As the decade closes in, I’ve decided to make a list of the 20 best movies I have seen since 2010. To say that I have painstakingly been trying to refine this list over and over again would be an understatement. The general questions I set forth to ask were quite simple: which films left the biggest impression on me this decade? Which works of art transcended the medium and paved their way into my deepest subconscious? Which films will have a lasting impact in the years to come?
1) “The Tree of Life”
Terrence Malick’s “The Tree Of Life” is a mosaic of a film that might test the limitations of its audience, but more importantly, those of the cinematic medium. No matter what faults you may have with Malick’s movie, you cannot deny the sheer chutzpah and originality that went into its creation. There has never been anything quite like it and I highly doubt there ever will be. Malick tries to transcend the boundaries of life itself by trying to find a kind of meaning. This is his search for transcendence, in the little moments that make us and shape us. Death, mourning, rebirth, and transcendence are just a fraction of the themes being tackled here. The mainstream might not have warmed up to the film’s non-linear narrative, but for the rest of us, the symposium of abstract shapes and colors that pop our eyes out on the screen is just what the doctor ordered. This is the greatest cinematic experience of the decade.
2) “The Master”
P.T Anderson’s masterpiece is almost unexplainable. It’s a reinvention of the cinematic language with a never better Joaquin Phoenix. The backdrop is scientology, but that’s only the scenery for a much more complex movie. The surrealistic nature of the film was a hint for things to come in the Anderson cannon — “Inherent Vice”, anybody? — but here was a movie that had the best director of his generation at the peak of his powers, using scientology as only the background for bigger more complicated themes. I was more than riveted. Bold, innovative and infuriating, “The Master” is a landmark movie, but one that will likely divide its audience in half. Too bad, I was hypnotized by almost every single frame of its puzzling, schizophrenic narrative.
3) “Under the Skin”
What Glazer has accomplished here is quite remarkable and shouldn’t be forgotten. He’s made a picture that defies all the rules and, just like most films on this list, has reinvented a new kind of language. He showed real promise with his first film, “Sexy Beast,” back in 2000, a cerebral and intense film that paved the way for Ben Kingsley’s best performance. He followed it up with “Birth”, which was kind of all over the place and not as successful as I wanted it to be, but now he’s really surprised me with this one, an out of left field vision that stuns. More than two years after having seen it I still can’t get the damn thing out of my head. Its originality and absurdity is what I love the most about it, and of course Johansson, who is just perfect for the part of a murderous, seductive alien, was the perfect casting choice.
4) “Margaret”
“Margaret” is an absolute masterpiece. It thematically is going for the tone of a grandiose opera, but in a modern day context, filtered through the emotions of a teenage girl associated with a tragedy that she witnessed and for which she felt responsible. It expresses the emotional teenage mind-set like no other. Every performance is astounding and every character in it so compelling and fully-realized. There’s no doubt in my mind that if this movie hadn’t been tangled up in lawsuits years ago, Anna Paquin surely would have been winning many awards for her performance. It’s such a shame that a movie of this size and scope was overlooked. Director Kenneth Lonergan asked friend Martin Scorsese for some help in the editing room and what you ended up getting was a movie that could not be explained easily and has only gotten better with time.
5) “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”
Grasping a film such as this one may require some major attention from the viewer, and even when the attention is there, frustration may come about as a result of the film’s abstractedness and non-linear narrative. This is all not too surprising when you consider Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s filmography and his constant acknowledgment of nature and the way it binds to us as human beings. Have I lost you yet? Snoozing? That’s how some folks might react when watching “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”. Coming out of the screening I attended, there was a kind of head-scratching vibe in the air. It was as if Weerasethakul’s film had not only confused the general public, but actually frustrated them with what they had witnessed. I dug its mysterious setting and its dream-like episodes. If you’ve seen “Tropical Malady” or “Syndromes and a Century,” you know just how special this guy is.
6) “Dogtooth”
Absurdist director Yorgos Lanthimos started off the decade with a major statement. Lanthimos turned more than a few heads with his 2010 film, the bewildering “Dogtooth.” The film, which was about a locked up family living by their own set of language, math and rules, announced the arrival of new cinematic talent, albeit one that would no doubt be divisively met. Lanthimos felt like a sort of heir to Bunuel’s own provocative brand of cinema, which the late great master perfected in the ’60s and ’70s with “Viridiana,” ‘The Exterminating Angel,” “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Obscure Object of Desire.” To say that Lanthimos was inspired by the surreal iconoclasm of Bunuel’s work would be an understatement. You can see it all over his work. However, the moralist approach that Bunuel had in his pictures was all but gone in Lanthimos’ films. Instead, a Kubrickian detachment, a total dis-empathy towards character if you will, was what the Greek auteur was looking for. This mixture of Bunuel and Kubrick was never going to be an easy sell, but it worked triumphantly in “Dogtooth.” The film defies description; you have to see it believe.
