Summer, played by Zooey Deschanel, is a beautiful free spirit with an endearingly cute retro hairdo and impeccable taste in music. Well, if you’re mentally retarded. If you have any brain power she’s a cold, manipulative cock tease who has a stupid bowl haircut and who listens to lameass indie rock. She proves herself to be a wretched human being.

Her beau is equally deranged. He’s the sort of incredibly unique American who loves British indie rock. He’s really an individual. Some even say that he was the first person in the States to discover The Smiths. I mean, what the fucking fuck? Why is it that wherever I go in America I have to be tortured by Morrissey and Marr? And why is it that every film or every American who references them seems to think that this is some underground pleasure – that they’re an obscure band. They’re not. Everywhere I go they’re polluting the airwaves. I go to a comedy gig and I hear ‘Panic’. I go to a party and I hear ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’. I go into a store and I hear ‘How Soon is Now’. Tom and Summer are not unique, quirky, enlightened individuals because they listen to the fucking Smiths.

Even worse, Tom later ponces about in a Joy Division t-shirt. So you go from wanky to just plain dull? The only redeeming thing is that Tom also has a Jesus and Mary Chain poster on his wall. But do you hear ‘Reverence’ or ‘Sidewalking’ on the soundtrack? No that would kick far too much ass.

Early in the film Summer plainly states that she doesn’t believe in true love and doesn’t want to have a relationship. Fair enough, you want to die alone in your apartment and have your face eaten by your cats. I understand that. But then after fucking Tom they go to Ikea. I’m sorry, but nothing more plainly states that you’re in a relationship than going to Ikea together. You might as well be walking down the aisle or surgically sewing your foreheads together. If you’re going to Ikea and buying furnishings and arsing about and thinking about how you’d arrange a group of Billys and looking at each other in a lovey-dovey way, you’re in a fucking relationship motherfuckers!

Quite why Tom gets so besotted with this woman is hard to understand. Everything about her is cold and flighty. But bless him, Tom falls head over heels. And it’s easy to share his confusion when Summer insists that despite the fact that they fuck and hang out and have a good time, they’re not in a relationship. What the fuck bitch, we just went to Ikea and bought a Poang!

Summer would be far less hateful a figure if she wasn’t so damn manipulative. In one scene she has an argument with Tom and says that they’re not in a relationship and then later she turns up at his door, apologises and begins kissing him. She mind-fucks him all over the place.

And then to turn her into a Stalin-esque figure of evil she dances with Tom at a wedding, while, unbeknownst to him, she pursues a relationship with another man (a man whom we later find she’s engaged to). Everything she does just makes me want to kick her into the infinite abyss and shout, ‘This is SPARTA!’ She’s worse than Hitler. Hitler wouldn’t say that he doesn’t believe in true love or relationships, fuck a guy, break up, dance with the guy at a wedding and then announce his engagement to a different guy a few days later. This kind of evil is Summer’s alone. ‘Oh, I don’t believe in attachments. People shouldn’t belong to one another. We should all just encounter one another; have beautiful encounters and then move onto the next. Wouldn’t that be nice? Oh wait, I’ve changed my mind and I’m getting married. You just weren’t enough to keep me interested and satisfied. So sorry.’

There’s actually a scene where the heartbroken Tom sits on a bench and Summer turns up out of the blue to talk to him. Sadly Tom doesn’t piledrive her through the bench. Nor does he Stone Cold Stun her. Instead they talk rationally and calmly. The only thing that wasn’t calm was me when I was watching the film. ‘Why are you letting her humiliate you like this? I understand you’re not going to fulfil my secret desire and kick her into the infinite abyss, but at least give her a tongue lashing. Or even just walk away. That would at least show a bit of class.’ But no he lets her have her say. [insert Bennett out of Commando type scream]

One of the few laughs that the film contains is when a depressed Tom writes a greeting card (this being a ‘quirky’ indie film, he of course has to have a silly job – writing the text in cards). A Valentine’s Day card contains the following: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue. Fuck you, whore!’ Pretty awesome. I also liked the skipping along the street scene when Tom realises he’s in love with Summer. It brilliantly captures the feeling of walking on air, and taken on it’s own it’s a marvellous scene, but then you remember he feels like this because of Summer and everything’s suddenly tainted.

