250 Critics Name 'Fury Road' The Best Film Of The Decade

[Jay 37,346]

3 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

That was really enjoyable indeed. I even bought the Blu-ray. 

 

I want to see it again!

[Glóin the Dark 1,220]

5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

it's officially not cool anymore 

 

That verily explains its exclusion from my vocabulary!

 

10 minutes ago, Glóin the Dark said:

Jeebers, 2008!

 

Sounds like an unsuccessful presidential bid.

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Wow and I don't even hardly remember it.

[A24 4,331]

20 minutes ago, Glóin the Dark said:

 

Wow, that seems like a very low success rate (even if there are some more that you didn't recall off the top of your head)! I would stop watching new films if I was finding them unabsorbing. I'm sure I could name more than one hundred films from this decade that I thought were awesome...

 

 

More than a hundred movies that knocked you out? Wow, that rarely happens to me. In fact, the older I'm getting, the less I'm floored by something.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Is that because the films arent as good anymore, or have you changed? Or both?

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Films are just as good as ever. There are good bad great and everyone perceives them differently. That said the top films on this list do not melt my butter.

[A24 4,331]

 

 

8 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Is that because the films arent as good anymore, or have you changed? Or both?

 

Let me put it this way, some people see a 'life changer' in almost every sci-fi movie that comes out. I'm lucky if I see one life changer sci-fi movie per decade. 

 

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Just now, Alexcremers said:

I'm lucky if I see one life changer sci-fi movie per decade. 

 

I Am Legend, right?

[A24 4,331]

8 minutes ago, JoeinAR said:

 That said the top films on this list do not melt my butter.

 

So they are not as good as ever?

 

Just now, Stefancos said:

 

I Am Legend, right?

 

No, that's Koray.

[Jay 37,346]

60s - 2001

70s - Alien

80s - Blade Runner

90s - Contact

00s - Children of Men? District 9? Donnie Darko?

10s - Arrival? Ex Machina? Annihilation? Interstellar? Edge of Tomorrow? Gravity? Under The Skin? Blade Runner 2049? War For The Planet of the Apes?

[A24 4,331]

60s - 2001: ASO

70s - Alien/Solyaris

80s - Blade Runner

90s - The Matrix

00s - Donnie Darko/Watchmen

10s - 

[Jay 37,346]

You consider Watchmen a sci-fi film?  Interesting...

[A24 4,331]

1 minute ago, Jay said:

You consider Watchmen a sci-fi film?  Interesting...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_science_fiction_films_of_the_2000s

[Jay 37,346]

I didn't ask you what Wikipedia considered it.  I am discussing how YOU consider the film.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

It's a comic book movie.

[A24 4,331]

Sure, but is that an official genre? I thought it was all Sci-fi/Fantasy.

 

If we're going to be really strict about it, then Alien isn't sci-fi either.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Genre hair-splitting?  This thread got boring fast.

[A24 4,331]

You Americans are so quickly bored. 

 

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

3 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

You Americans are so quickly boring.

 

Fixed!

[mstrox 6,651]

20 minutes ago, Alexcremers said:

You Americans are so quickly boning. 

 

It doesn't take much!

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Anyone else try to watch 10 minutes of Fury Road and then turn it off?

[A24 4,331]

No, but I didn't connect to it, which was a pity. 

[mstrox 6,651]

I saw it in theaters - the first ten minutes almost turned me off, too - but the rest, once the caravan chase starts, is brilliant.

[John 2,032]

It’s pretty eye candy but ultimately rather hollow, imo. 

[A24 4,331]

Just now, mstrox said:

I saw it in theaters - the first ten minutes almost turned me off, too - but the rest, once the caravan chase starts, is brilliant.

 

But couldn't you just as well be watching a carnival parade?

