Let it be known henceforth that the following movies would once be declared the best of the 00s decade by none other than one added voice in the cloud:
1. Synecdoche, NY (Charlie Kaufman, USA 2008)
2. Cargo 200 (Груз 200) (Aleksei Balabanov, Russia 2007)
3. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuarón, GB 2006)
4. Rescue Dawn (Werner Herzog, USA 2007)
5. Talk to Her (Hable con ella) (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain 2002)
6. In This World (Michael Winterbottom, GB 2002)
7. Deep Water (Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell, GB, 2006)
8. Michael Clayton (Tony Gilroy, USA 2007)
9. The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany 2006)
10. Code Unknown (Code inconnu: Récit incomplet de divers voyages, Michael Haneke, France 2000)
11. Head-On (Gegen die Wand) (Fatih Akin, Germany 2004)
12. Intolerable Cruelty (Ethan and Joel Coen, USA 2003)
13. Amélie (Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, France 2000)
14. Adaptation (Spike Jonze, USA 2002)
15. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, USA 2005)
16. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, USA 2001)
17. Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA 2004)
18. The Three Rooms of Melancholia (Melancholian 3 Huonetta) (Pirjo Honkasalo, Finland 2004)
19. Russian Ark, (Русский ковчег) (Alexandr Sokurov, Russia 2002)
20. Halbe Treppe (Andreas Dresen, Germany 2002)
21. Still Life (三峡好人 Sānxiá hǎorén) (Jia Zhangke, China 2006)
22. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA 2007)
23. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le scaphandre et le papillon) (Julian Schnabel, France 2007)
24. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, USA 2005)
25. First on the Moon (Первые на Луне) (Aleksei Fedorchenko, Russia 2005)
Honorable Mentions (because nobody else will): Die Unberührbare (Oskar Roehler, Germany 2000), Zoolander (Ben Stiller, USA 2001), Herr Schmidt und Herr Friedrich (Ulrike Franke, Germany 2001), Igby Goes Down (Burr Steers, USA 2002), Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, USA 2004), Muxmäuschenstill (Marcus Mittermeier, Germany 2004), Fateless (Lajos Koltai, Hungary 2005), Domino (Tony Scott, USA 2005), Idiocracy (Mike Judge, USA 2006), Manda Bala (Jason Kohn, Brazil 2007), Sunshine (Danny Boyle, GB 2007), Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA 2008)
(And some of the worst movies I have yet to repress: The Family Stone, Munich, The Break-Up, I Know Who Killed Me, Babel, Redacted, American Gangster, Alexandra, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Righteous Kill, House of Sand and Fog, and –sacrilege, but really, folks– 2046)
2009-12-31
as if this record matters, so early on, to anyone.
at 22:00
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8 comments:
Hm! There are so many lacunae in my decade of film-watching (or I devoted much of the last ten years to watching things not of this time) that I should just keep my mouth shut. But - what about Little Miss Sunshine? Too cute for honorable mention?
Hm, yes - I did enjoy LMS a lot, but it left me a tad wistful. I think the list is based on films that really moved me, that capture or elude the prevailing spirit of the times, or that try to do something magnificent. Little Miss Sunshine is certainly important as a Sundance legend, but ultimately it's more of an inversion of the standard family picture conventions, no?
On the other hand, my friend and colleague "the Barkhowler" objected to Michael Clayton and Zoolander on these grounds, so why not include it indeed? I certainly try to participate in my own daily "Refuse to Lose" program, with my favorite steps being "Say No to the Negheads" and "No Hocus Pocus, Just Focus."
"The Barkhowler" huh? I wouldn't listen to that noise. Probably doesn't even remember what he barked or howled about. I wouldn't trust him. Anyway, the Big Lacunae of the decade is Zombie Strippers. Now THAT captures--and then zombifies--the prevailing spirit of the times. Or at least the Bush years. Same thing I guess.
Well, the Barkhowler barks quite eloquently and howls in the most beautiful registers. But, you're right: Zombie Strippers definitely need to be recorded as essential to the spirit of the times. Absolutely! And, mind you, the Bush years are not yet over: the fourth term will probably be something akin to a Palin/Blagojevich ticket.
In this electric circus, as MirandaC calls it, we must provide the groundwork for future historians of this age of stupidity and allegedly incipient singularity, although these historians may not be wetware or even carbon-based, I presume.
However the electrons flow around the nuclei of the future pickers-over of our pottery shards, there are bound to be dissertations involved -- and I wouldn't be surprised if tons of 'em revolved around the whole zombie way of life. To each age its flesh-devouring monster: the Romantics (and teenage girls in perpetuity) had vampires; we're stuck with the sexless brain-eating dead (as von Wenk puts it -- Sarah Palin)...
Right, mrc: it's nice to imagine there will be some grad-student-botnet, ghost-in-the-machine sapient Seiendes, sifting through the silicon sands to suffer our, uh, sibilant somethings, still hoping in vain to find out wie es eigentlich gewesen ist.
Or is my desire for the archive a pathological obsessive-compulsive way to "manage terror" by the narcissistic "fashioning of a form of immortality"?
And what could we even say: we were just sayin'? Accept our sincere apologies? Oops, our bad? Or just: please, please, Control-Z, Control-Z, Control-Z?
Sometimes I think of Benjamin with his suitcases in Portbou. What if he'd carried a 16GB flash drive instead?
And, speaking of zombies, the masterpiece production design and location scouting for The Road should be included in this list. Filmed (where else, of course?) in Western Pennsylvania...
O thank you for the haunting "Suitcases" link -- what a show! Though thinking of Benjamin in the Pyrenees always makes me -- word of the moment -- wistful. Trapped by the goddamned zombies, back when words were heavier than shadows. 16 GB drive indeed, and he could have carried his entire library under his tongue...
After some serious deliberations, the barkhowler has convinced me that The White Ribbon needs to be on this list. It is not too early to declare it a masterpiece, and not just for its final image. Anyone who still thinks this is a movie "about" fascism or "about" the children has yet to take into account how it plays with memory: yours, theirs and ours.
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