2000-2009: The Best Movies List
I really wanted to put together a 10 Best Movies of the Decade list, but I really don't even know where to start. Adaptation and Memento need to be on there, and probably Once, but after that, I start waffling -- is No Country For Old Men better than There Will Be Blood? and so on. And I can't make the list until after I've seen The Road, which has a fairly good shot at making the list. What movies do you guys think should be there?
Brick and Royal Tenenbaums are up there on my potential list, and Pan's Labrynth, Wall:E, Audition, Children of Men and Eternal Sunshine are all great choice, too, but Mulholland Drive and Dark Knight were both rubbish. I haven't seen Solaris, Synecdoche or Fog Of War yet.
Also on my right-up-there-but-not-quite-there list is Dear Wendy, Red Road, and pretty much anything Michael Haneke has made this decade, and Broken Flowers, and Moon.
I haven't seen Dear Wendy or Red Road. I've seen Caché, that was pretty great. Other's that I really liked at the time but haven't seen in ages: Elephant and Dogville.
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Oh man oh man, the imdb ranking is a sad list. Did remind me of City of God though, which is another one of my 'loved at the time' movies.
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I've rented Elephant probably 3 times and just haven't been able to force myself to watch it, even though I loved Gerry and most of Van Sant's movies. And Dogville seems interesting but it's like 43 hours long and I just dont have the attention span for that anymore. And City of God, yeah, brilliant movie. Definitely deserves to be mentioned.
IMDb tells me that Gerry came out in 2002, so is that another one for your list?
As for your earlier question, I definately think No Country is better than There Will Be Blood.
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Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead!
25th Hour
Almost Famous
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Casino Royale
Catch Me If You Can
Children of Men
Cidade de Deus
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Infernal Affairs
Iron Man
Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
Love Actually
Moulin Rouge
Munich
No Country for Old Men
Ocean's 13
Ratatouille
Sur mes Levres (Read My Lips)
Shrek
Snatch
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Lord of the Rings
The Man Without a Past
The Royal Tenenbaums
Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement)
Zodiac
Scary Movie 3! It was soooo funny lol!
thanks for sharing.blackhawk tactical pants.
— Spambot
"I could have done worse!" exultantly cried the murderer Lebret, sentenced at Rouen to hard labor for life. — Félix Fénéon
I haven't seen The White Ribbon yet, but that sounds like it's going to be right fucking up there, and I'm also lacking Rivette's output for this decade on account of the world showing him no love. But beyond that, the ten films that I think should be remembered above others are... well, the problem really is whatever you're doing the thing is going to be condensed, but I'm stopping at ten because I feel I ought to, and attempting a cross-section. In an attempt at Alphabetic Order.
- 35 Shots of Rum
- 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
- Caché
- Eastern Promises
- The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy)
- The Man Without a Past
- Memento
- Mulholland Drive
- No Country for Old Men
- Uzak
And to be completely honest, I only put No Country for Old Men there because someone would bitch if I didn't. Otherwise I would have put Ceylan's Three Monkeys up there.
Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith!
I loved Synecdoche, New York, but I can understand it being an acquired taste. But I'm so damn acquired.
If documentaries can be counted, then Capturing The Friedmans, Man On Wire and Why We Fight are all incredible. Haven't seen Fog of War yet though.
And Meet The Spartans. There's a hilarious bit in it where they reference something that's popular in culture at the time, and make a joke about it involving hitting or poo. My sides, my sides!
I saw like the first 5 minutes of this, when the girl gets an arrow through her boob and then eye.
Hey, spoilers, asshole.
Franc, you've got some surprising movies on your list--25th Hour, Catch Me If You Can, Iron Man were all entertaining, but I wouldn't've even thought to add them to any sort of best of list, and Ocean's 13? I enjoyed 11, but 12 was so meh that I just skipped 13.
So I'm looking down my Netflix list, and excluding documentaries, these are the movies I've given a 5-star rating to for the decade, and I've highlighted my favorites:
28 Days Later
About Schmidt
Adaptation
Apocalypto
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Babel
Black Hawk Down
Borat
Brick
Broken Flowers
The Cell
Children of Men
Chumscrubber
City of God
Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dear Wendy
The Departed
District 9
Dog Days
Down in the Valley
The Dreamers
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Das Experiment
The Fall
The Fountain
Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai
Goodbye Solo
Half Nelson
Igby Goes Down
Inside Man
Into the Wild
Kill Bill Vol. 1
Kung Fu Hustle
Little Children
The Lookout
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings
Lost in Translation
Manic
Me & You & Everyone We Know
Mean Creek
Memento
Michael Clayton
Mr. Brooks
Mutual Appreciation
Narc
No Country For Old Men
O Brother Where Art Thou?
Oldboy
Once
Pan's Labyrinth
The Prestige
Primer
The Proposition
The Puffy Chair
Punch Drunk Love
Quiet City
Red Road
Roger Dodger
The Royal Tenenbaums
Sex & Lucia
Slumdog Millionaire
Snatch
The Station Agent
Stranger Than Fiction
There Will Be Blood
Thmbsucker
Traffic
Unbreakable
Visioneers
The Visitor
The Wackness
Wall-E
Watchmen
The Weatherman
Wendy & Lucy
The Woodsman
Wristcutters: A Love Story
I really, really liked Half Nelson. Need to see that film again sometime. Sex and Lucia and Rodger Dodger are also damn good films.
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Ha, those were the three movies that I almost highlighted, but then decided to go with movies I've seen more than once. All damn good movies, and possibly deserving of Best of the Decade accolades.
Also, of all these movies, Dog Days is the one I probably randomly think of more than any other.
The Fountain is a bad film. Aranofsky would be ignored if it wasn't for Clint Mansell.
You're silly.
I haven't seen Sex and Lucia, but heartily agree with the other two.
No actually I think a lot of the movies listed so far were awful. Best Movies are a matter of opinion. The Fountain was pretty bad.
I LOVE FUCKING TREES
and I was pretty sure you were going to be stumped.
What's on your list?
I didn't mean to poo poo your whole list, I just meant that some mentioned including others as well weren't good.
I'm one of those guys who can't make a list. I'd forget a lot of good stuff or something.
I liked:
Memento
Sin City
Donnie Darko
Dark Knight
Moon
Eternal Sunshine
Oldboy
Brick
Super Size Me
Can't really think of many.
I didn't like Wall E. It was a kid's movie where nothing happens.
I thought Mulholland Drive was thought provoking but not something I'd want to watch more than twice for anything other than the lesbianism.
I remember Chumscrubber being pretty good.
I LOVE FUCKING TREES
and I was pretty sure you were going to be stumped.
I'll have to do some real thinking to make any sort of list, but i agree with most of cassun's picks. Mostly all of them except Borat and Mean Creek.
I'd add In the Mood for Love and 2046 by Wong Kar Wai to the list.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter...and Spring and 3 Iron by Kim Ki-duk
The Return by Andrei Zvyagintsev
All About Lily Chou Chou
Amelie and Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunot
Let the Right Ones In
The Russian Ark by Alexander Sokurov
Sympathy for Mr Revenge by Chan-wook Park, which i think is better than Oldboy
Little Miss Sunshine
Sunshine
Lucky Number Slevin
There Will be Blood
Irreversible
Y tu Mama Tambien
Time of the Wolf by Michael Haneke
I can't think of anything, really.
Man, you were doing So well! I mean, the films you picked weren't films that I'd say were my favourites, but I could appreciate that some people really like them. Then you did this-
Little Miss Sunshine
Sunshine
Lucky Number Slevin
Seriously?
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Lucky Number Sleven is the best of those three, and the first 2/3 of the movie was fantastic. I agree with The Return, though--I just watched that the other day, and it was amazing and Y Tu Mama Tambien was great, too.
I do really like those movies. Part of it was because i felt like a douche listing only foreign movies and those were the only english speaking movies i could think of because they're on the table next to me.
Little Miss Sunshine is a great movie, i think. Funny, thoughtful, and very touching. The cinematography and shooting is quite beautiful, too. Lucky Number Slevin is a movie i had never heard of before i watched it. I think it's a very clever movie that's a lot of fun. Sunshine, too, is a movie i had heard nothing about until i saw it and i remember being blown away by it in the theatre.
But, yeah, best of the decade is probably a stretch. And i'm still blanking really hard on this. Can't remember the names of any movies.
I really dug Sunshine, until it became a slasher flick. Lucky Number Sleven surprised me with how much I enjoyed it, I thought it was really clever and entertaining, although some of the twists were overkill.
I've never properly seen Lucky Number Slevin, I've had it on in the background when I was doing other things and it always seemed to me to be an actioned-up version of Usual Suspects, or something like that. I might have to give it another go.
Little Miss Sunshine I really didn't like, I think it was one of the first films to jump on the 'indie is cool' bandwagon. It felt like a ripoff of Royal Tenenbaums.
Before it was released I was really excited about Sunshine, I thought it might be an intelligent Sci-Fi (which I just love) in the vein of Solaris or (even though it came later) Moon. Turns out it was pretty good but they didn't really pull it together enough for it to be a classic, more of a standard sci fi action movie.
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Little Miss Sunshine was definitely the token indie movie of that year, but it was a lot better than Juno, which was the token indie movie the following year. I think (500) Days of Summer, the token indie movie this year, is far better than both of them.
I prefer Juno over Little Miss Sunshine, I think it had more substance. I haven't seen (500) days of summer yet, but I'm looking forward to it.
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I think Juno could have been a really good movie but suffered from being so quirky/indie. Pretty much every cliche you could work into it was there.
I really hated Juno. There is honestly so little of that movie that i enjoy. Can't even begin to see it's appeal or why the world loves it so much.
