New York Stories: 2019

This was a very good year for cinema – in fact, instead of just writing about my favorite ten films of the year, I’ve included my thoughts on my entire top twenty-five. In some cases, if I’ve written significantly more in depth about certain films, I may have originally written a review for Austin Family Magazine, where I’ve been proud to serve as the film columnist for nearly fifteen years.

I should mention there are two excellent movies, The Favourite and If Beale Street Could Talk, I would like to see a second time before determining their placement on this list.

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed has stayed with me ever since it was released early last summer. Even as many of this fall’s prestige films premiered to great accolades, Schrader’s quiet picture hung above all of them, haunting me and asking me to wrestle with many of the questions tormenting the film’s protagonist, Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) – namely, will God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world? This is a profound film – one that takes faith seriously, interrogating the nature of our beliefs much in the same way as Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016). These two wonderful films, which make nice companion pieces, are actually about something, and not in an ironic or reflexive manner – they invite you to consider and reflect. Not coincidentally, they were both made by men with deeply religious backgrounds.

Schrader’s films have long dealt with a man’s need to commit a singular act based upon intense feeling. In 2011, I heard Schrader speak at NYU after a screening of his 1985 masterpiece, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, during which he discussed this idea. Mishima focuses on the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who was disgusted by the worldly nature of post-World War II Japan, and eventually felt his words were not enough to communicate his longing for a return to pre-World War II rule. In an effort to restore power back to the Emperor, he gathered his own army and invaded a Japanese military headquarters, taking a general as a hostage. Standing atop the military building, he said the following to the gathered soldiers:

Body and spirit have never blended. Never in physical action have I ever found the chilling satisfaction of words. Never in words have I ever experienced the hot darkness of action. Somewhere there must be a higher principle that reconciles art and action. That principle that had occurred to me was death.

Mishima, mocked by the soldiers, retreated and committed seppuku, a form of honorable suicide (appropriately, this final chapter of the film is titled Harmony of Pen and Sword). Mishima’s words passed through my mind as I watched First Reformed. The key difference between these two pictures is that First Reformed is concerned not with art, but faith. Schrader grew up in a Dutch Calvinist household, and has said on numerous occasions that First Reformed is the most personal movie he’s ever made.

Reverend Toller is the minister of the rustic, 18^th-century First Reformed Church in upstate New York, a historic site now only attended by a handful of local churchgoers and kept afloat by a nearby megachurch, Abundant Life. When we meet him, he is living alone in a small, spare house behind First Reformed, drinking heavily, and haunted by the death of his son in the Iraq War. At the outset of the film, he takes to keeping a journal for a year to gather his thoughts – putting pen to paper in an effort to communicate his growing despair.

A member of his congregation, the pregnant Mary (Amanda Seyfried), approaches Toller with concerns about her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger). Early in the film, Toller and Michael have a long conversation about the morality of bringing a child into a world man has all but destroyed (I was impressed how Schrader simply allows this scene to play out for a significant amount of time, bringing so many of the film’s ideas to the forefront, slowly and deliberately). “Opportunistic diseases, anarchy, martial law – you will live to see this,” Michael tells him. An uncertain and disturbed Toller attempts to console him, but soon after their meeting, Michael kills himself. Mary subsequently discovers a suicide vest in their garage, and entrusts Toller to hide and dispose of it – knowing full well that Michael intended to use the vest for an act of eco-terrorism.

First Reformed is largely about Toller slowly immersing himself in Michael’s beliefs as he researches into his environmentalist causes, and beginning a journey of self-reckoning. Most films would show the reverend losing his faith, but Schrader wisely has these events, in a strange way, deepen Toller’s beliefs. Suddenly, he tries to find a way to express the word of God with a more direct purpose than simply sermonizing for a handful of people in a relic of a church. He struggles to find an act that will mean something to those who seem removed and detached from their faith – including Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer), the head pastor at Abundant Life, and Balq (Michael Gaston), the church benefactor whose company is the major polluter in town.

Many critics have described First Reformed as an update on one of my favorite films, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), which Schrader wrote (in total, he’s written four films for Scorsese – Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing Out the Dead – all masterpieces). But Toller is even world-wearier than Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) – he is plagued by fear and panic. And unlike Travis, he’s perfectly capable of ordinary social interaction – he’s just come to a point with his despondency where relationships, except perhaps with Mary, no longer seem like a worthwhile use of time. The film isn’t afraid to examine Toller’s inability to look at his own life, either – this character is far from the saint or martyr he could have so easily been. His treatment and dismissal of real affection from Esther (Victoria Hill), his growing lack of interest about his own health, and his apathy toward the upcoming 250^th anniversary ceremony for First Reformed are all signs of his simultaneous indifference to people and his deep concern for humanity’s salvation.

Schrader excels at making what he calls “man in a room” movies, and in the final scenes of First Reformed, Toller is seemingly unable to leave his house for the ceremony, plagued by indecision and conflicted as to the exact method he should use to make his point. I couldn’t help but feel as if I was right there with him, his torment and panic playing out in almost real-time. These final moments are unnerving precisely because you can feel the clock ticking – he has to go into that church, but what action can he possibly take that will fully express the darkness of his thoughts and force the congregation to face their culpability in destroying the world?

What happens at the end of this film? I’m not certain I know, but I was truly taken aback and shocked the first time I saw the picture. Schrader has given his thoughts about the ending on numerous occasions, most revealingly in an interview this month in which he says: “God walks in the room. God, who had never talked to him over the course of the film. And God says, ‘Reverend Toller, would you like to see what Heaven looks like? I’m going to show you right now. Heaven looks like one long kiss.’ And that’s the last thing he sees.” That’s a fascinating interpretation, but even Schrader admits that he deliberately built the ending so that it can be interpreted either way. A more optimistic viewer might cling onto Schrader’s inspiration for the ending, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Ordet (1955), which culminates in a resurrection and (decidedly real) long kiss.

