#30 - #21

This was my initiation to the manic delights of Edgar Wright, and I'll confess that I really didn't know what to make of Scott Pilgrim after absorbing it – nay, being bombarded by it – in a crowded theatre during that hot August of 2010. All I knew at the time is that I laughed a lot, and that it was exhausting. Only multiple viewings have allowed me to appreciate how meticulously designed Wright's visual grammar and twelve-gags-per-minute screenplay truly is, because I continue to laugh a lot, and I continue to feel exhausted by it despite my now innate familiarity.

Michael Cera is aptly cast in a tricky role that demands him play ‘loveable underdog’ and ‘shallow dick’ in equal measure. The offhand, dehumanizing remarks he makes about literally every person in his life cut deep, but Cera & Wright find a way to ensure that it’s always Scott's myopic worldview (not his words) that’s the real punchline.

The comedy isn't so much in the text as it is in the timing. Paul Machliss & Jonathan Amos' editing is so precise that I could watch this film in an alien language and still respond to every comic beat on cue. Heap on top of that a parade of dizzying martial arts sequences, a wryly self-aware grunge soundtrack, and a pervasive layer of affectionate arcade homages all rolled into one sensory onslaught. It all proved a bit much for audiences in 2010, when it Sex Bob-Ombed at the box office. But for the cult fandom that swiftly precipitated after it vanished from theatres, this strange yet satisfying formula keeps improving with time.

Coolest award or nomination:

American Cinema Editors [nomination] – Best Edited Feature, Comedy/Musical (Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss)

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Wright is one of the few true comedy auteurs working today, and Baby Driver (2017) continues to exemplify his infusion of black humour with overstimulating audiovisual rhythm. The now icky vibe of Kevin Spacey’s domineering deadpan notwithstanding (this was his last performance to reach the big screen before his gross history of sexual harassment came to light), this revved up not-quite-a-musical is tremendous entertainment that gets great mileage out of a basic gimmick, every image and sound clipped and assembled in perfect synchronization with its rubber-burning soundtrack.

Can a true masterpiece come from a first-time feature director? Nemes makes a strong case with this incredible subjective study of the concentration camp experience, made all the more horrifying for the peripheral focus in his lens and on his soundtrack. With the camera following the titular Auschwitz sonderkommando (the excellent Géza Röhrig) around so closely and with such shallow depth of field, many of the atrocities of the Nazi death machine are experienced aurally for the viewer, constantly flowing in and out of earshot as he moves around. It's deeply unsettling but artful work.

Nemes achieves a sort of brutal poetry here, capturing the best and worst of humanity all at once, and positing a thesis on the unmarriable gap between one’s personal calling – however justifiable or not – and the sacrificial collective good. It could challenge Schindler's List as the penultimate Holocaust drama; Difficult but essential viewing.

Coolest award or nomination:

Cannes Film Festival – Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist, Sound Design (Tamás Zányi)

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As history spins further away from the Holocaust (and yet closer to the fevered political climate that spawned it), first- and second-hand accounts become rarer and increasingly important. Several short documentaries including The Lady in Number 6 (2013) and Joe’s Violin (2016) – both of which also integrate the life-saving power of music – have nobly sought to unearth the stories from a dwindling pool of survivors while they’re still with us. The HBO short Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (2015) spotlights the late great documentarian reflecting on the arduous production of his crucial 10-hour opus Shoah (1985), and studies the toll an historian’s work can take on them. All are precious, invaluable records.

Classical construction and stylistic restraint from a dialled-in Spielberg allows history to speak volumes. What could have been easy hagiography is instead a thoughtful, eloquently scripted political docudrama that deconstructs a mythologized figure and explores the moral compromise of doing the right thing – “Honest” Abe is forced into some decidedly manipulative politicking and no-win decisions.

A lesser film would have ended with the cheers and church bells that sound upon the 13^th Amendment's passing, but Kushner and Spielberg are woke to the long shadow this moment would cast on America's future. Several of the film's epilogues are eerily, painfully prescient in 2020, such as when the weary president tours a charred battlefield upon which the Confederate flag still flies, or wishfully infers “whatever must be proven by blood and sacrifice must have been proved by now… Shall we stop this bleeding?”. Shall we, indeed.

