The MoFo Top 100 of the 2010s Countdown

I haven’t seen Boyhood, it’s not really my thing.

I liked The Irishman but almost immediately forgot it existed.

This is another reason I struggle with these lists. Knowing I haven't seen everything. Makes my list feel like a sham to me.
That said, I saw neither Boyhood nor The Irishman because there was not one kernel of interest for me on either cob. I was at the very peak of my "I really hate children" phase of my life when it came out and I remain at the peak of my "Scorsese and DeNiro need to retire" phase, so there was nothing that was gonna make me see either film. The fact that both films easily topped the 2 1/2-hour mark with The Irishman brazenly busting right through 3 hours and still going, there was just no chance and there never will be.
This is obviously not a criticism of either movie. It's an explanation, probably just for myself, of why making the lists feels awkward to me. I knew a lot of people liked The Irishman and I knew a lot of people liked Boyhood. And I knew that I hadn't seen them and I knew I wasn't gonna, under any circumstances. So is my list even valid, I wondered.

A necessary and reflective film showing Scorcese’s growth and sense of responsibility for his film legacy.
The Irishman was my #3. "It is what it is.."

SEEN 55/70
BALLOT 15/25

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When I first saw Boyhood, I really loved it. Amazing and unique cinematic experience and felt like the ultimate Linklater experience in a way.

I’ve seen it a few times since with varied results. Mostly good but last time I remember struggling a little bit. I would like to check up on it again to see if it can still work. Because sure, it’s very much about the real time character development and all that, but it still feels raw and honest, even if there’s some cliches. But yeah, a big small movie that I don’t mind being on here. It’s quite decade defining.

As for The Irishman, it’s very much the obvious concluding chapter of Scorsese’s mafia movies. I appreciate the idea and overall it is a lot of talent involved, so it can never be bad. But that CG is, to be quite honest, bad. It looks like a video game cut scene. And that’s now. I don’t want to think about in 10 years or more. It took me out of the movie when I watch it. But thankfully, the more the characters aged, the less distracting the de-aging was. Anyway, I liked the movie quite a bit. I would never put it this high though myself.

I didn't vote for The Irishman but it's such a treat, just to get tense talking scenes between Keitel, De Niro, Pesci and Pacino for what's almost certain to be one last Scorsese mafia hurrah.

What hurts it is the obvious bad CGI, I think in the future we'll move to deep fakes for this kind of thing.

Another negative is that it turns out the story, at least from Frank Sheeran's point of view turns out to be nonsense mixed in with real historical events which makes for kind of a alternate history Tarantino esque mixed with a biopic hybrid. Making it compare poorly with Goodfellas or Casino, obviously those 2 films take narrative liberties but they are very much grounded in real events concerning their main characters.

However if you can put those 2 things out of your mind and you're a fan of Scorsese then you should love this.

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Interstellar is what I'd consider the perfect outer space movie. It's ambitious, it's creative, thought-provoking, & intense through its considerable run time. There's not many films that leave me in awe. My #2

Gravity is another very good astronaut movie, with a great performance from Bullock. here were my praises


I rated Boyhood - in 2015. Sounds generous as I really don't remember anything about it

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Two very good films but neither made my list.

The first time I watched Boyhood I thought it was great. Extremely impressive for obvious reasons but there are a few scenes that I don't like which become more apparent with every viewing. Linklater is at his best for me when he's been free-flowing and capturing the subtleties of humans and their interactions but the irony of this film is that in order to give the film a sense of narrative, certain scenes don't feel like this.

I love Linklater and voted for Before Midnight for this list which has already shown up.

I also included Everybody Wants Some!! which I, unfortunately, figured had no hope of making it from the start. One of my favourite films of his, which found laugh out loud hilarious.

The Irishman I enjoyed although I found it to be a case of hammering home the point too hard in being self-reflective on violence and so on. I owe it another watch with my full attention, as my memory of it is vaguer than it should be.

59/70 seen.

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Why should they retire?

