Well, well, well. I'm not sure what I expected to happen when I first started this small, very basic, and quite poorly-named site as a dumping ground for my efforts to turn into a film critic. But it's been a solid decade now, and here I still am, though both the content and amount of it have undergone significant changes in recent years.
Regardless, one thing that has remained a mainstay are my listicles, especially my yearly Top Tens. And with a decade now behind me, I have a whole 10 of them to look back and reflect on. So, I figured, what better way to celebrate a decade of my musings that to go the extra mile and rank...myself!
Yep. We're doing this. I am going to go back and take MYSELF to task for all my #1 picks so far. Which did I get wrong? Which don't hold up under the harsh lens of hindsight? Did I ever miss the mark entirely? LET'S FIGURE IT OUT TOGETHER!
Just so the ground rules are clear in advance, I will consider this list from two angles. First, I will try to recapture what led to me picking each film that I did in a given year to see if, even then, my pick was justified. Second, I will consider if another film I saw that year would, in hindsight, have been a better pick, especially if one has ended up aging better in the intervening years. What I will NOT do is engage in an alternative timeline where I somehow saw every film on time, because that was just never in the cards for me (and still isn't). Meaning, any movies from a given year I had no access to then and only saw much later won't figure into this, since they would not have been able to make my lists to begin with. No sense in making things more complicated than necessary. That's what my crippling self-doubt is for!
The rankings will be like a normal Top Ten list, meaning a lower pick like 9 or 10 means my pick was worse, with #1 obviously representing my best pick.
I think this'll be fun.
Number 10: 2012
What I Picked: Lincoln
What I Should Have Picked: Cloud Atlas
Figures. At the very bottom for my „Worst Best“ pick, we gotta wind it all the way back to the early months of this site, when I was but another young, fresh-faced, Roger-Ebert-Wannabe. As opposed to what I am now; a weary, aged, and beaten-down Roger-Ebert-Wannabe.
See, with this being the first Top Ten list I'd ever done, I felt a lot of wholly self-inflicted pressure to ape all the „real“ critics I followed. And since many of them had Lincoln somewhere on their Best Of lists and nearly all of them roundly ignored Cloud Atlas, that meant pulling the lever for so-called „prestige.“
Now, let me be clear- this is not a knock on Lincoln. It was and is a great film, definitely in the upper half of Spielberg's filmography, and Daniel Day-Lewis deserved all the awards. But was it the best film of that year? It is even MY favorite from that year? No and no. And the sad thing is, this isn't just hindsight- I knew that at the time. Even when I first did the list, a very clear voice in my head kept saying, „C'mon...you know Cloud Atlas is the real fave.“ But I chose to shunt that voice away and go with the safe „conventional“ choice, just like the Academy so often does. So yeah, this is all on me- I shoulda stuck to my guns, and this remains the one case where I very clearly made the mistake of not doing that.
Number 9: 2020
What I Picked: Hamilton
What I Should Have Picked: Corpus Christi
Ok, so this will be the most complicated one here to explain to anyone reading this in the far future where the COVID pandemic and the GOP are but fading memories. For those of us who were there, no explanation is needed, but to sum up; 2020 sucked. Like, generational, emotionally scarring suckage. All the years of dealing with a Fascist, death cult of an administration, building into a global pandemic where said administration made every conscious effort to hinder relief and cause as much death and suffering as possible, was something so beyond sense and morality that it was literally traumatizing to those of us who had to bear witness.
And as a result, I felt truly broken for most of the year. As if my entire being had gone into lizard-brain survival mode and shut off all capacity for emotion or feeling just to preserve whatever shred of sanity I had left. I spent the entire first half of 2020 feeling like I should feel something, but instead feeling nothing. You feel me?
And then Disney dropped the live recording of the original, Broadway cast of Hamilton, and when I watched it, I cried. I cried and cried and cried. I remembered who I was, what I valued, that I am not just a film bluff but a motherfucking THEATER NERD, and that there remained beauty and power in the human spirit that would outlive the fuckery. Hamilton has its flaws, certainly, but it was exactly what I needed at that moment in time to get me through the rest of the single worst year I had experienced to date. And there was simply no getting around that. So no, I do not, and will never, regret picking this as my „Film of the Year“ when all was said and done.
