Top 10 Movies of The 2000s, Part 2

Continuing from the previous article counting down the best films of the 00s, numbers 10 through 6, we now move on to the Top 5 Movies of the 2000s.

Numbers 10 through 6 were:

10- The Weather Man

9- Almost Famous

8- There Will Be Blood

7- Up

6- Adaptation

5- Michael Clayton:

Boy, was this a big surprise. Michael Clayton, written and directed by screenwriter Tony Gilroy as his first directorial effort, was marketed as a standard legal thriller a-la John Grisham, but proved to be something more, much more. It stars George Clooney in one of the most subtly nuanced performances of the decade as the title character, a corporate "fixer" whose own life is in the crapper.

When his ex-partner Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson in the only performance I can think of that even comes close to competing with Peter Finch in Network) loses his marbles during a billion dollar corporate poisoning lawsuit, his law firm brings in Clayton to "fix" the situation. As Clayton finds out more about Edens' case, he realizes that Edens had a lot to be insane about. Pretty soon, he's in over his head and he has very little time to figure out where his loyalty lies.

Sounds like standard Grisham-fare, doesn't it? On the surface, Michael Clayton is a great conspiracy thriller. But underneath, it's about the search for one's soul within a world that has lost its grip on the simplest of human morals for the almighty buck. Corporations can do almost anything to get ahead, to reach that bottom line, but what toll does it take on the souls of the people it trusts to make that happen?

Tony Gilroy's screenplay and direction is impeccable. Not one single piece of information is wasted. It's characterizations and structure are perfect. The script is the kind that should be studied and analyzed in screenwriting classes. Michael Clayton is a great film about the insanity of modern society and business and deserves to be compared to other similar masterpieces like The Insider and yes, even Network.

4- Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King:

If there is one genre that made its mark on the 00s, it was the big-budget fantasy franchise based on an established best-seller. From Harry Potter to Narnia and many knock-offs that are already forgotten (Does anyone actually remember Lemony Snicket?), fantasy was the name of the game in the new millennium.

But none of these efforts to cash in on the craze came even close to the awe-inspiring majesty of Peter Jackson's colossal undertaking of The Lord of The Rings. In all fairness, number four on this list should belong to the whole trilogy, but if I have to pick a specific film, Return of the King is without a doubt my first choice.

As a 4-hour-long third act to Tolkien's sprawling epic, The Return of The King is immensely entertaining. It does not lay to waste the six hours we spent watching The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and presents us with one of the most spectacular finales to any fantasy epic.

3- Children of Men:

2006 saw the release of three influential films by three influential Mexican directors known as The Mexican New Wave. Alejandro Gonzales Inarittu's Babel was well received by critics but somehow did not connect with me. Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth was a fascinating adult fantasy that came really close to claiming a spot on this list.

Children of Men, on the other hand, is a different story. Alfonso Cuaron's ferociously raw and powerful masterpiece of speculative fiction is that very rare gem that comes along once every decade: It's a truly adult science fiction film that uses its futuristic world to hold a mirror to our contemporary society. The film's depiction of a childless world shows us both the depths of human ugliness and depravity and the little glimmer of hope that can emerge from the seemingly endless onslaught of fear and paranoia.

The look and feel of the film is magnificent at every turn. It contains not one, but three of the greatest single take shots in film history. The 10-minute, single-take sequence where Theo (Clive Owen) searches for Kee, the only pregnant woman in the whole world, through a full-blown battle between the army and the refugee insurgents was made to be analyzed and picked apart by film classes. Children of Men is a truly great film.

2- A.I.:

I can hear the whining and groaning. I don't care, Kubrick and Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence belongs on this list.

If The Weather Man is the most underrated film on the top 10, then surely A.I. is the most misunderstood. I can't tell you how many times since its release in 2001, I engaged in heated discussions and arguments about it, more than usually concerning the final 20 minutes.

Before we even get to the "Spielberg ruined Kubrick's vision by sugar-coating the material" argument, bear in mind that Kubrick wanted Spielberg to direct A.I. He felt the story was closer to his sensibilities. After working on the film for three decades completing a considerable amount of pre-production, Kubrick passed the torch to Spielberg and passed away shortly afterwards. That's why I prefer calling it Kubrick and Spielberg's A.I., as opposed to crediting Spielberg alone.

It's no wonder that most audiences were lost on A.I. and did not connect with it. Kubrick fans thought it was too cute, Spielberg fans thought it was too dark, and everyone else was just plain bored and confused. This is part of the reason I love A.I. so much. To me, it represents a perfect cocktail of two of my favorite directors.

