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6. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. (2006)
Directed by Ang Lee
Ang Lee is a brilliant filmmaker. There are some sentences that need no embellishment whatsoever, because they simply contain the truth, and any elaboration beyond that distracts from the simplicity of the notion. There is no other modern director like Lee. For nearly twenty years, he has moved from genre to genre, language to language, style to style, and the only thing that has remained consistent since is the highest quality of his work, regardless of the assumed generic constraints. (This paragraph is written with the acceptance of the fact that his latest film, TAKING WOODSTOCK was considered something of a disappointment by many, and is his least inspiring work to date).
Still, you can trace his career from masterpiece to masterpiece, and acknowledge that even his failures come from the ‘inspired’ category (HULK, I’m looking at you, here). You could look at RIDE WITH THE DEVIL or EAT, DRINK, MAN, WOMAN. You could happily watch a double bill of SENSE AND SENSIBILITY and THE ICE STORM (his second best film) and acknowledge that both films are scarily perceptive examinations of their society’s mores. Alternatively, you could find your enjoyment in THE WEDDING BANQUET or CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, or his follow up to BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, the phenomenal LUST, CAUTION.
It is BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that I’m here to write about, though, not his previous work, but it is so difficult to appreciate the work of a director as fascinating as Lee without context. That the film works isn’t solely down to the director though. There’s the writing, for example. It’s an adaptation of a short story by the Pulitzer Prize™ winning author E. Annie Proulx, which was adapted by Diana Ossana and Pulitzer Prize™ winning author Larry McMurtry. There’s also the acting, which is of an incredibly high standard. Each of the four leads give what were, at the time, career best performances.
The plaudits went mostly to Heath Ledger, whose performance here is every bit as good as, if not better than, his Oscar™ winning turn in THE DARK KNIGHT. He was Oscar™ nominated here, too, but lost out to Philip Seymour Hoffman in CAPOTE, a poor decision, which was overshadowed by the inexplicable victory of CRASH over BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN in the Best Picture category. In all honesty, Ledger’s is the best performance here, although Michelle Williams as his wife, and Jake Gyllenhall as his lover are tremendous. The fourth member of the quartet, and the only one of the four not to be Oscar™ nominated for their work is Anne Hathaway, who plays the wife of Gyllenhall’s character.
Ledger plays Ennis Del Mar, who, along with Jack Twist (Gyllenhall), is given the responsibility of shepherding a local farmer’s flock on the titular mountain. Stuck together for a winter, their relationship becomes physical, and later romantic. The scenes on that mountain are beautiful to look at, and exquisitely handled by Lee. The performances of Ledger and Gyllenhall take root here. Everything that happens in later scenes (and the film spans thirty years) can be traced back to this beginning. Lee’s film remains honest to its characters throughout, and the result is a tragic love story, but one touched with beautiful moments of true happiness. Outside of their relationship with each other, both men get married, and try and establish home lives as satisfying and fulfilling as their relationship, which is crystallised in two or three meetings each year, usually spent back on Brokeback Mountain.
It would be easy to underestimate the importance or power of the actresses’ performances here. Unfortunately, we still live in a time when to play a gay man, while a young and attractive leading man with aspirations of career longevity is a sign of bravery in an actor. As such, it was inevitable that Ledger and Gyllenhall would dominate much of the film’s press. Williams and Hathaway, though, are superb; saddled with characters that could easily have been unlikable – they’re standing in the way of our heroes’ happiness, for one thing, each makes their character completely believable, and every bit as much of a victim as their husbands in the tragedy of a love deemed unacceptable by society.
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is a timeless love story. It’s a film as much about the sanctity of romantic love as any other Hollywood classic. It’s exquisitely played, with great chemistry existing in all three relationships that the film explores, beautifully written – the 22 page long script more than adequately filling a two-hour plus running time, with no sign of sag, and directed with a huge amount of skill and heart. There are a number of outstanding scenes, none of which can quite match the pure exhilaration of the blossoming of Jack and Ennis’ love, but give us deeper understanding of the characters involved. The fight scene at the fireworks display is perfectly framed and staged, while if you can survive the ending without crying, there’s potentially something wrong with you. It’s this scene, as Ledger mutters the words ‘Jack, I swear...’, that best illustrates the talent and potential of an actor, of a leading man, taken away much too young. There’s no doubt that he’ll always be best remembered for his thrilling portrayal of The Joker, but it is Ennis Del Mar who will always be his best screen creation, and BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN that will, surely, always be the crowning achievement of Ang Lee’s glittering career.
7. THERE WILL BE BLOOD. (2008)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
At the beginning of the zeroes, Paul Thomas Anderson was a promising filmmaker, on the back of a superb second feature, BOOGIE NIGHTS. At the end of the decade, three movies later (of which this is the third to make this list), he had a real claim to being the most important American filmmaker of his generation. I’ve spoken briefly about MAGNOLIA already, and a little more about PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE, but it is THERE WILL BE BLOOD that is his true masterpiece, and one of the standard bearers of modern American cinema.
A stunning character portrait, THERE WILL BE BLOOD is an incredible film. It hums with a purpose from the very first shot to the last, and that purpose is to show the indefatigability and venality of man. It does so by focusing (albeit to different extents) on two men, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis) and Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Without exemplary performances from either of the two leads, this wouldn’t be anything like the film it is. Dano is a revelation. Before this, he was best known as the support in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE GIRL NEXT DOOR, but his is the performance of a skilled veteran, never stealing the attention from Day Lewis, who is the headline act, just as his character is to everyone he meets.
It’s an incredible performance by Day Lewis, an actor whose tendency for hamminess could have derailed Anderson’s film, but who, instead, dominates it with an enormous amount of power. Plainview is a monstrous man, egotistical, psychotic and selfish. At the start of the film we see him overcome huge personal and physical obstacles in order to secure oil from a mined well, and that level of dogged assurance remains in his character throughout. The shading, added by Anderson and Day Lewis throughout, is what elevates the film, though, to a similar level as the best Hollywood classic character portraits of the 1930s and 40s. Anderson’s obvious inspiration throughout his first three movies was Robert Altman, but here, his work is closer in style to that of John Huston, or Orson Welles. Plainview is as much a cinematic icon as Welles’ Charles Foster Kane.
The film is ostensibly inspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel ‘Oil’, but aside from the central relationship between Plainview and his son, HW, and the interest in oil, there’s little here that can’t be directly attributed to Anderson. It was his decision to lose the politics from the original story, to focus on Plainview (the characters names have been changed) rather than HW and to introduce Eli, and as such religion to the story, twinning it with money as the two key ingredients to the only true currency in this world – power.
The battle for power between Eli, an evangelical preacher, reputed to have healing powers, whose family’s land Plainview buys as part of his latest prospecting, and Daniel is the film’s driving conflict. Throughout, Eli is painted as less than Plainview’s equal; he is physically bested by Plainview in front of most of his congregation, and even Plainview’s subjugation to him is a pyrrhic victory. In the end, the film comes down to the conflict generated between two men, whose egos can’t allow them to accept that they may not be all-powerful.
This is the third highest American film on this list, but Day Lewis’ turn might be the best of the decade. In anyone else’s hands it’s impossible to imagine how THERE WILL BE BLOOD could have been as successful as it is. Anderson’s work behind the camera is similarly superb. Together they have crafted a film for the ages, one as perceptive about American culture today as any on this list; a film which questions our attraction to people of power as much as it does the fact that power corrupts those who seek it above all else. It’s a staggering achievement, and as well as being the seventh best film of the past decade, it’s also one of the very best films of all time.
There are a number of striking, outstanding scenes. The scene in which Eli baptises Daniel is haunting, while the finale is blackly funny, providing one of the quotes of the decade (I drink your milkshake!). The wordless opening is a marvel, an incredible piece of direction as Anderson ratchets up the tension even before we know Plainview’s character. The true stand-out moment, though, is the oil-fire, which claims HW’s hearing, and we can later identify as the beginning of Plainview’s eventual decline. Visually beautiful, and as exciting as all hell, this, like the rest of the film is technically stupendous. Special word should go to Jonny Greenwood, of Radiohead fame, whose soundtrack is haunting.
8. MULHOLLAND DR. (2007)
Directed by David Lynch
David Lynch has had an extraordinary career, so it’s fitting that his best film is one of the most sensationally strange and beautiful films ever made. MULHOLLAND DR. is the sort of film where you can enjoy it even while it flummoxes you completely. The only true thing about this movie is that anyone who tells you that they definitely know what it means is lying to you, which of course, presents me a problem, as I’m about to tell you what it’s about, or, more accurately, what it means to me.
