5. “Holy Motors” (2012)
The first feature in over a decade from Gallic madman Leos Carax was eagerly anticipated when it premiered at Cannes in 2012, and boy, did it not disappoint. Reteaming with Carax with long-time collaborator Denis Lavant, who plays Oscar, a man who travels Paris in a limousine (driven by the iconic Edith Scob) changing into various costumes and make-up in order to play different characters: a beggar, a motion capture performer simulating sex, a violent sewer dweller named Monsieur Merde, a father, an accordion player, a Chinese gangster, etc etc. Hypnotic, visually stunning, baffling to an almost perverse degree, and completely wonderful, it’s an unsolvable genre-bending puzzle that no one’s cracked three years on, but that’s hardly the point, because you enjoy every second (and would that every Cannes-approved arthouse pic were as furiously entertaining as this one). Add in a Lavant performance (or performances) for the ages, and you have a film that might just be Carax’s masterpiece.
4. “The Act of Killing” (2012)
Leaving audiences, organizations, and an entire national identity in smithereens after it punched a hole into the historical memory of the wildly underreported 1965 Indonesian genocide, Joshua Oppenheimer’s excoriating, visceral, moral explosion of a film hardly needs us to cement its importance. Of all the films on this or any list, how many have literally changed the course of a nation’s history? But aside from its value as a vehicle for sorely needed social change, “The Act of Killing” is remarkable filmmaking that expands and ultimately overflows the bounds of what we traditionally think of as documentary. Exploring the nature of storytelling as a very precise function of memory, guilt, repression, and revelation, Oppenheimer (with whom we had a fascinating interview recently) exposes layer after layer of corruption and moral rot, and shows with devastating clarity how the truths we fear most to reveal helplessly bubble to the surface in the stories we tell. Dazzling, epic, at times borderline unwatchable, “The Act of Killing” is most incredible for creating a symphonic whole out of all these cacophonous horrors.
3. “Under The Skin” (2014)
We showered Jonathan Glazer‘s sci-fi mind-prober “Under The Skin” with much love and affection during last year’s wrap up, and it deserved every syllable. Did you really think it wasn’t going to factor in here? Years in development, the project finally came alive once the story became centered on a single female extraterrestrial who makes contact with Earth, and slowly begins to learn the complexity of human existence. Scarlett Johansson was cast as the most unique protagonist of the century so far, and set loose in Glasgow to lure unsuspecting victims into the black jelly that turns them in floating Raisin Bran flakes of skin. The film is an organism within itself, and the way it’s constructed, from Mica Levi’s electroacoustic score through its use of improvisation, minimal dialogue, and an unshakable sense of constant wonder, it’s begging to be analyzed by future archeologists. If not for Johansson’s iconically stoic presence and embodiment of femininity, then for its audacity to comment on the current state of the human condition in such a left-field and insatiably transportive way.
2. “Dogtooth” (2010)
Sometimes it can feel like there’s nothing new under the sun. Everything is just a different combination of old elements, at best a new skein made up of strands of old rope. But then it’s 2010 and you go see Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Dogtooth” and you get the feeling that while it’s literally impossible, physics-wise, you’ve just experienced something unprecedented, like you’ve discovered the universe has a back door and there’s a nice porch out there. Utterly original, deadpan, worrisome, dreamy, and totally inexplicable, “Dogtooth”’s skewering of the myth of the perfect family has in the years since become the Prime Mover for a lot of homagistic filmmaking, as well as having catalyzed the thriving force of the “Greek Weird Wave.” But it is still just itself, shimmery and strange, a black comedy washed in crisp whites, framed with specific perversity by DP Thimios Bakatakis, and essentially a series of peculiar paradoxes: it’s familiar and peculiar; funny and scary; insane, wild, and completely controlled. It is a new thing.
1. “A Separation” (2012)
Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” is the kind of film that they don’t make anymore, except, thank God, they do, at least in Iran. Complex, human, rich, and providing no easy answers to the situations and dilemmas that it depicts, it makes you care for each and every one of its characters. A Golden Bear and Oscar-winning breakthrough for the Iranian helmer, it, as the title indicates, revolves around a lower-middle class couple who are seeking a divorce (Simin, played by Leila Hatami, wants to leave the country with their daughter, but Peyman Moaadi’s Nader wants to stay to look after his ailing father). It’s at once culturally specific — a remake set elsewhere simply wouldn’t work — and entirely universal, tackling concerns of honor, guilt, family, duty, and grief while reclaiming the term melodrama for good. It’s gripping, but in a low-key way that steers away from soapiness (Farhadi’s follow-up, “The Past,” is almost as good, but becomes a little too contrived near its conclusion). In the hands of different filmmakers or actors, “A Separation” could have faltered badly, but in the hands of Farhadi and his cast, it’s a little miracle.
Honorable Mentions: Of course, the films above are just the very tip of the iceberg, and there have been far more in the last five years that have contributed to the greatness of cinema culture. Among the films that were cut at the last minute, despite bitter protestations from various staffers, were Rick Alverson‘s hipster satire “The Comedy,” Ben Wheatley‘s pitch-black horror-com “Sightseers,” Paolo Sorrentino‘s Fellini-esque “The Great Beauty,” Ruben Ostlund‘s bleakly hilarious “Force Majeure,” Richard Linklater‘s trilogy-capper “Before Midnight,” Mike Mills‘ strange and impossibly moving “Beginners,” Banksy documentary “Exit Through The Gift Shop,” David Michod‘s Australian crime classic “Animal Kingdom,” Derek Cianfrance‘s raw relationship drama “Blue Valentine,” Jacques Audiard‘s bruising “Rust & Bone,” Martin Scorsese‘s roaring return to form with “The Wolf Of Wall Street,” Steve McQueen‘s desperate character study “Shame,” and Mia Hansen-Love‘s lyrical “Goodbye First Love.”
Then there were the films that we perhaps admire more than we truly love, the hardcore cinephilia manna that are astonishing feats, but ultimately didn’t quite find enough favor to make our final list. They include Carlos Reygadas‘ “Post Tenebras Lux,” Peter Strickland‘s “Berberian Sound Studio,” fascinating doc/fiction hybrid “Museum Hours,” Jean-Luc Godard‘s 3D extravaganza “Goodbye To Language,” Terence Davies‘ painful “The Deep Blue Sea,” Cristian Mungiu‘s soulful convent drama “Beyond The Hills,” Tsai Ming-Liang‘s beguiling “Stray Dogs,” Olivier Assayas‘ terrorism epic “Carlos” (and his more personal “Something In The Air“), and Bela Tarr‘s crowning work, “The Turin Horse.”
Personal favorites of our editor-in-chief that he was shouted down over include Denis Villeneuve‘s doppelganger thriller “Enemy,” Alex Ross Perry‘s portrait-of-a-prick comedy “Listen Up Philip,” J.C. Chandor‘s powerful crime flick “A Most Violent Year,” Sarah Polley‘s wrenching “Take This Waltz,” Bennett Miller‘s endlessly rewatchable “Moneyball,” Anton Corbijn‘s art-movie-disguised-as-actioner “The American,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu‘s bleak “Biutiful,” Chilean charmer “Gloria,” Oren Moverman‘s terminally underrated cop drama “Rampart,” and Lenny Abrahamson‘s wonderfully strange “Frank.”
We could mention literally dozens more, from “Scott Pilgrim” and “Fish Tank” to “The Interrupters” and “Bullhead,” but we’d be here all day. Let us know your own favorites in the comments.
— Jessica Kiang, Oliver Lyttelton, Rodrigo Perez, Nik Grozdanovic
