Best of 2010-2019

[baby doll]

We all have our flaws. Mine is flippancy. Well, at least one of them. I'll try again:

This film moved me because I felt that the observations it made about intellectuals and high culture and art were pointed and often funny. I do not think it's a misogynistic film in the least. I think it's fair it in its targets and it's even-handed in wondering if anybody really has a clue what they're talking about. There's power in the scene with the young girl flinging paint on canvas because it creates a dichotomy. On the one hand, it seems utterly absurd that serious people could call it art in the strictest sense. On the other hand, her passion and anger are real, the process of watching her is captivating and the result is indeed quite beautiful.

In the earlier scene, I don't feel like the performance artist's gender is something that is important. What's important is that she is hiding behind a bluff, using pain, nudity and iconography to mask something substantial to say. Whether or not she's based on Abramovic, the difference is that, unlike Abramovic, she lacks the ability to answer follow-up questions about the significance of her work. There are many great performance artists. And there are also those who ape the extreme indulgences of their predecessors without it being genuinely felt expression. That, to me, was the target of ridicule, not her gender.

I was likewise moved by the party scene in which he asks his friend to drop her facade and simply be human. I feel like there's truth in that. I think that humility is an attractive quality, both in artistic expression and in artistic critique. Being human is challenging and life is too short for us not to cut others a little bit of slack.

Is the protagonist likable? Or any more insightful than anybody else? I don't know that he is and I don't think he needs to be. I think it's enough for us to understand that he's reached a point in his life where he's reached the unsettling conclusion that, although he's lived in the midst of high society and culture, nobody around him really knows what they're talking about. Life seems absurd and frustrating, but also joyous and much too brief.

It sounds like it felt blunt and obvious to you. It didn't to me. I was caught up in the music and the visual surprises. I thought it was an effective expression of one man's journey and his attempt to make sense of it.

I want to focus on this idea that no one really has a clue what they're talking about. What does this mean, exactly, in an artistic context? Either you like something or you don't, and there are plenty of good artists who are terrible explicators of their own work (David Lynch being perhaps the most obvious example). Yet rather than requiring the spectator to make a judgement, the film settles for easy potshots at people who are obviously phonies. Maybe it's captivating to watch a child make an abstract painting, but by literally infantilizing her, and thereby suggesting she is incapable of having a mature artistic intent, the film lets the viewer off the hook: We don't have to be able to discern whether the final result is a good example of abstract painting or a bad one; rather, the whole idea of abstract painting is made to seem absurd, confirming every yokel's first and last insight about Jackson Pollock ("My kid could paint that"). Perhaps the most revealing thing about this scene is that it upends the historical association of Abstract Expressionism with the Virile Male Genius pouring his soul into a canvas, as if the film were so invested in the notion of the Great Male Artist that Sorrentino had to make the painter a girl before he could ridicule the work.

[MadMan]

You act like I don't have years of experience knowing that a discussion with this poster is much more likely to result in multiple lengthy paragraphs insinuating I'm an idiot rather than anything productive. Not interested.

Hehe...rep.

[Spinal]

I want to focus on this idea that no one really has a clue what they're talking about. What does this mean, exactly, in an artistic context?

It means the same thing that it does in the context of religion, later in the film. It means that certain people hold themselves up to be authorities and are able to get others to believe in them because it's comforting for some to believe that there's an authority who can tell them what's right and what's wrong. It's the artist's affectation and facade that is the subject of ridicule in the performance artist scene. Lynch is eccentric to be sure, but he is also authentic. Jep reaches a point in his life where he's questioning how he can know what is truly meaningful. Everything around him seems absurd, although often beautiful as well. My take on the ending is that he starts writing again not because he's any more talented than anybody else, but rather because he sees that everyone is struggling to create beauty and give voice to meaning in this world, so he might as well too. It's a 'human' thing to try and be absurd and fall short. As he says at the dinner with friends: "We're all on the brink of despair, all we can do is look each other in the face, keep each other company, joke a little..."

It worked for me.

[Spinal]

What We Do in the Shadows (transmogrifier)
The Great Beauty (Grouchy)
Cloud Atlas (Peng)
A Separation (Mr. McGibbletts)
The Immigrant (Pop Trash)
Green Room (Dead and Messed Up)
Upstream Color (Neclord)
The Forbidden Room (baby doll)
Oslo, August 31st (Ezee)
Our Little Sister (Purple)
The Lost City of Z (Watashi)
Only Lovers Left Alive (dreamdead)
I Saw the Devil (Duke)
Prisoners (Ivan)

What We Do in the Shadows - On the surface of it, a Real World style parody with vampires doesn't seem like the most novel comedic premise, but fortunately it pays off big here. This a very, very funny movie and the masterstroke is the decision to parody different conceptions of vampires through the ages. By allowing their extravagant clothing and ridiculous accents to collide with the mundane aspects of modern life, the film becomes not so much a parody of vampires, but a parody of the ways in which we build mythology, loading the past with decadent sexuality, over-the-top violence and faux gravitas. Plus, I can't stop saying "eat some basghetti".

[transmogrifier]

What We Do in the Shadows - On the surface of it, a Real World style parody with vampires doesn't seem like the most novel comedic premise, but fortunately it pays off big here. This a very, very funny movie and the masterstroke is the decision to parody different conceptions of vampires through the ages. By allowing their extravagant clothing and ridiculous accents to collide with the mundane aspects of modern life, the film becomes not so much a parody of vampires, but a parody of the ways in which we build mythology, loading the past with decadent sexuality, over-the-top violence and faux gravitas. Plus, I can't stop saying "eat some basghetti".

Yay! We are werewolves, not swearwolves.

[Spinal]

What We Do in the Shadows (transmogrifier)
The Great Beauty (Grouchy)
Cloud Atlas (Peng)
A Separation (Mr. McGibbletts)
The Immigrant (Pop Trash)
Green Room (Dead and Messed Up)
Upstream Color (Neclord)
The Forbidden Room (baby doll)
Oslo, August 31st (Ezee)
Our Little Sister (Purple)
The Lost City of Z (Watashi)
Only Lovers Left Alive (dreamdead)
I Saw the Devil (Duke)
Prisoners (Ivan)

Our Little Sister - Even if the conflict feels a little light in the first half of the film, Koreeda's depth of humanity is on full display here. Here is a film filled with good, likable people trying to their best to live well, torn between self-fulfillment and their obligations towards family. I appreciated the film's warmth and detailed depictions of various character types, although ultimately the film's gentleness means it left less of an impression of me than either Nobodys Knows or Shoplifters.

[Spinal]

What We Do in the Shadows (transmogrifier)
The Great Beauty (Grouchy)
Cloud Atlas (Peng)
A Separation (Mr. McGibbletts)
The Immigrant (Pop Trash)
Green Room (Dead and Messed Up)
Upstream Color (Neclord)
The Forbidden Room (baby doll)
Oslo, August 31st (Ezee)
Our Little Sister (Purple)
The Lost City of Z (Watashi)
Only Lovers Left Alive (dreamdead)
I Saw the Devil (Duke)
Prisoners (Ivan)

The Forbidden Room - A work of dazzling creativity and technical innovation to rival Peter Greenaway's Propspero's Books. Maddin's hilarious extrapolation of silent film conventions is always welcome and many of the title cards are laugh out loud funny. "Forced to wear a leotard" is my personal favorite. It's the kind of film where you're never quite sure how you got to where you are, but you also don't really mind because there's sure to be an extraordinary visual surprise around the corner. My only reservation, and it's a mild one, is that Maddin is a bit disconnected from real-world consequence. His mischievous experimentation with cinema and narrative is endlessly witty; however, I miss the weight of something that feels drawn from life outside of artifice.

[baby doll]

The Forbidden Room - A work of dazzling creativity and technical innovation to rival Peter Greenaway's Propspero's Books. Maddin's hilarious extrapolation of silent film conventions is always welcome and many of the title cards are laugh out loud funny. "Forced to wear a leotard" is my personal favorite. It's the kind of film where you're never quite sure how you got to where you are, but you also don't really mind because there's sure to be an extraordinary visual surprise around the corner. My only reservation, and it's a mild one, is that Maddin is a bit disconnected from real-world consequence. His mischievous experimentation with cinema and narrative is endlessly witty; however, I miss the weight of something that feels drawn from life outside of artifice.

I'm glad you liked it. However, I would take issue with the idea that the film is disconnected from the real world, insofar as its formal procedures reproduce the horrible presentness and discontinuity of life in the 21st century (another day, another social media outrage), which results in a feeling of never being quite sure how you got where you are (exactly the predicament of the Roy Dupuis character in the film). Thus, the disintegration of film history in the movie, where the various fragments of stories seem to be disappearing before our eyes, is not simply a matter of personal forgetfulness but reflects how the attention economy makes remembering impossible.

[Spinal]

I'm glad you liked it. However, I would take issue with the idea that the film is disconnected from the real world, insofar as its formal procedures reproduce the horrible presentness and discontinuity of life in the 21st century (another day, another social media outrage), which results in a feeling of never being quite sure how you got where you are (exactly the predicament of the Roy Dupuis character in the film). Thus, the disintegration of film history in the movie, where the various fragments of stories seem to be disappearing before our eyes, is not simply a matter of personal forgetfulness but reflects how the attention economy makes remembering impossible.

Good stuff. It would be interesting to watch it again with this in mind.

[PURPLE]

Our Little Sister - Even if the conflict feels a little light in the first half of the film, Koreeda's depth of humanity is on full display here. Here is a film filled with good, likable people trying to their best to live well, torn between self-fulfillment and their obligations towards family. I appreciated the film's warmth and detailed depictions of various character types, although ultimately the film's gentleness means it left less of an impression of me than either Nobodys Knows or Shoplifters.

What I love about the film is that while the conflicts are light, they aren't actually smaller than in any other film. The difference is that the characters (realistically) don't overreact, which does at least two things: It allows for far many more conflicts which are also realistically underplayed (which adds texture) and it enables the characters' behavior to be imbued with meaning. This is not to say something pretentious about "the meaning of life", it is to say that the characters' reaction actually means something. If they don't react adversely toward their new sister despite her being the product of her father's unfaithfulness, it means that they value her as a human being more than the actions of their father, and it means that they value family, and if they value family then it means that they also value their shared father, which even further heightens the meaning of their generosity. In another film, where the sisters acted defensively and spitefully, it means that they are selfish and small minded. So much cinema and theater and writing centers uninterestingly either around conflict that is so large that the reactions can never resemble 99% of real life or around conflict that it small and is uninterestingly turned "dramatic" by making characters all selfish and small minded. Here is a cinema of selfless, broad minded people - it will necessarily be free of "drama", but it won't necessarily be uninteresting.

It's a funny film, because its complexity is only possible because it is so subdued. In a way, it can be seen as a deconstruction of a typical drama because it removes all of the drama and allows characters to not be enslaved by the need for theatrics but instead to be driven only by the desire to live their best lives and support each other in ways that their parents never did. In this light, it's pretty much as inspirational a film as has ever been made: The characters' ability to overcome the negative elements of their parents' behavior is both an example of and a testament to the power of overcoming the obstacles in one's life. Sure, the obstacles don't seem huge in the film, but that's in part because the characters are successful, not because the obstacles are any lesser or greater. To the extent that this reading is "reaching" - it's fine, because the film is still simply a lovely film about people overcoming a multitude of negativity and living their best lives. The film is instructive as to the benefits of perspective, of maximizing the positives and dealing openly but rationally with negatives. Many films spend an hour and a half with people spiraling in the negative only to have one moment of clarity at the end - this film has two hours of clarity, and instead of the clarity merely being momentary it is instead incredibly nuanced.

