Best of 2019

2019 was my first full year living in New York and it was delightful to get the chance to see more or less everything I wanted to see, cinematically speaking. Because I still write a weekly column for the Sonoma Index-Tribune, I also watched plenty of the stuff everyone else saw as well. One weekend I absorbed the bracing contrast of The Aeronauts to review and Portrait of a Lady on Fire for my own pleasure. This year it became clearer to me the way my mind works on much different levels depending on whether the film before me has any desire to engage intellectually.

The key to enjoying the films of 2019 was weathering the nonstop bludgeoning by Disney Corporation (whose portfolio includes Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilms with more to come soon). Our corporate overlord did over 40 percent of the total box office in America and generated very mediocre film products this year. Streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, themselves fighting for market dominance, picked up some of the slack by distributing many excellent films. In spite of Hollywood’s overall lack of bravery, a bumper crop of ethnically and geographically diverse directors did outstanding work outside the realm of boardroom consensus.

Best Supporting Actor

Some would say Little Women or The Irishman but what if the best ensemble cast of the year was in Beach Bum? Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Buffet, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill and, especially Zac Efron and Zac Efron's beard made me laugh as hardest in 2019...until Uncut Gems and Kevin Garnett's smooth turn as himself. My favorite part of Midsommar is the bickering about grad school theses between the useless men, so William Jackson Harper gets a nod. While I was not 100% persuaded by Knives Out, I do declare that I enjoyed Daniel Craig doing Michael Scott's "I do declare" Southern accent for the entire film. The finest performance, particularly when considering the element of surprise of a retired actor returning to screens, is by Joe Pesci in The Irishman. He really knew how to move through a HoJo's kitchen and I appreciated his clarity of mind even immediately after waking up from a nap.

Best Supporting Actress

While her character was short-lived and quite blood-soaked, it was magical to watch Elisabeth Moss flip to her tethered self in Us. WTT Best Supporting Actress 2018 winner Awkwafina gracefully passes the torch to Zhao Shuzhen, her Nai Nai in The Farewell. Park So-dam gives the funniest and ultimately most affecting performance in the Parasite and we'll long remember the catechism, "Jessica, only child, Illinois Chicago." But the WTT award goes to the mother we all needed—Penelope Cruz in Pain and Glory. Pedro Almodóvar has given us many great matriarchs but Cruz's appearances are as spectacular as discovering a Renaissance Madonna and Child in a museum of contemporary art. 

Best Actor

It's well to remember that Brad Pitt isn't and has never been bad, as he reminded us in both Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Ad Astra. Robert Pattinson excels in isolation in High Life (it's possible I'm also still charmed by the Q&A I saw with Pattinson and Claire Denis, in which he clearly adored his director). In Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler gives his once-a-decade reminder of what he can do as an actor (before making four or five straight films with David Spade). Bless Clint Eastwood for finding Paul Walter Hauser to play his Richard Jewell, a wheezing American heart attack waiting to happen. Given the buzz around this film in early 2019, I though we'd see Tom Burke on more year-end lists for The Souvenir—but he's clearly a step forward in the portrayal of devastatingly addicts on screen. 

Best Actress

It was pleasing to see the steely Florence Pugh get a nom for Little Women, but she was even better ensconced in flowers and depression in Midsommar. In my annual nod to a non-professional actress doing better work that 99% of the professionals, there's the quietly electric Mame Bineta Sane in Atlantique. I adored our new Orpheus and Eurydice on flying ointment, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Cynthia Erivo's nomination for the lifeless Harriet reveals the Academy's bottomless taste for boredom. The nom is particularly stupid this year, when Lupita N'yongo was right there in Us. She poured unbelievable amounts of herself into her role and she even did a funny voice—that sort of thing ought to have easily secured her Oscar glory.

Best Pictures

Before rolling into the Top Ten, some other fiction to see: Carlos Reygadas’ Our Time, Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Oliver Assayas’ Non-Fiction. And the hottest docs were: Feras Fayyad’s The Cave, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s American Factory, Brett Story’s The Hottest August, Nanfu Wang’s One Child Nation, and Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov's Honeyland.

10. Us - If you remember just one sound from a 2019 movie, it is probably the unforgettable snip snip of scissors from Jordan Peele’s thriller. The snippet is trimmed from the “tethered” remix of hip-hop classic “I Got 5 on It,” one of the best deployed songs in recent cinema. The superb music cues, Peele’s stellar story concept and astonishing acting by both Lupita Nyong’o and Elisabeth Moss made Us a great start to the year in film.

9. Atlantique - This assured debut by filmmaker Mati Diop employs non-actors to present a hypnotic vision of languorous ghosts on the coast of Senegal. At once casually depicted and deeply rigorous, the film offers both insights into the lives of impoverished workers in Dakar and a fantastical vision of reincarnation. Diop’s career will be fascinating to track as she explores little seen places and states of mind.

8. The Beach Bum - Harmony Korine’s follow-up to the inimitable Spring Breakers heads way down South to the Florida Keys and a mad poet, Moondog, played by Matthew McConaughey as only he can. The supporting cast is as colorful as the lead, with delicious roles for Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence, Jimmy Buffett(!), and a panini-bearded Zac Efron. With some help from real-life poet Richard Brautigan, Moondog delivers one especially fine poem then mic drops on the line, “That’s great poetry.” Damn straight.

7. Ad Astra - It’s wonderful to see James Gray making better and bolder films as he ages. Between this role here and his deeply charming turn in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Brad Pitt spent 2019 reminding us of his excellence. Yes, Ad Astra is another lonesome outer space film, but Pitt offers more than Ryan Gosling’s nearly strangled terseness in First Man or Matt Damon’s uber-chipper performance in The Martian. As he presses on from the Moon to Mars to the unfathomable frontier of Neptune, Gray dares to deliver that rarest commodity in contemporary cinema—earnestness.

6. High Life - Another of 2019 auteurs in space is Claire Denis, who brought Juliet Binoche and Robert Pattinson with her. For the director, this film is both a leap forward and return to a familiar form. Denis’ first English-language film still has a soundtrack by the Tindersticks but now they’re scoring the journey of prisoners compelled to undertake experiments in deep space. Their spacecraft, designed by artist Olafur Eliasson, is at once prison-like and Edenic. The heroes are shipping out to a black hole, destined to see things those who condemned them are too frightened to contemplate.

5. Uncut Gems - The Safdie Brothers’ previous adventure Good Time brought relentless and headlong nihilism to the screen and with Uncut Gems they’ve somehow one upped themselves for sheer you-better-breathe-into-a-paper-bag madness. Adam Sandler’s Diamond District hustler is just smart enough to get himself into bigger and bigger trouble with dangerous people—the insanity of his jewel-selling schemes is exceeded only by his pulse pounding proclivity for implausible parlay bets on NBA games. The directors get not only a career-best performance from Sandler but also generate a remarkably good turn from NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett. Plus they seamlessly interweave the real events of 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Finals with the rest of their bonkers story.

4. Dolor y gloria - Pedro Almodóvar’s films are often a triumph of design but Pain and Glory, in which the master again collaborates with longtime production designer Antxon Gómez, has his most wondrous interiors ever. Antonio Banderas plays a stand-in for Almodóvar himself and his home is furnished with the director’s own belongings. Flashbacks to his youth reveal a whitewashed cave setting that’s filled with a mythical power. Banderas impresses and, in her limited screen time, Penelope Cruz has never been better, nor more beautiful. When the Almodóvar character is asked what he will do after retiring from writing and directing films he replies, “Live, I suppose.” Oh the gorgeous resignation of it all!

3. The Souvenir - Joanna Hogg, an English director too little known stateside before producing this masterwork, will not fly under the radar again. The film’s smart and stylish love story gives Honor Swinton Byrne a marvelous debut and showcases Tom Burke’s addictive, irresistible performance as her erudite yet heroin-addicted beau (his character stole steals the heart quickly with his praise for the films of Powell and Pressburger). The film has an incredibly fresh feel, thanks to the extraordinary quality of light, costume, and setting. Not to mention Hogg’s flawless deployment of songs as disparate as Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out with Him” and Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.”

2. Asako I & II - A thought-provoking film that, amongst other things, has the most delightful variation on the “Going out for a pack of smokes” disappearance in any recent film. Three quiet, subtle but still tremendous acting performances make the piece: Masahiro Higashide and Erika Karata are remarkable as the confused and crisscrossed central couple and Jintan the cat proves that pet acting has really gotten stronger in recent years. Director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi infuses the film’s two-part structure with just enough essence of mystery from Hitchcock’s Vertigo while making something totally his own, featuring doppelgangers, recurrences, rhymes, and echoes.

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire - The most indelible, burned-into-your-memory film of 2019 is Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This film, about the creation of a painting, boasts dozens of breathtaking shots, carefully composed and brilliantly lit against the gorgeous backdrop of Brittany, France in the late 18th century. The story is simple—a female painter meets and must paint her reluctant subject, who knows the commissioned work will be sent to a fiancée she’s never met and never wishes to meet. So she hides—her hair, her face, her smile—for as long as possible. Each revelation aches with significance and, as the pair’s relationship crescendos, the film becomes a fresh, reimagined twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is, wonderfully, almost entirely without men. But its success rests on the incredible chemistry between the lead actors—we feel the thunder in their hearts.

Best of 2018

2018 was better than 2017 (for films released in America, not for American democracy). It had returns to form from Yorgos Lanthimos and Alfonso Cuarón. It had the same excellent form from Wes Anderson and Barry Jenkins. And it had a total masterpiece from Lucrecia Martel after a too-long wait.

All it lacked was a new release by Olivier Assayas featuring Kristen Stewart...

Though the best features came from Latin America, I must admit that the film moment that titillated me the most in 2018 must have been the trailer drop for A Star Is Born. I spent a lot of time streaming hacked together tracks of the isolated audio, waiting for the full reveal of Lady Gaga accompanied by Bradley Cooper as voiced by Sam Elliott.

Best Supporting Actor

Flyest use of capes in 2018 is a title shared by Jason Isaacs in The Death of Stalin and Donald Glover in Solo, both of whom were the most irresistible things in their films. As I've said elsewhere, the only interesting five minutes across all 20 Marvel films is the sequence when it appears Michael B. Jordan will be righteous king in Black Panther. Tom Waits was the best bit in the kinda disappointing but kinda what you expected The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But the easy winner in this category is Steve Yuen in Burning, the man who gave us our postmodern Gatsby.

Best Supporting Actress

Rarely has our inability to communicate with each other been expressed as poignantly as by Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk. And poignancy is not something you'd expect from a queen vomiting blue cake, but Olivia Colman's badgery self in The Favourite does it exquisitely. Elizabeth Debicki was excellent in Widows and not just because she stood a head taller than everyone else. Lola Dueñas delighted in keeping the title character at a low boil in Zama but the best laughs and best pajamas belonged to Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians.

Best Actor

Give me lean Christian Bale in the tasty Hostiles over fat suit Christian Bale in the execrable Vice. Give me Daniel Giménez Cacho in Zama and help me rediscover all of his other roles. The most stirring moments in BlackKklansman occurred when John David Washington sounded exactly like his father. As someone who never tires of insulting Ethan Hawke, it's absurd that he wasn't nominated for First Reformed. Adriano Tardiolo convinced as a time-traveling supernatural Italian peasant in the remarkable Happy as Lazzaro. But in a put up or shut up role, Bradley Cooper—a guy I have not particularly enjoyed since Wedding Crashers—gave us a massive gift with A Star Is Born.

(And, just to go on record, Cooper's goldendoodle Charlie edges Olivia the West Highland White Terrier in Widows for Best Doggo.)

Best Actress

Charlize Theron is so good in Tully that I'm in the awful position of praising something about a Jason Reitman film. Praising something about a Claire Denis film is less surprising, and Let the Sunshine In benefited from Juliette Binoche, who is wonderful in everything, all the time. Praise also to Viola Davis who, as Michelle Rodriguez tells it, was kissed by Liam Neeson in a non-racist way in Widows. The year, however, belonged to non-actors. Lady Gaga was fabulous, even with that terrible tangerine dream hair color, in A Star Is Born. Late in Madeline's Madeline, Helena Howard had the finest audition since Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. But the prize is for Yalitza Aparicio carrying a family of six (and an entire nation) on her back in Roma.

Best Pictures 

Outside the Top 10 you might also consider Annihilation, First Reformed, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Happy as Lazzaro, Hostiles, Leave No Trace, Madeline's Madeline, Tully, and Widows. And any film not made by a white male director.

10. The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci is the best ever at satire that is not quite satire because he is too right about the grotesque sausage-making of empires. In the same way Veep scripts began to predict Trump's White House, The Death of Stalin doesn't feel at all out of step with the bumbling series of events that would occur in the event of King Trump's longed-for demise. The stacked cast, from Steve Buscemi to Jason Isaacs to Simon Russell Beale to Jeffrey Tambor skillfully convey the endless absurdity of each political power grab. And their clothes are so vile you can almost smell them through the screen.

9. Let the Sunshine In - Claire Denis will always give you something different. Let the Sunshine In pairs her with Juliette Binoche in a comedic mode, as the legendary actress faces middle age and all manner of insufferable Gallic nincompoops. From the cretin who insists of "gluten-free olives" to the ignorant, Harry Dean Stanton-type drifter, it's all garbage until she hangs out with Alex Descas, one of the classiest figures in contemporary cinema. And, like a gout-inducing glass of port, Gerard Depardieu ends the picture with a fantastic cameo.

8. If Beale Street Could Talk - With the recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro and this film, it's been great to have James Baldwin's words back in the public imagination. Barry Jenkins adapts Baldwin's 1974 novel with tremendous tenderness for his star-crossed leads, KiKi Layne and Stephan James. In a one-sequence but brilliant appearance, Brian Tyree Henry succinctly describes the prison-industrial complex: "This country really does not like n---as." Jenkins's cinematographer James Laxton lights the faces in the film with the unusual radiance he finds in any space, but he makes sure the prisons are never beautiful.

7. Burning - Lee Chang-dong made good films with Secret Sunshine and Poetry but he has far exceeded those with Burning, a completely engrossing study of three characters full of literary affinities, from The Great Gatsby to Crime and Punishment (the film is based on a Haruki Murakami story). In addition to the scorching work of Steven Yeun, Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo give great, troubled performances as poorer souls. Yoo's slow writer is on the receiving end of the shiver-inducing diss, "What kind of 'writing' are you planning to 'create?'" Even more chilling, as cooly delivered by Yuen, is the line, "I have a habit of burning greenhouses..."

6. The Favourite - Yorgos Lanthimos is back at his best with The Favourite. Olivia Colman, as the gout-afflicted Queen Anne, vomiting blue cake and surrounded by rabbits, is served by her sharp lady-in-waiting Emma Stone, whose enormous eyes were made to gawk at the goings on, and her even sharper confidante Rachel Weisz, who does some of the strongest work of her career. And then there's the marvelous Nicholas Hoult, whose speech is powdered as prettily as his resplendent wig. The biting insults, vicious repartee, and impromptu breakdancing make for a giddy two hours.

5. Isle of Dogs - Moving from one polarizing auteur to another, there's Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, in which he again flexes his mastery of stop-motion animation. The canines quarantined on Trash Island are hilarious, especially Jeff Goldblum's mutt, who knows all the rumors. Anderson is seen as an apolitical stylist, but has made a picture very relevant to these times—Isle of Dogs touches on the environmental destruction of the planet and the plight of "aboriginal" dogs born on Trash Island that are unable to gain asylum and enter the wider world.

4. A Star Is Born - While his direction would hardly be confused with the ultra-controlled mastery of Anderson, Bradley Cooper acquits himself well as a first-time filmmaker. He gets great performances from Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay and himself (borrowing Sam Elliott's voice). The music is tremendous, real pop and real country, all of it listenable—especially for those of us who found "Shallow" atop our year-end most-played playlists. You really feel the Jason Isbell-penned lyrics of Cooper’s signature tune—it takes a lot to change a man, hell, it takes a lot to try.

3. Roma - As with Cooper's A Star Is Born, this film is clearly a passion project Alfonso Cuarón, and a beautifully conceived one at that. The household of a well-to-do Mexico City family in the 1970s is seen through the eyes of the incredible non-actor Yalitza Aparicio. She does her daily business against a fabulous city backdrop, full of large-scale, "how’d-he-get-that-shot?!" choreography. There are a dozen memorable sequences, highlighted by a nude shower bar martial arts demonstration and an uproarious, "The Rules of the Game"-style interlude in the country. Roma is mid-career masterpiece full of nods to Cuarón’s former films, especially Y Tu Mamá También and its desperate, breathtaking climax at the beach.

2. Minding the Gap - Bing Liu's debut film is a riveting look at Rockford, Illinois and the intergenerational damage caused by poverty, abuse and alcoholism. It's also the foremost skateboarding documentary ever, with Liu following skaters Keire, Zack, and himself. The cinematography is tremendous, so skillfully tied together it's almost inconceivable that Liu produced this landmark documentary in only his mid-20s, after filming for a dozen years. Minding the Gap shows the ways in which, to help deal with trauma, you control the minutest actions while you’re on your board skating...or in your editing bay, cutting together a masterpiece.

1. Zama - As played by the brilliant Daniel Giménez Cacho, protagonist Don Diego de Zama is at the end of the alphabet, the end of the world, and the end of his rope. Lucrecia Martel's adaptation about a Spanish colonial functionary stuck in the South American interior improbably improves upon Antonio di Benedetto’s must-read novel of the same name. As the hero loses track of time, so does the viewer, lost in immersive lushness of Martel's vision. The film ends in the emerald beauty of the countryside, as Zama tries to move out of the fetid ennui of his colonial outpost, even if the quest is sure to be fatal. The most lasting image of the year is the hungry landscape swallowing him whole.

Boggle Poem

Found poem from a game of Big Boggle with Mr. Cody W. M. Upton:

The terns are lost
kept as pets with the rest
they nest with hens have
restless fetes on lots
here and there --
the most gorgeous gets
a penthouse that's hers.

Best of 2017

We put a brave face on things, but 2017 was a bad year at the movies. With nonsense like Dumbkirk and Grinding Nemo pulling down most awards at the Oscars, it made last year's surprise Moonlight win feel like a dream. We're back to the old darkness, with small bits of light provided by (incrementally) more diverse casting, non-actors, Olivier Assayas and, of course, #KSTEW. 

2017 was slightly stronger than I indicated in my earlier Top 10 for the Sonoma Index-Tribune. So read on for new entries in the Top 10! As you read through a hierarchy topped with beautiful dresses, listen to this by Marlon Williams. As the artist has said of the tune: "I don't know what this song is about, and I don't want to know."

Best Supporting Actor

We can all only dream to have a boyfriend as delightful as O'Shea Jackson in Ingrid Goes West, his attachment to Batman fanfic not withstanding. Ben Safdie was unbelievably good at absorbing all manner of abuse in Good Times. What a delight it's been watching Timothee Chalamet flit about in Lady Bird and Call Me By Your Name, reading fine literature and flashing those vulpine features softened only by the haircut all the boys had at my middle school. It's incredible that Lil Rel Howery did not even get an Oscar nom for his role as Get Out—he is the truth telling friend we all desperately need before making weekend plans, and the WTT awardee for Best Supporting Actor.

Best Supporting Actress 

In the battle of best supporting moms I'll take Holly Hunter in The Big Sick over Allison Janney in I, Tonya over Laurie Metcalf in Lady Bird. And the better lady movie of the year was Lady Macbeth, which had a great mute performance by Naomi Ackie. The best uses of breakfast foods came from Get Out, where Allison Williams deconstructed Froot Loops and milk, and Girls Trip, where Tiffany Haddish repurposed a grapefruit and banana to uproarious effect. But my award must go to the grand dame of the breakfast table, my old so-and-so, Lesley Manville in Phantom Thread. Please come run my life Cyril!

