Favorite/Best Movies of the 2010 Decade

3. Boyhood (2014)


Year: 2014
Release Date: 7/11/2014
Director: Richard Linklater
Writer(s): Richard Linklater
Starring: Ellar Coltrane, Patricia Arquette, Ethan Hawke, and Lorelei Linklater
Based on: N/A
Distributor: IFC Films
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 165 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

The idea of filming a movie over the course of twelve years as a child grows into adulthood is one of those crazy-ass ideas that film students have while smoking weed in their dorm rooms, but Richard Linklater was actually audacious enough to actually do it and he actually managed to not only pull it off but pull it off masterfully. Linklater began making the film in 2001 when he cast a six year old named Ellar Coltrane to star in what is essentially the ultimate coming of age film and revisited him every year to film a new segment of the film. The character at the center, Mason Evans, is fictional and should not be considered to be a depiction of Coltrane himself but over the course of the film Linklater let the character evolve into someone who continued to fit his star. Linklater also managed to bring in Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke to play the boy’s parents and you see all three of these people (as well as Linklater’s daughter, who plays Mason’s sister) change over the course of the film in a way that’s almost unprecedented in film history. Watching the film is also something of a journey back into recent history and some of the historic and cultural milestones of the first two decades of the century which will be particularly poignant to millennials like myself who, though a little older, did more or less grow up during the same period and remember a lot of neat little details that you can spot in the film. This is not, however, just a portrait of a generation as there’s a lot of universal stuff here that I would think most people will recognize about what it means to be certain ages within adolescence and Linklater finds some really smart way to come across simple truths that don’t feel like clichés. He also edits the film in a really seamless way that resembles a sort of nostalgic trip through someone’s memories and uses period appropriate music in order to mark the passage of time. That this film got made is kind of a miracle and the fact that it worked out as well as it did is really a testament to Linklater’s care and skill.

1. A Separation (2011)


Year: 2011
Release Date: 12/30/2011
Director: Asghar Farhadi
Writer(s): Asghar Farhadi
Starring: Leila Hatami, Peyman Moaadi, Shahab Hosseini, Babak Karimi, Sareh Bayat, Sarina Farhadi, and Merila Zarei
Based on: N/A
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics
Country of Origin: Iran
Language: Persian
Running Time: 123 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1

Choosing a top 100 list for this decade really wasn’t all that hard. There weren’t a ton of painful cuts in the 101-120 area and if anything a few of the movies that made it on the list were kind of lucky to have made it. Choosing an order for most of them also wasn’t painfully hard, after all I did have some pretty clear tiers of hierarchy to work with. But the one thing I scratched my head about and dithered on almost to the last minute was what was going to be my number one choice because that was something I wasn’t sure about at all. For the longest time I had another movie penciled in for that slot, and then I switched it out for something else, nothing ever felt quite right. But then things finally clicked into place when I started thinking about Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation as my top choice. There were other choices that were more technologically innovative and shot with more skill and scope, there were also choices that were more directly relevant to the political and social currents of the decade, and there were choices that more clearly emblemized the filmmaking trends of the decade… but none of those movies were as perfect as A Separation. For those who don’t know the film is about a man and a woman living in Tehran who are going through a divorce and who also find themselves enmeshed in a separate lawsuit and throughout the movie Farhadi employs a brilliant humanist eye for seeing everyone’s perspective in this complicated situation and building each character in a richly detailed way. The film is set in a faraway place that’s frequently opposed to my own country and differs from my own culture on any number of political, religious, and legal dimensions and yet this film in many ways doesn’t feel “foreign” at all outside of the language barrier. It also isn’t an inaccessible and challenging “art” movie that I can’t easily recommend to most people, on the contrary there’s a simplicity and directness to its storytelling and style that makes it truly universal for anyone who watches it. In the years since making the film Farhadi has made a number of films, many quite good but few that reach the level of mastery he achieved in this breakout film. Perhaps he captured lightening in a bottle with A Seperation, a film with nary a single element I’d want changed and which I have basically no reservations about endorsing. I rarely throw around the word “masterpiece” anymore as that’s a label I’m increasingly only comfortable attaching to movies decades down the line, but if any movie from this decade has been a masterpiece it’s probably this one.

Well done Drac. I think I suspected that as your #1 at some point.

Battleship?

Geostorm?

C'mon, man...

Geostorm is #1 in our hearts

I like pie (charts).

Yay, stats!

Same here, honestly.  My list didn't take me that long to come up with because of that, but I still very much stand by it.  Certain movies just stick with you in certain ways.

Perfect. Thank you sir.