Loneliness can be self-imposed, but that doesn’t make it any easier to overcome.
Adam (Andrew Scott) is alone. A writer living in a London high rise that’s still under construction, his solitary days bleed into his solitary nights, 80s hits on video and vinyl his main companions.
Adam is trying to write about his parents, so he decides to leave his flat, take a train, and revisit his old neighborhood. And soon his solitary days turn into afternoons spent with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) and nights spent with his only neighbor, Harry (Paul Mescal).
What follows is a beautiful, melancholy meditation on reconciling your love for someone who has failed you, recognizing their love for you and their failure.
Scott doesn’t anchor the film as much as he haunts it with a turn that’s achingly tender and forgiving. Meanwhile, Mescal delivers another beautifully wounded performance, raw with emotion and sensuality.
Foy is a delightful change of pace, conflicted and unsure, and Bell stands out as the dad you really want him to be: honest, culpable, sorry, deeply loving.
Writer/director Andrew Haigh (45 Years) expertly weaves the lonesomeness of childhood traumas, as misunderstood and overwhelming as they can be, with personal identity. What of your traumas created who you are? What of who you are created your traumas?
Though never illogical, logic itself is far from the driving principle in Haigh’s storytelling. Emotional honesty, perhaps. Desire, certainly.
All of Us Strangers is a tough film to summarize and even tougher to categorize. It exists in a dream state bound by loss and isolation. Naturally, the only way to puncture that atmosphere is with love.
In many ways, this film should not work. Genre elements litter the script that, told by any other filmmaker, would run either maudlin or cheesy. But Haigh’s hypnotic touch creates a tone equally honest and obscure yet full of wonder. It’s also utterly devastating.
It’s one of the oldest tropes in horror: an unexpected knock at the door. Maybe the visitors are in danger: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Human Centipede, The Old Dark House and countless others. Or, maybe it’s the folks inside who should be afraid: Knock, Knock; Brimstone and Treacle. For our 10th anniversary special, we count down the best “unexpected guest” horror.
5. The Eyes of My Mother (2016)
The Eyes of My Mother will remind you of many other films, and yet there truly is no film quite like this one.
First time feature writer/director Nicolas Pesce, with a hell of an assist from cinematographer Zach Kuperstein, casts an eerie spell of lonesome bucolic horror.
Shot in ideal-for-the-project black and white, an Act 1 event could come from any number of horror films. A mother looks out her window to see her young daughter, playing alone in the front lawn, talking with a stranger. There is something clearly wrong with the stranger, and things take a bad turn. But for Pesce, this simple, well-worn set-up offers endless unexplored possibilities. Because this bad man doesn’t realize that the isolated farm family he’s come to harm is very comfortable with dissection.
4. The Strangers (2008)
“Is Tamara home?”
Writer/director Bryan Bertino creates an awful lot of terror beginning with that line.
A couple heads to an isolated summer home after a wedding. It was meant to be the first stop on their life together, or so we gather, but not all worked out as James (Scott Speedman) had planned. As he and what he’d hoped would be his fiancé, Kristen (Liv Tyler), sit awkwardly and dance around the issue, their very late night is interrupted by a knock and that immediately suspicious question.
Bertino beautifully crafts his first act to ratchet up suspense, with lovely wide shots that allow so much to happen quietly in a frame. This is a home invasion film with an almost unbearable slow burn.
3. Funny Games (1997, 2007)
A family pulls into their vacation lake home, and are quickly bothered by two young men in white gloves. Things, to put it mildly, deteriorate.
Writer/director Michael Haneke begins this nerve wracking exercise by treading tensions created through etiquette, toying with subtle social mores and yet building dread so deftly, so authentically, that you begin to clench your teeth long before the first act of true violence.
But it is the villains who sell the premise. Whether German actors Arno Frisch and Frank Giering or Americans Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt for his 2007 English language remake, the bored sadism that wafts from these kids is seriously unsettling, as, in turn, is the film.
2. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)
I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.
Two young, ordinary, healthy kids left Denton that fateful evening on a night out. It was a night out they were going to remember for a very long time.
Brad Majors (asshole) and Janet Weiss (slut) get themselves in a bit of a pickle on a rainy night and need to seek a telephone at that castle they past a few miles back. I think you know the rest.
