20. “Black Swan” (2010)
A seductively strange and twisted psychological horror, Darren Aronofksy’s obsessive-ballerina movie borrows from the likes of “Suspiria” and “The Red Shoes” but still ends up in its own singular register. Featuring an Oscar-winning Natalie Portman as the dancer driven to the brink of insanity and beyond by her demanding maestro (Vincent Cassel), her stern mother (a great Barbara Hershey) and the shadow of an ambitious fellow dancer who may or may not at times be a projection of her own psyche (Mila Kunis), it’s a deliciously torrid melodrama about the cost of artistic perfection.
19. “The Hurt Locker” (2009)
History needed a “first woman to win the Best Director Oscar” and a “first woman to direct a Best Picture-winning film” and if it couldn’t have been Jane Campion, we’re pretty happy that it was Kathryn Bigelow, even if we’d have hoped by now she wouldn’t still be the only one. It was particularly of note that Bigelow broke her gender’s forever-long dry spell with a film like “The Hurt Locker”: tense, muscular and exclusively focused on men bristling with adrenaline and testosterone in extreme wartime conditions, it’s as far from the traditional conception of a “women’s film” as can be imagined.
18. “Gravity” (2013)
Slight of story and light on philosophical importance, Alfonso Cuaron‘s space-set survival movie places this high because it’s simply one of the most gloriously immersive cinematic experiences of the century. The pioneering camerawork from Emmanuel Lubezki and the groundbreaking special effects do not heighten the story, here they are the story, and that is not a flaw: instead the film is exactly as pared-back in other departments (like Sandra Bullock‘s unshowily steely performance) as it needs to be, to send us into space.
17. “Her” (2013)
The warm and humanist corollary to the “Black Mirror“-style technophobia that more often characterizes modern sci-fi, Spike Jonze’s completely beguiling “Her” dares to imagine a world where a man falling in love with a self-aware operating system is neither a joke nor a prelude to a Skynet-style technogeddon. Featuring a fabulously lovelorn performance from Joaquin Phoenix and a brilliant voice-only turn from Scarlett Johansson, this is the kind of sci-fi that makes us better understand what makes us human.
16. “Up” (2009)
Justly famous for its completely heartbreaking montage of a relationship from beginning through to end, “Up” is so much more than just that five-minute sequence. In fact it’s one of the most interestingly structured, least schematic of Pixar movies, with the wanderlust of the narrative almost threatening to float away with the film entirely, if it weren’t anchored, with the blossoming friendship between plump boy scout Russell and the irascible Carl Fredricksen, in one of the most beautiful and mutually healing relationships the animation giant has ever portrayed.
15. “Michael Clayton” (2007)
Overshadowed at the time a little by its Coen/PTA competition, and now the exact kind of movie that would probably be a prestige cable drama instead, Tony Gilroy’s first film as director “Michael Clayton” improves with every rewatch. A textured, rich screenplay evoking 70s Lumet digs deep into the compromised life of George Clooney’s fixer (still the actor’s finest performance), with some killer suspense scenes, terrific supporting turns from Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack and Tom Wilkinson, and one of the great ambivalent endings.
14. “Selma” (2014)
While “Selma” made it into the Best Picture line-up, that it was nominated for only one other awards helped to spark the first major OscarsSoWhite controversy, and rightly so: it’s frankly baffling that a film as blindingly smart and beautifully made as this was overlooked in this way. Ava DuVernay’s tale of Martin Luther King (a mighty turn by David Oyelowo) and the Selma marches is a gripping drama about politics as PR, capable of being rousing and visceral as well as quiet and contemplative. No wonder “The Theory Of Everything” picked up more nominations…
13. “Spotlight” (2015)
Last year’s victory of “Spotlight” over the more-favored “The Revenant” and “The Big Short” was the first true Best Picture surprise in years, and it was a highly satisfying one. Tom McCarthy’s drama about the Boston Globe journalists who broke the story of the Catholic Church’s cover-up of sexual abuse is a sober and tasteful thing, but in a way that gives credit to those words: it’s a film utterly in control of its storytelling, filling in character through detail and gripping like a vice throughout.
12. “The Social Network” (2010)
Like many of the best double acts, director David Fincher and writer Aaron Sorkin seemed to bring out the best in each other. Their biopic about the story of the founding of Facebook, and the collapse of the friendship of founders Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) and Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) sees Fincher bring a harder, more youthful edge to Sorkin, while Sorkin brings out a vulnerability and humanity that Fincher sometimes overlooks. It’s still Hollywood’s defining statement on the way that being more connected has actually pushed us further apart.
11. “Inception” (2010)
James Cameron was complaining recently that blockbusters don’t get enough respect from the Academy, but if every blockbuster was as good as “Inception,” that wouldn’t be the case. A deeply personal therapy session in the guise of a sci-fi/spy/heist actioner, it’s Christopher Nolan’s finest achievement to date — yes, sometimes exposition heavy and a touch sexless, but also dizzying, thrilling, beautiful, fascinating and, eventually, even moving.
10. “The Tree Of Life” (2010)
That his three films since have been to greater or lesser extents variations on the theme and style of “The Tree Of Life” has only underlined what we felt at the time: that the film was the culmination of Terrence Malick’s entire career. A colossal epic spanning space and time but all coming down to one little boy and his relationship with his parents, all captured by Emmanuel Lubezki’s roving camera, it’s as close as you can get in the cinema to a religious experience.
9. “Amour” (2012)
The idea of Michael Haneke: Oscar Nominee would probably have seemed absurd to someone coming out of a screening of “The Piano Teacher” or “Time Of The Wolf,” but it’s a testament to both the relatively adventurous taste of the Academy of late, and the indisputable greatness of “Amour” that it came to pass back in 2012. His story of the indignities and tortures of old age is difficult to watch even by his standards, but it’s also arguably his most human and moving film too.
8. “12 Years A Slave” (2013)
The race between “12 Years A Slave” and “Gravity” a few years back was a genuine nail-biter, one of the closest in recent history, and while Cuaron’s film is a remarkable achivement, there’s little doubt that the right film won. Steve McQueen’s telling of the tale of Solomon Northrup is as bruising, unsentimental and utterly moving as its subject matter deserves, with an impeccable cast giving it their all, and McQueen’s utterly controlled filmmaking observing without manipulating. They’ll talk about this one forever.
7. “Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)
The debates over it continue to this day (spoiler: it’s not pro-torture), but nearly five years on, it’s clearer than ever that “Zero Dark Thirty” is THE movie of the post 9/11 era. Following Jessica Chastain’s increasingly morally compromised CIA agent in a decade-long quest to get Osama Bin Laden, it’s a film of rare scope and sweep, but Kathryn Bigelow’s breakneck direction and Mark Boal’s clear-eyed script pull you along without ever making you feel like you’re getting a surface-level take on the story. It’s a film about the emptiness of vengeance and the price of obsession, and it grips like a motherfucking vice.
6. “A Serious Man” (2009)
Not everyone was a fan of expanding the Best Picture line up to ten for the few years that it stood, but if it allowed a film as utterly strange and wonderful as “A Serious Man” to sneak in, we certainly didn’t have a problem with it. One of the most Coen-ish of all Coens films, its Job-like tale of a physics professor (Michael Stuhlbarg, transcendent) watching his life unravel is darkly funny, deeply profound, stunningly shot, consistently unexpected and spiritually haunting.