20 – Stranger by the Lake – Alain Guiraudie – 2013 – France

When this film was released, I had heard about the infamous sex scene depicting unsimulated sex between two men. Early in my relationship with my wife, I decided to take her to see this. I think at the time, I wanted to gauge her reaction to something that I knew she hadn’t seen before. I didn’t anticipate that the film would get under my skin in such a powerful way and leave me considering it years later.

Franck frequents a nude beach in France. The beach and surrounding woods serve as a popular area for gay men to meet and hook up. Eventually he meets Michel and is instantly infatuated. He takes to watching the man and his lover and one evening witnesses Michel drowning the other man in the lake. This moment does nothing to lessen Francks attraction to Michel and he continues to pursue him despite the inherent danger.

A sexy and slow-burning thriller that uses suggestion to explore uncertainty and fear that comes along with being a sexually active gay man. We know Franck is aware of the risks he takes pursuing Michel, but the film does him the service of never questioning what force drives him towards this danger, but rather that it is a force and it is irresistible. When the intimate scene finally arrives, the stakes are so high and the tension so tightly wired, there isn’t a single moment of it that feels gratuitous or pornographic. This was one of those films I grew to love as the years went on for what it manages to say while attempting to say so little. Queer cinema to the bone, lacking in exploitation or melodrama.

19 – Tangerine – Sean Baker – 2015 – USA

If you heard about Tangerine when it was making the festival rounds, you likely would have heard about how it was shot on an iPhone on a shoestring budget, or perhaps that it started two transgendered actresses in their first roles. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, but within seconds I was arrested by the incredible energy. Tangerine plays out to such a fast paced, chaotic rhythm, that makes it impossible to look away. More of a roller coaster than a train wreck, we follow Sin-Dee Rella on her first day out from a 4 week prison sentence. She meets up with her friend Alexandra and the two embark on a quest around blazing hot Hollywood to catch Sin-Dee’s pimp/boyfriend cheating on her.

The 2010’s have been full of conversations about inclusivity in Hollywood films. With Tangerine, Sean Baker completely blows this debate up by casting two non-professional actresses who deliver an energy and authenticity to their performances and avoid descending into caricature. Somehow Tangerine manages to be endlessly engaging, funny and breathtaking without trying to make some clean cut statement about it’s subject or to wrap things up to make things palatable for a wider audience, yet what is most stunning about Tangerine is its warm heart. For a film that starts at such a breakneck speed, the most significant moment comes when things finally stop and, in a late night laundromat, our heroes come together in silence and the act of sharing a wig seems to close a divide that Hollywood would rather pretend doesn’t exist. An authentic and valid experience that needs to be seen.

 

18 – Spring Breakers – Harmony Korine – 2012 – USA

I know as many people who hate this movie as I know people who love this movie. I came into this a considerable fan of Korine’s work. I grew up with Kids. His directorial debut Gummo was an early instance of me dealing with a piece that upset me so much it made me angry. Over time, I grew to love Gummo and appreciate it as the hilarious shockstravaganza that it is. By the time Spring Breakers was announced, with the Mickey Mouse Club cast and the day-glo, Girls Gone Wild aesthetic, I knew this would be more than it appeared on the surface.

Shino and I saw Spring Breakers on opening night in a theater packed with teenagers. I snickered in private, thinking that these kids had no idea what they were getting themselves into. In reality, Korine gave them exactly what they came for. Tits, Dubstep, Booze, Guns, Drugs, Numchuks (sp) and James Franco doing a pitch perfect impression of dirtbag Texas rapper Riff Raff. Is there something deeper being said here about a generation dedicated to empty, mindless partying? Probably, but more than every other film on this list, Spring Breakers appeals to me because it is unapologetic, senseless, remorseless fun. Rather than pointing his finger and looking down at the youth of this decade, Harmony Korine rips his shirt off and stage dives directly into the mosh pit.

Harmony Korine is incredibly gifted in the art of Idiot Poetry. He co-opts the worst elements and vocabulary of a subculture and spits it back at us in a way that heightens it; in a way that makes it profound. There’s something to be said about a film that has me giggling with excitement over a monologue about drugs, money, guns and shorts and moments later has me tearing up to a Britney Spears song replete with a machine gun ballet and pink ski-masks. I refuse to sell this film short. When people raise their eyebrows at my mentioning Spring Breakers I am only inspired to double down and explain in the most grand of statements just why I believe this is a defining work of this decade. Spring Breakers is the distilled essence of what it meant to be young and dumb in the early 2010s. I have and will continue to revisit many times.

