Emily Blunt, then and now

The release of The Devil Wears Prada 2 earlier this year reminded me that this is the 20th anniversary of our awareness of Emily Blunt. The original film came out in 2006, and that's definitely the first time I had ever seen Blunt on screen. (She'd been working for three years before that, but not in anything I'd seen.) In those 20 years, she has become one of my favorite actresses.

Oh yeah, she's beautiful, and she's just my type. I'm not going to deny that. 

But from that very first role in The Devil Wears Prada, it was clear she had the chops as well. She has since appeared in a number of other personal favorites that have done extremely well in my year-end rankings, chief among them Your Sister's Sister, Looper, Edge of Tomorrow and Sicario. And her performances in those films are primary reasons why the films are so effective. (Maybe not Looper, I think her role was smaller in that.)

And yet awards love has largely eluded her. In those 20 years, she's earned only one Oscar nomination, that being for Oppenheimer a few years ago -- a role I don't even remember being very compelling. (The finer details of Oppenheimer did not really stay with me.) Specifically in the case of Sicario, I feel like that performance was served up on a platter for Oscar consideration, and I don't mean to suggest it was just awards bait. I mean it was a strong lead performance in a film that received three other Oscar nominations, and everyone could see that Blunt was central to the film's success. 

Maybe it's just the fact that she's British, and British actresses are usually feted by the Oscars, but I feel like Blunt not having more nominated work is a bit of a crime. Just this year, Brit Jessie Buckley walked away with an Oscar for histrionic work in a film that's way less good and way less subtle than some of Blunt's best films. 

I'm writing about Blunt today not because I just saw Disclosure Day, although I did just see Disclosure Day. It's because the next night I also saw a movie from very back at the beginnings of that career called Wind Chill, which was released in 2007. 

I didn't go hunting for Wind Chill. In fact, I had no idea what I wanted to watch when I started browsing on Netflix. And there's no doubt the algorithm pushed up Wind Chill higher in prominence due to the release of Disclosure Day, but I think I had to click into it in the first place to see that Blunt was involved. Once I saw that, it was a cinch to make it that night's movie. (The fact that the movie is executive produced by George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh, even stranger given the sort of movie it is, was the clincher, if the decision still needed clinching.)

First, Disclosure Day.

I'm not going to reveal spoilers, because it's only just opening in the U.S today. But I did want to give you my general impression, and I'll also link to my review (here) if you want to read it. I gave it a 6/10, or three stars. My primary two complaints, as it were: the story is a bit all over the place, and the ultimate secret being disclosed feels a bit too obvious within the history of Spielberg's career. (I don't know why I'm dancing around that secret, the advertising materials themselves don't try very hard to keep it.) 

But Blunt's performance is quite good. As a Kanas City weather woman undergoing a profound change, she herself has got to be all over the place, emotionally -- repeatedly struck with sudden knowledge upon meeting a new person, and at the same time, reacting with fear about what's going on with her. It's a performance that requires many of the same skills as a person playing someone with split personality disorder, and Blunt pulls it off with typical aplomb. There are also moments when she's in sort of a trance, as in the signature scene from the trailers, where she's on camera and suddenly starts speaking in clicking noises. It's a role that requires a lot of an actor, and there's no one better to do it than Blunt. 

Wind Chill was interesting because it strikes me as the sort of film Blunt would have only made if it were already in progress at the time The Devil Wears Prada was released, which it likely was, given that it came out only a year later. The story involves Blunt's character and a man played by Ashton Holmes, who I must be remembering from A History of Violence because he hasn't been in much else I've seen. They're on a road trip home from college to Delaware for Christmas, and get into a car accident in the snowy night on a shortcut, where they remain stranded without help. They're then haunted by the ghosts of people who died on that stretch of the road. 

This one gets only two stars from me, despite the pedigree of the star and the producers. (The connection of Clooney and Soderbergh is that the director, Gregory Jacobs, is in their inner circle; he also directed Magic Mike XXL.) It was really interesting to watch what is essentially a low-budget horror movie starring someone with Blunt's natural instincts. She's definitely good in this movie, better than the role requires, but there's a strange disconnect to watching her smart reactions to horror stimuli that are clearly beneath someone of her talents. Hey, everyone has their beginnings. 

Blunt is 43 now, so her window to finally get that Oscar could be closing. Or maybe not. She's really showing no signs of slowing down, and she doesn't look like she's done any of the plastic surgery that can sometimes curtail the careers of an actress of her age. Sometimes actresses get their most award-worthy roles when they start to get a little older, and if we are already looking at this year's Oscars, we need to look no further than 75-year-old Amy Madigan finally getting a first Oscar halfway through her eighth decade. Let's just hope it doesn't take Blunt that long. 

When tragic heroes defy your romantic expectations

I finally got to one of the most acclaimed documentaries of the year on Wednesday night, Fire of Love, even though I probably should have spent the evening frantically completing Christmas-related tasks. What can I say, we decorated our tree last night and I always like to pair that evening with a movie.

Maybe something less heavy would have been in order, but the volcanic spectacle of the movie was certainly a good match. It was no Beasts of No Nation in terms of depressing subject matter for a tree decoration movie, but Fire of Love does indeed end with both of its main characters dying -- which is no spoiler, because it's one of the first things you learn about them and is in every bit of promotional material related to the movie.

When I first heard that a documentary had been made about two married volcanologists who had perished in the line of duty of their passion -- not unlike Timothy Treadwell, made famous in Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man -- I assumed they looked something like this:

When in fact, Katia and Maurice Krafft looked like this:

The difference between the two is how Hollywood would cast them and how real life did cast them.

This is not to say that the Kraffts were ugly. But it is to say that they look more like scientists than L.L. Bean models, which is what the first two people are -- and which is very similar to how they would be cast when/if there is a narrative film version made of their story.

