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40) INCEPTION (2010)

Inception is one of the most universally-recognized great movies of the 2010s, and while I don’t quite think it’s the masterpiece that some people make it out to be, I do think that it deserves a lot of the praise it gets. Where I find the movie excels the most is in its originality and reality-bending visuals, and so this makes for quite a unique movie-watching experience. I don’t have a lot to say about this one that hasn’t been said a million times, but it definitely does deserve a spot on this list.

39) WONDER (2017)

Wonder was perhaps one of the most heartwarming movies I’ve seen this decade. The movie is about August Pullman, a young boy with a facial deformity, that is entering public school for the first time. The movie naturally deals with the struggles Auggie faces due to his condition, but this also leads to the movie having a wonderful amount of heart. It does something interesting where it tells its story from multiple perspectives, and so it has a lot to say about remembering that no one’s lives are perfect, but that despite all of that, there’s still beauty in everyone.

38) MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT (2018)

We’ve already seen the other two Mission: Impossible movies from this decade make the list, but the newest entry in the series, Fallout, is actually the best of the best. This entry has some of the most exciting action sequences I’ve seen on film, period, and it blends everything that has made this series great in such a seamless and exciting way. This has been the pinnacle of the series so far, and it’s only made me even more excited to see what the future brings for it.

37) PRISONERS (2013)

Prisoners is one of the most intense entries on this list. It’s all about a man named Keller, whose daughter goes missing. Keller is unsatisfied with the police’s progress in their investigation, so he decides to take matters into his own hands. He finds the man that is the prime suspect, and keeps him as his hostage until he gets some information out of him. Prisoners is an exploration of how far a man is willing to go, and how much of himself he’s willing to lose in the process, in order to find his child. This has some amazing performances from both Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, and was one of the most intense movies I’ve seen this decade.

36) GONE GIRL (2014)

I mentioned The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo earlier on this list as an amazing David Fincher-directed movie adaptation of a book, but Gone Girl is even better. Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne, whose wife Amy goes missing. The news makes headlines, and Nick soon becomes a prime suspect in the case, despite all of his objections that he had nothing to do with it. Gone Girl plays with you in really fun ways, constantly making you question what’s really going on. It has some really shocking twists and turns as well, which ultimately make Gone Girl one of the best mystery thrillers of the decade.

35) INCREDIBLES 2 (2018)

I was never actually one of the biggest fans of the original Incredibles movie, which is kind of surprising given how much I like superheroes. I think it’s great, but I didn’t connect with it as much as some people, which is why I never really clamored for a sequel like others did. This is why it became all the more surprising that I loved Incredibles 2 as much as I did. I think that this is the rare sequel that’s genuinely superior to its predecessor, but I had an amazing time with this movie. Not only was the story more interesting to me, but the villain was nothing short of fantastic. This was an insanely surprising sequel hit for me.

34) MARRIAGE STORY (2019)

I’ve brought up a lot of my favorite modern horror movies on this, but none of those movies scared the shit out of me as much as Marriage Story did. The title is actually a bit of a misnomer, since it’s about a married couple who are going through a divorce. It shows all of the insane hardships that come with a divorce, most notably involving what’s going to happen to their son. It shows just how ugly this process can get, and how two people who once loved each other more than anything in the world can get to the point of absolutely hating each other. This movie fucked me up hard, and made me afraid to ever have to face the possibility of going through what the characters here do. This was one of the powerful movies of the decade.

33) THE LEGO MOVIE (2014)

The Lego Movie is something that shouldn’t be as good as it is. What could have easily come across as nothing more than an overblown commercial for Legos, The Lego Movie delivered something that was insanely fun and creative. Featuring some amazing Lego-mation and an adventure that’s such an enjoyable ride to join on, The Lego Movie reminded me of what it was like to be a kid and craft together exciting adventures for your toys to go on.

32) DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2014)

I’ve already talked about the other two movies in the modern Planet of the Apes reboot series, but Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is quite possibly the best of the trilogy. While I might argue that Rise has a stronger rewatchability factor, Dawn feels like the overall stronger film for me. It’s a sequel that took a much darker tone than the first movie, and showcased a war between humans and apes that only began at the end of Rise. Plus, there is an amazing conflict between two of the main apes here, Caesar and Koba. While I think all three of the movies in the trilogy are pretty comparable in quality, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes showcases most of what made this modern trilogy so special.

31) THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (2013)

The Wolf of Wall Street was definitely one of the more controversial films at the time of its release. The movie told the true story of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who lived an insane life and did whatever he had to in order to get richer. Some have criticized the movie for reveling in the debauchery depicted, but I considered it an experience of laughing at how insane the characters were rather than laughing with them. Regardless of how you feel, I don’t think it can be argued that The Wolf of Wall Street is one of the most honest depictions you’ll find of its subject matter, and doesn’t try to shy away from any of its crude elements or paint its characters in a better light than they deserve. It’s a movie that recognizes its characters for what they are, and shows the insane lives that they lived.

30) 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE (2016)

10 Cloverfield Lane was a quasi-sequel to the first Cloverfield movie in 2008, but the movies are seemingly not connected at all until the last 10 minutes or so. This is a totally different movie in tone, and I absolutely loved it for what it was. Where the first movie was a found-footage monster movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane is actually more of a one-location psychological thriller. It’s all about a woman who wakes up and finds herself in an underground bunker with only two other men. She doesn’t know how she got there, but the men tell her that she’s unable to go outside due to a widespread chemical attack that will kill her if she steps outside. Part of the fun of the movie is wondering whether or not these men are keeping her hostage or just actually trying to help. This movie featured one of the most amazing performances I’ve ever seen from John Goodman, who is truly terrifying in his role. Believe it or not, this movie would actually rank even higher on my list if it weren’t for a pretty awful ending, because up until the last 10 minutes it’s an absolute masterpiece.

