30 Films That Celebrate Black Lives

Black lives matter.

This statement should not be in the least bit controversial, nor should it require being uttered at all. Yet time and again, abuses committed by the American police and justice systems remind us the value placed on a human being's life too often depends on its owner's skin colour, economic status, social class, gender, gender identity and/or nationality. Such injustices are by no means limited to the United States alone; they manifest themselves in a multitude of countries, each informed by their own specific histories and structures – none of which I am qualified to talk about with any authority.

I would like, instead, to address the role culture has to play in all of this. Culture's primary role has always been to help us make sense of ourselves and each other; how we live together, how we behave with each other, what values guide our lives, how we understand the world around us... every aspect of these forms of knowledge we take for granted is moulded by the storytelling and art we transmit from generation to generation. To paraphrase Charlie Chaplin, the fundamentally communicative nature of this artform cries out to our natural empathy and curiosity, cries out for us to watch, listen and learn from experiences that are not our own.

It is in that spirit that I have assembled a list of 30 films that celebrate Black lives in all their diversity and complexities. To be more specific, this list will concentrate on films that do not feature topics such as slavery, racism, police brutality, gang violence, segregation, colonialism or injustice as their primary focus. Films about these issues, of course, are every bit as legitimate as any other but my intent is to highlight works that put the spotlight on Black humanity rather than Black trauma. Works in which Black characters experience a whole spectrum of human existence as ordinary people who fall in love, fall out of love, hurt each other, hurt themselves, help each other, help themselves, struggle with their emotions, try to figure out what they want and look for happiness, without having to stand in for an entire group or serve as symbols for a greater cause.

While this will not be a wholly exclusive list, I will make a conscious attempt to emphasize films directed and/or written by Black artists. If any of my readers have any film recommendations - particularly from countries or cultures that are either underrepresented or unrepresented on this list - I enthusiastically invite them to post them in the comments below. The same goes, for that matter, for any critiques or advice they might have.

And now, to the list itself:

30 - Mother Of George by Andrew Dosunmu (2013).

Best known for portraying Wakanda's iron-willed General Okoye in Black Panther and Michonne in The Walking Dead TV series, Danai Gurira's best cinematic performance so far can be found in this visually resplendent exploration of tradition, womanhood and desire. Not just another immigrant tale of female emancipation from patriarchal norms, Andrew Dosunmu's drama compassionately envisions the immigrant experience as a space of continuous battles and compromises between different conceptions of being, visualized as a series of tightly-framed explosions of colour and movement mirroring the characters' ever-shifting emotions. This is how you bring feelings to life.

29 - Just Another Girl On The I.R.T. by Leslie Harris (1993).

Have you ever commuted next to a loud teenage girl who spent the entire ride vocally gossiping with her friend about boy trouble or school, in graphic detail with no consideration for any of her fellow passengers? As the title might indicate, this film isn't just about that girl, it is that girl; unruly, ill-disciplined, aggravating, in-your-face...and hiding its depth in plain sight. Alternating between static and handheld, half-satirical mockumentary and half-social drama, Leslie Harris's rough-and-tumble dive into an ambitious Brooklyn girl's battle against her own ego mirrors her protagonist's best and worst traits in the most beautifully expressive way possible. This is a film that doesn't concern itself with being liked as much as it is with being seen and listened to; a film that catches the angry energy of early-90s New York's cultural ruckus like lightning in a bottle filled with nitroglycerin, and proceeds to hurl it straight at the audience's face. The resulting shock to the system may not be an easy or consistently agreeable experience, but it's a vitally worthwhile one.

28 - Drumline by Charles Stone III (2002).

Imagine Whiplash as a teen comedy with its harshly individualistic outlook flipped on its head, and you might get something like this gem. Starring opposite Orlando Jones and a young Zoe Saldana, Nick Cannon beautifully conveys, through headstrong college band drummer Devon Miles, all the excitement and insecurities that come with finding your voice, taming it and finding its place in a wider community. In a storytelling landscape full of geniuses breaking rules and refusing to go with the crowd, it's rare to find a music-centred film so committed to teamwork - even moreso one with such a breathtaking, sublimely-edited finale.

27 - Friday by F. Gary Gray (1995).

F. Gary Gray's stoner comedy classic is well-remembered for its timeless quotability (all together now: "Bye, Felicia.") as well as propelling Chris Tucker into A-list stardom, but it should also be commended for showing a different side to 'hood life. Four years after Boyz N The Hood, writer-star Ice Cube - assisted by DJ Pooh - uses the fundamental humanism of "low-brow" humour to humanize South Central's inhabitants beyond media clichés and remind audiences of the desires, instincts, daily annoyances and bodily functions that unite us all.

26 - The Wood by Rick Famuyiwa (1999).

