The Saturday Interview
Kevin Smith: ‘I got a phone call from Harvey Weinstein a week before the #MeToo thing broke’
As Kevin Smith returns in ‘Jay and Silent Bob Reboot’, the actor, director and podcaster tells Gerard Gilbert about the changes in his life post-heart attack, a third Clerks film, and why he doesn’t believe ‘woke culture’ is killing comedy
Kevin Smith doesn’t like to dash expectations. As expected, when we meet in a deluxe London hotel that would be completely alien to his stoner character, Silent Bob – from Smith’s 1994 classic slacker movie Clerks – he’s wearing his trademark back-to-front white baseball cap.
“It is a kind of branding,” the 49-year-old actor-director-podcaster says. “It just saves a lot of time. I tend to go with the hat… a wash ’n’ go kind of guy.”
For the record, he’s also wearing an oversized purple jacket, a T-shirt promoting his new film Jay and Silent Bob Reboot (more of which later), denim shorts (this is in deepest November) and yellow Vans. “For years I wore hockey jerseys but they went away after I lost a load of weight.”
The weight loss was the indirect result of a massive heart attack in February 2018 while filming a comedy special. Smith thought that he couldn’t catch his breath because he’d smoked too much weed that day, but luckily his manager made the decision to call an ambulance. “They’re just going to tell me I’m too stoned,” he said.
Informed instead he had an 80 per cent chance of dying, Smith remained remarkably calm. “I always figured you’d have to drag me out of this world, but I went through my entire life and realised I was really content.”
And that wasn’t just the marijuana speaking. A huge source of Smith’s near-death contentment was his decision 25 years ago to max out his credit cards to finance a black-and-white movie filmed and set in the local convenience store where he worked in New Jersey. Made for just $27,575, Clerks starred his friends Brian O’Halloran, as the main protagonist Dante Hicks, and Jason Mewes, as the talkative half of Jay and Silent Bob. Mixing witty filth with stoner wisdom, Clerks was made with the amateurish vim of Andy Warhol’s Factory movies, and had shades, too, of Richard Linklater’s Slacker. It won a prize at Sundance before being snapped up by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax, going on to gross over $3m.
The 40 best films of the decade
Show all 41
The 40 best films of the decade
1/41 40. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
A helter-skelter ride of a movie, satirical, very witty and showing its director’s immense affection for the B-movie actors, stunt men and hangers on who make up its cast. It’s also a tribute to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Who would have believed that a film set just as the Sixties in LA turned sour could be so uplifting? Geoffrey Macnab
Sony/Columbia/Rex
2/41 39. The Master
The world isn’t scared enough of Scientology, but perhaps it
would be if enough people had seen The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson depicts (a fictionalised version of) the cult as a trap for bruised masculinity. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix contort themselves into primitive creatures of greed and desire.
It’s an ugly film, in the very best sense of the word. Clarisse Loughrey
Snap Stills/Rex
3/41 38. The Irishman
Scorsese summons all his sad captains for one last reunion in his magisterial gangster epic. De Niro, Pesci, Keitel and (newcomer) Pacino are all cast in a film as much about friendship, memory and betrayal as it is about corruption in the Teamster union or Mafia violence. GM
Netflix via AP
4/41 37. Inside Out
This is Pixar’s boldest and strangest animated feature. It takes us deep inside the mind of its heroine, 11-year-old Riley, where her unconscious is shown as akin to a magical theme park; emotions like Joy and Sadness feature as characters. Director Pete Docter deals with complex subject matter in a lithe and inventive way, and without too many Freudian hang ups. GM
Moviestore/Rex
5/41 36. Shoplifters
Hirokazu Kore-eda is like the Charles Dickens of contemporary Japanese cinema. He tells melodramatic family stories which would seem mawkish if they weren’t so brilliantly observed. Winner of the Palme D’Or in Cannes, this is one of his very best movies – a heart-tugging story about impoverished members of a makeshift family doing everything they can to survive. GM
Thunderbird Releasing
6/41 35. Dogtooth
Dogtooth is a grim tale of isolation, incest, cat murder and
DIY dentistry. But Yorgos Lanthimos has a hidden superpower up his sleeve: the more off-putting his films, the more you get drawn in. His work breeds curiosity. We want to solve the mystery of these strange worlds and their cold, inscrutable characters. The
fact that there are no answers keeps us coming back for more. GM
Feelgood Entertainment
7/41 34. Edge of Seventeen
Kelly Fremon Craig’s gorgeous if cruelly unrecognised The Edge of Seventeen is deliberately small in plot, with Hailee Steinfeld playing a grumpy teen horrified to discover her best friend is dating her older brother. But it is told with heartwarming urgency, reflective of the heightened, dizzying drama of merely being a teenager.
Moviestore/Rex
8/41 33. A Quiet Passion
Reclusive New England poet Emily Dickinson, who published only a handful of poems during her lifetime, is brought to life in vivid fashion by actress Cynthia Nixon in Terence Davies’s biopic. She may look like a spinster aunt but Nixon shows us her passion, mischief and her eccentric brilliance.
