The 2000s

And so we've come to it at last, as Darth Vader would say "The circle is now complete."

For the past ten years all I can comment on is what has impacted me the most, I'm not going to talk about about the biggest movie, or the one phenomenal movie that defined a generation. If there is anything I could take out of the last ten years, it's that I've found the movies that fit me. I turned 20 in the year 2000, I was a young adult, I knew movies and I was probably a little smug about it. I didn't really know anything past the 70s, I was under the impression that movies stopped being interesting after that point.

I think I was still trying to find my voice, in fact I'm still on that journey. By the time I turned 22, I was in theatre school and completely forgot about my love of film for awhile. Two years later I enrolled in a motion picture arts program which renewed my love for it. I was starting to watch films by Fellini, Ray, Bergman, and Kurosawa. I was looking at old favorites by Ford, Capra, and Wilder in a different light. I wasn't just watching movies again, I was learning about them. I had a new interest in what made a great movie so great, I wanted to know how they were made, I found a new outlet in learning about them through film criticism. Suddenly my teachers weren't just the Fords, Wilders, and Hitchcocks, but the Eberts, the Kaels, and the Emersons. I learned more about films through shot by shot analysis, audio commentaries, and essays.

Suddenly films I might've been attracted to as a teenager no longer interested me. I no longer cared so much about the big movie opening on the weekend. My big movie became something that could only be seen in art houses or in the Independent section of my video store.

I would say there were three big discoveries in the 2000s for me that completely changed the way I look at movies. These three discoveries were Yasujiro Ozu, Jean-Luc Godard, and Krysztof Kieslowski. I have fallen in love with their films so much over the years, they introduced to me philosophies of film but also of life, it's a joy to watch their films and feel invigorated.

During this last week of 2009, I will be discussing what I think are the greatest films of the past decade, but for me I think I will remember the last ten years as an education I will take with me for the rest of my life.