These lists are not easy to create. Something is always left out, or forgotten. No one will ever agree completely. But that’s the beauty of the list — it’s open for discussion or interpretation. After careful review of 10 years of movies, here is my list of favorite films from the last decade, the Oughts (2000-2009). — Michael Clawson
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25. Primer
Two garage scientists accidentally invent time travel and they do what most of us would do: they play the stock market. But as the time loops grow more complex, the movie unfolds into one of the most difficult, but rewarding, science experiments of the cinema. Made on the fly and on the cheap by Shane Carruth, Primer is one of the gutsier sci-fi movies.
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24. High Fidelity
John Cusack … gotta love him. He plays the most manic, depressing version of himself in High Fidelity, a wonderful comedy about love, relationships and, because of its record-store setting, music. Cusack plays Rob, a recently single eccentric who reflects back on his many loves during a movie-long “top 5 list.” He’s joined by Jack Black, Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Springsteen and the lovely Iben Hjejle in one of the most quotable movies of the decade. ______________________________
23. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
How do you make a movie about sex with no sex? The powerhouse that is Judd Apatow figured a way in this crude but lovable comedy that introduced us to the Apatow Comedy Machine and the genius of Steve Carell, who plays the title character with a pitch-perfect howl. Many other Apatow comedies would follow (Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Funny People), but The 40-Year-Old Virgin was the best and brightest.
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22. The Dark Knight
All of Christopher Nolan’s films could appear on this list (especially Memento or Insomnia), but Dark Knight is something very special. Yes, it broke most of the box-office records. And yes, it was Heath Ledger’s last film. But more than anything the Batman Begins sequel examined the roles of superheroes, especially their roles in relation to villains. Batman growled: “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Dark Knight was not afraid to look into the recesses of a man’s soul for salvation or damnation, and for that it will always be remembered.
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21. The Hurt Locker
The lone representative from 2009 on this list, Hurt Locker was a juggernaut this summer. Compared to the abysmal Transformers 2, not many people saw Hurt Locker, but those that did knew it was something special. Directed by renowned action direction Kathryn Bigelow and starring a very talented Jeremy Renner, the film follows a three-member bomb disposal team as it navigates the violent streets of Iraq. Gripping and almost surreal, the film was the first of only several films to tell an honest story from our country’s new warzones.
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20. Japanese Story
One of the most thoughtful and unappreciated movies of the decade, Japanese Story might be also one of the most forgotten. About an Australian geologist (Toni Collette) who escorts a Japanese businessman on a tour of the Outback, Japanese Story cruises along at an easy-going pace until a dramatic twist changes the entire fabric of the delicate composition. The ending is heartbreaking and poignant, but it reveals the true nature of what we as a people are capable of becoming.
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19. Punch-Drunk Love
Paul Thomas Anderson is an artist with his characters. In Punch-Drunk Love, which is something about pudding and frequent flyer miles, he gives us Barry Egan (Adam Sandler), an awkward and desperately lonely plumber salesman who has found love, or maybe love has found him. With Sandler’s best performance and a peculiar collection of new and old music, PTA crafts this wonderfully amusing and heartfelt tribute to the awkwardness in all of us.
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18. No Country for Old Men
The Coen Brothers are the most gifted of directors, and No Country For Old Men is one of their finest works. With basically no music, no fancy camera work, very little dialogue and a number of terrifically restrained performances, the Coens created their darkest, most haunting tale, this one about a bag of money and its suitors — a grizzled sheriff (Tommy Lee Jones), a hired killer (Javier Bardem) and welding rancher (Josh Brolin). And if you can decipher the dreams at the end and relate them to the film you’re a cinema expert.
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17. Juno
Most films bark at teens. Juno just wants to talk. The 2007 comedy, about a pregnant teen who decides to give her baby up for adoption, understood teens on a philosophical level. Juno also gave us a proper introduction to star Ellen Page, whose quirky dialogue was instantly quotable. Directed by Jason Reitman — whose new movie, Up In the Air, could have been on this list — Juno, and all its heartwarming goofiness, is a treasure.
