Top 25 of the 2000's

This list was tough because I think the 2000's is the best decade for film. American and internationally, filmmaker were killing it in the 2000's. Now, of course I'm biased because this is the decade of film which I really came of age as a film watcher, and is the decade from which I've seen the most amount of movies. But, the fact is that I could've expanded this list out to more than 40 entries and still not run into a movie I hadn't rated a 10/10. So, let's take a look at the movies I did include, in my vote for greatest film decade:

25. Katyn (2007) directed by Andrzej Wadja
During WWII, the Soviets massacred thousands of Polish citizens, both soldiers and civilians, in the Katyn forest in April and May of 1940. The estimates on how many were murdered is between 12,000 and 22,000 people. The Nazis, as the relationship with the Soviets turned south, exposed the genocide and used it as propaganda against them. When the Soviets took control of Poland after the war, however, they turned and claimed the Nazis were the culprits, committing the crimes in 1941. In post-war Poland, to even suggest that your brother died in Katyn in 1940 was considered treason, as the Soviet backed government propagated the lie covering up their actions in Katyn.

Among those murdered was Jakub Wajda, the father of 14-year-old Andrzej, who would go on to be the most important filmmaker in Polish history. Andrzej has said he knew he needed to make a movie about the Katyn massacre, but he wasn't able to tackle it until 2007, at the age of 81. What he gave us is one of the most powerful war movies I've ever seen because, although the movie takes fictionalized characters to tell the story, it sees the reality of how war spreads over people like a plague. Once the war is over, it's not really over because now we have to live with the consequences of war. And that's how we see this story, often playing out through the women: wives, mothers, sisters, daughters of those killed. Some holding out hope, some trying to move on, some just wanting the closure that truth brings. Katyn is a powerful movie that plays on us like no other WWII movies have.

24. Mulholland Dr (2001) directed by David Lynch

David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. is a fascinating dream of a movie. I would say it’s nightmarish, but for a good amount of its running time it’s over-the-top cheery and almost phony. Of course, as the movie goes on we begin to see that those times where it felt fake might have been for a reason. We descend into the fractured psyche of Diane Selwyn, or maybe a woman named Betty, as she arrives in Los Angeles and meets Rita. They go on a series of adventures, but then like its closest analogous movie, Bergman’s Persona, things start to break down and we begin to see that everything is not what we might’ve previously thought it to be. We begin to see Diane in a different light, as a more down on her luck and paranoid and angry character, seeing Rita less idealized as well.

But Mulholland Dr. works even if you don’t try to figure it out. Lynch’s approach has always been dreamlike, and this is his most successful dream. The movie plays on fears and emotions without even always consciously evoking them. The Silencio sequence, the person behind the dumpster at the cafe. Why do these sequences work? What exactly are we meant to feel? Why? It’s an odd movie to talk about, really, if you’re trying to explain it to someone who hasn’t seen it. So, if you haven’t seen it, remedy that as soon as possible. It’s a masterpiece, and this is coming from someone who doesn’t even really like Lynch as a filmmaker.

23. The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009) directed by Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam, another filmmaker I don't much care for. But when I watch this movie, I miss Heath Ledger more than ever. He reached great heights with his Oscar-winning performance in The Dark Knight, which was his final completed performance, but not technically his final role. He died midway through re-teaming with his The Brothers Grimm director (and former member of Monty Python) Terry Gilliam in the dark comic fantasy The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. The role he left behind was that of a mysterious stranger who joins up with the supremely odd theatre troupe of the title character. Thanks to the story, one involving a magic mirror that allows people to enter into a world of imagination partially controlled by Dr. Parnassus, Gilliam was able to recast Ledger's role during the sequences inside the Imaginarium. He recast it with three great actors who wanted to honor Ledger's memory, and took on the roles without payment (all three deferring their money to Ledger's daughter Matilda). Gilliam has said that many actors (including Tom Cruise) offered their services, but he wanted to "keep it family" with actors whom Ledger had befriended, therefore the casting of Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell to complete the role.

Gilliam has always been known for his distinct imagery (often in a fantasy setting), but is a filmmaker I usually find short on story and character. Here, he is not. I've not typically been a fan of Gilliam’s, even his celebrated visuals, but this movie made me reconsider (I’ve since revisited much of Gilliam’s work and found that my dislike of his non-Monty Python movies hasn’t changed just because I love this one). Although the CGI isn't perfect, we're not always convinced that the actors and the effects are occupying the same space, the overall feel and impact of the images works the way I assume Gilliam wants it to. And that’s because of the amazing and dreamlike imagery in the Imaginarium. The fact that we don’t believe the effects actually ends up elevating the dreamlike state of those scenes.

22. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) directed by Sidney Lumet

The last film directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, 50 years after his directorial debut 12 Angry Men announced him as a bright new talent, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead is both a fascinating character study of a disentegrating family, and a terrifically suspenseful crime thriller. Hank (Ethan Hawke) is 3 months behind on his child support payments, and his older brother Andy (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is in trouble with the IRS for embezzling countless dollars from his employer. Andy's wife Gina (Marisa Tomei) complains that he doesn't open up to her the way he did on their vacation to Rio, and Andy thinks maybe they could start over their life by moving there. Andy comes to Hank one day with a proposition, a mom and pop jewlery store robbery where they'll use toy guns so that there's no chance of anybody getting hurt, the owners will be taken care of by insurance, and the overall haul should be around $600,000. More than enough for both of them to fix their problems. Hank says that it sounds like a victimless crime, so he agrees to pull the job. I'll stop plot description there because one of the movies many pleasures is the way it slowly reveals the complete happenings of how the robbery goes spectacularly wrong. I will say that it shows remarkable confindence from first time screenwriter Kelly Masterson that the robbery is not the climax of the story, but the catalyst for it.

This movie nearly ended up in last week's "Best Cast" list, and there's not a weak link in the bunch. Hawke and Hoffman both do what might be the best work of their considerable careers. Marisa Tomei is her always underrated self. Albert Finney, Michael Shannon, Rosemary Harris, Amy Ryan, they're all wonderful as can be. But really the movie hits the highs it does because of Hoffman and Hawke. The casting of Hawke and Hoffman as brothers seems wrong at first, but the movie uses it as an advantage to show the opposing effect that each brother has within the family, Hoffman as the first born, and Hawke as the baby. They also work so well with each other that you feel the sense of history and brotherly connection that Hank and Andy share. Hawke should be commended for his fine work here as Hank. Most actors would shy away from the role of the obviously weaker brother, but Hawke completely nails Hank as the inadequate scared little boy in over his head. And since it's masterfully directed by Lumet, this movie becomes one of the great hidden gems of the 2000's. A wonderful swan song for Lumet's amazing career.

21. Eastern Promises (2007) directed by David Cronenberg

As the movie opens, we meet Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a mid-wife at a London hospital. A young teenager dies after giving birth in Anna's ward, and while searching for any sort of identification Anna stumbles upon the girl's Russian language diary. In an attempt to find the rightful home for the newborn, she takes the diary to a local Russian restaurant where the owner, a seemingly kind old man named Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), offers to translate it for her. While at the restaurant, Anna crosses paths with Seymon's son Kirill (Vincent Cassel) and his best friend and driver Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen). Anna's Russian born uncle warns her that these people are part of vory v zakone, the Russian mafia, but when Anna's motorcycle breaks down one night outside the restaurant, Nikolai gives her a ride home. There is a strange attraction between the two, but he warns that she should stay away from people like him. Nikolai insists he is just the driver but we've, not long before this, seen him casually dismember the body of a mobster that Kirril had put out a hit on. Anna gets slowly sucked into this world and fights to protect the current and future safety of the baby. Nikolai meanwhile must handle his unstable captain Kirril, and make progress in the eyes of the cold hearted boss Seymon. Kirril and Nikolai also have to deal with the fact that when you put out a hit on another member of the mafia, his family might come looking for you.

There is violence in the movie, as there has been in nearly every Cronenberg movie, but the violence is not exploitative in any way. Cronenberg doesn't necessarily want to thrill you with action sequences or fight scenes, he wants you to see how difficult it would be to fatally slice someone up with a razor. He wants you to see the consequences to the body when you get stabbed with a knife (fragility of the human body is a recurring theme throughout Cronenberg's career). As he himself has pointed out, there are only about 4 or 5 scenes of violence in the movie, but you will hear many people talk about how violent it is. It's not because there is a lot of it, it's because Cronenberg takes violence seriously and doesn't want to trivialize it by making it part of a standard action sequence. In so doing, the violence makes a bigger impact on people's minds. The movie has also become somewhat notorius for an extended fight sequence in a bath house where Viggo Mortensen is naked throughout. This was also not done simply to give the movie a calling card, it was done because Nikolai has nothing to hide behind in this fight. No pads, no armor, no weapons. It makes the fight all the more effective because we can see how vulnerable Nikolai is to attack, and that adds an extra layer of danger and suspense to the scene. Also, kudos to Viggo Mortensen for taking on that scene when every single other star in Hollywood would've balked at it. As Cronenberg said, he was lucky that he cast an actor in the part and not a star.

