The 2026 awards season will be starting soon, and it won’t be long before we learn which 2025 films are the front-runners at the Oscars.
But it takes more than just an Academy Award for a movie to secure its place in cinema history. A true masterpiece can be recognized even without those accolades.
The Watch With Us team has assembled our picks for the 10 greatest movie masterpieces of the last 10 years.
There are some Oscar-winners among our list, but these are the films we believe will withstand the test of time.
10. ‘The Revenant’ (2015)
After five previous Oscar nominations, Leonardo DiCaprio finally won Best Actor for his performance in The Revenant. Alejandro G. Iñárritu also took home an Academy Award for Best Director for this film, which was inspired by the account of Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), a fur trader in the early 19th century.
After barely clinging to life from a bear attack, Glass is helpless to save his son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck), from John S. Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), who murders the teen and leaves Glass for dead. To get his revenge, Glass has to will himself to survive and make an arduous journey through the untamed wilderness. It’s a beautifully filmed movie that makes the setting seem otherworldly.
The Revenant is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
9. ‘Ford v Ferrari’ (2019)
Racing sports biopics aren’t always destined to be blockbusters, but Ford v Ferrari is an unusually gripping movie even when it’s not taking place on the race track. This true story begins in the early ’60s when Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) uses an offer from Ford to inflate the value of his company before insulting the latter. Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) is so enraged that he throws ridiculous money at his team to create a car powerful enough to defeat Ferrari’s vehicles in the most prestigious races.
The ’80s were a great decade for film, and many of its movies remain popular four decades later. In many ways, the ’80s paved the way for Hollywood’s turn towards blockbusters, but there were still serious films that could become breakout hits. Watch With Us has selected our picks for the best movies of every […]
That job falls to former racer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and British driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale). Miles’ blunt personality earns him some animosity from an executive at Ford, but his contributions allow the company to compete against Ferrari’s most formidable cars. Miles even gets behind the wheel for the 24 Hours of Le Mans competition in 1966 on his way to the race of a lifetime.
Ford v Ferrari is streaming on Netflix.
8. ‘The Shape of Water’ (2017)
Director Guillermo del Toro really wanted to do a Creature from the Black Lagoon remake where the creature ended up with the girl. Universal didn’t go for it, so del Toro explored similar themes in his Oscar-winning original tale, The Shape of Water. In the early ’60s at the height of the Cold War, a mute cleaning lady named Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) stumbles upon an Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) who is being held captive by the U.S. military.
Elisa forms a silent bond with the Amphibian Man and ropes her friends, Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and Giles (Richard Jenkins), into helping her free the creature. As Elisa and the Amphibian Man’s connection blossoms into love, a paranoid Colonel, Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon), will do anything to recapture him, no matter who he has to kill.
The Shape of Water is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
7. ‘Arrival’ (2016)
Director Denis Villeneuve has made the Dune movies that everyone wanted to see four decades ago. But Villeneuve’s true masterpiece of the last decade was Arrival, a down-to-earth science fiction story. When alien ships arrive at 12 locations across the world, the Americans recruit linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) to figure out how to communicate with them.
The aliens, whom Louise nicknames Abbott and Costello, aren’t remotely human and their language is very difficult to understand. It’s also open to misinterpretation of the aliens’ intent, which creates an international crisis. Those are the larger stakes of the film, but Louise has an emotional reckoning as well that provides the heart of the story.
Arrival is streaming on Paramount+.
6. ‘Get Out’ (2017)
Coming out of his hit sketch comedy series Key & Peele, writer and director Jordan Peele wasn’t expecting the overwhelming response to his directorial debut, Get Out. Instead of being a one-off experience, this horror film was critically acclaimed and a massive hit at the box office. Peele even won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
From Get Out to Nope, Jordan Peele has been involved in quite a few TV and movie projects through his production company, Monkeypaw Productions. Peele started his career in sketch comedy as a cast member on Fox’s MAD TV series. He branched out with Keegan-Michael Key, whom he frequently collaborated with on a number of […]
Daniel Kaluuya leads the cast as Chris Washington, a Black man who is anxious about meeting the wealthy family of his girlfriend, Rose Armitage (Allison Williams). Something is unsettling about the warm welcome that Chris receives from everyone he meets in upstate New York. Chris’ instincts tell him that something is off, but the truth is more horrible than he suspects. By the time Chris learns why everyone is so happy to see him, it’s too late to run.
