Luke's Top 100 Films of the '10s

THE STATE OF THE BLOG

2010 saw me write 129 blog posts. In 2019, I only published 7. 

There's a reason for this. 

In 2012, I decided to get into reading. I was never a big reader growing up and being assigned a book only elicited an audible groan from me in school. When my friend got me a warehouse job, I eventually ended up bringing a book to read during lunch break. With the way I am, a challenge to tackle a behemoth right off the bat seemed a plausible way to hit ground running and not look back. That behemoth was Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. On April 27 of that year, I published a post about this task. That same year I read Stephen King's The Stand and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. 

This obsession didn't fully catch on until around 2014. The impact it had on my time was significant. As anyone knows, the amount of hours put into a book is far more substantial than the 2 hour movie. My dedication to running a blog on film started to weaken. I would post content but the time between posts would become greater and greater. Until I only posted around once a month. Sometimes a month would go by without anything. 

If you look at the number of posts for each year you see this gradual decline. 

2010- 129

2011- 106

2012- 49

2013-16

2014- 73

2015- 43

2016- 9  (24 books)

2017- 8  (48 books)

2018- 9 (73 books)

2019- 7 (38 books)

There was a pull inside of me that wasn't really there before. The pull to disconnect from movies and television in general. I would experiment by deactivating my Facebook profile for a month. The result was tangible. 

I got my hands on a book called The Shallows by Nicolas Carr. This quote hit me:

 "What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I'm online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski." 

Am I damaging my attention span by being online? Nicolas Carr thinks so. And the experiments of deactivating facebook only prove his point: I was way more productive during that time of Internet inactivity. 

To poke a hole in Carr's thesis, had it not been for the Internet, I wouldn't have met several people I now call friends. Moderation is an essential component to something as addicting as social media. Some people are just more disciplined than me. 

When 2020 rolled around the problem with the inactivity of the blog sort of solved itself. Two ex bloggers signed on to publish on this blog: Aaron Dawson and Jacob Spickelmire. By now you have seen their posts.

It's a new year. Going forward, I hope to see this blog reach new heights. 

THE DECADE

I started out the decade testing my boundaries. Seeing how far my limitations could go with 'extreme cinema'. I delved deeper into stuff I liked before- Italian horror, Miike- as well as discovering Jodorowsky.  I would get into Japanese cinema in 2011 and on and on and so forth. My time spent exploring the past was exponentially bigger than anything I was watching in the theater. This is a major reason why I don't envy film bloggers who have to review every new movie that comes out. 

As far as reading into the trends, the patterns went something like this:

What I was seeing in the horror genre was a shift away from the likes of The Descent and 28 Days Later from the 2000s and moving into more arthouse. The filmmakers were name dropping Bergman in interviews instead of the usual names like Romero and Carpenter. Many of these productions were A24. Stephen King adaptations hadn't seen this big a resurgance since the 90's. As far as franchises go, James Wan took a second swing and connected with The Conjuring and it's whole universe spinning off of it. 

Superhero movies exhausted the marketplace. It would take a wringing out of the blockbuster soaked towel to only have a few ones that took on the genre in an interesting way: Logan, Guardians of the Galaxy 1 & 2, Shazam. I don't blame anyone for dismissing the genre.

THE LIST

This list will never stop changing. That is the thought for any list I have ever had. And should be the thought for any list you ever had. It's particularly difficult in ranking. How the hell do you go about ranking when your tastes are constantly evolving? 

When creating the list I had to be honest with myself. Am I keeping this movie in for it's critical importance or personal importance? End of the decade lists often have the same handful of movies toward the top. The 2010s had The Social Network, Mad Max Fury Road, Tree of Life, The Master, Whiplash, and Holy Motors. Having seen each of those, the two that stuck the most with me are The Master and Whiplash. What is frustrating is seeing the movies described as the next Venus de Milo. The reviews are not capturing what makes them special to the reviewer. The Tree of Life is "simply a masterpiece that transcends space and time." 

The Tree of Life is a movie I watched, loved and by 2012 had forgotten. 2001: A Space Odyssey was in my top three at the time. So the craving for a "visual experience like any other" was high for me. The trailers for ToL ticked my boxes for what I was looking for in a film at the time. When I came out of the screening I gave it an A+. Looking back on the experience, what I was actually doing was tracing an A+ already put there before the movie even started. I needed this movie to be great. 

