Top 100 Films of the 2010s - Top 10

10. First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)

Paul Schrader has, of course, been an accomplished screenwriter and director dating back to the 1970s – and still, he waited until he was over 70 to make his masterpiece. First Reformed contains a brilliant performance by Ethan Hawke as a Priest – he came to it later in life, after his son died in Iraq, and his wife left him – who is basically going through the motions in a tourist church. Then he meets a beautiful, pregnant young woman (Amanda Seyfried) who convinces him to meet with her husband – who doesn’t think they should bring a child into a dying world. This sets Hawke off in a different direction. In many ways, this is a classic Schrader protagonist – a lonely man driven to action. You’ve seen this in everything from Taxi Driver to Light Sleeper to Affliction, etc. And yet, rarely has Schrader ever dug so deep into this type of character – nor has he driven into his influences – Dreyer, Bergman, Rossellini – so deeply. And yet, for all the hallmarks of earlier work, this film is still its own thing – right up until the haunting final shot of the film. This is a beautiful, subtle brilliant drama – and something that it feels like Schrader had to make – had to get out of himself. And in doing so, he created his masterwork.

 

9. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman, 2016)

I don’t particularly care whether you think this five part, eight-hour documentary is a TV series or a movie – because in the end it doesn’t really matter. It is a complete and total masterpiece – easily the best documentary of the decade, and a film that deserves to ranked near the top of any list of the best docs ever made. Ezra Edleman’s film is long and complex – diving into who O.J. was in the 1960s through the 1980s as a football star and celebrity, before it dives into the crime, the trial and everything happened since. It also functions as a documentary about race in America during this time – from the Watts Riots to the Rodney King riots and everything in between. It concludes that clearly there is racism in America (obviously) and in particular in L.A. and the LAPD – but also finds it ironic that the beneficiary of the backlash against that racism was O.J. who said things like “I’m not black, I’m O.J.”. Films like this – this far reaching, this in depth – are a rare thing indeed. Who knows if we’ll ever seen on like again – people are certainly trying, but no one has come close to this.

 

8. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012)

There are many ways you can take Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master. It is, in some ways, a continuation of his previous film – There Will Be Blood (2007) – which was a history lesson about capitalism and religion in America. Here, Anderson has moved into the post-WWII period, but he finds something similar in the new religious movement inspired by Scientology. And yet, oddly, his main character isn’t the head of that religion (played, in one of the all-time great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman) – but on his most imperfect disciple – played in arguably an even better performance by Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s Freddie Quell is one of the most mysterious, ambiguous characters in cinema history – someone who seems to be searching for answers to life’s big question, but in the end may be exactly the same person he was at the beginning at the end. There are other ways to take it though – perhaps it is nothing more than Anderson pitting these two amazing performances against each other, as they are equals, but opposites – Phoenix channeling something out of Brando, Hoffman channeling something out of Welles. And don’t forget Amy Adams, who so many people dismissed in this film, despite the Oscar nomination she got for it, but who is really subtly astounding here – and in complete control. Whatever it is, it is an absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous film to look at, with some of the best cinematography of the decade, and perfect period detail. It’s a film that, like Anderson’s Boogie Nights, is endlessly rewatchable, but for very different reasons. This isn’t a brilliant entertainment – but a dreamlike mystery you want to sink into again and again.

 

 

7. The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

The Social Network really did feel like a feel about the here and now when it came out in 2010 – about how we live life online, and how you can be wildly successful at it, and lonely and miserable in real life. Yet, with all the revelations about Facebook in recent years, it seems even more relevant now. Is it surprising that Facebook, whose founding story we see here, is really not the good actor that it so desperately wants to be seen as. And the film is also just amazingly entertaining – with the best ever screenplay by Aaron Sorkin, and a director in David Fincher who knows how to use it so that the film doesn’t just become a series of monologues and walk-and-talks. Jessie Eisenberg gives one of the decade’s best performances as Mark Zuckerberg – it’s the type of performance that will define his entire career, but if you’re going to be defined by one performance it should be this. Fincher was essentially a director-for-hire here, but he finds the perfect way to tell this story – aided considerably by the decade’s best score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. A brilliant, dizzying story that may well become the film that defines this decade.

 

6. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

In retrospect, it has become clear that Tarantino turned some sort of corner with Inglorious Basterds, the film he ended last decade with, and has been moving towards something like Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ever since. It is another revisionist history film – one that ends with a more satisfying orgy of violence than reality gave us, one that corrects things going forward. But here, Tarantino lingers after that violence – and gives us the most genuinely moving scenes of his career. And it comes at the end of a film that really does feel like it addresses all of Tarantino’s obsession – with old school Hollywood, with the joy and purpose of making entertainment, even if it’s destined to be forgotten, about friendship – and about allowing people to see Sharon Tate as a human being, and not a murder victim. It’s also just deliriously entertaining – with some of the best work of DiCaprio and Pitt’s careers – and the Spahn ranch sequence, the best single sequence of Tarantino’s career. The more times I see this, the more I think about it, I think it’s Tarantino’s masterpiece – a decade, and perhaps career capper, for him.

 

5. The Tree of Life (Terence Malick, 2011)

There probably wasn’t a more ambitious film this decade that Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, which dared to tell the entire history of world in one film in a beautiful, epic length, and then also drill right down to the intimate family portrait based on Malick’s own childhood – and then going into the future to show the emptiness of modern life. This feels like the film that Malick was working towards his entire career – and brilliant melding of the intimate and the epic showing you human existence in one mesmerizing package. I understand some people hate it – that they want a more concrete narrative, and that is something Malick simply does not want to show you, he does not care about. This is the type of film only someone like Malick would or could make – a brilliant, one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

 

4. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)

At his worst, sometimes Wes Anderson makes little more than beautiful, but empty bobbles – films that look good and are entertaining, but aren’t really about anything. At his best, he makes a masterpiece like The Grand Budapest Hotel. With a Russian Nesting Doll like screenplay, going through different time periods, with different looks, and different aspect ratios, Anderson has made a film who surface pleasures are more than anything he has ever made before – a masterpiece of production design, costume design, cinematography and music. And yet, it also had a hard center – a film about the civility in the face of violence and fascism, and its ultimate futility. It’s a tragedy on a larger scale that Anderson has ever attempted before. Ralph Fiennes gives one of the best performances of the decade – a performance, that like the movie itself, it fun on the surface, but has a core that it sad and tragic. This is Anderson’s masterpiece.

