In November 2009 staff of Paste Magazine came up with a list of the 50 best films of the decade. There’s no real surprises although Almost Famous never felt important enough to me to be placed the 3rd best film of the decade but it’s good to see Claire Denis’s exhilarating Foreign Legion drama Beau Travail in the top 10.
- 1. City of God
- 2. Amélie
- 3. Almost Famous
- 4. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003)
- 5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- 6. Beau Travail (1999)
- 7. Lost in Translation (2003)
- 8. The Son
- 9. No Country for Old Men (2007)
- 10. The Royal Tenenbaums
- 11. The Dark Knight (2008)
- 12. There Will Be Blood (2007)
- 13. Mulholland Drive
- 14. Up (2009)
- 15. Juno (2007)
- 16. Half Nelson (2006)
- 17. Memento (2000)
- 18. Syndromes and a Century (2006)
- 19. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
- 20. Elephant (2003)
- 21. In the Loop (2009)
- 22. Dogville (2003)
- 23. Traffic
- 24. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
- 25. Pan’s Labyrinth
- 26. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
- 27. Hidden (2005)
- 28. A History of Violence (2005)
- 29. Man on Wire (2008)
- 30. Once (2007)
- 31. Gosford Park
- 32. Ratatouille
- 33. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2 (2003, 2004)
- 34. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
- 35. Junebug (2005)
- 36. Millions (2004)
- 37. Billy Elliot (2000)
- 38. Donnie Darko (2001)
- 39. Spirited Away
- 40. The Departed
- 41. The Child (2005)
- 42. The Last King of Scotland
- 43. In America (2002)
- 44. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
- 45. Whale Rider (2002)
- 46. Iraq in Fragments (2006)
- 47. Grizzly Man (2005)
- 48. Flight of the Red Balloon (Le voyage du ballon rouge) (2008)
- 49. High Fidelity (2000)
- 50. The Squid and the Whale (2005)
In October 2010 The Guardian compiled a list of the 25 best action and war films ever made. Defining what makes something an action film is a troublesome thing. After all nearly all films have some sort of action in them. Does a film need gunfights and explosions in every other scene to be considered a real action movie? If so, then those following the adventures of Jason Bourne or starring the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Steven Seagal and Jason Statham should surely be on the list, but there not. In fact, some will argue that Die Hard is the only true action film among the 25 listed but The Guardian’s Michael Hann believes “the perfect action film should set the heart racing while still giving some food for thought” which is apparently why Where Eagles Dare is on the list! Ultimately whether or not these films would be classed as action movies, (particularly when you consider the low attention spans of many modern cinema-goers), they are all well worth a watch.
With a plot loosely based on real events, the film depicts the growth of the slum gangs in the Cidade de Deus suburb of Rio, with the closure of the film depicting the war between the drug dealer Li’l Zé and bus driver turned criminal Knockout Ned. With an authentically gritty feel, helped by the use of a mainly amateur cast from local favelas, and brilliant energised story telling, City of God is one of the most compelling studies of the irresistibility of criminality and violence for youths who have little in the way of life choices. While some critics denounced the visceral and shocking violence for being shot with entertainment in mind, it is never without purpose and few could argue that the film is not a remarkable technical achievement.
Buy or Rent (watch online)
(Buy or Rent, watch online)
Before he got too carried away with CGI, New Zealander Peter Jackson got the balance just right in the first of his epic fantasy trilogy set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The film tells of the Dark Lord Sauron, who is seeking the One Ring, but its found its way to the young hobbit Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood). To defeat Sauron, Frodo must leave his simple life in the shire and join a quest with a fellowship that includes the wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen), his faithful friend Sam (Sean Astin) and the mysterious Strider (Viggo Mortenson). Remarkably well crafted and imagined, Jackson and his team create a visually rich mythical universe that’s on a scale that seemed impossible only a few years earlier. The film’s grandeur is enhanced by the sort of powerful emotional intensity and complex characterisation that is perhaps lost behind the ever growing story strands and huge effects in the follow up films.
Buy (watch online)
(DVD)
(book)
Chris Vognar is Culture Critic for The Dallas Morning News, where he was movie critic from 2006-2014. He was the 2009 Arts and Culture Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. He has taught arts journalism at Southern Methodist University and film history at the University of Texas at Arlington. Below are his picks for the top 25 films of the decade 2000-2009.
