“A film should be like a rock in the shoe.”
050. DOWNFALL (Oliver Hirschbiegl : Germany)
One of the biggest emotional rides you’ll ever be taken on, this film makes you sympathize with the Nazis.
049. SURVIVE STYLE 5+ (Gen Sekiguchi : Japan)
As saturated in color as it is beauty, this film is a hilarious tale surface level, and a mind teaser below.
048. DON’T TOUCH THE AXE (Jacques Rivette : France)
Rivette has still got it.
047. ANTICHRIST (Lars von Trier : Denmark)
As notorious as it is brilliant, no enjoyment lies within this Eden.
046. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman : USA)
A film that dares to ask every question in life that anyone has ever pondered.
045. GERRY (Gus Van Sant : USA)
Van Sant ventures into the realm of experimentation.
044. THIS IS ENGLAND (Shane Meadows : United Kingdom)
A brutal look at childhood and brotherhood.
043. BATTLE ROYALE (Kinji Fukasaku : Japan)
Kitano as a crazed teacher on an island full of kids killing each other? Yes, please.
042. MILK (Gus Van Sant : USA)
Sean Penn is a God amongst other actors.
041. OLDBOY (Park Chan-wook : South Korea)
That ending still evokes a “Holy shit!” out of me.
“Some day I’ll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.”
040. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (Ang Lee : Canada)
Yep, that one “gay cowboy” film is actually pretty great.
039. LA MONDE VIVANT (Eugène Green : France)
Such low budget brilliance. Green’s attention to faces is admirable.
038. BROKEN FLOWERS (Jim Jarmusch : USA)
Besides Dead Man, this is Jarmusch’s greatest feat to date.
037. LADY VENGEANCE (Park Chan-wook : South Korea)
The definitive revenge film.
036. ZODIAC (David Fincher : USA)
David Fincher made a good film? Whaaaat?
035. THE HOURS (Stephen Daldry : USA)
Just about as strong of an ensemble as you can get.
034. SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY (Apichatpong Weerasethakul : Thailand)
Keep an eye out for Weerasethakul, the guy is cinema’s next great hero.
033. THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (Sylvain Chomet : France)
Just about the most perfect hand drawn film I’ve ever seen.
032. O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? (Joel Coen : USA)
Hot off the heels of Lebowski, the Coen Brothers adapt The Odyssey into a deep south flick.
031. SIDEWAYS (Alexander Payne : USA)
Payne is kind of a god at adapting novels. A film that only gets better upon each viewing.
“Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.”
030. GRIZZLY MAN (Werner Herzog : USA)
Just as Herzog describes it: estranged beauty.
029. THERE WILL BE BLOOD (Paul Thomas Anderson : USA)
A true American epic.
028. UN PROPHÈTE (Jacques Audiard : France)
Robbed at this year’s Oscars, Audiard’s newest is one of the best crime films of all time.
027. THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD (Guy Maddin : Canada)
A wonderful blend of the best pieces of cinema over the past eighty years.
026. HUNGER (Steve McQueen : United Kingdom)
One of the greatest and bravest debuts in cinematic history.
025. ZOO (Robinson Devor : USA)
Can’t word it any better than, “A humanizing look at something awful.”
024. KEN PARK (Larry Clark & Ed Lachman : USA)
More twisted than Kids, an exposé on sexual dysfunction and teenage life that will floor you.
023. HUKKLE (György Pálfi : Hungary)
A minimalistic masterpiece.
022. CHILDREN OF MEN (Alfonso Cuarón : United Kingdom)
This film is always an awe inducing experience.
021. ABOUT SCHMIDT (Alexander Payne : USA)
Nicholson’s greatest performance.
“I don’t know what the hell a third act is.”
020. INLAND EMPIRE (David Lynch : USA)
Not Lynch’s best film, but most certainly his magnum-opus.
019. ADAPTATION. (Spike Jonze : USA)
Best screenplay of the decade and quite possibly of all time.
018. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (Andrew Dominik : USA)
If you missed this one on the big screen, you’ll never witness its true beauty.
017. WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Ari Folman : Israel)
Filled with supple and brutal images, this film will stick with you.
016. 28 DAYS LATER… (Danny Boyle : United Kingdom)
Without a doubt, the best horror film of the decade.
015. SYRIANA (Stephen Gaghan : USA)
I can never recommend this film because it’s a thriller about oil.
014. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (Wes Anderson : USA)
As quirky as it is, there is so much truth layered within this film.
013. HALF NELSON (Ryan Fleck : USA)
Gosling gives the performance of the decade.
012. THE FREE WILL (Matthias Glasner : Germany)
A film that humanizes the wicked and exposes for the world for the true inhibitor it is.
