A 2010s List for Those That Couldn't Wait

[colinr0380]

20. The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013) This is another shocker to me. It does feel like a lot of films from the first half of the decade may have faded into memory or been superseded by newer entries in their director's canon. But this is my favorite Gray of the decade. There's a lot I love here: Phoenix's self-loathing pimp, Renner's entrancing magic act, that final shot.

If it is any consolation Shrew I just had The Immigrant in my list. Such a powerful film and I entirely agree about that astonishingly perfect virtuoso, but more importantly emotionally gut-punching, final shot. In a film that feels all about characters examining themselves in mirrors, yet often refusing or unable to acknowledge the figure looking back, it seems achingly apt to end within one.

[zedz]

Heads up to whoever voted for Beanpole that I will be revising my list to vote for it! I categorize movie release dates slightly differently than IMDb and forgot to account for it in that case...

Also, absolutely stunned that two people voted for Wind River.

And apologies from me, as I bumped Beanpole off the bottom of my list to make room for a film I'd forgotten.

Likewise, I'm shocked at how bad some of the films that got voted for are (i.e. some of the worst films I've seen in the last ten years). Not naming names, but yikes!

About 60% of the films I voted for are currently orphans, but I'm not inclined to massage my list to promote films I like less. I'm happy to be sold on the merits of any films I've never heard of, however.

[Ghersh]

Likewise, I'm shocked at how bad some of the films that got voted for are (i.e. some of the worst films I've seen in the last ten years). Not naming names, but yikes!

Why not name them? Would be interesting...

[zedz]

My poor orphans:
15. The Knick (Steven Soderbergh, 2014-15) Are people splitting the Knick vote by voting for the individual seasons? Did none of the people who praised this in its thread vote here? Did you all (like myself initially) agonize about voting for seasons of TV on this film list? Whatever the case, this is "retired" Soderbergh unleashing absolutely electric filmmaking.

The Knick is fantastic. I don't vote for TV series, but if you do, I'd highly recommend it. Possibly the best US series of the decade.

[zedz]

Likewise, I'm shocked at how bad some of the films that got voted for are (i.e. some of the worst films I've seen in the last ten years). Not naming names, but yikes!

Why not name them? Would be interesting...

I'd rather talk about films I like than disembowel somebody's pets, but I think I'm on record about several of them somewhere on the forum.

[knives]

A Rainy Day in New York (49): I don't know if this is Woody Allen's most mature film, but it's the film that's most reflective of his late-age maturity and developmentally-delayed self-actualization.

Literally about an inch away from including on my list, but with three films I figured I already gave WA plenty of love. I doubt I have the time to defend all my little orphans, but I must say that I imagine if more on the board saw Yuasa’s wonderful, eclectic, pop art Fantasia The Night is Short, Walk on Girl it would definitely make the list. The way it uses subjective experience to present the experience of youth is the definition of the board’s wheelhouse.

[Ghersh]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

Incendies on the another hand is a beautiful film which is both very specific to its themes and characters and their backgrounds as well as somewhat universal in the simple elegance of its story and storytelling. A great experience of the kind that stays with me for a long time. I'm still baffled it's an orphan right now, as I thought it was Villeneuves most or second-most acclaimed film with communities like these.

[zedz]

Dragging together some stuff I've previously said about my orphans, starting with the top ten:

Happy Hour:

I've decided to optimistically open a thread for the best new film I've seen so far this year, Hamaguchi Ryusuke's 5+ hour quiet epic Happy Hour.

The film focuses on a group of four middle-aged female friends in Kobe. We meet them at a drizzly picnic before they split up and afford us glimpses of their everyday work and family life. The first half-hour or so is gently observational, kind of a cross between Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Eric Rohmer. The group reconvene to make up numbers at a day-long yoga-esque workshop organized by one of their number, Fumi, and this is where the film drifts, unexpectedly but delightfully, into Rivette territory. The pace slows right down to examine the activities of the characters, and the subtle, largely non-verbal, interactions between them, over an extravagant stretch of cinema time (well over an hour if you factor in the revealing social gathering that follows). The characters unfold before us, making unexpected revelations and alchemically altering established relationships.