It's a Spielberg film that has a very clear edge and attitude that doesn't exists in any of his other work, primarily because he was compelled to stay true to Kubrick's vision and could not sugar coat the material too much. At the same time, it is a perfect Kubrick film in many ways, without his usual cold detachment against human feelings and emotions. In fact, considering that the story's about a robot who tries to become human and therefore have "real feelings", it's no wonder Kubrick tried to pass it off to Spielberg.

Even though it looks like A.I. is already forgotten, there are still articles being written about its many underlying themes, metaphors and subjects. And I'm sure movie nerds everywhere still engage in heated arguments about it. Most of these articles and arguments focus on the final 20 minutes of the film. Much like the last 20 minutes of 2001, the ambiguity of the final scenes have been scrutinized to no end.

First of all, Kubrick wanted that end. It was not fabricated by Spielberg to give the film a family-friendly, cookie-cutter happy ending. Second, it is not, I repeat not, a happy ending. I could write a doctorate paper on why the film's final act is not a happy one, but to save time and space, I would just advise anyone who bitches about the end to watch it again and again until they get it. It's really the only way.

As our technology progresses in a stupefyingly accelerated rate and the line between machine and human becomes thinner by the day, A.I. will take its place as one of the most prophetic and profound science-fiction films in ever made.

1- Wall-E:

Why is Wall-E the best film of the decade? Because it's the best animated film, the best science-fiction, the best adventure, the best romance, the best criticism of consumer culture, the best environmental message movie and overall the most purely enjoyable and breathtaking film of the 00s. Not to mention it has the cutest, most adorable, most ingenious creation of the decade: The hapless romantic trash compacting robot, simply called Waste Allocation Load Lifter - Earth Class, or Wall-E.

Written and directed by Pixar's Andrew Stanton, who previously helmed the great Finding Nemo, Wall-E is truly a wonderful anomaly. Smashing through the children-and-families-only confines of the American animation format, Wall-E soars, much like its protagonist near the middle of the movie, to become one the most universally cherished films of the 00s, and easily one of the ten best animated films ever made, maybe even the best.

The first half of the film takes place on a deserted planet Earth. After being unable to handle the escalating trash problem, the people of the planet fly away in luxurious space ships that resemble expensive cruise liners. The job to clean up the planet is left to Wall-E units. After 700 years, only one Wall-E unit remains active. While still doing his job, Wall-E dreams of a world beyond the stars. But mostly he dreams of love. The kind of love he learned from an old VHS tape of Hello Dolly. Soon, his world turns upside down as he's visited by a sleek and sexy Earth research robot by the name of EVE.

Andrew Stanton and the Pixar team do not hold back any punches concerning the visual depiction of the trash-infested Earth, nor do they even try to fit it inside a cutesy, non-threatening family-friendly mold. The planet is dirty, dusty and unpleasant. A tone of gray dominates the color palette while the obligatory bright pastel colors usually seen in so-called family entertainment is nowhere to be found.

This is a bold move for Stanton, but his gamble pays off in spades since the bleak look of the film allows the endlessly creative and wonderfully endearing back-and-forth between Wall-E and Eve to shine. The scenes between Wall-E and EVE almost completely silent, reminding us once again that film is above all a visual medium. The rest of the story, a magnificent adventure aboard the space cruise liner Axiom, is the visual polar opposite of the first half, with its clinically clean and bright look. The final five minutes of the film are equally heartbreaking and full of joy. Wall-E is a wonder to behold, and it is the best film of the decade.

Top 10 Movies of The 2000s, Part 1

I realize that this is kind of cheating. But I was in the process of creating my 10 best films of the 2000s article for beyazperde.com and I came upon a minor writer's block. So I thought I'd try it first on this blog as a more free-form first draft. Also, since the beyazperde article is going to be in Turkish, I kinda like the idea of having a more detailed English version on hand.

So how does this belong in Top 5 Movies? After all, I did set for myself the rule that all of the blog entries will involve some form of top 5 about movies. Well, the way I get around that this time is by posting the first five entries in the list, plowing through numbers 10 through 6, and then presenting the grand finale involving the "real" top 5 in another entry. Technically, this counts.

Right off the bat, I have to admit that this was my idea. I contacted my editor and suggested a Top 10 Films of The Decade article. So in a way, this is not really an assignment. It's more of an interest. I know the 2000s officially end with 2011 but the reason I thought of doing this now is because every other critic already started posting their lists, so I didn't want to be left out. Also, I like making movie lists, hence this blog.

