41-50

50 Keane
49 El Aura
48 Amores perros
47 Finding Nemo
46 The Incredibles
45 Guizi lai le (Devils on the Doorstep)
44 Inglourious Basterds
43 Tokyo!
42 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
41 United 93

Lodge Kerrigan has released three movies in the past 16 years.  Alejandro González Iñárritu has made three in 10 years.  My mathematical formula for ranking directors has a four film minimum, so these guys will just have to make more.  The Taymor/Tarsem/Selick group also falls short, but at least they have the "Don't rush me, I have to create a whole new world, after all!" excuse.  More tragically, Fabián Bielinsky died and Wen Jiang is suffering a slow death at the hands of the Chinese government.

Devils on the Doorstep is the only film I have seen so far that has ventured into the grandness of Kurosawaland, that wonderful place where everything seems bigger and greater and yet is fully grounded in details and humanity, filmic fractals to last a lifetime.

Three major 00s trends are also evidenced here: 9/11, the dominance of the fantasy franchise, and the growth of the animated film.

51-60

60 Ying xiong (Hero)
59 Stellet licht (Silent Night)
58 Stranger Than Fiction
57 Waking Life
56 Babel
55 Primer*
54 Elephant
53 Blades of Glory
52 Caché
51 Brødre* (Brothers) (just remade)

Some of my favorite new directors are represented above (Bier and González Iñárritu especially).  Van Sant and Linklater are confortably mid-career and we are still awaiting the follow-up to Primer, which is as good a time travel tale as any that has been/will be/is being told.

61-70

70 La Moustache* (Un Buñuel, somehow crisp and diaphonous)
69 Kontroll (A vibrant soundtrack can do so much for a low budget film. I hope that Hollywood resists the temptation to remake this.)
68 Open Water (I liked the sequel more than most too)
67 Eastern Promises (Elevated by the sounds of the sauna scene)
66 The Royal Tenenbaums
65 Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary*
64 The Night Listener (Given my Robin Williams prejudice, incredible)
63 Salinui chueok (Memories of Murder) (Preferable to The Host)
62 Lost in Translation (One hit wonder?)
61 Wu jian dao (Infernal Affairs)

Guy Mann asked offline why 99?  It just turned out that I had that many from the decade ranked 8 out of 10 or better.

71-80

80 My Blueberry Nights
79 The Saddest Music in the World*
78 Transsiberian
77 Bin-jip (3-Iron)*
76 Rachel Getting Married
75 INLAND EMPIRE
74 Dare mo shiranai (Nobody Knows)*
73 Blindness
72 Zui hao de shi guang (Three Times)*
71 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

I'll take this moment to once again praise the U.Va. students running OffScreen for bringing so many fine films to Cville.  I have been a regular attendee since Fall 2002 and two of my favorite days of the year are when the next semester's slates are announced.  It's like a cinematic WTJU..  I don't choose and I never know what I am going to get.   For instance, the four asterisked above and 2 of my top 10 for the decade.    And if I hadn't already seen INLAND EMPIRE twice, I would have seen it with them as well.

81-89

89 The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
88 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
87 Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
86 Charlie Wilson's War
85 The Departed
84 The Fall
83 La Graine et le mulet (The Secret of the Grain)
82 Redbelt
81 Revanche

I am surprised that Mike Nichols makes my 00s list but not Woody Allen.  

My 99 favorite movies of the 00s decade (90th through 99th)

99 Paris, je t'aime
98 King Kong
97 The Kite Runner
96 Iron Man
95 Che: Part One (Part Two never played Cville, I feel cheated)
94 Chuck & Buck
93 Planet Terror
92 Frida
91 The Puffy Chair
90 The Fountain


Re: Iron Man:  I sure hope that the trend of letting people who know as much about working with people as working with explosions (Favreau, Forster, Cuaron, Greengrass) helm blockbusters becomes the industry standard.
 
Re: Frida: Taymor, like Selick, is someone I want to make more movies but I know if they did, I'd like them less.

Braindead

Peter Jackson's directorial trajectory has reached its apex just like Francis Ford Coppola's.  Work under the radar, mysteriously get handed a franchise, then succeed beyond all expectations.  Let's see what happens next.

Jokey splattercore and MST3K targets aren't my thing.  Why spend time with "so bad they're good" when there are 1000s of "so good they're good" and "so funny they're funny" films out there?

Rating: 1 out of 10 (stopped watching once the old lady escapes from the cellar)

Recommended instead: Shivers by David Cronenberg.  Nice review here.

Stars in My Crown

Jacques Tourneur is best known for Out of the Past and his wonderfully titled run of B-horror in the 40s (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie and The Leopard Man).  He's the poor man's Michael Curtiz, letting the story and actors take the spotlight while moving from genre to genre without screaming "I'm an AUTEUR."

I've now seen 11 of his films, and Nightfall is my favorite.  It's a sharply written crime drama with consistently superior dialogue and a few original riffs off the standard noir melodies. "I don't carry a gun. That's why we pay taxes, so the police can do that for us."

As for Stars in My Crown, it features one of the best "lone man standing up to the mob" speeches I have ever seen, bringing to a climax the Our Town/Mayberry take on the traditional homesteader vs land baron Western rivalry.  Overall though, pretty bland.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Recommended instead: Wagon Master by John Ford, which elevates the Muzak Western

Le journal d'une femme de chambre

I don't spend too much time reading reviews, but when I see the World Socialist Web Site in the external reviews section of IMDB, I always seek out their unique slant. So, it was disappointing when they were not in the list for Diary of a Chambermaid since I definitely needed some perspective on this relatively restrained and "realistic" Buñuel. When the weird go normal, you start looking between the lines (e.g. Lynch's The Straight Story).

It takes rigor to keep from drifting between:

1. Believing that something is worthy of critique


2. Agreeing with a particular critique


3. Agreeing with the philosophy behind a critique


4. Agreeing with the solution proposed by that philosophy

I am almost always with the Socialists on #1, less on #2, rarely on #3 and almost never on #4.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Recommended also: The Exterminating Angel is an ideal introduction to the Spanish surrealist's work.

Because I Said So

We all need to set boundaries. One of the more overlooked steps is actually telling other people what they are. The conversations in my head can be so vivid and full of feelings that I can easily forget that no one else has been invited.

One summer day I was awoken at 7AM by the phone. At this time, I was still intensely entangled with my mother's day-to-day health problems and so I fearfully answered anticipating an emergency (powerless to assist, but anyway...).

Turns out a friend just wanted to chat. He thought it was 7PM. Drinking around the clock will do that to you. Someday later (because I am slow to act on resolutions) I told him that I did not feel comfortable talking to him when he was drunk. A boundary was set and the consequences of crossing that line were spelled out. Please grant me the courage to do things like that more often.

Rating: 3 out of 10.

Recommended instead: Bad Santa (more Lauren Graham, among 100 other reasons)

Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes Formula:

1. Substitute mixed martial arts for the Marquess of Queensberry rules [for the teens]
2. Withhold iconic props like the Calabash Meershaum and the Henschel Deerstalker for sequel usage ("Behold! The character is gradually recreated before our eyes" [for the adults])
3. Make Irene Adler more important than Watson (feminist or sexist? You be the judge.)
4. Take the whole milieu several classes down the social ladder (Gangs of New York is cooler Scorsese than Age of Innocence, I guess)
5. Add cuffs or chains wherever possible [for Madonna?]

Rating: 5 out of 10

Recommended instead: The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes