The 50 best films of the decade (so far) – part 2

If you’ve missed the first part of our count­down of the best films of the decade so far, here’s what you need to know: recent­ly we asked our reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tors to pro­vide their per­son­al top 10s based on movies released dur­ing the first half of the 2010s – the indi­vid­ual results of which you can check out at the bot­tom of this page. Read on to find out what’s been vot­ed in at num­ber one…

Q. What’s the best thing Tim Bur­ton has done in the new mil­len­ni­um? A. Award­ing the Palme d’Or to Uncle Boon­mee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Apichat­pong Weerasethakul’s exot­ic, erot­ic excur­sion into an enchant­ed Thai jun­gle tran­scends time and geog­ra­phy to explore the lives of peo­ple both dead and alive, real and fic­tions, human and ani­mal – and some­times even com­bi­na­tions of the two. The cat­fish princess cun­nilin­gus sequence remains a saucy high­light. Read the review

Austria’s Mr Aus­tere arrived at the 2012 Cannes film fes­ti­val with a cin­e­mat­ic award sea­son bat­ter­ing ram in the form of his 10^th direc­to­r­i­al work, Amour. From when it first unspooled, there was no doubt that vic­to­ry was a fait accom­pli, such was the verve and finesse with which Haneke unrav­elled this sim­ple, terse tale of a mid­dle class cou­ple liv­ing out the final days of their lives in a cosy Parisian apart­ment. The process of phys­i­cal and men­tal decay is depict­ed with a mea­sure of cau­tious sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty as yet unseen in the director’s body of work, and the film is nudged to great­ness with the help of its two astound­ing leads, Jean-Louis Trintig­nant and Emmanuelle Riva. Read the review

If we’re allowed to wheel out that crit­i­cal cliché ​“a true orig­i­nal” just once for this sur­vey, then let’s do so for Leos Carax’s aggres­sive­ly doolal­ly Holy Motors. It stars the director’s muse and alter-ego, Denis Lavant, as a cor­po­rate stooge whose job involves trav­el­ling around Paris in a white Limo and adopt­ing var­i­ous guis­es along his strange tour of the cap­i­tal. Some see it as a pro­found dis­til­la­tion of what it means to make movies, some as a ram­bunc­tious spec­ta­cle of trans­gres­sion and beau­ty, while oth­ers see it as a bunch of ran­dom cob­blers. Read the review

When James Gray’s The Immi­grant pre­miered at the 2013 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, there were simul­ta­ne­ous cat-calls of ​“mas­ter­piece!” and ​“garbage!” at the very sec­ond its cred­its fad­ed onto the screen. And this clas­si­cal­ly-inclined saga con­cern­ing Mar­i­on Cotillard’s Pol­ish immi­grant attempt­ing to make a life for her­self in 1920s New York remains to this day as divi­sive as it was deemed by those hot-head­ed crit­ics, utter­ly beloved by some, while oth­ers glance upon its gold­en-hued frames with shrug­ging indif­fer­ence. See it and decide for your­self. Read the review

The prob­lem that comes with get­ting bet­ter with each sub­se­quent movie is that you’re wait­ing for the inevitable drop-off to occur. Thank­ful­ly, this hasn’t been a prob­lem for French direc­tor Mia Hansen-Løve who, in 2015, deliv­ered her best film yet in Eden, an inti­mate chron­i­cle of what it means to ascribe to that hack­neyed old cre­do, ​“live your dreams”. Tak­ing place in the world of ​’90s French house music, the impres­sive­ness of the film’s his­tor­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion and atten­tion to detail ran sec­ond to its grand and melan­cholic philo­soph­i­cal mus­ings, which cli­maxed in one of the most odd­ly mov­ing grace notes of the new mil­len­ni­um. Read the review

There were per­sis­tent rumours that Chilean expat direc­tor Raoul Ruiz invest­ed him­self ful­ly in some films, while oth­ers he sim­ply lost inter­est half way through and let oth­ers tie up the loose end. We’d haz­ard that his incred­i­ble six-part TV ser­i­al Mys­ter­ies of Lis­bon (which was released in UK cin­e­mas as a sin­gle film) is one that he took immense care over. Inspired by the 1854 nov­el of the same name by Cami­lo Caste­lo Bran­co, this wind­ing epic of famil­ial intrigue is full of emo­tion and intrigue, it’s like the plush­est and most per­fect­ly pho­tographed soap opera ever made.

