Wattching Movies: Watt A Life-The 2010's+

My wistful look back at my favorite films released during each year of my lifetime enters the homestretch. Here you will find the critical movies that came out while I was wrapping up high school, matriculating through college, and beginning my time as a full fledged adult who pretends to know what I'm supposed to put on a W-4 and all that responsible member of society stuff. This post will update daily as a new entry recaps another film that takes up the valuable mind real estate I really should try to start dedicating to knowing the difference between interest rate and APR.

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The 90's, The 00's, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

2010: Inception

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Hulu

I love me some big swing movies; when a director builds enough clout and goodwill in the industry that they can make the audacious budget-busting film of their dreams a reality. Inception is the big swing movie for the most ambitious blockbuster filmmaker of the 21st century, Christopher Nolan. Originally pitched to Warner Bros back in 2002 shortly after the release of Insomnia, Nolan sat on it for nearly a decade while he developed the script and honed the technical skills to bring his ambitious vision to life. The goodwill Nolan generated at Warner brothers with his first two ultra successful Batman films allowed him to secure a $160 million production budget. As the first film for which he is the sole credited screenwriter, it is pure uncut Christopher Nolan. It takes all of his signature obsessions and mashes them together. The relativity of time and the malleability of memories explored in Memento, his love of heist films shown off in The Dark Knight’s iconic opening scene, and the twisty head games of The Prestige all intertwine in one spectacular package.

Maligned by some fools upon its release as overly complex and difficult to follow, the real beauty of Inception, like much of Nolan’s filmography, is it takes your basic dumb fun movie stuff and couches it in heady concepts and philosophical exploration to elevate its basic crowd pleasing roots. This is for all intents and purposes really just a metaphysical Ocean’s movie. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom Cobb is an extraction expert that pulls valuable secrets from the subconscious of his sleeping targets. He is out pulling the proverbial one last job to get out of a hole and reunite with his children. He assembles a colorful team consisting of his trusted partner Arthur, played by an acrobatic Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy as a “forger” who takes identity theft to a whole 'nother level and has catty exchanges with JGL, Elliot Page as promising architecture student Ariadne recruited to build the dream worlds, Dileep Rao as the team’s chemist Yusuf tasked with keeping everyone asleep for all the dream robbing and doing some hectic getaway driving, and Ken Watanabe as Cobb’s employer Saito, tagging along to ensure the task of planting a disruptive idea into the mind of his business competitor is completed. Unofficially joining the crew and haunting the proceedings is Marion Cotillard with the femme fatale set on 11 as Cobb’s subconscious projection of his dead wife Mal.

Inception has the most impressive and influential visuals in a blockbuster since The Matrix released over a decade earlier. Nolan makes the brilliant “spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down” decision to coverup an extensive but necessary exposition scene with a showcase of some truly stunning visuals. While Cobb is talking his new recruit Ariadne, and in effect the audience, through the dream heist process Nolan deploys some incredible effects that became the signature images of the movie. There are slow motion explosions spewing objects into the air all around the cafe while they chat through rules and logistics. Later the cityscape they stroll through folds over on itself in a stunning visual that Marvel has been continually biting in their Dr. Strange series. The magic doesn’t end there.

The centerpiece 360 degree rotating hallway fight is show stopping and a marvel of practical filmmaking techniques.

You have to be an absolute madman to even come up with something like the rigging for this rotating set, let alone actually convincing the studio to let you build it and make it functional:

I would legitimately rather watch the behind the scene features on this movie than many other big budget 2010 releases. I’m looking at you Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

Dreams can take you anywhere in the world and evidently so can having carte blanche at Warner Bros. (At least prior to their new broke boy CEO nixing almost finished movies and hiding decades worth of “Looney Tunes” to avoid paying taxes and royalties). Nolan took full advantage when shooting this thing. He has helicopters flying over Tokyo. He stages a thrilling foot chase through the narrow streets and alleyways of Morocco. The streets of Paris are the ones previously mentioned as being folded up on themselves. He pulls a makeshift train down the streets of LA while dumping in artificial rain. Finally you have the exciting snow covered mountain raid filmed at an Alberta ski resort literally called Fortress Mountain. These are some all time set pieces and he racked up enough frequent flier miles to gain lifetime access to the Admirals Club in the process.

The third act of this film is a high wire act of technical filmmaking. Nolan and his editor Lee Smith expertly crosscuts between 4 different levels of dreams taking place simultaneously and impacting one another. You have a van driving off a bridge and slow motion falling into the river below, Joseph Gordon-Levitt traversing a zero gravity hotel, a snow gear clad Tom Hardy shooting up special forces security troops zipping around firing machine guns while skiing or driving an incredibly cool modified hummer with snowmobile treads, and Cobbs emotional final confrontation with his dead wife’s memory ghost and Nolan keeps the tension high on every plane. Through it all Nolan’s designated music man Hans Zimmer has the booming score thumping like a freight train. It is just edge of your seat entertainment at its finest. Inception would justifiably take home 4 technical Oscars for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects

After the critical and commercial success of Inception Nolan would continue to take bag swings: Portraying extensively researched wormhole travel in Interstellar, three timelines taking place over a month, week and a day that all converge in Dunkirk, filming backwards action that had folks catching bullets with their guns and John David Washington rappelling up a building in Tenet, and letting Tom Hardy talk like that as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises. He has connected on all of them. I wait with baited breath for what he will unleash this summer as he takes on the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.

Honorable Mentions: The Social Network, The Fighter, Jackass 3D

2011: Drive

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Where to Watch: Streaming For Free With Ads On Tubi

Prior to this film, in my mind Ryan Gosling was just the handsome guy with exorbitant postage expenses in The Notebook. Fittingly the location of my initial viewing of Drive was a lecture hall during a Student Union screening my freshman year of college because I was quickly taken to school on the true talents of one of the most gifted actors working today. Gosling’s unnamed driver is a mysterious cipher that moves quietly through the criminal underworld executing his jobs with precision. Gosling portrays the man as an absolute force of brooding as he drives around the halogen lit night time streets of Los Angeles with a haunted stare. What’s truly remarkable about the performance is how well the inner workings are conveyed with the bare minimum of dialogue. Gosling is on screen for the bulk of the film’s 100 minute run time yet according to IMDB only utters a grand total of 891 words. There’s no narration guiding the viewer through the driver’s thoughts yet Gosling’s expressive face consistently lets them know right where his head is at. The tensions in his movements gives the character a perceptible silent simmering rage that when finally pushed dramatically breaks through his forced steely cool exterior.

The film begins on a high note with one of my favorite opening scenes of all time. Gosling succinctly lays out the no nonsense terms of his services as a getaway driver on a call with his latest client. Bryan Cranston pops in as the driver’s chatty mechanic/handler and promptly has an entire conversation without Gosling replying once. The actual getaway isn’t a high octane Fast and the Furious style affair but rather a display of skill and efficiency as Gosling smoothly dips out of view of pursuing officers on the street and in the air.

The title sequence that follows tosses the moody synth heavy techno “Nightcall” by Kavinsky over some aerial shots of the blackened late night LA skyline setting the atmosphere just right. For good measure the neon pink cursive credit font immediately calls to mind Michael Mann’s 80’s output like similar neo-noir masterpiece Thief. I was sold from the jump.

