The Top Twelve Films of the 2010s from The Danny’s

It’s the end of the decade, which means every film critic has to rush out their top movies of the 2010s list. Here at the Danny’s, we can’t let that opportunity go to waste. I’ve been awarding my personal movie awards since 2012. Going back over those, I sometimes found myself wondering what the hell I was thinking. That fact makes me wonder how much I’ll want to change this list in a few years. But it doesn’t matter. It’s the last week of the decade. The top films of the last ten years must be named. Most people only give their top ten. Because I am a rebel, I am listing twelve…

12. 2019 Placeholder

…Well, really eleven. Let’s face it, movies released in the last year of a decade get the shaft when it comes to these top of the decade lists. It’s impossible to see everything in time to publish your list before the end of December. It’s even harder to evaluate how something you’ve just seen compares to a movie you might have watched five times in the last ten years. I’ve seen at least two movies so far this year that could easily rate a place on my top films of the 2010s list. And there are a few more I haven’t seen that for all I know might also be that great. I am leaving a place open in honor of whatever 2019 film should be here.

11. Paperman

Honestly, seeing Paperman for the first time might have been my favorite movie-watching experience of the decade. This charming six-and-a-half-minute work of black & white animation appeared before Wreck-It Ralph in theaters and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short. The story is told without words and follows a young man stuck in a mundane job as he tries to connect with a beautiful woman he saw on the train. A mixture of CGI and hand-drawn animation brings director John Kahrs and writers Cilo Chiang & Kari Wahlgren’s beautiful paper airplane filled vision to life. It’s probably not fair to judge this short piece of perfection against feature-length films, but it still deserves a place on my list. You can buy Paperman for $1.99 on YouTube. It’s worth every penny.

10. The Entire Marvel Cinematic Universe

Sorry Martin Scorsese, but I am coming down on the side of Marvel and declaring that superhero movies are cinema. Moviegoing is more than seeing serious, highbrow films. There’s a long tradition of crowd-pleasing pure entertainment as well. Would Marty say that Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark aren’t cinema? It may be a cheat to lump every Marvel movie of the decade under one heading, but that’s the way they have been designed. Producer Kevin Feige has overseen all of the Marvel films at Disney and is probably the filmmaker of the decade with the box office to prove it. Some of the MCU movies are great (Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy); some of them not so much (Iron Man 2, Guardians of the Galaxy 2), but they all come together to form a grand vision. If that’s not cinema, I don’t know what is.

9. The Big Sick

Top films of the decade lists are hard to make. Do you go with pictures that made a great statement? Ones that pushed moviemaking past new boundaries? Films with a capital ‘F’ that are exquisite works of art? Maybe all of the above. But I also think you have to include the movies that you liked the most. I don’t know that any movie made me happier while watching it than The Big Sick. Based on the real-life love affair between Muslim immigrant Kumail Nanjani and American Emily V. Gordon, the movie has more laughs and heart than most rom-coms combined. Nanjani and Gordon co-wrote the script, and Nanjani is both hilarious and heartbreaking as he relives the story of how they met and how Emily’s serious illness changed their lives. Movies like this one never seem to make these kinds of lists. They should.

8. Phantom Thread

When I awarded this my Best Picture of 2017 Danny, I noted that it was a film about sewing, fashion, sibling rivalry, love, lust, control, submission, routine, breakfast, misophonia, creative things to do with mushrooms, and more. What more could you ask for out of a movie? Paul Thomas Anderson’s pictures are always fascinating, but definitely not for everyone’s filmgoing tastes. I haven’t been a fan of all of them either, but the darkly comic universe Anderson created with this one kept me riveted to see what would happen next. Phantom Thread was supposedly Daniel Day-Lewis’ last film as an actor as well. I hope that’s not the case, but, if so, it was a fitting role to end his career.

7. Ex Machina

Hollywood has been telling stories about the rise of intelligent machines and their relationship with humanity for almost as long as they have been making movies. These films are usually epic in scope (Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey) or action-oriented (The Matrix and the never-ending Terminator franchise). Alex Garland’s Ex Machina takes this idea in a different direction. With a small cast and a story that would work just as well on a stage, he raises thought-provoking questions about how computers and their creators will co-exist in the future. Oscar Isaac, one of our most underrated actors, plays the type of slightly mad genius who will likely lead this revolution. Domhnall Gleeson turns in another strong performance as his unwitting human test subject. But Alicia Vikander steals the show by outshining the Oscar-winning special effects as the possibly self-aware android who might have some ideas of her own.