It’s kind of hard to understand what you’re supposed to get out of a film like this. The film isn’t realistic enough to capture the true despair of a broken relationship and the characters are far too stupid and hateful for it to serve as an interesting diversion. The film might aim for sadness and melancholy but there’s no depth of feeling here. It’s hipster central. And in the end Tom doesn’t learn his lesson – of course, this being standard quirky indie fare, Tom has to better himself and find his true calling. And while being interviewed for a new job, he falls for a girl called Autumn. Oh how clever. But in reality his experience with Summer would either lead to a lasting depression or a severing of human emotion – he’d either become a monk or senselessly fuck everything in sight. But then that would be far too real for this piece of crap.

So, several months after the project started we come to the highly anti-climatic conclusion of my Films of the Decade project. Here's my overall Top 20:

20. American Psycho


Favourite scene: Patrick Bateman gives a speech about Whitney Houston as he encourages a couple of women to make out on a sofa. With tears in his eyes he speaks about the greater meaning of Whitney’s music and how important it is to empathise with other people and one’s self. We then have a jump cut to him vigorously fucking the women and then killing them. It’s very funny and shows the complete disconnect that exists in Bateman’s character. He can regurgitate all this nonsense about Phil Collins and Whitney Houston but the reality is that he has nothing but contempt for the people around him – he may speak with emotion and he might talk about how important it is to empathise with other people, but this is just stuff that he’s read; in reality he wants to destroy everything.

19. The Lives of Others


Favourite scene: Having become seduced by an artist couple while performing surveillance on them, a Stasi officer encounters the actress half of the couple and chats with her in a bar. She has no idea who he is, thinking he’s just a fan, but he manages to give her the resolve to stop an affair she’s having with a high ranking minister. The scene that follows shows the officer relieving his subordinate from duty and reading the report of what happened during the night. The actress returns to her writer lover and they make passionate love. It’s very romantically filmed and you can see the joy that the report gives the officer – for once, rather than have a destructive effect on someone’s life, he’s doing something positive. He even manages to overlook his subordinate sleeping and praises him for a good report.

18. Audition


Favourite scene: When you give your heart to someone, there’s always the fear that the other person will hurt you. But what happens in Audition takes this fear to the extreme. A widower ends up being tortured by a prospective bride. Her reason for doing this? To prove what is feels like to need someone. It’s a very tough scene to watch but with Miike very slowly winding the tension tighter and tighter, it’s almost a release. The need to possess her ‘love’ is far too much for this woman – she doesn’t just want love, she wants full ownership and devotion; she’s willing to disable the object of her affection to make him totally dependant and subservient.

17. Memento


Favourite scene: Lenny finally hears the truth of his quest to find his wife’s killer and learns that, thanks to his memory disorder, he’s been manipulated by his friend Teddy. Apparently he found his wife’s killer a long time ago but because of his condition he doesn’t remember it. Since then Teddy has been giving him puzzle after puzzle to solve in order to give meaning to Lenny’s life. In a moment of quiet rage, Lenny sabotages his quest and sets Teddy up as his next target. The film ends with Lenny forgetting the fact that he’s set up his friend, ready to begin the investigation that will inevitably end with Teddy’s death. The scene brilliantly explains everything that has been going on, but more than that it shows human fallibility. We may think that we can overcome anything and build perfect systems that will help us achieve our goal, but we’re still slaves to our emotions. Rationality will rarely win over anger. And it’s also true that people often lie to themselves in order to be happy. This scene just elevates it to a grand scale.

16. Grizzly Man


Favourite scene: Timothy Treadwell is filming a grizzly bear when a couple of foxes run into the shot. One of the foxes then goes up to him and smells his finger. It’s a little moment but it shows why Treadwell became so obsessed with living in the wilderness. These animals give him the companionship he didn’t get in the city. They also give him (in his mind) unconditional love and they definitely protect him from his demons. They prove to be his saviours and the cause of his destruction.

