Best Movie of Each Year in the 2010s
I’m a few days late on this one, but that’s okay because the best movie from each year isn’t changing all that much on a day-to-day process.
As these things tend to start, someone posed a simple question on Twitter that exploded into a whole to-do:
https://twitter.com/bestavenger2001/status/976146155355688960
My favorite film for each year…
That immediately ruined my day and forced me to slave over my own list.
Which I will now present to you in blog form.
Along with my pick and the runner-up, I’ll also be listing the top movie from the year that has eluded me.
There will likely be some groaning at the names in the “Still Need to See” column, but this isn’t the time for movie shaming.
This is the trust circle.
We’ll start at the beginning:
2010: Black Swan
Darren Aronofsky is a special filmmaker, one who pushes the bounds of what makes the viewer comfortable.
Requiem for a Dream, his big breakthrough into the mainstream, still stands out as the best warning against drugs ever put on film; it’s a hard-to-digest, frantic unraveling of lives that brilliantly walks the fine line between excess and genius. Depending on who you ask, it could fall on either side.
In 2008, Aronofsky took his shot at the most straightforward narrative of his career with The Wrestler, which was rewarded with an Oscar nod, but the monster in his head was crying out to return his old ways.
He did that with Black Swan, a psychological thriller starring Natalie Portman (Nina) and Mila Kunis (Lily) that examines a woman’s internal and external struggle with her own innocence and the darkness that lies beneath.
The story revolves around Nina’s (who is fairly old by ballet standards at 28) attempt to earn the starring role of the Swan Queen in the upcoming show and her struggles to embody the duality of the light of the white swan and the dark eroticism of the black swan.
As the pressure from her mother (who she lives with), the director (Vincent Cassel), and others vying for her spot (namely Lily), the cracks in Nina’s fragile facade begin to deep further and further.
Black Swan has an unreliable narrator and utilizes hallucinations in such a way that you question all that is real and isn’t, who is good and bad, and the line between perfection and obsession.
It can be seen as Aronofsky’s battle with his own creativity, the battle for perfection, even at the cost of one’s own sanity, even at the cost of one’s own health.
This may not be Aronofsky’s finest film, but it is unequivocally Aronofsky-esque, a beautifully harrowing film with haunting performances, unique narration, eroticism, and plenty to ponder beneath the surface.
Runner-Up: The Social Network
Still Need to See: Blue Valentine
2011: Take Shelter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5U4TtYpKIc
2011 was sort of a weird year for me as far as films went. I was a sophomore/junior in college, and I had fallen into the streaming hole, watching everything I could from past generations.
It was the lost year, the year I saw the least amount of films in theaters.
There were simply other things on my mind; I was wrapped up in my own shit in my own world.
As a result, the things I saw from that year were virtually context-free, no momentum, no Oscar pushes, nothing.
I think that’s part of the reason why I gravitated towards Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, a smallish budget psychological drama with a limited release.
Afflicted by hallucinations of impending doom, Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon as masterful as he has ever been) sets out to turn an old tornado bunker in his backyard into a full-blown shelter for the apocalypse to “save” his wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), and deaf daughter, Hannah.
Curtis risks his job and necessary health insurance that pays for his daughter’s needed equipment all for the shelter that will protect his family from the impending storm, all while his family is trying their best to protect him from himself.
It’s sort of a contemporary retelling of Noah’s Ark with Curtis deciphering the visions.
Take Shelter is more refined that Nichols’ first film offering, Shotgun Stories, but there’s still the grittiness that drew me to Jeff Nichols’ work in the first place, something similar about the landscape, the town, and the people who reminded me of my own surroundings.
The best scene in the movie comes during a dinner at a community center. Curtis and his friend, Dewart (Shea Whigham), get into an altercation before Curtis snaps:
The plastic plates, red and white table cloths, ugly wood paneling, all these things may have been in any community fellowship hall. Nichols absolutely nails the tone, place, and people he was trying to replicate.
In the end, we’re left with an answer of sorts to the question of whether or not a storm was ever coming at all, but that becomes sort of irrelevant. It isn’t a story of preparation or overcorrection, but a story of things we cannot change and the acceptance that comes with it.
In a year with a lot of really good understated movies, Take Shelter stands out as something entirely different from the norm.
Runner-Up: Drive
Still Need to See: The Tree of Life
2012: Life of Pi
On one of the Ringer’s podcasts with Bill Simmons, Wesley Morris (NYT), K. Austin Collins, and others, the crew discussed the 2013 Academy Awards and how the movies/winners held up. Waiting five years to award movies has been one of Bill Simmons’ deals because he feels that is the best way to gauge cultural significance without getting too caught up in the hoopla surrounding the movies and their PR pushes.
