Top 20 Movies of the Decade (2000-2009)

After waiting a year (almost) for the movies of 2000-2009 to fully sink in, we’re finally prepared to unleash our best of the decade list. Hold on to your butts.

20. Memento – The infamous “backwards movie” that really launched Christopher Nolan’s career (The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Inception). Nolan packs enough action into his movies to satisfy most everyone, but at the root of his best movies are unique story/narrative concepts that are fully developed and realized via complex plots. Hard to believe that some thought of him as a “gimmick” movie maker when Memento first came out.

19.  Cloverfield – A documentary style horror movie, effectively crossing Godzilla with The Blair Witch Project. Maybe not completely beloved by critics, but beloved by me. Cloverfield‘s faithfulness to its point of view gives the unfolding horrors a sense of realism that heightens their impact.

18. Nine Lives – Nine loosely connected, interwoven vignettes, written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, son of famed Latin American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

17. Dogville – Lars Von Trier’s controversial 2003 movie starring Nicole Kidman and set on a stage with no props, backdrops, or scenery. Very dark.

16. Adaptation – Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin, Donald, attempt to adapt Susan Orlean’s  The Orchid Thief.

15. The King of Kong – This documentary tells the story of the all-time Donkey Kong arcade game record, which is surprisingly dramatic. There’s sabotage, conspiracy, and an antagonist so villainous, you wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t real. Plus a lot of hilarious nerds.

14. O Brother, Where Art Thou? – The Coen Brothers teamed up with George Clooney to make a Depression-era retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

13. The Man Who Wasn’t There – Billy Bob Thornton stars in this barber shop Noir. My favorite Coen Brothers movie of the decade, even if it’s not the most critically acclaimed.

12. Brick – This is what happens when you view a high school drama through a Noir lens.

11. The Descent – A horror movie that rises to the challenge of having an actual story with real characters, while remaining truly scary. (Side note: In seventh grade, I made it to the southwest semifinal spelling bee for my state, and I got out on my first word. Descent. Ever since, the word has terrified me.)

10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Charlie Kaufman’s “what if we could pay to erase our bad memories?” movie, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Peter Jackson’s fantasy trilogy is probably the best execution ever in this genre.

8. Let the Right One In – Swedish vampire movie that on the surface sounds similar to the plot of something like Twilight, but in reality works as a totally unique, quirky horror movie.

7. Inglourious Basterds – Most critics prefer the Kill Bill movies, but despite many openly sophomoric elements, Basterds struck me as Tarantino’s most mature movie, and it’s my favorite of his from this decade, and maybe my favorite over all.

6. A Tale of Two Sisters – This Korean horror movie combines a “what the hell is going on” plot with a variety of creepy visuals.  It has stuck with me for about 7 years.  (It also was remade into the horrible American horror movie “The Uninvited“.)

5. Shotgun Stories – A blood feud erupts between two families in a rural Arkansas town, and it’s not long before both sides go too far.

4. Amelie – A French story about an eccentric girl and her first secret adventures after a childhood of isolation.

3. The Station Agent – A lonesome dwarf inherits an old train station building in rural New Jersey and befriends some of the locals.

2. The Best of Youth – Originally made for Italian TV, this 6 hour mini-series/movie tells the story of 2 brothers, covering from their high school years up through adulthood.

1. Grizzly Man – The life and death of Timothy Treadwell – the guy who voluntarily lived among the bears in the wild of Alaska for months at a time – filmed by Treadwell himself and pieced together into a documentary by Werner Herzog after Treadwell’s death.  I watched this over 5 years ago and still think about it a lot. It didn’t win the Oscar, in fact it wasn’t even nominated, but it’s number 1 in our book.

