Ten Modern Provocative Films

Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.

(Franz Kakfa, 1904)

Cinematic arts show little sign of stagnation. It is the greatest of all times for a film lover.

All these films were released in the last ten years.

In no particular order:

• The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr, 2011)
• The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg, 2012)
• Miss Lovely (Ashim Ahluwalia, 2012)
• The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
• Nymphomaniac I and II (Lars von Trier, 2013)
• Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)
• Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin, 2011)
• Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2006)
• Incendies (Dennis Villenueve, 2010)
• Julia (Erich Zonka, 2008)