The 50 best films of the decade (so far) – part 1

It’s become a stan­dard com­plaint of the casu­al-to-reg­u­lar movie­go­er that there is now too much choice out there. Every Fri­day, as the new releas­es are sluiced out, adver­tised in flash­ing neon over the box office of your local mul­ti­plex, it’s become a case of pick­ing one film and catch­ing the oth­er one lat­er, if at all – it’s like movies are pit­ted against one anoth­er in glad­i­a­to­r­i­al combat.

And so we decid­ed to organ­ise a mas­sive sur­vey of the best titles to receive a the­atri­cal release between the start of 2010 and the end of 2015, in a mod­est bid to ease the stress of hav­ing to make that tough choice week in, week out. The bal­lot was post­ed out to a glob­al pha­lanx of LWLies con­trib­u­tors who were asked to select 10 films they thought exem­pli­fied the first half (and a bit) of the cur­rent decade. We’ll be post­ing the per­son­al lists lat­er this week, but until then here are the first batch of results…

In 2014, one of the greats of con­tem­po­rary cin­e­ma, Pedro Cos­ta, returned with his first fea­ture since 2006’s aston­ish­ing Colos­sal Youth. In the astound­ing Horse Mon­ey we rejoin the hero of that film, Ven­tu­ra, (an actor who repeat­ed­ly, mov­ing­ly plays on-screen iter­a­tions of his real self) now hos­pi­talised and des­tined to face off against the ghosts of his tumul­tuous past. It’s tough to describe the film any fur­ther, as Costa’s mode is one that favours a pur­pose­ful bar­rage of stark imagery, shock­ing jux­ta­po­si­tions, baroque com­po­si­tions and oblique ref­er­ences to the clas­sic Hol­ly­wood films he reveres so fer­vent­ly. It’s post-punk film­mak­ing, and it’s extra­or­di­nary. Read the review

Two Gyl­len­haals for the price of one are the top prize for view­ers of Denis Villeneuve’s exper­i­men­tal odd­i­ty. Its plot is ripped from the pages of the 2002 nov­el, ​‘The Dou­ble’, by Por­tuguese author José Sara­m­a­go, and the film takes the con­cept of a man spot­ting his own dop­pel­gänger in a crud­dy movie as its start­ing point, and then spi­rals off unnerv­ing­ly from there. As a direc­tor and an arch screen styl­ist able to inti­mate off-screen hor­rors, Vil­leneuve appears as an acolyte to Davids Lynch and Finch­er. The sin­u­ous glid­ing move­ments of his cam­era work-up a pal­pa­ble sense of unease. Read the review

Even though he’s lev­elled with with accu­sa­tions that he makes the same film year in, year out, it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter when that film is charm­ing, clever, inno­v­a­tive and pro­found. 2011’s The Day He Arrives focus­es on stock con­cerns, a yarn spun around a nomadic film­mak­er who wan­ders the snow-swept streets of Seoul in search of his pal, and gets wast­ed on Soju. And we get three ver­sions of this same sto­ry, with sub­tle vari­a­tions on each rev­o­lu­tion. The way Hong deals with time means you could almost cat­e­gorise his films as hard sci-fi, in par­tic­u­lar the way he exam­ines the coun­ter­in­tu­itive daisy-chain effect that our actions have on the lives of others.

Cor­neliu Porumboiu’s charm­ing, dry­ly com­ic The Sec­ond Game sees the film­mak­er – a lynch­pin of the so-called Roman­ian New Wave – sit­ting down with his father Adri­an, an ex-foot­ball ref­er­ee of con­sid­er­able note, to intone their com­men­tary on the titan­ic, snow-swept 1988 clash between local teams Dinamo and Steaua from a crud­ded-up VHS tape. The game plays out in silence, bar the fuzzy burr of the tape play­back, as son ques­tions father about his deci­sions on the pitch, the his­tor­i­cal con­text of the game (Steaua were Ceaușescu’s favourite team), and how the dynam­ics of the game have changed over the past 25 years. A heart­break­ing film of his­tor­i­cal inquiry and father-son bonding.

