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Some great movies you may have missed this decade

February 26th, 2014 by Marc Comments

Greatest Films this Decade – So Far!

It’s a little unfair to do a list like this when we’re barely halfway into the decade. However, given the quality of some of the releases over the last few years, it’s hard to resist writing up some of the contenders that will still be hailed as the greatest films of the decade in 2020.

The heat is already on in the race for Oscars 2014, but these films already stand the test of time. Some of the contenders are truly noteworthy. Some of them stand a chance of being regarded as all-time greats, unforgettable and ground breaking. The following are the films we think have changed perceptions and will go on to influence film-makers and movie goers alike.

The Social Network – 2010

A docudrama directed by David Fincher and based on the rise and rise of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, The Social Network was heralded by critics as a brilliant, ambitious example of what modern film making should aspire to be. Regardless of the factual inaccuracies in the film, it received widespread acclaim for its editing, acting, musical score, direction and screenplay. It’s a brilliant, sardonic and ironic look at the ‘Facebook’ generation: absolute must-see American cinema at its best.

Restrepo – 2010

Journalists Sebastian Junger and the late Tim Hetherington both spent one year in Afghanistan, on assignment for Vanity Fair, to make a documentary about the day-to-day lives of a US Army platoon in the Korangal Valley. The film chronicles how the platoon survives for an entire year, renaming their lonely outpost after a medic who was killed early on in their campaign. If you’re looking for a brutally honest documentary about what modern warfare is really like, you probably can’t ask for more than this film.

Zero Dark Thirty – 2012

Katheryn Bigelow’s feature about the CIA hunt that ultimately led to the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, still polarises viewers, particularly around the subject of torture. Whether you think the film endorses torture, or speaks out against it as a method of information gathering, no one can dispute that the film displays a ridiculously high level of craft. It functions as a police procedural and features an incredibly strong performance from Jessica Chastain.

The Act of Killing – 2013

Where does one even start with this film? You will struggle to figure out if it’s the greatest documentary of all time, or one of the greatest films of all time, full stop. Film-maker Joshua Oppenheimer befriends the ‘Gangsters’ of Indonesia, paramilitary killers hired by the government to kill ‘communists’ in the purge of the 1960s. The same regime is still in power in Indonesia, so these killers are under the impression that they did the right thing for their country.

In a landmark stroke of film making genius, Oppenheimer gets the killers to direct and act in their own re-enactments of the murders, slowly getting some of them to understand, for the first time in their lives, that perhaps what they did was wrong. It’ll leave you up all night, seriously re-evaluating your perception of good and evil.

Jean-Luc Goddard recently proclaimed that cinema was dead – he’s clearly not tuned into the same channels as the rest of us! What films do you think are going to make the final cut for the greatest films of this decade?

Marc is a self-confessed nerd. Ever since seeing Star Wars for the first time around 1979 he’s been an unapologetic fan of the Wars and still believes, with Clone Wars and now Underworld, we are yet to see the best Star Wars. He’s a dad of two who now doesn’t have the time (or money) to collect the amount of toys, comics, movies and books he once did, much to the relief of his long-suffering wife. In the real world he’s a graphic designer. He started Following the Nerd because he was tired of searching a million sites every day for all the best news that he loves and decided to create one place where you can go to get the whole lot. Secretly he longs to be sitting in the cockpit of his YT-1300 Corellian Transport ship with his co-pilot Chewie, roaming the universe, waiting for his next big adventure, but feels just at home watching cartoons with his kids….