2005: "You wanna know how I know you're gay?"

1. The Squid and the Whale

The most painfully accurate kid's eye view of divorce on celluloid. Also, one of the most painfully accurate views of childhood, period. There's none of the dewy-eyed nostalgia that most movies about kids display, where aging filmmakers gaze back to a simpler time in their lives. Noah Baumbach channels all of the raw nerves, confusion and shame that tend to fade in our memories over time.

2. Syriana

I don't care that nobody seems to understand the plot. I don't care that it's didactic. I don't care that "serious people" find the geopolitical analysis puerile. I love Stephen Gaghan's Syriana because it's the only American film to seriously and thoughtfully engage with the "war on terror." Every other Hollywood product either exploits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an easy background for action scenes or to make rather banal points about the traumatic effects of war on those who fight them. Syriana, on the other hand, examines the moral implications of our oil-based economy with deftly intertwined stories of terrorists, CIA officers and sheiks. There's just enough time spent teasing out the characters to make you care about them, with the rest of the running time devoted to the dispiriting and wholly inevitable bureaucratic machinations that happen when you run your country on a rapidly diminishing resource that largely rests under the sands of one of the world's most unstable regions. No bullshit about defending freedom, or how tough it is to be a solider, or other airheaded pablum; just a serious wrangle with a bloody, amoral foreign policy and the chest-thumping pieties that accompany it.

3. Cache

Michael Haneke's tightly controlled frames, audacious subject matter and mastery of atmosphere make his movies compulsively watchable, but they're also rarely enjoyable in any traditional sense. He's too bent on punishing his audience for having the temerity to seek film entertainment in the first place. Even with the stately pacing, colonial allegory and moments of upsetting horror, Cache still stands as the closest thing Haneke has made to a crowd pleaser.

4. The Constant Gardener

This is sort of the anti-Syriana, in that it takes on global economic and political issues and filters them through an intensely personal prism. Fernando Meirelles' follow-up to City of God, based on one of John Le Carre's post-Cold war novels, Constant Gardner deals with the merciless logic of global capitalism while also telling the supremely affecting story of stuffed-shirt diplomat Ralph Fiennes, who falls in love with his activist wife only after she's murdered by a pharmaceutical company. Fiennes' grief blooms in tandem with the revelation of the company's crimes, culminating in an ending that manages to simultaneously offer a stem-winding denunciation of the exploitation the Third World and a beautiful tribute to Fiennes' failed relationship.

5. A History of Violence

A lot of people posit this movie as some kind of allegory for American foreign policy. I guess. For me, it works more as a family psychodrama, a movie about the limitations of romantic intimacy and the inherent contradictions of raising children who avoid their parents sins. David Cronenberg's direction is his usual deadpan violence, minus the surrealism (unless William Hurt's loopy turn as a gangster counts as surreal), and Viggo Mortensen has never been better as the docile cafe owner with a bloody past.

Worst theatrically released horror film I've ever seen: Boogeyman. Truly worse than Hitler.

Oscar-winning, universally-beloved movie that actually sucks out loud: Crash. What the fuck was up the praise for this movie? Was it some elaborate, Borat-style prank on the public carried out by rogue Academy members and film critics.

Best zombie-scene in a non-zombie movie: the car riot scene in War of the Worlds. Spielberg's allegorical treatment of 9/11 has a lot of scenes of people in distress banding together to survive, but one memorable scene where fear drives ordinary citizens to frenzy and violence. When Tom Cruise's family drives their pilfered minivan into a crowd of fleeing refugees, the previous inhabitants of suburban New Jersey descend on them like a pack of ravenous undead. It's a sobering depiction of the chaos that sleeps below the surface of orderly society.

Insane and insanely memorable scene in otherwise forgettable action movie: Tom Waits as the stigmatic preacher in Domino. Domino is remembered, if at all, as Tony Scott's single most visually incoherent movie, but there's a sequence at the end, scripted by Donnie Darko mastermind and all around nutter Richard Kelly, that stands out for it's batshittery. Before sexy bounty hunter Domino Harvey and her motley gang head off to their doom in Las Vegas, they stop in the desert for a chat with a crazed prophet who happens to be bleeding from his palms. Of course he's played by Tom Waits, and of course he spouts a bunch of gibberish about destiny, and it almost redeems the rest of the movie, which is basically a migraine-delivery system.

Most genuinely shocking moment in a horror film: the scene in the garage, Wolf Creek. I hesitate to write too much about this scene in case people haven't watched it, because if you don't know what's coming, the moment is a gut-punch of surprise. Seriously.

Most ridiculous murder in film history: Christian Slater killed by liquid nitrogen in Mindhunters. Must be seen to be believed. He doesn't just get frozen by a tank of liquid nitrogen that's knocked over by a ludicrously complicated Rube Golberg contraption, but he falls over and smashes into a bunch of Slater-chunks.