Black coming-of-age stories are often framed in terms of overcoming gang violence, institutional racism and/or poverty, but those that emphasize the joys of learning and growing through the bonds we form in our youth get comparatively less attention. That is exactly what Rick Famuyiwa's 1999 début does, as it recounts the adolescent misadventures of three young men as they bond through their attempts to survive bullying, stay out of trouble and lose their virginities in Inglewood, California. More than its setting or its characters' skin colour, what distinguishes this film from many similarly-themed comedies is a potent mixture of tenderness and emotional honesty that can only come from stories that the teller has lived in their bones. In a year when teen comedies like American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You were all the rage, The Wood's heartfelt candour singled it out as something quite special.

25 - Attack The Block by Joe Cornish (2011).

Joe Cornish's John Carpenter-inspired inner-city-vs-outer-space showdown (as the posters promoted it) cuts to the heart of what makes most great alien invasion stories endure: how they highlight and reconfigure divisions within our social fabric. Revealing himself to the world as a natural movie star, John Boyega leads a gang of hoodlums as they use their street smarts and intimate knowledge of their block to defend its residents - including their onetime mugging victim, future Doctor Who star Jodie Whittaker - against a swarm of extra-terrestrial invaders. Beyond its Britishized John Carpenter premise, this film's singularity comes from the sly way its humorous combination of genre tropes reveals unspoken values within the characters, as well as the connective tissue between them, in defiance of initial assumptions. In a decade full of flag-waving prestige dramas anchored in a glorious historical past (Dunkirk, 1917, The King's Speech), Attack The Block just might, in its own unassuming way, be the most subversively patriotic British film of the 2010s.

24 - I Will Follow by Ava DuVernay (2011).

Although she is understandably better known for the righteous indignation that guides her best-known recent work (Selma, 13th, When They See Us), Ava DuVernay's best quality as an artist is her attention to the small details in-between moments that make all the difference in our daily lives and her first feature-length drama demonstrates this beautifully. Starring a sharply sensitive Salli Richardson-Whitfield as an artist processing her complicated relationship with her recently-deceased aunt, I Will Follow movingly captures the imperceptible emotional cuts and bruises that only start to hurt once a person has left our lives forever, in an intimate drama whose aesthetic simplicity gives its characters all the more room to breathe and exist as real people.

23 - Two Can Play That Game by Mark Brown (2001).

The screwball comedy gets a 21st-century update courtesy of the formidable Vivica A. Fox as Shanté Smith, a successful advertising executive who decides to get back at her man when a nightclub incident leads her to think she might not have him on quite as tight a leash as she thought. The ensuing psychological war between the two unfolds like a sexual game of poker as each side's move is planned, predicted and counteracted based on gendered assumptions of the other's behaviour, which Fox's fourth-wall-breaking asides to the audience amplify with devilish delight. The romantic comedy may have been one of the biggest genres of 1990s and early-to-mid-2000s Hollywood, but few of them satirized heterosexual courtship as pointedly or hilariously as this.

22 - Barbershop by Tim Story (2002).

First and best of the Ice Cube-led Barbershop trilogy*, this is a smart, generous and uproariously funny comedy whose laughs, characters and structure are all powered by strong communal energy that's truly magical to behold. Following a colourful roster of barbershop employees - including Cedric The Entertainer's scene-stealing Eddie Walker - and their customers as they debate everything from Black history to sex and relationships, Barbershop anchors its comedy in a strong sense of community that makes every exchange, every behaviour, no matter how outrageous, feel like a genuine lived experience. A vibrant celebration of brotherhood and an at times quietly insightful look at urban social masculinity, you'll wish all visits to the barber were as exhilarating as this one.

21 - Love & Basketball by Gina Prince-Bythewood (2000).

From a seemingly predictable romantic premise involving two hotheaded people from different socioeconomic backgrounds united by a common passion for basketball, Gina Prince-Bythewood orchestrates a splendidly elaborate game of magnets across two decades, where each party's urges, feelings and frustrations are grown and developed with an attention to detail that gives them exceptional texture, depth and momentum. Fuelled by strong chemistry between Omar Epps and an electric Sanaa Lathan, the central relationship has a feeling of rounded experience that transcends both the romance and the sports genres and makes its protagonists one of the most convincing couples of 2000s cinema.

20 - Creed by Ryan Coogler (2015).

Ryan Coogler didn't just reinvigorate the Rocky franchise with a charismatic new lead, a return to the franchise's working-class underdog roots and a magnificent supporting turn from its former star; he interlinked these elements with a quietly moving depiction of family that crosses generational, racial and biological lines, and in doing so crafted a beautiful metatextual examination of legacy and redemption buoyed by a Jordan-Stallone tandem so organically dynamic it feels like the divinely-ordained culmination of two lifetimes' worth of work. Rarely has a torch been passed down so gracefully or with more self-evident crossover between on-screen and off-screen partnership.

