Hello everyone!

For those of you new to my quirks, especially those of you who only know me in a professional capacity, a few years ago, I got tired of people asking me what I had watched recently or could recommend, so I started making a spreadsheet of everything I saw with handy-dandy ratings and run times. I also hate lists that get published before the year is actually over, and yes, this year the list is a bit early but you know what? At least it didn’t come out after Thanksgiving so cut me a little bit of slack, okay?!

This year I saw 176 movies. I came within sniffing distance of 200 and hopefully next year will be the year I pass that elusive number. That came out to 19,996 minutes or about 13.9 days of movie watching. I know you’re probably trying to figure out how I manage to stay so well adjusted and, well, I have some bad news for you. I also listened to about 36 days worth of Spotify this year so maybe I should do some hard thinking in 2020 (but probably not).

I started the year off with THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER and ended with DABANGG 3. What the hell is DABANGG 3 you might ask? Great question. Let me explain using a visual aid. Feel free to play the video while you read the list which starts after the jump.

10. QUEEN & SLIM (d. Melina Matsoukas, 132 minutes)

The marketing for QUEEN & SLIM conditions the viewer to accept it as the black BONNIE & CLYDE. This isn’t hard to do given the film’s plot and the nature of the relationship between the eponymous characters (Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya respectively). Queen’s uncle (Bokeem Woodbine) even hangs the lampshade himself by explicitly referring to them as such.

But I think such an explicit comparison is disingenuous and designed to make the film an easier sell. After all, a slow-burn drama about a black couple on the run for murdering a white police officer (Sturgill Simpson in the cameo of the year) in self-defense is a hard pass for a good chunk of the country, but it’s difficult to argue against the film’s relevance or its message.

Lena Waithe paints Queen & Slim as regular people caught up in something bigger than themselves and illustrates the growing pains they face in coming to terms with their newfound hero/fugitive status. Her screenplay is a ferocious mix of adrenaline and bucolic contemplation as her characters try to enjoy the little things in life before the hammer comes down on them.

I’ve been waiting for Melina Matsoukas’s feature film debut for a while now (and you have too if you were one of the 3,000 people posting FORMATION gifs back in 2016) and she doesn’t disappoint at the helm. Despite taking place in the now, QUEEN & SLIM has a visual flair drenched in the 1970’s as we explore deep parts of an America long ignored in film.

The film’s standout sequence is a sex scene juxtaposed with a riot; beautifully edited, framed, and shot, it is the culmination of quite a few character arcs despite the end of the film being some 40+ minutes away. It’s quite hard to distill a film’s spirit into one scene, but Matsoukas does it with considerable aplomb as all the tension, sweat, rage, and love is released in spectacular bedlam. It’s important to keep this scene in mind as the film rushes to its infuriating conclusion and to remember that love exists, even in the most hopeless of places.

9. THE KING (d. David Michôd, 140 minutes. AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX)

HENRY V is one of Shakespeare’s history plays. You know, the type that was so dry and boring that nary a high school would dare teach it. Yet, like most Shakespearean works, it’s been adapted to death. You might be familiar with it as Kenneth Branagh’s breakout role.

Jump to 2019 and Netflix is throwing money around like it’s going out of style. One of the projects they approve in their coke-filled haze is a remake of HENRY V starring Timothée Chalamet as the Henry himself. This could have fallen by the wayside and been one of the many, many, MANY garbage Netflix titles that pop onto the site and fall into obscurity, but THE KING is that rare Shakespearean adaptation that sets itself apart by being so goddamn batshit insane that you can’t help but admire it’s audacity.

For starters, and I found this after I had finished the film, it is wildly historically inaccurate. If fidelity to history is your fetish, I’m sorry to say that this isn’t movie ain’t it chief. That being said, I appreciate the willingness of Michôd and his co-writer, Joel Edgerton (who is also in this movie as Henry’s drinking buddy who’s also really, really good at killing people) to lure people in with the promise of a HENRY V remake and just do their own thing. Not only is it a brilliant move, but the story they’ve created is incredibly captivating.

Chalamet is a force of nature as Henry, imbibing all the nuance he can into a raging alcoholic with daddy issues who’s forced into a job he doesn’t want. There’s a scene early on in the film where Henry brutally stabs a rival to death in a suit of armor and it’s the first time in my life I’ve been intimidated by Chalamet, an actor, who at this point, has made his name playing intellectual waifs and whatever the male version of an MPDG is.

There are other strange elements such as Robert Pattinson’s Pepé Le Pew impression and Lily Rose Depp’s glorified cameo (which she absolutely knocks out of the park) that embody the “Fuck it, we’ll do it live.” mentality this movie has. It would be so easy for any one thing to derail this movie, yet, like a really dense prog-rock song, all the discordant elements create an incredible work of art.

THE KING’S version of The Battle of Agincourt (the climax of HENRY V and a very famous battle you should go Wikipedia) is also an incredible feat of filmmaking. Every hit, stab, and death in the quagmire of a mud pit that comes to define Agincourt is visceral and illustrated in a way that Shakespeare himself could only have dreamt of.

8. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE [Portrait de la jeune fille en feu] (d. Céline Sciamma, 120 minutes)

Hot take of the decade: I don’t care much for CALL ME BY YOUR NAME. I don’t care for Elio, I don’t care for Oliver, I don’t care for it’s absurdly esoteric dialogue, I don’t care for Elio’s accepting dad beating the audience over the head with the moral of the story in an out-of-place monologue, and I especially don’t care for the insinuation that you can masturbate into a peach without absolutely annihilating it. (I’m not saying we should be funding this, but we should be funding this to settle the matter once and for all.)

So it’s with that in mind I say that PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (“PORTRAIT”) is the lesbian answer to CALL ME BY YOUR NAME and it claps the fuck back. Set on an island in the 1800’s in France, it follows the forbidden relationship between the painter, Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and her subject, Héloïse (Adèle Haenel) who is due to be married off imminently to a man she has never met. Marianne and Héloïse’s relationship builds slowly until it erupts into a passionate affair. Along the way, they pick at the crevasses of their predicament and the injustice of their situation. Most queer cinema is tragic due to the historical treatment of such relationships and PORTRAIT is no exception.

What truly distinguishes PORTRAIT, however, is the POV of Sciamma, one of France’s finest directors and a lesbian herself. The absence of the male gaze is interesting in this case because there are virtually no men in this film. Yet, their presence is always felt; an unseen force that threatens to upset the natural order of the island that the film takes place on. This is illustrated not only through Héloïse’s inevitable marriage, but also the affecting subplot involving Héloïse’s pregnant maid who desperately seeks an abortion.

PORTRAIT also pulls off an incredible feat in having not one, but two, devastating endings. Either one on its own would have been enough to stick the landing, but the juxtaposition of the two back-to-back really hammers home the cruelty of the situation the protagonists find themselves in. After watching this, you may not be able to listen to Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in G Minor without bursting into tears; a small price to pay compared to what the star-crossed lovers here had to endure.

7. THE IRISHMAN (d. Martin Scorsese, 210 minutes and you will feel every second of it you philistine. AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX)

I recently reconnected with a friend and asked her if she had seen THE IRISHMAN. She said she had not and had no reason to as it would be “three, straight white guys being straight and white for 4 hours.” You know what? She’s not wrong. That’s pretty much the THE IRISHMAN, but it’s the best three, straight white guys in the business doing what they do best directed by a guy who’s made his legend being the patron saint of disaffected straight, white guys.

Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) kills people, I mean “paints houses” for the mob. Over decades, he goes from a truck driver, to hitman, to Jimmy Hoffa’s (Al Pacino) confidante and loyal union man, all while damning his soul further and further each time he pulls the trigger for his mob benefactor (Joe Pesci).

I’ve been hearing about THE IRISHMAN for years. It’s been in development since it was in high school, and not until Netflix showed up with dump trucks filled with cash did it finally happen and it is truly a sight to behold. The de-aging CGI, while jarring at first, blends in flawlessly after a certain point. All of the actors here give a shit for the first time in years and there isn’t a bad performance in the bunch.

But I think where this film really succeeds is in addressing its own meta-reflexivity. Part of the reason that hype for this movie was so high is because Scorsese’s greatest and most celebrated films are his mob epics (and I know this as one of the 12 people who saw SILENCE). So who wouldn’t be psyched for one last go-around with Scorsese and De Niro and Pesci?

