September 30, 2009
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The Decade in Movies
It’s coming up, the close of another 10 year period, and I’ve decided to take a hard and honest look back at the movies from 2000 to 2009. There’ve been ups and downs, thrills and spills, blockbusters and bombs. I’ll list year by year my favorite and least favorite movie. Now, these are the movie’s I’ve personally watched, so if there’s a bigger bomb out there, I managed to avoid it. (I, for instance, have been spared Gigli. WOO HOO!)
2000
Easily outstripping all competition for me in this lackluster year was Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. Wonderfully shot, with the bad effects unnoticable to me as he kept my eyes on the action, not the background, Russel Crowe puts up a performance of a career here.
Easily bombing harder than any other movie, ever, is Battlefield Earth. I intentionally set up a Battletech game where, unbeknownst to my friend who inflicted this upon me, five people had agreed to gang up and shoot his ‘Mechs down in the first round giving him nothing to do. I will now list all the bad things about the movie: Everything.
2001
Jocking for the top spot was a whole host of movies. I enjoyed A.I., Enemy at the Gates, Harry Potter 1, Monsters Inc, The Fast and the Furious… but all were going to be swept away by the first movie in the juggernaught franchise: The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. I, literally, had been waiting for this movie all my life, and while there were some problems, it did a decent job in capturing the feel of the novels, and felt like the EPIC MOVIE I’d been waiting for. Sean Astin begins, what I felt, was 3 concecutive shoo-ins for best supporting actor. He owned that role.
Last place had NO competition. Pearl Harbor got bombed again. Expecting a FX feast coupled with at least a story as good as Midway (we wanted Tora! Tora! Tora!) we got Titanic 2: The Arizona. God, I can’t think of a time where I left the theater more disgusted with a movie.
2002
Another big year in film, bringing me Eight Crazy Nights, Equillibrium, Harry Potter 2, Kung Pow!, Men In Black 2, and Spiderman, it’s a forgon conclusion that in December with my girlfriend and mom, my butt would be in the theater for Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The bombs remained big, however. Known in the household as “Nytol on DVD”, 2002 gave us Star Wars: Episode II: Send In The Clowns. After seeing it in the theater, I’ve never once made it through the movie again, it is that boring.
2003
I know, we all know the top film here has got to be Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Still, let’s give credit where credit is due. 2 Fast 2 Furious was a fun movie, and so was it’s twin Bad Boys II. Finding Nemo touched hearts, and Pirates 1 made me like the unholy trinity of Depp, Disney, and Bruckheimer. And Kill Bill 1 was a masterpiece of modern art.
There was a sort of tie for loser movie of the year. The Matrix was cool… but it spawned The Matrix: Reloaded and The Matrix: Revolutions. The action scenes were amazing, cinematic eye candy of the highest sort. Aside for those 15 minutes, however, you’re left with content that made George Lucas feel a little better about Episode 2.
2004
Featuring Harry Potter 3, Sky Captain and The World of Tomorrow, Kill Bill 2, and a suprisingly good remake of Walking Tall, top props had to go to
Warhammer 40K: THE MOVIEThe Chronicles of Riddick. Vin Diesel does a great job in this action role, and the grimdark sci-fi setting was what the world needed to recover from the mind rapes of the last two years.NOTICE: BobRichter pointed out that my list-generator omitted the real top spot of this year: The Incredibles. Frankly, I’m embarrassed. I’m also suprised that Marvel went ahead with the Fantastic Four movies, as they couldn’t have hoped or prayed to beat this movie. Phenomenal cast, Pixar’s fine graphics, and a story that can’t possibly not move you, coupled with the best animation director since Don Bluth equaled pure win. My apologies.
Bad movies abounded, however. Alien vs. Predator, Eurotrip, Mean Girls, Napoleon Dynamite, and Oceans 12 all tried to hit bottom. One movie, however was not to be denied, and I didn’t talk to my sister for two years after she put on White Chicks at a family get together. There’s nothing wrong with offensive comedy, IMO, but this movie forgot the COMEDY part. This was a movie I tried to avoid, but rolled a fumble and got critted.