Best Actor

In the auto-nominations category, we have WTT's daily inspiration Channing Tatum in Logan Lucky. Of course I have to praise the dual android, poetry-spouting Michael Fassbender in Alien: Covenant, proving that quoting "Ozymandias" makes you sexier than Ryan Gosling's Blade Runner 2049 replicant. Gael Garcia Bernal was back to his best as a voice in Coco and live action in You're Killing Me Susana. Vin Diesel was so pleased to be starring in xXx: The Return of Xander Cage you couldn't help but grin along. But 2017 had only one acting performance: Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread. What a man, what a man, what a mighty mighty good man. The ultimate expression of WTT motto NO MEDIOCRE. 

Best Actress

Vicky Krieps was excellent as Day-Lewis's media naranja in Phantom Thread and in her way kicked as much ass as Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde (make her the next James Bond, dummies—the world demands more of Charlize beating the everliving shit out of everyone!). As time passes I grow more enamored of Aubrey Plaza's total investment in her roles—she was fascinating in Dirty Grandpa a couple of years ago and has much stronger material in Ingrid Goes West. Like Plaza, Bria Vianaite of The Florida Project comes out of left field, straight from Instagram to the cinema crackling with intensity that just isn't seen from more mannered actresses. But the award goes to the only thespian who reliably shakes me from my comfort zone (almost nodding off in an overpriced chair on the lefthand aisle of the cinema): Kristen Stewart. I feel her character in Personal Shopper in all my anxious texting, all my late, frustrated days.

Best Pictures 

Coco - Pixar does its finest world-building ever in Coco—the Land of the Dead is a marigold-drenched wonderland in which the skeletal spirits of your ancestors sing, dance, and make art. It’s also happy news that, even without flesh, the dead can still drink tequila. When you (re)watch the film, remember to bring a box of tissues to the theater with you—as one character says, speaking to the afterlife or the best Pixar films: “This place runs on memories.”

Lost City of Z - From Aguirre, the Wrath of God to The New World to this film there is something endlessly appealing about pushing upriver into the unknown. The fact that none of these dumb, self-mythologizing white boys would ever return only adds to the romance. Director James Gray adapts the wild excellence of David Grann's book and, especially on the big screen, you can feel the Amazon wrap its arms around you as Percy Fawcett follows the lure of little voices to his destiny. 

Dawson City: Frozen Time - In this superlative documentary, Bill Morrison provides a meditative mélange of photographs, documentary footage, silent films, and early talkies from Dawson City, a turn-of-the-century gold rush town in the Yukon that was the end of the line for thousands of reels of early movies. The doc includes amazing nuggets, like the reason Jack London turned back for home before reaching Dawson City (scurvy) and the origin of the Trump family fortune (brothels). By the end, you almost can’t imagine cinema history without this small town—if not for the future moguls who intersected there, we might never have had the chance to watch Snatched, 2017’s worst film.

Call Me By Your Name - You try to think of yourself as the kind of person who would never cry while listening to a Sufjan Stevens in public but then you do, and it's Luca Guadagnino fault. CMBYN also deserves credit for spawning the most enjoyable meme of the year, moves so cold even those of us who are more rhythmically challenged can't help but try to duplicate them—see, we're just doing the Armie! There's also the outstanding mood of doomed love and wistfulness and regret—all while the romance is still happening!—capped with a great dad talk and an amazing winter lookbook.  

Wind River - Writer/director Taylor Sheridan is among the best at leading us to the dark places in our society and this trip to the Wind River Indian reservation is no different. As a young man (and potential murder suspect) on the rez explains: “I wanna fight the whole world.” Despite the bracing violence in the film, it’s fascinating to watch Jeremy Renner’s tracker Cory as he moves from hunting mountain lions that prey on livestock to hunting death itself.

Good Time - Josh and Ben Safdie direct what is, for a few minutes at least, a straightforward picture about two brothers, Connie (Robert Pattinson, very good) and Nick (Ben Safdie, extraordinary) bumbling through a bank heist. From there straight through the end, the plot goes spectacularly off the rails—the hilarious, truly inconceivable twists are so uproarious that you run the risk of peeing your pants from the sheer giddiness. Future filmmakers must take notes on how to craft a proper thriller that never comes up for a breath.

Get Out - The film was nominated for a Golden Globe in the “Best Musical or Comedy” category but, crucially, director Jordan Peele has called the film a documentary. The power of the piece is the utter believability of the ills that befall Daniel Kaluuya’s Chris, a black man trapped in the hell of a long weekend with his white girlfriend’s parents. While often very funny, Peele’s film is heavy on bitter truths. A cop car appears twice and both times you immediately fear for our hero—across the country, police have generated a well-earned, gut-level fear from their constituents in minority communities.

Logan Lucky - With little else to recommend it, 2017 can at least be remembered fondly for Steven Soderbergh’s return to filmmaking. Like Good Time, the criminals in this robbery picture are not overly bright but possess a desperate ingenuity. It’s so fun to watch country-fried narrative threads spread in many directions before being tied back together. Logan Lucky boasts a brilliant climax at the Charlotte Motor Speedway, which Soderbergh photographs in popping bright colors to capture the rainbowed American glory of all those glittering stock cars.

The Florida Project - Sean Baker famously shot his debut feature Tangerine on an iPhone and returned to shoot The Florida Project on even more beautiful 35mm. This film, set in the strip mall and cheap motel squalor outside Disney World, is about people pushed too far in an unnatural, lavender-and-fuchsia landscape. Much has been made of performance from seven-year-old spitfire Brooklyn Decker as a free-roaming child but the startling, discomfiting acting by newcomer Bria Vinaite as her mother is indelible. As with Sasha Lane’s Star in last year’s American Honey, the finest recent acting has been done by untrained presences like Vianaite. 

Phantom Thread - Easily the best PTA picture, thanks to the cast—all of which has been lauded above—and the relative restraint of the director. The film is not about wild tracking shots and enormous amounts of acting. The most exciting set pieces are of Daniel Day-Lewis at work—cutting, sewing, staring down the lines. In addition to motivating future breakfast orders, Phantom Thread shows the ways in which idiosyncratic artists, whether the subject or the maker of the film, help show why it's worthwhile to keep fighting through the cruelty and banality of life—think of the couture we'd miss if we died today! 

Personal Shopper - Any film is bound to be excellent when the best French director, Oliver Assayas, works with the best American actress, Kristen Stewart. Assayas wrote the film for Stewart when they were working together on the magisterial Clouds of Sils Maria, and the script addresses fashion, the supernatural, and the burden of being a talented personal assistant. Surrounded by jittering wraiths and glittering couture, Stewart moves through Paris and London with the radical coldness that sets her apart from her contemporaries. The cinematic sound from 2017 that will linger longest in the ears is the skittering of Stewarts’s fingers over her phone as she composes text messages to a ghost.

