So, you don't wanna talk about Spencer Tracy or James Brown? Okay, fine, be that way. I see now that the crew over at Time Out New York has posted its Top 50 Movies of the Aughts, so now's the time, as Charlie Parker would put it, when I might as well counter with my own list, and create what some call "added value" by citing 20 more than 50, because why the hell not.
I will try to be more aphoristic and less portentous than the TONY crew in my film assessment. I don't mean that as a slam against the TONY crew's summings-up. Believe me, I know what a drag it can be to write those 50-to-120 word capsules, particularly if you're trying to get across why the films "mattered" or were "important." It was, quite frankly, really tiresome to have to strike those poses back in the Premiere days. Now that I'm my own boss, my own capsules will be...well, whatever they will be. Another liberty I take is in not ranking—who am I tallying up ballots against, anyway?—but rather listing the films in possibly imperfect alphabetical order. Shine sweet freedom, etc...
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001): A heartbreakingly fractured fairy tale. If you think its final 20 minutes constitute a happy ending, watch, and think, again.
Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002): The Charlie Kaufman-scripted upending of Hollywood convention isn't quite the coup-de-grace it's meant to be, but it still delivers a potent viral load of satirical venom.
The Aviator (Martin Scorsese, 2004): The maestro's sweeping Hughes biography is a much-misunderstood study in obsession, and how failure never stops haunting success. The color manipulation is brilliant too.
Burn After Reading (The Coen Brothers, 2008): A really superb live-action cartoon. Reviewed here.
Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008): Pace, Steven, this was not a mistake. Not at all. Some thoughts on it here.
A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008, pictured): A superbly multi-faceted film that genuinely suggests where cinema can, and should, go in the next century.
The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000): Women's oppression in Iran. A beautiful new manifestation of the neo-realist ethos.
Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, 2006): It took me a while to come around to this extraordinary film...and I'm glad I did. I walked out on it first...now I feel I could watch it three times a year, at least. The first key to appreciating it is to stop seeing Costa as some sort of, shall we say, "liberal." It's deeper, way deeper, than that...
The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, 2007): Well, yes, it is about the plaints of white people who are visiting India. And your point is? My initial thoughts here.
Demonlover (Olivier Assayas, 2002, pictured): A perhaps alarmist portrait of capital in the cyber age. But a swift, effective kick in the balls in any event.
Éloge de l’amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001): Profoundly problematic Godard, yes. And no less great for that.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004): Another magnificent Kaufman script given preternaturally empathetic life by director Gondry.
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009): Reviewed here.
Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001, pictured): An appropriately twisted vision about the catastrophe of erotic awakening.
The Fountain (Darren Aronofsky, 2006): "We rented that, and we saw they quoted you on the box cover," some friend of a friend told me at dinner recently, "and you said it was 'fascinating and amazing.' I'm amazed the stupid thing ever even got made!" I get this a lot. And still insist. Review here.
The Frontier of Dawn (Philippe Garrel, 2008): His ghost story, with effects straight out of Melies/Franju. An incomparable atmosphere.
Gangs of New York (Scorsese, 2002): Decidedly imperfect, with moments of epic greatness that is dares subsequent films to come near.
The Girlfriend Experience (Soderbergh, 2009): Yeah, The Girlfriend Experience. What about it?
Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003): I love all of this director's films, but really, this is his most haunted and haunting experience, a must-see for everyone.
The GoodTimes Kid (Azazel Jacobs, 2005): Another particularly sui generis thing, this from a genuinely adventurous American independent. Crazy, anguished, visually controlled and deft.
Good Morning, Night (Marco Bellocchio, 2003, pictured): A painfully nuanced film about the Red Army and Moro, from a politically and emotionally engaged director who's been in there pitching since well before the event depicted.
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008): Reviewed here.
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005): Reviewed here.
The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008) Reconsidered here.
A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2006): One of Cronenberg's slyest not-quite-pastiches. FULL of unnerving acting.
I Heart Huckabees (David O. Russell, 2004): Improbably enough, my original review is still preserved here.
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007): I didn't entirely get this picture at first. And then, I got it much better. It's that kind of movie. I've seen it three times. Gets more interesting.
