The Best of the 2010s: Top 20 Moments

You never know what will stick with you when you see a film. Sometimes, you think you know what you will take away, but then something else catches you by surprise and never leaves you. It could be a performance, a stunt, a joke, or maybe just a look, but when you see it, you know it. You feel it. Like the perfect line in a great song, it comes to define an experience. These moments can be painful or joyous or both, but no matter what they are, they are the experiences that make moviegoing so wonderful.

By their very nature, these moments are personal. Your 20 favorite film memories from the decade will be different from mine, and that is okay. That is great, in fact. I hope you share with me some of yours and allow me to share with you some of mine, the 20 moments from the 2010s that will stay with me forever.

20. The villagers are crucified – from Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese

Scorsese’s true magnum opus of the decade – his ultimate statement on the themes he has explored his entire career – is Silence, about a Jesuit missionary (Andrew Garfield) who sees himself in Christ’s image. In this extended crucifixion sequence, he is confronted with the reality of that image, and the emptiness of his words in the face of true suffering. He prays the villagers remember what Christ went through, but he watches as their torture continues for days and no amount of prayer will make it stop. When one villager sings a hymn as he dies, he is left to do so alone on the cross, and we are witnessing not some glorious martyrdom but a senseless death.

19. Jordan Belfort has lunch with Mark Hanna – from The Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese

Matthew McConaughey won his Oscar in this year for Dallas Buyers Club, beating out scene partner Leonardo DiCaprio for the prize. Many saw that as the culmination of the McConaissance, but I actually think peak McConaughey is right here, sipping martinis and beating a drum on his chest. Mark Hanna is the macho ‘80s stereotype Jordan Belfort has modeled himself after, and he lays out the entire scam of the machine. As long as he is getting paid, getting drunk, and getting off, nothing else matters. We are watching a snake oil salesman explain his craft, and in so doing, we see why it works. Jordan is hooked, and so are we.

18. W’Kabi kneels to Okoye on the battlefield – from Black Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler

Apart from Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, the most memorable character in Black Panther is Okoye, played by Danai Gurira. She is a fierce warrior, loyal to her nation, and torn between honor and duty. Her arc reaches its glorious climax when she must face down her love, W’Kabi (Daniel Kaluuya), on the battlefield. When she chooses Wakanda over him, he realizes that this civil war is destroying them and their people, and he knees to her. In this moment, Coogler is paying tribute to the power and resilience of black women while also condemning the kind of internecine conflicts that distract from pursuing meaningful change.

17. Captain Phillips receives a medical evaluation – from Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass

Greengrass is an expert at crafting tense thrill rides that never let up for a moment. See United 93 and his Bourne films for further evidence. These movies, Captain Phillips included, so rarely afford the viewer a chance to breathe. This is their defining quality. So, when Captain Richard Phillips’ (Tom Hanks) ordeal is over and he is given a second to reflect, the audience is taken aback. We are shocked by his vulnerability, his pain, his sadness, and ultimately, his relief. The steely, resolute man who had been so strong throughout all of this finally breaks down, and we see the real person underneath, the person who could be any of us in both courage and fear.

16. “The incident” goes down – from I, Tonya, directed by Craig Gillespie

“This is what you all came to see!” Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie) snarls, and we are indicted. Gillespie pieces together the maiming of Nancy Kerrigan with precision and skill, expertly building up tension until the moment the knee buckles. It all works brilliantly, but it is undeniably voyeuristic. What in us compels us to watch this? Why do we need to see poor Nancy beaten and broken? What the hell is wrong with us? By asking these questions, the film is already miles ahead of us in the audience. Tonya is right. This is what we wanted, and that says more about us than it does about Tonya Harding.

15. The band records “Please, Mr. Kennedy” – from Inside Llewyn Davis, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen

This is when it all goes wrong for Llewyn (Oscar Isaac). Yes, the song is uproariously funny, and performers Isaac, Justin Timberlake, and Adam Driver commit to its goofiness. Driver’s deepthroated “uh-oh,” Timberlake’s guileless enthusiasm, and Isaac’s weary skepticism come together in a hilarious sequence that displays the absurdity of the business they have all chosen. When the gut punch comes at the end, no one knows that is what it is until much later, but when we do, the irony is almost unbearable. This is every bad decision Llewyn has made coming back to bite him, the greatest near-miss of his life, and it is all his own damn fault.

14. Eliza and the Amphibian Man dance – from The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro

Bear with me a moment. I liked La La Land fine. It had some lovely sequences, including the dance in the observatory among the stars, featuring two of the most attractive movie stars on the planet. This ain’t that. This is a deaf-mute woman (Sally Hawkins) and an Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) re-enacting their version of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance number. In making these his heroes, del Toro crafts a tribute to all those outsiders and weirdos, himself among them, who may never defy gravity like some of the pretty people but who dream of a transcendence made in their own image.

13. A woman cries in the rain – from Foxtrot, directed by Samuel Maoz

Rutger Hauer, who died in 2019, is responsible for delivering into the lexicon the line “tears in rain.” The very idea is arresting, so simple but so powerful, and demonstrated so movingly here by Maoz. At an army checkpoint, Israeli soldiers get their kicks harassing the Palestinians trying to get through, trying only to live their lives. The cruelty is the point. When a well-dressed man and woman arrive, apparently on their way to a function, they are forced into the pouring rain, humiliated for no reason other than being who they are. She fights back tears, but they fall anyway, and in the deluge, we feel a world weeping for this pain but doing nothing to stop it.

12. Juan teaches Little how to swim – from Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins

For two brief, fleeting minutes, the weight of the world is lifted from Little’s (Alex R. Hibbert) shoulders and he is weightless. The film’s defining image is that of Juan (Mahershala Ali) cradling Little’s head as he helps him to float in the ocean. Though waves crash down around them and on them, Juan assures Little he will not let go, and Little is supported. He is held. He is lifted up for perhaps the first time in his life. Things will not be this good, this free, again for a long time, and as Jenkins’ final shot shows us, Chiron will have spent his whole life trying to rediscover what he felt at this moment.

11. Patsey is flogged – from 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen

Filled with sequences of unhinged brutality and dreadful torture, McQueen’s masterpiece reaches its moment of greatest horror when Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is forced to whip Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) by Epps (Michael Fassbender). Patsey’s cries are what we remember as the blood and flesh spray from her back, but it is not only the pain of slavery we are witnessing but also the impotence and cowardice of those who uphold its virtues. They are weak, hateful, and malevolent, driven by a need to destroy what they see as strength in others. Patsey cannot demand to be clean. Solomon cannot demand mercy. Demands require power, and as McQueen demonstrates, they have none.

10. Aron Ralston cuts himself loose – from 127 Hours, directed by Danny Boyle

Not since the reverse vibraphone at the end of Taxi Driver has a musical sting stuck with me so long and so vividly as the moment Aron Ralston first hits the nerves in his arm. The entire sequence is a transcendent blend of Boyle’s high-octane editing style, A.R. Rahman’s propulsive score, and James Franco’s understated performance. The stakes are life and death, and we feel every second tick by as Aron battles for his future. Of course, it is a difficult sit and not for the squeamish, but the payoff is so magnificently played by all involved that I could watch it over and over again.

9. The raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound – from Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow

Bigelow’s Oscar-winning epic was controversial when it debuted and has only grown more so over the years. The filmmaker likely inflated the role of prisoner torture in finding and killing Osama bin Laden, and that inflation has had real-world consequences. That is the film’s first two hours. Its final half-hour, however, is a tense, moody, boots-on-the-ground depiction of the raid on bin Laden’s compound. The precision and competence of the Navy SEALs is impressive and exciting to watch, but we are always ill at ease as we realize just how easy it is to kill a man, and we grapple with just what that death means.

