The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Take time out to relive 10 years of unflinching, unapologetic, and unforeseeable film
Director Darren Aronofsky takes no prisoners. Rather, he ushers his leading men and women to the brink of sanity, and then ever so brilliantly provides the final push that sends them over. He did it with Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and Jennifer Lawrence in Mother. But it’s his collaboration with Natalie Portman on Black Swan, a dance thriller about a ballerina spiraling into madness, that is absolute tops—not only of this decade, but of all the decades Aronofsky’s work spans.
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By Harper’s Bazaar Singapore Team - published
Whittling 10 years of great cinema down into a succinct best-of list is a difficult task; but it’s one we took on with aplomb. Over the course of the past decade, we watched as stale genres were reinvigorated with inventive and imaginative reels, we saw diversity and feminism finally take center stage, and we were keen to celebrated auteurs reaching the pinnacle of their lives' work while newcomers launched careers of their own with stunning debuts. It was a great decade for the art of film—and these 45 are the cream of the cinematic crop. See if your favorite made the list.
This article originally appeared on Harper's BAZAAR US.
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Black Swan (2010)
Director Darren Aronofsky takes no prisoners. Rather, he ushers his leading men and women to the brink of sanity, and then ever so brilliantly provides the final push that sends them over. He did it with Jared Leto and Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream, Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, and Jennifer Lawrence in Mother. But it’s his collaboration with Natalie Portman on Black Swan, a dance thriller about a ballerina spiraling into madness, that is absolute tops—not only of this decade, but of all the decades Aronofsky’s work spans.
Photo: ©Fox Searchlight / Courtesy Everett Collection
The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Winter's Bone (2010)
If it weren’t for indie director Debra Granik’s sophomore film set in the Ozarks, we may have never met The Red Dress. You know the one. After a breakout performance, Jennifer Lawrence made her Oscars debut in Calvin Klein in 2011, with her red-hot sartorial skills on full display. But even better, her work in the film as Ree, a teenager mulling through meth and murder to find her drug dealer father, proved her to be an even snazzier actress.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Inception (2010)
Whenever you see that a film is directed by Christopher Nolan, you know two things: 1) This is a must-see film, and 2) This is a must-see film that will probably require subsequent viewings. Nolan, a highly conceptual and visionary filmmaker, doesn’t babysit his viewers by detangling his webbed plotlines. With Inception, a thriller within a thriller within a thriller, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Tom Hardy, and several more, the director reaches near perfection.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Social Network (2010)
Leave it to David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl) to turn something historically labeled as nerdy—we are talking algorithms here—into cool school. A dramatized and slightly fictionalized retelling of the creation of Facebook, with Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network crept into the 2010 zeitgeist with all the likes, thanks to original music from Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor (a.k.a. Nine Inch Nails), and a screenplay from the ultimate whip-fast linguist Aaron Sorkin.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Drive (2011)
Just imagine this elevator pitch: “Stunt driver never says a word. Lets his hammer do the talking. Falls in love with the wrong girl. It’s violent. It’s romantic. We’ll get Gosling to star.” Only Nicolas Winding Refn, whose abstract body of work includes Bronson and The Neon Demon, would ever think to muzzle an actor like Gosling. And only Refn would soak his graphic, high-octane mob thriller not just with the blood of the Italian mob, but the neon sound of dreamy ‘80s-inspired synth pop. All cylinders, this one.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Bridesmaids (2011)
A rule-breaking comedy in front of and behind the lens, Bridesmaids ushered in an entirely new subgenre: the female raunch com. Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, and the rest of the cast proved to its male-dominated category that women can not only break laws, drops F-bombs, and crap their pants all in the name of laughing out loud; they can also craft a damn fine screenplay. See: Writers Wiig and Annie Mumolo receiving Oscar nods for their writing.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Shame (2011)
Steve McQueen, a contemporary director who has never met a boundary that didn’t need pushing, has a powerful body of work that includes only groundbreaking cinema. In his second project with actor Michael Fassbender—the first being Hunger, a crippling true story about a prison hunger strike—McQueen pulls back the covers on a secretive, solitary, and severely misunderstood condition: sexual addiction.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Warrior (2011)
Released a year after David O. Russell’s The Fighter starring Mark Wahlberg, the martial arts thriller Warrior was shrugged off by moviegoers as a cheap imitation. But, man, were they wrong. Starring Tom Hardy, Joel Edgerton, and Nick Nolte in a late-career-defining role, Gavin O’Connor’s drama is full of surprises and, dare we say, the unanimous winner between the two.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Hugo (2011)
One of the greatest auteurs of this generation, Martin Scorsese escaped the mob genre to lend his abilities to high-brow, family-friendly fare. Hugo, an absorbing masterpiece that somehow weaves the director’s adoration of film into a mystery surrounding an orphan boy and an automation, was an instant classic the day it was released in 2011.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Killer Joe (2012)
