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CibbuanoTop 101 Movies of the Decade Part 2
January 5th 2010 06:44
Napoleon Dynamite
Gosh! Every now and again a cult hit mutates into something so big that it permeates pop culture for many years to come. Napoleon Dynamite is this kind of inexplicable monster. It's an offbeat story that barely goes anywhere and consists of a handful of social misfits who seem to live in a timeless vaccuum that could be anywhere between now and the 1970s. Napoleon (Jon Heder) is the kind of daydreaming uber-nerd who reminds everyone of someone from their school days, and so I guess this film spoke to a whole generation with it's gloriously deadpan dialogue and tiny character explosions. I also have a special place in my heart for the haplessly sleazy character of Uncle Rico (Jon Gries, who also features in Lost as Ben's Dad).
Narc
On the surface Narc feels like a fairly standard film about drugs and police corruption, but it has a quality of authenticity to it that makes it feel like the missing link between The French Connection and the groundbreaking TV show The Wire. It gets up close and personal with it's subject matter without being showy or glamourous about it, and if you're not a fan of Ray Liotta then this film will turn you into one. Liotta did a De Niro and packed on some decent weight to play an absolute shotgun-toting bull of a cop in this, and he piledrives this movie right into the dirty cesspool it examines.
No Country for Old Men
This nihilistic modern-day western from Cormac McCarthy was given a Coen brothers treatment almost entirely devoid of their usual humour, allowing a cohesion of talents that created something special in the world of crime-thrillers. By holding back on the laughs, the Coen brothers have managed to make a cold, sharp masterpiece that benefits from their subversive storytelling techniques. The brutality of this film comes via the great performances, especially that of Javier Bardem as a freaky Mexican bounty hunter, and the story stands as a harsh memorial to the Things Go Very Wrong thriller sub-genre.
Noise
This is a Melbourne-set crime film that seamlessly blends the perceived Australian national character into a film noir atmosphere, and makes use of an unusual sound design that relates to the main character's hearing problems. What starts out as a taut muder mystery is eventually elevated to something much more complex by some interesting subtexts and inspired direction. Also of note is an amusingly brash and sympathetic performance from Brendan Cowell as the police constable at the centre of this story. All of these aspects combine to create one of Australia's best crime movies - an oddity in a film landscape all too often filled with comedic characters and cliched sleight-of-hand plot twists.
Observe and Report
Few films have polarised audiences as much as this one seems to have done, and I can't help but feel it's a damn shame that Observe and Report didn't get the exposure it deserved. If there was ever a film to inherit the insane trauma and mental illness of Taxi Driver, then this is it. That it manages to embody this inappropriateness and do it with big laughs is testament to it's genius. Seth Rogen's bi-polar security guard is so shockingly ill-suited to his vocation that it makes you feel uncomfortable, and I guess this is what divides a good portion of the audience - some people react to this sort of thing with laughter, and some people don't.
Oldboy
Oldboy is just a great concept. You take a regular guy and you put him in a small room for fifteen years without any explanation, and then you let him out. A film could go almost anywhere from here, and Oldboy actually manages to take this crazy premise and make sense of it without letting the imagination of the viewer down. Director Chan-wook Park hangs his film around a seemingly endless, escalating cycle of revenge - bumping characters and coincidences against each other to build a machiavellian portrait of vengeance and the illusion of choice. Oldboy also contains some amazing sequences of implied violence and inspired direction, including an infamous scene where the main character takes on about twenty angry hoodlums in a hallway whilst armed only with a claw hammer.
Once
Sometimes a simple concept can succeed where others fail simply because all the ingredients come together in a refreshingly new way. With it's documentary-feel and the layers of reality that informed it's creation, Once feels like a candid peak into the real life relationship of two gifted artists (and in many ways, it is). Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova extend the synergy of successful songwriting into a metaphor for love itself, and the resulting music is achingly beautiful. This is a low key film, but it's very much the real deal - and hence it's a far better piece of work than any other romance film of the decade.
