I’m obsessed with cinema.

Since the year 2000, I have compulsively rated every film I’ve seen, using a rating system (a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best) that considers directing, screenplay, acting, cinematography, editing and sound design.

As the decade came to a close, critics and newspapers put out their endless “Best of the Decade” lists.  Then it hit me, why don’t I do it?  Surely, I have the authority to support my own opinions.  So I sifted through my long list and chose 50 films I felt were the absolute best of the best.  I tried to preserve the memory of the film and its impact on me at the time, while measuring its significance on the advancement of cinema as an art.

The final list spans all genres and budgets, countries and languages.  Most of the directors are young voices of creative ambition, while others are old masters.   Only two of these films have won the Oscar for Best Picture, and three others are Golden Palm winners at Cannes.  In spite of my love of foreign cinema, most of these films are American and very few are directed by women or minorities.  Though you might say that I have a taste for the films of white men, I will argue that this is more a reflection of the struggles that women and minorities face in Hollywood than it is of my taste.

I may not be able to explain what compelled me to rate, say, #37 over #38, but I can tell you that I’ve sat with this order for several weeks now and it feels right.  I strongly encourage discussions - tell me why I got it right or wrong!

And without further ado, I give you The Top 50 Films of the Decade:

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50.  Marie Antoinette (2006) Directed by Sofia Coppola
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman, Judy Davis

I’m aware I may be losing credibility by opening up the the list with Marie Antoinette, but this film has always been greatly misunderstood.  Even before the collapse of our economy, Marie Antoinette was ripped apart by critics for the film’s decadent style, anachronistic soundtrack, and favorable depiction of spoiled socialites.  But if you look past the cotton candy wigs and haut couture, you’ll see the tender story of an unlikely girl thrust into the throne of a foreign nation.  Sofia Coppola, who knows a thing or two about developing her own identity despite being Hollywood royalty, paints a portrait of Marie Antoinette not as an impudent queen, but rather as a confused teenager dealing with all the malaise of adolescence as she keeps from drowning in a life of opulence.  Let us eat cake!

49.  Mulholland Dr. (2001) Directed by David Lynch
Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux

David Lynch, the father of modern day surrealism, gives us his version of a love letter to Los Angeles.  Of course, the sentiments never materialize as Mulholland Dr. weaves dreams within nightmares and nightmares within dreams of Hollywood stardom.  Through the eyes of two women, an amnesiac and an aspiring actress, we experience a city just as bizarre and beautiful as it is cruel and frightening.  Ultimately, Lynch touches on similar taboo desires that made Blue Velvet so engaging and leaves us a with a provocative story of a jealous lover thrown aside.  Or so I think.

48.  Broken Flowers (2005) Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Starring Bill Murray, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange

Bill Murray hit his “dramatic” stride this decade portraying quieter, more subtle characters that relied less on broad comedy and more on the comic complexities of tragic events.  Here he plays an aging lothario who receives an anonymous letter informing him that he may have fathered a son, setting him off on a trip in search of former lovers and girlfriends whom he suspects may be the mother.  Broken Flowers is a hilarious and heartbreaking film driven by Bill Murray’s performance that descends from graceful nostalgia to full-on desperation.

47.  The Dark Knight (2008) Directed by Christopher Nolan
Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal

I will say this up front: I would not like this movie as much if Heath Ledger hadn’t played the Joker.  There.  Accept it and move on.  Ledger’s screen presence dominated the film - I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.  The flick the tongue, the wounded eyes, the flinching grin in the face of chaos, it was all so disturbing and enchanting, a comic portrayal deep-rooted in a psychological distress.  The movie itself, though at times convoluted, is a feast of  summer entertainment.  With the exception of his “overly raspy” Batman voice, Christian Bale is as good as ever.  The movie benefits from the humanity Gary Oldman brings to a world gone topsy-turvy.  Although miscast, what Maggie Gyllenhaal lacks in sexual appeal, she makes up in confidence, holding her own against the boys.  It’s the mark of a good director to never show your cards too soon, something Christopher Nolan surely understands, but when your best card is the Joker, well, anything goes.

46.  Sideways (2004) Directed by Alexander Payne
Paul Giamatti, Virginia Madsen, Thomas Haden Church

Paul Giamatti’s vicious rant against Merlot not only single-handedly contributed to slumping sales of this variety of wine throughout California but it cleverly depicted how a shattered man stands up to the world in spite of himself.  Therein lies the beauty of Sideways.  Alexander Payne inspired, or rekindled, many Americans’ love affair with the “serious” romantic comedy by setting the film in wine country.  Though our heroes are not quite the gentlemen we’d like them to be (one steals money from his mother, the other cheats on his fiancée), they strive to become better men  in the face of love and misfortune - usually at their own expense.

45. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) Directed by Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris
Alan Arkin, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell, Toni Collette

The little film that could.  For all the critical acclaim that Little Miss Sunshine initially earned, it also received its unfair share of backlash once it became a mainstream success.  Sure, the characters may be archetypes, and at times predictable (of course Paul Dano’s character will be speaking by the end of the film!), but the film undermines the pitfalls of preciousness by finding humor in the darker themes of family drama - suicide, death, financial ruin.  While some say the ending falls flat, let me remind you that it’s the journey that matters as we watch a family come apart at the seams and barely hold itself together for the sake of a little girl’s dream.

44. Urbania (2000) Directed by Jon Matthews
Dan Futterman, Alan Cumming, Samuel Ball

I have yet to see a more genuine portrayal of an “ordinary” gay man than Dan Futterman’s Charlie in the suspenseful, low-budget Urbania.  Though Charlie’s sexuality is central to the drama, it never dominates the film.  Charlie is unwilling to categorize himself in any sexual role, proving that sexuality is more complex than just gay or straight, top or bottom.  He is a grieving man, bereft of his lover by a gruesome hate crime, who wanders the streets of New York City reliving the moment of his lover’s murder.  As he closes in upon the assailant, Urbania artfully balances a disparity between Charlie’s sexual desire and vengeful motives, amid a city plagued by urban legends.  The results are suspenseful and shocking, but ultimately cathartic.

43. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) Directed by Julian Schnabel
Mathieu Amalric, Max von Sydow, Marie-Josée Croze

Imagine writing a book in a blink of an eye, or I should say, with a blink of an eye.  The Diving Bell and the Butterfly beautifully captures the claustrophobia of former Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby’s real-life struggle for survival after a sudden stroke renders his entire body paralyzed, except his left eye.  What follows is a weaving of flashbacks and dreams, reality and nightmare, as Jean tries to hold onto his humanity, trapped in a body that experiences desire, but doesn’t feel it.  Directed with a startling earnestness by Julian Schnabel, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly offers a moving portrait of a man, despite his disability, whose consciousness soars through the spectrum of human emotions with every ounce of dignity.

42.  Adaptation. (2002) Directed by Spike Jonze
Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper

When this movie first came out, I detested it.  It wasn’t until suffering from my own bouts of writer’s block that I came to appreciate screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s successful attempt at creating something out of nothing.  Originally intended to be a faithful adaptation of Susan Orlean’s book, “The Orchid Thief,” Adaptation. is a strikingly original film that mixes sequences from the book with Kaufman’s real-life writing struggles, making both a mockery and celebration of its source material, and dishing up a whopping dose of post-modern, self-referential cinema.  But don’t let that scare you - Adaptation. is funny as hell!  Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper are absolutely fantastic as an unlikely romance broods between them, playing foil to Cage’s depiction of Kaufman’s alter egos.  Though Adaptation. is remembered more for being a “Kaufman picture,” director Spike Jonze keeps it all from spinning out of control, converging all cinematic elements into a coherent, rollicking film.

