My Top 20 Films of the 2010s - Part One

Finally, I can announce the launch of my long-unawaited Best Films of the 2010s series. I should begin by noting that I watched far fewer films this decade than in the previous one, and far, far fewer in the second half of this decade than in the first half because I realized I needed to spend much more time reading books and studying for Jeopardy! even though I'll never get on the show. We love you, Alex!

Therefore, I can't claim any authority regarding what's actually best, but then again nobody else can either. So consider this my Top 20 Films of the Decade Out Of the Relatively Limited Selection I Saw And That I Can Remember Right Now.

20. ENTERTAINMENT (Alverson, 2015)

Most films that set out to provoke audiences fail to do so, in large part because they try to shock with content. Just try to forget our graphic gang-rape scene, so lovingly rendered in hand-held close-up for ten minutes! We can go fifteen minutes if that's what you want. Just pretend you don't know it's all pretend and you'll be absolutely appalled!

Rick Alverson's “Entertainment” provokes much more effectively through lack of content. Gregg Turkington portrays a stand-up comic condemned to a no-budget tour through the hollowed-out purgatory of Mojave Desert California, where both prisons and dive bars feature the same apathetic audiences. The film's long silences and unpopulated marginal spaces evoke “Two-Lane Blacktop” (1971) but now imagined as the comedy set to nowhere.

The Comedian's stage act is a mutated version of Turkington's real-life (if that's the right term) persona Neil Hamburger, the greasy-haired anti-comic whose phlegm-choked “epater la bourgeoisie” act is rendered impotent in this desperate hellscape. How do you puncture the illusions and delusions of consumerist society for audiences who've already abandoned all hope? How do you offend people who don't even care enough to pay attention anymore? Uncertain that his “mission” still has any relevance, The Comedian gradually cracks up which, to be fair, seems like an entirely reasonable reaction to the modern iteration of the American Dream.

I'm sure many viewers will stare blankly at this idiosyncratic film, perhaps the same ones who can't even begin to understand why Neil Hamburger is the funniest comedy act of the century. But “Entertainment” captures a sense of American malaise so vividly and so perceptively that I can't stop thinking about it more than four years later. I also love the fact that perhaps the single scene in American film this decade that so perfectly captures how I feel about the culture right now is currently indexed on YouTube as “Fart Trophy.”

“Entertainment” is the defining film for Fart Trophy America.

19. A QUIET PASSION (Davies, 2017)

I can understand just about any reaction to “Entertainment” from love to hate to boredom to bewilderment, but I'm completely baffled by viewers who found Cynthia Nixon's portrayal of Emily Dickinson to be alienating or unlikeable. I cannot think of a more moving performance this decade.

Director Terence Davies and his crew construct a formally restricted world, not just of tight interior spaces but also of a society of increasingly limited and unappealing choices, and Nixon's Dickinson is a spirit so expansive she can't help but slam into its walls every day, and every bruise she absorbs in the process draws us deeper into her experience. Her righteous anger at a world that can't accommodate her talent is perhaps the most lingering impression, but there's so much more to her performance, such as the simmering joy that struggles to find an appropriate outlet when she interacts with friends and family.

And, man, what a screenplay by Terence Davies. His dialogue is every bit as formally restricted as his sets and it's magnificent from start to finish. And all the more reason to shower praise on Cynthia Nixon because only a handful of actresses could have embraced that clipped diction with such, well, passion. I watched a few clips online to refresh my memory for this capsule write-up and I'm astonished anew at how brilliant Nixon is. I'm trying to think of a better author biopic, and not coming up with any obvious contenders. Though I suppose it's fair to resist applying the term “biopic” to a movie with so much more on its mind. Perhaps it's only appropriate that audiences failed this movie as badly as we all failed Emily Dickinson.

Some Thoughts From A Year Of Not Really Watching Films

MY FAVORITE FILMS OF 2017, OF WHICH I DID NOT SEE THAT MANY

mother! (Aronofsky)

A Quiet Passion (Davies)

The Death of Louis XIV (Serra)

Ex Libris (Wiseman)

Wormwood (Morris)

Jane (Morgen)

Columbus (Kogonada)

Song to Song (Malick)

Logan (Mangold)

The Beguiled (S Coppola)

The Square (Ostlund)

I saw fewer new theatrical releases in 2017 than in any other year this century, so I don't intend this as anything resembling a representative sampling of the most recent twelve months of cinema, a subject which holds increasingly less interest for me. I consider Criterion's release of “Barry Lyndon” on Blu-ray the major movie event of 2017.

Except for “mother!” 

I love “mother!” from its tiny little “m” to its glorious ! I love “mother!” so much I considered just listing it ten times and posting it as my top ten without further comment. Except maybe for a few extra !s. Like The Simpsons' “Man Getting Hit By Football” it works on so many levels. It's funny, it's frightening, it's a vivid depiction of the misogynistic horrors propagated by Christian mythology and male ego, it captures the naked terror of exposing your personal art to an audience, and it's exquisitely filmed from just a handful of efficient camera setups. Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Pfeiffer are perfect, and, oh lord, the sound design... it's damned exciting, gonzo filmmaking. Really, I love it so much I need to wait a few more months before I can do more than gush. Naturally, critics couldn't wait to take a dump on it. I hope Aronofsky doesn't get tired of casting pearls. Illegitimi non carborundum, darren!

As much as I love, love, love the movie, I found several of the skeptical takes on “mother!” both reasonable and insightful, and I often found myself responding “You're not wrong... but that's exactly what I want from a movie.” The tiny handful of viciously negative takes on “A Quiet Passion” were, by contrast, nothing short of baffling. Cynthia Nixon delivers the performance of the century as a righteously indignant Emily Dickinson in Terence Davies' semi-biopic, the best film about an artist this side of Peter Watkins' magisterial “Edvard Munch” (1974). The weirdest, wrongest take of all is the weird, wrong suggestion that Nixon's portrayal of a “difficult” protagonist somehow makes her character unsympathetic. One critic even described Nixon's Dickinson as a “harridan.” WTF? I was moved to tears, felt a desperate urge to apologize to Dickinson across the centuries on behalf of a fallen world that didn't deserve her, and, above all, to read lots and lots of her poetry as one modest act of contrition.

Albert Serra's “The Death of Louis XIV” would have been a heck of a movie no matter the lead, but casting little Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) as the setting Sun King is the year's stroke of genuine inspiration. How can any cinephile not compare teenage Leaud in freeze frame circa 1959 to this craggy, withered, royal wreck and marvel at the special power of cinema? Great, gangrenous Louis waits (in full regal luxury, mind you) for the inevitable end that sure takes its sweet time arriving, while his faithful advisers fuss nervously in hushed, helpless meetings. The array of charlatans who propose ineffective cures provide some of the year's quietest comic scenes – bull semen cocktails for all! Paired with Roberto Rossellini's extraordinary“The Taking Of Power By Louis XIV” (1966), Serra's gem may vault Louis into the lead as the most cinematic European monarch ahead of Elizabeth I and Henry VIII. Now we just need a film about Louis' passion for ballet to complete the grand historic trilogy. If it turns one has already been made, feel free to let me know.

Any year which produces new films from documentary masters Frederick Wiseman and Errol Morris should be appreciated. “Ex Libris” turns Wiseman's studied eye to the glorious institution of the sprawling New York Public Library, proven here to be as vital as ever from boardroom meetings to dynamic guest speakers to endless shelves of real, actual, physical, beautiful books. In the six-part Netflix series “Wormwood,” Morris leads viewers through a few twists of the labyrinthine story of scientist Frank Olson, alleged to have jumped to his death from a New York hotel room in 1953, but possibly killed by the CIA because... well, because it's the sort of thing that CIA guys really get off on. Maybe. Eric Olson, Frank's son, still fighting (perhaps both futilely as well as nobly) for justice emerges as one of the year's most compelling characters. Both films showcase their directors' attention to detail and passion for rational investigation, though “Wormwood” also underscores the limits of empiricism when evidence proves elusive – that doesn't mean you stop digging, though! Both documentaries are sensational and my only complaint about each: too damn short.