The film resumes a more standard pace when the quartet split up again, but each time they reconvene, Hamaguchi's cinematic microscope comes back out and we get to experience some kind of performance in unusual detail. In the middle of the film, it's Jun's divorce hearing; in the second half, in a mirror of the workshop, it's a book reading (which pretty much occupies real time). By the time of this latter event, radical changes have happened within the group, which has moved towards individual isolation for a variety of complex reasons, and the event is far more fraught and fragmented than its first-half counterpart, as is the dinner that follows. The narrative is carefully worked out, but develops logically and naturalistically (the script and characters were developed through extensive workshopping).

Hamaguchi's style is elegant and unfussy, with the occasional flourish when he artfully throws a character into shadow or plays with layered reflections. More deliberately, from time to time a character's gaze might directly address the camera. The first time this happens, it creates an incongruous connection that will only be followed up several hours later. The performances are superb, almost all coming from first-time actors, and no characters are conceived as fixed: even tertiary characters get the opportunity to surprise us in their limited screen time.

I'm not familiar with any of Hamaguchi's previous films (which include a 2007 Solaris!), but Happy Hour is the work of a major talent and is well worth taking the time to experience.

Norte, the End of History:

If this is going to be the greatest film of 2013, somebody better start up a thread for it.

Not only is this the best film I've seen this year, it's the best-looking as well. Diaz demonstrates a complete mastery of Cinemascope composition that makes this the most impressive widescreen film I've seen since Loznitsa's My Joy. Like that film, the skill doesn't lie in contriving artsy or striking shots for the wide format, but the much more elusive Fordian gift of placing characters intelligently and meaningfully in their surroundings and making every composition look 'right'. This is a long, long film, and it includes some long, long shots, but a lot of those incorporate subtle camera movement and reframing (e.g. gradual tracks in) or the tying together of several distinct compositions in a single shot. There's an exquisite shot at dawn which begins on Eliza's sister waiting at home, then moves to take in the arrival of Eliza in a taxi and the unloading of the fruit and vegetables she's bought at the market, then moves back to the house. At various points the action is occurring in the foreground, midground, background and deep background (all against the incrementally changing light of the dawn), with the camera panning and tracking to reframe it, but at every point the composition is balanced and alive.

In terms of story, this is slow cinema with a lot going on. The same amount of narrative could easily occupy nearly as much screentime in a conventional film, but Diaz creates space by allowing a lot of major events to occur offscreen, since his interest isn't in the big catastrophes, but in how they impact on everyday lives. In short, this is another one of those 'society drives ordinary guy to murderous action' films that seem to be in vogue at the moment (though I don't know if they ever go entirely out of fashion). At Cannes alone, that trope yielded one other masterpiece (Jia's A Touch of Sin), standard issue festival fodder (Heli) and generic crap (Blue Ruin). Where Diaz sets himself apart is spending the time to really explore the impact of that action on his three protagonists, but also balancing it with the rest of their lives. Even if cruel fate and an indifferent justice system destroys your life, you still have to feed your kids. This is an extraordinarily powerful and engrossing film, so I don't want to spoil too much. Just see it.

Jauja (really shocked nobody else voted for this!):

Alonso's most commercial (story! actors!) film yet is still vastly removed from the mainstream, and it's also profoundly beautiful and mysterious while at the same time being about as simple as a narrative can be (girl runs away / is kidnapped; father pursues). Along with Lav Diaz (qv), Alonso is rediscovering silent movie mise en scene (and Viggo Mortensen gives essentially a great silent film performance for most of the film), and the film is exquisitely mounted in Academy (with - attention, Herr Schreck! - cute rounded corners to ensure that projectionists don't mess with the precision framing). There's dialogue, but much more of the narrative is conveyed by how full figures are deployed in relation to the raw landscape. It's like a modern day Sjostrom or Stiller film (or outdoorsy Murnau). Despite the austerity of the style, it plays like a classic western, until it turns into a Raul Ruiz film when a trapdoor in the narrative drops us into a more allegorical level that's sublimely moving. The film comes to a perfect close with Mortensen disappearing into the landscape. And then the film drops us through another Ruizian trapdoor (or maybe it's a Pasolinian one?) I really liked this coda on its own terms, but I suspect it's going to be extremely divisive, and as an ending it's much less holistic and satisfying than the other one - which is probably the point.

[therewillbeblus]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

Incendies on the another hand is a beautiful film which is both very specific to its themes and characters and their backgrounds as well as somewhat universal in the simple elegance of its story and storytelling. A great experience of the kind that stays with me for a long time. I'm still baffled it's an orphan right now, as I thought it was Villeneuves most or second-most acclaimed film with communities like these.

While Incendies really put me off, and if it has been my first Villeneuve, I wouldn't have continued. But I'm in the minority there.

[Red Screamer]

OK, who was the maniac who voted for Dario Argento's Dracula 3D?

Guilty. I don't have a defense for it and I half expect that I'll hate it if I watch it again. But I had a transcendent experience seeing it in a theater at 3 or 4 A.M. as part of a horror movie marathon. The 3D was gorgeous, with rich colors like stained glass. Its serious, hushed tone and dramatic inertia might not be virtues in the light of day, but that night they helped mesmerize me, making the experience run on pure sensation. It was a hallucinatory spectacle that gave me the same feeling I got as a kid the first time I saw paintings at an art museum or the first time I played with a stereoscope. So my vote's honoring that specific experience more than evangelizing for the film. It'll probably end up as my #50.

But otherwise, to the fellow Jodie Mack fan who voted for two Mack shorts rather than the two longer Mack films I chose...

Also me! Mack is one of the ten or so filmmakers who defines this decade in my opinion. I wanted to do a guide on her work for this thread but never got around to it, in part because I haven't found a way to see Dusty Stacks of Mom yet! I'll definitely vote for The Grand Bizarre in my revised list—a great film and the abstract animated-musical-comedy-essay you never knew you wanted—though I prefer her shorts. Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty, my highest-placed orphan, belongs on the shortlist of the greatest flicker films ever made. Mack's mastery of the form creates some incredibly vivid 3D effects simply through careful compositions and editing, and its concept is as simple as it is ingenious: combining, through cinema, the last signs of life from one year's garden with the first growths of the next year's. In the tradition of feminist gallery artists, she fuses the categories of high art and the so-called domestic arts. And the results are euphoric. I have nothing to say about her Glistening Thrills, a ballet of light play and colors blooming, except that its beauty makes me weep.

Some of my other orphans make me worry about what this list is going to look like: Tsai, No Home Movie, Bernie, Vitalina Varela, &c &c. I didn't think these films needed an increased profile but maybe I was wrong. I actually didn't vote for The Immigrant because I assumed it would place without me!

[domino harvey]

I am highly unlikely to change any of my votes, but in case you are, here's a three minute gift to all of you who didn't vote for Cat City only because you never saw it. To this day I have no idea why the YouTube algorithm recommended this to me, but thank God it did

[knives]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

Incendies on the another hand is a beautiful film which is both very specific to its themes and characters and their backgrounds as well as somewhat universal in the simple elegance of its story and storytelling. A great experience of the kind that stays with me for a long time. I'm still baffled it's an orphan right now, as I thought it was Villeneuves most or second-most acclaimed film with communities like these.

While Incendies really put me off, and if it has been my first Villeneuve, I wouldn't have continued. But I'm in the minority there.

A minority of at least two (though I only like Blade Runner)

[senseabove]

Also me! Mack is one of the ten or so filmmakers who defines this decade in my opinion. I wanted to do a guide on her work for this thread but never got around to it, in part because I haven't found a way to see Dusty Stacks of Mom yet! I'll definitely vote for The Grand Bizarre in my revised list—a great film and the abstract animated-musical-comedy-essay you never knew you wanted—though I prefer her shorts. Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty, my highest-placed orphan, belongs on the shortlist of greatest flicker films ever made. Mack's mastery of the form creates some incredibly vivid 3D effects simply through careful compositions and editing, and its concept is as simple as it is ingenious: combining, through cinema, the last signs of life from one year's garden with the first growths of the next year's. In the tradition of feminist gallery artists, she fuses the categories of the so-called domestic arts and high arts. And the results are euphoric. I have nothing to say about Glistening Thrills, the other short of hers that I voted for, except that it's one of the most beautiful films ever made, an exuberant ballet of blooming colors and light play so gorgeous that it makes me weep.

Some of my other orphans make me worry about what this list is going to look like: Tsai, No Home Movie, Bernie, Vitalina Varela, &c &c. I didn't think these films needed an increased profile but maybe I was wrong. I actually didn't vote for The Immigrant because I assumed it would place without me!

