2010s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

An ongoing project to survey the best films of individual decades, genres, and filmmakers.
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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#251 Post by swo17 » Tue May 31, 2016 4:46 pm

bottled spider wrote:I could have rescued so many orphans! The top half of my list would have drawn heavily from the also-rans and might have nudged a few of them into the final list.
Out of curiosity, which ones?

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Tommaso
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#252 Post by Tommaso » Tue May 31, 2016 5:17 pm

Okay, here's my entirely (European)-arthouse-dominated list, with thanks to domino nevertheless for making me aware of "Another Earth" and zedz for doing the same for "Fish and Cat":

1. Melancholia (von Trier 2011)
2. Hard to be a God (German 2013)
3. Sudoeste (Nunes 2012)
4. Copie conforme (Kiarostami 2010)
5. La vie d'Adèle (Kechiche 2013)
6. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jarmusch 2013)
7. Holy Motors (Carax 2012)
8. Nymphomaniac (von Trier 2014)
9. Bellas mariposas (Mereu 2012)
10. Leviathan (Zvyagintzev 2014)
11. Blancanieves (Berger 2012)
12. Like Someone in Love (Kiarostami 2012)
13. Winter Sleep (Ceylan 2014)
14. Le quattro volte (Frammartino 2010)
15. Before Midnight (Linklater 2013)
16. La danza de la realidad (Jodorowsky 2013)
17. Fish and Cat (Mokri 2013)
18. L'Apollonide (Bonello 2011)
19. Clouds of Sils Maria (Assayas 2014)
20. Mistérios de Lisboa (Ruiz 2010)
21. La Sapienza (Green 2014)
22. Black Swan (Aronofsky 2010)
23. Another Earth (Cahill 2011)
24. Adieu au langage (Godard 2014)
25. Habitacion en Roma (Medem 2010)

Noiradelic
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2009 12:45 am

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#253 Post by Noiradelic » Tue May 31, 2016 5:37 pm

Forgot all about Killer Joe!

Never thought I'd live in a world in which I vote for We Are The Best! at #2 and domino didn't vote for it at all!
knives wrote:Seriously, cutting Greenberg felt awful.
Top 10 film on my list.

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bottled spider
Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2009 2:59 am

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#254 Post by bottled spider » Tue May 31, 2016 5:46 pm

swo17 wrote:
bottled spider wrote:I could have rescued so many orphans! The top half of my list would have drawn heavily from the also-rans and might have nudged a few of them into the final list.
Out of curiosity, which ones?
The orphan Master Builder and the also-rans Manuscripts Don't Burn and Winter Sleep would have been in my top five, and orphans Calvary and Story of Children and Film would have figured somewhere. Kicking self.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#255 Post by movielocke » Tue May 31, 2016 5:59 pm

domino harvey wrote:
TMDaines wrote:Do you watch much non-US cinema, Domino?
I see that only one foreign film made my top twenty five, so I reckon it's a fair question! I do (I've seen most of our overall list), but I find the art house foreign scene of the last ten years or so pretty dreadful and, mock surprise, I don't like many of the films that find such fervent championing here and on the festival / art house circuit, many of which I find trying and a poor perversion of the wealth of great international cinema from the fifties and sixties which knew how to handle crypticism and alienation techniques. But, to not dwell on the negative, I do also enjoy many of the foreign films recognized here, even if not enough to make my overall top list, and some absences were in hindsight oversights (We Are the Best! and Blue is the Warmest Color both could/should have made my list, for starters!)
I feel exactly the same way on all counts, down to having only one non English film on my list, and as a result wasn't going to post my list, now I'll have to, thanks for making me feel better about sharing probably unpopular opinions!

Brood_Star
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#256 Post by Brood_Star » Tue May 31, 2016 6:24 pm

I'm probably the complete opposite.
6 The Turin Horse
89 Film socialisme
53 Goodbye to Language
42 Jauja
49 Norte, the End of History
66 Tabu
23 Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
55 The Strange Case of Angelica
112 This Is Not a Film
32 Le quattro volte
112 Stranger by the Lake
45 Leviathan
99 The Strange Little Cat
119 L'Apollonide
Sorry, Godard. I'm happy that Like Someone In Love features on the list, because I find it much more interesting over his other completely inert feature, Certified Copy. One other person voted for Hong (Hill of Freedom) and I'm guessing it was zedz? I definitely have to check out Sudoeste and Aita.

