As I’m writing this, a huge swath of the Internet has attempted to gaslight the entire country into believing that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is a bad movie. Countless fanboys and dude bros have spent enough time decrying this movie as a failure and the movie that killed the franchise that if you admit you actually like or even love “The Last Jedi,” you won’t escape all the outraged haters letting you know how wrong you are. Preferring “Rogue One” or Baby Yoda are just the norm now.
The 2010s were the Twitter Decade, where every discussion about politics, sports or pop culture was filtered through what a bunch of people who spend way too much time online are saying about it. Anything that tried to be sincere was dead on arrival, and movies were judged based on how many memes or gifs they generated and how they seeped into the “cultural conversation” that is toxic Internet discourse.
So when I sat down to make my list of the 10 Best Movies of the Decade, I really had to step outside myself and figure out, “What do I actually think about these movies?” Not “what did they say about this decade” or “how important were they?” I tried not to care what the Reddit mob thinks. But of course, I didn’t have time to rewatch many of the movies I’ve loved and remembered over the last 10 years, so this list is as unfiltered as I can be.
Also, if you don’t feel like reading, please check out this podcast I recorded going over my Top 10 films. Zach Dennis and I got the band back together for a special reunion podcast of The News Reel, which you can listen to below.
1. “Boyhood”
If “The Tree of Life” is meant to make you feel everything there is in life, Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” shows us there’s a lot life still has to offer. Any discussion of “Boyhood” starts at how they told this movie across 12 years, and the cultural touchstones throughout are remarkable, even prescient in how spot on and naturalistic they feel. I feel like I grew up right along with this movie, and I feel like I could watch this movie for hours more and live in this world forever. “I thought there would be more,” Patricia Arquette, giving a phenomenal performance, says as her son is heading off to college. Linklater doesn’t give us the big, cathartic moments or answer the questions about the people and places we’ve left behind, but we’re left with some truly beautiful memories and slices of life, not to mention some good music along the way (for one, this movie opens with one of my favorite songs of last decade, “Yellow,” and closes with a song from Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs,” my favorite album of this decade). So, what’s the point? Ethan Hawke says it best: “The good news is you’re feeling stuff.”
2. “The Tree of Life”
No movie was more polarizing this decade than “The Tree of Life.” Terrence Malick’s weightless, spiritualized style has been parodied and overdone to death, most notably by Malick himself, and it all stemmed from this movie. But that free flowing quality feels organic, intimate, lively and necessary here. Yes, even the Big Bang and the dinosaurs have a purpose, because Malick shows you can’t truly understand your life and your place in it until you’ve put it against the backdrop of the history of the entire universe. Less of a story and more of a visual poem that shows what cinema is made for, Malick transports you through a world of emotions. I felt elated, fearful, angry, playful, lost, loved and hated. Putting these family vignettes on the grandest canvas possible, with some truly iconic, jaw-dropping cinematography, made me feel enormous in the face of the universe, not smaller. “The Tree of Life” is as deeply spiritual and reverential of an experience I’ve ever seen.
3. “Moonlight”
I knew “Moonlight” was great when I saw it, but I didn’t fully allow it to wash over me the way it did on another viewing. My goodness this movie is ravishing. Barry Jenkins finds poetry and sweeping, dreamy mystique in every frame where most directors working with this material just saw grittiness and trauma. Jenkins made black beautiful. The story is a coming of age told across three different ages, but it feels like a journey across generations, where the littlest gestures of making a Cuban meal or exchanging a quick smile feel heart-wrenchingly romantic. I had never seen a movie quite like “Moonlight,” and now many movies want to capture that subtle mystique Jenkins managed on his very first try. After I saw “If Beale Street Could Talk,” I always said, “Get someone in your life who looks at you the way someone in a Barry Jenkins movie looks at the camera,” because no one does it quite like him.
4. “Gravity”
What a ride. And yet “Gravity” is so much more than an edge of your seat roller coaster. It’s a movie about grief, rebirth and finding the will to stand against all odds. Alfonso Cuarón goes all out to attain a sensation that’s breathtaking and inspiring. The film’s pin-drop silent set pieces that are devoid of the usual action explosions or feedback not only contribute to the movie’s authenticity but make you feel like the world is collapsing around you in a whirlwind. Both life and “Gravity” move quick, but the beauty of this film and Sandra Bullock’s committed performance is how it finds those moments for you to appreciate just how beautiful it is. I won’t hear a word about the “script,” and yes it’s probably better seen on a big screen in 3-D, which isn’t easy, but then all the best cinema should be seen that way.
5. “The Social Network”
For a movie about technology, it’s incredible how well “The Social Network” has aged. Facebook is as relevant as ever, and the only thing that seems inaccurate about David Fincher’s film and Jesse Eisenberg’s performance is that we ever thought Mark Zuckerberg was some sarcastic, asshole genius instead of a socially awkward weirdo. But “The Social Network” is a movie about communication, about how we talk, interact and move at a mile a minute in everything we do. If anything, Aaron Sorkin’s dialogue and Fincher’s lightning fast style feels prescient, like it knew just how much we’d be jumping to conclusions, talking over one another and treating every interaction as a moment for potential outrage. The movie is incredibly lively, funny and frigid at once, amplified by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s pulsing, digitized score. Eisenberg’s performance is so dialed in that even the smallest twitch of his eyebrow indicates a world of emotion and drama, and that feels just right as we head into the next decade.
