Best of the 2010s Lists • Page 3

Personal top 10 TV shows. Did not include shows I have not finished or (obviously) haven't seen yet.

1. Nathan For You
2. You're the Worst
3. Mad Men
4. Happy Endings
5. Atlanta
6. Justified
7. Breaking Bad
8. Terriers
9. Rick and Morty
10. Party Down


Obvi didn't watch Fleabag or Succession or Twin Peaks or The Americans

 

Man Terriers. Gone to soon.

 

I haven’t thought about a full top ten, but my top three without a doubt are ALL in the list you mentioned not watching.

 

I made my top 100 today because it was bad 90's comedy movies all day at school.

I have a 2000-2009 list, but making that was so different because I only really started pursuing film seriously in 2007 or so and it was a lot of catching up. By contrast, looking at old yearly lists, I was alarmed by how little I remembered. Whenever I had two films that were essentially a tie, I would choose the less well-known one simply to try and give it more exposure. In contrast, my decade list is more mainstream, because it is easier to remember films that were part of the cultural conversation rather than something from Argentina that I saw on my laptop and never talked to another human about. I had to look up images or plot recaps of many of the films. If it jarred my memory, I probably kept it, but there were times that I still couldn't remember it. Too many Asian couple dramas, too many experimental South American movies in the woods, too many European movies about seeing a girl walk by a cafe.

I will probably play around with the list more as I wait for a few of the really big 2019 films, but also because some of the placements ended up feeling off. If you had asked me if I preferred Mistress America or Marriage Story, I would have said Mistress America, but picking from the 200 films I used as a baseline it stood out to me more for some reason. I need to jumble the years as well, because it probably influenced how I went down the list.

 

Your number 1 is still Korine, though, right?

 

He makes an appearance. Not top twenty, though.

 

U

Uh watch Fleabag immediately

 

Recapping a year is easy; twelve months seem to fly by, especially as you get older. A few seasons, a birthday and some holidays. You get into yearly routines, like paying your taxes or renewing your vehicle tags or finding out how your company health plan has gotten worse. On a more practical matter, our planet is governed by the idea of a year, as we quite literally took our trip around the Sun.

A decade is a much thornier proposition. You can really chart change, especially in your first few decades of life. At the beginning of 2010, I was in my last semester of college. I had more hair, I had more passion about politics, and most people my age didn't have children. As the decade passed, our lives changed considerably. We found ourselves starting careers, forming families, and settling into the life that will define us going forward. There probably won't be a decade that will have more change for the rest of my life; I am such a different person and in a different place at 21 as I am at 31, but it is hard to imagine that it will be that dramatic from 31 to 41.

In film, we saw changes as well. The idea of a Netflix film didn't really exist in 2010, and people really thought 3D was here to stay after the success of AVATAR. Many of the best directors of this decade were either unknown or hadn't released a film yet, and superhero movies hadn't suffocated movie theaters yet.

As always, before we can look at the best films of the decade, we have to wash our mouths out of the filth. These were the most nauseating experiences of the 2010's. Of course you could pluck some SciFI channel original to compete against them, but it would be like excusing a bad NBA team by pointing out that they could dominate the local middle school. These films came from filmmakers that people respected or that received notices they did not deserve. I decided to limit this to one film per director, so you can easily substitute some of these films for their rancid siblings.




10. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
DIRECTED BY: LYNNE RAMSAY

A film that suggests that school shooters, and sociopaths in general, are born that way rather than a product of their environment. The entire affair is loathsome, but the biggest failing is its complete lack of attempt to delve into any sort of psychology around the real reason these acts keep happening.



9. THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
DIRECTED BY: MARTIN MCDONAGH

In case you didn't know that the protagonist is supposed to be flawed, there is a scene where she antagonizes her daughter before she leaves. As the daughter is leaving, she yells "I hope I get raped!", only to be raped and murdered immediately afterward. The dumb racist cop is secretly a master detective, and they finally find the murderer, but maybe it isn't? It doesn't matter because the film never really cared about the case to begin with.



8. GREEN BOOK
DIRECTED BY: PETER FARRELLY

Everyone who watches the Academy Awards, or defends them as an institution, has to contend with the fact that this film exists because of their choices. While DRIVING MISS DAISY is a punchline for beating the much more vital DO THE RIGHT THING, the makers of this film correctly saw that that was the equation for winning awards. The two leads are so cartoonishly contrasted that you might think you are watching a new version of the show WIFE SWAP.