Music Box Films
9/41 32. Frances Ha
Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is the definitive film about the quarter-life
crisis, largely because it embraces the messiness of it all. We get the ups and the downs. We get the poorly-planned trip to Paris made by a young woman desperate to experience something profound. It’s a film without many dramatic conflicts, but marked by
a gentle push towards accepting the inevitability of change.
IFC Films
10/41 31. The Revenant
Famous for its scene of Leonardo Di Caprio being mauled by a bear, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s western is part survival drama, part revenge movie. It’s a wilderness tale on the very grandest scale. From the opening massacre to the snowbound denouement, it if full of moments that startle you with their violence and their beauty. GM
20th Century Fox
11/41 30. Boyhood
Shot over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is the ultimate coming-of-age movie. It follows main character Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from when he is seven years old until he is a young adult. It’s a testament to the patience and ingenuity of Linklater and to the exceptional work of his cast (including Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke) that the film never feels phoney. GM
Sundance Institute
12/41 29. Hereditary
The horrors of Ari Aster’s occult contraption are matched
only by the sheer volume of ideas crammed into it. A devastating kaleidoscope of stark images, mischievous easter eggs and pure, guttural horror,
Hereditary
asks a staggering amount of star Toni Collette, who wails and groans and weeps, as if conveying a full-body demolition in painful slow-motion. It is a performance for the ages in one of the best films in recent memory.
A24
13/41 28. Melancholia
Kirsten Dunst is remarkable as a bride in the grips of
mental illness shortly before the world ends. She conveys like few before her the surging apathy and bottomless self-loathing of depression, where everything, be it food or otherwise, tastes like ashes. The film that surrounds her is equally awe-inducing,
distilling with grim elegance all of Lars von Trier’s polarising genius. AW
Canal+
14/41 27. Selma
Selma is a masterclass in the historical biopic. Presenting a
crucial moment in Martin Luther King Jr’s life without dramatic embellishment or emotional manipulation, it lets his legacy speak for itself, as Ava DuVernay wields her camera like a weapon of truth. Unabashedly political in its approach, Selma speaks plainly
to the fact that society cannot pave its future without first understanding its past. CL
Paramount/Rex
15/41 26. Boy
Taika Waititi’s films always end with the feeling that things
will work themselves out. It’s not blind optimism, but something far more comforting – he believes deeply in people’s ability to weather even the worst of storms. This is most apparent in Boy, still his best film to date, which catalogues a young Maori boy’s
dawning realisation that his absent father isn’t the hero he imagines him to be. CL
Transmission Films
16/41 25. Dunkirk
British stoicism and grace under-fire are foregrounded in Christopher Nolan’s epic film about the Dunkirk evacuations. Nolan has a Cecil B De Mille-like genius for orchestrating crowd scenes and working with huge ensemble casts. He combines spectacle with very intimate moments that show the quiet desperation of the soldiers stranded on a French beach with little chance of escape.
Warner Bros
17/41 24. Her
Her
felt almost uncomfortably relevant upon its release in 2013, and even more so today. Not because it shows people falling in love with artificially intelligent operating systems voiced by Scarlett Johansson, which hasn’t exactly caught on (...yet), but for
what it said about modern loneliness. It is a sparse, oddly human film, Joaquin Phoenix finding solace and romantic fulfilment in sparkly new technology, before everything falls apart. AW
Warner Bros
18/41 23. Call Me by Your Name
Luca Guadagnino’s wonderfully evocative coming-of-age drama, set over a long, lazy Italian summer sometime in the 1980s, is notable for its frank but delicately observed account of the love affair between the precocious adolescent Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and the American academic, Oliver (Armie Hammer), who becomes part of the household. GM
Warner Bros
19/41 22. Anomalisa
It may be animated but few live-action films have captured middle-aged male angst and disillusionment as well as Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa. David Thewlis’s exceptional voice work brings an extra, sardonic edge to its portrayal of the businessman on a work trip to Cincinnati. Kaufman captures the man’s vulnerability, boredom and creeping disappointment about the course his life has taken. GM
Paramount Pictures
20/41 21. The Social Network
Described upon release as a lightly fictionalised account
of the birth of Facebook, and as “hurtful” by Mark Zuckerberg himself, The Social Network was always spectacular, but its lessons have only deepened with time. It now resembles a terrifying warning about privacy, power, misogyny and the dangers of the internet,
brought to life by David Fincher’s irresistibly cool direction, a characteristically snappy script by Aaron Sorkin and the dreamy, pulsating score by the now-ubiquitous Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It remains the most important film of the decade. AW
Columbia
21/41 20. Black Swan
It’s important to occasionally remind yourself that
Black Swan,
a bonkers, uncompromising and horrifying ballet thriller, somehow grossed $329m at the box office. But even removed from its staggering financial success, Darren Aronofsky’s psychological creepshow is a creative triumph. Part
Showgirls,
part Polanski and all Perfect Blue,
it flirts with camp, Cronenbergian body horror and shaky-cam intimacy, with the deservedly Oscar-winning Natalie Portman as the twirling, crumbling creature at its centre. AW
