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.

Year in Review: Top 10 Films of 2015

The best films tell us something about ourselves, something about what it means to be human. Sometimes, the picture is not so rosy, but look out the window. It is not so rosy out there either. The world is perched on a ledge, and it could tip at any moment. I do not mean to sound like a harbinger of doom here in my little movie column, but when we go to the cinema, it is because of what is going on in the world. Either we are seeking an escape from the darkness or a reflection of it.

Well, I have never been one for escape, so each of my top 10 films of the year is representative of the society we have built and the culture we have bred. If it sounds like a dour evening of programming, it is in some ways, but in these depictions of a world askew, I find hope. These are bleak films, yes, but this is because they dare to confront us with human truths, and if we are to find a way forward or some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, we must first open ourselves to honesty.

In one way or another, every film below is about people – or a dog or a machine – trying to take the next step toward a deeper understanding of themselves and the world they inhabit. Their circumstances may be dire, and they may not always succeed in their quests, but the search for truth and meaning is always worthwhile. These are the top 10 films of the year because for whatever else they are, they are celebrations of the search for truth.

Before we get to the list, here are five other fantastic films from 2015 that exemplify the perilous march forward, either for individuals or whole movements: The Second Mother; Everest; Room; Suffragette; Macbeth.

The Top 10 of 2015:

10. The Kindergarten Teacher, directed by Nadav Lapid

For Nira (Sarit Larry), the kindergarten teacher at the center of the story, beauty comes with a responsibility. If one is capable of recognizing something beautiful, it is incumbent upon that person to share it with the world. Nira would love to be that beautiful thing, but she knows she is not. Instead, she finds it in the poetry of a 5-year-old boy, Yoav (Avi Shnaidman). Once she finds it, she can think of nothing else but sharing this boy’s poems with an ungrateful world.

Lapid has called Nira a warrior for poetry, a warrior for beauty in a world that has neither the time nor inclination to enjoy it. Lapid creates a universe – not unlike our own – in which people would rather watch inane television shows, talk about their sex lives, and drink away their worries. That Yoav is destined to be unappreciated causes great pain in Nira, and she acts out. Perhaps her decisions are irrational or extreme but only in the world in which she and Yoav live. In a better place, where beauty and poetry meant more, Nira would be hailed as a righteous hero, and it is that world for which she fights.

9. Ex Machina, directed by Alex Garland

All of Ex Machina is a test. We learn this almost from the beginning. Nathan (Oscar Isaac) brings Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) to his secluded compound to test a new artificial intelligence program, Ava (Alicia Vikander). The goal is to see whether this machine can imitate humanity so well as to be indistinguishable from it. The obvious ethical question is if Ava is so human she fools Caleb, does she deserve to be treated like a human, or is she still simply a robot? Ava asks what will happen if she fails the test, and she is told her memory will be wiped and she will be broken down. At this point, Ava demonstrates the most human thing of all – the will to survive.

Isaac, Gleeson, and especially Vikander are tremendous as three characters who each represent a different path for humanity. Nathan is an innovator, but he is cruel. Caleb is kind but weak. Ava is strong but alien. Garland suggests only one of these will inherit the earth, and he forces the audience to choose an allegiance. We can create the future, fight the future, or be the future, but if we choose wrong, then we have failed the test, and the repercussions will be severe.

8. White God, directed by Kornél Mundruczó

Mundruczó set out to make an angry, unflinching film about his native Hungary and the growing inequities that have torn the country apart from within. He certainly has made that, but he has also made a beautiful fable about a girl and her dog. That two such disparate stories could be told not only parallel to each other but in concert is a testament to the remarkable filmmaking and storytelling on display in White God.

After Lili’s (Zsófia Psotta) father forces her to abandon her beloved dog, Hagen, the film charts the course of these two outsiders as they try to make their way back to each other. Both are abused and degraded by systems set up to keep them on the outside looking in. The wonder of Mundruczó’s story is that he makes Hagen the hero. Hagen is the one who finally cannot take it anymore and rises up with an army of the oppressed.

That they are dogs is what makes the story a fable, but in that fable, Mundruczó uncovers undeniable truths about the despicable ways we treat each other. He argues that if we cannot find some empathy inside ourselves, we are doomed to be destroyed, not by some outside force but from within.

7. 99 Homes, directed by Ramin Bahrani

Adam McKay’s The Big Short has received much acclaim and many accolades this year for the way it tackles the financial crisis and housing market meltdown of the mid-2000s. That film is a big, flashy, star-studded, smart-ass look at the world of Wall Street, but for me, it does not compare to 99 Homes. Bahrani’s film chooses substance over style and has the guts to examine the human toll of the crisis. While The Big Short laughs and jokes its way around big numbers and big ideas, 99 Homes goes for the throat, takes hold, and never lets go.

There are no winners in Bahrani’s film, only those who keep their dignity intact and their souls unstained – and there are not many of those either. Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is a good man who wants to do right by his family, but the only way he can do that is to give up a piece of himself. Rick Carver (Michael Shannon) is a bad man who also wants to do right by his family. He has already given up every part of himself to the system he serves and spends his days collecting the broken pieces of others. Bahrani creates a dichotomy in which we can either give in and be destroyed or fight back and be crushed anyway. 99 Homes may be a dark statement on our time, but it never feels anything but true.

6. The Revenant, directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

It would be hard right now to find another auteur operating at the consistently high level at which Iñárritu works. The Mexican-born director has made just six feature films, and each is a masterwork. In 2014, he gave us the acid-tongued satire Birdman, which amazed with its vibrancy and technical wizardry. In 2015, he returned with The Revenant, a stone-faced adventure epic set in the Old American West. The technical mastery remains – in particular, director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki’s lush cinematography – but this time, Iñárritu uses his storytelling gifts to far more humanist ends.

The story of Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) dragging his broken body hundreds of miles through the snow to find those who left him for dead could easily be positioned as a revenge saga. In fact, the marketing would have you believe that is all it is. It is not. The Revenant is about grief and guilt, survival and strength, nature and progress. Against the vast expanse of frozen tundra, Glass is barely a speck on the horizon, and his personal tragedy is just one of many tragedies suffered every day on this land. As he wills himself back to civilization, he discovers his true home and his duty to the universe.

 

5. Mustang, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

 Complacency is a byproduct of a successful society. Certainly in the U.S., most of us have the luxury of being insulated from the truly terrible acts committed in this world. Even if we are not satisfied with what we have, we have the choice to go out and seek something more or something else, which is its own kind of privilege. Mustang is an important film because it has the ability to shock us out of complacency by showing us a world in which people do not have a choice.

Five sisters in a small Turkish village are held hostage by their family and forced to participate in a culture that has no place in a modern society. They fight back against their oppressors, but an entire system has been set in place to hold them down. However, Ergüven wisely does not fill her film with sorrow but rather rage. Mustang is an angry cry against inequality and an urgent call for justice. The subjugation and degradation of women is not a cultural issue but a human rights issue about which none of us can afford to be complacent.

4. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, directed by Roy Andersson

Every scene in A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is shrouded in death, but this is not a film about dying. It is a film about being alive. There is no more precious gift than life, and if it sometimes takes a morbid reminder of this fact, then so be it. Life is not always pretty or fun or sweet, as we are all well aware, but you know what – it sure as hell can be all those things, and when it is, the struggle and the pain seem worth it.

There is no story to speak of in Andersson’s film, just a few connecting threads here and there, loose tendrils of lives intersecting almost imperceptibly. In fact, the frame is filled constantly with life. People go about their business in the foreground, and the rest of the world goes about its day in the background. It quickly becomes clear that neither is more important as the next scene, or three scenes later, could focus on one of those background players, or we may never see any of these people again. Few films capture the simultaneous majesty and randomness of life as well as this, and as the film wanders, it pulls viewers along, making us a part of its wondrous tapestry.

3. 45 Years, directed by Andrew Haigh

Put next to films about the financial crisis, the systemic abuse of women, and rampant inequality, the small-scale marriage drama 45 Years may seem to involve fairly low stakes, but for its characters, the stakes could not be higher. Haigh’s film is a deeply penetrating look at the damage we inflict on each other when we refuse to be honest with ourselves. It concerns the way old wounds do not heal when left unattended but rot and infect everything they touch. The tragedy is that it could all be easily avoided if we were stronger, more open people. Instead, we become guarded, thinking we are protecting ourselves, but we are just causing further pain.

Kate and Geoff (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, who give two of the best performances of the year) have been married 45 years and still seem deeply in love, but when news from the past shakes the foundation of their bond, they realize the fragile nature of everything they have built. Bit by bit, Kate’s world crumbles around her, and all she can do is sift through the rubble, searching for a reason to carry on with life the way it was before. She wants to bury the past, discard the truth, and ignore all those old wounds, but she cannot. Everything is in the open now, and she must confront her new reality or be destroyed by it.

2. Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy

Spotlight is another film about people who would rather ignore the truth, and the film’s heroes are the Boston Globe reporters who refuse to remain silent. They uncover decades of abuse hidden by the Catholic Church, and everyone else would prefer to pretend the problem does not exist or will go away on its own. The Spotlight team, however, cannot abide the lie and goes to great lengths to ensure the truth will see the light of day.

McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer’s screenplay works as both a thrilling legal procedural and a moralistic drama. The film understands the mechanics of journalism and the lives of reporters like few others before it, but it never gets so bogged down in minutiae that it fails to tell a human story. The victims are the heart of Spotlight, and in his construction of the film, McCarthy guarantees we never forget the real people who suffered because of a corrupt system.

Finally, what Spotlight reminds us is that this work is never done. The Catholic Church still harbors and hides pedophile priests in cities around the world and places not fortunate enough to have teams of reporters, lawyers, and investigators dedicated to the truth. In the end, justice is our responsibility, and we must seek it everywhere, not just from the Catholic Church but from governments and Wall Street and schools and big business. Spotlight is a great film because it shows us how good people can change the world one truth at a time.

1. The Tribe, directed by Miroslav Slaboshpitsky

For sheer audacity, there is no film that could match Slaboshpitsky’s tale of humiliation, rage, and defiance set at a Ukrainian boarding school for the deaf. Apart from being told entirely in Ukrainian sign language, the film is shot in a remarkable series of long takes that makes the audience complicit in the abuses and atrocities being perpetrated in this insular society. After a while, the silence becomes so unsettling it is almost unbearable. We want to scream for these kids and the suffering they endure, but we cannot. We remain quiet, passive observers, and in so being, it feels like we are allowing this to happen.

Sergei (Grigoriy Fesenko) is a new student at the school and quickly becomes embedded in the school’s ruling gang. The gang controls the student body through intimidation, fear, and brute strength. They sell drugs, deal in other contraband, and operate a prostitution ring. Anya (Yana Novikova) is one of the prostitutes. Sergei falls in love with her and wants to escape this life together, but she rebuffs him. This is the life she knows, and she refuses to give it up. From there, the story spirals into hate, madness, and violence so rapidly the audience is left gasping for air.

There was no other film this year that offered the mix of sensory overload and emotional devastation in The Tribe. It is not a fun night at the movies, but it is something more. Cinema is a beautiful medium because it inserts viewers directly into the lives of others. If those lives are not always pretty or happy, so much the better. In life, we shut ourselves off from the pain of other people, either because we wish not to feel pain or because we do not want to be reminded of our own. The Tribe is a daring, confrontational rebuke of that numbness. We want to hide, but The Tribe forces us to open ourselves to feeling.

Thank you for being a part of Last Cinema Standing's 2015 Year in Review. Be sure to check out the other installments in the series by clicking any of the links below, and keep coming back for continued coverage of this year's Oscar race and the year in cinema that will be 2016.

Top 10 Performances of 2015

Top 10 Quotes of 2015

Best & Worst of 2015

The Kindergarten Teacher: First poetry, then anything else

Avi Shnaidman (left) and Sarit Larry star in Nadav Lapid's excellent new film The Kindergarten Teacher.

Parents probably do not ask themselves enough what they hope their children get out of going to school each day. It seems a pretty significant question to ask. For the most part, we agree it is important for children to attend school from a fairly young age, but we rarely identify the specific good scholarship is intended to promote.

This question is intrinsically linked to the function of school teachers in our society. These people devote their lives to the education of children, and they ask little in return for their investment, yet the question of what they are investing in still stands. Israeli writer-director Nadav Lapid’s sophomore feature The Kindergarten Teacher is a stunning exploration of the role teachers play in our culture and the lengths to which one woman will go to fulfill her perceived duty.

Lapid was in New York last week for a screening of his film, followed by a question-and-answer session at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Lapid was chatty, witty, and engaging throughout a half-hour discussion in which he touched on the need for art in society, the essential function of educators, and the importance of contradictions.

“I think there’s something in this position of kindergarten teacher,” said Lapid. “On one hand, kindergarten teachers, as we know, are real persons, private persons who have their private life, etc. On the other hand, they are the ones who are in charge of the transmission of social values, of state values, of moral values. They are the ones who meet the future citizens in their earliest stage in order to prepare them, to make them appropriate to become a part of society. They are also an incarnation of right and wrong, bad and good in the eyes of society, and I think that this specific kindergarten teacher – she’s in a kind of permanent rebellion.”

