Check out the entire series here.
Red: the color of passion, the color of blood, the color of lust, the color of bloodlust. Sex is always intertwined with death, as love is only meaningful if it cannot endure forever. Students of Christianity might disagree, but damn if the Greek pantheon of gods weren't dissatisfied with their eternal bonds of marriage.
I digress... as far as the visible spectrum, you can't make a much bolder statement in cinema than splashing the screen with red. Unless you're Dario Argento, these moments of red are best as emphasis, a carving out of a passionate event. Red can be a shade of lipstick, a sea of blood, or even meaningful in its greyscale absence. Breakthroughs of ardor in these films tend to be powerful nexuses, a way to escape the bonds of oppression or banality-- if only for a time.
20. Carol
A brief perusal of my list reveals that I enjoy formally playful genre fiction. I love the way that heightened conventions and creative worldbuilding explode our storytelling methods and encourage us to engage with themes in a more confrontational way. Carol is something of a counterpart to that, a romantic drama that demonstrates the merits of a well-told story playing familiar genre conventions beautifully. The way director Todd Haynes grounds us in subtle gestures and words unspoken invests the proceedings with tremendous pathos. The phenomenal acting and deft cinematography are no less transportive than any other example on this list. Even though this queer period piece could have happened in 'our world,' stepping into an intimate understanding of another human being's experience is as transcendent as ever.
19. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
In my frequent dalliances with metafiction, I've found few works of art so invigorating as Sion Sono's Why Don't You Play in Hell? The film follows an eager young filmmaking team that decides the best way to make a realistic mob movie is to stage and film actual mob violence. This intertwining of violence and raw extant drama produces an insane concoction. Blood and guts fly about while artists stop the (real) violence just long enough to adjust the scene composition. It is a film that owns the impact of its eccentricities, showing us again and again that artificial narratives are inextricable from what we consider to be 'real life.' Sono also knows how to have a hell of a lot of fun.
18. The Babadook
The Babadook flips the script of most horror. The titular 'dook is not a metaphor that gains power because it is a monster, it is a monster that gains power because it is a metaphor. Jennifer Kent blurs the lines between a symbolic manifestation and a manifestation of symbolism, because as anyone who has suffered depression knows, it might not be tangible but it is definitely there. Essie Davis's beleaguered single mother is experiencing a depressive break so crushing that it ruptures reality itself, which Jennifer Kent represents with an ever-evolving series of visual flourishes. The imagery is instantly iconic, as is the nightmarish performance of Noah Wiseman as her-- ahh-- troubled son.
Only in the film We Need to Talk about Kevin have I seen a parent/child relationship so suffocating, and so unflinchingly portrayed. When pretending like everything is okay is no longer an option, the ensuing confrontation with one's demons is sure to be consequential.
17. The Act of Killing
Is this the only nonfiction film on my list? I admit that documentary cinema is an enormous blind spot of mine; I tend to prefer fiction. In a way, so does The Act of Killing. As a roundabout method of convincing its subjects to openly engage with the genocide that they perpetrated, directors Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and Anonymous encourage them to recreate their life experiences in fully staged and realized film sequences. The result is a devastating exploration of the atrocities and beauty that can somehow cohabitate within a single human being. The creative team refuses to redeem these men, but they nonetheless show us their domesticity, their wit, and their companionship. This makes the horror all the more incomprehensible.
16. Roma
Alfonso Cuarón films grandiose spectacle. The director takes bold concepts and realizes them with flashy technique, never sacrificing a view of the whole for the splendor of a part. Here he makes his most intimate and personal work yet, a black and white film about a live-in housekeeper in Mexico City modeled after his mother. So what happens when you graft a director known for bombastic setpieces to a quiet story of reflective realism?
In this case, the answer is an intimate story with an epic scope. The cinematography (also Cuarón) is extraordinarily controlled, always doing so much work to establish space and isolate rich performance moments from Yalitza Aparicio. Yet the grandiosity is not absent. Routine moments are interrupted by the unimaginable, as in a subdued shopping scene that slowly blooms into a mass revolt. Cuarón is always seeking the sublime, best emblemized in a long tracking shot that sees Aparicio's character struggle into an ocean tide and get swallowed up. It's a stunning work of intergenerational connection, so small and yet so achingly large.
15. The Raid: Redemption
Many of the entries on this list have compelling characters, incisive dialogue, fascinating plot, rich themes. The Raid has none of that. The story is merely functional, workmanlike. There is a slumlord at the top of an apartment tower... our hero is part of a police raid... he has to get up there... also he loves his family. That's just about it.
