100 Favorite Films of the Decade: #50-1
- Jon
- Jan 19, 2020
- 22 min read
-These are my favorite feature-length films released in the US between 2010-2019, not necessarily "the best," whatever that means.
-Ranking is a fool's errand, and how I feel about these films will definitely change, likely the minute this is posted. Don't take the minutia of ranking too seriously. I probably don't see much of a difference between, let's say, #85 and #68, but I probably do like #54 a good bit more than #88 or so.
#50. It Follows
I wrote a review of this back in college for my school's newspaper - I liked it then, and I like it even more now. There are scarier horror films further up this list, but few have clung to me like this one. The monster here is really Anxiety, the sense that no matter how far you are from danger, something lurks at the edges of your vision. Walking closer. Slowly, yes, but it'll get there eventually.
#49. Get Out
Easily one of the defining films of the decade. Most big movies that tackle race and racism do so from a rather simplistic "look how bad things were in the old days" angle, or at least "look at these racist people." Get Out blends a truly unique and cutting take on America's great curse with a thrilling horror premise, all with director Jordan Peele's sense of comedic timing. Years from now, when we think back on the 2010s, we'll point to this film to explain what it felt like.
#48. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Sweet without being saccharine. Quirky without being twee. Funny without abandoning real sadness. Taika Waititi is one of my favorite working directors, and while I've really enjoyed all of his films, this one is his best.
#47. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
The first and third films in the new Planet of the Apes series range from decent to quite good, but this middle installment is the great one. The story of the human and ape cultures, both led by good people, being drawn inexorably and tragically towards a deadly war, is downright Shakespearean.
#46. Whiplash
This is one of those artfully constructed odes to the pursuit of greatness where I'm not sure if the creator wants us to think all the sacrifices were worth it or find the person absolutely reprehensible. Personally, I fall into the latter camp with this one. But either way, this is just brutal in the best way.
#45. The Social Network
Isn't it wild that the Facebook movie came out way back in 2010? Facebook and social media hadn't even really begun to go down the roads they occupy now. Either way, Fincher had it right early on that Zuckerberg and his ilk are fundamentally missing something about humanity.
#44. The World's End
The final piece of director Edgar Wright's Cornetto Trilogy. Funny, fast-paced, tragic, and absolutely bonkers. Wright's sense of comedic timing and editing are on full display here.
#43. Mission Impossible: Fallout
I have a lot of complicated feelings about Tom Cruise, mostly due to the man's involvement in the cult of Scientology. But I can't hate him, because he stars in movies like this one. MI: Fallout is a wild, incredible love letter to what action movies can do at their best. Tom Cruise hangs from a helicopter! Henry Cavill re-loads his own arms! This movie is so much fun!
#42. The Witch
Everyone and everything in The Witch is harsh, scrabbling by in beautiful yet haunting natural landscapes, with the threats of violence and plague hovering over everything like a murder of crows. The supernatural horrors of The Witch lurk mostly off-screen, but the true terror is coming of age in such a bleak world.
#41. The Wolf of Wall Street
This is the film that should have won Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar. It's a riotous, excessive film about the excesses of the worst people in the world, about how much of the world's ills come down to powerful people looking at all they have and saying "it's not enough. I need more." And so more comes until it turns their stomachs, and they still can't stop, and we all suffer. At least we get this great film out of it.
#40. Take Shelter
I feel like this film got forgotten in the shuffle, especially since it came out back in 2011. But this is a poignant and strange little indie film about a man convinced he's been given visions of a coming storm. Like the story of Noah in the Bible, one father alienates everyone around him in his obsessive need to build something to keep his family safe from a disaster no one else believes in. But unlike Noah's story, in Take Shelter we're not sure if this disaster is really coming or is just the stress of fearing that the world will come to take everything you love from you in the end.
#39. Short Term 12
One of those bittersweet indie dramas that leaves you in tears, hopeful about what good humanity can do, and heartbroken about how often we fail to reach those heights. It even stars a lot of actors who would go on to be in a lot of great films later on in the decade.
