10 of the best films from the 2010s
"The Social Network" didn't win the best picture Oscar, but it made this list.
We're days away from ushering in a new decade, which makes it extra-fun to look back on the past 10 years.
Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers, who also hosts ABC's "Popcorn," chose 10 of his favorite movies from this decade, which includes two winners of the Oscar for best picture: "12 Years a Slave" and "Moonlight."
However, awards aren't everything.
Here are Travers picks for the best films from 2010 until today.
10. "Black Panther," 2018: The Marvel superhero film, starring Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan, earned an astounding $1,346,913,161 worldwide. "It was one of the most successful movies ever made," Travers gushed. "It allowed children, especially of color, to see themselves reflected on screen with superheroes. All apologies to Martin Scorsese, who has famously said that Marvel movies are not cinema, I'm sorry. Mr. Scorsese, this particular movie is cinema. It's terrific and revolutionary in every way."
9. "The Master," 2012: Written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, who Travers gushed is "the best talent of his generation," "The Master" focuses on a charismatic leader of a religious movement, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. "It's about America. It's not just about this, but about how we basically show allegiance to things that we shouldn't -- that we need to think for ourselves," Travers said. Nominated for three Oscars, including one for Hoffman, Travers gushed that "The Master" is "a terrific, great movie."
8. "Zero Dark Thirty," 2012: Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," about the hunt for terrorist Osama bin Laden, earned five Oscar nominations and the number eight spot on Travers' list. "Kathryn Bigelow does such an amazing job of making us see what happened and see what's behind what happened," Travers. said.
7. "12 Years a Slave," 2013: "12 Years a Slave," about a black man who lived free in New York before the Civil War but was then enslaved, "brings the horror of slavery to us like no movie ever had before," Travers said. Star Lupita Nyong'o won the Oscar for best supporting actress, and John Ridley earned the award for best adapted screenplay. But perhaps the biggest accolade earned by the movie was the prestigious best picture Academy Award. "This was the right choice," Travers said.
6. "Get Out," 2017: Jordan Peele transitioned from comedy to drama with his feature film directorial debut, "Get Out," which he also wrote. The movie earned Peele an Oscar, but also a whole new audience. "In the guise of a horror movie, Jordan Peele has made a movie that speaks to everything about race in this country and everything that still needs to be discussed," Travers said. "Amazing film."
5. "Boyhood," 2014: "I cry when I think of 'Boyhood' because Richard Linklater, who wrote and directed this, decided, to the horror of studio executives, that he was going to make a movie about a boy from the ages of 7 to 18 and he was gonna shoot it in real-time," Travers said. "Over time he was going to watch that little boy instead of being played by an older actor later. He was going to age and we were going to watch him age just as the parents who were played by Ethan Hawke and Oscar-winner Patricia Arquette. We would see them do this in real-time. Everybody said what a failure it would be. Instead, it was a triumphant success because it had heart and it spoke to us about who we are as parents and children."
4. "The Irishman," 2019: A front-runner for next year's best picture Oscar, "The Irishman" is the latest movie from director Martin Scorsese, starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Al Pacino. "This is Martin Scorsese, almost in a way saying goodbye to mob movies," Travers said. "This Netflix movie, I can't watch it enough. It just keeps affecting me so deeply. And that's because everything in it is so deeply felt by a master director."
3. "Moonlight," 2016: "Barry Jenkins's movie about growing up in the Miami projects... [is] just terrific in every way," Travers said of "Moonlight," a coming-of-age drama centered on a boy struggling with his sexuality, among other things, at three phases of his life. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won three: best picture, best adapted screenplay and best supporting actor for Mahershala Ali.
2. "Mad Max: Fury Road," 2015: Travers describes this as a movie about "a dystopian world and people are in cars and there's a gas shortage," but it made number two on his list in part because of the message it sends about conservation. The performances don't hurt, either, he said. "You have Tom Hardy as Mad Max, the character that Mel Gibson created years before. And Charlize Theron in what I think is maybe the best screen performance I've ever seen her give as a female warrior," he said. "So you're having this rip-roaring rocket of a time as a movie. And when you go home, you wind up thinking about it for a good long time."
1. "The Social Network," 2010: "The Social Network," the film about the founding of Facebook, earned Travers' top spot because of the message it sent about the dangers of social media. "The movie was a warning," Travers said. "This thing could also mean that it's turning us into a nation of narcissists who are taking pictures of ourselves and putting them everywhere so that we can see them. And also, what's the downside of that? Can the fact that we do this and give our information to the world be being used against us?" "The Social Network" lost best picture, but earned three Oscars, including one for screenplay writer Aaron Sorkin.
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