2005
Batman relaunched, Narnia was discovered, Harry Potter found a goblet, Vin showed his Pacifier side, and Kurt Russell went Sky High. Too bad they all needed to look up the proper formula for best movie in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A superb cast pays perfect tribute to Douglas Adams’ work, coupled with breathtaking SFX (the Malgaretha Floor quite literally did this for me, I’d love to see a Theme Park Dark Ride based on it) made this the talk of Comic Con, and the event of the year. It remains the last film I paid full price twice to see.
The turkey of this year was a movie that should have been called “Tom Cruise Runs with a Blank Look on his Face, While Carrying a Screaming Dakota Fanning.” Obviously, that doesn’t fit too well on a poster, but I’m at a loss for why they called it “War of the Worlds“. We may never know. This made it easy to beat out the horrible remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tony Scott’s Domino disaster, Star Wars III (as a gift to Lucas, I suppose) and the stilted Robots.
2006
While I enjoyed A Scanner Darkly, the top spot was a race to the finish. Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift was actually a nice piece of movie, but the imports couldn’t keep up with American Muscle. Framed on one of the absolute best pieces of nostalgia, Route 66 gets animated in Cars. I’ll admit, I didn’t have a chance with this movie, what with the long road trips my father used to favor. But it also reminded us of fair play and humility while not shying away from the benefits from being the best.
While another childhood memory got trashed in Charlotte’s Web, and a franchise disappointed in Pirate’s 2, only one movie could nearly kill my girlfriend’s love for Marvel. Even as I watched it, I knew I was watching the dismantling of a beloved continuity and franchise, and with Brett Ratner at the helm I even knew why. X-Men 3: Oh God, Why? started off as wrong as Clear and Present Danger and the crap just kept coming. With a story telling style that made Star Wars III look like Lord of the Rings 1, we felt nothing about the characters except on how Ratner evidently never figured out which mutant was what.
Incidently, this was the most boring year for films. Ever.
2007
2007 was filled with “average” films, with few standouts… and few bombs. While Live Free or Die Hard (mostly) brought John McLean back to us… out of bullets, hehehehehe… and Across the Universe (for me) was an excellent piece of musical storytelling which I think needs to be explored more, this was finally… FINALLY… Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix‘s year. Despite all the directors, and the loss of beloved actor Richard Harris, the movies have remained tight, enjoyable, and suprisingly enough, aged with the young actors involved.
The two bombs dropped on us were Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which was edged out by the banal National Treasure 2. The frantic treasure hunt feel from 1 is all lost in this badly concieved sequel, and Nick Cage doesn’t fill out an adventure’s outfit as well as Ford or Jolie. And less Jon Voight, the better!
2008
2008 had too much of one thing: Grit. Sure the movies were great but you had Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Hellboy II, Indiana Jones 4, and Gran Torino all in the same year. All excellent movies, but I’m going to shock you. I don’t think any of them were my favorite of this year. One movie gave me fun, humor, action, and a positive message. The movie of the year for 2008 was an apology for Matrix 2 and 3, and a fantasically animated movie it was, as Speed Racer zoomed past all the tough guys to finish in first place. John Goodman gets all kinds of props for a fantastic job as Pops Racer.
Yes. Read it again. Best movie: 2008? SPEED RACER. I’ll wait a moment for you to compose yourselves, you should have more control than that, and the language…
Now the losers were a tight pack too, Cloverfield’s shaky camera made it so frankly I still don’t know what the movie was about. Get Smart felt dumb. Pixar finally fell through for me with the terribly over-preachy, doldrumish WALL-E. But all that faded before the shear stupidity and incompetence behind Harold and Kuumar go to Guantamano Bay. I put this on my Zune to watch it… thank god I bought the warranty, because it grew legs and jumped into Lake Isabella rather than show it again.
2009
I’m not going into depth here, but this looks like another year for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, aging like a fine wine, the actors all making us feel a part of the make-believe. Watchmen was pretty good and Star Trek wasn’t the complete fiasco I expected.