Schrader’s film feels different than any of the four films he’s written for Scorsese – as it should, given that he’s an entirely different kind of director. Whereas Scorsese’s films lock you into the moment-by-moment experience of these tortured souls (which is typically my preferred aesthetic), Schrader’s world is quieter and more inward. The form matches the content here – First Reformed is as reflective (and even in the same Academy aspect ratio) as many of the great spiritual films that inspired it.

If Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters was about the reconciliation of art and action, then First Reformed could equally be said to be about the reconciliation of faith and action. But what of the ending? Both men fail by the film’s end, but unlike Mishima, Toller does not go out in glorious action. Is he saved by love? Is his faith shaken to the point that he hallucinates a moment of salvation? Does love, rather real or imagined, even matter if we won’t have a world in which to experience it? All I know for certain is that First Reformed has a staying power unlike any film this year. Schrader and Hawke have created an experience fans of cinema will be talking about and revisiting for years to come.

2. A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper)

A Star is Born is a work of astonishing power, with remarkably clear and precise storytelling from first-time director Bradley Cooper. Between this film and David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook (2012), Cooper is responsible for some of the best onscreen romances of recent years. And just as in Playbook, he’s utterly convincing as a man on the verge of a breakdown – his character, rocker Jackson Maine, cannot seem to beat his alcoholism or his depression. I don’t want to presume too much about Cooper’s own history with (and recovery from) alcoholism, but the topic is handled here with such understanding and care – and a refusal to offer any easy answers. Staring into Cooper’s eyes, I could feel his character’s pain at every moment.

But his performance is only one part of his amazing achievement with this film. As a filmmaker, he’s created a world that feels completely authentic from the very beginning – in the opening thirty minutes of this film alone, he shows us one of the most moving and believable romantic set-ups in recent cinema. The growing relationship between Jackson and Ally (Lady Gaga) unfolds like a fable, taking place over the course of one long night – a night that, even as it’s still happening before our eyes, feels as etched into our memory as one of our own relationships. From there, the film is a whirlwind journey into the frightening and turbulent world of show business – but it’s all contingent on that first date, which Cooper dramatizes so beautifully. Gaga gives an absolutely fantastic performance – Ally’s journey from her breakout concert appearance alongside Jackson to navigating a new world (in which she risks falsifying her own image and constantly making excuses for the man she loves) feels deeply honest.

As the film chronicles Ally’s rise to stardom, Jackson’s further descent into addiction and the enduring love between the two, A Star is Born never ceases to amaze. I can think of two fairly naturalistic scenes in which Cooper stunned the audience by removing sound altogether, suddenly moving into more subjective territory – one near the beginning, in which Jackson gently touches Ally’s nose in a bar, and later, when he gives her a wedding ring made out of guitar string at the dinner table. This film is so full of movement and forward momentum that we’re caught off-guard when Cooper flat-out stops everything in its tracks and offers something so direct and immediate.

Alongside its propulsive energy and dynamically staged concert performances, A Star is Born offers out one impeccably performed dramatic scene after another. Particularly moving is the relationship between Jackson and his older brother Bobby (a superb Sam Elliott) – they have a scene late in the film in which you come to understand so much about their upbringing, ending in an extended close-up of Elliott (as he backs out of Jackson’s driveway, his face turned toward camera as he looks over his shoulder) that’s every bit as memorable as the moments I mentioned above.

Near the end of the film, Bobby tells Ally about Jackson’s philosophy toward music – that every song is simply twelve notes between a given octave, and then they repeat. “It’s the same story told over and over, forever,” he says. “All any artist can offer this world is how they see those twelve notes.” Jackson’s love for Ally, Bobby says, comes partly from the way she tells that story.

It’s a sentiment that rings true to the nature of the film itself. This story has been told before – quite literally, in the 1937, 1954 and 1976 versions of this same picture. But it’s never been told like this – Cooper and Gaga have created a piece of art quite unlike any before it. Perhaps the film feels unique because, above all, we believe their relationship. Jackson and Ally’s love for each other feels authentic and sincere, and that’s not an easy thing to capture. Most movies simply indicate that two characters love each other without doing any dramatic heavy lifting. For A Star is Born, that’s simply not good enough.

3. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)

I’ll see all of you sonofaguns in the bye and bye, and we can sing them sweet airs together, and shake our heads over all that meanness in the used-to-be.

Joel and Ethan Coen’s beautiful and haunting anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a rich cinema experience full of so many varying moods and ideas. This should be seen on the biggest screen possible (Netflix, who distributed the film, unfortunately hasn’t made Buster Scruggs nearly as accessible theatrically as they have with their other major awards contender, Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma).

The anthology structure of The Ballad of Buster Scruggs allows the Coens loose rein to make six astonishing short films, each of which can take their most natural shape (The Girl Who Got Rattled, the fifth chapter, runs around forty minutes, while other segments are only as long as fifteen minutes). The variance in tone and pacing is welcome, and the structure works so well because of the parable-like quality of so many of the Coens’ past films, which oftentimes play out like dark fables. And while each of these short films would work brilliantly as a standalone piece, they make for a haunting tapestry when woven together.

By starting with the most straightforwardly entertaining short of the bunch (a rollicking, peppy cowboy musical starring Tim Blake Nelson) to engage the audience, the Coens then slyly lead us into more subdued and stranger territory, including two haunting back-to-back vignettes, Near Algodones (starring James Franco) and Meal Ticket (starring Liam Neeson and Harry Melling). Watching the film for the first time at the New York Film Festival last October, I could feel the audience shift into uneasiness as the nature of the stories changed. And then suddenly, just as you’ve settled into a kind of despair, we’re met with the unexpectedly sincere and heartfelt The Girl Who Got Rattled. The West may be unforgiving and cruel, but there is joy to be had in some of these people’s lives – namely the gold prospector (Tom Waits) in All Gold Canyon and the unmarried Alice Longabaugh (Zoe Kazan) in The Girl Who Got Rattled, who both experience some form of optimism before meeting very different fates.

The Coens are able to cover so many corners of the West through these six stories – from vibrant, old-fashioned saloons to the vast expanse of the Oregon Trail; from green vistas full of wildlife to a ghostly carriage leading to a haunted town; from a failed bank robbery to a McCabe and Mrs. Miller-like snowy journey from town to town. There are few westerns that span such a wide scope of stories, locales, feelings and moods. By the end of the picture, you almost can’t believe everything you’ve just seen existed in the same film.

In terms of thematic connection, all of these characters are ultimately heading toward the same fate, but it’s about how these folks choose to get there that matters. Some are ruthless gunslingers, others are rugged opportunists, and some are sweet natured innocents struggling to survive the brutalities of the country. Even as they hurtle towards death (or at least an uncertain destiny), there is an engagement with their surroundings and the natural beauty around them. Animals play a crucial role throughout the film – particularly during All Gold Canyon, in which a wise owl, butterflies and deer seem to begrudgingly allow the prospector to enter the land and mine their territory for riches; when he’s gone, the natural peace of the land returns.

The Coens’ camerawork has never been better or more controlled than it is here (this is their first digitally photographed film, beautifully shot by Bruno Delbonnel). There were a number of close-ups and striking perspective shots where I simply couldn’t believe my eyes. Consider the shot from inside Buster Scruggs’ guitar as he belts out tunes across Monument Valley – there’s something so haunting in that brief moment. Whose perspective is this? The Coens have always looked at their characters with a kind of omnipresent viewpoint, and to me, their films exist in a world in which God is, if not exactly a character, certainly a kind of narrator (although I’ve heard the opposite argued, as well – that their films are filled with the nonexistence of God or any kind of meaning). The aforementioned shot from inside Buster’s guitar, the bank robber’s final look at the “pretty girl” just before a hood is wrapped over his head at the gallows, the animals coming out again after the gold prospector departs – these are shots that evoke such a cosmic sense of wonder and dread. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is so much about death that sometimes it seems to come from the perspective of death itself.

And for filmmakers who are so gifted with memorable, distinct dialogue (which is on full display here), so many of the film’s most powerful moments are completely wordless. Take the relationship between the Impresario (Neeson) and the Artist (Melling) in Meal Ticket – nearly all of the spoken dialogue in this segment comes from the Artist performing Shakespeare for dwindling audiences on the Impresario’s stage wagon. But the silences and looks between the Artist and the Impresario – as they sit around campfires, visit whorehouses and travel from town-to-town together – do so much incredible storytelling.

As always with the Coens’ films, I found myself unexpectedly moved – even in the midst of absurd scenes, such as Buster Scruggs’ ascension to heaven after being killed. His spirit lifts out of his body, and with a lyre in hand, he sings the beautiful When A Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings, written by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings (which received a richly deserved Oscar nomination). The segment has been so cartoonish and wild that suddenly, when our seemingly invincible protagonist is killed, there’s a stirring melancholy. Listening to this song (you can guarantee I bought the soundtrack) never fails to raise the hairs on my arms (a special mention to Carter Burwell, who always composes wonderful music). Or take the beautiful moment in The Girl Who Got Rattled, in which Alice speaks about certainty with her potential husband, frontiersman Billy Knapp (Bill Heck). Alice at first chides herself for not having certainties, but Knapp assures her that “certainty… is the easy path.” Considering the way in which this segment ends (and the extent to which these characters strive, in their sweet way, for their own kind of certainty), I find this to be one of the most thematically resonant scenes in the whole film.

The last seven films by Joel and Ethan Coen have all appeared on my year-end top ten lists, and it’s no coincidence. They are the most consistently excellent American filmmakers around, and with their return to the West in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, they have made another masterpiece. My hope is that cinemas in the coming years will revive this picture on the big screen, where its majesty and power come into full effect.

4. Widows (Steve McQueen)

Steve McQueen’s Widows is the crime epic of the decade, an ensemble powerhouse with such clear storytelling in each scene - no small feat considering it’s an extremely complex narrative. In my mind, it’s not only worthy of comparisons to Michael Mann’s Heat (1995), but it’s my favorite McQueen film so far (which may sound blasphemous, considering his phenomenal 12 Years a Slave and Shame). Plus, it has a great supporting performance from one of the world’s finest actors, Robert Duvall.

Veronica (Viola Davis) is married to career criminal Harry Rawlings (Liam Neeson), who, near the beginning of the film, is killed along with the husbands of three other women during a robbery gone awry. Before even burying her husband, Veronica is visited by Jamal Manning (Brian Tyree Henry), a candidate for alderman of Chicago’s South Side and the man from whom Harry and his team robbed the money. He demands that she pay him back the money her husband stole, or face retribution. Veronica slowly comes up with a plan for another heist (based on Harry’s notebook of potential scores), and enlists the help of two other widows of Harry’s deceased team (Elizabeth Debicki and Michelle Rodriguez). A fourth widow, played by Carrie Coon, does not take part, but plays a significant role nonetheless.