Tom Hardy may be renowned for his ani­mal­is­tic inten­si­ty in films like Bron­son and Mad Max: Fury Road, but the British actor showed anoth­er, more inti­mate side to him­self in Steven Knight’s sus­pense­ful auto thriller from 2013. Under­state­ment is the preva­lent key­word here, with Hardy don­ning a soft Welsh accent and dad jumper to play a reg­u­lar bloke calm­ly attempt­ing to nav­i­gate his way out of a par­tic­u­lar­ly messy domes­tic cri­sis – all from the front seat of his fam­i­ly SUV. Shot in real­time over the course of a sin­gle evening, Locke is a dis­arm­ing­ly sim­ple movie that deliv­ers unfor­get­table dra­ma on an impres­sive­ly eco­nom­ic scale. Read the review

Though Jacques Riv­ette is no longer mak­ing movies, one direc­tor who’s mak­ing a seri­ous play to take up his cre­ative baton is Argen­tinean Matías Piñeiro, whose excel­lent 2012 minia­ture, Vio­la, co-opts those Riv­et­t­ian main­stays of rehears­ing a play and shady under­ground polit­i­cal sects. The mean­der­ing plot takes in the pre-pro­duc­tion peri­od of an ama­teur pro­duc­tion of Twelfth Night which the title char­ac­ter hap­pens upon by going about her busi­ness of sell­ing pirat­ed DVDs. As the film trun­dles on, it’s clear that Piñeiro is not aim­ing to make any kind of crass state­ment about art or pol­i­tics, but one about com­fort­able gen­er­a­tional malaise.

Before he dis­ap­peared up his own back­side with The Hate­ful Eight, Quentin Taran­ti­no deliv­ered a major career high­light with this sub­ver­sive and supreme­ly vio­lent anti-west­ern. A freed slave on the warpath across the snow-blan­ket­ed Deep South is the jump­ing off point for a pop­corn-crunch­ing social com­men­tary that provoca­tive­ly con­fronts America’s ugly past. Ignor­ing a baf­fling third-act segue into Mel Brooks-esque farce, Djan­go Unchained is right up there with the writer/director’s clean­est kills – a blis­ter­ing, blood-soaked reminder that nobody does enter­tain­ment quite like QT. Read the review

Those who have caught Ron Howard’s (dire) lat­est, In the Heart of the Sea, have sug­gest­ed that the direc­tor has clear­ly tak­en time out to watch Lucien Cas­taing-Tay­lor and Ver­e­na Par­avel fish­ing-based slab of pure, sen­so­ry over­load, Leviathan. In depict­ing the dai­ly real­i­ties of North Sea trawler fish­ing, the direc­tors take the view­er on a baroque jour­ney in the bow­els of Hades as their ultra-agile GoPro cam­eras are able to reach vant­gaes that no cam­era has reached before. Read the review

One thing that came with the astound­ing suc­cess of the film Boy­hood is that we had per­haps neglect­ed – or at least under-appre­ci­at­ed – the tal­ent of its direc­tor Richard Lin­klater. Sure, he had his cre­ative wilder­ness years, but pri­or to his Biggest Year Ever, the direc­tor astound­ed with anoth­er of his ​“Before” movies, this one the cli­max of a pro­posed tril­o­gy. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are not hitched and spend a long night of the soul decon­struct­ing their cur­rent rela­tion­ship woes attempt­ing to divulge whether they are the sum of their youth­ful roman­tic dal­liances. Mag­i­cal. Read the review

A pox to any­one who com­plains that the Dar­d­enne broth­ers are too reli­able. Though their 2014 film, about a woman (Mar­i­on Cotil­lard) try­ing to save her­self from immi­nent redun­dan­cy, is cut from the same care­worn cloth as pre­vi­ous fea­tures, it’s anoth­er unde­ni­ably sub­lime and heart­break­ing work about saint­ly self preser­va­tion, the strug­gles of work­ing class life and the fact that it’s often the small­est sto­ries which deal with the biggest and most impor­tant ideas. Read the review

Take some squeaky clean young stars, add a cou­ple of fash­ion­able pop cul­ture fig­ures and throw them togeth­er into a crime-based par­ty movie set dur­ing the annu­al stu­dent rite-of-pas­sage: sounds like a sure fire recipe for suc­cess, right? That’s the beau­ty of hind­sight, because even those who kept faith with Har­mo­ny Korine through­out his alien­at­ing Mis­ter Lonely/​Trash Humpers peri­od must sure­ly have approached the writer/director’s fifth film with a degree of uncer­tain­ty. As it turned out, of course, Spring Break­ers was an unmit­i­gat­ed tri­umph, a bril­liant­ly bonkers teen movie satire that doesn’t so much flip the genre on its head as spew neon-yel­low vom­it into its face. Spring break for­ev­er, bitch­es. Read the review

The most haunt­ing hor­ror sto­ries are root­ed in real­i­ty. Lynne Ramsay’s adap­ta­tion of Lionel Shriver’s best-sell­ing nov­el is root­ed in every­day mater­nal fears. What if you don’t love your baby? What if your child grows up to be a psy­chopath? Told from the per­spec­tive of Eva (Til­da Swin­ton) in the present and in flash­back, we watch her baby Kevin, becom­ing a smart and nihilis­tic teenag­er played by a smirk­ing Ezra Miller. Dread builds. We know an awful event is com­ing. Red imagery dom­i­nates. Eva’s hus­band refus­es to see any­thing wrong. Ram­say shows us life before Kevin mean­ing life after Kevin is a hell for one who has known heav­en. Read the review

