Best Films of the 2000s

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about my favorite films of the decade. On his podcast and in his articles Bill Simmons has been discussing what he thinks are the best movies made since 2000 and this made me want to make my own list. His qualifications are 'excellence, originality and (this is crucial) rewatchability.' Although I appreciate the importance he places on rewatchability, I don't necessarily consider that as important as the ability of a film to stimulate me intellectually or emotionally. I also place a higher importance on originality, I like to watch a movie and think 'wow I have never seen anything like this before.'

Below are my top 5 films of 2000-2009. Although I may title this post as the 'best' films of the 2000s I realize that everyone is looking for different things from a movie. It's more of a list of my favorite movies, but that is all semantics. I figure that towards the end of this year many lists like this might come out so I want to put this out there before I have the chance to be affected by the other lists. Hopefully I didn't overlook anything, and I had quite a few films that barely got cut. The films that just missed the cut include Primer, Donnie Darko, Gladiator, Oldboy, The Departed and Let the Right One In.



Honorable Mention: Comedies - Zoolander (2001)













I'm not the biggest fan of comedies. I tend to enjoy them, but never really get obsessed and don't often feel the need to watch them more than once. My problem is not that I don't like to laugh, it's that as movies they tend to lack that extra something that dramas have. It's incredibly hard to balance the comedic aspect of films with the plot arc necessary for the medium. Thus for my list it was necessary to create an independent comedy category so as not to ignore an entire genre. And for me, Zoolander wins this category in a landslide.

Although there might be 'better' comedies (like Juno) nothing that came out in the past 10 years made me laugh like Zoolander. It might have helped that I had friends in high school who were also obsessed with it and walked around randomly yelling 'OBEY MY DOG' at inappropriate moments, but as I've gotten older I found that people in college, and now in my life after college were equally into this movie. Not only is this my favorite performance by Ben Stiller, I think that this might be Will Ferrel's best role. Almost everything that Mugatu says or does in Zoolander makes me laugh and all of his lines are extremely quotable. It may be completely ridiculous and nonsensical, but I haven't found a comedy as funny or rewatchable as Zoolander.



Honorable Mention - Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)


















I love these movies. Love, love, love them. Some of the best nights I've ever had involve just sitting around watching one of the extended films with my best friends. But I wasn't able to put them in my list because for me, it's impossible to separate these films from the books that spawned them. Peter Jackson did what was once thought impossible, and turned the most famous fantasy book of all time into a series of epic movies. Although a few plot points were changed for better or worse, he completely nailed the tone, feeling and overall story of Tolkien's masterpiece. They are a wonderful companion to the books and although technology might improve in the next century, I think future directors will be hard pressed to create an adaptation of the books that surpasses than Peter Jackson's crowning achievement.



#5 - Children of Men (2006)












Children of Men not only works as a depiction of a possible dystopian future, but also as a straight up action movie, political and social commentary, and as an intense personal drama. As you might note from this list or my other posts, I am partial to genre films and Children of Men fulfills that part of my interest while being a great film in many other ways. It's hard not to get caught up in Theo's struggle for self preservation in a dead world even before his conscious forces him to care for, and protect humanities last hope found in the first pregnant woman in decades. The story is taut, the action is exciting, and the camera work is superlative. The film uses many single-shot sequences which are incredibly hard to pull off, but extremely rewarding when done correctly. In my opinion, the final action sequence, which is over 7 minutes long, is one of the best action scenes ever filmed.



#4 - WALL-E (2008)



















I think that any list of the best films of the decade that doesn't include a Pixar film would be amiss. No film studio of the 2000s comes close to the string of success that Pixar has achieved. Since 200o Pixar has put out Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up. Not only are Pixar movies financially successful, they are uniformly loved by critics, kids, adults and young adults. Everyone enjoys Pixar's films and rightfully so.

Although I love Monsters, Inc., WALL-E is probably my favorite Pixar film. The first 20 minutes or so which are completely without dialog might be the best single sequence of any of the movies on this list. The film becomes a little more formulaic after the initial sequence, but the quality of the film hardly drops at all. The ability to make the audience feel the entire range of human emotions with just the body language and facial expressions of a pair of robots should not be overlooked. I even have a friend who refuses to watch WALL-E and claims she doesn't like it because it always makes her cry. WALL-E also contains some very poignant social commentary in its view of our possible future that is a little more believable than the picture painted by most films which use science fiction as social commentary (ie Children of Men or Idocracy).