41.  Margot at the Wedding (2008) Directed by Noah Baumbach
Nicole Kidman, Jack Black, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Margot at the Wedding is the closest thing America has to a French New Wave film.  Director Noah Baumbach forgoes the opulence of his previous movies for a stylized subtlety very rare in contemporary American cinema.  The sets are natural, the lighting sparse and shadowy, the hand-held camera always moving, capturing the mutedness of its actors’ faces.  Nicole Kidman plays Margot, a self-involved writer careening straight towards a breakdown, who attends her sister Pauline’s wedding to a pathetic underachiever, excellently played by Jack Black.  Of course, long-buried childhood secrets are resurrected and the intricacies of sisterhood are laid out to be devoured.  This is best exemplified in the scene when Margot and Pauline share a cynical but regretful laugh remembering their young sister’s rape.  Nothing so sad has ever been so funny, and nothing so rousing has ever been so American - at least for a while.

40. Inglourious Basterds (2009) Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Brad Pitt, Christopher Waltz, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger

If the death of Hitler, arguably the most hated man of the 20^th century, was ever sacred, consider it officially desecrated.  Quentin Tarantino’s unapologetic vision of Nazi-occupied France is every bit an homage to cinema itself, from spaghetti Westerns to Hitchcock, mashed together into two and a half hours of flash, romance, suspense and violence.  From the very first scene, Christoph Waltz steals the show as Col. Landa, the Jew Hunter, a charming, double-crossing maniac who, over a glass of fresh milk, brings a French farmer to tears as he manipulates him into admitting he’s hiding a Jewish family beneath his floor.  It’s no wonder Tarantino focuses less on the title character and more on Waltz’s murderous exploits.  But for all its audaciousness, cinema remains at the heart of  Inglourious Basterds, the movie house serving as church and temple, providing shelter, hope and a means of revenge - all this from the brilliant, unrestrained imagination of a man who’s seen (and loves) too many movies.

39.  Volver (2006) Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Penélope Cruz, Carmen Maura, Blanca Portillo

Hitchcock had Grace Kelly, Bergman had Liv Ullman, Godard had Anna Karina and now Pedro Almodovar has Penélope Cruz.  Every director lives and dies for his muse and only a few are lucky enough to employ her.  Almodovar understands Cruz’s sex appeal and simultaneously undermines and enhances it by thrusting her into the most extreme of situations (remember the HIV positive nun who left behind a child in All About My Mother? Yep, that was Our Lady Penélope).  In Volver, she plays a mother who stumbles onto the corpse of her husband, stabbed to death by her daughter in defense of his sexual advances.  Add to that the ghost of her mother, allegedly returning from the dead, and you’ve got yourself a lively melodrama, reminiscent of Hamlet, filtered through a Spanish aesthetic and seen through the eyes of complex female characters.  Passion - thy name is woman.

38.  Shaun of the Dead (2004) Directed by Edgar Wright
Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield

Arriving at a time when zombie movies were infiltrating theaters left and right, Shaun of the Dead delivers the funniest, most intelligent parody of the genre while still adhering tightly to its conventions.  The movie effectively mixes a sharp, English wit with moments of genuine horror, usually in the same scene.  Simon Pegg plays a lovable slacker set on winning back his girlfriend and reconciling with his mother, just as London is being overrun by zombies, who are blending right in with the city’s apathetic youth.  The film doesn’t shy away from violence and gore, instead it uses them to remind us of the dangers, absurd as they may be, our beloved characters suffer.

37.  The Squid and the Whale (2005) Directed by Noah Baumbach
Jeff Daniles, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, William Baldwin

In a time when nearly half of American marriages end in divorce, Noah Baumbach bares his soul with the autobiographical The Squid and the Whale, based on his parent’s divorce and his dysfunctional childhood in Brooklyn.  Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels grace the screen as the metaphoric title characters: Linney plays a successful writer who’s outgrown her husband and Daniels plays a jealous, pseudo-intellectual, who refuses to be outdone by his wife.  The brunt of their split is absorbed by the two boys, Walt and Frank, who cope with a self-prescribed dose of booze, plagiarism, and chronic masturbation.  The undercurrent of the film stems from the psychological damage inflicted on Walt as he’s forced to accept his parents as sexual beings.  Baumbach stays away from sentimentality, instead, he heightens every emotion that breaks through the protective sarcasm of his characters like a patch of sunlight emerging from rain clouds.

36.  Capote (2005) Directed by Bennett Miller
Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Chris Cooper

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I would pay to watch Philip Seymour-Hoffman do stand-up as Truman Capote.  The movie is his!  To say that Hoffman transformed himself into the affected Capote, wouldn’t quite be fair to the actor.  In spite of the physical differences between the two men, Hoffman captures the nuances and tormented spirit of the tragic writer.  The events in the film depict the obsession and psychological deterioration of Truman Capote as he falls into a dark and disturbing relationship with the murderer Perry Smith.  Capote shows what the writer was willing to risk for his book, ruining friendships, betraying his lover, and checking his humanity at the door - all for the sake of professional success.  The process destroyed him and he never recovered from the guilt (”In Cold Blood” was his last book).  Bennett Miller captures the murder of a Kansas family with stark, moody cinematography, its color palette reflective of the shock and mourning by the American public.

35.  Gangs of New York (2002) Directed by Martin Scorsese
Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Cameron Diaz

Though dismissed by many critics as a misstep in a master director’s career, I found Gangs of New York to be Martin Scorsese’s most inspired work since Goodfellas.  Perhaps I was in utter awe of Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Bill the Butcher, as I had never seen Lewis in any movie before (a problem that has since been well-corrected), or maybe I was charmed by the contrast of the bloodshed against the Dr. Seuss-like costumes of the rival gangs.  Like Woody Allen, Scorsese’s greatest love affair has always been with New York, so it’s no surprise that a movie about the city’s violent past was practically handed to him (although now I’m curious to see what Allen’s neurotic depiction of a violent Manhattan would be).  Scorsese paints a bloody image of one of the world’s most beloved cities in its infancy, before immigrants truly melted into its pot, before they identified themselves not as Americans but as New Yorkers.  Gangs of New York marks the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio, rescuing the actor from the curses of matinee idolatry and prompting him to take over where DeNiro and Pacino left off.

34.  Synecdoche, New York (2008) Directed by Charlie Kaufman
Philip Seymour-Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Michelle Williams, Dianne Wiest

Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut isn’t so much an act of vanity as it is an exercise in madness.  Synecdoche, New York is a brilliant mess, drowning in its own glory of fragments and excess.  Philip Seymour-Hoffman plays Caden Cotard, a dejected theater director hell-bent on recreating the events of his very existence in a life-size replica of New York City as his life unravels before him.  To say that the film reaches into the dark corners of the cinematic equivalent of metafiction would be an understatement.  At one point, Kaufman challenges the boundaries of sex and gender when Caden casts Ellen (Dianne Wiest), a middle-aged woman, to portray the actor playing him.  She ends up embodying Caden’s spirit better than he ever could, taking over his real life, while he focuses on the play, essentially living vicariously through himself (wtf?!).  Still the heartache that Caden experiences at the estrangement of his wife and daughter is visceral and devastating.  Although Jon Brion’s score subtly underscores the action, I can’t help but wonder how a director other than Kaufman would have handled this script, pulling in the reigns where Kaufman let fly.  Still, there are far more uninspired ways to err and for this being a first feature film, Kaufman emerges as one of the most visionary, American directors today.

