Once upon a time
in the world of film criticism, there was a unanimity of opinion in which, by
and large, major films by major directors were enshrined as great films and to
offer an opposing opinion was to label yourself as a self-centered iconoclast
or simply cinematically ignorant.
For better or
worse, you could count on end-of-decade lists to all include a similar subset
of pictures, accented by a off-beat film or two (often ones that didn’t even
make the critics’ Top 10 the year it was released).
“Lawrence of
Arabia,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” and “The Graduate” topped
most 1960s lists, while “The Godfather” films, “Chinatown,” “Manhattan,” “Taxi
Driver” and “Nashville” were the anointed ones of the 1970s. In the 1980s,
“Raging Bull,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Blue Velvet” and “The Right Stuff”
dominated, followed by “Pulp Fiction,” “Schindler’s List,” “Unforgiven” and
“Goodfellas” in the 1990s.
Then came the 21st
Century and, like music and television, cinema splintered into a thousand
pieces. Suddenly, films as diverse as
“The Dark Knight,” “No Country for Old Men” and the animated “Up,” along with
films from countries rarely heard from before, were tapped as best of the
decade, with few titles appearing on multiple lists. For critics who
appreciated inventive story structure “Mulholland Drive” and “Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind” and “Memento” were automatic selections, but the century’s
first decade, cinematically weak by any measure, offered few resounding great
works.
I view the 2010s
as the most interesting 10 years of American cinema since the 1980s, spurred by
the emergence of a new group of extraordinary filmmakers dedicated to exploring
human stories even as the real money flows to comic book heroes and remakes (Is
there another “Spiderman” reboot in the works?)
But you won’t
find any consensus great films at the top of my list because they don’t exist
any longer. Not the Oscars, the New York Times or Time magazine (or, even,
Rotten Tomatoes) can elevate a single film—there are just too many diverse
voices weighing in; and what little agreement that exists usually leaves me
baffled (“The Irishman,” for example).
I struggled to choose between Alejandro
González Iñárritu’s two astonishing man vs. world films, “Birdman or (The
Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” and “The Revenant” and Danish director Lars
van Trier’s rumination on the end of the world, “Melancholia.” I finally
settled on “Birdman” because I think it best defines both the dilemma of the
modern artist and the difficulties of making human connections in a world
smothered by artifice. If there is a perfect analogy for 21st
Century living it’s a chaotic theatrical production.
The only other
filmmaker who directed the top two films of a decade was Francis Coppola for
“The Godfather” films in the 1970s. Iñárritu has quickly climbed into the
forefront of innovative filmmaking with these two powerful movies that feature
great storytelling and breathtaking visuals (a nod to the extraordinary
cinematographer Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki, who also shot “Gravity”).
Christopher
Nolan, who made my list in the 2000s with “Memento,” has made some overpraised
movies (“The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Dunkirk”) but delivered a dazzling
piece of sci-fi wizardry in “Interstellar.” In the tradition of “Close Encounters
of a Third Kind” and “2001,” this adventure into the past to save the future is
the rare puzzle film that’s worth figuring out.
The 77-year-old Martin Scorsese remains
capable of brilliance and his tale of 17th Century Japan and austere
Catholicism in “Silence”—not his overpraised “The Irishman”—that stands as his
best recent work. It is an exacting, emotionally wrought examination of faith
as powerful as his underrated “The Last Temptation of Christ” and about as
different as humanly possible from his other superb movie of the decade, “The
Wolf of Wall Street” (No. 22).
Worth noting,
among my Top 50 films, is Kathryn Bigelow’s “Detroit,” a tense chronicle of
what African Americans faced in the 1960s, that, along with her film about the
hunt for bin Laden, “Zero Dark Thirty,” confirmed her status as one of the
finest American directors of the past 20 years.
Other underrated films on the list include Italian director Paolo
Sorrentino’s amusingly sarcastic musings on aging as seen through film actors,
“Youth”; Denis Villeneuve’s moving first encounter movie, “Arrival”; and J.C. Chandor’s
“A Most Violent Year,” a thoughtful mob film that plays like a lost masterpiece
from the 1970s.
Selecting the
decades best performances proved to be an easier task: Daniel Day-Lewis’
towering work as the Civil War president in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln,” maybe
the most believable portrayal of an historical figure ever put on film, and
actor-director Denzel Washington’s Troy Maxson in the adaptation of August
Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Fences,” about a Pittsburgh father who
takes out his disappointments on his family. Both performances are career-bests
for these magnificent actors.
Coming into his
own as an actor this decade, after years of stardom, was Leonardo Di Caprio in
“The Revenant,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood” and
“The Great Gatsby.”
Among leading
actresses, Cate Blanchett’s modern-day Blanche in Woody Allen’s “Blue Jasmine”
and Julianne Moore’s heartbreaking work as a too-young victim of Alzheimer’s in
“Still Alice” stood out among a group of excellent performances. Though her
unending Oscar nominations have become something of a joke, Meryl Streep did
give one of her best performance this decade as Washington Post publisher
Katherine Graham.
Though Kate
Winslet, the most dominate actress of the first decade of the century, all but
disappeared, Charlize Theron had a memorable decade, doing superb work in
small, character-based picture “Young Adult” and “Tully” along with the
blockbuster “Mad Max: Fury Road” and 2019’s two films, “Bombshell” and “Long
Shot.”
