50 Best Movies of the Decade: Part One

By Lisa Fary

I never feel the need to rank the best movies of a year, but after a chunk of time like a decade, it feels like necessary housekeeping. Look back, determine what was awesome and what was awful, box it up, label it, and turn around to face the next decade.

This list was a surprise even to me. I started writing down the expected titles, only to find myself left cold, thinking, “That was a great spectacle, but. . . ” or “Yeah, it was good, but it wasn’t one of the best.”

So, here is part one of the list, numbers 50 -26.

50. The Devil Wears Prada

OK, so it’s kind of shallow. And a thinly veiled bio of a disgruntled ex-assistant to the EIC of Vogue. And put Meryl Streep in a stereotypical role of a ball crushing, cold, heartless, high ranking, professional woman. But the “stay true to who you are!” message is timeless, right?

49. Bridget Jones’ Diary

Bridget Jones’ Diary is one of only four existing rom-coms that I like (the others being The American President, Sleepless in Seattle, and High Fidelity). The rest of you rom-coms with your twiggy lead actresses working their fabulous jobs and living in their great apartments can piss off.

48. Donnie Darko

A tangent universe, psychotherapy, a demonic looking bunny man, and Patrick Swayze as hack motivational speaker. Not easy to follow, but original and brilliant in a bizarre way.

47. Shadow of the Vampire

Willem Dafoe chews up every scene he’s in, obviously having a wonderful time portraying Max Shreck. John Malkovich is perfect as the director of Nosferatu, going to any length imaginable to shoot his vision.

46. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Chow Yun-Fat may be listed prominently in the credits, but I’ve always seen Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as a women’s film. Jen, the nobleman’s daughter struggles between doing what’s expected of a girl of her station and following her own heart. Jade Fox, the renegade angry that women had been shut out from Wudun’s secrets. Shu-Lien, the professional warrior who, despite living an alternative lifestyle in ancient China, still holds to the moral codes put forth by men.

45. Maria Full of Grace

Imagine for moment that you’re so poor and so desperate that your best option is to bring in money for your family is to fill your stomach with about a pound of heroin for illegal transport. Like Traffic, Maria Full of Grace puts a face on the drug trade, but a more personal one.

44. The Dancer Upstairs

A political drama for people who live in their heads. As expected from a film directed by John Malkovich, The Dancer Upstairs is intelligent and restrained, going for the mind instead of cheap, 24-style thrills.

43. State and Main

I’ve always liked David Mamet and State and Main is my second favorite Mamet film (the first being Wag the Dog). Hollywood comes to small town Vermont. Hilarity ensues.

42. Amores Perros

Three stories of love and cruelty, intersected via dogs and a car accident. Not a feel good film about love, but brutal and riveting.

41. Finding Neverland

A story behind the story sort of film, about J.M. Barrie and his inspiration for his play, Peter Pan. It’s also a sweet film about retaining imagination, dealing with death, and growing up without becoming a stuffy adult.

40. Chocolat

The reviving power of chocolate (and Juliet Binoche’s knowing smile) invigorates a stuffy French village. Beautifully shot and written with excellent performances from Judi Dench, Carrie-Ann Moss, Alfred Molina, and Johnny Depp. It’s such a sweet, uplifting movie (and it makes me want to take a chocolate making class!).

39. Idiocracy

I’d like to think the America shown in Idiocracy just couldn’t happen, that smarter heads will prevail. But, as illustrated in the movie’s opening sequence, smarter people simply don’t breed at the same rate as dumber people, making Uhhhmerica a distinct possibility. How else can we explain the continued existence of America’s Funniest Home Videos?

38. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

The third movie in the series, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, broke the patterns that had already been established by The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets. Cuaron got the wizards out of the robes. He skipped the seemingly requisite Quidditch match. Three movies later, PoA is still the deepest and most satisfying of the movies, feeling more like a genuine adaptation rather than a play for play translation of the book.

37. Y Tu Mama Tambien

Coming of age movie, road trip movie, sex comedy. Y tu mama tambien is all of those things while still hitting deeper topics such as class issues, questions of sexuality, and the boundaries of lifelong friendships.

36. Finding Nemo

Yeah, I watch Finding Nemo to cheer myself up on a poopy day or to fend off that icky feeling that comes from watching something like The Devil’s Rejects. You wanna make something of it?

35. Frida

I generally would much rather read a biography than see a biopic, unless the biopic does something genuinely interesting, something more than putting the chronology to film. In the hands of Julie Taymoor, Frida Kahlo’s life melts into and from her paintings, echoes the richness and color schemes of the artist’s work, and handles Kahlo’s lifelong pain as a matter of fact, rather than a matter for sympathy.

34. Shaun of the Dead

The world’s first rom-zom-com. What’s not to love?

33. Unbreakable

I love Unbreakable not for the twist ending, but for its idea of superheroes in the real world (I can’t help but wonder how David Dunn would respond to the emo stylings of the cast of Heroes) and its comic book aesthetic.

32. Rabbit-Proof Fence

A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of the Aborigines in Western Australia in the 1930s once wrote, “Eliminate the full-blood and permit the white admixture to half-castes and eventually the race will become white.” Between 1869 and 1969, the Australian government regularly removed Aboriginal children and placed them in “re-education camps” where they were trained to be domestic servants or agricultural workers, essentially stripped of their Aboriginal heritage and culture. Rabbit-Proof Fence tells the story of two girls in the 1930s who were part of the Stolen Generations, who escaped from their re-education camp, and walked nearly 1000 miles home.

31. Girl with a Pearl Earring

This movie is shot as if it were a Vermeer painting in motion; every fame is a study in color, light, and composition. One of my great fears about this adaptation was that the relationship between Vermeer and Griet would be a Hollywoodized, sexed-up romance. Thankfully, it’s kept chaste and not presented as romantic at all. In this illiterate maid, Vermeer finds someone who understands what he does. Griet, though, is so subtle and expressionless that it’s almost unclear what she gets from the relationship; it’s only her slightest of smiles while mixing pigments or naming the colors of the clouds that give away her enjoyment of this small happiness.

30. Road to Perdition

Not so much a mob movie or revenge story as it is a father-son journey. The movie was criticized as lacking emotional attachment, but it took place the 1930s and Tom Hanks’ character was a mob enforcer – not exactly the kind of guy who’s going to be emotional, even in the wake of his family’s murder. That lack of emotionality is what makes his final scene so wrenching and sadly beautiful.

29. Night Watch

The never ending struggle between good and evil comes to a truce. That truce becomes a bureaucratic hell of licenses and paperwork and both sides keeping tabs on the other.

28. Ghost World

The antidote to the crappy teen exploitation movies that my friends and I have never been able to relate to.

27. The Host

Part monster movie, part family drama, part political satire, The Host is a terrific movie with a heart and a mind.

26. District 9

Science fiction that’s also commentary on segregation, immigration, and evil, giant corporations.

Tomorrow: 25 – 1

Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her earliest influences are Princess Leia, Rainbow Bright, Astronaut Barbie, and her 6th grade teacher, Ms. Palmer. She’s angry that it’s almost 2010 and she still doesn’t have a hovercraft, but will accept a jetpack as consolation. That jetpack had better be pink with a rhinestone monogram.

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