#38. Green Room
This is a nail-biting, grimy, heart-pounding ride that never lets up. There are no ghosts, demons, or zombies, but this is horror filmmaking at its best. Patrick Stewart delivers a chilling performance against type as the head of group of Neo-Nazis hunting down a group of in-over-their-head punk musicians. Absolutely gutting.
#37. Starred Up
What can I say? I just really love small emotional indie dramas with excellent performances, and Starred Up delivers exactly what I want in spades. Chronicling the hard times of a young prisoner who's been "starred up" from juvie to the big leagues, it really makes my list for the incredible performances, particularly by my favorite why-won't-they-give-him-tons-of-better-roles actor, Ben Mendelssohn.
#36. Looper
Before he went on to direct several great episodes of Breaking Bad and one film in a little series called Star Wars, director Rian Johnson made his first bona-fide hit with Looper, a knotty time-traveling gangster movie that brings us a tale of two versions of one hitman, and the bigger story he only ever stumbles into. Johnson is one of my favorite filmmakers right now, and this is the movie that really made me love him. It's a thrilling and smart entry into the time-traveling canon, made with a critical eye to the genre and deep sense of love for it.
#35. Blade Runner 2049
If I may be so bold: I'm not a huge fan of the original Blade Runner. It's a dreamy piece of sci-fi that's had a huge impact on the aesthetics of cyberpunk, but I never connected much with its narrative or characters. And so I was eager to see what a new take on the story could look like, casting the original's 2019 setting three decades into its now-alternate future. Blade Runner 2049 improves on the original's story, though it's not without its faults. But like the original, it's incredibly beautiful, so much so that I had to see it twice in theaters. It's a complicated film, but damn if I don't want to fall back into that beautiful, horror world it creates.
#34. Us
Jordan Peele is grappling with so many different things in this movie, but what stood out to me was that it's one of the few instances in blockbuster film that really tries to process that so much of America's prosperity was and is built on the backs of an underclass. It doesn't hurt that the movie is a great action-thriller, quite scary at times, and even funny.
#33. Calvary
This is a quiet, haunting film about an Irish priest, doing his best to keep going in a small seaside town that's too caught up in its own petty hates and wounds to give much attention to faith or any higher meaning. Brendan Gleeson's Father James is told by a man in confession one Sunday that he's going to kill him next week as a way to get revenge for being sexually assaulted by a priest in his youth. Father James is a good priest, see, so his death will be more meaningful and shocking. He has one week to get his affairs in order, to try to make amends with those he's wronged, and to try to bring some small bit of peace to his fractured community. It's a heartbreaking little film, one I wish more people could see.
#32. I, Tonya
My favorite sports movie of the decade. Goodfellas for a new age.
#31. Eighth Grade
Middle school is the absolute worst, and comedian Bo Burnham's directorial debut Eighth Grade knows it. The only thing worse than being a middle schooler, is being a middle school girl. And the only thing worse than being a middle school girl, is being one right now. Eighth Grade is an empathetic piece of storytelling that takes the trials and tribulations of its protagonist seriously, because Kayla's problems are incredibly serious to her. It's very funny and very sad and very likely to give you second-hand cringe. Also, it culminates in a scene of intense social anxiety at an eighth grade pool party, which is literally the memory that most epitomizes my own eighth grade experience.
#30. Under the Skin
This is less a film and more of a deeply unsettling nightmare. Anchored by incredibly cinematography, a mesmerizing and uncomfortable score, and a terrifying performance by Scarlett Johansson, Under the Skin is an instant horror classic. Some of the visuals in this film have already become hugely influential, such as the all-black void the protagonist brings her victims into it (mimicked in Get Out and Stranger Things), or the chilling and protracted scene of a baby crying on a rocky beach, alone, while the score hammers on with an alien darkness. This is probably the most abstract and "art house" of the films on this list, but it's a surreal trip that's worth going on.
