Dec 20, 2009

Favorite Films of the Decade: 1. Brokeback Mountain

1. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
2. Birth (2004)
3.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
(2003)
5.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
6.
Knocked Up (2007)
7. United 93 (2007)
8. Avatar (2009)
9. You Can Count On Me (2000)
10. Eastern Promises (2000)

From a long-list that includes:— The Wrestler, United 93, The Incredibles, Up, Catch Me if You Can, Memento, Downfall, An Education, Traffic, The Hurt Locker, In The Mood For Love, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Michael Clayton, The Squid and the Whale, The Deep End, WALL-E, Milk, Anvil! The Story of Anvil! Casino Royale, High Fidelity, Traffic, Ratatouille, Million Dollar Baby, No Country For Old Men, The Queen, The Bourne Ultimatum, Sideways, Elf, Mystic River, Lost in Translation, Once, Narc, The Hurt Locker, Zodiac, Borat, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Brokeback Mountain because it was both heartbreaking and tough — you felt massive, impacted emotions moving beneath its surface. Ang Lee was the decade's most interesting director — inventive, curious, playful, scrupulous. Birth was a magical and mysterious picture, operatic and strange. I chose Eternal Sunshine over, say, Memento, or Traffic, because its smart intricate structure connected with something more heartfelt. The Royal Tenenbaums gives off this amber glow that just seems to grow stronger as time goes by, like all family albums should. Avatar has just blown me away, so maybe I'm too close, but the middle hour is a rolling, diving, tumbling, dolphin-backed delight. Knocked Up for all the obvious reasons — its painful, honest, and sharply observed without losing any warmth. I've gone back and forth on the Pixar movies, but today I'm going for Finding Nemo: it completes me. Mulholland Drive is close to David Lynch's best.

7 comments:

  1. This is a list for the multiplexes Tom; I agree about Brokeback's placing at No.1, and the inclusion of Royal Tenebaums and Eternal Sunshine though not their placings, but where are the truly wondrous foreign/indie/small budget fims? Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Lives of Others, and Lost in Translation to name but a few...

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  2. I like Lost in Translation a lot but also found it slight, too chic. A case could definitely be made for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly which I loved, but — what can I say — I loved the Lynch the Lee and the Eastwood more. It would make my top twenty. The Lives of Others I'm afraid I just didn't like: on some fundamental level I didn't buy that listening to Bach stops you being a communist. It seemed like an artist's sentimental fantasy about the power of art.

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  3. I guess I'll have to respectfully disagree!
    All my best movie moments of the last decade have been in smaller, more intimate films; the sumptuous visuals of in the Mood for Love, the illusion of eavesdropping a realtime conversation in Before Sunset,Werner Herzog's masterful treatment of Grizzly Man, and (I'm sorry to go on about it) The Beat my Heart Skipped.
    I think Brokeback is the only major studio film I've seen in the last 10 years that successfully managed to convey real and sometimes suffocating intimacy.
    In fact, I was so affected by it, I haven't been able to revisit it yet. Definitely No.1.

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