6. “Drive”
Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Only God Forgives” is, like “Drive,” also a hyper-stylized, neon-colored gore fest starring a murderous and stoic Ryan Gosling. When I saw it, I feared I had vastly overrated Refn’s earlier film. Oh, how wrong I was. “Drive” still holds up beautifully, playing like an intimate, indie character drama spliced in with a brutal exploitation film. There’s an elegance, humanity and romance to Gosling driving down the dried up LA river or calmly moving Carey Mulligan to the corner of the elevator in a moment where it feels like time is standing still. Everything else crackles with violence and suspense, most notably the electric opening car chase that ends just as a Clippers game is letting out. “Drive” may feel like style over substance, but it’s a movie about what it is to be human even as every other inch of humanity has been drained.
7. “Phantom Thread”
Both “Phantom Thread” and “The Master,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s other masterpiece this decade, are films about control, about the often bizarre relationship between genius and pupil, master and servant. But who is who? Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performances in that film are earth shattering and monumental, but I love the sumptuous detail and richness of “Phantom Thread” just a hair more. It’s elegant and meticulous at once, both fiendishly funny and anxious in its tone. The cinematography is gorgeous and alluring, and Jonny Greenwood’s score is so easy to get wrapped up in. But as Daniel Day Lewis, Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville play it, “Phantom Thread” is about more than just who’s in control. It examines the power dynamics between men and women and how the pursuit of perfection can tangle everything in our lives.
8. “Lady Bird”
“Lady Bird” might be a perfect movie, not because it’s the best film ever made or is my favorite, but because it is so assured in everything it does, every character it introduces and every trope it borrows. Lady Bird feels like a character you’ve seen before in a high school you might recognize and with problems that have not been unheard of in films about teenagers. But Greta Gerwig’s execution never feels familiar, forced or cliché. In fact, it seems effortless in how well drawn its relationships and turns of phrase are. But from the first scene between Lady Bird and her mom, you can sense the masterclass at work from Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf’s performances and know how carefully written, edited and directed it is. It’s not just a coming of age story for teens; it’s a movie about how our surroundings dictate the person we become and how we treat those we love.
9. “Parasite”
In Bong Joon-ho, here was a guy who made powerful fables and satires of economic inequality through the lens of a twisted, dystopian sci-fi (the stunning “Snowpiercer”) and an adventurous buddy movie about a girl and her massive super pig (the very fun “Okja”). So, what did I expect with “Parasite?” I would’ve never guessed how invested I’d be in this family of poor, desperate con artists, how Bong could go beyond a bloody, devilish twist and some biting humor to make something with real empathy and poignancy. If I appreciated the construction of the film on its first viewing, a second viewing revealed its beautiful coda and how you can still hope to make a better life for yourself, even when your whole world is flooding.
10. Inside Llewyn Davis
The Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis” is a story about failure. And like any great period piece, it’s set in 1960s Greenwich Village but feels like it’s about right now. You can be talented, smart and determined, but it just feels like the universe is conspiring against you. You can’t catch a break, you can’t make a buck and you can’t shake your past demons, and all your hopes and dreams are like a cat scurrying away from you never to be seen again. You become jaded, bitter and hopeless, and once you feel like you’re turning over a new leaf, there’s Bob Dylan, and you realize it’s just never going to happen for you, is it. It’s a whirlwind, one of the Coens’ most sobering, but it helps that it’s rich with music, wry humor and warm cinematography that make it worth watching over and over.
These are the next tier of movies, the 20 films that just missed the cut from my Top 10 list, in alphabetical order.
- A Separation
- Arrival
- Baby Driver
- Before Midnight
- Certified Copy
- Cold War
- Columbus
- Dunkirk
- First Reformed
- Get Out
- La La Land
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Marriage Story
- Snowpiercer
- Take Shelter
- The Act of Killing & The Look of Silence
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- The Great Beauty
- The Master
- World of Tomorrow
And these are 31-100. Just know that if a movie you love is not listed below that I most likely hate it with every fiber of my being. Or I just haven’t seen it.
- 12 Years a Slave
- 21 Jump Street
- A Star is Born
- Argo
- Beasts of the Southern Wild
- Black Panther
- Black Swan
- BlacKkKlansman
- Blade Runner 2049
- Bridesmaids
- Brooklyn
- Call Me By Your Name
- Citizenfour
- Coco
- Dogtooth
- Ex Machina
- Force Majeure
- Frances Ha
- Gone Girl
- Good Time
- Hell or High Water
- Her
- Ida
- It’s Such a Beautiful Day
- John Wick
- Life Itself
- Life of Pi
- Like Father, Like Son
- Logan
- Magic Mike XXL
- Manchester By the Sea
- Margaret
- Melancholia
- Minding the Gap
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout
- Moneyball
- Moonrise Kingdom
- Nightcrawler
- Only Lovers Left Alive
- Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Prisoners
- Private Life
- Room
- Short Term 12
- Sing Street
- Skyfall
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Spotlight
- Spring Breakers
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens & Star Wars: The Last Jedi
- The Babadook
- The Big Short
- The End of the Tour
- The Favourite
- The Kids Are All Right
- The LEGO Movie
- The Shape of Water
- The Spectacular Now
- The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
- The Trip
- The Turin Horse
- The Wind Rises
- Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
- Toni Erdmann
- Under the Skin
- Weekend
- Whiplash
- Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
- Zero Dark Thirty