THE POPE'S TOP MOVIES OF THE DECADE (2010 - 2019)

The 2010s are officially over.  This seems as good a time as any to ponder what the last decade meant to me in film.  Below is a list of movies that over the past decade have stuck with me or, in the case of the more recent films, movies I feel confident will stand my personal test of time.  If someone were to ask me to describe my last ten years, I would hand them this list of movies.

Brian Pope
January 31, 2020

THE POPE’S TOP MOVIES OF THE 2010s
(in alphabetical order)

AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013)  David O. Russell turns the ABSCAM sting operation into a love story for the ages, with all the passion, fury and absurdity you’d expect from one of our most volatile filmmakers.

THE DEATH OF STALIN (2018)  Armando Iannucci’s black-as-the-bowels-of-the-earth comedy follows the lethal power struggle after the titular tyrant’s death and is hilarious and horrifying at the same time.

GET OUT (2017)  Jordan Peele’s debut film works both as social satire and creepy horror film; it’s as if the late great George A. Romero had made The Stepford Wives for the Black Lives Matter era.

INSIDE OUT (2015)  Pixar knocks it out of the park with this melancholy animated comedy that takes place primarily inside the emotions of a pre-teen girl.  It’s wondrous, imaginative, and profound.

THE LOBSTER (2016)  Yorgos Lanthimos’ bracing, bonkers satire about extremism straddles the uneasy line between cruelty and absurdist humor so deftly you don’t know whether to laugh or flinch.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)  George Miller returns to his post-apocalyptic Mad Max universe with a vibrant energy and an off-kilter wit that should humble most other so-called “visionaries” and action filmmakers.

MOONLIGHT (2016)  Barry Jenkins’ tone poem about an African-American man at three pivotal stages of life (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood) is difficult to describe but impossible to forget.  Staggering.

PARASITE (2019)  Bong Joon Ho’s thriller about a poor family that insinuates itself into a rich household with tragic results taps into the zeitgeist, shedding its genre skin and slithering into your subconscious with ease.

SPOTLIGHT (2015)  Tom McCarthy’s engaging drama about the Boston Globe’s dogged reporting breaking the Catholic Church’s child molestation scandal provides a desperately needed tonic in an age of chronic injustice.

STORIES WE TELL (2013)  Sarah Polley’s powerful, personal documentary recounts her odyssey to learn more about her late, mercurial mother in which she uncovers a family secret about her parentage.