Keep It Going Louder in conjunction with the Slam Zuckert Institute of Cultural Opinions Present…
The Best Feature Films of the 2010s
“If you disagree, fight me”
#30 – The Miseducation of Cameron Post
Directed by Desiree Akhavan, Screenplay by Desiree Akhavan & Cecilia Frugiuele
Navigating the complexities of identity can be difficult enough in the most supportive environments…unfortunately, Cameron Post doesn’t have that. She has an oppressively religious Aunt and Uncle who send her to God’s Promise, a gay conversion therapy boarding “school”, after she was caught making out with her best friend at Homecoming. Oof.
Part of the conversion therapy wave of 2018 (shouts out Boy Erased), The Miseducation of Cameron Post is one one level a movie about the mental and emotional abuse that happens at these “programs”, but more than that it’s a movie about trying to find yourself when everyone around you already has forceful opinions about who you should and shouldn’t be. Sincere, vulnerable, and brutally funny with a killer performance by Chloë Grace Moretz and some excellent support from Sasha Lane and Forrest Goodluck, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is an honest coming-of-age story that lays bare the trauma caused by blind religious obedience and the hypocrisy of people who claim to hold unchallengeable moral authority.
Select Quote:
Cameron: What do you guys think of Dr. Marsh? [Director of God’s Promise]
Adam: I guess it’s like having your own Disney villain, only this one won’t let you jerk off.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
French Fries and lemon lime soda, ideally 7-Up
#29 – Raw
Written & Directed by Julia Ducournau
When Justine starts her first semester at Veterinary School, the hazing is a bit more intense than she expected, but with her sister in the older cohorts she goes along with it even as her class is doused her with blood and made to crawl on their hands and knees though the wildest vet school party you’ve ever seen. All of this is fun and games until she is forced to eat raw rabbit kidney and acquire a taste for raw flesh which at first she satiates with some of her animal friends at the vet school but when it’s not enough, let’s just say she doesn’t stop there. Oh me oh my does she not stop there.
Ducournau titillates and terrifies with bold, stylized cinematography, grotesque bodily consequences, and of course, flesh flesh flesh. Not for the faint of heart or easily squeamish, Raw is a perverse, erotic, and smart horror film that has plenty of guts and gore but also something to say about the literal and metaphorical consumption of bodies.
Select Quote:
Justine: It’s stuck?
Alexia: I don’t know.
Justine: What’s Plan B?
Alexia: This is weird. Wait.
Justine: You’ll circumcise me!
Alexia: We have to.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Fully cooked broccoli with steamed carrots
#28 – Swiss Army Man
Written & Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
From the guys that brought you the “Turn Down for What” music video, may I present the most beautifully bat-shit insane film of the decade. Alternating between heartfelt and obscene, Swiss Army Man is profound, profoundly vulgar, and one of the most original films of the decade.
It would be enough for me if all The Daniels wanted to do was have Paul Dano drag around Daniel Radcliffe’s flatulent corpse, shoot crutches out of his mouth, and ride him like a jet-ski, but they had more on their mind and managed to weave in some interesting thoughts on the contradictions of living in a world that is hyper-connected yet somehow more distant. Dano and Radcliffe’s hallucinatory journey is a completely unique exploration of self, a mature film that trips and falls into a big pile of fart jokes and find youthful pleasure rolling around in the mud.
Select Quote:
Manny: My name’s Manny, and this is my best friend Hank. I used to be dead, but then he brought me back to life, and we were lost out there in the woods for a very long time, but we survived, because I have special powers.
Manny: [pukes]
Hank: Manny…
Manny: [farts]
Hank: Manny…
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A bag of chips and some water sprayed at you from a friend’s mouth
#27 – Coco & Inside Out
[Coco] Directed by Lee Unkrich, Screenplay by Adrian Molina & Matthew Aldrich
[Inside Out] Directed by Pete Docter, Screenplay by Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, & Josh Cooley
By any reasonable metric it has been an outstanding decade for Pixar…but not for nothing, a whole lot of that success was built off of their previous movies. Out of the eleven feature films released by Pixar in the 2010s a whopping eight of them were sequels; it makes sense when you look at the run or original films they put out in the 2000s, (Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille, WALL-E, and Up all in one decade…) but for the same reasons we might look back on this decade of Pixar and long for more as two out of the three originals from the 2010s were masterpieces (sorry, The Good Dinosaur).
Both Coco and Inside Out are visually dazzling, kaleidoscopic visions of the Land of the Dead and young Riley’s mind. The stories in both are heartfelt and thoughtful, the jokes and visual gags are fresh enough to get laughs from all and from the coldest of souls, and their ability to appeal to viewers of any age is a laudable feat. Coco does an excellent job wrestling with the intricacies of family and how sometimes the stories that people use to keep them together can also work to drive them apart. Inside Out is just as successful contemplating our neuropsychological tendencies and how they interact with our memory, emotions, and relationships. Both are wonderful films that showcase the power of animation with the humor, heart, and depth that we’ve come to know and love in Pixar films.
Select Quote:
[Coco]
Clerk: (sneezes) I am terribly allergic.
Miguel: But Dante doesn’t have any hair.
Clerk: And I don’t have a nose, and yet, here we are.
[Inside Out]
Joy: Do you ever look at someone and wonder, “What is going on inside their head?” Well, I know…Well, I know Riley’s head.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
[Coco] Tamales and some aguas fresca
[Inside Out] Pop Rocks and fruit punch
#26 – Get Out
Written & Directed by Jordan Peele
Written and Directed by the indomitable Jordan Peele, Get Out took a sledgehammer to the fantasy of a constant march towards inevitable racial harmony and broke new ground on the genre of Social Horror. Grippingly effective in its horror, Get Out turning the bucolic residence of the Armitage family into a cabin-in-the-woods style house of horrors and squeezes a pulpy mess of tension out of every interaction Chris Washington has with his girlfriend Rose’s family, friends, and suspiciously off-kilter gardener and maid.