Get Out is streaming on HBO Max.
5. ‘Sinners’ (2025)
The Oscar nominations for 2025 haven’t gone out yet, but it will be a major upset if Sinners doesn’t earn nods for Best Picture and Best Director for Ryan Coogler. This horror film deserves recognition for its high level of craftsmanship, as well as two great performances by Michael B. Jordan in the leading roles.
Elijah “Smoke” Moore and his twin brother, Elias “Stack” Moore (both played by Jordan) lived through World War I and their time in Chicago working for Al Capone. But the brothers meet their match when a vampire called Remmick (Jack O’Connell) crashes the opening night of their juke joint. Remmick can turn anyone into a vampire in just a few minutes. Before long, there aren’t many mortals left alive to defend themselves against his legion of the undead.
Sinners is streaming on HBO Max.
4. ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ (2022)
Everything Everywhere All at Once took the Oscars by storm, winning Best Picture, Best Director for Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, as well as Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, Best Supporting Actor for Ke Huy Quan and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis.
Yeoh leads the cast as Evelyn Quan Wang, a woman whose American dream has floundered alongside her marriage to Waymond Wang (Quan). Even Evelyn’s relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is strained. But once Evelyn is drawn into facing a threat to the entire multiverse, she gets a chance to reexamine her own choices and potentially make better ones if she can find a way to save reality itself.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
3. ‘La La Land’ (2016)
La La Land looks and feels like an old-fashioned Hollywood musical that somehow burst into the present day. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone dance and sing with such conviction that it seems like they could almost rewrite the ending of the movie as it’s playing out in front of our eyes. This is a dazzling film in almost every way possible, and it left its mark despite a very famous Oscar snafu where it was mistakenly announced as Best Picture.
La La Land’s choreography helped Ryan Gosling score an Oscar nomination in 2017 — but there’s one move that still has him wishing for a do-over to this day. While speaking to WSJ. Magazine in an interview published on Thursday, May 2, Gosling, 43, revealed that the 2016 film’s evening street dance scene, featuring costar […]
Stone won Best Actress for playing aspiring actress Amelia “Mia” Dolan opposite Gosling’s Sebastian “Seb” Wilder, a Jazz musician with ambitious dreams of his own. For this couple, falling in love against the backdrop of Los Angeles’ beauty was the easy part. Staying together and achieving their dreams is far more difficult, especially when Mia and Seb can’t live up to the high expectations they’ve placed on themselves.
La La Land is streaming on Fawesome.
2. ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019)
If Quentin Tarantino is serious about retiring on a high note, then maybe he should forego directing a tenth film and just call it a career after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, because it’s going to be hard to top this one. Tarantino thumbs his nose at history while introducing Leonardo DiCaprio as a faded movie star, Rick Dalton, with Brad Pitt as his driver and stunt double, Cliff Booth.
Margot Robbie also stars as Sharon Tate, an actress who was murdered by the Manson family in real life. It’s actually uplifting when Tarantino chooses to ignore the way those events really went down in favor of an over-the-top conclusion. This movie is constantly hilarious with great performances from its three leads, and it’s already considered a classic by many critics as well as the director himself.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
Brad Pitt was spotted filming a new movie on the same day his mother, Jane Etta Pitt, died. According to photos obtained by the Daily Mail, Brad, 61, appeared to be hard at work on the set of The Continuing Adventures of Cliff Booth in Gardena, California, on Tuesday, August 5. An obituary published by […]
1. ‘Oppenheimer’ (2023)
Christopher Nolan bounced back from his polarizing film Tenet with one of the best movies of the 21st century. The Barbenheimer phenomenon may have helped make this a hit, but Oppenheimer is a great film regardless of its pop culture footprint. Cillian Murphy gave an Oscar-winning performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the leading scientists behind the atomic bomb.
Emily Blunt also gave a great performance as Oppenheimer’s wife, Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, but the other Oscar-winner from this film’s performers was Robert Downey Jr., who portrayed Oppenheimer’s nemesis, Lewis Strauss. Nolan lets the story unfold out of chronological order as Strauss’ attempts to destroy Oppenheimer’s reputation play out alongside the latter’s race to create a weapon that could end World War II … or potentially destroy the world. Somehow, Nolan made this true story into a riveting historical thriller that’s also the greatest movie masterpiece of the last decade.
Oppenheimer is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
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