Line of the Year: "Why in pluperfect fuck would you pee on a corpse?" --Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

2004: "I would have named you Kingsley."

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Charlie Kaufman's screenplays are intensely interior: they're all about the uncharted, dangerous territory between our ears. That can create a challenge for directors looking to give visual expression to such subjective, symbolically-loaded material. Michel Gondry's homemade special effects trickery and ceaselessly moving camera deftly express the Kaufman's vision. And it's a damn amazing vision, brimming with comedy, sadness and an unblinking examination of the perils and rewards of love. Nothing beat that amazing ending, after the memories have been wiped, the connections have been severed, and all Clementine and Joel know is that their love was so traumatizing that it drove them to experimental memory erasure...and they still want to give it another go.

2. Shaun of the Dead

It's almost impossible to make a fully successful parody. You either drop the ball on the comedy, or you drop the ball on making a cohesive, compelling film. Unless, of course, you're Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg. Then, you're able to consistently send up genres while simultaneously delivering the authentic pleasures that the genres have to offer. I probably can't judge Shaun of the Dead objectively, since I'm a huge mark for all things zombie, but when you consider that this is not only one of the funnier films of the decade, but also one of the very best non-George Romero zombie films ever, I think I'm in the ballpark here.

3. Kill Bill Volume 2

This movie marked the beginning of Quentin Tarantino's run as a master of the cinematic bait-and-switch. After busting out two hours of non-stop bloodletting in Kill Bill Volume 1, setting up his audience for an epic explosion of badassery, Tarantino's sequel spends the bulk of its running time on talky digressions. It' s not just a bit of audience-punking, though. The operatic violence of Kill Bill 1 was criticized by some for being an empty exercise in style, but Volume 2, in addition to featuring style to burn, gives shades and depth to its characters that give retroactive meaning to all that arterial spray.

4. Sideways

Like his earlier film About Schmidt, Alexander Payne's Sideways is a bout a confused, angry man adrift in a sterile, passionless world. Unlike Warren Schmidt, Paul Giamatti's Miles is achingly, punishingly, brutally aware of every way in which the world and his own carbuncular personality prevent him from finding happiness. And yet...it doesn't do a bit of good, because the self-loathing that bubbles up like black tar in Miles' soul can only be soothed by the sweet elixir of alcohol. But if it's fancy wine, it doesn't count as alcoholism! So Miles and his best friend (who, in a great touch, he doesn't really seem to like) Thomas Hayden Church tear up wine country in search of transient pleasures. There's a bit more redemption at the end of this one than About Schmidt, and it comes courtesy of Miles' ability to express his pain artistically. Just like Harvey Pekar. This movie clinched Paul Giamatti's status as Schlub of the Decade.

5. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Will Ferrell was probably the biggest comedy star of the 00's, and this is easily his best movie. It's the most effortless mixture of parody, character work and flat-out absurdism to be found in the decade. There wasn't a funnier sequence in film during the aughts than the news team fight scene and post-fight conversation in Anchorman. It starts with an amusing conceit: rival newscasters rumble West Side Story-style. Then, during the rumble, the absurdism explodes with the introduction of horses, nets and, of course, tridents. Everything comes to a delirious head in the next scene, when Ron's crew dissects the fight and, instead of leaving the super-over-the-top violence as a bit of throw-away wackiness, they bring everything back down to earth, starting with the immortal line "Brick killed a guy." There's an unwritten rule that when a comedy turns the absurdity knob up for one scene, it won't effect the rest of the movie, and Anchorman's decision to abandon that convention made for transcendent comedy.

Horrible movie that forever tarnished the cinematic reputation of the Milwaukee Brewers: Mr. 3000. C'mon, man, can't we retroactively get Major League, please?

"Modern Classic" I just can't get behind/Oscar-winning, universally-beloved movie that isn't that great: Million Dollar Baby. At his best, Clint Eastwood movies feel strangely airless and mannered, and the cliche-filled, cartoonishly-dark subject matter of this movie plays to all of Eastwood's worst habits as a director.

Great scene in an otherwise-crummy film: Adrian Brody stabbing Joaquin Phoenix in The Village. When he feels like it, M. Night Shyamalan can control the frame like nobody's business, and that mastery serves him well in an expertly paced, genuinely shocking sequence.

Best dinner-table scene: I Heart Huckabees. This movie is not without it's faults, but it also brims with considerable virtues, the most richly rewarding of which is the clash of ideologies at Richard Jenkins' dinner table. Jason Schwartzman's fervid idealism meets a hostile reaction in the defiant complacency of a family of suburban Christians. What happens when you stand in a meadow at dusk? Nothing and everything.

Most frustratingly great scene: the opening scene in Dawn of the Dead. For all of it's bloody delights, Zack Snyder's remake of the George Romero classic features a number of missed opportunities, none more agonizing than the failure to carry the sense of apocalyptic frenzy that powers the magnificent first ten minutes into the rest of the film.

