Forgot to post this last week, due to me being so swamped putting together the 2010-2012 aggregate critics polls that I didn't have the free time, but Fandor Keyframe's Kevin B. Lee asked on Twitter and Facebook over the holidays the question of which films released in the first half of the 2010s (2010-2014) were the best. Nearly 300 people responded to him, including film critics as well as other general cinephiles, and this was the result for the top 35:
1. THE TREE OF LIFE (dir: Terrence Malick)- 103 votes
2. CERTIFIED COPY (dir: Abbas Kiarostami)- 91 votes
3. THE MASTER (dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)- 76 votes
4. MARGARET (dir: Kenneth Lonergan)- 68 votes
5. HOLY MOTORS (dir: Leos Carax)- 66 votes
6. A SEPARATION (dir: Asghar Farhadi)- 64 votes
7. UNDER THE SKIN (dir: Jonathan Glazer)- 61 votes
8. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)- 59 votes
9. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES (dir: Apichatpong Weerasethakul)- 45 votes
10. BOYHOOD (dir: Richard Linklater)- 44 votes
11. GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D (dir: Jean-Luc Godard)- 41 votes
12. THE SOCIAL NETWORK (dir: David Fincher)- 40 votes
13. MOONRISE KINGDOM (dir: Wes Anderson)- 36 votes
14. HER (dir: Spike Jonze)- 33 votes
14. LEVIATHAN (dir: Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel)- 33 votes
16. MYSTERIES OF LISBON (dir: Raul Ruiz)- 32 votes
17. THE ACT OF KILLING (dir: Christine Cynn, Joshua Oppenheimer)- 28 votes
17. THE TURIN HORSE (dir: Agnes Hranitzky, Bela Tarr)- 28 votes
19. BEFORE MIDNIGHT (dir: Richard Linklater)- 27 votes
19. MELANCHOLIA (dir: Lars Von Trier)- 27 votes
19. ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA (dir: Nuri Bilge Ceylan)- 27 votes
22. FRANCES HA (dir: Noah Baumbach)- 25 votes
22. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET (dir: Martin Scorsese)- 25 votes
24. SPRING BREAKERS (dir: Harmony Korine)- 24 votes
24. TABU (dir: Miguel Gomes)- 24 votes
24. THE IMMIGRANT (dir: James Gray)- 24 votes
27. AMOUR (dir: Michael Haneke)- 23 votes
27. HOUSE OF TOLERANCE (PLEASURES) (dir: Bertrand Bonello)- 23 votes
29. LIKE SOMEONE IN LOVE (dir: Abbas Kiarostami)- 21 votes
29. THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (dir: Wes Anderson)- 21 votes
29. THIS IS NOT A FILM (dir: Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Jafar Panahi)- 21 votes
32. UPSTREAM COLOR (dir: Shane Carruth)- 20 votes
33. STRAY DOGS (dir: Tsai Ming-liang)- 19 votes
34. DRIVE (dir: Nicolas Winding-Refn)- 18 votes
34. OSLO, AUGUST 31st (dir: Joachim Trier)- 18 votes
You can check out the entire list here, and you can also check out Lee's Slate article analyzing the list here.
Considering this was a list created by people who read articles from a writer for a cinephile-friendly website, the fact that the top of the list comprises of independent films and arthouse fare is no surprise at all. The Tree of Life being voted on as the #1 film is also not surprising. Since premiering at Cannes in 2011 (where it also won the Palme d'Or), Terrence Malick's impressionistic work has amazed countless film lovers in a way that few others have since: it placed #1 in this website's 2011 aggregate film poll during a year which saw a stacked crop of movies released and managed to becomes one of the most shocking Best Picture nominees in recent memory (and I say "shocking" because of its lack of focus on a traditional narrative story and because of the film being pretty divisive among those who saw it). It was the also the highest-ranked 2010s movie in the latest Sight & Sound poll of the greatest films ever, finishing one vote shy of the top 100 despite being released only a year before the list was compiled. If there was any one film that a majority of critics and cinephiles could pinpoint as being a meaningful one in the history of cinema, it would probably be this movie.
When comparing this list to this website's five aggregate critics poll, it's interesting to note the types of films that continued to receive acclaim years after their releases, as well as the films whose acclaim fluctuated.A lot of familiar faces show up: Certified Copy, The Master, Holy Motors, A Separation, Boyhood, The Social Network, etc. But the high placement of several movies were a pleasant surprise. Margaret, for instance, barely missed out on the top ten of the 2011 aggregate poll yet managed to finish fourth, while Mysteries of Lisbon and The Turin Horse cracked the top twenty despite not placing in the top twenty of the 2011 and 2012 polls, respectively. But perhaps the most surprising rise in acclaim is Bertrand Bonello's 2011 film House of Tolerance, which never made it onto the top 85 of any of this website's aggregate film polls yet placed in the top thirty of this list. On the flip side, there are several films adored at the year of its release that aren't as highly ranked in this one, including Inception, The Artist, Zero Dark Thirty, 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).
There is a theory I have for the high placements of certain films on the list, which is that a lot of them fall under a certain category of movies, specifically the category that is both auteur-driven and was considered polarizing upon its release but gained a cult following among those who love it. As anyone would notice from reading famous film polls (like the once-a-decade Sught & Sound poll), this tends to fit many of the movies that would eventually be regarded as the greatest of all-time, from Vertigo and L'Avventura to The Rules of the Game and Last Year at Marienbad. It seems to continue in this list, with such films fitting the bill including Margaret, The Wolf of Wall Street, Spring Breakers and the aforementioned The Tree of Life. Either way, this is just one list and there is a good chance that if more people were polled, then the results would be a lot different. Now the only thing left is to wait another five years and see how the films highly-placed on this list compare to others when critics and film writers look back at the entire ten-year period.
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