The 25 Best Soundtracks of the Decade (2000-2009)

[Note: This was a rather ambitious post with a lot of embedded content. Please excuse awkward spacing and timing lags.] 

Considering it's March of 2010, I guess I should clarify that I've made a list of the best soundtracks from last decade, 2000-2009. I started a draft of this at least six months ago but of course it fell into the netherworld of unfinished posts. As late as it is, here are 25 soundtracks from the last decade that I remember fondly, and I use the word "soundtrack" loosely since some of these movies had great songs that weren't actually on the soundtrack album. Also, note that these are soundtracks, not original scores.

First, here are some that I am setting aside because they fall into the following advantageous categories. Consider them in a class by themselves:

Musicals - Across the Universe, Dreamgirls, Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, Rent, Mamma Mia!

Biopics - Walk the Line, I'm Not There, Notorious, Ray

Documentaries - Dave Chappelle's Block Party, Tupac:Resurrection, Amandla! A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony, Young @ Heart

Now, on to the list of 25, in alphabetical order with the exception of this first selection:

1. City of God (2002) - Was there any doubt my favorite soundtrack of the decade wouldn't come from my favorite movie of the decade? I've listened to this hundreds of times over the years and it never gets old. Antonio Pinto and Ed Córtes struck a perfect balance of soul, romance, funkiness, danger, and fun in their original score for City of God, but the supplemental songs really rounded out the album, such as "Convite para Vida" by Seu Jorge, "Na rua, na chuva, na fazenda" by Hyldon, and "Nem Vem Que Não Tem" by Wilson Simonal. Take a few minutes and enjoy a free trip to Brazil:

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Best Picture Nonsense, Clouzot, Crazy Heart, Muriel, & More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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The Best Picture Nominees

I scoffed at the decision to expand the Best Picture field six months ago, and I'm scoffing at it again now. To summarize: because The Dark Knight was not nominated for Best Picture last year and the Oscar telecast was again watched by a fraction of the population, the decision was made by AMPAS and the show's producers to nominate ten films instead of five, making the ceremony more appealing to Joe and Jane Public, who see 3-5 movies year, at least one of which is directed by Michael Bay and at least 2-4 of which star Brendan Fraser, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Lopez, or Sandra Bullock.

And so in a year where so much went wrong at the movie theater (in my opinion, of course, and for the first time I didn't even bother with predicting the nominations), we have five stereotypical Best Picture nominees (Avatar, The Hurt Locker, A Serious Man, Up in the Air, and Inglourious Basterds), three passable Best Picture nominees (Up, An Education, Precious), and two tacked-on popular hits (District 9, The Blind Side; that The Hangover was somehow not nominated for Best Picture surprised me more than anything else in the nomination announcements). I'm not saying the wrong films were nominated - that's a given every year. I'm just saying that the expanded field only made room for more wrongly chosen films.

Of course the irony is that the inclusion of Avatar alone would have been enough to get people to watch the telecast, so the expanded field turned out to be completely unnecessary. Worse, the first-ever Pixar film to be nominated for Best Picture is arguably not even one of the best Pixar films. There was a case to be made for WALL-E last year, but not so with Up this year. Besides, it will win Best Animated Feature without any problem - wouldn't that have been "enough" without what is now a somewhat meaningless Best Picture nomination?

Ten from the Decade

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Considering the Best Documentaries of the Decade (2000-2009): Part 2

Among the best: The War Tapes, Mad Hot Ballroom, In the Shadow of the Moon

Recently I analyzed a couple of "Best Documentaries of the Decades" lists. Soon after that post I found similar lists at Cinematical and The Playlist, as well as a terrific selection from Marilyn Ferdinand. Since some of my favorites from the decade are missing from these lists, I found it only right to come up with some version of my own.

I've been really inspired considering these films and everything they've taught me about the world in the last decade. So long as a story is well-told and relevant to my life, I don't really have a preference between documentaries or traditional feature films. But truth is always stranger than fiction - and a lot funnier, and more emotional, and more horrifying, and generally more compelling. So documentaries represent a powerfully transformative tool in my life, allowing me to be taken to times and places I could never otherwise go and be introduced to real people that I would never otherwise meet.

So I've developed a somewhat raw list of more than 40 documentary films that have added greatly to my worldview this decade while making me laugh, sob, recoil, or quite often, all three. For reasons I explained in the last post, they are all from 2002 or later and are not ranked in any order (I also listed some notable documentaries I missed from this decade). Also, I stand by my previous claims in this space that 2008 was the best documentary year of the decade, which explains why nearly all of my top 10 from last year are represented here (also, reviews for many of these below can be found via my Review Index). This is not a definitive collection by any means, but it is a personally meaningful one for me:

Considering the Best Documentaries of the Decade (2000-2009): Part 1

 Among the best: Spellbound, Born into Brothels, Jonestown, Trouble the Water 

A few weeks ago, before the current deluge of Best of Decade lists hit the internet, I came across a couple of lists ranking the best documentaries of the last 10 years (not surprisingly, I found them via The Documentary Blog). I enjoyed scanning through these to see what I agreed with, what I'd never heard of, and what I noticed was missing. The first list was Paste Magazine's 25 Best Documentaries of the Decade, and the second was an excellent independent list by a London-based blogger, 50 Documentaries of the Decade, which was actually written as a kind of response to Paste's list.

I'm not going to make a third list here, but I am going to offer some thoughts on these two, and in the process I'll probably end up with my own top ten or so. As a general disclaimer, I should say that a.) I generally don't like ranking films numerically (really, what's the difference between the 4th best and the 6th best?), and b.) I only began watching documentaries in earnest around 2002, so I am biased toward the second half of this decade simply because I've seen many more from that period.

So, on with the show:

A Closer Look at the Worst Movies of the Decade (2000-2009)

A couple of weeks ago I caught a story about Rotten Tomatoes listing the worst films of the first decade of this century/millennium (2000-2009). Obviously curious to see what was included, I headed over to RT to see the full list of shame. Here it is, from the "best" (an RT rating of 7%) to the worst (RT rating of 0%); titles are followed by the film's release year...