10. First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)
Paul
Schrader has, of course, been an accomplished screenwriter and director dating
back to the 1970s – and still, he waited until he was over 70 to make his
masterpiece. First Reformed contains a brilliant performance by Ethan Hawke as
a Priest – he came to it later in life, after his son died in Iraq, and his
wife left him – who is basically going through the motions in a tourist church.
Then he meets a beautiful, pregnant young woman (Amanda Seyfried) who convinces
him to meet with her husband – who doesn’t think they should bring a child into
a dying world. This sets Hawke off in a different direction. In many ways, this
is a classic Schrader protagonist – a lonely man driven to action. You’ve seen
this in everything from Taxi Driver to Light Sleeper to Affliction, etc. And
yet, rarely has Schrader ever dug so deep into this type of character – nor has
he driven into his influences – Dreyer, Bergman, Rossellini – so deeply. And
yet, for all the hallmarks of earlier work, this film is still its own thing –
right up until the haunting final shot of the film. This is a beautiful, subtle
brilliant drama – and something that it feels like Schrader had to make – had
to get out of himself. And in doing so, he created his masterwork.
9. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016)
I
don’t particularly care whether you think this five part, eight-hour
documentary is a TV series or a movie – because in the end it doesn’t really
matter. It is a complete and total masterpiece – easily the best documentary of
the decade, and a film that deserves to ranked near the top of any list of the
best docs ever made. Ezra Edleman’s film is long and complex – diving into who
O.J. was in the 1960s through the 1980s as a football star and celebrity,
before it dives into the crime, the trial and everything happened since. It
also functions as a documentary about race in America during this time – from
the Watts Riots to the Rodney King riots and everything in between. It
concludes that clearly there is racism in America (obviously) and in particular
in L.A. and the LAPD – but also finds it ironic that the beneficiary of the
backlash against that racism was O.J. who said things like “I’m not black, I’m
O.J.”. Films like this – this far reaching, this in depth – are a rare thing
indeed. Who knows if we’ll ever seen on like again – people are certainly
trying, but no one has come close to this.
8. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
There
are many ways you can take Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. It is, in some
ways, a continuation of his previous film – There Will Be Blood (2007) – which
was a history lesson about capitalism and religion in America. Here, Anderson
has moved into the post-WWII period, but he finds something similar in the new
religious movement inspired by Scientology. And yet, oddly, his main character
isn’t the head of that religion (played, in one of the all-time great
performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman) – but on his most imperfect disciple –
played in arguably an even better performance by Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s
Freddie Quell is one of the most mysterious, ambiguous characters in cinema
history – someone who seems to be searching for answers to life’s big question,
but in the end may be exactly the same person he was at the beginning at the
end. There are other ways to take it though – perhaps it is nothing more than
Anderson pitting these two amazing performances against each other, as they are
equals, but opposites – Phoenix channeling something out of Brando, Hoffman
channeling something out of Welles. And don’t forget Amy Adams, who so many
people dismissed in this film, despite the Oscar nomination she got for it, but
who is really subtly astounding here – and in complete control. Whatever it is,
it is an absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous film to look at, with some of the
best cinematography of the decade, and perfect period detail. It’s a film that,
like Anderson’s Boogie Nights, is endlessly rewatchable, but for very different
reasons. This isn’t a brilliant entertainment – but a dreamlike mystery you
want to sink into again and again.
7. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
The
Social Network really did feel like a feel about the here and now when it came
out in 2010 – about how we live life online, and how you can be wildly
successful at it, and lonely and miserable in real life. Yet, with all the
revelations about Facebook in recent years, it seems even more relevant now. Is
it surprising that Facebook, whose founding story we see here, is really not
the good actor that it so desperately wants to be seen as. And the film is also
just amazingly entertaining – with the best ever screenplay by Aaron Sorkin,
and a director in David Fincher who knows how to use it so that the film
doesn’t just become a series of monologues and walk-and-talks. Jessie Eisenberg
gives one of the decade’s best performances as Mark Zuckerberg – it’s the type
of performance that will define his entire career, but if you’re going to be
defined by one performance it should be this. Fincher was essentially a
director-for-hire here, but he finds the perfect way to tell this story – aided
considerably by the decade’s best score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. A
brilliant, dizzying story that may well become the film that defines this
decade.
6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin
Tarantino, 2019)
In
retrospect, it has become clear that Tarantino turned some sort of corner with
Inglorious Basterds, the film he ended last decade with, and has been moving
towards something like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ever since. It is another
revisionist history film – one that ends with a more satisfying orgy of
violence than reality gave us, one that corrects things going forward. But
here, Tarantino lingers after that violence – and gives us the most genuinely
moving scenes of his career. And it comes at the end of a film that really does
feel like it addresses all of Tarantino’s obsession – with old school
Hollywood, with the joy and purpose of making entertainment, even if it’s
destined to be forgotten, about friendship – and about allowing people to see
Sharon Tate as a human being, and not a murder victim. It’s also just
deliriously entertaining – with some of the best work of DiCaprio and Pitt’s
careers – and the Spahn ranch sequence, the best single sequence of Tarantino’s
career. The more times I see this, the more I think about it, I think it’s
Tarantino’s masterpiece – a decade, and perhaps career capper, for him.
