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.

Year in Review: Top 10 Moments of 2017

A film is a snapshot of the world at a place and time. It says, “This is who we are now,” and to future generations, it will say, “This is who we were then.” Films provide a metric for how far we have come or how little we have changed. What I would like to do here, then, is to take a snapshot of the snapshot, to pick images or sequences from some of the year’s best films that somehow represent a larger piece of our collective puzzle.

Traditionally, I have used this space in my annual Year in Review series for the Best & Worst column, identifying the positive and negative trends taking place in the film industry and filmgoing experience. That column frankly felt like a futile gesture this year in the wake of the ongoing sexual harassment and abuse scandal that has shaken Hollywood to its foundation. To call such abuse a negative trend feels glib and dismissive, however accurate, and no film business trends column would be complete without such a discussion.

Briefly, the rampant sexual abuse perpetrated by powerful members of the Hollywood community – almost universally men – has been dispiriting but not shocking. I say not shocking because throughout history, wherever power has been consolidated abuse has thrived. This is true of the political and business worlds, as well as film. However predictable these behaviors, it does not diminish their evil. If any good can be said to have come from this, it is the hope the #MeToo movement has raised awareness of the disheartening prevalence and disgusting banality of these abuses and the problem, now named, can be fixed sooner rather than later.

Elsewhere in the cinema world, things continued apace with theater revenues dropping even as ticket and concession prices rose. The MoviePass subscription service rocked the industry with its business model of essentially giving away movie tickets to those willing to take them, and the theater business, ever fearful of change, tried to battle back the upstart by incentivizing the theatergoing experience any way it could. This will be an interesting development to watch as 2018 unfolds and perhaps serves as a litmus test for new vs. old business practices. It may even provide the key for just what it will take to get people going to the cinemas again, if this is even possible.

A State of the Cinematic Union, however, feels less vital this year than years past, which is not to say it will not return in future installments of this column. Instead, this year, I wanted to introduce a new feature, the Top 10 Moments. This will not be the first site to compile such a list, and I have thought for years about introducing one. Now, the time feels right, and two moments this year made it feel so – the No. 10 moment on this list and the No. 1.

These are the moments that will stay with us once the rest of 2017 has fallen away, the moments that will remind us of who we were and just what it meant to be us. These are the Top 10 Moments of 2017:

10. When Bobby lights a cigarette, and the motel lights come on – from The Florida Project, directed by Sean Baker

Bobby (Willem Dafoe) stands on the balcony at dusk. It has been another hectic day managing the Magic Castle, the motel on the outskirts of Disney World where mostly poor families have made their temporary homes. If this is a castle, then Bobby is its king, but he does not feel much like one. In fact, he has stepped out on the balcony to steal a moment of peace, a quick cigarette before returning to the backbreaking work of running his little kingdom.

He lights his cigarette, and the porch lights of every room in the complex come on. It is a fleeting moment – blink and you might miss it – but it encapsulates his character perfectly. The motel lights are on a timer, surely, coming on as the sun goes down, and we realize Bobby is, too. He lights his cigarette and the lights come on because they are on the same schedule, part of the same entity, inseparable from one another.

All of the moments discussed below take place over entire scenes or sequences. They build, some slowly, some rapidly, to an apex of shock or catharsis. This moment, though, is a flash, a brief flicker, and then it is gone. In the time it takes to light a cigarette, we learn almost all we need to know about Bobby and his world, and all the filmmaker asks of us is to pay attention. We’d be foolish not to.

9. When we learn what happened to the Engineers – from Alien: Covenant, directed by Ridley Scott

I am among the few who think Scott’s earlier Prometheus is a misunderstood masterpiece. In fact, I might be the only one. Its investigation of the origins of human life and religious belief resonated for me on a level it didn’t for most observers. That’s okay. I don’t mind being in the minority. But it was hard not to watch Alien: Covenant and feel vindicated. The latest installment in the Alien franchise is much more highly regarded than its immediate predecessor, but I believe for any issues viewers had with Prometheus, any lingering questions or doubts, the answers are there in Covenant.