Smack-dab in the middle of the decade’s McConaissance, awakened by the actor’s critically acclaimed performances in Bernie and The Lincoln Lawyer, Matthew McConaughey would receive his very first Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club. But that wasn’t his best film of the decade. That superlative goes to Killer Joe, a gonzo, Southern-fried genre-bender from The Exorcist helmer, William Friedkin, which stars the Texas native in the title role.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Life of Pi (2012)
Zebras, tigers, and monkeys, oh my. There is every kind of creature in Ang Lee’s visionary Oscar winner—including man. A religious parable borrowed from the pages of the same-name philosophical novel by Yann Martel, Life of Pi is a glorious journey that belongs to a castaway whose cargo ship carrying his family and the zoo animals they own capsizes, leaving him bound to a rescue boat with a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
By far the most original piece of filmmaking to grace the screen this entire decade, debut director Benh Zeitlin’s celebration of the South pulses with all the energy, emotion, and imagination a tenacious six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy can muster. About a Louisiana bayou community repairing after a devastating flood, it’s a drenched fairy tale that won’t only pull on your heartstrings, it will fray the hell out of them.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Gravity (2013)
Sandra Bullock takes one step for woman and one giant leap to the Oscar stage with her work as cosmonaut Ryan Stone in director Alfonso Cuarón’s two-hander that costars George Clooney. Nominated for Best Actress, Bullock and her tender performance as a woman lost in life and space are the subtle compliment to a film whose technological fancies catapult it to the pinnacle of visually effective cinema.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
12 Years a Slave (2013)
Steve McQueen’s adaptation of the 1853 eponymous memoir written by Solomon Northup, a man who was born free in New York then kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, is essential viewing. It’s bolstered by revolutionary performances from everyone above the line, namely Chiwetel Ejiofor as Solomon and Lupita Nyong’o as Patsey, a woman whose story will break you.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Frozen (2013)
Once upon a time, there was a princess whose sister had magical frozen fractal powers and whose Prince Charming wasn’t so charming. So goes the gist of the Disney film no one was ready for back in November 2013. Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel loan their pipes for a movie musical-turned-pop culture phenomenon that was co-directed by a woman, Jennifer Lee, and redefined the phrase “happily ever after.”
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Her (2013)
Spike Jonze writes and directs a cerebral techno-romance about a forlorn divorcé (Joaquin Phoenix) whose broken spirit gets a boost once he logs on to his new operating system, an artificially intelligent software named Samantha designed to indulge his every need. A near-future love story, the film sees the two fall in and out of love. Which, with the advancements in AI these days, isn’t all that unrealistic. Right?
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Whiplash (2014)
A millennial version of John Cusack, Miles Teller might be the most misunderstood actor of his time; but what he does in front of the camera needs no explanation. He’s a revelation as Andrew Neiman in Damien Chazelle’s breakout film, Whiplash. As a promising drummer at odds with his sadistic band instructor (played by J.K. Simmons, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor), he bleeds his heart into the role—and his drum kit—and deserves every standing ovation he receives.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Selma (2014)
Martin Luther King Jr. is a man whose story is no stranger to a film adaptation, but you’ve never seen the civil rights movement’s central figure like this before. Rather than offer a familiar history lesson, director Ava DuVernay reveals another side to the story of the activist: the human side. Starring a brilliant David Oyelowo, Selma chronicles the epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, while giving audiences a peek into its revered leader.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Birdman (2014)
More a feat in filmmaking than a potential instant classic, Birdman was conceived as an entirely single-shot film. And though editing tricks of the trade and the talents of award-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki were at play here, what director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and leading man Michael Keaton pulled off with Birdman, a drama about a fading movie star who turns to the stage, is nothing short of magical.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Nightcrawler (2014)
Though one could possibly poke nitpicky holes into the direction of Dan Gilroy’s debut, the character of Lou Bloom, who Jake Gyllenhaal masterfully brings to life, is perfection. An amateur crime journalist who takes “if it bleeds, it leads” to the extreme, Lou prowls the streets of Los Angeles late at night looking for his next story. A nocturnal thriller radiating with talent, Nightcrawler is Gyllenhaal’s best work yet.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Babadook (2014)
Aussie director Jennifer Kent takes no mercy with her paralyzing horror film about a mother who may just hate her young son as much as she loves him. A tale of grief and motherhood, it’s the kind of “watch with the lights on” nightmarish horror that makes grown men cry. Needless to say, The Babadook is vital feminist viewing for the genre we wish wouldn’t come around only once in a decade.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
