30. “Bridesmaids” (2011)
Dying is easy, comedy is hard goes the saying, and that goes double for mainstream studio comedies. It sometimes feels like 90% of them are unwatchable Sandlerian dreck. Thank god, then, for the minor miracle of “Bridesmaids.” Kristen Wiig, Annie Mumulo, and Paul Feig’s film, about an adrift singleton (Wiig) asked to serve as her best friend’s maid-of-honor, builds on the Apatowian success of films like “Knocked Up,” melding genuinely uproarious gross-out gags and inventive improv, with subtler character work and acute relationships. The film was an oddity at the time, looking like a rom-com without really acting like one, and its focus on female friendship is only one of the reasons it felt so refreshing. Feig isn’t exactly a visual stylist, but he knows how to make comedy sing, and the film’s remarkably free of fat given its two-hour run time, while still allowing everyone, from the terrific Rose Byrne to the winningly and despicably goofy Jon Hamm, a moment to shine.
29. “Selma” (2014)
Snubbed by the Academy or no, the surprise of Ava DuVernay’s “Selma” for anyone coming to it through the blizzard of commentary in which it was released, is that it is not merely an issues film, nor even “just” a biopic. It’s a consummately well-acted, beautifully shot (by Bradford Young), independently-minded movie, that is an expression of its director’s intentions and artistry before all else. Taking Martin Luther King’s days in Selma, Alabama as a starting point to prise open the mythmaking tendencies of history, DuVernay, aided by a startlingly good David Oyelowo, presents MLK as a man both inspirational and flawed, suffering a constant internal conflict between his long-view political pragmatism as a great statesman and the demands on his moral conscience as a pastor and a human being. Resolutely anti-polemical, complex, and superbly textured, before being history or race commentary, “Selma” is a remarkably accomplished, personal film.
28. “Kill List” (2012)
There’s gore in Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List,” and scares and occult imagery. But it’s debatable whether that’s what makes it such an effective horror, or whether the real uncanniness of the film’s effect is derived from the deeply unsettling way he plays with genres, switching from arthouse Brit social realism to slick hitman thriller tropes to all-out, “Wicker Man” insanity in a completely unique and unprecedented manner. His debut, “Down Terrace” already melded kitchen sink with a crime family saga to absurd effect, and his subsequent, excellent “Sightseers” would be an enormously enjoyable, ruthlessly dark-hearted killing spree black comedy. But “Kill List,” perhaps because it doesn’t have those currents of humor to even allow the catharsis of discomfited laughter, is the purest expression of just what a blazing and original talent we have in Wheatley, and just how pitilessly he can treat us.
27. “Amour” (2012)
Travel back to he start of the decade and tell an arthouse full of people that not only would famously austere and alienating filmmaker Michael Haneke win his second consecutive Palme D’Or for his next film, but that it would also be nominated for several Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, and you’d likely be laughed out of town. But that’s exactly what happened with 2012’s “Amour,” and it couldn’t have been more deserving. Detailing the final days, weeks, and months of a long-married Parisian couple (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant) after she suffers a stroke, the film’s a chamber piece. Set entirely within the confines of their apartment, it’s as brutal and painful a watch as we’d come to expect from the Austrian master, but with a heartbreaking humanity and compassion that, while it had usually underscored his work, was certainly never as prominent as it is here, aided by two of the finest-ever performances by two French cinema legends.
26. “Mother” (2010)
Bong Joon-ho might have got more recognition from U.S. audiences when “Snowpiercer” (finally) came out, but his best film of the decade is undoubtedly “Mother,” which premiered at Cannes in 2009 but only made it to American shores the following year. A Hitchcockian tragedy about a dedicated mother (Kim Hye-ja, giving an astounding performance) trying to clear the name of her son, a developmentally-disabled young man accused of murder, it’s perhaps the best example of what Bong does better than anyone, which is deftly hop between tones and genres to the extent that you have no idea where he’s going, but you’ll follow him anywhere. Tense, unexpectedly funny, powerful and painful, surprising, and phenomenally made, it’s a film that could only have come out of South Korea and their thrilling new wave, and could really have only been made by Bong Joon-ho.
