Top films of last 10 years

I thought it would be an interesting exercise to list my top film for each of the previous ten years. I’ve been collected my movie tickets since 1995, but unfortunately, I don't have a record of every film I've seen in that period, as computerised ticketing only became ubiquitous in the last five years or so.

When I started watching films in 1992, only the cinemaplexes printed the film title on the tickets. These tickets were the basis for my film database when I started. As the more artistic films tend not to screen at these establishments, the pre-2002 years may not be entirely accurate.

For the purpose of this post, I originally intended to keep it as simple and succinct as possible by only including my favourite film of the year. This was OK for say, 1997, where Lost Highway easily beat Romeo & Juliet. But then in 2000 and again in 2002, there’s only a hair’s breadth separating my favourite three or four films. So I settled on listing the contenders.

I think this kind of list is interesting, at least to me, as it is indicative of evolving taste. My favourite films of the last five years have tended more towards dark and gritty social realism, whereas the previous five years favourites – while still including some dark stories – were clearly lighter and more mainstream. Feel free to post your own list.

The years correspond to when I viewed a film, typically the year of Australian release.

	2006: Em 4 Jay (Alkinos Tsilimidos) Contenders: The King (James Marsh), Ten Canoes (Rolf de Heer), The Child (L’enfant, Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)
	2005: Good Night and Good Luck (George Clooney) Contenders: 2046 (Wong Kar Wai), The Proposition (John Hillcoat)
	2004: Monster (Patty Jenkins) Contenders: Donnie Darko - The Director's Cut (Richard Kelly), Tom White (Alkinos Tsilimidos)
	2003: Elephant (Gus van Sant) Contenders: Edi (Piotr Trzaskalski), Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson), Kill Bill vol.1 (Quentin Tarantino)
	2002: The Circle (Dayereh, Jafar Panahi) Contenders: Pollock (Ed Harris), Beneath Clouds (Ivan Sen), Bowling For Columbine (Michael Moore)
	2001: Monsoon Wedding (Mira Nair) Contenders: Requiem for a Dream (Darren Aronofsky), Memento (Christopher Nolan)
	2000: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (Wo Hu Cang Long, Ang Lee) Contenders: Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese), American Beauty (Sam Mendes)
	1999: Fight Club (David Fincher) Contenders: Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer), High Art (Lisa Cholodenko)
	1998: The Boys (Rowan Woods) Contender: The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan)
	1997: Lost Highway (David Lynch) Contender: Romeo & Juliet (Baz Luhrmann) - not really in contention, though.