Underrated Gems of the 2010s
Like most critics and film writers at the end of 2019, I sat down to write about my favorite films of the decade. It was a daunting task that I soon realized was ultimately pointless because by the time I read the umpteenth publication’s list of favorites, featuring all the usual suspects, I decided I had absolutely nothing new to add to the conversation about “The Tree of Life.” I did notice a large list of favorites that failed to make an appearance on most of these lists though, which got me thinking about films I really enjoyed over the past decade that might not have been given their fair due. But I’m also a screenwriter and filmmaker and most famously, a waiter, so sometimes critical writing has to take a backseat to every day life.
Then, like most of you reading this, I lost both of my jobs in a flash when the world shut down due to COVID-19. So in between frustrating attempts at filing for unemployment on a website that hasn’t been updated since 2004 and my usual bouts of clinical depression, I found myself with a lot more time on my hands. Finding it incredibly difficult to feel creative or productive in the midst of a pandemic that is killing people and exposing how deeply broken our political and medical system is, I did what I do best: stand in front of my DVDs and Blu-Rays, thinking about what I want to watch for about an hour before deciding on something and then wondering ten minutes in if I made the right choice. Even during a pandemic that forces me to stay inside for fear of getting sick and dying alone due to a compromised immune system and shitty health care, I still wondered if I was wasting my time watching one movie, when I could be watching another. These are the kinds of first world problems and neuroses that fill my daily life.
I ended up returning to this piece and revisiting some films I hadn’t seen since their release, which spawned a list of 50 films that I felt deserved a second glance.
“50 Films?! You want me to read you ramble on about 50 films, some of which I could give a fuck about?!”
First of all, no. I highly doubt more than a dozen people will read this and that’s okay. I’m a nerd, a notorious procrastinator and a glutton for punishment, so this is comforting to me in these dark times.
But also… what the fuck else are you gonna do today?
So if you’ve already watched the Tiger Show and you wanna spend your quarantined days catching up on some recent films that you might have missed in theaters, this is for you.
You can also just like, scroll through this and just check out the ones that catch your eye. That’s usually what I do to be honest.
The brilliance of Michael Mann is that he immerses himself so deeply into the worlds he’s portraying on screen that he obsessively fixates on the most mundane details (in this case, incomprehensible hacker lingo) yet can’t resist casting one of the most masculine, stupidly handsome men alive (Chris Hemsworth) to play the world’s most notorious hacker. The only thing more on-brand for Mann is introducing Hemsworth’s Nick Hathaway in a jail cell listening to Audioslave and reading Nietzsche. “Blackhat” is arguably Mann’s most divisive film: a financially disastrous cyber-thriller constrained by a screenplay riddled with exposition and the kind of goofy stock dialogue you’d find in a leftover 90s action film from Dominic Sena (“I did the time, the time didn’t do me.”) But that’s also part of what makes the film so endearing on repeat viewings. It represents all of Mann’s best and worst tendencies as a director: a hyper-kinetic, downright balletic display of action in service of a mechanical, but also deeply researched screenplay with a potentially miscast leading man. Operating as a slow burn procedural, heist film, globe-trotting cyber thriller, earnest romance, and stylized homage to directors like Johnnie To and Tony Scott, “Blackhat” is a mesmerizing piece of action cinema and an endlessly fascinating experience.
Available to rent on iTunes
If Antonioni made “Eyes Wide Shut” in 2015, it might look a lot like Angelina Jolie’s directorial outing, “By the Sea.” A movie that, like Kubrick’s final masterpiece, saw the most famous celebrity couple in the world airing out their personal grievances and insecurities on the big screen for us to consume. Marking her only directorial credit as “Angelina Jolie Pitt,” the film often verges on feeling like a Tumblr mood board of 60s Italian cinema, Monica Vitti and Jane Birkin come to life, but is salvaged by the underlying sense that this is a truly painful film for the couple to make. Most celebrity vanity projects don’t require them to hash out their marriage on the big screen, but Jolie and former husband Brad Pitt are bearing their souls under the guise of a steamy erotic thriller set on the isolated seaside of France. “By the Sea” is far from perfect, but the key is to appreciate it as strictly a vibe film, one populated by immensely powerful moments of trauma-induced pain and others that are gorgeously transfixing. A languorous experience that is bound to leave half its audience bored to death, I personally find it to be Jolie’s finest hour behind the camera.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Netflix and HBOGO.
Expecting a mindless Blumhouse thriller, I threw Daniel Goldhaber’s feature debut “Cam” on in the background while I did some work around the house, but found myself unexpectedly glued to it. Anchored by Madeline Brewer’s fully committed performance as a cam girl meeting her digital doppelgänger, “Cam” takes what could have been a particularly clever episode of “Black Mirror” and turns it into something far scarier and authentic. Goldhaber’s film succeeds as the kind of micro-budget thriller that Blumhouse cut their teeth on over the past decade, but it’s also surprisingly funny in its depiction of desperate men hiding their barely concealed hatred for the women they digitally pursue behind a wall of anonymity. Credit to screenwriter and former cam girl Isa Mazzei, whose script never stigmatizes the world its portraying, nor turns it into a cautionary tale, making “Cam” one of the most refreshingly authentic portrayals of sex workers this decade.
Streaming on Netflix
Cormac McCarthy’s first original screenplay, the wildly indulgent and hyper-violent morality tale, “The Counselor” has been a divisive curiosity for critics and cinephiles since it was released seven years ago. Some critics praised the film for its unwavering nihilism and ambitious plotting, while most flat out despised it, some even declaring it to be the worst film of Ridley Scott’s career. For me, it’s the definitive film in the canon of “Films Directed by Ridley Scott That Should Have Been Directed by Tony Scott.” McCarthy’s script creates an interesting conundrum for its director, as Scott clearly wants to honor the legendary author’s vision, but doesn’t bring his brother’s visual panache to the table, which could have enlivened what often feels like a sprawling adaptation of a stage play. It’s a film in a constant battle with itself, which results in a film that’s tonally jarring, but undeniably engrossing. I still think about what a Tony Scott helmed version of “The Counselor” would look like, but the Ridley Scott version that exists is still an endlessly fascinating ball of contradictions and imperfections that’s absolutely worth your time.
Available to rent on iTunes
“A Cure for Wellness” costs 40 million dollars to produce, clocks in at 2 hours and 26 minutes, and one of the first lines of dialogue in the film is “Ever been fucked in the ass by a twelve inch black dick?” I still don’t know how Gore Verbinski, the impossible to pin down director who turned the “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride into a billion dollar franchise, managed to sneak this grotesque, batshit body horror nightmare through Fox, but God bless him and every studio exec that greenlit this critical and box office bomb. Focusing on a young Wall Street broker (Dane DeHaan) who’s sent to a wellness retreat in the Swiss alps to retrieve the company’s CEO, Verbinski’s film takes its time ramping up to the kind of sickly, unapologetically lurid thriller studios are too scared to make these days. Far from perfect (the film is riddled with plot holes and baggy dramatic detours that don’t pay off), it’s Verbinski’s go-for-broke style and D.P. Bojan Bazelli’s frigid and sickly green visual palette that evokes a world of moral and spiritual decay, controlled by late capitalism’s grip on our humanity and our bodies. It’s the kind of cynical, unbridled nastiness we need more of in big Hollywood movies.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on DIRECTV.
Everything you need to know about Christian Gudegast’s bro’d out love letter to Michael Mann’s “Heat” is that there’s a stand-off between Pablo Schrieber’s crew of South LA bank robbers and Gerard Butler’s corrupt LAPD crime unit in a Benihana that results in Schrieber telling Butler “I don’t appreciate you poppin’ off like that. We got family here, bro.” The family Schrieber is describing is his crew of high school football players turned bank robbers and the strippers they’ve brought along for their feast at the kitschy Japanese franchise.
Oh, and Butler’s hot-headed, alcoholic detective is named Big Nick.
