The Best Films of The Decade

10. ‘The Irishman’ (2019)

The Irishman shows the work of an older, more mature filmmaker.  Possibly a person younger than 60 could not have made this film, or rather, could not have made it with the pacing and precision with which Scorsese directs this film.  It’s evenly paced, giving space to all of the major players so that we know who they are and what their motivations are.

9. ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ (2015)

Genre hounds and arthouse aficionados are often antagonists in the pop-cultural cage match — so thank the Lord (by which we mean Imperator Furiosa) for the unifying, mutilated beauty of George Miller’s return to the Mad Max franchise. Just consider the sheer bloodbag balls it took to sideline Tom Hardy’s marquee hero and instead let the film play out as a splayed-leg, electric guitar solo dedicated to Charlize Theron’s one-armed savior, dedicated to saving a gaggle of comely women from biological slavery come hell, high water or an actual apocalypse. A wildly kinetic chase movie, it’s been accused of having too little substance beneath a stylish veneer that’s less smoke and mirrors than belching plumes of orange flame and orally-administered, silver spray-paint. But that would deny this film the revolutionary bona fides it rightfully deserves. This is the action movie as extended state of grace, and an air-horn blast of guzzoline-and-breast-milk-scented fresh air. JK

8. ‘Roma’ (2018)

Alfonso Cuaron’s masterpiece doesn’t feel like a movie so much as a time machine — one that takes you back to the 1970s Mexico City of the director’s youth, where the streets are crowded with life and domestic workers like Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) double as a nurturing force. The longer we ride shotgun with this formative figure (based on the woman who looked after Cuaron when he was a kid) as she goes about her daily chores and takes care of a fracturing family, the more we’re reminded that cinema is a medium whose specialty is not spectacle but empathy. Not that Roma lacks big moments or ambitious set pieces — riots, earthquakes, mass martial-arts demonstrations and even death occur. But the glory in what the filmmaker accomplishes here is that he immerses you in what feels like one long, intimate memory. It’s a personal film for him; what makes it work is how personal it ends up feeling to you by the end of it. DF

7. ‘The Master’ (2012)

Is Paul Thomas Anderson the fiercest, most unfathomable and untamable American filmmaking talent of the 21st century so far? His 2012 drama stars the Oscar-nominated Joaquin Phoenix as a raw, exposed nerve named Freddie Quell, a World War II vet with a penchant for drinking homemade hooch and drifting from job to job. He’s exactly the kind of lost soul who would fall under the spell of Lancaster Dodd, a 1950s cult leader played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman (a pause here to honor the enormity of his loss). Is Dodd — rhymes with God — a stand-in for L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the Church of Scientology? Anderson has denied that the controversial figure was a direct inspiration on the movie’s larger-than-life father figure. But the resemblance matters less than the way the filmmaker indicts unthinking allegiance to institutions, such as religion, country, sex and money, that demand absolute allegiance. It’s a complex, endlessly fascinating dissection of the American character, as seen from the dizzying heights of “success” and those seconds away from hitting rock bottom. PT

6. ‘Toni Erdmann’ (2016)

Parents live to embarrass their children; children exist to disappoint their parents. This truism is the fodder for a thousand anodyne Hollywood movies. It’s also a notion that’s explored, denuded, forced to wail Whitney Houston songs and is then shoved into a shambling, hairy Bulgarian folk costume in German director Maren Ade’s blisteringly original comedy. Sandra Huller is tightly-wound, careerist exec named Ines. Peter Simonischek is her bearish father Winfried, a lonesome, tiresome prankster whose even-worse alter ego, Toni Erdmann, will eventually make his offspring’s life better … by first making it much worse. Over the course of three funny, wildly unpredictable hours, Ade delivers absurdism laced with pathos and pointedly feminist corporate satire, while her actors vividly sketch a parent-child relationship as uncategorizably unique as your own. Every family thinks they’re freakish. Toni Erdmann doesn’t just agree with that idea; it reminds all of us to revel in it. JK

5. ‘Get Out’ (2017)