20. The Aviator (2004) directed by Martin Scorsese

This spot goes to my favorite living directors masterpiece of the decade, Martin Scorsese's The Aviator, from 2004. From what I've read, the movie is 2 hours and 50 minutes long, but it has flown by for me the many times I have watched it. Scorsese favorite Leonardo DiCaprio proves yet again what a versatile actor he can be in the right circumstances. His take on legendary billionaire Howard Hughes is fascinating in the small details he adds into his performance. His striking blue eyes bouncing between paranoid fear and defiant rebeliousness, which serves the movie well since Hughes often feels he has to prove himself to the unbelieving people he comes into contact with, people like Alan Alda's smarmy Sen. Brewster, Alec Baldwin's Pan Am exec Juan Trippe, or even the other people in Hollywood who say that he's mad to try making his movies in the unconventional way in which he chooses to make them in. The ending may not work as well if we weren't familiar with what Hughes ended up being, a reclusive germophobe who spent his final years in a hotel room overlooking Las Vegas. It's wonderfully tragic (from a dramatic standpoint) to see Hughes rise above his illness and accomplish his greatest achievement, only to allow his demons to take a final hold of him, while he's looking hopefully to the future. An ending worthy of Shakespeare, and a testament to what an amazing decade it has been for moviegoers that this masterpiece is only #20.

19. The Dark Knight (2008) directed by Christopher Nolan

There's not much left to say about The Dark Knight, one of the most talked about movies of my generation. I love it despite its flaws. The main flaw with it is that Nolan pitches everything at a climax, so that there's eventually no more drama to wring out, as we haven't had a chance to ebb and flow. When it's all climax, you run out of build-up and resolution to let the energy keep flowing. But despite that major flaw, the movie is wonderfully acted, well shot, and contains one of the great villains of cinema.

18. 5 Centimeters per Second (2007) directed Makoto Shinkai

5 Centimeters Per Second is one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, in both a visual and thematic way. It's the story of two people who were inseparable as kids (both entranced by the falling cherry blossoms, which allegedly fall at 5 centimeters per second) but are split apart by their families moving. But they are determined to meet up again, they do and fall in love as teenagers, only to be split apart again, before becoming adults who still think of each other but have moved on with their lives (or are trying to learn how to). It's breathtakingly animated. Writer/director Makoto Shinkai allows so many shots of lonely looking objects to linger a bit longer than most would let them, underscoring the longing our characters feel for each other. At just 63 minutes, 5 Centimeters doesn't outstay its welcome, but Shinkai takes his time unfolding his story in a way that makes sure it doesn't feel truncated either.

The story reminded me forcibly of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's great Three Times, another love story set against 3 separate time periods (and was my honorable mention in my previous top ten of the decade). Of course, Hou set the stories apart by having the same actors playing different characters in different time periods and then watched how they play out their love scenarios. Shinkai simply gives us three segments from the same characters, as they grow older. The first segments are strikingly similar, as the man (boy in 5 Centimeters case) seeks out the woman (girl) before eventually meeting and sharing a simple expression of affection, although Shinkai's ending is as achingly beautiful as Hou's, it's in a different way, since 5 Centimeters follows the same characters throughout its 3 stories, we don't leave our characters at the end of the segment. So there isn't the ending note of love, since we will catch up with Shinkai's characters (and his first segment ends on a less fully romantic note, there's some mixed feelings there). The unreciprocated feelings in the second story are interesting and worthwhile as a story, but don't have quite the same emotional weight as the opening segment.

The final segment, though marred a bit by a too on-the-nose power ballad that stands at complete odds to the sparseness of the rest of the soundtrack, is the ambiguous end to the story that maybe isn't so ambiguous once you think about it. Our hero is haunted by the lost love that never got to see its fruition, while the heroine still occasionally thinks back on those days gone by, even as she has moved on. The chance meeting that the hero has longed for finally happens, but how you feel about the outcome will ultimately depend on each viewers interpretation of the characters feelings at that point in their life.

17. Three Times (2005) directed by Hou Hsiao-Hsien

I first discovered Hou Hsiao-Hsien's brilliant Three Times back in 2009 and was bowled over by it. Hou's style, slow paced, gorgeously filmed, but not distractingly so, mesmerized me. I was also taken by the incredible beauty of lead actress Qi Shu. But mostly, I just flat out loved the first of the three times that Hou gives us. I think the opening section, the simplest of the three segments, is one of the greatest pieces of filmmaking I've ever seen. Its simplicity gets right to the heart of the love story, and I've never felt such joy just watching two people hold hands.

Sadly, the next two sections don't live up to the first (honestly, how could they?). The second segment is at least interesting from the point of how different it is. It's filmed like a silent movie, complete with title cards for dialog, using the same actors from the first section to play out a love story of a different sort. It has a tremendous score, and is unbelievably beautiful to look at, but doesn't have the emotional resonance of the first section. To be fair, it's not meant to, since Hou isn't just repeating the same love story in different times, but it doesn't work as wonderfully as the first. The final section is the only one set in modern times, and is by far the weakest. It doesn't ruin the movie, but it is not a great piece of drama and keeps the movie as a whole from unencumbered genius. But this is still one of the great movies of the decade and deserves its spot in the top 25. Hou is one of our best filmmakers, and this is my favorite film of his in the 2000's.

16. Unbreakable (2000) directed by M. Night Shyamalan

M. Night Shyamalan is pretty much a joke now, after the colossal failures of his last few movies, but there was a time when he was thought of as a Spielberg/Hitchcock hybrid for a new generation, mainly due to the unforeseeable success of 1999's The Sixth Sense, which got him Oscar nominations for Screenplay and Director. His career has been seen by most as a steady decline since then, with many pointing to 2002's Signs as his last good movie (though that movie has plenty of detractors, myself not among them). Until this year's Split, which served as a sort of backdoor sequel to Unbreakable.

But watching this movie it was obvious that Shyamalan had genius within him. This might be the best superhero movie ever (only The Incredibles can top it, in my mind), and it's because it has not only the serious dramatic weight that Christopher Nolan would get credit for introducing to the genre 5 years later with Batman Begins, but also the visual audacity not seen in any other entry to superhero movies. There are deliberate multi-minute shots, definitely not seen in the hyperkinetic work of the genre today. For instance, it's just over 9 minutes into the movie when we get to shot #3. Then there are the motifs like Elijah and glass ("the kids called me Mr. Glass"), where we see him often reflected in mirrors, glass panels, TV screens, etc. The color motifs of purple for Elijah, green for David, and pops of color (red, orange, blue, whatever) from the normally dreary palette for when David senses someone bad. There's that simple attention to visual detail and depth that no other superhero movie has. This is really masterful filmmaking, no matter what happened to Shyamalan afterwards.

I believe Unbreakable should stand atop the mountain of superhero movies, despite being an original creation and not a Batman, Superman, or Spiderman adaptation. It's steeped more in comic lore than any other, and it is steeped in greatness more than any other comic book movie.

15. Yi Yi (2000) directed by Edward Yang

Taiwan's Edward Yang was one of the most respected filmmakers of world cinema, and most often cited as his masterpiece is his 2000 drama Yi Yi (sometimes translated as A One and a Two). A nearly 3 hour human epic focusing on the Jian family living in Taipei. It starts with a wedding, and a visibly pregnant bride, and ends with a funeral, in between containing everything life could contain: joy, pain, anger, regret, love, and the constant search for the whole truth of it all. It's a truly great movie.

We mostly follow NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), the father of the family, as he struggles with money, disagreements with his partners in the failing business he runs, and a chance meeting with his first love, 30 years after he'd run away from her, making him contemplate his choices and direction in life. We also see Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), NJ's teenaged daughter, struggle through the mess of being a teenager. Making friends, hanging out, discovering boys (and boys discovering her), her relationship with her elders, and more. We see a bit of the mom in the family, Min-Min (Elaine Jin), but mostly the other person we follow is Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), the 8-year-old son as he navigates being a kid; a curious, sensitive kid. Writer/director Yang manages all of this and more with an author's sense of detail and character building. Like John Sayles's Lone Star or Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, this is one of the few movies I'd describe as novelic. It is so richly made, and with such care. I've rarely felt closer or more curious about the fates and futures of movie characters than this family.

Yang was a member of the Taiwanese New Wave, alongside one of my favorite filmmakers Hou Hsiao-Hsien. He even cast Hou in his third movie, Taipei Story, in 1985. Nien-Jen Wu, the father NJ, is a celebrated writer/director himself (his 1994 movie A Borrowed Life was named by Martin Scorsese as the 3rd best movie of the 90's), and worked as an actor and writer for both Hou and Yang throughout his career. And he's tremendous in the lead role here, playing a thoroughly good man who contemplates his life while trying to be a good dad, and a good and ethical business man. The kids, neither of whom had ever acted before or much since, are both tremendous. Especially little Jonathan Chang as the son searching for truth in the world. It's a beautiful trio of performances in a beautiful movie.

14. The Incredibles (2004) directed by Brad Bird

This is the best and most thrilling action movie ever made, if you ask me (which by reading this blog, you're kinda doing). I also think that with the issues of marriage and family and trying to find yourself when you don't know who you are anymore, The Incredibles is Pixar's most adult movie, most thematically complex, even though it's disguised as a bright colorful action movie for kids. Each character is created with a distinct personality, each speaks differently about their feelings and actions (you'd be surprised how little this happens in movies once you start paying attention to it), and the voice acting brings that last little bit to make these truly remarkable characters. All of that said, it's also just a mind blowingly amazing action movie, with set pieces that put Bond and Bourne to shame. The attack on the plane is my personal favorite, as the mounting fear in Helen's voice, and the parental actions she takes to possibly sacrifice herself for her children are a rare action sequence that makes me tear up with its dramatic implications. Then there's also the "discovering the joys of your abilities" quality of Dash vs. the flying machines. When Dash starts running (with unexpected success) on the water of the ocean, he lets out a little "oh man, that's so awesome I can do this" kinda giggle that lights my face up every time I watch it.