BUUUUUUUT.....yeah, no, a Broadway stage recording, no matter how expertly done, is not filmmaking. Hamilton is NOT a movie, and if it had dropped in any other year, or had 2020 been anything approaching „normal,“ I would not have spent even one second contemplating bending myself into so many pretzels to put it on my Year End list. So let's assume there exists a mythical alternate dimension where 2020 was slightly less shitty and Hamilton hits streaming in, say, December of 2019. Under such magical circumstances, Corpus Christi would have waltzed away with the top spot (although I could have made an argument for Totally Under Control).
Number 8: 2013
What I Picked: Asura
What I Should Have Picked: Inside Llewyn Davis
Unlike the year before, by the time I came around to doing my 2013 list I had shed myself of the desire to be „conventional“ with my writing. Nonetheless, picking my number one came down to the wire, with my top two films just about dead even in my brain. In the end, I went with this oddball, independent Japanese animated film about a rapid, partially-cannibalistic child in feudal times for the very specific reason that I found it's ending incredibly emotionally resonant. I still feel that way and absolutely think Asura is a criminally underappreciated gem.
However, while my reasoning at the time made sense to me and I can still get why I felt that way, as the years have gone by Asura has more or less stayed put, while Inside Llewyn Davis has vaulted ahead of it in leaps and bounds. There's just no denying the Coen Brothers when they are in top form. Not only has this long since established itself as my favorite of 2013, it even landed within the Top Ten on my Films of the Decade list from two years back. This is an all-time classic, and if I were to redo this list today, it would easily top the cake.
Number 7: 2016
What I Picked: 13th
What I Should Have Picked: Swiss Army Man OR Silence
My reasoning behind this pick, which came in the wake of the 2016 election and all the darkness that descended with it, was as follows; 13th, the first documentary by Queen Ava DuVernay, long may she reign, featured the single greatest sequence in all of film from that year. Said scene was a supercut of one of the more odious pieces of audio from a GOP rally, where Trump openly called for violence against his opponents and reminisced about „the good old days,“ where uppity Blacks were treated much differently, set to a montage of black-and-white footage from Civil Rights protests where we see, in violent detail, precisely what Trump meant by „the good old days.“ It remains one of the most on-point and powerful pieces of documentary filmmaking I've ever encountered, and the entire film deserves to be considered a modern classic.
However, while I think this was the right choice to make at the time and don't regret it, a single scene, no matter how good, doesn't necessarily make a film the greatest of a particular year. Plus, I think there is a slippery slope to picking number ones based on how topical a film is, because on that criteria alone, my lists would consist of documentaries and nothing else. While I do find outlets for that sort of thing- see my Films for the Trump Years collection- I want my Top Tens to be a little bit more fun and interesting, because we all need some escapism from time to time.
Plus, when you get right down to it, 13th just isn't my favorite film from that year anymore; my number two pick, Swiss Army Man, quickly supplanted it the more I contemplated its batshit brilliance. If you had asked me maybe a year or two later to redo the list, I would have switched the places for these two.
However, now that even more time has gone by, another contender has entered the chat; the least-discussed Scorsese film from the 2010's, an adaptation of a Japanese novel about the trials and pains of spiritual and existential uncertainty, set in feudal Japan. With a subject matter and approach that strikes deep at my own personal background and current mindset regarding religion and faith, Silence quietly (heh-heh) snuck up on me until, when putting together my Decade List in 2020, I found myself comfortably slotting it into my Top Ten, way ahead of Swiss Army Man. If I were to revisit this year now, these two would be dead ringers for the top spots, and I'm honestly not sure which would end up on top.
Sorry, my Queen. I beseech thee for thy royal pardon.
Number 6: 2017
What I Picked: Get Out
What I Should Have Picked: A Silent Voice OR The Last Jedi OR Thor Ragnarok
This might be the year that got scrambled the most for me in the subsequent years, with lots of movies shuffling around in my head. Get Out is a masterpiece, was one of the year's best films, and was criminally under-rewarded at that year's Oscars. However, like with 13th, I was once again being more topical with this pick than anything else. As great as the film is, the very things that make it great are also the reasons why the film is such a hard watch that I may never be able to sit through it start to finish again.