The thing is, everybody knows this is probably the last time they’ll all do this. THE IRISHMAN’S punishing length isn’t an exercise in sadism; it’s necessary to draw out Frank’s ultimate punishment. Whereas Scorsese was content to end GOODFELLAS with Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) living as a normal person (his own personal hell), Scorsese draws out Frank’s punishment by having everyone he cares about die or abandon him.

Frank is an interesting character to me as he is the banality of evil in its purest form. He sees himself as an employee simply following orders and you could substitute him for a Nazi concentration camp guard without missing a beat (ironic given his military service). It’s for this reason that Anna Paquin’s role as his daughter, Peggy, is so affecting. Her one line, “Why?”, comes at a pivotal moment in Frank’s life when he’s finally crossed the point of no return. Frank’s silence is deafening and defining: he doesn’t know why. He simply does what he’s told. He thinks it makes him a good man, but in the end, it makes him a lonely one.

6. TOY STORY 4 (d. Josh Cooley, 100 minutes)

My generation is the target demographic for TOY STORY and Pixar knows it. I was 2, 6, and 17 respectively when the first three installments were released. TOY STORY 3 is one of the best films of all time and the ending is the only time I can recall crying in a movie theater.

So imagine my shock and dismay when I hear there’s going to be a TOY STORY 4. It’s preposterous! It’s outrageous! Why mess with perfection? It’s like putting googly eyes on the Sistine Chapel.

But somehow they did it; the madmen at Pixar did it. They managed to make a sequel that justified its own existence and did it by, once again, appealing to their target demographic (i.e. me). I’m a 26-year old Millenial man in the midst of a time of great upheaval. Existential questions and absurd comedy are the only thing getting me through this and Toy Story 4 is all that and more.

Woody (Tom Hanks) is unsure of his place with his new owner, Bonnie (Madeline McGraw). On a trip out-of-town, he is misplaced and ends up reconnecting with Bo Peep (Annie Potts) who lives a free life as a toy without an owner. Given that toys are functionally immortal, this franchise has decides to lean into the absurd and explore the full implications of what such a life would entail. As it turns out, life without a master is not as bad as Woody thought it would be. Yes, there’s the usual “we must defeat this antagonist” plotline, but even that gets rolled into a rare redemption arc for the series in which the main message shines through: the end is not the end. Life is a long journey and when one door closes, another opens. It’s something that people in my generation need to hear a lot, especially as we don’t have the perspective to realize this just yet.

This film also wrestles with the question of life as Bonnie has created a toy: the suicidally despondent Forky (Tony Hale): a fork she has affixed pipe cleaner limps and googly eyes to. Forky knows he is an abomination and wishes to end his existence. Given that this is Disney and they somehow kept the G-rating, hats off to the team of writers (really… a baseball team of people wrote this movie) for making it funny enough for kids to miss and depressing enough for adults to immediately recognize.

Whether or not this franchise continues or not is a big question mark. Yes, Disney has the money and the technology to keep Tom Hanks alive for millenia, but I imagine that in 10 or 15 years, Woody and the gang might have something else to say to my generation and I will welcome their message with googly eyes wide open.

5. MARRIAGE STORY (d. Noah Baumbach, 136 minutes, AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX)

Noah Baumbach knows divorce intimately. His breakout film, THE SQUID & THE WHALE is based on his parents’ divorce and the effect it had on him. Now with MARRIAGE STORY, Baumbach turns the lens in on himself. You should do a bit of Googling on Baumbach and his marriage to Jennifer Jason Leigh and his subsequent coupling with Greta Gerwig to contextualize yourself with the film. While things won’t exactly add together, the whole hodgepodge will make a lot of sense.

Noah, I mean Charlie (Adam Driver) is a brilliant theater directer and a proud adopted New Yorker to his core. His soon-to-be-ex-wife Jennifer, I mean Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), wishes to move back to Los Angeles to be with her family and to continue her career as a screen actress; something she put on hold to help Charlie grow the reputation of his own theater company. Nicole wishes to raise their son, Henry (Azhy Robertson) in Los Angeles and a brutal war erupts between the two.

Baumbach has said in interviews that to choose sides in this film is folly as he sees Charlie and Nicole both equally responsible for the demise of all sense of decorum. Yet, to claim that seems disingenuous as there are too many parallels between Charlie and Baumbach to be coincidence. While Nicole’s point-of-view is acknowledged in an incredible monologue by Johannson in her lawyer’s (Laura Dern playing herself and I love it) office, this is really Charlie’s film. His pain, his suffering, and his trauma is torn apart and examined more viscerally than Nicole’s. I actually think it’s that partisanship that makes this film all the more incredible because, while Nicole’s treatment is relatively even-handed, it’s hard to devote time equally to one party in a collapsed marriage. It’s the same reason KRAMER V. KRAMER focuses mainly on Dustin Hoffman’s character or why Bergman’s SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE is 45 hours long.

And we cannot talk about this movie without talking about Adam Driver who delivers the performance of the year.

Driver’s Charlie is angry, and unreasonable, and selfish, and deeply hurt, and an absolute tour de force. He’s Kylo Ren without the lightsaber and God powers; an angry little man who can’t handle that things aren’t going his way and it absolutely destroys him but also builds him back up into a (hopefully) better man. Every review of this movie highlights the inevitable argument between Charlie and Nicole as the show stopper, but I’m going to go a little past that and highlight Charlie’s performance of “Being Alive” from Sondheim’s COMPANY. I haven’t seen it and I had to do some research after seeing this movie but the musical fits so well into the context of what’s happening as Charlie sings all alone on stage as he contemplates what’s next for him. The Oscar is Mr. Driver’s to lose.

4. THE ART OF SELF DEFENSE (d. Riley Stearns, 104 minutes)

I used to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night wondering what would happen if Yorgos Lanthimos remade FIGHT CLUB. Well, apparently my sleep paralysis demon heard my wish and granted me with THE ART OF SELF DEFENSE (TAOSD).

Casey Davies (Jesse Eisenberg) is an absolute wet, paper bag of a man who is loved and respected by no one. One day after being viciously assaulted by an anonymous group, he joins a karate dojo run by the magnanimous and mysterious, Sensei (Allesandro Nivola). Sensei takes great interest in Casey’s progress and invites him to join his special night classes where things really go off the rails.

I really adore TAOSD moreso than FIGHT CLUB just because of how directly it confronts toxic masculinity. Whereas FIGHT CLUB seemed to forget at times it was supposed to be lampooning the concept, TAOSD makes no qualms about how ridiculous machismo is. As Casey becomes more self-assured and confident, the more ridiculous his mannerisms become. From watching porn at the office, to punching his boss in the throat, to withholding pets from his adorable dachshund to make him stronger, Casey becomes a caricature of himself. Yet he loves it because he thinks society will love it, and he thinks society will love it because his Sensei says so.

Sensei is an incredible character as he charts the film’s descent into horror absurdism by slowly peeling off his repulsive nature not only with his seemingly super human strength, but also his over-the-top misogyny, demonstrated by his unwillingness to promote his best student, Anna, (Imogen Poots) simply because she’s a woman. Anna also has her own secrets which, while fitting in with the film’s over-the-top tone, illustrate issues that face women too often in male-dominated spaces.

Did I also mention it’s funny? This is the funniest movie I’ve seen all year. The nonchalant throwaway lines as well as the film’s ultimate payoff show an understanding of comedy that most people wish they could even come close to in their lifetimes. Riley Stearns is not a newcomer, but this movie should be his stepping stone to bigger and better things.

3. MIDSOMMAR (d. Ari Aster, 147 minutes)

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being drunk with me at a party in the late hours, I’ve inevitably given you my TED talk on why HEREDITARY falls apart in the last 20 minutes. It turns into a Scooby Doo episode with all the running around and trap doors and crazy random shit happening. You could play Yakety Sax over the end of HEREDITARY and nothing would change.

But MIDSOMMAR? MIDSOMMAR is fire (hehe) from start to finish. Dani (Florence Pugh having the best year ever) has gone to Sweden with her asshole boyfriend (Jack Reynor) and his asshole friends (Will Poulter, William Jackson Harper, Vilhelm Blomgren) to heal from a horrible trauma and also see a fun Swedish festival.

