Edward's Best of the 1980s

1. The Shining (1980)

Even after multiple viewings, The Shining still frightens and haunts me. Jack Nicholson plays a struggling writer who takes a job as caretaker at a hotel in the mountains during the isolated winter months. When he moves his wife (Shelley Duvall) and young son (Danny Lloyd) in, things start to go very, very wrong. I've never been a fan of Kubrick, but I love this film immensely: the controlled directorial style allows the natural horrors of the situation to seep through. And given that the film is about a writer's paranoia, it's only right that we have ample time to become as convinced as he is that malign forces are at work in the labyrinthine hotel. Nicholson is splendid, both fearsome and touching, yet always entertaining, while Duvall is just superb as his strung-out wife, a good woman driven to the brink of breakdown by her terrifying husband while trying to do what she can to save her disturbed, 'shining' son. Almost every scene in this film is great, yet the set-pieces are never pretentious or artificial, and always move the story along effectively.

2. The Stunt Man (1980)

Okay, okay, okay, it's in my top ten! I admit it, this was not an easy choice to make. There were half a dozen movies which could have been here instead, all of which probably give me more guaranteed pleasure with each viewing. But The Stunt Man is a unique film, with unique pleasures. Richard Rush has had a halting, marginal career, but with this film, he did his bit: it's the work of a lifetime. Steve Railsback's harassed, paranoid Viet vet is put through his paces - and then some - by Peter O'Toole's dictatorial director, who is willing to use anyone and everyone - including leading lady Barbara Hershey - in his quest to make his war film. How the stunt man negotiates these supremely choppy and unenviable waters makes for a terrifically involving story, with no end of surprising and offbeat directorial coups. Bonus points for the dog licking its balls in the opening sequence, the night-time scene between Railsback and Hershey before the big final day, and especially Dominic Frontiere's rascally score, which gets endless mileage out of its witty theme tune.

3. The Great Muppet Caper (1981)

Jim Henson's artistic sensibility was perfectly suited to kids, his work full of classic entertainment - songs, silly voices, and sweet, sophisticated humour - while also having educational value and a gentle morality. The Muppet films were a very successful extension of the TV series, and The Great Muppet Caper is a really excellent movie for all ages. Kermit, Fozzie and Gonzo are reporters sent to London to cover the theft of fashionista Lady Holliday's diamond. She (Diana Rigg) is a grande dame par excellence, but unaware that her layabout brother (Charles Grodin) is the thief. And of course, Miss Piggy falls for Kermit... What seals the deal with this film is the terrific cluster of songs, composed by Joe Raposo in the style of classical American showbiz entertainment - among other things, this film deserves to be seen as a top movie musical. I loved it and watched it repeatedly when I was a kid, didn't see it for twenty years, and now, on seeing it again, realise that it has stood the test of time.

4. Stop Making Sense (1984)

I was a little surprised that this didn't make Andrew's top ten, but perhaps it was close? For me, this concert movie, directed by Jonathan Demme, and with not a little artistic input from David Byrne, is so comprehensively put together that it transcends its 'live' origins to create a series of abstract musical puzzles, perfectly ordered and paced, and totally satisfying, intellectually and musically. Byrne makes a great front man, the rest of the band plays tight - and really enjoy the music they create - and the makers work wonders with camera angles, lighting, and off-the-cuff filming. So strong a film it is, I would wager that you don't need to be a Talking Heads fan to enjoy it.

5. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

Paul Schrader's best film, and one which deserved to do better - or even some - business. It's a biopic of Japan's famous post-war writer Yukio Mishima, told in three parallel strands - naturalistic recreation of the last day of his life, black and white account of his early years, and lush, multi-coloured recreations of scenes from some of his novels. This structure is fitting for someone who sought, his whole life, to unite his work and his desire for action, which, here, he finally does, in the 'harmony of pen and sword'. Helped by his reserved leading man Ken Ogata, Schrader presents Mishima as a multi-faceted and conflicted character - prolific author, celebrity, traditionalist, lover of Western culture, closeted homosexual and militarised, self-styled outcast. The visual surprises and glories are matched by Philip Glass's iconic score - those wonderfully ominous cells of music - and amazing production and costume design. It's one of the best films about the pleasure and pain of being a writer, and a very literate, unconventional biopic.

6. Come and See (1985)

This is a movie which has a mighty and awesome reputation, wholly deserved. Elem Klimov's final film (he felt he had nothing more to say after having made it) is an account of the Nazi stranglehold on Belarus in the Second World War. This terrible period is seen through the eyes of an adolescent boy, Florya (Alexei Kravchenko, billed as A. Kravchenko), who has run away to join the guerrillas and gets an abrupt, and unforgettable, lesson in the art of war. Klimov anchors the movie in a firm reality, then embellishes it with surrealistic touches which increase our identification with Florya's experience - the high-pitched whistle on the soundtrack when the boy is rendered temporarily deaf by bombing, the toppling trees, the wade through the swamp, and the whole second half of the film, which, with its extended Nazi atrocities, is as terrifying and devastating as movies can get. But it's ironic that when a movie actually earns those overused epithets, it does so by showing how futile such descriptions are; Come and See just needs to be seen. The only thing about it which will lift your spirits is the excellence of the moviemaking itself.

