30. “American Honey” (2016) Robbie Ryan
Who knew the state of being young and rootless and thinking every moment— good or bad — will never end, could be distilled into a potion of lens-flared, sun-splashed images and swigged like shot of tequila. But that’s the heady feat that Robbie Ryan pulls off in Andrea Arnold‘s blood rush vision of a tattooed, trashy, tribal Gen Y/Z America, in gorgeously mobile, vital photography that lets us capture the ephemeral experience of youth for a moment, like a wasp in a glass, before setting it free again.
29. “Gravity” (2013) Emmanuel Lubezki
For a while there, it was possible to catch yourself wondering what the sudden resurgence in IMAX was for, and why 3D was making a comeback. Then Alfonso Cuarón and Emmanuel Lubezki made “Gravity” and it all made sense. In a film that, simply put, sends you into space, even in 2D on a small screen, Chivo’s miraculous photography encompasses disparities of scale so vast they give you an impression not only of the infinite, terrifying black beauty of the universe, but of the unlikeliness, and preciousness, of our minuscule part within it.
28. “Zama” (2017) Rui Poças
Rui Poças‘ gorgeously textural black and white photography in Miguel Gomes‘ “Tabu” (2012) did not prepare us for his work on Lucrecia Martel‘s mesmerizing “Zama,” in which, more than perhaps any other element, it is his use of color that magnetizes you to every frame. Palm trees explode like dark green fireworks against aquamarine skies; men in bright pink and turquoise velvet stride through indecently lush, chin-high grasses; powdered ladies and dark-skinned slaves enact power plays against deep blue walls. Parsing “Zama” is a difficult task, but a visually delicious one.
27. “Enter the Void” (2010) Benoît Debie
Choosing just one Gaspar Noé/Benoît Debie collaboration for this list was hard— almost any of their films together, up to and including this year’s orgiastic dance movie “Climax,” could have taken this slot. But Debie’s work on “Enter the Void” does not just embellish Noé’s gonzo, go-for-broke vision, it really is the vision, tracking in sinuous yet strobe-y travelling shots a soul’s journey from the murdered body of its owner, into the minds of friends and family, to become an epic, psychedelic, epilepsy-inducing firework in the brain; the most beautiful of bad, bad trips.
26. “The Age Of Shadows” (2016) Kim Ji-yong
Kim Jee-woon‘s deliriously convoluted period spy caper would be just that if it were not for Kim Ji-yong‘s masterful cinematography, which finds entire new ways of shooting action, with an eye for extraordinarily beautiful choreography as well as pace, clarity and spatial coherence. Sometimes you can really sense a cinematographer’s excitement at being tasked with reinventing a genre film vocabulary that has become hackneyed through overuse, and that is palpable here: every shoot-out, double-cross, raid and chase is an opportunity to mine one of the camera’s still endless untapped possibilities.
25. “Roma” (2018) Alfonso Cuarón
There is some debate in cloistered cinematographic circles— and, well, reddit threads— about whether Alfonso Cuarón truly deserves sole cinematography credit on his 2018 Best Picture nominee, or if it should have been at least co-credited to Galo Olivares. What’s not up for debate is the quality of the image-making, with even those of us slightly cooler overall on Cuarón’s minute recreation of his Mexico City childhood absolutely blown away by the majestic scope and thrilling clarity of fluid images that feel at once spontaneous and eternal.
24. “Arrival” (2016) Bradford Young
With most sci-fi films indebted to the crisp chiaroscuro contrast between blinding, celestial whites and the velvety blackness of space, Bradford Young‘s (“Selma“) muted, misty, mid-toned work on Denis Villeneuve‘s “Arrival” is all the more impressive and expressive. His imagery has a softer edge but a weightier gravity, which somehow fits “Arrival”‘s general mojo— it is, after all, a film in which the most spectacular revelations blossom in your own mind, as though nourished in the fertile soil of Young’s restrained, allusive, intelligent photography.
23. “Loveless” (2017) Mikhail Krichman
A hateful married couple argue bitterly about their unloved child, and in one devastating reveal, we see the boy himself is listening, standing hidden by the bathroom door, his mouth wide open in a silent scream of anguish. Truly one of the most upsetting and haunting single images of the decade, this signature shot by Mikhail Krichman is a microcosm of everything his icy formalism can achieve. In both this hard, angry film, and in Andrei Zvyagintsev‘s previous masterwork “Leviathan,” Krichman’s studied, forensic perfectionism makes the director’s despairing worldview utterly compelling, even as it’s freezing you to death.
22. “Birds of Passage” (2019) David Gallego
It’s ironic that DP David Gallego‘s second collaboration with Ciro Guerra and Christina Gallego after the equally stunning, black and white “Embrace of the Serpent” is the one in color, given that it deals with extreme contrasts— between the modernity of 1970s Colombia and its ancient tribal past; between outsiders and locals; between honor and depravity. But what colors! In billowing silken reds, cracked earthen yellows and white-clouded blue skies so perfect as to look painted, Gallego’s images give appropriately epic vitality to this epic tale.
21. “The Handmaiden” (2016), Chung Chung-hoon
Having worked together since “Oldboy,” master stylist Park Chan-wook and DP Chung Chung-hoon reach something of a state of extended mutual orgasm here, as the slinky perversity of Park’s reimagining of Sarah Waters‘ lesbian love-and-betrayal story “Fingersmith” meshes perfectly with Chung’s astonishing facility for images of sensual beauty. A camera movement can make you gasp; a coy focus-pull upend your idea of someone’s loyalties; and a simple close-up, of a lip or a fingertip or a thimble filing down a tooth, can become almost pornographic in its erotic charge. I should probably go take a cold shower.
20. “Dunkirk” (2019) Hoyte von Hoytema
For a film that made format bores of us all (we still bear the scars from the IMAX/70mm purity debates of ’17) the imagery in Christopher Nolan‘s “Dunkirk” had to be pretty bloody special. And then, dammit, it was. Hoyte van Hoytema’s collaboration with Nolan reaches its apex in the ground-shaking you-are-there immersiveness of this bruisingly beautiful war film, as wide vistas of boats bobbing on the tide jostle against jerky, terrifying handheld shots of beachfront battles, and claustrophobic interiors mire you in dread while dramatic aerial sequences thrill the marrow out of your bones.
19. “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013) Bruno Delbonnel
In the very opening shot of the Coen Brothers‘ lovely, brokenhearted anthem for the also-rans, Oscar Isaac‘s Llewyn croons in a smoky club, and Bruno Delbonnel‘s glowy, soft-edged autumnal photography somehow already tells the story of how he’s never going to make it. And yet, that’s okay — even when Llewyn’s being an asshole, or trudging through sludge chasing possibly the wrong cat, the images are alive with warmth and compassion for him. Failing to achieve your grandest ambitions, and maxing out tantalizingly close, yet so far away from the success you probably deserve, has never looked and felt so melancholically comforting.
18. “The Favourite” (2018) Robbie Ryan
Cinematography, of itself, is rarely funny. But in Yorgos Lanthimos‘ bawdy tale of powerplay in the court of Queen Anne, Robbie Ryan‘s gleefully anachronistic camerawork is frequently hilarious. The fisheye visuals cleverly mirror the warping of this palatial microcosm around the three principal women, putting each momentarily at the center of her own solipsistic universe. And sometimes, the effect is tragic, as when Olivia Colman‘s petulant monarch gets lost in palace corridors that wrap around her in a trap as inescapable as the royal role she’s so unfit to play.
17. “Victoria” (2015), Sturla Brandth Grøvlen
During the mid-decade mania for the long take, it felt like we were waiting for someone to do the feature-in-one-shot thing for real, with a storyline less forbiddingly arthouse than that of “Russian Ark.” Step up, German director Sebastian Schipper with propulsive love story/heist movie “Victoria” in which the cataclysmic energy build-up of 2 hours 20 minutes without a cut is a pure dose of cinematic adrenaline, and a testament to the athleticism of DP Sturla Brandth Grøvlen, who not only sets the careening pace, but manages to find fleetingly lovely images while literally on the run.
