Top 25 Movies that Made You Think in the last Decade – So the 00’s are the aughts. But what do we call 2010 to 2020? The Teens? Fine, we’ll call them the teens. Well, I’ve been writing about movies a solid ten years, throughout the entirety of the teens. And having just sat down and looked back over the years, I was pretty amazed at some of the movie posts that you found the most interesting and entertaining.
When I first started this blog, there were four or five enormous blog posts that I did that I thought would never be past from a visitor standpoint. (Think Memento, The Prestige, Inception, et al.) I just assumed I’d just get lots of visitors on lots of posts, no real big spikes, and that was how the traffic would roll. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. In fact, Memento is the only one of those three posts on this list, and it’s all the way down at #20. And a couple of these posts came in the past year. Now, to get on this list, the post just needed to get a lot of site visitors. Think, like, a couple million visitors to make this list. Or at the very least hundreds and hundreds of thousands of visitors.
#25 – The Kindergarten Teacher – Wow! BANG! What a great way to start off this list. The Kindergarten Teacher is a master class in taking the contrarian view and just owning it through thick and thin. I mean, Maggie Gyllenhaal once said what drew her to the movie was the, “waking up to the starving, and living a life of compromising.” Come on. If that doesn’t draw you – then the next 24 movies will not do anything for you either.
#24 – Buster’s Mal Heart – I just finished season 4 of Mr. Robot. Rami Malek is a vision. Love watching him work. (Always nice when he’s accompanied by Christian Slater, but I digress.) Buster’s Mal Heart is a raging torrent of a chaotic movie. What is real? What is solely in Buster’s mind? And all of it brilliant.
#23 – You Were Never Really Here – Someone really should pay me to tip you off about movies this good. I mean, you’d never see this movie otherwise. It wouldn’t happen. So, since you aren’t going to start paying me a cash money, just consider this my love note to you all. 25 love note mementos…
#22 – Forgotten – I think this might be the only foreign film in this list? This Korean film is a crazy mindjob of a film. When his abducted brother returns seemingly a different man with no memory of the past 19 days, Jin-seok chases after the truth behind the kidnapping. And we all lose our minds in the process.
#21 – Bird Box – Didn’t I do Bird Box yesterday? Like, literally yesterday? How is Bird Box on this list? I guess people liked my simultaneous breakdown of the book and movie side by side. Or, maybe it’s just my charming wit? Or not. Dunno. I guess I also talked with Eric Heisserer as well? That was a pretty big deal in my life. Still get butterflies thinking about that chat.
#20 – Memento – Before I created THiNC., I actually began by writing out on this now defunct website called … no idea. I’ve forgotten. But I’ll send a Starbucks card to anyone that figures it out. It’s now gone. But you could go on there and write product reviews, and I think maybe you could even get paid for readership? Though I am sure I never got paid a dime my reviews were so bad. Anyway, I wrote my Memento review out there. And then I ported it over here after I stood this place up. It’s literally one of the best movies ever made. I’ve been going through Nolan’s Oeuvre with my kids, and I can’t wait to watch this with them. CAN NOT WAIT!!! Memento is literally the movie that stood this website up.
#19 – The Ritual – five guys decide they are going to meet up for an Icelandic, or Norwegian, or an Antarctic, or some sort of hiking trip. But before they even leave, everything goes in the toilet. Deciding to go anyway, the remaining guys are faced with their own horrible demons. And ya. Loved it.
#18 – Miss Sloane – I literally have no idea why this movie is on this here list. I mean, other than the fact that it was a bit of a sleeper, and was such a fast talking, slick little film, it might have been kinda hard to understand. Not to mention that crazy ending that took me 12 hours of rewatching to sort out. That might have had something to do with it as well.
#17 – Super Dark Times – darkly realistic movies are a thing for me. Like, real-realistic. The darker the better, and the darker the spiral the more I wonder about the intrinsic darkness of the human collective soul. It’s also a crazy fun spiral too.
#16 – What Happened to Monday – In a future world where only one child is allowed, a father creates seven daughters, one for each day of the week. Come on, that’s a great setup. Farfetched. But we love farfetched here.
#15 – 10×10 – Closed box films are one of my favorite film types. Take a handful of actors, drop them in a home, lock the door, and only the winner comes out alive? (Want more?) 10×10 is great because it takes stereotypes and spins them on their head…causing everyone to wonder what the heck is really going on here.