The melan­cholic tru­ism that pho­tographs are a way for humans to out­live their bod­ies is the con­cept at the core of Manoel de Oliveira’s 2012 film which was made when the direc­tor was a spright­ly 101 years young. The film con­cerns a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who is com­mis­sioned to take pic­tures of a deceased (and stun­ning­ly beau­ti­ful) young woman, Anjel­i­ca, who mys­te­ri­ous­ly died on her wed­ding day. To con­fuse the mixed-up desires of this upstart artist, his sub­ject (or pos­si­bly her ghost?) comes to life as soon as he peeks through his viewfind­er. It’s an intox­i­cat­ing and sub­tly com­plex rid­dle on the nat­u­ral­ly reju­ve­nat­ing prop­er­ties of cinema.

Before Com­put­er Chess came along in 2013, Andrew Bujal­s­ki was known to all and sundry as ​‘that mum­blecore guy’ – now (at least to us) he’s ​‘that mum­blecore guy who made one of the most sur­pris­ing and best films of the decade’. Set in the ​’80s over a week­end-long chess tour­na­ment con­test­ed by a group of com­put­er pro­gram­mer supern­erds, this ultra lo-fi micro mar­vel from the Beeswax and Mutu­al Appre­ci­a­tion direc­tor arrived com­plete­ly out of left field and left us singing the prais­es of a film­mak­er seem­ing­ly chan­nelling the exper­i­men­tal spir­it of Robert Alt­man. Read the review

Most would be hard pressed to select the best ever Juli­ette Binoche per­for­mance, but there’s no doubt that her cen­tral turn Abbas Kiarostami’s aston­ish­ing walk­ing-and-talk­ing two han­der, Cer­ti­fied Copy, would be close to the top of the stack. The film itself is a bal­anc­ing act of nuance and inflec­tion, with the direc­tor ask­ing us inter­ro­gate the nature of the rela­tion­ship being placed before us as it twists, writhes and alters from scene to scene. Read the review

That title is of course iron­ic, as what Jafar Panahi aims to prove with this inti­mate por­trait of cre­ative impris­on­ment is that a ​“film­mak­ing ban” is a pun­ish­ment that is whol­ly impos­si­ble to uphold. He illus­trates this through a range of means, whether cap­tur­ing the innate­ly cin­e­mat­ic and dra­mat­ic goings on of his direct envi­rons, or talk­ing through the plot of an unmade film which was deemed too prob­lem­at­ic by the state. A major act of polit­i­cal defi­ance which proves that, when it comes to heart­felt self-expres­sion, you can’t keep a good man down. Read the review

The sec­ond film Iran­ian direc­tor Jafar Panahi has made while under strict instruc­tions from his gov­ern­ment to desist from mak­ing films, this one is a slight­ly more fleshed out pro­duc­tion than his pre­vi­ous, This Is Not a Film, yet it still betrays all the hall­marks of a film made under oppres­sive restric­tions. This auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal tale con­cerns a man and his dog who hole them­selves in a house, close all the cur­tains, while he pro­ceeds to get some screen­writ­ing done. The film is then thrown into sharp relief, mutat­ing into some­thing else entire­ly, when a mys­te­ri­ous female char­ac­ter pays a vis­it. Read the review

I once went home with a man I met at a bus stop because he said that he also loved Don Hertzfeldt’s 62-minute ani­ma­tion about the ail­ing health of a stick­man named Bill. When it came out on a very lim­it­ed release in 2012, I saw It’s Such A Beau­ti­ful Day three times and each time felt clos­er to under­stand­ing the secrets of the uni­verse. It’s all there: the sil­ly embar­rass­ments, the stu­pid humour, the inher­it­ed suf­fer­ing, the desire for love, the iso­la­tion, the yearn­ing, the mem­o­ries, the bursts of tran­quil­i­ty, all evoked with basic line draw­ings amped up by flash­es of Mal­ick­ian nature pho­tog­ra­phy under­scored, fit­ting­ly, with the greats of clas­si­cal music. Read the review

The sto­ry of how Har­vard cod­ing whizz Mark Zucker­berg birthed the social media behe­moth that would become the tem­plate for glob­al human com­mu­ni­ca­tion in the 21^st cen­tu­ry, The Social Net­work is not only remark­able for its time­li­ness but for the way direc­tor David Finch­er and screen­writer Aaron Sorkin’s derive first-rate dra­ma from seem­ing­ly ordi­nary and mun­dane sit­u­a­tions – Andrew Garfield’s ​“you bet­ter lawyer up, ass­hole!” tirade being our favourite of many mem­o­rable exam­ples. Zodi­ac is Fincher’s best film, but The Social Net­work runs it a close sec­ond. Read the review

Con­ven­tion­al plots are so 2004. Fol­low­ing a long stretch of pro­fes­sion­al silence, Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien returned with a sin­gu­lar and majes­tic take on the mar­tial arts movie. Though osten­si­bly about a female assas­sin embroiled in famil­ial and polit­i­cal intrigue dur­ing the Tang dynasty, every­thing that makes its way into the frame is of vital impor­tance, from the wafts of smoke, the arch­ing tree-line, the shafts of morn­ing light or the gor­geous inte­ri­or drapes. Indeed, if this was a poll of the decades best on-screen fur­nish­ings, this was sure­ly be in with a crack at the top spot.

Todd Haynes’ crit­i­cal dar­ling deserved­ly rides high in this sur­vey, a tes­ta­ment not only to the immac­u­late beau­ty of its con­struc­tion and artistry, but to the gen­tle vehe­mence with which it tack­les its cen­tral themes what we talk about when we talk about love. Cate Blanchett whisks har­ried bour­geois fury into the title role, while Rooney Mara answers any detrac­tors she might have by deliv­er­ing a per­for­mance that’s unshowy but heav­ing with nuance and bare­ly exhumed emo­tion. Read the review

Good­bye indeed. In the years lead­ing up to the release of Jean-Luc Godard’s 75-minute cav­al­cade of sounds, images and ideas, there was evi­dence to sug­gest that the direc­tor had long been try­ing to for­mu­late the best part­ing ges­ture for the process of con­ven­tion­al writ­ten and spo­ken com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Yet the ​“lan­guage” referred to in the title is also the lan­guage and gram­mar of cin­e­ma itself, as JLG does every­thing in his vast pow­er to realign the norms of how we read a movie, and it’s a daz­zling feat. Read the review

For a film which makes the case for the indi­vid­ual being alone in an unfeel­ing uni­verse, it’s heart­en­ing­ly iron­ic that Ken­neth Lonergan’s Mar­garet was saved from being entire­ly swept under the rug by a band of crit­ics going by the con­tem­po­rary moniker of #Team­Mar­garet. Fol­low­ing months of spec­u­la­tion regard­ing its run­time, who was edit­ing it, whether it would receive a fes­ti­val pre­mière and whether it direc­tor had even approved the final ver­sion, the film which was final­ly released assured that the long wait for Lon­er­gan to fol­low-up his excel­lent You Can Count on Me was more than worth it. A ram­bling exis­ten­tial para­ble in the Eric Rohmer mould, the film sees Anna Paquin’s enti­tled brad Lisa sud­den­ly change her stripes when she wit­ness­es a woman killed in a bus crash, pos­si­bly the result of her dis­tract­ing the dri­ver. It rejects a clean nar­ra­tive arc in favour of watch­ing Lisa unpick this tough eth­i­cal conun­drum. Read the review

Thir­ty years after Aus­tralian vision­ary George Miller took the throt­tle off his post-apoc­a­lyp­tic action fran­chise with Beyond Thun­der­dome, audi­ences received anoth­er hard shot of adren­a­line and diesel with 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. Through­out the film’s trou­bled pro­duc­tion his­to­ry, per­haps the most encour­ag­ing news for fans of the orig­i­nal tril­o­gy was the cast­ing of Tom Hardy as the epony­mous road war­rior. But, as it turned out, it was Char­l­ize Theron who real­ly put the ped­al to the met­al as skin­head MVP, Imper­a­tor Furiosa, giv­ing the film an unex­pect­ed fem­i­nist twist. As unadul­ter­at­ed joyrides go, they don’t come much bet­ter than this. Read the review

What is the mark of a tru­ly great direc­tor? Using Miguel Gomes’ 2012 fea­ture Tabu as an exam­ple, you could say that it’s the abil­i­ty to make your view­er weep salt tears by play­ing a Ramones cov­er of ​‘Baby, I Love You’ on your sound­track. This two part explo­ration into per­son­al and col­lec­tive mem­o­ry sees a elder­ly Por­tuguese house­wife struck by a fever dream in her dying moments as she recalls her youth in Cape Verde which just hap­pens to resem­ble the tales of loved-up colo­nials spun by Mer­chant Ivory. A per­fect fusion of the iron­ic and the sin­cere. Read the review

Remem­ber­ing pro­found expe­ri­ences takes you right back to when they hap­pened. I was at the Human Rights Watch Film Fes­ti­val in 2013 when Joshua Oppenheimer’s film revealed the rad­i­cal pow­er of human­is­tic jour­nal­is­tic doc­u­men­tary mak­ing. To engage with the boast­ful per­pe­tra­tors of the 1965 Indone­sian geno­cide and emerge with har­row­ing­ly detailed tes­ti­monies is bold enough. To weave those tes­ti­monies into an imag­i­na­tive cin­e­mat­ic sto­ry ele­vat­ed by philo­soph­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal insight into what enables a human to kill anoth­er human is a rais­ing of the bar for all pur­su­ing a bet­ter world. Read the review

Oscar Isaac has been in demand ever since the Coen Broth­ers cast him as ​’60s folk singer, Llewyn Davis. The film’s colours have a mat­te qual­i­ty con­jur­ing the cold­ness that sur­rounds our anti-hero as he touts his music to an ambiva­lent world. Hilar­i­ous sequences [‘Out­er … Space’] are all ground­ed by Llewyn’s sar­don­ic tem­pera­ment. Adam Dri­ver, Carey Mul­li­gan, and a mar­malade cat named Ulysses are on aston­ish­ing form. The flake of back­sto­ry that nes­tles into place at the half-way point trans­forms an acer­bic com­e­dy into one of the sad­dest and most sin­cere char­ac­ter dra­mas that the Coens have ever made. Read the review

The crossover between The Church of Sci­en­tol­ogy and Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1950s-set film about an organ­i­sa­tion called The Cause is there for all to see. But the process­es by which a mes­sian­ic leader tries to inter­vene in the fate of a trau­ma­tised World War Two vet is but a foil for explor­ing a twist­ed, touch­ing, tor­tured rela­tion­ship. Each man has his obses­sions, each is delight­ed by the oth­er. Philip Sey­mour Hoff­mann and Joaquin Phoenix give won­drous lay­ered per­for­mances. When Hoff­man sings, ​‘I’d like to get you on a slow boat to Chi­na’ it feels like a hymn to love pulled apart by the world. Read the review

The star of Richard Linklater’s Boy­hood is not the boy (Ellar Coltrane), his mum (Patri­cia Arquette), his dad (Ethan Hawke) or his sis­ter (Lorelei Lin­klater). It’s not his friends or the girl he sleeps with or the pas­sions that slow­ly form. The star is time itself: the 12 years over which the film was made; the mean­ing­ful moments that erupt then pass, the sense that Lin­klater has cap­tured the bit­ter­sweet force that pro­pels us all onwards, hold­ing us in its immutable log­ic until we’re gone. Read the review

For those who val­ue such things, there’s a con­sen­sus grow­ing which sug­gests that the direc­tor Ter­ence Mal­ick might be run­ning on cre­ative vapours at the moment. His fol­low-up to The Tree of Life, To The Won­der, seemed to cement a grudg­ing scorn afford­ed in some quar­ters to his majes­tic Palme d’Or win­ner, while his most recent work, Knight of Cups, looks to be a com­mer­cial write-off even before it has been offi­cial­ly let out the traps. But The Tree of Life is a film which bel­lows to the rafters with ela­tion and dis­en­chant­ment on the fol­ly of human exis­tence. It’s a yel­low­ing pho­to album brought to life and the cul­mi­na­tion of a grand artis­tic cor­pus. While it boast­ed big movie stars like Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, this film extracts the essence of sci­ence fic­tion, social real­ism, fam­i­ly dra­ma and even under­ground exper­i­men­ta­tion to forge a glo­ri­ous, panoram­ic splash paint­ing of unbri­dled emo­tion­al hon­esty. It attempts to answer The Big One: what the hell are we all doing here? Read the review

Defin­ing what makes an endur­ing­ly great film is a sub­jec­tive busi­ness. One mea­sure that leans towards objec­tiv­i­ty is whether a film reveals every­thing it has on first view­ing. Under the Skin does no such thing. Jonathan Glaz­er has craft­ed a cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence built to with­stand count­less watch­es. It plays on con­trasts in sen­su­al­i­ty. Mica Levi’s score is a com­bi­na­tion of somber bass drums and abra­sive­ly shrill strings, the alien’s lair fea­tures a semi-clad siren padding across a vis­cous black swamp, Glas­gow is shown as an ugly urban sprawl sur­round­ed by breath­tak­ing nat­ur­al vis­tas, mega-star Scar­lett Johans­son dri­ves a bland tran­sit van.

Images and sounds and events com­bine with hyp­not­ic pow­er but what is it all about? An alien that wants to undo her dead­ly nature? The dif­fi­cul­ty of form­ing con­nec­tions with humans? Even though some of the best post-film con­ver­sa­tions I’ve ever had have involved peo­ple shar­ing their rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent inter­pre­ta­tions of Under the Skin, hack­ing to the heart of its nar­ra­tive doesn’t mat­ter. What mat­ters is the exhil­a­rat­ing feel­ing that you’ve been to anoth­er world and seen life from a new per­spec­tive. No doubt every­body that helped vote this film in at num­ber one has done so for their own rea­sons and this is what makes Under the Skin great: its abil­i­ty to unite us in our oth­er­ness. Read the review

What have been your favourite films of the decade so far? Check out our con­trib­u­tors’ per­son­al lists and leave yours below or tweet it to us @LWLies