My Top Films of the Decade 2000-2009...

Following on from my Top Ten of 2009, I've only gone and compiled a list of my favourite films from the past decade - a tricky task in itself. There are years where there are sometimes several more films I would have wanted to include, but you just have to pick the ones to fit in your allocated spots - as such I set myself the task of picking a Top Three for each year, with two honourable mentions.

My Top Films of the Decade 2000-2009:

2000:
Top 3:
American Psycho - phenomenal book, phenomenal movie. Bale at his career best in a hell of a flick.
Battle Royale - brutal, comedic, action-packed and iconic.
High Fidelity - Cusack is on top form, the soundtrack is top notch, and it's generally just great.

Honourable Mentions:
Memento - a cracking little thriller that fucks your head up.
Requiem For A Dream - this should be shown to kids at school to deter them from drugs. Horrifying, electric, and in your face.

2001:
Top 3:
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - a decade-defining trilogy begins.
Donnie Darko - mind-fuck meets the nostalgic high school movie.
Dogtown and Z-Boys - beautifully crafted, energetic, involving documentary about the birth of modern skateboarding.

Honourable Mentions:
Black Hawk Down - a thunerous slice modern war(fare) film-making.
Monsters, Inc - Pixar take a simple concept and turn it on its head, and give the world the cutest tyke in motion picture history.

2002:
Top 3:
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Helms Deep. Nuff said.
28 Days Later - they're not zombies, but Danny Boyle's UK-set dose of apocalypse has reverberated throughout the horror genre.
The Rules of Attraction - vibrant, sleazy and stylish.

Honourable Mentions:
Spider-Man - Raimi's superhero movie masterstroke.
Bubba Ho-tep - Bruce Campbell as an elderly Elvis. Nuff said.

2003:
Top 3:
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - the conclusion of the grandest filmmaking achievement in decades.
Lost In Translation - moving and involving character study that makes you feel like you were in Japan.
Bad Santa - gleefully politically incorrect and so funny it hurts.

Honourable Mentions:
Finding Nemo - Pixar hit another high note with a beautifully animated and written undersea tale of a father searching for his lost son.
Kill Bill Vol. 1 - Tarantino's first movie in six years, and it's a thrash-bash slice of pure QT brilliance.

2004:
Top 3:
Downfall - astonishingly great telling of the final days of Hitler and The Third Reich.
Shaun of the Dead - the best British film of the decade, and it's an utterly hilarious zombie comedy - with shamblers in it, and the folks behind Spaced giving it to us.
Team America: World Police - foul-mouthed hilarity from the South Park duo and a cast of supermarionettes.

Honourable Mentions:
Layer Cake - Matthew Vaughn and Daniel Craig on top form in a gangster picture that does away with years of Lock Stock's influence with limitless confidence.
Saw - giving the horror genre a royal kick up the arse, this intense, shocking, low budget flick is just fantastic.

2005:
Top 3:
The Devil's Rejects - Rob Zombie's Citizen Kane. A brutal, stylish, confident shredding and re-writing of the horror and road movie handbooks.
Sin City - a graphic novel brought to life with real pinash.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - under-rated, but tip-top Hollywood-set detective-flavoured thriller with RDJ knocking it out of the park.

Honourable Mentions:
Brokeback Mountain - poetic, beautiful, heart-breaking.
The Descent - one of the (few) scariest horror films of the decade, which takes time to investigate the characters themselves before squeezing us into the most claustrophobic movie ever made.

2006:
Top 3:
United 93 - gripping, none-more-intense dramatisation of the infamous hi-jacked flight on September 11th 2001. Horrifying, and incredible in its power to move the viewer to tears and adrenaline-fuelled muscle spasm.
A Scanner Darkly - superb, drug-addled rotoscoped Philip K. Dick adaptation.
Rocky Balboa - the return of two giants in the form of Stallone and his most famous character, in a thoughtful and inspiring return to the ring.

Honourable Mentions:
Right At Your Door - terrifyingly real-feeling terrorist attack indie flick.
Casino Royale - the spiffing reboot that made James Bond cool again.

2007:
Top 3:
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - an incredibly well crafted, mesmerising, meandering, poetic, beautifully photographed and acted piece of filmmaking.
Zodiac - David Fincher delivers a fascinating slow-burn character piece.
No Country For Old Men - stunning return of the Cohen Brothers to their best in a perfectly crafted thriller.

Honourable Mentions:
Grindhouse - brilliantly sleazy love letter to the golden era of low budget, independent grindhouse cinema.
There Will Be Blood - wow. Just wow.

2008:
Top 3:
The Dark Knight - it kicks ass. Nuff said.
WALL.E - beautiful. Pixar's best since Toy Story.
In Bruges - non-PC and utterly hilarious, deeply black British comedy.

Honourable Mentions:
Rambo - the ultimate bloke's film in which Rambo atomises a Burmese soldier with a huge truck-mounted machine gun. Nuff said.
Tropic Thunder - endlessly quoteable mix of action and mass market satire. RDJ owns everyone.

2009:
Top 3:
Avatar - I visited Pandora. I want to go back. End of story.
Moon - UK indie sci-fi with it's head thoroughly screwed on. Superb.
Adventureland - it makes you feel like it was your own coming of age.

Honourable Mentions:
The Wrestler (2008/09) - soulful turn from Mickey Rourke in a soulful film.
Gran Torino (2008/09) - a non-PC Clint Eastwood growls his way through a touching realisation of one old man's twilight.

Finally, as I'd alluded to at the start of this post, there were many times when I struggled to pick one film over another, so here follows a list of films I was close to including as greats & favourites.

The 'Ones That Didn't Quite Make the List' ... List:

2000 - Tigerland (tense boot camp war movie without the war).

2001 - Training Day (gripping), and Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (simply a fun favourite).

2002 - Panic Room (rarely has a simple premise been so masterfully executed).

2003 - The Matrix Reloaded/Revolutions (take away all the pretentious nonsense, and you've got two kick ass action sci-fi flicks, plus I really enjoyed seeing them in the cinema).

2004 - The Aviator (a fascinating life story from Scorsese & DiCaprio), The Bourne Supremacy (the best of the three in my eyes), Kill Bill Vol. 2 (a stylish, wordy end to an enjoyable romp), The Machinist (stunning), and Napoleon Dynamite (this became a huge favourite in our off-campus house at university).

2005 - Batman Begins (overcame 'bat nipples' brilliantly), Good Night and Good Luck (intriguing slice of McCarthy era tension), and Walk The Line (great, quite simply).

2006 - Clerks 2 (a firm favourite of mine, and a really touching/gleefully crude follow-up), and The Departed (Scorsese doing what he does so well).

2007 - Sunshine (beautiful), 28 Weeks Later (my biggest about-turn in movie opinion this decade), The Simpson's Movie (the funniest they've been in years), Gone Baby Gone (tense directorial turn from Ben Affleck with a great performance by his undervalued brother Casey), and Juno (quirky and fun).

2008 - Iron Man (it kicked ass), The X-Files: I Want To Believe (welcome back), and Taken (Liam Neeson kicking all kinds of ass, nuff said).

2009 - Watchmen (even better the second time around with the Director's Cut), District 9 (smar sci-fi that's also bloody enjoyable), Drag Me To Hell (scared me witless), Zombieland (ridiculously fun), Dead Snow (zombie Nazis, nuff said), and Inglourious Basterds (QT's best since Pulp Fiction).

*phew*

Right, that's enough lists for now I think.