#29. The Death of Stalin
One of the funniest films of the decade. A brilliant satire that's less about Soviet Russia and more about the lengths powerful men will go to in order to ingratiate themselves to authoritarians and to backstab anyone who gets in their way, all while wearing terrible suits and being generally pathetic. No idea how that could be relevant in the 2010s. Nope, nothing's coming to me.
#28. Django Unchained
To be honest, it's been a long time since I saw this film back in 2012. But - and I often feel like this is something of a character flaw - I love Quentin Tarantino's films, and I remember really loving this one. Tarantino is a master of dialogue, of bursts of violence that dance between gruesome and gleeful, of telling roaring stories of vengeance that play around in genre spaces with the knowledge and love of a true fan, and Django Unchained has all of Tarantino's strengths in spades.
#27. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
This is the best comic book of all time. It's a stunning achievement in animation, a film bursting with color and action and energy that looks leagues more interesting that everything else in animated films this decade. In a time where gorgeous hand-drawn art has been replaced by photorealistic CGI or samey 3D modeling, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a gut-punch of fresh air. But it's not all visual: it's one of the best incarnations of Spider-Man in years, because it knows what makes this hero so beloved. He's someone in over his head, someone who wants to do the right thing but isn't some larger than life hero like most of his super-powered peers. He's...he's your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, and SM: ItSV never forgets that, even as it's journeying through multiple timelines and a baker's dozen of Spider-Men.
#26. Call Me By Your Name
A slow-burn romance in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I dare you to watch this and not want to spend a summer biking aimlessly through Italy. I also dare you to find a film with an ending credits scene that leaves you more in tears.
#25. The Farewell
What is the responsibility of a family when one of them is dying? To help them prepare for the end, to say farewells and get their affairs in order? Or to bear the burden of death for them, letting them carry without knowing? This is a deeply sad and often funny exploration of two conflicting cultural views, embodying in a protagonist who feels caught in between, uncertain if there even is a right answer.
#24. The Irishman
Has Martin Scorcese made a better film than The Irishman? Maybe, but this is the one that will last as his own exploration of his legacy. It's everything he does best distilled into one 3.5 hour epic: perfect visual storytelling, great knotty dialogue, excellent performances by his usual team of Robert de Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino, and an examination of the hollowness of a life spent seeking glory and power. It chronicles the rot and corruption at the heart of every American institution, all while also delivering a chilling portrait of the specter of old age and death. If you're not interested in Scorcese's particular flavor of film, The Irishman won't change your mind, but this is a great film that hooks you in despite the run-time.
#23. Carol
Like Call Me By Your Name earlier, Carol is a beautifully shot, slow-burn queer romance, with its protagonists dancing around each other, forced to wrestle their feelings into small forms; quick glances, short sentences, a touch on the shoulder. What really stands out, beyond Cate Blanchett's performance as the eponymous Carol, is the way the cinematography and score force you into a state of wistfulness, of looking out through the foggy window at the Christmas lights blinking in the cold. Of longing for something you can't quite place, and that you wouldn't really know what to do with if you figured it out.
#22. The Lobster
I've never seen a film in the theater where more people walked out halfway through. I mean that as a tremendous compliment. The Lobster exists in a surreal dystopia at the edge of our own reality, where every adult that isn't in a romantic relationship is rounded up, put in a hotel, and forced to find a partner in a month or be turned into an animal. The performances are intentionally stilted, like everyone is being forced to recite the lines of dating at gunpoint, and the humor is pitch black. I loved it, and my friend and I were cackling in our seats even as others grumbled and strolled out. It's not for the faint of heart, but I found its mixture of deep cynicism with a glimmer of true romance absolutely compelling.
