Perhaps the most stylish movie of 2000, Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog is a strange but sleek mix: one part samurai flick, one part mob movie, one part 'hood film and one part Western.

Played by Forest Whitaker, Ghost Dog is a modern-day samurai working as an assassin for a low-budget mobster. Ghost Dog lives on a rooftop and can be contacted only by pigeons bearing notes. His best friend is a Haitian ice cream salesman who speaks only French (Ghost Dog, in turn, speaks only English). Ghost Dog, though generally quiet and deeply faithful to the samurai code, has an abiding fondness for hip hop ... especially the hip hop of the RZA (who did the film's entire soundtrack).

All of these things make Ghost Dog stylish, yes. But the most stylish part of the movie is its opening: though Ghost Dog doesn't even speak for the first 45 minutes of the film, we watch a pigeon fly through the industrial nightscape to the RZA's beats. Stunning.