1. The Black Cat (1934)
Rocky Horror owes a tremendous debt to Edgar G. Ulmer’s bizarre horror show. The film – clearly precode – boasts torture, tales of cannibalism, and more than the hint of necromancy.
Plus Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff?! What is not to love?
Loosely based on Poe’s The Black Cat – so loose in fact that it bears not a single moment’s resemblance to the short – the film introduces Lugosi’s Dr. Vitus Werdegast. He’s come to seek vengeance on Karloff’s mysterious Hjalmar Poelzig, if only Werdegast can overcome his all-consuming terror of cats!
Boyz in the Hood is a great movie. In 1991, the same year 23-year-old John Singleton’s feature debut made box office and Oscar history, Julie Dash released the beautiful, generational drama, Daughters of the Dust. No guns, no cops, no real violence to speak of, Dash’s film nabbed a Sundance grand jury prize nomination and cinematography award.
Daughters of the Dust was essentially forgotten upon its release. (It has, thank God, in recent years been rediscovered, restored, and added to the National Film Preservation Registry.) But Boyz in the Hood immediately reshaped movies.
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction takes aim at fiction – print or cinematic – and its problematic relationship with Black trauma. But to say that Cord’s film would like to see movies move beyond Boyz in the Hood and other films that revel in suffering would be to simplify, even miss its point. The filmmaker complicates the discussion with debate over a Black creator’s right to simply pursue success, as any other creator might. Even if that means catering to a white audience’s thirst for Black trauma.
“White people think that they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.”
You might not expect a film that floats this truth so effortlessly to be a laugh riot, but American Fiction delivers an awful lot of laugh-out-loud moments.
Jeffrey Wright plays cantankerous college professor and literary writer Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. His latest manuscript is not being picked up for publication, his students hate him, and suddenly he needs to look after his mother, who will need round-the-clock care. Which costs money. The kind of money you can make if you pander to exactly the readership he loathes.
Monk does, incognito, and soon he’s pretending to be something he’s not at work and pretending not to be something he is at home. Buried within this are a couple of really lovely, sweetly complex middle-aged romances. Those are rare in films, so they deserve a mention here.
Issa Rae and Sterling K. Brown offer remarkable supporting turns as characters you want to dislike but simply cannot – part and parcel of a film that forever asks you to rethink what you believe you know. And maybe laugh bitterly as you do.
Adam Brody is also a hoot as that same smarmy douche he always plays, but he does it so very well. Jon Ortiz and Erika Alexander both bring warmth and humanity to a story essentially about a man who is not quite sure how to be warm and human.
Wright – an underappreciated genius of an actor if ever there was one – does what he always does. He conjures a fully formed human being, flawed but forgivable and endlessly earnest. Buoyed by a delightful ensemble and cuttingly hilarious script, he delivers one of the finest performances of his career.
These are the first words uttered in Michel Franco’s deceptively spare drama, Memory. Sylvia (Jessica Chastain) is celebrating 13 years of sobriety at an AA meeting. She’s brought her daughter, and those around her are remembering her impact on them.
For the next 140 minutes, Franco examines what’s true and what’s faulty in the human memory, and what he finds is sometimes harsh and unpleasant, but just often, profoundly tender.
Chastain’s performance is brittle but with complexity and depth. Sylvia’s life, and her hard-edged wall, are built from the years of being denied her truth. She knows who she is and she’s doing what she can with that.
Saul (Peter Sarsgaard, astonishing) does not always know who he is, but when he does the film shimmers with life and humanity. Saul follows Sylvia home from a high school reunion of sorts. The catalyst is provocative in that it makes Sylvie reconsider her own memory, which allows those around her to reignite their assault on its veracity.
A razor-sharp ensemble lends remarkable support to Chastain and Sarsgaard. Jessica Harper, in particular, is picture perfect, her sly and cheery manipulation leading to an emotional climax blistered by authenticity.
Memory is a bit of a departure for Franco, who’s films often keep audiences at arm’s length from the emotional turmoil beneath a character’s enigmatic surface. Not so here. Chastain’s slowly melting wall of ice creates real intimacy, and what she reveals beneath is raw.
She and Sarsgaard are veteran talents reveling in an opportunity to discard artifice and create something untidy. Their work, particularly in scenes together, testifies again to each actor’s remarkable skill.
