2010s Best Films of the Decade - #4

"The opening quote of Tom Brokaw's oft-read The Greatest Generation is by FDR: ‘This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.’ The epochs of The Great Depression and WWII led to a deep anti-intellectual conformism, which only cracked during the horrendous foreign policy adventures in Indochina in the late 1960s. What was told, which most of us know to be false, is that the branding of stoic masculinity breeding, and hard work to achieve our own pocket-sized utopias was within arm's length; if we can destroy the Nazis and neuter the Soviets, anything is possible. And unfortunately, in popular culture, this was reinforced, with some exceptions (Ray's Bigger Than Life a clear standout).

“The Master, then, feels like a lost narrative, but one of such familiarity that most who came of age even generations after the so-called ‘Greatest’ will experience déjà vu. This post-WWII world is hyper-sexualized, moralistic but with arguments held together by scotch tape and intoxicated on cheap cult theories, politics and booze. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, in his best performance) slips through the cracks during the Eisenhower years: he can barely contain his nervous rage, constantly running from the jobs he's holding and eventually finding himself in the palm of a contrarian crackpot's hand, Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). It is here that the film's greatest mystery lies: what does Quell find in Dodd, and vice versa, that binds them so tightly? Why is Quell at the mercy of a pseudo-science patriarch and Dodd with such an elusive, anti-authoritarian, feral creature? Wouldn't narrative traditions suggest that there ought to be some kind of compliment here?

“Except that this is a film built on anti-compliments. How else to explain the unusual use of 70mm? The visual palate of the most generous and expansive of formats here is not of long panoramic vistas, but of medium shots and close ups, many times of faces, and often times using an extremely shallow depth of field, smudging foreground action into out of focus, shadowy blotches of color. Jonny Greenwood's score is also in this vein; its cues are, except in a few occasions, placed in transition scenes, unlike the operatic sonic blasts of his work in There Will Be Blood. But mostly, this is, like his masterpiece Punch-Drunk Love, director Paul Thomas Anderson taking an opportunity to complicate genres and filmmaking eras evoked by pitting anti-heroes (Adam Sandler in the Lewis/Tati tradition, Phoenix in the Phil Karlson/Nic Ray tradition) into an revisionist narrative.

“Back to déjà vu, though: The Master is something entirely singular in Anderson's body of work, closer to the revisionist historical cinema of Full Metal Jacket, Zodiac, Doomed Love and The House of Mirth. Which is to say: these histories are able to be experienced as a consciousness. With WWII, drifters are societal anomalies, bellwethers of a failure to suppress something else other than what was acceptable. There's a reason why these films stand out, which may say a lot about the times we live in and the years in which each of the films mentioned were made than the times depicted on screen. The Master, set during a period of ‘forward-thinking’ capitalism, finds its elliptical narrative footing in the self-doubting head of a broken, rugged failure, whose primal, sexual impulses supersede any kind of professional or ideological adult conformism that our culture digests as pamphleteered self-fulfillment." ~ Michael Lieberman (originally posted February 23, 2013)

Note: The Master ranked #3 in the 2012 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #5

"For a long time before The Social Network was released, people just called it ‘The Facebook Movie’ -- even after the inspired trailer (the one that combined footage from the movie with Facebook screenshots and a choir singing Radiohead's ‘Creep’) made it clearer that it dealt with the human stories behind how the social networking site was created.

“I joked that the studio should adopt the approach used in the famous trailer for Stanley Kubrick's Lolita in 1962: ‘How did they ever make a movie of Facebook?’ That turns out to be the title of the ‘making o’" documentary on the extras DVD (the people who made this movie have an exceptionally sharp sense of humor). Since it opened the New York Film Festival in October, it's been described as a ruthless ladder-to-success story, a thwarted romance (with Erica or Eduardo?), a courtroom drama, a fast-moving portrait of a generation and The Way We Live Now -- and ‘a movie about 2.0 people made by 1.0 people’ (that last comment written by a person still in beta, apparently).

“Is it any of those things -- or all of those things? I don't think we know yet. As the movie's Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) says of the newly launched Facebook to his friend and CFO Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield): ‘We don't even know what it is yet. We don't know what it is, what it can be, what it will be.’ That may be the smartest thing Mark says in the movie, and I think it may apply to The Social Network itself -- a deceptively conventional film that races by at such high-bandwidth speeds that even after you've seen it, you may not be sure you know what you've seen. I've seen it only twice (though I've gone over individual scenes in shot-by-shot detail), but I feel like it's been downloaded into my brain and I'm still trying to process it. What I know for sure is that it's exquisitely designed and thrilling to engage with. (John Paylus was absolutely right to compare Fincher's direction with Jonathan Ive's designs of Apple products.)

