I cannot, of course, claim to tell you what The Top 50 Movies of the Past Decade were, since that would require my having seen all the movies there were; I can only tell you what my Top 50 were, which is of only limited use unless you know which movies aren’t on the list because I didn’t see them, and which aren’t there because I didn’t think they were good enough.  But, as this is a list I have been meaning to make for awhile, and I have a blog on which I can share such things, I will do so, useful or not.  A few things you should know:

The “Past Decade” designates to all of the movies that came out between roughly the end of 2001, which was the point in my life where I first began to make a point of watching good movies, and roughly the end of 2011.  Documentaries and TV miniseries are excluded, although many are among my favorites.  “Top” movies are determined primarily by my (admittedly rough) standard of storytelling and filmmaking excellence, but also, to a lesser extent, by how downright enjoyable they were (hence the relatively high ranking for the original Pirates of the Caribbean), and in some cases, by how much I appreciated the argument the film was making (this, for instance, obviously helps the ranking of The Tree of Life).  Necessarily, it is also determined by how much impact the film made on me when I saw it, even if my artistic sensibilities have changed since.   Also note that while these are ranked in order, this ordering is only accurate to +/- 2 ranks (which is why I haven’t shown the numbers).  So a movie here ranked 9th might be as high as 7th or as low as 11th if I remade this list next week.  This is particularly important to note for the top 3, among which I really can’t pick a favorite.   But enough of the blather.  Here they are:

1-10

Shutter Island

Inception

The Tree of Life

The King’s Speech

The Dark Knight

Slumdog Millionaire

The Departed

Gran Torino

Oasis

LotR: Return of the King

11-20

LotR: Fellowship of the Ring

Downfall

The Ides of March

The Descendants

Wall-E

LotR: Two Towers

Memento

Michael Clayton

Hotel Rwanda

The Queen

21-30

A Beautiful Mind

The Passion of the Christ

Stranger than Fiction

Unbreakable

The Prestige

Toy Story 3

The Aviator

Up

Serenity

Cinderella Man

31-40

True Grit

Moulin Rouge

The Pianist

Pirates of the Caribbean

The Social Network

No Country for Old Men

The Last King of Scotland

Se7en

Walk the Line

Signs

41-50

Road to Perdition

Dan in Real Life

The Blind Side

The Illusionist

V for Vendetta

Juno

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 2

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

Catch Me if You Can

Blood Diamond

Honorable Mention (in no particular order): 

Minority Report

We Were Soldiers

Black Hawk Down

Avatar

The Constant Gardener

Finding Nemo

Children of Men

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Pt. 1

3:10 to Yuma

The Last Samurai

Amelie

The Incredibles

Tangled

Ratatouille

Monster’s Inc

And, the Ten Best Movies I’ve Seen in the Past Decade that Weren’t Made in the Past Decade

 1. The Godfather

2. The Godfather, Pt. II

3. Twelve Angry Men

4. Hamlet (Kenneth Branagh)

5. Forrest Gump

6. Manon des Sources

7. Jean de Florette

8. The Silence of the Lambs

9. Schindler’s List

10. The Mission