What a decade it has been. When I actually stopped and considered some of the great films the past ten years has produced I was surprised. For all my griping and preferences for older movies and disappointment with some of the unsavory turns many modern films have taken, I was happy to recall that I did in fact enjoy myself at the theater this decade. Looking back, I’d say that the films that came out helped define and shape their decade. The were a product of and reflection of their time that helped inform the rest of us what our world was and was becoming.
The following is my list of my personal favorite films to emerge between 2000 and 2009 (naturally it’s limited to only the films I saw and perhaps I may find more gems that I missed). *My list’s order is almost entirely arbitrary…it was just how I was feeling that day.
10. Richard Linklater is one of those fascinating filmmakers that’s not afraid to experiment. “Waking Life” (2001) is a lyrical dream of a meandering existential conversation with delirious rotoscoped animation. It latches onto your retinas and does not let go until your brain has been forced to ponder the musings of the ever-changing line-up of characters.
9. An unexpected surprise occurred when Christopher Nolan directed this small neo-noir flick and told it backwards…it turned out to be brilliant. Perhaps the film solely hinges on a gimmick, but the gimmick never gets old and they never run out of twists. Guy Pearce stars as a man with five-minute memory who is slowly tracking down the man who murdered his wife and destroyed his world in “Memento” (2000).
8. My next pick reminded me why I needed to watch more documentaries. Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s exploration into the world of India’s red light district and into the lives and minds of the offspring of prostitutes is at once shattering, engaging, informative, and heartfelt. Briski goes to India to document the prostitutes but finds an even more fascinating subject in their children. She gives them all cameras and let’s us watch what develops. If at the end of “Born Into Brothels: Calcutta’s Red Light Kids” (2004) you still feel nothing, then you have no heart.
7. My next pick is on pretty much everyone’s list, but deservingly so. Andrew Stanton’s “WALL-E” (2008) from Pixar was a welcome treat for sci-fi fans, comedy fans, and even romance fans. WALL-E is so irrepressibly likable that’s it’s no wonder he captured the hearts of so many. A janitor-esque robot cleans an empty planet earth until EVE shows up and changes his life. The film absolutely elates.
6. Everyone loved “No Country For Old Men” so much (myself included) that they completely overlooked another Coen Brothers masterpiece from this decade: “O Brother, Where Art Thou” (2000). Say what you like, this was one of my favorite movies of theirs. Based on Homer’s “The Odyssey” and set in the Depression era American South this breezy comedy features three escaped convicts (George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson) on a strange adventure to find fortune. The movie also features a great bunch of Southern folk songs.
5. Very seldom to pictures, performances, and music come together so well to recreate another time and life. Andrew Dominik’s film, “The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford” (2007) got a bum rap for being a lousy cowboy action movie, which is a shame because the movie is really a very intricate and pensively paced character study. Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck play their roles well and for the patient and attentive the movie will prove to be a very fascinating and rewarding experience.
4. It’s obvious French animator Sylvain Chomet’s style and sensibilities will not be for everybody, but I guess they were for me. “The Triplets of Belleville” (2003) rekindled my hope in animation. Chomet gives us the world as we’ve never seen it: an absurd and bent caricature of the world we live in. When bicyclist, Champion, is shanghaied during the Tour-de-France to America by the French mafia, only his Grandma and dog, Bruno, can save the day…as long as they get some help from a trio of aging Vaudevillian sisters.
3. My next pick is another one that showed up on a lot of best-of-the-decade lists. It’s Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund’s terrifying drama about growing up in Rio de Janeiro’s gang-run streets, “City of God” (2002). Rocket must hone his skills and passion for photography and keep his wits about him if he wants to stay alive long enough to become a success against the odds.
2. Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” (2004) may seem modest, but for 126 minutes it’s everything it needs to be. Paul Giamatti, Thomas Hayden Church, Virginia Madsen, and Sandra Oh are all fascinatingly real characters that we alternate from being repulsed and intrigued by…yet we still catch ourselves rooting for them. Explorations into the rituals of male bonding, mid-life crises, and wine never have been so “quaffable but far from transcendent”…maybe not.
1. The best fairy tales not-for-kids come from the twilight hallucinations of Mexican director, Guillermo del Toro. “Pan’s Labyrinth” (2006) sets young Ofelia against the evils of Fascist Spain amidst communist uprising and wicked stepfather and also against the slime of a twisted fantasy that is woven by a mossy, old faun who insists that she is the princess. Del Toro marries monsters and magic with taut, emotional drama like no other.
Whew. I guess it was a good decade. For personal edification consider some other great movies from the aughts.
“Oldboy,” “Amores Perros,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,” “The Departed,” “Mulholland Dr.,” “Bronson,” “Let the Right One In,” “The Incredibles,” “The Saddest Music in the World,” “Spirited Away,” “In Bruges,” “The Wrestler,” “Eternal Sunshin of the Spotless Mind,” “Team America: World Police,” “Requiem for a Dream,” “Babel,” “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Ghost World,” “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “American Movie,” Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” “Crimen Ferpecto,” “Munich,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” “Ratatouille,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Amelie,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Up,” “King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters,” “The Machinist,” “Gosford Park,” “Michael Clayton,” “Adaptation,” “Minority Report,” “The Royal Tenenbaums,” “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” “Kung-Fu Hustle,” and the list goes on.
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