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my favorite 100 movies of the 2010s.

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.

The end