Once we reach the second act’s supernatural turn all the pieces start to fall into place and the rest of the movie is a mad dash of fright, action, and sharp racial commentary. Peele has something to say about privilege, pride, saviors, slavery, gentrification, appropriation, and differing relationships to law enforcement (shouts out TSA agent Rod Williams) and he says it all with a devilish snarl as our hero fights the powers that be. A product of its times in all the best ways, Get Out is a cathartic horror escape from this nightmare we call reality.
Select Quote:
Dean Armitage: By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term, if I could. Best President in my lifetime, hands down.
Chris Washington: I agree.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A mayonnaise sandwich on white bread with a big cup o’ whole milk
#25 – Inception
Written & Directed by Christopher Nolan
An unwieldy beast of a film, Inception is an extravagant collision of an excessively complex narrative, stylistic action, and innovative directing. Featuring a cast of characters that’s as zany as the plot (Leo as a Dream Thief, Ellen Page as an architect student, Dileep Rao as an avant-garde pharmacologist, and a whole bunch of Nolan’s friends from past and future Batman movies like Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ken Watanabe, and Cillian Murphy), Inception is Nolan at the peak of his mind-bending power, a peak that you reach and then argue with your friends about for weeks until you all see it again and somehow move further apart in your interpretation of the peak. You know, like hiking.
Nolan turned on the throttle and takes us on a fascinating journey through dreams, desires, regret, and global corporate warfare. Twists and turns abound (both of plot and of hotel hallways) with an ending that is a rare combination of satisfying and infuriating, Inception fulfills its ambition and is one hell of a ride.
Select Quote:
Yusuf: (after surviving a roll with the van) Did you see that?
(realizes that everyone else in the van is asleep)
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Chamomile tea and a biscuit
#24 – Frances Ha
Directed by Noah Baumbach; Screenplay by Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig
Like the movie’s titular character, Frances Ha is a wandering film. After her roommate/best friend moves out, Frances (Greta Gerwig) is left to dwell on her life and she quickly realizes it isn’t what she pictured for herself. That’s about it as far as plot goes, Frances does some stuff and goes to some places but that’s really besides the point. The true joy in this film is watching Frances stumble through her new reality in all her Gerwigian glory.
Frances Ha is the funniest and most honest of the 2010s-era “20-something-year-old-finding -yourself” films, aware of the privileges and baggage that the Franceses of the world carry with them. Shot in a gritty black-and-white palette, Baumbach gentle touch shepherding us through Franceses ups and downs (and downs and downs…), letting Gerwig do most of the heavy lifting but peppering in plenty clever shots and directorial flourishes to complement her physical presence. A delightful breakout role for Gerwig as both an actor and writer, Frances Ha is a movie small in scale that delivers big.
Select Quote:
Andy: So what do you do?
Frances: Uhh…It’s kinda hard to explain.
Andy: Because what you do is complicated?
Frances: Because I don’t really do it.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A bottle of red wine and a big plate of cheese and crackers
#23 – Inside Llewyn Davis
Written & Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
In general the Coen brothers make movies about messes. Small shocks, massive meltdowns, cold cataclysms, and parching predicaments can all be found in their lengthy filmography, but in each movie they find a new world to explore and Inside Lleyn Davis brings the same disorderly energy filtered through the 1960s folk scene.
Dripping with melancholy, the Coen brothers send folk musician Llewyn Davis (Oscar Issac, who delivers a killer performance both as an actor as a singer) send Davis from one opportunity to the next, floundering all the while and almost drowning in the crushing disappointment of artistic rejection (always slipping out of his grip like a particular cat). But the film is as funny as it is gloomy, especially Adam Driver’s faux-cowboy Al Cody and the “Please, Mr. Kennedy” scene (Oooooooooouter. Spaaaaaaaaace!). Filled with quality folk tunes and plenty of Coen quagmires, Inside Llewyn Davis is a true-to-form Coen brothers movie that’s as soulful and nourishing as the songs of Llewyn Davis himself.
Select Quote:
Llewyn Davis : If it was never new, and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A greasy spoon diner breakfast. I would go with a short stack of pancakes, scrambled eggs, and a potato hash but up to you.
#22 – The Social Network
Directed by David Fincher; Screenplay by Aaron Sorkin
Funny, the passage of time. In 2010 when The Social Network was released there was a significant number of people who thought the movie was too harsh on Mark Zuckerberg. Now, knowing what we know and living in this post-2016 world, we might take a second look and think quite the opposite.
The acting in the film is rock solid; Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg with quivering power, Justin Timberlake is perfect as the dot-com roller coaster that is Sean Parker, and we’re lucky enough to get not just one but two Armie Hammer as the smarmy Winklevoss twins, but the true magic comes from behind the camera where we get a directing, writing, and scoring team all at the top of their game. The Sorkin script is whip smart and viciously paced, Fincher is a master of atmosphere and produces one set of memorable scenes after another throughout, and the score produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross is moody, haunting, and essential for the success of the film. A movie that only continues to evolve as the monster that is Facebook continues to loom large over our society and democracy, The Social Network is a riveting look at the dawn of a new era.
Select Quote:
Cameron Winklevoss: What, do you want to hire an IP lawyer and sue him?
Divya Narendra: No, I want to hire the Sopranos to beat the shit out of him with a hammer!
Tyler Winklevoss: We don’t even have to do that.
Cameron Winklevoss: That’s right.
Tyler Winklevoss: We can do that ourselves. I’m 6’5″, 220, and there’s two of me.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A 32 oz bag of Doritos and a six pack of Red Bull
#21 – Son of Saul
Directed by László Nemes; Screenplay by László Nemes and Clara Royer
Son of Saul follows Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, as he searches for a Rabbi to conduct a burial for a boy who may or may not be his son. Just wanted to put that out there to start so we know what kind of movie it is. A tremendously heavy film, it bears the weight of its subject matter with courage and honesty to create a truly important work of art about the human experience in times of extreme inhumanity.
With the camera pulled in tight on Saul throughout the entire film, we follow as he navigates the hell-on-earth that was Auschwitz. Searching not only for a proper burial for his son but also for any semblance of dignity and humanity. Unflinching in its depiction of the horrors of the Holocaust, Son of Saul grabs a hold of you from the start and doesn’t let go as Saul experiences the violence of the Nazis and the constant threat of death, the perversion of social bonds as your community is being destroyed in front of you own eyes, and the shame of being forced day after day to aid the war efforts of a country intent on exterminating you. A brutal but necessary film, Son of Saul is an important reminder of the human consequences of evil when it’s allowed to metastasize and consume a society.