Now, I’ve intentionally missed a lot of films, so one day this line might change, but of the ones I watched the most disappointing one was: Fast and Furious. I thought, wow, they did so great with the first three, keep it up. This seemed recycled, trite, and frankly it was more than a little boring.
Recap:
So the best film of the decade? Yeah, I’m going to make everyone mad again. I can guarantee I will be watching Speed Racer more than any other film on this list. It’s that damned fun, and the only objective standard I recognize. You don’t watch movies you don’t like, and you rewatch movies you do like more, right?
Worst film? The decade started off in the Marianas Trench, there’s no where else to go but up. Anyone who says Battlefield Earth wasn’t the worst movie since the end of 1999 is lying, or has seen Gigli. Those that have seen Gigli will say Battlefield Earth was the worst movie to cover up the fact they saw Gigli.
Comments (4)
Thanks for putting your opinions out there. I noticed a large amount of disagreement in our perspectives, with movies I rated highly getting negative billing, movies I considered only mediocre getting top billing, and movies I found absolutely craptacular somehow being rated good or average.
Clearly I am right and you are wrong.
But mainly this reminded me that I still haven’t seen a lot of these films.
2000: Yeah. No disagreements there.
2001: I’m going to burn some of the nerd-cred I’ve built up over the years by saying that while I really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I’d prefer Enemy at the Gates to any of them. I actually missed this one the first time around and caught it on DVD later and I was completely blown away. Awesome film.
Pearl Harbor was a horrible atrocity against history, and yet a not-entirely-unfun film with a fair amount of airplanes, machine-guns, and explosions. It has as competition for “worst film” some of the worst film adaptations and remakes in the current century, at least one Ben Stiller “comedy” and who knows what else. Well, Wikipedia does.
2002: The second part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy had a competitor that rocked the whole trilogy while taking less time to play than any of them, and not just because of the comparitive sparsity of hobbits. You mentioned it, it’s Spider-Man. 2002 had a lot of other great entries, making it hard to pick a runner up.
While Episode II was certainly the franchise’s worst entry, and probably the only one I would actually rate as bad, it has stiff competition for worst film. Part of the problem with identifying a specific competitor is that I don’t usually watch films I don’t expect to enjoy, and this year was littered with them. While I will admit that 8 mile was actually a better film than SWE2, I’m pretty sure SWE2 can’t take the year outright.After all, it has to compete with Reign of Fire.
2003: Return of the King is the worst of the three,and yet perhaps good enough to take the year. I’d actually rate the Matrix Sequels over it, but mileage on those obviously varied somewhat.
While I enjoyed the Matrix sequels, I understand that a lot of fans didn’t like them nearly as much. Fair enough. This year also saw the release of Freddy vs. Jason. Also, Gigli. Probably the worst year for films in the entire decade, this year simply could not be taken by a pair of high-intensity action/SFX films that even at their worst barely dipped into mediocre.
This year was just crap generally, actually.
2004: Seriously? You’re going to go with The Chronicles of Riddick? I only barely made it through that film. It probably would have been my gut-reaction pick for “worst” for this year. That it was actually better than Pitch Black isn’t saying much. Films like this give sci-fi a bad name.
I’m going to go with The Incredibles, which I notice you didn’t even mention.
For worst, I don’t doubt that White Chicks was bad — there’s a reason I still haven’t seen it. Even so, The Day After Tomorrow probably deserves dishonorable mention, if only because it did so shockingly well.
2005: Hitchhiker’s Guide was…okay. While it could never have lived up to the awesome anticipation it had built up in sci-fi fandom from waiting until 2005 to be released, it didn’t even try. The ultimate result was a moderately funny but ultimately totally forgettable film that, while it clearly belongs in the franchise, simply doesn’t bring any credit to it.
Giving the HHG movie top billing misses some feats that are simply incredible: a Batman film that revitalised that much-abused franchise, the best kid-superhero film I’ve ever seen, and a movie that despite having both Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in it, actually managed to be a great deal of fun.