But what else could have taken its place? A Silent Voice, Star Wars TLJ, and Thor Ragnarok all cracked the top 15 in my Decade List, so any of them would have been solid picks. Plus, I haven't done a full rewatch of Lady Bird yet and that is exactly the sort of film that might hit me way harder the second time around. It's tough to say, but at the time the most likely alternative pick would probably have been A Silent Voice, which would have meant a full half of my first ten #1 picks would have been animated works. I guess I'm nothing if not consistent (Narrator: He isn't).
Number 5: 2019
What I Picked: Jupiter's Moon
What I Should Have Picked: Jupiter's Moon....but maybe Parasite? Portrait of a Lady on Fire? The Lighthouse?? Little Women???
Jesus Tapdancing Christ, 2019 was stacked. This honestly might have been, to date, the heaviest out of all the years I've been reviewing movies. There was practically zero breathing room between my top 3 at the time I made the list, and The Lighthouse and Little Women are no slouches either. I mostly stuck with Jupiter's Moon because it had the most I could relate to on a personal level, but looking back now, I could probably redo the exact order of my Top 5 a dozen different ways and still not feel satisfied. Which, granted, is about the best problem I could have as a film critic.
And this isn't even including The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a heart-shattering masterpiece that never got widely released in Europe and STILL isn't available for streaming. It took an inexcusable TWO YEARS before I had the chance to see it and it immediately had me rethinking both this Top Ten and my Decade list. If this had made the mix on time, I truly do not know which movie would get the top spot.
Number 4: 2021
What I Picked: The Mitchells vs. The Machines
What I Should Have Picked: The Mitchells vs. The Machines....but maybe (one day) something else?
I'm ranking this one a bit lower more out of a wariness of recency bias than anything else. It's only been a few months and, my initial surprise aside, nothing has yet led me to doubt this pick. That said, again, it's only been two months and there is still LOTS of stuff from last year I haven't had access to/time to watch yet, so there is still plenty of room for something that could have made my list to crop up. I suppose this is the one where I have to just shrug and stick a pin in it for now...
...but it WILL take a lot to supplant it, because Mitchells was legit great and there are STILL too many people sleeping on.
Number 1 (THREE-WAY TIE): 2014/2015/2018
What I Picked: The Tale of Princess Kaguya/Mad Max: Fury Road/Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
What I Should Have Picked: The Same. These picks were perfect and always will be.
And now we get to the golden ones. These picks were all perfect then and they're perfect now; not only have these remained my unchallenged favorites from their respective years, they were all a virtual dead heat for the top 3 spots in my Decade list. They remain among the best films I've ever seen and are all-time personal favorites.
Princess Kaguya ended up being the swan song of Isao Takahata, and what a note to go out on. From its eternal themes of struggling with societal restrictions, to its wholly unique animation style, to one of the best (and most underappreciated) Joe Hisaishi scores, to its devastingly emotional final moments, this remains one of the most profound experiences I have ever had in a movie theater.
George Miller's return to the franchise that helped to establish his career, usually the sort of thing that so, so often ends in creative catastrophe (looking at you, Ridley Scott), was instead an absolute baller that took the world by storm. Not only did it make bank and waltz out of the Academy Awards with the most trophies, it provided an endless ream of meme and gif material to feed the internet forever. Oh, and it also allowed Charlize Theron to immortalize one of the greatest original characters of all time.
And finally, in a world long overrun with comic book and superhero adaptations, practically drowning in studios aping each other to death, Into the Spider-Verse managed to outshine them all with one of the most engaging, memorable, and groundbreaking animation films to ever come out of an American studio, outshining nearly all the competitors to not only cement its status as (arguably) the best Spider-Man movie and one of the best comic book movies ever made, but an all-time great movie, period. I could watch Miles fall upwards into the New York City skyline forever.
Here's to the next 10 years.
-Noah Franc
