*The following was originally published on 5/28/2010, on another social networking site.
The first decade of the 21st Century has been rough with the cinematic medium. The century has announced very clearly that it belongs to another medium: the video game. You know the stats, games are selling in ways that make studios envious.
And the 2000’s are also the decade when television outstripped the cinema. The best episodes of The Sopranos, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, Mad Men rival anything at Cannes or Sundance. It seems that a paradigm shift has occurred. TV was once the domain of family and film was where more adult stories were told, but that has finally been reversed.
Technology has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, but the paucity of great films this these technological breakthroughs has yielded is very telling. Digital Video and 24p Hi-Def seemed to be the way of the future in 1999. Many directors experimented with these formats. Now it seems that with a few exceptions (Michael Mann, David Lynch), DV has failed to really payoff creatively or launch any movements. In other words, this is a decade when anyone, even this filmmaker, could make a feature-length movie. That makes the paltry product seen since 2000 all the more depressing.
On the international scene, we lost many of our last remaining titans in this decade. The filmmakers that made being a cinephile chic in the late 60’s & 70’s have all but disappeared. We also saw the rise of Israel, South Korea, Romania, Nigeria, Thailand, the Philippines, & most recently South America on the festival circuit. Iran & Taiwan, so vibrant in the 1990’s, seemed to have lost their respective ways. France continues to produce important films and keep its film industry viable. A film without any White characters won the Academy Award for Best Picture. A new kind of art film, which I call Critic-Bait Cinema, emerges in which nothing much happens in long takes.
And despite all of our losses, the cinema gained its first centenarian filmmaker in the 2000’s.
And then there was “The Man Who Couldn’t…” My first feature was made in the middle of the decade for less than $10,000. I don’t bring this up to promote it, but to say that in this decade, I changed as a cinephile, as a filmgoer. Making a feature was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It has changed me as a filmmaker and as an artist. It also means that from now on, I will always view features (especially those by young, or more pointedly, younger) filmmakers with a certain defensive competitiveness. Making a feature probably made me a more forgiving film-goer, but it also made me a protective parent of a child loved by a few, but ignored by the many. So let that serve as an honest declaration of the baggage I tote as a cinephile.
With all our disclaimers out of the way, let’s take a look at the best that “The Noughties,” as the Brits call it, offered up.
1. INLAND EMPIRE – 2006 – USA – David Lynch
2. Yi Yi (A One & A Two…) – 2000 – Taiwan – Edward Yang
3. The Royal Tenenbaums – 2001 – USA – Wes Anderson
4. Silent Light – 2007 – Mexico – Carlos Reygadas
5. George Washington – 2000 – USA – David Gordon Green
6. Secret Sunshine – 2007 – S. Korea – Lee Chang-dong
7. Ghost World – 2001 – USA – Terry Zwigoff
8. All About Lily Chou-Chou – 2001 – Japan – Shunji Iwai
9. Lilya 4-Ever – 2002 – Sweden – Lukas Moodysson
10. 25th Hour – 2002 – USA – Spike Lee
Why “Inland Empire?” It is not the most entertaining film of the decade. It is not a film that I pop in the DVD player at any given moment and enjoy like a visit from an old friend. But it is a towering work, a singular artistic vision of purity rarely seen in the cinema (Laura Dern’s performance is arguably the decade’s best turn by an actress, it must be said). It is also an example of what could be produced only in this decade (thanks to advances in consumer hardware & software), and a reminder of how few artists of Lynch’s caliber took up the challenge given by new technology. The top 3 films are all outstanding and could be rearranged easily. But of the three, only Lynch’s film is uniquely a product of this moment, not a project with roots in the previous decade like Yang’s or consciously timeless like Anderson’s.
11. Synecdoche, New York – 2008 – USA – Charlie Kaufman
12. I’m Not There – 2007 – USA – Todd Haynes
13. Gangster No. 1 – 2000 – UK – Paul McGuigan
14. The Circle – 2000 – Iran – Jafar Panahi
15. Beau Travail – 2000 – France – Claire Denis
16. The New World – 2005 – USA – Terrence Malick
17. The Dark Knight – 2008 – USA – Christopher Nolan
18. Los Angeles Plays Itself – 2003 – USA – Thom Anderson
19. The Corporation – 2003 – Canada – Mark Achbar & Jennifer Abbott
20. A.I. Artificial Intelligence – 2001 – USA – Steven Spielberg
21. Code 46 – 2003 – UK – Michael Winterbottom
22. Shortbus – 2006 – USA – John Cameron Mitchell
23. Donnie Darko – 2001 – USA – Richard Kelly
24. Kill Bill (Volume 1) – 2003 – USA – Quentin Tarantino
25. L’Emploi du Temps (Time Out) – 2001 – France – Laurent Cantet
26. Surfwise - 2008 – USA – Doug Pray
27. Street Fight - 2005 – USA – Marshall Curry
28. Mystic River – 2003 – USA – Clint Eastwood
29. The Squid & the Whale – 2005 - USA – Noah Baumbach
30. La Ville Est Tranquille – 2000 – France – Robert Guédiguian
31. Grizzly Man – 2005 – USA – Werner Herzog
32. The Gleaners & I – 2000 – France – Agnes Varda
33. The Incredibles – 2004 – USA - Brad Bird
34. Manderlay – 2005 – Denmark – Lars Von Trier
35. Million Dollar Baby – 2004 – USA – Clint Eastwood
36. Before Sunset – 2004 – USA – Richard Linklater
37. Knocked Up – 2007 – USA – Judd Apatow
38. Ocean’s 11 – 2001 – USA – Steven Soderbergh
39. The Filth & The Fury – 2000 – UK – Julien Temple
40. Brokeback Mountain – 2005 – USA – Ang Lee
41. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy – 2004 – USA – Adam McKay
42. A History of Violence – 2005 – USA – David Cronenberg
43. Peppermint Candy – 2000 – S. Korea – Lee Chang-dong
44. Nobody Knows – 2004 – Japan – Hirokazu Kore-eda
45. The Departed – 2006 – USA – Martin Scorsese
46. Children of Men – 2006 – UK – Alfonso Cuarón
47. Sicko – 2007 – USA – Michael Moore
48. Pulse – 2001 – Japan – Kiyoshi Kurosawa
49. Zodiac – 2007 – USA – David Fincher
50. Mooladé – 2004 – Senegal – Ousmane Sembene
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