GooseRadio’s Top 10 Films of the Decade

The New York City skyline wasn’t the only thing that changed on 9/11…

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Now that we’ve got the obligatory twin towers decade reference out of the way, on to the banal.

Many movies were made during the past 10 years: some were enjoyable, some were not. For every Charlie Kaufman film, an American Pie spin-off was released. Moviegoers saw Jude Law in comedies, dramas and tabloids. And the world spinned sadly on. In the midst of this cinematic milieu, a few films stood out to me – 10 films more than any others. Maybe my opinion doesn’t matter to you, but I can beat you in Scene-It. How’s that for credentials? Without further typing…

10) Memento (2000)

The decade started with promise because of a shining, complex screenplay from Christopher Nolan (more from him later). Guy Pierce stars as a man who has lost his capacity for short-term memory, hunting down his dead wife’s murderer. Borrowing – and improving on – Quentin Tarantino’s broken chronological style, Nolan crafts a plot that turns on its ear at just the right point.

And speaking of Nolan, he and M. Night Shyamalan had similar promising starts. Since then, their career arcs make a greater than symbol. Shyamalan hitched his star to professional bearded man Joaquin Phoenix, while Nolan kept writing intense, story-based scripts. Crazy to think that M. Night was once considered the bigger director.

Also, Joaquin had a brother named River, and I just listened to the River by Bruce Springsteen. I feel like I need to tell you these things.

9) Catch Me If You Can (2002)

This ’60s period piece is the happy version of Mad Men. It captures the colors and mood of a bustling era without the excessive smoking and infidelity. Director Steven Spielberg comes out with a much rosier view of the Love Decade than of the ’40s (All his movies about that decade make me cry. Even 1941.) and stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks pull off a good game of cat-and-counterfeiting mouse. Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams make early-career appearances as DiCaprio’s love interests, and Christopher Walken makes an impact in his few scenes: the film is stocked with talent.

But the heart of it is Tom and Leo. Both actors appear to be having a good time, and share a lot in common despite not sharing the screen a lot. Moreover, Hanks pulls off the greatest knock-knock joke of all time. Google it if you’re not offended by awesomeness.

8 – Kill Bill (2004)

Though Tarantino divided up the film for release, it really is just one movie. Like Tarantino or hate him, his films love film more than any other director’s canon. Kill Bill is an homage to westerns and far easterns alike, with all the idiosyncrasies we’ve come to expect from the director: swords, interesting music choices, Samuel L. Jackson. Uma Thurman embodies the role of Beatrix Kiddo, the bride out for revenge against her ex-lover Bill. The action scenes are impeccably acted and completely over-the-top, the dialogue is rich, vibrant and bizarre. It’s the movie we’ll show people in 50 years to answer the question, “What was the deal with Quentin Tarantino?”

7) Gladiator (2000)

Russell Crowe is my favorite actor of the decade. This movie is why. In contrast with the personal plot of Kill Bill, Crowe’s Maximus seeks revenge on a macro level. His backdrop is the most grand empire in history. His enemy is the emperor. His weapon is a freaking sword.

He took down the kingdom with a sword. That’s awesome.

I could tell you all about the beautiful cinematography and the powerful acting performances from Crowe and Phoenix, but ultimately, I only have to answer Maximus’ bloodbath question: yes, I’m entertained.

6) Up/Finding Nemo/Wall-E/The Incredibles

What, you say? There are four different movies occupying the sixth slot! Well, you be the one to walk up to those perfectly animated characters and tell them their perfectly crafted movies didn’t make the list. All of these movies made me laugh more than the typical gross-out comedy, feel more than the typical chick flick and connect more than the typical drama. They’re not typical at all. Pixar is the most consistently excellent studio in Hollywood – animation or live-action.

And the first 15 minutes of Up is the greatest example of showing rather than telling that I’ve ever seen.

5) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

My indie friends will yell at me for not having it higher. My bro friends will chide me for watching it while listening to The Decemberists. Whatever. Along with The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine proved once and for all that Jim Carrey isn’t just a rubber face. It also proved Kate Winslet is attractive even with pink hair. With a screenplay by Kaufman, the film delved into the deep end of the pool with questions about pain: if you could erase the bad from your past, would you do it? Never get your heart broken? Never feel rejected? It all sounds so appealing until you realize what those memories take with them – life.