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Omensetter
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#257 Post by Omensetter » Tue May 31, 2016 7:35 pm

(Thank you swo.)

Surprised and slightly enthused that my number one---My Joy---not only managed to crack the list, but nearly the top thirty on the strength of three lists. I assumed it was destined to the also-rans or orphans, but it seems to have a following of sorts, at least on these boards. That film came out of the blue at the beginning of the decade; it's nice to see it's still sticking.

My other orphans never stood a chance---All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Jimmy P., Beyond the Hills, Something in the Air, and Neighboring Sounds. The Mungiu might find movement if/when it receives a Criterion release, the Assayas always seemed bound to be overshadowed by Carlos/Sils Maria, but I thought the Mendonça Filho might snag a slot on at least one other list.

It's perhaps telling of the quality of this half-decade that neither of Mike Leigh's critically acclaimed offerings received a vote. Another Year fell in and out of my list.

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zedz
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#258 Post by zedz » Tue May 31, 2016 8:21 pm

I'm in Kyoto (yeah, life sucks) so I don't even have access to my list, but swo's mods mock up gives an idea of it. As I recall, My Joy was at the top. Thanks again to swo for another exemplary and informative (and entertaining) collation effort.

Is this the most English- language dominated final list we've ever had?

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#259 Post by swo17 » Tue May 31, 2016 8:39 pm

You can kind of tell from the country stats. US films have typically been running around 40-45%--this time they were a little over 50%.

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DarkImbecile
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#260 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue May 31, 2016 10:46 pm

Omensetter wrote:...but I thought the Mendonça Filho might snag a slot on at least one other list.
I watched Neighboring Sounds the night before the list was due and it fell just short of being added to my list, but the more I think about it, the more I think I might have made a mistake. It was a more compelling, lively example of the type of film that lays a seemingly prosaic, even mundane slice of life over some quite trenchant political subtext, which didn't work for me at all recently in Cemetery of Splendor (though I basically had to be led by the hand to grasp the politics of that film, where the more familiar historical context of Brazil's last half-century helped me tremendously with Sounds). In particular, some striking imagery that is still lingering a few days later is making me wish I'd given myself more time to process it before submitting my list.

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colinr0380
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#261 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:41 am

zedz wrote:I'm in Kyoto...
Or "the anagram lover's Tokyo" as Futurama once put it!

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Satori
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#262 Post by Satori » Wed Jun 01, 2016 6:16 am

My list with orphans briefly discussed. I ended up very happy with my list, although there are another dozen or so films that I like almost as much as the bottom half of my list. Thanks to swo for tabulating the lists!

1. Meek’s Cutoff
2. Two Days, One Night
3. Turin Horse
4. Mysteries of Lisbon
5. Exhibition (Also Ran)
6. Only Lovers Left Alive
7. Strange Case of Angelica
8. Uncle Boonmee who can Recall his Past Lives
9. Archipelago (Orphan)- I did a small write up on this and Exhibition earlier in the thread. I had to break my one per director limitation for these films, which for me are two of the most intense and beautiful films of the half decade.
10. Winter’s Bone (Also Ran)
11. Upstream Color
12. Moonrise Kingdom
13. We Are the Best
14. Leviathan (Zvyagintsev)
15. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Orphan)- I’m a bit surprised at this one, I thought it was a fairly popular film (although I guess I didn’t really pay attention to its lack of placing in the 2014 list thread). I found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable genre exercise: a vampire movie with the plot of a western and a great soundtrack.
16. Nostalgia for the Light (Also Ran)
17. Winter Sleep (Also Ran)