15. No Country For Old Men


Favourite scene: The Coens manage to produce a shoot-out that is several times more exciting than anything that the best action directors managed to film. Shot at night and not accompanied by a score, the two lead characters face off against each other in a Texas street. For all intents and purposes, this is like something out of a Western. The evil man in black stalks the hero and the good guy turns the tables to bring on the pain. But with an innocent driver getting shot in his throat and with the sight of two men having a gun battle in the middle of a deserted street in a populated town, the action scene ends up having an abstract quality. Both men are both hunter and hunted, and in the end they fight to a stalemate. In the mindless pursuit of money, no one wins.

14. Downfall


Favourite scene: With the Soviet troops rapidly approaching Berlin, Frau Goebbels poisons all of her children. She and a doctor pretend that it’s ‘medicine’ and all but one of the children happily gulps the stuff down, but one child knows what’s going on and resists. Frau Goebbels and the Doctor then force her to drink it. The most disturbing thing about the scene is the normality of it – you really would think that the woman was giving them medicine; she’s like a rock. It’s only when the final child resists that she seems a little rattled. And there’s also a moment when we see her put a book of fairytales to the side; these kids have read their final bedtime story – they don’t need the book any more. But again to the disturbing normality of the scene – another thing that makes the scene difficult to watch is the kindness present in it. Millions of other people weren’t shown this same kindness in their final moments – they were treated like vermin. So in a way you should rejoice at this extermination of Nazism and the seeds of its evil, but there’s no joy to be taken from this act.

13. Auto Focus


Favourite scene: Bob Crane and his best pal ‘Carpy’ have a discussion about how unreasonable women are while they both masturbate to their homemade porn. Funny, melancholic and pathetic, the scene encapsulates everything about these guys – their desire to orgasm at the drop of a hat eclipses any need for a deep, fulfilling relationship. They’re clueless teenage boys trapped in the bodies of men.

12. Munich


Favourite scene: The first assassination. Proving just how hard it is to kill someone, the Mossad agents fumble and hesitate and then almost close their eyes when they finally pull the trigger. Their target then falls in a heap and lands on some bottles of milk which spills across the floor with his blood. It’s a quick, brutal scene, but it beautifully sets up the film – that revenge isn’t clear cut; it’s brutal and messy.

11. Zodiac


Favourite scene: A relatively innocent July 4th drive turns into a bloodbath when a couple of kids stumble upon the Zodiac killer. At the tail end of the sixties it signals the end of the era of peace and love. A new darker era is being ushered in and America is very quickly losing what innocence it had. The killing is filmed in minute detail and the choice of ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’ on the soundtrack is perfect.

10. Gomorrah


Favourite scene: A couple of wannabe gangsters play about with stolen weapons as they piss about in some marshland. Wearing nothing but speedos, they fire machine guns and rocket launchers. Drunk on violent movies and the violence that surrounds them in the slums, this is their idea of masculinity. Nothing is tougher or more fearsome than a man firing an AK-47 in his underoos. Needless to say that despite the heavy crimes these teenagers commit, they have the minds of young children.

9. In the Loop


Favourite scene: There are certainly more intelligent scenes in this amazing film, but nothing gave me as much pleasure as Malcolm Tucker bullying a minister and his staff. Best line: ‘Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!’

8. Touching the Void


Favourite scene: With a broken leg, Joe Simpson falls into a crevasse. Stuck in a hole and filled with impotent rage, he screams every swear word he knows. Simpson then explains that despite his dire situation he never prayed to god. The fact that the man never asked a higher power for help and that he didn’t just crawl up and die is a huge inspiration.

7. Dogville


Favourite scene: With blossom falling, Grace and Tom confess their love for one another. It seems that their blooming romance has come to fruition. And yet Tom, being the colossal coward that he is, can’t bring himself to kiss Grace. We then have a dinner where one of the townsfolk of Dogville thanks Grace for showing the town who she is. You’d think that nothing but bright skies would follow, but under the surface everything isn’t quite so rosy. Grace might have shown the town who she is, but she’s also shown the town who they are. She’s seen right through them, and although they thank her for this, they grow to hate the mirror she’s shone upon them. The scene wonderfully captures the polite façade and the hatred and hypocrisy that can lie beneath it.

