PORTLAND, Ore. — We did it folks. We made it through the longest decade in human history.
The 2010s brought us some of pop culture's best moments -- Hamilton, the relaunching of the Star Wars saga, Beyoncé's Coachella performance. And some of the worst -- Green Book winning Best Picture, Ariana Grande's Coachella performance.
It also brought us some of the best movies ever made in voices from which we rarely get to hear. So with another ten years in the rear-view mirror, here are my picks for the ten best films of the last decade.
10) Get Out
The sight of a police car in a horror movie is supposed to bring about a sigh of relief. But it has the opposite effect in Jordan Peele's pee-your-pants scary debut, and that's kinda the point. It's also why we can't talk about the 2010s without talking about Peele's seemingly overnight transition from skit-show funny-guy to Academy Award-winning auteur. Fast as the change seemed to happen, in hindsight it also seemed sort of inevitable. This especially after you took a closer look at his classic Key & Peele sketches and finally saw them for what they really were -- hyper-perceptive stories of being black in America that also critiqued a specific class of liberal white wokeness. Get Out did the same thing, just with a lot more blood. And Fruit-Loops.
9) Coco
Full disclosure -- I'm a movie-cryer. Granted, not all movies can do it, but, when they do, whoo boy! Among the movies that made me cry -- Titanic, Cinema Paradiso, my number one pick (we'll get there), and, you guessed it, Coco. It has all the magic you've come to expect from Pixar: it's gorgeous, especially when young Miguel starts exploring The Land of the Dead in search of his nearly forgotten ancestor. And, of course, it has cute non-human sidekicks that make such great toys around Christmastime. But where Coco excels is where all the great Pixar films do, in getting you so deeply invested in its world and its characters that you're sad when the credits finally roll. I certainly was.
8) Arrival
Can a movie's success stem from a single shot? Because every time I think back to Denis Villeneuve's brainy sci-fi drama, I go first to that incredible aerial shot over rolling, fog-covered Montana hills, peppered with military vehicles and personnel. Then, in the distance, that now-iconic vertically-oriented black alien spacecraft. A different director might have leaned into the chaos and anxiety such a moment would create. But Villeneuve wisely focused on the quieter moments where the smart people actually try to figure out what the hell is going on so the rest of us rubes are safe to panic. Has a film about learning a language ever been this intense? My wish for the next decade -- give Amy Adams a damn Oscar!
7) Call Me By Your Name
There was a point late in Call Me By Your Name where I was afraid it would end the same way too many movies about gay people do: in violence, or even death. But the most radical part of Luca Guadagnino's lavishly photographed portrait of queer love is how unradically the love story unfolds -- through a few notes played on a piano, or a glimpse of swimming trunks in all their natural eroticism. Elio and Oliver aren't even sure they like each other until they love each other. Of course they love each other. Come for the peach, stay for the most beautiful closing shot of the decade.
6) Whiplash
My most personal entry on this list, it also happens to be the film that gave PTSD to an entire generation of band geeks. JK Simmons' Oscar-winning turn as a brilliant and sadistic big-band director at a prestigious art school is the reason Oscars are handed out. But Miles Teller's quieter turn as the film's protagonist, an increasingly single-minded drummer pushing his talents to their absolute breaking point, stood its ground and channeled such focused passion during the film's stunning conclusion that I wanted to cheer when the credits finally rolled.
5) Moonlight
I'm about to do it right now, but it is a damn shame that the first thing that comes up when people talk about Moonlight is the fiasco at the Academy Awards. Because there is so much to talk about. And listen to. The generation-spanning tale of queer black love in a poor Florida neighborhood hummed with an almost religious energy. There are moments in Moonlight that are so personal and so painful that I felt I shouldn't be allowed to see them. Yet I couldn't look away. Individual frames in Barry Jenkins' opus could be hung in the Louvre -- the shot of Chiron squeezing a handful of sand in a spasm of pleasure. Or when he dips his bloody face into a sink filled with ice-water, letting the red slowly mix with the greenish water reflecting the alien light of the ramshackle bathroom. Or his embrace, as a mountainous adult, of an important person from his childhood. I walked out of the theater changed. There was not a more defining film of the 2010s.
4) Parasite
Picture it: the decade was nearly over and cocky critics had their end-of lists pretty well polished off. But then Parasite smashed its way into the scene like a boulder through brittle bone. If directors were married to genres then Bong Joon-ho would be a polygamist. Parasite shape-shifts before your eyes, inviting you in with a joke and then stabbing you in the back once it's got you laughing. The film has already been lauded with every superlative in the dictionary so I'll just say that I have not had this much fun in a movie theater in a very, very long time. There is a conception, I think, that capital G "Good" movies aren't allowed to also be massively popular and entertaining. If that's the rule, than Parasite is a mighty exception.
3) The Social Network
The movie that predicted our current hell-scape without even realizing it and changed movie trailers forever. By tapping into his inner aloof tech-bro nerd, Jesse Eisenberg seemed to notice the alien Mark Zuckerberg that the rest of us didn't before it was too late and democracy was overthrown. Eisenberg didn't get enough credit at the time for his muted douche-baggery, which is a shame. An even bigger shame, the film lost Best Picture in 2011 to The King's Speech which was a fine film but, ultimately, a forgetful one. It is the opposite of The Social Network, which only gets more relevant and terrifying each time Mark Zuckerberg is called to testify before Congress. The music of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is the Oscar-winning bow on the whole package. If David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin decide to reunite for a sequel about everything Facebook has wrought since, I will be first in line for tickets.
2) Mad Max: Fury Road
This is the second-best film of the decade but the most perfectly made one, if that makes sense. George Miller's action-epic begins with the force and suddenness of a bazooka blast to the face and doesn't let you breathe until about ten minutes later. But catch your breath while you can because the next roar of the engine is never far away. This entry into Miller's saga successfully refracted the machismo of the originals into a version updated for our modern sensibilities, all without losing the vital cool factor. Add to that the impossible-seeming practical effects (seriously, how did nobody die making this film?), and you have a movie that should not have been made, and yet, luckily for all of us, was. Michael Bay wishes he could.
1) Roma
Yes, this was the other movie that made me cry. Alfono Cuarón's masterful poem in black-and-white almost whispers its story of an indigenous Mexican housekeeper, based on the real-life woman from his own childhood. It's clear she made an impression. Yalitza Aparicio's performance was radical even before the Oscar-nomination. We rarely get to see women who look like her on the big screen (or, in this case, the little screen. Thanks Netflix!) But the perseverance, grit, and heart Aparacio brings to the character of Cleo suggest this probably isn't the last we'll be seeing of her. From the film's masterfully simple opening shot that tells an entire story itself, to Cleo's final confession on a beach surrounded by the family she both serves and loves, this slow, quiet-until-it-isn't story about a woman just surviving is the best movie I've seen this decade and fundamentally changed my perception of what movies are capable of making me feel.
Runners-up:
The Favourite, Black Swan, Blade Runner 2049, Gravity, Toy Story 3, Brooklyn