Top Movies of the Noughties (?)

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I'm glad to have made the FRF a place where I can remember what movies I saw. A cursory look over the entries here helped me assemble a (preliminary) Top 10 Movies of the Noughties list. Add yours, debate mine, let's do this.

Top 10 in no particular order

Fantastic Mr. Fox
Sideways
In Bruges
Shawn of the Dead
Tell No One
The Station Agent
The King of Kong
The Lives of Others
The Incredibles
Children of Men

[Benjamin Grimm]

Iron Man
The Incredibles
Dark Knight

[metirish]

Not in any order

There Will Be Blood
Wall-E
City of God
Downfall
Gangs of New York
The Magdelene Sisters
In America
Bloody Sunday
28 Days
Shaun of the Dead
Dark Knight
The Wind That Shakes the Barley
Almost Famous


subject to change I suppose

Edited December 22, 2009 by Guest

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I thought Almost Famous was 1999. OK, on the list...

In Bruges probably falls off.

[metirish]

Got to say I couldn't sit through The Incredibles


I fully expect to add "Hunger" to the list....if it ever comes out on DVD...

[metirish]

Pan�s Labyrinth
Lost in Translation

Are we to stick to a rigid ten?...this could get ugly

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Maybe once we get a big list we can try to slim it down., For now let's just work on getting a list of people's favorites for this decade.

[Edgy MD]

Going with ten, reviewing this forum (which covers, at best, half of the decade), I've got:

1) Wall-E
2) The Station Agent
3) Gran Torino
4) The Wonder Boys
5) Superbad
6) Sideways
7) Adventureland
8) The Incredibles
9) Once
10) Um, Hitch, I guess

Given half a chance, I'm sure I'd pull half of those, but that's where I am right now.

[metirish]

OK, here is my Top Ten

There Will Be Blood
Wall-E
City of God
Downfall
Gangs of New York
The Magdelene Sisters
In America
Before Sunset
28 Days
Lost In Translation

[Benjamin Grimm]

metirish wrote: Got to say I couldn't sit through The Incredibles

Really? That's how I felt about Wall-E. It seemed like three hours of watching a little troll shoving garbage around.

[TransMonk]

Requiem for a Dream
Gladiator
Vanilla Sky
Kill Bill: Vol. 1 & 2
Shaun of the Dead
The Devil's Rejects
The Departed
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
Superbad
The Dark Knight

[metirish]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: metirish wrote: Got to say I couldn't sit through The Incredibles Really? That's how I felt about Wall-E. It seemed like three hours of watching a little troll shoving garbage around.

It was a magnum opus for fecks sake.....


Million Dollar Baby
This is England..........

I could easily add these two...


Looking at Monks list I see The Departed , Gladiator....of shit, I'm sure I have that listed as my fave movie on my FB profile...

[Frayed Knot]

Michael Clayton

[metirish]

Frayed Knot wrote: Michael Clayton

That too....IIRC we ahd a good thread on that movie....

[Frayed Knot]

I was actually going to start a thread on this too.
In part because I can never remember what year these flicks came out so I need a larger list to choose from before I could form an opinion.
But also because I stumbled across the latest rendition of 'At the Movies' - the next generation of the Ebert-Siskel show - where the two current guys are picking their decade's best. They're still in the process of counting down so they haven't gotten to #1 yet, but of the ones they have picked I'm thinking ... really?!? Those are the BEST ones?


Michael Phillips (one of those Chicago papers)
10 - Minority Report
9 - Gosford Park
8 - Mulholland Drive
7 - United 93
6 - Zodiac
5 - Y Tu Mama Tambien
4 - Once
3 - Climates (Turkish)
2 - Ratatouille


A. O. Scott (get a real name dude) - NY Times
10 - Million Dollar Baby
9 - 25th Hour
8 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7 - 4 Months, 3 Weeks ... (Romanian)
6 - Best of Youth
5 - Where the Wild Things Are
4 - The Pianist
3 - Brokeback Mountain
2 - A.I.



Now I saw and liked some of those, saw and have virtually forgotten others, and failed, as usual, to see a bunch -- but few of them struck me as best of the decade types which led me to wonder whether it's just been a bad decade, bad (or at least odd) choices, or maybe just me.

[metirish]

I'm seeing a lot of those movies on various best of Lists{/i]

I don't recall Minority Report being this well liked when it came out. I saw most of those movies, Zodiac didn't do much for me...A.I. did nothing..