 

3. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

Scorsese had a great decade – especially for someone in his 70s – but he saved his best film for the last one of this stretch. In many ways, The Irishman feels like a summation from Scorsese – like he has made it in a way to bury the gangster film genre altogether, as well as perhaps the 20^th Century as a whole. It is a familiar story in some ways – full of familiar faces for a Scorsese film – and yet this gangster epic – which runs three-and-a-half hours, is obsessed with death – the slow march towards it we all go on, and the choices we make along the way, that seem so important, that end with us isolated and alone – having given up everything you care about because your boss told you told. The performances by DeNiro, by Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa and especially by Joe Pesci are all brilliant. The screenplay brilliantly structured across decades. And as the film moves towards its conclusion, the weight of everything we’ve seen accumulates, in a way I found crushing. It is what it is – and what it is a masterpiece, one of the best films of Scorsese’s unparalleled career.

 

2. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)

I don’t think you can argue that Phantom Thread is Anderson’s most ambitious film this decade – hell, it may even be his least ambitious of his three films in this 10-year period. What it also is though is his most entertaining film since Boogie Nights – a portrait of a strange, kinky relationship that you don’t quite see for what it is until the final moments in the film. It features a great performance by Daniel-Day Lewis, if this is actually his swansong, it’s a great one – and an even better one by Vicky Krieps, who is perhaps the most interesting, most mysterious character of the decade – someone who doesn’t give away her secrets, but you can completely see her total character. It’s a beautiful film – no film had better costumes this decade than this, also with great production design, and cinematography by Anderson himself. The film is the decades most demented comedy because it isn’t played as one at all. It’s also perhaps the best portrait of a longtime relationship I have seen in a long, long time. Sure, The Master and Inherent Vice had more ambition – but Phantom Thread is an absolute masterpiece on a different level.

 

1. Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013)

I don’t think I’ve ever quite seen a film like Inside Llewyn Davis before. It’s about an artist who is very good – just perhaps not quite good enough. The title character is not s genius – we get a glimpse of one near the end of the film, but he also isn’t like the Coens Barton Fink – a hack. Inside Llewyn Davis is essentially a heartbreaking film of just not being good enough – and the point in which you need to give up and quite. Oscar Isaac became a star because of this performance – really the best of the decade – as a folk singer in early 1960s New York. His life is a mess, he is broke, and he is slowly falling apart. He is talented at singing – the soundtrack has become a staple for me – but it’s just not new enough, different enough. In the decades finest one scene performance F. Murray Abraham delivers the most heartbreaking line I have ever heard “I just don’t see money here”. The film looks gorgeous, full of smoky clubs, and freezing roads. And it can be downright hilarious – Adam Driver shows up for one scene of amazingly singing – and John Goodman is larger than life. Carey Mulligan gives a performance that really just cuts Llewyn to the bone. This is perhaps the Coen’s masterpiece – I know I may be alone on that, but I have toggled back and forth between this and Fargo for what is their best film. But this sad, understated film about quitting was the best of the decade for me – and to be honest, I never really even considered anything else. Since 2013, everyone else was playing for second place.

Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 20-11

20. Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016)

I think it’s fair to say that no film emotionally wrecked more this decade than Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea. It was designed this way, specifically to wreck parents, and if you, like me, happened to have two daughters (aged 5 and 2 at the time), then all the better. And yet, despite the fact that the film is designed to make you cry, it never feels like a cheat – never feels like its milking tears out of you just for the sake of milking tears. Casey Affleck gives one of the very best performances of the decade (I tear up just thinking of him saying “I can’t beat it” as a lonely Boston handyman – living by himself in a crummy apartment, drinking every night and while he is good at his job, he can also be an asshole if pushed. His world is turned upside down when his brother dies, and he is put in charge of his teenage nephew (Lucas Hedges, in the performance that made him a star). Through the course the film, we get to know these two, and their rocky relationship, as well as diving into Affleck’s past – and what led him from what he was, to what he is. Michelle Williams is Affleck’s ex-wife – and her few scenes are as good as any she has ever done in her stellar career. The film doesn’t wrap everything up in a neat package – but does offer a little bit of hope for the future. This is Lonergan’s best film to date – and one of the best straight dramas of the decade.

 

19. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

Lynne Ramsay deserves to be mentioned alongside the best directors working today – she is as great of a filmmaker as David Fincher or Paul Thomas Anderson or anyone else you can name – and yet she never gets mentioned alongside them. Her masterpiece We Need to Talk About Kevin is a parental horror film – about a woman (brilliantly played by Tilda Swinton, in what is probably the best performance of her amazing career) whose son Kevin commits a horrible mass murder at her school, and she has to deal with the wreckage he left behind. The film flashes back and forth in time to show her raising her son – and their troubled relationship. Ramsay does a brilliant job of visually linking Swinton and Ezra Miller – who plays her son – and just similar they are, which is, of course, why she hates him so much. The film is difficult – almost impossible – to watch and not be horrified, but it is so brilliantly told by Ramsay, who finds a way to do the same thing the novel did – which is to tell the story completely from the point of view of Swinton’s character – and make you realize how flawed that version is. Ramsay is a master filmmaker – and I really wish she was able to work more often. The film world would be richer for it.

 

18. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

Bong Joon-ho’s best film to date was this film, that like much of his work, begins as pure entertainment – a fun and funny movie about a family of scammers who insert themselves into the lives of a rich family – and then descends so deep into darkness and tragedy that it leaves you hopeless. It’s an effective way to make a movie – because when the hammer drops, it kills you. You can mark when this film does that – it quite literally descends into darkness at the same time it figuratively does, and from there, even as the film remains as entertaining as ever, it also takes on an added weight – leading to its bloody, tragic, gut punch of an ending. Bong has been working towards something like this for a while, and here, he pulls it off brilliantly.

 

17. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie, 2019)

With Uncut Gems, the Safdie brothers attempt to outdo what they did with Good Time – one of the most propulsively energetic and anxiety inducing films of the decade – with a film specifically designed to give you an anxiety attack while watching it. This is a film that doesn’t slow down for a second – stacking one intense sequence after another after another – and perhaps even more amazingly, making it also hilarious. The casting of Adam Sandler was genius – he explores the opposite end of his comic persona than he did in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, and does so brilliantly as a jewelry dealer, whose life is crashing down around him, as he tries to keep multiple scams going throughout the film. There’s barely a moment where he isn’t in the center of the screen, holding court, holding the wolves at the door – which he can only do for so long. The Safdies are now among the very best working directors.