The film does not lionize democracy, nor the statesman whose bearded profile has come to emblemize its ideals, but rather cautiously and considerately presents an “idea of democracy to aspire to – Eventually to become worthy of…”

Coolest award or nomination:

Academy Award – Best Production Design (Rick Carter, Jim Erikson)

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Spielberg hasn’t slowed down in his sixties and seventies. Historical dramas Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017) make for a nice political trilogy alongside Lincoln, all three of them taking grounded looks at American values as imperfect, impractical, often compromised, but fundamental to an evolving nation. They are a mature and valuable form of patriotism from a wise and tireless storyteller.

Nor has he tired as an engineer of grand spectacle. His eagerness to stand upon technological frontiers (this is the man who gave us Jurassic Park, remember) brought him to the cutting edge of performance-capture with The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Ready Player One (2018). Even though neither of these mixed-media efforts completely escapes the uncanny valley, both liberated the ever-imaginative Spielberg to indulge in shots and sequences he could only have dreamt of in past decades. Speaking of, his somewhat undervalued War Horse (2011) is perhaps the purest throwback to the sort of movie he would have made in his 80’s heyday. Not saying it stacks up to them, but it’s every bit as ‘Spielbergian’ as E.T. and Indiana Jones.

I don't believe a single scene from this droll year in the life of a rebellious high school senior runs longer than 3 minutes, but each one is briskly insightful, culminating in that bittersweet moment when one chapter of your life closes (*takes a breath in*). That Gerwig and star Saoirse Ronan (delivering a piquant performance she's gonna be remembered for) can lend so much dimension to a sprawling web of complex relationships through such tiny, inconsequential, bite-sized vignettes is a magnificent feat of character exploration. It looks easy, messy even to the untrained eye, but requires the utmost clarity to pull off.

Every one of the people who figure into Lady Bird’s world feel as though they have their own movie playing in parallel, just occasionally intersecting with her own. I demand spin-offs! Chief among them is her vexed mother (Laurie Metcalfe radiating an exhausted yet marrow-deep love), whose thorny relationship with her strong-willed daughter provides the picture with its most memorable and complicated exchanges.

Coolest award or nomination:

Golden Globe – Best Motion Picture, Comedy/Musical

Also worth checking out:

The Edge of Seventeen (2016) may not make as huge a dent in the pantheon of high school movies, but writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig announced herself as a fresh and promising voice. Her tragicomic tale of teenaged outsider (Hailee Steinfeld) does show some signs of first-feature patchiness, especially in the soap operatic third act that threatens to delegitimize her character's pain, but otherwise she treads a fine line between comic jadedness and earned empathy. Steinfeld is the real reason to see it though. We could’ve called her a revelation had True Grit (2010) not already alerted us to her precocious talent. She truly comes into her own with this salty comedic performance, tasked with the challenge of making us relate to and root for a character who is far from entirely likable. What she delivers is at once caustic and heartbreaking, knowing exactly when to play for laughs, for tears, or for both.

Only a seasoned provocateur of Lee’s calibre would have the gumption to make a film so riotously entertaining and tonally swervey, bookended with such abrasive commentary on the White supremacist values that many of our institutions (from the political to the cinematic) are built upon. Indeed, there’s nothing subtle about the film’s perambulations on race – nor about the chilling documentary epilogue that sledgehammers home a point Lee’s already made several times over – but some things really shouldn’t be subtle, especially if they would risk being smothered by a narrative this accessible and savagely funny.

Lee does not shy away from laughter, but rather embraces it, wise to the inherent absurdity of a Black cop (John David Washington in a smooth star-making turn) infiltrating a local chapter of the KKK. Nor does Lee shy away from depicting several Klan characters as otherwise unthreatening personalities (take Topher Grace’s humdrum geniality as grand wizard David Duke, or Paul Walter Hauser’s oafish ineptitude), often made the butt of the screenplay’s jokes and dramatic ironies. His direction is sharp enough that we never lose sight of the systemic wickedness they represent, and that still pervades to this day.

Coolest award or nomination:

Cannes Film Festival – Grand Prize of the Jury (Spike Lee)

Also worth checking out:

The sensitivity regarding institutional bigotry has been its own worst enemy, cautioning entire generations of storytellers to broach these issues with a delicate touch that – while certainly thoughtful – undercuts their urgency. Then there are others (like Spike) who refuse to tread lightly on these ideas, instead stomping all over them with audacious abandon that can’t help but force a conversation. The most prominent enfant-terrible who emblemizes this style of unshackled temerity is Quentin Tarantino, whose ‘Southern’ revenge fantasy Django Unchained (2012) shook many from their slumber, soliciting praise and outrage alike. Mileage will vary (personally, I cannot recommend it without major reservations), but your viewing experience from the 2010’s would be incomplete without it.

