My 100 Favorite Films of the Decade

[Howard Schumann]

1. Broken Wings
2. Promises
3. All About Lily Chou Chou
4. The Lives of Others
5. Bus 174
6. The New World
7. La Cienega
8. Nobody Knows
9. Les Fils (The Son)
10.Vertical Ray of the Sun

11. The Believer
12. Paranoid Park
13. Linda, Linda, Linda
14. Tropical Malady
15. Time Out
16. 35 Shots of Rum
17. Munyurangabo
18. You Can Count on Me
19. Sweet Sixteen
20. Chunhyang

21. This is England
22. Wendy and Lucy
23. I’m Going Home
24. Beijing Bicycle
25. Elephant
26. The Cuckoo
27. Deep Breath (Le Soufflé)
28. L'Enfant (The Child)
29. Yi Yi
30. In This World

31. Somers Town
32. Rocket Science
33. Syndromes and a Century
34. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
35. Unknown Pleasures
36. Maria Full of Grace
37. Donnie Darko
38. The Intruder
39. Half Nelson
40. Los Angeles Plays Itself

41. Son of the Bride
42. Keys to the House
43. No Direction Home
44. Oasis
45. Songs From the Second Floor
46. Memories of Murder
47. The Tracker
48. L.I.E.
49. Tony Takitani
50. Heaven

51. Dead Man’s Shoes
52. Code Unknown
53. Wonder Boys
54. The Son's Room
55. Y Tu Mama Tambien
56. Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
57. Noi Albinoi
58. Hana and Alice
59. Russian Ark
60. The Fountain

61. Fateless
62. I'm Not Scared
63. Nowhere in Africa
64. Rabbit-Proof Fence
65. Sin Nombre
66. Slumdog Millionaire
67. The White Ribbon
68. Lorna’s Silence
69. Unmistaken Child
70. Mulholland Drive

71. Capturing the Friedmans
72. The First Saturday in May
73. Letter to a Child
74. The White Diamond
75. Nine Lives
76. The Way Home
77. Ten
78. Tricks
79. Charly

80. In Between Days
81. London to Brighton
82. Artificial Intelligence: A.I.
83. Fahrenheit 9/11
84. Read My Lips
85. Spellbound
86. Tully
87. Sicko
88. 13 Conversations About One Thing
89. Ballast

90. Boy A
91. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner
92. XXY
93. The House of Mirth
94. Good Bye, Lenin!
95. Mysterious Skin
96. Caché
97. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
98. An Inconvenient Truth
99. Blind Shaft
100. Battle Royale

[Chris Knipp]

Thank you for returning after long absence to post this interesting and (I fully understand) very personal list. As with the other recent long lists, being a completionist who'd like to claim to have seen almost everything, however foolish that is (at least I'd like to know what they all are), I'll begin with the films I haven't seen, or can't identify.

Vertical Ray of the Sun
Linda, Lind, Linda
Munyurangabo
Chunhyang
The Cuckoo
Deep Breath (Le souffle)
In This world
Haihane Renmei
Son of the Bride
Songs from the Second Floor
Heaven
Dead Men's Shoes
Noi Albinnoi
Hana and Alice
Unmistaken Child
The First Saturday in May
Letter to a Child
The White Diamond
Nine Lives
The Way Home
In Between Days
Spellbound
Tully
Battle Royale

That's a lot. I did somewhat better with Film Comment's list. I know Songs from the Second Floor is Roy Andersson; I got that off the Film Comment list and am renting it from Netflix. Some of these I may have seen and don't recognize the titles without the directors' names.

I have long observed that you favor movies involving children and young people; consequently, often coming of age stories. You can even see them in the titles, Wonder Boys, The Son's Room, Unmistaken Child, Letter to a Child, Boy A. Many others are coming of age films, from Unknown Pleasures to Donnie Darko to L.I. E. to Y Tu Mama' Tambien, Goodbye Lenin! and on and on. I see The Way Home is Jeuburo (Lee Jyoung-hyang), a Korean film about a seven-year-old boy who is "tamed" by his grandmother in the country while his mother looks for work. In Between Days (Kim So Yong 2006) is a coming of age tale of an 18-year-old Korean girl who falls in love with her best friend while adjusting to life as an immigrant in Canada. Deep Breath (Le souffle 2001) is about a disturbed teenage boy in France who is sent to stay with his uncle in the country. Noi Albinoi is Icelandic: "Noi (17), dreams of escaping from his remote fjord with the girl from the filling station." Tully, about two young brothers in a country town, sounds familiar, but I can't find my report on it. Tom Twykwer's Heaven, with Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, is not available on Netflix.

