DZ has been demanding that I produce some kind of end-of-the-decade list for movies. I realized tonight that I had one more day left. So here it is.
First let me say again what a wonderful time the last several years has been for character driven documentaries, stories about people and their struggles and joys and failures, rather than ideas and issues. I posted a list of these a while back along with some thoughts about each. I still feel like these are some of my favorite movies of the decade.
Apart from those documentaries, here are my ten favorite movies of the decade (in no particular order):
You Can Count On Me
Far From Heaven
Brokeback Mountain
Pan’s Labyrinth
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Gosford Park
Lives of Others
Children of Men
Junebug
In Bruges
Here are several which (unlike the 10 above) didn’t seem to make their way into anybody’s lists but mine. They are all smaller indie films and they are all wonderful:
Dirty Filthy Love
Shattered Glass
Thirteen
Adam’s Apples
Winter Solstice
Off The Map
Chuck and Buck
The Orphanage and The Devil’s Backbone (much like Pan’s Labyrinth)
Sleepwalking
Some runners-up to all of the above:
A History of Violence
O brother where art thou?
Songcatcher
High Fidelity
The Squid and the Whale
Unbreakable and Signs
Knocked Up and Superbad
There Will Be Blood
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
No Country For Old Men
And again the documentaries I mentioned at the beginning:
Bigger, Stronger, Faster (2008)
Surfwise (2007)
My Kid Could Paint That (2007)
King of Kong (2007)
Deep Water (2006)
Murderball (2005)
Born Into Brothels (2004)
Capturing The Friedmans (2003)
My Architect (2003)
I haven’t included a lot of movies from 2009, partly because I agree with DZ that this hasn’t been a particularly good year for them (as opposed to 1999 which was a gold mine). Partly because there are still a number I haven’t seen. And partly because the one movie from this year that I am crazy about (THE ROAD) is a movie I only saw two days ago and I am too close to it.
Best wishes to you all and have a great new year at the movies.
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6 responses to “Best Films of the Decade”
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I can remember exactly where I was when this awful decade came into being. Believe it or not, when I rang in the new year on January 1, 2000, not only was I stone-cold sober – I was at church! My then-girlfriend and I attended a special midnight mass at the local Catholic church to welcome in, not only a new decade, but a new century and a new millennium. I remember feeling filled with optimism. By entering this new era, I felt, we could wipe the slate clean. Maybe this would be a new age of peace, love, brother and sisterhood. EVERYBODY SING!
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius!
Age of Aquarius!
Aquariusuuuuus!
How utterly naive on my part, huh? By year's end, all of that hope was out the window and into the toilet. In December of 2000, an ideologically perverted Supreme Court would assist in a stolen election by stopping the vote count in the state of Florida, installing a corrupt little frat boy with the I.Q. of a half-eaten box of Milk Duds as president of the United States. It was all downhill from that moment on. From the birth of "Reality Television" to the worst attack on American soil since the Civil War, it was quite a strange ten years to say the least. Thankfully this awful decade is a mere three days away from being forever consigned to history's scrap heap. Hallelujah.
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Great lists, John. I've actually not seen very many of these, so I'm going to add as many of them to my netflix que as I can find!
the matrix did not make your list. interesting.
"The Matrix" was released in 1999 and so didn't make anybody's Best of the Decade list. But if I were to list the great movies of 1999 (a truly great year for movies) I wouldn't include it as a personal favorite. Lots of other people love it, but I'm sadly not one of them.
Movies in 2000-9 that got a lot of praise but which I didn't myself like include:
The Lord of the Rings movies
Amelie
Spirited Away
Love it, John. Thank you for this. So glad to see you included You Can Count On Me.
I suppose the only issue i would take with the list is that Superbad made the cut but no Wes Anderson? (unless you count Squid And The Whale, that is). And no Pixar? I think The Incredibles is definitely up there with the best of the decade…
anyway, thanks for this John.
You're right, Dave. "The Incredibles" should have been mentioned in the runners up — gross oversight by me. I really did like it.
Pixar in general, however, is something I am just not as smitten by as most folks are (Incredibles excepted). I didn't like Toy Story, and had mixed feelings about Finding Nemo. Wall-E was ok, but felt like an E.T. ripoff. And so on. I love animated fantasies (e.g. YELLOW SUBMARINE and THE JUNGLE BOOK) so it's not the form itself I don't like.
UP and DISTRICT 9 and WILD THINGS all hit at a time this year when I was swamped at work and I made the mistake of missing them on the big screen — and I have decided I won't see them until I get a big screen HDTV (next year maybe?). Am I right that these are big screen movies?
For me one of the interesting and sad stories of the decade was the plunge of New Zealand's director Peter Jackson into the Hollywood abyss. All three LOTR movies and (worst of all King Kong) were terrible compared to the artistic heights he had achieved back in NZ (e.g. Heavenly Creatures, Forgotten Silver). I went into 2000 crazy about PJ and left very disillusioned.