When thinking about the Top Ten Films of the decade, it’s impossible to find any objective measure for putting together such a list, which means there is no way to avoid making it personal in some way. That means it’s up to me to determine what is the most important factor in choosing my personal Top Ten, and for me, I had to go with the ten films that stuck with me most. A decade of films for a film fanatic like me means hundreds of films, making comparing a film from 2011 to one from 2019 incredibly challenging, and I don’t have time to go back and rewatch any of them. So, it only makes sense to choose the ones that burrowed their way deep into my heart, my mind, or my soul in some way and found a home there, whether I remember every detail or not.
10. Spring Breakers/The Bling Ring
I must start with a bit of a cheat, because these two films are inexorably intertwined in my mind and I cannot include one without the other. They were released within months of one another, both by A24, and although they are polar opposites in style and approach to storytelling, their commentaries on modern American youth are so complimentary that they belong together as a perfect cultural artifact of the time. Together, they capture a holistic view of the emptiness of life as a teen in a capitalist utopia that is burning itself to the ground as we speak.
9. An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty
An Oversimplification Of Her Beauty perfectly captures the relationship anxiety we feel when we are young and infatuated with an idealized version of love and foolishly project our fantasy onto an actual human. An exploration of how we get in our own way in the pursuit of love by treating someone as an object of desire rather than a person would be powerful enough, but this film does so much more. It plays with form, narrative, and aesthetic in brave ways that turns the ordinary into something transformative, for the artist as much as the audience. Never have I emotionally resonated with a protagonist’s struggles as fully as I did in this film, and to attempt to describe with the words the impact this film had on me would surely be an oversimplification of its beauty.
8. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
A simple description of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night sounds like a parody of a pretentious hipster art film: black & white feminist Iranian skateboarding vampire film! However, in practice it is a film so alive in its stillness that it sucks you in to its world and holds you there, breathlessly waiting to see what will happen. The black & white nighttime cinematography is hauntingly entrancing, and the magnetism of lead actress Sheila Vand is hypnotic. There is a moment of such incredible tension built out of such simplicity of imagery that it creates the illusion of stillness in motion. No other single scene in a film this decade stayed with me more vividly, and no other movie of the decade exuded indie cool quite like this one.
7. The Tree Of Life
Terrence Malick is my biggest inspiration as a filmmaker, and Tree Of Life is the purest and fullest expression of his artistic vision as a filmmaker. Although I said there is no objective way to measure the best films of the decade, if there is one film on this list I feel deserves objectively to be on any list of best films of the decade, this is it. After decades as a filmmaker, it seems like Malick finally felt completely free to make the kind of creatively unrestrained film he always dreamed of making. He seeks out answers to the biggest questions of existence in this universe we call home by eschewing narrative almost completely and focusing on a poetic, almost stream of consciousness approach to imagery. The free floating movement of the camera and the seamless editing of the disparate moments of life give the film an out-of-body, otherworldly feel. If you let yourself free fall into the flow of this film, you will experience the awe of existence, in all its beauty and sadness.
6. Mustang
My memory of the details of Mustang are the fuzziest of any film on this list. What I do recall without a doubt, however, is that it is one of the most sensitive and authentic portrayals of girlhood and sisterhood I have ever scene in film. It is the story of five sisters living under the guardianship of conservative family members in the Turkish countryside after their parents pass. As they try desperately to assert their independence and express their burgeoning womanhood in an increasingly restrictive environment, they are quickly put on lockdown in their house and slowly forced into arranged marriages one by one. The term coming of age is used to death in film, but there certainly was not a more lovely and heartbreaking coming of age tale this decade about young female characters becoming women..
5. Tangerine
I debated the inclusion of this film more than any other on the list, but watching the trailer again brought back the vibrant kinetic energy of this film and I knew it had to be on the list. This was also the first film that showed the power and promise of the iPhone as a filmmaking tool, ushering in a new era of independent filmmaking where all barriers to making a successful, acclaimed film, real or perceived, were shattered for good. Most importantly, it tells a painfully human story featuring characters, and actors, that have been forever stereotyped and marginalized in film and in society. For me, this film is like a bridge to the future, where the possibilities are endless of what a film can be.
