#20-11
20. Mulholland Dr.
For the last 13 years or so, David Lynch has been making the same film. Each of his four films since 1997 is about a broken mind, and is presented as a dual narrative where one half dreams the other half, or perhaps both halves are dreaming each other. Of the four, Lost Highway is the most obvious, Inland Empire the most subtle and complex, and The Straight Story the most deceptively simple. But Mulholland Dr. stands out as being the most fun; it is the only one I would sit down and watch just for the hell of it. As a film, it plays like a greatest-hits collection of astonishing scenes, from the Man Behind Winky’s to Diane’s audition to the Cowboy’s speech to Club Silencio. And while I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of the other Lynch films, this is the one you need to see if you’ve never tried him before. Like all great mysteries, it will occupy your mind for days after you’ve seen it.
19. No Country for Old Men
I love the Coens. For me their greatest gift is their ability to play with film noir: they treat it not as a style or a genre but as a specific world with specific rules. In their noir worlds (e.g. The Big Lebowski, A Serious Man), it’s as if everyone and everything is turned against the main character. There’s a nagging suspicion that all of the pieces have been arranged in a certain way to maximize the coincidences and close shaves. Sure there’s ineptitude and folly and other human failings, but really fate holds all the cards and occasionally lets you peek.
No Country examines what this world would look like to someone who has the ability to leave it. Ultimately Llewelyn Moss is too dumb to escape it, while Anton Chigurh embodies it completely. But Sheriff Ed Tom Bell can watch it from a distance, and he does not like it one bit. The film is one of the best thrillers I’ve ever seen, but really it’s about how people cope with a world that is arranged against them. As Americans, we’re used to seeing films where the individual changes his environment, or at least gets to redeem himself and escape. This film throws that worldview out the window and presents something far more sinister, more defiant, and unfortunately, more realistic.
18. 色戒 Lust, Caution
For me this is the best Ang Lee movie of the decade: better than Brokeback, better than Crouching Tiger. It’s one of the most honest depictions of Asian culture ever put on film, and of the ways people try to escape the obligations of Asian society. The movie is not about espionage but performance: we are all of us acting every day of our lives, but few of us are given the chance to feel real passion – whether it be on stage, at work, or in bed. Tang Wei’s character is, above all else, tired of submerging herself for others, and Ang Lee follows her through years of performance and (ultimately) true emotion.
Each of the film’s three cornerstone scenes makes me pause for a moment in thought: there is a scene where she walks through an empty set, thinking of the night before; there is a scene where she and her friends dismantle their apartment, unaware of a dangerous observer; and there is that final shot of Tony Leung (whom we have believed for hours is a master manipulator) as he touches an empty bed, thinking not only of his previous nights with her but wondering how many observers were watching him. Lee holds on that shot for a long time, letting its implications soak in, before fading to black. I think the greatest compliment I can pay this film is that I will be watching it again ten years from now, and it won’t have waned one bit.
17. The Dark Knight
I wish I’d been able to see this in IMAX. From first frame to last, I loved it – the vulnerability of the characters, the scope of the city, the messiness of the relationships. Most of all I loved how damn iconic it was. Batman is a huge figure of my childhood, so this is not just filmmaking but mythmaking. I’ll be quoting the Joker (sad, I know) for a long time.
16. Brick
This is the movie the Coens didn’t make this decade: an inspired genre mash-up that throws the hard-boiled detective story right into a Southern California high school. For those who say it’s ridiculous: absolutely. It’s also goofy, inspired, quotable, and has Joseph Gordon-Levitt in one of those performances that makes no sense on paper and perfect sense on celluloid. If you’re a fan of Miller’s Crossing, watch this now.
15. Y tu mamá también
Alfonso Cuarón’s great road movie benefits enormously from a comment I heard him make once – that as an expatriate, he is able to see his country from both the inside and the outside. He is part of Mexico, and yet apart from it.
You can see that distance throughout this movie, which is about a journey between two teenage boys and an older woman. Time and time again, the camera seems to stand further back than you’d expect. And time and time again, a narrator emerges who provides background information that you otherwise would not hear. None of these are cheap gimmicks; they fill in the story in ways the main plot cannot. And they are essential to the film, which is not just about Julio and Tenoch and Luisa, but also the country through which they are passing – a country in the midst of its own adolescent discovery. For all the raunchiness and laughter and beauty in this movie (and there’s a lot), Cuarón is really after something much more: chronicling a time when we realized we needed a little more distance in order to grow up.
14. Primer
I love movies like this, because they remind me of how few materials we need to achieve greatness. Shot for $7000 in garages and industrial parks, Primer follows two engineers as they accidentally invent a machine that can send objects backwards in time. They begin to use themselves as test objects, and eventually each man tries to best the other by going back to an earlier event, altering it to suit his needs. The movie’s timeline is extremely confusing but also addictive in its clues and teasing solutions. Unlike all the other science fiction I saw this decade, Primer expands in my imagination rather than diminishes, and for that I’m very grateful.
13. 살인의 추억 Memories of Murder
The best police procedural I’ve seen in many years, this South Korean film about the country’s first serial killer follows two detectives with contrasting methods. Both are given chances to apprehend the killer, but departmental incompetence and bad luck get in the way. The movie benefits enormously from its rural setting and low-key aesthetic: there’s a feeling that catching the killer is an afterthought to many of the people involved. But as time goes on, a feeling of utter helplessness begins to creep into the investigation room. While other procedurals end with a solution, this film (like Zodiac four years later) is more interested in the exhausting toll of real police work. The final shot of Song Kang-ho’s face is one of the great close-ups in cinema, as twenty years of acceptance is shattered in a moment of crushing despair.
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Years ago, I said this movie was Annie Hall, and I meant that in the best way possible. Like Woody Allen’s film, it mostly takes place inside the head of a man as he traces his memories of a relationship. And its tone is both fanciful and unbearably sad. But Eternal Sunshine also implies something far more powerful – that the people we love are inextricable in our minds from all the other people we love. Joel’s feelings for Clementine run so deep that she can become other women in his memories: his first babysitter, the girl who takes him away from the bullies, the witness of his humiliation, the partner who shares his simple pleasures. And by wiping his memory, he erases not only her but also the foundations of his other emotions. Gondry’s finale is the correct example of a director throwing out a writer’s idea. He manages to suggest that these two people cannot be perfect together, but that being together gets them closer to that goal than anything else.
11. Cidade de Deus // City of God
I must’ve seen this movie 3 times before it ever made it to a theater in the States. Of all the debut films this decade, this was the one that grabbed me the most. While the Paolo Lins novel reads more like a drifting Altman movie, I think Fernando Meirelles’ great instinct was to take the camera and plunge it into the city, dragging us from character to character, decade to decade, and moment to moment. And what moments! Sequence after sequence is burned in my memory: the story of the apartment, a day at the beach, Benny’s goodbye party, Knockout Ned’s one-man army. The movie depicts poverty and crime with a force I’ve rarely seen elsewhere, and it ends with a feeling of exhilaration, exhaustion, and weirdly enough, hope.
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