Decade in Review - The 100 Best Films of the Decade
![Feature by InRO Staff: Cinema, as we’re often reminded, is a collaborative medium. But is it a collaborative experience? When Norma Desmond complained about the pictures getting smaller sixty years ago, she never could have imagined that folks would one day be watching films on a screen no bigger than her palm. We don’t go to the movies anymore, the movies come to us. Netflix, iTunes, YouTube, BluRay, Bit Torrent—there are more ways than ever to avoid cramming yourself between strangers in a darkened auditorium. I’m exaggerating a touch: as demonstrated by the staggering grosses of “Mission: Impossible II” and “Avatar”—to name-check the bookend blockbusters of our bygone decade—Hollywood can still get asses in seats. But something about that communal experience went missing. Hell, you didn’t even have to wait in line opening weekend to see a new “Star Wars” movie. (Thanks, Fandango!) Like everything else, cinema got chopped up and sold off in the naughty aughties. And we all got a piece vc, a little photoplay to hold in our hands and store on our hard-drives, private pictures for our private amusement.
Yet there’s a paradoxical conundrum to it all. Downloading and streaming may have forever compromised the “movie theater experience,” but it was the Internet that helped make cinephilia, for better or for worse, a mass public discussion. The best movies are the ones that live off the screen, in the talks, actual or just internal, that they inspire. And we had a lot to talk about this decade. The death of the mid-level indie. The rebirth of 3D. The documentary explosion. The proliferation and evolution of digital video. The Romanian New Wave. Torture Porn. Mumblecore. Pixar. Lars von Trier. “Snakes on a Plane!” Every blog or thread or comment section was like a local bar, a place to pull up a stool and have an argument. Sure, plenty of conversations got monopolized by box-office number crunching and award-season prognosticating. When that chatter started, you could always ask for the bill and find a new watering hole.
Cinema lived this past decade in the dialogues, and it was with that in mind that InRO’s own retrospective was conceived. Trying to summarize ten years of film in one sitting is at best a daunting endeavor, at worst a fool’s errand—you could end up as befuddled as Nic Cage’s constipated Kaufman in “Adaptation,” staring at a blank page or screaming ideas into a tape recorder. That’s why we called for some backup. In the spirit of democratic collaboration, InRO’s 100 Best Films of the Decade boasts the passion and the prose of thirteen different writers—in addition to eight of our own wily wordsmiths, we roped in a trio of bloggers, a journalist and a screenwriter. With the exception of our number one film, that runaway consensus choice, no one agreed on everything. And though the rankings might suggest otherwise, there’s nothing definitive about the following list. Cinephilia is a work in progress, and each new movie we all see contributes to a different vision of what the medium is capable of and where it’s headed. This is just one vision, a backwards glance from a tenuous here and now. We’ll be counting down our list of one hundred all week long—prefaced with ten honorable mentions—so check back daily for updates and for a new set of snazzy collage pieces, featured at the top of each page, by graphic artist Ryan Walters. Let the dialogue commence and the debate continue. A.A. Dowd

CONTRIBUTORS (InRO):
Jordon Cronk (Music Editor); A.A. Dowd (Staff Writer); Sara Freeman (Staff Writer);
Luke Gorham (Film Editor); Sam C. Mac (Editor-in-Chief); Brendan Peterson (Staff Writer);
Ranylt Richildis (Staff Writer); and Kathie Smith (Staff Writer).
ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTORS:
Lula Elias; Gisella Faggi; Daniel Gorman; PK Smith; and Josh Staman.
ALSO CHECK OUT OUR ‘100 BEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE’

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[ Honorables .. 100-91 .. 90-81 .. 80-71 .. 70-61 .. 60-51 .. 50-41 .. 40-31 .. 30-20 .. 20-11 .. 10-1 ]

   
   
  

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[ Honorables .. 100-91 .. 90-81 .. 80-71 .. 70-61 .. 60-51 .. 50-41 .. 40-31 .. 30-20 .. 20-11 .. 10-1 ]](15_Decade_in_Review_-_The_100_Best_Films_of_the_Decade_files/shapeimage_1.png)
February 15, 2010
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Decade in Review - The 100 Best Films of the Decade
February 15, 2010
Stay in Touch
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Home • Features • Film Reviews • Music Reviews • Yearbook • InRO Gold • End of Radio