Franco’s films rarely answer all the questions they ask, and can feel almost shapeless and often hopeless. Memory is a departure here as well. Though it’s far less rigidly structured than many Hollywood films, there’s a comforting structure to it and, more comforting, an undeniable spark of hope.
A film for anyone who squeezes creative passions into the hours outside other responsibilities, refuses the label “hobby” and still never manages to complete anything, Destroy All Neighbors lives that nightmare.
William (Jonah Ray) has been working and reworking the final song on his prog-rock album for ages. Years. He’s so close, but then the loudest, most aggressively weird neighbor moves in next door. Vlad (Alex Winter, who also produces) may have charmed William’s longsuffering girlfriend (Kiran Deol), but he’s pushing William to the brink of insanity. Who can get anything done with all that noise?!
William is that nonconfrontational nice guy who’s always being taken advantage of. But Vlad has pushed him too far. Which is why it will be so difficult to convince anyone that Vlad accidentally killed and dismembered his own self. But he did! Really!
Destroy All Neighbors delivers silly, sloppy horror comedy with the highly relevant message: maybe this is all your own fault. Ray (MST3K) drives the lunacy with an earnest performance. You kind of already know this guy. Hell, he could be you.
And that’s the real charm of Destroy All Neighbors. Director Josh Forbes, working from a script by Mike Benner, Jared Logan and Charles A. Pieper, isn’t wagging a finger of judgment. The finger is gently pointed inward.
The writing team comes from animation and comedy rather than horror, which may be why the film is so gleefully gory, no meanness in it. Whenever William does find his inner badass, the film makes sure he immediately regrets it.
A cameo from Kumail Nanjiani and the supporting goofiness from Lennon and Ryan Kattner as rock and roll has been Caleb Bang Jansen (say the whole name!) keep the tone silly.
Destroy All Neighbors is not a great movie. It’s definitely not a great horror movie. But it’s a light, weird, gentle reminder that you may be all that’s holding you back. (And also, loud neighbors kind of suck.)
Nominees for the 22nd annual Columbus Film Critics Association awards
(Columbus, December 31, 2023) The Columbus Film Critics Association is pleased to announce the nominees for its 22nd annual awards. Winners will be announced on the evening of January 4th, 2024.
Founded in 2002, the Columbus Film Critics Association is comprised of film critics based in Columbus, Ohio and its surrounding areas. Its membership consists of 28 print, radio, television, and online critics. COFCA’s official website at www.cofca.org contains links to member reviews and past award winners.
The 2023 Columbus Film Critics Association awards nominees are:
Best Film
–American Fiction
–Barbie
–Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
–The Holdovers
–The Iron Claw
–Killers of the Flower Moon
–May December
–Oppenheimer
–Past Lives
–Poor Things
–Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
–The Zone of Interest
Best Director
-Greta Gerwig, Barbie
-Yorgos Lanthimos, Poor Things
-Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
-Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Celine Song, Past Lives
Best Lead Performance
-Bradley Cooper, Maestro
-Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Colman Domingo, Rustin
-Zac Efron, The Iron Claw
-Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
-Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Greta Lee, Past Lives
-Carey Mulligan, Maestro
-Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer
-Margot Robbie, Barbie
-Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
-Emma Stone, Poor Things
-Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Best Supporting Performance
-Penélope Cruz, Ferrari
-Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Robert Downey Jr. – Oppenheimer
-Jodie Foster, Nyad
-Ryan Gosling, Barbie
-Glenn Howerton, Blackberry
-Charles Melton, May December
-Julianne Moore, May December
-Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
-Mark Ruffalo, Poor Things
-Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers
Best Ensemble
–Asteroid City
–Barbie
–The Color Purple
–Killers of the Flower Moon
–Oppenheimer
–Poor Things
Actor of the Year (for an exemplary body of work)
-Willem Dafoe, Asteroid City, The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka), Inside, and PoorThings
-Matt Damon, Air and Oppenheimer
-Colman Domingo, The Color Purple, Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken, Rustin, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
-Sandra Hüller, Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute) and The Zone of Interest
-Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction, Asteroid City, and Rustin
Breakthrough Film Artist
-Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon – (for acting)
-Cord Jefferson, American Fiction – (for directing and screenwriting)
-Charles Melton, May December – (for acting)
-Dominic Sessa, The Holdovers – (for acting)
-Celine Song, Past Lives – (for directing and screenwriting)