Best use of Tom Cruise's innate creepiness: Collateral. Seriously, how come more director's don't see that Cruise's laser-eyes and wolf's grin are a natural fit for villainy?

Line of the Year: "America, FUCK YEAH!" --Team America: World Police

2003: Turning Japanese

1. Kill Bill Volume 1

Before this movie, Quentin Tarantino was, in some ways, underrated as a director. Even his most vocal advocates almost always cited the dialogue or clever remix of filmic tropes of his screenplays (also the two things his detractors usually cite), but his camera-work went largely unremarked upon. Tarantino finally unleashed the full directorial capability with a masterful piece of lean, mean action filmmaking. The story is a typically regurgitated pulp riff on revenge movies, mostly from Tarantino's beloved 1970s, but it's executed with tremendous verve and creativity. You've got the brilliant O-ren anime sequence, a kick-ass RZA score, and, of course, the undisputed champion of 00's-era action scenes, the showdown at the House of Blue Leaves. Leaving aside the delirious and expertly-staged decapitations, the pacing and blocking of that entire sequence are a thing to behold. The long tracking shot of the Bride making her way to the bathroom to get into her murderin' clothes that switches to follow Sofie Fatale headed towards the same bathroom, to the epic calling-out of the O-ren, tension drawn to the breaking point before the first cathartic gusher of blood.

2. Lost in Translation

This is a movie that seems to have dropped off of a lot of people's radar in the past five years, and that's understandable. Not only is the whole thing played in an achingly minor key, but the Orientalism is doubtlessly problematic, and it is really just the petty carping of a couple of supremely overprivileged whiners. Still, there aren't many films in the decade that communicated the alienating vastness of contemporary life as authentically as Lost in Translation. Most of us can't relate to the problems of being a washed-up millionaire actor or a globetrotting trophy wife, but we all know what it's like to walk alone through the streets of an unfamiliar city, or spend a night on the town with friends you know deep down don't really know who you are. Couple that palpable sense of place and theme with an all-world performance by Bill Murray and a central relationship that's genuinely touching without once succumbing to cliche, and you're dealing with a cinematic triumph, mopey shoegazing be damned.

3. City of God

Fernando Meirelles' epic tale of growing up in the drug-ruled midst of Rio's favelas doesn't suffer from a lack of style. City of God contains some of the most memorable, purely-cinematic sequences of the decade. The kinetic, free-for-all sensibility could come off as insensitive to the hyperviolence and poverty of the setting, but it turns out the be exactly the right choice. Because life in the favelas can't be defined solely by drugs and violence: people live there, they fall in love, they dance, they raise families, and Meirelles' film contains the multitude of that experience.

4. American Splendor

The Aughts were truly the Decade of the Schlub. The two most consistently excellent actors of the 00s were Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, and no film encapsulated the essential predicament of the American Schlub like Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's American Splendor. A schlub doesn't have the most brains, and he's certainly not athletic, and he's painfully aware of each and every one of his shortcomings, without possessing the wherewithal to correct them. The triumph of Harvey Pekar is that he can make his own painful inadequacies into art and, miracle of miracles, have people respond to it. It's the ultimate dream of schlubs everywhere, but in the final, aching twist, even that recognition isn't enough to end his torment, just make it bearable. That's the most a schlub can hope for in this life.

5. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

It's the signal film achievement of the decade, so I guess it deserves some appreciation. This is it.

Most completely and totally horrible movie of the decade: God and Generals. That shit will make you sterile. Revolting pro-Confederate historical revisionism, a turgid screenplay, painful over and/or under acting, lifeless (and criminally sanitized) battle scenes, all stretched out to nearly four fucking hours. Without a single redeeming feature. Well, maybe that hilarious "Southern rights for all" song-and-dance number. Apparently the Confederate army didn't bother with "don't ask, don't tell."

Horrible movies that are kind of fantastic: Dreamcatcher and Identity. Both of these movies brim over with fail, and yet have more than enough laugh-out-loud moments to make them worth watching. Most notably, the "gunphone" in Dreamcatcher and the rise of Evil Timmy in Identity.

Image of singular beauty: Andy Goldsworthy throwing a handful of snow into the air, where it holds for a moment before dissipating into the wind in the lyrical documentary Rivers and Tides

Rousing climax from an animated movie that doubles as an allegory for the labor movement: a school of fish versus a fishing net in Finding Nemo. A school of fish caught in a net. If they all swim in different directions, they're doomed. If they all pull in the same direction (with a little help from a neurotic clownfish), they can snap that fucking net right off the beam. Workers of the world, unite!