One glance at The Grand Budapest Hotel’s pastel palette will reveal its creator: Wes Anderson. The director has built his career with films that showcase colors as whimsical as his characters and narratives, and it just may be that his optics are at the top of their game in The Grand Budapest Hotel, a comedy about the misadventures of a lobby boy.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Thrust Charlize Theron to the forefront, strap Tom Hardy to the bumper of a janky dune buggy, and go balls to the wall for an entire reel. Now, that’s how you launch a reboot! George Miller, the original director of the Mad Max dystopian doomsday franchise starring Mel Gibson and scorched earth, delivered a beautiful display of female empowerment in the dirtiest and dustiest of packages—one we never thought we’d find it in.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Martian (2015)
Sometimes all you want from a movie is to feel good. In a decade of infuriating (Spotlight), unflinching (12 Years a Slave), challenging (The Revenant), and white-knuckled (Sicario) cinema, it’s relieving to be able to hit pause on fraying the nerves and just watch Matt Damon get saved by a woman (Jessica Chastain) from abandonment on Mars, courtesy of Ridley Scott.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Spotlight (2015)
With so much information, so many priests, and even more victims, so much could have gone wrong in this riveting Oscar winner. But director Tom McCarthy keeps the reins tight as he dives deep into exposing the conspiracy of widespread sexual abuse staining the Catholic clergy. Not to mention the outstanding contributions of the leading trio of Boston Globe journalists, played by Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, and Rachel McAdams.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Brooklyn (2015)
Saoirse Ronan and Emory Cohen bring An Education writer Nick Hornby’s script to life with what might be the most romantic surprise since Ingrid Bergman walked into Humphry Bogart’s bar in 1942. The tale of an Irish immigrant who falls in love with a Brooklyn native, it’s a tiny film that bowed at Sundance and mustered the stamina to travel the film circuit all the way to the Oscars.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Anomalisa (2015)
In what might be the most human film that doesn’t star a single human, the stop-motion-animated Anomalisa toys with themes of identity, isolation, and depression, as it follows an author once disinterested in life through an insightful and sexual reawakening. Just as stirring as his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Being John Malkovich scripts, Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa is a consummate study of the human condition we can all get something from.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Moonlight (2016)
His second feature, after Medicine for Melancholy, Barry Jenkins set audiences awash in Moonlight with his almost unbearably tender depiction of a man at war with his identity and sexuality his entire life. The Oscar-winning film unravels in three parts, signified by the chapter in life his lead character, Chiron, is currently in. And through youth, adolescence, and adulthood, we just cheered for him.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Hell or High Water (2016)
Come hell or high water, Starred Up director David Mackenzie’s contemporary western, lifted off a screenplay written by Sicario scripter Taylor Sheridan, was going on our list. Chris Pine and Ben Foster play a pair of brothers robbing Texas banks for a reason we wouldn’t dare spoil, and they do so as an original score by Assassination of Jesse James composers Nick Cave and Warren Ellis keep its viewers under a melodic trance.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Arrival (2016)
French-Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve can do no wrong. Seriously: Incendies, Sicario, Enemy, Prisoners—good God, just take all our money. But if there were one film we’d suggest queuing first in line, it’s Arrival. An eerie extraterrestrial delight with a stunning performance by leading lady Amy Adams and a superb narrative fusing the circle of life with realism with surrealism, this one is absolute perfection.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Sing Street (2016)
Don’t let the flawless faces of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone distract you; the actual best musical of the year, of the decade maybe, is John Carney’s Sing Street. Carney, who became a household name after a little gem called Once was heralded as a sensation (because it is), the Irish maestro encored with a film about a Dublin kid who starts a band to impress a girl. Blending emotion with an underdog story and hit original music, it might just be the most underappreciated film in Carney’s catalogue.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Get Out (2017)
Wait, did Jordan Peele just reinvigorate a stale genre with a race-based horror film? Oh, yes, he did. Peele, whose comedy is revered on the small screen with his title partner, Keegan-Michael Key, went solo to write and direct a genre-blending film about a guy (Daniel Kaluuya), a girl (Allison Williams), and her beyond-belief dark secret (our lips are zipped here). A chiller that scores high marks for its traditional scares, Get Out reaps its acclaim for not being afraid to take viewers to the “sunken” place.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Lady Bird (2017)
Lady Bird McPherson, a named given by herself to herself much to the chagrin of her mother, is our hero when she dives out of a moving car at the age of 17 just to get away from her nagging mom. Don’t worry, she lives. And she goes on share with us her senior year in high school in Sacramento, California, complete with her first romance (Timothée Chalamet). Thank you, Greta Gerwig, for gifting us with a soaring film that celebrates the beauties and the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Wonder Woman (2017)
Patty Jenkins is the very first woman to direct a big-studio project backed by a mega-million purse (like, $100 million) with her interpretation of an iconic DC Comic. In a gender-swapping adventure, Wonder Woman stars Gal Gadot as the wondrous Amazonian superhero, with Chris Pine supporting as the damsel in distress, and the two go on to save the world and solidify the film as the industry’s highest-grossing superhero origin film.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Black Panther (2018)
Marvel’s first film to star a Black superhero made all the right moves: It recruited Fruitvale and Creed director Ryan Coogler as its helmer, put 42 and Marshall actor Chadwick Boseman in the cat suit, and supplied its action-packed narrative about an heir protecting his advanced kingdom with an A-plus soundtrack curated by and largely featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar. Wakanda forever indeed.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Roma (2018)
Director Alfonso Cuaron said his Roma was his love letter to all the women who raised him, and while we were all collectively “aww”-ing, the Netflix film was scooping up hardware from the BAFTAs to the Academy Awards. Unfolding entirely in crisp black-and-white digital cinematography, the film takes its time chronicling a year in the life of a middle-class matriarch and her domestic worker.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
A Star Is Born (2018)
Tell the truth: Which did you like better? Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut marking the fourth time the enduring musical would see the screen? Or the Oscars stage performance of the film’s breakout original hit, “Shallow,” by leading duo Cooper and Lady Gaga? Yeah, it’s a toss-up for us too. What isn’t debatable, however, is the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry between Gaga and Cooper that sets this adaptation lightyears ahead of the others.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)
The Mission Impossible franchise, though it peaks and valleys over the course of six films, is a good one. But if you’d have told us that its sixth, and most recent, installment would be its best, we wouldn’t have believed you. But it is. It has Tom Cruise’s stunt insanity and Edge of Tomorrow screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie’s skillful directing to thank for it. Not to mention, this might be the first MI film that gives its female cast (Angela Bassett, Rebecca Ferguson, and Michelle Monaghan) something to do, other than looking pretty.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Favourite (2018)
All hail Olivia Colman as the mercurial queen leading a trio of polished performances in a dark period comedy so offbeat and uproarious it could only come from Greek auteur Yorgos Lanthimos. After critic-happy films Dogtooth and The Lobster, the filmmaker doused his film The Favourite in a secret sauce that propelled it to the winner’s circle with both critics and audiences. We’re pretty sure Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz had something do with that too.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
Crazy Rich Asians, adapted from the satirical pages of novelist Kevin Kwan and starring Constance Wu and Henry Golding, is the first studio film to feature an all-Asian cast since The Joy Luck Club—and we can’t believe it took 25 years to see that happen. It’s been a long time coming, and the film’s top-grossing box office numbers prove the masses are starving for more diversity in their rom-com fare. Let’s keep it going.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Apart from the genre’s standouts—Black Panther, Wonder Woman, and the like—we’ve unfortunately become complacent with mammoth franchises tacking on entertaining yet average installments to their super-verse repertoires. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, however, shreds the yarn that binds comic book films and instead creates a visually stunning and inventive animated world all its own.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood (2019)
Full disclosure: Upon our initial viewing of Quentin Tarantino’s bromantic genre-bender, we wrote if off as entertaining, sure, but also another indulgent, overwrought Tarantino affair that could benefit from a little editing. We were wrong. After watching again, and again, the visceral fairy tale, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as a fading actor and his loyal stunt double respectively, is full of nuance, and skill, and is an example of a filmmaker at the peak of his craft.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Marriage Story (2019)
Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver fight to the death—or rather, to the punch of a wall—in Noah Baumbach’s incredibly personal feat about the deterioration of a marriage and the impending custody battle the two must face. More a divorce story than marriage story, the film is loosely based on the real-life union of Baumbach to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, and while it definitely cuts like a box-knife on bare skin, Baumbach manages to lighten the load with heartfelt injected comedy. It’s very well done.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
The Farewell (2019)
She made us LOL in Crazy Rich Asians and got her heist on in Ocean’s Eight, but Awkwafina (born Nora Lum) brought the house to tears with her drama debut in The Farewell. An autobiographical film from Lulu Wang about a Chinese family reuniting under false and sorrowful pretenses, The Farewell is rich in emotion; it makes you laugh, it makes you cry, it makes you crave authentic Chinese food.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s
Parasite (2019)
South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho is a name you don’t even know you know. The creator of a masterful filmography including Mother, The Host, Snowpiercer, and Okja, he released a Korean-language film this year that demands to be seen. It’s definitely a thriller, it’s kind of a comedy—it’s honestly un-categorical. But what we can definitively say is that the film, a tale of a poor Seoul family who infiltrate an affluent brood’s home, is a not-so-subtle comment on social and economic inequalities, and quite possibly the very best film of 2019.
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The 45 Best Films Of The 2010s