Looking back, how does the first decade of the new millennium fare compared to the older decades? Pretty good, actually. Browsing through various favorites from the 00s, I came across many masterpieces. Great movies that will be remembered for years to come.

In retrospect, 2007 was the best year of the decade. I remember referring to that during conversations with friends months before the year even ended. That's how you know it was a great year. Although I'm sure this happened completely by coincidence, 2007 saw a surprisingly strong return to the dark, edgy, brutally honest yet joyfully stylized character driven films of the 70s, the best decade for American cinema.

2004, on the other hand, proved to be the weakest year. In fact, 2004 was so weak, I could not find a single film worthy of a spot on the list, so I opted on picking two titles from 2007. No films from the worst year, covered by two films from the best. It seems fair to me.

Otherwise, there is exactly one film on the list per year. I simply picked my favorite film from each year and made a chronological list. That was the easy part. The excruciatingly hard part was to measure their greatness. In many different ways, these films are equally great. I just had to go by my gut reaction ("Go by the gut" is a proud credo of The Colbert Nation) regarding how much I love each film, so here you go.

The best films of the 00s, entries 10 through 6:

10- The Weather Man:

In my humble opinion, this is easily the most underrated gem of the decade. When The Weather Man was released in October 2005, it kind of passed through theaters without much recognition from the audience, who probably did not know how to react to what looked like a big Hollywood drama with a big Hollywood star (Nicholas Cage) that was surprisingly unconventional and brutally honest.

The Weather Man did have a large budget and impressive star power, but it had the soul of a character-driven indie drama. In lots of ways, it's better than all the critically-acclaimed indie darlings of the 00s. It had a very dry sense of humor, yet it did not overdo it by adding the sugary sweet "quirk factor" that spreads like a cancer on almost all indie dramas. It was a reflective study of a man lost in his mid-life crisis, but it wasn't unnecessarily gloomy or depressing.

In its core, The Weather Man is about the search for a man's place in life. It's about that time in our lives where we really start asking ourselves, "What am I doing here? What is my purpose? What am I good for?"

Local Chicago TV Weather Man Dave Spritz (Nic Cage) might be financially successful without having to do much work, but his respected author father (Michael Caine in what might be his greatest performance) doesn't respect him, his ex-wife loathes him and his children barely know his name. He is not really a likable man. He always looks mopey, is usually rude to people and sometimes he can't even get the most basic tasks done, as seen during the brilliant flashback scene about "The Tartar Sauce!" Yet we sympathize with him because deep inside, he yearns for the most familiar basic needs: The need to have a happy family, the need to be respected, to be loved.

Instead of building a traditionally cynical sob story about this guy, screenwriter Steve Conrad and director Gore Verbinsky (Who directed all three Pirates of The Caribbean, go figure) intricately construct the story on a series of small moments, reminding us that the big answers about our lives usually lie in the little details. The Weather Man deserves to be sought out and rediscovered.

9- Almost Famous:

Cameron Crowe started the 00s strong with 2000s Almost Famous. He also crashed and burned with 2005s Elizabethtown but I choose to focus on his glory days as opposed to his later embarrassments.

Based on Crowe's own experiences as a 15-year-old reporter for the Rolling Stone, touring with bands like Led Zeppelin and The Who (A.K.A. The Luckiest Teenager Ever), the film follows (surprise, surprise!) 15-year-old William Miller's (Patrick Fugit) often exhilarating, sometimes frustrating journey with the fictional band Stillwater and their "band-aids".

Since it's based on real life experiences that are obviously very near and dear to Crowe, the film immediately instills in us an intimate feeling of familiarity. Every step of the way, we feel like we personally know the characters. We feel as if we are watching our own memories (Wishful thinking, I know).

It's an endlessly endearing film, full of life and energy, much like the music.

8- There Will Be Blood:

If there is one film on my list that will remain a bona fide American classic and will be discussed in film schools in 50 years, this is it. With its impeccable direction full of perfectionist touches that would put Kubrick to shame, its awe-inspiring, "freeze-a-random-frame-and-hang-it-on-your-wall" cinematography and its powerhouse lead performance that will crush all other less-worthy powerhouse performances (Daniel Day-Lewis in the best performance of the decade, bar none), There Will Be Blood is a film lover's heroine, pure and uncut. Primo stuff.

