And Thus We Come to Decades End

I find it interesting this upon this year so many of us have decided it's time to reflect upon the decade. We go through year from year and pick out our favorite films, throw them up for criticism, and opt to stand behind it. Of course all these lists are rather futile in that you never really know how you'll view the best films of a particular year many from now. Who knows by then we may not even be blogging anymore, things, for better or worse, do change. Alas though I figured I'd take a look back at the history of my blog over these past years.

In December of 2003, unsure of what to do with my free time, I signed up for The Vine, a community based system over at RottenTomatoes.com. From there I created my first journal, simply titled: Ryanator's Movie Reviews (oh the creativity I possessed :P). At the time my #1 film was Glory, a film I had seen in school years before and really connected with. As such Glory was also the first review I ever did. My review was simple: "If there is one civil war film, or war film for that matter, you just have to see then this is it. Without a dout the greatest Civil War film to date. Denzel gives a comanding performance in this film, also winning him his first Academy Award - '89. Zwick makes this film rememberable and makes you want to feel for his characters while giving you highly realistic battle sequences."

And quite obviously a bit short! The first person I ever befriended (the RT equivalent of Following) went by the name Froger96, amusingly enough my friend requests predate most of RT's system. One other early follower was Nebular, one whom I still follow and discuss film with today (his blog is entitled Cinemarvellous). In that time lots of fellow movie reviews have come and gone, at one point my RT journal held over 100 friends, but alas all things must end. Over time RT's website got slower and slower, to the point of insane frustration. Then the nail in the coffin was finally hit. Removing the intimacy of a blog setup, RT opted to remove user input, and instead streamline everything. Standardized one blog layout for everyone, point and click review instead of the need to write something substantial about the film, RT was overrun from IMDB detractors, and hate mongers, a group I felt little need to be associated with.

So after nearly 6 years, and 879 reviews, I quit RottenTomatoes, hanging up my blogging shoes, figuring this would be the end. One day, several months later, I decided to log in to my old RT account just on a whim. What I found was a collection of backlogged messages sent from the likes of TheAnswerMVP and Crhualsees (both long time rt friends) discussing their blogs, how much they like them, and their move. Deciding I felt a bit empty without movie blogging I opted to join them, creating the very blog you see here. Throughout the task MVP was great at helping me organize the blog, and layout, and for that I owe him quite a bit of thanks.

It's been an interesting decade for me really, and I've gone through the emotional roller coaster several times over. So I figured I'd end with the films that most connected with me over the last 10 years. The following list is the 15 films that made my top 100 at the end of last year (in the order they appear there). After heavy debate I could come up with no films from 2008, or ones I've seen this year, that are really worth pushing. So as it goes, here is my top 15 films of the 2000's:

1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003)
2. Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
3. The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)
4. Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky, 2000)
5. Hero (Zhang Yimou, 2002)
6. Amelie (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
7. Road to Perdition (Sam Mendes, 2002)
8. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
9. Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)
10. Unbreakable (M. Night Shyamalan, 2000)
11. There Will be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
12. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002)
13. Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
14. Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
15. High Fidelity (Stephen Frears, 2000)

Hope you enjoyed this post and as always I look forward to many more months (and for some cases years) of posting with you all!

Oh and don't worry this isn't the last post of the year, I'm sure I'll have plenty more. Just wanted to do this before it got too played out by everyone else :P.