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring


Favourite scene: The best scene in the Lord of the Rings trilogy actually comes at the very beginning. The film opens with a dizzying prologue that beautifully and economically tells us the history of Middle Earth and explains what’s at stake in the story that follows. In particular I love the image of Gollum in the cave, allowing the ring to consume him for years and years.

5. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World


Favourite scene: When Doctor Maturin accidentally gets shot, Captain Jack Aubery temporarily ends his pursuit of the French ship Acheron. Yes he has the ship in his sights but he ends up putting his friend before duty. He ends up taking him to land so that surgery can be performed. Of course with both of them being British males, they can’t verbalise the depth of feeling they have for each other. Jack says that this detour hasn’t been taken on the Doctor’s account. He says that he needs to stretch his legs. But both know that this is an act of friendship. This scene helps give a wonderful adventure film an added dimension – the characters aren’t just meat to be blown up and sliced to bits; they’re people that we come to care about.

4. Perfume: The Story of a Murderer


Favourite scene: Grenouille’s first encounter with Laura - with his superior olfactory senses, he smells her long before he sees her. Immediately enraptured, he hides from the road as she passes in a horse and carriage. But then like a dog he follows her to her father’s mansion and hides in the garden, drinking her in. The scene is wonderfully scored and hopelessly romantic but it’s also filled with dread – you know that nothing good is going to come of this and that death is waiting around the corner.

3. There Will Be Blood


Favourite scene: Daniel Plainview finally strikes oil but his ‘son’ gets injured as a result. However, his injured boy concerns him little. As it is, his family is just an artifice – it’s just a way of masking his greed and making it more palatable to the masses. The most telling moment is when he’s looking at the burning oil. A colleague asks him if his son is okay and he casually replies that he isn’t. You can almost see the dollar signs in Plainview’s eyes – he doesn’t give a shit about the boy; the money is everything.

2. United 93


Favourite scene: Cutting through the simplistic jingoistic ‘Let’s roll’ bullshit like a knife, the final scene shows the passenger revolt for what it was: a desperate, violent last ditch fight for survival. These are people placed in a horrible situation desperately clawing at their tormentors as they try and regain control of the plane and their lives. But both sides are spinning out of control and mutual destruction is the only possible result. Knowing exactly what’s going to happen to these people only makes everything that more powerful; the desperate way that they try and push the pilot into the cockpit, in particular, never fails to get to me.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


Favourite scene: The final moments are amazing. Finally realising the hollowness of his celebrity, Robert Ford is left to live a disappointing existence. No one really likes him and he misses his old friend. All that’s left is for him is to read hate mail and hang out in his saloon. The melancholy of this is magnificently captured and fate eventually catches up with Robert Ford. Considering what Ford did prior to this, this killing, in lesser hands, might have resembled someone getting their just desserts. But there’s no feeling of victory with this murder. It’s empty and it’s sad, and just as Ford is finally coming to terms with his act and just as he’s understanding how rotten it was, his life is taken away from him. But what makes the scene even more powerful is how resigned he is to his killing, like he knows it’s just around the corner. He almost embraces it.

I found it almost impossible to restrict my best drama list to five movies. Therefore, for this final category, I’ve decided to expand it to a list of ten flicks.

Top Ten Dramas

10. The Piano Teacher


Still waters run deep. In other words, quiet people are probably tortured perverts. Well, at least that’s the case in The Piano Teacher. Dark, twisted and with no hint of redemption for any of the characters involved, it’s a brilliantly bleak film that shows that the most loathsome people aren’t those who have sexual desires that deviate from the norm (the protagonist here is someone who secretly enjoys S&M), but those that punish people because of their proclivities.

9. Hunger


Hunger surprised me a great deal. With Steve McQueen directing, I was expecting a visual feast, but I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so heartfelt. Focusing on how the conflict between the IRA and the British government dehumanised those involved, it manages to be both brutal and tender. No judgements or sides are taken; we just see that this conflict is a cancer that eats away at everyone involved.

