Best Films of the 2000s Pt 1
In December 2009 I was presented with the impossible task of listing my 10 favourite films of the previous decade. It's a personal selection, put together according to no meaningful criteria at all - except that, at some point, I loved them all.
10. Anvil! The Story Of Anvil
Me and Anvil, we got history. As a kid growing up in the 1980s, metal ruled my world. Getting regular spins on the gramophone was the band's free flexi-disc, given away with 'Kerrang!' and singer Lips, with his fetching bondage braces and attractive spandex strides, was granted wall space alongside Lemmy and someone called Doro Pesch from Warlock. I explained this to Lips and drummer Robb Reiner when I went to interview them at the start of 2009. Lips peered curiously at the scrawny hack in a Hawkwind T-shirt (that would be me) and was less stoked by the revelation than I'd hoped. In fact, Lips and Robb turned out to be unfailingly lovely, if slightly bewildered by the sudden glare of media attention, and director Sacha Gervasi beamed over them like a dad ushering his boys onto 'The X-Factor'. There are a thousand reasons why this film is so great. It's brilliantly edited (by the man who shaped This Is Spinal Tap). It's acutely aware of its own ridiculousness, and yet it takes the story entirely seriously. "Hey man," said Lips once the interview was over. "I love your shirt." And there we were, two grown men with ill-advised hair, fully familiar with Saxon's early work, united by the majesty of rock.
Me and Anvil, we got history. As a kid growing up in the 1980s, metal ruled my world. Getting regular spins on the gramophone was the band's free flexi-disc, given away with 'Kerrang!' and singer Lips, with his fetching bondage braces and attractive spandex strides, was granted wall space alongside Lemmy and someone called Doro Pesch from Warlock. I explained this to Lips and drummer Robb Reiner when I went to interview them at the start of 2009. Lips peered curiously at the scrawny hack in a Hawkwind T-shirt (that would be me) and was less stoked by the revelation than I'd hoped. In fact, Lips and Robb turned out to be unfailingly lovely, if slightly bewildered by the sudden glare of media attention, and director Sacha Gervasi beamed over them like a dad ushering his boys onto 'The X-Factor'. There are a thousand reasons why this film is so great. It's brilliantly edited (by the man who shaped This Is Spinal Tap). It's acutely aware of its own ridiculousness, and yet it takes the story entirely seriously. "Hey man," said Lips once the interview was over. "I love your shirt." And there we were, two grown men with ill-advised hair, fully familiar with Saxon's early work, united by the majesty of rock.
9. Head-On
There's something strangely alluring about stories that begin at the end of the line. Fatih Akin's visceral drama follows a suicidal German-Turkish ex-punk as he claws his way back from the brink by confronting the Muslim heritage he's always denied. Whether you are able to love this film may depend on the degree of sympathy you feel for Birol Ünel's character Cahit - a selfish, self-destructive loser made magnetic by Ünel's potent, surly performance. Head-On is absolutely without sentiment, yet it's as darkly romantic as the music which crops up on the soundtrack: The Sisters of Mercy, The Birthday Party and a mournful gypsy orchestra. This was a film about culture clash and faith in the broadest sense, but the spirit is raw rock 'n' roll.
There's something strangely alluring about stories that begin at the end of the line. Fatih Akin's visceral drama follows a suicidal German-Turkish ex-punk as he claws his way back from the brink by confronting the Muslim heritage he's always denied. Whether you are able to love this film may depend on the degree of sympathy you feel for Birol Ünel's character Cahit - a selfish, self-destructive loser made magnetic by Ünel's potent, surly performance. Head-On is absolutely without sentiment, yet it's as darkly romantic as the music which crops up on the soundtrack: The Sisters of Mercy, The Birthday Party and a mournful gypsy orchestra. This was a film about culture clash and faith in the broadest sense, but the spirit is raw rock 'n' roll.