Select Quote:
Abraham Warszawski: You failed the living for the dead.
Saul Ausländer: We are dead already.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
No food or beverage
#20 – Parasite
Directed by Bong Joon-ho; Screenplay by Bong Joon-ho and Han Jin-won
Deceit! Action! Comedy! Class warfare! Parasite has it all. Another titanic film from Bong Joon-ho, Parasite is a timely tale of a poor family trying to scheme their way to the top, stuffed to the brim with Bong’s signature dark humor and bursts of kinetic energy. A slower burn than Snowpiercer and more grounded than Okja, Parasite builds from its initial calm, layering on more and more until we reach a thrilling ending that feels impossible and inevitable at the same time.
Bong uses the camera masterfully, bringing us close to the characters as they scurry through the Park house, alternating between relaxing space and claustrophobic tremors, and giving us more space when the story calls (there’s also a great meta-slow-mo shot that is basically Bong doing a guitar solo with the camera). Parasite feels like a truly hand-crafted film, one simmering with intellect while delivering a roundhouse kick to your head to shock your conscious and focus your mind.
Select Quote:
Kim Ki-taek: They’re rich but still nice…
Kim Chung-sook: They’re nice because they’re rich.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A big bowl of bulgogi japchae with peaches for dessert
#19 – Skate Kitchen
Directed by Crystal Moselle; Screenplay by Aslihan Unaldi, Crystal Moselle, and Jennifer Silverman
There’s nothing like a good development back-story to put the cherry on top of a great movie. In 2016 the Miu Miu clothing brand asked Crystal Moselle to direct a short for their Women’s Tales series. On one very fortuitous subway ride Moselle met two members of the real-world skate crew Skate Kitchen and ended up featuring the skaters in her short film. Moselle initially wanted to follow that up with a documentary about them but instead they decided to make a narrative film and after about a year of script development, acting lessons, and shooting (along with the addition of one Jaden Smith), they had themselves a gem to add to the pantheon of great skateboarding movies.
The movie follows Camille, stuck in Long Island during the summer and forbidden from skateboarding by her mother. She connects online with an all-female group of skateboards in NYC (they call themselves, you guessed it, Skate Kitchen) and spends her summer sneaking onto the LIRR, skateboarding around NYC, coming out of her shell, navigating up-and-down teenage relationships, and worrying the living hell out of her mother. Beautifully filmed with a ton of slick skateboarding shots, Moselle wisely lets the skaters lead the way and deliver a lively and honest performance on the solid script.
Skate Kitchen would be good enough if it were only a coming-of-age-slice-of-life-skateboarding movie, but the focus on the harsh reality of gender division in the skating world is really pushes the film from good to great. The real Skate Kitchen took their name in response to comments on their online videos telling them to “get back in the Kitchen” and the crew in the movie is equally as bold in their confrontation of sexism in their day-to-day life. Constantly teased and harangued (sometimes playfully, sometimes not) by male skaters, the women of Skate Kitchen skate with a big chip on their shoulder and being new to the world Camille runs into trouble when she makes friends on the “other side”. Heartfelt and sharply funny, Skate Kitchen takes a classic coming-of-age tale and kick-flips it (sorry, had to) into something new, alive, and special.
Select Quote:
Guy on Stoop: Hey can you do an ollie?
Kurt [Nina Moran]: No bro, I’m a poser.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Large pizza and a tall can of FourLoko
#18 – Roma
Written & Directed by Alfonso Cuarón
A love letter to Mexico City and family (both biological and not), Roma is a movie that puts it’s arm around you and guides you lovingly through the tumultuous life of Cleo, a live-in maid for a wealthy and disintegrating family. Shot in enchanting black and white, Cuarón cuts back the scale from his previous sci-fi/fantasy epics and delivers an immensely personal and intimate film.
With only the loosest of plots, Roma plays like a fable from Cuarón’s youth. Although the film is centered around Cleo she has very little agency over the plot, she goes where her employers want her to go and in her time off she ends up following a lover to a hotel room, a movie, and then to his village with disastrous results. Her resilience in the face of tragedy, both social and personal, frame the movie and the family she works for. They lean on her like a crutch when they struggle and lean on her with comfort when they watch a film.
Heartfelt and oftentimes wiley in its comedy (Professor Zovek leading the rag-tag martial arts training with a CIA agent in tow, that amazingly awful marching band that bookends the film…), Roma tells a powerful and moving story with a keen eye and a big heart.
Select Quote:
Sofía: We are alone. No matter what they tell you, we women are always alone.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Rice and beans with corn tortillas, ice cream eaten in front of a giant crab
#17 – Inherent Vice & Phantom Thread
[Inherent Vice] Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
[Phantom Thread] Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
Some may say that these movies are only on my list because I’m a devotee to the Church of Paul Thomas Anderson but to that I say haters can kick rocks these movies are rad.
Inherent Vice follows Doc as he investigates the disappearance of his ex-girlfriend but really who cares what the plot it. The movie is a beautiful, weed-smoked mess of Pynchonian characters stumbling around and into each other. You got Josh Brolin playing a detective named Bigfoot hollering at a chef for more pancakes, Owen Wilson as a surf-rock sax player hiding in a cult, Martin Short as a coke-fueled dentist, and Benicio del Toro as a man named Sauncho Smilax. Get it? Because I certainly don’t. The movie is brutally funny and full of luscious colors and long, cool shots that bring you right into Gordita Beach, 1970. You may have to see it two or three times to figure out what the hell you watched, but once you get settled in Doc’s world you’ll be whistling “Wonderful World” (Sam Cooke not Louis Armstrong) as you hunt for you own personal Golden Fang.
Phantom Thread is a less wacky film but it is every ounce as beautifully shot and maniacally comical as Inherent Vice, what it lacks in cast size it more than makes up for in intimacy and the wonderfully devilish performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in his (allegedly) last feature file role. A film about obsession and Difficult Talented Men, Reynolds Woodcock (Day-Lewis) goes back and forth with his muse Alma (magnificently played by Vicky Krieps) as they struggle for control over the future of his fashion and their lives. With another hauntingly beautiful score from Jonny Greenwood, Anderson gives Day-Lewis one hell of a send off and Woodcocks us till we can be Woodcocked no more.