The basic set-up seems simple enough, but one of the great surprises of Widows is the way in which Chicago, in both its political leadership and neighborhood demographics, becomes a major character in the unfolding of events. Jamal’s opponent in the alderman race is Jack Mulligan (Colin Farrell), who comes from a prominent Chicago political family and lives far from the neighborhood he hopes to represent.

In one of the great shots of 2018, Jack leaves a tumultuous campaign rally on the South Side, hopping into his car with his campaign manager. The camera stays planted on the hood of the car, as we overhear their conversation for several minutes. At first, it seems like a strange choice, but then I noticed the camera turning slowly, as we travel from an urban, middle-class neighborhood to Jack’s ritzy compound in another part of Chicago. By the end of the take, the camera has observed a complete transformation from one part of Chicago to another. In that one shot, McQueen establishes both the geography of this world and the remove Jack has from his potential constituents – all while providing essential story information in the overheard dialogue.

Widows is also remarkable in balancing the character arcs of no less than eleven leading characters. In an incredibly dense 129 minutes, the film finds time to explore the inner lives of all of these people, leaving nobody shortchanged (this, along with its climatic robbery, earn it the closest comparisons to Heat). The storytelling is so efficient and compact, and it’s positively thrilling to watch as each new scene offers something so immensely exciting and propulsive. There’s a climatic scene between Jack and his father, Tom Mulligan (Duvall), in which the extraordinary Duvall goes toe-to-toe with Farrell; it’s one of the best-acted scenes of the year.

It’s been some time since there was a crime epic as entertaining as Widows, and I expect I will be returning to this picture for many years to come.

5. Vice (Adam McKay)

I had an electric Christmas Day with Vice, Adam McKay’s decidedly non-traditional biopic of former Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale), which has proven to be one of the most divisive films of the year. I can see where some of these criticisms come from, and yet I love the movie all the same. Vice often tells rather than shows, but this is a film meant to be confrontational and presentational in its very structure. And though McKay’s opinions about Cheney couldn’t be more apparent, more complicated are the performances by the film’s cast, primarily Bale’s masterful portrayal of Cheney across more than forty years, from his time as White House Chief of Staff under President Gerald Ford to his secretive tenure as Vice President under George W. Bush (the amazing, finally-being-recognized Sam Rockwell).

The entire movie, Cheney is deliberately a cipher – we’re oftentimes left to wonder what he’s thinking, or how he’s calculating his next move. But I found this rather appropriate – after all, he is the ultimate quiet man, and Vice warns us from the beginning to beware the quiet man. Everything culminates in an explosive monologue at the end, in which Bale addresses the camera directly, using a series of real-life Cheney quotes patched together. McKay asks you not necessarily to understand Cheney, but rather observe him and attempt to piece together his thinking. I found it a fascinating experience.

There are many haunting scenes in this film. Certainly one of them is Cheney and his team, once elected to the White House, stacking the deck in favor of all kinds of nefarious folks and policies – everything is executed with a kind of ruthless, grim satisfaction. But there’s also a great match cut during Bush’s televised announcement of America’s invasion of Iraq, in which the camera moves down from Bush’s face to his shaking, quivering leg. We cut to another shaking leg, this time that of an Iraqi civilian taking cover during the 2003 bombing of Iraq. I also will never forget the quiet phone call in which Cheney ends things between him and Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carell), his longtime friend and Secretary of Defense under Bush. Rumsfeld sits alone in a small, empty room, mystified as to why his friend has abandoned him.

Amy Adams, one of the best actresses working today, is expectedly amazing as Lynne Cheney, Dick’s wife. Adams and Bale work so well opposite one another, having already established their chemistry in David O. Russell’s The Fighter (2010) and American Hustle (2013). I may be in the minority here, but I found Vice even more effective and disturbing than McKay’s The Big Short (2015). It doesn’t offer much in the way of new information, but it does create a sensory feeling, one of terror and uneasiness, that helps us experience the drive and methods of a major political leader. And, as if that weren’t enough, it features one of the best performances from one of the greatest actors of our time.

6. BlackKkKlansman (Spike Lee)

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman is wild, powerful and electric, and absolutely one of the best movies of the year. Lee, as always, is such a master of tone, successfully fusing a fascinating detective story and an examination of the last century of racial oppression together into one thrilling experience.

One of the many joys of this film is that it’s never in a rush – Lee allows us to fully get a sense of the characters and environment of Colorado Springs (not to mention the dynamics of the specific era) before even leaping into the central Ku Klux Klan undercover mission. It’s completely necessary, for instance, to experience the entirety of Stokely Carmichael’s speech to the Colorado Springs Black Student Union near the beginning of the film. This scene not only gives us a glimpse of the rising political activism of the African-American community, but also demonstrates how Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) becomes more in touch with what it means to be a black man in America, even as he’s just beginning his undercover work for the all-white police force.

We’re also privy to long, interior scenes in KKK territory – in living rooms and basements. These scenes feel so lived-in (and hauntingly mundane) at times, and they seem to speak to how these guys regularly hang out. It never feels anything less than authentic - here these guys are, in the light of day in their home environments, consumed by their hatred and own self-inadequacies.

There’s also the truly moving admission by fellow undercover detective Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver), a Jewish man who pretends to be Stallworth in person when meeting with the Klansmen. He tells Stallworth he never felt Jewish growing up, nor did he ever think about it as part of his identity. Now, after going undercover and hiding his Judaism in front of white supremacists, he thinks about it all the time.