19 - Second Coming by Debbie Tucker Green (2015).

Overlooked by filmgoers upon its release, this British diamond in the rough spotlights a troubled marriage marred by emotional suppression, mental illness and a possible mystical pregnancy. Directing Idris Elba and a revelatory, internally combustive Nadine Marshall, filmmaker and playwright Debbie Tucker Green sublimates her married couple's unexamined inner struggles into dark poetry of texture, voice and tone, whose primal narrative question is but a gateway to deeper psychological mysteries, all unravelled with superb emotional acuteness by its main acting duet.

18 - In Fabric by Peter Strickland (2019).

The inclusion of this film may raise some eyebrows, as while Marianne Jean-Baptiste's overworked divorcée may be the human with the most screentime, its true protagonist is the killer sentient dress she unknowingly buys to get back on the dating scene. Nevertheless, I contend this hypnotic surrealist satire can still be seen as a celebration of Black life simply for the unsentimental, worn-down humanity with which Jean-Baptiste brings out this middle-aged working mother's desire for temporary escape and the inconspicuous ease with which she conveys an entire life's worth of disappointments with mere glances. Sometimes, all you need is just one extremely talented actor to create deep meaning.

17 - Rafiki by Wanuri Kahiu (2018).

Initially banned in its native Kenya for its positive portrayal of the main characters' lesbian relationship, Rafiki is an energetic, blissful, radiant cry of freedom whose Romeo-and-Juliet plot, not only a denunciation of endemic homophobia, patriarchal norms and deeply-entrenched class divisions, allows its characters' forbidden romance to magnify Nairobi's extraordinarily vibrant youth and culture through vividly eye-popping cinematography and one of the best pop soundtracks of the past decade. Just you try to get Muthoni Drummer Queen's "Suzie Noma" out of your head after watching this. Just you try to even want to.

16 - Eve's Bayou by Kasi Lemmons (1997).

Shamefully ignored by audiences and media upon its release, Kasi Lemmons' stunning début explores the breakdown of a Black upper-class family in 1960s Louisiana as the titular 10-year-old Eve (Jurnee Smollett) witnesses gradual explosions of repressed resentments, sexual impulses and anxieties without fully comprehending them or their impacts. At times quasi-Bergmanian in its style, Lemmons' Southern Gothic drama nevertheless finds its own voice through its firm rooting in specific expressions of Creole culture as it travels through memory and trauma to question the reliability of human perception. Standout performances by Samuel L. Jackson and Debbi Morgan cement this overlooked work of art as one of the 1990s' best first features.

15 - Pariah by Dee Rees (2011).

Feature-length adaptation of her 2007 short of the same title, Dee Rees's semi-autobiographical coming-out tale is a painfully truthful learning experience for both its character - magnificently incarnated by Adepero Oduye - and its audience. From the forbidden excitement of lesbian nightclubbing, the spine-tingling little wonders of sharing oneself with another for the first time, to the suffocating agony of denying oneself and being denied by the very people whose affirmation you most need, Pariah is a Golgothan trek across personal and social identity, whose pains and pleasures ultimately contribute in equal measure to a final, hopeful liberation.

14 - Atlantics by Mati Diop (2019).

A righteous call to arms against Senegal's class divisions and the exploitation of workers; an intersectional screed against the patriarchal capitalist systems of power that keep poor Senegalese women in various states of subservience; a mournful lament for the countless souls lost at sea in search of a better life. Atlantics is all these things and more; equally angry and hopeful, sad and joyful, it interlinks horror, romance and social drama into an oniric tapestry of colours, music and sound that speaks to us in a language of its very own. With seductive gentleness, Mati Diop invites us into the lives of her characters and gives their hopes, dreams and disillusionments a mythological quality that only further enhances their profound humanity.

13 - The Fits by Anna Rose Holmer (2016).

Like Carol Morley's even less well-known 2015 mystery drama The Falling, Anna Rose Holmer investigates the trepidations of girlhood through a series of unexplained fits and faintings in an all-female space, with Morley's 1969 British girls' school substituted for a Black working-class neighbourhood's all-girl dancing troupe. As if to simultaneously illustrate and probe the famous hashtag #BlackGirlMagic's social implications, The Fits patiently studies a single black girl's position and identity within her community as her response to adult and peers' behaviour finds itself challenged by a crisis that upsets established order and makes children of us all (sound familiar?). Without making any overt political points, Holmer turns this confusion into audiovisual poetry whose every stanza is built on an increasingly urgent awareness of the pressures of growing up female, leading to one of the most visually arresting end sequences of the past 10 years.

