Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
His Three Daughters
A Real Pain
Saturday Night
Smile 2
The Wild Robot
10.I Saw the TV Glow:
I've never seen a movie provide a clearer window into what it feels like to battle gender dysphoria and the agonizing struggle of someone deciding to embrace their true identity or remain in the closet at the expense of their mental health than I Saw the TV Glow. Pairing haunting imagery with a slowly escalating feeling of suffocating isolation to capture how a reclusive young man's (Justice Smith) life changes forever when his only friend disappears (Brigette Lundy-Paine) following the cancelation of their shared favorite TV show The Pink Opaque, writer/director Jane Schoenbrun is able to cast a hypnotic surrealist spell that captures the struggle of how electing to not live your life as your true self will eat away at you until there's nothing left but a hollow shell in heartbreakingly vivid fashion.
9.Monkey Man:
Freed from the clutches of Netflix after sitting on the shelf for nearly 3 years, Dev Patel's directorial debut exploded onto the big screen back in April thanks to Jordan Peele's company Monkeypaw and their distribution partners at Universal. While Monkey Man's political subtext about India's caste system isn't fully coherent, Patel's tremendous dedication to his role as Kid-a jobber working at an underground fight club who is angling to kill the powerful men (Makarand Deshpande, Skiandar Kher) responsible for massacring his village-including his mother-as a child and the bone-crunching, visceral fight sequences he put together are more than enough to make it a top-notch revenge action thriller nonetheless.
8.Civil War:
Civil War works as well as it does because Alex Garland forces the viewer to draw their own conclusions as to why the events of the film are happening and what they say about the people of the United States. Making an ambiguous war movie set in the present day is a ballsy move, especially in the current political climate where we're seemingly always on the precipice of grand-scale violence, but the lack of a defined agenda allows Garland to shift his focus to something that we don't see depicted too often in this genre: the human element underneath all the carnage. At its core, it's really a movie about what living in an active warzone does to people and the answers the film provides are occasionally reassuring but mostly really fucking terrifying. It's an illuminating, thought-provoking and disturbing depiction of the type of immense destruction that mankind is capable of inflicting on one another that I'll continue to wrestle with for quite some time.
7.Abigail:
Radio Silence's first post-Scream project adds another winner to their increasingly impressive filmography. The ensemble cast (Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Alisha Weir, Kathryn Newton, Kevin Durand, Will Catlett, Giancarlo Esposito, the late Angus Cloud in the final role of his career) is phenomenal, the gore/kills are nuts and the whole "unsuspecting band of crooks locked in a mansion with a vampire that looks like a 12-year-old human girl" plot conceit leads to a great, organic balance of horror and comedy elements.
6.Rebel Ridge:
After stumbling a tad with the endearing but uneven mystery/folk horror project Hold the Dark, Rebel Ridge marks a gritty, thrilling return to Jeremy Saulnier's top form. The modernized take on the classic western narrative of a mysterious, well-intentioned outsider (Aaron Pierre-who oozes charisma and quiet empathy in a breakout performance) taking on the dirtbag local cops (Emory Cohen, David Denman and Don Johnson) after they wrong him is the perfect vessel for Saulnier to explore the deep systematic rot of small-town legal systems while also delivering a string of awesome confrontations full of snappy dialogue and pulse-pounding suspense. Having the hero be an imposing retired Marine that specializes in de-escalation through hand-to-hand close quarters combat is also a nice touch that births some really clever, subversive writing.
5.The Substance:
What better way to take a blowtorch to unrealistic female beauty standards and women's internalized fears over aging than making a body horror movie in which you satirize them in the most overtly disgusting way possible? The Substance is a gory, hilarious triumph driven by a trio of incredible performances (Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid) that are completely in-tune with the movie's sad/silly/angry tonal balancing act and writer/director Coralie Fargeat's refreshingly audacious, uncompromising vision. It also absolutely rules that a hardcore genre movie has a strong chance of landing a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars.
4.Didi:
Didi is one of those coming-of-age movies that comes along every few years or so that just hit me like a fucking truck since I recognized so many of the situations the main character found himself in as I was around the same age in the year in which the film takes place (the summer of 2008). Writer/director Sean Wang does a great job of applying the wisdom that adulthood provides to the proceedings by highlighting just how necessary these awkward moments, stupid lies that blow up in your face and little acts of rebellion towards your parents are to figuring out the person you truly are once the chaos of being a directionless shithead teenager subsides. Please seek out this underseen, poignant gem of a movie ASAP.
3.The Fall Guy:
Movie stars! Real stunts! Romance! The Fall Guy is the kind of lovingly crafted, immensely fun grand-scale blockbuster that Hollywood just doesn't have much interest in making these days. Kudos to David Leitch, Drew Pearce and the primary cast (Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Winston Duke, Stephanie Hsu, Teresa Palmer) for taking full advantage of the rare opportunity that was afforded to them.
2.Challengers:
Getting to see Luca Guadagnino put his feet up and just have a blast after so many years of making gloomy, tragic romances was one of the biggest treats of the year. With the help of a smart script from Justin Kuritzkes, an absurdly hard electro-industrial score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and a trio of powerhouse actors (Zendaya, Josh O'Connor, Mike Faist) that the sell the shit of their roles as three manipulative egomaniacal tennis players that find themselves caught in a love triangle that spans 10+ years, the Italian auteur makes a really stylish, accessible romantic sports drama about how the obsessive drive athletes have to win by any means necessary poisons every area of their life. Who knows when we'll see get to see this loose side of Guadagnino again, but hopefully it's sooner than later because he's really damn good at it.
1.Anora:
Throwing around the "M" word willy nilly is not something I'm about, so just know that I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that Anora is a masterpiece. Mikey Madison shines as a Brooklyn stripper who develops a whirlwind fairy tale romance with the immature, hard-partying son of a Russian oligarch (Mark Eydelshteyn) that suddenly gets sent into disarray once word of the couple's impromptu nuptials during a raging weekend in Vegas reaches his powerful parents in Moscow. Sean Baker's excellent script does a terrific job of exploring class, the dehumanization of sex workers that's built into our society and the harsh truth of who gets left paying the price when shit hits the fan. The tonal balancing act on display as Baker weaves together romantic comedy, chaos and tragedy elements is masterful and the final moments are a blinding gut punch that the film brilliantly forces you to sit with as the credits roll. I'd vote for it for Best Picture 10,000 times if I could.
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