The Best (maybe?) 100 Films of the 21st Century - Part 2

 

Continuing with my personal list of the best 100 films of the 21st century, this time with twice as many films and half as much commentary. 

I've decided to get through this list in three posts rather than five. This means I have less to say about my choices, but at least I’ll finish these posts before winter sets in.

Just a reminder: these are not ranked in preferential order. Instead they are listed in alphabetical order.

The next 40 films are:

Dogville (director: Lars Von Trier; 2003)

Nicole Kidman is the stranger in town, arriving in Dogville to find herself victimized and brutalized by the locals with ever-increasing menace. And yet, given that extremely simplistic plot summary, it's not at all what you'd expect. Von Trier, an unrepentant bad boy of cinema, shoots on a set that looks more like a blueprint of a small town than an actual one, making some pointed commentary about the drudgery and cruelty he sees in American small town life (or imagines, anyway, as a particularly snotty and cynical Dane might.) This is another film to which you either respond enthusiastically or hate bitterly; there are no lukewarm reactions. I admired its audacity, even if I didn't entirely buy into its nihilistic premise.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (director: Julian Schnabel; 2007)

Julian Schnabel's adaptation of the Jean-Dominique Bauby's memoir is powerful and moving. Bauby, the former editor of French Elle magazine, suffered a stroke at the age of 42, rendering him paralyzed and completely unable to communicate except by blinking his left eye. His speech therapist devised a way for him to "speak" - and even narrate a memoir - she pointed to letters of the alphabet on a card, and he blinked in response to the letters he needed to build words and then sentences. The story is compelling, but not one that seems inherently cinematic. Fortunately, Schnabel (who directs from a script by Ronald Harwood), finds ways to open the story up and set it free. 

Drive My Car (director: Ryusuke Hamaguchi;2021)

A somber, quiet meditation on sorrow, grief and art. A Japanese theater director works through his complicated feelings towards his late, unfaithful wife while directing a production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya. A scene in which a deaf actress signs her lines in the final scene of the play is one of the most moving and beautiful things I have witnessed in recent film.

An Education (director: Lone Scherfig; 2009)

A 17-year-old British girl (Carey Mulligan) dates a man who looks to be in his mid-thirties, even travelling to Paris with him at one point. But the impropriety of that situation is barely acknowledged by anyone on screen; even her reasonable-seeming parents are charmed by her suitor. His criminal tendencies are revealed in quiet layers without any telegraphing of where the story is headed. You can't watch it without a growing sick feeling for the consequences to Mulligan's character, but it isn't in any way a conventional cautionary tale. Mulligan's captures her character's desire to avoid a typically dutiful, unspectacular life to perfection, avoiding both the innocence and angst you'd normally find in a film's teenager. Her character is preternaturally intelligent (if not wise), and her measured performance is laced with bracing, entirely unexpected line readings. 

Enough Said (director: Nicole Holofcener; 2013)

Anyone who's been on a date in middle-age will recognize themselves in the characters portrayed by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the late, great James Gandolfini. Director/writer Nicole Holofcener and her actors recreate the nervous mating dance of battle-scarred-but-hopeful, forty-something singles with exhilarating accuracy, right down to the skittish, defensive comic riffs that pass for flirtation.  The characters felt like people I knew and both their wisecracks and their screw-ups hitt very close to home. 

Evil Does Not Exist (director Ryusuke Hamaguchi: 2024)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films have a quiet, graceful quality to which it is virtually impossible to do full justice in a review composed of mere words.  There is a patience in his approach to a story, a willingness to take time for quiet observation without rushing to make a point or form a judgment.

A corporate developer approaches an isolated, rural community with a proposal to build a "glamping" site. The company’s representatives who present their plan to the locals are shockingly unprepared to respond to their (very politely expressed) concerns about how the project will impact their land, safety, and water supply. Rather than take these concerns seriously, however, their bosses send them back to get the support of one local man.  Takumi, the man chosen for them to engage, is the father of a young girl and a steady, taciturn presence in the community. He does not scold them or argue with these corporate emissaries, but quietly and patiently takes them along with him on a typical day - with ultimately tragic results.

Far from Heaven (director: Todd Haynes: 2002)

Todd Haynes reimagines the classic Douglas Sirk melodrama All That Heaven Allows, with his favorite actress, Julianne Moore in the Jane Wyman role. This time, however, she's not a widow but the wife of a closeted gay man, and the gardener with whom she falls in love (to the horror of her proper friends and neighbors) is black. Haynes' film is a true homage to Sirk with its meticulously saturated color palette and the heartbreak that lurks beneath the characters' restraint, yet finds new nuances in the altered story. The acting, by all, is exceptional.

First Reformed (director: Paul Schrader; 2018)

First Reformed won a fair amount of critical acclaim in 2018, but mostly from people who'd seen and studied the two European films on which it's directly based (Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest and Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light). It's austere and formal, deliberate in its pacing and sometimes downright bizarre.  But if you're inclined to give it a chance - and willing to embrace its slow rhythms and intellectual challenges - you may find yourself richly rewarded.  Ethan Hawke plays the pastor of a small, sparsely attended church. He struggles with his own faith and health  - as well as interference from a larger, more financially sound congregation - while attempting to counsel a depressed congregant and his pregnant wife. Writer/director Paul Schrader (who himself grew up in a Calvinist sect that prohibited going to movies) seriously confronts questions about our responsibilities to God and one another; his film is brutal and phantasmagorical by turns. 

Flow (director: Gints Zilbalodis; 2024)

Five animals - a cat, a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a bird - band together to find dry land during a devastating flood. The animation is exquisite (I don't know much about how capybaras and lemurs move, but I guarantee the animators must have studied the movements of cats, dogs and birds in great detail before working on this film. The realism of their work is stunning.) Flow was the first ever Latvian film to win an Academy Award, and it was very well deserved.

Four Weeks, Three Months, Two Days (director: Cristian Mungui; 2007)

On its face, it's both an abortion drama and a story of friendship tested, but it plays like a thriller and leaves your breathless. It proves yet again that a good story, told honestly and straightforwardly, is the most compelling film experience of all. Anamaria Marinca's performance is emotionally devastating.

