The 100 Best Movies of the Decade

INHERENT-VICE

“Inherent Vice” (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)

So dense and hazy that it was probably destined to be the most under-appreciated of Paul Thomas Anderson’s films, “Inherent Vice” is a strung-out noir odyssey through the fog of late capitalism that grows a little clearer every time you watch it. A little sadder, too. Shot like a faded postcard, and as untethered from reality as its source material requires, this rare Thomas Pynchon adaptation borrows a lot from sun-dappled L.A. noir like “The Long Goodbye,” but it’s sillier and more sentimental than Philip Marlowe ever was.

Per genre tradition, the central mystery is actually several different mysteries all knotted together; good luck untangling what a heroin addict’s missing husband has to do with a real estate developer named Mickey Wolfmann and a drug cartel that calls itself the Golden Fang. But while the plot may be hard to follow, PTA compensates by making the film’s emotional underpinnings as clear as Doc Sportello’s view of the California coastline.

The lost love between hippie P.I. Sportello (a magnificently frazzled Joaquin Phoenix) and his ex (a bittersweet Katherine Waterston) is achingly well-realized in just a few short scenes, while the pervasive sense of a country in decline is suffused into the atmosphere like so many “patchouli farts” (to borrow one of the best insults from a film that has dozens to spare). Forget “Boogie Nights” and the illusion of American possibility, “Inherent Vice” burrows into the feeling that we’ve already let it get away from us — that we’re all out there chasing our own tails and waiting for the fog to burn off.—DE

THE-LONELIEST-PLANET

“The Loneliest Planet” (Julia Loktev, 2011)

Julia Loktev’s narrative debut “Day Night Day Night” was a sharp revisionist approach to the slow-burn thriller that followed a suicide bomber wandering the streets of New York City. “The Loneliest Planet” transplanted the filmmaker’s unique storytelling instincts to a quieter setting, as a wayward couple (Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) on vacation in the wilderness of Georgia encounter a sudden attack at gunpoint that changes the nature of their relationship. The encounter lasts mere seconds, but its unspoken impact lingers as the campers roam from one location to the next, uncertain about their future together and how to address it.

A few years later, Ruben Östlund would enter similar terrain with the masterful dark comedy “Force Majeure,” but Loktev probes her conundrum in pure cinematic terms: Her movie deals with the assumptions about trust and companionship that so often go unquestioned until they’re forced into the open, but it never states its themes outright. The tension bursts into the story and then sits there, like an open wound, while its extraordinary performances address the rich thematic depths of each disquieting scene. Loktev hasn’t made a movie since then, but her two features together speak to the unique anxieties of this present moment — what it means to experience a sudden shock to the system, and then linger in the fallout, uncertain what to do next.—EK

THE-GREAT-GATSBY

“The Great Gatsby” (Baz Luhrmann, 2013)

Baz Luhrmann’s movies have such a pulse that by the time you’re done watching one you feel like it’s in your bloodstream. No wonder some people hate them. But if you can get on their wavelength, there’s nothing more purely cinematic. “The Great Gatsby” is Luhrmann’s style distilled to its most potent essence, more a visual concept album riffing on Scott Fitzgerald’s novel than an adaptation; it has a lot more in common with “Lemonade” and The National’s “I Am Easy To Find” than the Francis Ford Coppola-adapted “Gatsby” from 1974. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jay Gatsby might as well be Jay-Z Gatsby (Jay-Z was a producer of Luhrmann’s film and contributed several tracks to it), a self-made gangster with a poetic streak, committed to outrageous experiences of sensation to fill the hole inside. Luhrmann crams enough sensation into his frames to overwhelm the retinas — this is one of three or four movies to justify a 3-D release this decade — and to put you in the front seat of a life, and a society, racing to a head-on crash.—CB

ALL-THESE-SLEEPLESS-NIGHTS

“All These Sleepless Nights” (Michal Marczak, 2016)

As the last 10 years have seen non-fiction cinema continue to untether itself from convention with bold results, forward-thinking figures such as RaMell Ross and Robert Greene have pushed the form and helped galvanize the idea that documentary filmmakers are bonafide artists, not just glorified reporters or historians. With “All These Sleepless Nights,” Polish director Michal Marczak didn’t just blur the line between fact and invention, he danced all over it until the sun came up. Free of binary or hybrid distinctions, his wandering portrait of beautiful and aimless Warsaw youths cohered into an unclassifiable wonder that sits comfortably somewhere between Terrence Malick and the restless spirit of the French New Wave. 

Nothing else this decade quite tapped into the bittersweet euphoria that Marczak was able to capture through his camera, which the director wielded with a custom rig that he designed himself in order to trace the ephemeral moments that spark when his characters twirl down the empty city streets and dance through each other’s lives. Creating a cinematic language far more sophisticated and satisfying than the handheld aesthetic that so many of today’s scripted indies port over from documentary filmmaking, “All These Sleepless Nights” is a miraculous film that, decades from now, we will recognize as being light years ahead of its time.—CO

GIRL-WALK-ALL-DAY

“Girl Walk // All Day” (Jacob Krupnick, 2011)

The 2010s promised a new era of run-and-gun DIY filmmaking, as the ability for regular people to shoot and share their own content was sure to wash away the old rules in a massive wave of micro-budget cinema. It didn’t quite pan out that way. While iPhones became an invaluable resource for documentarians (and a creative gold rush for generations of budding artists on platforms like Vine and YouTube), feature-length fiction was largely immune to the charms of consumer-grade digital technology. Sean Baker (and Steven Soderbergh with “High Flying Bird”) found a way to make it work on a big-screen level, but only because the raw and unvarnished immediacy of a pocket-sized camera served the story they were telling. Most creators were so focused on how smartphones and DSLRs can simulate traditional equipment that they failed to realize how this tech can do things that film cameras never could.

And then there’s “Girl Walk // All Day,” a visionary and euphoric work of lighting-in-a-bottle genius that only exists because director Jacob Krupnick recognized what the rest of the world had yet to figure out for themselves: In an age where the line between public and private spaces was about to be erased forever, art could happen at all times — anywhere and to anyone. 

An endlessly re-watchable bit of Vimeo kitsch that uses Girl Talk’s mashup album “All Day” as the soundtrack for an exuberant modern ballet, and the whole of Manhattan as its stage, “Girl Walk // All Day” begins with a rebellious young dancer (the fearless, Moira Shearer-worthy Anne Marsen) escaping from a stuffy barre class and follows her across the city as she sparks a love triangle and injects some life into a city of automatons. Funded via Kickstarter, released directly online, and full of stolen locations (e.g. a ferry, an Apple Store, Central Park) that it bends to its will, the film is a joyous trip through the looking glass that separates physical and digital spaces — the world as it is, and the world as we have the power to make it.—DE

THE-ARBOR

“The Arbor” (Clio Barnard, 2010)

Clio Barnard masterfully assembles narrative tropes with documentary tricks to tell the complex story of lauded British playwright Andrea Dunbar in a film that’s as fresh today as the day she conceived it. Named after Dunbar’s play of the same title, Barnard uses staged recreations and various actors to unspool a look at Dunbar’s exceedingly rough upbringing and her unshakable desire to succeed, all while lip-syncing to actual interviews from Dunbar and her family. Mostly focused on her fraught relationship with daughter Lorraine, “The Arbor” uses a seemingly basic story to frame a wildly original and unique storytelling conceit. Each drama can have its own telling, its own force, and Barnard embraces that it in rewarding ways that never fail to surprise. —KE

HAPPY-HOUR

“Happy Hour” (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke, 2015)

“Happy Hour” is five hours long, but that only sounds like a lot until you start watching it. Launching writer-director Hamaguchi Ryūsuke onto the world stage, this gentle domestic opus eases into the lives of four middle-aged women in Kobe, Japan, criss-crossing their daily trivialities into a rich mosaic that stretches out like the kind of thing that Mikio Naruse would make if he were alive in the limitless age of digital video.

The movie is absorbing from the moment it starts, as Hamaguchi’s exquisite cast of actresses forge a palpable bond that immediately convinces you of their 25-year history. These characters are all working through their own stuff (one is seeking a divorce, another is struggling to accommodate her mother-in-law, and so on), but they’re working through it in the same way we all do: Quietly, as if trying to put on a show while keeping most of themselves hidden behind a curtain. Ambling from one tremendous setpiece to another, “Happy Hour” gives us the time to suss out the difference between feeling and expression. By the end of it, even the most fleeting and ordinary moments seem to contain entire worlds. —DE

MOTHER-OF-GEORGE

“Mother of George” (Andrew Dosunmu, 2013)

Devastating and dazzling in equal measure, Andrew Dosunmu’s Brooklyn-set breakthrough drama tells the story of a Nigerian woman (a standout Danai Gurira) who’s struggling to conceive a child with her new husband (Claire Denis and Jim Jarmusch favorite Isaac de Bankolé). The rare movie to shine a light on the lives and customs of Nigerian immigrants, “Mother of George” is exquisitely staged by Dosunmu — who makes full use of his background as both a Nigerian-American and a fashion photographer — and lushly photographed by cinematographer Bradford Young, who would leverage his work here into shooting the likes of “Selma” and “Arrival.” The film’s beauty, however, is never self-serving. Dosunmu uses it as a lens through which to clarify the power of love and the possibility of betrayal as those twin energies flow through a woman who’s caught between the weight of tradition and the pull of modernity. Made for the big screen but still waiting for a big audience, “Mother of George” is not only one of the best films of this decade, it will also be one of the best discoveries of the next. —TO

INTO-THE-SPIDERVERSE

“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman, 2018)

As inviting to Spidey newcomers as it is rewarding for diehard fans, this Oscar-winning curveball to the Spider-Man canon is hilarious, touching, and so thoughtfully crafted in regards to its eye-popping animation and layered storyline that it becomes almost impossible not to care for Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino Brooklyn high schooler at the center of the film. The thrilling, inter-dimensional journey on which Miles embarks is made all the more fun by the other Spider-heroes he meets along the way (including Peter Parker, Gwendolyn Stacy, and Spider-Man Noir), each of whom the script renders with purpose and care. “Into the Spider-Verse” emphasizes the idea that there’s no one way a hero needs to look or a specific background that they need to come from, and it does so in an effortless, non-performative way. In a decade where it felt like there was a new Spider-Man movie every other week, this was the only one that spun the character into something special.—LL

FIRE-AT-SEA

“Fire at Sea” (Gianfranco Rosi, 2016)

An intimate and sobering look at the heart of Europe’s ongoing refugee crisis, Gianfranco Rosi’s “Fire at Sea” still feels as urgent as the evening news — so urgent, in fact, that most films like it would probably have succumbed to their raw value as a public service. But this Oscar-nominated documentary is pure Rosi, which is to say that it’s rooted in the poetics of cinema. 

“Fire at Sea” is told largely from the point of view of Samuele, a 10-year-old boy who lives on the sleepy Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. In the waters just beyond what Samuele can see from his bedroom, a near-daily life-and-death battle rages as rescue boats try to save hundreds of desperate refugees trying to reach European shores. For Rosi, this juxtaposition between Samuele’s self-contained universe and the humanitarian crisis that’s spreading across the sea — close in proximity, but a world apart — is a damning metaphor for modern-day Europe. It’s a simple connection on its surface, but one that Rosi cut into with his camera until he exposes the raw feeling lurking underneath. 

The filmmaker religiously avoids expositional tools like title cards, voiceover narration, talking-head interviews, or any formal construct that might put the story in a larger context. On the contrary, Rosi thinks of his films in terms of color, light and composition. He studies his subjects and locations for months, so that once his skeleton crew finally begins shooting they know what they’re looking for, and are able to locate it inside a specific frame that’s capable of capturing a lifetime of focused emotions. “Fire at Sea” is a profound and unshakeable testament to the scalpel-like precision of Rosi’s approach; a harrowing masterpiece that will always be haunted by a horror that much of the world preferred to ignore. —CO

PRIVATE-LIFE

“Private Life” (Tamara Jenkins, 2018)

Given their tendencies to play New York City misanthropes, it’s a wonder Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti have never played opposite each other before; the only predictable thing about Tamara Jenkins’ “Private Life” is that these two are absolute fire together as a downtown couple struggling with infertility. An expert in rendering and observing the specific heartbreaks of contemporary life, Jenkins crafted her long-awaited third feature — a neurotic passion play of sorts — into a biting exploration of the indignities of aging. That process grows infinitely more complicated for these characters after their ennui is upended by their bubbly niece (a revelatory Kayli Carter), whose youth and adoration make all things seem possible. Jenkins’ nuanced script handles the discomfort with heartbreak, hilarity, and grace in a film that continues to grow inside you long after it’s over.—JD

SUPPORT-THE-GIRLS

“Support the Girls” (Andrew Bujalski, 2018)

Regina Hall is astonishing in Andrew Bujalski’s touching look at an earnest woman who manages a sleazy Texas “breastauraunt,” where many things go wrong over the course of a single hectic day. Bujalski’s typically subdued, character-based storytelling takes on a new volume of warmth and sensitivity with this striking examination of surviving difficult times through unbridled empathy. That might sound cheesy, but Bujalski’s such a wizard when it comes to scripting authentic dialogue that “Support the Girls” may as well be a documentary. Hall’s manager juggles each new challenge with a steely resolve that makes her one of Bujalski’s greatest characters, the indefatigable creation of a filmmaker who excels at exploring the nuances of human behavior.

Though it’s been lumped in with that non-existent movement known as “mumblecore,” Bujalski’s perceptive filmmaking has always existed in a class of its own. He excels at capturing quirky, alienated characters trapped by routine and insular communities (“Mutual Appreciation,” “Results”) but “Support the Girls” takes that skill to new symbolic heights. The image of its three central women hollering from a rooftop defines the zeitgeist with a blend of hilarity and emotional catharsis; it illustrates what can happen when a subtle filmmaker operates at the height of his powers.—EK

WE-NEED-TO-TALK-ABOUT-KEVIN

“We Need to Talk About Kevin” (Lynne Ramsay, 2011)

Lynne Ramsay crafted one of the decade’s most unnerving nightmares in “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” which the filmmaker adapted from Lionel Shriver’s 2003 novel of the same name. The non-linear story centers on a mother (Tilda Swinton) whose son (breakout Ezra Miller) commits a heinous tragedy of some kind, but the genius of Ramsay’s script is in how it buries the facts under layers of trauma, effectively fracturing the film between the mother’s emotional states before and after the violent act. Working with editor Joe Bini, Ramsay jumps back and forth between the timelines in triggering fashion to create an impressionistic yet palpable look at one woman’s psychological breakdown. Swinton’s delicate behavior is the only thing that orients each scene, turning her mental state into a tactile kind of geography that grows even scarier when you start to get lost in it. “We Need to Talk About Kevin” wasn’t billed as a horror movie in the strictest sense, but few films this decade offered more viscerally unnerving experiences. —ZS

HER-SMELL

“Her Smell” (Alex Ross Perry, 2018)

Alex Ross Perry’s work has always had the courage to be unpleasant, but none of his previous stuff prepared us for the incredible sourness of “Her Smell,” which is one of the most noxious movies ever made before it hits bottom and tunnels out through the other side. A pungent Shakespearean epic starring a feral, unforgettable Elisabeth Moss as the drug-fueled Becky Something — a sinking ship of a woman who seems hellbent on dragging the rest of her riot grrrl band down into the abyss along with her — “Her Smell” essentially takes the basic structure of Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs” and transposes it over the life and times of Courtney Love.

The film is a full-body experience from start to finish — a 360-degree nightmare that cools into a cold sweat. The relentless first chapters snake their way through a fluorescent, Gaspar Noé-like underworld of ego and addiction, while the closing acts condense into a kind of morning frost that’s cold enough to feel on your own skin. Moss stomps through the movie like a piss-spewing cross between Gena Rowlands and the Phantom of the Opera, while the supporting cast around her is stacked with brilliant actors who disappear into their characters’ double lives. Smeared together by Sean Price Williams’ queasy neon cinematography and Keegan DeWitt’s panic attack of a score, Perry’s magnum opus crescendoes into a cathartic portrait of personal demons and their collateral damage. In a risk-averse time when many filmmakers were too afraid of their own shadows to make great art, Perry’s poignant barnstormer warmed our hearts by setting fire to everything in sight. —DE

KATE-PLAYS-CHRISTINE

“Kate Plays Christine” (Robert Greene, 2016)

Wrapped inside the very conceit that drives Robert Greene’s “Kate Plays Christine” is a disturbing, immovable truism: It’s impossible to know for certain why anyone would kill themselves. And yet, Greene’s beguiling documentary and narrative hybrid challenged actress Kate Lyn Sheil to solve that mystery as best she could, as the film unspools a real-life tragedy while also following Sheil’s process of trying to understand why her “character” shot herself in the head on live television. 

In 1974, Christine Chubbuck — a television reporter for a local Sarasota, Florida TV station — abruptly ended a lifetime of unhappiness by killing herself during the morning news. “Kate Plays Christine” takes an ambitious angle on Chubbuck’s sordid tale, mixing fact and fiction to present the story of an actress grappling with her preparations to play Chubbuck in a narrative feature that doesn’t actually exist. Sheil is tasked with embodying a heightened version of herself, and also Chubbuck in a series of re-enactments. 

The film tweaks its many fundamental contrivances to its advantage, as the multi-layered structure emphasizes the elusiveness of the film’s underlying mysteries. The frustrating search, which includes an obsessive hunt for a rumored tape of the actual suicide, fuels Greene’s ultimate interest: The elusive nature of truth and the documentary form itself. All of Greene’s films are fascinated with the nature of performance in nonfiction, and here his collaboration and friction with Sheil builds towards the most provocative moment of his career so far, as Sheil is made to reenact the suicide in a way that forces the audience to confront our own need for hard answers. —CO

THE-ILLUSIONIST

“The Illusionist” (Sylvain Chomet, 2010)

Sorry “Toy Story 3,” the most shattering ending to an animated film you’ll see this century is the haunting coda to “The Illusionist,” Sylvain Chomet’s hand-drawn adaptation of an unproduced Jacques Tati script the French comic master wrote between “Mon Oncle” and “Playtime.” Concerning the delicate bond that forms between a threadbare magician and an orphan girl who believes his magic is real, the story is thought by some Tati scholars to be his attempt at reaching out to the daughter he abandoned as an infant.

Controversy surrounded the film’s release because, not only did Tati choose not to make it himself (and otherwise never even publicly acknowledged the daughter he left behind), but the film seems to continue to erase her existence. Those are valid criticisms, but the film is so damn sad it seems to confront them head-on. When the magician finally abandons the girl, as Tati had in real life, he leaves her a note that simply reads: “Magicians do not exist.” Yes, that sound you hear is your heart being ripped out of your chest. The feeling that follows is subtler, sadder even somehow, and yet also hopeful: We still need illusions, especially when we no longer believe in them. —CB

BEASTS-OF-THE-SOUTHERN-WILD

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” (Benh Zeitlin, 2012)

A dazzling ode to resilience and self-reliance that pops off the screen like a fireworks display, Benh Zeitlin’s “Beasts of the Southern Wild” is grand in scope, and mind-bogglingly ambitious for a debut film shot on a modest budget. In a forgotten but defiant bayou community that seems to be leveed off from the rest of the world, a six-year-old girl named Hushpuppy (played wonderfully by then-newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis) is faced with more than any child her age should ever have to handle.