Haven’t seen Boyhood since the theater. It’s very good, in my top ten of the year, I don’t adore it though. Maybe eventually.

Irishman is very good as well. Even though it’s a 4/5 for me, I have to admit I don’t see it as the deconstruction of his other work that others seem to. I just think I would rather see these characters in Goodfellas or Casino.

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I don't know I feel both films were interesting and good enough but not close to making my list probably not even the top 100. But I guess others disagree since they're pretty high on this list. I can echo what others have said: Boyhood is great in an experimental sense and The Irishman brought together all the heavyweights from Scorsese's past (plus Pacino) but I won't, or I guess I will, but I don't think either film is great.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

I must have dozed off for the latest clues...shrugs.

The Irishman, I haven't seen, and it's the long runtime that holds me back on it along with warnings that I need to take it all in at once. Something I don't necessarily have time for...I was able to complete Silence in several viewings (and it didn't feel like it lost any power of it).

Boyhood, on the other hand, is my #1. Sure, you can knock it for some cliches (I mean Olivia can't seem to find someone to date that DOESN'T have alcohol issues?; the Harry Potter segments feel more like setting when it was taking place than anything), but it does manage to maximize its runtime which feels shorter than it is. Director Richard Linklater has managed to make a thriller out of one boy's life as he grows up. Will he end up OK? Sure, it's known as the film that took twelve years to complete. But it's more than that; it feels like a one-of-a-kind movie...a worthy marker of a decade of interesting fare.

I've seen both #32. Boyhood (2014) and #31. The Irishman (2019).

• Boyhood (2014) - at first glance nothing special but while I was watching it, I've noticed the hidden power in this film. This work of cinema was pleasant surprise for me back then. Thanks to it, I've discovered Richard Linklater and rediscovered the charismatic Ethan Hawke. I immediately dedicated the months following the 2015 awards season to the Before trilogy, then known only as a title for me.
Well, Boyhood was briefly in consideration for my ballot, finally taking position #41 in my fixed top 60 of the decade.
+ (83/100)

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• The Irishman (2019) - ugh, one of the biggest blunders in the history of cinema. Almost immediately after we've started watching the movie, we couldn't believe what a dull thing was this. All my film companions left the room after 20 minutes of watching, totally shocked at this banality. I've stubbornly watched the whole long film and what a painful experience was this.
All the time, I've imagined how a gang of cheeky yuppies offered the poor old man Scorsese to repeat his old, already a world-wide standard for banality, movies for gangsters. Now, it is totally proved that the old men, the same as the kids, needs a guidance so that not to do foolish things.
Yes, I couldn't believe my eyes while I was watching this absolute mediocrity. At moments, I've even closed my eyes terrified by the miserable Pesci, so awful was he here (as always by the way).
As a whole, only Pacino was on some level, trying to deliver some decent acting within this crappy project...
Ugh (16/100)

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I agree with this and it in particular does apply to Boyhood. The greatness (or not-greatness) of that movie is inseperable from its method. As a film, what is actually on screen is at best a half decent coming of age tale. But it was in allowing us to see the actual evolution and growth of a real person inside of that half decent narrative which allows so much more to happen. And it is how this methodology opens the door for us to contemplate the real world toil of the actors and the directors and cinematographers had in making this for us, as well as how time has also moved through all of us while this movie was in production for all of those years (real time, not an artificial approximation of it) that made me want to cry an hour after watching it.



Nothing about the actual film was a particularly emotional experience for me. But thinking about what I had just seen, and how it let me see beyond the horizon of the celluloid that was presented on screen, overwhelmed me for a few moments. And it was in the uniqueness of that response that I really appreciated about what Linklater did here.

Actually just rewatched Boyhood after it appeared here.

I had to do that check up on it. And like expected, it doesn’t really work to the extend it once did for me. Seeing real life develop in real time in a single movie is quite crazy. But having watched it multiple times, that effect wear off a bit and you’re left with a more cliched and simple story with rather on the nose thematics. The simplicity is of course a key in its very human and intimate story, but still…

Anyways, someone already pointed out the fun fact about this one having characters aging in real time and The Irishman digitally tinkering with the age of their characters.