 

16. Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

Paul Thomas Anderson is probably the best director of the decade – he made three films in this 10-year period, and this is the lowest ranking one on my list. It’s a fascinating film – a kind of stoner noir in the vein of Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, the Coens’ Big Lebowski (and Mitchell’s Under the Silver Lake, which came out later). This is the film with perhaps the most plot of any film this decade – and yet, in the end, the plot doesn’t matter at all. This is an end of an era film – about how the hope of the 1960s had become dashed by the 1970s, and the rot has set in. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant in the lead role – it’s a nearly impossible role that goes over the top comic one moment, to subtle emotional wreck the next. He’s a character we like – and yet see precisely why he isn’t quite the easy going hippie guy he thinks – and why his “ex-old lady” (Katherine Waterson) – feels as oppressed by him as anyone else. Josh Brolin is kind of the equal, opposite to Phoenix – the flip side of the coin that both hates him, and needs him. All this is wrapped up in the most exuberant package Anderson has concocted since Boogie Nights. A masterwork – that keeps one getting better with time.

 

15. Good Time (Josh & Ben Safdie, 2017)

The Safdie brothers Good Time is a throwback to the films of the 1970s that have become legendary – and yet at the same time, a portrait of white privilege in the 2010s. Robert Pattinson gives a great performance as a petty criminal – who spends a very long nightmarish night trying to rescue his brother – who is in jail for a crime they committed together – out, and encountering one roadblock after another. And yet, each time he is seemingly about to get caught, there is always a person of color who is readily available for law enforcement to blame. True, as the night goes on, and the noose tightens, it becomes clear he isn’t going to get away – but he gets away with so much it’s unbelievable. This is energetic, kinetic filmmaking at its best – a film that moves forward on propulsive energy, and a great led performance. The Safdie like to make you like their characters at first – and then slowly reveal just how awful they really are – and in Good Time, they found their best chance to tell that story. A brilliant, underseen film destined to become a cult classic.

 

14. Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012)

We can hope that the now nearly 80-year-old Michael Haneke has another masterpiece left in him. A key figure of European art house cinema in the 1990s and 2000s, so far Haneke’s final masterpiece is 2012’s Amour – a film that in many ways is very much like his other films, and in a few ways, a little different. Haneke has always liked to punish his characters for the sins of their past – his affluent man characters often see themselves as blameless and innocent, until they are confronted with what they have done, and have to pay the consequences of those actions. In many ways, that is what happens in Amour – a story of an elderly couple, Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) – as she slips in dementia, and he tries to keep things together. And yet, their main sin here seems to be growing old – and therefore, we are all committing the same sins. The performances by Riva and Trintignant are brilliant – Riva’s is scarily accurate as a woman who is slowly dying, and Trintignant has the more difficult role of dealing with it – all leading to the tragic conclusion. Amour was Haneke’s biggest hit – in terms of Box Office, and awards love – and that is perhaps because it is more universal, and we can better see ourselves in his characters. It isn’t quite as thorny as other masterpieces like The Piano Teacher, The White Ribbon or Cache (my personal favorite) – but it is every bit as heartbreaking and difficult to watch. Haneke has only made one film since Amour – and while I like Happy End more than most, it is nowhere near this masterpiece – one of the most heartbreaking, and difficult to watch films of the decade.

 

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

Martin Scorsese once again had a great decade, even as he is well into his 70s, he continues to push himself – and his audience – to uncomfortable levels. The Wolf of Wall Street is a triumph – a portrait of egotistical, misogynistic, homophobic and greedy assholes that run Wall Street – basically doing whatever they can to get their hands on other people’s money, and living a life of enormous excess with it. It also features the best performance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s career – as the ringleader of this group of grown-up man children. DiCaprio goes full tilt from beginning to end here – it’s a daring, high wire act of a performance that makes you hate him every second of the film, and yet understand precisely why he got away with what he did for so long. The film is, like GoodFellas, an entertaining film about horrible people (the film is hilarious – the Quaaludes sequence is one of the greatest sequences of physical comedy you will ever see). You will laugh throughout The Wolf of Wall Street – and be entertained – and then you have to think about why you found this all so much fun, as Scorsese implicates us all in this American Dream gone wrong. A masterpiece that shows that Scorsese still has more energy, more ambition and more skill that most other filmmakers working today.

 

12. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)

It sometimes feels as if Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color was a dream. It’s a film that I saw at the Lightbox, knowing almost nothing about – and was completely blown away with – it’s like a David Cronenberg film directed by Terence Malick – and then it kind of disappeared as quickly as it appeared. It did well on critic’s top 10 lists in 2013 – but it doesn’t feel like it gets talked about as much as it should be. Carruth’s sophomore film – made 9 years after his debut (Primer) – and sadly still his most recent film. It’s a wildly ambitious film – a film that plays like a dream with its brilliant visuals and sound design. It featured a great performance by Amy Seimetz, playing a woman who was drugged and robbed – and left her a shell of her former self, and trying to piece together her shattered life. This film is a marvel, an endlessly rewatchable film where you learn more and more each time through. There is so much going on, it almost feels like a different film each time you watch it. Carruth did pretty much everything on this film – it’s a truly independent movie – a personal vision from the director, who unfortunately has yet to follow-up this up. If you haven’t seen Upstream Color, correct that right now.

 

11. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018)

It was more than a little gratifying to me that Lee Chang-dong’s masterpiece Burning finally got the Korean master the respect he deserved in North America. His 2007 film, Secret Sunshine, had been a favorite of mine since seeing it at TIFF that year – but it was a film that barely got a North American release – years later – and even if it was added to the Criterion Collection, still isn’t as widely known as it should be (ditto the film he made between these two – Poetry). Burning really is his best film yet – a mysterious film about a young man from a border town in Korea, who meets an old school friend in Seoul – and thinks the two are dating, until she shows back up from vacation with a new boyfriend (a great performance by Steven Yeun). He immediately dislikes this new guy of course – and finds reasons to suspect him when she ends up going missing. The film is a fascinating three-part character study – all from the protagonist’s point-of-view, as at first, he examines her, then her new boyfriend, and finally in the last act, himself. The film goes to dark, ambiguous places – and never spells anything out for you. But it is fascinating character study and a wonderful thriller, all rolled into one, and ends just about perfectly – and right in the middle, has one of the very best scenes you will ever see.

Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 30-21

30. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)

It’s not an easy feat to make a three-hour comedy that keeps the comic momentum for the entire runtime, but Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann manages to pull off that trick. One of the reasons why it works is because the film is so layered, and takes on so many different topics, and there is a thread of melancholy throughout. I’ve heard the film described the film as Homer Simpson visiting a grown up Lisa – and that’s a great description of the film. In one of the great performances of the decade, Sandra Huller stars as a successful German businesswoman, on a trip to Bucharest – when her strange father Peter Simonischek shows up, posing as a businessman, to try and get close to his daughter. The film crams so much into its run time – misogyny, feminism, globalization and depression among many other things. And yet, miraculously, the film never feels overstuffed – never feels like it’s biting off more than it can chew. The film is great throughout – but truly becomes a masterwork in the last hour, with one standout sequence after another (the karaoke is probably the best – but who can choose). One of the truly great comedies of the decade – please Hollywood, don’t mess this one up.

