My Ten Best Films of the Decade (2000-09)

It is hard enough to choose the best films of the year, but it always even more daunting to proclaim a film to be 'the best movie of the decade.' I am still deliberting if Robert Altman's "The Player" was a better film than Mike Figgis' "Leaving Las Vegas," which gave Nicholas Cage an Oscar. Those are my two top choices for the best of the nineties.

This decade saw the emergence of international film. It was the decade of cinema globalization as now good films can come from Mexico, Brazil, Iran or Turkey as easily as they can come from The United States, France, Germany or Japan.

There are also many great films which did not make this list including "Elephant," "Lost in Translation," "21 Grams" and "There Will Be Blood."

All lists by their nature subjective and if mine reflects a bias it comes that reflected by a British film critic who when listing his ten best films ever made said he was choosing a Turkish and an Iranian film because those films were always overlooked. Perhaps, because Turkey is my late father's country, I fully sympathize with that view. And, perhaps for that reason, a Turkish and an Iranian film made my list, but I assure you both "Distant" and "Ten" are outstanding films, irrespective of my own bias.

Here is the list, with a compilation of titles I thought about selecting listed under 'honrable mention:'

1. Cache (Hidden)- France, 2005. dir. Michael Haneke
2. Sideways- USA, 2004. dir. Alexander Payne
3. Distant- Turkey, 2002. dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
4.Lilya 4-ever- Sweden. 2002. dir, Lukas Moodysson
5. A History of Violence- USA/Canada. 2005. dir, David Cronenberg
6. Little Children- USA, 2006. USA. dir, Todd Field
7. AI- USA, 2001. dir, Steven Spielberg
8. The Darjeeling Limited- USA, 2007. dir, Wes Anderson
9. Talk to Her- Spain, 2002. dir, Pedro Almodovar
10. Ten- Iran, 2002. dir. Abbas Kiarostami


Honorable Mention:
"21 Grams"
"Y Tu Mama, Tambien?"
"4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days"
"In the Bedroom"
"You Can Count on Me"
"Grizzly Man"
"Downfall"
"Mullholland Drive"
"The Fantastic Mr. Fox"
"The Royal Teenbaums"
"City of God"
"Borat"
"Bruno"
"Before Sunset"
"Bus 174"
"spirited Away"
"Minority Report"
"The Road to Perdition"
"I'm Not There"
"Climates"
"High Fidelity"
"Little Miss Sunshine"
"Lost in Translation"
"Fog of War"
"Bright Future"
"Best of Show"
"Frost/Nixon"
"The Wrestler"
"The Aviator"
"The Departed"
"There Will Be Blood"
"No Country for Old Men"
"Mystic River"
"Million Dollar Baby"
"Elephant"
"Traffic"
"Almost Famous"
"The Pianist"
"The Magdalene Sisters"

And, I'm sure there was at least one film I overlooked!