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16. A History of Violence
Director David Cronenberg is no stranger to the violent and perverse, but here he outdoes himself … and in small-town America no less. Starring Viggo Mortensen as a diner owner, History invokes in us the outrage of violence and also the act of betrayal, which may be what Mortensen’s character has done to his family by hiding his dark past. In the end, though, the film, as disturbing as it is, wants what we all want — a safe place to raise our families.
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15. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Striking and majestic, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the first major martial arts movie of its kind (wuxia) to hit American soil. And now they’re quite common. The Ang Lee-directed picture centers on a mystical sword, its owner (Chow Yun-Fat) and a young girl (Zhang Ziyi) who wishes to wield its power. There’s lots of complex kung fu sequences, and also flying wire-fu, but the film is also an epic romance and a tragedy. Add into that stunning cinematography and a terrific Chinese score and Crouching Tiger is one of the most beautiful films of the decade.
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14. Lost in Translation
People who say nothing happens in Lost in Translation aren’t watching close enough. Life happens. About two disconnected souls (Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson) as they wander Tokyo’s culture-pulsing landscapes, Translation reflects on the loneliness of society and the way it alienates us from the mainstream’s centerline. It’s also a mesmerizing romance that ends at the most appropriate moment with a hushed whisper that’s never meant to be heard.
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13. Lord of the Rings
Peter Jackson pulled it off, and in spades no less. After filming for a full year on three consecutive movies, then releasing them a year apart — Fellowship of the Ring in 2001, The Two Towers in 2002 and Return of the King in 2003 — Jackson was not only able to create a convincing Middle Earth with Hobbits, dwarves, elves and a creepy Gollum, but he added real depth to J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy books.
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12. The Departed Martin Scorsese is one of the most gifted directors of any decade. But here, with The Departed, all his skills have been boiled into one red-hot crime thriller, about the Boston mob infiltrating the state police and the state police infiltrating the Boston mob. All the Scorsese staples are here — rock soundtrack, violence, Thelma Schoonmaker’s perfect editing, obscenely rich dialogue — as well as three of the most electric performances of the decade by Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon and Leonardo Dicaprio.
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11. Slumdog Millionaire
Hope is hard to convey convincingly on camera, but Danny Boyle never falters as he shows it in the face of young Jamal, a Mumbai teen who gets on a TV game show with all the right answers. Shot in some of the poorest locations on the planet and with many non-actors, Slumdog Millionaire nearly swept the Academy Awards the year it was released. More importantly, though, it showed audiences the importance of foreign film.
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10. Children of Men
Dystopian science fiction — from 1982’s Blade Runner all the way back to 1927’s Metropolis — is the oldest, and bleakest, variety of science fiction. Yet 2006’s Children of Men is something entirely new, and considerably bleaker. Set in a future London 18 years after women stopped giving birth, Alfonso Cuarón’s action-drama is ugly and cruel, but also beautiful and hopeful as it attempts to save the world’s last pregnant woman. The film is also a marvelous technical achievement as Cuarón and cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki craft exceptionally long takes around star Clive Owen as he plods through the nightmarish future.
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9. The Prestige Christopher Nolan is no stranger to this list. All of his films examine the balance between good and evil, and also explore the duality of flawed men, from his existential Batman to Memento’s memory-suffering Leonard. In The Prestige, a deeply layered and fully realized dramatic thriller, he takes these themes to the absolute breaking point. About two dueling magicians, Prestige is also about obsession as Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman one-up each other in 19th Century London. The film, which is told mostly out of order, is made so exact that every single scene is essential to understanding the plot’s complex riddles.