“Actually, there's a kernel of truth to that ‘1.0 vs. 2.0’ comment: the visual grammar of The Social Network is fairly traditional. Establishing shots, two-shots, reverse angles, limited use of steady dollies and cranes rather than shakycams and extended takes. (Though, as I learned from the DVD supplements, the shot over which the title appears is really several shots stitched together.) The difference is the rapid speed at which they are deployed, and the effortlessness with which the movie delivers multiple streams of information.

“Unlike that other 2010 movie that made such a big deal of explaining arbitrary rules for getting from one level of storytelling to another, The Social Network just does it. And you get it -- without the actors reading you instruction manuals encoded into dialog. It shifts backward, forward, sideways in time and space (with no ‘present tense’ defined), through depositions, memories, e-mails, affidavits... and you may get temporarily/temporally thrown now and again, but it's not hard to follow. Again, unlike the science-fiction movie that preceded it into theaters in 2010, The Social Network is complex without trying to appear complicated. Indeed, its design and direction, the tools of its tale-spinning, are far more sophisticated, but less ostentatious. And more fun. And lead to a better life." ~ Jim Emerson (originally posted March 6, 2011)

Note: The Social Network ranked #1 in the 2010 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #6

"If you ask me, I could write a book about Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis. I say that about each new Coen brothers movie (and, yes, I know Rodgers & Hart’s 1940 ‘I Can Write a Book’ is not a folk song), but in this case I use the phrase to point out that it’s a movie that lends itself to considerable rumination and explication (and appreciation), which is probably easier to do at book-length than in just a few paragraphs. But here goes:

“Inside Llewyn Davis is the only 2013 movie that I’ve watched more than twice. I think it’s been three or four times now. It’s certainly lovely to look at, while appropriately chilly with its moody blacks, blues, browns and greys (thanks, Bruno Delbonnel and Peter Doyle). The music (whether sung — always live — by the title character, Oscar Isaac, or Justin Timberlake or Carey Mulligan) is hauntingly gorgeous and sometimes so unspeakably haunting it raises goosebumps — which is often the case when the Coens work with frequent collaborators Carter Burwell and T Bone Burnett. And though I wouldn’t call it a flat-out comedy (like, say, The Big Lebowski or O Brother Where Art Thou?), it’s occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, especially when John Goodman or F. Murray Abraham are on the screen.

“It’s all very loosely based on The Mayor of MacDougal Street, the posthumously published 2005 memoir by Dave Van Ronk about his days and nights in the early-‘60s Greenwich Village folk revival scene. All of which is to say that Inside Llewyn Davis (title and album cover patterned after the 1962 Prestige LP, Inside Dave Van Ronk) is richly entertaining in multifarious ways.

“It begins with a close-up of a microphone and a long close-up take of Llewyn singing an old folk song, ‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me,’ in a dark club known as the Gaslight Cafe. He’s told someone is waiting for him in the alley out back and a man in a black coat and wide-brimmed fedora punches him out. The movie then dissolves back in time to reveal (in its own good time) how Llewyn came to be punched. So, there’s that — a structural/narrative hook that teases us along through the story. We soon find that we can easily understand why somebody — anybody — would be likely to take a swing this guy. He’s a singer, but not exactly an entertainer — talented as hell, but he doesn’t exactly ‘connect’ with people, from the stage or in his daily life.

“There are so many ways to look at the movie. Watch how Llewyn uses his music as a tool: a weapon, a shield, a challenge, a payment, a bribe, a gift, a meal ticket, a proof of authenticity, an apology... You could see it as a kind of Raging Bull with an acoustic musician instead of a boxer, a man so steeped in pride and self-loathing that his life has become an effort to build a monument to his own iconoclasm and unlovability, cloaked in a form of non-careerist ideological purity.

