Top Fifty Films of the Decade (Part 1 of 5) (1/14/2020)
- Heather German
- Jun 26, 2020
- 7 min read
Despite my naysaying about Hollywood in my previous bottom twenty films of the decade list, I actually think that the past decade was a fantastic year for film. You just had to look beneath the surface. Beneath the cloying decay of Hollywood was a rich and thriving independent scene, and already we’re seeing foreign countries stepping up to fill the shoes of the American film industry’s inevitable implosion. Streaming services and the internet have made films and filmmaking more accessible than ever before, and the very idea of what a film can do is being challenged with so many gorgeous and essential works.
There were dozens of great films that came out over the past ten years, but here are my top fifty overall. Keep in mind that these are just out of the ones I have seen as of January 2020, and there may certainly be better movies that I haven’t yet discovered.
As a further aside, I’d like to say that this list is fairly subjective and prone to change. I made a top fifty list of all time for myself a few months ago and even what movies from this decade were on it were ordered very differently. Ordering movies like this definitively is a fool’s errand; you may like one thing better than the other based on your mood. These rankings I’m going to do from here on out are going to be in the spirit of honoring the best movies of the year/decade, and not a set in stone list of my opinions that I’m going to hold to going forward. This list is how I feel in the moment, right now, looking back, about what movies this decade affected and meant the most to me.
We’re going to start from the bottom and work our way up. But first, some honorable mentions, movies that I didn’t feel were good enough to get in the top fifty, but that I wanted to give a shout out to regardless.
Honorable Mention: Fateful Findings
There does not exist a world in which this film is unironically good in any sense. That being said, Neil Breen has become somewhat of an obsession for me. His films are so bafflingly inept in such a unique way that hasn’t been seen such Tommy Wiseau’s The Room - and Breen has made a lot more than Wiseau has. Fateful Findings is the pinnacle of Breen’s work this decade, with a bafflingly idiotic and nonsensical plot filled with so many WTF worthy moments and lines that one has to watch it again and again to fully process them all. If you ever want a good time, grab some friends and some drinks and sit down to watch this work of sheer breenius.
Honorable Mention: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World was not quite good enough to breach my top fifty, however, I wanted to give a shoutout to it because of its importance to me. It’s my least favorite of the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, but it is still an engaging, emotionally fulfilling and gorgeously animated conclusion to one of my favorite trilogies of all time. The story of Hiccup and Toothless quite literally changed my life when it began back in 2010, and to see it end is both heartbreaking and somewhat cathartic. Hiccup and Toothless guided me through an incredibly rough time in my life, and I’m so glad to have seen an end to their story.
50. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
After the cold and overstuffed The Amazing Spider-Man 2, yet another live action Spider-Man iteration fell to time, and yet another reboot was planned. In a fresh surprise, Spider-Man: Homecoming turned out to be the strongest live action Spider-Man film to date - and one of the strongest Marvel films overall. Stepping away from the huge, world-ending scope and over produced battle sequences of so many of its compatriots, Homecoming wisely elected for a much smaller scale plotline, with Spider-Man coming into his own as a neighborhood protector while simultaneously navigating the embarrassing and awkward world of adolescence and high school. It’s a sheer delight to watch, and easily one of the MCU films I’ve rewatched the most.
49. mother! (2017)
This is a film that I struggled with when it came to deciding if it warranted placement on this list. An argument could certainly be made that this is a over-indulgent, pretentious, one trick pony of a film. But personally, of all of the experiences I went through in the movie theaters in the 2010s, none have haunted me more than mother! Darren Aronofsky’s remarkably twisted allegory about man, religion and nature is a creative tour-de-force, and while the first two thirds of the film can sometimes come off as dry, the final act is such a depraved and unrelenting nightmare of an audiovisual experience that it took me days to get it out of my head - and I’m not sure it’s ever truly left. So, as unlikeable as this film is in many aspects, it’s also one of the strongest and most unique art pieces of the past decade.