6. Locke

It’s rare to see a movie that tells its story in a unique way. My Best Picture of 2014 is one of the tensest films of the decade, even though it almost wholly takes place inside of a car. Tom Hardy is the driver speaking to many different people on his phone (hands-free for safety, of course!). His job and marriage are both on the brink of falling apart as he speeds towards a responsibility he has to keep. Steven Knight wrote and directed this high wire balancing act that proves a movie can be suspenseful without shootouts or car chases. There’s nothing wrong with films that use either of those things, but it’s refreshing to see a movie that tries for something more original.

5. Her

Because I make up the rules when I give out the Danny’s, I presented three Best Picture awards in 2013 to Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and Her. With apologies to the other two very good films, that tie can now be considered broken. Spike Jonze’s Oscar-winning script for Her was my favorite screenplay of the decade. Like Ex Machina, the story tackles the way that intelligent machines will change our lives. This film focuses more on the human side of the equation as Joaquin Phoenix plays a lonely man who falls in love with his phone’s operating system. Scarlett Johansson voices the OS, and if Siri ever is programmed into something this intelligent and becoming, Apple’s stock price will continue to skyrocket. Both human and machine evolve over the course of the story in different and unpredictable ways. It will not surprise me if this movie plays more like a documentary in decades to come.

4. Toy Story 3

Movies from the first year of a decade are often shortchanged as much as those from a decade’s last year on these lists. Toy Story 3 did not show up on any of the top ten or even top one hundred lists of the 2010s I saw. Maybe people forgot about it or perhaps it’s that pesky ‘3’ in the title. The third movie in any franchise should not be this great. There wasn’t a better scene in any film from the last ten years as the final one this Pixar classic. If College-bound Andy giving up his beloved toys to toddler Bonnie didn’t bring a tear to your eye, check your pulse because you are probably dead. It was the perfect ending to the Toy Story franchise…until Disney went for the cash grab and made Toy Story 4. I almost wish I could have hated the 4th installment just to have something to complain about. I can’t, though. It’s still pretty great. As I wrote earlier this year, the entire franchise is a bit of a miracle. And Toy Story 3 is an all-time classic.

3. The Social Network

Another film from 2010, The Social Network gets to the heart of the number one cultural phenomenon of our time. Just telling the story of the founding of Facebook would be fascinating in itself. Director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin do much more by using the (admittedly somewhat fictionalized) life of Mark Zuckerberg to explore how social media is impacting ourselves and our society. Do platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat make us more connected with each other or less? At the end of the film, Jesse Eisenberg’s triumphant yet deflated Zuckerberg sits waiting for a response to a friend request sent to his former girlfriend. It’s as if he’s waiting for an answer to the larger question as well. Nearly ten years later, I think it remains unresolved.

2. Inside Out

I don’t think it’s been the best decade for Pixar. Like everything else Disney has gobbled up, it is milking the platform for every precious cent it can squeeze out. Despite that, Pixar rates two of the top four spots on my list, so they are still doing many things right. Great animation can transport audiences to places other forms of storytelling have a hard time getting to. Inside Out does a masterful job going to one of the most mysterious locations of all: the human mind. As my favorite poster for the movie says, “Every day is full of emotion.” Director Pete Docter and a team of writers dive deep into the turbulent brain of 11-year old Riley as she and her family relocate from Minnesota to San Francisco. Turning the emotions of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust into characters responsible for operating Riley’s brain, the movie takes viewers on a hilarious and, yes, emotion-filled ride. All our feelings, especially extreme opposites like Joy and Sadness, only work when we balance the right amount of each. Inside Out’s fresh approach to telling that story makes me hopeful that Pixar will continue to make great films like this into the next decade and beyond.

1. Arrival

I am a sucker for intelligent science fiction, so my Best Picture of 2016 being at the top of my best of the decade list is not a surprise. Much like animation, sci-fi opens up a world of possibilities to storytellers. No film touched me as profoundly over the last decade as Arrival. On the face of it, the story is a simple one. Aliens have landed with no explanation, and humanity has to figure out what they want. While many movies take this premise in an action-oriented direction, Arrival has a more thoughtful approach. If we ever come in contact with an alien species, the first hurdle will be how we communicate with them. It’s easy for a writer just to make up some kind universal translator so that even the weirdest tentacled creatures speak English. Real-life won’t be so easy. Centering the movie around a linguist is a masterstroke. Amy Adams is always phenomenal and does a phenomenal job playing the grief-stricken woman tasked with figuring out how to communicate with the aliens. Denis Villeneuve’s film, taken from a novella by Ted Chiang, plays with the notions of both language and time. Adams’ character is faced with some difficult questions when the two intertwine. The answers that come are not easy, but they get at the heart of what it means to be alive.

There are at least ten more movies that could have shown up on my list. If I did this exercise again next week, next month, or next year, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them did. Here they are in alphabetical order: The Big Short, Boyhood, Drive, The Edge of Seventeen, Get Out, Hugo, Inception, Moonrise Kingdom, Under the Skin, The Wolf of Wall Street.