Best Films of the "Decade": 2010-2019

There is an eerie enigmatic near-Apocalypse of the Lambs artistry at work in this tale of an Arizona FBI rookie brought into the murky world of CIA drug dealer assassinations that marks Villeneuve as the premiere stylist of the decade. The refreshingly ominous and abstract use of sound, the way Jóhann Jóhannsson's droning ominous synthesizer casts an intoxicating pall over the proceedings, as if the bottom is slowly dropping out in an endless elevator to Hell that opens out onto the sky at the same time, the naturalistic low-key dialogue, the vast empty spaces, and one of the best scenes of slow building tension and violent explosion (at the Mexico-US border crossing traffic) ever. As the moral compass Emily Blunt whispers through the whole movie like a lover trying not to wake her kids. Brolin and del Toro have such chemistry they're reminiscent of Clu and Lee in the '64 KILLERS. The easy realism of the various military-CIA-Texas Ranger joint-op briefings recalls the best Hawks' men-in-group maturity, which is so rare it must be savored, like a last meal.


One of the trippiest, wildest, most insane biblical fables ever, it's also a perfect emblem of its #metoo time. Here we have Woman as Avenger and astro-turf of life, and humanity as a vile overpopulating violent plague. What gets me is the editing and pace- the seamless evaporation of time so that we never really notice the sea changes wherein a single night's poetry book release party devolves from a few fans dropping by to a full scale riot, and then beyond, in real time, as Jennifer Lawrence moves from room to room of her house, trying to prevent each new destructive urge in her uninvited guests, with Javier Bardem always inviting in more and more. It's beyond horrible, back into blissful, and it's weird, but it's not as sadistic or pretentious as some of Aronofsky's earlier work, and it's above all, the truth. It's the allegory we need, and Jennifer Lawrence, so terrible in her last few 'big' pictures, like the X-Men reboot, redeems herself in spades as her generation's golden wild child. All hail! (more)

Pair-bond romance has always been Wes Anderson's weak point: he tends to focus on the childhood friendship of two (or sometimes three) boys and/or immature men, often ne'er do wells or scoundrels which a girl--usually more mature--comes painfully betwixt, if at all. But in this, his so-far only true love story, and he nails it by making the pair too young to be out and about without disproving adult permission, and too cool to let that stop them. when pushed. They do not cower! With her dark eye shadowed fox eyes and focused fearless deadpan expression, 14 year-old Kara Hayward is to Wes Anderson as Lauren Bacall was to Hawks, or Lana Del Rey to Val Lewton, and the effect is the same; Jared Gilman as her opposite number, an intrepid woodsman orphan, is shorter and seemingly younger, with owlish glasses and a Daniel Boone cap, but possessed of an eerie confidence and curiosity that sets him leagues apart from the 'average' shy and smitten doofusness so many lesser directors mistake for 'real' kid behavior. He's a badass.

We all have felt this type of heady connection, this thrilling outlaw romance, at some point in our lives, I hope. I would regret anyone missing it, this lightning bolt that comes at any age, at any time. Whether we either rise to its challenge or drown it, like a wolf cub in the bathtub, is up to us, but Moonrise Kingdom commands you turn this pair loose and hope they don't get run over crossing the highway, but don't impede, or you will get bit. And this is maybe the best and most undrowned wolf of a film Anderson film he's ever released into the wild, it's a true wolf whirlwind, full of great animal totems, woodcraft, folklore, park ranger-style factoids, and Francoise Hardy.

Miller's fourth Max film takes the big truck chase climax of the The Road Warrior and stretches it two hours into the void, filling it full of sunbleached women, Nordic mutants and crazy vehicles. It left some critics shellshocked but most of us had our socks blown off so far they drifted in astral winds. I have a feeling it's going to make a lot of alienated 15 year-old boys very happy for centuries to come. I know my buddies and I would have been. And they're still factoring my judgment, hence my undying love and props to the George Miller. He may have fumbled with the dreadful Thunderdome, but this more than makes up for it. With its bright blazing graphic novel colors (those deep reds!) it's always a joy to look at, and edited so quick and with such a dense, character-infested, mythically coherent mise-en-scene, it can stand a trillion re-viewings and still have secrets. 

Scripted with great sensitivity and Jungian Girls who Run with the Wolves-ish archetypal revisionist moxy by Linda Woolverton, this 'other side of the story' operates on the presumption there's more to Jolie's joyless laugh and a peerless sense of wry poise than we might think in our snide, sexist, dismissive tabloid cover disdain moments. There is. I know a girl or two just like her in AA and maybe they're cold for similar reasons, for here we have the origin story for why beautiful women become marble-cold and it's not just because they don't want to crack their make-up. Here, at last, never before in any Disney film, is a mythic contextualization of that unforgivably common social evil --date rape. One doesn't realize the extent of it as a problem of female maturity until its finally made mythic. Now it all makes sense. The resulting film, for all its beauty and fairy tale shimmer, is as alchemically healing as a caustic salve, brought up from deep murky chthonic of a growing girl's true poltergeist power, and slathered on all over the place while censorious moms and stern patriarchs can do nothing but moan in shame for letting it come to this through their centuries of their 'don't ask/don't listen' parenting and blind trust in authority figures. With art direction that can stand proudly next to the Pre-Raphaelite work of Edward Burne-Jones, J.W. Waterhouse, Michael Parkes, Maxfield Parrish, and William Blake, Maleficent's fairy kingdom pulses and writhes in ways that make every frame worthy of one. Trees grow and change at an accelerated rate; warriors of stone and tree root rise up from the ground on command; beings small and large fly and shimmer at night in ways Max Reinhardt would have been jealous of in his 1935 production of Midsummer Night's Dream. And this time there's not a single Mickey Rooney to grab the mic - it's a lady's show the whole way through - all the men can do is sulk about it, not even their best princely kisser need apply. (see also: CinemArchetype 11: The Wild, Wise Woman.)

Too bad about the sequel though. Pair with The Black Swan and/or Moonrise Kingdom for more women in black feathers clawing and cawing their way towards Dietrich in Shanghai Express-level coolness. 

These films came out in the 10s, but are they really from our decade? One is so rooted in the 70s, yet, Quixote-esquely gives plenty of indications that is not, indeed, where we are, that it's almost a time capsule. It could also well be from some magical Arthurian pre-Christian chthonic paradise of matriarchal herbscraft -- figure it out for yourself, but irregardless, the colors, the unified art, music, costumes, colors and deliberately (I hope) stilted acting, all signify the arrival of a true wunderkind, Anna Biller. The other is the result of Orson Welles acolyte Peter Bogdanovich finally finishing Welles' great lost, long-confiscated, ever-in-progress final masterpiece, shot mostly in the mid-60s-early 70s, and a towering titanical if madly egotistical achievement