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Best of the Decade #16: Summer Hours
The film’s real greatness stems not merely from its exploration of family, but its depiction of a distinctly 21st-century family in particular. In the microcosm of the Berthiers’ story, Assayas finds...
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Best of the Decade #15: The Royal Tenenbaums
In a decade when American studios seemed to discontinue serious dramas, or cynically relegate them to their independent divisions, one of the most poignant and heartrending stories of family came from...
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Best of the Decade #14: Werckmeister Harmonies
Tucked into the behemoth body plan of Werckmeister Harmonies is a distressing spiritual-political parable that resists allegorical interpretation even as it solicits such readings, a quality that...
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Best of the Decade #13: Yi Yi
Cinephilia is usually characterized as an insatiable, promiscuous kind of love, but Edward Yang’s Yi Yi tempts me to think of it as monogamous. While this certainly isn’t the only film I’ve ever held...
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Best of the Decade #12: Kings and Queen
Of his contributions this decade, none represents Desplechin's virtues better than 2005's Kings and Queen. Where to begin with it? Well, one doesn't “begin” with Kings and Queen. Much praise has...
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Best of the Decade #11: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Few contemporary films manage to span the critical and popular culture divide to capture the collective imagination in electric, unifying ecstasy, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes the...
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Best of the Decade #10: There Will Be Blood
The blustery banalities and sweeping assertions of the conventional historical epic give way here to the ominous, the ambivalent, and the particular. For all its visual grandeur and allegorical...
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Best of the Decade #9: The Son
If the Dardennes are indeed the premiere narrative film artists of our time (as this writer believes them to be), this is not because they make Story sovereign above all else, but because they use...
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Best of the Decade #8: Flight of the Red Balloon
In his essay, “The Task of the Translator,” Walter Benjamin remarked, “Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what...
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Best of the Decade #7: L'Intrus
Despite its abundance of resonances, rhymes, and echoes, L’Intrus seems to be finding its shape for most of its running time. Hence a few of its early emphases—like the erotic game instigated by...
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Best of the Decade #5: Syndromes and a Century
The English translation of Syndromes and a Century’s Thai title, Sang sattawat, which means “light of the century,” sounds atypically grandiose for humble filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It’s a...
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Best of the Decade #4: Before Sunset
Before Sunset may be the most written about movie in the still-brief history of this publication. Since many Reverse Shot writers are just a few years younger than Jesse and Celine, the reasons for the...
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Best of the Decade #3: In the Mood for Love
A man and a woman passing each other on a dark stairwell; the same man and woman trapped in a bedroom together, chastely waiting for a marathon canasta game to expire so they can separate without...
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Best of the Decade #2: The New World
Perhaps more than any other film on this list, The New World reminds us of the poetry inherent in the realistic, unvarnished image, and by extension, the poetry found at the intersection of history...
View ArticleBest of the Decade #1: Mulholland Drive
Looking back on this American masterpiece from a 2010 vantage point, we can now see this was a film released on the brink of major change, and that it managed to embody that change while remaining...
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