10 Greatest American Movies of the Last 15 Years

That holds true today, and the best films from the last 15 years of American cinema are all reflections of where we’ve been and where we’re going in one way or another. What constitutes a completely American film has become an increasingly complicated question with every passing decade. Production companies have been formed all over the world, and even when an American movie studio is the major distributor of a film, the money that makes it comes from all sorts of international sources. Ultimately, the films listed here all have two things in common: they all, by any basic measure, could be considered American films, and they’re some of the best made in the last 15 years.

10 'Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse' (2018)

Animated movies in America have been dominated by computer animation in the last 15 years. Disney and Pixar are the most massive forces in that regard, and they’ve given us some amazing films, like Moana, Encanto, Coco and Inside Out, appealing to American audiences of increasing diversity. Themes of universality also apply to the best animated film of the last 15 years, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. It’s a Spider-Man film that expanded the idea of who its main character could be and what a mainstream animated movie could look like, but also made an appeal to the heroism inside all of us.

Switching the focus from Peter Parker to Miles Morales was the smartest move the first animated Spider-Verse could make, breaking out of the mold that had begun to grow stale. While Tom Holland’s inaugural film as the character, from the year prior, borrowed a bit from Miles’ comics, the animated film still forges a new path by introducing a whole multiverse of possibilities. The film is packed with different versions of Spider-Heroes and colliding visual styles that also represent the closest a film may ever come to replicating a comic book. Into the Spider-Verse is an American animated masterpiece.

9 'Bridesmaids' (2011)

Comedy in the last decade and a half has certainly shifted more to the small screen. That doesn’t mean we haven’t gotten some great American comedies in the last 15 years—there have been many. Booksmart, Game Night, The Nice Guys, One of Them Days, and Palm Springs all come to mind. If we want the best, though, we have to go 15 years back to a film that was a big hit at the box office: Bridesmaids.

A perfect marriage of 2000s “chick flicks” like How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days with the frat-humor, immature raunchiness of movies like The Hangover, Bridesmaids also elevates both. It supercharged the directorial career of Paul Feig, made Kristen Wiig a legitimate leading lady, and catapulted Melissa McCarthy to the comedy A-list. Bridesmaids is such a funny, perfectly pitched movie that hasn’t diminished at all in that time. Some things will simply always be funny, like Melissa McCarthy doing a number 2 into a sink.

8 'Killers of the Flower Moon' (2023)

No genre is more quintessentially American than the Western. Even if some of the best ever made were produced outside the States, they are still tied to the same iconography of the Old West and the films that were produced during the genre’s golden age. The genre will never match that level of output ever again, but it doesn’t mean we don’t still get some great American Westerns. In the last 15 years, we've seen movies attempting to grapple with the inherent violence and racism of the Western, but none more directly than Martin Scorsese’s revisionist Killers of the Flower Moon.

Rife with contradictions and bloody depictions of inhumanity, Killers of the Flower Moon wrangles with both real and film history. Scorsese may not be the best filmmaker to tell the story of the Osage people of Oklahoma, who were slaughtered by white men over a decade so they could control their oil rights and money, and he seems to know that. Still, this Western understands the issue of monetizing the violence perpetrated against a nation for the sake of entertainment. That acknowledgment doesn’t forgive the film of its sins, but playing devil’s advocate, it's still a genuine attempt to explore America's mythologizing and romanticizing of one of the most violent and volatile eras in its history.

7 'Interstellar' (2014)

Christopher Nolan holds dual citizenship as a citizen and filmmaker. His influences range from the visual magnificence of Ridley Scott, the technical perfectionism of Stanley Kubrick, and the blockbuster showmanship of Steven Spielberg. He has a clear affinity for science fiction, and nowhere is that, or his influences, more apparent than in Interstellar, a blockbuster sci-fi adventure film and a father-daughter love story made on a gigantic scale with unbelievable visuals. It’s Nolan’s attempt at the cosmic grandeur of 2001: A Space Odyssey but with the blockbuster sensibility of Spielberg.

Even when you can see the signatures of other filmmakers in any of Nolan’s films, the result is always uniquely his. Interstellar's notions of love being quantifiable may be awkward, the result of a technically brilliant filmmaker trying to tackle sentimentality, but damned if the film doesn't fail to move you. It helps that, on a pure spectacle level, it's Nolan's greatest accomplishment, with technically astounding and awe-inspiring space sequences. It's an overwhelming viewing experience, demanding to be seen on the biggest screen possible.

6 'Gone Girl' (2014)

Thrillers are a cornerstone of any healthy film diet, and they can occupy just about any section of the pyramid. Gillian Flynn's novel Gone Girl is certainly better than the average airport novel, with some ingenious twists and turns in its plot, but it's easy to see how it could have been adapted into a standard thriller. With David Fincher at the helm, with many of his usual collaborators and a truly stacked cast, the film adaptation became one of the best thrillers of the 21st century.

Not only does the film look and sound better than most thrillers, with cinematography by Jeff Cronenweth and a thrumming score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, but it also has tight pacing with perfectly timed plot twists. Perception is key to the plot, and Fincher plays with the audience throughout the first half before dropping the first twist like an anvil. In lesser hands, that reveal could rob the film of all its mystery and reduce its momentum, but it only makes the second half of Gone Girl all the more enthralling. Everything and everyone is firing on all cylinders, from Fincher to Ben Affleck and an Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike and even Tyler Perry, who has never been better cast in a role.

