Post-Mortem on the Week of Films From the 2000's

The goal for this week was to watch films made between 2000 and 2013. This featured a good deal of rule bending. That began right with the very stated goal, which if I was being more honest should have been limited to 2000 through 2010. I changed that a little bit so I could cheat and fit in more recently released films and films that I'd seen in theaters. Then I broke it even more by including A Bug's Life which I had been dying to make an argument in favor of for a long time. On top of this, I chose to make the "week" end on Sunday in order for it to be a seven day running thing (not that it mattered as I missed two days altogether due to a lack of time).

Then there's the whole matter of how this set of films is not representative of the time period I set out to look into. There are several years that have absolutely no film whatsoever. And though I did my sincere best to include a wide range of films (for instance, Spirited Away is there so that animation got its fair due, Jiro Dreams of Sushi is there so at least one documentary was part of the conversation, and Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... And Spring is there both because its a foreign film and a film from what was then a rising film market), I haven't even scratched the surface of what made the 2000's such a great time period for movies.

This was all due to a combination of factors and there's not really any excuse other than that I chose movies I wanted to watch and then time caught up to me before I could level out the playing field. However, I'm very pleased by the movies I chose which turned out to all be great and I had been wanting to give them a chance for far too long.

This exercise was frustrating at times. The constraints on my options for films required me to not watch films that I really wanted to watch but didn't fit the billing (I hope to get to some this week). But it also made me remember that exceptional films are still getting made and that I've been neglecting them in favor of older movies. I hope that from now on I can have more of a balance between old and new.