It’s also worth mentioning that BlacKkKlansmen employs the use of a device found in another film from this year, Sorry to Bother You – an African-American man using his “white voice” over the phone – in a far more inventive and effective manner. Whereas the character in Sorry to Bother You uses his “white voice” as a telemarketer to appeal to mostly white customers, BlacKkKlansman has Stallworth use his real, unaffected voice over the phone when talking to David Duke (Topher Grace), the Grand Wizard of the KKK – and because of the racially charged language he uses, Duke doesn’t question for a second that he must be talking to a white person (even going so far as to brag that he can easily recognize a black voice over a white voice). The choice is inventive because it further illustrates the absurdity of Duke and the Klan’s bigotry.

BlacKkKlansmen ends with a victory for Stallworth and Zimmerman against the Klan, but the heroic feeling dissipates as it’s clear the fight is never over – not even in Colorado Springs, where the Klan remain and are normalized by those seeking (and now winning) public office. I was truly impressed by Lee’s depiction of an extremely different environment than the New York City boroughs he frequently documents – the racial tension here is different, in some ways more subtle and in other ways far more explosive. Underneath the veneer of a peaceful mountain community lies a powder keg.

The stylistic and expressionistic flourishes that come with so much of Lee’s work are used to such great effect here – every one of his films is so alive and full of energy. He’s never made a film I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed, even as Do the Right Thing (1989), Malcolm X (1992) and 25^th Hour (2002) clearly stand as his masterpieces. I’ll now add BlacKkKlansman to that list – this is one of his best joints yet.

7. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay)

Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here is a strange, beautiful and mesmerizing movie with one of the world’s greatest and most interesting actors, Joaquin Phoenix, at its center. Ramsay strikes gold once again, after her masterful We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) - there was no scene in You Were Never Really Here that unfolded how I expected. And this picture could have been so violent, reveling in the brutality of our protagonist's methods - but Ramsay isn't interested in close-ups of hammers bludgeoning heads. She's interested in more specific details, and the effects trauma has on the human body.

Seeing the film a second time, I was struck even more by the connection between Joe (Phoenix) and Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the young girl he rescues from a New York City brothel. Subtly over the course of the movie, they recognize each other as having both experienced abuse and trauma in their lives. Both characters use counting mechanisms to cope with their suffering – as a child, Joe held a cellophane bag over his head and counted down in order to repress the brutality exacted upon him (and his mother) by his father. Likewise, Nina counts down in her head when men inside the brothel prey upon her. These elements are beautifully woven together in an underwater sequence in which Joe attempts suicide, and as he counts down, he begins hearing Nina’s voice counting instead of his own, leading him to abandon his suicide attempt and attempt to rescue her.

At a compact 89 minutes, You Were Never Really Here accomplishes so much in a short period of time, creating a mood and atmosphere quite unlike any other this year. And it’s the first of three great Phoenix performances on this list. I should mention that when I saw this film for a second time, the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin had a You Were Never Really Here promotional photo booth, and you can bet I spent some time in there. Very well done, Amazon Studios.

8. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)

I first saw Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma at the Virginia Film Festival in November, and it was immediately apparent that the overwhelming praise surrounding the film was justified. Every shot is a work of art – it’s a film full of such roaring life and activity packed into every single frame, with a quiet, nuanced protagonist at its center. I found the picture even more breathtaking on a second viewing, this time in 70mm at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin. Because this film was financed and released by Netflix, most folks will see Roma on a television. I haven’t experienced it that way yet, but I have a hard time believing it will be anything like seeing the film in a cinema.

For one thing, the sound (by Joel and Ethan Coen’s frequent collaborator Skip Lievsay) is astonishing to hear in theaters. Roma is an immersive film, with long shots that often pan nearly 360 degrees around a large space, and I could hear noises, street fanfare and various off-screen action coming from all corners of the cinema. It feels alive in the best possible way – it’s one of the most engaging aural (and visual) experiences of recent times.

Stepping away from Cuaron’s technical achievements with this film (he served as Roma’s director of photography, editor, writer, producer and director), let’s focus on the story: Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio) is the housekeeper for a well-to-do family in 1970s Mexico City. She’s a fixture of the family, though she largely keeps to herself. After a first date with the mysterious Fermin (Jorge Antonio Guerrero), she becomes pregnant, and although the family for whom she works is supportive and loving, much of Roma concerns Cleo navigating her new reality in Mexico City, one in which few things are certain – particularly whether Fermin will even acknowledge he is father of the child.

Although Cleo is undoubtedly the protagonist of the film – we experience just about everything from her perspective – Roma is bold in sometimes dwarfing her against the life and activity in every scene. One could argue that Cleo almost gets lost at times in the midst of the spectacle – whether it’s a forest fire in the country or the beginnings of a major Mexican revolution in the streets.

But I think what Cuaron is suggesting here is that, although the world around Cleo is raging with vitality and revolution, she is by necessity focused on the mundane and comparatively small tasks she has to perform to survive. This rings true to me. Many folks – particularly working class people – are not attuned to every detail of the outside world and the current political climate, primarily because they’re doing everything they can to stay alive. Cuaron trusts that we will stay with Cleo, even as the scope of the film continues to expand, and it pays off beautifully.

As far as autobiographical cinema goes, Roma is as rich and profound as it gets, and it stands right alongside Children of Men (2006) as the best work of Cuaron’s career.

9. First Man (Damien Chazelle)

After the Oscar-winning two-punch of Whiplash (2014) and La La Land (2016), director Damien Chazelle brings us something entirely new with his latest film, the absolutely astonishing, gripping and experiential First Man. The picture is not only the story of Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling), the first man to walk on the moon, but also of NASA’s Apollo space missions leading up to the historic moon landing in 1969.