Select Quote:
[Inherent Vice]
Doc Sportello: How would I forget something like that?
Penny Kimball: Grass. And who knows what else?
Doc: I’m only a light smoker.
Penny: How many joints have you had today?
Doc: I have to check the logbook.
[Phantom Thread]
Alma: Reynolds has made my dreams come true. And I have given him what he desires most in return.
Dr. Robert Hardy: And what’s that?
Alma: Every piece of me.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
[Inherent Vice] MOTTO PANUKEIKU
[Phantom Thread] A Welsh Rabbit with a poached egg on top please (not too runny), and bacon, scones, butter, cream, jam (not strawberry), a pot of lapsang and some sausages.
#16 – Widows
Directed by Steve McQueen; Screenplay by Gillian Flynn and Steve McQueen
McQueen continues his exploration of America with the gritty and thrilling Widows, an update of the 1980s British TV drama that drags us through the city of Chicago in all of its political intrigue and corrupt glory. After their husbands die in a robbery attempt, Veronica (played by the unstoppable Viola Davis) wrangles them all together and convinces them to finish a heist their husbands had planned before they died so she can pay back a crime boss who is running for alderman against a corrupt city official who happens to be the son of the districts previous alderman. You know, Chicago.
With a dagger-sharp script from Gillian Flynn, McQueen takes us through this rag-tag team’s growth from hapless to ruthless, processing their loss as they grab their new life by the horns. Alice (Elizabeth Debicki) goes through an especially interesting journey. She starts the movie as a literal punching bag, at least three characters hit her in the face before the movie is an hour in, but once she’s freed from her husband and mom (and laws I guess) she becomes the team’s most successful operator, getting the van, blueprints, and the guns in a particularly excellent gun show scene.
Widows is a smart heist thriller about power, who has it, and who gets to take it. Characters navigate the roles of gender, race, wealth, and history as they fight for legal, political, and financial power; mix those heavy themes with some pulpy action scenes and Daniel Kaluuya as a psychopath mob-enforcer and you have yourself a winner.
Select Quote:
Fuller: I always said he should burn in hell. But Chicago will do.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Deep dish pizza and a bottle of red wine.
#15 – Mustang
Directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven; Screenplay by Deniz Gamze Ergüven and Alice Winocour
Set in a small Turkish village, five orphaned sisters become the proverbial caged birds when they are put on house arrest by their conservative aunt and uncle after getting caught enjoying an afternoon at the beach with some boys. But sing they do, as the more their aunt and uncle try to control them, the more they yearn to be free, sneaking out at night to meet with friends and planning a bold escaping to watch a professional soccer match.
Mustang tells a story that is both specific and universal, the experience of losing your parents and being physically restrained is not one of those “we’ve all been there” situations, but as we grow up our relationship with our parents is often forced to change and the parents we knew in our younger years often can seem like an alien beings compared to the parents we have as teenagers when we start to exert our own agency. Same goes with the restrain, few of us will be locked in a fortress fairy-tale style but most of us will feel constricted as we age, the rules that made sense at 14 feel like they might as well be mental shackles as we reach 18. Mustang does a wonderful job being both an intimate story and a universal fable about the pitfalls of a lack of understanding between guardian and child.
Ergüven does a masterful job showing not only the reassuring bonds of sisterhood but also their limitations when their Aunt and Uncle begin to try and marry them off and one by one they are released from one prison only to enter another. Funny, compassionate, alive, and heart-wrenching, Mustang tells a universal story of oppression and control in a unique and interesting way.
Select Quote:
Lale: The house became a wife factory that we never came out of.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Grilled vegetables over rice with a pot of coffee
#14 – The Last Black Man in San Fransisco
Directed by Joe Talbot; Screenplay by Joe Talbot and Rob Richert; Story by Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot
What happens when you can’t go home? Jimmie Fails (played by Jimmie Fails), our autobiographical hero, refuses to even consider that question, trekking in from the outskirts of SF on a regular basis with his friend Montgomery so that he can act as the unwanted custodian of his family’s old home in San Francisco’s Fillmore District.
At a time when it would have been all too easy to make a ham-fisted gentrification film, Last Black Man is instead a thought-provoking and plucky meditation on family, friendship, and identity. Broad strokes of urban angst are trimmed with fluorescent absurdity that highlight the contradictions of municipal improvement.
An ode to and lament for San Francisco, Last Black Man is not afraid to wrestle with tough questions and leave with scrapes and bruises galore. Talbot and Fails approach it with humor, heart, and style, creating a mesmerizing film that should resonate far beyond the Bay.
Select Quote:
Girl on Bus [to friend]: I hate this city.
Jimmie: Do you love it?
Girl on Bus: What?
Jimmie: Do you love San Francisco?
Girl on Bus: I mean, I live here…
Jimmie: You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A plate of street tacos and a Miller High Life
#13 – Sicario & Hell or High Water
[Sicario] Directed by Denis Villeneuve; Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan
[Hell or High Water] Directed by David Mackenzie Screenplay by Taylor Sheridan
Welcome to the New West y’all, it’s time for some Taylor Sheridan films. Like Sorkin with a pick-up truck and an AR-15, Sheridan wrote us two gems in the middle of this decade; both packed with razor-sharp dialogue, clever and clean plots (Hell or High Water: Two brothers rob banks to pay back their Mom’s mortgage, cops chase them. Sicario: Idealistic FBI agent joins task force to combat drugs cartels, things don’t go as planned.), thrilling set pieces, and memorable characters. He also gave us the audacious, powerful, and deeply flawed Wind River and the very bad Sicario: Day of the Soldado, but we don’t have to get into those here.
Sicario benefits from the bold direction of Villeneuve, taking us across the Southwest and Mexico with big, sweeping shots that give us a feel for the uneasy expanse of the land then bringing us in real close when Benicio del Toro gets his hands on a water jug and turns off the camera. Emily Blunt is excellent as an FBI agent who is taken out of the frying pan of domestic investigations and thrown into the fire of the global war on drugs; as we follow her through the spiraling “investigation” we are met with the harsh reality of a world where all friends and enemies are temporary and the ends justifying the means is a malleable proposition.