Of course, this is an Ari Aster film, and the Swedish festival is anything but fun. Aster’s subtle details reward rewatches and are the fodder that message boards live and die off of. This is truly a labor of love, meticulously crafted and carefully unspooled. As the bodies pile up and the events get more and more chaotic, Dani has an awakening not only of mind, but of soul as she realizes she don’t need no man… or his friends.

Speaking of Dani, is there anybody out there writing female characters as well as Aster? Toni Collette was robbed of an Oscar for HEREDITARY and I have no doubt that Pugh will be as well despite this being the female performance of the year (all shade to Renée Zellweger). Her Dani is sad, then confused, then angry, then happy, all while trying to keep it all together even though she’s not all there. Aster loves examining what grief and trauma do to people and the fact that he’s chosen to frame it as a relationship drama is both intriguing and empowering. On a final note, I have not seen a video of the MIDSOMMAR ending set to Lizzo’s “Good as Hell”. I’m not going to look again because I’ve been hurt too many times during the writing of this list but I hope that someone reading this will rectify it soon enough.

2. PARASITE [기생충] (d. Bong Joon-ho, 132 minutes)

Can we all take a minute to reflect on an incredible film getting the acclaim it deserves? PARASITE won the Palme D’Or back in May, arguably the most prestigious film prize there is next to the Academy Award for Best Picture, and has just been running the table since. It’s doing incredible business everywhere, especially in the U.S. where people can’t be bothered to read subtitles unless the dialogue is in Dothraki. It’s truly astounding to see a magnificent work of art, as well as it’s brilliant auteur, get the recognition it deserves so quickly and deservedly.

As a result of this acclaim, PARASITE has been thinkpieced to death. I highly recommend doing a Google search because it’s amusing to see how many hot takes this movie has. Not that it doesn’t deserve them, but the “RICH BAD, POOR GOOD” theses get old after the 13th page of Google Search.

I myself have very little to add to the conversation. It’s about a poor Korean family who scam their way into working for a rich Korean family. And then, a game-changing twist happens and the movie goes from pretty good to godly masterpiece. Normally, I think revealing a twist happens gives away the twist, but PARASITE’s twist is so out of left-field that I feel comfortable telling people who’ve never seen it because they’ll never guess what it is. I myself went in knowing there was a twist and still being gobsmacked by what happened. It’s also that rare left-turn twist that doesn’t completely derail the movie ( looking at you LAST CHRISTMAS) and for that alone, it deserves all the acclaim it’s getting and more.

Bong Joon-ho has also been around for a while. He’s even made some movies in English, but this movie for some reason was his Lizzo moment and now he’s EVERYWHERE. He was on Jimmy Fallon the other day for God’s sake and I am SO happy. Truly one of the best filmmakers out there and definitely the best non-Western one. Seek out his other work if you liked PARASITE and please let me know where I can find a copy of MEMORIES OF MURDER that won’t cost me an arm and a leg.

1. NEVER LOOK AWAY [Werk ohne Author] (d. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 189 minutes)

How stacked was 2018 for foreign language films? With ROMA and COLD WAR battling it out for various Oscars, all the air got sucked out of the room for any other foreign movie and it all fell by the wayside. NEVER LOOK AWAY was actually nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography, but it never stood a chance.

In 2019, it was actually released in more theaters than a random multiplex in Whittier and I had to chance to see it. Now, one thing you should know about me is that I actually go to the restroom during movies more often than I would like to. I try not to as I hate missing anything, but sometime you can’t help it.

I didn’t get up once during NEVER LOOK AWAY’s 3+ hour runtime. Yes, I literally never looked away haha hope you had a good laugh but I hope that’s a testament to the power of what I was watching on screen.

This is an epic film in every sense of the word. Epic in scale of scope and ambition as it charts the course of a young artist (Tom Schilling) who came of age during World War II and the Nazi doctor (Sebastian Koch) who impacted his family in an unforgettable and unforgiving way. As the men ebb and flow towards one another over the years, each reacts to the other with the impact of his own trauma, unaware of the effect it will have, or has had, on the other.

This is a staggering work of art that dissertations should be written about. The payoffs and layers in this movie are breathtaking to behold. I understand how it flew under the radar given the unfortunate timing of its release, its runtime, and subject matter, but it is truly one of the most beautiful and uplifting films I’ve ever seen. It speaks to the nature of art as one’s own truth in a way I’ve never seen any other work do quite so well or so boldly. Here’s to hoping that more people discover it and feel the same way I do in the coming years.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

In addition to these 10 titles, I’ve also added the following movies to my Films You Should Watch list which you can access below! Happy New Year! Hope to see you all watching more things next year!

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

In addition to these 10 titles, I’ve also added the following movies to my Films You Should Watch list which you can access below! Happy New Year! Hope to see you all watching more things next year!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pCIQv_UAm9H-2tRvRg7Ib8O7xuFGR4LfL85fZWgMx_w/edit?usp=sharing

WILD ROSE (HARPER 2019)

TELL ME WHO I AM (PERKINS 2019)

UNCUT GEMS (Safdie Bros 2019)

JOKER (Philips 2019)

EVERYBODY KNOWS (Farhardi 2019)

GLORIA BELL (Leilo 2019)

US (Peele 2019)

MISSING LINK (Butler 2019)

YESTERDAY (Boyle 2019)

LYREBIRD (Friedkin 2019)

JOJO RABBIT (Waititi 2019)

KLAUS (Pablos 2019)

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD (DeBois 2019)

CLIMAX (Noe 2019)

CAPTAIN MARVEL (Boden & Fleck 2019)

HOTEL MUMBAI (Maras 2019)

AMAZING GRACE (Boyd 2019)

SHADOW (Yimou 2019)

TOLKIEN (Karukoski 2019)

THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO (Talbot 2019)

CHILD’S PLAY (Klevberg 2019)

THE DEAD DON’T DIE (Jarmusch 2019)

THE FAREWELL (Wang 2019)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (Tarantino 2019)

THE PEANUT BUTTER FALCON (Nilson & Schwartz 2019)

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (Norton 2019)

PAIN AND GLORY (Almodovar 2019)

FAMILY ROMANCE LLC (Herzog 2019)

ALL ABOUT EVE (Mankiewicz 1950)

UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (Mitchell 2019)

21 BRIDGES (Kirk 2019)

JUMANJI: THE NEXT LEVEL (Kasdan 2019)

BOMBSHELL (Roach 2019)

THE TWO POPES (Meirelles 2019)

LITTLE WOMEN (Gerwig 2019)

MINDING THE GAP (Liu 2019)

FIVE FEET APART (Baldoni 2019)

CRUEL INTENTIONS (Kumble 2019)

THE MUSTANG (Clemont-Tonnerre 2019)

THE BEST OF ENEMIES (Bissell 2019)

SECOND ACT (Segal 2018)

BOOKSMART (Wilde 2019)

GOOD BOYS (Stupinsky 2019)

FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS & SHAW (Leitch 2019)

LUCE (Onah 2019)

FORD V. FERRARI (Mangold 2019)

THE REPORT (Burns 2019)

BRITTANY RUNS A MARATHON (Colaizzo 2019)

KNIVES OUT (Johnson 2019)

Hello everyone!

For those of you new to my wacky antics, a few years ago, I got tired of people asking me what I had watched recently or could recommend, so I started making a spreadsheet of everything I saw with handy-dandy ratings and run times. I also hate lists that get published before the year is actually over (so, all of them) and this is my way of trying to be ~the change I see in the world~.

This year I saw 157 movies; well short of my still-to-be-achieved goal of 200 but some of you might look at that number and think “At least my bucket list isn’t as sad as that guy’s”. And you’re right! It isn’t! (sobs).

If you’re morbidly curious, that’s 17,719.2 minutes or about 12.3 days, and that doesn’t even include TV (of which there is way too much for me to accurately write a post about that so we’re gonna put that all the way over there).

I started the year off with FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL and ended with SIMMBA (If you’re not Indian just look it up I can’t even begin to explain). Without further ado, let’s dive in!

HONORABLE MENTION

For something that’s not a TV show, but not a film either.

MANIAC (d: Cary Joji Fukunaga, 383 minutes, AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX)

MANIAC begins with a long-winded monologue by Dr. James Mantleray (Justin Theroux) about the evolution of life and how we’re all connected. It’s beautiful poetry from a man we’ll later find out has a crippling addiction to VR porn and enough mommy issues to make Freud back away slowly, but it’s also a fantastic opening statement for a miniseries that explores the disparate, yet significant connections between us.

Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill) are two severely broken people who enter into an experimental drug trial in order to cure their respective ailments. Annie is a junkie who needs to forget about her sister’s tragic death, and Owen is a schizophrenic desperate to figure out what, if anything, is real in his world. A sinister computer throws the two together in a set of mini meta-narratives that parallel their real lives, but also show them the way out of their predicaments.

The world of MANIAC is a confusing one with IBM-esque computers existing side-by-side with technology both modern and futuristic, but if it’s disorienting for the viewer, imagine how it must be for Annie and Owen who have both lost their grip on a reality that cares little for them. Hill and Stone, light-years away from their first pairing in 2007’s SUPERBAD, embody their characters with significant pathos that shines through even in the simulations (such as the wonderful Long Island set Episode 4).

But it’s the side characters, like Mantleray, that reveal MANIAC as a story about finding one’s self. Their stories seem superfluous until the viewer realizes that everyone in this beautiful, yet empty, world is sad and alone. It is the common thread that weaves in and out of every fantastical plot line and simulation. The viewer only needs to pull on it to realize the richness of MANIAC’s message: life is worth living and it is worth living with other people.

10. ANNIHILATION (d. Alex Garland, 115 minutes)

At some point in your life, you’re going to find yourself in a discussion with someone about a sci-fi movie that’s not STAR WARS, and that person is inevitably going to bring up the works of Stanley Kubrick and/or Andrei Tarkovsky (maybe even Shane Carruth if they’re particularly cheeky) to describe what they’ve just seen. Most of these people have no idea what they’re talking about (*COUGH JEFF FROM HR WHO THINKS BLADE RUNNER IS TARKOVSKY-ESQUE BECAUSE THINGS DON’T GO BOOMBOOM EVERY 5 MINUTES COUGH*)

But with ANNIHILATION, the actual love-child of Kubrick and Tarkovsky with shades of APOCALYPSE NOW might finally be here. Ex-soldier and cellular biologist Lena (Natalie Portman) goes on an expedition into “The Shimmer”, an area surrounded by an iridescent electromagnetic field, to find out what happened to her husband Kane (Oscar Issac), who has returned from the Shimmer crazier than two bowls of Cocoa Puffs.

So Lena ventures in and one-by-one, her companions are picked off like some macabre version of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. The Shimmer and its tendency to create new organisms by fusing them together, functions as a new kind of Hell: one that flies directly in the face of an omnipotent and all-knowing creator. Want an alligator/shark? You got it. The next step of human evolution is moving intestines? In the Shimmer ~anything is possible~. Want a fucking demon bear to show up and terrify the shit out of everyone? Oh you bet that happened.

Lena’s journey through the Shimmer represents a penance for her own sins, and the seeming lack of an explanation for everything actually works very well on a personal level because by the end, she understands the encounter at the lighthouse is designed for her and her alone. Garland directs the stunning climax with an aplomb that demands you see it on the biggest screen with the best speakers you can; anything else is to do a grave injustice to Lena’s journey to Hell and back.

9. THE DEATH OF STALIN (d. Armando Ianucci, 107 minutes)

Hot take: authoritarianism is bad. And while you can’t throw a rock in a major city without hitting a date or a comedy club that touches on the topic of Trump, it’s important to note that we’re not 1953 Soviet Russia (at least not yet but I don’t write those kind of Medium articles).

The characters of THE DEATH OF STALIN, however, do find themselves in 1953 Soviet Russia where the titular death of the eponymous Stalin sets off a power vacuum that would be concerning if not for the fact that everyone left is a bumbling, power-hungry idiot that would stab their own mother for a chance to be the big man in charge.

It’s a dynamic that Armando Ianucci, the creator of THE THICK OF IT and VEEP, knows all too well. Here, he’s transplanted the same profane and incompetent politicking to real historical figures like Nikita Kruschev (Steve Buscemi), Georgy Zhukov (Jason Issacs), Lavrentiy Beria (Simon Russell Beale), and Stalin’s batshit insane and impotent son, Vasily (Rupert Friend). Instructing everyone to keep their native accents, Ianucci has created an absurd and delightful pastiche. The balance of power gets thrown around like a football and even if you are familiar with the real history, it’s extremely entertaining to watch.

What makes THE DEATH OF STALIN standout, however, is its hard turn to the dark in the 3rd Act. Beria was the head of the Soviet secret police and is portrayed like a sadistic sociopath by Beale. While the other Politburo members look the other way when he orders someone disappeared or carries out an execution, he slowly becomes the elephant in the room that the others cannot ignore; in other words, his evil becomes less and less banal as the film goes on. You can probably see where this is going (or you read his Wikipedia article), but Beria’s end is particularly gruesome given that this is a film that tries to mostly keep its hands clean with light-hearted abandon. But you shouldn’t worry; by the time the credits roll, Khrushchev is in charge and it seems that the new boss is the same as the old boss (albeit less genocidal).

8. HEARTS BEAT LOUD (d. Brett Haley, 97 minutes AVAILABLE ON HULU)

If you had to play Sundance Bingo with HEARTS BEAT LOUD, you’d win pretty easily. This movie has everything. It’s set in Brooklyn, Frank (Nick Offerman) has a beard and owns a record store, his daughter, Sam (Kiersey Clemons) is bi-racial, queer, and a musical genius who wants to be a doctor, his mom (Blythe Danner) has Alzheimer’s, his friend is a bartender who’s played by Ted Danson, and he makes indie music with his daughter that goes viral on the internet. If this movie was a person, it would be campaigning for Elizabeth Warren.

And despite having all the ingredients to be insufferable and tone-deaf, it is absolutely fantastic. This is truly one of the hidden gems of the year because of, what I assume to be, a horrendous case of judging a book by its cover.

This movie works so well because of Offerman and Clemons’s chemistry and rapport. It could have easily been a two-hander on some Off-Off-Off-Broadway stage and it still would have retained all of its magic and charm. While there’s a lot of love between Frank and Sam, there’s also a lot of grief due to the tragic death of Frank’s wife/Sam’s mother. As Frank tries to reignite his musical dreams through Sam, who desperately wants to be her own person, they work through their grief. Sam’s relationship with her girlfriend, Rose (the always amazing Sasha Lane), is a wonderful example of positive queer representation as Rose is unconditionally supportive while still remaining her own person.

Oh, did I mention that the songs are fucking fire? Prepare to update your Spotify playlists.

7. BURNING (d. Lee Chang-Dong, 148 minutes)

Jong-su’s (Yoo Ah-in) life fucking sucks. He works a menial job as a truck driver, his asshole dad is facing prison time for assaulting a neighbor and left Lee a failing farm, and the North Koreans keep blasting propaganda across the border day-and-night (not a joke). In the midst of this gnarly quarter-life crisis, Lee runs into Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-so), a girl he knew from his youth who has turned into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl he so desperately needs right now. Not only is she cute, but she’s into Jong-su. She confides in him, she wants him, she needs him. He responds in kind by deeply falling and affixing her to the top of a high, high pedestal.

And then it all goes to shit when Hae-mi comes back from Africa with The Guy She Tells You Not to Worry About aka Ben (Steven Yeun). Ben is everything Jong-su isn’t: rich, more handsome, confident, better educated, etc. Jong-su realizes he’s being iced out of Hae-mi’s sexual affections and a high-wire love triangle forms, one in which Jong-su becomes the slowly more desperate Nice Guy.

A lesser movie would have just left it that, but BURNING plays out like a John le Carré novel, slowly setting up its pieces until it yanks the rug out from under you and the realization of what’s actually happening hits like a runaway freight train. The climax of the film comes in the middle in which the three main characters get high and Ben confesses an unusual hobby to Jong-su, all while Hae-mi dances topless to Miles Davis at magic hour. It’s a scene that wouldn’t be out of place in TWIN PEAKS, but in BURNING, all that comes before and all that comes after centers around this one sequence. I won’t say anymore, but the falling action is truly a descent into oblivion and one in which no one gets out unscathed.

6. WILDLIFE (d. Paul Dano, 104 minutes)

In 1960 Montana, all is well. America is…uh… great (if you’re a certain color). Work is plentiful, men are men, women are women; the “natural order” abounds. This is a land of opportunity, especially for Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) and Jerry Brinson(Jake Gyllenhaal) who have moved with their son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) to take full advantage. But then Jerry is let go from his lucrative golf job at the local country club, and in desperation to regain his manhood, he leaves his family to go fight wildfires in the mountains.

