BEST OF THE DECADE - Introduction

Here we sit in 2010, a futuristic number to be sure, and yet the world doesn’t look quite like the future yet. In the ten years since Y2K, little has changed. We don’t have flying cars yet (although according to Back to the Future II, those don’t arrive until 2015), nor do we have robots to serve us (those are coming in 2104 according to A.I.), and the government isn’t tracking our every move (assuming Minority Report is correct, this technology doesn’t come until 2054). And here I am, 20 years old, still comparing my life to Steven Spielberg-produced science-fiction movies. No, it doesn’t appear that much has changed at all in the last decade. 2010 is rather a lot like 2000, except for the fact, I guess, that I own an iPod now. As Bilbo Baggins might say, change comes slowly if it comes at all. However, we don’t need a major change to warrant a glance backwards. All we need is a nice, round number.

So the list that follows is my top 10 of the last 10 years – the 00s. The movies on this list are not a retrospect of the last decade in film, but are my personal choices for the Top 10 of the 2000s – the films I had a personal reaction to and have stayed with me after multiple viewings. I’ll be going through the list one day at a time, posting a full-length review for each – my argument for the canonization of each film.

For this particular list, I’ve decided to stick only to American films. While there were certainly many great foreign films released in the last ten years (City of God (2002) and The Lives of Others (2006) are two that come to mind as being among my favorites), I don’t feel that I would be able to accurately represent the overwhelming wealth of quality that global cinema has to offer. So I’ll stick to the market I know well and have been following closely for the last decade.

A few interesting points before we begin the list: Five of the films on the list could be considered crime films, a whopping eight were based on books (one of those is a bit of a stretch though), and two of them feature fight scenes where a villain swings a spiked ball on a chain – I’m as surprised to say that as you are to read it.

But enough teasers. Let’s kick things off with the Honorable Mention – ten more great films that didn’t make the list, but are still among my favorites released in the last decade. In alphabetical order, they are: Almost Famous (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), Finding Nemo (2003), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Jarhead (2005), Match Point (2005), Minority Report (2002), Mystic River (2003), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and Zodiac (2007).

And now we start the list with number 10…

- Steve Avigliano, 2/1/10