7. Crazy Love (1987)

Young Belgian writer-director Dominique Deruddere made a splash with this, his first feature film. Adapted from writings by Charles Bukowski, it's the three-part story of a young man's coming of age, and is a movie which shines a pallid light on the gulf between the ideal of love and the messy, real thing. As a young boy, Harry Voss (Geert Hunaerts) falls for a blonde beauty on the silver screen and is then traumatised by his older friend's initiation into the world of dating and, ahem, girls. A few years later, and suffering from a monstrous case of acne, Harry (now played by Josse de Pauw) finds himself the outcast at the end-of-year disco, but desperate to make an impression on the school sweetheart. Lastly, as an alcoholic adult, Harry must confront his demons when he finds the beautifully preserved corpse of what is probably his ideal woman. By turns funny, farcical, macabre and downright tragic, Crazy Love is a striking and profound movie, a triumph of Belgian cinema, which rides its disturbing sexual and emotional shenanigans on a wave of heartfelt compassion.

8. Moonstruck (1987)

Whatever happened to the romantic comedy genre seems to stem from when they became commonly known as romcoms. Because these days, I never see a good one. Notting Hill is about the best we've had, and it's sweet, silly and, I suppose, romantic, but back in 1987 we had Moonstruck, and thank goodness we still have it today. Plot is simple: lonesome Italian-American widow Loretta (Cher) gets engaged to mamma's boy Johnny (Danny Aiello) and then promptly falls for his estranged brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage). What's a girl to do? Well, it would be helpful to notice the big full moon hovering over Brooklyn, which seems to be setting off Loretta's whole family on various romantic escapades, while Loretta herself has 'those ugly greys' removed from her hair, gets dolled up and goes to La Bohème at the Met with the man she's trying not to fall in love with! Moonstruck, superbly written by John Patrick Shanley and effervescently directed by Norman Jewison, is a magical movie, chock-full of witty lines, demonstrative performances and affairs of the heart. It's a movie imbued with the spirit of the commedia all'Italiana, and Cher proves herself an actress worthy of the status of Sophia Loren.

9. Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (1988)

Writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore had made only one film before this catapulted him to international attention. It's easy to see why it lapped up audiences: in its tale of the friendship across the years between a young boy and a cinema projectionist at a small cinema in Sicily, it tells a simple, touching story, while also paying tribute to the very act of movie-going. But Nuovo Cinema Paradiso strikes a deeper chord than mere adulation: it builds its story on a bedrock of disappointment, missed opportunities, loss and regret, which goes a long way to counterbalancing the sentimentality for the provincial movie house of the title, a balance sustained by Ennio and Andrea Morricone's luscious but aching orchestral score. It's important to note that these qualities come through much louder and clearer in the director's cut, which flopped upon initial release, was edited down into the Oscar-winning extravaganza everybody knows, and was then re-released to more acclaim in the '90s. There are charming and effective performances from the three actors who play central character Totò: Salvatore Cascio as the young boy, Marco Leonardi as the lovelorn youth, and Jacques Perrin as the celebrated, but unhappy filmmaker in middle age; while Philippe Noiret plays the cantankerous but always loveable projectionist, whose wisdom might be summed up as 'cruel to be kind'.

10. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

Woody Allen was, for me, the filmmaker of the decade, with pretty much all of his films from this period being a cut above the norm. Broadway Danny Rose, The Purple Rose of Cairo and Hannah and Her Sisters are all yapping at the coat-tails (or pasta-covered table cloth) of my '80s top ten; Crimes and Misdemeanors trumps them all and remains for me, with Annie Hall, Allen's best work. It's a film which takes on a weighty issue - how to have morals in a godless universe - and tackles it through two stories in one: a dark and dramatic tale of a philandering opthamologist (Martin Landau) who is toying with having his mistress (Anjelica Huston) bumped off and a witty love triangle involving Woody Allen's hapless documentary filmmaker, Mia Farrow's sweet and pragmatic production manager and Alan Alda's pompous television magnate. Through juggling these narrative strands, Allen creates a fully-rounded portrait of life's ups and downs, and presides over uniformly excellent performances from his extensive cast. And, given that his concentration on the bourgeoisie has attracted some criticism over the years, this film, like the later Match Point, uses its privileged characters in order to comment on the corrupting nature of power and money, and the necessary endurance of the opposites.

Ten performances of the decade

Men:

A. Kravchenko in Come and See (1985)
Jeff Bridges in Jagged Edge (1985)
Jon Voight in Runaway Train (1985)
Sean Connery in The Name of the Rose (1986)
James Woods in Salvador (1986)

Women:

Shelley Duvall in The Shining (1980)
Diane Keaton in Reds (1981)
Meryl Streep in Silkwood (1983)
Sigourney Weaver in Aliens (1986)
Cher in Moonstruck (1987)

Andrew's Best of the 1980s

Needless to say, I think the next few decades are going to be particularly tough: so many great films to choose from, so many tough cuts to make. One absentee from my eighties list is worthy of special note, however, as it was the decade's single greatest cinematic achievement: Kieslowski's Dekalog (1989). I chose to omit it from the list because it's technically a television mini-series.

1. The Stunt Man (1980)
   I love Richard Rush's films. The Stunt Man took him nine years and one heart attack to complete, and it pretty much ended his career, but it was worth it! Steve Railsback is terrific as an on-the-lam Vietnam vet who gets enlisted as a stunt man in a war film being directed by the megalomaniacal Eli Cross (Peter O'Toole, never better). He remains in a continual state of paranoia about whether O'Toole is trying to kill him to get a stunt finished, creating a compelling metaphor for the ways in which trust and domination play out in personal relationships. The Stunt Man is also one of the great films about filmmaking: fantasy and reality get blurred and the insanities and egomanias of the Hollywood system are skewered by Rush with extreme prejudice. It's a shame that there aren't more action movies as smart, as sophisticated and as idiosyncratic as this one. It's also a shame that Rush has only completed one film since – Color of Night (1994) – a film which also caused him a heart attack.
   