Documentary December – Last Train Home

In many ways, life in China is almost incomprehensible to the average American. Lixin Fan’s documentary, Last Train Home, gives us a glimpse, a sometimes disturbing one, of life in China through the lens of one family of migrant workers.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 86 minutes

Directed by: Lixin Fan

Starring: Zhang Changhua, Chen Suqin, Qin Zhang

Theatrical Release: 09/5/10

DVD Release: 2/22/11

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $272,556

Metacritic Score: 86/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 100%

The movie opens with a shot panning across an endless crowd of people – I’d guess in the six figure range – standing outside of a train station in the rain. Every year 130 million migrant workers head home for the Chinese New Year, which, we’re told via text on the screen, is the largest human migration in the world. The subjects of the film, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, have been making this annual trek for roughly 20 years – starting when they were just 16 years old and dropped out of school to find work, a decision which they not only regret but seems to consume them – even after 20 years, they bring it up constantly. The couple spends the rest of the year living in a tiny bunk down the hall from the factory where they sew jeans and other garments to be shipped to the Western world.

They arrive home at the family farm to spend time with their 16 year old daughter, 10 year old son and the grandmother that is raising the children with the financial help of the factory money. Their visit is awkward. Spending around 51 weeks a year away at work, they don’t know their own kids very well. Their daughter, Qin, is openly angry at her parents and rebellious. Ironically, and against all the parental advice she’s ever received, Qin drops out and gets a factory job similar to that of her parents. Her parents are confused and upset by her decision. Her mother says, “I’d rather work even harder than have Qin work.”

While there are many differences from American life to be seen, in some ways the similarities are more striking. The first words out of Qin’s younger brother’s mouth when his parents show him the cell phone they bought Qin are, “Does it have games?” During an argument with her mother, Qin says, “I don’t care what you say.” Teen angst and rebellion, it appears, are universal.

If the most important thing in someone’s life is spending time with the people they care about, the economic situation in China has removed this aspect of life almost completely. Last Train Home doesn’t beat this idea over your head, but by the end you realize that’s what it’s all about.

The Acolytes: Underground Horror from Down Under

Part serial killer thriller, part good teens gone bad, Australian indie “Acolytes” is the kind of horror movie they should be making more of. I’m pretty hard to please when it comes to this genre, and I was pleasantly surprised by this one.

Mark (Seb Gregory) wanders into the woods one day and spies a man burying something. He and his friends James (Josh Payne) and Chasely (Hannah Morgan Lawrence) decide to unearth the buried treasure, but instead of money, they discover the body of a young woman.

Here’s where the movie takes a turn for the “Kids do the darndest things when they find a body”, and I start wondering if I ever really want to procreate. Instead of reporting the body to the police, Mark and James cook up a scheme to find the murderer and blackmail him into killing an evil scumbag kiddie rapist (Michael Dorman) who has recently been released from prison. Schemes like this in thrillers never play out as planned, so things go from bad to worse pretty quickly for Mark, James, and Hannah.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 91 minutes

Directed by: Jon Hewitt

Written by: Shayne Armstrong, Shane Krause

Starring: Sebastian Gregory, Joshua Payne, Hannah Mangan Lawrence

Theatrical Release: 05/15/08

DVD Release: 07/28/09

Production Budget: $4 million

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 83%

With a small budget of only four million dollars, “Acolytes” has a great visual style and excellent performances by the cast, especially considering their age. Unlike most teen horror flicks, the characters in “Acolytes” are handled as real people instead of hash marks on a killer’s bed post.

You’ve probably seen movies that have one twist too many. The theatrical release of this movie has four or five too many- so many twists piled on top of one another is overkill and takes away from the overall impact. The ending is a bit of a cliché for a thriller, which is the biggest let down of all. (The DVD features two alternate endings.)

Overall, “Acolytes” is a movie I would certainly recommend to fans of the horror/thriller genre. It’s dark and disturbing and has just the right kind of jump-out-of-your-seat tension. The DVD became available in the U.S. today.

Horsemen: Ponyloaf.

Here’s a recipe for braised bullshit movie: one 12 oz. can of David Fincher’s “Se7en” (Up), one leg of “Silence of the Lambs“, and two squirts of pure Quaid sweat. (This recipe calls for Dennis. Randy is an acquired taste. Little gamey.)

Yep. “Horsemen” is a blatant “Se7en“/”The Silence of the Lambs” copycat. Their strategy was to not merely recycle that material… but to kick it up a notch by totally sucking. Quaid (Dennis. Randy wouldn’t touch this script with Gary Sinise’s sac.) stars as Aidan Breslin, a work-obsessed homicide detective slash crappy dad. We know he’s a crappy dad because his eldest son, Alex (Lou Taylor Pucci), harps on the subject every time he’s on screen. A 16 year old boy that insists on giving his dad lectures on parenting? Science fucking fiction. It’s so heavy handed it makes Queen Latifah’s meathooks look downright dainty.

In one scene, young Alex suggests the family go to a hockey game. Daddy Breslin responds as if he’s either never heard of the sport or the notion of spending time with his offspring has never occurred to him before. Immediately cut to the family decked out in matching Red Wings gear. Huh?

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 110 minutes

Directed by: Jonas Åkerlund

Written by: Dave Callaham

Starring: Dennis Quaid, Lou Taylor Pucci, Ziyi Zhang

Theatrical Release: 03/06/09

DVD Release: 07/14/09

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: N/A

Similar crappisms abound in “Horsemen“. I sense severe editing going on here. Several transitions left me feeling as if a whole chunk of movie had gone missing, which is often the case with straight to DVD turds.

Even Ziyi Zhang, who I’m a fan of, struggles. She is not nearly sinister enough to pull off the gloating female temptress the movie wants her to be. Her performance comes off as silly and a little embarrassing.

Plotwise, the movie is just as blah. Detective Breslin hunts a gruesome murderer. Eventually he realizes that this is not the work of one killer, but a kill group! Four, to be exact, each one representing a horseman of the apocalypse (rather than each murder representing one of the 7 deadly sins). Spooky, no? The actual murders lack believability and the quick discovery scenes don’t seem to give them the reverence such brutality would require – even the filmmakers aren’t buying it. We’ve seen it all before in “Se7en” and the dozens of movies that have already ripped it off. The biblical details are meaningless – a catchy name and an excuse for cryptic bible passages are all it really adds up to. Which is kind of how the whole movie feels. No substance and not even much style.

“Horsemen” fails on the very basic level of establishing a connection between the audience and the characters, rendering itself suspenseless. The movie could have almost saved itself (by a pussy hair) by following through with the final twist. Instead, it limps off with the cheesy, stupidly optimistic ending. Why? Movies like “The Descent” and “Se7en” resonate because they don’t go for the “things are finally starting to look up!” Hollywood ending. In the end, “Horsemen” failed to even successfully rip off its predecessors.

First clip of Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in “Public Enemies” Out Now

The first clip of “Public Enemies” has been released.  The gangster movie starring Johnny Depp and Christian Bale is due out July 1.

You can check out the theatrical trailer here:

Trailer Trash: Weekend of 6/19/09 Trailers

This weekend’s theatrical releases ranked in the order I’d like to see them from most to least:

Year One

This is the first trailer that’s made me laugh in a while – thanks to David Cross. Jack Black and Michael Cera star as essentially the first lazy men in history.

Under Our Skin

This documentary about Lyme disease looks pretty alarming.

Dead Snow

Nazi zombies in the snow.

Whatever Works

Woody Allen directs Larry David. It looks fairly funny, though Evan Rachel Wood seems pretty annoying.

$9.99

Animated comedy about the meaning of life based on the short stories of Etgar Keret. Geoffrey Rush does one of the voices.

End of the Line

This is a documentary about the effects of overfishing. It’s like an anti- “Deadliest Catch.”

The Proposal

I propose that I will never watch this. Ever.

First Michael Moore Teaser Released

Michael Moore has a new, as yet untitled, documentary about what caused the economic collapse – what Moore calls “the biggest robbery in the history of this country” – as well as the subsequent federal bailout. The film is due out October 2, 2009.

