The Top Films of the 2010s

I really only began watching movies, period, in about 2003 and I didn’t actually begin developing my own taste, style, and enjoyment of movies until shortly after that. As a result, my top films of the 2000s list (in three parts: https://24framespersec.wordpress.com/2010/01/15/the-best-films-of-00-intro-and-25-21/, https://24framespersec.wordpress.com/2010/01/16/the-best-films-of-00-20-11/, https://24framespersec.wordpress.com/2010/01/18/the-best-films-of-00-10-1/) was colored by playing a lot of catch-up and missing quite a few films of that decade. While there were still many films in the 2010s that I wanted to watch, but have yet to do so, I was much more aware of everything that the 2010s had to offer. Part of that awareness had to do with one of the big themes of movie watching in the 2010s: the rise of streaming websites as movie rental services and producers of original content. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, YouTube, and many more streaming services came to dominate the 2010s movie conversation, both the conversation about HOW we watch movies and about the specific movies themselves. I appreciated the streaming sites for how much easier they made it for me in eastern Washington state to see smaller movies with limited distribution that would never be able to make it into a theater within 3.5 hours of where I live. 

 

The second big theme of movie watching in the 2010s was the monolithic, congealing of franchise filmmaking, particularly under the Disney umbrella. Sequels, remakes, and franchises have been a part of filmmaking since the 1930s, so I don’t want to pretend like we are breaking any new ground in those regards, but the reliance of movie studios on gigantic, interconnected, franchise blockbusters and the need to fire creative teams to shepherd those monoliths feels like it increased exponentially in the 2010s. Part of that is on us as film viewers and the expectations that we bring to movies, as opposed to drawing our understanding from the movies, but part of that is on the studio structure in connecting movies with television shows with written source material with selling toys with creating theme park rides all that connect back to the company brand and marketing. Yes, that was a word salad sentence and that is primarily the point, the movies serve so many masters that it can be difficult to see them as individual pieces in and of themselves. 

 

But never fear! Through the ups and downs of the decade, through living in two different cities, through turning 30, through purchasing a house, and through films watched or missed, many of the films I watched were great! When trying to think back through the decade in film and laying them out in a list, the list broke naturally into loosely defined tiers in my brain. How many movies does that mean are included? As many as felt right to me and if you are reading this, I hope you don’t mind reading and thinking through all of this with me. Scroll through and just read the titles if you’d like, but I’d love for you to travel on the journey below with me as I try to bring some overarching ideas and thoughts about the top…well, you’ll see how many…films of the 2010s decade.