Here at last! The final list - still in alphabetical order. (Sort of, anyway. A few entries here are out of order, due to being sorted incorrectly in my Excel spreadsheet!)
As you may notice, it’s been almost three weeks since my last installment. I had a tough time finishing this up, and not only because I was busy on several other fronts. I had second thoughts about some of my initial choices, eventually swapping them out in favor of other films I remembered more fondly -even if they weren't generally considered "great" by the larger critical community.
(In case you missed them, you can find the previous installments of this list here and here.)
Moonlight (director: Barry Jenkins; 2016)
Moonlight is a beautiful, poetic, emotionally shattering coming-of-age drama of a young, gay, black man growing up in the projects of South Florida. It's a linear narrative, but one that communicates most powerfully through images and wordless sequences (the motion of water beneath and around the boy as he learns to swim, the sensation of his free hand digging into beach sand as he embraces and kisses another boy for the first time.) These scenes have an intimacy and emotional resonance that nearly breaks your heart.
Mulholland Drive (director: David Lynch; 2000)
I've never been a huge fan of David Lynch's work. With a few notable exceptions (The Elephant Man, The Straight Story and this one) I've mainly been an occasional, often puzzled admirer. But Mullholland Drive is something else again: an insane, impenetrable, surreal Hollywood dreamscape, both beautiful and bizarre. It seems to be about something - it may be about nothing. I've never really cared. It's just so beautiful and thrilling to watch that, for me, it resists all attempts at interpretation. The late Rebekah Del Rio's stunning Spanish-language performance of Roy Orbison's Crying is, all by itself, worth the streaming rental price.
Museum Hours (director: Jen Cohen, 2012)
A quiet, lovely film about friendship and the power of art, in which a Canadian woman and a Viennese museum guard strike up a friendship that alleviates their mutual loneliness. Starts out in “what is this movie and where is it going?” territory - but its emotional power sneaks up on you as you go.
Nebraska (director: Alexander Payne; 2013)
Nebraska is very funny and, at the same time, sad and elegiac, a perfect evocation of small-town life in the flyover states as lived by a generation that is aging into oblivion. It may play like satire to those unfamiliar with the territory, and some may dismiss it as more of Alexander Payne's condescending comedy at the expense of rubes, but they'd be wrong on both counts. Nebraska, a deceptively simple film, evinces a profound understanding of its characters - their unspoken dreams and disappointments, their hard-nosed common sense - as well as the slow, quiet decay of the American small town.
Never Let Me Go (director: Mark Romanek; 2010)
An exceptionally fine screen adaptation of Kasuo Ishiguaro's acclaimed novel, thus is a dystopian tale with a deeply broken heart. Set in a meticulously rendered alternative version of 1980s Britain and suffused with a deep and pervasive sense of melancholy that never once abates, it lays out the terrible secrets of its characters' fates in haunting and deeply moving fashion.
Nomadland (director: Chloe Zhao; 2020)
This is a sad story. But when I remember the film, it's not the sadness I think about, but rather its beauty. The gorgeous musical score and the breathtaking cinematography that takes in so many natural wonders of the western United States. The sense of community that develops between the modern-day nomads who have lost their homes and live out of their vans and trucks, while eking out meager livings from temporary service jobs. Many of the characters in the film are real-life nomads who are profiled in the non-fiction book on which it is based. I've not read the book myself, but people who have read it assure me that their actual lives are a good deal more dire and hardscrabble than the film version fully depicts. Still, I respect Chloe Zhao for finding something transcendent in the lives of people whose hardships we barely know. She turns the story into visual poetry, anchored by a reliably brilliant performance by Frances McDormand.
Notes on a Scandal (director: Richard Eyre: 2006)
Judi Dench is the embittered spinster schoolteacher who becomes obsessed with a new, younger teacher at her school (Cate Blanchett). Meanwhile, Blanchett becomes involved with a teenage student (Andrew Simpson). Dench discovers their affair, and uses the knowledge as leverage to get ever closer to Blanchett. The performances are superb and the escalating tension is unnerving. It's an actor's showcase, not only for Dench and Blanchett, but for a fine supporting cast as well (including Bill Nighy as Blanchett's husband, plus significant roles for Michael Maloney, Joanna Scanlon and Phil Davis).
O Brother Where Art Thou? (directors Joel and Ethan Coen; 2000)
The Coen brothers transplant Homer's Odyssey ( in a very loose adaptation) to 1930s rural Mississippi where a trio of escaped convicts (George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson) search for buried treasure and become country singing stars in the process. This may not be the goofiest Coen Brothers film ever made, but it's definitely in contention for that honor. Deliriously funny, and featuring a terrific soundtrack of gospel and country music (I have the soundtrack CD and I still listen to it sometimes), it's a wild and joyous ride.
OJ: Made in America (director: Ezra Edelman; 2016)
A masterful, nearly 8-hour documentary that exhaustively examines race and celebrity in America through the prism of O. J. Simpson's rise and fall. Simpson's story plays like Greek tragedy. Director Ezra Edelman shapes a mountain of material and interviews into riveting drama, the equivalent of a great book that you can't bring yourself to put down.
Once (director; John Carney; 2007)
It centers around the brief, chaste romance of a Dublin street singer/guitarist (Glen Hansard) and a young Czech pianist (Marketa Irglova). Actually, it's barely even a romance - Irglova keeps Hansard at arm's length throughout the film, and only allows him a brief kiss on her cheek late in the film. But there is a definite romance in the way these two play and sing music together, in their mutual love of musical expression.
Actually, Once is not so much about the love between a man and a woman as it is about the love between musicians and their music - and how that shared love binds them to other musicians. I can't think of another movie that captures so well the dizzying communal joy of people getting together to sing and play.
Oppenheimer (director Christopher Nolan; 2023)
Christopher Nolan seamlessly integrates the many facets of a complex story about a complex man into a film both thrilling and intellectually stimulating. He is absolutely masterful when incorporating scientific information, giving us just enough for a high-level understanding of how the bomb works, but not so much that we’re baffled and constantly trying to keep up. Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer is mostly in his eyes. He's soft spoken and his body language is restrained, but you can see the curiosity or moral panic in his subtlest sweeping glances.
Paddington 2 (director Paul King; 2017)
I first watched Paddington 2 on an airplane, where I surreptitiously dabbed at tears several times while watching. Like Mr. Rogers, the little Peruvian bear has a kinder heart and a purer spirit than most of the humans around him - sufficient to soften the hearts of some particularly gnarly prison inmates just by introducing them to the life-changing magic of marmalade sandwiches. There is such a welcome sweetness to a film where the stakes are no higher than Paddington's quest to send his beloved Aunt Lucy an antique pop-up picture book of London. When was life ever that simple? Hugh Grant is on hand in a deliciously flamboyant performance as the villain of the piece - an overbearing, over-dressed has-been actor with an ego as big as his wardrobe. Characters like this keep the film from becoming overly saccharine and make it as appealing to adults as it is to children.
Parasite (director Bong Joon-Ho; 2019)
Highly entertaining, provocative and sad, this tale of one South Korean family's doomed attempt to transcend their social class is a compelling and chilling wild ride. Even my friends who normally hate sub-titled foreign films have embraced it. One friend aptly described it thus: "If Dostoyevsky wrote a screenplay and Alfred Hitchcock directed it, it would be Parasite." I can think of no better recommendation - see it for yourself.
Phantom Thread (director Paul Thomas Anderson; 2017)
I don't just watch this film - I luxuriate in it. It's big and gorgeous, with a lush, romantic musical score... and a few distinctly creepy plot twists involving lightly poisoned mushrooms being fed to a cranky man to keep him in line. P.T. Anderson borrows heavily from both Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean for this strange romance between a fussy fashion designer (whose life is carefully managed by his icy, controlling sister) and the deceptively mild, mouse-like woman he falls for. Sure the cinematography and clothes are gorgeous and the actors are great. (It's Daniel Day-Lewis, for Pete's sake!) But it's the weird and twisty parts that make Phantom Thread such a irresistible cinematic treat.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (director: Celine Schiamma; 2019)
This movie is many things - a love story, a feminist fable, a story about painters and their subjects and the fraught relationship between them. It has the grand sweep of an epic period piece, yet feels entirely contemporary. As a meditation on the process of artistic creation, it is, itself, gorgeous to look at; every shot is composed in a painterly fashion with meticulous attention to lighting and composition.
From a feminist point of view, it depicts a rare, blessed window of time when no men are present in the household of a 19th century aristocratic French family and shows women bonding and taking care of one another in ways that men cannot. You can sense the relaxation in all the female characters during this chapter. And as a love story between two women, it is undeniably romantic, in spite of the fact that the relationship must ultimately give way to the demands of practicality and propriety.
The Power of the Dog (director Jane Campion; 2021)
Benedict Cumberbatch is unnerving here as an inexplicably cruel and conniving rancher. He and his gentler, more refined brother (Jesse Plemons) run a family ranch together in uneasy partnership where Plemmons steadfastly deflects his brother's insults. When Plemmons meets and marries a sweet-tempered widow (Kirsten Dunst), Cumberbatch makes it his mission to undermine and unnerve her, and succeeds in driving her to drink. Dunst's teenage son, sensitive and shy, also becomes the target of Cumberbatch's nastiness.
What I've just given you is a bare outline of the story. It's far more twisty and subtle than I can properly convey, and let's just say that at least two of these characters are not quite what they seem to be at first glance. Cumberbatch is electrifying in every scene, always managing to suggest a vulnerability - or at least some unplumbed complexity - beneath every wincingly nasty wisecrack. The gorgeously photographed landscape that surrounds them all is beautiful and forbidding at the same time. The It keeps you off balance and guessing at things right up to the final shot.
Pride and Prejudice (director Joe Wright; 2005)
This fine adaptation of the beloved novel has a bit more grit that your typical Austen adaptation. Keira Knightley's take on Elizabeth Bennett is tomboyish, rather than merely sharp-witted, while Matthew McFadyen brings interesting nuances of melancholy and longing to his portrayal of the legendarily uptight Mr. Darcy.
Rachel Getting Married (director Johnathan Demme; 2008)
Anne Hathaway plays Kym, a recovering addict on temporary release from a rehab hospital to attend her sister’s wedding. Hathaway is a revelation here. Her Kym is a haunted soul whose emotional pain is palpable even (and especially) when she can't stop putting herself at the center of everyone's attention on a day that ostensibly belongs to her sister. She gives a rambling, embarrassingly self-revelatory toast at the rehearsal dinner, and we acutely feel her loneliness as her attempted jokes fall flat, while other toasters receive warm applause and appreciation for their inarticulate stammering.
Kym is guilty of causing a terrible family tragedy, and the scene in which we learn about this (set at a 12-step meeting) is handled and acted with breathtaking delicacy. Director Jonathan Demme used Dogme 95-like techniques (hand-held cameras, a soundtrack provided by musician characters rehearsing for a wedding) to create vibe that is intimate and raw. We're not allowed a comfortable distance from which to view the family's dysfunctions - we live them.
Red Rocket (director Sean Baker; 2021)
Sean Baker is Hollywood's Golden Boy these days since his multiple Oscar wins for Anora. But this earlier, scruffier, and largely unsung film is superior to the one that took the Best Picture trophy. Here a thoroughly reprehensible - but oddly captivating - doofus (Simon Rex) returns to his economically depressed Texas hometown after a failed attempt to become a porn star. He moves in with his ex-wife, romances a girl who works behind the corner at a donut shop, and tries to make a new life, but with faltering (and usually dishonorable) results. Nothing about this character should engage our interest or sympathies, but under Baker's skillful direction, Rex makes him endlessly fun, if sometimes maddening, to watch.
The Royal Tenenbaums (director Wes Anderson; 2001)
Gene Hackman, in one of his best performances, is the estranged paterfamilias of an almost indescribably eccentric and dysfunctional family. For most of the film, he's busy concocting elaborate schemes and hoaxes (including a fake cancer diagnosis) to get back into his adult children's good graces. But his kids (Ben Stiller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Luke Wilson) have more than enough issues of their own to overcome.
That's the straightforward, prosaic version of what happens in The Royal Tenenbaums. But it doesn't convey the delightfully eccentric sense of whimsy that drives the narrative. In everything from Alec Baldwin's narration to the art direction to the excessively mannered performances, Anderson's film consistently delivers twisted comedy while still getting at the genuine emotional truths of its characters' lives.
A Serious Man (directors Joel and Ethan Coen; 2009)
While in many ways a radical departure and an uncharacteristically personal work for the Coens, it’s of a piece with the nihilistic tomfoolery in their preceding film, Burn After Reading. And it resoundingly reaffirms that film's closing line: "What have we learned from this? Not a thing." It's many things all at once: a take-off on the Book of Job; an unsettling, absurdist meditation on human suffering and the limited efficacy of religion to help us make sense of it; and a meticulously detailed remembrance of growing up Jewish in the suburban Midwest of the 1960s. Ultimately it's the kind of film in which the words to Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" prove to contain more wisdom than those of three revered rabbis put together. But its final shot is every bit as ambiguously ominous as the conclusion of No Country for Old Men.
