The Resident Bitch Prepares for the MoFo 2010s Countdown

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Good thread Miss Vicky.

Some thought on the last few pages:

-'Parasite' is a good film but I remain confused by it's popularity and recognition. It's not even Bong's best film. I think the 'timing' was just right.
-I dislike 'Rush' so much. It's exactly the type of film I don't like. Schmalzy, overblown, cheesy, hackneyed characters over acting and stupid cars flying through the air to create a faux sense of tension / action.
-'Inception' is just another in the Nolan catalogue of 'most overrated films in the history of film'.
-'Captain Phillips' - what else happens other than a hijacking? I can remember nothing else about it.
-'Room' is brilliantly made and beautifully acted. Good film
-'Incendies' is an all timer.
-'The Florida Project' and 'Anomalisa' are really great films too that will be close to being on my ballot.
-'Mad Max: Fury Road' - I have never got past the opening 20 minutes of this film. The relentless action and chase pursuits bore me to tears. I have tried 6 or 7 times now. Shame as the cinematography looks great.
-'Three Billboards' is a really good, well written film
-'Gone Girl' I remember liking it and thinking it was a decent thriller. Won't be close to my ballot though.

Keep it going Miss Vicky



-I dislike 'Rush' so much. It's exactly the type of film I don't like. Schmalzy, overblown, cheesy, hackneyed characters over acting and stupid cars flying through the air to create a faux sense of tension / action.
-'Mad Max: Fury Road' - I have never got past the opening 20 minutes of this film. The relentless action and chase pursuits bore me to tears. I have tried 6 or 7 times now. Shame as the cinematography looks great.
I love these two movies so much.

I still have 10 films left on my watchlist. Whatever I watch tonight will make 50 movies watched this month. I think I'll be taking a little break from movie watching after I finally vote.



I love these two movies so much.

I still have 10 films left on my watchlist. Whatever I watch tonight will make 50 movies watched this month. I think I'll be taking a little break from movie watching after I finally vote.
I think I'm in the small minority, everyone I know loves those two films!





Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine, 2011)
(Recommended by @cricket)

My taste in movies tends to be kind of all over the place, but normally a character-driven tale of redemption would be right up my alley. Some of my very favorite films are about otherwise bad men who do good things. But there are some acts of badness that no amount of goodness would ever redeem in my eyes.

Joseph, the protagonist of this film, commits one such act in the opening scene and my resulting hatred of him never waned and in fact only worsened as the film went on. Making matters worse is that the closest thing to fondness I felt for any of the other characters was apathy. This movie is full of deeply shitty people. Violent, racist, abusive, neglectful, terrible people. And that Joe's act of redemption comes in the form of assisting Hannah, a Christian charity shop worker, doesn't help his case with me because I didn't like a damn thing about her either. The fact that her religion was such a huge part of who she was didn't exactly endear her to me, but what made me truly hate her was when she told Joseph that she felt safe with him. There were also a few things that happened in the film that I found really implausible and these things would have taken me out of the film if I had ever managed to get into it in the first place. But I didn't. I will say that I thought the film had strong performances, and I'll give it some credit for that, but because those performances were for characters that I hated watching that doesn't count for much.




I love Tyrannosaur. Very real film about real things. Will be very close to making my list.
. I often love films where all the characters do bad things or are horrible. People are horrible.



I love Tyrannosaur. Very real film about real things. Will be very close to making my list.
. I often love films where all the characters do bad things or are horrible. People are horrible.
I also really liked Tyrannosaur. A fascinating, if hard to watch, look at the intersection of people who for very different reasons are not in a good place.



Sorry you didn't like Tyrannosaur, but I'd agree that it's miserable and the guy was irredeemable. I do believe that bad people can do good things though. I think it's cool that you saw Eddie Marsan in such a different role than the last one.



Sorry you didn't like Tyrannosaur, but I'd agree that it's miserable and the guy was irredeemable. I do believe that bad people can do good things though. I think it's cool that you saw Eddie Marsan in such a different role than the last one.
Eh, nothing to be sorry about. It didn't cost me anything but a little bit of time. It was definitely weird seeing Marsan in such drastically different roles but definitely cool also.





Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018)
(Rewatch)

I've watched this movie probably a half dozen times now and at this point I think I like it as much as I'm ever going to and I will never come even close to loving it. Which is not to say that there's nothing about it that I love. I actually quite like it. I think that, aside from Jack Black who I hate in just about everything, it has some really strong performances. I also really love the chemistry between its major characters. Real life couple Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara have excellent chemistry, as do Phoenix and Jonah Hill, whose turn as Phoenix's character's AA sponsor is really charming and sweet. It's probably my favorite performance I've seen from Hill.

But having said all that, the movie feels a bit disjointed. It's told in a not quite liner way - something which can work very well in some films, but here it just makes it feel jumbled and I never got any sense of the passage of time from one event in the subject's life to the next. I also am always bothered by the scene where Phoenix has an imagined conversation with his "mother." I'm not sure how it could've been handled better, but I always find it jarring and it takes me out of the film every time. (As an aside, I will never not be bothered by Phoenix's orange hair in this movie, and yes I realize he's playing a real person. I don't care, it's still ugly.)

Still I think this is overall a very worthwhile watch but definitely not something that has any shot at making my ballot. I am going to downgrade it slightly from my previous rating, not because I like it any less than I did before, but because I don't think it deserves to be on the same level as other films from the decade that I've ranked 4 out of 5, so 3.5 it is.






I'm Still Here (Casey Affleck, 2010)
(Rewatch)

When I was putting together my watchlist for this countdown, I knew there was no way in hell that I'm Still Here was gonna end up on my ballot, but preparing for this seemed like a good enough excuse to give this crazy ass thing another go.

Well tonight was my fourth time watching what Phoenix claims is an exploration of celebrity and the relationships between the media, the consumers, and the celebrities themselves. Really it's just a big middle finger to the press, a big middle finger to the audience, and a big middle finger to fame. It's also a chaotic, self-indulgent trainwreck and I can't decide if it is a brave and brilliant piece of performance art or the stupidest shit he's ever done. It's probably all of the above.






Argo (Ben Affleck, 2012)
(Rewatch)

I don't have a whole lot to say about this Best Picture winner. I think it's a solid film with a really strong cast and an engaging (if perhaps not entirely accurate) story to tell. It also does a very good job of balancing the tension of the situation with a good amount of humor and it makes for a very entertaining film that I've enjoyed every time I've seen it.

That said though, it's pretty far from being a favorite from the decade - or even the year of its release - so there's no way it makes my ballot. I won't have any complaints if it makes the countdown proper, but I am going to downgrade its rating a bit from what I've previously given it, because while I can't pick out any real weaknesses here, I also can't pick out anything about it that I truly love.






Manchester By the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)
(Rewatch)

When I first heard about this movie, I had absolutely no intention of watching it. The thought of sitting through over two hours of Casey Affleck was, in a word, unappealing. But in 2017 it was nominated for a Hall of Fame I was participating in, so it could no longer be avoided.

I was surprised to find a a quietly devastating and well crafted film that features some really strong performances including - and maybe especially - that of Casey Affleck. He completely embodied Lee, a broken shell of a man who suddenly finds himself thrown into the responsibility of arranging his brother's funeral and becoming the guardian of his teenaged nephew, all while having to return to a town that for him symbolizes tragedy and that brings out tremendous feelings of grief, guilt, and rage that were present before and separate from his brother's death.

The perpetual cold of the weather and the ever-present snow reflect Lee's numbness and add to the film's mood. I also really liked the way the film portrayed his interactions with the other people - the awkwardness of scenes like the funeral reception is palpable - and the way their individual struggles caused so much friction between him and his nephew. I felt very strongly for Lee's struggles and found myself crying for his pain in multiple scenes.

