Er, Change of Plans

Earlier today I announced my plans to dedicate the remaining months of 2009 to the ascending years of the closing decade. Unfortunately, upon doing my research for 2000, things are feeling a bit overwhelming. I turned the not-so-tender age of 16 in 2000 and was still in my earlier stages of my cinematic love affair, in which playing catch-up for the years of film that came before me was of higher precedence than catching new films (it still is that way to an extent). In some ways, the year 2000 was a pretty lousy year, cinematically speaking, if you discount the leftovers from the 90s making their official US theatrical run. It might have been suggested that the films of that year didn't hold up to those of the previous year (I remember Entertainment Weekly declaring 1999 "the year that changed film," or something to that extent), but you'll notice most of the big '99 releases have lost their shimmer with time (yes, I'm looking at you, American Beauty, The Matrix and Run Lola Run). So, really, 2000 might have sucked all by itself. Honestly, I couldn't find 20 films from that year that I would feel confident championing at this point in my life. So instead of a stone-solid list, I'm just going to select as many of the films from 2000 I can come up with by the end of this month, which is probably what I'll do for every other year as well. Trying to catch up on ten years of cinema is a pretty daunting task, so it'll probably take me all year to sift through the ones I've missed, not to mention the ones that impressed me at the time in order to reevaluate my thoughts. Example 1: Though I bought the DVD when it came out, I've never gotten around to watching Béla Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies (I know, I know). Example 2: Though my lame-16-year-old ass loved You Can Count on Me nine years ago, I have my suspicions that it won't fare nearly as well with my lame-24-year-old ass. So, in summation, throughout the rest of the month, I'll be focusing on at least ten of 2000's high points (two of which are pictured here and in the previous post), building toward that scary "decade list" come December. We'll play it by ear and see how it goes. As I said earlier, if there's anything from the past decade that you think I must see or, perhaps, give a second shot, let me know. If I'm lucky, I'll never have to see Crash or Almost Famous again in my lifetime, so other than those two, anything else is fair game.