More recently, Spike cashed in on his long-time-coming Oscar for Klansman with a lucrative Netflix launch for Da 5 Bloods (2020), a practically Shakespearean odyssey into the heart of darkness for a quartet of Vietnam vets hunting for lost gold and the remains of their fallen commander. Though it may be indulgent and thematically sporadic, it’s never less than gripping and boasts a soliloquizing, Oscar-bound performance from Delroy Lindo.

It starts as a wacky biography about eccentric Frenchman Thierry Guetta, but acclaimed street artist turned subversive filmmaker Banksy turns the tables to ultimately serve up a droll treatise on celebrity, culture, the death of an artistic movement, and creative expression vs. creative pillaging. It could have ended up as a one-note study about a larger-than-life personality, but Banksy has bigger plans. Throughout the movie he has us questioning, “is this guy for real?”, and by the end we realize that the real question Banksy has been posing is “what are the true natures of art and genius?”.

Is Guetta a nut job or a genius? Is he the rabbit or the turtle? The answer proposed by Banksy to that small question is pretty obvious, but think about who won that fabled race, and you'll understand his definitive stance on the bigger issues. Banksy demands that we consider for ourselves 'what is art?', and does so in brisk, often hilarious fashion. It is the funniest and most mantic documentary of the decade.

Coolest award or nomination:

American Cinema Editors – Best Edited Documentary (Chris King, Tom Fulford)

Also worth checking out:

Cutie and the Boxer (2013) – nicknames of the artsy, aging Japanese couple at its centre – is a more soft spoken documentary on the struggles of artists, the weight of living in someone else's shadow, and a love that weathers all of its own faults. Zachary Heinzerling's invisible direction and probing photography are so unobtrusive that the film seems to unfold like a narrative feature at times, but that doesn't make the story any less poignant. He lets the viewer simply watch and listen, free to read into whatever his camera captures.

More intimate yet is Frank Stiefel’s lovely Oscar-winning short doc Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2017), which uses the gallery exhibition of its subject as a diving board into her daily challenges of living with mental illness.

A comedy that's excruciating in the best possible way, YouTuber-turned-indie-filmmaker Bo Burnham forces you to laugh through the awkwardness of shy Kayla (the remarkably authentic Elsie Fisher) suffering whatever the tween equivalent is of a mid-life crisis during her last days of middle school.

While I can’t claim to know what it’s like to be a teenage girl born into an age of cel phones and social media (to my geezerly embarrassment, I can remember when neither were a thing), there’s much universality baked into this beautifully observed coming-of-age tale. Be it in Kayla’s naïve eagerness to fit in, or in her fragile uncertainty of who she is and who she wants to be, or in her unconditional mortification at the gentle prying of her father (Josh Hamilton, an absolute treasure as the most a-dork-able movie dad of the decade). Burnham's hilariously precise screenplay bores into and lays bare the angsty adolescent mind in ways that are so real, they're funny... and then so funny, they're sad... and then so sad, they’re funny again. “Gucci!”

Coolest award or nomination:

Writers Guild of America – Best Original Screenplay (Bo Burnham)

Also worth checking out:

Eighth Grade is such a unicorn not only for its freshness of tone, but because the perspectives of girls aged 12-15 are a bit of a blind spot in the modern market. Most Y.A. stories find easier drama in the lives of older teens on the cusp of adulthood. The only other film I saw this decade that attempts to channel the worldview of this underserved demographic is Andrea Arnold’s micro-indie Fish Tank (2010), a crushing review of society’s emotionally malnourished, psychologically impoverished youth, transfixed on a blistering performance from discovery Katie Jarvis.

For 20 years now live-action adaptations of superhero IP have dominated the pop culture landscape, but it’s the eye-popping, epileptic fervor and dynamic storyboarding of this animated marvel that offers the closest cinematic equivalent to flipping through the pages of a comic book we've ever seen. The deployment of split-screen panels, callouts, and ink-dot texturing (among countless other visual touches) captures the spirit of not just the characters, but the very medium it adapts. And yet it remains its own strikingly original creation. Whenever you think it can't get any weirder, "it can get weirder!", and always in a good way!