Macks shorts are indeed superb, though I found them a little opaque, if still delightful and intriguing, until The Grand Bizarre made everything click into place, and finally watching Dusty Stacks (and re-watching The Grand Bizarre) yesterday affirmed for me that, while the shorts are masterful in their execution, what's astonishing about the longer works is how Mack's broad obsession with pattern, as narrowly focused on the "domestic arts" of fabric as it often is, allows her to take absolutely massive, unwieldy concepts and abstract them into something as simple as the shifting line of a shadow as the sun descends in late afternoon. I mean, Dusty Stacks is an entertaining pseudo-rock opera, but it's also a cogent look at the consumption and disposability of imagery around the turn of century as manifested by the impact of the PC revolution on a specialist small business. There's one brief, almost throwaway composition that recreates two of the most over-referenced images in film history and yet it combines the salience of both, the thrilling possibilities of technological progress and the unwitting victims of forces larger than the individual, in a way that is both hilarious and poignant.

If anyone is curious to see Dusty Stacks... now or in super advance preparation for the musical list, I miiiiight be able to help.

I was also the other Tsai orphan. I've been slowly working through his narrative features and even though Stray Dogs is probably my least-favorite of them all, it just felt wrong not to include Tsai at all. I'll bump Journey up my viewing list to see if I'm up for de-orphaning it instead.

[therewillbeblus]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

Incendies on the another hand is a beautiful film which is both very specific to its themes and characters and their backgrounds as well as somewhat universal in the simple elegance of its story and storytelling. A great experience of the kind that stays with me for a long time. I'm still baffled it's an orphan right now, as I thought it was Villeneuves most or second-most acclaimed film with communities like these.

While Incendies really put me off, and if it has been my first Villeneuve, I wouldn't have continued. But I'm in the minority there.

A minority of at least two (though I only like Blade Runner)

I've been vocal about my distaste for the last act of Sicario, and while I love the final shot of Prisoners, the reveal in its third act kinda killed that otherwise solid movie for me too. Blade Runner 2049 is far superior to the original and might be his best film, but Arrival hits a very personal ethos exactly in its cavity for me, and with one of Adams' best perfs to earnestly deliver the emotional side of that philosophy, it might be my favorite. Enemy is a fine attempt at one of those eccentric ambiguous sci-fi/metaphor indie films, but it didn't deliver the high promises others seemed to get from it.

[knives]

My problem with Enemy is that I saw almost exactly on the same day as Ayoade’s fantastic The Double adaptation, a movie I probably should have voted for, which just does that so much better on every level.

[willoneill]

Interstellar

I have no idea how to decide which film is the best of the 2010s, but I put Interstellar as my number one film of the decade because it’s the film I keep coming back to, at least once a year. It has become a kind of comfort food to me, but it is also a very high quality film. From a popular film perspective, I feel like the 2010s decade has been defined as the decade of the MCU, and so another thing that draws me to the film is that it feels much more like a classic blockbuster. Where the MCU (and every blockbuster trying to capture is glory/$$$) is bright and colourful and clean, Interstellar is muted, dusty, and aged. It is obviously full of effects from beginning to closing credits, yet those effects are overall much more subtle than the average 2010s tentpole, supporting the story rather than leading it. Another standout aspect is the score; Hans Zimmer scores are pretty much a percussive cliché by now, but here Zimmer switches it up with a unique organ-led score, that I also still regularly pop on when I want some background music. Some more thoughts in SPOILERS, though honestly, if you haven’t seen Interstellar by now, you’re probably not going to.

SpoilerShow

One of the ways that I think Interstellar has aged very well is as an allegory for the current pro-science/anti-science divide in society. The climate change aspect if obviously not subtle (the parent-teacher interview is pretty on the nose, as is NASA having to become an underground near-rebellion type organization), but I find the film even more poignant in light of the politicization of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is highlighted best in the scene where Casey Affleck’s character, already embittered towards his pro-science father and sister, refuses to seek help, or even really acknowledge, his wife and children’s obvious respiratory disease.

Another aspect of the film I greatly respect is the attempt to be scientifically accurate as possible. Obviously it’s a Hollywood film, and I’m sure Neil De Grasse Tyson’s grievance list is a long a nasal swab into one’s brain, but I was impressed by the film’s use of time dilation and gravity as a plot device, as a metaphor for how the results of rash actions reverberate and alter the course of our lives, exponentially at time.

Apart from all that, I just think that it’s well-made, well-written, and well-acted big budget crowd-pleasing film, and it’s the kind of movie that if this were 25 years ago, and it just popped up on TV as I was flipping channels (I barely remember what that’s like anymore), I would stop everything and watch it until the end.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration … INTERSTELLAR.

