The best films of the first 1/3 of the decade

and it manages to be a critique of the world-view of both spielberg and kubrick at the same time, and its the best movie either have been involved with.

i know its got problems. I can list them as well as anyone, but this is the kind of movie where the flaws only serve to make it that much more interesting. the whole thing is a conflicted mess really.

and that bear is cool.

um, no particular order:

Mulholland Drive
Wonder Boys
Requiem For A Dream
Gosford Park
Amores Perros
Waking Life
Y Tu Mama Tambien
25th Hour
Tigerland
The Anniversary Party

i think this is probably true

I did like the bear though.

25th hour is Spike Lee's best film.

1. The Dancer Upstairs
2. The Devil's Backbone
3. Fulltime Killer
4. Girlfight
5. Igby Goes Down
6. Memento
7. Nichts bereuen
8. Sexy Beast
9. Songs from the Second Floor
10. You Can Count on Me

So, we have two US/ New Zealand, one US/ Hong Kong, two Japanese, one Brit and three American releases. Jackass... why would you put that in there? I'll tell you why, it's fucking funny and it entertained me for 90 minutes almost non stop, which by my reckoning is what cinema should do. If I was feeling arty I'd put The Plegde in there, which really disturbed me (but I don't know if I'd watch it again) and I liked the Canadian movie Ginger Snaps a whole lot as well. If you hate the choice of Jackass, then replace it with either of these two.

I can't believe no one has mentioned Lord of the Rings, which is just baffling.

A.I. is okay until the last reel, which fucks everything up. To say it's Spielberg's best work is a joke (it's no Jaws or Schindler's List).

Sexy Beast was alright.

A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001; S. Spielberg)
All the Real Girls (2003; D.G. Green)
Far From Heaven (2002; T. Haynes)
Mulholland Drive (2001; D. Lynch)
Spirited Away (2002; H. Miyazaki)
Together (2001; L. Moodysson)
25th Hour (2002; S. Lee)
You Can Count on Me (2000; K. Lonergan)

I'd like to see Mulholland Drive, The Two Towers and Memento.

A.I. had some nice visual effects and that is about it. Spielberg has made a lot of cheese in the past ten years and not good cheese other than it they make money.

Some films I think are great that no one has mentioned:
Beau Travail
The House of Mirth
George Washington
Donnie Darko
Hamlet

The rest of the movie could have been fucking awful, but that last ten or fifteen minutes would have saved it, for me.

Surprised no one's mentioned Talk to Her, Catherine Breillat and The Gleaners and I (whose absence disappoints me) or Charlie Kaufmann, Michael Haneke and In the Bedroom (whose absence heartens me).

Even more surprising: no Crouching Tiger hate!

I did not like Donnie Darko quite so much however. I haven't watched many flix released during the naughts, so I can't add anything constructive, only criticize everyone's choices.

The most impressive new film I saw in the past year or two was, I think, One Fine Spring Day, from Korea. Yi Yi was wonderful, although I found myself resisting it solely because of the gloppy music (the same thing that defeated me the first time I saw Hou's A Time to Live, A Time to Die).

Didn't The Mission come out in 2000? That film was astounding.

no, but I did cry during Bowling for Columbine.
(well, I saw the places where I definatley could have cried, but I was given the heads up before the movie, and there were enough slightly uplifting scenes so that the real depressing stuff didn't take full effect. Which I thought was great for Polanski to do. It was an amazingly depressing movie that didn't make me feel all depressed.)

Baran
In the Mood for Love

I feel the same way. The tone is emotionally distant. Brody never cries, never really emotes at all. He just survives. There is something very profound about that film, despite my misgivings about it.

Since I'm here I'd like to throw in DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. One of the best of the year.

(that Salon article bothered me a lot)