7. THE IMPOSSIBLE
DIRECTED BY: J.A. BAYONA

It is bad enough that you take a horrific natural disaster and make it into a thriller, but when you sprinkle in a white family to center around hundreds of thousands of Thai people, you are really being gross. If that wasn't enough, the family that this was about wasn't even white in the first place. It is hard to imagine this kind of thing coming out in the latter half of this decade, but you never know.



6. MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN
DIRECTED BY: JASON REITMAN

People finally realized that Reitman was a hack after he dominated the previous decade, but few could have been prepared for a trainwreck such as this. Not only did it feel like a grandmother warning her children about "chat lines", it often was not even up to date with the technology of the time.



5. SHAME
DIRECTED BY: STEVE MCQUEEN

In this film, rock bottom is letting a man blow you.




4. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK
DIRECTED BY: DAVID O. RUSSELL

Filmmakers really need to pass some sort of competency test before they try to make films about mental illness.



3. DRIVE
DIRECTED BY: NICOLAS WINDING REFN

You can make a great film that becomes iconic, or you can just appropriate other iconography at a desperate grasp for your own mythmaking. ONLY GOD FORGIVES was worse and NEON DEMON was a disaster as well, but this was the one that captured national attention. Nicolas Winding Refn is among our worst directors.



2. WISH I WAS HERE
DIRECTED BY: ZACH BRAFF

We knew we were in trouble from the moment the Kickstarter announcement came out. Why would Braff, a popular television star and the director of the very successful (but loathsome) GARDEN STATE, need to beg for a few million dollars? In this film, Braff's family sends their kids to private school because it would be too terrifying for them to get a public education. Braff stays at home as a failed actor while his wife works, and when the faucet is turned off from the grandfather getting cancer, we are supposed to care about the middle-aged Braff's emotional development while he decides to put his kids at risk by choosing to home school the kids. This is the most loathsome type of coastal liberal arrogance, the pure narcissism and self-obsession that is easy target for mockery.



1. MOTHER!
DIRECTED BY: DARREN ARONOFSKY

Darren Aronofsky is like a student who says women belong in the kitchen in order to irritate his peers and teacher. It is hard to believe he somehow made THE WRESTLER. Here, we have to suffer through his spin on the Bible, which is a piece to let his child bride emote and wail around the screen. Killing a baby and having it ripped apart isn't profound; it is cheap shock in order to get contrarians to defend your work. On a plane, I saw a young women turn off her iPad after that scene. If only we could do that to his career.

 

Drive is good!

 

Yeah Drive is the only one i disagree with. Though I havent seen Kevin, Green Book, Billboards, and Impossible, all for the reasons stated. Didnt see the Braff one either cause well, duh.

 

SLP ain't even the worst DOR

 

American Hustle may be the least ive ever felt from a film experience.

 

I genuinely love half the movies on that list, ha. Looking forward to your best of list.

 

A chance to see the new Malick has temporarily delayed my top 100. I will have 100-91 either late tonight or tomorrow.

 

Holy Motors
Raw
November
The Lighthouse
Under the Skin
Hereditary
The Turin Horse
Mandy
Parasite
The Witch

 

Mad Max: Fury Road
The Master
The Social Network
Boyhood
The Irishman
Inside Llewyn Davis
Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood
Her
Spring Breakers
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Blade Runner 2049
The Raid
Toy Story 3
The Wolf of Wall Street
Uncut Gems
Lady Bird
Parasite
Dunkirk
Drive
Everybody Wants Some!!
Phantom Thread
The Place Beyond the Pines
22 Jump Street
Baby Driver
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping

 

A Very Murray Christmas is gonna be your #1, right?

 

It might make an appearance.

 

There were a few 2019 films that still need to be seen, but this is a list of greatness in cinema.



100. GRADUATION
DIRECTED BY: CRISTIAN MUNGIU

One of the most interesting news stories of the decade was about a cabal of celebrities and millionaires who scammed the SAT scores of their children in order to get them in to better schools. We all know that the wealthy play by different rules from the rest of us, but who wouldn't try to get a leg up for their children? Who hasn't used their own personal experiences as excuse for taking an easy route? If everyone else does it, why shouldn't you? If you care about your children, wouldn't you do everything you can?