Now, one could argue it shouldn’t take a whole second movie for the first movie to make sense, but that is neither here nor there. As great as I think Prometheus is, everything in Alien: Covenant makes it that much better, that much more interesting. Covenant brings the Alien franchise full circle in a way that is both satisfying and shocking. It somehow makes perfect sense yet is so radical it boggles the mind.

Prometheus leaves off on the question: Where did the Engineers, those mysterious beings from deep space who seem to be the creators of life on Earth, come from? Did some other being create them? I will not discuss the specifics here because they would constitute major spoilers if you have not seen the film – for which it would be best to go in blind – but Alien: Covenant’s manner of dealing with these questions raises the level of the entire Alien franchise to high art. The moment we learn what happened to our creators is at once profoundly beautiful, philosophical, nihilistic, and perfect.

8. When Kay makes the decision to publish – from The Post, directed by Steven Spielberg

All of The Post builds to this moment. The audience, if it has any sense of history, knows what is coming, knows what must come. That it lands so well is a testament to the genius of Spielberg, the brilliance of Meryl Streep, and the wonderful script by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. While characters like Tom Hanks’ hard-charging journalist Ben Bradlee and the rest of the newsroom are clear in their aims, Kay Graham, as portrayed by Streep, is a slow burn.

Kay is the owner and publisher of the Washington Post, a position she inherited through her husband’s death but would have gotten by birthright alone, if not for the sexist nature of the industry. She is questioned and doubted and patronized by the men around her who don’t wield her power but by virtue of their gender believe they should have a seat at the table. It is difficult to watch as Kay struggles to find her voice, to find her cause, and that is what the Pentagon Papers provide.

Her business – and by association, the past and future of her family – is at stake. She stands to lose everything she built and worked for, so the decision to publish does not come lightly. Finally, though, she can longer bow to the men in her life – not even Ben. She makes this decision because she believes it is right, because she decides it is her time to come out of the shadows and flex the muscle she has always had but was afraid to use. She will no longer be silent, and neither will her paper.

7. When a dinner party art show goes wrong – from The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund

We talked in yesterday’s feature about Östlund’s investigation in The Square of how little separates order and chaos and how quickly the rule of law can devolve into the law of nature. We are not so far from our primal selves, Östlund argues, and the repeated use of primates and a primate-man performance art piece drives this point home.

The museum at the center of the story hosts a dinner party for its donors and patrons. The moneyed elite gather to be entertained, to be pampered, to be coddled, and in some respects, to be thanked for their contributions. In essence, they are here to reaffirm to themselves and everyone else there would be no museum without them. It is a giant pat on the back, a self-congratulatory evening of conspicuous consumption. It is, by most definitions, order. 

Enter chaos, in the form of the aforementioned performance art piece in which the artist, aided by a pair of mechanical arm apparatuses, bounces around the opulent dining hall, imitating a chimpanzee or other primate. It begins innocently, amusingly enough, but ever so slowly, the situation escalates. This is no longer performance art but assault – an assault on these wealthy donors’ values, on their primness, on their beloved social structure. When they sense what is under attack, they fight back in the most shocking and brutal way imaginable. It is precisely what the artist intended, if perhaps not the outcome he predicted.

6. When Mildred Hayes sees a deer in the field – from Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh

McDonagh’s moralist revenge thriller is a lot of things, but peaceful it is not. There is no peace in Mildred Hayes’ (Frances McDormand) life, not since her daughter was brutally raped and murdered. There is no certainty even that her quest to find the killer, if completed, will bring anything to her but more grief and ever-more focused rage. The world has let her down time and again, and her remorseless path of destruction through the system is what keeps her going.

But it can’t all be pain and rage. There must be some relief. As Mildred tends to the flowers she has planted in front of the billboards that give the film its title, a deer arrives in the meadow. It stands just yards from Mildred. They lock eyes. It is an otherworldly moment in an otherwise heavily grounded film. Time seems to stop. They linger in silence. McDonagh’s cinema brand is such that you half expect a gunshot to ring out and a hunter’s bullet to pierce the animal’s heart. But no such break in tension is coming.

