The Filmcake

My favorite movies of the 2000s. There are easily 15 more that could’ve made this list. But this list is only fifteen.

1. Children of Men
2. Shaun of the Dead
3. The Royal Tenenbaums
4. Where The Wild Things Are
5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
6. Best in Show
7. Inglourious Basterds
8. Kill Bill Vol. 1 & 2
9. No Country for Old Men
10. Wall-E
11. Ghost World
12. Pan’s Labyrinth
13. There Will Be Blood
14. Lost in Translation
15. Brokeback Mountain

Rotten Tomatoes recently put out a list of the 100 worst reviewed movies of the last decade. It seems that I’ve (luckily) seen only two of the hundred worst–The New Guy and Alone in the Dark. I saw The New Guy (2002), starring DJ Qualls, presumably because of Elvis Mitchell’s New York Times review (which upon second look doesn’t look all that positive). Perhaps, I was game for this movie solely based on the appearances of Eliza Dushku and Zooey Deschanel.

As for Alone in the Dark (2005), I was fully aware of what I was getting into. My initial introduction to Uwe Boll, this movie’s awfulness was its main selling point. Tara Reid as an archaeologist…I mean, c’mon.

If those are the worst, what are the best? Thanks to a recent Filmspotting podcast, I was introduced to the Flickchart site. The site asks you to rank movies that you’ve seen. To do this, you are given two movie titles and asked to pick which one is your favorite. This binary system is easy for some matchups (say, Casablanca versus The New Guy), but a lot more difficult for others (say, two seemingly really good movies from vastly different eras and/or genres). WARNING: This website is a major timesuck. You will lose many minutes that can never be recovered. But for slightly OCD movie nerds, its a fun site to play around with. So far, after only 237 rankings, my Top 5 Movies of All Time are:

1. ET: The Extra Terrestrial
2. Contact
3. Dogma
4. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
5. Die Hard

I truly enjoy all five of those movies. But, I wouldn’t necessarily place any of them in my Top 5. I guess I have some more ranking to do…

While there are still a bunch of movies from 2008 that I still need to see (Wendy & Lucy and Slumdog Millionaire are but two),  I’m going ahead with my “final” Best of 2008 list. Without further ado:

1. Rachel Getting Married
2. Wall-E
3. Ballast
4. A Christmas Tale
5. Let The Right One In
6. Man on Wire
7. Paranoid Park/Milk (a Gus van Sant tie)
8. Flight of the Red Balloon
9. The Dark Knight
10. Happy Go-Lucky

Honorable Mention: 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, Son of Rambow, Chop Shop, The Fall, Encounters at the End of the World

I love lists. I know as soon as they’re written they’ve lost any utility they may have fleetingly possessed. And I know they’re always inevitably incomplete. But they’re still kinda fun to come up with. So here’s my Top 10 Movies of 2008 (so far). I’ve still got a bunch more to watch. I plan on coming up with a more finalized list (along with Oscar predictions) sometime before the Oscar ceremony. That’ll give me time to see a few more contenders.

Dwight’s Top 10 Movies of 2008
1. A Christmas Tale
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
3. Wall-E
4. Man on Wire
5. Paranoid Park
6. The Dark Knight
7. Son of Rambow
8. Chop Shop
9. Milk
10. Trouble the Water

Still haven’t seen: Wendy and Lucy, Ballast, Happy Go-Lucky, Let the Right One In, Synechdoche, NY, My Winnipeg, Waltz With Bashir, Flight of the Red Balloon, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire.

Even though this blog is primarily focused on movies, I can’t resist including my music lists. While I did a piss-poor job at listening to music in ‘08 (and came to it late at that), I did manage to come up with lists for my best albums and songs of the year.

Dwight’s Top 10 Albums of 2008
1. She & Him – Volume One
2. Fleet Foxes – s/t
3. Frightened Rabbit — The Midnight Organ Fight
4. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Jolie Holland – The Living and the Dead
6. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
7. Conor Oberst — s/t
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
9. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
10. (3-way tie) Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers — The Confiscation EP, The Decemberists — Always the Bridesmaid Singles, The Mountain Goats — Satanic Messiah EP

Dwight’s Top 10 Songs of 2008
1. “Mexico City/Corrido Por Buddy/Palmyra” – Jolie Holland (OK, it’s 3 songs. But it’s what I consider to be the best 13 minutes of music in ‘08.)
2. “Valerie Plame” — The Decemberists
3. “Sentimental Heart” – She & Him
4. “I Will Possess Your Heart” – Death Cab for Cutie
5. “Skinny Love” — Bon Iver
6. “See Fernando” — Jenny Lewis
7. “We Call Upon The Author” — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
8. “White Winter Hymnal” – Fleet Foxes
9. “Dancing Choose” – TV on the Radio
10. “Head Rolls Off” — Frightened Rabbit