TOP TEN FILMS OF THE DECADE
1 JANUARY 2000 – 30 DECEMBER 2009 (S.A. release dates)
1. Requiem for a Dream
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. City of God
4. Munich
5. There Will Be Blood
6. No Country for Old Men
7. Babel
8. Memento
9. Spirited Away
10. A.I.
In other words, the top film is Aronofsky’s shocking tour de force about addiction. I have seen it nine times, and it always holds up. He followed this triumph with the pretentious F/X display “The Fountain”, which went nowhere, and then beautifully atoned for that misfire with “The Wrestler”, a good but not great film.
There are only two ‘foreign language’ films on the list, simply because I inevitably see more American movies every year. There are two Spielbergs on this list. PT Anderson makes the list again, as he did in the 1990s with his superlative “Magnolia”. The best movie Chris Nolan ever directed is on here as well, and as you can see, it’s not “The Dark Knight”. There is one animation, and of course it’s Miyazaki, at whose feet I bow. “City of God” also doubles as the best gangster film of the decade.
The films listed below very nearly made the list.
Honourable mention:
• Barbarian Invasions, The
• Flags of Our Fathers / Letters from Iwo Jima
• Gosford Park
• Oldboy
• Perfume
• Synecdoche, New York
• Watchmen
• Y Tu Mama Tambien
Best Action Films: “Casino Royale”; “Apocalypto”; “Passion of the Christ”; “The Rundown”.
Best boys’ own Adventures: “A Knight’s Tale”; “Kingdom of Heaven” (Director’s Cut).
Best Horror: “The Descent” (I do not count torture porn or hillbilly hunts towards this category. Both of these are best avoided in any event).
Best Comedy: “Anchorman”; “Pineapple Express”.
Most Visually Innovative Films: Guillermo del Toro’s “Devil’s Backbone”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”, “Hellboy”, “Hellboy 2: The Golden Army”.
Best non-Tolkien Fantasy: “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”.
Best quasi-revisionist War Movie Fantasy: “Inglorious Basterds”.
All Hail Pixar Triple Decker: “Ratatouille”; “Wall-E”; “Up”. These three films provide unparalleled joy.
Best Musical: “Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street”. (Also the best movie the overrated but interesting Tim Burton has yet made. )
Best Romance: “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”; “Secretary”.
Finest Philosophical Consideration of Human Relations: “The Big Lebowski”.
Best Documentary: “Grizzly Man”.
When Shyamalan still made great genre-bending films: “Unbreakable”; “Signs”; “The Village”.
Performance of the Decade: Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood”, “Gangs of New York”. Runners up: Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote”, “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead”, “Synecdoche, New York”, “The Savages”. Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain”, the film he should’ve won the Oscar for. Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler”.
As for female performances, Naomi Watts in “21 Grams” and “Mulholland Drive” stands shoulder to shoulder with Kate Winslet in everything she’s done, but mainly “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”. Also, Uma Thurman remains iconic as The Bride in the “Kill Bill” movies.
Best films I saw this year that were released in different decades but would’ve ended up on this list had they been eligible for inclusion on this current list: “The 400 Blows”, “Come and See”, “The Last Temptation of Christ”.
And, just for the hell of it, the best TV series of the past ten years is “Deadwood”.
On a more negative note, the past decade also gave us more Michael Bay movies and the “Twilight” saga. General audience behaviour in cinemas continues to decline as socially inappropriate behaviour from teens and adults just get worse. Had to sit through awfully pretentious documentary “March of the Penguins”, which really tested my love for nature. Eastwood’s melodramatic “Million Dollar Baby” drove me up the wall, as did his indulgent “Mystic River” (apparently it takes 30 policemen to hold back Sean Penn). Also, too many sub-par animated movies are doing the rounds.
Here's to the next ten years (and to more regular writing about film).
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