Matt's Top Ten Films of the Decade
10. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
First, let's all go back in time to 2006 for a minute and remember "Brokeback to the Future." I think it still holds up. "Who the hell is Clara!?"
Second, is this the greatest love story of the decade? I think it's probably a cliche of criticism to say that Ang Lee's film is not just a gay story, but a film about love in general. It's also vaguely insulting, with its implication that male-male love is only a tiny and remote corner of the universe of 'love in general.' But I understand the impulse. Even though it's a film about the tragedy of deception, Brokeback Mountain tells its story so simply and so openly that it's impossible not to fall under its spell.
What else to love: the wild ruggedness of the landscape, matching the ruggedness of the men's emotions; the subtle, moving way the film traces the passage of time, via clothes and camping equipment; and of course, as Katherine says, Heath Ledger's gritted teeth. How many nominees have I named yet for Best Actor of the Decade? Let's make them Ulrich Muhe for Lives of Others; Olivier Gourmet for The Son; Ledger here, and two more to follow.
Second, is this the greatest love story of the decade? I think it's probably a cliche of criticism to say that Ang Lee's film is not just a gay story, but a film about love in general. It's also vaguely insulting, with its implication that male-male love is only a tiny and remote corner of the universe of 'love in general.' But I understand the impulse. Even though it's a film about the tragedy of deception, Brokeback Mountain tells its story so simply and so openly that it's impossible not to fall under its spell.
What else to love: the wild ruggedness of the landscape, matching the ruggedness of the men's emotions; the subtle, moving way the film traces the passage of time, via clothes and camping equipment; and of course, as Katherine says, Heath Ledger's gritted teeth. How many nominees have I named yet for Best Actor of the Decade? Let's make them Ulrich Muhe for Lives of Others; Olivier Gourmet for The Son; Ledger here, and two more to follow.
9. The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) (2001)
This Inuit epic is shot on the kind of digital film reminiscent of a National Geographic documentary. Initially, it's jarring -- you're constantly waiting for the British-accented female narrator to begin talking about how heroically these indigenous people have managed to maintain their traditions against the onslaught of the modern world.
But after a little while the crude immediacy of the picture begins to feel just right. The documentary quality highlights the otherwordly minutiae of Arctic life, where even the most mundane tasks require enormous creativity and effort. And when, after about half an hour, the main plot springs into motion, you find yourself more fully immersed in this distant universe than would have been possible with a more conventionally prettified cinematography.
The main plot, derived from ancient Inuit legend, centers around two brothers who incur the rivalry of the local chief and his son. Brutal violence ensues, and so does even more brutal naked ice-running. On the page, the characters are mythic archetypes, but in Zacharias Kunuk's telling they all have beating hearts. It takes a strange film to tell the truth about such a strange place, and the The Fast Runner is that film: austere but not aloof; alien but not remote; bitterly cold but not even a little bit frigid.
8. Memento (2000)
Over the course of the decade, the scale of Christopher Nolan's films seemed to expand in proportion to the man-bulk of their leading actors. As Guy Pearce's tattooed litheness in Memento gave way to Hugh Jackman's brawny solidity in The Prestige and finally Christian Bale's musclebound Dark Knight, the films themselves gradually exchanged taut urgency for a kind of steroidal vehemence. All of Nolan's work is well worth watching, but he may be at his very best on a smaller budget (and with fewer protein shakes).
Memento is famous for its narrative quirkiness, but as Nolan has observed in interviews, it actually has a more rigidly linear structure than most films: remove even one scene and the entire connected story falls apart. Indeed, unlike some of the decade's other cinematic black holes, the morbid puzzle at the heart of the film is, with enough re-viewings, more or less solvable. And a satisfyingly noir-ish solution it is: Double Indemnity meets The Sixth Sense. But what Nolan's film ultimately suggests is not only the frailty of memory but the inadequacy, even the impossibility of narrative itself. You don't have to be a postmodern nihilist to feel that all our private stories spring from essentially untranslatable self-deceptions -- that we are all, in a manner of speaking, Leonard Shelby.
