Jinn's 100 Films of the 2010s

Tools    





46. The Florida Project (2017, dir. Sean Baker)





God bless Willem Dafoe. This frustrating, infuriating look at "not the best parents" in a slummy Florida motel is focused on the children, wild and vibrant, creatively and mischieviously resourceful, and the only custodian who cares to keep an eye on them is Dafoe's motel manager, a fundamentally decent man who's seen enough to know that none of this is going to end well for anyone. We, as a society, proved ourselves unworthy of Dafoe's saintly slither when we gave the Oscar to a cartoon racist instead.

And there it is. Best film of the decade. This movie breaks me, just thinking about it.



Yes! Thank you. I thought this may have fallen off your list as well, since it seems to have become forgotten in Anderson's career. I'm obviously being a bit of a contrarian when I still resolutely state it is close to my favorite of his, but it's kind of true.
Just writing out that entry has made me feel that I may have had it too low.


You should also compile a list at the end of this, so I don't have to. I need to see so many of these movies that I've planned to see for so long, but entirely forgotten about.
Aye, will do.



45. Kill List (2011, dir. Ben Wheatley)





Unfortunately, any basic synopsis is a spoiler, since the genre shift itself is one of the film's sublime surprises, but what starts out as a hardnail psychological crime thriller takes a turn into occult horror. Thankfully, there's plenty of surprises left to discover, so I really should leave it at that.



44. High Life (2018, dir. Claire Denis)





Another sci-fi that is more concerned with existential issues than high-concept convolutions. The film is mostly low-key, sedate but haunting, meditating on desire and survival. Robert Pattinson has spent most of the decade proving his bonafides and leaving his pop idol past behind him, but Juliete Binoche, as is her wont, is the beating heart here as she tends to be always.



Yes! Thank you. I thought this may have fallen off your list as well, since it seems to have become forgotten in Anderson's career. I'm obviously being a bit of a contrarian when I still resolutely state it is close to my favorite of his, but it's kind of true.
I think it’s great but it feels more in step with the guy that made Boogie Nights than the guy that made the Master and Phantom Thread. I think, like Burn After Reading, its reputation is more due to being placed in the wrong period of a filmmaking career than anything to do with the quality of film itself.



43. Hard To Be a God (2013, dir. Aleksei German)





A Russian film that recasts Andrei Rublev as an alien sentry from an advanced civilization. The sci-fi premise has astronauts finding a planet and society that is locked in an equivalent of dark ages tyranny. Refusing to interfere with the natives' natural technological evolution, one scientist attempts to be the guiding light that will lead these people out of their darkness. Things go about as well as you'd expect.



the guy that made Boogie Nights
Hey, I like that guy.



42. Nightcrawler (2014, dir. Dan Gilroy)





Probably the strongest contender for "films you need to shower after", it achieves its repulsion not through graphic scenes or shocking debauchery, but through the sheer slimy scum shining on the surface of our protagonist, Lou Bloom, and his high-functioning sociopathic semblence of sincerity. A parasitic opportunist in a media culture that encourages people like Bloom to thrive, this isn't the first film about the exploitation of base audience instinct, but in shaping the essence of this poison into such a condensed and ruthless figure, an insect among humans, sharpens the virulant impact of such predatory obsessions.



The trick is not minding
43. Hard To Be a God (2013, dir. Aleksei German)





A Russian film that recasts Andrei Rublev as an alien sentry from an advanced civilization. The sci-fi premise has astronauts finding a planet and society that is locked in an equivalent of dark ages tyranny. Refusing to interfere with the natives' natural technological evolution, one scientist attempts to be the guiding light that will lead these people out of their darkness. Things go about as well as you'd expect.
So I looked this guy up and saw it was released the same year as Leviathan. At the Nika Awards (Academy Awards equivalent in Russia I think I?), this beat out Leviathan for best picture but was not presented as their countries nomination for Best International Film, which is was subsequently nominated for as well.

I wonder which is the stronger film? And furthermore, why was Leviathan chosen instead?



41. Beasts of No Nation (2015, dir. Cary Fukunaga)





Harrowing look into West African child armies, incorporating a number of first-time or amateur actors (including the incedible young Abraham Attah) and giving Idris Elba his strongest role to date. By adopting a realistic, documentary style, the film is powerful and insightful, and unique in being a modern African-set production that doesn't bother to require a white audience surrogate for the West. This film also put Netflix on the map for original productions, a venture rewarded by Hollywood by having this film blackballed from most awards consideration, an act of exclusion that all of the Green Books in the world couldn't begin to rectify.



Hey, I like that guy.
I love that guy. I just don’t get why he waited 17 years to follow it up.