That's not to say it's an easy film to warm up to. As remorseless and cold as his protagonist, it took me a couple of views before I could even get to grips with the film's visceral power. After I saw it in the theater near the end of 2007, it didn't even make it on my beyazperde Top 5 list for the year. After watching it again and letting its mastery wash over me, I can safely say it is one of the most powerful American films ever made. Who knows, maybe after watching it a couple more times, it might move up on this list as well.

7- Up:

The decade ends with 2009's Up, a true animation classic. One that not only presents an endlessly exciting and breath taking adventure, it also accomplishes something seldom seen in American animation: It has real characters, with real feelings, dreams and motivations. Even though it is part of a format generally marketed to kids, not one frame of it has even a speck of that familiar pandering and condescension observed in countless animated films, especially ones that were released during the 00s.

Underneath the delightful fantasy of Carl Fredericksen, a cranky septuagenarian, voyaging to Paradise Falls with his flying house to fulfill a promise to his wife Ellie, lies a beautifully told story about a man's personal journey into dealing with his own grief and finding new purpose in his life, executed with endless empathy and compassion.

Directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson go out of their way to crush every children's film cliche known to man. Russell, Carl's unwanted child companion, is not treated as an adult in a child's body, the way children are depicted in almost every family film, but as a real child, confused, goofy and sometimes even annoying. The talking dogs don't have human characteristics or mannerisms, they simply articulate a dog's thought pattern. Balls are good, squirrels are bad. This is, quite simply, a wonderful film.

6- Adaptation:

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman made his mark on the 00s with his own brand of off-beat, self-referential, post-modern work. Kaufman has a knack for wryly examining the deepest regions of the human soul. Some critics are already calling Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I thought was over-written and too Gondry-fied, one of the best films of the decade.

I think Kaufman's best work is the delightful Adaptation. When he couldn't find a feasible way to adapt Susan Orlean's non-fiction book The Orchid Thief, Kaufman inserted himself into the script, created a fictional twin brother and used this wide palette to examine everything from sexual frustration, writer's block, sibling rivalry, Charles Darwin and of course, orchid thieves.

Much like the ouroboros, a symbol of a snake that eats itself, referenced in the film by Charlie's simple-minded-yet-more-sexually-active brother Donald, Adaptation devours and recreates itself as it moves along. The film bashes certain storytelling gimmicks constantly used by Hollywood such as voice-overs and action-oriented finales full of fist fights and car chases, only to conclude with a ridiculously conventional ending that utilizes every cliche in the Hollywood playbook, including ending with a (you guessed it) car chase and a heart-warming pop song ("Happy Together" by The Turtles).

I know Nicholas Cage has made some bad choices during this decade. Ghost Rider and The Wicker Man are the first ones that comes to mind among a double-digit list of crappy films. But the fact that he gave two of the best performances of the 00s more than makes up for his sins.

His personification of the morbidly neurotic Charlie Kaufman and his goofball brother Donald are pitch perfect. Cage's take on these two characters are so distinctive, we can always immediately tell which brother we're looking at even though no make-up was used to visually distinguish them.

Adaptation is one of those films that is surprising and unpredictable at every turn. So far, this is the final pair-up of director Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman along after the almost equally brilliant "Being John Malkovich". Even if this is their final effort together, it's certainly not a bad end.

Click Here for Part 2

Top 5 Best Uses of a Classic Rock Song in Contemporary Films

If you want to know my thoughts on The Coens' latest masterpiece A Serious Man, you can check out my previous post. Needless to say, I happen to think strongly about how fascinating, thought-provoking and, most importantly, original and unpredictable it is.

Out of everything the film gets right, one of the most curious is how well it utilizes its classic rock soundtrack. The use of 60s counter culture psychedelic rock against the backdrop of the repressed, traditional Minnesotan Jewish society does a perfect job of contrasting the dull and dreary images with fresh, new (at the time) and daring music, full of vibrancy and life.

It also reminds us that while these characters were living their monotone lives in their little social bubble, the world outside was changing and evolving at a highly accelerated rate.

Of course there are lots of films that utilize music to contrast its images. The first and the easiest example that comes to mind is Kubrick's use of classical music during scenes of brutal graphic violence in A Clockwork Orange (It also includes the famous performance of Singin' in the Rain which forever ruined the wholesomeness of the song).

What makes A Serious Man even more special in that context is how well the music fits melodically with its images and pace. The opening credits sequence seamlessly takes us from the old 19th century (I'm guessing) shtetl into the ear canal of an adolescent boy in 1967, listening to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love". The song becomes a thematic string that ties the story together the way "Fight The Power" did for Do The Right Thing. It does a great job of introducing us to the bizarre world of the film.

