All these top ten lists we see every year got me thinking this year. Especially after seeing Spider-Verse. In many ways, it was a seminal work, something that will influence films years to come and so I started wondering what films I'd pick for each decade that have that sort of quality. Films that represent the decade they belong to, that in some ways tell its story.
Rules: You can only pick one movie per decade. No runner-ups. Just a list is fine. Describing why each film is your top movie for the decade it represents would be awesome. Not every decade needs to be used, only the ones you truly feel strongly about.
Here's mine:
2010's
Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 ★★★★★
George Miller's Fury Road is stunning achievement across so many cinematic disciplines. The editing, the flow of the action, centered and anchored, always, like we are always in the eye of the tornado throughout the whole film, watching within it. The world, the story, where so little is said, and so much is conveyed. The cinematography, the colors, and tone, light and shadow offering sights that will remain with me for the rest of my days. The characters. FURIOSA. She enters into frame and instantly towers over the movie, infusing its narration and action with every ounce of her singular motivation to get them all away from him. The meaning and symbolism that is there to think about when the movie isn't in front of my eyes. The score. Brothers in Arms, when that track plays, motorcycles launching off sand dunes, music pumping, and the chase really begins in earnest, its one of my favorite movie scenes where everything a movie is and can be, that fusion of motion and sound and story, converge into something truly extraordinary. Fury Road is a masterpiece and is the greatest action movie of all time.
2000's
Children of Men 2006 ★★★★★
The cold vision of a future without hope of surviving because humanity has lost its ability to perpetuate. How Cuarón chooses to show how we react to that premise when a ray of light appears, is a story that is unforgettable. As Sci-fi? One of the most thought-provoking and engaging films in the genre we have. It is a movie is that becomes more relevant every year, being far more prescient than we could have anticipated. How it warns us about immigration, xenophobia, and what connects us all together is what great movies are all about. It's a towering achievement and deserves to be seen every year to continue to remind us what is important, what is worth dying and living for.
1990's
The Shawshank Redemption 1994 ★★★★★
1980's
Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 ★★★★★
Lightning in a bottle. That's what Speilberg captured. One of the finest characters introductions set to screen. Perfect pacing. The smoothest balance of humor and action make this one of the most entertaining movies to watch ever. There's not a minute I'd trim out of the movie and the music still soars after all this time. It remains a paragon of action adventure that nothing has come close to and makes me yearn for someone to at least try again.
1970's
Star Wars 1977 ★★★★★
It changed the cinematic landscape of what was possible and introduced the world to characters that now reach across billions who love them. There is so much in terms of originality introduced here, for all the influences it had, that it popularized, and spread through the galaxy of fandom that we still see the ripples of and will continue to see for a long long time. I love the story structure, of how all narrative points converge into a singular action and finalize at exactly the same time. And it plays so well even still in a crowd. It's a beautiful setup to a cinematic legacy that will likely continue till the day I die and that's saying something about what sort of nuclear bomb it really was when it hit in 77'.
1960's
Lawrence of Arabia 1962 ★★★★
A film that is more married to the big screen than any film I can think of. It's told in epic grandeur, writ large on a canvas meant to be seen in as big a screen as you can. A story as big as its vistas, and a performance to match. It's truly one of the great films.
1950's
12 Angry Men 1957 ★★★★½
Not many scripts with as many characters and in as many settings as they've wanted have managed to do what 12 Angry Men does with 12 and one setting. It's a clinic in storytelling even today and shows more than any film that I can think of that what really matters most when everything is melted away is good writing, and a good story.
1940's
Casablanca 1942 ★★★★
Filmed and told in a bygone era, with performances that seemed to push further than the story before them. This thing is timeless and full of everything you want out of the movies. It remains one of the great romances. Still has some of the best lines put to film. It manages to remain affecting after all these years.
1930's
Modern Times 1936 ★★★★★
I was truly stunned at the scope of this movie when I first saw it. I had never seen a Chaplin movie before, and I remain transfixed by what he accomplished all those years ago. I love where stories are told with as little exposition as possible, and to see Chaplin at his height, telling a story just at the dawn of "talkies", a reaction to the culture he lived in, during the great depression, someone who had so much say and never a word comes out of him. It's the movie that talks, every action, every cog he gets stuck in, every job he wiggles out of and jail cell he wiggles into. It's still incredibly funny, and for my money, its message and ending are one of my favorites of all time and I can't help by grin my head off as the scene fades into black.
That's it for me.
Rules: You can only pick one movie per decade. No runner-ups. Just a list is fine. Describing why each film is your top movie for the decade it represents would be awesome. Not every decade needs to be used, only the ones you truly feel strongly about.
Here's mine:
2010's
Mad Max: Fury Road 2015 ★★★★★
George Miller's Fury Road is stunning achievement across so many cinematic disciplines. The editing, the flow of the action, centered and anchored, always, like we are always in the eye of the tornado throughout the whole film, watching within it. The world, the story, where so little is said, and so much is conveyed. The cinematography, the colors, and tone, light and shadow offering sights that will remain with me for the rest of my days. The characters. FURIOSA. She enters into frame and instantly towers over the movie, infusing its narration and action with every ounce of her singular motivation to get them all away from him. The meaning and symbolism that is there to think about when the movie isn't in front of my eyes. The score. Brothers in Arms, when that track plays, motorcycles launching off sand dunes, music pumping, and the chase really begins in earnest, its one of my favorite movie scenes where everything a movie is and can be, that fusion of motion and sound and story, converge into something truly extraordinary. Fury Road is a masterpiece and is the greatest action movie of all time.
