It's Been A Big Decade For Film - These Are 20 Of The Best
Our resident film columnist Anthony Carew believes he has watched over 3,000 films this past decade. And you know what? We believe him. Here we asked him to dive deep into the grey matter to whittle the list down to the top 20. Someone grab the popcorn.
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.
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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
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.
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