Hell or High Water gives us a Robin Hood story updated for the modern West, stealing from the rich to remove debts from the poor as they outfox Texas’s fines. The Rangers who give chase are more or less cliches but they add wonderful texture to the cat and mouse game played between them and the brothers and between the brothers themselves, one cool, calm and collected and the other a loose cannon with a head hotter than a grill on the fourth of July. As they all circle around each other they all wrestle with the question of who Texas belongs to, how the land has moved from Native Americans to settlers to corporations and to the banks and how that impacts the independent tendencies that set Texas apart from most other states in the Union, wrestling with the questions of law and order in a world that seems increasingly tilted towards those with the power to bend law and order for their own personal gain.
Select Quote:
[Hell or High Water]
Tanner Howard: How much you making on this deal?
Billy Rayburn: Not near as much as I’m risking.
Tanner: Why you doing it then?
Bank: [beat] You know, they loaned the least they could, just enough to keep your Momma poor on a guaranteed return. They thought they could swipe her land for $25,000. That’s just so arrogant it makes my teeth hurt. To see you boys pay those bastards back with their own money…well if that ain’t Texan I don’t know what is.
[Sicario]
Kate Macer: What’s our objective?
Matt: To dramatically overreact.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
[Hell or High Water] Steak cooked medium rare (that wasn’t no question), Iced tea, a baked potato, corn on the cob. You don’t want the green beans.
[Sicario] A nice family meal – just hope no one interrupts!
#12 – Whiplash
Written & Directed by Damien Chazelle
A masterclass in show, don’t tell, Whiplash takes us through the pitfalls of obsession, even when it’s directed towards something ostensible productive. Chazelle’s bold and taut debut takes us up close to the laser-like focus of Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) as he abandons all of friends and family to devote his time to becoming a singular drummer in the mold of Buddy Rich. The person who can take him to those heights, or maybe the only person standing in his way, is the brutal band director Terence Fletcher (J. K. Simmons). Their relationship makes up most of the meat of the film and that combined with the entrancing drumming sequences is more than enough to fill the film with drama, pain, redemption, and betrayal.
Simmons takes full advantage of his wonderfully deep and emotive face lines and his skill as a yelling actor (I would put him on this generation’s older-white-guy-yelling-actor Mount Rushmore, along with Phillip Seymore Hoffman, John Malkovich, and Nicolas Cage) in his very juicy role. Chazelle gives an endless stream of quips and put downs to assail his band with, demoralizing them in the hopes of building them back up to greatness.
Simmons and Teller dance around each other the entire film, Simmons dangling greatness in front of Teller as a reward for his subservience and Teller putting his blood, sweat, and tears (literally) back into the drum set. They end up on a mutually self-destructive path but are brought together for one last hurrah in the rousing and explosive climax, a fitting cymbal-crash ending to a film of symphonic scale.
Select Quote:
Terence Fletcher: Nieman, you earned the part. Alternates, will you clean the blood off my drum set?
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Movie theatre popcorn with raisinettes dumped in, wash it down with a cola if you’re so inclined.
#11 – Her
Written & Directed by Spike Jonze
Tale as old as time, boy meets operating system, boy falls in love, operating system simulates love, they ride off on horseback into the distance. If only it were that simple…A brilliant meditation on relationships, love, loneliness, and technology, Jonze puts a Twilight Zone spin(or should it be Black Mirror spin?) on the classic love story and gives us a truly unique romance for the modern age.
In Her, the wonderfully-named Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) get an OS upgrade with a new and improved virtual assistant that he named Samantha. He slowly falls in love with the sultry-voiced AI (played by the sultry-voiced Scarlett Johansson) and we watch as they navigate their new kind of relationship. As modern technology grows more capable and changes the way we relate to it and to each other, Her gives us a sensitive and thoughtful story about the possibilities and pitfalls of this brave new technological world we face.
Whimsically fun, full of heart, and overflowing with wonderfully muted near-futuristic costume and set design (I’m still waiting for someone to come out with a line of Twombly-style high waisted pants), Her is another mind-bending classic from Jonze that is the perfect mix of high-brow philosophizing, low-brow jokes, and heartfelt romance.
Select Quote:
Paul: We should all go out some time. You bring Samantha. It’d be a double date.
Theodore: [hesitates] She’s an operating system.
Paul: Cool. Let’s go do something fun. We can go to Catalina.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Soylent
#10 – Mad Max: Fury Road
Directed by George Miller; Screenplay by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nico Lathouris
Mad Max is back and this time, there’s a road. A Fury Road. A Fury Road furiously rode by Imperator Furiosa. And it just gets better from there. A two-hour long lightning bolt to the chest, Mad Max: Fury Road is a much needed balance to to needlessly complex and excessively CGI’d action films churned out so regularly these days. The plot is delightfully simple; after spending the first two acts escaping Immortan Joe and his hellish Citadel our motley crew of blood bags, war boys, and recently escaped wives realize they have to go back the way they came.
Not since the Crank series has a film been so literally and wonderfully non-stop. The action is exhilarating, all the more impressive as they are mostly all practical effects. We swoop in and out of the war caravan in hot pursuit of Furiosa and Miller treats us to explosions and car flips with meticulously designed (and deranged) costumes, mind-bending vehicles, and of course, the pièce de résistance, Doof Warrior shredding guitar solos and musical mayhem on the Doof Wagon as it barrels along with the rest of the cars.
It would have been enough if Mad Max: Fury Road was just an incredible rad action film, but Miller had more on his mind and the movie was filled with deeper themes about survival in the age of environmental crisis, revenge, and feminism in an age of oppressive patriarchal control (much to the chagrin of sexists everywhere). Perhaps the most purely fun action film of the decade, Fury Road has something for your mind, your soul, and above all your adrenal glands.
Select Quote:
Toast: Are you hurt?
Max Rockatansky: Huh?
Toast: You’re bleeding.