“And then there’s the cat, an orange tabby we (and Llewyn) belatedly find out is named Ulysses. He takes us on quite an odyssey, leading us back in time, through the Village streets and into the subway, and eventually all the way to Chicago. Who is this cat and what is he doing here? That’s a good excuse for another viewing..." ~ Jim Emerson (originally posted March 9, 2014)

Note: Inside Llewyn Davis ranked #4 in the 2013 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #7

“Moonlight is a gloriously, painfully romantic film set in modern-day Miami, following the early life of Little (Alex R. Hibbert), a black gay kid growing up in the hood. Moonlight may be about as modern as a film can get, yet it's reminiscent of classic Hollywood love stories. Moonlight's days are infused with the hot yellow-white of the sun, at once beautiful and unforgiving, and at night, the deepest black of the sky framing the harsh glow from urban streetlights. Throughout are the bright colors of a fable, tiny splashes of aqua and red and gold, royal colors to remind us of ancient tales of romantic conquest. Thanks to director Barry Jenkins and cinematographer James Laxton, the film boasts the confidence of long takes in everyday locations, lingering stills in a religious Renaissance style, and deliberate use of washed-out color and unsynchronized sound, knowing that these techniques could easily be blamed on the film's low budget, but doing it anyway, fearlessly, the film's construction mirroring the emotional growth of the young boy whose story it tells.

“Little, about 10 years old when the film opens, struggles with poverty, bullies, and a mother falling into drug abuse, while local drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) and fellow student Kevin (Jaden Piner) help him navigate a harsh world, in their way. Kevin kindly offers to help toughen Little up by teaching him how to fight; several years later, Kevin does it again, but not kindly, and not until after he and Little, now known by his given name Chiron, have had a fleeting romantic night together on the beach. The third panel of this cinematic triptych finds a 30-something Chiron, again renamed, this time as Black (Trevante Rhodes), driving his way back to Miami after an unexpected call from Kevin (André Holland).

“Just as in classic Hollywood romances, the characters in Moonlight move like they're in a musical, deliberately and gracefully, as the passage of time speeds up and slows down and the space around them bends and stretches, having broken completely free of the science that explains it, instead being powered by the sheer will of emotion. The old-fashioned romance genre is used in a very modern set of circumstances, where traditional tropes -- coming-of-age, lost love, loneliness -- are recontextualized within non-traditional realities such as homophobia, institutionalized racism, violence and poverty. The big minds at the big studios would surely have passed on such a tale, thinking that its themes would alienate most audiences, when in fact the opposite is true: Moonlight is universal.

“That's not to say the film bypasses cinema's past altogether. The adult Kevin is a cook at a diner, something that can't help but be a nod to the dozens of black actors who spent entire decades-long careers playing nothing but background characters in service positions. How many films came out of Hollywood where the only black character was a diner cook or a porter or a butler, who often didn't even have a word of dialogue? Hollywood for decades, and even to an extent now, has contempt for both the non-white actor and the real-world people in the service industry they play.

“In Moonlight, the adult Kevin, whose job at the diner is more about slinging hash than haute cuisine, is a success story, and that success story is both social commentary and a show of the character's strength. At the same time it acknowledges the scores of underdeveloped characters just like him in films of the past, chiding those films a little, asking how dare they consider this job some little nothing that never mattered. It did matter. It always mattered. And here we see, in terms that cannot be denied, that cooking is care and it is love, and you don't have to be of a certain Hollywood-approved demographic for that to be true.

“On the surface, Moonlight sounds like a social commentary film, and it is to a certain degree, but it's also a fine example of modern independent filmmaking that has been deeply influenced by the classics. It's the kind of film that would have been relegated to a specific genre not that long ago -- LGBT film, or black film, or indie film -- and to an extent, it's a bit of a surprise that it wasn't this year, but if nothing else, we should know by now that with Moonlight, the rules very happily do not apply.”~ Stacia Jones (originally posted March 5, 2017)

Note: Moonlight ranked #3 in the 2016 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #8

"The covert and beguiling Under the Skin rattled me to my core. The film is, first and foremost, image-centric storytelling, with roots in experimental cinema, that distances itself from mankind. Birth to death, human as alien, alien as human. Firmly divided into two parts, routine and the failing quest for basic human pleasures, with the key transitional scene being the Laura’s (nobody has any names, including Laura, but she’s billed as such so it’s just easier for me to follow suit) (Scarlett Johansson) encounter with a man with neurofibromatosis. Before that, she goes about her business, luring and leading men into an abstract and oily black digestive space. There’s no connection between her and her body, her victims, or feelings. But gradually the loneliness starts to sink in, and with it the isolation that humans may experience. She begins to seek out basic human pleasures like eating, sex, and companionship, inquisitive and nervous like a child. She knows she needs something, but is unsure how to go about it.

