Best Horror Movies of the Decade

To be honest, this wasn't a great decade for horror.  We saw lots of trends - J-Horror, Zombie mania, Torture Porn, 3D, and endless, mindless remakes, but not many memorable installments into the horror movie hall of fame.

Here are the lone standouts:

Let the Right One In - the vampire tale finally told from a personal perspective.  Quiet, reflective and chilling to the bone.

The Ring - the best of J-Horror transferred to the states. A compelling ghost riddle with a great ending.

 The Devil's Backbone - Del Torro's haunting ghost story.

The Orphanage - another foreign language pitch-perfect ghost story.

The Host - the best monster movie in a long time.  Great characters - a fun ride.  What Cloverfield and Monsters wanted to be.

The Mist - best Stephen King adaptation since Shawshank.  Builds up gradual tension and then crashes you with a brutal Lovecraftian ending.

Drag Me to Hell - Raimi returns to his manic Evil Dead roots, but with a more toned-down approach.  Fun, funny, scary and always entertaining.

28 Days Later - Danny Boyle's brilliant zombie reboot for the 21st century.

Saw - yes, it launched a torrent of horrible torture porn, but as a standalone low-budget horror movie Saw remains as a great example of what you can do with minimal sets, a couple actors and one nasty idea.

Paranormal Activity - lots of haters with this one, but I loved the setup and bought most of it - except for the flaming Ouija board - ok, that was kinda silly.



Let's see, a top ten list where 5 out of the 10 are foreign made (remember, 28 Days Later is British), another one (The Ring) is a remake of a Japanese film and two of the American-made movies were indie films, far from the mainstream studio system.  Really, a pitiful showing from Hollywood, where dollar signs led them to blindly rehash old favorites in a desperate attempt to generate revenue - instead of developing great new horror talents.

It's obvious the foreign and indie markets will continue to drive this genre.

The best of the rest:

The Mothman Prophecies
REC
Hostel
Trick 'r Treat
1408
The Last Exorcism

Best TV Shows of the Decade

I decided to skip over the Top 10s of the year and go right for the big daddy - the Best of the Decade.

First up - Television.

 This last decade of TV represents for me, the golden age of television.  Simply put, it is the best television has ever produced:




The Wire - The best. Ever. David Simon's brutally honest dystopian vision is the gold standard.









 





The Sopranos - The one that started it all - and relaunched Journey's career.

















 
Breaking Bad - Fearless. Bold. Funny. Visionary. Brutal.















Mad Men - Tone-perfect subtle portrayal of the pivot point of a decade and a man's journey to find his authentic self.
















Deadwood -  David Milch's foul-mouthed Shakespearean western is a multi-layered tour-de-force.

Band of Brothers - Epic portrayal of the realities of war in the mid-century.

Dexter - Puts all those CSI clone shows to shame.  Michael C. Hall carries the show with nothing but subtle facial expressions.














 
Curb Your Enthusiasm - Seinfeld synthesized into a crack-like addictive journey into Larry David's warped vision of ultimate social discomfort and humiliation.















Battlestar Gallactica - Sci-Fi told on an epic scale while maintaining its focus on character.

Rescue Me - Foul-mouthed.  Daring.  Brutally honest.  Went head-first into post 9-11 territory that no one else with a sane mind would touch.  Thank you Dennis Leary.















These brilliant and revolutionary shows easily match up against the best television of any decade - perhaps even the best narrative dramas of any medium.  If will be interesting to see if the next decade can live up to these achievements.  Clearly the most creative minds are now working in television - where the showrunners (usually writers) can maintain control of their vision.

Not one of these shows was produced by traditional network television.  And no one cares anymore - the era of the networks is dead.  My children couldn't tell a network from cable or pay tv or YouTube or hulu or Netflix.  It is all simply visual storytelling that comes to them from a box in our home - or on a mobile device on the go.  The revolution is already over.

The best of the rest:

Six Feet Under
The Office
Rome
Entourage
Generation Kill
Friday Night Lights
30 Rock
True Blood
Survivor
The Daily Show With John Stewart
Lost

Next up:  Best Horror Movies of the Decade