We’re almost done with the 2010s, so that means it’s time for another Best of the Decade list. The funny thing about these lists is that they’re not set in stone. They’re recommendations and they’re snapshots. I look back at my Top 20 Films of the 2000s and I would definitely make some changes (not including There Will Be Blood is madness), but it’s a snapshot of a time rather than some grand declaration.
But I’ve seen quite a few movies this past decade and yet there are plenty more that I still haven’t gotten around to yet, and maybe once I do this list will have to change someday. But for this moment in time, these are the 25 films with which I had the strongest connection. These are the movies that stayed with me. These are movies that I wanted to revisit, and that I kept thinking about long after they were over. Your list of the Best of the Decade will probably look very different, and that’s okay. Opinions on art aren’t democratically determined, and my hope is that if you look at this list and see a film you disliked or haven’t seen, you might give it a chance.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the Top 25 (with a few cheats to get this at twenty-five items), and be sure to click here for more of our Best of the Decade content.
25) Inception
Christopher Nolan built up a lot of capital from the success of The Dark Knight, and I’m so glad he chose to spend it on this. We can quibble over how dreamlike the dreams of Inception are supposed to be, but at the end of the day, this is a big, audacious, unique blockbuster that studios don’t make anymore, and it paid off for everyone. Nolan knew exactly what he wanted when crafting dreams-within-dreams, projections, and basically spinning out an entire world that an audience could understand with minimal introduction and exposition. The result was a thrilling heist film with a strong emotional core about loss and regret.
24) Marvel Cinematic Universe
The first cheat! Obviously, not all Marvel movies are created equal and some are far better than others. But in terms of building out a cohesive story in the most audacious way possible, Marvel deserves special recognition, especially because most of their movies are so darn rewatchable. What Harry Potter movies were to the 2000s, MCU movies have been to the 2010s, and I can easily chill out with The Avengers, Captain America: The First Avengers, Thor: Ragnarok, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2, and Spider-Man: Homecoming just to name a few. Marvel has carved out a unique space in the blockbuster landscape with no one able to replicate their success. Arguing whether they’re cinema or not cinema is a pointless endeavor. They’ve changed Hollywood and I’m excited to see what Kevin Feige has planned for the next decade.
23) Drive
Nicolas Winding Refn’s neo-noir still kind of blows me away with its easy confidence and raw emotional core. The movie comes right up to the line of being too stylish for its own good, but then Refn eases off the throttle and pulls back to relish Ryan Gosling’s cryptic, enigmatic performance. The movie has all the hallmarks of a good noir, and a killer cast to boot with Albert Brooks of all people being one of the most exciting villains of the decade. Some may have felt betrayed by Drive thinking it was more of an action movie than it was, and while it does have some good driving and gory violence, it’s really a sad, somber tale of human connection that’s just out of reach.
22) Beasts of the Southern Wild
I guess I’ll stop writing angry letters to director Behn Zeitlin to make another movie since his next film, Wendy, arrives in February 2020. Thankfully, Beasts of the Southern Wild is electric and vibrant enough to make any follow-up worth the wait. The Sundance sensation came out of nowhere and showed the festival at its best by taking a movie with no stars from a director with a first feature and letting people realize they were watching something entirely new that blended the mythic, the poetic, and the tragic into a powerful coming-of-age story. I’d also add that the film also has the best score of the decade as well.
21) Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The Lonely Island has been going strong since the mid-2000s, but they took their talents to new highs with the perfect music doc parody, Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Like the best music parody movie of the 2000s, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Popstar understands that just because you’re lampooning an industry, that doesn’t mean you get to phone it in with the music. The Popstar soundtrack is filled with great tracks like “I’m So Humble” and “Finest Girl (Bin Laden Song)” to the point where even the deleted scenes are brilliant like the song “Fuck Off”. The fame parody goes hand-in-hand with the hilarious songs, and while the movie didn’t hit at the box office, I really hope Popstar isn’t the last Lonely Island movie.
20) The World’s End
It took me a few viewings to get on The World’s End’s wavelength, but Edgar Wright’s conclusion to his Cornetto Trilogy is his most poignant film to date. The story of five old friends going on a bar crawl through twelve pubs becomes a really moving story about being stuck in the past and the destructive effects of nostalgia. While the first two parts of the Cornetto Trilogy—Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz—have an element of parody to them, The World’s End chooses to let that go for a more mature film that still has the tight construction of Wright and Simon Pegg’s previous movies, but with a greater trust in more damaged characters. Gary King is Pegg’s best performance and the terrific fight scenes with the robots are just some added spice on a surprisingly emotional movie.