 

[TheUlyssesian 2,478]

This is the only correct list is

 

1. Amour (Haneke, Michael, 2012) 

2. Tabu (Gomes, Miguel, 2012) 

3. Stranger by the Lake (Guiraudie, Alain, 2013) 

4. Turin Horse, The (Tarr, Béla, 2011) 

5. Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz, Raúl, 2010) 

6. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, Apichatpong, 2010) 

7. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013) 

8. Toni Erdmann (Ade, Maren, 2016) 

9. Zama (Martel, Lucrecia, 2017) 

10. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) 

11. Li'l Quinquin (Dumont, Bruno, 2014) 

12. Toy Story 3 (Unkrich, Lee, 2010) 

13. Florida Project, The (Baker, Sean, 2017) 

14. Inherent Vice (Anderson, Paul Thomas, 2014) 

15. Western (Grisebach, Valeska, 2017) 

16. Good Time (Safdie, Benny & Josh Safdie, 2017) 

17. Cold War (Pawlikowski, Pawel, 2018) 

18. Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, David, 2014) 

19. Tribe, The (Slaboshpytskiy, Myroslav, 2014) 

20. House That Jack Built, The (von Trier, Lars, 2011)

  

So they got 3 right.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Just now, TheUlyssesian said:

This is the only correct list is

 

1. Amour (Haneke, Michael, 2012) 

2. Tabu (Gomes, Miguel, 2012) 

3. Stranger by the Lake (Guiraudie, Alain, 2013) 

4. Turin Horse, The (Tarr, Béla, 2011) 

5. Mysteries of Lisbon (Ruiz, Raúl, 2010) 

6. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Weerasethakul, Apichatpong, 2010) 

7. Inside Llewyn Davis (Coen, Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013) 

8. Toni Erdmann (Ade, Maren, 2016) 

9. Zama (Martel, Lucrecia, 2017) 

10. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018) 

11. Li'l Quinquin (Dumont, Bruno, 2014) 

12. Toy Story 3 (Unkrich, Lee, 2010) 

13. Florida Project, The (Baker, Sean, 2017) 

14. Inherent Vice (Anderson, Paul Thomas, 2014) 

15. Western (Grisebach, Valeska, 2017) 

16. Good Time (Safdie, Benny & Josh Safdie, 2017) 

17. Cold War (Pawlikowski, Pawel, 2018) 

18. Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, David, 2014) 

19. Tribe, The (Slaboshpytskiy, Myroslav, 2014) 

20. House That Jack Built, The (von Trier, Lars, 2011)

  

 

I've seen all of these!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

1 hour ago, Alexcremers said:

You Americans are so quickly bored. 

 

 

I don't get bored. I do take it as a terrible weakness 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Just now, JoeinAR said:

I don't get bored. I do take it as a terrible weakness 

 

How does one get bored with so much potential prey around?

 

Always something to plan.

[Thor 7,493]

This was extremely tricky. What I did was to copy/paste into a document my top 5 in all years, then select 25 of them and order them in an order (but after 5-6th place, it doesn't really matter which place they're at, really). It ended up thusly:

 

1.      EX MACHINA

2.      LE QUATTRO VOLTE

3.      THE REVENANT

4.      THE ROAD

5.      LUCY

6.      INTERSTELLAR

7.      SON OF SAUL

8.      ELLE

9.      THE POST

10.   NERUDA

11.   INCEPTION

12.   THE TREE OF LIFE

13.   PROMETHEUS

14.   MAD MAX: FURY ROAD

15.   GRAVITY

16.   AMERICAN HONEY

17.   THE NEON DEMON

18.   PAIN & GAIN

19.   LOST RIVER

20.   RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA

21.   DES HOMMES ET DES DIEUX

22.   LA GRANDE BELLEZZA

23.   IT FOLLOWS

24.   MUSTANG

25.   TOMBOY

 

That means I had to leave out the following of all the top 5s, which was rather painful: THE LOVELY BONES, ROBIN HOOD, HANNA, JANE EYRE, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, LOOPER, AMOUR, THE HOBBIT, DJANGO UNCHAINED, LA PASSÉ, GODZILLA, YOUR BEAUTY IS WORTH NOTHING, UNDER THE SKIN, STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS, THE RED TURTLE, MANDY, SOLO, THE FLORIDA PROJECT, A QUIET PLACE, THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT, THE LOST CITY OF Z, ALIEN: COVENANT, A SEPARATION

 

And so many more if I were to include my 6-10th place in each year -- also brilliant films.

 

I love lists, but I also hate them, in a way.

[Fabulin 3,511]

.

[Kasey Kockroach 2,344]

No thanks. I don't need to see the milking scene ever again.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

It's a masterpiece!  For whatever reason I was on-board from the opening shot.

