Just when you thought you had enough of 2014 year-end lists, it’s now 2015 and time to begin everyone’s “halfway through the decade” retrospective lists.
The folks at Fandor are the first out of the gate, as they asked 290 film critics (and assorted other movie lovers) what they thought the best films of 2010-2014 were.
The 26 films below veer more towards the art house end of the spectrum, but there’s some great representation for filmmakers like The Coen Bros, Terrence Malick, David Fincher, Spike Jonze, etc…
The Best Films of the Decade So Far (2010-2014)
1. The Tree of Life (103 votes)
2. Certified Copy (91 votes)
3. The Master (76 votes)
4. Margaret (68 votes)
5. Holy Motors (66 votes)
6. A Separation (64 votes)
7. Under the Skin (61 votes)
8. Inside Llewyn Davis (59 votes)
9. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (45 votes)
10. Boyhood (44 votes)
11. Goodbye to Language (41 votes)
12. The Social Network (40 votes)
13. Moonrise Kingdom (36 votes)
14. Her (33 votes)
(tie) Leviathan (2012)
16. Mysteries of Lisbon (32 votes)
17. The Act of Killing (28 votes)
(tie) The Turin Horse
19. Before Midnight (27 votes)
(tie) Melancholia
(tie) Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
22. Frances Ha (25 votes)
(tie) The Wolf of Wall Street
24. The Immigrant (24 votes)
(tie) Spring Breakers
Tabu
As far as comic-based (or related) films go: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World came in at #36, Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises made it in at #44, Blue is the Warmest Color is #56, The Dark Knight Rises wound up at #141 along with Snowpiercer. Kick-Ass, We Are The Best and X-Men: Days of Future Past also received one vote each, landing them at #248.
I’m surprised to see there wasn’t any support for The Avengers or Guardians of the Galaxy, especially given the recent WGA nod for the latter. I’m sure 5 more years, and further perspective, will alter much of this list dramatically. Regardless, there’s a lot of stunning cinema here, and it’s a great list for anyone looking to check out something new, or a film they might have missed over the past few years.
And here’s a nice video compilation of the top 26:
In Washington DC, a clever spin on the superhero film festival:
Oddly, however, no Superman? Or Spider-Man, for that matter.
To my recollection, I’ve made only a small handful of edits to Wikipedia—a couple at least five years ago, and two this past summer. Not surprisingly, most (if not all) were related to Bill Finger.
The two more recent edits were to the entries for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, the second and final films in Christopher Nolan’s groundbreaking Batman trilogy.
I added that the first Batman story to include the phrase “the Dark Knight” was one written by Bill Finger (in Batman #1, 1940). The fact that neither film needed the word “Batman” in the title shows how iconic not only the character but this nickname are.
Note that I did not write “Bill Finger was the first to call Batman ‘the Dark Knight’” nor did I claim that Finger coined the phrase.” I think both were the case, but we may never know for sure. Therefore, to defend my objectivity, I inserted the info in a way that is indisputable.
I feel it is a travesty that Bill’s name is not in the credits of those (or any) Batman movies, but am somehow comforted by the fact that at least Wikipedia has the truth. More people have access to Wikipedia than to the movie…
Though the movie the Aurora, Colorado, shooter chose for his rampage was clearly deliberate, this unthinkable incident is not about Batman, or even movies in general.
The priorities are honoring the dead and figuring out what we can do to better protect the living. Like the rest of the conscious world, I express the deepest of sympathy to those suffering.
Still, as the author of a new book about Batman, I can’t begin to post in the wake of Aurora without acknowledging the tragedy. I don’t claim to have anything profound to add to the chorus of eloquently worded offers of condolences, shoulders, blood, and other forms of support. I simply want to say I am so, so, so sorry for your loss.
The day we woke up to the heartbreaking (and enraging) news, I had three items on my agenda, and all were Batman-related: morning phone interview about Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman with the New Haven Register, the newspaper of my hometown metropolitan area; afternoon book signing/meet and greet at a Virginia Barnes & Noble; evening screening of The Dark Knight Rises. (I didn’t have advanced tickets; arriving only 30 minutes before start time, I suspected it would be sold out. It was not.)
At first I wondered if I should go through with any of my 7/20/12 agenda, especially the second two items; if my book was not about Batman, I don’t think this would have been as strong an internal debate.
But I am not the type for symbolic grandstanding. If you are not directly affected by such an incident, I do not feel going on with life is disrespectful, nor do I feel a one- or two-day moratorium on Batman “work” will send a message of consequence to anyone, including myself. I believe in doing what I can, privately, to help the victims and meanwhile, carrying on.
To be clear, I am also not one who says “I will go ahead with my Batman commitments because if I don’t, the terrorists win.” That brand of statement is too glib, too self-important, for me. I believe in going ahead with my commitments because they are just that, commitments. I can take other specific action to do my small part to try to prevent terrorism.
Here are glimpses of my low-key afternoon:
The table as it was set up.
The table as I rearranged it. I don’t like giving out candy and I don’t like Butterfingers
in particular, but I’m sure you get why I made exceptions.