Finally, Mildred tells the deer: “You’re pretty. But you ain’t her.” In a beautiful stroke of the pen, McDonagh denies us the easy metaphor. Of course we see in this beautiful, innocent creature the daughter Mildred lost so senselessly and violently. That is what we are meant to see. But Mildred will not be placated by such symbols. She has already turned away god in the form of the town preacher, and now she turns away nature itself. Only the real-world justice she seeks will do. And like that, the deer is gone.

5. When two inmates hug and all we hear is the beating of a heart – from The Work, directed by Jairus McCleary and Gethin Aldous

Toxic masculinity is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, enough that its meaning has somewhat muddied, particularly for the uninitiated. It is essentially the cultural pressure felt by men to uphold standards of masculine gender roles – violence and anger, mostly, with a general inability to express emotion thrown in for good measure. This leads to all sorts of societal ills and takes men places both privileged and less so. For the subjects of McCleary and Aldous’ magnificent documentary, it has brought them to Folsom Prison.

The men in this film are almost all criminals, most of them violent offenders, but what they truly share is the capacity to change. They are the film’s subjects because they have chosen to break the cycles of neglect, abuse, and violence that brought them here. They choose to undergo intensive rounds of group therapy that at times devolve into primal screaming sessions. It is all meant to unleash the emotions these men have so long held back, to force them to confront their deepest fears and insecurities with no safety net but the support of the group.

It is a powerful film, deeply moving, and it feels revolutionary to watch hardened criminals bawling unselfconsciously about thoughts of suicide, their fathers, their friends, and all the promises they have broken and lives they have damaged. In one particularly brutal stretch, an inmate suggests he will kill himself, and another pleads with him not to. They lock eyes, and one makes the other promise not to kill himself. Then they hug, and they hold each other so closely, the microphones strapped to them pick up only their hearts beating. It is the thump of pain, resilience, and ultimately change.

4. When “the incident” goes down – from I, Tonya, directed by Craig Gillespie

The filmmakers know what you came to see. Everyone knows. We all want the same thing here in one way or another. Yeah, there’s the interesting character study and the wonderful dissection of class in America. There are the bravura performances and stellar direction. The finely tuned writing. All of that is there, and surely some of us entered the theater to be wowed by it. But deep down, we are all a little curious. We want to see what the film refers to as “the incident.” We want to watch as poor Nancy Kerrigan’s knee is busted by some thug.

Gillespie has taken heat in some corners for directing I, Tonya like Scorsese-lite. The film’s trailer even plays up these comparisons, proudly wearing the badge as the “Goodfellas of figure skating” movies. Admittedly, there are flashes of that, but Scorsese’s influence is far and wide, and it is to be expected even in the most unexpected places – say a figure skating biopic. But this gives Gillespie too little credit. He has constructed something else, something that operates on its own time, its own wavelength. When this sequence arrives, it feels like it could only be a piece of the puzzle I, Tonya is meant to reveal.

Just before the sequence plays out, as we all know it must, Margot Robbie, delivering the year’s best performance, snarls into the camera: “This is what you all came to see!” Then from the low gliding camera to the pulsing music, the performances to the dramatic irony of the whole situation, Gillespie does not disappoint. It is tense, propulsive, wild, and inevitable. By this point, it is more Shakespeare than Scorsese, a grand, fatalistic tragedy. And we got to see it all.

3. When Elisa and the Amphibian Man share a dance – from The Shape of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro

For everything else The Shape of Water wants to be – all of which it is, from Cold War thriller to satire to romance – it is most of all a loving tribute to film itself. There is no other reason to put Elisa’s (Sally Hawkins) apartment directly above a movie theater than to proclaim loudly and for all to hear that this movie loves the movies. Del Toro has spoken of his direct influences, including the great old monster-movie actor Lon Cheney, and those drip through in every frame.

Yet it is not a monster movie that inspires the film’s most lively and gorgeous sequence. Rather, the inspiration comes from the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, rewritten for a deaf-mute woman and the lonely Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) she loves. In a fantasy sequence of the highest order, the soundtrack swells, the real world melts away, and Elisa and the creature are transported to a black and white wonderland where the curtains shimmer and dance floor reflects their love back up to them.

It is a perfect choice, made all the more perfect by the actors’ performances. Hawkins, of course, is brilliant, but Jones truly mesmerizes in this sequence. Buried beneath layers of prosthetics, make-up, and visual effects, Jones makes us feel the warmth and passion simmering within this ancient creature. He makes the unknowable known, and it is no longer a question of how a woman could fall in love with an Amphibian Man, but rather how the rest of the world couldn’t.

2. When a woman cries in the rain – from Foxtrot, directed by Samuel Maoz

On their surface, the top two moments here deal with much the same subject matter, but each film comes at its story from a markedly different angle. While the No. 1 moment is about fostering empathy, this moment of quiet devastation is achieved by demonstrating a complete lack of empathy. We spoke yesterday about Maoz’s film as a condemnation of the dehumanizing effects of war, both on soldiers and citizens. In this heartbreaking moment, the writer-director drives that point home.

The second act of Foxtrot takes place entirely at a roadside checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers. We see the monotony of their day as minutes and hours tick by, offering little interest or excitement. It is rare even that this road is used, but the soldiers sit at their posts, automatic weapons in hand, ready for the action or adventure the army promised them. Instead, day after day, there is just boredom. So they make their own brand of cruel fun.

With the exception of Israeli military personnel, the only cars that ever seem to come by here belong to Palestinian citizens. One evening, in a torrential downpour, a car pulls up. The soldiers stop it and notice a well dressed husband and wife, clearly on their way to an event. For no reason in particular, they force the man and woman to get out of the car and stand in the rain. As the woman’s gown and makeup and hair are ruined, the soldiers just look on. She tries to remain strong, but the effect of their cruelty – in fact the very reason for it – is to break her. She cries, and in the rain, it appears as a never-ending stream of tears. And we cry with her for a world so drained of humanity and decency.

1. When Jeannine sees her portrait on the front of her home – from Faces Places, directed by Agnès Varda and JR

Another woman brought to tears on a dreary day, but this time, it is because she is overwhelmed by the depth of feeling and connection she senses. Faces Places is an attempt by Varda and JR to recreate through their art the souls of the people they meet and places they visit. Their canvasses are found in the world around them, and their subjects are the individuals who inhabit those worlds. Fleeting as the physical portraits they create may be, their impact remains long after the poster paper JR works with has been washed away.

The film is broken down into a series of scenes and meetings. Varda and JR visit several farms. They visit the docks. They visit an industrial work site. They visit a small seaside town. In all of these places, they document what it means to be a person existing among other people, inseparable from your environment. Each sequence has its own style of resolution and catharsis, and each sticks its landing wonderfully, but none hits as hard as the filmmakers’ first visit to a small mining community that has been left almost entirely abandoned.

A row of houses, where once legions of miners came back after long, grueling days of work, now sits mostly empty but for one woman, Jeannine, who refuses to leave. This is her home, and she will not be going anywhere. Varda and JR rightly see in her the spirit of a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, and they post her portrait on the front of her home as big as the house itself. When they bring her out to see it, it is as though she is seeing herself for the first time. She is seeing herself in a new way, through the eyes of a pair of admiring filmmakers who saw in her something worth capturing and preserving. One wishes more films even tried to capture such beauty and soul, if only for a moment.

Check back tomorrow as we conclude our Year in Review series with Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Top Films of 2017, and be sure to go back through all of the Year in Review pieces posted throughout the week.

Year in Review: Top 10 Quotes of 2017

To be honest, this is the column I look forward to writing each year. The best performances, best films, all of that, they are fun but sometimes feel like work. The Top 10 Quotes of the year are a joy to write about, a joy to compile, and a joy to share.

In the past, there has been an overarching structure or theme to the quotes – whether it was to define the movies they were contained within or to speak to the world outside – but this year more than any other, I went with my gut. These are the quotes that stood out immediately for one reason or another. And in ways large and small, I have thought about each since seeing them spoken on the big screen.

Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Quotes of 2017:

10. “It’s good in a peculiar way” from School Life, written Etienne Essery, Neasa Ní Chianáin, and David Rane

School Life is the kind of gem of a film it is hard to find and even harder to see. By which I mean, even for those of us lucky enough to live in a place where it might play in theaters, it does not necessarily stand out as a must-see or appointment viewing. It is a little documentary about a year in the life of a modern Christian boarding school in Ireland, and I can identify at least four words in that sentence that will drive some people away. They shouldn’t.

