Should the night in which I journey be a journey long

[sovay]

That meme of 20 favorite movies from the 2010's is going around my friendlist, so I decided to add my extremely subjective contribution.

2010: The King's Speech, Winter's Bone

2011: In the Family, The Awakening

2012: Berberian Sound Studio, Byzantium

2013: Pacific Rim, Starred Up

2014: The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Duke of Burgundy

2015: Demon, Neither Heaven nor Earth

2016: Midnight Special, A Dark Song

2017: God's Own Country, Small Town Crime

2018: The Favourite, The Rusalka

2019: Rust Creek, The Lighthouse

Runners-up: Despicable Me (2010), The Adjustment Bureau (2011), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Dimensions: A Line, a Loop, a Tangle of Threads (2011), The Adventures of Tintin (2011), The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012), A Field in England (2013), The World's End (2013), Europa Report (2013), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Mr. Turner (2014), Song of the Sea (2014), The Blackcoat's Daughter (2015), The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015), Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Experimenter: The Stanley Milgram Story (2015), Carol (2015), Colossal (2016), Moana (2016), The Limehouse Golem (2016), Call Me by Your Name (2017), Mohawk (2017), Dunkirk (2017), Coco (2017), The Shape of Water (2017), Marjorie Prime (2017), The Ritual (2017), Black Panther (2018), Who Will Write Our History (2018), Annihilation (2018), Apollo 11 (2019). For purposes of this meme I am not counting In Fabric (2018) even though I adored it, because its wide-release dates were deeply weird and therefore it was my first movie-in-theaters of 2020.

It is obvious from this list that, as usual, I have never written about some movies that I loved very much and should perhaps attempt a catch-up project in my copious free time; we'll see. I watch so many fewer first-run movies than movies made decades before I was born, I still don't know what happened in 2017, but I enjoyed it.

Comments

[dramaticirony]

A great list! (And a good chance to go to earlier reviews)

Did you have a chance to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019? I only ask because a film about the sea, queer lovers, feminist intersectionality, and the role of the artist seems likely to appeal to you.

Of course, sometimes things that seem well calculated to appeal to one bounce off or don't impress.

[sovay]

A great list! (And a good chance to go to earlier reviews)

Thank you! (Enjoy!)

Did you have a chance to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire in 2019? I only ask because a film about the sea, queer lovers, feminist intersectionality, and the role of the artist seems likely to appeal to you.

I heard wonderful things about it and have not yet seen it—if it came through Boston in 2019, I missed it. (It's coming to the Coolidge in February, I sure hope for more than the one night.) Part of the extreme subjectivity of this list is the number of movies I just haven't seen. I am not a comprehensive moviegoer.

[dramaticirony]

Ahhh, I had forgotten that I had seen Portrait as part of the IFFBoston's Fall Focus, not in general release.

The Coolidge tweeted this morning that it'll open regularly on the 14th.

[moon_custafer]

Reading your post on The Adjustment Bureau, and the romantic leads having believable chemistry for once, led me on a train of thought about how if there’s another resurgence of rom-coms in the coming decade (and there likely will be— the worse things get politically, the more money there is in escapist entertainment), I hope it will at least include a subgenre in which the leads are the character types who would have been supporting roles in a ‘90s rom-com.

Better yet, make them literally supporting characters from a 90s rom-com— maybe there’s already a version of this out there, but I picture a movie that begins with one of the leads, a stuffy yet basically decent sort, being left at the altar when their intended runs off with some rando. Some time later, once the jilt-ee has finished trying to accurately return the wedding gifts to the correct guests and dissuade the parents from suing the caterers, they decide to question their ex’s friends, in some forlorn hope of winning him/her back, or at least figuring out if they were the one person who didn’t see this coming. Eventually this leads them to rope one of said friends into a road trip or crazy plan, and naturally *that* leads to the jilt-ee and the friend falling for each other, but neither dares to wreck the crazy plan by confessing their feelings... I’m picturing stuffed-shirt fiancé/wisecracking gay best friend as the leads, or possibly rich-bitch fiancée/exhausted caterer.

[sovay]

Better yet, make them literally supporting characters from a 90s rom-com— maybe there’s already a version of this out there, but I picture a movie that begins with one of the leads, a stuffy yet basically decent sort, being left at the altar when their intended runs off with some rando.

This feels like something that must exist, but I haven't seen enough contemporary romantic comedies to know for sure! If not, you are entirely correct that it should.

I’m picturing stuffed-shirt fiancé/wisecracking gay best friend as the leads, or possibly rich-bitch fiancée/exhausted caterer.

I am here for both of these pairings, thank you.

[troisoiseaux]

Pacific Rim is without a doubt my favorite movie of all time, and I loved your write-up on it, especially "[...] it's a movie that knows exactly which clichés it wants to honor unashamedly and which ones it wants to subvert or entirely ignore." For all the WWII nods in it, I had never connected Hermann with Bletchey Park!

(I wrote my own thing about it here, several years and so many re-watches that I've literally lost track later, if you're so interested!)

[sovay]

Pacific Rim is without a doubt my favorite movie of all time, and I loved your write-up on it

Thank you! Especially if it's your favorite, that means a lot.

For all the WWII nods in it, I had never connected Hermann with Bletchey Park!

I may have a slight Turing filter, but I stand by it.

(I wrote my own thing about it here, several years and so many re-watches that I've literally lost track later, if you're so interested!)

(Totally! I also wrote some fic which you may or may not agree with.)

[troisoiseaux]

I may have a slight Turing filter, but I stand by it.

I'm so mad I never thought that Burn Gorman would be fantastic casting for Turing, and now I am even more upset they went with Benedict Cumberbatch in the movie that came out a few years ago.

Ooh, I'll check it out!