Batman Begins
Casino Royale
Solaris
Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull
A Good Year
Ocean's 11
Star Trek
Doubt
3:10 To Yuma
Traitor
Honorable Mention; The Lord Of The Rings trilogy. I dug the hell out of them when they were released, but haven't watched them in years. No reason in particular.
Wow, all the previous lists were full of some pretty good movies in every ones list. So far all the mentions of good 00's films seem pretty flacid to me. Has it really been that awful of a decade for film (heh, if you can even accurately call them films anymore)?
I guess I will take a go at a list, my top ten, not long thought out, and in no particular order (ranking them takes WAY too much brain power, and doubtless my order would change from day to day).
1. Serenity
2. Primer
3. Spider-Man 2 (really liked part one as well, but I don't want to put both in the top ten, and I felt two was slightly superior to one).
4. Fellowship of the Ring (same as the above, next two installments were also top quality, but the first one ranks higher in my book).
5. Children of Men
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (really, really pains me to put a movie starring Jim Carrey on this list, but I think this film deserves it).
7. Pan's Labyrinth
8. Gladiator
9. Amelie (Yeah, I actually do like Jean-Pierre Jeunet... when he isn't making Alien sequels anyway).
10. Gran Torrino
Honorable mentions,
Kingdom of Heaven (Director's cut only! Theatrical was pretty awful).
Pirates of the Caribbean (come on, it was the best action/adventure movie it his the big screen in years. It's sequels totally drove it into the ground with unforgivable awfulness).
Shrek (I am not into kids movies at all. Never had any interest in seeing this when it was first released, then I caught it on TV one day and was quite impressed. Good balance (or perhaps unbalance) of things that appeal to kids, and humor intended to keep the adults that accompany them amused. Not to mention it was actually fairly profound for what it was: a shallow kid's flick full of fart jokes).
300 (for what it was, this film was nearly flawless! A lot of the hate came from people who came in expecting/wanting to see a more historically accurate portrayal of these events, or the fans of films like Troy and Alexander, and where hoping for an action drama more along these lines. No such luck, instead they got a cut-off-your-head-and-piss-down-your-neck-cavity-high-paced-action-flick filled with non-stop CG flow of blood, with several memorable quotes thrown in for good measure... now that I think about it more, this film should probably be on my actual list and not in the honorable mention appendix... oh well).
All I can think of off the top of my head.
"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape
What a crappy decade, as I can't even think of 10 great movies. I was looking through my DVD collection, and I think I have 5 movies from this decade!
CO said:What a crappy decade. I was looking through my DVD collection, and I think I have 5 movies from this decade!
I concur
Moth3r said: No, there is no video embedding option in this forum software (thank god!)
More than ten, and in no particular order:
There Will Be Blood
The Dark Knight
WALL-E
City of God (Brazil)
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Wrestler
Pan's Labyrinth (Spain)
Kingdom of Heaven (Director's Cut; the theatrical version is a hunk of shit)
Downfall (Germany)
Children of Men
Untitled (the Director's Cut of Almost Famous)
Into the Wild
The Lives of Others (Germany)
Let the Right One In (Sweden)
--edit--
Added one:
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
More than ten also, no particular order: (Although I own three different releases of the first title mentioned)
Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des Loups. I prefer the Director's Cut.)
The Dark Knight
GLADIATOR
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Sort-of also meant to count as one huge long film?)
Infernal Affairs Trilogy (I'm still hunting down the 5-hour chronological 2-Disc of it. I own the imports with full bitrate DTS. Will buy them on Blu-ray shortly)
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (I'm still waiting for the rest of the books to be adapted)
Enemy at the Gates
BLACK HAWK DOWN
House of Flying Daggers (I own the import Edko 2-Disc with full DTS-ES bitrate track. Just wow.)
Fulltime Killer
Catch Me If You Can
Will be edited with more later.
It's a weird deal alright, this decade. There are some films that I absolutely love as much as any of the films I have in my collection, and they moved me just as much. That said, like CO, I only own 5. It seems that I've really loved a few films this decade, but had little interest in going to see several of the "must see" films.
I also think it's weird how so few of the films I've really enjoyed this decade have had the staying power (to me as a fan) that films from the 60s, 70s, and 80s had. Each decade seemed harder for me to come up with ten that I still loved.
It would seem to me that it can't be the art of film making that's at the root because there are things being done now that are so real that we don't always know when we're seeing CGI, truly incredible things. My guess is that it has something more to do with age. Maybe we're less likely to accept new trusted companions as we grow older. Maybe we can't be moved at the same level we were when we were young, at least not where films are concerned.
Anchorhead said:
It would seem to me that it can't be the art of film making that's at the root because there are things being done now that are so real that we don't always know when we're seeing CGI, truly incredible things. My guess is that it has something more to do with age. Maybe we're less likely to accept new trusted companions as we grow older. Maybe we can't be moved at the same level we were when we were young, at least not where films are concerned.
I still say CGI killed the modern day movie, and because they are so profitable, they just don't try to make as many 'good story/character driven' movies they had in the past.
Look at Transformers, that movie is raking in millions and millions, why wouldn't a studio capitalize on this and try to make something like this in the future? Why make a drama that the older crowd will go to once or may wait for it on DVD, when you can make some mindless CGI-action film that teenagers will see 3-4 times. I don't blame studios because they are doing the $mart thing as to their bottom line, but they also are lowering the bar for movies in general.
So what we get now are the 'dramas' at the end of the year, as all of them come out from Thanksgiving to Christmas, as they compete for an oscar and are geared towards adults. Usually, there are about 10-12 movies that fall into that category. From May 1st to the end of August are the summer CGI movies that appeal to kids/teenagers. Then from January to April and September to October are usually the thrillers, horrors, comedies that don't want to compete with the crowded summer movies, but still cater to teenagers/20 somethings.
I realized this about 5-6 years ago, when the only time I wanted to see a movie was around Christmas, and then I looked up great movies from the past, and saw Goodfellas came out in September 1990, and movie like Witness came out in February 1985. We aren't different cause a good movie is still a good movie, just times are different, IMO.
You know the 21st Century covers the next 90 years too, right? But of the past decade:
Pan's Labyrinth
Serenity
The Incredibles
The Dark Knight
The Lord of the Rings
Wall-E
Finding Nemo
The Lives of Others
The Last Samurai
Shrek II
There are probably some others that deserve to be on the list more, but I've not seen some of them, like No Country For Old Men.
Darth Chaltab said:You know the 21st Century covers the next 90 years too, right?
Yeah - I'm hip to how the whole century thing works, man. It was a joke. Thought it might be funny since we've experienced all of the 21st that there has been so far and it just happened to fit the top ten format we've been using.
