The Top 25 Movies of the Decade

19.  


Rachel Weisz won an Oscar for her performance in "Constant Gardener" but the real heart of this movie is Ralph Fiennes.  He's made a career playing memorable baddies (Goeth in "Schindler's List", Voldemort in "Harry Potter", 'arry in "In Bruges"), but he gives his best and most subtle performance playing the kindhearted Justin.  Ralph breaks your heart by playing Justin restrained.  In one particularly moving scene, as he identifies the body of his dead wife, he quietly comforts his companion instead of shedding his own tears.

Fiennes' performance reflects the tone of the movie.  Fernando Meirelles ("City of God") doesn't let the pharmaceutical conspiracy sub-plot push the movie into melodrama.  There is clearly a political message here, but it becomes much more powerful as a backdrop to the story we really care about:  Fiennes finding out what happened to his wife.  Moreoever, Meirelles allows the secondary characters who move this sub-plot along to develop without defining them as soon as they appear on screen, making the revelation of their true nature infinitely more effective.

The Top 25 Movies of the Decade

20.  


Post-modernism is a difficult term to define, especially as it pertains to film.  As I understand it, post-modernism in cinema means a deconstruction of the medium, a process that actively reminds the viewer they are watching a contrived piece of art.  This seemingly contradictory principle yielded films like "Breathless", a stylistic revolution in its time but virtually unwatchable from an entertainment standpoint.

Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman gave the 2000s its first, and maybe only, mainstream post-modern movie.  "Adaptation" is about the writing of its own screenplay.  Sure, not everything that unfolds actually happened, but that is precisely the point.  Kaufman, arguably the most auteur of any working writer, proves the ultimate power of the screenplay (and its creator) by writing himself into an adaptation of "The Orchid Thief".  Brilliantly, he still adapts "The Orchid Thief" to some extent and simultaneously details his difficulties in writing that adaptation, tying the two very different stories together as a study of writing.  Kaufman deconstructs the process and weaves it into the fabric of the movie.  Brilliant.  If only he hadn't literally deconstructed his next work.