By way of introduction, let me say that despite being alive and watching movies during this past decade, I was not actually watching that many great contemporary films during most of the 00's so this project felt a lot like a game of catchup. 27 of my final 50 films were watched in preparation for the 00's project, so that gives some idea about how fluid this decade will be as movies become available (and I catch up on a number of readily available titles that I have missed) and others are re-watched sometime down the road. Major omissions being Hou, Zia (beyond
The World), as well as Hungarian and non-Hong Korean cinema. I also did not include a single 2009 movie on my list as I only saw a handful of '09 features and none of them were that great. I guess the game of catchup continues...
1.
Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000) [made final 100]
Is this the last great film of the 20th century or the first great film of the 21st? It feels like the fulfillment of the potential of conventional narrative filmmaking. Even putting it at number one doesn’t seem quite high enough.
2.
Woman is the Future of Man (Hong Sang-soo, 2004) [made final 100]
I couldn’t be more pleased to see three Hongs make the final list, including this one!
3.
Honour of the Knights (Albert Serra, 2006)
This hit me in the huge way I expected
Birdsong to but didn’t. Maybe it was the stripped down aesthetic as opposed to the “grand minimalism” of the latter film, but it does not really matter. As zedz has already pointed out, these Serra films are very personal experiences, dealing with something very deep in the viewer if they engage with them at all. As a result, it is a very difficult film to talk about because in strict terms nothing much happens. But I felt so much for these two people, searching aimlessly for meaning in their journey that they nearly miss the journey as a result.
4.
L’intrus (Claire Denis, 2004) [made final 100]
5.
Coal Money (Wang Bing, 2008)
Salesman moves to the 21st century, sells the old sedans for dumptrucks and the Bibles for coal. Wang is a smart filmmaker who can weave seemingly mundane action and detail into the sort of existential tapestry of workingman sensibility that made the Maysles’ film so perfect. As a continuation of that film,
Coal Money says businesses may change but principles remain the same, and people are somehow always left to fend for themselves in the midst of it all. But I don’t want to overstress the connections I made to
Salesman. There are some utterly profound sequences that one could argue work as atmosphere but really are quite clever character moments. I’m thinking in particular of the “descent into the coal pit,” where Wang leaves his camera rolling as it shoots through the dirty windshield of the dumptruck as it makes its way down into the line to wait for its payload. It seems superfluous, and could have easily been cut out by a more pragmatic editor, but such a cut would really do a film this delicate a great disservice for that is what each truck driver experiences every morning before he sets out to try and move his merchandise (that may or not be worth its haul). I can’t wait to get a hold of Wang’s other films; from what I’ve heard,
West of the Tracks is even more of a masterpiece (if such a thing can exist).
6.
War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005)
Steven Spielberg’s dark as pitch re-imagining of Well’s novel is my pick for strongest post-9-11 film. Do the aliens hate us for our freedoms too, I wonder? By using the safe confines of a sci-fi genre classic (and the even safer confines of a summer blockbuster), Spielberg gives the most searing indictment of American depravity that I saw on-screen all decade. A broken family, through on-the-spot resourcefulness (good ol’ American know-how), steals one of the tent pegs of the American dream-----a minivan. One of the only working civilian automobiles for miles, the family flees the destroyed city for the safety of the suburbs where they are nearly killed by an airliner crashing into their house. Seeking to move further out from civilization, they eventually encounter a faceless mob who rip the family from their minivan and fight to take control of a machine that is worthless in the midst of a mob of pedestrians anyhow. Then a frightening gunshot is fired. It is not so much about terror as it is about our response to terror (as human beings, as Americans…I have no idea how other nationalities respond to this film through their own national identities). The ending (which apparently ruined it for many cinephiles) is so unjustified that it works as a cynical reminder that the audience of the day would never accept the cancerous diagnosis without picking out a lollipop at the front desk at the end.
7.
The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005) [made final 100]
8.
Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004) [made final 100]
9.
Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005) [made final 100]
This was a film I appreciated but didn’t love until I was finally able to get a grasp of the grand theme hiding just under the surface: self-stylization. One of the great documentaries ABOUT the documentary form. Tidwell chooses his stylization in the same way Herzog, as narrator, chooses his own. In many ways, Herzog’s most revealing film about himself as a filmmaker.
10.
Prometheus’ Garden (Bruce Bickford, 2008)
Bickford’s fever dream couldn’t quite cut it, even with the recommendation early on in the voting. It looks like I wasn’t alone in my vote however. I would love to know who else dared to place this somewhere on their list.
11.
Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, 2000) [made final 100]
12.
Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002) [made final 100]
13.
Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006) [made final 100]
14.
Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman, 2001)
The opening images, in typical Wiseman fashion, are images of the setting. Tampa, Florida in this case. But they are not as perfunctory as they sound. One shot of the city skyline is framed with a glass skyscraper centered. The next shot is a reframing of the same shot with the same building slightly off-kilter frame left. Seeing this cut made me instantly believe something I was sort-of beginning to suspect: Wiseman is a formalist. He doesn’t usually tip his hand so much but the material here probably warrants a shocking juxtaposition in “mundane establishing shots” to balance the juxtapositions in drama that will arise from the devastating emotional material of the film.
15.
Mobile Men (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2008)
Should I just stop recommending films? And Weerasethakul, I thought, was one of the decade’s sacred cows. Oh well. Anyhow, it’s on
YouTube for the curious.
[This is about where my list starts to become fluid. On any given day, trade out 15 or so of these and reshuffle the rankings.]
16.
