11. Blader Runner 2049 (2017)


Warner Bros. decision to give Denis Villeneuve $185 million to create a sequel to a notorious 1982 box office bomb that took a decade to gain cult status may not be astute from a business perspective, but they enabled one of the most audacious tentpoles of the decade. Using the original as a jumping-off point rather than a constant reference point, Blade Runner 2049 goes bigger in scale and scope, yet keeps the fundamental thematic area - that of our relationship with technology and, more abstract, what it means to be human, at the fore. Holograms are the mots relatable characters and blank Ryan Gosling ciphers are the point. Best of all, it refuses to answer the Deckard-Replicant question, and brings everything around to be about a simple love story.

10. The Social Network (2010)


No film from the 2010s has aged quite as finely as The Social Network. In 2020, it stands as a far more chilling look at how drunken rejection and teenage jealousy led to a total shift in how our world works, from personal relationships to global politics. Whenever you watch it, though, David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's masterful teamup remains a fascinating parable of misplaced power, manipulation, birthright and the American dream. The truthfulness behind Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg or Armie Hammer's Winklevi almost ceases to matter when the message behind it is so pure.

9. The Cabin In The Woods (2012)


What if all the horror movie tropes that define the genre aren't easy writing short-cuts but all part of a grand ritual to keep the world safe? It's a delightfully meta concept that The Cabin in the Woods slowly ekes out over its first half, starting as a celebration of cliches before twisting into an all-out monster action that namechecks everything from The Evil Dead to Hellraiser. When every genre film narrative seems so keen to canonize their self-awareness (post-post-Scream), it's easy to forget just how exciting The Cabin in the Woods was when Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard unleashed it in the other world of 2012.

8. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)


Rian Johnson's Star Wars: The Last Jedi did to Star Wars what the original trilogy did to Flash Gordon: distilled the hero's journey down and asked serious questions about the monomyth ideal (once again filtered through groundbreaking tech and heavy cultural influences). Picking up from The Force Awakens, albeit with the decision to explore in a more tangential direction, Episode VIII was a meditation on the pragmatics of the franchise, what it is to be a hero, how failure defines us but we have ultimate control, and finding hope from within that. It lacks the clear-cut approach of its predecessor, but that allowed The Last Jedi to go deeper, delivering thematic closure to the sequels and providing the ultimate stamp on legacy.

7. La La Land (2016)


It remains incredibly fitting that La La Land had the Best Picture Oscar snatched from it after the infamous Warren Beatty mix-up: nothing quite sums up Damien Chazelle's heartbreakingly-true look at lost relationships and the sacrifices necessary for success than such a public near-miss. The film manages to be so much from an industry perspective - a throwback to the Hollywood musicals of old, a satire of the modern moviemaking landscape and, albeit with some questionable perspectives, love letter to jazz - but what so connected with a global audience outside of L.A. is the fraught, regretful love of Mia and Seb, played to millennial perfection by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.