Jinn's 100 Films of the 2010s

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Victim of The Night
96. The Nice Guys (2016, dir. Shane Black)





A fine comedy filled with memorable moments, but the plot ain't one of them. More fun than funny, but you can't deny the appeal of the leads, with maybe three really classic set pieces. I still can't help but feel a little empty afterwards.
I do have real affection for this film. Aside from being just fun, it's also a very good-looking, well-paced, well-edited, very well-acted film with a good score/soundtrack if I recall. A lot like its predecessor.



With rice. And chutney.

Just a fancy way of saying bread and ketchup.

I'm keeping my shoes off this time. And possibly about to clip my toenails into an ashtray.



Don't pretend you're better than me!



The Nice Guys has one moment I think of and chuckle about often (the scene where Gosling falls over the balcony).


The Big Short and Vice are both quite clumsy, but I think I like seeing McKay struggle to apply his dumbassed style to material clearly ill-suited to it. I like enough of his movies (although I'm in the minority of finding Anchorman really off-putting), but I've seen some weird consensus emerge that his ones with Will Ferrell are actually great satires and I mean...c'mon.



I'm keeping my shoes off this time. And possibly about to clip my toenails into an ashtray.
It's not the 1940s, crumb. We don't have ashtrays anymore.


If you abolutely need to, you can clip your nails on these glossy pictures of fetal abnormalities instead.



The Nice Guys has one moment I think of and chuckle about often (the scene where Gosling falls over the balcony).
Yeah, that's definitely one of the classic bits.



The Big Short and Vice are both quite clumsy, but I think I like seeing McKay struggle to apply his dumbassed style to material clearly ill-suited to it. I like enough of his movies (although I'm in the minority of finding Anchorman really off-putting), but I've seen some weird consensus emerge that his ones with Will Ferrell are actually great satires and I mean...c'mon.
I was thinking about mentioning The Other Guys as an example of McKay's humor and politics being well balanced. But, again, you have to deal with Ferrell. Going further on that limb, I think that The Campaign might be an even better example of political slapstick. But...Ferrell as well.


Is it that his eyes are small and too close together?



Yeah, that's definitely one of the classic bits.




I was thinking about mentioning The Other Guys as an example of McKay's humor and politics being well balanced. But, again, you have to deal with Ferrell. Going further on that limb, I think that The Campaign might be an even better example of political slapstick. But...Ferrell as well.


Is it that his eyes are small and too close together?
The Other Guys is easily my favourite Ferrell performance, in that he actually tones it down. And I guess I like him in Step Brothers, which acknowledges how obnoxious and unlikable his shtick is. Otherwise, best in small doses, and John C. Reilly in Talladega Nights illustrates that you can do the same kind of dumbassery while being significantly more tolerable.



It's not the 1940s, crumb. We don't have ashtrays anymore.

As long as I can one day be reincarnated as a cigarette smoked in defiance of the entire universe, I'm okay with the lack of ashtrays.



95. Mandy (2018, dir. Panos Cosmatos)





I usually try to judge recent Nicolas Cage films by how confused he looks on the poster. Most of them are perplexing exercises, sure enough, but there's also a lonely howl in his eyes as if he's trying desperately, a little angrily, to remember where he put his keys, parked the car, if he paid his taxes or exactly where he last saw his career. In this poster, justifiably, the anger takes over, and suddenly the rapture becomes the least of his troubles. This is the first Nicolas Cage film since Port of Orleans that understands how to arouse and harness the raw id that has unfortunately become self-parody more often than not. (And, no, Color Out of Space doesn't come close.)



I wanted to like Mandy more, but it felt a little too obviously catered to things I'm supposed to like. A strange complaint to have, probably, but I like my movies a little less obviously designed. Cage is very good, and I agree that this (and his work here) is much better than Color Out of Space.



I wanted to like Mandy more, but it felt a little too obviously catered to things I'm supposed to like. A strange complaint to have, probably, but I like my movies a little less obviously designed. Cage is very good, and I agree that this (and his work here) is much better than Color Out of Space.
Hm. I've had the experience of a film recommended to me by someone because "you should like it" (one of them was Cage's Kick-Ass), and it's almost like an insult. Maybe that's similar to what you mean, but I still thought that Mandy felt refreshing, maybe by comparison to those others.


My apprehension is that I haven't got a read on Cosmatos. He's a wonderfully evocative filmmaker, but there's something sinister there as well, a creeping nihilism. I'm afraid that he'll turn out to be an Eli Roth with a superior color palette and compositional competence.



