Top 5 2010 Films
By Austin Johnson
It’s 2020, and all five of these films came out in 2010. That’s ten years of life for these films. Wait, let me check the math on that… yeah, ten years.
5.) Submarine
“Her new boyfriend has an incredibly long neck.
Just thinking about giraffes makes me angry.” |
I caught Submarine a couple years after its release on Netflix. I was immediately entranced by Alex Turner’s voice as an actor named Craig Roberts graced the screen with a presence that not many teenagers possess. He was 19 when it came out and writer/director Richard Ayoade was 33 when it came out. They’ve both done some interesting stuff the past decade but Submarine is by far my favorite project for either of them. Yasmin Paige steals the show a few times as Oliver’s love interest with some truly authentic acting. My adoration for Submarine always begins and ends with the soundtrack by Alex Turner, the Arctic Monkeys lead singer. It puts me into a very specific atmosphere and the film pairs with it very nicely.
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4.) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
“That's it! You cocky cock! You'll pay for your crimes against humanity.”
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So, how did they cast Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Anna Kendrick, Kieran Culkin, Alison Pill, Aubrey Plaza, Jason Schwartzman, Johnny Simmons, Mark Webber, Chris Evans, Brie Larson, and Bill Hader? I got to see Scott Pilgrim in theaters while on a visit in New York City. I’ll never forget that experience or the film because it fucking rules. It’s amazing how easily writer/director Edgar Wright can break what we think to be the rules of film. Scott Pilgrim moves like a purebred comedy at times, a psychedelic music video at times, and a bloody video game at times. It’s endlessly rewatchable and a pretty spectacular love story when you break it down.
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3.) Tuesday, After Christmas
“I'll write to Santa and tell him to bring me a man with more willpower.”
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Sheesh, Tuesday, After Christmas really rocked my brain. The Romanian writer/director Radu Muntean was 39 when this devastating drama premiered at Cannes in May of 2010. I lived in Romania for about a year when I was 17 and 18, but I haven’t seen too many Romanian films. Tuesday, After Christmas caused me to really believe in Romanian filmmaking and I will definitely check out more of Radu’s work. I really dig American films about marriage like Kramer vs. Kramer and Marriage Story, but Tuesday, After Christmas doesn’t fuck around at all or make light of the mental toll it takes to go through something so human and common as a divorce.
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2.) Blue Valentine
“Don't say stuff you can't take back.”
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Man oh man, Blue Valentine is one of the American films that truly goes there when it comes to realistic films about relationships. When you get Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams to totally buy in, you get two monstrous performances that are both worth a serious reevaluation. Writer/Director, Derek Cianfrance worked with Gosling two years after Blue Valentine on The Place Beyond the Pines. They clearly had a great chemistry early on in the decade and he’s gotten the very best out of Gosling. I like Blue Valentine a bit more and it’s the only film that can rival my number one film of 2010.
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1.) The Social Network
“We lived on farms, then we lived in cities,
and now we're going to live on the internet!” |
David Fincher is one of my favorite directors of all time. In March of 2019, I wrote a list of my five favorite Fincher films. The list hasn’t changed much at all, but my adoration for his work has grown. The Social Network is my second favorite film of his, but I think it might be the strongest film of the entire 2010’s. The combination of Fincher and Aaron Sorkin is a dream and the tremendous cast of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Rooney Mara, and Justin Timberlake are random as hell but the stars fucking aligned. The secret ingredient is the score by Trent Renzor and Atticus Ross as it transitions us through the film almost arrogantly. The Social Network knows how good it is and I think it can only get better as time goes on and Facebook gets weirder.
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