Sexy Beast (director Jonathan Glazer; 2000)
A retired safecracker (Ray Winstone) is lured out of a luxurious retirement in Spain for one more job by a cold, terrifying gangster (played with psychotic flair by Ben Kingsley). Glazer's direction is visually stylish and the entire film crackles with an almost unbearable tension.
Sideways (director Alexander Payne; 2004)
Two longtime friends. Miles and Jack, make a last "bachelor's" trip together to California's wine country before Jack's wedding. That trip will ultimately test their friendship and push them both to become a little better men by the time the closing credits roll. Ultimately much more than a mismatched buddy comedy or a road movie, it's a showcase for the phenomenal acting talent of Paul Giamatti. His portrayal of Miles - a perpetually morose and miserable would-be writer and oenophile, still pining for his ex-wife - could easily have just been annoying. But Giamatti brings him to full, complicated life. We can even forgive him when he explodes in rage to declare, "I'm not drinking any fucking merlot!"
The Squid and the Whale (director Noah Baumbach; 2005)
This dysfunctional family drama is lacerating, sad and honest all at once. There were a fair number of pompous academics portrayed on film in that decade, but Jeff Daniels' performance will make you both cringe and cry like no one else's I can recall. Noah Baumbach's semi-autobiographical drama of a couple's divorce and its effect on their two teen-aged sons is uncomfortable in ways that feel absolutely real and unsparing in exposing every one of its characters at both their most vulnerable and most despicable.
Stan and Ollie (director Jon S. Baird; 2018)
I’m fully prepared for the eye rolls this choice will provoke among my serious cinephile friends, but I make no apologies for it. In their portrayals of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy at the twilight of their careers, Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly are nothing short of brilliant. I pretty much grew up on Laurel and Hardy, who were favorites of my comedy connoisseur dad. The acid test for me is that Coogan and Reilly are every bit as much fun to watch doing classic Laurel and Hardy bits as were the men themselves. And when they aren’t performing bits, they bring enormous sensitivity to their roles.
Starting Out in the Evening (director Andrew Wagner; 2007)
This is an obscure and probably unexpected choice, but it has stayed in my mind for years, and I’ve revisited it a few times since first watching it. I’m listing it here to garner some attention for Frank Langella’s raw, vulnerable performance as an ill and aging writer who becomes enamored of the graduate student (Lauren Ambrose) interviewing him for her thesis. Ambrose’s performance is canny and slippery; you’re never quite sure if her character is intentionally playing on Langella’s interest to get interviews or if she’s truly oblivious to his attraction to her. Langella is memorably heartbreaking, never more so than in a scene where he suddenly grabs Ambrose, pulling her to himself for a kiss with such urgent longing that it haunted me for days after. There’s more than just romantic desire expressed in that moment; rather it’s a last, desperate grasp for life itself,
State and Main (director: David Mamet; 2000)
A Hollywood movie crew invades a sleepy New England town to make a historical drama; comedic chaos ensues. An all-star cast (including Alec Baldwin, William H. Macy, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Stiles and Patti LuPone) makes David Mamet’s razor-sharp wit soar and sing. And Sarah Jessica Parker’s portrayal of an impenetrably dim actress is so funny, you’ll almost forgive her current, embarrassing resurrection of Carrie Bradshaw in HBO’s And Just Like That.
Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby (director: Adam McKay; 2006)
Every “best of” list, no matter how exalted to claims to be, needs at least one entry is that is just pure, dumb fun. And no one does dumb fun like Will Ferrell, here as a NASCAR driver with daddy issues and a memorably dopey best friend/racing partner (John C. Reilly). It’s accurate to say that, in this film, Ferrell’s Ricky Bobby experiences a nervous breakdown, the end of a marriage and a confrontation with childhood trauma. But… come on! It’s a Will Ferrell movie! Every time it begins to approach something serious, it rapidly devolves into the silliest possible take on the chaos and dysfunction on hand. Sometimes you just need that, and Ferrell and Reilly are the kings of fully committed silliness.
Tar (director Todd Field; 2022)
Blanchett's portrayal of a brilliant, difficult artist (the fictional orchestra conductor Lydia Tar) brought low by a potent combination of cancel culture and her own obstinate hubris, is not so much dazzling as it is flawlessly committed. It's a masterful performance that doesn't draw attention to itself; you're never aware that you're watching Cate Blanchett act. Instead you're captivated by the character herself - by her intellect and her passion, but also by her self-destructive blindness to the cultural and emotional tectonic shifts taking place just under her feet. It's a stunningly executed tale of a fall from grace.