2. The Shining (1980)
   This is my favorite Kubrick film and is one of only a few Stephen King adaptations that I really like. It’s also one of the few films that still gives me the chills after all these years: "Come play with us, Danny!" If The Stunt Man is one of the great films about the insanity of filmmaking, The Shining is one of the great films about the insanity of writing, with the Overlook Hotel becoming an analogue for the inside of Jack Torrance’s head. Kubrick’s precise, mathematical approach to mise-en-scène and editing creates a genuinely unsettling atmosphere, and the Steadicam has never been put to better use. It's also a surprisingly humorous film with some great, quirky dialogue – especially any scene with Scatman Crothers: "Larry, just between you and me, we got a very serious problem with the people taking care of the place. They turned out to be completely unreliable assholes."
   
   
3. Cutter's Way (1981)
   A film about impotence, apathy, narcissism and responsibility, that asks whether our actions give our lives meaning. Jeff Bridges plays Richard Bone, an apathetic gigolo who witnesses a man disposing of a dead girl in a dark alley. He is quite willing to dismiss and forget about what he saw, but his friend Alex Cutter (John Heard) has other ideas. Cutter is an embittered, alcoholic Vietnam veteran who's missing an eye, a leg, and an arm, and he develops an obsessive drive to prove that a prominent local businessman was the murderer. It's a remarkable, Ahabesque performance from Heard, turning the film into a fascinating fusion of Chinatown and Moby Dick. No less impressive, in much more low-key performances, are Bridges as the terminally passive Bone and Lisa Eichhorn as Cutter's depressed, alcoholic wife. The film also features an awesome score from Jack Nitzsche that uses a combination of glass harmonica, zither and electric strings to haunting effect. Released the same year as some higher profile revivalist noir films – such as Body Heat and The Postman Always Rings Twice – I think Cutter's Way got lost in the mix and has never really received the acclaim it so richly deserves. It is modern-day noir at its best.
   
   
4. Knightriders (1981)
   By the end of the 1970s, George Romero had established himself as one of the preeminent directors of the horror genre, having made such groundbreaking films as Night of the Living Dead (1968), Martin (1976) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). For his first film of the 1980s, Romero confounded expectations by delivering a lengthy, melancholic melodrama about a traveling group who stage Renaissance fairs in which they dress up as knights and joust on motorcycles. It might be the best film on the subject of sixties countercultural idealism entering the Reagan era: the group is a living anachronism with a strong code of ethics modeled on King Arthur's Camelot, and tensions spill over when a handful of the knights split from their king (Ed Harris) and "sell out" to corporate show business. Harris is superlative in his first leading role; the rest of the cast is made up of Romero's stock troupe of players and they are all excellent, especially Tom Savini as the treacherous Morgan.
   


5. Q (1982)
   Made at the tail end of the golden age of drive-in and grindhouse cinema, Q is a satirical, low-budget monster movie about New York City being terrorized by Quetzlcoatl, the winged serpent Aztec god. Michael Moriarty stars as Jimmy Quinn, a petty crook who thinks he might have a shot at the big time when he discovers Quetzlcoatl's nest at the top of the Chrysler Building. Only exploitation auteur Larry Cohen would have the balls to film a full scale monster movie in Manhattan without permits – including a massive gun battle at the top of a skyscraper! The results are an absolute blast and Moriarty's extraordinary performance as a beaten-down loser opportunistically looking for a "Nixon-like pardon" gives the movie an unexpected depth and poignancy.
   


6. Videodrome (1983)
   This list would be incomplete without a film from David Cronenberg, who was one of the few seventies directors to do consistently great work throughout the eighties, including Scanners (1981), The Dead Zone (1983), The Fly (1986) and Dead Ringers (1988). Videodrome was Cronenberg's last Canadian film before heading to Hollywood, and it stars James Woods (at his sleazy best) as Max Renn, a cable television operator who becomes obsessed with a broadcast that is comprised entirely of torture and murder. It's a cold, brutal, hallucination of a film in which Cronenberg takes Marshall McLuhan's view of media as an extension of man to its logical, horrific conclusion ... paving the way for the cyberpunk movement that would blossom in the following decade. The film's depiction of the cathode ray tube as a cancerous tumor is a theme echoed in my next pick...
   


7. The King of Comedy (1983)
   This is Taxi Driver re-imagined as a comedy of manners and it's a terminal, spastic piece of cinema, cynical in the extreme and intent on making its audience squirm. I love it! It's a dark portrait of passive hostility and of a culture that has lost all sense of priorities and values, and it seems more prescient with every passing year. In Scorsese's eyes we are all Rupert Pupkins, and the motto "I'd rather be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime" prophetically sums up the direction in which television culture would go over the following decades. Jerry Lewis is cast wonderfully against type as a self-serious, humorless grump; Sandra Bernhard is volatile and appropriately excruciating; and it's probably the last movie in which De Niro really made an effort. Now that Scorsese has presumably got the Oscar chasing out of his system, I'd love to see him make another black comedy like this.
   
   
8. Trading Places (1983)
   Another comedy of manners and an uproarious take on 1930s social message films, updated for the Gordon Gekko era. Every line of dialogue is priceless – "Where is your bitches?" – and the cast is remarkable. Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd are so good that I can still forgive them for everything they have done since the nineties began, and special kudos should also go to Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy as the slimy Duke brothers, Denholm Elliott as the butler, and Paul Gleason as the villainous Mr. Beaks. And, no, I've not forgotten about Jamie Lee Curtis or her boobies; no boy in the eighties ever could! I also love the gritty, earthy look of the film and the local Philadelphia flavor that it captures. John Landis was a comedic genius in the 1970s and 1980s, making a handful of timeless classics; Trading Places is not only his finest work, it's also my pick for the best film comedy of all time.
   