Memento is famous for its narrative quirkiness, but as Nolan has observed in interviews, it actually has a more rigidly linear structure than most films: remove even one scene and the entire connected story falls apart. Indeed, unlike some of the decade's other cinematic black holes, the morbid puzzle at the heart of the film is, with enough re-viewings, more or less solvable. And a satisfyingly noir-ish solution it is: Double Indemnity meets The Sixth Sense. But what Nolan's film ultimately suggests is not only the frailty of memory but the inadequacy, even the impossibility of narrative itself. You don't have to be a postmodern nihilist to feel that all our private stories spring from essentially untranslatable self-deceptions -- that we are all, in a manner of speaking, Leonard Shelby.
7. The Departed (2006)
I love this movie, but I feel like it's been deserted by its natural constituents. Scorsese aficionados will never, ever, admit that this is a better movie than Taxi Driver (which it is, by a little) or Goodfellas (which it is, by a lot). Film cosmopolitans will say that the movie just retreads its source, the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. I guess I have Masshole meatheads who just want to hear "Shipping Up To Boston" after the next Youk home run, but really, that's not a constituency, it's a curse.
In fact, The Departed is simply a great American crime drama -- the best urban cops and robbers movie in a generation. Sure, it's big, shaggy, and occasionally over-acted (Jack, I'm looking at you... but lovingly). But that's just what makes it great. You're telling me De Niro's performance in Taxi Driver was a masterpiece of restraint? Gene Hackman's cop in The French Connection? Joe fucking Pesci in Goodfellas? Get this motherfucker outta here! This movie should never have to apologize for its bodacious energy or sheer entertaining girthiness. It is what it is, and if you don't like it, you can go back to your cardamom tea and your roasted fennel and your Lars Van Trier. Don't tell him I said hello.
(Apparently, writing about this movie is turning my into one of its Masshole admirers. Sorry for that.)
Scorsese puts some of the best Hollywood talent of this era exactly where they need to be: Leonardo DiCaprio, ideally cast as a tough, earnest faker; Matt Damon, putting his sturdy good looks on the side of evil; Jack Nicholson doing his thing in the right place and time; and Mark Wahlberg, always a sparkling side-player. (Baldwin and Sheen are great, too, but I'm running out of adjectives.)
The film does owe its brilliantly mirrored plot to Andy Lau's Infernal Affairs. That's not a bad movie, but compared to The Departed it feels like a skeleton. It just doesn't have the size, the scale, the raw pulsing force. I'm sure some of the above will strike many as a silly overstatement. But we'll see who's laughing in 30 years. This is one to keep.
In fact, The Departed is simply a great American crime drama -- the best urban cops and robbers movie in a generation. Sure, it's big, shaggy, and occasionally over-acted (Jack, I'm looking at you... but lovingly). But that's just what makes it great. You're telling me De Niro's performance in Taxi Driver was a masterpiece of restraint? Gene Hackman's cop in The French Connection? Joe fucking Pesci in Goodfellas? Get this motherfucker outta here! This movie should never have to apologize for its bodacious energy or sheer entertaining girthiness. It is what it is, and if you don't like it, you can go back to your cardamom tea and your roasted fennel and your Lars Van Trier. Don't tell him I said hello.
(Apparently, writing about this movie is turning my into one of its Masshole admirers. Sorry for that.)
Scorsese puts some of the best Hollywood talent of this era exactly where they need to be: Leonardo DiCaprio, ideally cast as a tough, earnest faker; Matt Damon, putting his sturdy good looks on the side of evil; Jack Nicholson doing his thing in the right place and time; and Mark Wahlberg, always a sparkling side-player. (Baldwin and Sheen are great, too, but I'm running out of adjectives.)
The film does owe its brilliantly mirrored plot to Andy Lau's Infernal Affairs. That's not a bad movie, but compared to The Departed it feels like a skeleton. It just doesn't have the size, the scale, the raw pulsing force. I'm sure some of the above will strike many as a silly overstatement. But we'll see who's laughing in 30 years. This is one to keep.
6. The Wrestler (2008)
No performance of the 2000s was mightier or more hard-won than Mickey Rourke's Randy "The Ram" Robinson. I like Sean Penn, and he did a very plausible and even moving impression of Harvey Milk, but the 2008 Oscars were still a disgrace. And not just because Mickey would have given an unforgettable acceptance speech (Look for Brad Pitt there at BAFTAS, spotting his Aldo Raine moustache). In fact I think Rourke is, on the whole, the winner in my personal competition for Best Actor of the Decade.
