News » Golden Tomatoes: The 10 Best Movies for each of the Last 10 Years

Golden Tomatoes: The 10 Best Movies for each of the Last 10 Years

RT highlights the best reviewed movie for each year we've been around.

by RT Staff | Wednesday, Jul. 16 2008
132 comments

What better way to celebrate RT's 10th birthday than with a film retrospective that focuses on the very basis of our existence? Take a look back, all the way through our formative years, to see which movies had garnered the best critical responses. Those of you who have been with us for a while now are already familiar with our Golden Tomato Awards, and the memory of last year's winner might still be fresh on your mind. But between a handful of animated features, a political satire, and a sentimental turn from a wild comedian, you might find one or two surprises in our list of each year's best-reviewed film.


more info...

1998's Best-Reviewed:
The Truman Show

Media appropriation, voyeurism, ditching our jobs and sailing to Fiji -- these are issues we mull over every day at Rotten Tomatoes. So it's fitting that The Truman Show, Peter Weir's gentle treatise on pop culture and art, is the movie to inaugurate the site. The movie stars Jim Carrey as meek Truman Burbank, an insurance adjustor slowly realizing his hometown a giant set, his life nothing more than televised pap. But just like everyone else, critics loved tuning in to The Truman Show: "Adventurous, provocative, even daring," wrote Kenneth Turan. And the movie demonstrated Carrey need not resort to falling out of a rhino's ass to make the audiences laugh and take home the box office; The Truman Show has heart, hijinks, and, according to Owen Glieberman, it turns "Carrey...into a postmodern Capra hero."

Runners-Up: Shakespeare in Love, Antz, Saving Private Ryan
Worst-Reviewed: Jawbreaker




Comments

The Great One

The Great One on 07-16-2008 05:37 PM

Well two of the films...The Truman Show and Monsters Inc., are in my top ten of all-time, so thanks critics

movieguy81

movieguy81 on 07-16-2008 11:08 PM

i can't believe Ratatouille beat out NCFOM and TWBB. WOW. PIXAR IS GOOD

The Dark Knight Fan 1

The Dark Knight Fan 1 on 07-16-2008 05:49 PM

Ratatouille is one of the best films i ever saw well deserved

Some guy you dont know

Some guy you dont know on 07-16-2008 05:52 PM

Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille... Wow, now with Wall-E, Pixar is god. Plus with Chicken Run, 60% of the films are animated. ZOMG0111!!

Deeds

Deeds on 07-16-2008 06:01 PM

Of course the animated films dominate, they appeal to nearly everyone.

Also the Queen better than the Departed and Pan's? I dont think so.

Some guy you dont know

Some guy you dont know on 07-16-2008 06:19 PM

Not elitists who think they're above everyone.

Mavtactic

Mavtactic on 07-16-2008 06:31 PM

Spirited Away should have won that year actually....higher rating and all...
so it should be 70% of the films are animated...PWNAGE

ksduded

ksduded on 07-16-2008 06:34 PM

It just shows how good Pixar is at their craft.

Zergling

Zergling on 07-16-2008 06:35 PM

can pixar be nice...


Pans Labyrinth shouldve won best picture... thank you academy for choosing Scorsessssy's much overrated Departed over the true masterpiece.. Pans labyrinth. stupid.

zooman

zooman on 07-18-2008 12:45 PM

pans labrynth is cool, but leave it at that, if it had been an American movie it would have gotten way less respect and a bit more money, which is what it deserved, no relevance whatsoever but a contrived "innocence dies" supposed message just to have one, accompanied by stupid fantasy trials like killing a frog mario bros 1 style or knowing that the stupid girl is going to (showing bad acting skills, to her credit, as rarely in the film) take food from the table not because you feel the temptation is real, but because you know they couldn't have gone without it..... and I could go on and on.... Don't get me wrong, labyrinth is a great movie that masterfully blended genres, but one that has nothing to say, that has serious flaws, and that is just NOT close to being one of the greatest. The departed might have had little to say also (yet is more powerfully relevant), but it is a testament for moviemaking in so many ways, you just can't compare scorcesse's skill as shown in the departed to del toro's which is sloppier and uninteresting when you get over the original "cool ideas" which remain mostly as such..



Given that that year was so weak, I can only have some respect for the departed, the queen, and the lives of others, and to a lesser extent, little miss sunshine and the more flawed Labyrinth%u2026 Considering the terrible year it was, I could even add cars here for a few accomplishments it had..

sugarflowlistical77

sugarflowlistical77 on 07-16-2008 06:39 PM

Does Pixar have you on a payroll? Until WALL-E, their films felt uniformly commercial and formulaic. Oh, and The Queen? That stuffy, overwrought, heavy-handed Tony Blair love-fest may as well have aired on PBS.

