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In sitting down to write out this list, I expected much less trouble than I ended up having. What was in my mind as a weak year for cinema was anything but, perhaps weak in the multiplex sense but independently and internationally, there was an abundance of unique voices and visions.  

Really, this ended up being a top 30, ten favorites with about 20 honorable mentions that I felt deserved a mention. 18 of the 30 screened here at a/perture cinema in the last year, including a couple of sell-outs (here’s looking at you, Hundreds of Beavers and The People’s Joker), and I can’t wait to experience the next year of favorites with you all.  /JL

 

/Anora (Sean Baker) 

Sean Baker fit three different films into his Palme D’or winner, opening with a mismatched romantic comedy you’d see from a major studio in the 80’s (with Baker’s penchant for empathy towards historically ‘fringe’ characters), into a 30’s screwball comedy, with a focus on the class divide between the characters we are watching and the ones we don’t see throughout the act, and finally a devastating character study with patience and care towards the couple of characters we end up caring for the most. 

 

/Between the Temples (Nathan Silver) 

I’ve always been fond of Jason Schwartzman, but there’s been a shift in the last couple of years that has seen him emerge as truly one of our best working performers. Part of that excitement is the range of projects he selects, from taking on a new role with an old collaborator in Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City last year, to the slippery fellow expatriat he portrays in Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. But the possibilities seemed endless in teaming up with one of the most creative directors who worked in microbudget American cinema in the 2010’s, Nathan Silver. Add on the unbelievably wonderful Carol Kane as the former music teacher to Schwartzman’s grieving widow cantor, and you have the odd-couple movie of the year. Equally sweet and acidic, the film plays off your expectations as a Harold and Maude re-examination while finding plenty of grace notes in between the existential spiraling that Schwartzman and Silver portray so well. 

 

/Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice) 

Victor Erice returns after a 30-year filmmaking absence with an absolutely staggering masterpiece, reflecting on his life as an artist as well as a life lived through moving images. His two prior fiction features come full circle, with the lead child actress of The Spirit of the Beehive returning as an adult, the daughter of an actor who has gone missing during production of our protagonist’s film. The protagonist, Miguel Garay, has left filmmaking behind after his friend and lead actor vanished, leaving his film incomplete, much like Erice’s own El Sur, which only filmed half of his script after a producer called an end to the production. El Sur does not feel like an incomplete film however, yet you can feel the regret and acceptance in every frame of Close Your Eyes. If you’ve lived any amount of your life in dark rooms, watching old images projected onto a screen, this film is for you.  

 

/A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg) 

The most darkly comic film of the year, an unsettling hall of mirrors that forces you to witness an aspiring actor’s ego death happen over the course of two masterful hours of filmmaking. Sebastian Stan more than proves his depth and range as Edward, a wannabe actor who’s neurofibromatosis manifests as a facial disfigurement that causes him almost as much trouble as his crippling anxiety. When an experimental treatment comes along with the chance to give him a new face, he quickly tries it, only to find the surface-level fix does little to fix the rest of his issues. Adam Pearson arrives as Oswald, dealing with a similar facial disfigurement to Edward, only exacerbates the issue with his incredible charm and ease with how he moves through the world, and into the life of Edward’s neighbor and director, Ingrid, as Renate Reinsve plays a much worse person than her breakthrough role in The Worst Person in the World. Viciously funny and perfectly-tuned, extra points are deserved for casting the best American independent filmmaker you probably haven’t heard of, Patrick Wang, as the director of a workplace video Edward stars in.  

 

/Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross IV, Turner Ross) 

The Ross Brothers remain two of the most interesting directors working today, coming off their masterpiece Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets in 2020. It feels unfortunately important to note they utilize documentary techniques within narrative frameworks, casting first-time actors to fill in the details between plot. This story of five Oregon teens fleeing their small town on a poorly-planned road trip to the coast feels like the best filmic representation of Gen Z, their phones are often out, but their appetite for adventure and wide range of music tastes span generations. Whatever the Ross Brothers do, it’s worth seeking out.  

