Salon.com > Films of the Decade http://www.salon.com Sun, 27 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Fantasy still can’t get no respect http://www.salon.com/2010/01/06/lotr_nelson/ http://www.salon.com/2010/01/06/lotr_nelson/#comments Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:07:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/01/06/lotr_nelson Why did LOTR drop off the critical radar at decade's end? Methinks it's due to that perennial, fundamental disrespect of the fantasy and science fiction genre, the same reason "sci-fi" literature was/is ghettoized and consigned to the bring-your-own-blacklight section of your local bookstore. See Ellison, Harlan, or King, Stephen. Or better, Dick, Philip, K. (while he was alive). "Fantasy" is just not as critic- or award-friendly as, say, our annual dose of Clint Eastwood directed melodramatic "relevant" Oscar fodder.

Or, as the great Firesign Theatre pinpointed, "honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/01/06/lotr_nelson/feed/ 39 “Lord of the Rings”: WTF happened? http://www.salon.com/2010/01/05/lotr_wtf/ http://www.salon.com/2010/01/05/lotr_wtf/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:06:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2010/01/05/lotr_wtf Last week we received a fascinating letter here at Film Salon Towers (OK, it's more like a deep purple grotto) from Matt Burr, a reader in Austin, Texas. In between bites of excellent Tex-Mex and BBQ, Matt raised a question about Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy and all the recent decade-end lists, including our own Films of the Decade series. I realized it was a question that's been hovering, half-formed, in the back of my brain without quite expressing itself clearly.

I just want to ask [Matt writes] if one of the Salon movie contributors would explain why the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy has been so disrespected by critics. Not just at Salon but also at Slate and in every list I have seen. This suggests that a negative critical consensus has formed about LOTR and I have to admit that that really surprises me. I consider LOTR one of the singular cinematic achievements in film history. But if not that, at least of the decade. And I think there was a time where some critics would have agreed with me. It seems that some sort of gestalt has changed while I wasn't looking.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2010/01/05/lotr_wtf/feed/ 225 Films of the decade: “In the Mood for Love” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/in_the_mood/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/in_the_mood/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:31:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/31/in_the_mood Despite what many think of either the encroaching annihilation of the form or its social or economic irrelevance, film criticism remains a noble and deeply necessary vocation. A number of films and filmmakers excited, disturbed or enthralled me over the course of the past 10 years (I have about 126 titles on a preliminary list of my personal favorites). It's hard if not impossible to pick just one, but the movie that exemplifies what the art form is capable of — the sensual intoxication of camera movement, color, editing and the framing of bodies punctuated by an emotional and narrative roundelay of desire, longing and memory — is Wong Kar-wai's "In the Mood for Love." I’ll never forget the first time I saw it, in the balcony of the Théâtre Lumière on the final Saturday at Cannes in May 2000.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/in_the_mood/feed/ 12 Films of the decade: “Rejected” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/rejected/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/rejected/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:55:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/31/rejected The past decade of movies included several cosmic explorations of lunacy, from "Punch-Drunk Love" to "Grizzly Man," but none impacted me quite as much as Don Hertzfeldt's mesmerizing animated short film, "Rejected," made in 2000. (You can see it embedded below.) The premise is incredibly simple: An animator continually fails to create consumer-friendly TV commercials as he quickly loses his mind. But there's brilliance coursing through this fundamental strangeness. Hertzfeldt crams riotous absurdity and profound epistemological inquiry into a trippy shot of comedic inspiration. In less than 10 minutes, he hurls through a series of endlessly quotable non sequitur vignettes ("Mah spoon is too big!") as his rudimentary characters grapple with their absurdly untenable existence. It's sheer madness in bite-size chunks of hilarity (with a keen anti-consumerist message to boot), delivered entirely by way of stick figures less complicated than the earliest cave paintings.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/rejected/feed/ 3 Films of the decade: “Casino Royale” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/casino_2/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/casino_2/#comments Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:43:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/31/casino It feels pretty strange to nominate a James Bond movie as one of the decade's best examples of filmmaking craft — the series had been photocopying the same formula over and over for decades ever since the glory days of Sean Connery, and even longtime fans like myself had given up hope that the franchise would ever feel exciting or vital again. Imagine my surprise when Martin Campbell's 2006 "Casino Royale" turned out to be a fantastic, full-service entertainment in an era when the standards for big-budget cinema have plummeted: It's a thriller with action scenes that further the character development (and how rare is that?), a romance between two leads who have movie star charisma to burn, and finally, a heartbreaking tragedy.

On one end of the spectrum, I love the deliriously fun chase sequence in which Bond pursues an acrobatic would-be terrorist through a construction site. Notable for its lack of shaky camerawork or ADD editing, the scene gradually evolves into a game of "Can you top this?" as Bond realizes he's met an opponent he'll have to outthink rather than outfight. It's his first lesson that if he's going to survive, he'll need to become something more than just a glorified hit man.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/31/casino_2/feed/ 8 Films of the decade: “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/thompson_16/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/thompson_16/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/30/thompson Several of the decade's most beguiling cinematic risk takers flew well under the radar. Joanna Hogg's "Unrelated," warmly received in its native Britain, has yet to cross the Atlantic, although the writer-director's perceptive gaze at a "mature" woman's summertime fancy toward a young hedonist has "art-house hit" stamped all over its passport. Other expectation-defying films were openly jeered (Spike Lee's""She Hate Me," Woody Allen's "Anything Else") or were held captive by archaic copyright laws (Nina Paley's "Sita Sings the Blues").

But of all the masterworks denied their rightful place in the noonday sun of mainstream recognition, the one dearest to me is Rebecca Miller's "Ballad of Jack and Rose." By turns a frenetic comedy, a sun-dappled meditation on nature worship, and a poignant study of how hippie idealism sputters in a materialist world, "Ballad," above all, centers on the intimacies that develop in father-daughter relations given the absence of a mother figure. Miller handles the incest theme with great delicacy, hiding neither behind manufactured sentiment nor falsely ironic hipster posturing.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/thompson_16/feed/ 5 Films of the decade: “The Five Obstructions” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/debruge/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/debruge/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/30/debruge Special effects may have dominated the decade, granting fanboys access to such previously inaccessible playgrounds as Middle-earth and the Marvel universe, but the way I see it, the true star of the past 10 years has been the documentary. In retrospect, the aughts saw the rise of reality TV and its spawn, from the successful debut of "Survivor" in 2000 to YouTube and its myriad X-rated counterparts.

Oddly enough, while scripted television series tried to emulate classical Hollywood filmmaking (à la "Sopranos"), the movies went in the opposite direction, embracing handheld pseudo-documentary tactics (from the long, single-shot action scenes in "Children of Men" to the amateur-eyewitness conceit of "Cloverfield"). Where virtually no audience had previously existed for documentaries, normal folks started to seek out nonfiction films in theaters.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/30/debruge/feed/ 4 Films of the decade: “Gladiator” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/picado/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/picado/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:40:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/29/picado "Rome is the mob … The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it's the sand of the Colosseum."

"Gladiator," Ridley Scott's epic starring Russell Crowe, proved that timeless sentiment with blood and glory in 2000. And no one's done it better for a decade — not that they haven't tried. "Gladiator" spawned a legion of imitators. Crowe's Academy Award-winning portrayal of the Roman general turned slave turned gladiator breathed life back into the sword-and-sandals genre, and rose from the dust of "Cleopatra's" glittering tomb with a vengeance. But "Alexander," "Troy," and Scott's own "Kingdom of Heaven" (without Crowe) paled in comparison, even when they followed so many of "Gladiator's" established patterns, right down to the mournful female ululation over a classical soundtrack.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/picado/feed/ 19 Films of the decade: “Chop Shop” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/di_novi/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/di_novi/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/29/di_novi Back in 2008, long before the Obama juggernaut was humbled by double-digit unemployment and the war in Afghanistan, a film entered American theaters that seemed to capture the spirit of the political and cultural moment. The story of a young boy defying abject poverty to pursue his dreams, it spoke to the harsh realities that Americans were enduring in the twilight years of the Bush administration, as well as to the hopeful, multiracial future embodied by the half-Kenyan, half-Kansan's historic ascent. Ramin Bahrani's "Chop Shop" demonstrated that you didn’t have to go all the way to Mumbai to make a serious film about poverty and that some of the decade's greatest cinema shared at least one thing in common with such inner-city squalor. It was often lurking right around the corner, in places familiar yet unexpected.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/29/di_novi/feed/ 3 Films of the decade: “Spirited Away” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kois/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kois/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:09:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/28/kois "I think we should let our children watch animation only once or twice a year," director Hiyao Miyazaki told an interviewer in 2001, the year "Spirited Away," one of the most wonderful films of the decade, was first released in Japan. "There are too many things around us to relieve our unsatisfied hearts and boredom. This is the fault of adults; it's adults who are in the wrong shape. Children are just mirrors, so no wonder they are in the wrong shape."