In stark contrast to that opening sequence is a later scene where the driver takes his pretty neighbor Irene and her son Benecio on a drive along the LA river in the warm golden sun. A doe eyed Carey Mulligan exudes a gentle soft spoken helplessness that makes her a perfect fit for the girl next door/damsel in distress that Gosling’s nameless driver latches onto. She would later subvert this very perception excellently in the thrilling Promising Young Woman. Gosling gets to laugh, smile and experience a glimpse of a fulfilled carefree existence. Setting this sequence to a song about being a real human being is a bit on the nose but it works. It’s one of the few moments where you sense the driver starting to open up and interact with the world outside of his professional focus. Of course it also helps spark the trouble that comes his way when a pre-fame Oscar Isaac shows up in a small but pivotal role as Irene’s fresh out of prison husband that gets Gosling tangled up in a web of feuding mobsters.

Gosling’s quiet reflective performance operates in perfect concert with Director Nicolas Winding Refn's flair for sudden bursts of graphic animalistic violence. Winding Refn is often criticized for style without substance in his filmography and having seen a decent chunk of his work this is not wholly without merit. Here however, he works from someone else’s script for the first and only time in his career. This focus on directing rather than building the narrative affords him the opportunity to provide imagery in service of a story rather than what seems to be his standard route of shaping a story out of striking images.

There is a moment late in the film where the driver comes to the stark realization that he isn’t going to get a happy ending ride off into the sunset with his best girl at his side. Hell, he probably can’t even go back to his previous regimented life of solitude given what he has gotten mixed up in. He gives a passionate kiss to Irene, knowing this is likely the last time he will ever see her, then unleashes all that pent up frustration on the face of a two bit hitman sent to shakedown Irene. There’s no real catharsis in each savage stomp, just an understanding of who he has to be now. The shot at normalcy is gone, the best he can do now is embark on a ruthless offensive to give Irene and Benecio a chance at a better life than his.

Comedian Albert Brooks does awards worthy work playing hard against type as the ruthless mobster Bernie Rose whose entanglement with the driver’s affairs is what leaves Gosling in such a tight spot. While Brooks has played an all time villain before (Hank Scorpio), I did not have him pegged as someone that would stab a guy in the eye with a fork. It is truly unnerving how calmly he later slits another man’s wrists as if it were a matter of routine. If I’m Nemo, I’m not sure I want Marlin to find me anymore.

I could go on all day about why this movie rules (Ron Pearlman is in this, who doesn’t love Hellboy?), but this sentence already put me over Gosling’s word count. I’ll just close by saying, not a day goes by after viewing this film that I don’t ponder if I need to purchase brown leather driving gloves or come perilously close to pulling the trigger on ordering a white satin jacket emblazoned with a gold scorpion.

Honorable Mentions: The Muppets, Goon, Haywire

2012: Dredd

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Peacock

Dredd, is a crystalline pure shoot ‘em up action flick. A fruitful bit of parallel thinking gives it almost the exact same killer premise as 2011’s action classic The Raid of law enforcement making their way up a heavily fortified high-rise. This time the high-rise has 75,000 residents and is an engineering impossibility at 200 levels high. Judge Dredd happens to be supervising a new recruit with psychic abilities on her one day evaluation shift so it gets to riff on Training Day a bit as well. Dredd is not a dirty cop like Denzel’s Alonso Harris, rather he follows the law to an almost comically brutal T.

The Judge Dredd character originated in the late 70’s British comic anthology 2000 AD as a parody of the “shoot first, ask questions later” fascist adjacent Dirty Harry law enforcement types that were popular in American media. The “judge” concept takes this to its logical extreme by making all cops of the dystopian Mega City One, judge, jury and executioners dolling out sentences of extended periods in the "iso cubes" or, more often than not, death, directly at the point of arrest. Dredd is such a pedant the very reason they end up getting stuck in the high-rise is because upon their initial exit with prisoner in tow, Dredd gets distracted attempting to arrest a vagrant for loitering.

Dredd was unfortunately marketed under the confusing title Dredd 3D that likely deflated it’s commercial appeal by making everyone think it was a sequel, especially since the character had already been adapted unsuccessfully into a past his peak Stallone feature. Rob Schneider plays the comic relief in that version so I haven’t yet worked up the mental fortitude to actually watch it but I feel confident in declaring this one the definitive cinematic version.

Stallone had too big an ego and producers had spent too much money to not show the mug of a bankable movie star, in direct violation of Judge Dredd’s signature no helmet removal policy. No such qualms when you cast genre journeyman Karl Urban, who has done strong work on the periphery of major franchises for two decades now. His take on Leonard “Bones” McCoy is the best part of the JJ Abrams Star Trek series. He leads the Riders of Rohan in the 2nd and 3rd Lord of the Rings. He got to fight Jason Bourne once. He was very fun as a machine gun wielding viking in Thor: Ragnarok. Unfortunately he rarely gets to be the main attraction. Even in 2005’s Doom, The Rock really dominated the marketing. He is finally getting his much deserved flowers as gruff Billy Butcher in The Boys but the badass work he does here with just the lower half of his face exposed is where the accolades should have come.

Dredd has a permanent iron jawed scowl plastered on his face. Urban speaks all his dialogue in the same growly manner as Christian Bale’s Batman. He walks around and moves with the methodical precision of Robocop. He gets a cool gun called the “Lawgiver” that fires a variety of specialty bullets. Critical to the enjoyment of most action movies are the protagonist’s cheesy one liners. Urban sells all of them with the right amount of gusto. Dredd calls a perp “hot shot” before melting his skull with an incendiary bullet. He drops a “Choke on that.” to an obviously already incapacitated body after karate chopping the man’s windpipe to smithereens. When his trainee argues that wearing her protective helmet might interfere with her psychic abilities, Dredd retorts, “I think a bullet might interfere more.”

The Alex Garland penned script for this movie is lean and mean. A veteran of mid tier budget genre fare (Before Dredd he wrote the excellent zombie movie 28 Days Later and the solid Sci-Fi thriller Sunshine. He would go on to write/direct two of the best Sci-Fi films of the last decade Ex Machina and Annihilation) Garland knows how to get you your money’s worth. It takes all of 15 minutes for the judges to get to the high-rise and kick the showdown into high gear. Even the bulk of the time prior to that is spent on Dredd chasing a van full of drug dealers on a suped up motorcycle called the “Lawmaster” with built in machine gun turrets.

Lena Headey, early in her run as Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones, gets to play a formidable and gnarly scarred crime lord Ma-Ma. She took over the whole high-rise through a ruthless campaign of violence and intimidation and runs the largest drug ring in the city. This is someone that Dredd would want eliminated and she comes with more than enough cannon fodder henchmen to keep us busy prior to their inevitable showdown.

The only real frills come in the form of the film’s made up narcotic “Slo-Mo” which really just functions as an excuse to combine high speed cameras and digital effects for some very cool visuals. The gimmick is the drug makes your brain feel like time is moving at 1% speed. I have to assume the sequence where “Slo-Mo” users are thrown back by a concussion grenade and picked apart by the Lawgiver looks even cooler in the 3D format the film was originally released in.

