Time of the Wolf
Categories: Best Movies of '00s,Critics' Polls,2000s,'00s,Top Ten
Tags: Best Movies of '00s Critics' Polls 2000s '00s Top Tens
Everybody's doing it! I was distracted, I guess, and didn’t realize it was time for all of the movie critic polls to assess not just 2009 but the entirety of the ‘00s as well. This is sport, but I like it, so here’s my decade-best list, the Top 50, in order because it's not fun any other way, as it’s being fed into the exanding universe of film critic best-of stats...
1. La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, France)
2. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)
3. Adaptation (Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman, US)
4. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, Hungary)
5. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong)
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry/Charlie Kaufman, US)
7. Time of the Wolf (Michael Haneke, France)
8. Battle in Heaven (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico)
9. Cache (Michael Haneke, France)
10. Inland Empire (David Lynch, US)
11. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, US)
12. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, US)
13. Children of Men (Alphonse Cuaron, US/GB)
14. Oasis (Lee Chang-dong, Korea)
15. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weersethakul, Thailand)
16. Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch, US)
17. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
18. Yi Yi (Edward Yang, Taiwan)
19. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong)
20. Songs from the Second Floor (Roy Andersson, Sweden)
21. Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, France)
22. The Weeping Meadow (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece)
23. Safe Conduct (Bertrand Tavernier, France)
24. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, US)
25. Platform (Jia Zhangke, China)
26. Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, US)
27. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, US)
28. 4 (Ilya Khrjanovsky, Russia)
29. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
30. The Day I Became a Woman (Marziyeh Meshkini, Iran)
31. Regular Lovers (Philippe Garrel, France)
32. Wordly Desires (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
33. Dans Ma Peau (Marina de Van, France)
34. United 93 (Paul Greengrass, US)
35. Ballast (Lance Hammer, US)
36. Le Fils (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium)
37. Wendy & Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, US)
38. Keane (Lodge Kerrigan, US)
39. The World (Jia Zhangke, China)
40. Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, US)
41. Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, Iran/Iraq/Kurdistan)
42. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico)
43. Once (John Carney, Ireland)
44. Still Life (Jia Zhangke, China)
45. Monday Morning (Otar Iosseliani, France)
46. The Headless Woman (Lucretia Martel, Argentina)
47. The Last Train (Alexei German Jr., Russia)
48. Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel)
49. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, US)
50. The Mist in the Palm Trees (Carlos Molinaro & Lola Salvador, Spain)
A cavil: there are only three films on the list that were never distributed in any way in the United States, and this is not because I have such fabulous faith and commonality with this country's running-scared film distribution industry, but because I have children and a mortgage and do not get to travel to international festivals very much. So, my list should be seen through this scrim; conservatively speaking, I don't think the list would change radically if I was single and wealthy and festival-obsessed, but it would change somewhat.
My 2009 lists are forthcoming...
Great list. You're one of my favorite film critics, so it isn't suprising after all, but it's always nice to see this amount of excellent movies together. I'm glad you added "Inglorious..." to the list and i share your love for Haneke's flicks. Take care :)
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So, just for clarification, is ADAPTATION your #3 or #4?
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Yeah, sorry about that. My #3.
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This is a great list, full of vital films and healthy in its comprehensiveness. No room for You, the Living or Peppermint Candy, though? I would like to think they were at 51 and 52 :)
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I love both of those, but I like Songs from the Second Floor & Oasis better, respectively.
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Longtime listener, first time caller. I'll skip the mash note and just say that I've read your stuff for years, know you're one of the hardest and best thinkers around, and hope you continue to continue. You're in my cloud of witnesses.
I admire Inland Empire for all the reasons you do. Just now I'm thinking of Harold Bloom's comment about originality being "a strangeness we can never altogether assimilate." But I was never able to intuit a key to any sort of code book like I easily did with Mulholland Dr., and it does feel like there is or should be one to intuit. Among other things, it's a puzzle you put together emotionally, correct? I found my way into Mulholland Dr. easily - there was little struggle - yet its innards turned out to be made of wonderful, resilient stuff. I've only spent a few hours actually watching the thing, but I've lived with it for years like you live with a family member. It's been a highly useful movie to dwell on and in. Inland Empire has a "strangeness" that refuses to budge from my mind, or, likely, the canon, but I'm only admiring from outside the gates, standing on my tiptoes, angling to catch a view. Any thoughts?
With this decade factored in, please tell me where Hou and then Sokurov stand in your books, and why.
Ten years on from the 1999 Village Voice poll, off the top of your head, what are your all-time ten best? You know, the films you re-watch and contemplate most, the films most profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
Thanks.
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With this decade factored in, please tell me where Hou and then Sokurov , both absent from your list, stand in your book and why.
Off the top of your head, what are your all-time ten best? You know, the films you re-watch and contemplate most, the films most profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. Thanks.
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Tough questions. Hou is up there for me, but not quite since The Puppetmaster (though I loved Red Balloon, it didn't make the decade list). Sokurov has been getting weird, I think, since Russian Ark, and the films are always 3/4 of the way to their goal. If it were a list of the last 25 years' best filmmakers, they'd be on it, but for individual films in the millennium, they've been falling just short.
My all-time list, though it's not a list chosen for repeatability (a very particular quality that has nothing necessarily to do with greatness), or certainly for instruction in anything: Kane, Rules of the Game, Sunrise, Vertigo, Tokyo Story... I'm a listmaker, but I've grown uncomfortable with the All Time List, because it changes in order too much, and I hate realizing I'm tired of/less impressed by a movie I think is one of the best after teaching it for a number of years. I like better pantheonizing artists; the top shelf, in its entirety: Godard, Bunuel, Welles, Renoir, Dreyer, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Bresson, Hitchock, Bergman.
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I like that you put 2046 way above In the Mood for love - I loved 2046 and it did much more for me than the first movie, too. May have to do with the fact I saw 2046 first, but I preferred the episodic structure and the mood of 2046 to the more conventional narrative approach of In the mood.
Happpy I'm not alone with that opinion.
Cheers!
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Me too!
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I am a bit surprised not to see any Hong Sang-soo movies on this list, as I know you've done a fair amount of writing on his work. While I've only seen about half the movies on this list (working on the others), it seems like quite an omission to me; I feel that "Tale of Cinema" at least deserves some recognition.
I'd also like to second the above poster's comment about 2046 vs. In the Mood for Love, though I did see them in chronological order.
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My favorite Hong is still Power of Kangwon Province, and that was '98. The others are fascinating, but don't quite hit that left-hook soft spot like that early one.
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