It also misses Serenity. Far and away the best film of the year, Serenity may actually have been the best sci-fi film ever. It is unfortunate that it achieved neither box-office success nor the hoped-for restoration of its franchise.
I’ll admit that I haven’t seen the 2005 War of the Worlds, but I have seen Elektra and if Steve Spielberg somehow made something that could ever compare to that atrocity against reason and art, I would be very, very impressed (and also convinced he’d done it on purpose.)
2006: Haven’t seen cars. Still have no plans to. I honestly doubt it can compare to V for Vendetta, which is my pick for the year.
2006 also contained a number of other fine films. I find it a pity that you mentioned none of them.
X3 wasn’t great. Okay, it was actually pretty bad. Even so, this year saw the release of The Grudge 2
2007: I’m going with the Simpsons Movie on the high side, actually. (though I’ll admit to willfully ignoring the entire Harry Potter series and everything associated therewith. It might actually be good and I still wouldn’t care.)
Again, really terrible movies are hard to pick out because I didn’t see a lot of them. One I did see was Reno 911!: Miami. I didn’t see National Treasure 2 for the obvious reason that I didn’t enjoy National Treasure, but I actually doubt it can match the depths to which the aforementioned title sunk.
2008: I don’t know about Speed Racer. It might actually have been better, but I haven’t seen it because my love for cartoon nostalgia pieces hasn’t yet overcome the double-threat of being broke and a strong distaste for racing films. Actually, the first part of that double-threat means I haven’t seen a lot of these films yet.
Harold and Kuumar might have been bad (don’t know, haven’t seen it,) but does it compare to the reality-denying horror of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed? Sure, you might try to disqualify it on account of it’s supposed to be a documentary, but it is most certainly fiction.
2009: Not over yet. We’ve still got three more months for any winner in either category to be challenged.
Monsters vs. Aliens was pretty awesome. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was actually shockingly good. I still continue not to care about Harry Potter. That Star Trek doesn’t take the top spot is an indictment in itself.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen may have a shot at worst film as well. I wouldn’t know. I haven’t seen it, and given the state of my finances, it may be years until I do.
@BobRichter - As I said, I can only speak to films I’ve watched. This excludes Gigli from consideration, as is 8 mile, 911: Miami, Reign of Fire or Expelled. The list I generated from unfortunately did not include “The Incredibles”, which I will move ahead of Riddick, certainly. An oversight is an oversight, and a wrong must be righted. Brad Bird’s creation was, indeed, far and above Vin Diesel’s sci-fi romp. I apologize not, however, for picking HHG over Serenity. Every time I was almost ready to get into that movie, some character would dive into a long winded speech that sounded like cast offs from Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. It, in my opinion, does not even come close to sci-fi’s loftier positions. These, of course, remain my opinions and as such are in the end, only of value to me.
You should probably see Cars. You should probably continue to avoid War of the Worlds. V for Vendetta was good, but just left me on the edge of wanting to call it great. National Tresure 2 was ninety times worse than 1. It was 1 without what passed for novelty. It almost was as cookie-cutter as Kickboxer 2 was to 1.
It was hard to pick Fellowship over Enemy, because I am a HUGE Ed Harris fan, but as I said, part of the attraction was the wait, and the payoff was being able to share them with mom. I’m not a critic, and sentiment plays a factor.
Thanks, though, for reading and responding.
Yeah, Speed Racer was good. I never got why it got so much negative attention, but then with the exception of Star Trek: Nemesis and Clone Wars, I’ve liked all of the Star Trek/Wars movies from the last decade or so.
@Alan_Nominus - Didn’t see Clone Wars after my buddy who’s a SW geek said he fell asleep in it, on a full night’s rest. Nemesis had potential, but the “Remans”… I don’t know why Rick Berman hates the Pocket Writers… Gar and Judith almost saved Enterprise, you’d think he’d learn… The new Trek, it had potential, but I think that Ira Behr put it best, Trek is at it’s finest when it moves FORWARD.