Chihiro, the heroine of "Spirited Away," is in the wrong shape. Grumpy and sour, 10-year-old Chihiro whines at her parents about their move to a new town; timid and apprehensive, she clings so that her mother, irritated, shakes her off. Trapped in the spirit world in which the film takes place, Chihiro is belittled by the staff of the bathhouse where she gets a job. "What a dope!" one character says. "You're the most pathetic little girl I've ever seen," another says, laughing, "a stinking, useless weakling."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kois/feed/ 9 Films of the decade: “Up the Yangtze” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kenner/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kenner/#comments Mon, 28 Dec 2009 12:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/28/kenner A few of my favorite films of the 2000s are "Precious," "Sin Nombre," "City of God" and "Maria Full of Grace." All of these films took me to worlds I knew little about. And in each of these films, I felt the hand of a director guiding the experience.

I also loved "Michael Clayton," a wonderful thriller that exposes the greed and short-sightedness of a giant agrochemical firm. It certainly fed my paranoia while making "Food, Inc."

On the documentary front, I loved a film by the Chinese-Canadian director Yung Chang called "Up the Yangtze." It is the story of a valley in China being flooded to create a dam. I wasn't sure if I was watching actors or real people. It turned out to be all real people who felt very comfortable letting the camera into their lives. It had a very theatrical feel. It is a beautiful film.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/28/kenner/feed/ 6 Films of the decade: “Elf” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/elf/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/elf/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/24/elf There may be greater movies. There may be more important ones. There are certainly others with subtitles and all that schmancy symbolism they taught in film school.

But was there a movie this decade that flat out comes together more pleasurably than "Elf"? Is there another that can elicit such guffaws from you — and your 5-year-old?

Jon Favreau's 2003 comedy isn't memorable simply for catapulting SNL MVP Will Ferrell to the Hollywood A-list — although it did. It stands out because it has become, like "A Christmas Story" and "It's a Wonderful Life," an undisputed holiday classic.

From its opening moments, the tale of an orphaned human baby's accidental upbringing in Santaland tugs at our nostalgia zone with its lushly orchestrated score and Rankin-Bass-homage winter wonderland setting. But this is no cheap reproduction; it's a delight in its own right.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/elf/feed/ 18 Films of the decade: “The Weather Underground” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/weather_underground/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/weather_underground/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:45:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/24/weather_underground In a decade scarred by terrorism and disastrous responses to it, a documentary about homegrown terrorists — militants? revolutionaries? — blew my mind: "The Weather Underground," about the radical antiwar group of the '70s whose mission was no less than the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. For me, too young to know what the Weather Underground were up to when they were at large, learning what they did, and why, in their own words, was seriously disturbing — not least because it seems almost reasonable. They bombed the Capitol, people! Along with police stations, banks and the Pentagon. And they eluded the FBI for years.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/weather_underground/feed/ 15 Films of the decade: “The Wrestler” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/the_wrestler/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/the_wrestler/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/24/the_wrestler "The Wrestler" is on HBO. I still have an analog TV, so "this movie has been modified from its original version," meaning it's in pan and scan. I own the movie on DVD. I can view it in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It's a very good film, a future classic even. I should pop in that DVD and preserve the dimensions of director Darren Aronofsky's canvas, but I'm 10 minutes into it. I'm done. I'm watching the whole thing and staying up way past my bedtime in the process, all to watch a movie with a clipped aspect ratio, one I've seen several times already.

My review of "The Wrestler" from last year was my first Open Salon blogpost to be chosen as an editor's pick. I used to wrestle and emcee for a low-rent, punk-rock wrestling league in San Francisco called Incredibly Strange Wrestling. Even with ISW's postmodern, ironic bent, I've dealt with guys just like Randy "The Ram" Robinson, the down-and-out former superstar brought to life by Mickey Rourke in an Oscar-nominated performance. I've been in backrooms of municipal ballrooms, rodeo fairgrounds and nightclubs where shirtless guys, half in and half out of their spandex, discussed at great length whether to "work" the leg or the neck.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/24/the_wrestler/feed/ 5 Films of the decade: “Me and You and Everyone We Know” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/kiefer/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/kiefer/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:28:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/23/kiefer Writer-director Miranda July's 2004 debut feature isn’t without flaws, but it is astonishing -- with such a disarming, sweetly ingenious presence of mind that it seems like a miracle. The array of July's thematic concerns -- our gropes for connectedness, sexual and technological curiosity, fine-art pretense, identity as a function of sought approval -- is vast, yet she shows great restraint in subordinating her satirical impulses to more humane ones.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/kiefer/feed/ 1 Films of the decade: “Idiocracy” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/nelson_9/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/nelson_9/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:42:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/23/nelson So.