 

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

There was no better pure action film this decade than George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road – hell, you can argue that as far as straight ahead action movies, almost nothing in cinema history can match this film. It is basically one huge action sequence from beginning to end – featuring Mad Max (Tom Hardy) fighting on the side of right once again – but giving even more weight to the female characters – particularly Charlize Theron’s Furiousa – an action heroine with no equal. The film is one mind boggling action sequence after another – full of stunts and action choreography that is unequaled in modern cinema. The film is a technical achievement on a level that even other master filmmakers have no idea how Miller pulled it off (listen to Steven Soderbergh talk about this film to see just what the difficulty level of this film was). And yet, it’s more than that – it is a feminist action masterpiece – and not matter how I describe it, I cannot do it justice. Just watch it – and then watch again and again.

 

28. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, 2015)

One of my top wishes of modern American movies is that Charlie Kaufman would make more films. He seemed to on a role as a writer in the early 2000s – from Being John Malkovich to Adaptation to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (among others) before making his directorial debut – Synecdoche, New York (2008) – which was better than all of them. And yet, since then, all we’ve gotten in Anomalisa – this bizarre, brilliant stop motion animated film about a lonely man (brilliantly voiced by David Thewlis) who is sleepwalking through life while on a business trip to Cincinnati. Everyone looks and sounds the same (the great Tom Noonan does the voice of everyone else in the cast) – with the exception of Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh). For a brief, shining moment Lisa brings joy to his life – the two connect, talk, flirt – and yes, have sex. But lasts only such a short period of time, before it’s all back to grey. Kaufman teamed up with Duke Johnson to better find the brilliant animated style of this film – basically, its puppets again. This is slow, sad nightmare of a film. Yes, you can question the gender politics of the film – but are those the films, or the lead characters, a sad, lonely pathetic little man who will never find joy. This is certainly the most original animated feature of the decade.

 

27. Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)

We need David Fincher to make more movies – he is taking too long between his projects, and that is really a horrible thing. His most recent film is Gone Girl – which was misunderstood by too many people, who saw the film – like they (mistakenly) thought the bestselling book – as high end trash. It is actually a pitch black comedy and satire, posing as a thriller – and features the best performance ever by Ben Affleck as a dolt, and an even better one by Rosamund Pike as his wife who becomes a dark feminist anti-hero. This film may have been a little too early – imagine this film coming out in the #MeToo era, and the response would have been deafening. Still, this film works as a pitch black comedy, a moody thriller, and a brilliantly directed, written and acted film that gets to the heart of the difference between men and in women, in one brilliant, stylistic package.

 

26. Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014)

You have to admire Richard Linklater, who spent 12 years making Boyhood – filming a few scenes every year with the same cast and crew, to come up with a wonderful, intimate portrait of growing up. There has never quite been anything like this in film history -  - films like Francois Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel’s series, or the Michael Apted Up series, which also followed the same people over the course of years – but they did that in a series, not in one package. What’s even better about this film is that Linklater mainly focuses on the smaller moments in their lives – not the big, dramatic moments, but those quiet ones that we remember for reasons we cannot always explain. He perfectly cast Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette as the parents, who go through their own development over time – he from an irresponsible mess, into a real family man, her picking up the pieces of her life, but wondering where it’s all gone. Young Ellar Coltrane is great throughout – he hasn’t done as much since, but he is terrific here, and perfect as kind of the quiet presence at its core. This is the type of film that will be remembered, and studied, forever.

 

25. Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

Carol is one of the great cinematic love stories of all time – a beautiful film set in 1950s New York when a young artist working in a department store (Rooney Mara) locks eyes with a rich, beautiful, bored housewife (Cate Blanchett) across the store, and nothing is the same for them ever again. Haynes has always been an expert stylist – bringing the style of the past to the present, and this may be his best example of that yet. Blanchett is brilliant here – it is a bold performance, one that deliberately calls back to a style of acting that has fallen out of favor in the decades since the 1950s, but is perfect for this film. Mara is even better – it is a quieter, more sensitive and realist performance. The screenplay is by Phyllis Nagy – the first not written by Haynes himself in a film he directed (although the film seems custom made for Haynes) – based on a great Patricia Highsmith story – a rarity of lesbian literature, is it doesn’t all end in tragedy. The film is one of the most erotic I have ever seen – with lust running through every scene, every glance. As with all of Haynes films, the film looks beautiful – the costume design and production design are excellent, Edward Lachman’s cinematography is perhaps the best of his long career, and the great Carter Burwell score adds immeasurably to this film. And then it all ends with the perfect final shot. A true masterpiece – perhaps Haynes’ best films, but it says something that there are probably three other films in the running for that title.

 

24. Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

One could argue that one of the reasons why I love Inside Out as much as I do – that I named it the best film of 2015, and it ranks second (behind Wall-E) as my favorite Pixar film of all time is because I am the father of two daughters, who at the time were 5 and 2, and watching the film with them next to me made me think of them growing older – and how everything we’ve done up to that point in their lives is destined for the dustbin of their memories. Which is why the film moved me so much – which is why Bing Bong’s final moments had me weeping like no other film I can think of. But I also think that Inside Out is a unique film – a bold film – that centers on the emotions of a pre-teen girl, when everything feels like life and death, and how all we (as parents, or her emotions) wants to do is hold onto the happiness. But happiness and sadness are both needed to lead a full life – and that’s something this film knows all too well. It is also deliriously entertaining and visually stunning from beginning to end. So yes, I cannot divorce my feelings for this film from my feelings for my daughters – but I don’t have to (or want to) to know this film is a masterpiece.

 

23. World of Tomorrow (Don Hertzfeldt, 2015)

The only short film on this list – Don Herztfeldt’s wonderful 17-minute animated film is as densely packed as any feature film, and has more to say than almost all of them. Visually, it’s a strange mixture of simple stick figure a child could draw – a staple in Hertzfeldt’s films – and a mesmerizing computer animated background. The story is about a clone coming back from the future to talk to Emily Prime about the hellscape they currently live in – the problem being that Emily Prime is a toddler, and has no idea what the hell is going on. As she innocently plays, the dystopia is described to us. The film is hilarious, but it’s also a brainy sci-fi film. It’s an unbearably sad film – or would be if it weren’t so funny. Hertzfeldt made a follow-up a few years later – and its great as well – but not up to the level of this film, which really is one of the greatest short films of all time, and certainly the best of the decade.

