Okay so here is how I did this: I went down a list of all the movies released in the past decade and wrote down the ones that I really liked a lot. Not the ones that I liked okay or that I found a bit amusing but really liked. Then I realized that the list I was working off of wasn’t complete. So I went through lists of every year in the decade and wrote down films I had missed. I ended up with a list of 160 movies that I really, really liked from the past decade and then started to pare them down to the ones from that list that I loved. That left me with a list of 26. Then I took the 20 of THOSE that I loved the most and tried to throw them into some kind of order of preference. This is the sort of list that makes me crazy. I am sure after I finish I will change my mind a bunch of times or realize there was one I missed or whatever. Some of my choices are the typical ones found on a lot of these lists but I am a fan of all sorts of movies and I am not just going to make art or indy choices. This is a list of my favorites so there are films from most categories represented. As always, chime in with your lists or comment on mine in the appropriate section below. Special mention goes out to Equilibrium for almost making the cut until I remembered something that needed to be added and subsequently bumped it. Lists are a cruel business.

20. Emperor’s New Groove (2000)

Right off the bat we have an unconventional choice. I don’t think a lot of people really paid much attention to this hand drawn animated feature. I certainly didn’t in the theater, or even on video/DVD until I started working at Hollywood Video in Arkansas where I was a fish out of water and stuck in a shitty retail job with shitty racist customers who were rude and mean and wanted to make sure you knew just how rude and mean and racist they were every moment you were at work. I found Emperor’s New Groove on a particularly awful shift because a co-worker put it in the store’s VCR. Something in the movie’s irreverence really struck a chord with me. David Spade’s Emperor Kuzco’s attitude became a surrogate for how I would have liked to have been with customers and I found myself putting the movie in everyday, sometimes several times a day. I think it was maybe six months before I actually managed to see anything going on but that was okay. It was funny and irreverent and has consistently stayed fresh for me over so many viewings I have lost count.

19. Ocean’s Eleven (2001)

I am a huge Steven Soderbergh fan. I love his commercial stuff like this or Out of Sight and his indy stuff like the Limey. Ocean’s Eleven is my favorite. I love the cast and their incredible chemistry. I love how cool it is and how cool it makes you feel to watch it. The dialogue is snappy and memorable and the caper they pull is enormous fun to watch. The first sequel was atrocious and the second sequel was back to form, but this one stands on its own as a real triumph.

18. Bourne Identity (2002)

Bourne was the movie that made ass kicking spies popular again. Bond was flagging and getting more ridiculous by the moment and in came Bourne, based very loosely on Robert Ludlum’s books about a super spy with amnesia. Bourne inserted a gritty toughness that Bond couldn’t supply and did it in a script that didn’t seem to be written by a 4 year old in the throes of a candy induced fever dream. There was a realism to Bourne that Bond at that time couldn’t hope for and action that was effortlessly cool. It had the best martial arts fights, the best driving and the best gun fights all wrapped in a script that assumed that its audience was not comprised of mouth breathing troglodytes. This style was so popular and so successful for star Matt Damon that the Bond franchise had to be revamped to include the new rough and tumble realism in their new vision for the series. I love this movie.

17. Super Troopers (2001)

Broken Lizard’s humor is not for everyone but it certainly is for me and Super Troopers is their best. While some of their material is of the outwardly funny variety, a lot of it takes a more subtle approach and comes from long build ups and with great payoffs. It is hard to convey in trailers and if you aren’t paying attention a lot will be missed but if you can plug into it and it fits with your sense of humor then you are in for a treat. The chemistry of the troupe is perfect allowing them to play off each other with an ease that other such groups could take lessons from. There are moments in comedy where you can see the actors ad libbing and trying to trump the each other and it is funny but it takes you out of the movie. In Super Troopers the banter feels very authentic and genuine from a group of people very familiar with each other and who find one another very amusing. I can watch this over and over and still laugh every time. It is somewhat polarizing, but it is great.

