The 100 Films Of The Decade: 5 – 1
And the five greatest films of the decade are …
5 Hidden (2005)
Dir. Michael Haneke
A bewildering puzzle of a film, as well as a disturbing and gripping thriller, Michael Haneke dissects both bourgeoisie society and cinematic voyeurism in his greatest film to date. Mysterious videotapes sent to the home of TV host Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche), contain endless footage of the outside of their house filmed from a hidden static camera, ultimately forcing Georges to confront terrible secrets from his past. Not only a tragic personal story of a man stalked by his past, Haneke also offers a scathing attack on a self-satisfied intellectual class who share and deny a buried collective guilt, explicitly referring to the massacre of Algerians in 1961, but the idea applies on a more general level. Hidden sustains its incredible disturbing tension throughout, so that when one particularly horrible scene arrives, it is all the more shocking. An extraordinary multi-layered thriller, with a final subtle twist in its tail.
4 Let The Right One In (2008)
Dir. Tomas Alfredson
A stunning romantic horror film, Let The Right One In is such a richly moving work that any genre pigeon-holing does it a disservice. This is technically and emotionally superb filmmaking, with Tomas Alfredson’s delicate capturing of time, place and character absolutely pitch perfect. In a bleak snow-drenched suburb of 1980′s Stockholm, introverted 12-year old Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) finds salvation from his bullying schoolmates when he develops a friendship with his young neighbour Eli (Lina Leandersson), who is actually a vampire over 200 years old. Like warm red blood melting through crisp white snow, this film will thaw any hard heart with its strange and poetic central friendship. By turns sensitive and shocking, Let The Right One In is a beautiful and frightening work of nuanced genius, where every detail matters.
3 Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Dir. David Lynch
Hurrah for David Lynch. Without his skewed psychological dreamscapes the cinema would be a far duller place. There’s something about Lynch’s unique off-kilter aesthetic that keeps me riveted to the screen, even in muddled but brilliant films like Lost Highway and Inland Empire, but with Mulholland Dr. he succeeds in making a work so unremittingly captivating that it doesn’t matter when none of it seems to make any sense. Of course, half the fun on repeated viewings is trying to work it all out (clue – it’s literally a film of two halves). If you thought Billy Wilder nailed feverish Hollywood noir with Sunset Boulevard, this menacing and surreal response to that film presents warped Tinseltown paranoia at the level of a carnivalistic nightmare. Mulholland Dr. is a monumental piece of intoxicating cinema, ranking with The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet as David Lynch’s third out-and-out masterwork.
2 Lost In Translation (2003)
Dir. Sofia Coppola
A beautiful and totally charming tale of the unlikely friendship formed between an ageing movie star and the young wife of a celebrity photographer, both caught at emotional crossroads in their lives. Bonding over a shared sense of alienation and culture shock, a poignant relationship blossoms within the hotel’s sterile interiors. The couple’s final inaudible words together leave the audience floating with possibilities, but the impact is simply breathtaking. With career best performances from Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, an irresistible shoegaze soundtrack, and exquisite direction from Sofia Coppola, Lost In Translation is simple, sweet and so effective. Appropriately enough, this is a film to fall in love with and to lose yourself.
And The Film Of The Decade …
1 There Will Be Blood (2007)
Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson
So here it is, a film so devastating in its ambition and execution that no other came close to claiming the top title. The film’s many great aspects are all too clear when compared against other great cinematic jewels – There Will Be Blood offers a complex character dissection similar to Citizen Kane, it has the same themes of destructive greed as The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, the same bold visionary style of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the same sprawling social commentary as The Godfather etc. In summary, this is one hell of a film. Channeling John Huston with frightening skill, Daniel Day Lewis’s tour-de-force performance as Daniel Plainview fully realises the character’s remarkable descent into evil. From a penniless wreck crawling over miles of hills with a broken leg to an insane ageing millionaire prowling madly around his empty mansion, the character arc of Plainview is truly terrifying. With this film, Paul Thomas Anderson cements his reputation as America’s greatest modern auteur. From its no-nonsense opening title to its closing dedication to Robert Altman, There Will Be Blood is an astonishing, mad, surprising, thematically rich, visually audacious masterpiece.
Look out for the next 100 Films Of The Decade list which will be published in January 2020.