13. Take Care of My Cat (2001) directed by Jeong Jae-eun

2001's Take Care of My Cat is one of those movies that doesn't sound like it'd be extraordinary, but it is. It's about a group of 5 young women in South Korea, just out of high school, and how they grow, work, and basically how they handle the world at such a transformative age. It has no love story, but contains characters that I want to see more of. It's just under 2 hours long, and that times flies by. Coming-of-age movies are one of my favorite genres, and this is right at or near the top of the heap.

The friends, as can happen in school and sadly not so much later in life, are all of differing social classes, and may even sound like clichés, even though they're not. There's the rich girl Hae-joo (Lee Yo-won), the poor girl Ji-young (Ok Ji-young), the dreamer Tae-hee (played by the amazing Doona Bae, from The Host and Cloud Atlas), and the twin sisters Bi-ryu and Ohn-jo (Lee Eun-shil and Lee Eun-jo). The sisters get the short stick, development wise, but the other three are really wonderfully drawn and played by the actresses. They grow and change and develop in perfectly believable ways, never a false note or false drama, though there were many times it could've gone that way. It's a great trio of leads, even though I can't quite put my finger on why it's so good.

And that's kind of the whole thing about the movie. Writer/director Jeong Jae-eun has crafted a startling movie that has nothing startling in it, really. It's just SO good. The music is impeccable, the framing of the shots, the cinematography, everything is top notch. I want to see this movie over and over again throughout my life. I know it's going to be one of those that really stays with me. Which is a remarkable thing to say about the movie because what do I know or can relate to about being a 20-ish Korean girl? Nothing whatsoever. Yet I was moved by these actresses and their story. Jeong has created herself a truly amazing movie that plays on us like music. We may not be able to articulate what makes it special, it just is.

12. Adventureland (2009) directed by Greg Mottola

Greg Mottola's coming-of-age/the-summer-that-changed-everything movie, Adventureland, was my favorite movie of 2009. Adventureland is the most wonderfully realized, delicately crafted, and emotionally affecting movie about young people that I've ever seen. It captures a moment in time that didn't even exist in my life, yet I connect to it so deeply I almost can't explain it.

There's not a single moment in the movie that rings false to me, and so many moments that transcend the maligned "young adult/teen" genre. Of course, it's not about "teens", it's about people just out of college realizing that their studies in Comparative Literature or Russian and Slavic Languages don't mean much in the real world. It's also about those fragile feelings of first love, real friendship, jealousy, and taking the wrong advice because you don't know any better yet. More than anything really, it's the story of first love. But because everything is so carefully constructed, capturing life, the feeling of real life, it's about much more than that simple genre description might allude to. Sure, it's not documentary-esque real life, it's idealized and nostalgic, but in the best way possible.

11. Before Sunset (2004) directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy (consisting of 1995’s Before Sunrise, 2004’s Before Sunset, and 2013’s Before Midnight) is the great trilogy of cinema, I think. It’s a fascinating look at a couple, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) at vastly different times in their lives. Before Sunrise finds them in their early 20’s, in love with life and ideas and philosophy and all that great college era stuff. They meet and fall in love over the course of a night roaming around Vienna. Before Midnight sees them dealing with the mundanity of parenthood, the crumbling of love when you don’t protect and nurture it, and the ruts that we all fall into in relationships that lead to fights and unhappiness.

Before Sunset, my favorite of the series, follows Jesse and Celine through a 90-minute meetup in Paris as he’s on a book tour for a book he wrote about the events in Before Sunrise. The movie takes place in real time, as Jesse has to catch a plane back to his life in the US, while Celine goes about her life in Paris. We see both the love and the pain caused by the events in Before Sunrise. We see the missed connections and the longing for the feelings of love that were created that magical night in Vienna. We see Jesse and Celine’s immediate re-connection, falling back into their love of talking and connecting with one another. We see the things they keep and the things they share with the other, before it all seems to come out in a car ride back to Celine’s apartment. And, ah! The perfection of that ending. “I know” has never felt so romantic and full of possibilities.

10. No Country for Old Men (2007) directed by The Coen Brothers
2007's No Country for Old Men is the Coen brothers best work, and they're no strangers to great movies. I would count their The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona, Blood Simple, and Miller's Crossing as really great movies (and that's with thinking their generally regarded crowning achievement, Fargo, is just "good"). Of course, Javier Bardem's Oscar-winning villain is the part that sticks in everyones mind, but the work done here by Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, and Kelly MacDonald can't be overvalued. MacDonald in particular deserves more attention than she ever got. The scene where she gets a piece of news she didn't want to get, her reaction brings tears to my eyes every time I watch this movie, and I don't think I can say that about any other scene in the typically emotionally distant Coen catalog.

One of the most tense movies I've ever seen, I was so wrapped up in the story that like many people, I was caught off guard by the ending. We're trained by other movies to expect some sort of showdown between the main characters, and when we don't get it, I was left quite disappointed. It wasn't until I kept thinking about the ending, and watched the movie a couple more times, that I was hit by its brilliance. The Coen's go for intellectualism and metaphor rather than the emotional release of a showdown. I wasn't sure at first if they'd made the right decision, but I'm more sure than ever (after my last viewing) that they did make the correct choice.

9. Talk to Her (2002) directed by Pedro Almodovar
I already admired even if I hadn't quite loved Pedro Almodovar's movies when I finally came to Talk to Her. This is not just one of the great movies of the 2000's, but one of the great movies ever made, period. The story, of two relationships of very different types, gets us to identify and relate to these four people in surprising ways. The amount of life that Almodovar injects into this movie is astounding. Every frame pulses with the energy of life. He tackles weighty topics in the same movie in which you'll find dick and poop jokes. And the turn of the plot comes as such a shock that we cannot believe it, just as we wouldn't if it happened in real life. But Almodovar never cheated, it's not a twist in the regular movie sense. It's kind of a twist in the way that life twists us. Overall, I just can't quite get over how much life is in this movie. That was the theme that kept coming up to me. Even side characters are so precisely written that one doctor character has one small scene and he felt like a fully formed person. The movie also contains the craziest, funniest, wildest movie-within-a-movie I've ever seen.

8. Ratatouille (2007) directed by Brad Bird

The first thing I wanted to do when leaving the theater after seeing Ratatouille on opening day was cook. Cooking is one of the great joys of my life, and it is one of the great joys for Remy the rat too. Re-watching this movie so many times, I'm actually a little bored by the opening 20 minutes or so, until Remy gets to Paris. From then on the movie is perfect. It's hilarious, heartbreaking, romantic, and filled with a love of life and food. Peter O'Toole's performance as the food critic Anton Ego is the movie's key, I think. When presented with the title dish, vegetable peasant food thought unworthy of the high end restaurant in which it's being served, he is raced back to childhood and the comfort and love he felt when his mother made him the dish. Then he follows with one of my favorite monologues in movies, about the relationship between art and art criticism. Heady stuff to put in a "kids movie" but that's because Pixar isn't trying to make movies just for kids, they're trying to make good movies period. The fact that Ratatouille isn't even the best Pixar movie of the decade is further proof that they can edge out Studio Ghibli as the best animation studio in the world.

7. In Bruges (2008) directed by Martin McDonagh

Colin Farrell's effortlessly heartbreaking yet hysterical performance as the endearing naughty boy Ray becomes much more impressive every time I watch this infinitely rewatchable masterpiece. Brendan Gleeson's work shows that many more layers to his character, the wonderfully paternal Ken. And even Ralph Fiennes' deliriously over-the-top mob boss becomes more of a joy to watch, as well as making such a deeper impact on a dramatic level. McDonagh's screenplay shows off his roots on the stage (where he's often considered one of Ireland's top playwrights) in its use of a small number of locations and characters, and his attention to the detail of his dialog. In what may be the movie's best scene (although it's really too tough to pick just one), a simple piece of dialog shifts the entire mood of the film. Not in many movies would a line like "Good. Because he wasn't a bad kid, was he?" change the course of the movie, but the line is loaded with meaning where it's placed in the screenplay, and delivered with such brilliance, it has a remarkable impact. And that's without thinking about the scene being a masterfully subtle 6 1/2 minute long single take.

McDonagh should also be commended for his ability to mix the profane with the spiritual, violence with the magical, and most simply (yet remarkably) the comedy with the drama. In Bruges would be a tremendous piece of work for any filmmaker, but the fact that it was McDonagh's first makes it all the more impressive.

6. Wall-E (2008) directed by Andrew Stanton

The next movie on my list is the Pixar tour-de-force that is Andrew Stanton's Wall-E, quite possibly the greatest of all animated movies. Its visual invention and nearly silent opening section are reminders of what a little ambition can do for a movie. Stanton and his co-writers provide pointed commentary on the laziness of the human race and where our reliance on technology will logically lead us to (a commentary lost on so many viewers who thought the filmmakers were just making fun of fat people). But at its heart, Wall-E is a simple love story, one that just happens to star robots.

Most of note, really, is the genius creation of the title character. Stanton gives ample time for his mostly silent hero to show of his comedic skills, ones worthy of the great Buster Keaton. Stanton has actually said that he and his staff studied the entire available catalogs of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton in an effort to understand and emulate the great silent comedians. Wall-E is a delightful creation, and the movie starring him equally enchanting. It was another one that didn't quite hit me with its full force on first viewing. Looking back on my original review, I wasn't even sure if it was Pixar's best movie. After repeat viewings, I always find wonderful little details in it, plus there's still the beautiful sequences like Eve and Wall-E's dance, and the simplicity of the story proves to be a strength rather than a hindrance. Our adorable hero and his quest for love hits me in the gut every time since that first viewing. It's really a testament to the strength of the decade's movies that a masterpiece like Wall-E is only 6th. And I'm already starting to wonder if that position is too low.