12 - Carmen Jones by Otto Preminger (1959).

Dorothy Dandridge achieves cinematic immortality in this dazzling Technicolor adaptation of the Rodgers-Hammerstein musical, which ingeniously melded the grandiose melodies of Georges Bizet's opera with Black Southern rhythms and vocalizations to transpose Prosper Mérimée's Mediterranean tragedy to American cultural specificities. Though her singing voice is dubbed by Marilyn Horne, Dandridge nevertheless illuminates the screen with a defiant sensuality entirely of her own making that elevates Carmen above the hot-blooded temptress archetype she's come to represent and suggests an entire lifetime of passionate struggle. Pearl Bailey's unforgettable supporting turn as best friend Frankie - most notably her rendition of "Beat Out Dat Rhythm On A Drum" - also deserves special mention. At a time when few Hollywood films centered non-white people and even fewer took interest in them independent of their relationship to whiteness, Carmen Jones's cross-cultural energy stood out and it still holds up beautifully today.

11 - Girls Trip by Malcolm D. Lee (2017).

It's hard to articulate exactly what makes Girls Trip stand out in the sea of raunchy R-rated boys/girls'-night-out comedies that so pervaded the 2010s box-office. Is it the way it takes full advantage of its New Orleans setting without resorting to lazy clichés? Is it the natural, tangible chemistry between its four main players that underlines every exchange and interplay with a sense of lived history? Is it Tiffany Haddish's explosive livewire performance as Dina, and the communicative energy she exudes that elevates her far and above the "loose cannon" role typically expected in this subgenre? Is it Malcolm D. Lee's knack for knowing when to let his actors' energy guide the scene and when to bottle it in? Perhaps it's all four at the same time, with the added secret bonus of a screenplay that treats its characters with equal amounts of love, warmth and respect for their intelligence as well as our own, allowing the "oh-my-God-did-that-just-happen" shenanigans to look all the more outrageous and making the laughs all the bigger for it.

10 - To Sleep With Anger by Charles Burnett (1990).

Perhaps the most important living American filmmaker most people have never heard of, Charles Burnett spent the first twenty years of his distinguished career examining the emotional lives of Black Angeleno families in such films as My Brother's Wedding and the groundbreaking Killer Of Sheep (more on that later). In this film, his third feature and the first cast entirely with professional actors, a middle-class South Central family finds its life disrupted by the unexpected visit of old family friend Harry (Danny Glover, in his very best performance), whose invasive manners and ambiguous intentions unearth unresolved issues from the past and present. Mixing observational dramedy with the smallest hint of magic realism, To Sleep With Anger uses the tried-and-tested premise of the disruptive visitor to dissect family dynamics and the far-reaching ripples both collective and personal past into interpersonal relationships. By taking full advantage of the shift from his previous films' guerilla documentary aesthetics to a more conventional style, Burnett makes every tonal swerve, every behavioural change and every scene beat all the stranger, all the more uncomfortable and all the more exciting to experience. Alternately weird, familiar, puzzling, funny, shocking and awkward, this is an example of an American master at the height of his powers.

9 - Madeline's Madeline by Josephine Decker (2018).

Identity is on everyone's lips these days, but few artists mine the topic's meaning and implications as intelligently as Josephine Decker does through this intense, agoraphobic portrait of a mentally ill biracial teen who finds her innermost struggles appropriated by a vampiric acting coach. Carried by newcomer Helena Howard's awe-inspiring performance - one of this decade's very best - and filmed with unnerving precision, Madeline's Madeline is a dark existential reverie that exhorts us to re-examine our preconceptions on experience and performance, not just in art but in our everyday interactions with anyone whose life is different from ours.

8 - Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman (2018).

The best superhero film of a decade defined by them, Into The Spider-Verse draws its heart from its intelligent spin on empowerment metaphor inherent in superhero narratives; more than just another nerdy power fantasy, Miles Morales's story is one of family, solidarity and self-acceptance that embraces and magnifies ordinariness much more than it celebrates superheroic dominance. Through its magnificently disparate animation styles and subtle yet unmistakeable meta-narrative about diversity, this Spider-Man, more than any of its predecessors, speaks to the hearts of marginalized identities from all walks of life - as well as the awkward geek within us all.

7 - Shadows by John Cassavetes (1959).

The film that inaugurated a new era of American independent filmmaking - and one of the audiovisual arts' most groundbreaking careers - has the controlled anarchic energy of a masterful jazz improvisation; it zig-zags from one mood to another, never keeping us in the same place for long, and forces us to keep up with the twists and turns of its main sibling trio's inner lives as they navigate the complexities of social and racial identity in late-50s New York. Renowned for its unsensational examination of "passing" as white, the film is above all an engrossingly naturalistic portrait of life at the crossroads between private desire and group influence, where the self is kept in a state of constant reconfiguration by every exchange. Few movie characters feel so immediately alive or complicatedly human.