[Frayed Knot]

See if this helps move the discussion along - or at least throws in a few suggestions:

Best Picture Nominees
2000: Gladiator; Chocolat; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Erin Brockovich; Traffic
2001: A Beautiful Mind; Gosford Park; In the Bedroom; The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring; Moulin Rouge
2002: Chicago; Gangs of New York; The Hours; The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers; The Pianist
2003: Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King; Lost In Translation; Master and Commander; Mystic River; Seabiscuit
2004: Million Dollar Baby; The Aviator; Finding Neverland; Ray; Sideways
2005: Crash; Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Good Night, and Good Luck; Munich
2006: The Departed; Babel; Letters From Iwo Jima; Little Miss Sunshine; The Queen
2007: No Country for Old Men; Atonement; Juno; Michael Clayton; There Will Be Blood
2008: Slumdog Millionaire; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button; Frost/Nixon; Milk; The Reader

[Centerfield]

Off the top of my head, though I'm sure I'm missing tons:

Lord of the Rings
Thank you for Smoking
Little Miss Sunshine
Hero
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
Master and Commander
The Constant Gardner
Batman Begins
Training Day
Shaun of the Dead
Cinderella Man
A Knight�s Tale
Remember the Titans
Kill Bill 1

[Frayed Knot]

Trying to put together a top ten (in no particular order):

Lives of Other
Letters from Iwo Jima
Million Dollar Baby
Michael Clayton
Almost Famous
Slumdog Millionaire
In Bruges



... and I obviously need three more which, unless and until I come up with something better, will be filled in with Juno, and the very overlooked The Bank Job and The Lookout

[Vic Sage]

My Top 10:
Almost Famous
Batman Begins
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Kill Bill I & II
Lord of the Rings I, II, III
Moulin Rouge
Once
Slumdog Millionaire
Stranger than Fiction
Unbreakable

another 40 worth mentioning:
300
A History of Violence
American Splendor
Bad Santa
Billy Elliot
Bourne Ultimatum
Chicago
Children of Men
Crash
Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Dark Knight
Donnie Darko
Fahrenheit 9/11
Ghost Dog
Ghost World
High Fidelity
Ice Harvest
In Bruges
The Incredibles
Invincible
Juno
Lars & the real girl
Last Samurai
Little Miss Sunshine
The Matador
Memento
Michael Clayton
Million Dollar Baby
Mystic River
No Country for Old Men
Pan's Labrynth
Shrek
Sin City
The Tao of Steve
There Will Be Blood
Wall-E
The Watchmen
Wonder Boys
The Wrestler
X-Men 2

[Edgy MD]

Would have guessed Almost Famous was from 1998 or 1999. That's got to be on my list, as it's almost perfect.

Hard to rank the three Lord of the Rings Films. They all hit pretty equally for me. I guess the more Christopher Lee, the better. The less Sean Bean, also.

[metirish]

The Bourne Trilogy

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

metirish wrote: The Bourne Trilogy

Hey. We're talking best, not stupidest.

[Frayed Knot]

Trying to put together a top ten (in no particular order): Lives of Other Letters from Iwo Jima Million Dollar Baby Michael Clayton Almost Famous Slumdog Millionaire In Bruges ... and I obviously need three more which, unless and until I come up with something better, will be filled in with Juno, and the very overlooked The Bank Job and The Lookout

On goes 'High Fidelity', off comes Juno.

[Edgy MD]

Richard Brody of The New Yorker wasn't very Hollywood happy this decade:


1. Eloge de l�amour (�In Praise of Love�) (2001, Jean-Luc Godard, France): Lives up to the promise of its title: one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; a depiction of history in the present tense, as well as a virtual thesis on the filming of history; a work of art, as well as the story of the work at the origin of art; Godard�s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema.

You'll notice that none of his descriptions will include a plot summary.

2. The Darjeeling Limited (2007, Wes Anderson, United States): As ever with the films of Wes Anderson�the best new American director of the last twenty years�love and death, comedy and tragedy, comfort and adventure, understanding and opacity, style and substance fuse in a modernism of personal and reflexive cinema and a classicism of grand and subtle literary emotion.

It's a certain brand of modernism though. I'd sum up his themes as the alienation of white privilege, and a desire to go back to the seventies before we found out how empty it was. But congrats to Anderson for making the list. U-S-A! U-S-A!