So what went wrong? Was it the anticipation being so great that no matter what the quality, I had to like it? Was it because it rode a wave of critical consensus that marked it as a masterpiece before the projector even fired up? Was it the the aftermath of a critical consensus that sought to shame anyone who objected to it being a masterpiece as not knowing what 'real cinema' was? How about all three!

In hindsight, this putting of the cart before the horse helped me look back on the decade as a whole with fresh eyes. 

Social Network started out as an A-/B+ and fell lower since the first screening. Mad Max was fun but had nowhere near the impact. And Holy Motors is a flavor that doesn't sit well in my mouth. Boyhood started out in the top ten when I first saw it. Now it's dropped out of the top 50. Carol wasn't apart of the top 50 until recently. There's films that jump in and out of the top 50: Bridge of Spies, Birdman, Only Lovers Left Alive, Contagion, Interstellar. 

But enough of my boring rambling, let's get to what you really came here for: 

100. Annihilation (2018, Alex Garland)

99. Leviathan (2014, Andrey Zygintsev)

98. Prometheus (2012, Ridley Scott)

97. It Follows (2014, David Robert Mitchell)

96. Mud (2013, Jeff Nichols)

95. Good Time (2017, Josh and Benny Safdie)

94. The Revenant (2015, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)

93. Embrace of the Serpent (2015, Ciro Guerra)

92. Looper (2012, Rian Johnson)

91. Hail, Caesar! (2016, Joel and Ethan Coen)

90. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014, Wes Anderson)

89. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018, Barry Jenkins)

88. The Invitation (2016, Karyn Kusama)

87. Red State (2011, Kevin Smith)

86. Django Unchained (2012, Quentin Tarantino)

85. Citizenfour (2014, Laura Poitras)

84. The Lobster (2015, Yorgos Lanthimos)

83. Lords of Salem (2013, Rob Zombie)

82. Brawl In Cell Block 99 (2017, S. Craig Zahler)

81. Logan (2017, James Mangold)

80. Anomalisa (2015, Charlie Kaufmann)

79. Gerald's Game (2017, Mike Flanagan)

78. Blue Ruin (2013, Jeremy Saulnier)

77. Melancholia (2011, Lars Von Trier)

76. Before Midnight (2013, Richard Linklater)

75. The Irishman (2019, Martin Scorsese)

74. First Man (2018, Damien Chazelle)

73. Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012, John Hyams)

72. The Counselor (2013, Ridley Scott)

71. What We Do In the Shadows (2014, Taiki Watiti and Jermaine Clement)

70. The Babadook (2014, Jennifer Kent)

69. Upstream Color (2013, Shane Carruth)

68. I Saw the Devil (2010, Kim Je-woon)

67. Boyhood (2014, Richard Linklater)

66. Paradise Lost: Purgatory (2011, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky)

65. The Nice Guys (2016, Shane Black)

64. The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015, Osgood Perkins)

63. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (2016, The Lonely Island)

62. 20th Century Women (2016, Mike Mills)

61. Split (2016, M. Night Shyamalan)

60. Phantom Thread (2017, Paul Thomas Anderson)

59. Only Lovers Left Alive (2014, Jim Jarmusch)

58. Four Lions (2010, Chris Morris)

57. Wind River (2017, Taylor Sheridan)

56. Bridge of Spies (2015, Steven Spielberg)

55. Birdman (2014, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu)

54. Toy Story 3 (2010, Lee Unkrich)

53. Midsommar (2019, Ari Aster) (Director's Cut)

52. Contagion (2011, Steven Soderbergh)

51. Interstellar (2014, Christopher Nolan)

THE TOP 50

50. The Nightmare (2015, Rodney Ascher)

The documentaries of Rodney Ascher are frustratingly absent from the conversation of "good documentary filmmakers." There's the Maysles, Morris, Moore, but Ascher is always missing. The Nightmare manages to be as blood curdling as any narrative feature. 