18. Norte, End of History
19. Stranger by the Lake (Also Ran)
20. Tomboy (Also Ran)

21. The Wonders (Orphan)- I loved the complex, weird characters you get to live with for the film’s duration. There are also moments of startling beauty, such as the honey-covered floor after the hospital visit.
22. Amour Fou (Orphan)-I posted a tiny bit about this in its designated thread (or maybe it was a Hausner thread?) Watching it again for this project, I was once again struck by both the meticulous mise-en-scene and also at how funny it is.
23. Manuscripts Don’t Burn (Also Ran)
24. Tale of Princess Kaguya (Also Ran)
25. Duke of Burgundy (Also Ran)

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zedz
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#263 Post by zedz » Wed Jun 01, 2016 9:55 am

swo17 wrote:You can kind of tell from the country stats. US films have typically been running around 40-45%--this time they were a little over 50%.
Though there are another three non-US films in the top twenty that are also almost entirely in English, which skews things.

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swo17
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#264 Post by swo17 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:22 am

True, although aren't there similar exceptions in most other decades? In any case the point stands--the results for this decade are probably about 15-25% more English-oriented than usual.

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TMDaines
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#265 Post by TMDaines » Wed Jun 01, 2016 11:39 am

My hypothesis is that virtually everyone here has seen most of the big English-language films, especially as a significant proportion of them were in contention for major awards and played in multiplexes, whilst the same cannot be said for the foreign ones. It's not like the historical lists where the majority of the viewing would have been done on DVD/BD and most of the big arthouse films are just as easily acquired as the English-language films.

I'd love to know how much certain films have been seen by the people submitting lists. If everyone had seen everything that was an orphan or better, the list would look completely different, in my opinion.

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movielocke
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:44 am

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#266 Post by movielocke » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:57 pm

Here's my list, I've included a brief comment about each film that didn't rank in the final list:

1 Inception
2 Brave

I've never seen my wife react so strongly to a film before, this was instantly one of her favorites because of the powerful mother-daughter relationship underpinning the film and that the resolution was achieved in apologizing and taking responsibility for your own actions and errors. This instantly became one of her all time favorite films, and I think it is one of Pixar's greatest achievements, subverting the princess genre rather brilliantly while also making a deeply resonant feminine film.

3 12 Years a Slave
4 Skyfall

I never would have included this right after it was released, but having watched it again since, I've realized not only is it the best Bond film ever made, but it is also a great film, as an exemplar of the Action genre, this is the equivalent, for me, of "The Searchers"

5 American Hustle
6 Lincoln
7 Guardians of the Galaxy

As with Skyfall, it's the repeat viewing (seen this three times actually) that's made me appreciate how outstanding this film is. Not only do they properly kill the villain (rather than the hero-ego-massage of leaving the villain alive to murder millions so the hero can feel like a good heroic person for sparing the life of the villain). But the film also manages to innovatively resolve the finale without resorting to another boring super-hero fist-fight that comprises the majority runtime of every other Marvel and DC and Star Trek film.

8 Gravity
9 A Most Violent Year

This is the only orphan that shocked me it was an orphan. This film is a goddamned masterpiece, a spiritual crime drama about resisting the pull of the organized crime. It brilliantly illustrates how razor thin the margin is between a business and a mafia and the entire film concerns itself with the inner conflict and resistance felt by Oscar Isaac. It's his best performance and an absolutely incredible film. If Ingmar Bergman ever attempted to make "The Godfather" it would be something like this.

10 Hugo

I'm very surprised this wound up an orphan. It was so highly and profoundly praised and beloved when it came out--even here, but it seems to have vanished into the ether. Given the low placement. I'm definitely going to rewatch it before the youth list to see if it really is as bad as you all think all of you leaving it off your lists (;))and probably place it very high on the Youth list.

11 The Wind Rises
12 Midnight in Paris
13 Temple Grandin

The best original film I think HBO has ever done, and Claire Danes performance is monstrously good. If every Hollywood biopic were this good, the genre would be so much less disappointing.