Unheralded Johnny Depp performance: Once Upon a Time in Mexico. 2003 was the year Jack Sparrow resurrected Johnny Depp's career as a big ticket Hollywood star with an Oscar nominated bit of weirdness, which overshadowed the excellent weirdness of his turn as a loopy CIA agent in Robert Rodriguez's Once Upon a Time in Mexico. The movie itself is a mess, but every time Depp is on screen, it vibrates with unpredictability. It was Depp's last chance to goof around under the radar.

Comedy sequence that made me laugh until I cried and therefore invalidates any credibility I may have as a film critic: the boxing scene from Bad Santa. Yes, it's five straight minutes of guys (and kids, and midgets) getting punched in the junk. As Bob Saget proved many years ago, the shot the groin is the lowest, cheapest form of comedy. It's also deliriously funny when it's done right, and in Bad Santa, it's done right. Also, I'm not on trial here!

Line of the Year: "Talk to the hand." --Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

2002: "Don't say 'pitch.'"

1. Adaptation

I remember the exact moment in Adaptation when it went from being a great movie to one of the my all time favorites: the low speed car chase between the Kaufmans and Susan Orlean. This was the moment I realized that, after two acts spent carefully creating rich, interesting characters and struggling with the difficulties of creating truthful art, writer Charlie Kaufman and director Spike Jonze were going to intentionally set fire to the whole construction with an empty Hollywood-style action ending. It's a ballsy move, and it pays off handsomely: not only does it cut the Gordian knot of the how to deal with the tough subject matter, but it's also a point blank indictment of narrative cinema's inherent limitations. Combine that with Nicholas Cage's last known unironically good performance, and you've got the makings of a post-modern triumph that manages to express real emotion while also undermining the Robert McKee screenwriting model.

2. Punch-Drunk Love

After P.T. Anderson followed the sprawling porn industry melodrama Boogie Nights with the even more sprawling Magnolia, you might have wondered if his next movie was going to be a 16 hour miniseries about every citizen in greater Los Angeles. Instead, he radically rebooted, tapping noted man-baby Adam Sandler to take his psychotic infant schtick to a darker, sadder place. This is a romantic comedy that is less about the birth of a relationship than about the forces of alienation, shame, family resentment and fear that make romantic love necessary and beautiful. Best scene: Sandler trying to juggle his pushy sister, his would-be love, his befuddled employees and an extortion-minded phone sex operator, while John Brion's nerve-wracking score jangles in the background. Contrast that with the sweet, weird moment in bed with Sandler and Emily Watson, talking about how much they want to bash in each other's faces, and it makes you feel blessed and strong to have a love in your own life.

3. Bloody Sunday

This is the first of two Paul Greengrass-directed dramas about horrifying real life events to appear on my list, so let's get it over with: I have no truck with people who complain about Greengrass' handheld camera work. If it makes you nauseated, that's one thing, although if you get a tummy ache from watching a fucking movie, I wonder how the hell you can walk to the mailbox without hurling. Anyway, non-stomach-related complaints can all suck it: the Greengrass approach, more than anything, drains historical events (and, in his Bourne films, the spy genre) of their mythic qualities, cutting everything down to a human scale. The "Bloody Sunday" massacre in Derry, Northern Ireland proved to be the opening shots of the IRA insurgency that raged for thirty years, but Greengrass breaks the tragedy down to a series of mistakes and miscommunications, giving everyone involved, from activist MP Ivan Cooper to young Bogside Catholics to the British Paratroopers who carried out the shooting, their moments of quiet humanity.

4. About Schmidt

Warren Schmidt could be a character in Ghost World, maybe sitting alone in a diner booth behind Enid and Rebecca, eating soup and looking out the window at a dry cleaners. The marvel of this movie, Alexander Payne's best to date, is that it channels the same sort of bland, lifeless suburban hellscape as Ghost World, but does so through the eyes of a character who is largely oblivious to it. Jack Nicholson's best "old dude" performance powers the story of a man who knows, deep down, that life has somehow passed him by, but he doesn't quite know how, and more importantly, he can't figure out what to do about it now that he's in post-retirement, widower drift. It's a collection of awkward personal interactions and fumbles towards enlightenment, all topped by one of the best endings of the decade; Ndugu's painting is a disarming bit of pure grace, and the tears that come to Schmidt's eyes are heartbreaking. They're tears of joy for the beauty of the world, and tears of sorrow for all the beauty that he's missed.

5. Full Frontal

Of all of the low budget, digital experiments Steven Soderbergh directed in the 00s between Ocean's movies, Full Frontal is easily the best. Unlike pretty much every other inside-Hollywood movie, Full Frontal goes beyond easy satire of the superficiality and lack of creativity of the industry (although there is plenty of that) and actually engages with the psychological transference by which film directors and writers take the raw material of their own lives and neuroses and put them on the screen. It also features one of the funniest supporting turns of the decade, with Nicky Katt as a struggling actor/pilates instruct playing a yuppie version of Hitler in a play when he isn't complaining to the director that his co-stars don't get him. "You know what, fuck her. And here's why. Number One-anyone who's offended by drinking blood, obviously doesn't drink blood. Number Two-anyone who drinks as much blood as I do knows that it has no effect. Number Three-there is absolutely no scientific connection between drinking a shot of blood a day and being an extraordinary actor. And Number Four-it is impossible to prove Number Three." Big ups to Baron Von Hugecock.