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8. Kill Bill
Quentin Tarantino freely admits that he steals styles and filming methods from other filmmakers. Strangely, though, his films are entirely unique, even as they borrow from Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa and all his other favorite directors. In Kill Bill — both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 — Tarantino turns his manic attention once again to Uma Thurman, who plays The Bride (or B****** K****), a betrayed former assassin who is sent on a “roaring rampage of revenge” after she’s put in a coma on her wedding day. Most people like Vol. 1’s chop-socky and kung-fu swordplay to Vol. 2’s wordier, and grittier, resolution. I think of them as a singular unit and feel required to watch both as opposed to one or the other. Every film Tarantino has made is amazing, but his Kill Bill shows off all his skills and powers as a filmmaker.
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7. There Will Be Blood Paul Thomas Anderson’s devastatingly raw There Will Be Blood was set at the turn of the last century, but its themes (greed, family, business) seem very appropriate in our world right now. Are not the CEOs of Citigroup, Enron, Goldman Sachs and Countrywide secretly versions of Daniel Day-Lewis’ devastating Daniel Plainview? Plainview, the vile oilman and father, abuses the public’s trust to attain money, and in the process abandons his son, his morals and all hope of his ultimate salvation. By the end of the movie, as he hollers to his butler, “I’m finished,” you can’t help but be thankful his reign is over. Or is it?
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6. Requiem For a Dream
Drug movies can be dark, and usually are, but not like Darren Arenofsky’s brutal, almost sadistic version of Hubert Selby Jr.’s novel Requiem For a Dream. He casts Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans as addicts in one form or another as they move from score to score in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Told using a hypnotically frightening score, split-second edits of the drug peripherals and a number of clever camera tricks (bodycams, time lapse, cameras hooked to vibrating gantries), Requiem is the scariest of outcomes when it comes to addictions.
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5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Here’s a movie that’s almost science fiction, but instead veers into the psychological catacombs of a man’s despairing mind. Jim Carrey plays a man so depressed by a recent breakup with an extrovert played by Kate Winslet that he pays a company to erase his memories of her while he sleeps. Slowly, across the course of an evening, the process begins to yield results, but then the sleeping man changes his mind mid-dream. Michel Gondry’s surreal dream movie (from a script by Charlie Kaufman) is about the pain of love’s sting, but also about why that pain is a mandatory feeling — it proves why we loved to begin with.
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4. The Royal Tenenbaums
Wes Anderson is a genius. In 50 years he will be studied in film class, cable channels will run marathons of his works, and boxed sets of his films will be a mandatory purchase for movie buffs. His Royal Tenenbaums is his most complete quirky-dark comedy. Starring an all-star cast (Gene Hackman, Danny Glover, Owen and Luke Wilson, Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston), Tenenbaums, about a dying father reuniting with his imploding family, has all of the Anderson trademarks: static displays of props, hilarious montages set to rock music, highly detailed set designs, his stationary camera setups and that classic Anderson dialogue full of non-humor humor.
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3. Once
I completely believed the romance in Once. Of course, though, the stars were actually dating when the film was being made, adding a real element to the story. Real-life singers Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová play small-time musicians who meet on a Dublin street and agree to make some music over the course of a weekend. Once is a musical and the music is heartbreaking and wonderful, especially “Falling Slowly.” But Once is also a fairy tale, so much so that it spilled over into the Oscar telecast, when Irglová was cut off from her Best Song acceptance speech and after a commercial break host Jon Stewart brought her back out so she could say this: “Fair play to those who dare to dream and don’t give up. This song was written from a perspective of hope and hope at the end of the day connects us all, no matter how different we are.”
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2. Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe directs his own life story in Almost Famous, about a teen who hits the road with a rock band in the 1970s as a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. Everything works in the film: it works as a comedy, a road movie, a rock movie, a coming-of-age story, and in some ways it works as a documentary of rock itself with an awesome soundtrack to boot. More than anything, though, it’s a touching story told with wonderful zeal by Crowe, who captures the spirit of the ’70s with the exuberance of being young and apart of something important and magical. The film also gave us the electric Kate Hudson, although she’d never do another film as good or as important.