“Den of Thieves” is clearly a labor of love. Gudegast is a self-proclaimed lover of heist films, specifically the aforementioned “Heat,” which is arguably the Holy Grail of crime movies. “Den of Thieves” is not “Heat.” Nothing is, and I’m pretty sure Gudegast is aware of this. It is a surprisingly well-made, slow burn heist thriller that features one of the most unhinged performances by an actor of the 21st century that isn’t Nicolas Cage. I’m talking about Gerard Butler, of course, who just fucking goes for it and is clearly having a blast settling into his role as Hollywood’s go-to guy for playing cretinous, middle-aged drunks with a badge.
You’re not going to find anything remotely groundbreaking in “Den of Thieves,” but that’s part of its appeal. Gudagest’s heart is so clearly in the right place, and he so earnestly wants to make a classic crime film for the ages, that you can’t help but just sit back and roll with every moment of it. Well, maybe not every moment (it’s almost two and a half fucking hours). It does have an incredibly well staged opening sequence, a killer, genuinely clever (if not semi-illogical) centerpiece heist, and a legit great performance from Schrieber. Sometimes you just need some comfort food and “Den of Thieves” is my kind of comfort food. Gudagest’s film is so eager to join the pantheon of crime classics, yet still hyper-aware of its own stupidity, making it both endearing and commendable. The movie itself is sort of like Big Nick: a big, bloated, relentless machine that might stumble along the way, but ultimately gets the fucking job done.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Showtime and DIRECTV.
Karyn Kusama made a gritty, hard boiled LA neo-noir, using a fairly conventional cop story to probe the underlying pain of its furious, wearied protagonist and nobody showed up. I’d be lying if I said my initial viewing of “Destroyer” made much of an impact on me outside of Nicole Kidman’s visceral performance as Erin Bell, an LAPD officer who’s fallen into a life of isolation and despair after a failed undercover operation. At first glance, “Destroyer” is the kind of familiar genre exercise we saw far too often in the early 2000s from New Line Cinema and Miramax, but it’s clear that there’s far more on Kusama’s mind than low-level criminals and brooding cops (although there’s plenty of that, including a super specific San Bernardino crew of meth head criminals led by an enigmatic figure appropriately named Silas).
So while there’s no denying Kusama’s reliance on genre tropes, the heart of the film reveals a much more complicated story of a battered, heartbroken woman seeking redemption in a man’s world. It’s about the way women are manipulated, abused and tossed aside by men in power when they’re no longer needed. In many ways, it feels like a parallel to Kusama’s career trajectory and her mid-career bid at a comeback after studios unfairly blacklisted her in the wake of 2005’s “Aeon Flux.” Even more frustrating was that in the same year it was released, “Roma” was universally praised for its contrived story of female empowerment and healing through trauma, while “Destroyer” authentically explored the endurance and determination of women without manipulating its audience. We’ve had plenty of hardened male antiheroes seeking redemption, so it’s refreshing to see a character as complex and raw as Erin Bell get her due.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Hulu.
Dark comedies in a post “The Hangover” world have been grim. Directors mistaking “dark” for mean-spirited, punching down humor gave us a decade’s worth of “edgy” studio comedies that have mostly been forgotten. It’s increasingly difficult to pull off what writer/director/actor Kris Avedesian does in his feature debut “Donald Cried,” an honest-to-God dark comedy about a slick Wall Street banker whose return to his hometown to bury his grandmother turns into a depressing journey down memory lane with his socially inept, unbalanced childhood best friend. The best thing of its kind to come around since Jody Hill introduced us to Danny McBride’s delusional Taekwondo instructor in “The Foot Fist Way,” Avedesian’s wholly independent, lo-fi cringe comedy explores the underlying depravity and awkwardness of its two central characters without falling into the tropes that directors like Todd Philips or Judd Apatow have in their depictions of the “man-child.” “Donald Cried” is the kind of dark comedy that might have thrived in the mid-90s era of Sundance, but now is unfortunately relegated to becoming a streaming discovery on Netflix. It’s the only contemporary comedy of its kind that authentically portrays the “man-child” as the deluded, potentially dangerous men they can be, and not cuddly teddy bears that just need a good woman to straighten them out.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy.
There is no current American action director that makes the kind of economic, politically profound that prolific Chinese filmmaker Johnnie To does. The man responsible for over sixty feature films and several mini-series over the last 40 years delivered his best work of the decade in 2013 with “Drug War,” an adrenalized blast of expertly choreographed action sequences, berserk shootouts and bone-crunching fist fights, all wrapped up in a clever game of narrative subterfuge. In “Drug War,” To strikes a healthy balance between lean storytelling, complex plotting, and breakneck action as he tracks a police commander going undercover to infiltrate a pan-Asian drug empire with the help of his longtime enemy, a major meth pusher in the local cartel. A film that reminds you that Asian filmmakers have long understood balletic, intelligent action better than anyone, and To is keeping the genre alive and well at a faster clip than any of his contemporaries.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Shudder and YouTube (with ads).
It’s hard to think of many other sub-genres that have prevailed through every major cultural shift in film like the coming of age movie. From the John Hughes canon of the 80s to the resurgence of gross-out sex comedies like “American Pie” in the 90s and the recent “bromance” era of Judd Apatow, the coming of age story has evolved and devolved for decades now, but rarely has the female perspective found the same success as the “boys will be boys” stories. Last year saw the T-shirt feminist comedy “Booksmart” ride in on a wave of festival hype, only to fall short of its promise of being this generations answer to “Superbad.”
Three years earlier, director Kelly Freemon Craig’s sophomore feature “The Edge of Seventeen” suffered a similar fate. Suffering from a familiar story line that poor marketing failed to distinguish from countless other teen comedies, the film was released and quickly forgotten. But familiarity can be comforting. It’s why we fall back on old favorites when we’re mindlessly scrolling through thousands of streaming options or why we live in an era dominated by Marvel and other franchise favorites. “The Edge of Seventeen” is comforting the same way rediscovering an old high school playlist is, or rehashing the same stories with friends for the umpteenth time. You know all the beats, you know how it’s gonna end, but there’s something soothing about reminding yourself of the person you were at a specific point in your life.
“The Edge of Seventeen” follows a high school junior (a severely underrated Hailee Steinfeld) who is trying to navigate her teenage years in the wake of her father’s untimely death and the revelation that her best friend (Haley Lu Richardson) is dating her brother (Blake Jenner). A loner almost by choice, she spends her lunches at school complaining to her sarcastic, but encouraging English teacher (Woody Harrelson, once again reminding us why he’s one of the best actors in the game). “Seventeen” checks most of the boxes along the way, but it’s the honesty and genuine humor in between that makes it feel less like a retread of familiar tropes and more like a generational rejuvenation of the genre. It’s fitting that James L. Brooks produced it, as it possesses much of the same warmth, humanity, humor and intelligence that his best work is known for. It never attempts to tap into the zeitgeist with #woke humor because Craig is confident enough as a director to know that honesty trumps timeliness any day.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Netflix.
If you’ve ever wondered what an Antonioni or Bruno Dumont film might look like through the eyes of Andy Kaufman, you should absolutely seek out the subversive trio of films Rick Alverson made in the 2010’s. Undeniably pretentious, but fiercely intelligent and perceptive, Alverson quickly became one of the most vital and polarizing voices in independent film this last decade. A director like Yorgos Lanthimos was able to thrive off of his unique, deadpan style in part because of his underlying humanism (and increasing star power and tastemaker backing), but Alverson’s films aren’t exactly radiating with warmth. What’s exciting about Alverson though is how much he simply does not give a fuck about finding an audience. The closest he’s come to mass praise was his 2012 Tim Heidecker starring feature “The Comedy,” and even that resulted in mass walkouts when it premiered at Sundance. Instead of moving in a more accessible direction, Alverson doubled down on his dry, austere approach and made “Entertainment,” a relentlessly bleak look at a comedian’s tour through the Southwest as he makes his way to Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged daughter. Inspired by co-writer and star Gregg Turkington’s stand-up persona Neil Hamburger, Alverson uses the Andy Kaufman-esque Hamburger as a catalyst to explore a virtually apocalyptic Americana landscape of loneliness and moral decay. The long, static shots of Turkington centered in vast, empty wastelands and architectural decay become increasingly hypnotic, nearly suffocating us in a world of despair and failed dreams. Like a Wim Wenders road movie on a heavy dose of Klonopin, Alverson’s episodic nightmare permeated itself into my consciousness in a way few contemporary directors are able to do.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on MagnoliaSelects.