Chazelle takes a personal, evocative approach to the material – this film is, in every sense of the word, a first person movie. In the early missions, we rarely see a wide shot of the rocket blasting off into the sky – we’re cramped inside the small cockpit alongside Armstrong and his fellow astronauts. At times, First Man goes into downright abstraction in its visual depiction of what being inside that small spacecraft must be like – this isn’t a movie out to show you space travel from the perspective of outer space, but instead from the perspective of those men who first experienced it.

As a character, Armstrong is fascinating. Gosling plays him as someone who bottles up his inner sorrow (much of which stems from his daughter’s death early in the film). In the last third of First Man, as many of his fellow astronauts die as a result of failed missions, he becomes increasingly laser-focused on his own mission. When he’s lifted up to the Apollo 11 spacecraft alongside Buzz Aldrin (Corey Stoll) and Mike Collins (Lukas Haas), he’s the only one not looking out of the elevator at the rocket. He just stares straight ahead.

When he finally walks onto the moon’s surface, his helmet covers his entire face – a perfect metaphor for his masked emotions. And then finally, when he lifts up his visor, he reveals himself to us and finds a way to say goodbye to his daughter. It’s a profoundly effective moment that gives an even greater, personal significance to such a historic feat of mankind.

Chazelle is also deeply interested in the toll the space missions take on the astronauts and their families. A heartening amount of screen time is devoted to the depiction of 1960s suburban family life within this insular NASA community. There’s a beautiful scene in which Armstrong and Ed White (Jason Clarke) take a nighttime walk together. We see the inability of both men, particularly Armstrong, to articulate or express their grief, fear and sadness. The camerawork in these domestic scenes (shot mostly on 16mm) is reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), in which natural beauty is found in a small suburb just beneath the great expanse of the universe.

The core of the movie comes in a powerful scene in which Armstrong’s wife, Janet (Claire Foy), makes him face his children and explain he may not come home from his mission to the moon. The closed-off Armstrong has mastered his stoicism to the point where he cuts off his family from everything, and it’s Janet who forces him to look at them and address the risk and danger of what he does.

Which brings me to the final shot of the film, which has stayed with me for some time. Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins are kept in quarantine at NASA shortly after their return to Earth as a precaution, during which time Janet visits her husband. They stare at each other through protective glass, and then slowly press their hands against one another’s. Here is a man who is always going to be a little distant from his family, separated behind a glass wall – he’s literally been to a place, at this point, that his family will never experience. But he’s back, and within his own capabilities, he’s going to be there for them.

The cast assembled here – including Kyle Chandler, Patrick Fugit, Shea Whigham and Ciaran Hinds – is as strong as any ensemble this year, and Gosling and Foy are incredibly compelling in the leads. I continue to be in awe of Chazelle’s work as a filmmaker – he challenges himself with each new project, and has yet to make anything resembling the same film twice. First Man deserved to be a blockbuster, but lesser films overshadowed it at the box office. My hope is that more folks will see this movie in years to come, and First Man will hopefully receive the recognition it deserves as one of the year’s best films.

10. The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery)

Texas filmmaker David Lowery’s The Old Man & the Gun is a beautiful, soulful film, in which stars Robert Redford, Casey Affleck and Sissy Spacek are (as always) wonderful. The picture concerns the (mostly) true story of Forrest Tucker (Redford), an aging outlaw who has successfully escaped from prison eighteen times in his criminal career. In the early 1980s (at which point Tucker is well into his seventies), he embarks upon a bank-robbing spree across Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri in the most polite and gentlemanly way possible. He has help in the form of two accomplices, Teddy (Danny Glover) and Waller (Tom Waits), and his charm and easy-going attitude help him remain at-large.

Dallas detective John Hunt (Affleck) is hot on Tucker’s trail, hoping desperately to catch him before another law enforcement agency beats him to it. As Tucker continues his spree, he also falls in love with Jewel (Spacek), who lives alone on a farm with little but her horses and her memories. Although he doesn’t outright tell her about his every scheme, there’s no pretense between them – clearly, Tucker does something rather dangerous with his life, and that’s part of his appeal. There’s a wonderful wordless sequence in which Redford and Spacek are in a jewelry store, and he quietly leads her out with a bracelet on her wrist without paying. In this moment, she experiences his high of having stolen and gotten away with it. But as the excitement dissipates, she gives him a look. They have to go back and return it – and better yet, she wants Redford to actually pay for it. It’s a sweet and playful scene – one in which both characters acknowledge their differences, and yet we also see plainly why they want to be around one another.

Affleck’s Hunt is a perfect counterpoint for Tucker. He’s a family man (the film spends a heartening amount of time focusing on Hunt’s relationship with his kids), and though he’s consumed by his dogged pursuit of Tucker, he also comes to realize the cost of living this way. Midway through the film, he travels to San Francisco to meet Tucker’s daughter, Dorothy (Elisabeth Moss), who doesn’t even remember her father, but knows he’s the one behind the heists. Hunt comes back home from the trip renewed, having seen how Tucker’s life robbed him of having a family – or much of anything, really, besides the basic thrill of living. Hunt isn’t the cop who ultimately catches Tucker in the end, but he comes to value his own life more in the process. It’s a truly satisfying character arc, and Affleck plays it with the same subtlety and believability he brings to all of his performances.

If I have a favorite moment from a film full of them, it’s the Redford/Affleck encounter in a diner set to Lola by The Kinks. It’s a terrifically exciting detective-meets-criminal scene, done in the film’s characteristically jovial manner (the whole film, in fact, is like a low-key Heat with regard to its cop versus robber dynamic).

