The show At the Movies was once a favorite show of mine. It is of course the show that started as Siskel and Ebert and then became Ebert and Roeper at the movies. When Disney wanted to mess with it and make it more about entertainment, they hired two douchebags and I stopped watching. Realizing their mistake Disney went back to what worked and hired two great film critics and took the show back to really reviewing movies. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune and A.O. Scott of The New York Times are two of my favorites to read and they were my two favorite guest hosts with Ricard Roeper, so my excitement level for At the Movies went right back up. Starting this past week, the show is going to feature each man unveiling one movie a week in their top 10 of the decade.
A few months ago Robbie approached me with the idea of coming up with a best of the decade list and it kind of festered in my mind, but a few weeks ago I started to really think about it. I rewatched a bunch of movies and thought long and hard about it. Then I watched At the Movies this weekend and it clinched it for me: I needed a list. So, Saturday night I started a list. It started at 50 movies, then I got it down to 33. Monday the list got whittled down to 25 and finally yesterday afternoon I got the the list all the way down to my definitive top 10.
Before I unveil how this is going to work, I need to talk about how I decided on these 10 movies. It is a combination of things and different aspects are weighed differently. I wasn't sure if I should do just the ten best, or most replayable, or maybe 10 movies I felt defined this decade of film making. Should I look at them for what I felt at the time of their release, or movies that hold up over time? Eventually I came to the conclusion that it should be a bit of all of that. So my list will incorporate a lot of those aspects for different movies.
Alright, so the plan is this, for the next ten weeks I will release 1 movie on my list to coincide with At the Movies. I will also list each of those guys' pick and talk about for a brief second. This might turn out to be a colossal disaster and it is very time consuming considering I have like 4 people who actually read this, but I think I want it for me, so here we go!
Number 8
Michael Phillips: Mulholland Drive- This movie was in my initial batch of 50 movies, but last month when I put it in to watch it for the first time in a few years, I found that I was not as pulled into the film as I remember being. There are still some visually stunning moments and Phillips makes a pretty good case for the movie, but it just does not do anything for me any longer. I respect Lynch's vision and I like movies that do not always make any sense, but I guess this one just goes too out there for me now. I do think Noami Watts gives a wonderful performance, but I think Lynch gets in his own way a little bit, by trying to just do too much maybe. I think, in the end, the movie is too ambitious for its own good.
A.O Scott: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind- I do not want to say too much here because, well you will see this on my list in a few weeks.
My Pick: Wall-E- If you want to view this pick as the entire Pixar catalogue, that is fine with me. It would be foolish to not include a Pixar movie in this decade because they really came into their own in this decade. I settled on Wall-E, as opposed to UP, because Wall-E as a character mesmerized me to the point where I forgot he could not talk. He was so expressive and so loving and the story is basically a love story set within a message film. I know some people think the message is heavy handed, but I think it is funny and biting and all of the SCI-FI elements in the film are magical. I am incredibly certain that this movie will stand the test of time for me, because the story is universal. Everyone is looking for their place in the world and everyone just wants someone to hold his or her hand and let them know everything is going to be fine when you have love and passion.
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