And a few more thoughts on the decade...
BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
After almost twenty years of waiting the movie they finally make is this cartoonish piece of crap (the refrigerator, the monkeys, the ants, the waterfall, the whole finale in the temple) with plotting that would be suspect in a videogame that embarrassingly carries the franchise name but retains none of the wit, charm, excitement and cinematic fun of the original. Ugh. Certainly not the worst movie of the decade, but the one that hurt me the most.
MOST OVERRATED:
Gladiator
To me this flick is a slickly made but ultimately hollow and extremely basic action movie that isn't even as powerful or interesting as the better sword and sandal epics of the '50s and '60s. That it was a box office hit, I have no problem with at all - more power to 'em. That this somehow passed as Best Picture material at the Oscars, I'm still stumped.
BEST DIRECTORS OF THE DECADE:
Lars Von Trier
The sometimes controversial Dogme95 standout who made his international mark at the end of the 1990s with
Breaking the Waves, he released only four films in the first decade of the 21st Century, but one made it to #2 on my list and all four made my list of a hundred.
Dancer in the Dark is a dark and weird and stylized Musical melodrama that on paper probably shouldn't work but in the hands of Von Trier and his rather brilliant and completely outside of the box casting of the odd Icelandic popstar Björk in the lead makes for a devastating and compelling piece of cinema. I liked the stylized
Dogville only a bit less, and while the Beckett-like pared-down Theatre of the Absurd staging may turn some people off, what he has to say about the darkness of human nature really spoke to me in a profound way. Its sequel,
Manderlay, isn't quite as clean in its message, but it's close. And the experience of
Antichrist is one of the most emotionally disturbing I've had in a movie theatre, even if I'm still not sure exactly what the point was. Lars Von Trier is definitely a divisive artist for both critics and audiences alike, but those of us who get him
really groove to his unique brand of filmmaking.
Wes Anderson
And Wes, I don't know how to express it; the guy just fills me with such joy with his melancholy hipster cinematic love poems. Three of his four films this decade made my list, and
The Darjeeling Limited just missed the cut. He continues to be the filmmaker whose sensibility and humor and style run absolutely parallel to my own, almost as if we're sometimes sharing a subconscious. His movies are beautiful to look at and technically perfect, but there's a deep intrinsic level that I just connect to with his flicks. Von Trier challenges me and makes me confront the dark side of the world as I experience it, but Wes pulls a warm blanket over me and makes me smile like an idiot. I need both of these kinds of movies in my head.
Steven Soderbergh
Soderbergh is my second runner-up, who had a mammoth and ridiculously productive decade as a writer/cinematographer/director that harkens back to the old Studio System - even though he is one of the most self-sufficient helmers you'll ever find. He just kept going and going this decade with the mainstream entertainments and box office hits of the three
Ocean's films, Oscar success with
Traffic and
Erin Brockovich, an ambitious if flawed biopic epic in
Che, the most underrated thoughtful Science Fiction film of the decade and a great remake in his
Solaris, small indie projects that were underseen but quite good in
The Informant, Bubble, The Girlfriend Experience and
Full Frontal, and was the best third of an antholgy film with Michelangelo Antonioni and Wong Kar Wai (
Eros). For me Soderbergh's only misstep of the decade was
The Good German, a movie that held high expectations for me but disappointed on nearly every count. He was also an executive producer of other filmmakers' work, such as Christopher Nolan's
Insomnia remake, Clooney's
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and
Good Night, and Good Luck, Todd Haynes'
Far from Heaven and
I'm Not There, Richard Linklater's
A Scanner Darkly, and the Oscar-nominated
Syriana and
Michael Clayton. Although only one of Soderbergh's efforts actually landed on my list, he's still one of the names that just about always satisfies me and I love his variety of subject matter, budget and seeming inability to take a vacation or even a nap!
Very Honorable mentions: Pedro Almodóvar, Spike Jonze, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
BEST NEW DIRECTOR:
Ryan Fleck & Anna Boden
Ryan Fleck only made two features, but both were excellent and are in my top hundred.
Half Nelson (2006) is an understated piece with two powerhouse central performances by Ryan Gosling and Shareeka Epps. A story about a drug-addicted middle school teacher who forms an unlikely relationship with a student, it could have easily slipped into melodramatic TV movie garbage, but in the hands of Fleck and co-writer Anna Bowden it is intelligent, avoids all the cliches with honest surprises in character, and overall is incredibly resonant. His follow-up,
Sugar (2009), was co-directed by his partner and co-screenwriter, Anna Bowden. It follows a Dominican pitching prospect who suffers massive culture shock when he arrives in the American midwest in the minor leagues and also finds out how competitive and fast-paced the culture of performing at the highest levels of athletics can be. Like
Half Nelson, the script deftly sidesteps the well-known pitfalls of the genre to create a compelling portrait that seems so incredibly authentic and truthful.
Of the first-time directors who emerged this past decade, this is the pair of writer/directors I'm very high on and expect continued great things from in this next decade.
Thomas McCarthy
The runner-up here would be Tom McCarthy. He also only made two features this decade as a writer/director, but both are also in my top hundred: the charming oddball characters of
The Station Agent (2003) and the engrossing immigrant piece
The Visitor (2008). McCarthy is a character actor himself, though he hasn't yet appeared in one of the films he's directed, popping up in flicks as diverse as
Michael Clayton, Syriana, Duplicity and
2012 as well as TV fare such as
"Law & Order" and
"The Wire". His sensibility as a filmmaker is incredibly satisfying and a welcome Humanistic voice, so I certainly hope and expect he'll continue on that path.
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