There are two films called Nine Lives from the 2000's, by Rodrigo Garcia (2005) and Andrew Green (2002).

[Howard Schumann]

Thanks for commenting. I'm a bit surprised you haven't seen that many since you generally see twice as many films as I do. In any event, these are personal favorites which you might check out. Some you may like, others not but as always I would value your opinion.

I do enjoy films about children since I strive for a world of purity and innocence and children often embody those characteristics. I would especially like to have your opinion of Deep Breath but it may not be easily available. I would not call the boy in the film disturbed. He may be on the verge but is more of a normal adolescent going through the growing pains in an environment that is not suitable for him.

[Chris Knipp]

Of course I would like to see these, but Deep Breath/Le souffle seems available only for sale for $28 in a PAL format DVD, not on Netflix. A Guardian review worries about animal abuse, but says the images are beautiful and striking. Any others you'd specially recommend?

Yes I may see more films than you see but I've remarked before that you often manage to see ones I have missed, at the Vancouver Festival, for instance. I don't know where you find them! I remember your Cinescene reviews of several of these, including Vertical Ray of the Sun, and I know you have good reviews of them on IMDb if not there.

[Howard Schumann]

I would especially recommend :

Vertical Ray of the Sun
Linda, Linda, Linda
Munyurangabo
Chunhyang
The Cuckoo
In This World
Dead Men's Shoes
The White Diamond
Nine Lives
In Between Days
Spellbound
Tully

[Chris Knipp]

I'll work on those, but I'll work on my list from Film Comment's Decade in the Dark first. I am sure I saw Tully and just forgot the name; I forget films sometimes when nobody else ever mentions them. The White Diamond one is Werner Herzog, I see, so I'll definitely go for that. I still have to look up the other ones and find out what they are. Off to dinner at my goddaughter's now, before she goes back to college to finish up her junior year.

[Howard Schumann]

I'll work on those, but I'll work on my list from Film Comment's Decade in the Dark first. I am sure I saw Tully and just forgot the name; I forget films sometimes when nobody else ever mentions them. The White Diamond one is Werner Herzog, I see, so I'll definitely go for that. I still have to look up the other ones and find out what they are. Off to dinner at my goddaughter's now, before she goes back to college to finish up her junior year.

Have a great dinner.

By the way, if you have never seen "Broken Wings" or "Promises", I would recommend them strongly. Notice that I have a lot of documentaries on my list. It was a good decade for that.

[cinemabon]

It's so great to have you back, Howard. We missed you. Enjoyed the post. We started a similar thread (as you know I hate 82). I have to go back to my saga, but great to read your work.

[Howard Schumann]

It's so great to have you back, Howard. We missed you. Enjoyed the post. We started a similar thread (as you know I hate 82). I have to go back to my saga, but great to read your work.

Thanks very much for your words of support.

[Chris Knipp]

I have put Broken Wings and Promises on my Netflix queue.

I did enjoy the dinner. Indeed it was a great decade for documentaries, and that's why my thought is not to make a list of 38 or 100 best or most loved of the decade, which others can do better or with more enthusiasm than I, but separate lists of certain categories, my thoughts now being to do:

Best Gay films of the 2000's
Best French Films
Best Documentaries

Note from Roger Ebert's blog in March 2009:

There are so many new movies opening I simply don't have time to double back for everything.

He also wrote a couple days earlier:

Ranking directors, and all lists of "best movies," are distasteful to me.

[Howard Schumann]

I will be looking forward to seeing your lists. Broken Wings and Promises have not shown up on any "best of the decade" lists nor do I expect them to. They will always remain very special films for me, however.

Ebert makes his share of lists even though he claims to find them distasteful. I think they are important indicators of taste.

[oscar jubis]

Here's Ebert's THE BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE list:

1. SYNECDOCHE, NY
2. THE HURT LOCKER
3. MONSTER
4. JUNO
5. ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW
6. CHOP SHOP
7. THE SON
8. 25TH HOUR
9. ALMOST FAMOUS
10. MY WINNIPEG

[Chris Knipp]

You beat me to it but I just put up the Ebert list over on the National Board of Review thread wherre we have a lot of lists, with the link to Ebert's discussions of each film and his original reviews:

http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2701-National-Board-of-Review-Best-of-2009&p=23699#post23699

The problem with list-making apart from its arbitrariness especially in some cases, is that it provides only a kind of statistical information, and what is of more interest is a discussion of the reasons for the choices. arsaib made this comment to me on this site years ago.