Former sketch-comedy star turned scary-movie-maestro Jordan Peele’s debut feature was nothing less than a cultural phenomenon, an elegant tribute to the social horror of the ’70s and ’80s, and a shockingly sharp treatise on institutional racism. Hitting theaters during the early months of the Trump administration, his dark twist on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? cast Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a photographer who heads upstate to meet the family of his new girlfriend, Rose (Allison Williams). Her parents (Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford) seem nice enough, though something feels off from the jump. By the time we find out what these privileged white liberals are actually up to, we’re already several leagues deep into the Sunken Place. Lacing his genre exercise with sharp humor yet refusing to skimp on the shocks, Peele opened up a safe space to have a necessary conversation about our post-Trayvon Martin world, where the deadliest place for African-Americans is a sleepy suburban street. An instant classic. KW

4. ‘Boyhood’ (2014)

What if you followed a protagonist from childhood to young adulthood — and shot it over a dozen or so years, using the same actors? Richard Linklater’s sui generis coming-of-age film sounds like a high concept experiment on paper; onscreen, the cumulative effect of watching Ellar Coltrane go from daydreaming babyface to philosophizing emo-hunk college student is like speedreading someone’s photo album. The indie-film godhead has dabbled in playing the long game before (see his Before trilogy). But this chronicle of marking the milestones of American adolescence via a random assortment of moments — some minuscule, others monumental — both milks its central “gimmick” for all it’s worth and transcends it. Spend all those rapidly passing years with Coltrane’s everyteen, as well as his screen family (Ethan Hawke, Patricia Arquette, Lorelei Linklater), and the very concept of time no longer seems so abstract. The grow up so damned fast. DF

3. ‘Holy Motors’ (2012)

A metaphor for acting? An exploration of the many roles we must play in life? Or simply one of the most exuberant and gonzo blasts of pure imagination to grace a movie screen this decade? Yes, yes, and hell yes: Holy Motors is such an uproariously surreal comedy that it may take a while to realize it’s also a profound statement on modern malaise. Writer-director Leos Carax sets Denis Lavant loose in Paris, with the actor executing a series of different “assignments” over the course of a day. He might be asked to be a motion-capture artist participating in a surreal love scene one minute, and then become a monster who terrorizes the population the next. Gleeful yet constantly attuned to the poignant, allegorical implications of its all-the-world’s-a-stage premise, Holy Motors asks us to see existence as a grand game of dress-up where cars can talk and accordion bands kick out the jams. Maybe it really is a wonderful life. TG

2. ‘The Social Network’ (2010)

Meet Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) — just your run-of-the-mill dark, depressive Harvard student who’d end up founding a website he’d call Facebook, betraying his partner Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and laying the foundation for the fountain of backbiting and misinformation we call the modern world. Blessed with the dream team of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher (and a cast that includes Armie Hammer as both Winklevoss twins and Rooney Mara as the object of Zuckerberg’s fixation), this adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s book Accidental Billionaires is one deliciously re-watchable preview of the apocalypse, as entertaining and cheeky as it is troubling and startlingly prescient. From the moment that the glowering Zuckerberg figures out how to turn what we now call toxic masculinity into a billion-dollar industry, you can see how Fincher & co. are coldly dissecting the entire notion of smartest-guy-in-the-room entitlement. And in the harsh cold light of a decade later (post-Gamer Gate and Cambridge Analytica), what seemed merely ominous then is now what has likely driven our sense of civility and civilization to the brink. Thanks a lot. [Clicks unfriend.] KW

1. ‘Moonlight’ (2016)

Barry Jenkins’ second film seemed to come of out nowhere — an adaptation of playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney’s little-known work “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” from a modest indie distributor with little industry juice (what’s an A24?) and a director who’d run into obstacles trying to follow up his impressive 2008 debut Medicine for Melancholy. “Gamechanging” doesn’t begin to describe the impact it had once audiences saw what the then-37-year-old filmmaker had come up with. Charting a sensitive young Florida kid’s rocky road to manhood via three time periods and three different actors (Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes, all of whom are fabulous), Jenkins refracts the agonies and ecstasies of African-American life through a very subjective prism. Yet the story he’s gifted us with goes beyond any attempt to categorize it. Moonlight is simply a profound, tender, sympathetic look at a human being finally, painfully coming into his own. Every character, from the neighborhood drug dealer (long live Mahershala Ali!) to the addict mother (Naomie Harris) to the high school tough guy contains multitudes. Every shot looks ravishing. It’s the sort of once-in-a-lifetime project that hits at just the right time and finds the audience it deserves. This is what the movies look like when the medium’s full arsenal of expression is being tapped by someone with vision. DF