14 Wild

As with A Most Violent Year, I found this a Hollywood film that is surprisingly focused on the inner spiritual journey of its main character. She detoxes from the slog of the trek, it is not because of the glorious pre-lapsarian "Wild" making her born again into a luddite evangelist. Also extremely pleasing to me was that she fails in natural ways in interacting with the great outdoors and the film is okay with that. The awful "Into the Wild" kept excusing the profound ignorance and stupidity of its protagonist in its hagiographic attempt to turn him into a hero or a cause or a martyr when he was really just a dumb kid that didn't respect how deadly the Wild itself is because he believed it was some sort of fountain of purity that would baptize him into Thoreau. As this film and this character is the antithesis of that film and that character, I also loved it for it.



15 The Artist
16 Argo

I'm not surprised at all this entry wound up an orphan, but I think it's Affleck's best film, relentlessly entertaining, and relentlessly Hollywood, but considering its subject matter, anything less would be a squandered opportunity. as with Skyfall and Guardians of the Galaxy, this is a B-Genre (like a western back in the day) film that is an apex of it's category. The film never stopped entertaining or thrilling me. It reminds me of brilliant dramatic thrillers from the 90s, like The Fugitive.

17 Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre has been a favorite novel of mine ever since I read it. She's one of the all time great characters and the story is one of the best there is. This is far and away the finest adaptation I've ever seen of the story, one that captures everything great and powerful and moving about the book in a way that none of the other versions ever have. Incredible performances and an absolutely gorgeous film as well.

18 Boyhood
19 Blue is the Warmest Color
20 13 Assassins

Miike's version/remake of Seven Samurai is brutal, bloody and absolutely stunning. The climax is unforgettable and incredible, it's both a refutation of and a celebration of the Kurosawa film (and now that I've seen all the Zatoichi films, obviously there's a lot that in it as well).

21 Too Big to Fail

I rewatched this earlier in the year and was shocked that not only did it hold up, but it was honestly far better than I remembered. This is one of Hanson's best films and I think significantly underrated and forgotten. It is actually the greater distance from the crisis that makes me appreciate even more how exceptional this film is.

22 Les Miserables

I am pretty sure I am the only person on the internet that liked Hooper's approach in this film. I've never seen any reason to attack him for it. it's bold, powerful and it really works. The massive failing of the film is Russell Crowe, but he does embody the physicality of Javert incredibly well. If only they had dubbed his voice with someone that didn't sound like a dying rhinoceros. I also liked the opera aspect of the film being told entirely in song, with no book whatsoever. I had never heard a note of the musical before hand, as I'm really not a musical theatre person (Hamilton is the first stage soundtrack I've ever bought), so the entire impact of the music was magical for me. I'm actually a little sad at how vicious the backlash was against this film, as I feel like a lot of it is based on the prior of familiarity with the theatre version and the prior of The Social Network losing to the King's speech (though the backlash against Crowe was entirely justified).

23 Easy A

I'm actually fairly surprised at this one being an orphan as well. Like Pitch Perfect (which would be in a list of top thirty), the film consciously invokes the teen films of the 1980s in demonstrating its mastery over the vernacular of that genre of filmmaking. Emma Stone is wonderful in this film and I really admire the enthusiastic playfulness of the filmmaking without ever taking on the twee hipsterismness of a Juno or Little Miss Sunshine.

24 Cave of Forgotten Dreams

I REALLY hope this film becomes a staple of repertory in those rep-houses that are 3D capable because this is one of the greatest uses of 3D ever achieved. The ultimate effect here is that the flattening distortion of pictures of the cave paintings does not capture the dimensionality of those paintings. These paintings are effectively three dimensional because they use the shape of the rock they were painted on to give them perspective and accuracy. All of that is flattened by an ordinary camera lens, but when I saw it for the first time I actually gasped in astonishment at what I was seeing. Not to be missed if you ever get the chance to see it in 3D.

25 If God is Willing and the Creek Don't Rise

I absolutely love this film and think it's possibly Spike Lee's best film, as it relentlessly chronicles the trainwreck of Katrina tragedies. I wish it were even longer, in a way, and I'm saying this as someone who always switches off NPR whenever it goes into their daily ritual worship of fetishizing 'tragedy occurring around the world right now.'