The Wrestler is probably my favorite movie of the decade that has a serious, unmistakable flaw. The father-daughter scenes with Evan Rachel Wood are brittle and contrived in comparison with the rest of the film.
But in the end it doesn't matter. Whether he's reading quietly in his trailer, his thin wire glasses incongruously perched atop the thick mass of his face, or holding gruesome combat in the ring, bronzely wincing with every blow, Randy just oozes warm, battered humanity. He makes you love him, and he makes you hurt for it.
Also: the bar dancing scene! Ratt! Marisa Tomei! (who is still egregiously underrated by film snobs). And Randy's take on the '90s: "Then that Cobain pussy had to come around and ruin it all."
The Wrestler is probably my favorite movie of the decade that has a serious, unmistakable flaw. The father-daughter scenes with Evan Rachel Wood are brittle and contrived in comparison with the rest of the film.
But in the end it doesn't matter. Whether he's reading quietly in his trailer, his thin wire glasses incongruously perched atop the thick mass of his face, or holding gruesome combat in the ring, bronzely wincing with every blow, Randy just oozes warm, battered humanity. He makes you love him, and he makes you hurt for it.
Also: the bar dancing scene! Ratt! Marisa Tomei! (who is still egregiously underrated by film snobs). And Randy's take on the '90s: "Then that Cobain pussy had to come around and ruin it all."
5. Lust, Caution (2007)
Ang Lee: my favorite director of the decade? Well, I haven't seen Taking Woodstock yet, so who knows.
But this is an unjustly neglected masterpiece. Lee's film is set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, during World War II, and concerns a small student resistance cell that attempts to assassinate the Chinese collaborationist leader of the city's secret police. More to the point, the film is about Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei), the young woman who is charged with the seduction and set-up of that leader, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) -- a brutal man with whom she nevertheless falls in love. It's an absolute firecracker of a plot, sensationally acted, and filmed with the lushness and the intensity that are Lee's trademarks.
My favorite bits: the opening mah jong game, which (far more than any of the decade's filmic poker games) immerses you at once in this colorful world of power and deception; the students' first, almost-accidental assassination, which is just about the most clumsily wrenching action sequence ever filmed; Chia Chi and Yee's furious, harrowing, red-hot sex scenes; and an indelible tea-room meeting where she sings the gorgeous ballad "The Wandering Songstress" to him, and both of them -- and me, too! -- break down in tears.
But this is an unjustly neglected masterpiece. Lee's film is set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, during World War II, and concerns a small student resistance cell that attempts to assassinate the Chinese collaborationist leader of the city's secret police. More to the point, the film is about Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei), the young woman who is charged with the seduction and set-up of that leader, Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) -- a brutal man with whom she nevertheless falls in love. It's an absolute firecracker of a plot, sensationally acted, and filmed with the lushness and the intensity that are Lee's trademarks.
My favorite bits: the opening mah jong game, which (far more than any of the decade's filmic poker games) immerses you at once in this colorful world of power and deception; the students' first, almost-accidental assassination, which is just about the most clumsily wrenching action sequence ever filmed; Chia Chi and Yee's furious, harrowing, red-hot sex scenes; and an indelible tea-room meeting where she sings the gorgeous ballad "The Wandering Songstress" to him, and both of them -- and me, too! -- break down in tears.
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
My choice among the the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the meat in the middle of the sandwich, which I think contains the best elements of the first and third films -- the rich character interaction of the former, and the rousing action of the latter. In fact, as in the original Star Wars trilogy, I think the emotional and dramatic climax at the end of this central movie (the Helm's Deep battle) overwhelms the final showdown in Gondor. Plus: all the scenes in Rohan, my favorite fantastical civilization in the entire epic.
