I certainly am not such a cinephile that I see all, or even a significant percentage of, the films released in a given year. But thanks to Netflix as well as a desire to see many of the leading directors of our times films on a big screen I do end up managing to see quite a large number of each years films though perhaps well after they are made. While I’ve enjoyed film on a more serious level for the last couple of decades I have really devoted a lot more of my time watching new and historical films as well as collecting them for more in depth study in the last ten years. So here I present my favorite films that were shown in this last decade.  Almost all of these films are ones that I love, own the DVD of and watch over and over again.  However there are several films that I simply recognize as an amazing achievement which still moved me in some way, even if I don’t feel much compulsion to own and re-watch it.   This list of course is a snapshot of my preferences at this time, as I catch up on even more films from the past decade I’d surely edit this list.  Also I’m not going to write an essay for each of these films (though they certainly all deserve it) but I can definitely explain what is great about each of these films and in what way they moved me. They are ordered by year with no hierarchy implied and all films link to their IMDB page.

Favorite Films of the Aughts

Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love) (Kar Wai Wong, 2000)
Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
Requiem for a Dream (Darran Aronofsky, 2000)
Untitled (Cameron Crowe, 2000)
Werckmeister harmóniák (Béla Tarr, 2000)
A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (Stephen Spielberg, 2001)
Monsters Inc. (Pete Doctor, 2001)
Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
Nekojiru-so (Cat Soup) (Tatsuo Sato, 2001)
Royal Tennenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001)
Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Hayao Miyaaki, 2001)
Rivers & Tides (Thomas Riedelsheimer, 2002)
Bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring) (Ki-duk Kim, 2003)
Cidade de Deus (City of God) (Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund ,2003)
Five Dedicated to Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003)
The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003)
Innocence (Mamoru Oshii, 2004)
The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson,2004)
Tony Takitani (Jun Ichikawa, 2004)
Tideland (Terry Gilliam, 2005)
The New World (Terrance Malick, 2005)
The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005)
A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)
Sang sattawat (Syndromes and a Century) (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006)
No Country for Old Men (Coen Bros., 2007)
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon ,2007)
Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
A Serious Man (The Coen Brothers, 2009)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009)
Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Peter Esmonde, 2009)

2009 of course is a bit incomplete as like I said in the intro I tend to spend much of the following year catching up on a given year,  yet it already has four that I placed on the above list and thus I’d say it was a pretty strong year.  My full list of favorites (in order) from 2009 so far:

The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, 2009)
A Serious Man (The Coen Brothers, 2009)
Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009)
Gake no ue no Ponyo (Hayao Miyazaki, 2009)
District 9 (Neill Blomkamp, 2009)
Trimpin: The Sound of Invention (Peter Esmonde, 2009)
Up (Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, 2009)
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Terry Gilliam, 2009)
Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)