The audience is planted in this fantastical world and navigates it through the perspective of the film’s singular, curious young heroine; the film’s success depends entirely on the young first-time actress asked to fill the character’s tiny shoes. Wallis, who went on to be nominated for an Oscar, is a miniature force of nature unto herself, a tempest in a teapot brimming with raw charisma and a hunger for everything the world might throw her way. Along with the sweep of Zeitlin and Lucy Alibar’s story and the bombast of Dan Romer’s score (which Zeitlin also co-wrote), Wallis helped elevate “Beasts of the Southern Wild” into a new kind of modern American folklore. —TO

SYNONYMS

“Synonyms” (Nadav Lapid, 2019)

A singular misadventure about the violence of trying to supplant one self with another, Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms” is an astonishing, maddening, brilliant, hilarious, obstinate, and altogether essential film. Not since “Waltz with Bashir” have the movies produced such a lucid and self-loathing portrait of Israeli identity. Co-produced by “Toni Erdmann” director Maren Ade, and loosely based on Lapid’s own experience as a young soldier who fled to Paris because he believed that he was born in the Middle East by mistake, the “Policeman” filmmaker’s disorienting third feature tightened his career-long fascination with the impossible knot that ties a person to their country.

First-time actor Tom Mercier delivers one of the decade’s best (or at least most exposed) breakout performances as Yoav, a twentysomething who arrives in Paris with a pledge to never speak another word of Hebrew. Alas, the rich young couple he falls in with don’t make it easy for Yoav to sort himself out. In broad strokes, his story becomes the unshakeable story of a man who’s grown tired of carrying the baggage that comes with being an Israeli, and who’s driven to the brink of madness by a world that forcibly identifies people by the place they were born. It’s a raw and intransigent tale, and one that’s sure to provoke a fascinating shitstorm when it hits theaters this fall. —DE

SUNSET-SONG

“Sunset Song” (Terence Davies, 2015)

Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s 1932 novel “Sunset Song” had been swelling inside Terence Davies for more than 40 years, and the sensitive British filmmaker — who suffers an almost religious torment in the process of bringing his projects to the screen — had been trying to adapt the book for almost as long. Some things are worth the wait.

“Sunset Song” offers a plaintive War World I-era story of a tall Aberdeenshire farm girl named Chris Guthrie (a magnificent Agyness Deyn) who feels closer to her family’s land than she does any of the men who try to reap it with her, and gorgeous 65mm cinematography makes it easy to appreciate that attachment. The film accumulates a tender beauty as the narrative slowly melts into myth, and — as the war takes hold — Chris becomes less of an individual woman than an undying symbol of femininity and forgiveness. 

It was a natural progression for Davies, who sculpts by omission and tells impossibly wistful stories in the time between time. His films are rooted in memory and swaddled by nostalgia, suspended between an acutely remembered past and the unbearably painful present that it left in its wake. With Chris, he found a character who feels that dislocation in her bones, and the ache of it would be too much to bear if not for the strength of her roots. “Nothing endured but the land,” she says, sublimating herself into the earth itself. “Sea, sky, and the folk who lived there were but a breath. But the land endured. And she felt in the moment that she was the land.”—DE

HIGH-LIFE

“High Life” (Claire Denis, 2018)

In many respects, the mesmerizing and elusive “High Life” was a first for writer-director Claire Denis: The first of her films to be shot primarily in English, the first of her films to be set in space, and the first of her films to follow Juliette Binoche inside a metal chamber that’s referred to as “The Fuckbox,” where the world’s finest actress — playing a mad scientist aboard an intergalactic prison ship on a one-way trip to Earth’s nearest black hole — straddles a giant dildo chair and violently masturbates in a scene that’s endowed with the tortured energy of a Cirque du Soleil routine.

An oblique and freeze-dried hunk of sci-fi that’s wrestling with the future (or the lack of it) and preoccupied with the obsidian darkness that stretches out before us all, “High Life” is as horrifying and monolith-black a space odyssey as you might expect from the mind behind “Trouble Every Day” and “Beau Travail.” But Denis’ genius is in her ability to find the tender spots in even the most apocalyptic of circumstances, and her best film of the last decade is all the more powerful for how it finds light and hope as it soars towards oblivion. Plus, it features a scene in which Pattinson warns us about the dangers of eating our own shit. The more you know! —DE

NO-HOME-MOVIE

“No Home Movie” (Chantal Akerman, 2015)

The concept of home was always at the center of Chantal Akerman’s 40-year body of work, which is what makes her final film such a deeply felt exploration, and gave it the feeling of a culmination even before the filmmaker took her own life in October 2015. The documentary is a portrait of Akerman’s mother, Natalie, at the end of her life. In a series of intimate conversations — over Skype and in her kitchen — about Natalie’s experience as a Holocaust survivor and her experience as an immigrant in her adopted home of Brussels, Akerman attempts to capture her mother’s essence and memory on camera, as any number of people have done with their ailing loved ones since the spread of digital technology.

Yet “No Home Movie,” which Akerman edited from over 40 hours of footage after her mother passed away, is hardly just an act of preservation. On the contrary, it hews closer to self-portraiture, as the film poignantly erodes into another piercing examination of Akerman’s rootless existence. Tying together several of the threads that Akerman had always pulled at, “No Home Movie” nods at a lifetime of nomadism, and dissects the complicated role that her mother played as her constant; Akerman saw Natalie as a siren’s call away from her isolation (see 1977’s “News from Home”), and “No Home Movie” brings the two women face-to-face in a way that echoes with decades of cinematic tension.

A formalist if ever there was one, Akerman stated that “No Home Movie” was shot in the spirit of a home movie because, “I think if I knew I was going to do this, I wouldn’t have dared to do it.” Yet by embracing elements of the home movie form — regardless of what the film’s title tells us — Akerman crafted a film so clear and acutely mundane that it feels like an act of holding on and letting go at the same time. “No Home Movie” is a perfect distillation of how it feels to say goodbye, both to a loved one and an artist.—CO

KUMIKO-THE-TREASURE-HUNTER

“Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” (David & Nathan Zellner, 2014)

Nothing about “Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter” could have prepared audiences for its greatness. Not the oddball premise, about a lonely Japanese woman (Rinko Kikuchi) who believes the premise of “Fargo” is real and decided to hunt for buried treasure in frozen Minnesota. Not the quirky nature of her journey, which includes a rabbit sidekick named Bunzo and various eccentric characters who can’t understand a word Kumiko says. And not even anything else in sibling directors David and Nathan Zellner’s previous oeuvre. The Austin auteurs had been quietly cranking out surreal dark comedies for years before this somewhat larger-scale effort, but the movie takes their prankish storytelling to new tonal heights, with a melancholic look at one woman consumed by fantasy that sympathizes with her outlandish cause.

No wonder Alexander Payne signed on as an executive producer: Like his best work, “Kumiko” finds something weird and wonderful in the mythology of middle America, even as it acknowledges that giving into that myth can often lead to a harsh reality check. Kumiko’s ultimate fate is a brilliant encapsulation of what it means to live within the confines of popular culture until it eats you alive. Bunzo may often steal the show, but Kumiko is a singular character whose journey ranks as one of the most memorable cinematic plights of the past decade, building on the universe of one great story and forging another one in the process. —EK

INSIDE-OUT

“Inside Out” (Pete Docter, 2015)

It remains an inexplicable achievement that a film based on emotional caricatures — one that casts Lewis Black as the bright-red personification of anger — is among the most accurate and nuanced depictions of childhood in recent memory. Pixar elevates its “simple stories, complex characters” mantra to a new level as we watch Joy, Fear, Anger, Sadness, and Disgust interact inside the mind of a young girl. What could have been a clichéd “Herman’s Head” update ultimately serves as a celebration of the need for contradictory feelings to coexist. The perfectly-cast emotions are offered in just the right doses, the gags (“Congratulations, San Francisco, you’ve ruined pizza!”) are funny without grating, and the film earns its surprising-yet-obvious conclusion that sadness is an essential part of life. 

At its best, Pixar produces animated films that delight children without ever condescending to them. But after a few rough years of sequels and cash grabs, audiences couldn’t be blamed for asking if the studio had lost its touch. Then came “Inside Out.” By showing an 11-year-old girl’s mind as complex enough to merit exploration, and doing so with an instantly-graspable plot device, the studio fulfilled its brand promise and then some. Wrapped in a Technicolor bow that never feels moralizing, “Inside Out” is the most compelling argument Pixar could make for its ongoing place in American pop culture. —CZ

THE-SOUVENIR

“The Souvenir” (Joanna Hogg, 2019)

There’s never much doubt that the loutish Anthony (Tom Burke) isn’t a good match for the starry-eyed (a breakout Honor Swinton Byrne), spending their first few dates insulting her filmmaking ambitions to her face and dragging her around upmarket settings he has zero interest in engaging with. And yet. Based loosely on filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s own film school years, complete with her own wrenching romance, “The Souvenir” recreates the runaway feeling of being young, dumb, and totally unaware of how the choices you make when you’re still a child can impact the rest of your life. 