Frances Ha (director: Noah Baumbauch; 2013)

A joyous and charming fable of deferred adulthood shot in the manner of a French New Wave film, right down to the black-and-white photography and the Georges Delerue score.  Gerwig - gawky, goofy and good-hearted - is jolted into growing up when her beloved roommate moves out and her performance gig with a small dance company falls through. She gropes her way towards stability through a series of odd jobs and bruising mishaps, including a literal pratfall in the street.  But through it all, Gerwig projects a charming, Mary Tyler Moore-esque comic determination: you just know that she's gonna make it after all. 

Frida (director: Julia Taymor; 2002)

Salma Hayek's performance in her dream project - a biopic about the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo - is impressive, as are the performances of a stellar supporting cast (Alfred Molina, Geoffrey Rush, Edward Norton and others). But what impressed me most is how director Julie Taymor, working on a very tight production budget, found innovative ways to capture events like Kahlo's trip to New York without location shoots. Her collage-like montages of images and snippets are art are dazzling and of a piece with her subject's creativity.

Good Night and Good Luck (director: George Clooney: 2005)

A taut and expertly acted drama pits David Strathairn's Edward R. Murrow against the real Joe McCarthy (shown in actual new clips) and his unhinged crusade to find and persecute Communists. Under Clooney's direction - and soothed along by performances by jazz singer Diane Reeves - the film delivers a nostalgic vibe while rightly making heroes of Murrow and his co-workers. Yet it ends on a bittersweet note as Murrow's triumph is rewarded by CBS moving his Tuesday night program to Sunday afternoons where it will, henceforth, be rendered harmless. The penultimate scene is particularly painful: a clip of a Dwight Eisenhower speech where he assures us that in the US, no one need fear punishment for speaking truth to power. "We have the habeus corpus act," he says, "and we do not reject it." Good Night and Good Luck speaks powerfully to our current political climate, as Clooney must have realized when he recently staged it as a Broadway play, himself taking the role of Murrow.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (director: Wes Anderson; 2014)

There's an undeniable heart and a sadness beneath its deceptively frothy surface. Set in a fictional middle European country on the brink of war, its hijinks are almost reminiscent of early Lubitsch comedies, but with elegiac undercurrents to remind us that this sort of civilized elegance will soon give way to brutality and never be seen again. Ralph Fiennes is perfection as M. Gustave, the fussy, elegant concierge (who, I'm not the first to note, functions as a sort of stand-in for director Wes Anderson himself), but repeat viewings have only enhanced the luminosity of Soirse Ronan's charming supporting performance and brought to light the perfection of F. Murray Abraham's narration.

The Great Beauty (director: Paolo Sorrentino; 2014)

Paolo Sorrentino's rambling meditation on modern-day Italy as seen through the eyes of an urbane, insouciant writer named Jep Gambardella.  I could follow Toni Servillo's Jep around forever; he never runs out of interesting friends, gorgeous places to visit or profound reminisces.  And it opens with what is possibly the greatest party scene in film history, a wildly exhilarating rooftop extravaganza for Jep's 65th birthday. You'll wish you could be there.

Hail Caesar! (directors: Joel and Ethan Coen; 2016)

The Coen's love letter to early '50s studio filmmaking takes scattershot aim at a whole lot of targets (Communists, musicals, Biblical epics, studio meddling in the morals and private lives of its contracted actors) and culminates in a heartfelt, if barbed, appreciation of the magic that comes from it all.  Alden Ehrenreich steals the film as the young cowboy actor being uneasily shoehorned into a sophisticated comedy. An extended sequence of him on a date with an up-and-coming actress is a particularly sweet digression from the hi-jinks.

The Hand of God (director: Paolo Sorrentino, 2021)

Sorrentino mostly puts aside his tendencies towards meticulously art-directed profanity to tell the story of his own early life in Naples.  Young actor Filipo Scotti plays Fabietto, a stand-in for Sorrentino as a teen-ager in the 1980s. Sorrentino opens with raucous remembrances of his large, loud, exuberantly vulgar extended family, including a sexy but problematic aunt (Luisa Ranieri) who will bewitch and haunt Fabietto throughout his life. His parents are played by Teresa Saponangelo and Toni Servillo (the latter, a familiar fixture in Sorrentino's work) and they are superbly funny and mercurial.  Tragedy eventually comes to the family, but Fabietto gradually finds his way towards a love of film and filmmaking.

The Handmaiden (director: Park Chan-Wook; 2016)

A gorgeous and erotic adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith, transported to early 20th century Japan. The imagery is unforgettable and the story is expertly told.

Happy Go Lucky (director: Mike Leigh, 2008)

The perpetually cheerful Poppy Cross - played brilliantly by Sally Hawkins - is more than a beautifully realized, infinitely complex character (although she certainly is that). She also proves to be a sort of Rorschach test for the viewer. What you see in her, how you react to her, is likely reveal to your deepest feelings about how good or bad the world is, and how much any of us can do to change it. It's not just that watching Poppy in action forces you to identify whether you're a glass-half-full or a glass-half -empty person; it goes deeper than that. She forces you to think through your entire worldview. Eddie Marsan is equally brilliant as the brooding, anguished driving instructor who punctures Poppy's upbeat, glass-always-half-full view of life.

A Hidden Life (director: Terrence Malick, 2019)

An impressionistic art film about the terrible, lonely cost - and the ultimately transcendent value - of true Christian discipleship. It's based on the true story of a simple Austrian farmer who refused to serve in Hitler's army and the steep price both he and his family paid for that act of defiance. Yet it's not tortuous to watch; it is, in fact, a stunningly beautiful film made up mostly of quietly observed moments and details.  Malick weds his penchant for fluid tracking shots and jittery, fleeting images to an uncharacteristically (for him) linear narrative and succeeds brilliantly.

The Holdovers (director: Alexander Payne, 2023)

A beautiful, sensitive, compassionate film about the unlikely alliances formed between wildly different people thrown together under uncomfortable circumstances. Paul Giamatti plays the cranky Latin instructor assigned to tend the handful of private academy students who are forced to remain at school over Christmas break. His charges eventually dwindle to just one, an insufferably snotty boy (Dominic Sessa ) whose apparent arrogance is a mask for deeper troubles. There is also the school cook, whose son was recently killed in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph in an Oscar-winning role.), grieving privately while brushing off too easily offered condolences.

Put all that in writing and it sounds hokey. But be assured, The Holdovers is no such thing. Nothing in the developing relationships between these characters ever feels forced or precious. Every one of them is recognizably, stubbornly human and real, and no conflict between them is ever resolved in a pat or predictable manner. This is a film I know I will come back to, time and time again, in the coming years just to bask in its humanity and intelligence. 

The House of Mirth (director: Terrence Davies, 2000)

Beautiful, heartbreaking, gloriously well acted, and one of the finest literary adaptations on film. Gillian Anderson is a revelation as the doomed heroine, Lily Bart.

Inglorious Basterds (director: Quentin Tarantino; 2009)d

It is possible to change your mind about a movie over time. When I first saw Inglorious Basterds - even while in a huge, crowded multiplex auditorium with a wildly enthusiastic and receptive audience - I had misgivings about its alternate history of the Third Reich, insider jokes about German cinema and spaghetti western references. But over the years, I've been forced to admit just how wildly entertaining and expertly directed this film really is. I keep coming back to those long, dialogue heavy scenes - often in German with English subtitles - that held a very large audience in thrall with no evidence of boredom or frustration. Those scenes alone gave me greater respect for Inglorious Basterds, but the entire film is worthy of lavish praise.

Lady Bird (director: Greta Gerwig; 2017)

You could call Lady Bird a coming-of-age story or you call it a mother/daughter drama; either or both is true, but confining it to a neat category would reduce and misrepresent what it achieves.  It's really a story about being human - about being young, unformed, hopeful and figuring life out - while at the same time, it's about the disappointments of adulthood and the anxieties and hopes that parents have for their children.

Let the Sun Shine In (director: Claire Denis; 2018)

Much the same as Juliette Binoche's character here, I did a lot of dating in 2018, and ultimately none of it turned out very well. It was oddly comforting to watch a chic, gorgeous Frenchwoman having all the same disappointments and frustrations in her dating life that I've experienced in mine.  For me, it will always be the French film version of my year on Match.com.

Licorice Pizza (director: Paul Thomas Anderson; 2021)

Sometimes the best recommendation for a film is that its characters are just fun to hang out with. That's definitely the appeal of Licorice Pizza. Its cast is headed up by two fine young actors; both are charming and instantly likable, but neither is intimidatingly beautiful. They look and act like people you might actually know. Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Alana Haim stumble through a year or so of adventures and misadventures around the fringes of the early 70s Hollywood scene.  There's not much plot to speak of, just an amiable rambling from experience to experience. There are fun cameos from Sean Penn and Christine Ebersole as barely fictionalized versions of William Holden and Lucille Ball respectively, plus a screamingly funny one from Bradley Cooper as hairdresser-turned-producer Jon Peters.

Lincoln (director Steven Spielberg; 2012)

A highly literate, and meticulously atmospheric portrait of a complex man and the rancorous political climate in which the final months of his presidency played out. More specifically, it's a terrific political thriller about Lincoln's quest to get the 13th amendment through Congress, thereby abolishing slavery in America forever before the Civil War ended and the returning Confederate states were able to overturn the Emancipation Proclamation.

Ultimately, of course, it's all about the man, Abraham Lincoln. That Daniel Day-Lewis is magnificent in the title role is not surprising in and of itself, yet  I was unprepared for just how completely he rescues Lincoln from the folksy, railsplitting plaster sainthood of American legend. His Lincoln is equal parts prairie sage and shrewd political manipulator, impressively presidential and wearily melancholy in almost the same moment, exuding both integrity and vulnerability. 

Little Women (director Greta Gerwig; 2019)

I've seen all four big-screen versions of the Louisa May Alcott classic that I grew up loving; this is my favorite. (Even so, for my money, the best Jo March was Winona Ryder's unapologetically tomboyish take in Gillian  Armstrong's 1994 version). Gerwig's take on the material is fresh and original, deviating slightly from the novel but it ways that enhance and illuminate the story for contemporary viewers. 

The Lives of Others (director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; 2006)

A drama centered on an East German surveillance operative whose life is changed by the people he listens in on. It may sound a bit like The Conversation; it's every bit as good, but ultimately, this one is a story of personal awakening and redemption. The late Ulrich Muhe gives a performance of quiet power.

The Lobster (director: Yorgos Lanthimos; 2016)

In this oddball dystopian tale, single people are rounded up and taken to a remote hotel where they have 45 days to find a mate or else be turned into a animal of their choosing. If you (like me) are a single person, you'll especially appreciate how Lanthimos finds the absurdities in society's disapproving take on the unattached and cranks them to a lunatic nth degree.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring & The Return of the King (director Peter Jackson; 2001 and 2003).

If you're wondering why only two-thirds of the Lord of the Rings trilogy made the list, it's mainly because these are the only parts I saw.  I never got around to The Two Towers, and didn't make the effort because a friend told me I didn't need to see it before I saw Return of the King ("It's just a lot of battles and stuff she assured me; as a result, I spent the first 45 minutes of Return... asking her in frustration "Who are these guys?! When did Gandalf come back to life?")

I'm not sure what I can add to everything that's already been said about this justly revered adaptation of Tolkein's classic except to share what I told my friend as Return... moved into its final scenes: "There is NO WAY we've already been here for 3 1/2 hours!" When a films is so moving and thrilling that you lose all track of time... I mean, what better recommendation can there be?

Lost in Translation (director: Sofia Coppola; 2003)

My favorite thing about this film is not necessarily the platonic but tight friendship that develops between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, but rather the way Coppola captures the vibe of being disoriented and adrift in an unfamiliar city. There's a otherworldly sense of loneliness that pervades the film and adds urgency to the connection made by the lead characters. Per a recent interview with Johansson, Murray was unpleasant and difficult with her during the filming, but there's no hint of that in their on-screen chemistry. 

Margaret (director: Kenneth Lonnergan; 2011)

Director Kenneth Lonnergan and his star, Anna Pacquin, brilliantly capture the heightened, desperate emotions of a young person's first experience of tragedy (a tragedy she may have, unwittingly, helped to bring about) against a richly detailed landscape of post-9/11 Manhattan. It's a long and meandering film, but it's ambitious in scope and rarely dull. And may I just add how wonderful it was to see Jeannie Berlin an all-too-rare screen appearance, bringing a welcome no-bullshit briskness to a pivotal supporting role.

Marie Antoinette (director: Sofia Coppola; 2006)

One of Coppola's gifts as a filmmaker is capturing the loneliness in privileged lives (particularly those of young women) with impressive clarity.  She brings a sort of rock and roll sensibility to this telling of the young Austrian princess who becomes Queen of France and faces pressures and frustrations she is no way equipped to handle. The film ends discreetly, well before the title character's trip to the guillotine, but the final image of a ransacked room at Versailles is still potent.