5. High Fidelity (2000) directed by Stephen Frears

High Fidelity is another one that didn't immediately make an impact on me. As a 17-year-old, I walked away from the theater loving Jack Black's hilariously over-the-top know it all Barry, but not really connecting with John Cusack's self-loathing (yet often arrogant) Rob, and his travails through the top 5 loves of his life, and why they didn't work out. A few years later, I watched the movie again and found it deeply affected me on an emotional level, now that I had some life experience with what Rob was talking about, and a deeper love of the pop-culture that Rob also cherishes. Now, as a 26-year-old with even more experiences, I find more than ever that I connect not just with Rob, but with Barry, Dick, Liz, and Laura. All the characters are amazingly well drawn (much of which comes from Nick Hornby's brilliant novel) and brilliantly played by the actors, with even Jack Black seeming like a real character, and not just Jack Black.

Sometimes a movie feels so personal to me that I fear showing it to other people, afraid that their opinion (whether positive, negative, or indifferent) will color mine in some way and my love of it will be somehow tainted. This is a movie like that. I occasionally hesitate in recommending such a deeply personal favorite, especially one that I don't think will connect with someone as fully as it does with me, immediately at least. Some people aren't willing to revisit movies that they didn't love the first time around. But I do have such a deep love and connection with it that I can't help but put it on this list and want to recommend it to anyone with an open mind.

4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) directed by Michel Gondry

This is one of the most interesting visual experiences ever put on screen, with Michel Gondry able to project what the inside of our minds just might look like.

The crowning achievement in Charlie Kaufman's catalog, in my eyes, teaming him again with French music video director Gondry (who had previously directed Kaufman's script Human Nature, unseen by me). A haphazard journey through the memories of Joel Barish (a never better Jim Carrey) as he tries to erase his recently ex-girlfriend Clementine (the always brilliant Kate Winslet) from his mind. Kaufman started from the idea of erasing someone from your memory (who hasn't wanted to do that before?) and the impact that memories have on us as people. The way a loved one can get so associated with something that to remove it would be to remove a part of your own being. The impulsive Clem has had Joel erased from her memory by a company called Lacuna that provides such a service. As a way of getting back at her, Joel decides to erase her from his memory. Joel at one point asks Dr. Mierzwiak (the infallible Tom Wilkinson) if there's any chance of brain damage caused by the erasing. He answers "Well, technically speaking, the procedure is brain damage."

There's an achingly sad moment later in the movie when you realize that Joel doesn't remember the song "My Darling Clementine", even though it had deep meaning to him long before meeting Clem. It had become so associated with her in his mind that to remove her removes all traces of the song as well as his childhood favorite, Huckleberry Hound. For the majority of the movie we travel with Joel through the good and bad memories of the two years he spent with Clem. It's hysterical, heartbreaking, amazingly true to life while being totally surreal. Also, the brilliant score by Jon Brion is worth mentioning. It plays more like an accompaniment to the action onscreen, instead of trying to underline it, or try and inform the audience how to react emotionally. The movie is a beautiful, hilarious, and melancholy trek through the emotions one experiences with both the good and bad in a relationship, and how you should live with the balance of the two instead of trying to forget. Your memories help make you who you are, appreciate that you have them.

3. Almost Famous (2000) directed by Cameron Crowe

With Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe finally achieved the flawless synergy of his love of rock music and the personal relationship dramedy that he’d been trying to perfect since his debut with Say Anything. Crowe used his experiences as a teenaged journalist for Rolling Stone magazine (where he toured with Led Zeppelin, The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and The Eagles, among others) as the basis for his autobiographical masterwork. And while the theatrical cut of the movie is wonderful, the cut that makes it onto my list is the Untitled: Bootleg cut (i.e. Director’s cut). Although most director’s cuts are fairly worthless and indulgent, the original cut of Almost Famousonly had one drawback (to me), which was that it felt a bit rushed. Crowe’s Untitled cut adds in just enough scenes to make the movie feel more lived in, more detailed, and add more character moments so that we really get to know and love these people.

Even though the movie skirts so close to cliché at nearly every turn, it never felt anything but alive to me. A lot of the credit for that goes to Crowe’s (deservedly) Oscar-winning script, but I think even more of it goes to the best cast he’s ever assembled. From Patrick Fugit as our hero William, to Frances McDormand’s overprotective mother and Zooey Deschanel’s flighty sister, Jason Lee and Billy Crudup’s quarreling band leaders, to Kate Hudson’s perfect Penny Lane and most especially Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lester Bangs (still his greatest of many, many great performances), the closest thing William has to a mentor. Hell, Crowe even gets a terrific performance from Jimmy Fallon. Fugit though, as the newcomer of the bunch, deserves special mention for his ability to capture a certain youthful naiveté and earnestness, while also taking us on William’s coming-of-age journey with enthusiasm and joy. It’s one of the great youth performances the movies have ever given us.

Probably the most talked about sequence in the movie is the “Tiny Dancer” scene. I’ve heard it described as transcendent by some, and ridiculous (or worse) by others. It is, of course, the former. After a night of in-fighting and much drug taking, the whole group is angry with Crudup’s Russell Hammond as he gets on the bus wrapped in a towel and still a little bit high. The bus sets off, and Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” plays over the bus speakers. Eventually everyone joins in singing along, and with it, Crowe shows us the kind of healing power great music can have. Nobody says anything to Russell about the night before. They don’t have to. Music is a powerful thing, and Almost Famous captures that like no other movie I can think of.

2. Pan's Labyrinth (2006) directed by Guillermo del Toro Guillermo del Toro had shown promise with some of his earlier films, most particularly in the comic book adaptation Hellboy, and his ghost story The Devil’s Backbone. But he had never melded his extraordinary talents as a visual stylist with some storytelling craft as well as he did with his 2006 masterwork Pan’s Labyrinth. He wrote a simple story about a young girl escaping from her hellish life into a fantasy world that may not be any less brutal, but tells it with an elegance and assurance that he’d only hinted at before. The effortless flow of the story makes the simplicity all the easier to enjoy, with the only character who isn’t really a defined good guy or bad guy being the Faun who opens up this alternate world to our young heroine.

Movies with children as the lead characters can often get bogged down in “cute” moments from the young actors who fail to give much in the way of a real acting performance. Pan’s Labyrinth is not one of those movies. Premier among the movie’s many pleasures is the central performance from Ivana Baquero as Ofelia. The rest of the cast is littered with wonderful performances as well, but Ofelia is our guide and needs to be something truly special. Baquero is most certainly that. The film’s detractors often point to the simplistic nature of the movie as a negative, usually pointed at Sergi Lopez’s villainous Captain Vidal as the biggest offender. So what? So he’s obviously the bad guy, and he’s a really, really bad guy. He’s not even the most memorable villain, as the infamous Pale Man sequence has demonstrated. Regardless, do we denigrate The Adventures of Robin Hood because Claude Rains is so wonderfully hissable, or the Harry Potter movies because Voldemort is one-sidedly evil? No, we enjoy the obstacle for our heroes to overcome. And the movies are better for it.

The feeling that often stays with me after watching Pan's Labyrinth is one of a beautiful melancholy. The Javier Navarrete score is gorgeously haunting, and fits the movie perfectly. The rich cinematography from Guillermo Navarro, as well as Del Toro’s developing compositional brilliance, leaves us with some stunning images. One thing I would like to address that Del Toro purposefully leaves open to a bit of interpretation is whether or not this fantasy escape is all happening in Ofelia’s head. There’s a shot near the end where Vidal runs into Ofelia talking to the Faun, but he can’t see the Faun. Del Toro has said he meant this as adults aren’t as in tune with the fantasy world as children, more than that the fantasy world doesn’t exist. And that’s the way I’ve always looked at it as well. I’m more one who believes in the fate of the fig tree as an indication of what was real and what wasn’t. What is very real though is that this is one of the great movies I’ve ever seen, and I have no problem having it as my #2 movie of the decade.

1. Children of Men (2006) directed by Alfonso Cuaron
I have rarely been as emotionally impacted while watching a movie as I was sitting in the theater watching Children of Men. Having since seen it multiple times, I am more convinced than ever that it is the best movie of the decade, and one of the greatest achievements in all of cinema. Its story is very simple: the year is 2027, and the human race has been infertile for the past 18 years. An emotionally disconnected former activist (now anonymous bureaucrat, played by Clive Owen) is asked by his ex-wife to escort a young girl to safety across the dangerous obstacles now occupying England as the world's last surviving powerful nation. The by now well known complication being that the girl is pregnant. Director/writer/editor Alfonso Cuaron uses this concept as the basis to tell a powerful story of action, love, and hope rarely touched in cinema. The almost oppressive grimness of the frighteningly realistic future setting is offset with the optimism brought about by the prospect of a future generation.

Children of Men has become somewhat famous for its single-shot sequences, including an assault on a car that lasts for more than 4 minutes, and a shot during a chaotic battle that lasts for around 7 1/2 minutes. The thing that many people don't know about these shots are that they aren't really a single shot, but a couple of shots stitched together through the aid of computers. Some detractors have taken this as a negative, as though the only point of single-shot sequences is an exercise in technique. The single-shot sequences, whether actually a single unaided shot or not, work as a single take, not allowing the audience the chance to distance itself through an edit. We can't get away from the action, because the camera isn't getting away from the action, making the movie all the more tense and exciting.

Werner Herzog has often said that the world is starved for great images. With Children of Men, Alfonso Cuaron continues his fight to give us extraordinary images. He has the audacity to be poetic in an almost Herzog-ian way such as in the scene where the soldiers all stand around dumbfounded at the sound and sight of the baby Theo is escorting out of a building. Some people, even in the midst of the fighting and destruction going on around them reach out to the baby as the first sign of hope in nearly 20 years. The soldiers, many of whom are probably too young to even remember seeing a baby in their lifetimes, look on at the young child in a paralyzing shock. It's a tremendously moving sequence, and again, Cuaron's use of music (an opera) is very reminiscent of Herzog. Cuaron has given us some wonderful images in his previous movies. Y tu Mama Tambien, A Little Princess, and even his Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were expertly filmed and gave us gorgeous shots to behold. But nothing he'd ever done in the past prepared me for the power and poeticism of some of his work here. I would single out more shots, but I could nearly single out anything in the movie and use it as an example, since Cuaron often finds the poetry of images in small ways that many viewers may not even be aware of or remember.

Some great movies that just didn't make the list include:

The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
Spirited Away (2001)
The Pianist (2002)
Adaptation. (2002)
Whale Rider (2002)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Master and Commander (2003)
Shattered Glass (2003)
Zodiac (2007)
Once (2007)
Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Superbad (2007)
Coraline (2009)

Best casts

This list has been the toughest for me because how do you choose "best cast"? Is it the greatest collection of talent? Is it the greatest collection of performances? Hopefully it's a mixture of the two, as you have collected great talent who then give great performances, but that's not always how it works out. Sometimes a cast of nobody's, or even non professional actors, give great performances, while all-star casts deliver a flop of work. So that was my dilemma coming into the creation of this list. I decided to honor a bit of all of it. Let me know what you think!

I'd like to make an honorable mention to all Robert Altman movies. I am not much of an Altman fan as a storyteller, but his casts were impeccable pretty much every single time out. Can't pick just one cast, he always had great ones.

And I was going to include Big Night, my favorite movie, but I write about it so much that I wanted to highlight other films. So just consider it an honorary #1 on this list.

10. Movie 43

One of the greatest collections of talent comes in the form of one of the worst movies ever made. It's not a bad idea, necessarily, because Movie 43 is an anthology film. 14 short comedy films put together for feature run time. It's like an episode of SNL. It's like a baaaaaad episode of SNL. Many of the shorts aren't terrible as sketch ideas, but the execution of those ideas is awful. It's obvious many of the cast didn't really want to be in it, and from behind the scenes stories they were often guilted into shooting just a couple of days so that they'd stop getting hassled. The results show on screen. Still, with a cast highlighting Oscar winners like Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, and Emma Stone, as well as talents like Hugh Jackman, Chris Pratt, Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Dennis Quaid, Naomi Watts, Kristen Bell, and many more, it should be on this list.

9. Out of Sight

One of the first movies that came to mind when making my initial shortlist for this topic was Steven Soderbergh's remake of Ocean's 11. But then I started looking and saw that the superior movie in Soderbergh's catalog is the great Out of Sight, which boasts a cast including George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, Viola Davis, Steve Zahn, Albert Brooks, Nancy Allen, Luis Guzman, and Catherine Keener. It's not just a great movie, but has an astounding cast even if you only look at their names and not their terrific work in the movie.

8. Nine lives
Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives is another anthology movie, but unlike Movie 43, it's not terrible. It's made up of nine short films, all filmed in one shot, all focused on a short moment in one woman's life. The movie is filled to the brim with great actresses doing great work, my favorite being Robin Wright, who stars in the section "Diana", where she runs into her old flame, Damien (Jason Isaacs), and all this past pain and love comes up to intrude on their seemingly perfectly happy lives. It's an extraordinary piece of storytelling and acting, and it's not the only one, as the other stories are filled up with great actors like Sissy Spacek, Glenn Close, Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates, Dakota Fanning, Amy Brenneman, Ian McShane, Amanda Seyfried, Joe Mantegna and others. A great cast and a movie definitely worth checking out.

7. Crash
Ah, Crash. It's become a joke. It's become a whipping boy for every "the academy fucked up again" story writer. I saw it when it came out because it had some really good actors in it and I loved it. It wasn't universally loved, but it was well received and didn't become hated until it beat the more beloved Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars. But even for those who dislike the movie it's hard to argue against the cast. Matt Dillon does the best work of his career, Terrence Howard gives a really thoughtful and sensitive performance, Thandie Newton finally delivered on the promise she'd shown before, even Ryan Phillipe is good. And there are so many little roles here and there by actors like Keith David and Tony Danza that are really good and add to the overall tapestry of characters on display. And I hadn't even mentioned Don Cheadle, Michael Peña, Larenz Tate, Sandra Bullock (who didn't do anything better until Gravity), Ludacris, Brendan Fraser,

6. The Thin Red Line
Terrence Malick assembled his greatest cast in The Thin Red Line. Now, I feel like it's the least of his movies, but it's the best of his casts. Sean Penn, John Cusack, Nick Nolte, and Elias Koteas all do really good work in the meandering pseudo-philosophical movie, and they're surrounded by a ridiculous amount of terrific actors like John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, Jim Caviezel, George Clooney, John C. Reilly, Adrien Brody, and Jared Leto. The problem becomes that some of them aren't great in the movie (Travolta) or their presence is distracting. Clooney, in a blink and you'll miss it cameo, was supposed to have a much larger role, and when Malick informed him of how little his part became in the final cut, he asked Malick to cut him out completely so that his presence wouldn't be a distraction for the audience. Brody's character was supposed to be the main character, according to the script, but with Malick's approach of shooting an ungodly amount of footage and then finding the movie in the editing room, his work was cut out almost completely. But still, as uneven as some of the work is, the collection of talent is nearly unmatched.

5. Pulp Fiction
A terrific cast all the way around, featuring the best work of almost everyone's career, Pulp Fiction had to end up on this list. Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, and Bruce Willis are the leads of the movie, and are all tremendous in their different ways. They are all doing some of their best work. Ving Rhames, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Maria de Medeiros, Amanda Plummer, Rosanna Arquette, and of course the two standouts of the supporting cast, Christopher Walken and the justly Oscar nominated Uma Thurman are all up to the standards set by the leads. Of course it's Quentin Tarantino's directorial style and writing that lifts the movie up into the stratosphere, but this cast is a big reason it is so good in the first place.

4. JFK
Although I'm not as crazy about the film as some other people, JFK is a terrific movie with an astounding cast. Even with the occasionally wooden Kevin Costner in the lead role, when your supporting cast is filled out with names like Donald Sutherland, Tommy Lee Jones, Joe Pesci, Kevin Bacon, Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman, Jack Lemmon, John Candy, Walter Matthau, Vincent D'Onofrio, and others, how much more do you need to say? This is simply one of the greatest casts ever assembled. And while it doesn't have as powerful of work as writer/director Oliver Stone got in other movies (like Tom Berenger in Platoon or Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July), as an overall ensemble of actors, Stone never bested it.

3. The Departed
Martin Scorsese's best cast isn't in service of his best movie, but it's one of his most compulsively watchable. Leonardo DiCaprio takes his piercing blue eyes and tells his characters story looking shiftily from underneath his furrowed brow. Matt Damon grounds his Boston bravado in everyday believability in one of his best performances (and I think VERY highly of Damon as an actor, so that's saying something). Mark Wahlberg and Alec Baldwin go totally over-the-top, but sell it so well that it still fits the overall film. Vera Farmiga is intelligent and mysteriously sexy and loving and strong and all kinds of other things in her best work. Sadly, the great movie tough guy Ray Winstone is hidden under an inconsistent accent and so loses some of his power. And Jack Nicholson gives into all his work instincts. It's still a good performance because Nicholson is one of our greatest actors, but his performance is the weak link in this otherwise impeccably acted movie.

2. Cloud Atlas
A great cast all acting across many timelines, roles, and sometimes even genders gives us one of the best casts you could imagine. While my favorite of the cast is Doona Bae, Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Ben Whishaw, James D'Arcy, Keith David, and Hugh Grant all give performances that ground this time hopping movie in emotional realities that fit each and every one of their characters and stories. It's a movie that must be experienced to truly appreciate. I liked how Roger Ebert said it, which was "Even as I was watching "Cloud Atlas" the first time, I knew I would need to see it again. Now that I've seen it the second time, I know I'd like to see it a third time". It's one of the great movies, and with a collection of top actors doing amazing work (including one of the rare Tom Hanks villain roles, in which he's deliciously evil), Cloud Atlas has to be this high on the list.

1. The Godfather
The best mix of great ensemble talent, all giving great performances is here in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Al Pacino and Marlon Brando highlight the cast, of course, but I think Diane Keaton's sensitive work as Kay gets overlooked. She's really wonderful in the movie. John Cazale, James Caan, and Robert Duvall are tremendous as the other "sons" of Brando's Vito. Cazale is the softer souled Fredo, Caan the hot headed Sonny, and Duvall the even tempered, intelligent Tom Hagen, the adopted son of the family. All fit their roles perfectly. Duvall, in particular, shines as Tom. Although Caan's role of Sonny is the flashy one, the scene in which Duvall tells Brando of Sonny's death is heartbreaking and perfect work from each actor.

Brando does some of the greatest work of his considerable career as Vito, giving the role the intelligence and gravitas that it requires, but also the sensitivity in needs. Pacino's Michael shares his father's brain, but has a character arc towards the cold hearted Michael we see in the second film. Pacino has the most to play in his character, as Michael changes the most of anyone, and I still think it's probably only second to his work in Dog Day Afternoon as the best work from my favorite actor.

All of that said, the smaller roles being filled out by actors like Sterling Hayden as the police chief, Al Lettieri as the drug dealing Sollozzo, Talia Shire as the victimized Connie, Richard S. Castellano as Peter Clemenza, Lenny Montana as Luca Brasi, and Abe Vigoda as Tessio. It's a perfectly cast movie in each and every role. It's what puts this movie as the #1 on my list because of the amazing talent in each role, but mostly because there's not a single line reading or character that isn't perfect.

