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11.09.22 Every Episode of Atlanta Ranked11.03.22 Andor
10.26.22 lost my job list is digs11.07.21 A Decade of Rowan ♦
10.06.21 spookytober watchlist time05.31.21 top 20 twilight sad
02.23.21 top 30 beach boys12.27.20 Rowan2020 ♦
10.21.20 Mike Flanagan Ranked07.06.20 Top 20 Deftones
04.04.20 top 20 elliott smith02.18.20 Clone Wars 7 hypethread
02.12.20 top 20 enter shikari ♦01.18.20 Songs of the Decade ♦
12.29.19 Movies of the Decade ♦12.20.19 Rowan2019 ♦
12.02.19 TV of the Decade [UPDATED FOR DADDY ESM ♦10.18.19 Top 20 Jimmy Eat World ♦
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Movies of the Decade

alternate title: winesburgohio came to my house and held me at gunpoint chanting "solo violin improvisations" repeatedly while I typed this
1Childish Gambino
Because the Internet

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (2018)
I don't have much to say about this that hasn't been said. All I can relate is how much it moved me the first time I saw it on my 22nd birthday, and every time since. How it became clear I was watching something special in that tracking shot of Miles through the city, dapping his old friends and leaving stickers on lampposts and building sides. How the comedy of the "play dumb" scene landed perfectly, and not 10 minutes later I had tears in my eyes at Peter's split-second "god, I'm tired" during the first fight. How the animation is more eye-poppingly gorgeous than anyone anticipated, how effortlessly Nic Cage and John Mulaney fit into what's fundamentally a more grounded and personal take on one of our most oversaturated superheroes. Scorsese might not consider this cinema - that's fine. Watch the "What's Up Danger" scene again, and tell me that isn't a moment of pure, heartfelt, goddamn art.
2clipping.
There Existed an Addiction to Blood

The Blackcoat's Daughter (2017)
What sets this film apart is how deeply personal it is to Perkins. Its surfaces may be those of satanic, ritualistic scary things, but the heart of this film is only tied to the fear of abandonment and the loss of parental love which clearly stems from Perkins' relationship to his father. Powered by Kiernan Shipka's absolutely incredible performance - my favourite on this entire list - The Blackcoat's Daughter becomes a kind of sick, bubbling psychological stew which somehow turns demonic possession into the only lifeline a lonely girl can cling onto when her ties to the world are cut. This is the film I'll hold up as an example of horror operating at its peak; the grinding sound design and tension grab your heart in the moment, but it's the small interactions, the performances, that fucking unforgettable final shot, that make this a movie that will never leave your head.
3Burial
Untrue

Anomalisa (2015)
Eternal Sunshine... is Kaufman's best movie. Anomalisa, though, is my favourite, his most personal, most heartrending, darkly funny and moving. Something about the stop-motion combined with the snail's pace of the script, how it takes place almost in real time letting us realise what Michael's condition is, and the grace and delicacy of the film down to its most uncomfortable interactions and moments, is just absolutely extraordinary. Let's not forget David Thewlis and Jennifer Jason Leigh doing some of the most beautiful, sensitive work of their careers, although all praise should go to Tom Noonan, one of the greatest living actors, for landing such a ridiculous acting challenge perfectly. Maybe this isn't as blindingly brilliant as one of Kaufman's films about making films or the people who make films, but what Anomalisa loses in meta extravagance it makes up for with quiet beauty.
4Broken Social Scene
You Forgot It in People

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
Fuck it. This is my rainy-day, sick-day, hungover-watch film for the lads. This is pure entertainment, kinetic, incredibly lovable, and with more jokes landing per minute than any other film I can readily think of. You may point out the grossness of some of the shit Scott does, the reliance on editing and visual gags (can you imagine this film without effects??) or any of the other many flaws, but when I'm tucked up in bed quoting every line, I just don't care.
5Radiohead
Amnesiac

Knives Out (2019)
In discussion with the handsomest, best user on Sputnik I described Knives Out as "an ode to how you can put so much depth inside one genre, instead of making something that could easily become a pastiche", and I haven't yet thought of a better way to describe it so let's roll with that. Knives Out flirts with horror, slapstick, political commentary and mystery and doesn't do any of it subtly; you can figure out the big twist half an hour before, and there's only one real suspect so it's not much of a whodunnit. None of that really matters though. Johnson infects every frame with the love of cinema and the pure joy of making a film to just make a film, flirting with all these styles out of the sheer enthusiasm for their structures and tropes. Knives Out is not high cinema, but nothing else I've seen on the big screen has transmitted to me the pure, primal joy of just *being* a film like this.
6Giles Corey
Giles Corey

The VVitch (2015)
Eggers is obviously one of the best filmmakers working, and even above his shot composition, incredible nose for actors or attention to detail with scripts, it's his mastery of tone and tension that really sets him apart. The VVitch is one of the most choking, claustrophobic, throat-grabbing films I've seen, and it does it without cheap tricks or sudden scares - the most haunting images in the film actually happen almost in slow motion, like a crow drinking bloody breast milk or a cabal of women contorting as they float up into the sky. You almost feel the fever of the characters as they descend through their psychosexual, God-fearing hell, and there really isn't a second of reprieve, which is of course the point. While I don't think it asks as many truly great questions as the horror films above, The VVitch might be the greatest horror film of the decade on a purely visceral level, visually and atmospherically. There's nothing else like it.
7Katatonia
The Great Cold Distance

Coherence (2013)
Imagine a puzzle box of a movie with real characters living their lives inside. Coherence has a lesson to teach any filmmaker who builds an endless labyrinth of mysteries without anything inside to actually connect with; this sci-fi horror mumblecore masterpiece assembles its puzzle from the raw material of improvised, true-to-life character beats. It's also an incredible feat of filmmaking, a no-budget alternate-reality freakout which scared me more with the sight of something unseeable or a loud noise interrupting a dinner party than any outright horror did this decade. Much like the film that only just beat it to the spot above, Coherence will stay with you, and actually improve exponentially each time you rewatch. Looking for the clues and edges of the world is a part of the fun, but the questions of identity, free will, and what you would do to steal a life you think you deserve are what you can't look away from.
8Thom Yorke
Suspiria

Suspiria (2018)
On a pure enjoyment level, I can't escape how completely satisfying Suspiria is for my personal taste, how much this movie panders exactly to the kind of shit I love. I knew going in I would be biased towards this overlong, ambitious, auteur, passion-project revival of a classic that keeps the psychosexual, surreal undertone but loses Argento's more overbearing tendencies and terrible acting. But Guadagnino's Suspiria actually exceeded my expectations, not just bucking the trend of shitty remakes but becoming something great in its own right. I fucking love this, the washed-out colour palette, the attempts at tying in the rising tension of the war into the cabal of quarelling, chain-smoking, dance-choreographing witches. We will definitely disagree on how many of its big swings Suspiria lands, and that's totally fine, but as another notch in this decade's impressive list of passion-driven, unique, non-conformist horror movies it more than earns its place.
9Better Oblivion Community Center
Better Oblivion Community Center

Resolution (2012)
Benson & Moorhead are the kind of filmmakers who might live next door to you, chatting about their favourite Kubrick shots on the way to the mailbox (this impression is likely biased due to me encountering them more than once on The AV Club). Resolution is broadly horror, but it's the small details snuck in under that umbrella which make it stick. This is a grimy, no-budget film which is powered by the genuineness of its core relationship; Cilella & Curran's performances tap into a naturalistic, almost mumblecore sensibility that creates a believable friendship horror-comedies have been straining to land for decades now. Around this relationship, Resolution is basically a series of vignettes that vacillate between unnerving, hilarious and somewhere in between, building to an incredible ending that questions the nature of an audience's role in a story and the demands of the horror genre itself in a way you'll never forget.
10M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Mark this down as another really pleasant revival of a property that's, well, kind of not great in its original form. Villenueve's direction is of course the star, in tandem with Roger Deakins' cinematography; this is simply one of the most gorgeous movies just to look at, letting colours and moments and flashes play across your eyes. Whether or not the plot can fill the 2.5 hour-sized ambition is a matter for debate; whether the film would've been improved cutting all of Jared Leto's scenes pretty much isn't. But this remains a sensitive and beautiful sci-fi film, less interested in playing off the viewer's nostalgia for Harrison Ford than it is sketching its own character's lives. One scene midway, between Ryan Gosling and Ana De Armas or Mackenzie Davis depending on your definition, remains easily one of the most stunning and breathtaking cinema moments of the decade.
11Brian Eno and David Byrne
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Personal Shopper (2016)
Personal Shopper is kind of built like a mountain range. When I think of this movie technically, I flash to the assured and stunning mid-movie sequence, when Kristen Stewart takes a long train ride and has an unnerving text exchange. That's all that literally happens, but Personal Shopper is a film built around subjectivity and the personal, and I think every viewer sees something else in this sequence; a promise for connection, a foreshadowing of a supernatural haunting, just a creepy exchange with a potential predator? That's why when I think of this film emotionally, I flash to its beginning and ending, the delicate and emotional interpretation of ghostly subject matter which refuses to descend into melodrama. In particular, the final line, and Stewart's delivery of it, single-handedly turns Personal Shopper from an odd, arthouse little thing into one of the most emotional, touching ghost films of the decade.
12mewithoutYou
Pale Horses

