The 2010s: the decade of Obama and Trump, hope and hate, dashed dreams and heightened anxiety, increasing interconnectedness that lead to both positive grassroots movements and sharper divisions, social media overload, hacks into our privacy and once sacred institutions, political chaos, and drones delivering both presents and bombs.

Personally, this was the decade I traveled abroad for the first time and ultimately visited six different countries. I advanced multiple rungs in my corporate career. I met an amazing woman – our first date was seeing the Roger Ebert documentary Life Itself – who I married. We then bought a wonderful old house together in a charming neighborhood, and became parents to an awesome little boy. I also published a novel, Then Came Darkness, that will likely always be my own sentimental favorite piece of work.

Film was right there with me every step of the way, mirroring the light (La La Land) and increasing darkness (most of Villeneuve’s output) in the world at large, sometimes in the breadth of the same film (Arrival, Drive, The Tree of Life).

It’s terms of consistency of output, Denis Villenueve had a banner decade and directed more list entries than any other auteur: Arrival, Enemy, Sicario, Blade Runner 2049. It was also a great decade for Ryan Gosling, who is the performer who shows up on more list entries than any other: Drive, La La Land, The Place Beyond the Pines, Blade Runner 2049. The Gos also brought my wife and I together as our shared love for him was one of the first topics of discussion the night we met at a rooftop party, both of us reluctant guests of mutual acquaintances. Her favorite Gos performance was Half Nelson, mine was Drive. We abhorred The Notebook. Both of us passed each other’s first test.

But I digress. Back to the decade at hand where some films reflected the anxious yet still somehow hopeful mood of the moment through depictions of complex modern relationship (Moonlight, Waves), while others just flat out broadcast our deepest modern anxieties (Take Shelter, Enemy, Sicario, Us). Still others looked back and reminded us there were times before ours even more tumultuous (Phoenix). Still others bent time (Inception, The Tree of Life, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives) while others stood austerely outside of any context and proved the timeless nature of art (Phantom Thread).

Some could’ve only been made with the boldness of young auteurs finding their voice (Moonlight, Us, Waves), while some could’ve only been made by a reflective master looking back on their career (The Irishman). Then there were others that could’ve only been made by auteurs in their prime (Arrival, Inception, Phoenix).

Yet some could’ve only been made by a depressed madman looking for the beauty in the end of the world (Melancholia). And still some blazed a trail so defiant in their logic and reason for being (a continuation of a series thought long dead directed by a senior citizen) that they perfectly reflected the madness of our times by showcasing an even madder future (Mad Max: Fury Road).

But the movie that I think about probably more than any other film of the decade; a film whose climax features a haunting, emotional, draining, and ultimately uplifting rendition of Sarah Vaughn’s “Speak Low” that was so memorable my wife and I later added it to our wedding song list; a film that I compared to such classics like The Third Man (routinely in my Top Five of All Time) and Hitchcock’s Notorious…is none other than Christian Petzold’s neo-noir psychological slow-burner about survivor’s guilt and hidden identities, Phoenix. Just as Nelly (played by Nina Hoss in a performance for the ages) survived her husband’s betrayal, WWII and the Holocaust, so did all of us looking back now survive the wild anxiety-riddled ebbs and flows of the 2010s. Phoenix is without a doubt, the greatest film of the decade.

Film	Year	Director	Decade Rank
Phoenix	2015	Christian Petzold	1
Phantom Thread	2017	Paul Thomas Anderson	2
If Beale Street Could Talk	2018	Barry Jenkins	3
Inception	2010	Christopher Nolan	4
The Tree of Life	2011	Terrence Malick	5
Mad Max: Fury Road	2015	George Miller	6
Waves	2019	Trey Edward Shults	7
Melancholia	2011	Lars Von Trier	8
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives	2011	Apichatpong Weerasethakul	9
Drive	2011	Nicolas Winding Refn	10
The Irishman	2019	Martin Scorsese	11
Arrival	2016	Denis Villeneuve	12
12 Years a Slave	2013	Steve McQueen	13
Winter’s Bone	2010	Debra Granik	14
Interstellar	2014	Christopher Nolan	15
Moonlight	2016	Barry Jenkins	16
La La Land	2016	Damien Chazelle	17
Cold War	2018	Pawel Pawlikowski	18
Lean on Pete	2018	Andrew Haigh	19
The Place Beyond the Pines	2013	Derek Cianfrance	20
Take Shelter	2011	Jeff Nichols	21
Biutiful	2010	Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu	22
Transit	2019	Christian Petzold	23
Us	2019	Jordan Peele	24
Personal Shopper	2017	Olivier Assayas	25
A Separation	2011	Asghar Farhadi	HM
Lincoln	2012	Steven Spielberg	HM
The Grey	2012	James Carnahan	HM
The Impossible	2012	Juan Antonio Bayona	HM
The Master	2012	Paul Thomas Anderson	HM
Gravity	2013	Alfonso Cuaron	HM
Inside Llewyn Davis	2013	The Coen Brothers	HM
Mud	2013	Jeff Nichols	HM
Blue Ruin	2014	Jeremy Saulnier	HM
Enemy	2014	Denis Villeneuve	HM
Sicario	2015	Denis Villeneuve	HM
The Salesman	2016	Asghar Farhadi	HM
Dunkirk	2017	Christopher Nolan	HM
Blade Runner 2049	2017	Denis Villeneuve	HM
Wind River	2017	Taylor Sheridan	HM
BlacKkKlansman	2018	Spike Lee	HM
Roma	2018	Alfonso Cuaron	HM

Written by D. H. Schleicher