The film follows the day-to-day travails of husband-and-wife team John and Amanda Leyden, teachers at the Headfort School. They are nearing the ends of their careers, but through all the years, they seem to have maintained a sense of duty and pride in their work, helping children take their first awkward steps into adolescence and eventually adulthood. They act as educators, confidants, wardens, and substitute parents all at once, leading the kind of quiet, humane lives so often ignored by a world obsessed with the grand and the flashy.

In one of the film’s many standout sequences, Amanda helps the students put on a Shakespeare play, and after a particularly odd, energetic performance, she tells a student: “It’s good in a peculiar way.” This is kindness distilled to its most basic form, telling a child – away from home, away from his parents for the first time, lonely and scared – something positive in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat, coddle, or condescend. The same could be said of this film, which is peculiar only in its commitment to generosity and openness, so rare in these times.

9. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” from The Square, written by Ruben Östlund

Östlund is perhaps the foremost progenitor of high comedy rung from the slowly cracking social facades that keep us bound within ourselves. In his superlative Force Majeure, he took a broad swipe at the falseness of masculinity and the social structure that requires reverence to such. At Cannes in 2017, where Östlund walked away with the prestigious Palme d’Or, he returned with The Square, broadening his critique and sharpening his sense of satirical wit on a story of class, entitlement, and the thin line between order and chaos.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the curator of a contemporary art museum, confronted on all sides by both the ludicrousness of the art world and the need to find meaning in something greater than the self. He glides through his world, often seeming to hold himself at a remove from it, perhaps for fear of realizing he is no better than anyone else in his orbit. He engages with few and engages deeply with even fewer. His connections are surface-level at best, a start contrast to the art he surrounds himself with, where the surface does not begin to reveal its meaning.

“The Square” is an art installation in front of the museum. It defines the brutality and inhumanity of the outside world by creating a separate space, outlined only by a series of lights arranged in a square. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” reads the plaque placed next to the installation, and the implication is clear. If within this space – no more than a few feet by a few feet – there has been made room for trust and caring, then we have failed to make in our world space for such values.

8. “We don’t like each other, but we’re friends” from BPM (Beats Per Minute), written by Robin Campillo and Phillipe Mangeot

Activism depends, more than anything, on the group, on collective action, on working together to achieve a common goal. Thanks to great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi – or rather, the way we are taught and learn about such figures – we tend to have a romanticized view of protest and rights movements. We envision an impassioned man or woman standing up in front of a giant faceless crowd and pointing the way forward. We revere these people and study them, but in truth, as great as they are, it is the faceless crowd and every individual therein who truly effects change.

If you saw the great 2012 documentary by David France How to Survive a Plague, you will be familiar with the American chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group that pushed for change in the medical and health care rights of AIDS and HIV patients. In BPM, Campillo portrays the work of the French chapter of the group, of which he was a member, showing the nitty-gritty details of putting together and maintaining a real movement, the work often ignored by more perfunctory histories.

The film’s greatest strength comes in showing how groups of people from disparate backgrounds, sometimes sharing only the goal of living with their disease just a little longer, can come together and how tough it is to stay together. Members fight, they bicker, they back bite, they disagree, but at the end of the day, they have only one goal, which they all share: to survive. So they don’t have to like each other, but they are friends.

7. “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday” from Foxtrot, written by Samuel Maoz

War, even at its most righteous, is an absurd endeavor. It devalues the lives of those fighting, those dying, and even those nowhere near but still touched by it. All arguments toward war are founded on the same premise – that somehow the lives of others are less than our own. It is, at its base, the worst of us-vs.-them thinking. The act of war is an act entirely devoid of empathy.

Now comes the brilliant Foxtrot, from Israel, where it should be noted military service is mandatory. It addresses the falsehoods of war at home and abroad in personal terms that cut so close to the bone they are hard to watch. It deals with grief in ways so painful and daring, few films have ever endeavored to portray them, and many of those that have pale in comparison.