But another fun element is how both films seems to be, in my opinion at least, not the grand magnus opus finale of their filmography, but more like a beautiful footnote or semi-swan song of their careers. Like how Scorsese played a lot with the gangster/mafia genre and now deconstructs it in a way, Linklater always loved playing with time like the Before trilogy. And Boyhood feel like the ultimate extension of that, even though what came before is overall greater films. At least in my opinion.

So a fun movie I pairing on many levels actually.

Only seen Boyhood once. It probably should have been on my list, but was one of the last cuts. Had I rewatched again I bet it would have made mine.

I also quite enjoyed The Irishman. It's a top 10 Scorsese, which is a tough task with his great filmography.

Boy, are you set up for some disappointment.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

Boyhood was my #12

Funny story here: I had watched this during the week before the final ballot deadline, and when it ended, I had found it just as affecting as the first time I had seen it, and in the following days, just as haunting. I remember making a mental note to make sure it made my ballot in at least the top 15. In the final last minute rush to complete my ballot, I totally spaced it out. I believe it was the day after the deadline when it struck me suddenly that I had forgotten it. I lamented in the Shoutbox, and Yoda was kind enough to allow a last minute edit to my ballot before the event started. Thanks for that @Yoda. It was fairly important to me that it made it on to my final ballot.

Boyhood is one of those coming of age films that has a way of disarming me in a certain way. Another from the decade that sort of has the same effect is 8th Grade, but I don't relate to the main character in that one on the same level, so it didn't make my ballot, even if I do like it quite a bit. Some of the scenes in Boyhood are similar to events from my youth, and its earnest attempt at a raw realism really threw me for a loop when I first saw it. I have gotten older since Boyhood was first released, and my own distant boyhood is an even foggier, more abstract memory that it was when I first saw the film. The next time I see it, which perhaps won't be for a few years, I think I will still be able to experience reminder of that time so long ago, when I rode my bike down a street in my neighborhood, my entire life ahead of me.



The Irishman didn't make my ballot. I probably need to watch it again, as it didn't make a big impression on me the first time.

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Yeah, how people do (or don't) react to it works well as a litmus test for how they approach art. It's such a weird thing to say, but it could simultaneously be a bad film but a great work of art, and it's interesting to think about why that distinction is possible.

Definitely. I wonder how many crew were replaced, didn't come back, or left the industry. I wonder how many times the actors, particularly the title character, thought about having to continue the film regardless of whatever else happened, and felt it was a burden to have that hanging over them. I wonder if they gamed out in their head what might happen if they refused. I wonder how on earth they got insurance for this thing.

I've always found it fascinating to think about how people creating films make a decision, maybe even a split-second decision based on limited budget, waning daylight, an actor's lack of sleep, or a million other things, and then maybe the film becomes a classic and all those decisions are trapped in the amber forever. Every film is a series of snapshots not just literally, but in the abstract, too: it's the collection of decisions all those people made at that specific time.

A lot of people might say, sure, it's a little different, but push it back a day and it's mostly the same. But not entirely the same. And in the case of Boyhood, it's obvious it's totally different than it would have been if not for those jumps. Everyone involved is a different person, sometimes profoundly so.

I didn't have an emotional reaction like you did, but I did have a strong intellectual one. I'm not even sure it taught me anything I didn't know, but even so, it brought some of those things I knew into sharper relief. If someone had asked me all these things I think I would've answered the same, but having them made manifest like that is something I'm grateful for.

Boyhood was my #3 and The Irishman was my #13. Boyhood is fantastic, wonderfully directed and with beautiful performances. The Irishman is flawlessly directed and has an excellent cast. Both are masterpieces to me. Both are

Seen: 66/70
(Have not seen The Raid 2, The Turin Horse, The Act of Killing, and Burning)

'Preciate the review link, SE. I had the film at #13 on my list.