The 100 Best Films of the 2010s

The following masterpieces depict what we loved about movies this decade and what we hope to see more of in the years to come:

Acceptable arcs and outcomes.

Who got to make movies and how.

Representation, curiosity, and honesty.

Experimentation, daring-do, and heart.

What left us breathless and what defined what it felt like to be a human in the 2010s.

Tell us what we missed in the comments. And if nothing else, please seed!

***

100. God Help The Girl

Truly a ragged decade for the musical, wasn’t it? God Help The Girl provided hope in the form of a beating heart that only KickStarter could fund. Anna and the Apocalypse was polished, The Lure was truly on-brand (Hyperreal-wise), and Sing Street charmed. What else was there, though? (I’m genuinely curious.) The most precious movie of the decade (Sorry, Submarine and Perks of Being a Wallflower, you did good.) showed us DIY always wins. I’m going to snuggle under this weighted blanket of a film every time I get a cold until infinity.

-Tanner

99. Logan

A grizzled, dystopian, fatalistic take on Wolverine that erases the hot mess that was X-Man Origins: Wolverine and closes the Hugh Jackman chapter with a bloody poem worthy of the decade’s angriest anti-hero. Logan is more than just than an R-rating gloom trip. It’s a classic Western with claws, a treatise on how when a generation’s heroes see an apocalypse-ravaged world that no longer belongs to them, their mandate is not to slowly fade away underground but to ride out one last time with the next generation, get them as far away from the blast radius as possible until their horse gives out. 

-Graham

98. The VVitch

If comedy was the little genre that could in the 2000s, horror reclaimed that distinction in the 2010s by going back to art school. A24 and The VVitch opened the floodgates. Disney+ aside, it seems like all the must-see, event films these days are inventive and painterly terrors. It’s honestly the best.

 -Tanner

97. Damsels in Distress

Whit Stillman, he can do no wrong in my eyes. This film, which sounds unbearably twee on paper, is actually an extremely smart and nuanced feel-good comedy, filled to the brim with that signature Stillman dialogue. 

-Lisa

96. The Challenge

Who needs dialogue when you have Lamborghinis and cheetahs and Qatari sheikhs and falcons and private jets and motorcycle gangs. When grandiose meets minimalism we are left with The Challenge.

 -Jenni

95. Loving 

The story of the Lovings is about a husband and wife from Virginia whose defiant commitment to one another led to the landmark 1967 Supreme Court decision that invalidated state laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Loving the movie is about two landmark performances by the film’s leads Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton. The thing most people forget (until they’re forced to remember) when they tell each other ‘love conquers all,’ is that in order for love to conquer something, it has to be willing to go to war. The acting in Loving is a full-body invocation of the depth and bravery that kind of love requires. Negga gives Mildred her luminously expressive eyes, brimming with subtle yet unwavering belief in her husband. Edgerton carries all the strain of Richard’s immovable dedication to his wife and children in his shoulders and jaw. Together, scene by scene, brick by brick, they build a monument to the Lovings’ willingness to be soldiers in a battle they didn’t choose to fight but decided to win. 

-Graham

94. Coco

Pixar once again masterfully portrays death in a magical and sensitive way for audiences of all ages. You’ll cry at least once. 

-Jenni

93. Edge of Tomorrow

Bemoan the State Of The Industry! Weep for the Paucity of Ideas! Welcome to the Desert Of The Real©! God I know I know I know that blah blah intellectual property and woof woof it’s the only tentpole original content and uggghhhhhhhhh sometimes, just… fuck. This movie is fucking awesome, and it’s not because of all that. Well, it is too, but mostly just… is there a funner sequence than Tom dying over and over again and waking up and doing it again? Is there a wilder love story? Is there a crazier plot than aliens that know the future and use it to win wars and our man Tom somehow co-opting that power by getting melted with glowing blue ooze? Is there less pandering wish-fulfillment than seeing them go and go and go until they finally get it right? NO! This movie is the best.  

-David

92. Only Lovers Left Alive

I guess being a vampire for 12314254 years and watching empires rise and fall and loved ones slip away turns you into a Gen X guitar collector who can't stop talking about the genius of Jack White (kill me). 

Seriously though, Jarmusch lets his droll arch facade slip to deliver a movie with a surprising depth of feeling.  Sure, he still loves to name drop like some college snob, but Only Lovers settles into a weary nightpeople mood I can't help but love. The drone soundtrack and somnambulant pace perfectly capture time stretched indefinite.  And Tilda and Loki sell their romance across ages like one long sigh. This bloodsucker has a pulse!

-Patrick

91. Grand Budapest Hotel

Just when Wes Anderson’s study in ruthlessly art-directed adorability was beginning to wear thin, he makes a film like this. Grand Budapest Hotel harnesses all the things we appreciate about his work and strips away all the things that make it seem too easy for him. What’s left is a story with real stakes, real heart, and a thoughtful ear for history. Led by a breathlessly surreal Ralph Fiennes performance, the highest compliment I can give Grand Budapest is that it’s the first Anderson film I’ve ever truly been haunted by long after it was all over. 

-Graham

90. Blue Ruin

Jeremy Saulnier is an extremely talented new voice of the decade and it’s amazing to see him tighten his reins since his first feature, Murder Party, the low-budget horror-comedy he once described as “The Breakfast Club with chainsaws and hard drugs,” with his second feature Blue Ruin. Both star expressive, wide-eyed Macon Blair, who went on to star in Saulneier’s third film Green Room. In all of Saulnier’s work, he utilizes violence in a very strategic and visceral way. I love it when a character is described as having “nothing to lose” because you know they’re gonna try some bananas shit and whoo boy does he. If you’re a fan of revenge thrillers, Blood Simple, and Pontiacs, you might want to give this a look.

-Jenni

89. Force Majeure

Ruben Ostlund pushes discomfort to the brink to create the best cringe comedy of the decade while asking, “What does it mean to be manly?”  A merciless skewering of clueless patriarchs, traditional family dynamics, bourgeoise vacations, and testosterone slathered bravado told with frigid Nordic flair. 

 -Patrick

88. The Act of Killing

Kaleidoscopic examination of The Evil Men Do pushes the documentary format into something resembling performance art where stone cold killers reenact war crimes on sets with costumes. Victors film history ‘til it almost feels like fantasy and doubles back into sober self-reflection. Do these men actually feel regret? Or are they performing for the camera? Lying to themselves to maintain a warped sense of heroism? Essential. 

-Patrick

87. Jo Jo Rabbit

Taika Waikiki’s Hitler didn’t make me laugh as much as Springtime for Hitler but it came close. However, the youth performances in Jo Jo Rabbit are what cinched its spot on my best of the decade list. I love in the intro credits of a film when they say "Introducing …" you know you’re going to see a first-time performer hopefully giving it their all. And for me, the youths of this film (Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo and Archie Yates as his best buddy Yorki) are *chef’s kiss*. 

-Jenni

86. Booksmart

Over the course of this decade, no movie did a better job of loving each and every one of its characters. Through their breakthroughs and shortcomings, we melted together like Velveeta and Rotel. 