[Jay 37,346]

Which film are you each talking about?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

TLJ

[Disco Stu 15,495]

The two posts above mine are talking about Fury Road.

 

1 minute ago, The Original said:

TLJ

 

In Fury Road, Immortan Joe has a bunch of large women with their breasts hooked up to milking machines.

[Jay 37,346]

So you were saying you were on board with Fury Road form its opening shot?  I don't even remember what the opening shot was!

 

Was it Tom Hardy standing next to his car, or was there something before that?

[Disco Stu 15,495]

1 minute ago, Jay said:

 

Was it Tom Hardy standing next to his car, or was there something before that?

 

That's it.  I thought it was very striking.  There's not a single frame of that movie I don't think is very striking.  I'm under that movie's spell for always (and allllllways)

[Jurassic Shark 12,055]

I haven't seen it. Any good?

[TheUlyssesian 2,478]

It is a little bit (a lot) overrated. It is basically a 2 hour action scene. That's it. The only novelty factor is that the lead is a female and it is almost in constant motion, but apart from that, there isn't much that personally strikes me a monumental achievement in the art of cinema.

[Jay 37,346]

14 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

That's it.  I thought it was very striking.  There's not a single frame of that movie I don't think is very striking.  I'm under that movie's spell for always (and allllllways)

 

Yea, I was on board right away and loved the whole movie too

[Disco Stu 15,495]

6 minutes ago, TheUlyssesian said:

 It is basically a 2 hour action scene. That's it. 

 

You say this like it's an easy thing to pull off.  And there is a lot of depth, it just doesn't stop to point it out to the people not paying close attention (you).

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Thank you!

[Fabulin 3,511]

.

[Glóin the Dark 1,220]

3 hours ago, Alexcremers said:

More than a hundred movies that knocked you out?

 

Knocked me out? You've raised the bar somewhat while I wasn't looking! I don't think I could list one hundred films that quite meet that standard. Perhaps forty (no actual spoilers within):

 

Spoiler

All Is Lost (J.C. Chandor)

Amour (Michael Haneke)

The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu)

Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky)

Blue Is the Warmest Colour (Abdellatif Kechiche)

Burning (Lee Chang-dong)

Calvary (John Michael McDonagh)

Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)

The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet)

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)

First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

The Florida Project (Sean Baker)

Four Lions (Chris Morris)

The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino)

Inception (Christopher Nolan)

Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd)

Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)

Leviathan (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev)

Madeline's Madeline (Josephine Decker)

Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan)

The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)

Once upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)

A Separation (Asghar Farhadi)

Son of Saul (László Nemes)

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)

The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky)

Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)

Whiplash (Damien Chazelle)

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

The Witch (Robert Eggers)

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)

 

And another forty which may not quite have floored me but are still whoppingly great:

 

Spoiler

Ain't Them Bodies Saints (David Lowery)

Apostasy (Daniel Kokotajlo)

The Babadook (Jennifer Kent)

A Bigger Splash (Luca Guadagnino)

BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)

Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen)

Blue Ruin (Jeremy Saulnier)

Boyhood (Richard Linklater)

Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)

Carol (Todd Haynes)

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)

Custody (Xavier Legrand)

Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino)

An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)

The Fighter (David O. Russell)

The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson)

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)

Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski)

Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel and Ethan Coen)

The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo)

Locke (Steven Knight)

Melancholia (Lars von Trier)

Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)

A Most Violent Year (J.C. Chandor)

Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)

Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz)

The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery)

The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)

Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)

Le Quattro volte (Michelangelo Frammartino)

Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

Shame (Steve McQueen)

Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Sicario (Denis Villeneuve)

Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu)

They Shall Not Grow Old (Peter Jackson)

Two Days, One Night (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)

We Need to Talk about Kevin (Lynne Ramsay)

 

And a final fortysome of films that are excellent and thoroughly absorbing:

 

Spoiler

American Honey (Andrea Arnold)

At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel)

Birdman (Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas)

The Death of Louis XIV (Albert Serra)

The Disappearance of Alice Creed (J. Blakeson)

The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland)

Elle (Paul Verhoeven)

Ex Machina (Alex Garland)

Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)

A Ghost Story (David Lowery)

God's Own Country (Francis Lee)

Graduation (Cristian Mungiu)

The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg)

