When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 1990, it gave its Best Picture award to Dances with Wolves, the middlebrow message-movie that definitively established that a revisionist western could be boring. I prefer these:
1. Miller's Crossing Written and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
A story about power, loyalty, and violence, and the ways the first item on that list depends on the other two.
2. Ju Dou Directed by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fengliang Written by Liu Heng
From the days when Zhang made movies that worried the Chinese authorities instead of celebrating them.
3. The Reflecting Skin Written and directed by Philip Ridley
This would make an interesting double feature with Martin.
4. An Angel at My Table Directed by Jane Campion Written by Laura Jones, from the memoirs of Janet Frame
The life of Janet Frame, who endured psychiatric torture just for being a bit of a nonconformist, survived the experience, and became a successful writer. I've never been a big Campion fan, but this movie is a masterpiece.
5. Jacob's Ladder Directed by Adrian Lyne Written by Bruce Joel Rubin
Lyne's flicks are usually unwatchable, and Rubin is best known for writing the sappy Ghost. How those two, of all people, managed to put together this absorbing thriller -- part Philip K. Dick, part Lucius Shepard, part Ambrose Bierce -- is a mystery.
6. Europa Europa Directed by Agnieszka Holland Written by Holland with Paul Hengge, from the memoirs of Solomon Perel
Schindler's List poses the audience a question: Would you give up your riches to save thousands of lives, or would you selfishly serve the Nazis? And us viewers allow ourselves to believe that we would be as noble as Oskar Schindler, and we pat ourselves on the back. Europa Europa, the tale of a Jewish boy passing as an Aryan in the Nazi era, asks a much trickier question: whether we'd be willing to suppress our own identity to survive, inflicting tremendous physical and emotional pain on ourselves in the process. The answer is not as easy, and the movie is much more interesting.
7. The Nasty Girl Written and directed by Michael Verhoeven
Another good Holocaust film -- they're rare, but they do exist. This one is about the Germans who weren't as noble as Oskar Schindler, and how they dealt with their history after the war was over.
8. Sink or Swim Written and directed by Su Friedrich
"She didn't know whether to feel pity or envy for the young girl who sat alone in the sunshine trying to invent a more interesting story."
9. Quick Change Directed by Howard Franklin and Bill Murray Written by Franklin, from a novel by Jay Cronley
Some movies are love letters to New York. This is not one of them.
10. To Sleep with Anger Written and directed by Charles Burnett
"And where did he get the power to summon up all his old raffish friends?"
Honorable mentions:
11. Metropolitan (Whit Stillman) 12. King of New York (Abel Ferrara) 13. Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese) 14. Miami Blues (George Armitage) 15. La Femme Nikita (Luc Besson) 16. The Freshman (Andrew Bergman) 17. The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (Jan Svankmajer) 18. White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood) 19. Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami) 20. To Be (John Weldon)
Of the movies of 1990 that I haven't seen, the one that interests me the most is No Fear, No Die.
When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences looked back at 2000, it gave its Best Picture award to a sporadically watchable CGI-fest called Gladiator. I've picked something else:
1. The Gleaners & I Directed by Agnes Varda
An essay-film about people who glean food from the fields after the harvests are over; and urban scavengers who find sustenance in the trash, sharing their leftovers with the neighbors; and artists who make assemblages from trash-picked materials; and the director herself, near the end of her life, making a movie filled with serendipitous moments she gleaned from all the hours her camera happened to be rolling. Above all, though without being obvious about it, Varda is documenting a gentle kind of anarchism -- finding, as the slogan goes, the seeds of a new world in the shell of the old.
2. Yi Yi Written and directed by Edward Yang
As rich a portrait of a family as you'll ever see at the movies.
3. You Can Count On Me Written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan
Another sort of family, another sort of portrait.
4. Dark Days Directed by Marc Singer
This documentary could be screened as a darker, sadder companion to Gleaners. It's a film about the world built by homeless people in the tunnels beneath New York -- sort of like that book The Mole People, only Dark Days is actually true.
5. Rejected Written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt
"My spoon is too big."
6. Memento Directed by Christopher Nolan Written by Nolan from a story by Jonathan Nolan
"Maybe it's time you started investigating yourself."
7. High Fidelity Directed by Stephen Frears Written by D.V. DeVincentis, Steve Pink, John Cusack, and Scott Rosenberg, from a novel by Nick Hornby
Jack Black has been in so many terrible pictures since this one came out, it's easy to forget how good he was here, how effortlessly he steals the show when he takes the stage to sing "Let's Get It On." At the time it looked like his breakthrough; today, sadly, it looks more like his peak.
8. Sexy Beast Directed by Jonathan Glazer Written by Louis Mellis and David Scinto
Ben Kingsley plays the anti-Gandhi.
9. Almost Famous Written and directed by Cameron Crowe
"The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool."
10. Code Unknown Written and directed by Michael Haneke
The last decade has seen a lot of big-cast, multi-story, everything-is-connected movies, some of them so ham-fisted and didactic that it's easy to forget how great the genre can be when it's done right. Haneke does it right. This window on a set of interlocking lives in Paris, Mali, and Romania is an antidote to Crash, Syriana, and the rest of the heavy-handed tedium that came later.
Honorable mentions:
11. Panic (Henry Bromell) 12. Brave New World (Theo Eshetu) 13. Wonder Boys (Curtis Hanson) 14. Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu) 15. The Heart of the World (Guy Maddin) 16. Faithless (Liv Ullmann) 17. Tragos (Antero Alli) 18. The Cell (Tarsem Singh) 19. The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg (Paul Driessen) 20. George Washington (David Gordon Green)
Of the movies of 2000 that I haven't seen, the ones that interest me the most are Mysterious Object at Noon and Gangster No. 1.
• "The Great Radio Blockade" (November 12) is about the fight to allow more low-power stations on the FM band.
• "Season of the Regulator" (October 29) is about the war on Halloween. (Halloween? Man...I haven't blogged here in a while, have I?)
Also, my writing has appeared in the last two print editions of Reason. The December issue included an article I co-wrote with Armin Rosen hailing the wildest crop yet of online campaign commercials, plus a little squib I did about the Zero Views website. And the January issue includes my brief review -- not online yet -- of the latest TV Carnage video mixtape.