Pan's Labyrinth
Fantasy had always been a fairly neglected genre in the 20th century, with only a handful of films being both critical and commercial successes. This all changed after Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, and now we have several new film adaptations of fantasy novels every year. Pan's Labyrinth stands out amongst the pack due to it's originality, it's not based on a book or a computer game or a disney ride, and is an honest to goodness new and original fantasy film. Guillermo Del Toro (who is soon to direct The Hobbit parts 1 and 2) creates a parable amongst the brutality of the Spanish civil war, paralleling the violence of the real world with gruesome and frightening creatures of fairytale origins. Despite the elements of horror (it's definitely not a kid's movie), the film reflects a certain mythical beauty and continues Del Toro's winning streak as a unique designer in fantasy-related filmmaking.
Pineapple Express
Dealing drugs is usually a subject kept for brutal gangster and action films, or depressing dramas, which is a surprise when you consider how much drugs are a part of Hollywood culture. You'd think filmmakers would want to put a less demonising spin on drugs rather than paint themselves as morally bankrupt, but there you go. Pineapple Express successfully melds stoner comedy with violent action-thriller territory, depicting the local weed dealer (James Franco, who steals the whole movie) as a sensitive and affable chap who just wants a friend. I could pretty much watch anything with Seth Rogen in it, and I have. Pineapple Express was both hilarious and a whole bunch of fun, and it was refreshing to see a drug dealer character who wasn't depicted as the lowest possible form of life.
The Pledge
Sean Penn has directed four films now, but The Pledge is easily his most focused and interesting effort. Jack Nicholson plays Jerry Black, an ageing detective who promises a bereaved mother that he will track down the killer of her child and bring him to justice. The only problem is that it's impossible to tell if the killer is even alive anymore, and as a result it seems that Black will never even solve this case. Penn takes a difficult subject from a subversive European crime novel and builds a film about obsession and culpability, all while remaining true to the film's source and never once giving quarter to the trappings of the genre. It's a harsh and realistic story, and it also contains the last serious performance Jack Nicholson has (so far) given in a film.
The Prestige
Chrisopher Nolan adapted this Victorian-era tale of Houdini-like rivals from an award-winning novel by fantasy/sci-fi author Christopher Priest. It turned out to be some of the cleverest eye candy to ever take audiences by surprise, and was exactly the sort of film M. Night Shymalan should still be making (but isn't). The Prestige is one of the very few recent films where I felt Christian Bale delivered something approaching an interesting performance, and Nolan showed himself to be one of the most inventive, unpretentious and uninsulting directors to be working in science-fiction today - once again crafting an engaging mystery where the subject matter brilliantly reflects the themes of the story itself.
The Proposition
The Australian western is a somewhat obscure sub-genre at best, and in an era where the western genre itself is largely extinct this film was always going to stick out. Featuring an impressive international cast (including Emily Watson, Danny Huston, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, Guy Pearce and David Wenham), The Proposition sets out to paint an accurate picture of 19th century outback Australia - a flyblown hell of brutal outlaws, ruthless lawmen and unsuited colonials. Director John Hillcoat and writer/composer Nick Cave create an historical vision far more desperate and violent than most American westerns, and incorporate the 19th century Aboriginal experience to maintain a high level of accuracy.
The Queen
The Queen could have very easily been a TV movie of the week, given it's subject matter (the death of Lady Di and the royal family's reaction to it) and the nature of what you would imagine to be it's initial target audience. I couldn't imagine anyone other than Helen Mirren playing Queen Elizabeth II without making it ridiculous though, and Michael Sheen is perfect casting as Prime Minister Tony Blair. I think it's also somewhat snobbish to underestimate the power and importance of the events portrayed in this film... the death of Lady/Princess Di is to the 1990s generation what JFK was to those in the 1960s, and I think The Queen gives this piece of recent of history the serious treatment it deserves.