Dana Shawn Stevens is a movie critic at Slate. She is also a regular guest on the magazine’s weekly cultural podcast, the Culture Gabfest. In December 2009 she came up with her best 11 films of the decade and also listed another 10 as runners-up. Both lists are in alphabetical order.
(Cristian Mungiu, 2008)
(Zacharias Kunuk, 2002)
(Alfonso Cuarón, 2006)
(Michel Gondry, 2004)
(Robert Altman, 2001)
(Werner Herzog, 2005)
(Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne, 2005)
(David Lynch, 2001)
(Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
, Richard Linklater, 2004
, Pedro Costa, 2006
Lisa Schwarzbaum is an American film critic. She joined Entertainment Weekly as a film critic in the 1990s, and remained there until February 2013. She has been featured on CNN, co-host on Siskel & Ebert At the Movies as well as a cultural, theatre and television reviewer. Below is her list of the top 10 movies for the period of 2000-2009.
Ann Hornaday is an American film critic. She has been film critic at The Washington Post since 2002 and is the author of Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies. In 2008, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In December 2009 she published her top ten for the decade 2000-09 as well as her worst movie for the period. She includes two of the great masterpieces of the 21st century There Will Be Blood and The Lives of Others but appears to feel guilty about including Finding Nemo. While I wouldn’t name the animated tale of two fish (A male clown-fish and his forgetful friend) searching for the clown-fish’s son the greatest film of the noughties for me it’s much more than a guilty pleasure. I once despaired that the coming of computers would slowly remove the artistry from animation, but Finding Nemo provides the sort colourful and magical computer generated imagery that makes me gleefully rethink and leaves most young children happily fixated on the screen. Adding to the charm is the wonderful emotive music of Thomas Newman. As for Hornaday adding Clone Wars as worst film, I couldn’t agree more.
” (2003)
” (2000)
” (2009)
” (2001)
” (2006)
” (2007)
” (2003)
Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies (Hardcover)
David Denby is an American journalist and has been a staff writer and film critic at The New Yorker since 1998. In December 2009, Denby listed what he considered to be the best films of the decade. His list reflects that he’s not particularly pleased with the direction that commercial cinema is going. He dismisses The Dark Knight as depressing (obviously a matter of personal taste rather than the film not working for what it is). He appears to consider the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a “standard blockbuster” while apparently Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a film “that’s quite different in tone and appearance” to such films. I’m a great admirer of Ang Lee’s martial arts fantasy but I don’t believe it has more artistic merit or emotional intensity than LOTRs or at least The Fellowship of the Ring. He feels there weren’t many masterpieces over the ten years but I can think of five that didn’t get a mention here – In the Mood For Love, City of God, No Country For Old Men, Spirited Away and Mulholland Drive. There is no suggestion that Denby’s picks are in any order and some are grouped together as a single entry to show the “emergence of a new sensibility.”
” (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
” (Clint Eastwood, 2003)
” (Ang Lee, 2000)
” and “The White Ribbon
” (Michael Haneke, 2005 and 2009)
” and “Funny People
” (Judd Apatow, 2007 and 2009)
,” and “Wall-E
” (Pixar, 2004, 2007, and 2008)
” (Andrew Jarecki, 2003)
” (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
Do the Movies Have a Future? (Hardcover)
The staff of Slant magazine compiled their 100 best films of the Aughts in February 2010. This does have some surprises. Brian De Palma’s much ridiculed sci-fi drama Mission to Mars is given a place on the list and there are plenty of polarising entries such as the disappointing Marie Antoinette, Michael Mann’s film version of Miami Vice and Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which struggles to find the human face that is so evident in his work from the mid 70s into the 80s.
(Darren Aronofsky)
(Laurent Cantet)
(Hou Hsiao-hsien)
(Darren Aronofsky)
(Jonathan Glazer)
(Jan Svankmajer)
(Zhang Yimou)
(Ira Sachs)
(Patrice Chéreau)
(Götz Spielmann)
(Patrice Chéreau)
(Dover Kosashvili)
(Kelly Reichardt)
(Tim Burton)
(Aleksandr Sokurov)
(Olivier Assayas)
(Brian De Palma)
(Joel and Ethan Coen)
(Claire Denis)
(Jia Zhang-ke)