99. WINTER SLEEP
DIRECTED BY: NURI BILGE CEYLAN

Ceylan's films are always dense, both glacial and full of history. You can feel the weight of Turkish history in all of his work, and it really rewards you if you go along with it. This is a tale about how money won't complete a person, and although that has been done before, the feel of a once proud people wallowing in a nation stuck within te confines of despotism makes the quest for morality more urgent.



98. WESTERN
DIRECTED BY: VALESKA GRISEBACH

"People are just like animals. Eat or be eaten. The stronger one always wins."



97. NOCTURAMA
DIRECTED BY: BERTRAND BONELLO

So few European arthouse films actually have casts that look like modern Europe, but any story that wants to specifically convey how the youth are responding to their aging former empires needs to show how the people inheriting this mess can trace their roots elsewhere. A few films have flirted with showing the point of view of a terrorist, but few even bother to humanize them. Here, we see ourselves, our friends, and our children personified.



96. SILENCE
DIRECTED BY: MARTIN SCORSESE

There wasn't a more haunting cinema death this year than Garupe, a Catholic priest who has been starved and tortured, running out to sea to save his followers, only to be dismissively drowned by his captors on a boat holding him down in the water with sticks until he stops moving. To the unbeliever, it seems like a simple solution; just repent and they will let you go. You don't even have to really mean it, and if it will save the lives of others, why not just do it? Faith doesn't operate within the framework of logic, though, and if you feel as duty-bound to God as a priest who risked his life to proselytize must, it becomes a bit clearer.



95. OUTSIDE SATAN
DIRECTED BY: BRUNO DUMONT

No one else does weird quite like Bruno Dumont.



94. TIMBUKTU
DIRECTED BY: ABDERRAHMANE SISSAKO

When the antagonist of your film is the Islamic State, a lot of the work is already done for you, but here we try to see what normal communities respond to when faced with the implementation of such harsh theocratic authoritarianism. Petty family feuds find people utilizing the caliphate to their own ends, not unlike Abigail using the threat of witchcraft to win back a lover in THE CRUCIBLE. We expect groups like ISIS to go after sexuality, but their ban on soccer is important; it isn't about any religious blasphemy but rather about breaking people so that they are more susceptible to your pitch.



93. CALL ME BY YOUR NAME
DIRECTED BY: LUCA GUADAGNINO

The 90's and 00's had many films and television shows grappling with gay relationships, but the stories were more about the unique difficulties to a gay relationship rather than portraying them with any real depth. The last decade saw the truest type of equality, telling these stories with the care and tenderness that you would find in a straight drama. The film is about the imbalance of expectations that we see in so many relationships, with the older person seeing the romance as a moment of many while the teenager sees it as the defining moment of their sexual awakening. Many people have played one of these roles before, but the latter is the one who thinks about it every time they try to connect with another person.



92. TRANSIT
DIRECTED BY: CHRISTIAN PETZOLD

Why do we keep putting off change? One last drink, one last cigarette, one last hamburger. We think that it is all up to us and that change will come when and if we want it. Even in a Paris descending into becoming an open city, Georg keeps finding himself intertwined with people and circumstances that delay his exodus from the city. Why would we fall in love in these circumstances? Our animal instinct to survive and our human instinct to form bonds with one another are in constant struggle.



91. FORCE MAJEURE
DIRECTED BY: RUBEN OSTLUND

The first of two films on this list about men losing the respect of their wives by being cowardly, the film wrestles with the extent to which we should be judged by the person we have made of ourselves versus the person who comes out when there is real danger. Our fathers and grandfathers fought wars, but what have we become, with our increasingly manicured features and tailored wardrobes? Did we lose what it meant to be men, as cultural conservatives argue, or was that always a false illusion that people told themselves they belonged to? Can a few seconds really supersede a decade of warmth and empathy? It is not up to an accounting of pluses and minuses, but rather the feeling in your stomach when you look at that person you thought you knew.

 

A continuation.



90. IN JACKSON HEIGHTS
DIRECTED BY: FREDERICK WISEMAN

Truthfully, any Frederick Wiseman documentary this decade could have been on this list, but here we get a real sense of community and how it develops in spite of and because of our cultural differences and points of origin. This is a film that repudiates the ideology of Stephen Miller and the alt-right in general, without having to beat you over the head with it.



