Forgotten Silver Dept.

Most people are busy compiling their best-of-the-last-ten-years lists. Me, I thought I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes do something more in keeping with the general theme of the site, and run through the greatest discoveries I've made over the past ten years which remain undeservedly obscure.

Here, then, are the Ten Best Films You Didn't See This Decade, in no particular order.

Princess [review coming soon] A genre-breaker, like Ralph Bakshi filming an Andrew Kevin Walker script. A priest returns from his missionary work to find his sister dead after a disturbingly prolific porn career. She's left behind a four-year-old daughter with scars both mental and physical, which inspires our (anti-)hero to do a little … housecleaning. Not for all tastes or stomachs, but hard to put out of mind — and not just because it's "transgressive". Proof that animation industries apart from Japan are experimenting boldly and getting away with it.

Casshern [^] One of a very small category of movies I call “experimental epics,” where a groundbreaking look-and-feel is combined with an engaging story to produce something totally new: part science fiction, part retro-futurism, part mystic fantasy and part family epic. It could have been a mere exercise in effects technology, but it has a fearless passion to it, a heedless excess that makes it transcend its pulp-fantasy roots. Fans of the steampunk aesthetic who haven't yet seen this film will drop dead in their tracks when they finally do lay eyes on it.

Mind Game [^] The greatest animated film you have never seen. I don’t think I’ve ever consciously described a film as a “feel-good experience,” but Mind Game earns the label. Tells a story that is life-affirming and inspiring, and uses animation in an absolutely unparalleled way to do it. Amazingly, it is not yet available in a domestic edition.

Gojoe [^] Even after Twilight Samurai and all the rest, this remains my favorite samurai film of the decade — not just for the story but the storytelling, the imagery, the feel, the sheer audacity of the whole thing. A retelling of the Yoshitsune and Benkei story, with the former now an avatar of Nietzschean will-to-power and the latter a tormented and conflicted man certain that he can only fight evil by embracing it. The finale on the bridge alone would make the film, but the rest of it is no less a knockout.

Tekkonkinkreet [^] The other greatest animated film you've never seen. An adaptation of the Taiyo Matsumoto manga, it was the culmination of ten years of work by its director to bring it to the screen, and there isn't a frame that isn't stuffed to the sprocket holes with ambition and love.

Facing the Truth (At kende sanheden) [^] Powerful and moving story taken from the real life of a doctor who garnered great fame in Denmark, only to become a pariah. It is one thing to be punished for being evil, and another thing entirely to be punished for being the wrong kind of good. Not available domestically.

Nobody Knows [^] Based on a true story about a cadre of children who lived for months on end without their parents, surviving by sheer force of will and what native ingenuity they have. Heartbreaking stuff, served without sentimentalism or cant. Yuya Yagira, the lead actor, matures almost in real-time on the screen, and quite deservedly won an award for his performance. Also excellent is pop star You as his ne'er-do-well mother, who never seems to understand she is condemning these children to live without having a childhood.

Izo [^] Takashi Miike's Art Theatre Guild moment, a movie that divided even his most loyal adherents. A samurai condemned to death pulls a Billy Pilgrim and becomes unstuck in time, and attempts to use his mounting rage to break out of the cycle of birth and death itself. Unfortunately the universe is a good deal more implacable than he realizes. Everyone I know hated it, which tells me I'm either an idiot or I saw a lot more in it than they did. See it for yourself and judge. I prefer this to any number of Miike's yakuza/gang-war retreads, as creatively-executed as those may be.

United 93 [^] Most people I know refused to see it on principle. Too soon, they said. Too depressing. Exploitive. All wrong: this is as good a movie as could ever be made about a subject this inherently divisive and difficult. Real-time filmmaking and low-key acting make it feel doubly documentary-like. Amazing how Paul (Bourne) Greengrass generates an amazing amount of tension from a subject where (we think) the conclusion is obvious. The final seconds wrung tears from me, when almost no other movie has.

Kao [^] Another genre-breaker. Mousy seamstress Masako becomes a criminal on the run and remakes her life on the fly against a panoramic backdrop of Japan. Funny, touching, enthralling, horrifying, and finally heartbreaking, its greatest shocks and most powerful moments sneak up on you from behind and stay with you for a long time.