My top 5 films of the decade
I have been inspired by one of my fellow bloggers (thanks Sascha!) to write a list of my top 5 films of the past decade. My criteria are much the same as Sascha’s: I am looking for great writing, memorable moments and re-watchability. I acknowledge my cinema tastes are fairly mainstream, but here are my top 5 of the 2010s:
5. OJ Made in America
While not technically a movie (its five ‘parts clock in at over seven hours), this stunning documentary won an Oscar for best Documentary Feature at the 2017 Academy Awards and so counts as a movie, at least for me! It tells a relatively familiar rise and fall story, that of infamous American football star OJ Simpson who, most famously, was acquitted of the brutal murder of his wife Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ronald Goldman in 1995. The documentary is about so much more than OJ though: it is a searing indictment of America’s obsession with fame, its inability to deal with the continued legacy of slavery and the subjugation of its Black citizens and the complex way in which OJ came to symbolise a struggle against police brutality and corruption that most observers would argue he was particularly poorly positioned to symbolise.
4. Boyhood
Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is a masterpiece of both formal innovation and entertainment. Filmed over 12 years, it is the ultimate coming of age story in that it literally follows a family featuring two (initially) young children as they progress from childhood and into adolescence. It’s depiction of the tenuous nature of some families and the role of time in shaping all of us is as breathtaking as the pure logistical feat of its existence.
3. Parasite
Ground-breaking as a widely seen and almost unanimously adored foreign-language film, the 2020 Best Picture winner is as searing in its critique of inequality and the mutual destructive force of capitalism as it is entertaining. The story of the mutually parasitic relationship between the Park and Kim families, situated at opposite ends of South Korean society, is not easily forgotten and may herald a sea change in increasing acceptance and celebration of international film by Western audiences.
2. The Social Network
An Aaron Sorkin penned, David Fincher directed film depicting the rise (and rise) of the world’s biggest and most disruptive (in so many ways) social media/tech companies? It couldn’t possibly be anything other than entertaining. The Social Network was outrageously overlooked at the 2011 Academy Awards but has rightly entered the cultural cannon as an inimitable artefact of our time. The dark brooding score and mis-en-scène as well as the positively chilling inhumanity of its protagonist (Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg) presaged much of what was to come in the real world, and this story holds up to repeated viewings better than almost anything else I’ve seen this decade.
1. Ladybird
Greta Gerwig’s debut feature film is, to me, perfect. Complete and utter charm from its cast of emergent millennial icons, Saoirse Ronan, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet and flawless, warm yet melancholic writing from Gerwig render this film completely delightful. It’s full of emotional punches that sneak up on you, whether regarding ageing, class, sexuality or the trials and tribulations of the relationship between children and parents. I can’t recommend it enough.