With the 2010s' candle burning out, I thought it worth looking back on
my favourite movies of the past ten years. It may have been a relatively
uninspiring decade for mainstream cinema, but even the weakest year had
a few standout releases worth celebrating. This post covers entries ten through eight.
10. EX MACHINA (Dir: Alex Garland, 2015)
John Wick misses out by a whisker to Alex Garland's sci-fi thriller, whose central concerns of objectification and the difficulties distinguishing between human and digital interaction and deception have grown more potent in the decade's sunset years. Despite their very different aims, Wick and Ex Machina have much in common: both strip down often their often bloated genres (action and science fiction respectively) to the essentials, making the most out of a small number of ingredients rather than vaingloriously throwing everything in the pot and hoping for the best.
For most of its running time, Ex Machina limits itself to four characters, one of whom is mute, allowing us to spend the time with each to get a clear understanding of their characters, dynamics and their role in the drama and its subtext. Though not a subtle film in conveying its intentions, it mercifully refrains from didacticism, preferring to pose questions rather than tell its audience what to think. For those whose primary motivation is entertainment rather than intellect, it is as finely tuned and tense as any thriller released in recent years. By contrast, Garland's next movie, Annihilation, used its bigger budget to lean more heavily into opaque visual surrealism, ending up muddying its messages and lacking the focus to satisfy as a genre piece. Insofar as the old expression about limitations being a boon to creativity rings true, Ex Machina embodies it to an uncanny degree.
John Wick misses out by a whisker to Alex Garland's sci-fi thriller, whose central concerns of objectification and the difficulties distinguishing between human and digital interaction and deception have grown more potent in the decade's sunset years. Despite their very different aims, Wick and Ex Machina have much in common: both strip down often their often bloated genres (action and science fiction respectively) to the essentials, making the most out of a small number of ingredients rather than vaingloriously throwing everything in the pot and hoping for the best.
For most of its running time, Ex Machina limits itself to four characters, one of whom is mute, allowing us to spend the time with each to get a clear understanding of their characters, dynamics and their role in the drama and its subtext. Though not a subtle film in conveying its intentions, it mercifully refrains from didacticism, preferring to pose questions rather than tell its audience what to think. For those whose primary motivation is entertainment rather than intellect, it is as finely tuned and tense as any thriller released in recent years. By contrast, Garland's next movie, Annihilation, used its bigger budget to lean more heavily into opaque visual surrealism, ending up muddying its messages and lacking the focus to satisfy as a genre piece. Insofar as the old expression about limitations being a boon to creativity rings true, Ex Machina embodies it to an uncanny degree.
9. SKYFALL (Dir: Sam Mendes, 2012)
Bond films occupy a unique space between commerce and art. Despite the earliest Connery movies having arguably the greatest crew of behind-the-scenes talent ever assembled (Terrence Young directing, Peter Hunt editing, John Barry composing, Ken Adam on sets, Maurice Binder on titles), the series has since offered few opportunities to be celebrated on technical merit. While its commercial appeal has always been strong, its long history and carefully curated identity - whether playing to the formula or against it - give it a distinction and prestige setting it apart from other blockbusters.
There could be no better film to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bond series than Skyfall. Not only is it a rare entry which can be enjoyed as much for its artistic and technical opulence as its enormous entertainment value, but it functions as a celebration of Bond's outsized role as a British icon in cultural history - the film released, in a true instance of stars aligning, in the same year as the successful London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - as well as a dissection of his role in the present day and aspirational look to the future. Drawing on Arthurian legend (the new M is named for Thomas Malory, author of La Morte D'Arthur) and the poetry of Tennyson (quoted in-film by Judi Dench's M), the film feels self-assured in its Bondian identity in a way the heavy revisionism of the previous Craig films, and emptily formulaic Brosnan entries, did not. Most importantly, it delivers fun by the metric tonnage, with a fantastically perverse villain, action shot as strikingly as choreographed, a main Bond girl in her late seventies, and Bond in the company of two black labradors, proving once and for all that despite being a womanising, mass-murdering alcoholic, he remains a man of irrefutable distinction.
