Originally published in December 3, 2009 Issue
It’s a shame that approximately 85 percent of end-of-the-decade top 10 lists will begin by quoting Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities—“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”—because when it comes to the past 10 years in movies, it’s really quite applicable. There were many disquieting trends that persisted in the industry (superhero overload, underwritten female characters, Eddie Murphy), but there were also many signs of hope.
Take the studio system. Sure, it regularly churned out vapid, generic, inexplicably popular CGI-laden cash cows (hi, 300!)—but it also allowed independent divisions to flourish. Focus Features gave us Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Fox Searchlight distributed such gems as The Dreamers and Slumdog Millionaire, films that would never otherwise have seen the light of day on these shores; and Sony Pictures Classics imported foreign fare like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Lives of Others, which unexpectedly yet deservedly nabbed Oscars from more popular and more expensive films.
New modes of distribution were also, despite their downsides, cause for excitement among cineastes. DVDs finally caught on, taking a bite out of ticket sales, but they also made movies more portable, affordable, and rewatchable. And though YouTube gave us lonelygirl15 and Chris Crocker, it also gave us “Star Wars Kid,” who seems to have had even more cultural impact this decade than the Star Wars series itself.
The future of film, in any case, still looks bright. Here are the best reasons why:
Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Almost Famous (2000, dir. Cameron Crowe)
Based loosely on Crowe’s real-life experiences as a teenage Rolling Stone journalist, Almost Famous brilliantly frames the mid-’70s rock scene as a coming-of-age narrative. Its only weakness? After watching the movie, you may find it hard to jump in swimming pools without yelling “I’m a golden god!”—or to listen to “Tiny Dancer” without shedding a tear.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000, dir. Ang Lee)
High-flying swordsmen, women walking on trees, sparks flashing off steel in the darkness of night—Ang Lee’s wuxia masterwork is one of the most visually stunning films of the decade. But it’s also one of the most influential. It wasn’t the first film of its kind, of course, but it spurred intense worldwide interest in the genre—Zhang Yimou’s Hero and House of Flying Daggers wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much face time without it.
Inglourious Basterds (2009, dir. Quentin Tarantino)
QT’s return to form—his best offering since Pulp Fiction—is one of the few highlights of this lackluster movie year. Many of the typical Tarantino flourishes are here: chapter breaks, songs that sound straight out of spaghetti westerns, protracted scenes of slow-boil dialogue, sustained close-ups of female feet. But somehow IB feels wholly new. Maybe it’s because Tarantino finally decided to create compelling characters again—like Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), one of the decade’s most frightening and unforgettable villains.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008, dir. Danny Boyle)
Somewhat of a backlash seems to have set in after this film swept through the Oscars and into the tabloids. To be certain, the child stars of this British drama, set in India, were under-compensated for their work—to this day, they deserve far more support in getting their lives on track. But that shouldn’t detract from the incredible and timely achievement that is Slumdog Millionaire, a modern-day fairytale whose message of hope arrived at just the right moment to capture the attention of a world in need of change.
WALL•E (2008, dir. Andrew Stanton)
Anyone conducting an overview of this decade in movies would be remiss to neglect the achievements of Pixar, the studio with the best record of success—10 for 10—in the industry. WALL•E, arguably Pixar’s best film, showcases its best animation—and its most potent message.
The Top 10:
10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007, dir. Andrew Dominik)
The latter half of this decade marked a comeback for the Western: films like Open Range and 3:10 to Yuma were throwbacks to the genre’s golden age, while others, such as Brokeback Mountain and No Country for Old Men, pushed its boundaries. The best of the lot, however, was this under-the-radar offering from Andrew Dominik, a budding director who was no doubt weaned on the 1970s films of Terrence Malick. With its swooning, dreamlike visuals, its vivid, punch-drunk performances, and its haunting depiction of suppressed anger and looming violence, Jesse James feels like the true spiritual successor to Badlands and Days of Heaven.
9. Let the Right One In (2008, dir. Tomas Alfredson)
It’s been said many times before, but it needs to be said again: although Twilight took the world by storm in the latter half of this decade, it was this Swedish vampire romance that really deserved all the press. Chilling to the bone, gorgeously shot, endlessly ambiguous—is Eli a girl, a castrated boy, or androgynous? And will Oscar end up like Håkan?—Alfredson’s film, based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, sets the template for how horror movies can transcend their genre to become something more. Here’s hoping the American remake, due out in 2010, doesn’t ruin the rich source material.
8. There Will Be Blood (2007, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
Many critics have noted that P. T. Anderson’s movies pay homage to his favorite directors: Boogie Nights is indebted to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Raging Bull; Magnolia recalls Robert Altman’s Short Cuts. There Will Be Blood follows in this tradition, honoring Stanley Kubrick by playing, in a way, like 2001 in reverse. We begin with a larger than life hero, apparently alone in the universe; we look on in awe as tall black masses appear seemingly out of nowhere; and we end with a man bent over in rage, brandishing a bowling pin like a femur-wielding ape. If Kubrick’s film is about progress, then Anderson’s is about regress—fitting, perhaps, for an age when people complain that a film titled There Will Be Blood doesn’t have more blood in it.