What The Raid has that those other movies don't is an extraordinary understanding of story through action. The action here is so rich and complex that if any of those more sophisticated story elements were included, they would have simply gotten in the way! For the film is more or less one single extended combat gambit, with character relationships being teased out in quick breaths between moments of peril. Such peril it is! Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian prove themselves as premier martial artists based on this film alone, and the ruthless editing means we get to appreciate every single gesture. Gareth Evans has tremendous insight for when to simply get out of the way and let the choreography shine, and when to bust out an ostentatious camera maneuver to punctuate the action. The result is a most visceral parable, a pinnacle of modern action filmmaking.
14. Get Out
The release of Get Out was an important moment for a bunch of reasons. It was a startling coming out moment for the Jordan Peele formerly-known-as-comedian. To make a leap from goofy sketch comedy to brutal horror was not what anyone would have predicted, though with hindsight you can see his capacity for cinematic language in "Key & Peele," one of the most polished sketch shows in existence. It was also a rare 'political film' that crossed so many aisles you could consider it universal. Young Black revolutionaries saw it, old white racist grandmas saw it, and though not everyone loved it, the impact was felt across the board. That impact led to a surge of 'social horror' films over the last half decade, especially Black-led horror.
It would take a hell of a movie to get crusty ol' Hollywood to give opportunities to more Black artists. Get Out was certainly that, a searing film that is alternately devastating, silly, poignant, barbed. Peele's dissection of the violence of white liberalism was a desperately needed insight (one that actor Bradley Whitford famously misunderstood), but in the hands of many artists such necessary criticism turns hectoring. Peele dips all of his insights in harrowing interpersonal moments, like the iconic 'Sunken Place' sequence, or Betty Gabriel's haunting delivery of 'No no no no no no no no no no.' Centering a phenomenal cast is Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, the antidote to most horror protagonists' idiocy. His savvy skepticism is at once a refreshing break from genre convention, a safety raft for the audience's anxieties, and a taste of how much Black Americans see but don't say.
13. Ex Machina
Ex Machina has the components of schlocky sci-fi. A regular computer programmer is mysteriously selected to stay at a superscientist's compound and discuss his ultra-secret AI technology. Surely sci-fi antics will ensue! Alex Garland, who takes the director's chair after an already lengthy career screenwriting intelligent genre fiction, has something bigger in mind. Or smaller? See, a great deal of the film consists of techno-philosophical-ethical conversations between these two principal characters, as well as mesmerizing interactions with the AI herself. Through these 'human/machine' interviews, we gain the context to better understand the horrors of the scenario that were not immediately apparent to us. Then the movie excoriates us for not being aware in the first place.
Garland uses the structure of the film to raise the audience's awarness of our own role in systems of patriarchy and oppression. It's a spectacular trap. We spend the whole runtime speculating about the humanity of the AI in question, only to realize with sunken stomach that we had bought in all to easily to the humanity of the other characters in the first place. And if that be the case, what does it say about our own humanity?
12. World of Tomorrow
The only short film to make my list, The World of Tomorrow is a crowning achievement of animation director Don Hertzfeldt, who has too many crowning achievements to single one out. In brief, the film is an existential psychedelic sci-fi comedic drama about growing up, our many selves, and the unfinished fragility of all of existence. His signature stick figure style has never been so ambitious, a simplistic base that allows him to overpopulate and underpopulate frames for maximum effect. Best of all, the dialogue of the protagonist is supplied by the ramblings of Hertzfeldt's four year old niece, recorded while she was drawing and playing. The chipper non sequiturs of a little girl make for a loopy narrative shape. They also communicate the depth and breadth of insight to be found in the ideas of small children, if we would be patient enough to listen.
11. The Grand Budapest Hotel
Wes Anderson's work has gone from adored to mocked and back again, but the man never ceased bringing the heat. His symmetrical shots and deadpan delivery are easy to recognize, and when a pattern in art is easy to recognize, folks often feel superior to it. They are mistaking a crutch for a signature style. Anderson's films are eruptions of imagination reined in by rigid structure. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the best of the half dozen or so I've seen. It's also the only movie during which I was scolded in the theater for laughing too loudly.
The movie is a genre-bending frame-up suspense-comedy that follows a pair of concierges who work at a spectacular mountainside resort. The visuals, historical scope, and massive ensemble cast combine into the defining moment of an illustrious career. The bleeding heart of the movie is the sometimes stiff sometimes warm relationship between the leads, played by Ralph Fiennes and Tony Revolori. I don't know how anyone can witness the sparkling dialogue between these characters and still call Anderson's work 'stiff' 'aloof' or 'ironic.'
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