1. Mulholland Drive
[Besides the great multi-tiered/themed story, this film is a sendup and appreciation of Hollywood as a place, as a business, and as a myth. It also has amazing sound, a refined signature style, and great performances by relative unknowns. Repeat viewings reveal obsessive layers, digressions, and speculation, as you re-enter the inclusive ominous atmosphere of the movie, which is a world unto-itself. Perhaps Lynch's best work.]
2. Amelie
[Creativity unbound in the use of effects all of which enhance the story. Perhaps precious at times, and maybe even a little sappy (especially the ending), this is still an emotive and well crafted movie with astounding attention to detail]
3. Ghost Dog
[Impressive individual style, tone, and direction. One of Jarmusch's most entertaining and infectious works. Forest is also at his best.]
4. The Virgin Suicides
[Quietly dazzling debut based on a great novel. For me this movie fits in with a certain hard-to-define strain of the late-90s-indie-film-rennaisance dominated by Hal Hartley, Todd Solonz, Wes Anderson, Anthony Drazan, Chris Eyre and maybe a couple other directors which culminated in Hollywood's release of American Beauty which borrowed heavily from all of the above.]
5. Fast Runner
[Long slow and potent. Hilarious, scary, sad, this is a memorable allegory and portrait of a dying culture.]
6. Time Out
[Anxiety-ridden critique of modernity? Inspired in part by the real life story of Jean-Claude Romand--who after 18 years of convincing his family (and friends) that he was employed in Geneva at the World Health Organization, then murdered them when they confronted him with the truth--Time Out is richly acted and will get you thinking about ethics, family, work, love, honor, etc. And yet it is never heavy-handed.]
7. Ghost World
[I liked the comic (David Boring is even more fully realized), but the movie was good for other reasons. Alienation is explored at first mockingly, then more seriously (mirroring Enid's understanding of/reaction to being an "outcast"), until Enid is put in an impossible place (unlike in the comic book where she 'grows' distant from her friends/family more because of her own evolving interests not her stasis in the face of her changing companions) and checks out in a scene that reminded me a little of Five Easy Pieces, though in some ways this ending seemed more of a cop-out both by Enid and by the director. Some scenes/characters are also uncomfortably familiar while others are laugh out loud funny.]
8. Donnie Darko
[An 80s movie for the 90s. Cult classic, with a plot that turns in on itself making you want to start over again. Also some of the best use of music in a film I have ever seen.]
9. Lord Of The Rings (The Fellowship Of The Rings)
[I didn't think they could pull this off without resorting to obvious CGI, an overly-pruned script, and silly performances. I was pleasantly surprised. Depending on how the next film comes out, I'll take this trilogy over the first three Star Wars flicks.]
10. The Ring
[Saw the original and one of its sequals. The low budget thing really hampered the impact. Also, the original story reveals too much too quickly. Could be the horror movie of the decade.]

Runners Up (Not necessarily in order):

11. Spirited Away
12. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
13. Chuck And Buck
14. Memento
15. Secretary
16. Waking Life
17. The Royal Tennenbaums
18. Gerry
19. Dogtown and Z-Boys
20. The Devil's Backbone
21. A.I.
22. Minority Report
23. The Others
24. Erin Brockavich
25. Ali
26. Punch Drunk Love
27. Legally Blonde
28. A Beautiful Mind
29. Mr. Death
30. Igby Goes Down
31. Dangerous Lives Of Alter Boys
32. Vampire Hunter D
33. Far From Heaven
34. The Hours
35. Bowling For Columbine
36. Lost In La Mancha
37. Pumpkin
38. Signs
39. Wonder Boys
40. Adaptation
etc...

Darks Days
Y tu mamá también
The Road Home
The Widow of St. Pierre
The Princess and the Warrior
Amores Perros

Then call me Carl Reiner.

A.I. (Spielberg)
Ten (Kiarostami)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Anderson)
Femme Fatale (De Palma)
Gerry (Van Sant)
Esther Kahn (Desplechin)
Russian Ark (Sokurov)
Domestic Violence (Wiseman)
Kandahar (Makhmalbaf)
Mulholland Drive (Lynch)

(list in no particular order... also, add Marker's Grin Without a Cat if you want, even though it's a '77 film.)

*Peppermint Candy (Chang-dong Lee, South Korea)
*Coronation (Silvio Caiozzi, Chile)
*Dark Days (Marc Singer, USA)
*Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, Japan)
*Amélie from Montmartre (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
*Barking Dogs Never Bite (Joon-ho Bong, South Korea)
*Waiting List (Juan Carlos Tabio, Cuba)
*The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, France)
*Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden)
*The Isle (Kim Ki-duk, South Korea)
*Together (Lukas Moodysson, Sweden)

I'm not an American film hatah, but I haven't seen truly great movies from that country for some time. Mulholland Drive, Ghost World, Almost Famous, Requiem for a Dream, Memento, Donnie Darko and O Brother Where Art Thou were all good films, but not perfect. In the Bedroom, Ghost Dog and The Virgin Suicides were disappointments. Moulin Rouge, Shrek and The Pianist would probably be in my top 20. I havent seen Bowling for Columbine nor A.I., though.

crouching tiger, hidden dragon
george washington
in the mood for love
mulholland drive
shaolin soccer
yi yi

also, narc, how high, time and tide, and the transporter.

wanna fite?

ps. somebody tell good things about gerry - it was on my 2 see 4 sure list before i packed up my blinging life in the big shitty late year.

pps. i'm gonna quit this embarrassing ilf-ing and watch spirited away now. finally.

spirited away was phenomenal. i wish i'd gotten out to the theatre to see it last year. a crummy promotional screener on a 17" monitor ain't really the way to go...

