A Solipcist's Prayer Meeting

Bill Fay – Still Some Light (Coptic Cat)

I should probably warn at the outset that this is likely to be a somewhat confused and disoriented piece of writing, the British singer-songwriter Bill Fay having been a musical infatuation of mine for a while now. I chanced upon the See For Miles reissue of his two albums originally made for Decca in the early 1970s in my local library some time in the early years of the last decade. I picked it up purely on the basis that I knew nothing about Fay and because the original cover images were striking. Later, when working on a piece on Fay for John Kell’s Unpredictable Same fanzine, I discovered that Fay was also being championed elsewhere. MOJO’s Jim Irvin had drawn attention to these classic, underappreciated albums, whilst Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy had been performing Fay’s ‘Be Not So Fearful’ in his solo concerts, having been introduced to the Decca albums by Jim O’Rourke.

After his Decca contract folded, Fay had not, as many imagined disappeared, but had continued to write and record music at home, away from the commercial imperatives of the music industry. Some of this was released by David Tibet on Current 93 on the excellent, spacious and mysterious ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ set. It’s entirely probable that, much like the home tapes of the late, great Arthur Russell, there may be numerous unheard Fay recordings that are worthy of release.

‘Still Some Light’ contains the first brand new Fay recordings for over thirty years, recorded alone at home. It is packaged, delightfully, with a generous set of demo recordings made between 1970 and 1971 with the superb band that made ‘Time of the Last Persecution’ – guitarist Ray Russell, drummer Alan Rushton and bassist Daryl Runswick. All three musicians play beautifully. Russell, better known as a jazz musician with an enthusiasm for ‘freer’ musical forms makes some dramatic and searing contributions, emphasising Fay’s apocalyptic themes of cosmic battle between good and evil.

A number of these demo recordings are invaluable. There are stripped back versions of two songs from the eponymous debut album, which had been embellished with huge orchestrations from Mike Gibbs. ‘The Sun Is Bored’ has even greater menace with the focus shifted from string section to Russell’s violent bursts of guitar, whilst ‘Sing Us One of Your Songs May’ retains its eccentric charm. Then there is the bulk of ‘Time of the Last Persecution’, in prototype form, but largely faithful to the cleaner recordings that ended up on the album itself. The quality of these recordings is not good – there is plenty of residual hiss from the tape sources and the vocals frequently clip in a way that is not easy on the ear. Fay is honest about this in the sleeve notes, and I would argue that he is right that the feel and atmosphere of these sessions, as well as the quality of the songs and the musicianship, outweigh the limitations of the equipment used. It’s actually a great pleasure to hear these songs in such a raw, pure and direct form.

Perhaps even more notable amongst the demos are those songs that did not appear on either ‘Bill Fay’ or ‘Time of the Last Persecution’. There’s a wonderful ‘Love Is The Tune’, which eventually appeared on ‘Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow’ and the charming ‘Arnold is a Simple Man’ seems to be another of Fay’s brilliant character portraits of sympathetic eccentric individuals. It’s a more than worthy addition to his canon. More unexpected is the distorted sturm und drang of ‘There’s A Price Upon My Head’.

The new material is considerably harder to judge. Recorded at home using a Korg keyboard and a basic microphone, it is awash with generic synth pads, facsimile piano sounds, plinky mock pizzicato strings and very basic drum machines. These arrangements will likely present difficulties for those, like me, who love both the lavish Mike Gibbs scores and the excoriating immediacy of the band recordings. It’s quite a similar feeling to listening to those recent low budget albums Leonard Cohen made with Sharon Robinson, although ‘Still Some Light’ rather lacks their sense of irony.

‘Road of Hope’, ‘City of Dreams’, ‘Fill This World With Peace’, ‘Be at Peace with Yourself’, ‘Peace on Earth’ – the song titles certainly offered a clue as to the mood of ‘Still Some Light’. It’s a sincere and earnest collection of songs searching for the spiritual or the numinous in a troubled world. To many people, this may come across as idealistic, spiritual dreaming - to others, the sincere sense of peace, contemplation and devotion may strike a real, personal chord. It’s tempting to suggest, however, that Fay has already written a couple of definitive examples of this kind of spiritual-inspirational song with ‘Methane River’ and ‘Be Not So Fearful’. In those songs, the sentiments were mysterious and eccentric – here, they are sometimes transparently platitudinous. The nadir is probably ‘Hello Old Tree’, a mercifully brief and very whimsical track in which a tired sounding Bill takes a brief pause to commune with nature.

It’s also a challenge to adapt to Fay’s changed singing voice, which may have been diminished by his years of smoking. It’s a weaker instrument now, although much of its conversational, intimate character is retained. Whether Fay’s tepid attempts at vocal treatment – double tracking and reverb particularly – serve to improve the sound of the vocals is a matter for personal taste. I find myself frequently wishing he’d left them dry. Perhaps the biggest obstacle of all is the gentle, hushed dynamic, languid pace and consistent muted tone. Over twenty six tracks, it begins to become more oppressive than it is dreamy or peaceful. A little more rhythm would have been appreciated.

Yet, even though the production values are modest, perhaps even bizarre, there are still flashes of inspiration that remind us of Fay’s dignity, compassion and melodic invention. If we try and imagine these songs as home recorded prototypes for a studio recording that might never be, it starts to make a little more sense. Imagine the mysterious ‘City of Dreams’ with a real vibraphone and some dusty, brushed snare drum and it might sound a whole lot more evocative. There’s a humane soul in ‘There is a Valley’ and ‘Road of Hope’, in the frailty of Fay’s voice in the latter and in the expansive narrative of the former. One can’t help but wonder if the Willie who has a dream in the forest in ‘All Must Have a Dream’ is the same Willie of ‘Gentle Willie’ from the debut album. There’s a sense that the benign feeling at the heart of these songs might be a genuine inner peace and tranquillity from which a conscious rejection of conflict and intensity results.

In his sleevenotes, essentially a history of his career in the form of an embellished acknowledgements list, Fay comes across as a gentle, calm, very dignified human being. It might therefore be unfair to expect any grandstanding musical statements from him now. For all its pleading for hope and peace, ‘Still Some Light’ still seems like an insular and hermetic work. Perhaps it’s all the more interesting for that. Those who have not heard those two incredible Decca albums should certainly start there rather than here – they are wonderful recordings and, honestly, contain some of my favourite music of all time.

Fun with Fangs

Vampire Weekend – Contra (XL)

Pretty much every review and feature I’ve read on Vampire Weekend in the past couple of months starts in the same way – with a lengthy examination of supposed critiques of the band as inauthentic ‘cultural tourists’. I’m still wondering precisely who these detractors are. Every review of ‘Contra’ so far has been at least positive, and it seems as if every journalist is trying to position themselves as valiant defenders of this band against a constant stream of invective that doesn’t really seem to exist. Most of us seem to accept that they are privileged and educated New Yorkers – but this doesn’t stop us from enjoying either their witty lyrics or their enthusiasm for African rhythm and harmony. If this music opens doors to Congolese soukous music or the rich contemporary sounds of Mali, this surely cannot be a bad thing.

‘Contra’ is a typical second album in that it consists in part of laudable attempts to develop and diversify alongside a handful of tracks that could have sat comfortably on their debut. ‘Cousins’, somewhat impressively, is an even spikier and more insistent rewrite of ‘A-Punk’ and ‘Holiday’ is a ska-tinged piece of angular post-punk. There’s nothing remotely surprising on either track, including their inherent infectiousness that borders on irritating.

Late last year, the band already gave clues that the full album wouldn’t be quite that simple by posting opening track ‘Horchata’ as a free download. This track amplifies the African influences to almost dizzying and saccharine levels, with its percussion and thumb pianos. It’s also a brilliant song, with Ezra Koenig’s near-nonsense wordplay operating in excelsis.

Much of the rest of the album downplays the familiar strafing and staccato guitar lines in favour of a lush texture dominated by synths and keyboards. It is, on the whole, a less taut and more expansive proposition. Rostam Batmanglij never seemed like a particularly skilled keyboardist, and many of the parts here are quite minimal. Yet the arrangements and overall sound, in which Batmanglij plays the pivotal role, add up to something invigorating and intriguing. There’s a deceptive simplicity to many of these tracks – the detail often matters more than the fundamental elements.

Initially I wasn’t sure about the excess treatment on ‘California English’ – all vocoder gloss – but the track somehow ends up sounding effortless and fluid. Similarly, whilst on first listen to the epic ‘Diplomat’s Son’, the slightly cloying plinky-plonk piano stands out, repeated listens reveal a plethora of riches, from its unpredictable shifting rhythms to its wonderful vocal arrangement. The most impressionistic moment comes with ‘I Think Ur A Contra’, on which the band manage to craft something emotionally affecting beneath their characteristic archness. Perhaps best of all is ‘Taxi Cab’, an almost-ballad that comes across like a brilliantly imagined hybrid of Salif Keita and early Depeche Mode. On these tracks, not only as the musical context been refined, but Koenig has ironed out some of his more provocative vocal quirks in favour of a more understated and subtle delivery. This is no bad thing – and it helps make the band sound less in thrall to the likes of Talking Heads.

Koenig’s lyrics might well be meaningless, but he certainly delights in the way language can trip off the tongue. On ‘Cousins’, he’s particularly exuberant: ‘Dad was a risk-taker/His was a shoemaker/You, greatest hits 2006 little list-maker’ - it sounds like he’s, ahem, gently parodying nerdy music bloggers. Sometimes the lyrics are just joyfully ridiculous (‘In December, drinking Horchata/I look psychotic in a balaclava’). Yet even on a song where political metaphors abound (‘I Think Ur A Contra’), Koenig is capable of isolated moments of disarming directness (‘Never pick sides, never choose between two, well I just wanted you…’).

Amidst all the cleverness, what really comes across is Vampire Weekend’s mastery of the simple pop song. For all its drive to be more adventurous and sonically diverse, ‘Contra’ is still an album full of memorable hooks. It’s hard to know how many albums of this nature a band can produce before their ideas become formulaic – but, for now, it works just fine. ‘Contra’ is short, but very, very sweet.

Looking Ahead

So, having bid 2009 and the noughties farewell it seems only right and proper to highlight some forthcoming releases for 2010. I don't promise to like all of these at this point however!

It's surprisingly hard to find a good list of forthcoming new jazz releases (not reissues or compilations) - but the Curios and Roscoe Mitchell albums should be particular highlights of 2009 for me. I have only heard of the Motian/Moran/Potter ECM collaboration via some messageboard hearsay - I do hope it's true as that would make for intriguing music. If the one track that has made it online is anything to go by, that 'opera' from The Knife, Mt Simms and Planningtorock might be a strong contender for album of the year. The Vampire Weekend album, pleasingly, is already available to stream from their MySpace.

