Best movies of the 2000s - Yearly Top 5 lists
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 2:35 pm
With the Academy Awards just around the corner, I figure this would be a good time to get to something I've been meaning to do for awhile now: A personal Top 5 list from each year of the 2000s.
You've probably noticed that I have an interest in the cinema. What you may not have known is that my interest was only recently rekindled. I grew up exposed to movies, so I naturally fell in love with them. I also grew up on "junk food cinema". Dumb action fare, summer blockbusters... that kind of thing. To say my tastes were unsophisticated would be a gross understatement. I may have only seen one or two Oscar-winning Best Pictures, but I could probably rattle off most one-liners in every Schwarzenegger movie ever made ("What did you do with Sully?" "I let him go.").
I can recall precisely the moment that I finally had gorged too much on empty cinema calories. It was during my viewing of Independence Day, a movie that for me epitomizes the brain-dead blockbuster (though that hasn't stopped its director from churning out similar shlock to this day). I walked out of the theater wondering why I had wasted my time and money on such a worthless spectacle. Shortly thereafter I slowed my trips to the theater, and "slowed" eventually gave way to "basically quit". That state of affairs remained unchanged until... well, I'll get to that in a moment.
For now, let me kick off the yearly Top 5 lists. I'll be posting two years at a time. In addition to the Top 5, I'll add at least one film that's noteworthy for one reason or another. And because highlighting the bad is at least as fun as highlighting the good, I include my worst movie of each year here as well. When I'm finished, I'll wrap up with my overall Top 25 and Bottom 5 from the 2000s.
Just so we're clear, these are not the movies I'd call the very best of each year. Rather, they're my personal favorites. There's a great difference between the two! Don't forget that I basically wasn't going to the movies for the entire first half of the decade. Since I can't rate what I haven't seen, plenty of worthy movies will likely be missed. At the same time, you'll find a few titles on here that have no business even sniffing a yearly best list. Don't blame my inability to recognize a good film - blame my crappy taste.
Lists like these are great fun because everyone is going to have their own take on what deserves and doesn't deserve to be listed. By all means, take issue with my lists! I've certainly provided enough ridiculous inclusions to warrant your scorn. If you like movies, I encourage you to post your own Top 5 movie lists as well. You might inspire me to seek out a movie I otherwise wouldn't have. Finally, feel free to create new threads to share your own lists on different subjects as well. Like I said, everyone likes a good list.
You've probably noticed that I have an interest in the cinema. What you may not have known is that my interest was only recently rekindled. I grew up exposed to movies, so I naturally fell in love with them. I also grew up on "junk food cinema". Dumb action fare, summer blockbusters... that kind of thing. To say my tastes were unsophisticated would be a gross understatement. I may have only seen one or two Oscar-winning Best Pictures, but I could probably rattle off most one-liners in every Schwarzenegger movie ever made ("What did you do with Sully?" "I let him go.").
I can recall precisely the moment that I finally had gorged too much on empty cinema calories. It was during my viewing of Independence Day, a movie that for me epitomizes the brain-dead blockbuster (though that hasn't stopped its director from churning out similar shlock to this day). I walked out of the theater wondering why I had wasted my time and money on such a worthless spectacle. Shortly thereafter I slowed my trips to the theater, and "slowed" eventually gave way to "basically quit". That state of affairs remained unchanged until... well, I'll get to that in a moment.
For now, let me kick off the yearly Top 5 lists. I'll be posting two years at a time. In addition to the Top 5, I'll add at least one film that's noteworthy for one reason or another. And because highlighting the bad is at least as fun as highlighting the good, I include my worst movie of each year here as well. When I'm finished, I'll wrap up with my overall Top 25 and Bottom 5 from the 2000s.
Just so we're clear, these are not the movies I'd call the very best of each year. Rather, they're my personal favorites. There's a great difference between the two! Don't forget that I basically wasn't going to the movies for the entire first half of the decade. Since I can't rate what I haven't seen, plenty of worthy movies will likely be missed. At the same time, you'll find a few titles on here that have no business even sniffing a yearly best list. Don't blame my inability to recognize a good film - blame my crappy taste.
Lists like these are great fun because everyone is going to have their own take on what deserves and doesn't deserve to be listed. By all means, take issue with my lists! I've certainly provided enough ridiculous inclusions to warrant your scorn. If you like movies, I encourage you to post your own Top 5 movie lists as well. You might inspire me to seek out a movie I otherwise wouldn't have. Finally, feel free to create new threads to share your own lists on different subjects as well. Like I said, everyone likes a good list.