"When Under the Skin ended, I felt like I’d been scooped out from the inside. It’s one of the saddest and loneliest films I’ve ever seen. Scarlett Johansson is mainly a presence for the first half, removed and captivating. And then in the second half she is heartbreaking; confused, yearning and unfulfilled. The final minutes, in which she is pursued by a man in the musky never-ending forest, is so palpable; you can feel her fear. Predator to prey. The second she desires the human instinct she loses so much agency. She becomes vulnerable and susceptible, her lair further and further away, unable to reconcile that yearning. We sense the irreparable loss of that center, her time dwindling. My boyfriend found something peaceful about the one-with-the-snow ending, but I didn’t. I just can’t; it’s not in my nature.

"The formalism contributes to a new withdrawn perspective of ourselves, as something Other and incomprehensible. The thick Scottish accents further that distance, as does Mica Levi’s slinky and exotic high-pitched string score, and the sound design where much is compressed and blanketed over. Take for instance, as an example of said withdrawn perspective, the way Glazer shoots the scene on the beach, in which attempted rescue causes a chain reaction of familial death, a wailing abandoned baby as sole survivor. Laura, and thus we, take all of it in at once and for what it is (death) with unfeeling coldness. The discrepancy between what is happening, and how we see it, is very disturbing. And then Laura murders a man with a rock, and it’s the opposite of how murder is usually depicted in film. There is no close-up, no sound effect, and no clear view because Laura is crouching with her back to us. The impact of the scene is that there is no impact, and that lack of impact in turn translates to its own unique impact for the audience.

"The film does not pass judgment on Laura. As she observes us, we observe her, and ourselves through her. Another layer to this is gradually added when Laura begins to observe herself, in a successive set of mirror scenes as she considers her new form. This observation becomes out-of-body in the end. No mirror is needed in her last moments.

"Generally, I think more filmmakers and producers need to put their trust in the communicative power of the image (and in viewers), especially since it’s what the medium inherently is to begin with. Under the Skin hypnotically uses impressionistic imagery and Scarlett Johansson’s face as narrative (there is very little dialogue overall) for a final product about existential isolation and irreconcilable cognizance that I still haven’t been able to shake." ~ Catherine Stebbins (previously posted March 8, 2015, edited from an essay posted on May 2, 2014; used by permission of the author)

Note: Under the Skin ranked #2 in the 2014 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #9

“Their eyes meet across a crowded floor, and in an instant everything changes. That's about as cliché as cliché can get, but In Todd Haynes’ mid-century love story, Carol, the story is less about any ‘will they, or won’t they’ dramatic tension, and more a quiet, and persistent damnation of a world which two women are forced to sublimate their true selves beneath the overpowering weight of social expectations.

“The world in which Carol resides could have come straight from a fashion magazine. Interiors are, initially, *perfect* - the woods are warm, the surfaces shiny and unblemished, with a flattering light caressing clothing that always manages to hang just so. It is a vision of America all too familiar to those of a conservative mindset; an 8 x 10 glossy homage to a capitalist perfection that sure looks pretty from a few decades down the road, but only if you willfully choose to ignore the very uncomfortable realities that lay beneath.

“It is within this reality that we find our two heroines. Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara), is a young woman on the cusp of self-discovery, a budding photographer with a disaffected love life. She is working at a department store when she first catches a glimpse of Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett), a vision in furs that moves through the store with an impeccable grace – ‘as swans in the evening move o’er the lake’ – slapping her empty gloves against her hands as if mildly irritated to be gracing the room with her very presence. Therese is instantly smitten, and a delicate dance of seduction begins.

“In these scenes of courtship, Haynes uses the art of cinema to fantastic effect. His camera catches the furtive glances, fleeting touches, and unspoken communication of lovers learning the boundaries of each other. Simultaneously, his camera guides us to the realization that much of these women’s lives are lived under the auspices of a subtle schizophrenia; that their everyday actions are performances for critics who may not have always been in the room, but whose merciless opinions were always deeply feared, and carried the power to destroy. Therese, by virtue of her youth and inexperience, may appear to be less bound by the societal pressures both women are acutely aware of, but nonetheless knows that certain observances must be made. Carol, on the other hand, has been playing her part for so long, that her immersion has become all but absolute. She has nearly lost herself in the role she’s been forced to play, and it is only when circumstances finally hit critical mass that the socially acceptable façade she’s so carefully constructed crumbles into dust.

