TV Editor and Twitter Monkey (follow us: @channel4film) Catherine Bray gives a personal take on her favourite ten films of the decade so far. Warning: may contain hobbits. (And if you're interested in her criteria for declaring a film "top", her blog explains all...)
Top Ten Films Of The Decade: Part Four Pictures
"I think only stupid people have good relationships."
10. Ghost World
Coming out in 2001, Terry Zwigoff's acidic adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel caught me at the perfect time: like sarky lead Enid (Thora Birch), I was 18 and had recently left school and embraced an ill-advised series of lurid hair-dyes. At the time, these touchstones seemed integral to why I liked the film - it felt like it was made for people like me, in a cinema landscape all but devoid of recognisably real teenage girls. Ghost World is still on my list now because unlike other old favourites, its subtle relevance goes beyond a teenage yearning for identification. Ghost World is about what to do when you don't like the world you've found yourself in. Do you cut yourself off like Seymour (Steve Buscemi), admitting "I can't relate to 99 per cent of humanity", and obsessively collect old records? Do you knuckle down, like Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson, before she got blanded) and get a job in a coffee shop? The film's too realistic to offer answers, and deliciously refuses to take the traditional hipster's escape route and hide in nostalgia and retro cool. And yet the ending, a Graduate coda for the 21st century, is full of sly possibility.
