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THE 248 "BEST" MOVIES OF THE 20-10S~!

RIPPA

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Chaos

Chaos

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16 hours ago, Andy in Kansas said:

Splitting "since 2000" into two separate decades, there are at least four movies he did in the first decade of the century that I have some real fondness for. This decade, not so much. I feel there's been a drop-off. By the standards of your familiar cold war spy thrillers, I found Bridge of Spies a bit on the middling side. Lincoln is fine just to appreciate Daniel Day-Lewis doing his thing, but doesn't do much for me beyond that. And I actively hated The Post, because Spielberg (like many inert institutions that have been around as long as him or longer...) isn't really equipped to tackle what he's attempting to in this movie with any teeth. 

To each their own of course. Maybe The BFG is really good. That'd be a pleasant surprise. 

My "since 2000" delineation is more tied to that people seem to behave like Spielberg quit making good movies after Private Ryan released in 98. Personally, I might find Catch Me If You Can to be my favorite Spielberg film in general, and I have a fondness for Minority report. All in all, the last 20 years have been very hit and miss, but no outright disasters. I actually never got around to BFG. I've not read anything to make me overly eager to seek it out and watch it. I've also never gotten around to War Horse.

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RIPPA

RIPPA

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cloud_atlas_ver3

 

229) CLOUD ATLAS (2012)

Director: Tom Tykwer/Lana and Lily Wachowski

116 Points (2 Votes) - HIGH VOTE: KLOS (#8) - ADDITIONAL VOTES: Hobo Joe

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES (67%/66%) : METACRITIC (55/8.3)

Caley wrote this when he wrote "30 Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2013"

Quote

3 Cloud Atlas: Endlessly inventive, visually enthralling and just a lot of fun.  I mean, even if you don't like it, you had to admire its audacity.

Caley did not vote for Cloud Atlas ?

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RIPPA

RIPPA

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lincolnbg

https://alternativemovieposters.com/amp/lincoln-by-jeff-boyes/

227) LINCOLN (2012)

Director: Steve Spielberg

119 Points (3 Votes) - HIGH VOTE: EVA (#17) - ADDITIONAL VOTES: Hobo Joe, Octopus

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES (89%/81%) : METACRITIC (86/7.5)

NOTE FROM RIPPA - Welcome Lincoln might have been just as bad as searching for Super. Especially when you lot randomly starting arguing over the causes of the Civil War.

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Octopus

Octopus

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Is Lincoln Top 3 DDL facial hair roles? I’m partial to Daniel Plainview and the Butcher. Top notch mustaches. His beard gets pretty thick in My Left Foot and handsome in the Crucible. But I admire the stoic chin old man beard he was rocking in Lincoln. Really shaped his face in an interesting way.

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Octopus

Octopus

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Hey, I got a Top Ten high vote in! 

Highly recommended for any Godard-nerd. It was probably my favorite in theater experience. Which saying that out loud makes me very sad of the pandemic we are in. I miss movie theaters. Both art houses and cineplexes. I want that communal laughter and group awe again.

Back to the escape of movie talk, damn it! 

A few years ago I watched Goodbye To Language at the Walker Art Center and it was in 3D. With how 3D is shot, it’s actually done with 2 cameras to create that effect. Well, there is a scene where two characters are talking to each other. Pretty normal, but one character is pulled away to talk with someone else. One camera follows the one character and the other stays. Both images are now over each other, instead of the same shot. Your brain having never seeing this before is comprehending this kaleidoscope image. Eventually you can literally see both images at the same time. Literally having full comprehension of both, simultaneously. All in a matter of seconds. You are experiencing something that is so outside of common experience, but you’re able to physically do it. You close one eye and it’s just the one character. Close the other and it is the other. Even in his 80’s Godard is a daring lunatic that is changing how we think of film and its capabilities. 

I saw it twice in theaters. The first time I started to tear up. So much joy for how much I love cinema. I remember going to a 3D movie in the past, I think one of the Resident Evils but I’m not sure, but I recall a scene that was beautiful. It was simply a character walking down a wide hallway with several pillars in the shot. I felt that 3D was used so regularly for gimmick jump moments and attributing to the excitement of action, that I forget to appreciate the idea of using the technology to create a new layer to the mise-en-scene. How beautiful a composition can be in a stationary shot with an extra dimension added to it. Godard managed to create a parallel experience and added such an epiphany to me that I feel I am failing to express thoroughly. His films are often filled with odd editing that can be stark at the moment but be used decades later in a more accessible form of storytelling. His use of jump cuts, visual text structure, sound cuts in the 60’s are all used excellently in modern storytelling. I can only scratch the surface of imagining how future directors will use this brief moment of split camera 3D to enhance or add to their stories.

This film specifically I have in my Top Ten for the decade. I don’t recommend it for everyone though. Godard can turn a lot of people off. A lot of his modern films come across very film essay-esque. Characters are used less to attribute to a continuation of structured narrative and almost more like a figment of a conversation. Richard Brody has an excellent review of this film that expresses it better than I can. 

———

I try to look at movies less like a book and more like a sculpture or a building. All these scenes, pieces of film or digital media, being sculpted together with attributed sound and narrative to create a complete work of art. From beginning to end. A moving painting. What is being said and shown? Why is it formed this way? Why make that edit? Do the performances fit or leave the piece unbalanced? I enjoy floating though the story and appreciating the journey it takes me on, but I appreciate it for the mass in front of me, as a whole. Physical and the soul of its form.

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John from Cincinnati

John from Cincinnati

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My enjoyment of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo largely stems from my revisiting it around the time Mindhunter came out. After watching the first season of that, I was interested in going back and re-watching Fincher's other serial killer stuff: TGWTDT, Seven, and Zodiac.  I know Seven and Zodiac are largely held up as good examples of these types of movies on Fincher's part while TGWTDT was been more of a swing-and-a-miss that failed to launch a franchise. But I found it to be of a piece with the other movies.

Is it an imperfect mess that's ultimately sequel bait? Sure, but that's the 2010s. Does it spend half the movie with the main characters completely separated to the detriment of the overall movie? Of course, why wouldn't it? 

But it also serves as an example of a craftsman of a particular genre producing some very good versions of things you'd want in a movie like this. Great setting and atmosphere? Yep, maybe the most gorgeous and cold and unsettling of any of his films. Sharply edited sequences of process work like people pouring over old photos and maps and travel logs? You betcha, shoot that shit directly into my veins. Tense moments where the protagonist is in a situation you want them to run from immediately? Not quite at the level of the basement scene in Zodiac, but close. A banger of a dark, moody score from Reznor and Finch with the occasional Enya classic while the villain's monologuing in his murder dungeon? Fuck and yes. A dark room where Christopher Plumber keeps the paintings that are driving him mad? I think you know the answer. A star turn from Rooney Mara worthy of awards consideration on top of all of that? Sure, why not. 

I like David Fincher and find this film's charms to be such that it should be given more consideration in the conversation with some of the other movies I brought up. I'm not sure I could justify that as being a case for it being anyone else's 4th best movie of the decade. But I've had almost a decade to sit with this one, with my feelings about it coming into clearer focus over the last couple years. It's a movie in a genre I tend to enjoy, done well. I'm comfortable with where it sits on my list... I think...

Anyway, I warned everyone my list was bananas. Let it not be said I'm not a man of my word. 

Bonus SPOILER that undercuts everything and proves the movie actually sucks and is a bad example of this kind of movie:

Spoiler

Never cast the most recognizable supporting actor as the killer, you fools! Amateur hour!

 

Edited by Andy in Kansas
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jaedmc

jaedmc

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My first and only modern 3D movie going experience was Goodbye to Language. I'll never do another one. I hate it. But the movie was great.

Godard is a favorite of mine. I think what I love about him is that I can see where he's critical of an ideology and when he's lost in an ideology. He's a clearly imperfect critical thinker, and seeing his success and failures allows me to recognize my own.

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John from Cincinnati

John from Cincinnati

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8 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

My only problem with The Girl... was 

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them having to literally sit down and explain everything to you at the end. Maybe it was necessary, but it seems so... off. 

 

A lot of murder mysteries fall into that trope, so it probably washed right over me. I can't remember being struck by that. But I would never blame anyone for being galled by chunks and chunks of "this is what happened and how" when you're sitting there screaming to yourself "WE ALREADY KNOW!"

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EVA

EVA

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TGWTDT is an A+ production, but after watching it, I finally had to come to terms with the fact that I just don’t like this story.  I didn’t like the book.  I didn’t like the Swedish movie.  And not even Fincher could find a way to make me like the American version.  *shrug*

CLOUD ATLAS:  I loved the book, and I loved the creative team behind the movie, but literally every decision they made to alter the form of the book just made it exponentially worse and worse to me.  In particular, telling all the stories concurrently instead of using the boomerang sequencing of the book turned the whole narrative into a borderline incomprehensible mess.  And while the gimmick of having all the actors play different reincarnations of their characters across time probably made the movie financable (Its now a Hanks/Berry star vehicle as opposed to them being pieces of a much larger ensemble), it all just seemed pretty silly to me.

I took a friend to see that movie.  I was so hyped for it, convinced it was going to be transcendently great.  They put me in movie jail for like 6 months afterwards.

If the Wachowskis waited 5 more years to make this, it probably would’ve been a limited series on a streaming service and been incredible, though.

Edited by EVA
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jaedmc

jaedmc

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20 minutes ago, Andy in Kansas said:

Goodbye to Language is available on a service I have. How much would you expect not watching in 3D to lessen my experience?

Probably not much. I don't think it actually made the movie better. Your biggest loss would be when Godard takes one of the two cameras needed to film in 3D and points it somewhere else. That moment is a communal kind of experience that we all need more of.

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