 

22. The Lobster (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015)

Was there a stranger film this decade that Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Lobster – a dystopian satire about a future in which every person is required to partner up – you can be gay or straight, but you cannot be alone. If you reach a certain point and have yet to find a partner, then you are turned into an animal, and set free in the wild – but hey, you get to pick whatever animal you want. The film stars Colin Farrell, who is going to a hotel for a month for his last chance to find a partner – it’s a hotel that is designed to help you find just that. And if he cannot find love, then he has chosen to become a lobster. The film is a wicked and dark satire – the first half takes dead aim at society’s obsession with love and marriage, forcing those partner up. The second half – outside the hotel, mainly in the forest, takes aim at the exact opposite, as the rebels are just as dogmatic in their extremism as society at large. Farrell has never been better than he is here – it is a masterclass of deadpan hilarity. It also has one of the best final shots of the decade – one that answers everything, and nothing at the same time. Lanthimos has become one of the best directors in the world – and so far, The Lobster is his masterpiece.

 

21. Paterson (Jim Jarmusch, 2016)

For me, Paterson was the perfect film at the perfect time – and I cannot separate it from the first time I saw it. My wife and I were in New York – we got tickets to Hamilton, and planned a weekend around it – and while she wanted to do some shopping, I wanted to see Paterson – which hadn’t opened in Canada yet. The weekend we happened to be in New York was on the same weekend Trump was being inaugurated – and I happened to watch Paterson at the exact same time Trump was giving his speech. So while the world listened to Trump talk about American Carnage, I was watching this incredibly quiet, gentle film about a bus driver named Paterson in Paterson New Jersey, and his love of poetry – both the stuff he writes himself, for himself, and the work of others. Adam Driver delivers his best performance – one of the very best performances of the decade. He plays Paterson as a man of routine – he likes his routine – but this isn’t a film about a man in a rut – it’s about a man who is truly content in his modest life. The pictures of him as a Marine give you some sense as to why he may like a quieter life – but the film never expresses that literally. This is a quietly profound film – one that I loved, but underrated at the time (I published my top 10 list for the year right after coming home from New York, and had Paterson at # 8). It is the best film Jim Jarmusch has ever made – and like all of his best films, it needed to time to percolate for its true specialness to come through.

Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 40-31

40. American Honey (Andrea Arnold, 2016)

I kind of love it when European filmmakers come to America and appear mesmerized by its wide open spaces. The best film in this vein is Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas (1984) – and Andrea Arnold’s American Honey deserves to be mentioned right alongside that masterpiece. This is a long film – nearly three hours – and stars Sasha Lane, as a lower income young woman, who joins up with a group of travelling magazine salespeople – those people who go door-to-door, which is of course, possibly a scam. The travel from one place to another in a rundown van, living in rundown hotels – partying, fucking, drinking, drugging when they aren’t selling their wares. This is a film made at the beginning of the Trump era – and it is a perfect portrait of this America, an America that isn’t working for everyone. The film constantly seems to be in danger of falling over a cliff of darkness and danger from which it won’t recover – but it never quite gets there. The cumulative power of this movie is quite something – it’s a long trip, but one well worth taking.

 

39. The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)

Sean Baker’s The Florida Project is a deeply empathetic film – shot on location on a seedy, rundown motel in the shadow of Disney Land in Orlando. At its center, is one of the best child performances I have ever seen – by six-year-old Brooklyn Prince, who lives with her mother (Bria Vinaite) – a single mom, who makes her living with a variety of scams, and sometimes as a prostitute. Prince and her friends wonder around – getting into trouble and mischief. She is truly a life force in the film. Willem Dafoe gives one of his very best performances as the motel manager – a man who truly does care for all these people, who live on the margins here, but can only do so much. The film is naturalistic throughout – and even if the ending is pure fantasy, it works remarkably well. The film is alive in many ways – the joy that Prince exudes is contagious, while at the same time, you realize it very well may not last into adulthood. A beautiful, empathetic, sad film.

 

38. Drive (Nicholas Winding Refn, 2011)

Sometimes it feels like a director is put here to direct one specific film – such is the case with Nicholas Winding Refn and Drive – an ultraviolent fairy tale, disguised as a crime thriller. Ryan Gosling gives one of his best performances – turning down his charm to nothing – playing a getaway driver in L.A. – who decides it is his duty to protect a mother and her child for some ruthless gangster – led by Albert Brooks, doing some of the best work of his career. The film is ultra-stylish – bringing to mind Michael Mann or Jean-Pierre Melville, with one stunning sequence after another. The film is violent and disturbing – but the key to it all is that Winding Refn structures it all as a fairy tale more than anything else. Winding Refn’s career hasn’t been great since – I hate Only God Forgives, and while I really like The Neon Demon, I am seemingly alone on that one. But this is the one film he got exactly right.

 

37. Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, 2012)

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln is rare for a Spielberg film – because the best thing about the film is the masterful screenplay by Tony Kushner, that weaves together a complex story about how Lincoln was able to bring together a very strange group in order to pass the 13^th Amendment. Daniel Day-Lewis delivers an outstanding performance (for most actors, this would be the crowning achievement of their career – but not for him). Spielberg’s attention to detail is great here – and the casting is impeccable (not just Day-Lewis, but Tommy Lee Jones, Sally Field and a host of others). This is a long film – of course – and a complex one. It’s basically a lot of men in rooms talking – and yet it never drags for a second. The ending is perhaps not the best (a weakness for Spielberg sometimes – but not all the ones people don’t seem to like). It was very smart to concentrate on this narrow aspect of Lincoln’s career – and even narrow in regards to this moment in history, even if it did lead to some (silly, in my opinion) controversy about not showing slavery. Spielberg had a solid decade – he directed 7 films after all – but this is clearly his best of those. It was made in 2012 – as a hope for Obama’s second term, which now seems so distant – but it should stand as a reminder of what America could be.

 

36. Black Swan (Darren Aronofsky, 2010)

Pretty much all of Darren Aronofsky’s films are essentially a descent into madness – from Pi to Requiem for a Dream onward, things typically do not end well for his protagonists. If Black Swan isn’t his finest achievement (and I’d still argue Requiem for a Dream is his best) – it may be his most focused. Natalie Portman won a well-deserved Oscar as a talented ballet dancer whose descent starts when she is cast in the lead of Swan Lake. It’s a brilliant, high wire act of a performance by Portman – perhaps the real start of her taking on bigger and bigger risks this decade that have divided audiences. Here, though, she is perfect – and the supporting cast is all great as well – especially Mila Kunis as her friend/rival/doppelganger. Aronofsky has a tendency to drift into excess and insanity himself in his films – and sometimes he loses control. He’s at his best here – walking that fine line between control and insanity, and the whole things spins close to out of control, but doesn’t get there. A brilliant portrait of art and insanity – and their overlap.

