Nov 19, 2009 4:00 pm US/Central
11/19/09: Too Early For End-Of-Decade Lists?
(WCCO)
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Kate Winslet in critics' darling "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
Focus Features
It's not too early to start talking about the best movies of the decade, is it? Unless you think James Cameron's
Avatar, Guy Ritchie's
Sherlock Holmes or
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakeul stand points to act as game-changers, the answer for most critics and bloggers appears to be no, it's not too early.
While most are choosing to sit on their decade-cumulating lists until at least sometime in December, a few have already trickled out, especially among the outlets with long leads (i.e . magazines).
Paste Magazine has already unveiled its
top 50 movies from the last 10 years, and their results are an intriguing blend of art house gimmes like
Lost in Translation and
Pan's Labyrinth, difficult monuments from cinephile paradise like
Ghost Dog and
Syndromes and a Century, and a few straight up crowd-pleasers like
Juno and
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Their choice for the single best movie of the last decade: Fernando Meirelles'
City of God.
Apparently, the fact that Brits are a few hours ahead of anyone on this side of the Atlantic also means they like to call an end to the decade a little bit ahead of schedule as well. Both the
Times and the
Telegraph have posted their top 100 rundowns, though the latter is couched as a look back on the most "definitive" movies of the noughties, which helps explain why they gave the leadoff slot to Michael Moore's
Fahrenheit 9/11. (The Times, on the other hand, gets their arty freak on by honoring Michael Haneke's poker-faced
Cache.)
If you want to get a preview of what the next few months will likely bring in the way of collective list-making, you couldn't do much better than to check out the ultimate list-aggregator online:
They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? (Yowsah, yowsah, yowsah!) Using their methodology, they've taken a "best guess" stab at what the most widely acclaimed recent movies have been based on an entire decade's worth of year-end lists. If their work is any indication, you'll be seeing a lot of coronations for Wong Kar-Wai's
In the Mood for Love, David Lynch's
Mulholland Drive, Edward Yang's
Yi Yi, Michel Gondry's
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Sofia Coppola's
Lost in Translation over the next few weeks.
I think at least three of those titles are apt to figure into my own list of the decade's best films, but I'm too busy trying to slam through all the titles on that TSPDT list I have lamentably skipped until now to really know for sure.
-- Eric Henderson
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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