Best of the Decade

I realize that I haven't posted anything in quite a while, in fact I missed the entire month of November, so it's about time I write something new. There has been an avalanche of Best of the Decade lists recently (the 00s, the Aughts, or whatever it's being called), and David Hudson has done a great job of linking to them at the Auteurs Daily. My favorite list so far is the one compiled by the Toronto Cinematheque (TIFF List) from the ballots of a number of film historians, archivists and programmers, and their number one film is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Syndromes and a Century. I watched the film again for the fourth time to see if it lived up to such a designation and I can't think of another film this decade that gives me such pleasure on so many levels. (Mulholland Drive and In the Mood for Love would be close runners-up, along with Weerasethakul's Tropical Malady (#6) and Blissfully Yours (#13). My cinephile friend Juan doesn't think Joe deserves to have three films in the top fifteen, but we'll agree to disagree about that.) Syndromes is a film that is hard to analyze or appreciate on a strictly narrative level, but it does have real flesh-and-blood characters and things do happen. It's just that the rhythm of the camera movements, the flashbacks, music, and dual narrative structure are so absorbing, and Joe's attitude toward his characters (including representations of his doctor parents) is so loving, compassionate, humorous and sensual, that I find myself transported every time I see it.

Glenn Kenny lists his top 70, and Film Comment has a great list of the top 150 films of the decade.