16. “One More Time With Feeling” (2016), Benoît Debie & Alwin H. Kuchler
From the luscious black and white photography, to the surprising choice of 3D, to the acutely moving portrait of an artist as a grieving man, Andrew Dominik‘s Nick Cave doc is unlike any other. Benoît Debie & Alwin H. Kuchler create a breathtakingly beautiful film, with the third dimension used as though to create enough space not just for unthinkable tragedy, but for the overwhelming volume of love there is in this room— for Cave’s dead son, for Cave himself, and for the art, poetry, and music that help us get our arms around loss.
15. “The Lighthouse” (2019), Jarin Blaschke
As rich, sinister and peculiar as Jarin Blaschke‘s work on Robert Eggers‘ debut “The Witch” was, we weren’t quite prepared for the black-and-white Melville-meets Poe phantasmagoria of “The Lighthouse.” As eternally, sculpturally fascinating as Willem Dafoe’s weathered face, and as scratchily ancient-feeling, as a sea shanty barked out in a sailor’s hoarsely rum-roughened voice, it’s the rare monochrome film that manages to feel almost psychedelic in effect, a torrid fever dream of mermaids, masculinity, masturbation, and madness, totally worth spilling your beans for.
14. “Burning” (2018) Hong Kyung-pyo
Like everything else about “Burning,” Hong Kyung-pyo‘s photography is deceptive. Starting off in an almost mundane, naturalistic register, just like with Jongsu, the apparently mundane, ordinary main character, we’re gradually made aware of the deep wellspring of weirdness — paranoia, jealousy, possibly even psychosis— the apparently placid surface conceals. It’s so skilfully achieved by Hong, who also shot the terrifying “The Wailing” as well as Bong Joon-ho‘s brilliant “Parasite,” that you start to doubt that what you see is really there, like the imaginary tangerine that Haemi peels, or the cat that maybe doesn’t exist or the warmth that flickers on then off in Steven Yeun‘s enigmatic smile. All cinematic shots are just a trick of the light, but some are trickier than others,
13. “Blade Runner 2049” (2017), Roger Deakins
The culmination of a remarkable collaboration between superstar Deakins and Denis Villeneuve (after “Sicario” and the visually underrated “Prisoners“), here Deakins’ work almost entirely defines the film. It’s ravishing of course, but the images also convey vital narrative information through composition alone, while spanning every conceivable visual arena: driving rain exteriors, parched dust bowls, still-life interiors and sterile holograms all become part of the same desperate, lonely world. As Ryan Gosling said: “Once you are in one of his shots, your job is already half done.”
12.“You Were Never Really Here” (2017) Thomas Townend
Lynne Ramsay‘s film is a jagged masterclass in deconstruction, as though built from the smithereens that fly when you pitch a $15 hammer at the cliches of the revenge genre. But Tom Townend‘s cinematography within that smashed-mirror world, is almost elegiac in its grace and consideration. A tendril of blonde hair in a shaft of underwater light; an airport water fountain running with no one around; Joaquin Phoenix‘s hunched, schlubby Joe walking home across a footbridge —Townend’s unusually mournful images imbue even the most brutal moments with a desperate undertow of sadness.
11. “Holy Motors” (2012) Yves Cape, Caroline Champetier
For a film that defines the word “mercurial,” DPs Caroline Champetier and Yves Cape gave Leos Carax‘s “Holy Motors” a fabulously consistent oily richness. Treating even the most outrageous of scenarios with the utmost gravity, they wind a visual refrain through the disparate vignettes that act like the thread running through a necklace. Here it’s the use of velvety color, especially green, with accents picked out in wallpaper, neon signage, Eva Mendes‘ olive dress, Edith Scob‘s avocado-colored face mask, the greenscreen mo-cap background, and Denis Lavant‘s incredible corduroy suit.