6 - Moonlight by Barry Jenkins (2016).

With tender care and impeccable attention to detail, Barry Jenkins turns the specificities of a poor gay black boy's emotional experiences into poignant testimonies of the human longing to be touched, seen and heard by another. Thanks to the superb efforts of Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes, and pitch-perfect complementary work from Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris, that longing has been fulfilled as rarely before in American cinema.

5 - The Last Black Man In San Francisco by Joe Talbot (2019).

Because gentrification's insidious racism is so central to the film's story, this bittersweet breakup letter to a beloved city may appear to contradict my previously established criteria. I would, however, argue that Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails, not content with merely denouncing the economic injustice visited upon Black working-class populations, makes the unjust situation a springboard for a much deeper dive into the relationships we build with each other and our surroundings through storytelling. At once radical and gentle, its powerfully empathetic observation of Jimmie and Montgomery's friendship and struggles to carve out spaces for them to live and express themselves makes it as moving a celebration of Black life as has ever been seen in the past decade.

4 - Tangerine by Sean Baker (2015).

The best film centering Black lives to have been released this decade, however, is this phenomenal act of digital love. Chronicling a day in the life of a recently-released transgender sex worker as she hunts down her unfaithful boyfriend/pimp with the reluctant assistance of her loving best friend, Sean Baker's film bursts with vivid detail that bring these characters' polyvalent, complicated humanity to gorgeous life, far above prevailing miserabilist clichés and media condescension. Powered by two of the best performances of the decade, this wild walk on L.A.'s mean streets is an invaluable work of cultural elevation.

3 - George Washington by David Gordon Green (2000).

To describe David Gordon Green's still-unsurpassed feature début as one of the most vital portraits of humanity ever added to the American film canon this millennium would be accurate, yet would scarcely do justice to the rapturous poetry with which the film probes the American consciousness. Following a group of predominantly Black children in a depressed North Carolina town as each process the consequences of an accidental killing, George Washington drifts across its various protagonists' lives in a stream-of-consciousness flow of images, sound and feelings that captures, more movingly than any other film of the 00s, the chaotic headspace of the juvenile mind. The lead performances from the non-professional cast, especially Donald Hoden and Damian Jewan Lee, are among the best ever given by child actors; unaffectedly forthright in that unfakeable way only kids can be, they convey in simple, short lines and single gazes more emotional truth than most trained actors deliver in entire monologues.

2 - Killer Of Sheep by Charles Burnett (1978).

It's one of the most important films in American cinema history and it took 20 years for it to get a proper wide theatrical release outside of museums and festivals. Shot guerilla-style without permits and starring Charles Burnett's own friends and neighbours, Killer Of Sheep documents the daily frustrations, distractions and dreams of a working-class Black community from L. A.'s Watts neighbourhood, with special attention on Stan (Henry G. Sanders) and the toll his job at the slaughterhouse is taking on his marriage and mental health. With no real "plot" to speak of and very sporadic dialogue, Burnett eschews traditional storytelling in favour of a documentary approach that uncovers his characters' inner lives through silences, music, unexpected cuts and careful framing of the actors' body movements in both still and handheld shots. Though the film is short, the characters' arcs static and the story seemingly devoid of any grand overarching idea, the treasure trove of emotion and experience Burnett discovers in each shot make its viewing experience one that resonates louder and deeper with each following day.

1 - 35 Shots Of Rum by Claire Denis (2009).

The simplest scenarios often yield the most complex emotions: a young woman falling in love with a sensitive young man, a widowed father whose young adult daughter is about to fly the nest, a veteran train conductor slowly realizing his job may end up being all he has left... Claire Denis unifies all three scenarios in a single narrative story about the subtle change in the close relationship between a middle-aged man (Alex Descas) and his daughter (Mati Diop)** and creates one of the most transcendently human films I have ever had the joy of experiencing. Lionel and Joséphine's relationship is practically devoid of what we might think of as "drama" in fiction or real life; no shouting matches, no slamming of doors, no sarcastic jabs, no whining or scolding, but instead a quiet observation of the subtle shifts in everyday gestures and behaviours that commemorate the approaching end of a life lived together. Underlined by the bittersweet glow of Agnès Godard's magnificently-lit Parisian sundowns and the Tindersticks' gentle harmonies, the silent emotional battles waged within these sublimely-realized characters' hearts make every interaction feel like the most important happening in the world. It is one of the most vibrant celebrations of life - Black or otherwise - ever put to screen.

*Though if we take into account the Queen Latifah-led spin-off Beauty Shop, doesn't that make it a Barbershop quartet?
**Inspired by Yasujiro Ozu's acclaimed 1949 classic Late Spring, still unseen by me as of this writing.