The 100 Films Of The Decade: 40 – 31
40 Ghost World (2001)
Dir. Terry Zwigoff
Based on Daniel Clowes dark cult graphic novel of the same name, Terry Zwigoff’s first non-documentary feature presents a strange and fascinating look at adolescent sorrow. Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson) are two socially anomalous best friends who, after graduating from high-school, struggle to adapt to an adult world of disappointment. After setting up a prank meeting with a lonely heart subscriber, Enid strikes up an unusual friendship with middle-aged Seymour (an excellent Steve Buscemi), whilst loosening the bond between herself and Rebecca. A bitingly funny and tender film about the death of friendships and the agonies of maturity, Ghost World is a startling work of nuanced melancholy.
39 The Hurt Locker (2009)
Dir. Kathryn Bigelow
A fiercely tense war movie, Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker revisits the themes of her adrenaline-charged thriller Point Break by presenting characters who actively thrive on their dangerous pursuits. Naturally you’d expect any decent film about bomb disposal to generate a certain amount of nail-biting tension, but Bigelow heightens the strain further by casting well-known faces in discardable roles and framing each explosive encounter with a sincere depth of character. Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner) is a man totally addicted to war and, having diffused over 800 bombs, approaches each new engagement with steely arrogance and exhilarating glee. This film is not concerned with the politics or strategies of the Iraq war, but more interested in man’s insane addiction to warfare and the competitive machismo of the soldiers. A brilliant, urgent and agonizing piece of cinema, The Hurt Locker is Bigelow’s best film to date and one of the great modern war movies.
38 Shaun Of The Dead (2004)
Dir. Edgar Wright
Inventing its own unique sub-genre of the rom-zom-com, Shaun Of The Dead pulled off an impressive feat by combining sweet romantic charm, genuinely horrific gore and side-aching comedy. But perhaps this successful blending of styles isn’t all that surprising, since they were all the hallmarks of the TV sitcom Space, the film’s direct stylistic influence. Space director Wright and cast members Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (and even Jessica Stevenson in a bit part) bring their groundbreaking 25-minute sitcom to the cinema and sustain the central zombies-in-suburbia theme for 100 minutes with brilliant invention, clearly revelling in their love of George A. Romero films. Hot Fuzz tried the same trick with action movies three years later but didn’t quite have the originality of Shaun Of The Dead.
37 Before Sunset (2004)
Dir. Richard Linklater
In Before Sunset Richard Linklater seamlessly recaptures the charm and impetuous joy of Before Sunrise nine years earlier, but now with an added poignancy of regret and the sense of lost opportunities. Set against the beautiful backdrops of Parisian cafés and winding paths, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy excel as the mature Jesse and Celine, still passionate about life’s great questions but clearly fractured by the intervening years of doomed relationships which seem like a direct result of their years apart. Handled with sweetness and subtlety, it’s the perfect conclusion to one of the screens great romantic pairings.
36 In The Loop (2009)
Dir. Armando Iannucci
The great guru of modern British comedy, Armando Iannucci, made an equally expert transition to the big screen with this ferocious satire on Anglo-American relations. When Minister for International Development Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) publicly states that war in the middle east is “unforeseeable”, he triggers a series of frantic political gesturing on both sides of the Atlantic from pro- and anti- war advocates, but he soon realises he’s being used as the pawn in an international game. Fans of The Thick Of It will be amusingly thrown by the presence of familiar faces with different names and professions – so Ollie becomes Toby, Terri becomes Roz, Sir Julius becomes Sir Jonathan. Perhaps Iannucci is implying that certain character types always recur throughout government and civil service. But of course there’s only ever one Malcolm Tucker and Peter Capaldi dominates the film with his insatiable prowling performance. Filmed in an immediate semi-improvised style and with a perfectly structured narrative, In The Loop is the most savage and incisive comedy this side of Network.
35 Waltz With Bashir (2008)
Dir. Ari Folman
Essentially a documentary framed by the fictional meeting between ex-infantry soldier Ari Folman and an old friend with whom he shares his nightmares and fantasies about his role in the 1982 Lebanon War, Waltz With Bashir met with huge acclaim for its honest and striking depiction of a harrowing conflict. The film has a unique style, combining traditional hand-drawing and flash animation based on video footage, which proves the ideal medium for presenting Folman’s partly vivid, partly hazy recollections. His memories take on an almost hallucinatory abstract sense, emphasizing the horrors of the war but capturing them with an oblique beauty. As with Grave Of The Fireflies and When The Wind Blows, it takes an animated movie to artistically realise the all-too-graphic scenes of warfare and, like those two films, Waltz With Bashir is a work of devastating visual poetry.