Best of 2016

I have, for THE paper of record in Sonoma Valley, already given you my top ten wide release films from 2016. But there is an alternate best of list, a superior and updated one, below. And it's not too difficult to separate out the pretty good from the more or less unwatchable in 2016—the real challenge would be to parse the extremely narrow margins amongst the bottom 10 (or 25). I am, however, not brave enough to revisit my thoughts on Warcraft v. Suicide Squad v. Marvel Horseshitiverse: Civil War v. Batman v. Superman v. the sweet sleep of death.

As the Hollywood productions I watched continued to enervate and enrage with their lack of ideas, I tracked the demographics among the filmmakers of 2016 movies released in Sonoma, CA (where the wine and people are slightly better than those in Napa). To use a horrifying neologism, I briefly tweetstormed on this topic. I assumed women and people of color would be underrepresented but how can it be this bad? Directors of films released in Sonoma (which I think is a reasonable representation of small town, one-AMC-Theater-only America) are 94% male and 89% white. It's a disgrace. Films and performances by non-white, non-men are, as usual, overrepresented on my year end list but that does little to rinse the bitter taste.

Here's hoping that 2017 holds more directorial efforts from the Solanges of the world and fewer from the Zack Snyders.

Best Supporting Actor

The best idea is probably to copy Manohla Dargis and give all five noms to the supporting actors in Moonlight, but I pretend to use original thought on the WTT. I always appreciate a madman spouting aphorisms, so love to Alessandro Nivola in The Neon Demon: "True beauty is the highest currency we have. Without it, she would be nothing." It pleased me to no end that antagonists on The Office—John Krasinski and David Denman—are superbros in the good(!) Michael Bay film 13 Hours. And John Malkovich is a great scenery snacker in Deepwater Horizon. But it all comes back to Mahershala Ali in Moonlight. He is not just the best of the year but one of the best for all time, a role that fills me with wonder. Come back to me Juan!

Best Supporting Actress

Chloe Sevigny is a perfect supporting actress for any movie but especially in a Whit Stillman film like Love and Friendship. Scarlett Johansson and Tilda Swinton are marvelously sharp in Hail, Caesar! but slip away too quickly. I'll give a random shout to Aubrey Plaza for embracing exactly how awful Dirty Grandpa is and delivering every leaden line with disgusted gusto. But the most excited I was for a supporting actress in 2016 was Janelle Monáe in Moonlight and Hidden Figures—she vivified the screen with her snap and verve. Hopefully much more to come from her—I suggest a film on yoga.

Best Actress

Credit to Blake Lively for her excellent use of her jewelry to stitch wounds in The Shallows,
Samantha Robinson for her delirious embrace of Anne Biller's vision in The Love Witch, and Amy Adams for her ultra-linguistic brilliance in Arrival. And, because it's too hard to select between the harrowing continental performances of Sandra Hüller in Toni Erdmann and Isabelle Huppert in Elle (they both seem the only actresses who could play those very difficult parts), my best actress is Sasha Lane in American Honey. My longterm affection for nonactors stems from performances like this, the pleasurable wildness of an actress, a director and an audience seeing something new together. My sense is that Ms. Lane herself wasn't sure what she was selling in certain scenes: magazines, sex, her own charisma.

Best Actor

First a nod to Christian Bale for putting up with whatever dizzy shit Terrence Malick was doing in Knight of Cups. Michael Shannon (still holding the belt for favorite domestic WTT actor) proves in Midnight Special he's continually awe-inspiring. But the real race is for best facial hair, wherein Vin Diesel in The Last Witch Hunter is a glorious, braided option, Colin Farrell's Lobster character has the most depressive mustache you'll ever see and Chris Pine in Hell or High Water sports a delicious mustache to beard muddle that recalls, well, Colin Farrell in Miami Vice. But the nod goes to Tom Hanks in Sully—in film after film he is as immaculate as Chesley Sullenberger's neat white pushbroom.

Best Pictures 

See also: Arrival, Loving, Midnight Special, Hell or High Water, Ixcanul, Elle, Zootopia, and, if you're very patient, Knight of Cups and Neon Demon.

10. The Lobster - In this highly credible satire, "The City" is patrolled by uniformed men demanding marriage paperwork and, if you don’t have it, you’re sent to "The Hotel," where you’ll find a mate or be turned into a wild animal of your choice. The Lobster is the logical extension of our current mania for the polite emptiness of online dating, where couples are pressed together by algorithms and every dream vacation destination is deadened by the tepid prose of glossy airplane magazines. In the movie at least, those who break free spend an uproarious time on the lam, in woods filled with people they used to know, now in the form of a camel or flamingo.

9. Cameraperson - We need many more cinematographic memoirs. Kirsten Johnson, who has lensed dozens of documentaries (including motherfucking Citizenfour), here collages footage from many of her projects, much of it absolutely hair-raising. For a somewhat disorienting 20 minutes, the sequences seem unconnected but a pattern emerges as the film marches ahead with incredible storytelling of genocide in Bosnia and Darfur and almost unwatchable scenes from a makeshift maternity ward in Nigeria. It is an excellent film, and a test of even my voyeurism.

8. La La Land - I give this more points for sparking so many angry spats amongst jazz people, musical people, people who hate mansplaining in all its forms (so, many of my friend groups). Regardless of where you stand in the standoff between Gosling vs. Legend for the future of jazz, this is the throwback to classic Hollywood we pretended The Artist was in 2011. As with Whiplash, when director Damien Chazelle swings, he swings hard over and over, until his arms get tired. Seeing a Los Angeles where the old movie palaces are shut down and the big band halls have transitioned to samba and tapas places, Chazelle reveals his burning passion for jazz and classic cinema. La La Land is jammed with song and dance, rash technicolor displays and literal flights of fancy. Charming actors Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone often wear looks that show they can’t help themselves—they've made something special.

Beyond the words in my review of the film I can report something else as important: the two times I saw La La Land and got to the audition scene, I had chill run straight up my spine. Right or wrong, if I had the chance, I'd stand up right now, walk to the theater and watch it again.

7. Manchester by the Sea - Casey Affleck proves a thousand times better than his brother at playing a damaged man, featuring in one of the best films of the year while Ben cast his steely gaze at whatever it was in the last Batman flick. Given the brutal plot summary of Manchester by the Sea, it's surprising that it’s also the most laugh-out-loud funny film of the year. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan provides a savagely hilarious script, including a very funny cameo for himself, yelling at the good Affleck. As a bonus, the film doubles as motivation to drink less, despite daily provocations, in 2017.