33.  The Pianist (2002) Directed by Roman Polanski
Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann

While viewing this film, I ask you to forget two facts: 1) That Roman Polanski had sex with a 13-year old girl in 1977 and 2) That Roman Polanski is a survivor of the Holocaust.  What’s that?  It’s impossible?  Of course, it is.  Unlike other American “Holocaust films,” The Pianist feels incredibly personal, a film by a director who has not only experienced it first hand but who has miraculously survived the events that annihilated so many people in Europe.  Perhaps, he felt that if he survived the Holocaust, he could survive anything, entitling himself to a hedonistic life of women and film.  Politics aside, The Pianist is one of the most engaging accounts of how far the spirit of man can be tested in the most abhorrent of situations.  Adrien Brody plays Wladyslaw, a pianist living in the ghetto who watches his own family shipped to their death and who becomes decimated of body and soul while escaping the Germans in Poland.  Ultimately, what saves Wladyslaw is his love of music, inspiring a Nazi officer to help him survive.  But what makes The Pianist unforgettable for me are the small ironies: a child selling candy to the Jews waiting to be shipped, Wladyslaw having to prove he’s Polish after a German officer gives him his military coat for “protection.”  This is an important benchmark in Polanski’s legacy as a filmmaker and as a man in search of redemption.

32.  Broken Embraces (2009) Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Penélope Cruz, Lluís Homar, Blanca Portillo

In every Pedro Almodovar movie that I’ve seen, there is at least one image that remains in my consciousness, an image that comes to represent the film as a whole.  In Broken Embraces, it’s a tear running down the side of a ripe tomato.  The image is sensual and hysterical, extravagant and somehow sad.  Broken Embraces embodies all these elements and blends them seamlessly into the story of Harry Cain, a blind screenwriter revisiting his former life as a movie director who fell in love with his young starlet.   Broken Embraces continues Almodovar and Penélope Cruz’s foray into folly.  Though she only appears in flashbacks, Cruz takes center stage as the object of not only Harry’s affection, but also of her sugar-daddy lover, a wealthy Madrid businessman who paid for her father’s hospital bills.  What follows is a screwball comedy, melodrama and film noir that feels as agile as the strings of a marionette handled by a master filmmaker.  From the opening scene, where Harry Cain seduces a woman who has helped him home, Almodovar reminds us that even when his characters lack them, he is a filmmaker that engages all the senses.

31.  Brick (2005) Directed by Rian Johnson
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Nora Zehetner, Lukas Haas

The only work of art that I’ve quoted more than this movie is Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”  Brick is a knock-out of a film, neo-noir gone high school, with teenagers spouting out lines tailored for Bogart in his finer moments.  There’s something jarring about the script - like all great poetry, rhythm gives the words meaning.  It takes a moment to get used to, but your ears adjust quickly. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, on a mission to establish himself as one of the most dynamic young actors of my generation, plays Brendan Frye, an ordinary kid in search of his ex-girlfriend who has gone missing.  His search leads him through the underbelly of high school social circles, from the rejects to the upper crust, in quest of truth and justice.  What follows is a compelling portrait of a cross-section of high school hierarchy, replete with noir archetypes (the brain, the pin, the muscle, the dame) that obliterate expectations.  First time director Rian Johnson understands the iconography and conventions of the genre and deconstructs it in a way that is free of irony and academics, giving you a genuine attempt of noir at its darkest.

30.  Where the Wild Things Are (2009) Directed by Spike Jonze
James Gandolfini, Lauren Ambrose, Catherine Keener, Forest Whitaker, Max Records

Whereas the Pixar movies are children’s films that adults can enjoy, Where the Wild Things Are is an adult movie that children might enjoy - if they work hard at it.  This film is rich in nostalgia, partly because it’s based on the beloved children’s book by Maurice Sendak, but mainly because its truths and morals are just as applicable to grown men and women as they are to kids.  At the heart of the film you have the simple story of Max, a child who is cruel to his mother, learns his lesson, and changes for the better.  However the textures of the film are incredibly detailed, with many questions of Max’s family left unanswered.  After misbehaving, Max runs away from his mother and finds himself lost, quite possibly at the edge of the earth, in a land ruled by large, monsters.  He not only persuades them not to eat him, he convinces them that he is a king with powers.  Max forms a special bond with Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini), the selfish monster that is a reflection of Max’s id and a projection of an absent father.  The course of the friendship ends in catharsis and regret, but it’s through this experience that Max learns to be a better person.  Spike Jonze, who spent years working on the film, layers the visuals with neo-Gothic imagery against vast desert and forest landscapes.  He extracts a playful beauty from the purest form of idealism: a child’s imagination.  The film is sincere up to the very last shot, which I won’t ruin, but I will say, is heartbreaking.

29.  Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) Directed by Peter Jackson
Viggo Mortensen, Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Cate Blanchett

I expect to get a lot of shit for listing Peter Jackson’s beloved trilogy as a single entry, and I may be cheating here, but when I think of Lord of the Rings, I find it difficult to distinguish one film from another since each film overlaps in themes and narrative.  I’m not saying this to discredit the efforts of Jackson but rather to praise them.  The three movies (Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) although stand separately, are meant to be viewed as a part of a whole, the ultimate fantasy feast of a film.  Jackson’s production practices of shooting continuously and contextualizing each film in the editing room has influenced subsequent fantasy series like Harry Potter and Twilight.  His vision of Middle Earth is unlike any other world presented before, filled with mosters and elves and dwarves.  Viggo Mortensen received overdue recognition as one of the most visceral and versatile actors today.  Though I’ve never read Tolkien’s books, fanboys everywhere attest to the faithful and reverent redesigns that Jackson applied to adapting the unadaptable.  It certainly propelled Jackson to the heights of a pantheon of Hollywood directors that include the giants George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.  Frankly, not a bad place to be.

28.  In the Mood for Love (2000) Directed by Kar Wai Wong
Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung

The beauty of this love story lies in irony: Mr. Chow, a newspaper editor (Tony Leung), and Mrs. Chan, an executive secretary (Maggie Cheung), form a bond when they discover their spouses are having an affair with one another.  While their spouses’ affair is carnal, and possibly temporary, the friendship that sprouts from their shock and anger proves to be more meaningful.  Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow silently resolve to never consummate their own affair, and so the tension builds and builds in spite of their ensuing love.  Set in Hong Kong in 1962, Kar Wai Wong directs In the Mood for Love with a nostalgia that is reminiscent of a European romance.  He uses Michael Galasso’s sultry string score and a deliberate, slow camera to enhance the desire between the two characters as their love blooms in secrecy.  His color palette is that of a rose, bold greens and reds with deep blacks, realizing the passion that bleeds at the seams of their character’s hearts.

