Let’s start with a quick recap of what we’ve covered so far.

25. Shaun of the Dead
24. Gladiator
23. Sideways
22. In Bruges
21. Lost in Translation
20. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
19. Mulholland Drive
18. Gosford Park
17. O Brother Where Art Thou
16. There Will Be Blood
15. Snatch
14. Borat
13. The Dark Knight
12. Spirited Away
11. The Royal Tenenbaums
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
9. Memento
8. Wall-E
7. Slumdog Millionaire
6. The Hurt Locker

Before I get to the top five, I wanted to mention a few films that just missed this list. The last 10 years have given us a lot of good to great films, and for that reason there’s a glut of films that are all close to, but not in, my top 25 films of the decade. So here, in no particular order, are some films deserving of acclaim from the last decade:

CAPOTE :  Absolutely remarkable performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman in a film that somehow manages to make you care about two brutal murderers. This film is gushing with humanity; it’s understated but it speaks loudly and clearly.

MINORITY REPORT: Some of the best Sci-Fi of the last decade and eerily prescient. I’m not that thrilled with what ultimately becomes a by-the-numbers game of cat and mouse, but there’s a lot going on in this flick that deserves praise and is worth your time for sure.

25th HOUR: Unquestionably Spike Lee’s best film of the last decade, and perhaps the best and most universal of his canon. An incredibly underrated film on many levels. Odds are you haven’t seen it, and you definitely should.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK: This is a film that doesn’t do much, but what it does, it does incredibly well. Sure the message is thinly-veiled. But the subject matter was and is as deserving of committing to celluloid as any of the last century. The lead performance is stellar, David Strathairn is a criminally-underrated actor. His Edward Murrow performance wasn’t an impression or imitation, but he channeled the conviction and fervor of Murrow incredibly. The “B” story, with Robert Downey Junior and Patricia Clarkson, seems tacked on and drags the film down a notch from where it needs to be. But overall, outstanding soundtrack, powerful film, great performances. Clooney knows what he’s doing at the helm.

KNOCKED UP: Ok, I lied. I will rank the films here if only to say this would be number 26 on the list. I guess it’s fair to say this is the Apatow film that speaks to me most. I think it covers various kinds of relationships with ease, and seems to contain humans, not stereotypes, warts and all. It’s not perfect, and the characterizations aren’t as rich as they are in “Sideways” or “Lost in Translation” but they’re damn good, and this is damn funny. Sure, it’s a little syrupy, but I like that about it. I suspect if there had been 10 Best Picture nominations this year this came out like there are now, this would’ve scored one.

PAN’S LABYRINTH: I already talked about this when discussing “Spirited Away”. An incredibly visually-stimulating film. But a film that’s inconsistent emotionally. It’s chock full of emotion, don’t get me wrong, but it’s almost like being in a relationship with inconsistent emotional support in terms of how it makes you feel happy on one had and tragically sad on the other. It works, I recognize what I’m experiencing, but it just seemed like an out-of-focus image to me. One more turn and I think it would’ve been pitch perfect.

THE BOURNE TRILOGY: Perfect blend of style and action substance. The second and third films of the trilogy are actually better than the first, and as a whole the trilogy works on myriad levels. If you’ve ever enjoyed an action film, it would be tough not to enjoy these.

ANCHORMAN: So full of ridiculousness, and yet one of the most memorable comedies of the decade. I know some people hate the giant gang fight 3/4 of the way through the film. To me, that’s the epitome of the sublime silliness that this film captures so perfectly throughout. About the only comic actor from the 00’s missing from this one in some way, shape, or form is Ricky Gervais. I’ll be quoting this one long after other comedies from the decade have faded from memory.

SUPERBAD: Maybe the best juvenile comedy of the last couple of decades. Full of hilarity, yes, but also full of memorable sequences and actual poignancy in the relationship between the two main characters. One of the sweetest stories of a relationship between two teenage male best friends in American cinema, and wrapped up in a downright laugh out loud flick.

THE WRESTLER: Don’t have much to say except this is one of the top 5 acting performances of the decade. Criminal that Mickey Rourke didn’t win Best Actor for it.

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN: Alfonso Cuarón is a master and this is a near-masterpiece. He found his stroke and hit a grand slam with a film that I’ll talk about momentarily, but this film is no slouch either. Cuarón is Midas-like, his Harry Potter film is the best in the series as well. He just gets it. Anything he directs is worth seeing, and this one is second on his list in my book.

Ok, let’s get to the top five!!

