#50-41
#40-31
Click through for the next installment.
30. Requiem for a Dream (2000) Helpless minds that stray in a direction far from its capable mass and souls that get eaten away by an urge that’s far more grateful than what it can handle: Four people, all dealing with these difficulties, plan to capture and secure the American Dream; fame and fortune. These four people – boyfriend and girlfriend (Jared Leto and Jennifer Connolly) who are drug addicts, their friend who’s both seller and addict (Marlon Wayans) and Leto’s mother (Ellen Burnstein) who’s losing her grip on reality – all have in mind that the American dream should be spoon-fed to them. Dreams that include being on television, owning a fashion shop and living like rock-stars are all bogged down by each of the dreamer’s economic situation or their appearance. The saying goes that if “you lose your dreams, you’ll lose your mind.” In the situation given to these four people it would be best if they had no dreams to pursue. The American dream has never been more coveted than it is in Aronofsky’s adrenaline rushed film Requiem for a Dream. The outcome is a devastating voyage through the lives of people who’ve become so obsessed with something that they’ve become disconnected from the world and of their own self will. It’s a startling portrait of the drastic lengths that people will go through just to escape reality. | |
29. The Pianist (2002) What a towering performance Adrian Brody turns in as a surviving Holocaust victim. It is a performance so powerful that he never turned in another one quite like it. Maybe it’s because Roman Polanski poured his heart and soul into Brody’s character, easily making this film Polanski’s most personal to date. Brody dives head first into the character of Wladyslaw Szpilman who is the greatest pianist in the world at the time of the Holocaust. Like all Jews who had to go through such torture Szpilman separates himself from the rest as he goes on an unforgettable journey of survival through war-torn Poland where he appears to be more lucky than smart. Scourging helplessly around for some means of shelter or gratification, after being raped emotionally, Szpilman, no matter how specter thin he looks, still appears to have a soul. What keeps him alive is not only his desire to outwit Nazi officers or the war, but his innate gift of music. He has one thing in mind and that is to be able to play the piano again, and in a classic scene, that represents all the unfortunate Jews, we see all the passion that oozes from his soul as he plays for a German officer. Great stuff. | |
28. Sideways (2004) An unprecedented occurrence happens in the comedy genre here, as the camera shows an overwhelming amount of love for our two main characters as they travel down paths that me, you and everyone we know would travel down. It has been said that opposites attract. That has never been truer with the characters from Sideways. Alexander Payne provides a witty script to tag along with our characters. The fragile Miles and the sex maniac Jack will go down as one of the greatest pairs of buddies in movie history. Miles is trying to get through a mid-life crisis after being divorced. He’s a struggling novelist and doesn’t know his place in life. The great Paul Giamatti not only embodies this character but creates him as if we knew him our entire lives. He takes the soon-to-be-wedded-too-old-to-be-cool Jack (Thomas Hayden Church), his best friend since college, on a week long road trip through California and its luscious wine fields. Their journey involves wine tasting stops, great food, two loveable girls they meet (Sandra Oh and Virginia Madsen) and, most of all, they get a taste of life itself. | |
27. In America (2002) Nothing fancy here. No huge film budget, no twisty ways of telling a story, no $20 million actor in the lead role and pretty much no violence. Such care of direction is taken by Jim Sheridan. Such faith is put into his acting cast and they do more than just deliver. Most of all, such faith is put into the story telling that it doesn’t just blow you away it literally kills you with emotions that you won’t find anywhere this year or maybe any year for that matter. It’s one of the greatest storytelling jobs I’ve ever seen. A simple tale of an Irish immigrant family, a married couple and their two sweet little girls, moving into a drug infested apartment in Manhattan during the 1980s dealing with certain issues and people. At anytime Sheridan could’ve resolved to a “racism” kind of approach but he walks a very straight line. The film possesses more gut-wrenching scenes than all the movies combined on this list. Let the tears of joy and sadness overflow from our eyes. | |
26. American Psycho (2000) Jean Paul Gautier, Valentino, John Varvatos: names of products that wear these designer names proudly. Bryce, McDermott, Van Patten, Carruthers, Allen and Bateman: names of a band of 80s business men who flaunt their goodies in order keep their hearts beating. The designer clothes and cosmetics, along with the watermarked business cards and platinum credit cards, are all mixed amongst each other in these men’s’ penthouse homes. By this mingling, this over-excess of high-end materials, what becomes of the product is they lose their uniqueness, their ability to inspire awe. There happens to be nothing distinct about them when they’re all bunched together in one man’s medicine cabinet or closet. The business men come to resemble this cluster of goodies and high-end excess. When one tries to leave the band of men one loses his grip on society. Identities become misconstrued and dehumanized in this late 80s society where man is constantly trying to one up the other while they are slowly succumbing to the almighty God of materialism and consumerism. Unspeakable cruelty is at the core of these sophisticated men, especially Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale), an unbalanced man who realizes he has everything but wants more. The only place for him to find satiability is within his own mind, and it just so happens to be vacuous save for the bloodlust that plagues its core. | |