27.  Milk (2008) Directed by Gus Van Sant
Sean Penn, James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin, Diego Luna

The same month that Proposition 8 passed in California (a proposition that banned same sex marriage) Milk was released in Los Angeles and San Francisco, becoming a call to arms for gay rights activists and supporters.  The movie couldn’t have been more relevant, yet the advertising of the movie was scaled back in the rest of the country.  Studio executives believed that the passing of Prop 8 in our liberal state was proof that the rest of America would have no tolerance for a movie with mostly gay characters.  How unfortunate.  Milk tells the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the US who was brutally murdered.  Sean Penn plays the effete politician without resorting to stereotype, yet embodying a gay aesthetic that makes him arrogant, witty and totally endearing.  He earned the Oscar for Best Actor that year.  James Franco, Emile Hirsch, Joseph Cross and Diego Luna rounded out the spectrum of gay characters, ranging from closeted to full out fabulous.  Gus Van Sant returns to the mainstream with a toned down style that, in all honesty, is still off kilter with flair and perfect for film.  Van Sant, himself openly gay, brought a magical quality to the depiction of San Francisco in the late 1970’s, when the city was viewed as the center of counter-culture.  Much credit goes to Dustin Lance Black (winner of the Best Original Screenplay Oscar) whose research led to befriending real-life members of Harvey’s team, giving Milk that stamp of authenticity.  Since the film’s release, Iowa, Vermont and New Hampshire have legalized gay marriage, making Milk a benchmark in a continuing struggle for equality, then and now.

26.  The Hurt Locker (2009) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes, Brian Geraghty, Anthony Mackie

Arguably one on the most masculine and visceral war films ever, The Hurt Locker is directed by a woman - talented Kathryn Bigelow.  A war film, practically by its very definition, is anti-war, but this film makes the drama less about politics and more about the exploring the psychological limits of man.  Jeremy Renner plays Staff Sergeant James, a devil-may-care bomb expert who takes over a bomb disposal unit with only thirty-nine days of deployment remaining.  In these thirty-nine days, we bear witness to the atrocities of war and the helplessness that comes with trying to prevent them.  James can’t explain why he’s so good at his job, though his reckless instincts suggest that he just isn’t afraid of dying.  The scene where the regretful suicide bomber changes his mind is one of the most gut-wrenching scenes I’ve ever seen.  But even with nerves of steel, James finds himself vulnerable when he befriends an Iraqi kid who sells pirated movies to the American troops.  That it would take a child to push this man to his limits is an indication of the damage and stress that claims the humanity of so many soldiers.  Bigelow doesn’t shy away from investigating the testosterone-laden world of war and the coping methods of its players, instead, she takes us to the front and center of it all so that we may get a glimpse of just how war decimates the human spirit.

25. Lost in Translation (2003) Directed by Sofia Coppola
Bill Murray, Scarlet Johansson, Giovanni Ribisi

When I was 18 years old I was lucky enough to spend a summer in Tokyo.  Over the course of a few weeks, after the initial culture shock and loneliness, I became friends with a middle-aged, heterosexual English teacher from Iowa who was also new to the country.  In many ways, it was one of the greatest affairs I’ve ever had.  This friendship, however, could only exist in Tokyo - it would be diminished if it continued in America, lost in translation across the Pacific Ocean.  This is why Lost in Translation has become so dear to me.  Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson play two lonely Americans, taken out of their element, who find solace and friendship and some semblance of home within one another.  The tragedy comes when they realize that what awaits them in their lives is even more foreign.  Sofia Coppola understands the sudden emotional bond that two strangers can form, especially in the masses of people and neon.  She adds to their story a subtle romantic charge that is never meant to materialize but is kept aglow below the surface.  From the iconic opening image of her precious pink panties, Johansson blasts onto the screen with a sensuality that is both coveted and attainable.  Bill Murray, in his finest performance, lets his eyes do the all revealing.  While he’s unofficially credited with improvising a lot of his dialogue, it’s Coppola’s direction that keeps him focused yet playful.  I never thought I’d see the day when Sofia Coppola would make films more provocative than her father, but my friends, that day has come.

24.  A Single Man (2009) Directed by Tom Ford
Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode, Nicholas Hoult

I wonder how seriously producers took fashion designer Tom Ford when he announced he wanted to direct a movie.  I certainly did not.  It’s hard enough to see writers and actors, or even music video and commercial directors, make the switch, much less someone who’s claimed the highest stake in the world of fashion.  But Tom Ford made two excellent choices from the very beginning, adapting Christopher Isherwood’s novel and casting Colin Firth in the title role.  He surrounded himself with young, ambitious talent (Spanish cinematographer Eduard Grau and editor Joan Sobel) and most importantly, let someone else handle the wardrobe design.  The result: a true collaborative effort that realizes the vision of new cinematic voice.  A Single Man centers on one day in the life of English professor George Falconer, a day that he determines should be his last.  He’s never recovered from the death of his longtime lover (Matthew Goode) and never paid his last respects - this being 1962, the funeral was for “family only.”  It’s in this supposed last day that he begins to awaken and see the world exploding with life around him, the camera conveying this theme with transitions from sepia to technicolor.  Julianne Moore plays Charlotte, his best friend, whose hopeless efforts in romance stand in sharp contrast to George’s.  Still the complexities of their friendship run the gamut of emotions in their time together.  The heart of the film belongs to Kenny, George’s naïve student who calls him out on all his bluffs until they materialize, George drunk on Scotch and high on life.  A Single Man is a splendor of style and catharsis, and now looking back, the logical progression in Tom Ford’s career.  Let’s hope his next film is even better.

23.  Best in Show (2000) Directed by Christopher Guest
Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Fred Willard, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge, Bob Balaban, John Michael Higgins

One of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen!  Christopher Guest is at the top of his game with Best in Show, a mockumentary centering on obsessive Americans and their dogs competing in a national dog show.  Considering that most of the script was improvised on the spot is a testament to the comic genius of every actor listed above.  Christopher Guest tends to focus on a very specific part of American culture, whether it’s a rock band (This is Spinal Tap) or a small town theater troupe (Waiting for Guffman), but he’s never struck more gold than he has in exploring dog show competitions.  If you’ve ever seen the Westminster Dog Show you know that there’s a lot of comedy to be had in obsessive dog owners and the extremes they’re willing to go to in hopes of the grand prize.  However, what elevates Best in Show from a mere comedy to a social satire is the depiction of a cross-section of America - from Seattle yuppies to a North Carolina redneck to a gay Manhattan couple - all through their respective dogs.  The actors shine with a razor sharp wit, sharing the screen equally, and understanding that the most effective comedy comes not from a mean-spiritedness toward your subject, but rather from a sincere affection.  Guest never did replicate the success of Best in Show in his subsequent movies, even with the same actors, proof that there is something special about this film.

22.  Kill Bill Vol. 1 (2003) Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Vivica A. Fox, Daryl Hanna, Michael Madsen, David Carradine

For as much shit Quentin Tarantino gets for “borrowing” from other films, he has contributed ten-fold to the iconography of American cinema.  His films become barometers of pop culture, very much of their time and yet somehow nostalgic (Pulp Fiction, anyone?).  With Kill Bill Vol. 1, he creates a non-stop spectacle of color and action, a mix of styles and genres that amount to something completely original.  Kill Bill is pure cinematic candy.  Uma Thurman plays The Bride, a woman left for dead who is out to avenge herself and the death of her unborn baby against the man who once loved her, the elusive Bill.  She kills up the ranks of former assassins who stand in her way, crossing their names off her hit list as she goes along.  I can’t think of this film without seeing Japanese schoolgirl Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama) sauntering down the stairs, playfully twirling her ball and spike, or Ell Driver (Hannah) in full-on sexy nurse costume, whistling that soul-chilling tune.  Tarantino doesn’t hold anything back, taking the violence to a new level of absurdity - severed limbs, disembowlments, beheadings - and dishing it out with morbid humor.  Of course, it’s over the top, so that when Kill Bill finds an emotional sincerity, it’s much more effective. Although I found Kill Bill Vol. 2 sentimental and anticlimactic, it complements Vol 1 nicely.  It’s impossible to speak of one without the other, the films sharing an intertwined narrative, but compared side by side, it’s clear that Kill Bill Vol. 1 goes for something grand and exuberant while the finale, seems to only deliver on the promise its title implies.