Their thoughts on Life of Pi bothered me a great deal.
It was viewed as an afterthought, the curious stepchild in a room full of thoroughbreds.
And that makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
The mere fact that it exists at all, let alone in its brilliant state, is a miracle. For the longest time, the novel by the same name was said to be “unfilmable” due to the nature of the story.
Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain), an absolute master filmmaker, proved everyone wrong in his patented heartfelt way.
Life of Pi is about Pi Patel’s (Suraj Sharma) journey for survival on the open seas after the ship carrying he and his family sank into the ocean. Along with facing the impossible conditions of the elements, starvation, and dehydration, Pi also had to deal with a tiger being in his lifeboat, the last remaining piece of Pi’s former life as a zookeeper’s son.
For 227 days they floated listlessly, desperate for survival, they formed a sort of connection, an understanding that each of them were vital if they were to avoid death. It’s an exploration of religion, perseverance, and the human mind’s ability to save itself from the traumas of the world.
And when it is all over you’ll feel exhausted, as if you yourself took on the sea with a tiger in tow.
Acting in a compelling way with no one to work off of is one of the hardest thing an actor can do, but Suraj pulled it off with the excellence of a well-seasoned legend, like Robert Redford in All is Lost. He was transcendent, creating a legacy for himself in the process.
Visually, Life of Pi is on a level with very few peers.
It has some of the best CGI work you will ever see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMTuBy7ju1o
There are numerous scenes just like that one, and if for no other reason, it should be mandatory viewing for anyone who wants to make films utilizing CGI.
But it is so much more than a pretty movie. You fall in love with the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker (the tiger), and as soon as you turn the corner and hope for their deaths just to ease their suffering, you get one more reason to cling onto hope.
Such is life for Pi and Richard Parker.
Such is life for us all.
Runner-Up: Beasts of the Southern Wild
Still Need to See: The Master
2013: Blue is the Warmest Color
I’ve written about Blue is the Warmest Colour before, and I’ve told almost everyone I know to give it a shot at one point or another, so I’ll be belaboring the point a bit here.
But fucking hell is it good.
Winner of the Palme d’Or, French director Abdellatif Kechiche’s masterpiece Blue is the Warmest Colour took the film world by storm due to the otherworldly performances by Adèle Exarchopoulos (Adele) and Léa Seydoux (Emma) as a pair of lovers embarking on a
The premise of the movie itself isn’t all that interesting. It’s a three-hour film about the rise and fall of a lesbian relationship and all that went into it. That’s it.
There’s no life-altering car wreck or a disease that affects the family of one of the lovers.
It is simply about the relationship and the girls in it.
And it hooked me from the second it began and never relented.
The film garnered infamy for its lengthy, graphic sex scenes, but nothing is without purpose; it’s an exploration into every aspect of a relationship, and it builds to a magnificent fall.
It’s beautifully shot and scored (I still get chills whenever I hear “I Follow Rivers”), but the performances are what carry this into a whole different stratosphere.
Blue is the Warmest Colour stayed with me for days after my initial viewing, and for every subsequent viewing, it haunts me longer and longer.
I’ve said enough about the film, but for the love of all that is right in the world, stream it while it is still on Netflix.
Runner-Up: Mud
Still Need to See: Her
2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel
This was one of my favorite movie years ever, and picking between them was an absolute bitch.
Even now as I’ve decided, I’m still thinking of switching to Room, but I digress.
Every good list needs balance, and The Grand Budapest Hotel provided me with more laughs than most outright comedies have
Wes Anderson is a divisive, polarizing filmmaker because of the way his fans obsess over his works, preaching his message to anyone and everyone within earshot. You know the ones… Decked out in glasses that serve no purpose other than to give them a specific look, tight jeans and flannel shirt they found at a flea market for $1.27, American Spirit cigarettes showing off from the shirt pocket, face locked in an ever-present smarmy sneer, ready at all times to mock someone for watching any movie that was promoted through a commercial, a 9.7% triple IPA sitting in front of them as they explain to you the cultural merits of Bottle Rocket. That guy.
He’s the director of the hipster nerds.
I am one of those hipster nerds, at least in this instance.
I am a HUGE Wes Anderson fan.