Best Cinematography
-Matthew Libatique, Maestro
-Rodrigo Prieto, Barbie
-Rodrigo Prieto, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Robbie Ryan, Poor Things
-Hoyte Van Hoytema, Oppenheimer
Best Film Editing
-Michael Andrews, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
-Kirk Baxter, The Killer
-Nick Houy, Barbie
-Jennifer Lame, Oppenheimer
-Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Poor Things
-Thelma Schoonmaker, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Adapted Screenplay
-Kelly Fremon Craig, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
-Cord Jefferson, American Fiction
-Tony McNamara, Poor Things
-Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
-Eric Roth and Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Original Screenplay
-Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola, Asteroid City
-Samy Burch and Alex Mechanik, May December
-Sean Durkin, The Iron Claw
-Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, Barbie
-David Hemingson, The Holdovers
-Celine Song, Past Lives
-Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)
Best Score
-Jerskin Fendrix, Poor Things
-Ludwig Göransson, Oppenheimer
-Laura Karpman, American Fiction
-Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
-Naoki Satô, Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
Best Documentary
–20 Days in Mariupol
–32 Sounds
–American Symphony
–Anselm (Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit)
–Kokomo City
–Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
Best Foreign Language Film
–Afire (Roter Himmel)
–Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)
–The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)
–Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0)
–Perfect Days
–The Zone of Interest
Best Animated Film
–The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka)
–Elemental
–Nimona
–Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
–Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Frank Gabrenya Award for Best Comedy
–American Fiction
–Asteroid City
–Barbie
–Bottoms
–The Holdovers
–No Hard Feelings
–You Hurt My Feelings
Best Overlooked Film
–Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
–Blackberry
–Rye Lane
–Showing Up
–Theater Camp
–You Hurt My Feelings
COFCA offers its congratulations to the nominees.
Previous Best Film winners:
2002:Punch-Drunk Love
2003: Lost in Translation
2004: Million Dollar Baby
2005: A History of Violence
2006: Children of Men
2007: No Country for Old Men
2008: WALL·E
2009:Up in the Air
2010:Inception
2011: Drive
2012: Moonrise Kingdom
2013: Gravity
2014: Selma
2015: Spotlight
2016: La La Land
2017: Lady Bird
2018: If Beale Street Could Talk
2019: Parasite (Gisaengchung)
2020: Promising Young Woman
2021: The Power of the Dog
2022: The Banshees of Inisherin
For more information about the Columbus Film Critics Association, please visit www.cofca.org or e-mail info@cofca.org.
The complete list of members and their affiliations:
It is that time again! What a year 2023 was in movies – action and horror, blockbusters and indies, newcomers and veterans. Plus feminists, God bless them! We had to really prune and trim, but here are our 25 favorites.
1. Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos creates a luscious world that is difficult to pin down. It’s part Victorian England, part Blade Runner 2049, and it is where Bella Baxter (Emma Stone, perfection) evolves to challenge the patriarchal notions that surround her.
The arc of Bella’s character is as satisfying as anything put to screen, and Stone revels in every unexpected, delightful, brash moment. And though it’s tough to pull your eyes away from Stone, along comes Mark Ruffalo to commit grand larceny with every scene of his hysterical cad Duncan Wedderburn, who indulges his ego teaching Bella about “furious jumping” (take a wild guess) but is reduced to mush when she moves past him without mercy or apology.
2. Killers of the Flower Moon
“Can you find the wolves in this picture?”
The question comes from a book on Osage Indian history that Ernest Burkhart is perusing, and it’s one that lingers throughout Martin Scorsese’s triumphant epic Killers of the Flower Moon.
Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth adapt David Grann’s nonfiction book with an engrossing mix of true crime fact-finding, slow burning thrills and devastating heartbreak. The characters are rich in culture and in shades of human grey, each one caught in an infamous crossfire of American envy, arrogance, bigotry and greed.
3. Oppenheimer
Writer/director Christopher Nolan gives Oppenheimer an engrossing IMAX treatment that serves up history lesson, character study and mystery thriller during three unforgettable hours.
Cillian Murphy is simply mesmerizing and absolutely award-worthy as Oppenheimer. Much like any film of this nature, Oppenheimer takes its liberties and leaves room for further study. But Nolan takes you inside the personal journey of one of the most important men in history, with resonant and challenging lessons on hubris, envy, blind faith and the search for redemption. And by the end of hour three, he leaves you drained but thankful for the experience.
4. Barbie
Barbie, which director Greta Gerwig co-wrote with Noah Baumbach (that slouch), delivers smart, biting, riotous comedy with more whimsy than anything this politically savvy has any right to wield. This film does not work without a tightrope of a tone, and everyone walks it with their heels off the ground.
It’s a role Margot Robbie was clearly born to play. Ryan Gosling, the man behind the tan, plays Existential Crisis Ken and it’s possible he’s never been better. Barbie is a brilliantly executed, incredibly fun, brightly colored, completely logical feminist statement that should be remembered come awards season.
5. Maestro
Bradley Cooper’s instincts for construction have grown exponentially since A Star Is Born (his stellar directing debut). Frame after frame is a wonder of style and storytelling, including an unforgettable extended take of simmering intensity and visual contrast that rivals the emotional wallop of Marriage Story‘s famous soul-baring confrontation.
Maestro is a film that soars early and often, via moments of glamorous cinematic muscle-flexing and intimate soul searching. It is as much about a great artist as it about the sacrifices great art often demands from both the artist and those who are closest to them. It’s a celebration of a legend and of a legendary bond, a sublime piece of moviemaking that deserves a standing O.
6. When Evil Lurks
Just when you thought no one could do anything fresh with a possession movie, Terrified filmmaker Demián Rugna surprises you. When Evil Lurks does sometimes feel familiar, its road trip to hell detouring through The Crazies, among others. But Rugna’s take on all the familiar elements feels new, in that you cannot and would not want to predict where he’s headed.
As choices are made and usually regretted, Rugna propels his heroes onward, each step, each choice, each misstep adding pressure and confusion, unveiling the character beneath even as bits of the brothers’ history organically comes to light. This is a magnificently written piece of horror, and Rugna’s expansive direction gives it an otherworldly yet dirty, earthy presence.
7. The Boy and the Heron
Hayao Miyazaki delivers the best Christmas gift this year with the lovely, likely swan song, The Boy and the Heron. Characteristically gorgeous, the film combines the spectacle of Spirited Away with the solemnity of The Wind Rises. Joe Hisaishi’s plaintive score never overwhelms but quietly emphasizes the sense of loss that permeates the movie. And though the painterly magic we’ve come to expect from the unparalleled filmmaker is on display in every frame, the storytelling this time is openly wistful.
The Boy and the Heron may represent Mahito’s coming of age, but as he turns his back on the imaginative world he leaves behind, it’s hard not to feel as if Miyazaki is likewise waving goodbye.
8. Godzilla Minus One
Writer/director Takashi Yamazaki tips some unmistakable hats to both Jaws and Dunkirk, and emerges with a completely satisfying Kaiju adventure. And though Yamazaki makes sure Godzilla wreaks his havoc early and often, Minus One is a film driven by characters with all-too-human complexities.
Yamazaki – who’s also credited as the VFX supervisor – gives Godzilla a wonderfully classic look, with imposing and well-defined features like those spiky scales that turn blue when he’s about to spit that fire! Hell yeah! The filmmaker deftly balances the destruction with the reflection, and Minus One raises up a welcome addition to Godzilla lore.
9. American Fiction
“White people think that they want the truth, but they don’t. They just want to feel absolved.”
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction takes aim at fiction – print or cinematic – and its problematic relationship with Black trauma. You might not expect a film that floats this truth so effortlessly to be a laugh riot, but American Fiction delivers an awful lot of laugh-out-loud moments.
Jeffrey Wright – an underappreciated genius of an actor if ever there was one – does what he always does. He conjures a fully formed human being, flawed but forgivable and endlessly earnest. Buoyed by a delightful ensemble and cuttingly hilarious script, he delivers one of the finest performances of his career.
10. The Color Purple
No matter how familiar you are with Alice Walker’s original novel, or Spielberg’s 1985 film, director Blitz Bazawule’s adaptation of The Color Purple Broadway musical comes to the big screen as a heartfelt and joyous experience.
Have those tissues handy, but rest assured they will all be tears of joy. Because as much suffering as Miss Celie and her family endure, that pain is not what drives this vision. Bazawule, Fantasia Barrino and a top flight ensemble make this The Color Purple an uplifting celebration of heritage and family, and an exhilarating film experience.