-Tanner

85. American Honey

Road trips, teens, America’s impoverished underbelly, these themes are nothing new for the silver screen, but American Honey, based on the real-life world of traveling mag crews, is the rare film that just kinda nails it. The direction by British filmmaker Andrea Arnold isn’t self-consciously gritty or maudlin, just honest. And, you have to talk about the music. Almost entirely diegetic, blasted out from the crew’s Ford Econoline speakers, American Honey’s might be the realest road trip soundtrack ever assembled. When the ragtag group of teen wanderers sing the entirety of Lady Antebellum’s eponymous “American Honey” in near-unison, you realize despite its preoccupation with the dirt, this movie has wings. The Shia LaBeouf we see here is markedly more unhinged than the one who just made Honeyboy. But, surprisingly (pleasantly so) Shia doesn’t steal the show. Instead, the film belongs to its almost entirely street-cast ensemble of young people. Together, they give a masterclass in naturalistic performance. But, if there’s one player who makes their mark most indelibly it’s the lead. Dallas, Texas’s own Sasha Lane is, as the cliché goes, a revelation. The film doesn’t work without her seamlessly real blend of weariness, naivety, and steel. And, I’m really glad this film worked. 

 -Graham

84. Dredd

Do you remember that early twenty-teens trend of slowing down music 1000% or whatever arbitrary number got selected? Like this one or this one? There is something so eerie and majestic about stretching a thoroughly-known moment out like a ket-infused Airhead; turns out it works with action movies too. Also, why the fuck is Lena Headey not every-fucking-where??? Also also, fun fact: one time back in the early Hyperreal days, a distributor sent us a DCP harddrive that we obviously could not play on our collection of busted laptops. We didn’t fully confirm this until about 15 minutes before the showtime of what was supposed to be this very wild experimental doc about ______. The whole crowd was all seated and jazzed and ready, we got up on stage and were like… “Sorry!! Y’all want refunds? Y’all wanna watch Dredd instead?” No one left, and everyone loved it. I AM THE LAW. 

-David

83. Lady Bird 

I honestly can’t speak too much for the female experience this movie portrays, since I’m a 30-year-old dude, but it deeeeeefinitey served as a weird magic mirror reflecting all the awkward and exciting and painful experiences shared with my long term high school girlfriend who also thrifted and dyed her hair and had a “Mother Love” Crass voicemail message and got suspended and had mom issues and made me Compact Disc mixes with Bikini Kill and Lilliput and Stellastar* (how’s that for a 2003 reference?) and stuff on it. A time when the world was new and cell phones were scary and rugby shirts were fashionable among certain (preppy) circles. I guess all I’m saying is this movie so accurately and eerily captures a time, place, and feeling that I felt SHOOK. I wouldn’t be who I am today (for better or worse) without those turn of the Willenium formative life experiences.   

-Patrick

82. Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse

I couldn’t fully explain it at the time, but the first time I saw Miles Morales, drawing at his desk listening to Post Malone and Swae Lee’s Sunflower on his headphones, I got a little teary-eyed. In that scene was everything I didn’t know I needed in a superhero movie growing up. A black kid, cared for by his community, vocally loved by his father, supported artistically by his uncle, emboldened and entrusted with superpowers–the film puts into perspective the importance of seeing oneself in fantasy. The most touchable, relatable of superheroes, Spiderman is perhaps the perfect vehicle for the kind representation that’s been missing from big-screen comic lore. The other perfect vehicle is a hyperactive, hilariously creative storyline, incredible vocal cast, and the most truly innovative approach to animation since Toy Story.  Spider-Verse is a landmark achievement in genre cinema, a new and joyous reason to take family cinema and comic-book movies seriously. My dad loved it too.

-Graham 

81. Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade was the only movie in theaters this decade to take the time to appreciate how fucking hard it must be to be a kid right now. The visual and narrative inventiveness felt like natural by-products of the honest pursuit of truth.

-Tanner

80. Take Shelter

For a lot of my picks from earlier in the decade, I don’t always remember the plot but how it made me feel. I’m from Florida and all too familiar with #stormlife and I saw this film there, in the first row from the screen, fully immersed in Michael Shannon's (Sorority Letter Dramatic Reading) incredible performance and I just remember feeling like I had been through an actual tornado as I walked out of the theater.

-Jenni

79. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

If I saw my dead relatives reappear as ghosts and a bunch of monkey people wylin’ in the woods, I might consider becoming a monk, too. I love how Boonmee creates a tangible sense of a spirit world lurking outside our own. Somewhere in the shadows or deep in the countryside or out of the corner of your eye you can feel a presence watching. Magic. 

-Patrick

78. This Must Be The Place

Sean Penn basically cosplaying Robert Smith…or at least an imagined version of everyone’s fave goth rocker. Penn’s performance is nuanced and masterful.  

-Lisa

77. The Other Side of the Wind

Orson Welles’ shit has always been about watching powerful, impossibly witty, misunderstood men be powerful, impossibly witty, and misunderstood, and this finally-released final film is one million percent that thing. Have you read about the calamitous history of this production? A best-of blurb is no place to go into it, but here’s a quick primer if you’re interested. So… what is this doing on this list? Well, it’s like how sometimes the only way to eat your feelings is by gulping down two full meals while movie-watching at Drafthouse, or how you sometimes get good and fucking blasted even though you know you’ll spend the next day green-faced on the bathroom floor. This movie is Welles at his infuriating best, and sometimes that’s the only thing that’ll scratch the itch.

-David

76. Enemy



The Jake Gyllenhaal-Denis Villeneuve duo—I CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF IT. First Villeneuve gave me Gyllenhaal with a slickback in the supremely underrated Prisoners, which a lot of my arthouse friends didn’t pay attention to maybe because Hugh Jackman is on the cover? But damn, it was a full-on Hitchcock experience. And then he gives my Gyllenhaal on Gyllenhaal, DOUBLE GYLLENHAAL, in Enemy, his second English-language film of the same year. I love any movie that prompts a million articles titled “Ending of X Movie, Explained” and this is one of them. 

-Jenni

75. Buzzard

A slow depressing toilet flush of nervous loser angst that feels real and raw and funny.  Extreme long takes capture gross toxic half-naked dweebs slathered in filth, scarfing junk food, and pulling shortsighted cons like some Chantal Akerman movie made by a burnout who loves to heckle his own kind. What a vibe. Joel Potrykus definitely has a VOICE! 

-Patrick

74. The Source Family

My favorite cult gets its own doc! The Source Family obsessively recorded and photographed everything they were up to, so this is the ultimate inside look at this stylish (and yes, ultimately not good) cult.

-Lisa

73. Obvious Child

Comedians played comedians in the 2010s, and we ate it up. Is it because we all grew up on Seinfeld? We also had the pleasure of seeing lots of brilliant and funny women be self-destructive (Tiny Furniture, Appropriate Behavior, Ingrid Goes West, etc.). It was amazing. Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child is not only endlessly re-watchable, but extra-notable for FINALLY breaking the abortion barrier.

-Tanner

72. Center Jenny

Watching Center Jenny is like watching a time capsule from the present future that was made in the past present. Like a demonic twin challenge on TikTok or a lost season of Floribama Shore where the gang drops DMT. It’s like Ryan Trecartin was an oracle gazing into the digital near-future from waaaaaay back in 2013. This is what the 2010s felt like.

-Tish

71. Madeline’s Madeline

Josephine Decker got WEIRD this decade. To feel simultaneously wholly gotten and lost like I do during her movies — psychedelic. All hail the new era of the female auteur.