Despite my affinity for all of his films, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou in particular, and my understanding of what the film would be, at least in a broad sense, The Grand Budapest Hotel still shocked me. I was stunned at how beautiful it was, how clever the dialogue was, how artistic it was.
It was his masterpiece.
As an artist, Anderson is one of the few auteurs working today, someone whose style is immediately evident as soon as a scene begins, and The Grand Budapest Hotel has all of the common visuals and sounds: The use of colors that pop off the screen, the use of miniatures, the balance and symmetry, the scrolling tracking shots, the whimsical music, the brilliant, engaging dialogue, etc… It’s all there.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is a flashback film that covers the budding relationship between concierge Gustave H (Ralph Fiennes) and newly hired lobby boy Zero (Tony Revolori) at the Grand Budapest. Gustave asks much of his workers, though nothing more than he would freely give himself, and he has a penchant for sleeping with rich, elderly women, a trait the puts Gustave and Zero in a precarious battle for a priceless painting against the estranged estate of Madame D in one of Anderson’s most outlandish dreams come to life.
Ralph Fiennes, whose character most resembles Harry Waters from In Bruges than anything else in his filmography, is such a delight in this movie that I just can’t help but laugh to myself when thinking about him. He is a highly critical man, but a deeply loyal one. The faced with armed guard, he happily throws himself in harm’s way for the safety of his worker:
The Grand Budapest Hotel works on every level because Anderson uses so many of his frequent collaborators who know exactly what he wants from them at every second of the film. From Adrien Brody to Bill Murray to Edward Norton to Willem Dafoe, the names and faces from the catalogues of his work pop up time and time again to steal scenes.
There are movies that I adore that I have no interest in watching ever again (we’ll cover one soon enough).
This isn’t one of those movies.
Runner-Up 1A: Birdman
Runner-Up 1B: Room
Still Need to See: Two Days, One Night
2015: Mad Max: Fury Road
Despite a great year for movies, there isn’t an easier selection on this list for me than Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015.
I find myself thinking about it on a daily basis, the colors, the music, the unrelenting energy.
Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t just an action movie; it’s the best action move ever made.
That seems like a lofty proclamation, but its transcends what an action movie is supposed to be in the same way Raiders of the Lost Ark and Die Hard did.
Only it did is better.
Mad genius George Miller created his original Mad Max trilogy over 30 years ago, a gritty, violent ballet of steel and gas, and over the course of that 30 years, he worked on far different projects. He created Babe: Pig in the City and the Happy Feet movies, which were about as far away from Mad Max as one could possibly go.
But all the while, the Mad Max world never left his min; it stayed in there like a cancer, ruminating and growing more evil.
In 2015, it was unleashed upon the world once more.
Tom Hardy took over for Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky, a wanderer in the desert wasteland that the world has become. Ever since his family was murdered, his sole focus is just survival. He gets captured at the opening of the film, and it sets up one of the most adrenaline-pumping opening sequences since Saving Private Ryan.
As Max is trying to escape from the clutches of Immortan Joe’s (Hugh Keays-Byrne) War Boys, he runs into Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron), one of Joe’s lieutenants, trying to do the same thing with some of the most important currency in this horrid world: breeding women.
After a rocky start, Max and Furiosa find that they have a common goal and work together to escape the wide reach of Immortan Joe
For all of my praise of Life of Pi, I’m equally as enamored with the visuals of Mad Max: Fury Road, but it’s like the polar opposite of it.
Miller filmed Mad Max: Fury Road out in the Namibian desert in South Africa and used minimal CGI, and the results were rather groundbreaking.
To shoot a film like this with so little CGI is almost unheard of in this day and age, and to see the painstaking decision elevate the film is gratifying.
More movies need to be made in this vein.
To prove that it is more than just an action flick, ne of the biggest themes in this movie is feminism, and while some movies feel like they’re trying to bash that into your head with a lead pipe, that isn’t the case here. It shows women in two lights, both as the damsels in distress used only for breeding and the woman intent on releasing the shackles of that role from them. There’s a duality here that works so well; it doesn’t feel shoehorned in for PC purposes.
It’s beautiful, violent, loud, smart, and impactful; it’s everything an action movie can be.
For the love of God, just fucking watch it if you haven’t already.
And if you have, just watch it again.
Runner-Up: The Revenant
Still Need to See: Carol
2016: Manchester by the Sea
This movie is a 1,000 pound cinderblock smashing directly into your heart, and just when you feel like it’s okay to breathe again, it comes back in for another assault.
That’s what watching Manchester by the Sea was like for me.