Los Muertos (Lisandro Alonso, 2004)
Los Muertos was seen on GringoTex’s rave and what a film. It’s a film you kind of live with rather than watch.
17.
The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang, 2005)
18.
Marie Antionette (Sofia Coppola, 2006)
In an early version of the list, zedz says this was the major Coppola vote-getter (and was actually doing quite well). Obviously that changed at some point. I don’t remember much about
Lost in Translation beyond thinking it was a decent film with a good lead performance, but this struck me as the work of a true talent.
19.
Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002) [made final 100]
20.
Lifeline (Victor Erice, 2002)
21.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003) [made final 100]
22.
Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (Hong Sang-soo, 2000) [made final 100]
23.
Bright Leaves (Ross McElwee, 2003)
Poor Ross. Even I ended up dropping him lower than I had originally anticipated once I started catching up on a lot of recommendations from the decade.
24.
Zodiac (David Fincher, 2007) [made final 100]
I had avoided this after growing tired of Fincher’s antics, having watched
Fight Club one too many times when I was in high school. But I was amazed to see a dense and mature work, dealing with far-reaching themes of cultural ownership and obsession and the limits of authority. It deeply integrates the story into its San Francisco setting. I think it is probably one of the great films about the information age. On a personal note: I had imagined seeing a scene like the building of the Transamerica Pyramid and was ecstatic to see passage of time find a root in the city beyond a time-lapse of clouds over the skyline.
25.
One Day in People’s Poland (Maciej J. Drygas, 2006)
Another smart documentary from the Polish master. If you haven’t picked up the PWA Drygas set from Melrin.pa yet, do yourself a favor (a bonus is that in doing so you will also pick up one of the greatest documentaries of the 90’s which is one of the most blazing cinematic debuts in recent memory).
26.
Electric Dragon 80.000 V (Sogo Ishii, 2001)
Zedz could not have said it any better.
27.
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008) [made final 100]
28.
“Come Into My World” (Michel Gondry, 2002)
Michel Gondry is the Georges Méliès of the 21st century. But as with Méliès, I think he probably works best within the shorter format.
29.
The World (Zia Zkang-ke, 2004) [made final 100]
30.
Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003) [made final 100]
31.
Coffee & Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch, 2004)
Back when this was released a lot of people seemed to like it okay but dismissed it as “more a collection of episodic shorts than a unified whole.” That always seemed a funny criticism of a Jarmusch film and it was one I never could completely buy. I loved the insightful dissection of celebrity identity and in a just world, the Oscar nominees that pepper this film would have all received nominations for this one.
32.
Black and White Trypps Number Four (Ben Russell, 2008)
33.
What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001) [made final 100]
34.
Ali (Michael Mann, 2001)
The lone vote. That’s fine. Mann makes a bio-pic that is to
Ray what
Electric Dragon 80.000 V is to
The Dark Knight.
35.
King of the Jews (Jay Rosenblatt, 2000)
I don’t love Rosenblatt but he does something really wonderful with the third part of this film that nearly makes up for the heavy-handed didacticism of the second part.
36.
Who’s Camus, Anyway? (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 2005) [made final 100]
37.
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006) [made final 100]
38.
Mission to Mars (Brian De Palma, 2000)
De Palma looks through the future past. The opening scene is not only a great parody of
Apollo 13 but a joke on the nationalistic pride that usually tinges the rhetoric of the by-gone days of NASA’s Apollo program. At some point, nationalism becomes meaningless next to survival and De Palma answers all the questions Kubrick was afraid to answer in
2001. Sometimes, ambiguity is overrated.
39.
The Order of Myths (Margaret Brown, 2008)
American racial and class divides get picked apart by someone who isn’t self-laudatory, vindictive, or preachy. It’s not about Civil Rights….it’s about what happens after that. Turns out the problems are far more complex than “Coexist” bumper stickers would have us believe.
40.
Adaptation. (Spike Jonze, 2002) [made final 100]
41.
Plot Point (Nicholas Provost, 2007)
Plot signifiers are assumed under the sweep of a movie’s score and begin to indicate that there are sinister things occurring under our very noses, right on the streets of New York City. Or are there?
42.
The Company (Robert Altman, 2003)
43.
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001) [made final 100]
44.
Sunshine State (John Sayles, 2002)
45.
The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
46.
Night and Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2008)
47.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Alex Gibney, 2006)
Call me crazy but I think this documentary is good in spite of itself. Everything seems conventional about it on the surface: the topicality, the political undertones, the use of music, the narrative structure, the use of re-enactments and archival footage. Nothing ground breaking here. But it is the final effect that works for me, the reconstruction of a particular time and place in American corporate culture. Plus those empty interiors of the Enron building toward the end of the film really seal the deal.
48.
Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006)
49.
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007) [made final 100]
50.
The Fog of War (Errol Morris, 2003)
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Miscellaneous Response to the inclusion of:
25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)
I guess I need to re-watch this because I remember a pretty good film that I liked more than many around me at the time and then I sort of forgot about it over time. Back in '02, it didn't get any Oscar nominations and most critics gave it a token 10-slot or "Honorable Mention" if it made their end-of-year lists at all. I think Ebert gave it 3 1/2 stars and others were quick to dismiss it as more subdued and apolitical than
Do the Right Thing, as if those are bad things. A couple years later, critics fawned over Lee's
Inside Man in a way they hadn't about
25th Hour. And all of a sudden (it feels like), I'm seeing
25th Hour on critics' DECADE lists, as well as finding a comfy spot on this list. Obviously a lot of people here voted for it and it may not need a full-fledged defense, but I would love to hear some thoughts on it that might help me bump it further up the kevyip stack.