011. FANTASTIC MR. FOX (Wes Anderson : USA)
“These apples look fake – but at least they’ve got stars on them.”
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.”
010. THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (Noah Baumbach : USA)
Baumbach’s portrait of a deteriorating family is subtle, brilliant and highly relatable.
009. GENOVA (Michael Winterbottom : United Kingdom)
The cameras in this film is not an object, but rather an extension of the perception that we are given.
008. LA VIE NOUVELLE (Philippe Grandrieux : France)
This is what all of underground cinema will be like ten years from now.
007. ELEPHANT (Gus Van Sant : USA)
This film will never leave you.
006. DOGVILLE (Lars von Trier : Denmark)
“I am the best film director in the world.” – Lars von Trier
005. AFTERSCHOOL (Antonio Campos : USA)
The first film to perfectly capture what it’s like to grow up in today’s society.
004. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (Joel & Ethan Coen : USA)
The ultimate cinematic adaptation.
003. A DIRTY CARNIVAL (Ha Yu : South Korea)
The definitive gangster flick.
002. MULHOLLAND DR. (David Lynch : USA)
“It’ll be just like in the movies. Pretending to be somebody else.”
“Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit.” – Orson Welles
It’s strange to think that at the beginning of this decade I was only 8-years-old. Among the films released that year were Gladiator, Amores perros, George Washington, Battle Royale, Requiem for a Dream and Snatch. At such a young age, I couldn’t watch the films that I love so dearly now. Even if I was granted the ability to view the films, I doubt that my opinion would have been very valid on their mature subject matter. For me, the past ten years will always be remembered. Since the year 2000, I have matured from child to man and am still going. My number one film of all time has changed seven times – Garden State to Fight Club to Requiem for a Dream to Good Bye Lenin! to The Royal Tenenbaums to The Assassination of Jesse James then finally back to The Tenenbaums – and each film still holds a special place in my heart. People call me a “film elitist” or a “film snob” but trust me, I’m neither. You see, for me, cinema, film, the movies, whatever you prefer, is a very personal art.
“Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.” – Jean-Luc Godard
The above quote is – in a nutshell - all of my beliefs of cinema mashed into one, singular, beautiful sentence. For years now, people have used the cinema as a form of enlightenment and an escape from their everyday troubles. I am no different. Ask any cinephile and they will tell you the same thing. There have been certain moments in film that are so awe-striking, so powerful and so flawless to me, that when I reflect upon vivid, joyous past memories of my life, those images come up. Cinema is a lifestyle, a beautiful form of faux reality that once fully explored is one of the most marvelous gifts that life has to offer. I wish I could show everyone the images I have seen, the dialogue I have heard, the performances I have witnessed, not just in cinema but in life as well.
“I always viewed life as material for a movie.” – Noah Baumbach
Every person in life is a performer. Every smile, wink, gasp, hands clasping, head nod, whisper, step forward, step back, it is life in movement, cinema in realized perception. My goal in life is to become a filmmaker and I hope to whatever it is that put us here that one day I shall achieve it. Like every person that dreams, I am plagued by my own thoughts, my own visions merely because I can not display them for everyone else yet to see. I want to show a shadow smiling, what love at first sight really is like, the destruction of a culture and the beginning of tomorrow before it has happened.
“There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.” - Federico Fellini
So much truth has never been packed into a single sentence. For me, cinema is my life. Criticize that statement all you want but “film or bust” is the slogan that I shall live by for the rest of my life. The past decade has incited a variety of changes for me. Whether it was moving away from my childhood friends to my current domicile to the first time I ever had sex or witnessed death. I once heard someone say that, “innocence is lost before it is gained” and with that fact I can agree. Cinema was my vice long before it was my passion. I used it as a tool of witnessing deviant images of sex and violence, but rather than a voyeur of cinematic perversion, I am now an incubated artist, waiting for his inspiration to arrive. Now, without any further delay, I present to you, the best film of the decade and of all time,
001. THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (Wes Anderson : USA)
This is the affirmation Welles was talking about.
From its images of childhood to its devastating yet hilarious funeral procession, The Royal Tenenbaums is the ultimate cinematic proclamation of life. Tenenbaums is everything I have ever wanted out of a film. That is all. After 2,000+ films watched, Tenenbaums is still the one film I always come back to when I’m down, because every instance, every moment is something that I have gone through in one way or another. Tenenbaums is both soother and inhibitor. Watching this film reminds me of my childhood and witnessing the kids grown up makes me fear for my future but at the same time, incredibly excited. Throughout the thick and thin, no matter what, no matter how fucked up your life is, you will always have your family to run to, and for me, Tenenbaums is part of that family. Cinematic love.
nellodeangelis