5. THE DEPARTED – 2006

This one is indelibly etched in my memory in so many positive ways. So much so that when my grandmother passed away recently, during the prayer at her graveside, when the priest said the prayer containing the line “and the souls of all the faithful departed”, I was reminded of a brief moment in the film with the prayer, and I was swept away ever so slightly, enough that I wasn’t as sad as I was before I’d been reminded of it.

This is the power of films. Through word, sound, and image, they can take us away like no other. Books are great escapism, but they are limited to what we can imagine. Films show us. And they stay with us, much like faded memories of individuals, or events. We remember snippets, or scenes. The best ones create in our mind emotional associations with images or words or sounds that can trigger waves of emotional memory when accessed again.

Martin Scorsese is a, perhaps THE, modern master at creating these associations. He does it as much through music as he does through image or dialogue, so that the end product of his best films could not exist without the soundtracks. Once you’ve seen it a couple of times, you can watch a Scorsese film on the radio. When you hear songs they’re evocative of what you saw. He does it through image, in a subtle way, so that there’s a snub scene at the end of this film that is a direct call out to one of the most legendary snubs/endings in film history from “The Third Man”. You see it, and you think of the themes of the other film, and how they’re similar, and pretty soon you’re swept away in thought and evaluation. Like I said, Martin Scorsese is a master at creating these associations.

Sure, some of Scorsese’s films, “Casino” for instance, lean heavily on this almost as a device, and come off as sometimes style-laden instead of style-setting.  But “The Departed” strikes a perfect balance between style and substance so that the style is both subtle and superb. The film is paced incredibly well, so that the story of two young men, one on the police force who is secretly working for a gangster, and the other who is working for the gangster but secretly on the police force, never feels dull, and builds to a incredibly-draining climax. It would not develop so well were it not for the way music underscores the interactions of the characters, for the way a simple guitar strum builds tension, to the way a single piece of music interspersed under several scenes makes them feel connected, so fast, and so tight. If you read this story on paper (which I have done via the screenplay) you’d come across confused and detached from the emotional impact of the story. When you see it, it’s marvelous how wonderfully intertwined this parallel story is. It becomes something far greater because of the sum of its parts. Somehow Scorsese has figured out the formula to maximize their impact. It helps that the individual parts are top-notch, great writing, outstanding performances abound (Leo DiCaprio, hat’s off to you for being a legitimately great actor who I used to heap non-stop trash on just because you were “cute”), and an awesome soundtrack that leads to some wonderfully-orchestrated moments. I’m particularly a fan of the live version of “Comfortably Numb”, mainly for the way it goes under the scenes, and then swells back into a crescendo over the images during a sequence that lasts basically the entire 7 or 8 minutes of the song. This is a fantastically well-executed film.

One of the landmark achievements for a director is watching a film and knowing that no one other than them could’ve made it the way it is. That’s what “The Departed” is. It’s a Scorsese. It feels, sounds, looks, and lasts like a Scorsese. And in doing so it presents a film experience that rates and resounds among the top of the last decade, and of all time. Even without my meaning it to, it crept up into my grandmother’s funeral and gave me escapism for a brief second when I needed it most. Pretty impressive.

4. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN – 2007

This one flat knocked me on my ass when I first saw it. I was completely riveted. Mind…blown.What is this? Is it a study of what pure evil can do to a town and the word? Is it about how our actions make us who we are? Is it about how even the best intentions can lead us into peril? Is it about the country as a place and state of mind, or is it about The Country and the state of affairs? It is all of these things and so so much more.

This is the scene I love the best. The ending. Straight out of the book but, when performed by Tommy Lee Jones, one of the single best scenes of the decade.

This is a film (and a wonderful book by Cormac McCarthy) that has more to do with its title than people realize. The film seems to be about drug money and the dogged pursuit of a real life cowboy in a game of finders keepers with one of the purest forms of evil in cinema history. On its surface, it’s a pure chase movie with good guy and bad guy lines fairly clearly drawn. But what it is really about is how this has always been and always will be no country for old men. The scene above, and the scene where Tommy Lee Jones meets with a retired sheriff and they wax poetic about how, even in 1900, this was no country for old men, are the sum of the film to me. That there are forces of nature like Javier Bardem’s character in the world is nothing new. That the older people in society feel time has passed them by is an eternal theme. To the Sherrif Ed’s of the world, things always used to be better.