The trailer played in a few theaters this weekend, and ushers walked the aisles with cans to collect money for the needy CEOs Moore speaks of in the commercial.

5 Movies From the Underground, 6/11/09

Our objective at TV Casualties is actually pretty simple – it’s our duty to uncover the gems, what the British would call the “best bits.”  This becomes especially crucial when dealing with TV series or movies that have been overlooked.  The following movies will throttle you.  Hard.  (We actually suggest you sit as you watch them.)  And not one of them has more than 2000 votes on IMDB. So give these films the love they deserve – buy them, sign up for a free trial at Blockbuster and rent them, etc. Find a way.

1. “Shotgun Stories” (2008) 1,284 votes on IMDB – Michael Shannon earned an Oscar nom last year for his role in “Revolutionary Road.”  He also starred in the much lesser known “Shotgun Stories,” which was my favorite movie of 2008.  A blood feud erupts between two families in a rural Arkansas town, and it’s not long before both sides go too far.  The movie has funny parts but is dark and very subtle, with a needlessly tragic streak that doesn’t feel at all manipulative or contrived.  It’s the best I’ve watched in a long time.

2. “Chop Shop” (2008)  1,240 votes on IMDB – Ramin Bahrani wrote and directed “Chop Shop,” a movie about a street kid scavenging in the slums of New York.  Alejandro works in a chop shop and the owner lets him live in a cluttered room above it.  Eventually he takes in his sister, whom looks headed toward prostitution, and the two of them save up to try to buy an ice cream truck to start a food truck business.  The story somehow balances the naivete of a child with the grit and grim of urban life in an honest, believable way.  Roger Ebert declared Bahrani the “new great American director” a few months ago.

3. “Diggers” (2007) 1,090 votes on IMDB – Written by our Emmy pick for Outstanding Performance in a Comeday, Ken Marino, “Diggers” tells the story of clam diggers in a depressed New England town in the 70′s. Hunt (Paul Rudd) deals with the loss of his father while a corporation threatens to put him, and all other local diggers, out of business. Rudd plays the reserved main character well, but Marino steals the laughs as a frantic father of many. While subtle, this is probably the funniest movie on the list. You can own it for under $10.

4. “Look Both Ways” (2005) 1,865 votes on IMDB – “Look Both Ways” is the first full length feature from writer/director/animator Sarah Watt. Set in New Zealand, the movie follows Meryl, an artist who illustrates sympathy cards for a living, and whose father recently died. After witnessing a deadly train crash, Meryl meets Nick, a photojournalist who is sent to cover the crash and has recently been diagnosed with cancer. Sounds uplifting, no? It actually works out to be subtly optomistic by the end, I promise. Animated scenes of Meryl’s obsessively morbid thoughts mix with the live action, which is where the movie really shines.

5. “Ten Tiny Love Stories” (2001) 232 votes on IMDB – If I were a teacher, Rodrigo García would be teacher’s pet. On top of having written and directed three movies we like a lot (“Nine Lives” and “Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her” are the other two), he’s directed a number of the best episodes of our favorite shows (“Carnivale” and “Six Feet Under“). That led to him landing his own HBO series, “In Treatment,” which is also excellent.  As a cherry on top of all of that, he’s also the spawn of author Gabriel García Márquez (another personal fave). “Ten Tiny Love Stories” is ten women sharing one intimate story from their past in almost-mockumentary fashion. Some of the stories are sad, some are funny, and almost all of them are so well crafted that you’ll feel a slight voyeuristic discomfort, as if you’ve come across someone’s secret video diary and can’t help but keep watching.

Trailer Trash: Weekend of 6/12/09 Trailers

Not a big week for new movies. Here they are, though, ranked in order of how much I’d like to see them (from most to least):

Moon

A thriller in space starring Sam Rockwell.  The basic premise, a guy stationed alone in space for 3 years, reminded me a ton of the George R.R. Martin scifi short story “The Second Kind of Loneliness,” which is one of my favorite pieces of short fiction in any genre. “Moon” currently sits at 100% fresh on rotten tomatoes (out of 13 reviews), but it’s a limited release, and I doubt it will be anywhere around here.