49. Sicario (2015, Denis Villeneuve)

For my money, Don Winslow's Power of the Dog and The Cartel are the best depictions of the narcotics trade between US and Mexico and the violence it entails. For now, Sicario will be the closest visual representation of it. Taylor Sheridan shows he is not afraid to break the rules of screenwriting and shift perspectives in the third act. Add a propulsive Johan Johansson score and Villeneuve's masterful direction and you got another winner in his filmography.

48. The Witch (2016, Robert Eggers)

Folklore is something that I've been in tune with and has become a major component to some of my favorite horror films. By obsessing over every detail, Eggers manages to transport into this world every time I watch it. 

47. Bone Tomahawk (2015, S. Craig Zahler)

There's something deceptively simple about this. If it were just a horror western, then it would be easy to dismiss. But it isn't the dialogue is from a gifted scribe who started out as a novelist. Then there's the economy of story. All of the story is deliberate and adds momentum to the narrative. The real grace here is the characters. They are so sharply drawn that we become invested in their plight. 

46. Elle (2016, Paul Verhoeven)

Daring, transgressive cinema is rare nowadays. Hupert's character is a distinctly flawed, distinctly human that we get to see make bad decisions along the way. It's something so rarely see in film lately. 

45. Killer Joe (2012, William Friedkin)

The teaming up of Friedkin and Tracy Letts produced two of his stronger works late in his career: Bug and this. McCoughnahey's Rust Cohle is a hard performance to top, but his performance here takes 2nd place. The movie also makes a point to say: remember Gina Gershon? 

44. Incendies (2010, Denis Villeneuve)

1+1=1

I haven't been affected by a plot twist like this one since OldBoy. Haunting is used to describe far too many films these days but this film truly lives up to the title. 

43. Manchester By the Sea (2016, Kenneth Lonergan)

Few films portray grief this realistically. 

42. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011, David Fincher)

If it's Fincher doing crime, it is well worth your time. The investigative hunt is something that he is born to film. Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander makes for a fascinating huntress. 

41. The Handmaiden (2016, Park Chan-Wok)

What happens when men underestimate the validity of lesbians. 

40. Blue Is the Warmest Color (2013, Abdatellif Kechiche)

Kechice's film was and still is overshadowed by it's explicit sex scenes. That's too bad because Blue is as raw and honest a coming of age story out there.

39. Foxcatcher (2014, Bennett Miller)

Cold steely winds. Wrestling. Horses. Ornathologist. Philatelist. Philanthropist. There's darker stories than this one, but the tone Miller captures here continues to make me squirm in my seat whenever I watch it. 

38. A Touch of Sin (2013, Jia Zhangke)

Chinese film distribution companies delayed this film because authorities thought it would cause social unrest. Genre trappings are explored through the lense or socialist underpinnings. Characters pushed into volatile circumstances. My first time watching a Zhangke film and it won't be my last. 

37. Margaret (2011, Kenneth Lonergan) (Extended Cut)

Watching a character's single action haunt her emotionally for the duration of the run time only makes the catharsis at the end seem that much more impactful. 

                                             

36. End of the Tour (2015, James Pondsoldt)

Wallace's Infinite Jest cracked me open and got me into reading for pleasure. It made me obssess and pour over every interview Wallace made. What is so fascinating about End of the Tour is that it takes a specific interview with David Lipsky and manages to make it feel more like a "life of DFW" more than any biopic could have. 

35. Burning (2018, Lee Chang-dong)

The gift that keeps on giving. This film continues to offer up new mysteries and layers with each viewing. 

34. Magic Mike XXL (2015, Gregory Jacobs)

The seminal hangout film of the decade. It also acts as a go-to movie when I'm feeling down. 

33. Bad Black (2016, Nabwana I.G.G.)

For $100, Ugandan filmmaker Nabwana I.G.G. and Wakaliwood Studios crafted a film more earnest, more sincere and more riveting than anything Marvel released in a decade with their bloated production budgets. Films with extremely low production values tend to get laughed at or enjoyed ironically. What separates this movie from those, besides being produced in a Third World country, is that everyone involved is 100% committed. The context of it being made is an impressive feat in and of itself. They all want to make the most kickass action movie ever made. 

You have no excuse to not make your movie. 

32. The Nightingale (2019, Jennifer Kent)

Jennifer Kent's Babadook contained images I'll never forget. So it should come as no surprise that the nightmarish imagery here is every bit earned. Films rarely leave bruises on the psyche when someone watches them. Or maybe I'm just too desensitized. There's a scene here that does just that. 

