Tybout picks his decade movie favorites

We’re dangerously close to the end of the year, and that means lots and lots of lists.

Have… We’re dangerously close to the end of the year, and that means lots and lots of lists.

Have you ever wondered what the 10 best movies of the year were, but felt too uncertain about your own opinion? Let the critics tell you.

Some critics, though, have become even more ambitious than their usual “best of the year” fare, focusing instead on the more grandiose “best of the decade.”

If you’re faint of heart, you might want to avoid such lists — the sheer overflow of quality can feel overwhelming.

Given all this wonderful data, I thought it would be redundant to make another “top 10 of the year” or “top 50 of the decade” list. Instead, I will try something new — giving out awards for categories I’ve picked at random.

Usually, I would begin with the disclaimer — “This is just my opinion” — but that’s false. These are actually the best movies in each respective category.

Best “Harry Potter” movie: Although my personal favorite was the one with the bad*ss snake, I have to hand it to director David Yates. “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” (2009) was the most mature, emotionally invested of the series. And that scene with the water zombies? That’s probably the scariest a PG-rated movie since “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

Best superhero movie of the decade: I basically had three movies in contention for this title — both the new “Batman” movies and “Spider-Man.” Unfortunately, for my favorite Web-slinging superhero, the subdued menace of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” (2008) wins out. This was simply the most complex, most intellectual and most superbly plotted superhero movie ever made.

Best series to hate this decade: It’s the one with the vampires. You know, it starts with a T and rhymes with “dwilight.”

Best trailer of the decade: This one’s a tie. The trailers for “Where the Wild Things Are” (2009) and “Cloverfield” (2008) both accomplished their goals beyond the studios’ wildest dreams: to get people worked into a cinematic fervor based on roughly two minutes of footage. “Where the Wild Things Are” stirred the child within viewers with dazzling footage of an imaginationland, and “Cloverfield” excited nerds by embedding countless clues in the trailer itself, creating a veritable decoding frenzy on the Internet. While the latter never really lived up to its trailer’s mysticism, it still felt thrilling to witness what had been built up as some sort of dark movie secret.

Worst trend of the decade: I’d say superheroes, were it not for the abundance of quality we’ve seen from these movies over the last 10 years. Instead, I will have to go with a cinematography trend: the shaky cam. It might work well for certain movies (“The Bourne Ultimatum”), but not for every movie. The shaky cam is the technique your mom uses when she first picks up her camcorder and tries to walk around the house with it. More deliberate shots are almost always the best way to captivate an audience. Let’s hope more filmmakers take this to heart in 2010.

Best zombie movie of the decade: To be honest, not many movies even come close to “28 Days Later” (2002), and that includes its shaky cam sequel “28 Weeks Later” (2007). This is what a zombie apocalypse would actually look like. Prepare accordingly.

Finally, to end in the holiday spirit, the best Christmas movie of the decade: Unfortunately, there wasn’t much strong competition for this, but you can take refuge in Danny Boyle’s “Millions” (2004), about a kid who discovers a sack of money that’s been thrown from a train. The only people I can imagine not liking this movie are people who have lost large sacks of money on trains. Other than that, it’s amazing.

Now sit back and take a breath of relief — you are officially cinematically enlightened.