8. The Edmund Pettis Bridge sequence – from Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay

We go here from the cold calculation of Kathryn Bigelow’s Navy SEALs to the unsettling chaos of an attack on civil rights marchers in the south. What guts and brilliance from DuVernay to stick a miniature war film right in the middle of her historical drama. The first march on Selma is a masterclass in putting the viewer in the middle of a battle, demonstrating the brutality of the racist forces of oppression without exaggeration or embellishment. DuVernay puts the camera on the ground and makes the audience a part of the struggle, ensuring each blow of a billy club is felt and each drop of blood is remembered.

7. Moana sings “How Far I’ll Go” – from Moana, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

“How Far I’ll Go” is the movie song of the decade. I will hear no other arguments. There were bigger hits (“Let It Go,” “Happy,” “Skyfall”) and songs more integral to their films (“Feels Like Summer,” “Everything Is Awesome”), but there was no other song in the 2010s that demonstrated so succinctly the greatness of the film in which it appears. Auli’i Cravalho’s performance of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s glorious show-stopper is evidenced of what family films can do at their best. It lifts the spirit and empowers the soul, urging all listeners, young and old, of any race or class, to wonder … well, you know.

6. Lancaster Dodd interrogates Freddie Quell – from The Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

I wrote previously in this series of the performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd and Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell. I called them the two best performances of the decade. This scene contains within it all the proof I could ever need. What starts almost as an acting class exercise in repetition becomes something else entirely as the Master tries to break through to this seemingly unknowable beast before him. In so doing, they form a bond that is unlike any we have seen in cinema before. It is deep, it is troubling, and it is fascinating. These are two performers absolutely demanding each other’s and our attention, and they are getting it.

5. Jeannine sees her portrait on her home – from Faces Places, directed by Agnès Varda and J.R.

Varda died near the start of 2019 at the age of 90. Right up to the end, she continued making tremendous works of art, filled with the kind of empathy for which she was so rightly celebrated. The penultimate work of her career, Faces Places, is empathy writ large, literally, as she and co-director J.R. go around the countryside putting up giant portraits of the people they meet. It is the first portrait, however, that sticks in mind the longest, the lone woman in an abandoned neighborhood, Jeannine. She is a quiet revolutionary, battling back against a world that would just as soon forget her. Varda and J.R. ensure that will not happen.

4. The history of the universe sequence – from The Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick

Even at its most direct, The Tree of Life is an impressionistic collage of memories and free-floating ideas. Then, for one glorious sequence, Malick goes full-on expressionist, showing us the violent, fiery, yet ultimately empty history of the universe from moment one. It is gorgeously shot and exquisitely executed, but it is not just aimless wandering through the galaxy. It is a history of life, which is itself a history of cruelty. Malick takes us beyond our little lives and the lives of his characters, and their petty grievances, to show us just how small we are and just how much of what we are has been there from the beginning.

3. Jack Mulligan gets a ride home – from Widows, directed by Steve McQueen

The single take has been around for years but really exploded this decade with directors like Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, along with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, essentially making it their calling card. But the best single take of the 2010s was also the most subtle, with McQueen telling the entire tale of inequity and corruption in Chicago during a single car ride home. As the camera slowly pans across the hood of the car, we see wealth and poor side by side, a juxtaposition that helps us understand just how far apart the rich and the poor truly are.

2. Sharon Tate goes to the movies – from Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino

I had never cried during a Tarantino movie. Never really even felt teary. That is not the wavelength on which his films operate. But when Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), whose fate we know so well, goes to the theater to see one of her own movies, that’s when the director finally got me misty-eyed. All of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood feels like an elegy to a time long since passed. Tate has become emblematic of that – her murder for many symbolizing the end of the ‘60s dream. Her joy in seeing herself on screen reverses this, turning her from a symbol back into the living, breathing, joyous human being she was. If only for a moment.

1. Frances runs through the city – from Frances Ha, directed by Noah Baumbach

When the beat kicks in, all you can do is dance. Greta Gerwig’s Frances Hawthorne is a dancer, anyway, and so she must do more. She runs. As David Bowie’s “Modern Love” blares on the soundtrack, she runs. As New York City goes about its day, she runs. Her sprint down the sidewalks of the city is boundless, inexhaustible, unfettered joy, exploding out in every direction at once. She spins and leaps and, yes, dances through the streets with the exuberance of youth and the seeming knowledge that maybe it will not last forever, but it surely exists right here and right now. So, let’s dance.

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Check back again as we wrap up the Best of the Decade project with some fun ephemera and the Top 20 Films of the 2010s.

The Best of the 2010s: 20 for 2020

Amid all the list making and best-of roundups, there are films bound to be forgotten. Among these are great films, some heralded in their time and some less so, but all of which deserve to be remembered and shared as the years and decades go on. Last Cinema Standing will, of course, be compiling our Best of the Decade lists and sharing them in this space. We will talk about the best moments in film, the best performances, and the best films, but I wanted to start off this project with the films that might not end up in these other places.

I initially planned to have here a list of movies that should be revisited so as not to be forgotten, but as with so many things, the idea morphed and transformed in the process. What we have instead are the movies that for whatever reason, I could not stop thinking about as the years have passed. Some are big blockbusters while others are little-seen indies, but none has left my mind. So, here are 20 movies – two for each year of the 2010s – that I will be thinking about in 2020 and beyond and that I hope you will give another watch to in the decade to come.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)

Remember when Banksy was nominated for an Oscar? That was no joke, except perhaps on the Academy for buying into the veracity of the notoriously prank-happy street artist’s supposed documentary. But “fact or fiction?” is not really the point in Exit Through the Gift Shop. If you accept it as a documentary, then it is a documentary. If you view it as a satirical jab at the world of high art, then that is what it is.

The characters are verifiably real – or as verifiable as anyone in this world gets – with Mr. Brainwash, Space Invader, Shepard Fairey, and Banksy himself all making appearances. The film captures the guerilla nature of their work but also the craftsmanship inherent in the planning, preparation, and execution of their schemes. It then goes beyond that into the commodification of all that work, questioning the very nature of art as a business.

It is undeniable that Exit Through the Gift Shop is an elaborate practical joke, but on whom will change based on your perspective. Is it on the high-art world, which is shown to be shallow and corruptible? Is it on the street artists, who allow themselves to be taken in by Mr. Brainwash? Is it on us for getting dragged into any of this? Or maybe the joke is ultimately on Banksy, for thinking any of us would get what he was doing in the first place.

See also: 127 Hours, Danny Boyle’s stirring tribute to the human spirit, which gives us James Franco’s finest performance, a wonderful A.R. Rahman score, and one of the most beautiful and uplifting finales of the decade.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)

The revitalization of the Planet of the Apes series is one of the most pleasantly surprising developments of the past decade. Though many of the films are enjoyable, the original series essentially peaked with the twist at the end of the first film. Charlton Heston damns us all to hell, and it is basically downhill from there, give or take an Escape from the Planet of the Apes. Tim Burton’s widely loathed 2001 Planet of the Apes left neither hope nor much desire for a revival.

So, imagine the delight of sitting down for another reboot in a decade of full of them and instead getting a startlingly original vision that refuses to trade on the nostalgia of its predecessors and forges a new path forward. Director Ruper Wyatt strikes gold with the story of a chimpanzee accidentally granted sentience and a society that has no idea how to handle that development. As ever, though, this tale about the rise of another species is truly about the fatal flaw in humanity that precipitates our own downfall.

Of course, Andy Serkis is great as Caesar, the central chimp, and we will talk more about him in another installment of this series. The visual effects work, to this point, was unmatched. How Joe Letteri and team lost the Oscar will be puzzled over. But Wyatt does not rely solely on performance and effects, and in the end, he stages one of the great battle scenes of the decade on the Golden Gate Bridge. He imbues the sequence with the weight it deserves, portraying humanity’s last stand for the futile gesture it is and, perhaps, always was.

See also: Drive, a tangerine dream of a film that made a lot of people (yours truly included) think they could be cool just by throwing on a scorpion jacket and remaining stoic. Perhaps no one will ever be as cool as director Nicolas Winding Refn makes Ryan Gosling look in this movie.

Prometheus (2012)

In 2012, I called director Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel the best film of the year. It was not a well-liked film, and its esteem has not grown in the intervening years. At the time, I thought it was an estimable science-fiction masterpiece. Masterpiece was probably too strong – the film is silly in places and has surface-level flaws I missed while admiring its depths. I still admire its depths. In the wake of Alien: Covenant, I find still more to like in Prometheus.

It is fascinating the four original Alien films were handled by four distinct directors, each putting his spin on the material. Of them, only Scott returned to the franchise. Perhaps, this is because he was the only one who had something left to say on the matter. Taken together, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant reach for a grand statement on humanity’s origins and our never-ending quest to find meaning beyond ourselves.

The android David (Michael Fassbender) is one of the great characters of the decade. He represents both human ingenuity and human vanity. He is the best of our intentions and the worst of our actions. He is both the pride and the fall. He is the film’s final verdict on what we are. Maybe Prometheus does not achieve all its goals, but for setting its aims so high, it is to be applauded.

See also: Chronicle, which like so much else in recent times has been stained by problematic men behind the scenes but which remains the second-best superhero film of a decade dominated by superheroes. Dane DeHaan is marvelous, and as a latecomer to The Wire who never watched Friday Night Lights, this was my introduction to the one, the only Michael B. Jordan.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

This is an already well-regarded film by two of the preeminent filmmakers of the era, which is to say Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis is not exactly at risk of being forgotten. On the contrary, it will be at or near the top of many best-of-the-decade lists, I suspect. And while it will not be on my list, Inside Llewyn Davis is a film that has not left my mind since I saw it. It sticks with you and demands attention, not unlike the cat Oscar Isaac’s Llewyn picks up as a traveling companion.

Adam Driver gave an interview to the New Yorker a couple months back in which he stated he no longer watches his own performances, citing his performance in this film as a reason why. In particular, he mentioned the famous “Please, Mr. Kennedy” sequence, which is the most out-and-out funny moment in a movie that is otherwise blackly comic at the best of times. I bring this up because at Driver’s mere mention of the scene, my mind spiraled in a dozen different directions, analyzing the film’s structure, its humor, and its performances, all of which remain richly nuanced on every viewing.

The story is not so much a straight line of incidents but a densely interwoven tapestry of accidents and ironies – all meticulously planned by the Coens, of course. Though I do not have this on my list of the best films of the decade, it tops the list of films I have thought about most in the past 10 years. It is impossible not to think of Llewyn and his brushes with greatness, his travels parallel to the road that leads to success and fame, a road he will never walk.

See also: Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley’s poignant and pointed work of autobiography, functioning both as a deeply felt exploration of the relationship between parents and their children and a larger investigation of the nature of truth and truth-telling.

Inherent Vice (2014)

In a decade that saw Paul Thomas Anderson produce two universally acclaimed masterworks (The Master and Phantom Thread), it is the film that came between those two that stands out the most in my mind as a hidden gem. It is truly PTA’s middle child of the decade – forgotten, underappreciated, and a little bitter. Where The Master and Phantom Thread trade on their mannered stateliness, Inherent Vice is an irreverent freakout, content in its strangeness and unbothered by its messiness.

Adapted from a seemingly unfilmable Thomas Pynchon novel, Inherent Vice is less about its twisty, private-eye mystery plot than it is about a mood. With an all-time Joaquin Phoenix performance at its center, the film tangles you up in knots, daring you to pull at any thread and see what happens. Sometimes, it feels as though the film itself is unsure what will happen if you look too closely, though of course, Anderson is always in control, no matter how out of control his creation seems to be.

The hippie dream has never been portrayed as foggier or more distant than here, where characters walk around seemingly aware that any change they longed for has eluded them and any peace they sought has curdled into boredom and discontentment. Anderson knows this, and his film is unafraid to show us how all that bitterness builds up in those who had so much hope dashed so unceremoniously. And, suddenly, all the fun stops, and we are left with only emptiness, and we can hardly picture what once may have filled the void.

See also: Mr. Turner, about what happens when a world we thought we knew passes us by and we are left to reflect on what remains. Mike Leigh delivers a gorgeously shot tribute to the life and work of a singular artist that serves as a reminder of what makes all artists special and just a little crazy.

The Kindergarten Teacher (2015)

I have not seen Sara Colangelo’s 2018 remake of this film. I hear Maggie Gyllenhaal is exceptional in the title role. Considering I can think of no bad Gyllenhaal performances, I am sure that she is. But we already have Sarit Larry’s sublime performance in Nadav Lapid’s original, and to ask for more would seemingly be greedy.

Beyond Larry’s stellar work, there is also Lapid’s constantly seeking camera, following characters around at ground level, spotting the nuances and flavors of everyday lives that have seemingly been sapped of both. It is a film about art that is as cynical as Exit Through the Gift Shop but drained of satire. The Kindergarten Teacher is deadly serious.

When the film came out, Lapid called the titular teacher a “terrorist for art,” and she certainly proves willing to blow up her life, metaphorically, for the cause. As we slide further into a culture that ignores beauty for the banal, Lapid was already here on the front line before we knew there was a war, calling it a battle before the first shot was fired. It all seems so clear now, but The Kindergarten Teacher knew then.

See also: 99 Homes, when Andrew Garfield finally got to step away from the Spider-man mask that was always ill-fitted and show us once again the thespian underneath. Few films understood and conveyed the economic realities of the decade better than this vital Ramin Bahrani work.

Moana (2016)

Moana made $690 million worldwide. It was a critical hit. It featured a popular soundtrack spearheaded by the brilliant Lin-Manuel Miranda. And in its time across various streaming services, it has proved to be endlessly rewatchable. Despite all of this, it feels as though the film is destined to animated also-ran status for the 2010s.

The Frozen franchise was the biggest animated hit of a decade bookended by a pair of Toy Story sequels (Toy Story 3 in 2010 and Toy Story 4 in 2019), part of Pixar’s continued dominance in the animation realm. Hayao Miyazaki made his supposed swan song (The Wind Rises in 2013, though he may have further features yet to come). Spiderman: Into the Spider-Verse changed how we look at animation and animated heroes. This all went on, and still, I keep coming back to Moana.

I can’t think of a better animated story to save for future generations than that of a young Polynesian girl who takes control of her destiny, saves her people, and defeats a “villain” not with violence but empathy. It is classic Disney, presented in a way that is anything but classic. There is no princess. There is no prince. There is just a fearless warrior, who instead of urging us to let it go, asks us to wonder how far we’ll go.

See also: 20th Century Women, Mike Mills’ loving portrait of the women who raised him, which stands among the most empathetic films of a time in which empathy seems in short supply. Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, and Elle Fanning are remarkable at the head of an ensemble of lives that feel truly lived.

In the Fade (2017)

Each of us is dealing in some way with forgiveness and reconciliation, be it on a small scale within ourselves or our families or on a grander scale with a society that continues to oppress and marginalize the most vulnerable among us. There is no easy answer, there is no quick fix, and no peace appears to be on the horizon. So, what are we left with? Fear. Anger. Resentment. Hatred. And a lack of avenues to explore and work through these feelings. In that spirit, director Fatih Akin’s In the Fade sure seems like the movie of the moment.

Despite winning the Golden Globe for best foreign language film and despite starring Diane Kruger, one of Germany’s most famous actresses internationally, who won best actress at the Cannes Film Festival for this performance, In the Fade was criminally underseen. Perhaps it was too raw for American audiences. Tell me if this sounds familiar: A person of color is killed, and the system spends its time investigating the deceased for reasons it is his fault he is dead. Throw in the true antagonists, a band of Neo Nazis, and though set in Germany, this begins to resemble the America a lot of us know today.

Kruger plays the wife of the Turkish man who is killed along with their son in a terrorist bombing, and when the system fails to achieve justice, she is left to face a world that would rather protect Nazis than avenge an immigrant. So, we return to forgiveness and reconciliation. The Christian bible says Jesus wants us to forgive 77 times – or maybe 70 times 7. In the Fade asks what of that next time and whether practicing forgiveness and reconciliation simply comforts evil-doers. What of and at what cost accountability? Akin’s answer comes not from the bible but another worldly scribe: Don’t let the sun go down on your grievances.

See also: The Florida Project, about mostly good people mostly trying to do good in a world that has little time or patience for small kindnesses. Writer-director Sean Baker’s film is equal parts damning and triumphant, portraying the American Dream as a flickering candle, a beacon of hope that at any moment could be extinguished.

Black Panther (2018)

Ryan Coogler dominated the decade. I say that as a plain fact. I am on the record all over this website calling Coogler the best director in the game today, and I have not seen a compelling argument for anyone else. He burst on to the scene in 2013 with Fruitvale Station, an underseen masterwork. From there, he took over one of the most storied franchises in American film and made it relevant again with Creed in 2015. Finally, to close out the decade, he gifted the world Black Panther.

For 2018, Black Panther simply was the culture. Think about how remarkable this is: A black man directs a script from two black writers (Coogler and Joe Robert Cole), starring a mostly black cast, and the film becomes the highest-grossing domestic box-office hit (until Avengers: Endgame took back the title) in a series that is otherwise painfully white. But leave aside for a moment everything the film means to the industry and the world at large, and what you are left with is a tremendous work of art and, for my money, the finest superhero film ever made.

Black Panther is great because as thrilling as its set pieces are, as cool as its technology is, as fun as its heroes are, it is a film equally concerned with ideas. Though it ends with a big fight sequence – as required by Marvel formula – the battle is about more than brawn. It is about ideas, about ideology. Coogler engages the audience intellectually in a way that even few non-superhero films have the courage to do. That he does so while entertaining so thoroughly makes Black Panther like watching a magic trick – and Coogler, right now, is the world’s greatest magician.

See also: The Other Side of the Wind, the final Orson Welles film, about which we do not talk enough, perhaps because we take for granted a masterpiece from one of the greatest directors ever to step behind a camera. It is the perfect coda to a sadly imperfect career, marred by a system that could not understand or appreciate the genius in its midst.

The Nightingale (2019)

Writer-director Jennifer Kent seemed to spring forth fully formed with her astonishing horror debut The Babadook in 2014. Her second feature, the equally horrific but decidedly less supernatural The Nightingale, proves that first film was no fluke and that Kent will be a filmmaker to be reckoned with in the coming decade.

A revenge thriller where the antagonist is nothing less than European colonialism, The Nightingale takes place 200 years ago and could not feel more of the moment. Our heroes are a white convict woman (Aisling Franciosi) and an aboriginal tracker (Baykali Ganambarr), who each have reasons to be angry with the hand life has dealt them, or more specifically, the hand their white male overseers have dealt them.

As they trek through the Tasmanian wilderness, doggedly pursuing those who have wronged them, we are confronted with the kinds of banal, everyday violence that make up life in a world destroyed by its conquerors. The film is brutal, bloody, and assaultive, all of which I mean as compliments, as Kent never shies from her duty to portray the truth of this place and these people. This is not about the nobility in the fight – there is no nobility or grace to be found here – but rather the necessity of struggle. No one wanted things to be this way, but they are, and we do what we must.

See also: Aquarela, which is the most beguiling and entrancing documentary to come along in quite some time, demonstrating the power of the natural world and, thereby, humanity’s inherent powerlessness. We are guests here, and not permanent ones at that.

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Check back throughout the week as we continue with our Best of the Decade project, continuing with the Top 20 Performances of the 2010s.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Animated Feature

Zootopia is nominated for Best Animated Feature.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Animated Feature

The nominees are:

Kubo and the Two Strings

Moana

My Life as a Zucchini

The Red Turtle

Zootopia

Best Animated Feature is a studio game, plain and simple. This is the 16th year since the category became official at the Oscars, and in that time, there have been 64 nominated features. Of those 64, 31 have come from just three studios – Pixar (Disney Pixar), Disney, and Dreamworks. Of the 15 winners, not counting this year of course, those three studios have accounted for 12. The boom in independent animation has been wonderful for the industry, but if you want to win an Oscar, come with big boys or don’t come at all.

This year represents one of the few times Pixar had an eligible feature (Finding Dory) that failed to get a nomination, but Disney made up for it with a double nomination (Zootopia and Moana). Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli earned its sixth nomination with its first non-Japanese production (The Red Turtle), and Laika picked up its fourth nomination (Kubo and the Two Strings) for its fourth film, a perfect record that so far has produced zero wins. French-Swiss co-production My Life as a Zucchini is the only independently produced nominee, and not coincidentally, it is the least likely winner.

*Note: Full disclosure, I have not yet seen My Life as a Zucchini, which will not be released here until Feb. 24, two days before the ceremony. I will write about it in this space once I have had the opportunity to see it.

Zootopia (directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore) – Zootopia has been the animated movie of the moment pretty much the whole year. Its clever examination of race relations and prejudice teaches viewers a valuable lesson, and it is also undeniably entertaining and hilarious. Released early in 2016, as the U.S. presidential election truly was beginning to ramp up, it felt important and relevant then, and it has only grown more so as events in this nation have unfolded.

The film not only forces us to question our preconceived notions and biases, but it also wants us to question who benefits from those biases and how those people build systems that reinforce and worsen prejudice. Of course, this is all done in the style of a computer-animated talking-animal movie in which an adorable bunny (a bunny is allowed to call another bunny “cute,” but another animal …) realizes her dream of becoming a police officer.

The writing is smart, the animation is inspired, and the message is moving and necessary. Given all that – and the fact it has been a dominant and beloved force all season – you are probably looking at your winner. It would be the third non-Pixar Disney winner in the last four years, joining Frozen and Big Hero 6, and fifth straight from either Pixar or the parent company. Howard is a previous nominee for Bolt and Moore for Wreck-It Ralph, while nominated producer Clark Spencer will be making his first trip to the Oscars.