-Tanner

70. Black Mother

Never underestimate the magic of seeing something completely unknown at a film festival. I went to New Orleans a while back and hit up our friends at the amazing Shotgun Cinema who just happened to be running a theater at the New Orleans Film Festival that week. They invited me to come join for Black Mother, and I was floored, awed, stunned, transported, dazed for the rest of the trip… Dubbed a documentary, this work of art might be better labeled a 77-minute moving painting. There is no narrative agenda other than the deeply human one of coming to know people, there is no political agenda other than the deeply inherent one of the subject. It exists, it exists. Fold yourself in.

-David

69. Nathan for You: Finding Frances

Who knew a feature length episode of a Comedy Central reality series could be so disarming and gripping and touching?  There's plenty of laffs, too, as a (very poor) Bill Gates impersonator seeks his long lost love after realizing his life hasn't turned out quite the way he planned.  I can't get enough of the labyrinthine schemes Nathan executes, like location scouting a fake sequel to Mud called Mud 2: Never Clean to gain access to an Arkansas high school so Bill can find a yearbook photo of his former flame.  Bill seems kind of a like a creepy self-centered jerk who watches too much Fox News, but I like how his humanity shines through in some key sequences. If anything, Finding Frances works as a penetrating study of both and subject and documentarian. Nathan's side story blurs fiction and reality so much, I couldn't tell if his relationship was mutual or transactional or just a ruse for more content for his show or what. "I'm a Ding Dong Daddy from Dumas," indeed! 

-Patrick

68. The Skin I Live In

I appreciate Almodóvar’s evolution to more sophisticated dramas, but he’s really best when he’s channeling his freaky earlier work, and this one does not disappoint. A horror film only he could make.

-Lisa

67. Girls’ Trip

When Jada Pinkett Smith’s Lisa Cooper unleashes a torrent of urine onto Bourbon Street from the dangling perch of a zip-line, it’s a riotous signal that Girls’ Trip isn’t running from its inevitable comparisons to Bridesmaids but rather fully embracing the chance to shine on the same stage. By the time Dina, the Tiffany Haddish role that left a grapefruit-sized hole in the comedy ozone, releases her own high-wire shower in an act of sheer solidarity, it’s clear that the film has just challenged Maya Rudolph’s infamous street defecation to a game of dozens and won. What makes Girls’ Trip special is that it is so much more than a Black Bridesmaids (a.k.a. The Hangover for women) and yet exactly that in the best possible way. Riddled with Easter eggs for Black millennials (ask your local Living Single stan why it’s significant that Queen Latifah’s character is a journalist), it’s the perfect blend of the specific complexities of Black female friendship and the fulfillment of the simplest of desires: an equal platform to be vulgar, raunchy and unselfconsciously hilarious without being punished for it. As for the cast, the chemistry and timing is amazing. But, a special shoutout has to go to Regina Hall. Less lauded than Hollywood’s other Regina but no less talented, Hall is the single most underrated comedic actor on the planet. I look forward to a day when she finally gets all her roses, but even if she doesn’t, we’ll always have this movie as proof that she deserves them. 

-Graham

66. Dusty Stacks of Mom

In the decade that social media event horizoned us, film largely failed to keep up. Even the decade’s masterful self portraits (Cameraperson, Shirkers, Stories We Tell) feel like they could have arrived in the previous decade. Jodie Mack not only delivered a mystifying and heartfelt lyrical essay, but proved that film still contains endless worlds to explore.

-Tanner

65. Evolution

As you can maybe tell, we’re sort of obsessed with fairy tales here at Hyperreal, and Lucile Hadžihalilović is just about the best in the game. Truly the only reason there aren’t more of her films on this list is because her previous feature-length, the also incredible Innocence, was made way back in 2004. God! Someone, for the love of all that is holy, give this woman some MONEY!! 

-David

64. Fast Five

Obviously over here at Hyperreal we love the Fast and the Furious franchise. Heck, we set up an entire summer’s worth of drive-in block parties dedicated to it complete with themed food from Austin Daily Press like “Vin Diese’s Pieces” and Dwayne “The Brocc” Johnson (a delicious pork belly and grilled broccolini sandwich), thoughtful and contextualizing intros from Isobel Ikard, and short film adaptations from Austin filmmakers. Yeah, the acting can be silly and over the top, yeah it’s just big budget Hollywood giving us crash bang booms, but deep down, it’s family, and I can’t wait til they go to space. 

-Jenni

63. Shakedown

One of the most formally interesting and engrossing documentaries of the 2010s Shakedown chronicles the lives and work of the women of “Shakedown,” a long-running Black lesbian strip club night in Los Angeles. Filmmaker Leilah Weinraub started documenting the parties in the early 2000s and shaped it into a film over the course of 16 years. The result is an honest and intimate view of an underground culture that most of us would never had been exposed to otherwise. Shakedown has been compared to Paris is Burning, and although there are obvious differences (mainly, Weinraub was actually part of the Shakedown scene) the films are similar in their level of importance. Shakedown is an incredible document of a community that is rarely, if ever, given the spotlight and opportunity to share their stories. You won’t find another film like it, last decade, or for a long time to come. 

-Tish

62. Tigers are Not Afraid

It’s funny how genre films are the foreign films that translate best. I guess it’s because there are rules that we’re familiar with, and the stylish flourishes that tend to differentiate these films translate well too. But what about fairy tales, the genre whose main rule is that there are no rules? Tigers are Not Afraid filled me with wonder, dread, and love the way only the early Del Toro films could. I can’t wait to see what Lopez does next. 

-Tanner

61. Elle

Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert, at the peak of their powers, twist the rape revenge Eurothriller into grotesque and humorous examination of sexual power dynamics. Throw in masked men, cute cats, CGI tentacle porn, Isabelle Huppert playing air guitar to “Lust for Life,” and a French bourgeois comedy of errors, and you have an unforgettable genre satire from one of cinema’s smartest perverts.

-Patrick

60. Widows

I wish Oceans 8, Ghostbusters, or any of the other lame remakes-but-with-women movies they pandered to us this decade would have had an ounce of the badassery and originality that Viola Davis brought to this movie.

-Jenni

59. Pariah

First things first, queer cinema of color did not have a moment in the 2010’s; Hollywood did. It’s Hollywood that pretended it didn’t exist for the first century of its existence, and its Hollywood that will eventually have to reckon with its commercial addiction to Anglocentric stories of straight, white patriarchy. Now that that’s out of the way, Dee Rees’ debut narrative feature feature is a semi-autobiographical coming out story told with a delicate touch and a strong eye for lighting and teen vulnerability. Adepero Oduye's turn as Alike, her first full-length leading role, hits all the right notes. Family acceptance and matriarchal conflict are easy to set bonfire onscreen. The more difficult trick is keeping the embers burning at a soft glow; that’s where the real story is.  

-Graham

58. American Reflexxx

Myrtle Beach: The Cesspit of America

Director Alli Coates takes her performance art out of gallery space to mix with local yokels in a dangerous beer puke haze beach party town. Proof positive most humans are awful and hate what they don't understand.