Top 25 of the 1990's

25. Lessons of Darkness (1992) directed by Werner Herzog

Lessons of Darkness is only about 50 minutes long, and one of the best science fiction films I've seen. Herzog filmed in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion of Kuwait in the early 90's, showing bombed out buildings, oil fields aflame, broken people, and more remnants of the destruction of war. No special effects. How Herzog frames the story, however, is that of an expedition onto a foreign planet, and seeing the destruction that a war has brought to this strange land. Many of the images are barely recognizable as our planet. Others you don't want to recognize as something we've done to each other and ourselves. Herzog narrates in that odd, beautiful Bavarian accent of his, but the narration is minimal. Mostly he uses classical music pieces from Wagner, Schubert, Verdi and others. It's a really extraordinarily transportational experience, as Herzog takes us to another land and an often breathtaking and heartbreaking journey. Another filmmaker could've easily made this movie feel exploitative of the war, but Herzog makes it allegorical. He shows us ourselves by trying to show us something else. He plays on our emotions and our imaginations, making the movie even more impactful than it would've been as a straight documentary about the war. I found myself speechless and slightly disturbed by the movie, in a good way. It's quietly operatic, contemplative without being boring or too heady. It's a simple movie. Extraordinary in every way. One of Herzog's best, and that's really saying something.

24. Dances with Wolves (1990) directed by Kevin Costner

Unfortunately, Dances with Wolves' reputation (especially among movie buffs) has been damaged over the years because it beat Goodfellas for the Best Picture and Best Director Oscars. While I personally would've also given both of those awards to Scorsese, that doesn't mean that Dances with Wolves isn't a worthy choice. Although at its core it is still the "white man, savior of the Native people" storyline, it's done with more care and nuance than others of that kind (Avatar, The Last Samurai, etc.). We hear a lot of the Native's language (Lakota and Pawnee), and the movie takes great pains to show us the slowly evolving relationship between Kevin Costner's Lt. Dunbar and the Sioux, led by Graham Greene's Kicking Bird. We see them exchanging words, slowly learning each others language, and forging bonds that help both of them as the white man is encroaching on the Native's lands and lives. A big beautiful epic, it's the kind of movie (especially alongside Costner's terrific Open Range) that makes you wish the filmmaker would make more westerns.

23. L.A. Confidential (1997) directed by Curtis Hanson

L.A. Confidential is a tribute to all the great noir movies of the 1940's and 50's, while also being a prime example of the genre itself. Adapted from the great James Ellroy novel, this movie has an amazing collection of great actors in it. Led by our lead trio of Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, and Russell Crowe we go down a rabbit hole of sex, drugs, corruption, violence, and the beginning age of paparazzi. It's a seedy and somehow still beautiful town, populated with great characters played by the likes of David Straithairn, James Cromwell, and Kim Basinger in a role that she won an Oscar for, even if she's probably the weak link in the cast (which says more about the cast than it does about her, by the way). It's a big, convoluted web of deceit and destruction, but that's what the noir genre always gave us. It should've been the big winner at that years Oscars, but got overshadowed by the juggernaut of Titanic. But I think time has been kind to the movie because it's been 20 years and it's the movie from 1997 that ends up on this list. 

22. Close-Up (1990) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Close-Up is a fascinating and brilliant look at a real life case in which a man claimed to be a famous Iranian director, impressed a family, only to have them find out that he wasn't that filmmaker and his subsequent trial for fraud. That may not sound like the most compelling movie, but Kiarostami's genius use of documentary and recreation footage (where the people played themselves), helps give everything an intrigue and strange atmosphere that kept me riveted. The story concerns Hossain Sabzian, a poor print shop worker who is obsessed with the movies, and is intentionally mistaken for famed Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf while on a bus one day. The woman who mistakes him, Mrs. Ahankhah, does so because he claims to be the filmmaker. But when she introduces him to her family, including her sons who also are passionate about film, the little lie takes on more weight, and Sabzian goes along with it, as this is seemingly the first time anyone has really listened to him. It makes him feel important instead of poor and worthless. He is listened to, seen, and respected. We can all sympathize with that feeling, I think.

Although he admits to taking some money from the family, that he asked for and they gave, he doesn't see himself as a criminal. He didn't intend to rob the family or anything, I think he was simply a little bit off in the head maybe, and lonely, and in need of the kind of attention he got from the Ahankhah's. Kiarostami was a master at getting believable and intricate performances from any actor, professional or not. This movie didn't need to be based on a true story for it to work. The "actors" carry the story and its themes perfectly, and it's an emotionally affecting movie in many ways. Close-Up has a lot to say about the needs of humanity and how we don't often get what we emotionally need. It says a lot about the nature of performance and what kind of performance we are all always giving, even when we're trying not to. It's a movie that will stick in my mind and will be there a long time. And I'm thankful for that.

21. The Big Lebowski (1998) directed by The Coen Brothers

Although Fargo is generally thought to be the Coen Brothers' masterpiece of the 90's, cult hit The Big Lebowski has long been the one that I prefer. I've probably watched it as much as the rest of the Coen's movies combined. Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi, and especially John Goodman keep me coming back to this bowling noir movie. Not quite a parody of the old detective noir genre, but more a twisted modern take on it, the movie works even when it doesn't make you laugh. But The Dude, Walter, and Donnie always have me cracking up, and then there's John Turturro's Jesus, Peter Stormare and the nihilists, Philip Seymour Hoffman's awkward Brandt, and of course Sam Elliot's The Stranger narrating the whole thing and occasionally losing his way. The Dude abides, man.

20. Hoop Dreams (1994) directed by Steve James

A wonderfully human look at the lives of two up and coming basketball stars in inner city Chicago in the late 80's early 90's. Hoop Dreams started as a 30-minute project looking at how 8th graders were recruited by suburban schools to play basketball, the project grew and grew until it became something totally different, the best documentary I've ever seen. A look at how the business of basketball, and of trying to find the next Michael Jordan, can chew up and spit out unsuspecting families and people, Hoop Dreams has a right to be angrier than it is. Director Steve James instead encompasses all the human emotions, even taking us into the life of one of the young men's mother as she works her way through nursing school to help provide for her family. It's a tough life for these kids, made tougher by the fact that neither was the next Michael Jordan (as most young men aren't). It may look like a doc about basketball, but really it's about life in America.

19. Malcolm X (1992) directed by Spike Lee

Spike Lee has said that Denzel Washington became Malcolm X during filming of the great biopic of the controversial leader. He said Denzel would often go off script for minutes at a time with an assurance and fire that were not his own. Once he would finish a speech and Spike would call cut, he'd ask Denzel where those words came from and Denzel would say "that was Malcolm." And I believe it. As much as we know the faces and voices of movie stars like Denzel, and he changes neither of them for this performance, I never once questioned that I was watching Malcolm, not Denzel, on screen. It's a scorching performance, and Spike doesn't let Denzel down, as the movie is a masterpiece as well. A huge epic biopic of one of the most prominent and complex leaders of our times, Lee also doesn't sugar coat or deify Malcolm. We see him be unnecessarily cruel to a white woman that wants to help him, simply because she's white. And Lee also shows us Malcolm growing when he visits Mecca and sees Muslims of all shapes, sizes, and colors worshipping in beautiful harmony together. He changes, he develops, he grows. Those are things not often seen in the biopic genre, and it's why Malcolm X may be the greatest of biopics.

18. Schindler's List (1993) directed by Steven Spielberg

I've put Ralph Fiennes' performance as Amon Goeth as one of the great villains in cinema history, but probably should've put Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler as one of the great heroes as well (he was one of the last cuts I made to that list). Schindler isn't a perfect man, but he does great things to save more than a thousand people from slaughter at the hands of the Nazis. This movie is beautiful from an aesthetic perspective, the cinematography from regular Spielberg collaborator Janusz Kaminski (though this was the first time they worked together) is astounding, and it's John Williams' most beautiful score. The acting is top notch all around, and although the subject matter is the awful, the movie is about finding hope in the most hopeless of situations, so as a whole you don't come out depressed or oppressed by the movie. As Stanley Kubrick said, "the holocaust is about 6 million people who died. Schindler's List is about 1,100 who didn't." That doesn't mean that Spielberg turns away from the horror, just that he's not wallowing in it. It's ultimately and uplifting and inspiring movie. One of the best films from one of our best filmmakers.

17. Swingers (1996) directed by Doug Liman

Swingers is an important movie for me in that I saw it as a young teenager, and it was one of the first low budget non-Hollywood type of movies I ever loved. It's funny to think of it now as non-Hollywood, since so many of the people involved went on to big careers, but at the time it was just a $200k movie that no studio wanted to make with the movie's writer starring with a bunch of his friends and being directed by a guy, Doug Liman, who'd only made one movie before.

Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn play Mike and Trent, a couple of struggling actors who occasionally get auditions, but mostly just hang out, going to clubs all around LA with their friends Rob (Office Space's Ron Livingston), Charles (Alex Desert), and Sue (named after the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue", played by Patrick Van Horn), and cruising for chicks along the way. Mike's trying to get over his breakup with a longtime girlfriend, and Trent repeatedly and hilariously tries to get Mikey to follow his advice for how to pick up girls (whether he actually likes them or not is irrelevant). Against this aimless backdrop, Liman shoots a lot of handheld (and apparently often without filming permits) shots, giving the comedy a great homemade and gritty quality that is really endearing.

