Page 1 of 5 If comparing music from Gillian Welch and Outkast in our 50 Best Albums of the Decade is like apples and oranges, ranking films like Amélie, The Dark Knight and Mulholland Drive is more like apples, ice cream and foie gras. But despite the wild variety among our 50 Best Movies from, each is an exquisitely made, exceptionally satisfying piece of cinema that we believe will endure well after the decade has ended. There are masters like Martin Scorcese and Lars Von Trier, and relative newcomers like Fernando Meirelles and Anna Boden. There are documentaries, comedies and dramas, as well as animated films and even a super-hero flick. Mirroring a decade of globalism, the filmmakers are from the United States, New Zealand, Taiwan, Germany, Ireland, France, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Romania, Thailand, Brazil, and nearly every part of the U. K. Let these be our recommendations for your Netflix queue—or in the case of 21, a theater near you. Personally, after reading the loving descriptions in these pages, I’ve already got films I missed the first time around—like Syndromes and a Century and Beau Travail—on the way.— Josh Jackson, Paste editor-in-chief50. The Squid and the Whale (2005) Writer/ Director: Noah Baumbach Starring: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline Studio: Samuel Goldwyn Films Borrowing themes from his previous films—children of failed marriages; characters whose bookish smarts seem to work against them; a floating sense of fatalism— The Squid and the Whale creeps ever closer to Noah Baumbach’s own tempestuous past. His parents’ faltering union isn’t just a detail used to add depth to a certain character. It’s the whole story—a gorgeous, candid portrait of the messy car crash of divorce, from all angles. “ It’s hard to even put myself in the mindset of those movies anymore,” he told Paste in 2005. “ With Squid, these are.
The middle of a decade isn’t often a cause for reflection, but maybe it should be. We tend to break time down into whatever segments make sense, especially within art, fashion, and culture, where things move quickly and change significantly: The teen world of 1982’s Fast Times At Ridgemont High, for instance, is markedly different from the teen world of 1989’s Say Anything Inspired by our friends at Pitchfork, The Dissolve polled its regular contributors and some friends of the site about the best films released since January 1, 2010. We compiled the results in an effort to help give shape to the decade in progress, as the cinematic landscape keeps evolving around us. When the math was done, we found the results surprising, with a No. 1 none of us predicted. ( Though we probably should have.) Let’s start from the bottom and work our way up: Gravity ( Dir: Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) Gravity is the rare movie that manages to succeed on two contradictory fronts. On one hand, it’s a spectacle of massive visual scope that demands to be seen on the largest possible IMAX-ified screen. But it’s also perfectly correct to describe it as an intimate, borderline claustrophobic character study of a terrified but determined newbie astronaut deciding between life or death. Thanks to the famous marketing tagline for Alien, everybody knows that in space, no one can hear you scream. While watching Gravity in a theater, it’s difficult to hear, or even feel, yourself breathe. Gravity won seven Academy Awards out of the 10 for which it was nominated, including Oscars for direction, cinematography, editing, and visual effects. But what makes this a landmark work—one that, in five years, will likely rank on many best-of-the-decade lists—is the way it restores one’s faith in the promise of the modern blockbuster. Alfonso Cuarón and his collaborators raised the bar for awe-inspiring technical.
Inception (2010) X A thief, who steals corporate secrets through use of dream-sharing technology, is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO. (148 mins.) Director: Christopher Nolan Stars: Leonardo Di Caprio, Joseph Gordon- Levitt, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe Toy Story 3 (2010) X The toys are mistakenly delivered to a day-care center instead of the attic right before Andy leaves for college, and it's up to Woody to convince the other toys that they weren't abandoned and to return home. (103 mins.) Director: Lee Unkrich Stars: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty The Social Network (2010) X Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg creates the social networking site that would become known as Facebook, but is later sued by two brothers who claimed he stole their idea, and the co-founder who was later squeezed out of the business. (120 mins.) Director: David Fincher Stars: Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Rooney Mara How to Train Your Dragon (2010) X A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons, becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself, and learns there may be more to the creatures than he assumed. (98 mins.) Director: Dean De Blois, Chris Sanders Stars: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Christopher Mintz- Plasse, Craig Ferguson Kick- Ass (2010) X Dave Lizewski is an unnoticed high school student and comic book fan who one day decides to become a super-hero, even though he has no powers, training or meaningful reason to do so. (117 mins.) Director: Matthew Vaughn Stars: Aaron Taylor- Johnson, Nicolas Cage, Chloë Grace Moretz, Garrett M. Brown Black Swan (2010) X A committed dancer wins the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake.
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