It was interesting for me to consider, though, how much of my expectation to feel sorrow at their tragic passing -- 30 years in the past though it may be -- was bound up in the idea that they would be conventionally beautiful, more like Jack and Rose going down on the Titanic than two eccentrics risking life and limb on the edge of a volcano. I won't say it's likely, but it's certainly possible that more conventionally beautiful people would not have gotten into that line of work in the first place.

And I think the expectations were set by the title Fire of Love, which really places an emphasis on this being a love story, not a story of scientific exploration. And I'm sure it was, though Maurice Krafft's video footage -- oh so much wonderful video footage -- understandably does not highlight any moments of intimacy between them. In fact, the persona they present to the camera is more one of an odd couple, with playful banter directed at one another, and relatively few deep and soulful looks.

And when we are expecting a tragic romance, one that ended when they were both buried in an avalanche of soot, the movies have trained us to envision two people like the L.L. Bean models above. The fact that they are beautiful makes their untimely loss all the more tragic.

Never mind young. When they died they were 49 and 45 years old. That's not "old" of course -- I'm 49 now, and don't you dare call me old -- but it's not the platonically ideal 32 years old, old enough to have had ten good years in volcanology before meeting their makers. Old enough to believably be established figures in their field, but not old enough to have any gray hairs.

See that's Hollywood thinking again.

So who plays them in the movie?

I don't know, how about John Krasinski and Emily Blunt? Blunt is two months away from turning 40 and Krasinski is three years into his 40s. The fact that they are married in real life probably adds an element of tragic romance to the whole thing, as it assumes they will have good on-screen chemistry.

I really liked Fire of Love -- how close it gets to the top of my 2022 list is something that I'm still considering, and will be revealed in a month's time.

But I'm being honest with myself when I ask if it wouldn't end up higher ... if Maurice and Katia looked like this:

Performers and directors of the decade

Do I really need to do two follow-up posts to my best of the decade post?

Duh.

But this is the last, I promise.

As I was going through my list of 87 movies identified for further reconsideration for my best of the decade (82 of which I ultimately watched), I noticed both actors and directors appearing multiple times across the films. That naturally got the wheels spinning for me to honor them separately, hence this post.

I won't write an additional post this time explaining how I did it, but will give you a little bit on that right here.

For starters, I want to explain that this is not some be-all, end-all examination of who were the "best" actors or actresses (or directors) this past decade. That kind of thing might involve tallying Oscar nominations and the like, and that might be an interesting separate exercise, but that's not what I'm doing today. The honors in this post are based only on which movies I liked the best, so they ignore what I might have thought were great performances in mediocre movies. It seemed like the most effective way to filter and manage a post like this, while also keeping it very subjective to my own tastes.

And yet, there is also a non-subjective element to it. Unlike my "three who had a good year" segments in my year-end wrap-up posts, the methodology I'm using does not allow me to choose one person over another based on more nebulous, slippery criteria. I'm going by sheer number of appearances in my favorite films here, with a little wiggle room based on ties and factors like whether the person's work contributed significantly to my affection for the film. So if a dominant percentage of the actors who recurred in my favorite films are of a particular racial composition -- er, white -- then that isn't the result of a specific choice made by me in January of 2020. It's what the numbers bore out over time. And, I suppose, the cumulative effect of a number of small, individual choices. Hey, what can I say, I watched what I watched and I loved what I loved.

I'll also say that either actors or directors who did good work in 2019 are slightly disadvantaged by my system. If 2019 were a year in the middle of the decade rather than at the end, I'd have longer to figure out if those films were going to endure with me, and I would have reconsidered more of them, possibly even some that landed outside my top ten. I think that's just kind of inevitable with years at the end of the decade. Sorry 2019.

So director was pretty straightforward, as each film has only one of them, or at most two. (Okay, okay, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has three.) I put the 87 films in a spreadsheet, slapped the director's name(s) next to each, and sorted by the second column, thereby figuring out who appeared the most. Done and done. As there were only seven directors who had more than one film appear, I had to go outside the 87 in support of the director who appeared as a third honorable mention, but that seemed fair.

Actors were a bit more tricky. I also used a spreadsheet, and I went through the films listing every actor who was either of note or who had any likelihood of appearing in another of my films. For example, I didn't get too hung up on the cast of Tanna (though I did list the two leads) because I knew it was just academic to include them. This meant that some actors got credit for only a very small role in some of their films, but I did my best to account for that as well in breaking ties. In the end, I identified 278 (!) different actors across the 87 films, 240 of whom appeared in only one film.

Tedious. Exhaustive. That's me.

It may go without saying, but if it doesn't, I'll say it now. I didn't penalize anyone for appearing in/making bad films. You could have spent the entire decade making shithouse movies, but if you made two or three that I really loved, you were in. I did decide to mention the moves that may have detracted from their clean records, as you will see, and may have used them once or twice to break a tie. But I was by no means consistent about that.

Okay! Here we go.

Actresses of the decade

1. Emily Blunt 
Considered from the 87: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Looper (2012), Sicario (2015), Your Sister's Sister (2012)
It was easy enough to award Blunt the accompanying art to this post, as she was the only performer to appear in four films from the original list of 87*. (See all the way at the bottom of this post for explanation of asterisk.) In a weird and surprising phenomenon, though, none of those films appeared in either my top 25 or my honorable mentions. Your Sister's Sister, my #2 of 2012, came closest. That does nothing to tarnish the way Blunt announced herself this decade, becoming one of the most capable A-list stars who you also never worried about in terms of her craft. She mostly played tough, as we would expect from female characters written really carefully nowadays, but I may have found the vulnerability she displayed in Sister to be some of her most affecting work this decade. I find it hard to believe that this talented actress has never earned an Oscar nomination (she was robbed for Sicario), and I hope to see that change in the coming years. Interestingly, her "imperial period" (to borrow a phrase usually reserved for music artists) occurred entirely within a four year span from 2012 to 2015, when all four of the above movies were released. But that's not to say she didn't do good work elsewhere in the decade, as you will see below.
Other notable works this decade: The Five-Year Engagement (2012) (really liked it), Mary Poppins Returns (2018) (liked it), A Quiet Place (2018) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: The Girl on the Train (2016) (didn't like it), Into the Woods (2014) (hated it)

