Okay so I set a precedent back in 2009, so here we go again. Got a lot of guff last time after naming Hot Rod as movie of the decade, so it's up to you how serious you take this. Either I'm terrible or you're wrong or this doesn't matter or nothing matters or has ever mattered and humanity is just some dumb mistake. Take your pick.
Real quick I should mention that to make this interesting I tended to lean into movies that have had more of a hidden personal resonance over the years. There are lots of big blockbusters on here, but if I had a choice between something big and something weird, I chose the weird one, if nothing else to have something to talk about. I've ranked all these movies over the years, yet this list isn't just the top movies from every year. They're kind of plucked from all over the place depending on my mood this week. So not scientific, not definitive, but genuine in terms of looking back at a decade. Tell me what I got wrong. Tell me what I missed. But mostly tell me I'm great.
50. The Greasy Strangler (2016)
Let's get this over with and start things off with a WRONG pick. The story follows a confident father and his doofus son as they navigate their business and love lives while a greased-up murderer wreaks havoc on the community. The extreme icky content and quirky characters make this sort of an X-rated Napoleon Dynamite. It's easily described as lousy, but shoot if it doesn't stick with you. It's aggressively annoying and offensive, but it bludgeons the viewer so hard with its goofy tone that one must laugh as a result of either brain damage or Stockholm Syndrome. Do not watch this movie. You will hate it and you will hate me.
49. Empire Uncut (2014)
This one is purely self-indulgent. This isn't really a movie, but an interesting crowdsourcing project where participants pick a 15-second scene from The Empire Strikes Back, re-create that scene through their own original video, then send it in for the project creators to stitch all the tiny scenes together back into a completed movie. This was also done with the original Star Wars this decade, but Empire is the one I participated in. Watch closely for my scenes re-interpreted with Star Trek uniforms, a French biking couple, and an old elementary school filmstrip with those beeps that tell the teacher when to go to the next slide. As proud as I am to sort of take ownership of 45 seconds of one of my favorite movies, I still get immediately sucked in when I see all the other submissions stitched together. It's a crazy assortment of vision with wild bursts of humanity. Makes me smile.
48. Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)
Here's my Marvel submission. The Marvel movies are great. I've seen them all, but I don't feel the need to fill like ten slots on this list with the best ones. Winter Soldier is a great example of what Marvel movies do best. They use the Marvel universe framework to jut out of the superhero genre and blend it with another. In this case, it's 70s paranoia thrillers. I really love how they use the ra-ra character of Captain America in a movie that forces him to re-evaluate the authority of his institutions. It tests the more difficult aspects of patriotism.
47. Moonlight (2016)
I mostly just remember faces from this movie. I can't tell you details or names, but I can say it speaks pain by gazing into eyes.
46. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)
If this pops up on cable or Sling or uTorrent or whatever you use nowadays for whim watching, don't watch more than ten seconds or you'll be sucked in. The first Neighbors is great, but the second one really embellished what the first one did well which is giving the girls more of a comedic spotlight. Apparently the original plan for the first movie was to have Rose Byrne act as Seth Rogen's disapproving wife because up until now in the history of storytelling, that's the tried and true template. They struck gold in deciding that the pair would work as a scheming comic duo rather than be separated in motivation. In the sequel we're treated to the opposing sorority house consisting of future decade breakouts like Beanie Feldstein and Awkwafina. This set of goofy girls are set up against the established goofy couple and the wild card of Zac Efron with an astounding bit of comic timing. Each party is inept but motivated. The girls get the spotlight, but they're not superpowered women, it's the hilarious humanity that gets shown.
45. Get Out (2017)
Okay I think Jordan Peele knows scary and he knows he has a lot to say about race relations in this country. That sequence at the beginning with LaKeith Stanfield wandering around the white neighborhood is actually legit creepy (and that's totally my neighborhood). Rather than lecturing, Peele does a great job of presenting the experience. All those white folks make a point of being well-meaning to take the fact that they're actually not well-meaning right off the table.
44. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
There's something about this story that feels more real than fiction. The book is quite lovely in that it has a sincere, natural narration that's somehow unburdened by the usual literary language that builds a barrier between character and reader. The movie is quite the same. Apparently the director of the movie and the author of the book knew each other growing up. How's that for a perk? The movie just feels like the oldest moments of younger times. Those times when you actually feel yourself growing up. It's also a great period piece. It may as well be in present-day, but then there's that scene where they hear a song on the radio and don't know what it is and they're forced to just not know because there's no Shazam. Olden days are more memorable because of moments like that.
43. Midsommar (2019)
Fortunately Ari Aster got to make his second movie. As a result, I'd call this one much more focused than Hereditary. Like Hereditary, there are still a bunch of random bits of mythology that may be unnecessary, but at least here I'm able to see a significant focus on the Florence Pugh's story and how her need for connection relates to the setting and the horror. I may be wildly misinterpreting the whole thing, but I look at it like the scariness that comes with certain expectations in a relationship. On one side the horror comes from the partner closing off when the desire is to share with them. On the other side the horror comes from the partner wanting to open up, causing unwanted vulnerability. Midsommar is a little bloated with events and weirdness, but I think it does a great job at sliding between these concepts. A sort of sliding scale from agoraphobia to claustrophobia, depending on the point-of-view.
42. The Raid (2012)
With the CGI boom and other cinematic technology, it's refreshing that there have also been leaps of progress for straight-up physical ability. The plot is purposeful and ludicrous as a guy stuck in a building needs to fight through an army of men floor-by-floor. It's the plot of 80s video game and it's perfect for what it is. This is more of a martial arts demo reel of what's possible in the decade. Special effects are great, but there's nothing like the real thing and every ten years we need something like this to keep humans on the screen.
41. Hanna (2011)
It's been a long while since I've seen this, and perhaps it's positively quaint by now. There's a long single-take of Eric Bana fighting off a bunch of thugs on a subway platform. I recall this scene not because of the impressive single-take, but because I got so wrapped up in the scene that nearly didn't notice that it was a single take. I can't explain the mechanics of it, but that's the sign of a movie made well. Something that uses tools to invest us in the action on the screen, but doesn't spotlight the tools themselves. There's weird music and weird characters too.
40. Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
Way back in 2010 this "documentary" took some crazy liberties within the definition of documentary. It's apparently directed by Banksy, who makes an appearance, but I doubt even the modified voice and blurred face come from the literal Banksy. The doc begins straightforward enough with Banksy's street art scene as its subject. Eventually, the director and subject switch places and the movie becomes an examination of the showmanship within art or any other world. This decision is more likely a creative stunt rather than a depiction of the events as they naturally unfolded. Ultimately though, show or document, the truest truth is in the title. This decade I've been fascinated by the way documentaries have moved away from straightforwardness and more toward mindbending experimentation. All that rule-breaking got a big boost from the weirdness of this doc here.
39. Marriage Story (2019)
I expected a series of scenes where the couple would yell at each other and we as an audience would choose loyalties. Yeah that happens yeah. But I'm most surprised at how the scenes naturally flow. Like these two are getting divorced, yeah, but the rest of the world still carries on and they live in it. And yes, since I've seen it, I've been thinking of the loyalties and I've gone back and forth about who's right or wrong and about what. I could easily claim a "victor" in the divorce, but the movie itself compels me not to. For both parties, the antagonist isn't the other person, but the act of conflict itself -- that invisible burden they hope can be extinguished. Both make mistakes, but both are noble in trying to stay above the swamp of inevitable discord. The enemy is strong though, and makes its presence known in a way that feels beyond the control of even Kylo Ren and Black Widow.
38. Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)
So if you remember, this is the one where Elizabeth Olsen joins a cult of sorts and then doesn't. The movie plays a lot with stitching together pieces of past events with different scenes. So like a sound made in one scene will reverberate into the next seen as if they're simultaneous. This clever editing really establishes the sort of present-ness of memory. The main character's life may as well exist in her memories as that's the reality of the film. At the same time, we have the advantage of witnessing Olsen's drastic changes in severely contrasting scenes. There's this pair of milkshake scenes, one giving and one receiving, that combine for a hand over agape mouth sense of terror. If you've seen it, you know how well two different scenes are able to combine their moving parts into a working, yet troubling machine. By the end we're as unsure as she is about what she values.