The Old Man & the Gun is brisk, speedy and fun, and sometimes it may seem like it doesn’t have a great deal to say as a film beyond that. But there are quiet, subtle moments beneath the lighthearted surface, particularly when Tucker catches fleeting glimpses of what a normal life looks like. This is a movie that only gives you brief hints of melancholy and regret, which makes the ones that do appear all the more striking.

One such moment comes when Tucker, on the lam from pursuing police, hops in a car with his gun and forces the driver to take off. When he sees she has a young child in the backseat, he ends up dropping them off at a gas station and leaving them behind. Just for a moment, as they disappear in his rearview mirror, we see Tucker consider what he’s missed in life. But for the most part, he just can’t bring himself to engage with the past – not because he’s haunted by it, but perhaps because he’s just not that interested in anything but the thrill of the present.

When the authorities finally catch him, Jewel asks him to not attempt another escape from prison – and he doesn’t. But even as he tries to reform once released, he eventually has to go back to doing what he loves. In a strange way, Tucker is like Jeremy Renner’s character in The Hurt Locker (2009) – no matter how dangerous or irrational his preferred lifestyle may be, he just can’t live an everyday life.

Although there’s a great ending coda to the film, the most moving and defining moment of the picture may come when Tucker, during that same pursuit, rides a horse from Jewel’s ranch calmly as the police approach in the distance. He’s able to check off horse riding from a list of things he hasn’t yet done, just before he’s sent away to jail. Jackson C. Frank’s Blues Run the Game plays during this final chase sequence (Lowery’s use of music in this film is impeccable), and it’s a truly moving send-off to this character’s journey (or so we presume).

Which brings us to the film’s major send-off: The Old Man & the Gun is supposedly the final film of Redford’s career, and although I hope that’s not true, this would be a beautiful closing chapter for one of the most iconic leading men in cinema history. Between this and All is Lost (2013), Redford has been giving some of the greatest performances of his career in the last few years, and he’s joined here by an ensemble of brilliant actors. After Ain’t Them Bodies Saints (2013), Pete’s Dragon (2016), A Ghost Story (2017) and now The Old Man & the Gun, David Lowery should be considered a Texas treasure, and his work with Redford here makes you wish they’d make a dozen more films together. If we’re lucky, perhaps they will.

11. The Mule (Clint Eastwood)

I loved the hell out of Clint Eastwood’s wild, funny and moving The Mule, which almost took my tenth place spot (in the end, it was a duel between two films featuring cinema legends as outlaws). Released late in the year (it’s Eastwood’s second movie of 2018, after The 15:17 to Paris), The Mule once again finds the director making something with flavor and dramatic power. In the past ten years, Eastwood has directed some of the most formally fascinating films of his career, including the under-appreciated Hereafter (2010) and J. Edgar (2011).

Better yet, Eastwood is the star here, in his first acting role since Trouble with the Curve (2012). One of the many joys of The Mule is its playful tone, as the film switches loosely between ninety year-old drug mule Earl Stone (Eastwood) driving along the highway and singing to himself, and the brooding DEA agents, led by Colin Bates (Bradley Cooper), hot on his tail. It encompasses a wide variety of themes – namely, regret, and the ability of a senior citizen to still have a damn good time – and does so with the characteristically economical storytelling for which Eastwood is known.

As someone who eagerly awaits the oftentimes-annual Eastwood film, The Mule was a real delight – not nearly as tragic or powerful as Mystic River (2003) or Million Dollar Baby (2004), but engaging, entertaining and unafraid to move seamlessly between moods.

12. The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)

Some critics have called the great French director Jacques Audiard’s new film The Sisters Brothers one of the most sensitive westerns ever made, and that it is. This is chiefly due to the endearing brotherly love between Eli (John C. Reilly) and Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix), two murderous assassins who, even when diametrically opposed, show a kindness and sweetness to each other, having shared a dark history together.

The film is particularly tender when concentrating on Eli, who is one of the more thoughtful characters in any western I can recall. Whether asking a prostitute to gently reenact the exchange of a scarf between him and his old love, delicately using new products like toothbrushes and toilets with child-like astonishment, or showing deep affection toward his horse, Eli isn’t quite cut out for the brutality of the Old West – even though he’s intensely capable of enacting that brutality on others (he’s a damn fine shooter, for one thing).

But that’s one of the beautiful things about The Sisters Brothers – neither brother is confined to one overarching set of characteristics. There’s a duality to both of them. Charlie is the drunken wild man, and there’s a scene in a brothel in which Eli watches Charlie’s gregariousness with a hint of sadness from afar. This scene is later upended, however, when Charlie watches Eli laughing and fitting in amongst their former adversaries, John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed).

Morris and Warm are our other two primary characters. Warm is a chemist who has devised an inventive way to unearth gold from the ground. While at first Morris, an investigator, is assigned to capture Warm and hold him for the Sisters Brothers, he eventually joins Warm on his venture, inspired by his good intentions. Together, the two plan to use their prospective fortune to create a more egalitarian society in Dallas – one based in kindness and shying away from the brutality of the Old West. Eli and Charlie, meanwhile, are on their tail, having been hired by The Commodore (Rutger Hauer) to kill them.

The Sisters Brothers is particularly powerful when the four leads all come together, and, somewhat unwittingly, Eli and Charlie join Morris and Warm in their plans. Watching these four characters commiserating, pontificating and learning to work together as they mine gold in the second half of the film is an absolute joy. Perhaps it’s because all of them are reaching for something besides greed – looking to leave the nature of their old, violent lives behind. Once together, there’s a sense of optimism about the possibilities of a New West, and we genuinely feel hopeful as we laugh alongside them and watch their brotherhood take shape.