11. May/December
May December feels more like Todd Haynes of old: a sultry situation masquerading as hum drum, populated by Tennessee Williams-esque damaged beauties wanting, wanting. Plus, Julianne Moore.
Moore is characteristically brilliant and wonderfully enigmatic. Portman is magnificent, biting into a role with more salty meat than anything she’s handled since Black Swan. But it’s Charles Melton who truly surprises, heartbreaking emotional honesty in a film that flaunts insincerity.
12. The Iron Claw
Writer/director Sean Durkin (Martha Marcy May Marlene and The Nest) brings together his lifelong love of wrestling with a keen ability to heighten psychological tension to the breaking point and then see what fills the void that comes after that break.
The result is a mesmerizing sports movie and Oscar contention for Zac Efron. Call it a curse or call it bad luck, but Durkin’s deft handling of these events turns public tragedy into a searing meditation on familial bonds and the limits of a certain type of masculinity.
13. The Holdovers
Director Alexander Payne serves up plenty a period comedy that also finds time to unwrap some warmth and understanding.
Paul Giamatti is perfection as a man who seems to have forged a comfortable “hate-hate” relationship with life. Dominic Sessa impresses in his screen debut, giving depth to the rebellion that has brought Angus multiple expulsions from multiple schools. And Da’Vine Joy Randolph brings plenty of weary humanity, crafting Mary as a heartbroken woman still trying to understand why her Curtis was deemed more expendable than these rich white boys who are preparing for college instead of war.
14. Asteroid City
As is so often the case, director Wes Anderson, writing again with Roman Coppola, painstakingly creates a world – colorful, peculiar, emotionally tight lipped – brimming with characters (equally colorful, peculiar and emotionally tight-lipped). Brimming. About 50 speaking characters stand or sit precisely on their mark, perfectly framed, each one doing their all to keep chaos at bay.
The wordplay is succinct and witty per usual, dancing through themes of science, art, and Cold War paranoia. But while Anderson’s last film, The French Dispatch, left its procession of indelibly offbeat characters to fend for themselves, this time they’re connected with the sterile humanity that buoys the best of his work.
15. Air
If you still need proof that Ben Affleck is a damn fine director, you’ll find it, right down to how he frames the multiple telephone conversations. But the real surprise here is the script. In a truly sparkling debut, writer Alex Convery brings history to life with an assured commitment to character.
And much like his success with the Oscar-winning Argo, Affleck proves adept at a pace and structure that wrings tension from an outcome we already know. In fact, he goes one better this time, inserting archival footage that actually reminds us of how this all turned out, before leaving Mrs. Jordan’s final ultimatum hanging in the air like a levitating slam from Michael.
16. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
A reminder that multiverse films can, indeed, be made well, this story is wild but never illogical, delivering a heady balance of quantum physics, Jungian psychology and pop culture homages while rarely feeling like a self-congratulatory explosion of capitalism. Heart strings are tugged, and it helps if you’ve seen the previous installment. (If you haven’t, that’s on you, man. Rectify that situation immediately.)
A star-studded voice cast shines, but that wattage is almost outshone by the animation. Every conceivable style, melding one scene to the next, bringing conflict, love and heroism to startling, vivid, utterly gorgeous life.
17. John Wick 4
Chapter 4 is not just more of what makes the series memorable, it’s better: better action, better cinematography, better fight choreography, better framing and shot selection. Sandwiched between inspired carnage are brief moments of exposition set within sumptuous visions of luxury and decadence. This movie is absolutely gorgeous.
One of the reasons each episode of this franchise surpasses the last is that the franchise is not exactly about John Wick. It’s a love letter to a canon, a song about the entire history of onscreen assassins and their honorable, meticulous action. Genre legends arrive and we accept a backstory that isn’t detailed or necessary because the actors carry their cinematic history with them, and that’s backstory enough.
18. Showing Up
Visual poet of the day-to-day Kelly Reichardt returns to screens with a look at art as well as craft in her dramedy, Showing Up.
Michelle Williams is characteristically amazing. Her character exists as much in what she does not say as what she does, and the honesty in that performance generates most of the film’s comic moments. Reichardt invests her attention in the small moments rather than delivering a tidy, obvious structure. The result feels messy, like life, with lengths of anxiety and unease punctuated by small triumphs.