Lydia Tar, in the end, is the sort of complicated, fiercely talented -- and just as fiercely arrogant - artist that men were allowed to be (even indulged in being) for centuries. But director Todd Field doesn't take an obvious stand on whether Tar's persecution is excessive due to her gender. Instead he depicts her decline with a cool, detached lack of escalating intensity, an emotional temperature which suits and complement's Tar's own chilly, cerebral personality.
The Taste of Things (director Tran Ahn Hung; 2023)
Delicate, sensual and gorgeously photographed, The Taste of Things is a celebration of food, cooking, beauty and romance all at once. Juliette Binoche plays a cook working for a celebrated French gourmand (Benoit Magimel) who is also her lover. The opening scene alone is a wonder - thirty-plus minutes in which the camera glides around a busy kitchen as the main characters prepare a huge, elaborate meal. Vegetables are cleaned and chopped, meat is seared, butter sizzles in a pan, various dishes are ecstatically sampled - and every delightful minute of it commands our rapt attention. There's a swoony sensuality to the proceedings which permeates the entire film, particularly as the romance between Binoche and Magimel grows more serious. It's a love story between two people who court one another with exquisite tastes and flavors, and a celebration of the goodness in a simple meal prepared with patience and care.
The Brutalist (director Brady Corbet; 2024)
An epic film about love, trauma, anti-Semitism, the immigrant experience and the power of great architecture. Adrien Brody plays Lazlo Toth, a brilliant Jewish architect who survives the concentration camps, heads to America, and lives in a relative’s spare room while eking out a meager living. After he supervises the building of home library room for a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce), his identity is revealed and he’s put to work designing a community center.
There are no happy endings here, no moments of genuine triumph. Lazlo, a man with passionate artistic sensibilities and a traumatic history of loss and suffering, keeps bumping up against the prejudice and materialistic values of those who hold his fate in their hands. But, in a stunning epilogue, Corbet allows him to have the last word.
The End (director Joshua Oppenheimer; 2024)
Eccentric but weirdly engrossing, this post-apocalyptic musical (yes, really!) gets under your skin. Twenty years after a global environmental disaster, a wealthy couple (Michael Shannon and Tilda Swinton) are keeping comfortable and content in a luxurious underground bunker shared with their son (George McKay) and a handful of servants. They’re so happy, in fact, they frequently feel moved to sing about it. When a young woman finds her way into the bunker from above - and the son falls in love with her - they’re almost forced to look harder at their lives and their own roles in a bringing about a disaster that ultimately killed billions. But as Oppenheimer demonstrated in his documentary examinations of Indonesian political genocide (The Look of Silence, The Act of Killing), we should never underestimate the power of pop culture cliches to put distance between ourselves and our misdeeds.
The Friend (directors Scott McGehee & David Siegel; 2025)
Unfairly overlooked in a year of otherwise over-hyped cinema, this is a quiet, lovely and deeply moving film, featuring what might be the greatest performance ever given by a canine performer. Naomi Watts plays a lonely academic who inherits a particularly charismatic Great Dane from her late friend/colleague/former lover (Bill Murray). Her slow, stumbling road to accepting - and ultimately loving - this unexpected companion is depicted with great humor and sensitivity.
The Friend also contains a stunning fantasy sequence in which Watts confronts her deceased friend about the pain his suicide caused everyone who loved him. It’s not a rant - it’s sensitive and nuanced - but the anger and anguish she expresses are heartbreaking in their authenticity. And it just about wiped me out. Having myself lost someone I loved to suicide, I can attest to how perfectly this scene captures the emotions of those who are left behind.
Under the Skin (director Jonathan Glazer; 2013)
It has little in the way of a conventional narrative or even intelligible dialogue, but it's seductively creepy and will more than reward your patience if you stick with it. Scarlett Johansson plays an alien who takes on the form of a low-rent femme fatale, prowling the streets of Glasgow in her big, black SUV, picking up men and leading them to ruin. There's a rote, detached quality to her seductions and it gradually becomes clear that she herself doesn't really understand the mating dance she's performing according to pre-programmed script. Eventually, she abandons the manhunt and attempts to puzzle out what it is to be human and why men are so drawn to her. Have I intrigued you yet, or have I put you completely off this one? It's available on Amazon Prime right now, so give it a shot. And know that Scarlett Johansson's performance is inexcusably absent from this year's award nomination slates: she is brilliant.
