'Moonlight' Named Best Movie of the Decade

What are the best movies of the last decade?

Critics over at IndieWire picked 100 stellar films of the 2010s, and among movies like A Star Is Born, The Social Network, Black Panther, The Great Gatsby, and Get Out are six steller LGBTQ-themed movies. 

Did your faves make the list? Scroll down to see!

72. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

"South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook delivered one of the 21st century’s most devious and ravishing queer films with The Handmaiden, which seamlessly ported the Victorian England events of Sarah Waters’ novel Fingersmith to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri bring palpable chemistry to the roles of the captive Lady Hideko and her two-timing (or is it three?) maid Sook-hee, whose twisted relationship is as dynamic and unpredictable as Park’s titillating and characteristically operatic camera. 

Re-teaming with his regular cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, Park and his collaborators elevated the tawdrier elements of Waters’ novel to fetishistic heights — even strapping them in a harness and suspending them into mid-air when he had to. The result is a cheeky erotic thriller that subverts classical tropes with giddy injections of sapphic energy; a soapy melodrama that feels dangerously alive with every frame." — ZS, IndieWire

70. Pariah (Dee Rees, 2011)

"Dee Rees grew into a force of nature over the last 10 years, but her debut feature — a gracefully rendered coming-of-age story that draws inspiration from her own — is still her defining statement. Humming with the electricity of repressed sexuality finally unbridled, Pariah follows teenage Alike (Adepero Oduye) on a raw and tender journey towards queerness and masculine gender expression. We witness Alike quietly change out of her baseball hat and t-shirt on the train home to Brooklyn, donning a girly sweater in order to calm her parents’ suspicions (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell). We melt alongside her as she lights up with the first tingles of love, seeing herself as desirable for the first time through the sparkling eyes of Bina (Aasha Davis). Cinematographer Bradford Young (Arrival) films Alike’s first nights out at the club in rich, saturated colors, allowing the movie to pulse with the rhythm of first love and the cost of self-discovery. Pariah was ahead of its time, but it’s waiting to be found whenever people need it." — JD, IndieWire

57. Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015)

"An audacious and infinitely re-watchable farce about a day in the life of two trans girls working the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Sean Baker’s Tangerine was both an instant classic, and a lightning rod for emerging trans cinema. Baker earned major points for casting actual trans women in the leads — a rarity in 2015 that has since become the norm — and his decision paid off in a big way; Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriquez saturate the film in such delicious specificity that it’s almost enough to make you want to swear off professional actors altogether. Shot entirely on iPhone (with the help of an anamorphic adapter), Tangerine made waves when it premiered at Sundance in 2015. And sure, the cinematography is vibrant and alive in a way that no one has been able to replicate on a consumer-grade camera since, but the look of the film was only a means to an end. On the contrary, it’s the raw intimacy of Baker’s approach that made Tangerine an instant queer classic." — JD, IndieWire

18. Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino, 2017)

"Miraculously, Luca Guadagnino made a movie that looks, sounds, and feels as fleeting and infinite as a teenager’s first summer love. Who knew it resembled the golden light of an Italian villa, or the smiling eyes of a father witnessing his child’s first heartache? Or that it could be heard in a chorus of window shutters as they clatter in the wind, the heavy slam of a wooden door, or a spoon’s clumsy tap tap tap on top of a soft-boiled egg? And — if not for being able to clutch their chests in a dark movie theater that transported them to the place where they first lost their sanity to a pretty face — who would have known that love feels like rolling lazily into a fountain, or the moist insides of a peach?

If Moonlight is the decade’s defining queer coming-of-age film, then Call Me by Your Name is its grand gay romance. It is the Brokeback Mountain of its era, made all the more sweeter and more sensitive for being directed by an actual gay person. Sexuality notwithstanding, it’s hard to think of any recent film that makes such a meal out of love. The last 10 years saw the romantic drama vanish along with the romantic comedy, but Call Me by Your Name made falling in love feel sexy again. All it took was the sight of Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer staring each other down in short shorts, and suddenly we knew in a permanent way that it would always be better to speak than to die." — JD, IndieWire

7. Carol (Todd Haynes, 2015)

"Whenever Todd Haynes’ unspeakably beautiful Patricia Highsmith adaptation comes to mind, it brings some of the novel’s last words along with it: 'It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and hell.' In that light, a spot on a list of the decade’s best films hardly seems like much of a reach.

Brought to life by the careful genius of Phyllis Nagy’s script, the supple glow of Ed Lachmann’s 16mm cinematography, and two of the most extraordinary performances ever committed to celluloid (which isn’t to sweep old Harge under the rug where he belongs), Haynes’ Carol is more than just a bone-deep melodrama about a mutual infatuation during a repressive time. It’s more than a vessel for Carter Burwell’s swooning career-best score, or Sandy Powell’s seductive costumes, or the rare queer romance that gave its characters a happy ending — an ending that resonates through Cate Blanchett’s coy smile with the blunt force of every impossible dream Carol Aird has ever had for herself. It’s more than just an immaculate response to decades of “if only” dramas like David Lean’s Brief Encounter, or a heartstopping series of small gestures that builds into the single most cathartic last shot of the 21st century. It’s all of those things (and more!), but most of all it’s an indivisibly pure distillation of what it feels like to fall in love alone and land somewhere together." — DE, IndieWire

1. Moonlight (Barry Jenkins, 2016)

"Barry Jenkins’ long-overdue followup to Medicine for Melancholy wasn’t your typical sophomore effort. Made a decade after that tender, insightful rumination on romance and gentrification, this sprawling look at romantic desire and the emotional hardships of the African-American experience folds its fixations into a profound creative tapestry. On one level, it’s a deep tragedy told in passing glances. At the same time, it’s a rallying call that broadens the potential for black artistry to permeate popular culture in fresh ways. Rich with evocative images and tender exchanges, the filmmaker’s treatment of Tarrell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue displays the rare capacity to make grand statements with small gestures. No other epic this decade has managed that tricky balance, capturing timeless moments even as it embodies the uncertainties of its moment, and left such an impact on the state of American filmmaking in the process.

Yet Moonlight manages to slip its profundity into the guise of more traditional dramatic tropes. The movie explores the plight of a young black man across three eras, searching for his place in the world while struggling with his sexual identity under the burdens of class and a broken family. But much of that arc unfolds through sequences that defy the boundaries of a traditional plot. Instead, the story’s power comes from the gaps between words — and an ongoing battle to find the right ones. It’s an astonishing mood piece about the nature of being marginalized on many levels at once.

The tale of young Chiron, as he grows up and misses his opportunity to find a satisfying life, gets more desperate and mournful as it moves along. Finally, the boy becomes a man as he attempts one last shot at setting things right. Despite the somber tone, it’s a beacon of hope for the prospects of speaking up. Released a month before the 2016 presidential election, Moonlight nailed the sense of disconnect in American society well before it became supercharged. The tone reflects the mixture of despair and yearning at the center of our troubles times, but hovers above any precise historic moment. Its final image, of young Chiron gazing at the camera from the nighttime beach where his true self will always linger, is nothing short of iconic." — EK, IndieWire