Some guy you dont know

Some guy you dont know on 07-16-2008 07:26 PM

*coughelitistcough*

The Forbidden Douchebag

The Forbidden Douchebag on 07-16-2008 07:51 PM

To sugarflowlistical77, Pixar's films are NOT formulaic and commericlal. Dreamworks' animated features are.

mightyfooda

mightyfooda on 07-16-2008 10:59 PM

Doofus, these are based on the percentage of good reviews by critics. As to the person who said Pan's was better than Departed, I mean I love both, but it's not like Departed sucked. That's a killer movie.

RosebudIsASled!

RosebudIsASled! on 07-17-2008 03:46 PM

Are you insane? Is something wrong with you? Okay the queen wasn't great but Pixar? You're insulting Pixar? Toy Story?? Come on!!!

Long Live the New Flesh

Long Live the New Flesh on 07-16-2008 07:44 PM

This list is the demonstrates why I don't let the Tomatometer rule my life. If I did, then I would love "The Incredibles" (which I borderline hated), think that it was the best Pixar film (I think that it was the worst), think that "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" was the worst of the trilogy, and half of my favorite movies would be animated.

Thank God for free will.

P.S.: I think the comment about animated films is somewhat true. It's not that they're neccessarily any better than normal films; it's just that there is usually less in the thematic material sophisticated or controversial enough to complain about. I'm not saying that all animated films are awful. Some are good. Some are very good ("Toy Story", "Toy Story 2", "Shrek", "Chicken Run", "Finding Nemo", "Monsters, Inc.", "The Lion King", "Alladin", "Beauty and the Beast", "Spirited Away", "The Simpsons Movie", etc.), but none of them are, say, best-reviewed-picture-of-the-year good. I also prefer both stop-motion and traditional animation to the newer computer-generated films.

The Forbidden Douchebag

The Forbidden Douchebag on 07-16-2008 07:53 PM

I can see the Golden "Tomaters" for this year:

Winner: WALL-E
Runner-Ups: The Dark Knight, Changeling, Encounters at the End of the World
Worst Rated: One Missed Call

badjoke71808

badjoke71808 on 07-19-2008 02:49 PM

how about iron man being one of the runner ups for this year, or say the dark knight will win and wall-e will suck on my nuts.

Lemonhead112

Lemonhead112 on 08-3-2008 02:14 PM

I agree with you 100%! Pixar is the best! They blow Dreamworks out of the water. Dark Knight and Wall-e, the two best movies this year.

Ukrainianator

Ukrainianator on 07-16-2008 08:17 PM

Too many stupid, mediocre cartoons which don't even come close to the real good films obviously. If you want to see which films at the best, don't look at RT, look at the academy awards for best picture.

filmboy22

filmboy22 on 07-16-2008 08:35 PM

Zergling, you're just hating on the departed because it won best picture. i remember that night hoping that it WOULDN'T win just so people like you wouldn't refer to it as being overrated. that's why i'm glad there will be blood didn't win, cause it was the best picture nominated last year and it will age better because it didn't win.

Brodie14

Brodie14 on 07-16-2008 09:00 PM

I think they should do these lists without the animated features, since they are films that appeal to nearly everybody.

Yrogerg

Yrogerg on 07-16-2008 09:29 PM

So obviously the movies which appeal to everyone should not get be the best reviewed movie of that year. I mean... I'd expect critics to loathe movies which appeal to nearly everybody. This feature is meant to show which movies are most well liked, not which movies are the best works of art. Besides, critics more often than not dislike children's animated movies, so it's a mark for these movies that the only studios to have turned out consistently good and well reviewed animated movies this past decade are Pixar and Studio Ghibli. In my opinion these are some of the most aesthetically pleasing movies ever made and make great use of the film medium.

Garamonde

Garamonde on 07-16-2008 09:18 PM

Why isn't Return of the king up there??? In fact, why so many damn animated movies? I doubt adults and people who take films seriously say "Hey, you know what the greatest movie of all time is??? Finding Nemo!". No, this list is a disgrace.

arendr

arendr on 07-16-2008 09:23 PM

I like Pixar, but they tend to get rave reviews from all critics because, let's face it, they're fairly safe movies (up until Wall-E; that was a little ballsier of them).

Pixar consistently makes great movies (although I went through a patch where I wasn't so high on them, mainly because we have CG animation overload now), but there are certain filmmakers who make better movies that won't get the same kind of acclaim because they don't make safe movies.

Floor Man

Floor Man on 07-16-2008 09:26 PM

Hmmm...I'm still surprised, even after a year or so, that The Queen got the nominations it did...it was good, but certainly nowhere near as spectacular as several others that year.

