#11 — Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, 2010) In the society where Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) grew up and still persists, the rules are tricky and unyielding. Ree is a teenager residing in the Ozarks. Family woes mean she is charged … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Eleven
#12 — Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) The basic plot description of Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, implies that the film is a despairing broadside against modern technology. In an indeterminate near future, Theodore Twombley (Joaquin Phoenix) is a … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Twelve
#13 — Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) Looking back, it’s remarkable that Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was the first foreign language film to claim the Academy Award for Best Picture. There’s first the oddity that no film reliant on subtitles to reach … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Thirteen
#14 — 20th Century Women (Mike Mills, 2016) It dismays me to know that 20th Century Women is a period piece, roughly as removed in time from the era it depicts as, say, Steven Spielberg’s 1987 World War II drama, … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 10s — Number Fourteen
#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
#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
#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
#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 