Vampire Weekend – Contra
Bill Fay – Still Some Light
Spoon – Transference
Midlake - The Courage of Others
Jaga Jazzist – One Armed Bandit
Pat Metheny – Orchestrion
Laura Veirs – July Flame
Hot Chip – One Life Stand
Magnetic Fields – Realism
Sam Amidon – I See The Sign
Beach House – Teen Dream
Dan Berglund - Tonbruket
Four Tet – There Is Love In You
Yeasayer – Odd Blood
These New Puritans - Hidden
Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabate – Ali and Toumani
Massive Attack – Heligoland
Peter Gabriel – Scratch My Back
Field Music – (Measure)
Efterklang – Magic Chairs
Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part II: Return Of The Ankh
Curios – The Other Place
Quasi – American Gong
Liars – Sisterworld
The Besnard Lakes – The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma
Matthew Herbert – One Pig
Roscoe Mitchell and the Note Factory - Far Side
The Knife with Mt. Simms and Planningtorock
Polar Bear – Peepers
The Books – The Way Out
Plaid – Scintilli
Jack Rose – Luck in the Valley
Goldmund – Famous Places
Late of the Pier – Blueberry Pie
David Byrne and Fatboy Slim – Here Lies Love (can’t say I want to hear this!)

Plus albums expected from:
Andre 3000
Arcade Fire
Beastie Boys
Big Boi
Broken Social Scene?
Cee-Lo Green
Devo - Fresh
DOOM and Ghostface
Fleet Foxes
LCD Soundsystem
Madvillain??
Mystery Jets
New Pornographers
OutKast
Paul Motian/Jason Moran/Chris Potter
Jay Phelps
REM
The Avalanches
Panda Bear
Band of Horses
Menomena
Jonsi
Amy Winehouse?!?

Review of the Decade Part 2: Best Albums

I've tried to do something a little different with this list. Instead of writing reams of text on all these albums, many of which I've already written about anyway, I've tried to come up with a pithy justification for why I think they are important and merit inclusion here. Anything I couldn't justify in one sentence has missed the cut. Also, I've tried to stop myself from including more than one album per artist. There are some exceptions when two albums are substantially different but of similar quality (Dirty Projectors, Lambchop and Elvis Costello all have two entries). However, such cases are rare and there are a number of albums I really love (Emmylou Harris' 'Stumble Into Grace', Wilco's 'Yankee Hotel Foxtrot' to cite just two examples) that I don't include as a result of these restrictions. Also, a number of artists who have stayed with me over time (Flaming Lips, REM, Keith Jarrett's Trio, Neil Young) are conspicuous by their absence because I don't feel they've produced their best work over the past decade.

I'm quite sure if anyone can really be bothered to refer back to my old albums of the year lists that I am open to the charge of inconsistency. I don't really care - this list is a snapshot of the albums that have, for me at least, best endured. It is of course personal and subjective.

Also, as I think John Kell also mentioned when publishing his own list, this might be the last time I get to do this, if the digital revolution really means albums become a thing of the past. I'm sceptical as to whether this will happen, but that's a subject for another post...

200. Sylvie Lewis - Translations (2007)
Included for its clever, empathetic songs that grow with every listen and for Lewis' delightful, understated voice.

199. Scott Colley – Architect of the Silent Moment (2007)
Included for its collection of contemporary American talent (Taborn and Moran!), for its flowing, sophisticated melodies and for its gentle groove.

198. The Broken Family Band - Cold Water Songs (2002)
Included for creating the unlikely Cambridge country sound, and for neatly combining raucous humour with an underlying sensitivity.

197. Stefano Bollani – I Visionari (2006)
Included for Bollani's virtuosic technique at the piano, for his deep understanding of music - and for his fusion of different musical worlds.

196. Sleater-Kinney - The Woods (2005)
Included for proving my intial judgment about Sleater-Kinney to be wrong, and as a great example of raw, heavy, blues-infused rock.

195. Elvis Costello and the Metropole Orkest - My Flame Burns Blue (2006)
Included for brilliantly encapsulating Costello's improved vocal prowess and neatly summarising his work outside the conventional rock ensemble.

194. Broadway Project - Compassion (2001)
Included for its murky atmosphere which, in spite of its title, seemed full of menace.

193. The Avalanches - Since I Left You (2000)
Included for its inventive, playful and humorous use of sampling.

192. Johnny Cash - American III: Solitary Man (2000)
Included for Cash's stark, powerful but vulnerable delivery and its intriguing choice of material.

191. Roots Manuva - Run Come Save Me (2001)
Included for its successful and distinctively British take on rap, and for its affinity with dub soundsystem music.

190. My Morning Jacket - It Still Moves (2003)
Included for being a colossal rock behemoth.

189. Rufus Wainwright - Poses (2001)
Included for finding the profundity in banality and vice versa.

188. Aphex Twin - Drukqs (2001)
Included for gradually making a peculiar kind of sense as the initial confusion subsided.

187. Blur - Think Tank (2003)
For finding a new and intriguing sound in the absence of Coxon - it's a shame they failed to build on it.

186. TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain (2006)
Included for its adventurous production values and distinctive sound.

185. Jason Moran - Facing Left (2000)
Included for confirming a major piano talent and for combining superb reinterpretations (especially Bjork's Joga) with sophisticated compositions.

184. Shivaree - Rough Dreams (2002)
Included for its gently meandering impulse and sophisticated songwriting.

183. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (2007)
Included for its engaging combination of austerity and warmth.

182. Immaculate Machine - Ones and Zeroes (2005)
Included, at least in part, to allow me to champion some wonderful underdogs and for its bounding, zestful songs and crisp playing.

181. Two Lone Swordsmen - Tiny Reminders (2000)
Included for making an art form from bleeps and bloops.

180. Gas - Pop (2000)
Included for its overarching influence in the world of atmospheric dance music, and for its depth of imagination.

179. Tomasz Stanko - Lontano (2006)
Included for its deceptive calm and haunting, eerie beauty.

178. Aesop Rock - Labor Days (2001)
Included for its forceful, compelling rap language.

177. CocoRosie - Noah's Ark (2005)
Included for sounding thoroughly mesmeric - like clockwork musical theatre.

176. The Hidden Cameras - The Smell Of Our Own (2003)
Included for its bold subversion in combining unreserved and sexually candid lyrics with sugar-coated, highly infectious melodies.

175. Air - 10,000 Hz Legend (2001)
Included for being a record that only I seem to really like - at least in part for its sense of parody.

174. Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill (2008)
Included for its desolate, unsettling mood.

173. Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy (2005)
Included for being a dark, merciless and compelling song cycle and also for considering the presentation so carefully too - superb artwork!

172. Beirut - Gulag Orkestar (2006)
Included for its rowdy, bawdy choruses, drunken emoting and for its incorporation of Eastern European folk music.

171. Erin McKeown - Grand (2003)
Included for McKeown's effortless subsuming of the great American songbook within her own charming musical personality.

170. Manitoba - Up In Flames (2003)
Included for its very contemporary take on psychedelia and for its great explosion of percussion.

169. Craig Taborn - Junk Magic (2004)
Included for being one of the best examples of electronic jazz and for Taborn's feverish imagination and technique.

168. Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump (2000)
Included for the human warmth beneath its technocratic sheen.

167. Gang Gang Dance - God's Money (2006)
Included for its primitive party vibe.

166. Electric Masada - At The Mountains of Madness - Live in Europe (2005)
Included for its stamina, savage intensity and gleeful recklessness.

165. Max Richter - The Blue Notebooks (2004)
Included for its languid grace and sensitivity.

164. M Ward - Transistor Radio (2005)
Included for its understanding of and love for a bygone era when broadcast radio had both power and magic.

163. Beatundercontrol - Cosmic Repackage (2008)
Included for being a staggering, mind-blowing recording without respect for genre restrictions that hardly anybody in this country noticed.

162. Efterklang - Parades (2007)
Included for continuing to grow on me nearly three years after its release, and for having a wider profile that also refuses to stop growing.

161. Liam Noble - Romance Among The Fishes (2005)
Included for the empathy and adventure of the ensemble and for Noble's highly distinctive piano language.

160. Junior Boys - Last Exit (2004)
Included for its quiet, unassuming reinvention of the synth-pop wheel.

159. Curios - Hidden (2007)
Included for its attention to detail, highly attuned group interaction and its sophisticated, quietly affecting themes.

158. Doves - The Last Broadcast (2002)
Included at least in part for helping me through my university exams, but also for its careful balance of the melancholy and the anthemic.

157. Pat Metheny/Brad Mehldau - Duo/Quartet (2006/2007)
Included for providing two albums' worth of effortlessly flowing ideas, the result of a meeting of truly brilliant minds.

156. Bobo Stenson Trio - Cantando(2008)
Included for its serenity and quiet exploration.

155. Missy Elliott - Miss E...So Addictive (2001)
Included for being Missy's most strident and confident album and for including some of Timbaland's most adventurous production work.

154. Tord Gustavsen Trio - The Ground (2005)
Included for its spirituality, serenity and strong sense of purpose.

153. Loose Fur - Loose Fur (2003)
For being one of those great records that should have been so much more appreciated - how could Tweedy, Kotche and O' Rourke together be anything other than great?

152. Solomon Burke - Don't Give Up On Me (2002)
Included for being one of the very best of the soul survivor comebacks during the decade, delivered authoritatively without any crass attempts at modernisation.

151. Matmos - A Chance To Cut Is A Chance To Cure (2001)
Included for its radicalism and insightful comment in making engaging, meaningful music from surgical procedures.

150. The Postal Service - Give Up (2003)
Included for its winning combination of shimmering melody, detached production values and meaningful heart, all achieved in separate processes over distance.

149. Paul Burch - Fool For Love (2003)
Included for the warmth in Burch's understated vocals and the delicate, zesty swing in his songs.

148. The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan (2005)
Included for its unusual instrumentation, therefore making it the most daring and unexpected of their albums and the only one to affect me strongly on a personal level.

147. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (2007)
Included for allowing pensive reflection to invade the party spirit, and for capturing the dilemmas of the ageing hedonists.

146. Andrew Hill - Time Lines (2006)
Included for capturing the great piano player in full creative flow just before his death and for reminding us of his hugely important, and still somewhat underrated contribution to jazz.

145. Myra Melford - The Image Of Your Body (2007)
Included for introducing me to a new, distinctive and questing musical voice.

144. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (2007)
Included for its compelling narrative drive, considered structure and thrilling musicality.

143. Calexico - Feast Of Wire (2003)
Included for the relaxed drama of Calexico's border sound, and especially for 'Not Even Stevie Nicks', increasingly one of my favourite songs of the decade.

142. Isolee - Wearemonster (2005)
Included for its light propulsion and immersive atmospheres.

141. Hot Chip - The Warning (2006)
Included for its daring combination of the satirical, the sinister and the saccharine.

140. Chris Potter - Underground (2006)
Included for its muscular energy and exuberance.

139. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest (2009)
Included for its rich orchestration, lush harmonies and thoroughly involving sense of construction and care.

138. Herbert - Bodily Functions (2001)
Included for the smoky sophistication in Dani Siciliano's vocals and the intelligent radicalism at the heart of Matthew Herbert's sonic and political manifesto.