Food, Inc.

A documentary about the reality of food as an industry and how far it is from the images used to market food to us. This might be like the opposite of watching food porn like “Top Chef,” but I’m still curious.

Street Dreams

Rob Dyrdek (of MTV’s “Rob & Big“) wrote a movie. There’s about a 110% chance that it won’t be very good.

Blast!

A documentary about astrophysicists living fast and not dying young. I’d be shocked if this came around here. I’ll give pretty much any doc a chance, though, so I may find it on DVD down the road.

Tetro (opens June 11)

Francis Ford Copolla’s new movie. Will it be his first good movie in 30 years? Doubtful. At least with Vincent Gallo as the lead, it’s guaranteed to be moderately annoying.

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

Synopsis: John Travolta takes a bunch of hostages and many cars flip over. This is the third feature film adaptation of the novel by John Godey.

Imagine That

Eddie Murphy kids movie that reminds me of Jim Carrey’s “Liar Liar.”

The Burrowers: Digging Up Another Straight to DVD Gem

Add yet another movie to the long list of recent feature films inexplicably reduced to straight to DVD affairs.  J.T. Petty’s “The Burrowers” really saw no theatrical release outside of playing at a handful of film festivals last fall.

The movie combines an old West adventure with horror, drawing pretty equally from both genres.  The opening scene features a family being attacked by some unseen entity.  When Fergus Coffey (Karl Geary) arrives on the scene to find his fiancée among those missing, he quickly launches a search party.  Just like that, the movie takes to the road on horseback – cowboys riding through the prairie in search of missing folks and mysterious monsters.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 96 minutes

Directed by: J.T. Petty

Written by: J.T. Petty

Starring: Clancy Brown, Karl Geary, William Mapother

Theatrical Release: N/A

DVD Release: 04/21/09

Production Budget: $7 million

Domestic Gross: $0

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 67%

The lush green atmosphere and Western sensibility really separate this from your average teen horror fare straight away.  Your run-of-the-mall horror movie rarely even pretends to care about its characters, and horror teens, in particular, are always disposable.  Often annoying already, their deaths are so meaningless that they may as well be bags of meat for a maniac to hack away at with an ax.  In this semi-proper Western universe populated more by adults than teens, though, the characters are treated with a little more reverence.  Consequently, the deaths still pack some surprise, still carry some weight with the audience.  Like “The Descent,” (though not quite as good) this is horror made for adults.

Fans of ABC’s “Lost” will recognize several faces here:  actors William Mapother, Doug Hutchison and Clancy Brown (our famously despised pick for Sandor Clegane) all play major roles in “The Burrowers” and had significant parts on the island as well.  (Fun fact:  Hutchison, AKA Horace the Dharma leader on “Lost,” got one of his big acting breaks as the super creepy Eugene Victor Tooms on “The X-Files.”)  The entire cast does a nice job pulling off the critical juxtaposition of the old West -  stuffy, formal, almost Victorian aspects of speech and mannerisms mixing with the rough and grimey demeanor of hardened men that work ranches all day.  As always, this combo is good for several laughs.

The movie does have its flaws, though – from the opening scene on, the audience stays one step (or more) ahead of the characters.  That certainly doesn’t help build suspense or an aura of mystery.  I also thought a fight scene toward the end went on way too long.  Even if we do sort of feel like we know what’s ultimately coming, though, some of the particulars of the details still make the end satisfying, and there are a few twists along the way as well.

Perhaps its biggest strength – “The Burrowers” shows some restraint in not letting us see the actual creatures too much, which I think usually works better than the alternative.  (This isn’t Freddy or Chuckie making wise cracks as they kill.  What might lurk in the shadows is always scariest.)  All told, it’s an effective and entertaining movie, especially considering its modest budget.  Just 900 and some odd votes on IMDB? Horror fans should seek this out on DVD.