CinemaCynics.com

Tackling a top 10 of any given year is a challenge in and of itself...tackling a Top 10 of a whole decade is excruciating.  What do you leave out?  What do you consider essential and why?  What it really comes down to in the end is the disposition of the person who is creating the list...in this case, me. 

This past decade had a lot to offer in the way of choices....it was the golden age of superhero films with Spidey dealing with villains and teen angst and Batman getting a makeover, it saw the rebirth of the Hollywood musical when Chicago won Best Picture and Moulin Rouge mesmerized audiences, it saw the torture porn industry soar to new heights.....I mean lows (even as I type this Saw VII is in the works) and it saw the maturation of the gross out comedies as those films sought to gain credibility with movies like 40 Year Old Virgin,  Role Models and Funny People.   Bond was reignited for the big screen with the charismatic Daniel Craig recreating 007 for a new generation.  Star Trek was reinvented by JJ Abrams and Company.  A small independent film about hobbits, wizards, elves and dwarves took the fantasy genre to new levels of cinematic achievement.  Scorsese returned to form with The Departed, Wes Anderson gave us three solid films about quirky people (Royal Tenenbaums, Life Aquatic, Darjeeling Limited) and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu created the "everybody's connected" genre with Amores Perros.  Gibson gave us the controversial Passion of the Christ, a religious masterwork to some and an excessively violent snuff film to others. 

All that being said...there is only room in a Top 10 for 10 films.  I am as surprised by my list as you may be.  I didn't realize these were the 10 films that would make it on there until I was finished with it.  Looking at it now, it seems right.  Hope you think so.

In descending order than...here are my top 10 films of the last 10 years:

Number 10

Directed by:  Yimou Zhang (2002)

Hero is an amazing visual display of martial arts action, poetic fight scenes and vivid colorful imagery.  It also borrows heavily from Kurosawa's Rashomon in the way it depicts similar events from different perspectives depending on which character is recounting which part of the story.   Every film of this genre since owes something to it.  Hero takes a B genre and makes an A work of art.

Number 9 

Directed by:  Paul Greengrass (2006) 

Many asserted that it was too soon for a film about 9/11.  It wasn't.  In the capable and sensitive hands of Paul Greengrass a masterpiece was created.  All unknown actors were utilized to recreate the worst day in our recent history.  Never sensationalistic, always engrossing and riveting as we see that day unfold again....the chaos, confusion and tragedy.   Each of the actors met the families of the characters they were portraying which may explain the documentary feel of the whole enterprise.  It's a painful experience though....because we already know how it ends.....

Number 8

Directed by:  Werner Herzog (2005)

If this were a fictional film about a fictional guy it would be incredible and mystifying.  It is even more so because of the fact that Timothy Treadwell was a real guy...who loved grizzly bears so much that he lost all sense of reason about them over the years he spent living with them in the wilds of Alaska.  Herzog crafted a documentary from much of the footage that Treadwell shot himself and edited it into one of the most bizarre and interesting character studies of all time.  The story of Treadwell is like a massive car pile up on the interstate...you can't help but gawk and stare with jaw agape at the whole thing.  Whether Treadwell was a tragic hero or buffoon is left for the viewer to decide.

Number 7

Directed by:  Christopher Nolan (2008)

Why so serious?  Because Christopher Nolan took the comic book genre and expanded it into something more.  A reflection on the strange nature of unmotivated and irrational evil in our modern world.  It asks real questions about how far you should go in the fight against evil and when, exactly, is the moral boundary separating good from bad irrevocably severed so that heroes are unrecognizable from villains?  Ledger's malevolent Joker is one for the ages and it's his film all the way.   An amazing achievement.

Number 6

Directed by:  Jean Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne (2005)

The Belgian Brothers Dardenne make quiet films bursting with visceral truth and emotional honesty.  L' Enfant (The Child) is such a film.  The story of how Bruno sells his newborn son to an underground black market baby ring and spends most of the film trying to get him back has no money shots or cheap emotional manipulation.  We are astounded by this guy whose moral barometer is so off he doesn't realize how awful his act is.  His moment of self realization in the final scene is the stuff cinema dreams are made of. 

Number 5

Directed by:  Kathryin Bigelow (2009)

Finally, a great film about the Iraqi conflict.  A film that can stand with Platoon, Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day, etc.  It concerns a bomb squad in Iraq who diffuse bombs so they don't kill allied troops.  Bigelow creates a world of constant danger, uncertainty and fragility that palpably captures what it is like to be in combat over there.  An unforgettable film experience.

Number 4

Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro (2006)

In World War II Spain a  young girl escapes the harsh realities of her everyday life in an eerily vivid fantasy world.  Del Toro brings together a tale of a sadistic army officer, a Spanish resistance movement and a little girl's fantasy world in a seamless blend of genres that never feels forced or manipulated.  Awesome set designs, costumes, cinematography, acting and script combine to create a masterpiece for the ages.  Remember the creature with no eyes?  Yeah....me too.

Number 3

Directed by:  Andrew Dominik (2007)

Dominik brought us this elegiac, beautiful American Gothic western.  Nick Cave's haunting score will stay with you long after the credits roll.  Dominik made poetry here.  Every frame is meticulously filmed.  Casey Affleck is creepy and sympathetic all at the same time as he doesn't know what to do with his feelings of love/hate for Jesse James.  This is the kind of film you immerse yourself in.  You let each successive scene just wash over your soul as you take it all in.  The Western genre never had such beauty.

Number 2   

Directed by:  Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (2006)

Probably the most relevant film for our decade.  Inarritu takes our inability and ineffectiveness at communicating with each other (a theme he examined in Amores Perros) and takes it global.  Four separate story lines encompassing much of the globe are intertwined in ways the participants don't even realize.  He doesn't provide us with spoon fed or easy answers to the problem...he just kind of addresses it.  Solid performances from an international cast flesh it all out.   A stand out is Adrianna Barazza as the illegal immigrant who keeps house for Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. 

Number 1

Directed by: Peter Jackson (2001-2003)

This is the defining work of the decade.  Jackson filmed the unfilmable, breathing cinematic life into literary characters.  He knew what to leave out, he knew what to put in and what he ended up with was the greatest fantasy film of all time.  He didn't lose sight of the characters or the smaller emotions that make up the bulk of Tokien's tale.  He gave us battle scenes that were draw jopping.  Gollum was a revelation and showed the advantages of using CGI to further along the story and not the other way around.   It's a coherent and breaktaking epic from first frame to last.  LOTR is why we go to the movies in the first place.