37. Knives Out (2019)
On my first viewing I was mostly impressed at how straightforward the mystery is. There are definite subversions, but the facts are presented in an orderly way with no drastic rugs being pulled from under us. Also, the whodunit concept is slightly subverted by relying on the side mystery that's less about murder, but more about motive. Add in a main character that must tell the truth and the balancing act is most impressive, without a hint of cheating. On my second viewing I saw much more of the class commentary at play. I think the whole movie may have been based around a tweet I saw a couple of years ago (yes, yes this is funny because at one point Toni Collette's character references "a tweet about a New Yorker article" referring to Daniel Craig's fame). Anyway, the tweet just mused something about removing the concept of family inheritances, and thus making the system more fair. This greedy family is well-represented in the expected, capitalist way, but I really love how the progressive liberals are just as greedy when they sense their potential finances slipping away. Prosperity is independent of deserving it. At least the virtuous are rewarded with movie magic.
36. Blue Ruin (2014)
Movies tend to romanticize revenge. I suppose revenge is one of those things where we can't take really take the pleasure of killing those who have wronged us, but we're able to watch movies of other people doing it and we at least get the pleasure of schadenfreude when some villain is justifiably punished by someone similar to us. Blue Ruin takes the romance away. The revenge-enacter is justified, but he's not granted the special revenge powers usually set aside for the main character. Rather, we're treated to a combination of rooting for this guy, but cringing when the job continues to spiral.
35. The Trip (2011)
Is The Trip a movie or is it just a camera left running in front of Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon? Kind of like The Raid does in physical prowess, The Trip fully exploits the cinematic power of verbal prowess. It's oddly comforting that we'll always have a need to simply see the joys of two people interacting -- even two people that sort of dislike each other. Actually, maybe that's a plus. They wouldn't be so funny if they weren't so competitive. The big power play in this one is the Michael Caine impression-off. Head to the sequels for a lively fix of both Hugh Grant and Roger Moore, may he rest in peace.
34. Life Itself (2014)
Roger Ebert did two things in his life that I'm thankful for. First, he brought the concept of film criticism to the masses. This actually comes with its own set of issues. The fact that we're all critics now seems to somehow dissuede the allowance of individual thought. Even so, in the end it's a benefit that society has the vocabulary to actively discuss movies rather than just passively watch them. The other thing Ebert brought, and we don't talk about this as much, is how his movie views are so specifically based on how he personally connected with the film, rather than how he thinks the masses should connect with it. Now that we're all critics, many of us fall into that silly trap of gauging a film on how we think others should feel about it rather than how we feel about it. He showed us we ought to reckon with a film based on how it challenges and adjusts our own beliefs. Ebert's personal feelings would often make for some crazy opinions that I definitely don't agree with, but nonetheless I can't argue with his convictions.
33. Atomic Blonde (2017)
This may still be recency bias talking, but this is one of those that's sort of made for me. You got your 80s vibe, you got your European spy stuff, you got your stellar fight scenes. It's just great craft. So great, that in the middle of the movie there's a long fight sequence without the slick sheen of the 80s soundtrack. It's just a straightforward long sequence to prove the exhilaration of great choreography without the need for other pleasurable distractions.
32. Only God Forgives (2013)
Nicolas Winding Refn had a pretty good decade. I nearly put Drive on this list, but the darkest part of me gravitates toward this bit of fluorescent misery. I checked my records just now and I hilariously put this as number 21 on my 2013 list. There are at least 15 movies from that year I guess I liked more at the time that I'm completely skipping over on this big list. This is not something I can explain, but I can say the overhead images of Ryan Gosling getting pummeled in a Bangkok, the sudden way Kristin Scott Thomas loses her confidence in the face of the law, the way the machine gun fire sprays eye level on neon-soaked dining tables are all images that continue to stick with me over the last six years. I think the movie is about the reckoning of the most abhorrent spilling over onto more innocent lives. Maybe these types live with similar visions that have been embedded in my brain since I've seen this.
