Our critics pored over 5,279 of the decades films.
Heres the best, worst, andmehst.
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In 2010, the No.
1 movie at the box office wasAvatar.
Hypercool indie darlings Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were thecoupled-up starsof a lucrative supernatural teen romance.
But were we punishing smaller films simply because their distributors deemed them uncommercial?
Cue the guilt, and the exceptions.
Soon, we were permitting ourselves a few wild-card contenders, because list-making is more art than science.
(Is there such a thing as a definitive ranking?)
But it does reflect the highs and lows of a tumultuous decade.
We hadnt, for instance, planned for our top-three picks to be so … apocalyptic.
But when it turned out that way, it felt entirely appropriate.
The past 10 years have been marred by doomsday predictions about cinema, whether the harbingers areNetflixorsuperheroesorhigh frame rates.
Its messy, and its filled with contradictions, and we wouldnt have it any other way.
Here are the films of the 2010s, ranked, for better and worse.
(If you just want to see the Worst, click here.)
by pretentious film critics.
Though a pretentious film critic, I say, Moi aussi.
Its a beguiling blend of documentary and fiction that follows amateur actors playing fictionalized versions of themselves.
6.Moonlight
How can I do justice todirector Barry Jenkinsand co-writerTarell Alvin McCraneys evocative 2016 film?
WatchingMoonlighthas brought me to tears, with its piercing turns byAshton Sanders, Trevante Rhodes, and Mahershala Ali.
Go for the longer version.
Willem Dafoe is unforgettable as the motel manager who cant fix what most needs fixing.D.E.
To that end, the film includes mundane interactions that sometimes slip into surrealism, and wild experimental passages.
An unimportant exchange suddenly reveals deeper realities; odd, throwaway images come back as soul-crushing memories.
You have never, ever, ever seen anything like it.B.E.
Is there anything left to say about it?
What could have felt gratuitous, even silly, instead is rendered with care and specificity.
Its a striking parable about gender its elasticity and its horrors.
The probing gaze of Park and cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon is rich with hypnotic detail and texture.
But its more wistful pipe dream than manifesto, building to a denouement at once euphoric and heartbreaking.D.E.
Perhaps it was Schraders cool eye upon him.
But what this moment signaled to me is that I was in the hands of truly striking filmmakers.A.J.B.
The movies three timelines all play out in ways that foreground the subjectivity of the people experiencing them.
Great opening shot though.
So glad to have her back.B.E.
Its bloody and exhilarating, with the camera swinging and serving with dancerly grace.
Burnsides Let My Baby Ride.
Its shot in the Saint-Merri Church, of course, the sacred and profane in one glorious interlude Trois!
29.The Master
Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) is a man undone.
But what transfixes are the performances.
Phoenix stands with crooked, hunched posture, making Freddie look likea living question mark.
Hoffman portrays Lancaster Dodd with both ragged egoism, a hulking presence, and the shimmer of self-doubt.A.J.B.
He captures what contemporaries described as Lincolns mysterious private sadness.
You dont feel youknowLincoln few in his time claimed they did.
But you feel you know what it was like to be in his presence.
It isnt just genuinely scary, but a layered treatise on unexpected loss and mental illness.A.J.B.
Writer-directorDestin Daniel Crettonhas a brutally real design:Every seeming breakthrough is followed by a harsh fallback.
The company offers each stand-in a 1,000 bonus to do so.
Its an austere, working-class drama brimming with genuine feeling and power.A.J.B.
Scenes are blurred at the edges.
Its a slippery, exasperating, transcendent film that haunts long after seeing it.A.J.B.
Surprising performances by Willem Dafoe, Ian McShane, Adrianne Palicki, and Michael Nyqvist.
A lightning-bright, fresh mythos.
(The third part,Parabellum, had some great stuff amid the bloat.)
Rebuttal: Id like this movie more if anyone in it behaved like an actual human being.
Hes just not enough of a success to live off it.
Thats a simple idea, but the filmmaking here is outrageously beautiful, with every moment ringing achingly true.B.E.
The violence is brusque, flat un-mythic.
Rebuttal: I loveThe Irishman,butSilencewas Scorseses true masterpiece this decade.
After making films for years in England, the director announced his return to Poland with this Oscar-winning movie.
Although they didnt make the cut, our critics have annotated the choices for which they fought hardest below.
Inevitably, one of your favorites will fall in this vast range, and for that we apologize.
And yet … it does everything right.
(just do not give us another 20 of these.)
Heres but a sampling of the titles that avoided death, which is reportedly still imminent?
Stay safe out there, rom-coms.
It stars Kevin Costner as a general manager whos trying to get the most of his teams No.
But instead it justis.
If middling had a face, itd be someones fromDraft Day.A.W.
Linda Cardellini had a thankless role inGreen Book.Seth Rogen has become one of the busiest men in Hollywood.
Jason Segel played with Muppetsandplayed David Foster Wallace.
