Skip to main content
News 30 May 2026

Not the ten best. The ten that other films started copying.

  1. The Social Network (2010) — proved software could be dramatised, by turning it into competing depositions.
  2. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) — restored practical stunt work as a commercial argument, not just a purist one.
  3. Whiplash (2014) — cut a music film like a thriller, and every music film since has noticed.
  4. Arrival (2016) — made a science fiction blockbuster out of a translation problem.
  5. Get Out (2017) — reset the economics of original horror.
  6. Blade Runner 2049 (2017) — demonstrated that a studio sequel could be slow, long and beautiful, and lose money doing it.
  7. Parasite (2019) — broke the Academy's language barrier and shifted international distribution with it.
  8. Interstellar (2014) — put hard physics and open sentiment in the same film.
  9. Zodiac (2007, but its influence is entirely of this decade) — the template for the prestige procedural that never solves anything.
  10. The Dark Knight (2008, same caveat) — the crime film in costume that every franchise then tried to be.

Two of those are from 2007 and 2008. The decade's taste was set slightly before it started.