6. I Am Not Your Negro - This documentary goes well beyond journalism to get to the truth, challenging viewers to wrestle with the deaths of Martin, Malcom and Medgar as written in the unpublished notebooks of James Baldwin. Eschewing talking heads, I Am Not Your Negro is all Baldwin footage and prose, with some contemporary clips cut in, from Ferguson and elsewhere in the disintegrating United States of America. The material is strong enough that it forces Samuel L. Jackson, who narrates, to tone down his histrionics and smolder, to be as lucid as Baldwin was eviscerating the iniquities of our nation.

I remain proud that the place I work made this film happen and that one day Raoul Peck walked in the door and I got to shake his hand and tell him his film is better than O.J.: Made in America. It's a film about genius rather than notoriety (and thus has no chance to win the Best Doc Oscar).

5. Toni Erdmann - This is a rewarding, very long comedy about work that almost reaches the delightful pain of the British Office or Lars Von Trier's The Boss of It All. The aforepraised Sandra Hüller and magnificent Peter Simonischek are an indelible daughter/father pairing in this film studded with shockingly funny deadpan moments, including a tender shot of semen-spattered petit fours. Directorial marvel Maren Ade accomplishes the astonishing feat of shooting a scene as great as the one in which Hüller bangs out Whitney's "The Greatest Love of All" then somehow tops it later in the film (using a costume as fine as Octave's bear suit in The Rules of the Game).

(Also: it is an official WTT prediction that the Kristen Wiig/Jack Nicholson Hollywood remake will be one of the ten worst movies ever made.)

4. American Honey - In making the combustible American Honey, Andrea Arnold (director of WTT-favorite Fish Tank) embedded herself with many nonprofessional actors and one merely unprofessional one (Shia LaBeouf, rocking a most alarming pigtail). The best of her finds, picked off a beach in Miami, is of course Sasha Lane, who brings startling passion to her role. A whole crew of hustlers is shot hazily in vans and cheap motels—this is a meandering road movie lensed across the South and Midwest, places deep in the American twilight full of poverty and grace and bad tattoos. Arnold knows how music can make or break a moment and when Rihanna’s "We Found Love" blasts across the Walmart checkout aisles it's a fitting hymn for the film and for our time.

3. Cemetery of Splendor - This film has recently increased in my estimation after a rewatch, perhaps because it is about soldiers who sleep continuously for months (they are, one character patiently explains, fighting a dream war on behalf long-dead kings in another dimension). If only I could sign up for four years of peaceful slumber in quiet Thailand adjacent a glowing neon tube floating through sherbety colors that ease my nightmares. As one character reads in a journal, "Our problem is that we think too much...at night we call these dreams." Even when the soldiers wake, it is not exactly into the real world, but a space in limbo, where deities step down from their daises and give skin care tips to mortals. I was so moved by a sequence where a nurse walks through a former palace of deceased kings that is now a ramshackle park—where a beautiful stone pillar once held a glittering roof, there is now a tree with an orchid growing on it. Director Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul is a genius who helps his audience practice stillness—if we open our minds the way his characters do, we can see glittering floors of pink stone instead of dead leaves on the ground.

2. My Golden Days - Director Arnaud Desplechin is, to borrow a phrase from this film, mon amour adore. Here he's made a madeleine from an adult Paul Dédalus (played by Mathieu Amalric with his usual resplendence) to his younger self (Quentin Dolmaire), who is madly in love with Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet). The young actress, faced with the daunting task of becoming Emmanuelle Devos in Desplechin's earlier/later film My Sex Life...or How I Got into an Argument, owns from the moment we see her slow dancing with herself in a crowded party. In ten seconds, we are ready to buy Paul's line to her: "Have you ever been loved more than life? It's how I'll love you." The rest of the film is their passion, mostly told through their letters, which are given as wonderful direct addresses to the camera. And, as the strains from the score to Vertigo float in, I felt an old, melancholy ache—perhaps we are in love in this life just once.

1. Moonlight - No points for originality here. But it speaks to the brilliance of Barry Jenkins that the critics' choice and the Oscar favorite and the WTT pick are one and the same this season. I hope this remarkable film, eye-catching on the first viewing and rewarding across many more, is the start of a needed response to the whiteness of the Hollywood whale. After most other images from this year are forgotten, there will be the magnificent Mahershala Ali holding that boy in the water—so, so blue.

*

I ended last year's column by saying "2016's gonna be great." Jesus Christ. I hope I meant that ironically. In 2017 we're all gonna die. But perhaps the pictures will be pretty.

Off White

[I had to cut a section from an essay for publication but would hate for my love of Brian McKnight to be lost to the world. It is reproduced below.]

Half an Ativan is not enough—I still think I’m going to die as we rattle down the runway.
Since I last flew, Virgin America has failed to renew their license on Brian McKnight’s “Back at One” so I cannot listen to it during takeoff. I’ve paid the premium to fly Virgin not for the mood lighting but because I can be listening to that song at the moment the wheels leave the runway—I have never yet died while it is playing.

That the music video for the song involves a plane crash is such a ridiculous coincidence that I must have sublimated the fact when I picked my to-die-to anthem.

It has an easy chorus to repeat if you picture yourself as a nervous child who has severe issues with memorizing numbers. My right hand holds the armrest as hard as I can without the knuckles whitening and my left hand grips my right forearm. I raise the fingers as I count up, mouthing silently.

“One, you’re like a dream come true,”

I listen too carefully for moment it feels to me the engines stop pushing us up and we float out.

“Two, just want to be with you,”

I would like to be in the middle seat next to She.

“Three, girl, it’s plain to see / That you’re the only one for me,”

When She rides her bike on nights when it’s too cold her fingers go white on the handlebars and for her it’s almost always too cold.

“And four, repeat steps one through three,”

Sometimes She gets home and sends me a picture so I see what She means.

“Five, make you fall in love with me.”

I write out the reply oh, I want to hold them then erase the line with the last vestiges of will. At least I am not coating my arms and back with cold sweat—thanks for that, half an Ativan. I pick up a copy of White Girls I can’t read and watch the plastic window shade, the color of clouds at 35,000 feet.

“It’s unbelievable how I used to say that I’d fall never.”

More here.

Best of 2015

In 2015 I got a gig writing for THE paper of record in Sonoma valley and boy has that established for me that Hollywood is worse than I thought...and the requirement to watch the biggest releases each week impacted my ability to write on the WTT about other, better films (thankfully, the gig has not impacted my ability to make excuses about not writing). That said, read all my reviews! I'm working up a lather now and getting stronger even if the films aren't--bet on it.

In paging through WTT "Best of" posts from years past (in a desperate attempt to put off work on this new post), the films sort of reorder themselves around the ones I've had the biggest urge to watch since. For 2015 I tried to rank less on what I consider the best in this moment and more on which films will obsess me moving forward. 

