The best films of the 2000s:

     1.  Requiem for a Dream. This surreal and intense adaptation of Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel is a stylistic tour-de-force.  Darren Aronofsky's film employs fish-eye lenses, close-ups, split-screens, Snorricam shots where the camera is attached to the actor, time lapse shots, and bewitching music to depict altered states and amp the dramatic tension. Summer is a happy time for four soon to be desperate drug addicts in New York and then fall and winter descend on their lives. All the style gives way to a climax of startling intimacy.

     2.  Mulholland Dr. is David Lynch's masterpiece -- a surreal juxtaposition of a bubbly blonde's dreams of making it big as an actress against a backdrop of Hollywood decadence. This puzzle film, a Rubik's cube of sorts, is tantalizing, entertaining, mysterious, and ultimately as dark as can be.  Angelo Badalamenti's music for the film makes it an entrancing experience.  There are countless interpretations of the meaning of it all and the movie is so much fun to get lost in.

     3.  Adaptation is a curiosity for me because I myself am a twin. This inventive comedy is about two twin screenwriters both played by Nicolas Cage (who deserved the Oscar). The movie is a playful satire of movie cliches and formulas.  Directed by Spike Jonze from a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, the film has time-lapse shots that intrigue and fascinate.  Jonze and Kaufman muse with hope about society, art, love, writing, nature, and the cinema.    

     4.  Shadow of the Vampire is darkly humorous and the look of the picture is pungent and remarkable. The film is atmospheric as it follows the production of a film called Nosferatu where the actor not only plays a vampire, but is one.  Willem Dafoe's performance conveys the longing and existential misery of the vampire.  The screenplay is deliciously witty and the art deco-inspired opening credits are sublime. 

     Plenty of insightful speeches about the nature of cinema are given by John Malkovich as the film director F.W. Murnau.  However, the best speech in the film is by Willem Dafoe as the vampire Max Schreck.  In just a few words, he conveys dread, sorrow, and longing:  "But thy strong hours indignant worked their wills...  and beat me down, and maimed and wasted me.  And though they could not end me, left me maimed to dwell...  in presence of immortal youth.  Immortal age beside the immortal youth...  and all I was in ashes." 

     5.  Girl on the Bridge is a charming delight about a circus knife thrower and his protege, whom he found on a bridge about to jump into the icy river. If she is willing to drown, why not have knives be thrown at her? The movie is shot in gorgeous, voluptuous black-and-white. The director Patrice Leconte is joyously fond of exotic music and good for us in the audience since the tunes are eloquent. In The Hairdresser's Husband, a character would put on Turkish music and dance right there in the salon. Girl on the Bridge makes one want to join the circus.  More than anything else, the film makes one want to experience life and love. 

     6.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has the cumulative emotional effect of no other movie this last decade except perhaps Requiem for a Dream. This lyrical film follows a man who dictates an entire memoir just by blinking his eye. He is an editor at a magazine and has suffered a stroke. The film has point-of-view shots of French beauties comforting him, one a nurse who pronounces the French alphabet so that he can choose which words he wants to say. Breathtaking compositions of glaciers melting and flashbacks to happier, romantic times distinguish Julian Schnabel's masterpiece. 

     7.  Almost Famous is like a warm blanket, boasts charming performances, and has a lovely shot that introduces a character named Penny Lane, walking out of the darkness and into the light outside a concert to ask an aspiring rock music critic what he means by the word "groupie." She insists that she and her friends are "band aides." The rock critic's mother is a source of insight as the young man writes a piece for Rolling Stone magazine on the band Stillwater. He goes on tour with the band and returns a little wiser.  And watch toward the end as Penny Lane grabs her shades before her trip to Morocco.  It's a lovely movie. 

     8.  Wonder Boys is a marvel for many reasons: the wintry cinematography by Dante Spinotti, Michael Douglas -- never better, Robert Downey Jr. in a sly supporting turn, and so many dazzling plot elements to make one weep with gratitude. The adaptation of Michael Chabon's novel is a movie about writing that never bores and is endlessly watchable.  The story concerns a few hectic days in the life of an English professor, Grady Tripp, who has a curious case of writer's block.

     9.  Synecdoche, New York is the inventive and playful directorial debut of the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.  This peculiar, beguiling movie about an ailing playwright, Caden Cotard, is about mortality and our feelings about death.  This fascinating movie follows Caden as he proceeds to make a work of sprawling theater.

     10.  Talk to Her.  A film critic once wrote that "in the art house of the '60s it was Godard, Bergman, and Antonioni.  And now in the '00s, it's Almodovar, Almodovar, Almodovar."  This is a poetic soap opera of sorts.  The artistry with which Pedro Almodovar tells his story, of two comatose women and the men who love them, distinguishes the film.  The movie's look, the elegant music, and the lovely Pina Bausch ballets lace the film with beauty.  "The metaphysics of love from the Spanish master" (Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News).