48. Booksmart (2019)
In what seems to be an ongoing war between raunchy and edgy comedy and political correctness, Booksmart arrives to declare that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too. Booksmart is a raunch and hilarious coming-of-age caper that manages to offend the sensibilities and appeal to the adolescent sense of humor in all of us without punching down to those who have less power. Instead of, say, mocking the same sex attraction of its lesbian protagonist, it smartly incorporates it into the jokes, playing off of the unique experiene of that demographic in our society while still making it clear that, gay or not, she’s still just an awkward, love-struck teenager like everyone else. Add to that a delightful coming of age story that may err a bit to close to being a rehash of Superbad (though, in my opinion, Booksmart is a better film overall) but is still an emotionally satisfying journey, and you have one of the better comedies of the last decade.
47. Skyfall (2012)
Daniel Craig’s James Bond has been quite literally hit and miss so far, with every other film being a success and every other film being a flop to some degree. 2006’s Casino Royale was a fun and refreshing reimagination of 007’s legacy, with a new emphasis on the darker aspects of his character - plus, it was a great spy thriller to boot. 2008’s Quantum of Solace was a mess of a film overall, but 2012’s Skyfall upped the ante, delivering the best new James Bond to date. The action scenes are sublime, the performances excellent, and the degree to which the story delves into Jame’s Bond’s tortured past is surprising and fascinating. Overall, Skyfall is the quintessential vision of who James Bond is in the modern day, and an essential addition to the series filmography.
46. Coco (2017)
The 2010’s without question showed somewhat of a decline in the quality of Pixar’s output. The legendary animated studio produced one too many unnecessary sequels and half-baked ideas to retain their status as the West’s most significant source of animated fare. Every now and then, however, they still managed to hit the ball out of the park in such a way that everyone was reminded of just how they got that reputation in the first place. Such is the case with Coco, a thoroughly entertaining and heartfelt journey that creative explores Mexican culture with its story and aesthetic while providing the single most sensitive and nuanced exploration of death that I’ve ever seen in a children’s film.
45. Green Room (2016)
There’s been somewhat of a horror/thriller renaissance lately, and while Green Room is far from the scariest contributor to this, it’s easily the most punk rock. Never have I seen a fiction film that so brilliantly represents the genre in its raw grittiness and kinetic anti-fascist energy. It’s a tale as old as time of punks vs. neo-nazis set in a backwoods venue completely isolated from the outside world. One of the most intense and grueling thrillers of the past decade, Green Room is a triumph of genre filmmaking.
44. BlacKkKlansman (2018)
BlacKkKlansman is a messy, angry movie for a messy, angry time. It starts off as a comic police procedural but then slowly descends into something darker and more provocative. It has a virile energy throughout that just seems waiting to explode, and at the end, it does, in a brilliant montage of clips that make this film’s relevance clear. In an age where movements like Black Lives Matter still have to fight to be heard, while police are shooting unarmed black people on the streets and getting away with it, the fight for civil rights is far from over, and BlacKkKlansman is determined to make sure we all know.
43. Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Thor: Ragnarok wasn’t always my favorite MCU film of the decade, but as time passed since it was released I found myself coming back to it again and again and again. It’s certainly not a perfect film, but it is such quintessential blockbuster fun that manages to do what the rest of its ilk does better while simultaneously setting itself apart. Thor: Ragnarok is such a genuine, unbelievably fun time that for all the pitfalls it occasionally takes into generic superhero turf, it always manages to rebound with a huge smile on its face. Of all the decisions Marvel Studios made this past decade, bringing director Taika Waititi on board was perhaps their wisest decision - and yes, we will be hearing from Waititi again on this list.
42. Baby Driver (2017)
Despite the shadow cast over this film by the spectre of star Kevin Spacey’s allegations in the #metoo movement, Baby Driver still manages to be one of the most impressive achievements in cinematic style of the past ten years. Edgar Wright was always a director for unique visual style and editing technique, and here he pushes it to the absolute maximum, creating an utterly wholehearted letter to pulp action flicks and music that plays like a musical that replaces singing and dancing with bullets and car chases. It’s exhilarating stuff.
41. La La Land (2016)
While not quite the complete revival and overhaul of the musical genre it was hyped out to be, La La Land is nevertheless an exquisite piece of genre filmmaking, with a dizzingly romantic story featuring sublime direction and breathtaking energy, and a contemplative ending that ends on a far more poignant note than a simple “happily ever after.” La La Land makes up for its lack of originality with its complete visual expertise, bringing weight to every scene with its perfect compositions and choreography that eventually culminates in one of the best abstract representations of regret and acceptance that I’ve seen in my years.
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