Author Topic: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon  (Read 9414 times)

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« on: January 02, 2020, 03:47:52 PM »
This is my first full decade as a movie-watcher. Feels weird saying that but I didn't get into movies until 2007 when I was 17-18. Now I'm a wizen 30. How this will work is that I've got two lists, new to me films, and rewatches. I'll probably spend most of this year working through this list and it might take until next year. I'm not in a super rush to get this project done. Might take me a decade!

I will take recommendations if you see glaring films missing.

New Watches:

24 Frames
Amer
American Honey
Animal Kingdom
Another Year
April and the Extraordinary World
At Berkeley
Berberian Sound Studio
Blackcoat's Daughter, The
Boxing Gym
Burning
Call Me By Your Name
Captain Phillips
Carlos
Claire's Camera
Color Wheel, The
Coma
Dangerous Method, A
Double, The
Elephant Sitting Still, An
Elle
Enough Said
Evil Dead
Faces Places
Force Majeure
Four Lions
Gimme the Loot
Grandmaster, The
Great Beauty, The
Heaven Knows What
Hidden Life, A
How to Talk to Girls at Parties
Image Book, The
In Jackson Heights
In this Corner of the World
Incendies
Invitation, The
It Felt Like Love
Last of the Unjust, The
Lesson of Evil
Letter to Momo
Leviathan
Life of Pi
Listen Up Philip
Liz and the Blue Bird
Look of Silence, The
Loving Vincent
Lu Over the Wall
Lure, The
Madeline's Madeline
Margaret
Mary and the Witch's Flower
Midnight After, The
Mirai
Miss Hokusai
Mr. Turner
My Life as a Zucchini
National Gallery
Night is Short, Walk on Girl
Nightingale, The
No
No No Sleep
Nobody's Daughter Haewon
Non-Fiction
Oki's Movie
Oversimplification of Her Beauty, An
Paddington
Paddington 2
Parasite
Penguin Highway
Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, A
Prisoners
Red Hook Summer
Red Turtle, The
Revenant, The
Right Now, Wrong Then
Secret Sunshine
Selfish Giant, The
Shin Godzilla
Shoplifters
Silent Voice, A
Son of Joseph, The
Son of Saul
Song of the Sea
Strange Little Cat, The
Submarine
Summer of 84
Sunset Song
Take this Waltz
Toni Erdmann
Upgrade
Wadjda
Wailing, The
War Horse
Waves
Wild Tales
You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Zama



Rewatches:
12 Years a Slave
Anna Karenina
Arrival
Attack the Block
Before Midnight
Beguiled, The
Calvary
Clouds of Sils Maria
Cold War
Conjuring, The
Day He Arrived, The
Eighth Grade
Everyone Else
Exit Throught the Gift Shop
Favourite, The
Film Socialisme
Florida Project, The
Get Out
Good Time
Goodbye to Language
Grand Budapest Hotel, The
Grey, The
Hanna
Holy Motors
Ida
Illusionist, The
Immigrant, The
In Another Country
Inherent Vice
Isle of Dogs
It Follows
Jafar Panahi's Taxi
Knight of Cups
Kubo and the Two Strings
Leave No Trace
LEGO Batman Movie, The
Let the Bullets Fly
Let the Sunshine In
Like Someone in Love
Lobster, The
Loneliest Planet, The
Love and Friendship
Man from Nowhere, The
Mandy
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Meek's Cutoff
Melancholia
Midnight Special
Mommy
Moonrise Kingdom
Mother
Museum Hours
Mustang
Mysteries of Lisbon
Noah
One I Love, The
Oslo, August 31st
Paterson
Personal Shopper
Phantom Thread
Phoenix
Quiet Passion, A
Raid: Redemption, The
Raid 2, The
Rango
Sapience
Separation, A
Shaun the Sheep Movie
Silence
Something in the Air
Somewhere
Song to Song
Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
Summer Wars
Take Shelter
Tale of the Princess Kaguya, The
Taxi
This is Not A Film
To the Wonder
Tower
Tree of Life, The
Turin Horse, The
Two Days, One Night
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Under the Skin
Upstream Color
We Need to Talk About Kevin
What We Do in the Shadows
White Material
Win Win
Winnie the Pooh
Winter's Bone
Witch, The
Wolf Children
World of Tomorrow
World's End, The
You Were Never Really Here
You're Next