Wunderkind director Damien Chazelle and screenwriter Josh Singer eschewed expectations of an inspiring space epic in the vein of “Apollo 13” with this subdued, surprisingly mournful examination of mid-century virility and America’s soulless, capitalistic quest for innovative domination. The film suffered from a bizarre backlash after its debut at the Venice Film Festival, plagued by predictably dumb right-wing critiques of the films “flag erasure” and a lukewarm reception from critics that wrote it off as Oscar-bait. I’ll even admit, I was cold to the film on my first viewing, regardless of its unquestionably top-tier technical prowess. But “First Man” was a second viewing revelation and one that I kicked myself for not experiencing in IMAX. Like other Chazelle protagonists, Neil Armstrong is an obsessive driven by the very American concept of greatness at all costs, but this time the filmmaker puts the pathology under a microscope and examines it through the lens of grief. Taking a bit of creative license, Chazelle uses Armstrong’s mourning as a catalyst for his workmanlike obsession with a remarkably tactful and honest perceptiveness. Ryan Gosling is brilliant as Armstrong, deftly capturing the reticent masculinity of the era, while resisting the urge to imbue Armstrong with a warmth he notoriously lacked.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO and Cinemax.
Coming as no surprise to the average person living through the largest wealth gap in history, studies have shown that wealth can massively decrease empathy in human beings. Bennett Miller’s shrewd, remarkably restrained demythologizing of American exceptionalism, “Foxcatcher” is one of the most searing visions of class divide and tragedy of our lifetime. As an ice-cold anthropological study of the sort of detachment from humanity wealth engenders, “Foxcatcher” was a film that went from critically praised to divisive to overrated over the course of one Oscar season. It currently sits on MetaCritic with a positive score of 81 and did go on to receive nominations for its cast and director, but I still feel like Miller’s work here is severely misunderstood.
A cursory glance at the film would suggest another sensationalized look at an eccentric true crime, but “Foxcatcher” is far more successful as a darkly comedic satire of American excess that ends in unspeakable tragedy. More importantly, it’s a film about classicism and the false hope entrenched in American’s minds that if they work hard enough, they can have whatever they want in life. Class divide has never been a sexy theme for the kind of audience “Foxcatcher” needed to find success — although maybe “Parasite” will change that — so it’s no surprise it was written off at the times of its release. A film that tackles American disenfranchisement, repression and vulturism isn’t something most audiences are prepared to swallow easily, especially in a system that enables the success of guys like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, men who a vast majority of Americans aspire to be one day.
One aspect of the film that is unimpeachable are the three central performances. While Steve Carrell gives the closest thing to a “showy” performance, his notoriously likeable veneer masked by ghoulish prosthetics, co-stars Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo give equally transformative performances. Ruffalo is one of the most consistently dependable, effortlessly watchable actors we have and his work here is unsurprisingly fantastic, but it’s the apex of Tatum’s still evolving career. Miller brilliantly utilizes Tatum’s previously untapped vulnerability as a performer, and he’s matched by Tatum’s specificity and physicality — even the way he eats a cheeseburger in this movie is fucking mesmerizing. Ruffalo might be the heart of the film, but Tatum represents the broken system that preys on the poorest and most desperate of us all. “Foxcatcher” is one of the most essential films about America you’ll see, and absolutely one of the best.
Available to rent on iTunes
Released in 1999 when the film’s central gimmick couldn’t be spoiled for unsuspecting audiences, “The Blair Witch Project” was released under the guise of being a true story of three teenagers who vanished without a trace in the Black Hills of Maryland. Most people bought it and the film was able to thrive as an experience that couldn’t be tainted by internet spoilers and fact-checking. Eighteen years later, director Dean Fleischer-Camp miraculously found a unique and timely approach to the well-worn sub-genre by piecing together hundreds of hours of footage from a random family’s YouTube account. By manipulating innocent, mundane family home videos into a quasi-true crime documentary about a family burning down their home and starting a new life on the run with the insurance money, Fleischer-Camp managed to reinvigorate the “found footage” movie. A disturbing meta-commentary on how we perceive truth in a digital world, the formally inventive young director uses our collective skepticism and paranoia of the “Fake News” era to manufacture the first found footage true crime story, capitalizing on two of the most popular phenomenons to emerge in the 21st century. While exploring American’s superficial demand for materialism in excess is far from groundbreaking, it’s the medium in which he exploits that makes it one of the most essential viewing experiences for the digital age.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy.
After revisiting David Fincher’s deceptively layered adaptation of Gillian Flynn’s massively successful novel “Gone Girl” last year, I can confidently say I think it’s one of Fincher’s best films, behind only his masterpiece “Zodiac” and the game-changing “Seven.” This is a book with inherently lurid material that asks its director to straddle multiple genres in pursuit of a make or break mid-film twist. Along with his regular editor, the unparalleled Kirk Baxter, Fincher navigates seamlessly between murder mystery, earnest romance, procedural, dark comedy, and media satire. Fincher’s often underrated for the underlying comedy in his films, but his sly, acidic sense of humor is perfectly calibrated to the lurid absurdity and satirical elements at work in Flynn’s story. He shoots with a straight face, allowing the audience to feel at home in a taught murder mystery, which grants him the power to switch gears in the second half to a far more complicated story of sexual politics and marital resentment. It’s rare you get to see an adult thriller that wants to entertain as much as it wants to provoke, but in the hands of Fincher, we get a twisty, darkly funny modern update of the erotic thriller that has already elicited endless post-viewing debates.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on DIRECTV.
Released in the middle of his transition from acerbic family dramas to light-hearted, whimsical comedies, Noah Baumbach’s “Greenberg” is his best film of the decade, and sadly his most forgotten. It may lack the whimsical brevity of more approachable films like “Frances Ha” and “Mistress America,” but it’s a reminder that not many screenwriters can write toxic, broken people with the same acidic wit and honesty as Baumbach. There’s also few actors that have been able to channel the director’s tricky tonal balances like Ben Stiller. Playing off his own image of a sardonically funny, detached Gen-X’er, Stiller is the perfect surrogate to play the suicidal former musician crashing at his successful brother’s Hollywood Hills pad. A film that only becomes more comforting and relatable with age, as life’s many disappointments pile up and can feel impossible to bear, “Greenberg” offers a light at the end of the mid-life crisis. A turning point in Baumbach’s career where he like, Roger Greenberg, decided to embrace life than give in to his own cynicsm.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO, Cinemax and DIRECTV.
During the height of Liam Neeson’s unexpected career pivot to being a man with “a very special set of skills,” he turned in the best work of his career with Joe Carnahan’s survivalist thriller “The Grey.” Ostensibly about a team of ragtag oil workers who are hunted by wolves in the Alaskan wilderness after a tragic plane crash, the film was marketed like any other Neeson action flick, leading most audiences to believe they were about to see a movie where Liam Neeson fights wolves to the death with broken mini bottles strapped to his fists. Inevitable audience disappointment and a mid-January release date killed any chances of being taken seriously as one of the most harrowing meditations on grief of the last ten years.
Far less prolific, Carnahan’s a disciple of the Tony Scott school of stylized, gritty action, most well known for his post-Tarantino offbeat action comedy “Smokin’ Aces,” which might be the very definition of too much coke energy for one movie. But for all of his indulgent and occasionally goofy stylistic flourishes, Carnahan is clearly interested in mortality and his masculine edge as a filmmaker can be remarkably well serviced when given the right vehicle to channel it. By psychologically dismantling one of the most inherently macho genres in film, Carnahan is able to explore the complexity of the barriers men hide behind and the strength it takes to be vulnerable in our darkest hours. “The Grey” is often relentlessly brutal, but it’s one of the most moving and cathartic experiences I’ve had with any film this past decade.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on STARZ and DIRECTV.