The first, immediately obvious thing about MULHOLLAND DR. is that it carries a number of brilliant performances. Laura Elena Harring, for example, who was best known before being cast in this, as one of the mainstays of SUNSET BEACH, a cult US soap, is superb as Rita, with whom our heroine, Betty (Naomi Watts) shares a love affair after a car accident leaves her with amnesia. Offering superb support are Justin Theroux, Dan Hedaya, and another soap alumni, HOME AND AWAY’s Melissa George.
The best performance of the film, though, and in fact, the best female performance of the decade comes from Watts. Her portrayal of Betty is simply awesome, she exhibits a phenomenal range in this one performance. In fairness, it’s a role to die for. Betty goes through enough in this film to have occupied some actresses’ entire careers. After approximately two-thirds of MULHOLLAND DR., the film changes tack, completely. The woman that we previously knew as Betty is now known as Diane, and those that were previously part of her life, no longer know who she is. It’s down to the dexterity and openness of Watts’ performance that this change is accepted by the audience, even though it makes no sense to us, at least at the time.
Lynch has done similar things before (LOST HIGHWAY) and since (INLAND EMPIRE), but here he has created something that is evidently the work of a genius. One of the things that I love about the film is that there are several different, and equally valid, responses to what it all means, to what the plot twists and turns could possibly represent, and to what each character’s timelines in the film actually are. It’s a rare piece of cinema that can inspire such a myriad of interpretations, each of which gives some depth to every other reading of the film.
For my part, I think my reading of it is the most common. That is that the first two-thirds of the film represent the dying dream of Diane, a frustrated actress, turned prostitute. She has a connection to Rita, which she fantasises about, the result of which is an ideal, although one that keeps getting slightly skewed more and more by her ‘reality’ impinging on her subconscious. Within the two parts of the film, we see mirrored scenes, such as the audition sequences, the first of which is absolutely remarkable. In it Betty is trying out for a part, and our expectation is that it will be an unpleasant experience for her, yet she absolutely aces it. It’s a spine-chilling scene, featuring some of the best acting of Watts’ career to date. In the flipside, Diane witnesses another character – Camilla (Melissa George), who by this time has begun to blur slightly with Rita, go through an audition. Though a much different scene, the resonance is unavoidable and, clearly, deliberate.
Betty’s audition scene is one of the film’s best scenes, others include the introduction of a mysterious cowboy, a scene in which Angelo Badalamenti drinks an espresso really slowly a terrifying sequence behind a diner and the film’s highpoint, the pivotal nightclub scene. In it, Betty and Rita are watching a woman sing Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’ in Spanish (Llorande) at the club Silencio. It’s a staggering sequence, one which makes the hairs on the back of your neck dance to attention. It’s a spine-tingling moment, rife with sadness and tension. At its conclusion, Betty becomes Diane, and we enter the devastating denouement of Lynch’s masterpiece.
9. SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE. (2003)
Directed by Park Chan-Wook
As mentioned earlier in this list, Park Chan-Wook has become one of cinema’s most important and exciting filmmakers. If his latest film, THIRST, disappointed somewhat, it was only because of the insanely high standards he had set for himself with his seminal ‘Vengeance’ trilogy, a trilogy only in theme, but the best series of films of the decade. This is where that trilogy began, and amongst some strong competition, it’s probably the bleakest film on this list.
The film follows Ryu (Shin Ha-kyun), a deaf and dumb factory worker at Ilshin Electronics, who is desperately looking for a kidney donor for his beloved sister (Lim Ji-eun). Crushed by the fact that his blood-type means that he isn’t a compatible donor, and then by his sacking he agrees to buy an organ on the black market for a huge sum of cash and his own kidney. When he can’t afford the payment, his anarchist girlfriend (Bae Du-na) encourages him to kidnap Yu-Sun (Han Bo-bae), the daughter of Park (Song Kang-ho), his former boss.
As you would expect, if you’ve seen any films, ever, such a plan is doomed to tragic failure, and such is the case here, and the tragedy begets a cycle of guilt, vengeance and violence that encompasses each of the characters. As with the other two films in the trilogy, Park does a magnificent job in orchestrating the action, making each of the main characters sympathetic, and swathing the film in a kind of extra-sensory bleakness. He’s aided, of course, by his exceptional cast, particularly Song Kang-ho, who played the leads in THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD and THE HOST, as well as Park’s own THIRST and the peerless Bae Du-na.