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1. Wall-E No other movie from the last decade, or last several decades, has been as pure as Wall-E, a film constructed, down to every last nut and bolt, with goodness. No surprise here — Wall-E is a Pixar movie. The company has made a number of films that could have made this list, including Up, Monster’s Inc., Ratatouille, The Incredibles or Finding Nemo. But Wall-E is something very special. It’s about hope — hope that something better is out there for all of us, hope that change is possible, hope that love finds a way. The computer-animated film stars Wall-E, a little trash collector who blurts and bleats out his tinny electric language. It’s funny: he never actually says anything but we understand him more than we do most human film characters. His adventure takes him from a trash-filled Earth to the deep depths of space as he follows the only love he’s ever known. No film this decade has captivated the imagination, touched hearts, caused such great sadness, or been as moving as Wall-E.
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Honorable Mentions
The list isn’t big enough for everything, but I must commend these brilliant films: Korean revenge thriller Old Boy, M. Night Shyamalan’s realist superhero thriller Unbreakable, the Ray Liotta-starring cop drama Narc, the Robert McNamara documentary Fog of War, scary-real epic City of God, dark divorce comedy The Squid and the Whale, vampire romance Let the Right One In, gritty western The Proposition, Sam Mendes’ crime drama Road to Perdition, Clint Eastwood’s beautiful Million Dollar Baby and Brian De Palma’s erotic crime thriller Femme Fatale.
A special Jury Prize should go to Steven Spielberg, who has made some stellar movies from the last decade, none of which are quite good enough for this list, though all of them are close. His works in the Oughts: AI: Artificial Intelligence, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, for which I have forgiven him.
The Book of Eli is completely and utterly preposterous. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. 
Ignore all the outrageous stuff you’re supposed to accept as believable in The Book of Eli and it’s still an invigorating and nail-biting, if also disposable, movie, the kind that’s usually reserved for the popcorn haze of summer. But here it’s released in January, which means I can safely say it is the best film of 2010 thus far. 
The film, directed by the talented Hughes Brothers (From Hell, Menace II Society) — and based, not on a book, but a screenplay by Gary Whitta — stars Denzel Washington as a lone wanderer, probably named Eli, as he walks west to the sea across a dying earth. Cities are gone, plants are grey and ashy, and human skulls are bleached white where they fell after a nuclear holocaust that killed nearly all of humanity. Those that survived the blinding light of extinction now face a harsh new reality: bandits on the roads, cannibalism, the crumbling of morality and the never-ending search for drinkable water. 
There are many secrets that will go unspoiled here, but one secret I won’t deprive you of is the book that Eli totes around: it’s the last copy of the Bible in existence. It’s one of those old antique editions with the leather cover and the metal lock on the front. It’s also a King James Version, which means Moses actually saves his people from Egypt as opposed to sending them a Facebook event invite. By the end of the film it’s safe to assume that on the shelf next to the Bible will be a biblical sequel of sorts, the first book of which will be called the Book of Eli and it will tell this story. 
Do my vague recommendations of the film’s ending intrigue you? They should, which will hopefully get you in the door. You’ll go for that brain-busting secret at the finale, but you’ll end up staying for and enjoying the rest of the film for a variety of other reasons. One of them is Denzel Washington, an expert actor who plays a man who could be a biblical prophet if he weren’t so violent in his quest for the rescue of his book at the sea. Another is Gary Oldman, who plays one of those big, bad Gary Oldman villains. Here Oldman is Carnegie, a (waste)land baron who wants to use the Bible to unite his town in fear.
I must agree with Manohla Dargis, though, when it comes to the casting of actress Mila Kunis as Carnegie's bar vixen. She's far too pretty and manicured for a movie about the end of the world. As is Jennifer Beals, who plays Kunis' mother, a blind woman whose delicate smile (after receiving the last bottle of shampoo in existence) lights up an otherwise grim landscape.