#21. The Hateful Eight
There's nothing quite like a locked-room mystery. In this dark and bleak Western, eight violent outlaws and killers find themselves trapped in a cabin in a blizzard. Hatred and racism and misogyny and the fresh anger of a post-Civil War world combine in a nihilistic mix that's as unpleasant as it is engrossing. Seeing this beautifully shot film in 70mm with an intermission was one of my favorite film experiences of the decade. Like all Tarantino films, there's a lot to unpack here, and a lot of fair criticisms to be made. But I can't stop being compelled by most of his work, The Hateful Eight among them.
#20. Knives Out
I dare you to find a movie that's more fun than this one. An incredible cast tied up in a great whodunit that both breaks the rules of the genre and serves up a delicious example of it. Rian Johnson delivers another masterpiece - there's a reason this guy is one of my favorite directors. He understands so well how genres work, how to pull them apart, and how to rebuild them into something better and more fascinating to both fans and newcomers.
#19. Little Women
Greta Gerwig is on fire, and I for one will follow her career wherever she goes. No one working today has her ear for dialogue, even taking into account a film that's an adaptation of a previously written work. It's hard to pinpoint what's so great about her version of Little Women other than...well, everything that makes a film good. It's beautifully shot (check), wonderfully acted, especially by one of my favorites, Saoirse Ronan (check), brilliantly paced (check), and it's a faithful adaptation (check) that manages to wring new relevant truths out a story over a century old (check). Even when it makes it's big change from the novel, it somehow gives the author the story she might have preferred to write, even if it's long after she's gone. Along with The Irishman, these were the last two films I watched before I started writing this list, and so it may have been buoyed by recency bias. But I left the theater just in continued awe at how good Greta Gerwig's films are, and how good this one made me feel.
#18. Before Midnight
In 1995, director Richard Linklater released Before Sunrise, a film about two young strangers meeting in Vienna and falling in love over a long night of talking, wandering through city streets, and asking each other deep questions. In 2004, nine years later in both real life and the universe of the film, the lovers reunited with Before Sunset, which evolved the first film's focus on the rush of falling in love with a more mature take on taking real risks for love (and changed the setting to Paris). And then, nine years later, in 2013, we were gifted Before Midnight, a poetic and brutally honest look at what love can bring eighteen years into a relationship (in the beautiful Italian countryside). It's bracing and poignant and emotional, and I sincerely hope that Linklater never stops making these films, charting all the various stages and kinds of romantic love. Here's hoping for 2022!
#17. Gone Girl
A pulpy mystery-thriller shot through with a cold, mesmerizing eye. It delights in changing your allegiances constantly until you're not sure who to root for, or if anyone here is even worth rooting for. Does Gone Girl have a lot to say about gender and marriage and relationships, or is too messy and incoherent to have deep themes? I have no idea, but I'm pulled into its grip every time I watch it. A perfectly constructed mystery.
#16. Hereditary
This is my favorite horror film I've ever seen. I never want to watch it again. There is an image in this film that I will never be able to un-see. The horror of it was not rooted in the supernatural or the occult - though both play prominent roles in the film - but in something that could actually happen. I don't have the words for the real sense of soul-sickening despair that this film feeds on. It's not something I want to subject myself to again, but...what else has affected me like that? What else has managed to be that horrifying while also being so well-made, with actually complex and interesting characters and the real-world tragedies of loss and guilt and grief? That's why it's here on this list. Because nothing has ever made me feel like that.
#15. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I have a theory. When we return to the beloved stories of our childhood - either to re-experience them or when new stories in the same worlds are created - most people want one of two things. The first group wants this new experience to recapture what it felt like to encounter the original as a child. The second group wants to re-examine the beloved story, poke holes in, see what it's like to examine it through the eyes of an adult. There are gaps in every story, roads not traveled, ideas not explored, and being a fan means being able to look critically at the stories you love, see them twisted into strange new patterns, all while still appreciating how you felt or still feel about the original. I'm definitely in the latter camp - I love The Last Jedi's boldness, how it critically casts its eye towards the past films and the fandom itself, all the while holding a deep love for the mythos and iconography of Star Wars. I vehemently disliked The Rise of Skywalker for doing its best to erase this film from the canon, and I don't have much hope of something this good making it through the corporate Disney machine again. But I'll always have it. This got made. The best Star Wars film since Episode V.
