Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 70-61

70. Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014)

Longtime screenwriter Alex Garland’s directorial debut is this perfect, contained, claustrophobic little sci-fi film. Set pretty much entirely in the isolated mansion of a mad genius billionaire inventor (Oscar Isaac – brilliant), the film really only four characters. The main character is an employee (Domhnall Gleason) who thinks the billionaire wants him around because he’s such a good coder, but is really just being used to test Ava (Alicia Vikander) – his latest A.I. experiment to try and see if he can be fooled. What follows is intelligent science fiction, with brilliant special effects, done on a budget, in what is really just a four-person chamber peace. In an era where science fiction has mainly been taken over by horror and action and special effects, something like Ex Machina is a welcome corrective – showing what sci-fi can be.

 

69. Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Garland’s first film as a director – Ex Machina, was an intimate sci-fi film, done on a budget. His follow-up, Annihilation, has a much larger scope, and paints on a much larger canvas. Following a group of women who walk into the “shimmer” – a place in the jungle where something has crashed, and everyone who has entered has gone insane and died – except for one person, who isn’t quite himself (Oscar Isaac). Natalie Portman yet again shows her willingness to take chances in her projects – she plays Isaac’s wife, and one of the women on the journey inside, who find – well, themselves. This has a larger scope than Ex Machina to be sure – but it really is a journey inward, an epic sci-fi film about depression more than anything else. Ex Machina showed Garland was a huge talent behind the camera – Annihilation confirmed it.

 

68. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019)

Noah Baumbach’s best film to date is this painful, deeply empathetic movie about a couple going through a painful divorce. The film doesn’t choose side between Scarlett Johansson’s actress – wanting to get out from under her director husband, and move back to L.A., and that director, played by Adam Driver, who was probably too self-involved to see things breaking apart. They are both sympathetic characters – Baumbach gives both scenes where they pour their souls out for us to see – and they both do horrible things as well as they completely come apart. The film is perhaps a companion piece to Baumbach’s previous best film – The Squid and the Whale, a film about his parents’ divorce, from the point of view of their son. This time, Baumbach is inside that marriage as it crumbles into pain and misery – and then, perhaps, put back together in a different form.

 

67. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

Kathryn Bigelow’s best film is this complex look at the American response to 9/11 – and the long hunt for Osama Bin Laden, all through the eyes of a CIA analyst who wouldn’t give up – brilliantly played by Jessica Chastain, in her best lead performance to date. The controversy around the films depiction of torture really did miss the point here a little – this is a film about obsession, and the lengths people go to get what has been haunting them. The ending of the film is hardly triumphant – it’s yet another thing that has happened, but doesn’t feel particularly good. This is a more complex film than The Hurt Locker – less immediately satisfying, but’s that because there are no easy answers to be found.

 

66. Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011)

Steve McQueen’s second film – about a sex addict (Michael Fassbender) spiraling out of control is certainly a hard film to watch. It is a brilliant performance by Fassbender – a man who has been able to somehow live his life with his addiction, and keep all the balls in the air, that gradually falls apart when his sister (an equally brilliant Carey Mulligan) shows up to stay – their complex, perhaps incestuous relationship (at least in terms of desire) – makes them both spiral out of control. As with all of McQueen’s films, it is about the human body – the abuses we put it through, and the consequences of that. It is also just a dizzying portrait of the dark, seedy New York – the type we haven’t really seen since the 1970s. A devastating film that is difficult to watch, but is rewarding when you get through it.

 

65. 45 Years (Andrew Haigh, 2015)

Andrew Haigh has become an interesting director – who you never quite tell what he is going to do next, except that it will be an intimate character study. This is my favorite of his work – a film about an elderly married couple – Tom Courtenay (brilliant) and Charlotte Rampling (even more brilliant) – in the days leading up to their 45^th Anniversary Party they have been planning. This is when they get word that Courtney’s former girlfriend has been found dead – she disappeared on a mountain climbing trip all those decades ago – which make the two of them go back and re-examine their lives together. The film builds to a devastating climax. The film was kind of overlooked in many ways in 2015 – but deserves to be seen and discussed – it’s one of the best films about marriage this decade.

 

64. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

Barry Jenkins’s film about three points in time in a young, gay man in Florida I a beautiful, Wong Kar Wai inspired masterpiece. As a kid, he has to deal with his junkie mother (Naomie Harris) and whose only mentor is a drug dealer (Mahershala Ali). As a teenager, he is shy and awkward, and has a fleeting romantic moment with another young man on the beach. As someone in his 20s, he has gone done a different rabbit hole – trying to overcompensate for being gay, by donning all the outward appearances of a masculine man. Jenkins films of fleeting moments, and furtive glances, which gives each segment its own distinct look, while still being a part of the whole, is touching – and because it is so grounded in its specifics, it becomes universal. This wasn’t Jenkins’ first film – but it’s the film that showed just what a special filmmaker he was going to become.

 

63. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)

If Beale Street Could Talk didn’t get the attention that Moonlight did two years earlier – but to me, it is an ever better film. Here, adapting James Baldwin, Jenkins achieves a few things I wouldn’t have thought possible – he is able to adapt Baldwin faithfully, while still maintaining his own vision. He is also able to portray how systematic racism filters down and has personal consequences for everyone it touches – spreading out like cracks in a window. The movie is almost impossibly romantic in the scenes between the two young lovers, who seem to exist in their own world when they are free and together, and then almost impossibly harsh and depressing when that racism rips them apart. The film is beautifully directed – the cinematography, art direction, costumes, score – are all top notch. The performances are great – Regina King justly won an Oscar as a mother doing everything she can for her children – but I think Brian Tyree Henry may just be the best in the film – and he basically only has one sequence, where he shows the crushing consequences of mass incarceration on a personal scale. With these two films, Jenkins showed he is one of the best in the world.

 

62. A Ghost Story (David Lowery, 2017)

David Lowery became one of the most interesting directors working this decade with films like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Pete’s Dragon and The Old Man and the Gun. None was better though that his haunting A Ghost Story – a very strange film, about a man (Casey Affleck) who continues to haunt his suburban home to be near his wife (Rooney Mara) – and then continues to hang around even after she moves on. It is a beautiful film, that takes us into the future, and back to the past, and is really a slow rumination on love, loss, grief and death. It’s an odd film – impossible to sum up in a few sentences, but it’s a film that builds slowly, and then will stick with you for days, weeks, months, years after seeing it. Lowery continues to make interesting films – this is one that hopefully points the way towards something even greater from him.

 

61. Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2015)

Brooklyn is a delicate, beautiful film and features the best ever performance by Saorise Ronan, who has become one of the best actresses currently working. Playing a young, Irish immigrant in New York – who falls in love with an Italian-American man, and then has to go home and deal with a family tragedy – and the pressure to do what her family wants. It is a tender romance – really two romances, where Ronan has to choose between two guys, both of whom may be right for her, but in very different ways, and would lead to very different lives. It is a subtle film – with so much left unsaid, because they don’t need to be said. The period detail is great, the performances rich and subtle, and it is just such a lovely film – but whose core is harder than you first suspect.