The 25 Best Fictional Films of the Decade (So Far)

Our film team ranked their favorite films of the past few years — all fictional, all fiercely debated. It took five critics, three long meetings, one shared spreadsheet with far too many tabs and, at one point, a heated argument about whether a two-hour film about a lighthouse counts as a horror movie. Each critic submitted a personal top 40. We awarded points by position, added them up and then spent two weeks fighting about the results anyway. What you see below is where we finally landed: 25 films that we believe will still be talked about long after this decade is over.

A few ground rules before we begin. Every film on this list had a wide or limited theatrical release in the United States during the current decade. Documentaries and short films were considered separately and will get their own list next spring. And we tried, as much as possible, to rank the films we think are best, not simply the ones that made the most money or won the most trophies.

Number one

“The Quiet Year,” a gentle family drama, beat the space epics by a single vote. That margin tells you a lot about this list. For most of our process, “Orbit Nine” sat comfortably at the top, the big, ambitious science fiction film that nearly everyone admired. Then our final critic turned in her ballot with “The Quiet Year” in first place and “Orbit Nine” in eleventh, and the whole order shifted.

We are glad it did. “The Quiet Year” follows a family in rural Minnesota over twelve months after the death of a grandparent. Nothing dramatic happens. A barn is repainted. A daughter learns to drive. Thanksgiving is awkward. But the film captures the texture of grief and recovery with such tenderness that, by the final scene, several of us were in tears. It is the rare movie that feels smaller than life on the surface and much bigger underneath.

Lists start arguments. That’s the point.

Our film critic

Top five

The top of the list was the hardest part to settle, and the five films below finished within a handful of points of each other. Any one of them could reasonably have been number one.

• 1. The Quiet Year
• 2. Orbit Nine
• 3. Saltwater
• 4. Pip & the Paper Moon
• 5. The Lantern Keepers

“Orbit Nine” is the decade’s defining blockbuster, a sprawling story about a crew stranded at the edge of the solar system that somehow balances huge spectacle with real intimacy. “Saltwater” is its opposite: a spare, quiet drama about two sisters running a failing oyster farm on the Gulf Coast, which first wowed festival crowds before slowly finding a wider audience. “The Lantern Keepers” is the newest film on the list, a coastal locked-room mystery that our critics agreed was the best thriller of recent years.

Biggest surprise

The animated “Pip & the Paper Moon” landed in the top five. Nobody on our team expected that when we started. Animated films have a habit of being admired and then quietly left off lists like this one, as if they belong in a separate category. But once the ballots came in, “Pip” was on every single one, and three critics had it in their top ten.

The film follows a small paper bird on a journey to find the moon, and on the surface it is a bright, funny adventure for kids. The final act, about letting go of someone you love, is what lifted it so high on our list. More than one of us admitted to watching it alone after the kids were in bed, just to feel it again. It is proof that the most emotional film of the decade can also be the gentlest.

Numbers six through twenty-five

Here is the rest of our ranking, with a line on why each film earned its place. Some of these are well known. Others are small films we think deserve a much bigger audience.

• 6. The Last Ferry — A romance set entirely on a late-night crossing to a Washington island.
• 7. Holiday Detour — The funniest family comedy in years, and secretly very wise.
• 8. Ironwood — A slow Western about a widow defending her land in 1880s Montana.
• 9. Glasshouse — A chilly, elegant thriller about an architect and a client with secrets.
• 10. Paper Planes Over Ohio — A coming-of-age story built around a high school science fair.
• 11. Tidewater — A gripping courtroom drama set in coastal Virginia.
• 12. The Night Shift — A hospital drama that follows one nurse through a single brutal night.
• 13. Red Rock Road — A road movie across Utah with two estranged brothers and a broken truck.
• 14. Small Hours — A jazz musician’s last week in New Orleans, scored to perfection.
• 15. Northern Lights Motel — A quirky ensemble comedy set at an Alaska roadside inn.
• 16. Hollow Pines — The rare horror film that is genuinely moving.
• 17. Fieldwork — A sharp satire about a reality show filmed on a Kansas farm.
• 18. The Long Winter Garden — A retired botanist and her grandson build a greenhouse in Vermont.
• 19. Signal Lost — A taut survival story aboard a disabled research ship.
• 20. Brightwater — A musical about a summer camp that left us humming for weeks.
• 21. Copper City — A crime saga about three generations of a Montana mining family.
• 22. Westbound — A train heist film with the decade’s best action sequence.
• 23. Kitchen Table — A single conversation between a mother and daughter, in real time.
• 24. Low Country — A Southern Gothic mystery wrapped in Spanish moss and family lies.
• 25. The Understudy — A backstage Broadway comedy with a surprisingly sharp heart.

The ones that just missed

Every list leaves out something somebody loves. The films that came closest to cracking our top 25 included the Arctic adventure “Whiteout,” the baseball drama “Extra Innings” and the eerie sci-fi film “Static.” Each of them had at least one passionate champion on our team, and each of them is well worth your time.

How we chose

Several readers have asked how a list like this gets made, so here is a short look behind the curtain. Each critic ranked forty films. A first-place vote earned forty points, a second-place vote earned thirty-nine, and so on down the line. We added the scores, then held a final meeting where any critic could argue to move one film up or down by up to three spots. That last step is where most of the shouting happened.

We also made a few deliberate choices. We weighed how well a film has held up on a second or third viewing, not just how it felt opening weekend. We gave extra consideration to films that tried something new, even if they did not fully succeed. And we tried hard not to let box office numbers or awards results do our thinking for us.

Key takeaway: The best films of the decade so far are a mix of big spectacle and small, quiet stories, and the quiet ones won the argument.

Your turn

We know you will disagree with at least a few of these picks, and we would be disappointed if you did not. Tell us in the comments which film we ranked too high, which one we ranked too low and which one we forgot entirely. Our awards tracker will keep updating as the season goes on, and we will revisit this list when the decade is over. Until then, start with “The Quiet Year,” keep tissues close for “Pip & the Paper Moon,” and let the arguments begin.