They might get lumped together, but we ranked them for posterity.
(There are 21 in total this decade, though only 19 are featured here.
For the remaining two, jump tothe Worst.)
The first film, released in 2014, was a hit.
The second did even better.
Still, there were a few adorable hot messes out there.
Rebuttal: No idea what this is doing all the way down here, this movie rules.
Its too bad his mixture of pulp and idolatry congeals on the screen.
out of my head.
His story is fascinating, butI Am, the 2010 documentary he made about it, is not.
Its a reminder that all the best intentions in the world dont exempt someone from indulgent acts of ego.A.W.
5,237.Now You See Me
Remember that brief period when movies about magic were all the rage?
Okay,The Prestigewas excellent.
Also, despite the presence of many likable stars, somehow every character in this was supremely irritating.B.E.
In this case: Matt Damon as Jason Bourne and Paul Greengrass as a director.
Here, Tony Gilroy takes the helm andJeremy Rennertakes his turn as the star.
Ive loathed Renners acting style since first seeing him in a 2000 episode ofAngel.
(Yes, he played a vampire.)
The other issues are the script and the sinful waste of the transcendent Rachel Weisz.A.J.B.
(Try singing something anything to Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.Awkward.)
The movie has so many terrible ideas that the terrible execution is almost irrelevant.
5,243.Saving Mr. Banks
Insufferable corporate hagiography.
Travers (Emma Thompson), to sell him the rights to her character.
Elizabeth Sloane is a cunning lobbyist okay with spilling a little blood, metaphorically speaking.
She works obsessively and has no time for romance.
The script is convoluted, Aaron Sorkinlite.
Jessica Chastains performance is one of the worst of her career, all hard edges and little soul.A.J.B.
The cast was phenomenal, but the production featured a half-baked heist and barely-there motivations.
5,247.Arthur
The remake no one wanted of Steve Gordons 1981 P.G.
Helen Mirren plays his Jeeves she gazes on Brand with a disgust thats too credible to be funny.
The most telling part is the opening, which in the original featured Dudley Moore driving drunk through Manhattan.
The inept staging, Brands braying falsetto, and those bull balls read as a symbolic castration.D.E.
I realize thats a me problem and not a you problem, but still.
Do noble ends justify ignoble means?
Only in movies, where bogus good-guy vigilantes sustain the paranoid fantasies of real-world gun nuts.
The film puts a hit on your soul.
Theyre always cute together.D.E.
It took me four tries to make it through the whole thing.B.E.
Rebuttal: I honestly dont understand how anyone could see this film as anything other than a good time.
Heads get popped off like beer caps!
Taylor Lautner explains how he fell in love with a baby!
A case study in how not to make a movie.B.E.
its guaranteed this corporate nostalgia death spiral will continue for years to come.A.W.
Then he whips up some fabulous biscuits.
Soon, hes fixing the sink and teaching the kid to catch a baseball.
Women in the audience are meant to say, Can I get one of those?
Its so terrible that its amazing.D.E.
The acting ranges from the grating to the forgettable by the likes of Nat Wolff and Willem Dafoe.A.J.B.
How about this: A week or so later, Id completely forgotten that it existed.
Nobody should be shocked that the series basically died then and there, the modestly likableBumblebeenotwithstanding.B.E.
Narratively incoherent and rippling with misogyny.Life Itselfis an easy film to make fun of.
(His career has subsequently entered a new, more serious phase.
At least, its only watchable if you think of it that way.
The ship looks like an ugly, sterile shopping mall.
The intended chemistry between the two lead characters fails to complicate the icky narrative.
Oh, and Pratt isnt a good actor.A.J.B.
Its not that bad.
Indeed: From moment to moment, it looks and sounds like a real movie.
Hes provided work for so many great black actors, whose talents Hollywood had otherwise ignored or mishandled.
But hes also responsible for some of the most pernicious representations of black identity in the modern age.
Here,For Colored Girlslacks the precision and grace necessary to adapt Ntozake Shanges 1975 work.
That should count for something, even if that something is simply confirming its awfulness.B.E.
Its ridiculous, arch, and a grave misuse of Reevess tremendous screen presence.A.J.B.
5,2745,275.Human Centipede 2and3
Who are these films even for?
A nadir of filmmaking in all manners of speaking, with not one iota to praise.
It only grew more gross and galling as the franchise continued.A.J.B.
5,277.2016: Obamas America
Dinesh DSouzatweetedlast month that the apocalypse has become a political racket!
It succeeded because it made for the presidents fundamental foreignness not of birth, but belief.
Impersonally staged by director Alex Kurtzman with so much computer-generated imagery, the movie feels prefab.
Its flop was absolute (Universal canceled the Dark Universe thereafter) but its blueprint will live on.
As willAvengers: Endgames, now the highest-grossing movie of all time.
Nearly $3 billion later, though, does it matter?
Black Widow isgetting her origin story next year, and the franchises Hydra-like existence persists.