#14. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
I remember watching Edgar Wright's funniest film, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, for the first time in theaters with my brother back in 2010. I don't think I've laughed so much in a theater since. There's a still-unbroken rule that video game movies are terrible, but SPvTW channels the fun of comic books and video games into the medium of film better than any other movie had done before. Edgar Wright is a master of using quick cuts and editing to tell jokes, to keep you pulled along in a fast-paced montage of images and dialogue, all calculated to make the comedy land in just the right way. I think the world - or at least my corner of it - is tired of stories about awkward nerd guys bumbling their way into relationships with beautiful women - and any of those critiques of SPvTW are entirely fair. But I still think it's a hilarious movie and one of those comedies that's entered my personal canon of favorites, films I'll still be quoting years from now.
#13. Moonlight
Moonlight's already won awards, from best of the year to even best of the decade. It doesn't need my praise, but I'll still give it. This is a quiet, intimate character piece with moments I still can't get out of my head. It's beautiful, and deserves it's already substantial legacy. It's also the only film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture that I believed deserved the title, for what that's worth. An instant classic.
#12. Sorry to Bother You
My favorite films are the ones that manage to defy all my expectations, even when I go into them expecting something weird. Sorry to Bother You is nuts, and even when it threatens to careen off the rails, it sticks the landing.The most explicitly political and urgently necessary film of the decade, at least among my favorites. It's also absolutely wild and weird and colorful and hilarious. How did something this overtly leftist and powerful and anti-capitalist make it through the corporate machine to even become a movie? I don't know, but I'm so glad it did. Along with Get Out, this is the film of the 2010s; and something's telling me it'll be all the more relevant in the 2020s.
#11. First Reformed
After seeing First Reformed in the theater, I sat in my car, alone in a nearly empty parking lot at night, just thinking. And I don't think I've really stopped thinking about the issues it raises, how no story I've ever experienced has so dramatically and powerfully showcased the apocalyptic dread of climate anxiety. How do you manage to deal with the regular feelings of grief and depression and sorrow when the world is literally ending around you? Is anything that could stop some small bit of the coming catastrophe worth it? Is choosing to bring children into this world knowing what they'll face as they grow up on a burning planet an evil act? Will God forgive us for what we've done to Earth? I don't have the answers. First Reformed doesn't either. But it asks the question, and in doing so, says "I feel the same as you." That's what the best fiction is for.
#10. Her
Once I was a melancholy teenager who pined for some grand romance and felt broken by a world that didn't seem ready to give me one, and I often connected with the "sad-sack quiet lonely guy falls in love with an exciting manic pixie dream girl" kind of stories. Some of these still hold up as excellent movies and deconstructions of the trope - like 2004's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - but the 2010s have let this sub-genre's real criticisms come to light, at least to me. I'm a much happier person in the years since I saw this film back in 2013, and less likely to connect with those kind of stories. But Her floored me when I first watched it, and I think it would still hold up. It's far more complex than that kind of sub-genre would suggest, and it plays its "man falls in love with iPhone AI" story completely straight. And above all else, the film is beautiful, both thematically and visually. It's a future that seems just on the horizon, with a lush, warm color palette and a moving score. Few films are instant 5 stars ones for me, but for the person I was when I saw this, it deserves to stay there as one of my favorite films of the decade.
#9. Moonrise Kingdom
I can't watch this film without a big, stupid grin on my face. It's a love letter to the self-seriousness, awkwardness, and tragic incompetence of youth, told with heart, beautiful cinematography, a lot of laughs, a lot of scouts, and Edward Norton. Watching this at my parents' house with my brother remains one of my favorite movie-going experiences of the decade; we were both in the film's spell, laughing and crying in equal measure. It's one of Wes Anderson's best films, and clearly one of the decade's best as well.