Moana (directed by Ron Clements and John Musker) – Of course, I will be rooting for the other Disney nominee in the category. If Best Animated Feature existed in the ’90s, Clements and Musker probably would already have a couple Oscars for The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, both of which they also directed together. As it stands, their only previous nomination together came in 2009 for The Princess and the Frog, which lost to Pixar’s crowning achievement, Up. Clements earned a solo nomination for Treasure Planet in 2002, though that feature was also co-directed by Musker.

Moana is the story of a young Polynesian girl, Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho), torn between duty to her people and an insatiable desire to explore the world beyond her island. When the island is threatened by a curse that will wipe out all life, she sets out to find the demigod Maui (voiced by Dwayne Johnson) and, with his help, end the curse. As a tale of a young girl’s strength, wisdom, and independence, it is revolutionary in the Disney canon, encouraging traits in a young girl rarely encouraged by the movies or, sadly, by the world at large.

Beyond that, it is a terrific entertainment with the most gorgeous animation of the year – particularly the water effects, which are remarkable – and one of the best, most listenable Disney soundtracks in a long time. The songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i, and Mark Mancina are endlessly hummable, instantly memorable, and in the case of the showstopper “How Far I’ll Go,” out-and-out brilliant. The voice acting is on point, and the world of the story is absolutely engrossing. As I have said before, this is not only the best animated film of the year but one of the best films of the year, period.

Kubo and the Two Strings (directed by Travis Knight) – Where I find myself in the minority with my unabashed affection for Moana, I also find myself in the minority with my muted appreciation of Kubo and the Two Strings. Along with Zootopia, Knight’s stop-motion film gobbled up the lion’s share of critical kudos and has been talked about as the most likely spoiler in this category. Only the second animated film ever nominated for Best Visual Effects, the animation is undoubtedly gorgeous to look at, but on a story level, the film does not hold up.

Kubo and the Two Strings is a story of magic, tradition, and family, but the film’s default setting for communicating each of these ideas is action – action, action, and more action. Again, I would never deny Knight, who is also president and CEO of Laika, and his team bring their vision to life in a stunning fashion. Every sequence is magnificently realized and lovingly detailed. In between action sequences, though, the story bogs down, seemingly unsure what to do with itself when not engaged in a battle of some sort. As such, whatever message the film is trying to communicate is lost in the morass of combat.

The Red Turtle (directed by Michael Dudok de Wit – The story goes Studio Ghibli co-founder and animation legend Hayao Miyazaki met with the head of Wild Bunch studio and screened the Oscar-winning animated short Father and Daughter. He then asked Wild Bunch to find him that director. That was in 2008, and after finding Dudok de Wit and convincing him to make a film for the studio, the world got The Red Turtle.

A marvel of hand-drawn animation, Dudok de Wit’s style is recognizably his own, while still maintaining that certain Studio Ghibli charm, no doubt aided by the presence of nominated producer Toshio Suzuki. The plot, such as it is, follows the life of a man who gets shipwrecked on a deserted island and makes a life for himself there. To reveal anything further would be to dispel some of the film’s magic, though the trailer does a pretty good job of that anyway. The Red Turtle is intentionally slow and contemplative, but even at 80 minutes, it feels long, like a magnificent short idea stretched out to feature length.

My Life as a Zucchini – *See note above

The final analysis

Zootopia is the juggernaut here, the billion-dollar grosser from one of the biggest studios in the world. It won the Golden Globe and the Producers Guild award for animated feature, and it has picked up numerous critical accolades. Kubo and the Two Strings is the underdog from the little stop-motion studio that could. Its triumph at the BAFTA Awards over Zootopia and Moana certainly raises questions for the Academy. Could this be the year Laika finally breaks through? I wouldn’t bet on it. Expect Disney’s recent run of dominance to continue, though not necessarily for its best new film.

Will win: Zootopia

Should win: Moana

Should have been here: Finding Dory

Tomorrow: Best Animated Short

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

Moana, which is nominated in the Best Original Song category

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Original Song

The nominees are:

“The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story

“Audition (Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land

“City of Stars” from La La Land

“How Far I’ll Go” from Moana

“Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls

After a dire year last time around in this category, the music branch rights the ship with four excellent, deserving nominees and one that should be nowhere near a nomination but is at least a passably enjoyable song. So much goes wrong with the music categories each year – and I complain about it every time – it is genuinely surprising when the branch gets it right, or as close to right as they are likely to get.

Of course, these films made it easier than most. In the first place, you have a wildly popular, incredibly successful musical filled to the brim with original songs and dominating the awards race. It received two nominations, the maximum allowable under the rules. To fill out the category, try to grab the biggest stars you can because if nothing else, it will make for an entertaining performance at the ceremony, and boy, did they ever grab the biggest stars around.

My wish every year for this category is that the nominees reflect their importance to the films in which they appear, whether they are integral to the plot or simply evocative of the emotions at play. With one exception, once again, these songs pass that test with flying colors, and I am left with only praise for a branch I often find laughably out of touch and whose nominations are often downright preposterous. Okay, I suppose I had to get my shots in still, but this remains an excellent selection of nominees.

“Audition (Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land – This is going to sound hypocritical from someone who just called another group of people out of touch, but I don’t listen to the radio or even go to stores that often, so I have no idea what people are listening to when it comes to new music. However, I know La La Land is a popular film, and within that popular film, this is the most popular song. It also happens to be the song most integral to the film’s plot.

It is the turning point at the end of the film’s second act when the characters make decisions that will set them on the path to the film’s climax. In addition to being a catchy, important song within the context of the musical, the lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul perfectly capture the essence and themes of the film. Composer Justin Hurwitz builds the musical accompaniment to a glorious climax, and it becomes one of those “stand up in the theater and cheer” moments that are all too rare.

“City of Stars” from La La Land – All due respect to stars Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, whose performances are wonderful, but their voices do not hold up to the rigors of a musical. Stone performs admirably on “Audition,” but the deficiency is highlighted in the film’s ensemble numbers like “Another Day of Sun” and “Someone in the Crowd,” which are led by experienced musical performers. Ultimately, this does not affect the enjoyment of the film, but “City of Stars,” a duet between Gosling and Stone, loses some of its luster due to the only-passable voices of its singers.

In addition, while Hurwitz’s composition is used throughout as a key piece of underscoring, becoming a leitmotif for the film’s central couple, the song as a whole and its use in the film does not exactly cry out for recognition. Its most prominent placement is under a montage, and while it is effective, it is less effective than the film perhaps wants or even needs it to be.

“How Far I’ll Go” from Moana – I have written about this song before in some depth here, but it bears repeating just how revolutionary Lin-Manuel Miranda’s composition is in terms of Disney movies. For nearly 80 years, Disney movies have sold a certain version of young girls, and they have sold it successfully. Even those who break out of their shells tend to discover what they needed was “right here all along.” They often limit in the same breath as they empower. Not so with Miranda’s powerful ode to exploration and self-discovery.

Moana (voiced by Auli’i Cravalho) is a soul on a mission, and what she needs is not on her island but beyond the reef that surrounds it. It is somewhere out there, beyond anything she has ever known, and the beauty of the song is that it expresses the inner call she feels to discover whatever is waiting for her. She is conflicted, of course, caught between obligation and desire, but for once, the film does not argue for her duties and obligations but for her need to break free. Even “Let It Go,” from Frozen, the most popular Disney song in years, rings hollow in the context of the whole film. But, “How Far I’ll Go” is a mission statement and a blueprint for a heroine the likes of which we have rarely seen.