 

/Hard Truths (Mike Leigh) 

Embarrassingly, I had never seen a Mike Leigh film before this year. In going through his filmography, you notice a certain structure with constant variations that he revisits. A lot of your personal enjoyment may vary on how annoyed you are by the main characters initially, but usually come around to by the end as you learn more about them and their situations, what made them the hyper-specific characters they are. Hard Truths follows this, but the conclusion feels especially heartbreaking. Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy is the best performance I’ve seen this year, swinging from wild fury to reserved heartbreak within scenes, fully presenting a broken human who is avoidant, but hopefully not forever reticent to change. 

 

/Janet Planet (Annie Baker) 

There’s something about the way first-time filmmaker Annie Baker uses close-ups in her debut that somehow gives more detail to the image than other filmmaker’s busy wide shots. Told from 11-year-old Lacy’s perspective, we follow her and her magnetic mother, Janet through a summer in the early 90’s. Every detail is small and specific but feels huge with the weight of memory and perspective. Julianne Nicholson takes a great leading role and runs with it after a long career of outstanding supporting parts, and Annie Baker transitions seamlessly from the stage to the screen, undoubtedly one of our most exciting new filmmakers.  

 

/La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) 

You can learn how movies are made, the technical details and craftsmanship that goes into creating a frame, but even with that you will come across films that seem like they are so effortless, magical and full of life that it’s impossible to imagine the minutiae that comes with film production. Alice Rohrwacher has become one of the greatest magical realist filmmakers we have, between her previous film Happy as Lazzaro and La Chimera, following a group of Italian grave-robbers led by Josh O’Connor’s Arthur, who is also seeking his lost love, the one thing he can’t seem to find. Veering between comedy, romance and dream-like visions with such confidence seems impossible, yet Rohrwacher keeps surprising and growing her vision and skills.  

 

/Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

Nickel Boys belongs in a rare class of film, notable for how it uses the basic tools of cinema to tell the story, albeit in increasingly inventive ways. Portrait of a Lady on Fire and The Zone of Interest are other recent entries to this class, all three utilizing perspective primarily, along with editing and sound to place the audience firmly in the headspace of the protagonists, not giving you any other option than to connect to their vision. In a time where the art of directing is quickly being lost in popular filmmaking, artists like RaMell Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray must be celebrated and encouraged to continue developing their storytelling techniques and creating new works like this one. Despite the loose comparison above, I’ve never seen a film like this before.

 

/The Substance (Coralie Fargeat) 

It’s over the top, for sure, but self aware enough to not take itself too seriously without pulling its punches. The kind of film that completely makes sense why one person wouldn’t enjoy it, while it becoming a favorite of someone else. The filmmaking is thrilling, the performances are perfectly pitched, and the ending is simultaneously the grossest and funniest of the year. There’s not much more to say except for being excited to hear what each individual person took away from this one.  

 

/Special Mention

/Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley) 

The studio comedy is dead, long live YouTube comedy features? In 52 minutes, directors and stars Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley, and a handful of the funniest people the average comedy fan has never heard of deliver the best comedy film I’ve seen in years. Your mileage may vary, but anything this unabashedly silly and stupid (in the best way possible) is worth recognition in my book. One night in Tobyhanna, PA circa 2010, three friends unite to record a rap album. They end up doing nearly anything but that in a timeless ode to friendship and independence, or at least the illusion of the latter.  

 

 

/Honorable Mentions 

/All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia) 

/The Beast (Bertrand Bonello) 

/The Brutalist (Brady Corbet) 

/Daughters (Angela Patton, Natalie Rae) 

/Dìdi (弟弟) (Sean Wang) 

/Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude) 

/Evil Does Not Exist (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi) 

/Ghostlight (Alex Thompson, Kelly O’Sullivan) 

/Good One (India Donaldson) 

/Here (Bas Devos) 

/Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik) 

/In Our Day (Hong Sang-Soo) 

/Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood) 

/Music (Angela Schalenec) 

/Nosferatu (Robert Eggers) 

/The People’s Joker (Vera Drew) 

/Problemista (Julio Torres) 

/Red Rooms (Pascal Plante) 

/The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof) 

/Sugarcane (Julian Brave Noise Cat, Emily Kassie) 

 

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