‘Best Movies of the Decade’ podcast: Dramas

Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) meets the parents of girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) in “Get Out.” | Universal Pictures

Still the reigning heavyweight champion of genres. As you’d expect, this episode is dominated by films that were on hundreds of critics’ “Best of the Year” lists and garnered countless Oscars—not only for Best Picture, but in the acting and technical categories as well.

But not all of the films on this list won Oscar gold or dominated the box office. We’re also going to take a look at the of the very best dramas of the 2010s that were criminally overlooked.

“Boyhood”

Recognitions at the 2015 Academy Awards

• Best Supporting Actress, Patricia Arquette, Winner
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Supporting Actor, Ethan Hawke, Nominated
• Best Director, Richard Linklater, Nominated
• Best Original Screenplay, Nominated
• Best Film Editing, Nominated

“Django Unchained”

Recognitions at the 2013 Academy Awards

• Best Original Screenplay, Quintin Tarantino, Winner
• Best Supporting Actor, Christoph Waltz, Winner
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Cinematography, Nominated
• Best Sound Editing, Nominated

“The Farewell”

Roeper’s review — July 2019

We recognize aspects of our own clan within the complicated, maddening, frustrating, head-butting, ridiculous, hilarious, terrible, wonderful, but most of all deeply loving dynamic of the extended family depicted in writer-director Lulu Wang’s semi-autobiographical, absolutely beautiful and memorably lovely “The Farewell.”

This is a viewing experience to be treasured. It is one of the very best films of 2019.

Billi (Awkwafina, right) knows her beloved grandmother (Zhao Shuzhen) is dying but the grandma doesn’t in “The Farewell.”

“Get Out”

Roeper’s review — February 2017

“Get Out” is a cutting-edge, fresh and sometimes bat-bleep-crazy mash-up of “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” and “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Stepford Wives,” with dashes of John Carpenter’s “They Live,” among other films, mixed in for good measure. It is weird and it is funny, and some of the racial humor might well make you squirm in your seat, and how great is that? We need more movies that dare to start a conversation, all the while entertaining the hell out of us.

Recognitions at the 2018 Academy Awards

• Best Original Screenplay, Jordan Peele, Winner
• Best Actor, Daniel Kaluuya, Nominated
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Director, Jordan Peele, Nominated

“Manchester by the Sea”

Roeper’s review — November 2016

If you’ve ever been to a memorial service where everyone is heartbroken and stricken with grief but there are just as many laughs as tears, just as many moments of wickedly dark humor as heavy sobbing — well, there’s your reference point for “Manchester by the Sea.”

This is one of the funniest films about coping with tragedy I’ve ever seen. Not that it’s a comedy, not for a second. It’s an immensely moving and beautifully resonant drama about the walking wounded and how they cope with a horrific event from many years past.

Casey Affleck in “Manchester By The Sea.” | Roadside Attractions and Amazon Studios

Recognitions at the 2017 Academy Awards

• Best Actor, Casey Affleck, Winner
• Best Original Screenplay, Winner
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Supporting Actor, Nominated
• Best Supporting Actress, Michelle Williams, Nominated
• Best Director, Nominated

“Moonlight”

Roeper’s review — October 2016

The only criticism I have of “Moonlight” isn’t really a criticism at all — it’s more of a wish this had been a trilogy instead of a single film.

Because all three sections of writer-director Barry Jenkins’ modern masterpiece are so rich in character and story, so vibrant and bone jarring and real, one laments not spending more time with each chapter.

And isn’t that a rare and wonderful “complaint” to have about a feature film?

“Moonlight” is a “small” film in terms of budget and scope of action and size of cast, but Jenkins tackles big and timely issues, from the drug epidemic that continues to blight the inner cities, destroy families and steal futures, to a subject rarely explored in cinema: what it’s like for a young African-American to grow up gay.

Ashton Sanders plays Chiron as a teenager in “Moonlight.”

Recognitions at the 2017 Academy Awards

• Best Picture, Winner
• Best Supporting Actor, Mahershala Ali, Winner
• Best Adapted Screenplay, Winner
• Best Supporting Actress, Nominated
• Best Original Music Score, Nominated
• Best Director, Nominated
• Best Cinematography, Nominated
• Best Film Editing, Nominated

“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Roeper’s review — July 2019

Quentin Tarantino’s deeply personal, ’60s-cool, darkly funny, trippy, bold and sensational “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is filled with pitch-perfect vignettes such as that moment at the intersection — moments perfectly capturing the vast chasm in the country and in the world of American pop culture in 1969.

For a time, the focus of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” switches to actress Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie.

“Room”

Roeper’s review — December 2015

Brie Larson is transcendent as Ma. She deserves a best actress nomination. The wonderful Joan Allen is as good as she’s ever been. Director Lenny Abrahamson and the tech artists on this film do an amazing job of creating a world within that room — making it seem oh so claustrophobic, but also letting us see it through Jack’s eyes as this big wide world.

And then there’s Jacob Tremblay as Jack. To play someone who is so smart and so curious, so devoted to his mother and so creative, and yet so isolated and sheltered and incapable of understanding reality, is an enormous challenge for an actor.

Recognitions at the 2016 Academy Awards

• Best Actress, Brie Larson, Winner
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Director, Nominated
• Best Adapted Screenplay, Nominated

“Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”

Roeper’s review — November 2017

The mystery surrounding Angela’s murder is always lurking on the edges of “Three Billboards,” but somehow McDonagh has taken the bleakest of subject matters and treated it seriously while also serving up one of the best dark comedies I’ve ever seen. In scene after scene, McDonagh and that outstanding cast deliver small chuckles and hearty laughs that spring authentically from the situations at hand.

Grieving mother Mildred (Frances McDormand) finds a bold way to demand justice.

Recognitions at the 2018 Academy Awards

• Best Actress, Frances McDormand, Winner
• Best Supporting Actor, Sam Rockwell, Winner
• Best Picture, Nominated
• Best Supporting Actor, Woody Harrelson, Nominated
• Best Original Screenplay, Nominated
• Best Original Music Score, Nominated
• Best Film Editing, Nominated

“Widows”

Roeper’s review — November 2018

Viola Davis gives a breathtakingly pure performance as Veronica, a high-ranking officer with the Chicago Teachers Union who has been married for 20 years to Liam Neeson’s Harry Rawlings. Veronica knows Harry is a career criminal, but she is content to look the other way and enjoy the fruits of his ill-gotten gains, including their stunning penthouse apartment in a Mies van der Rohe building on Lake Shore Drive.