2. Synecdoche, New York (2008)
There is no other screenwriter out there right now quite like Charlie Kaufman. Favouring non-linear, meta-inclined narratives that ask movie-goers to question what they know about filmmaking, about art, and about life itself, you either appreciate his style or you don't. For the most part, I'm on board with Kaufman: Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are incredibly clever, and are both arthouse and mainstream enough to appeal to both sides of the movie-going public. Don't see that as a compromise on Kaufman's part: they work better that way. Synecdoche, New York marked Kaufman's debut as a writer/director, and many critics went to declare it as an unsung masterpiece of sorts - Roger Ebert even named it the best film of the noughties. It's hard to tell if this film really is a masterpiece or an insane work of intrepid self-indulgence, though. I'm leaning towards the later, for one main reason: The plot, which concerns a theatre director who reconstructs his life as an ever-expanding, life-sized play in a massive warehouse, starts out as an intriguing one, but Kaufman soon gets losts in his own cleverness, and as a result, so do we. It might be masterpiece, but it's a hard movie to love, by any standard.