#14 – My Cousin Rachel – Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought that My Cousin Rachel was confusing. I mean, did she? Didn’t she? Did he? Didn’t he? I don’t know? Do you know? Gack!
#13 – Triangle – Loop movies are one of my favorites, and this one is no different. (Want more, you can find some right here – yes, you are welcome.) And Triangle is definitely a cream of the crop loop flick. Perfect in every way.
#12 – Z for Zachariah – Just a little three person film…with, oh, I don’t know – Chiwetel Ejiofor, Chris Pine, and Margot Robbie. Then surround them with an apocalyptic hellscape, and a triangle love conflict to end all time. It is a perfect little film in every way.
#11 – Sicario – A brilliant movie for sure, but it surprised me that people were confused, and went looking for discussions about the film to learn more. (Which, is how most people find my posts.) Sure, the ending is a little ambiguous…actually, apparently, very ambiguous.
#10 – The Invitation – Personally, I think this movie should be the number one movie on this list. But as I’m just going by visitors to the post – I can’t really jack with the order much! hahaha. But Phil Hay, and his wife, Karyn Kusama (who also did Destroyer, etc., etc.) just killed it with this film. Loved it loved it loved it.
#9 – In Darkness – A fluke little film like In Darkness? That must have been one doozy of an ending! Holy cow. Kudos to Anthony Byrne and his team that created this inside out little film. Personally, I thought the ending jumped the shark. Or un-jumped the shark. Or double jumped the shark that didn’t actually jump? Something.
#8 – The Signal – HAHAH… oh man, The Signal. Hackers. Signals. And desperate attempts to hack into Area 51. And come to find out, Area 51 was hacking into us all along? Wait, WHAT? We have had so much fun with this one. Maybe something like 200 comments. All 500 words or more? Definitely a ripe discussion.
#7 – I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House – First, this is the movie that made so many of you realize that I am a pansy when it comes to “scary movies”. That’s the first thing. The second thing – this movie is nigh on inscrutable. And for that, I couldn’t love it more.
#6 – Personal Shopper – A Kristen Stewart movie about shopping? What? Next we’ll do a Food Network movie with Robert Pattinson? But no, it’s a movie about loss, and those that are so desperately lost, that they turn to the paranormal in order to try and connect. This is literally one of my favorite movies of all time.
#5 – Spinning Man – I didn’t see this one coming. I mean, yes, I of course enjoyed the movie. And yes, of course the ending’s twists and turns were so fantastically tricky that I loved it. But I didn’t see just how big this post was going to get. It’s a movie about guilt, and the legal definition of what can get you put away forever. And are you really innocent, even if you think you are guilty? It’s a complicatedly awesome film.
#4 – The Circle – Oh how I love it when a movie’s post comments all blow up. And with this movie? Woah, you guys really blew it up big time. Like 35,000 words just of comments and discussions about this film. I mean, it is a brilliant philosophical exercise – and it is totally work a healthy discussion. If you haven’t seen it, you really need to.
#3 – The Killing of a Sacred Deer – Yorgos Lanthimos has grown on me since The Lobster (next entry). And I actually loved this movie. It made a modern myth a haunting reality in The Killing of a Sacred Deer. And Apparently you were all just as baffled by Deer as I was!
#2 – The Lobster – When I first watched this film, there were so many unsettling things that happened in this movie that I almost decided not to write about it. But, woah, did this post take off. And after falling in love with the movie after discussing it over and over again. I wasn’t shocked that there were other movies by Yorgos Lanthimos.
#1 – Dark – (You may want to not look too closely at that image… cough.) I’ve done a number of posts about Dark. But my biggest is my Dark family tree. Like, it single-handedly beats any other post I’ve ever done in the past ten years – but combined, my Dark posts blows half this site away all by itself. And it stands to reason – because dang is Dark good! If you haven’t ever watched Dark before, head here, and start right now.
Ten years worth of fantastic movies. 2010-2019 – it’s been a fun ride. Thanks for the thousands and thousands of comments, conversations, emails, and ideas that you’ve taken time out of your day to share with me. Not many know this – But I think I had to bribe someone to give the first comment on the site. Starbucks gift cards was the bribe of choice. And I basically said, if you type anything below in the comments area, and hit submit, you can have a Starbucks gift card! hahahah. And today, look where we are. Can’t wait to see what the next ten years brings…
Edited by: CY