Favorites of 2010-2019: Movies and TV
Cartoon by E. Black (caption slightly modified). Image: New Yorker
It's been ten years since I began posting my year-end lists of the favorite movies, TV, music, live performances and books I experienced in the previous 12 months. Over the past decade I listed 35 narrative films from countries other than India, 27 films from India, 15 documentaries, 18 TV series, 49 recordings, 57 live performances, 39 works of fiction, and 32 works of non-fiction.
While I tend to be more interested in planning my next adventure than in reviewing past pleasures, I've gone back through all of the favorites lists of the past decade to nominate my favorites of the favorites, 2010-19.
One friend calls my lists "idiosyncratic." I'm sure it was meant kindly, but in fact it's the entire point. These are not intended to be "best-of" lists, nor are they driven by the commercial considerations that motivate most year-end listmaking. The movies, music, books, etc., that make my favorites lists are simply those I found most personally engaging in the previous year, whenever the works themselves were produced. They can be a universally acclaimed masterpiece, a hidden gem, or just something that perfectly matched my mood at the time. Your tastes may (and probably will, and probably should) vary.
NARRATIVE FILMS
Fully half of my ten favorite narrative films seen in the past decade are in languages other than English (and as usual Indian films are in their own category), and eight were produced more than half a century ago. Just missing the list: Her (2013), Mysteries of Lisbon (2010), and Today's Special (2009). Apologies to Jean Arthur, René Clair and Ernst Lubitsch, who were limited to one film apiece: otherwise Too Many Husbands (1940), Sous les toits de Paris (1930), and One Hour With You (1932) would also have been included.
À nous la liberté (Give us freedom! 1931): René Clair's great comic masterpiece, in which two free spirits try to escape the conformist, coercive worlds of prison, work and school.
Trouble in Paradise (1932): "The Lubitsch touch"—witty, sophisticated comedy—is brought to a peak of perfection in this classic pre-Code romantic triangle.
Libeled Lady (1936): Speaking of witty and sophisticated comedy, it's delivered here with sparkling timing by a quartet of glamorous stars: Jean Harlow, Spencer Tracy, William Powell and a luminous Myrna Loy.
Remember the Night (1940): Four years before they appeared as the fatally attracted couple in Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity, Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck co-starred in this compelling Preston Sturges-penned Christmas noir.
The Devil and Miss Jones (1941): One of the best of Jean Arthur's comedies (which is saying a great deal), The Devil and Miss Jones offers heartfelt emotion and a pointed social message.
Tokyo Story (Tōkyō Monogatari, 1953): Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece of restraint in which details of the characters' lives and emotions are slowly unveiled, as in a great novel.
A Report on the Party and Guests (O slavnosti a hostech, 1966): A party that everyone is forced to attend becomes a barbed analogy for political life under Communism in this brilliant parable by Czech New Wave filmmaker Ester Krumbachová.
War and Peace (Voyna i mir, 1967): Epic in every sense, Sergei Bondarchuk's four-film adaptation of Tolstoy's great novel sets the characters' private dramas of sacrifice, betrayal, and reconciliation against the public catastrophe of Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
Frantz (2016): Based on Ernst Lubitsch's Broken Lullaby (1932), François Ozon's Frantz follows the deepening emotional connection between a German war widow and the French soldier wracked with guilt over his role in her husband's death.
Julieta (2016): In deciding the final entry for this list, I thought about which film I'd be most eager to rewatch. It was no contest. As with most Pedro Almodóvar movies, Julieta (based on Alice Munro short stories) is less about the twists and turns of the plot than about a series of emotion-packed moments rendered with the hyper-real acuity of a dream.
DOCUMENTARIES
Out of my 15 favorite documentaries first seen in 2010 or after I've selected five. Just missing inclusion were three performing arts documentaries, Every Little Step (2008), First Position (2011), and Pina (2011).
Joni Mitchell: A Woman of Heart and Mind (2003): Susan Lacy's documentary traces Joni Mitchell's life and work from her mid-1960s beginnings singing as Joni Anderson in Calgary coffeehouses, through her 1970s heyday and her subsequent fall from pop music favor. Even if you think you aren't interested in Mitchell or her music, her determination to explore her own path in the face of what seem at times to be insurmountable difficulties is compelling.
Finding Vivian Maier (2013) tells the fascinating and wildly improbable story of John Maloof's discovery of Maier's photographic archive at a storage space auction, his attempts to trace her identity and history, and his bringing her work to well-deserved fame. And it is filled with Maier's striking and sometimes unsettling photographs.
I Am Not Your Negro (2016): Drawn primarily from James Baldwin's writings on the 1960s civil rights movement, Raoul Peck's documentary speaks just as urgently to the present moment. Essential viewing.
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week—The Touring Years (2016): In a matter of months in 1963 and 1964, to their own disbelief, the Beatles went from playing basement bars to sold-out stadiums filled with tens of thousands of screaming fans. It's an amazing story that never gets old, and Ron Howard lets us watch events unfold through footage shot at the time. Pure pleasure.
Joan Jett: Bad Reputation (2018): This documentary captures Joan Jett's onstage energy, her fierce integrity (which has survived four and a half decades in the music industry), and her delightfully raspy speaking and singing voice. A must for fans; if you aren't one, watch this movie and you will be.
TV SERIES
Unsurprisingly all of my favorites-of-favorites TV series are related to literary works. Just missing inclusion on the list were The Barchester Chronicles (1982), Daniel Deronda (2002), and Victoria (2016).
Middlemarch (1994): Adapted by Andrew Davies, this BBC series features virtually every major incident in George Eliot's great novel of marital disillusion, a wonderful cast (including E & I favorite Rufus Sewell), and of course fabulous costumes and locations.
Wives and Daughters (1999): Another Andrew Davies adaptation, this time of Elizabeth Gaskell's best novel. Molly Gibson (the ethereal Justine Waddell) is a young woman who must deal with her unpleasant new stepmother (Francesca Annis) and her beautiful but emotionally manipulative new stepsister (Keeley Hawes). The cast also includes Michael Gambon, Barbara Flynn, Barbara Leigh-Hunt, and Rosamund Pike.
Slings & Arrows (2003-2006) follows the fortunes of a theater company that bears a striking (but surely coincidental!) resemblance to the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Each season centers on the production of a different Shakespeare play: Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. But the other productions of the festival and the barely controlled backstage chaos provide an authentic backdrop for the mainstage drama.
Cranford and Return to Cranford (2007-2009): These Heidi Thomas-scripted Elizabeth Gaskell adaptations focus on the inhabitants of the fictional town of Cranford, and the challenges to their traditions posed by new social, political and economic changes. Dame Judi Dench heads an ensemble cast of excellent British actors such as Imelda Staunton, Barbara Flynn, Claudie Blakely, Lesley Manville, Jim Carter, Michael Gambon, and the serenely radiant Julia Sawalha.
Lark Rise To Candleford (2008-2011) is the story of a young rural woman (Olivia Hallinan) learning to make her way in the wider world; the contrast between hamlet and town offers a microcosm of the social, political, economic and technological changes occurring in England in the late 19th century.
Other Favorites of 2010-2019:
No comments :
Post a Comment