There’s no doubt that the impinging bleakness of Park’s vision won’t be to everybody’s taste, but I would contend, strongly, that nobody came close to this level of brutality and skill anywhere in world cinema in the 2000s. A number of scenes test the stomach of the viewer, including the autopsy of Yu-sun, which is viewed by both audience and grieving father, giving us the same level of outrage as he, which fosters our sympathy for his vengeance. That sympathy becomes tested, as we begin to become increasingly sensitive to the violence he augurs. The death of a female character, through an unbearably slow torture by electrocution is as difficult to watch as anything by any of the baroque masters of horror.
Park hit the nail on the head when he mentioned that each of these characters’ single most dominant trait is a guilty conscience. It’s something that the film has in common with Shane Meadows’ extraordinary DEAD MAN’S SHOES; that the avengers are as damaged by their actions as they are by the crimes that brought them to bear. It’s what sets both films (and OLDBOY and SYMPATHY FOR LADY VENGEANCE) apart from odious nonsense like Tony Scott’s MAN ON FIRE, where vengeance is treated as heroic, and each death comes unsettlingly easily for both perpetrator and audience. Park, simply, isn’t interested in black-and-white morality as anything other than a stick to beat us with.
It’s therefore an even more excoriating experience, because of the level of humanity and feeling that Park invests in the film. To do so much with a genre is an extraordinary showcase for a prodigious talent, and each member of the cast benefits from that as well. The visual audacity is more muted here, than in OLDBOY, but understandably as SYMPATHY FOR MR VENGEANCE is a more muted film. The final twenty minutes here are devastating, there’s no escape for anyone who sits through it. Many horror films fell under the ‘Asia Extreme’ banner in the zeroes, but no other exemplified it in the manner of Park’s masterpiece.
10. PAN’S LABYRINTH. (2006)
Directed by Guillermo Del Toro
At this stage of the list, we’re dealing with ten films that could all, easily, have been ranked number one; ten films that would, absolutely, deserve that ranking.
Guillermo Del Toro’s best film, PAN’S LABYRINTH is an extraordinary ride, with elements of historical drama, fantasy, gothic horror, thriller and a coming of age story. Set in Spain, during the Spanish Civil War, Del Toro’s film hums with invention and delivers an exquisitely crafted fairy tale, which sits incredibly comfortably alongside the historical drama.
Del Toro, throughout his career, has always been a great storyteller, as can be seen in his early, exploitation-horror work, through to his work on the HELLBOY films. PAN’S LABYRINTH has most in common with THE DEVIL’S BACKBONE, from the period setting, to the child protagonist and ghostly, otherworldly theme. This is, much, the better film, though.
The film begins with a young girl, Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero) who with her mother (Ariadna Gil) is moving in with her new step-father, a fascist army captain (Sergi Lopez) at his base in rural Spain. While there, she stumbles across a beguiling, yet dangerous fantasy world, seemingly guarded by Pan, a mysterious faun-like creature, which offers her a possible escape from the terrifying real world she’s moved into.
As the cruel Captain Vidal, Lopez gives a superb performance. If you don’t believe, entirely, in his capacity for evil, then the whole concept of the film fails. His work is mirrored by both Gil and Baquero, who bring their characters hauntingly to life. Maribel Verdu as Mercedes, Vidal’s maid and a communist rebel sympathiser, is also terrific. What really stands out, though, is the brilliance of the character design in Ofelia’s fantasy world.
Del Toro’s career has much in common with that of Peter Jackson, a similar beginning in schlocky horror movies and then a superb record of character design and visual excellence. It’s with no small amount of thought that I say that this is better than any of Jackson’s films. The invention of just about every frame of the film is jaw-dropping. It really deserves to be seen on several occasions, so it’s possible to take in the scope of Del Toro’s imagination, and the skill evident in bringing it to the screen.
Just as impressive is the way in which he has melded the more fantastical elements of the story to the ‘real’ events in Ofelia’s life. There’s just as much attention and detail being paid to every inch of Captain Vidal’s house as there is Pan’s lair. The use of set and sound design doesn’t generally excite many people, but here is the textbook example of how to use technical, and design skills to the very best possible effect for your film. Of all of the brilliant scenes in this film, my mind invariably flies back to two in particular.