4. Mad Max: Fury Road
Mad Max: Fury Road is the greatest achievement in practical filmmaking that has ever been made. In a world of increasingly CGI centered blockbuster filmmaking, bringing to life a world as distinct and imaginative as this one within the real world instead of on a green screen is a feat of filmmaking not surpassed by any other this decade. The non-stop action, the crazy car chases, the wild costuming and vehicle design, and the insane characters all pull you into a desolate world of violence and survival. If I had access the biggest and best cinema in the world and could choose only one film from the past decade to show, it would be Mad Max: Fury Road, the greatest cinematic spectacle of the decade.
3. Her
Her fits perfectly into the tradition of classic indie rom com drams of the 21st century such as Lost In Translation and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. What make it unique is its exploration of the evolution of consciousness through an AI-human relationship. Our worldview is so human-centric that often even when we explore higher concepts like AI or alien life in stories, the story still imposes a human worldview onto the narrative. Her has the intelligence to acknowledge that any higher consciousness that may evolve in the future, whether out of human technological ingenuity or the natural order, might not fit our needs or our narrative. In fact, rather than serve us or work with us or enslave us, this evolved entity could choose to not even engage with us and let us seal our own demise. It challenges our sense of self as humans in compelling ways that forever changed the way I think about the evolution of consciousness.
2. The Act Of Killing
The Act Of Killing explores the darkest corners of the human psyche in ways that are squirm-inducingly uncomfortable, but impossible to look away from. In my opinion, it is the best documentary of all time, and it redefines what its possible for documentary film as cinema. In a nutshell, the filmmakers ask a few perpetrators of the Indonesian genocide of the 60s to make a film recreating their crimes however they wish. The ruling party who ordered the genocide is still in power, meaning there has been no reckoning of the horrors it brought, so the killers are still considered heroes for their misdeeds. Through one of our protagonists, we see the agony and humanity of spending decades living with guilt of murdering the innocent without punishment or consequence. There is no greater magic trick in storytelling than taking a real life monster and making the audience feel sympathy for them, because it makes us ask ourselves what is our level of complicity in the atrocities of humanity? We all believe we could never be like those monsters, but the truth is that most of us have been fortunate enough to never be in the kind of circumstances that would truly test us. Not yet, that is.
1. A Separation
A Separation is as close to a perfect film as you ca find. It illuminates a part of the world that Americans are told to be afraid of, full of people we are led to believe are fundamentally different from us. Instead, what we see is people just like us struggling to live under a system of laws and cultural beliefs they did not choose and make do the best they can. The brilliance of the narrative and the craftsmanship of this film is that it allows the filmmaker to examine and critique a very restrictive society so cleverly and obliquely so as to not diminish its societal criticisms while also not inviting censorship from an Iranian government extremely sensitive to artistic critique. It also happens to be a masterclass in acting, directing, and tension-building. Put simply, it is the finest film of the decade.
Special Mention: Best Music Video Feature Film
Girl Walk // All Day
I will close this post with one last cheat by giving a special mention to Girl Walk // All Day. I had a hard time decided whether or not to call this a movie and consider it for this list, but considered as a movie it could not possibly make the list of best movies of the entire decade. However, as something wholly unique and original unto itself, a feature length music video for an album comprised of improvised dance around New York City, I had to include it somehow. The lead actress/dancer, Anne Marsen, is a revelation and an inspiration as The Girl. She is the least technically proficient dancer in the film, but she allows herself total freedom of expression and movement, quirky as it may be, making her the most captivating performer in the film. If you want to see a dancer living fully in the moment as her authentic, artistic self, watch this film (split into a series of chapters on youtube, the first of which is embedded above).