Zoomtard

Seeing as it is so in vogue to make lists ranking things I thought I’d put a list of movies on a post-it note and write a paragraph about why I remember them and don’t remember other, equally good films. This might seem like shoddy journalism to you but it is actually the way they do it in the Irish Times. I know because God showed me in a dream. If you dare disagree, you are disagreeing with God!

The most significant movie experience of the decade was undoubtedly Lord of the Rings. I am not a big fan of reading movies pretentiously. Ultimately, in the two hours that a film has your attention, it must be entertaining. LOTR was beyond entertaining. It was exhilarating and expansive and just simply stunning. It made me read fantasy novels for the first time ever. It made nerds out of all of us. I notice in the best of lists that it is as neglected as Forrest Gump was in the previous decade for similar reasons. It is considered too low-brow, too populist and in every single case that such an argument is used (almost always implicitly) you should suspect bullshit. Movie of the decade? LOTR taken as a whole. It was phenomenal.

Two movies that have stuck with me from the early part of the decade and the northerly part of Europe are Italian for Beginners and Tillsammans. In the case of Italian for Beginners, you have a beautifully observed comedy about community and church and soccer and linguistics. It is a delight. Tillsammans might be in my top three films of all time. Telling the tale of a failed Swedish commune, it is flawless. Funny and touching and true. Don’t just see it. Buy it.

Of the don’t just see it but buy it variety, Lars and the Real Girl was a surprise. Billed as a raunchy sex comedy in trailers, man was it a shock to find it to be a fantastically real fairytale about the redemption brought about by patient grace in community. I liked Little Miss Sunshine as much as the rest of you but Juno is perhaps my favourite film of the decade. I still remember seeing it one bright Saturday morning with my wife and my dear friend Ian. It put a spring in my step for weeks. We saw it again in a fancy hotel in Portland and it put a spring in my step. It might make me seem far less cool, but from the moment she says, “I don’t know what type of girl I am”, I was in love with this film. Hidden under all the (brilliant) faddish touches, it is beautiful.

But for beauty, can anything compare with Station Agent? That little seen film about a little man with a lot of anger. He meets two very different people and all three become friends. It walks at the pace of friendship and at the end of it, you want to watch it again.

Germany usually makes the best movies in Europe, contrary to France’s high-faluting reputation and in The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl, Downfall and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin there are four very different films that are all scorched on my brain. The scene with the biro under the tanker in Der Krieger is astounding. Downfall is heavy, Scholl is heavier and The Lives of Others was the best film of 2006. Hands down. Case closed.

In terms of heavy films, Dancer in the Dark is the most spectacular. It is almost two and a half hours long but you need to set aside three hours of your time to watch it to account for the tears that will fall uncontrollably at the end of the mesmeric performance from Bjork. The final walk down the corridor, those 22 steps, is unfathomably difficult and compelling at the same time. Such anger we have for the injustice of Bill Houston’s character.

Dancer in the Dark is of course a profoundly Christian film. And in this last decade some of the finest films were like that, explicit retellings of the Gospel. I don’t mean the Passion of the Christ here or Left Behind. But the lovely and innovative Stranger Than Fiction, featuring a luminous Maggie Gyllenhaal and ever surprising Will Ferrell managed to make a deeply philosophical treatise on the authorship of God and the piercing of the finite by the infinite that makes life meaningful deeply enjoyable. Gran Torino was arguably the finest film of this year and as bold an evangelistic tale as ever has been made. Hard viewing at times, it along with the justly rewarded Million Dollar Baby is part of the Clint Eastwood renaissance that at this stage, will go down in history as the most remarkably career turn in the history of Hollywood. The guy has dominated the decade without any buzz or spin or gloss. But my personal favourite of the Christian films is Children of Men. Adapted from a novel by an Anglican octogenarian called PD James, it recasts the incarnation in the not-too-distant future, transporting Judea to the south coast of England.

One of the very surprising things about this decade looking back on it is the war. We never expected to be immersed in two long term conflicts and while Iraq and Afghanistan were both topics for many many films, most of them were turds like Lions For Lambs. Pontificating bores of gory messes. But Stoploss had me sobbing like a baby on an airplane and The Hurt Locker is easily the greatest war film of the decade. So compassionate for the soldier and the victims in Iraq, it brings home the hellish futility of these wars far better than Robert Redford’s pathetic college lecturer having his own little hope rekindled.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Minority Report are two very similar films but one is cool to like and the other isn’t. Which is funny because Minority Report is just as brilliantly acted (Tom Cruise is amazing in it!) and even more stylishly shot. It is so influential on contemporary culture but like AI, it seems to suffer from a kind of Spielberg retardation whereby we have to be slow to like any of his entertaining films. Both films dealt with issues of self and memory and time. One was based around the fulcrum of a love story and the other was a fascinating musing on the way technology might impact justice, democracy and truth itself. Yet its the love story that gets the best-of plaudits. Still, Eternal Sunshine is superb and Winslet and the always brilliant (but also never much-loved (like Adam Sandler)) Jim Carrey make a magnetic pairing. Who can forget the snowy bed scene? The answer is no one. You just think you forgot it but maybe you had that part of your memory surgically removed.

Inside Man was another popcorn chewing delight. Best Spike Lee movie ever. Brokeback Mountain deserved its credits.

And to end my arbitrary list of bestish films of the decade, there are two that peer underneath the surface of civilization and reveal it to be a rotting corpse. Both are different but they share this compulsion; to reveal the sick underbelly of societies. In the first case there is the harrowing There Will Be Blood which has the greatest living actor (move over De Niro, Pacino etc) Daniel Day Lewis owning the screen for twenty minutes without speaking and ultimately bashing the corrupt skull of religion to smithereens. In the second, we resort to fantasy as the only means by which to depict reality and have the stunning Nolan brothers opus that is The Dark Knight. A whole course on Nietzschean ethics compressed into one hugely entertaining movie.

And there was Hotel For Dogs of course.

Your Correspondent, Pappa slog mig