31. The Death of Stalin (2017)
Armando Iannucci has been huge over the past decade. Veep has been a major antidote to the fable idealism of The West Wing as well as the deeply cynical villainy of House of Cards. I'm betting media historians will actually consider Iannucci's interpretation of politics as the daily lives of the pettiest as the most accurate of the three. The Death of Stalin is a bit different in that it straight on takes place in a historically established governmental regime. The movie disarms the audience with all the players tripping over each other while keeping their native accents rather than adopting Russian ones. Still, after the disarming it's unnerving to see characters so similar to people so familiar to us living and feeling so comfortable in a totalitarian world.
30. John Wick (2014)
Action movies got off the couch this decade. The point is no shortcuts. Put literal actors doing the literal action within a medium shot with no cuts so we actually see what's going on rather than a jumbled, edited mess. I probably shouldn't see as many violent things as I do, but this might be the closest I get to appreciating ballet. Who wouldn't fight over their loving dog though?
29. Boyhood (2014)
I have more respect for this than anything else. The noble experiment took what, 12 years or something? It's completely fictional, but due to its nature of using real-life actor aging it's practically more documentary than other documentaries on this list. The thing strangely feels a bit uneven with some of the more dramatic stuff at the beginning and uneventful stuff toward the end. Perhaps it works as a symbol of adolescence itself. The beginning tends to be more dramatic than the end, even though the answers aren't all there. The choices of what to include over the years is initially confounding, but make sense in a nature of memory kind of way. Often they're everyday conversations rather than what would seem to be a movie event, such as a high school graduation ceremony. And that fits. There's one image of the boy's friend biking behind the car as the boy is riding away from the neighborhood for the last time. What a perfect memory.
28. Two Days, One Night (2014)
I did not want to see this. I was stressed out about work, and I think there had been recent layoffs or something. Then I walked into this movie about Marion Cotillard trying to convince her co-workers to allow her to not get fired even though it means less pay for everyone. I didn't even want to deal with it. Obviously her character is just as apprehensive on the subject. Amazingly though, there is so much hope in this bleak at first picture. It's so crafty to take something so inherently depressing and let the characters find the goodness. Now that's art. Let the miserable stuff be the inanimate. Use humanity to go beyond that.
27. mother! (2017)
There's so much symbolism here, but if you just take it on its surface, a bunch of guests come into the house and an exasperated Jennifer Lawrence tries in vain to usher them out, it's horrifying in a very vivid "been there" kind of way. Throw the symbolism in and it's another story. Hilariously many people found this movie's meanings and themes very obvious, but nearly everybody came to a different conclusion about what they were. I was convinced the movie is actually about the relationship between having children and creating art and the consequences of both. Maybe that's true, but the more overt meaning I didn't even get is a straight up Biblical interpretation starting with Adam and Eve. More hilariously, many people see the movie as a representation of Jennifer Lawrence's and Darren Aronofsky's volatile relationship. JLaw and Aronofsky really didn't appreciate that interpretation. When they broke up everyone on the internet was like "oh I guess she finally saw mother!" The thing is, I'm not even sure if it's what makes it great, but this BEYOND textbook definition of "Death of the Author" makes it interesting. Maybe because none of us even knew we'd see it differently until we all did.
26. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
It's like The Odyssey told in living pictograms. The dialogue isn't so much an afterthought, but it's more like background noise in an already-existent universe. It's the best of oldschool filmmaking. You wanna make a movie about a bunch of post-apocalyptic punks racing through the desert blowing up each others' cars? Then go to the desert with a bunch of punks and blow up a bunch of cars, but do it with precision and completely committed to the world. George Miller realizes that especially in this day and age our eyes are open. We can still tell the real from the fake. The day is not here where we can be deceived to completion. It's actually interesting that there is actually a ton of CGI in this thing, but it's not in the cars or the guns or the sand. It's in the tiny stitches between the practical effects. Until real physical truth has no meaning, this is the way to make movies.
25. Parasite (2019)
This was a big hit this last year, so I'm still ruminating on it just a little bit. Bong Joon Ho has this crazy subtle method of making straightforward tales complicated. Usually these kind of society fables have this patronizing sense of what's right so they show the doofus rich people or the morons in power get their comeuppance while we in the audience cheer at the obviousness of it all. With his movies, the problem isn't one-dimensional characters, but rather the system we've allowed ourselves to be placed. Undoing it isn't as easy as merely dispatching a human villain. I'm not sure if anything was lost in translation, but I think the title is supposed to be singular on purpose. The leech is our own system and everyone provides the blood.