 -Patrick

57. Wild Boys

With a dash of Fassbinder’s Querelle, a dollop of Todd Hayne’s oeuvre, a helping of the Guy Maddin of your choice, a few hairy peaches, and an island filled with very sensual plants - Bertrand Mandico’s recipe for his debut feature The Wild Boys is a simultaneously familiar and wholly unique wet-fever-dream fantasia. Sumptuously shot on 16mm film with rear-projected scenery, blatantly artificial sets & props, and old-fashioned in-camera effects, the fact that the film OOZES with style would land it on nearly any ‘best-of’ list I would be compelled to compile. And we haven’t even mentioned the film’s abundance of playfulness and camp, the IDGAF approach to gender, and healthy skewering of toxic masculinity. 

-Tish

56. What We Do in the Shadows

I recently watched Taika Waititi’s 48 hour film fest submissions from over a decade ago and until then I didn’t think about this wave of indie directors (idk if he can be indie anymore after Thor) whose origins are so visible. Thanks to YouTube and Vimeo, we can now see the roots of a director's rise and I find it incredibly inspiring. Visibility is more attainable in the filmmaking world more than ever before … and this has been me trying on not being cynical. Watch this movie it’s about funny vampires.

-Jenni 

55. Neon Demon

First of all — don’t @ me. I recognize that The Neon Demon is a highly divisive film. It invokes extreme hatred from many, but I will counter that perspective with the point of view that The Neon Demon is a misunderstood future cult classic. If you can see the film for all of the things it IS - stunningly beautiful with an incredible soundtrack, a triumph in camp, the cinematic unicorn that is a hilarious lesbian film, and a satirical take on culture’s constant obsession with beauty and youth - you’ll enjoy it A LOT more. Suspiria in the streets, Showgirls in the sheets, babes. Lighten up and revel in a movie that is totally bonkers and insanely fun.

-Tish

54. The Diary of a Teenage Girl

I love movies about teenagers, and this one gets bonus points for being set in 1970s San Francisco.

-Lisa

53. O.J.: Made In America

Still technically a feature-length film even thought it was rolled out to the public as a multi-part television event, Ezra Edelman’s towering, 7.5-hour documentary isn’t just the definitive account of the murder trial of the century, it’s a sprawling, seminal text on the American psyche. O.J.’s story is a nightmarish allegory of the one truth we can’t seem to reckon with: the engine that burns at our nation’s core runs almost exclusively on a violence predicated by the fundamental denial of all things Black and all things woman. Nicole Brown’s story, told for the first time in a way that centers the brutality of her abuse, is one of inevitability––the violent inevitability that follows a woman in a world with no laws for the men who hurt them. For O.J., the fable of Black manhood is one of panicked dread for a life confined to two existential choices: god or monster. In the end, Simpson became both. That neither of these is human is Made In America’s bitterest, most revealing truth. 

-Graham

52. Catfish

In the age of information, something like 99% of our online lives go unexplored. If you know this, you know it because of Catfish, the multi-level emotional scam that showed us the rabbit holes behind our YouTube holes.

-Tanner

51. 12 Years a Slave

There’s no trophy for watching difficult films about themes as disturbing as slavery. There is, however, rightful praise reserved for a piece of art that mixes history, horror, beauty, and tension into a thunderstorm as deeply affecting as 12 Years A Slave.  John Ridley’s Oscar-winning adapted script is an emotional serum that gets stuck in your throat. Everything from the cinematography to the sound design is a probing reminder of what is so psychologically mystical about the Deep South: that America’s truest horrors took place against its most gorgeous backdrops. I can still hear the stomach-churning, gothic hum of the river boat paddles as they carry Solomon Northup (Chiwatel Ejiofor) to his potential doom. As the viewer, that uneasiness never leaves you, even in the end. That’s Steve McQueen’s magic trick. The deepest trauma of the slave experience isn’t just in the violence; it’s in the dread. 

-Graham

50. Drug War

All hail the greatest action director in the world, Johnnie To! In one of his most spare and ruthless crime dramas, the maestro takes aim at the futile war on drugs and the mainland Chinese surveillance state. But he also composes the most visceral, raw, and adrenaline pumping shootouts since the early ‘90s Hong Kong heroic bloodshed boom. Run and gun drug dealers receive the death penalty while bullets rip wet chunks through flesh. When cops and robbers die, life slowly drains from their eyes, grim. Quick visual shorthand conveys key information, like a tollbooth operator clocking smugglers in cars.  A god tier arthouse potboiler with real visual and thematic muscle! 

-Patrick

49. Happy as Lazarro

I don’t understand how more people weren’t losing their minds when this came out recently. Magical, masterful, moving. 

-Lisa

48. Gone Girl

When Carrie Coon stops to pet a cat after running scared from Ben Affleck. . . I felt that. 

Rats off to David Fincher for resurrecting the '90s erotic thriller in the chilliest most clinical and removed way possible. In Gone Girl, he navigates how click and viewer thirsty media shapes public narrative down to the way you smile or what you wear or when to show your face.  An acerbic whodunit morphs into a media war between two bitter spouses. The juiciest story holds precedence over facts until the couple at the center plays pretend for the entire world. In a time where meaning has collapsed in the newscycle and everyone puts their fake happy face forward on social media, Gone Girl slices deeper than ever.  I guess a second wave of ice pick wielding softcore mid-budget Hollyweird thrillers never happened 'cause Fincher blew up the genre and buried it.

-Patrick 

47. Last Days Here

Perfect gateway doc for people who ‘don’t like documentaries’. Sex, drugs, and rock n roll, plus that ending! I still google Bobby Liebling on the regular to get updates on his crazy life.

-Lisa

46. The Tale of Princess Kaguya

The most beautiful ending to an incredible career, Isao Takahata’s swan song is as close to perfection as any film has come before. A painting come to life. Thank you, Paku-san.

-Jenni

45. The Wolf of Wall Street

The son of two NYC Garment District workers drops the most scathing indictment of capitalism in a decade of films mining class warfare for material.  Professional cine so-and-sos deriding Scorsese as some bro reveling in Wolf's debauchery back in 2013 must not have foreseen the grotesque hellscape scorching the back half of the decade where temporarily embarrassed wannabe millionaires defend their scumbucket 1% overlords. 'Cause maybe if a working stiff grinds 'til he almost drops and makes all the right moves and magically rolls a Yahtzee in life, he can become a millionaire and call the shots, too.  Everyone who can't succeed in this country is just lazy and deserves to work at McDonald's, right?

Jordan Belfort and his nouveau rich thugs are despicable rotten husks who see anyone else as exploitable less-than-human walking dollar signs.  The whole movie acts as a parade of large adult son idiocy where a bunch of obscenely wealthy crooks convince themselves, and those gullible enough to drink the profit poison, they earned their status through smarts and hard work. These gluttonous money mad ghouls are in charge of the world? Wall Street broke and derailed millions of lives, but these chuckleheads didn't even get a slap on the wrist?  We paid taxes to bail them out? And people still line up to hear Jordan Belfort give Toastmasters classes about being assertive and really wanting it and pulling up those bootstraps. THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT.

Congrats, Marty, for making a movie so disturbing and ahead of its time, I had to laugh to keep from screaming.

-Patrick

44. Dogs Don’t Wear Pants

This movie is an emotional rollercoaster, and truly has it all. I never thought a film where a man in a leather harness is peed on could also leave me sobbing by the end, but such is the magic of this film. 