Swingers launched both Vaughn and Favreau to much bigger things, both in front of and behind the camera, but I'm not sure either ever did anything better. Liman would go on to direct Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, Edge of Tomorrow, and the underrated Go, but he never bettered this movie either. Whether it's Trent's "You're like a big bear" speech, Mike's incessant calling of a girl whose number he got earlier in the night, or even Favreau's little look when Trent says "Hey Mikey, it's been 2 days, you should call that Nikki girl", the humor comes in many ways, all perfectly delivered by the wonderful cast.

16. The Beatles Anthology (1995) directed by Geoff Wonfor and Bob Smeaton

A thorough celebration of the life and times of the greatest band we've ever known, The Beatles Anthology is my favorite documentary. At 10+ hours, time has never flown faster than when I was watching this. The filmmakers used bits of interviews, photos, performances, and sometimes songs to illustrate where the band was and what they were thinking and creating at any given time in their history. Going from their births to the end, I couldn't ask for more from this doc as a look into the group that has inspired me the most as a creative person, and been the best of the soundtrack of my life. This movie encapsulates all of that and more.

15. Forrest Gump (1994) directed by Robert Zemeckis

Forrest Gump is one of the great fairy tales ever put on film. It's not a fairy tale like The Princess Bride or something that one would immediately recognize, but more a fairy tale like Rocky is a fairy tale. It's a fairy tale set in our real world, as it follows the adventures of the title character. Robert Zemeckis was always known for his technological innovations, like the SFX in Back to the Future, or the live-action/cartoon mixing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, but Forrest Gump is his best movie because there's such a seamless blend of the technology and the story and characters. We can identify with Forrest just wanting to be accepted and loved, and can also laugh at the ridiculous situations he gets himself in as well. And, of course, his love of Jenny. Who can't relate to a kind of devotion to your greatest love? And Forrest is just an interesting guy, wonderfully played in one of Tom Hanks's best performances. I love spending time with this character, and going through the wild ride of his life.

14. Defending Your Life (1991) directed by Albert Brooks

Daniel (Brooks) dies and is sent to Judgment City, where people from his part of the world are sent to find out whether they will be allowed to "move on", or whether they'll be reincarnated on Earth for another go round. They have to defend the power that fear has over us in all its guises, from not taking a job you want because it'll be scary, to chickening out on making a move on the girl you really like. Daniel is assigned an attorney, Bob Diamond (Rip Torn), and eventually meets another deceased person in the city, the fun and lovable Julia (Meryl Streep), also awaiting judgment. Daniel's told that he will have to defend 9 days of his life while in Judgement City. "Is that a lot?" he asks. It's not a lot or a little, he's told, it just is. But to a neurotic guy like Daniel, that sure seems like a lot. Julia is only defending 4 days, and when Daniel sneaks into her trial he sees things like her saving her family from their burning house and her prosecuting attorney crying and saying "I just wanted to see that again" after Brooks' prosecutor (Lee Grant) has been relentless in saying he doesn't deserve to move on.

The laughs come in all different ways here, some great one liners and set ups, but mostly I found them coming from the great characters Brooks sets up. He's his usual sarcastic neurotic self, but we feel some deep humanity in him as his life of second guessing himself may send him back to Earth just as he's met the love of his (after)life in Julia. And boy is Meryl Streep low key, warm, and altogether wonderful as Julia. It's not a flashy part like many of her Oscar grabbing roles, but it's a role that would've ruined the movie if it'd been cast with the wrong actress. Rip Torn is a hoot as the lawyer, bringing an unhinged hilarity to the movie. Defending Your Life is a wonderful look at a possible afterlife, with many associated questions arising from the world Brooks creates. It's a terrific love story between Brooks and Streep. And above all it's just a damn wonderful comedy.

13. Before Sunrise (1995) directed by Richard Linklater

Richard Linklater is one of the least celebrated truly great American filmmakers of our times. Thankfully that has started to change over the last couple of years, since his big critically and commercial hit Boyhood in 2014, but those of us that've been following Linklater since his first few features have known that he is one of our most sensitive, intelligent, and curious filmmakers. He started off with his indie hit Slacker, then made the great high school movie Dazed and Confused, and followed that up with this tiny little romantic masterpiece that sees Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy meet on a train through Europe, and impulsively get off and spend the night walking and talking around Vienna, slowly getting to know each other and falling in love. The trio would revisit these characters two more times, 9 years later in 2004's Before Sunset, and another 9 years later in 2013's Before Midnight. All three are terrific, for different reasons. Before Sunrise is the most romantic, and maybe my favorite of the trilogy.

12. The Shawshank Redemption (1994) directed by Frank Darabont

One of the most universally beloved movies ever made, seemingly everyone likes The Shawshank Redemption. It has long been the #1 movie on IMDb's fan voted Top 250 movies list, holding the spot for most of the past 15 years or so. Endless showings on TNT and TBS have made the movie so ubiquitous that I think people can easily forget just how powerful the movie is. The cast is uniformly excellent, it's beautifully shot by the great Roger Deakins, and will always be Frank Darabont's masterpiece as a film director. There's not a lot new to say about this movie, but I'll say that it thoroughly deserves its place on any Best Movies of the 1990's list.

11. Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) directed by John Patrick Shanley

A review of Joe Versus the Volcano is very difficult to write. It is at once epic and intimate, ambitious and silly, humorous and melancholy, ridiculous and thought provoking. It is a movie that has a passionate fanbase, but a movie that has divided critics and audiences since it was released in 1990. On IMDb it has a user rating of only 5.7/10, on RottenTomatoes a "rotten" critics score of just 58% (and an audience score of 54%), a thumbs down from Gene Siskel, New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote "Not since Howard the Duck has there been a big-budget comedy with feet as flat as those of Joe Versus the Volcano. Many gifted people contributed to it, but there's no disbelieving the grim evidence on the screen." Yet it had some staunch defenders like Roger Ebert who called it "new and fresh and not shy of taking chances" upon its original release. Obviously, since I’m putting it as my #11 movie of the decade, I’m on the side that Ebert is on. This movie is full of life and invention, warmth, whimsy and insanity, and even Tom Hanks has referred to it as something of a hidden gem in his filmography.

10. Taste of Cherry (1997) directed by Abbas Kiarostami

Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is a fascinating and affecting movie. It has stayed in my brain since I first watched it, with its simplicity, empathy, and emotional power. The plot, that of a man trying to find people to assist him in his suicide, sounds depressing as hell, but it's really not. We never know why he wants to commit suicide, but Kiarostami subtly shows us the character's isolation. And feeling alone is why everyone who commits suicide does, they feel alone. If they weren't alone they'd have something to live for. It's an interesting take that this man wants help with his death, and I think that's the key to the movie. This man is reaching out for connection, looking for someone to help him, yet, naturally, when he finds connection is when there's some doubt to his plan. He picks up 3 passengers, of 3 ethnicities, throughout the movie, and when the third tries to convince him not to do it, he does so through connecting with our protagonist. And that's why when the camera fades to black as he's lying in the grave he's already dug, with us ignorant of whether or not he took the overdose of pills he planned on taking, I was filled with hope and positivity in this life affirming masterpiece.

9. Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993) directed by Steve Zaillian

A fascinating movie with a lot of brains and insight, while also working on the level of being one of the great family movies ever made, Searching for Bobby Fischer is a movie that I watch pretty much every time it's on TV, and it's on TV way more often than you might think. I just find it so challenging, yet so lovable. It's perfectly acted by everyone in the cast, subtly directed by ace screenwriter Steve Zaillian, and gorgeously shot by the legendary Conrad L. Hall (where, shamefully, the movie's only Oscar nomination came from). It's a fascinating look into a world most of us are probably not familiar with, but at once is very familiar, that of parents pushing their children to do things and be things that the children may not want to do or be. Chess prodigy Josh (Max Pomeranc), his competitive but loving father Fred (a never better Joe Mantegna), protective mother Bonnie (Joan Allen), and the dueling teachers in Josh's life, Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne) and Bruce (Ben Kingsley). It's an embarrassment of riches in the characters department. Through all the pushing and competition, Bonnie never loses sight of the goal, and just wants her son to be a good person, but Fred gets caught up in winning at almost all costs because "he's better at chess than I've ever been at anything", while Josh is not always capable of knowing when to take Bruce's often harsh advice and when to take the more nurturing but less fundamentally sound advice from Vinnie. To see Max Pomeranc's tremendous performance as he's being pushed and pulled in all these directions while only 7-years-old, is truly extraordinary. It's probably the best child performance I've ever seen in a movie. Thankfully, it's not wasted in a lesser movie, but into one of the best movies of the 1990's.

8. Out of Sight (1998) directed by Steven Soderbergh

I wanted to see Out of Sight when it came out because I thought Jennifer Lopez was hot. It was that simple for me. I knew it had "that guy from ER" in it (George Clooney), but whatever, it didn't matter. I had no knowledge of director Steven Soderbergh, nor screenwriter Scott Frank, nor writer Elmore Leonard, whose book inspired the movie. But I think I watched it 4 or 5 times when it came out on VHS (aw, remember those days? I'm glad they're dead too). I was enthralled with George Clooney's cool, Jennifer Lopez's hotness and actual acting ability, the sexy cinematography and editing, and the terrific crime story of deals and double crosses and interesting characters. The supporting cast populated with great actors like Don Cheadle, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, Denis Farina, and an uncredited cameo from Samuel L. Jackson, never hurts.

