Top Ten of the Decade

2009 was the first year I remember being consciously interested in movies. I had friends over for the Oscars, I had peer-pressured most people in my life to spend countless hours at the local Regal, and I began to get into reading film criticism and listening to podcasts, of course. The past ten years have represented essentially my entire young adult life, so when Brian asked for a best of the decade list, I thought it would be a nearly impossible task. It was.

10. Baby Driver (Edgar Wright, 2017) /Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017) (tie)I can’t let 2017 die. My first draft of this list had 26 films, seven from 2017. Baby Driver and Phantom Thread represent the two types of ways I obsess over movies. Baby Driver, I saw five times in theaters. Phantom Thread just kind of kept poking at the back of my brain over and over. And to be honest, I just really needed an Edgar Wright and a PTA on my list.

9. Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019)I was hesitant to include a film from 2019 due to recency bias, but after watching a few times, I cannot find any flaws with Parasite. Bong Joon Ho has made a perfect thing; intimate, funny, truly shocking, and surprisingly approachable. I tend to dissolve into “you just haveeee to see it” blubbering to nearly everyone I have come in contact with this year.

8. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater, 2016)This is the first of my “Real Meg Sh*t” choices. To breeze right past Boyhood and Before Midnight to praise Linklater’s frat boy slice of life movie…even I kind of hate myself for it. But this is my “pop on to feel good” film, and I find it is severely overlooked for being viewed as “Dazed and Confused Pt. 2”. While I think they make a good pair, EWS stands on its own.

7. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)One of my most repeated mantras is the best dramatic films contain funny aspects, because sometimes in real life, even in tragedy, there are lighter moments. The same applies for horror. If it is all just unrelentingly terrifying and dark, it doesn’t feel like life, it feels like fiction. So, the genius of Get Out is that while it is ostensibly science fiction, it is the horror movie of the decade that hits the best for me. It handles so much so effortlessly; it shifted the cultural conversations around satire and horror and the next generation of filmmakers. On top of all that, it’s just a great time.

6. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (Ol Parker, 2019)The fact that this is on my list is a testament to my stubbornness, and the fact that it’s not in the top five is a testament to my restraint. I have nothing intelligent to say about MM! HWGA. But movies are an audio-visual medium, and I love to listen to ABBA and see attractive people dance around Europe. Any defense I could mount for this movie would crumble under the slightest inquiry, so I am glad this is a one-sided review.

5. Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)Ralph Fiennes was determined to get on my list. I cut A Bigger Splash (and that scene from Hail, Caesar) under duress. I know it is so horribly predictable for a “film person” to praise a Wes Anderson movie, but I can’t help myself. This is the first since Tenenbaums that has been an A+ for me, and potentially even more rewatchable.

4. What We Do in The Shadows (Taika Waititi, 2014)Ah, the nonsense continues. I refused to get out of here without proper comedic representation, and after having a friend shoot down my argument for Spy (three times), WWDITS stands alone as the only true comedy on the list. It is endlessly rewatchable, since it is so jam packed with jokes. The only movie from this decade that has permeated into my friend group vernacular in a significant way. Leave me to do my dark bidding on the internet.

3. Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadanino, 2017)I am not Brian Gill and thus, I do not like to cry. I can sometimes find it hard to identify with a character enough to be moved to tears. That being said, after watching Call Me by Your Name, every time, I cry. The ability of Timothee Chalamet to convince me that I, too, was once a young man in northern Italy who found and lost love, is inexplicably masterful. Such a beautiful and playful and honest movie. It haunts me. I could gush about it until the end of time.

2. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)When this exercise started, I thought The Social Network would be my number one with a bullet. Incredibly directed, written, and acted and wildly relevant 10 years later. The score is constantly playing in my office. The Eduardo/Zuckerberg fight is one of my most-watched Youtube clips. I have a serious long-term relationship with this film. These were the first Oscars that I remember being invested in, and my social life has been all downhill from there.

1. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017) The best films, my favorites, I feel some sort of ownership stake in them; none so much as Lady Bird. While not exactly paralleling my high school experience, it feels so universal to being a teenager and being so confidently lost and stubbornly wrong, all the time. Making all the right mistakes that everyone makes and is forgiven for in time and in maturity. I feel Lady Bird in my bones and after watching I feel it become more and more a part of me. There could be no other number one.