24. Anna Karenina (2013)
I only saw this once, but its method of interweaving scenes cinematically like the the adjustment of backdrops in a playhouse has always stayed with me. Actually, it's even more literal than that. Apparently Anna Karenina is a long book, so I'm told and also I don't read, but the whole movie compresses times and locales within a literal playhouse. The events are the same, but the intimacy is ratcheted. It's a bizarre experiment that I don't recall much discussion of when it was released. I suppose I don't recall anybody else I know seeing it at the time, so I've been alone with my curiosity about it. Also, this movie introduced Alicia Vikander to my world, so I'll always remember it.
23. The Neon Demon (2016)
Sweet music. Sweet seizure-inducing strobes. Sweet dreams on the edge crossing into nightmares. Nicolas Winding Refn made a lot of testosteroney movies this past decade, but he jumped into the estrogen pool with a set of fangs and a stack of vivid color filters. This movie uses the L.A. model scene as its backdrop, but the model participants are closer to tigers than anything else. There's some symbolism involving some kind of of wild feline getting into Elle Fanning's motel room. I think the idea is once you get to the big city, you gotta close yourself up because either you're gonna be eaten or your own instinct to consume will awake in you. Weird symbolism turns into "wow they went there" literalism. If I recall, Victoria's Secret model Abbey Lee does a pretty great job as one of the fellow savage models.
22. The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
If you haven't seen this movie, go ahead and see it. It's got its basis in scary movies, it follows the template, but it's not scary. It uses horror movie tropes to become a visual essay on our relationship with the entertainment mass media and questions why we make the demands we do year after year in what shows we consume. The horror aspect of the story is intercut with sequences involving a few boring accountants and monster scientists with a few discussions regarding our need to perpetuate our primal visions of nightmares into product. The surprisingly thoughtful essay does all this in a spectacularly entertaining way. So much so, that maybe it's easy for the point to be lost. So see this movie. Enjoy the exciting twists. Decide for yourself what that giant hand represents at the end.
21. Bridesmaids (2011)
Melissa McCarthy has this line where she introduces herself as "someone who recently fell off a cruise ship and hit all the railings like a pinball" and I will never stop thinking about that. Good job to Kristen Wiig for presenting a character who actually is rather abhorrent in some ways, yet I completely relate to her frustration at the situation. There's lots of gross stuff in this, sure. Honestly, you could take or leave that. The real beauty is the tenseness between Wiig and Rose Byrne that's constantly on the verge of blowing over.
20. Room 237 (2012)
Okay here's another one that didn't rank super well with me in the actual year I saw it, but has been one on my mind for years. This unorthodox documentary isn't a study of the movie The Shining, it's a study of the fans of The Shining who study The Shining. These people are weird, but like everyone who watched mother!, they're weird in vastly different ways from each other. It goes to show the unsuspecting power of an artistic piece of work. Stanley Kubrick threw in a few bizarre bits of set design to his original movie and the result is a catapulting of ideas in different directions. I've noticed that when some people have these far out theories on the meaning of a movie or another piece of art, a lot of other people jump on it saying "oh whatever you can BS interpret anything you want!" This is true and this is a problem. But there is a significant difference in the way art speaks to us and the stuff we make up to sound smart. Obviously I'm guilty of the latter, but you gotta trust me, sometimes stuff just speaks out. Those are the truly interesting films. The ones where you sense a meaning beyond your cultural assignment to find meaning. And so often that meaning is not the same as your friends. I wish I understood the science for that, but that's where it gets really fun.
19. Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Here's another one of those allegory movies. The musician Boots Riley made this and I'd love to see more filmmaking from him in the future. There's a great vision here of an off-kilter society similar to our own with just a few extreme cases amped up. In this world, rather than worrying about debt, people have the convenient option to volunteer to live and work forever within the same building and free jumpsuits are provided! There are also some clever filmmaking visual touches like the main character telemarketing and his desk literally falls into the living room of the family he's calling. It's all a bit Brazil, but it continues a warped path right to the last frame. Lets just say Riley didn't have anyone on his team to tell him horse-men would go to far. I'm very glad nobody reigned him back because this movie's bonkers and I'm glad we get it in full bonkerness.