After a few thrilling firefights, including an encounter with 3 high powered gatling guns that tear apart an entire floor of the complex, the credits roll right at the 90 minute mark. It’s a stunning sight to see in this streaming age of bloat where even a simple zombie heist movie is 2.5 hrs long but it’s right in line with the similarly mindless entertaining action classics Rambo and Commando that both get out under the 100 minute mark. I appreciate Dredd's streamlining more and more with my always cluttered grown up schedule. There are dirtied dishes every day. I can’t watch the Rock and Ryan Reynolds half ass some banter for 2 whole hours on a weeknight. You pop this sucker on, you see some thugs blown to bits, you wrap up at a decent time leaving you a whole extra half hour to rile up your dog by pointing finger guns, making some machine gun noises and growling “I am the law” before you head to bed.

Honorable Mentions: Mud, The Place Beyond The Pines, The Avengers, Looper

2013: The Wolf of Wall Street

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Amazon Prime, Paramount+ and Fubo

Despite previously releasing 4 great movies I really love during my lifetime (Casino, Bringing Out The Dead, The Aviator, The Departed) this uproarious comedy is where legendary director Martin Scorsese finally makes an appearance on this list. Unfortunately often misread and embraced by the very finance bro culture it mercilessly lampoons the film is a cautionary tale of the ruin wrought by the addictions to drugs, money and power that have long run rampant across American society. In the decade since its release it’s biting satire has aged like fine wine.

The film works well in concert with Scorsese’s 1990 masterpiece Goodfellas as it focuses on market manipulating white collar crooks as a cleaner kind of aspirational criminal. Like Ray Liotta’s iconic Henry Hill before him, Leonardo Dicaprio’s Jordan Belfort narrates his rise and fall through an empire of illicit activities. Here “Ever since I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster." is replaced with the baser motivation of “I always wanted to be rich.”

I’m always baffled how anyone could walk away from this movie with admiration for the heathens within. Scorsese and screenwriter Terrence Winter aren’t exactly subtle in how they feel about Wall Street money movers. The film opens with a stereotypical hoity toity commercial for Jordan Belfort’s real life financial firm Stratton Oakmont. Scorsese then immediately cuts to the trading room floor of said firm full of stock jockeys throwing a velcro suited dwarf at a giant inflatable dart board. That brilliant juxtaposition is soon followed by perhaps the film’s most scathing scene where Matthew McConaughey’s senior broker character fills a still green Jordan in on the secrets of Wall Street. These largely amount to “It’s all a fugazi.” No one really knows what the market is going to do so your job is to extract as much cash off the system as you can while making investors believe they too can wildly profit while in reality they are burdened with substantially more risk. The tools to success as a broker he offers to Jordan are 1. use cocaine and 2. make sure you are jerking off regularly.

The sequence strikes a nerve in recent years where despite talk of funding innovation, securing clients futures, diversifying portfolios, or whatever high minded malarkey firms peddle in their classy television ads, Wall Street has been increasingly exposed as more or less a legalized gambling ring. Thanks to meme stocks, reddit trading tips, and the ubiquity of online apps for day trading it’s manipulability has been left out in broad daylight as well.

During one of his rally the troop office speeches, Belfort muses that, “Stratton Oakmont is America.” There is truth in these words but not in the bullshit way Belfort means. In the years since Wolf’s release it seems America has only increasingly revealed itself to be a nation alarmingly full of grifters. Someone just got elected to congress with an entirely fabricated resume telling tall tales of having double knee replacement surgery after years as a star volleyball player at a school with no record of their attendance. These are folks that have no real qualms about what they do because they just assume everyone else is in on the game so why let some other bozo claim that money or power.

Belfort has the gall to traffic in some “American Dream” nonsense when the feds start putting the squeeze on his financial duplicity stating “Every time someone rises up in this world, there’s always gonna be some asshole trying to drag him down.” Scorsese overlays this narration with shots of Belfort walking a monkey on roller skates around the trading room floor. The film understands that regardless of whether our nation’s nobility corroded over time or never existed to begin with, the true “American Dream” is no longer to methodically work your way to the top through virtue of your wits, wiles, and determination. The true “American Dream” that seems to be driving an alarming portion of our populace is to get rich quick by any means necessary.

Belfort earns his titular nickname from an article in Forbes about his underhanded practices preying on lower class inexperienced investors and what a general scumbag he is. It also happens to detail the gobs of money he and his firm are bringing in so the next day the office is overrun with applicants wanting to get in on the action

Much as the dollar signs are a siren call to those with lesser scruples, there is a Pied Piper appeal to the human id in observing a man made entirely of vices. Belfort is addicted to gambling, hookers, drinking, and above all else drugs. He has an obscene daily regiment of narcotics he rattles off like a fitness guru giving you their meal prep plans. His drug of choice is quaaludes and their usage leads to some incredible bits of physical comedy from DiCaprio. The lengths Leo goes to depict Belfort’s difficulties getting into a sports car while in an especially potent pill-addled stupor, should have secured him his first best actor Oscar.

I don’t think I have ever laughed harder in a theater than when he squeaks his foot up to his Lamborghini’s door handle.

The real life Belfort makes a cameo at the end of the movie introducing his cinematic counterpart at some low rent seminar and you see he’s not a movie star at all. He probably can’t even dance like Leo.

He’s just some spray tanned schlub with so little self-awareness he’s agreed to be in a movie that just spit roasted men of his ilk. The final shot of the film is a crowd of Joe Schmo everyday people packed into a hotel conference room to hang on the every word of what this convicted shyster can teach them. It speaks to both the get rich quick itch and this phenomenon where people conflate wealth and power (or the illusion thereof) directly to high value skills, abilities, and knowledge. This belief seems incongruous with the simultaneous thought that they too could achieve obscene wealth one day unless they think those perceived skills can be transferred to them with just a few monthly payments. It’s a foolish belief that helps to explain the cults of personalities that have been built around bankrupted several times over “real estate tycoons,” billionaire dweebs that think saying 69 is still the height of comedy, or washed up kick boxers trafficking cam girls in Eastern Europe.

Throughout the film Scorsese, himself a recovered cocaine addict, makes clear that however entertaining depicting some of his antics may be, Belfort is nothing but a sleeker coat of paint over Jonah Hill’s hilariously depraved crack smoking, public masturbating Donnie who worships at Belfort’s altar.

Honorable Mentions: Only God Forgives, Blue Ruin, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska

2014: John Wick

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Where to Watch: Streaming on HBOMax, AMC+ and Fubo

Keanu Reeves is one of my favorite actors. Just look at the resume: Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is a perfect movie. Point Break is a perfect movie. Speed is a perfect movie. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the most visually striking movies ever made, so much so you can kind of overlook Keanu trying his damndest and failing miserably to sound like a posh Brit. The Devil’s Advocate is some of the finest pulpy trash ever produced with Keanu walking around sounding like Colonel Sanders playing opposite perhaps the hammiest Al Pacino performance. The Matrix trilogy, philosophical gibberish and underground rave issues of the sequels aside, whips an unconscionable amount of ass.

Unfortunately Reeves kind of floundered around a bit for years following the conclusion of the aforementioned trilogy with a slew of mixed to poorly received projects. He slunk so low as to romance Sandra Bullock via a magic time traveling mailbox. After a decade adrift, Reeves got his mojo back re-entering the martial arts world and playing the villain in his underseen but well regarded directorial debut Man of Tai Chi. Building off that momentum and working under the direction of a couple of his stuntmen from The Matrix series, John Wick proved to be the sleeper hit that would vault Reeves back to superstardom and change the action movie genre forever.

The premise is comically simple for a franchise with some of the most extensive and bizarre world building out there. A retired hitman living in solitude after the loss of his terminally ill wife has his brand new puppy killed by a Russian mobster’s shithead son who was looking to steal Wick's very cool muscle car. Understandably this pisses off the highly skilled hitman and he goes on a calculated murder death spree of vengeance.

Filmmakers are encouraged to show, not tell, but I think an exception is made for the outlandish descriptors of John Wick's murder prowess. “John wasn't exactly the boogeyman. He was the one you send to kill the fucking boogeyman” is a bar. “I once saw him kill three men in a bar with a pencil. A fucking pencil” is also something that made me cackle with delight in anticipation of the beatdowns this man would surely be doling out post haste. Importantly all this hype is 100% delivered upon later in the film in some superb cleanly shot action sequences. The night club scene is an all timer and throughout co-directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch go to great lengths to avoid, the en vogue at the time, camera shaking or rapid cuts that would obscure their immaculate fight choreography.

Keanu takes this action movie shit seriously and moves with precision in these incredibly kinetic gun fights. As his former stuntmen, Wick’s co-directors know exactly how Reeves moves and take full advantage of it. They create a perfect combination of grappling and gunplay as he methodically mows down the henchmen in the crowded nightclub. The precise manner in which John kills people is also a sneaky great piece of character work. John is constantly double tapping when taking out his adversaries. He even shoots a guy he just hit with his car that is actively still rolling over his car’s roof. You don’t become the premier assassin in all the world leaving your victims only probably dead.

At one point John is securely tied to a chair surrounded by goons and he still growls at the crime boss, “You can either hand over your son or die screaming next to him.” To me, that’s as good as cinema gets. Even the Russian mob boss played by Michael Nyqvist just starts giggling during a car chase and putting his hand on his chin as if he is delighted to see a maestro of murder at work regardless of the fact he is the one getting his car rammed into. Wick is simply an unstoppable force of vengeance. All you can do is hope he doesn’t get pointed in your direction. This is a man that lets a guy stab him so their arm is more reachable to snap in twain.

Reeves is the biggest but not the only draw here. One of my other favorite actors, Willem Dafoe makes a surprisingly late first appearance on this list playing a trusted colleague of John’s in the murder industry. Alfie Allen, Reek on Game of Thrones, was the perfect choice to play the sniveling punk who pokes the boogie man out of hiding. Also perfect, Dean Winters, aka Mayhem from the Allstate Commercials as a weaselly lawyer/henchman. Ian McShane does near Hot Rod level work as the regal owner of the hitman hotel The Continental.

That’s right, a luxury hotel exclusively for hitmen, complete with bullet proof tailoring services and strict codes of conduct about what can happen on its grounds. That bizarre gathering spot for a dignified order of contract killers leads to some great comedic moments like John politely taking a call from the concierge (Lance Reddick) about noise complaints while he fights off Adrianne Palicki’s sneak attack. The hotel and the gold coin based transactions also lay the groundwork for a one of a kind alternate reality expanded upon in two equally great sequels, one of which features Reeves on horseback delivering a headshot to an armed assailant on a motorcycle.

Reeves is once again on top of the world. In addition to those two well received sequels, he got to represent his home country playing Canada’s greatest motorcycle stuntman Duke Kaboom in Toy Story 4. Warner Bros. fast tracked a 4th Matrix and he got to play a talking tumbleweed in a highly underrated Spongebob movie. He was even able to finally galvanize into production the long dormant second sequel to Bill and Ted. I cannot wait to see what Stahlski and Reeves have cooked up for John Wick: Chapter 4.

Not only does it look like he will get to fight Donnie Yen, he appears to be deflecting bullets with a samurai sword while doing so. They might as well not even invite other production teams to the next Academy Awards.

Honorable Mentions: The Lego Movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Nightcrawler, The Guest

2015: Mad Max: Fury Road

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Where to Watch: Available for Rental

The original Mad Max trilogy frequently popped up on weekends when networks turned their vast programming gaps over to the local affiliates. I have fond memories of watching those on my couch with my dad and a big ole bowl of stove top popcorn. I loved the aesthetics of the post apocalyptic world George Miller had created. The souped up cars with impossibly loud engines, Max’s black leather police get up that got progressively more modified, and the repurposed sporting goods clad villains he encountered like a bodybuilder in a steel hockey mask going by the name Lord Humungus; it built a captivating world to play around with in your imagination.

After the abominable Happy Feet movies I assumed Miller had lost his fastball. Mel Gibson had long ago anti-semitic ranted his way out of the blockbuster franchise. Each update from its lengthy and troubled production process sounded more and more dire. At one point they had to relocate their whole shoot because heavy rains in central Australia turned their initial desert locale into a flower hotbed. My hopes were not high. Then the trailer dropped.

Those 2 minutes laid out impossible expectations for a non-stop thrill ride. Somehow the finished product exceeds them with ease.

It turns out Miller was laundering all that insipid tap dancing penguin money to build the chrome and gasoline hellscape of his wildest dreams. He originally came up with the concept of a single long car chase Mad Max film back in 1987. He then spent years storyboarding out a vision of his oil stained dream before working backwards to actually write the screenplay and add some dialogue. His return to the post-apocalyptic nightmare world 30 years after going Beyond Thunderdome feels as if he spent every single day of that absence filing to secure the proper permits to execute his adrenaline soaked fever dream in the sand choked desert of Namibia. Nearly every single frame is filled with some batshit spectacle that makes you question how they were possibly given studio approval to stage this action let alone pull it off largely with expert stunt work and practical special effects without inducing a production fatality count in the double digits.

Epic does not even begin to describe the spectacle that unfurls across Fury Road’s kinetic two hour journey. Piecemeal death cars dreamt up in the recesses of a heavy metal loving 12 year old’s brain crash and explode left and right. All told 150 fully functional vehicles were constructed. The centerpiece of which was an imposing tanker fitted with a cowcatcher up front and equipped with a hellish sounding horn known as “The War Rig.”

Every 5 minutes you see the coolest thing you think you’ve ever seen in a movie then the next moment arrives and the bar is re-raised. An iron muzzled Max is rigged to the front of a car to serve as a human hood ornament/blood bag combo. Impossibly nimble body painted fanatics swing on pendulum poles from vehicle to vehicle in an endless pursuit. Exploding spears are chucked from atop “The War Rig” onto porcupine like metal spiked rally cars below. A muscle car on tank treads is driven by an old man with a headdress made of bullets. Masked marauders fly through the air on dirt bikes drop grenades during each jump. A man shreds a fully functional flame throwing guitar on a mobile wall of speakers soundtracking the entire proceedings.

Tom Hardy’s fairly subdued dialogue light performance returns Max to his Road Warrior roots as a badass reticent and haunted cypher passing through the tales of others. This in turn allows the film to rightfully cede much of it’s true focus over to Charlize Theron’s one armed and instantly iconic Furiosa. With her tight buzz cut, black grease war paint, and mechanical arm Furiosa strikes a tremendously badass figure. She more than lives up to that image in her quest to save five women from a life as child birthing slaves. At one point Max misses a number of long distance rifle shots at a quickly closing antagonist. With just one bullet remaining Furiosa takes the gun from Max, rests it on his shoulder for balance and promptly blinds the vehicle’s driver. This really is Furiosa’s tale of heroics, Max is just a support prop.