7. Children of Men (2006, dir. Alfonso Cuarón)
What is it about dystopias that we find so fascinating? Somewhere around the beginning of the twentieth century, utopian visions went out of style; we began to prefer to see social structures destroy the human spirit rather than improve it. Whatever the reason, this decade continued the streak: films like A. I.: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, and WALL•E imagined frightening futures that shed a critical light on the present. Children of Men is the cream of this crop, portraying a world where women have become infertile and humanity has lost hope. Keep an eye out for its two astonishing tracking shots—among the greatest ever committed to celluloid.
6. Dogville (2003, dir. Lars von Trier)
Many serious charges have been levied against this three-hour epic, set entirely on a soundstage with the sparest of sets. Some have claimed it’s an example of misogyny or misandry; others have argued that it’s outright misanthropic; and yet others have claimed (worst of all!) that it’s anti-American. To denigrate the film as being any of these things, however, would be to miss the point. Throughout the movie, there are several clues that part of Danish director von Trier’s project was to play with the idea that film can function as allegory: try reading the apples scene as any sort of Eden retelling, for instance, and you’ll be sure to hit a brick wall. By its end—a surreal spectacle that is both hilarious and horrific—Dogville doesn’t criticize women, or men, or human beings, or America, so much as its own ability to represent and comment on them in the first place.
5. Spirited Away (2001, dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
CGI may have ruled the day at the box office this past decade, but this almost completely hand-drawn film, Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece, was the aughties’ greatest feat of animation. Drawing from sources as diverse as Lewis Carroll and ancient Japanese mythology, Spirited Away tells a coming-of-age story that is as complex as it is moving. Ten-year-old Chihiro is anxious about relocating to a new town, but she soon finds that she’s traveled to a new dimension. It’s place where gods come to rest, and where people have to work—a reality that forces her into a memorable encounter with a “stink god.” Yet it’s also a place where magic happens—where identities can be lost and miraculously found, and where friendships can literally take flight. Look for the moment when Chihiro and Haku fall through the sky, tears drifting back toward the heavens—it’s one of the most beautiful scenes of the decade, animated or not.
4. The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003, dir. Peter Jackson)
Hollywood blockbusters ran the gamut in quality this decade, ranging from the truly awful (Spider-Man 3) to the transcendent (The Dark Knight). Yet none of them came close to Peter Jackson’s three-volume opus, one of the most ambitious and successful projects in the history of film. From the magnificent montage at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring to the stunning battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers to the heartbreaking coda at the end ofThe Return of the King, LOTR maintains an incredibly epic scope but never loses sight of its human scale. It’s notable for its innovations not only in narrative—Gollum remains the most convincing, empathetic CGI character ever created—but also in production: its back-to-back filming schedule has been adopted by the Matrix sequels and the last two Harry Potter films.
3. City of God (2002, dirs. Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund)
Sometimes style creates substance, as is the case with this 2002 stunner from Brazil. With its overexposed photography, its restless camera movements, and its rapid-fire editing, City of God not only captures street life in Rio de Janeiro, but also comments on it. The film races through space and time at a breakneck pace, much like the young men who populate it—making the violence that crops up so casually seem somehow unavoidable, or even inevitable. We aren’t allowed to get too close to the characters, just as no one in the film seems able to do so; to know is to trust, and to trust—in a place where even eight year olds are packing heat—is a fool’s errand. City of God has inspired interest not only in its namesake, but also in the ability of film to bring urban poverty and strife to the world’s attention. Slumdog Millionaire, Gomorrah, and others are indebted to it.
2. The New World (2005, dir. Terrence Malick)
It has become a bit of a cliché to refer to some films as poetic, but it’s hard to describe Terrence Malick’s latest as anything else. With its sweeping views of early colonial Virginia—the camera drifting through tall grass, under towering trees, along rippling rivers—The New World feels like one of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s dreams, portraying nature more rapturously than any other film this decade. With barely any dialogue, Malick tells a story that remains an important one in the age of globalization—showing that no foreign land, no matter how replete with resources, should be considered a “new world” ripe for exploitation. The film’s revisionist take on John Smith’s relationship with Pocahontas does not so much distort the early history of America so much as elucidate it—as a tragedy where innocence, and unbounded promise, were lost.
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004, dir. Michel Gondry)
Just as Annie Hall reinvented the romantic comedy in the 1970s, so did this genre-bending phantasmagoria, directed by French music video auteur Michel Gondry from a script by the wildly inventive Charlie Kaufman. In some ways, the film is reactionary, doing away with state-of-the-art special effects in favor of camera tricks and clever lighting. But in others it’s astonishingly avant-garde, collapsing the distinctions between past and present, comedy and tragedy, real and imagined. As a film whose central conceit is that technology can overcome pain—a man and a woman break up and discover they can erase each other from their memories—Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is incredibly timely, pitched at an impatient and overmedicated world. Yet it’s also timeless—telling a story that reminds us that we all have needs and shortcomings, and that reassures us, as the man and woman ultimately decide, that that’s “okay.”