8. The Lives of Others
I went to interview director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in 2006, and he told me about his own parents' experiences of being spied on by the Stasi in 1980s Berlin and the cost of the city's resistance - and complicity - with the secret police before the Wall came down. The Lives Of Others was his first film, but it was an astonishingly assured debut which clearly bore the mark of first-hand experience. It works as a wire-tight thriller, a gripping political drama and a tragic story about the personal implications of ideology. It reached back to the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s but there was an added chill in the fact that these events happened only 25 years ago at the heart of what is now democratic Europe. Von Donnersmarck still hasn't delivered a second film (a political thriller called The 28th Amendment is scheduled for 2011) but in a decade where the strength and scope of the state again became a pivotal issue in Western politics, this was a significant and moving drama.
I went to interview director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck in 2006, and he told me about his own parents' experiences of being spied on by the Stasi in 1980s Berlin and the cost of the city's resistance - and complicity - with the secret police before the Wall came down. The Lives Of Others was his first film, but it was an astonishingly assured debut which clearly bore the mark of first-hand experience. It works as a wire-tight thriller, a gripping political drama and a tragic story about the personal implications of ideology. It reached back to the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s but there was an added chill in the fact that these events happened only 25 years ago at the heart of what is now democratic Europe. Von Donnersmarck still hasn't delivered a second film (a political thriller called The 28th Amendment is scheduled for 2011) but in a decade where the strength and scope of the state again became a pivotal issue in Western politics, this was a significant and moving drama.
7. Sex And Lucia
The erotic undercurrent generated controversy when Basque director Julio Medem's drama was released in 2001 but the Spanish sauce shouldn't detract from the fact that this is a compelling psychological mystery and, like all good European arthouse films, the problem is the nature of reality and solution takes the form of sex. Sort of. Paz Vega is the waitress who retreats to an island after the death of her writer boyfriend. But time becomes circular and the truth is uncertain as the life she thought she had takes on the shifting quality of a dream. Like Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle the real mystery here is the human heart but the audacious structure and elemental tone made it a dazzling, sexy and endlessly seductive puzzle.
The erotic undercurrent generated controversy when Basque director Julio Medem's drama was released in 2001 but the Spanish sauce shouldn't detract from the fact that this is a compelling psychological mystery and, like all good European arthouse films, the problem is the nature of reality and solution takes the form of sex. Sort of. Paz Vega is the waitress who retreats to an island after the death of her writer boyfriend. But time becomes circular and the truth is uncertain as the life she thought she had takes on the shifting quality of a dream. Like Medem's The Lovers of the Arctic Circle the real mystery here is the human heart but the audacious structure and elemental tone made it a dazzling, sexy and endlessly seductive puzzle.
6. A Scanner Darkly
Keanu Reeves was strangely animated in every sense in Linklater's disorienting adaptation of Philip K Dick. Paranoid, hallucinogenic, impenetrably weird and as addictive as the film's lethal substance 'D', this was like Linkater's first film Slacker projected into a dystopian parallel universe. Robert Downey Jr was the secret star (isn't he always?) but for once even Keanu's legendarily vacant persona didn't seem inappropriate. However the real stroke of genius was the use of rotoscope animation, which made it feel as if you were watching this through the gauze of heavy sedation. It was a genuinely strange new format by which to tell a genuinely strange new story.
This way to films of the decade Part 2
Keanu Reeves was strangely animated in every sense in Linklater's disorienting adaptation of Philip K Dick. Paranoid, hallucinogenic, impenetrably weird and as addictive as the film's lethal substance 'D', this was like Linkater's first film Slacker projected into a dystopian parallel universe. Robert Downey Jr was the secret star (isn't he always?) but for once even Keanu's legendarily vacant persona didn't seem inappropriate. However the real stroke of genius was the use of rotoscope animation, which made it feel as if you were watching this through the gauze of heavy sedation. It was a genuinely strange new format by which to tell a genuinely strange new story.
This way to films of the decade Part 2
