19) Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) 20) Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) 21) 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) 22) Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011) 23) 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010) The first actual winner of the Best Picture Oscar that I have reviewed during this A Decade at the Oscars feature, 12 Years a Slave is a masterwork of grim racism and a portrait of how mistreatment of both an individual and a people can lead to hopelessness and despair. It is a film that, through a harmonious, if brutal, blend of form and content delivers an unrelentingly harrowing cinematic experience, and for ..read more

53) Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016) 54) Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018) 55) Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017) 56) The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017) 57) American Sniper (Clint Eastwood, 2014 This will be the only piece of writing in my A Decade at the Oscars feature that is also a Take 2 review. Phantom Thread is a film with depth and nuance, and it is extremely highly regarded by many within the film world. It is also a film I saw for the first time in a charming but mostly empty cinema and as the third movie I had seen that day, and I was concerned these non-ideal ..read more

60) Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2017) 61) Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015) 62) Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012) 63) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) 64) Bohemian Rhapsody (Dexter Fletcher and Bryan Singer, 2018) Lincoln takes up an unfortunate position in the bottom five of my ranking of the last decade of Oscar Best Picture nominated movies. It’s not that it’s a bad film exactly, and indeed it is far better than the two below it, but it is a work that lacks ambition or subtlety. Upon closer inspection of my rankings, it is clear that Lincoln settles in its place ..read more

Netflix is probably the biggest and most well-known and subscribed-to of all the streaming services, and yet it has never quite hooked me the way it hooks other people. Perhaps that is because it has historically focused on television rather than film, and, though its film collection is now relatively large, it still takes the populist approach of majorly favouring more recent films instead of curating an extensive back-catalogue. That being said, with Netflix’s increasing forays into the production of film, they are starting to carve their own unique mark on the cinematic landscape and provi ..read more

25) Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) 26) Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019) 27) The Kids are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010) 28) The Imitation Game (Morten Tyldum, 2014) 29) Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014) Do you ever watch a film and feel like you are looking through a window into people’s lives rather than a fictionalised drama being projected onto a screen? There are scholars in early Film Studies who dedicated their whole writing careers to the pursuit of this phenomenological goal, and yet cinema of the 21st century seems to have swung in the opposite direction, favouring escapism over auth ..read more

It is a rare delight when a television show inspires me with such fervour that I cannot wait to watch the next episode once the current one has finished. Game of Thrones (2011-2019) had this magic touch, but so many other good shows do not. For example, I am currently part way through season 2 of The Crown (2016-), yet, though I am enjoying it, I could easily wait a while before returning to it. Similarly, Breaking Bad (2008-2013) took me about half a decade to complete, because, until perhaps its final season, it could never hold my interest enough that I felt simply addicted to coming back ..read more

19) Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019) 20) Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017) 21) 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013) 22) Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011) 23) 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010) The first actual winner of the Best Picture Oscar that I have reviewed during this A Decade at the Oscars feature, 12 Years a Slave is a masterwork of grim racism and a portrait of how mistreatment of both an individual and a people can lead to hopelessness and despair. It is a film that, through a harmonious, if brutal, blend of form and content delivers an unrelentingly harrowing cinematic experience, and for ..read more

53) Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016) 54) Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018) 55) Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017) 56) The Post (Steven Spielberg, 2017) 57) American Sniper (Clint Eastwood, 2014 This will be the only piece of writing in my A Decade at the Oscars feature that is also a Take 2 review. Phantom Thread is a film with depth and nuance, and it is extremely highly regarded by many within the film world. It is also a film I saw for the first time in a charming but mostly empty cinema and as the third movie I had seen that day, and I was concerned these non-ideal ..read more

60) Darkest Hour (Joe Wright, 2017) 61) Bridge of Spies (Steven Spielberg, 2015) 62) Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012) 63) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… (Quentin Tarantino, 2019) 64) Bohemian Rhapsody (Dexter Fletcher and Bryan Singer, 2018) Lincoln takes up an unfortunate position in the bottom five of my ranking of the last decade of Oscar Best Picture nominated movies. It’s not that it’s a bad film exactly, and indeed it is far better than the two below it, but it is a work that lacks ambition or subtlety. Upon closer inspection of my rankings, it is clear that Lincoln settles in its place ..read more

Netflix is probably the biggest and most well-known and subscribed-to of all the streaming services, and yet it has never quite hooked me the way it hooks other people. Perhaps that is because it has historically focused on television rather than film, and, though its film collection is now relatively large, it still takes the populist approach of majorly favouring more recent films instead of curating an extensive back-catalogue. That being said, with Netflix’s increasing forays into the production of film, they are starting to carve their own unique mark on the cinematic landscape and provi ..read more