19) Star Wars: The Last Jedi
This movie didn’t make my Top 10 in 2017 and yet it’s a movie that I’ve only grown to love with each new viewing. I understood why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a relatively safe movie given the backlash to the prequels and Disney’s major investment in Star Wars as a franchise, but Rian Johnson, rather than continuing to make that safe play, went much bolder in a movie that takes big swings rather than attempt to please anyone. It’s a film that looks at each major character and attempts to throw them the biggest challenge possible to push them forward, and it largely succeeds. It wisely discards useless characters like Snoke and Phasma who are more mystery than substance, and it still finds a way to tie back into the larger franchise while pushing Star Wars out of a dynastic framework and into a more egalitarian one. I understand why some people don’t like The Last Jedi. I respectfully disagree with them.
18) Planet of the Apes Trilogy
Another cheat! I really love the first five Planet of the Apes movies. Each one is more bonkers than the last and they use their sci-fi premise to explore some really important social themes about oppression and power particularly with regards to race. When the series was rebooted with Rise of the Planet of the Apes, you could see the glimmers of potential in what they were going for, but director Matt Reeves allowed the series to realize its full potential with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. These are sharp, thoughtful films about what it means to belong to a society, the destructive impulses between groups, and if there’s any hope for reconciliation and peace when fear and control are such powerful motivators. Rather than look for comfort in familiar plot beats, the new Planet of the Apes trilogy understood the themes of the original movies, and it was all the better for it.
17) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Yeah, we’ve had a lot of Spider-Man movies. It’s hard to argue that’s a bad thing when you get Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which understands the egalitarian nature of the character. While a movie like The Dark Knight Rises tried to argue that “anyone could be Batman”, that was obviously untrue. But Spider-Verse makes the perfect case that not only can anyone be Spider-Man, anyone can be heroic. Anyone can find that courage because while we’re all dealing with personal issues (that day-to-day baggage Spider-Man always carries), nothing prevents you from finding your own identity and stepping up. Also, a bunch of kids saw this movie and their Spider-Man won’t be Peter Parker. It will be the half-black, half-Latino Miles Morales. That is very cool.
16) MacGruber
This movie should not work. It’s based on a very short SNL sketch that’s a very clear parody of MacGyver. It should not work, but it does work, and it works brilliantly. Jorma Taccone expertly parodies the 80s action genre but with the unique spin of Will Forte’s brilliant performance. The movie has no problem being unabashedly silly and it always goes at that silliness with full force. Whether it’s sticking celery in his butt as a distraction or his obsession with “KFBR392”, MacGruber is unrelenting in how firmly it believes in its weird comedy, and it just plays beautifully. I can think back to so many different moments from this film and just start cracking up from laughter, although my go-to is MacGruber’s anguished cry of, “Just tell me what you want me to fuuuuuuuuck!”
15) Paddington 2
There’s a lot to be said for kindness and sweetness these days, and Paddington 2 delivers those in spades. The first Paddington was a pleasant surprise, but Paddington 2 takes everything that worked from the first movie and elevates it—the humor, the heart, the charm—and makes a movie that can win over anyone. Paddington 2 never needs to wink at the audience, because it firmly believes Paddington’s creedo, “If we’re kind and polite, all will be right!” and if you behave badly, you get a hard stare. This movie is like concentrated sunshine.
14) The Act of Killing
Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2012 documentary still feels like it’s from an alternate reality, but it’s depressingly and hauntingly our own. In Indonesia in 1965-66, there were mass killings and those killers still walk free. Oppenheimer thought the killers would have some kind of remorse for this, but instead they were proud and bragged about what they had done. So Oppenheimer had the ingenious idea of letting these killers reenact these killings, and it speaks to the transformational power of storytelling without rendering the tragedy of the murders glib or cheap. The Act of Killing forces introspection on the part of one of the killers, and it forces every viewer to sit in a horrifying world where slaughter is happily celebrated. No movie from the 2010s was more chilling.
13) Parasite
Parasite may be the most recent movie on this list, but after seeing it twice already, I’m pretty sure it’s going to hold up in the years to come. Bong Joon-ho has plenty of great movies to his credit, but Parasite could very well be his masterpiece (at least, until his inevitable next masterpiece). The story begins with a poor family infiltrating the lives of a wealthy family in Seoul, but through various twists and turns, Bong weaves a stellar, funny, and tragic picture of the ravages of capitalism. Watching Parasite is like seeing a high-wire act as Bong skillfully works with different tones and major plot moves, but he makes it look absolutely effortless. Parasite will haunt me for a long time to come, but at least Bong will still be making movies, so at least I’ve got that going for me.