There’s the scene where Ofelia, carrying out Pan’s instructions encounters a horrifying creature (pictured above), and her childlike curiosity places her in immediate, terrifying danger. It’s sensationally well directed, and the sense of peril is overwhelming. Secondly, the scene in which we witness Vidal shaving; it emphasises everything we know about the character, his insecurity, perfectionism, compulsiveness and obsession. It’s hammered home by the sound of the razor against his skin, repetitive, chilling and violent. It’s an extraordinary moment, and the juxtaposition between the two shows off the real skill of the director, someone who can utilise all of the tools at his disposal to create wildly different, yet similarly overwhelming scenes, within the same film, and have them sit comfortably together in the film as a whole.
11. ZODIAC. (2007)
Directed by David Fincher
As we get to this stage in the list, we’re inevitably going to be running into a number of career bests, and so it is with ZODIAC, David Fincher’s finest film by far. Both a thriller about a search for a murderer in 1970s San Francisco, and a drama about the human effects of the failed search on the men trying to capture him, ZODIAC is a mature, tense and devastating film, one which pays tribute to the indefatigability of an investigation, while showing us the very human cost of searching for something so important and failing to find it.
While Fincher’s previous films were superbly put together (even the minor ones like THE GAME, PANIC ROOM and ALIEN 3), this is the first of his films to truly engage on an emotional level since SEVEN. While FIGHT CLUB was far flashier, by its very nature, this is a more sobering film. While the thriller aspects of the film are superb, it’s as a human drama that the film really excels. Fincher gets terrific performances from Robert Downey Jr and Jake Gyllenhaal as employees of the San Francisco Chronicle (respectively star journalist and new cartoonist), who become obsessed with the search for the Zodiac murderer. Equally brilliant are Mark Ruffalo and Anthony Edwards as the detectives tracking the case.
Fincher’s always shown great skill when dealing with actors, but this cast deliver flawless performances to a man. Gyllenhaal, for example, is better here than he’s ever been, while Edwards also gives a career best performance. We have come to expect excellence from the other two main leads, and neither Ruffalo nor Downey Jr. disappoint. Great support comes from Chloe Sevigny, Brian Cox and Elias Koteas, while there’s a haunting cameo from John Carroll Lynch in one of the film’s best scenes.
The film has a number of extraordinary moments, mostly in scenes when pieces of information are put together. A few stand out, such as the scene in which Lynch’s character is interrogated, and the two murder scenes we see are simply brilliantly handled. These scenes prove Fincher to be one of the most accomplished directors around, and he does wonders with the pacing of James Vanderbilt’s script, turning a near-three hour movie into something without a semblance of a sag in the middle.
It is, of course, exquisitely shot. Fincher’s use of space, colour and scale is probably second-to-none. It was unfairly neglected on release, as it seemed that the studio’s sole plan was to avoid the awards consideration it could and should have received. Now that time has passed, though, it has grown in stature. The story it follows is based on the true events that inspired DIRTY HARRY, most notably, yet there isn’t an essence of cartoonish excess, overt moralising or easy answers anywhere in ZODIAC.
Arguably the most accurate comparison film might be Spike Lee’s SUMMER OF SAM, which while very different, stylistically, bears the hallmark of being a crime movie in which the film focuses more on the impact of those around it. While Lee’s film is concerned with the impact on the community, Fincher’s focus is more narrow, he deals with the same fear and uneasiness, but adds in professional frustration and a devastating weight on the shoulders of its protagonists, turning the film into a tragic examination of the human cost of allowing the impact of such terrible crimes into your life.
12. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. (2005)
Directed by Michel Gondry
Jim Carrey had already made waves as a serious actor before his starring role in Michel Gondry’s adaptation of Charlie Kaufman’s script. He was terrific in the otherwise ordinary MAN ON THE MOON, and wonderful in Peter Weir’s majestic THE TRUMAN SHOW. This, though, is his best performance to date, and one of the best turns by anyone in the decade.
Alongside Carrey, Kate Winslet is terrific. She takes a character that could have fallen in one of the decade’s most irritating clichés – Kooky Girl – and turns her into a human being, with vulnerability, and empty confidence in spades. She has great chemistry with Carrey too, and their scenes together hum with a palpable authenticity. Further skilled support comes from Tom Wilkinson and Kirsten Dunst, while the peerless Mark Ruffalo is superb, as always.
