Best films of the second decade … so far

In his excellent and informative blog Hollywood Elsewhere, film critic Jeffrey Wells listed 54 films he called "really, really good" that have opened since 2010. Interesting list, but I think he may have been a tad too generous. Here are the films I rated either five-star or four-and-a-half-star films in that same period.

2016: None so far (Wells already has six, but some of them haven’t opened in Central Texas yet)

2015: Carol, Inside Out, 45 Years, Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road (5; Wells listed twice as many)

2014: Boyhood (1; Wells had 7)

2013: 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Before Midnight, Inside Llewyn Davis, American Hustle, Her (6; Wells had 8)

2012: Zero Dark Thirty, Armour (2; Wells had 7)

2011: A Separation (1: Wells had 6)

2010: The Social Network, Toy Story 3, Winter’s Bone (3; Wells had 10)

So I have 18 films so far this decade that have received one of my two top ratings which is exactly a third the number Wells lists. Now, this list includes only those films I saw the first time in a theater and there were many more worthy films I only had the opportunity to view on DVD that made Wells’s list, such as The Tillman Story and A Prophet. But, still, I’m sticking by these choices.