   
9. Repo Man (1984)
   The cult film of the decade and a stunning debut for Alex Cox. A wild genre amalgam involving repo men, street punks, secret agents, Latin revolutionaries, Scientologists, ufologists, and a hippie mystic who are all on the hunt for a Chevy Malibu with dead aliens in the trunk that is being driven around East L.A. by a lobotomized scientist who invented the neutron bomb. It's an hilarious satire of Reagan era America and a cool time capsule of the 1980s West Coast punk scene. I feel a great affinity for Cox's representation of Los Angeles and I probably quote from this film more than any other (so I will refrain from doing so here). True, there is a strike against the film for kick starting Emilio Estevez's career ... but Cox did apologize for this later.
   
   
10. Wings of Desire (1987)
    One of the most sublimely beautiful films ever made. Bruno Ganz is wonderful as an angel who falls in love with a trapeze artist and longs to be human, but Peter Falk steals the movie as a film star who was once an angel himself. Just about perfect in every way, and a fascinating document of a Germany on the verge of unification, two years before the wall came tumbling down. Avoid the Nicolas Cage remake at all costs.
    

Also, here are ten performances of note (five male, five female). I'm sure I've forgotten somebody, so this is by no means a definitive list:

• Nicholas Worth, Don’t Answer the Phone! (1980)
• Ed Harris, Knightriders (1981)
• Michael Moriarty, Q (1982)
• Christopher Walken, The Dead Zone (1983)
• Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas (1984)
  
  
• Lisa Eichhorn, Cutter's Way (1981)
• Jenny Agutter, An American Werewolf in London (1981)
• Nastassja Kinski, Paris, Texas (1984)
• Sigourney Weaver, Aliens (1986)
• Michelle Pfeiffer, Married to the Mob (1988)
  

Edward's Best of the 1990s

1. Porte aperte (1990)

Italian filmmakers have got a lot of mileage out of their country's Fascist past (e.g. Visconti with The Damned, Bertolucci with The Spider's Stratagem and The Conformist), and Gianni Amelio's Porte aperte is a very strong addition to this interrogation of history. A sacked government official (Ennio Fantastichini) murders two of his former colleagues and then rapes and kills his wife. He is promptly put on trial, he flaunts his guilt, and nobody seems to care if he lives or dies. But one judge (Gian Maria Volontè) does care. This is a movie about whether a man will receive a fair trial, and how every man, no matter how deranged, deserves one. Volontè, who will always have a place in my heart for his wicked (and sexually magnetic) performances in Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, here gives a touching portrayal of a man with the soul of Atticus Finch, and brings a kindly, intelligent presence to this grave and compassionate movie.

2. Unforgiven (1992)

David Webb Peoples wrote the script in the '70s, but Clint Eastwood sat on it until he felt he was mature enough (in years, and as a filmmaker) to make it. When he did, it was roundly acclaimed. And indeed, it is a towering modern Western, earthy and convincing, in which Eastwood's ageing, reformed gunslinger picks up the pistols and rides out on one last mission, to earn money for his ailing farm and his two little'uns. The film critiques the myths on which American history is built, the bloodthirsty taste for violence, and the arbitrariness of justice. It falters towards the end, when the final showdown between Eastwood and the vicious sheriff (Gene Hackman) perhaps has its cake and eats it, but the sombre achievement of the film remains, and features Eastwood's best-ever work as actor and director.

3. Pulp Fiction (1994)

With Jackie Brown indisputably on the list, and with other films (The Sheltering Sky, Dick Tracy, Husbands and Wives) clamouring for that tenth slot, Pulp Fiction was vulnerable. But in the end I went with it, because, when it first came out, I thought its screenplay was remarkable, and I still do. The way Tarantino structures the multiple stories, allowing each situation its own highs and set-pieces but unifying them into a totally satisfying experience, was one of the great (and repeatable) pleasures of '90s cinema. Eminently quotable lines ('I'm gonna get medieval on your ass!') stem from the mouths of a shining cast, including terrific performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Ving Rhames and a quite magical John Travolta. My parents (whom I all but forced to go and see what everyone was talking about) may not agree with me, and I'm not sure I agree with myself, but it is some kind of a classic.

4. Three Colours: Red (1994)

I agree with everything Andrew said: this is the crowning achievement of one of the great auteurs of the movies. Kieslowski's death was a shock, not just because he was only 54, but because he was in his creative prime and we weren't going to get any more films from the man who had directed (and co-written, with Krzysztof Piesiewicz) the likes of the Dekalog, The Double Life of Véronique, and the Three Colours trilogy. Red is a totally intricate, yet sensual and beautiful tale of two people, a model and a retired judge, who come together by chance. Kieslowski's benevolent worldview was never more clearly articulated, the cinematography (by Piotr Sobocinski, who also died young) is essential to the way the film works (what a collaboration!), and the last ten minutes are just sublime - with possibly my favourite final shot in the movies.

5. Everyone Says I Love You (1996)

Woody Allen attempts a musical - and pulls it off! A delightfully carefree, dotty romantic comedy, Everyone Says I Love You gains considerable charm from having its cast members take it in turns to break into song (and, sometimes, to dance). It doesn't matter that many of the performers (such as Edward Norton, Natalie Portman, Tim Roth and Allen himself) can't sing especially well; what this film has is heart, and tons of it. Alan Alda and Goldie Hawn (both of whom are very musical, by the way) play the parents of a group of madcap teens looking for love, while Goldie's ex, played by Woody, tries to woo Julia Roberts by hook or by crook. With its emphasis on three glorious romantic hotspots (New York, Paris and Venice), its wonderful wit ('Steffi, bring me a copy of my will, and an eraser') and the superb number set in the funeral parlour (the highlight of a picture full of highlights), Everyone Says I Love You is a feel-good movie through and through.