The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004): Is The Incredibles.
Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009): Reviewed here. Tub-thumped further here.
L’Intrus (Claire Denis, 2004): One of the great Denis' most daring and transportive (in more ways than one) films.
Invictus (Clint Eastwood, 2009): I can't really talk about it yet, but yes, I think it's that good.
In The Mood For Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2001): An apotheosis. Reviewed here.
The Lady and the Duke (Eric Rohmer, 2001, pictured): Rohmer's experiment with digitally-created backdrops adds a daringly beautiful dimension to his mise-en-scene. The writing and acting are unusually sensitive.
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009): Too hip? Gotta go? Not by my lights. 100% beguiling.
Looney Tunes Back In Action (Joe Dante, 2003): A meta-movie that really knows its business. Reviewed here.
Lorna’s Silence (The Dardenne Brothers, 2008): A lot of critics thought this was more, and less, of the same from the filmmaking team, but its concentration, and discovery of the iconic Arta Dobroshi, make it my favorite Dardennes. First considered by me here. And again here.
Marie Antoinette (Sofia Coppola, 2006): A splendid cinematic intoxicant, and not stupid. Reviewed here.
Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004): A lot of people still enjoy trashing this picture, and truth to tell, a lot of its imperfections are legitimate chum for the breed of moviegoer Hitchcock called "the Plausibles." And for all that it still wrenches your gut when you actually watch it. Reviewed here.
Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002): A truly visionary work from a truly visionary director...who hasn't made a feature since. What the hell is wrong with the world? Reviewed here.
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001): Ah, I'll never forget David Lynch at Premiere's party at Prego in Toronto, chomping on a Sicilian slice with Watts and Harring flanking him, and booming across the floor, "Thanks for the four-star review, Glenn! Great pizza!" From said review: "Roberto Rossellini once remarked of Chaplin's A King in New York, 'It is the film of a free man.' Mulholland Drive is the film of a slave — a slave to his own, undying obsessions. But that's not necessarily a bad thing."
Ne touchez pas le hache (Jacques Rivette, 2007): I prefer the evocative French title to the plainer The Duchess of Langeaise. A wonder, first reviewed here.
Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2008): For my money the Korean director's funniest, most audacious work. Reviewed here.
Notre Musique (Jean-Luc Godard, pictured): War and provisional peace, enraged and enigmatic.
No Country For Old Men (The Coen Brothers, 2007): A lot of folks are already pissed that this was entirely snubbed by the Time Out New York panel. As in, didn't get a single vote. I reserve comment on the matter. I have written about the film here and here.
Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki, 2009): Simplicity and wonder. Considered here.
Red Cliff Parts 1 & 2 (John Woo, 2008): Epic moviemaking like you thought they didn't/couldn't do anymore. Considered here.
Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, 2005): You say you wanna revolution...Garrel's uncanny evocation of May '68 melds the political with the personal until the political becomes...something else.
The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001): Anderson really let fly with his baroque side here, to dazzling and heartbreaking result.
Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002): This one-take wonder is more than an amazing technical achievement, and more than an arty promo for The Hermitage. It's a restless treatise on art and intimations of immortality.
A Serious Man (The Coen Brothers, 2009): Reviewed here. Sorry about the critic-baiting therein, but what am I gonna do, pretend it never happened?
Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004): You don't have to be an alcoholic to love this picture...but it helps! But seriously. I compared it to Renoir when it first came out and I stand by that.
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001): One of the master's most complex, enigmatic, and haunting works.
Star Spangled To Death (Ken Jacobs, 1957-2004): Jacobs' epic assembly, a jitter-and-laughter inducing anti-ode to the notion of American exceptionalism. Just because you're paranoid, etc. etc...
Still Life (Jia Zhangke, 2008): The most visually spectacular and mesmerizing work from the Chinese maverick yet.
The Story of Marie and Julian (Jacques Rivette, 2003): In a weird way, I feel as if I am somehow always writing about this film. See here. I consider it in an upcoming Salon mini-feature also.
Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008): Never trust a film critic who tells you he or she doesn't care for pictures about "rich" people.
Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005): Weirder and less on-the-nose than Oldboy. I didn't review, but I got into this online fracas about it, one of the most memorable in the genre.
Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2008): Beautiful, droll, difficult to summarize, one of the most specifically poetic films ever made.
Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008): I liked it so much, I was a DVD extra on it! More thoughts here.
Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002): A peak moment, a summation and an expansion of everything the filmmaker has stood for.
There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007): Damn. Further thoughts here and here. And here. This sure was a fun film to argue about.
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2005): A remarkably delicate, ages-spanning anthology film. Every shot a beauty.
Tokyo Sonata (Kiroshi Kurosawa, 2008):A beautifully calibrated vision of dread. Reviewed here.
Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001): A sui generis splatter/art film. Harrowing, merciless, strangely tender.
25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002, pictured): A beautiful sprawl.
Up (Pete Docter and Bob Peterson, 2009): Reviewed here.
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009): Funny; I'm still kind of on the fence about the content of this picture, but I'm so impressed by its formal excellence in every respect that it dogs me, and strikes me as a genuinely major work.
The World (Jia Zhangke, 2004): Life as a theme park. Not as funny as it sounds. But wonderful
Yi yi (Edward Yang, 2000): The Taiwanese pioneer's last film, alas, a snappy, beautifully detailed family saga, each scene as vivid and true as the last or the next.
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007): Head-spinningly masterful, a redefinition of the policier, an obsessive film worth obsessing over. See here.
And there you have it. You?
Maybe Mike got bent out of shape because his scroll key wasn't working.
But I'm sure Glenn is now convinced to start tailoring the content of his blog to Mike's standards.
Posted by: jbryant | November 28, 2009 at 01:31 PM
Not having seen Invictus, I can't comment on that, but if it's anything like Million Dollar Baby or Gran Torino, easily two of the worst films of this or any decade, this should've been an Eastwood-free list. I have no idea what the plausibility concerns are with MDB; my problem with the film is that it's a heaping pile of grossly manipulative, poorly told dreck. Sam Mendes in Revolutionary Road, or even Todd Field in Little Children, masterpieces of asinine contemptuous caricature, have nothing on the scene where Ms. Swank's family just had to stop by Disney World before dropping by to rustle up some money from their paraplegic daughter. And the whole movie's like that (see the Cowardly Boxer who could've been great but hangs out in Clint's gym and picks on retarded people), when it's not busy offering up insipid homilies to the virtues of lemon meringue pie, or trite little scenes about the big holes in Morgan Freeman's socks, or sucking the life out of your brain with aforementioned's ridiculous narration. On top of that, there's never been a worse-paced movie made. Nearly an hour of Swank begging Eastwood to coach her (sort of reminiscent of how Jolie spends two thirds of Changeling repeating the line, 'where is my boy'), followed by a 20-minute meteoric rise to the top of female boxing - I can understand scrimping on the boxing scenes, but what about the agents, the fame, the money, or a relationship or friendship or acquaintance with anyone but Eastwood - followed by over an hour of hospitalization that drags and drags and drags. As for Gran Torino, I forget the name of the critic who said that the thing was an unholy fusion of the grumpy gramps from Dennis The Menace and Paul Haggis's Crash, but he was on the money. If you had screened clips from the first half hour for me and told me they were an SNL parody Eastwood had done of his own terrible acting and directing, I would've believed you. The laughable simplemindedness and miserable craftsmanship of the whole thing (and of all Eastwood movies in the past 10 or so years) is perhaps best summed up in this bit of dialogue between Walt and his granddaughter:
Ashley: I never knew you had a cool old
car.
Walt: It's only been in here since
before you were born.
Ashley: So, what are you like going to do
with it like, when... you die?
Walt: Jesus, Joseph and Mary.
Ashley: Then what about that super cool
retro couch in the den, I'm going
to State next year and I don't
have, like, any furniture?
No kid in America is that boorish (to her own grandfather on the day of his wife's, and her grandmother's, funeral, no less), or talks like that.