Sexy Beast
From the introduction of Ray Winstone's oiled and bloated speedo-clad body, it's pretty clear that this isn't going to be your standard gangster-flick. Winstone plays Gal, a retired safecracker living the high life in sunny Spain, whose life is turned upside down when he recieves a visit from his old colleague, Don Logan (Ben Kingsley). Most actors would probably have a tough time out-toughing Ray Winstone, and Ben Kingsley - the guy who played Gandhi, no less - is probably the last person you'd imagine Winstone to be afraid of. But here Kingsley gives a ferociously manipulative performance so shockingly out of his usual parameters that Gal's anxiety seems more than justified. Sexy Beast plays out in a less than predictable way right from the outset, and it's worth seeing if only for Kingsley.
Shaolin Soccer
Quite simply the most fun ever put on celluloid. The premise is simple - down-on-their-luck kung fu experts form a soccer team and use their kung fu skills to kick some sporting arse. I've only seen one other Stephen Chow film (he directs, writes and stars), and it showed up earlier in this list, but damn me if he isn't the modern equivelent of Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. His goofy (and idiosynchratically Chinese) comedic stylings combine with a limitless imagination and impressive physicality that make him a downright modern genius. This movie is hilarious, and everyone needs to see it.
Shattered Glass
This is a little film, but it's also just an interesting story told in a more than effective fashion. Hayden Christensen plays real life journalist Stephen Glass, a hotshot reporter who eventually fell from grace in a very spectacular fashion when it was revealed that the bulk of his articles were the result of fraud. Shattered Glass presents a careful and mesmerising account of a fascinating story, offering more than a glimpse inside the psychology of a fraudster like Glass thanks to the surprisingly multi-layered performance of Hayden Christensen. Also worthy of note is the intense performance of Peter Sarsgaard as Glass' colleague and rival, a quiet kind of heroism that represents integrity and idealism.
Shaun of the Dead
This is a real no-brainer, and has been turning up on just about everyone's list for greatest films of the decade. It really was only a matter of time before someone combined outright cult comedy with the zombie genre in all it's full-blown glory and Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright were just the right people to do it (if you're a fan of this movie then you really need to check out their TV series Spaced). I was sold on this movie the moment Nick Frost sat down at the pub and dropped the C-bomb, and I don't think anyone could've known back then in 2004 just how influential this movie would become (Zombieland, Lesbian Vampire Killers, I Spit on Your Rave).
Signs
There are a lot of M. Night Shymalan haters out there and I guess some of that hate is pretty justified (I stopped being a fan after the incredibly poor Lady in the Water), but one film of his that isn't deserving of that scorn is Signs - probably his last great movie so far. It's very easy to get hung up on the supposed holes in the plot but a lot of that comes from misreading the film as a straight-up science fiction movie, which it isn't. It's a film about one man's loss of faith and his realisation that such faith may be the only survival tool that will get him through incredibly hard times. It's also a cracking suspense movie, with one of the all-time great 'jump' moments being the reveal of the aliens via some home video footage shown on the news. The idea of showing a widescale alien invasion in microcosm seems to fly in the face of everything Hollywood stands for, but showing this aggressive first contact from the point of view of just one family turned out to be far more effective in conveying the terror and fear such a situation would actually engender.
Snatch
Guy Ritchie's Snatch is very much a reworking of his previous film, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, with both shining a light on the seedy British underworld and tying it up in labyrinthine plots filled with 'ilarious 'ard men characters. I think Snatch is actually the better film, with Ritchie tightening up his concept for Lock Stock and ramping up the laugh factor. Of course, there's not much substance to Snatch in comparison to a lot of gangster films by other filmmakers, but few films manage to be as flatout entertaining, quotable and rewatchable as this box of party tricks by Mr. Ritchie. Also, other gangster films don't have Brad Pitt as an incomprehensible Irish gypsy, nor do they feature a villain as chillingly cold-blooded as Brick Top.