21.  Casino Royale (2006) Directed by Martin Campbell
Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, Jeffrey Wright, Mads Mikkelsen

For all the controversy surrounding Daniel Craig’s selection as the new James Bond, it quickly faded when the public saw what an actor of his caliber brought to the role.  It doesn’t matter that Craig is light-haired, shorter, and unconventionally attractive, he’s the best Bond yet.  He portrays the spy with the wounds of an orphan: a brutish rogue, selfish and charming, dangerously handsome.  Meant to wipe the slate clean of a franchise that was spinning into irrelevant camp, Casino Royale restores integrity to the series by staying faithful to Fleming’s novels in tone and narrative.  What makes the film so successful, other than the fantastic action sequences, is the romance between Bond and Vesper (deliciously played by French actress Eva Green).  Eva Green brings an old-world beauty to the film, her character matching wits with Bond.   It’s expected to see such beautiful people in a film as big as this, but what raises the stakes for the audience is watching Vesper and Bond fall in love.  For a moment we become just as vulnerable as Bond, engaged in the love story, swept away by the splendid set pieces of Saint Mark’s Square in Venice, so that when Vesper’s motives are revealed, like him, we’re devastated.  Casino Royale reminds me of a modern-day Hitchcock film, minus the psycho-sexual twists, but with every bit as much of the suspense and glamour that define Hitch’s finer globe-trotting films.

20.  Dancer in the Dark (2000) Directed by Lars von Trier
Björk, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare

The Dogme 95 movement invigorated European cinema similarly to how the French New Wave and its founders did so in the 1960’s.  A manifesto was written by two young, bold auteurs as a vow of chastity in direct opposition to the Hollywood mainstream, stipulating ten rules that Dogme 95 directors must adhere to in order to “purify” their film (no breaks in time, handheld cameras and no external sound, just to name a few).  Lars von Trier was at the forefront of the Danish movement with Breaking the Waves and The Idiots, but his next film, Dancer in the Dark - a musical! - completely destroyed the very foundations of Dogme while still maintaining a visual and thematic aesthetic of the movement.  Björk stars as Selma - a Czech woman in America obsessed with musicals who works endlessly to save money so that her son can be saved from the same disease that is making her blind.  What makes the film so harrowing, and ultimately moving, is that Selma is the victim of injustice after injustice, offered as a sacrificial lamb for greed and exploitation.  Yet in the face of it all, she escapes her realities by envisioning her life as a musical.  Unlike other musicals, the set pieces here arise out of the despair that marks Selma’s life, making gorgeous productions out of Björk’s music.  It’s rumored that von Trier’s direction of Björk, combined with the passion and nerve she brought to the role, nearly destroyed her, so much so that she never dared to act again.  Dancer in the Dark is the most tragic, unsettling musical ever and in a strange way, Lars von Trier launched the rebirth of the musical in America, ironically making him an unlikely pioneer for Hollywood blockbusters like Moulin Rouge! and Chicago.

19.  Memento (2000) Directed by Christopher Nolan
Guy Pearce, Carrie-Ann Moss, Joe Pantoliano

I find it very difficult to write about Memento, it’s like attempting to describe a distant memory that comes and goes like a dream.  When Memento broke out in 2000, nobody had made a film like this since the 70’s.  Guy Pearce plays Leonard, an amnesiac incapable of forming new memories who uses notes and tattoos to keep him on the trail of his wife’s murderer.  The film plays it’s scenes out in reverse sequence, letting the audience experience the same confusion felt by Leonard as we try to piece together what happened.  Although some may call it a gimmick (and in all fairness, it is), watching the film in reverse leaves the audience completely in the hands of Christopher Nolan who masterfully weaves the elements of film noir in a modern way, bringing a jolt of vitality to a previously exhausted genre.  By juxtaposing the same scene against itself from a different perspective, we’re given a choice to interpret for ourselves what is true and what is fraudulent.  Soon, the murder becomes irrelevant and we’re left sorting the pieces of identity and morality: Is it others’ reactions to us that make us who we are?  Where is the line between revenge and justice?  Yes, I’m aware I’m speaking in platitudes, but this is the kind of discussion Memento stirs.  Constructed as much in the editing room as it was in the screenplay, Memento proves that disjointed scenes can be coherently formed to create a mind-fuck of a film.

18.  Dogville (2003) Directed by Lars von Trier
Nicole Kidman, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Paul Bettany, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Gazzara, Chloë Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgård

What right does Lars von Trier have, never having set foot in the United States (due to his fear of flying), to dish out one of the most shocking and ravishing American parables that would bring the likes of Arthur Miller to his knees?  I say, he has every right, or at least as much as Americans do in claiming a moral superiority over other cultures.  But that’s not the point - von Trier chooses to depict a cold and brutal portrait of an American town, but really, it can be set anywhere.  Here’s the kicker though: the entire movie is filmed on a barren soundstage, with no walls and no doors, lending an air of avant-garde theater to the film.  But where theater may seem restrictive in expanding a point of view, Dogville sets the camera in the thick of it all and captures the drama cinematically.  There’s a seamless transition between skepticism and suspension of disbelief, but once you find yourself engrossed in the characters, you begin to visualize the town as clearly as if it had been shot on location.  Von Trier uses negative space like paint strokes, crafting a movie that brings out the goodness and evil in every archetype character.  Nicole Kidman plays Grace, a mysterious woman seeking refuge from her past that ends up in Dogville, a small town in Colorado.  The residents, though alarmed by her arrival, welcome her at first before exploiting her in a shameless display of envy and xenophobia.  The men rape her, the women, just as abusive, humiliate and emotionally degrade her.  And just as we can take no more, von Trier gives us the satisfaction of watching Grace take her revenge, only to have the mirror turned onto ourselves, as now we become the aggressor, relishing in the cruelties we so abhorred minutes earlier.  Therein lies the genius of Dogville.

17.  The New World (2005) Directed by Terrence Malick
Colin Farrell, Christopher Plummer, Christian Bale, Q’orianka Kilcher

I’ve never been a fan of Terrence Malick.  I think I’m the only one who didn’t truly understand The Thin Red Line.  Although I respect his work as a filmmaker, I’ve always been weary of the mysticism he’s built around himself: a poet of a director that will go as much as ten years before he finds/writes a script he deems worthy of directing.  However, The New World catapults Malick from reclusive eccentric to filmic master with his vision of the English settlers in a story that we only believe we know.  While setting images of ethereal beauty from the Pocahontas mythology against the bleak and anguished reality of imperialism, Malick creates within the audience a longing for a world that once was pure, dispelling any false romantic notions of Pocahontas’ love affair with John Smith (thanks but no thanks, Disney).  My friend Rod Hewitt described this film as “the death of beauty” and watching the exquisite Q’orianka Kilcher (only 14 years old at the time of filming) as the beloved Native American princess completely overwhelmed by the modernity of the English empire, he couldn’t be more in the right.  Kilcher steals the film, embodying the very essence of a conquered people struggling to hold onto their sense of identity in the face of colonialism.  She is the missing link between the old and the new world, the matriarch of America, and she’s portrayed as a force as intoxicating as Mother Nature herself.  There are moments of pure visual poetry in this film and it stirs the senses delicately, unlike any other film this decade.

