Citizen Wausau

My Movies of the Aughts

by Dino Corvino on January 2nd, 2010

My friend Rob Mentzer made a series of lists. Not wanting to be upstaged by Rob, I decided I needed to make a list of my favorite movies of the last decade. I am not going to try to tell you that these are the best movies of the last decade, because that would require a Roger Ebert like seriousness about being comprehensive, and I am going to fail in that regard.

What I noticed up front about this list, the lack of comedy. I love to laugh, and I love comedy. But, I think the Aughts were a decade of crappy comedy. Seth Rogan and Judd Apatow bastardized themselves to such a massive extent, they became uninteresting. The wave of comedy with people like Apatow, or Rogan, or whoever else was a waste of time. Even a movie like THE HANGOVER was simply a sort of rehashing of another movie from the past, Very Bad Things starring Christian Slater. Overall, I am not going to put comedy on the list, unless it is truly amazing. I thought Funny People was shocking in its highs, and might be the best thing Rogan and that crew have ever done. But, not enough to make the list.

So, off we go.

10. Million Dollar Baby. I thought the soft hands of Clint Eastwood, combined with the amazing performances of Morgan Freeman and Hillary Swank are a great combination. The ending is unrepentant in the sort of directness to that being the only option, but I respect the way Eastwood closes the story. Truly good stuff.

9. The Departed. It would be easy to say that this is just another crime story done by Scorsese but this time set in Boston. The fact that these are real people is cool. The cast is also the great thing about it. Nicholson, DeCaprio, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Matt Damon, Mark Wahlberg…and more. They all raise their game to a high degree. And it is the first time I really got to see Ray Winston, who was a revelation.

8. Surfer, Dude. This one is clearly a personal journey choice. I think that it is on the surface a wonderful simple movie. It really is. But, I think some of the themes that it puts together, freedom and integrity, those are amazing. You combine that with surfing, and it was going to make my list.

7. The Bourne Trilogy. I do not know if it is fair to include them all as one, but it is my website. I think that they brought something different to action, the personal. And then they were consistent over three movies. So, I was a fan.

6. Requiem for a Dream. I thought the performances of this movie were exceptional. The fact that someone made a great movie out of a Selby book, that is awesome. Jared Leto delivers an amazing performance. And Darren Aronovsky is top notch.

5. Day Night Day Night. The story of a nameless girl who wants to become a suicide bomber. Hannah Arendt wrote the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ and this movie embodies it. If we are to assume that suicide bombers are evil, then the life of this one is truly banal. 48 hours. I also truly love the fact that we know NOTHING other than what the camera shows us. We never know why she is doing this, or even if she succeeds. I think it is exciting because it forced me to understand and once again see that humanity, all around me, is struggling with these concepts, and this internal life that I know nothing about. Forces are at play. At work.

4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I love westerns. I have always loved the story of Jesse James, and Robert Ford. This movie is pastoral in its scope, and the way it is shot is amazingly lingering. I loved it.

3. The Dark Knight. I do not see this showing up on a lot of peoples lists. I tend to wonder about why that is. People went nuts for the movie when it came out. It make you wonder if the response was simply based on the Heath Ledger tragedy, and if we are so ADD as a culture we do not see a lasting impact in these things. The reason I loved the movie is the fact that it placed the essential question on Batman. Will you kill? What would you do? The Joker essentially said…I am going to continue to kill and kill and kill and kill. Nothing will stop me. I am a force of nature, so Batman this is entirely up to you…will you kill me to stop me from killing? I thought LEdger was possessed, and Bale brilliant.

2. Where the Wild Things Are. This movie, like Surfer, Dude, is a personal choice. I think this movie is entirely about little boy rage, and the desire to reconnect to the primal inside of us. These are important things for me. Giant life things for me. You put that together with a book that meant everything to me, and then you really have something.

1. There Will Be Blood. If you know me than this is my second favorite movie of all time. The performance by Daniel Day Lewis is without a doubt the greatest performance I have ever seen by an actor. The story of madness, and greed, and power, and corruption is amazing. Combine that with the great western sense, the anti church theme. Well, we are going great guns.

Some of the others…

The Wrestler, The New World, SpyGame, Red Dragon, Hard Candy, The 25th Hour, Traitor, Micheal Clayton, The Kingdom, Recount, CLoverfield, Tyson, Inside Man, American Gangster