Favorite/Best Movies of the 2010 Decade

87. 127 Hours (2010)


Year: 2010
Release Date: 11/5/2010
Director: Danny Boyle
Writer(s): Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy
Starring: James Franco, Kate Mara, and Amber Tamblyn
Based on: The memoir "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" by Aron Ralston
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 93 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

In 2003 a wilderness survival story for the ages was born when Aron Ralston stumbled down from a canyon after having severed his own arm after five days of it having been trapped under a boulder. It was a hell of a story but not one that would have immediately been pegged as the subject of a movie, but after coming off his Oscar winning triumph of Slumdog Millionaire Danny Boyle decided he was up for the challenge. Boyle (who would otherwise have a pretty rough decade) applied his usual maximalist approach to the story using flashbacks to fill in Ralston’s life story and also utilizing a sort of video diary Ralston made along with some kinetic camera angles and soundtrack selections. A lot of critics didn’t like this approach and would have preferred a simpler film that focused instead on Ralston’s loneliness and desperation but I disagree, firstly because I think that Gerry approach to this story would have actually been the more obvious and less creative way to go, and secondly because that seems like the kind of thing you’d probably rather have in theory than in practice. The film served as probably the best acting showcase that James Franco would get and despite what people think about him on the other end of the decade he really did great work here managing to capture his intense desperation while also making him into a likable person during the other sections of the movie. Of course the section of the movie that will likely go down in history more than the rest are the moments where Ralston has to finally do the self-amputation and Boyle does a great job of threading the needle here to make this seem visceral and painful while also remaining on the right side of tasteful.

85. Julieta (2016)



Year: 2016
Release Date: 12/21/2016
Director: Pedro Almodóvar
Writer(s): Pedro Almodóvar
Starring: Emma Suárez and Adriana Ugarte
Based on: The novel "Runaway" by Alice Munro
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Country of Origin: Spain
Language: Spanish
Running Time: 99 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

When Pedro Almodóvar made his 2019 film Pain and Glory it was celebrated as a comeback but as far as I was concerned he’d never really gone anywhere. In fact I think his previous film, Julieta, was the bigger achievement. Granted the film was relatively genteel compared to some of his boundary pushing earlier films (his other major achievement of the decade, The Skin I Live In, reflects the other extreme) but it is nonetheless a great melodrama that fits well with Almodóvar’s sensibilities. The film is based on the short story cycle “Runaway” by the Nobel Prize winning Canadian writer Alice Munro and was at one point meant to be his first English language project before he changed his mind and adapted the setting to Spain. I haven’t read that book but I am familiar with some of Munro’s other works and I could certainly recognize her voice here and it blends well with what Almodóvar is capable of. The film looks at a woman, one who you could say is well past the point of a nervous breakdown, and the film uses flashbacks to establish how she came to that point. The reasons for her trauma are personal and not overly sensational and you do really come to feel for her by the end of the film. It’s not a movie that really breaks new ground but it is affecting and an interesting new direction for Almodóvar to go in.

76. Us


Because the mixture of ambiguous social allegory and nightmarish horror really worked for me, even if I almost got into a fist-fight at the theater.

IanTheCool just wasn't having it that night.

84. Captain Phillips (2013)


Year: 2013
Release Date: 10/11/2016
Director: Paul Greengrass
Writer(s): Billy Ray
Starring: Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi
Based on: The memoir "A Captain's Duty" by Richard Phillips and Stephan Talty
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 134 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

I do remember when the MV Maersk Alabama was abducted by Somali pirates in early 2009 and remember the news media mostly viewing it as an early test of the recently elected Barrack Obama’s resolve when dealing with international incidents but the human story on the ground was kind of lost. Four years later the story came to the big screen helmed by the ideal filmmaker, Paul Greengrass, who had previously brought the September 11th attacks to the screen in visceral fashion with his landmark film United 93. Captain Phillips is a little closer to being a conventional thriller than that film was insomuch as it stars an A-list celebrity and features more in the way of scripted drama than that film, which was more of a historical re-enactment but Greengrass still films the movie with a sort of documentary intensity. Tom Hanks fits well as the titular captain and is allowed to be used differently than he usually is as Phillips is not necessarily a particularly warm figure and his work in a late scene where his character is in medical shock is among the finest moments of his long and illustrious career. Perhaps even more impressive is that the unknown actor Barkhad Abdi was able to stand toe-to-toe as the lead pirate attempting to take over the ship and the film generally does a great job of having sympathy for these Somali men who find themselves in way over their heads without trying to justify or excuse modern high seas piracy. Both as a tense thriller and as a study in human behavior under difficult circumstances this is a winning entry in a perfect example of the kind of thing I’d like to see Hollywood make more often.

Captain Phillips is awesome. Loved it even more with rewatches.

Jibbs is conspicuous by his absence.

All he watched last year was a 007 preview.

Plus roof tile porn.

I'll say no more.

81. The Martian (2015)



Year: 2015
Release Date: 10/2/2015
Director: Ridley Scott
Writer(s): Drew Goddard
Starring: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Kristen Wiig, Jeff Daniels, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Benedict Wong, Donald Glover, and Chiwetel Ejiofor
Based on: The novel "The Martian" by Andy Weir
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 141 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

I have a lot of movies on this list which take major artistic risks and try to make serious statements about the world. The Martian probably isn’t one of them… or maybe it is? To be sure the film certainly stands in stark contrast with much of the rest of what was happening in science fiction during this period given that it is filled with optimism about the possibilities of science and human ingenuity rather than dread at the horrors that future technology will unleash. Just compare it to the other high profile fictional space survival film of the decade, Gravity, which is a movie that opens with title cards about how life in space is impossible and proceeds to show its protagonist go from disaster to disaster and only make it by the skin of her teeth. The Martian by contrast suggests space as something of a new frontier that can become someone’s home at least temporarily with a little hard work and can do spirit, and it has a lot more disco music. Made in 2015 it’s something of a last gasp of that “hope and change” spirit that animated the beginning of the decade and ended definitively in 2016 when it became clear that we were truly living in the worst of all timelines and that we were completely fucked. But solid feel good movies like this are harder to make than people give them credit for, in fact it’s pretty much the platonic ideal of the “original Hollywood movie for adults” that we keep begging for when done right. It’s the kind of movie you’d find yourself watching over and over again on HBO during a time when watching movies on TV was still a thing, and if that isn’t the sign of a classic of a decade what is?

And boasts the best Lord of the Rings reference of all time.

What does Doomsday think?