Top 10 Movies of the Decade: Drama

10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers directed by Peter Jackson
The middle picture in Peter Jackson's Oscar winning trilogy adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's novels has it all: humor, drama, one of the best battle sequences ever filmed and a groundbreaking CGI character. It's also the best of the three films, moving breathlessly through its three-plus hour running time.

9. Lost in Translation directed by Sofia Coppola
This story of two Americans--a washed up actor a bored newlywed--who become friends during a stay in Tokyo established Sofia Coppola as one of the most exciting filmmakers working today, and with good reason. Despite great performances from Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson (just 20 years old when the film was released), the real star of the film is Japan, lovingly captured by Coppola as a place full of wonder and beauty.

8. L'Enfant directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne
Bruno, a down on his luck petty criminal, sells his baby. When his girlfriend reacts with horror, Bruno goes on a desperate quest to raise the money to buy his son back and, in the process, find some personal redemption. Using sparse dialogue, the Dardenne brothers manage to portray Bruno, not as a monster, but as an aimless man-child who just doesn't know any better.

7. Dogville directed by Lars von Trier
For the first installment in Lars von Trier's "U.S.A. trilogy," the director filmed the entire movie on an open soundstage with no walls and minimal props. This stripped down approach adds to the intensity of the story, about a small town in Colorado where the locals agree to shelter a woman hiding from the mob, but then turn abusive and become her captors, subjecting her to public humiliation, forced labor and rape.

6. There Will Be Blood directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
There's not a single bad performance in this stark epic about an oil tycoon's rise to power, but Daniel Day Lewis, who won his second Best Academy Award for Best Actor, haunts every scene he's in. You won't be able to take your eyes off him.

5. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind directed by Michel Gondry
This offbeat drama about a new couple who discover they're on their second relationship together after undergoing a medical procedure that erased all memories of their first romance, earned screenwriter Charlie Kaufman a much deserved Oscar. When Joel, played by Jim Carrey, realizes that he wants to keep his memories of Clementine (Kate Winslet), miserable though they may be, the film becomes a dazzling meditation on memory and what it really means to feel love.

4. Let the Right One In directed by Tomas Alfredson
Though frequently mentioned along with the Twilight movies and television shows like "True Blood" and "The Vampire Diaries," no other vampire movie or TV show has reinvented the genre like this Swedish film, adapted from the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, about a bullied 12 year old whose life changes forever when he becomes best friends with his new neighbor, a centuries old vampire in the body of a 12 year old girl.

3. Werckmeister Harmonies directed by Béla Tarr
In a small town on the Hungarian Plain, a traveling sideshow arrives. The show's main attractions are the giant stuffed carcass of a whale and The Prince, a mysterious figure whose presence causes the town to erupt in violence. This simple story filmed in black & white became one of the greatest films of the decade.

2. Little Children directed by Todd Field
The lives of a stay at home dad, the unhappy housewife he has an affair with, the pedophile who's moved into their neighborhood and a disgraced former cop trying to find meaning in his life, all intersect in this richly layered drama that only gets better with each viewing.

1. No Country for Old Men directed by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
If the only good thing about this film was the scene where Javier Bardem forces a frightened gas station owner to gamble his life on a coin toss, it would still be good enough to make this list. But there's so much more. Playing Anton Chigurh, "a psychopathic killer," as another character describes him, Bardem is pure evil, an unstoppable force killing everyone in his path. The performances are uniformly terrific, the dialogue is pitch perfect and the cinematography by Roger Deakins gives the West Texas landscape an apocalyptic ominousness.