Imperator Furiosa: That’s not his blood.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A sack of coffee beans and an IV bag of high-octane gasoline
#9 – Midsommar
Written & Directed by Ari Aster
Bathed in sunshine and flowers, Midsommar is a horror movie disguised as a Sweedish milkmaid that’s as unnerving as it is beautiful. After a brief and brutal prologue introducing Dani (Florence Pugh) and her awful, awful boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor), Aster quickly gets us to the good stuff: a group of American students visiting their friend’s commune in Sweden for a once-every-90-years summer solstice festival. What could go wrong?
Aster does a masterful job slowly building the tension, setting up tricks and traps for later all while the characters develop their own relationships to the festival and the commune. Darkly comic, a Sweedish man with a 10-foot tall wooden hammer to chuckle at…until you realize what that hammer is going to be used for. The acting is stellar throughout, especially Pugh who gives a tremendous performance as Dani’s life seems to be disintegrating along with the group’s hope for the festival and Will Poulter who’s a riot as the douchey Amercian heel, taking hits from his vape pen and ratcheting up the animosity between our American friends and the commune.
With themes of Amercian entitlement, trauma processing, and the value of relationships, Midsommar builds in controlled chaos and releases it all at the end with a cleansing, cathartic, and fiery conclusion. Intricately designed and beautifully shot, Midsommar is a bold psychological horror that shows us the light can be as ominous as the dark.
Select Quote:
Siv: Now, it’s traditional for the May Queen to bless our crops and livestock. And after the luck you just inherited from that salt herring, we should all be doubly encouraged!
Dani: Can Christian come with me?
Siv: Nej. The Queen must ride alone.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Pot pie and lemonade
#8 – The Florida Project
Directed by Sean Baker; Screenplay by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch
In the shadows of the Disney World there is a pastel colored motel called The Magic Castle, and while it may not feel very magical to the week-by-week tenants or the gruff employees, Moonee and her friends turn it into the happiest place on earth until they run into the harsh realities of the adult world.
Brooklynn Prince shines as the precocious and hilarious Moonee, Queen of The Magic Castle, as she enjoys the summer with the other children of The Magic Castle. Their families are all just barely scraping by but they enjoy their time without a care in the world, going on a safari behind the motel to look at cows and treating an abandoned condo-complex like their own playhouse. Moonee and her adventures are a vision into the reckless joy of youth and we experience the adventures along with her, scampering from one mischievous activity to another, trying to evade the fatherly scolding of the motel manager (Willem Dafoe), a scolding that her mom is also trying to avoid for very different reasons.
But of course, real life catches up with them, the consequences of their comic adventures are no laughing matter and Moonee’s crew dwindles as the families filter in and out of The Magic Castle. Like Baker’s other recent work Tangerine (which follows two transgender women navigating a lonely Christmas Eve in LA), The Florida Project is compassionate towards its downtrodden subjects without lionizing them. Moonee’s mom Halley is not what we would think of as a great parent, but we see her as she is, not a permanent victim or an unsung hero but a Mom trying to make the best of bad situations and give her daughter the best childhood that she can. The Florida Project takes us through the highs and lows of a childhood spent coping with the harsh realities of the adult world, a stark reminder of how there isn’t always a Prince Charming waiting to ride in and save the day.
Select Quote:
Moonee: You know why this is my favorite tree?
Jancey: Why?
Moonee: ‘Cause it’s tipped over, and it’s still growing.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Whatever you want from the hotel’s breakfast buffet
#7 – Django Unchained
Written & Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Part two of Tarantino’s “How Much Fun Can We Have Amidst Atrocities?” series, Django Unchained, to put it mildly, is a boundary-pushing film. Set smack dab in the middle of the Antebellum South, Django Unchained is a revenge film in the mold of old Westerns (Tarantino is fond of calling Django a “Southern”) that has enough plot to fill a whole TV series, enough violence to satiate anyone falling in the 3-standard deviation range of derangeness, enough humor to keep you laughing throuhout, and enough brutal scenes depeticing slavery to make you question if you should really be laughing at any of this.
Visually dazzling, Django takes full advantage of the natural beauty of the American South to contrast with the abhorrent treatment of the enslaved individuals. Tarantino doesn’t let the scenery or the music force you to feel any way about slavery, like in life, it’s left up to you to synthesize the surroundings and think about how you feel.
The acting is strong all around; Christoph Waltz is perfectly bizarre as a German bounty hunter (and ended up winning an Oscar in what was basically a 2nd award for his performance in Inglorious Basterds – Philip Seymour Hoffman was robbed), Jamie Foxx nails his transition from broken, enslaved man to empowered, gun-slinging romantic, and Leonardo DiCaprio is appropriately petulant and over-confident as slaver Calvin Candie.
In a classic Tarantino fashion, there is non-stop humor throughout. We get the whole gamut, sharp zingers, subtle visual gags (that damn tooth wobbling back and forth on Shultz’s carriage), and zany situations. But importantly, the humor is not derived from the mocking or making light of the conditions of slavery or slaves (except for Samuel L. Jackson’s Stephen for obvious reasons). Tarantino spends the movie punching up: mocking the dim-wittedness of a proto-klan raid, deriving humor from the fish-out-of-water feeling Django gets once he joins his new quirky German friend, and giving many insidious individuals their comeuppance.
Like Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino drops us in a world of unimaginable inhumanity and sees how much excitement and enjoyment he can wring out of it. Most movies about subjects like this will focus on the oppressor dominating the oppressed, maybe the oppressed will keep their spirits and fight back but they will usually only win an emotional victory, rarely a physical one. Even when movies about heavy subjects try to be ‘about’ the oppression and show light in the face of darkness, they can fall trap to over exaggerating that light. Like Kubrick said about Schindler’s List: “Think that’s about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about 6 million people who get killed. ‘Schindler’s List’ is about 600 who don’t.” Django Unchained does not have much to say about slavery in the US and it doesn’t have to. What makes it great is its focus on one man’s story of revenge and empowerment, told in a new and unique way, twisting, turning, and thrilling for every second.
Select Quote:
Dr. King Schultz: How do you like the bounty hunting business?
Django: Kill white people and get paid for it? What’s not to like?