Moviestore/Shutterstock
22/41 19. Roma
Roma takes two stories – one heartwrenching and intimate, the other sweeping and political – and weaves them together so delicately that they become one. It’s a tribute to the domestic worker who director Alfonso Cuarón says raised him. But it’s also the story of Mexico’s history, as seen through the perspective of those who have, for so long, been left voiceless. This is Cuarón’s masterpiece. CL
Carlos Somonte
23/41 18. The Act of Killing
It feels remarkable, given how easy it is to turn away from evil,
that The Act of Killing exists at all. Not only did Joshua Oppenheimer choose one of the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide as his subject of his documentary, but he had him confront his own crimes through a series of cinematic reenactments. It is profoundly
disturbing to watch. CL
Dogwoof
24/41 17. Stoker
Park Chan-Wook’s twisted homage to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt
may be filled with beautiful things, but they’re laced with venom. When India (Mia Wasikowska) receives a visit from her enigmatic Uncle Charlie, she discovers they share a perverse kinship. Are they the same soul in two different bodies, or are they merely
bound together by the stench of death that follows them wherever they go? CL
Rex Features
25/41 16. The Selfish Giant
Like Ken Loach’s Kes, Clio Barnard’s Bradford-set tale, very loosely inspired by the Oscar Wilde story, combines lyricism with polemic. It captures brilliantly the mischief and resourcefulness of its two young protagonists (teenage kids excluded from school) while laying bare the brutality of the society in which they and their families are cast adrift. GM
Rex Features
26/41 15. Son of Saul
In 'Son of Saul' Geza Rohrig plays a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner tasked with the extermination of his fellow Jews
Sony Pictures Entertainment
27/41 14. Lady Bird
Lady Bird – and its story of a frustrated teen (Saoirse Ronan)
trapped in Sacramento, California – is deeply attuned to how we relate to memory. It’s less about particular events than the emotions they create: a flash of adolescent alienation, a tearful goodbye at the airport, or the sensation of seeing a familiar place
through new eyes.
A24
28/41 10. 20th Century Women
20th Century Women
is a small-scale comedy drama with the power of something bigger. A tapestry of restless lives figuring things out, it is about family, longing and feeling out of place. At its heart is Annette Bening, heartbreakingly empathetic as a woman out of time – too
old for youthful bohemia and too young for her stuffy peers, and determined to raise her teenage son to be enlightened and brilliant. Rare is a fictional world so peacefully captivating. AW
A24
29/41 13. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson’s kitsch yarn, largely set in a luxurious spa hotel just before the Second World War, is an elegy for a lost world. Whether it’s Alexandre Desplat’s music, the eye-popping colours or the mannered but brilliant performances, all the elements here are perfectly judged. A film that could easily have seemed flimsy and conceited is instead utterly enrapturing. GM
Moviestore/Rex
30/41 12. 12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen’s harrowing period drama confronts audiences with the reality of slavery. Racist white owners treat their slaves as if they’re livestock, not human beings. Chiwetel Ejiofor excels as Solomon Northup, the free man sold into slavery. The film has a furious polemical charge but also works as a terrifying Kafkaesque drama about a man who falls off the face of the world. GM
Lionsgate
31/41 11. Under the Skin
Scarlett Johansson tucking nervously into a slice of
chocolate cake becomes one of cinema’s most humane and bittersweet moments courtesy of filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, whose once-in-a-blue-moon film projects have produced a trilogy of sinister classics. Like
Sexy Beast
and Birth
before it, Under the Skin
is a wild, beautiful pleasure, as haunting as it is tender and serenaded by a spindly, disquieting score by Mica Levi. AW
Filmnation/Rex
32/41 10. 20th Century Women
20th Century Women is a small-scale comedy drama with the power of something bigger. A tapestry of restless lives figuring things out, it is about family, longing and feeling out of place. At its heart is Annette Bening, heartbreakingly empathetic as a woman out of time – too
old for youthful bohemia and too young for her stuffy peers, and determined to raise her teenage son to be enlightened and brilliant. Rare is a fictional world so peacefully captivating.
A24
33/41 9. You Were Never Really Here
Cinema is often at its most triumphant when it’s used as a tool
for empathy, letting us climb into someone else’s brain and experience things that feel miles away from our own reality. That’s the revelatory power of Lynne Ramsay’s portrait of a PTSD-suffering vigilante, brought to life with incredible vulnerability by
Joaquin Phoenix.
Amazon Studios
34/41 8. Mad Max: Fury Road
In a recent interview, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho revealed
that he’d shed a tear while watching George Miller’s unexpected return to the Mad Max franchise. He called it “something we cannot describe with our words: all we can do is just cry”. He’s right. Fury Road is, essentially, a feature-length car chase – but
it’s hard to put into words how epic and symphonic it truly is. CL
Warner Bros
35/41 7. Paddington 2
A soothing balm for all of our socio-political ills,
Paddington 2
is the film we needed more than any other this decade. There are numerous delights here, from the majesty of Paul King and Simon Farnaby’s script and its elaborate sleights of hand, to a moustache-twirling Hugh Grant at his most magnificent. But more than
anything, Paddington 2
is about the healing power of community and family, a message conveyed with wholesome warmth and pluck by the achingly sweet bear of the title. Michael Bond would be proud.
