, eXistenZ, and Dark City all interrogated what's real in a mediated world.
Post-9/11 trauma shaped a decade of cinema. Superheroes became relevant (Spider-Man arrived seven months after). War films returned. Torture became contested on screen (Zero Dark Thirty). New Yorkers refused to be shown threatened cities for years.