Films by decade
Films make more sense in the company of the films around them. Each decade below collects everything we have reviewed from that period, with an account of what the decade was doing and why the films in it look the way they do.
Our library spans 1950s to 2020s — six decades, 31 films. Coverage is deliberately uneven: we write about films we have something specific to say about, not every release.
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1950s
The decade that taught cinema its grammar.
Highest rated: Seven Samurai →
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1970s
New Hollywood and the director as author.
Highest rated: The Godfather →
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1990s
The decade independent cinema broke through.
Highest rated: The Shawshank Redemption →
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2000s
Scale and melancholy.
Highest rated: Spirited Away →
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2010s
The decade that rediscovered ambition.
Highest rated: Parasite →
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2020s
Auteurs, streaming and the theatrical divide.
Highest rated: Oppenheimer →
Why we group films by decade
Genre tells you what a film is trying to do. A decade tells you what it was possible to do. Production technology, censorship, distribution and the economics of the industry all shift on roughly ten-year cycles, and those shifts show up in the films whether the filmmakers intend them to or not.
A decade page also lets us be honest about coverage. We have ten films from the 2010s and one from the 1950s, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. Where our coverage is thin, we say so, and explain what the decade was doing that we have not yet written about.
Prefer rankings to chronology?
Our ranked lists place films against each other inside a decade and explain the ordering.