Jeff Chen recently asked, “Since everybody else is making lists of their top ten films of the decade, does that mean I have to, too?” I wouldn’t presume to speak for him, but my own answer to the same rhetorical question is a sheepish “yes.” Jeff ended up making his list, too, although I don’t know how sheepish he felt about it.

Anyway, here are my top ten…nah, screw it—twelve favorite movies of the decade just completed, i.e., 2000-2009.

1. Dogville (2004)

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   Mike D’Angelo, The Man Who Viewed Too Much:

   Inevitably, von Trier’s spartan aesthetic has American critics citing Our Town, but in both method and spirit Dogville has much more in common with Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan (written in Denmark, ironically), another sorrowful disquisition on the mercenary aspects of human nature. Anything this ostentatiously artificial demands to be read as allegory, of course, and charges of anti-Americanism aren’t entirely groundless — certainly the film is very, very critical of the way that the U.S. treats its underclass, and to argue that Von Trier isn’t entitled to feel that disgust without having set foot in the continental 48 is patently absurd.

2. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

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   Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader:
   

   If Capturing the Friedmans were less shapely and less of a masterpiece, I’d find it less troubling. Both times I’ve seen it I’ve felt that by the end practically everyone associated with the film seems tarnished in one way or another: the ostensible subjects (the Friedmans, an upper-middle-class Jewish family in the Long Island town of Great Neck), the members of their community who helped destroy much of their lives, the filmmakers, and the audience. We’re all tainted by the graphic exposure of family wounds, diminished by what we think and feel–and by what we don’t think and don’t feel.

3. The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003)

   
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   Jeffrey Chen, LVJeffrey’s Window to the Movies:

   Thinking about this trilogy, I ponder over the strange dynamics of its journey to the screen. Peter Jackson and his team of wizards had already set themselves up with the first two movies — they were instantly beloved, receiving more praise from critics and public alike than most movies could ever dream of having. Naturally, the demand would be for the third episode to match the same heights. Even if Jackson only needed to deliver a movie that simply met expectations, he’d already have to create something quite special. Thus, the successful effectiveness of the final film should be an astonishing feat — we anticipate nothing less. It’s like putting Jackson on a golf course and telling him 18 hole-in-ones is par for the course.

   But he did it.

4. Before Sunset (2004)

   
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   Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club:

   When Hawke first beckoned Delpy off the train in [this film's 1995 prequel] Before Sunrise, he lured her with a half-sincere, half-smoke-and-mirrors speech about how she should take a chance or else feel some doubt in her romantic future. Though it seemed like a harmless come-on at the time, those words carry an achingly ironic resonance in Before Sunset, when the renewed pleasure they take in each other’s company only deepens their regret about where life has steered them. Shooting in long takes, [director Richard] Linklater and his actors (who get co-screenwriting credit) allow the conversation to curlicue effortlessly from literate banter to matters of the heart, and sometimes to places in between. And, in the spirit of the original, Linklater closes with one of the best endings of its kind since George Romero’s Martin.

5. Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) (2006)

   
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   Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times:

   [Writer/director Florian Henckel] von Donnersmarck has set his film in the East Germany of 1984, five years before the Berlin Wall collapsed. It was a time when the terrifying Stasi, the secret police, made it their business to use an extensive network of spies and surveillance to know every secret thing about their citizens. Unlike other German films, most notably 2004′s landmark Goodbye, Lenin, Lives is hardly an exercise in what’s called “Ostalgia”–nostalgia for the good old days of the East. Instead it is an inside look at how a surveillance society, set up to discover and prey upon human weakness, has the ability to make everyone a potential suspect and destroy everything it touches. The Lives of Others does all this beautifully, but it is too well-acted a film, too meticulously plotted and carefully directed, to be satisfied with that alone. It’s also finally too smart to be content with telling anything like a familiar story.

6. Y Tu Mamá También (And Your Mama Too) (2002)

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   Peter Rainer, New York Magazine:

   We’ve all seen (or consciously avoided seeing) plenty of Hollywood comedies about horny teens, but the two Mexican 17-year-olds in this film, Tenoch (Diego Luna) and Julio (Gael García Bernal), are perhaps the freest and most closely observed of their species to ever grace the screen. Y Tu Mamá También is like a Bill-and-Ted movie made by a true artist, and this in itself is a great joke.