Worst movie that also doubles as an endorsement of serial murder: Frailty

"Modern Classic" I just can't get behind: Time Out. It's on a bunch of best-of-the-decade lists, but this flavor of quiet desperation is a bit too quiet, and not desperate enough.

Oscar-winning, universally-beloved movie that actually kinda sucks: Chicago. Sure, it looks good, and some of the musical sequences are brilliant, but still...it's just a goddamn musical! Seriously!

Movie that makes me wish I had a time machine: Gangs of New York. Give me access to a time machine, and the first thing I'm doing is grabbing a DVD of There Will Be Blood (and a portable player, of course), going back to, say, 1995, finding Martin Scorsese and making him watch it. Afterwards I would say to the man: "Marty, you're going to get Daniel Day-Lewis to star in this Gangs movie you've been trying to get made for the past twenty years. THIS is what he's capable of. For the love of God, don't waste a bunch of screen time with some bullshit teenybopper love story and some pissant kid whining about his dead daddy. You made Goodfellas, ferchrissakes! You know how to build an entire film around an unsympathetic character! Look at There Will Be Blood! This punk kid Anderson stole half your shit to make Boogie Nights, then he took Day-Lewis and made the movie that you COULD have made if you didn't waste precious screentime on weak-ass shit!" Just imagine a cut of Gangs of New York that did away with DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz completely, and focused on Day-Lewis' Bill the Butcher. I think my brain melted from the very notion of such concentrated awesomeness.

Scariest scene of the decade: the Brazilian birthday party sequence from Signs. The only time I got goosebumps watching a movie.

Most perverse scene in a Steven Spielberg film: Peter Stormare as the creepy eyeball doctor in Minority Report. With that unhealthy yellow light, Stormare's sleazy demeanor and a disoriented, eyeball-less Tom Cruise, you'd never guess that it was directed by the maestro of childlike wonder.

Best sex scene: the three way in Y Tu Mama Tambien. Alfonso Curon creates such a vibrant atmosphere of in-the-moment pleasure that two dudes kissing doesn't feel "gay" some much as an expression of the complete loss of inhibition.

Line of the Year: "Just look at the greatest Jewish minds ever. Marx, Freud and Einstein. What have they given us? Communism, infantile sexuality and the atom bomb." --The Believer

2001: Now THAT'S more like it!

Ah...much better. Now's the time to point out that, officially, the first year of the 21st century was really 2001. So let's just say that the 20th century in film ended with the whimper of dying harp seal, while the 21st started off with the mighty roar of a mildly syphilitic lion.

1. The Royal Tenenbaums

I know that "real" Wes Anderson fans are supposed to like Rushmore the most, and the smart-ass pick is Life Aquatic, but goddamn it, my favorite is still The Royal Tenenbaums. It's the movie that most successfully balanced Anderson's whimsical artificiality with earnest emotional catharsis. Few film moments in the decade packed the richly-earned wallop of Chas Tenenbaum's quivering voice saying "It's been a hard year, Dad." And Anderson's artifice is here at its most rewarding, from the intense detail of that fantastic opening sequence to the funny, sharp digressions sprinkled throughout the film: Dudley Heinsbergen, the disastrous Tenenbaum v. Gandhi tennis match, Pagoda...and, of course, we can't forget Margot Tenenabaum meeting her brother at the gangplank. And this from a guy who generally finds Gwyneth Paltrow about as appealing as red tide poisoning.

2. The Man Who Wasn't There

THE underrated Coen brothers movie. Written off at the time as some kind of half-assed Miller's Crossing, this movie features the Coens at their most empathetic and contemplative. The film noir trappings aren't simply another slick genre goof. The Man Who Wasn't There is an examination of the alienating forces at work in post-war America that made film noir possible, and one man's struggle to define himself in the face of them. Considering the Coen's penchant for deliberately obscure endings, the graceful, elegiac finale of Man is even more impressive.

3. Ghost World

This movie is so deliberately low key, that it ends up getting slept on by a lot of people, but for me, it's one of the most haunting films of the decade. Mostly because of director Terry Zwigoff's absolute mastery of the banal: every detail of his gray little suburb feels lived in and, at the same time, drained of life. That palpable atmosphere makes Enid Coleslaw's fitful attempts at entering an adult world that she can't bring herself to take seriously even more recognizable. Steve Buscemi's Seymour is a creature of pure tragi-comedy, and a perfect encapsulation of the "geek" mentality: he's a person at once invigorated and entrapped by his petty obsessions. As the poor bastard says "Maybe I don't want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests." Could any other movie have a middle-aged misanthrope have sex with a sexy 18-year-old, and have the viewer end up feeling like the guy is being used?

