The 25 Best Films of the Decade (So Far)

Our film team ranked their favorite films of the past few years — all fiercely debated. It took five critics, three long meetings, one shared spreadsheet with far too many tabs and, at one point, a heated argument about whether a two-hour film about a lighthouse counts as a horror movie. Each critic submitted a personal top 40. We awarded points by position, added them up and then spent two weeks fighting about the results anyway. What you see below is where we finally landed: 25 films that we believe will still be talked about long after this decade is over.

A few ground rules before we begin. Every film on this list had a wide or limited theatrical release in the United States during the current decade. Documentaries and short films were considered separately and will get their own list next spring. And we tried, as much as possible, to rank the films we think are best, not simply the ones that made the most money or won the most trophies.

Number one

“The Quiet Year,” a gentle family drama, beat the space epics by a single vote. That margin tells you a lot about this list. For most of our process, “Orbit Nine” sat comfortably at the top, the big, ambitious science fiction film that nearly everyone admired. Then our final critic turned in her ballot with “The Quiet Year” in first place and “Orbit Nine” in eleventh, and the whole order shifted.