6. Jackie Brown (1997)

An adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch, 'written and directed for the screen' by Quentin Tarantino, Jackie Brown is the young attention-grabber's third full-length feature film. And, given the ludicrous over-indulgence of the more recent Kill Bill saga, this represents arguably Tarantino's most mature and controlled work to date. With its use of '70s forgotten favourites like Pam Grier and Robert Forster, it also acts as a dramatically engaging illustration of Tarantino's cinephilia and his conjurer's skill with casting. Grier plays the eponymous flight attendant, desperate to escape her working life drudgery and disentangle herself from the clutches of suave gangster Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson, excellent as ever), while Forster is the bail bondsman who finds himself falling for her in one of the cinema's great middle-aged romances. The film features a terrific, fresh use of classic disco tunes, the sly cinematic references are everywhere (such as the opening shot's homage to The Graduate), and, most impressively, Tarantino's pacing allows us to become fully absorbed in Jackie's desire for a more fulfilling life.

7. Life is Beautiful (1997)

There are people who would laugh me out of town for including this film on the list, because Life is Beautiful, when it was released, was a love-it-or-hate-it movie: a comedy set in the Holocaust. But its detractors seemed defiantly blind to one thing: this film doesn't seek to wring laughs out of the concentration-camp setting, it is a drama about the use of humour (and inventiveness) to sustain the human spirit in the face of a waking nightmare. Ultimately it is about the will to survive. The movie divides neatly into two halves: 1) Roberto Benigni's hyperactive waiter woos Nicoletta Braschi's tentative sweetheart; 2) the young lovers, with their little boy, are carted off to the death camps and Benigni sets about shielding his son from the reality of the situation by pretending it's all a game. Well, I'll stop there, because either you need no more convincing, or you've heard enough!

8. Ring (1998)

Based on the bestselling novel by Kôji Suzuki, Ring is a modern horror classic - and an absolute nerve-shredder. Nanako Matsushima plays Reiko, a journalist investigating the deaths of a group of teens who had all claimed to see a disturbing video and receive a doom-laden 'phone call. When she herself happens upon the eerie film footage, Reiko, with her young son and her ex-husband, has only seven days to solve the mystery. And what a mystery it is. Director Hideo Nakata's major coup is his straightforward, and thus entirely plausible, juxtaposition of contemporary Japanese life and ancient folklore. My first viewing of this movie, at the ICA in London in 2000, remains one of the most unforgettable times I've ever had in the cinema. Every promise was fulfilled, every setup was paid off, and as the film moved relentlessly towards its conclusion, my eyes were out of their sockets on stalks! And each subsequent viewing has only served to enrich my appreciation. A masterpiece.

9. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

I disliked this film the first time I saw it. The hype surrounding it had grown to absurd proportions and my expectations were dashed. But one thing stuck, and it's what gets this film onto my list: its use of its own low-budget origins to tell its story. Writer-directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez have delivered the ultimate 'found' documentary - so it's absolutely right that it looks and sounds scuzzy, that the camerawork is rough, and that the footage doesn't make complete sense. The world of the film exists outside the confines of the frame, and the performances by the three unknowns capture a particularly recognisable youthful brand of naïveté. I haven't got a clue what actually happens (are there ghosts in the woods? is the Blair witch running rampant?) but, despite not considering myself a particular fan of the genre, I can't stop myself from making this the second horror movie on my '90s list.

10. South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut (1999)

'I farted once on the set of Blue Lagoon!' Message movies were never as entertaining as this! When the South Park kids start using bad language as a result of seeing the Canadian Terrance & Phillip movie, their outraged parents wage war on Canada. In the Internet era, with adults unaware of the technological know-how of their offspring, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut acts as a reminder to the generations to communicate better with each other. All well and good. It just so happens that this is also a great big-screen spin-off from the popular TV series, a wonderfully inventive animated feature, and a terrific musical into the bargain, with song-and-dance routines worthy of the best of classical Hollywood, not to mention a generous strain of subversive wit. And just how do you get your kids not to swear? 'It's Easy, Mmm-kay!'


Six performances of note:

Gérard Depardieu in Cyrano de Bergerac
Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven
Robert Forster in Jackie Brown

Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs
Judy Davis in Husbands and Wives
Julia Roberts in Notting Hill

Andrew's Best of the 1990s

1. Lessons of Darkness (1992)
   A fusion of documentary and science-fiction from Werner Herzog. Following the first Gulf War, Herzog went to Kuwait to shoot footage of the oil fires that had turned the region into an apocalyptic inferno. Lessons of Darkness frames the footage as though it is from the perspective of an alien visitor to Earth. The metaphor of being an alien presence in the Middle East obviously has a lot of political resonances, and the film provides a powerful, moving, and utterly unique view of the crises there. It features some of Herzog’s most extraordinary landscape photography and trumps his own Fata Morgana (1971) as a vision of colonial madness in the desert.
   
   
2. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
   Seeing this fresh, before Tarantino became Tarantino, was one of the most exhilarating experiences of the nineties for me. It's a lean, taut and focused film, featuring none of the bloated self-indulgence of Tarantino's later work.
   
   
3. The Player (1992)
   I love thrillers with an off-key quality to them, where mood and texture play as much of a role as plot. Altman was a master of this; and, in representing Griffin Mill's growing paranoia, The Player has this quality in spades. The ending is especially good, simultaneously upbeat and downbeat, sentimental and cynical, a Hollywood ending that's as unHollywood as they come.
   