97. I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016, dir. Oz Perkins)





This is how out of touch I am, perhaps, with modern audiences, but this kind of slow-burn and mostly frill-less old school ghost story is exactly the kind of horror film that I find exciting while it puts everyone else to sleep like Nyquil. Sure, it isn't particularly scary and it doesn't even try to be very dark in the sense that we've come to expect, but it's simply a well-told gothic tale in the Shirley Jackson-M.R. James tradition which relies on stillness, dust and the secrets of an unknown past to carry the sense of eerie unease.
So, have you seen the director's debut film The Blackcoat’s Daughter (or February or The Daughter of Evil - this one's known by many names)?. While Pretty Thing is still more or less good, I think Perkins has grown worse with every film and his debut is easily his best.
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Please put your shoes back on, Crumb.


Wonder Bread pffft. It should be known when it comes to my bread bag shoes, its ancient grains or bust. I like to make a dignified first impression while I'm picking through my neighbours garbage, thank you very much.



Wonder Bread pffft. It should be known when it comes to my bread bag shoes, its ancient grains or bust. I like to make a dignified first impression while I'm picking through my neighbours garbage, thank you very much.
Well, excuuuuuuuse me, Mr. I Have Neighbours Who Can Afford Fancy Bread. Not all of us live in a nice neighborhood.



So, have you seen the director's debut film The Blackcoat’s Daughter (or February or The Daughter of Evil - this one's known by many names)?. While Pretty Thing is still more or less good, I think Perkins has grown worse with every film and his debut is easily his best.
Whoa whoa whoa! Let's not get ahead of ourselves.


I was probably the most vocal proponent of Blackcoat's Daughter on the previously deceased blog, so some folks know how I feel about it, andd there's slightly better than a non-zero chance of it making the list here and I can go into more detail then. That's a long way to say that I agree.



I'm a big fan of Oz Perkins so far, but I would agree that Gretel & Hansel was lacking. I would like to believe that this is due to studio interference, although I have no information to back that up. The film's first half is such a lovely somnambulant mix of rich mood and archetypal gothic imagery that the third act feels like an entirely different film, like one where some exec said, "We got to wrap this up under 90 minutes, so we're going to a lot of blood, fire and screaming. It doesn't have to make sense, the kids don't care about that", etc etc. Maybe I'm wrong and they really did just run out of ideas, money, whatever.



Oh no, not Jinn again!





(I'll be reading)
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100. Hugo (2011, dir. Martin Scorsese)






I think he looks just like Ben Kingsley, and, like Hugo, Kingsley is an amazing actor and faithful companion of enormous resource and versatility. Hugo may be a very charming children's film, one that feels like fantasy, but at it's core, it is a Georges Melies redemption tale in which Kingsley is pitch perfect as the father of fantastic cinema, and it's his story, rather than little Hugo's, where you can feel Scorsese's inspiration to keep the illuminated flame burning. It's also interesting how much the film feels like something made from a Tim Burton, Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson at a time when they were all producing the worst films of their career.


HM: The Young and Prodigious T.S. Spivet (2013, dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet) - A similarly charming, precocious and subtlely moving children's "fantasy" (depending on your supension of disbelief) that was originally shot in 3D but is nonetheless perfectly entertaining without it. Practically ignored on release due to being buried by Harvey Weinstein because Jeunet refused to make cuts, making it one of Weinstein's last crimes against humanity before he retired to a new life as a confiscated scum bag.
As a die-hard lover of this film, I fully endorse its appearance on this list, even if it should be higher



96. The Nice Guys (2016, dir. Shane Black)





A fine comedy filled with memorable moments, but the plot ain't one of them. More fun than funny, but you can't deny the appeal of the leads, with maybe three really classic set pieces. I still can't help but feel a little empty afterwards.


HM: Ryan Gosling's comic height for the decade was The Big Short ("Jacked to the ****!!!"), a surprisingly sharp primer on the '08 financial collapse. But I also have a slight issue with Adam MacKay and his similar follow-up, Vice, which is that, although I generally share his politics and outrage, he has a nasty habit of alternately being condescending and scolding to his audience which makes him look a lot less intelligent than he thinks he is, and turns him into an insufferable hybrid of Michael Moore and Oliver Stone.
This is another one I'm a fan of. As far as recent comedies go, this has been one of my favorites. Loved the chemistry between Crowe and Gosling, and Angourie Rice was superb.



Oh no, not Jinn again!





(I'll be reading)




94. A Dangerous Method (2011, dir. David Cronenberg)





This film may be a little underrated for the fact that it's soaked in psychosexual theory and yet maintains a disturbingly sober and clinical distance to the subject throughout. It may be too much to expect an emotional reptile like Cronenberg to manage a, let's say Two Moon Junction for example?, but some may have anticipated something more weird, wild or unhinged, ala Dead Ringers or Crash. Instead, Cronenberg keeps a tight leash on the proceedings, allowing the ideas, of the tension between ethics and eros, to supply the teeth (as Cassel's Otto Gross demonstrates), and the actors, all of whom are superb (definitely including Knightley, you haters), to supply the subtle steam of repression. It probably helps to be interested in both the subject matter and respective writings of the figures presented.