Posted by: Asher | November 30, 2009 at 03:21 AM
"Sam Mendes in Revolutionary Road, or even Todd Field in Little Children, masterpieces of asinine contemptuous caricature, have nothing on the scene where Ms. Swank's family just had to stop by Disney World before dropping by to rustle up some money from their paraplegic daughter."
Dude, there are people like that.
Hell, there are people IN MY FAMILY like that.
Posted by: Tom Russell | November 30, 2009 at 03:35 AM
my god, it's full of...movies.
One film maker from this decade who I don't believe has been mentioned either by Glenn or anyone else is Bong Joon-ho, whose "Memories of Murder" and "The Host" can slot themselves comfortably into my top 70 flicks of the new century.
Continuing NickonSunset's "it was a good decade for" theme, Johnnie To continues to crank out an impressive product. While it can be argued that he hasn't quite produced an out and out masterpiece (though I'll go to bat for "Exiled", which would make my top 70), he does, every other year or so, direct a damn fine film.
Along with To, it was a good decade for French Horror. Along with Glenn's astute choice of "Trouble Every Day", those cheese eating surrender monkeys gave us "In My Skin" and "Inside" (top 70) along with a gaggle of deeply flawed but fascinating films, at least for horror buffs ("Martyrs", "High Tension", "Them").
Posted by: maximilian | November 30, 2009 at 04:20 AM
What a marvelous list, Glenn. Sure, I'd add my voice to the chorus on behalf of "Werckmeister Harmonies," but the rollcall is quite estimable even without it.
I've given "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" two spins (one on screen at TIFF, a second time on video) and I just find it so....slight compared to other Tsai. But this line of argument quickly devolves into a religious debate, one I've had with many folks since its release. (FWIW, my favorite Tsai overall is "The River," and my favorite Tsai of the 00s would probably by "The Wayward Cloud," although I have "Face" right here on my desk and haven't yet found the time.)
Posted by: msic | December 01, 2009 at 02:06 AM
maximilian: Good call on Bong Joon-ho. MEMORIES OF MURDER is in my top ten for the decade, yet I somehow inexplicably left THE HOST off the top 100 list I made for another forum. Looking forward to MOTHER.
Posted by: jbryant | December 01, 2009 at 06:58 AM
Un Prophete
Posted by: wefew | December 01, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Top of the list for me is the absolutely breathtaking UNITED 93.
I totally agree with the poster who mentioned ANCHORMAN (didn't take note of your name, sorry). For me it goes hand in hand with another gem, ZOOLANDER.
Posted by: Owain Wilson | December 03, 2009 at 01:28 PM
Thought the first twenty minutes of The New World was the best first twenty minutes of any film ever made with the exception of 2001 A Space Odyssey.The rest of the film is problematic. But it does deserve mention.
Posted by: Richard | December 03, 2009 at 08:35 PM
'Silent Light' by Carlos Reygadas?
Posted by: RL | December 03, 2009 at 11:45 PM
Good to see some love for REGULAR LOVERS... But Glenn, let me get this straight, you prefer MARIE ANTOINETTE to LOST IN TRANSLATION?
Posted by: Clint | December 04, 2009 at 06:51 PM
"But Glenn, let me get this straight, you prefer MARIE ANTOINETTE to LOST IN TRANSLATION?"
I can't speak for our host, of course, but I myself prefer MARIE ANTOINETTE to LOST IN TRANSLATION; the former has more verve, humour, style, and just plain personality. It's an audacious, if not entirely successful, piece of filmmaking, anchored by strong and idiosyncratic performances. Bill Murray is fine in TRANSLATION, sure, but Scarlett Johannson's vacantness-- even if said vacantness is kinda the point-- grates on me to no end.
Posted by: Tom Russell | December 04, 2009 at 11:58 PM
Surprised not to see "Spider" on this list, since, if I'm not mistaken, it was your #1 film of whatever year it came out back when I still got Premiere magazine.
Posted by: Scott | January 28, 2010 at 04:17 PM
@ Scott. An unforgivable omission. I address it here:
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2009/12/because-100-is-a-nice-round-number.html
Posted by: Glenn Kenny | January 28, 2010 at 11:20 PM