For a bad guy Miller brought back Hugh Keays-Byrne who played very deceased Toecutter in the original Mad Max to play the monstrous dictator of the wasteland Immortan Joe. He is a disgusting man inside and out caked in white makeup and covered in festering oozing sores while he withholds the water supply from the wasteland’s inhabitants. His wild eyes and untamed hair sit above a scary toothy mask that contains a breathing apparatus which gives his voice an echoey metallic sound. The design and performance hit all the right notes to create a villain for the ages.

The groundbreaking spectacle of Fury Road’s two hour car chase would be nigh impossible to replicate but leaves you instantly pining for Miller to once again be granted unlimited gasoline and pyrotechnics to film out in some desert to give it a shot as soon as possible. Thankfully after some initial delays, he is currently doing just that and will return with an Anya Taylor-Joy led Furiosa centered prequel scheduled to come out sometime next year. Chris Hemsworth is playing a character named Dr. Dementus. You can sign me up for opening night.

Honorable Mentions: Green Room, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, The Hateful Eight, Dope

2016: The Nice Guys

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Netflix

Buddy action comedy franchises used to be a staple of the American film diet. There are 4 Lethal Weapons, 3 Bad Boys, 3 Rush Hours, and a pair of 48 HRS. In a true and just world we would be getting at least 3 sequels worth of buddy hijinx to this masterpiece of the genre. Writer/director Shane Black knows the genre better than just about anyone having written the original Lethal Weapon, contributing story for the second, writing the fun genre addition The Last Boy Scout, and writing and directing the playful noir twinged version Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Here he adds another worthy entry in the genre with one of the most criminally underseen and underappreciated movies in the last decade. The Nice Guys plays like The Big Lebowski but with more action coming at you in the form of brilliantly staged car chases, fist fights, and shootouts that Black uses to ingeniously play with and against audience expectations of these buddy movie staples. It’s a real shaggy dog story where a primary bad guy doesn’t even emerge until well over an hr in but there is a lot to delight in during all that ambling.

Ryan Gosling had previously shown some promising comedy chops in Crazy, Stupid, Love but he takes them to new screwball heights with his uproarious portrayal of in over his head low rent private eye Holland March. Sporting a goofy van dyke beard, his frequent Looney Tunes-esque screams of fear and pain left me in stitches every single time. Throughout the film he engages in some of the finest physical comedy this side of Jack Black’s peak. The gag where he tries to point a piece at Crowe while on the toilet is practically a Three Stooges routine.

He later goes full Lou Costello wheezing and gesticulating wildly while he struggles to spit out any words when he inadvertently plops down for a cigarette next to a fresh corpse (Black’s buddy Robert Downey Jr. cameoing hidden under a beard and some gruesome makeup).

What makes or breaks any buddy film is the chemistry between the two leads and in this case the Gosling and Russel Crowe pairing is sublime. Gosling’s manic energy plays magnificently off a paunchy Crowe’s calm ruthlessly efficient enforcer Jackson Healy. Crowe plays the straight man, but scores some of the film’s biggest laughs like his matter of fact snapping of Gosling’s arm or delivering a spit take for the ages. The two unwitting partners hilariously bumble their way through unraveling a Chinatown style conspiracy involving porn stars and automakers across a vibrant 1977 Los Angeles backdrop with a catchy soundtrack to match.

Boy do I mean bumble. These are not smooth operators. Punching out a window actually goes how I feel jamming your arm into shattered glass would go most of the time. A dead body removed from one party is inadvertently dropped on another party taking place down the hill. Coffee is thrown in a bad guy’s face but it’s the dead of night so the liquid is stone cold. March drops an optimistic “Nobody got hurt.” after multiple shootouts and murders have left their exploits with an overall body count in the double digits.

Joining the titular guys is Angourie Rice (Betty Brant in the Tom Holland Spider-man trilogy) a great third wheel as Gosling’s precocious daughter/secretary who may be the more competent sleuth in the family. She lights up when she finds out Crowe beats up people for money and wants to use his services on her bothersome friend Janet. The rich velvety tones of Keith David are always a welcome sound in your supporting cast. One of my favorite comedians Hannibal Buress plays a talking bee and Val Kilmer’s son Jack gets to play the dim witted Chetest of Chets.

The film produced some of the hardest laughs I have ever had in a theater and that’s saying something because I'm pretty sure at least .5% of my blood is movie theater butter at this point. Hopefully it can develop a fervent cult following similar to that of the aforementioned Lebowski. I will go door to door evangelizing its charms if need be, Yoo-hoo in hand.

Honorable Mentions: Everybody Wants Some!!, Hell or High Water, The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping

2017: Blade Runner 2049

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Hulu

The fact that anyone produced a damn near 3 hours long $150 million sequel to a slow moving action light contemplative piece of science fiction about the nature of what makes us human is incredible in and of itself. The fact that it delivers on every single level without suffering from the studio interference that led to 7 different cuts of the original film floating around is nothing short of a miracle. 2049 is an absolute best case scenario for the recent trend of legacy sequels and franchise reboots in that it boils down and refines the essential elements of the original Blade Runner to invoke and expand its legacy while remaining fundamentally its own thing. I could not in my wildest dream have assembled a better cast and crew to bring this movie to life.

Stepping in for the original’s director Ridley Scott (who stepped down in order to direct Alien: Covenant instead. Woof), director Denis Villeneuve was given his first major budget feature after a phenomenal mid budget output (Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival). He did not waste a single penny of that expanded bankroll. Every single aspect of this film combined to create a near perfect theatrical experience. The screenplay written by original Blade Runner scribe Hampton Fancher and Michael Green (Logan) brilliantly deconstructs the “chosen one” mythos that has dominated our most popular sagas (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Ernest goes to various locales). The visuals of its futuristic Los Angeles and barren irradiated wastelands of Las Vegas are jaw dropping pieces of production design and captured stunningly by cinematographer Richard Deakins. Deakins would earn his well deserved first Academy Award for his work here after 13 prior nominations.

The seat rattling cacophony of sounds created by sound editors Mark Mangini and Theo Green and sound mixers Ron Bartlett, Doug Hemphill and Mac Ruth would earn a pair of Academy Award nominations as well. Further developing the soundscape were top of the industry composers Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch who expand on Vanelis’s revered synth heavy score from the original to carry you through its dark and distant future. My evening dishwashing had a truly epic feel in the weeks that followed the soundtrack hitting Spotify.

Ryan Gosling, who if you’ve read 2011’s Drive entry has already been established as a taciturn acting god, is perfectly cast in the lead role as an artificially intelligent replicant (a humanoid robot) named K struggling with his burgeoning humanity. Somehow the production team gave him an even cooler jacket than he had in Drive. K is an incredibly complex character that requires a lot of nuanced work. He’s a replicant that is tasked with working as a blade runner for the LAPD and hunting down and decommissioning his own kind. Given this seeming conflict of interest, K is subjected to an emotional intake exam after every encounter to ensure he is maintaining his required even keel and subject to decommissioning if he does not. Gosling has to deal with not only expressing the character’s emerging emotions but also capture K’s growing existential confusion coming from the fact that those feelings should not exist within his programming.