The Master (director Paul Thomas Anderson; 2012)

An enigmatic work of flawed genius, P. T. Anderson's epic was a thing of beauty, graced with exceptional acting by Joaquin Phoenix and Phillips Seymour Hoffman. Anderson's mentor and friend, Robert Altman, once said he wanted to make a film that people would come away from without being able to talk about or analyze it all. His acolyte, Anderson, came pretty damn close to making that movie here. 

Melancholia (director Lars Von Trier; 2012)

In the simplest terms, it's the story of a two sisters, a wedding, and the end of the world. At its deepest level, it presents the destruction of the earth as a metaphor for clinical depression that renders all human ritual and activity essentially meaningless and futile.  

But that makes it sound deeper and far less accessible than it actually plays.

Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsburg play sisters who have wildly different reactions to the news that a distant planet (not insignificantly named Melancholia) is an course to collide with (and destroy) the Earth. Dunst, whose character is clinically depressed and miserable sees the approaching apocalypse as the end to her suffering, while Gainsbourg - a housewife and mother who loves her domestic life - is understandably terrified. 

This is actually Von Trier's most accessible film, although not without a few flourishes of his trademark weirdness. And it's lush and visually gorgeous with a haunting score largely borrowed from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde.

Midsommar (director Ari Aster: 2019)

Possibly the scariest movie you'll ever see that take place entirely in bright sunlight, this folk horror tale is appropriately gruesome, but virtually demands a repeat viewing to sort out the symbolism that is referenced throughout.  Florence Pugh accompanies her estranged boyfriend and his buddies to a summer solstice celebration in Sweden where the celebrants turn out to be members of a violent cult. Pugh's terror and disorientation build to a particularly harrowing finale. It's more than a little nuts, but effectively engrossing.

A Mighty Wind (director: Christopher Guest; 2003)

My favorite of the Christopher Guest ensemble improv comedies, primarily for the surprisingly nuanced and deep work by two of his regular players, Catherine O'Hara and Eugene Levy. Their performances as a former husband-and-wife folk singing duo - long since estranged, with Levy's  character obviously suffering some long-term effects of drug abuse -  are funny enough, but also tinged with heartbreak and melancholy.  In fact, there is more gravitas among most of the other players, as well, but with just enough flourishes of silliness to keep the laughs coming. And it's informed by a sincere appreciation of early 60s folk music.

The Best (Maybe?) 100 Films of the 21st Century - Part 1

 

Last week, the New York Times published its list of the 100 Best Films of the 21st Century (so far). 

Now, I'm going to take a crack at it. Be warned, my list is not their list. Oh sure, there is a significant amount of overlap (even though I've never gotten around to seeing 16 of their 100 choices). 

But...

As I I've noted here many times, I'm a serious film fan, but not necessarily an academic or intellectual one. I'm not above putting a few lowbrow selections on this list if I truly love them.

Also, I didn't name this blog PART-TIME Cinephile for nothing. I love films, but I love other stuff, too. I worked long hours at an often stressful IT job for years, frequently unable to fire up my brain cells for a complex or epic-length film in my spare time. Even in my retirement, I've made as much time for volunteer work, travel, and reading as I have for going to the movies. My experience of world cinema is spotty; I'm well versed in North American film and European films, but less knowledgeable about the cinema of the remaining continents.

So.. take this list with a huge grain of salt, if you must. I make no claims that these are the best films of this century, only that they are my favorites. My choices are personal and sometimes eccentric. The number one criteria for inclusion in my top 100 is that, if given the chance, I'd sit down right now and watch it again.

One more thing - I did not even attempt to give these films a numerical ranking. The very thought of doing so makes me want to lie down and take a long nap. I did manage to pick a Top Ten for the reader's ballot I sent to the Times, but within 24 hours I wished I could revise it.  Instead, the films presented here are listed in alphabetic, rather than preferential, order.

(Also, this list contains a few films released in the year 2000, which technically isn't the 21st century. But since the Times ignored that technicality in compiling their list, I did too.)

Here are the first 20 films on my list - watch for four subsequent posts in which I'll present the remaining honors:

35 Shots of Rum (director Claire Denis; 2008)

A beautifully and quietly observed story of the close relationship between a father and his adult daughter and how it evolves as the daughter moves into a serious romantic relationship. Denis has a nice feel not only for the main characters, but also for the community in which they live and the relationships between members of that community. This is a deceptively lightweight but profoundly felt 'slice of life' story with lasting emotional impact.

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (director Laura Poitras; 2022)

A profound and moving documentary that touches on so many themes: art, activism, the opioid crisis (and the Purdue Pharma/Sackler family culpability for it), mental illness, dysfunctional families, and the functional, nurturing families we create for ourselves with people we aren't related to. A stunning portrait of Nan Goldin who, through her twin passions for provocative art and unyielding activism, transformed immense personal pain into a mission to remove the Sackler name from art galleries around the world. Her passion and sense of purpose are unforgettably captured here.

Almost Famous (director Cameron Crowe;2002)

Cameron Crowe actually did write for Rolling Stone as a teenager, as the lead character (Patrick Fugit) does here, and it's reasonable to assume this film is based on his own experiences.  Fifteen-year-old William goes on the road with a band called Stillwater, while his anxious mother (Frances McDormand, great as always) phones in regularly to remind him "Don't do drugs!" Crowe gets everything right here - from the sometimes contentious relationships between band members (Billy Crudup, Jason Lee) to the details of William's bittersweet loss of innocence to the infectious joy of great rock music.  Kate Hudson delivers a star-making debut as the "band aid" (NOT groupie, as she'd be the first to tell you) Penny Lane.

Annette (director Leos Carax; 2021)

The slightly (ok, totally!) bonkers rock opera in which a foul-mouthed stand-up comic (Adam Driver) and an opera singer (Marion Cotillard) fall in love. Their baby girl, Annette, is an animated puppet with a lovely singing voice. Things only get weirder from there. Leos Carax is a famously avant garde director, and this film was waaay outside most people's comfort zones, but I found it fascinating. The music, composed by Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks, is memorable and infectious.  It has a little bit to say about toxic relationships and a little more to say about the ways in which children can be exploited for their parents' glory. But mostly it's just nuts. You'll either love it or hate it.