Okay, so “Happy Death Day” made $125 million off a $4.5 million budget and spawned a not-so-great sequel, but I still don’t think it gets the praise it deserves. In an era where most horror movies are dreary art-house films or politically confused micro-budget thrillers looking to be the next “Get Out” , it’s refreshing to see a horror movie that’s just interested in having a good time. A potentially unwitting throwback to the Dimension Films slasher movies of the late 90s and early 2000s, Christopher Landon’s horror/comedy is not only surprisingly clever and entertaining, but an earnest attempt at comedy in a genre that’s stuck in its own post-post-irony phase. Guys like Phil Lord and Chris Miller have cashed in on nostalgia through their own brand of self-aware, ironic detachment that enables them to reboot any franchise or corporate property you’ve ever loved, while maintaining a glib attitude of “We know this is dumb, but that’s why it’s funny!” Thankfully, Landon and writer Scott Lobdell never wink at the camera or turn the material into a snarky, meta update of “Groundhog Day,” instead relying on genuine wit and a smart, fully fleshed out protagonist to invest their audience. It does beg to question exactly how we project our own nostalgia on the art we consume. There are obvious cash-grabs and cynical recreations of the stories we grew up on, but there’s something far more complex about the way nostalgia permeates and distorts our individual experiences of film and television. Watching “Happy Death Day” took me back to a time in my childhood when horror films were unapologetically sincere, driven by committed performances and engaging protagonists actually worth rooting for. A time when horror films didn’t have to be on the nose with their political intentions, because the subtext of women taking back their agency in the face of evil men preying on them was already a genre staple. Most importantly, it reminded me that anybody can be ironic or meta, but being earnest is one of the hardest things you can do as a filmmaker today.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO and DIRECTV.
Steven Soderbergh usually makes films that get better with age. I recently revisited his scarily prescient “Contagion,” his bold and moving “Solaris” remake, the criminally misunderstood “Ocean’s Twelve” (the best in the franchise) and his 2011 lo-fi action flick “Haywire,” and they all hit in very different ways than the last time I had watched them. Soderbergh cleverly dissects the most masculine genre imaginable with UFC fighter Gina Carano taking the lead as the double-crossed government op on the run, using bare-bones fight sequences and a role-reversal romance to make an authentic feminist action film. Soderbergh rarely gets caught up in industry demands and trends, so he’s the perfect director to take on a feminine action film if you want to avoid the “Yass Queen” posturing feminism so many modern films are plagued by. Infusing the film with a cool, Eurocentric style that recalls his abstract work on “The Limey” and hangout vibes of “Ocean’s Twelve,” Soderbergh made a 90s action film like it was directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. A low-key stunner that absolutely rules.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Netflix.
Few directors this past decade have managed to cinematically indict consumerism and capitalism’s stronghold on the bottom rungs of society better than Bertrand Bonello. Perhaps one of the most unintentionally great quarantine movies in recent memory, Bonello’s languorous film focuses on a Parisian brothel at the turn of the 20th century and the literal and metaphorical imprisonment of the women working in it. Similarly to his 2017 counter-terrorism drama “Nocturama,” Bonello is more focused on the bonding and behavioral shifts among a group of disenfranchised youths confined to the spaces they’re forced to inhabit in order to survive. Gorgeously photographed by Josée Deshaies, scored by an electrifying combination of period music and anachronistic blues and funk jams that create a disorienting and timeless energy, “House of Tolerance” is a haunting mood piece about the daily routines of society’s forgotten workers. At a time when millions are feeling left behind by a system built on suppression and furthering the economic gap, there’s an urgency in Bonello’s work that makes the film feel all the more timely and tragic.
Available to rent on iTunes
The closest we’ve come to a modern day Andy Kaufman stunt are Nathan Fielder’s genius satire on American innovation and capitalism, “Nathan for You” and Casey Affleck’s brilliant satire/prank/meta-reflection on celebrity, “I’m Still Here.” Released over a year after Joaquin Phoenix’s public “meltdown” and cringe-inducing transition from one of the best actors of his generation to one of the worst rappers to ever take the mic, “I’m Still Here” was one of the funniest, complex looks at celebrity we’ve ever had and most people wrote it off as a failed experiment because they couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. Chalk-full of uncomfortable, brilliantly calculated comedic moments involving Phoenix’s misguided attempt to become a rapper, the film also offers buried layers of complexity that hint at the trauma Phoenix has buried in his work after the untimely death of his brother, River Phoenix.
It’s been ten years since “I’m Still Here” was released and quickly forgotten, but the film is even more complicated in hindsight. Phoenix went on to do the best work in his career, including two films with Paul Thomas Anderson and other prominent works with directors like Spike Jonze, Lynne Ramsay and frequent collaborator James Gray. He won his first Academy Award for what might be the worst performance of his career. He’s become an even more outspoken animal rights activist. Casey Affleck won his first Academy Award for “Manchester by the Sea” in 2017. In other words, two notoriously “difficult” Hollywood darlings turned a year long performative art piece skewering the very concept of celebrity and the industry that enables them, and recovered from the bad publicity like nothing ever happened. Actresses and pop stars like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Shelley Duvall and Sean Young all endured their own public meltdowns or were plagued by rumors of being “insane” or “difficult,” and most of them lost their careers for it. “I’m Still Here” accidentally opens up a very necessary conversation about the hypocrisies of Hollywood and our own morbid fascination with famous people’s genuine traumas. There’s a lot to unpack here and it’s a film that is the very definition of why it can be difficult to separate the art from the artist, but it’s worth discovering for yourself because moral implications aside, there are few things in the world as funny as watching Puff Daddy being forced to listen to Phoenix’s mixtape.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Tubi and Roku.
Much more than the “Killer Dress” movie it was branded as upon its much delayed release last year, Peter Strickland’s latest fetishistic throwback, “In Fabric” is the bonkers, gaudy exploration of consumerism run amok we need right now. A movie that can only be described as Giallo “Office Space” follows the deadly path of a sought after red dress and the victims that fall prey to its allure, all while satirizing the numbing and dehumanizing corporate world and the innate human desire to be loved and appreciated through materialist needs. It may hit you over the head with its anti-capitalist message in its batshit, unforgettable last act, but judging by the consumerist-driven world we live in today, it doesn’t appear subtlety in art is always the answer.
Available to rent on iTunes. Coming soon to stream on Amazon Prime.
When my mother passed away in 2012, I had a difficult time articulating my grief and the massive amount of regret I felt weighing on my shoulders. I’m already someone who lives in the past and will regret almost any decision instantaneously, but this was a wave of regret I had never encountered and probably never will again. I buried myself in creative work in the months after she passed, before inevitably crashing and burning when the first holidays without her came around.
Three years after her death, I saw Josh Mond’s deeply personal film about his own experience losing his mother to cancer, “James White.” Clocking in under 90 minutes, “James White” is as blunt and brash in its approach as its protagonist, a 20-something fuck-up coasting on his dad’s inheritance and living in denial of his mother’s recent diagnosis with cancer. Performed with the kind of unbridled, raw intensity you’d find in a Cassavetes film by Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon (both giving the performances of their careers), the film is a gut-punch for anybody who’s suffered with the kind of loss the film depicts.
It’s no doubt a difficult watch, with Mátyás Erdély’s camera constantly tracking Abbott in uncomfortable, claustrophobic close-ups, but it’s an undeniably cathartic experience for anybody grappling with the grief of losing a parent. White is a volatile, erratic young man trying to find his place in the world and accept responsibility for his choices; adding the weight of care-taking for your only living parent is a burden no one should have to accept. “James White” isn’t looking to break the mold cinematically, nor is it employing the type of maudlin redemption and manufactured hope these types of movies often traffic in. It’s about how the smallest steps we take towards forgiveness or changing our paths in life can feel monumental. It’s about the person you were and the person you become in the wake of a tragedy, and how those crippling feelings of remorse and guilt will always stay with us. Mond doesn’t offer the kind of solace some might be seeking, but great films don’t always provide easy answers. They hold a mirror to our best and worst selves, so that we can be reminded that we’re all human and we’re all a little bit lost.