137. Deerhoof - Offend Maggie (2008)
Included simply to represent one of the most adventurous, maverick and off-the-wall bands to have dominated the alternative music landscape of the decade.

136. Tim Whitehead/Giovanni Mirabassi Quartet – Lucky Boys (2006)
Included for being a personal source of encouragement and inspiration.

135. Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf (2002)
Included for its sheer hard-hitting vitality.

134. John Scofield – Time On My Hands (2000)
Included for the sheer brilliance and versatility of the ensemble (Scofield, Charlie Haden, Jack De Johnette, Joe Lovano).

133. Orchestra Baobab - Specialists In All Styles (2002)
Included for bringing them back to international prominence with a set at once righteous and elegant.

132. Joshua Redman - Compass (2009)
Included for being Redman's most assured, spacious and versatile collection of the decade, a substantial achievement that seems to have been somewhat neglected in the UK jazz press.

131. Salif Keita - Moffou (2002)
Included for its maturity and sense of craft.

130. The Bug - London Zoo (2008)
Included for its unflinching, uncompromising aggression and confronational agenda and for its snapshot of an urban Britain in fear and division.

129. Patricia Barber - Mythologies (2007)
Included for being a contemporary vocal jazz album I can wholeheartedly embrace for the allegorical depth of its songs and the weight of experience in Barber's breathy voice.

128. Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men (2009)
Included for its seamless flow and masterly construction.

127. Soweto Kinch – Conversations With The Unseen (2004)
For providing a distinctly British and positive take on American forms.

126. Roy Hargrove Quintet – Earfood (2008)
For its glorious, clean sound and for its infectious jubilance, suggesting that jazz can still be a music of the people.

125. Sparks – Lil’ Beethoven (2002)
Included for its riotous sense of humour and its playful irony.

124. Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)
Included for being the most consistently involving example of her peculiar, eerie and vital world.

123. Scott Tuma – Not For Nobody (2008)
Included for its golden mix of folk tradition and contemporary innovation.

122. Portishead – Third (2008)
Included for not settling for repetition of past glories and therefore being much better, and more adventurous, than anyone expected.

121. Laurent Garnier – Unreasonable Behaviour (2000)
Included for its combination of insistence, repetition and expression.

120. Olafur Arnalds – Eulogy For Evolution (2008)
Included for its spare beauty and lingering sadness.

119. Cee-Lo Green – Cee-Lo Green Is The Soul Machine (2004)
Included for its madcap, exhilarating and vibrant explosion of ideas.

118. Leila – Courtesy Of Choice (2000)
Included for its sleek, modern conception of bedroom soul.

117. Cinematic Orchestra – Every Day (2003)
Included for continuing to reveal previously hidden subtleties and for the power and determination of Fontella Bass’ vocal contributions.

116. Elbow – Asleep In The Back (2001)
Included for Guy Garvey's compassion and humility and for being the best of their albums that didn’t win the Mercury.

115. Leonard Cohen – Ten New Songs (2001)
Included for coming down from the mountain in the most unhurried manner, armed with the twin forces of wisdom and reflection.

114. Jaga Jazzist - What We Must (2005)
Included for its adventurous spirit, lush arrangements and rhythmic precision.

113. Pat Metheny – The Way Up (2005)
Included for Metheny’s glorious chiming melodic sound and his sustained compositional ambition.

112. James Blackshaw – The Cloud of Unknowing (2007)
For introducing me to this extraordinary talent and his dense, hypnotic twelve-stringed tapestries.

111. Dirty Projectors – The Getty Address (2006)
Included for its cut-up orchestral wizardry, very different from subsequent DPs projects – and for its utterly bonkers premise – a concept album affording Don Henley prophetic status.

110. Carla Bley – The Lost Chords (2004)
Included for establishing an inspired new working band for Bley, an artist whose combination of fun and musicality continues to provoke.

109. Xela – The Dead Sea (2006)
Included for its unpredictable movements between brutality and calm, resulting in an effective, uneasy symbiosis.

108. Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble – Exile (2003)
Included for its unconventional and controversial handling of its theme and for its masterful fusion of jazz with Middle Eastern music.

107. Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra – Not In Our Name (2005)
Included for capturing the prevailing political mood of the times in something close to a folk language.

106. Dizzee Rascal – Boy In Da Corner (2003)
Included for its individuality, spark and brilliant juxtaposition of the confrontational and celebratory – a far cry from the banal forms with which he now sadly preoccupies himself in the aim of increased sales figures.

105. Mouse On Mars – Idiology (2001)
Included for being dance music you’d only be afraid to dance to.

104. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds – Abattoir Blues/The Lyre Of Orpheus (2004)
Included for showing us that the great man obsessed with sex, drugs, darkness and death had a sense of humour all along.

103. Four Tet – Rounds (2003)
Included for being the album to best capture Kieren Hebden’s beautiful, lingering pastoral electronic sound.

102. Subtle – For Hero:For Fool (2006)
Included for taking the surrealism of the Anticon anti-rap and placing it in a radically different context, making it something visceral and thrilling.

101. J Dilla - Donuts (2007)
Included for Dilla’s wide-reaching posthumous influence, and for crafting a coherent vision from a piecemeal, scattershot approach.

100. Hans Koller – London Ear (2005)
Included for its powerful, imaginative arrangements and marvellously swinging feel and also for capturing the final recorded moments of Steve Lacy.

99. Panda Bear – Person Pitch (2007)
Included for its resplendent, overwhelming synaesthesia of sounds and ideas.

98. Boom Bip and Doseone – The Circle (2002)
Included for its disorientating, stream-of-consciousness surrealism.

97. Bill Frisell – Blues Dream (2001)
Included for its brilliant achievement in conjuring up precisely the mood its title suggests.

96. Vijay Iyer – Reimagining (2003)
Included for its rhythmic complexity and compelling group dynamic, although it’s worth noting that any of Iyer’s albums this decade could have been included on this basis.

95. Jim O’Rourke – Insignificance (2001)
Included for its rock classicism – which in O’Rourke’s hands sounds fresh and exciting.

94. Plush – Fed/Underfed (2003, reissued 2008)
Included for the sheer commitment and scale of the former, and the emphatic melodic qualities of its de-orchestrated counterpart.

93. Quasimoto – The Unseen (2000)
Included for being the work of hip hop’s greatest mavericks.

92. Colin Towns – Orpheus Suite (2004)
Included for being an outstanding example of big band composition that both fulfils and transcends the brief of its original commission.

91. Mu – Afro Finger and Gel (2003)
Included for Maurice Fulton’s radical, wild production, the perfect backdrop for the uninhibited vocal eruptions.

90. Khonnor – Handwriting (2005)
Included for its adolescent sadness and blissful anonymity.

89. Nick Lowe – The Convincer (2001)
Included for being unafraid of maturity, taste and understatement.

88. Polar Bear – Held On The Tips of Fingers (2003)
Included for being unconcerned with what constitutes ‘jazz’ and, as a result, producing an improvised music that is at once ingratiating and challenging.

87. Elvis Costello – The Delivery Man (2004)
Included for being the highlight of his career revival so far – a loose concept album filled with songs of barbed insight and sly magic, delivered in his strongest voice.

86. Super Furry Animals – Mwng (2000)
Included for the idisyncracy of singing in a language few can understand and the accessibility of playing it in the international language of pop.

85. Kurt Rosenwinkel – The Next Step (2002)
Included for its exuberant, playful twists and turns, driving intensity and for Rosenwinkel’s total mastery of the fretboard.

84. Cornelius – Point (2002)
For its perfect dreamy heat-haze.

83. Broadcast – Ha Ha Sound (2003)
For its retro-modernist austerity.

82. Low – Things We Lost In The Fire (2001)
Included for the haunting quality of Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker’s voices and for the harrowing, stark minimalism of the songs.

81. Jamie Lidell – Multiply (2005)
Included for having the audacity to follow a glitchy electronic debut with an album of white-boy soul, and for making it irresistibly brilliant.

80. Steely Dan – Two Against Nature (2002)
Included for returning and sounding like they’d never been away, with Becker and Fagen’s quirky irony and musical sophistication thoroughly undiminished.

79. Supersilent – 6 (2003)
Included for further developing their original, already influential language of improvisation.

78. Ry Cooder – Chavez Ravine (2005)
Included for being as much a historical and socio-political documentary as vibrant song collection.

77. Est – Seven Days of Falling (2003)
For its subtlety, grace, and unhurried intelligence and, of course, for bringing European jazz to stadium audiences.

76. Radiohead – Kid A (2000)
Included for being a provocative record that I alternately loved, hated and then learned to love again.

75. Scritti Politti – White Bread Black Beer (2006)
For being a home-recorded songwriting masterclass, and for the honey-drenched wonder of Green Gartside’s voice, which remains unchanged from Scritti’s 80s heyday.

74. Steve Coleman – On The Rising of the 64 Paths (2003)
For its rigorous adherence to the groove and Coleman’s understanding that rhythm and time are music’s fundamental elements.

73. The Knife – Silent Shout (2006)
For its sinister sense of malice and cruelty.

72. Amy Winehouse – Back To Black (2006)
For the refreshingly candid songs and the sublime delivery which will hopefully outlast the lurid tabloid-baiting.

71. Daft Punk – Discovery (2001)
Included for its sheer ubiquity in the good times and for being impossible to resist.

70. Joe Lovano – Streams Of Expression (2006)
Included for Lovano’s splicing of personal story with tradition - his understanding of where jazz has been and where it still has to go.

69. Ellen Allien – Berlinette (2003)
INcluded for making brutalist, mechanistic precision sound beautiful.

68. DJ/Rupture – Minesweeper Suite (2002)
Included for defining an art for the DJ mix album.

67. Mark Kozelek – What’s Next To The Moon (2005)
Included for taking the macho swagger of AC/DC songs and exposing their vulnerability, perhaps a greater achievement than having written them in the first place.

66. Alice Coltrane – Translinear Light (2004)
Included for its inner peace and contemplation and for being a comeback of immense dignity.

65. Warren Zevon – Life’ll Kill Ya (2000)
Included for being one of the best expressions of Zevon’s inimitable black humour, one where the production is not intrusive, and where Zevon's wit and melodic strengths can cut through clearly.

64. John Abercrombie – Class Trip (2004)
Included for Abercrombie’s masterly fluidity and the languid atmospheres of the music – a class act.

63. The Bad Plus – These Are The Vistas (2003)
Included for their iconoclastic approach in building a new standard repertoire and for developing a power trio with playful sophistication.

62. Michael Brecker – Pilgrimage (2007)
Included for being so much more than just a last will and testament and, against all odds, standing tall as one of the highlights of a tremendous and justly revered catalogue.

61. Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker (2000)
Included for a pure expression of romantic songwriting, before his restlessness and complacency destroyed his artistry.

60. John Surman – Coruscating (2000)
Included for its beautiful, hymnal merging of reed instruments and string quartet – an ensemble that transpires to be both serene and immersing, somewhere in the hinterland between composed and improvised music.

