a little blessing in disguise
Before I proceed, I want to stress that this list was done according to my taste and preferences. It’s not a reflection on the “best” movies of the decade, but on movies that I can watch 10, 20 times and still be amazed each time. Maybe we share some of the movies below, or maybe we don’t. If we do then yay; if we don’t, then this is an opportunity to talk about some of our favourite movies of the decade!
Honourable Mentions
20 Movies of the Decade
(in alphabetical order)
Children Of Men (2006)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne More, Michael Caine, Claire-Hope Ashitey
Synopsis: In the year 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help save the future of humankind.
Comment: I love post-apocalyptic movies, and this is definitely one of the best that I’ve watched. It’s raw, poignant and filled with amazing shots. There’s a scene almost at the end when something happened which momentarily stopped a heated combat between the military and the resistance, and it’s so darn beautiful. Despite such a bleak outlook on a barren world, I love that the movie shows there is still a glimmer of hope.
Cloverfield (2008)
Director: Matt Reeves
Cast: Michael Stahl-David, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas, TJ Miller
Synopsis: The film follows five young New Yorkers attending a going-away party on the night that a monster attacks the city. Their experiences are told from the perspective of a hand-held video camera.
Comment: Disaster movies are awesome, if done right. The thing that I love most about Cloverfield is that it doesn’t go down the route of over-explaining every little thing about the monster, which means we have the same information that the protagonists have - which isn’t much. The effects are awesome, and it's filled with unpredictable scenes that I never saw coming.
Constantine (2005)
Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast: Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Gavin Rossdale, Tilda Swinton
Synopsis: The story of supernatural detective John Constantine, who has literally been to Hell and back. When Constantine teams up with sceptical policewoman Angela Dodson to solve the mysterious suicide of her twin sister, their investigation takes them through the world of demons and angels that exists just beneath the landscape of contemporary Los Angeles.
Comment: Angels versus demon stuff are like my crack (re: Supernatural), and this movie is full of imageries and battles of heaven and hell on Earth. Okay, so Keanu isn’t the most expressive actor, but he’s perfect here as the stony, cynical Constantine. Gavin Rossdale is a revelation as the demon Balthazar and Shia is pretty neat as Constantine’s sidekick (before he got all annoying via Transformers).
The Dark Knight (2008)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger (RIP), Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal
Synopsis: In the second instalment of the reboot Batman series, Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lieutenant Jim Gordon and DA Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a criminal mastermind known as The Joker.
Comment: Come on, do I need to explain this? :D The best superhero movie to come out of the decade, it’s not only a real-world take on crimes and anarchy, but it’s also diabolically fun thanks to Heath’s marvellous portrayal of the Joker. Not to mention the abundant themes of duality, sacrifice, choices; it’s an action movie that makes you think - the best kind of movie. RECOMMENDED IF YOU'RE ONE OF THE TEN PEOPLE ON EARTH WHO HAVEN'T WATCHED THIS YET
The Departed (2006)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin
Synopsis: Two men from opposite sides of the law are undercover within the Massachusetts State Police and the Irish mafia, but violence and bloodshed boil when discoveries are made, and the moles are dispatched to find out their enemy's identities.
Comment: I’m usually wary of big names being paraded in a movie because there’s a potential for the actors’ celebrity to overtake the actual plot, but this is one of the exceptions. I will watch any and all kinds of cop shows, and I can’t think of a better cop movie to represent the decade than this intense, suspenseful and sneaky thriller. Watch it to see Matt Damon play a bad guy (for once), and for a ballsy death scene of one of the main characters. Seriously, I was in shock for a full 10 seconds after it happened.
District 9 (2009)
Director: Neill Blomkamp
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, William Allen Young, Eugene Khumbanyiwa
Synopsis: In 1982, a massive star ship bearing a bedraggled alien population appeared over Johannesburg, South Africa. 28 years later, the refugee camp where the aliens are located has deteriorated into a militarized ghetto, where they are confined in squalor. A munitions corporation is contracted to evict the population, but an unexpected incident to one of its operatives changes everything.
Comment: A creative approach to an alien invasion story inspired by events during the apartheid era, D9 doesn’t only show the disgraceful treatment by humans to other creatures, but also features one of the most unlikeable protagonists ever. Wikus is so damn annoying, it’s kinda amazing that I felt anything for him at all (I did though, in the end). This movie sort of answers the common question of ‘if there’s other life out there, why don’t they visit us?’ Because we will likely do horrible things to them the way we’ve done to each other.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Director: Michael Gondry
Cast: Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Wilkinson
Synopsis: A couple undergo a procedure to erase each other from their memories when their relationship turns sour, but it is only through the process of loss that they discover what they had to begin with.
Comment: One of the few movies on love that I could tolerate, this movie suggests that maybe erasing everything we know about someone may not be the best way to move on. Because with every bad memories, there’s also great ones <3 Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are both amazing in this movie, it’s so bittersweet and very truthful in the depiction of the ups and downs of a relationship.