It was a renaissance of sorts for Soderbergh, who'd made a big splash with his debut Sex, Lies, and Videotape, but had hit a wall both creatively and commercially afterwards. It also sparked a great artistic working relationship with Clooney, as the two would make 5 more movies together. But they never topped this initial collaboration (though their terrific remake of Tarkovsky's Solaris gets better every time I watch it). Like Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Barry Levinson's Get Shorty, Out of Sight might not be completely faithful to the source novel, but it "gets" Elmore Leonard. It has the distinctive dialog, an unforced cool, and a leisurely paced narrative that Soderbergh mixes up by telling out of chronological order. It's famous "locked in the trunk" meeting between Clooney and Lopez is justifiably famous as it's off the sexiness charts, but the Don't Look Now evoking sex scene later in the movie is equally as sexy and proves that sexiness can easily exist without nudity. It's fun, funny, violent, sexy, and proof of how great the 90's were that it's only #8.

7. Beauty and the Beast (1991) directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise

I know it's not the first movie I saw in the theaters, but Beauty and the Beast is the first one I have vivid memories of seeing. I was enthralled from the first second to the last. I had a huge crush on Belle, and knew all the songs by heart. Now, I'm older, more cynical, have a general distaste for musicals and still, I love this movie with all my heart. Belle is the best and most interesting of all the Disney heroines, smart, funny, kind, and fiercely intelligent. And the Beast is the most interesting of the Disney Princes, probably because he has his own fascinating personal journey. He goes from arrogance and self hatred to both learning to love himself and someone else. Meanwhile, the movie teaches us that we should be falling for the soul of a person, looks be damned. That's a pretty great lesson to be put on top of the impeccable animation, tremendous songs, and flawless voice cast. The new live-action remake that came out this year only made me wish I was watching this movie again instead.

6. Goodfellas (1990) directed by Martin Scorsese

Goodfellas is one of the breeziest 2 1/2 hours in movie history, but is one of the most profane and violent mainstream movies you're ever gonna see. Not talking about gore or blood necessarily, but violence in the way people speak and treat each other, in addition to the guns and bats and ice picks and whatever else that these gangsters use to dispatch of one another with.

In addition to the flawless acting from an amazing cast, Thelma Schoonmaker and Michael Ballhaus deserve infinite praise for their work on the editing and cinematography, respectively. Ballhaus’s roving camerawork helps us feel personally involved in these people’s lives, and Schoonmaker’s propulsive editing makes the movie feel alive with energy. The most obvious examples of Ballhaus’s great work is the famous tracking shot in the Copa, and the great camera work during a certain sequence of the movie scored to the piano section of “Layla”. Schoonmaker’s genius in particular shows during a bravura sequence where Henry spends a frantic, paranoid day where he believes an FBI helicopter is following him as he dashes all over town running guns, tries to organize some drug trafficking, and attempts to cook dinner for his family (“don’t let the sauce burn” he keeps repeating to his family).

That said, some people may be bothered by both the language (fuck is used an alleged 300 times in the movies 145 minutes) and the violence. These characters are not nice people, and the fact that they show no remorse for their actions may also disturb some. The movie is not overly graphic in terms of gore, but there is no shortage of violence depicted on screen. Still, it's to Scorsese and company's credit that I can't help but smile while watching all of that go down. It's a brilliant piece of filmmaking.

5. Dead Man Walking (1995) directed by Tim Robbins

THE most emotionally devastating movie I've ever seen, Dead Man Walking's genius is to get us to be destroyed by the execution of an awful human being. Sean Penn's extraordinary work as Matthew Poncelet (the best of his considerable career) and the tireless decency and love from Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) force us to see that every life is precious, even those of people who've stolen that precious gift from others. Robbins being the writer/director and staunchly against the death penalty, there are certainly indications that the movie is anti-capital punishment, but it has the intelligence and heart to also understand what an execution can bring to the families of those who've been wronged. The final 30 minutes or so of this movie is the most destroying piece of cinema I've seen, as we see Matthew come to grips with the realization that he can't get out of his sentence, and Sister Helen's guides him through his final moments as she pleads with him to truly take responsibility for what he's done and have the possibility of redemption in God's eyes.

Flawlessly acted, written, and directed, the movie is never sensational about such an inflammatory subject. It sees everything the way it is, gives everyone their time, and simply regards the process of execution. Leaving the audience to make up their own minds about what they think. Robbins sidesteps every opportunity to preach to the crowd. He's much too smart for that. He knows that simply showing the story (adapted from the non-fiction book of the same name by Sister Helen Prejean), and making sure to show everyone as a real person, we'll see that Matthew's death really doesn't bring back that poor teenage couple. All we're left with is another dead body.

4. Unforgiven (1992) directed by Clint Eastwood

Little Bill: You'd be William Munny out of Missouri. Killer of women and children.

Will Munny: That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill.

My vote for Clint Eastwood's masterpiece as actor and filmmaker is the universally acclaimed western Unforgiven. The terrific characters set up in the original screenplay by David Webb Peoples people this movie with a lot of life, and Eastwood's flawless casting of great actors like Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman and Richard Harris, in addition to himself in the lead role, really helps bring the story alive. Ultimately though, it's the story of William Munny, who'd been cured of the evil ways of his youth by his now deceased wife, leaving him with two young children, and a lifetime of guilt and frustration. When the opportunity to make some money comes up, taking revenge on a couple of guys who attacked some whores in a brothel in Montana, he takes it. We follow him on his eventual descent back into the William Munny of legend, as the job becomes much bigger than taking down a couple of hoodlums, when Hackman's corrupt Sherrif Little Bill doesn't take kindly to Eastwood trying to cash in the reward for these fellas he's given leniency to.

It's a gorgeously shot, wonderfully acted, and terrifically written elegy of a movie. Eastwood's farewell to the western genre that'd made him a household name. Almost noirish in its moral ambiguity, Unforgiven also works as a straight ahead western adventure, even if you don't want to look deeper at the things he's saying with it. One of the best movies to ever win Best Picture at the Oscars, Unforgiven stakes its claim as possibly the greatest western ever made too.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994) directed by Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction hit the moviegoing public like a lightning bolt in 1994. It's unashamed use of violence and creatively foul language offended a good deal of the people who went to see it (there were actually a number of boos from the audience when it took home the Palme D'or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival). It also hit me like a lightning bolt when I first saw it at about the age of 12 or so. It was the first movie I'd remembered seeing told out of order (no, I hadn't seen Citizen Kane by 12, nor had I seen Tarantino's debut, Reservoir Dogs) and the stunning dialog really lodged a place in my young brain. Tarantino's skills as director also had quite an impact on me, building tension in some scenes, hilarious comedy in others, and his use of music struck a significant chord with me back in those days of not knowing just how much he was stealing from Scorsese (in style and approach more than content).

So many movies that hit you at a young age simply don't continue having the same sort of impact as you get older. Pulp Fiction, though, still thrills me and makes me laugh (it's one of the great dark comedies at its core), nearly as much as when I was 12. There's not really a whole lot more to write about one of the most written and talked about movies ever made. Not for everybody, but definitely for me!

2. Dark City (1998) directed by Alex Proyas

I vaguely remembered Dark City being advertised, but only knew one person who saw it in theaters and they told me it was just ok. So I was surprised when I saw at the end of the year that it landed at #1 on Roger Ebert's year end top ten list. That made me want to check it out and see what was up. I did, and just thought, "it was ok". But then I started thinking more about the philosophy behind it, and especially the images contained within it. I was caught by the incredible German expressionistic architecture, and the subconscious evocation of old school noir movies (subconscious to me, because I didn't know much about noir at the time) and the paintings of Edward Hopper. So I bought it on DVD, watched it again, and liked it a lot. Then a few weeks later watched it again, and loved it. A few months or a year or whatever later, I watched it again and decided it was one of my favorite movies.

In 2008, director Alex Proyas released his Director's Cut of the movie. I'm not normally a fan of Directors Cuts, but this one took one of my favorite movies and turned it into an all-time top 5 for me. The theatrical cut is like a sprint, the quick cutting and relentless pacing rushing towards the final confrontation. The DC adds in just a few scenes, but Proyas cuts them in in a way that lets the movie breathe and not exactly take its time, since it is still paced quite rapidly, but feel like it's not the sprint to the finish line that the original cut is. I listed it last year as one of the most beautiful movies ever made, because it can be viewed in slow motion and just taken as a moving painting and it still works. Roger Ebert said so eloquently in his original review (he's since written another one, when he added it to his list of "The Great Movies", as well as doing a commentary track for the DVD) and I can't top it, so I'll just close with this quote "If it is true, as the German director Werner Herzog believes, that we live in an age starved of new images, then Dark City is a film to nourish us. Not a story so much as an experience, it is a triumph of art direction, set design, cinematography, special effects--and imagination."

1. Big Night (1996) directed by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott

I've written about Big Night over and over again, because it's the movie I most connect to on an emotional level. It's a terrific comedy, a heartbreaking drama, and an actors showcase as the ensemble put together by Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott, including the two of them, is simply extraordinary. I initially wrote that Big Night was about life, and I believe that more than ever now. It's about relationships, new and old, romantic and platonic and familial, beginning and ending. It's about trying to start your life, or a new life in the case of Tucci and Tony Shaloub's Italian brothers. It's also about food, that life giving nurturer that we disrespect so often. Tucci has said "I thought I loved food when I started making Big Night, but I loved it even more after. It was never my intention to make a food movie. The movie was about the relationship between art and commerce, the art being food." But no movie has ever loved food like Big Night. The cooking, the presenting, the eating, it's all here, it's all delicious looking, and it means so much. When Shaloub's character is disgusted by the "Italian food" served at the restaurant of Pascal (Ian Holm), he isn't just disgusted, he shouts "RAPE! RAPE! That's what that man serves every night, the rape of cuisine!"

It's a movie that is comforting to me. It's a movie that is moving to me. It's a movie that is endless in its humane depth of insight. It is my favorite movie and definitely the #1 movie of the 90's.