Another Year (director Mike Leigh; 2010)

I can think of no finer example of ensemble acting in this century, and that includes other films by Mike Leigh, who is very much an actor's director. Here we spend a year with a long and happily married couple, their family, and two of their sad single friends. The performances feel so lived-in, the relationships between the characters are so nuanced that we can glimpse the whole history of a relationship in a furtively exchanged glance or a shared joke.  The standout performance comes from the brilliant Lesley Manville, as a fiftyish single woman who is slowly unravelling into despair. Manville's final closeup shot as she sits forlornly among a lively group at a dinner table maybe the most heartbreaking image of Leigh's entire career.

At Eternity's Gate (director Julian Schnabel; 2018)

During the pandemic, I gave myself a little assignment. I would watch every film and television portrayal of Vincent Van Gogh I could find, and rank them from best to worst.  I watched a staggering number of Van Gogh portrayals (including the character's appearance on an episode of Dr. Who and a wordless cameo by Martin Scorsese in Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.) But I never got around to posting a ranking. If I had, this film - and Willem Dafoe's portrayal of Van Gogh in it  - would easily have topped the list.

Schnabel, himself a painter, has a different feel for the material than others who have attempted it; you can tell that a painter was behind the camera in the way colors are captured or landscapes are framed. It's like we're seeing Van Gogh's subjects through the artist's own eyes. This version of the artist's life story doesn't pull punches about his depressive nature, but neither does it lean in to the sensationalistic aspects of that illness. (As opposed to, say, Robert Altman's Vincent and Theo which dives right into the ugliest and most off-putting aspects of Van Gogh's madness. Or Kirk Douglas' unrelenting intensity in Lust for Life.) 

Atonement (director Joe Wright; 2007)

A masterful adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel about family secrets and their legacy.  It's most impressive achievement is a single, seven-minute tracking shot of the Dunkirk evacuation in World War II. It also introduced us to Soirse Ronan, making an impressive debut as the young girl whose misinterpretation of a romantic encounter between her sister and their housekeeper's son has lasting consequences.

The Aviator (director Martin Scorsese; 2004)

I've never gotten over the injustice of its losing the Best Picture Oscar to Million Dollar Baby, and so I'll take any opportunity to lavish praise on it. To my mind, it's easily one of the best biopics of the century, featuring what may, arguably, be Leonardo Di Caprio's greatest performance as an ambitious, phobia-ridden and ultimately tragic Howard Hughes.  And I love the film's palette; those touches of sepia-golden-brown and vibrant aqua blue that suggest the tinted photographs I used to see in my grandmother's albums. 

The Banshees of Inisherin (director Martin McDonagh; 2022)

The setting is an island off the coast of Ireland, and the time is 1923. The low roar of gunfire can be heard from the mainland where a civil war is raging. But on the isle of Inisherin, the squabbles are far less consequential if, in their own way, nearly as brutal.

After years of sharing daily chats and pints in the pub, Colm (Brendan Gleeson) decides he can no longer be friends with Padraic (Colin Farrell) because he finds Padraic dull company. Colm dreams of writing music and making something meaningful of his remaining days, while Padraic, confused and hurt, keeps chipping away at Colm for rapprochement. Colm becomes so indignant that he threatens to cut off his own fingers, one by one, if Padraic doesn't leave him alone.

If you've seen any other of Martin McDonagh's films, you can probably guess where this is going. 

His dark, deadpan humor works brilliantly here, particularly as acted by Farrell and Gleeson, as brilliant a double act as we've seen onscreen in many years. The film is suffused with an underlying sadness and sense of loneliness, even in its most ridiculous moments. It's a tale of small things - petty grievances, idle gossip, fleeting moments of contentment - but it accords to those small things a deep emotional resonance.

Beau Travail (director Claire Denis; 2000)

This one's a bit of a cheat since it is generally considered a 1999 film. However, per IMDB, it was not in general release anywhere (meaning outside of film festival screenings) till 2000. It's worth cheating a little to recommend this odd but compelling drama. Denis Lavant plays a disgraced military officer who looks back on his career in Djibouti from his solitary home in Marseilles. His recollections of his obsession with a young, handsome soldier are scattered and impressionistic, but presented here as visually stunning. Levant's character is shown to keep tight control over his emotions and actions, but the final scene - in which he pulls out all the emotional stops on a secluded corner of a nightclub dance floor - is an exhilarating moment of catharsis.

Birth (director Jonathan Glazer; 2004)

One of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but unaccountably mesmerizing. Nicole Kidman plays a  widow who's about to remarry. A young boy who lives in her building shows up out of nowhere at a party in her home, claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband.  There's a terrific extended scene of Kidman attending the opera with her fiancé which consists entirely of her face in a tight close-up as she struggles to get her mind around the idea that the boy may actually be her husband. You have to see to believe it, but Kidman pulls it off beautifully. It may be the single greatest piece of acting she's ever committed to film.  There's a trancelike vibe to this film that pulls you in from the very first scene and seduces you into accepting its bizarre premise. It's like walking into someone else's dream.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (director Michael Morris; 2025)

Yes, there is a Bridget Jones movie on this list - deal with it! 

The Bridget Jones franchise has had its up and downs over the last 24 years, but the most recent installment is, far and away, the best of the lot. It opens five years after the sudden death of Mark Darcy, with Bridget slowly emerging from her grief, looking after her two small children, and tentatively re-entering the dating market.  Loosely based on author/Bridget creator Helen Fielding's own experience as a suddenly widowed mother, the new film keeps Bridget's buoyant, gaffe-prone spirit intact while handling her sadness with tender sensitivity. It's every bit as funny as the preceding films when it needs to be, but also heartbreaking and even profound at just the right moments. Renee Zellweger slips easily back into Bridget's skin.  And Hugh Grant is also back for a few brief scenes that deliver a kick of naughty humor at just the moments when it's needed, while humanizing his rascally Daniel Cleaver character. 

Can You Ever Forgive Me? (director Marielle Heller; 2018)

Melissa McCarthy plays real-life writer Lee Israel who forged and sold letters from the likes of Dorothy Parker and Noel Coward to make ends meet when her career as a celebrity biographer petered out. Director Marielle Heller infuses her story with a palpable sense of melancholy in everything from the low-lit bars that Lee and her drinking buddy (Richard E. Grant) frequent to the perfectly curated, jazz-inflected musical soundtrack. It's a character study with the rhythms of a true crime drama. But it's also a sad valentine to the end of an era in New York - a time when books and writers truly mattered and it was possible to live in shabby-genteel poverty on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Grant and McCarthy are wonderful together, their characters sharing both a closeted, queer identity and outrageously caustic personalities designed to mask their vulnerability and loneliness.

