There were a lot of great movies over the past decade as there are every decade. What makes the 2010s different is that there were even more demands on our times with the rise of streaming and the age of Peak TV. Movies has to seriously compete with other forms of entertainment, and that made it more than easy for films that may have picked up a word-of-mouth following to be seen. Additionally, with a greater reliance on IP, any film that wasn’t part of a massive franchise was likely to get brushed aside.
With all that mind, we’ve put together a list of the best movies of the decade that likely flew under the radar. If you’ve seen any of these movies, that’s great! But for whatever reason, these movies didn’t connect at the box office or had trouble becoming part of the cultural conversation even though taken on their own, they’re absolutely terrific. As the decade winds down, we highly encourage you to seek out one or two of the following movies to see what you’ve been missing.
Note: This article was originally published in 2019 as part of Collider’s Best of the 2010s series.
There was a seven-year gap betweenCharlie Kaufman’s bizarre directorial debutSynecdoche, New Yorkand his still-bizarre stop-motion animated filmAnomalisa, but it was absolutely worth the wait. The film follows Michael Stone (David Thewlis), who is stuck in an existential malaise and ennui where every single person in his life looks and sounds the same (a very smart piece of voice casting by havingTom Noonanfill the role of everyone else). However, Michael thinks he may have found some kind of salvation when he meets Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), an “anomaly” in the sameness of his life. The film is darkly comic and sadly poignant like most of Kaufman’s work with the stop-motion animation providing a nice added touch that helps deepen the themes of a world that doesn’t feel quite real and yet all-too-real at the same time. –Matt Goldberg
Ruby Sparks
Ruby Sparksis a weird little movie that may at first glance looked too twee or too maudlin, but it’s actually a scathing rebuke of Manic Pixie Dream Girls, or really how any insecure man approaches a relationship with a woman. The plot follows Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano), an acclaimed writer who hasn’t published anything his celebrated first novel and is struggling with writer’s block. Then he starts writing himself a girlfriend, Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan, who also wrote the film), and Ruby comes into being and does whatever Calvin types. But eventually, Calvin’s insecurities start to get the better of him and he doesn’t know how to manage his feelings for Ruby and the control he has over her. It’s an insightful look at a particular kind of toxic masculinity that doesn’t necessarily manifest itself in physical or even verbal abuse, but in desperation that ignores the humanity of a partner. –Matt Goldberg
The Place Beyond the Pines
I really thought this would be a bigger movie when it premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. It was the follow-up toDerek Cianfrance’s acclaimedBlue Valentineand starredRyan GoslingandBradley Cooper. Sadly, the film never really caught on, and that’s a shame because it’s a moving generation saga of the colliding legacies we leave behind despite our best intentions to do right by our children. The story begins with a bank robber played by Gosling before morphing into a conflicted cop story featuring Cooper before making one last turn following the sons of both men played byDane DeHaanandEmory Cohen, respectively. It’s an epic of intimate relationships and tragic consequences that absolutely deserves your time. –Matt Goldberg
This would make the list just for howTom Hardysays the word “concrete.” The film follows construction foreman Ivan Locke (Hardy), whose life is imploding, and he has to manage the fallout all from his car phone as he tries to hold together his family, his work, and a secret shame while making a fateful drive in real time. The film isn’t just a testament to Hardy, who proves he could read the phone book and turn it into a captivating performance, or even the tight script and direction fromSteven Knight.Lockeis how it all comes together to make you feel as trapped as its title character but with a claustrophobia that never becomes tiresome. The film also boasts a terrific voice cast that includesOlivia Colman,Ruth Wilson,Andrew Scott, andTom Holland, so you really should give this one a shot if you haven’t already. –Matt Goldberg
AlthoughMudboundearned four Oscar nominations, it’s difficult to know how well the film performed on Netflix and if there was much of an audience for a 134-minute drama about race relations in rural Mississippi post-World War II. And yet I can I only hope people gaveDee Rees’ moving saga a shot as she incisively looks at two colliding families—one white and one black—and what it says about race in America today. Never heavy handed and featuring astounding performances from the entire cast,Mudboundis a powerful and insightful work of southern art that has the poignancy of Faulkner and the thoughtful societal critiques of DeBois. –Matt Goldberg