When Jerry disappears, WILDLIFE really begins as Jeanette realizes that the man she married is no man and the times are a changin’. She gets a job and a new lover, all while Joe, who’s in the middle of puberty, is faced with the realization that his mother is not who he thought she was and he may not like that.

While Updike-esque family resentment runs through WILDLIFE, director Paul Dano, having learned so much from his prolific career as an actor, seems to be taking aim at the idyllic image of the American family as made famous by Norman Rockwell. His script, co-written with his partner Zoe Kazan, is written like a symphony in two parts: one written beautifully and melodic, the other discordant and unnatural. Yet, they both show two sides of the same coin. WILDLIFE has an extended sequence in which Jeanette brings Joe to dinner at the house of her boss/lover, Warren (Bill Camp). Warren is rich and successful, and apart from the infidelity, seems to be a better match for the Brinsons than Jerry ever was. Yet, Joe knows this isn’t right, even if he knows if might be better. It’s an astounding work of character drama from two actors who know a thing or two about long-term commitment.

5. THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN (d. David Lowery, 93 minutes)

There might not be a more meta-movie this year than THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN. Marketed as Robert Redford’s final movie before he supposedly retires, it charts the course of bank robber Forrest Tucker (Redford): a charming rogue with a rap sheet as long as a CVS receipt who can’t seem to stop robbing banks. To him, it is a way of life and the only thing that gives it meaning.

Based on David Grann’s phenomenal New Yorker article, the film takes us through the last part of Tucker’s “illustrious” career as he meets and seduces Jewel (Sissy Spacek), an old widow who is fascinated by him, while being hunted down by John Hunt (Casey Affleck), a detective who is perhaps even more fascinated by him. And make no mistake, Tucker is a fascinating character, but maybe one we shouldn’t be too enamored by. After all, he was an armed robber who put loaded weapons in people’s faces and demanded money. The fact that he did so with a smile shouldn’t endear us to him. Instead, we should maybe even be a little disturbed that he could do it so casually.

But one doesn’t think about those things when Redford is on screen, and Lowery crafts a beautifully grainy film that wouldn’t be out of place in the 70’s aka Redford’s heyday when he was in heist films like THE STING or basking in the afterglow of his iconic role in BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID. The parallel’s between Tucker’s struggle to retire and Redford’s actual retirement are as subtle as a brick to the face, but it makes for an extremely poignant watch, especially at the end when Tucker’s real-life escapes are recreated using footage from Redford’s earlier films. It’s a bold fourth-wall break, but one that’s a necessary and fitting tribute to both Tucker’s audacity, and Redford’s influence.

4. COLD WAR (d. Pawil Pawilkowski, 85 minutes)

There was only room on this list for one foreign language black-and-white movie, and boy I bet you weren’t expecting it to be this one.

I’m a sucker for doomed relationship movies, and COLD WAR is a beautiful, yet relentless series of gut punches. Set during a period of indirect proxy battles between the United States and the USSR, it is the story of subversive Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a musical director put in charge of managing a choir designed to showcase Polish culture to the rest of the world. He falls in love with Zula (Joanna Kulig), a beautiful and talented singer who shares some of Wiktor’s views, but not his outspokenness or desire to rock the boat. They inevitably separate and the rest of the film is vignettes of the few times over the years they manage to reunite.

And so begins probably the worst long-distance relationship you’ve ever seen. It’s got everything from a partner refusing to commit to a move, to being unsure as to whether or not they are truly on a break (Ross and Rachel were in a bedrock relationship compared to Wiktor and Zula), to casually being imprisoned and tortured and re-educated in concentration camps. There’s the standard and pushing and pulling and attempts by each partner to gain the upper hand in the relationship, but it’s all the more tragic due to the fact that Wiktor and Zula truly love each other; that’s never in doubt but it’s almost certain that they will never be together.

Pawilkowski’s previous film was the Holocaust drama IDA which, if you can believe, actually manages to be more cheerful in a lot of ways than COLD WAR. What COLD WAR does different than IDA, however, is imbibe its setting with a natural lushness that seems to be radiating from Wiktor and Zula’s love. Even the film’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography seems to have an indescribable layer to it that seems inviting and warm. The entire thing is beautifully intimate from start to finish.

3. ISLE OF DOGS (d. Wes Anderson, 97 minutes AVAILABLE ON HBO NOW)

You can spot a Wes Anderson film from a mile away due to his unorthodox aesthetic. Less discussed, however, is how most, if not all, of his films center on the notion of family. What is it? How does one become a family? Is it important to have one?

Anderson touches on the last one with ISLE OF DOGS, his delightfully madcap stop-motion film set in a dystopian Japan where dogs are animalium non grata. Exiled to a literal trash island, the dogs of Japan form their own society which is interrupted when Atari Kobyashi (Koyu Rankin), a human boy, crash lands on the island to find his own dog. Helped by the cynical Rex (Bryan Cranston), Atari forges his way through a dystopian hell-scape, all while hell breaks loose in Japan over his disappearance.

To address the elephant in the room, yes, Anderson is a white man who has made a film set in Japan with heavy Japanese influences. However, in my opinion, he has done so with the utmost respect and care. From the film’s opening titles which include Japanese characters, it’s clear that Japan isn’t just window dressing for the plot; it is a real place with real culture that is incorporated into the narrative. Taiko drums are a common motif in the soundtrack (shoutout to Alexandre Desplat for not making a soundtrack for your grandma), and shadow puppetry/kabuki/Japanese screens and other art forms are incorporated into the animation to create a flawless visual world.

Anderson populates the rest of the film with a usual murderer’s row of side characters, especially the Oracle (Tilda Swinton) whose “visions” consist of her watching television. Anderson’s familiar formula seems finally fine tuned, with the right balance of zany and even-handedness for the more serious plot beats. While his live-action work is more acclaimed, he can be uneven there when he swings for the fences. With this and FANTASTIC MR. FOX, however, Anderson has proven himself a great animator, even if it isn’t considered his forte.

2. MISSION : IMPOSSIBLE — FALLOUT (d. Christopher McQuarrie, 148 minutes)

Every cynical law of Hollywood says that new entries into franchises have diminishing returns. Eventually, you’re going to run out of things to do with your characters and the whole enterprise is going to be a soulless crash grab.

But here we are with the sixth entry of a franchise that shouldn’t have even really gotten this far that turns out to be not only one of the best movies of the year, but one of the best action movies of all time. Is the plot important? Eh, kinda? Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is here to kick ass and pull off masks, and he’s all out of masks to pull off.

M:I-F is the first entry in the series to have a director, Christopher McQuarrie, return and he seems have been on a mad quest to outdo himself from the previous entry, ROGUE NATION. In this movie, Ethan HALO dives over Paris, nearly loses a fistfight with an Asian man who yeets him in a bathroom, engages in a massive chase through Paris, another massive chase through London, and then a motherfucking helicopter fight over the Himalayas. While the spectacle is enough to be impressive, McQuarrie’s directing is phenomenal and if you had told me Christopher Nolan had directed this movie, I would have believed you; it is that good.

Watching this franchise over the years islike watching the FAST AND THE FURIOUS series progress from plausible to ludicrous, except MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE seems somewhat possible (hehe). Is it because Tom Cruise does all his own stunts? Does the power of Xenu actually exist? You know what don’t answer that, I don’t want to be sued.

McQuarrie is also one of the best writers in Hollywood, having penned THE USUAL SUSPECTS and that ending that makes your 15- year old cousin lose his mind every time. He’s still got it in somehow combining the disparate lore of the previous 5 entries and synthesizing them flawlessly with callbacks (such as Vanessa Kirby’s character) and straight up jaw-dropping reveals (Nuking the Himalayas is bad. Nuking them with someone Ethan cares about around to see it? That’s an ass whooping). But nothing comes close to the level of skill needed to pull off the catacombs scene in which there are no less than 15 twists in 10 minutes. It’s enough to make Agatha Christie look like a fucking amateur and it comes in the middle of the movie. Judging by the box office receipts, a lot of people slept on this and you really shouldn’t have. I want this franchise to beat FAST AND FURIOUS to the moon, and that can’t happen if you don’t see it!

1. BOY ERASED (d. Joel Edgerton, 114 minutes)

How far do we go to tolerate the ones we love? In these polarized times, the common advice is to cut out people who espouse abhorrent views, no matter their relationship to you. It is practical, maybe even needed advice, but easier said than done. And sometimes, it can be taken both ways.

Jared Eamons (Lucas Hedges) is sent to a gay conversion program in early 2000’s Arkansas after an encounter with his gay, pedophilic, rapist of a college roommate (Joe Alwyn, cementing his status as the Gary Oldman of his generation in playing despicable side characters) comes to the attention of his God-fearing and loving parents Marshall and Nancy (Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman). He is sent to be cured by Victor Sykes (Edgerton), a quack who thinks he is doing the Lord’s work, but is actually destroying the lives of his young charges in pursuit of a cure that does not exist.

Gay conversion therapy is a monstrous thing and should be outlawed. It is the easy thing to go off the deep end and be sadistic in depicting the process, but the truth is that it is often an insidious evil, perpetrated by people who think they are helping when all they are doing is laying down the road of good intentions to Hell. This small choice that BOY ERASED makes serves to imbibe its villains with a complexity you often don’t see outside of television. They deserve to be hated, but at the same time you want to shake them by the shoulders and show them the true error of their ways.

This is truly a masterclass in writing and acting. Hedges, Kidman, and Crowe all bring their A-game to portray a family in crisis. The side characters, such as Flea and Xavier Dolan’s self-hating gay men and Troye Sivan’s suppressive who is just trying to do his time, lend more facets to this complex story. The true feat, however, is taking a script like this, which goes to extremely dark places, and coming out at the end with a positive and uplifting message. For that, all credit goes to Edgerton who imbibes his dialogue with a deft dramatic touch that feels natural, all while hitting the necessary beats.

It all culminates in the final scene in which Hedges and Crowe have an argument to rival those found in the works of Eugene O’Neill and Edward Albee. Each man steadfast in his own beliefs: Marshall in that there is something wrong with his son, and Jared in that there is nothing wrong with him and his father was wrong to think that and put him through his torture. It is a hard scene to watch, but eventually cathartic for both men who reach a tenuous, if not final, understanding. I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

In addition to these 10 titles, I’ve also added the following movies to my Films You Should Watch list which you can access below! Happy New Year! Hope to see you all watching more things next year!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pCIQv_UAm9H-2tRvRg7Ib8O7xuFGR4LfL85fZWgMx_w/edit?usp=sharing

PADDINGTON 2 (King 2018)

PADMAVAAT (Bhansali 2018)

BLACK PANTHER (Coogler 2018)

McQUEEN (Bonhotte & Ettedgui 2018)

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN (Forster 2018)

BLACKKKLANSMAN (Lee 2018)

ICE CREAM (Riazi 2018)

FIRST REFORMED (Schrader 2018)

AMERICAN ANIMALS (Layton 2018)

THE MEG (Turteltaub 2018)

THE FAVOURITE (Lanthimos 2018)

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (Russo Bros. 2018)

SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (Howard 2018)

INCREDIBLES 2 (Bird 2018)

TRIAL BY FIRE (Zwick 2018)

A STAR IS BORN (Cooper 2018)

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (Von Trier 2018)

THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (Tjahanto 2018)

SCHINDLER’S LIST (Spielberg 1993)

ROMA (Cuaron 2018)

BLINDSPOTTING (Estrada 2018)

THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST (Akhavan 2018)

DEN OF THIEVES (Gudegast 2018)

LOVE, SIMON (Berlanti 2018)

A QUIET PLACE (Krasinski 2018)

HEREDITARY (Aster 2018)

WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? (Neville 2018)

THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS (Wardle 2018)

LEAVE NO TRACE (Granik 2018)

SEARCHING (Chagtany 2018)

THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS (Henson 2018)

THE FRONT RUNNER (Reitman 2018)

WHITE BOY RICK (Demange 2018)

FREE SOLO (Vasarhelyi & Chin 2018)

MANDY (Cosmatos 2018)

MID90s (Hill 2018)

PRIVATE LIFE (Jenkins 2018)

A PRIVATE WAR (Heineman 2018)

WIDOWS (McQueen 2018)

GREEN BOOK (Farrelly 2018)

VOX LUX (Corbet 2018)

SPIDER MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (Pesichetti, Ramsey, & Rothman, 2018)

BIRD BOX (Bier 2018)

PETER RABBIT (Gluck 2018)

GAME NIGHT (Daley & Goldstein 2018)

CHAPPAQUIDDICK (Curran 2018)

UPGRADE (Whannel 2018)

OCEAN’S 8 (Ross 2018)

ANT MAN AND THE WASP (Reed 2018)

EIGHTH GRADE (Burnham 2018)

BARBARELLA (Vadim 1968)

A SIMPLE FAVOR (Feig 2018)

HOLD THE DARK (Saulnier 2018)

BEAUTIFUL BOY (Van Groenigoen 2018)

THE HATE UGIVE (Tillman Jr. 2018)

OVERLORD (Avery 2018)

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (Johnston & Moore 2018)

BEN IS BACK (Hedges 2018)

THE MULE (Eastwood 2018)

ON THE BASIS OF SEX (Leder 2018)

Hello everyone!

For those of you new to my neuroses, a few years ago, I got tired of people asking me what I watched or recommended, so I started making a spreadsheet of everything I saw with handy-dandy ratings and runtimes. I also hate lists that get published before the year is actually over (so, all of them) and this is my way of trying to be ~the change I see in the world~.

This year I saw 134 movies; well short of my still-to-be-achieved goal of 200 but some of you might look at that number and think “Jesus that explains a lot.” And you’re right! It does! (sobs).

Anyway, that’s 15,300 minutes (exactly) or 10.6 days, and that doesn’t even include TV (of which there is way too much for me to accurately write a post about that so we’re gonna put that all the way over there).

I started off with THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (yes, I did watch all 8 films of the series this year and my life is better for it) and ended with PHANTOM THREAD (which, SPOILER ALERT, made this list). So without further ado let’s dive in!

10. THE DISASTER ARTIST (d: James Franco, 105 minutes)

I first heard about THE ROOM from Entertainment Weekly when I was growing up on Long Island. It was a feature on this crazy movie that was all the rage in LA and had a cabal of celebrity fans and at the time, it seemed as inaccessible as HAMILTON is today.

Eventually in college, I got around to a midnight screening of THE ROOM and was hooked. I totally got the cult and became a devoted member. Around this time, Greg Sestero (the actor who plays Mark in the film), published a memoir about the making of THE ROOM: THE DISASTER ARTIST, and a few years later, James Franco made the eponymous film adaptation.

Going in, I knew I was going to love this movie, but I was a bit curious as to how it would do in the rest of the country. Would it be seen as some weird liberal elite in-joke like I had initially thought?

Maybe that’s the case, but THE DISASTER ARTIST is not just about the making of THE ROOM; it’s about one man’s driving desire to be somebody, no matter the (literal) costs. This is by-and-far James Franco’s best directorial effort (which to be honest isn’t saying much), but his performance is the lynchpin of this movie. Odd to look at first, Franco disappears into Tommy Wiseau, transforming an enigma into a real, yet odd, man. It takes an inordinate amount of skill to not only make us laugh at this crazy man-child, but also feel sorry for him and want him to succeed. Casting his real-life brother, Dave, as Sestero, is a genius move and only serves to highlight the friendship of the two men.

You don’t have to see THE ROOM to get the brilliance of THE DISASTER ARTIST; the themes are apparent to anyone who’s ever had a glimmer of a dream and tried to chase it with everything they had.

9. LADY BIRD (d: Greta Gerwig, 96 minutes)

Early on in LADY BIRD, Christine McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) wants us to call her Lady Bird. After all, it’s the name she gave for herself, and changing your name is the ultimate act of rebellion against one’s parents, and LADY BIRD is nothing if not the story of Christine’s war against her mother, Marion(Laurie Metcalf).

But that simple act in the beginning sets the stage for one of, if not the, best high school movie in years and the first one to perfectly capture the depression of the early 2000’s with the Iraq War raging in the background of Sacramento’s living rooms. But Gerwig, firmly placing herself in the pantheon of great directors with this knockout of a film, focuses on the War at Home as Christine tries to take control of her life for the first time she’s able to as she nears the precipice of adulthood. Marion and Ronan act out this unhealthy, but ultimately loving, relationship with Tennesee Williams-esque cattiness and heartbreaking honesty at the low points. It’s hard to award one woman over the other when the symbiosis is such a large part of the appeal.