Kudos to Carter Burwell for his score that leads into the song. His dedication to using the same instruments and recording style of the period was so good, I thought I was listening to an unused intro from 1967.

The best use of classic rock in the film, and what inspired me to write this article, was the perfect synchronization of Jimi Hendrix's "Machine Gun" during the sequence where the middle aged rabbi tells Larry the story of "The Goy's Teeth". With each revelation the dentist in the story comes upon concerning the goy's teeth, the song's fast, hard-hitting drum beat provides us with an aural exclamation mark. It's definitely one of the best uses of a Hendrix track in a movie.

So that got me thinking: What are some of the best, most original uses of classic rock tunes in recent films? Films that go back up to about a decade or so. So here it is, off the top of my head, without any particular order, the top 5 uses of a classic rock song in contemporary films:

1- "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin from Almost Famous:

I'm not entirely sure about this but short of a concert film like The Song Remains The Same, I believe Cameron Crowe's ode to his days as a 15-year-old rock journalist carries the honor of being able to use the most Zeppelin songs in a feature film. Just off the top of my head, "Misty Mountain Hop", "That's The Way" and "The Rain Song" comes to mind. But the one that made the biggest impression was Crowe's use of "Tangerine" as we see a montage of Stillwater back on tour before the end credits roll. It perfectly encapsulates the warm, nostalgic feeling it tries to create about the good old days of rock, before it turned into a multi-billion dollar business. Try to get your hands on the extended, "Untitled" version of the film, where Crowe lets the song play out till the end over a black screen before laying out the credits.

2- "The Seeker" by The Who from Religulous:

Bill Maher's incendiary anti-religion documentary where Maher searches for meaning in faith and organized religion starts with a credits sequence montage of people from various religions practicing their faith, set to "The Seeker". The lyrics of the song does a good job of accentuating the film's themes and Pete Townsend's guitar helps start things off with a bang.

3- "In The Court Of The Crimson King" by King Crimson from Children of Men:

Alfonso Cuaron's topical, bleak and visually exhilarating masterpiece was not only the best film of 2006, it's also one of the best science-fiction films to come out in a long, long time. During the scene where Theo is on his way to visit his minister (of the arts?) cousin in order to secure transit papers for a mysterious young girl, he looks out the window of his government limo into a lost and frightened England, a country still trying desperately to hold onto whatever semblance of pride and privilidge left in its soul. The dark and depressing tone of "In The Court of The Crimson King" by prog-gods King Crimson succinctly conveys the mood and setting.

4- "Like A Rock" by Bob Seger from The Weather Man:

I guess the Bob Seger classic doesn't technically count as a classic rock song. It's probably more in the vein of southern rock, or maybe even classic country, depending on who you ask. But its use in the vastly underrated The Weather Man definitely deserves to be mentioned. Unlike the other entries in the top five, the song does not blare out of the speakers and takes the foreground to emphasize on the emotions of the scene. Instead, it quietly plays out of a car stereo in the background during the most powerful and touching scene of the film.

During his successful writer father's living funeral, Chicago TV weatherman Dave Sprizt, played with masterful existential angst by Nicholas Cage, can only get through the first line of his eulogy before the power cuts out. All he manages to say is that when he thinks of his father, he thinks of Bob Seger's "Like A Rock". Days later, everyone forgets he even started his speech, except his father, played by Michael Caine. He plays the song for his son in his car, not understanding what this rock song has to do with his life. What follows is a scene of profound honesty and the forming of a bizarre yet surprisingly emotional connection between the son and his dying father.

5- "Immigrant Song" by Led Zeppelin from School of Rock:

We opened with the mighty Zep, it's only fitting we close with them. It's not a secret that Page and Plant frown upon the use of their songs in movies and rarely give such permission to filmmakers. Knowing their reputation regarding this matter, director Richard Linklater actually shot a piece of film where Jack Black literally pleads for permission to use "Immigrant Song" in front of thousands of cheering Zep fans. Linklater sent the film to Page and Plant, hoping it would persuade them to give permission. The plan worked and Linklater was able to use the song in a crucial scene where the band of school boys led by Black rock on in a van after wining a spot on The Battle of The Bands. As the relentlessly harcore infamous riff bangs away, it signifies a sort of liberation for the characters, from the drudgery of school work, into a world where their ideas, talent and emotions can run free.