Son of Rambow
I don't think I've ever seen any other movie that so completely evoked nostalgic feelings for my childhood. The British 1980s setting and the stifling indoctrinations of the Plymouth Brethren unexpectedly combine to create a magical sense of daring adventure that calls to mind great 80s films like The Goonies, Explorers and even First Blood itself (the Sylvester Stallone film that provides the inspiration at the heart of this movie). This is a vibrant and joyous story of childhood friendship and making one's way in the world, and it deserves to be seen by anyone who was ever a child of the 80s or dared to dream beyond their own social barriers.
Spiderman 2
For me, Spiderman 2 is the pinnacle of traditional comic book-filmmaking. No other superhero film has gotten things as right as Sam Raimi did for Spiderman 2. He almost got there with the first film but was let down by his Mighty Morphin Power Rangers-interpretation of the Green Goblin... here he makes up for his mistakes tenfold by giving us a great, memorable villain in Doctor Octupus (played note-perfect by the underrated Alfred Molina) and building on the pathos inherent in the character of Spiderman/Peter Parker (most notably in the great train-wrecking scene where Raimi breaks the rules and lets everyday people see who Spiderman really is). That the Spiderman franchise was able to go from strength to strength so wonderfully should've guaranteed Raimi an unprecedented level of control with these films, but unfortunately it all got ridiculously messed up with Spiderman 3 thanks to the usual Hollywood bullchit.
Spirited Away
Spirited Away just might get my vote for the best animated film of the decade. Director Hayao Miyazaki crafts a universal fable about one child's apprehension about moving to a new town, transporting the 10 year old character of Chihiro to a bizarre spirit world where she must contend with a range of bizarre entities and learn to overcome her fears. It put me on to a whole world of fantastic films through Studio Ghibli, and it's a beautifully animated adventure that should capture the hearts and fascination of both adults and children alike.
The Square
I kind of see this as the Australian counterpart to the heist-gone-wrong movie Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Transposing a film noir-styled thriller plot to the WASPish south-coastal area of Sydney, The Square reaches dizzying heights of tragedy as the ambitions of two secret lovers outreach their capabilities. It starts out in a fairly low-key fashion, but each action has a knock-on effect that reverberates back to the protagonists in a very bad way, getting worse and worse until the mess just can't take any more pressure. The Square also bucks the recent trend for Australian thrillers to be comedy-based and it's shelf-life feels a lot longer as a result.
Superbad
I guess this is the movie that gave us the 'bromance'... the idea that an event comedy film could be pinned around the platonic-yet-loving relationship between two male leads (examples include Role Models, I Love You Man and Funny People). Superbad took the basic concept behind American Pie and made it more realistic. Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) are the true underdogs in the school scene, and here we aren't bullchitted into believing they can have a typical Hollywood ending. The crux of Superbad is the friendship between these guys, and the way that such a bond can get the marginalised through the nightmare of school. American Pie is often credited with introducing heart into an otherwise crass genre of comedy, but it's Superbad that melts away the saccharine and cheese to get to the truth of things. Superbad also happens to be ball-droppingly funny, especially the character of McLovin.
Super Troopers
The funniest comedy to come out of nowhere. Super Troopers is a goofy, antagonistic chucklefest that makes you feel more like you're laughing it up with your mates rather than just watching a movie. The Broken Lizard ensemble self-assuredly bounces off itself like all the best comedy teams of the last century (the Marx brothers, Monty Python, films made by Saturday Night Live alumni in the 70s and 80s, etc, etc). It also has Brian Cox and his Canadian tuxedo, and Farva - one of the all-time funniest film characters. Unfortunately Broken Lizard are yet to follow up this movie adequately.
Taken
Liam Neeson is 100% don't-mess-with-me vengeance as the ex-CIA agent out to save his daughter from dirty Eastern European white-slavers. Casting Neeson as a no-nonsense tough guy seems like such a given, so it's amazing that no one really thought of it before this movie. Neeson has made a long career for himself playing variations on father figures, and this movie represents the most pure distillation of this into the action format. There's something very precise and minimalist about Taken that puts it a cut above it's peers, I'd probably rate it as the best straight-forward action flick of the decade.
There Will Be Blood
This could possibly be the single greatest film in this whole list. Sometimes a film will get made that stands so apart from other films that it really doesn't get the credit it deserves, but hopefully time will show There Will Be Blood to be the towering monument it truly is. For anyone who hasn't seen this movie, it's basically just Daniel Day-Lewis embodying the very essence of greed in the most watchable yet repellent way imaginable. It's like you don't want to watch him because his is an evil as black as the oil it latches on to, but at the same time you can't look away because he has you in his unbreakable gaze and you're charmed like a docile snake. It's also a film so full of mesmerising imagery and intriguing ambiguity that it's more than ripe for endless rewatching and discussion.
Tideland
Terry Gilliam's junkyard re-envisioning of Alice in Wonderland remains his least accessible film but also by far his creepiest and most open-ended. Making a film about an 11 year old girl whose only friends are her severed doll heads and a mental retard named Dickens may not have spelt out big box office returns, but Gilliam's willingness to create a point of view like this speaks volumes about his artistic credibility and the fact that this film even exists is a triumph in itself. And as you go down the 'rabbit hole' with the young protagonist you'll find yourself being pulled into a bizarre and disturbing imaginary world against your better judgement, and it's a freakish and picturesque journey.
TimeCrimes
There's not much a film can do with time travel that a) probably hasn't been done already, and b) invites a lot of fannish scrutiny due to it's inevitable plotholes. TimeCrimes succeeds because it limits it's story to just the mechanics of time travel itself, foreshadowing it's twists and paradoxes with a freakish air of foreboding symbolised by a scissor-wielding madman in a creepy cloth mask.
The Tracker
Indigenous Australian icon David Gulpilil forms the centrepiece of this fascinating Australian western as the tracker of the title. Australian director Rolf De Heer has carved a niche for himself as one of this country's most innovative and unsung talents, and this film's allegorical commentary on the historical relationship between the Aborigines and their colonial oppressors is presented in a minimalist and digestible way. Gulpilil himself is also such a dynamic and entertaining presence that the viewer is often caught offguard, and he deservedly won an AFI Best Actor award for what represents the pinnacle of his life's work as an actor.
Traffic
This ambitious take on the American War on Drugs came at an idealistic pre-9/11 point in history where serious drug trafficking was just about the worst thing you could do on American soil. Ah, such innocent days! Sadly, Traffic seems to get overlooked a lot these days, which is a shame because it remains an intelligent and engagingly in-depth, all-star look at a complex problem. So much so that it influenced a whole sub-genre of 21st century social conscience films (Syriana, Crash, Babel).
Training Day
For a lot of people this is just the movie where Denzel Washington finally won the Best Actor award, but I found it to be so much more than that. Police corruption isn't a new subject for action/thrillers by any stretch of the imagination, but this is more a story about a burgeoning relationship between two cops and the way they explore each other's idealogy and weaknesses... Alonzo (Washington) plays with high stakes, and his power lies in his intelligence and the way he continuously tests his new rookie partner Jake (Ethan Hawke, whose performance is just as good and to-the-wire as Washington's). Training Day also contains some of the scariest, tensest latino-gangster scenes to ever creep up on the viewer, and this movie had me put through the ringer just as much as Ethan Hawke's character. A top shelf genre film.
