Rashomon
Rashomon is the next movie I have to see, according to
Movielens, the fabulous "collaborative filtering" site run as an experiment by the University of Minnesota. I know that rating 350 movies I've seen will help Amazon send commercials directly into my RNA in the future, but I can't help myself. It's too fun. You can see how much you differ from everyone else (my hatred of
Forrest Gump, the moron-as-ideal-citizen, seizes the top slot there) and you can pair yourself with buddies to see which movies you ought to watch together.
Here are all the movies I've rated so far and
here are all the movies in the world in the order that I should see them.
From Justin to Kelly rounds out the end, preceded only by
Gigli.
My Ten Favorite Movies of the Oughts
In
alphabetical order of importance:
12.Bad Santa
11.Ocean's Eleven
10.Spellbound
9. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8. Spirited Away
7. Donnie Darko
6. Lord of the Rings (trilogy)
5. Kill Bill (2 movies that can only be considered as one)
4. Amores Perros
3. Fat Girl
2. Sexy Beast
1.
I ♥ HuckabeesI think
Zoolander and Monsoon Wedding might have a shot at this;
I mention Zoolander because there have been some flat-out very funny movies of the decade, and that's as good a placeholder as any. Update: Clearly Bad Santa is the funniest movie of the oughts thus far. Not that Zoolander wasn't really funny. And Monsoon Wedding was perhaps a bit of a trifle, but it was an amazingly sumptuous one, with supersaturated visuals and, for a wedding movie with a subplot of sexual abuse, a touching willingness to operate without melodrama. Morvern Callar had the only soundtrack that changed my life in the oughts. American Splendor and Ghost World could also displace a couple of the ones listed above if I had eaten something differently. I bet Pixar could land a slot if they lobbied me at my home or workplace.
Ocean's Eleven I threw on the top of the pile after I'd started out with ten because it really is perfect. It's funny, it's sexy, it has a barely-believable twist, and great use of star power. There were probably better documentaries than Spellbound, certainly more important ones, but I don't know that any of them could have been better movies.
Thanks to
DJW for kicking this off, to
Majikthise and
Rox Populi for carrying the ball down the court and to
Matthew Yglesias for pointing me to it. It would be very easy to write a post about why their individual choices are wrong, but maybe I should concentrate on doing some blog posts about the movies I like for a change.
Update: Scott writes, "2)I have responded to the general consensus of no Lukas Moodysson films by including two." I can't disagree. After seeing Lilya 4-Ever, I wrote a check to UNICEF, which is not like me. And Together was fanfreakingtastic. So I think my list is at 13, or I'm abandoning the whole enterprise.
