We’ve had a lot of discussion of this topic around here lately. My husband makes me reveal my favorite book and favorite movie of the year every single New Year’s Eve - it’s something I just had to accept when I married him.

But this year I had the added challenge of coming up with the best of the decade and have been debating potential films to be put on this list and their various merits and faults. So here’s mine. The top 25 movies of the decade, in “sort of” order, and in what I like to think is a nice balance of movies that I simply really enjoyed and those that were superbly done. It’s a nice balance of genres too, if I do say so myself.

1. Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

2. Pride and Prejudice (2005)

3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

4. Amelie

5. Avatar

6. Wall-E

7. March of the Penguins

8. Little Miss Sunshine

9. The Royal Tenenbaums

10. Love, Actually

11. Winged Migration

12. Signs

13. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

14. Eastern Promises or A History of Violence. I’m having trouble deciding but know that I need more Viggo Mortenson on this list because I bear much, MUCH love for him.

15. Best In Show (although Waiting For Guffman will always be my favorite of this group, but alas, 1996)

16. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

17. Whale Rider

18. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

19. House of Flying Daggers

20. Gangs of New York

21. Stranger Than Fiction

22. My Big Fat Greek Wedding OR Bridget Jones’s Diary. Again, movies I just loved despite their many flaws.

23. Gladiator

24. The Village

25. The Matrix: Revolutions

Additions and omissions? What say you? And Fight Club was 1999, unfortunately.