Another Decade - Part 3

Well, here we are.  In the middle of a pandemic, with a lot of spare time, stagnant film industries and a state of permanent uncertainty hovering in our minds. A perfect time to conclude my much-belated look back at the past decade in cinema and count down the 30 films that stand heads and shoulders above all others. As I indicated in the first part, this is a selection of films whose diversity of backgrounds, subjects, styles and genres offer a multiplicity of perspectives into the drive for happiness, meaning and purpose we all share. On a personal level, each one was an emotional and intellectual experience that left me a richer person than I was before I sat down to watch them. Whether they made me laugh, made me cry, cheered me up, enraged me, frustrated me, confused me or caused me discomfort, they opened doors in my mind through which I accessed parts of myself that might otherwise have been left unexplored. I sincerely hope to transmit parts of that experience to readers, if only in brief snippets, across each of the following entries.

Before we begin, I would like to address a couple of small caveats on the issue of television. It is a fact largely acknowledged that in the past two decades, televisual storytelling has more than equalled cinematic storytelling and, in some respects, may even have surpassed it. The venerable Cahiers Du Cinéma all but entrenched this truth into global cinephile consciousness by putting Twin Peaks' belated third season, Twin Peaks: The Return, on top of both their list of best films of 2017 and, more recently, their list of best films of the decade. While I entirely agree that the third season of Twin Peaks constitutes an achievement that towers above most entries on the following list, I believe boundaries between televised and cinematic experiences should nevertheless be maintained, for the sake of coherence. For similar reasons, while I consider miniseries to be fragmented films and even acknowledge those screened at film festivals* or given limited theatrical distribution, this list will not include such stellar recent examples as Sharp Objects or Coincoin And The Extra-Humans, but I would like to take a brief moment to salute director Jean-Marc Vallée and creator Marti Noxon's superb dissection of generational trauma through a modernization of the Southern Gothic, as well as Bruno Dumont's thought-provoking, often discomfiting surrealist farce on the cultural and political identity crises currently traversing France.

And now, without further ado...

Honourable mentions:

- Inception by Christopher Nolan (2010).
- Jeanne by Bruno Dumont (2019).
- The Handmaiden by Park Chan-Wook (2016).
- Raw by Julia Ducournau (2017).
- Get Out by Jordan Peele (2017).

30 - Inside Out by Pete Docter & Ronnie Del Carmen (2010).

How fitting that this bittersweet dramatization of juvenile emotional growth would prove to be Pixar's most mature and poignant undertaking outside of the Toy Story franchise. First-tier voicework from Amy Poehler and especially Phyllis Smith humanize the most colourfully poetic journey through childhood development since Terence Davies' masterpiece The Long Day Closes.

29 - Clouds Of Sils Maria by Olivier Assayas (2014).

Olivier Assayas combines the psychosocial mysteries of L'Avventura with the feminine inter-generational conflicts of All About Eve, and from that union creates an empathetic examination of age, storytelling and identity in today's cultural landscape. Juliette Binoche and a never-better Kristen Stewart embody, confront and juggle personas with masterful subtlety, confirming the former's golden age and the latter's long-misunderstood brilliance in one of the decade's best acting duets.

28 - Uncut Gems by Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie (2019).

The Safdie brothers take their immersion into fast life on the margins of New York City life to dizzying new dimensions in a superbly-textured, richly-detailed thriller bolstered by Adam Sandler's very best performance, which I very reluctantly had to leave out of Part 2's honourable mentions for lack of space. Few films have dramatized contemporary American capitalism's moral and social consequences on so small a scale with such razor-sharp precision.

27 - Hereditary by Ari Aster (2018).

Amidst the treasure trove this new Golden Age of western horror has uncovered (The Babadook, Get Out, Raw, It Follows), Ari Aster's feature début stands as the scariest, saddest and most rigorously-executed of all. A dark, fatalistic, at times perversely humourous slow-burner, Hereditary conveys the unspeakably intimate pain at the heart of most great horror with an acuity unlike anything else released this decade.

26 - Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse by Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman (2018).

In a cinematic decade saturated with galaxy-saving superhero mega-narratives, who could have predicted Marvel Studios' mould would be broken by a Marvel-owned property? Leaning on co-screenwriter Phil Lord's intuitive understanding of pop culture and using diversity as their driving force, the PRR directing trio gets to the very heart of superhero stories' universal appeal and conjure a mosaic of colours, styles and characters unlike anything the genre - or feature-length animation itself - have ever seen.

25 - The Wolf Of Wall Street by Martin Scorsese (2013).