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zedz
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Re: 2010s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol

#267 Post by zedz » Wed Jun 01, 2016 7:05 pm

swo17 wrote:True, although aren't there similar exceptions in most other decades? In any case the point stands--the results for this decade are probably about 15-25% more English-oriented than usual.
It's always going to be the case with UK films (which are underrepresented here compared to some decades), but I think the phenomenon of English language French, Danish or Italian films is quite a new thing (or at least it was previously exceedingly uncommon). This decade, there are a bunch of such films that are prominent, and more that didn't make it but were in contention (e.g. Clouds of Sils Maria).

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TMDaines
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Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#268 Post by TMDaines » Fri Jun 03, 2016 6:55 am

Here's mine:

Top 50 - Also Ran - Orphan

#1) Amour (2012 - Michael Haneke - France)
#2) Toy Story 3 (2010 - Lee Unkrich - United States)
#3) Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (2011 - Asghar Farhadi - France)
#4) Whiplash (2014 - Damien Chazelle - United States)
#5) Plemya (2014 - Miroslav Slaboshpitsky - Ukraine)
#6) 12 Years a Slave (2013 - Steve McQueen - United States)
#7) Gravity (2013 - Alfonso Cuarón - United Kingdom)
#8) Leviafan (2014 - Andrey Zvyagintsev - Russia)
#9) La vie d'Adèle - Chapitres 1 et 2 (2013 - Abdellatif Kechiche - France)
#10) Mommy (2014 - Xavier Dolan - Canada)
#11) Black Swan (2010 - Darren Aronofsky - United States)
#12) Durak (2014 - Yuriy Bykov - Russia)
#13) The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014 - Wes Anderson - United States)
#14) Bande de filles (2014 - Céline Sciamma - France)
#15) Cesare deve morire (2012 - Paolo & Vittorio Taviani - Italy)
#16) Neadekvatnye lyudi (2010 - Roman Karimov - Russia)
#17) Jagten (2012 - Thomas Vinterberg - Denmark)
#18) Le passé (2013 - Asghar Farhadi - France)
#19) Before Midnight (2013 - Richard Linklater - United States)
#20) En kongelig affære (2012 - Nikolaj Arcel - Denmark)
#21) The Artist (2011 - Michel Hazanavicius - France)
#22) Oslo, 31. august (2011 - Joachim Trier - Norway)
#23) Kapringen (2012 - Tobias Lindholm - Denmark)
#24) Captain Phillips (2013 - Paul Greengrass - United States)
#25) Beyond the Lights (2014 - Gina Prince-Bythewood - United States)

Stats:
  • US had eight films, France six, and both Russia and Denmark three. Curiously all of Denmark's were from 2012.
  • Asghar Farhadi was the only director to have multiple entries
  • Neadekvatnye lyudi (Inadequate People) is easily the most obscure film on my list. It's a Russian independent-American style comedy about the developing relationship between a young man in his 30s and his 17 year-old neighbour. The humour tends to be quite dry, which is probably why it clicked with me. I loved it, but never found time to plug it.

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mfunk9786
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Re: 2010s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol

#269 Post by mfunk9786 » Fri Jun 03, 2016 10:22 pm

Hey, you're the other Beyond the Lights guy! We have to be friends now, you know.

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knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: 2010-2014 List Discussion and Suggestions

#270 Post by knives » Sun Jan 15, 2017 9:48 pm

domino harvey wrote:Margin Call is okay, but I preferred Arbitrage from the "Rich white guys getting away with everything" mini-movement of this period
Well a thank you for recommending this. The occasional dogme aesthetics of this put me off at first, but like The Celebration (which I could not get out of my head) the ugliness of the image in retrospect become pretty impressive as the film wore on and showed some good narrative and thematic reasons for this. I'm not entirely sure it works as a direct commentary on the meltdown though it pretty clearly is aiming to be a Chabrol like metaphor for it. Still as a straight poop thriller it's fascinating in a '90s Sharon Stone sort of way which is just fun. The big help is all of the performances which all have these different energies that oppose each other in great ways. Not even just the obvious of Gere and Marling (I suspect she was cast in part because she looks like Ivanka Trump), but also a surprise turn by Chris Eigeman doing what he does in the best way he does it for a small role. Roth also gives a nice enough verve to his generic cop character. The way he walks is just hilarious.

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