16.  The Dreamers (2003) Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci
Michael Pitt, Eva Green, Louis Garrel

Most of us don’t know what it was like to be a young, passionate champion of rights in 1968.  From the Americas to China to Europe, it was a time of revolt and revolution, anger and progress, and it changed the world forever.  With The Dreamers, Bernardo Bertolucci captures a tiny corner of this time and transports us to Paris in the midst of the student riots.  Michael Pitt plays Matthew - an idealistic, American studying abroad who befriends a French brother and sister during the closing of the treasured Cinemateque.  They develop a friendship that is based on sexual discovery as much as it is on political and artistic awakening and walk away from it changed forever.  The Dreamers, rated NC-17 at the time of its American release, is as much heart as it is body.  Bertolucci, 63 at the time, pushes the boundaries of sexuality on film, exploring a fraternal bond that borders on incestuous.  The film is arousing and sexy, free of obscenity and pornography.  Bertolucci’s characters, completely obsessed with cinema themselves, use the films of Truffaut and Godard as a source of escape and sexual provocation, challenging one another to break the sexual taboos of its time, while the world changes outside their window.  Watching The Dreamers is like attending a lesson in film history by a professor who not only experienced it firsthand but who also contributed to writing its history books.

15.  Brokeback Mountain (2005) Directed by Ang Lee
Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams, Anne Hathaway

The first time I watched Brokeback Mountain in the theater, I became frustrated at the minimal amount of screen time that Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar (Jake Gyllenhaal and the sublime Heath Ledger) shared.  After their stint as underpaid and overworked cowboys on Brokeback Mountain, the beloved place where they first became secret lovers, each man goes on to marry a woman and lead his own life.  I soon realized that Ang Lee’s direction reflected the unfortunate circumstances surrounding these characters’ very lives.  The romantic chemistry between Ledger and Gyllenhaal is so palpable that it kills us to see them apart for so much of the movie, giving the audience a glimpse of the anguish that the two characters must have felt, social conventions of masculinity keeping them from running off into the sunset together.  We watch them grow old separately, their stolen trips to Brokeback Mountain never enough to fulfill their desire.  The strength of the film stems from Annie Proulx’s short story and Larry McMurtry’s script and is enhanced by Ledger’s performance as the tortured cowboy.  Ang Lee lets the story do most of the heavy lifting, while layering the film with a healthy dose of subtlety and detail that go unnoticed the first time around.  Lee transforms Brokeback Mountain into a film not defined by sexuality but by the unlimited scope of love that even the most red-blooded American male is capable of.

14.  No Country for Old Men (2007) Directed by Joel & Ethan Coen
Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Kelly Macdonald

The Coen Brothers are at the top of their game with No Country for Old Men.  Technically this film is perfect, every element of cinema coming together to create a fatalistic story of an old man who realizes he’s helpless against the forces of the natural order of the world.  The sound design in No Country for Old Men is as powerful as the camerawork, ingraining itself into your subconscious and sacrificing any element that doesn’t advance the story forward.  Working from a script adapted from a Cormac McCarthy novel, the Coens remain incredibly faithful to the book both in tone and narrative, understanding when to defer to a master storyteller and when to step up to bat.  Javier Bardem earned an Oscar for his portrayal of the stoic Anton Chigurh, the most terrifying man with a Dutch-boy haircut, leading an experienced cast (Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin) in what may possibly be their best work to date.  Combining a high-brow sensibility with a mainstream appeal, No Country for Old Men is that rare blend of film that inexplicably spreads itself across various “quadrants” and “markets,” capriciously betraying its audience as cruelly as fate abandons its characters.  The Coens balance out the severity of the film’s themes with masterful suspense sequences that would make Hitchcock shiver (remember when Chigurh turns off the light in the motel before he attempts to kill Llewelyn?).  In a decade that saw the Coens compromise nothing of their vision, a plan of action that’s brought them mixed results, they take the greatest risk by directing a film that unapologetically refuses resolution, in spite of how much its characters seek it out.

13.  Talk to Her (2002) Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Javier Cámara, Darío Gardinetti, Leonor Watling, Rosario Flores

Delivering on the promise that his previous movie All About My Mother so boldly declared, Pedro Almodovar rises to the rank of master director with the provocative Talk to Her.  I hate to keep using the word melodrama in reference to Pedro Almodovar’s work, but much the way Hitchcock is known for suspense and Bergman for his existentialism, Almodovar will go down in film history for exalting the genre to artistic levels.  Talk to Her tells the story of two men (Benigno, a nurse, and Marco, a journalist) who form an unlikely friendship when the women they love both fall into comas.  The film gets its title from the advice that Benigno offers Marco in regards to his unconscious girlfriend.  Though Marco attempts to talk to her, love communicates through far more intricate measures than words can ever offer.  Inspired by the true story of a Spanish woman who became pregnant in the midst of a coma, Almodovar extols a beauty from the perversity of the act and creates a vibrant world that arises from that contrast.  It’s in this world that he lets the paths of his four characters cross, their passions and destinies at odds with another in the most depraved of ways.  Almodovar challenges Spanish notions of gender roles by casting a woman as the ultimate expression of masculine ideals: a bullfighter.  He depicts the most virile of his men as sensitive beings, unashamed to cry if moved by theater or film or his own love.  With a wonderful soundtrack by Alberto Iglesias, Talk to Her offers a world out of tune with reality but in perfect harmony with the complexities of human desire.

12.  The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) Directed by Walter Salles
Gael García Bernal, Rodrigo De la Serna, Mía Maestro

Che Guevara’s silhouetted image has become an icon of American pop culture, so much so that his face on t-shirts means nothing more than a hip, ironic sense of liberalism to most.  However, Guevara’s idealism stemmed from a deep-rooted sense of identity that he had for his home continent and its disenfranchised people.  Staying clear of politics, Walter Salles tells the story of a young Guevara during one of the definitive moments of his life - a motorcycle trek across South America with his beloved friend Alberto Granado.  They travel from Argentina to Colombia on an old motorcycle nicknamed La Poderosa (The Powerful), in order to serve their medical residency in a leper colony.  Along the way they battle the elements, their youthful desires and each other as they discover which way their moral compass points.  The script is adapted from the journals Guevara kept, and later published, throughout the trip, giving us an insight into the heart and mind of a man who was yet to be political revolution.  Gael García Bernal plays Guevara with a magnificent dignity, letting his passions and convictions take center stage but offering hints of the anger that turned him into a revolutionary.  The film relies heavily on Bernal’s performance and he carries it gracefully.  The cinematography is gorgeous, depicting the beauty and danger of a continent on the brink of revolt.  The Motorcycle Diaries is the trip of a lifetime that attempts to explain what shaped the destinies of two men who wanted to change the world.  The rest, as they say, is history.