19. Sisu
Is there anything in all the world more satisfying than watching Nazis die? Perhaps not. Jalmari Helander, the genius behind 2010’s exceptional holiday horror Rare Exports, squeezes a lovechild from Leone and Peckinpah by way of Tarantino (natch). The result, Sisu, a kind of WWII-era Scandinavian John Wick.
Helander’s confident vision meshes majestically with the cinematography of Kjell Lagerroos, capturing the lonesome beauty of Lapland in one minute, the next minute bursting with the frenetic energy and viscera of action. The stunt choreography and editing in the dizzying array of carnage-laden set pieces are breathtaking. Knives, guns, fisticuffs, tank fire, regular fire, land mines, a hanging, airplanes – a seemingly endless string of magnificently crafted violent action keeps the pace breathless.
20. Anatomy of a Fall
Writer/director Justine Triet’s understated gem masquerades as a courtroom drama – a thrilling, frustrating, compelling one at that. But the tale she really tells is one of sexual politics and the way the patriarchy effortlessly vilifies women.
Sandra Hüller is perfection as a woman suspected of killing her husband. Triet’s script – a quietly powerful sermon on the power of words – tells two stories simultaneously: the one we’re hearing and the truth. It’s a masterful piece of filmmaking, frustrating in its honesty.
21. Bottoms
Bottoms essentially follows a traditional teen comedy path, from the first day of senior year. But if you saw co-writer/director Emma Seligman and co-writer/star Rachel Sennott’s uncomfortably brilliant 2020 comedy Shiva Baby, you have some idea of what you’re in for. Expect a chaotic, boundary pushing satire unafraid to offend.
Part John Hughes, part Jennifer Reeder, part Chuck Palahniuk, Bottoms exists in a bizarre world of deadpan absurdism so littered with smart, biting commentary that you’ll need to see it twice to catch all of it. Seligman’s tone, her image of high school and high school movies, is wildly, irreverently funny and fearless. It’s hilarious, raunchy, and so much fun.
22. Linoleum
If you haven’t gotten to know filmmaker Colin West, it’s high time you correct that. The writer/director follows up last year’s surreal Christmas haunting Double Walker with a beautiful look at living a fantastic life.
The effortlessly affable Jim Gaffigan plays Cameron, an astronomer in suburban Dayton, Ohio hitting a very rocky path in his middle age. The kiddie show about science that he hosts is failing. Maybe his marriage is, too. New neighbors, a mysterious woman, and increasingly bizarre events have got him wondering. What does it all mean?
23. The Killer
Writer/director David Fincher gives us The Killer as a Patrick Bateman for a new generation, managing some dark fun as he probes our descent into cold, violent narcissism. Fassbender is perfection as this meticulous, emotionless killbot, and the great Tilda Swinton’s late stage cameo brings the film more star power, plus one genuinely hilarious and insightful moment.
There are no business cards involved, but passports with increasingly funny aliases (brush up on your classic sitcoms) provide levity as scores are settled with inventive bloodshed and impressive fight choreography. And through it all, The Killer keeps preaching his mantra as a MAGA Bond, unwavering in his devotion to self and the perpetual need to feel aggrieved.
24. Priscilla
Like most stories about Elvis, this one is pretty familiar. But this point of view is not. That’s likely what interested Sofia Coppola, and she adapts Priscilla’s 1985 memoir “Elvis and Me” as a lush, compelling, and often heartbreaking portrait of the woman at the heart of a uniquely American love story.
Cailee Spaeny (On the Basis of Sex, Bad Times at the El Royale) gives a breakout performance that is utterly transfixing. With grace and ease, she is able to take Priscilla from the shy schoolgirl hiding a big secret behind her knowing smile, to a woman no longer willing to sacrifice her life to the whims of an icon.
25. Blackberry
So, a voice on the line says, “You have a collect call from ‘What the f%& is happening’!”
That’s not really the caller’s name.
He’s actually Jim Balsillie (a terrific Glenn Howerton), co-CEO of BlackBerry Limited, and he’s having yet another temper tantrum. The pairing of Balsillie’s bare-knuckled business sense with the tech genius of other CEO Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel, perfectly awkward) made the company an early leader in the cell phone game, but things have started to unravel. Fast.
The colliding of worlds is engaging enough, but the delightfully sharp humor and first-rate ensemble (also including Michael Ironside) turn these based on true events into a rollicking, can’t-look-away slice of history.