5. The Tree of Life (Terence Malick, 2011)
There
probably wasn’t a more ambitious film this decade that Terrence Malick’s The
Tree of Life, which dared to tell the entire history of world in one film in a
beautiful, epic length, and then also drill right down to the intimate family
portrait based on Malick’s own childhood – and then going into the future to
show the emptiness of modern life. This feels like the film that Malick was
working towards his entire career – and brilliant melding of the intimate and
the epic showing you human existence in one mesmerizing package. I understand
some people hate it – that they want a more concrete narrative, and that is
something Malick simply does not want to show you, he does not care about. This
is the type of film only someone like Malick would or could make – a brilliant,
one-of-a-kind masterpiece.
4. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
At his
worst, sometimes Wes Anderson makes little more than beautiful, but empty
bobbles – films that look good and are entertaining, but aren’t really about
anything. At his best, he makes a masterpiece like The Grand Budapest Hotel.
With a Russian Nesting Doll like screenplay, going through different time
periods, with different looks, and different aspect ratios, Anderson has made a
film who surface pleasures are more than anything he has ever made before – a
masterpiece of production design, costume design, cinematography and music. And
yet, it also had a hard center – a film about the civility in the face of
violence and fascism, and its ultimate futility. It’s a tragedy on a larger
scale that Anderson has ever attempted before. Ralph Fiennes gives one of the
best performances of the decade – a performance, that like the movie itself, it
fun on the surface, but has a core that it sad and tragic. This is Anderson’s
masterpiece.
3. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
Scorsese
had a great decade – especially for someone in his 70s – but he saved his best film
for the last one of this stretch. In many ways, The Irishman feels like a
summation from Scorsese – like he has made it in a way to bury the gangster
film genre altogether, as well as perhaps the 20th Century as a
whole. It is a familiar story in some ways – full of familiar faces for a
Scorsese film – and yet this gangster epic – which runs three-and-a-half hours,
is obsessed with death – the slow march towards it we all go on, and the
choices we make along the way, that seem so important, that end with us
isolated and alone – having given up everything you care about because your
boss told you told. The performances by DeNiro, by Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa and
especially by Joe Pesci are all brilliant. The screenplay brilliantly
structured across decades. And as the film moves towards its conclusion, the
weight of everything we’ve seen accumulates, in a way I found crushing. It is
what it is – and what it is a masterpiece, one of the best films of Scorsese’s
unparalleled career.
2. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
I
don’t think you can argue that Phantom Thread is Anderson’s most ambitious film
this decade – hell, it may even be his least ambitious of his three films in
this 10-year period. What it also is though is his most entertaining film since
Boogie Nights – a portrait of a strange, kinky relationship that you don’t
quite see for what it is until the final moments in the film. It features a
great performance by Daniel-Day Lewis, if this is actually his swansong, it’s a
great one – and an even better one by Vicky Krieps, who is perhaps the most
interesting, most mysterious character of the decade – someone who doesn’t give
away her secrets, but you can completely see her total character. It’s a
beautiful film – no film had better costumes this decade than this, also with
great production design, and cinematography by Anderson himself. The film is
the decades most demented comedy because it isn’t played as one at all. It’s
also perhaps the best portrait of a longtime relationship I have seen in a
long, long time. Sure, The Master and Inherent Vice had more ambition – but
Phantom Thread is an absolute masterpiece on a different level.
1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013)
I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen a film like
Inside Llewyn Davis before. It’s about an artist who is very good – just
perhaps not quite good enough. The title character is not s genius – we get a
glimpse of one near the end of the film, but he also isn’t like the Coens
Barton Fink – a hack. Inside Llewyn Davis is essentially a heartbreaking film
of just not being good enough – and the point in which you need to give up and
quite. Oscar Isaac became a star because of this performance – really the best
of the decade – as a folk singer in early 1960s New York. His life is a mess,
he is broke, and he is slowly falling apart. He is talented at singing – the
soundtrack has become a staple for me – but it’s just not new enough, different
enough. In the decades finest one scene performance F. Murray Abraham delivers
the most heartbreaking line I have ever heard “I just don’t see money here”.
The film looks gorgeous, full of smoky clubs, and freezing roads. And it can be
downright hilarious – Adam Driver shows up for one scene of amazingly singing –
and John Goodman is larger than life. Carey Mulligan gives a performance that
really just cuts Llewyn to the bone. This is perhaps the Coen’s masterpiece – I
know I may be alone on that, but I have toggled back and forth between this and
Fargo for what is their best film. But this sad, understated film about quitting
was the best of the decade for me – and to be honest, I never really even
considered anything else. Since 2013, everyone else was playing for second
place.
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