Nick Pinkerton Top Tens

All of these lists are by release year.

2007 [Indiewire]

• Black Book (Paul Verhoeven)
• Bug (William Friedkin)
• Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino)
• The Exterminating Angels (Jean-Claude Brisseau)
• Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright)
• Margot at the Wedding (Noah Baumbach)
• Poison Friends (Emmanuel Bourdieu)
• The Wayward Cloud (Tsai Ming-liang)
• We Own the Night (James Gray)
• Youth Without Youth (Francis Ford Coppola)

2008 [Indiewire]

• I Can No Longer Hear the Guitar (Philippe Garrel)
• Boarding Gate (Olivier Assayas)
• The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette)
• The Foot Fist Way (Jody Hill)
• W. (Oliver Stone)
• La France (Serge Bozon)
• Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols)
• Definitely, Maybe (Adam Brooks)
• My Brother Is an Only Child (Daniele Luchetti)
• State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman)

2009 [Village Voice]

• Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (Werner Herzog)
• Extract (Mike Judge)
• Import/Export (Ulrich Seidl)
• Orphan (Jaume Collet-Serra)
• Somers Town (Shane Meadows)
• 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
• Two Lovers (James Gray)
• Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
• A Perfect Getaway (David Twohy)
• Adventureland (Greg Mottola)

2010 [Village Voice]

• The Portuguese Nun (Eugène Green)
• Piranha 3D (Alexandre Aja)
• 45365 (Bill & Turner Ross)
• The City of Your Final Destination (James Ivory)
• Ghost Town (Zhao Dayong)
• The Temptation of St. Tony (Veiko Õunpuu)
• The Runaways (Floria Sigismondi)
• World on a Wire (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
• Buried (Rodrigo Cortés)

2011 [LA Weekly]

• The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceauşescu (Andrei Ujică)
• The Descendants (Alexander Payne)
• Final Destination 5 (Steven Quale)
• The Future (Miranda July)
• The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
• The Princess of Montpensier (Bertrand Tavernier)
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt)
• Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)
• La Pivellina (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel)
• The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski)

2012 [Village Voice]

• Alps (Yorgos Lanthimos)
• Bernie (Richard Linklater)
• The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies)
• The Grey (Joe Carnahan)
• Haywire (Steven Soderbergh)
• Magic Mike (Steven Soderbergh)
• Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)
• Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
• Wanderlust (David Wain)
• Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

2013 [Unknown via CriticsTop10]

• To the Wonder (Terrence Malick)
• Bastards (Claire Denis)
• The Canyons (Paul Schrader)
• The Grandmaster (Wong Kar-wai)
• Inside Llewyn Davis (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)
• Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
• Paradise: Love (Ulrich Seidl)
• Prince Avalanche (David Gordon Green)
• The Wolf of Wall Street (Martin Scorsese)

2015 [Film Comment]

• Arabian Nights (Miguel Gomes)
• Blackhat (Michael Mann)
• Carol (Todd Haynes)
• Hard to Be a God (Aleksei German)
• Heaven Knows What (Josh & Benny Safdie)
• Inside Out (Pete Docter)
• Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller)
• Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
• Timbuktu (Abderrahmane Sissako)

2016 [Film Comment]

• The Academy of Muses (José Luis Guerín)
• The Illinois Parables (Deborah Stratman)
• Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick)
• No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
• The Other Side (Roberto Minervini)
• The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)
• Silence (Martin Scorsese)
• Sully (Clint Eastwood)
• Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)
• 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Wang Bing)

2017 [Film Comment]

1. Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch)
2. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
3. Downsizing (Alexander Payne)
4. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)
5. By the Time It Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong)
6. Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie)
7. All These Sleepless Nights (Michał Marczak)
8. mother! (Darren Aronofsky)
9. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh)
10. Brawl in Cell Block 99 (S. Craig Zahler)

2018 [Film Comment]

• Araby (João Dumans & Affonso Uchôa)
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen)
• Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
• First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
• Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross)
• Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)
• The Mule (Clint Eastwood)
• The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
• Personal Problems (Bill Gunn)
• Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)

2019 [Sight & Sound]

• Atlantics (Mati Diop)
• Asako I & II (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
• Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt)
• A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
• La Flor (Mariano Llinás)
• The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
• Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)
• Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
• Peterloo (Mike Leigh)
• What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? (Roberto Minervini)