Favorite/Best Movies of the 2010 Decade

Alright, I've put this off long enough...

Dracula Presents The Top 100 films of the 2010s

This should be a pretty natural extension of what I did when I did the top 100 of the 2000s way back in the day.  As with most of my lists I'm disqualifying documentaries and I will not be cheating and lumping trilogies or doing any kind of ties (with arguably one exception).  I'm also sticking strictly to American release dates for eligibility, which will benefit some and harm others.  Also as with pretty much any list like this movies from the final year of eligibility (2019) are probably at a disadvantage.  Finally, my list is more or less set at least in terms of what movies are making it, so if I see anything from the decade latter on they're s.o.l.

Without further ado...

100. The Shape of Water (2017)

Year: 2017
Release Date: 12/1/2017
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writer(s): Guillermo del Toro
and Vanessa Taylor
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Octavia Spencer
Based on: N/A
Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 123 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1


I tend to be tough on Guillermo del Toro, in part because I think his potential is unlimited when he gets out of his own way, so when he squanders his talents on silliness like Pacific Rim it disappoints me. I also didn’t much care for his 2015 film Crimson Peak, which was bogged down by some weak scares (and yes, it is trying to be scary) and a script where the audience is way ahead of the protagonist in a frustrating way. He mostly got things back on track with his 2017 film The Shape of Water though I was kind of tough on it as well at first if only because it kind of felt like the movie I had hoped he’d make around 2010 and be on to other things by the end of the decade, but in retrospect it was probably better late than never. What I didn’t expect was for the rest of the public to finally be primed for his work and that the rather outlandish fairytale he delivered would become among the more improbable Best Picture Winners in Oscar history, at least in terms of subject matter. The themes of tolerance and of free spirits fighting back against oppressive societal conformity are all a bit on the nose, but it’s hard to call a movie about a lady boinking a fish monster uncreative and the movie also delivers a lot of very memorable moments and set pieces like the flooded bathroom and the throwback musical number late in the film. When a movie is doing all that a lot of my complaints about it just seem a bit petty in the long run.

Hell yeah! Great first pick.

Did somebody splice together Robin Williams and Mel Gibson?

And it takes advantage of not letting elgort speak at all. Because that bird chested boy has no acting talent.

I'm onboard so far.

I haven't read the book and I love the hell out of the film.

Too late, my man.

97. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Year: 2018
Release Date: 4/27/2018
Director: Joe Russo and Anthony Russo
Writer(s): Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, Chadwick Boseman, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Anthony Mackie, 
Sebastian Stan, Dave Bautista, Zoe Saldana, Josh Brolin, and Chris Pratt
Based on: The characters from Marvel Comics
Distributor: Buena Vista
Country of Origin: United States
Language: English
Running Time: 149 Minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Given their dominance of the box office dominance of the Marvel Cinematic Universe throughout the 2010s decade and how many hours of pleasure they gave me between them all it feels like I do owe them some representation on the top 100 even if I probably like them more as a collective than I do any individual film. If I am going to place one MCU film in to represent them all it only makes sense to make it one of the Avengers movies given that those films kind of combined a lot of what made this series so special. I was tempted to put the original The Avengers for how well it set the template and sort of springboarded the franchise into dominance and an argument could also be made for Avengers: Endgame given that it brought everything together into a massively profitable even, but the movie that ultimately seems to be the best representation of what these movies managed to get right is the penultimate Avengers movie: Avengers: Infinity War. Infinity War did a great job of juggling a lot of storylines while also introducing a shockingly well realized villain in Thanos. Like a lot of Marvel’s movies it really gets that perfect balance between storytelling, character interaction, and action set-pieces. But what really put Infinity War over the top was that big cliffhanger ending. Obviously it was easy to watch that cynically and assume that it would be undone (which is essentially was in Endgame) but that doesn’t change the fact that it was a shocking way to end one of these movies that the effect it had on the theater I was watching it in was one of my most memorable cinematic moments of the decade. In a decade full of movies where superheroes were fighting to keep glowing macguffins from killing everyone there was something really affecting about seeing what happens when one of those doomsday devices actually worked.

I get your reasoning and I do think you chose the best Avengers movie, but I still think Guardians 2 is a stronger film, and the strongest film the company has put out by a pretty wide margin.

I felt similar to you in a theater, but on a rewatch the film hit me a lot harder emotionally. I also think the character work is a lot stronger and the film is the best looking of the MCU. Black Panther comes close, but some of the weak effects in act 3 sort of bring things down.

But Yondu's death meant a lot to Starlord as his father figure and is thematically relevant in a story about parenthood. Coulson was just a guy Tony sort of knew and mostly made fun of.