Those Game-Changing Films of the 00′s
Some excellent film-making happened during the Cold War, a time when paranoia pervaded movies with such atmosphere and rhythm as to make them fairly indispensable to our back-looking view of those decades. What happened in the post 9/11 years of the 21st century was something different though. Parameters were stretched with visual tactics and narrative structures were blasted and remolded by fantastic writing talents. The films in this list are the game-changers for film in the last decade. They are chosen both for their artistic merits as well as for their popular appeal, and because I will always fall for the masters of the pen.
Dancer in the Dark (2000) – Just a tremendous masterpiece.
Lord of the Rings (2001) – Screenwriters Fran Walsh (married to Peter Jackson) and Philippa Boyens, were both working in flush territory of fantasy and English poetry with this script. I can’t imagine why elves and goblins make a good picture, and military brats and blue aliens don’t, but alas, we have Avatar.
Lost in Translation (2003) – This film helped solidify a new age for introspection and malaise in cinema, Coppola’s muse. Well done, because this one stuck.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) – Charlie Kaufman is a master. Anthony Lane remarked at the time that he would have liked to see Mark Ruffalo and Jim Carrey switch parts in this film. So would I, you know, just for a laugh.
Shaun of the Dead (2004) – This film came right on the heels of the break-out British comedy series, The Office, and it had, along with Simon Pegg’s fine comedy writing, the same idea to embark. We are all, in our hazy, slightly terrified, uncertain daily lives, already zombies.
Naploeon Dynamite (2004) – I may have been persuaded by the time capsule of nostalgia that this film is, but ultimately it’s about friendship, and it pulls off that journey with humor and fluidity. It also lets Jon Heder dance like a white boy at the end.
Brokeback Mountain (2005) – Annie Proulx’s fiction is a solid base for Ang Lee’s beautiful piece. The American West is the star, but Lee respects emotional conflict enough to let the characters stir up a brilliant narrative.
This Is England (2006) – My favorite film of that year, because it so eloquently said and did what everyone was trying to do — Show that we ache for the lives of others, and that, in itself, is life.
The Host (2006) – Funny and sad, scary and…salty. Lots of ramen. A great take on what a horror film should be.
There Will Be Blood (2007) – If the Western was at all revisited in this last decade, it was to broaden the limits of the ideals implicit in the genre, Brokeback did a lot for that, while films like those by Paul Thomas Anderson, operatic and gorgeous, simply use their existing limits to expose a general uneasiness and fear about our present modern world.
-Heather Struck
Filed under: Review | Leave a Comment
Tags: best films of the decade, movies
No Responses Yet to “Those Game-Changing Films of the 00′s”