My Top 5 English Movies of the Decade 2011-2020
(in no particular order; light spoilers ahead)
Moonrise Kingdom
When I watched it the first of four times, I wanted to hug the movie. From opening shot to closing note (I stayed for the end credits), I loved everything in it to pieces, squirming in delight at the (a) camera moving strictly along x-y-z directions, (b) bewitching score (I learnt all the songs), (c) mind-tickling colours, (d) postcard-perfect locations, (e) delicious cast (I mean, in how many movies do you find Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Jason Schwartzman, all in *supporting* roles?), and (f) omniscient narrator who takes the trouble (and an umbrella) to talk to the camera. But most of all, I was thoroughly smitten with the two leads, their dialogue, and their tale of audacious, distilled romance.
Magic in the Moonlight
Maybe it was the illusion of a cozy, private viewing at my beloved little Bijou Cinemas in Eugene, seated as I was ahead of everyone else. Maybe it was Colin Firth's performance, maybe it was a Woody Allen script at its best, or the dialogue ("We are the acme of congruity"), or the magic tricks. Whatever — it was my most mesmerizing movie experience. Until this moment, I was not sure of Allen's exact place in my heart. Afterward, he quietly joined Chaplin at the top.
Coco
By the time Coco was out, Pixar had already perfected the arts of getting their patrons to cry. So when Shyamala and I entered the theatre the mood was mostly curiosity about their latest tricks. That this foreknowledge was still woefully insufficient, that Pixar still pulled the rug in such spectacular manner from beneath us, is testament to what superlative storytellers they are among the few originals left in cinema. Inside Out was pretty damn good and intellectually satisfying, but Coco is utter magic and Pixar's very best — yet.
Knives Out
The best whodunits aren't about who done it. Knives Out knows that, and so as soon as it exhibits the body, introduces the detective and interviews the suspects, it *shows* us what happened — the truth coming out of the perpetrator's mouth in *two* ways. Only, you know, …
We think we've seen it all, that no plot is all that diabolical if you've been brought up on Poirots and Marples, but Knives Out practically reboots the genre, as Sleuth once did. It delivers flawless scripting, performances, humour, and a closing shot for the ages. My favourite moment is when Daniel Craig, all Kentucky accent, reminds a central character: "You won by playing the game your way." Just the way writer-director Rian Johnson played it.
Interstellar
Interstellar could not have been made without 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it surpasses its predecessor in two virtues. First, where 2001 abandons character development for its vaster theme — the long arc of mankind's evolution — Interstellar achieves the astonishing task of placing the drama in proportion to its mammoth scope. Few epics succeed at this balancing act to this degree, e.g. Titanic. Second, the scale of the movie utterly outdistances 2001. Indeed it is hard to imagine what other frontier of Nature is left to explore in the movies after Nolan sweeps intergalactic travel, general relativistic time dilation and quantum gravity all into one basket. I was enormously pleased as a theoretical physicist to see these concepts on the screen, and as a sci-fi lover to see them packaged neatly into an authentic and intelligent father-daughter relationship. I was surprised to learn later just how accurately the film had handled physical reality. Kip Thorne — the physicist who supplied much of the story, counseled Nolan, and served as inspiration to Michael Caine's character — gave a beautiful lecture at the University of Oregon detailing the technicalities of the realistic special effects. (A couple of years later I nearly parked my car at his spot in Caltech hours before his Nobel Prize was announced.) Nolan is without doubt the king of cinema at the moment: along with Interstellar, my Top 10 of the Century would feature The Dark Knight and Inception.
My Top 5 Indian Movies of the Decade 2011-2020
Dare I aver that this was, collectively speaking, the finest decade yet for Indian cinema? Watching a desi film finally turned the corner from baseline expectations of artificiality and predictability to those of nuance and surprise.
Piku
Piku and the cab-owner are so finely attuned to their romantic situation and its unique challenges, that we get this exquisite moment where she asks him almost winking: "Think you want to marry me?" And the reply: "I'm not that mad." 'Piku' is full of such moments. Amitabh Bachchan pulls off a blinder in the riveting role of a social-progressive-yet-emotional-infant. He builds enough sympathy in us that when in the end he takes a free-winged bicycle ride through Calcutta that relieves him (as it were) of his long-standing agony, we are genuinely happy. And yet, when it is clear that he'd no longer appear in the film, we feel hope and possibility for the lives he'd held back. They could now play badminton with a Padukone.
Papanasam
I cannot conceive of a tighter script. Kamal Hassan is pitch perfect, a rarity these days, but the show belongs to Asha Sharath in the role of mama bear in khaki clothing.
Jigarthanda
Three spellbinding stories that could stand on their own stitched almost seamlessly into one breathtaking sequence. The most stylish Tamil film: kinetic camera, sounds, music, and editing, none of which are distracting because they're in the service of narration.
Queen
My favourite moment: Rani has shunted so emphatically into her new world that when the most unwelcome inhabitant of the old one visits her, she doesn't hear him. Not because she means to ignore him — she simply has too many plans for the day. And when she returns something he'd given her once, there is zero spite in the act, for she has discovered giddying depths of happiness she was previously unaware of.
Super Deluxe
The largest canvas spanned by an Indian film. The Vijay Sethupathi story arc alone would've inducted it into greatness, but somehow the film finds room not only to plumb other human conditions — the elasticity of social mores, the meaning of religion, of marriage, of death — but also for something altogether otherworldly.
Other movies of the decade that I'd count as experience as opposed to spectacle.
12 Years a Slave,
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,
Aadukalam,
Andhadhun,
Argo,
Before Midnight,
Boyhood,
Dear Zindagi,
Django Unchained,
Drive,
English Vinglish,
First Man,
Flight,
Gravity,
Her,
Hugo,
Inside Out,
Joker (Tamil),
Kaakaa Muttai,
Kubo and the Two Strings,
Life of Pi,
The Lunchbox,
Mad Max: Fury Road,
The Martian,
Meek's Cutoff,
Moana,
Naduvula Konjam Pakkattha Kaanom,
Nightcrawler,
Particle Fever,
The Revenant,
Rise of the Planet of the Apes,
Searching,
Skyfall,
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,
Sicario,
Snowpiercer,
Source Code,
Spider-Man: Homecoming,
Tim's Vermeer,
Shame,
Your Name,
The Walk,
Where to Invade Next,
Whiplash.