Coming off the heels watching Hidden Figures in my attempt to see all the Best Picture nominees for the Academy Awards, I walked into Manchester by the Sea with no preconceived notions about it because frankly I had no idea what it was about.
It opened with operatic music playing behind a conversation between a happy guy and an energetic little kid with another man driving the boat. The happy man is Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), the man driving the boat is his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler), and the kid is Joe’s son (Lucas Hedges).
The scene following Lee doing a whole slew of dirty janitorial duties in an apartment complex, and it looked as if he hadn’t smiled or been happy in quite some time.
We come to find that tragedy of an unspeakable nature has fallen upon Lee, so he chooses to spend his days away from family and friends; anger laces his words when his general sadness doesn’t do the trick to maintain his isolation.
When Joe passes away unexpectedly, Lee is called upon to take care of Joe’s teenage son, Patrick, and both of their lives are flipped upside down.
Manchester by the Sea is a master work in emotion, creating lines and cracks of feeling that are explored and deepened throughout the film.
There’s a scene with an emotional conversation between Affleck and Michelle Williams (Lee’s ex-wife Randi) that makes you want to crawl in a hole and die. A lady behind me in the theaters was sobbing uncontrollably, and I wanted to do the same.
Catharsis is a funny thing; it can be the ugliest thing in the world, looking like smeared mascara or agony, and there’s a whole hell of a lot of pain involved, but it is the only thing that can save someone who is emotionally repressed.
Better doesn’t seem like a proper destination, but some people are so damaged that they will never regain the ability to be who they once were. Sometimes, better is as good as it gets.
I may never watch Manchester by the Sea again in its entirety.
I loved it dearly, but it puts you through such an emotional strain that it drains you entirely.
But I truly feel that I’m better for having watched it.
Runner-Up: Moonlight
Still Need to See: The Handmaiden
2017: The Big Sick
I never expected my favorite movie in any year to be a romantic comedy, but The Big Sick sort of redefined what that is for a newer generation.
Since their heyday in the 90s and early 2000s, rom-coms have sort of fallen out of favor this decade, but The Big Sick snuck in and filled a void that people didn’t realize was there, so much so that people began to question it.
Is The Big Sick a real rom-com?
According to the Ringer’s Shea Serrano, these are the pillars of a rom-com:
For a movie to be a romantic comedy, there has to be protagonist who, whether they know it or not, needs to find love. (I’m always a fan of the setup where the protagonist is a workaholic and lives this especially tidy and manicured life, and then a new person gets dropped into it and causes everything to get turned upside down. I am equally a fan of the setup where the two work together, and also equally a fan of the setup where the two had some sort of relationship as children and then they meet back up again as adults.) There has to be a scene where the protagonist meets the potential love interest (hopefully in some kooky or zany way, although it doesn’t have to be). There has to be a scene where, after the two have realized they’ve fallen for each other, something happens that forces them apart. (Usually, it’s a callback or the revelation that someone has been lying about something.) And there has to be a scene where one of the people involved in the relationship makes some big gesture (hopefully in front of as many people as possible, in as embarrassing a situation as possible).
That’s good enough for me; it checks every box in spectacular fashion.
The Big Sick is a funny, heartfelt modern love story based on the real relationship between screenplay writer and lead actor Kumail Nanjiani and his wife, Emily V. Gordon (played by Zoe Kazan in the movie).
Emily heckles Kumail at one of his stand-up shows, and that turns into a one-night stand, which turns into a blooming relationship, one that becomes threatened by Kumail’s traditionalist parents trying desperately to arrange a marriage for him, a fact that cause a deep rift in said relationship.
That would be the movie in most cases, but that’s only the first portion of The Big Sick.
Emily falls ill, and Kumail is thrust into awkward interaction after awkward interaction with Emily’s parents, Beth and Terry (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano), as they all try to cope with the circumstances they were dealt.
Here’s a little thing about me: One of my favorite sitcoms of all time is Everybody Loves Raymond, so to see Ray Romano shine in this role that is reminiscent of that role but totally unlike it was a sight to see.
He shows a range that was previously unseen in him from his role as the everyman Ray Barone, layered with understanding, sympathy, and remorse for the things he had done in his own life.
This isn’t just a popcorn flick or a nice little date night movie; it’s certainly suitable for those purposes, but this movie has so much heart and should that it still feels insulting to simply call it a rom-com.
It certainly wasn’t the most important film of the year, but you’d be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable film to take in than The Big Sick in 2017.
Runner-Up: Get Out
Still Need to See: Phantom Thread