Throughout it’s run-time, LADY BIRD is hilarious, ribald, heartbreaking, but most importantly, genuine. And as much as this is Christine’s story, Marion is no caricature or cartoonish villain. She’s a woman who’s been high on hope and optimism and crashed hard, so is it hard to judge her for not wanting the same fate to befall her daughter? Maybe so, but it leads up to a beautiful ending that makes one believe that everything is going to be all right between the two (and that there will be no more impromptu detours out of a moving car).

8. THE INSULT (d. Ziad Doueri, 112 minutes)

The Lebanese Civil War was waged from 1975–1990 and I am extremely underqualified to explain it properly. But as a TL;DR Shia and Sunni Muslims and Christians fought each other, a lot of people died, and there’s been tense peace for about 30-ish years.

This is the backdrop of Ziad Doueri’s THE INSULT, a film that starts as a simple dispute between a Christian mechanic (Tony Hanna) and the Palenstinian Muslim foreman overseeing construction in his neighborhood. The matter is petty (over a literal insult), but neither man is willing to forgo his honor and pretty soon, their small fight threatens to rip the country and its wounds apart.

What starts as a hilarious and borderline Kafka-esque farce eventually blossoms into a deeper understanding of trauma and division, especially amongst a people that have lost so much. There are no easy answers by the end (nor should there be), but THE INSULT aims to start a conversation on the road to healing a nation that may not be as healed as it thinks it is, and in that, it has succeeded immensely.

7. PHANTOM THREAD (d: Paul Thomas Anderson, 130 minutes)

Full disclosure: Paul Thomas Anderson is my favorite director working today. I am convinced he’s incapable of making a bad film and PHANTOM THREAD continues to prop up that belief.

Continuing his transformation from Robert Altman to Stanley Kubrick, PHANTOM THREAD is in the vein of the character studies Anderson has made since THERE WILL BE BLOOD because at it’s heart, the film is about the nature of love. It’s maddening and unpredictable and frustrating but at the same time wonderful and all-encompassing.

Those are the feelings that Reynolds Woodcock (Daniel Day-Lewis in his alleged final performance), fashion designer to the wealthy and European loyalty, goes through after falling head-over-heels for Alma (Vicky Krieps in a hell of a breakout performance); the one thing he can’t seem to control in his life. While that may seem overtly patriarchal and creepy, Alma is no pushover and it drives Reynolds all the more crazy (and in love with her).

I feel the need to single out Jonny Greenwood’s score which permeates every carefully placed frame in the film. I’ve had a running theory that Greenwood is the modern-day Mozart and he does nothing to disprove that by creating a score that sounds as rich and moving as any classical piece by any of the great masters. Having been with Anderson since THERE WILL BE BLOOD, the two men have always been good at nailing down a sonic landscape but Greenwood has truly outdone himself here. I normally don’t like scores that tell you how to feel as they can backfire horribly, but Greenwood is in such control that his score commands you how to feel. In the end, one can’t help but just… listen.

6. MUDBOUND (d. Dee Rees, 135 minutes, AVAILABLE ON NETFLIX)

Often left off the list of women directors is the understated and underappreciated Dee Rees who did MOONLIGHT years ago with her haunting (and semi-autobiographical film) PARIAH. It is a film that showed off her talents, but perhaps not in as flashy a way as, say ,Ava Duvernay in SELMA.

But with MUDBOUND, there are no more excuses. This is the best film Terrence Malick never made and it was made by Dee Rees. Most experienced writers and directors would never attempt the expansive saga of two families, one white and one black, in post-World War II rural Mississippi without an HBO miniseries behind them. Rees and her co-writer Virgil Williams tackle the story in a 135 minute film and nail every beat, all while juggling multiple narrators and parallel character arcs.

The story of the white McAllans (Jason Clarke, Carey Mulligan, Garrett Dillahunt, Jonathan Banks) and the Jacksons, their black tenant farmer (Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige, Jason Clarke) has a familiar fatalism to it. Due to the time and place, you know the two can never truly co-exist, but Dillahunt and Clarke’s characters, both veterans of World War II and both seemingly past the petty racial divisions of the Jim Crow South, try to give their friendship a go with predictably tragic results. Rees draws the tension out and gives the McAllan farm a claustrophobic feeling despite the wide open spaces to make the climax of the film truly horrifying.

One hopes that the Netflix stigma doesn’t keep MUDBOUND, or Rees, away from the glory that they both truly deserve. If nothing else, it’s time to add another face, perhaps the most deserving one, to the conversation of female directors in Hollywood.

5. BABY DRIVER (d. Edgar Wright, 113 minutes)

The story of a young buck, trapped in a life of crime, wanting out, yet in over his head, is not a new one. On that merit, BABY DRIVER won’t be winning any awards.

On the other hand, however, most stories are unoriginal anyway and it’s all in how it’s told, and BABY DRIVER proceeds like a musical on adrenaline-infused cocaine.

Long noted for his visual flair, Edgar Wright finally comes to America with a rip-roaring love letter to car chases and 70’s R&B with the best editing I’ve ever seen in a movie. According to the many, many interviews he did for the movie, Wright meticulously planned out every chase with the beats to the songs he wanted to use and the results… well… they speak for themselves.

I should also say I’m being too harsh on BABY DRIVER’s premise; I enjoyed some of the twists, especially the villain shift halfway through and the somewhat unconventional ending for Baby. I also want to give a shout-out to Wright for actually embracing Atlanta as a location and not just a place for convenient tax breaks. Having been there a few times, he really nailed the sprawl of the city and the chase in the underground mall is A+.

4. GET OUT (d. Jordan Peele, 104 minutes)

After the disturbing cold open, CHRIS WASHINGTON (Daniel Kaluuya) and his white girlfriend ROSE (Alison Williams) prepare for a fun weekend at her parents’ house. In the background is Childish Gambino’s “Redbone” with the wailing refrain, imploring Chris subconsciously to “stay woke”. From the beginning, Jordan Peele lays down the pieces for a truly frightening experience, all while accomplishing the most game-changing career-shift since Adam McKay came out of nowhere with THE BIG SHORT two years ago.

There’s very little I could write about GET OUT that hasn’t been covered to death since it’s release this past February, from the fact that the villains are white liberals, the symbolism of the Sunken Place,the literal appropriation that underlies the film’s main conflict, and the politics behind the fake-out ending. Part of the reason GET OUT seems to have entered the zeitgeist in such a manner has to obviously do with Trump’s election and how (spoiler alert!) racism didn’t end when Obama was president.

But personally, I think the reason people flock to GET OUT is that it’s the first horror movie in a while that doesn’t insult the audience’s intelligence. The monsters are real people and not just crazy psychos, the horror is well explained and defined, and perhaps most importantly, Chris isn’t a fucking idiot. When he is let loose and has the chance to do some real damage, dude goes in. In his final rampage through the house, you can almost feel Peele apologize for every dumb-ass kid in every horror movie you had to go to as a teenager because it’s that awesome. In between every head smashing and bone-crunching death, one can’t help but thank Peele for breathing some life back into a somewhat stale genre.

3. THE SALESMAN (d. Asghar Farhadi, 125 minutes, AVAILABLE ON AMAZON PRIME)

I’m in the middle of watching CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM for the first time and I’ve noticed that Larry David is pretty much the serious version of Asghar Farhadi. While they’ve got some pretty obvious differences, their works both focus on petty people whose small misdeeds and flaws slowly boil and explode catastrophically with devastating results. While it’s played for laughs in David’s case, Farhadi uses his characters to explore nuanced takes on human nature. Perhaps most impressively as an Iranian citizen, he has to do it within ridiculously strict censorship rules.

It’s with that mindset you’ve got to approach a Farhadi movie (the exception being 2013’s THE PAST which is set in France.) All of the women will be in headscarves, most taboo subjects will be danced around, and a lot of the movie will be people talking. Yet, Farhadi is so in control that even within these confines, he’s able to produce some of the world’s best films and dialogue (Side note: Don’t go thinking he’s some conservative idiot either. Watch an interview with the guy he’s woke AF. It’s a small miracle he’s not in a dingy cell somewhere in Tehran).