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Hot coffee and baked beans cooked open an open fire
#6 – Short Term 12
Written & Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton
If you’re in the mood to test exactly how far your heartstrings can be plucked while watching one film, Short Term 12 may be your best bet. Heartwarming and heartbreaking, a movie that will have you sobbing one moment that laughing through those tears the next, Short Term 12 is an emotional rollercoaster that is as sharp as it is moving and powerful.
The majority of the movie takes place on the campus of Short Term 12, a transitional group home for teenagers, where Cretton is able to build a vivid and lively setting out of the cold and drab decor. All of the acting is stellar, especially Brie Larson, who stars as Grace, a supervisor at the group home and gives a powerhouse performance as the narrative and emotional center of the film. Also involved are a who’s-who of actors before they struck big…Early Kaitlyn Dever! Pre-Mr. Robot Rami Malek! Pre- Brooklyn 99 Stephanie Beatriz! Lakeith Stanfield in his first feature film! Also John Gallagher, Jr.!
Cretton does a great job peppering in narrative techniques that may feel cheesy or trite in lesser hands to great effect. A funny story to welcome new volunteer Nate (Malek) as told by Mason (Gallagher) primarily functions to set the scene and efficiently explain the rules of the group home, but it is also genuinely funny for us in the audience.
But as much as the film is funny and uplifting, it also takes an unflinching look at the trauma faced by children who have been separated from their parents and how that separation, and the reasons for it, can impact you days, weeks, or years later. Short Term 12 does not heap praise or blame on any of the children but rather takes them as they are and love them all the same. It does not offer easy solutions to these deep scars, this is not a happy-go-lucky-all-you-need-is-love type film, but it bold, moving, and honest, filling out hearts with empathy for others while reminding us that to help others sometimes it is first necessary to ensure our own strength.
Select Quote:
Grace: They’re going to ask you a lot of questions. It’s going to be hard.
Jayden: I’ll try to leave out the part about you breaking into that house with a baseball bat.
Grace: Thanks.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Cupcakes and soda
#5 – Wadjda
Written & Directed by Haifaa al-Mansour
In the late 2000s, Haifaa al-Mansour began working on a Saudia Arabian film. The first Saudia Arabian film actually, at least the first film to be shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, a country with essentially no domestic film industry and laws against movie theatres being on the books until 2018. To ensure authenticity al-Mansour shot on the streets of Riyadh which caused some logistical issues because it was considered improper for a woman to be seen giving instructions and orders to the males in the cast and crew. So for outdoor scenes she sat in the back of a van, monitor in hand, and relayed her directions via walkie-talkie. Through this herculean act of filmmaking, Wadjda was given to the world.
The film follows a rebellious 10-year old named Wadjda, played by the ruthlessly charming first-time actress Waad Mohammed, as she enters a Quran recitation contest at school to try and win enough money to buy a bicycle. Elegant in its simplicity, al-Mansour slowly lets the story unfold, painting a vivid picture of the ordinary but rocky life of Wadjda’s family in Riyadh.
With clear aim at a global audience (al-Mansour likely didn’t envision much of a domestic audience in a country where, again, movie theatres were illegal at the time), Wadjda is a feast of cultural specificities. al-Mansour lingers on the clothes, food, schools, and markets of Riyadh which show us the world through Wadjda’s eyes as she goes on her quest in the face of a society who can’t imagine a young girl being free.
The modern Amercian imagination does not smile down on middle-eastern countries, especially the ones controlled by autocratic and religious governments. In turn, this creates a false image of the people who live in those countries, it is only natural to fill in what we don’t know with what we do. Truly great cinema opens your eyes to something new and Wadjda is a perfect example of a story that is universal while also being daring and original. Like the works of Jafar Panahi and Asghar Farhadi, al-Mansour is able to show the common human desires that unite us; a comfortable life for your family, not to be oppressed because of who you are, or the freedom to ride a bicycle with your friends and feel the wind flow through your hair as you push on the pedals and cruise through the afternoon.
Select Quote:
Mother: You won’t be able to have children if you ride a bike.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Lamb with rice, lentils, hummus, and pita. Coffee if you’d like.
#4 – The Master
Written & Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
In 1948 during an Eastern Science Fiction Association meeting, L. Ron Hubbard, Science-Fiction writer and founder of Scientology, (allegedly) said “You don’t get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion.”
“Loosely” based on Scientology, The Master follows Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), lost and riddled with post-traumatic stress, as he finds meaning and stability in the teachings of Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the leader of a quasi-religion and maybe cult known as “The Cause”. Though the film questions the wisdom of a movement based on the pseudo-therapeutic techniques of a megalomaniac, The Master is more about how we enable each other to either use our past to build our future, or let that same past destroy us.
Phoenix and Hoffman both give incredible performances, masterful in their physicality, alternating between exaggerated and restrained when the scenes call, never overplaying their hands. Jonny Greenwood delivers a frenetic and haunting score that perfectly compliments Anderson’s vision of Quell’s past and time with The Cause. Shot in a luxurious 65mm film stock, The Master is a visual treat with its wide open ocean shots, meticulous 1950s set design, and desert landscape. Thrilling, challenging, and I can’t stress this enough, deeply funny, The Master finds everyone involved at the top of their game for an engrossing cinematic experience.
Select Quote:
Freddie Quell: Well, I’m sorry if I got out of hand last night. It was cold and…
Lancaster Dodd: Don’t apologize. You’re a scoundrel
Freddie Quell: [laughs]
Lancaster Dodd: And as a scientist and a connoisseur, I have no idea the contents of this remarkable potion. What’s in it?
Freddie Quell: Secrets.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A big plate of pork washed down with a motor oil and paint thinner cocktail
#3 – Moonlight
Written & Directed by Barry Jenkins
A movie in three acts; not beginning, middle, and end, but more like beginning, another beginning, and another beginning. Like Seneca the Younger said, every new beginning comes from a new beginning’s end. Moonlight is tender and powerful film about love, life, and building yourself up in a world that seems to exist only to knock you down.
Based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jenkins does a superb job adapting it for the screen, coaxing beautiful performances out of the whole cast, especially Mahershala Ali as Juan and the trio that play Chiron (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes in that order). Wisely restrained, they never fall prey to the lure of over-acting, instead letting their physical performance speak louder knowing that words said out loud are sometimes less powerful than those not said. Naomie Harris is excellent as well as Paula, Chiron’s mother who weaves in and out of his life. In a role that could have easily turned into a caricature or stereotype she grounds the role with a compassionate performance that humanizes Paula without making excuses for her actions.