2. Zoe Kazan
Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Meek's Cutoff (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012)
It may be surprising to see Kazan on this list, especially at #2, but she makes it on quality rather than quantity. Kazan was not in a lot of movies this decade compared to some of her peers -- she also spent some time writing -- but whenever she did appear on screen, she was great. I'm glad to have this opportunity to throw some love to my #1 of 2012, which was the only #1 I left off my top 25 (it was an honorable mention). As both writer and star of Ruby Sparks, Kazan is perhaps more responsible than anyone else for the success of that movie, a sly attack on the lazy screenwriting trope of the manic pixie dream girl. Contrary to what you might think, that was not a role she herself played very often, as her two other choices I considered are oddly similar, both involving characters on long and fateful wagon train trips across country. She may have been a part of the ensemble in Meek's Cutoff, but she carried the brunt of the effectiveness of the best segment of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, which I was also sorry I could not give any more love before now.
Other notable works this decade: The Big Sick (2017) (liked it), What If (2013) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: The Pretty One (2013) (didn't like it)

3. Scarlett Johansson
Considered for the 87: Isle of Dogs (2018), Under the Skin (2014)
In the end, I really only considered one film where Johansson plays a major role, Under the Skin, in which she is pretty much the entire thing. Her role in Isle of Dogs, kind of a random choice to consider as it was only my #15 of 2018, couldn't really be said to move the needle in that giant ensemble cast. But that doesn't tell the true story of Johansson's decade, one in which I twice named her as one of three "who had a good year" (let's forget the once she was named to "three who had a bad year"). Scarlett Johansson was all over this decade, doing increasingly interesting and increasingly more realistic work as the 2010s went on. We always knew she could play a fembot -- that's pretty much the role in Under the Skin -- but her Oscar nomination for Marriage Story was based purely on her ability to portray an actual person. So when looking to why Scarlett Johansson makes this list, we may have to look more to the films down below this text than those above it.
Other notable works this decade: Avengers: Endgame (2019) (loved it), Captain America: Civil War (2016) (loved it), Her (2013) (really liked it), Jojo Rabbit (2019) (loved it), Marriage Story (2019) (really liked it)
Possible detractors: Ghost in the Shell (2017) (didn't like it), Rough Night (2017) (didn't like it)

4. Nicole Kidman
Considered from the 87: The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Rabbit Hole (2010)
I may have really fallen in love with the acting skills of Nicole Kidman last decade, after following the rest of the world and pretty much snubbing her for the first 10-15 years of her career. But she came on strong at the start of the 2010s by giving perhaps my favorite naturalistic performance of the decade in Rabbit Hole. That didn't mean she couldn't still groove to the kind of weirdness she found with Stanley Kubrick in Eyes Wide Shut or with Jonathan Glazer in Birth. She teamed up with Yorgos Lanthimos for The Killing of a Sacred Deer and played a perfect type of sultry ice princess (if you'll go with me on that possibility) who isn't quite knowable. Kidman likes to work so her choices haven't always worked for me (Just Go With It, anyone?), but she has continued raising the bar throughout the decade, perhaps most notably in places I have yet to see her (Big Little Lies). My kinship with her is such that I feel defensive on her behalf when people snipe at her about plastic surgery or whatever other things they think she's guilty of. If Kidman really is worried about her age, she needn't be. At 52, she still looks great, but that doesn't matter, because those skills translate at any age.
Other notable works from decade: The Beguiled (2017) (loved it), The Family Fang (2015) (really liked it), Lion (2016) (loved it), The Paperboy (2012) (liked it)
Possible detractors: Just Go With It (2011) (didn't like it)

5. Jennifer Lawrence 
Considered from the 87: mother! (2017), Winter's Bone (2010)

It’s hard to believe that Jennifer Lawrence is someone we have known for only ten years, as her entire known career falls within this past decade. Winter’s Bone may not have actually been her first professional work, but it was the first time most people had ever seen her – unless you watched (ahem) The Bill Engvall Show. She went on to be nominated for four Oscars over the course of the next decade, winning one. Lawrence’s toughness and girl-next-door authenticity were both on display in Winter’s Bone, but my favorite performance she gave this decade might be the one where she had her bearings the least. Darren Aronofsky’s mother! subjects her to nearly von Trierian levels of sadism in a story about how a young bride’s life is falling apart after her famous older husband starts losing interest in her, which is only one of a kajillion interpretations of the film. There’s no other way to interpret the performance of Lawrence than brilliant as she looks on in horror at the social contract exploding around her, and her house becoming the site of nothing less than biblical apocalypse. It’s sad to me that Lawrence has taken a step back from the spotlight as I am interested every time I see her name attached to a project. 

Other notable works this decade: American Hustle (liked it), The Hunger Games (2012) (really liked it), Silver Linings Playbook (2012) (loved it), X-Men: First Class (2011) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Joy (2015) (didn't like it), X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) (hated it)

Honorable mentions

1. Rooney Mara

Considered from the 87: A Ghost Story (2017), The Social Network (2010)

Other notable works this decade: Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) (liked it), Carol (2015) (liked it), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) (really liked it), Her (really liked it), Side Effects (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Mary Magdalene (2018) (didn't like it), Pan (2015) (hated it)

2. Emma Stone

Considered from the 87: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014), La La Land (2016)

Other notable works this decade: Battle of the Sexes (2017) (really liked it), Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) (loved it), Easy A (2010) (really liked it), The Favourite (2018) (really liked it), The Help (2011) (liked it), Magic in the Moonlight (2014) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Aloha (2015) (didn't like it), Irrational Man (2015) (hated it), Movie 43 (2013) (hated it), Zombieland: Double Tap (2019) (didn't like it)

3. Kristen Wiig

Considered from the 87: mother! (2017), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013), The Skeleton Twins (2014)

Other notable works this decade: Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) (really liked it), Bridesmaids (2011) (loved it), Date Night (2010) (really liked it), The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015) (loved it), Ghostbusters (2016) (liked it), Her (2013) (really liked it), How to Train Your Dragon (2010) (really liked it), The Martian (2015) (really liked it), Masterminds (2016) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Hateship, Loveship (2013) (didn't like it), Nasty Baby (2015) (hated it), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) (didn't like it)  

Actors of the decade

1. Ethan Hawke
Considered from the 87: Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014), First Reformed (2018)

It was a pretty straightforward choice to select Hawke as my #1 for the decade, as he appeared in three films I considered, all of which made either my top 25 or my honorable mentions. He has Richard Linklater to thank for two of those, and as you saw in yesterday’s post, Before Midnight was the “first alternate,” in other words, the last movie to get knocked out of my top 25. But as much as I appreciate the lived-in naturalism of the performances Hawke gives for Linklater, his collaborator for more than 20 years now, I think my favorite Hawke performance of the decade was the slightly more stylized one he gave for Paul Schrader in First Reformed. That’s not to say his portrayal of Ernst Toller is not naturalistic, but it’s a kind of heightened naturalism consistent with Schrader’s willingness to stray from realism when it suits him. I was really hoping Hawke would get Oscar nominated for that performance, which would have been only his third, but at least many other critics groups recognized his work. Hawke has been a consummate professional throughout his 35-year career and I know he’s always interested in breaking the boundaries of narrative cinema. It’s why I’m always interested in seeing his name attached to a new project. 

Other notable works this decade: Daybreakers (2010) (really liked it), Maggie's Plan (2015) (really liked it), Predestination (2014) (liked it), Sinister (2012) (really liked it), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Purge (2013) (hated it), Regression (2017) (didn't like it)

2. James Franco

Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), 127 Hours (2010), Spring Breakers (2013)

James Franco is not a good guy, but hey, I don’t make the rules. Okay, I do make the rules, but I’m happy to include Franco based on the way his performance dominated (in a good way) two of my favorite movies of the decade. You can’t imagine either 127 Hours or Spring Breakers with any other actor, not because another actor could not do it – okay, I don’t know that another actor could do Alien – but because he put such a stamp on those roles that they don’t deserve to be in anyone else’s hands. The thing that blows my mind most about Alien is not that he preens like a gangsta, it’s that he’s actually a scared little boy preening like a gangsta, which most actors would not have thought to bring to that role. 127 Hours features a guy who is scared in a different way and is nearly being driven out of his mind from hunger and exhaustion, which Franco expresses perfectly. He’s not hugely important one way or another to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs so that’s just gravy. The much-deserved shaming of Franco in the latter half of this decade was disappointing to me not because I feel an inherent warmth toward the man, but because it means that going forward, he won’t likely get the same opportunities to give us more performances like these. 

Other notable works this decade: Date Night (2010) (really liked it), The Disaster Artist (2017) (really liked it), Howl (2010) (really liked it), The Interview (2014) (loved it), Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) (loved it), This is the End (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) (didn't like it), Why Him? (2016) (hated it)

3. Adam Driver 
Considered from the 87: BlacKkKlansman (2018), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Lincoln (2012), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Adam Driver may be the most interesting case on this whole list as he packed a decade’s worth of good performances into essentially a half-decade. Okay, Inside Llewyn Davis isn’t the second half of the decade, but I love his performance as Al Cody more in retrospect than I really recognized it at the time. (“Outer … SPACE!”) Speaking of outer space, it was when he emerged as Kylo Ren in 2015 that I started to appreciate the things that had eluded me about Driver when I first encountered him on Girls (the few episodes I watched). Three excellent turns as the unhinged spawn of Han and Leia really sold me on his innate skills that go well beyond his kind of mumblecore beginnings. This is the way Hayden Christensen wished he could have played Anakin Skywalker. Then my Driver lovefest was bolstered by his work with Spike Lee in BlacKkKlansman, in which he has to act the part of a guy who’s acting a part, which is no mean feat. At decade’s end I feel like I want Adam Driver to be in every new movie that gets made, and the rest of the world is catching up to me as he has now been nominated for Oscars in consecutive years.
Other notable works this decade: Frances Ha (2012) (loved it), J. Edgar (2011) (really liked it), Marriage Story (2019) (really liked it), Paterson (2016) (loved it), Silence (2016) (liked it), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) (really liked it), While We're Young (2014) (liked it)
Possible detractors: The Dead Don't Die (2019) (hated it), The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2019) (didn't like it)

4. Paul Dano
Considered from the 87: Looper (2012), Meek's Cutoff (2011), Ruby Sparks (2012)

If we went back to the start of the century, Paul Dano would be even higher than this, but he doesn’t get to count movies like The Girl Next Door and There Will Be Blood for this decade. That said, the films he does get to count are quite solid, and his power coupling with Zoe Kazan (I just looked, they’re still together!) gets its second entrant on this list. Paul Dano has been kind of John Cusack’s heir apparent as the “weird looking” everyman leading man, which is appropriate as he and Cusack played the same character in Love & Mercy, a film that I could have revisited by virtue of it landing at #4 for me in 2015, but decided to rule it out from the start. He used those traits to their fullest in Ruby Sparks, but his intense desperation has been present in all of his roles this decade, from Looper to Swiss Army Man (another top ten movie I pre-emptively ruled out) to Meek’s Cutoff. He’s pursued other interests the last few years, making his feature directing debut with a film I did not like, Wildlife. Here’s hoping he gets back to what he does best.

Other notable works this decade: Love & Mercy (2015) (loved it), Okja (2017) (really liked it), Prisoners (2013) (really liked it), Swiss Army Man (2016) (loved it), 12 Years a Slave (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Cowboys & Aliens (2011) (hated it), Wildlife (2018) (as director) (didn't like it)

5. Chris Pine

Considered from the 87: Hell or High Water (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Wonder Woman (2017)

Captain Kirk was the role that really put Chris Pine on the map at the end of last decade, but that isn’t even where he’s shone in this one. He really demonstrated the range of his abilities in performances both essentially Kirk-like (funny and charming, the way he is in Wonder Woman) and those that are pretty much the exact opposite of that (laconic and world-weary, the way he is in Hell or High Water). In fact, Pine is so good in Hell or High Water – though he’s not the only one – that I was kind of shocked when the movie couldn’t find its way into my top 25 of the decade, settling for an honorable mention. His role in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a lot more brief, and at first I kind of wished they’d given him Jake Johnson’s role until I saw how good Johnson was. The point is, at this point, I’ve decided beyond a shadow of a doubt who is the “best Chris” out of him, Hemsworth, Pratt and Evans. Just as he charmed the pants off of Gal Gadot, he’s charmed the pants off me, and that’s not even the only mode he has – not nearly.

Other notable works this decade: Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) (liked it), Star Trek Into Darkness (2012) (liked it), Z for Zachariah (2015) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: Into the Woods (2014) (hated it), A Wrinkle in Time (2018) (didn't like it)

Honorable mentions

1. Oscar Isaac

Considered from the 87: Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)

Other notable works this decade: Annihilation (2018) (really liked it), Drive (2011) (liked it), Ex Machina (2015) (loved it), A Most Violent Year (2014) (liked it), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Addams Family (2019) (didn't like it), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) (didn't like it)  

2. Javier Bardem

Considered from the 87: Everybody Knows (2018), mother! (2017)

Other notable works this decade: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017) (liked it), Skyfall (2012) (liked it), To the Wonder (2013) (really liked it)

Possible detractors: The Counselor (2013) (didn't like it), The Last Face (2017) (hated it)

3. Mahershala Ali

Considered from the 87: Moonlight (2016), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)

Other notable works this decade: Green Book (2018) (liked it), Hidden Figures (2016) (liked it), The Place Beyond the Pines (2013) (liked it)

Possible detractors: Alita: Battle Angel (2019) (didn't like it)

Directors of the decade

1. Asghar Farhadi

Considered from the 87: Everybody Knows (2018), The Past (2013), A Separation (2011)

Farhadi easily wins the decade by being the only director who had three films that I considered for the decade’s best. What’s more, the fourth film he released this past decade – 2016’s The Salesman – won the best foreign language film Oscar, giving him two (along with A Separation). That I think this film is only mediocre is an indication of just how successful Farhadi has been. (Or maybe I’m still just mad at the movie for stealing the Oscar that rightfully belonged to Toni Erdmann.) When you consider that his 2009 film, About Elly, was also unearthed and made more generally available this decade, and that it is also a masterpiece, you have a truly staggering body of work to grapple with. Two other factors contribute to making these ten years all the more astonishing for Farhadi: 1) He’s an Iranian director, yet somehow avoided the type of government scrutiny that torpedoed fellow countryman Jafar Panahi, while still making films that seem pointed in their criticism of Iranian society; 2) He directed films in three different languages, those being Persian, French and Spanish. What a decade. 

Other works this decade: The Salesman (2016) (liked it)

2. Richard Linklater 

Considered from the 87: Before Midnight (2013), Boyhood (2014)

Linklater came within a hair of getting two films in my top 25, which would have made him one of only two directors to do that (see my #3), and only the third to do it in the history of these decade-end lists (Cameron Crowe had two in my top ten last decade, if you can believe it). But just because I decided Before Midnight was only my #26, it doesn’t take away from a decade of critical acclaim and exquisite invention for Linklater. It was impressive enough when he submitted his third entry in the best “aging along with the characters” series since Michael Apted’s Up movies. But then, as something of a surprise, the very next year he told everyone he’d been working on a movie for the past 12 years using the same four actors at different ages. Who does that? The answer is, the guy who last decade was experimenting with rotoscoping, which allowed him to put Waking Life on my last best of the decade list. Linklater has never been flashy with his technique (unless, of course, he’s using rotoscoping), but he has established himself as able to convey thoughtful humanism like few of his peers. He’s also great with nostalgia, as exemplified in one of the other movies below.

Other works this decade: Bernie (2011) (really liked it), Everybody Wants Some!! (2016) (really liked it), Last Flag Flying (2018) (haven't seen it), Where'd You Go, Bernadette (2019) (didn't like it)

3. Byron Howard 

Considered from the 87: Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016)

Who? Exactly. And that explains why the only man to get two movies in my top 25 for the decade is only my third-best director for the decade (and why I haven't mentioned this feat in either of my previous decade-end posts). It's hard for most people, including myself, to understand exactly what role a director has in bringing an animated movie to the screen, since animation is one arena in which we don't typically think of the director as the primary auteur. In fact, the director rarely even has sole credit, and that was the case with Howard in each of his movies that made my top 25. But the fact remains that whether with Nathan Greno on Tangled or Rich Moore on Zootopia, Howard helped make two absolutely fantastic 2010s animated movies a reality. Did he tell the actors how to say their lines? Did he suggest how to "set up the camera"? To the first, probably yes; to the second, I have no idea. But without Byron Howard, I do know that it's a far less rich decade for animated movies. And hey, at the very least, we know he can hold a stuffed animal. 

Other works this decade: None

4. Barry Jenkins

Considered from the 87: If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Moonlight (2016)
I greatly regretted that I couldn’t summon more affection than I did for Moonlight. I placed it in my top ten for 2016, at #10, but I felt like there might have been films below it where my personal affection was slightly higher (sorry, Hello My Name is Doris). If the whole film remained at the high level of its first third, which showcased a director I’d never heard of (Barry Jenkins) and all that this “newcomer” possesses in terms of craft, it’d have been my #1 of that year. I did revisit Moonlight for this project to be sure I didn’t actually love it (I didn’t), but there was no artificial inflation when it came to If Beale Street Could Talk, which floored me the first time and then pushed me through the floor into the earth on the second. Here Jenkins’ skills were matched with a story that was overall more resonant with me, and it left me in a near-stupor state. Moonlight would have probably resonated with me just as much if it had kept its momentum from the Mahershala Ali-led first act, which only goes to show that not only can Barry Jenkins pick ‘em, he can film ‘em too. 

Other works this decade: None

5. Gaspar Noe

Considered from the 87: Climax (2018), Enter the Void (2010)

Gaspar Noe made three films this decade, two of which I saw twice, and I also twice watched his one movie from last decade, Irreversible. That means I was never long without the singular weirdness of this French filmmaker, who is known for putting his entire closing credits – often smashed at the screen in crazy fonts, and with strobe lights and industrial music – at the beginning of the film rather than the end. Each Noe film thereby introduces you to the fact that you’re in for a ride, and a ride is what you get. Not only is his subject matter always shocking – graphically sexual in nature when it is not graphically violent, and sometimes both at once – but he films it in a way you’ve literally never seen before. Most of Enter the Void is shot from above, from the angle of a wandering spirit flying over the city of Tokyo. In Love, you get a head-on view of a penis ejaculating. In Climax, the camera goes literally everywhere, in such a manner that the only way I could think to describe it in my review was that it seemed to be on a fishing rod dangling over its subjects. I’m not sure how Noe does what he does, but I love it. 

Other works this decade: Love (2015) (liked it)

Honorable mentions

1. Joel & Ethan Coen
Considered from the 87: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Other works this decade: Hail, Caesar! (2016) (didn't like it), True Grit (2010) (liked it)

2. Damien Chazelle
Considered from the 87: La La Land (2016), Whiplash (2014)
Other works this decade: First Man (2018) (really liked it)

3. Bong Joon-ho
Considered from the 87: Parasite (2019)
Other works this decade: Okja (2017) (really liked it), Snowpiercer (2013) (loved it)

Okay! That'll do.

Thanks for tuning in to a full week of year-end and decade-end writing. Tomorrow I will look forward to 2020 in a very explicit way by introducing you to what I'm going to be watching as a monthly series this year.

Oh, and here's that asterisk I promised you earlier:

* - I only belatedly noticed that Adam Driver also appeared in four of the 87 movies when I determined he had a small role in Lincoln. I had already written most of this post at that point, so I did not adjust my perspective mid-stream and allowed Blunt to keep the spotlight to herself. 

A poor man's Jennifer Lawrence, and other Girl on the Train thoughts

I thought Jennifer Lawrence was in both The Girl on the Train and The Magnificent Seven.

Turns out, she's in neither.

Turns out, it's some person named Haley Bennett.

Haley Bennett is not just "some person," you might say. You might say she's putting together a little bit of career momentum here, also appearing in this year's (poorly received) Hardcore Henry, in 2014's The Equalizer, and even in some older well-regarded films like Music & Lyrics and Marley & Me.

But that doesn't change the fact that she looks almost exactly like Jennifer Lawrence, and that's (presumably) why people are casting her now.

Here, consider it. Someone on the interwebs has done me the favor of putting them next to each other:

When you look at them side by side, you can (probably) tell which is which. But when you see only Bennett by herself in a movie trailer, you think "Is that Jennifer Lawrence?"

And then, "If that's Jennifer Lawrence, why isn't her name on the poster?"

This was a big flaw in my theory about Lawrence being in The Girl on the Train. As you can see from the poster above, only Emily Blunt was deemed famous enough to appear on the poster. Lawrence is more famous than Blunt, so that theory didn't work.

But it still took me looking at her a couple times on screen before I said "Oh yeah, that's not J-Law. That's that woman I've seen in that Magnificent Seven trailer about seven times."

I wonder if it occurs to Bennett that her resemblance to Lawrence is probably a boon to her career. I mean, she's pretty, so she probably would have succeeded anyway. And Girl on the Train demonstrates that she has at least some acting talent (though nowhere near Lawrence's class). But part of her has got to think "Well, they wanted a Jennifer Lawrence type, and I was cheap so they got me." I suppose there are worse people than a four-time Oscar nominee and one-time winner to be likened to.

Lawrence is actually the youngest actress ever to accrue four Oscar nominations, as she only turned 26 two months ago. That means she was born in 1990, and that creates an interesting (though surely coincidental) relationship to Bennett as well. But the following is a SPOILER ALERT for Girl on the Train, so if you haven't seen it yet (and care), stop reading.

The movie has occasion to show a tombstone for Bennett's character, and the inscription shows that that character, too, was born in 1990. Bennett herself was born two years earlier than that, in 1988. I only wish I'd had the foresight to check out the exact date on the tombstone, because choosing Lawrence's August 15th birthday would have been a cheeky inside joke about the similarity of the two actresses.

And forgive me for a little bit of the vulgar Donald Trump coming out here, but I couldn't help wondering if some kind of wish fulfillment related to Lawrence was a reason we see so much of Bennett's skin in this movie. The only traditionally defined nudity we get of Bennett is to see her bare bottom, but in a shower scene and some other scenes, we come pretty damn close to seeing everything else. Part of me wonders if the apparent fixation on the amount of skin she revealed was an attempt by the filmmakers to cater to our most prurient interests regarding Lawrence -- to kind of make us think we were seeing Lawrence in the buff. (Then again, actual nude pictures of Lawrence are available from one of those Snapchat hacks or whatever it was, so perhaps we didn't really need to fantasize about Lawrence via Bennett in the first place.)