25. Y tu mamá también (2001) In the literary world, traveling down a highway or a road indicates one’s journey through life itself. Alfonso Cuaron’s crack at this task is the quintessential example of how a film can relish that fact. His movie can be summed up as that one spectacular summer where all other summers after and before failed drastically to measure up to that one special one. That special summer that aches to death at your heart when you’re sitting in your armchair when you’re sixty-five-years old and recalling that unbelievable journey to your grandkids. That’s how our characters feel and it’s how we feel after we watched a true piece of art which is slyly concealed underneath raw sexual encounters. It doesn’t get any simpler: two horny teenagers (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) travel the dusty and winding roads of Mexico with an older and more knowledgeable woman in her late twenties (Maribel Verdu) in search of a beach that doesn’t really exist. Yet, the magic that Cuaron orchestrates with this meager plot is unexplainable. What unfolds is the true definition of life, in every imaginable shape or form, seen through such different prisms. Y tu mamá también (translates to And Your Mama, too) is so well paced that throughout the whole movie its magic continues to swell and eventually culminating with a magnificent ending which forms into one of the most emotionally moving pictures I’ve ever seen. | |
24. Letters from Iwo Jima/Flags of our Fathers (2006) Clint Eastwood is the best director that we have alive today (sorry Scorsese). That has to keep being stressed. If he had focused on directing his entire career think of the movies we would have at our disposal. Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, especially the latter, are two films that can find their way into the discussion of “best film of the decade” and Flags of our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima aren’t so far behind either. With the completion of Letters from Iwo Jima, it solidifies that Eastwood is the best director we have in the world. In Flags of our Fathers we are told the story of the famous photo of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima. Eastwood makes the film deeper than that. It shows that the government will do anything to promote something if that something makes them money. The story is told through the eyes of three soldiers played by Ryan Philippe, Adam Beech, and Jesse Bradford. Letters is a beautiful tale of the Japanese soldiers and generals who are totally outnumbered by the Americans, yet they still fight until their death. Ken Watanabe, in a great performance, plays Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi who has both humble and fierce attitude. Eastwood does something rare in movies; in Letters, the more superior of the two, he makes us sympathize with the Japanese side of the story which in Flags they played the hateful enemy. A great storyteller can tell heartening stories from both sides of the war. | |
23. Into the Wild (2007) The second time around with this movie, I was able to absorb not only the beautiful scenery that's captured but the relationships that Alexander Supertramp, real name Christopher McCandless, allows into his narrow minded world. He's played to perfection by Emile Hirsch, who behind Daniel Day-Lewis had the best performance of the year. He embodies a soul that seizes the rebel angst of youth and a soul that is completely confused and doesn't know exactly what he wants. As he leaves behind his home, college and money, he meets an array of people in different locations from hippies to a humble old belt maker. In between are the same people who embrace Christopher with all their hearts only to be torn to shreds when he has to continue on with his great Alaskan journey. What the movie does so perfectly is the fact that when he does leave, he has such a profound impact on these people's lives, that they're either motivated by his presence (the hippies) or devastatingly shattered by it (the 16-year-old girl and the belt maker). He also learns a few tips about life and conquering certain fears of his. Sean Penn's direction is even more respectable the second time around. He boasts an impeccable arrangement of images and scenarios such as Christopher face to face with a bear, Christopher trying to bring himself to forgiveness after killing a moose and every subtle moment that takes place in a trailer lot where selling books and late night singing are the high points and no one complains about such bliss it creates. | |
22. Zodiac (2007) A psychopath goes on a killing spree in the San Francisco Bay Area (one of the most faithful renderings of a bygone era thanks to director David Fincher) taking lives of both men and women. He writes letters to the different newspapers telling them to publish his cryptograms that when decoded tells what he is going to do next and states his name as Zodiac. If the newspapers don't publish them he makes it clear that he will kill more. This cryptogram makes people become obsessed with the Zodiac. The people who are infatuated with this man are two detectives, a crime reporter (Robert Downey Jr.), and a political cartoonist (Jake Gyllenhaal). Once they enter this psychological cat and mouse chase with the Zodiac killer it slowly chips away at each of their lives ruining marriages, friendships, careers, and their minds. Each one of them spends two decades trying to catch the man. This exploration into obsession may just be the best foray into two deteriorating minds looking for the slightest representation of closure. | |
21. In Bruges (2008) Call it a buddy movie, a hit-man film or a dark comedy taking place in some place that is called Bruges. Make sure, though, when you describe Martin McDonagh’s directorial debut film you say that it has heart, creativity and magic. In Bruges literally floors you like no film this decade because its heart is able to be concealed so cleverly underneath a artistic action picture. Colin Farrell and Brandon Gleason deliver award worthy performances as two believable hit-men searching for salvation that have hearts that suffer pain like anyone else. The movie towers over all recent gun-happy movies and has the most confidence and creativity than any other movie in this genre since Pulp Fiction. The creativity juice is abundant. It’s granted to In Bruges by McDonagh, which starts with him and slowly reverberates throughout the entire cast of the movie. |
Be sure to check back tomorrow as we continue our list!
No comments:
Post a Comment