As we reach the end of awards season, it's time for me to unveil my best of the best films of a very good year!
1. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson):
PTA hasn’t reinvented cinema with “One Battle After Another,” but he’s sure as hell revitalized it with a film that stays alive with daring for nearly three hours. That’s a remarkable feat for an epic from a major studio (Warner Bros.) with a high-risk cost (a reported $130 million) and ambition that won’t quit. Set in an all-too-recognizable here and now, “One Battle After Another” strives to get it all in—a divisive electorate, rampant racism, shuttered abortion clinics, and hate crimes against migrants intensified by ICE raiders in masks. That’s a tall order in a Hollywood mired in the creative quicksand of lazy sequels, prequels and comic-book reboots in constant rotation. (PETER TRAVERS)
2. MARTY SUPREME (directed by Josh Safdie):
loosely inspired by midcentury table-tennis sensation Marty Reisman, a slender showman known as “the Needle,” Chalamet’s character is the most charismatic person in any room. Eyes blazing beneath a bushy unibrow, his cover-boy allure only slightly muted by geek-chic specs and made-up blemishes, Marty seems to have four arms and an extra brain. How else to explain the speed of his return, whether in table tennis or everyday conversation? Marty’s got the moves, but is beaten all the same. Instead of graciously accepting defeat, he demands a rematch with the Japanese champion Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), whose cool discipline and focus seem the polar opposite of Marty’s atomic-meltdown energy. (VARIETY)
3. HAMNET (directed by Chloe Zhao):
remains mostly faithful to the novel (O’Farrell collaborated with Zhao on the screenplay), but the two works center on different parts of the imagined timeline. The book ends with our first glimpse of Hamlet, and its final words belong to the Ghost of the play: “Remember me.” The film, on the other hand, directly grapples with the connections between real life and art, showing how the play (and his own role in it) became a vessel for Will Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) to confront his sorrow and help bring his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley) out of hers. Hamlet is thought of, not incorrectly, as a work about vengeance and the conflict between thought and action; indeed, it was Shakespeare’s version of an already-existing and popular revenge play. But in shifting her focus, Zhao fully embraces something long evident but often overlooked: As reworked by Shakespeare, Hamlet is also a play about all-consuming grief, one driven at all levels by loss and guilt and questions of how to properly mourn.. (VULTURE)
4. THE SECRET AGENT (directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho):
set in 1977 Brazil, roughly at the midpoint of a 21-year military dictatorship, “The Secret Agent” is a drama, a satire, an intriguingly laid-back espionage film, and a recreation of a time and place, with expressionistic and surreal flourishes that must be accepted on their own terms. Wagner Moura stars as Marcelo, a tall, bearded fellow with gentle energy and sad eyes. He arrives in Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, in a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. We don’t know why he’s come to Recife. We won’t know for a long time. You have to pick up on subtext in order to understand certain conversations. Marcelo and the other characters in his orbit try to avoid saying exactly what they mean, because someone might be listening. Murder is everywhere. Some deaths are punishments, levied against the regime’s opposition. Others are byproducts of street crime. There’s a lot of overlap. Hired killers are free agents who will murder a stranger and dispose of the corpse—whether the client is the state, a corporation, or some random person with a grudge—then have a nice dinner and go to bed. This film is partly about how people accept a world where such things can happen, and learn to move within it.. (EBERT.COM)
5. SENTIMENTAL VALUE (directed by Joachim Trier):
believability is so essential to the success of “Sentimental Value.” There has rarely been a film in which the family dynamic is more genuinely defined than in this one. Skarsgard, Reinsve, and Lilleas disappear into their roles, playing father, daughter, and sister so genuinely. As it always is, it’s in the small choices. There’s a hysterical bit in which Gustav buys some very inappropriate DVDs for his grandson, and the knowing laugh that Reinsve gives him is just wonderful. They follow the moment of unspoken joy with a cigarette, laughing and smiling as they do so. Strained relationships aren’t only defined by their strain. And it’s often when we stop talking that old bonds reform just a little bit. When Hollywood mistakenly thinks that fraught family dynamics are only one thing, it leads to melodrama. Trier and his performers understand this, defining their characters outside of their greatest emotional upheavals, making them all the more powerful. (ROGER EBERT.COM)