-Lisa

43. Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter

I remember reading once that when John Waters first started making movies he would just open the newspaper that day and pick a story to shoot. If he had opened the paper sometime in December 2001 he may have seen the headline, “Cult film sparked hunt for a fortune." If you haven’t heard the back story for this one, Kumiko is based on the urban legend surrounding the real life Japanese office worker, Takako Konishi, whose body was found in a snowy Minnesota field. This film came out of a Coen-brother’s style misunderstanding that Konishi came to Minnesota to look for the money hidden by Steve Buscemi’s character, Carl Showalter, in the movie Fargo. In reality, after losing her job, Konishi came to the states to revisit a place she once came to with her former lover, a married American businessman she met in Tokyo. Local police tried to help her when she arrived but state she kept pointing to a map of a road with a tree and repeating “Fargo,” so they filled in the blanks and Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter is that story.

-Jenni

42. The Souvenir

I think Joanna Hogg literally went into my brain and stole my life experiences and thoughts to write this script…and a lot of other people had the same reaction after watching this film, so I think it’s safe to say this is one of the finest pieces of art imitating life out there. Plus the mother/daughter Swinton duo is unstoppable and I hope this is the start of many more acting collaborations. 

-Lisa

41. Climax

Climax isn’t really a ‘film’ as much as it is an EXPERIENCE. Visceral, immersive, visually jarring, boundary-pushing, and ultimately horrifying, Climax is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s perhaps a bit premature to put it on a ‘best of the decade’ list, since there’s a bit of recency-bias involved, but Gaspar Noé’s film is certainly a singular work that will likely be unmatched for a long time - for better or worse. I, personally, am impressed by movies that can bring me to the edge of a panic attack, so I’m in the ‘for better’ camp. Whether you hate it, or love it, you will definitely FEEL SOMETHING. But what’s not to like about a 12-minute opening dance sequence followed another two hours of a clubby decent into some unexplored ring of hell?!

-Tish

40. Chevalier

The word “skewered” is overused in film reviews, but… damn how do you talk about this movie without it? I guess it has always been true that European movies, on the whole, have the option to be more funny and raw than American ones. Is that too broad? Well, take Chevalier. Men, masculinity at large are relentlessly punching-bagged here and it is terribly funny. Maybe this is too cynical, but I just have to imagine if this movie was not Greek, there would have to be some studio-mandated gender-based fan service. Luckily that ain’t the case here. Tear it all down, baby.

-David

39. The Fits

Name, if you can, a more brilliant screen debut than Royalty Hightower’s in The Fits. Or, well, don’t. I don’t care. This is it. It’s great, too, that fairy tales still have the power they do over us. You get into territory so primal and core when things start happening that are just beyond what you can explain with all your books and all your science. What is this plague that’s taking over the school? Who is susceptible, and how do we think about things beyond our control? Also, the final sequence in this movie is one of those perfect confluences of sight, sound, and payoff that will haunt you forever. Royalty, the floor’s all yours. 

-David

38. World of Tomorrow

Hilarious future junk head trip animation. Don Hertzfeldt has come a long way since Rejected.

-Patrick

I don’t understand how Don Hertzfeldt became the best sci-fi writer of the decade, but it happened.

-Tanner

37. The Handmaiden

Feels like an outre culmination of all of Park Chan-wook's obsessions: familial malaise, voyeurism, sex-and-death, pulp thriller hooks, rigid class systems. And what lurid gorgeous binding to hold all the rot together like a forbidden book about bells that chime without wind.  Icy and coy and wicked work from a titan of world cinema licking the black ink off his brush and signing the final word on his past.

-Patrick

36. Last Black Man in San Francisco

A lot of great movies over the past decade have got us asking—is it possible for a semi-widely released studio-ish film to be truly revolutionary? Can an art object with the ostensible backing of the establishment rail sincerely against that establishment? Can something that requires the financial and human resources at this level actually say something anti-capitalist? I think the answer is either “no” or at best “the jury’s still out,” but damn if this wasn’t the one that left us shook. A meditation on brutal, highly racialized gentrification; an ode to friendship and creation; a stunningly photographed work of art with a visual language you never thought you’d see in a theater: this movie is a masterclass in playing you like a tear-soaked harp that kills fascists.

-David

35. Embrace of the Serpent

There is this thing in movie reviewing where a reviewer will, as a flaunted taboo, as a big reveal at the end of the piece, admit they didn’t watch the whole movie. I love this. It’s like when actors break in SNL; it’s like when a main cast member gets kidnapped in NCIS. It’s like when a friend expertly executes a complicated dish and doesn’t tell you until after you’ve breathlessly consumed it that they were doubled-over-hungover the whole time making it. So… I only saw about 30 minutes of this movie, having spent the rest of it taking care of a sick friend during the screening, and still it’s on my decade short list. Every moment is packed with crisp beauty. Every moment is brimming with mythic strangeness. Float on in, and someone let me know how it ends!

-David

I saw the rest and it definitely belongs on this list.

- Jenni

34. Gone with the Pope 

An incomplete 1975 film that was literally found in a closet represents the unlikely collaboration between its original (and deceased) creator Duke Mitchell, an Italian-American singer who provided Fred Flinstone's singing voice and briefly had a career as a Dean Martin clone, and the whiz editor/Duke Mitchell superfan Bob Murawski who made it his life's mission to complete the film. The plot follows the exploits of an angry hitman who decides to make it big with this incredible scheme: kidnap The Pope and ask for $1 from every Catholic in the world as ransom. Do the math, it adds up! Mitchell's film is a soliloquy and expletive filled outsider genre exercise elevated by Murawski's stylized editing, oddly personal, and a truly unique slice of Americana. 

-Laird

33. Carol

Carol became an instant classic the moment it was released into the world. A meticulously styled, brilliantly acted, exquisitely made film about a devastating love-of-your-life kind of love filtered through a necessary restraint. The type of movie that makes you sad when you recognize it’s almost over. The sort of movie that you can watch over and over again. Carol is a mood and it’s Todd Haynes at his absolute best. We’ll be watching and admiring it for many decades to come. 

-Tish

32. Crumbs

An Ethiopian post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie featuring Daniel Tadesse on a mystical quest, Santa Clause, a teleporting bowling alley, and 20th-century action figures and posters used as currency. If this doesn’t have you madly Googling, I 100% respect your opinion and would never tell you what to like, but we probably aren’t going to agree on much.

-David

31. The Master

True Life: I Escaped a Cult (Thinly Veiled Scientology Edition) 

Strip back the stunning long takes that look like grainy postwar photographs come to life to reveal a cutting examination of a broken person seduced by a secret charlatan cult leader trying to convince himself he’s the real deal. A hostile, thorny movie with images still seared in my mind’s eye. Freddie’s struggle feels like trying to drop a bad therapist. Woof!

-Patrick

30. An Oversimplification of Her Beauty

You know, I didn’t know until JUST NOW, Googling around while writing this blurb, that Terence Nance had a TV show and that that show is Random Acts of Flyness. BLESS. Y’all, always keep writing, always keep learning. Wonders abound. Anyhow, was going to say that Terence Nance is a dang creator for our times, a postmodern scion, a storyteller of agility and grace and gobsmacking visuals. This movie flits between visual styles like a beautiful young man trying on a closetful of beautiful young dresses for the first time. Also, HOLY SHIT I just found out that he’s going to be directing SPACE JAM 2!!! There is bright light in this cold world 😭😭😭

-David

29. Personal Shopper

You know how some people hate Kristen Stewart? I am definitely not one of them. I love me some KStew, and I think Personal Shopper is her finest moment — and marked a change in the conversation around her work. As a film, Olivier Assayas’ slow-burn ghost story/meditation on grief is quiet and understated in its subtle examination of isolation and search for meaning in our hyper-connected, materialistic world. As insignificant as it may seem, Assayas’ portrayal of texting and the space personal technology occupies in our everyday lives stands out as one of the most accurate representations of our day-to-day of the decade. If nothing else, although I believe there is a lot more, Personal Shopper captured the mood of the 2010s better than most other films of the era...Or maybe I’ve just been depressed for 10 years.