Swinging with ease between snarky meta-humour and genuinely empathetic character development, this superhero origin story is perpetually exciting, funny, touching, and ultimately – I’ll admit, surprisingly – quite moving. Miles’ journey directly heralds the inspiring notion that anyone can be a hero, at the same time making valuable gains for positive and diverse representation in mainstream children’s fare.

Coolest award or nomination:

Academy Award – Best Animated Feature (Randy Rothman, Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller)

Also worth checking out:

The brain trust of Phil Lord & Christopher Miller made inroads into the phantasmagorical possibilities of animation with the short-lived Adult Swim cult classic Clone High (2002-2003), the gastronomically zany Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009), and the uncontrollably funny mega-hit The LEGO Movie (2014). While that feature-length toy commercial feels almost too impressed with its own cleverness for me to embrace as fully as the rest of the world did, it is indeed a riot. More importantly, it was a harbinger of Lord & Miller’s capacity to push the boundaries of technique – in this case, faux stop-motion choppiness amid rectilinear explosions of plasticized primary colour – to mirror high concept, and of their commitment to aesthetic which would pay even higher dividends on Spider-Verse.

Science-fiction for the thinking moviegoer – superbly adapted by Eric Heisserer from a nebulous Ted Chiang novella – which voices the power of empathy and the value of communication in its own surreal, circular, beautiful language. It may favour the cerebral over the sentimental, but not at the expense of true emotion.

Amy Adams plays a preeminent language professor, depressed over the loss of her daughter, enlisted by the military to forge communications with a mysterious race of aliens who have landed in enormous, parabolic monoliths all over the world. It's a role that requires a lot of internalized emoting on Adams' part, but she plays it earnestly. With modern maestro of atmosphere Villeneuve pulling the strings, it's never less than utterly hypnotic. Desaturated colours, shadowy interiors, stifling sound design and another inventive score from the late Jóhann Jóhannsson all keep our sense of wonder rapt, whilst our brains process the intricacies of the not-so-straightforward story.

Coolest award or nomination:

Academy Award – Best Sound Editing (Sylvain Bellemare)

Also worth checking out:

Though you wouldn’t be out of line to regard it as a misbegotten sequel that won’t foster nearly as much interesting debate nor as passionate a cult following as the classic that inspired it, Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is still an aesthetically striking studio gamble. Villeneuve’s moody world-building acuity is clearly not dulled when trusted with a mega-budget. Expectations for his two-part epic of the infamously “unfilmable” Dune (2021?) are high indeed.

That this 12-year opus even exists is a miracle. Richard Linklater takes the fragmented instants of a childhood – the agony, the ecstasy, and the mundane – and elevates it to a masterclass of relaxed observation, with a soft-spoken but profound epiphany about life hidden amongst the banal. Its gutsy concept, sorta planned out / sorta made up as it goes along, is of foolish genius: A boy grows from seven to nineteen, and we just watch it happen. In that time, the actors age along with their characters, creating a unique special effect.

The finest virtue of these performances is that they all have a breath of awkward naturalism – replete with uncomfortable pauses and nervous laughter – that most directors would consider ragged acting, but that ground every scene with an almost documentarian verisimilitude. Even though these folk are fictional, they feel like people you could know, living in the real world in real time. Linklater packed twelve years of their lives into a mere three hours, and yet when it finally cuts to black their story doesn’t feel over. I can only release a plaintiff sigh and parrot Patricia Arquette’s misty-eyed line reading: “I just thought there’d be more.”

Coolest award or nomination:

Berlin International Film Festival – Silver Bear, Best Director (Richard Linklater)

Also worth checking out:

Linklater’s latest experiment in long-form cinema, a 20-year production of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, has me all aquiver. But I won’t be able to recommend it until 2040, if we even survive that long!

As for movies of the here and now, if you concur that the leisurely spectatorship of ordinary people is chief among Boyhood’s unassuming charms, you’ll find it impossible to dislike the road trip doc Faces Places (2017), in which New Wave pioneer Agnes Varda and muralist JR charmingly shape human interest stories and street art into a unique living photo album; Enormous portraiture embossing what makes ordinary people such extraordinary creatures.