7) “A Separation”
Filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s indisputably great “A Separation” is the portrait of a country in turmoil. Just like the marriage depicted, it is constantly caught in the politics and restrictions the society offers. In one memorable scene, a man tells his daughter to speak Arabic as opposed to Farsi. In another telling moment, a girl’s school textbook recalls a time in the country’s history when the only two classes that existed were “royalty” and “everybody else”. Every person involved in the trial of “A Separation” has the best intentions and their own honorable values to go by. It is the most truthful and unbiased depiction of Iran I have seen this decade. The characters in Farhadi’s film live their lives according to the religion and guidelines that they are asked to obey. Yet, in the end it is only our own personal experiences that can provide us with the moral compass for the story.
8) “OJ Made in America”
There was no better movie in 2016 and there was no better doc this decade. Thank Ezra Edelman’s “O.J. Made in America.” Almost no documentary has come close to the gripping, assaultive nature of this 464-minute masterpiece. More engrossing than the FX American Crime Story” series, which, by the way, was grippingly watchable, Edelman’s doc meticulously fleshed out a monstrous story of class and racial warfare in America. The fact that this epic split its screen time between the heated Rodney King riots that were happening in Los Angeles at the time and O.J. Simpson’s infamous murder case was a creative decision of sheer genius and, as it turns out, the definitive way to tell the layered and complex story of how Simpson’s case split America’s racial divide. Director Edelman, whose only other work as a director came from ESPN sports doc, did have one hell of a story to tell. The result was a film that was all at once historic, meticulous, thematically compelling and deeply humane. This was a masterwork of scholarship, journalism and cinematic art.
9) “Carol”
Of all the great romantic, wordless, understated and invigorating scenes director Todd Haynes delivered in his masterpiece, Carol, the dinner scene that opens and closes the film is the pièce de resistance. So much of the romance at the center of Todd Haynes’ film is challenged by the crushing weight of oppression, that when the words “I love you” finally get delivered it’s like a moment of release. The cruel society that surrounds Carol (Cate Blanchett) and Therese (Rooney Mara) has made it impossible for them to be in love, yet all throughout the film’s two hours they try to fight back these odds. This scene that opens and closes the film (and ultimately turns out to be a flash-forward in its chronology), is seen in two totally different contexts. The first time we are emotionally unattached and on the outside, but the second time when the words “I love you” get uttered, you gloriously melt in heartbreak. It all plays out in a pair of precise, smoky framings. When the scene replays at the closing, Haynes has changed a few minor things, but the pain and longing largely suppressed up to that point comes out into a sharp, devastating focus.
10) “The Wolf of Wall Street”
Scorsese’s most recent collaboration with DiCaprio has become a career-defining performance for the actor. Rude, crass, wild, you name it, and with a live-wire of a central performance steering it, there are many who would argue this is Scorsese’s most outright entertaining and enjoyable film. Following the story of stock-broker turned millionaire, Jordan Belfort, and his run-ins with crime and corruption, this comedic crime drama/biopic is a three-hour ball of energy. Its endless mayhem makes it feel as if you’re attached to a drip that supplies only pure caffeine. Insatiable from start to finish, its over the top brashness comes across as self-aware and crafted to within an inch of its life by Scorsese. It may be the Scorsese of the last 20 years that demands the most rematches, just as it demands your undivided attention. The sky’s the limit for DiCaprio, and in Scorsese’s now-classic epic of debauchery, he brought a whole new range to his repertoire. With some scenes veering towards slapstick comedy, Leo’s portrayal of Wall Street madman Jordan Belfort could have quite easily tipped over the top towards caricature, but I don’t think anyone could have pulled it off better than DiCaprio did. A divisive movie upon its release, ‘Wolf’ has gained notoriety over the last few years and will no doubt continue to do so as a classic. It is the riskiest performance DiCaprio has ever given us.