Dar­ren Aronof­sky is a direc­tor prone to grand ges­tures and pro­longed cli­max­es whose films can be at once mes­meris­ing and con­found­ing, and his bal­let­ic psy­cho­sex­u­al thriller cen­tred around a pair of New York dancers proved no dif­fer­ent. Natal­ie Portman’s Oscar-win­ning per­for­mance aside, Black Swan remains as allur­ing today as when it divid­ed crit­ics back in 2010, its inter­tex­tu­al oblique­ness and vis­cer­al sym­bol­ism com­mand­ing our repeat atten­tion. Indeed, it’s only after sev­er­al view­ings that Black Swan tru­ly begins to reveal itself as Aronofsky’s most accom­plished and com­plex work. Read the review

Like Tsai Ming-Liang, the Hun­gar­i­an direc­tor Bela Tarr announced pri­or to the release of 2011 film The Turin Horse that this would be his final film. Hav­ing moved into acad­e­mia in the inter­im years, it looks like this retire­ment might be more than idol show­boat­ing. But in terms of its bleak final­i­ty, it makes for one hell of a swan song, oper­at­ing as a metic­u­lous, con­cen­tric metaphor for the slow decay and even­tu­al death of ani­mals, peo­ple, fam­i­lies, lan­guage, coun­tries, polit­i­cal sys­tems – the whole bit. Read the review

Reach for Nuri Bilge Ceylon’s slow mur­der mys­tery when free hours roll across the hori­zon, like the yel­low hills of Ana­to­lian coun­try­side. From the open­ing shot of a tiny car with tiny beams inch­ing onwards from the right­hand cor­ner of the frame, it’s clear that the nar­ra­tive fire is slow to burn. The mys­tery of a miss­ing body is approached, not clin­i­cal­ly like in a pro­ce­dur­al but amid the swell of every­day con­ver­sa­tion and needs. The pho­tog­ra­phy is so glo­ri­ous that sim­ple images are burnt onto the reti­na with irra­tional poignan­cy: why is an apple bob­bing in a stream unfor­get­table? Read the review

Iran­ian mae­stro Abbas Kiarosta­mi has said of this extra­or­di­nary work that he has sim­ply made a film with­out a begin­ning or an end. While that state­ment makes a lot of sense when con­sid­er­ing the soft and oblique man­ner in which the film opens and the shock­ing­ly abrupt man­ner in which it cli­max­es, you feel like he’s prob­a­bly just being false­ly mod­est and there’s actu­al­ly much more to it than that which he’ll nev­er let us in on. Set in Tokyo, it con­cerns a young pros­ti­tute and her enlight­en­ing evening with a dawdling pro­fes­sor who becomes her father fig­ure. Read the review

If any­thing, the fact that we weren’t over­ly enam­oured with Joachim Trier’s recent Palme d’Or con­tender, Loud­er Than Bombs, is an indi­ca­tion of how ridicu­lous­ly high he set the bar for him­self with his first two films, Reprise and Oslo, August 31^st. The lat­ter, from 2011, saw the Nor­we­gian writer/​director reunite with his com­pa­tri­ot, Anders Daniel­son Lie, here play­ing a recov­er­ing junkie who sets about recon­nect­ing with old acquain­tances in a city where he used to belong. An emo­tion­al, haunt­ing film about learn­ing to final­ly let go of things lost. Read the review

The bruised dig­ni­ty of the work­ing class­es is cap­tured with mighty rap­ture in Tsai Ming-Liang’s alleged fea­ture swan song, Stray Dogs. Though tough to express the true flavour of it’s mucky splen­dour, you might say it’s a lit­tle like The Bicy­cle Thieves has been remade as a video instal­la­tion for an art gallery. It con­tains a shot of its main char­ac­ter, played by Tsai muse Lee Kang-Sheng, weep­ing con­tin­u­al­ly while dec­i­mat­ing a cab­bage with a face drawn on it as his chil­dren slum­ber near­by, which sure­ly must be con­sid­ered one of the shots of the decade. Read the review

It wasn’t until her star­ring role in Kathryn Bigelow’s ​“war on ter­ror” pro­ce­dur­al, Zero Dark Thir­ty, that Jes­si­ca Chas­tain rose in to the upper leagues of the Hol­ly­wood A‑list. And it’s easy to see why, as she is bril­liant as an unsmil­ing, pow­er-suit­ed CIA blood hound known only as Maya who is one of the key play­ers in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Writ­ten by Mark Boal, the film fol­lows her inves­ti­ga­tion, from flip­ping through piles of dusty loose-leaf files to cel­e­brat­ing with ground troops hold­ing high the head of their icon­ic tar­get. Read the review