5 'One Battle After Another' (2025)

American filmmakers have undoubtedly delivered some spectacular action movies in the last 15 years, but the best American-made movie brought the fight home with a thoroughly domestic thriller. One Battle After Another features a very different style of action: its pulse-pounding sequences aren't bombastic gunfights but riots and police raids, and its car chase isn't made exciting by endless flips and crashes, but by a long stretch of road and a low-angle camera.

Paul Thomas Anderson's action thriller takes the revolutionary spirit of Thomas Pynchon's novel Vineland and applies a modern context to it. It's a film about the failures of political movements and the hope that they can inspire future changes. It finds action through revolution and chaos, and its sequences are as perfectly executed as anything you'll find in more escapist fare, also inspiring more unease than the average action movie because the images can so easily be applied to current political events. One Battle After Another is visceral, chaotic and even clumsy at times, exactly what you want out of an action movie made by PTA.

4 'Get Out' (2017)

Horror has been having a moment for the last 15 years. The rise of so-called "elevated" horror, which is a complete misnomer that indirectly insults decades of great movie work made by great filmmakers, is a sign of how the genre is finally being taken seriously outside its own fervent fandoms. The Witch, Hereditary, and Talk to Me are all modern horror masterpieces, and then there's the work of Jordan Peele. The former sketch-comedy star proved that the tension and release of a good joke is strikingly similar to that of a good scare.

While Us and Nope are both amazing continuations of Peele's genre dominance, it's his directorial debut, Get Out, that's the near-perfect summation of the "post-racial America" it was released in. Using horror as a lens to examine white liberal racism in a post-Obama America where deeply seeded prejudices were ready to sprout, the film was a terrifying herald of what would grow rampantly in Trump's America. A decade on, the horror seems almost too understated compared to the bold bigotry that dominates our culture now, but its keen insights into a more quietly insidious racism are still just as sharp. It's a horror film that can make different viewers uncomfortable in different ways, which is part of what makes it the best American horror film of the last 15 years.

3 '13th' (2016)

There have been many incredibly compelling documentaries made in America in the last 15 years, many of them unsurprisingly focusing on race. Ava DuVernay's 13th, which chronicles the history of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution and argues that its exemptions have been exploited to perpetuate slavery through prison labor, is a fascinating, infuriating work that examines a wide range of social issues and punitive legislation that overwhelmingly affect Black Americans.

Through personal stories, statistical analysis, and historical events, the film makes a very compelling case and offers a wake-up call to Americans who may have been blissfully or deliberately ignorant of the inequalities built into our institutions. There have been claims against some of the film's assertions and use of data, but those are minuscule compared to the overwhelming evidence it provides and the heartbreaking stories it spotlights. Released in 2016, the film was already powerfully relevant, but the ensuing years since, which have continued to expose just how foundationally broken our systems are, have also proven its necessity.

2 'Inside Llewyn Davis' (2013)

Nothing can lighten the mood like a good musical, even when they're resolutely morose. In the last 15 years, there have been a number of big Broadway-born movie musicals that have all added to the rich film history of music in movies, but if there's one movie that feels like the filmic version of the music it portrays, it's Inside Llewyn Davis. The Coen Brothers' New York City-set portrait of the folk music scene is a melancholy masterpiece with chilly visuals and fantastic music. Its cyclical plot, misanthropic lead character and mushy-grey visual palette all contribute to a movie that looks and feels just like a folk song.

About as inspired by the life of folk singer Dave Von Ronk as Fargo was by a true story, the film rambles and wanders through its narrative. Like its lead character, played and sung by Oscar Isaac, it rambles and wanders through the artistically rendered vision of early '60s New York City, to the tune of a carefully curated soundtrack of period songs assembled by T Bone Burnett. Inside Llewyn Davis looks like no other movie, and it has the sound to match, with a distinct dark spirit to it but also an odd comfort. It might be difficult to argue that it's the Coens' greatest film—difficult, but not impossible.

1 'Moonlight' (2016)

Barry Jenkins' Moonlight is one of the most deeply felt and nakedly emotional films of the 21st century. Following a Black male protagonist through three different stages of his life in Miami and Atlanta as he discovers his sexuality and struggles with his identity and masculinity, the film offers a window into a very specific lived experience. The intersection of all of its themes can only really be fully appreciated by those who can fully relate and engage with it, but it can still evoke strong emotions and inspire empathy in the rest of us.

Even in hyperbolic terms, it's hard to express what makes Moonlight the best American film of the last 15 years. Its specificity and depiction of a life that's far too underrepresented in film are part of what makes it great, but they aren't automatic qualifiers. It comes through the sympathetic filmmaking of Jenkins, the breathtaking cinematography of James Laxton, the compelling performances of the entire cast, and its ineffable ability to emotionally annihilate. There's not one specific quality that makes a film objectively better than any other; sometimes it just comes down to how it makes you feel, and Moonlight makes you feel a lot.