59. Prefuse 73 – One Word Extinguisher (2003)
Included for its fragmented and futuristic vision.

58. Ornette Coleman – Sound Grammar (2006)
Included for not resting on his considerable laurels and continuing to push the envelope.

57. Kenny Garrett – Beyond The Wall (2006)
Included for capturing a palpable sense of the East in a largely Western language.

56. Califone – Roots and Crowns (2006)
Included for making the wayward sound coherent and for making the arcane sound contemporary.

55. Konono No. 1 – Congotronics (2005)
Included for subverting expectations of what African music is all about, and for its irrepressible energy.

54. Feist – The Reminder (2007)
Included for her psychological and emotional insight and for her beguiling voice, which here appears adaptable to a wide range of musical settings.

53. Scott Walker – The Drift (2006)
Included for fearlessly shining a spotlight on the terrors and violent extremes of recent human history.

52. Mirouslav Vitous – Universal Syncopations (2003)
Included for Vitous’ deep, resonant bass sound and for its powerful combination of lyricism and daring flight.

51. Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)
Included for its graceful melancholy and for so brilliantly redefining the group’s sound that they left little space for anything more beyond dependable consistency.

50. Keith Jarrett – Testament (2009)
Included for capturing the performances, delivered towards the close of the decade, which summed up a lifetime’s creative endeavour.

49. Burial – Untrue (2007)
Included for finally justifying the use of the word ‘urban’ as a genre classification.

48. Steve Lehman Octet - Travail, Transformation and Flow (2009)
Included for being the next major voice in jazz, if I were to get my way...

47. Madvillain – Madvillainy (2004)
Included for uniting the two greatest eccentrics in hip-hop, with predictably thrilling and imaginative results.

46. The Microphones – The Glow pt. 2 (2001)
Included for its exquisite musical landscape, attention to detail and imaginative sonic manipulations.

45. Terence Blanchard – Flow (2004)
Included for the singing presence of Blanchard’s lines, the considered pacing of his music and for its ultimate joy.

44. Alasdair Roberts – Farewell Sorrow (2003)
Included for effortlessly connecting the Scottish folk tradition with contemporary songwriting and for the rich quality of its language.

43. Bob Dylan – Love and Theft (2001)
Included for its hilarity, its magpie borrowings and for sounding both as old as the hills and as fresh as the daisies.

42. The Books – Lost and Safe (2005)
Included for its distinctive artistry in reimagining the world from found sounds and samples.

41. El-P – High Water (2004)
Included for making ‘jazzy’ hip-hop something to be both feared and admired.

40. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago (2008)
Included for its perfect isolation and for simply being every bit as beautiful and moving as everyone says it is.

39. Peter Gabriel – Up (2002)
Included for combining meticulous organisation with sensitivity and devastating human feeling and also for simply being his only new material of the whole decade.

38. Max Tundra – Mastered By Guy At The Exchange (2002)
Included for its madcap, relentless ‘anything goes’ spirit and for the unsurpassed musicality and intelligence that comes with it.

37. Godspeed You Black Emperor! – Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000)
Included for enthusiastically embracing the apocalypse.

36. Sufjan Stevens – Greetings From Michigan (2004)
Included for meshing delicate, charming songs with ornate, intelligent arrangements and for capturing both the despair and resilience of the great lake state.

35. Emmylou Harris – Red Dirt Girl (2000)
Included for its haunting, elegiac sound and for displaying a new confidence in songwriting, based on compassion and hard experience, late in her career.

34. Herbert – Plat du Jour (2004)
Included for its unflinching political conviction and for creating a new brand of music concrete from food production processes.

33. Tom Waits – Alice (2002)
Included for its theatrical poignancy and sense of longing – and simply because I underrated it considerably on first listen.

32. The Notwist – Neon Golden (2002)
Included for its drifting atmosphere, textured sounds and sense of space and time.

31. Branford Marsalis – Braggtown (2006)
Included for Marsalis’ conviction and stablility in developing one of the longest running and most impressive ensembles in contemporary jazz, reaching a pinnacle of interaction and expression in the process.

30. Arcade Fire – Funeral (2004)
Included for creating not just a set of songs, but an entire world and cast of characters and for connecting so readily and passionately with their audience.

29. Songs:Ohia – Magnolia Electric Co (2003)
Included for making some unfashionable influences sound raw and righteous and for establishing a distinctive lexicon, one that Molina may now have exhausted.

28. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People (2004)
Included for its stylistic diversity, collective ethos and genuine love of sound.

27. Gillian Welch – Time (The Revelator) (2001)
Included for its spare, delicate purity, wisdom and insight.

26. Antony and the Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now (2005)
Included for the complete and wondrous exposing of a unique soul.

25. Dave Holland Big Band – Overtime (2005)
Included for the adaptability of Holland’s formula, in using his formidable quintet sound as a springboard to a cliché-free set of big band charts.

24. Cannibal Ox – The Cold Vein (2001)
Included for presenting the harsh reality of America’s urban centres without machismo, bravado or glamour and for combining it with an appropriately heavy, abrasive sound.

23. Evan Parker and Transatlantic Art Ensemble – Boustrophedon (2002)
Included for pushing Parker away from his comfort zone in its subtlety, sympathy and precision.

22. Acoustic Ladyland – Last Chance Disco (2003)
Included for its evangelical fervour in making jazz as physical and insistent as club music and as immovable and immediate as punk.

21. David Torn – Prezens (2007)
Included for making an uncategorisable music of paradoxes – at once furious and elegant, confrontational and inviting, brutal and serene.

20. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion (2009)
Included for its sheer sense of joy and its curious asymmetry.

19. Outkast – Stankonia (2000)
Included for bringing celebrity, flamboyance, insight and humour to a too often po-faced genre and remembering the virtues of funk.

18. Robert Wyatt – Cuckooland (2003)
Included for the staunch principles and beliefs of the artist and the dignity of his art.

17. Lambchop – Is A Woman (2002)
Included for getting to the core of Kurt Wagner’s songwriting artistry and for its pervasive subtlety.

16. Fennesz – Endless Summer (2001)
Included for producing a fuzzy, all-enveloping warmth from ostensibly cold and atavistic ingredients.

15. Boards of Canada – Geogaddi (2002)
Included for their unique, trademark sound, arguably at its best here - sinister, bewitching, uncomfortable and compelling.

14. Iron and Wine/Calexico – In The Reins (2005)
Included for Sam Beam’s regal prose-poetry, the exquisite border flavour and some overwhelming songs of love and loss.

13. D’Angelo – Voodoo (2000)
Included for creating a smouldering, sensational and resilient new soul music and then audaciously refusing to do anything else for the entire decade.

12. Bruce Springsteen – We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006)
Included for demonstrating the continued relevance of the American folk tradition to the turbulent geo-political issues of this decade and for Springsteen’s conviction and empathy.

11. Wildbirds and Peacedrums – Heartcore (2008)
Included for its unrestrained emotion and explosive physicality, brilliantly explored through the tension of the percussion-vocal duo dynamic.

10. Derek Bailey – Ballads (2002)
Included for daring to go where avant-garde artists usually fear to tread (the standard repertoire), and for making the familiar sound disconcerting and unusual through doing so.

09. Lambchop – Nixon (2000)
Included at least in part for its recontextualisation of Curtis Mayfield but also for its hope, charm and poetic non-sequiturs.

08. Toumani Diabate and Ali Farka Toure – In The Heart Of The Moon (2005)
Included for establishing a musical relationship of supreme empathy and for expressing something clear, beautiful and meaningful in the simplest of terms.

07. Boredoms – Vision Creation Newsun (2001)
Included for its primal urgency and potency and for its considerable creative risks.

06. Arthur Russell - Calling Out Of Context (2004)
Included for Russell's becoming, sadly posthumously, the artist of the decade and for this album being the closest the collections of his previously unheard material got to sounding like a coherent album.

05. David Sylvian – Blemish (2003)
Included for being genuinely difficult, rather than merely obstinate, and for finding a distinctive, personal form of catharsis.

04. Dirty Projectors – Rise Above (2007)
For respecting the visceral thrill of hardcore punk and the imperatives of formal composition, redefining the parameters of the rock ensemble in the process.

03. Wilco – A Ghost Is Born (2004)
Included for introducing alchemy, spontaneity and adventure into what is ostensibly traditional rock music.

02.Wayne Shorter – Alegria (2003)
Included for not only reaffirming the pre-eminent status one of contemporary music’s greatest talents, but for igniting a whole new phase of adventure in the twilight of a long career.

01. Bjork – Vespertine (2001)
Included for its intimacy and sensuality (a bizarre combination of iciness and warmth) and for Bjork’s innate understanding of the timbre and shape of human voices.



















c

Review Of The Decade Part 1: 100 Best Films

100. Primer (Shane Carruth, 2004, UK release 2005)
This low-budget, hugely claustrophobic science fiction feature, brilliantly and mercilessly concise at just 78 minutes, suggests there is still life in independent American film-making. It’s ostensibly about a well-worn movie subject - time travel, but there is something mysterious, elusive and intriguing at its core. The physics is no doubt questionable I’m sure.

99. Brick (Rian Johnson, 2005, UK release, 2006)
I am a bit of a sucker for a good high school movie, for there is no more competitive, political and claustrophobic an environment than a school. ‘Brick’ was a devious, imaginative and, it must be admitted, slightly geeky take on the genre. In combining the high school movie with sleuth noir, this could easily have turned out to be a sterile formal exercise, or a whimsical conceit. However, the energy and spirit with which Johnson carried out this high-minded exercise in lowbrow film-making rendered it immensely enjoyable.

98. Dodgeball (Rawson Marshall Thurber, 2004)
Some will probably assume this film is in here merely to prove that I’m not an arthouse cinema snob. To some extent, that’s probably true, but I do genuinely love this film. It’s one of those great comedies where the gags get better with familiarity and Ben Stiller’s performance as the repulsive caricature White Goodman may be his finest achievement to date. Completely silly, of course, but we can all use some levity from time to time.

97. The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)
Here is a film I would never have expected to like in a million years – but somehow Stephen Frears and Peter Morgan’s speculative examination on the inner life of the monarch following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales is fascinating. It’s also a politically astute film, demonstrating the shrewd opportunism of Tony Blair (that great impersonation from Michael Sheen).

96. Wild Combination – A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, 2008)
95. The Devil and Daniel Johnston (Jeff Feurzeig, 2005, UK release 2006)
These two films are the most personal, revealing and intelligent of many documentary profiles of musicians released during the decade. Jeff Feurzeig’s documentary is first and foremost an affecting portrayal of a troubled individual, but it also makes a valiant attempt at explaining Johnton’s appeal as an artist, in spite of his lack of technical ability, to the relatively uninitiated. Matt Wolf does a brilliant job given the relative paucity of footage of Arthur Russell performing – and his labour of love film has played a major part in the rediscovery of Russell and his music over the last few years. There is something particularly moving about the contributions from Russell’s parents.

94. Red Lights (Cedric Kahn, 2004)
Kahn is an adaptable and assured film-maker and this adaptation of a Georges Simenon novel is full of uncomfortable tension. It’s a tight, carefully orchestrated thriller that deserved a wider audience. It will be interesting to see what Kahn does next.

93. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michael Gondry, 2004)
The romantic comedy is such a debased genre now that it’s always a revelation when a film turns up and fulfils the brief with wit and imagination. Gondry’s surrealist and absurdist take is joyful and ingenious, with a typically intellectual, game playing script from Charlie Kaufman. All the manipulations could easily become irritating were it not for the charming and unsentimental performances from Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet. Indeed, by way of contrast, Gondry’s subsequent film, ‘The Science of Sleep’ amplified all of the quirks without any of the substance, and may well be one of the most infuriating films of the decade.

92. Belleville Rendezvous (Sylvain Chomet, 2002, UK release 2003)
Chomet’s playful animation is full of bright ideas, visual humour, caricatures of stereotypes and warm invention. It is an absolute joy to watch.

91. The Constant Gardener (Fernando Meirelles, 2005)
This is, I think, a greatly superior film to Meirelles ‘City of God’. That film, whilst exciting and impressively made, threatened to glamorise the violence of street youth living in depravation in the favelas of Sao Paolo. ‘The Constant Gardner’ is a taut, entertaining thriller with a strong ethical heart. It is an impassioned film.

90. Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright, 2004)
As brilliant as Channel 4’s comedy ‘Spaced’ was, few could have expected its creators to go on to make a sprightly paced parody of a zombie movie with a razor sharp script, plenty of brilliant jokes. Even fewer could have expected it to be quite so successful – a fact that suggests British audiences prefer intelligent comedy to the lowest common denominator material routinely churned out.

89. The Sun (Alexander Sokurov, 2005)
I’m more than a little bemused by the films of Alexander Sokurov, which are largely very slow, fuzzy and impressionistic. I have to admit I loathed the highly acclaimed ‘Russian Ark’ – its one 90 minute shot technical achievement was remarkable, but it really was little more than a tour through the Hermitage museum, complete with historical reconstructions and lavish costumes. This, for me, does not make for a good piece of cinema. Much more interesting is this bizarre, deeply mysterious portrait of the downfall of Hirohito. The film presents Hirohito as isolated and perhaps mad, and it brilliantly captures the sense of a deluded divine God realising that his divinity is temporary.

88. Together (Lukas Moodysson, 2000, UK release 2001)
‘Together’ is the slightly better of Moodysson’s initial breezy feelgood films, shot through with humane charm and empathy. A hippy commune is a ripe target, of course, but Moodysson’s film is gentler and more sensitive than simply an all-out attack. It is brilliantly funny, but finds room also for anxiety, loneliness and thwarted love.

87. Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)
The films of Judd Apatow, often dismissed in some quarters as macho or juvenile, are actually rather sweet, sensitive and entertaining pictures. Bizarrely, this film prompted protests from pro-choice campaigners on the grounds that it was anti-abortion. Clearly, this was not the film’s concern – had there been a termination early on, the film would have been cut crudely short, or may well have become a decidedly more melancholy and reflective picture. Instead, it’s a deeply enjoyable, frequently thoughtful look at how to manage a supposedly unwanted pregnancy, and a real affirmation of the abilities of human beings to change and mature through experience.

86. Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
Arnold’s ‘Red Road’ is much admired but, for me, a flawed film with laudable ambitions. ‘Fish Tank’ is the feature that has really established her as a director to watch – and it is a film of great empathy and powerful observation. Arnold creates a brilliant sense of restriction and claustrophobia – and the desire for escape in the teenage Mia is palpable.

85. Mysterious Skin (Gregg Araki, 2004, UK release 2005)
This may be too relentlessly bleak a film even for me, but I include it here because of the major transition it might mark in the careers of Gregg Araki and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. It was Levitt’s first really substantial role, and he handles the difficult material adroitly and convincingly. For Araki, it was a step away from doomed generation cliché, and lightweight movie making into something more powerful and genuinely confrontational.

84. Sicko (Michael Moore, 2007)
Yes Moore is crude, crass, patronising and misleading. He is not a documentary maker, but a polemicist. Some of his more grandstanding claims are ludicrous – and, even in this film there are plenty of them (the lauding of the ‘perfect’ health systems of Britain and France and, even worse, the admiration of Cuba). However, intelligent viewers who are able to distinguish the valid points from the glaring holes should still be affected by the real human stories he brings to his films. The amount of suffering that the American insurance-based system has caused is nothing short of scandalous, and Moore is right to highlight its failings for the vulnerable.

83. Vera Drake (Mike Leigh, 2004, UK release 2005)
It’s usual for Mike Leigh films to be superbly acted – but Imelda Staunton’s performance in this is one of the greatest performances in a British film this decade. It is impossible not to become immersed in her story. A cup of tea, it would appear, can’t quite solve everything.

82. My Summer of Love (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2004)
Pawel Pawlikowski’s second film neatly balances a tender intimacy with danger and confrontation. It’s beautiful to watch and blessed with effortlessly natural performances from Natalie Press and Emily Blunt.

81. Lilya-4-Ever (Lukas Moodysson, 2002, UK release 2003)
This disturbing, upsetting film relies solely on spiritual images of angels and ideas of ascension for levity. It represented a sharp turn for Moodysson, previously the maker of gentle and charming films such as ‘Together’. ‘Lilya’ is an entirely different beast, a bleak tale of abandonment, depravation and desperation in youth. Unfortunately, it seemed to lead Moodysson up an experimental cul-de-sac as his subsequent features dealt in pretentious posturing and gonzo pornography.

80. Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, 2008)
I need to watch this film for a second time, for its labyrinthine portrayal of the Neopolitan mafia is difficult to follow. These story strands are careful to include the real life cost of the Camorra’s activities, and this film has a shocking and powerful impact.

79. Turtles Can Fly (Bahman Ghobadi, 2005, UK release 2006)
‘Turtles Can Fly’ may achieve some sort of classic status simply for being the first film to be made in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. That it is also a film of tremendous power, detailing the resourcefulness and resilience of children in terrible circumstances, suggests that it is worth recognition for much more than that.

78. London to Brighton (Paul Andrew Williams, 2006)
For sheer, gut-wrenching tension, there have been few films this decade to match this. With a British film industry preoccupied to the point of tedium with gangsters and violent crime, it’s hard to pick out the films with some substance. This film is more concerned with grim reality than with the glamorisation of criminals, and the thrill of its chase is extraordinary.

77. Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002, UK release 2003)
Well, it’s one way to spice up the mundanity of office life, I suppose. Shainberg’s kinky film is, beneath its unsubtle surface, a credible and intelligent piece of work. James Spader must surely be getting concerned that he continues to be typecast in roles where some kind of sexual perversion is called for.

76. Blackboards (Samira Makhmalbaf, 2000)
This film presents a vivid and empathetic portrait of displacement, as itinerant teachers roam the land with blackboards strapped to their backs. The film has that distinctively Iranian absurdist humour, mostly emerging from seemingly endless circular arguments. The teachers struggle valiantly to find children to educate – instead their blackboards largely offer protection in a violent world.

75. Roger Dodger (Dylan Kidd, 2002, UK release 2003)
Between them, director Dylan Kidd and actor Campbell Scott create a truly loathsome figure in anti-hero Roger Swanson, an advertising expert and frequenter of bars who decides to educate his visiting 16-year old nephew in the art of seduction. It is simultaneously satisfying and distressing to watch his downfall.

74. Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001, UK release 2002)
Richard Kelly’s absorbing, entrancing fantasy was deservedly popular (although I sincerely hope I never have to hear Gary Jules’ version of ‘Mad World’ ever again). It’s funny to think that it made a career for Jake Gyllenhaal, who is offbeat and quirky here, before becoming a reliable bland lead. What a shame Kelly has disappeared into the realms of the ludicrous with his subsequent films.

73. The Proposition (John Hillcoat, 2005, UK release 2006)
An Australian western with a typically malevolent performance from Ray Winstone and a script from Nick Cave, ‘The Proposition’ has all the ingredients of a dark, magnetic thriller, and it does indeed deliver. It’s a film with terrifying moments, and it is undoubtedly negative in outlook – infused as it is with the dry fatalist spirit of Peckinpah.

72. 13 (Tzameti) (Gela Babluani, 2005, UK release 2006)
This extraordinary piece, filmed in monochrome, is a taut and ice cold piece of cinematic confrontation. Here is a film that lays bare the dangers of gambling in unbearably tense style, with detailed photography of terrified faces.

71. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000, UK release 2001)
This may not be Ang Lee’s most original or profound film, but there is simply no denying how stirring and exciting it is, even on repeated viewing. It’s an old-fashioned romantic yarn and the action sequences are staggering.

70. Code Unknown (Michael Haneke, 2000, UK release 2001)
‘Code Unknown’ gave the first hint of Haneke’s bid for world domination – a film in which he ratcheted up his ambitions and attempted to reposition his austerity as popular cinema. This is a sceptical, questioning and thoughtful film which, characteristically for Haneke, asks most of its questions of its complicit audience without providing any clear answers or direction. Juliette Binoche, as ever, is superb.

69. The Beat My Heart Skipped (Jacques Audiard, 2005)
Audiard is a film-maker who keeps getting better (indeed, his latest film ‘A Prophet’ sounds like a contender for film of 2010) . ‘The Beat My Heart Skipped’ is a gangster film, ostensibly a remake of James Toback’s ‘Fingers’, but so much more compelling and exciting than that description suggests. Romain Duris’ presence is magnetic, and the film is muscular and stylish.

68. Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)
I’m not generally a fan of biopics – they are frequently by their very nature predictable and conventional – but photographer Anton Corbijn’s first film about Joy Division’s Ian Curtis is brilliantly constructed and hypnotic. The film somehow manages to be sensitive to the long-suffering Deborah Curtis and to Ian himself, who emerges as something of an unreliable, duplicitous romantic, if such a thing is possible.

67. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008, UK release 2009)
It would have been quite easy for this beguiling film to get lost amongst the current craze for all things vampiric. Instead, it became one of the most successful foreign language films of the decade in the UK. It’s a blackly comic, charming and gruesome story that still finds room for a brave and intelligent investigation of burgeoning emotions and attractions at the dawning of adolescence.

66. Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach, 2002)
Ken Loach’s Palme D’Or victory with ‘The Wind That Shakes The Barley’ seemed like one of those victories designed to recognise a whole career rather than highlight one of his best works. ‘Sweet Sixteen’ was arguably his best film of the decade – superbly scripted by Paul Laverty and with a naturalistic, urgent performance from newcomer Martin Compston.

65. Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, 2008)
Davies’ return to the cinema, wonderfully, proved to be a huge event, ironically celebrated by the very institutions that had previously failed to fund him. This love letter to Liverpool also comes with a barbed, acerbic side, and huge helpings of working class pride and homosexual anxiety. It’s at turns funny, moving and provocative. As ever, Davies has thought carefully about the music – and the sequence of images of high rise blocks set to ‘The Folks Who Live on the Hill’ is extraordinary.