8. American Psycho


Far superior to the novel that it’s based on, this adaptation dispenses with most of the more ridiculous violence and instead focuses on the black humour. Patrick Bateman is a man stuck in a nightmare of conformity and no matter how desperately he tries to break out, no one is listening and no one cares. He’s trapped. Christian Bale’s performance is amazing and the writing and the direction are impeccable, showing that even the most ‘unfilmable’ books can be transported to the big screen if the filmmakers are talented enough.

7. The Lives of Others


At the beginning of The Lives of Others one of the characters states that people don’t change. However, we get to see that exact thing occur – we get to see a Stasi officer have his blind faith eroded and in the process regain his humanity. It’s a very tight film with great performances and Hitchcockian direction. It also has a terrifically moving and understated ending.

6. Downfall


It’s ridiculous that people criticised this film for ‘humanising’ Hitler. Newsflash motherfuckers, Hitler was a human being! Yes he may have been among the shittiest human beings of all time but to reduce him to a cardboard cut-out monster is extremely dangerous – it makes it harder for people to learn from the mistakes that Germany made when they allowed this madman to seize control. But Downfall goes some way to reversing that – it’s a film that allows you to get a small idea of what this lunatic was really like. It never makes you sympathise with Hitler but it does flesh him out to some extent, making the horror of his regime even more palpable.

5. Auto Focus


No other film depicts the desperation of male sexuality as accurately as Auto Focus. Portraying the exploits of Bob Crane and John Carpenter, it shows that there’s nothing as disturbing, pathetic and blackly comic as grown men who are stuck in adolescence. Unable to focus on anything but themselves they’re constantly looking for their next orgasm. In fact, their need is so desperate that they even masturbate in each other’s company while watching their own homemade sex tapes. But as lurid as the film is, it manages, in the end, to achieve a note of melancholy. Still, for women I imagine this must resemble a horror movie – these men (duplicitous horny bastards who have no moral fibre) must be their worst nightmare.

4. Dogville


At first it seems like Lars von Trier’s film might amount to nothing more than a gimmick – there are no real sets and the actors mimic the actions of opening doors and performing other actions. But I found it very easy to forget this artifice and it actually ends up helping the film – there are scenes where horrific events occur and you can still see people in their buildings getting on with their lives; you can visually see the way people turn a blind eye to abuse. And although the brutality in the film is exaggerated, it does have a serious point – if you treat people like animals, you shouldn’t be surprised when they treat you like one.

3. There Will Be Blood


It’s easy to just remember There Will Be Blood as a film about milkshakes, but there’s a whole lot more going on in this film. Deep down it’s a horror film about how we’re all beholden to capitalism and the insatiable greed of big business. Daniel Plainview is a man who uses his wealth to build schools and roads and irrigate the land, but while this would suggest he’s a decent human being, he’s actually a murderous monster. And instead of ushering in an era of freedom, he helps usher in a monetary-based class system – no longer will society be controlled by nobility; it’ll be controlled by big business. But the film also illustrates the uneasy relationship between religion and capitalism (America’s two biggest obsessions). And if There Will Be Blood is anything to go by, should the two sides of America fight to the death, capitalism will win.

2. United 93


Few things are as scary as religious mania. Otherwise decent people can be driven to perform atrocious acts. This is what United 93 manages to capture so superbly. These people aren’t evil – they weren’t destined to do this from birth. They’ve just become warped. And like loyal soldiers, they execute their orders faithfully. The last few moments are among the few times that I’ve become anxious while watching a film – the passengers frenzied attempt to cling onto life is gut-wrenching.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford


One of the most remarkable films ever made, The Assassination of Jesse James is a beautiful film about the hollowness of celebrity. Robert Ford is a man who thinks that some of Jesse James’ stardust will rub off on him if he kills him and thus follows the soul-destroying realisation that fame for the sake of fame doesn’t bring happiness. It’s a very modern film in the body of a historical drama – it might as well be about Mark Chapman or any of the losers that appear on programmes like Pop Idol. The final twenty minutes are especially good and are amongst the best cinema I’ve ever seen.

Ten Worst Dramas

10. Into the Wild