4. In the Bedroom

Another super low key movie that's easy to forget in the avalanche of films to sift through for the end-of-decade retrospective. It's also a movie chock full of closely-observed moments and visual poetry. The grieving parents in the office of the district attorney charged with prosecuting their son's killer, looking at the pictures on the shelf of the man, his wife and their dogs: the DA doesn't have children, and can't know the parent's pain. That wreath of smoke twisting out of the killer's chest wound, catching the headlights of a nearby car. The breath-taking crack of Sissy Spacek's hand on Marisa Tomei's face.

5. Memento

Christopher Nolan's breakout film, and a marvel of stylistic gimmickry complimenting thematic content. It's easy to focus on the ingenious backward plot structure, that manages to generate genuine suspense even after it begins at the end of the story. But the real triumph of Memento is how it comments on the nature of memory and the necessary human capacity for self-deception, using the structure to underline the point.

Movies that take a giant shit on the Greatest Generation: 2001 saw the release of two awful movies about World War 2. Michael Bay's monstrous Pearl Harbor and the painfully botched retelling of the battle of Stalingrad, Enemies at the Gate. The latter includes one of most hilarious sex scenes in film history, with Jude Law furtively banging Rachel Weisz in a Red Army dugout. The look on her face is priceless: either her vagina is broken, or Jude Law's penis is made out of hornets.

Worst film I've ever seen in the theater: Scary Movie 2. Blame my sister.

"Modern Classic" I just can't get behind: Mullholland Drive. Like most David Lynch movies, I can' appreciate what he's going for, but still not find it terribly engaging. But that lesbian sex scene is definitely a modern classic of film nudity.

Oscar-winning, universally-beloved movie that actually sucks out loud: A Beautiful Mind. Goddamn, two in a row, and both starring Russel Crowe, no less! Ron Howard is in the exact middle of the directorial PH scale. He is the cinematic personification of beige.

Credit sequence in a biopic that's so good it makes the rest of the movie superfluous: Ali Too much of Michael Mann's Mohammed Ali biography is disappointing boilerplate, but the very first minutes are a galvanizing array of impressionistic images that build the world of Cassius Clay frame by frame. Sam Cooke rocking a black nightclub. A young Clay jogging down the road, getting bird-dogged by a cop car. Clay's father painting a portrait of an aggressively Caucasian Jesus. It's the sort of approach that's hard to sustain over the course of a whole movie, but that kind of non-linear, musically-edited energy should definitely be a feature of more biographical films.

Best British bad-asses: Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, and Ian Holm in From Hell. I'm on record as saying that Ben Kingsley usually bites it as whatever mannered, stick-up-the-ass yutz he's playing, but he's flat out awesome as psychotic criminal Don Logan. Less funny, but somewhat more terrifying is Ian Holm as Jack the Ripper in the otherwise crummy Hughes brothers movie From Hell. His black-eyed monologue while cutting out a woman's heart conveys the lucid, controlled madness of the character.

Worst British bad-asses: the parade of Brits trying their best to sound like American crackers in Blackhawk Down. It's ridiculous: Ewan MacGregor, Jason Isaacs, Ewen Bremner, Ioan Gruffudd, and the Australians (who are honorary Brits, after all) Orlando Bloom and Eric Bana, all doing some sort of vague, twangy accent for no discernible reason.

Stupidest action scene: the flying bus in Swordfish. Novel! Bold! Retarded!

Line of the Year: "You taste like burger. I don't like you anymore." --Wet Hot American Summer

2000: The decade begins with the whimper of a dying harp seal

Looking at my trusty 2000 spreadsheet, I'm once again reminded of how inauspiciously the 21st century began, film-wise. If you only had this year to go on, you could make an argument for shutting down Hollywood all together. Shit, Traffic is on my top ten of the year, and I don't even really like that movie. Still, there were one or two truly memorable films from that year, as well as some movies that remain, to this day, stunningly overrated.

Top Five

1. Requiem for a Dream

As a testament to the lameness of 2000, I haven't seen the top film of the year since I saw it in the theater. In the case of Darren Aranosfky's Requiem, though, that's really more of a compliment. Beyond the brutally grim subject matter, the imagery is so vivid and terrible that you can't unsee it, so repeat viewing is really beside the point. It's been nearly a decade since I saw Requiem for a Dream, and when I close my eyes to conjure it, I can still see Ellen Brustyn's carnivorous fridge, Jared Leto's sore-covered arm, and, of course, "ass-to-ass." Film can be the most ephermeral of art forms: film images tend to degrade in your head over time, whereas a piece of music, for example, can haunt your brain for years. Requiem for a Dream is filled with some of the most devastating and indelible pieces of visual poetry, horrible, horrible visual poetry, of the decade.

