What are your favorite films of the decade?

Let me make an antisuggestion then Ionus:
If the thought of a Were-Rabbit makes you cower, then don't try and watch the violent Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death' (2008).

Oh no, I can handle murder and gratuitous violence, it is just bunnies I have trouble with after a terrifying encounter with A2Ks resident wabbitt. I am a shy person really, and found her threats horrific !

AP critics Germain, Lemire pick decade's top films:

Germain:
1. "Pan's Labyrinth"
2. "You Can Count On Me"
3. "The Barbarian Invasions"
4. "Once"
5. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"
6. "The Hurt Locker"
7. "The Saddest Music in the World"
8. "WALL-E"
9. "Adaptation"
10. "Moulin Rouge"

Lemire:
1. "No Country for Old Men"
2. "There Will Be Blood"
3. "American Splendor"
4. "Far From Heaven"
5. "Sideways"
6. "Memento"
7. "Mystic River"
8. "The Squid and the Whale"
9. "WALL-E"
10. "Wonder Boys"

Link and full story:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gwcd0Nc4x2PjTCg3IMqUx0lrAaOwD9CHBPE80

Underlining what I've seen - much tapering off in recent years. Sometimes it's hard to remember if I just read five reviews and saw the Oscars, or trailers, or actually saw the movie.
1980
Ordinary People
Coal Miner's Daughter
The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
Tess
1981
Chariots of Fire
Atlantic City
On Golden Pond
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Reds
1982
Gandhi
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Missing
Tootsie
The Verdict
1983
Terms of Endearment
The Big Chill - liked it ok, but liked The Secaucus Seven better (similar earlier movie, if I remember the timing)
The Dresser
The Right Stuff
Tender Mercies
1984
Amadeus
The Killing Fields
A Passage to India
Places in the Heart
A Soldier's Story
1985
Out of Africa
The Color Purple
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Prizzi's Honor
Witness
1986
Platoon
Children of a Lesser God
Hannah and Her Sisters
The Mission
A Room with a View
1987
The Last Emperor
Broadcast News
Fatal Attraction
Hope and Glory
Moonstruck
1988
Rain Man
The Accidental Tourist
Dangerous Liaisons
Mississippi Burning
Working Girl
1989
Driving Miss Daisy
Born on the Fourth of July
Dead Poets Society
Field of Dreams
My Left Foot
1990
Dances with Wolves
Awakenings - Columbia
Ghost - Paramount
The Godfather Part III
Goodfellas
1991
The Silence of the Lambs
Beauty and the Beast
Bugsy
JFK
The Prince of Tides
1992
Unforgiven
The Crying Game
A Few Good Men
Howards End
Scent of a Woman
1993
Schindler's List
The Fugitive
In the Name of the Father
The Piano - Miramax
The Remains of the Day
1994
Forrest Gump
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Pulp Fiction
Quiz Show
The Shawshank Redemption
1995
Braveheart
Apollo 13
Babe (now there's one I liked)
Il Postino
Sense and Sensibility
1996
The English Patient
Fargo
Jerry Maguire (this is one I can't remember if I saw or not)
Secrets & Lies
Shine
1997
Titanic
As Good as It Gets
The Full Monty
Good Will Hunting
L.A. Confidential

Nothing in those Oscar categories in 1998 or later (going through divorce and I stopped driving at night a decade earlier). I did rent VHSs and DVD, still do DVDs, but not so much the famed US films.

Whops, I meant Pollock not Warhol peeing in Peggy Guggenheims's fireplace. I'd read about him doing it before the movie came out. I think the film was just okay. I thought Ed Harris overdid the brooding drunk painter persona. It alsways cracks me up when actors play artists, they usually always overdue the "passion" side.

On the list you've posted "You Can Count On Me" is one of my favorites, as well as "Wonder Boys."

I love to see these inclusions. These small and independent films need more recognition.

The Saddest Music in the World is the most surreal musical I have ever seen. I understand it's an acquired taste so I understand if while watching it you the average viewer instinctively take the DVD and throw it into a microwave for 2 minutes on high.

The Secaucus Seven? You mean Return of the Secaucus Seven (1980)?
Wow! A rare find! A John Sayles fan! I really liked this ensemble film.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081420/

Babe!

How about the flip side of the coin -- the ten worst flops of the decade (from The Hollywood Reporter) but with my commentary (you can find their commentary on the site or in a Google search) -- hard to come up with a personal list as I don't remember finishing any of these films -- well, all except for "Battlefield Earth." I was really curious if Scientology had produced any omens it was full of crap:

2008's 'The Spirit,' The spirit of this movie refers to the amount of vodka consumed while writing the script.

2007's 'Grindhouse,' Quentin is following up with a sequel, "Bumphouse."

2002's 'Rollerball,' Made me wish after the first half-hour (where I shut it off) that the skates had bombs installed in them.

2007's 'The Invasion,' Was this referring to Nicole Kidman invading us from Australia? It got to what is referred to as "the second reel" and realized how annoying Nicole Kidman could be.

2004's 'Catwoman,' Win an Oscar, only to let your agent set you up in this superhero unintended lampoon.

2001's 'Town & Country,' Makes one wish to forget about living in the town or the country and move to Mars. I think I may have finished watching this one, but I quickly hit the erase button in my mind.

2003's 'Gigli,' A new word meaning your brain matter turned to jelly.

2009's 'Land of the Lost,' Referring to the place where screenwriters are unable to to use a PC and scribble a script down on brown paper bags with crayons, and they're all brown.

2000's 'Battlefield Earth' I had forgotten this started the sci-fi decade with aliens donned in dreadlocks and gigantic Carmen Miranda wedgies.

2002's 'The Adventures of Pluto Nash.' Yeah, and the automobile also became extinct.

