Category: Best Of The Decade

Best of the 2010's, Part V

1/13/2020

20

Rabbit Hole

What is it: Months after the accidental death of their son, a couple sorts through the wreckage.
MVP: Writer David Lindsay-Abaire, composing monologues about grief that I honestly think about all the time.
Why it's here: Sensitively acted by its cast including Nicole Kidman, Aaron Echkart, and Dianne Wiest, Rabbit Hole is deep with truth about the hardest parts of life.

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Best of the 2010's, Part IV

1/12/2020

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Part I
Part II
Part III

40

The Irishman

What is it: A lunkheaded hitman considers his work alongside the Philly mob and labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.
MVP: Martin Scorsese, putting a reflective period on his long career depicting organized crime.
Why it's here: The titular Irishman is no schemer dreaming up new revenue sources for his underworld masters. He's an order-follower of the kind that made much of the 20th century such a disaster, and Scorsese's clear-eyed depiction of him as such means we might not need another gangster film again.

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Best of the 2010's, Part III

1/11/2020

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Part I
Part II

60

1917

What is it: Two British soldiers in WWI are assigned a mission to get to the front and call off a doomed charge before it begins.
MVP: George MacKay, grounding a technical achievement in real emotion.
Why it's here: It gets how useless WWI was, and refuses to give the viewer any cheap catharsis. Some people died in vain, some people's lives weren't tossed into the meat grinder, and tomorrow's another day.

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Best of the 2010's, Part II

1/10/2020

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Part I

80

Moneyball

What is it: An adaptation of Michael Lewis' groundbreaking book on the Oakland A's reevaluation of what makes a good baseball player.
MVP: Brad Pitt, quietly revolutionizing a pillar of American society.
Why it's here: Because even for someone who's bored to tears by the sport itself, it's easy to be romantic about baseball.

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Best of the 2010's, Part I

1/8/2020

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The 2010's as a decade personally represent the crystallization of a hobby that's grown to take up more and more of my life. That hobby is capital-A amateur film criticism, as manifested by a well-maintained Letterboxd page and the thousands of words and dozens of hours of podcasts on this website. So why did I write almost 1200 reviews over that period of time? More importantly, why didn't I take seriously that guy that Bryan and I met at Ebertfest who wanted to promote our website? Where would we be now if that guy turned us towards writing with an environmentally-conscious message? Would climate change be solved by now? We'll never know.

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Best of the 2010's, Part V

20

Best of the 2010's, Part IV

40

Best of the 2010's, Part III

60

Best of the 2010's, Part II

80

Best of the 2010's, Part I

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