Nira, brilliantly played by Sarit Larry, is a middle-aged kindergarten teacher whose life lacks excitement and inspiration. Her husband is a loving man but a dolt. Her job often seems like nothing more than glorified babysitting until one day when her world changes and a new light shines down on her. She overhears one of her students, a 5-year-old boy, Yoav (Avi Shnaidman), dictate a poem to his nanny. The verse is beautiful, and Nira obsesses over the prodigiously insightful mind of this child.

The first thing she does is repurpose two of Yoav’s poems to impress the teacher and students of her night school creative writing class, claiming she has written them. We seem to be headed for a narrative in which the teacher steals the child’s poems in order to procure some form of glory for herself, but Lapid’s script is smarter than that. The Kindergarten Teacher veers into entirely different territory, portraying Nira as a person so moved by the glory of Yoav’s poetry that she absolutely must share his gift with the world, regardless of what rules or cultural norms she has to violate to do so.

“She’s doubting this right and wrong, the social, the moral values, and I think in a way she’s inventing an alternative moral system, which to make things short, it claims something like: first, words of poetry, and then anything else,” said Lapid. “I try to imagine our world ruled by such a kindergarten teacher … First poetry, then anything else – imagine that. Since her life was totally shaken, changed, turned upside down after she hears a 5-year-old kid mumble two or three lines of poetry, she believes in a way that each time this kid opens his mouth, the world should stop turning around. People should stop anything and listen. Maybe it’s not such a bad belief.”

The film positions Nira as a radical warrior, fighting for art and beauty in a world more concerned with the shallow and prosaic. It may seem like an extreme stance on her part, but as we watch Yoav’s nanny use his gift for her gain and his father decry the art of poetry, it becomes easier for us to understand Nira’s desire to strike back at the culture. Yoav’s father, a wealthy restauranteur, explicitly tells Nira not to encourage the child’s gift, but she refuses to contribute to a society that will not stop to recognize greatness when confronted with it.

“She’s aiming not only to save this kid, not only to save herself, not only to save this kid’s words but in a way to change the course of history,” said Lapid. “She aims to change the universe in the way she declares war against what most of us see as triviality, as banality. She claims a war against the man who’s sitting right now in front of his TV watching a quite-stupid TV show, even if this man is her husband.”

Adding another layer to the proceedings, however, is Yoav himself. He is not some perspicacious movie child like other preternaturally gifted kids in lesser films. He is a child – shy, uncoordinated, and simple but paradoxically capable of producing intensely beautiful words of poetry. It is this paradox that intrigues Nira, said Lapid. It is a mystery at the center of the film that she must follow through to its end, whether it leads to her destruction or redemption.

“At a certain moment, we understood there is something in this age, 5 years old, that combines huge, verbal capacity – very powerful imagination on one hand – and something very basic in the physical gestures,” said Lapid. “That’s why, for example, you can see the kid doing his ritual, his poetic ritual, walking from left to right, right to left, reciting sometimes very complicated words, and almost falling while he’s walking because there’s something basic about him. There was a moment when I think we understood that this is the essence because the kid is a contradiction.”

If Lapid’s script makes this point, then his direction and the jaw-dropping camerawork of cinematographer Shai Goldman drive the point home. Whole scenes will play out from Nira or Yoav’s point of view before the audience even realizes it is looking through the eyes of one of the characters. There are no boundaries between the camera and the action, forcing viewers to become a part of the story but depriving them of any agency, much like the children in Nira’s class.

“If I decide to make a film called The Kindergarten Teacher, which takes place in a kindergarten and there are kids and that talks in a way also about childhood and adults, childhood … should be present on the screen,” said Lapid. “For me, present on the screen means that it’s like a child. The characters on the screen will have their own independent way of thinking, while the camera will have different way of thinking, my way of thinking.

“In part of the film, there will be sometimes a collision between the camera and the characters, between the borders of the frame and the character in the middle of the frame. For example, they don’t keep distance from the camera. They don’t respect the autonomy, the independence of the camera. They don’t respect the objectivity of the camera. They force the camera to be subjective, to take a position, so in a way, it’s a combination between order and concept and arbitrary things and freedom.”

The clash between order and freedom drives much of The Kindergarten Teacher and gives it power. Poetry is no parent’s idea of a stable career path, least of all Yoav’s father, but must that be a consideration? In Yoav’s words, Nira sees beauty, freedom, and expression, and she determines to encourage and nurture these traits. The society she lives in would rather she not. If she cannot transcend, she will be crushed, leaving us still with the question: If not the devotion and dedication of someone like Nira, what do we really want from our teachers?