The Top Fifty

This week, I finally compiled a list of my ten favorite novels published in the last decade. (You can see my picks at the Mountain Times.) At the same time, I considered making a corresponding list for movies, but I struggled with this -- there were both too many movies and too few. I think, by that, I mean that there were too many good movies and too few great ones.

So I decided that I'd rather make a list of the 50 best movies of the decade -- a more expansive selection where movies admirable but flawed, entertaining but limited, would feel at home -- and post it here. The films are arranged alphabetically. Below the titles I have typed a few of my observations.

1. Apocalypto (2006)
2. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (2009)
3. Bad Santa (2003)
4. Bamboozled (2000)
5. Best in Show (2000)
6. Capote (2005)
7. Children of Men (2006)
8. Coraline (2009)
9. The Dark Knight (2008)
10. Doubt (2008)
11. Elling (2001)
12. The Fall (2006)
13. Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
14. How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass (2003)
15. Hot Fuzz (2007)
16. Hustle & Flow (2005)
17. I Heart Huckabees (2004)
18. In Bruges (2008)
19. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
20. Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
21. The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
22. A Mighty Wind (2003)
23. Monster (2003)
24. Mulholland Dr. (2001)
25. Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
26. The New World (2005)
27. Old School (2003)
28. Palindromes (2004)
29. Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
30. Public Fears in Private Places (2006)
31. The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
32. Redbelt (2008)
33. A Serious Man (2009)
34. The Shape of Things (2003)
35. She Hate Me (2004)
36. Sin City (2005)
37. Slumdog Millionaire (2006)
38. Snatch. (2000)
39. Superbad (2007)
40. Swimming Pool (2003)
41. There Will Be Blood (2007)
42. Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001)
43. Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005)
44. Tropic Thunder (2008)
45. 24 Hour Party People (2002)
46. Unbreakable (2000)
47. Volver (2006)
48. The Weather Man (2005)
49. The White Ribbon (2009)
50. Wonder Boys (2000)

- The best year for movies, apparently, was 2006, which produced seven favorites. The worst year was 2002, which yielded just one.

- No director created more than two of the movies on the list. The repeats are Wes Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox), the Coen brothers (The Man Who Wasn't There and A Serious Man), Christopher Guest (Best in Show and A Mighty Wind), Spike Lee (Bamboozled and She Hate Me), and Michael Winterbottom (Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and 24 Hour Party People).

- The movie that received the most mainstream acclaim was Slumdog Millionaire. The movie that received the least mainstream acclaim was She Hate Me. Naturally, I was far more reluctant to include the former than I was to include the latter.

- By my count, 22 of the movies are comedies. I think that number is a lot higher than it would be for most people who make lists of this kind, because most list-makers are humorless pedants.

- The movie I was most hesitant to list was Apocalypto because I really didn't like the idea of starting off with such an absurd picture. I even considered alphabetizing the list by the directors' names so as to avoid this situation. I think that would have put Paul Thomas Anderson first with There Will Be Blood, which is a much better movie. But, after all, I'm no auteurist.

- I apparently don't like foreign-language films as much as cineastes are supposed to. There are only seven of them here. Are the more interesting movies from Europe and Asia not making it over here? I can't say I'm too impressed with what I've seen, but I sometimes wonder: if only Hollywood's most acclaimed products -- stuff like Million Dollar Baby and A Beautiful Mind -- made it overseas, wouldn't American filmmakers look pretty dreadful to Europeans, if they don't look dreadful already?

- Two of the movies (Thirteen Conversations About One Thing and Tropic Thunder) feature Matthew McConaughey. WTF?

- This list does not accord with the list I made a year ago of the best movies of 2008.

- Alain Resnais's Private Fears in Public Places, also known as Coeurs, has the fewest votes on IMDb. How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass has the second fewest. The Dark Knight surely has the most.

- Paste Magazine, the A.V. Club, and Time Out New York all produced top-50 lists, too, but theirs were really lame and had annoying descriptions of each movie. They did complete theirs on time, though.

- Cinematically, it was a pretty OK decade. About as good as all the others since the 1930s.

- Let me know if I missed anything.

Comments

[Dr. Quinn]

Uhmm, you've overlooked Donkey Punch (2008).

[Richard B.]

Good list. I'm a little embarassed that I haven't seen more than about 12 of these though.

I'm honestly a bit surprised I haven't even heard of "How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass". What is that about?

[Brett Yates]

Thanks. "How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass," aka "BAADASSSSS!," is Mario Van Peebles's account of the making of the seminal blaxploitation movie "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song," which his father Melvin Van Peebles directed in 1971. In "How to Get...," Mario plays his father Melvin. It's a wild, grimy story and actually sort of inspirational even without any whitewashing or fake predictable heroism.

[Brett Yates]

I was just looking at this again, and I see that I forgot The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, which deserved a spot about as much as any movie on the list. Damn. Oh well.