And on to some other thoughts ...

Oh Emily

Emily Blunt is one of my favorite working actresses today. Period. Exclamation point.

But boy did she let me down here.

What was she thinking in that first half of the movie?

She gets better, as does the whole movie, as it approaches its climax. But I'll be much quicker to blame Tate Taylor, the director, for how she performs her scenes of drunkenness in its first half. Because I just can't think of Emily Blunt as an actress who makes bad choices. No, not even appearing in Into the Woods.

But if I'm being honest with myself, Blunt at least shares the blame for her performance in this film.

Playing a drunk is not an enviable task. Many actors and actresses have tackled it numerous times, so not only are you competing with a pretty thorough history in the annals of acting, but even the best of those performances usually seem mannered in some way. There is almost always something too big by half about playing drunk. It's kind of like when people play being stoned or sniffing cocaine -- they almost always exaggerate the effects. (Whereas taking cocaine can really look as subdued as Trump looked during the second debate. Sorry, I'm taking every occasion I can to slam The Donald these days.)

So Blunt is not immune to those traps. She does a lot of unfocusing of her eyes and blurring of her speech and ranting and raving. There are choices she makes within her choices that ring true, but the overall effect is somewhat less than natural. And Taylor makes it worse by holding her in extreme close-up for many of these scenes.

The plot of the movie turns on a lot of twists related to her being blacked out, so no doubt Taylor is trying to capture that with his camerawork and editing choices. But it just doesn't work very well. And Blunt -- even if she is the blameless victim I want her to be -- pays the price.

Gone Girl on the Train

The similarities of this movie to Gone Girl are obvious, and I think, intentional. I won't list them here. Instead, I will draw attention to the one that I thought was the most shameless.

No less of a hall of fame film composer than Danny Elfman seems to have totally ripped off Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

The Nine Inch Nails frontman and his frequent collaborator worked with David Fincher to create a memorable and indelible score for Gone Girl. Then Elfman seems to have parroted it almost exactly.

People who know more about music than I do will surely point out important differences, but I noticed at least two points of near total correlation.

The beginning passages of both films deal with the lives of the couples in question pre-incident, when there's some possibility they're okay despite obvious foreboding to the contrary. In both films I noticed a sort of warm synthesized blooping on the soundtrack. (See, I told you I don't know much about music.) There's a melancholy to the music in these scenes, but also an optimism that things might turn out okay. The music is, as I say, warm, and it does, as I say, contain "blooping." You'll just have to try to imagine what I mean because I can't do any better than this, apparently.

As things go to shit and the more sinister elements of the plot are revealed later on, the score develops a sense of electronic rot, an ominous kind of scraping sound that increases in intensity as the physical and emotional violence of a scene intensifies. GONE GIRL SPOILERS. I'm thinking of the scene in Gone Girl where Rosamund Pike slits Neil Patrick Harris' throat and kind of writhes around on top of his body as the blood and life run out of him. I don't know if you remember it, but Reznor and Ross' score becomes unbearably rotten and scrapy during that scene. (Sorry, I'm doing my best.)

I'm not sure if there is an exact corresponding moment in The Girl on the Train -- I mean, there's a moment that involves a man bleeding from his neck that could well have that part of the score, but I didn't notice it there. I did notice it in the closing credits, and thought "That sounds almost exactly like that signature moment from the Gone Girl score."

Maybe we should just be happy Elfman isn't giving us another one of those Tim Burton-sounding scores with the angelic singing voices.

Chameleon

There's one woman at the center of the plot that I have yet to mention, and that's Rebecca Ferguson as the new wife of Emily Blunt's character's ex.

As I was watching the movie, I thought, "That woman looks sort of familiar, but I can't quite place her." The closing credits clarified for me. Ferguson was the woman who got so much praise in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation.

Even knowing that, though, she still looked only sort of familiar.

It's clearly the same woman playing both roles, but her physicality is so different in the two roles, and they're such different roles, that I couldn't make the connection in my mind.

I'll dispense with the side-by-side photos here, because when I look them up on Google Images, they do look fairly similar. I mean, it's the same actress, so obviously they look similar. She's not wearing prosthetics or anything in either role. Her hair color does seem to be different, but that's only one minor reason she seems so different.

Really, she seems different because actors are supposed to seem different when they play different types of roles. Why do you think Vincent D'Onofrio looks different every time you see him? Because he really climbs inside the skin of the characters she's playing. He's a true chameleon. And from what I've seen of these two roles, Ferguson may be one too.

Not really enough for me to recommend you to go see the movie, though.

A terrific female cast ... and Chris Hemsworth

Perhaps because of the presence of Australian Chris Hemsworth, we are getting The Huntsman: Winter's War a full two weeks before you in the U.S. are getting it. (I assume you are from the U.S., but you could be from anyplace, in which case, my apologies to you for assuming you are American.) It opened here on Thursday.

But Hemsworth is not what gives me a smidgen of interest in seeing this film, though it's only a smidgen.

Simply put, this movie has about the best assemblage of female acting talent in any movie I can think of recently -- which is all the more shocking because it's just a shitty FX-heavy sequel to a shitty FX-heavy movie. (I'm assuming Snow White and the Hunstman was shitty, though did not actually see it to have any authority behind my judgment.)

Charlize Theron was in the first one, so her involvement should not be (and wasn't) much of a surprise to me when I learned of it. But Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain? What's going on here?

What's going on, of course, is that it is, and always has been, difficulty for actors to resist wads of money being waved in front of their faces. I get it. I could not resist a wad of money being waved in front of my face, and it would be a far smaller wad than the one that was waved in front of theirs.