31. Under the Skin (2013, Jonathan Glazer)

A hypnotic, submersive film where each element plays off one other: the performance by Scarlett, the Mica Levi score, the deliberate pacing, the visuals. 

30. Get Out (2017, Jordan Peele)

If I were to make a list of the top 5 scripts of the decade, Get Out easily makes it. It's not just the pacing of thriller curdling into outright horror. It's perfectly modulated to perform three things at once: to move the plot along, to turn horror tropes on their head and to create a social commentary.

29. Carol (2015, Todd Haynes)

There's that moment in the film where a simple glance across a dining table makes small ripples through time. An accumulation of everything that came before it. 

28. The Last Black Man In San Francisco (2019, Joe Talbot)

A love letter to the people of San Francisco. A hate letter to gentrification. 

27. Enemy (2014, Denis Villeneuve)

The sickly, yellow hues of this riff on identity get punctuated by pure nightmare fuel. 

26. Moonlight (2016, Barry Jenkins)

Saw this in a theater with Jenkins, Steve McQueen and Bubbles from the Wire (Andre Royo) in attendance. The experience was just as emotionally resonating as watching it in a room by myself. 

25. Parasite (2019, Bong Joon-ho)

One of the best films on class since Kurosawa's High and Low. Given that Joon-ho's entire filmography has focused on class struggle, one could say this is the film he's been building toward.

24. Suspiria (2018, Luca Guadagnino)
Change the name of this movie and you will have more people showering praise upon it. A complete reworking of the original in tone, story and in this case historical context. If the original is a fairy tale, this is a parable.

23. Doctor Sleep (2019, Mike Flanagan) (Director's Cut)

A man takes a drink, then drinks the drink, then the drink takes a man. Flanagan uses both the Kubrick film and King's book as a springboard for the telling of King's follow up to that book. 

Flanagan has become one of my favorite horror directors as of late. Here's a convo between him and Mick Garris (the director of the made for TV version of The Shining that everyone forgot existed.)

22. The Hunt (2012, Thomas Vinterberg)
Watch a lie completely undo a man's life and social standing for nearly 2 hours. It's a devastating role that Mads Mikkelsen pulls off brilliantly. The group mentality and mass hysteria depicted in this movie is as terrifying as any horror movie.

21. O.J. Made In America (2016, Ezra Edelman)
I'm a true crime fiend. No other true crime doc satiated my appetite like Ezra Edelman's treatise on race, class, police brutality and fame. An impressive feat of journalism and longform storytelling. 

20. You Were Never Really Here (2018, Lynn Ramsay)

PTSD has been depicted in film before. With Lynn Ramsay's lyrical images, it takes on an ethereal quality that I haven't seen before. 

19. Whiplash (2014, Damien Chazelle)

If I ever wished to take up an instrument it would be the drums. Neil Peart, Mike Portnoy, Bill Bruford are all heroes of mine. Chazelle manages to capture that ferocity of achieving and maintaining perfectionism. 

18. Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011, Sean Durkin)
This movie wisely never lets you off the hook. Is she just making this cult stuff up? Nope. Is the cult going to come after her? There is no release of tension where we feel safe. A film I wish I made. 

17. The House That Jack Built (2018, Lars Von Trier) (Director's Cut)

If Von Trier never did anything after this, it would be a fitting swan song. The director's films are determined to resist categorization. By eliminating rudimentary techniques of cinema, the artist can achieve a kind of freedom. This has been the heart of his filmmaking. What his later work since Antichrist has shown is an artist grappling with depression, sex, and in this film, the pretension of art.  

16. Savageland (2017, Phil Guidry, Simon Herbert, David Whelan)

While The Walking Dead has taken almost 10 seasons to do what Day of the Dead accomplished in 90 minutes, the zombie film can be considered dried up. So it came as a pleasant surprise to find a fresh take on the genre with this movie. The scariest zombie film in decades.

15. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013, Joel and Ethan Coen)

A seasonal staple for the month of January. Beyond just being one of the best scripts the Coens have written, it holds sentimental value. It was the first movie I took my girlfriend to. 

