It’s been an unusual decade; I spent much of it hunched over spiral notebooks and laptop computers in libraries and cafés and at kitchen tables here and in France while writing a book (remind me to mention the bathroom, in a house in Normandy, that I rigged out as a nocturnal study), and didn’t maintain my usual diet of cinephilic delights. Which is why, though few who issue their best-of-decade lists can claim to have seen all releases, many have likely seen more than I have this time around, so I’ll put an asterisk to the adjective above and note: the twenty-six best movies I’ve seen (and will resist the temptation to issue a separate list of the best films I haven’t seen). The top ten are in order; the remaining sixteen are grouped according to incidental connections.

1. “Eloge de l’amour” (“In Praise of Love”) (2001, Jean-Luc Godard): Lives up to the promise of its title: one of the most unusual, tremulous, and understated of love stories, as well as the story of love itself; a depiction of history in the present tense, as well as a virtual thesis on the filming of history; a work of art, as well as the story of the work at the origin of art; Godard’s third first film, thus something of a rebirth of cinema.