The Decade's Best: #31-#40

This next grouping of ten shows me something about my own tastes, underlining how gripped I always am by films that worry the relationship between an individual, whether exceptional or unexceptional, and some personal or social collectivity to which they ostensibly belong. Maybe because that kind of drama can inhere inside any shot (who to frame, and who to leave out?), and keeps playing out at every expanding level of the film, I feel like I have an unusual lot to think about when a film engages that quandary in an inspired or unusual way. #40, #39, and #38 are all about collective endeavors, but the concert, the classroom, and the quest also proffer revealing lenses for perceiving the specific agents working at the heart of the action. After that, the bonds become even more elliptical: an unbelievable assertion and the scary desire to accept it, despite the distemper of a surrounding family; a resolute but quickly overwhelmed girl involved in a corrupt traffic; a marooned group, possibly standing in for the whole globe; the elliptical relations inside a hotel that is also a home; the dual but not simply opposed pull of one individual into a criminal life and an artistic calling; an individual who disperses into multiple avatars in different eras; and a pair of boisterous chums who are barely ready to examine their own bond, much less to realize there's a whole nation surrounding them, and it's more than a backdrop for their exuberant jaunts, though the film is gracious enough to welcome us into that exuberance.

And now, we will test my individuality against your collective will! How are you feeling about this group? The responses on all the earlier days have been a real kick to receive and to answer.