Is Mr Turn­er Mike Leigh’s mag­num opus? It’s cer­tain­ly not hard to make the case that the vet­er­an British director’s biopic of the Roman­tic painter, JMW Turn­er, is the crown­ing achieve­ment of an illus­tri­ous career – so detailed and pre­cise is each brush­stroke that com­pris­es this two-and-a-half-hour por­trait of one of the most impor­tant artists of the 20^th cen­tu­ry. Tim­o­thy Spall’s aston­ish­ing, large­ly non-ver­bal cen­tral turn saw him pick up the Best Actor prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, and we’d have been quite hap­py had the film swept every major award on offer. A bona fide mas­ter­piece. Read the review

We don’t want to say that Greek direc­tor Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ best work is already behind him yet Dog­tooth is a per­fect encap­su­la­tion of his taste for sur­re­al sit­u­a­tions, black humour and dead­pan char­ac­ters. The con­cept is sim­ple. A man and a woman keep their grown-up chil­dren iso­lat­ed at home. Father tells elab­o­rate lies about the dan­gers of the world beyond. Sex, danc­ing and edu­ca­tion take place with­in the fam­i­ly com­pound, endured with star­ing eyes and inflec­tion-less voic­es. Humour comes from con­trast between com­posed per­for­mances and bursts of phys­i­cal com­e­dy. Ten­sion is con­stant. The pay-off is touch­ing­ly full of pos­si­bil­i­ty. Read the review

Chan­ning Tatum is the ripped par­ty boy strip­per with a twin­kle in his eye in this bois­ter­ous sequel which arguably improved on the 2012 orig­i­nal. It’s cer­tain­ly the clos­est that we’ve come this decade to an old fash­ioned MGM musi­cal, with Gre­go­ry Jacobs piec­ing togeth­er a series of lav­ish and play­ful­ly bawdy musi­cal set-pieces along the road to a giant strip­per con­ven­tion in Mia­mi. Though it’s a gang of bur­ley men that once again take cen­tre cen­tre, Mag­ic Mike XXL is also a beau­ti­ful cel­e­bra­tion of how female sex­u­al appetite knows no con­ven­tion­al size, shape or age. Read the review

It was inevitable that direc­tor Kel­ly Reichardt would even­tu­al­ly make a west­ern, such is her abid­ing inter­est how we nav­i­gate the pecu­liar climes of rur­al Amer­i­ca in films like Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. Meek’s Cut­toff is the very def­i­n­i­tion of a slow­burn treat, a clas­si­cal Ore­gon-set ​“oater” in which a wag­on trail head­ing across vast, acrid prairies is placed in dan­ger when its par­ty decide to take heed of a short cut sug­gest­ed by one Stephen Meek. Yet this film adopts the per­spec­tive of the female trav­ellers, how they are sum­mar­i­ly removed from the male-ori­ent­ed deci­sion mak­ing process that’s get­ting them into hot mess after hot mess. Read the review

Slow cin­e­ma lode­stone Jour­ney to the West comes across as Tsai’s bril­liant and clever attempt at auto-cri­tique, as he places the con­tem­pla­tive fun­da­men­tals of his cin­e­ma (as sym­bol­ised by Lee Kang-sheng and Denis Lavant) into the fran­tic, chat­ty, unwieldy mael­strom of mod­ern urban life. And yet this is not sim­ply an exer­cise in dry cinephillic acad­e­mia, but sees Tsai mak­ing sim­ple (yet pro­found) obser­va­tions about time, land­scape, human inter­ac­tion and how the more time we are giv­en to look at some­thing, the more oblique, unten­able and (per­haps) strange­ly beau­ti­ful it becomes.

Once a film becomes buried under pop­u­lar acclaim it’s easy to for­get how fresh it once felt. Noah Baum­bach and Gre­ta Gerwig’s most suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion is just a joy to watch. Sure, it’s about semi-seri­ous things like fig­ur­ing out what to do with your life while your best friend cracks on and leaves you behind, but the tone of deliv­ery and Gerwig’s earnest clum­si­ness are one long hoot. Well-observed social sce­nar­ios make up the nar­ra­tive spine as a 27-year-old dancer tries to go her own way with­out alien­at­ing every­one or sell­ing her­self short. The black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy and use of David Bowie’s ​‘Mod­ern Love’ suit Frances in all her classy, goofy whole-heart­ed­ness. Read the review

Read part 2 of our best films of the decade (so far) count­down and let us know your favourite films of the 2010s at @LWLies