Capote (director Bennett Miller; 2005)

Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of Truman Capote is unforgettable, as is Catherine Keener's portrayal of his friend and fellow author, Harper Lee. But what I remember most is the haunting, melancholy vibe that thrums throughout this film from start to finish.  We follow Capote through his research for and writing of In Cold Blood, his great "non-fiction novel" about the brutal murders of a Kansas family. The process takes a steep emotional toll on him. Capote established a close relationship with one of the convicted killers (in fact, it's strongly suggested the two fell in love). Yet he needed the the killers' executions to take place in order to tie up and publish his story. His inner conflict nearly destroys him. 

Carol (director Todd Haynes; 2015)

I was unprepared for how beautifully screenwriter Phyllis Nagy adapted and even improved on Patricia Highsmith's odd, difficult stream-of-consciousness novella about the forbidden love between a young woman behind a shop counter and the older, affluent woman who meets her while Christmas shopping. Haynes and Nagy have created a classic love story in which both women's yearnings and heartache are distilled into the simplest, most subtle expressions and gestures, as the times they lived in would require. Ultimately it is a story about passion that is transmuted into genuine, mature love as both characters grow and sacrifice to be true to themselves while protecting the ones they love. And I'd be unforgivably remiss if I didn't mention how remarkable both Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are as the lovers. 

Certified Copy (director Abbas Kiarostami; 2010)

Abbas Kiarostami's enigmatic, shape-shifting film is a fascinating fugue on the nature of authenticity in art and relationships.  And if that sounds intimidating, be assured the film is not.  An engrossing brain teaser with a lovely, emotionally supple performance by Juliette Binoche.

Clouds of Sils Maria (director Oliver Assayas; 2014)

I've recommended this film to a few friends; their reactions have been evenly split between "WTF was that?" and "That was AWESOME!" I can't predict which of those camps you'll fall into, but maybe, like me, you'll wind up watching it four times in the space of a couple weeks. How to sum up the virtually un-summarizable plot? Well, Juliette Binoche is an aging actress, Kristen Stewart is her assistant and Chloe Grace Moretz is the Lindsay Lohan-esque youger actress cast opposite Binoche in an upcoming play. Binoche and Stewart take a house in the Swiss Alps where they run lines, often while hiking in the Alps; they are electric together and fascinating to watch, sparks fly off their interactions. My friend Bill (who loved it) is much more eloquent: "It was disarmingly complex. It seemed simple and straightforward, but on a closer look, it was far more textured in its analysis of human nature, relationships and personal growth." If any of that sounds intriguing to you, watch it and lose yourself in it. 

The Congress (director Ari Folman; 2013)

The Congress imagines a deceptively candy-colored but ultimately chilling and soulless future world whose harrowing consequences will only be meaningful to adults. Along the way, there's some moderately trenchant commentary on the way Hollywood disposes of actresses over 40 as well as the potential dangers of the ever-burgeoning pharmaceutical industry, There is also a testament to the enduring power of maternal love.  And about a third of the way in, the film morphs from live action to animation, employing a dazzling, sometimes nightmarish style that recalls the work of both Ralph Bakshi and Max Fleischer. Audacious, ambitious and haunting.

A Dangerous Method (director David Cronenberg; 2011)

A film that dares to be "talky" and to trust its audience to be intelligent and sophisticated,  A Dangerous Method delineates the ideas that (in the memorable words of a friend) led to "the birth to the twentieth century." David Cronenberg's drama of the interconnecting relationships between Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Jung's patient, Sabina Spielrein (brilliant in her own right and an underappreciated influence on both men's work) was a film of ideas, driven by superlative performances.  It's thrilling even when it's doing no more than reconstructing actual correspondence between the doctors; Cronenberg finds a visual rhythm that keeps these frequent epistolary passages from stopping the film dead. And yes, there are spanking scenes, but please - Cronenberg's film is anything but dirty-minded.

The Death of Stalin (director Armando Iannucci; 2017)

You've heard of cringe comedy?  Well, Armando Iannucci is the master of 'gasp comedy' - rapid-fire comic patter so fast and so mean that you can barely process it or even croak out a proper laugh in the wake of its farcical nastiness. But even if you've watched one of Iannucci's television political satires (Veep, The Thick of It.), you won't be prepared for the undercurrent of true horror in this very black political comedy.  This time, the history is true (mostly) and the stakes are real; you can hear people pleading for their lives and/or being shot just off camera even while breathlessly funny bureaucratic squabbles play out before your eyes.  It takes a particularly masterful director to get that balance right - Iannucci is up to the task. With Stalin on his deathbed, the politburo goes mad, each man jockeying for position and power in the new government to come. Kruschev (Steve Buscemi), Beria (Simon Russell Beale) and Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor) rush to build alliances and kiss up to Stalin's daughter (a superb Andrea Riseborough). What follows is both antic and terrifying, and the actors (particularly Beale and Buscemi) are just about perfect.

"Not the Best" Films of 2024

 It's that time again...

Every January, I post this list of my favorite films from the previous year.  I make no claims that these films are indisputably the finest and most artistically successful films released in 2024. For starters, these are my favorite films, chosen based on my preferences, tastes and limitations as a viewer. (I've written many times previously about my own sensory issues which tend to make loud or frenetically edited movies difficult for me.  One highly acclaimed 2024 film will be conspicuously absent from the list, due to a pivotal scene that was so overwhelming for me, it made me want to flee the theater.)

I pass this list on every year to readers in the hopes that they, too, will find joy in - and be pleasantly challenged by - the films I've loved. And, if not, well...chacun à son goùt as the French say.

As the title of this blog clearly indicates, I am a part-time cinephile, not a professional critic. This means I see around half (or slightly less) films in a year than would a professional critic. This year's total was 102 - not bad, but not quite my all-time high. So here's an overview of this films you won't see here - and the reasons why:

Limited or missed opportunities: 

These are the ones I just didn't get around to. Maybe they had a short run in the theater while I was busy or preoccupied and haven't yet arrived on streaming. Or, in a few cases, I just had no real interest in seeing them. They include: A Complete Unknown, Babygirl, Blitz, Dune: Part Two, Flow; Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Outrun, Queer, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot.

