RANKINGS SERIES: MOVIES OF THE DECADE (2010s) - Introduction

         Greetings to all, and a very hearty thank you to all of you who have been keeping up with this blog, my reviews, special rankings, and anything else concerning my take on movies. You guys are the best, and I can’t wait to get back to you very soon with some brand new reviews on the main page of the blog (including the first Mini-Reviews piece for the site), but first, I wanted to let you all in on a little project I’ve been developing for the past month or so.
          Around the beginning of June, I started to realize that we’re all going to be leaving the 2010s behind soon; it’s 2019, which means the final calendar year in this decade of movies is upon us (only 6 months left now), and that meant that an entire decade of movies will have passed wherein I had become (or hoped to become) a valuable, insightful voice in the world of movie critique. I’d come to love movies in a way much closer to my heart than I had previously thought possible, studying various critics, and approaching films from a critical perspective enough that I decided to begin pursuing that passion for film to its utmost end.
          But why didn’t I have anything to commemorate the occasion? What could I possibly write that would essentially sum up both the decade in movies and my growth in love for those movies? And then it hit me – what films would end up being the final definitive films of the decade? What, at the end of it all, would stand above the rest as not just some of the best, but some of the most essential of our time? This is what this new Rankings series seeks to answer over the course of the next 6-7 months.
        For each month left in 2019, I will be releasing my list of Top 10 movies from each calendar year for the years of 2010-2018.  I will not be changing or altering them in any fashion, except to give a small summary on what I think of the films, their legacies (if necessary), and why they each deserve their places on each list. This means that I will not be adding in entries that I saw later on, nor removing entries that have broken down over time (except in the case of the 2010-2014 Top 10’s, as those were lists I only officialized later on down the line). These rankings will exist as they were upon their creation, and in no other form. Keep in mind these were my favorites of each collective year, not what I would objectively consider the best (although that is quite impossible to quantify anyway), so don’t expect to see Mad Max: Fury Road to show up in my Top 10 Movies of 2015 , as it was not included at the time the list was made.
          As well, I did not truly start to appreciate and critique movies as in-depth as I do now until around the transition of time between 2013 and 2014, so my earlier lists may look a lot more mainstream or blockbuster-centric than the latter ones; this is largely because I did not see nearly as many movies in theaters at the time as I do now, and because the list can only contain films I have seen or seen since that likely would have made the cut, they may be a bit “out of order” from what I would have thought at the time had I started my film critic “career” back then. I promise, it’s not just a popularity contest.
         One final note before we begin: Because we’re already almost 6 full months into the calendar year for 2019, and I have 8 lists to bring you before the end of December, this month will have to be a twofer. That’s right; you guys will be getting my Top 10 Movies of both 2010 and 2011 this month (how exciting is that?!). I can’t promise that I’ll always have the rest of the rankings up on a consistent basis month-to-month, but I will do my best to make sure they all hit around the same day, one month apart each, so as to build up a consistent flow of content for you guys to enjoy. At the end of our journey through this series (and after I release my Top 10 Movies of 2019 sometime early next year), I will resume work on my rankings for the Top 10 Movies of the Decade (I have an early draft now, but a lot can change in 6 months!). I should (hopefully) have that up sometime by mid-May 2020 at the latest.
        My Top 10 Movies of 2010 will be up very, very soon. I can’t wait for you guys to see it! Thank you guys so much for reading, and have a wonderful day! (Now go see a movie in the theater today. You deserve it.)
 
Other Rankings Series & New Pieces Coming Soon:

• Trilogy Retrospective: Toy Story
• A Definitive Ranking of Pixar Movies
• Directors’ Series: Quentin Tarantino
• Film Series: Star Wars
• The Friendly Film Fan’s 7 Essential Movies
• ..and so much more!!

 
- The Friendly Film Fan