I’ve been preparing for my obligatory best of the decade column, which will drop in December after we’ve assessed 2009’s offerings. I’m covering bases on films that inevitably slipped through the cracks, but I’m looking to be as thorough as I can. If there’s a film you can think of that blew you away between 2000 and now but know in your heart of hearts hasn’t hit my radar yet, chime in.
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98 responses to “QUERY: Name an obscure film from the past decade I should see.”
Since you had mentioned you hadn’t seen it yet, go grab [rec].
1. Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
2. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
No clue if you’ve seen either of them
I’ll put more if I remember them
Have you seen Die Unberührbare (2000)? If not, you must. Set in Berlin in 1989, it’s especially timely again this fall.
It’s going to be interesting to see your list. I’m preparing one of my own and it’s been hard to narrow it down to just ten.
Back to your question, since Michael Haneke is quite popular this year and people (John Foote and Scott Feinberg excepted) are saying that The Road stinks to high heaven, you should try to find his not-very-well-known post-apocalyptic drama Time of the Wolf.
Since this is also supposedly the “Year of the Woman,” it amazes me how many good, or at least intriguing, films from women flew under the rader this decade. See if you can find the time for Liv Ullmann’s Faithless (written by the late Ingmar Bergman), Marzieh Meshkini’s The Day I Became a Woman, Lynne Ramsay ‘s Morvern Callar (You’ve probably seen that one, but better safe than sorry), Claire Denis’ The Intruder, Catherine Breillat’s À ma sœur! (You may find it under the titles “Fat Girl” or “For My Sister”), Lucrecia Martel’s The Holy Girl, and Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners & I.
Besides that, I’m not sure what films you haven’t seen yet, and you’ve probably seen a lot more than I have, so there’s not much I can contribute here.
“Max” from 2002 with John Cusack.
Cusack plays Max, a German art dealer. He discovers Hitler’s artistic ability and is moments away from commissioning some of his work when Hitler’s fate takes him elsewhere, obviously. Great film.
I’m not sure how extensive your radar is, but I have been prepping my own best of the decade list for the site, so here are a few obscure films that are in or near my top 10:
2008 – Summer Palace
2007 – Brand Upon the Brain!
2005 – 3-Iron
2005 – Nobody Knows
2005 – Mysterious Skin
2004 – The Return
2003 – Lilya 4-Ever
2003 – To Be and to Have
2003 – Millennium Actress
2002 – All or Nothing
2002 – Hell House
2001 – Children Underground
2000 – The Idiots
– “Tales from the Golden Age” – Cristian Mungiu (dir. “4Months,3Weeks,2days”) wrote this anthology of short films about Romania in the days of communism, and 4 other directors, as well as himself, directed the shorts. It’s pretty solid. It just came out this year at a bunch of festivals.
“Metropolis” (2001)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolis_(anime)
Have you seen Das Leben der Anderen?? Because if you haven’t, you have to do it. It’s one of that masterworks that grow everytime you see it…
Have you ever seen The Fall? Amazing, brilliant film, and sorely underloved.
What about Broken English or Mysterious Skin. Very amazing performances from Parker Posey and Joseph Gordon Levitt. Both films are very underrated.
“The Beat That My Heart Skipped.” No doubt about it.
I’m pretty sure it’s hit your radar, but it must be said: “Vera Drake”…blew.me.away.
Brick
There is a brazilian documentary that, as far as I believe, is one of the best ever:
SANTIAGO (2007).
and a brazilian narrative that is a true gem:
LAVOURA ARCAICA (2000)
Bella. I think it played at Toronto a couple of years back and won some prize. Great, moving story and film.
Little Miss Sunshine
Shotgun Stories
If any of these have slipped through your cracks, correct that mistake.
The Gleaners and I
Day Night Day Night
This is England
Kurt Cobain: About a Son
I’m Not Scared
Lantana
Murder on a Sunday Morning
Confessions of a Superhero
Sophie Scholl: Die Letzten Tage
The History Boys
Someone mentioned Michael Haneke earlier, so I have to mention The Piano Teacher. I’m sure you’ve already seen it; it seemed to have been a decent sized art house it. But it’s truly a fascinating film–absolutely blew me away.
American Splendor, one of the most original films of the decade for sure.
You’ve probably seen it, but what is for me, Wong Kar-Wai’s Magnum Opus, 2046.
I second the “Lavoura Arcaica” mention. Fantastic film.
Don’t know if you’ve seen it – Ghost World
Fairly sure this came out in the last decade – A Wonderful Night in Split (directed by Arsen A. Ostojic). Wonderful but bleak film.
These didn’t quite blow me away but impressed me in some way or another:
The Tracker (2002)
The Axe aka Le couperet (2005)
I Am aka Jestem (2005)
A Bittersweet Life aka Dalkomhan insaeng (2005)
Reconstruction (2003)
I will echo Kokushi and throw Brick out there. You’d most certainly hate Ken Park, but that’s another one.
A Bittersweet Life (2005) – dir. Kim Ji-woon
Save the Green Planet! (2003) – dir. Jang Joon-Hwan
Memories of Murder (2003) – dir. Bong Joon-ho
Pulse (2001) – dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
My Sassy Girl (2001) – dir. Kwak Jae-young
Ip Man (2008) – dir. Wilson Yip
One Nite in Mongkok (2004) – dir. Derek Yee
I also recommend Sex Is Zero (2002) – dir. Yun Je-gyun
It’s not a great film but it’s damn funny.
You should also check out Attack the Gas Station by Kim Sang-Jin. It’s a 1999 South Korean film and it’s one of the funniest comedies I’ve ever seen. And while they’re not films made in the 2000s I highly recommend the 90s films of Stephen Chow like Forbidden City Cop, King of Comedy, and God of Cookery.
The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Blue Gate Crossing*
Down in the Valley*
The Devil’s Backbone
Fear and Trembling*
Gasoline
Linda Linda Linda*
Lost and Delirious (quite possibly a contender for my film of the decade, actually)*
Loves Songs (Les Chasons d’Amour)
Memento Mori*
My Summer of Love
Show Me Love (Fucking Amal)*
Tropical Malady
Water Lilies
Secret Things (Choses Secretes)
I put the stars next to the ones I recommend the most.
I
you may have seen some of these, but I think they’re still not as obvious as some of the films others have mentioned so far… :)
Intimacy (Patrice Chéreau)
Tillsammans / Together (Lukas Moodysson)
Thomas est amoureux / Thomas in Love (Pierre-Paul Renders)
Come Undone (Sébastien Lifshitz)
What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
Atanarjuat / The Fast Runner (Zacharias Kunuk)
Devdas (Sanjay Leela Bhansali)
Vendredi Soir / Friday Night (Claire Denis)
En La Ciudad / In the City (Cesc Gay)
Kontroll (Nimród Antal)
L’Iceberg (Dominique Abel & Fiona Gordon)
La Sconosciuta / The Unknown Woman (Giuseppe Tornatore)
Azuloscurocasinegro / DarkBlueAlmostBlack (Daniel Sánchez Arévalo)
The Band’s Visit (Eran Kolirin)
Revanche (Götz Spielmann)
Chad already took two of my suggestions — “This is England” and “Lantana” — but they bear repeating. (You may well have seen them, but just in case.)
I also heartily recommend Valeska Grisebach’s “Longing,” which never earned the attention it deserved. Other, more prominent, titles yoiu may or may not have seen: “Morvern Callar,” “Jindabyne,” “uCarmen eKhayelitsha,” “The House of Mirth,” “Japanese Story,” “Innocence” (the Lucile Hadzihalilovic film, NOT the “Ghost in the Shell” sequel), “Heartbeat Detector,” “Time Out” and “Moolaade,” to name a few.
http://www.theyshootpictures.com/21stcentury_allfilms.htm
You can try this. Its is a compendium of good films from this century.
