Top 100 Films of the 2010s
Ken Jones, Chief Film Critic
100. PHOENIX (2014)
This movie about a disfigured Holocaust survivor aches with the spirit of Hitchcock's Vertigo. Nina Hoss gives an unforgettable and haunting performance as a woman trying to figure out if her husband betrayed her. The best mic drop ending of the decade.
99. ROOM (2015)
A powerful story about the bond between a mother and child is also a powerful illustration of how hard it can be to move on from trauma/addiction and revert back to what is familiar.
98. THE BIG SICK (2017)
Maybe the best rom-com of the decade. Messy, blunt, and vulnerable in all the right ways. Kumail up on stage essentially having a breakdown is a heartbreaking moment. And don't sleep on Ray Romano's performance.
97. FORCE MAJEURE (2014)
A controlled avalanche almost gets out of control and in the process upends the internal dynamics at the core a of a Swedish family of four. It's an uncomfortable family comedy-drama in the best ways as the father attempts to win back his standing in the family.
96. STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)
Disney brought the franchise back to life in a big way, finding a way to cater to fans (it could've just been titled A Newer Hope) and set up the potential for bigger things to come in new Star Wars adventures for fans of all ages.
95. SHOPLIFTERS (2018)
A poverty-stricken family of shoplifters living in Tokyo takes in an abandoned and neglected little girl, which begins to make some of them question their way of life. It's a poignant family drama from Hirokazu Kore-eda and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2018.
94. HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE (2016)
Director Taika Waititi made this little comedic gem about a troubled foster child named Ricky that ends up on the run in the New Zealand brush with his grizzled foster Uncle, played wonderfully by Sam Neill (in maybe the only comedy he's ever done). Ricky didn't choose the skuxx life, the skuxx life chose him. Waititi made this film in between two more that will appear on this list.
93. A QUIET PLACE (2018)
This post-apocalyptic sci-fi horror features a nuclear family that has to keep quiet to avoid being detected by hearing-sensitive extraterrestrial monsters. The film was so effective that you could hear a pin drop in the movie theater. And you could hear everyone fighting to hold back tears when John Krasinski's father character signed to his deaf daughter "I love you."
92. MONEYBALL (2011)
A baseball story about the GM and the stat-nerd-based system he established to create a cheap, competitive team doesn't exactly scream a hit movie. And yet, that's exactly what Bennett Miller pulled off as director with Brad Pitt as A's GM Billy Beane. The analytics vs. scouts scene is amazing.
91. SPOTLIGHT (2015)
Set aside the meme-able overacting of Mark Ruffalo yelling "THEY KNEW!" for a moment. This Best Picture winner highlighted the yeoman's work that went into uncovering the Catholic church sex abuse scandal. A great ensemble investigative movie in the mold of All the President's Men.
90. CREED (2015)
Ryan Coogler made a name for himself this decade. With Creed, he showed how to make a compelling sequel/franchise from an older property. The entire film builds to the moment right before the last round of the big fight when Adonis tells Rocky why he can't stop the fight, which is just a roundhouse of an emotional punch.
89. THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (2017)
Frances McDormand plays a mother who is all-consumed with her grief over the loss of her daughter in a grisly murder, and goes to war with Woody Harrelson's sheriff when the case goes cold. It's another unique blend of quirky characters and black comedy from writer/director Martin McDonagh. McDormand and Sam Rockwell were deserving Oscar winners for this film.
88. TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (2011)
A terrific British ensemble brings this slow-burn, deliberately paced spy thriller to life, an adaptation of a John le Carre novel. Gary Oldman won his Oscar for Darkest Hour, but his restrained performance here as George Smiley might be his best.
87. THE SHAPE OF WATER (2017)
Modern-day fables are a Guillermo del Toro specialty, and this one ended up being a Best Picture winner. Sally Hawkins is delightful as a mute woman who forms a relationship with a mystical, amphibious creature being held by the government. The better version of the Beauty and the Beast story compared to the Disney live-action remake released the same year.
86. SHORT TERM 12 (2013)
Destin Daniel Cretton made a tense and empathetic drama about neglected children and the people who choose to help care for them and the humanity of all of them. This movie is also features two future Oscar winners in Brie Larson (Room) and Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), NBD. Also appearing are early LaKeith Stanfield (future Oscar winner?), Stephanie Beatriz, and a young Kaitlyn Dever (also future Oscar winner?).
85. THE HANDMAIDEN (2016)
Arguably the most sensual movie of the decade, this erotic thriller from Park Chan-wook is a tangled web of love and deception that is expertly crafted.
84. DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)
Jamie Foxx stars as the titular Django, a freed slave turned bounty hunter who seeks to be reunited with his wife, Broomhilda, who is a slave under the moustache-twirling Calvin Candie, one of Leo DiCaprio's most enjoyable roles. Another masterpiece from Tarantino, who continued the trend of revisionist history that he started in Inglorious Basterds.
83. WONDER WOMAN (2017)
Warner Bros/DC Comics futilely tried to escalate their superhero capabilities to keep up with the runaway box office success of Marvel, and most of it was an unmitigated disaster. But Wonder Woman ended up being a genuine bright spot, with Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot showing what DC's superheroes were capable of on the big screen in a way that hadn't been accomplished outside of Nolan and Bale.
82. MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011)
Woody Allen essentially churns out movies at a rate of one a year, a pace that is mostly unmatched (Eastwood comes close), which makes for some hits and misses. Midnight in Paris was late-period Allen finding his sweet spot in this delightful comedy about Paris and nostalgia for the past.
81. ISLE OF DOGS (2018)
You heard the rumor, right? That few bonds are stronger than the bond between a boy and his dog. But Chief, the main dog of this movie, has a complex relationship with his human counterpart, Atari Kobayashi, who comes to Trash Island in search of his loyal dog, Spots. Wes Anderson's second stop-motion animated film finds his as quirky and charming as ever.
80. THE BIG SHORT (2015)
This Academy Award winner for Best Adapted Screenplay does a nearly impossible job, making the complex story of the financial crisis of the US housing bubble make sense to the average viewer. It's also manages to be wildly entertaining and also shockingly sobering in its critique of the American economy.
79. THE CABIN IN THE WOODS (2011)
We've had deconstructive horror movies before ("Do you like scary movies?"), but few have been as meta as Cabin in the Woods. This horror comedy collaboration from Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard plays with the archetypes and tropes of the genre, and is clearly an ode to the genre itself.
78. AMERICAN HUSTLE (2013)
American Hustle is a great ensemble film from director David O. Russell. Russell channeled the spirit of the (still living) Martin Scorsese for a lot of this film. Bale, Cooper, Lawrence, and Adams all scored Best Acting nominations for their performances here.
77. MIDSOMMAR (2019)
Writer/director Ari Aster spooked people with the supernatural Hereditary in 2018. In 2019, he provided the hallucinatory solstice celebration from hell. Midsommar is disturbing, twisted, psychedelic, messed up, precise, exquisite, disorienting, darkly comedic at times, beautiful, and the ultimate break-up movie.
76. SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017)
Much like Disney rehabbed Star Wars with fans after the prequels, Marvel jumped in and rehabbed Spidey's image after two lackluster Sony entries earlier in the decade. Spider-Man: Homecoming put Peter Parker and his alter ego in a John Hughes high school movie from the 80s and it totally worked.
75. EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014)
Tom Cruise's best movie of the decade outside of the Mission: Impossible franchise. This is a fast-paced, action movie with a Groundhog Day twist, as Cruise keeps living a fateful day over and over again in a war against an invading alien species. Equally great is Emily Blunt, who cemented her place alongside Charlize Theron for most believable female badass.
74. THE LEGO MOVIE (2014)
EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!!! Pretty much everyone scoffed when it was announced that a movie was being made about Legos, thinking these game/toy-based movies had gone too far. But Phil Lord and Chris Miller made a movie that was hyperactive, bursting with colorful visuals, a terrific voice cast, and more depth than anyone ever expected from it.
73. BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)
The love story of Jesse and Celine kicked off in 1995, picked up again in 2004, and came back around to us in 2013 in another beautiful meditation on love, relationships, commitment, marriage, the work that is put into them, and the way they change over the years. I'm sure I'm not the only one hoping we get to see them again in 2022.
72. MISTRESS AMERICA (2015)
Before she was directing her own films, Greta Gerwig was co-writing and starring in a few of Noah Baumbach's movies. Gerwig's Brooke is pure verve, living life in the moment, a kind of platonic Manic Pixie Dream Girl that everyone kind of wishes they were friends with. And the screwball comedy detour to Connecticut is rare comedy gold in this day and age.
71. 50/50 (2011)
Making a comedy-drama about cancer is a tough sell, but Jonathan Levine pulled it off. This film was based on the real-life diagnosis of the writer, Will Reiser. The movie is warm-hearted and vulnerable, but also doesn't pull any punches about the subject matter or the need to find laughter in difficult times.
70. THE BABADOOK (2014)
Ba... ba... dook... dook... dook. Jennifer Kent made perhaps the most atmospheric horror film of the decade. The Babadook is an expertly crafted movie dealing with grief and loss and handling single-parenthood and struggling with an incredibly annoying child. Mister Babadook is downright terrifying, and somehow became a symbol embraced by the LGBTQ community.
