The "Best" Movies of the Decade

There were over 6000 movies released in U.S. theaters in the last decade – a staggering number – and anyone claiming to list the “best” of the decade first has to provide a disclaimer that they can only rate what they’ve seen.  For me, I watched approximately 240 films released within the last ten years, and I’ll undoubtedly add another 20 or so soon as I catch up on movies I’ve missed.  Case in point: I haven’t yet seen “Bohemian Rhapsody” or the Paddington movies because they’re not yet available for rental on Prime, so there they sit in my watchlist.  I’ll get to them eventually.

In the meantime, I’d like to share what I think are the best movies of the decade out of the 240 I’ve seen.  The word “best” is open to interpretation, of course.  Do we mean the movies we enjoyed the most?  Those films that moved us the most?  Those that we consider the most important?  For my list, I chose films from all three categories.  Some I just enjoyed the hell out of, some brought me to tears or gave me chills, and others resonated with me for days or weeks or months as I pondered their impact.  All are worthy movie-going experiences.  As a society, we tend not to reward the first category enough and tend to reward the middle category too much.  We’re suckers for sentimentality.  I’ve tried not to lean too far forward in any one direction.

First, my top ten, in order of release date:

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Beginners
Searching for Sugar Man
Silver Linings Playbook
Argo
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Birdman
The Big Short
Arrival
First Reformed

“Beginners” gets my favorite film of the decade vote.  I’ve already watched it four times, and for reasons I can’t entirely explain, I love everything about it: the characters, the pacing, the dry wit, the melancholic aura, and of course the inimitable Christopher Plummer’s first Oscar-winning performance.  But if I have to pick one film as the best of the decade, I’ll go with “The Big Short.”  It exposes the insanity of capitalism and human behavior in such an entertaining way, and it’s one of those films that I think we’ll look back on in decades to come as an unheeded warning sign for the future.  (The same could be said of “First Reformed,” but this is a tougher movie to watch.)  It’s worth noting that when my three children and I made our choices independent of each other and compared notes, only one film made all of our top-ten lists: “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”  It’s a rip-roaring good time with such humor and creativity, along with a good heart, that it’s tough not to like.

Of course, there were a helluva lot more than ten great movies in the 2010s.  Here are another 28 that were in contention for me: The Social Network, The Tree of Life, The Descendants, Moneyball, Hugo, The Impossible, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Zero Dark Thirty, Drinking Buddies, Bad Words, Chef, Spotlight, Bridge of Spies, Manchester by the Sea, Hail Caesar!, Zootopia, Hell or High Water, La La Land, Lion, Wind River, Get Out, The Florida Project, I Tonya, All the Money in the World, Searching, Vice, Parasite, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  

These movies would serve me very well were I to be sent to a desert island with only one decade of movies to choose from.  The last ten years were certainly a source of disruption in the way we view entertainment, but one can’t argue that the quality (and certainly the quantity) suffered as a result.

The Big Short and Being Human

Back in the late 80s when I attended UW-Madison, I had a conversation with a fellow student and expressed my opinion that the way we value a nation’s economy is going to have to change – that we can’t continue to measure economic growth largely by how much of its natural resources we’re expending. In essence, I argued that the entire world economy is a one giant Ponzi scheme (though I didn’t know the term Ponzi scheme until Bernie Madoff entered the picture). I still believe this to be the case. After all, a stock’s price is supposedly the present value of all future earnings, but we know that most companies that exist today will one day disappear and be sold for peanuts (Pan Am, Blockbuster, Enron, Woolworths, Tower Records), and the present value of a string of zeros is zero, so we’re really betting on short-term earnings. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who has a rare long view when it comes to business success recognizes that his company will one day be disrupted and perhaps no longer exist (watch 13:20 of this 60 Minutes video).

It’s one thing to have this viewpoint about a system that’s largely on the up and up: that’s run by smart people with good intentions but who sometimes fall short or make mistakes. It’s quite another to discover that the people driving our economy are incompetent, greedy, short-sighted, ruthless criminals. If you’ve seen The Big Short or read the Michael Lewis book upon which the film is based, you’ll likely spend some time rethinking your investment strategy. After all, does it make sense to invest your retirement savings in corporations run by buffoons? The answer: what choice do you have? If you could earn 5% guaranteed in CDs you might do so, but you can’t, so if you’re like me you’ll throw the dice and hope that the pyramid scheme of the U.S. economy can hang in there for a little while longer.

I tried reading The Big Short a few years ago and had some difficulty. It does get complicated. But having a visual helps me enormously, and the film’s director Adam McKay (of Anchorman fame) does a marvelous job of acknowledging the complexity of the movie’s subject while helping the audience along the way. I still left the movie with a few lingering questions (that I hope to answer by giving the book another shot), but generally felt more informed than when I arrived, while still being entertained in between. 

No small feat.

Michael Lewis has a terrific piece in the week’s Vanity Fair that describes the minor miracle that any of his books have been made into movies (and successful ones at that: Moneyball, The Blind Side), least of all a film about credit-default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. You’ll also learn what you likely already knew: that incompetence and greed are as prevalent in Hollywood as they are on Wall Street. 

If only it ended there. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s Wall Street, Hollywood, government agencies, the Chicago police force, horny priests, Oregon ranchers or religious zealots: we as humans seem to be preprogrammed to abuse power, blur the lines between right and wrong, desire more even when we have enough, sacrifice long-term benefits for short-term gains, and hurt people for our own benefit. So why is it when we read about our brethren behaving badly we feel smug about it and think we would never fall into the same trap despite history telling us otherwise?

There are different schools of thought here. My own viewpoint is that religion – for all its faults – helps ground us in humility and gratitude, two essential ingredients to keep from following our worst instincts. Perhaps the people running our biggest firms would do well to spend more time in the pews or our nation’s religious institutions and less in the office.

But then how do you explain the clergy sex abuse scandal? Yeah, that's tricky. After you see The Big Short go watch the marvelous film Spotlight and then tell me your faith in mankind hasn’t been just a wee bit shaken.