Best Films of the Decade: 2000-2009

by Neil Morris

Ever since Moses brought down the stone tablets from atop Mount Sinai, people have gravitated to the Top 10 list. Perhaps no entity – aside from David Letterman – has utilized this olden construct more than film critics, who each year employ it to apply one last stamp of (dis)approval to the world of cinema.

Once every decade, however, we enjoy the rare treat of reaching back in time to not only rehash the best films of – you guessed it – the last ten years, but also reassess the way films have improved or withered with age.

In compiling my roster of the ten best films during 2000-2009, I looked back at the annual top 10 lists I began formally assembling in 2002, the year I began writing movie reviews. For starters, my top two films of the decade were released before then, and nothing I have seen during the ensuing seven years of critiquing films threatened their place atop my list.

Moreover, of all the films I declared at the time to the best of their respective years, only five merited a spot among the decade’s top ten. Over time, a number of films have grown in my estimation, while others have not matured as well, each for a variety of reasons. That is the wonder of cinema: the way a film speaks to you evolves due to personal and societal changes.

So, I commend to you – and your Netflix queue – my choices for the best films of the last decade. See you in another ten years!

Best film of the decade: Requiem for a Dream – Director Darren Aronofsky took Hubert Selby’s book about drug addiction and created a kinetic, transcendent masterwork about loss and unfulfilled promise. A trendsetter, including both visually and for Clint Mansell’s relentless score, this gut-punch of a film – more than any other this decade – advanced the medium of cinema.

2. Memento – Christopher Nolan’s best film remains this hypnotic thriller/character study, not his otherwise superb Batman entries. More than a structural gimmick, this is sublime cinema that combines indie inventiveness with populist moviemaking, resulting in a neo-film noir that is made better by its narrative loose ends.

3. The Pixar canon – Besides saving and revolutionizing the waning animated movie genre, Pixar’s sterling film collection stayed enjoyable to viewers of all ages while managing to mature with its audience. Consider this: 7-year old kids who started off watching Toy Story back in 1995 became the 15-year olds diving into the underwater Finding Nemo, 16-year olds flying away with The Incredibles, 19-year olds escaping into the world of a Parisian kitchen in Ratatouille, 20-year olds captivated by the futuristic WALL-E, and today’s 21-year olds floating away to far-off adventure in Up.

4. There Will Be Blood – Part Citizen Kane, part Stanley Kubrick, director P.T. Anderson’s tour de force speaks to the valor and iniquity of American individualism, and also encapsulates the longstanding feud between capitalism and orthodox religion. Daniel Day-Lewis’ portrayal of oilman Daniel Plainview is arguably the defining film performance of the decade.

5. United 93 – The most emotionally affecting film experience of the decade. Five years after September 11, 2001, director Paul Greengrass accomplishes the unthinkable: a technically proficient rendering that horrible day that manages to honor the departed, praise the heroes, explicate and damn the villains, and skewer the bureaucratic morass that paralyzed our governmental institutions. It is not only an exacting post-mortem on the day our world stood still, but also a celebration of the better angels of our nature.

6. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – Far and away, the most underrated film of the decade. Director Andrew Dominik – backed by a haunting score and gorgeous cinematography from the indomitable Roger Deakins – composes a gorgeous, lyrical meditation on celebrity and the concept of hero-worship, a longing gaze on the sepia-soaked days of yesteryear refracted into a piercing commentary on our con

temporary culture.

7. Munich – Critics have lashed Stephen Spielberg’s most provocative film with every strap of iniquity – amoral; pro-Jewish; anti-Israel; pro-Arab; anti-American; misogynistic; an act of appeasement; etc. These contrasting labels are integral to Spielberg’s complex portrait of Israel’s reaction to the murder of its athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and, by extension, America’s post-9/11 foreign policy. The film is designed not to advocate, but equally critique the sons of both Isaac and Ishmael.

8. The Bourne trilogy – This is the authoritative movie series of the decade (not Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, or the Star Wars prequels), along with being the most exhilarating, intelligent additions to the indispensable action-thriller lineage.

9. Traffic – Using several interconnected storylines, Steven Soderbergh conjured a sprawling, multi-faceted examination of the war on drugs from viewpoints both macro and personal. This is filmmaking at its most epic and informative.

10. City of God – The beauty of this film, set amidst the favelas of Rio De Janeiro, can be found in its narrative scope and visual poetry. Director Fernando Meirelles crafts a gritty, powerful saga that is as poignant as it is brutal.

