Best Films of the Decade 5-1

5. Zodiac

David Fincher confidently walks into areas owned by All the President's Men (newspaper genre) and Vertigo (obsession) and very nearly matches their standard. The cop genre is satisfyingly incorporated with detectives using their brains, not guns. Fincher also has the guts to re-enter the serial killer genre where he already has his own masterpiece and comes back with something even more substantial. In his first period film, Fincher convincingly recreates 1970s California to the last precise detail. Mark Ruffalo, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Robert Downey, Jr. are the standouts, but there are at least a dozen more character actors doing superb work. Extrapolating the story to our modern era is an unexpected bonus. We have less and less closure these days. Not putting Hitler on trial was just the beginning. We can't even find the bad guys anymore. Sometimes, we're not even sure who they are.

4. There Will Be Blood
The best film of the decade - until they get to 1927 and Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview descends into parody (as evidenced by everyone's ability to mimic his lines - which were never meant to be catchphrases). But director Paul Thomas Anderson salvages it with a Kubrick-worthy last shot (and line) and a perfect musical cue. Nobody seems to be capable of inhabiting characters like Day-Lewis. Anderson's complex treatment of religion and greed is staggering as is the oil derrick scene - one of the most startlingly original and exhilarating film moments of the decade. Cinematographer Robert Elswit captures the barren landscapes (and everything else) terrifically. And Jonny Greenwood's original score breaks almost as much ground as Plainview himself did in the film.

3. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Charlie Kaufman dissects love in the modern era with a thoughtful, touching script about getting rid of bad memories to survive even though those bad memories help make us who we are. Jim Carrey will never be better and the supporting cast (especially Tom Wilkinson and Mark Ruffalo) is equally great, but it's Kate Winslet who is the force of nature as the troubled, exciting, spontaneous Clementine. Director Michel Gondry has certainly disappointed since, but his use of classical filmmaking techniques (forced perspective, trick lighting) as well as CGI serve the story well. The "science" is more fictional than anything found in Minority Report, but the truthfulness of the emotions and the conclusion that love should not be explained but experienced will resonate for a very long while.

2. Mulholland Drive
No other film has captured our movie & celebrity obsessed culture so well. A young starry-eyed lady (Naomi Watts) moves to Hollywood in the hopes of achieving great success and things go well - until the best hard left turn in any film since Psycho (twist endings are different). Every film genre (westerns, mystery, mob, romance) is included in the first 90 minutes as part of Betty's/Diane's fantasy, hallucination, or dying vision (your choice, pick one). Each scene is fascinating in appearance and sound. David Lynch had an excellent pilot TV episode which, when rejected, he flipped on its head and turned the focus on addiction, obsession, jilted lovers, revenge, memory, dreams, and everything in between. Making it somewhat coherent and complete is nothing short of astonishing.

1. No Country for Old Men

It's an excellent cat-and-mouse chase movie with the Coens' droll humor laced with tension and suspense. There's an excellent sense of time and place (1980, West Texas), great cinematography (clouds, water, sunlight), greater performances (led by Javier Bardem), and a minimal use of music that works quite well. Then, the genius third act kicks in and Tommy Lee Jones's character (Sheriff Ed Bell) comes to the forefront (even though he provided the opening narration). In last hotel crime scene, it seems like he chooses to ignore Anton Chigurh and live rather than confront evil incarnate. Or does he? Bell may have been an unreliable narrator all along, sharing his bleak outlook on the world. Every aging population thinks the young are going to screw it up. The themes of life, fate, choice, chance, dreams, reality, redemption, and the trivial nature of human existence hit me harder than any film of the decade. The Coens have always had the technique; they needed novelist Cormac McCarthy to provide the substance.

6. The Departed
7. Memento
8. Adaptation
9. Minority Report
10. City of God
11. Children of Men
12. The Lives of Others
13. The Incredibles
14. Traffic
15. Master and Commander
16. A History of Violence
17. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
18. I'm Not There
19. Almost Famous
20. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
21. Finding Nemo
22. The Dark Knight
23. Sideways
24. Once
25. The Hurt Locker
26. Let the Right One In
27. Cinderella Man
28. Synecdoche, New York
29. Miami Vice
30. Punch-Drunk Love
31. Up
32. Lord of the Rings
33. Erin Brockovich
34. Michael Clayton
35. Lost in Translation
36. Inglourious Basterds
37. About a Boy
38. Public Enemies
39. Amelie
40. Collateral
41. Munich
42. Black Hawk Down & The Constant Gardner
43. Mystic River
44. The Aviator
45. Cast Away
46. The Wrestler
47. Gosford Park
48. Kill Bill
49. You Can Count On Me
50. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
51. 21 Grams
52. Ratatouille & WALL-E
53. Road to Perdition
54. Billy Elliot
55. The Royal Tenenbaums
56. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
57. Downfall
58. Hot Fuzz
59. The New World
60. Knocked Up
61. Inland Empire
62. United 93
63. Babel
64. Pan's Labyrinth
65. In the Bedroom
66. Monsters, Inc.
67. The Pianist
68. Batman Begins
69. 3:10 to Yuma
70. King Kong
71. In Bruges
72. No Direction Home
73. Intolerable Cruelty
74. Little Children
75. Gangs of New York