After a long hiatus from blogging, I’ve decided to return with probably the most ambitious (and totally pigheaded) thing you’re ever likely to see here at good ol’ Cinematic for the People: a 50-film list of my picks for the best of the past decade.

Had I planned way ahead of time to put one of these together? Honestly, nope. Heck, it wasn’t even until I saw the first “Best of the 00s” list appear on a film review site a couple of months back that it dawned on me this decade was ending at all (what can I say, I’ve been pretty busy). Ten years used to seem like a pretty long time, but man, it feels like just yesterday that I was contemplating Y2K and telling anybody who’d listen how good Fight Club was. And now here we are, ten years into the millennium that Stanley Kubrick predicted would begin with humanity’s first contact with an alien intelligence (I’m still pretty bummed that that didn’t happen), and all I can think is…

… Damn, I’ve seen a lot of movies since 2000.

So, since everyone else seems to be throwing together lists of their favorite films of the “oughts” – check out a few here and here – I thought maybe I should take a stab at it, as well. Not only does it give me a chance to recall the movie moments that have wowed me over the last ten years, but it’s also a great opportunity to show some love for a lot of films that probably didn’t appear on a lot of other folks’ lists.

Let that second thing serve as a bit of a disclaimer: some of my picks are surely going to piss you off. If you’ve stopped by this blog before, you know that my taste in film is all over the place – I’m equally enamored with well-made Hollywood blockbusters as I am with stately foreign films and audacious indie efforts, and while I like a lot of the same filmmakers as the majority of critics do, I tend to gravitate toward the “underdog” movies of their respective careers (I can feel the hate already for the Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Spielberg films that land highest on my list).

But, as I’ve said before, the best part about making lists like this – and, really, the only reason why I’d ever do one – is that inevitably get people thinking about what films they’ve appreciated and why they loved them. My opinion is my opinion, it’s no more valid than anyone else’s, and the only reason I’m putting it out there is that I hope it inspires some argument, some agreement, maybe some anger, and – fingers crossed – at least a little bit of discussion. Feel free to leave a comment or e-mail me (nscalia@nhregister.com) with your picks, your thoughts, or whatever else you want to say.

Check back in a couple of days for picks #50 through #41; I’ll be rolling out the rest over the next couple of weeks.

I've had my differences of opinion with king-of-critics Roger Ebert lately, but somehow the big lug always manages find a way back into my heart. Ebert recently revisited one of my favorite films of all time, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, and his "Great Movies" review (major spoilers, BTW) not only neatly sums up everything I love about the epic ensemble movie, but also points out some of the dramatic threads that you might have overlooked on seeing it for the first time. Ebert was one of the notoriously divisive film's most ardent early supporters, and his appreciation seems to have grown since its release nearly ten years ago.

Myself, I've only seen Magnolia twice, believing that some movies are so good, they ought not to be worn out. But you know what? I'm thinking it's time to see this daring, heartfelt, beautifully constructed masterpiece again, and I have Ebert's passionate and eloquently written analysis to thank for that.

And, just for the hell of it, here's the film's theatrical trailer, in case you were wondering what the fuss was all about:

I finally had a chance to see There Will Be Blood this week, and now all I want to do is talk about it, see it again, spend way too much time analyzing every cut and camera angle and acting nuance until my eyes bug out.

Relax, I’m not gonna go all Howard Hughes and lock myself up in a screening room with a copy of the film and a steady supply of empty milk bottles, though I guess if somebody wanted to obsess over a movie while slowly losing their grip on reality, this would be as good a film as any to do it with.

I’m not quite that obsessed – truth be told, it’s not my favorite movie of the year, or even my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie – but I did walk out of the theater pretty overwhelmed, and certain that I’d seen something that will be talked about long after its (probably inevitable) Oscar victories are old news.

Rather than bore you with the ten million or so questions I’d love to ask Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis if I happened to run into them at Starbuck’s, however, I’ll just spend a minute here focusing on one small, bite-sized chunk of what makes the film the incredible experience it is: it’s got, hands down, the most memorable opening and closing scenes I’ve seen in a movie all year.

Smart filmmakers never underestimate the importance of beginning and ending their films on the perfect notes – if you can grab your audience by their collective jugular within the first minute and send them out two hours later with a line or image that will bang around their heads for the next month, you’re golden. Everybody loves a great ending, of course, but beginnings are equally important, and most of the time don’t get the attention they deserve (except over at Jim Emerson’s blog Scanners, with its ongoing and awesome Opening Shots Project).

