#15 — Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015) If George Miller was going to go back the Wasteland, he was going to get everything he could out the post-apocalyptic landscape. Mad Max: Fury Road was released thirty years after … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Fifteen
#16 — Selma (Ava DuVernay, 2014) Ava DuVernay’s Selma is a proper history lesson. Attaching that description to a film usually signifies dreary dryness and a plodding pace as the filmmakers labor to impart lessons more than shape action or … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Sixteen
Je Tu Il Elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974). Esoteric and aloof, Chantal Akerman’s early feature is exactly what I thought all French cinema was like until I actually, you know, watched some of it. Je Tu Il Elle is almost amusing … Continue reading Then Playing — Je Tu Il Elle; Dark Places; The Decline of Western Civilization
#17 — The End of the Tour (James Ponsoldt, 2015) When it was announced that Jason Segel was hired to play writer David Foster Wallace in James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour, the brays of outrage were drowned out … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Seventeen
La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel, 2001). This loose, impressionistic drama craftily captures the complexity of life itself, where outcomes can be shocking and predictable at the same time. There are incidents aplenty in this story of family, but the film is … Continue reading Then Playing — La Ciénaga; Seven Beauties; Merrily We Go to Hell
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966). An altogether remarkable feat of cinema, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film documents several years of the Algerian War, when rebels fought against colonialist rule by the French. Pontecorvo opts for verisimilitude, staging sequences with the … Continue reading Then Playing — The Battle of Algiers; Recorder: The Marion Stokes Story; Sleepwalking Land
#18 — Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, 2018) Support the Girls closes with a scene that has, in the past two years, only grown more spot-on in capturing the mood of the moment. Lisa (Regina Hall), the former manager of … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Eighteen
Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011). The debut feature from director Sean Durkin takes a fraught subject and increases its power with shrewd understatement. The film opens as Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) flees a commune-like rural homestead, seeking assistance, with … Continue reading Then Playing — Martha Marcy May Marlene; Personal Shopper; Cleo from 5 to 7
#19 — Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010) Michelle Williams carries the weight of a weary life like few of her acting contemporaries. She’s been called upon to portray misery so often that it is all too easy to forget how … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Nineteen
#20 — The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015) An important cinematic storytelling strategy, too often overlooked, is to treat the outlandish as if it’s as plain as white paint on a wall. In Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, people who are romantically … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twenty
Coffee for Two 