The Fall (2006)
Director: Tarsem Singh
Cast: Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, Justine Waddell, Sean Gilder
Synopsis: In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances.
Comment: I love, love, love this movie. Not only is it visually stunning, but it is heartfelt and touching (yeah, I cried at the end, sue me). It was shot on 26 locations over 18 countries, and the result is a gorgeous masterpiece. Add to that Lee Pace’s great chemistry with the little Catinca, and you get a movie which beautifully illustrate that we can find solace in the most unexpected of forms. RECOMMENDED.
Finding Nemo (2003)
Director: Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich
Cast: (voices) Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, Alexander Gould, Willem Defoe, Brad Garrett
Synopsis: An underwater adventure featuring a clown fish, Marlin and his son Nemo. When Nemo is stolen from his home in the Great Barrier Reef, the timid Marlin and a blue tang fish named Dory with short-term memory loss must follow the East Australian Current in order to get to Sydney and bring Nemo home.
Comment: Pixar is an established home of geniuses, and Finding Nemo is one of my favourites from their collection. The artwork is dazzlingly colourful, and even looked somewhat real. Of course, there’s the usual group of zany characters and the lesson learned, but this movie did it in a somewhat subtle way for an animated feature. I also love that they mentioned Sydney 36587 times because I was born there and I don’t care that I’m biased.
Friday Night Lights (2004)
Director: Peter Berg
Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Lucas Black, Garrett Hedlund, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez
Synopsis: The film follows the run of the 1988 Permian High School Panthers football team as they head towards the state championship. Odessa is a small town in Texas, racially divided and economically dying, united only by their love for football. The Panthers have a big winning tradition in Texas high school football, but expectations of their classmates, family, and community soon exact a toll on the team.
Comment: This is not your average sports movie. There’s no larger-than-life coach with super-inspiring lines, no defying the odds moments of heroisms, no teenagers crack-whoring their way throughout the movie. It’s a simple story of a man attempting to accomplish the difficult task of bringing success not only to his team, but also to his town. The movie is done in a quiet, unflinching honesty with equal parts of triumphant and of heartbreaking moments. It is so good, they made a TV show out of it (which is also amazingly good). ANOTHER RECOMMENDATION.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Michael Gambon, Gary
Synopsis: It's Harry's third year at Hogwarts and troubles are brewing. A convicted mass murderer, Sirius Black, is on the loose and the sinister prison guards of Azkaban have been called in to guard the school. Black is known as Lord Voldemort's most devoted follower, and he's coming after Harry to finish the job. But the truth about Sirius may be more shocking than Harry could ever imagine.
Comment: The Harry Potter movies are all incredible achievements, but for me the best one is still the third (the fifth one comes close in my opinion, mainly due to the classic Voldemort-Dumbledore clash). Alfonso Cuarón brought his vision of a moody, ominous wizarding world and I felt it reflected the books best out of all the other movies. Even though a lot are cut from the book (yeah, I was mad about it at first), but the essence is intact, most obvious in the scene at the Shrieking Shack, and Harry and Hermione’s trip through time.
Hot Fuzz (2007)
Director: Edgar Wright
Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton
Synopsis: Top London cop, PC Nicholas Angel is good. Too good. And to stop the rest of his team looking bad, he is reassigned to the quiet town of Sandford. He is paired with Danny Butterman, who continuously questions him on his ‘action-packed’ lifestyle. When a series of grisly accidents rocks the town, Angel is convinced that Sandford is not what it seems and set out to uncover the unbelievable truth.
Comment: As I mentioned before, I love all kinds of cop movies but this one takes the cake because it sort of parodies a lot of other cop/action movies. It’s brilliantly written, wickedly hilarious and full of kickass action sequences. If you love British comedies, you’re going to love this! (See also: Shaun of the Dead for an amusing take on zombies infestation)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
Cast: Abigail Breslin, Greg Kinnear, Toni Collete, Steve Carrell
Synopsis: The Hoover family is the dictionary definition for the word 'dysfunctional'. When seven-year-old Olive has a chance to enter the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California, the whole family travels together in their old Volkswagen Type 2 Microbus, in a funny journey bonded by hope, pain and each other.
Comment: I’m usually not too fond of these quirky, indie type of movies, but LMS is not really one, despite its appearance. It starts out painfully awkward, but when it becomes a road trip movie, everything just clicks. Whenever something goes wrong or right, the characters’ reactions feel honest to me. In the end, the movie shows that despite whatever shit life throws at you, your family will probably be the only ones left with you in the end, and that’s okay. (I also fucking love the dance scene on stage at the end, oh my God, it’s so hilariously wrong and yet so right)
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Christopher Lee, Liv Tyler
Synopsis: An ancient Ring thought lost for centuries has been found, and through a strange twist in fate has been given to a small Hobbit named Frodo. When the wizard Gandalf discovers the Ring is in fact the One Ring of the Dark Lord Sauron, Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring must make an epic quest to the Cracks of Doom in order to destroy it.