Why I love this film, why it works so well to me, is in the face of that theme, the film does wonders to make me yearn for the world of MY childhood, that is, the world depicted in the film. The world where small towns, independent drug, furniture, and department stores existed. A world of roadside non-chain motels. A world without Wal-Mart. This is the world of No Country For Old Men. And even though it is inhabited by really, really depraved souls like Anton Chigurh, I found myself yearning for it as I watched the film. So while Tommy Lee Jones’ character yearns for the past, and Josh Brolin’s character has hopes for the future, I find myself yearning for the time in the film. This is one that has a very personal reaction for me. It may not play the same for everyone else.

3. GANGS OF NEW YORK – 2002

It’s difficult to find a place to begin talking about this film, because it encompasses so much, but surely director Martin Scorsese had the same issues with bringing it to screen. It’s a snapshot of the history of crime in New York, as such it fits perfectly into his canon that has examined that issue from all sides in previous films. But it’s also a snapshot of the history of New York itself, and the history of America. In that way it’s about much more than warring Gangs in the Five Points neighborhood of what is now Manhattan. It pulls all of this off well, in ways picturesque and memorable. It’s a true sweeping epic that succeeds at what it tries and suggests a history of our not too distant past that seems altogether foreign and unusual.

The best and most fully-developed villain of the decade is William “The Butcher” Cutting. He’s a man of principles, such as they are; opting to daintily sniff a woman’s hand instead of kissing it, but later nearly bashing someone to death with his own skull to the point his hair is deeply matted with blood. He claims that the only difference between he and his rival Priest Vallon was faith, and he seems to reject all things not “American” but displays a deep reliance on the “ancient laws” of combat, which ostensibly did not come from America. He uses incredibly flowery language to describe his interactions, and yet is barely literate. The last words he speaks in the film are therefore cast onto this puzzling canvas, so that they seem as ironic as they do sincere. It’s an amazing character, and an incredible performance from Daniel Day Lewis. He vamps around the Five Points in a way just shy of complete insanity, but in such a way that you understand this is a man with deeply primal rage and anger simmering just under the surface. Because of this, he’s as scary as he is entertaining. Which is more than we could ask from most film villains. A true monster, and yet not even the true villain in the film. Which brings me to:

The first time I saw this film, I was very confused. It felt long and like it could’ve wrapped up 30 minutes before it did. But that’s because I saw it as a story about the conflict between the “good” bound-for-revenge Amsterdam Vallon and the “evil” Bill The Butcher. What I didn’t realize is their story is just a microcosm; the larger story is the story of the poor in America, specifically New York during the Civil War. While the poor were busy murdering each other over perceived differences, the country was busy grouping them all together and conscripting them into service for a war in which they had no interest in fighting. The larger story is about how the poor found their way during this time, and what their reality was as “Americans”. One of the most memorable sequences of the film shows a boat of Irish coming to American shores for the first time and in one shot pans across the docks to show a line of other Irish being suited up and loaded onto another ship for war, even as caskets of other Irish are being unloaded from the same warship, all the while a singer is lamenting this process in a wonderfully sad Irish Folk song. It’s one of many powerful sequences in the film that stand out more when you realize that this is a film about all the people in the Five Points, not a story about how two of them settle their differences.

In talking about “The Departed” I went into detail about how I feel regarding Scorsese’s use of music in his films. This one is on a whole other level. Because this film is a portrait of America during a time and place, the music is the watercolors or oils Scorsese uses to paint that portrait. It’s a history of American music, with over 100 different pieces of period music, from African rhythms to Irish dances, from Chinese ceremonials to Chamber music. If America is a melting pot, then when we see in the film are all the ingredients being melted into that pot, and what we hear are combinations not heard before, and not heard since. We see and hear the interactions between elements that have brought us to where we are today, as a nation physically and musically.

This was a bit of an opus for Scorsese, who first conceived it in 1978 and thought of casting John Belushi as Bill The Butcher. It remained in flux throughout the 80’s (Mel Gibson and Willem Dafoe were also attached). The production design was no less epic; Scorsese built the entire Five Points set at Cine’Citta in Rome, and George Lucas remarked he could’ve done it on a computer. But, then, this film was nominated for 11 Oscars, something George Lucas knows next to nothing about, so I am not sure we should take that seriously.

It’s a sprawling, outlandish, instructive, and entertaining masterpiece of a film. This will be one I’ll remember as an American masterpiece and an American story. It doesn’t matter that everything in the story isn’t technically true, or that the microcosm story of the characters isn’t as rewarding as one might hope, or that the love story in the film feels tacked on. The devil in this film isn’t in the details of the story, it’s in the details of the film. The costumes, the sets, the shots and suggestions. The overall imagery and impact are significant, and earn their place in my top 5 favorite of the last 10 years. What Scorsese has done with this film is to cast history in certain tones, so that the memories this film creates are more lasting than actual history. No small feat, but no less than should be expected from perhaps our greatest living director.