18. The Lobster (2016)
This movie is easy to hate if you feel a need to line up every symbol. It's a lot easier to let it go and put yourself in Colin Farrell's shoes as he faces eternal loneliness (this isn't hard for me to do). In another wacky concept, this world forces every inhabitant to couple up or be turned into an animal (the lobster is the main character's choice). Premise aside, this movie stays strong in my memory because of the hard lines of two factions. One group finds a severe importance in finding essential similarities within relationships with no patience for flexibility or the opportunity to grow in different directions. The other group is militaristic in its adherence to individuality to the point of a complete breakaway from other individuals. Maybe it's too easy to point out the obvious things relationships shouldn't have, but also so many of these things maybe are heralded as virtues too much.
17. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
This was our introduction to Taika Waititi and he did not disappoint. I actually don't have a lot to say about this one. Its premise is actually a bit stale. We get the documentary formatted comedy which is pretty stale by now. We also get the unusual subject matter in vampires. This is so delightfully successful though because it's simply so very funny. It probably comes from the full commitment of the team. The set-up is standard, but the execution is just about as sincere as it can get. Maybe it was, but this movie certainly doesn't feel like it was produced in a boardroom because "mockumentaries are hot and vampires are hot so we'll monetize by combining!" No. Even if that's the story of how this came to be, the laughs come from the sincerity of the characters.
16. Tower (2016)
I've implied in other entries that there are some documentaries that don't even skirt the line, but full on jump over the line into something else. Tower is specifically what's on my mind as far as breaking documentary rules, but is otherwise uncategorizable. The movie covers that one day when a guy climbed a belltower in Texas and started shooting people. It was way back in the 60s I think and is one of the first mass shootings. Okay with that out of the way, I know that puts you off from seeing it. Trust me on this, you're gonna want to see the movie. First of all, the shooter is glamorized or really not even featured. This is a movie about a community of strangers. It's about the courage that rises up in crisis. Okay and also, the details are presented to us in a very unorthodox way. One could say such re-enactments are a step away from the truth, but quite uniquely, Tower provides a depth and emotion I've never seen in another documentary, despite moving closer to a narrative method of storytelling.
15. Raw (2017)
A young vegetarian comes of age and finds herself with more than the usual set of uncontrollable appetites. The coming of age concept may be a tired theme, but it's executed with precision and power here. The movie swings from sheltered shame to the exhilaration of giving into the basest of nature. There's good humor too. Every cannibalism tale has that.
14. Us (2019)
I just wrote about this in my other post, so I'll attempt (but fail) to elaborate out something different here. There's a story tool here that Jordan Peele uses that I'm sure has a name, but I'm too literary-inept to know what it's called. If it doesn't have a name, then I think Peele will have a long legacy because of its invention. I'll be vague if you haven't seen it (I'll also be vague because I don't have the skills to properly hammer the concept down). So anyway the movie is off and running and we get a bunch of antagonists. They're dressed in red and they seem very annoyed at the seemingly liberal elite protagonists. The movie seems to say that these people are society's antagonists. Later in the movie, it's revealed that one individual is not what he or she is. This subverts the initial judgment the movie makes, but rather than making it about an entire society, the judgment is more on the individual. So in the end, we're left with broad external sentiments going against opposite individual internal sentiments. Regardless of how you relate outwardly to society, Peele found a way to question our motives on the inside. I'd sure love the Cliff's Notes to the paper about this that must exist somewhere.
13. The Duke of Burgundy (2015)
I've only seen this once. It's weird. The story takes place in a world that looks like 60s Europe, but no men exist. Women are in relationships with each other based on some S&M role-playing. Yes, it's a little bit kinky, but not explicit. Anyway, as we're exposed to the master and servant dynamics, there are slight cracks in the structure. Desire and vulnerability are found in unlikely places. Throughout this decade I've never gotten the image out of my head of some unforseen tears from a character in this movie. Consider listening to the soundtrack. It's by a band called Cat's Eyes and it completely commits to something out of another time to the point that it feels like time travel.