17 – An Elephant Sitting Still – Hu Bo – China – 2018

A work of such incredible scope and despair, it is impossible to talk about it without bringing up the tragedy that we will never receive a follow-up, as the director commited suicide shortly after completing this, his debut feature film. That this element is usually front loaded in the press for the movie is no surprise, as it serves to set the table for the type of experience that watching An Elephant Sitting Still can be.

There are few films in the history of cinema that so precisely inform a feeling of hopelessness as this one. On top of that, the film is 4 hours long. There isn’t a moment in the entire running time of An Elephant Sitting Still that offers an olive branch or even a fractal of light to pour through the cracks. We follow the four main characters on their descent into desperation and watch as they give up under the oppression of their circumstances. The setting of Manzhouli in Norther China serves as an impossible hurdle in the way of the protagonists. An old man being offloaded by his children, a younger man wracked with guilt over the suicide of his friend, a teen boy trying to escape an endless cycle of bullying and a teenage girl who leaves home and begins a relationship with an official at her school.

This film could not have been made anywhere other than China. The difficulties involved to produce a piece like this and the kind of environment that is required to create this world view are perfectly in line with the kind of isolation that is so commonplace there. Chinese film has become one of the most important sections of cinema for me in the past decade. Through some of the greater examples from the “6th Generation” of Chinese cinema, I have discovered the masters of “New Taiwanese Cinema” and a beautiful new film language that speaks to me in a way I hadn’t previously experienced. In many ways An Elephant Sitting Still shares ground with some of those other examples of great Chinese Language Cinema. It also stands on it’s own as the most upsetting portrait of social despair that has ever been made.

I know it’s a lot to ask you to watch a depressing 4 hour Chinese movie. The final thing I will note about this film is that it flies by at a terrific pace. There are few moments to contemplate what has just happened before another card is balanced on top and before you know it, the whole thing gives way. Groundbreaking and final. The work of a Master who was not to be.

16 – The Lobster – Yorgos Lanthimos – 2015 – UK

This marks the first film in this list that was in conflict with another film by the same director. Even as writing this, I m not sure why I would choose this over 2018’s The Favourite. The Lobster was in many ways my favourite film of 2015, but it is not the highest ranked on this list from that year, either. I remember back to 2009 when I saw Lanthimos’ second feature Dogtooth and it was instantly apparent that I had witnessed the work of somebody who would go onto do something truly spectacular. I didn’t realize just how far that would go on to be true, until learning that he was set to produce his first English language film with a flawless who’s-who cast and a considerable amount of foreign money. Now the question was would the Greek guy be able to translate his particular film language into something that would work in English and would the budget enable him to achieve his vision or get in the way of it? Many filmmakers have made this transition only to flee back to their home countries to rework their new skills into a more succinct and effective piece in their native language (Bong Joon-ho, Park Chan-Wook, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck all spring to mind). With The Lobster, Yorgos Lanthimos makes the case that film transcends spoken language and speaks to universal truths without losing what makes his films distinctly greek.

A fable about a man who goes to a hotel after his wife leaves him for someone else. He lives in a world where being single is not an option and is given 45 days to find a new mate or he will be turned into an animal of his choosing. He chooses a Lobster because they live long, fertile lives and he has a love for the sea. The conditions at the hotel aren’t exactly optimal for nurturing a romantic relationship, and the people in this world are so disassociated that they see things like mutual constant nosebleeds to be a signal that the two should mate. The fact that one of these people secretly smashes their own nose doesnt feel sad, but necessary. When love shows up, it is practical, and unromantic and yet by the end of the film seems like something worth sacrificing everything for.

Lanthimos’ trademark wooden, to-the-point dialogue is a treat to listen to. He has gone on to make two more English films. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which I love, in spite of it’s ridiculousness and The Favourite, which is Lanthimos at his best. Where that film grounds itself in history and three incredible performances, I chose to place The Lobster here, in stead, because I think it is a better representation of what makes Yorgos’ films so much fun to watch. I think The Favourite is a better movie, but The Lobster lays the groundwork and has set the stage for so many more wildly inventive films to come.

 

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