Harrison Ford does his best work in decades stepping back into his role as former blade runner Deckard who is overflowing with longing and regret. Ford moves around and scraps with Gosling so well it makes you think maybe Indiana Jones 5 could work afterall. Ana De Armas does strong work as Gosling’s even more artificial Her-esque digital love interest Joi that yearns to have a more corporeal form. Sylvia Hoeks plays the deadly replicant assistant Luv as brimming with jealous rage over not being seen as an apex creation by her always tinkering creator. Robin Wright is believable both as Gosling’s no nonsense LAPD boss and someone that grows to sympathize with his plight. Dave Bautista, showing why he is the greatest wrestler turned actor, plays a former replicant soldier turned humble protein farmer. Don’t let his adorable little glasses fool you, the hulking bruiser does still get to throw Gosling through a wall.

The only minor possible gripe I have with the entire masterpiece is that Jared Leto’s role of tech CEO and replicant builder Niander Wallace was clearly written and earmarked for David Bowie but had to change hands due to that legend’s untimely passing. Leto is most certainly not Bowie, unless Bowie had a Long Haired Asshat persona he deployed after Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke. Admittedly I am a bit fuzzy on his early 90’s output. Tilda Swinton’s agent can’t have been that hard to track down instead.

While the commercial performance of the film, a 30 year later sequel to an 80’s box office bomb, was nothing to write home about, its meager earnings and strong critical reception gave Warner Bros. confidence to hand the keys to re-adapt Dune over to Villeneuve. They weren’t confident enough to let him shoot both halves of his massive vision simultaneously but luckily the fantastic first part made the bean counters happy enough that he will get to complete the saga and more importantly deliver another seat shaking visual splendor filled sci-fi epic to the silver screens. November 3rd, 2024 cannot come soon enough.

Honorable Mentions: The Florida Project, Dunkirk, Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde

2018: Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Where to Watch: Streaming on FXM which is available to anyone with access to cable channel FX

This movie was an absolute revelation earning its distinction in my mind as the finest animated film of the last decade. Ang Lee did some goofy paneling in 2003’s Hulk but this is the closest a movie has ever come to capturing the sensation of reading an actual comic book. The animation done by Sony Pictures Animation was like nothing I’d ever seen and a monumental feat of technical prowess. After years of Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks all kind of settling on a similar blobby rounded 3D look, it was a breath of fresh air. It pops with kinetic energy and is covered in ink blot like patterns. Color sits outside of borders as if a misprint occurred on a page. The animators even went so far as to inventively play around with frame rate. For most of the movie, its young lead character is animated at an entirely different frame rate (12 FPS) than the other smooth moving veteran Spider-Men (Standard 24 FPS) making his movements appear awkward and herky jerky to emphasize his inexperience.

You can already see the film’s stylistic influence in Sony’s own The Mitchell’s vs The Machines and Dreamworks' latest Puss in Boots that looked lightyears cooler and more kinetic than the previous 5 Shrek films.

Spiderverse had no right to be this good. I already mentioned in an early entry that Batman is my guy, but Spider-Man definitely snags a close second in the hero hierarchy. He’s typically a relatable lower income high school/college age student. He makes mistakes. He has an awesome rogues gallery of villains. He had a 90’s cartoon I watched daily on Fox Kids. But even as a Spider-Fan I was a bit apprehensive when I first heard about this project. It was the 4th different iteration of Spider-Man to hit the silver screen in the past 20 years and coming from a studio who that same year dropped a Spider-Man villain movie without Spider-Man even in it. Remarkably, rather than a stale rehash, Spiderverse brilliantly plays with that cultural foothold to create a thrilling and original origin story full of the action and laughs that are staples of any great Spider-Man story.

On paper the story seems like it should be an absolute mess. Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy and the Amazing Spider-Man series were both derailed by final films featuring the “too many villains" problem where a story is stretched thin trying to give screen time and motivations to too many rogues. You would think a similar problem would befall a film featuring over a half dozen variations of Spider-Man in addition to a number of his villains. Yet, the masterful script by Phil Lord and Rodney Rothman manages to somehow smoothly integrate wild concepts like parallel dimensions and a talking costumed pig into a grounded and genuinely moving coming of age tale. Marvel unfortunately took the wrong lesson from the runaway success of Spiderverse to somewhat haphazardly latch onto the concept of the multiverse as central to their latest set of film and television series. What they miss is that the true strength of Spiderverse is that it is fully a Miles Morales story and despite all the Spider-man variants that show up along the way, the focus remains on his journey. It is a relatable story too about the struggle of learning your place in the world and taking the leaps of faiths required to claim it.

The voice work, led by perfectly cast Shameik Moore (Dope) as Miles and Jake Johnson (New Girl’s Nick Miller) as a washed up schlubby Peter Parker who mentors Miles, is universally outstanding. Bryan Tyree Henry hits all the right notes as Miles’ loving father Jefferson. Hailee Steinfeld gives Miles a teenage peer to connect with as Spider-Gwen. Two time Academy Award winner Mahershala Ali plays a pivotal multifaceted role as Miles’ beloved uncle Aaron. Liev Schreiber voices Kingpin whose character design with a neckless head more or less floating on a hulking frame is fantastic. Golden boy Chris Pine is the perfect choice to open the movie as an idealized amalgamation of the various movie Spider-Men we already know and love. Some inspired bits of casting even give us Nicolas Cage and John Mulaney as some wild alternative dimension variants that are a hoot.

The hip-hop filled soundtrack built to match the assumed musical tastes of Miles absolutely slaps. The song “Sunflower” was just certified 17x Platinum, the highest certification of any song ever issued by RIAA. No disrespect to Swae Lee and a fair amount of disrespect to Post Malone, but that success is on the back of this film using it as part of its pitch perfect school day morning introduction to Miles Morales.

No matter how ill-advised a project initially sounds be it multiverse gobbledigook, a theatrical adaptation of a cheesy 80’s tv show, or a movie about children’s building bricks, Lord and his writing/directing/producing partner Christopher Miller have pulled it off. With each magical viewing of this immaculate film, I grow increasingly incensed that Solo was taken out of their supremely creative hands and given over to serviceable workman Ron Howard for retooling. The first in a planned two part return trip to the Spider-Verse penned by the pair is scheduled to release this June. I don’t think it’s a leap of faith to anticipate further greatness.

Honorable Mentions: Mission Impossible: Fallout, American Animals, Mid90s, Widows

2019: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Starz

Quentin Tarantino’s career is the lingering daydream of every casual cinephile that ever thought of taking a stab at working in film. Afterall he didn’t even sign up for any fancy technical training stating, "When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films." Tarantino worked in an LA county video store for 5 years and became notorious for his spot on recommendations and encyclopedic film knowledge. Fittingly, given his background, his films are overflowing with homages and pastiche from the countless films he has devoured over his cinema obsessed life. It was only a matter of time before he turned his pen to writing about tinseltown itself.