First Reformed (2017)
While I'm on the subject of films with incredible endings. I mean First Reformed is great from frame one, with Schrader's best script in years seeming tailormade for a truly incredible performance by Ethan Hawke, and there's plenty more to discuss here than I could fit into this little blurb. It's the ending, though, that I can't forget. Whether you think it's a dream, a vision or something to be taken literally, Hawke and Seyfried's final scene is simply one of the most utterly joyous, transcendent things put on screen in the last few years.
13Soundtrack (Film)
Inside Llewyn Davis

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
This isn't my favourite Coen Bros. script; it's funny, but never hilarious, maybe slightly too mawkish, and never taps into that surreal broth of psychodrama that tends to mark my favourite films by them (Barton Fink fans, where you at?) But it's inarguably their best film this decade and a fantastic character piece, especially as a feature-length vehicle for Oscar Isaac, doing some of his absolute best work in what he chooses to reveal and conceal on Llewyn's face as he suffers defeat after defeat. Of course there's all the usual fare here, John Goodman cameos and beautifully written music and all, but Inside Llewyn Davis is best in the quietest moments when it's just a camera gazing into the soul of a man.
14Trophy Scars
Holy Vacants

The Master (2012)
Look, I'll level with you; I have no fucking idea what this movie is about or what I'm supposed to take from it. I couldn't even pretend to engage in a smart discussion about this film without quickly revealing how little insight I have into it at all. All I know is, every time Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix go head to head? That's some goddamn cinema.
15The Hotelier
Goodness

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
The Lobster is better and The Favourite is funnier, but Sacred Deer is my favourite Lanthimos for the emotional effect it leaves behind. I didn't know whether to laugh, scream or throw up for the majority of this movie, and looking back I still have no idea how it's supposed to make me feel, but that elusive mix of horror and humour is utterly fantastic. I was sifting through this movie for weeks afterwards, and where a movie like The Lobster occasionally becomes too robotic and far from human for my taste, Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman ground this movie in such an uncomfortable, gritty believability it's almost disgusting. I couldn't ask for more.
16...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
Madonna

The Lighthouse (2019)
This is lowkey the best comedy of the year, between Pattinson's response after Dafoe's incredible "HARK!" monologue, the deadpan comedy everytime they get drunk, the lowbrow humour embodied in every kind of excretion and liquid imaginable from a human body. It's fucking nasty, of course, miles away from the removed and considered dread of The VVitch. Here Eggers dips his hands into the muck and comes out with this truly filthy, gritty thing. Even the boxed-in aspect ratio and black-and-white mark it as a complete departure from his previous work, just a movie about two men going insane and nothing else. It's pointless, and it's utterly fantastic.
17Arcade Fire
Her

Her (2013)
This is the kind of film that shows up on everyone's list. That's not a bad thing; it's so utterly human, so warm and heartfelt and compassionate, that it convinces you not to care about its silliness or outsize emotion. I can easily imagine myself hating this as a script, which makes it all the more impressive when I watch it and it tricks me once again into loving it, even with all its faults. All this anchored, of course, by Phoenix and Johansson doing some of their finest ever work.
18Lou Reed
Metal Machine Music

Good Time (2017)
I haven't seen Uncut Gems yet, but its rep as a headache-inducing cluster of anxiety excites me because I already found Good Time a mini-masterpiece of tension. There's an absolutely glorious moment about 30 minutes into this movie where you realise the plot doesn't mean shit and none of the relationships you'd invested in matter; this is just an experiment in nastiness, in seeing how much further than the bottom of the barrel Pattinson's character can scrape, and it's terrific.
19Coldplay
Ghost Stories

A Ghost Story (2017)
This movie is a whole lot more than Rooney Mara eating a pie for an uncomfortable amount of time, although that scene may have unlocked things in me I didn't know were there. But Lowery's film is a terrific meditative piece which takes the mundane and silly and twists them into something like grace. If Casey Affleck watching stuff happen in a child's ghost outfit sounds like a thin premise for a movie to you, you're not wrong, but A Ghost Story is far more concerned with the things we leave behind and choose to let go of to allow doubts about its own purpose.
20Manchester Orchestra
A Black Mile to the Surface

Deadwood: The Movie (2019)
This doesn't really stand up as a movie on its own, beyond the base pleasures of watching Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane and a shedload of other terrific actors going toe-to-toe. As a conclusion to one of the greatest TV series of all time, it's goddamn perfect, acknowledging and allowing room for the unfinished business of the past without functioning as a cynical nostalgia machine. I don't know how well this stands up on its own; all I know is when Al Swearengen speaks his final line, I was, briefly, fully convinced this was the greatest drama I'd ever seen.
21ITEM
Sad Light

honourables, aka films with parts I really liked but which fell off or started poorly:
The Irishman (2019), Midsommar (2018), Sorry to Bother You (2018), Green Room (2013), Berberian Sound Studio (2012), Once Upon a Time in.... Hollywood (2019)
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