69. THE NICE GUYS (2016)
As the writer of Lethal Weapon, Shane Black is the godfather of the modern-day buddy cop movie. Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe are a perfectly mismatched pair of inspired comedy gold. A shaggy dog plot doesn't get in the way of the hilarious dialogue and performances of the two leads.
68. STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (2017)
"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That's the only way to become what you are meant to be." In a way, Kylo Ren's words to Rey served as a message to Star Wars fans that many were not willing to hear. Bookended by two movies from J.J. Abrams that had their feet set firmly in Star Wars nostalgia, The Last Jedi proved to be a divisive outlier, not just for this new Star Wars trilogy, but in franchise filmmaking; a blockbuster that has echoes of the past, but step boldly into charting a future that is not entirely beholden to it.
67. THOR: RAGNAROK (2017)
With director Taika Waititi, Hemsworth and company got to flex their comedic muscles and break out of the Shakespearean mold and that defined so much of the Thor standalone movies. It also provided us the Thor/Hulk buddy movie we didn't know we needed. It also serves as one of the prime examples of Marvel allowing their directors to keep their distinct voices as filmmakers and play in their universe.
66. BABY DRIVER (2017)
Edgar Wright has been a favorite of movie nerds around the world since Shaun of the Dead. Wright has a deft hand at making genre films, and Baby Driver is a hard-charging car chase/heist film that is full of great action and a great use of soundtrack. Wright is always a steady hand on the wheel.
65. THE CONJURING (2013)
It was a great decade for horror films overall, but there was something of a renaissance in mainstream horror this decade, thanks in large part to The Conjuring. An utterly terrifying movie, one scene in particular involving a dresser gave me a full-body chill that radiated out of from my spine to my extremities, a reaction I've never experienced before or since watching a movie.
64. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (2014)
Of all of the main Avengers that had their own movies, Captain America's trilogy is the most consistent, and The Winter Soldier is the best of the bunch. It was the first real MCU genre-based movie, heavily influenced by the political espionage/conspiracy thrillers of the 70s. It was also directed by the Russo brothers, who would leave the biggest mark on the MCU, directing Captain America: Civil War and the final two Avengers movies.
63. SKYFALL (2012)
Simply put, the definitive Daniel Craig Bond movie. In addition to Craig and Javier Bardem burning it down on camera, we were treated to a Bond film where Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins were working behind the camera.
62. BRIDESMAIDS (2011)
Bridesmaids was a massively important comedy. For some reason, audiences needed to be reminded that women could be funny (basically, it gave us the Judd Apatow formula from a female perspective,). It made Melissa McCarthy a breakout star. It helped usher in a decade of comedic Rose Byrne. It further cemented Paul Feig as a name director in comedy. Oh yeah, and aside from being massively important, it was massively funny, too!
61. MARRIAGE STORY (2019)
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson give the best performances of their careers as a couple whose marriage dissolves. Like marriage, divorce can be complex. Try as they might to make it work amicably, it’s nearly impossible to untangle without shedding a bit of blood it seems (literally in Driver’s case). The fight at the middle of this film is so authentic in how people can say the cruelest things to those they love and the immediate regret that can come with it. One of Baumbach’s best films.
60. HEREDITARY (2018)
Hereditary was a horror movie that had buzz attached to it for several months before its release, having hit a few festival along the way to its wide release. It was heralded as the scariest movie of the year, and it did not disappoint. Like the miniature houses in the movie, it is meticulously detailed and ordered to maximize the building tension and horror unfolding around this tragic family and the unholy terror that awaits them.
59. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION (2015)
People point to the Fast & Furious franchise as the rare franchise that has gotten better as its aged, but while F&F may be more inexplicable, the Mission: Impossible franchise leaves the it in the dust. Following up the very good Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation has a the most formidable villain of the franchise and introduces us to Rebecca Ferguson's Ilsa Faust, who steals the movie from Tom Cruise.
58. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (2018)
Fallout is the first movie in the Mission: Impossible franchise that follows up the story of the previous film, and it is 100% successful in building on it and making another action-packed entry in this series, and maybe the best of them all.
57. COCO (2017)
The 2010s were another strong decade for Pixar, and they'll have more entries higher on this list, but few movies this decade were as visually vibrant as Coco. And few packed the emotional wallop that Coco did, tugging at the familial heartstrings. The last 35 minutes of Coco always involves me fighting back tears.
