The 2010s produced some of the most daring and technically accomplished work in Hollywood history alongside franchise blockbusters. Here are the ten films that defined the decade.
1. Parasite (2019) — Bong Joon-ho
The first non-English film to win Best Picture. The most precisely engineered screenplay of the decade. A film about class that never becomes a lecture. Its imagery burns permanently into memory.
2. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) — George Miller
Miller spent thirty years trying to make this film and produced what many consider the greatest action film ever made. Almost entirely practical. Shot in the Namibian desert. Furious, feminist, and full of genuine ideas beneath the mayhem.
3. The Tree of Life (2011) — Terrence Malick
A film about grief and existence that begins with the formation of the universe. Audiences walked out at Cannes then gave it the Palme d'Or. The most visually extraordinary thing committed to celluloid this decade.
4. Her (2013) — Spike Jonze
A love story between a man and an operating system that is the most perceptive film about loneliness and technology made this decade. Joaquin Phoenix gives a performance of devastating vulnerability.
5. The Social Network (2010) — David Fincher
Aaron Sorkin's screenplay is one of the finest ever written. Fincher directs with ice-cold precision. Jesse Eisenberg's Zuckerberg — brilliant, cruel, lonely — is one of the decade's great screen performances.
6. Moonlight (2016) — Barry Jenkins
Three chapters in a man's life about identity and the catastrophe of never being allowed to be yourself. The Best Picture win over La La Land was correct. It is the more important and more beautiful film.
7. Gravity (2013) — Alfonso Cuarón
The most technically accomplished survival film ever made. The opening seventeen-minute continuous shot in zero gravity remains one of cinema's technical miracles. Sandra Bullock carries every frame.
8. Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) — The Coen Brothers
A talented musician failing in 1961 Greenwich Village with no one to blame but himself. A circular narrative that ends exactly where it begins. Devastating, funny, and achingly beautiful.
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — Wes Anderson
Anderson's most fully realised vision — all pink facades and meticulous symmetry, concealing genuine darkness and heart. Ralph Fiennes gives his funniest and most charming performance.
10. Whiplash (2014) — Damien Chazelle
A film about a jazz drummer and an abusive instructor that functions as thriller, sports film, and moral argument. J.K. Simmons won a deserved Oscar. The final fifteen minutes are some of the most exhilarating in modern cinema.