In the film’s enthralling first act, a father and mother learn of the death of their son at war. They grieve in separate ways, and eventually the father (Lior Ashkenazi) finds himself pulling out his phone and calling his son over and over, knowing he will never answer. Instead, he calls to hear his son’s voice the only way he can, on his outgoing voicemail message: “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday.” That he will not call back now is a given because he was sent to wherever the end of the world may be, for what reason no one can say.

6. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish” from The Post, written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer

Steven Spielberg’s handsomely mounted The Post is about one thing above all else: the importance of speaking truth to power. Set in the 1970s amid the Pentagon Papers scandal and the administration of Richard Nixon, its modern-day parallels are immediately obvious. One need not look closely to see modern counterparts in the Nixon administration, a group of powerful men doing whatever they can to stay in power by obfuscation, intimidation, and outright abuse.

Yet as much as the film is a critique of the current administration and its many failings and abuses, it is also a celebration of the freedom of the press and need for that press to perform its duties and perform them well. After The New York Times is barred from doing its job by a fearful government, the Washington Post takes up the mantle of defender of the First Amendment. The movie revolves around the decision whether to publish the classified documents that will unveil to the people – you know, those from whom the government derives whatever power it has – the full history of the Vietnam War.

Early in the film, the paper’s editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), makes it clear where he stands, when speaking about an entirely unrelated matter. The Post has been barred from attending Nixon’s daughter’s wedding, and Bradlee says they will write about it anyway, even if it angers the government. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish.” This is the film’s mission statement, and it does not matter if you are printing wedding gossip or classified government secrets, its truth remains. In the end, we must defend our rights by exercising them, whatever the cost.

5. “We’re all looking for something real” from Blade Runner 2049, written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green

If I haven’t made it clear by now, I think we have a hard time as a society fostering empathy for each other. On the whole, we are too wrapped up in ourselves and those closest to us – read: those most similar to us – to worry about anyone else. Yet, as bad a job as we do feeling for our fellow humans, that doesn’t compare to our failures to consider the rest of intelligent life on this planet. For the most part, if it isn’t human, we treat it like it isn’t alive.

This is perhaps not the primary concern of Denis Villeneuve’s belated Blade Runner sequel, which is several movies at once and most of them pretty good, but it is among them. K (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant, in the film’s parlance, investigating a mystery, at the end of which he believes he will discover something miraculous about his own origin. Similar to Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence, it is at its core a Pinocchio story. The android dreams of being more than he is, even if he cannot be quite human.

His boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), visits one night and offers her insight into K’s predicament, which will take him to the far reaches of their society in a search for what he believes is the truth. But it never gets more honest than Joshi’s assertion: “We’re all looking for something real.” We all want truth. We all want meaning. We all want something more. It is often an endless search, and as K will discover over the course of the story, even if we reach the end, we do not find what we were looking for.

4. “Anyway, it amused us at the time” from T2: Trainspotting, written by John Hodge

Trainspotting, from 1996, is a modern masterpiece. A sequel has never felt particularly necessary to Danny Boyle’s rollicking ode to and indictment of a generation raised on sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. T2: Trainspotting, down to its tongue-in-cheek title, disproves this notion handily. Reteaming with Hodge, who wrote the original, Boyle finds new life and fresh ideas to mine still from Irvine Welsch’s dense, inscrutable work. They combine these with their own observations on being 20 years older and having little to show to produce another searing work of depth, insight, and not just a little fun.

The best remembered sequence of that original film is probably its opening, set against the thumping strains of “Lust for Life.” It is the “Choose life” speech, wherein Renton (Ewan McGregor) lays out his and his friends’ philosophy on getting high, getting laid, and getting through your miserable life by numbing everything that makes life worth living. It was a gutsy call to revisit the speech for the sequel, but this updated version, while perhaps lacking the energy of the earlier incarnation, earns its place by being something even deeper and darker.

Renton, speaking to his betrayed old friend’s girlfriend, Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), unleashes 20 years of anger, regret, and pain in explaining what he and his friends meant by “Choose life.” He attempts to undercut it by framing it as a joke on an old anti-drug ad, but the feelings it evokes are real. Finally, he ends the speech with a melancholy chuckle: “Anyway, it amused us at the time.” As so much did 20 years ago, but nothing remains the same. Time colors all things a little darker, a little sadder, and that which we loved so much then no longer means what it once did.

