The Top 50 Films of The Decade

1) The Lives of Others

This deserves a little analysis. It is the movie of the decade after all. And yet it was criminally overlooked in many of the lists of the top movies of the decade, despite the exceptional reviews upon its release. This gets the top spot because quite simply it has everything a movie can possibly have. It's technically brilliant, tonally pitch perfect, exquisitely acted, beautifully scored, superbly photographed, thematically rich, politically engaged, gripping, suspenseful, entertaining and most of all heartbreaking, emotional and deeply affecting. Most movies would do well to achieve just a few of these aspirations. The Lives Of Others does everything we could hope a film to do, everything we could hope for art to do in general.

And the rest of the list:
2) No Country For Old Men
3) Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
4) Old Boy
5) Y Tu Mama Tambien
6) Requiem For A Dream (another one strangely overlooked in many lists)
7) There Will Be Blood
8) City Of God
9) Brokeback Mountain
10)Before Sunset

And the next 10 in no particular order

- The Station Agent
- Spirited Away
- A History Of Violence
- Memento
- Traffic (another one forgotten because it came so early in the decade)
- Heartlands
- Lord of The Rings Trilogy (we see no reason to separate them)
- This is England
- Amelie
- Let The Right One In

And the next 10 in no particular order

- Donnie Darko
- The Queen
- Moulin Rouge
- Wall-E
- The Bourne Trilogy (again, we see no reason to separate them).
- Pan's Labyrinth
- Dead Man's Shoes
- The Fountain
- Sideways
- The Assasination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford


And The Next 10 in no particular order
- The Constant Gardener
- In The Bedroom
- Mulholland Drive (actually genius enough to be higher but so opaque it gets pushed down)
- Adaptation
- Million Dollar Baby
- 24 Hour Party People
- The Descent
- United 93
- The Wrestler
- Talk To Her

And the last 10 in no particular order

- The Prestige,
- Batman Begins & The Dark Knight (a more controversial grouping of 2 films but hey, sue us!)
- The Man Who Wasn't There,
- A Serious Man,
- The Royal Tenenbaums
- The Diving Bell & The Butterfly
- Happy Go Lucky
- The Class
- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
- Lost In Translastion

* Stay tuned for separate lists on documentaries, Irish movies and comedies complete with justifications for separating them.