Beyond quibbles about which of the three films is best, I think, really, arguing about the LOTR films is a kind of futile exercise. If you weren't moved by their unapologetically grand storytelling, then there's nothing to be done. If you were, you probably don't need my analysis. So let's travel back and revisit two of the greatest speeches from The Two Towers, and, really, the entire trilogy:
1. Saruman: "There will be no dawn for men."
2. Theoden: "Where is the horse and the rider?" Oh man, this still makes me quiver.
Beyond quibbles about which of the three films is best, I think, really, arguing about the LOTR films is a kind of futile exercise. If you weren't moved by their unapologetically grand storytelling, then there's nothing to be done. If you were, you probably don't need my analysis. So let's travel back and revisit two of the greatest speeches from The Two Towers, and, really, the entire trilogy:
1. Saruman: "There will be no dawn for men."
2. Theoden: "Where is the horse and the rider?" Oh man, this still makes me quiver.
3. Donnie Darko (2001)
I don't know if the 2000s witnessed a cinematic infection quite like Donnie Darko. I remember when in the spring of 2003 (a bit later than most?) I first got wind of the strange movie about a giant bunny, and high school, and the '80s, and time travel. Josh and Deborah were visiting me at Amherst: they had just seen Darko the night before, and no matter how awful and stupid I thought it sounded, they demanded that we watch it again. The very next night, after they left, I commandeered Marvel and watched it a second time. Then I bought it, took it home, and forced it on my mom and Katherine and everyone else who had two hours to spare and was unable to resist my urgings.
And it wasn't just me: suddenly, Donnie Darko was everywhere. A movie that made $4 million at the box office had taken a large portion of the nation's youth by storm. There was a midnight show in Dupont Circle. There was the now-obligatory obsessive online community. Everyone was debating Smurf sexuality, wearing stupid man suits, and doubting everyone else's commitment to Sparkle Motion. Tears For Fears had never been hotter.
What to make of Donnie Darko, three quarters of a decade later? Well, I'm pretty sure some of the over-broad Age of Reagan satire wouldn't wear as well with me today. And maybe (especially if I made the mistake of listening to Richard Kelly's DVD commentary) I wouldn't be so mystified, or even intrigued, by the supernatural stuff.
But I love this movie. I love Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Drew Barrymore; and I love Jake Gyllenhaal so much I've even forgiven him for The Day After Tomorrow. I love the emphatic '80s cultural references, from power-walking to Michael Dukakis to a brief shot of the glorious and fallen Joe Gibbs Redskins. I love "The Killing Moon" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Under The Milky Way" and "Mad World" (screw Wes Anderson -- has old pop music ever been put to better use in a film?). I'm still haunted, and distressed, by the final neighborhood scene, after the jet-engine collapse. And I still think about how every living creature dies alone.
Maybe it's the eternal adolescent in me, but I'm still infected.
And it wasn't just me: suddenly, Donnie Darko was everywhere. A movie that made $4 million at the box office had taken a large portion of the nation's youth by storm. There was a midnight show in Dupont Circle. There was the now-obligatory obsessive online community. Everyone was debating Smurf sexuality, wearing stupid man suits, and doubting everyone else's commitment to Sparkle Motion. Tears For Fears had never been hotter.
What to make of Donnie Darko, three quarters of a decade later? Well, I'm pretty sure some of the over-broad Age of Reagan satire wouldn't wear as well with me today. And maybe (especially if I made the mistake of listening to Richard Kelly's DVD commentary) I wouldn't be so mystified, or even intrigued, by the supernatural stuff.
But I love this movie. I love Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Drew Barrymore; and I love Jake Gyllenhaal so much I've even forgiven him for The Day After Tomorrow. I love the emphatic '80s cultural references, from power-walking to Michael Dukakis to a brief shot of the glorious and fallen Joe Gibbs Redskins. I love "The Killing Moon" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Under The Milky Way" and "Mad World" (screw Wes Anderson -- has old pop music ever been put to better use in a film?). I'm still haunted, and distressed, by the final neighborhood scene, after the jet-engine collapse. And I still think about how every living creature dies alone.
Maybe it's the eternal adolescent in me, but I'm still infected.
2. The Return (Vozvrashcheniye) (2003)
A hidden treasure. I saw this Russian film while trawling through the list of movies I'd never heard of that were also major international festival winners (Venice, somehow, seems to line up best with my taste). I saw a lot of very good movies that way (and some clunkers, too) but this was by far the best of the bunch.