Film that moved me the most in the last decade. Like salmon swimming upstream, only the ones that made it to my permanent DVD collection need apply. Let's see. "Downfall." Pro: Gripping historical epic, best depiction of absolute power absolutely disintegrating. Con: Can't get You Tube ranting Hitler parodies out of mind. Next. "A.I." Damn, spoken for. Alternate Spielberg choice, "War of the Worlds." Pro: Best 9/11 movie ever, "United 93" notwithstanding. Con: Can't get You Tube ranting Cruise parodies out of mind. Next. "Wit." Pro: Brought me to my knees with documentary-like portrayal of the black hole of ultimate human connection. Also, bonus points: Emma Thompson, my personal goddess, in the performance of the end of a lifetime. Con: Only on HBO, not in theaters. Damn. "The Wrestler." Pros: Mickey Rourke working that deli counter. Great epilogue from personal god and hardest working music man of the decade, Bruce Springsteen. Con: Cuts too small a slice of life to have life-changing resonance.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/nelson_9/feed/ 21 Films of the decade: “Still Life” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/feinstein_6/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/feinstein_6/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:01:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/23/feinstein Chinese director Jia Zhangke is among that rare breed of filmmaker capable of combining stunning artifice with documentary truth. After making a few low-budget underground films about provincial slackers, and at a time when most of the so-called Fifth Generation filmmakers had resigned themselves to collaborating with the powers-that-be, Jia took up the slack. He began to tackle larger social issues with a much more refined aesthetic in such films as "The World" (2004) and "Still Life" (2006). In the latter, one of the most provocative movies of the past decade, he exposes the folly of the Three Gorges Dam, a project conceived under Mao and executed by contemporary technocrats. During its construction, the government destroyed the city of Fengjie, displacing 1.2 million residents.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/23/feinstein_6/feed/ 4 Films of the decade: “Star Spangled to Death” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/jacobs_2/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/jacobs_2/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:12:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/22/jacobs I'm picking "Star Spangled to Death," by the experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs. I know how that looks, considering the film was made by my father -- but that just proves how much I believe in it. What could mean more than to be invited into a world only to find out that it is the actual world we live in? That the one that existed before stepping into the theater or pressing play was mostly built on delusions?

By seeing clips of certain films as a whole, ones that mostly show the cruelty, racism and bullshit that have served as bedrocks for both this country and movies themselves, and by interspersing them with people who hold art above eating, "Star Spangled to Death" as a whole serves as a testament of humanity and of great possibility. I leave that film with a way of seeing where things make sense, for better or for worse. With that clarity comes a lot less fear. In the context where the film places Richard Nixon -- the fumbling, awkward man revealed with the "Checkers" speech, in its entirety -- he and his propaganda are reduced to bare bones, almost toothless and entirely human. It's a great way to be armed for whatever comes next.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/jacobs_2/feed/ 10 Films of the decade: “Southland Tales” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/rogers_3/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/rogers_3/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:22:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/22/rogers "Southland Tales," Richard Kelly's epic film about the end of the world, is by no means a perfect film. Characters appear and disappear with little explanation, the plot is muddled to the point of self-parody, and the tone shifts wildly from slapstick comedy to pathos and back again. I saw the film at a late-night, near-empty screening in New York's Angelika Film Center, during which approximately two-thirds of the audience left by the end of the second act. I can't really blame them -- but I can gloat that they missed out on my favorite film of the past decade. From the first appearance of Sarah Michelle Gellar's pop-tart porn star, Krysta Now (with a hit single called "Horniness Is Not a Crime"), to the film's climactic modern-dance routine, I was utterly enraptured by "Southland Tales."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/rogers_3/feed/ 12 Films of the decade: “Memento” http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/dangelo_2/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/22/dangelo_2/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 12:30:00 +0000 http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/film_salon/2009/12/22/dangelo Reading the previous entries in this series has only reinforced my belief that naming your favorite film -- of the year, of the decade, of all freakin' recorded time -- is more of a personality test than an exercise in objective critical judgment. So rather than try to make a brief case for the unimpeachable awesomeness of "Memento," the movie that gave me more giddy pleasure than any other over the last 10 years, I think I'll just reveal the peculiar predilections and biases that made Christopher Nolan's stone-cold masterpiece (oops) custom-fitted for my particular sensibility.

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