36/41 6. American Honey
It took a woman from Dartford to capture the sprawling,
stirring power of the American road and all that it promises. Of all the decade’s films, Andrea Arnold’s
American Honey
feels the most hungry to exist independently on its own, ignoring the rules of storytelling and bursting at the seams with wildness and colour. Sasha Lane – who had never acted before she was spotted by Arnold on a beach during spring break – plays working-class
teenager Star, who yearns for a greater purpose and hitches a ride with a truckful of kids as adrift as she is. AW
Universal Pictures
37/41 5. Inside Llewyn Davis
Inside Llewyn Davis is a kind of anti-Odyssey. In its story of
a folk singer (Oscar Isaac) who hops from couch to couch, with no direction and few prospects, Llewyn becomes the weary Greek hero who not only struggles to find a way home, but realises he may not have a home to go to. It’s a deeply melancholic work.
CBS Films
38/41 4. Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
is a love story in a funhouse mirror – fizzy and feather-light, but with a barbed and kinky underbelly that could only have come from the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson. The bewitching duo of Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps play a fashion designer and his
muse, who unearth new means to sustain their marriage. Anderson lingers over objects of beauty throughout – the lines of a fabric, the mess of a breakfast table, the colourful residue left over after the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. Apparently Day-Lewis’
final film, but what a blissful way to go out. AW
Universal Pictures
39/41 3. Get Out
Get Out sunk its teeth into culture in 2017, and hasn’t stopped biting. Jordan Peele’s horror satire is a polished, spooky and supremely well-executed chiller, but works even better as a deconstruction of race. In its sights are peak white centrism, the burdens and expectations of being black in America, and the untruths of the post-racial utopia many were fooled into embracing in the Obama era. No other film has reflected society in the 21st century more succinctly. AW
Universal Pictures
40/41 2. Carol
A magical reprieve from much of the queer romance canon,
Carol is neither tragic nor sexually neutered, and is rich with snowy, expensive opulence. Todd Haynes’s 2015 masterpiece plays like
a fairytale, kick-started by a misplaced pair of gloves, with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara acting on feelings that were considered unacceptable at the time. Deeply romantic, sexy and dramatic, it takes everything Haynes perfected in his Douglas Sirk-inspired
drama Far from Heaven
(2002), and maximises it.
41/41 1. Moonlight
Barry Jenkins is destined to be one of the most important cinematic
voices of the era. Moonlight is ample proof of that: there are very few debuts that feel this transportive, that fill the screen with this much raw beauty and human vulnerability. The director knows the power of gesture, and so the film’s emotional weight
rests on a few shared glances, or one hand placed gently on another. In the intersection between race, sexuality and class, it crafts tender poetry. CL
David Bornfriend/Kobal/Rex
1/41 40. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
A helter-skelter ride of a movie, satirical, very witty and showing its director’s immense affection for the B-movie actors, stunt men and hangers on who make up its cast. It’s also a tribute to Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Who would have believed that a film set just as the Sixties in LA turned sour could be so uplifting? Geoffrey Macnab
Sony/Columbia/Rex
2/41 39. The Master
The world isn’t scared enough of Scientology, but perhaps it
would be if enough people had seen The Master. Paul Thomas Anderson depicts (a fictionalised version of) the cult as a trap for bruised masculinity. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix contort themselves into primitive creatures of greed and desire.
It’s an ugly film, in the very best sense of the word. Clarisse Loughrey
Snap Stills/Rex
3/41 38. The Irishman
Scorsese summons all his sad captains for one last reunion in his magisterial gangster epic. De Niro, Pesci, Keitel and (newcomer) Pacino are all cast in a film as much about friendship, memory and betrayal as it is about corruption in the Teamster union or Mafia violence. GM
Netflix via AP
4/41 37. Inside Out
This is Pixar’s boldest and strangest animated feature. It takes us deep inside the mind of its heroine, 11-year-old Riley, where her unconscious is shown as akin to a magical theme park; emotions like Joy and Sadness feature as characters. Director Pete Docter deals with complex subject matter in a lithe and inventive way, and without too many Freudian hang ups. GM
Moviestore/Rex
5/41 36. Shoplifters
Hirokazu Kore-eda is like the Charles Dickens of contemporary Japanese cinema. He tells melodramatic family stories which would seem mawkish if they weren’t so brilliantly observed. Winner of the Palme D’Or in Cannes, this is one of his very best movies – a heart-tugging story about impoverished members of a makeshift family doing everything they can to survive. GM
Thunderbird Releasing
6/41 35. Dogtooth
Dogtooth is a grim tale of isolation, incest, cat murder and
DIY dentistry. But Yorgos Lanthimos has a hidden superpower up his sleeve: the more off-putting his films, the more you get drawn in. His work breeds curiosity. We want to solve the mystery of these strange worlds and their cold, inscrutable characters. The
fact that there are no answers keeps us coming back for more. GM
Feelgood Entertainment
7/41 34. Edge of Seventeen
Kelly Fremon Craig’s gorgeous if cruelly unrecognised The Edge of Seventeen is deliberately small in plot, with Hailee Steinfeld playing a grumpy teen horrified to discover her best friend is dating her older brother. But it is told with heartwarming urgency, reflective of the heightened, dizzying drama of merely being a teenager.