Adam Sandler’s cinematic masterpiece Click also attempted to answer these questions, but wouldn’t you know it, Sandler got bogged down in looking at breasts and making fart jokes. Funny that his lowbrow predecessor was able to maneuver the waters. [Note: this is in no way a slam on lowbrow humor in general, as Carrey's Dumb and Dumber would stand in my top five for the '90s.]

4) Anchorman (2004)

This position is not earned for cinematography, nor character development, nor moving soundtrack. It is for the fact that, after five years, I still say “Milk was a bad choice” whenever someone comments on the heat. Before sliding down the humor quotient with Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay reached the pinnacle of wacky one-liners and bizarre non-sequiturs with Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy. Ferrell, Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Christina Applegate and Vince Vaughn all hit the perfect notes with their characters, supposedly satires of 1970s newsrooms, but really just vehicles to utter lines like “Sixty percent of the time it works every time.”

Anchorman is certainly an acquired taste, and won’t top many Best Of lists, but it hits at the heart of what comedy is supposed to do – make us laugh, repeatedly.

“Now you’re putting the whole station in danger!”

“I had ribs for lunch. That’s why I’m doing this.”

“You pooped in the refrigerator? And you ate a whole wheel of cheese? How’d you do that? I’m not even mad… that’s amazing!”

3) Lord of the Rings (2001-2003)

Nerds are tough to please. They rant and rave when the new Star Trek movie contradicts episode 13, season 2 of the original series (pushes up glasses), and they are forever skeptical of book adaptations. That’s why Peter Jackson’s cinematic take on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic trilogy was such an anomaly: it was the rare film that transferred the original vision of the books directly to the screen. Major scenes weren’t left on the editing floor, yet the three-hour-plus run times didn’t seem dawdling. Frodo’s saga played out on a scale rarely seen before on the big screen, and Jackson kept his actors in New Zealand to film the trilogy in sequence in similar originality. In the end, the old good-versus-evil tale got a fantasy twist. And the nerds rejoiced.

2) The Dark Knight (2008)

It was such an enthralling performance that people legitimately questioned whether the character had consumed the man. The Joker, once a camped-up criminal embodied by Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s Batman, became an anarchist mastermind in the hands of Heath Ledger. Rightfully so: people fear most what they don’t understand, and the Joker operated without reason, chaos being his only cause.

Ledger’s cackle became the signature sound of the movie that changed the superhero film paradigm. Following his wonderful reboot of the series, Batman Begins, Nolan crafted a Heart of Darkness-like plot that made every situation gray. Ethical quandaries abounded, from Christian Bale’s Batman all the way to Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox. All the male leads shine (Maggie Gyllenhaal seemed a little out of her element as Rachel Dawes) and Nolan deftly handles both the action and intellectual elements, but Ledger rose above the rest. Though it is impossible to view the Aussie’s performance without thinking of his untimely death, his acting stands without death’s rose-colored glasses. He deserved the Oscar his family ultimately received for him, and the fact that this film as a whole was not nominated for best picture is an indictment of the entire Academy Awards selection process.

1) Almost Famous (2000)

This is a movie for music lovers specifically, but it’s also for anyone who loves anything completely.

High schooler William Miller loves rock and roll music, believes it can set him free, and consequently wants to know as much about it as possible. He views rock as an intellectual virgin, not yet jaded by “the business”, and this is what endears him to, and ultimately gets him in with, the fictional band Stillwater. He tricks Rolling Stone into letting him write a story about the band, though he’s only a teenager. What follows is the loss of his rock innocence, but not his love for it.

Cameron Crowe wrote and directed this film semi-autobiographically, so all the details he learned as a young Rolling Stone writer appear throughout. Kate Hudson, Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup and Jason Lee all give career-making performances (I have hated everything else Hudson has ever done on film, but love her as Penny Lane, the glorified groupie). The movie never drags, and the conclusion is uplifting without being sappy.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that this film deals with two of my favorite things: writing and music, so I might be biased toward it. That being said, Almost Famous was more original, more nuanced, and more personal than any other film of the last 10 years. That’s why, 10 years later, it stands up over all the others made after it.