It’s the day you’ve all been waiting for.
40. In America (2002)-I typically dislike schmaltz, but this one got to me.
39. Lantana (2001)
38. Dogville (2003)-A lot of people despise this movie, and I don’t really have a good answer.
37. Roger Dodger (2002)-very funny.
36. Sideways (2004)
35. The Incredibles (2004)
34. The King of Kong (2007)-Lots of great documentaries this decade. One of the dudes looks like Haren.
33. The Pianist (2002)-second half is outstanding.
32. The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
31. Half Nelson (2006)
30. Volver (2006)
29. Ghost Dog (2000)
28. Persepolis (2007)-Have you seen this woman interviewed? She is crazy…
27. Broken Flowers (2005)
26. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter & Spring (2003)-Fantastic landscape.
25. Best in Show (2000)-My favorite nut is the pistachio.
24. Let the Right One In (2008)-The scene at the end is awesome.
23. Ocean’s 11 (2001)
22. 28 Days Later (2002)-Slumdog Millionaire sucks.
21. The Return (2003)-My blurb is “haunting.”
20. Solaris (2002)
19. You Can Count on Me (2000)
18. No Country for Old Men (2007)
17. Memento (2000)
16. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)-Good documentary about clowns.
15. The Informant! (2009)
14. To Be and To Have (2002)-Amazing cinematography for a documentary.
13. Children of Men (20060
12. Cache (2005)
11. Punch Drunk Love (2002)
10. Spellbound (2002)
9. The Station Agent (2003)
8. Time Out (2001)-I have experienced similar dread…
7. Happy-go-Lucky (2008)-I think people should be nice to each other.
6. Zodiac (2007)
5. Before Sunset (2004)
4. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
3. School of Rock (2003)-I love Linklater.
2. Up (2009)
1. Talk to Her (2002)
My Top 40 Films of the Decade 97
97 thoughts on “My Top 40 Films of the Decade”
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Those on your list that I saw:
40: I’m a sucker for schmaltz. Really liked this movie.
36: If this is the universe’s penance for canceling Ned and Stacy, I’ll take it…reluctantly.
35: “I am the greatest good you are ever going to have!”
25: Not as good as Waiting for Guffman.
23: Enjoyable
17: Merlin
13: I still don’t understand why the pregnant woman didn’t go to the authorities.
12: Liked it
10: Meant to be watched as a double feature with Word Wars.
4: Oh, that Wes Anderson; he’s so clever.
3: This is one of the greatest movies of all time.
36. A fellow N&S fan!!! God, I loved that show. Thomas Haden Church is an unstoppable force. And Nadja Dajani is … well, in the flash-back-to-high-school episode from s2 (I think?) she was every single girl I had a crush on as a teenager. Real shame that she’s had work done the last couple years.
To be honest, I barely remember the show except for thinking that it was uproariously funny, and that THC’s exit from Wings was well worth it (looking back on things, I’m not sure why I liked Wings, but I was a Full House fan, too, so what the hell did I know?).
13. My memory is hazy, but she may be have been pregnant with Jesus…
I enjoyed 17 of the 18 movies I have seen that are on that list.
But Ghost Dog is a waste of time and money.
Ghost Dog is great, but came out in 1999.
I counted 15 of these that I saw, and liked them all (though wouldn’t have The Incredibles on a list.) Some that I would add: Milk, Last King of Scotland, Catch me if you Can, Adaptation, and, just for fun, Star Trek!
Didn’t see Star Trek but the rest of those, particularly the middle three, were great.
Milk would be top-10 on my list. So too Lives of Others.
Agreed, on both counts.
My attendance this decade has been very, very spotty (and I’ve also gone down an aesthetic rabbit hole [TWHS/euphemism alert] with film much as I’ve done with music).
What I’ve seen from your list:
38. Eh, I found it pretentious, tendentious, and unwatchable. Which pretty much sums up LvT for me.
36. Wonderful. THC is a second-tier comedic genius.
35. Very good. No objections to its inclusion in this spot.
33. Left me cold. I’m a huge Polanski fan, but it just seemed to be too close for him. Has a weird resonance with Cast Away for me.
32. Mind-blowingly great. Verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry French.
25. Very good in spots. I find Guest’s corpus to be a bit overrated (Guffman, in particular, I find thoroughly unfunny and condescending).
