A Journey Through My Collection: The 2000's
This was the decade that I was in college and the time when I was working in a video store. It was a tumultuous time in pop culture transitioning from the boredom of life in the 1990’s, yearning for something exciting, to 9/11 and a cultural sense of dread, whether it was from actual terrorists or from greater political divisions. There was at least one great year for movies with 2007, and oddly the headline great movies of that year were westerns There Will be Blood and No Country For Old Men. Every year had at least one great movie, even if it wasn’t the one that gained the most acclaim. This was a time of growing pains, comic book movies were making a lot of money but they didn’t quite figure out how to be fun and well made at the same time. That doesn’t quite include the Nolan Batman movies that are more prestige films that happen to have a guy in a costume.
Bamboozled (2000)
This is such a wild, nightmarish film from Spike Lee. It doesn't hide the parallels with Network, Mantan even gives his own "Mad as hell" speech when he refuses to come out in blackface. It's amazing how both movies are especially well made, follow similar plot points, but are very different movies. I would say that Network isn't a satire, it actually is, the end of that film makes sensationalized television news like a religion, and Bamboozled had to flat out give the definition of satire at the opening of the film, a fact that was still lost on some outraged audiences. Spike Lee is an absolute master of filmmaking and storytelling. What I love most about him is his ability to straddle stories, tones, and messages in wild, yet seamless ways that are understandable to the audience. This is fairly focused, but we still keep the storylines of the black rebel group, something that Network also has. Spike weaves himself and Tarantino into the dialogue of the film, I wonder if Django Unchained is another level of reaction to this in what feels like stepping into the plantation backdrop of the minstrel show set. This really is a fever dream of a horror film, stealing reality and going off the rails. And oddly it foresees the end of Chapelle Show, but Bamboozled 2 would be a story where the main characters live on and don't learn any messages, continuing on a path of extremism where they court the audience they claim to despise, under a different makeup of oppression.
The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
I went into the theater in 2001 to see this and the way that I looked at movies, and the level of which I enjoyed movies changed in the process. This is a feast of quirkiness, color, symmetry and an artificial nostalgia. There are hints of future films, living on a ship like Life Aquatic, the formality of classic hotels like rand Budapest, a Long Island Sound summer house where the b.b. got stuck in a finger like Moonrise Kingdom, and even a look back at homemade theater like Rushmore. This touches on as many points of interest for Wes Anderson as he could slice into one film without being distracted. It's a film of full backstory and worldbuilding of a time and place that didn't exactly exist. And that's what most Wes Anderson films are, a photograph of an visually idealized past in very flawed societies. The soundtrack and score are absolute perfection. This was also my first Criterion DVD and the extra features remain one of the best collections. To me, this is a perfect film.
Spider-Man (2002)
This really was the movie that kicked off Marvel dominance in theaters after the '70's through '90's belonged to DC. It's really a mixture of a comic book made into a movie (not necessarily just a comic book movie) and a horror film. Peter and Mary Jane are made to be so insane and over the top like live action cartoons that they are unsettling. While this works for Willem Dafoe as a villain, it's very strange for the protagonists. I don't have an easy time going back to the pre-MCU Marvel movies. This was really the first escapist movie after 9/11 and it missed out on capturing that energy in a useful way like The Amazing Spider-Man swinging from crane to crane with the help of regular New Yorkers.
Lost in Translation (2003)
I loved this when it came out, I had been to Japan studying abroad in college at a time where nothing seemed right. And yet the country was so beautiful, futuristic, hip and strange, and fresh that my brain chemistry felt stretched in many different directions. At the time I could relate to Scarlett Johansson's character, just lost in a life and experiencing things with eyes wide open. These days I feel closer to Bill Murray's character as he tries to juggle house renovations from thousands of miles away. He really has given up more on his life much more than it seemed when I was younger, to the extent that he forgets his kid's birthday. His wife has a point to be pissy with him for a lot of his shit, but neither of them are helping the situation. This really is the best comedic performance from Bill Murray of this century. As subtle as it is, he still delivers silliness and fantastic jokes and a lot of his other films have him expecting a laugh before he speaks only to deliver a line with annoyance. But this movie does everything. We get a full picture of Tokyo from the eyes of a tourist, the music is incredible, it's a touching movie and it really is very very funny.
