Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

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feihong
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Re: Dynamic Top Tens of 2019

#177 Post by feihong » Thu Dec 26, 2019 1:31 am

I only have one for the decade, and that was hard enough to make––mostly because my shifting interests in movies have meant not seeing too many contemporary movies. For me the 2010s in the movies were dominated by the deaths of my top filmmaking favorites, Seijun Suzuki and Jacques Rivette. It was hard to be excited about most of the movies I saw around those events, and I just wasn't connecting to most of the new movies that came out. The decade made me miss Shinji Aoyama, who hardly seems to be directing these days, miss the Hong Kong new wave, made me miss the movies of the 90s. Anyways, I suppose it makes for a weird list. Only #1 on the list is ranked in any kind of order:

1. A Bride for Rip Van Winkle (2016, dir. Shunji Iwai)
2. The Final Master (2015, dir. Xu Haofeng)
3. Blind Detective (2013, dir. Johnnie To)
4. Mystery (2012, dir. Lou Ye)
5. Cemetery of Splendour (2015, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
6. Nude Area (2014, dir. Urszula Antoniak)
7. A Proletarian Winter's Tale (2014, dir. Julian Radlmaier)
8. Phantom Thread (2017, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. Liz and the Blue Bird (2018, dir. Naoko Yamada)
10. Your Name (2016, dir. Makoto Shinkai)

I also liked "Blackkklansman," "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," "American Honey," "Parasite," "The Taking of Tiger Mountain," "Carol," and Twin Peaks was constantly amazing. So if it were a top 15 (err...top 16?), they'd be in there also. The series "Mawaru Penguindrum" was thrilling and imaginative.

The films I disliked the most in the decade would be "Argo," the Coen Brothers "Hail, Caesar!," Fincher's remake of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," and Randy Moore's "Escape from Tomorrow." I didn't see even worse–looking Ben Affleck movies, like "Live By Night," so I don't feel like I can place it here. "Argo" was bad enough to speak for all his movies, though, as far as I'm concerned.

My #1 discovery of the decade was Shinji Somai's 1983 movie "P.P. Rider." Featuring a young Masatoshi Nagase and a pair of other kids doing their own scary stunts, and featuring one of Tatsuya Fuji's most poignant roles, this movie was constantly surprising and delighting. I've watched this movie 6 or 7 times now, and I find myself wanting to watch it all the time. It was really a remarkable movie, and it would have been a great way forward for Japanese cinema of the era––a way forward no filmmaker capitalized on (Somai's own "Typhoon Club" plays like a more commercial film in a similar vein, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same sense of free surrealism). "Liquid Sky" was also another great discovery for me in this last decade.

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The best films of the 2010s by Slant Magazine & others

#178 Post by Finch » Fri Dec 27, 2019 3:39 pm

The 100 best films of the 2010s as chosen by Slant Magazine

Feel free to add other lists to this thread.

My own #1 sits at 52 in their list.

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Re: The best films of the 2010s by Slant Magazine & others

#179 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:13 pm

Finch wrote:
Fri Dec 27, 2019 3:39 pm
The 100 best films of the 2010s as chosen by Slant Magazine

My own #1 sits at 52 in their list.
I actually like that list, though it has a few glaring omissions. My number 1 is at number 91 there but I’m shocked that either of ours are on any mainstream list at all, so I’ll consider it a win

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#180 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:18 pm

A grand total of 0 of my top ten appears on that Top 100, but I give it props for sprinkling in some not obvious choices and for listing Magic Mike XXL that high

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#181 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:19 pm

It's probably the best one of these lists I've seen so far.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#182 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:22 pm

domino harvey wrote:
Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:18 pm
A grand total of 0 of my top ten appears on that Top 100, but I give it props for sprinkling in some not obvious choices and for listing Magic Mike XXL that high
Yeah I’ll admit I looked at the list twice to make sure the ridiculous decision to leave out Moonrise Kingdom wasn’t an oversight by me, especially with their high placement of his next film.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#183 Post by domino harvey » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:26 pm

Also, my top ten is crazy (though an authentic representation of my tastes, consistent with and on brand for me), so I’m always like looking for crumbs in these lists anyways

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#184 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:44 pm

I don’t think my top ten is crazy at all but only three of Slant’s are on it (and one of those is La Flor...)