23. I’d put this higher. I’d also group all 3 films together for the willful perversity with which SS imbued them.
22. Meh. Boyle’s been on an accelerating downhill slide since Trainspotting.
20. I’d put this higher.
19. Meh. Didn’t dislike it, but top 40?
18. Meh. Better for the return to form than for what it was per se.
17. I’m finding myself feeling similarly about this as I did about The Usual Suspects — initially found it wildly overrated, then came to realize the simple brilliance and sharp execution of the content and the form.
16. Great. Also depressing/harrowing/frustrating.
11. Loathed it. Passionately. If there’s one cinematic force I hate more than PTA, it’s Sandler.
10. Good. Wouldn’t have it this high, but …
6. See #17, but less so on each extreme.
4. Ugh. I love Rushmore, but can do without the rest of his crap.
4. It’s just like Rushmore.
17. It would have been extremely difficult to make the plot and everything about his condition make sense, and I don’t think they quite did.
25. This is actually the only one I liked.
17. See my #1 and #2
… and my #3, which actually does, I think, solve all its own problems.
Oh, and I forgot Riding Giants.
How about Step Into Liquid?
I didn’t see it but heard good things. I’m not a surfer, but I thought the whole historical aspect of the people surfing the big waves for the first time really interesting. And yeah, cool footage.
36
1. Femme Fatale — almost a perfect film, so much fun
2. Mulholland Drive — mikeA, did you forget about this one? Or am I projecting/misremembering?
3. Happy Accidents — now this is a perfect film.
4. Session 9 — … as is this. In the absence of a more comprehensive ranked list, I probably out to throw The Machinist and Transsiberian in here somewhere, too.
5. Donnie Darko
6. Solaris
7. Amelie
8. The Prestige — my favorite Nolan film
9. I’m Not There — fan-fucking-tastic
10. Russian Ark — another perfect one
11. Southland Tales
12. Ocean’s 11/12/13
13. Eastern Promises/A History of Violence — the Cronenberg-Mortensen thing is just really, really great. I also really dig the late-period Cronenberg that’s emerged since eXistenZ.
14. Wonder Boys
15. The Bourne trilogy — went downhill over the course of the run, but each film (esp. the first 2) has a lot to recommend it
16. Lost in La Mancha
17. Collateral — gawd, that shootout scene in the club!
18. O, Brother Where Art Thou?
19. Team America: World Police
20. Moulin Rouge – or, at least, the first 10 minutes of it
21. The Heart of the World — Maddin’s filmograph gets pretty tiresome (even over the course of one film), but this concentrated short is AMAZING
22. Grizzly Man/Wild Blue Yonder/Rescue Dawn – It’s hard to claim that Herzog has transmogrified in quite the same way as Cronenberg or Lee, but he’s definitely in an interesting phase/renaissance. WBY is really astonishing … ah, fuck it: it gets its own entry
23. Wild Blue Yonder
24. Erin Brockovich
25. 25th Hour/Inside Man/Miracle at St. Anna– the “new” Spike Lee is almost as interesting as the new Cronenberg
26. LOTR trilogy … somewhere in the bottom quadrant of my top 40
27. Training Day — you know, maybe it’s the constant playing and replaying on cable, but I find this to be a really, really solid piece of work, with great perfs by Denzel and Hawke
28. Spider
29. Good Night, and Good Luck
30. The Matador
31. Timecrimes
32. Gosford Park — I’m a notorious Altman-hater, but this picture is just really, really good
33. Swimming Pool
34. Sideways
35. The Triplets of Belleville
36. The Incredibles
Mulholland Drive was 41 or 42. No objection to putting it as high as you did.
I loved the first two thirds of Training Day, but the ending was awful.
Haven’t seen 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16, 21, 23, 30, 31.
25th Hour almost made my list, but I wasn’t too impressed by Inside Man. Seemed like a standard heist movie.
I liked Eastern Promises a lot, but not History of Violence. The shift in tone in the second half was very jarring.
Training Day and Collateral both had lousy endings. Seems to me that it’s a generic requirement: if you’re going to make a moderately budgeted major-studio pic focusing on an antihero, you have to have a crappy ending.
I liked Inside Man for how casually and playfully authoritative it was. The willfully perverse casting and use of Willem Dafoe, for example.
