AWN Blogs

Nominated for three Oscars, this character study looks at the music business and alcoholism. It doesn't say anything unique about the latter, but it does about the former. However, both issues are intertwined in a way that they cannot be separated. It certainly shows why so many country songs are so sad.

Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI) is a legendary country musician who time has left behind. He has been relegated to driving himself to play bowling alleys. He drinks constantly, but tries to stay as professional as he possibly can. When he needs to throw up, he has the courtesy to leave the stage. At one show, he meets single mother and reporter Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal, WORLD TRADE CENTER), who's a fan and asks all the right questions. She discovers that Bad doesn't like to talk about his successful former apprentice Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, IN BRUGE) or his family.

I debated for a long time whether or not to put together this list or not. It is so hard to do lists like this one. There's also the pet peeve of mine that it's actually not the end of the decade, but why should I nitpick over counting to ten when everyone else in the world isn't? I'm a sheep I suppose. So this list is the best of the 2000s, which include 2000, which is actually part of the previous decade and in turn previous century and millennium, but I digress.

I looked over my Best of the Year lists from the past 10 years and tried my best to stay consistent and celebrate the films I felt were the must see films of the period. Because it's my list I have also included a baker's dozen honorable mentioned films that deserve a nod as well. In the end, I'm glad I did the list. I think it well represents the best of the 2000s and serves as a nice list of films that if you haven't seen them, you really should. So without further ado here you go.

It's been five years since Roman Polanski directed his very good adaptation of OLIVER TWIST. Now he returns to the thriller genre he so commanded in classics like CHINATOWN and ROSEMARY'S BABY. Now mind you, this isn't a new classic, but it is a return to form from his last thriller, THE NINTH GATE. This time he delves into the land of modern political mystery, keeping us wondering right up to the very end.

Ewan McGregor stars as simply The Ghost, a writer hired to ghost write the autobiography of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, THE MATADOR), the former prime minister of the U.K. The writer has a month to rewrite the draft of the previous writer who drowned. He flies from London to Massachusetts where the PM lives with his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams, RUSHMORE). His life is closely regimented by his assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall, SEX IN THE CITY), who refuses to let the writer leave the house with the manuscript. It seems there are people eager to steal it. While the Ghost delves into Lang's past, the former world leader is whipped up in controversy over detainees and torture that has lead to war crimes charges at the Hague.

Character. Character. Character. Every film needs engaging characters and the title character of this Oscar-nominated animated short is unforgettable. Granny O'Grimm comes to read her granddaughter a bedtime story. It's "Sleeping Beauty." But Granny knows a version of the tale that few others know. The beautiful fairies have left the elderly fairy off the guest list to Sleeping Beauty's christening and the elder fairy is furious… much like Granny.

Granny's overdramatic telling of the story had me laughing out loud on several viewings. With her Bride of Frankenstein hair and thick glasses, she appears all the more intimidating to her frightened grandchild, who cowers under the covers. The dark irony that boils under the surface of the entire film is wonderful. Director Nicky Phelan, working with writer Kathleen O'Rourke's pitch perfect dialog, brings out so much character in Granny and the child. The real-life personal resentments that Granny infuses into the story are marvelously handled.

All five Wallace & Gromit films have been nominated for Oscars. Director Nick Park has won for three of them. A GRAND DAY OUT lost to CREATURE COMFORTS, directed by Park. His track record has been outstanding. A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH takes the thriller plot that has become a standard of the series since THE WRONG TROUSERS.

Wallace (Peter Sallis) and his devoted dog Gromit start a bakery, of course, using one of Wallace's Rube Goldberg contraptions to bake bread. Wallace was inspired by his crush on the Bake O Lite Bread spokeswoman Piella (Sally Lindsay). When they meet, Wallace is smitten and so is Gromit with Piella's poodle Fluffles. But it's a bad time to get into the bakery business. It's not the recession, but a serial killer that's knocking off doughboys around town.

Francois Alaux, Herve de Crecy and Ludovic Houplain, known collectively as H5, are the creative force behind this interesting short, which was nominated for 2010 Oscar. In a world made completely out of corporate logos, Ronald McDonald goes on a violent crime spree through the streets of a city much like Los Angeles. Michelin Man Mike and Michelin Man Mitch are cops who set out to stop his bloody rampage.

That description highlights the potential of the premise. That's why the resulting film is a bit disappointing. For all intents and purposes, the film takes a standard action/disaster flick plot with all the requisite adult humor and casts corporate icons as the characters. In the end, the film works as a satire of Hollywood films more than the corporatization of America, which the logos seem to suggest.