Best Supporting Actor

I have more clarity on certain subcategories of this section--the best costumes for a supporting actor goes to Isaach de Bankole in The Last Witch Hunter, the best supporting voice acting is Sam Elliott in The Good Dinosaur, the best ensemble supporting acting is a fierce competition between Michael Sheen and Tom Sturridge in Far from the Madding Crowd and Joe Manganiello, Matt Bomer, Kevin Nash and Adam Rodriguez in Magic Mike XXL. For some reason, Jeff Daniels' "Mark Watney is dead" line from The Martian still kills me, I don't know why. (I do know why. I wish Matt Damon were dead.) But the prize goes to Benicio del Toro, because his character in Sicario plays exquisitely off his Traffic statuette-winner and because he runs off and hides with the narrative in the last half hour of the film.

Best Supporting Actress

With apologies to Ilsa Faust in M:I5, Lea Seydoux wins for the best supporting actress name--Madeleine Swann--in Spectre. The most surprising supporting actress turn belongs to Monica Bellucci in The Wonders--one cannot imagine the American analog of her fabulous guest appearance in a film about rural Italian beekeepers. Praise be the ensemble of Turkish Coppola virgins in Mustang--Güneş Şensoy, Doğa Doğuşlu, İlayda Akdoğan, Tuğba Sunguroğlu and Elit İşcan--they are charm and wallop together. Lola Kirke is excellent smirks and turns of phrase against Greta Gerwig in Mistress America but really the only performance one sees is Kristen Stewart's in The Clouds of Sils Maria--her personal assistance to Juliette Binoche dominates the landscape and then recedes in the most affecting retreat of the year. 

Best Actor

2015 was a year of #hottiealerts. I must put order to my objectification, so, with apologies to Chris Hemsworth's faux Moby-Dick pecs In the Heart of the Sea and Jake Gylenhaal's phenomenal Southpaw abdominals, the best topless performances are by Michael B. Jordan in Creed (astonishing, truly astonishing that this film is left on the outside by the Academy) and Channing Tatum with so, so much Magic in his Mike. Shoutouts to the scruffier sex symbols Viggo Mortenson in Jauja and Vin Diesel in The Last Witch Hunter working their way handsomely through various portals. But in Far from the Madding Crowd Matthias Schoenaerts' Gabriel Oak is that most special heartthrob: women want him, blogging men want to be in (much smaller sizes of) his impeccable shepherd wear. To paraphrase J. Lo to Clooney in Out of Sight: "you really wear that scarf." I'm just thankful that now all theaters have those high-backed seats so I didn't snap my neck swooning when Gabriel sorted all those bloated sheep and got tarps over the haystacks in the rain.

Best Actress

Salute to Angelina Jolie for directing and starring in By the Sea--her excellent work was dismissed as vacuous and narcissistic with a viciousness that would never apply to male actors/directors--but I'll long remember her face in the film, a gorgeously-photographed mask of pain. Another hat tip to Kristen Stewart in American Ultra, as the straw that stirs Jesse Eisenberg's drink. One wonders how in the world Charlize Theron wasn't nominated for Mad Max: Fury Road and if one had any hopes to save #OscarsSoWhite, it would have been noms for the extraordinary cohorts in Tangerine, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor--they burn that motherfucker to the ground. I must credit longtime WTT-enemy David O. Russell for wising up and getting everything (Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro, plot logistics) out of Jennifer Lawrence's way in Joy--her role shares the same electricity as that of the not-be-denied Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. 

Best Pictures

20-11
Spectre, By the Sea, In Jackson Heights, Mistress America, The Wonders, Jauja, Joy, Mustang, Timbuktu, Mad Max: Fury Road.

10. Tangerine - The first minutes of the film have a fantastic effect. My mind was full of questions like what am I watching? why is it shot like this? who ARE these people? what is HAPPENING?? Sean Baker directs this picture so aggressively it's probably as close as we'll get to a Ryan Trecartin film at a cinema near us. The aforementioned excellence of Kitana Kiki Rodriguez is apparent in a flash--when her friend explains her boyfriend's been cheating on her she clarifies that she's "an upper hoe" and sets the narrative in motion. Rodriguez and her costar Mya Taylor drag the film by the hair through the streets of Los Angeles, which have never looked harsher or more beautiful than they do shot by iPhone, the day turning yellow and blue to orange and pink. Oh, and it's Christmas Eve in a city that's just "a beautifully wrapped lie." 

9. Far from the Madding Crowd - I covered the main points in my review but there are many additional things I love about this fast-paced and not-too-stately adaptation of Thomas Hardy. As previously discussed, this is an all-time great film for enthusiasts of scarves and cravats, the best I’ve ever seen in terms of neckwear style and variety (take a bow, costume designer Janet Patterson). In addition to the life-changing style of Gabriel Oak, Bathsheba is not slouch in a sterling blue milkmaid outfit, complete with kerchief, shot against a breathing couture cowhide. I also appreciate that Carey Mulligan sings a folk song that feels about an hour shorter than her “New York, New York” in Shame. As her Bathsheba explains of a most difficult year, “I seem to cry a great deal these days. I never used to cry at all.” Tell me about it lady. 

8. Macbeth - Here's another adaptation of concision--director Justin Kurzel took a lot out of the play but the snatches he left are indelible. "O full of scorpions is my mind!" he says and no contemporary actor has a more scorpion-dense head than Michael Fassbender. He is well on his way to developing the harshest crow's feet in cinema history and his Macbeth dispenses proper, proper violence. His handwash is blood, his war paint is ashes and his crown is tarnished gravestones. Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth matches his intensity, her face essentially a constant death frieze. The witches are hair-raising, the music chills. Kurzel took a green and grey Scottish expanse and turned it defiantly red and black. And as I turned another year older while writing this recap, I appreciated Macbeth's comforting speech about aging:

I have lived long enough: my way of life
Is fall'n into the sere, the yellow leaf;
And that which should accompany old age,
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have; but, in their stead,
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

7. The Assassin - The black and white opening movements of this film are so perfect I wished for time to stop; I wanted to ask the projectionist for the replay. I gasped and wrote furious notes to myself to look up the cinematographer: Ping Bin Lee (In the Mood for Love, of course). We're introduced to the Assassin in question as she deals death with remarkable naturalness, like a cloud passing across the sun, much more vivid for being so brief. Lee is the longtime lenser for Hou Hsiao-Hsien and, like their work together on The Flowers of Shanghai, this film uses the slightest of camera movements to ratchet the tension of palace intrigues. The set design is gauzy curtains and candlelight--seemingly peaceful, Lyndon-esque compositions interrupted by cuts like the flash of a knife. I often find myself back with the advice of the Assassin's mentor: "your mind is still hostage to human sentiment." 

