Released: 2008

What makes it great: This film topped my best of the decade list. Here's what I wrote in Dec. 2009. "Every time "Dark Knight" is on [HBO or cable] you can't turn away from the screen. Whether it's Ledger's career defining performance (which will still be lauded when we're all dead and gone), the groundbreaking score (by two composers of polar opposite styles mind you), the screenplay's subtle allegories to panic in a post-9/11 world or one strikingly powerful and original action sequence after another, Nolan has turned a "superhero movie" into art. And that, ladies and gentleman, is very, very, very hard thing to do." Over three and a half years later, it's still as powerful and cinematic as ever.

-Gregory Ellwood