11.  Amélie (2001) Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Audrey Tautou, Mathieu Kassovitz

Do you remember what it’s like to be twelve years old and completely in love with a movie?  Watching Amélie induces a sense of childlike wonder in the naïve and cynical, the young and old - like a little boy seeing the world clearly for the first time.  And in many ways, we did see the world for the first time, at least through the eyes of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet.  It’s rumored that the whimsical moments of breathtaking beauty depicted in the film are mostly his memories and stories taken from his journal with entries from as far back as 1974.  Audrey Tautou stars as Amelie, a shy, lonely waitress in Paris who secretly plays matchmaker and guardian angel to her co-workers and neighbors, ignoring her own longings of love.  Her world is turned upside down when she finds herself smitten by a young man who collects the discarded passport photos of strangers.  We experience every sensation through Amelie, physical and emotional, with a kind of magical realism that makes the film so endearing.  Though there’s irony in the film, it’s never cynical, wearing its heart on its sleeve without being sentimental.  The musical score by Yann Tiersenn (who used accordion, piano, harp, and vibraphone) is as beloved as the film, bringing an urgency and romance to the drama onscreen, and calling to mind the many love affairs that the city of Paris has had with cinema.  Amélie may seem like an airy, fabulous film, but it’s so deeply layered with rich imagery, it becomes unforgettable.

10.  The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) Directed by Wes Anderson
Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Luke Wilson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Danny Glover

I’ve never been so polarized by a single director as I have by Wes Anderson.  Yes, he is every a bit of a dandy about town, at times too precious for his own good, but there’s no question that The Royal Tenenbaums, along with Rushmore, are two seminal blueprints that have paved the way for a “new wave” of idiosyncratic American films, such as the recent work of Noah Baumbach, Sofia Coppola, Alexander Payne, P.T. Anderson, David O. Russell and Jason Reitman.  The Royal Tenenbaums is an extravagant display of detail and design, hip and ironic but ultimately a poignant film about a dysfunctional family of geniuses and their estranged father’s attempt at reconciliation.  The humor is dry and sarcastic, but never mean-spirited, and the characters flourish with a melancholic splendor.  There’s a darkness that underlies the script, a broken marriage marred by abandonment, incest, and suicide, but it never takes itself too seriously.  An exercise in style and opulence, Anderson employs a pastiche of modernist films, reimagining the film somewhere between the 1970’s and timelessness - John Lennon, Ravel and Elliott Smith in perfect harmony on its soundtrack.  Gene Hackman is terrific as the egocentric patriarch in one of the acting legend’s last roles.  For all its worth, The Royal Tenenbaums is both an underrated and overachieving film, and one of the pinnacles of Anderson’s career.

9.  Oldboy (2003) Directed by Chan-wook Park
Min-sik Choi

No other revenge movie is as twisted and shrewd as Oldboy.  Gone largely overlooked in America until about three years after its initial release, Oldboy exploded onto the international scene to mounds of critical praise, making South Korea’s Chan-wook Park one of the most distinct and visionary auteurs working today.  This is a film of raw instinct, taking its dramatic make-up from the likes of Oedipus Rex and other ancient Greek tragedies.  The story revolves around Dae-su Oh, an ordinary businessman in Seoul, who one day wakes up in a strange room, locked away without any sort of explanation, pushing his sanity to its limits.  After fifteen years of captivity he’s suddenly released.  What follows is an attempt to navigate through a brutal, surreal world and exact revenge on his unknown captor.  “Laugh and the world laughs with you.  Weep and you weep alone,” is the mantra that Dae-su employs through his search, serving as the ironic theme of the movie.  I won’t ruin what happens but I will say that it’s a jaw-dropping mind-fuck unlike any other.  Park has a talent for evoking a strange and eccentric world that challenges the hearts and stomachs of most if its viewers.  His vision of his characters’ lives, although bleak, is full of color, every emotion taken to the extreme.  I’ve never been so joyfully disturbed by any other movie last decade than I have by Oldboy.  It’ll be a long time before I can gather the courage to watch it again, but when I do, I hope to be just entranced by it as I was the first time.

8.  Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) Directed by Woody Allen
Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Patricia Clarkson

No city in Spain has ever been portrayed in American film as fondly or passionately as Paris or London or Rome - until now.  Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona is the film of a young romantic, not the eccentric, cranky New York intellectual we’ve come to know over the years!  This film finds itself in a class all of its own, distinctive from such Woody Allen classics as Manhattan and Annie Hall, yet the logical step for a director whose newfound inspiration has led him across the Atlantic.  Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall play Cristina and Vicky, two young, American women who spend the summer in Barcelona.  Though Cristina is recklessly adventurous and Vicky a self-righteous prude, they both become enamored with a seductive painter (Javier Bardem), whose implosively jealous ex-wife (Penélope Cruz) complicates and invigorates their respective love affairs.   Allen directs his trifecta of muses with delicacy, understanding the strengths of each actress and letting each have her moment.  Penélope Cruz is smoldering as the embodiment of the Spanish woman - watching her spout Woody Allen banter in Spanish is practically poetry.  But where the movie really separates itself is with the spiritual, sexual and creative awakening that Vicky and Cristina experience in Barcelona.  Allen captures what it’s like to be impressionable and so willing to give yourself to world that can destroy you just as quickly as it seduces you.  He makes no apology of it, deferring only to the wonderful mysteries of the heart when it finds itself in a foreign city.  And when that city is Barcelona, every aspect of body and soul is at stake.

7.  The White Ribbon (2009) Directed by Michael Haneke
Christian Friedel, Ulrich Tukur, Burghart Klaußner, Rainer Bock

For the last ten years, I’ve been keeping an eye on Michael Haneke’s work.  Although his previous films have never really gripped me, they’ve always caused me to rethink the power of ambiguity in film.  Along comes The White Ribbon, a film that is just as ambiguous on the surface, but that resolves itself in our imagination, engaging (or perhaps implicating) the audience in controversy.  The White Ribbon takes place before the outbreak of WWI in a small, German town plagued by a series of bizarre and violent acts.  The mystery unfolds through the curious obsessions the town children form with the crimes.  The White Ribbon is a modern allegory that attempts to show the moral and spiritual dissolution that enabled so many Germans to become complicit in the atrocities of the Third Reich.  Shot beautifully in HD and transferred to black and white, the film is crisp and sharp, the bold contrast of the black and white indicative of the moral absolutes that prevailed in hearts of the town’s citizens.  At times reminiscent of Bergman at his most sadistic, Haneke reaches the level of master filmmaker, depicting the loss of a child’s innocence as a metaphor for a country recovering from humiliation.  It’s too early to see how this film holds up over time, but it has already left an impression on me unlike any other film last year.

6.  Amores Perros (2000) Directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu
Gael García Bernal, Emilio Echevarría, Goya Toledo

Last decade bore witness to the rebirth of Mexican cinema with a triumvirate of fresh voices: Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu.  Amores Perros was the first of a series of revitalized Mexican films that took the world by storm.  Whereas previous Mexican movies romanticized drug-fighting vigilantes or depicted the frivolous lives of the wealthy, Amores Perros unveiled the harsh realities of urban life in Mexico City with a gritty candidness - finally, cinema for the people.  Three different narratives, driven by three separate themes (poverty, jealousy, or vanity), are connected by a car accident.  Iñárritu stays clear from any moralizing, choosing instead to reflect the dramatic ironies of his characters through their dogs.  In one of the film’s most powerful scenes, El Chivo, a desensitized hitman, becomes remorseful of his crimes only when he finds his faithful dogs brutally massacred by the stray he rescued that day.  The stray - a gentle, loyal dog - was subjected to dog fighting by Octavio (a breakout role for the fantastic Gael García Bernal) as a means to earn money so that he can run away with his brother’s wife.  You get the idea.  In many ways, Amores Perros, which loosely translates to “wretched loves” (a play on the word dog), is series of fractured love stories between husbands, fathers, daughters and brothers.  And while it’s difficult to have sympathy for such cruel people, the dogs in the film allow us to understand that what lurks beneath each character is an instinctual urge for love and redemption.

