Anyone can hardly believe that 2010 was already 14 years ago. Let's revisit this Good-Old-Times when remarkable films dominated the scene. Here, Mark Peranson, the chief programmer at the Berlinale, has meticulously curated a selection of top-tier movies, showcasing the best of the best with his discerning eye. Get ready for an exploration of cinematic excellence and discover with his LG OLED Score.
Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017)
Got a light? A project long anticipated that, at the same time, had no legitimate right to exist, David Lynch’s magnum opus is the landmark work of the decade: a pure gift to cinephiles, it brought us back to the future, ignited the present, and, in an era of “peak TV,” further blurred the boundaries between what is cinema and what isn’t. What to highlight in describing the wonderful world of Lynch? The rebirth of Kyle MacLachlan’s Special Agent Dale Cooper from his Dougie slumber? Laura Dern’s at-long-last appearance as Cooper’s secretary Diane (albeit, as a “tulpa”)? David Bowie reincarnated as a massive teakettle? Or you can just put the explosive Twin Peaks origin story that is the miraculous Part 8 on an infinite loop on your TV, or at least one lasting as long as Oppenheimer. Writing this makes me want to watch it all again, right now.
-Cinematic Quality ★★★★★
-Visual Beauty ★★★★★
-Recommended to watch on LG OLED ★★★★★
*Overall ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
All hail the Apichatpalme, an event that, likewise, was inconceivable then and will probably never be duplicated. To my knowledge Joei has never made television, but does more than dabble in the world of fine art—the early part of this century saw the need for cinema to reach out to the gallery, as for most filmmakers the financial burden of major productions impinges on their impulsion for creative expression. A 16mm-shot experiential journey of reincarnation and transformation that closed Apichaptong’s multi-faceted Primitive project, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Liveslanded like a UFO from outer space at the turn of the decade and led Apichatpong to meme-level cinephilic repute, emblematized by its Lynchian scarlet-eyed “monkey ghost.” I even put it on a T-shirt.
-Cinematic Quality ★★★★★
-Visual Beauty ★★★★★
-Recommended to watch on LG OLED ★★★★★
*Overall ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
<h4>Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, 2012)</h4>
The title is, of course, Biblical, referring to a great fish that eventually came to symbolize evil in the Christian Era. This Leviathan is the locale for slaughter, for blood, for heavy metal mechanical mayhem; via the many GoPros of anthropologists Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, it’s immersive documentary filmmaking by way of Baroque painting and slasher cinema. The title also brings to mind Hobbes, whose Leviathan was the State; he also philosophized that all ideas are derived from sensory experience. Marking the explosion of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab into prominence, Leviathan remains a stunning and unparalleled work, one which discovers new forms. Fun fact: Apichatpong Weerasethakul was President of the Locarno jury that completely ignored Leviathan, possibly due to the screening taking place in a cinema that was the auditory equivalent of the hull of a ship, volume cranked by the filmmakers to deafening heights. Or maybe he just thought it was too fishy.
-Cinematic Quality ★★★★★
-Visual Beauty ★★★★★
-Recommended to watch on LG OLED ★★★★
*Overall ★ ★ ★ ★
Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sangsoo, 2015)
While the Hong Sangsoo slot on this list could be occupied by almost any other film from his 2010s output—from Oki’s Movie, the film that changed it all in terms of his production process and the centering of the female perspective, The Day He Arrives (also a masterpiece), Hill of Freedom, through to On the Beach at Night Alone (which appeals to me for more than just personal reasons)—Right Now, Wrong Then is the best representation of the repetitive Hongian multiverse, in its literal bifurcated inscription of “infinite worlds possible.” Despite its unique (for Hong) high-concept premise, there is something universal—if not magical—about this philosophical treatise that elevates it to a higher level. It’s also the only film of his to win the top prize at a major festival (again, Locarno). Also, even though he was still employing a cinematographer back then, I must admit that most Hong films look better on smaller screens.
-Cinematic Quality ★★★★★
-Visual Beauty ★★★
-Recommended to watch on LG OLED ★★★★
*Overall ★ ★ ★ ★
An impressively dense yet fleeting concatenation of doomed love, colonial guilt, a reflection on the changing aesthetics and characteristics of cinema, Tabu is a deeply emotional and heartbreaking experience; like its female protagonist Aurora, it’s bipolar, both depressive and ecstatic. Like all of Miguel Gomes’ films, it is preoccupied with storytelling and the perceptual contrast between “reality” and “fiction,” taking the form of a cinephile’s bastard child fever dream that combines Godard, Out of Africa, Letter from an Unknown Woman, Mogambo, Errol Flynn, Crocodile Dundee, a whole lot of Portuguese cinema I can’t place, and, of course, F.W. Murnau, stunningly shot on 16mm monochrome by Rui Poças (before Gomes moved on to employing Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, the DP of, you guessed it, Apichatpong). The imaginary is key to Tabu, like it is to most fiction cinema that matters in the tradition of Méliès, and I’m going to stop over-intellectualizing a filmic version of saudade that still strikes me as impossibly moving.
-Cinematic Quality ★★★★★
-Visual Beauty ★★★★★
-Recommended to watch on LG OLED ★★★★★
*Overall ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
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