   
4. The Strategy of the Snail (1993)
   This Colombian film is a delightful satire about poverty and solidarity. A group of neighbors are forced to pull together and use all of their wiles to save the house that they live in but do not legally own. It's a genuine crowd-pleaser and a potent political allegory with an absurdist touch.
   
   
5. Three Colors: Red (1994)
   In selecting Three Colors: Red, I'm really implying all three films of the trilogy. Krzysztof Kieslowski was the auteur director of the nineties and left us way too soon. This tale of fate, fraternity and responsibility was his crowning achievement and is a near flawless film. What a way to end a career!
   
   
6. Before Sunrise (1995)
   I was roughly the same age as the characters when this first came out, and it spoke to me. Before Sunset (2004), however, has changed my relationship to Before Sunrise, contextualizing it as a film about being in love in your early twenties. This context gives new layers of meaning and specificity to the characters’ yearnings, musings, and fumblings – presenting romance not as something “eternal”, but rather as something determined in large part by age. If another film appears in a few years, it will become the 7-Up series of Generation X relationships.
   
   
7. Lost Book Found (1996)
   Jem Cohen's meditation on New York and Walter Benjamin is a masterwork of experimental filmmaking and a fascinating updating of the "city symphony" tradition. It's impossibly hard to find – I've only seen it as part of a film class – but it seems likely that someone involved in American Beauty saw it: the plastic bag motif is lifted whole cloth from Lost Book Found.
   
   
8. Boogie Nights (1997)
   Boogie Nights is a film of such wisdom, confidence and cinematic flamboyance that it still boggles my mind that Paul Thomas Anderson was only 27 when he made it. I can’t think of another ensemble film where all of the characters are so richly written and performed. I love the film’s use of fluid long takes (perhaps emulating/mocking the use of static long takes in adult films). And I love how the sad, broken-down-carousel music score offsets the peppy disco tunes to reveal the heartbreak and anguish behind the freewheeling decadence. More than any other film, it captures my own memories of the feel of the late-1970s and early-1980s.
   
   
9. Jesus’ Son (1999)
   Sam will disagree with me, but I like this film much more than the book on which it was based. The book is great, but what I love most about the film is the wonderfully existential mood of Alison Maclean’s direction, and the terrific performances by all of the cast. Billy Crudup, as Fuckhead, has never been better; and Jack Black, Samantha Morton, Denis Leary and Holly Hunter are all at the tops of their games. Along with Boogie Nights, it’s another insightful look back on the 1970s.
   
   
10. Three Kings (1999)
    David O. Russell’s Gulf War action-satire is in the best tradition of 1970s Hollywood filmmaking: it’s complex, challenging, exciting, absurd, angry, funny, cynical, tragic, and bold. I can’t think of another Hollywood movie that has tackled the United States' involvement in the Middle East as well; the first ninety seconds of Three Kings alone covers more ground than the whole of Jarhead. It also has some of the most strikingly innovative cinematography I’ve ever seen.

Edward's Best of the 2000s

I'm happy to join in! I've given my ten below, plus I've selected three male and three female performances from the decade which I think are especially noteworthy. Happy to do other lists as well - I've been trying to come up with top tens for each decade recently, so I'd be happy to share!

One of Andrew's is on my list too - Before Sunset - and I really liked the part of The Five Obstructions which I've seen (about the first thirty mins.) so I must see the rest of it. I didn't think much of Battle Royale, actually - I remember thinking that it was a film which could use a remake: I felt it wasted its premise. Admittedly I've only seen it once, and it was a few years ago, so maybe I'd like it better this time. I agree about Children of Men's dazzling long takes, and I think if I see it a second time I'll be able to absorb more of the characterisations. And though I have yet to see Happy Accidents, you won't get a complaint about Marisa Tomei out of me!

Here are my ten:

1. Wonder Boys (2000)

This is a very warm and witty film about a university lecturer, Grady Tripp, and the various crises, personal and professional, which he has to deal with over the course of a weekend at his college. Michael Douglas's performance as Grady is charming and loveable in its shambolic humanity. Perhaps it's all wrapped up a little too neatly, but along the way we get lots of insights into the way writers write, and it's great to see a film which finds non-angry things to say about the educational system. Lovely cinematography, too - cold and snowy - a colourful supporting cast of likeable actors and excellent use of Bob Dylan's music, especially 'Not Dark Yet' and the song he wrote for this movie, 'Things Have Changed'.

2. Our Lady of the Assassins (2000)

This is Barbet Schroeder's adaptation of Fernardo Vallejo's sardonic novel about a middle-aged writer falling in love with a young gang member in violence-stricken Medellín. The filmmaking is elegant, the script verbose, the actors awkward but ingratiating, and the situation rests on a knife-edge - their lives are in constant danger, and yet the film manages to make of their relationship an unashamed cross-generational homosexual love affair. Schroeder is one of the most worldly directors working.

3. Moulin Rouge! (2001)

I wanted to have a music on the list, and this is, I guess, the best one of the decade (to date). The first half hour is too hyper, but if you get as far as the moment where Ewan McGregor bursts into 'Your Song', you'll probably be hooked from there onwards. Richard Roxburgh has been overlooked in all the fuss, but he gives a very affecting performance as the loathsome Duke. And Baz Luhrmann has the courage to make a movie about love itself.

4. Mulholland Drive (2001)

A young wanna-be actress arrives in Hollywood and falls victim to its relentless dehumanising machine. And David Lynch makes it as odd and absorbing as you'd expect. This is a film which has its own dreamy momentum and which takes you along for its ride. Its very fascinating structure, born of its origins as an aborted TV pilot, leaves certain plot lines dangling or underdeveloped - the hitman's botched jobs, the film director (underrated Justin Theroux) at the mercy of his financiers - but don't listen to the people who say it doesn't make sense; it does, thanks to Lynch's commitment to emotional, rather than narrative, coherence.