#8. The Favourite
Wow. What even is The Favourite? On the surface it's a historical drama about the Queen of England and the two women competing for the power and prestige of being her close companion. All three of the main characters are vividly portrayed and deserve awards and recognition for their performances, but a great twisting dark story isn't The Favourite's only strength. A skewed fisheye lens, partnered with a menacing score, a devilishly dark sense of comedy, and a grinning sense of historical inaccuracy make this weird, fun, hilarious, sexy, and horrific movie into something truly unique and incredible. I loved it on my first watch, and then had to keep moving it up and up in my personal rankings, as I realized how much it stayed with me, how much I wanted to go immediately and see it again. I still do, right now. Also, Rachel Weisz in her shooting outfit is worth the price of admission.
#7. A Separation
Many of my favorite films of the decade are intimate indie films that probably exist in a similar space as really good theater (I'd know if I managed to see more theater!). They don't do anything flashy with filming techniques, and keep the story grounded on realistic, interesting characters and the conversations and confrontations between them. The best example of this is 2011's A Separation, an Iranian film about a divorce. It's magnetic and harrowing, and I found myself completely wrapped up in the drama of these two families. Few directors know how to capture this kinetic energy better than Asghar Farhadi, and A Separation towers above the rest as his best film.
#6. Annihilation
Jeff VanderMeer - author of the novel Annihilation, upon which this film was loosely based - is one of my favorite storytellers. His novels are obsessed with the blurring of the lines between the things society holds up as separate entities, and none more so than human and nature. Director Alex Garland re-imagines the story of the novel almost as if he heard the plot in a dream, taking the story of a group of women hired by a mysterious agency to investigate an encroaching anomalous area on the Florida Coast and keeping it faithful in spirit, if not in plot. To explore the mysterious Area X is to lose sense of yourself as a coherent thing, and to embrace influence and symbiosis in all its beautiful and horrifying forms. Annihilation is a science fiction classic, one that succeeds on the merit of its imagery, it's complex shifting themes, one truly horrifying bear, and a haunting score. It's not a faithful clone of the original, but rather something...else...entirely. A mutation. An evolution. Somehow that makes it all the more faithful.
#5. The Handmaiden
Go into The Handmaiden knowing as little as possible about it. Okay, well, prepare for something weird. Don't watch it with kids around. Like a lot of the films high in this list, The Handmaiden is an impeccibly crafted, beautiful-shot, jaw-dropping thriller that changes genres and tones and plots like a runaway train leaping into different tracks entirely. It's...a lot. I wish I could go and see it again for the first time, just to get caught up in it's web all over again.
#4. Parasite
Parasite's director Bong-Joon Ho, when asked his thoughts on the surprising success of his film throughout the world, answered that although the film deal specifically with contemporary life in Korea, it's ideas were universal, because "We all live in the same country now: that of capitalism." In a decade that saw the continued rise of mega-corporations, the advance of right-wing ideologies across the world's democracies, the gutting of organized labor, the early death-knells of a coming ecological collapse, and an expansion of the vast gulf between the uber-rich and everyone else, Parasite is a quintessential expression of the brewing anger of everyone exploited by the system. It's all the more striking for a message like this to come from film, a medium that remains gatekept by wealth more than most others.
But all this to say, Parasite succeeds even if you ignore its greater thematic messages. It's a perfectly constructed and frequently hilarious thriller that's always bizarre and unpredictable. The performances of the entire family are top-notch, and every single character - even the "villains" - are portrayed realistically and with the nuances and complexities of real people.
Parasite offers no easy answers, or even the hints at revolutionary possibilities as seen in Sorry to Bother You. In the film's view, we're all caught up in this system, both those at the bottom and the top and in the increasingly smaller section in between, and that whatever's coming next likely won't be good for anyone. But the steam has to come boiling out at some point, and that point is fast approaching.
