16. Mad Max- Fury Road (2016)

There is a very strong argument to be made that this is far and away the best action film of the decade. You can also argue pretty effectively that the Oscars fucked up when they didn’t award it Best Picture back in 2015 (sorry I’d take this or The Revenant over Spotlight any day of the week). Mad Max: Fury Road is an absolute balls to the wall tour de force of an action movie that puts its foot on the gas pedal from the first frame and doesn’t let up for the next 2 hours. Mad Max had already been a pretty beloved action franchise prior to Fury Road. In the 80s the original was (still is) an absolute classic, the second was really good in its own right, and Thunderdome is pretty fun to this day, but with Fury Road, Director George Miller made his masterpiece. Miller’s direction is especially awe-inspiring. Often times action films are directed jarringly and feel disoriented as they are clearly built for spectacle alone, but not Fury Road. The spectacle is here (I mean for fucks sake that dude with the fire guitar is still one of the coolest and most bad ass things I’ve seen), but nothing is without purpose. As much as Tom Hardy shines as Max, this is Furiosa’s (Charlize Theron) movie. In a world where action movies are just testosterone fueled romps, Fury Road has some real feminist energy behind it which is a massive breath of fresh air. Now if only we could finally get Miller’s version of Justice League off the ground…