56. THE WITCH (2015)
The Witch (stylized as The VVitch) is presented as "A New England Folktale" by writer/director Robert Eggers in his debut film. An isolated Puritan family experiences grief, loss, and a steady dissolution of the family bonds as they encounter supernatural forces at the edge of the New England woods around them. Despite the encroaching evil forces and the blame assigned to the eldest daughter Thomasin, it is the sins of the father that damn this family to their fates.
55. TOY STORY 3 (2010)
After Toy Story 2, we didn't think we needed another Toy Story movie. Turns out, we did. Woody, Buzz, and the gang are sent to preschool after Andy grows up and is moving off to college. If you don't have a lump in your throat at the end of this movie then you are dead inside.
54. FIRST REFORMED (2018)
Paul Schrader's transcendental film of a priest having a crisis of faith tackles weighty issues of belief, stewardship, and the morality of bringing life into a world that we are actively destroying. When Ethan Hawke, as Reverand Ernst Toller, asks, "Will God forgive us for what we're doing to his creation," we know what the answer should be.
53. IT FOLLOWS (2015)
Sex in horror movies resulting in death is a well-worn trope of horror movies. Director David Robert Mitchell deconstructs the trope and makes it the driving force of this movie about the worst STD ever, a supernatural force that will follow you until you pass it along to someone else via a sexual encounter. The camerawork in this movie is so effective that this movie will follow you after you finish watching it.
52. ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)
Tarantino's love letter to Hollywood of the late 60s luxuriates in its time and place. DiCaprio as the fading star and Pitt as his stunt double and friend have rarely been better. This movie completes Tarantino's triptych of revisionist history. Even though the ending is vintage Tarantino, this might be his most mature film.
51. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014)
The Grand Budapest Hotel is perhaps the purest distillation of a Wes Anderson movie. But even if it is distinctly a Wes Anderson vision, it is undoubtedly the performance of Ralph Fiennes as Gustave H. that is the most memorable aspect of this delightful film. Frankly, he's never been better. The movie won 4 Oscars, but the fact that Fiennes wasn't even nominated remains criminal.
50. SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (2012)
After a massive hit with The Hangover, Bradley Cooper struggled a bit to find roles that elevated him as a notable actor, until he connected with David O. Russell for this romantic comedy-drama. He's been nominated for an Oscar 7 times this decade, with his first coming from this movie. Speaking of Oscars, Jennifer Lawrence won hers here, as a young widow who falls for Cooper's bipolar Eagles fan (is there any other kind?)
49. AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019)
How do you conclude a story that has been 12 years in the making and has been told over 20-something movies in a satisfying and fitting way? Whatever the answer is, Anthony and Joe Russo and Marvel made it look easier than it probably was, managing to land the plane and in the process surpassing Avatar to become the highest grossing movie of all time. And we loved it 3000.
48. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU (2018)
Sorry To Bother You is sharp social, political, economic satire that is very funny and entertaining regardless of whether you subscribe to its politics. Boots Riley's debut film about a black telemarketer who literally finds his inner white voice is not horsing around.
47. ALL IS LOST (2013)
J.C. Chandor's Margin Call was an exceptionally verbose film about the financial crisis. His follow-up, All Is Lost, only has a few lines of dialogue and only features Robert Redford as "Our Man" fighting to survive on his own after his boat collides with a floating container in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It came out the same year as it's spiritual cousin, Gravity and was probably Redford's last best chance to win an Oscar. He wasn't even nominated.
46. KNIVES OUT (2019)
Practically everyone loves a good whodunit murder mystery. Writer/director Rian Johnson made the best one in years. Sharp, witty, and full of great banter, Knives Out features a great ensemble cast playing a rotten family and the detective trying to suss out whether the patriarch's death was murder. Highly entertaining.
45. BLACK PANTHER (2018)
Marvel was already 17 movies into the MCU when Black Panther came out. People had high hopes for the movie, as it was directed by Ryan Coogler and was the first notable superhero of color. Black Panther exceeded everyone's expectations, becoming a bona fide hit and cultural phenomenon. Audiences were treated to a fully realized Wakanda, a place infused with African culture, and a thoughtful story about engagement and representation.
44. THE MARTIAN (2015)
An adaptation of a best-selling novel, The Martian is a visually immaculate movie about survival and rescue of astronaut Mark Watney when he is stranded on Mars after an emergency evacuation. Clever, compelling, funny, and thrilling, it has everything you could want from a big budget film. Ridley Scott's best work this decade is among his best work ever. Maybe most importantly, this film highlighted how much movie money has been spent over the years rescuing Matt Damon.
43. THE AVENGERS (2012)
Our perspective of the MCU is very different now at the end of the decade compared to the beginning of the decade, when a lot more was up in the air and unsettled and bringing all these characters into one movie was no sure thing. But Joss Whedon pulled it off, bringing a comic book to life on the big screen in a way fans dreamed could happen. It also happened to be a game changer in how franchise and world building could be done.
42. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (2015)
It's safe to say that Taika Waititi had one of the best decades of any director, and while the success of Thor: Ragnarok is a big part of that, What We Do in the Shadows remains his crowning achievement. This mockumentary comedy follows around a group of vampires that live together. The vampires are all based on various vampire archetypes, from Dracula to Nosferatu. The film also manages to wrangling in werewolves (not swearwolves) as natural enemies of the vampires. The funniest pure comedy of the decade.
41. BLADE RUNNER: 2049 (2017)
Denis Villeneuve directed this sequel that builds off of Ridley Scott's dystopian sci-fi classic, a visually immaculate film that finally nabbed cinematographer Roger Deakins his first Oscar. It updates the story of the original film without ever being encumbered by it or holding it as precious, and it expands upon the thoughts and themes of the first movie with the perspective of 21st century eyes. Also, it was Villeneuve making a leap into bigger, mainstream filmmaking.
40. GREEN ROOM (2015)
Jeremy Saulnier’s films are visceral and their violence has genuine consequences. This claustrophobic film about a punk band witnessing a murder and stuck in a room, surrounded by neo-nazis is terrifying and nerve-wracking, and made all the more sinister by the face that Captain Picard himself, Patrick Stewart, is the chief of the skinheads. I still remember leaving the theater and being exhausted getting into my car because this movie had frazzled every last nerve I had.
39. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018)
Into the Spider-Verse was the best way to bring Miles Morales into the mainstream as Spider-Man. This animated film is fresh and inventive, bursting with great action and eye-popping animation. Also, some inspired voice casting, with Nic Cage as Spider-Man Noir and John Mulaney as Spider-Ham. This movie was a jolt of new energy just when there was a hint that superhero movies might be starting to stagnate.
38. MUD (2013)
This Southern coming of age drama about two boys finding a fugitive hiding out on an island has a strong hint of Mark Twain/Tom Sawyer influence. Matthew McConaughey won the Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, but Mud was the real peak of the McConaissance. It also cemented Nichols as one of the best original storytellers of the decade, evoking a feel of time and place that few can match.
37. LOOPER (2012)
"Time travel has not yet been invented. But thirty years from now, it will have been." This is how Rian Johnson sets up this sci-fi flick about how the mob sends people back into the past to be disposed of by Loopers in the present/near future. Bruce Willis plays the older version of JGL's Joe, who square off over the morality of killing a young kid that will wreak havoc in the future. The way the film plays with time and memory and consequences shows Johnson is on a higher level. Also, Looper features the single best booty call of the decade.
36. NIGHTCRAWLER (2014)
Jake Gyllenhaal's Lou Bloom is gets involved in the LA crime journalism scene (journalism VERY loosely applied here), a morally ambiguous world where "if it bleeds, it leads" is the prevailing mantra. Gyllenhaal is a gaunt and haunting as Bloom, a morally deficient sociopath who takes to the job naturally, like Travis Bickle with a camera wandered into Sidney Lumet's Network. A commanding character performance, the best of Gyllenhaal's impressive career to date.
35. FRANCES HA (2012)
Greta Gerwig as Frances Ha is one of the defining female roles of the decade, in my humble opinion. Perfectly captures the aimlessness that many people experience post-college and the vagaries of friendships in your mid-to-late 20s. When Frances tells a date, "I'm not a real person yet," she speaks for all of us who don't have it all together. Ultimately, though, this Baumbach film is a loving ode to the platonic love of best friends.
34. WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (2018)
In a world rife with tribalism, hyper-partisanship, discord and such focus on the things that divide us as people, this biographical look at the life of Fred Rogers is practically counter-cultural. We would all do better if we looked at the world through the eyes of Mister Rogers, who left a substantial mark on the world in valuing everyone as a special and unique in their own way.
33. JOHN WICK (2014)
Keanu Reeves' ex-assassin comes out of retirement after mobsters kill his dog, which was given to him by his deceased wife to help him grieve. What a beautifully simple but weighty premise for an action movie. A ballet of bullets ensues, and by the end you realize that this is the kind of movie that Keanu should have been making post-Matrix all along. Also, a delectable, gentlemanly underworld where practically everyone is an assassin. Very enjoyable sequels and a blossoming Wickiverse that has grown out of this one seed of an action film.
32. IDA (2014)
A beautiful black and white film from director Pawel Pawlikowski set in 60s Poland, where a young orphaned woman finds out information about her family right as she is about to become a nun, retracing her past to try and find out what happened to her family. Pawlikowski frames many shots with the actors appearing in the bottom third of the screen, leaving plenty of space above for their implied thoughts, the history weighing over them, or something sacred.
31. THE ACT OF KILLING (2013)
Few movies this decade were as unsettling, disturbing, and important to watch than The Act of Killing, an unflinching documentary that looks at the mass killings of 1965-1966 in Indonesia. Amazingly and inexplicably, director Joshua Oppenheimer got members of the death squads to talk on camera about their past deeds. One of them returning to the scene of their atrocities on a rooftop is unforgettable. Oppenheimer's companion follow-up, The Look of Silence, is also very good.
30. MOONLIGHT (2016)
Three actors tell the story of Chiron at different parts of his life: a scared little kid; the scrawny, gay teenager; finally, a drug dealer as an adult. Mahershala Ali won a Best Supporting Oscar for his role as Juan, a drug dealer who takes a genuine interest in Chiron as a young boy who is neglected by his addicted mother. There are no easy answers in this morally complex world, as the dinner table scene in this film shows.
29. TAKE SHELTER (2011)
A family man begins having apocalyptic visions that begin to upset his daily life. Does he need to shelter his family from a coming storm or from himself? Jeff Nichols shows a deft touch in handling the script and keeping the questions open throughout the film. Michael Shannon is incredible in the lead, doing so much subtle acting leading up to a dam-busting outburst toward the end.
28. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)
Before DiCaprio won an Oscar for crawling through the woods after being mauled by a bear, he crawled to his car after taking Quaaludes. DiCaprio's best performance, brought out by Martin Scorsese in his best film this decade. Throw this together with Margin Call and The Big Short to really feel great about Wall Street and the American economic system.
27. ARRIVAL (2016)
Earth is visited by alien crafts around the globe and Amy Adams' linguist is brought in to communicate with them and determine if their arrival is peaceful or ominous. The importance of communication and the power of words being able to create or destroy on the macro and micro, are powerfully conveyed, and increasingly noteworthy seemingly with each passing day.
26. LA LA LAND (2016)
La La Land wears its musical influences on its sleeve, along with its heart. One of the best love stories of the decade, even if it is bittersweet, Beautiful and energetic and earnest and winsome. Gosling and Stone have collaborated on several movies, and this is their chemistry at its best. Here's to the fools who dream.
25. 12 YEARS A SLAVE (2013)
This adaptation of the memoir of Solomon Northup deals unflinchingly with America's original sin. The oppression of slavery was not just at the hands of the owners of slaves, but the indifference of so many people too. When Northup is strung up and left to stand on his tiptoes, the scene is stretched to an almost unbearable length. Like so much of this film, it's difficult to watch, but impossible to look away.
24. ZERO DARK THIRTY (2012)
Zero Dark Thirty was universally praised when it was released, and then unfairly maligned during awards season and ultimately got lost in the shuffle that year. But it is a powerful film about the decade-long hunt for bin Laden. Doesn't pull any punches on the acts that were done in the name of finding him, nor does it downplay the toll that those compromises may have had on the soul of the nation. A great piece of filmmaking from Kathryn Bigelow and a superb performance by Jessica Chastain.
23. PARASITE (2019)
Bong Joon-ho loves to blend genre and deal in black comedy. Parasite is his best concoction yet. An unemployed family worms their way into the lives of a rich family. The film tackles class dynamics and family interactions in a distinctly Bong Joon-ho way. The story is intricately crafted and the ending is bonkers.
22. DUNKIRK (2017)
In a world where everyone is moving to cater their work to the living room TV screen, Christopher Nolan is out there going in the opposite direction, making his movies to fit the biggest screens possible. Dunkirk recreates the evacuation of British forces from France after being pushed to the sea by the German army. The story is told on the land, the air, and the sea, and Nolan weaves them all together magnificently and immerses you in the film. You never see the Germans, but you feel every bullet they fire.
21. THE FAVOURITE (2018)
Director Yorgos Lanthimos gives us a twisted, titillating tale of palace intrigue, as a love triangle threatens to be as dangerous as the war that the crown is trying to finance. Emma Stone plays against type, Rachel Weisz delivers Lanthimos dialogue like few can, and Olivia Coleman is indeed queen. Plus, Horatio the duck and Nicholas Hoult as a dandy fop. As darkly comic as this film is, I love how my perceptions of all three women are vastly different by the end.
20. THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010)
Even though I'm a huge fan of David Fincher, I dismissed this film when it came out because I couldn't get past how unlikeable Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg was. Revisiting the film more recently, I realized I couldn't have been more wrong. Facebook has obviously become a dominant feature of the world this decade, even more than it was last decade, and the dramatization of how it came to be is fascinating, especially in light of where everything has gone this decade.
19. DRIVE (2011)
Drive is easily the coolest movie of the decade. Ryan Gosling is a stunt driver who also provides his services as a wheelman for the criminal element in LA. Nothing director Nicholas Winding Refn does is muted, so everything visual in this film is luscious and sumptuous, drenched in vivid colors and a synth score right out of the 80s. Refn is known for blending the brutally violent with the achingly beautiful, and that has never been more fully realized than in the elevator scene where Gosling kisses Carey Mulligan.
18. INSIDE OUT (2015)
Pixar has a well-earned reputation for inventiveness and fitting emotionally weighty themes into their films. With Inside Out, they made the emotions the stars of the story, literally. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are in the control room of young Riley, who is uprooted from the only home she's ever known when her dad gets a job in San Francisco. Joy and Sadness go on and adventure, Riley struggles with her emotions, and the audience gets a reminder that we need all our emotions to be fully-functioning humans and to connect with one another.
17. GET OUT (2017)
Get Out was the social/cultural satire/horror/thriller we didn't know we needed. Jordan Peele made one hell of a first impression in his directorial debut. Cultural appropriation is taken to a whole new level. Peele keeps you guessing as to what exactly is going on, with nods to influences like The Stepford Wives or Invasion of the Body Snatchers in terms of ratcheting up the paranoia. And the Sunken Place has become part of the cultural lexicon.
16. LADY BIRD (2017)
Just on her acting alone, Greta Gerwig would have been one of the winners of the decade. With her directorial debut, Lady Bird, she cemented her place as a voice to pay attention to going forward on both sides of the camera. There were a lot of great coming of age movies this decade (The Spectacular Now, The Way Way Back, The Kings of Summer, The Edge of Seventeen just to name a few), but none of them rang as true as Lady Bird. Laurie Metcalf was robbed of a Best Supporting Actress.
15. GRAVITY (2013)
Spectacle filmmaking at its finest. Sandra Bullock's Dr. Stone is out in space to do a hardware upgrade for NASA, and ends up fighting her survival when a chain reaction knocks out communication and destroys her crew's ship. Alfonso Cauron delivers the intensity and... gravity of her situation in spades, as well as the symbolic imagery of being tethered to mankind (that tether looks an awful lot like an umbilical cord...). This film won seven Oscars, including Best Director for Cauron and Cinematography for Emmanuel Lubezki. This was a one of the few movies that was actually effective as a 3-D presentation. An unforgettable cinematic experience.
14. WHIPLASH (2014)
A determined, gifted young drummer's pursuit of greatness is fueled by the intensity of his demanding instructor. Damien Chazelle's film makes us question what it takes to achieve greatness, where the line is in pushing someone to achieve greatness, and whether the cost is worth it. J.K. Simmons earned his Oscar with this performance. The ending is exhilarating, and the film overall is master class in editing and sound.
13. THE MASTER (2012)
Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is a confounding masterpiece. It grapples with post-war America, Scientology, homoerotic subtext, and several other things. You don't have to fully grasp all of that (and I'm not sure the film even gives a straight answer on any of that) to understand that the heart and soul of this film is the dance between Joaquin Phoenix's Freddie Quell and Philip Seymour Hoffman's Lancaster Dodd over the course of the film. Man, I miss PSH.
12. HER (2013)
At this point, with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and other voice assisted software, the question isn't if Her is prescient about our relationships to our phones/devices/future AI, but rather how prescient it will be. There is an inherent weirdness to the story of a man falling in love with OS, but what makes this film truly stand out is not a relationship between a human and an AI, but the vulnerability and intimacy of the performances and the characters, portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix and voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
11. INCEPTION (2010)
Has Inception gotten lost in the shuffle of looking back over this decade? It's hard to understate how big of a deal this movie about dream espionage was in 2010 when it was released. Still in the early days of Twitter, before it becam a cesspool, and in the early days of "__________'s Ending Explained" pieces, Inception broke the internet. It was Nolan coming off The Dark Knight, Leo DiCaprio in his first big blockbuster summer release, the Inception sound ("BRRAAAAHHHWWWWMMMM"), and an ending that left everyone questioning whether it was a dream or not.
10. THE FLORIDA PROJECT (2017)
Kids being kids and getting into messes while living on the margins in the Florida sun. Sean Baker's second feature film, heavily influenced by the classic shows The Little Rascals and Our Gang, will make you run the gamut of human emotion: happiness, joy, elation, hope, love, anger, fear, concern, sadness, despair and everything in between. Willem Dafoe has perhaps never been better, or at least more likable. Brooklynn Prince as Moonee will melt your heart. And when the ending threatens to be too much for us to handle, Baker gives the only imaginable kindness possible for a happy ending in that moment for a movie set in the shadow of the Magic Kingdom.
9. BOYHOOD (2014)
Richard Linklater filmed Boyhood over 12 years, following a young kid named Mason growing up in Texas every year from age 6 to age 18. What happens year in and year out is less important than watching this kid grown into an adult, see how relationships ebb and flow over time, how he changes, and how the people around him change, including Patricia Arquette as his mother. Boyhood will make you reminisce about your own childhood. It is nearly unmatched in the scope and ambition and accomplishment as a final product.
8. EX MACHINA (2015)
Like Her earlier on this list, Ex Machina is a sci-fi film that feels eerily prescient about the downsides of humans meddling with artificial intelligence and not considering the ethics of it, or the potential abuse of power. Instead of a disembodied voice on a phone, though, Ava is physically present, hidden away in a secure, remote location for observation as to whether she passes the Turing test. The interpersonal dynamics between Ava, her creator Nathan, and Caleb (who is asked to observe her) is full of subtle gamesmanship and manipulation. Again, this movie feels cautionary, wondering if we will pause if a moment like this arrives in the future.
7. SICARIO (2015)
Denis Villeneuve tackled the drug war at the US-Mexican border before it became a hot button political issue in the later half of the decade. This film is almost unbearably tense. The idealism of Emily Blunt's Kate is slowly torn away from her over the course of the film. Kate herself is worn down to a nub by the men (Josh Brolin and Benico del Toro) who bring her into their world as legal cover for their actions. VIlleneuve as a director, Deakins behind the camera, and an amazing score by Johann Johannsson all elevate the material to make a journey into Juarez feel like a descent into hell itself. By the end of the film, del Toro's assassin, Alejandro, is right, this is a land of wolves now.
6. CALVARY (2014)
About halfway through this movie, Brendan Gleeson's "good preist", who has been told by one of his parishoners during confession the he plans to murder him in a week for the sins of the "bad preists" out there, advises someone close to him who recently attempted suicide that, "God is great. The limits of his mercy have not been set." Later, he says, "I think there's too much talk about sins and not enough about virtues... I think forgiveness has been highly underrated." Amen and amen.
5. MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012)
Two 12-year-olds fall in love on a New England island and all the adults and mother nature herself seems to be conspiring against them when they run away together. Wes Anderson's tale of young love in 1965 is genuinely sweet and sincere and puts his natural whimsy as a director to good use. In addition to young love, it also deals with belonging and community and finding a place to fit in. Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums are great, but this is my favorite Wes Anderson film.
4. MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)
An analog movie in the digital age, Mad Max is a thunderous throwback to movies that weren't being made entirely on a green screen. George Miller returns to one of his greatest creations, Mad Max (Tom Hardy), and throws him into a chase across the desert as a warlord name Immortan Joe tries to recover his stolen "property" in the hands of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron). This movie is filled with jaw-dropping visuals and stunts. The story is just enough to string along the action, which is unrelenting and thrilling. Long live Doof Warrior!
3. THE LOBSTER (2016)
Director Yorgos Lanthimos is consistently weird and disturbing with his films and I love almost every second of it. With The Lobster, he made a dystopian satire about cultural obsession over marriage. In this world, people have 30 days at a resort to find their soulmate or be turned into an animal of their choosing. I'm always a sucker for deadpan comedy too, and this film has it in spades. And even though it is specifically about the pressures of being single vs. being married, I think it says a lot about the polarization in society that we've seen become even more divisive in the latter half of the decade.
2. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013)
The Coens generally put out great content, but this one joins the ranks of The Big Lebowski and No Country For Old Men as among their best work. Is Llewyn's no good, horrible week a parable of the artistic struggle in general? Is it two brothers who collaborate on everything opining about the possibility of having to do it alone? Is Llewyn actually in purgatory? Is Llewyn really the cat? At least we're given a great soundtrack along with these questions.
1. THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)
A middle-aged man reflects back on his childhood in a family of five living in a Texas suburb in the 1950s, and pondering the wonders of the universe and the role his parents played in his life. This is the pat description of Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, but it does not do this masterpiece justice. The familiar Malick character voice-overs read like a prayers to God, the cinematography of Emmanuel Lubezki is transcendent, and the extended creation sequence is breath-taking. It's all beautiful, it's all intimate, it's all epic, and it's all connected; it's all Malick at his zenith. The Tree of Life is a film that transcends the medium as a beautiful work of art.