Movies of the 2010s
The honor roll, continued.
- Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris, 2010)
- We Are the Best! (dir. Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
- L’illusionniste (dir. Sylvain Chomet, 2010)
- Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh, 2010)
- It Follows (dir. David Robert Mitchell, 2014)
- Bridesmaids (dir. Paul Feig, 2011)
- Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (dir. Brad Bird, 2011)
- Hail, Caesar! (dir. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2016)
- The Trip (dir. Michael Winterbottom, 2010)
- 56 Up (dir. Michael Apted, 2012)
- Queen & Country (dir. John Boorman, 2014)
Several of these movies were released in the previous decade, in the last weeks of 2010. So, clarification is in order.
To qualify for the list, a movie needs to have ended its first run in U.S. theaters no earlier than January 1, 2011. This is a fair criterion because I wouldn’t have been able to see several of these movies as soon as they appeared in theaters, in 2010.
Besides, if I hadn’t adopted this criterion, this would’ve been a sorry list indeed. Like the previous list, this one makes it clear that I stopped paying attention to art and culture halfway through the decade. I guess I no longer view the world with wide-eyed wonder.
Or maybe the new stuff really does lack freshness. A common complaint, nowadays, is that too many movies are sequels or prequels or adaptations. As it happens, this list includes three sequels: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, 56 Up, and Queen & Country. And the first two of these would go on to have sequels of their own (as would The Trip).
But the three sequels on the list are pretty darn cool. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol revitalized an ailing franchise. Queen & Country, which seems never to have held much commercial promise, is a self-contained appendix to Hope and Glory, which was a minor hit in 1988; its very existence is miraculous.
56 Up is, of course, a part of the greatest string of sequels in documentary history; that they are sequels is their whole point.
Tabloid is not a sequel, but it’s quintessential Errol Morris. This means that it’s what 75% of those true crime docs on Netflix are trying to copy. They are Tabloid’s spiritual sequels, or they would be, if they were good enough.
Tabloid is my no. 1. I thought long and hard about making either We Are the Best! or L’illusionniste no. 1. They may as well all be tied.
The Trip and 56 Up first appeared on British TV.
To qualify for the list, a movie needs to have ended its first run in U.S. theaters no earlier than January 1, 2011. This is a fair criterion because I wouldn’t have been able to see several of these movies as soon as they appeared in theaters, in 2010.
Besides, if I hadn’t adopted this criterion, this would’ve been a sorry list indeed. Like the previous list, this one makes it clear that I stopped paying attention to art and culture halfway through the decade. I guess I no longer view the world with wide-eyed wonder.
Or maybe the new stuff really does lack freshness. A common complaint, nowadays, is that too many movies are sequels or prequels or adaptations. As it happens, this list includes three sequels: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, 56 Up, and Queen & Country. And the first two of these would go on to have sequels of their own (as would The Trip).
But the three sequels on the list are pretty darn cool. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol revitalized an ailing franchise. Queen & Country, which seems never to have held much commercial promise, is a self-contained appendix to Hope and Glory, which was a minor hit in 1988; its very existence is miraculous.
56 Up is, of course, a part of the greatest string of sequels in documentary history; that they are sequels is their whole point.
Tabloid is not a sequel, but it’s quintessential Errol Morris. This means that it’s what 75% of those true crime docs on Netflix are trying to copy. They are Tabloid’s spiritual sequels, or they would be, if they were good enough.
Tabloid is my no. 1. I thought long and hard about making either We Are the Best! or L’illusionniste no. 1. They may as well all be tied.
The Trip and 56 Up first appeared on British TV.