The next category that I'll cover is Drama (Human and Relationships). Drama is a big catch-all category for me, so when I first categorized 2000's movies, 21 movies fell into this category. Therefore, I split out Dramas dealing with the human condition. Movies that deal with a person or small group of people who go through a change within themselves and/or their relationship with each other. Coming-of-age movies fall in this category. Falling in love belongs to another category, falling out of love belongs in this category.

There are nine movies that fall in the Drama (H&R) category: the sexy bar movie "Coyote Ugly"; the karaoke movie "Duets"; the 1960's mental institution movie "Girl, Interrupted"; John Cusack talking to us throughout the whole of "High Fidelity"; Alicia Witt in the San Francisco-based "Playing Mona Lisa"; Sandra Bullock going through drug rehab in "28 Days"; Bruce Willis struggling with his super-hero abilities in "Unbreakable"; Natalie Portman is a 17-year old single mother in "Where the Heart Is"; three guys getting tooled by Amanda Peet in "Whipped".

This one is tougher for me since I do like this kind of movie. I'm torn among "Duets", "Playing Mona Lisa", and "Where the Heart Is" as they are all fine movies that left me deeply moved. In the end I think "Duets" is the best of the three, if for only the fact that it has Gwyneth Paltrow and Maria Bello singing; and of course Huey Lewis is in it extensively. This movie makes karaoke almost appealing.

For the main Drama category, there are 12 movies. In general a Drama is any movie that doesn't fit into another category. There is one sort of comedic movie in here ("Lucky Numbers"), mostly because I don't have a Comedy category. Along with the dark comedy "Lucky Numbers", there is the Tom Hanks survival movie "Cast Away" (which could have been put in H&R but I don't think Tom Hanks' character went through a dramatic inner change); the Julia Roberts law movie "Erin Brockovich"; the time-travel-through-radio-waves "Frequency"; the Tom Hanks death row miracle "The Green Mile"; the semi- biographical movie about Rubin Carter, "The Hurricane"; the Depression Era golfing movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance"; the Haley Joel Osment playing an idealistic kid out to change the world in "Pay It Forward"; the conjectural disaster movie "The Perfect Storm"; the Ben Affleck casino robbery movie "Reindeer Games"; Denzel Washington playing a football coach in "Remember the Titans"; and Keanu Reeves as a scab football player in "The Replacements".

So, which movie would I see again? I would have to say none of them. They're fine movies but I don't think I'd actually watch any of these again if I had the choice. But I have to pick one, and I would say "Frequency" is the best movie of the bunch. It has elements of action and thriller and humanity and it was a nice movie, if a bit underrated by other people.

We end today's journal entry with the Best Horror/Thriller of 2000. The nominees are "Final Destination" which I saw with Chris but only because Kristen Cloke is in it (she was in "Space: Above and Beyond"); "Hollow Man" which could be classified as a Science Fiction movie but is meant to scare people; the stylistic and cinematographic "Sleepy Hollow"; and the eerie Michelle Pfeiffer/Harrison Ford "What Lies Beneath".

Horror/Thriller movies have to scare you, and I'm scared easily. But of the four the scariest movie by far was "What Lies Beneath". It lets the mind imagine everything by only showing us hints and a suggestion of what's really going on. The other three movies are relatively straight-forward horror-type movies. "What Lies Beneath" is more original and strikes a resonant chord in me.