[therewillbeblus]

My problem with Enemy is that I saw almost exactly on the same day as Ayoade’s fantastic The Double adaptation, a movie I probably should have voted for, which just does that so much better on every level.

I have yet to revisit The Double since I read Dostoevsky's story probably only a year after the film came out, but as I was reading it I found myself incredibly impressed with the film- whereas I was indifferent to it at first glance- so much so that the film's mise en scene infiltrated my reading and me appreciate the book more. I'm sure that was the opposite experience of most, but it was cool to see it work so effectively in reverse.

[brundlefly]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

Incendies on the another hand is a beautiful film which is both very specific to its themes and characters and their backgrounds as well as somewhat universal in the simple elegance of its story and storytelling. A great experience of the kind that stays with me for a long time. I'm still baffled it's an orphan right now, as I thought it was Villeneuves most or second-most acclaimed film with communities like these.

While Incendies really put me off, and if it has been my first Villeneuve, I wouldn't have continued. But I'm in the minority there.

A minority of at least two (though I only like Blade Runner)

One more for bridge? This one was my first Villeneuve, and though I've seen most of the rest since, I've often done so reluctantly. Permanently colored the way I see his treatment of his characters.

Saint Maud (46): People here love A24 horror, so I suspect this'll get more love once people see it.

Comes to Hulu May 13th, if that helps.

[John Cope]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

So you don't like Wonder Wheel at all? I grudgingly gather that's the consensus but for me it's Woody's best post-Match Point and easily among the great films of the decade. I was astonished that he could reach such heights of artistry so late in his career.

[senseabove]

Thoughts on a few of my orphans:

Kater (Tomcat) (Klaus Händl, 2016) 5 - I'm going to just plainly beg y'all to give this a shot. It's streaming on Kanopy and OVID or a $3 rental on iTunes. It's a chamber drama with shades of Haneke—though don't let that scare you away, as it's not antagonistic towards its audience the way Haneke can be—and a Poussin pedigree about two men in an absurdly idyllic relationship suddenly having to cope with an inexplicable, spontaneous, and utterly impossible event. It flirts with allegorical excess to get at the broader experience of how a relationship—something that is somehow more than the individuals that make it up—processes something that is utterly inexplicable, and helps or hinders its constituents' processing of it. It's also a fascinating look at how different the dynamics of a relationship can be without the rote gender dynamics that people often fall into, wittingly or not, in stressful situations. And lastly, while not about addiction in any way, it's the most painfully accurate representation of being in love with an addict—the shame, the fear, the bewildering lack of stability, the complexity of trust and betrayal when will is all but irrelevant. I'm very aware it's special to me and so highly-ranked for entirely personal, subjective reasons having to do with it being exactly the right movie at exactly the right time, and because I only saw it by pure chance, sitting down to rest my feet for a bit at the end of a volunteer film fest shift, it felt like something of a minor miracle. But it's gone over well with everyone I've shown it to, which is a fair number of people, and even if it doesn't make your list, it's very much worth your while.

Saint Laurent (Bertrand Bonello, 2014) 13
Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016) 6 - No surprise on SL, but I'm mildly surprised Nocturama is an orphan. I've made my cases for both upthread, and with L'Apollonide, Bonello is probably director of the decade for me. At least the latter appears to have made the cut.

Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2011) 2
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019) 46 - Just WTF, y'all. Meek's Cutoff is the chef d'eouvre of one of the living greats, Reichardt's hyperfocus on the intersection of the social, environmental, and interpersonal stripped to an excruciating minimum, with cinematography that combines the rarified abstraction of Von Sternberg and the patient observation of Peter Hutton. I think First Cow is her weakest movie since Night Movies and, though I like it a lot, I had the impression I was uncommonly cool on it given its prevalence on the year-end lists, so I'm a little surprised it's an orphan—but I'm completely baffled by Meek's Cutoff being one. At least it sounds like this was a miscalculation/oversight for some folks and I can hope it'll be remedied.

Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011) 20 - Haynes firing on all cylinders, closer to [SAFE], despite the period setting, than Far From Heaven, if that's what's scaring any of you away, and an incredible, faithful adaptation of the book, unlike the wildly unfaithful Curtiz movie, so don't dismiss it as an extended retread of something you've already seen. Streaming on HBO Max.

Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina, 2019) 36 - If you grew up watching Nickelodeon and wonder how Lynch might have directed an episode of Alex Mack, have I got a movie for you. It drifts casually into its strangeness, then triples down in a way that I wish more directors were willing to do on their first feature. In the running for my favorite discovery I doubt I'd've watched if not for this list. Streaming on Mubi and Prime.

I've got a few more to write up, but that's all for now.

[therewillbeblus]

I was really excited for Ham on Rye, and it’s ostensibly a film right up my alley, but man it just did not work for me. I’d love to hear a more in-depth reading at some point, as I have yet to stumble across a detailed defense to support a new lens with which to approach it for a revisit .

[senseabove]

I'd want to rewatch it before I could go into much detail, given how far it drifts from the expectations set by the first quarter and how unexpected it was, but for now, I like K. Austin Collins' non-spoilery review.

Out of curiosity:

SpoilerShow

Did you recognize Nickelodeon/Disney channel stars that have cameos? I about fell out of my chair when I realized that it was Lori Beth Denberg and Danny Tamberelli, and their cameos definitely drove home the sense of just how arbitrary, unfair, and mysterious adulthood seems during youth, and how that can carry over into adulthood in ways we either adapt to or avert our gaze from... I can't say the movie wouldn't have worked if I didn't know who they were, but it's a brilliant stroke that really drove home the empathy of what Collins summarizes: "Discarded objects in Taormina’s world don’t land soundlessly or without consequence."

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I noticed them and had the same impression as you, that's a good way to put it. The first act really worked for me before the "event" and that revelation in the last act was somewhat affecting in a kind of inescapable banal posterity as well as what you describe, but I can't say it all connected for me in a satisfying way. I think what I've read so far is right on the money in that it's about a feeling, and one that is audaciously translated with minimal holds. I just wanted to like it more, but I'm happy for those who did.

[swo17]

I've updated this post to reflect changes following submission of another list

[Ghersh]

Well, it's his best film of the last five for sure, closely followed by Irrational Man. But not nowhere near my list. Enjoyable, entertaining stuff, but not much more.

So you don't like Wonder Wheel at all? I grudgingly gather that's the consensus but for me it's Woody's best post-Match Point and easily among the great films of the decade. I was astonished that he could reach such heights of artistry so late in his career.

I didn't say I don't like it at all. I liked Irrational Man and Rainy Day better than Café Society, and Café Society more than Magic in the Moonlight and Wonder Wheel, but all five were mostly enjoyable but nowhere near outstanding for me (with IM and RD obviously coming closest). In Wonder Wheel, the colour scheme often threw me off, it seemingly followed some concept, but that was too vague and irritating for my taste, and I didn't like Winslets performance too much either.

As for Woody post Match Point I've heard good and interesting things about Vicky Christina Barcelona, but doesn't matter for this project anway (2008 I think).

Earlier in this thread I already posted the following about Woody:

I have seen the last five cinematic releases (actually never heard of Crisis in Six Scenes until now...) and maybe about ten more scattered Allen films from earlier decades. To make it short and sweet: All those five were enjoyable to some degree, but not much more. Magic in the Moonlight started out charming but when it went into romance territory in the second half, it started to drag a bit, also because the romantic chemistry between Stone and Firth didn't work very well for me and their relationship of distrust in the first half was more entertaining and convincing. Stone worked much better with Phoenix in Irrational Man, which was probably my second favourite from those five and had nice touches of dark humour. Café Society was a decent filler for Allen with some nice Allenuesqe characters in Eisenberg and one of the smaller roles. Wonder Wheel was hit and miss I think with the Winslet character getting more and more annoying as the film went on and the colour scheme was often bizarre if not ugly. Rainy Day In New York must be my favourite of those five, I liked the story concept of the couple that gets separated and experiences (mis)adventures on a Rainy Day in New York (duh) plus there's Timothée Chalamet who's always a win in my book.

All five films were more or less entertaining when I watched them once but actually I don't feel the urge to rewatch any of them except for maybe the Rainy Day. For this decade I'd like to catch up on Midnight in Paris and maybe Blue Jasmine but actually I don't count on Allen to be in my Top 50, even though he's dependably enjoyable.

Hmm, I haven't watched Midnight in Paris and Blue Jasmine at all since then, but whatever, I'm actually fine without a Woody film on my list right now.