12. Never Let Me Go (2010)
I liked this fine when I saw it, but it became a part of me watching it twice since then. If reading, rather than movies are your thing (and if you've read this far, that's likely the case), consider picking up the book. I was actually brought to a sobbing mess that one night when I read the book and then watched the movie immediately after. There is sort of a speculative concept, that I won't discuss. The movie does a great job of slowly ushering us into the world of the three teenage main characters and their predicament. Really though, it's the oldest story. It's about love first. But most of all it's about regret. Despite the bizarre situation of the characters, it's strangely even more relatable.
11. Ex Machina (2015)
I'm not even really sure what life is. I know I can think and struggle, but when a machine tells me she's alive, how is that any different in my universe than another living person I don't communicate with? My beloved Alicia Vikander handles quite a job here as acting as a machine pretending to be alive. There's never a question though. I mean she's alive, right? She's alive enough to form a connection with, right? She'll save me if I'm trapped or dying, right? What is humanity? What is thinking? Are either of these more important that whatever overthrows us? Ex Machina is the kind of science fiction Greek myths invented.
10. Snowpiercer (2014)
My intro to Bong Joon Ho! I love this. Humankind lives on a perpetually moving train and the poorest (the ones in the caboose) fight through the train to the most well-off (the engine) in order to change society for the better. It's like the most dismal children's book ever. Every train car is like its own little short film as our heroes navigate through each level of society. The real-world parallels are obvious, but in the end, it's not as easy as killing the bad guy. Like in Parasite, the real enemy is a system that can't merely be killed.
9. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
When I saw this movie two years ago I never dreamed it would be as controversial as it's become. I might be considered a fair weather Star Wars fan. In the early 80s Star Wars was my life, my dreams, my joy, etc., but since then the new movies and other media have mostly been cultural homework assignments rather than the sort of religious experiences they were when I was a kid. The Last Jedi affects me though. This movie contains a few weird choices regarding minor side plots I suppose I'm not a fan of, but if nothing else, I'll always love this movie because for seven other movies we've dealt with a evil as a product of manipulation. Here, the antagonist is the product of complete freedom. Like all moral struggles, the right path must be re-evaluated for the present rather than just rehashed from the past. It's a vibe that feels familiar to those murky emotional journeys of Star Wars past, but it's twisted with a fresh moral perspective. In the past two years I've heard so many people gripe about so many miniscule things about this movie I either like fine or don't even care anything about. But I haven't seen anything like the troubled conversation between Rey and Kylo after they've dispatched the trite placeholder character in a gorgeous throne room. With a nearly sexual afterglow, the characters realize that even though they fought alongside one another, they still bear the heartbreak of seeing the universe differently. I thought highly of this two years ago, but I find it more powerful now considering how it matches so fittingly with the current Star Wars fan war. Hey also this movie does what so many fantasy stories fail to do in that it teaches you don't need to have a famous name to save the day, but whatever maybe that's not true after all.
8. Whiplash (2014)
"NOT MY TEMPO!" J.K. Simmons' character from Whiplash is like this decade's Darth Vader. The supreme chancellor of music schools imbibes this movie with more horror than most Friday the 13ths. I saw this movie at Sundance and thought to myself if J.K. Simmons got on the same elevator I'd instantly collapse in a heap and huddle into a ball. I've found some intriguing similarities in Damien Chazelle's two big works this decade in that they're both about what you're willing to sacrifice to follow your dreams. I've thought about this a lot over the last five years and I've decided that this movie isn't about needing an antagonist to become great, but it's about casting out the antagonist that's holding you back. Strangely, the results of the intense Miles Teller/J.K. Simmons face-off is more empowering than the melancholic ending to the sunny happy La La Land.
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
Everybody's in this. Captain America, Captain Marvel, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, the cups lady, that Succession guy, Anne from Arrested Development. Everybody! As I watched this originally, I recognized that I might be a little too swayed by the frenetic Edgar Wright visual and editing techniques. It may have been a minus on first viewing. He's so good at what he does though, that all that crazy special effect stuff that's so over the top only gets way more fun with age. It's like beating Contra the first time was way fun, but beating Contra without losing any lives is what living is all about.