That tonal shift in HoV — yeah, it’s a take it or leave it thing. It was certainly intentional, and I thought it worked, but I can see how it could work against one’s enjoyment of the film.
You should really check out Brad Anderson’s work. He’s really, really sharp. Happy Accidents is for me what Memento and the Usual Suspects were for others.
I’ll check out Happy Accidents and Session 9. I don’t think I’d even heard of them. I respect movies (like Collateral) that kill off semi-major characters unexpectedly. My favorite example of that was The Patriot, which of course was terrible, but I loved that they spent a good 20 minutes on a love story between Heath Ledger and his wife, and then almost immediately the British rounded her up with some others into a barn and burned down the barn.
Yeah, when Ruffalo goes down, it’s a real jolt.
I’d be willing to bet that the first version of the script killed off Jada at the end.
Isn’t randomly killing semi-major characters a hallmark of Joss Whedon projects? He did the re-write for Speed, and I’m certain that he added the death of Jeff Daniels’ character.
Speed would have been a lot more fun if they’d killed off all of the bustages, one by one, until it was just Keanu left on the bus, and he figured out where Dennis Hopper was and drove the bus into his house, killing them both.
Brad Anderson reminds me of Wes Anderson reminds me of David O. Russell, which brings me to I Heart Huckabees, which I loved the first time around. Slightly less the second time.
15. Yes, the Bourne’s were good. For pure ridiculous fun, though, Live Free Or Die Hard > Bourne Ultimatum (both 2007.)
mb:
1. The first ten minutes of Moulin Rouge were incredible.
2. You are very, very wrong about PTA. I think this may just be your contrarian monkey.
3. I find it hard to believe the Coens only made ONE FILM that cracked your top 36.
Eh, most of the Coens’ best movies came before 2000.
OH! DECADE!
I get it.
I’m a dense ex-sign-maker. I thought we were talking the last forty years and couldn’t understand the HUGE gaps in peoples lists.
I think I’ve seen 10 of mikeA’s, and only 7 of monkeyballs (and I pretty much hated Team America and Mulholland Drive).
I can’t believe neither included There Will Be Blood
10 (11) of my favorites that I can think of right now:
Already listed:
Memento
Sideways
Broken Flowers
Best in Show
Royal Tenenbaums
Not already listed:
The Man Who Wasn’t There
There Will Be Blood
Coffee and Cigarettes
Bad Santa
Word Wars / Wordplay
I almost put The Man Who Wasn’t There and Coffee and Cigarettes on.
Oh, and The Wrestler
Oh. I barely know who he is. But that was a great, great movie.
(monkey’s wrong here—PTA’s awesome in his awesomeness)
Um, wow.
Close Encounters of the Redneck Kind from Marc Bullard on Vimeo.
So no one has seen #1?
Nope. I know what it’s about, but never saw it.
Speaking of Almodovar: All About My Mother I saw and thought was okay.
Speaking of Spanish-language movies: Y Tu Mama Tambien I really liked.
Last week re #2: watched again, cried again.
Also…how the hell do you people find the time to see so many movies?
Obviously, by not spending too much time on (ostensibly) A’s-related blogs over the course of the decade.
Very few and/or recent parents hereabouts.
Empty nester here. I pretty much missed a wide swath of movies/music/baseball/pop culture from the mid-80s to mid-90s.
Looking at my list, I think I saw almost all of these pre-baby.
Hey, wait a minute–I think there’s another film we all need to add to our lists!
Hm. I have been tasked with acquiring 6# of turnips for tomorrow’s feast.
SIX POUNDS OF TURNIPS! In former Soviet Union, Leningrad lays siege to you.
You’re leaving it a bit late to start your turnip kraut.
jeez, I wish I could give you mine. I’ve been collecting the damn things from my CSA for weeks. What are you going to do with them? I could use a use.
I wish I could tell you. I’ve been banned from the kitchen for the day. I am going to be in full-body withdrawal/loss-of-control twitch by noon.
you get no turkey access?
No turkey, period. (That, I don’t have a problem with per se.)