 

35. Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012)

Quentin Tarantino went further back into history than ever before – making his ultra-violent slavery epic but as a revenge epic. You can question whether Tarantino really should be making this – whether he has the right to dive into this history, particularly in this way – but I think he crafted a film that is both hugely entertaining, but didn’t skimp on the true brutality of slavery. The violence here can be as over-the-top as in many other Tarantino films – but at just the right moments, he pushes it into hard-to-watch territory. But basically, this is an entertaining Tarantino Western – with Jamie Foxx as the title character – a slave, trying to save his wife from bondage, who teams up with a Good German (Christoph Waltz – who is excellent, but really shouldn’t have won a second Oscar for this – especially when Leonardo DiCaprio and especially Samuel L. Jackson were as good as they were in this film). This is the first film Tarantino made since the death of his editor Sally Menke – and it shows at a few moments – but overall, this is still an excellent Tarantino film.

 

34. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

The story behind Kenneth Lonergan’s long delayed second feature is almost as fascinating as the film itself – as it basically resulted in a four-year battle between Lonergan and Fox Searchlight over final cut of the film – which was finally resolved (kind of) in 2011 when the film finally hit theaters – and then the next year when an even longer cut hit home video (either version is a masterpiece, and I’m not sure which I prefer). But the film itself is even better – a complex look at a teenage girl (Anna Paquin) – who causes a bus accident that kills a woman, gets away with no charge, and then is consumed by guilt – and then makes everyone’s life around her miserable. That’s a summary, but I’m know it doesn’t do the film justice – it is an incredibly complex portrait of Paquin’s character – and everyone in her orbit, and the world they inhabit. The film is a big, bold, beautiful, deliberate mess, and perhaps the most complicated moral puzzle of the decade. It was worth the wait.

 

33. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010)

In 2010, I thought Derek Cianfrance was going to become one of the great American filmmakers of the decade – and even if that didn’t quite happen, this, his breakthrough film, is still one of the best films ever made about an ending marriage. The film cuts back and forth in time between a couple (Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams) as they fall in love and later as their marriage ends. The fascinating thing about the film is how the structure – the cutting back and forth in times – shows you how the root of their problem could be seen from the beginning of it, but in the beginning, we are all wearing blinders (or in the words of Bojack Horseman, if you’re wearing rose colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags). The film got a NC-17 rating because of three sex scenes in it – but those sex scenes, showing Williams with another man early, contrasted against her first scene with Gosling to show the difference, the depth of feeling in the second compared to the first, and then the final one where all that tenderness is now gone. Gosling and Williams – two of the best actors in the world – have never been better than they were here. I think sometimes we focus too much on the undeniably great directors – I’m as guilt as that as anyone (just look at the filmmakers on this list) – but sometimes, someone like Cianfrance completely nails one film.

 

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

I said in my 2014 top 10 list that Only Lovers Left Alive had only grown in my mind in the months since I saw it – and that is even truer now, as the film just continues to age better and better, and become a truly haunting film. On a plot level, the film is a vampire film about a pair of lovers – Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton – who are centuries old are getting fed up with humanity – him more than her, and are hiding out. It is a film that could only be made by someone at the stage of his life and career as Jarmusch is here – it is a late period film in almost every way. It is the immortality and age and wisdom of vampires that fascinates Jarmusch more than their bloodlust – although there is something there. The film is a haunting elegy, but one that still finds at least a little bit of hope for the future. One of Jarmusch’s absolute best films.

 

31. Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

The sophomore horror film from Aster – following up his brilliant Hereditary from the year previous – Aster pulls off a more difficult trick his second time out. Hereditary was an intensely scary movie – with lots of great scary moments – but what Aster does in Midsommar instead is gradually build a mounting sense of dread for two-and-a-half hours, often in the beautiful, blinding sunlight of the seemingly idyllic setting. He is aided greatly by a great performance by Florence Pugh – a young woman, trapped in a horrible relationship that she somehow thinks is entirely her fault (when she apologizes to him, it is infuriating, in large part because it rings so true). It all climaxes with one of the best ending of a film this decade. Truly, Aster is a special director – even after only two films.

Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 50-41

50. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

Tomas Alfredson’s brilliant spy film – based on the John Le Carre novel is a complex film about a MI6 agent, coming out of retirement, to find a mole within the organization. It is the film that first got Gary Oldman an Oscar nomination (and would have been a much better winner than The Darkest Hour). Alfredsson, making his English language debut following the great vampire film Let the Right One In – is at once both a throwback – a 1970s style paranoid thriller – but one that seems increasingly relevant as the decade progressed. The period detail is great – the cast aside from Oldman (Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Benedict Cumberbatch – and on and on and on – are all wonderful. Hollywood seemingly forgot how to make these types of films, but for one film anyway, they remembered (too bad, based on the evidence available in The Snowman, Alfredson completely forgot how to do anything after this).

 

49. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen, 2018)

The Coen Brothers’ anthology Western is a film that snuck up on me – I watched it once, and quite liked it, but thought it was fairly minor Coen. But then I couldn’t get it out of my mind, and watched it twice more over the first couple of weeks (if there is an upside to this being released on Netflix, it’s the ability to revisit immediately) – and then the film just grew and grew and grew – making it one of the Coen masterpieces in my mind. This is a very dark movie – all about death – which is approached and dealt with in each chapter in very different ways – from the comic masterwork of the first (and title) chapter with Tim Blake Nelson, to the cosmic joke of the second, James Franco starring chapter, to the allegory of the third, with Liam Neeson, to the irony of the fourth with Tom Waits, to the emotional wallop of the fifth – and longest – with Zoe Kazan, to the surreal inevitability of the final chapter. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs deserves to be viewed among the best of the Coens films.

 

48. Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2010)

When Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island was moved out of Oscar season 2009 into February 2010 – you would have been forgiven for thinking that perhaps Scorsese had a boondoggle on his hands. What happened instead, is that Scorsese had made a mad genre piece – a grand guignol horror film, with psychological depth. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a cop, sent to a mental hospital with his partner in search of a missing payment – and then gets sucked deeper into his own mind, and his own past. It is a film about PTSD coming out of WWII, and how it effects the home front. It is brilliantly staged by Scorsese, with great performances by DiCaprio and Michele Williams – with an ending that packs a gut punch. The Dennis Lehane book on which this is based felt flimsy – kind of cheap (and I usually love Lehane) – but Scorsese and his collaborators raised the whole thing by huge degrees. An underrated masterpiece that was an audience hit, but didn’t get the love it deserved at the time, and has sadly faded a little in the past decade in some minds.