Movies and lists and lists of movies are a few of my favorite things!
http://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2009/1231/Ten-best-movies-of-the-decade

[Film reviews by Peter Ranier of the Christian Science Monitor. The order of placement is mine.]
1. Spirited Away (2001)

This is the best film from the world’s best animator, Hayao Miyazaki. A 10-year-old girl, moving to the suburbs with her parents, discovers a tunnel leading to a world that might have astounded even Lewis Carroll. Miyazaki creates wondrously mysterious effects in almost every hand-drawn frame.

2. Sideways (2004)

For pure unalloyed pleasure, few Hollywood movies of the decade could touch this bittersweet Alexander Payne film about an oenophile (Paul Giamatti) whose crankiness is the thinnest of veneers covering his sadness. It’s a comedy about how we all make it, somehow, through life, and it’s so sharply observed and deeply felt that, in the end, it also seems, of all things, wise.

3. No Country for Old Men (2008)

Joel and Ethan Coen are perhaps the most polarizing of contemporary American filmmakers, but in this adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, they had their greatest critical and popular success. (It won the Academy Award for best picture of 2007.) It’s about the human response to death and dying as embodied in three men " a thief-hunter (Josh Brolin), a lawman (Tommy Lee Jones), and a terminator (Javier Bardem) " and it has an allegorical power that at times is close to biblical.

4. Waltz With Bashir: (2008)

Filmmaker Ari Folman was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in the 1982 war in Lebanon, from which he fashioned this one-of-a-kind animated memoir that, in the end, unforgettably breaks into live-action footage of the sorrows of war.

5. Time Out (2001)

Laurent Cantet’s 2001 movie about a husband and father, suddenly unemployed, who pretends he has a lucrative new job, seems doubly prescient these days. As the harrowed, deluded protagonist, Aurélien Recoing gives a withering portrait of a man who is trying to do right by everybody " and nobody. Although set in a very different time and place, this film has some of the spookiness of a Hawthorne story.

6. The Pianist (2002)

Roman Polanski drew deeply on his boyhood experiences as a Jewish child being hunted down in World War II Poland in this poetically stark adaptation of the wartime memoir of Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman, played with unerring grace by Adrien Brody.

7. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)

The best Romanian filmmakers are among the most remarkable in the world right now, and none more so than Cristian Mungiu. In this masterpiece, set in small-town Romania in 1987 at a time when the waning Ceauşescu regime was still potent, a college girl (the great Anamaria Marinca) covertly arranges for her friend’s abortion. The consequences of this illegality, in a society where all human activity appears to be monitored by the state, are sorrowing.

Haven't seen the following ... (yet):
Before Sunset
Y Tu Mamá También
The Wind Will Carry Us

Great list and it reminded me that "Sideways" would easily nudge any of my first impressions on my top ten list back down into my next top 10. It's a dramady, and would definitely be near the top of my then favorite dramas, and again on my ten favorite comedieds. I think those lists are more important -- choosing by genre.

Favorite Drama
Favorite Comedy or Musical
Favorite Animation

The greatest film of all time has been neglected by the critics--Not only was it a tour de force--it addressed the major problem in today's society-- I speak, of course, of the luminous and highly affecting film- "Milk"

I didn't like Milk. I know it was supposed to be wonderful, awesome, affecting, etc., etc...but I didn't like it- good idea for a biopic and the subject matter was more than worthy of coverage - but Sean Penn's characterization (though some thought it Oscar-worthy) to me, was overwrought.

My favorite comedy of the decade is 'Napoleon Dynamite'. I say that because that's the only movie that I can seriously remember separating out from the huge forest of cinematic comedies I've watched this decade. The others just sort of fade together - but Napolean Dynamite stands alone-in my mind.

'Do the chickens have large talons?' is, I think, my favorite single line in a movie ever.

I just wish they'd make a sequel. I keep waiting. I want to see how Kip and LaFonda's kids turn out.

Such a bigoted response!! I bet you're lactose intolerant!!

That was funny! No - but actually I only just started enjoying milk with anything but chocolate. I used to only like it with brownies or chocolate chip cookies and now I love it whenever I have french fries with ketchup or pickles...weird.

I wanted to like Milk - I did. I was all set to - but I just didn't.

I saw a movie last night that made me cry though - Bright Star. Beautiful cinametography - absolutely stunning- good acting and an interesting story. It's hard for me to ever pick out one favorite of anything though. I like too many things in general - but yeah - if you haven't seen it - Bright Star is worth the time.

The reason that Milk was a great film is that it addresses the most important issue of our time--the depersonalization of millions of Americans because of bigotry. Milk should be compulsory viewing in all American schools. If we can't solve the problems of the gay community, we are not really the America of legend!

Don't understand who gave you that thumbs down Massagat. At least I balanced out that minor case of jerkishness with a thumbs up.

I agree with your perceptive and all too accurate statement. When bullying and bullish behavior is persistent and in many cases tolerated and celebrated in our society, (especially against gays and lesbians in the US), something has to be done to inoculate and prevent this epidemic of hate and intolerance from setting in the next generation. This immature prejudice starts in middle school and festers in high school cultures and beyond. Far too prevalent.

Milk could in theory make a great cultural vaccine if it was properly viewed by high school audiences (given the proper contextual bit of history that surrounds the film).

No Country for Old Men, There will be blood, Almost Famous are simply great. Great movies!

Years to see the movie too much, and can not know in the end have seen many movies, let alone remember also how many movies!

Though I can't say I liked Avatar or Cars. Strongly disliked them in fact, I do really love both The Hurt Locker and Kick-Ass.

Welcome to a2k Billyjordon. Hope to read more from you regarding your choice of movies and more.