“It is here that the real Carol, the heart and soul of Carol, emerges. The moment is devastating to behold (and a testament to the Blanchett’s emotional control), a cri de Coeur of epic proportions almost impossible to bear in its emotional nakedness. It is a moment that will have a profound effect on the lives of our heroines, the beginning of an end for a way of life that never actually existed, and the dawn of an era in which the truth walks hand-in-hand with the present.” ~ Donald G. Carder (originally posted March 6, 2016)

Note: Carol ranked #2 in the 2015 Muriel Awards.

2010s Best Films of the Decade - #10

Note: Instead of requesting original pieces for this countdown, I will be re-posting essays that were written for the film’s year of release. All essays are reposted with permission from the authors. That’s how we roll here at the Muriels.

"Perhaps the time for a properly considered assessment of Margaret will come with its upcoming home-video release -— away from its fraught production history, away from the bitter legal issues still surrounding the film, away from Fox Searchlight’s attempts to quietly bury it with an extremely limited token release, away from the #teammargaret cause that sprouted up on Twitter to get more film critics to be able to see it and champion it. Home video may be the only way that the many outside of certain major film cites who have merely heard about Kenneth Lonergan’s sophomore film maudit will finally get to see it for themselves, and perhaps by then the hoopla will have died down enough for the film to be considered on its own terms. Who knows? Maybe, by the time it does get a home-video release, we will all be able to see it in a form closer to Lonergan’s original intentions.

“Even in the unabashedly messy 150-minute theatrical version that inspired all that ink to be spilled for and against it, however, Margaret remains, to these eyes, a considerable achievement: a work of enormous thematic ambition that adds up to more than the sum of its often-impressive parts and is a deeply moving experience besides.

Here is a film that is not content to simply tell a straightforward story of a teenager, Lisa Cohen (Anna Paquin, in a majestic performance), dealing with the traumatic after-effects of witnessing a woman perish right in her arms as the result of a traffic accident she inadvertently helped cause. Lonergan, instead, blows his narrative up into a complex portrait of an adolescent not only coming to grips with this particular death but also with everything in the adult world she has yet to fully grasp. Broadly speaking, Lisa’s angst-filled journey toward some kind of personal redemption touches on matters of ethics, morality, class differences and even art; unavoidably, she comes up against moral gray areas and emotional complexities that can’t help but confound her sheltered upper-class existence and her increasingly spiraling-out-of-control sense of right and wrong. Margaret isn’t just meant to be universal in scope, however; Lonergan, for instance, includes earnest classroom-discussion scenes in which students often heatedly discuss worldly post-9/11 implications, suggesting he wants his tale to be clearly situated in a topical context.

“All of that is enough to fuel two or three films’ worth of drama; that Lonergan tries to cram it all into this one means Margaret sometimes admittedly comes off messy and unwieldy. But, even at its least coherent, Lonergan has genuine insights into human nature to back up his ambitions. Margaret is, in part, about the ways we all see ourselves as the stars of our own personal dramas, to the point that good intentions sometimes can shade dangerously into self-involvement. During the film’s last hour, Lisa gets caught up in the U.S. legal system when she tries to help the accident victim’s best friend, Emily (Jeannie Berlin), sue the MTA for negligence -— but is she doing it out of pure altruism, or is this just a cover for a pained attempt to assuage her own guilty conscience? Lonergan wisely allows both possibilities to hang in the air; his film freely swims in the complexities of character, and the film is all the richer for it.

“What ultimately dazzles about Margaret is an overriding sense of a film borne out of what feels like bitter experience on the part of its maker — a work that feels torn, bleeding, from Lonergan’s heart. And that, among other reasons, is why its ending is as emotionally soaring as it is. Set during a live Metropolitan Opera performance of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta The Tales of Hoffman, it depicts a catharsis for both Lisa and her mother that may not mean anything to the many opera-goers surrounding them but certainly mean the world to them both and to us as well. Even after all that Lisa has gone through in the course of this particularly exhausting period of time, she has the power to respond passionately to even something as seemingly unrelated to her current circumstances as The Tales of Hoffman —- and, considering how much we in the audience have been privy to regarding her emotional struggles, we find ourselves thoroughly understanding the experience that informs her passionate reaction. It’s unavoidable that everyone brings their own personal baggage to the way he/she responds to a work of art; more than any other film I can think of, Margaret vividly conveys the process by which one individual develops the kind of life experience that can’t help but affect one’s own perspective on art. That is not a small thing for a film to accomplish; the fact that this is merely the least of the film’s accomplishments is proof that Margaret, warts and all, is a film to value and treasure."~ Kenji Fujishima (originally posted March 4, 2012)

Note: Margaret ranked #10 in the 2011 Muriel Awards.