Anderson is particularly skillful at both beginnings and endings, so I sort of figured he’d do something impressive with his latest. Who could forget the tracking shots that open Punch-Drunk Love and Boogie Nights, introducing and drawing us in to two very distinct film worlds right from the get-go? Or the spellbinding Ricky Jay-narrated bit about coincidences that kicks off Magnolia? Or that famous shot that closes Boogie Nights, where porn king Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg) finally takes a good look at, er, himself in the mirror?

So, right, There Will Be Blood. Consider this a spoiler warning – I’m not going to reveal anything that doesn’t happen in the first five or so minutes, but it’s still better to go in cold and just experience it for yourself.

The film opens with one of its many arresting landscape shots, then provides us our first glimpse of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) – the man we’ll get to know in frightening detail over the next two-and-a-half hours – as he descends into a subterranean silver mine that’s more foreboding and otherworldly than any of the fantastical underground hellholes in the Lord of the Rings movies. The opening sequence, like the rest of the movie, plays out with deliberate intensity; between the creepily slow camera movements and Jonny Greenwood’s nerve-jangling score, it’s unsettling on levels both palpable and subconscious. By the time the scene is over, we know several things: one, that no risk or sacrifice or rationality can stand in the way of Daniel Plainview getting what he wants; two, he’s as hard and unforgiving as the rocky, barren country where he does his bidding; and three, most importantly, that the movie to follow is going to take us to places darker and scarier than that hole in the ground could ever hope to be, and – like Daniel – we’re going to be too fixated to even consider looking away.

Spoiler warning or not, I’m not going to reveal what happens in the closing scene, since I couldn’t hope to do it justice. Suffice it to say that it takes place in a mansion as eerie-looking as the silver mine in the opening scene, it reunites two characters that we absolutely needed to see together one last time, and contains a dramatic speech that will twist your guts in knots. It’s an exclamation point of an ending, the kind of thing that even viewers who didn’t appreciate the rest of the film will have trouble dismissing. It’s also the best few minutes of screen time in Day-Lewis’s already amazing career.

It’s true, these are only two scenes in a very lengthy movie, but they do so much to elevate everything that falls between them that they deserve to be singled out.

Alright, that’s enough out of me for now. I’ve got to go track down a screener copy of There Will Be Blood and a few dozen milk bottles… so, see you when I see you, I guess.

A first blog post is sort of like a first kiss – sure, it’s very exciting and all, but it’s also pretty clear to all parties involved that you don’t have a clue what you’re doing.

So let’s just keep it simple, shall we? The aim of this blog, Cinematic for the People, is to share some information, discussion, and opinions (and yes, I am aware of what certain unsavory body part that opinions are like) about anything and everything involving the movies. I’ll be touching on all the big-deal Hollywood blockbusters, of course, but also as many independent, foreign, classic, or otherwise obscure films as I have time and space for. My goals is to have something to offer to both the casual cinema-goer who catches a flick or two per month as well as the hardcore movie-geek who owns every Criterion Collection DVD or scours the internet hourly for the latest tidbit about what material Spider-man’s eyeholes will be constructed out of in the series’ next installment.

My taste in movies is all over the map – Nosferatu, Singin’ In the Rain, Oldboy, and, uh, Half-Baked all comfortably share space on my DVD shelves at home – so I hope to cover as wide a range here as possible, and not to trash anything that isn’t actually trash (though I certainly believe there's a distinction between “good trash” and “bad trash”).

I do have a particular affinity for the great “underdog” films that, for whatever reason, didn’t connect with the majority of critics or moviegoers – like Punch-Drunk Love, whose incredible closing scene supplied the title of this post – and also for movies made by scrappy, resourceful filmmakers who didn’t let their lack of money, access, or support get in the way of them getting their vision to the screen.

What’s to come? Well, we’ll see – 2007 was a particularly terrific year for movies, so here’s hoping that this year will give us lots more memorable films to talk about in the coming weeks and months. Feel free to drop me a line here at the Register at nscalia@nhregister.com, and check back every few days for updates of all shapes and sizes.

Until then, try to have yourself a transcendent experience in a darkened room surrounded by loud noises and complete strangers. Trust me, you’ll love it.