I chose these movies not necessarily because I felt they were superb (although I loved them all) but because they were critically acclaimed and all received lots of oscar nominations. Almost by definition, they are the best films of the year.

If you compare it to nominated movies ten years ago, Braveheart, Apollo 13, I think they are comparably great.

Additionally, box office returns seem to be at all time highs. Black Swan and True Grit are two films that typically would be destined for "niche" audiences, but have returned hundreds of millions for reasonably small budgets.

Also, I think that Inception will be almost as influential as The Matrix, except in a smaller genre of films (eg: Matrix built upon action movies, whereas Inception was more of a psych thriller) - in my opinion.