Sideways (2004)
Oddly, I think I've been through Solvang three or four times in the last few years and I didn't realize it had this cinematic connection. It is an interesting little place and it makes sense why it would be a stop on their weird bender. This is such a well told story, the story points are really good, but it's not that fun of an escapism movie that I seek out rewatches of it. I think that's how I am with all of Alexander Payne's works. While the 2000's were a formative time in movie watching for me, but I'm not so sure 2004 was a year of movies I would still find enjoyable. There are a few that fit the bill, but it was a pretty serious time in film and that doesn't age especially well. But this movie does have a slow burn to some pretty funny payoffs.
King Kong (2005)
This is such an odd film. Perfectly executed from a special effects standpoint. The story is faithful to the original, while modernizing some of the storytelling, although it falls into the same problem of overwhelming length. I appreciate that Peter Jackson takes these big swings of big movies and long runtimes. I like this movie, it's enjoyable, but it's not great. I'm glad to have it as this giant piece of a movie and I'm glad it doesn't have any sequels.
The Host (2006)
I think that what I love about this films not the effects, the monster, or Bong Joon Ho's direction in a technical sense, but the use of everymen and women in the face of a disaster film. No one is a general or scientist or the president and no one is friends or relatives to anyone like this. These are real people experiencing something otherworldly and we get to experience it in a relatable way, even if we don't have the experience of being a South Korean in this social station. That's what makes this touching and humorous and successful as a film.
Death Proof (2007)
It might be a little bit nostalgia for watching Grindhouse in the theater (although I did not enjoy the other instalment) but I really enjoy the simplicity of this story, that also manages to feel unrestrained from the vast differences from the first and second part of the film. The first half crew vs the second half crew are quite different in their likability, , but after all these years and several rewatches, I do appreciate the familiarity of the first half gang, as toxic as they are with each other. Ultimately, they aren't all that bad in their dynamic, despite the hierarchy of the clique. The feel of the movie is great, just like hanging out with the characters Quentin must encounter at work and out at the bar. The music is great and the stunts at the end are spectacular. A favorite.
Be Kind Rewind (2008)
This is very close to being my favorite movie of all time. Jack Black and Mos Def are an amazing comedic duo and the end of this movie never fails to bring me to tears. The sweded movies are fun, this is almost like a recommendation list from Michel Gondry if he were to be working in a video store, not especially pretentious, but I assume the fun movies he would like to make with his friends. For my money, this is easily my favorite movie of his, and the perfect mixture of comedy, art and heart.
A Serious Man (2009)
The four year run from the Coen Brothers from 2007 to 2010 of No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man and True Grit has to be one of the best consecutive four years from a filmmaking team, ever. At the time, Burn After Reading was hard for me to wrap my brain around after the masterpiece of No Country, but it really is a great dark comedy. A Serious Man seemed to sneak into the mix of these movies at the time, although I have a clear image in my mind of the first time I saw the trailer for it and my breathless anticipation of it. The stories of the family members are all so grounded yet surreal, although the daughter’s entire arch seems to be solely an odyssey to successfully wash her hair. All of the women are fairly one dimensional in humorous ways, but anyone who is not the father, son, or uncle are so simplistic and so cartoonish as to be purely out of the perspective of the characters rather than as characters from real life or even fleshed out from a writer. The neighbor, the student, the bully, the rabbis, and the other man, the “serious man,” are also more caricatures than characters. In a way, this is a pure comedy set inside of a tragedy, and it is more satisfying in either genre because of it.
Final Thoughts
This was definitely a formative decade. There are a few movies that I really love that I didn’t watch here, but Lost in Translation, The Royal Tenenbaums, Death Proof and Be Kind Rewind are four movies that I could use as four movies that are illustrative of my personality. There were a couple of movies that I might have watched over some, like Spider-Man, but that is still a pretty important movie to my filmgoing history, I thought it was fine at the time and it still had me thirsting for what the MCU would ultimately become.
Up Next!
True Grit, Hugo, The Adventures of Tintin, The Impossible, The Great Beauty, Boyhood, The Hateful Eight, Star Trek Beyond, Star Wars the Last Jedi, Ready Player One, 1917.
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