6. MacGruber (2010)
At one point in this movie MacGruber tells a story so seemingly innocent to him, but it reveals to everyone else in the room that he's actually the monster of his own story. This movie hilariously failed miserably at the box office, which I suppose is understandable. It's based on not just a Saturday Night Live sketch, but a sketch already known for being a 30-second single-joke. The extra mile was taken though. As mentioned in the opening sentence, this character is someone usually unseen in comedy, but we all know him. Every once in a while you meet that guy who actually worsens as you get to know him. It's a rare trait. Here's a guy who not only uses his teammate as a human shield, he spins the guy backward because one half of the human shield is too riddled with bullets. Despite leaning into the despicable character, the filmmakers actually lean into a pretty great look for the film. This may be my favorite 80s action movie.
5. Before Midnight (2013)
The Before trilogy is more real to me than many of my family members. If you're unfamiliar, the three movies came out in 1995, 2004, and 2013. Each takes place with the same two characters over the course of a single day. As far as I'm concerned, this all happened. I think this last one may actually be my favorite of the three too, and as the third in a trilogy, I'm not even sure of another example where that's the case. Jesse and Celine's loose improvisation yields something so natural I actually feel the weight of it in my seat. At the same time, it's so frightening to see their world turn on a dime so quickly. This movie is a triumphant crown to the other two, but the crown is made of the thinnest glass.
4. La La Land (2016)
There's strangely so much against this movie, so let's get a few things out of the way. First, Ryan Gosling's character doesn't "save" jazz. Like most white men, he has a weakness for the past and prefers living there. Second, there's no reason the singing and dancing needs to be to the level of oldschool MGM musicals to have a place in the story being told here. This isn't a showy Broadway production, but rather a rougher and more internal tale of minor nobodies trying to become professional. Beyond the rousing opening number, the style is more an intimate documentary-style of what it would look like if these talented, but not perfect people decided to dance in public. But whatever, those are the minorest of minor things in this movie. Like Whiplash, it's a movie about following your dreams, but this one has some added complexities that aren't obvious until later. Despite the array of sunny songs, there's a beautiful bittersweetness to La La Land with its conclusion that a passion for craft and a passion for romance are often at odds with each other. Such passions can't simply be multi-tasked in the same way singing and dancing can. In the end, Chazelle pulls it together by showing a beautiful love through these characters helping each other with their artistic passions at the sacrifice of romance.
3. It Follows (2015)
Dreamy in its blue hue and nightmarish in its clanging Disasterpeace soundtrack, It Follows poured out from the screen and into my very warped heart. The rules for this horror movie make little sense, but somehow the film has enough conviction that we're forced to just accept the illogic and run with it. Death comes no matter the rules. Either run or put it off with pleasure.
2. Eighth Grade (2018)
I'm exhausted because this list has been long and eighth grade is still forever. The point of view of Eighth Grade is horrifyingly drastic and familiar. Weird how Kayla only seems to see everyone else in her life adjusting so well, but I'm pretty sure (and I sort of hope) that we were all screwed up back then. As dismally true as this movie will always be, the speech Kayla's dad gives her about how honored he is to be the dad of someone so smart and so cool, is something I'm choosing to rob Kayla of for myself.
1. Sing Street (2016)
So let's warp back to Ireland in 1985. The eighties are half over and it's up to us to provide the soundtrack for the rest of the decade. I'm in. I'm so in. But that's just the setting. The movie begins pretty dismally with young Conor adjusting to bullies at a new school. About ten minutes in, the camera rolls out of the school, across the street, and right into Lucy Boynton's eyes as her smile changes Conor's entire universe. At that exact moment we feel him come of age. Sing Street doesn't just tap into the type of music I've never let go, it taps into those adolescent moments I still live with. Although the girl is the catalyst, the movie isn't just about impressing her. It's about the creative joy that comes with making a piece of art come alive and live in the world.
There you are. You didn't ask for it, but I forced it upon you. Get prepped for this again in ten years.
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