“Can’t Stop the Feeling” from Trolls – Remember when I admitted above I do not listen to the radio? I don’t, but as soon as I heard this song, I felt I had heard it before. It has a classic, timeless pop feel to it, which makes sense, coming as it does from one of our foremost popular music artists, Justin Timberlake. Co-written with Max Martin and Shellback, two of the most successful songwriters and producers of the current century, “Can’t Stop the Feeling” is disposable, bubble-gum pop at its finest.

How perfect it is then for this disposable, bubble-gum movie. Trolls is a mildly enjoyable children’s entertainment, but this song easily will be its longest-lasting cultural legacy. About a group of trolls who live by the credo “Hug, Dance, Sing” and teach a species of monsters how to find happiness through love – and music – “Can’t Stop the Feeling” is the film’s climax. Its entire payoff is predicated on the success of this song, and what do you know? It works. If the song does not quite reach the heights it purports to – teaching the power of love – it at least gets toes tapping and hips moving.

“The Empty Chair” from Jim: The James Foley Story – The outlier here, the cynic in me wants to say this nomination only exists because the name Sting is attached to the credit, although co-songwriter J. Ralph is a three-time nominee himself. This is Sting’s fourth nomination but his first for a documentary, while J. Ralph has carved something of a niche composing songs for socially conscious documentaries (Racing Extinction and Chasing Ice before this).

Jim: The James Foley Story is an intimate, unflinching look at the life and death of conflict journalist James Foley, who was beheaded by members of ISIS in a now-infamous video. It is a worthwhile project, though the film does not perhaps tease out all the ideas it could from its subject matter given its narrow focus. Hopefully this nomination draws attention to the film and the issues it raises, but as a song that plays over the closing credits and accomplishes nothing the score could not, I cannot say I fully support its inclusion here. Plus, the song is just okay.

The final analysis

The only award La La Land is 100 percent certain to lose, that is only because both of its nominated songs cannot win – unless there is a tie, in which case we really would be in for an historic sweep. This probably does come down to “City of Stars” against “Audition,” and the latter simply has greater emotional impact within the film and is the more memorable composition.

Will win: “Audition (Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land

Should win: “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana

Should have been here: “Drive It Like You Stole It” from Sing Street

Because it is a great song from a great movie and one of my favorites of last year, here is “Drive It Like You Stole It” from writer-director John Carney’s Sing Street:

Tomorrow: Best Original Screenplay

Year in Review: Top 10 Films of 2016

Here we arrive, then, at the annual tradition of narrowing the hundreds of films released and seen in a year to 10 or so. I have never come up with a satisfactory answer for why this is done. The closest I can come is this: Only the crazed and obsessive among us will approach seeing even half the films released in a year, and providing a top 10 or 20 allows those burgeoning but busy cinephiles to focus on a well curated selection of the year’s best offerings. Why order the list – a practice against which no less an authority than Roger Ebert once tried to rebel? Simply, if one sees only one or two movies in a year, start at the top and move down.

Our basic purpose defined, then what does this specific list mean? Almost every one of these films could be found on other lists out there – and there are a few I turn to more often than others such as the BFI Sight and Sound poll and the National Board of Review. Left for me to consider, then, is what if anything this specific list in this specific order means about me. I do not know if I am the most easily knowable person, but were one to try, he could do no better than a list of films I think are important. So as much as I wish this to be a guide for you, dear reader, to the movies I hope you seek out, it is a guide to me as a person and what I feel about the world right here and right now.

Before we get to the list, five other films you could do worse than spending two or so hours with: Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, a glimpse of the Civil Rights movement through the eyes of a man who lived and breathed it; Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow, an anti-war protest film disguised as a horror movie set in 1980s Tehran after the revolution; Ava DuVernay’s 13th, a bracing, comprehensive study of black America’s struggle from its roots in slavery through the present; John Carney’s Sing Street, a beautiful ode to youthful rebellion and the uplifting power of music; and Jeff Nichols’ Loving, a quiet, meditative film that celebrates the strength of a single voice (or a pair of voices in unison) amid the din and clatter of hatred and bigotry.

10. I, Daniel Blake, directed by Ken Loach

What I, Daniel Blake comes down to is this: Systems will not help us; only people will help us. I am defining help broadly here as anything that improves our lives. No system ultimately can improve our lives as much or as efficiently as the people around us. Loach’s film, from a tremendous script by Paul Laverty (their second Palm d’Or winner together after The Wind That Shakes the Barley in 2006), is undeniably angry, fed up with austerity and bureaucracy and governments that care more about self-perpetuation than governing, but at its core, it is a deeply human story about small kindnesses.

Daniel (Dave Johns, a comedian in his film debut, though he has been on television and stage for years) is a widower with a heart problem. A carpenter by trade, his doctor tells him he cannot return to work as the strain on his heart would be too much. However, after a government physical, the state tells him he is fit to work and he will not receive his medical benefits. He goes on unemployment, but the strict rules for earning unemployment benefits – including using computer skills he does not possess – leave him without the means to support himself.

While he is in the employment office attempting to arrange his medical appeal, he overhears Katie (Hayley Squires), a single mother of two forced from their residence in a homeless hostel in London due to squalid conditions. She is being railroaded by the same system as Daniel, and he has had enough. It is one thing to push him around, he determines, but he cannot sit by and watch it happen to someone else. He befriends her and her two children, and they form a makeshift family, out of necessity, yes, but primarily out of an innate desire to be kind to one another.

There are no easy resolutions in this film because the adversities experienced by these characters are real, and they are happening all over right now. People who want to work cannot for reasons medical, family, or elsewise, but the state does not see reasons, only statistics, only another jobless person to burden the government. This is what bureaucracies do – they reduce people to numbers in a formula, then remove humanity from the equation. Systems cannot tolerate humanity because they cannot understand it, so it falls to us, the people, to show to each other what no system can – compassion and kindness.

9. Jackie, directed by Pablo Larraín

The greatness of Jackie lies in a triptych of elements coming together to form a masterful portrait of perhaps the defining moment of the 20th century: the assassination of John F. Kennedy. No single moment provides as clear a schism in the American experience as that fateful split second Nov. 22, 1963, when a man pulled his trigger and shook the world. We have seen the assassination on screen before in countless ways from countless angles but never in this way from this angle with this director, this script, and this star.

It does not take long to realize you are in for a different experience. From the first moment Larraín and cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine’s grainy footage washes across the screen, Jackie becomes an eerily subjective rendering of Jacqueline Kennedy’s life in the White House. Often shot in extreme close-ups, the visual language of the film suggests a woman who must suffer the constant bombardment and invasion of a nation’s interest but who is smart enough to use that to her advantage. At first, Jackie seems overwhelmed, but at last, she seems – and is – powerful.

The script by Noah Oppenheim smartly zeroes in on Jackie’s mental state in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s death. This narrow focus gives Larraín the freedom to make the film about the first lady’s subjective experience. Oppenheim takes this historical figure and finds what made her relatable and beloved while showing the calculation that went into establishing the Jackie O aura. Her concern for her husband’s legacy – at one point, she asks her driver his knowledge of another president who died in office; he has none – gives her a goal to focus on amid her grief. In so doing, she helps define one of the most enduring legacies in modern history.

Through it all, there is Natalie Portman as Jackie. I discussed her performance in depth yesterday in my Top 10 Performances column, so I will only briefly touch on it here, but suffice it to say, the film would not succeed without Portman’s stunning work at its center. Most great performances are like wonderfully written prose – precise, detailed, and nuanced. Portman’s Jackie, while full of precision, detail, and nuance, is closer to poetry, flowing seamlessly in and out of ideas and drifting along a rhythm of her own making. It carries us along, and by the end, we are thankful for the ride.