Unbreakable
A movie that takes a real world view of superhero-lore and masterfully casts Samuel L. Jackson against type as a fragile uber-nerd. Bruce Willis' character's gradual epiphany as a real life superman is a powerful thing to behold, and director M. Night Shymalan has never been so careful and controlled, showing us this story through a deliberately tense and slowed Hitchcock-like eye. Unbreakable is a much needed counter-film to the gooey and colourful Marvel-spearheaded comicbook-film boom of the early 21st century. "This is where we shake hands"... everything about this movie gives me goosebumps and demonstrates what film storytelling should be all about
V For Vendetta
Before Zac Snyder successfully adapted The Watchmen, the Wachowski brothers wrote this startling adaptation of another Alan Moore graphic novel classic. Coming in the wake of 9/11 and the wave of anti-terrorist controlling techniques that many western governments started employing, V For Vendetta follows the great tradition of dystopian science-fiction founded by George Orwell's 1984. With only his voice and body language, Hugo Weaving fantastically embodies an ideal behind his mask as the character of V. John Hurt is also an inspired piece of casting, playing a sinister Big Brother-like leader twenty years after once playing Winston Smith in the film adaptation of 1984. Anyway, this is a sharp and highly controlled deconstruction of all that is wrong with our western paradise, and director James McTeigue does it in such an eloquent and riveting style.
The Wackness
Nostalgia for the 90s is something that's only just starting to appear in fashion and music this year, but I think The Wackness can lay claim to being the first film to do for the 90s what films like The Wedding Singer and Rockstar did for the 80s. Ben Kingsley and Josh Peck play out twin storylines of age-related crises against the backdrop of dope-loving 1990s New York city, with Kingsley providing another exciting and unpredictable performance as an oddball therapist. I've said it before but I'll say it again - why doesn't Kingsley get more love from filmfans?! He's fantastic in this... even if the film's storyline or general concept does nothing for you, you should at least still watch it just for Kingsley. Another underrated indie comedy.
Waltz With Bashir
The rise of low-budget CGI in films has often been cited by fans as the cause of the general downfall of industry standards, but what's often overlooked is that the availability and cheapness of CGI and computer-animation has now made it possible for less prominent countries to tell stories that could otherwise never been told. A great example of this is the Israeli documentary Waltz with Bashir, a film that tells the story of Ari Folman's search for his lost memories regarding Israel's 1982 war with Lebanon. Using a distinctive and unique style of animating, Waltz with Bashir paints the recollections of Folman's various interview subjects in a harrowing and hypnotic style - giving form to a piece of history that Israel would probably rather was forgotten altogether. At first it might feel like this comic-book style distances the audience from the subject matter, but the eventual and controversial revelations at the film's end are all the more immediate and disturbing for it.
The Watchmen
Comic book films have become something of a paint-by-numbers genre in recent times so it was very refreshing to see this faithful adaptation of a graphic novel-classic, an epic alternate history cycle that examines the cold realities comic book superheroes would face if they existed in the real world. The bleak commentary these broken characters pass on this doomsday scenario puts this film into new territory... the graphic novel it's based on might be old news, but the themes and fears The Watchmen film explores are still shockingly relevant today and it's ending is the kind of big, black, brave full stop that a lot of other comic book films could use.
The Wrestler
Few acting comebacks are as heartfelt as Mickey Rourke's raw performance as ageing wrestler Randy 'The Ram' Robinson. The Wrestler presents a simple character study in an unflashy and realistic fashion, scraping away the cliches to expose the core of a "broken down old piece of meat" like Randy the Ram. Despite his flaws you'll want him to be at peace with his world, though the inevitability of where his life is heading will break your heart. The final sequence of The Wrestler pushes it into the territory of being a true and unpretentious piece of art.
Wolf Creek
A huge commercial smash with a somewhat lacklustre critical reception, Wolf Creek is one of the few modern horror films that have made any impact on me whatsoever. A large part of this is probably because, for most of the time, it doesn't really feel like a horror film. We spend the first half of the film getting to know the backpacker protagonists as they travel around the beautifully photographed wilderness of central Australia, and the film makes little concession to the typical conventions of the horror genre. The eventual meeting between the backpackers and sadistic outback killer Mick Taylor (a standout performance from John Jarratt - part Crocodile Dundee, part Chopper Read) is a high-octane charge. We know what this guy is going to do from the moment he appears, and the film toys with the audience before really letting them have it. It suggests a mature and self-actualised understanding of scary filmmaking on the part of director Greg McLean, and trying to read the film any other way is probably missing the point.
END OF PART 2
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