The Ones I Couldn't Finish:

Sometimes I start a film on streaming, but I don't get to the end of it.  It might be because I'm distracted and have too many other things on my mind to give the film my full attention. Other times, it's because the movie itself just doesn't pique my interest. Sometimes I revisit those movies (as I did with a certain film that is ranked highly on the list below). Sometimes, I never come back to them.  This year's false starts include: Between the Temples, Bird, Close Your Eyes, Kinds of Kindness, La Chimera

The Ones I Couldn't See Till 2025:

A standard qualification for this list is that the film must have been in general release in Chicago for the first time during the calendar year being discussed. Some of the films in this year's list are considered to be 2023 films, but they weren't available to watch where I live till 2024. (That is, apart from film festival screenings, which don't count as general release.) 

Conversely, there are several 2024 films which have only just opened in the Chicago area - or will open soon - which will be considered for my 2025 list. These include: All We Imagine as Light, The Brutalist, The Girl with the Needle, Hard Truths, The Last Showgirl, Nickel Boys, The Room Next Door, Vermiglio.

The good news here is movies were fantastic in 2024! So fantastic, in fact, that I expanded my list from the usual 10 films to honor an even dozen. Plus, I came up with a hefty list of honorable mentions.  

The bad news (for people who don't like to read subtitles, anyway) is that my list is unusually heavy on international films this year, and quite light on mainstream and/or American films.  Be assured, that's not calculated snobbery on my part, just the way it all shook out.

In reverse order of preference:

12. Chicken for Linda! (Directed by Chiara Malta and Sebastien Laudenbach)

This French-language animated film tells the kind of story that adjectives like 'heartwarming' were coined to describe.  Linda's mother accuses her of losing a precious ring she received from Linda's late father. When the truth comes out (their cat swallowed it), the mother asks Linda what she can do to make it up to her. Linda requests her father's favorite meal: chicken with peppers. So Mom sets out to get a chicken, but the grocery stores are closed due to a worker's strike. Her urgent quest to find a chicken for Linda's apology dinner eventually brings a whole community together and heals family wounds in the process. The animation itself is admittedly sub-Pixar in quality, but the film's heart and humor are irresistible.

Where to stream: Chicken for Linda!

11.Conclave (directed by Edward Berger)

Conclave makes spiky, suspenseful drama out of the machinations behind the election of a new pope. Impeccably acted (particularly by Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci and Isabella Rossellini) and expertly edited, it ratchets the tension up by degrees as new revelations about each papal candidate come to light and ballot after ballot fails to produce a successor. This film has been dubbed as 'pulpy' and compared to 'a good airport novel' by more than one reviewer, and they aren't wrong. But its final, startling plot twist is a sly nod towards the call for greater inclusion and tolerance in the church, and it accords Conclave a greater seriousness than we might have expected.

Where to stream: Conclave

10. The Old Oak (directed by Ken Loach)

This is reported to be the final film for Ken  Loach, the now 88-year-old British filmmaker who has consistently demonstrated a heart for people struggling on the margins of society. (See Kes, I Daniel Blake, and Sorry We Missed You, among others.)  Here a pub owner in an economically depressed neighborhood befriends and helps a family of Syrian refugees over the pointed objections of his rather less tolerant customers.  Loach accords compassion and forgiveness to all his characters; ultimately no one is entirely saintly or villainous, even when some behave far better than others.  The penultimate sequence brings everyone together in a show of compassion that may well move you to tears. 

Where to stream: The Old Oak

9. Megalopolis (directed by Francis Ford Coppola)

Francis Ford Coppola's long promised epic is kind of a mess. But it's a glorious (and gloriously nutty) mess, overflowing with imagination, ambition, and a breathtaking visual beauty.  And any filmmaker who can pull all that off at the age of 85 deserves some kind of accolades.

Megalopolis is set in the near future in New Rome, a city that strongly resembles New York.  It sets up a battle for the soul of the city between an innovative, forward-thinking architect, Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) and Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) who envisions the city transformed into something tawdry, commercial and Vegas-eque. Things get complicated when Catiline falls in love with the mayor's daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel) while his own former lover, a television reporter named Wow Platinum (played with deadpan relish by Aubrey Plaza) marries a very rich older man (Jon Voight). There are allusions to events from ancient Roman history throughout, as well as glancing references to The Fountainhead.

But keeping track of the plot is more of a distraction than a necessity. Better to lose yourself in the grandiosity of Coppola’s vision. There are flourishes of magical realism (Catalina can freeze time just by shouting “Time, stop!”) and set pieces whose sheer elephantine grandeur is marvelous to behold (the event celebrating the marriage of Plaza and Voight being a particular highlight). It’s a movie best experienced rather than analyzed.

Where to stream: Megalopolis

8. Tuesday (directed by Daina O. Pusic)

Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives a stunning - and too little appreciated - dramatic performance as the mother of terminally ill teenage daughter (Lola Petticrew). Writer-director Daina Pusic presents their story as a magical realist allegory, with Death embodied in an enormous talking bird whom the daughter befriends and welcomes. Louis-Dreyfus, by contrast, is in denial and despair. Tuesday is not an easy film. It requires leaps of faith and a willingness to embrace unconventional modes of storytelling, but it more than rewards the effort.

Where to stream: Tuesday

7. A Real Pain (directed by Jesse Eisenberg)

You could not more perfectly cast the leads in this film than has director Jesse Eisenberg. His first stroke of brilliance was casting himself as David Kaplan, a stammering, neurotic, intensely serious man, always looking to avoid making a misstep or calling attention to himself. Opposite him, as his cousin Benji, Kieran Culkin is a joyous, open-hearted extrovert… until he isn’t. His occasional shifts into anger or despondency suggest a possible bi-polar disorder, hinted at but never expressly called out.

The cousins unite on a trip to Poland, part of a tour group made up largely from descendants of Holocaust survivors. Once close, their lives have drifted in different directions; David is the sober, responsible one with a family and a corporate job, while Benji has never really settled down. David comes to the trip with hopes of the two becoming close again, but the film is ultimately more realistic about the difficulties of recreating that bond.

A Real Pain is both serious and comic, sometimes in the same moment, and Eisenberg’s direction skillfully sustains that very delicate balance. He is particularly masterful at handling the sequence in which the group visits the Majdanek concentration camp, bringing those moments a hushed horror that puts everything and everyone else in the story into proper perspective.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out Culkin’s especially brilliant performance as Benji. He is the beating heart of the film, and I’ll be very surprised if he doesn’t get an Oscar.