Streaming on Amazon Prime
Chameleon director David Gordon Green and our most committed living actor, Nicolas Cage, joined forces for the kind of brooding character study we rarely see in American film today. “Joe” finds Green returning to the same visual palettes and themes that earned him comparisons to Terrence Malick back in the early aughts, bringing Cage along for the ride in a rare performance that doesn’t ask the character to play off his quirky persona. It’s a bleak portrait of poverty and revenge in the South, populated by eccentric, desperate characters and a darkly comedic streak that only Green can pull off. Similar to Green’s equally underrated Southern Gothic revenge tale, “Undertow,” the film’s poetic visual language and Green’s signature empathy bring a necessary balance to the brutal violence and self-aware absurdity of the story’s villains. Green’s career has taken him down a road nobody could have predicted in the early 2000s, but his range and lack of pretentiousness when tackling versatile material has always kept him close to my heart. An underrated director of actors with a true gift for blending first time actors with seasoned pros, Green is one of the closest things we have to a modern Robert Altman.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on STARZ.
Tracy Letts’s nasty, viciously funny 1993 play “Killer Joe” got the big-screen treatment early in the decade, courtesy of one the most uncompromising American directors, William Friedkin. After seeing Friedkin slum it in the early 2000s with forgettable thrillers like “The Hunted” and “The Rules of Engagement,” the director finally found a writer that could bring out the best in him, and by best, I mean his most morally abhorrent. A trailer trash noir with the blackest of hearts and most nihilistic view of humanity you can possibly imagine, “Killer Joe” is the anti-triumph of the human spirit movie of our times. Following a family keen on seeing the abusive, alcoholic matriarch killed, the film takes us down a relentlessly cruel path of betrayals, selfishness, and savage beat-downs, culminating in the most unforgettable family dinner since the original “2Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
Friedkin and Letts refuse to shy away from the inherent trashiness of the material, doubling down on the story’s hopelessly nihilistic view of humanity and the lengths people will go in the name of self-preservation. It also serves as the definitive 2010s Matthew McConaughey performance. Seeing McConaughey cut loose and go against his easygoing, stoner persona by engaging in the first fried chicken blow job committed to celluloid is a testament to the actor’s often untapped range. “Killer Joe” was an overlooked return to form for Friedkin and the film that really kick-started last decade’s McConnaissance.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Hulu.
A calculating, manipulative teenager infiltrates a doctor’s life to seek revenge for his father’s death by psychologically and emotionally blackmailing him, resulting in the most morbidly fucked up spin on “Sophie’s Choice” ever put on film. “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” is the kind of film that features a father and son having a heart to heart over an incestual hand job. It’s from the brilliant, singular mind of Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, and might just be his best film to date.
There are few directors that saw their careers skyrocket quite like Lanthimos in the 2010s. In the span of ten ten years, Lanthimos has gone from foreign curiosity to subversive crossover to three-time Academy Award nominee. His distinct, deadpan sense of humor and minimalist visual approach have become as immediately identifiable to cinephiles as the meticulous, whimsical stylings of Wes Anderson. “Sacred Deer” is the director’s first outright venture into genre filmmaking by blending Cronenberg inspired body horror, ambiguous supernatural motifs, familial Greek tragedy, suburban malaise, and his own mordant sense of humor, all set against a depressingly mundane Americana backdrop. “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” might not convert any skeptics, but if you’re in the mood for a savagely funny, genuinely creepy exploration of psychological torture that expertly balances horror and sci-fi tropes with pitch black comedy, this is the vibe you’ve been looking for.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Netflix and Kanopy.
Poorly marketed and dumped in the notoriously slow weekend after Thanksgiving slot by The Weinstein Company, Andrew Dominik’s crime thriller “Killing Them Softly” was met with terrible box office and the rare “F” CinemaScore rating from audiences (something that frankly, does not fucking matter, but still spells poison for a film’s success). It’s easy to blame the Weinstein Company for the film’s failure, as audiences showed up expecting a fast-paced Brad Pitt crime thriller, and instead got a stylized, mad as hell dark comedy, heavier on political subtext and long-winded monologues than action and suspense. It was a bait and switch on the level of “Drive” all over again for general audiences.
Released at a time when liberals were still clinging to the “hope and change” of Obama-era politics, feeling a sense of ease having an intelligent, charismatic Democrat in the White House after eight years of George W. Bush, this was a time when the ideal audience for “Killing Them Softly” were celebrating, instead of reflecting on the failures of neoliberal policies. Too cynical for blindly devoted liberal audiences, not mindless enough for the soon-to-be MAGA crowd, and too on the nose for some leftists, the film was too alienating for both sides of the aisle.
But almost eight years later, “Killing Them Softly” remains even more relevant than ever. Dominik’s vision of modern day America as a cutthroat business exploiting poor people and turning their desperation into a life of crime is angry, blunt and utterly nihilistic in the most sobering way imaginable. Democrats fail to learn from their mistakes over and over, resulting in the disenfranchised working class and a generation of new voters turning their backs on the party for what might be a very long time. Dominik set out to show us that even when the messenger is a charming, intelligent, seemingly decent man, the same people at the bottom will always get fucked. “Killing Them Softly” is every bit as timely as this years Best Picture winner “Parasite,” both tragic depictions of working class desperation under the grip of capitalism, and it deserves its place in the modern crime film pantheon.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Netflix.
If you’ve ever wanted to see a film that perfectly embodies the hypocrisy of white feminism, look no further than William Oldroyd’s relentlessly bleak “Lady Macbeth.” Otherwise known as the film that introduced the world to newly minted Academy Award nominee Florence Pugh, “Lady Macbeth” follows a young white woman in 1865 rural England, subjected to the abuse of a wealthy husband and his dying father. For a first film, it’s remarkable how tonally confident Oldroyd is with the material, as he slowly transitions from a story of abuse and temptation to a pitch black portrayal of self preservation through the lens of classism. An inverse tale of the human condition, the film exposes the treacherous lengths people will go to in order to survive, by keeping us mostly in the perspective of a woman who can only sympathize with her own abuse. Oldroyd is interested in the levels of privilege we inhabit, using a classic period setting to coldly dissect the white women’s movement and its erasure of black women’s suffering. “Lady Macbeth” is a savagely funny, timeless sociopolitical tragedy that’s as cold and calculating as its protagonist.
Streaming on Amazon, Hulu and Kanopy
If you’re not Spike Lee, it’s really difficult to address the racial divide in America with a sledgehammer approach, but that hasn’t stopped a new generation of directors from trying. Living in an era that has seen a long overdue push for diversity come (slowly) to fruition has provided this decade with some of our best films, from some of the most exciting and essential new voices in American film today. Inevitably, it’s also seen studios capitalize on “woke culture” in the most cynical way imaginable, as well as a new generation of filmmakers tapping into the cultural zeitgeist to some truly cringe-worthy results. Mistaking subtext for narrative, directors have missed the mark in countless ways over the last few years, resulting in films like “Blindspotting” that border on science fiction in their quest to authentically portray the times we’re living in. Every once in a while though, you get a film like Julius Onah’s audacious, conversation starter “Luce.”
Adapted by Onah and co-writer JC Lee from Lee’s play of the same title, “Luce” is a rare example of a film that genuinely wants to unnerve its audience and provoke a nuanced conversation. Kelvin Harrison, Jr. is mesmerizing as the title character, an all-star athlete and Valedictorian, adopted by white liberal parents (Tim Roth and Naomi Watts), who comes under fire when his history teacher (Octavia Spencer doing the best work of her career) discovers explosives in his locker and becomes rattled by a recent paper he’s written. The film operates as a suspenseful, almost Shakespearean battle of the wits on the surface, but goes on to interrogate the very notion of race and tokenism in America, while deconstructing the hypocrisy of liberalism and the roots of white guilt. Onah seamlessly tackles some of the headiest, most topical thematic points you can think of with tact, restraint and opacity that’s admirable in today’s cinematic landscape.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Hulu.