Damn – sal’s confiscating turkey periods now too?
watch yourself
No mention of the Dark Knight?
http://www.athleticsnation.com/2008/7/25/579390/batman-kinda-sucked
Hm, good points throughout. That said…
I think this Batman movie would be better understood/appreciated if you were familiar with Alan Moore’s Batman. Moore presented the “insanity can be triggered in anyone” theme Nolan tried so hard to touch on (and which he succeeded in doing so for the first 2/3 of the movie). And with that, I had no problem with the plausibility of Harvey Dent’s conversion (especially knowing how fucked up the guy is even before the stuff he endured in Dark Knight).
The two issues I had with TDK were Nolan’s backgrounding of the characters/plot and the ending. He assumes the viewer already knows a lot w/r/t to the history of Batman, Two Face, and Batman’s relationship with Gotham, which is why Batman fanboys (like myself) enjoyed the movie immensely whereas my friends with a casual knowledge of Batman enjoyed it but also found some parts lacking explanation (such as the ending and Batman’s need to go into hiding). But of course, if Nolan spent more time on that, then this movie would easily be around ~4 hours and us Americans surely can’t sit still long enough for that. Lastly, the conclusion Nolan reaches at the end of the movie (that the Joker was wrong and that people are inherently good) felt like too much of a Hollywood feel good cop out to me. Or maybe I’m just biased towards Moore’s more ambiguous conclusion at the end of “The Killing Joke.”
Anyways, I’m rambling here, I agree that the critics fawning over the movie was nauseating, but it was also quite typical of mainstream critics (who, all too often, confuse “dark” with “OMFG thought provoking!!!!”). That said, it was still a damn good movie (far from “sucked”), definitely the best superhero movie of all time, and especially pleasing to us fanboys with a better sense of the background of the characters. Best movie EVAH? No. Top 40 of the decade? Definitely.
yeah, that’s probably true about all the backstory. I didn’t like the LotR movies either, largely because it wasn’t clear what all the rules of that world were, and it also wasn’t clear to me why I was supposed to care.
Fair enough. I loved the LotR movies, and biased-ly think it’s more fair since every fantasy plot ever is a LotR knockoff.
It’s strange-TDK triggered in me a desire to return to reading Batman comics. I was an avid Batman fan in the 70’s and early 80’s when that goody-goody was getting all the DC love.
I understood completely where Nolan left off TDK. But, you’re right, the “humanity is basically decent” crap seemed to strike a false chord to me.
Eh, I actually like the “humanity is basically decent” crap. But then, I actually believe that. :)
I really do, too, but it seemed like the complete wrong note for the movie.
That’s a valid point, especially since all of the passengers probably should have died (if I’m remembering the scene correctly). I do like the whole, “everyday men can be just as nasty as the worst criminal” theme that eventually gave way to the do-good criminals.
Enjoyed that one too, although it left my head spinning first time I watched it.
Some that haven’t been mentioned, in no particular order:
In the Mood for Love, Man On Wire, Dirty Pretty Things, Enigma, United 93, Memories of Murder, Maria Full of Grace, In Bruges, The Lookout, Shotgun Stories, Michael Clayton, 49 Up, Oldboy, Lost in Translation, Notes on a Scandal, The Devil’s Backbone, Hustle & Flow, The Proposition, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Gone Baby Gone, Tell No One, The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Did not like Michael Clayton. At all.
Did not like Lost in Translation. Major thumbs up to ESotSM (big Jim Carrey fan and have always like Gondry’s music videos and commercials). Maria Full of Grace was enjoyable, I didn’t care too much for Hustle and Flow.
I thought Enigma was remarkably terrible. First of all, the actual historical story is fantastic and dramatic enough that the stuff they elided and made up was just … beyond comprehension. Second, it was dramatically slack in that BBC-ish way.
remarkably terrible
I don’t begrudge anyone that reaction. It sure was a big mess. And there are parts I thought were misfires, for sure. I fuckin’ loved it, though. Having all the “revolutionaries” be played by former SNL’ers? That’s … genius of a certain kind.
OK, so M&C isn’t as polarizing as, say, this.
And I’ll take “sprawling, ambitious mess” over “tasteful, ‘authentic’ historical ‘thriller'” any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I think you are crediting it with ambition simply because it was sprawling.
Your weakness for cleverness blinds you. Perhaps my weakness for Kate Winslet does the same to me.
Loved The Lookout. I’m a big Gordon-Leavitt fan.
