With the decade half over, I thought it a good idea to have a taxonomy set up for the eventual 2021 collection. South Floridians should rejoice: after years of reliance on Miami International Film Festival screenings and waiting for DVD copies in video stores and Redbox, we finally have a half dozen art houses that have sprung up in the last half decade, most of which have earned the titles I’ve included below.
And there are some titles. I can put them up against anything I’ve seen in the last forty years. Marvel-crazed Hollywood still coughs out the occasional Magic Mike in its indie division, although looking at my list I’m surprised how little Oscarbait figures. The films with homosexual subject matter represent a significant advance over previous years’ attempts at integration (and ingratiation). Ira Sachs directed two of the decade’s most fully realized portraits of contemporary homo life, while Patrick Wang’s too little seen In the Family, made before the Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage, already showed the cracks in the new order. And when they look too staid I can turn to Heartbeats, Xavier Dolan’s depiction about straight/gay interaction that plays true to life and remains l’infant maudit‘s most fully realized film.
On another tip, The Turin Horse and Mysteries of Lisbon, two of the longest films screened this decade, found visual equivalents for their novelistic patience, obsession with surface, and devotion to melodrama.
Here they are, in no order:
1. Something in the Air (Olivier Assayas)
2. Poetry (Lee Chang-dong)
3. Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs)
4. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
5. Stranger By the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
6. Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
7. A Dangerous Method (David Cronenberg)
8. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
10. Heartbeats (Xavier Dolan)
11. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
12. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
13. In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman)
14. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
15. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
16. Enough Said (Nicole Holofcener)
17. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz)
18. The Immigrant (James Gray)
19. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
20. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
21. Girlhood (Céline Sciamma)
22. Being 17 (André Téchiné)
23. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
24. Horse Money (Pedro Costa)
25. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)
26. 13 Assassins (Takashi Miike)
27. Love is Strange (Ira Sachs)
28. Appropriate Behavior (Desiree Akhavan)
29. In The Family (Patrick Wang)
30. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
31. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-Liang)
32. Love and Friendship (Whit Stillman)
33. 35 Shots of Rhum (Claire Denis)
34. No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
35. Amour Fou (Jessica Hausner)
36. The Kid With a Bike (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne)
37. Creed (Ryan Coogler)
38. Barbara (Christian Petzold)
39. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
40. Mother (Bong Joon-ho)
41. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)
42. Heart of a Dog (Laurie Anderson)
43. Carlos (Olivier Assayas)
44. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr)
45. True Grit (Ethan and Joel Coen)
Humanizing The Vacuum 