List in Progress:
The Wind Rises
Hail, Caesar!
Lady Bird
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness
Inside Llewyn Davis
Ex Machina
I Am Not Your Negro
From Up On Poppy Hill
The LEGO Movie
Cabin in the Woods
Drive
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
The American
The Endless
Pacific Rim
Moneyball
Frances Ha
Dredd
True Grit
Bone Tomahawk
Tangled
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Annihilation
Her
The Social Network
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
Edge of Tomorrow
Fruitvale Station
The American Scream
The Death of Stalin
Allied
The Muppets
Mission: Impossible - Fallout
The Garden of Words
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
The Future

The Doghouse:
Your Name
Children of the Sea
Young Adult
Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol
The Bling Ring
Baby Driver
Searching for Sugar Man
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Love Witch
Enemy

Abandoned:
Anomalisa
Bisbee '17
Wasp Network

« Last Edit: January 06, 2024, 02:01:50 PM by Sam the Cinema Snob »

1SO

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Re: Sam vs. the 10s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #1 on: January 02, 2020, 05:09:13 PM »
That title seems familiar. I know you can't see the smile on my face, but there it is.

I want to give 2019 time to settle before I embark on a similar marathon. I still have a half-dozen titles to catch up with followed by a 2010s Hit List, which currently has 43 titles. Then there are 33 films from the decade that people loved and I didn't, (like Ida, Minding the Gap and The Master), but maybe on a 2nd look I'll get it.
« Last Edit: April 19, 2020, 03:15:58 PM by 1SO »

oldkid

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Re: Sam vs. the 10s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2020, 01:46:46 AM »
Following
"It's not art unless it has the potential to be a disaster." Bansky

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam vs. the 10s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2020, 01:45:13 PM »
Dredd (2012)

Spoiler Alert: The film is discussed at length.

Looking over the last decade, there’s one film that stands out to me that begs to be considered a cult classic. From the flashes of color draped across the brutalist architecture to the simple action story spanning one day, Dredd feels in the vein of an old ‘80s sci-fi flick that might have come out alongside Predator or RoboCop. The film oozes with a supreme sense of pulp and certainly digs into the roots of its comic book origins.

Dredd initially appears as a simple exercise in exploitation and action filmmaking, a cinematic indulgence, a spectacle of violence. However, this ignores the strength of the writing by Alex Garland and the story’s interesting themes of justice and mercy.

Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is a veteran Judge in Mega City One, a dystopian future world where Judges act as the beginning and end point of the law, issuing summary judgment at the scene of the crime. He is tasked with assessing Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie on her first patrol. What starts as a simple murder case esclates into a full investigation of the Mawmaw Clan and the addictive substance they’ve been producing called slo-mo.

Dredd and Anderson are locked inside the apartment block, throwing Anderson into the deep end of a pool flooded over in the worst society has to offer. Dredd begins drilling her on the various judgements facing the people they encounter along the way. To be a Judge is to adhere to the letter of the law and dish it out judiciously. There would be a lot of ethical issues with a real-world implementation of such a judicial system, some of which the film explores, for the purposes of the film, Anderson and Dredd are presented as characters who uphold justice.

It’s important to remember that the original Judge Dredd comics came from the UK during the rise of Thatcherism and in many ways is a satire of conservative moral absolutism and nationalism that Thatcherism represents. Judge Dredd exists as a satire of the facist state and facist police. Everything in the film is cranked up to extremes. The villains are flamboyantly and unquestionably bad but the police are cold and mechanical. Dredd perceives himself as the good guy of the story but the film keeps him at arm's length as a character, physically placing him behind a mask. The audience empathizes more with Anderson who doesn’t use her helmet because it gets in the way of her psychic abilities.