Moviestore/Rex
8/41 33. A Quiet Passion
Reclusive New England poet Emily Dickinson, who published only a handful of poems during her lifetime, is brought to life in vivid fashion by actress Cynthia Nixon in Terence Davies’s biopic. She may look like a spinster aunt but Nixon shows us her passion, mischief and her eccentric brilliance.
Music Box Films
9/41 32. Frances Ha
Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha is the definitive film about the quarter-life
crisis, largely because it embraces the messiness of it all. We get the ups and the downs. We get the poorly-planned trip to Paris made by a young woman desperate to experience something profound. It’s a film without many dramatic conflicts, but marked by
a gentle push towards accepting the inevitability of change.
IFC Films
10/41 31. The Revenant
Famous for its scene of Leonardo Di Caprio being mauled by a bear, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s western is part survival drama, part revenge movie. It’s a wilderness tale on the very grandest scale. From the opening massacre to the snowbound denouement, it if full of moments that startle you with their violence and their beauty. GM
20th Century Fox
11/41 30. Boyhood
Shot over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is the ultimate coming-of-age movie. It follows main character Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from when he is seven years old until he is a young adult. It’s a testament to the patience and ingenuity of Linklater and to the exceptional work of his cast (including Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke) that the film never feels phoney. GM
Sundance Institute
12/41 29. Hereditary
The horrors of Ari Aster’s occult contraption are matched
only by the sheer volume of ideas crammed into it. A devastating kaleidoscope of stark images, mischievous easter eggs and pure, guttural horror,
Hereditary
asks a staggering amount of star Toni Collette, who wails and groans and weeps, as if conveying a full-body demolition in painful slow-motion. It is a performance for the ages in one of the best films in recent memory.
A24
13/41 28. Melancholia
Kirsten Dunst is remarkable as a bride in the grips of
mental illness shortly before the world ends. She conveys like few before her the surging apathy and bottomless self-loathing of depression, where everything, be it food or otherwise, tastes like ashes. The film that surrounds her is equally awe-inducing,
distilling with grim elegance all of Lars von Trier’s polarising genius. AW
Canal+
14/41 27. Selma
Selma is a masterclass in the historical biopic. Presenting a
crucial moment in Martin Luther King Jr’s life without dramatic embellishment or emotional manipulation, it lets his legacy speak for itself, as Ava DuVernay wields her camera like a weapon of truth. Unabashedly political in its approach, Selma speaks plainly
to the fact that society cannot pave its future without first understanding its past. CL
Paramount/Rex
15/41 26. Boy
Taika Waititi’s films always end with the feeling that things
will work themselves out. It’s not blind optimism, but something far more comforting – he believes deeply in people’s ability to weather even the worst of storms. This is most apparent in Boy, still his best film to date, which catalogues a young Maori boy’s
dawning realisation that his absent father isn’t the hero he imagines him to be. CL
Transmission Films
16/41 25. Dunkirk
British stoicism and grace under-fire are foregrounded in Christopher Nolan’s epic film about the Dunkirk evacuations. Nolan has a Cecil B De Mille-like genius for orchestrating crowd scenes and working with huge ensemble casts. He combines spectacle with very intimate moments that show the quiet desperation of the soldiers stranded on a French beach with little chance of escape.
Warner Bros
17/41 24. Her
Her
felt almost uncomfortably relevant upon its release in 2013, and even more so today. Not because it shows people falling in love with artificially intelligent operating systems voiced by Scarlett Johansson, which hasn’t exactly caught on (...yet), but for
what it said about modern loneliness. It is a sparse, oddly human film, Joaquin Phoenix finding solace and romantic fulfilment in sparkly new technology, before everything falls apart. AW
Warner Bros
18/41 23. Call Me by Your Name
Luca Guadagnino’s wonderfully evocative coming-of-age drama, set over a long, lazy Italian summer sometime in the 1980s, is notable for its frank but delicately observed account of the love affair between the precocious adolescent Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and the American academic, Oliver (Armie Hammer), who becomes part of the household. GM
Warner Bros
19/41 22. Anomalisa
It may be animated but few live-action films have captured middle-aged male angst and disillusionment as well as Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa. David Thewlis’s exceptional voice work brings an extra, sardonic edge to its portrayal of the businessman on a work trip to Cincinnati. Kaufman captures the man’s vulnerability, boredom and creeping disappointment about the course his life has taken. GM
Paramount Pictures
20/41 21. The Social Network
Described upon release as a lightly fictionalised account
of the birth of Facebook, and as “hurtful” by Mark Zuckerberg himself, The Social Network was always spectacular, but its lessons have only deepened with time. It now resembles a terrifying warning about privacy, power, misogyny and the dangers of the internet,
brought to life by David Fincher’s irresistibly cool direction, a characteristically snappy script by Aaron Sorkin and the dreamy, pulsating score by the now-ubiquitous Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It remains the most important film of the decade. AW
Columbia
21/41 20. Black Swan
It’s important to occasionally remind yourself that
Black Swan,
a bonkers, uncompromising and horrifying ballet thriller, somehow grossed $329m at the box office. But even removed from its staggering financial success, Darren Aronofsky’s psychological creepshow is a creative triumph. Part
Showgirls,
part Polanski and all Perfect Blue,
it flirts with camp, Cronenbergian body horror and shaky-cam intimacy, with the deservedly Oscar-winning Natalie Portman as the twirling, crumbling creature at its centre. AW
Moviestore/Shutterstock
22/41 19. Roma
Roma takes two stories – one heartwrenching and intimate, the other sweeping and political – and weaves them together so delicately that they become one. It’s a tribute to the domestic worker who director Alfonso Cuarón says raised him. But it’s also the story of Mexico’s history, as seen through the perspective of those who have, for so long, been left voiceless. This is Cuarón’s masterpiece. CL
Carlos Somonte
23/41 18. The Act of Killing
It feels remarkable, given how easy it is to turn away from evil,
that The Act of Killing exists at all. Not only did Joshua Oppenheimer choose one of the perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide as his subject of his documentary, but he had him confront his own crimes through a series of cinematic reenactments. It is profoundly
disturbing to watch. CL
Dogwoof
24/41 17. Stoker
Park Chan-Wook’s twisted homage to Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt
may be filled with beautiful things, but they’re laced with venom. When India (Mia Wasikowska) receives a visit from her enigmatic Uncle Charlie, she discovers they share a perverse kinship. Are they the same soul in two different bodies, or are they merely
bound together by the stench of death that follows them wherever they go? CL
Rex Features
25/41 16. The Selfish Giant
Like Ken Loach’s Kes, Clio Barnard’s Bradford-set tale, very loosely inspired by the Oscar Wilde story, combines lyricism with polemic. It captures brilliantly the mischief and resourcefulness of its two young protagonists (teenage kids excluded from school) while laying bare the brutality of the society in which they and their families are cast adrift. GM
Rex Features
26/41 15. Son of Saul
In 'Son of Saul' Geza Rohrig plays a Hungarian-Jewish prisoner tasked with the extermination of his fellow Jews
Sony Pictures Entertainment
27/41 14. Lady Bird
Lady Bird – and its story of a frustrated teen (Saoirse Ronan)
trapped in Sacramento, California – is deeply attuned to how we relate to memory. It’s less about particular events than the emotions they create: a flash of adolescent alienation, a tearful goodbye at the airport, or the sensation of seeing a familiar place
through new eyes.
A24
28/41 10. 20th Century Women
20th Century Women
is a small-scale comedy drama with the power of something bigger. A tapestry of restless lives figuring things out, it is about family, longing and feeling out of place. At its heart is Annette Bening, heartbreakingly empathetic as a woman out of time – too
old for youthful bohemia and too young for her stuffy peers, and determined to raise her teenage son to be enlightened and brilliant. Rare is a fictional world so peacefully captivating. AW
A24
29/41 13. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson’s kitsch yarn, largely set in a luxurious spa hotel just before the Second World War, is an elegy for a lost world. Whether it’s Alexandre Desplat’s music, the eye-popping colours or the mannered but brilliant performances, all the elements here are perfectly judged. A film that could easily have seemed flimsy and conceited is instead utterly enrapturing. GM
Moviestore/Rex
30/41 12. 12 Years a Slave
Steve McQueen’s harrowing period drama confronts audiences with the reality of slavery. Racist white owners treat their slaves as if they’re livestock, not human beings. Chiwetel Ejiofor excels as Solomon Northup, the free man sold into slavery. The film has a furious polemical charge but also works as a terrifying Kafkaesque drama about a man who falls off the face of the world. GM
Lionsgate
31/41 11. Under the Skin
Scarlett Johansson tucking nervously into a slice of
chocolate cake becomes one of cinema’s most humane and bittersweet moments courtesy of filmmaker Jonathan Glazer, whose once-in-a-blue-moon film projects have produced a trilogy of sinister classics. Like
Sexy Beast
and Birth
before it, Under the Skin
is a wild, beautiful pleasure, as haunting as it is tender and serenaded by a spindly, disquieting score by Mica Levi. AW
Filmnation/Rex
32/41 10. 20th Century Women
20th Century Women is a small-scale comedy drama with the power of something bigger. A tapestry of restless lives figuring things out, it is about family, longing and feeling out of place. At its heart is Annette Bening, heartbreakingly empathetic as a woman out of time – too
old for youthful bohemia and too young for her stuffy peers, and determined to raise her teenage son to be enlightened and brilliant. Rare is a fictional world so peacefully captivating.
A24
33/41 9. You Were Never Really Here
Cinema is often at its most triumphant when it’s used as a tool
for empathy, letting us climb into someone else’s brain and experience things that feel miles away from our own reality. That’s the revelatory power of Lynne Ramsay’s portrait of a PTSD-suffering vigilante, brought to life with incredible vulnerability by
Joaquin Phoenix.
Amazon Studios
34/41 8. Mad Max: Fury Road
In a recent interview, Parasite director Bong Joon-ho revealed
that he’d shed a tear while watching George Miller’s unexpected return to the Mad Max franchise. He called it “something we cannot describe with our words: all we can do is just cry”. He’s right. Fury Road is, essentially, a feature-length car chase – but
it’s hard to put into words how epic and symphonic it truly is. CL
Warner Bros
35/41 7. Paddington 2
A soothing balm for all of our socio-political ills,
Paddington 2
is the film we needed more than any other this decade. There are numerous delights here, from the majesty of Paul King and Simon Farnaby’s script and its elaborate sleights of hand, to a moustache-twirling Hugh Grant at his most magnificent. But more than
anything, Paddington 2
is about the healing power of community and family, a message conveyed with wholesome warmth and pluck by the achingly sweet bear of the title. Michael Bond would be proud.
36/41 6. American Honey
It took a woman from Dartford to capture the sprawling,
stirring power of the American road and all that it promises. Of all the decade’s films, Andrea Arnold’s
American Honey
feels the most hungry to exist independently on its own, ignoring the rules of storytelling and bursting at the seams with wildness and colour. Sasha Lane – who had never acted before she was spotted by Arnold on a beach during spring break – plays working-class
teenager Star, who yearns for a greater purpose and hitches a ride with a truckful of kids as adrift as she is. AW
Universal Pictures
37/41 5. Inside Llewyn Davis
Inside Llewyn Davis is a kind of anti-Odyssey. In its story of
a folk singer (Oscar Isaac) who hops from couch to couch, with no direction and few prospects, Llewyn becomes the weary Greek hero who not only struggles to find a way home, but realises he may not have a home to go to. It’s a deeply melancholic work.
CBS Films
38/41 4. Phantom Thread
Phantom Thread
is a love story in a funhouse mirror – fizzy and feather-light, but with a barbed and kinky underbelly that could only have come from the mind of Paul Thomas Anderson. The bewitching duo of Daniel Day-Lewis and Vicky Krieps play a fashion designer and his
muse, who unearth new means to sustain their marriage. Anderson lingers over objects of beauty throughout – the lines of a fabric, the mess of a breakfast table, the colourful residue left over after the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. Apparently Day-Lewis’
final film, but what a blissful way to go out. AW
Universal Pictures
39/41 3. Get Out
Get Out sunk its teeth into culture in 2017, and hasn’t stopped biting. Jordan Peele’s horror satire is a polished, spooky and supremely well-executed chiller, but works even better as a deconstruction of race. In its sights are peak white centrism, the burdens and expectations of being black in America, and the untruths of the post-racial utopia many were fooled into embracing in the Obama era. No other film has reflected society in the 21st century more succinctly. AW
Universal Pictures
40/41 2. Carol
A magical reprieve from much of the queer romance canon,
Carol is neither tragic nor sexually neutered, and is rich with snowy, expensive opulence. Todd Haynes’s 2015 masterpiece plays like
a fairytale, kick-started by a misplaced pair of gloves, with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara acting on feelings that were considered unacceptable at the time. Deeply romantic, sexy and dramatic, it takes everything Haynes perfected in his Douglas Sirk-inspired
drama Far from Heaven
(2002), and maximises it.
41/41 1. Moonlight
Barry Jenkins is destined to be one of the most important cinematic
voices of the era. Moonlight is ample proof of that: there are very few debuts that feel this transportive, that fill the screen with this much raw beauty and human vulnerability. The director knows the power of gesture, and so the film’s emotional weight
rests on a few shared glances, or one hand placed gently on another. In the intersection between race, sexuality and class, it crafts tender poetry. CL
David Bornfriend/Kobal/Rex
Weinstein and Miramax would go on to produce nearly all of Smith’s films for the next 14 years, including Chasing Amy, Dogma (Smith’s suitably controversial 1999 fantasy starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as fallen angels and Alanis Morissette as God), Jersey Girl and Clerks II. He says that if he knew then about Harvey Weinstein’s abuse, he would happily have foregone them all.
“Scott Rosenberg [the Hollywood screenwriter] wrote an article that said everybody knew [about Weinstein], but I didn’t know because if I had I wouldn’t have worked with the guy,” he says. “Around Miramax all we thought was like ‘Oh, Harvey cheats on his wife’ because he’d always be around pretty girls but it was never like ‘Harvey is a rapist’.
“I got a phone call from Harvey a week before the #MeToo thing broke. He hadn’t spoken to me for 10 years and I was so excited because this was the guy who started my career. He owns Dogma personally and he was like, ‘Maybe we could talk about a sequel to Dogma… we’ll speak soon.’ A week later the New York Times piece ran. It was a sick feeling. He was circling his wagons because he knew that article was about to drop.
“But I’m not the victim here,” Smith continues. “He never victimised me; in fact, he made my dreams come true.” To help the real victims, the actresses whose dreams Weinstein crushed, Smith pledged his future residuals from the films Weinstein produced to the non-profit organisation Women in Film.
His new film, Jay and Silent Bob Reboot, sees the stoners from Clerks make a road trip to Hollywood to fight for the film rights of their fictional likenesses Bluntman and Chronic, just like they did in 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
“Technically it’s not really a reboot, it’s more a ‘requel’ – a reboot and a sequel together, like The Force Awakens,” says Smith, a massive Star Wars fan. “I want to say some stuff about reboots and remakes and sequels.”
If that sounds a bit meta and a million miles from the lo-fi grubby realism of Clerks, then it is. It’s one primarily for the fans, and there are enough of those that, in America, Smith was able to forego a marketing budget and advertise the $8m film on social media alone. He’s an early adopter. “By the time Twitter came around I could do this in my sleep,” he says. “I sold out my American tour just using Twitter and Instagram.”
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot features a small galaxy of guest stars, including Chris Hemsworth (“I didn’t know him but I saw him say he was listening to a Kevin Smith podcast, and I thought, ‘Thor knows my name!’”), Rosario Dawson, Val Kilmer and Ben Affleck. “I cast the movie with my heart attack,” he says. “Basically, you call up people and say, ‘Hey, do you want to come down to New Orleans and be in a movie? You do remember I almost died last year, right?’”
There’s also a starring role for Smith’s 20-year-old daughter Harley Quinn, who plays the leader of a pack of rebellious vegan girls – typecasting perhaps, since it was Harley who persuaded her father, post-heart attack, to take up the plant-based diet that caused Smith to lose 11 stone (70kg). Nowadays he graces photoshoots in Men’s Health and Muscle & Fitness magazines. Harley is gleeful about his conversion, according to her dad. “Oh, yes, she’s ‘If I can flip this motherf***er what a gift for the vegan movement he is’.”
Smith doesn’t agree with the sentiment that “woke” culture is killing comedy. “If you ever punch down to make laughs, you can’t get away with that anymore,” he says. “I was always punching myself, so I don’t find it difficult to make comedy in a woke culture.
“I get to take my characters, firmly rooted in the Nineties, and introduce them to the Klan, to Russian collusion, to social-justice warriors, to diversity, and see what comes of that. The fish out of water thing. But my kid, who’s of an incredibly sensitive generation, had me second-guessing myself. She said you can’t put the Ku Klux Klan in a movie, they’re a hate organisation. I was like, ‘I know that, that’s why we dump s*** on them.’”
One irony of playing a character called Silent Bob is that Smith himself is anything but, his hands gesticulating wildly as he speaks. You can see why podcasting is his natural métier. Another irony is that he has gone from portraying a drug dealer to being in the real-life legal weed business, with his own brand of pre-rolled legal marijuana, a sample of which appears from his pocket now.
“This one is called ‘snoochie boochie’ [Jay and Silent Bob speak for ‘cool’] that’s got 20 per cent THC and 31 percent CBD – so it’s a joint that’s like a cup of coffee. The other two are more like ‘smoke this and it’ll knock you the f*** out’.”
Talking of knockouts, I wonder what his near-death experience has taught him. “I learnt finally that I’m living on borrowed time,” he says. “My wife [former USA Today journalist Jennifer Schwalbach] is like ‘that’s morbid’ and I say, ‘You’re living on borrowed time too, I’m just acutely aware of it.’”
One project that will now finally be made, after a false start in 2017, is a second sequel to Clerks. “The original version of Clerks III was very middle-aged and obsessed with death. Now that I’ve seen death I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he says.
“The new version is a lot more hopeful. In the very first scene Randall [the video-store worker played by Jeff Anderson] has a massive heart attack. So, in recovery he’s telling Dante, ‘I nearly died last night. I’m 50 years old and I’ve got nothing to show for my life. I’m not watching anyone’s movies anymore, I’m making my own movie about my life working here and you’re going to help me.’ So, Randall and Dante make Clerks, essentially.”
It’s a neat idea, drawing a full circle on Smith’s career and I hope Clerks III does justice to the original. By his own admission, he hasn’t developed as a director in the intervening 25 years. “I don’t think I’m born to be a director, like Tarantino or Robert Rodriguez or Chris Nolan,” he says. “I’m more of a carpetbagger… I’m a fan. I never wanted to make big stuff. I love watching Marvel movies but I’ve got no interest in making a Marvel movie.
“I’m in the Kevin Smith business. Sometimes I do it through a movie, sometimes I do it through a podcast, sometimes I do it on stage. What makes it all palatable is I give away my podcasts, which is where I do my best work, for free. But every other way, Kevin Smith is trying to separate you from your loot.”
Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is in cinemas now
Comments
Share your thoughts and debate the big issues
Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines.
You can find our Community Guidelines in full here.
-
Newest first
-
Oldest first
-
Most liked
{{/moreThanOne}}Please be respectful when making a comment and adhere to our Community Guidelines.
You can find our Community Guidelines in full here.
-
Newest first
-
Oldest first
-
Most liked
{{/moreThanOne_p}}Follow comments
Vote
Report Comment
Subscribe to Independent Premium to debate the big issues
Want to discuss real-world problems, be involved in the most engaging discussions and hear from the journalists? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Already registered? Log inReport Comment
Delete Comment
About The Independent commenting
Independent Premium Comments can be posted by members of our membership scheme, Independent Premium. It allows our most engaged readers to debate the big issues, share their own experiences, discuss real-world solutions, and more. Our journalists will try to respond by joining the threads when they can to create a true meeting of independent Premium. The most insightful comments on all subjects will be published daily in dedicated articles. You can also choose to be emailed when someone replies to your comment.
The existing Open Comments threads will continue to exist for those who do not subscribe to Independent Premium. Due to the sheer scale of this comment community, we are not able to give each post the same level of attention, but we have preserved this area in the interests of open debate. Please continue to respect all commenters and create constructive debates.