6. WEAPONS (directed by Zach Cregger):
Weapons is steeped in loss and paranoia during its first hour, punctuated with symbols and other arcane clues that snap into sharp focus during its dizzyingly eventful second half. Cregger puts his ensemble through a tangle of collisions throughout—some emotional, others quite literal—ratcheting up tension before retreating to his next chapter (named after these characters, plus a dazed druggie played by Austin Abrams), a rhythmic design that gives the audience a chance to catch their breath before doom shoves its way back in.. Through this, his film establishes keen tension between Garner and Brolin (both terrific), which initially makes it seem as though Weapons is careening toward some broader, Eddington-type reckoning. No doubt Cregger is playing with his audience’s collective awareness of the busted reality outside the theater, where infrastructure is failing, homes are bunkers, and schools resemble mausoleums, to subvert expectations. In many ways, Weapons is a topical ensemble drama; thrillingly, it has darker, more genre-driven ambitions beyond that. Cregger mixes all this despair, cynicism, and brutality into an impressively wicked and heady brew—and a ferociously entertaining horror movie, besides. (PASTE)
7. IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (directed by Jafar Panahi):
the question at the center of “It Was Just an Accident” is whether these men and women will resort to the same torturous tactics that were imposed on them and whether such means will actually help them conquer their respective traumas. Each actor acutely wrestles with their character’s respective moral dilemma with such openness that it’s easy to miss just how well-crafted each performance is. Through cinematographer Amin Jafari’s sense of environment, the script’s agile tonal changes, and the attentive cast, we are enthralled from minute one until the end of an intense thriller that operates quietly but with no less punch. As such, there are no wasted shots and no squandered moments in this picture because it understands that cinema is life, imbued with the power to rediscover the past, to protect the present, and to imagine a future. “It Was Just an Accident” is doing all those things at once, for its characters and its creator. (EBERT.COM)
8. SINNERS (directed by Ryan Coogler):
as ever, Coogler seems equally interested in Black resilience and the monstrous culture of racism that requires it, though some specific story details complicate the notion that white people are simply vampires eager to drain Black culture of its vitality. The vampires’ still-nefarious aims are thornier and creepier than garden-variety racism, though there’s some cathartic addressing of that business as well. One obvious reading involves assimilation, and the question of how or whether it’s possible for a marginalized or oppressed group to meaningfully hold their ground, and what that might cost. (AVCLUB)
9. PILLION (directed by Harry Lighton):
where Pillion undoubtedly succeeds is on the strength of its leads. Skarsgård — pulling double duty as executive producer — is perfectly cast, continuing a streak of sexually daring roles that began with True Blood and continued through being dog-walked in Infinity Pool. (Do yourself a favor and check his IMDB page, you’ll thank me.) As emotionally withholding as Ray is, you understand completely why someone like Colin would drop everything for a six-foot-four slice of Nordic perfection. Pillion’s most devastating image comes when Ray finally lets the mask slip, a whole word of emotion playing out on Skarsgård’s face, at once emotionally intuitive and cryptically heartbreaking. But Pillion simply wouldn’t work without Harry Melling, who’s proven to be the true acting talent to emerge from the Harry Potter movies. I hesitate to call any role “brave,” yet Melling’s leading turn requires a level of physical and emotional vulnerability — in addition to comedic timing — that’s as demanding as a bossy dom. Melling effortlessly rises to the challenge, it’s a wholly naturalistic performance, fully lived in and realized. He’s the heart and soul of the movie. (THE ARTS FUSE)
10. WARFARE (directed by Alex Garland & Ray Mendoza):
Garland and Mendoza's rigorous approach to the screenplay makes this film more docudrama than fiction. They relied entirely on the accounts of the men who were part of the mission, cross-checking to account for faulty memories. They invented no plot twists, and drop us into the action without any backstory about the characters. The dialogue is restricted to the military shorthand the Seals would have used, with no time for the jokey banter most war movies indulge in. Apolitical though Warfare is, with its blood-soaked scenes and brutal sounds, it seems to question the wisdom of settling any conflict, even or especially one about global power and politics, with the kind of violence this film draws us into so intimately. (BBC)