The rest, in brief: “Jane” spins some glorious color footage of young Jane Goodall in Tanzania in the 1960s into one of the more beautiful documentaries of recent years. “Columbus,” the debut feature by director Kogonada (familiar to Criterion fans for some great extras features), turns architecture into a way of life and love and gives actors Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho ample room to shine. “Song to Song” is probably my least favorite recent Malick, but give me a chance to rewatch it and I may change my mind. Least favorite recent Malick still equals one of the year's best, of course.

Oh my god, Patrick Stewart is so great in “Logan.”

They don't have to be in competition, but I think Sofia Coppola improved on Don Siegel's original “The Beguiled” (1971). At the very least, she made it her own film, a fresh remake that actually has a reason to exist. “The Square” is a bit too long for my taste, and not nearly as good as “Force Majeure,” but Ruben Ostlund is becoming one of the modern masters of the squirm-laugh.

I greatly disliked a good deal of the year's critically praised movies, many of them likely award winners, but rather than mentioning duds like “The Shape of Water” or “Wind River” or “Three Billboards Blah Blah Blah” I'll limit myself to venting my spleen at “I, Tonya.” It's cruel, stupid, glib, condescending, and so incompetently made, it earned a glowing 90% approval from the Tomatogentsia, compelling evidence that we get the president we deserve. After a wearying year of unprecedented cognitive dissonance from every news source, I can't even face the prospect of speaking with someone who can't recognize what complete garbage this loathsome nothing of a movie is, and so I will never volunteer to speak of it again. 

The Long Day Closes

THE LONG DAY CLOSES (Davies, 1992)

Criterion Collection, Blu-ray, Release Date Jan 28, 2014

Review by Christopher S. Long

British writer-director Terence Davies' reminiscence of his childhood appears, at first blush, to be a very flattering portrait that borders on narcissism. Amidst the grayness of 1950s Liverpool, twelve-year-old Bud (Leigh McCormack) shines like a delicate angel, almost literally. Bud is often framed dead center in an otherwise dimly-lit composition, gazing wistfully off-camera with his gentle, pensive face bathed in the light of a film projector, a television screen, the moon, or perhaps from an unspecified source even higher up as he imagines a world as happy as the one portrayed in his beloved Hollywood movies.

Add in the musical accompaniment of church choirs and even Debbie Reynolds, and it's enough to make the viewer wonder if this perfect, innocent child could possibly be of mortal born. Then again, one of the film's other defining images is that of Bud securely nestled against his even saintlier mother (Marjorie Yates), somehow all alone with his unflinching protector even though he shares a cramped rowhome with a bustling cohort of older brothers and sisters.

Davies, a Liverpudlian who was the youngest of many siblings, makes no secret that Bud (whose last name also happens to be Davies) is a portrait of the artist as a young man; Davies even faithfully recreated his childhood home, in slightly expanded and more flexible form, on set. It's fair to question why the director has chosen to portray his younger self as such a beautiful dreamer. The key comes in the director's explanation that the only truly happy time in his life was from age seven (after his abusive father died) to about age twelve, when a stable home life with mum gave way to conflict at secondary school and the adolescent (and adult) torment of a Catholic ashamed of his homosexuality. 

The film depicts the very end of this idyll, the moment when “The Long Day Closes” (1992). In other works (his “Trilogy” of short films shot in the late '70s and early '80s, and 1988's “Distant Voices, Still Lives”), Davies' screen memoirs focused on far more morbid material; with “The Long Day Closes” he opens the treasure chest safeguarding his most-cherished memories and shares them with the world.