Where to stream: A Real Pain

6. The Substance (directed by Coralie Fargeat)

Bring a strong stomach to this one, and prepare for some over-the-top body horror, none of which is gratuitous. Coralie Fargeat’s audacious sci-fi thriller explores the complex relationships that women have with their bodies as they age, and the judgments passed on them by society in general and men in particular. 

Demi Moore plays a washed-up film star named Elizabeth Sparkle,  reduced to hosting a cheesy television exercise program from which she is fired on her 50th birthday. Her boss (an over-the-top Dennis Quaid, shot in purposely grotesque close-ups) makes no bones about the fact that her age is the reason for her termination. When she learns about a black market serum called The Substance which can reverse aging, it doesn’t take her long to sign up.  But the dirty secret of The Substance is that it doesn’t de-age you, but rather allows your body to produce a second, younger and more beautiful version of yourself. Elizabeth’s alter ego is an impossibly shapely and gorgeous twenty-something who dubs herself Sue (Margaret Qualley) and gets herself hired as the new host of Elizabeth’s old show.

The catch here is that each version of you can only exist for seven days at a time. The horror begins when Sue gets greedy for more youth and more men, and uses up part of Elizabeth’s share of The Substance, only to see Elizabeth aging at a far more accelerated pace.c From that point, the grossness of the situation only gets grosser. 

The Substance scores points for feminism - and has launched a welcome career renaissance for Moore - but it won’t be most viewers’ cup of tea, due to the exaggeratedly cartoonish tone and the aforementioned grossness. But it has a fire and anger that many women strongly relate to. Consider yourselves warned.

Where to stream: The Substance

5.  The Zone of Interest (directed by Jonathan Glazer)

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. 

4.  Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (directed by Radu Jude)

Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude makes films with long, unwieldly titles (in English translation, anyway - recent ones have included I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn). His films themselves, are less unwieldy than their titles - rambling, shaggy-dog stories of life in contemporary Romania - and often very funny after a dark, absurdist fashion.

Here we spend a very long day with Angela (Ilinca Manolache) as she drives all over Bucharest interviewing injured workers for a  corporate 'safety at work' video, with the various interviewees taking full responsibility for their on-the-job injuries, even when it's obvious their employers and shoddy working conditions are more to blame. In between interviews, she records vitriolic, misogynist rants on TikTok using the persona of Andrew Tate, ostensibly as a twisted kind of stress relief. Scenes from a 1981 film Bucharest, about a female taxi driver, are intercut into the current-day story which give us some sense of how dramatically life in Romania has changed over the last 40-some years.

Do Not Expect… is freewheeling and funny, while at the same time vividly capturing the anxiety of a life spent struggling in the gig economy. Manolache's droll performance never wears thin, and if the references are occasionally a bit too parochial for American audiences, it hardly matters. The scenes breeze by so fast, you'll be on to something more accessible in mere minutes.

Where to stream: Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

3. The Beast (directed by Bertrand Bonello)

The Beast starts out as a romance set in Belle Epoque Paris between two people who are fatally drawn to one another at an upper-class soiree (Lea Seydoux and George McKay). But it evolves into a twisty, disorienting sci-fi epic over three different time periods in which the would-be lovers are reincarnated into entirely different versions of themselves. In a 2010 version of Los Angeles, Seydoux becomes a struggling actress while McKay is a vitriolic incel with a rabid internet following. Later the couple returns to Paris in the year 2044, now as estranged former lovers.

In the The Beast’s imagined future, AI has evolved to the point where a simple medical procedure can eliminate all of a person's inconvenient emotions; Seydoux's struggle over whether to submit to this induced emotional amnesia provides the running thread of tension throughout. On paper, this all sounds a little nuts, but in actual execution, The Beast is mind-bendingly seductive and adept at transitioning coherently among the various time periods.

This, by the way, is the film I had to start watching three times before I finally got engaged enough to finish it. I bailed on it twice because I just couldn't buy McKay as the kind of dashing, romantic figure who could make Lea Seydoux leave her husband. But as the film progresses to the other time periods, his casting makes complete sense.

Where to stream: The Beast

 

2. The Taste of Things (directed by Ahn Hung Tran)

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.

Where to stream: The Taste of Things

1. Evil Does Not Exist (directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Ryusuke Hamaguchi's films have a quiet, graceful quality to which it is virtually impossible to do full justice in a review composed of mere words.  There is a patience in his approach to a story, a willingness to take time for quiet observation without rushing to make a point or form a judgment. He has an uncanny ability to appreciate a particular moment on its own terms rather than appropriate it for symbolic purposes. Many early scenes here are unspectacular at first glance (a father walking his daughter home from school, two men filling large jugs with water from a stream), but they are unhurried and mysteriously engrossing.

There is a story here, but it doesn't follow a predictable narrative arc. A corporate developer approaches an isolated, rural community with a proposal to build a "glamping" site. The company’s representatives who present their plan to the locals are shockingly unprepared to respond to their (very politely expressed) concerns about how the project will impact their land, safety, and water supply. Rather than take these concerns seriously, however, their bosses send them back to get the support of one local man.  Takumi, the man chosen for them to engage, is the father of a young girl and a steady, taciturn presence in the community. He does not scold them or argue with these corporate emissaries, but quietly and patiently takes them along with him on a typical day.

This is not a cliched "everybody learns and grows" story. One young corporate flunky may learn how to properly chop wood under Takumi's patient instruction. But he will fail to grasp a more important lesson: the natural world is not merely bucolic, nor is it to be packaged as a commodity. It can also be brutal, requiring caution and respect.

If you intuit a tragic ending from that statement, well... you're onto something. But be assured, this is no way a horror or revenge film. It's far too gentle and humane for that. Yet it does have a haunting quality, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. I've watched it twice in the last three months, and after writing all this, I feel like watching it yet another time.  It really does have that kind of power.

Where to stream: Evil Does Not Exist

A few more accolades:

Honorable Mention:  A Different Man, Anora, Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, The End, Ghostlight, Green Border, His Three Daughters, Hit Man, Strange Darling, Woman of the Hour.

2024 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Challengers, Emilia Perez, Juror #2

Best Older Films I Saw for the First Time in 2024: The Breaking Point, Lair of the White Worm, The Long Good Friday, Missing, Sexy Beast, The Straight Story