8. Moana, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker

Little in this life makes me as happy as being surprised at the movies. It does not happen often anymore. I am too inquisitive about films. I want to know what they are about, how they are regarded, what went into their development, all before I see them. So, even with great films, every other film on this list in fact, I had some idea going in they would be great, that I would appreciate them. Moana hit me like an arrow from Cupid’s bow. I had no idea it was coming, but I fell in love.

In every department, this is the best non-Pixar film Disney has produced in a long time. Beginning with the absolutely stunning animation, Moana pulls you in via a wordless opening sequence in which we meet the title character and learn her relationship to the ocean. The water effects alone impress, but the character designs, the small, in-world details, and the wonderful depth of explorable space all add up to the kind of rich experience rarely found in children’s movies.

The soundtrack, composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Opetaia Foa’i, and Mark Mancina, is gloriously realized and endlessly hummable. Songs like the opening number “Where You Are,” “We Know the Way,” and “You’re Welcome” demonstrate a fluidity with verse, daringness with style, and facility for arrangement lacking in lesser animated musicals. The show-stopper, “How Far I’ll Go,” a solo effort by Miranda as performed by Moana voice actor Auli’i Cravalho, belongs in the pantheon of great Disney songs with “Bare Necessities,” “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” and “Let It Go.”

Finally, it is a winning story about a young girl with drive, ambition, courage, and talent, the kind of character rarer at the cinema than she ought to be. At every turn, the film is charming, exciting, and simply delightful, but its ending, which I will not reveal, is its true masterstroke. Where nearly every film of this kind before it took one path, Moana takes another, and rather than celebrate the destruction of something evil, it embraces and revels in the creation of something good.

7. The Handmaiden, directed by Chan-wook Park

This film is why words like “sumptuous” were invented. Adapted by Park and Seo-kyeong Jeong from Sarah Waters’ novel “Fingersmith,” The Handmaiden is a twisting, twisted tale of love, passion, deceit, and betrayal told against the backdrop of the Japanese occupation of Korea in the 1930s. If I told you everything contained within this film, you would not believe me. There is even a chance you will see the film and not believe what you saw.

Con artists, double-crosses, triple-crosses, lesbian love affairs, insane asylums, and a library of every type of pornography imaginable – Park stuffs his film to bursting with so much lurid and illicit subject matter one could almost miss its studious formalism, its impressively byzantine narrative structure, and its outright beauty. Almost. For as much sex and sensuality as is trotted out, The Handmaiden is never prurient. The camera does not ogle these women, so neither do we.

Tae-ri Kim plays Korean con artist Sook-Hee, employed by “Count” Fujiwara (Jung-woo Ha) to insinuate herself into the life of heiress Lady Hideko (Min-hee Kim) in order to steal her fortune. She becomes the wealthy woman’s handmaiden, and the deeper and more intimate their relationship grows, Sook-Hee becomes less able to discern whether she is still pulling a con, genuinely falling in love, or being conned herself. The performances by all three actors are brilliantly mannered and cleverly insane.

By the time Park pulls the rug out from under the audience at the end of the elongated first act, he has so thoroughly brought us into his world we would let him do anything. This is good because the rug will come out at least twice more. As reveal after reveal and false reveal after false reveal pile on top of one another, your jaw drops at the sheer audacity of the strategy, and you are ultimately thankful for a movie that treats you as smart enough to keep up.

6. Weiner, directed by Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg

I saw this movie at the end of May, by which time we were all hopelessly enmeshed in the presidential election cycle and unbelievably had more than five months still to go. It still does not feel quite over, does it? My sneaking suspicion is it never will. It is a fine mess we made of democracy, a lovely theory but which has proved unsustainable. The writing was always on the wall, though, and in Kriegman and Steinberg’s probing (forgive me) political exposé, it is spelled out as clear as ever.

The First Fall of Anthony Weiner took place right around the time I began my journalism career. I had been told for years through school I should seek another profession, by friends, family, and well-meaning advisors. Journalism is dying, they said. There will be no jobs. Well, I have never had a problem finding work in the industry, but its death sure as hell came just the same. It is not a physical death or even a financial one – though that is occurring, too – but rather a spiritual rot at the core. The initial sexting scandal of the Democratic congressman from New York surely was not the first sign of a problem, but just look at its resonance now.

This documentary is a chronicle of the Second Fall of Anthony Weiner, when he ran for mayor of New York City and promptly got himself embroiled in another scandal. The film is a tale of hubris and dumbfounding illogic. Weiner is a deeply flawed man who could not get himself together for even a brief period, but as much as he may seem like a villain, particularly next to his long-suffering (now ex-) wife, Huma Abedin, he is no such thing. The villain, if there must be one, is us.

Who are we, so quick, so ready to judge? And what is it that we are judging exactly? Weiner was a hypocrite who was unfaithful to his wife. He was not the first to fit both those categories and will not be the last. His public profile made him a figure of ridicule and scorn, and ridicule and scorn him we did. Mercilessly. We chewed every bit of meat off the bone, and when there was none left, we ground the bones into dust. It was disgusting, every second of it. I do not defend the man’s actions, but I also refuse to point my finger and laugh. There is nothing funny about the end of civil public discourse, and it is not by chance the Third Fall of Anthony Weiner coincided with the rise of the current president-elect. It was not chance at all. It was a failure by all of us to recognize the design.

5. The Lobster, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

The same themes explored by Loach and Laverty in I, Daniel Blake are taken here to their logical extreme by director-co-writer Lanthimos and co-writer Efthymis Filippou. After we have removed humanity from our systems, what is there left but to remove it from ourselves? Lanthimos and Filippou craft a darkly funny satire that becomes less funny and less satirical the more you consider it until finally you are left with nothing but the dark.

In a world that is not too far in the future, the state determines humans belong in heterosexual pairs. Those who do not find a partner within a given set of time are transmogrified into the animal of their choosing. The metaphor is clear: The state defines humanity by couple-hood, without which we are simply beasts. It does not take long for us to meet a group of humans rebelling against the system, forced to live in the woods like … well, like the wild beasts they would otherwise become. They are militant in their singleness and fierce in their enforcement of individuality. Once again, the metaphor is clear: The rebellion becomes that against which it is rebelling.

If it were this simple and this clear cut, it would be entertaining and enlightening, but it would not be transcendent. The Lobster transcends because it introduces us to David (Colin Farrell) and the Short-Sighted Woman (Rachel  Weisz). They are good people trapped by their systems – he by the state and she by the rebels. Within all of this, they somehow find each other. Thus, the film ceases to be a battle between two diametrically opposed ideologies but a battle against ideology itself.

David and the Short-Sighted Woman, played to perfection by Farrell and Weisz, wage a private war against the world. Theirs is the kind of intense personal connection meant to be crushed by these systems because it is the ultimate expression of their humanity, for which as we discussed above, systems have no circuitry. The film’s ultimate question, and its darkest, becomes whether two people molded by the system have the strength and power to end it. The film may not provide a clear answer, but one need only look around in our world to intuit what it might be.

4. Fences, directed by Denzel Washington

Fences is a movie so good we almost do not deserve it. That it exists at all is a wonderful gift to the world. Whose gift, then? First and foremost, it is from playwright August Wilson, who adapted his script for the screen. Wilson uses the English language the way Renaissance masters used a canvas or, in the parlance of his characters, the way Hank Aaron used a bat – gracefully, elegantly, effortlessly. Fences is an invitation by Wilson to understand this country and its people a little better by sitting on the porch and chatting with them, by walking a mile in their well-worn shoes.