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#185 Post by swo17 » Fri Dec 27, 2019 11:53 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:22 pm
domino harvey wrote:
Fri Dec 27, 2019 8:18 pm
A grand total of 0 of my top ten appears on that Top 100, but I give it props for sprinkling in some not obvious choices and for listing Magic Mike XXL that high
Yeah I’ll admit I looked at the list twice to make sure the ridiculous decision to leave out Moonrise Kingdom wasn’t an oversight by me, especially with their high placement of his next film.
No von Trier either, and the Lanthimos they picked was from the 2000s

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#186 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 28, 2019 12:02 am

I think von Trier may have been canceled and I didn’t get the memo. On the other hand, they did throw in a Polanski

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#187 Post by mfunk9786 » Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:41 am

Bjork posting "he tried to send his sins at me... to reach through a window, to make my heart glow" has ended von Trier's eligibility for 2010 lists

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#188 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sat Dec 28, 2019 2:45 pm

feihong -- where did you come across the Somai film (and was it subbed). The "neglect" of Somai (and Jun Ichikawa) never ceases to amaze me.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#189 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Dec 29, 2019 6:50 am

I don't mind that Slant list (despite of course inevitably missing out on Human Centipede II and the two Panos Cosmatos films), although more than Von Trier it was a bit surprising that it looks like there is no Hirokazu Kore-eda at all despite it being his strongest decade, from Kiseki (aka Miracle aka I Wish) through Our Little Sister up to Shoplifters. That's three masterpieces there, and he made twice as many films than that which are deserving of mention also.
Last edited by colinr0380 on Mon Dec 30, 2019 10:25 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#190 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Dec 29, 2019 1:49 pm

Kore-eda's work during the decade has been uniformly splendid -- also true of the 2 preceding decades as well, of course.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#191 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Dec 29, 2019 7:51 pm

Most certainly agreed, though it felt as if this was really the decade that he hit critical mass!

This really feels like I'm doing my own top ten of the decade piecemeal style, but my number one would most certainly be Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmaster, albeit in its international cut so I can understand why all the chopping and changing, and upping the Bruce Lee angle, has kind of sunk it from view in the years since. Perhaps more than it being his martial arts film, it felt wonderful to think of it as a homage to the films of Sergio Leone.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#192 Post by feihong » Sun Dec 29, 2019 10:25 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Sat Dec 28, 2019 2:45 pm
feihong -- where did you come across the Somai film (and was it subbed). The "neglect" of Somai (and Jun Ichikawa) never ceases to amaze me.
I heartily agree, though I haven't seen any of Jun Ichikawa's movies (I want to, though). I sent you a message so we could gripe about it further.


The Slant list was pretty good. It was full of movies I want to see, which should really be the point of such a list, I think?

I was surprised that some of the movies appeared on the list. So I made my own list of the movies that surprised me appearing on the Slant list:

Personal Shopper
Timbuktu
Zero Dark Thirty
Knight of Cups
Inherent Vice
Oh...and Ghost Writer! That's a weird one to see on these lists.

I just had lots of problems with all of these. In the case of Knight of Cups and Inherent Vice, my impression was that not so many people were jumping to the defense of these movies. But whatever.

And I had another list of films on the Slant list I was not surprised to find on the list, but that I wouldn't include in my own list:

The Wolf of Wall Street
Li’l Quinquin
Grand Budapest Hotel
Under the Skin...dunno what it is about this movie, everyone seems to love it but me.

And a few I was delighted to see on the Slant list:

Mysteries of Lisbon
Drug War
Happy Hour
Last edited by feihong on Sun Dec 29, 2019 11:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#193 Post by brundlefly » Sun Dec 29, 2019 10:51 pm

Happy to see 'Strange Little Cat' creep in there. I think about the choreography at the kitchen counter all the time.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#194 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 29, 2019 11:45 pm

feihong wrote:
Sun Dec 29, 2019 10:25 pm
I was surprised that some of the movies appeared on the list. So I made my own list of the movies that surprised me appearing on the Slant list:

Personal Shopper
Timbuktu
Zero Dark Thirty
Knight of Cups
Inherent Vice
Oh...and Ghost Writer! That's a weird one to see on these lists.

I just had lots of problems with all of these. In the case of Knight of Cups and Inherent Vice, my impression was that not so many people were jumping to the defense of these movies. But whatever.
I think Inherent Vice is wonderful but mostly because it somehow recreates the hazy milieu that Pynchon paints in many of his books, on top of Doc’s own stoned confusion, visually emulating this state in ways no other film has really been able to do. The film initially bothered me before I had read any Pynchon, but I jumped on him immediately after my first viewing, and after a second viewing in the theatre I fell in love with it. Having read all of his books now (except I still need to finish Against the Day) the film only gets better, even if it’s my least favorite of his novels. There’s a weird acceptance to be found in the idea of these mysteries as unsolvable and a kind of joke of life in trying to scrape for hopeless meaning that only came easier from reading him, and actually made me appreciate Rivette a lot more too.

Personal Shopper is probably my second favorite Assayas, and The Ghost Writer is Polanski effortlessly demonstrating his mastery on the thriller genre. It may not be his flashiest or most interesting film, but it might be his best, or if not close to it.

I’m with you on Knight of Cups and Mysteries of Lisbon though.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#195 Post by John Cope » Mon Dec 30, 2019 5:46 am

feihong wrote:
Sun Dec 29, 2019 10:25 pm
I just had lots of problems with all of these. In the case of Knight of Cups and Inherent Vice, my impression was that not so many people were jumping to the defense of these movies. But whatever.
I love both of these and consider them both great works of art. Of course, if I wan't actively interested in keeping it more broadly and openly representative, all Malick's films for this decade would probably have wound up in my top 10.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#196 Post by feihong » Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:11 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sun Dec 29, 2019 11:45 pm
I think Inherent Vice is wonderful but mostly because it somehow recreates the hazy milieu that Pynchon paints in many of his books, on top of Doc’s own stoned confusion, visually emulating this state in ways no other film has really been able to do. The film initially bothered me before I had read any Pynchon, but I jumped on him immediately after my first viewing, and after a second viewing in the theatre I fell in love with it. Having read all of his books now (except I still need to finish Against the Day) the film only gets better, even if it’s my least favorite of his novels. There’s a weird acceptance to be found in the idea of these mysteries as unsolvable and a kind of joke of life in trying to scrape for hopeless meaning that only came easier from reading him, and actually made me appreciate Rivette a lot more too.

Personal Shopper is probably my second favorite Assayas, and The Ghost Writer is Polanski effortlessly demonstrating his mastery on the thriller genre. It may not be his flashiest or most interesting film, but it might be his best, or if not close to it.

I’m with you on Knight of Cups and Mysteries of Lisbon though.
I went in to Inherent Vice having read most of Pynchon beforehand, and the film had almost the opposite effect for me; I felt like PTA didn't capture the experience I had reading Pynchon at all. To each their own, I guess. This one felt totally alien to my experience of the writer. I felt it was very much less than Phantom Thread and The Master, at least. They only included the two Johnnie To films, and Life without Principle, Office and Blind Detective all came out this decade. I would have traded this movie for one of those. I realize those are my rules, and not those of the people making the Slant list, but that's part of the fun of the game.

As for Personal Shopper, I found it frustratingly inconsistent. I didn't feel as if Assayas really rendered the phenomena depicted in the story with a sure or consistent tone, and I felt that the drama of the movie collapsed as a result. The movie seemed to want to play in an ambiguous space, where Kristen Stewart's character wasn't sure whether the experiences she was having were real or only in her mind––but then the phantasms would manifest with huge roars on the soundtrack, appearing in front of us, and to me that means they have to be real––at least in the context of the story. The moment that really worked for me was when the hotel doors opened and closed for no one. That felt like the level of ambiguity Assayas was reaching for––but seldom achieved. I only sometimes felt like I was following Kristen Stewart's character––and then at other times her motivations were opaque. But in a film where she is the only constant element, she really can't be quite that opaque. This movie seemed like a kind-of good idea for a movie––at least a very compelling agglomeration of elements––but I suppose I feel that the movie needed another draft of its screenplay, with a tighter weave of its essential elements.