2. CHILDREN OF MEN – 2006

When a film chills you to the core, when you’re swept away from your reality to a reality that is slightly different and yet seems utterly real, when a film reaches up and shocks the conscience like “Children of Men” does, there is only to sit back and take it in for the experience it is.

There’s a sequence in “Children of Men” that in my humble opinion ranks among the most amazing in film history. It’s a long tracking shot, single take, about 3/4 of the way through the film. Just 6 or 7 minutes of non-stop action and intensity, as the camera follows our character through a mess of dangerous insanity. When it finally stops, when there’s a moment that brings it all to a halt, I found my eyes welled up with tears. It occurred to me afterwards that without cutting, without editing, the emotions in the scene just built up. I was completely wrapped up in the scene because I hadn’t been taken away from it, so that when the character stopped for breath, when the action stopped for the most incredible of reasons, I was an emotional mess.

This is a film that is a masterpiece at doing exactly that: knowing how to manipulate the true emotions of the viewers. It knows more about viewer’s emotions than we as viewers do. It accomplishes this manipulation through style as much as substance; indeed there’s such a blend of the two here that it’s difficult to say where one stops and the other begins. The world in which the film takes place is so richly imagined, things are going on in the background that are horrible and are just there. The lead character stumbles through a screaming, gun shooting, militant Islamic funeral without comment. There’s a burning pile of bodies by a country road that’s passed without comment. Immigrants are kept in cages in public areas and observed, without comment. This is reality. It’s dystopian, but it’s also close enough to realistic that it’s incredibly scary.

The premise of the film: that a worldwide problem caused people to cease being able to have children shortly after 2009, is lush with possibilities that are fully flushed out here. So in a world without human children, people dote on their pets. Everyone and I mean everyone in the film has one. And no one makes a point to say “we have pets because we don’t have kids” but the fact is there and you can’t ignore it. When the lead character visits his uber-rich brother, we see his brother has taken to recreating Pink Floyd album covers on grand scale with his money, because there’s no one to pass it on to and therefore no sense in saving it. Again, this isn’t so much said as just shown. The film trusts us to make the conclusions to the questions it also trusts us to ask. And much of the greater story of the film is told through newspaper headlines, background images, and broadcasts. There’s a fully imagined world in this story, we only see some of it, but we FEEL all of it.

Clive Owen finally plays a “good” guy here, but he can’t help but run from his somewhat shady sensibilities, so that he feels like an accidental hero (one who fakes emotion when convenient but also one who can’t hide it when it’s there.) People come running from the woods with rocks and torches. The graffiti on the walls aside the train tracks says “last one to die please turn out the light” (which you see if you’re looking for it but can pass you by if you don’t; this is a film that rewards depth of analysis like few from the last ten years), and England is somehow the only place on earth worth living any more. All the world has gone to pot and from this Owen must find some glimmer of hope and focus on it. This is just a remarkable film.

I find it difficult to pinpoint any weakness in this film. I think time will only enhance its genius. I am in awe of it every time I watch it. There’s a morning getaway scene that was clearly captured just as the sun was coming up in one incredible take that you sense they were extremely lucky to get. It feels like guerilla filmmaking at times, as though the camera crew were embedded with Clive Owen as he was thrust into chaos through no real choice of his own. It ends quietly, and powerfully, just as it should. The performances are stout all around, Michael Caine is particularly remarkable as an aging political cartoonist who brings much-needed levity to the film. He claims to have based his performance on John Lennon and it has that feel for sure, but there’s a bit of George Carlin there too. Julianne Moore is perfect as a revolutionary with an agenda Clive Owen only discovers the true nature of when it’s too late to turn away.

But the true star of this film, besides the world that’s created, is the creator of the film’s world himself, Director Alfonso Cuarón. Put simply, this is the best imagined, best directed film of the last 10 years. His touch is Midas-like, and his artist’s brush is nearly unrivaled. Everything in this film is there for a deeper reason. Everything going on adds depth, not just background. I imagine Cuarón working with extras to come up with backstories just so there could be a point in their work should anyone choose to look at it. I had a legitimately hard time not ranking this one number one on the list. If you haven’t seen it, I implore you to sit down, clear your mind, and take it in. And then see it again. It’s harrowing, uplifting, and sad. It’s dystopian and yet seems real. It’s scary. It’s incredible. It’s number two on this list, barely.

