BEST OF 2010s

It’s the last day of the decade, so what better time to count down my favourite films of the last ten years? A decade is as arbitrary a time period as any other, but there’s something memorable and immaculate about the number ten. Though we’ve still not come up with a catchy name for the past decade (‘Teens’ doesn’t quite cut it), it’s not hard to say it was an eventful era, both geopolitically and cinematically. I won’t profess to having a comprehensive view of the last ten years of film – my ‘to-watch’ list is nearly as long as my ‘watched’ one – but here are the ten films that impressed me, stunned me, spoke to me, or just plain entertained me the most.

Note: these are all English-language films by white, male directors. I fully admit my prejudice and tunnel vision, not that it makes it any better.

BEST OF 2017

Last night was the 90th Academy Awards, which celebrated the best films of last year and rewarded THE SHAPE OF WATER with Best Picture; since this marked the unofficial end of the 2017 cinematic year, what better time to count down my favourite films from the year that was. Though I obviously haven’t seen everything I’ve wanted to (missing mostly documentaries and foreign language films, alas!) my top ten is still – in my mind – strong enough to encapsulate the year, with a healthy mix of populist blockbusters and esoteric indies: my taste in a nutshell. It wasn’t an exceptionally strong year for film, but it did improve on 2016, which only had a few standouts amongst the throng; 2017 was much deeper by comparison. This was also the year that the auteur got his groove back, with no less than five notable directors delivering career-best, or close to it, works. From nonlinear war epics to vulgar allegories, here are my top ten favourite films of 2017:

Top Ten Tuesday: New York City

While the Cannes Film Festival is currently underway in the south of France, one of the darlings of last year’s fest, James Gray’s The Immigrant, is only just making its way across the pond for a domestic release. Starring Marion Cotillard as the titular Polish émigré who arrives at Ellis Island in 1921, it is just the latest example of cinema taking advantage of the historical beauty of New York City, arguably the most popular metropolitan setting in film history (only Los Angeles, London, and Paris can really dispute this claim). From the earliest days of moviemaking through to the CGI-saturated superhero tales of our contemporary times, The Big Apple and its five boroughs (the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island) have been utilized for all manner of mainstream, independent, and genre cinema. In that spirit, with The Immigrant releasing this Friday, I count down my ten favourite movies set in New York, New York.

Noah

(Darren Aronofsky, 2014, USA)

Biblical films generally follow the letter of their source text pretty closely – think The Ten Commandments or The Passion of the Christ or any of the other myriad ecclesiastical films over the years. The reasons for this should be obvious: the Bible is viewed as a sacred book by two of the world’s major religions, with its stories read as both metaphorical works of morality and actual documentation of human history. Thus, cinematic adaptations of The Holy Book’s innumerable tales come with an inherent obligation to satisfy faithful Christian audiences by not diverging too significantly from The Holy Scriptures; however, these movies must also succeed as modern pieces of art and entertainment, and, as such, are bound to modern notions of narrative, character, and theme. It’s a tricky balancing act to pull off, especially when it comes to some of the more beloved and renowned Biblical tales.

One of these hallowed stories comes to cinematic life with Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, a veritable blockbuster based upon the tale of Noah’s Ark found in the Book of Genesis. Make no mistake, though: although adapted from one of the most recognizable narratives in the Old Testament, if not the entire canon of human literature, this is not a religious film on the order of those mentioned above. Aronofsky, who was raised culturally Jewish but now identifies as more generally spiritual, realizes the aforementioned balancing act required to adapt a canonical Biblical story for modern audiences, and takes somewhat of an all-encompassing approach to the material. While following Holy Scripture in detailing some of the finer points of the narrative, the director also embraces science, more specifically biology and ecology, in depicting the broader strokes, resulting in a largely inoffensive, have-it-both-ways work. Due to the potentially volatile nature of any religious subject matter, this was likely the wisest option.

Top Ten Tuesday: Sports Dramas

Kevin Costner is currently experiencing something of a career resurgence (dubbed the “Costnergence” by some, playing on the “McConaissance” of Matthew McConaughey), having appeared in the Superman reboot Man of Steel, the Tom Clancy reset Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, and the McG/Luc Besson actioner 3 Days to Kill over the last year. This weekend he returns to the genre of some of his greatest successes – sports drama – with the Ivan Reitman-directed, NFL-sponsored Draft Day, playing the general manager of the Cleveland Browns attempting to acquire the number one pick in the eponymous player selection meeting. Though this certainly doesn’t sound like the stuff of compelling drama, the genre has shown that it can turn even the most mundane material thrilling through the magic and power of cinema. With that in mind, and for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, I present my favourite sports dramas:

Most Anticipated of 2014: Part I

(February – April)

This probably should’ve been posted a month ago, but not much has really come out so far (and nothing that I’ve been looking forward to), so I’m ok with doing it now. Plus, my first real big anticipated movie of the year gets released on Wednesday, so this is as good a time as any to post this. I’ll try to collect a good mix of blockbusters and indies, with some in-between genre pictures as well; I’ll also go chronologically, to help avoid ridiculous, arbitrary distinctions about anticipation level for various films. Anyway, without further ado, the first part of my most looked-forward-to films for the rest of the year: