Fifty Movie Scenes of the Decade: 2010-19, pt.2

A continuation of the list I started last month, here are some more of the standout scenes of the decade’s films…

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Bear scene: Annihilation (2018)
Bear scene: The Revenant (2015)
Bear scene: Midsommar (2019)
Bear scene: Paddington (2014) (a.k.a. all of it)

Somehow this ended up being the decade of the bear. From the harrowing (and seemingly endless) attack on Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant to the extremely bizarre and upsetting use of bearskin in Midsommar, taking in the adorable antics of the kind-hearted refugee Paddington and of course that terrifying home invasion by the mutant bear in Annihilation. Someday someone might connect the dots and figure out how it was that things got so damn ursine between 2010 and 2020. My best guess is something to do with the rise of Russia.

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) – “NO!”

This one really floored me, as I didn’t see it coming. Over the course of Rise of the Planet of the Apes we have watched in awe as Caesar (Andy Serkis) has grown in ability and power, thanks to the effect of the brain drugs he was given in the lab. It all culminates in this powerful moment, where mean-ass doofus with the perfect name of Dodge Landon (ol’ Malfoy himself, Tom Felton) is abusing the apes for kicks until he pushes Caesar too far… Chills.

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I, Daniel Blake (2016) – At the food bank

One thing that has characterised the decade in the UK has been the rule of the Conservative Party, and a steady rise in poverty among some of Britain’s most vulnerable communities. Ken Loach is the perfect director to bring us stories of these forgotten people, and I, Daniel Blake (along with 2019’s Sorry We Missed You) resonated strongly with filmgoers. Vivid and at times unbearably bleak, but very human, stories of those who had been trampled and left behind by the austerity agenda. This scene, in which a young, struggling single mother all but collapses with exhaustion and sadness in a food bank, can never be unseen.

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Gravity (2013) – Opening sequence

Wow. We all need reminding from time to time of what cinema is capable of, and of why it is so important to seek out films on the big screen whenever possible. This bravura long-take opening left audiences breathless, Alfonso Cuaron’s camera gliding and weaving around its central characters, framing them in a dizzying orbit miles above the Earth’s surface. All is breezy and workaday at first, until things start to go horribly wrong.

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Widows (2018) – The car ride shot

Steve McQueen’s Widows was loved by critics but did only modest box office, which is a shame as it is an incredibly accomplished and timely look at the culture of political corruption and the interplay between the haves and the have nots in modern America. This dynamic is brilliantly captured in this wonderfully witty single-shot sequence. After delivering a speech at a program launch in a working-class neighbourhood, Chicago alderman Colin Farrell hops in his car and is driven just a few blocks to his extravagant mansion home. As is often the case in Chicago, the short distance between poverty and power can be travelled in minutes, but might as well be an interplanetary voyage.
  

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Holy Motors (2012) – Entr’acte

Oh Holy Motors, what are we going to do with you? I have a huge soft spot for Leos Carax’s deeply weird and utterly unique vision, in which we follow an unnamed character played by Denis Levant as he makes his way around Paris, stopping to perform a series of bizarre and varied roles – his ‘assignments’ range from a motion-capture sex scene to a grotesque rampage through the Père Lachaise cemetery and even a duet with Kylie Minogue. Halfway through his nocturnal odyssey we get this bracing instrumental break, in which Levant leads an orchestra of accordion players on a looping wander through a Parisian cathederal. The playing is frenetic, the acoustics incredible, and the impact hard to put into words.  

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Mad Max Fury Road (2015) – Entering the storm

We waited a long time – thirty years after the Thunderdome, Mad Max returned in 2015 and took our breath away. George Miller returned to the helm, and Tom Hardy stepped into Mel Gibson’s dusty boots. As for the spectacle, the scope, the sheer size of this thing, it had to be seen to be believed. Practical stunts and effects led the way, with CGI adding gorgeous touches for us to marvel at. Take the storm sequence, for example. Furiosa (Charlize Theron), chased by the War Boys, who have Hardy’s Max strapped to the front of one of their cars, leads her pursuers straight into an apocalyptic sand storm. Big-screen filmmaking at its finest. To watch it on a phone or laptop, or even a TV, is like drinking the ocean through a straw.

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Spotlight (2015) – Survivor Interviews

Many of the reviews of Spotlight rightly highlighted its powerful ensemble cast – Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo, Stanley Tucci, etc. Two of the most indelible moments in the film belong to relative unknowns, Michael Cyril Creighton and Jimmy LeBlanc. These two men play adult survivors of childhood molestation by Catholic priests. Without their two searing scenes, reliving their past trauma, nothing else in the film would have an impact. We needed to see them, to hear them, to hear the lasting damage done – not just to their bodies but to their souls – by the men the film’s protagonists are trying to bring to justice.