16. King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters (2007)

The King of Kong is some kind of magic. On paper it seems like such a trifle. A documentary about a guy trying to beat the world record score on Donkey Kong, how compelling could it be? The answer is enormously compelling. I have yet to show this to anyone who was unmoved by it. Oh sure, the first 15 or 20 minutes they may be joking or rolling their eyes but by the end they will be drying their eyes and yelling at the screen in indignance. There is more drama here than a season’s worth of a network hospital show and it is 100 times more compelling. It has everything: a hero, a villain, obstacles, plot twists and a climactic competition (sort of).  King of Kong manages to accomplish more than most dramas could ever aspire to and it is a true story. That is kind of amazing.

15. No Country for Old Men(2007)

It is difficult to pick a favorite Coen Brothers movie. I personally feel that they are perhaps the most consistent filmmakers of the current generation and as such choosing between their films can be like picking a favorite child. That being said, in terms of their serious films, my favorite Coen child is No Country for Old Men. An adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, No Country is exceptional in every way. It is expertly performed, beautifully shot, and perfectly paced. It is not a fast moving flashy piece by any stretch of the imagination but that is one of the things that gives it so much power. The Coens have enough confidence in the material to linger quietly and bask in the tension. What they choose to show and what they leave to your imagination has been a source of frustration for some viewers but filling in some of these blanks for yourself not only pulls you farther into the story but it also elevates the scenes’ effectiveness, unless of course you don’t have a good imagination or weren’t paying attention.

14. Avatar (2009)

Whether or not Avatar changed the game in filmmaking is a hotly debated issue at the moment. I don’t really understand why. The storytelling is not groundbreaking although the story is told well, but the effects have really raised the bar. Leaving 3D out of it for a second, to have constructed an entire world that feels alive and populating it with inhabitants so lifelike that the viewer forgets entirely that they are computer generated is a massive feat. Some critics point to other achievements in special effects such as some of the worlds in the Star Wars prequels or Golem from the Lord of the Rings but in Avatar there is just so much of it and it seems so real that it is really hard to take such discussions seriously. You add the 3D in and you really have something spectacular on a purely technical level. This is the first film I have ever seen in which I felt like I was there. Walking out of my first viewing I was literally short of breath so taken in was I by the 3D and the environment. The second viewing did little to dull my sense of wonder at it all and still want to go back to Pandora. And that is how it feels, to actually go there. Sure, it sounds silly but James Cameron has really achieved something here and I feel sorry for people who just write it off as Smurfs in the Jungle or something similar because I would rather be swept away by something fun and wonderful than be too hip to appreciate anything.

13. District 9 (2009)

District 9 is another technological spectacle delivering convincing special effects and completely computer generated characters that seem to really occupy space. What it also has is a complex and flawed main character and a story that draws you in emotionally and puts you through the ringer. I found myself in deep worry and distress for the well being of the movie’s characters, even ones that were completely fabricated. It is hard to say too much without giving away spoilers but District 9 shows that you don’t have to sacrifice drama, performance and storytelling for action and spectacle.

12. Shaun of the Dead  (2004)

I have to say right away that I am an enormous fan of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost such that my cats are named after characters from Spaced. Everything they do is pretty much right up my alley. With Shaun of the Dead, they combined a romantic comedy and a zombie apocalypse and it was brilliant. I think one of the keys to why this movie succeeds is that they play the zombie bits more or less straight. There are funny things that happen around the zombies but there is real danger and the stakes are very high. The fact that there even is a romantic comedy against such a backdrop is funny on its face let alone what the actual jokes. Shaun of the Dead really plays on peoples’ ability to shut out everything else and focus on their own personal shit even in the face of almost certain death and it is a whole lot of fun. This film is now the standard for horror-comedy and is a tough act to follow.