2. American Psycho

If Mary Harron's American Psycho were just the business card exchange scene, Paul Allen's Huey Lewis-aided death scene, and a bunch of clips from Hee Haw, it would still be among my favorite films of the decade. Thankfully, those gems are surrounded by a bunch more great stuff, starting with Christian Bale's magnificent performance, easily the best of his career. It's hard to believe that the self-important, scowling stiff who glowers his way through blockbuster after blockbuster is the same dude how does that amazing shimmy with the raincoat and ax in this movie. The goofs on 80s superficiality are kind of glib, and the overall theme of Wall Street as a playground for sociopaths seems obvious, but in a country that continues to worship wealth regardless of how it is acquired, and chase status symbols regardless of the cost, American Psycho continues to be trenchant, in addition to being hilarious.

3. Wonder Boys

And now the serious drop off the cliff begins. Wonder Boys is another movie I haven't seen in ages, but have fond memories of, largely due to Michael Douglas's schlubby charisma and a general air of creative paralysis and, eventually, acceptance of limitations and failures, which I tend to respond strongly to in films.

4. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Not one of my favorite Coen brothers films, but still pretty good, and it holds up very well when half-watched on TV whilst interneting. Highlights: Stephen Root as the blind, crazy radio station manager, the Wizard of Oz Klan rally, "Ah, George, not the livestock!"

5. Traffic

What did I say about this being a crummy year?

Movie so awful that it's amazing: Battlefield Earth. "Before you could even SPELL YOUR NAME, I was being TAUGHT to CONQUER GALAXIES!!!!" Aaaaand, scene! Star wipe to Barry Pepper in a caveman outfit. It almost makes Scientology worthwhile.

Movie so awful it's just...awful: The Ninth Gate. On paper, this should have been fantastic: Johny Depp, Roman Polanski, Satan worshipers, portals to hell...and yet...hot ass on celluloid without the camp delights of a Battlefield Earth. Could have used some Travolta.

"Modern Classic" I just can't get behind: Almost Famous

Oscar-winning, universally beloved movie that actually sucks out loud: Gladiator. Yes, there's nothing better than an action film with incomprehensible action scenes! Don't we put up with enough of that shit from your brother, Ridley?

Brilliantly-rendered shot from a largely-sucky film: the horse dissection from The Cell

Best action scene: final shoot-out from The Way of the Gun. This is mostly a weak-tea Tarantino ripoff, made even more ridiculous by the attempt to make Ryan Phillippe into a badass, but the climactic shoot-out in a Mexican brothel manages to transcend cliche for a few minutes. No music, no slow motion, just a bunch of tubby hired guns awkwardly absorbing shotgun blasts.

Worst failed provocation: the rape scene from Baise-Moi. I'm sure directors Virginie Despentes and Coralie (just Coralie? Really?) thought that showing real penetration during a rape would shock viewers from their comfortable, titillated voyeurism, but it ends highlighting the artificiality of the enterprise and turns the whole movie from that point on into a numbing, alienated series of cheap shocks. Maybe that was supposed to be the point, but if so...who gives a shit?

Comedy sequence that made me laugh until I cried and therefore invalidates any credibility I may have as a film critic: the demon saying "Popeye's chicken is the shizznit" in Little Nicky. I can't defend Little Nicky as a comedy, as a film, as anything other than a painful bag of shitwiches, but that line, said by a snarly hellspawn...it just set me off. I can't explain it, and I certainly can't justify it. All I can say is: comedy is subjective, and I'm not on trial here!

Line of the Year: "You're the man now, dog!"--Finding Forrester

The Aughts in Film

The decade draws to a close, and every cultural commentator worth an ounce of bandwidth feels the urge to look back and start ranking shit. This includes cultural commentators whose waste of bandwidth is a crime against technology and the very notion of taste. So over the next couple of weeks, I'll be doing a year-by-year retrospective of the films of the expiring decade; the good, the bad, the comically bad and the random but memorable. There probably won't be too many surprises, but since I made a spreadsheet for every year and listed every single movie from a given year that I've seen, it will at least be relatively comprehensive.

The Fantastic Mr. Fox

So it has come to this. Wes Anderson's meticulously staged camera set-ups, whimsically detailed sets, and lush autumnal colors have found their natural expression: a stop motion animated adaption of a Roald Dahl children's book. The results are interesting, if mixed, in that the switch to animation is a natural fit for Anderson's aesthetic, while also undermining some of the emotional elements that makes his best work so memorable. Fantastic Mr. Fox feels like Anderson reaching a crossroads: from here, he'll either move on to a more expansive, penetrating cinematic palette, or continue to construct his delicate and increasingly sterile family dioramas.