5. Dark Water (2002)

Hideo Nakata, the director of Ring, here delivers another adaptation of a Koji Suzuki story, and it's another blood-curdler. But what makes this one of the best horror films is not just its nerve-jangling twists and shocks but the emotional undercurrent, which is made explicit in the film's moving coda. This is a movie about motherhood, and what a mother will sacrifice to protect her child. Intense and atmospheric, this shows yet again Nakata's deceptive style - it seems as if nothing much is going on but all the while he is pulling you further and further in.

6. Le Fils (2002)

A carpenter (Olivier Gourmet) at a reform school for delinquent teenagers becomes obsessed with his new pupil, who has in the past done untold damage. I believe this to be Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best film to date and one of the very best films of recent times. It's a perfect example of style and content in unison, the camera darting around after Olivier Gourmet as he grapples with the moral decision of what to do in a near-impossible situation.

7. The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanski's drama set in Warsaw during World War II was, as everybody knows, a very personal project for him. For this reason, it's the restraint which impresses the most - and this leads to some very chilling and sobering depictions of Nazi brutality. Stylistically not a ground-breaking film, it is a work which puts across its points with patience and lucidity.

8. Peter Pan (2003)

This is a very flawed adaptation of the famous story, but I rate it as one of the best of this decade because when it works, it works wonders. It contains some of the most original special effects I've seen recently, and James Newton Howard's music positively soars. I love the flight to Neverland, the night-time forest sequence, and especially the ending. Director P. J. Hogan always makes heavily flawed films (Muriel's Wedding, My Best Friend's Wedding) but he can nonetheless hit the heights. I've never been interested in the Peter Pan story, but this film is well worth seeing, and grows with repeated viewings - because the flaws recede.

9. Before Sunset (2004)

I agree with Andrew's take on this. I was very concerned when they announced it, because the first film had worked and I didn't want them to ruin things with a sequel. Well, this one works even better, and dramatises that eternal conundrum: what if we had got together with the one that got away? There are exquisite long takes of people communicating with each other as they walk the streets of Paris in real time.

10. Match Point (2005)

This is Woody Allen's best film since Everyone Says I Love You. People said that it was a change of pace for Woody - it's set in London, it's a thriller - but they were forgetting how well organised and powerful his best films are, and how this continues in that vein. It's a modern morality tale, deliberately stylised so as to convey its weighty themes - hence Jonathan Rhys Meyers' rather abstract performance - and although it's got its flaws, it is fluid, it looks fabulous, and it ends on a most cautionary note.

Here are my choices for outstanding male and female performances of the decade (three each, again in chronological order):

Michael Douglas in Wonder Boys

OK, I am a Michael Douglas fan. I always like him and his flawed white man act - Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct, Falling Down, Disclosure... but here, he is simply loveable as the respected lecturer and author going through all manner of mid-life crises over a single weekend. Whether talking to the police while wearing his ex-wife's pink dressing gown or stuffing a dead dog into the boot of his car, Douglas makes the character one to root for.

Olivier Gourmet in Le Fils

His performance works so well, it bears out the Dardenne brothers' claim that they wrote it only with him in mind. This is a towering achievement of outer appearance and inner revelation. And, incidentally, it is one of the best 'teacher' roles in the movies.

Maurice Bénichou in Caché

He has only a small role, as the nondescript French-Algerian man accused of sending threatening videos and letters to Daniel Auteuil's character, the complacent middle-class success story with the murky past. But Bénichou's sadness, his slumped shoulders, his end-of-the-line lack of energy, simply seem so real. If you've seen Caché, you may not easily forget Benichou's scenes or what happens to his character.

Charlotte Rampling in Under the Sand

Rampling plays a woman who is left bereft when her husband disappears while they are on holiday by the coast in France. What happened to him? And what does a middle-aged woman do when the man she has shared her life with is no longer there? It's heartbreaking to watch the character working this all out, and Rampling does it superbly.

Laura Elena Harring in Mulholland Drive

Harring plays an actress who gets amnesia after being involved in a car accident on the eponymous road. Naomi Watts' young starlet helps her search for her identity, and then falls in love with her. Watts is wonderful in the movie too, but she had the slightly easier role - more emoting to do - whereas Harring had to be desirable and remote, and later a heartbreaker, and her performance works perfectly within David Lynch's sensual puzzle.

Isabelle Huppert in The Piano Teacher

Intense, tortured - we really feel pity and sympathy for Huppert's pent-up music teacher who can only express her desires through masochism. That's two performances of my six from Michael Haneke films!

Andrew's Best of the 2000s

This is a list of my ten favorite films from this decade. I drew it up a while ago during a moment of boredom and then I forgot about it. Having just rediscovered it in the bowels of my laptop, I figured there was no better place to poop it out than onto this blog. If it succeeds in eliciting alternative lists, I might be motivated to do the same for the 1990s, 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, etc... Anyway, here's the list, in chronological order:

1. Battle Royale (2000)
   This was veteran Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku’s last completed film before his death. Given its subject matter – a class of school kids are sent by the authorities to a deserted island and have to kill one another until only one remains – it’s not surprising that the film never found a US distributor with the guts to release it theatrically. It is an intense, suspenseful, satiric, subversive, and truly surprising movie, and it enters into the kind of unsafe territory where all of the characters are totally vulnerable.
   