3. The World (2005, Jia Zhangke, China): The best new non-American director of the last twenty years, here revealing, at great risk, China�s, and his own, painfully ambiguous place in the world.

Fuck the Zhangkes!

4. A Talking Picture (2003, Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal): The great September 11th movie, from a spry ninety-five-year-old who sees not only the century�s long view but seemingly encompasses Homer�s.

Dude is still living and allegedly film-making at 101.

5. �Regular Lovers� (2005, Philippe Garrel, France): The events of 1968, depicted by one of its cinematic heroes as an intimate epic�and, with a self-deprecating fury, as a lovely but unsustainable burst of youthful lyricism.

Did Valadius write that blurb?

6. Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 P.M. (2001, Claude Lanzmann, France): This discussion with Yehuda Lerner, who took part in the uprising against the extermination camp�s guards, is as profound a dialogue on the morality of violence as the cinema has seen.

A Nazi documentary built around a single interview. Yikey.

7. Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (2009, Wang Bing, China): From one of the decade�s two best new directors, as well as its best new nonfiction filmmaker. If I had seen Wang�s �West of the Tracks� in its entirety, I�d have put it here instead; I saw only about a third of its nine hours, but this feature, converging recent Chinese history with the sufferings endured, at the hands of the regime, by one free-thinking couple, does quite as well.

Wang Bing sounds like a mashup of "Everybody Have Fun Tonight and "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby." Anyhow, can you tell I haven't seen any of these?

8. Knocked Up (2008, Judd Apatow, USA): Suddenly, all contemporary comedy seemed old-fashioned. From Lubitsch through the Farrelly brothers, the funniest guys in the room were behind the camera; Judd Apatow discovered, or rediscovered, the trick of the great silent clowns�to put funny people on screen�and to make it personal. (If Eddie Murphy had, say, directed �Norbit� in addition to starring in it, it would likely find a place on this list too.)

I liked it too, and I think Apatow is on to something, but, of all the American film-makers...

9. Moolaad (2005, Ousmane Sembene, Senegal): Women, resistance, and centuries of oppressive tradition, seen with the fiercely clarifying wisdom of age. The subject is genital mutilation; the phalanx of respected women eager to do the dirty work is truly frightening.

Bloody hell.

10. The Other Half (2007, Ying Liang, China): The other of the decade�s two best new filmmakers, the one who does dramas, bringing a laser-like analytical eye to the crossroads of private life and oppressive authority. His anger builds to an apocalyptic outpouring with few parallels in the history of cinema.


Score it:

China: 3
France: 3
United States: 2
Portugal: 1
Sengal: 1

[metirish]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: metirish wrote: The Bourne Trilogy Hey. We're talking best, not stupidest.

low blow mate, low blow

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Sorry I only saw one of them. I couldn't believe how stupid it was.

[Edgy MD]

Ludlum has always been beach reading for your dad (and, specifically, my dad).

I guess I'm glad those movies got made, because almost no films come out of Hollywood aimed at mature men (though I'm sure they're more youth-oriented than the books). Nonethless, I had zero interest in seeing them.

[Benjamin Grimm]

I enjoyed reading Ludlum when I was a twenty-something. I didn't know they were aimed at seniors! (I guess I was a bit of a fuddy-duddy.)

I saw a new Ludlum novel on display at the supermarket this past weekend. Knowing that the author is dead at the present time, I took a closer look. It's actually written by "Robert LudlumTM" and the indicia describes how the Ludlum family has personally approved an anonymous author to keep churning out Robert Ludlum thrillers in order to keep the gravy train on its tracks. (They didn't word it quite that way.)

I think that's just awful. It wouldn't be so bad if it was titled "Robert Ludlum's the Something-or-Other Something or Other" by New Author Guy. But to have it look like Ludlum actually wrote the thing is unfair to his legacy, whatever you may think of him.

What's next? Is some descendant of Charles Dickens, or John Steinbeck, or some other famous literary dead guy, going to commission a family-approved author to crank out "Greater Expectations" or "Of Mice and Men: Lennie's Revenge!"

[metirish]

I tried one of the new Bourne books written by Eric Van Lustbader , the author approved by the Ludlum Estate , IIRC that's how it was worded.....it was terrible.....Bourne was a professor and some long lost son comes back to kill him....it was awful