Tony's Twenty Favorite Films of the Decade (Part 3)

The finale. In a way, there was very little suspense because if you know me at all, you already knew my favorite a long time ago.

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10. Dave Chappelle's Block Party
2005 - dir. Michel Gondry
The best review I’ve ever read for this film was just six words: “feel-good movie of the decade.” That one line would sum it up, but I’d like to add another: “Dave, we miss you.”



For two years from 2003 to 2004, Dave Chappelle was the most quoted man on American college campuses. But instead of diminishing since then, his perspective has stayed fresh with me longer than anyone else’s; he had a way of criticizing American society without ever insulting his audience’s intelligence. Then came $50 million dollars, Africa, and the best episode of Inside the Actors Studio I’ve ever seen.



Block Party is the bridge between all the early phases of Chappelle’s career: it’s got Dave the young goofball (Half-Baked), Dave the social critic (Season 2), Dave the purely funny guy (Killing Them Softly) and Dave the introspective human (Actors Studio). But most of all, this is Dave the community organizer, and what makes the movie work is that he’s trying to get everyone together while pointing out how often we don’t get along. His energy is truly infectious, and we sense how much the whole thing means to him – not only does he pay for the party himself, but he also invites the Ohio guests personally and takes time at the show to hang out with them. And he shows us, the audience, the same affection: we get to watch rehearsals, location scouting, prop selection and little interviews on the side.



One of the best moments is something so small and yet so significant: Dave is onstage telling a joke to the crowd and right as he gets to the punch line, the movie cuts to him rehearsing the same joke with just the band. Everybody cracks up and Dave starts improvising new set-ups, all the while beaming and saying “Man this is gonna kill ‘em.” And in that moment – when he invites us to share his love of performance, when he invites us to imagine how great the party will be – he makes us part of the community too. Goddamn Dave, we miss you.



9. 一一 Yi Yi
2000 - dir. Edward Yang
This great Taiwanese movie is so beautiful in its simplicity: it follows a nuclear family (the father, the wife, the daughter, the son, and the father’s brother) during the course of a year, starting with a wedding and ending with a funeral. In between lies all the routine and messiness of life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film that so perfectly evokes what it feels like to live in an Asian city. I’ve never been to Taipei, but I have walked home under the same overpass day after day, taken the same right turn out of my elevator, stared out the window at night and seen myself reflected on the whole city (or maybe it’s the other way around). The movie also contains two wonderful characters: a Japanese game designer and a little boy, both of whom seem so much more attuned to their surroundings than those around them. The final speech by the boy, Yang Yang, is perhaps the most appropriate ending to any film this decade, and an absolutely fitting end to the career of the director, Edward Yang.



8. El laberinto del fauno // Pan's Labyrinth
2006 - dir. Guillermo del Toro
This film evokes that feeling I had when I was 4 years old, watching Bambi and terrified of the forest fire that might kill all the characters. It presents two worlds, each a complex reflection of the other, and the little girl who moves between them. Like Bambi, it builds its story out of the most primal, mythical images of our childhoods: a mother dying, a brother crying, a banquet waiting to be eaten, a man stitching his own face, a little girl all by herself. For me, the key to the movie is the way we follow that girl. She doesn’t comprehend the larger political struggle, but her overwhelming desire to help others is what shines through. And Guillermo Del Toro is willing to follow that impulse all the way to the bitter end, when the movie bypasses tragedy and fantasy and becomes some kind of magnificent fable.



7. 빈집 3-Iron
2004 - dir. Kim Ki-Duk
I’ve often wondered how Kim Ki-Duk dreamt up this movie, which he wrote, shot, and edited in about a month. Like Chungking Express, it’s a miracle of sudden inspiration. It follows two characters who never speak to each other: the man is an aimless drifter who breaks into people’s houses; the woman is a battered housewife. There is a third character: her husband, who separates them, takes her back, and throws the drifter into jail. And it’s here, in the jail cell, that the movie shifts into something totally unexpected – something I wouldn’t dream of revealing even if I knew how to describe it. The last twenty minutes are at once illogical, weightless, magical and yes, totally sublime.