Which brings us to Number One…

1. CITY OF GOD – 2002

In Rio De Janerio, a city many of us view with a paradise-like tilt to our thinking, the Brazilian government decided the best thing to do was to isolate the poor from the city center. So 15 miles outside the city, they built housing projects, without water, and without much thought other than, “let’s get the poor out of our city.” Perhaps with irony and perhaps not, one of these projects is called The City of God. It is here in which the film takes place, and it is the stories of these people we experience in the film.

There are 8 million stories in the City of God. And just as many ways to tell them. Why this film soars is how it chooses to do so. Namely, with reckless energy that shows us, not tells us, what’s going on, and doesn’t linger and allow us to pity or be sad. It’s a film bursting with life, so much so that even as lives are lost on screen, we press on without much sadness or regret. This is a film that just sweeps you away, instead of allowing you to linger and be emotionally distraught at what you’re seeing.

The result is a phenomenal film experience. Lessor films suffer the pitfalls of trying to capture emotions and create certain feelings through imagery, editing, etc. This film is concerned only with telling stories. And it pulls out every single stop in doing so. It’s been compared to Scorsese’s landmark “Goodfellas” and  it is on that rarified level that this film does its work. As one memorable story after another unfolds, you give up trying to see narrative arcs, a clean story, etc, and just revel in what the film is. It’s not purposefully confusing like “Memento”. It doesn’t play incessant fill-in-the-blank narrative games like “Pulp Fiction”. You just get lost in the stories not because you are confused, but because you’re swept away. It manages to interweave the stories of a cast every bit as large as “Gosford Park” has, and in doing so is off the charts in terms of success. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling, and there’s not a film from the last 10 years on par with it in that regard.

The common element to all these stories, the narrator, is a young boy self-named “Rocket” who grows up in the City of God with an interest in photography. He knows all the stories, he lived many of them and heard the rest, and he’s recounting them to us, so they’re all interconnected. In this way “Slumdog Millionaire” owes much to “City of God”, the main character being a young man who has lived through many tales he has to tell. But where “Slumdog” develops a device to elicit those stores (albeit a device that works fantastically) in “City of God” there is no device, there is no need. You’re just here to watch the stories unfold, there is no greater story. What has happened IS the greater story, because it has brought our character to where he is, and the stories develop in such a way that the last one he tells, in fact the greatest one, is a product of all the others. He’s telling the stories of everyone else, but the larger story is HIS story. It works fantastically.

This is a joy to watch. It’s incredibly “cool” and yet also easily accessible. It’s visually stimulating and inventive in the way only the best films are. It is like “Gangs of New York” and Dickens in that it has a two cities aspect to it, but it doesn’t make that the message. In fact there is no message. And that’s probably what is best about this film. It plays like you’re an observer of what’s going on without attempting to elicit any outcome other than letting you see what the character experienced.  It just presents a glimpse, a vibrant, cool as tinted sunglasses, glimpse, at these stories, at what the main character knows. I could watch it for days on end and not be bored.

Another significant way the film elicits this escapism is by using unknowns. Like in “The Hurt Locker”, because we don’t know these actors, we are given to just accepting what they are doing here, and now, and not burdened by what we’ve known them to do in the past. The end result is characters who last in our memory, not the actors who played them. Really, the two are indelibly linked once we’re done.

What I hope you’re getting a sense of is that this film is like many others that were on this list. It’s just better, more taut, and ultimately more entertaining than the rest. When I sat down to evaluate them, I couldn’t rightly rank it behind films on the list that I just can tell you it’s flat out better than in my book. At the end of the day, I feel comfortable about saying it wins this comparison with every film on my list. In 10 years, hopefully, “Children of Men” will be no closer to reality and thus won’t have the added benefit of hindsight. If things continue to approach where that film goes, I could see it surpassing “City of God” because of that. But barring that, this film will remain and stick out to me as the best of what the last 10 years had to offer. It’s an outstandingly entertaining film. Not rip-roaring hilarious, not heart-warming, or heart-wrenching, or anything. Just an incredible story told incredibly. Watch it for yourself.

Well, that wraps up my list. Thanks for reading. And be on the lookout for my top 100 list resuming in 2010. I’ll also attempt the auspicious task of reviewing every film I see, and there will be plenty more to come on anything else I see fit to put fingers to keyboard about. Happy New Year!