The Ides of March (George Clooney)

The Immigrant (James Gray)

It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults)

Killing Them Softly (Andrew Dominick)

The Levelling (Hope Dickson Leach)

Little Men (Ira Sachs)

The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin)

Nebraska (Alexander Payne)

Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy)

Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas)

Philomena (Stephen Frears)

Phoenix (Christian Petzold)

Raw (Julia Ducournau)

The Revenant (Alejandro González Iñárritu)

Room (Lenny Abrahamson)

The Square (Ruben Ostlund)

Summer 1993 (Carla Simón)

Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh)

12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)

Western (Valeska Grisebach)

What Maisie Knew (Scott McGehee and David Siegel)

The Wife (Björn Runge)

Winter's Bone (Debra Granik)

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

1 minute ago, Glóin the Dark said:

The Kindergarten Teacher (Sara Colangelo)

 

This is secretly my favorite Arnold movie.

 

Oops, secret's out!

[Thor 7,493]

Seen all of those films, Gloin. Lots of great selections, but also some where our taste departs radically. 

 

3 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

This is secretly my favorite Arnold movie.

 

Oops, secret's out!

 

Ha, ha...that would be COP, not TEACHER.

 

THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER -- which I saw just a couple of days ago -- is nice, but nothing that sparked a lot of involvement. Brilliant child direction, though.

[Glóin the Dark 1,220]

1 minute ago, Thor said:

...also some where our taste departs radically.

 

For example?

[Larry O 115]

I'm inclined to agree with the #1 choice in this poll.

You know who else might agree? Steven Soderbergh.

 

Quote

 

I just watched Mad Max: Fury Road again last week, and I tell you I couldn't direct 30 seconds of that. I'd put a gun in my mouth. I don't understand how [George Miller] does that, I really don't, and it's my job to understand it. I don't understand two things: I don't understand how they're not still shooting that film and I don't understand how hundreds of people aren't dead.

 

I could almost see that's kind of possible until the polecat sequence, and then I give up. We are talking about the ability in three dimensions to break a sequence into a series of shots in which no matter how fast you're cutting, you know where you are geographically. And each one is a real shot where a lot of things had to go right. I'm going to keep trying; I'm not going to keep trying in the sense that I'm going to volunteer to direct the next Mad Max movie. I'm going to keep trying in the sense that when I have sequences that demand a certain level of sophistication in terms of their visual staging, I'm going to try and watch the people who do it really well and see if I can climb inside their heads enough to think like that.

 

But he's off the chart. I guarantee that the handful of people who are even in range of that, when they saw Fury Road, had blood squirting out of their eyes. The thing with George Miller, it's not just that, he does everything really well. The scripts are great, the performances are great, the ideas are great. He's exceptional. I met him once for about 30 seconds at the Directors Guild Awards in Los Angeles the year of Fury Road. But you don't want to say that stuff to somebody's face; it's embarrassing.

 

 

Usually you have to wait a few years before the real best picture of any given year reveals itself, and it's almost never actually the same movie that won the Oscar, but it took about 6 months distance from the end of 2015 before it became glaringly apparent Fury Road was easily the best thing that came out that year, and while there might be some argument that it doesn't deserve to be #1 on a decade list, I can't imagine an argument where it's not in the top 5.

It is to the 21st century what Raiders of the Lost Ark was to the 20th.

I do wish it wasn't scored by Junkie XL...

[Thor 7,493]

10 minutes ago, Glóin the Dark said:

 

For example?

 

Well, I absolutely loathe INHERENT VICE. Paul T. Anderson has always been very hit/miss to me. It came in at the very end, or close to the end, of my list that year.

 

I was also not as thrilled as several of my colleagues about THE ASSASSIN, BURNING, LOVELESS, PHANTOM THREAD, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, THE WILD PEAR TREE (just to pick from your first 'hidden box') -- but I have nowhere near the negative feelings for these as I did for INHERENT VICE.

 

From the list that started this thread, there are also some inclusions that irk me: MOONLIGHT, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS and HER are films I outright dislike. ROMA, PHANTOM THREAD, CAROL I find overrated.

 

7 minutes ago, Larry O said:

I do wish it wasn't scored by Junkie XL...

 

I'm SO thankful that it was. A spectacularly good score; one of the very best that year.