40. Jojo Rabbit (2019, dir. Taika Waititi)





Some people, I understand, were offended by this film. Personally, I think they probably need to get drop-kicked out a window quicker than Hitler. Some of the humor (like the opening comparing the Hitler Youth to Beatlemania) is deceptively scathing, some of it is just silly (the satirical banality of evil), some of it triumphant (Sam Rockwell's fabulous fashion sense). But the film also knows when to be touching, and exactly the line where these gestapo games are no longer a laughing matter. Our child actors, Roman Griffith Davis and Thomisine McKenzie, are no goonies but sympathetic idealists. You know, folks, the Nazis still don't win here. Calm down.



This film also put Netflix on the map for original productions, a venture rewarded by Hollywood by having this film blackballed from most awards consideration, an act of exclusion that all of the Green Books in the world couldn't begin to rectify.
Yeah, but at least it gave us this, huh?:






40. Jojo Rabbit (2019, dir. Taika Waititi)





Some people, I understand, were offended by this film. Personally, I think they probably need to get drop-kicked out a window quicker than Hitler. Some of the humor (like the opening comparing the Hitler Youth to Beatlemania) is deceptively scathing, some of it is just silly (the satirical banality of evil), some of it triumphant (Sam Rockwell's fabulous fashion sense). But the film also knows when to be touching, and exactly the line where these gestapo games are no longer a laughing matter. Our child actors, Roman Griffith Davis and Thomisine McKenzie, are no goonies but sympathetic idealists. You know, folks, the Nazis still don't win here. Calm down.
I like just about everything about this movie except Taika’s portrayal of imaginary Hitler, which shocked me as I’ve loved his performances in virtually everything else.

I found his Hitler to miss the satirical mark for what Hitler would’ve represented to him and went for something too broad and silly to have any real teeth. It reminds me of Kate McKinnon’s manic Hilary impression or the movie The Final Girls, with its matrix fight scenes and unrecognizable cast of “stereotypes.” It’s hard to satirize when you don’t really “get” the thing you’re skewering.

It also makes the final confrontation fairly cringe.

That said, every other performance is great, it’s very pretty and it hits the dramatic beats really well.



I think it’s great but it feels more in step with the guy that made Boogie Nights than the guy that made the Master and Phantom Thread. I think, like Burn After Reading, its reputation is more due to being placed in the wrong period of a filmmaking career than anything to do with the quality of film itself.
I think this is fairly true in that it doesn't present itself as a particularly 'serious' film, which much of his later career has been. But in terms of cinematic chops, it seems to have taken all of the skill he has developed in his weightier, more thematically heavy films, and blown the doors open on what is basically presented as a screwy drug film full of paranoia and all the other good things that come with serious intoxication. As much as I love Boogie Nights ( I've watched it waaaaaay more than any other Anderson film), it just doesn't conjure the same sense of awe that any of his later films do for me. So in that way IV does seem more a piece of his more 'mature' films, since it was made long after he pulled out of the gravitational pull that still had a hold of him when he was making his first two movies. BN's and H8 hardly feel as weightless as everything that came after.

But, in essence, yeah, I agree this is probably a good reason why IV has been shuffled out of the deck of his supposedly greatest films.



My father keeps trying to get me to watch Jojo Rabbit. Whenever I visit him, he checks the viewing log on his television to see if I watched it during the night, and always seems horribly disappointed I haven't. HIs enthusiasm has kind of made me resist it though. I'm afraid if I don't like it, it will break his heart, because he rarely seems to like anything and he seems to think it is the greatest thing he's seen since....Spider Baby?



Victim of The Night
48. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011, dir. Tomas Alfredson)





Ice cold espionage served with a dry tone that's the cinematic equivalent of a stiff upper lip. Repressed performances and carefully woven exposition intended to deceive and confuse - an ideal scenario for duplicitous backyard snakes. Arguably the strongest possible cast of currently living Brit journeymen, a director who knows how to trust his actors and script, and likely the most sophisticated Cold War novel all add up to a thriller that's refreshingly free of jump cuts, high-speed shutter and Liam Neeson.
Was so great. I was really skeptical and I was just floored. It's an acting clinic for one thing, literally every performance is at the top of the game. But man, it's just... willing to be as patient as it needs to be. Which is so rare these days.



My father keeps trying to get me to watch Jojo Rabbit. Whenever I visit him, he checks the viewing log on his television to see if I watched it during the night, and always seems horribly disappointed I haven't. HIs enthusiasm has kind of made me resist it though. I'm afraid if I don't like it, it will break his heart, because he rarely seems to like anything and he seems to think it is the greatest thing he's seen since....Spider Baby?
I didn't like it very much.*Definitely worse than Spider Baby.*