If animation is in some ways Wes Anderson's perfect medium, then stop motion animation is even more perfect. The charming, hand-crafted feel of Mr. Fox makes the movie feel like something Max Fischer would have put together in middle school. Intricate set and character design, complete with animal hair that moves with the wind, offer the ultimate expression of Anderson's intensely composed film vision. It always felt like those pesky humans actors and were the thing standing between Wes Anderson and the movies he really wanted to make. Using animal puppets also does the work of justifying a visual fussiness that can feel artificial and lifeless when applied to actual people. In Mr. Fox, cross-sections of farmhouses and whimsical, choreographed heist scenes feel perfectly natural. It's easy to look back at the Wes Anderson filmography and imagine all of his previous characters as claymation figures bouncing around in Technicolor. 111 Archer Avenue is basically a giant dollhouse to being with.

And yet...while the animation makes Anderson's more contrived visual motifs easier to accept, it also ensures that the film can't reach the sort of emotional heights that Anderson, at his best, is capable of. The story is children's-book simple: Mr. Fox (George Clooney, reprising Danny Ocean for the woodland set) gives ups stealing chickens when his wife (Meryl Streep) gets pregnant, but a few years later, the itch comes back, leading to an escalating battle with three sinister farmers who live near Fox's treehouse. Along the way, Mr. Fox bonds with his alienated son (Jason Schwartzman) and comes to terms with his responsibilities as a husband and father. The character interplay echoes one of the themes that have dominated all of Anderson's work: overbearing father figures and the disaffected children left in their wake, but the emotional beats and dialogue are played so broadly that they fail to register with the poignancy of movies like Rushmore and Royal Tenenbaums. That's to be expected when dealing with what is ostensibly a kid's movie, but the overdetermined nature of the character arcs call to mind Anderson's last live-action film, The Darjeeling Limited. This suggests that Anderson has told all the stories of upper class family discord he can, and that it's time to move on. That, or he can simply occupy himself with finding new ways to control every centimeter of every frame of his hermetically sealed entertainments.

2012

California is going to have a gubernatorial election in 2010. Arnold Schwarzenegger, having served two terms, is ineligible for reelection. And yet, somehow, there's a scene in 2012, set in the titular year, where the governor of California calls a press conference, and sure enough, he's a giant dude with a thick Austrian accent. Yes, it's a small goof in an epically long, epically stupid movie riddled with jaw-dropping distortions of physics, astronomy and common sense, but it's emblematic of the slapdash, kitchen sink approach of German schlockmeister Roland Emmerich, or, as I like to think of him, Uwe Boll with a 200 million dollar budget.

Everything, literally everything, about this movie is ridiculous: the premise that the Mayans predicted that the world would end in 2012, the idea that the sun starts emitting "mutated" neutrinos that heat up the earth's core (who knew neutrinos had DNA?), the fact that a movie in which 99.9999% of the world's population dies horribly in volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis spends most of its running time detailing the petty relationship issues of science fiction author John Cusack and his estranged wife and children. And, of course, the continual and downright laughable defiance of basic plausibility. The first two hours of this seemingly endless movie feature three (THREE!) separate instances of an airplane taking off just in time to avoid, in turn, a massive earthquake, a supervolcanic eruption, and a massive cloud of ash. It's all part of Roland Emmerich's mission to film people outrunning the four elemental forces in his movies. First, Air Force One narrowly escapes the incineration of Washington D.C. in Independence Day (fire, natch), then Jake Gyllenhaal outruns a burst of supercold air in The Day After Tomorrow (wind), and now, in 2012, John Cusack's plane takes off just as California splits in half and sinks into the ocean (earth!). For the life of me, I can't figure out why the hell none of these close-call take-offs couldn't have dodged one of the film's many massive tidal waves. I guess Emmerich is adhering to a consistent One Element Per Film rule in order to make it more of a challenge for himself.

Of course, such trifling concerns are beside the point when dealing with a gigantic piece of nihilistic spectacle like this. The only real question worth asking is: is it a reasonably good time? On that score, 2012 delivers, like most Roland Emmerich movies. It's entertaining mostly because of the ridiculousness and the absurdity and the brain-bending continuity errors. Like a buttoned-down Michael Bay, Emmerich makes movies where the majority of the fun is in seeing how far the filmmakers will go to insult your intelligence as a viewer, and how many hundreds of millions of dollars of special effects wizardry they'll spend to do it. In this case, there's plenty of fun to be had, and even though most of the big disaster set-pieces are cribbed from other Emmerich (and James Cameron) movies, there's still a mad grandeur to unleashing every megadeath-causing havoc on the planet's landmarks all at once. As usual, the fact that these spectacles of mayhem are meant to represent the near extinction of the human race, including the horrifying deaths of almost every person (not to mention animal) on earth is given little consideration. Josef Stalin supposedly said, "one death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic." Roland Emmerich might have added "and six billion deaths is a 65 million dollar opening weekend."