Josephine Decker’s brilliantly disorienting head trip “Madeline’s Madeline” is the rare film that challenges the very notion of what film can be. A 90-minute hurricane of live-wire emotions, breathless theatrical energy, and swirling, electrically-charged cinematography Decker’s film is layered with so many complex ideas, it’s impossible to catch everything in one viewing. Putting you inside the head of a young, biracial artist whose talent is constantly battling with their mental illness is a potentially dangerous road to go down as a filmmaker, but Decker’s raw humanity gives her license to explore the intersection of art and mental health with an acute perceptiveness that’s rarely seen from young directors. She’s able to transcend her own experiences by exploring the exploitation of Madeline’s race and trauma, while still making the film feel deeply personal. She also has the luck of being aided by one of the most revelatory debut performances I’ve ever seen in Helena Howard. By deconstructing performance and art as therapy, Decker delivers one of the most dizzying, out of body cinematic experiences of the decade.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Amazon Prime and Kanopy.
There was an air of pleasant surprise when “Magic Mike XXL” arrived in theaters, courtesy of longtime Steven Soderbergh collaborator, Gregory Jacobs, mostly due to the fact that it was not only much better than its predecessor, but genuinely one of the best movies of 2015. The first film was more fun in theory than in execution, bogged down by a second half that became unexpectedly dark in an attempt to become the male stripper version of “Boogie Nights,” but the sequel stripped away (I know) the plot, and focused on just making a fun, enjoyable movie of dudes just being dudes. In fact, there isn’t enough credit that can be given to Jacobs, star and producer Channing Tatum, and the film’s lively cast, for how deceptively difficult it is to pull off what they do in the sequel. So yes, while the film was mostly celebrated at the time of its release, some of the praise felt condescending. It was as if cinephiles reluctant to admit the stripper movie sequel was actually good, gave it the bare-minimum passing grade of “entertaining.” “Magic Mike XXL” is absolutely entertaining, but it’s also a refreshingly bold and sex positive film, groundbreaking for a mainstream film in its portrayal of the female gaze. If you’re feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders right now and need a pick-me-up, I can’t think of a more joyous, genuinely sweet-natured film to put a smile on your face than “Magic Mike XXL.”
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on VUDU.
Noah Baumbach has become one of the most consistently reliable writer/directors working today as he’s graduated from prodding the internal misery of intellectuals to finding the whimsical, humanistic side of their misery, revealing a much more mature and mainstream director in the process. That’s not to denounce any of Baumbach’s earlier efforts as anything less than exceptional, but Baumbach appears to have found a groove in the last several years that has been the most prolific of his career thus far. “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” works as well as it does because, like “Greenberg,” it finds a way to marry the best of both worlds for Baumbach. It’s filled with disappointment, disillusionment and artistic frustrations, but it’s also deeply human and painfully relatable. Before the Safdie Brothers introduced the world to a side of Adam Sandler that no one had quite seen before in “Uncut Gems,” Baumbach gave the actor an overdue dramatic showcase to once again prove that that Sandler is one of the most effortlessly interesting actors in film today. I’ve argued for years that Sandler is one of the most dramatically undervalued actors in the industry, and not just because of his career-crowning work in “Punch-Drunk Love,” and “Gems,” but because even in his weakest comedies, he still possesses an uncanny ability to channel depression in ways most actors can only scratch the surface of. “Frances Ha” might be the most pleasantly charming, rewatchable film of Baumbach’s career, but “The Meyerowitz Stories” packs an unexpected punch that gives it far more staying power.
Streaming on Netflix
Clint Eastwood is on auto-pilot these days and I honestly don’t think he gives a fuck. He’s the cranky, conservative answer to other old, prolific directors spinning the wheels like Ridley Scott and Woody Allen. When he’s not talking to chairs on the stage of the RNC, he’s churning out increasingly lazy portrayals of American exceptionalism like the incoherent and awkwardly paced “Sully” or the unintentionally avant-garde “The 15:17 to Paris.” But hey, my man is cranking two of these things out a year sometimes on Warner Bros.’s dime, under budget, and just in time to get his ass to Chili’s before bedtime. Occasionally though — and possibly even accidentally — Eastwood stumbles onto something great and reminds us that he can still direct a better movie in his sleep (maybe literally) than most of his peers.
His best work since “Mystic River,” the 2018 true crime drama “The Mule” is honestly one of the most purely enjoyable, old-fashioned Hollywood films to come around in a long time. Acting in front of the camera for what is apparently the last time, Eastwood plays a broke, aging florist who becomes a drug mule for the Mexican cartel to make ends meet (yes, this is real and yes, this is also a true story). Look, it’s sometimes hard to critically evaluate Eastwood’s films now because his idealogical intentions are pretty murky. I don’t think Eastwood set out to make one of the best anti-capitalist movies of the decade with “The Mule,” but he did. Maybe Eastwood thought this was another “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” all-American tale of defying the odds stacked against you, but when you make a film about a 90 year-old war veteran who has to drive drugs across the border because his business tanked and he has no retirement plan or health care, you’re indicting a political system whether you like it or not. So if you choose to view “The Mule” as the anti-capitalist morality that it unexpectedly is, you’re in for a surprisingly compelling and moving film that sees Eastwood reckoning with himself, his past and his politics.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO.
There was a time when a writer could blow through an eight-ball of coke, knock out a lean 90 page screenplay in a night, and sell it to a major studio the next for a million dollars. That was the era of Shane Black, the highest paid screenwriter of all time. This is the guy who brought us “Lethal Weapon,” “The Last Boy Scout” and the criminally overlooked “The Long Kiss Goodnight” in the 90s, while consuming copious amounts of cocaine. Almost two decades later, Black is sober and making Marvel movies with pal Robert Downey, Jr., finding his groove in a new era of CGI-fueled action and far more PC comedy than he’s accustomed to. At first glance, his 2016 return to form of sorts, “The Nice Guys,” is the kind of standard action buddy comedy that was Black’s bread and butter for the longest time. It took me two viewings to see the film as something far more profound, oozing with effortless cool and Black’s wit, but also an underlying mournfulness. Acting as a more violent, fast-paced companion piece to “Inherent Vice,” Black’s 70s-set LA crime comedy feels like a love letter to a lost era and the kind of hardened men that once dominated the big screen. It never feels like an old man with a bone to pick with the new generation, but more a hazy memory of tough, hard-drinking men facing their own mortality. It also features one of the definitive Ryan Gosling performances, allowing the often stoic leading man an opportunity to put his love for screwball, physical comedy to work. His performance, like the film, is simultaneously broad in scope but fueled by an underlying melancholy that’s hard to shake.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO.
In many ways, Bertrand Bonnello’s counter-terrorist thriller “Nocturama” operates on the same level of narrative deceptiveness and intellectual complexity as “Luce.” By taking an almost academic approach to the material, Bonello’s film can be both riveting and incredibly frustrating in the moment. As engrossing and suspenseful as “Nocturama” can often be, it’s navigating Haneke levels of narrative deconstruction and technique that can leave one feeling as though it might be a more fascinating film to discuss than to watch. That’s also what’s so admirable about Bonello’s approach to the material. Deconstructing the terrorist thriller, Bonello utilizes De Palma style framing and editing, ramping up the tension surrounding the film’s pivotal attack in the first act, creating the kind of dread-inducing tension of the paranoia thrillers of the 70s, before settling into an existential meditation on the youthful characters at the center of the story. The mise en scène is undeniably obvious at times, but placing the characters against the backdrop of a shopping mall’s department store for most of the runtime allows Bonello to pit his youths against the very thing they’re combating. “Nocturama” casts a satirical eye on consumerism through a familiar genre, asking difficult questions about the limitations of protest in capitalist society, and how future generations may have never stood a chance to begin with.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on MUBI.