:/

dbask25

dbask25 on 07-16-2008 09:40 PM

I think it is very difficult to dislike a Pixar film. With that said, I doubt many of the critics that gave it a fresh rating would have picked any of them for best picture of the year. This just simply says the films have broad appeal. Unlike the people above, I say there is nothing wrong with this. Congrats to Pixar for making movies that so many people can enjoy (including the kids).

ityedmyshoetoday

ityedmyshoetoday on 07-16-2008 09:47 PM

First, there is no reason that "The Queen" should have been the best reviewed movie of 2006. "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Departed" are two of the best movies ever made. "The Queen" was just a stuffy movie about some old woman. If I wanted to watch something about an old woman I would just turn on The View. Second, these Pixar films are completely overrated. No movie should be put before "No Country For Old Men." These reviewers are just playing it safe by giving these Disney movies such good reviews. I can't believe Wall-E is at 97%, my seven year old niece fell asleep. It was boring and is just another example of an overrated Disney movie.

Zergling: The Departed deserved the Oscar hands down. Don't get me wrong I loved Pan's Labyrinth, but it does not even compare to how great of a movie The Departed is. Pan's Labyrinth is one of those movies that a lot of critics and people are going to pretend like they really like because it is "different" and from another country. I hate it when people try to pretend like something is so great simply because it comes from another country. I have a friend who is like that and has one of the worst DVD collections I have ever seen.

mogita001

mogita001 on 07-17-2008 01:21 AM

How can you rate Departed and not make mention to Infernal Affairs, of which Departed copied 99% of its material almost scene by scene. Can a movie that is a knock off of another be a masterpiece when its originality would get a 0? Sure the movie was good, but to give it best picture is ludicrous, especially given that the movie it copied was better and the movie it competed against was better.

Sunny_Corleone

Sunny_Corleone on 07-17-2008 02:59 AM

You can't hate on the departed for not being original. You should know 90 percent of what's in Hollywood is regurgitated (and that's a lowconservative number). I'm sure Internal Affairs stole from another film before it. The corrupt cop bit isn't exactly fresh. But you know what, I would watch The Departed over Internal affairs anyday. I mean it's Scorsese.

insanemansam5

insanemansam5 on 07-17-2008 05:37 AM

Wow, in terms of understanding cinema you my friend get an F that was most literalist non-intuitive take on a movie I've ever read. It's true that the plots of Infernal Affairs and The Departed followed similar patterns and yes there were some scenes that were in both movies but the two couldn't be more different stylistically from everything to the music, dialogue, and directing style. What's more there was actually a lot of plot added to The Departed and if you don't believe me about the plot, the proof is in the pudding The Departed(151 minutes) and Infernal Affairs(101 minutes).

insanemansam5

insanemansam5 on 07-17-2008 05:52 AM

A couple of things of note

1. The popularity of animated films on the tamatometer is not something exclusive among Pixar film, I believe Chicken Run also won a year and Iron Giant was a runner up in 1999.

2. The tamatometer only judges what films that critics liked and didn't. If a critic gave say five 4 star reviews in a year it has no methodology for differentiating which films they thought were best among those. I find moviecitynews.com which compiles averages among top ten lists to be a much more complete and thorough way of judging what films are most critically acclaimed for a particular year. Even though Finding Nemo may have been the film that the most critics would have agreed on as being good in 2003 there were very few critics who would have said it was the best film of the year and most critics probably wouldn't have even put it in a top ten.

ityedmyshoetoday

ityedmyshoetoday on 07-16-2008 09:48 PM

First, there is no reason that "The Queen" should have been the best reviewed movie of 2006. "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Departed" are two of the best movies ever made. "The Queen" was just a stuffy movie about some old woman. If I wanted to watch something about an old woman I would just turn on The View. Second, these Pixar films are completely overrated. No movie should be put before "No Country For Old Men." These reviewers are just playing it safe by giving these Disney movies such good reviews. I can't believe Wall-E is at 97%, my seven year old niece fell asleep. It was boring and is just another example of an overrated Disney movie.

Zergling: The Departed deserved the Oscar hands down. Don't get me wrong I loved Pan's Labyrinth, but it does not even compare to how great of a movie The Departed is. Pan's Labyrinth is one of those movies that a lot of critics and people are going to pretend like they really like because it is "different" and from another country. I hate it when people try to pretend like something is so great simply because it comes from another country. I have a friend who is like that and has one of the worst DVD collections I have ever seen.

TheEmoPianist

TheEmoPianist on 07-16-2008 09:50 PM

Is it juts me or are the majority of these movies made from Pixar, I am not surprised but still

IrreducibleKoan

IrreducibleKoan on 07-16-2008 10:00 PM

It isn't just you.

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