 

47. Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)

Jordan Peele’s directorial debut is also one of the best horror films of the decade – an intelligent horror, coming out the month after Trump was inaugurated, which pretty much acted as the perfect start to the Trump era. Peele clearly knows his horror movie – he nails the aesthetics, the tones, the slowly mounting tension – but he has also let the film be funny – at least a little – around the edges – but it’s a laughter that sticks in your throat – one that makes you laugh, and then question yourself for laughing. It is a horror film of awkwardness. And it’s so well-acted by the cast, who never really go overboard with any of it – just ever so slowly get bent. And it leads to a great climax. Peele has already become of the best directors in the world – and one of the only ones who can sell a movie on his name alone.

 

46. Silence (Martin Scorsese, 2016)

Martin Scorsese spent 20 years thinking about Silence – his beautiful, challenging religious epic – about a priest in Japan (Andrew Garfield) who is there to convert the locals to Catholicism, and then has that challenged at every step along the way. The film is the most upfront with Scorsese’s religious beliefs of any film he had made in decades – it is the type of Christian film we need, rather than the cookie cutter ones we get from the God’s Not Dead crowd. Here, Scorsese is making a film about religious belief, and how much that means when challenged – what you’re willing to stand up for, to die for, and what you are not. It is also, of course, a film about religious imperialism – with the Catholics trying to export their religion to a people who may have no interest in it – and while the leaders may go to extremes to defend their way of life, you cannot really blame them. It is also a Christ film of course – with many characters acting as sort of stand-ins for Biblical characters. And it is beautiful and moving as well. People slept on this in 2016 – but it has already developed a following since – a following that will only grow.

 

45. Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

A trickier, and more ambitious film – although not one as instantly iconic – as Peele’s debut film Get Out, Us starts out with a wonderful horror movie premise – take the home invasion genre, and then make the invaders doppelgangers of the family being invaded, and see what happens. Us is at once one of the scariest horror films of the decade – with genuine moments of fright, and expert building of tension, one of the most entertaining horror films of the decade – the entire sequence at their friend’s house is a riot – and a troubling parable for America’s ability to paint over its past instead of dealing with it as they should – and the disastrous consequences that result from that. It also contains a marvelous performance by Lupita Nyong’o in the films deepest of the dual roles – one where you marvel all the more when the secrets eventually spill out. Peele is one of the greats of the horror genre right now.

 

44. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2018)

With each passing film, British director Lynne Ramsay pushes her style further and further – with great results. In You Were Never Really Here, she takes what is essentially a revenge story in the vein of Taxi Driver, strips the narrative to the bone, and places us inside the head of its troubled protagonist – played brilliantly by Joaquin Phoenix. He plays a man who he is hired to rescue girls being traffic and/or abused by men – who he dispatches with brutal, bloody efficiency. But all this violence is taking its toll – he’s falling deeper into delusion and depression – while working on his biggest mission yet, with the most powerful people. The film is a masterpiece of cinematography, editing and sound design, and pushes this disturbing story into very different places, ending with a haunting, ambiguous shot. Ramsay is one of the best filmmakers in the world – and I’m a little tired of her not getting the attention she deserves.

 

43. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Blige Ceylon, 2011)

Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylon had a very good decade – Palme D’or winner for Winter Sleep and as well as The Wild Pear Tree – are both excellent. But for me, his masterpiece is his 2011 film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia – a crime thriller in which the closer you look, the less you know. The film is almost comic when it begins – it involves a group of police driving around the countryside with a man who has confessed to murder, who is supposed to lead them to the body of his victim – but he doesn’t quite know where it is. As the hour’s tick back, and it gets darker outside, it leads all the men into introspection, each taking things in their own way. When the body is found – and brought back for an autopsy, it places everything in a new light – the brutality of the crime snaps into sharper focus, and we are forced to confront what we saw before. What the doctor does to the body, Ceylon does to all of these men – delivering a haunting, brilliant examination of these men – and crime, in general. It belongs on a list with films like Memories of Murder, Zodiac and Police, Adjective.

 

42. Nebraska (Alexander Payne, 2013)

Alexander Payne returned to his native state to make this sharp, funny, sad film about a cross state journey by father and son. Bruce Dern plays the aging father, convinced he’s won the sweepstakes and will be coming into millions – his middle aged son, Will Forte, knows that’s probably not true – but drives him anyway, so he won’t drive himself. Along the way, they stop to see family, stop at in the old home town – and at least remember the past, even if they don’t really work through it all. The film is shot in stark black and white – the grayness of the countryside, the greyness of the lives being lived, becomes evident. But Payne isn’t looking down on his home state – or the people there – but instead looking at them with his eyes open, seeing the different sides to them. Bruce Dern has perhaps never been better – it was a role Payne wanted Jack Nicholson for, but his About Schmidt star suggested Dern, and he was right – it is a richer film with this performance. Nebraska was easily Payne’s best film this decade – one that stands along Election, About Schmidt and Sideways – at the top of his filmography.

 

41. BlackKklansman (Spike Lee, 2018)

It seems to me that Spike Lee has been written off countless times over the years – and then he returns with a bang with another masterpiece. It certainly happened before 25^th Hour in 2002 and undeniably it had been the case before BlackKklansman – the film that ended up winning a Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, and finally land Spike an Oscar – sure, it was a screenplay Oscar, and not the director Oscar he deserved – but it’s better than nothing. BlackKklansman is an incendiary film about a black police officer in Colorado in the 1970s – who infiltrates the KKK. The film is delirious and entertaining throughout – but with moments that strike out directly at our current time with rage. The whole thing comes to a head – and we think we’re getting a happy ending, and then Lee delivers a final gut punch. The performances by John David Washington and Adam Driver are great – and Lee stages several sequences (the juxtaposition between Harry Belafonte’s story, and the KKK watching The Birth of a Nation is stunning). Spike Lee is not going anywhere.

Top 100 Films of the 2010s - 60-51

60. Carlos (Olivier Assayas, 2010)

Olivier Assayas three-part, five-and-a-half-hour film that chronicles 30 years in the life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez – a Venezuelan terrorist and mercenary, who grabbed headlines, and become a wanted man the world over. The movie opens with him in his early 20s – where he pretends to be an idealist, in the Che Guevara – but it quickly becomes apparent that he isn’t really ideologically motivated. He will fight on behalf of the Palestinians, and other groups. While his “bosses” admire what he can do – they also know he cannot fully be trusted – he is a narcissist, and doesn’t like to follow orders. The final third of the film – with Sanchez drifting into irrelevance and excess isn’t nearly as exciting as the first two parts – which have some of the best set pieces of the decade – but are necessary to show just what becomes of a man like this. Yes, the film is very long – but it moves like gangbusters – like a Scorsese film (GoodFellas) that has been given even more time to breath. Call it a TV miniseries if you want – I saw it on the big screen, in one sitting, and loved every second.