(The 8 PM screening I attended is also my favorite theatre moment of the year. I was surprised at the relatively full house at the AMC Metreon but the turnout was all based on the title--throughout the two-hour run time, wuxia fanbois with strappy sneakers and ill-coiffed hair paraded out in huffy disgust. An auteur sneak attack!)

6. Carol - The biggest relief of the year. It was set up to be the one film to save all the shittiness that came before and so it did. Like all red-blooded Americans, I adore Todd Haynes' Far from Heaven and was impressed by how different Carol looks--it's less reminiscent of Douglas Sirk Technicolor than Robert Frank's black and white Americans. The acting is all so fine, with Cate Blanchett lionessing and Rooney Mara Audreying her tiny bangs and Coach Taylor behaving terribly because he had to be named Harge. The smeary interior of the Midwest is exactly the right amount of ugly, just as Highsmith would've wanted it, a slightly unfocused backdrop to the love story. And the formulation of the central relationship is ideal for me: a young artist is drawn resistlessly to an older lover whose art is her life itself. "Take me bed." My only problem with the film is that Carol is such an uninspired title. You know what's a great title? The Price of Salt.

5. Magic Mike XXL - Some of my feelings are noted here but it's nice to revisit the film because the Magic Mike franchise is my favorite argument. How do we live in a culture that insists on taking Avengers films seriously but dismisses Magic Mike as too shallow for serious discussion? People who deny themselves the pleasures of XXL are like this gas station cashier holding off on smiling as long as she can. In part two of what I hope is an endless saga, there are some excellent laugh lines, my favorite being Ken's on the the departed Dallas: "Don't say his name, don't give him that power." As a road picture, a lot of pleasure comes from the casual conversations the guys have, on their plans as they grow up. When not stripping, they work low-level jobs, from running a fro-yo truck to moving furniture--they are American dreamers. The pleasure-center release of the dancing benefits the recipients (who, in XXL, have a beautiful variety of body shapes and colors) as well as the entertainers. I’d say it’s still their day.

4. Blackhat - I love Michael Mann left to his own devices. As I touched on in my In the Heart of the Sea review, Chris Hemsworth (like Colin Farrell in Miami Vice) is better as an exterior, a vacancy. Blackhat is a film about visions rather than words--characters speak in thick accents and shorthand with the meanings often glitched out. From Los Angeles to Hong Kong, they move through spaces that are like the inside of computers, prisoners tethered to technology, neon chips falling over their faces--even the gold chains on necks come to look like strings of data. Despite the abstraction of much of the film, Mann remains the best composer of gunfights ever, this time surpassing himself with a crosscut sequence where the bad guys retreat down a circular ramp as the good guys make right angle turns in a warren of apartment buildings. Mann features faces and locations no one else could find and set pieces no one else would conceive. I hope his next film bombs too so he can stay small, dirty, digital, violent--he's at his greatest at the edge of coherence.    

3. Sicario - While not a particular Denis Villeneuve fan before this film, I was thrilled with the look of the picture. There's a downright Mannian border crossing sequence and later a deep push into the realm of night goggles and body heat maps. Most of my praise is contained in the review I wrote at the time so I'll re-emphasize my appreciation for the good films and books that lend a better better understand the ongoing Ciudad Juarez apocalypse. Recently I've read Yuri Herrera's Signs Preceding the End of the World, the first chapter of The Story of Vincente and listened to Charles Bowden, all to say I'm more convinced than ever by the pitch blackness into which Villeneuve drops viewers. Critics of his film had similar difficulties with No Country for Old Men, in which many were put off by the surprise death of (the wonderfully resurrected in Sicario) Josh Brolin. But that's cartels, killing the protagonist of any counternarrative with their unslakable thirst for death.

2. World of Tomorrow - Across the 16 minutes of Don Hertzfeldt's short but capacious animated masterpiece, every frame is screenshot-worthy and every line is quotable. Emily Clone, speaking from the future to her much younger grandmother, Emily Prime, gave me both the hardest laugh ("I drew a snakeboy") and shared the darkest thoughts of 2016 ("I do not have the mental or emotional capacity to deal with his loss but sometimes, I sit in a chair, late at night, and quietly feel very bad"). As we watch World of Tomorrow, much like Emily Prime, we are enjoying ourselves and don't quite sense how serious it is all getting. As carefree 4-year old playing a carefree 4-year-old, the filmmaker's niece Winona Mae gives the best vocal performance...ever? Probably ever. The film is full of ideas, second to second, visual and intellectual and emotional ideas and I want all of it, I want to be it--learn it, love it, stream it, buy it. "I am very proud of my sadness because it means I am more alive." "Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle."

(A quick hat tip to David Ehrlich for alerting me that I needed to see this. And, while we're here, his yearly Best of videos are one of the greatest gifts to cineastes--the 2015 version builds to a climax worthy of any film.)

1. Clouds of Sils Maria - What I've come to understand is that the films I love best are the ones I must keep watching to try to understand--this is why Our Beloved Month of August and Certified Copy were perhaps underrated in previous years' lists. I saw Olivier Assayas' Clouds of Sils Maria three times in theatres and there's still something just out of reach. 

The first act is an introduction to actress Maria Enders (Juliette Binoche) and her assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) who consider whether Maria should take the role of aging Helena in a restaging of the play Maloja Snake--Maria made her name 20 years earlier playing Helena's young foil Sigrid. Of course she must say yes. The second act--an endlessly beguiling affair that takes place in the cabin where Maloja Snake was written--has Maria and Valentine running lines as Helena and Sigrid with no real clarity on where the play ends and their personal conflicts intervene, whether the tensions between them are written. The third act is back in tumult of life with the new Sigrid, Lohanesque paparazzi-magnet Jo-Ann Ellis (Chloe Grace Moretz), meeting and tormenting Maria/Helena with what is presumably excellent method acting.

All of this plays off of Moretz and Binoche and Stewart's real life notoriety. They ask themselves why an actress like Maria Enders (like Juliette Binoche!) would take a role in an X-Men film and their conversations about Hollywood compromises are not trivial--it feels like they are addressing the heart of my work, reckoning with the commercial pictures of 2015. More than any action film, these meta games had me on the edge of my seat with excitement. Stewart is so tremendous in this film (and in 2015 as a whole) that I want to watch the Twilight films. I cannot put that in starker terms. Binoche (revelatory as she shifts from slumping in a train car to glamming up for fashion photos) is the best selector of roles and directors alive. Moretz holds her own and even takes the lead in the best image from Cannes. 

Which role is Binoche? Sigrid or Helena? Helena and Sigrid? Can the present overwrite the past? Assayas makes the Maloja Snake eats its own tail. I will keep watching until I can tell you everything about the play within the play and movie within the movie and the actors within the actors--The Clouds of Sils Maria is my best obsession of the year. 

*

Remember: "Now is the envy of all of the dead." 2016 is going to be great--so cheer the fuck up.