89. MARRIAGE STORY
DIRECTED BY: NOAH BAUMBACH

There is a long history of empathetic characters in cinema, but the real trick is to make a film full of empathy where there is no one to blame. The husband is not an abusive alcoholic, and the wife is not an adulterous gold digger. Both of these people are dealing with the fact that they are growing apart, but more importantly they realize they had started their relationship by settling and had thus doomed themselves to either a life of unhappiness or an inevitable divorce. People require protagonists and antagonists, but the reality is much more complex.



88. TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT
DIRECTED BY: JEAN-PIERRE AND LUC DARDENNE

Everyone wants to believe that they are willing to sacrifice for those close to them, but how many people are willing to actually do it? In a world that is increasingly impersonal and detached, as we lose our connections to church and family and community, the workplace becomes one of the last refuges of bonding, but it is in a scenario where you can profit from downsizing, why save someone who might be gone in a few months anyway? This is the dehumanization of capitalism, where a thousand Euros takes precedence over the well-being of a human being you spent so much time with.



87. FRANCES HA
DIRECTED BY: NOAH BAUMBACH

It starts with someone getting pregnant right after you graduate high school. It feels like an anomaly, but then it keeps happening. People get married, have kids, move away. You think they are the same person and they think they still have that person in them, but the gap between the family people and the single people keeps growing. At some point you realize that you, the unmarried and childless, are in the minority among your peers. What defines you now, now that what defines most people is the family they have built? When did people stop keeping up with current music or wearing clothes they bought on sale? Do you become a cycling enthusiast, a beer snob, or dive headfirst into your career? When did the kids stop thinking you were cool? Did these pants always fit so snug? Was my hairline always this way?



86. MYSTERIES OF LISBON
DIRECTED BY: RAUL RUIZ

It is a cliche when people say that every still of a film looks like a painting, but there are times when it is true.



85. DOGTOOTH
DIRECTED BY: YORGOS LANTHIMOS

Did any director start off so strong this decade, only to fall hard, quite like Lanthimos? Few films immediately establish the peculiarity of their conceit quite like this one, where we can sense that the natural behavior of kids who were sheltered too much, but instead of being too polite and having clothes with collars, here we have adults with the worldview of a four-year-old. Its violence is swift and unromantic, and sexuality is treated with the curiosity of kids at a sleepover. It gets to the heart of how what we consider to be "adult" to be conditioning, just as much as what is considered a normal part of development.



84. HARD TO BE A GOD
DIRECTED BY: ALEKSEI GERMAN

When people pine for the "good old days", one must assume that they have not studied history in any serious detail. The world is imperfect, but life today is better than any point in history. The world was a disgusting and horrifying place for most of human history, full of senseless death, disease, human waste, and dogmatism. Only through sheer luck did we break out of this lifestyle, but it had to break free from a world that imprisoned people for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the Sun. More often than not, people don't want to be civilized, because living in your own cage is more comfortable than trying to step outside.



83. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE
DIRECTED BY: ABBAS KIAROSTAMI

The swan song from a master, who finds a lot to say about commoditization in a country that leads the world in creating products that allow us to live in our own worlds, separate from others. There is a risk in fetishizing these people, but often non-Japanese directors find a lot to say when they make films about a country as committed to technology as Japan is. At the same time, that pre-World War II generation is still around, especially in a country with one of the oldest populations in the world, and that clash of old-world morality and a secular future are on a bigger display there than possibly anywhere else.



82. TAXI
DIRECTED BY: JAFAR PANAHI

Panahi has been a more vital and important director since being banned from making films or leaving Iran than most directors are in their entire career. Next time a movie star is called brave for gaining thirty pounds for a role or a mega-blockbuster is considered daring for having a gay kiss, remember what real stakes are.



81. PHOENIX
DIRECTED BY: CHRISTIAN PETZOLD

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

 

Hard to be a God was a very interesting watch.

 

Been following Tetras posts for still long and still got some more to add haha

 

I regret doing my worst of the decade list so early because I only just saw Jojo Rabbit today.

 

That's a bummer. Guess I wont be seeing that

 

I saw it the other day and it’s appalling. I really couldn’t believe it. I’ve been feeling cynical enough lately to put together a preliminary worst of the decade list and it’s definitely in my bottom 5.