Okay, okay, okay. I know the end of February is way too late to get around to sharing my favorite 100 films of the decade. It’s been at least two full months since most lists of this sort were published. However, counterpoint… Yeah, I don’t actually have a counterpoint. I just wanted to make this list, so I did.
It’s so late because I wasn’t intending to compile a list like this at all. But, that was before I started watching an unreasonable number of YouTube supercuts and video lists, which left me itching to compile a list of my own. That’s right around the time friends started asking me for a list like this, and at that point, the outcome was inevitable. If I’d been writing RtM as consistently as I once did, this list would have been a given. thanks to the folks who nudged me in the right direction.
All that to say that I threw convention to the wind and compiled this very late list of my 100 favorite films of the 2010s.
Important note: The order is randomized. There is absolutely no meaning in the numbers.
Fun stats:
Actors: Michael Keaton makes the list 4 times; Margot Robbie, the Gos, Bradley Cooper, and Leo show up five times; Chris Evans and Mark Ruffalo show up 6 times each; ScarJo shows up seven times; and Samuel L. Jackson takes the crown with eight appearances.
Directors: Jordan Peele, Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Damien Chazelle, Denis Villeneuve, Ryan Coogler, Joss Whedon, and Christopher Nolan all showed up twice; Edgar Wright and Tarantino have three films each; and I included five Taika movies!! All hail the King. That means I included every movie Peele, Wright, Tarantino, and Taika directed in the 2010s.
Favorite films by year: 10 from 2010, 11 from 2011, 9 from 2012, 5 from 2013, 17(!) from 2014, 9 from 2015, 9 from 2016, 13 from 2017, 6 from 2018, 11 from 2019.
Other random stats: Marvel movies = 9 — Animated movies = 5 — Movies with aliens = 8 — Live action movies with a CGI main cast member = 10(!) — Foreign films = 19 — Documentaries = 4. Films featuring the dead/undead = 3.5. Only 29 included primary cast members who weren’t straight white characters. Only 20 included a woman as a primary protagonist. Only 26 were written or directed by someone who wasn’t a white dude (a number that was tilted significantly by Taika Waititi being on here 5 times).
Anyway, without further ado, here’s the list! There’s more commentary at the end of the list. Enjoy!
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1. Moonlight
2. Drive
3. Coco
4. Grand Budapest Hotel
5. Django Unchained
6. La La Land
7. What We Do in the Shadows
8. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
9. Attack the Block
10. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
11. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
12. Arrival
13. Call Me By Your Name
14. The Tree of Life
15. Guardians of the Galaxy
16. Spotlight
17. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
18. Chef
19. It Follows
20. The Farewell
21. Whiplash
22. Baby Driver
23. Beasts of the Southern Wild
24. The Nice Guys
25. Senna
26. Moonrise Kingdom
27. The Guilty
28. Mad Max: Fury Road
29 & 30. Paddington 1 and 2
31. Creed
32. A Star is Born
33. Before Midnight
34. Toy Story 3
35. Jojo Rabbit
36. Take Shelter
37. Inception
38. Thor: Ragnarok
39. Mud
40. The Babadook
41. Knives Out
42. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
43. Housebound
44. Snabba Cash
45. Her
46. The Interrupters
47. Eighth Grade
48. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
49. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
50. Boy
51. Headhunters
52. Dunkirk
53. Parasite
54 & 55. Spider-Man: Homecoming & Far From Home
56. The Good, the Bad, the Weird
57. Marriage Story
58. Calvary
59. Inside Out
60. Get Out
61. The Cabin in the Woods
62, 63, & 64. Rise of, Dawn of, and War for the Planet of the Apes
65. Hanna
66. Little Women
67. Avengers
68. The Intouchables
69. Silver Linings Playbook
70. Shutter Island
71. I, Tonya
72. Swiss Army Man
73. The Trip
74. Kubo and the Two Strings
75. The Big Short
76. Us
77. Shame
78. The Raid 2: Berendal
79. The One I Love
80. The Hateful Eight
81. About Time
82. The Invitation
83. Brooklyn Castle
84. I Am Not Your Negro
85, 86, & 87. John Wick: Chapters 1-3
88. Dope
89. Skyfall
90. Seven Psychopaths
91. Black Panther
92. The Florida Project
93. The World’s End
94. Hell or High Water
95. Blade Runner: 2049
96. The Wolf of Wall Street
97. The Social Network
98. Kingsman: The Secret Service
99 & 100. Avengers: Infinity War & Endgame
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I had a great time making this list, and I’m grateful to the friends who asked for it. I really miss when this blog was something I did regularly. Making this list reminded me of so many great films from the decade. It also embarrassed me as I sifted through and saw how many celebrated and beloved films I haven’t gotten to yet. Even if I only loved 10% of the consensus great films of the last ten years that I’ve missed, this list may have been wildly different. I have so many films I’m excited to catch up on!
I’m amazed by all the film fans out there who painstakingly made video lists of their favorites of the decade. Theirs supercuts and lists overwhelmed me with the reminder of how beautiful this medium is, and how much I fucking love film. I wish I had the software and ability to do what they do.
In hindsight, I really needed several months to dive in and make this list right. I wish I could have gone back and revisited films from earlier in the decade. I remember really loving films like Certified Copy, Of Gods and Men, The End of the Tour, Somewhere, Black Swan, Jane Eyre, The Artist, The Lunchbox, Inherent Vice, Don’t Think Twice, Looper, Much Ado About Nothing, and Never Let Me Go, just to list a baker’s dozen. For whatever reason, those films aren’t as fresh in my mind anymore, and I have a feeling that if I’d had time to revisit them all, some would have been included. With more time, this list would inevitably have been different, perhaps significantly so.
I hope you enjoyed the list as much as I enjoy reading the lists other folks compile. Now I’m off to watch another movie.