Contrasting the film with Like Father, Like Son, you can see a remarkable difference. That film is really about contrasting two different families' reactions to the same situation. One is clearly unhealthy, but realistically a product of that character's foibles. Here, each character has a unique personality and unique foibles, but they are each able to surmount their issues more readily and more healthily together as opposed to the worst character in Like Father, Like Son, whose greatest error is not necessarily that he has foibles but that he is incapable of accepting anyone's help. This film has a hint of that dimension, but instead of contrasting a bad character with a good character it is done by contrasting a solitary young girl with a group, and showing how her life improves by incorporating herself into the group. This dynamic also continues into the next film, but utilizing a much different concept and achieving much different results.

This film exists in a continuum with Koreeda's previous films and his following film, and while this film is less "dramatic" it is, to me, far more accomplished as an example of how to live a life and a celebration of that kind of life and, if you're doing things right, a reflection of the viewer's life - or perhaps a model for how to improve one's life. That being said, as I mentioned, I do not see this as a fluff piece, as I see an immense amount of texture and nuance, it is just far better than films that people see as not puff pieces solely because characters react less sensibly. I guess you could say that the degree to which the film seems unfamiliar is the degree to which each person needs it - if you think that such a "scandal" would irrevocably ruin your life then it probably means you need to do some introspection, and if it seems totally reasonable and normal then it's probably refreshing to find a film that actually mirrors reality and doesn't waste its time on histrionics. And then, you know, there are people on all sorts of the spectrum who don't like it that much because that's just how art works. C'est la vie.

[Dukefrukem]

Me too. What do we do? Just pick a movie you haven't seen from everyone's list?

Mistress America - Trans
Elle - Grouchy
It's Such a Beautiful Day - Peng
Chi-Raq - McGibblets
Creepy - Dead & Messed Up
Eighth Grade - Spinal
Margaret - Pop Trash
Silence - Neclord
Copie conforme - Baby Doll
Son of Saul- Ezee E
The Square - Purple
First Man - Watashi
The Handmaiden - Dreamdead
You Were Never Really Here - Ivan Drago

As I said in the thread, First Man is good, not great. Typical biopic. Agreed the score was great and probably the standout; found myself a little emotional when the music kicks in as Neil tosses the bracelet. Gosling is typically Gosling. The other day when we were talking about comedic actors with no range. How does Gosling do stuff like the Nice Guys or La La Land, and then does his best Drive character in this? I didn't think Neil Armstrong was a Sully like guy; but maybe I need to read up on him more.

[Peng]

Regardless of Gosling’s performance, I know someone who made a thesis about Armstrong in uni and said the film’s version of him more or less captures him perfectly.

[Spinal]

What We Do in the Shadows (transmogrifier)
The Great Beauty (Grouchy)
Cloud Atlas (Peng)
A Separation (Mr. McGibbletts)
The Immigrant (Pop Trash)
Green Room (Dead and Messed Up)
Upstream Color (Neclord)
The Forbidden Room (baby doll)
Oslo, August 31st (Ezee)
Our Little Sister (Purple)
The Lost City of Z (Watashi)
Only Lovers Left Alive (dreamdead)
I Saw the Devil (Duke)
Prisoners (Ivan)

Upstream Color - This is very much a "wavelength" film it seems. I think that one's appreciation of what Carruth has done here will depend on how well you can get on board with his affection for jump cuts, purposefully leaving his narrative as a series of dots or dashes that need to be connected in the viewer's mind. It's alternately mesmerizing and exhausting, and I can't say that I was completely successful at grasping the film's underlying purpose without help from Wikipedia. That, unfortunately, kept me at a bit of an emotional distance, although I can see how this would be something close to a spiritual experience for the right viewer.

