The '00s are nearly over, and we still haven't come up with a good name for the decade. The Ohs? The Aughts? The Zeroes? Nothing has stuck. So let's give up on that and name the five best directors of the decade instead.

I had to apply some rules here. Quantity isn't the most important thing, of course, but it does say something about a director when he can be both prolific and proficient. So while I would love to have included Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) or Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain), they've made only two films each since 2000.

Apart from that, my thought process boiled down to this: Whose names keep popping up when I think about the best movies of the last eight years? Who consistently does enjoyable, high-quality work? Here's what I came up with.

THE TOP 5 DIRECTORS OF THE '00s:

1.) Steven Spielberg
He'd have made this list for each of the previous three decades, too, and it wouldn't surprise me if he'll be on it for the 2010s as well. Spielberg has made six films in the 2000s, and while they all have their weak spots -- the ending of War of the Worlds, the ending of The Terminal, the ending of A.I. -- not one of them is a bad movie. Even an "off" film for him is more proficient and exciting than your average Hollywood production.

2.) The Mexican Trio: Guillermo Del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
Okay, I cheated here by putting three men on one ticket. Maybe Del Toro would have made the list on his own; I'm not sure about the other two. As a trio, however, these filmmakers have brought renewed attention to Mexico as a major player in world cinema, and have created such outstanding films as The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth (Del Toro), Amores Perros and 21 Grams (Iñárritu), and Y Tu Mama Tambien and Children of Men (Cuarón).

3.) Paul Greengrass
This British director favors handheld cameras and a you-are-there style. This brings particular immediacy and intensity to the fact-based films Bloody Sunday and United 93, both of which recreate real events so vividly they could almost be documentaries. In The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, he uses the verite style to make the enigmatic hero more down-to-earth and relatable than most movie spies. For pulling viewers right into the action, no one beats Greengrass.

4.) Christopher Nolan
Nolan is a man who knows how to tell a story. Memento is one of the best films of the decade, with a complex but flawless screenplay (written by Nolan and his brother) and some unsettling ideas about memory and self-deception. The icy Insomnia was a worthy follow-up; The Prestige is a cracking good tale of magicians and murder; and Batman Begins successfully reinvigorated an iconic character. There's no reason to assume next year's Batman sequel The Dark Knight will be any less surprising and exhilarating.

5.) Zhang Yimou
Mainland China's finest director works equally well in two vastly different genres. He makes small, quiet, life-affirming stories like Not One Less (made in 1999 but not shown stateside until 2000), The Road Home, and Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles. And he also makes high-flying heroic epics like Hero and House of Flying Daggers, which are among the most beautiful-looking movies I've ever seen. His most recent effort in that vein, Curse of the Golden Flower, was a bit off the mark, but I'll let it slide.

(Honorable mentions: Wes Anderson, Michel Gondry, Peter Jackson, Ang Lee, and Brad Bird.)

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Eric D. Snider (website) is among the top five writers in his immediate family.

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