64. Howl’s Moving Castle (Hiyao Miyazaki, 2004, UK release 2005)
I think I prefer this to the much loved ‘Spirited Away’, if only because the source material (the children’s novel by Diana Wynne Jones) reminds me of my childhood. Miyazaki has made his own wonderful version of this story, with superbly exciting sequences and memorable images.

63. Head-On (Fatih Akin, 2004, UK release 2005)
Akin, a Turkish man living in Germany, established himself as a director to watch with this harsh, gritty and impassioned film detailing a marriage of convenience between a brutal alcoholic and the daughter of strict Turkish Muslims. The film is initially savage, but a form of compassion comes through towards the end. Throughout, it is brave and honest film-making.

62. The Man Without A Past (Aki Kaurismaki, 2002, UK release 2003)
Kaurismaki’s eccentric, wacky comedies are certainly not to everyone’s tastes. This is comfortably his best film to date though, filled with hilarious deadpan wit and ingenious repetition. There are so many unusual characters delivering peculiar dialogue to relish.

61. Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)
Visual artist Steve McQueen made a hard hitting impact with his debut feature, one which conveyed the degradation and brutality of the Maze prison both immediately before and during the hunger strikes in torrid detail. The film is not presented as a conventional narrative – but rather juxtaposes its scenes of desperation and rage against a crucial and brilliant central scene, in which Bobby Sands (convincingly portrayed by Michael Fassbender) discusses the prospect of the strike with a Priest. The ghostly, chilling voice of Margaret Thatcher hovers over the whole piece – and there was understandable anger that the film risked sympathising with terrorists by refusing to show the complete picture. Yet McQueen’s film is not even about the complete picture – it is about the violence, rage and inhumanity of these horrendous conditions.

60. Best In Show (Christopher Guest, 2002)
There’s a sense in which Christopher Guest goes for easy targets with his comedies – and those who compete in dog shows (both the animals and their owners) are certainly ripe for comic attack. Like ‘Waiting For Guffman’ before it, ‘Best In Show’ is hysterically, laugh-out-loud funny throughout.

59. Roberto Succo (Cedric Kahn, 2001, UK release 2002)
Kahn’s kinetic true-crime drama is disturbingly watchable in its portrayal of a brutal, seemingly insane killer who also maintains a completely rational and convincing alternate identity. Stefano Casseti’s performance is breathtaking.

58. The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002, UK release 2003)
Polanski’s artistry as a film-maker now again threatens to be overshadowed by his dreadful actions many years ago. ‘The Pianist’ is one of the best films of his uneven later career – with brilliant sets recreating the Poland of the holocaust. It’s a disturbing and harrowing picture, with even its central survival narrative failing to bring much levity given the total terror of the time.

57. The Magdalene Sisters (Peter Mullan, 2002)
Mullan’s broadside against injustice to women in the Magdalene laundries left the Catholic Church enraged. Perhaps that is testament to the power of his vision and his assured touch as a director. His film, a combination of searing attack and black comedy, is well-judged and features some superb performances from Anne-Marie Duff and Geraldine McEwan.

56. Touching The Void (Kevin Macdonald, 2003)
Kevin McDonald’s reconstruction of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates’ attempt to climb Siula Grande is tense and viscerally exciting, in spite of our foreknowledge of Simpson’s survival. Macdonald bravely avoids backstory or context – this is simply a story of the expedition, the terrible decision made by Yates and Simpson’s extraordinary will to survive. The mountain scenes look sumptuous and the combination of interview footage and reconstruction works brilliantly. Whilst ostensibly a documentary, Macdonald tentatively steps into the world of drama here, with engaging results. He would go on to make a promising feature adaptation of Giles Foden’s novel ‘The Last King of Scotland’.

55. Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2005, UK release 2006)
Hou had a somewhat uneven decade – with some of his films being rather stifling and impenetrable. This elegant triptych of love stories (each of which sees the same lead actors take on different roles) though remains one of my favourite films of recent years – a poignant and fascinating cinematic experiment.

54. All Or Nothing (Mike Leigh, 2002)
This marked a return to familiar territory for Leigh after his experiment in Gilbert and Sullivan film ‘Topsy Turvey’. The brilliant performance from Timothy Spall dominates the film, again demonstrating Leigh’s aptitude for working with actors. Indeed, he draws so much from his performers that he hardly needs any other resources. His films have an intimate, searching quality for which Leigh can be easily defended against misguided charges of misanthropy and caricature.

53. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, UK release 2008)
I’m deeply sceptical of the rush to proclaim Paul Thomas Anderson as the great saviour of American cinema – a new legend to rival Scorsese. His debut ‘Hard Eight’ remains his best film, if only because it lacks the grandiose ambitions of much of his subsequent work. ‘Boogie Nights’ showed promise but ultimately saw Anderson overreach himself, while tepeated viewings of ‘Magnolia’ reveal it to be overblown and horribly contrived (as well as hugely derivative of Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’). ‘Punch Drunk Love’ was by comparison oddly lightweight and insubstantial. ‘There Will Be Blood’ is the first of his films to suggest some of the gravitas may be real – it’s a film that occupies its own dark and sinister space, tremendously aided by Jonny Greenwood’s searing soundtrack.

52. The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2001)
The prolific Coen brothers’ first great film of the decade – this is an idiosyncratic, hypnotic contemporary film noir. It is stylised in the best sense of the word – involving the creation of a parallel world in film – one that evokes the murky world of great American crime fiction. It’s one of the Coens’ least extravagant and most controlled pictures.

51. The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001)
Haneke’s stark character study, adapted from the novel by Nobel winner Elfriede Jelinek is as uncomfortable a film as this great director has made. Its examination of sexual repression and domination is both unfashionable and uncompromising – we tend not to want to discuss or accept more perverse aspects of human sexuality. Isabelle Huppert’s performance is among the best of her illustrious career.

50. Kandahar (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 2001)
Made before 9/11, legendary Iranian director Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s humble, simple but quietly illuminating film assumed a new popularity and importance in light of the calamitous geo-political events of this decade. ‘Kandahar’ is disarmingly direct and almost anti-dramatic. It seems to end without resolution and has little of the conventional elements that draw audiences to films. It is all the more intriguing and original for this. It provides a vivid, visually arresting study of an oppressed nation.

49. I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2006, UK release 2007)
The oblique side of Tsai Ming-Liang’s film-making reached an apotheosis in this murky, peculiar film. Indeed, when I saw it at a London Film Festival screening, patience was running thin and a large portion of the audience walked out during the first thirty minutes. They actually missed a treat – perseverance revealed a surreal but humane and engaging film with its own unique rhythm and shape, a film concerned with the very unfashionable subject of care.

48. Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2003)
I was agnostic about Lynne Ramsay’s much admired ‘Ratcatcher’, largely because of its heavy reliance on banal imagery of the countryside and its lack of narrative substance. ‘Morvern Callar’, an adaptation of Alan Warner’s novel, is, for me at least, much better, because Ramsay’s impressionism works much more effectively in the context of a conventional story. This is a striking, memorable film with a superb lead performance from Samantha Morton.

47. Beyond Hatred (Olivier Meyrou 2005, UK release 2007)
46. Capturing The Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki, 2003, UK release 2004)
45. Aileen – Life and Death of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 2003)

Here are three documentary films that go right to the dark heart of human existence – and all three manage to do so with elements of healthy scepticism and compassion. I usually find the lumbering presence of Nick Broomfield and his boom mic incredibly annoying, especially when he’s trying to concoct a conspiracy theory. In recent years, he has mellowed somewhat, and has begun to investigate significant subjects. This update of his portrait of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos is potent and unsettling. Broomfield treates Wuornos and her horrible, deeply troubled life with patience and care, and a case emerges for her as a woman turned violent through persistent neglect and abuse. That being said, the space Broomfield affords Wuornos to talk reveals her as misleading, her willingness to confess but then retract obfuscating her already complicated story.

Jarecki’s film is the most difficult in that he stumbled across this story of the collapse of a family following a paedophilia case when preparing a movie about party clowns. His film certainly raises the question of ethics in documentary making – with one family member refusing participation, did he have any right to use this extraordinary home video footage? At what point does this become mere voyeurism and no longer in the public interest? Yet his film also asks important questions about guilt, evidence and the presumption of innocence.

Less widely seen is Meyrou’s wonderful, dispassionate study of a French family coping with the murder of their gay son by homophobic skinheads. This is a sobering, moving account showing compassion for both the victims and the angry, ignorant criminals.

44. The Squid and the Whale (Noah Baumbach, 2005, UK release 2006)
Noah Baumbach graduated from his assistant writing work with Wes Anderson to make what is arguably a better movie than anything Anderson has yet produced (although I do admire ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’). It has its fair share of brilliant cringe-inducing moments, but has excised Anderson’s tendency towards irksome self-conscious eccentricity. Also, beneath the surface laughs, ‘The Squid and the Whale’ is a convincing and excoriating portrait of family disintegration.


43. L’Enfant (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes, 2005, UK release 2006)
The Dardennes may have perfected their distinctive strand of neo-realism here, in this meticulously controlled, brilliantly acted drama. In light of the success of their previous movies, they could no doubt have extended their budget and resources for this picture. How refreshing it is that they stuck doggedly to their guns, and made a believable and engaging drama with no trickery or manipulation.

42. Lantana (Ray Lawrence, 2001, UK release 2002)
41. Jindabyne (Ray Lawrence, 2006, UK release 2007)
When ‘Lantana’ emerged in 2001, Australian director Ray Lawrence had not made a film since his 1985 adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel ‘Bliss’. With these two films, he revealed himself, quite unexpectedly, to be a master of the thriller genre, and a film-maker developing a new cinematic language for Australia. These are tense, edge-of-the-seat dramas with intelligence and nuance, and both dominated by superb lead performances (Anthony LaPaglia in ‘Lantana’, Gabriel Byrne in ‘Jindabyne’).

40. Etre Et Avoir (Nicholas Philibert, 2002, UK release 2003)
Philibert’s documentary about life in a small French rural infant school is charming in the best sense of the word. It’s a film that, like the teacher on whom it focuses, exercises great patience, understanding and consideration.

39. Under The Sand (Francois Ozon 2000, UK release 2001)
It’s tempting to dismiss Francois Ozon as a ‘Jack of all trades but master of none’ and there are times when he seems close to being a French Michael Winterbottom – following his every whim in every conceivable direction. He makes a lot of films, many of them bold and distinctive but ultimately flawed. Every so often there comes along one which stands out, and ‘Under the Sand’, along with his thoroughly disturbing short ‘See The Sea’ is probably the best example of the artistry of which he is capable. It’s his most restrained picture – a quiet study of grief and its effect on the mind that draws the very best from the characteristically brilliant Charlotte Rampling.

38. The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmark 2006, UK release 2007)
This is a brilliant dramatisation of lives under the Stasi in East Germany, suspenseful and compelling and delivered with a strong moral purpose. The conflict and doubt felt by surveillance operative and interrogator Wiesle is sensitively handled and superbly portrayed.

