Issue 5: 2010s, at a glance
Looking back at the films and television shows that defined the decade.
The decade is dangerously close to ending, so I’m writing to you in the middle of the night to tell you about some of the films and television series I liked best because it feels important to share these thoughts with you before it’s all over.
I’ve been reading and listening to a lot of end of decade lists and having conversations with friends about what they watched and how they felt watching it. It’s been fun to go back to see how my tastes changed as the decade progressed. When choosing these works, I tried to think about how I felt when I first watched and how my feelings have deepened as the decade comes to a close, but I also tried not to think too hard about it because I’m afraid that if I think too hard I’ll be less honest and you’re my friend so I want to be honest with you, so here it is.
Films, ranked
Beginners (2010)
Whiplash (2014)
Her (2013)
20th Century Women (2016)
Short Term 12 (2013)
Birdman (2014)
The Social Network (2010)
The Master (2012)
Blue Valentine (2010)
Black Swan (2010)
I remember lying on a mattress on the ground of my apartment and watching Beginners on my laptop in 2010 and feeling paralyzed by writer/director Mike Mills' depiction of sadness. Mills is radically tender with his characters as they embrace the beauty and loneliness that comes with falling in love and the despair and emptiness that comes with losing a parent.
Mills’ second film of the decade, 20th Century Women, is nostalgic for punk rock, unrequited crushes, moms, dancing in bedrooms, arguing about music and the pains of growing up and growing apart.
Mills camerawork, sequencing, and dialogue are stylized and quirky, but with more patience and vulnerability than, say, Wes Anderson, who similarly likes to paint his frames with nostalgia.
I worked at an upscale movie theater in Westwood when Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine came out. I was utterly broke and aimless and deep into my John Cassavetes phase, so watching the disintegration of a married couple oddly enough felt like an escape — I saw it four times in theaters. Cianfrance manages to sneak the camera in-between Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams’ painful, private performances. I went in to sweep the theater after a screening once I thought all the guests had left and found a woman still in her seat, crying, incapable of moving from the sheer grief of the film.
Social Network, as a film, begins with a heist. In 2019, it plays like an origin story of the biggest scam of the century. The dialogue crackles with cynicism as the characters hype themselves up for the con of a lifetime.
As someone who spends a considerable amount of his waking life looking at his phone, Her feels prophetic.
Series, ranked
Broad City (2014)
Fleabag (2016)
Atlanta (2016)
Succession (2018)
Game of Thrones (2011)
Silicon Valley (2014)
Love (2016)
Watchmen (2019)
American Vandal (2017)
Stranger Things (2016)
I love everything about Broad City, but nothing as much as the friendship at the center of the story. Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer’s ability to weave slapstick, stoner comedy and adventurous plot lines that often merge into magical realism with unflinching sincerity is nothing short of a miracle. Broad City was one of the first shows about millennial life for those of us unlucky enough not to be born into wealth or develop some stupid fucking app that doesn’t even work the way it’s supposed to.
Broad City somehow made it feel okay to be broke and bored and aimless and constantly losing day in and day out as long as you had your friends to pick and hype you up.
No show makes you feel like shit while making you laugh like Fleabag does. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s performance as Fleabag is hilarious and charming and sexy as she quips, steals glances, and meanders through family, friendship, work, and love. The second season addition of Andrew Scott as the Priest forced Fleabag to question meaning and faith and what love looks and feels like.
Fleabag and the Priest have one of the funniest and most heartbreaking exchanges I’ve ever seen in a series:
Priest: I can’t be physical with you.
Fleabag: We can’t even wrestle? (Chuckles). No, priests have sex, you know. A lot of them actually do. They don’t burst into flames; I googled it.
Priest: I can’t have sex with you because I’ll fall in love with you. And if I fall in love with you, I won’t burst into flames, but my life will be fucked.
Fleabag: [to the fourth wall] We’re gonna have sex.
Priest: I’m supposed to love one thing.
Fleabag: [to the fourth wall] Oh, my God, we’re going to have sex.
Priest: For fuck’s sake! Stop that! [Beat] I don’t think you want to be told what to do at all. I think you know exactly what you want to do. If you really wanted to be told what to do, you’d be wearing one of these.
Fleabag: Women aren’t actually allowed-
Priest: Oh, fuck off! I know! [Beat] We’re gonna have sex, aren’t we?
Nearly every episode of Atlanta feels like Donald Glover is saying “fuck you” in slow motion. As rap found its way to the forefront of culture, Glover turned the people who make and consume rap into characters and used Atlanta to portray the absurdity and PTSD black people experience as their art and lives are increasingly commodified and gentrified for white audiences.
Succession feels like 2010’s answer to Mad Men and for a generation of viewers less concerned with our bankrupt past and more concerned with the assholes who are completely fucking up the present. It’s depiction of the wealthy and powerful Roy family toggles between revolting, hilarious, and profound — often within the same sequence.
Here is a gif of Roman jerking off to the flood of emails he’s receiving as the COO of one of the world’s largest media conglomerates.
And here is a gif of Roman watching a rocket he’s responsible for launching blow up, then gently put his phone away and pretend it didn’t happen.
Thanks for reading. I hope you have a nice New Year’s. See you in 2020.