But Chastain and Blunt in particular have always impressed me as selective women, women who have made excellent arthouse work that gave their characters agency and stood for something progressive. Theron has had a more varied career of hits and misses, but she's also the only one of the group who has an Oscar (and was talked about as a surefire nominee last year for Mad Max: Fury Road, though that never transpired).

None of these women are new to blockbusters. In the past two years, Chastain has made the big sci-fi epic kind of her thing, as she was in the biggest scale space movie of both 2014 (Interstellar) and 2015 (The Martian). I'm sure healthy paychecks accompanied both jobs. Twenty fourteen also saw Blunt try on her bankability in a couple high-profile roles, one of which was a big hit with me (Edge of Tomorrow) and one of which was a major miss (Into the Woods). Like Chastain, Theron has also recently appeared in a big movie for Ridley Scott (Prometheus), but she's also not above idiotic comedies (A Million Ways to Die in the West).

So why should the Huntsman sequel -- actually a prequel -- seem so different for these three?

I'm sure it's a totally subjective thing, but to me, the movies listed in the above paragraph seemed like good bets, while this one does not. Each of those movies, even the Seth MacFarlane comedy, are high concept in some way, movies they would have seemed smart to involve themselves in if they'd been hits. And a number of those movies were hits, whether critical, commercial or both.

The Huntsman? It's a total cash grab. Again, I didn't see Snow White and the Huntsman, but was that anyone's idea of a promising new franchise, one that tried to clear the low bar of being about more than just making money? It made $155 million in the U.S., which is no small sum, but it also cost $170 million to make. Okay, internationally it made nearly $400 million -- a solid hit. But few movies, on their surface (because that's the only level on which I can actually judge this), seem to be more emblematic of the soulless Clash of the Titans-style approach to churning out big-budget FX movies for the masses. (And a sizeable chunk of the money probably came from Twilight fans showing up to watch Kristen Stewart -- who will not appear in the sequel.)

You're better than this, I want to say to Jessica, Emily and Charlize. You can do better.

But these ladies have a retirement to plan for. Blunt may be only 33, but Chastain and Theron are 39 and 40, respectively. And we all know what Hollywood does to women over 40 -- or more accurately, does not do. It does not employ them ... at least, not in roles where they can make very much money.

Maybe I should look at the prospect of seeing The Huntsman: Winter's War as a way to contribute to the retirement of three of my favorite actresses, many years in the future though I hope it is.

Then again, I'd be seeing it for free with my critics card, so I can't help them anyway.

Things should be better for Michelle Monaghan

I love Michelle Monaghan.

Let's just get that out of the way the start.

I've already devoted an entire post to my love for her, which can be found here. I think she is personality incarnate. She's bubbly and cute (physically but also in her mannerisms), but she can also bring it dramatically when need be (see the first season of True Detective). She should be a star.

However, True Detective is just about the only feather in her cap lately. The other places she's been turning up are just not becoming of a person of her talents.

I have two reasons for writing this post, but the first and most pressing seems to be this:

Now, I try not to damn a movie before I've seen it, especially when some movies that have received plenty of scorn -- most recently, The Giver, which I saw Sunday night -- have turned out to be big wins for me.

But the vitriol for Pixels has been at historic levels. Even by the pathetic standards of an Adam Sandler movie it is being shat upon. It's so generally acknowledged that this movie is or must be terrible that sites like Funny or Die have seen it fit to joke about the awareness we all share that it sucks. As seen here:

Oh, and then there's MovieBob's review that it so laden with colorful adjectives about the poor quality of this movie that I am either highly impressed by -- or take issue with -- the fact that he says he saw it just hours before the recording. As seen here:



So yeah, as you have determined by now, Michelle Monaghan is in Pixels. Maybe it was not a bad career choice on the face of it -- I mean, Sandler has flirted with respectability before, and continues to try to do so every third or fourth movie -- but the outcome was that she was front and center in what is being hailed as one of the biggest turds of 2015.

But what may be more disturbing is the fact that MovieBob does not see it fit to even mention her inclusion as being a travesty. He asks why Peter Dinklage or even Josh Gad would lower themselves to be in a movie made by such "shit-gargling fuckwits," but no mention is made of the lovely and charming Miss Monaghan. Either she did not register to him at all, or she did not register to him as someone who's great and deserving of better work.

So perhaps that brings me to my second point. The other place I've seen Monaghan's face most recently is on the cover of what we used to refer to as "straight to video" movies -- or movies that look like they should be that, in any case. Such as:

Or:

(Then again, these movies also feature Captain America and a recent best actor frontrunner, so maybe I should lay off.)

Or worse, a Nicholas Sparks adaptation:

Oh, she's working. There's no doubt about that. Hollywood recognizes her value on some level.

But I feel like Monaghan deserves the kind of career that another of my favorite actresses, Emily Blunt, is having. She should be not only in good big movies (Blunt was in Edge of Tomorrow), but also in good independent movies by hot directors (Blunt will be in Denis Villeneuve's Sicario later this year).

And Monaghan turns 40 next year, which is starting to be over the hill for a woman in Hollywood if you have not already firmly established yourself. I think of Monaghan as firmly established, but I guess your average person -- someone like MovieBob -- doesn't think of her that way. He thinks Josh Gad is more firmly established than she is.

Well, as usual with a piece like this, there is hope. Monaghan is currently filming the English language remake of the French thriller Sleepless Night, which I haven't seen, but which I have on good authority is terrific. Of course, American remakes of foreign films are certainly no guarantee to be good, but this one is being directed by Baran bo Odar, whose 2010 movie The Silence was really good. So it's not definite that it will be a good independent movie by a hot director, but it's in that realm, anyway.

Look, I just want the people I like to do good things. Is that so wrong?

And for Miss Monaghan's sake, I will eventually watch Pixels ... and hope to like it.