Bill Finger main-created Batman and nicknamed him the Dark Knight. Today (perhaps you heard) The Dark Knight Rises opens, but Bill’s name will not be in the credits.
On 12/10/07, a bit more than six months before The Dark Knight opened, I e-mailed DC Comics; after introducing myself as the author of books including Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman (which also wasn’t out yet), I asked the following:
Could Bill’s name be included in the credits for The Dark Knight? Please don’t automatically delete! I know contractually DC can’t call him “co-creator” so I rather mean something along the lines of “Batman was first called ‘the Dark Knight’ in Batman #1, in 1940, in a story written by Bill Finger.” DC publications already regularly credit Bill for that story, so I see this as completely compatible, legally safe, and of course morally fair. After all, the movie’s title doesn’t even include the word “Batman”—it is wholly a phrase coined by Bill Finger. I look forward to your response.
DC, to their credit, wrote me back:Thanks for your passion for our creators and characters, but there are no plans to credit Bill on The Dark Knight.
MTN:To be clear, I am asking if Bill can be credited only for the coining of a phrase, in unambiguous language. … Isn’t that just as permissible (it seems even more so) as your regular practice of crediting him in reprints for entire stories he wrote?
DC:
With all due respect, I’m not having this discussion.
However, I was not the first to attempt this. That distinction goes to Lyn Simmons, Bill’s second wife; they married in the late 1960s.Her determination to get credit for Bill were bold, selfless—and, it seems, nearly successful. I will let her words—and press about her efforts—speak for themselves (some are undated so I have put them in chronological order as best I can):
Batman is one of our greatest fictional champions of justice, so it is cruelly ironic that the story of where he came from hides a gross injustice: the man largely responsible for him receives no official credit.
What’s more, co-creator and original writer Bill Finger is the one who first called Batman “the Dark Knight,” yet Bill’s name will not appear in the credits of The Dark Knight Rises (nor did it in The Dark Knight). The nickname “Dark Knight” is so iconic that the word “Batman” doesn’t even need to appear with it; meanwhile, the mind behind it is left in the dark.
Yet I came up with one way to link Bill with the movie and hopefully do some good for my book in the process.
I individually e-mailed the following flyer to hundreds of independent bookstores across the country:
Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman publishes July 1.
The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.
My proposed course of action for the bookstores is simple:
- Ask the nearest cinemas if they will hand out the flyer to people who buy tickets to TDKR.
That’s it.If even the smallest fraction of moviegoers goes for the same-day incentive, I’d consider this effort a success. In part that is because the smallest fraction of the projected audience of the movie—1.939 zajillion—is several nations unto themselves.As it stands, I couldn’t figure how to extra-sweeten the deal for the cinemas…but they have nothing to lose, either.
Perhaps they’ll view this as value-added, serving their customers some historical perspective with their blockbuster. Perhaps they’ll feel a moral obligation to do their part for Finger when so many (but not Finger) will be making so much on his genius. Perhaps they just like Batman.Bookstores, if you set the discount, and cinemas, if we provide the flyers, who’s in?
By: Maryann Yin,
on 5/1/2012
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Legendary Pictures has released the third trailer for its upcoming Batman comic book adaptation, The Dark Knight Rises. We’ve embedded the trailer above–what do you think?
According to Comic Book Resources, Titan Books will publish the official movie tie-in novel by Greg Cox. Both the book and the movie will be released in July 2012.
Here’s more from E! Online: “[Anne] Hathaway gets lots of screen time in the new trailer as both [Selina] Kyle and her feline alter ego Catwoman. She appears to be taking Batman’s side and has no problem getting in on the action. There’s plenty of Jordon Gordon-Levitt‘s mysterious new cop John Blake looking all emotional. We also get to see franchise stalwarts like Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman), Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman).”
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
As anyone with a computer knows, Google is one of those rare brands willing to vary its logo. They have tweaked it to pay tribute to everyone and everything from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry to Pac-Man.
So on 3/27/12, I pitched them ([email protected]) this:
You'd be lavished with undying praise by legions of geeks everywhere if you did a doodle in honor of writer Bill Finger (2/8/14 - 1/18/74), the uncredited co-creator (and, objectively, dominant creative force) behind Batman, even though cartoonist Bob Kane unconscionably took all the credit. Bill is widely considered to be the greatest comics writer of his generation (the Golden Age)...and the biggest martyr in comics history.
Bill died alone, poor, and unrecognized (no obituary, no funeral). I wrote a book on him to help preserve his culturally significant legacy.
While we are too late for this year's birth and death anniversaries, I think a date that would make an even bigger statement would be July 20—the date The Dark Knight Rises, the next Batman movie, comes out. It would be poignantly appropriate since it was Bill who first called Batman the "Dark Knight" back in 
Batman #1 in 1940...yet Bill’s name will not be in the film credits...
To be continued…I hope. I'm feeling lucky.
By: Maryann Yin,
on 1/25/2012
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Over at MTV News, sixteen upcoming movies were pitted against one another to determine the winner of the “MTV Movie Brawl 2012.” In the final round, almost four million votes were cast and Cosmopolis (a Don DeLillo adaptation starring Twilight actor Robert Pattinson) emerged victorious over The Hunger Games (starring Oscar-nominated actress Jennifer Lawrence).