29) ZOOTOPIA (2016)

While I did love the Disney princess movies, it was actually Zootopia that ended up being my favorite non-Pixar movie of the 2010s. This one came out of nowhere and blew me away way more than I was expecting, being about much deeper issues than the trailers would suggest. It’s all about a fox and a bunny working together on a case in a city of anthropomorphic animals, and this is all a cover for a movie that deals with issues like racism very seriously. Make no mistake, Zootopia was one of the most important movies of the decade, and is way better than you might think.

28) INSIDE OUT (2015)

Equally impressive is Pixar’s original film from 2015, Inside Out. This was an important and brilliant movie in a much different way than Zootopia, though. Pixar has had a history of making movies about personifying inanimate objects, but in this movie they do this with more abstract concepts: emotions. We follow a little girl named Riley, who is experiencing an emotional rollercoaster as she’s uprooted from the life she knows to move somewhere far away. Throughout this process, the emotions inside her head are given tangible attributes and treated like separate people, and it’s their job to help Riley regulate what she’s feeling. This was an absolutely brilliant movie, and one of Pixar’s all-time bests.

27) AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018)

Avengers: Infinity War is part 1 of the largest culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It featured the heroes in the Avengers fighting Thanos, a villain who’s been lurking in the shadows for six years worth of movies. This is the ultimate team-up movie, and it’s incredibly impressive how Marvel managed to balance all of their heroes and give them all the screen-time they deserve. The real reason that Infinity War went down as one of Marvel’s best movies, though, is the ending. It featured a really shocking ending (or a “I didn’t think they’d actually go there” ending if you’re familiar with the comics), and left everyone in the theater heartbroken. This was the ultimate “part 1” movie.

26) ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (2019)

Director Quentin Tarantino has always enjoyed making his period pieces, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is set in the late 1960s. He wanted to make a movie about the Manson murders at the time, while also showing what Hollywood culture was like at the time, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a nice blend of these elements. We see fictional characters Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth in a “slice of life” style plot, as we also see Sharon Tate living out her last days before being murdered. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood always keeps you guessing though, and features some really interesting twists that definitely fall under the category of “revisionist history,” but regardless, it’s brilliant the whole way through.

25) STAR WARS: EPISODE VII – THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015)

Most movies have made this list because of “objective” quality or personal enjoyment, but Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is the rare movie that is as high as it is on this list because of a movie-going experience. I was definitely a big Star Wars fan growing up, and so I was as excited as I could possibly be when The Force Awakens came out. As I’ve gotten older, I tend to watch movies in a more critical lens than I used to, and so it’s rare that I wind up just getting consumed by hype and letting that carry me the whole way through. While I do still assert that The Force Awakens is a very strong Star Wars movie (it’s actually my second favorite of the franchise), the reason why I remember it as fondly as I do is because it’s one of the best experiences I’ve had at the movies in my entire life, period.

24) BEFORE MIDNIGHT (2013)

If nothing else, I’d like to use this time to tell you why the “Before” trilogy is one of the best movie trilogies ever made. Before Sunrise came out in 1995, and it’s probably my favorite romance movie of all time. It’s a brilliant movie from Richard Linklater, and basically has the entire movie be one long conversation between two characters that meet and fall in love. It’s rare that we ever get sequels to romance movies since most people like their “happily ever after” endings, but Before Sunset came out in 2004 and continued the story in a really interesting way. Now, Before Midnight is the third in the series, and since the movies came out 9 years apart, we get to actually follow a couple in real time, seeing them at various stages of life. Before Midnight shows the characters now in their 40s, and is perhaps the most dramatic and least lovey of the three movies. It deals with a couple that’s now fully in their adult stage of their relationship, and how they have to navigate the challenges that come with that. For how high this is on my list, Before Midnight is actually my least favorite of the trilogy, believe it or not, so that tells you how amazing these movies are. These are some of the most under-appreciated movies ever, but I think they’re amazing.

23) THE HUNGER GAMES (2012)

It’s fitting that The Hunger Games is ranked so closely to The Force Awakens, because it’s this high on my list for the same exact reasons. Like I said in my Catching Fire entry, I was a huge fan of the book series, and so I was insanely excited for the movie adaptation to come out. I let that excitement overtake me when I went to see The Hunger Games, and I had an amazing time and thought it was the perfect adaptation. Since then, I have been able to recognize the flaws that some people point out, but I still absolutely loved this movie when I first saw it.

22) KUNG FURY (2015)

This is the movie on the list that’s most debatable for being called a “movie,” since it’s only a half hour long, but I wanted to include it anyways. This is one of the most over-the-top movies I’ve ever seen, and its entire half-hour runtime is nothing but pure bliss. I was laughing for 30 minutes straight with this, because it’s so intentionally cheesy that I couldn’t help but have fun. It’s designed to look like an old VHS film from the 80s, and has some real style. If you want some cheesy one-liners and over-the-top, ridiculous action, check out Kung Fury.

21) SHUTTER ISLAND (2010)

Shutter Island is one of the most underrated movies of the decade, and so I definitely wanted to highlight how amazing it is here. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a U.S. Marshal that goes to a place called Shutter Island to investigate the disappearance of a murderer from a mental hospital for the criminally insane. This was one of the most fascinating mysteries I’ve seen this decade, and also one of the best thrillers. This is always one of those movies I don’t want to spoil for anyone that hasn’t seen it, but it definitely deserves more attention than it gets.

NEXT: #20-1