Special to Bloghawgs.com by Jim Gooch……Happy New Year…..this BlogHawg (AB) will be out of pocket for awhile in Tunimemphisca.
10. Mystic River: As a director, Clint Eastwood dominated this decade with great films like the oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby and recenlty with Gran Torino, but Eastwood’s Mystic River will be a highly rewatchable and captivating film for years to come, if only for the performances Eastwood got out of Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. 2003′s Mystic River also makes the list for achieving that ever elusive status of being better than the book it’s based on, Denis Lehane’s 2001 novel of the same name.
9. Borat: Quite unlike anything before it, Sascha Baren Cohen’s Borat, as directed by Larry Charles, reinvented satire for a whole generation. It exposed more truths about America than most of us would like to confront. But if that weren’t enough, it is arguably be the most laugh-out-loud hilarious movie of the last two decades.
8. Little Children: Beautifully written and expertly acted, director Todd Field’s powerful tale of suburan angst and sexual deviancy was my favorite film of 2007, a film small in scope but grand in meaning. If this list were a bit longer it would also include Todd Field’s tragedy, In the Bedroom. Fields is an amazing filmmaker and is currently in talks to direct Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. Keep your fingers crossed and pray this happens.
7. City of God: A gorgeous and absolutely brutal film, this 2002 Brazilian crime epic chronicling gang violence in the slums of Rio in the 70s and 80s introduced the world to Li’l Ze, reminicient of the most depraved of James Cagney villains and one of modern cinema’s most terrifying figures. This is also the only foreign film to make this list, although Pan’s Labyrinth was in serious contention.
6. The Bourne Movies: Seriously, how could this not make the list! Perhaps the best action movies ever made. Matt Damon’s Bourne significantly raised the bar on what it means to be a badass. No James Bond has ever even come close.
5. The Hurt Locker: Probably the best war movie I’ve seen since Platoon, Kathryn Bigelow’s 2009 character study of American bomb technicians in mid-decade Iraq is the by far the best cinematic rendering of the consequences of one of this decade’s most ghastly blunders.
4. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. The Departed: Martin Scorsese’s first best picture winner (shockingly enough), this might be the most rewatchable film on the list; it’s rewatchable the same way Goodfellas is. It’s also perfectly casted, and expertly scored with some killer rock’n'roll tunes. This was Scorsese’s second attempt at making Leonardo DiCaprio a tough guy, and the Irish gangster gem more than makes up for the disappointing Gangs of New York.
2. Sideways: “I am NOT drinking any f***ing merlot!” No one does dark comedy like Alexander Payne, and he’s never done it better than in 2004′s Sideways. This movie single-handedly made Pinot Noir and Paul Giamatti household names. This movie was so well-written that the mechanic from Wings got nominated for an Oscar.
1. No Country for Old Men: What’s amazing about the Coen brothers is that they’ve already made one movie, Fargo, that is widely considered one of the 100 or so greatest American movies of all time (see AFI’s list), and that they’ve made other films, Raising Arizona and the Big Lebowski, that are widely considered to be among the funniest American films of all time, the latter having firmly established itself as my generation’s most popular and least cultish cult classic (see the annual Lebowskifest). Yet, it wasn’t until 2007′s No Country for Old Men that the extraordinarily gifted brothers Coen peaked, and in doing so they made what I would call a nearly perfect film. Also, Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh is hands down the decade’s scariest, most villainous bad guy (not even close, Heath Ledger).
Top Ten Movies of the Decade
Posted by Adam Butler on December 31, 2009
Posted in Commentary | 5 Comments »