   
2. Happy Accidents (2000)
   A romantic comedy with Marisa Tomei? Am I crazy? Perhaps… but I thought this film was one of the most original romantic comedies I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of like The Terminator without Arnold and the body count. Marisa Tomei plays a New Yorker who has had a string of bad relationships; Vincent D’Onofrio plays an eccentric who claims to be from the future. Is he yet another loser boyfriend, or is he telling the truth? Happy Accidents has a very compelling, quirky tone, and the science-fiction plot provides a fascinating allegory for exploring the ways in which couples negotiate each other’s differences and defects. Plus, Anthony Michael Hall plays himself in the best celebrity cameo since Tom Jones crooned his way into Mars Attacks.
   
   
3. Together (2000)
   Lukas Moodysson is one of the most interesting figures in European cinema right now, a real provocateur in the ways Lars von Trier would like to be. This film shows a gentler side of Moodysson: a nostalgic ensemble piece about life on a Swedish commune in the 1970s. The film seems almost effortless in the way it weaves storylines together and makes care deeply for the dozen or so richly drawn characters. Also, no film is ever likely to put ABBA tunes to such good use … unless Larry Clark gets his hands on “Does Your Mother Know?”.
   
   
4. The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001)
   One of seven films made by Japanese director Takashi Miike in 2001, this zombie-musical-family-melodrama-black-comedy with claymation interludes plays like The Sound of Music meets The Evil Dead meets Nick Park meets crazy Japanese TV show. It was also Miike’s family film for the holidays! It’s a wild ride and tells the bad-luck story of a family that opens a mountain inn where the guests just keep dying, and it’s unlike anything an American studio would ever make.
   
   
5. Waking Life (2001)
   Richard Linklater’s first foray into rotoscoped animation is still his best. The drifting, aimlessness of the narrative is perfectly suited to its existential probing of life-as-a-dream, and I love how the “academic” tone of the first half slowly transforms into something more ominous and nightmarish in the second half. The animation technique – drawing over live-action video – is also perfected suited to the film’s plot and themes, as it is simultaneously both grounded in and removed from reality. A Scanner Darkly – Linklater’s Kid A – is almost as good and uses this animation style to different, but equally sublime, ends.
   
   
6. 11'09"01 - September 11 (2002)
   Eleven different directors from around the world each were given the same budget and complete creative freedom to make a film about September 11th. All the films had to be 11 minutes, 9 seconds and 1 frame long. Coming so soon after the attacks, the isolationist US was in no mood to hear a diverse set of global voices and this film never got a proper release in the States. It’s a genuine shame, as the visibility then of more works like this might have helped prevent what is happening now. Some segments deal directly with 9/11, others are more allegorical. The ones that have stuck with me the most are Ken Loach’s comparison of 9/11 with another 9/11, the US-sponsored coup in Chile in 1973, and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s structuralist audio collage, featuring a mostly black screen punctuated by flash images of people jumping from the towers that were omitted by most news coverage.
   
   
7. The Five Obstructions (2003)
   In the 1960s, Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth made a short film called The Perfect Human, a spoof anthropological film in which shots of sixties hipsters doing mundane things are treated like a nature documentary. Lars von Trier was one of Leth’s students, and in this film, as a form of therapy for his mentor, he challenges Leth to remake The Perfect Human five times. The catch is that von Trier will provide a set of “obstructions” each time, to limit/direct how Leth proceeds with each remake. What proceeds is a fascinating chess match: von Trier wants Leth to make something “less perfect and more human,” and deliberately gives him obstructions designed to sabotage the remakes; Leth in turn tries to outwit von Trier by turning the obstructions into strengths. A flawlessly conceived and truly inspirational film.
   
   
8. Before Sunset (2004)
   A second Linklater film for the list. At first glance, clocking in at a mere 82 minutes, this film seems like a slight, unassuming sequel to Before Sunrise. But it’s a film that sticks with you. Not only is it a finely nuanced take on dealing with being a thirtysomething, it also serves to add layer and texture to the original film, placing Celine and Jesse’s first encounter in the context of them being in their early twenties at the time. Shot in near-plotless real time, Before Sunset allows its characters and themes time to slowly emerge and develop, and it is the closest of Linklater’s films to the quietly devastating work of Eric Rohmer.
   
   
9. The White Diamond (2004)
   Around the same time that Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man came out to great acclaim, this other Herzog documentary slinked its way, almost unnoticed, straight to video. I think it's the better of the two, although I can see why the more sensational story of Grizzly Man got more attention. The White Diamond follows airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington on a trip to the jungles of Guyana, where he hopes to fly a craft he's designed over the tree tops. He's a classic Herzog protagonist – a driven, manic, obsessive dreamer dealing with past tragedy – and what makes the film work so well is how Herzog contrasts Dorrington with Marc Anthony Yhap, a lovable, mellow, slightly melancholic local from Guyana – the exact opposite of Dorrington.
   
   
10. Children of Men (2006)
    This one didn't grab me when I first saw it. I think the abundant Christian motifs turned me off a little bit, and the film is so extraordinary in its use of long takes that the sheer technical wizardry threw me out of the drama. Seeing it again on DVD, the brilliance of the film hit me. It's in the best tradition of political science fiction: a nightmarish vision of the future doubling as a commentary on post 9/11 society. It cements Clive Owen's position as a great, complex leading man. It does what any movie featuring Julianne Moore should do: kills her off early. And it has a terrific use of progessive rock: King Crimson's mellotron is the perfect soundtrack for a near-apocalyptic future London. Also, as IMDb reminded me, it bears an uncanny resemblance to Sergio Martino's 1983 post-apocalyptic cheesefest 2019: After the Fall of New York ... proving that the best steal from the best!