My top 30 of the last decade, in no particular order
1. In America
2. Twilight Samurai
3. Napoleon Dynamite
4. New York Doll
5. Mystic River
6. Garden State
7. Cast Away
8. Chicken Run
9. Big Fish
10. Best in Show
11. Almost Famous
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
13. The Dark Knight
14. Children of Men
15. A Beautiful Mind
16. Master & Commander
17. Donnie Darko
18. Spirited Away
19. The Darjeeling Limited
20. The Incredibles
21. Finding Nemo
22. Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers
23. School of Rock
24. Hero
25. The Pianist
26. High Fidelity
27. The Triplets of Belleville
28. Spellbound
29. WALL-E
30. Cinderella Man
I’ve only seen a quarter of the films from your list: 40, 35, 33, 32, 28, 25, 23, 20, 13 and 3. And most of those are on my list. If I had to make an actual top 5, it’d probably be:
5. Spirited Away
4. Hero
3. Master & Commander (pretty polarizing movie)
2. Children of Men
1. Almost Famous
I thought Solaris was good, but didn’t appreciate the ambient soundtrack.
I wanted so badly to like Persepolis, but the schmaltz-lover in me needed a slightly less-depressing ending.
Ocean’s 11 is also a lot of fun.
I’m pretty sure No Country would be on my list if I ever watched it, from previous YouTube viewing.
And I concur with the Ned & Stacy love above.
If you liked Darjeeling that much, you should watch Tenenbaums. I actually don’t remember the end of Persepolis (although I remember liking it), but you could think of the ending as “I became well-liked and successful for my graphic novels.” I love ambient music. Hero is probably in the 40s for me. Chicken Run won me over with allusions to The Great Escape, which is one of my favorites.
Oh, I didn’t see Spellbound on your list. The tension is real.
Pretty much anything that Aardman makes is brilliant. As for ambient music–I enjoy it when I’m relaxing, and it admittedly fit the environment in Solaris. But I think I would’ve enjoyed the movie a bit more if it had a traditional orchestral score. Kind of like the movie A Knight’s Tale–I would’ve liked it more if it wasn’t such a horrible movie. Wait..
Tenenbaums is on my to-watch list.
I liked the spelling parts, but what I especially liked was that it was a collection of interesting characters.
Agreed. Have you seen Word Wars? It’s a great companion to Spellbound.
Is M&C really polarizing? I liked it — maybe even liked it a lot — but it just didn’t really do much (either as a compelling narrative or for me personally/emotionally). I don’t have any objection to it in a best N of the decade list, or even to have it fairly high.
(Yes, M&C: The Wire of seafaring adventures.)
Most people I’ve talked to either loved it or hated it. Granted, the people who hated it were much more vocal than those who enjoyed it. I admit that much of my attachment comes from my love of seafaring adventures and classical music.
Then again, most of the people who have declared their disdain for M&C have stated that it was too slow, and that they expected Gladiator on water. I can’t expect these people (most of them classmates or coworkers whose top 40 of all time list would include movies like Armageddon and Transformers) to know that marine life was actually slow, or to have any appreciation of psuedo-period films. Yeah, don’t get iglew started on the historical accuracy of M&C.
Also, no one’s mentioned Requiem for a Dream?
And of the Pixar films, I actually enjoyed Ratatouille more than Up and Wall-E.
Pretty much anything Pixar or Aardman is in my top 40. I love Ratatouille.
I was very underwhelmed by it, but probably only because my expectations were so high. Haven’t seen UP, but liked Wall-E
Mike A:
I LOVED #9.
By the way, are these lists like truly supposed to be what we consider the top movies of the last 40 years? There seems to be a lot missing, especially from the seventies and eighties, the conventional “best films,” if you will.
I’m blonde. Nevermind.
We left out both of the Smokey and the Bandit films.
I just loudly laughed in a room full of people.
Sweet Ba’al Almighty. Have the Sharks gone to an all-Quaaludes pregame regimen?
Both “Titus” and “Across the Universe” would be on my list … love Julie Taymor, looking forward to her Tempest.
With Anthony Hopkins? Lots of fun, that one.
That’s the one … although I now find it came out in 1999 so it doesn’t count :-(
I loved that movie.
Her staging and choreography are spectacular. And when you combine them with performers like Hopkins and Jessica Lange (in Titus), or Eddie Izzard in Across the Universe … sublime.
I’m a big Eddie Izzard fan, though not so much of his movies. His stand up’s pretty fucking good.