Beaufort (2007)
13 Tzameti (2006)
L’Enfant (2005)
Enduring Love (2004)
The Twilight Samurai (2003)
Sunshine (2000) w/Ralph Fiennes
In order of my preference:
Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
Entre les Murs (Laurent Cantet)
Der Untergang (Oliver Hirschbiegel)
Demonlover (Olivier Assayas)
In the Mood for Love (Kar Wai Wong)
The Science of Sleep (Michel Gondry)
Dracula: Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (Guy Maddin)
The Machinist (Brad Anderson)
En la Ciudad de Sylvia (José Luis Guerín)
Cypher (Vincenzo Natali)
Spartan (David Mamet)
The Fall (Tarsem)
Enduring Love (Roger Michell)
Tigerland (Joel Schumacher)
The Woodsman (Nicole Kassell)
Lucía y el Sexo (Julio Médem)
One Hour Photo (Mark Romanek)
Session 9 (Brad Anderson)
Love’s Labour’s Lost (Kenneth Branagh)
The Good Thief (Neil Jordan)
Also, I agree with Ali E. about Kontroll, a surprisingly great film.
A couple of tiny little Australian films that I saw over the last few years that really grabbed me (though not a great deal of people ended up seeing them outside of the festival circuit…) we Boxing Day (dir. Kriv Stenders) from 2007, and Men’s Group (dir. Michael Joy). I can’t imagine either of them will be particularly easy to find, but they’re well worth it.
I second Men’s Group, The Idiots and The Tracker. All great films.
I’ll add the following:
The Magdalene Sisters
36 Quai des Orfèvres
5 cm/s
The Cave of the Yellow Dog
Mary & max
Mirage
Yesterday
The Girl who leapt through time
Also: mention of bad film thats done interstingly “Saddest Music in the world”
It probably wouldn’t get in my top 10 of the decade, but I found Emmanuel Carrère’s “La moustache” endlessly fascinating.
It is a film that gets better the more I think about it. A fascinating tale about paranoia and marital distrust with brilliant performances by Vincent Lindon & Emmanuelle Devos.
Cyclo (1995) and The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000) by Anh Hung Tran.
Oh, well Cyclo isn’t from the last decade, sorry. In that case, you should watch Jacques Audiard’s De battre mon coeur s’est arrêté (The Beat that my Heart Skipped I think in english)..
1. “Linda Linda Linda” (Nobuhiro Yamashita)
What seems at first glance to be a piece of fluff slowly reveals hidden depths and ultimately becomes a bittersweet, strange and immensely rewarding coming-of-age story. My favourite film of the decade – a must-watch.
2. “Vibrator” (Ryuichi Hiroki)
As “Linda Linda Linda” is a wry subversion of the coming-of-age genre, “Vibrator” is an at-turns hilarious and wrenching take on the romance genre. It’ll cut you to the core.
3. “The Return” (Andrei Zvyagintsev)
Probably more widely-seen than many on my list, but the imagery, audacity of concept and power of the performances are almost unrivaled by any film from this decade.
4. “The White Ribbon” (Michael Haneke)
Haneke’s most humanistic film, it ultimately succeeds as much more than a simple “village-as-state” metaphor. Great cast.
5. “The Forest for the Trees” (Maren Ade)
A brilliantly layered drama that is more tense than the most effective of thrillers. An unforgettable central performance from Eva Lobau.
6. “Humanite” (Bruno Dumont)*
Explores ideas of spirituality, sexuality and sin with a truly original eye.
7. “The Closed Doors” (Atef Hetata)*
A remarkable debut that juggles myriad issues – the place of religion in society, the role of women in Muslim society, the mother-son relationship, the class divide – with ease.
8. “Marie Antoinette” (Sofia Coppola)
Both conceptually and visually a step up from Coppola’s past efforts, it portrays the end of the era of Hollywood in a strange, beguiling and original way. A lot of its detractors were clearly expecting it to be something that it isn’t. For best results, simply lie back and let the film take you where it wants to go.
9. “Take Care of My Cat” (Jeong Jae-eun)
A powerful, poignant coming-of-age drama with a beautiful grasp of character and story.
10. “Morvern Callar” (Lynne Ramsay)
A frightening and thought-provoking look at how loss can affect someone.
11. “Beau Travail” (Claire Denis)*
A deeply rewarding and deeply troubling film about masculinity with perhaps the best ending of all cinema.
12. “Memories of Murder” (Bong Joon-ho)
A genre-defying epic that is both highly entertaining and highly disturbing.
13. “La Captive” (Chantal Akerman)
A dreamlike “romance” with some utterly bewitching scenes and setpieces. I’m still dissecting this one…
14. “Live-in Maid” (Jorge Gaggero)
A remarkably intimate story of human connection with a simply perfect ending.
15. “Take My Eyes” (Iciar Bollain)
More “conventional” than many films on this list in terms of structure, but here is a film where a straightforward approach illuminates a fantastic script. Probably the most unbiased, unjudgmental and unsparing look at domestic abuse I’ve ever seen.
16. “The Day I Became a Woman” (Marzieh Makhmalbaf)
A beguiling triptych that impresses with both its scope and its simplicity.
17. “Late Marriage” (Dover Koshashvili)
A remarkable twist on the romantic drama with a stunning ending and some of the best and most revealing (emotionally, hehe) sex scenes in any film, ever.
18. “Chopper” (Andrew Dominik)
A remarkably multi-faceted biopic with a fantastic lead performance.
19. “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (Mamoru Hosoda)
Stunning animation and supremely satisfying animation. I could watch this one a million times and not get bored.
20. “Respiro” (Emanuele Crialese)
A triumph of mood and atmosphere that is both engaging, ominous and haunting.
21. “Stephanie Daley” (Hilary Brougher)
A layered and discussable thought piece with fantastic performances.
22. “Me and You and Everyone We Know” (Miranda July)
A whimsical, original and refreshingly unpretentious look at humanity and human connection.
23. “Suzhou River” (Lou Ye)
A lovely work of style with powerful images and performances.
24. “Series 7: The Contenders” (Daniel Minahan)
Pitch-perfect tongue-in-cheek spoof of reality TV that somehow taps into something quite human in the third act.
25. “A Piece of Sky” (Benedicte Lienard)
Almost dreamlike mood piece with what I consider to be the greatest example of naturalistic acting ever by Séverine Caneele.
26. “Maelstrom” (Denis Villeneuve)
A fireball of style and structure. Immensely entertaining thriller with excellent performances.
27. “A Gentle Breeze in the Village” (Nobuhiro Yamashita)
Another coming-of-age story from Yamashita is, imo, a lesser work than “Linda Linda Linda” but still beautiful, lyrical, moving, offbeat and memorable.
28. “Innocence” (Lucile Hadzihalilovic)
Ethereal imagery and moods.
29. “It’s Easier for a Camel…” (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi)
A mishmash of genres and styles that under the laws of logic and physics should not work at all, but somehow do. Full of heart and surprisingly moving.
30. “Goodbye, Dragon Inn” (Tsai Ming-liang)
Elegiac, quietly funny mood piece. It seems slight but it will stay with you for a long time.
31. “The Libertine” (Laurence Dunmore)
Masterfully-produced, powerfully-acted period piece captures the times so that you basically feel you’re there.
32. “Something Like Happiness” (Bohdan Slama)
Touching character drama about lost souls in a Czech industrial city.
33. “Murderous Maids” (Jean-Pierre Denis)
A clinical directorial approach leaves room for two amazing actresses to do amazing work.