7. Mulholland Dr. (2001)

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   Bryant Frazer, Deep Focus:

   Mulholland Dr. could be described as a movie about a dream about Hollywood. The audio design, credited to [writer/director David] Lynch, throbs with amplified ambient sound that suggests not just the ever-present noise of the city, but also, by literally surrounding the viewer, the expansive and unexplored spaces inside one’s own head. The helicopter shots peering straight down between skyscrapers as the booming sound of the city fills the movie theater are incredibly eerie, capturing the uneasy feeling of being alone, downtown, in the middle of the night.

   In collaboration with cinematographer Michael Deming, Lynch bathes his images in unease. His camera can best be described as floating, often moving vertically within a scene and looking down upon the characters, or sucking us forward into a point-of-view that we’re not sure we want to share.

8. Traffic (2000)

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   Jeff Vorndam, AboutFilm.com:

   What Traffic achieves, and what makes it a great, landmark film is that it acknowledges our culpability and how at odds we are with the avowed intent to eradicate drugs. Our society creates this problem with its insatiable demand for drugs, be they heroin, alcohol, tobacco, or diet pills. We love the stuff, and refusing to look ourselves in the eye short-circuits any plans to attack the side effects. One should ask, after viewing the film, if the side effects should be attacked at all, or if efforts are better spent treating the necessary ills that accompany our thirsts.

   I’m speaking in this broad sense because that’s where the film is strongest. I’ve read the complaints about the story timeline and the portrayals of certain characters, and they are not without merit, but in the end they make little difference to me because the totality of the film is so utterly moving. Some have said it’s not telling us anything we didn’t already know about the War on Drugs. Well, The Insider didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know about smoking–which is to say, it’s beside the point.

   Traffic isn’t a message movie, it’s a movie about a state of being. It’s about being hopelessly incapable of affecting real change. It’s a state of besiegement, frustration, and resignation. Finally, it is a state of dogged optimism.

9. Bloody Sunday (2002)

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   MaryAnn Johanson, The Flick Filosopher:

   On a gray January Sunday in 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland, British soldiers opened fire with live ammunition on unarmed, peaceful demonstrators, killing 13. Shocking and visceral, writer/director Paul Greengrass’s documentary-style re-creation of the horrifying events of that day pulls no punches, bluntly depicting the powder-keg atmosphere of the city: the disquieting enthusiasm of the British troops on the streets, tired of taking the brunt of local ire and itching for a fight; the disdain of the British major general on the scene (Tim Pigott-Smith, weaselly perfection), dismissing civil-rights protestors as “hooligans”; the zeal of the people of Derry, led by the local MP (James Nesbitt, energetic and passionate), unwilling to back down in their own city.

10. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)

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    Vern, Then Fuck You, Jack: The Life and Art of Vern:

    To me the highly acclaimed picture Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is not so much about fighting as it is about love and woman empowerment and graceful movement. It’s more like a musical or one a them tapdancing movies they made back then with all the singing and umbrellas and what not. And I ain’t making excuses like the other critics, because I’d RATHER say it was a kung fu movie, and I loved it. But facts are facts, and this is a tap dancing movie. I ain’t complainin though cause it’s the best tap dancing movies I seen in years.

    My man [Chow Yun] Fat gets to perform stunts like I never seen him before, because he’s doing all kinds of kung fu and great swordsmanshipping. In case you don’t know not all chinese dudes know kung fu, and I never seen Fat do it before. Always using guns. Maybe a punch now and then but very rarely kicking. Here he’s flyin around like a god damn superman, flippin the swords around like WHISH WHISH WHISH and who the fuck even KNOWS what some a those weapons are called that he’s using. These guys know how to USE the things, we americans can’t even NAME them. That’s how far ahead of us Fat is.

    But like I said, this is a tapdancing movie. Not a Badass movie. And Fat is one fuck of a tapdancer.