34 Good Night And Good Luck (2005)
Dir. George Clooney
At the height of Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt in 1950’s America, pioneering TV news journalist Edward R. Murrow and his team were alone in defying pressures from sponsors and the CBS network in their attempts to expose the Senator’s ruthless tactics. George Clooney had already made an impressive switch to direction with Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind, but with this real-life story he came up with one of the greatest dramas of the decade. Presented in gloriously evocative black and white, allowing for real footage of McCarthy to be seamlessly woven into the story, Good Night And Good Luck is a rousing tribute to the occasionally noble arena of broadcast journalism. As well as a superb period feel it’s hardly surprising that Clooney also shows real talent for drawing out great performances, as this is very much an actors film. Whether in the naturalistic style behind the scenes of the television show or the stirring dramatic hyperbole in front of the studio camera, the tremendous ensemble cast of Clooney, Robert Downey Jr, Patricia Clarkson, Jeff Daniels, Ray Wise and Frank Langella do sterling work. But the movie belongs to David Strathairn, whose stoic performance as Murrow is the heart and soul of the film.
33 Where The Wild Things Are (2009)
Dir. Spike Jonze
Critics who sneered at the pretensions of taking a ten-sentence children’s book and turning it into a 100-minute screenplay completely missed the point of Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers interpretation. Where The Wild Things Are is clearly not an adaptation – it even ignores key elements of the book – but instead uses Sendak’s story as the springboard to a deeply personal examination of what it is to be a child dealing with all the extremes of emotion. One could go further – Max may very well represent every troubled soul trying to come to terms with the crazy world around them. Society, politics, religion, joy, sorrow – it’s all here, but being a Spike Jonze film means these ideas just happen to be played out by the supporting cast of Fraggle Rock. Praise must go to Max Records, who is on screen almost the whole time and handles his challenging role with remarkable depth for such a young inexperienced actor. Let the wild rumpus start!
32 Finding Nemo (2003)
Dir. Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich
A film that threatened to topple Toy Story from Pixar’s creative apex, Finding Nemo became the decade’s benchmark by which all subsequent computer-generated films were measured, with only a few Pixar films living up to its own outstanding artistry. The story of a clownfish looking for his son across Australia’s great Southern Ocean provides an enthralling adventure ride packed with tumultuous thrills and smart comedy, set against an incredibly lush underwater landscape. With a heartfelt emotional connection, shrewd widely accessible humour and gorgeous animated design, Finding Nemo is a film you’ll regularly want to search out.
31 The White Ribbon (2009)
Dir. Michael Haneke
A year in the life of a rural German village before the outbreak of The Great War sees a series of unpleasant and unexplained incidents occur. My initial reaction to The White Ribbon confounded my expectations in just the way Michael Haneke had surely hoped. No explicit sense of chilling horror or inciting dramatic tension, but instead a deeply troubling and uncomfortable feeling of unease. If this is Mr Haneke’s fictionalised reasoning for the rise of fascism in Europe then it’s a convincing argument. The strict religious morality of the village contrast sharply with the sudden abhorrent acts of evil, but the latter inhabits and nurtures the former like an internal rot. Haneke offers no simple resolution to mankind’s lurking malice (despite wagging his finger fairly sternly at religion and social hierarchies), but captures the bleak inevitability of it all in stunning black and white.
The 100 Films Of The Decade: 70 – 61
70 Wonder Boys (2000)
Dir. Curtis Hanson
An unfinished novel, a murdered pet, a pregnant lover, an unstable student and a coat worn by Marilyn Monroe on her wedding day are just some of the elements that make up Curtis Hanson’s wonderful comic drama Wonder Boys. In his finest screen role, Michael Douglas plays Professor Grady Tripp, a lecturer suffering from a seven-year bout of writer’s block as well as a failed marriage. The supporting cast is excellent, particularly Toby Maguire as the darkly enigmatic student with a fixation for Hollywood suicides. A charming, witty and engaging portrait of troubled characters all looking for resolutions to the trappings of marriage, education, emotional trauma and creative impasse.
69 Eastern Promises (2007)
Dir. David Cronenberg
A British midwife (Naomi Watts) gets mixed up with London’s Russian mafia in David Cronenberg’s riveting crime thriller. Reunited with the director after their success with A History Of Violence, Viggo Mortensen continues to show his brilliant range as Nikolai, the driver of a powerful mafia boss hiding a dangerous secret. With Cronenberg’s typical flair for startling gory violence (notably during an incredible fight sequence in a Turkish bath) and an impressive plot twist, Eastern Promises is a brilliantly constructed and electrifying slice of cinema.