“A doctor, a prosecutor, a policeman and two criminals venture off into the dark countryside to find the body of a murder victim” sounds like the beginning of a particularly grim and cruel joke, and in some ways, it is. Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s 2011 masterpiece “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” follows this very premise, taking us on a slow-burning journey into the night and into places both unexpectedly tragic and funny. Unfolding patiently and methodically, Ceylan’s film seems impenetrable at first glance. A cold, austere and almost surgical unveiling of a truth that can never fully be known, ‘Anatolia’ seamlessly gravitates from simmering dread to surprisingly funny slice of life to powerful procedural that exposes a broken system and the detached men working within it. As the complex nature of the crime unfolds, so do the men in search of its answers, reflecting on their own mortality and emotional attachments. Shot by Ceylan’s regular D.P. Gökhan Tiryaki, the film has a haunting, atmospheric quality that elucidates the bleak, despairing vision of societal and bureaucratic failures. A difficult, but rewarding trip into the darkest regions of humanity, it’s Ceylan’s most complete vision yet.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy and Fandor.
Looking at the onslaught of “Best of the Decade” lists that came pouring in at the end of 2019, I saw a lot of cowards writing about the same ten films everyone else was writing about and none of them were “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.” A satirical look at the state of modern pop music from The Lonely Island, “Popstar” is not only the funniest thing of its kind since the equally underrated “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” but one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off what these guys do in their work, straddling a fine line between absurdity and satire, all while producing genuinely well-engineered, catchy pop songs to bring a level of authenticity to the film that other comedies might sidestep in service of easy gags. It’s frustrating to see critics and awards committees undervalue the brilliance of films like “Popstar” and last decades “Step Brothers,” both films that are head and shoulders better than most of what gets year-end recognition. “Popstar” is not only a more visually dynamic and exciting film, but also offers more psychological insight into the ego and vanity of celebrity than any middlebrow Academy Award nominated biopic.
Available to rent on iTunes
It’s been five years so I guess I’m allowed to say that I don’t… really… love… “Mad Max: Fury Road.” I respect it endlessly and would never dispute the amount of hard work that was poured into making that film come to life, but I was honestly left more exhausted than exhilarated. So while that film was easily crowned the action film of the decade by most critics and cinephiles, my vote goes to Gareth Evans’ masterpiece of mayhem “The Raid 2.” The rare sequel that drastically expands the world of the first film, adds on 40 minutes(!) of screen time and is miraculously better in every way imaginable than the first film. This is a 150 minute crime epic with almost no fat on it. A film that leaps from major action set piece to another for most of its runtime, keeping you in awe of its masterful fight choreography, all while wondering how Evans could possibly top each sequence. From a 100 person prison fight in the pouring rain to an axe-shredding train showdown to one of the most immaculately staged and absurdly violent car chases ever put on film, “The Raid 2” is a feast for action fans.
Available to rent on iTunes
Feature film debuts are rarely as narratively creative and downright groundbreaking as Theo Anthony’s documentary “Rat Film.” Ostensibly about a widespread rat infestation in the city of Baltimore, Anthony’s debut brilliantly integrates techniques he learned from Werner Herzog’s Rogue Film School to tell a much more complex story of gentrification and poverty in Baltimore. Anthony, a young, white Baltimore native, ended up crafting the most subversive doc of the decade, but ironically, might have also made the most essential look at segregation of our generation. Using the rodent infestation as a springboard to dive into the history of Baltimore itself, Anthony’s film is like getting a history lesson from somebody coming to terms with the events in real time. Tangentially linking racist and anti-Semitic government oversight to a rodent infestation might sound like a reach on paper, but Anthony is quick to show us that the purportedly accidental link between the two is an intentionally hateful act to further disenfranchise the bottom rungs of society. At a time when we get a new Netflix documentary series every week that feels like a big budget Wikipedia deep dive, Anthony’s film is especially important and refreshing. Clocking it at a mere 82 minutes, “Rat Film” is a radical exploration of white supremacy that’s essential viewing for every white American.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy.
The Borderline Films trio of Antonio Campos, Sean Durkin and Josh Mond are clearly students of Haneke, using a cold, European approach to most of their films. Campos was the first out the gate with his 2009 take on Haneke’s “Benny’s Video,” “Afterschool,” a chilling, but flawed debut. In 2012, he returned with an equally chilling, but more psychologically complex and sadistically funny “Simon Killer.” Starring Borderline regular Brady Corbet as a heartbroken American traveling through Paris, “Simon Killer” keeps you firmly in the headspace of its protagonist as his psychological state is slowly exposed in equally horrific and morbidly hilarious fashion. What starts off as a wealthy New York fuckboy’s idea of a Hitchcockian character piece, thankfully transitions into a full-blown nightmare exposé on the wealthy New York fuckboy himself. Using his nice guy, puppy dog eyes and heartbroken awkwardness to manipulate the women who cross his path, Simon is hipster Patrick Bateman: a wealthy, white male antihero who most young men will inevitably fail to see themselves in. Between Mond’s unflinching, chilly direction and Corbet’s deeply nuanced performance, “Simon Killer” is the most fully realized, disturbingly authentic vision of white sociopathy of our generation.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on IFC.
Growing up with an unfortunate fascination with serial killers, my tolerance for films like Justin Kurzel’s unflinching true crime drama “Snowtown” is higher than I’d like to admit. I begged my babysitter to let me rent “Seven” from the video store at the convenient age of seven, used my early days on AOL to read about the grisliest murders and serial killers in the world, and let my morbid curiosity always allow me to to open the link “Click for Crime Scene Photos.” Inevitably I went on to have horrible night terrors for most of my adolescence, but that still hasn’t stopped me from compulsively researching every detail of the grisly cases that fascinate the darkest depths of my mind. With all that said, I still never want to revisit “Snowtown.” Released in the states at the beginning of the decade at the height of an Australian New Wave that introduced the likes of David Michôd, Joel Edgerton, Ben Wheatley and Ben Mendelsohn to American audiences, “Snowtown” was Kurzel’s debut and one that immediately cemented him as a force to be reckoned with. His career, like Michôd’s, has taken some head-scratching turns along the way, but “Snowtown” is an indisputably unforgettable showcase of directorial skill and control. His portrait of one of Australia’s poorest communities and the charming psychopath who infiltrated their households is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re willing to stomach Kurzel’s hopeless world for two hours, I can promise you an engrossing experience that’s impossible to shake.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on IFC.
The most divisive film on this list is definitely the 2014 Ukranian film “The Tribe.” The story of a lonely, deaf teenager infiltrating an underground gang at a school for the deaf, the film was made entirely with deaf actors, no score and most alienating for some, no subtitles. The effect is both disorienting and mesmerizing. It delves into a world never portrayed on screen with an unflinching eye for senseless violence and toxic masculinity gone awry, leaving you shaken, repulsed and maybe even laughing out of pure shock. It’s a film you can love, hate or just admire from a distance, but it’s not a film you’ll ever forget.
Available to rent on iTunes
A year after “Frances Ha” became a generational hit, another black and white coming of age film slowly came and went in theatres, courtesy of French-Canadian director Stéphane Lafleur. A film oozing with deadpan charm and youthful melancholy, “Tu Dors Nicole” is like a surrealist coming of age film with the vibe of a hangout flick. Julianne Côté is wonderful as the titular character, a 20-something spending her summer days barely able to move from the sweltering heat and nights wide awake, wandering the streets with her best friend and avoiding the seductions of a 10 year-old boy with the voice of Serge Gainsbourg. Lafleur’s film is inventive and quietly hypnotic, utilizing clever and evocative sound design and gorgeous 35mm black and white cinematography to cultivate a dreamy mood that perfectly captures the sweltering, lazy summers that can only accompany youth.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy and VUDU.