11) “Her”
The reason it is difficult to make science-fiction movies today is that they can no longer follow the structure of the old science-fiction flicks. And it is also why the few that succeed are very original. “Her” is a love story between a man and his operating system. It is first and foremost a wonderfully acted, shot and edited emotional romantic movie. While discussions of technology’s effects on our ability to socialize are all the rage, this movie does not get bogged down in simplistic for or against arguments. It seems to not judge at all. It simply documents life, not as it will be, but – really – as it is already. The slight exaggeration of a clearly delineated artificially intelligent ‘entity’ falling in love provides us with the ability to look into an interpersonal relationship as if from outside of a conventional relationship. But just as in Heinlein’s “Stranger in a Strange Land”, where through the eyes of a biologically human being raised on Mars we are allowed to observe human civilization, the main character is ultimately human. The relationship we see in “Her” is ultimately an interpersonal relationship in general, because we can no longer easily tell where the biological ends and the technological begins. Thus, granted that the viewer accepts the premise, which I had no trouble doing, the rest of it is a very realistic depiction of life after the zero-point of radical transmutation of humans’ perception of the world around them as well as of their interactions — an apocalypse if such a word may be used, an apocalypse we are living at this moment. Without giving anything away, let me just say that it appears to me that Jonze wanted to use the operating systems in his film to show us where we can go, and what abilities humans have.
12) “Inside Llewyn Davis”
There was a hint of reflective existentialism in the Coens’ Best Picture winner “No Country For Old Men”. Those kooky brothers were maturing before our very eyes and we had no idea what was to follow. “A Serious Man” was unlike any movie they’ve ever done: autobiographical, philosophical and damn near-apocalyptic. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is where the Coens, the thinkers, make the masterpiece they’ve been hinting at this decade. A meditation on failure which just so happens to have as a backdrop the 1960’s Greenwich Village New York folk scene. This is the scene right before Dylan, when Folk was still square and the struggles for the artists were very apparent. Our Llewyn Davis doesn’t want to sell out, sticking to his artistic integrity and preferring life without money than to sell himself to the devil. If only we had more artists like him today.
13) “This is Not a Film”
Whilst under house arrest in Iran, where he is not allowed to make any movies for the next 20 years, director Jafar Panahi shot “This Is Not a Film.” The director got a friend to sneak the roll of film out of his home as it was jammed inside a loaf of bread. And yet, the backstory isn’t even as enthralling as the film itself, the most personal film of Panahi’s impressive career. Shot in his apartment, Panahi watches and analyzes his own movies on DVD, describes scenes from unfinished or unfilmed works, and plays with his pet iguana, all while kept on house arrest via an ankle bracelet forced upon him by his government. The Iranian government’s attempt to shut down Panahi’s art didn’t work; in fact, it only energized his immaculate imagination. “This is Not a Film” is exactly that, a meditation on cinema, shot in a single location and made up of brilliant long takes, which show how even suppression can lead to indistinguishably beautiful art. The title is, of course, sarcastic, but the message is clear: Panahi’s art won’t be stifled or shut down — in fact, it can actually blossom into something vital, original and groundbreaking.
14) “Son of Saul”
“Son of Saul” is a holocaust movie shot from the POV of a concentration camp prisoner forced to burn the bodies of gas chamber victims after leading them to their doom. The movie is an immeasurable accomplishment. There are scenes here of staggering beauty and incredible pain; sometimes we wince and sometimes we just can’t look away from the screen. This isn’t your typical holocaust movie, it doesn’t intend to only shock as much as just put you right there with the lead characters as they work the chambers, furnaces and ovens. The movie opens with Saul finding out that the last group he led to the gas chambers included his 7-year-old son. Saul is a man so persistent in giving his deceased boy a proper burial that he risks his life and the lives of his co-prisoners just to find a proper rabbi for the kiddish ritual. The Jews around him are building up a resistance and are prepared to fight, but Saul seems completely aloof, focusing instead on finding a rabbi and having a burial. Using hand-held camera can sometimes end up being damaging to the overall narrative of a film, but here it complements the story and gives it a fresh spin. The fact the first time filmmaker Nemes was just 28 when he wrote and directed this masterpiece speaks volumes about his talents.
15) “The Social Network”
A film such as “The Social Network” relies on characters more than plotting. The characters populating the film stay etched in your head way after the film is done, which is, in fact, the best quality of the film. There is an almost irresistible vibe created; Fincher uses low lit cinematography to enhance the dreary atmosphere portrayed throughout the film. The hallways of Harvard feel cavernous and nightmarish, whereas the look and portrayal of university life is nothing short of condemning. Although the movie can be seen as entertainment first and foremost, the substance that drives its themes home is very apparent. After a second, third and even fourth viewing of David Fincher’s masterpiece, I discovered new things that might not have seemed as obvious or apparent the first time around. “American Beauty’s” advertising campaign told us to “look closer”; the same goes for “The Social Network”.