While remaining very much a Tarantino film, what with its choice needle drops, snappy dialogue, providing Michael Madsen some drinking money, obscure references and gratuitous shots of bare feet, I found it reminiscent of my fondest Richard Linklater hangout films in the way it meanders around. Just as Linklater captures the last day of high school in 1976 or the start of college in 1980, Tarantino and his production team painstakingly recreated 1969 Los Angeles to depict the waning days of the Golden Age of Hollywood. While slower paced than some of Tarantino’s more action oriented fare, rest assured, Chekov’s flamethrower and acid cigarette do not go unfulfilled.

Leonardo DiCaprio’s washed up alcoholic television star Rick Dalton and his loyal driver/repairman née stunt double Cliff Booth, played by a never more swaggering Brad Pitt, make for exquisite chaperones to putz around Tarantino’s nostalgic collage. Pitt would snag the Best Supporting Actor Oscar but the two are really co-leads as they either share or fairly evenly trade off scenes. Both actors are doing career best work here. DiCaprio’s diatribe to himself about drinking too many whiskey sours the night before a big shoot had me in stitches but you can also sense the real pain of a man coming to terms with being well past his prime. Booth meanwhile lives a wistful meager existence as a “never was” kind of driving around aimlessly when not at Dalton’s beck and call. Pitt’s brilliantly zonked out night time confrontation with some home invaders would have been what sealed my Oscar’s vote were I in the Academy.

The period setting allows Tarantino to play around with and pay tribute to the formative entertainment of his early life. Alongside Dalton’s fabricated filmography of fake action pictures like The 14 Fists of McCloskey and star making turn on the western series likewise made up for the movie Bounty Law, Tarantino peppers in all sorts of meticulous recreations of other real television shows of the era that he grew up watching like The F.B.I and Lancer that recruit Dalton to play heavies. Rick even gets inserted seamlessly into a scene from The Great Escape in the lead part he narrowly lost out to Steve McQueen for in Tarantino’s altered reality.

For those without knowledge or curiosity about the waning days of the so called Golden Age of Hollywood, the film could be seen as brash, overlong or boring, but for me, it just clicked on all cylinders. Is having one of your main characters fight Bruce Lee on the set of The Green Hornet a bit self-indulgent? Sure. Does it kick ass? Absolutely.

Margot Robbie plays ill fated real life actress Sharon Tate who bops in and out of the picture as Dalton’s next door neighbor. She functions as a beacon of the bright potential of New Hollywood. The escapades her fledgling movie career affords her like attending a star filled party at the Playboy Mansion stand in stark contrast to Rick and Cliff’s faded star trips to local Mexican restaurants.

Meanwhile the darkness that snuffed out that light and brought the Golden Age to a final screeching halt lurks along the periphery in the form of some run-ins with Charles Manson and the members of his cult. Never has Tarantino done suspense better than in Cliff’s visit to the infamous Spahn Ranch which in addition to housing the The Manson Family was once a prominent filming location for B westerns and television programs.

As the fairy tale title implies, an infectious yearning nostalgia drips out of every frame of this love letter to a forgotten time that never quite was. It makes you wonder how things could have gone had they continued unabated by the horrors that brought about their end. It certainly made me want to take up Rick’s repeated advice to get a permanent residence. It wouldn’t even have to have a pool or pitcher of margaritas. Heck, I’d take hanging with Cliff eating boxed mac and cheese in a trailer behind the drive-in movie theater with his loyal pit bull Brandy if the right shows are playing on the boob tube.

Honorable Mentions: The Lighthouse, Uncut Gems, Paddleton, The Peanut Butter Falcon

2020: Palm Springs

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Hulu

Time loop movies have become abundant in the decades since Groundhog Day popularized the concept. There are Sci-Fi versions like Edge of Tomorrow (also known by its way cooler alternative title Live. Die. Repeat.), action versions like Boss Level, horror versions like the Happy Death Day series and even a version for emo kids that huff paint, Donnie Darko. The time loop premise helped make Palm Springs the most representative film of the year 2020 as its central conceit of repeating the same day over and over only gained more relevance as we cruised through month after month of semi-quarantine.

Palm Springs contains the 1st or 2nd best romantic comedy pairing of the last decade depending on whether or not you are counting the homoeroticism lurking throughout The Lighthouse. The always delightful Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti have palpable chemistry playing two wedding guests who find themselves trapped in a time loop. Samberg’s Nyles has already been through the loop innumerable times, long enough to forget what his previous profession even was, which brings a notable nihilist streak to the proceedings. Miloti’s Sarah is a bit more motivated to escape the endless cycle but embraces the chaos long enough to fall for Nyles and take part in a hilarious montage of the pair living free from consequence culminating in a very funny choreographed bar dance.

Despite how many millionth birthday parties they throw, dick tattoos they draw, and costume changes they make, the ennui of the situation sets in and it quickly becomes an existential nightmare.

Meredith Hanger is great in this as Nyles’ vapid philanderess wedding date he abandons at the start of each repeated morning. Gonzo comedian Connor O’Malley isn’t in this quite enough for my taste but he does get to hang around the perimeter being weird and bragging about eating 3 whole pizzas while in the Air Force Reserves. J.K. Simmons knocks it out of the park getting a chance to once again work with his best friend Samberg, as a villain turned fount of wisdom. Simmons's character Roy’s call for us all to “Find your Irvine,” is a timely message to appreciate the simple beauty and joy that exists in life even when you feel stuck in a repeating rut. It can be as basic as soaking in all the little moments of a quiet afternoon spending time with those you love.

For much of my life watching movies has been my Irvine. They were certainly instrumental in breaking up the doldrums of a seemingly endless covid shutdown by themed pajamaing up to watch a Harry Potter marathon or taking my girlfriend to her first drive-in movie theater experience, which was seeing this very film. Likewise they were a noble time killer during my first few years as an adult living on my own hundreds of miles from most of my friends and family. I could pop on a movie I’d been meaning to see and have myself a good couple hours supplemented with the ensuing texts to my homies to see if they had ever seen the one where Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse is used as a jet ski. I could message my mom about the latest weepy Tom Hanks movie she might enjoy or fill my dad in on all the latest exploding things he’d need to scoot on over to the $4 Woodbury theater to check out. Even now after a long stretch of seemingly endless work days there’s no better refuge than kicking back with a nice bucket of popcorn and watching Gerard Butler choke a man out up on the ole silver screen.

The last few years of what felt like almost daily crises for the world have given us all ample opportunity to slip into Nyles’ nihilism (I’m just now putting together why the character is probably named that). You can try and act above it all but sometimes there are going to be bad times and problems you are going to have to face. Rob Schneider may have more than just a cameo in any given Sandler flick. But you can always take solace in the fact that we are all in this together and can make it through even the most helpless of situations with the help of those we care about and an extensive enough knowledge of theoretical quantum mechanics. As the wise Ray adds during his Irvine speech, “Nothings worse than going through this shit alone.” Hang on to those people that make you smile and laugh and feel loved even if you are just doing the same shit on a different day.

Honorable Mentions: Minari, Tenet, Dick Johnson Is Dead, The Sound of Metal

2021: The Mitchells vs The Machines

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Netflix

The Mitchells vs The Machines is a flawless family film that due to repeated Covid release delays ended up presenting an alarmingly prescient story about facing down an apocalypse with those you love. Mitchells has laughs galore and near Pixarian emotional resonance about connecting with your family as this crazy clan battles A.I run amok. Come for the possessed giant Furbies, stay for the touching father daughter reconciliation.

