Lettin' All The Big Balls Drop: Tim's picks for the best of last decade.

Well, woo to the hoo, it's 2010. A new year, which apparently means new, um, stuff.

It's also the end of a decade, too! And what an interesting decade it was in movie-land, wasn't it? There were many, many great films in the last 10 years. And there were also a fair share of clunkers (I'm looking at you, Battlefield Earth). But today, dear readers, I'm going to take a moment to go into the good.

Many films this decade tested conventions, and not just by beating us over the head with tales of morality and alternative lifestyles (I'm looking at you, Brokeback Mountain). We laughed at them, cried with them, and sometimes just wondered where the hell they were going (I guess I'm looking at you again, Battlefield Earth... Well, you and Mulholland Drive, and those damn Matrix sequels... Wait, I'm sorry, I was supposed to be going on about the good movies of the decade here).

So before I get distracted again, here's Tim's picks for the 5 best films of the last decade. Now, as much as I sometimes try to think that I'm above shoving my opinion down your throat like a typical film critic, I am only human, and thus these are my picks... But I do hope you look past the opinion side of this and agree with me that, whether you rate them as good as I do, they're fine cinematic achievements.

First off, I'd like to mention a few honorable mentions in this, stuff that is noteworthy but just barely misses my list, not based on their flaws, but on how damn good the rest were:

- Children of Men, it's smart and realistic look at a horrifying future is only matched by the fact that it has some of the greatest and most intense action scenes I've ever seen.
- Oldboy, one of the more wonderful symphonies of violence I have ever seen.
- 28 Days Later, a mind-blowingly realistic look at "zombies" that was really, truly terrifying.
- Batman Begins, for making the comic book movie something more than just a movie.
- The Departed, for being one of the only times a remake has been better than the original (and Oscar-worthy, at that).
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of the few movies I have ever seen that made me cry.

So without further ado...

5: Shaun of the Dead - While it may not have spawned the zom-com genre (Remember Peter Jackson's Dead Alive?), it may have mastered it. Take the dryness of British humor, splice in ample amounts of gore and the walking dead, well over a hundred nods to practically every horror film that came before it, and you have this, an understated masterpiece, and by-far my favorite comedy of the last decade. The reason no one takes it seriously as a film is because it was not meant for us to take it seriously... The film itself doesn't take its premise or anything else seriously. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost come off as a modern day, foul-mouthed Abbot and Costello, thrust into a waking nightmare and handling it as their dopey characters handle everything, through humor even in the face of a zombie apocalypse. And while the film is loaded with these goofs making asses of themselves for our entertainment, they also find themselves growing and making tough decisions. All in all, if zombie outbreak ever actually happens, I kind of hope this is how my friends and I would take it.

4: Pan's Labyrinth - Good God, Guillermo del Toro is goooooood. I mean damn good. And this one, this is by far his best. This film blurs the line between fantasy and reality in a way that can only be called perfect. The daily horrors of the main character are gritty, dark and compelling, and the fantasy sequences that surround this grittiness are otherworldly and also absolutely real, not to mention even more terrifying at times than the real world. Mr. del Toro had proven himself already by this point, but raised the bar much, much higher with this one. And after seeing this, I think we can all say The Hobbit is in good hands.

3: Requiem For A Dream - Bold, visceral, and unapologetic, this one makes my list for too many reasons to count. Ellen Burstyn gives one of my favorite performances ever in this one, as we are forced to watch the brutal downward spirals of her, her son, his girlfriend, and his best friend, in arguably the best study of addiction I have ever seen. This one defies the typical Hollywood happy ending, and just as you think things may possibly get better for the people we're watching, the rug is pulled out from under us, and things just get worse and worse right up to the final frame. This film is tough to watch, and it rips the still-beating heart out of the American dream, and we are all better off for it.

2: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy - Okay, maybe this one is a cop-out, lumping the entire series together, but the argument I'll make is that none of these films can really be picked out above the rest, and that they really all have to be considered as one work. One nearly 12 hour long work. This is one of the most ambitious projects in modern film history, and it pays off. Everything is near perfection, from the locations to the sound to the acting (And I'll go on record to say that Sir Ian McKellen's portrayal of Gandalf is the single greatest piece of acting I have ever seen). These films redefined what "epic" means, and proved that the realm of fantasy, once relegated to the garages and basements of the Dungeons and Dragons crowd, was something for everyone.

1: The Dark Knight - This was a tough call for me. I kept batting around between this and Lord of the Rings over which was more important. In the end, I have to go with this one, however, not just based on its own merits, but also what it has done to the film world around it.

While Batman Begins gave us the first believable, serious, thoughtful mainstream comic book film, Dark Knight perfected this. It managed to completely erase the damage that Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher did to the name of the Bat, and make a hell of a lot of people take notice. While everyone and their grandmother praised Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker (and he deserves every single bit of said praise), everyone else was spot-on in their roles as well. Gary Oldman brought Jim Gordon to life perfectly, capturing everything that has made him a wonderful character since Alan Moore's watershed graphic novel, The Killing Joke. Morgan Freeman's version of Lucius Fox? Also perfect. And in something that most people seem to overlook due to the carton of cigarettes a day voice thing, Christian Bale's Batman/Bruce Wayne is also perfect in the sense that it does something that no other actor before him has even tried: he manages to make you realize, much like the modern Batman comic books do, that Batman is not the mask, but rather Bruce Wayne is.

But all that alone wasn't enough to tip the scales for me. No, it took the aftermath of the film (which was also the biggest box-office success of the decade). Primarily, look at the Oscars. Due to the fallout of Dark Knight not getting a best picture nod last year, the Academy DOUBLED the number of nominees for best picture, something it should have done ages ago. The Oscars are much larger now due to this film. And if I've learned anything from Arsenio Hall's alter ego Chunky A, if something is larger, it must also be that much "in charger". Yeah, I know that was a lot of work to make a joke like that, but dammit, this film deserves it!

So there ya have it, dear readers. My picks for the big ones. Hope you liked 'em.