Best of the Decade, No. 18


Over the next 25 weeks I'll be rolling out my favorite films of the last decade. This is, as all lists of this kind, personal selections. Agree, disagree, make a comment and share your thoughts!

No. 18 Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Taika Waititi, Roman Griffin Davis, Thomasin McKenzie, and Sam Rockwell
Director: Taika Waititi
Academy Award Nominations: 6 Nominations
Academy Award Wins: 1, for Best Adapted Screenplay
About: When you're talking about films in a decade, it's only fair to count all the years. The danger is the first year or two of the decade are far enough away that your feelings for the films might have faded. The danger for the last year of the decade is that the memory is so fresh, you might be tempted to pick more films than you should. I struggled with that during the creation of this list, weighing the 2019 films that came out and trying to think about what really belonged. It seemed absurd to weed them out entirely, so I didn't. But nor did I go overboard in selecting recent films. Today's selection, "Jojo Rabbit," is one of two that landed on this list, the two that I enjoy the most from last year. "Jojo Rabbit" is a strange and beautiful film, one that was quite unexpected. It's a comedy set in Nazi Germany that features Hitler. That seems like a tough sell, and it is, but there is also something so wonderful about the finished film. That's a credit to Waititi, who won the Academy Award for adapting this book and starred as a cartoonish vision of Hitler. It's also a credit to Johansson, who was great in this film and who I thought should have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. This film has a lot of funny times, but it also has a heartfelt and beautiful relationship at its center, and that's one of the things that endeared it to me as well. I also thought it was an incredibly creative film. Waititi has delivered a number of interesting projects, including one of the better Marvel films of the decade in "Thor: Ragnarok." But it was this film that I felt was his best, and so that's why I have it on the list.
Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic content, some disturbing images, violence, and language.

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