2000's
Children of Men 2006 ★★★★★
The cold vision of a future without hope of surviving because humanity has lost its ability to perpetuate. How Cuarón chooses to show how we react to that premise when a ray of light appears, is a story that is unforgettable. As Sci-fi? One of the most thought-provoking and engaging films in the genre we have. It is a movie is that becomes more relevant every year, being far more prescient than we could have anticipated. How it warns us about immigration, xenophobia, and what connects us all together is what great movies are all about. It's a towering achievement and deserves to be seen every year to continue to remind us what is important, what is worth dying and living for.
1990's
The Shawshank Redemption 1994 ★★★★★
I've only had one film watching experience like this, and can only hope I have another. The way I ended up watching Shawshank Redemption happened by chance. My brother and I were in the mood to catch a movie, it was late, and this was roughly '95 or 96', and that meant we had to make a drive down to our local Hollywood Video. We got there without a clue what we wanted to watch, and walked up and down the New Release section and didn't see a thing that looked good. So we downgraded and started looking at the old sections. If it looked like I felt like something, he wasn't into it, and vice versa and so on for a good 40 mins. We couldn't find a thing and didn't want the whole trip to be bust, you don't go to get a movie with thousands of movies to choose from and come away empty handed. You know when you're starving but nothing sounds good? It felt like that. So we settled it down to a few possibilities, a bit crestfallen about not finding anything that sounded good, so we ended up with Shawshank, some dour prison movie that had at least been nominated for Best Picture. It matched our mood I suppose. So we take it home, pop it into the VHS player, and let it play. Goddamn, but by the time Andy had swindled the guys those " ice cold bohemian beers" something was going on. And when the warden tossed that rock through that poster, and it clinks through and the camera pans through that hole in the wall that took Andy 19 years to dig with a small little rock hammer, I don't think I've ever been as mesmerized by what was unfolding in a movie. It could have ended there, and been stunning, but to end up with Red there on the beach at the end as well, I think it pushes this ending above any ending in film history. The amount of satisfaction that this film pushes through you, symbolism, meaning, I can't help but come back to it over the years, I can't help myself if I catch it on TV. Nothing beats seeing an amazing movie cold without any preconceptions and notions of what to expect, and Shawshank will always hold that experience of being utter amazed at a film that even remains amazing knowing it is one of the greats before viewing it. A masterpiece beginning to end.
1980's
Raiders of the Lost Ark 1981 ★★★★★
Lightning in a bottle. That's what Speilberg captured. One of the finest characters introductions set to screen. Perfect pacing. The smoothest balance of humor and action make this one of the most entertaining movies to watch ever. There's not a minute I'd trim out of the movie and the music still soars after all this time. It remains a paragon of action adventure that nothing has come close to and makes me yearn for someone to at least try again.
1970's
Star Wars 1977 ★★★★★
It changed the cinematic landscape of what was possible and introduced the world to characters that now reach across billions who love them. There is so much in terms of originality introduced here, for all the influences it had, that it popularized, and spread through the galaxy of fandom that we still see the ripples of and will continue to see for a long long time. I love the story structure, of how all narrative points converge into a singular action and finalize at exactly the same time. And it plays so well even still in a crowd. It's a beautiful setup to a cinematic legacy that will likely continue till the day I die and that's saying something about what sort of nuclear bomb it really was when it hit in 77'.
1960's
Lawrence of Arabia 1962 ★★★★
A film that is more married to the big screen than any film I can think of. It's told in epic grandeur, writ large on a canvas meant to be seen in as big a screen as you can. A story as big as its vistas, and a performance to match. It's truly one of the great films.
1950's
12 Angry Men 1957 ★★★★½
Not many scripts with as many characters and in as many settings as they've wanted have managed to do what 12 Angry Men does with 12 and one setting. It's a clinic in storytelling even today and shows more than any film that I can think of that what really matters most when everything is melted away is good writing, and a good story.
1940's
Casablanca 1942 ★★★★
Filmed and told in a bygone era, with performances that seemed to push further than the story before them. This thing is timeless and full of everything you want out of the movies. It remains one of the great romances. Still has some of the best lines put to film. It manages to remain affecting after all these years.
1930's
Modern Times 1936 ★★★★★
I was truly stunned at the scope of this movie when I first saw it. I had never seen a Chaplin movie before, and I remain transfixed by what he accomplished all those years ago. I love where stories are told with as little exposition as possible, and to see Chaplin at his height, telling a story just at the dawn of "talkies", a reaction to the culture he lived in, during the great depression, someone who had so much say and never a word comes out of him. It's the movie that talks, every action, every cog he gets stuck in, every job he wiggles out of and jail cell he wiggles into. It's still incredibly funny, and for my money, its message and ending are one of my favorites of all time and I can't help by grin my head off as the scene fades into black.
That's it for me.