Psalms from the Kitchen (Bent Hamer, Norway)
Drive (Sabu, Japan)
Year of the Devil (Petr Zelenka, Czech Republic)
25 Watts (Juan Pablo Rebella & Pablo Stoll, Uruguay)
Officer's Ward (François Dupeyron, France)
Mortal Transfer (Jean-Jaques Beneix, France)
The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, USA)
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan)

You torture me by sharing a list where only 2 of 8 have been shown in the states!

So damn frustrating sometimes. . .

Can you tell me a little more about Drive? I really loved Sabu's Monday and was wondering if this was similar.

Are you sure? I've seen all of the first six films at the Helsinki Film Festival, and all of 'em had subtitles in English. Of course they could've been British or "international" copies...

Can you tell me a little more about Drive? I really loved Sabu's Monday and was wondering if this was similar.

I thought it was Sabu's best flick, and I have liked his previous ones as well. It's similar to Monday and Postman Blues in a way that the main character is an ordinary, meek guy who accidentally gets mixed with criminals. The difference is that it ultimately lacks the fatalism of other Sabu flicks, which in my opinion makes it transcend them. Also, though it takes place in the present day, it has one of the most wonderful samurai scenes I've seen in ages.

I can't imagine why Monday was never released here. It's quirky, funny, well acted, light -- certainly would do well in the foreign/indie theaters. (Sometimes I'm so tempted to get in the distribution business -- if only I knew how to go about it.)

A.I. (Spielberg)
Femme Fatale (De Palma)
Esther Kahn (Desplechin)
Russian Ark (Sokurov)

What I'm including:

Elephant (Van Sant)
Decasia (Morrison)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul)
La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Watkins)
Crimson Gold (Panahi)
The Company (Altman)

I'm glad Eric H. included "Decasia". It's a beautiful film & one of the most interesting formalistic experiments I've seen in awhile. Not that using emulsion as a subject is anything unique (it's a staple of experimental film), but the wealth of footage & magical chance moments where subject seems to interact with the decay of the medium is amazing.

I'd like to nominate Jem Cohen & Pete Sillen's brilliant & beautiful documentary, "Benjamin Smoke". It's probably one of the most intimate portraits of a human being that I have ever seen on film, and Cohen & Sillen's talents for making the mundane or decrepit beautiful reaches a new plateau in this film. I never thought dirty kitchens, shag carpeting, dirty white-trash kids, abandoned buildings & thrift store dresses could look so beautiful, but they do.

Time Out
In the Mood for Love
Yi Yi
Spirited Away
25th Hour
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
Together
Beau Travail
Hamlet
Morvern Callar
Mulholland Drive
Adaptation

I'm not sure what I would add from 2004 yet.

I'll thrown in another nomination--Caveh Zahedi's "In the Bathtub of the World".

Wow, you just made my day! Start the thread (I hope you didn't mean "threat"...) & I'll be happy to post my favorites.

As for the Brakhage DVD & music--it's really up to you, but they're not meant to have sound accompaniment. Stan created his films with a very specific visual rhythm, and he felt that music (or any sound) drew the audience's attention away from those rhythms.

Also, he believed that people intrinsically focus more on the visual when there is no other simulus (such as sound) accompanying it (kind of the same way that deaf/blind people have highened abilities in their other senses). He demonstrates this theory very well in an early tv interview that is included in the documentary film "Brakhage" (which I would highly recommend watching before the "By Brakhage" set)--he explains his theory to the camera, then turns of the microphone & continues talking. You can feel your eyes become more focused, more searching almost immediately. He was a brilliant filmmaker, and it's such a loss that he's gone.

No I'm not sure. I think that's why I listed it.

old list =
all the real girls
city of god
mulholland dr.
george washington
punch drunk love
o brother where art thou?
donnie darko
talk to her

new list =
undertow
control room
ten
all the real girls
mulholland dr.
my architect
city of god
platform
george washington
maria full of grace
crimson gold

can you tell that i like david gordon green?