#3. Lady Bird
Lady Bird is perfectly paced. Every scene gives us characterization and plot and emotion for just the amount of time we need it, and then it barrels along to the next scene. When it needs to montage, it gives us an excellent montage. When it needs to slow down for a quiet character moment, we get an excellent quiet character moment. It pulls you along, beat by beat, through the senior year of Lady Bird, a teenage girl growing up in New England in the early aughts. I was a bit younger than director Greta Girweg, but I can relate to enough of the experiences either directly (I too grew up in the aughts and went to a Catholic high school) or through the vivid diary entries of my girlfriend, who read them and recorded them as a podcast. It's funny, sad, and gives us the best new teen character in film, one who manages to be sympathetic and relatable and annoying and flawed all at the same time. I love this movie, and I can't keep a stupid grin off my face whenever I think about it.
#2. Mad Max: Fury Road
Mad Max: Fury Road is the greatest action movie ever made. There, I said it. Most action movies give us a boring, cliched plot, and then run us through boring, incoherent action scenes with shaky cameras and bland enemy mooks. Most of them bore me to tears. Give me characters and drama or give me death! Action movies should keep the plot simple yet compelling, give us clear action scenes where we can tell who and what is happening where, and just give us an exhilarating wild ride that only stops enough for us to catch our breath and understand the characters.
Max Max: Fury Road does this and more. It gives us a colorful pulpy post-apocalyptic setting with incredible vistas, perfect editing, a blindfolded flaming guitar-player strapped to a big rig named The Doof Warrior, the best new action heroine in film, and...and...did we need anything more after The Doof Warrior? God, this movie is so much fun. This had no reason being this good. Hollywood gave us so much terrible crap this year, but it might have all been worth it for this glorious, fuel-soaked piece of cinematic adrenaline.
#1. The Grand Budapest Hotel
And here we come to my favorite film of the decade, Wes Anderson's 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel. I liked it on my first watch. On my second, it climbed to be my favorite film of 2014. And on my third, I soared to the heights of my favorite of the decade. So why does this deeply idiosyncratic and weird movie earn so much of my love? I could talk about the incredible set design, how Anderson crafts a storybook world that feels accurate to a kind of oldtown European city that doesn't exist, how everyone and everything in this movie is bursting with color and is perfectly, artfully arranged in every shot. I could talk about the film's perfect mix of whismy, nostalgia, zany action, comedy, and tragedy. I could talk about Ralph Fiennes' performance as M. Gustave, the world's greatest hotel concierge, or newcomer Tony Revolori's young hopeful Zero, or the grinning devil of an assassin played by Willem Dafoe. I could talk about the nesting-doll structure of the film's story, which reveals a tale about change, about how everything fades eventually and brings forth the new, how regret and nostalgia and fond remembrance color all memories eventually.
But when it comes down it, I think I love the Grand Budapest Hotel so much because it's just a weird confluence of my favorite tropes and motifs. I don't have the same tastes and preferences as auteur director Wes Anderson, but yet this film, perhaps his most personal, also feels the most personally calibrated film for me. In my own stories and writings, I find myself drawn back again and again to issues of memory, nostalgia, and grief; to worlds influenced by the cobblestone streets of European cities; to the aesthetics and influences of the inter-war period between WWI and WII; to stories that find a place for tragedy and comedy and action and quiet reflection and never feel too confused because of it; and, well, trains.
The Grand Budapest Hotel may not be the most representative of the decade as a whole, but for me, there's no film in this big list of 100 that I'd want to rewatch again this moment, that has influenced my own storytelling, and that leaves me as thrilled with the possibilities and the future of cinema.
Thanks for taking this journey with me, and I hope something here strikes your interest and makes you go see a new, great film you hadn't checked out before. Let me know in the comments about your own favorites of the decade, and if there are others you'd suggest I check out!
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