-Tish

28. John Wick 1-3

I avoided watching John Wick: Chapter 1 for years because everyone on doesthedogdie.com told me a puppy dies in the beginning. And even though it’s a total revenge series for that puppy, I just couldn’t get in the mood to ever see a dead puppy. But one day I guess I was in the mood and thank the lord because this movie SLAPS as the kids say or once said. I truly love secret worlds that have been developing for decades within our reality (Harry Potter, Men in Black, Scanners) and this one unveils more and more layers as the series goes on. I also love a good fight sequence, but more often than not, fight scenes are kind of boring outside the beginning and end of them. But Wick’s style of “gun-fu” is never boring. I hate to admit the number of times I fist pumped while watching this, but it was a lot.

-Jenni

27. Spring Breakers

Harmony Korine turns his skater boy cineprankster hedonism toward a Big Idea target like what it means to be free in a country that values money and status over anything else. Tasting this very American concept of individual liberty can corrupt and rot you from the inside. But it can also open a third eye that won't allow you to see the world the same way again. Once you experience true power in a grotesque late capitalist circus, you'll become more cutthroat, daring, reckless, and cold to maintain that high.  But a bigger more ruthless dog will always come along to rip out your throat.  Anything to stay on top.

-Patrick

26. It Follows

Look, the clam phone was awesome. We all want the clam phone. It isn’t the main reason this film made my list but it’s a big part of it. The clam phone was part of It Follows’ production design that didn’t adhere to any one particular decade. It felt current but timeless. Director David Robert Mitchell did a masterful job of this in his direction as well, playing homage to horror classics like Halloween and Invasion of the Body Snatchers but taking the genre to a new place. As someone who prefers the slower horror of the past, I appreciate Mitchell’s scares lie in It Follows’ “waiting spaces."

-Jenni

25. Black Panther

My take on superhero movies is that they live and die with the wardrobe. Longtime Spike Lee collaborator Ruth E. Carter’s costume design is an Oscar-winning, Afro-futurist manifesto that visually elevates Black Panther above its source material and a signifies the film as a watershed moment in cinema. The first royal combat scene at Warrior Falls, with its Wakandan council leaders decked out in ceremonial tribal dress, is a breathtaking, achingly cool introduction to Carter and Coogler’s vision for an uncolonized African nation-scape. Black Panther is masterpiece of cinematic world-building that generations of Black comic book fans had begun to believe they’d never get to see. But, beyond the incredible cast, beautiful set pieces and groundbreaking music, what made Black Panther so special was its insistence on a story that explored themes (cultural connection, abandonment, the politics of resistance and Pan-Africanism) specifically endemic to the Black diaspora. Villains don’t get more Shakespearean than Killmonger; heroes don’t get more regal than T’Challa; and superhero films don’t get more generation-defining than Black Panther.

-Graham

24. Lemonade

You can’t talk about the 2010s without talking about Beyonce. And you can’t talk about Beyonce’s contributions to the decade without talking about Lemonade. Defiant, emotionally raw, feminist, Black, and brilliant - Lemonade was a cultural MOMENT. It’s also an exacting art film that references Daughters of the Dust, David Lynch, and Terence Nance, amongst other cultural touchstones from the film world, art, music, literature, and politics. If you don’t believe that it had happened already, the visual album is the undisputable coronation of Queen Bey. I can’t pretend to understand or express everything Lemonade meant to people, especially to Black women, or the full impact on culture at large, but I can certainly recognize a bold, unflinching, uncompromised, game-changing work that marked a turning point from pop star to true icon.

-Tish

23. Meek’s Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt is an American treasure. Her sparse, lyrical style of filmmaking is a breath of fresh air in an American film culture dominated by superheroes and verbose men who are very proud of themselves. Of all of her work, the film that I tend to come back to most is 2010’s Meek’s Cutoff. Perhaps it’s all of the hours of Oregon Trail I played as a child, or maybe it’s the way Reichardt captured the creeping sense of dread that being lost in a desolate, and thusly terrifying, 1800s West would have brought on. Either way, it’s a true gem of a film. Featuring a quietly amazing performance by Reichardt’s frequent collaborator Michelle Williams as the (spoiler alert) only person who actually knows what the F is going on, Meek’s Cutoff is the feminine, feminist, (low-key) horror-western we all deserve.

-Tish

"I don't blame him for not knowing.  I blame him for saying he did. That fool." 

Like watching a shitty dad play The Oregon Trail while every bad decision and broken wagon axel and river crossing play out in painful slow cinema real time. The Great American tradition of a blowhard commanding attention and respect just 'cause he dresses the part and boasts the loudest most confident in the room. Reichardt stomps a boot into Great Man history and the Myth of the American West that's still alive today every time a young dreamer packs bags to find a new life on the Pacific. Macho posturing bullshit like refusing directions, speaking over women, or looking for a fight with someone other stands the test of time, I guess. 

-Patrick 

22. Snowy Bing Bongs

I love it when I hear people describe movies as “fever dreams,” because if they’re right, I will always love that movie. This movie is like a fever dream except if an alien had a fever and that fever was a prolonged 40-minute raucous orgasm. This is maybe my favorite movie we’ve ever screened with Hyperreal; take it on as a holy pilgrimage to see this on the big screen with an audience of friends and lovers. Your joy meter will metamorphose into something better and larger and weirder.

-David

21. Knife + Heart

Some awesome things are going on in the queer film scene in Paris right now, this film is the perfect epitome of that. Sexy, scary, visually and aurally perfect.

-Lisa

Have you ever experienced a movie becoming one of your favorites in real-time? That is what happened when I watched Knife + Heart for the first time. An ultra-stylized love letter to ‘70s giallo generously peppered with queer characters, a world that is soundtracked by M83, and a wicked sense of humor? It’s like someone made a film just for me! When most queer-centered films are still run-of-the-mill dramas, bland coming of age stories, or tepid comedies, Knife + Heart is a much-needed shot in the arm to the queer film canon. I hope that Knife + Heart gaining praise from the genre film world will usher in more queer filmmakers exploring ideas through and having fun with horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.

-Tish

20. Killing of a Sacred Deer

A24 is my new religion and Yorgos is my preacher. I’ll watch anything they tell me to, even a close-up open-heart surgery, which is how Killing of a Sacred Deer chooses to begin its somewhat familiar tale of a tormented wealthy family. Normally I’d avert my squeamish gaze from such a scene but I couldn’t look away, and held my gaze throughout every funny and unsettling scene to follow. 

-Jenni 

If the films Yorgos Lanthimos released this decade were combined into one, that film would be the best film of the decade.