It is also the gift of its director, Washington, for being smart enough and talented enough to know when to stay out of the way of the material and what he can do to enhance it on the screen. Not every great actor can be a great director. Some may not even be good directors. It takes a certain skill, an ability to see the larger picture. Actors, so trained to focus on detail and nuance, can easily miss the greater themes calling out for exploration. Washington does not make this mistake, and in the film’s final resplendent moment, he reveals just what a talent he is behind the camera.

Washington the actor has also given us this gift, along with Viola Davis and co-signed by the rest of this superb cast, small enough I will list them all here – Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, Russell Hornsby, Mykelti Williamson, and Saniyya Sidney. Most of these actors had the benefit of appearing in the stage revival, including Washington and Davis, so familiarity and facility with the material is a given. However, to translate that familiarity from the stage to the screen takes a special talent, which is possessed by every one of these brilliant performers.

African-American life in this country has never been and will never be easy. Hell, life in this country is not easy, but to start from a place of systemic disadvantage makes it near impossible. The film’s main character, Troy Maxon, is not afraid to call out the systems that have held him and his family down for generations that have passed and generations still to come. Bigotry and racism must have a name to be fought, and we must be willing to call them by those names when we see them. This is Fences’ greatest gift, and we should cherish it, but we must also be willing to learn from it.

3. Moonlight, directed by Barry Jenkins

Some movies are about transformations. Others are transformative. Moonlight, inspired by the play “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue” by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is both. It would seem impossible to walk out of Jenkins’ beautiful tone poem without thinking a different way about the world and our responsibility in it. The trick of the film is to bring the margins and its marginalized people to the foreground, to show you their lives as they experience them, and to force you to question everything you thought about what it means to grow up poor, black, gay, or all three.

When first we meet the 9-year-old Little (Alex R. Hibbert), he is precisely that, physically diminutive and small in the eyes of the world – his peers, his mother Paula (Naomi Harris). It takes a chance encounter with the local drug lord Juan (Mahershala Ali) and his wife, Teresa (Janelle Monáe), to give him even the first hint of self-worth. All of these people exist on the outskirts of a society that would rather they just disappear, but Moonlight serves as a reminder not just of their existence but their value.

In a remarkable narrative gambit, we jump forward seven years in Little’s life to when he becomes Chiron (Ashton Sanders), his teenage self, who is full of anger at the way the world has treated him and feeling the weight of a developing sexuality he does not understand. Kevin (played in the film’s first act by Jaden Piner, the second act by Jharrel Jerome, and the third act by André Holland) is Chiron’s closest friend along the way. With an abusive mother and a now-absent father figure, Chiron turns to Teresa and Kevin for comfort and compassion. When Kevin betrays him, it sets in motion the events that will lead to Chiron becoming the man we meet in the third act, Black (Trevante Rhodes).

Act III is Jenkins’ biggest gamble and greatest achievement. It is here where he diverges from the play, which featured only the first two acts, and forges his own path. It would be a disservice to the film to reveal any more, but in its final stretch, Moonlight overturns every preconceived notion we might still have had about Little, Chiron, and Black. It demonstrates humanity in ways rarely shared on screen, showing him to be flawed but worthy of love, guarded but open to connection, but most of all, like the rest of us, complex and real.

2. Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese

Every film takes a different path to the screen, and some are more harried than others, but for a film like Silence, it is a miracle it even exists. Scorsese spent decades trying to bring Shûsaku Endô’s novel to the big screen. Beset by production delays and embroiled in lawsuits, it seemed a longshot ever to come together, but Scorsese is no stranger to long-delayed passion projects. This is the director, after all, who spent nearly 30 years trying to make Gangs of New York. If anyone could put his vision down on film, it would be Scorsese.

So he has, and in such a way as to make every minute, every second spent fighting for its realization seem worth it. The evidence of the master filmmaker’s passion is in every frame of Silence – the moody, fog-filled photography of its early passages, the spare but evocative set design of later sequences, and the languid pace, not often associated with Scorsese’s films, that allows viewers to soak in every luscious moment. This is certainly the director’s most beautiful film since Raging Bull, which is not a fair comparison because their forms are dictated by their functions, which are so very different.

If Silence were only a magnificently mounted project, it would be worthy of Scorsese’s efforts and the nearly three hours of an audience’s time it demands. However, it is also the most richly layered and doggedly inquisitive film Scorsese has ever made. As a lapsed Catholic brought up in a devoutly religious home, Scorsese has wrestled with questions of god and faith his entire life, thus he is the perfect director to adapt Endô’s work.

The film follows a pair of Jesuit priests, Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Garrpe (Adam Driver), on a mission in 17th century Japan, where Christianity is outlawed and practitioners of the faith are hunted down and forced to deny their beliefs on pain of torture and death. The story allows Scorsese to explore questions such as what faith means, who is worthy of forgiveness, whether the eponymous silence is proof of god’s absence, and what right men have to speak on behalf of god. Silence is a film that must be viewed and viewed again and again even to scratch its surface. Its thematic depth and aesthetic pleasures, however, make a daunting endeavor an experience to treasure.

1. O.J.: Made in America, directed by Ezra Edelman

Take a good look at that picture above. There is a good chance you recognize it. Some of you just said to yourselves, “If the glove don’t fit, you must acquit.” You probably know a lot about that image and could tell tales of your life directly related to it. Contained within that moment, which is the culmination of many smaller moments, is everything about us, our society, and the world we have built. It is our cultural Waterloo, after which we could never engage with anything the same way again, much to our detriment.

Some will cry foul at the inclusion of O.J.: Made in America on this list, let alone at the top, suggesting that despite its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and its limited run in theaters, it is a television show. I might respond by saying with the proliferation of Netflix original movies, video-on-demand, day-and-date releases, and the like, what even constitutes a “proper film” anymore is up for debate. If such matters concern you, simply cross this film off the list and make due with a top nine.

However you wish to define it – TV show, miniseries, film – O.J.: Made in America is the defining chronicle of our times. It takes the landmark O.J. Simpson murder trial and expands its scope, extrapolates back through time until the portrait is not of a controversial football player but of the United States itself. And it is a damning portrait the film paints.

Nobody comes out clean in this. O.J. Simpson is no hero. The Los Angeles Police Department is criminally corrupt. The prosecution is laughably inept. The defense is brazenly manipulative. The jury is willfully dismissive. The media are cravenly pandering. The world is gleefully entertained. The Trial of the Century was a freak show in a hall of mirrors. We came to gawk and saw only ourselves, but with the image distorted, we could not recognize our own faces, so we laughed and pointed anyway.

Had O.J.: Made in America focused solely on the trial, it would have been an intriguing, entertaining document, a snapshot of a moment frozen in time. Instead, Edelman’s grander focus turns the trial into the denouement of a Greek tragedy set in motion long before any of the players could have known what was to come. Our world now is simply the epilogue of this story, and we are all scarcely more than bit players in the greater narrative.

Take a look around and see the evidence of this on every newsstand, on every television channel, in politics, in civic interactions, in the worsening hell of our social discourse. Yes, the culture died on that day in 1994 when a retired football player on trial for the brutal murder of two people failed to put on a pair of gloves. That much seems self-evident. Edelman takes on the noble task with his film of trying to explain why. I think the answer is right there in his title: This is who we are, made as we are, in America.