Allison Janney
was most memorable in a supporting role as Tonya Harding’s bitter, brutal
mother in “I, Tonya,” but also giving powerful performances were Michelle
Williams as the broken mother in “Manchester by the Sea” and Brit Lesley
Manville as a depressed, alcoholic middle-age woman in “Another Year.”
As a washed-up
boxer turned trainer of his half-brother in “The Fighter,” Christian Bale gave
his best performance in a decade that saw him play a the much older, much
heavier Dick Cheney in “Vice,” the intense race car driver in “Ford v Ferrari,”
a creative con man caught up in an FBI sting in “American Hustler” and Batman,
in the final film of the trilogy, “The Dark Knight Rises.”
Most pleasing
for me was the return of Robert De Niro, now in his 70s, to serious film work.
He was perfect as the obsessive Eagles fan in “Silver Lining Playbook” and then
delivered another hilarious performance as an aging standup comic navigating modern
show-biz in “The Comedian.” He was also
memorable as a writer in “Being Flynn,” a con-man of a father in “Joy,” the
grumpy friend in “Last Vegas,” the title character in Scorsese’s epic “The
Irishman” and the heartless late-night TV host in “Joker.”
For reasons I
can’t explain, I’ve seen fewer foreign-language films this decade than in years
past, so my Top 10 is probably less thorough than it should be. But “Parasite”
and “The Great Beauty” are clearly masterpieces that will end up with spots on
Sight and Sound magazine’s Greatest Films list when it’s published in 2022.
FILMS
1 Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
2 The Revenant (2015)
3 Melancholia (2011)
4 1917
(2019)
5 Interstellar
(2014)
6 Spotlight (2015)
7 Manchester
by the Sea (2016)
8
Detroit (2017)
9 Silence (2016)
10 Joker (2019)
11 Gravity
(2013)
12 Darkest Hour
(2017)
13 Youth (2015)
14 Arrival (2016)
15 I, Tonya (2017)
16 The King’s Speech (2010)
17 Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
18 Argo (2012)
19 Nebraska (2013)
20 12 Years a Slave (2013)
21
A Private War (2018)
22 The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
23
First Reformed (2018)
24
A Most Violent Year (2014)
25 Jackie (2016)
26
The Post (2017)
27
The Descendants (2011)
28
Another Year (2010)
29
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
30
Lincoln (2012)
31
Vice (2018)
32 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
33
Winter’s Bone (2010)
34 The Social Network (2010)
35
Ford v Ferrari (2019)
36
The Martian (2015)
37 Midnight in Paris (2011)
38
Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
39 Room (2015)
40
The Big Short (2015)
41
Dolemite Is My Name (2019)
42
A Star Is Born (2018)
43
Indignation (2016)
44
Marriage Story (2017)
45
Mud (2013)
46
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
47
Fruitville Station (2013)
48 The Theory of Everything (2014)
49
Wind River (2017)
50
The Disaster Artist (2017)
DIRECTORS
1 Alejandro G. Inarritu, Birdman (2014)
2 Sam Mendes, 1917 (2019)
3 Alejandro G. Inarritu, The Revenant (2015)
4 Martin Scorsese, Silence (2016)
5 Lars von Trier, Melancholia (2011)
6
Christopher Nolan, Interstellar
(2014)
7 Paolo Sorrentino, Youth (2015)
8 Kathryn
Bigelow, Detroit (2017)
9 Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea (2016)
10
Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity (2013)
ACTORS
1 Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln (2012)
2 Denzel Washington, Fences (2016)
3 Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant (2015)
4 Michael Keaton, Birdman (2014)
5 Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club (2013)
6 Gary Oldman, Darkest Hour (2017)
7 Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea (2016)
8 Joaquin Phoenix, Joker (2019)
9 Colin Firth, The King’s Speech (2010)
10
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of
Everything (2014)
ACTRESSES
1 Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (2013)
2 Julianne Moore, Still Alice (2014)
3 Brie
Larson, Room (2015)
4 Meryl
Streep, The Post (2017)
5
Margot Robbie, I, Tonya (2017)
6
Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia (2011)
7
Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
8 Amy
Adams, Arrival (2016)
9
Natalie Portman, Jackie (2016)
10
Glenn Close, The Wife (2018)
SUPPORTING ACTORS
1 Christian Bale, The Fighter (2010)
2 J.K. Simmons, Whiplash (2014)
3 Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies (2015)
4 Joe Pesci, The Irishman (2019)
5 Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook (2012)
6 Christopher Plummer, Beginners
(2011)
7 Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals (2016)
8 Brad Pitt, Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019)
9 John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone (2010)
10
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club
(2013)
SUPPORTING ACTRESSES
1
Allison Janney, I, Tonya (2017)
2 Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea (2016)
3 Lesley Manville, Another Year (2010)
4 Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
(2014)
5 Octavia Spencer, The
Help (2011)
6 Alicia Vikander, Ex Machina (2015)
7 Lupita Nyong’o, 12
Years a Slave (2013)
8 Melissa Leo, The Fighter (2010)
9 Laurie Metcalf, Lady Bird
(2017)
10 Laura Dern, Marriage
Story (2019)
FOREIGN-LANGUAGE FILMS
1 Parasite (South Korea) (2019)
2 The Great Beauty (Italy)
(2013)
3 A Separation
(Iran) (2011)
4 Amour (Austria) (2012)
5 Toni Erdmann (Germany) (2016)
6 The
Secret in Their Eyes (Argentina) (2010)
7 City of Life and Death (China)
(2011)
8 Ida (Poland) (2014)
9 A Prophet
(France) (2010)
10 Certified Copy (France)
(2011)
No comments:
Post a Comment