Best English Language Films of the Past Five Years

Right Turn Clyde

I've been asked to supply my family with some of the best English language films of the past five years. The trouble is, my taste in films has been a bit all over the place during that period. For example, I'm watching a lot of world cinema and classics, i.e stuff that wouldn't interest my family. Of course I've seen plenty of English language stuff that I can pass on, but I'm hoping to pick your brains so I can draw up a more comprehensive list. Ideally, I'm looking for movies that have hit the critically acclaimed and commercially successful sweet-spot (they loved Captain Philips and Bridesmaids). This is because they're most likely to watch stuff that they've heard of before, be it through word-of-mouth or awards hype. Many thanks.

PS. Don't be afraid to throw a few curve-balls in there as well.

Birneybau

A niche market no doubt...

e_e

Looking at my films of the decade list Drive is the highest ranking that was critically acclaimed but also commercially successful.

Might have a bit too much skull violence for the family though.

Few others:

12 Years a Slave
All Is Lost
Black Swan
Boyhood
Django Unchained
Dredd
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Inception
Nightcrawler
The Place Beyond the Pines
Senna
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit

Nothing too challenging there.

hfallada

Gran Torino (2008) is excellent. The ending is so unexpected for a Hollywood film

Pride (2014) is the best English made film in years( Its extremely hard to think of a decent english made film. They are too "feel good" but lack substance.)

The Kings Speech. Was ok for me, but most people loved it

The Help is really funny and its a rare good book to film adaption.

Superbad is really funny. But its quiet a young male film

The hangover 1. The others were ****

The interview is quite funny. Same writer as Superbad

But tbh TV is the king for the last decade. Shows like Sopranos, Broadwalk empire, girls, breaking bad( basically anything HBO,AMC or Netflix original). Prove a tv series is better for a storyline than condensing and taking out everything good about it(nudity, sex scenes, not too much violence, cursing, characters who dont conform with society eg transgender people, gay people), to make it a 90 min film suitable for hollywood. I dont mean to sound like anti-hollywood nut job. But TV is pretty amazing at the moment

Right Turn Clyde

hfallada wrote: »

But tbh TV is the king for the last decade. Shows like Sopranos, Broadwalk empire, girls, breaking bad( basically anything HBO,AMC or Netflix original). Prove a tv series is better for a storyline than condensing and taking out everything good about it(nudity, sex scenes, not too much violence, cursing, characters who dont conform with society eg transgender people, gay people), to make it a 90 min film suitable for hollywood. I dont mean to sound like anti-hollywood nut job. But TV is pretty amazing at the moment

TV is king right now, in the sense that new series' are popping up all over the place and are picking up good reviews. But the list of truly outstanding English-language TV shows is still relatively short (it's notable that you started your list with The Sopranos, a series that first aired nearly 15 years ago).

Also, I don't agree that "basically anything" by AMC, Netflix and HBO "prove that TV series' are better for storyline." Fair enough, their shows are getting the ratings, but the quality is not always there. Let's look at AMC for starters. Hell On Wheels is maddeningly episodic, and narratively, The Walking Dead is a mess, an absolute mess. The Killing was ill-disciplined throughout its first two seasons, and oddly enough, when it finally started to pull itself together, in its third season, it was cancelled. So AMC is not exactly a hit factory, despite having produced, in Breaking Bad, the second truly exceptional series of the century so far (after the The Wire).

Netflix is even less successful. You're only really talking about House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, and the vision they showed in giving Arrested Development and The Killing one last run. Everything else is quite poor. Marco Polo is like a sexed-up version of something that Sky 1 used to show back in the late 90's). So the jury is still out on Netflix as a source of original TV (two of its four 'hits' started life elsewhere).

HBO is the real big daddy in all of this, even though it messes up every now and then (cancelling Deadwood has to be one of the greatest own goals of all time). However, HBO is a subscription-based service. In content it is more analogous to the indie scene than it is to Hollywood. Sex, nudity and 'non-conventional' characters still worry the 'Big Four' networks (although FOX has opened itself up a lot). So it's wrong to say that Hollywood is not as good as TV for including those 'controversial' elements. Rather, Hollywood and the large US networks are actually as stubborn as each other, but thankfully, independent film, pay-TV and a few brave souls in places like FOX and AMC are willing to do the dirty work.

Don't get wrong, I love a lot of today's TV shows. There's about ten of them that I wouldn't miss an episode of. But when it comes to fresh, high-quality drama, film is still where it's at. Or at least that's what I think.

OldeCinemaSoz

Right Turn Clyde wrote: »

I've been asked to supply my family with some of the best English language films of the past five years. The trouble is, my taste in films has been a bit all over the place during that period. For example, I'm watching a lot of world cinema and classics, i.e stuff that wouldn't interest my family. Of course I've seen plenty of English language stuff that I can pass on, but I'm hoping to pick your brains so I can draw up a more comprehensive list. Ideally, I'm looking for movies that have hit the critically acclaimed and commercially successful sweet-spot (they loved Captain Philips and Bridesmaids). This is because they're most likely to watch stuff that they've heard of before, be it through word-of-mouth or awards hype. Many thanks.

PS. Don't be afraid to throw a few curve-balls in there as well.

"Curve balls" I'd say you're well familiar with THE ENGLISH language, son.

Right Turn Clyde

OldeCinemaSoz wrote: »

"Curve balls" I'd say you're well familiar with THE ENGLISH language, son.

???