But as devastating and beautiful as it is, that heartache also works against it and makes for a very difficult watch. Also working against it is the fact that it offers almost no levity, no relief from the pain even for its audience. I came away from that initial viewing never wanting to see it again and I come away from this rewatch feeling much the same. If it takes a place on the countdown, I'll say in all sincerity that it deserves to be there but I don't think it'll have any of my help in getting there and I don't think there will ever be a third watch for me.






The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, 2018)
(Rewatch)

It's taken me a few viewings to get to the point where I appreciate this film and even longer to appreciate Joaquin Phoenix's performance in it. My first impression of his Charlie Sisters was that the character was one-dimensional and that Phoenix's talent was wasted on it. Charlie Sisters is a violent and mentally unstable character which we've seen from Phoenix plenty of times before. I still don't love the role - or the movie itself - but I do think Charlie works well as a balance for his brother Eli, played by John C. Reilly. Eli is a man who is violent out of a feeling of obligation to look out for his younger brother, but he is a gentle person at heart and this is really Eli's movie and Reilly does a wonderful job in the role. This film also sees a reunion of Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed, who had previously starred together in Nightcrawler, but who play far more likeable characters here.

All in all, I think this is a pretty solid movie and is worth watching. It looks good, has a fair bit of humor, and is a pleasant watch. However, I don't think it's a particularly memorable film and certainly not among my favorites of the decade. Probably more like a 3.25 than a 3.5, but I'll round up.






Robin Hood (Ridley Scott, 2010)
(Rewatch)

While there's certainly no denying that Ridley Scott's Robin Hood has perhaps a little more than its fair share of issues and is far from being a great movie, I do think it's a better movie than it is generally given credit for being. It has almost everything I want in a Robin Hood film - beautiful cinematography, gorgeous costumes, landscapes, and sets, a fair amount of humor, a sweet romance, and a handsome leading man (despite the decade between, Russell Crowe looks like he just stepped off the set of Gladiator) - but it frustratingly lacks a memorable villain. Nottingham's sheriff might as well not even exist here and, while Oscar Isaac and Mark Strong do fine in their bad guy roles, there's no chewing of the scenery here nor any quotable lines.

Still, I think that overall this is a pretty solid piece of entertainment and while it will never be a favorite I'll always have a good time watching it.






The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2015)
(Rewatch)

I don't know how many times I've seen this movie now, but each time that I do I am always quite taken with the strength of its performances, how well it captures the natural beauty of its setting, and how well that beauty is juxtaposed against the brutality of these men's lives.

But every time I watch it, I always am taken out of the film whenever a computer generated animal appears. Don't get me wrong, as CG goes it's done well, but the artificiality of it against all that natural beauty is really jarring to me. I also find watching the movie - and hearing that seemingly endless succession of grunts and groans from DiCaprio - to be rather wearing and, as good as it is, it will never be a favorite of mine.






The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
(Rewatch)

Aside from the fact that it stars Leonardo DiCaprio, my love of this movie is something of an anomaly for me. I like movies about kind and sensitive men, I like movies about noble and heroic men, and I like movies about bad guys who redeem themselves with noble and heroic acts. Jordan Belfort is none of those things. He's a greedy, materialistic, self-centered, abusive, ruthless, and misogynistic sack of shit.

But he's also funny as hell and in this role Leonardo DiCaprio gives what is probably my favorite performance of his career. As much as I admire his talent, I'd never even considered him as being anything of a comedic actor until this role and he is astonishingly good here. It's hard for any actor to be funny for three hours but he pulls it off and had me absolutely rolling (especially as he did a little rolling of his own with that Lemmon scene). But his is not the only really strong performance here (actually, I can't think of a weak one among the bunch), Jonah Hill is absolutely hilarious as Belfort's vice president Donnie Azoff, and Matthew McConaughey is great in the brief but memorable chest-bumping role of Belfort's mentor Mark Hanna.

It is an absolute blast of a movie to watch and if I were ranking the movies of the decade by pure entertainment value alone, it would no doubt be among my top three. It'll fall a little lower than that on my ballot because I am considering other factors, but there's no way it doesn't make top ten.