The Ghost Writer just hardly seemed like an exceptional movie in any sense. You could not convince me the person that directed Chinatown and Knife in Water with such clarity, such a sense for tension and such a revealing gaze also directed this picture. And next to those movies, I don't see why someone would see fit to put Ghost Writer on any list, regardless of the decade. Philip K. Dick rendered the central relationships in this film in novel after novel both more dynamically than in the movie, and with far less writerly polish to boot––which is like doing it with one hand tied behind his back. I kept waiting for something worthwhile to happen, and I was always disappointed. I suppose I liked seeing Eli Wallach in a movie, though.

As for Malick, I suppose I feel that his later movies are less focused and less rewarding, and that Knight of Cups almost seems like a parody of the style he has been working with since his return to filmmaking. I was moved by The Thin Red Line and The New World––because their historical grounding meant that Malick's drifting style was bringing appreciable perspective to something tangible. But the later movies just seemed looser and looser, and harder to access. I couldn't really come up with a worthwhile justification why these men were always moping around beaches, fancy apartments, classy hotel rooms, fields of wheat––and Malick had no interest in making it clear to me. I kind of felt like Sean Penn did analyzing his role in Tree of Life, in essence "what was I doing there, what was I adding to the movie?" I have loved a lot of avant-garde filmmaking, but I found no way to convince myself these films actually aimed at any kind of clarity. And they seemed too in-between the avant-garde and the narrative, and too close to the side of narrative. For Tree of Life at least, I'll admit that this sounds a bit like sour grapes. But To the Wonder and especially Knight of Cups seem like the milk of Malick's style is curdling before my eyes.

I didn't mean to grumble about everyone's movies, honest. Though since I started out grumbling, I thought it was probably worth it to explain myself a little better. I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade––this is all aesthetics and "how it made me feel"–type arguments––though I suppose I can't quite remove from my writing just how tired watching Ghost Writer made me feel. It's just one of those "is it me? am I the only crazy one?" kind of moments whenever I look at these lists of movies, and the answer to my question is usually "yes, it's just you, crazy."

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#197 Post by feihong » Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:14 am

John Cope wrote:
Mon Dec 30, 2019 5:46 am
I love both of these and consider them both great works of art. Of course, if I wan't actively interested in keeping it more broadly and openly representative, all Malick's films for this decade would probably have wound up in my top 10.

Whenever I make these lists myself I always rule out the possibility of including 2 films by the same director. It's an arbitrary rule, but I think for the purposes of a list it teases out a more interesting variety of movies in the end.

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#198 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 30, 2019 9:02 am

feihong wrote:
Mon Dec 30, 2019 6:11 am
I went in to Inherent Vice having read most of Pynchon beforehand, and the film had almost the opposite effect for me; I felt like PTA didn't capture the experience I had reading Pynchon at all. To each their own, I guess. This one felt totally alien to my experience of the writer. I felt it was very much less than Phantom Thread and The Master, at least.
Interesting- I mean, I don’t think anyone can really capture the experience of Pynchon, which is why even someone as ambitious as PTA abandoned his Mason & Dixon adaptation, my favorite and one I’d still love to see; but I thought he did a remarkable job replicating the experience for the viewer as the mystified and existentially powerless character and reader of one of his novels together at once. To each their own, indeed

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#199 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Dec 30, 2019 2:43 pm

For a twist on the best-of-decade lists, Owen Glieberman's 10 most overrated films of the 2010s in Variety is an attack on the "art-heads" and "bohemian purity brigade" who set the cinephilic consensus, including
SpoilerShow
The Master - "Anderson's most insanely acclaimed head-scratcher"
The Act of Killing - "horrifying... but not in the way it wants to be"
Under the Skin - "directed... with a twilight portentousness that's at once draggy and repetitive"
Margaret - "It's too damn long."

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Re: Lists of the Best Films and Performances of the 2010s: A Plague We'll Be Enduring For a While

#200 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 30, 2019 2:55 pm

If that was a list of best films of the decade, it’d be one of the better ones

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