The Decade in Movies, According to Me
The 2010s was a bizarre decade. As countless articles like this one have already pointed out, much of the last ten years are defined by confusion, fear, paranoia, and anxiety. In some sense, these cultural critics write, the movies we’ve consumed in the meantime reflect these times, help us envision better futures, or simply allow us a brief escape from that reality. Maybe there’s something to that. Certainly I have had moments where watching something felt like a comfortable respite, and I have personally found it to be my go-to solution for depressive episodes. I think the audiovisual art of the 2010s can tell us much more about what we think we know than it can tell us about what or who we are. In other words, at a time when companies get rich from promoting their products or causes as the last defense against a threatening world, the art we make and take in can, at its best, show us something brand new. And that’s enough.
Here are my favourite movies of the decade, with very few rules or regulations—if I want it included, it’s here.
The Lost City of Z
25. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson, 2016)
With footage pulled from various projects throughout Johnson’s decades-long career, from the Edward Snowden saga in Citizenfour to a Jacques Derrida documentary, this is far more than a collage. Johnson questions the truth of her own genre and work, while finding the dignity and humanity of her subjects, often both at the same time.
24. The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
DiCaprio’s best performance, and a clue for how film spectatorship was largely weaponized in the 2010s.
23. The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer, 2015)
One of the best debut films in recent memory, Anna Rose Holmer’s mysterious and singular film centres on bodily resistance. It’s a shame Holmer and the remarkable young star Royalty Hightower haven’t broken out big (yet).
22. Only Lovers Left Alive (Jim Jarmusch, 2013)
Sexy and funny, but mostly proof that Jarmusch would make a great vampire because he’s never in a rush and he has a fetishistic appreciation for art and art objects.
21. Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
Lies and truth—what’s the difference? Old confronting the young, tradition confronting the new. The end.
20. Unfriended (Levan gabriadze, 2014) / Unfriended: Dark Web (stephen susco, 2018)
Perhaps the defining horror films of the decade are these two deeply disturbing movies that take place entirely within someone’s laptop screen, with each story primarily told through Skype windows. While the content is extreme, they have the distinctly rare ability to authentically capture what it’s like to live online, exploiting that familiarity specifically to heighten the horror.
19. Ex Libris: New York Public Library (frederick wiseman, 2017)
Frederick Wiseman is our greatest living documentarian, and this is just one of several excellent 3+-hour-long docs he put out this decade, along with At Berkeley, In Jackson Heights, National Gallery, and Monrovia, Indiana. Ex Libris is a perfect example of the way his fly-on-the-wall approach allows for brief moments of compassion amid sobering insights into American institutions.
18. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt, 2010)
Slow mastery, and a reminder that cinema is all about perspective.
17. The Irishman (martin scorsese, 2019)
The only 2019 film on my list, mostly because everything else feels too fresh and uncertain, while Scorsese’s opus seems inevitable and steady.
16. The Lost City of Z (James Gray, 2016)
Obsession Cinema is one of my favourite subgenres, and Gray’s delirious venture into the jungle is an all-timer. Sensually overwhelming, it strikes at the failure of dreams and the humanity within that yearning, while acknowledging the wreckage it leaves behind.
15. The Wind Rises (Hayao Miyazaki, 2013)
Apparently, Miyazaki has another film on the way after yet another retirement, but The Wind Rises could stand as a perfect swan song. How do you reckon with the fact that the beauty you strive to create can only serve a horrific purpose? A loss of control can be a loss of self. Kinda like filmmaking, no?
14. The Witch (Robert Eggers, 2015)
I deeply appreciate the specificity of Eggers’ historical approach, largely because it makes the horror more palpable. This is a lesson in harnessing that fear and controlling it.
13. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)
Heart-stopping.
12. We Are The Best! (Lukas Moodysson, 2013)
Perhaps the best film about friendship this decade, this is the delightful and sweet story of three girls deciding to kick ass with their punk band even though everyone tells them punk is dead. Abort the sport!
11. Gone Girl (David Fincher, 2014)
Fincher had the best decade of his career in the 2010s, despite them all coming out within the first four years. While The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are both immaculate, Gone Girl is his real achievement, a pulpy thriller about how images and surfaces can deceive us, with the decade’s greatest love story at its centre.
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
How will you be remembered? Are you being replaced, and what’s coming next? What is your perfection covering up?
9. Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)
I’m powerless against this film. There are so many ways to self-destruct, and so few paths offering second chances. Why do we insist on taking ourselves apart? Perhaps there’s beauty in it. At the very least there is change.
8. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo, 2015)
Hong Sang-soo is my director of the decade, in large part because he put out 13(!) movies and each one that I’ve seen has been incredible. Right Now, Wrong Then is my choice at the moment, simply because of the way it distills his approach to narrative and surprise into a perfect diptych, and for Kim Min-hee’s performance.
7. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2017)
Hilarious and perverse. Just like love.
6. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller, 2018)
I will never stop going to bat for this movie, led by Marielle Heller’s vision (my favourite director to debut this decade) and two of the finest performances of the 2010s in Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant as nasty schemers with love only for each other.
5. Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011)
Subtle and tender, but ultimately a compelling tale of rethinking gender and, moreover, childhood.
4. Upstream Color (Shane Carruth, 2013)
The first time I saw this, I didn’t know what I was seeing but I knew that I was caught. The second and third and fourth times, I was enraptured but devastated. Do any of us have agency over our minds, our impulses, our nature? Also, killer soundtrack (also by Carruth).
3. Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)
This may have been Tumblr’s favourite movie of the decade, but don’t let that distract from the power of Haynes’ filmmaking. Precise and warm, a social drama of gazes, gestures, and touch. The happiest ending of the decade.
2. Personal Shopper (Olivier Assayas, 2017)
Kristen Stewart is a movie star, and never has that been clearer than here, where she carries a modernist ghost story like no one else could. A melancholic but unsettling film that wonders how we connect—with the dead, with digital others, with ourselves. No desire if it’s not forbidden.
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
What else could it be? Sensory overload, a critique of American aesthetics (and dreams) that exploits them giddily. A horror film, about sex, race, power, and class, stickily charting the moral failure of American capitalism while illustrating its hollow but enticing allure. A hedonistic nightmare of eternal youth and self-actualization, and undoubtedly my film of the decade.
The rest: Mad Max: Fury Road, First Reformed, Holy Motors, Melancholia, The Florida Project, The Lords of Salem, Under the Skin, The Tree of Life, The Social Network, Two Days, One Night, Cemetery of Splendour, BPM, The Duke of Burgundy, Coherence, A Star is Born