68 Hunger (2008)
Dir. Steve McQueen
Making an impressively assured switch from Turner Prize-winning art to award-winning cinema, first time director Steve McQueen brings the harrowing events of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strikes to the screen in this frighteningly honest depiction. At the centre of Hunger is a 17-minute one-camera take (and the longest single shot in mainstream cinema) of a priest trying to convince strike leader Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) to call off the protest, giving the film a rich political discourse amidst the graphic prison sequences. This is an unflinchingly brutal drama, certainly not an easy or pleasant watch, but powerful and important filmmaking.
67 Babel (2006)
Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu
The ambitious cinema of Alejandro González Iñárritu may seem to overreach itself with its grandiose themes of universal suffering, but there’s no denying the minute-by-minute dramatic punch of his films. Taking the multi-narrrative single-location style of Amores Perros and 21 Grams and transplanting it to an international stage, Babel presents four interlocking stories of personal tragedy set across Morocco, Japan, United States and Mexico. The Tower of Babel association is clear enough, since each story is built around misunderstandings caused by language barriers, particularly the moving tale of confused death-mute Japanese teenager Chieko. Babel‘s power lies in its sheer determined bravado.
66 Coraline (2009)
Dir. Henry Selick
Another stunning animated gem from stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, following The Nightmare Before Christmas and James And The Giant Peach. Based on Neil Gaiman’s fantasy-horror novel about a girl who finds a passage to an almost identical world in a strange old house, Coraline spills over with imaginative concepts and design. Revelling in delicous dark comedy and an occasional almost-inappropriate nakedness (you’ll know the scene), the 3-D technique only added extra visual novelty to an already faultless 2-D animated fantasy.
65 The Piano Teacher (2001)
Dir. Michael Haneke
Along with Lars Von Trier, Michael Haneke is perhaps the last great European aueteur of cinema, having built up an imposing body of work, often bleak and alarming but always significant. Winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, The Piano Teacher continues Haneke’s trend for grim visceral horror. Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert) teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory and lives with her oppressive mother (Annie Girardot), but after being seduced by one of her students she starts to unleash a dangerous and uncontrollable desire. Disturbing, demanding and overlong, but well worth the effort for those who can take it.
64 The Departed (2006)
Dir. Martin Scorsese
In his remake of Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs, Martin Scorsese adds an extra hour of screen time and again dissects the American gangster scene to present a typically epic portrayal of mobsters and informants in the Massachusetts State Police. Winning Best Film and Best Director Oscars may have seemed like compensatory awards for decades of Scorsese’s Academy losses, but that really belittles the achievements of this excellent crime thriller. The ridiculously starry cast includes Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen and Scorsese’s favourite 21st century lead, Leonardo DiCaprio. Violent epic grandeur and his best film since Goodfellas.
63 American Splendour (2003)
Dir. Shari Springer Bergman, Robert Fulcini
One of the great portraits of creative anguish, American Splendour is quite unlike any other biopic. Paul Giametti plays underground writer Harvey Pekar, who reflected the poignant monotony of his own life through the comic book series American Splendour whilst being treated for cancer. The real Harvey Pekar also appears throughout in the flesh and in animation, commentating on the film’s inaccuracies. Amusingly, Pekar’s actual appearances on the Letterman show are seamlessly spliced into the dramatic reconstructions. With its floating jazz score, bleak humour and off-kilter structure, American Splendour is a beautifully sad jewel of a film.
62 Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
Dir. Danny Boyle
The remarkable international success of Danny Boyle’s triumph-against-adveristy tale mirrors the film’s own ascending underdog status and somehow tapped into a global aspirational mood during a world financial crisis. But Slumdog Millionaire is no gentle ride and certainly not the ‘feel good movie’ labelled by advertises. In fact, it’s a tough, uncompromising film that only allows a feel good ending after subjecting the viewer to all the pain, suffering and heartache of it’s struggling protagonist. For a film with a comparatively low-budget, a bleak tone, a harsh subject matter and recurring subtitles, Slumdog Millionaire‘s international acclaim, particularly at the Oscars, only reaffirms the film’s great aptitude for dramatic storytelling.
61 Donnie Darko (2001)
Dir. Richard Kelly
‘Harvey on acid’ may sound like a trite IMDB review title, but it’s perhaps the best way to describe Richard Kelly’s strange soporific fantasy. Devilishly blending science-fiction mystery, college drama and dark comedy, the varied meanings and interpretations of Donnie Darko are still well up for debate, but thankfully the film is smart and witty enough to withstand repeated viewings needed whilst attempting to make sense of it all. Or maybe it’s just more fun not to make sense of things, afterall where’s the feeling of wonder in fully comprehending everything? Definitely the weirdest and coolest of the US indie new wave.