12) Inside Llewyn Davis
The Coen Brothers had no shortage of great movies in the 2010s, and I was almost tempted to give this slot to True Grit, but I’ve found over the years that Inside Llewyn Davis is the one I just can’t shake (although I will still say, “That did not pan out,” in a Rooster Cogburn voice from time to time). Gorgeously lensed by Bruno Delbonnel, Inside Llewyn Davis may be off-putting to those looking for a “likable” lead character, but the brilliance of the movie isn’t about whether or not we like Llewyn (Oscar Isaac’s melancholy and acerbic performance always keeps the character captivating), but seeing that he’s the right man at the wrong time. It’s a sly nod that great art and great artists are also about being in the right place at the right time and that the notion of meritocracy for fame is a comforting lie. Bring in some excellent folk songs and you have a movie that stands alongside the Coens’ best work.
11) Short Term 12
When I read about this one in the SXSW program, it sounded like the most cloying, maudlin movie imaginable. Director Destin Daniel Cretton did the exact opposite of that with his painfully honest but never aggressively brutal Short Term 12. A story like this, a woman working in a group home who’s dealing with her own trauma, takes an incredibly delicate touch, but Cretton manages it by not shying away from trauma nor exploiting it for dramatic effect. It doesn’t hurt that he has a murderer’s row of young talent that either now has an Oscar (Brie Larson, Rami Malek) or will one day have an Oscar (Lakeith Stanfield, Kaitlyn Dever). If the octopus story doesn’t make you weep, you don’t have a heart.
10) The LEGO Movie
Phil Lord & Christopher Miller are the kings of taking ideas that probably shouldn’t work and just casually turning them into classics. That’s pretty much every movie in their career, but as a longtime LEGO fan, I’m particularly glad they were able to take a toy property and turn it into a referendum on Chosen One narratives while skillfully dodging “Everyone Is Special” pabulum. The story of an ordinary construction worker who is The Special finds a smart way to upend the hero’s journey by questioning what makes a hero, and rather than defeating the villain through force, showing that our choices—what we choose to build—making us special. To convey specialness through action rather than destiny is an incredibly smart way to tell a story. It also doesn’t hurt that the movie is painfully hilarious and gorgeously animated.
9) 13th
Ava DuVernay is one hell of a filmmaker, and she made one of the best documentaries of the decade with 13th. One of the most impressive things about this movie is that she doesn’t keep it a dry recitation of important facts, but rather uses her keen eye and thoughtful storytelling to add immediacy to what everyone needs to hear about mass incarceration. 13th skillfully shows how slavery transformed into a carceral system for black people for a country that depends on their labor but doesn’t want to pay them for it. There are no easy answers in 13th or bromides to offer an escape. It’s a movie about harsh truths on race in America that DuVernay makes absolutely captivating.
8) Mission: Impossible Franchise
One more cheat! When the 2010s started, I didn’t expect Mission: Impossible to become the best action franchise, but here we are. The series wisely decided to use its strongest asset—Tom Cruise and his willingness to do any stunt—and build around that while still telling strong narratives that strain credulity, but do so in the way we expect from the best pulp. While we remember the stunts and now there are so many good ones we can argue over which is best, these movies are impressive from start to finish; a series that can ignore the mythic tropes of other franchises but still have people spout lines like “He is the living manifestation of destiny.” Plus, the fanbase isn’t toxic, so it has that going for it.
7) Get Out
I’m almost a little mad at Jordan Peele for apparently being good at everything. It wasn’t enough to co-create one of the best sketch comedy shows of the decade; he also had to go and create the best horror movie of the decade as well. Peele showcases the power of the genre to highlight real societal horrors, and while this isn’t necessarily new, Get Out feels like it’s taking it to a new level, especially in a post-Obama America that wants to pride itself on being post-racial when clearly it’s anything but. The way Peele is able to balance the tension, social commentary, and comedy of the movie is astounding. All this from his first feature and following it up with Us to show that it was no fluke.
6) Moonlight
Set aside all the Oscar drama—the unexpected win, the botched announcement—and you still have a poignant coming-of-age drama about a closeted black boy becoming a teenager becoming a man and working through those identities. Every performance in Moonlight is wearing its heart on its sleeve but in a way that never seems needy or overblown. Instead, “earnestness” is the word I would use to describe these characters, people who love too deeply and don’t know how to manage it so they turn to drugs or violence or to an entirely different persona to keep their guard up. The word “beautiful” gets tossed around a lot and easily, but I can’t think of a better one to describe Barry Jenkins’ movie.