Best of the Rest: Children of Men; The Wrestler; King Kong; Friday Night Lights; The Aviator; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly; Kill Bill Vols. 1 & 2; The Queen; Slumdog Millionaire; About Schmidt; Gangs of New York; Million Dollar Baby; 21 Grams; Whale Rider; Infernal Affairs; The Pianist; House of Flying Daggers; Batman Begins; The Dark Knight; Bridgett Jones’s Diary

The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke impersonates his recent career trajectory

Grade: A
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, and Evan Rachel Wood
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 55 minutes

In The Wrestler, a down and out bum grasps for one more shot at glory. The seemingly small but significant difference between director Darren Aronofsky’s new film and similarly situated films like The Champ, Rocky, and Cinderella Man is that boxing carries an esteem that professional wrestling lacks. Boxing is known as the "sweet science," fought under the "Marquis of Queensbury" rules, and popularized by culturally and politically transcendent figures such as Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis, and Muhammad Ali.

By contrast, the most prevalent remark made about pro wrestling is, "You know it's fake." It is popular among its rabid devotees; otherwise, it carries a stigma of being silly, trashy, and degrading. Some call the spectacle a "soap opera for men,” but perhaps the better label is "performance art.” The stagecraft in pro wrestling is predetermined, and the characters and storylines are written and choreographed for the viewers' pleasure. There is another vocation that also fits this description: Acting.

The Wrestler is foremost a character study of an aging grappler, Randy "The Ram" Robinson, played with raw authenticity by Mickey Rourke. However, under Aronofsky’s brilliant direction, the film itself becomes its own kind of performance art with a connecting thread that weaves the subject-matter, plot, characters, and actors into a seamless tapestry.

Aronofsky's prestige as a director was already cemented after the release of his 2000 tour de force, Requiem for a Dream. For The Wrestler, Aronofsky dials back his trademark visual flourishes for a gritty depiction of loss: of youth, fame, family, and, yes, dreams. Once the most popular wrestler in the country, Randy is now a relic living in near-poverty who spends his workweek stocking shelves at a grocery store in his rural Jersey hometown. Whereas Randy once fought before sold-out audiences in Madison Square Garden, he now spends his weekends scrapping for scratch at local armories and high school gyms.

After an especially brutal match accompanied by glass shards, metal staples, and barbed wire, Randy suffers a heart attack that forces him to hang up his tights and cancel an upcoming rematch against his former MSG foe, the Ayatollah (real name Bob, now a used car salesman). Facing a new reality, Randy attempts to advance his relationship with a local stripper, Cassidy (Marisa Tomei), and reconnect with his estranged daughter, Stephanie (Evan Rachel Wood).

The real-life parallels between character and actor are striking and likely intentional. Aronofsky risked cancellation of this film project with his insistence on casting Rourke, because producers and financiers were reluctant to invest in the notoriously tempestuous and evidently washed-up actor. As it turns out, Rourke visage bears the scars of real-life amateur boxing, botched plastic surgeries, and hard-living like a mask, doubling for Randy's years of ring injuries and steroid abuse. Like Randy, this is Rourke's attempt to recapture faded glory, and the end result is sensational. Rourke compliments extremely physical wrestling scenes - no stunt-work here, even when Randy must cut himself to draw blood during a fight - with intimate moments of charm, sensitivity, and vulnerability.

Cassidy does not turn the heads of younger customers as she once did, much like the now 40-something Tomei finds herself losing roles to a younger crop of actresses. And, Wood's own strained relationship with her father, Raleigh playwright and actor Ira David Wood, undoubtedly informed her brief, but spot-on performance here. When a tired and hurt Stephanie finally tells Randy, "I don’t love you; I don’t even like you. There is no more fixing this; it’s broke…permanently," the line practically crackles with verisimilitude. (Wood has been quoted as saying this role was a kind of "paid therapy" that led her to recently reconnect with her dad).

Fact meets thinly-veiled fiction throughout The Wrestler, never more than a bar-scene during which the pall over Randy and Cassidy's lives is temporarily lifted to the strains of Ratt's "Round and Round" playing on the jukebox. "F****n' 80's man, best s**t ever!", exclaims Cassidy. "Bet'chr ass man," says Randy. "I'll tell you somethin', I hate the f****n' 90's."

Unable to cope with life outside the squared circle, the film's finale manages to be both tragic and inspirational, hitting you like a 'Ram Jam' to the solar plexus. Whether you call it the rebirth of Rourke or Requiem for the '80s, The Wrestler has all the right moves. "They don't make em' like they used to," laments Randy/Rourke. Bet'chr ass, man.

Neil Morris