The Best Films of the Decade

No need for an introduction, so here they are:

1. "Mulholland Drive" - I like to think of David Lynch's stunning puzzler as a surrealist companion piece to Billy Wilder's 1950 masterpiece "Sunset Boulevard" in that they both present Hollywood as being an intoxicating vacuum that obliterates your ambitions and devours your spirit. The film is a product of chilling tone and idiosyncratic color schemes, both of which seem to get more complex every time you watch it. You may feel lost at times, but the career-best work from Naomi Watts is enough to hold you until the breathtaking finish.

2. "Almost Famous"/"High Fidelity" - Arguably Cameron Crowe's greatest achievement, this portrait of the 1970s music scene through the innocuous eyes of a 15-year-old journalist is pure magic from beginning to end. I'm not one who's known to get emotional during films, but the 'Tiny Dancer' scene envelops me each time I see it and stands as one of the finest combinations of sight and sound in cinema history.

John Cusack has long been one of my favorite actors and his work in "High Fidelity" is refreshingly real and sarcastic in a way that I aspire to be myself. Nick Hornby's novel is ripe with enough eclectic musical knowledge and hysterical witticisms to please any die-hard fan and director Stephen Frears knows how to get the most out of an on-screen romance.

3. "Memento"/"Zodiac" - Does it really matter that Guy Pearce hasn't been able to top this one since? I don't think so, because what he accomplishes here is remarkable through and through and it's a shame that the Academy didn't feel the same.

1970’s San Francisco is the sight for David Fincher’s spellbinding police procedural that takes the viewer deep inside the mania experienced by three men obsessed with cracking America’s most notoriously unsolved serial murder case. First-rate performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. crackle with energy and sarcasm as each actor allows himself to get totally swept up in the chaos that eventually unfolds. The 2-hour 37-minute running time seems to fly by as the anxiety builds and the possibility that he may still be on the loose can be both frustrating and unnerving to those unfamiliar with the real police files.

4. "There Will Be Blood" - Paul Thomas Anderson's towering oil saga throws so much on the table that you might feel overwhelmed the first time you watch it. It's about greed, faith, deception and how far one is willing to go in the name of ambition. Even with an off-the-rails final act, the performance from Daniel Day-Lewis stands among the best ever.

5. "25th Hour" - This penetrating drama about a drug dealer re-evaluating his life the night before he goes to prison captures the ethos of post-9/11 NYC like no other film has. Edward Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman are brilliant as usual as a pair of lifelong friends who realize that life as they know it is over, but it's Spike Lee's invasive personality that jumps out of the camera and demands you to keep watching.

6. "Amores Perros" - The first of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's multi-layered epics is, I think, his most unsettling and fully realized due to its ability to hold you despite graphic scenes of dog fighting. It's a tense story of love and lust that never hits a false note and I urge you to put your unwarranted fear of subtitles aside.

7. "Requiem For a Dream" - Darren Aronofsky challenges you to keep your eyes open as Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans descend into drug-addled madness and you might just lose that battle without even realizing it.

8. "Oldboy" - Korean director Park Chan-Wook has a knack for making audiences cringe on demand and the nasty little revenge tale he drums up here fits that bill to a tee. See it and then see it again.

9. "Sideways" - Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor took a quirky, high-spirited novel from Rex Pickett and turned it into one of the most enjoyably low-key cinematic gems of the decade. With its disheveled everyman duo of Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church, this one took us on a life-altering journey through the stunning ins and outs of California wine country and extracted some hysterical moments along the way. Seldom does a film capture the uncompromised essence of a book so impeccably.

10. "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" - Every time Charlie Kaufman pens a script, it’s guaranteed to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before and director Michel Gondry certainly did his part to deliver on that promise. His melancholy portrait of two endearing eccentrics trying to literally erase their relationship from memory is beautifully woven together to create something totally void of all rom-com cliché. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet are pitch perfect as the struggling couple, because they leave the glamour at home and delve into the painful aspects of romance with bona fide apprehension.

Honorable Mention - "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," "Capturing the Friedmans," "Once," "Munich," "A History of Violence," "I'm Not There," "Into the Wild," "Lost in Translation," "The Dark Knight," "The Wrestler," "The Hurt Locker," "Up in the Air," "Eastern Promises," "The Departed," "United 93," "Pan's Labyrinth," "Grizzly Man," and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin"