Best Films of the Decade (2010-2019)

[This post was originally published on Facebook and Reel Fanatics in February 2020.]

Attempting to assess or glean insight from a decade’s worth of movies strikes me as a futile task, especially with just two months of hindsight. If I were a wiser man, or just a less obsessive list-maker, I would only now be making a Best of the 2000s list because at least I’d have ten years of reflection. Instead, I foolishly share with you, dear reader, my selection of the 100 best films of the 2010s.

What I can say with certainty about the past decade is that it was one of considerable personal change. And those changes consequently altered my taste in cinema and reshaped my thoughts on many movies, to the point that when re-drafting my annual top ten lists, I found those of earlier years (2010-2014) to be remarkably different today.

I began this 2010s decade project fourteen months ago, slowly chipping away at notable blind spots and rewatching various films—some that I hadn’t seen in a while, others that simply demanded a second look. Now, after a decade of zealous moviegoing, I’ve seen just over 1500 movies from the 2010s. That averages out to ~150/year, which is pretty crazy by the average person’s measure, but it’s a small percentage of worldwide cinema from 2010 to 2019. No doubt I’ve overlooked some of your favorites.

My finalized list is below. I went deep on this one: a top 100! Blurbs for the top 30! Nearly 30 honorable mentions I couldn’t find spots for in the top 100! Know that the numerical rankings become less precise as the numbers get bigger. Note: I went by world premiere dates for the construction of this list. So 2009 films that didn’t get a U.S. release until 2010 (e.g., A Prophet or Dogtooth) weren’t eligible, and 2019 films that won’t open in the U.S. until 2020 (The Wild Goose Lake and First Cow) were. Onto the list!

Honorable Mentions

#100-31

100. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
99. Two Days, One Night (Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2014)
98. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
97. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)
96. Winter Sleep (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2014)
95. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (David Fincher, 2011)
94. Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes, 2015)
93. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson, 2016)
92. A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick, 2019)
91. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, 2015)
90. Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)
89. Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German, 2013)
88. The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
87. The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012)
86. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)
85. Romancing in Thin Air (Johnnie To, 2012)
84. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
83. La La Land (Damien Chazelle, 2016)
82. The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)
81. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)
80. Faces Places (Agnès Varda, 2017)
79. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)
78. The Illusionist (Sylvain Chomet, 2010)
77. Horse Money (Pedro Costa, 2014)
76. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke, 2018)
75. Beyond the Hills (Cristian Mungiu, 2012)
74. The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan, 2019)
73. Creed (Ryan Coogler, 2015)
72. Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016)
71. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
70. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)
69. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)
68. Drug War (Johnnie To, 2012)
67. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
66. Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
65. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
64. Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)
63. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018)
62. True Grit (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2010)
61. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)
60. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
59. Stray Dogs (Tsai Ming-liang, 2013)
58. Sunset (László Nemes, 2018)
57. Listen Up Philip (Alex Ross Perry, 2014)
56. Ad Astra (James Gray, 2019)
55. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, 2011)
54. Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)
53. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach, 2019)
52. Good Time (Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie, 2017)
51. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012)
50. Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015)
49. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
48. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, 2014)
47. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
46. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)
45. Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)
44. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019)
43. Uncut Gems (Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie, 2019)
42. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig, 2017)
41. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)
40. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Rodney Rothman, Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti, 2018)
39. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010)
38. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)
37. The Turin Horse (Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011)
36. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)
35. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, 2013)
34. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)
33. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)
32. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
31. 20th Century Women (Mike Mills, 2016)

Top 30

30. Beginners (Mike Mills, 2010)

The other 2010s film from Mills is #31, so I’ll use this opportunity to discuss both works. Two great semi-autobiographical portraits of 20th century American life that are discursive, personal essay-like reflections and sincere human dramas of intersecting trajectories and shared cultural experiences. Immensely rewatchable and touching.

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29. Zama (Lucrecia Martel, 2017)

No big deal, Martel only made the decade’s essential cinematic work on colonialism (apologies to Tabu and The Lost City of Z). Zama, an adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s acclaimed novel, is a striking, elliptical satire that reframes the colonial experience as one of existential horror and bureaucratic absurdism. First you laugh and then you gasp.

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28. Oslo, August 31st (Joachim Trier, 2011)

A concise yet devastating account of drug addiction and the struggle of recovery, Oslo, August 31st is a downbeat affair but also a deeply empathetic one. Few films so expertly tap into the cyclical despair of depression and the accompanying burden of guilt and regret.

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27. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)

The vampire genre had been drained of all life before the decade was even half over, but Jarmusch pumped fresh blood into it with his oddball hangout picture, Only Lovers Left Alive. The American indie maestro uses the genre as a jumping-off point for a rumination on 21st century society. The result is a delicious dose of humor, romance, and cerebral cool.

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26. Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

I had Contagion penciled in here well before COVID-19 appeared on the scene, but the recent outbreak really underlines the prescient vision of this 2011 thriller, clearly the horror film of the decade. A ruthlessly efficient, take-no-prisoners depiction of the inescapable reality that humans—through fear, distrust, greed, misinformation, and environmental destruction—will be the eventual executioners of the human species.

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25. Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

The rare film that surpasses the source novel (The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith), Carol is an elegant, moving romance of self-discovery, social codes, and sexual repression in 1950s America. Not quite peak Todd Haynes (that would be 1995’s Safe), but nevertheless a precisely calibrated and textured drama that lingers like a sensational love affair.

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24. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)

Even when making a personal film, Cuarón can’t help but tell his story on a massive canvas. A semi-autobiographical reflection on his youth in 1970s Mexico City, Roma is a grand reproduction of a specific time and place and experience. Expressive detail and incredible verisimilitude bring every vignette in this family drama to life.

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23. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)

A damning indictment of unchecked American capitalism, The Wolf of Wall Street is one of the defining films of the decade. And it is also one of the great 21st century comedies. The Lemmon 714 sequence is, for my money, the comic set piece of the 2010s, and it all hinges on the largely untapped comedic chops of a superlative Leonardo DiCaprio.

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22. Mysteries of Lisbon (Raúl Ruiz, 2010)

At its heart, Ruiz’s Mysteries of Lisbon is an unabashed celebration of storytelling. Spanning generations and chronicling the lives of a multitude of characters, this Portuguese drama is a sprawling epic of labyrinthine storylines, rich period detail, and cinematic bravura that invites the viewer to get lost in its world, as if being told an extravagant bedtime story.

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21. The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodóvar, 2011)

Pedro Almodóvar’s most twisty and twisted film, The Skin I Live In is a thriller hybrid that veers into Cronenbergian body horror territory. Like much of the Spanish auteur’s work, this one pushes the envelope while remaining sympathetic to its victims of violence, abuse, and injustice. One of the decade’s best interrogations of gender power dynamics.

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20. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

Certain Women is the quietest film in my top 30, but its reverberant effect is palpable. Reichardt’s narrative triptych, adapted from stories by Maile Meloy, is a perceptive study of life in microcosm as it tracks the experiences of several women privately fighting for respect, autonomy, and happiness against antiquated, patriarchal cultural attitudes. The third story—a romance—as a standalone could be my favorite short film of the 2010s.

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19. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011)

Arguably the quintessential Malick film, The Tree of Life exemplifies what we’ve come to define as the reclusive filmmaker’s signature style. This elliptical, poetic recollection of mid-20th century American life, firmly rooted in the director’s own Texas upbringing, is a wildly ambitious statement on life on Earth and beyond.

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18. Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

Yes, it’s that good. Fincher and screenwriter Gillian Flynn transfer the latter’s bestselling, serpentine pulp thriller novel to the screen, fashioning it as a perversely dark comedy of marital discord and a savvy critique of the news media circus. Fincher’s visual language is expertly articulated. And we get career-best work from Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike.

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17. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

Collaborating with Greta Gerwig was the best career decision Baumbach ever made. Frances Ha, their first script together, represented a kind of rebirth for the director. This highly relatable comedy about feeling rudderless in one’s twenties is an effervescent delight with a dazzling, charismatic lead performance from Gerwig. Baumbach’s strongest film to date.

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16. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)

Blade Runner is a sci-fi classic that didn’t need a sequel—the mere idea was off-putting!—yet somehow Villeneuve and his team gifted us one that matches its predecessor. 2049 builds on the original, reimagining and expanding its world and flipping the central concept in ways that open up even richer thematic avenues. And Ryan Gosling is used to perfect effect.

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15. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012)

“What makes you carry on, Oscar?” asks an unnamed man. “What made me start: the beauty of the act,” replies Oscar (an unforgettable Denis Lavant). Carax’s inscrutable curio, which unfolds in a series of vignettes with Lavant in multiple roles, remains hard to summarize, though I think of it as a paean to the art of performance. But regardless of how one interprets it, Holy Motors is a hypnotic, singular creation.

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14. The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013)

A Classical Hollywood melodrama (love triangle!) paired with the grime and cynicism (co-dependency! self-loathing!) of the New Hollywood era, The Immigrant tells an intimate story on an epic scale, set against the backdrop of 1920s New York City. Like Once Upon a Time in America or The Godfather, Part II, Gray’s masterpiece is one of the essential films about the European immigrant experience in early 20th century America.

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13. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire has drawn comparisons to Carol and Blue Is the Warmest Color (for all too obvious reasons), but Sciamma’s film is in fact a Brief Encounter for the modern age set in a historical age. While examining the social and professional restrictions women face in patriarchal societies, this stirring private romance reinterprets the concept of the gaze through the eyes of its female artist protagonist. A quietly subversive knockout.

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12. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

Originally scheduled for release in 2005 before a battle over final cut tied it up in litigation for years, Margaret doesn’t speak to the 2010s like other films. Instead, Lonergan’s diffuse and devastating depiction of adolescence—especially the experience of opening one’s eyes to the complicated realities of adulthood—acutely captures the zeitgeist of post-9/11 America.

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11. It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt, 2012)

The animated film of the decade was shot on 35mm film and crafted with crude stick figure characters. Take that, Disney! Hertzfeldt’s It’s Such a Beautiful Day, a fusion of three shorts, is as wise about humanity as any other film on this list. Its stream-of-consciousness trek through the protagonist’s afflicted mind is a profound, open-hearted plea for compassion.

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10. Bastards (Claire Denis, 2013)

French auteur Claire Denis made three films in the 2010s. Two of them received widespread acclaim. The other was Bastards. A divisive picture, this pitch-black neo-noir pulls no punches in its study of the abuse of power and how it rips apart the protagonist’s family. It is easily Denis’s darkest narrative, but the stylish design of this mood piece is truly haunting.

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9. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

The Handmaiden, which flawlessly transposes a Victorian Era British tale to 1930s colonial Korea, blends Park’s pulpy predilections (grisly violence, outré sexuality, and aberrant vice) with a genuinely affecting sapphic love story within a con artist scheme within a period piece. A storytelling marvel and a florid, dazzling entertainment of empowerment.

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8. The World’s End (Edgar Wright, 2013)

Wright’s bar-hopping sci-fi comedy may just capture the 2010s better than any other film. The World's End is a potent and pensive look at How We Live Now (e.g., the dangers of technological reliance, uncritical nostalgia, and the loss of individuality) but in a genre mashup register that circumvents Important Film status. And thanks to an unsung, sterling Simon Pegg performance, it offers one of the starkest depictions of alcohol abuse in cinema.

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7. A Separation (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

Iranian writer-director Farhadi is a master of the moral drama, and A Separation is his defining film. The picture opens as a simmering domestic tale of marital strife but soon morphs into a tense criminal investigation that constantly tests one’s allegiance to the characters. The result is a complex, heartbreaking portrayal of human behavior that provides no easy answers.

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6. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

The first film since 1955’s Marty to win the Palme d’Or and the Best Picture Oscar, Parasite is a rare achievement, indeed. Bong’s latest is a searing class critique baked into a cryptic and darkly comic home invasion thriller. Through expressive production design and ingenious plotting, Parasite is a vital evisceration of 21st century economic inequality and social strata.

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5. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Not the most Wes Anderson-y Wes Anderson movie (that’s The Grand Budapest Hotel), but the most effortlessly charming and deeply heartwarming. Moonrise Kingdom, a coming-of-age romantic comedy set in 1965 New England, precisely taps into the all-too-familiar frustrations of its young, star-crossed lovers. Possibly my most rewatched film of the 2010s.

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4. House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)

“If we don’t burn, how will the night be lit?”—A rueful observation that echoes throughout Bonello’s frank yet sympathetic depiction of a Parisian brothel at the close of the 19th century. Essentially a hangout film, House of Tolerance examines the cloistered community of prostitutes and their struggles in an environment that offers no escape and only occasional respite. Tragic, but also immersive, claustrophobic, sumptuous, and spellbinding.

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3. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, 2015)

I don’t think anyone expected the troubled fourth entry in a long-dormant dystopian franchise to make much of an impression on mainstream audiences, much less redefine action cinema, but that’s exactly what Miller did with Fury Road: a white-knuckle thrill ride of gonzo action and timely thematic bite; a feat of production design, choreography, and stunt work; a visionary triumph of artistry that no other filmmaker could have dreamed.

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2. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)

Under the Skin is an alien encounter film unlike any other, stripping away all of the usual dramatic beats (and much of the source novel) to create something borderline avant-garde—and even quasi-documentary. Through this discordant, unsettling, and overwhelmingly sensory viewing experience (elevated in part by Mica Levi’s decade-best score), Glazer primes the viewer to scrutinize human nature in both its beauty and ugliness. A coup of craft.

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1. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

“What game am I playing? What game? What precisely is the nature of my game? You tell me.” This taut, mischievous, and curiously elusive bespoke romance is an entirely unpredictable creation that operates as a series of mind games and subtly shifting power dynamics in which three people make calculated moves for domestic sovereignty. Its revelatory climax is a master stroke, illuminating character psychology that reframes not only the narrative but also what Anderson is saying about the nature of love. PTA, my pick for MVP of the decade, made two other great films in the 2010s, but Phantom Thread represents the apotheosis of his career (at least until his next picture!). I toyed with the ranking of every film on my list except this one. There was never any doubt: Phantom Thread is #1.