Filmotomy’s Best Films of the Decade – Jasmine May’s List

Members of the Filmotomy team agonize over their top ten for the decade (2010-19).

The power of the written word set for the screen should not be underestimated. When fictional and actual histories are preserved on film, the union of image and sound awakens our senses, as if immersed into another dimension. A deeply impactful film often stays in the inner theaters of our minds until death.

These ten films of the 2010-2019 decade are vivid examples of just how much mileage the written word travels from off a page. Eight narrative films. Two documentaries. Every single one is a treasure that warrants Criterion Collection inclusion. Enjoy.

10. Roma (2018)

Alfonso Cuarón’s semi-autobiographical award-winning Roma is an easy finale to this diverse collection of loved films. Roma flows as graceful as a symphony even in its moments of carnage. Affluent versus poor, imported European against indigenous and Mestizo. The caste system of 1970s Mexico is a universal parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man.

We the poor suffer our Hell on earth while our humanity and our land is diminished by ignorant braggarts who won’t be able to take a single cen(tavo) upon death. Alas, not all love is lost at the end. This is the remarkable beauty that breathes out from one of the decade’s best.

9. Red Army (2014)

Documentarian Gabe Polsky’s Red Army is a jackpot prize of documentary filmmaking. From the archive footage, interviews, and extremely engaging presentation style, no one else could have offered a more riveting inside look into inner mechanisms of the famous Soviet Union national ice hockey team. Fall-outs abound, political and otherwise in this groundbreaking nonfiction film.

8. Citizenfour (2014)

Filmmaker Laura Poitras’s Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour is a post-9/11 testament to the power of the documentary genre. To some Edward Snowden is an American traitor, while to many others he is viewed as the very definition of a civil servant.

Based on the turmoil that both Snowden and Poitra’s have endured due to their respective pathways, it is a miracle that Citizenfour was ever made. And even more, that We the People in the USA and the world over have had the opportunity to see it.

7. Winter’s Bone (2010)

Director/writer Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone is rural survivalist Americana set-to-film at its finest. Jennifer Lawrence’s Ree Dolly is youthful grit personified as she demands answers of community members in the Missouri Ozarks concerning the disappearance and suspected death of her meth-manufacturing father.

6. You Were Never Really Here (2017)

Director/writer Lynne Ramsay’s filmic adaptation of the novella You Were Never Really Here is quite astonishing in its insights of the American ills of human trafficking, and psychological neglect of PTSD-stricken military veterans. Joaquin Phoenix gives the performance of his career (so far) as veteran-caregiver-hitman Joe, who can’t shake off the tailing of government agents that want him dead after he is entangled in a child trafficking web involving high-ranking politicians.

5. Birds of Passage (2018)

Co-directed by Columbian Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra, Birds of Passage is a marvelous example of cinematic art. The film vividly depicts the inevitability of thorough corruption within a Wayuu family and culture when greed and power derived from drug trafficking of the 1960s and 1970s become the self-poisoning vices of choice.

4. Cold War (2018)

From the director/writer Paweł Pawlikowski of Ida (2013) comes the black-and-white photographed masterpiece Cold War. Lovers separated by country, ambitions, and oppression of the era, actors Joanna Kulig and Tomasz Kot both offer an intriguing interpretation of how one co-exists within the political/ideological chokeholds of the post-WWII Cold War era.

3. Embrace of the Serpent (2015)

The black-and-white Colombian film Embrace of the Serpent , directed by Ciro Guerra, and written by Guerra and Jacques Toulemonde Vidal is an exquisite masterpiece. Barbarity, foreign encroachment, curiosity, and ancient traditions reside side by side with the gorgeous majesty of the Columbian Amazonian jungle. A one-of-a-kind surreal cinematic experience.

2. Poetry (2010)

From South Korean director/writer Lee Chang-dong. Poetry tests the emotional limits of spectators with a dedicated working grandmother’s simultaneous rupture of personal memory due to Alzheimer’s. As new memories of tragic proportions form from her grandson’s suspected involvement in a gang rape and murder of a high school classmate.

Actress Yoon Jeong-hee is among world cinema’s finest thespians. If film aficionados are unaware of this, one must watch this masterpiece to witness great performances in action.

1. Short Term 12 (2013)

A landmark independent film in American cinema. Director/writer Destin Daniel Cretton presents with Short Term 12 authentic expressions of trauma, rage, grief, and ultimately a lively hope for healing. Oscar winners Brie Larson (Grace) and Rami Malek (Nate) co-star, with Larson giving an extraordinary performance as a young group home counselor recovering from the horrific wounds of incest. Lakeith Stanfield (Marcus) offers a character portrayal of the century as a suicidal abuse survivor.