#3 - The Dark Knight (2008)













The Dark Knight might end up being the defining film of the 2000s. It fully captures the fear that permeates our post 9/11 society in a way no other piece of art has. I also can't remember another film that opened with such high expectations and then fully surpassed them. Think of The Dark Knight like LeBron James if he had already won 3 championships. Although the Academy that runs The Oscars will never nominate an action or science fiction film for any major awards, many people and critics felt like this movie should have won more than just the award Heath Ledger was posthumously awarded.

In addition to all this it is easily the best superhero/comic book movie of the decade in a time where at least a half dozen or so of these open a year. Time will tell how future movies are affected by The Dark Knight, but it already seems like the film is to the superhero film genre that Watchmen was to comic books in the 80s. Although films had been getting darker before The Dark Knight opened, it ratcheted up the intensity and respectability the same way that Watchmen did for super hero comic books. And like Watchmen I doubt that The Dark Knight will be surpassed any time soon.



#2 - The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)















This would have to be my sentimental favorite. The Royal Tenenbaums was my first 'favorite movie' and holds a special place in my heart. I'm not sure what to say that hasn't been said about this film. Wes Anderson still has a long way to go in his career, but it feels at this point that you can separate his career into pre-Tenenbaum and post-Tenenbaum sections. After The Royal Tenenbaums his films seemed to be more concerned with quirk and aesthetics than with real human emotion. However The Royal Tenenbaums combines the meticulous and beautiful aesthetics of The Life Aquatic with the emotional anguish found within Rushmore.

Barring the effect that The Dark Knight might have on future films, The Royal Tenenbaums more than any other film on this list has shaped the films that came after its release. Every indie film of the day feels like a Wes Anderson knock off and even commercials such as the ones currently run by Comcast use a distinctly Anderson look. However, none of these imitators can touch the emotion or feeling found in The Royal Tenenbaums.



#1 - Mulholland Drive (2001)

















It was tough for me to order my favorite films after narrowing down the top five. I had all of the top three in this slot at some point before settling on David Lynch's masterpiece. The reason that Mulholland Drive claimed the top spot is the 'intellectual' factor that I discussed in the opening. While watching Mulholland Drive you end up asking yourself 'wait, what's going on' for most of the film, and Lynch makes no concessions to make this easy for the viewer. Not only do you have to think while watching the movie, after its conclusion if you didn't have to discuss what you just saw with whomever you watched it with and/or go online to read about the film, I'm not sure we were watching the same thing.

Lynch gets a lot of crap for being 'weird' or 'Lynchian' (the nice way of calling his particular methods weird) and I think that's just unfair. Lynch has no interest in typical story telling, and I find this refreshing. His movies are all unique and interesting, and there is a reason that there are armies of cinephiles that swear by everything he does.

Interestingly, Mulholland Drive was initially intended to be a television pilot for ABC in 1999. Predictably, the network declined to pick up the show and Lynch was left with some fantastic, but unusable footage. When he was making Twin Peaks Lynch was faced with the same possibility, and shot an 'extended pilot' that wrapped the story up and could be told as a stand alone story. As anyone who has seen this 'extended pilot' knows, it's completely awful and unwatchable. It seems like Lynch learned from his mistake and whether he had a contingency plan to turn Mulholland Drive into a film or not, the result is stunning.

Because much of it was initially shot to be a television pilot, there are multiple loose ends and red herrings that could be found to some as bothersome. I don't mind these seemingly unconnected loose ends because with Lynch's dreamlike style it's impossible to tell metaphors from plot relevant events.

Mulholland Drive does have that 'weird' factor found in Eraserhead and his later films Lost Highway and Inland Empire, but it also the great storytelling and mood found in what many people consider to be his best film, Blue Velvet. For the first 90 minutes the movie feels like it may just be another straightforward narrative that, like Blue Velvet, examines the horrors that lie underneath American society. However, as the last hour of the film unravels it becomes much more than that.

I remember the first time I watched Mulholland Drive and how I felt afterward. It was just like the first time I listened to Radiohead's OK Computer, I knew immediately that it was the best album I had ever heard. It's not often that upon a first experience I have such a strong feeling about something, and it's for this reason that I rank Mulholland Drive first.