There are a lot of people receiving justice in Dredd. The penalty for attempted murder of a Judge is execution, meaning that the Judges have immunity to kill whoever shoots at them, but Dredd and Anderson often engage fairly and even give oppertunities for would-be attacks to disperse. They do not have bloodlust, but do enact the law. Is the punishment always fair? Perhaps not, but it is the law.

In a pivotal scene Dredd and Anderson walk through the aftermath of a gunfight between Dredd and armed criminals. One struggling survivor looks up at Anderson. Dredd reminds her the penalty for attempting to kill a Judge is immediate death. She points her gun to his head and shoots.

Fast-forward to a later scene where Dredd and Anderson barge in on a woman to hide from gang members. Anderson glimpses a photo of the woman and a child with the man she killed. Yes, he attempted to kill a Judge, but that doesn’t stop Anderson from having a moment of hesitation and regret. Maybe this man wasn’t a criminal but forced to participate alongside a group of thugs to hunt down the Judges.

It is possibly this moment that leads Anderson to a surprising act of mercy later in the film. When Anderson and Dredd catch up with the clan techie (a bug-eyed Domnhall Gleason), she scans hir mind with her psychic abilities and sees that his participation in the clan’s criminal behavior is done under duress and out of fear. She decides to let him go even though Dredd warns her that to not issue him judgement will cause her to fail the test.

Anderson replies that she’s already failed and that letting him go might be the only good thing she has done that day. For Anderson, showing mercy to someone who deserves judgement in the right situation can be the greatest good possible. To not give someone what they deserve is to exercise discernment in applying the law instead of a strict, unwavering adherence to the letter of the law such as the one Dredd has.

From the onset Dredd seems underwhelmed with Anderson. When he is introduced to her, he’s told she was on the fringes of passing the test, to which he replies that means she failed the test. Dredd’s worldview is black and white, good and evil, just and unjust. It’s a moment of growth when in the final moments of the film he shows his own mercy and passes Anderson. Dredd recognizes that even though she failed the test that does not mean she will be a bad Judge or that she was wrong to spare someone who deserved judgement.

The world of Dredd is an unjust world, one overrun with many people doing evil and selfish things. The desire for justice is a good thing, especially in an unjust world. However, what that justice looks like and how it is applied is not always clear. Dredd’s unwavering and inflexible worldview is what makes it hard to empathize with him as a character. He may be cool to watch, but wanting to be him or even admiring him as a hero does not seem to be the desired effect of the film. It’s Anderson’s journey into discerning when to be just and when to be merciful that drives the film and makes Dredd a thoughtful examination of how to apply justice in a world where good and evil are not clear binaries.

Bondo

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Re: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2020, 02:17:56 PM »
Hmm, I saw the weakness of Dredd being the failure to really explore the problem with Dredd and the Judges, which left it compared to The Raid, a shallow though kinetic film. Contrast that to Judge Dredd which basically pulls a Minority Report (albeit before Spielberg did it way better), which overtly takes on the notion of Judges as infallible. Plus Judge Dredd was part of peak 90s action with mega-stars and one-liners. I couldn't quote you one line from Dredd, but I could quote many for Judge Dredd.

FLYmeatwad

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Re: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2020, 02:24:54 PM »
Where is Korine's pair of films?

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2020, 02:50:03 PM »
Does anyone here think I would like either film?

Eric/E.T.

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Re: Sam vs. the 10s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2020, 02:52:00 PM »

I recently posted a Best of the Decade free of many of my eye-rolling entries. Maybe there's something here you forgot about.

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1SO

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Re: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2020, 03:15:41 PM »
I deleted it once I was deep into my Marathon.

1SO

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Re: Sam vs. The 2010s: Best of the Decade Marathon
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2020, 03:17:28 PM »
Does anyone here think I would like either film?
Well-phrased.

 

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