3. “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love” from The Big Sick, written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani

No one knows what they are doing. We are all just feeling along in the dark, hoping we make good decisions. Hopefully, those decisions bring joy to us and others or, at the very least, cause no pain. But no one has any answers. No big ones, anyway. Within all that randomness, we cling to those we love in an attempt to make some sense of it and not feel so alone. Even that isn’t always easy, but it’s all we have, so we keep going.

Gordon and Nanjiani’s real-life love story is the basis for this delightful romantic comedy that speaks to the similarities among all people at heart. It argues that love is enough of a guiding force to carry us through even the darkest times. The crisis in The Big Sick comes when Emily (Zoe Kazan) is struck by a mysterious illness and put into a medically induced coma. Through this ordeal, Kumail (Nanjiani) bonds with her parents, Terry and Beth (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), while they endure their own marital strife.

Terry ends up on Kumail’s couch after an argument with his wife, and the two men talk late into the night. Kumail looks to the older man for advice, and Terry offers up: “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love.” Kumail rightly points out this is nonsense that means nothing. Terry confesses this is true, but it speaks to the deeper truth they share – no one knows anything. These are good people trying to do the best they can, and that’s all that can be asked of them.

2. “Why walk if I can’t dance” from Mudbound, written by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams

Set in World War II-era Mississippi, director-co-writer Dee Rees’ Mudbound is a masterful portrait of multigenerational racial tensions in the rural south. Two families – the McAllans and the Jacksons – live in a fragile peace founded on the understanding that the white McAllans are in charge and their authority is not to be questioned. In return, the Jacksons are allowed to work the McAllans’ land, to live in a home on the McAllans’ land, and to lead a life under the thumb of their supposedly benevolent masters.

They work themselves near to death for not a fraction of what the McAllans have. The McAllans are not so well off themselves, but at least they own their fate. They determine their destiny in a way the Jacksons cannot. This point is driven home when the Jacksons fall behind on planting their crops after Hap (Rob Morgan) breaks his leg. Due to economic, social, and racial pressures, he is compelled to try to return to work too soon, injuring his leg even worse in the process.

As he heals from this second disaster, he shares a tender moment on the porch with his wife, Florence (Mary J. Blige). His leg still in a cast, he stands and asks his wife to dance. She warns him he will hurt himself even further and, if he does so, may not even be able to walk. He asks: “Why walk if I can’t dance?” Then he shares a dance with his wife. He will determine his fate. If only in this small matter, he will say what he can and cannot do, and in this moment with his wife, no tragedy befalls him.

1. “It all depends on how one sees things” from Faces Places, written by JR and Agnès Varda

In its quiet, delightful way, Faces Places is as experimental as anything you will see this year. A travelogue documentary collaboration between a young artist on the rise and an old master on perhaps her last go-round, the film is a tribute to the people and things we touch without knowing it and those that touch us. It is about finding beauty in places where few see it and creating beauty in places that lack it. JR and Varda travel the French countryside, spreading love and joy in the ways only they can.

Varda is the French New Wave genius who brought us such great films as Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I, but this may be her crowning achievement. And go figure, the 89-year-old genius hits her stride just as she is losing her eyesight. What a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but particularly someone who has changed her small corner of the world by the very way in which she sees it. It is her unique view of life that has always been her greatest asset, so to lose her eyesight must truly be a tragedy.

Well, “It all depends on how one sees things,” she tells JR. And that is the beauty of this collaboration. While JR has the vitality of youth and a willingness to try anything, Varda has taken the long way to get here and has gained the perspective that comes with it. JR, who never removes his dark sunglasses, has his head down, buried in work, ready to produce at a moment’s notice, but Varda is more measured, less mercurial. She’s here not only to smell the roses but to reflect on what they mean. Eyesight or not, in her reflections, she will still find new ways to see things.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we present the Top 10 Moments of 2017, and keep checking back each day for more reflections on the year that was, leading up to the reveal of the Top 10 Films of 2017.