11. Almost Famous (2000)

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    Dana Stevens, New York Times:

    In Almost Famous, a loose, affectionate look back on his earlier career as a teenage music journalist, [Cameron] Crowe has devoted a whole movie to the love of rock ‘n’ roll. The soul he lays open — a sweet, forgiving and generous one — is his own. The movie follows the adventures of William Miller (Patrick Fugit), a San Diego 15-year-old whose fairy-tale ascendance from nerdy schoolboy to Rolling Stone reporter mirrors Mr. Crowe’s own life story. But Mr. Crowe is less interested in biographical or historical literalism — he freely mixes real and fictional characters and prefers period atmosphere to period detail — than in evoking the joyful, reckless, earnest energy of rock in the years between 60′s idealism and punk nihilism.

    He may be the least cynical director working in Hollywood today. In his hands this coming-of-age story is as much about the preservation of William’s innocence as its loss; the music William loves protects him even as his involvement with it introduces him to all manner of worldly corruption.

12. You Can Count on Me (2000)

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    Nick Davis, Nick’s Flick Picks:

    Have I failed at all to make You Can Count on Me sound like the warm, hilarious, moving story it is? It is the sort of film which I so poignantly hope people will see that I wish there were a sure-fire way to motivate you. I could go on about the wonders worked by [Laura] Linney, [Mark] Ruffalo, and even the young [Rory] Culkin, who is easily the least precious and therefore most winning of his brood. They disappear so completely into their gorgeously written parts that no one seems to be acting, just being. The cast is so confident with their roles that Lonergan, a playwright and screenwriter (Analyze This) making a very assured debut as a director, takes them everywhere with equally persuasive results: broad comedy, light romance, fisticuffs, apologies.

A Few Stats About the Top 12

• Movies released 2005-2009: 1
• Single year with most films on the list: 2000 (4)
• Movies in a language other than English: 3
• English-language movies by non-US filmmakers: 3
• Movies I currently own on DVD: 6
• Of those, sweetest and most tricked-out DVD: The Lord of the Rings Platinum Series (Special Extended Edition)
• Cheeriest: Almost Famous
• Least cheery: Dogville
• Most likely to have been seen: The Lord of the Rings
• Least likely to have been seen: Probably Dogville, and will probably remain so (see above, “least cheery”)
• Baddest muthafucka: Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh) in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Longest above-the-line name: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, writer/director of The Lives of Others
• How arbitrary the numerical rankings feel to me upon reflection: very
• Reportedly awesome 2000-2009 movies I haven’t seen: dozens
• Close, but no cigar: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Rachel Getting Married, A History of Violence, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, 25th Hour, No Country for Old Men, Memento, The Hurt Locker, Little Children, The 40 Year Old Virgin, All the Real Girls, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Letters from Iwo Jima, Brokeback Mountain

So, how wrong am I? How suspect is my taste? Lay it on me in the comments.

We’re getting closer to my #1 video of the year… can you feel the excitement building? Of course you can! Try to contain yourselves, and I’ll throw you a bone–one that just happens to be number three on my top ten videos of 2009. I call it “Mexican Border Wall.”

Although I’ve tried to not rely too much on the same sources for this list, astute observers will notice that this is the second video in the top five that comes from The Onion. What can I say? That’s just how the meritocracy of my laughter shook down.

Putting a thumb in the eye of the recent vogue of Hugh Downs-ian, anti-immigrant xenophobia is reason enough for satire, but what I love about this video is how it upends American narcissism. When I travel to other countries I seem unable to avoid running into other Americans, and all too often I’m at least a little embarrassed—if not mortified—by their behavior.

I’m aware that the “assholes abroad” phenomenon is not unique to the U.S. For one example, many will be familiar with the stories about locals in continental Europe bracing for influxes of drunken British louts. Similarly, I’m aware that most popular foreign destinations for Americans don’t end up like spring break in Cancún. There are degrees of douchebaggery.

Here’s a fairly ordinary example: in Munich’s Frauenplatz, a friend and I passed near a foursome of sixtyish suburbanites who griped loudly about their hotel-issued map before agreeing to “just go back to the Starbucks” for something to eat. We put our heads down and gave them a wide berth. It’s little things like that which make me resolve to learn the phrase “I swear to God, I don’t know them” in the language of every country I plan to visit before future trips.

Am I a snob? Do I set too high a behavior standard for Americans traveling abroad? Let me have it in the comments.