Comment: My favourite franchise to come out of the decade, I had a hard time choosing which instalment of the trilogy to put here, but in the end I chose the first one because I thought it did everything right. From the amazing prologue to the characters’ introductions, impressive battles, two superbly done death scenes; I loved everything about the movie. But that’s not to say the other two episodes are lacking, they’re all wonderful, but FOTR is the default I choose whenever I want to revisit Middle-Earth.
Mean Girls (2004)
Director: Mark Waters
Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chabert
Synopsis: Raised in African bush country by her zoologist parents, Cady Heron thinks she knows about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when the home-schooled 15-year-old enters public high school for the first time and encounters the psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teenage girls face today.
Comment: Put teen movies in the list of movies I usually can’t stand, so I was pleasantly surprised by how great Mean Girls is. Tina Fey’s script is made up of so many good quotes; I can recite at least half a dozen lines right now just from memory (my favourite being the classic “four for you, Glen Coco!”). It’s like a lite-version of Heathers, but much more fun!
Memento (2000)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Stephen Tobolowsky
Synopsis: The film chronicles two separate stories of Leonard, an ex-insurance investigator who can no longer build new memories, as he attempts to find the murderer of his wife, which is the last thing he remembers. One story line movies forward in time while the other tells the story backwards, eventually merging in a shocking conclusion.
Comment: This is the movie where I decided I will forever worship the Nolan brothers, because they come up with crazy, excellent stories and then have the nerve to act all humble and stuff. I know the movie sounds complicated with the moving forward and back thing going on at the same time, but just know that black-and-white scenes are moving forward, colour scenes are moving back. To me it's one of the best movies ever made, reflecting on the reliability of memories and how they can be manipulated. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS.
Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Cast: Ivana Banquero, Sergi López, Maribel Verdú, Doug Jones
Synopsis: In the fascist Spain of 1944, a girl is sent along with her pregnant mother to live with her new stepfather, a sadistic captain of the Spanish army. During the night, she finds her escape from the new world order by delving into the mysterious and enchanting world of fantasy.
Comment: This movie is like the original Grimm brothers' fairy tales; scary and fucking cruel. Even the fantasies are made up of horrible stuff, and because I’m a pessimist, I'm in the opinion that everything that Ofelia encountered are fantasies and only that, which makes the ending incredibly depressing. But the journey throughout is worth it, and maybe those of you who are optimists will view the movie in a different light.
Speed Racer (2008)
Director: Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski
Cast: Emile Hirsch, Matthew Fox, Christina Ricci, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon
Synopsis: Born to race cars, Speed is aggressive, instinctive and fearless. His only competition is the memory of his brother, Rex, whose death in a race has left behind a legacy that Speed is driven to fulfil. When Speed turns down a lucrative offer from Royalton Industries, he not only infuriates the company's maniacal owner but uncovers a terrible secret in the world of racing. The only way for Speed to save his family's business and the sport he loves is to beat Royalton at his own game.
Comment: When I first watched this movie, my comment was that it’s a psychedelic ecstasy, an orgasm of candy-movie porn. After several more viewings, my feelings are still the same. Most critics ripped it to shreds, but I say fuck them. This movie makes me happy every time I watch it; the visuals are entertaining, the races enthralling and the Racer family are made up of awesome. I especially love its bittersweet ending, and a scene where Emile wears the exact same outfit as the cartoon Speedy :D I'm so weird
Sunshine (2007)
Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Rose Byrne, Michelle Yeoh, Hiroyuki Sanada
Synopsis: It’s 50 years into the future and the sun is dying. After the mission failure of Icarus, a second team of eight astronauts in Icarus II are sent to reignite the sun. The already complex mission is jeopardised not only by the traces left by the previous team, but also the physical and psychological battle between the crew members.
Comment: Danny Boyle has several worthy entries in the decade (the multiple award-winner Slumdog Millionaire stands out, obviously), but my favourite is the haunting and trippy Sunshine. Creepy space movies are awesome because of the unexplored possibilities, but this movie not only attempts to look at the psychological effects of space travel, but also looking into questions of religion vs science. The images of the sun are radiantly brilliant in the movie, and the international cast is just as great.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds, Dillon Freasier
Synopsis: A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, the film focuses on a silver-miner-turned-oil-man on a ruthless quest for wealth during Southern California's oil boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Comment: This is the kind of movie that starts out slow and steady, and you think you have it all figured out by the first quarter, and then all hell breaks loose and you ended up baffled, trying to figure out what the hell it is that you’re watching. It’s a character study of a man consumed by his desire to succeed above all else, knocking down everyone who stands on his way. Daniel Day-Lewis is exceptional in the role, chewing every scene with gusto and a hint of insanity, and the epic backdrop of oil and vast lands is done remarkably well. The zealous and weird score is just one of the many highlights. ALSO HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Would love to read your comments! And a note: I don’t mind if you want to repost these elsewhere, but please credit to me as I spent a lot of time arranging and colouring the pictures. If you want to reblog on Tumblr, please credit to citrine. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did making it! Happy holidays!
♥