Through the Decades 10 Film Collection: 2000s DVD review

Jun 17, 2022- Permalink

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades 10 Film Collection: 2000s DVD set presents a sampling of ten films released between 2000 and 2009. Spread over four discs, these movies cover the spectrum from comedies and thrillers to dramas. The ten included films (with synopses from Mill Creek) are:

  • Nurse Betty (2000) – Obsessed with her favorite soap opera character, Dr. David Ravell, Betty (Renée Zellweger) travels across the country to meet the man of her dreams while pursued by two hired killers.
  • One Night at McCool’s (2001) – Three different men recall how the beautiful Jewel (Liv Tyler) came into McCool’s one night and brought chaos with her. The problem is their stories just don’t seem to line up.
  • Spy Game (2001) -Retiring CIA agent Nathan Muir (Robert Redford) works under the table against agency politics to free Tom Bishop (Brad Pitt), the agent he mentored, after Bishop is captured in China during a mission gone wrong and sentenced to death in 24 hours.
  • The Emperor’s Club (2002) – Idealistic prep schoolteacher William Hundert (Kevin Kline) takes it upon himself to mentor the unruly, troublemaking son (Emile Hirsch) of a U.S. Senator.
  • The Shape of Things (2003) – A quiet, unassuming man (Paul Rudd) begins to change in a major way after meeting and falling for a beautiful art student (Rachel Weisz), and his new personality doesn’t sit well with his best friend.
  • 21 Grams (2003) – A freak accident intersects the lives of a dying man (Sean Penn), a grief-stricken mother (Naomi Watts), and an ex-con (Benicio del Toro) who found God in this gripping drama about consequence and human connection.
  • Baby Mama (2008) – After learning that she has slim chances of getting pregnant, successful businesswoman Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) clashes with her surrogate Angie (Amy Poehler) on how best to behave when you’re expecting.
  • State of Play (2009) – The killing of a congressional aide sends Washington, D.C. Journalist Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) down a path of cover-ups, corruption, and corporate conspiracies.
  • The Hitcher (2007) – When a young couple (Sophia Bush and Zachary Knighton) picks up a seemingly harmless hitchhiker (Sean Bean), a good deed becomes a brutal, edge-of-your-seat fight for survival with the open road as the battlefield.
  • Cry Wolf (2005) – Eight students at a well-to-do boarding school find that their usual games of lies and deception are no laughing matter when people start dying and no one can be trusted.
Let’s be clear, there are ten films spread over just four DVD discs. DVDs don’t have the resolution or bandwidth of a Blu-ray disc so the video presentations are not crystal clear and there are compression artifacts here and there. If you’re willing to accept that, the presentations are okay.

On the audio side, the movies come with Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks. Subtitles are available for English SDH. Again, because of the quantity of films, these are not lossless tracks but they get the job done.

The collection does not come with digital code or bonus materials.

The Through the Decades 10 Film Collection: 2000s DVD set is a perfect sampler plate for the 2000s, especially if you haven’t seen many of the titles before. Mill Creek’s collections give you a chance to check out some movies from the decade at a very reasonable price per film.