There could be no better film to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bond series than Skyfall. Not only is it a rare entry which can be enjoyed as much for its artistic and technical opulence as its enormous entertainment value, but it functions as a celebration of Bond's outsized role as a British icon in cultural history - the film released, in a true instance of stars aligning, in the same year as the successful London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee - as well as a dissection of his role in the present day and aspirational look to the future. Drawing on Arthurian legend (the new M is named for Thomas Malory, author of La Morte D'Arthur) and the poetry of Tennyson (quoted in-film by Judi Dench's M), the film feels self-assured in its Bondian identity in a way the heavy revisionism of the previous Craig films, and emptily formulaic Brosnan entries, did not. Most importantly, it delivers fun by the metric tonnage, with a fantastically perverse villain, action shot as strikingly as choreographed, a main Bond girl in her late seventies, and Bond in the company of two black labradors, proving once and for all that despite being a womanising, mass-murdering alcoholic, he remains a man of irrefutable distinction.
8. KILL LIST
I'm not a big fan of horror films. There's enormous untapped potential in the arts for the use of 'negative' emotion as paths to the truth of the human condition, but too often the genre devolves into a game of 'imagine if this awful thing were happening to you!'. This undoubtedly has its pleasures, particularly in the hands of someone with the right sensibilities (someone a soul bubbling over with weapons-grade schlock, for my money), but more often than not winds up feeling as though you've put yourself through an ordeal only to find nothing at the end of it. Not every experience has to have a 'point' per se, but every journey needs an ending. Horror too often creates the emotion of a journey, but lacking anything deeper, simply halts as soon as the scares do.
It might seem contradictory that Kill List - written and shot by Ben Wheatley, the bravest and most fascinating British director working today - is a horror film which repeatedly and purposefully denies its viewers answers, yet finds meaning in the fright and disorientation left in its wake. It builds to a battery of relentless nastiness which exerts power not through the horrors it shows, but the details left out. As depressed hitmen Jay and Gal sink deeper into what seems like an occultist conspiracy, Wheatley offers small connections between each revelation, hinting at an explanation yet never giving enough to shape them into a picture your mind can rationalise. In doing so, Kill List evokes the disorienting spiral of life with the comforting filters stripped away. It forces its viewers towards big questions without asking anything itself. How can we trust others when we know nothing but what they show us? What would happen if I realised how little of my life was really under my control? What evils live beneath the surface of the world around me, and would the truth be too big to comprehend even if it emerged?
Wheatley mines the shared space between horror and the kitchen sink drama, two genres which have defined British cinema more than any other. It is a resource he has tapped into before and after Kill List, sometimes for black comedy (Sightseers, also excellent), sometimes surrealism (A Field In England; High Rise) and one particularly brutal take on the domestic drama in his debut, Down Terrace. Kill List nevertheless stands above them all as a punishing journey through the depths of a broken psyche, whose real horror is the abiding feeling that it might be a psyche far less broken than we'd be comfortable admitting.
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It might seem contradictory that Kill List - written and shot by Ben Wheatley, the bravest and most fascinating British director working today - is a horror film which repeatedly and purposefully denies its viewers answers, yet finds meaning in the fright and disorientation left in its wake. It builds to a battery of relentless nastiness which exerts power not through the horrors it shows, but the details left out. As depressed hitmen Jay and Gal sink deeper into what seems like an occultist conspiracy, Wheatley offers small connections between each revelation, hinting at an explanation yet never giving enough to shape them into a picture your mind can rationalise. In doing so, Kill List evokes the disorienting spiral of life with the comforting filters stripped away. It forces its viewers towards big questions without asking anything itself. How can we trust others when we know nothing but what they show us? What would happen if I realised how little of my life was really under my control? What evils live beneath the surface of the world around me, and would the truth be too big to comprehend even if it emerged?
Wheatley mines the shared space between horror and the kitchen sink drama, two genres which have defined British cinema more than any other. It is a resource he has tapped into before and after Kill List, sometimes for black comedy (Sightseers, also excellent), sometimes surrealism (A Field In England; High Rise) and one particularly brutal take on the domestic drama in his debut, Down Terrace. Kill List nevertheless stands above them all as a punishing journey through the depths of a broken psyche, whose real horror is the abiding feeling that it might be a psyche far less broken than we'd be comfortable admitting.
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