[Howard Schumann]

Thanks for posting that. How he could limit his list to only ten films boggles the mind. There were so many great one's. By the way, only one of his (The Son) would make my list.

[Chris Knipp]

I would find it difficult to list only ten for the decade, at this point. Perhaps in many decades, many will fade, seem less significant. Only a few works stand the test of time. It's also hard to see how one could list ten from the decade and include only one that is not in English.

[Howard Schumann]

I would find it difficult to list only ten for the decade, at this point. Perhaps in many decades, many will fade, seem less significant. Only a few works stand the test of time. It's also hard to see how one could list ten from the decade and include only one that is not in English.

I found it hard to keep my list to 100. Think of all the excellent films that he excluded.

[Chris Knipp]

You may well have a point. I like a lot of what I see. It's interesting to get a list like yours and the Film Comment one, that bring up movies maybe I ought to see, if I can manage it. I'd hope my lists would do that. My best lists (English, foreign, documentaries, short-listed, etc.) for each year have been used as guides by friends and people at my workplace who don't see many movies for things to look up and rent. Other lists are more interesting to me as representations of a consensus of what well-informed viewers collectively consider the best of a period of time or genre. Thus the lists that change over time, but often include certain titles like

Citizen Kane
Intolerance
Greed
Mother
The Battleship Potemkin
The Rules of the Game
Pather Pachali
Ugetsu
The Bicycle Thief
The Passion of Joan of Arc

I would trust only older films that have come up for a long time, because that is a real consensus.

There are certain (mainly American) types of movies that from about the age of seven I never have liked, such as (good) mainstream popular things with heartwarming messages and Westerns, so those are a gap in my knowledge that I'm not likely to fill in. So the masterpieces of John Ford may be forever lost on me. In individual "best lists" it should be obvious that due to personal preferences exceptionally good films of a certain genre that the person doesn't like (horror, say) are going to be left out.

So paradoxically two different things are interesting in lists: (1) the movies that I haven't seen, and, conversely, (2) the movies that every film buff makes an effort to see and agrees are great.

[Howard Schumann]

Thank you. You have definitely pointed out the value that lists can serve. Even if a list encourages one person to see a film that he/she had never heard of before, it would be a worthwhile exercise. It's also valuable for me in sharing those films that have had a special meaning for me.

[Chris Knipp]

Lists have value

I agree. In spite of everything, they still do.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks for commenting. . .I would especially like to have your opinion of Deep Breath but it may not be easily available. I would not call the boy in the film disturbed. He may be on the verge but is more of a normal adolescent going through the growing pains in an environment that is not suitable for him. Thanks for letting me see a copy of Le Souffle. It's a very interesting, powerful, and unique film; I can see why you'd include it in your 100 favorites of the decade, and it's too bad it's not available on a US DVD. Pierre-Louis Bonnetblanc, the young actor, is great. He is energetic, expressive, mad when he needs to be, and even handsome. The climactic sequence is horrific and disturbing. The "uncles" are too caracatural, as a French review (http://www.lesinrocks.com/cine/cinema-article/article/le-souffle/) says. The communist newapaper L'Humanité suggests in its review that there's a link with the literature of the American Spouth (Faulkners Sound and the Fury, perhaps). The photography and use of closeups seem classic, and sometimes quite beautiful. Three of Damien Odoul's films including this one are available (http://recherche.fnac.com/ia440225/Damien-Odoul) on French DVDs; the second and third star Benoit Magimel and Matthieu Amalric, so his adventurous themes have attracted big name actors and fans of French film ought to know who he is.

[Howard Schumann]

I'm so glad you were able to see this. You don't have to return the video right away. You are welcome to keep it for a while if you want to use it as a comparison tool or pass it around to others on the board. Perhaps you can find someone who can make a copy for you. I'm assuming you've read my review in the IMdb user comments so I don't need to discuss the film except to say that I have seen it perhaps 15 to 20 times and I never tire of watching it. It is a first feature so it definitely has its flaws but, as you say it is powerful and unique, and a film that is hard to get out of your mind.

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks but I've already returned it to you because I didn't want you to wait, or to forget. Maybe if it comes out on a DVD here I can watch it again.

I have not seen your IMDb review; I'll look that up.

[Howard Schumann]

Thanks but I've already returned it to you because I didn't want you to wait, or to forget. Maybe if it comes out on a DVD here I can watch it again.

I have not seen your IMDb review; I'll look that up. Great. Let me know what you think.

[Chris Knipp]

I gave my opinion briefly above.

http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2750-My-100-Favorite-Films-of-the-Decade&p=23804#post23804

[Howard Schumann]

I gave my opinion briefly above.

http://www.filmleaf.net/showthread.php?2750-My-100-Favorite-Films-of-the-Decade&p=23804#post23804 I meant of my review.

[Chris Knipp]

Oh, sorry. Well it's good. I was interested that you said Le Souffle has elements of "Bresson, Bunuel, Truffaut, Cocteau, and Dumont." Quite true. This is a film that contains a lot o disparate elements, indeed, and is open to many different interpretations.

[Chris Knipp]

I notice that Odoul has done five films, and that the interesting French mag Les Inrockuptibles has several reviews (http://www.lesinrocks.com/cine/fiche-artiste/artiste/odoul-damien/) of Le Souffle and of Odoul's subsequent films, which I'm looking over. Amélie Dubois describes David in Le Souffle as part wild child and part ghetto child ("entre enfant sauvage et enfant du banlieu"). He is a contemporary youth, though the country is primitive and there aren't many modern things other than David's headset and French rap. I kind of wish Odoul had made the setting deliberately of no certain period, like Manuel Pradal's 1997 Marie Baie des Anges -- a favorite of mine, not unrelated in its trajectory. In a review of a later Odoul film the writer says it's "a kind of Grand Maulnes [The Wanderer, Alain Fournier] reviewed and corrrected by Deliverance. . . where angels are constantly becoming beasts." (This is Vincent Ostria speaking about En attendant le déluge/After We're Gone, 2004). That pinpoints the wild mix that Odoul achieves in Le Souffle. With Cocteau were you thinking of Les Enfants Terribles? I notice also that Damien Odoul is an actor, he has been in ten films, and he is in all the ones he's directed, the other ones in more central roles. From reading all the Inrockuptibles reviews of Odoul's theatrical releases, I gather that he likes to combine comic or grotesque elements with tragic ones, which helps explain the presence of the kooky bumpkins in Le Souffle. Another regular motif is the castle (decayed nobility?) in the sticks.

[Howard Schumann]

Wish I could read French. At any rate, none of O'Doul's other films are available here so it's all academic at the moment. Let me know if there are any other films on my 100 best films of the decade list or even my Top 165 that you would like to borrow.

http://www.imdb.com/user/ur0491610/boards/profile/?preview=1

[Chris Knipp]

Well, if you have the capacity to watch multi region DVDs maybe you could get hold of the new Odouls, I imagine they are available in Canada because of all the French speakers. On the other hand they might not have English subtitles.

Thanks for the offer of loaning me titles. I'm getting Songs from the Second Floor right away from Netflix. I'll check what other ones they have. Vertical Ray of the Sun they don't have but say is coming, which as Oscar says is virtually meaningless; I have dozens on their Save list now that don't come.

[Howard Schumann]

Well, if you have the capacity to watch multi region DVDs maybe you could get hold of the new Odouls, I imagine they are available in Canada because of all the French speakers. On the other hand they might not have English subtitles.

Thanks for the offer of loaning me titles. I'm getting Songs from the Second Floor right away from Netflix. I'll check what other ones they have. Vertical Ray of the Sun they don't have but say is coming, which as Oscar says is virtually meaningless; I have dozens on their Save list now that don't come. No, I do not have the capacity to watch multi-region DVDs, nor are the O'Doul's available in Canada. Did you say you ordered "Broken Wings" and "Promises"?

[Chris Knipp]

It is possible to get software for a computer (not Macs though; that's trickier) to watch all regions of DVDs. It's turned out to be handy for me because I have a bunch of French and some Italian ones. I guess Amazon Canada doesn't seem to have any Damien Odoul DVDs. Anyway you're not in the French part of Canada . Yes, Promises and Broken Wings are in my Netflix queue.

[Howard Schumann]

It is possible to get software for a computer (not Macs though; that's trickier) to watch all regions of DVDs. It's turned out to be handy for me because I have a bunch of French and some Italian ones. I guess Amazon Canada doesn't seem to have any Damien Odoul DVDs. Anyway you're not in the French part of Canada . Yes, Promises and Broken Wings are in my Netflix queue.

I'm curious as to the name of the software even though I never watch movies on my computer. It's just not comfortable for me.

[Chris Knipp]

The one I know of is DVD X.

[Howard Schumann]

The one I know of is DVD X. Thanks very much.