THE SALESMAN is no exception and fully deserving of the Oscar it won earlier this year for Best Foreign Language Film. The story of a married couple, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Allodoosti)starring in a production of Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN who have their lives torn apart when Rana is attacked by an intruder and traumatized and Emad goes mad while seeking vengeance. It’s perhaps the most straightforward of Farhadi’s films and definitely the most devastating. Unlike ABOUT ELLY or his breakout film, A SEPARATION, the protagonists in THE SALESMAN don’t have any obvious flaws. It’s the inciting incident which brings out the worst in them and is an interesting deviation from Farhadi’s normal formula of letting flaws drive the narrative.

When the film does reach the promised and explosive conclusion, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but also a lot of pain and heartache regarding Emad and Rana’s relationship; something that I feel has to do with the parallelisms between DEATH OF A SALESMAN. The play is about Willy Loman’s desire to find some success and peace in the world all while being somebody. For Emad, the parallel is that he has failed to protect his wife and for Rana, that she has somewhat failed Emad in being attacked. In this case, they are both Willy Loman, struggling to find peace with themselves without destroying everything they’ve worked for. It’s a task that’s easier said than done.

2. THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (d. Yorgos Lanthimos, 121 minutes)

Most trailers these days are made by idiots; people who watch a movie and then have to try and sell it. In selling it, they need to appeal to everyone and when you appeal to everyone, you often end up appealing to no one. Trailers that don’t properly convey the mood of a film can often spell disaster for a film’s box office run, yet people might not see a film if the mood is “too weird”.

The good people at A24 don’t seem to care about that and released the above-trailer for THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (TKOASD). I was hooked and I got everything I wanted and more when I saw it.

Yorgos Lanthimos’s previous film, THE LOBSTER, is acclaimed by people who have seen it (and to my surprise, a lot of people have seen it). Yet in my opinion, TKOASD is not only a logical continuation of Lanthimos’s work from THE LOBSTER, it surpasses its predecessor in every way imaginable.

While THE LOBSTER takes place in an imagined dystopia, TKOASD takes place in the very real, and surprisingly frightening, world of Cincinatti. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) a brilliant, yet arrogant surgeon (is there any other kind?) is haunted by Martin (Barry Keoghan), a young boy whose father didn’t survive one of Steven’s surgeries. In retaliation, Martin curses Steven’s family (Nicole Kidman, Raffey Cassidy, Sunny Suljic) to die slowly and horribly unless Steven kills one of them.

And so begins the slow descent of the Murphy family, and the audience, into madness as a pestilence comes down on them in the form of paralysis, bleeding eyes, and shifting alliances. Martin, the human embodiment of the Old Testament God, shifts and mumbles his way awkwardly through his crusade, taunting Steven and taking the adage “everything happens for a reason” to its logical and horrifying conclusion. It is a phenomenal performance by Barry Keoghan who deserves to be better known than that poor kid on the boat from DUNKIRK.

Lanthimos’s filmography has always relied on an air of absurdity akin to children playing house to soften the blow of what he’s trying to say, but TKOASD strips all of that away. Without anything fantastical or metaphorical to fall back on, the horror of what unfolds becomes suffocating yet mesmerizing. Make no mistake, TKOASD is funny when it needs to be, but it also knows when to punch you in the face to make you pay attention. Choir-esque chanting and long-focus shots of Cincinatti’s rivers lend to the feeling that one is watching a taboo ceremony; something that ties in with the meaning of the film’s title (something I would Google after you watch it) and whether or not one should take nihilistic satisfaction in what “an eye for an eye” truly entails.

1. COCO (d. Lee Unkrich, 109 minutes)

Since its acquisition by Disney 10+ years ago, Pixar’s quality has been decreasing steadily. And when I say decreasing, I mean they’re not batting 1.000 anymore and it’s unreasonable to expect any company to do that. However, they’re more than capable of hitting a Grand Slam whenever they want to and they’ve done just that with COCO.

Much has been made about the Disney decision to place a short from the FROZEN universe in front of COCO and the rumor is that a story about Mexican people wasn’t enough to get people in their seats. While I personally enjoyed the FROZEN short, if that was the reasoning then it’s poor. People shouldn’t go see COCO because it’s a movie about Mexican people; they should see it because it’s a phenomenal movie. Full stop.

Unlike other films that may use cultural traditions as a jumping off point to explore broader themes, COCO never strays too far from its Mexican roots and therein lies its strengths. Paradoxically by referring back to the traditions of Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the broader messages Pixar is trying to convey become even clearer. More importantly, the love underlying everything comes into focus.

Miguel’s (Anthony Gonzalez) journey into the Underworld to find his famous musician ancestor (Benjamin Bratt) and get his blessing so he can finally play music against his family’s wishes seems childish and fantastical, but then again, he is literally venturing into the Underworld. While not as dark as THE GOOD DINOSAUR (a low-key FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS remake), COCO is not afraid to go to some very dark and scary places, and that’s where Pixar usually shines. Much like Jordan Peele’s treatment of horror, Pixar doesn’t try to talk down to the kids it’s aimed at, or the parents who will obviously get the message.

With death, and particularly within the traditions of Dia de Los Muertos, the dark message is that you are truly dead if you are forgotten, and what is our time on Earth if not a quest but to obtain immortality? It is a complex, heady theme to navigate and one which COCO does effortlessly, all the while while making us laugh and eventually heavy cry by the final performance of the showcase song “Remember Me”. I personally didn’t expect to like COCO this much, but then again, films like this remind me why I enjoy watching movies so much and how my life is so much richer for them.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE

In addition to these 10 titles, I’ve also added the following movies to my Films You Should Watch list which you can access below! Happy New Year! Hope to see you all watching more things next year!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pCIQv_UAm9H-2tRvRg7Ib8O7xuFGR4LfL85fZWgMx_w/edit?usp=sharing

FAST FIVE (Lin 2011)

LOGAN (Mangold 2017)

FURIOUS 7 (Wan 2017)

COLOSSAL (Vigolando 2017)

YOUR NAME (Shinkai 2017)

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 (Gunn 2017)

WONDER WOMAN (Jenkins 2017)

THE BIG SICK (Showalter 2017)

DUNKIRK (Nolan 2017)

GIRLS TRIP (Lee 2017)

THE VENERABLE W (Schroder 2017)

STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (Johnson 2017)

ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD (Scott 2017)

BLADE RUNNER 2049 (Villenevue 2017)

MOLLY’S GAME (Sorkin 2017)

VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (Besson 2017)

DETROIT (Bigelow 2017)

JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 2 (Stahelski, 2017)

FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Lin 2013)

FATE OF THE FURIOUS (Gray 2017)

FREE FIRE (Wheatley 2017)

THE SHAPE OF WATER (Del Toro 2017)

FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER (Jolie 2017)

HAPPY DEATH DAY (Johnson 2017)

STRONG ISLAND (Ford 2017)

PATRIOTS’ DAY (Berg 2016)

SPLIT (Shyamalan 2017)

THE LOST CITY OF Z (Grey 2017)

ALIEN: COVENANT (Scott 2017)

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES (Reeves 2017)

KONG: SKULL ISLAND (Vogt-Roberts 2017)

PERSONAL SHOPPER (Assayas 2017)

DON’T THINK TWICE (Birbiglia 2016)

THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (Cohen 2001)

LION (Davis 2016)

I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO (Peck 2017)

POWER RANGERS (Israelite 2017)

CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS : THE FIRST EPIC MOVIE (Soren 2017)

IT COMES AT NIGHT (Shults 2017)

WAR DOGS (Phillips 2016)

HELLO, MY NAME IS DORIS (Showalter 2016)

THE BEGUILED (Coppola 2016)

WIND RIVER (Sheridan 2017)

A FANTASTIC WOMAN (Leilo 2017)

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (France 2017)

THE WIZARD OF LIES (Levinson 2017)

THOR: RAGNAROK (Waititi 2017)

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI (McDonough 2017)

BOY (Waititi 2010)

A MAN CALLED OVE (Holm 2015)

HOW TO ME A LATIN LOVER (Marino 2017)

TRAMPS (Leon 2017)

OKJA (Joon-Ho 2017)

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (Watts 2017)

GOOD TIME (Safdie Bros. 2017)

LOGAN LUCKY (Soderbergh 2017)

THE FOREIGNER (Campbell 2017)

NOVITIATE (Betts 2017)

THE HOUSE (Cohen 2017)

I, TONYA (Gillespie 2017)