[dreamdead]

I love a lot of the quiet or non-dialogue scenes in Carruth's film. The silent shift from Kris's (Seimetz's) feminine attire to a masculine attire after the attack--how they echo her trauma or, alternately, contrast that sense;

How Jeff tells Kris midway through the film, “I want to marry you. I’m married to you right now. I’m marrying you.” The structural collapse of time in both dialogue and editing style;

How the paintings of fences in Jeff's room echo the trauma that Jeff and Kris's piglets are suffering;

How those last ten minutes of the film really have no dialogue and trust us to piece together so much;

How it feels like a legitimate take on feminist vigilantism, closing with community rather than individuality...

[Peng]

Eager to revisit this one. Liked it a lot already but could see it going up.

[Spinal]

What We Do in the Shadows (transmogrifier)
The Great Beauty (Grouchy)
Cloud Atlas (Peng)
A Separation (Mr. McGibbletts)
The Immigrant (Pop Trash)
Green Room (Dead and Messed Up)
Upstream Color (Neclord)
The Forbidden Room (baby doll)
Oslo, August 31st (Ezee)
Our Little Sister (Purple)
The Lost City of Z (Watashi)
Only Lovers Left Alive (dreamdead)
I Saw the Devil (Duke)
Prisoners (Ivan)

Oslo, August 31st - A life in freefall, plummeting towards oblivion, grasping for a reason to pull the ripcord. This film is utterly riveting, capturing both the joy and the pain of existence. What feels so authentic about this film is that even when Anders experiences the former, it is undercut with his knowledge that the latter is sure to follow and hit back twice as hard. Anders has opportunities - a job interview, old relationships, an invitation to a party - and we get the sense that people generally like him. But by the time we enter his life, there is something already broken - a disbelief that he can ever be loved for himself, a crippling anxiety that fills him with self-loathing.

Wonderful film, and one that I will add to my own shortlist for the decade's best.

[Lazlo]

My buddy and I have a podcast about Tom Cruise and we're running a March Madness-style bracket battle for the best movie of the decade (any movie, not Tom Cruise specific). We're currently in the Sweet 16 for 2011. Would love to have y'all vote if you're interested.

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Twitter
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The Social Network won 2010. New year every week until we get through 2018, matchups last 24 hours. Eventually we'll have a bracket of 64 movies from the whole decade, I guess this time next year once we see how 2019 shakes out. Hope to see y'all out there voting!

[Mr. McGibblets]

My buddy and I have a podcast about Tom Cruise and we're running a March Madness-style bracket battle for the best movie of the decade (any movie, not Tom Cruise specific). We're currently in the Sweet 16 for 2011. Would love to have y'all vote if you're interested.

Facebook
Twitter

The Social Network won 2010. New year every week until we get through 2018, matchups last 24 hours. Eventually we'll have a bracket of 64 movies from the whole decade, I guess this time next year once we see how 2019 shakes out. Hope to see y'all out there voting!

Cool. I voted for all the ones where I've seen both films and followed that Twitter account to keep up.

[Lazlo]

Cool. I voted for all the ones where I've seen both films and followed that Twitter account to keep up.

So cool, thanks!

[Spinal]

I voted too, but it looked liked some damage had already been done. The Tree of Life knocked out by Captain America? Yikes.

[Lazlo]

I voted too, but it looked liked some damage had already been done. The Tree of Life knocked out by Captain America? Yikes.

Yeah, the electorate mostly being our friends and family to start with has not done the candidates very many favors. Partly why I posted here, get some movie people voting!

[Dukefrukem]

I voted too, but it looked liked some damage had already been done. The Tree of Life knocked out by Captain America? Yikes.

I approve.

[Lazlo]

I approve.

Definitely thought of you in that matchup!

[Lazlo]

You can also vote on our Instagram story, if that's more your speed. Or, you know, vote on all three platforms to help protect your faves.

Instagram

[Dukefrukem]

I voted but the results are ridiculous. Hugo beating Fast Five and Drive beating Cabin in the Woods. Just no.