-Tanner

19. If Beale Street Could Talk

Moonlight got the Oscar. Moonlight shook the gates. Moonlight is timeless, a nearly perfect film. But, If Beale Street Could Talk is a colossus. In his follow up to the viscerally commanding coming-of-age story, Barry Jenkins took arguably the most difficult work from America’s greatest (male) writer and chiseled it down to a generational monument to black storytelling. The Oscar-winning script blurs the lines between prose and poetry, the stunning closeups perform the same trick without being overly polemic, and every performance is a certified clinic in ensemble generosity and solo restraint. Led by Regina King, one of the best of her era, the actors in this film throw down a gauntlet to their peers. If you can’t hang, don’t bother showing up. The film’s score is as unshakeable as its colors. It’s a love letter to the Black ‘70s, a decade that holds a pivotal place in African-American culture––art specifically. In a lot of ways Jenkins work and James Laxton’s cinematography are the progeny of a black aesthetic born of that decade. Of course, it’s also a love story about two people. In a piece for the Daily Californian, writer Harrison Tunggal called Jenkins the heir apparent to Wong Kar-wai, one of his biggest influences. If you’ve seen In the Mood for Love, you know he’s onto something. The Oscars are irrelevant and somehow manage to become more so every year, but in that same piece, reflecting on the film’s 2017 Best Picture snub, Tunggal pens the perfect riposte:

“As a writer and director, Jenkins has the rare talent of foregrounding a grim story while still evoking the power of Black love. As a non-Black writer, I can’t speak to the full experience of such a film. But, I do know that not recognizing it is a mistake.”

-Graham

This is the single most affecting film I saw this decade.

-Tanner

18. Bad Black

A Ugandan community pools their resources to print their own legend in one of the greatest backyard DIY action movies ever made.  American genre cinema pumps through director Nabwana Igg’s veins, and every homemade machine gun, cheap but effective computer generated explosion, and full bodied local performance shows him and his Wakaliwood creative family having a blast. You can feel the joy of filmmaking radiate from the screen. I haven’t seen a Hollyweird blockbuster match Bad Black’s energy and cine-love in years.  

-Patrick

17. A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

When thinking about what is ‘best’ to me, one of the major considerations is originality. I honestly don’t care about extremely well-written, well-acted, technically-sound, films that just rehash the same topics and characters we’ve been seeing for 40 or whatever years. So when thinking about putting together a list of the ‘best’ films of the decade, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night sprung to mind. Touted as the ‘first Iranian Vampire Western ever made,’ Ana Lily Amirpour made a moody, atmospheric, super stylish film that rethinks what any of the above-mentioned classifications or genres mean. Sure, there are definite nods to other filmmakers, cinematic styles, and pop culture moments, but Girl is more about the sum than the parts - and the sum represents the breakthrough of an exciting filmmaker doing things 100% on her own terms. And THAT is one of the best things the 2010s had to offer. 

-Tish

16. Raw

Women being unapologetically out of control and truly disgusting! A really unique and surprising horror film.

-Lisa

15. Terror Nullius

I craved a million more found footage features than we got this decade. Green Fog, Fraud, and everything Everything is Terrible produced killed. But Soda_Jerk took the format political and delivered the most revolutionary, uproarious, and powerful cinematic essay of the decade.

 -Tanner

14. Under The Skin

I can't believe Jonathan Glazer predicted the Uber/Lyft gig economy.

Seriously, though.  ScarJo delivers a legit C-R-E-E-P-Y performance where she seems like an alien hiding inside a stiff but delicate human suit.  Her moist eyeballs convey fear or morbid curiosity or the rush of another payday human catch while her face hangs slack like some irksome foreign appendage.  Frigid long takes transform the Earth into a terrifying other world populated by loud, obnoxious, and dangerously unpredictable fleshbeasts. At times, Under the Skin feels like some far out extraterrestrial wildlife documentary about this crazy island, Earth.  Johansson traverses the vast and impossible Scottish Highlands, which look ripped from a sci-fi paperback cover, in her spaceship of a van as primitives bang and yowl and stare and swarm. A real sense of stranger in a strange land anxiety permeates scenes where she's forced to step away from the security of her vehicle and engage with the locals. Who KNOWS what these wild homosapiens are capable of?

Maybe reading the source novel in the past half-decade drew murkier themes to the surface, like the grind of shepherding free-range human meat for an intergalactic Whole Foods.  Who wouldn't want to break free from a late capitalist alien gig economy where big motorbike riding bosses force the lowest on the corporate ladder to hunt dangerous otherworld game with only a flimsy scuba suit of a disguise to provide protection from who knows what?  What happens when the supposed savages you herd show deeper thoughts and feelings? How long can superiors micromanage down to examining every inch of your body before you SNAP? I love how Under the Skin shows the stress and wear and tear on Johansson with scant dialogue. This movie really MOVES and says what it needs in strict visual shorthand.  Combined with a distorted string’n’synth score that brings the anxiety of blending in with Earthlings to the surface, Under the Skin becomes a near flawless fusion of sound and image.

-Patrick

13. Tangerine

Being shot on an iPhone is one of the least interesting things about 2015’s Tangerine. Yes, Sean Baker and crew were able to make a great looking film with pocket technology but the real marvel of Tangerine is the story that is told and the actors who were given a chance to tell it. The film was shaped by the real experiences of Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, both transgender women themselves, and tells a true-to-life story of transgender sex workers in LA. Furthermore, it’s a fast-paced, super funny, honest, and wildly enjoyable film that is full of LIFE.  When most films that preceded it kept transgender characters on the perimeter, made them villains, or were told without real community involvement - or ended in tragedy - Tangerine was an epiphany. A landmark for trans* representation and participation in film.

-Tish

Name a better Christmas movie than Tangerine.

-Tanner

12. Moonlight

There’s an act of violence that closes the second act of Moonlight that separates the middle version of its sullen protagonist, played by Ashton Sanders, from his counterparts. For the audience, it’s a moment of unnerving but welcome catharsis. For the film, it’s an inevitable character break that explodes the thin line between resignation and rage––an early climax that both sets the film apart for its singular vision and cements its place in a canon of great films about the precariousness of trauma and sexual self-acceptance. But, ultimately, Barry Jenkins’ shining adaptation of co-writer Tarell Alvin McCraney’s In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue is a gorgeously constructed study in tenderness––more specifically the kind that black boys aren’t allowed to show each other.  The performances (Ali, Harris, Monae, Rhodes, Jerome, Holland, Hibbert) are warm, the cinematography pristine. It’s a love letter to black men, their queer brothers, and the freedom to love themselves.

-Graham

11. Call Me By Your Name

The first forty minutes or so of Call Me By Your Name reads liked a sun-soaked Hockney painting of a summering academic family blissfully unconcerned with how their impossibly stylish holiday might look to a viewer with anything resembling awareness of privilege. Then Armie Hammer’s Oliver arrives, Elio’s (Timothée Chalamet) hormones take the wheel, and one of the most romantic films of the decade shoves you right out of your vintage Adirondack smashes it to pieces with a sledgehammer. Even the most cynical of cynics–skeptical ’til the end about the fawning praise of film about a summer fling between two rich white boys (me, I was the cynic)–would have cause for major emotional concern if they didn’t fog up watching Elio’s dad deliver one of the most touching fatherly soliloquies in movie history. Truth be told, I was ready to be unimpressed, but it’s just really that good.