No American filmmaker alive understands American capitalist mythology as well as Martin Scorsese, as this satirical crime opera demonstrates with exhaustingly Dionysian fervour. Propelled by the masterful comic energy of lead tenor DiCaprio, Scorsese perfects with The Wolf Of Wall Street a cinema of constant forward momentum he'd been building up to for the past twenty years, the climax of which elegantly transitions into yet another entry on this list...

24 - If Beale Street Could Talk by Barry Jenkins (2018).

Like in a half-remembered dream, Barry Jenkins extracts from James Baldwin's acclaimed novel** pigments of joy and pain that give this lush watercolour celebration of Black love a bittersweet taste of yesterdays that could have been and tomorrows that may yet come to be. Jenkins's impeccable attention to movement, texture and touch ground his formal sumptuousness in a sensual form of humanity that finds in its superb cast its most understatedly eloquent expression.

23 - The Immigrant by James Gray (2013).

America's greatest contemporary classicist signs his best film yet, exploring the young American Dream's poisonous ecosystem of power in a labyrinthine maze of emotional smoke and mirrors led by Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix at their best. The final shot (above) still haunts my mind.

22 - Moonlight by Barry Jenkins (2016).

Barry Jenkins arranges the fragments of a single boy's journey to manhood into a sensuous poem of neon, touch and gazes through which human identity embraces - and transcends - the sum of its marginalized parts. Rarely has an American film simultaneously embodied and subverted the national motto E Pluribus Unum - out of many, one - with such literality or more grace.

21 - The Last Black Man In San Francisco by Joe Talbot (2019).

Under first-timer Joe Talbot's open-hearted direction, star and co-writer Jimmie Fails's semi-autobiographical struggle with familial heritage becomes a poignant allegory for Black American history and identity, buoyed by a deft sensitivity to its predominantly male characters' inner histories and varied expressions of masculinity. Fails's outstanding work on both fronts, supported by a revelatory turn from Jonathan Majors and a small but unforgettable turn from the ever-magnificent Rob Morgan, make this parting sweet sorrow indeed.

20 - The Irishman by Martin Scorsese (2019).

Scorsese completes his criminal chronicle of American history with a monument of sneakily disquieting self-reflection, moving with the clear-headed slow pace of a condemned man on his last day. Possibly the most moving look back an artist has made at their own career since Ingmar Bergman's Saraband, with career-best work from Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro's finest performance in decades.

19 - Burning by Lee Chang-Dong (2018).

South Korea's soulful observer of social self-harm concocts an intoxicating tale of obsession and envy whose mysteries, more than simple thrill-inducing devices, set the stage for an engrossing study of behaviour in an unequal society. You'll never look at a sunset the same way again.

18 - No Home Movie by Chantal Akerman (2016).

Chantal Akerman's achingly intimate account of her relationship with her mother shortly before their respective deaths may be the greatest act of filial love ever committed to screen, and a hauntingly fitting conclusion to a career spent contemplating the slow effects of time on our lives, our bodies and the spaces we occupy with them.

17 - Tangerine by Sean Baker (2015).

With three smartphones, Los Angeles's blinding sun and an extraordinary cast of non-professionals, Sean Baker illuminates the joys, pains and cruelties of life on the fast lane with blissful radiance and humbling empathy. A life-affirming, unflinching, gorgeously multi-faceted modern movie miracle.

16 - Heaven Knows What by Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie (2015).

The Safdies turn Arielle Holmes's autobiographical account of homelessness and addiction on the pitiless streets of New York City into a nerve-wracking confession of loneliness and emotional confusion, anchored by a performance of uncompromising bravery from Holmes as her fictionalized self. Let us hope it gets more attention after Uncut Gems's deserved success, for it is the brothers' best film to date.

15 - Margaret by Kenneth Lonergan (2011).

Post-9/11 America gets a long-awaited psychological autopsy in the form of a realist allegorical story of uncomfortable social acuity and generously rich characterization, best described as Bergman-era Rossellini as seen through Maupassant's cynical lens. In its crusading adolescent heroine, constantly ping-ponging between Abrahamic self-martyrdom and moral narcissism, Anna Paquin composes one of this decade's great acting partitions.

14 - Mad Max: Fury Road by George Miller (2015).

George Miller distils action cinema down to its simplest original subject - the chase scene - and returns to the genre's roots, making the action itself (and every element composing it) a clear signifier of character, purpose and idea. An audiovisual (and political) masterclass on how to move forward by going back to basics.

13 - Silence by Martin Scorsese (2016).

Martin Scorsese made three of his best films this decade, and this long-gestating epic is the best of them. Continuing The Last Temptation Of Christ's questioning of Christian morality, Silence navigates through the troubled waters of colonialism and oppression in a tempestuous quest for answers that reveals, as its creator previously did in Taxi Driver, the inextinguishable hubris that animates God's lonely men.