Andrey Zvyagintsev's film is built around two pre-adolescent boys whose absent father suddenly returns after a twelve year absence. They venture off on a mysterious camping trip which puts all of their relationships under a powerful and unforgettable stress.
Filmed almost entirely from the boys' perspective, the movie explores the alluring and terrifying magnetism of paternal authority. At once cruel and charismatic, capricious and apparently all-powerful, their father begins to feel somehow like our father, too -- even if he's very different from the one we've really had. The Return is a rare work of art that manages to function as both a psychologically sensitive depiction of real characters, and a vivid, boundless allegory -- political, historical, mythic, even biblical.
It's rich material for the mind, even as it twists and buckles the heart.
Andrey Zvyagintsev's film is built around two pre-adolescent boys whose absent father suddenly returns after a twelve year absence. They venture off on a mysterious camping trip which puts all of their relationships under a powerful and unforgettable stress.
Filmed almost entirely from the boys' perspective, the movie explores the alluring and terrifying magnetism of paternal authority. At once cruel and charismatic, capricious and apparently all-powerful, their father begins to feel somehow like our father, too -- even if he's very different from the one we've really had. The Return is a rare work of art that manages to function as both a psychologically sensitive depiction of real characters, and a vivid, boundless allegory -- political, historical, mythic, even biblical.
It's rich material for the mind, even as it twists and buckles the heart.
1. There Will Be Blood (2007)
It should probably be clear by now that I'm not afraid of bigness. As far as I am concerned, The Return might be the single most magically realized work of cinematic art this decade, but damn it, it's only 105 minutes! It was made for under $500,000! And there are only like three and a half important characters! For my number one film of the decade, I need a little bit more than that.
If nothing else, There Will Be Blood is big. Its swaggeringly epic title puts a kind of black spin on the magnificent complete sentences that once adorned massive Victorian novels. Daniel Day-Lewis's notion of acting, a skeptic might say, is practically a Frankenstein's-monster parody of largeness. P.T. Anderson threw his arms open so wide in this movie that the "10 Plagues" bits in Magnolia (which I hated, btw) now seem like quaint little theatrics. This is a movie that only hopes to put its definitive fingerprints on Capitalism, Religion, and The West -- a movie, really, that aims to be as big as America itself.
I loved it. Are there questionable bits? Surely -- this is a great big beast of the field, not a perfectly constructed miniature. On the wild, famously controversial ending, I'm agnostic: I appreciate the arguments against it, but as a tragic closing-of-the-circle, isn't merely a violent cousin to the destruction of Rosebud in Citizen Kane?
And there's so much that's marvelous: the silent, desperate opening in the oil well; the black-and-gray oil grit that defines the look of the picture; and above all the character of Daniel Plainview -- the way he talks, the way he moves, his tender, disturbing relationship with H.W. Plainview's palpable human vulnerability, even amid his insane and blood-drenched aggression, separates this movie from the pack of dark 21st century epics.
If nothing else, There Will Be Blood is big. Its swaggeringly epic title puts a kind of black spin on the magnificent complete sentences that once adorned massive Victorian novels. Daniel Day-Lewis's notion of acting, a skeptic might say, is practically a Frankenstein's-monster parody of largeness. P.T. Anderson threw his arms open so wide in this movie that the "10 Plagues" bits in Magnolia (which I hated, btw) now seem like quaint little theatrics. This is a movie that only hopes to put its definitive fingerprints on Capitalism, Religion, and The West -- a movie, really, that aims to be as big as America itself.
I loved it. Are there questionable bits? Surely -- this is a great big beast of the field, not a perfectly constructed miniature. On the wild, famously controversial ending, I'm agnostic: I appreciate the arguments against it, but as a tragic closing-of-the-circle, isn't merely a violent cousin to the destruction of Rosebud in Citizen Kane?
And there's so much that's marvelous: the silent, desperate opening in the oil well; the black-and-gray oil grit that defines the look of the picture; and above all the character of Daniel Plainview -- the way he talks, the way he moves, his tender, disturbing relationship with H.W. Plainview's palpable human vulnerability, even amid his insane and blood-drenched aggression, separates this movie from the pack of dark 21st century epics.