Vera Drake (director Mike Leigh; 2004)
Imelda Staunton's impeccably played Vera Drake is so full of good cheer, she even smiles while she's dusting furniture, as if it's her favorite thing to do. Amidst the gloom of working class post-war London, she is a beacon of kindness and warmth to her family and neighbors - always looking to help, coyly playing matchmaker between her shy daughter and the lonely mechanic who lives in the flat upstairs. Among her good deeds is "helping girls out," her delicate euphemism for "helping pregnant girls to not be pregnant anymore." She perform abortions in a calm and efficient manner; we witness several such procedures being administered within the first half-hour of the film. Significantly, though, Vera, never receives so much as a shilling for her services (although the conniving friend who refers her to girls in trouble does take a fee, offering Vera only some questionable deals on rationed supplies like sugar and tea in return.)
The miracle of Vera Drake is that Leigh takes a highly charged, potentially political subject and presents it as intensely personal, character-driven drama. And it's all the more powerful for that choice. We aren't explicitly shown which characters are good or bad; there are no broad, caricatured performances to be found here (save, perhaps Vera's status-seeking sister-in-law, a minor character). We don't even find out for sure why Vera agrees to perform abortions in the first place. What we're finally left with is a deep sense of how many lives have been shattered by the time Vera is found out by the authorities and sent to prison. The closing shot of Vera's family, sitting silently and forlornly around her kitchen table, resonates long after the closing credits have rolled away.
Vita and Virginia (director Chanya Burton; 2018)
The friendship/sometime love affair between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West is the basis for this film, but it covers a lot more territory. I've seen few, if any, other films that so successfully convey an author's love of/obsession with language. In one scene, Woolf watches her sister and brother-in-law dancing together while struggling to come up with the exact words to describe the dance and the emotion behind it - a struggle that will resonate with anyone who writes. Elizabeth Debicki's portrayal of Virginia Woolf (which includes recreating one of Woolf's debilitating breakdowns) is harrowingly precise.
Wall-E (director Andrew Stanton; 2008)
Sci-fi meets rom-com in a particularly memorable Pixar animation. In a goofily dystopian world of the future, a mechanized trash collector named Wall-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth-class) falls in love with a robot named Eve (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who scans the earth for signs of life. Plenty of adventures - and misadventures - follow their initial meeting, and the Earth eventually gets saved. Yet the detail I remember most fondly is Wall-E’s obsession with one particular scavenged item: a videocassette of the film Hello Dolly.
The Worst Person in the World (director Joachim Trier; 2021)
This Norwegian comedy-drama about a thirty-something woman's inability to settle on a career path or a partner is a pleasant, if not spectacular, way to spend a couple of hours. It's been compared by at least one critic to Frances Ha - an apt comparison, although this film is more distinctly European in its ambiguity. Its scenes wander in and around the characters emotions, without clearly defined comic beats or other cues to elicit desired audience reactions. It benefits from the fine lead performance of Renate Reinsve, a sweet-faced and subtle actress who comes off as likable and sympathetic even as her character makes selfish, ill-advised life choices. Her drift from job to job is played for laughs, while the scenes of her romantic break-ups are played with a realistic ambivalence and genuine pain.
The Zone of Interest (director Jonathan Glazer; 2023)
Glazer's very loose adaptation of a Martin Amis novel is considerably better and more powerful than its source material. It trains a cool, detached eye on the daily life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hess and his family, living in domestic bliss just outside the notorious concentration camp. Muted screams, gunshots and other signals of distress and horror are just barely perceptible in the background while the Hess family continues to fuss over their garden and their vacation plans. Frau Hess and her friends casually pick through fur coats and jewelry seized from the camp residents and gush over their appropriated treasures. Only once in the film is the Hess family bothered (or more accurately, inconvenienced) by the genocide taking place almost literally in their backyard; while swimming with his children in the nearby river, Hess is annoyed to find ashes from the crematorium polluting the water.
To borrow a phrase from Hannah Arendt, this is a film about the banality of evil. It manages to be properly horrifying without ever depicting the atrocities taking place just out of camera range. Glazer has come to be one of my favorite directors. He’s made just four films in 24 years, all very different from each other, but each one original in concept and astonishingly good. (And all four of which made this list!)
