Nothing too intriguing in the first year of the millennium. 8 films in the top 10 are made by 7 great filmmakers (one director had a GREAT year…). The other 2? Pretty standard: f***ed up allegories about unfeeling cynical societies, but potent nonetheless. How twisted you say? Check out below…
Steven Soderbergh, like an NBA point guard, makes everyone who’s working in his films better. Here he unleashes Julia Roberts, using her looks as an asset to win legal arguments as she tries to rally a class action lawsuit on a nefarious chemical company.
With this film, Disney found its version of the sports formula that worked for a long time: set the sports movie during the Civil Rights era, get a Benetton ads worth of charismatic new acting faces to learn to play as a team, and hire a mega talent to lead your team, and film, onto the path of tolerance. It might be simple, but damn if it isn’t satisfying as hell.
Before he became a back to back Best Director winner, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu become an international sensation with this epic first feature. Using the theme of love’s a bitch (the title translated), Inarritu tells 3 thematically potent tales about the power, highs and lows, of what it means to love. It’s ambitious, but Inarritu’s unflinching direction will keep your mind engaged….unless you love animals. Yessh, tough watch for those folks.
Ridley Scott’s sprawling, epic tale about General Maximus, one of the most powerful men in the Roman Empire, the political battle he waged with equally Dpowerful Commodus, and the redemption of the general in the Roman Gladiator arena. It’s big. It’s exciting. It’s fascinating.
The more ambitious of Steven Soderbergh’s projects, but equally entertaining and riveting. Following 3 stories, Soderbergh plunges head first into the drug war, and the host of people affected by it. This movie is so good, that I’d like Soderbergh to try to run it back as a tv show to get more morally complex storytelling in there.
This movie’s an eye popper. You sit down, ready to watch something fun, and all of a sudden, Michelle Yeoh and Ziyi Zhang start flying on rooftops like superheros, martial arting their way into your brain. On top of the stunning action, Ang Lee throws in a simple but profound storytelling scope, about how to live a life of fulfillment or regret.
You like Huey Lewis and the News? Christian Bale’s Patrick Bateman might….but he’s such a hollow shell of a Reganomic corporatist you’d never know. He’s barely a human being, as his serial killer tendencies reveal in this f***ed up but impossible to forget satire.
The only word to describe Cameron Crowe’s ode to music and artists is satisfying. In every way. On the road with Stillwater we learn to grow up, learn about the business and stresses of the music industry, the philosophy of groupies, and most importantly, the power of music. If you can’t smile throughout this film, you’re as empty as Patrick Bateman.
Christopher Nolan’s big breakout won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Told in reverse, Nolan brilliantly tells the story of how subjective memory is, and how it can potentially tell us lies, changing Guy Pearce’s reality every 5-10 minutes, a masterwork of editing and directing he’d become quickly famous for.
Addiction can tear apart anyone, even those with the best intentions. Darren Aronofsky’s entertaining, heartbreaking tale shows this sad possibility across 4 addicts: some are addicted to drugs, some pleasure, some glamour. And unfortunately, because there wasn’t enough support for any of them, it leads them on a cruel, tough path to destruction. I will never do heroine after seeing this film.
