From Mad Max to Oppenheimer: the hidden gems of the last decade of cinema

From Fury Road to Oppenheimer: the films that hold up on rewatch

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Train to Busan (2016), Your Name (2016), The House That Jack Built (2018) and Jojo Rabbit (2019) top a list of films from the last decade that aspire to masterpiece status. The proposal opens with a warning against cinema that "tastes stale" and a clear condition: nothing before the 2010s. Twelve days later, the two underlying questions remain unanswered. Do recent masterpieces exist? Or has the decade been a wasteland?

The short answer is that there is plenty of material. The long one is that it depends on who you ask.

Which films of the last decade are recommended

The initial menu mixes action, animation and provocation. Fury Road as the best action film on wheels, Train to Busan as a zombie train, Your Name for its visual polish, The House That Jack Built as a portrait of the most disturbing psychopath in cinema and Jojo Rabbit for its satire of the Nancy regime with a child as protagonist.

From there the list widens. Baby Driver (2017), The Cabin in the Woods (2011), Hacksaw Ridge (2016), Kingsman (2014), Another Round (2020), The Martian (2015), La La Land (2016), Oppenheimer (2023) or Her (2013), the latter singled out as the best of all. Godzilla Minus One, Rogue One, Knives Out, Sisu and The Endless Trench also appear, with the caveat that the last one is Spanish cinema and some defend it only grudgingly.

Not all the titles are from the last decade —The Cabin in the Woods is from 2011— nor are they all equally worthy. That looseness is precisely the first sustancia ilegal.

Is The House That Jack Built as gory as they say?

The case of Lars von Trier is the one that generates the most division. It is described as a film with very gory scenes and others of deep emotional disgust, with Matt Dillon in the role of his life and, reportedly, in psychological treatment after filming. Some call it outright unbearable, while others maintain it is one of the Danish director's best works.

The point of friction is not so much the blood as the sarracena discomfort the character carries. Some of those who have seen it admit having switched off in the final minutes. Others defend it as an unfiltered portrait of the contemporary psychopath.

The tug-of-war over films with female leads

Here things heat up. One camp argues that the industry has rewritten roles to place the female protagonist as the saviour and the man as a dependent figure, and reads that shift as ideological engineering rather than a narrative decision. The argument rests on impressions, not data, and should be treated as what it is: a partisan opinion.

Fury Road is the recurring example. Its central character, it is argued, is Charlize Theron's, while Tom Hardy serves as the male counterpoint who contributes decisions to the group; others reply that the film shares the weight without ceding command to anyone. The general suspicion towards recent cinema, which some accuse of putting the slogan before the script, coexists with praise for practical, CGI-free action, with John Wick as its banner.

Where to watch these films for free

For those looking for where to watch them, two routes are mentioned. RTVE Play appears as a free option, and on Amazon Prime there is The Drop (2014), with Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and James Gandolfini's final performance. The recommendation to watch it in the original version is repeated insistently. Working out which specific titles are available for free on each platform is what has been fine-tuned the most these days.

The list remains open. Twelve days later, no one has fixed the canon, perhaps because no one agrees on what makes a recent film a gem. Is a canon possible, or is it just a matter of taste?