Those are some lessons that Julie will learn the hard way, with Hogg cleverly opening the film with a bushy-tailed Julie pitching a film idea to an wary committee. She wants to do something following an underprivileged community, when it’s very clear she has no experience in that realm and is woefully unprepared for what she might find there. It’s a meeting that sets the stage for what’s to come, as Julie grows in fits and starts and Anthony reveals himself to be even more unsuitable than previously believed. In the simplest terms, “The Souvenir” is about an ill-fated romance, told through a late-blooming coming-of-age story, but it’s mostly about how we never grow out of those things, no matter how much popular culture — like movies! — force us to believe otherwise. There’s plenty left behind, the scars and the memories, a souvenir of heartbreak that will never fully heal, and perhaps shouldn’t. —KE

LEAVE-NO-TRACE

“Leave No Trace” (Debra Granik, 2018)

It’s tempting, these days more than ever, to want to stop the world and get off; you don’t need to be a PTSD-suffering war veteran like Ben Foster’s done-with-life Will to want to walk off the grid and leave it all behind. He and his daughter, Tom (the remarkable Thomasin McKenzie), live in the woods, uncorrupted by the pressures and compromises of modern life and the conformity it demands. But he’s deeply damaged, and Tom does deserve to have an education and a proper roof over her head. Granik’s only narrative feature since “Winter’s Bone” builds to one of the most powerful scenes of the decade, a moment which proves the filmmaker’s mastery of eliciting emotion from her actors’ most quiet gestures. She understands that seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time, and shows how that can become the key to empathy. —CB

“A Star Is Born”

“A Star Is Born” (Bradley Cooper, 2018)

Memes aside, the essential scene of Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” doesn’t involve a slightly exasperated Lady Gaga turning around to accept one last look from Cooper’s grizzled, gravelly Jackson Maine. It’s the one just before it, when a still-shy Ally (Gaga) pumps herself up enough to belt an original song in front of an already-hungover Jackson Maine (Cooper) in the middle of a midnight parking lot. You can see the songwriter debating the merits of what she’s about to do in the presence of one of the music world’s apparent great talents, downtrodden and whiskey-soaked and already at least half in love with her, and then she just…does it. A few movie minutes later, she’ll be doing the same thing in front of thousands of screaming fans, and knowing what’s to come — it’s “Shallow,” of course — doesn’t dilute a drop of the sequence’s power.

While “A Star Is Born” has, across four films, always offered up a two-pronged approach to the fame trajectory, following one star has she rises, the other as he falls, Cooper’s film is really about Ally more than it’s about Jackson. (That the film’s major twist, if you can call it that after three earlier films, is about Jackson does not detract from this bent.) Gaga is more than up for the challenge, but the generosity of the film extends to Cooper’s hard-won performance, alongside supporting turns from players as diverse as Sam Elliott and Andrew Dice Clay. This is a film in which every moment, every breath, every look matters (thank you, cinematographer Matthew Libatique), set to a stirring soundtrack and gorgeous scenery for added “oh, look, it’s my first film” jealousy points. There’s nothing to be jealous of here though, not really, because once the film wrings the tears from its audience — those too are hard-won — it’s hard to feel anything but wonder that this story still holds such a sway. Some stars shine forever.—KE

THE-LAST-JEDI

“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (Rian Johnson, 2017)

“The hero generally gains little or no reward for his sacrifice — it is the community that gains,” wrote Howard Suber in “The Power of Film.” “To choose heroism is to choose pain, sacrifice, loss, and sometimes even death.” In “The Last Jedi,” the Star Wars saga grappled with the tragic underpinnings of the “hero’s journey” as it never had before.

Forty years after the original, the saga grew up — and some of its fans couldn’t handle it. In this most mythic of Star Wars films, rendered in the boldest of cinematic strokes by Rian Johnson, there was no happily ever after for Luke Skywalker. But he does live up to the purest ideal of the Jedi: Like he does in his final battle with Darth Vader, he throws his lightsaber away, realizing that a sacrifice of himself will distract his enemies and allow his beloved “community” to survive. John Williams mixed leitmotifs from all seven of the previous films with Wagnerian panache — try not to rock out when “Rey’s Theme” propulsively dissolves into “Attack of the TIE Fighters” from “A New Hope” in the final battle – and DP Steve Yedlin lavished the color red on several key setpieces to create an explosion of emotion. It’s tempting to imagine what the movies would be like if more blockbusters shot for this level of ambition, beauty, and resonance. It’s almost unfathomable that one of this size was able to achieve it. —CB

LA-LA-LAND

“La La Land” (Damien Chazelle, 2016)

Like Quentin Tarantino, writer-director Damien Chazelle is that rare, obsessively gifted writer-director who intuits how to merge past and present in a way that enriches them both. With the wistful reverie “La La Land,” his critically hailed follow-up to Oscar-winning jazz drama “Whiplash,” Chazelle magically modernized the colorful swirl of French song-and-dance musicals “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “Les Desmoiselles de Rochefort” as well as backstage Technicolor spectacles like “New York, New York” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” Ultra-contemporary yet unapologetically retro, the film’s audacious show-business saga follows a jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) and struggling actress (Emma Stone) whose passion for each other gets tangled up in their career ambitions. Justin Hurwitz’s luscious score and catchy yet naturalistic songs like “City of Stars” help the fairy tale find its groove, while a swooning epilogue brought Chazelle’s epic to a close with a deliciously bittersweet twist of the dagger. The third original musical to land a Best Picture Oscar nomination, “La La Land” tied the Oscar record set by “All About Eve” (14 nominations, six wins). And while the movie is destined to be remembered for the Academy Award it didn’t win, Chazelle earned his title as the youngest person to ever be named Best Director. —AT

THE-HANDMAIDEN

“The Handmaiden” (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook delivered one of the 21st century’s most devious and ravishing queer films with “The Handmaiden,” which seamlessly ported the Victorian England events of Sarah Waters’ novel “Fingersmith” to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri bring palpable chemistry to the roles of the captive Lady Hideko and her two-timing (or is it three?) maid Sook-hee, whose twisted relationship is as dynamic and unpredictable as Park’s titillating and characteristically operatic camera. 

Re-teaming with his regular cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, Park and his collaborators elevated the tawdrier elements of Waters’ novel to fetishistic heights — even strapping them in a harness and suspending them into mid-air when he had to. The result is a cheeky erotic thriller that subverts classical tropes with giddy injections of sapphic energy; a soapy melodrama that feels dangerously alive with every frame. —ZS

GOODBYE-TO-LANGUAGE

“Goodbye to Language” (Jean-Luc Godard, 2014)

When someone shouted “Godard forever” before the premiere of the French New Wave Legend’s Cannes premiere of this astounding late period work, the audience erupted into applause. Who could argue? Jean-Luc Godard is the kind of resilient artist you want to cheer on each time out, but never know what to expect. What a welcome surprise to find that — more than 50 years after “Breathless” — “Goodbye to Language” once again took the medium in a fresh direction. Though it occasionally revolves aroudn the existential disputes of a wayward couple, the movie charts more of an exploratory path than any traditional narrative might offer up. It unfolds as an overwhelming montage that taps into the oversaturation of today’s media climate, a point that Godard renders explicit through many inspired bits: the recurring shot of a flat-screen television broadcasting static speaks for itself, as does a more comical bit in which two strangers tap away on their iPhones and exchange them several times over, trapped in a loop. At one point, as the narration samples highlights from philosopher Jacques Ellul’s essay “The Victory of Hitler,” someone holds up a smartphone screen showing off the essay’s contents.

It doesn’t require much analysis to comprehend Godard’s intent: He portrays the information age as the dying breath of consciousness before intellectual thought is homogenized by the digital realm. The filmmaker’s use of 3D technology in unparalleled; in one mind-bending moment, he splits the image across two lenses, then merges them, forcing his audiences’ eyeballs into a pretzel of confusion like nothing else before it. Eventually, the movie finds its true hero in Godard’s dog Roxie, who regards his aimless owners with boredom and eventually flees captivity in search of a better life beyond the confines of civilization. After years of calling humanity on its bullshit, Godard finally admits it’s too late, and one can imagine that the reclusive auteur can relate to Roxie’s triumphant escape. —EK

PARIAH

“Pariah” (Dee Rees, 2011)

Dee Rees grew into a force of nature over the last 10 years, but her debut feature — a gracefully rendered coming-of-age story that draws inspiration from her own — is still her defining statement. Humming with the electricity of repressed sexuality finally unbridled, “Pariah” follows teenage Alike (Adepero Oduye) on a raw and tender journey towards queerness and masculine gender expression. We witness Alike quietly change out of her baseball hat and t-shirt on the train home to Brooklyn, donning a girly sweater in order to calm her parents’ suspicions (Kim Wayans and Charles Parnell). We melt alongside her as she lights up with the first tingles of love, seeing herself as desirable for the first time through the sparkling eyes of Bina (Aasha Davis). Cinematographer Bradford Young (“Arrival”) films Alike’s first nights out at the club in rich, saturated colors, allowing the movie to pulse with the rhythm of first love and the cost of self-discovery. “Pariah” was ahead of its time, but it’s waiting to be found whenever people need it. —JD

DUKE-OF-BURGUNDY

“The Duke of Burgundy” (Peter Strickland, 2014)

A sumptuous and visually evocative tribute to ’70s European sexploitation films — and probably the only films this decade to come with a “perfume by” credit in the opening titles — Peter Strickland’s erotic drama flutters deeper and deeper into the sadomasochistic relationship between two lesbian entomologists. The film is as precise in its artistry as its dual heroines are in the humiliating ways they punish each other punishments, as Cythia (Sidse Babbett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna) exchange power in ways both lovingly tender and hardcore in their kinkiness. The lighting is sensuous, the camera charged, the chic and glamorous costuming titillating. Strickland understands the keys to eroticism are imagination and anticipation; most of the naughty business takes place offscreen, every touch adding to the Hitchcockian psychodrama that’s taking place just beneath the layers upon layers of festishistic beauty. —JD

JACKIE

“Jackie” (Pablo Larraín, 2016)

Jackie Kennedy has been portrayed plenty of times on the big screen, but in Pablo Larraín’s daring and original “Jackie,” Natalie Portman handily shed the expectations and assumptions attached to the perennially pillbox-hatted American icon to deliver her best performance yet. It’s certainly her most immersive, and while some might bristle at her accent and her mannerisms, “Jackie” only works because its lead so thoroughly throws herself into a role that goes beyond “warts and all.”

Mostly set in the weeks immediately following President Kennedy’s assassination, Portman is tasked with portraying a mourning, heartbroken Jackie who is also hellbent on establishing a legacy for her husband and family. She’s angry, just like the film she inhabits, but she’s also ruthless about the value of memory and truth. So is the film. 

Larraín’s film neatly shifts between past and present, providing rich and often unexpected looks inside Jackie’s life and psyche during one of the worst times of her — and the country’s — life. There are no grace notes here, no redemption, no sense that everything will be okay in the end, but such honesty suits what actually happened, and while the film might take a few liberties (see: Jackie’s extended stroll with a shocked priest), it gets the emotions exactly right. It’s the kind of veracity — emotional, mental, psychological — that more fact-based features should strive for. For now, at least, there is “Jackie” and its inimitable leading lady. —KE

AT-BERKELEY

“At Berkeley” (Frederick Wiseman, 2013)

In hindsight, there will be any number of things we took for granted about the cinema of the 21st century. But, even now, it’s already obvious that we took nothing for granted more than sharing the world with Frederick Wiseman, who — well into his 80s — continued to bang out another masterpiece every 12 to 15 months. From “High School” to “Ex Libris,” the quality of Wiseman’s output has never wavered, while our understanding of our institutions (and ourselves) has only continued to deepen as a result.

It almost feels arbitrary to single out just one of the great observational documentaries that Wiseman made over the last 10 years, but his examination of the University of California at Berkeley — a spellbinding four-hour wonder set against the backdrop of a decrease in state funding — strikes a particularly resonant chord. Wiseman trains his lens not only on the ideals of higher learning, but also on Berkeley’s unique spirit of idealism, and how the school might struggle to maintain its values of activism and accessibility in the face of an unforgiving climate. Universities can be such vibrant places, and even the longest of Wiseman’s protracted scenes feels like it’s brimming with potential and hope for the future. But it’s the finale that leaves the most fraught and lasting impression, as Wiseman jettisons his discrete style of editing in order to cross-cut between the faculty and the students during a sit-in protest that feels like a microcosm of the paradox that defines Berkeley’s future. One way or the other, that future will be the product of a painful compromise, a subject that Wiseman captures better than anyone. —CO

FORCE-MAJEURE

“Force Majeure” (Ruben Östlund, 2014)

In a decade that flayed white male insecurity in public, Ruben Östlund’s wickedly hilarious study of masculinity in crisis took a natural place as one of the definitive comedies of our time. Right from this film’s famous inciting incident – in which a dad named Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke) instinctively abandons his wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and their two children during a false-alarm avalanche at a ski resort — the upper-middle class family’s comfortable existence is upended forever. 

Nested inside perverse Kubrickian long takes, Östlund’s shrewd choreography and cringe-worthy situations heralded the arrival of a major cinematic storyteller who isn’t afraid to dig his characters into such deep holes that they have no choice but to try and tunnel out on their own. Each scene of this film shovels further and further into unsettling truth that Tomas’ reaction was not simply an isolated primal act, but something far more primal and perverse. The result is an unholy buffet of squirm-inducing humor, but one that’s built atop a dark reservoir of real empathy. Östlund takes seriously the escalating trap the family finds themselves in, and it’s the way that Ebba is forced to rebalance the gender equation that makes “Force Majeure” one of the most profound and unflinching examinations of masculinity this decade. —CO

MELANCHOLIA

“Melancholia” (Lars von Trier, 2011)

Lars von Trier’s beautiful and beguiling take on depression as the apocalypse is strangely one of his least disturbing films — and also one of his best. No one in this witty and accessible cosmic opera gets dismembered, or bull-whipped, or even killed for shits and giggles. The horrors in “Melancholia” are far more subtle than that, and as all-encompassing as a thick grey fog rolling in to block out the sun forever. Von Trier’s natural self-indulgence is tempered by the percolating trauma of Kirsten Dunst’s career-best performance. She traipses through her wacky castle wedding in a growing daze, her opaque moods belying an inner torment that seems to welcome (or even invite) the end of the world. The stunning and surrealistic prologue, driven by Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde,” renders the coming oblivion like an inverted riff on the birth-of-the-cosmos sequence from “The Tree Of Life,” but that introductory spectacle has nothing on the raw power of how Dunst brings it down to Earth. —JD

MISSION-IMPOSSIBLE-FALLOUT

“Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018)

A direct sequel in a franchise built from largely standalone adventures, “Fallout” refocused the “Mission: Impossible” saga on Ethan Hunt’s core dilemma, endowing the superspy with a moral urgency more befitting a prestige drama like “Bridge of Spies” than a late summer blockbuster that opens with someone stopping a nuclear attack by cosplaying as Wolf Blitzer. From the moment it starts, this movie has only one question on its mind: Is it possible that Ethan’s concern for other people isn’t just his greatest weakness, but also his greatest strength? For Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, the answer was always going to be an unambiguous “yes,” but hot damn did those guys have fun getting there. 

One of the best action movies of the modern studio era, “Fallout” is basically like watching the most intense man on Earth compete in a relentless foot race against his own demons, as Cruise laughs at death for our entertainment. From the HALO jump sequence to the climactic helicopter duel, the stunts in this one combine the gobsmacking scale of “Ghost Protocol” with the sheer velocity of “Mission: Impossible — III,” and McQuarrie weaves them all together into a breathless ride with nary a single wasted shot. It’s a veritable symphony of stunt work, a timeless piece of classical filmmaking, and an enduring reminder that great movies only get made because someone out there is crazy enough to think that they can. —DE

iNCEPTION

“Inception” (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

Sometimes, it seems like Christopher Nolan understands the beauty of magic tricks better than any filmmaker since Orson Welles. He’s a master of misdirection, a genius at gracefully folding any plot into an origami crane of intricate pieces, an expert craftsman of presentation and payoff. His good movies invite you to lean forward and question every inch of their core ideas, and his great ones eventually go sublime by replacing that curiosity with sheer awe. They make you obsess over how they work until the precise moment that you realize it doesn’t really matter.

On the other hand, sometimes, it seems like Christopher Nolan has absolutely no idea how magic tricks are supposed to work. A magician never reveals his secrets, but in “Inception,” Nolan can’t stop himself from constantly telling you what he’s doing. The ultimate example of the filmmaker’s penchant for take exposition and weaponizing it into drama, this is a movie that spends the vast majority of its running time simply explaining itself to the audience. Remember the post-screening conversations that you had with your friends? They sounded more like NFL referees trying to make sense of a fumbled play than people comparing their notes about a piece of art.

But so what? At his best, Nolan is both a showman and a storyteller, and all of his narrative gamesmanship — all of his dead wives and steady push-in shots and bombastic Hans Zimmer motifs — are in the service of an irreducible cinematic pleasure. Yes, “Inception” is a forceful drama about guilt and redemption and the power of ideas, but more than anything it’s an elaborate excuse for a hog-wild celebration of what movies can do. It’s about the pure joy of playing with relative time, of cross-cutting between four different planes of existence, of packing several different genres (heist movies, Bond epics, etc.) into a veritable playground of raw imagination. It’s about the visceral momentum of doing things that can’t be done on the page, on stage, or even on television with its stops and starts — it’s about using the fundamental elements of film grammar to create a coherent whole that sustains itself like a spinning top. More than just the most idiosyncratic blockbuster of the 21st Century, “Inception” is a testament to the incredible power of dreaming with our eyes open. —DE

SHOPLIFTERS

“Shoplifters” (Kore-eda Hirokazu, 2018)

The “chosen family” narrative isn’t new, but Kore-Eda Hirokazu’s 2018 Palme d’Or winner ranks as one of the most tender and tragic portraits of that concept ever committed to film. Kore-Eda is delicate in his construction of the Shibatas, a clan of people who are all broken in their own ways. It’s a makeshift group that includes an out-of-work day laborer, a teenage sex worker, and a big-hearted child whose desperate father has taught him to shoplift for their collective survival. And yet, despite the Shibatas’ dire straits, they can’t help but take in (read: kidnap) a young girl named Juri who they find abused and abandoned in the lot outside of their door.

A substantial bulk of this brilliant film is spent peering into the nuanced worlds of each family member, as Kore-eda builds them all into complex, endearing characters. The Shibatas have a lot of love, but they also have a wealth of complicated secrets, and they’re all splayed out in the film’s heightened and heartbreaking final 30 minutes. “Shoplifters” is a shattering experience, but it’s more than worth it, if only for how it forces viewers to reckon with what forces truly galvanize people into a family. —LL

FACES-PLACES

“Faces Places” (Agnès Varda & JR, 2017)

A moving, funny, life-affirming, and altogether wonderful twilight dispatch from the original queen of the French New Wave, “Faces Places” was the second-to-last film that Agnès Varda was able to complete before her death earlier this year, but it endures as a perfect entry point into a body of work that will make your life a better place. A testament to the creative imagination, Varda’s heart-tugger — made when she was 89 years old — found the late artist bringing her powerful personality, boundless visual acumen, and canny documentary instincts to a road movie made in collaboration with deferential younger street artist, JR. Together, the odd couple packed into a van that doubled as a massive Polaroid camera and toured the French countryside, taking giant photos of the strangers they meet and restoring a sense of visibility and wonder to working-class people who are often overlooked. 

The film is a prime example of Varda’s genius for eliciting delightful interviews from random people, but “Faces Places” also makes time for some of Varda’s old friends, the playful documentary becoming a whimsical memoir as it retraces some of the more indelible images from her life. The project was rife with potential for condescension, but Varda and JR’s charm and wisdom elevate the journey into a poignant meditation on time, cinema history, and the bittersweet fullness of passing through a world that’s too far too big to see in one lifetime. —AT

BLACK-PANTHER

“Black Panther” (Ryan Coogler, 2018)

At just 32, Bay area filmmaker Ryan Coogler completed his trilogy of missing-father-and-son films: “Fruitvale Station,” “Rocky” sequel “Creed,” and historic blockbuster “Black Panther,” which crashed Hollywood barriers that should have been shattered decades ago. Coogler ran with Marvel’s James Bond framework for T’Challa as he and co-writer Joe Robert Cole (“American Crime Story”) created hidden, high-tech African kingdom Wakanda and infused it with the same dimensions of family saga that Francis Ford Coppola brought to “The Godfather.” 

Coogler’s coming-of-age concept for “Black Panther” was a lion learning what it means to be king, a man who carried an idealized version of his father and country in his head; when that idea is destroyed, T’Challa has to pick up the pieces and create something new. Coogler had never seen an African man like T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), untouched by colonization. In order to find a personal way into an ambitious saga that raises so many questions about the role and responsibility of a rich nation in the world — as well as the ultimate consequences of neglecting and abandoning the less fortunate among us — Coogler selected African-American Killmonger (MIchael B. Jordan) as T’Challa’s central antagonist. “Black Panther” was the first blockbuster of its budget level to feature a majority black cast, but its humane characters and cultural specificity ensured that the movie wasn’t merely skin deep. Earning $1.3 billion at the box office and six nominations at the Oscars, “Black Panther” changed the film industry, and the rest of the world along with it. —AT

THE-FAREWELL

“The Farewell” (Lulu Wang, 2019)

Lulu Wang’s breakout Sundance hit is predicated on a lie — a good one, perhaps the best kind — that the filmmaker herself propagated within her own tight-knit family circle, likely never dreaming how it would actually end (in real life) or what it would spawn (in movie life). Starring Awkwafina in a rightly lauded dramatic turn, “The Farewell” follows shiftless Chinese-American twentysomething Billi, who is horrified to discover that her beloved grandmother Nai Nai (a charming Zhao Shuzhen) is dying of cancer. But Nai Nai doesn’t know that and, if her family has any say, she’s not going to. Unable to stay away and with little rooting her to her current life, Billi hijacks her parents’ trip to China to spend Nai Nai’s final days with her — again, days that Nai Nai has zero idea have any special meaning — and discovers a family dealing with life in all its messy, unexpected glory.

A true dramedy (a less graceful film would shout, “just like life!” at every turn, and “The Farewell” doesn’t have to), the movie flows between crowded doctors’ appointment, one wonderfully over-the-top wedding, and enough scenes centered on tasty dim sum to leave audiences in screaming hunger pains. Along the way, Billi and her family are forced to deal with both their lie and the imminent goodbye Wang’s title implies, pushing them into reckonings that go far beyond just the singular tragedy they’re anticipating. The film might be built on dichotomies — American versus Chinese life, lies versus the truth, family versus everything else — but it coalesces into a rich and relatable slice of life that illuminates every topic it touches. —KE

THE-TURIN-HORSE

“The Turin Horse” (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2011)

Every new generation feels like it’s living at the end of the world, and each of them is a little more right than the one before. But over the last 10 years, that solipsistic fear seemed to grow into a shared consensus, and movies about the last days began to assume a cold kind of closeness — like they were near enough to feel on your skin. You can probably thank the growing specter of climate change for that, especially as the best films about the heaviness of human existence (“First Reformed” being another that comes to mind) hinged on a sense of collective self-destruction, repetition, futility — and being paralyzed by the horror on the horizon. Nietzsche said that “God is dead,” but the likes of Béla Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” — a hypnotic dirge that imagines what happened to the farmer who supposedly inspired Nietzsche’s mental breakdown — suggested instead that God, dead or alive, isn’t going to save us from ourselves.

Tarr is no stranger to bleakness, but the Hungarian auteur’s previous films were all streaked with black comedy. “The Turin Horse,” on the other hand, is nothing more than a hard stare into the abyss. Society is lost, nihilism reigns, and the wind never stops howling. The potato farmer and his daughter live in a monochrome nightmare where they have little to do but rue their own oblivion. At one point, in the decade’s single most desolate scene, they escape over the ridge behind their house only to return after seeing what’s on the other side. There’s no hope here, or over there, and there was nothing left for Tarr to say when he was done — he retired from feature filmmaking when this was over, and unlike Steven Soderbergh or Hayao Miyazaki, he actually kept his word. And when he dies, he will leave behind the 21st century’s most harrowingly mundane vision of the apocalypse: a film that allowed everyone who saw it to actually see the darkness that so much of our lives is determined to disguise. —DE

TANGERINE

“Tangerine” (Sean Baker, 2015)

An audacious and infinitely re-watchable farce about a day in the life of two trans girls working the streets of downtown Los Angeles, Sean Baker’s “Tangerine” was both an instant classic, and a lightning rod for emerging trans cinema. Baker earned major points for casting actual trans women in the leads — a rarity in 2015 that has since become the norm — and his decision paid off in a big way; Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriquez saturate the film in such delicious specificity that it’s almost enough to make you want to swear off professional actors altogether. Shot entirely on iPhone (with the help of an anamorphic adapter), “Tangerine” made waves when it premiered at Sundance in 2015. And sure, the cinematography is vibrant and alive in a way that no one has been able to replicate on a consumer-grade camera since, but the look of the film was only a means to an end. On the contrary, it’s the raw intimacy of Baker’s approach that made “Tangerine” an instant queer classic. —JD

HAPPY-AS-LAZZARO

“Happy as Lazzaro” (Alice Rohrwacher, 2018)

A dreamy, fairy tale-like feature that spans time periods with ease (and without doubting that its audience is smart enough to keep up), the film follows the eponymous Lazzaro (Adriano Tardiolo) as he moves from impoverished farmhand to, well, something else. A pastoral fairy tale that slowly and assuredly morphs into a time-traveling adventure entirely of its own stripe, it offers no easy answers and zero in the way of narrative explanation. That only increases its charm. Like filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher’s other films (including the appropriately wonderful “The Wonders”), even an out-there concept can’t keep it from also feeling deeply personal and true. —KE

FRANCES-HA

“Frances Ha” (Noah Baumbach, 2012)

The “charming-but-unremarkable artist struggles to grow up” story has been standard indie film territory since the beginning of time. By 2012, it was hard to avoid feeling like the Hipster Hero’s Journey had run its course. But “Frances Ha” had an ace up its sleeve that comparable films lacked: Greta Gerwig. 

Noah Baumbach’s movie, co-written by and starring Gerwig, was arguably the first film to unleash her true power onto the world. And it’s a Pandora’s Box that nobody’s been able to close since. Her performance is remarkable in that she brings so much joy to a character that frankly has no reason to be happy. Her loyalty to her friends is so strong, and her passion for dance (even if she’s just an apprentice) so infectious that it’s impossible to look away. At the same time, the film’s craftsmanship and commentary are impeccably smart, never shying away from the real problems staring Frances down. The combination proves fatal: We fully understand why Frances shouldn’t be making these choices, but we can’t help but support her. This pattern culminates with Frances taking a spontaneous trip to Paris as her life collapses around her; it’s a funny-but-heartbreaking attempt to mimic the success of her friends for a day. But as her life deteriorates, her joie de vivre still finds a way to shine through. —CZ

COLD-WAR

“Cold War” (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)

Polish auteur Pawel Pawlikowski followed up his Oscar-winning Holocaust film “Ida” with another tragic black-and-white drama, this one inspired by his own parents. An epic story of star-crossed lovers that’s squeezed into just 88 minutes, “Cold War” charts the doomed romance between Stalin-era Polish musician Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and headstrong singer-dancer Zula (singer-actress Joanna Kulig), who meet as part of a touring folk troupe.  Wiktor and Zula first lock eyes over an out-of-tune piano as the troupe’s conductor gauges the lovely young woman’s musical ability; for al of its dark portent, the moment still registers as a meet-cute for the ages. Things get decidedly less cute from there.

Pawlikowski portrays two magnetically attracted people who are evenly matched. The elastic bond between Wiktor and Zula is symbiotic, charismatic, strong, and stubborn — it has to be in order to pull them back together over the years, as politics, borders, and several different forms of exile distance them from each other and distort their authentic selves. Terse, elliptical, and galvanized by its claustrophobic high-contrast cinematography, “Cold War” is a movie that mines its strength from all of the time and emotion that it lets fall between down the deep fissures between each scene; it’s such an indelible love story because of how Pawlikowski traces all that’s lost along the way. —AT

A-GHOST-STORY

“A Ghost Story” (David Lowery, 2017)

If the only thing “A Ghost Story” had given us was a five-minute take of a bereaved Rooney Mara devouring an entire pie on her kitchen floor, that would have been enough. But that headline-grabbing scene was just the cherry on top of David Lowery’s moving, surprising, and delightfully playful meditation on time and space. Reuniting the cast of his “Ain’t them Bodies Saints,” Lowery’s astral epic stars Casey Affleck as a homebody musician, and Mara as his restless wife. When the man dies in an offscreen car crash, his spirit rises from the gurney, a white hospital sheet draped over his head like a well-fitted halloween costume, and begins to haunt the house that he never wanted to leave. From that simple, almost child-like premise, Lowery spun an existential yarn the size of the known universe. Silly and profound in equal measure, “A Ghost Story” sent a wrecking ball through the wall that separates small budgets from immense visions, and proved that Lowery is one of the few contemporary filmmakers who’s able to skip between DIY indies and Disney blockbusters without missing a beat. —JD

EDEN

“Eden” (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2014)

All of Mia Hansen-Løve’s feature films are autobiographical in one way or another (see “Things to Come” and “Goodbye, First Love”), but it’s nevertheless surprising that “Eden” is the one which most transparently reveals who she is. For one thing, it’s based on somebody else: Hansen-Løve’s older brother, Sven, a former DJ who co-wrote this sprawling history of the French Touch music scene. An intimate epic running parallel to the ascendancy of Daft Punk, “Eden” stretches from the early ‘90s to the recent past, chronicling 20 years in the increasingly stagnant life of a Parisian DJ named Paul (Félix de Givry). He’s obsessed with bringing EDM to the masses, but his focus far outstrips his talent, and it soon becomes clear (to everyone else) that his mild early success is the beginning of a long road to nowhere. A delicate character study folded into a loving generational portrait, this melancholy masterpiece deepens the same detached inquiry into lost time that has informed all of its director’s work. There are a lot of great movies about dreams; this is one of the few about the pain of letting them go. —DE

ELLE

“Elle” (Paul Verhoeven, 2016)

Just when it seemed like Paul Verhoeven was down for the count, the Dutch provocateur delivered a rape-revenge fantasy that reminded the world that he’s still the reigning master of upending genres and subverting expectations. Of course, much of the credit for “Elle” belongs to Isabelle Huppert,” whose high-wire act as a woman who pursues an affair with her rapist earned the legendary French star her long-overdue first Oscar nomination. Abandoning the campy vulgarity that Verhoeven brought to the likes of “Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct,” the director organized every creative choice in order to foreground Huppert’s fierceness and physicality. That approach empowered Huppert to vacillate between victim and masochist from one scene to the next — or even one shot to the next — as the actress embodied the conflicting and often inexplicable reaction to trauma with a degree of raw verisimilitude we rarely see on screen. With morality taken out of the picture, “Elle” is able to explore something much deeper than most stories of sexual violence would ever dare; it’s a more human film as a result, and a more valuable one as well. —JD

THE-TALE-OF-PRINCESS-KAGUYA

“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” (Takahata Isao, 2014)

The indelible last film by late Studio Ghibli co-founder Takahata Isao — and his first since 1999’s “My Neighbors the Yamadas” — is perhaps the most poetic and beautiful achievement of his criminally under-sung career. Based on a popular 10th century Japanese folklore, “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” is carried by a story that’s as deceptively simple as its colored charcoal and watercolor animation (the spare, delicate aesthetic pulsing with life while also embodying the film’s bone-deep sense of mourning what’s lost and gone forever).

When a woodcutter discovers a miniature girl inside a glowing bamboo shoot, he brings her home to his wife, whose suddenly lactating body insists that the couple raise the baby as their own. Little Kaguya’s adopted parents gift her with an idyllic childhood in the forest, but time gets the better of them all, as the girl blossoms into a beautiful young woman and finds herself the subject of much attention from royal men in the big city. It’s here that Takahata’s melancholy adaptation pivots towards the post-war melodramas of Kenji Mizoguchi and their acute focus on female objectification, as Kaguya challenges her suitors to a series of impossible tasks while her once-humble father is seduced by his newfound importance.

This ancient story is cut with new ribbons of satire and surrealism, as Takahata creates a mesmerizing swirl of hope and darkness — past and future — that builds to a bottomless (yet bittersweet) hole in the pit of your stomach. How does a movie so sad not get overwhelmed by its own tragedy? The only explanation is that “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya” is touched with the same magic as its title character, and will remain perfect forever even if the source of its beauty is gone. —CO

BEFORE-MIDNIGHT

“Before Midnight” (Richard Linklater, 2013)

Eighteen years after spontaneously asking a cute stranger named Celine (Julie Delpy) to get off a train with him in Vienna — and nine years after one of cinema’s biggest gut-punches of a fade-to-black left their futures in the dark — a man named Jesse (Ethan Hawke) is reintroduced to us as he glumly places his teenage son on a flight back home. The message of Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” rings loud and clear from the opening scene: As we get older, our life gradually shifts from hellos to goodbyes — from new adventures to involuntary endings.

Now a couple with two daughters, Jesse and Celine are still as charismatic as ever. Watching the couple chat on vacation in Greece, it’s easy to feel like nothing has changed in the last two decades. But the film catches up with them at a time when things are closer to falling apart than they first appear, and the usual pseudo-philosophical banter soon gives way to a broken dam of unaired grievances. It turns out that finding each other twice, while living on different continents, was the easy part. Sharing the fullness of your life with someone? That’s another story.

The chemistry between Hawke and Delpy is as abundant as ever, but there’s more pressure brought to bear on it in “Before Midnight” than ever before. Linklater’s ability to bottle the energy between these characters is the only conceivable way for him to make their lived-in love feel as volatile and alive as it did in the trilogy’s previous two installments. Those were movies about once-in-a-lifetime serendipity, whereas this is a movie about just getting through the years together; it’s a story that so many people know first-hand. But while the film lacks the countdown device of its predecessors, Jesse and Celine are still hounded by the sounds of ticking clocks. For a pair of twentysomethings, one night in Vienna could feel like a lifetime. The brilliance of “Before Midnight” is in how it flips the script to make a lifetime feel like it could disappear in the span of a single night.

Here, the “Before” movies collected into the rare franchise that truly aged with its characters; each film is whatever Jesse and Celine needed it to be. The trilogy started with fantasy, and a magical infatuation with a stranger who would be nothing but a memory by the morning. It ends with permanence, and the realization that every relationship eventually becomes about doing the best you can together. “If you want true love, this is it,” Jesse tells Celine. “It’s not perfect, but it’s real.”—CZ  

PARASITE

“Parasite” (Bong Joon-ho, 2019)

A comically violent class parable that examines how a society can only be as strong as its most vulnerable people, Bong Joon-ho’s electric Palme d’Or-winner is a tender shiv of a movie that doesn’t rely on its metaphors, or even let them survive; unlike some of the “Snowpiercer” auteur’s other high-concept work, “Parasite” is nothing if not eminently possible.

A grounded enough story about the members of a poor Seoul family (led by the great Song Kang-ho) who, one-by-one, each begin working for a nouveau riche family in their sleek mansion up the hill, “Parasite” starts as an off-kilter class comedy of sorts before sinking into something wild, unclassifiable, and burning with rage. As heightened as “Okja,” as realistic as “Mother,” and as heart-in-your-throat haunting as “Memories of Murder,” Bong’s latest is a madcap excoriation of life under the pall of late capitalism, and it leaves everyone a little richer at the end of it. American viewers may not have gotten their chance to see it yet (Neon will begin to release the film stateside on October 11), but “Parasite” already seems certain to go down as a defining expression of the inequality that reared its head in the early part of the 21st century, both in Korea and beyond. —DE

THE-LOST-CITY-OF-Z

“The Lost City of Z” (James Gray, 2016)

“The jungle is hell,” a bearded Robert Pattinson spits out. “But one kind of likes it.” It might as well be a mission statement for all of the great adventure films. And James Gray’s “The Lost City of Z,” a lush and intoxicating adaptation of David Grann’s book about the ill-fated Amazon expeditions of British explorer Percy Fawcett, is one of the greatest adventure films ever made.

Played by Charlie Hunnam in the film, Fawcett makes three journeys into the rainforests of Bolivia and Brazil in search of the ruins of a lost civilization; the last results in a mystery that’s never been solved, as Fawcett and his son (future Spider-Man Tom Holland) disappear without a trace. Shot by Darius Khondji with the unfussy naturalism of an Alexander Korda adventure, and molded with the same nuance that Gray previously brought to smaller (but no less intimate) films like “Two Lovers,” “The Lost City of Z” is a swooning character study that teases out both the optimism and the frustration of exploration — the hope of discovering something new, and the desolate realization that what you already have must not be enough.—CB

HEREDITARY

“Hereditary” (Ari Aster, 2018)

So head-and-shoulders above the majority of its genre that people insisted on referring to it as “elevated horror,” Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” made it clear (yet again) that scary movies can make for serious art. Led by an astonishing Toni Collette, the film turns a standard-issue story of demonic possession in the foundation for a wrenching examination of grief, mental illness, and inherited trauma. Holding his own against a Collette in top form, Alex Wolff emerges as an impressive talent capable of toggling between terror, vulnerability, and teenage rebellion in the span of a single scene, while Ann Dowd plays a chilling villain who pushes the movie right up to the brink of camp. But “Hereditary” stands out not only for the performances Aster elicited from his cast, but also because of how he wove them together into a domestic horror story that churns with the unimpeachable terror of a truly fucked up family, and builds to the queasy conclusion that there’s nothing scarier than our own innate darkness. —JD

A-SEPARATION

“A Separation” (Asghar Farhadi, 2011)