37. A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006)
36. Persepolis (Vincent Parranaud, Marjane Satrapi 2007. UK release 2008)
35. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
These three films make superb, intelligent use of animation to produce very adult, questioning and moving cinematic statements. ‘Waltz With Bashir’ is effective in its use of animation to produce a dream-like fog of obfuscation, a sense enhanced by Max Richter’s languid score. The contrast with news footage at the film’s conclusion brings home the brutal reality buried in the director’s subconscious. ‘Persepolis’ is a visual memoir, and all the more intriguing for being animated – a brilliant combination of creative imagination and shocking reality. ‘A Scanner Darkly’ might be Richard Linklater’s best film – and a brilliant harnessing of his longstanding fascination with the rotoscoping animation technique to create something edgy and unsettling. Both Keanu Reeves and Robert Downey Jr. deliver career-best performances. I find all three films, in their varying ways, striking and moving.

34. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Christian Mungiu, 2007, UK release 2008)
This film is unflinchingly grim – but about as accurate and disturbing a microcosmic picture of communist Romania as could be made. It tells the story of an illegal abortion and its impact on the friendship between two female students. It is terse and skeletal – with nothing artificial to heighten the palpable drama and horror. It is a brilliant example of the burgeoning new cinema in Eastern Europe.

33. Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell, 2006)
For me, this is one of the most underrated and misunderstood films of the decade. It’s mostly dismissed as a ‘sex film’ (yes, it contains a lot of explicit real sex and yes, it still managed to obtain a BBFC 18 certificate) when it is actually a film about sex. More importantly, it’s a film about sexual anxiety, a subject rarely covered in American films, at least outside the awkward comedies of Woody Allen. Its great achievement is to make the intimate stories of its characters involving and affecting, and to present aspects of modern sexual lives (both straight and gay) in a candid, matter-of-fact and inclusive way. It’s also uproariously funny in places, as any film about sex should be. Compare this with Catherine Breillat’s disastrous ‘Sex Is Comedy’, which manages to be horrifically pretentious and funny for all the wrong reasons.

32. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
Many may feel that ‘Memento’ should be higher on this list – but, along with films such as ‘Seven’ and ‘The Usual Suspects’, it’s one of those pictures with a markedly diminished impact on repeated viewing. Still, the shock of the new that comes with its reverse structure, taut plotting and technical virtuosity remains viscerally exciting and its memory lingers long in the mind.

31. The Return (Andrey Zwyagintsev 2003, UK release 2004)
‘The Return’ deservedly took the top prize at the Venice film festival, its tense story about a previously absent father taking his two sons on a ‘vacation’ through the Russian wilderness being thoroughly unnerving and compelling. The film is visually fascinating too – portentous and brooding. It’s hard not to feel the film’s pathos enhanced by the knowledge that its fifteen year old star died in a tragic accident shortly after filming was completed.

30. Moolaade (Ousmane Sembene, 2004)
Stylistically, the last film from the ‘father of African cinema’ is about as direct, unadorned and unpretentious as possible. It’s also an enlivening and entertaining film about a thoroughly unpleasant subject – female genital mutilation. It’s both vital and wonderful that Sembene was able to make this brave and radical picture, and it stands as proof that male directors are capable of making feminist films. Also important is the reminder that Moolaade offers of the importance of the radio in providing access to impartial news.

29. Requiem For A Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000, UK release 2001)
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with this remarkable film and I have learned through experience that it is about as far as you can get from a ‘date movie’. I’ve watched it several times, and I must say that I find its relentless, stylised suffering rather difficult to endure. I’m also a little agnostic about some of the MTV-style funky split screen effects Aronofsky likes to use. Yet, beneath its surface is a harrowing, horrifying and brilliant nightmare in which the beautiful Jared Leto and Jennifer Connolly are thoroughly destroyed and degraded. The performance of Ellen Bursteyn is perhaps even more tragic, an undeserving and vulnerable victim in this simultaneously repellent and compelling descent into hell.

28. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007, UK release 2008)
Jean-Dominique Bauby’s dictated memoir of life after an unexpected severe stroke seems like one of those works of literature that should be impossible to film. Julian Schnabel brilliantly turns it into a vividly cinematic experience, and goes as far as possible in his quest to empathise with Bauby’s state, both physically and emotional. His techniques are simple and direct, but also virtuosic – and he expands on Bauby’s book by providing more sensitive roles for the women in Bauby’s life.

27. Unrelated (Joanna Hogg, 2008)
A film about a group of middle class people on holiday sounds like a tedious and lifeless experience. In actual fact, Joanna Hogg’s picture is one of the best British debuts in many years, full of dramatic tension and genuine sadness. It’s both compelling and convincing.

26. Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005, UK release 2006)
Herzog has always been an unpredictable film-maker but these days he’s also uneven. ‘Grizzly Man’ certainly brought out the best in this maverick, wayward director who is capable of real genius. It’s hard to accept that this is a documentary, given how ludicrous and reckless its subject, bear-obsessive Timothy Treadwell, appears to have been. He could easily have been one of those characters Klaus Kinski might have played in the early Herzog dramas. There’s a sense that Herzog’s directorial presence is minimal here – much of the film uses Treadwell’s own recovered footage of the bears and of himself. Yet its testament to Herzog’s skilful oversight that he manages to find both the sadness and the comedy in Treadwell’s extreme persona.

25. 3 Iron (Kim Ki Duk, 2004, UK release 2005)
Kim Ki-Duk has made some of the strangest films of recent times, many of them combining savage violence and brutality with an almost sentimental romantic core. 3 Iron may well be the best of these, both enigmatic and engrossing. Most of the essential dialogue occurs without language and the performances are accordingly nuanced and effective. It is a deeply unconventional story filled with brilliant and often baffling ideas.

24. Saraband (Ingmar Bergman, 2003, UK release 2005)
The great Ingmar Bergman signed off with a film as confrontational and tense as any in his career, brilliantly performed by Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann. Some noted the fact that the film was made for Swedish TV, but then so was the brilliant Fanny and Alexander – the small screen never seemed to limit Bergman’s stately mastery of the chamber drama, nor mute his overwhelming seriousness. Ostensibly a sequel to 1973’s ‘Scenes From A Marriage’, ‘Saraband’ also stands independently as a self-contained, brilliantly hermetic work. It is both austere and severe, and full of characteristically agonising emotional revelations – but, even in his 80s, Bergman retained an unflinching acuity and desire to unveil the dark secrets of domestic life.

23. Vendredi Soir (Claire Denis, 2002, UK release 2003)
I am aware that ‘Vendredi Soir’ is less appreciated than many of Denis’ films, particularly ‘Beau Travail’, but I think this may be her bravest, most direct work. It is the cinematic depiction of a one night stand and the events leading up to it – nothing more and nothing less. Few directors would ever present these events in such a matter of fact manner, and there is an empathetic physicality and eroticism in the sensitively filmed, almost solemn act itself. This film unfolds in what seems like near-real time, and with a quiet grace and composure.

22. Old Boy (Park Chan-Wook)
Park Chan-Wook’s dark, hyper-violent nightmare fantasy is one of the most sophisticated and ingenious of all revenge thrillers – so much so that it basically reinvents the genre.

21. The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino)
Sorrentino is the leading light in an Italian cinematic revival, not least because he is a film-maker of tremendous technical flair who loves deploying visual tricks and clever editing. Yet, beneath the tremendous style of ‘The Consequences of Love’ is a story of great substance and my lingering impression was of a deeply sad narrative with a brutal ending. It also contains a wonderful performance from Toni Servillo, a man rapidly staking a claim to be one of the best actors not just in Italy, but in Europe.

20. No Country For Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007, UK release 2008)
The combination of the Coens’ mischievous irony and Cormac McCarthy’s disturbing literary landscape makes for one of their finest films. The irritating side of their oeuvre (chiefly the goofy comedy) is jettisoned in favour of a relatively straight but brilliantly tense and dramatic reconstruction of McCarthy’s novel. It’s faithful to the source text but the Coens add plenty of their own, and Javier Bardem’s performance is terrifying in its unhinged lunacy.

19. The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
The more I think about this unsettling, intelligent film, the more I think it is another of Haneke’s spellbinding masterpieces. No other director of recent times has such a questing spirit and such consistency in their results. It’s a characteristically open-ended film, leaving many questions unanswered and with provocative detail to be spotted in its fascinating closing scene. The brilliant monochrome photography creates a claustrophobic, disturbing mood.

18. The Son’s Room (Nanni Moretti, 2001, UK release 2002)
Before this deeply moving and satisfying film, Moretti was better known as a director of quirky comedies. Whilst those films were often entertaining, they didn’t have the international impact of this serious, highly involving story of family tragedy and the pain that can come as a result of cruel chance. ‘The Son’s Room’ is an intimate piece, brilliantly capturing the disorientation and confusion of grief. Moretti directs himself with consummate ease, something not always achieved by actors who are also writers and directors, largely perhaps because his presence seems light and lacking in ego.

17. Far From Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002, UK release 2003)
Todd Haynes’ best film is a beautiful homage in the guise of a mischievous subversion. This is a deeply moving and thoroughly accurate account of racial and sexual prejudice in 1950s suburban American, issues that could not be confronted in the cinema of that time. In contriving to combine the two, Haynes pulls off an intriguing and enticing dramatic coup, and produces a beautifully designed work of intensity and power. Yet the film is also a genuine paen to the day-glo Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk, a passionate defence of cinema at its most extravagant. Although it is a film containing great sadness and cruelty, the superb performances of Julianne Moore, Denis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert imbue it with a resonant dignity and compassion.

16. Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004, UK release 2005)
There is a disturbing dearth of comedy in this list – perhaps because film writers seem unable to come up with scripts as sharp as the great comedies of the past (various Billy Wilder films spring to mind, or Joseph Manciewicz’s ‘All About Eve’). Even Woody Allen appears to have largely thrown away his talent. There may be an heir to the throne however in Alexander Payne. ‘Election’ was a brilliantly acute high school satire with much wider social implications. ‘Sideways’ is a similarly well observed study of mid-life males in crisis, blessed with a superb performance from the ever-endearing Paul Giamatti. This is hilarious in the most intelligent of ways, simultaneously acerbic and wistful.

15. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001, UK release 2002)
Tsai is one of the world’s most idiosyncratic and uncompromising directors, his speech-less films initially seeming oblique, but eventually conveying far more than words in their gestures, soundtrack music and bizarre set pieces. ‘What Time Is It There?’ moves at a typically glacial pace, and requires some degree of patience. It feels like a thoughtful rumination on love and loss, characterised by long takes and the compulsive behaviour of its characters. Given time, it reveals itself as a work of gentle beauty.

14. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003, UK release 2004)
Van Sant is the kind of film-maker who oscillates wildly between personal, esoteric projects and Hollywood-funded exercises in conventional tedium. ‘Elephant’ falls proudly into the first category, part of a long run of listless films said to be inspired by Bela Tarr, beginning with ‘Gerry’ and ending with ‘Paranoid Park’. This is the most successful picture in that sequence, although it seems designed to obfuscate and frustrate more than to elucidate. It simply portrays a Columbine-style high school massacre, thoroughly determined not to explain it or apportion blame. Various possible explanations are hinted at (including violent video games), but the film is ultimately much more about its capturing of a listless, uneventful atmosphere, where mundane reality is punctuated in the most brisk and violent of means. For a film about terror and tragedy, it’s remarkably beautiful and technically virtuosic.

13. Ten (Abbas Kiarostami, 2002)
‘Ten’ is an important movie – in its mischievous blending of documentary and fiction, in what it reveals about personal and social relations in Iran and in the way Kiarostami effectively absents himself from the action by placing two fixed cameras in a car and simply filming the ensuing conversations. All the direction happens before (in preparatory conversations with the actors) and afterwards, in the editing process. In between, the actors are effectively free to act however they like – and it is perhaps through this freedom that Kiarostami elicits such naturalistic and real contributions. Kiarostami’s critics maintain that ‘Ten’ is the type of film anyone could make. In practical terms this is no doubt true – the resources required are minimal, and footage can easily be edited creatively now on a home computer. But would anyone else decide to make this film? Would just anyone see it as the best route to providing illuminating social and political commentary on contemporary Iran? Would anyone else be so preoccupied with the position of women?

12. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001, UK release 2002)
‘Mulholland Drive’ is one of Lynch’s weirdest and greatest creations. With two powerful central female performances (Naomi Watts and Laura Harring), it avoids the charges of misogyny levelled at films such as ‘Blue Velvet’. It’s certainly all seen through Lynch’s male gaze (with a familiar Lynchian helping of violence against women), but its world is a good deal more sensitive and sensual, albeit nightmarishly fraught with danger and menace. Ridiculous and illogical as ‘Mulholland Drive’ is, it is possibly Lynch’s most compelling and convincing film. Writing this now, I’m also struck by the similarities between this and Weerasethakul’s parallel worlds in ‘Tropical Malady’. Where Weerasethakul presents his weird transitions in a matter of fact way, Lynch amplifies the craziness and distorts situations self-consciously. With ‘Inland Empire’, this tactic became too self-indulgent and extravagant – here, it is creepily disorientating and distinctive.

11. Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze, 1999, UK release 2000)
This seems to have been omitted from all the decade reviews I’ve seen, yet the UK release date was March 2000. It’s certainly a far superior film to Jonze and Kaufman’s more convoluted follow up ‘Adaptation’, one of the most stylistically and dramatically inventive American films of recent times. The action is of course wildly fantastical but this film brilliantly encapsulates Orson Welles’ dictum that great film need not be real, but should convey truth. The truth inherent in ‘Being John Malkovich’ is the human preoccupation with wanting to be someone else, or to inhabit someone else’s thoughts. The film creates its own unique and bizarre world (floor 7 ½!) and is rich in both vibrant, quirky humour and believable desperation. At the centre of it all is Malkovich’s own splendidly game self-mockery.

10. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2004, UK release 2005)
Weerasethakul, or ‘Joe’ as he conveniently likes to be known, is responsible for some truly bizarre and original films. There’s the unforgivingly slow, dreamy and erotic ‘Blissfully Yours’ and the mysterious dramatic reconstructions of ‘Mysterious Object at Noon’. Most successful are his two bifurcated features ‘Syndromes and a Century’ and this, what may already be an early masterpiece. The first half of the film is a tender, sweet and romantic depiction of a burgeoning gay love affair. When one of the two protagonists disappears, we are suddenly transported into what appears to be an alternative parallel world, in which the characters reappear as a hunter and a tiger. This is a very oblique, but deeply fascinating commentary on desire and obsession. It’s the kind of film that can be watched repeatedly, but still provoke new thoughts and leave questions unanswered.

09. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
This beautiful and assured adaption of Edith Wharton’s novel should have established Terence Davies as Britain’s greatest living film director – versatile and confident enough to work both at home and in the States without compromising his methods or his artistry. Instead, although acclaimed, it appeared to condemn him to a near-decade in the cinematic wilderness, unable to make a film through lack of funding. Whilst his British films, most notably ‘Distant Voices, Still Lives’, have now been re-established in the public consciousness, few speak of his work in America in the same breath. ‘The Neon Bible’ was a flawed but fascinating project – ‘The House of Mirth’ is a masterpiece.

Much of the film’s success is a result of Davies’ audacious and inspired casting. As the perennially sceptical Dana Scully in The X-Files, Gillian Anderson gave scant indication of the magisterial control and steely determination she demonstrates here as Lily Bart, a much weightier role. Similarly, Dan Aykroyd, an actor better known for his role in screwball comedies such as ‘Ghostbusters’, demonstrates considerable skill. These performances, combined with Davies’ fluid, atmospheric direction, make ‘The House of Mirth’ so much more than simply a period drama. It is a deeply sad, elegiac and haunting story of one woman’s downfall in a restrictive and prejudiced society.

08. Uzak (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002, UK release 2004)
‘Uzak’, which translates as ‘Distant’, is the kind of challenging film few people wish to see (indeed, it was dismissed as ‘dreary’ by the New York Times). It is minimal, spacious, languid and reflective, with little dialogue and even less direct action. It becomes more and more immersing and mesmerising with each repeated viewing. It is, at least in part, a film about isolation and boredom. It captures the difficulty in making intimate, meaningful connections, especially where communities are broken. Yet it is not without lightness, and plenty of ironic, visual humour. It is a beautiful film to remember and savour, one that amply rewards the close attention demanded when watching it.

07. A One and a Two (Edward Yang, 2000)
Edward Yang’s sad, premature death robbed contemporary cinema of one of its brightest talents. Perhaps even sadder is the fact that, whilst one might have expected his death to prompt greater attention, it still remains virtually impossible to see a Yang film in the UK. I went to see ‘A Brighter Summer Day’, his masterpiece, at the BFI a few years ago, but the cinema was unable to source a full length print. There has been no attempt at a full retrospective and, with ‘A One and a Two’ now deleted, none of his films are available on DVD in the UK. This is a travesty that should be rectified as a matter of urgency.

The ensemble piece can have its limitations, but Yang surpassed them all with this patient, carefully observed family drama. Whilst this is a film that shows how the pressures of modern life make us uncertain, perhaps even unmindful, of our happiness, it is not grandiose or depressing. It is certainly melancholy in places, but it also has a charming lightness and room to breath. This is a film with plenty of space for thought and reflection. The performances are assured and the drama both surprising and believable.

06. Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007, UK release 2008)
Whilst many prefer Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ for fairly obvious reasons, I still feel that ‘Lust, Caution’ is the superior, more convincing film. Discussion of the film inevitably focussed on its explicit sex scenes, although commentators failed to identify precisely why those scenes were necessary – the audience needs to experience and understand the devastating and dangerous intimacy at the heart of the picture. Critics also decried the film’s length and detail, and the manner in which Ang Lee holds back its pivotal scenes. To my mind, the careful delineation of 1930s Chinese society, and the carefully constructed life stories of the characters – it is at least in part this process that makes the film’s final scenes so harrowing and imposing.

05. Talk To Her (Pedro Almodovar, 2002)
‘Talk To Her’ was such a brave and impressive film that Almodovar has, to my mind, struggled to work out what to do next. He made a convoluted, garish mess with ‘Bad Education’ and then repeated himself, albeit enjoyably, with ‘Volver’ and ‘Broken Embraces’. With ‘Talk To Her’, Almodovar perfected his art, retaining plenty of the humour and stylistic flourish whilst sacrificing some of the extravagance and farce. The film has the kind of sharp script rarely seen since the glory days of Hollywood and also a teasing moral ambivalence that draws us to sympathise with a character who acts unforgivably. Perhaps ‘Talk To Her’ is also unusual within Almodovar’s recent body of work in that the focus is as much on its male characters as on the women. It’s a film of tremendous compassion.

04. Hidden (Michael Haneke, 2005, UK release 2006)
Haneke is clearly the major directorial presence of the decade, having made five world class features in the last ten years (‘Code Unknown’, ‘The Piano Teacher’, ‘Time of the Wolf’, this and now ‘The White Ribbon’), six if you’re among the few people who thought the US remake of ‘Funny Games’ had any purpose. That is a pretty astounding work rate, and a great big slap in the face to the golden ageists who think all the great filmmakers are gone. ‘Hidden’ may be the most powerful and subversive of his films in that it deploys his austere, rigorous style to something approaching the thriller genre. It is also a film that poses difficult questions about collective guilt and morality.

03. Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr, 2000, UK release 2003)
Bela Tarr is notorious chiefly for being ‘unwatchable’ – his films epitomising austerity and drudgery. He made the 7 ½ hour ‘Satantango’, with its lengthy shots of cows, rain and people walking. Yet there’s a haunting quality, an irony and mystery to all his films. ‘Werckmeister Harmonies’ has the feel of a medieval chronicle – filled with portents, signs and unusual happenings. It is weird, fascinating and difficult to fathom but its eerie mood is pervasive and highly original and its portrayal of societal breakdown somehow both dreamlike and convincing.

02. Time Out (Laurent Cantet, 2001, UK release 2002)
01. In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
These two films deal respectively with the two most important elements of most people’s lives: love (as distinct from lust or sex) and work. For this, they are singular and unfashionable works, even accounting for the swooning style of Wong’s direction and Christopher Doyle’s sumptuous cinematography. Laurent Cantet’s ‘Time Out’ struck me as a brave and audacious film on first viewing, but ‘In The Mood For Love’, with its languid pacing, long silences and meaning found in gestures and glances is a film that took several viewings to appreciate fully. Both, I think, are masterpieces.

‘In The Mood For Love’ deals with unrequited love in the face of strong conventions and moral codes. Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung’s characters develop a relationship that is affecting, honest and wholly convincing without ever becoming physical. The beauty is found in restraint – in what is held back and, in this case, the elegance of Wong and Doyle’s visual style aids the emotional impact of the film. Very few words are spoken, but so much feeling is conveyed. The locations and images linger long in the mind. It’s a film where every element – soundtrack, dialogue, performances, cinematography, lighting and editing – are carefully controlled.

Many lists will understandably include Cantet’s Palme D’Or winning ‘The Class’. As good as that film is, I can’t help feeling that ‘Time Out’ is the better work, by some considerable distance. A big factor in this is Aurelien Recoing’s remarkable performance, which somehow enables the audience to sympathise with a man who essentially becomes a serial liar and duplicitous fraudster.

Many dramas are based in workplaces, but this often serves purely as a springboard for more trivial romantic and sexual plot strands between characters. ‘Time Out’goes well beyond this in recognising the pivotal importance of work in defining people’s identities. Without it, people can easily and quickly become devastatingly lost. Cantet maintains an unflinching gaze as the lies at the heart of the film unravel, his use of music enhances the haunting power of his images and his film is meticulously constructed and compelling to watch.