500 Days of Summer was a very enjoyable film, though i prefer Little Miss Sunshine. I just think there's more there when it comes to Little Miss Sunshine. It's a thoughtful movie about family, isolation, the limits of language, and age. The soundtrack's great, the cinematography's great. The cast is perfect. It's a bit unfortunate that it gets clustered as a token indie movie because it really is quite good.
500 Days of Summer, i don't even understand why it stayed an indie film other than that probably giving it more credibility in certain circles. It was just a super enjoyable and pleasant romantic comedy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is probably one of the best young actors and kind of the recent king of indie movies, but he's a real leading man ability that he shows here.
I owe Cassun for liking JGL as much as I do.
Did you see him in The Look-Out? Normal guy gets into an accident suffers the rest of his life with a memory/brain problem and has to work as a janitor at a bank. Falls in with the wrong crowd and you can guess from the title what happens.
I LOVE FUCKING TREES
and I was pretty sure you were going to be stumped.
Yeah, he's on the top of the list of actors I want to work with, along with Jamie Bell.
Yeah I saw that. Also liked him in Killshot, Brick, Mysterious Skin and Stop-Loss.
Haven't seen 500 Days of Summer. Though he did well enough in GI Joe.
I think he's my favourite New Actor of the decade, I loved Brick but everything else he's been in he's carried.
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I was the biggest promoter of The Lookout when it came out, I ended up seeing it 3 times in theaters, and it was my favorite movie of the year until I saw Once and The Fountain. With that said, he does have a tendency to get too into his characters, which can be a downside. He was 50 percent great and 50 percent too much in Killshot, and I couldn't get through Mysterious Skin. But his performances in Brick, (500) Days of Summer, Manic, and Stop-Loss were all great.
Forgive me if my opinions are considered shit.
I've not seen anywhere near as many movies as most of you, so this is more of a 'movies I've seen in the past decade that I think are great'.
Hero
The Notebook
jeux d'enfants (saw that when I was younger)
The Libertine (perhaps not the best of anything, but that movie really struck a chord with me)
Lord of the Rings
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (you guys reminded me of that movie, and how good it was)
Blow
Assassination of Jesse James... That was a very good movie as well.
That's all that really stands out strongly at the moment.
thats all I can think of at the moment, as far as what stands out in my mind
I keep hearing how good The Notebook is but I just can't get myself to watch it, and I really wasn't impressed by Blow at all, although I know a lot of people who like it. I never saw The Libertine, but it's on my netflix.
The Libertine is really perverted in a lot of ways, but if you look past it, it's really about his struggle as a human being. Quite moving.
Blow I'm not really sure why I liked, but like I said, my selection is far more limited than most here.
I think Blow's a great movie. Terribly sad.
The Libertine was okay. He was kind of just a perverted asshole, but Samantha Morton and Johnny Depp do great jobs. And John Malkovich is always cool.
I hope who ever said Scary Movie 3 up there was merely making a poor attempt at humor. And Lucky Number Slevin definitely would not make my list. Josh Hartnett is just horrible. If they would have cast somebody better for his role and not gone overboard with the plot twists it would have been much better. Which is a shame because Freeman, Kingsley and Willis are all great actors. I also agree with someone above that The Fountain wasn't very good. Highly due to Rachel Weisz and her terrible acting. I really liked the graphic novel however.
Only 10 huh. Thinking about it, it's very difficult to narrow it down to 10.
In Bruges
Children of Men
Aviator
There Will Be Blood
The Prestige
Let the Right One In
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Pan's Labyrinth
Mulholland Drive
Into the Wild
Inglorious Basterds
Moon
Sideways
Memento
No Country for Old Men
Snatch
Lost In Translation
Watchmen
Movies I really loved:
Amelie
You Can Count On Me
The Princess and The Warrior
No Country For Old Men
Motorcycle Diaries
Once
Anchorman
Lost in Translation
Assassination of Jesse James...
Vicki Cristina Barcelona
Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
The Dark Knight
The Science of Sleep
The Life Aquatic
Best in Show
All The Real Girls
In Bruges
A Very Long Engagement
The first Bourne movie, whatever in the hell it was called...
...and how could I forget, Wet Hot American Summer!
I totally forgot The Prestige. I forget what exactly what I've seen until someone mentions it.
That movie was great.
Yeah, I forgot to mention The Libertine and Adaptation.
Hmm, it's hard to think about end of decade stuff, ones from the beginning tend to be forgotten. I'd definately agree with Adaptation and Memento. I'm just going through the 'year in film' columns at avclub.com to get some inspiration.
Other possibilities that could be included:
- Audition
- Mulholland Drive
- Royal Tenenbaums
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Oldboy
- Pan's Labyrinth
- Children of Men
- Brick
- Dark Knight
- Wall:E
Those are some of the most obvious ones. My personal favourites that I don't expect many other people to like are Solaris, Synecdoche New York and The Fog of War.
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