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We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) – Eva arrives at the scene

Lynne Ramsay’s novel adaptation We Need to Talk About Kevin is one of the more gruelling films of the decade, especially for anyone raising children. A dark comedy in places, a family drama in others, it is primarily a horror film – and one that poses the question ‘What if the monster in your house is your child?’ In this sequence (which starts at the 3:30 mark in the video below) Tilda Swinton rushes to the school where there are reports of a violent rampage. Eva fears her son may be a victim, although there is a deeper fear, one that is confirmed by a glimpse of a simple yellow bike lock that we have seen her son Kevin take delivery of, earlier in the film. Swinton’s face in that moment is a mask of a particularly 21^st century kind of horror.

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Creed (2015) – The one-shot fight

Before Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan were anointed for Marvel immortality with their excellent take on Black Panther, they brought us first Fruitvale Station and then this film, which breathed new life into the hoary old stalwart, the boxing picture. Both a spin-off and sequel to Rocky, Creed focuses on the gutter-to-glory trajectory of Jordan’s Adonis Johnson, who, under the tutelage of Stallone’s Rocky, fights his way into the light heavyweight world. There is real fire in the filmmaking here, and this one-take fight is impeccably choreographed but covers its tracks enough to retain a vital looseness that matches its hero.

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Drive (2011) – Opening sequence

One of the defining films of the decade, Nicholas Winding Refn’s Drive gave us an iconic Ryan Gosling performance, a neon-washed Los Angeles and a synth-wave score that would soon become ubiquitous. A pulpy, taciturn and ultraviolent take on Walter Hill’s The Driver, it sank its audience deep into its criminal underworld right from its opening moments (that garish hot pink font!) with Gosling intoning his ‘rules’ into the phone and then executing a truly nerve-jangling feat of getaway driving — propelled by Cliff Martinez’s thrumming, lustrous score – without breaking a sweat. Every single move, cool as a scorpion jacket, sharp as a toothpick.

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Call Me By Your Name (2017) – Fatherly advice

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster, and end up bankrupt by the age of thirty.” Oh, Michael Stuhlbarg! You broke all of our hearts and yet warmed them at the same time! As he sits beside his heartbroken son (Timothée Chalemet) he doesn’t tell him to ‘Man up’ or ‘Get over it,’ but rather to feel it. There’s a hint of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting (high praise indeed) to his solemn, heartfelt delivery. The film is adapted from a novel, and in the wrong hands this speech could have felt fussy or literary, but Stuhlbarg takes his own advice and feels it. And Luca Guadagnino, like Chalemet, wisely just sits back and watches him go.

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) – Leo can act

Not everything in this film worked for me, especially its climactic scene of ugly violence, but somewhere in the middle there is an excellent film about a washed-up actor being given one more chance to redeem himself, to show what he can do, no matter how downmarket the material. It feels like the twin to the scene in Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., in which Naomi Watts pulls off a similar feat of alchemy – taking soap opera dialogue and spinning it into something dark and urgent and strange. Here we see DiCaprio as the down-on-his-luck Rick Dalton, taking a formulaic scene and overdelivering in spades. Never mind Dalton, the degree of difficulty in this scene for DiCaprio is extremely high, but he nails it.

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Phoenix (2015) – ‘Speak Low’

[Spoiler] There’s a lot going on here, as there is throughout Christian Petzold’s brilliant and hauinting film, adapted from a 1961 novel. In it, Nelly (Nina Hoss), a German-Jewish concentration camp survivor who has undergone facial reconstruction surgery, returns to Berlin and reconnects with her husband, who doesn’t recognise her and who may have been complicit in her arrest. This scene, coming at the very end of the film, is the one in which Johnny, the husband, finally recognises his wife, as he is accompanying her at the piano while she sings ‘Speak Low.’ Low indeed.

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Tree of Life (2011) – Creation of the universe

“And why not?”, as beloved film critic Barry Norman used to say (or did he?) Why not take a quick break in the middle of your radiant, impressionistic examination of a 1950s Texas childhood to give the audience a 15-minute depiction of the Big Bang and the creation of life, compressing billions of years into a sequence that divided audiences but could only be attempted, never mind pulled off, by an artist who was firing on all cylinders. Malick is famously happy to cut entire roles from his films after shooting them, leaving a trail of disappointed actors in his wake, so that famous dinosaur should consider itself lucky.