5. Y Tu Mamá También (2001) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, Maribel Verdú

On the heels of Amores Perros, Alfonso Cuarón directs Y Tu Mamá También, a film as accomplished as anything out of the European festival circuits.  The film is overflowing with a raw sexual energy that has been repressed in the Mexican mainstream, reflecting the political and cultural shifts of a country thrusting itself into the 21st Century.  Julio and Tenoch (Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna) play unlikely best friends who are completely obsessed with any notion of sex, spending their time masturbating in Tenoch’s swimming pool as easily as they would hang out playing video games.  They meet the beautiful Luisa at a wedding and try to impress her with their plans to visit a secret beach they’ve made up called Boca del Cielo.  Unable to say no when she asks to come along, the trio embark on a road trip through the colonial heartland of Mexico in search of the fictional beach.  The portrait that Cuarón paints of his country is fascinating, revealing itself through the class differences that emerge between Julio and Tenoch, each reacting differently to the poverty and politics of the rural people.  More intriguing is the sexual awakening that occurs between the two when Luisa seduces them both, so staggering and frightening that it destroys their friendship.  In his breakout role, Gael García Bernal becomes to Mexican cinema what Jean-Paul Belmondo was to French New Wave.  The film is sexy and hilarious, with profound  moments of honesty, proving to the world that Mexico isn’t fucking around.

4.  There Will Be Blood (2007) Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Ciarán Hinds

Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s novel raises the bar on how directors should interpret original source material.  By no means faithful to the narrative, Anderson appropriates the novel’s themes from obscurity and presents them in a vision clearly his own.  There Will Be Blood is a hell of a film that depicts the rise and fall of an American oil man in a time when the country began its obsession with oil.  The film owes a lot of its success to Daniel Day-Lewis.  His portrayal of Daniel Plainview is already viewed as one of the greatest performances in American film, on par with the likes of Brando, DeNiro and Nicholson (”I drink your milkshake!” is as quotable a line as “You lookin’ at me?” or “I coulda been a contender.”).  Anderson’s direction takes a cue from modern filmmaking as well as the westerns of John Ford.  The cinematography is sweeping, employing a color palette of dark earthy tones - think a mixture of oil and fire.  However, what makes this film so effective for me is the frightening struggle for power and moral superiority between Plainview and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano in a totally overlooked performance).  Their rivalry is based as much on greed as it is on religious hypocrisy and it escalates into madness.  The scene where Plainview slaps and humiliates Sunday, dragging by his hair through the mud, is simply unnerving.  The emotional center of the film remains Plainview’s relationship with his son, H.W.  When H.W. loses his hearing in an oil rig accident, Plainview loses his spiritual center and he disposes of his son in a heartbreaking scene.  There Will Be Blood is a cinematic manifestation of paranoia and anxiety that overthrows even the most powerful of men from the heights of greatness.

3.  Children of Men (2006) Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Cain, Clare-Hope Ashitey

Alfonso Cuarón’s apocalyptic thriller of a masterpiece, Children of Men, isn’t the film that most expected he’d be capable of directing, but a film that cements his status as one of the most versatile auteurs today.  Practically disregarded by the Academy in 2006,  Children of Men has gained a cult-like reverence among critics and sci-fi fans alike.  In the near dystopian future of 2027 London, the human race has managed to bring about its own extinction; people can no longer procreate.  The world is shocked into despair when the youngest person in the world, 18 year old “Baby Diego,” dies.  However, when a young pregnant woman emerges - a miracle in its own right - former activist, Theo (Clive Owen), must transport her to a sanctuary so that her child’s birth may offer clues to keep the human race alive.  Creating a subversive world that George Orwell would be envious of, Cuarón infuses the film with themes of Christianity: mankind placing all its hope in a savior yet to be born.  Technically, the film is astounding, especially the unedited tracking shot of Theo escaping the ghetto, Cuarón upstaging Scorsese and his imitators at their own game, choreographing a ballet of violence and war somehow in harmony with nature. Clive Owen holds a commanding presence on screen, skeptical but heroic, a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. I’m still not sure why Owen isn’t as big a movie star as Clooney or Pitt - he’s just as handsome and a better actor.   Children of Men, for all its chaos and decay, offers an uncompromising hope for survival, an explicit foreshadowing of what our very own future may hold.

2.  Bad Education (2004) Directed by Pedro Almodovar
Gael García Bernal, Lluís Homar, Fele Martínez

With All About My Mother and Broken Embraces as bookends, Pedro Almodovar has put out a series of master works that can be compared to any string of great films put out by other cinema greats (think Buñuel’s work from Belle de Jour to That Obscure Object of Desire, or even Hitchcock’s from Rear Window to The Birds).  All the films Almodovar directed last decade made this list - I’m not biased, just completely in awe of him.  With Bad Education, Almodovar turns the camera onto his childhood, dramatizing his experiences with sexual abuse while attending Catholic school in Franco-era Spain.  It’s no wonder that his directing career began after the fall of Franco - his movies are bursts of liberation in reaction to newfound freedoms.  The images in Bad Education are unforgettable - priests playing soccer, the lounge singing drag queen, the murder in the church.  The film is put together in fragments of noir and mystery, blurring the line between memory and reality with its “movie within a movie” structure.  While women usually reign supreme in Almodovar’s movies, he brings the boys to center stage and extracts from them desires just as dark and erotic as those of his most passionate heroines.  Gael García Bernal shatters any expectation of what he’s capable of as an actor, portraying a subversive transvestite and conniving villain.  Alberto Iglesias’s score, in yet another thriving collaboration with the director, is haunting and Gothic with its eerie children’s choir.  I often compare Bad Education to a box of broken mirrors, each side a distorted reflection of a man and his country in the midst of an identity crisis.

1.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Directed by Michel Gondry
Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson

“How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!  The world forgetting, by the world forgot.  Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!  Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.”

So goes the poem by Alexander Pope, the namesake of my favorite film of the decade.  No other film is as emblematic of the disaffected twenty-somethings of my generation than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  Just ask that indie girl at the record store, the grad student in the cafe or the hipster cineast at the revival theater what their favorite movie is, chances are, it’s this one.  An unhappy couple, Joel and Clementine (Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet), undergo a procedure to rid each other from their memories.  However, they happen to meet again as strangers and fall in love just as easily as they did the first time, proving that you can erase someone from your mind, but you can never erase them from your heart.  The film is an intelligent blend of comedy, surrealism, sci-fi and romance, taking us on a trip through the subconscious of a man who struggles to hold onto his memories of the woman he loves.  Michel Gondry’s realization of withering memories is visually arresting, utilizing camera effects, negative space and production design like a master.  But the film is as much Charlie Kaufman’s vision as it is Gondry’s - it’s Kaufman’s script that gave rise to Gondry’s original idea.  Kaufman breaks every rule of Screenwriting 101, but it doesn’t matter, the film is practically perfect and beautiful in its flaws.  The cinematography by Ellen Kuras evokes an ethereal quality with its balance of grain and movement.  Jon Brion’s subtle piano score is playful and poignant.  In a time of hip, ironic detachment, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind bares its soul to people who don’t believe they even have one, leaving behind a trail of hearts, broken and mended, in a generation coming to terms with sincerity.

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