10 films

At Berkeley (Frederick Wiseman)
It’s a fairly gentle, unhurried four-hour-long documentary about the University of California at Berkeley, but it’s implicitly the fiercest defence of the University-as-institution I know.

The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer)
You wonder if, with its artistic approach, the film is letting the perpatrators off too easily, but then the final scene back on the rooftop is astonishing.

Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)
Would make the list on the strength of the Michael Stuhlbarg speech alone.

Carol (Todd Haynes)
The best Christmas film of all time.

For Sama / من أجل سما (Waad Al-Kateab & Edward Watts)
It’s horrific and upsetting, but also a deeply, profoundly optimistic film.

Four Lions (Christopher Morris)
A geniune comedic tragedy. The best thing Chris Morris has done.

her (Spike Jonze)
Scarlett Johansson’s voice was dubbed into this very late in post-production, I understand, and it’s still one of the great performances of the decade.

Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
Is it a film about depression, or is it just a film about the Earth being hit by a big planet?

Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
The decade’s lushest costume drama, swooniest romance, most giffable comedy, scariest ghost story, most twisted psychological thriller, and best film.

Tower (Keith Maitland)
It’s a careful and thoughtful documentary, but also a beautiful art film, and also a nail-biting thriller.

I regret not being able to include: Beast, Black Swan, Cold War, First Reformed, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Lady Bird, Lady Macbeth, The Lobster, Marriage Story, The Social Network.

Plus: if Apocalypse Now: The Final Cut counts as a new film, then it’s top of the list.

10 albums

Atoms for Peace – Amok
Thom Yorke’s solo work and side-projects are really good, and even the hardcore Radiohead fans under-appreciate them.

Björk – Vulnicura
On the list on the basis of the first half, which is one of the all-time great half-albums.

Bonobo – Black Sands
This is great, but it was perhaps even better live, where the brass and wind played a more forward role.

Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow
Among her many dazzling talents, Kate Bush remains an underrated pianist.

Camille – Ilo Veyou
Quiet and delicate, but lovely.

PJ Harvey – Let England Shake
It might not quite have her best songs, but this is PJ Harvey’s most complete artistic statement.

Metronomy – The English Riviera
My friend L was always a fan of this, but I never really got it until, years later, a cafe I was working in played the whole album front-to-back, and then it seemed obviously brilliant.

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The crowning masterpiece of Kanye’s genius period.

Kanye West – Yeezus
The best album there has been – and, it increasingly seems, that there ever will be – in Kanye’s post-genius period.

The first nine on the list were easy to pick, but it’s difficult to decide on the tenth. For my joker pick I’ll either go for Dirty Projectors – Dirty Projectors and Amber Coffman – City of No Reply considered as a conceptual double-album about both sides of a breakup, or the Hamilton soundtrack.

5 books

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katharine Boo
Beautifully written journalism. (I’ve always been a bit distrustful of the “nonfiction novel” genre, but the afterword to this convinces me it’s fully legit.)

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann
The collected New Yorker articles. I remember reading this on a transatlantic flight while the rest of the plane was sleeping and I should have been asleep too, but the book was too good.

Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anaatomy of a Murder Trial by Janet Malcolm
Reading Janet Malcolm is like having your brain cleaned out with a stiff brush.

The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, volume 4) by Robert A Caro
On Lyndon Johnson from 1960 to the first few months of his presidency. Such great setpieces: the 1960 convention, the Cuban missile crisis, and, most of all, the Kennedy assassination.

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson
I’m not totally sure every part of this hangs together and the “Adam Curtis explains the book’s thesis” scene seemed artificial – yet there was no book I had as much fun reading this decade. (Despite not having listened to it myself, I still feel fairly confident in recommending the audiobook over the paper book for this one.)

If a fiction book had made this list, it would have been How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti or The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht.

5 TV programmes

Mad Men
It wasn’t always great (see, for example, all the Don Draper backstory flashbacks), and I suppose that nearly half of it was last decade, but it was a TV series genuinely made for grown-ups who are willing to pay attention.

The Returned / Les Revenants, season 1
The French back-from-the-dead series. The first season felt so complete that, weirdly, I’ve never felt any desire to watch the second.

Happy Valley
The writing in this is just so good.

Fleabag
Is it possible, in the well-deserved raves for the second series, the first series has now become underrated?

Killing Eve, series 1
The later series are bad, but I went back and checked, and the first series really was as good as we thought at the time.