11. American Psycho (2000)

Based on the novel by Brett Easton Ellis, American Psycho explores the self-absorbed homogeny that was the 80’s yuppie.  Patrick Bateman finds himself so interchangeable that colleagues will talk to him about how lame Patrick Bateman is. He is so invisible and his contemporaries so self-absorbed that he can tell a woman he is in ‘Murders and Executions’ instead of ‘Mergers and Acquisitions’ and she doesn’t even bat an eye. This disconnection from anything remotely human serves him well when he starts killing people.  The film eschews some of the novel’s horrifying brutality with a fantasy like ambiguity. It is not made completely clear whether or not he is really killing people or if it is all in his head but in the film it doesn’t really matter. It is all about how disaffected he and everyone else around him is and how despite the money and success and glamour, none of them amount to all that much. The film retains many elements from the novel, including much of its dark humor but it feels decidedly different. Bateman of the movie is less sinister and more floundering and Christian Bale handles all the different aspects of the role wonderfully. It can’t be easy to wax intellectual about Huey Lewis and the News in one scene and kick a dog to death in another but Bale pulls it off. And while he is hilarious when he is chasing a woman with a chainsaw wearing nothing but briefs and some running shoes, his best work is done when the rage is bubbling just below the surface such that you can almost see ripples in his skin. It gives Bateman menace and believability and it may be something Bale himself should practice the next time someone fucks with a lighting set up when he is trying to emote to Bryce Dallas Howard.

10. The Dark Knight (2008)

Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne in the 2008 follow up to Batman Begins is not unlike Patrick Bateman. Wayne is a mask that he wears but in this case, rather than being a sadistic murderer, he is a sadistic vigilante. Bale doesn’t play the characters the same way though and that is something because I think it would be easy to tread water in the Wayne role but here he does it such that you can see the cracks in Batman’s armor without ever looking weak. All of that is really just a digression. The Dark Knight is not only the best Batman movie ever made but probably the best comic book movie ever made. Director Christopher Nolan takes what makes the comic work and puts it on the screen without being too dogged about the book’s details and capturing the essence of what is special about Batman. It then casts actors who actually take the material seriously, a point no more evident than Aaron Eckhart’s portrayal of Two-Face when considered next to Tommy Lee Jones’s atrocious and dismissive turn in Batman Forever. Heath Ledger’s Joker is by far the most talked about performance, earning him a posthumous Oscar, and deservedly so. Ledger is not the definitive Joker but he makes the part his own and takes him in a new direction that is a delight to watch. Next Nolan casts all of this into something like the real world and instead of relying on pulpy schemes with goofy gases and silly contraptions he brings us a crime story more like Heat than a Saturday morning cartoon. This is how you do a comic book movie pure and simple.

9. 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005)

Introducing the public at large to Judd Apatow, the 40-Year-Old Virgin let the world in on a secret those of us who watched Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared already knew about for years. The story of a 40-year-old electronics stock room worker and his friends’ mission to get him laid is funny from beginning to end and had much more heart than most people were expecting. It is raunchy and vulgar but it is so damn good natured about it that it one would be hard pressed to hold that against it. Steve Carrel is fabulous here as the titular virgin and plays Andy as a guy with more than one dimension. He is a guy who is more or less at peace with himself but still wants something better. It would have been easy to be heavy handed with the performance and portray Andy as some kind of uber-silly loser but Carrel is restrained and crafts a character that you believe might actually exist. His group of newly acquired friends who try to help him find elusive girl-bits come of convincingly as well. Some people are re-writing history and saying that they never liked Apatow and that he is over-rated but the majority of those people were in theater seats laughing their asses off. I remain a die-hard Apatow devotee and I think 40-Year-Old Virgin might be the best of his film work. I watched it at least twice a week for a year and still laughed every time so that has to count for something.

8. Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Originally thought of as a take on the Dirty Dozen concept, Inglourious Basterds turned out to be so much more. Something of a polarizing experience, the movie takes place during World War II and follows an American military unit made up of pissed off Jewish guys and their plot to try to kill Hitler in a movie theater. Some people were disappointed that this wasn’t a straight up action picture and others were horrified by the liberties taken with history but the movie never claims to be true or historically accurate. What it does have is the Bear Jew and he is so awesome I don’t really need to write anything else.  Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine is hilarious and expertly played but the real star of the movie is Christoph Waltz’s Nazi Jew Hunter Col. Hans Landa. Landa is creepy, confident, funny and just personable to really fuck you. Waltz steals ever scene he is in and really stands out from a tremendous cast. There are those who think that director Quentin Tarentino peaked with Pulp Fiction but there are those who are wrong. This is his best work and it is no surprise that it is the most complete and complex film Tarentino has ever made. Basterds will be hard to top but Tarentino may be the only one who can actually pull it off.

7. Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

I change my mind about my favorite Wes Anderson movie more than most people change underwear. Sometimes it is Rushmore, sometimes it is Bottle Rocket and thanks to my harpy ex-wife it is never the Life Aquatic. In terms of this decade, however, it is absolutely the Royal Tenenbaums. I saw this multiple times in the theater and  many more times than that on DVD and, despite the fact that I have to excuse myself every time I hear Needle in the Hay start to play, I still love it every time. This film is incredibly quirky and dry and often the humor is reasonably off sides. Given that the plot centers around a deposed patriarch attempting to get back in with his genius but odd-ball family after being disbarred and rendered homeless in order to stymie the burgeoning romance between his ex-wife and her accountant by pretending to have a terminal illness it is hard to imagine it wouldn’t be. The characters are all very intelligent and successful but all desperately bitter and unhappy. The collection of quirks on display would be enough to entertain but the dialogue is desperately funny for its awkwardness, selfishness and, sometimes, meanness. Gene Hackman is a standout as patriarch Royal who is self-absorbed, inappropriate, thoughtless and somewhat terrified of dying alone…whenever that might actually happen.  I have often wondered if Royal wasn’t something of a template for narrator Alec Baldwin’s later work, most notably his character on 30 Rock. My favorite line in the movie serves as a good indication of how Royal relates to others. When trying to console his grandsons on their mother’s death he delivers this: ‘I’m very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman.’ The Royal Tenenbaums also includes what to my mind is the greatest pratfall in film history.

6. Memento (2000)

Truly innovative and remarkable, Christopher Nolan’s Memento tells the story of Leonard, a man stricken with anterograde amnesia, a form of amnesia at the time unheard of by the general public in which the sufferer has no short term memory and lives in periods of about 15 minutes. In order to deal with this affliction, Leonard writes himself notes on the backs of polaroids and tattoos details about himself onto his body so he knows what is going on. Leonard is also hunting down the man who killed his wife and gave him his amnesia. The story is told backwards and you see the end first and then jumps back to Leonard’s previous batch of memory and so on. Watching Memento is like sculpting instead of drawing or drawing exclusively with negative space. Instead of the story unfolding normally it feels as if pieces are chipped away to reveal the final outcome. By the end of the film, which is in turn the beginning of the story, you understand how you got where you started from. Thankfully the movie is less confusing than its description and is almost viewed completely in retrospect. You are given all the pieces but you only see the whole as you are walking out of the theater. It invites multiple viewings and continually offers up new treats each time. You have to be patient the first time through but that patience will be rewarded 10 fold.

5. Requiem for a Dream (2000)

I have seen Requiem for a Dream exactly twice. I own it, bought of the strength of a friend’s recommendation and he sat down to watch it with me. I then watched it with another friend and have never done so again. It isn’t because I don’t like it, the movie is brilliant, it is just that it is just so disturbing and sad. I get fairly emotional during movies and just in general really and this movie destroyed me. It is about addiction and it is unique to movies of similar type in that it doesn’t just strive to shock with the dangers of getting into heavy drugs, although it does do that, it also offers up a parallel story of a lady who just wants to fit into her red dress again so she can appear on a TV show she loves. Generally, those of us who do not have drug problems can be comfortable with a movie like Trainspotting because at the end of the day the problems stemming from drug addiction can self-righteously be charged only to the individuals who chose to do the drugs. It is easy to cast blame and feel superior while watching that sort of thing. Here, those feelings are hamstrung by the descent into addiction by an old lady just trying to lose some weight. It is much more difficult to feel superior when you are watching your grandma click her jaw because she is jonesing for some diet pills. Ellen Burstyn’s performance is punishingly sad and gut wrenchingly effective here and easily trumps the stories of her son and his friends as they attempt to score when product has dried up. That is not to say that their stories are not compelling and crushing in their own way, truly the most haunting scene may be Jennifer Connelly cuddling up with a tiny baggie of dope when you’ve just watched what she had to go through to get it, but the outcome of Ellen Burstyn’s story is so bitterly heartbreaking it is difficult to think about afterwards. The performances, even by Marlon Wayans (who should be ashamed of himself for doing Dungeons and Dragons at the same time as this), are all brilliant and give the film the gravitas it needs to make its point. Darren Aronofsky used over 2,000 cuts here and the camera tricks and editing elevate the film even farther. You put all that together and have Keith David say ‘ass to ass’ and you have not only one of the best addiction movies ever, you have one of the best movies of this or any decade.

4. The Fall (2008)

The second film from Tarsem Singh (the Cell), The Fall took seven years to make and was filmed on 26 locations in over 18 countries. The word epic is thrown around a lot in filmmaking and The Fall redefines the term in its scope and beauty. The Fall tells the story of Alexandria, a girl in a hospital in 1920’s Los Angeles who, while nursing a broken arm, befriends Roy, a silent movie actor who has lost the use of his legs after an on set accident.  As the friendship grows, Roy tells Alexandria a story about five heroes on a quest to defeat the evil Odieus. The story is surreal and ever changing with Roy and Alexandria becoming characters in the evolving narrative. The film gives equal time to the fantasy as well as the reality and despite the fact that there is magic, revenge, fights, escapes, and Charles Darwin in the fantasy story, the segments with Roy and Alexandria are equally as engaging. The performances here are absolutely perfect. Lee Pace is as sweet as he is sullen and distraught as Roy and is heroic and conflicted as his fantasy counterpart the Bandit. Everything in Pace’s performance is spot on right down to the Bandit’s very silent movie hero movements and poses. First time actress Catinca Untaru is an absolute revelation as Alexandria. She radiates earnestness and delivers a performance better than any child actor I have ever seen. Her performance outpaces most adult actors as well when you get down to it. Without the skill and chemistry between the two leads, all the story and effects in the world wouldn’t be able to save it. As it is, the thing could have been filmed in a cardboard box with construction paper for props and it would still be a masterpiece. Thankfully, visuals match the performances in a way I wouldn’t believe if I hadn’t seen for myself. A Blu-ray presentation on a good 1080p screen is the best way to appreciate this film as it looks even better at home than it did in the theater. Singh claims not to have used any special effects to put together the sets and with a seven year completion time I believe him. There is really no way to express in words just how beautiful this film is, just know that everything from the cinematography, the sets, the costumes, the performances, the story, absolutely everything is masterfully done. The film is emotionally engaging to the nth degree and will have you laughing one moment and crying the next. I was a fan of the Cell but Singh really stepped up his game here. The Fall is an absolute masterpiece.

3. The Departed (2006)

An American remake (of sorts) of China’s Infernal Affairs series, The Departed is the movie that finally got Martin Scorsese an Oscar. Telling the story of a Massachusetts State Trooper who goes undercover in the Irish mob and an Irish mobster who goes undercover in the State Troopers, the Departed boasts an enormous amount of acting talent. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Walberg, Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Anthony Anderson, Vera Farmiga, Ray Winstone and James Badge Dale make up the impressive cast and all deliver in spades. The Departed is a taught and suspenseful crime thriller that not only keeps you on the edge of your seat but explores the nature of cops and criminals and what it means to choose right over wrong. The amount of twists and turns and double crosses here are staggering and it pulls it all off without sacrificing its own integrity. The Departed is infinitely rewatchable and I have found myself starting it over again right after it finishes.  With a 151 minute run time, that is really something. The film won 4 Oscars and is the current title holder for the movie with the most uses of the word ‘fuck’ to ever win Best Picture so that right there is worth a recommendation isn’t it?

2. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Okay, so I know that Return of the King won Best Picture but I think that is bullshit. It was a fine film, but for my money Fellowship did it the best. The Academy is made up of fickle bitches who don’t always reward the movie but rather often play politics. Just ask Tom Hanks and the empty space on his mantle where his Saving Private Ryan Oscar should be. I personally think they just didn’t want to hand the first movie in a trilogy the Best Picture Oscar so they saved it to the last movie. Don’t even get me started on the travesty that was A Beautiful Mind beating it out for Best Adapted Screenplay. All that aside, Fellowship of the Ring is one of the rare adaptations that is better than the book upon which it is based. Unless you are stuck on all the Tom Bombadil nonsense or just really enjoy reading about what hobbits eat for breakfast, it is impossible to argue that the movie did not elevate. I could point to the meager paragraph offered up in the book for the Balrog ruining the Fellowship’s shit but I would rather tell a story. This story contains spoilers so if you are one of maybe four people who haven’t seen this movie and you don’t want anything spoiled, you should skip to the number one pick. I read Fellowship of the Rings before the movie came out (sadly I have been on the last 10 pages of the Two Towers for something like 10 years at this point) and I was waiting in line to see the movie on opening day. This was an afternoon or evening show and my friend had been to see it earlier in the day and was coming back with me for another go around. I was talking about the book and how much I hated Boromir and couldn’t wait to see him die. My friend looked like I had slapped him across the face. He asked what I was talking about and went on about how sad it was. I fired back ‘No way, Boromir is a dick!’ I went in and watched the movie and was crying like a bitch when Boromir died. More than the other two movies, Fellowship really captured the emotion hiding under the surface of Tolkien’s writing and made it very relatable. Don’t get me wrong, I love all three movies but of them Fellowship remains my favorite. I saw it five times in the theater and have watched it countless times and god knows I feel like I have bought it just as many times. Now it is coming out on Blu-ray and I will have to open my wallet again. The extended edition is super long but worth the time commitment.

1. Adaptation (2002)

Adaptation is a very strange movie, but you could tell that the minute you saw that Charlie Kauffman wrote it and Spike Jonze directed it. I am a sucker for both Kauffman and Jonze and this is my favorite of both of their work. Similar to The Fall, there are two stories going on here as Nicholas Cage plays a fictionalized version of Charlie Kauffman as he tries to adapt Susan Orlean’s novel the Orchid Thief for film. Part of the movie is watching him try to write the screenplay and the other part is what is going on in the novel. And then the two sort of merge in a very Meta way that involves all the things Charlie says he will not ever do in a screenplay. It also involves his fictional twin brother Donald. The movie is absolutely brilliant. It is at turns funny and disturbing, often in the same scenes. My favorite parts are those that deal with Charlie’s inability to write and the nature of writing in general. As he sits down to his typewriter and asks himself if he should have coffee to get himself going or save it as a reward for writing is so spot on it almost gives me vertigo. Nicholas Cage looks nothing like Kauffman here but it doesn’t matter, his performance is spot on and he handles double duty very well. Meryl Streep is, as always, terrific and Chris Cooper stands out as well. I am not sure how easy this movie is to plug into if you aren’t a writer and maybe can’t relate to Charlie’s awkwardness and self doubt but I identified with him more than I should probably say out loud. The bizzarro turns it takes as it progresses are sweet icing on an already delicious cake. Being John Malkovich, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are great Kauffman efforts but, for me, Adaptation easily trumps them. Adaptation is well scripted, well acted, well shot and well…the best fucking movie of the decade.

There you have it. These are my 20 favorite movies of the decade. If you think it sucks or you love it, let us know in the comments section. You should also let us know what your list is so it can be praised or torn apart in its own right.