ten favorite movies, 2000-2009

A to Z:

Michael Bay's BAD BOYS II (2003)

Kinji Fukasaku's BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

Fernando Meirelles' CITY OF GOD (2002)

Michel Gondry's ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004)

Brad Bird's THE INCREDIBLES (2004)

Tony Kaye's LAKE OF FIRE (2006)

Peter Jackson's THE LORD OF THE RINGS: 
TEH WHOLE SHEBANG (2001-2003)

Edgar Wright's SHAUN OF THE DEAD (2004)

James Gunn's SLITHER (2006)

Paul Thomas Anderson's THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007)

apologies, I was going to draft little mini-writeups of all of these but I've already written about several of them here (linked in such cases, as they were in the previous posts, at the film's title) and the rest I haven't seen recently enough to do anything but run my mouth. 

stray defenses: 

• Bad Boys II is the Last Great Action Flick, and the only Great film M. Bay will ever make
• Shaun is funnier but Slither is sharper, and criminally overlooked
• Lake Of Fire may be, in its own way, the best nonfiction film I've ever seen
• and Incredibles is the best Pixar film, because it just is

and stray stats, because i think they're interesting:

• I suppose I agree with my list that Guillermo Del Toro (with three films) was the filmmaker of the decade. Peter Jackson teeeeeechnically has three films in my top ten, but they're counted as one, and then The Lovely Bones was just awful.
• 2002 was quantitatively the best movie year of the aughts, with nine -- Adaptation, City Of God, Punch-Drunk Love, Spellbound, Blade II, Blody Sunday, Dirty Pretty Things, Talk To Her and The Two Towers -- out of 53. (I split LotR and Kill Bill up into parts for fairness on this one.)
• Qualitatively is harder to say. I'd tie crowd-pleaser city 2004 (Kill Bill, Spider-man 2, Eternal Sunshine, The Incredibles, Mean Girls, Shaun Of The Dead and...well, Primer) with 2007, which of its six gave me two of my favorite cinema experiences (Grindhouse and King Of Kong) and then saw There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men battle it out in a wonderfully heavy awards season.
• Worst movie year turns out to be 2009 -- big ol' goose egg, there -- but I suppose it's hard to add fresher stuff to lists like this, and I'd wager at least Where The Wild Things Are and Crank: High Voltage would shimmy their way in if I ever came back to this.

thanks for reading! see you in ten years!


#11-#50, alphabetically:
Part One: Adaptation through Dirty Pretty Things
Part Two: The Fog Of War through The Man Who Wasn't There
Part Three: Mean Girls through Spider-man 2
Part Four: Spirited Away through Zodiac

favorite films 2000-2009 (part four)

Spirited Away through Zodiac, after the jump.

favorite films 2000-2009 (part three)

Mean Girls through Spider-Man 2, after the jump.

favorite films 2000-2009 (part two)

Fog Of War through The Man Who Wasn't There, after the jump.

my favorite films of the decade (part one)

i made this list for elsewhere and it'd be silly not to validate my time ever-so-slightly by reposting it here. the first four posts will be my eleventh through fiftieth favorite films (ten in each post) alphabetically, the last will be my top ten, also alphabetically. if you have a sure single favorite film of the decade, that sucks for you, you did not see enough movies.

Adaptation through Dirty Pretty Things, YouTube clipped all to death, after the jump.

back again 2010

ok, so: this blog started three years ago as a new year's resolution, which i kept right up until i got distracted by getting married, then continued intermittently for a year afterward, and then i slowly/abruptly/whichever abandoned it. i've still been writing film reviews for knoxville's Metro Pulse (the films i've written about since my last post here are accessible below) but here's to a new year, and getting back into doing this as well.

first of all, the Metro Pulse year-end list, to which i contributed five entries: Where The Wild Things Are, Crank: High Voltage, Observe And Report, Big Fan and Moon. (for the record Drag Me To Hell, Anvil: The Story Of Anvil, District 9 and Fantastic Mr. Fox would round out the list, with positions shifting according to my mood. i'll leave Number Ten open for stragglers.)


the rest of my year in film writing: