What's the best movie you saw this decade?

I saw so few movies that I really wouldn't qualify as a judge of the decade. But some observations about ones that have been mentioned.

--It's criminal that Keri Russell hasn't built on her transcendent performance in Waitress.
--Ratitouille (sp) felt too adult. The best animated movies can be enjoyed by kids, yet be literate enough for adults (like Shrek and the Toy Story films). Ratit...whatevs....didn't seem very much for kids at all.
--Eternal Sunshine proved that Jim Carrey can do drama awesomely, when he's cast as someone trying to find out something mysterious (Truman Show). And Kate Winslet was awesome as usual.
--Speaking of Winslet, she and the young actor had great chemistry in The Reader, but Ralph Fiennes seemed somnambulant. But nude Kate trumps all.
--Sideways was a masterpiece of a buddy movie in that it made a tale of dissolution seem so darn fun.
--Knocked Up was an enjoyable film about two people who think they have it all figured out and then have to adjust when they find they really don't. Rogen and Heigl both have peak performances they really haven't equaled since.
--The Tao of Steve was Donal Logue playing a Rogan-esque college slacker character. More somber but very engrossing.

More to come.

 

Means you have cooties, is all.

 

Forgot about Sideways. I tried to avoid it, but I was glad someone talked me into watching it.

 

Personal tastes, I guess. Burn After Reading struck funny with me in almost every way. Kind of like Cable Guy was for me in the 1990s; I loved it and no one else did.

 

Lots of great movies mentioned and I'd throw "The Triplets of Belleville" and "Up In the Air" into the mix. But my favourite was made for TV (HBO). "Angels in America" rocked my world especially since I didn't think anyone could do justice to the play.

 

I always appreciate when people explain WHY, even if it's just a sentence or two, they picked a movie on these threads, so thank you dooley (and others who did it that way). No offense, and I really mean that, but I'm not sure what some people get out of just list after list after list of movies you liked.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- I guess what I love most about this movie is that it's a reminder that we wouldn't be who we are if we could just wipe away the pain and heartbreak we've had to experience in life. Sometimes falling in love, and not having it work out, is just as important as falling in love for good. It's sad and tragic that Joel and Clementine might be destined to fall in love, and break up, and fall in love, and break up, over and over again, for now until forever, but there is also beauty in all that sadness -- the idea that a few good moments are so good, so powerful, they are worth having your heart absolutely destroyed. My favorite scene in the whole film is the one where Joel begs to keep just the one memory of he and Clementine under the sheets, talking intimately about their childhood fears, and she mentions that she had a fear of being ugly as a child. It's quiet and subtle and perfect. And it's a reminder of all those reasons you fall in love. Every relationship I've ever had go wrong had a moment like this, a moment that I couldn't bear to erase, even if it meant erasing all the hurt that followed. I'm married now, and happily so, but I have ex-girlfriends who destroyed my confidence, broke my heart and made me cynical and guarded about love without reservation. At times, I wished I could forget them completely. But I still need those memories of that first kiss, or the night we said I LOVE YOU to each other for the first time. Because those moments are part of my story. Maybe Kauffman's vision of it was a bit more cynical than my own, since he didn't get to film the ending he wanted, but I love the scene in the hallway where they know it will end badly and they choose each other (again) anyway. Sometimes it's worth it to fail, just for the stuff you experience on the journey.

 

Thank you, DD.

--Julie and Julia: If the film had been all Julia Child, it would have been one of the decade's best. As it was, I kept hoping the whiny Julie parts would go fast so the film would get back to Meryl Streep. The message I got from the movie, whether truly right or not, is that people had more fortitude back in the old days, and weren't so skittish.
--Juno: Ellien Page's most compelling smarter-than-thou teen effort that she seems to churn out (even Hard Candy was essentially that with a dark edge). She was more human in this play on her type, showing vulnerability in handling first love and first kid pressures. Tho I could have done without the ever-present cross country team.
--Changeling: As to Mizzou's praise: Huh? A bunch of L.A. noir stereotypes, like L.A. Confidential. But unlike LAC, Changeling's characters had no nuance, the movie didn't crackle with the anticipation of danger and intrigue that LAC did. A bunch of ciphers thrown together.

 

I think I might be the only person who actually liked the Amy Adams part of Julie and Julia. I don't mean to direct this specifically at you, dooley, because everyone I know says that Julie Powell's character was whiny and obsessed and they just couldn't wait to get back to Meryll, but that was, I think, the point. To show that obsession is a little selfish, and it's important to have someone who can balance that obsession with love and support. Obviously Adams isn't the actress Streep is, nor is the dude who played her husband in the same stratosphere as Stanley Tucci. But I found myself connecting to Adams too, because it is as much a story about taking bold risks as a writer as it is about cooking. Adams/Powell is essentially Bill Simmons in this film, but with a better haircut and without the porn star fascination.

 

Goddamn, if that's not the best line I've read in a long time.

 

For DoubleDown: "Angels in America" is, quite simply, something extraordinary. Seeing Kushner's play over 2 nights in the theatre was profoundly moving. It's a story about the AIDS crisis in the 1980's that managed to capture an era in North American history and synthesize it with the stories of Ethyl Rosenberg and Roy Cohn that tie it into the very nature of humanity. It's about gay vs straight, religious vs secular, right wing vs left wing and leaves you feeling that none of those distinctions truly matter and that any kind of limitation on what it means to be human is the true death.

How do you translate that to film? I didn't think it could be done but Kushner adapted his own play and Mike Nichols brought it to life on film. The cast is superb and it's no coincidence that even the 'movie stars' have a theatre background. "Angels in America" does what all great art does ... it uses fictional characters in imaginary settings to create a reality that touches us to the very core.

 

I went to high school with a cast member from that. She's a "newgrass" singer now.