-Graham

10. Good Time

Trapped in a neon jungle of filth and slime and spit and blood and shit and stink with Robert Pattinson doing his best sweat-soaked baby-Pacino bugout New-Yawker-on-the-edge tap dance. And that borderline Tangerine Dream synth soundtrack, clamping around the edges of the lurid-grainy frame like bloody knuckles wrapped in a rag after punching out a window.  THEEEE best up-all-night crime thriller since who knows when? A true scumbag city dirge of awful people making awful choices in awful situations. Sharp and delicious and RIGHT THERE like garlic off a slice of dumpster pizza.

-Patrick

9. We Are The Best

Pitch perfect coming of age story for anyone who grew up feeling like an outsider. Features my own personal anthem ‘Hate The Sport.’

-Lisa

8. Green Room

The best tense and throbbing siege movie since John Carpenter retired his camera to smoke weed and play videogames. Nazi punks: scarier and more threatening than any vvitch or secret demonic cult or following It. 

-Patrick

Just a super fun, perfectly crafted thriller. There’s no better villain than Patrick Stewart as a diabolical Nazi skinhead.

-Lisa

7. Mad Max: Fury Road

The one thing action film connoisseurs and soft-spoken cinephiles seem to agree on is that George Miller is a genius for this one. The greatest living action director didn’t just transcend the action film; he pushed himself to a new cinematic firmament and brought the whole genre with him. The choreography, the sound, Charlize Theron, that nothingness of a script, describing this film with words is a mistake. I’ll stop. Just go watch it on the biggest, loudest screen you can find. And, be sure to pee first.

-Graham

How did George Miller predict this stoopid dystopian sunblight wasteland where young white angry virginal war boys fight endless for a decrepit high tower tyrant and his mutant spawn?  The future us jabronies probably deserve told in quick visual shorthand. Miller breaks out every practical filmmaking tool to create a cautionary tale with concise kineticism unseen since his last post-apocalyptic Western.  Bless this miracle movie that jacked a blockbuster budget to showcase Frankenmobiles and giant dirtpunk sets and stuntmen flipping through windshields!

-Patrick

6. The Love Witch

Jobs Anna Biller did on The Love Witch: Director, writer, producer, composer, storyboard artist, costume and set designer/maker/builder, and more! Amazing accomplishments in craft aside, The Love Witch is a playful, self-aware, feminist, social satire cleverly constructed to highlight the radical concept of female pleasure. A movie made by a woman and for women, full stop. Despite an obvious dalliance with classic Hollywood, The Love Witch is one of the most exciting, jaw droppingly-beautiful, and forward-thinking films of the last decade. 

-Tish

This movie is a marvel of filmmaking. Anna Biller must truly be a witch because how did she create this masterpiece? The Renaissance Faire forest wedding is my forever mood.

-Lisa

5. Get Out

What can I say about one of the smartest and most culturally relevant films in recent memory that hasn’t been said more eloquently by someone else? Provocative, funny, and genuinely unnerving at times, Get Out expertly draws from classic horror themes and flips them on their head to create something new and timely. Get Out ushered in a new era of horror filmmaking and honestly blew my mind.

-Tish

There’s no film that better understands this generation’s deepest anxieties about the modern mutations of racism and structural violence than Jordan Peele’s debut opus. A startlingly good mix Hitchcockian suspense, in the film noir tradition of Ernest Dickerson’s Juice and the horror-allegory lineage of George Romero, not much can be said about Get Out that can’t be felt in the films perfectly taut runtime. When the closing credits rolled, I felt as stuck to my seat as Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris Washington, grateful to be seen, thankful for a film that good. Get Out is a definitive vision of America seeing itself for the first time through the lens of this decade’s most reliable narrator: the only black person at a party thrown by rich white people.

-Graham

4. Sorry to Bother You

The most imaginative, boundary-pushing comedy of the decade, in my humble opinion.

-Lisa

It is a rare and wonderful surprise to be utterly shocked by a movie. And I don’t mean a jump scare, I mean -- you’re bought into a movie fully, you think you’re tracking along and that you more or less know where it’s going, and then -- FUCKING HORSE PEOPLE. Jesus H. Clydesdale!! This movie was a brilliant fuck-you-earring of conceit and convention. Someone canonize this forever, please.

-David

3. Parasite

The most striking thing about Hong Gyeong-Pyo’s cinematography in Parasite is his mesmerizingly economical use of interior space. The Kim family’s cramped below-street-level apartment, the sleek, high-end maze of the Park estate, the huddled chow line of the limo driver’s cafeteria, the cell-phone-lit slit between the coffee table and the floor, every inch of the screen is dedicated to telling a story about the physical world of the characters as a way building the characters themselves. Spatial borders between upstairs and downstairs, front seat and backseat provide the perfect metaphorical plane of action for Bong Joon-ho’s and director Han Jin-won’s impossibly tight, viciously satirical script and the film’s incredible cast. Parasite is a black comedy about class with the deepest of blacks and a surgically precise sense of humor. By the time the film reaches its climax, the payoff is worth every minute of the two-hour-long tension climb. Do not make the mistake of being the last of your friends to see this film.

-Graham

The slick pop thriller to Wolf of Wall Street’s seething sprawl.  Bong Joon-ho delivers his most taut and thoughtful genre picture yet with scenes of sneaking, coverups, and double crosses that would make Hitchcock sweat through his suit. Sure, the commentary about eating the rich could have more bite. Bong can’t resist a good crackerjack set piece, but when he hits his precise high style stride, he can’t be beat.

-Patrick

2. The Duke of Burgandy

You’ll never see a lesbian S&M relationship dramatized in a more boring way...and that is one of the many reasons why The Duke of Burgandy is so brilliant. The mundanity of the kink rituals that play out day to day in the relationship between Cynthia and Evelyn, a pair of lepidopterists who live in an indeterminate place and time, paints a sincere and sympathetic portrait of the compromises we make when we truly love someone. That is not to say the film is as straight-forward as that might sound because it is definitely not. It is absurd, playful, moody, and stunningly beautiful if you are at all a fan of arty European exploitation films from the 70s. Along with thematic nods to two of my very favorite films The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant and Persona, The Duke of Burgandy is a film from the last decade that I will continue to revisit for the next decade and beyond.

-Tish

A dreamy depiction of the emotional complexities of a crumbling relationship.  Sure, the backdrop features S&M and a spot-on pastiche of '70s Euro softcore camera tricks: slow zooms, haunting dissolves, and otherworldly long takes that look ripped from a Jess Franco or Jean Rollin joint.  But those performances! It's all in the eyes: teary and trembling as the uncomfortable, unwilling dom goes through the motions of another meticulously scripted sexual scenario. The Duke of Burgundy explores the power struggle in any relationship.  The need to be heard, appreciated, respected, loved. This drama playing over an ethereal tableau of panty washing '70s master/slave human toilets makes Duke even better.

-Patrick

1. Holy Motors

"It's you?"

"I think so."

Everyone's so busy performing a role for someone else in this mixed-up modern age, they can't relax and be themselves. Or we run from ourselves for so long we forget who we even are or used to be. Either way, wearing masks tight can grind you down bad. Genuine human connection is such a shocking rare thing, cars seem more alive. Denis Lavant gives perhaps the best performance of the decade as he slips in and out of personas and film genres with insane physicality.

-Patrick