Carrey plays a man so haunted by his recent break-up that he decides to have his memories of his ex-girlfriend Clementine (Winslet) erased by Lacuna Inc., a company pioneering new memory technologies. Kaufman’s script is as high in concept as his earlier work, be it BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION or HUMAN NATURE. His latest two films, ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND and last year’s SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK haven’t seen him become less ambitious, but they have seen him combine that with superb execution.
This is his best film, by far. It’s heartbreakingly sad and romantic all in the same scene. The central story of the main romance is beautifully played by both leads, and judged to perfection, both in the script, and the execution of it, by Gondry. Before this Gondry’s only feature was HUMAN NATURE; a real disappointment. Since, he’s made two beguiling, if slight films: THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP and BE KIND REWIND. This is, simply, streets ahead of anything else he’s been involved with. His visual tics are married, beautifully, to Kaufman’s style.
There are a number of jaw-dropping scenes, both emotionally and from a visual standpoint. It’s Kaufman’s script, high-concept and all; that brings about the best moments, be they the tentative romance between two Lacuna Inc. employees forged while watching countless people erase the memories of their former loved ones, or an absolutely killer final scene, which is either blindly optimistic, or relentlessly cynical, depending on your viewpoint.
The sheer confidence of the film is breathtaking. It’s something that it has in common with the other (five) American films to come in this list, absolute surety, which when allied to the flawlessness of the execution and the audacity of the concept goes to create something extraordinary. With a terrific soundtrack, to boot, this is one of the boldest mainstream American films of the decade, and one of the best.
13. KISS KISS, BANG BANG. (2006)
Directed by Shane Black
Shane Black’s directorial debut is the purest piece of cinematic entertainment of the decade. Funny, intricate and sexy, this is a brilliantly knowing update of film noir, with a trio of sensational lead performances from Robert Downey Jr. (his career renaissance, later confirmed by IRON MAN and SHERLOCK HOLMES began here), Val Kilmer and the then unknown Michelle Monaghan.
Downey Jr. plays Harry Lockhart, a petty thief who on escaping from a toy store robbery blunders into an audition for a Hollywood film. His edgy charm works for him, and he’s invited to Los Angeles for further screen tests, where he’s introduced to Hollywood consultant and private eye Gay Perry (Kilmer), whose job it is to show Harry the ropes of private eye work as preparation for his possible film role.
Of course, for the traditional gumshoe, you need a love interest, here, Harry’s high-school sweetheart, turned Hollywood wannabe, played winningly by Monaghan (despite the fact she’s far too young to have been at school at the same time as Downey Jr.). The pair meet up again, of course, and Harry is instantly smitten once more.
The film benefits hugely from the performances. Even though she’s too young, Monaghan is just about perfect as the wannabe-starlet whose chances of making it in show business are almost over. Kilmer, meanwhile, has never been better than he is here, commanding and funny, and playing gloriously without ego, subverting his reputation in the process. The film, though, belongs squarely to Downey Jr., whose edgy charm dominates the entire film. Harry, in his hands is charming, yet vulnerable. He’s the sort of lovable fuck-up that it’s all too easy to imagine that the actor himself could have become in his years of addiction.
The real fun of KISS KISS, BANG BANG comes from the amount of fun that all involved appear to be having, from the reborn Downey Jr. to Kilmer, to Shane Black. Black was already a star screenwriter; his scripts for LETHAL WEAPON and THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT were hugely sought after, but he’d spent quite some time out of the business. Time, it seems, he spent well, working on this.
A heady mixture of mystery and comedy, KISS KISS, BANG BANG is gloriously entertaining from start to finish. Black isn’t afraid to investigate the shadier side of Hollywood, in fact he does so with relish, and the shares a darkness with the best Hollywood films noirs. Black’s direction is stylish, in addition to him getting the very best out of his actors. He keeps the action cracking along at a hectic pace – so much so that we feel almost as bewildered as Harry by his rapid journey from thief to potential star.
It’s a film that just crackles with humour and sexiness, while managing to tie in a story that could absolutely survive in a film with only a hundredth of the wit and invention that the protagonists bring to it.
14. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS. (2008)
Directed by Cristian Mungiu
One of the most shocking, powerful and forthright films of the decade, Cristian Mungiu’s film picked up a head of steam when it won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, an award that it thoroughly deserved. This is angry cinema, part of the new movement of Eastern European cinema, raging against their current states of affairs, and the regimes that got them there.