14. The Act of Killing (2012, Joshua Oppenheimer)

Herzog once said "I believe that documentary filmmaking- and I'm one of the great advocates- has to move away from pure, fact-based movies, because facts, per se, do not constitute truth. Otherwise the Manhattan phone directory would be the book of booksl four million entries, every single one factually correct. Mr. Jonathan Smith- his address and telephone number can be verified as correct. But whether he has nightmares or whether he cries into his pillow each night, we do not know. And that's where filmmaking has to move. " Oppenheimer takes that advice and pushes it to new boundaries. By having the people who actually perpetrated the crimes act them out for the cameras, we are given profound depths into truths we wouldn't have had otherwise if it was just an average talking heads doc. 

13. Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols)

Michael Shannon is a force ofd nature here. It might be my favorite male performance of the decade. 

12. Dunkirk (2017, Christopher Nolan)
After Elim Klimov's Come and See, the anti-war film almost becomes pointless. What more can you say that hasn't been said? Can you even make a true anti-war film in the US?  

Here, Nolan uses the war film as horror. There is little carnage on display here. Instead the sound, editing and cinematography congeal to create tense atmosphere. The leaflets at the beginning immediately set the tone: "We are watching you!" The enemy is never seen. Only heard.

11. Amour (2012, Michael Haneke)

A study in understatement. There is a quietness here that that allows the dour mood and human tenderness go down gently. 

10. Roma (2018, Alfonso Cuaron)

Mexican history and childhood memory are beautifully interwoven here. 

9. Prisoners (2013, Denis Villeneuve)

My favorite film from this director changes from time to time. Right now, Prisoners is the flavor the gels best. 

8. Dragged Across Concrete (2019) (S. Craig Zahler)
Zahler made two perfect films out of the three features he directed this decade. I lean toward this one. The only director who is making films that feel like they were pulled from the 70's. Well, him and Tarantino. I'd also like to point out the controversy regarding this film. When someone has a distinct political worldview, be they right, left or libertarian, it can often cause them to search for patterns or confirmation of that worldview in the media they consume. When a film's style is based in realism and contains things not considered polite in modern society, it can be seen as a confirmation of someone's "anti-PC" worldview. Thus generating takes from the left like "Vile, Racist film starring Mel Gibson" or "Refreshing Right Wing movie" from the right. Any apparent political overtone is completely irrelevant to the story Zahler is telling. 

7. We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011, Lynn Ramsay)

My first experience with one of my favorite filmmakers. Tilda Swinton's Eva Katchadourian is my favorite female performance of the 10s.

6. Green Room (2016, Jeremy Saulnier)

Only two directors have tapped into the horrific nature of violence: Zahler and Saulnier. Watching this in the theater in 2016 was one of the more tense experiences I had watching a film. It still maintains that tension on the 4th, 5th and even 6th viewing. 

5. Uncut Gems (2019, Josh and Benny Safdie)
Heaven Knows What. Then Good Time. Now This. The Safdies improve on each film. What's so interesting about this one is that it's been in the writing stages for 10 years. So it really has no reason to not blow us away.

4. The Hateful Eight (2015, Quentin Tarantino)
Can I see this one day overtaking Pulp Fiction as my favorite of his? No. That film is a wax museum with a pulse. This film is a haberdashery with a black heart. One pumps nostalgia. The other pumps vitriolic bile. Both represent the best of what the director has to offer.

Note: The extended version of this is even better than the theatrical. 

3. First Reformed (2018, Paul Schrader)
No one has their finger on the pulse of ecological anxiety better than Schrader and his 2018 film. It's the best thing he's done since Mishima.

2. The Master (2012, Paul Thomas Anderson)
The mondo poster for this movie seems more appropriate than the official poster itself. A strange hypnosis comes over me when I watch this. If I were to ask the man himself what the contents of this wonderful potion are he would just as surely say "secrets." You know them. They're the same thing you can sew into the canvas of any coat.

1. The Lighthouse (2019, Robert Eggers)
I have a lot to say about this movie. For now I will say it acts as one of the funniest movies of the last ten years while being a nexus of a handful obsessions over the past decade: B/W films, cosmic horror, isolation narratives. If Murnau were alive and just finished reading the works of Lovecraft, he would make a movie that is something like this.