16) “The Favourite”
A synchronized mix of tragedy, drama, comedy, and satire, “The Favourite” is director Yorgos Lanthimos’ sixth feature-length film and his first foray into period drama. There’s a comic perversity that recalls Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon,” but it’s not just the dramatics, it’s the style as well; the wide-lensed shots, the natural lighting and the obsessively delivered period details that the master was known for are all here. Set in the early 1700s, the film is about a pair of shrewd, ruthless schemers — Rachel Weisz’s Sarah Churchill and Emma Stone’s Abigail Masham — who compete for the favor, and the love, of a powerful, health-strickened and emotionally unbalanced Queen Anne (Olivia Colman). The hijinks of these three dames reach screwball heights. Despite being set in the 18th century, this tall tale about the incalculable strides a person would go to attain power feels like the kind of statement that could have only been made this decade. It all culminates with an ambiguously masterful final shot.
17) “Black Swan”
Taking a cue from Kanye West’s 2010 album, this is Director Darren Aronofksy’s Beautiful, Dark, twisted fantasy. Natalie Portman gave the performance of the year in a film that was more than just about ballet; it was about the boundaries an artist had to push in order to get him or herself to the very limits of their art. The same could be said of Aronofsky, who’s never adhered to the conventional or acceptable. A potent, poisonous child of Emeric Pressburger/Michael Powell’s “The Red Shoes” and David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”, this was a campy, visionary, extraordinary mess that turned into the film that confirmed that the filmmaker was the real deal.
18) “12 Years A Slave”
“12 Years A Slave” is a Steve McQueen film through and through even with an ending that surprisingly tries to tug at your heartstrings. Then again, that ending is what may have won it the Best Picture Oscar. Some scenes are as tough to watch as any from his brilliant directorial debut, “Hunger”. I’d go as far as to say that this is probably the most realistic portrayal of slavery ever put on celluloid. Don’t go in expecting ”The Color Purple” or “Beloved” — McQueen refuses to flinch at anything. He tries to depict exactly what happened. Fassbender is brilliant as Epps, the cruelest of slave owners with the sole intention of dehumanizing his “assets”. A bible-quoting man with a mean-spirited wife who jealously thinks he’s turned on by one of the female slaves, Patsy. And what to make of Chiwetel Ejiofor, excellent in films like “Dirty Pretty Things” and “Redbelt,” but flat out phenomenal in this film. “12 Years To A Slave” feels like a great symphony. It flows effortlessly from one scene to the next with the ability to have you feeling like you’re eavesdropping on an important part of American history.
19) “Mad Max: Fury Road”
You can’t deny the sheer impact of ‘Fury Road.’ Director George Miller’s fourth installment of the film franchise is proof that not all blockbusters should be greeted with an indifferent shrug. If anything, this brutal action film is even more intense and exciting than its predecessors. With its nihilistic outlook on human nature and a nasty, in-your-face style, this is Miller’s triumph, through and through. The amount of detail that he brings to every frame is as obsessively meticulous as any Wes Anderson picture I’ve seen, as is the Oscar-winning editing by Margaret Sixel. Edited at a breakneck pace and staged with manic fury, Sixel is the unheralded hero here. The celebrated one, however, is of course, Miller, whose passion and vision come through in every frame. The total control he must have had with this project to pull off what he did on screen is unheard of in an industry that just had a decade in which they refused to adhere to risk.
20) “The Florida Project”
After “Tangerine,” Sean Baker set up his camera again with an eye towards uncharted America with “The Florida Project.” This time his gaze went towards the makeshift motels that litter the main avenues towards Disney World, distilling a moist, colorful, and shimmering atmosphere, thanks to Alexis Zabe‘s beautiful photography. Moonee (Brooklynn Prince) is 6 years old and lives in a motel with her mother Halley (Bria Vinaite). On summer break, Mooney and her ragtag group of friends look for adventure as they roam through the outskirts of the motel while the adults around them struggle to make ends meet. Baker shoots his own “400 Blows” with his little band of insolent misfits. The atmosphere, paradoxically decadent and disenchanted, mixes what the filmmaker himself calls “pop verité” cinema, to create a hybrid of hope and misery that feels both transcendent and groundbreaking. Like “Tangerine,” it is with this sense of freedom, freshness, and energy that, in Baker’s mise-en-scene, from the camera to the non-professional actors, the film maps contemporary America. Baker doesn’t succumb to the sirens of misery, even though the final, sad frame might hint at this. Instead, he prefers the fanciful fantasy of the children who, in their flight forward, give themselves moments of happiness by the simple light of a blue sky.
