20. The Act Of Killing/The Look Of Silence - Joshua Oppenheimer, 2013/2015
Twin investigations into Indonesian genocide and its repercussions, replete with killers aping movie gangsters in absurdist dramatic recreations.
19. Parasite - Bong Joon-ho, 2019
Not home-invasion thriller, but home-infestation, economic inequality social satire. Rolling at a cracking pace, it stages a masterclass in cinematic composition.
18. Chevalier - Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2016
A giddy Greek-weird-wave barney satirising patriarchy, exclusive boys’ clubs, arcane rituals, male vanity and macho competitiveness.
17. Beginners - Mike Mills, 2011
Cine-memoir, photomontages, peak Mélanie Laurent, artmaking, grieving, the heaviness of inescapable sadness — I cry every time.
16. If Beale Street Could Talk - Barry Jenkins, 2019
Not just a love story, but a film about — and made with — love.
15. Inside Llewyn Davis - Joel & Ethan Coen, 2014
A film told in circle, turning like a record. Each lap round the titular sadsack singer’s NYC folk scene is like hearing the same old song sung gloriously anew.
14. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World - Edgar Wright, 2010
A box office ‘bomb’ turned beloved cult object. The decade’s most rewatchable, most quotable, most secretly profound film.
13. The Challenge - Yuri Ancarani, 2017
An Italian video artist meets blinged-out Qatari falconers in the desert sands. Eye-popping images and grand capitalist symbolism ensue.
12. The Handmaiden - Park Chan-wook, 2016
Lady Vengeance turns Ladies Vengeance in this bugfuck, bodice-ripping thriller; all double-crosses, cinematic sleights of hand, decadent perversion and directorial glories.
11. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire - Céline Sciamma, 2019
A masterpiece of the female gaze: in filmmaking, painting, and lingering looks between lovers.
10. Call Me By Your Name - Luca Guadagnino, 2017
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An instant queer classic, a bittersweet portrait of first-love/love-lost, a faultless exemplar of mood-sustaining mise-en-scène. And the decade’s clear #1 peach-fucking film.
9. Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson, 2012
A loving shrine to creating (meticulously art-directed) fantasy worlds in which to seek escape, shelter and belonging.
8. Her - Spike Jonze, 2014
A sad, bittersweet vision of the digital dystopia, in which the great love affair of modern times - the user and their device - is literalised in a tale of man-meets-AI-OS.
7. Evolution - Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2016
A spiritual twin to Hadžihalilović’s classic debut Innocence: another eerie, symbolist vision of spooky childhood grooming steeped in Jungian shadows.
6. Under The Skin - Jonathan Glazer, 2014
Come for ScarJo as an alien seductress luring men into a tar-black void, stay for the sustained, disorienting visual rapture.
5. Arrival - Denis Villeneuve, 2016
Peak blockbuster artistry. Hollywood sci-fi spectacle bent into sensorial fever-dream by dint of linguistic relativity.
4. Custody - Xavier Legrand, 2018
A brutal masterwork of controlled composition and domestic terror. The best debut of the decade, and in living memory.
3. The Master - Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012
Do your past failures bother you?
2. The Lobster - Yorgos Lanthimos, 2015
No director had a better decade than Yorgos Lanthimos, whose English-language debut delivered high absurdity, incisive social parable, and smart behavioural study of humans as animals.
1. The Square - Ruben Östlund, 2017
An incalculably rich text of social ethics, human/ape/mob behaviour, cringe comedy, art-world satire, and making chaos.