Under the Silver Lake
Under the Silver Lakeopened up next to a little known gem namedAvengers: Endgame, which meant a lot of people (see: everyone) missed out on a truly strange mind-trip that remainsfirmlyon my favorites of 2019 list. The film, much like its Southern California setting, is a big, sprawling thing filled with random pockets of bizarreness and twisted roads that ultimately lead nowhere. DirectorDavid Robert Mitchell’s follow-up toIt Followsis half old-school noir tale, half satire of a modern internet age obsessed with “solving” stories. At its center isAndrew Garfield, playing a 30-something named Sam who embarks on a strange odyssey to find a missing neighbor who he’s only met once (Riley Keough). The journey brings him to the weirdest side-quests and underground societies that L.A. has to offer, with Mitchell often flexing his horror muscles to turn the city into a place of murderers and monsters. It’s allverystrange, and a lot of it doesn’tmeananything, per se, but that’s part of the beauty. When you’reUnder the Silver Lake, it’s better to just let the current take you. -Vinnie Mancuso
Ingrid Goes West
Aubrey Plazahas enjoyed a well-deserved post-Parks and Recreation slate filled with high-profile projects likeLegionand theChild’s Playremake, but I wish more love was shown to probably the best pure performance she’s ever put on-screen:Ingrid Goes West. Plaza stars as Ingrid Thorburn, an unhinged loner who relocates to California to be closer to a social media influencer, Taylor Sloane (Elisabeth Olsen), whose perfect sun-drenched posts she obsesses over. From there, Ingrid crafts a false friendship using her online stalking as a guide, a frighteningly plausible storyline led by a multi-layered performance from Plaza that’s somehow both heartbreaking and repulsive. It also helps that the rest of the cast is filled with young breakouts who are probably going to lead films for the next few generations:O’Shea Jackson Jr.,Wyatt Russell,Billy Magnussen. An L.A. story filled with stars. -Vinnie Mancuso
Sing Street
Every year when the Academy Awards roll around the conversation almost always turns to snubs, and it’s about that time every year that I will scream to pretty much anyone within a ten foot vicinity about how “Drive It Like You Stole It”—the absolutebangerfromJohn Carney’s 2016 coming-of-age-musical,Sing Street—wasn’t even nominated for Best Original Song. It was and remains a crime, just like it’s a crime how small of an audience have seen this absurdly charming movie in the first place. Set in inner-city Dublin in 1985,Sing StreetstarsFerdia Walsh-Peeloas Conor “Cosmo” Lawlor, a young outcast who starts a band to impress aspiring model, Raphina (Lucy Boynton). Funny, earnest, and bursting to the brim with heart, Carney’s follow-up toSing Streetis about as crowd-pleasing a setlist as possible. And although “Drive It Like You Stole It” is the ultimate earworm, do not sleep on “Brown Shoes”, the type of Springsteen-esque get-up anthem that’ll have you bursting through a wall and right out of your hometown before the last note. -Vinnie Mancuso
Bone Tomahawk
I truly cannot stress how gnarlyBone Tomahawkis, but there’s also something to be said for going intoS. Craig Zahler’s horror-western knowing as little as possible about what you’re in for. Here’s the gist: An aging small-town sheriff named Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) heads into the hills to track down a clan of violent cannibals, accompanied by a posse made up of an injured foreman (Patrick Wilson), a backup deputy (Richard Jenkins), and a dickhead womanizer (Matthew Fox). Needless to say, things get rough, and the film carves its way toward some truly squirm-inducing moments that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who caught Zahler’s skull-crushing follow-upBrawl in Cell Block 99.Bone Tomahawkis similarly not for the faint of heart, but it boasts one hell of a cast, and the confidence with which Zahler displays his brutality is breathtaking, even through your fingers. Don’t bring a snack to this one.–Vinnie Mancuso
The Nice Guys
Not many filmmakers’ movies sizzle quite like the works ofShane Black, and add in two performers with the dynamite odd-ball chemistry ofRyan GoslingandRussell Croweand you get the explosion that isThe Nice Guys. This zippy noir-comedy hybrid sees Gosling and Crowe as down-and-out private detective Holland March and enforcer-for-hire Jackson Healy, two morally dubious men hot on the case of a missing teenage girl (Margaret Qualley). In a perfect world, we’d be three or four movies into the March & Healy franchise. Or, at the very least,The Nice Guyswould be recognized as one of the very best comedies of the decade. This movie rules, plain and simple. -Vinnie Mancuso