Carefully crafted set ups for well paid off story beats and gags abound in its fantastic script by animation veterans Mike Rianda and Jeff Lowe. I have to imagine super producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller pitched a few punch ups here and there given the film’s joke-a-minute style sits comfortably next to their own splendid animated features The Lego Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

While not quite as groundbreaking as Sony Animation’s prior feature Into the Spiderverse, the uniquely kinetic animation, appropriately hectic for its internet age focus, is a joy to watch. The film’s main character, enrolling college freshman Katie Mitchell, is an aspiring filmmaker and her fascination with making videos online affords the animators the opportunity to throw the requisite cat filters and doodle-like animations common to Youtube and social media videos up on the screen. The characters are 3D but textured in a unique way that makes them look like watercolor storybook illustrations. It’s finest feat of animation is Mitchell family bug eyed pug Monchi who gives Up’s Dug a run for his money as cartoon dog of the century.

Throughout this process I’ve found out a lot of my favorite movies happen to also have my favorite soundtracks. The Mitchells vs the Machines is no exception. The Talking Heads, Sigur Ros and Los Campesinos! track selections are all impeccable. Most importantly the film reminds us all of the power of Paper Trails era T.I during a climactic battle.

The voice cast is exemplary with Broad City’s Abbi Jacobson and Kenny Powers himself Danny McBride nailing the dynamic of a spunky teen striving to branch out and her out of touch once beloved father desperately flailing for any means to relate. As one of the stars of the iconic “Mom Jeans” sketch, who better than Maya Rudolph to play the Mitchell family matriarch. Beck Bennett from one of my favorite internet sketch comedy troupes Good Neighbor, voices one of the robots (my friends and I did the Kyle voice from that linked sketch for a good 5 years). Eric Andre got a fat voice work check he can use to fund at least a dozen episodes of his surreal late night comedy show. Speaking of late night comedy, the king himself Conan O’Brien even makes a quick cameo. John Legend and Chrissy Tiegen pop up to poke fun at their one time perception as America’s favorite internet family playing the Mitchell’s all too perfect neighbors.

I’ve always enjoyed the real to life dynamics of dysfunctional families in media like the Barones from Everybody Loves Raymond and the Simpsons from The Simpsons. I relate to these types of families that aren’t always on the same page and get on each other’s nerves but at the end of the day still love and care about each other very much. The Mitchells are by no means the highest functioning family unit but they do what it takes to get the job done and keep each other safe.

While the Mitchell’s do not exactly replicate my own family dynamic, there is a lot I could connect with. The “Rick Mitchell Special” which is just driving along the shoulder to dodge traffic jams reminds me of my dad’s own strategic driving techniques I experienced on countless trips to youth sporting events: From “I thought the sign meant, ‘no, you turn’” to his favorite get out of jail free card for committing low level traffic violations, “we’re from out of town.”

This movie was straight up robbed of last year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar. This isn’t a crackpot theory, it rightfully swept all 8 categories it was nominated for at the Annie Awards which are like the Oscars for animation. I’ll come right out and say it, the actual Oscar winning Encanto, like Frozen before it, is incredibly mid. Sure, sure, we all don’t talk about Bruno but earworm original songs aside, there is nothing script or animation wise that touches the magic of The Mitchells vs The Machines.

Honorable Mentions: Pig, Dune, Red Rocket, Licorice Pizza

2022: Jackass Forever

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%

Where to Watch: Streaming on Paramount+

After 29 entries I figured it was time to really up my film snob credentials on this last pick by squeezing in a documentary. Over a decade after their last big screen venture the Jackass boys gather for the proverbial one last ride. As soon as my eyes laid sight on the trailer I felt the palpable warmth of reuniting with an old friend; “The Boys Are Back In Town” the motion picture if you will.

Jackass is something near and dear to my heart. I can distinctly recall both the first time my dad rented the Jackass: The Movie dvd from the local Hollywood Video and the time we watched the crew’s 24 hour takeover of MTV in our hockey tournament hotel beds and he awoke the next morning with salt accumulated on his face from laughing so hard. Along with the gut busting hilarity there is a sneaky poignancy to watching these idiots maim each other for our collective entertainment. I would argue there simply is no better example of the indomitable human spirit overcoming the indifferent cruelty of the universe than the “Red Rocket” stunt featured in Jackass Number 2.

The bemused quip from the peanut gallery here as Johnny Knoxville giggles away from a near fatal equipment malfunction “He almost just died and he’s dancing” distills the mortality defying appeal of the whole endeavor.

The Jackass crew has been through a lot over the years, most notably the tragic loss of founding member Ryan Dunn in a 2011 car crash. There have also been several struggles with addiction within the group, one of which prevented mainstay Bam Margera from participating in filming beyond a blink and you miss it appearance in one of the full group stunts. Throw in their numerous concussions, broken bones, missing testicles and requisite surgeries and you have quite the battered collection. Yet here they still stand, some pushing 50, ready to do unfathomable damage to the most vulnerable parts of their bodies to bring laughter and cheer to the masses. In life’s darkest times, your best friends are always there for you. Coming out of some of our nation’s darkest times, Jackass is here for all of us as well. When you think about it, laughter through the pain of life really is the entire conceit of their hairbrained operation.

2022 was absolutely the year of Jackass. Through careful negotiation I was able to expose my girlfriend to the original 3 films for the first time. Along this educational journey she got to finally learn the unmatched comedic brilliance of “Is Butterbean okay?” The lads got to do another Shark Week special after crew member Poopies almost lost his hand literally jumping the shark the year prior. Johnny Knoxville had an iconic match at Wrestlemania with assistance from Wee Man and Party Boy Pontius. He was great in Hulu’s new sitcom Reboot as well.

Knoxville is a handsome man with impeccable comedic timing that is about as close to a modern day Buster Keaton we have. He probably could have focused more on his actorly pursuits and been a larger star but he just loves hitting his friends in the balls far too much to throw that all away. The American public should be eternally grateful for that. It also speaks to what this series understands as a fundamental truth of humanity, the insatiable call to do hoodrat stuff with your friends lies deep within us all.

The Jackass Ethos

The opening sequence of Forever built entirely around having Pontius’ genitals made up to look like Godzilla is exactly why inventor Wordsworth Donishtrobe first proposed a device that could take a series of still images in quick succession that could then be strung together to make a motion picture nearly 150 years ago. “The Silence of the Lambs” may be the best prank they’ve ever done. They fill a room with booby traps and turn the lights off after warning the participants there is a poison snake in the room. Chaos ensues all shot in the same night vision deployed in the climax of the film in reference.

The film effectively blends the old faithfuls with a fresh crop of able bodied lunatics inspired by the original crew's years of jackassery. Celebrities like Eric Andre and Tyler the Creator whose work has been heavily influenced by the exploits of the gang stop by to pal around and pay tribute. Franchise newcomer Poopies is a star. His face is constantly plastered with just a pure undistilled joy to be putting himself in bodily harm with his idols. With this fresh new blood taking more of the devastating blows under the careful supervision of the elder statesmen idiots of yore, the series’ inspired brand of pure distilled stupidity truly can last forever. In a way, it makes this selection the perfect bookend to this list with Dazed and Confused. The boys get older but their maturity remains the same.

Honorable Mentions: Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Batman, Top Gun: Maverick, Nope

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