     11.  Inglourious Basterds is a return to form for Quentin Tarantino.  The film is incendiary and passionate in its fantasy of a plot to assassinate Hitler.  The filmmaking is exciting and taut enough to get just about any cinephile's blood pumping.  The Nazis get their most satisfying comeuppance since Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

     12.  Minority Report is a perfect roller coaster ride of a popcorn movie set in the future where crimes can be foreseen by psychic pre-cognitive beings. An adroit scene set in a mall has so many deft touches, as the fugitive John Anderton and a pre-cog named Agatha evade the police. She is able to know exactly what to do in order to get away: drop a coin for a homeless person to trip their pursuers, wait for a balloon vender to obscure them from view of the feds, and to take an umbrella for their rainy getaway. Steven Spielberg has made a film noir of epic imagination.

     13.  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is an elegant epic.  The swordfight at midnight with Jade Fox is an accomplished and atmospheric scene.  The images at the end with the lady warrior floating in the clouds will stay with anyone who watches Ang Lee's masterpiece.

     14.  Pan's Labyrinth is Guillermo Del Toro's surreal masterpiece about a young girl who visits a fantasy land juxtaposed against the cold reality of the resistance fighting during the Spanish Civil War.  This is a film with absorbing visuals that will haunt you, such as a tall and fearsome creature with eyes in the palms of its hands.  The movie is also a potent tearjerker and I found myself moved by the way the story turns out.

     15.  Kill Bill: Vol. 1 / 2  --  Quentin Tarantino's enthralling tour-de-force about a bride who was shot and left for dead by her ex, who was her employer when she was a professional killer.  She is more than skilled in martial arts and Tarantino turns cliches on their ear by making her practically invincible.  What a brilliant stroke of genius to release the two parts six months apart and let the mythology of the lady warrior gain power.  She is gonna kill Bill if it's the last thing she does.  Vol. 1 is an elaborate exercise infused with the Japanese aesthetic.  Vol. 2 is filled to the brim with hypnotic dialogue. 

     16.  Monster's Ball.  A masterful, poetic masterpiece from Marc Forster.  The screenplay, by Milo Addica and Will Rokos, is an indictment of capital punishment and yet at the same time a moral treatise on the reverberations of hate and tragedy.  Roberto Schaeffer's cinematography is exquisite and the music by Asch & Spencer is elegant and lends some serenity to this bleak story of a lady who has lost so much.

     17.  The Princess and the Warrior.  Stlylish arthouse entertainment at its finest.  My favorite Tom Tykwer film is about a pyshciatric nurse who pursues the man who saved her life by performing an emergency tracheotomy when she was hit by a truck.  The man is a bank robber who loses his brother in a botched heist.  When the police catch up with them at night, the two leap off the roof of a psychiatric ward and into dark green and blue water.

     18.  Ghost World.  A comic masterpiece about alienation and the need for human contact.

     19.  The Royal Tenenbaums.  Wes Anderson's film about a family of geniuses is "Yasujiro Ozu-like in its delicacy and grace" (Kristian Lin, Fort Worth Weekly).

     20.  Waking Life.  A philosophical tour-de-force.  Look for the Holy Moment, the bit about how we all remain quintessentially ourselves, and the scene where a red-haired lady just doesn't want to be an ant (meaning she wants real human moments).

     21.  Children of Men.  This parable about the future ends with a surreal image of a boat reaching its destination over foggy waters.

     22.  Black Hawk Down.  This procedural about the battle in Somalia in the early '90s is a haunting monument and Ridley Scott shows an artist's eye for detail.  It's fair and balanced, mourning both sides.

     23.  City of God.  Director Fernando Meirelles is a force to be reckoned with in this story spanning a few decades in the drug-torn slums of Rio de Janeiro.  Co-directed by Katia Lund, the artistry of the picture is astounding -- especially in the segment where a time-lapse shot shows the life of an apartment.  The cinematography is exquisite.

     24.  13 Conversations About One Thing.  A transcendental philosophical treatise about physics, acceptance, emotions, and happiness.  Funny, moving, and unforgettable work from Jill Sprecher and Karen Sprecher.

     25.  Yes, a picture by feminist filmmaker Sally Potter, is exquisitely existential and employs dialogue in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare's dialect.

     Best First Film:  Better Luck Tomorrow is Justin Lin's first feature and has beautiful compositions sprinkled all over this story of mischievous high school students who get into trouble with cheat sheets, drugs, and violence. The screenplay is brilliant, the filmmaking assured, and the picture is one of the best made by a first-time director.

     Honorable Mentions:  The Fall, Traffic, The Cell, Angels in America, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Juno, George Washington, Before Night Falls, You Can Count on Me, In the Bedroom, The Widow of St. Pierre, Amores Perros, Wit, No Country for Old Men, Atonement, The Dark Knight, Lost in Translation, Monster, Mystic River, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

      Best Performances of the Decade:  Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys, Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, Nicolas Cage in Adaptation and Bad Lieutenant, Willem Dafoe in Shadow of the Vampire, Halle Berry in Monster's Ball, Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men, Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, Robert Downey Jr. in Wonder Boys, Amy Adams in Junebug, Sean Penn in Mystic River, Shohreh Aghdashloo in House of Sand and Fog, Charlize Theron in Monster, Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby, Joan Allen and Shirley Henderson in Yes, Patricia Clarkson in Pieces of April, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight, Jeffrey Wright in Angels in America, Ian McKellen in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Tags: Film Decade

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