In an interview with MTV, director David Cronenberg explained how he first learned about the brawl: “Cosmopolis, while I think in terms of what it is as cinema is pretty hefty, but in terms of budget and promotion, it’s an underdog compared to something like the Dark Knight franchise. I really didn’t think we would have much of a chance. That really got my attention.”
In the video embedded above, MTV caught up with Cosmopolis actor Paul Giamatti to get his reaction on the movie’s win. Several of the Movie Brawl film are literary adaptations including John Carter, The Avengers, Snow White & the Huntsman, The Hobbitand The Dark Knight Rises.
continued…
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Legendary Pictures has released a two-minute trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the conclusion of Christopher Nolan‘s Batman film trilogy.
Follow this link to watch the trailer–what do you think? Nolan collaborated on the screenplay with his brother, screenwriter Jonathan Nolan. The movie will hit theaters in July 2012. The trailer highlights the infamous Batman villain Bane as he wrecks Gotham City.
Here’s more from Movies.com: “[The trailer revealed] some enticing dialogue from Anne Hathaway, playing Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman). Naturally her chat with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), as they dance close together at a masquerade ball, falls somewhere between seductive and threatening, but that’s what we expect from her character. Will she be a villain? A romantic sidekick? Both? Other brief glimpses of Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine and Matthew Modine are exactly that — brief glimpses.”
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The teaser trailer for “The Amazing Spider-Man” is here, and we can’t help but wonder if this’ll be a bigger flop than the Broadway musical. Also, we miss Tobey McGuire. Over at Batman franchise headquarters, the trailer for... Read the rest of this post
Wow.
That list is blindingly awful
Yay for Inside Llewyn Davis!
No Speed Racer? I call bullshit.
I have to respectfully disagree about Inside Llewyn Davis. IMHO, at number 8 it rates waaaaay too high. Love the Coen Brothers, but really hated this when it came out. Early 60’s folk music in New York never sounded like it did in this movie. But for a song or two, not even close. And I never believed the main character had any sort of passion for the music he *did* play.
If you want to see a great film (released this year) about music that’s authentic and heartfelt and full of all the crazy things that music *is* about, see Whiplash, starring Miles Teller and a mesmerizing J.K. Simmons. Now that’s a movie that should have been a lot higher than #175.
Hey John,
I think Speed Racer came out in 2008, but how’d you feel about Cloud Atlas?
Charlie,
I hear you! Llewyn Davis was one of those films that sorta underwhelmed me at first, but then its charms worked its way into my head, especially its pseudo-Sisyphean structure. I know the main character was based on Dave Van Ronk and used some of the traditional music he played, but I’m not familiar enough to know how much. Definitely that song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” that opened the film at least.
The only thing the pretentious, miscast and overlong ‘Margaret’ is masterly about is in illustrating just how unprofessional a film director can act. Lonergan’s refusal to honor his contract will only make it harder for future filmmakers to win final-cut rights.
Why did people like the movie “Her” so much?
It is probably the only movie I ever walked out of. Sure it had good art direction, but all the dialogue was so pretentious and cheesy.
Maybe I can’t talk though since I’m not into artsy films. My favorite movie is Team America: World Police, which should be on this list!
Team America: World Police came out in 2004, so sadly, it wouldn’t be eligible for this list.
I have only seen Boyhood from the Top 10. And I gotta say it was great. Patricia Arquette never disappoints. And it barely looked like she aged in the span of the 12 years this movie took place.
Tree of Life as the best movie of the first half of the decade? Can’t help but roll the eyes.
@kyle Pinion
Whoops. For some reason I thought the list was from 2004 to 2014, which in retrospect does not make any sense.
But still “her” was terrible and “sharknado” should be on the list.
Some really great movies on here, a small handful I probably wouldn’t have picked myself, but I see why they were chosen.
I am legitimately shocked at the lack of Edgar Wright representation on this list, though, and I’d like to see more representation from action, comedy, and horror in general.
Still, any list that has Certified Copy, Margaret, and A Separation in the Top 10 is pretty alright by me.
“I’m surprised to see there wasn’t any support for The Avengers”
I’m not surprised that it missed the boat. Once the luster of the various Marvel franchises coming together on screen for the first time wore off, all that was left was a lot of terrible dialogue, explosions, and a sad excuse for a plot. On the other hand, a number of the movies that did make the list weren’t very good either, probably a symptom of only having five years worth of films to pull from.
Kind of interesting to me that the top three rated movies from the same time period on IMDB.com are Inception, Interstellar (both of which are much farther down the Fandor list), and the French film The Intouchables (which doesn’t appear on the Fandor list at all).
What an excruciatingly terrible list by my particular lights, epitomized by the #7 placement of the amateurish “Under the Skin”. That highly-divisive film is ludicrously overpraised by style-conscious critics but mostly loathed by actual audiences (with a majority of 1/5 reviews from customers at Amazon.com).
The indignant tone pervading these comments is wonderful.