6. The New World
2005 - dir. Terrence Malick
Christopher Doyle says that genius in cinema is when someone shows you something you’ve always felt but have never been able to explain. Terrence Malick’s poem captures that feeling perfectly. It depicts 1600’s America as a beautiful, terrifying, and awe-inspiring land – one whose secrets unfold reluctantly. I think the slow cadence of the film is just perfect: any faster and it wouldn't have the right rhythm. Malick hits the sweet spot, cutting his shots at a pace that feels foreign yet absolutely correct, letting his music drop out as natural sounds emerge. The movie is a visual and aural sensation, one that allows us to experience a profound sense of discovery. A work of genius.



5. 千と千尋の神隠し Spirited Away
2001 - dir. Hayao Miyazaki
Is this the greatest of the master’s films? It’s certainly my favorite. From first frame to last it’s an utterly beautiful experience. Like Pan’s Labyrinth, it taps into the subterranean fears we all have, and then weaves out of them an amazingly original world populated with things I’ve never seen before. Watching it now, I’m struck by how dense the world of the bathhouse is: not only are there floors and floors of guests but also sleeping quarters, boiler rooms, gardens, pig sties, offices, and even a baby’s room – each with its own unique space and design. The bathhouse itself acts as a brilliant metaphor: run like a Western capitalist enterprise, it nonetheless comes from a distinctly Eastern tradition. And while the people inside can be intensely greedy, discriminatory, and vindictive, they are also capable of deep kindness and selflessness. Like modern Japan, like any Asian nation, it’s a complex place that its creator can neither fully approve of nor fully denounce. His only duty is to represent it as beautifully as possible, and for that I am eternally grateful.



4. Children of Men
2006 - dir. Alfonso Cuarón
The thing I like most about this movie is how much of it takes place in medium shot or medium-long shot. There are almost no close-ups; everything is seen the way you or I would experience the world, as opposed to the way every other movie presents its world. That subtle choice is what helps me accept the setting of this movie, which takes place in 2027, and is about people who have no hope because there are no children.



I love the way that Clive Owen plays the hero in this film. He’s a cynical and heartbroken man; desperate but not despairing, lucky but not invincible. He flinches in fear but soldiers on. Oh and he has no shoes, just like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. The single-take action sequences are justly famous, but I think my favorite shot is the one where he tries to light a cigarette and has an emotional breakdown, then picks himself up, not because it’s the action hero thing to do, but because, what else can he do in this crazy world?



3. Into the Wild
2007 - dir. Sean Penn
Few films have had such an emotional impact on me after one viewing. Christopher McCandless is a fool, I know, but that just makes his story feel sadder and more predetermined. He’s not a traveler, he’s a writer: his book is his life and he rewrites the story by changing his name and embarking on a journey. It’s not until the end that he realizes his folly: we just don’t have the convenience of rewriting our selves so easily. For me, the last half-hour of this film is utterly heartbreaking. After he misreads a book on edible plants, he finds himself about to die; only then does he scribble a note and finish it with the two most important words, the ones he’d never given enough respect, the only ones that he needed to accept: Christopher McCandless.



2. Before Sunset
2004 - dir. Richard Linklater
I’ve never seen a movie that so perfectly captures the awkward, tentative, probing steps of conversation between two people. I return to it every year like a favorite song. Like any favorite song, I have my favorite passages, the bits that I can recite by memory. But mostly I just like to watch it and savor the experience, which culminates in a dance Julie Delpy performs to Nina Simone, an image I’ll remember for the rest of my life.



1. 花样年华 In the Mood for Love
2000 - dir. Wong Kar-Wai
Wong Kar-Wai’s movie about romantic yearning in 1960’s Hong Kong is like a daydream from a lost civilization. In two apartments that sit next to each other, a husband and a wife have an affair. But instead of watching the adulterers, Wong focuses on their spouses, who begin to see each other and develop a relationship of their own – except they cannot consummate it without betraying their integrity or their discretion. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung are perfect in their restraint, letting their body language, their eyes, and their surroundings convey the emotions. But the prize belongs to Wong, my favorite filmmaker and a true visionary, who understands that lost opportunities have a way of staying with you – that waiting for the right time and place means nothing can ever be the right time or place. Seen together with 2046 (which I consider a continuation and a deepening of the same feelings), this is my favorite experience of the decade.