Trainspotting the Decade: Movies

Verb
1. hobby of collecting railroad locomotive numbers: a hobby that consists of collecting the numbers of railroad locomotives
2. looking for vein: the search for a vein that is prominent enough to inject drugs into (slang)
Connotation: Obsessively compiling lists of pop culture minutiae....Which is what I was born to do.

Ok, so we've got a collection of films and film people that ought to be commended. There in no real order, because they're all good, really. There's nothing negative here, this is all stuff I love.

Directors who've debuted this decade
1. Steve McQueen
2. Jonathan Glazer
3. Ti West
4. Charlie Kaufman
5. Bong Joon-Ho

Directors who've started earlier but made some of their best work this decade.
1. Alfonso Cuarón
2. Danny Boyle
3. Lars Von Trier
4. Gus Van Sant
5. Wes Anderson
6. Steven Soderbergh
7. Jim Jarmusch
8. Paul Thomas Anderson
9. Guillermo Del Toro
10. Julian Schnabel

Cinematography - The films with the best looking cinematography, not neccesarily the best technically, and the guys who shot them.
1. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford - Roger Deakins
2. Everlasting Moments - Mischa Gavrjusjov and Jan Troell
3. The New World - Emmanuel Lubezki
4. A Very Long Engagement - Bruno Delbonnel
5. A Single Man - Eduard Grau
6. Silent Light - Alexis Zabe
7. Birth - Harris Savides
8. Antichrist - Anthony Dod Mantle
9. The Village - Roger Deakins
10. The Road - Javier Aguirresarobe

Performers and their best performances - You know these people because no matter the quality of the films they're in, it is always awesome to watch them act and bring their best to roles.
1. Daniel Day Lewis - There Will Be Blood
2. Tom Hardy - Bronson
3. Sylvie Testud - Murderous Maids
4. Michael Fassbender - Hunger
5. Marion Cotillard - La Vie En Rose
6. Giovanna Mezzogiorno - Vincere
7. Benicio Del Toro - Che
8. Samantha Morton - Synecdoche, NY/Morvern Caller
9. Laura Dern - Inland Empire
10. Viggo Mortensen - The Road

Character Actors - they may end up with large roles B films and small parts in A films but they're always great.
1. Jeremy Renner
2. Garrett Dillahunt
3. Paul Schneider
4. Clive Owen
5. Eric Bana
6. Isabelle Fuhrman
7. Jodelle Ferland
8. Radha Mitchell
9. Kelly MacDonald
10. Danny Huston

Zombie Films
1. 28 Days Later
2. [Rec]
3. Dawn of the Dead
4. Fido
5. Zombieland
6. Shaun of the Dead
7. Pontypool
8. I Sell The Dead
9. Planet Terror
10. They Came Back

Horror (non-Zombies, though for the record 28 Days Later and [Rec] are just great movies on top of being brilliantly scary)
1. House of the Devil
2. Let The Right One In
3. The Devil's Backbone
4. Drag Me To Hell
5. The Ring
6. The Strangers
7. Pan's Labyrinth
8. The Others
9. Wolf Creek/Rogue
10. Audition

Sci-fi
1. District 9
2. Star Trek
3. Solaris
4. Children of Men
5. Moon
6. Wall*E
7. Minority Report
8. Primer
9. War of the Worlds
10. The Fountain

Family-Friendly Films (clear slant towards Pixar)
1. Where The Wild Things Are
2. Wall-E
3. Millions
4. The Incredibles
5. Finding Neverland
6. Ratatouille
7. Corpse Bride
8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
9. Coraline
10. Up

Comedy
1. Royal Tenenbaums
2. A Serious Man
3. Happy-Go-Lucky
4. Little Miss Sunshine
5. Best In Show
6. Black Dynamite
7. I Sell The Dead
8. O Brother Where Art Thou?
9. In The Loop
10. Anchorman - Granted, as films go, it's not exactly...well, whatever. This was however the first film that takes some of my favorite comedic elements (misogyny, TV, giant egos, the 70s) and administers a pretty madcap dose of all of them.

Love Stories - or at the very least films with really compelling scenes that center around people falling in love. Thirst isn't really a love story but has some of my favorite scenes depicting two people in love
1. Let The Right One In
2. Bright Star
3. Water Lilies
4. Punch-Drunk Love
5. In The Mood For Love
6. Snow Angels
7. Paranoid Park
8. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. My Summer of Love
10. Thirst

Crime Films
1. No Country For Old Men
2. Zodiac
3. Gomorrah
4. Memories of Murder
5. Revanche
6. Sexy Beast
7. Brick
8. American Gangster
9. Chopper
10. A Prophet

Westerns
1. 3:10 To Yuma
2. The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
3. The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford
4. No Country For Old Men
5. The Way of the Gun
6. Brokeback Mountain
7. Open Range
8. The Proposition
9. The Good, The Bad, The Weird
10. Appaloosa

Epic
1. There Will Be Blood
2. Master & Commander: The Far Side of the World
3. Red Cliff
4. Che
5. The Two Towers
6. The Wind That Shakes The Barley
7. Flame and Citron
8. The Pianist
9. The Good, The Bad, The Weird
10. Star Trek

Biography
1. The Beaches of Agnes
2. The Pianist
3. Diving Bell & The Butterfly
4. Of Time and the City
5. My Winnipeg
6. Before Night Falls
7. Vincere
8. Capote
9. Che
10. La Vie En Rose

Life - Films that make you appreciate life by showing people approaching death and tragedy. The point is to take time and take in everything and the people whom I'd recommend these movies too the most would probably hate them. So I'm offering them to you.
1. Hunger
2. The Diving Bell & The Butterfly
3. The Beaches of Agnes
4. A Single Man
5. Bright Star
6. Y Tu Mamá También
7. The Road
8. The New World
9. Synecdoche, NY
10. Silent Light

4 comments:

Dizzy said...

You've got la vie en rose listed twice under biographies.
I wish I could watch as many movies as you do. Damn my useless habits of eating and sleeping !!

Scout Tafoya said...

Corrected. And Thank You.

Dizzy said...

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is woooonderful! Do you promise to watch all of these with me someday?

Scout Tafoya said...

Absolutely, just pick a day. I could think of nothing more fun.