The film is by no means all sweetness and light. Bud sees the avalanche that's coming, most vividly in the embarrassment he feels when a shirtless bricklayer mockingly returns the boy's furtive gaze, but for now he can sustain a blissful existence by retreating to his happy places: a home with a loving mother and supportive siblings, and always the local theater playing all those wonderful Hollywood movies. A tenuous lifeline, but sturdy enough to hold for a while. 

The movie's soundtrack is absolutely saturated with both music and dialogue from now-classic films; “Long Day” even begins with the 20^th Century Fox theme playing as the camera roves over a street sign and a muddy Liverpool road that will lead us to the happy home that once was. Intrusions of more sinister film scenes (audio clips from “The Magnificent Ambersons” and of Mrs. Havisham in full meltdown in “Great Expectations”) remind us that all was not well even on the big screen, and that a storm is a-brewin'.

If this meticulously sculpted evocation of childhood sometimes seems a bit too pretty and ethereal, perhaps that's part of the point. Some viewers dismiss nostalgia as either sentimental or reactionary, but it can also be a corrosive. Such vivid memories of fleeting bliss don't necessarily bring happiness to the older artist mourning what is now lost forever. Perhaps it would be easier to forget it entirely and just trudge ahead. Davies keeps looking back until it hurts, and that's where his art just begins. 

Video:

The film is presented in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The new transfer was “created in 2K resolution... from the original 35 mm interpositive held by Channel 4.” The 1080p image is rich and sharp, vividly capturing the desaturated look Davies and cinematographer Michael Coulter wanted for the film (and augmented by a bleaching process at the lab). It looks both dreary and dream-like, perfect for the material.

Audio:

The film is presented with an LPCM 2.0 stereo mix. “The Long Day Closes” encroaches on rock opera territory with its wall-to-wall soundtrack incorporating everything from classical music to religious hymns to movie scores and songs. Debbie Reynolds' “Tammy” is the most memorable musical cue, but the film tucks in Richard Rodgers, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and much, much more. This lossless mix easily does justice to the dense soundtrack, according the music an appropriately enveloping quality. Dialogue is clearly mixed, but you may need the optional English subtitles to make out some of the Liverpudlian accents. The subtitles, by the way, also identify each song and each film from which dialogue clips are taken, which is no small task.

Extras:

The film is accompanied by a commentary track by Davies and cinematographer Michael Coulter. It was recorded in 2007 and was previously included on a BFI standard definition release of the film.

The disc also includes a 1992 episode of “The South Bank Show” (47 min.) which played on British television a month before “Long Day” debuted at Cannes. It's mostly a one-on-one interview with Davies in which he speaks candidly about his childhood and the various influences on the movie. Davies can sometimes come across as terminally serious, but he lights up when talking about his fondness for Hollywood musicals. Definitely worth watching.

An interview with writer Colin McCabe (2013, 14 min.) provides production background. McCabe was formerly head of the BFI Production Board which helped finance some of Davies' earlier films. McCabe served as executive producer on “The Long Day Closes” and he shares details about the film's journey from the planning stages to the big screen.

Production designer Christopher Hobbs (2013, 20 min.) is also interviewed about his remarkable work on a film that might look deceptively simple, but ask yourself how easy it is to shoot in a tiny multi-story rowhome.

The insert booklet includes an essay by critic Michael Koresky. Koresky writes most of the liner notes for Criterion's Eclipse collection and it's great to see him in longer form on a Criterion release. This is one of the best essays I've read in a Criterion booklet, and that's pretty high praise. [Update: Koresky's book “Terrence Davies” was published in August 2014 and has received praise all around.]

Final Thoughts:

“The Long Day Closes” is best seen when paired with “Distant Voices, Still Lives,” but this initial foray by Davies into the Criterion Collection is welcome even by itself. We can just hope that more will follow. The high-def transfer is sharp, the extras are solid if not extensive, and the movie's not so bad either. Strongly recommended.