Another severely underrated microbudget horror film from the Blumhouse canon, “Unfriended: Dark Web” is the follow up to the moderately successful, ghost in the computer horror film “Unfriended.” While the first installment was a pleasant surprise, more clever and entertaining than any horror movie about a bullied teen’s ghost exacting digital revenge through a series of “Final Destination” worthy deaths should ever be, the sequel took the franchise in a much darker and relevant direction. I always admire directors who can tackle this kind of sensational, teen-driven horror material and find inventive ways to revitalize the genre, even more so when they’re tasked with operating within such a restricted form of the medium. First-time feature filmmaker Stephen Susco is working from the same bag of tricks that made the first film so enjoyable, but it becomes clear about halfway through that he’s much more interested in the disturbing repercussions of one man’s mistake. The bleakest film Blumhouse has ever produced, “Unfriended: Dark Web” teeters on the verge of cruelty for the sake of cruelty more than once, resulting in some genuinely upsetting moments, but it’s hard not to admire Susco’s nihilistic commitment to portraying an online world that thrives on mass-suffering and humiliation.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on HBOGO.
Who could have predicted that one of the most artful, visceral depictions of trauma would come in the form of the fifth installment of the “Universal Soldier” franchise? Relegated to straight to VOD status by the time the 21st century rolled around, director John Hyams pumped new life into the Jean-Claude Van Damme franchise about an army of combat veterans brought back to life by a tech company to spawn a new army of super soldiers, by approaching the material from a much more existential and political perspective. It’s as if Gaspar Noé was given the keys to the franchise and wanted to show us his take on the video game movie, but with the nightmarish logic of a David Lynch film. Taking the lead in this installment is Scott Adkins, an English martial artist/actor with an uncanny vocal resemblance to Charlie Hunnam, as a man who witnesses the death of his wife and daughter at the hands of the last living UniSols. Hyams uses trauma-induced nightmares to uncover the characters psychological destruction, giving him license to experiment with the genre and franchise in ways no other filmmaker has dared. Who needs the video game style plotting and direction of faux-highbrow awards bait like “1917” when you can just watch this and get the real fucking deal?
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on YouTube.
Growing up on a steady diet of Jerry Bruckheimer action movies and Dimension Films horror flicks, the films of Tony Scott were some of the most formative movie-going experiences of my life. I obsessively watched my VHS copy of “Enemy of the State,” caught “Crimson Tide” anytime it came on TV, and even begged my dad to let me see his “King of Comedy” with baseball stalker film, “The Fan.” Scott had one of the most distinctive visual eyes Hollywood has ever seen, even though most critics wrote off his movies as exercises in style. The way Scott shot action has been copied and recycled endlessly, paving the way for guys like Michael Bay and nearly every single action director working today.
His 2010 swan song, “Unstoppable” stands head and shoulder above almost every action film this decade. Along with the previously discussed “The Raid 2” and “Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning,” Scott’s man against machine thriller is a masterclass in action choreography and technique. His final film, and thus final collaboration with Denzel Washington, “Unstoppable” is sadly, now just a relic of the past. It represents the death rattle of action films that favored working class characters and practical effects over superheroes and green screens. It’s hard to even remember that there was a time — ironically when Scott was at his most prolific — that critics decried the death of cinema because of the kind of eccentric, high octane action films Bruckheimer was producing, because I don’t even know if a film as seemingly mainstream and exciting as “Unstoppable” could get made in our Marvel dominated world. It wasn’t intended to be a last film, but I can’t think of a more fitting way for Scott to go out then with a film where our greatest living movie star is the only thing that stands between a runaway train carrying deadly chemicals and a working class American town. Scott was an unstoppable force of nature and his filmography is an endless gift to cinema.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Cinemax.
Influenced by the enviable slate of European directors he’s worked with over the course of his career, actor turned director Brady Corbet bites off a lot more than most sophomore directors typically would with his wildly ambitious pop star satire “Vox Lux.” Aiming to make a film about the intersection between tragedy and pop music, Corbet makes one bold stylistic decision after another, but they’re thankfully always in sync with the thematic ambitions at the heart of the film. The film wastes no time unsettling its audience by opening with a deeply upsetting school shooting that serves as a catalyst for the central character, Celeste’s (played by both Raffey Cassidy and Natalie Portman) meteoric rise to pop star notoriety. From there, the film veers into various heady territory, mostly revolving around our culture’s reaction to a life-altering tragedy, whether it’s escaping through reality television, video games, or in this case, a catchy pop song that brings the nation together. Corbet asks a lot of questions and occasionally overreaches, but the fact that he was willing to make a film about the exploitation of a teenage girl after a school shooting in this climate is commendable in itself. I’ll always be in favor of a shoot-for-the-stars style mess than another safe indie about a mediocre white dude’s mid-life crisis. “Vox Lux” may stumble on its own over-zealous ambitions from time to time, but Corbet is always willing to ask big questions while knowing he doesn’t have all the answers. We turn other people’s tragedies into our own and in turn, invalidate the trauma they’re experiencing. “Vox Lux” holds a mirror up to the zeitgeist and the lives we exploit for profit and entertainment.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Hulu.
Possibly the most enigmatic film on this list, and of the last few years, Danish director Hlynur Pálmason’s remarkable debut “Winter Brothers” is a film that’s nearly impossible to define. Cloaked under a textural veil of bleak, snowy landscapes and underground mines coated in dust, Pálmason’s loosely tells the story of a lonely chalk factory worker, his more socially adept brother, and the violent feud that erupts between them and the family that employs them. The plot takes a backseat to the cold, deadpan mood Pálmason so evocatively captures through grainy, muted 16mm cinematography. A film whose success will rely heavily on your tolerance for humor so dry it would make Yorgos Lanthimos blush, “Winter Brothers” is a stirring descent into a bleak world of soul-crushing loneliness and deluded desires. A jarring sensory experience that operates between the pitch black underworld the men at its center live most of their lives in and the blinding wintry landscapes they can’t escape.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Amazon Prime and Kanopy.
A harrowing insight into the psyche of men, “The Work” is a remarkably powerful and visceral experience. Filmmakers Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous probe the depths of men’s souls through the examination of masculinity in a prison support group that unites inmates and free men to conversate over their existential fears and insecurities, under the roof of an institution that only exacerbates their primal anger. The second half is almost unbearably raw, but one particular moment sees two men embracing after a physical altercation and almost all the sound cuts out. Their mic’s are muffled, muted by their bodies brushing up against one another. Then, you hear something pulsating. It’s their hearts, pounding against each others, connecting two strangers at their most vulnerable. A moment so heartbreaking and painfully realistic, it could only be captured in a documentary. It absolutely floored me.
Available to rent on iTunes. Streaming on Kanopy.
It’s not a surprise that Jason Reitman and Diablo Cody’s dark character study “Young Adult” was written off when it was released almost a decade ago. A film about a bitter, alcoholic YA writer (Charlize Theron) who has a nostalgic crisis in her mid 30s and returns to her hometown in an attempt win back her high school crush (Patrick Wilson) by convincing him he’d be happier with her, than with his wife and newborn baby isn’t exactly what most audiences are looking for. What truly cements the film’s greatness though, is Reitman and Cody’s refusal to veer the story into any kind of hopeful ending. There’s no redemption or manufactured hope at the end of the journey, it’s fully committed to an authentic portrayal of delusion and bottomless depression. Theron is perfectly cast, fearlessly inhabiting a role of a severely depressed woman spiraling as she clings to a past she’ll never get back. Every once in a while, a dark comedy like “Young Adult” will slip through the studio cracks — “Observe and Report” comes to mind — but it’s rare that we get to see a film about a complicated, potentially unlikable woman like this. It took Theron burying her face behind prosthetics and make-up for the serial killer drama “Monster” to finally earn some sort of industry respect and award recognition, but her equally brilliant and difficult work here is virtually ignored. Regardless of how much the film industry evolves, “Young Adult” is a harsh reminder that dark character studies of problematic women who refuse to change will always have an insurmountable mountain to climb to get made.
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