 

59. A Separation (Asghar Farahadi, 2011)

Iranian auteur Asghar Farahadi peaked (so far anyway) with A Separation – a complex portrait of a couple who have to decide whether to leave Iran for a better life for their child, or stay and look after an elderly parent with Alzheimer’s – made even more complicated, when a seemingly innocent interaction, spirals into violence and tragedy. Farhadi’s film is a masterclass in screenwriting, showing all the complexities of this situation. It is an intimate portrait of Iran and its culture – grounded in this personal story, which becomes universal. Farhadi hasn’t come close to matching this since (The Salesman comes closest – but I wasn’t much of a fan of The Past, and Everybody Knows was pretty mediocre) – but in this film, he constructed a masterpiece.

 

58. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, 2012)

Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom is a deceptively sweet, deep film about young love. The two young teenagers at its center run away from their hometown – and parents, for varying reasons – and head out to an island – causing a search party to fan out and try and find them. The film, inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot Le Fou (one of his very best films) – but entirely Anderson’s own. The two kids romance is sweet – the girl loves storybooks, and their romance is very much like those out of her books, which Anderson contrasts very nicely with the weird, twisted complicated world of their parents. As with everything Anderson does, the film is meticulously crafted and designed – but rarely has one of his films so emotionally attuned. After two live action films in a row (Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Limited) where I don’t think he quite got the balance right, Moonrise Kingdom was a great return to form.

 

57. Nightcrawler (Dan Gilroy, 2014)

Jake Gyllenhaal gives one of the great performances of the decade as a shifty eyed psycho which harkens back to the films of the 1970s – specifically kind of combining Taxi Driver and Network, but updated for today’s dark media landscape. He plays a freelance cameraman, who makes his money filming accidents and crime scenes, and selling them to the highest bidder – and then he starts crossing one line after another. As great as Gyllenhaal is – and he has never been better – he is matched by Riz Ahmed, as his assistant, who seemingly has some scruples, and Rene Russo, who has none. The cinematography by Robert Elswit is great – no one quite shoots dark L.A. like him – and it is a great directorial debut for Dan Gilroy (his two films since cannot match this – but he’s always pushing something). One of the defining films of the decade in terms of just how screwed up the media landscape is.

 

56. The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

One of the great films about parenting ever made, The Babadook is a horror film about a monster in the basement that threatens a mother and her son – but is really about the mother’s fear that she hates her own son, who may be a violent psychopath. This was Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut – and it seems like the American distributer didn’t know what they had (the film didn’t make my top 10 list back in 2014 for instance – because in Canada, it didn’t get released until March 2015) – but has gone on to be one of the most loved horror films of the decade. There is a reason for that – Kent is a natural at horror movie ascetics, making this old (but not quite dilapidated) house into a truly scary space – but making sure you know its what’s inside the house that is truly terrifying. Parental horror films had a great decade – and The Babadook is one of the very best.

 

55. 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen, 2013)

I understand why many want to leave slave narratives behind – and concentrate on other aspects of African American life and history. Still, I’m not sure we will see a better film that directly confronts American audiences with slavery in a dramatic movie – one that makes it clear that even the “good” slave owners were horrible people, and just how traumatic, violent, painful the slave trade was. By concentrating on the case of a man (played brilliantly by Chiwetel Ejifor) who was born free, became and slave, and then got out – the film is telling a more “uplifting” film than most slave narratives – where people were born, lived and died in chains, but Steve McQueen’s film doesn’t skirt that issue – doesn’t put a happy face on this, and shows the pain of those who were left behind. It’s a brilliantly directed film – like his other films, it concentrates on the physical body, and what is goes through. The camera doesn’t look away, and it is unflinching. The performances by Ejiofor, by Fassbender, by Nyong’o – and the entire cast is brilliant. It is a powerful and important film – and not just because of its subject matter.

 

54. The Act of Killing/The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012/2014)

The two documentaries by Joshua Oppenheimer, looking at the genocide in the 1960s in Indonesia make a great one-two punch. The Act of Killing was the first, and more innovative, of the two documentaries which follows those who perpetrated the killings, and have been national heroes ever since, even going to so far as to give them cameras so they can do stylized re-enactments in the form of different movie genres. Some felt that movie ignored the victims – and Oppenheimer told them to just wait, and the result was the powerful The Look of Silence two years later, a less innovative, but more emotional documentary that is from the victim’s side. Between the two films, Oppenheimer produced some of the best documentary filmmaking of the decade – and ones that will remembered and remain relevant as time goes by.

 

53. Before Midnight (Richard Linklater, 2013)

My favorite film of the Before trilogy was this one – because it is the first film that felt that is built on something real, something substantial, not based on romantic idealism like the first two films. Now, the couple (played wonderfully by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delphy) have been together for nine years, and their conversation as they walk and talk through Spain means something, it’s built on their shared life, and how complex that can be. The film can be painful and awkward in its realism, but it is also still romantic and beautiful. For me, this is among Linklater’s very best films – and made the whole series better in retrospect. I would gladly take another chapter in 2022 – but for the first time in this series, I don’t think we need one.

 

52. Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013)

Under the Skin is strange, complex, brilliantly well-made, disturbing film that shows just how much talented Jonathan Glazer. He’s made three films now – the other two being Sexy Beast and Birth – and they could be more different stylistically, but are all great. Scarlett Johansson (back when she could still take risks, and not just be in Marvel movies) stars as alien, driving around Scotland, seducing men for her own dark purposes. The film has images that will never leave you – some of them of the creepy, horror variety – like when she shows her true form, some that seem like they are out of a David Lynch film – the strange red places she goes with her men – and some just very real, like a crying baby near the water. I underrated this at the time I saw it at TIFF (it was released theatrically the next year, and didn’t make my top 10 list – a massive mistake) – but it’s been one of the most haunting films of the decade so far.

 

51. Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

Spike Jonze works slowly – this was his only feature film this decade – and it’s one of his best. It is a film about the modern world, and how obsessed we all are with our phones – how personal that relationship feels. Joaquin Phoenix gives one of his gentlest, saddest performances as a man who grows through a breakup – and then basically falls in love with a more advanced version Siri – voice by Scarlett Johansson, who is also brilliant in her role. The film is a meticulously designed and shot film, and one that is both touching in its sincerity and sad in its depiction of this dystopia we are putting ourselves in. Jonze is a great filmmaker – his entire feature career is just Being John Malkovich Adaptation, Where the Wild Things Are and this one – and they are all great. Here’s hoping the next decade has more than one film from Jonze.