Best of the 2010s: 71 - 80

Check out the entire series here.

Economists, psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and political pundits will all tell you that we as human animals will always act in our best interest. All behavior that shows otherwise is categorized as 'error.' Yet this understanding of human action couldn't be further from the truth. Fortunately we have art to pick up on what many 'harder' lines of study have overlooked.

The seductive destruction of being human. We feel it in our bones every time we ask, why on earth did I...? One name for this unconscious unraveling is death drive. Thanatos. "The goal of all life is death." Film is an excellent medium to explore this self-destruction as an aspect of the human unconscious. It can be frustrating to watch characters screw up again and again in such obvious ways. "Turn the lights on!" we scream at horror movies, "Don't go through that door!" The best films contextualize what seems like senseless sabotage by showing us the raggedy contradictions of the human psyche. We destroy ourselves because we have something to prove, or because we don't know who we are. We destroy ourselves to be different, or to conform. We destroy ourselves for hatred, or for love. Some of the most complex work we can do with ourselves involves exploring the incongruity between our conscious desire and that pesky unconscious drive.

Best of the 2010s: 81 - 90

Check out the entire series here.

The turning of the decade saw exacerbated mass disaster. Global pandemic, unquenchable fires, rising oceans, economic collapse, political decrepitude-- integrated aspects of our wretched reality. Movies provided an escape. The play of sound, light, and movement on the big screen embeds us in the realm of fantasy, where we can explore grand ideas and even grander emotions. The bigness unique to cinema is both a monument to the very capitalist excess that has brought us to the brink of destruction, and a monument to the stubborn human creative impulse to stave off destruction.

Film can be escapist, but maybe I don't actually believe what I said about film providing 'an escape.' The fantasies of the big screen are never just fantasies, after all. They are figments that often confront us with the unknowable Real that we are stuck in, and that is stuck in us. Film, as a synthesis of visual art, music, and theatre, has immense power over our unconscious minds. Maybe the very fantastical escape we seek can shock us into remaking our reality.

These ten films wade into the realm of fantasy, then demonstrate the lasting consequences of such a sojourn. Whether that fantasy involves a reflection of the self, a telepathic mindscape, the battleground of politics, or the omnipresent specters of patriarchy and white supremacy, the best stories agree that you cannot turn away from your deepest held fantasies unscathed.

Best of the 2010s: 91 - 100

Check out the entire series here.

The ongoing shock of this global pandemic has affected us all in ways beyond our reckoning. What we do understand can't be communicated without cliche. We're too close. The implications need time to unravel. It's not just the big stuff; there are microtectonic shifts proliferating in our personhood that are nearly undetectable.

I lost the ability to watch new movies in a movie theatre, something that I held precious without even realizing it. For the first time in half a decade, I didn't feel like I watched enough new films in 2020 to put together a proper Top Ten List. To make right by that failing, I will here offer the ten film and film-like works that stuck with me the most from the year 2020.

10) The Platform - a limited allegory with an appealingly grisly design sense
9) The Old Guard - mediocre liberal propaganda dressed up in excellent stuntwork and fight choreography
8) Sonic the Hedgehog - a crap movie with crap effects and a crap plot salvaged entirely by an Oscar-worthy performance by Jim Carrey as the evil Doctor Robotnik
7) Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm - a return to form with an actual emotional core, and a matured political outlook to boot
6) Birds of Prey - an extremely colorful performance showcase for a bunch of cool folks
5) Invisible Man - although ultimately a bit hampered by its genre trappings, Elisabeth Moss's devastating performance and some wildly good suspense scenes make this a standout remake
4) Mank - Fincher takes his late father's story of a writer who takes another man's life story and makes it into a story taken by Orson Welles... all in lovely black and white
3) Opal - this formally experimental musical-horror youtube short is an impeccable stand-in for all of the amazing artistic work being done on that platform
2) Palm Springs - I could not have expected Andy Samberg's breakout existential drama/comedy to be so goddamn good on a molecular level, but the writing directing and acting are all exactly on point
1) "Fargo" S4E9: East/West - it's not a movie, but this sublime apex of a sublime season of television is rife with cinematic references, none more prominent than The Wizard of Oz

The upside is that the lack I experienced in 2020 spawned this project, a celebration of the riches of times past. Below are the first ten entries in my Top 100 Films of the 2010s list. I've seen hundreds of movies worth recognizing released between 2010 and 2019, so whittling that down to 100 standouts was long, arduous work. This was a labor of love all too long in the making.

These particular ten may have prominent flaws. They may not stick the landing the way better films do. They may be a bit awkward and gangly. But they are ten worthwhile examples of the riches this past decade had to offer us.