Best of the Year: The Archive

So here I am back, but now before we get to another book it’s time for my seventh annual round up of the best movies of the year and what can be learned from each. When I was archiving old posts last year, I never archived these, partly because I’m a little embarrassed by some of the old choices.

At first I was focused on Hollywood movies and preferably those based on spec scripts, because the site was primarily for spec script writers. Eventually I lamented that the spec market had died, and then finally I gave up on the idea of focusing on just Hollywood movies and started including indies too, which meant that my lists started closely resembling the Oscar nominees. As is my bent, however, I kept favoring fun Hollywood fare above grim indie features, which made me look like a heartless chucklehead at times.

As a result, there are a lot of Hollywood comedies here that are justifiably forgotten today (Date Night? The Campaign??) and a lot of beloved indie movies that I look like an asshole for not putting at number one in their respective years (in some cases, I specifically look like a racist asshole). But what can I say, folks, I called ‘em like I saw ‘em! Feel free to make fun of me for some of these...

Best of 2010:

• Best Hollywood Movies of 2010 #5: True Grit
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2010 #4: Date Night
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2010 #3: Unstoppable
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2010 #2: The Black Swan
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2010 #1: The Fighter

Best of 2011:

• Best of 2011, Runners-Up / Storyteller’s Rulebook # 122: Only Reveal Ironic Backstories (Captain America, Thor, and X-Men: First Class)
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2011, #5: Margin Call
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2011, #4: Bridesmaids
• Best of 2011, #3 (Cedar Rapids), #2 (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), and #1 (Crazy Stupid Love)!

I didn’t write up 3 and 2 because Cedar Rapids had already been an underrated movie, and I'd already done a week of posts about Apes:

• Storyteller's Rulebook #117: Create Reversible Behaviors
• Storyteller's Rulebook #118: Limit Your Hero's Perspective
• Storyteller's Rulebook #119: Great Genre Stories Must Be Metaphors
• Storyteller's Rulebook #120: Reboots Must Re-Establish the Metaphor

Best of 2012:

• What’s the Matter with Hollywood (Or Is It Me)?
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2012, #5: The Campaign
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2012, #4: Django Unchained
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2012, #3: Argo
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2012, #2: Lincoln
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2012, #1: The Master

Best of 2013: 

• Best of 2013, Part 1: Hollywood in Review
• Best of 2013: Hollywood Vs. Indiewood
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2013, Runners-Up 10 and 9 (Nebraska and Her)
• Best Hollywood Movies of 2013, Runners-Up 8, 7, and 6 (All is Lost, Blue Jasmine, and Inside Llewyn Davis)
• Best of 2013 #5: The Spectacular Now
• Best of 2013 #4: Dallas Buyers Club
• Best of 2013 #3: Gravity
• Best of 2013 #2, Part 1: What’s Great About 12 Years a Slave
• Best of 2013 #2, Part 2: Concerns About 12 Years a Slave 

For my #1 movie, American Hustle, I started off with a series of posts comparing the movie to the truly awful screenplay that originally sold, before I finally wrote it up:

• Best of 2013 #1, Part 1: The Most Remarkable Thing About American Hustle
• Storyteller's Rulebook #203: Everybody Can’t Have the Same Metaphor Family
• Storyteller's Rulebook #204: Let Us Empathize with the Motivation, But Don’t Force Us to Empathize with the Logic
• Storyteller’s Rulebook #205: Hurt Your Hero In a Way That Would Only Hurt Your Hero 
• Best of 2013 #1: American Hustle

Best of 2014:

• Best of 2014, #10: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
• Best of 2014, #9: Snowpiercer
• Best of 2014: #8: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
• Best of 2014, #7: The Lego Movie
• Best of 2014, #6: Guardians of the Galaxy
• Best of 2014, #5: Nightcrawler
• Best of 2014, #4: Birdman
• Best of 2014, #3: Whiplash
• Best of 2014, #2: Selma (And Storyteller’s Rulebook: The "Ironic How" is Better than the "Ironic What")
• Best of 2014, #1: Boyhood

Best of 2015: I did something new this year, I compared the top three movies to their books, giving me a chance to talk about the nature of prose and adaptation.

• Best of 2015 Runners-Up: The Revenant
• Best of 2015 Runners-Up: Spy
• Best of 2015 Runners-Up: Spotlight, and the Power and Peril of Procedure
• Best of 2015, #5: Trainwreck
• Best of 2015, #4: Mad Max: Fury Road
• Best of 2015 #3: Carol
• Best of 2015, #2: The Martian

I followed that up with three more pieces about The Martian:

• Storyteller’s Rulebook: Never Let Anyone Compliment Your Hero
• Rulebook Casefile: Foreshadowing Too Much in The Martian
• Rulebook Casefile: Cutting Out the Downhill Side of The Martian

Then I finally got to the first movie: 

•  Best of 2015, #1: The Big Short (and the Courage Not to Adapt)

I followed that with two more rules gleaned from The Big Short

• Storyteller’s Rulebook: Give Them a Big Hole to Fill
• Storyteller’s Rulebook: The One Great Character Intro Scene

Best of 2016:

• Best of 2016, #10: Fences
• Best of 2016, #9: Arrival
• Best of 2016 #8: Hell or High Water
• Best of 2016, #7: La La Land
• Best Movies of 2016 #6: Birth of a Nation
• Best Movies of 2016, #5: Moonlight
• Best of 2016 #4: Manchester By the Sea
• Best of 2016, #3: The Invitation
• Best of 2016, #2: 20th Century Women
• Best of 2016, #1: Zootopia 

I followed that up with a series on the plotting in Zootopia:

• How to Plot a Mystery, Part 1: Work Backwards from the Climax
• How to Plot a Mystery, Part 2: Set Up the Villain Fake-Out
• How to Plot a Mystery, Part 3: Quietly Give Your Heroes the Objects They Need
• How to Plot a Mystery, Part 4: Set Up the Hero Fake-Out
• How to Plot a Mystery, Part 5: Figure Out What Went Wrong