Visually sublime and sonically rich, Jenkins makes the most of the Miami setting, letting the palm trees and the ocean waves paint a fantastical background to the cold realities of Chiron’s experience while the score brings beautiful tension and release that ebb and flow like tides at the beach. There is probably a whole film school dissertation that could be written about his decision to start the movie with the same song same that starts Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly (2015) and feature a woozy remix of Jidenna’s “Classic Man” as Chiron approaches the diner to meet up with Kevin, but for now I’ll just say they are tantalizing and wonderful in the lyrical and pop-culture connections.
At a time when masculinity is being scrutinized and redefined at the speed of the internet, Moonlight offers an intimate and tender vision of one young man’s story. Commentary on race, class, and gender are all woven into the story without ever being preachy or holier-than-thou, Jenkins offers us a glimpse into a world both wholly unique and unbearably true in the intelligent, brave, and beautiful Moonlight.
Select Quote:
Juan: I saw your mama last night.
Little: I hate her.
Juan: I bet you do.
[pause]
Juan: Hated mine too.
[pause]
Juan: Miss her like hell now. All I’m gonna say about that.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
White rice and black beans with cilantro sprinkled on top, fried eggs, and cuban steak
#2 – Boyhood
Written & Directed by Richard Linklater
It is not an understatement to say that Boyhood is unlike any other film in cinematic history. Started without a full script and shot piece-by-piece over 12 years, even if Boyhood had just filler content it would have been a miracle of logistics and determination. But fortunately for us (and everyone who spent 12 years working on it), the content of Boyhood was monumentally good., thus we have ourselves a classic.
In a typically meandering Linklater fashion, we watch as Mason Evans Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) literally grows up in front of our eyes. Boyhood may seem like it’s trying to tell the story of an ‘ordinary’ boy growing up in America but I think that would be a misreading. Instead it’s strength is that the story of Mason is a very specific one, not a template for a normal childhood. Mason lives his own life, no one else’s, and his slow and continuous growth gives the movie an emotional depth that most coming of age films can only hope to skim the surface of.
Never one to push the plot, Linklater teases us with a few moments that seem like they might create some sort of overarching conflict or drama (knife throwing in the basement, texting and driving), but overall he lets Boyhood unfurl like our lives, one year at a time. Reminding us to savor the small joys and relationships we have in the present, Boyhood is testament to the constant motion of life and the inevitability of change. Less a mirror than a canvas to project your own life on, we’re asked to see ourselves in young Mason as he grows and in those who impacted Mason, for better or worse.
Select Quote:
Mason: So what’s the point?
Dad: Of what?
Mason: I don’t know, any of this. Everything.
Dad: Everything? What’s the point? I mean, I sure as shit don’t know. Neither does anybody else, okay? We’re all just winging it, you know? The good news is you’re feeling stuff. And you’ve got to hold on to that.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich with a Capri-Sun
#1 – 12 Years a Slave
Directed by Steve McQueen; Screenplay by John Ridley
Perhaps it’s only fitting that the creative team behind 12 Years a Slave largely consisted of people born outside of the United States. Directed by the British Steve McQueen and starring the British Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, and Benedict Cumberbatch along with the Kenyan-Mexican Lupita Nyong’o (Americans with noteable roles include Sarah Paulson, Brad Pitt who plays a Canadian, and Paul Dano who has the honor of getting his ass beat in the best film of the ’00s as well as the best film of the ’10s), 12 Years a Slave tells a profoundly Amercian story. Yet maybe the story and the legacy are so intertwined with current Amercian life that it took the perspective and moxie of a group of non-Americans to pull it off.
12 Years a Slave takes a brutal and unflinching look at the horrors of slavery in America through the eyes of Solomon Northup, a free-born African-American from New York who was drugged, kidnapped, sold as a slave in 1841, and held captive for 12 years in the Red River region of Louisiana. Based on the true story of Solomon Northup, the film is adapted from Northups’s 1853 memoir Twelve Years a Slave, which sold 30,000+ copies when it was first published but then fell into obscurity for almost 100 years until it was picked up by two Louisiana historians, Sue Eakin and Joseph Logsdon, who retraced Solomon Northup’s time enslaved and published a historically annotated edition. I realize I’m getting a bit off-track here but I’d like to take this stress how incredible of a book Twelve Years a Slave is. The body of literature written by people enslaved in the United States is tragically small and not only is Twelve Years a Slave powerful, gut-wrenching, and detailed but when Eakin and Logsdon researched the people and locations mentioned in the book they found it to be remarkably accurate. Northup was an incredible man and the book is a testament to his memory, intellect, and strength.
The cinematography in the film is bold and achingly beautiful, the acting is superb all around, and the score is as absorbing. 12 Years a Slave is a technical masterpiece, a monument to dignity and survival, and out of all the films of the 2010s, 12 Years a Slave is the only one that feels truly necessary. A film that will retain its power as long as the dark forces of racism continue to permeate our country and the world, 12 Years a Slave may find itself being played in high school history classes, college lecture halls, and independant cinemas for years to come. 12 Years a Slave can do nothing to erase the pain and suffering of the past, but if we are serious about addressing historical injustice and the lasting impact they have on our modern world, we will need more art like it to force us into a confrontation with our own history and moral responsibility we all have to work towards a more just future.
Select Quote:
Solomon Northup: I did as instructed. If there’s something wrong, it’s wrong with the instructions!
Tibeats: You black bastard. You… goddamn… black bastard. Strip your clothes.
[shoving Solomon]
Tibeats: Strip.
Solomon Northup: I will not.
Appropriate food/beverage pairing:
A small piece of bread and a cup of warm water
Slam Zuckert is a municipal bureaucrat. He sees a lot of movies and reads a lot of books and sometimes writes about them. His favorite movie is There Will Be Blood, his favorite mathematician is Georg Cantor, and his least favorite mathematician is Leopold Kronecker.
Keep it Going Louder 
1 Comment