34. “Rana’s Wedding” (Hany Abu-Assad)
A romantic comedy that is as tense as any thriller. From the director of “Paradise Now”.
35. “Clubland”/”Introducing the Dwights” (Cherie Nowlan)
A refreshingly candorous film about love and family. A great script & great performances – unfortunately the last scene feels tacked on and it breaks the spell completely. But still definitely worth a watch.
36. “2 Days in Paris” (Julie Delpy)
Very, very fun romantic comedy has some drawbacks but is completely worth a watch for the chemistry of the leads and the snappy writing – which is like Woody Allen but with a romantic spark and joie de vivre replacing the cynicism.
37. “Spun” (Jonas Akerlund)
Hilarious work of style that works on more levels than “Requiem for a Dream” did.
38. “Secret Sunshine” (Lee Chang-dong)
Powerful characted drama with a magnificent central performance.
39. “The Magdalene Sisters” (Peter Mullan)
A rather clinical film, but the acting is excellent – especially Eileen Walsh as a slightly unhinged “Magdalene sister”. She gives perhaps my favourite “supporting actress” performance ever.
40. “All or Nothing” (Mike Leigh)
Not my favourite Leigh by a long way – I feel it is the closest he gets to melodrama – but as usual the ensemble is absolutely fantastic and the film is worth watching just for the acting.
Honourable mention: “Lilya 4-Ever” (Lukas Moodysson)
A flawed film, but it contains a marvelous central performance by Oksana Akinshina.
Honourable mention: “Friends with Money” (Nicole Holofcener)
An honourable mention only because it is more widely-seen than the others on this list. If I were to rank this it’d probably be in my top 20. A brilliant script and cast of actors put male-female relationships under the microscope and come up with some fresh and truly powerful insights. Not much happens in the film, but that’s not really the point.
Honourable mention: “The Brown Bunny” (Vincent Gallo)
So much more than the controversy would suggest. A remarkably tender, delicate mood piece that says volumes about the artist, but also about love and loss in general.
All of these films are available from Netflix except for #4, #21 and #32. I own the Japanese DVD of #21 and the Korean DVD of #32. I saw #4 at a film festival. Both DVDs have great English subtitles.
* these films were made in 1999 but got a theatrical release in America in 2000, except for “The Closed Doors” which was made in 1999 but only released theatrically at all in 2000
Francois – good call on Cyclo, even though it isn’t a 2000s film. There were images in that film that just made me gasp with their power and strange beauty.
My two have already been mentioned, but they are worth repeating. Memories of Murder is like a Korean version of Zodiac, and is utterly brilliant. And Secret Sunshine completely blew me away when I saw it at Toronto a few years ago.
And by the way, definitely try and catch Mother before the end of the year if you haven’t already. Perhaps Bong’s best film yet.
“Nine Lives”, “Keane”, “Me and You And Everyone We Know”, “Better Luck Tomorrow”, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” , “The Grey Zone”.
And “Bubba Ho-Tep,” ’cause… why not?
And “Russian Ark”!
I haven’t read the other comments, so I don’t know if these have been mentioned before, but anyway, here we go:
Tilsammans/Together (Lukas Moodysson, 2000)
Im Juli (Fatih Akin, 2000)
Les triplettes de Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken? (Achim von Borries, 2004 – I don’t know if there’s a subtitled version of this, but if there is, it’s both August Diehl and Daniel Brühl’s best performance of the decade)
Gegen die Wand/ Head On (Fatih Akin, 2004)
I think I’ve been reading your blog(s) ever since 2005, so I don’t believe I’ve seen anything from the years following which you haven’t – but I know you loved it when it cam out, so I’m just saying it: give “Shortbus” another look, it is such a wonderful, tender piece of cinema.
The Edukators.
I second the Hedwig and the Angry Inch mention, but I thought it would be too widely-seen to put on my list.
“Chop Shop”.