12 - Appropriate Behaviour by Desiree Akhavan (2015).

Triple threat Desiree Akhavan converts personal inner experience into an initiative sexual journey of eye-opening emotional frankness, resulting in a comedy whose pains, shocks and discomforts fuel this decade's most rewarding laughs. The overwhelming sensation I felt at its conclusion, the elated realization that I had just witnessed the birth of something unique, beautiful and new that would engender many more of its kind, reminded me exactly why I love cinema so.

11 - Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (2010).

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's sixth feature takes us on a spiritual journey across life and death in a series of hypnotic tableaus in which Thailand's great painter of time examines the echoes we leave in the lives surrounding our own. Perhaps no other film about death has felt quite like such an approximation of the real thing; watching it is like going into a trance, drifting in a dark and gentle river of memory and sensation as you slowly shed yourself of the world around you in preparation for the next.

10 - Certified Copy by Abbas Kiarostami (2010).

The much-missed Iranian master updates Journey To Italy for the post-war generations, turning spoken word into action as identities and memories reshape themselves in real-time in a mesmerizing romantic duet carried out to pitch perfection by William Shimell and Juliette Binoche.

9 - The Rider by Chloé Zhao (2018).

Chloé Zhao's patiently-observed dramatization of rodeo cowboy Brady Jandreau's struggles against his circumstances is a work of quietly powerful humanism, solidified by a magnificent central performance from the man himself. In a media landscape saturated with performative progressivism, the stubborn self-effacement with which it allows its subject to speak for itself makes it perhaps the most politically vital work of audiovisual art yet produced in the Trump era.

8 - The We And The I by Michel Gondry (2012).

In the course of a single, prolonged bus ride from school, Michel Gondry analyzes teenage social codes in multiracial Bronx with devastating emotional accuracy. Lucid, playful and transformatively generous, this under-seen gift to the human desire to be enlightened stands as its creator's greatest film as of this writing.

7 - Camille Claudel 1915 by Bruno Dumont (2013).

Two of French cinema's most important figures join forces to humanize a martyrized artist. What they achieve is a sublime portrait that challenges audience assumptions on acting, stardom, faith and ability norms... and inaugurates new roads for each other's respective artform.

6 - Phantom Thread by Paul Thomas Anderson (2017).

In what may be the most self-reflective film of his career so far, Paul Thomas Anderson masterfully draws from the aesthetic and moral issues posed by Hitchcockian cinema to deconstruct an artist-muse relationship and expose the emotional voids behind it. And it's still only the second-best dissection of heterosexual relationships that came out this decade...

5 - Melancholia by Lars Von Trier (2011).

Lars Von Trier comes to terms with depression, misanthropy and mortality in his most mature film to date, in which Kirsten Dunst patiently guides us through the end of all things and uncovers what Penn Jillette once described as "The Audacity Of No Hope". Trust cinema's most notorious nihilist to make the end of the world such a life-affirming experience.

4 - Under The Skin by Jonathan Glazer (2014).

Jonathan Glazer evokes Roeg, Hitchcock and Kubrick's combined legacies to highlight the inherent menace in the human gaze - and the male gaze in particular - and in doing so produces a deeply unsettling masterpiece whose sensorial mysteries continue to swim in my mind to this day.

3 - Songs My Brothers Taught Me by Chloé Zhao (2015).

A new filmmaking star explodes into being, in the form of Chloé Zhao and her breathtaking feature-length début. Through the separate paths taken by a Lakota brother and sister after their father's death, Zhao reveals hidden, multi-faceted struggles for connection in a culture fighting to stay alive, bringing timeless expressions and experiences of the human soul to incandescent new light in a film of uncommonly raw power.

2 - Elle by Paul Verhoeven (2016).

Paul Verhoeven and Isabelle Huppert both reach the zenith of their respective careers in a psychosexual maze that systematically laughs at our efforts to apply moral or psychological labels on its beautifully, maddeningly complicated heroine. No film this decade has explored sexual desire, straight or otherwise, with more depth or daring.

1 - The Master by Paul Thomas Anderson (2012).

Movie theatres of the 2010s saw many striking images pass across their screens, but none have had as powerful an impact on me as the late Philip Seymour Hoffman's face filling the frame with angry sorrow, his voice cracking as he softly sings "(I'd Like to Get You on a) Slow Boat to China" in parting farewell to the only person with whom he formed anything resembling a meaningful connection. Paul Thomas Anderson's enigmatic reverie, more than any other film this decade, captures with that strange, dark, unmistakable touch of his the unquenchable hunger for kinship we all share as a species yet so often struggle with. As aptly-titled as a work of its calibre ever could be, The Master is the best film of the past ten years.

* as the first two episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return were at the 2017 Cannes film festival
**shamefully unread by me as of this writing