While Mungiu’s film is about a lack of freedoms in Ceaucescu’s Romania, many of the concerns are still relevant today in the Western world. There are still places where it’s horrifically dangerous to consider an abortion, places where women take their lives into their own hands for making that choice. While 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS paints a terrifying picture of what life must have been like under the iron curtain, it asks several questions about life today, all over the world.
At its centre is a phenomenal performance from Anamaria Marinca, who plays Otilia, a young student trying to arrange an abortion for her friend Gabita (Laura Vasilu). The procedure, highly illegal in Communist Romania, leads her into contact with Bebe, a man who promises to carry out the abortion for an extortionate fee.
While 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS works as a drama, showcasing the conditions that young people had to live their lives under in 1980s Eastern Europe, it’s also extraordinarily effective as a thriller. The oppressive sense of tension begins about twenty minutes into the film, not letting up until the very end. Credit must go to Mungiu for this, so skilfully does he orchestrate it. One scene in particular, where Otilia is having dinner with her boyfriend’s family, having left Gabita with the express instruction to telephone her if there’s a problem is an exercise in Hitchcockian levels of suspense. The sound of the endlessly ringing telephone haunted me for days. It’s an extraordinary scene, one of a handful of brilliant moments.
Throughout the film, the friendship between Gabita and Otilia is examined, stringently. Why would Otilia subject herself to the levels of risk and debasement that she does here if not for a lasting bond of deep friendship? Yet, throughout, there appears to be a distance between the two women, which is a cause of yet more tension. We’re never sure at which stage Otilia might just say that she’s had enough of the situation she’s got herself into.
Like most of the best films on this list, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS is an extraordinarily powerful film, a viewing experience that couldn’t be described as pleasant, but one that inspires debate, passion and a renewed interest in film. It’s the best film from Eastern Europe in the decade, and one of the strongest that the region has ever produced.
15. THE LORD OF THE RINGS. (2001, 2002, 2003)
Directed by Peter Jackson
It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Peter Jackson’s adaptation of JRR Tolkein’s beloved tome was the cinematic event of the zeroes. In a decade in which cinema’s premier blockbuster filmmakers from previous generations failed to deliver, Jackson presented us with three films, which can easily be treated as one, that provided more than could rightly have been expected.
Jackson wasn’t much of a name until these films; his previous work was good, but largely unknown, his two highest profile films were THE FRIGHTENERS (a flop on release) and HEAVENLY CREATURES. Add in a few splatter-horrors like BAD TASTE and BRAINDEAD, and you wouldn’t necessarily have expected a movie trilogy that would gross nearly $3 billion at the global box office, and sell millions of DVDs, as well as cleaning up at the Academy Awards™ in 2004.
Jackson is now one of the world’s foremost directors (although THE LOVELY BONES is a disaster), and his cast – as odd a bunch as the characters they portrayed have (mostly) gone on to have interesting and lucrative careers. What the films have is an immense sense of scale. From the first moment of THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001) to the final scenes of THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003), you can’t help but be awed by the sheer scope of Jackson’s vision. He utilised computer generation as skilfully as anyone else, before or since, using his own effects company WETA for CG and more tangible effects.
He garnered good performances from everyone (standouts in the trilogy include Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Sir Ian McKellen and Bernard Hill), but more than that makes you care about , and understand, the characters, using shorthand, when compared to the lengthy nature of the source material. Jackson’s major achievements come from his ability to stage sequences, though. Each of the films has at least one standout set-piece, from the battle with the cave troll, culminating in the Balrog scene in THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, to the phenomenal battle at the denouement of THE RETURN OF THE KING. In the middle comes the trilogy’s best sequence, the rain-sodden Battle of Helm’s Deep in THE TWO TOWERS (2002), in which all of Jackson’s visual flair comes out, in thrilling style.
He keeps a close eye on the smaller story, as well, following the quest to destroy the ring with a keen interest. It’s those scenes that contain the greatest technical achievement (and performance) of the trilogy: Gollum. The first truly believable, if not awe-inspiring, computer generated character in a live action film, Gollum is a wonder. Voiced, and portrayed, in fact via motion capture technology by Andy Serkis, Gollum is the films’ crowning achievement. The films have their flaws, but given the excellence that dominates almost every frame of film, it would be churlish to hark on at them. The Extended Edition DVDs last for almost twelve hours in total, and every second is worth watching.