The 2010s were the decade when Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi announced himself as cinema’s reigning master of marital deconstruction, and the 2011 drama “A Separation” remains his magnum opus. Winner of the Golden Bear, the Golden Globe, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language film, Farhadi’s shattering drama meticulously leverages a custody battle into a searing examination of the ties that bind families together (and break them apart) in an oppressive society. The director’s sharp script embeds the audience with Simin (Leila Hatami), who wants to leave Iran to give her daughter a better chance at freedom, and her husband Nader (Peyman Moaadi), whose ailing father is anchoring him in place. The two only divorce in order to avoid compromising their respective priorities, but their best laid plan is upended by the variety of systemic factors (including a religious caretaker and a biased court system) that conspire to turn the parents against each other. Farhadi traces the emotional fallout of his film’s central dilemma with such intensity and evenhanded rigor that “A Separation” fully realizes the painful inertia of a relationship in free fall. Over time, the situation becomes so fraught that it starts to feel as though the future of society itself hangs in the balance. —ZS

CAMERAPERSON

“Cameraperson” (Kirsten Johnson, 2016)

At a time when the documentary community was deep in a prolonged and overdue discussion about how to represent their subjects on screen, filmmaker and cinematographer Kirsten Johnson opted to look in the mirror instead. “Cameraperson,” Johnson’s magnum opus, is the work of someone who’s swan-diving into her seemingly bottomless archives in order to re-examine her 25 years behind the camera. While Johnson made this film out of an intense personal need — triggered by a subject, who out of fear for her safety pulled the plug on a film Johnson was making — the world of nonfiction cinema owes her a debt of gratitude for such an honest act of introspection. 

What emerges from the repurposed footage, which is taken from a wide array of the unused footage that Johnson has shot over the years, is less an academic exercise and more a deeply personal memoir that’s been salvaged off the cutting room floor. While Johnson seldom appears on screen, her perspective assumes a physical presence of some kind, and — through her lens — viewers soon become as emotionally tethered to the woman behind the camera as we do any of the fascinating people who move into its field of vision. While Johnson’s formalism might sound distancing (the footage isn’t framed with title cards or any other kind of hard context), the lack of information focuses our attention on the act of capturing these images more than it does the images themselves, which allows “Cameraperson” to become a vital act of self-portraiture, as well as one of the decade’s most engrossing films. —CO

PORTRAIT-OF-A-LADY-ON-FIRE

“Portrait of a Lady on Fire” (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

Céline Sciamma’s most perfect and powerful film to date — an 18th century period romance starring Adèle Haenel as a reluctant bride-to-be, and Noémie Merlant as the woman who’s hired to paint her wedding portrait in secret — came as something of a curveball when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year. Austere where “Tomboy” was anxious, and hesitant where “Girlhood” was rash, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” is the first of Sciamma’s movies that could be described as “classical” in any sense of the word. While all of her earlier offerings have told profound and tender stories of self-discovery and the images that women project, this film is more concerned with the ones they leave behind, and how stunning they can be when they aren’t forced through male filters. 

It would be an understatement to say that Haenel and Merlant leave an indelible impression, just as it would be a lie to say that you’ll be able to trace it clearly through the veil of tears they leave in their wake. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” isn’t subtle, but its heart-shattering intensity sneaks up on you as the film slowly explores the full power of a shared look between two people who have never really been seen before. Traditional in some ways, progressive in others, and altogether so damn real that it might feel more like staring into a mirror than it does running your eyes along a canvas, this is as tender and true as any love story the movies have ever told, and its sledgehammer of an ending flattens you right into the frame. —DE

ZERO-DARK-THIRTY

“Zero Dark Thirty” (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

The hunt for Osama bin Laden preoccupied two American presidential administrations for more than a decade, but in the end, it took a small, secret dedicated team of CIA operatives to hunt him down. Few details of the operation were made public until the release of Oscar-winning duo of Kathryn Bigelow’s nuanced and gripping feature, which felt like it was making history even as (or especially when) it kicked up a political shit-storm. 

Built around Jessica Chastain’s breakout role as the unsung woman at the mission’s center, “Zero Dark Thirty” is neither a strict dramatization of the facts nor a hoo-rah fantasy of a manhunt that assumed mythic proportions. Instead, it’s a gripping hybrid thriller and investigative drama that tracks closely what is known of the intelligence chase, shed new light on the dark corridors of the war on terror, and streamlined years of dense backroom activity by distilling it all into a laser-focused character study about “the motherfucker that found” Bin Laden. Mark Boal’s Oscar-nominated script smartly surveys the ambiguities, setbacks, and bureaucratic red tape of modern warfare, and points enough special attention towards the controversial use of torture that the film sparked a national debate. And yet, for all of those flash points, it’s the closing image of Chastain’s face — triumphant but uncertain — that emerges from the fog of war. —TO

MARGARET

“Margaret” (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

“Manchester by the Sea” won Kenneth Lonergan an Oscar, but his true masterpiece was released five years earlier with “Margaret.” Well, “released” might be a generous word to describe what happened with that movie — it was more like “mangled and held hostage.” Fox Searchlight dumped a 150-minute cut of “Margaret” into theaters in September 2011, but it wasn’t until Lonergan’s 186-minute director’s cut landed on DVD in July 2012 that many critics and moviegoers began appreciating what a profound and tragic mosaic Lonergan had made. 

The writer-director’s sprawling follow-up to “You Can Count on Me” stars Anna Paquin as Lisa, a 17-year-old New Yorker who witnesses a tragic bus accident and finds herself caught up in figuring out if what happened was intentional or not. Locating his heroine amidst a frayed and far-reaching tale that weaves half of Manhattan into its intricately layered tapestry (including a sexually deviant Matt Damon, an anti-Semitic Jean Reno, and even the filmmaker himself), Lonergan narrows in on Lisa’s shifting perspectives on morality and justice on his way to crafting a fearless portrait of someone finding their way through the world. In a decade that may have had a few too many films about teens coming of age, “Margaret” was perhaps the prickliest and most conflicted, and also the most prescient about the various socioeconomic anxieties that would come to the fore over the years that followed. —ZS

PERSONAL-SHOPPER

“Personal Shopper” (Olivier Assayas, 2016)

Reinventing the ghost story with radical directness and a singularly modern sense of self, Olivier Assayas’ “Personal Shopper” survived a dicey Cannes premiere to assume its place as one of the most affecting depictions of the grieving process ever committed to the screen. And somehow, even though it includes a scene in which a phantom projectile scream-vomits hot white ectoplasm into the air above Kristen Stewart’s face, it’s also one of the most realistic.

Bracingly direct one moment and elliptical the next, “Personal Shopper” isn’t just a story about a young woman trying to connect with her brother across the great beyond, it’s also a knowing portrait of how technology shapes the way people remember the dead and process their absence. A numbed Stewart is brilliant as Maureen, a celebrity assistant who moonlights as a medium in the hopes of making contact with her dead twin. And since spiritualists have always been magnetized to spectacle, it’s only natural that Maureen is constantly staring at her iPhone, using it to google the paintings of Swedish mystic Hilma af Klint or watch an amusing clip from a (fake) old TV drama in which Victor Hugo conducts a hokey séance. These digital communions lend Assayas’ laconic thriller the feeling of a Russian nesting doll, each layer hiding a new dead body, and the film’s infamous centerpiece sequence managed to infuse the simple (and decidedly uncinematic) act of texting with Hitchockian suspense. —DE

THE-BABADOOK

“The Babadook” (Jennifer Kent, 2014)

Jennifer Kent’s terrifying thriller starts with an innocuous (if not downright silly) premise: A mother (Essie Davis) has to protect her son (Noah Wiseman) from a supernatural entity that escapes from the pages of a children’s picture book. But it isn’t long before Kent’s craft scares you straight. Where most horror films rely heavily on jump-scares, “The Babadook” avoids genre clichés and tactics, impresses instead with an atmospheric sense of increasing dread. Brought to life with inventive camerawork, a dispiriting color palette, and taut editing, Kent’s debut feature takes its sweet time to sink into your skin. But once the Babadook gets inside, there’s no getting rid of it. Growing into a brilliant and monstrous personification of trauma, grief, and loss, the Babadook — like the feelings it represents — can never be completely quashed; the people it torments have to learn how to live with it. Kent’s unforgettable debut made it clear just how harrowing that process can be, and it introduced the world to a new queer icon along the way. —TO

TIMBUKTU

“Timbuktu” (Abderrahmane Sissako, 2014)

Abderrahmane Sissako’s “Timbuktu,” a harrowing but lyrical portrayal of a northern Mali community in the grip of a radical Islamist group, was always going to hit a nerve. The Mauritanian filmmaker took significant personal risk in making his fifth feature, and he knew that — even when safely completed — the project would be a lightning rod for polemical attacks due to the way it depicted Islam on screen, and cut to the heart of the country’s fraught relationship with artistic expression. But Sissako prevailed. His ability to provide a local perspective on the specific issues ordinary people face, while also offering the world a window into the quotidian hypocrisy of jihadist culture, allowed “Timbuktu” to succeed on a global stage. It resonated across the globe, winning seven César awards and becoming the first film by a black African filmmaker about black Africans to earn more than $1 million at the U.S. box office.

Sissako’s poetic approach allowed him to temper and complicate the film’s disturbing violence, a tactic crystallized with a soccer game that’s played without the villagers being permitted to use a ball; such is the absurdity of life under fundamentalist rulers, who distort Islam in cruel and clearly unfounded ways in order to justify their atrocities. “Timbuktu” unearthed a pulsing sense of life from beneath an inconceivable plague. —TO

ROMA