21) “Phantom Thread”
Paul Thomas Anderson said he was inspired by fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga in creating the character of Reynolds Woodcock – a controlling, obsessive stylist, aided by his sister assistant (an excellent Lesley Manville) and who doesn’t have time for love in his life. “Phantom Thread,” Anderson’s 8th movie as writer-director, has Woodcock, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, falling for strong-willed Alma (Vicky Krieps), who soon becomes a turbulent fixture in his life as his muse and lover. The opening sequences are entrancing. With barely any dialogue, and Jonny Greenwood‘s score weaving a beautiful, lush symphony of pianos and violins, PTA draws you into his world of models and dressmakers at the House of Woodcock. The entry of a perfect muse in the form of Vicky Krieps’ Alma brings about an unequal affair between the dressmaker and the young lady. Their strong will, intense romance, breathless moments of pure expression all set in the fashion era of 1950 is very much breathtakingly served by Anderson, who seems really keen in showing us a love story that is more than just about lust, but about the most primal and internal motherly affection most men still crave in their adulthood. The chemistry between the unlikely duo flies off the screen in the forms of upturned lips, gentle touches, and warm laughter.There’s a dazzling array of tracking shots and intense close-ups that make this truly feel like a PTA movie.
22) “Get Out”
Chris Washington, a young African-American male (Daniel Kaluuya) is about to meet the parents of his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) for a weekend in their posh, but the secluded cottage. The old adage of trust none of what you heard and even less of what you see is put to full-throttle here. Don’t expect “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” speechifying, at least not in the hands of first-time director Jordan Peele, one-half of the comedic duo Key and Peele, who has the time of his life messing with our heads his horror-satire “Get Out.” The clever film packed plenty of tension was the most fun I had in a movie theater all year, but it also found a way to skewer and make critical insights about the race relations in America. “Get Out” wasn’t just a horror comedy, but it was filled with political fireworks that made it a lot more nuanced and thought-provoking than your average B-movie flick. The film was refreshingly incisive for its stab at the white liberal and conservative elite. Something you don’t see much in the media or at the movies these days. Peele was smart enough to skewer all of white America and demand they wake up to the elephant in the room. Hypocrisy seems to be the name of the game and “Get Out” was the most relevant movie of the year.
23) “Nocturama”
Hyper-realized, Bertrand Bonnello‘s “Nocturama” can sometimes make the viewer uneasy, especially in its finale, which refuses to condemn the actions of the film’s terrorists. The visually masterful film, think Jacques Rivette, seems to take sides with the Marxist terrorists at the forefront of the story, even though Bonnello has been quite outspoken about his film NOT being political. “Nocturama” seems to be saying that these are not really terrorists, but “troubled youth” that have been hampered down by a flawed social and economical system. Owing to Robert Bresson’s “The Devil, Probably” and George A. Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead.” “Nocturama” presents no easy answers; what it does offer is one of the 21st century’s most stirring cinematic experiences. Yes, the ending is ideologically dubious, which is what has irritated French critics the most. Bonnello has talent, his views are complex and the film also raises interesting questions. He should be taken seriously and I’m looking forward to the response from American critics.
24) “Melancholia”
Lars von Trier was going through a major depression when he decided to make “Melancholia,” a beautifully orchestrated vision about the beauty that comes with mortality. Separated by chapters that focus on the two sisters played by Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg and their lives before and after they found out about Planet Melancholia’s impending descent to earth. Accepting what is to come instead of fearing it is what separates the sisters in their reactions to the world’s impending doom. Dunst’s clinically depressed Justine sees the end as a way to end her misery and so, as the planet slowly but surely comes crashing down to earth, a sudden burst of happiness comes creeping in. Gainsbourg’s Claire, happily married with kids, is terrified by death as she has lived a life of happiness and satisfaction. Von Trier uses the brilliant conversations that transpire as a way to tackle the human condition — the behavior exhibited by both sisters in the film’s second half is darkly humane.
25) “Holy Motors”
Leos Carax. You have to give it to this wildly imaginative filmmaker. He’s allergic to formula and refuses to adhere to the norm. In this thrilling, visionary, frustrating, exhausting and masterful film, he decided to give a poisonous valentine to the cinema, splitting his film into a bunch of different genres. Episodic in nature and more than eye-opening, Carax gave us something we’ve never seen before: a surreal nightmare of the past, present, and future of cinema. With unusual acting chameleon Denis Lavant by his side, this was a movie in which anything could happen, in which any image could get juxtaposed with any other. There is no three-act structure built upon a tired, overplayed premise. Carax pushes, pushes and pushes until he finds the existential, surrealistic nirvana he’s been looking for throughout the movie with a simple but awe-inspiring final image that is as haunting as it is ridiculous.