But the mistakes and tendencies of these men’s pasts – namely Charlie’s – eventually come to resurface. The Sisters are reconciling with their pasts for most of this picture, and so it’s fitting that Charlie’s natural tendencies get the better of him, extinguishing the glimmer of hope for a new way of life. But this is a film about forgiveness. All four of our leads – even Charlie – have goodness in them. Even as they fail, the moving ending shows you can sometimes go home again. In an immaculate, seemingly unbroken take (Audiard’s most stylistically astounding shot in the film), we’re treated to a truly touching ending chapter to this saga.

The Sisters Brothers is also paced in such a way to get the absolute most out of these wonderful actors – if you enjoy hangout movies as much as I do, you’ll adore this film. Everyone involved in this movie – Phoenix, Reilly, Gyllenhaal, Audiard – are among my favorite artists working today. I was delighted from start to finish.

13. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant)

Gus Van Sant’s latest film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, is one of the most honest movies about addiction, recovery and higher powers I’ve ever seen. Although the film tracks the journey (in a brilliantly non-linear way) of paraplegic cartoonist John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix), it’s just as concerned with the other recovering alcoholics in his program and their personal stories.

The film follows Callahan from a car wreck that leaves him paralyzed below the waist through his completion of the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The picture is so creatively alive in its formal qualities, with animations of Callahan’s cartoons, split screens, elements of magical realism (there’s a running motif of Callahan seeing gymnasts in the distance, culminating in a moving moment late in the film) and long zoom shots, all of which fully bring his world to life. Van Sant never once sugarcoats alcoholism or the recovery process – and in Phoenix, we truly feel we’re watching someone struggle with a disease that may very well end in death.

There’s a particularly beautiful moment midway through the film in which a hand imprint appears on Callahan’s shoulder, almost as if his higher power is making their presence known during his time of greatest need. It’s his moment of clarity, to borrow a phrase from AA – and it’s truly moving.

This is a picture with small, delightful moments, too – if you’ve ever wanted a film in which Jack Black and Phoenix argue about the merits of Bob Dylan, culminating in Black singing a dirty version of Blowin’ in the Wind, or one in which Jonah Hill dances in short shorts to Shake Your Groove Thing, well, this is your movie. This is the kind of film that could use everyone’s support – Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot is the sort of adult drama too often left behind by audiences these days.

14. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)

Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie give great performances in Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, her first narrative feature since Winter’s Bone (2010). Military veteran Will (Foster) and his daughter Tom (McKenzie) live an off-the-grid existence in the woods of Oregon’s Forest Park, isolated from society (aside from the occasional trip to town and interactions with similarly displaced veterans). When they’re discovered by authorities and entered into social services, Will must contend with his PTSD, while Tom enters a world suddenly occupied by other people and completely new circumstances.

Leave No Trace has undoubtedly one of the most powerful endings of any film this year, and I was deeply moved by the father-daughter relationship at its center. For my money, it’s an even stronger film than Winter’s Bone, and I wish the Academy had recognized Granik’s achievement with this movie. McKenzie, meanwhile, deserves to become a major name – she’s incredible.

15. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)

With Isle of Dogs, director Wes Anderson returns to stop-motion animation nine years after his positively sublime Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and I’m not even remotely surprised that the result is a feast for the eyes and senses. Isle of Dogs is also weirder, darker and more emotional than Fantastic Mr. Fox. Even as Anderson includes his trademark stylistic devices (symmetrical framing, horizontal tracking shots, deadpan humor), he’s still constantly surprising us and moving into new territory with each film (when writing about his last film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, I remarked that it was the first Anderson picture in which I experienced real fear and dread).

Isle of Dogs takes place in the near future in Japan, where Mayor Kobayashi (Kunichi Nomura) of Megasaki City outlaws dogs following a canine flu epidemic. All dogs are systemically transported to Trash Island, a dumping ground off the coast of Japan, where they scourge amidst decay and ruin. In a symbolic gesture, the first dog sent to Trash Island, Spots (Liev Schreiber), belongs to Kobayashi’s ward and nephew, Atari (Koyu Rankin). Atari, once separated from his best friend and loyal protector, escapes Megasaki City and flies to Trash Island, where he hopes to find Spots. He’s aided by a pack of aimless dogs, including the self-reliant stray Chief (Bryan Cranston), who has proudly never answered to a master. Chief, along with Rex (Edward Norton), Boss (Bill Murray), Duke (Jeff Goldblum) and King (Bob Balaban), agree to help Atari find Spots, as they embark on a journey across Trash Island. Meanwhile, an American student studying abroad in Japan, Tracy Walker (Greta Gerwig), suspects Kobayashi is behind the outbreak of the canine epidemic, as well as silencing the voices of scientists who may have a cure. She begins a passionate attempt to expose Kobayashi’s corruption and bring the canines back to the mainland.

For those overwhelmed by the sheer amount of talent lending their voices to Anderson’s film, have no fear – each dog (and human character) is so fully developed and each actor’s voice so distinct that there’s rarely any question about the identity of anyone in this large ensemble. These canines are all given such specific idiosyncrasies, and each of the actors (many of whom are part of Anderson’s regular troupe) are used to perfection – Goldblum’s gossip-hound Duke, Murray’s agreeable former sports mascot Boss, Norton’s obedient and domesticated Rex, Tilda Swinton’s visionary pug Oracle (whose visions come from her ability to understand television), and Harvey Keitel as the leader of a tribe of (supposedly) cannibal dogs (even in his brief scene, Keitel gives such humanity and feeling to, well, a talking dog).

The emotional arc of the film is best showcased, though, in the slow domestication of Chief. He’s a tough, bitter dog who is resistant to obeying any kind of master, and yet, as they travel across Trash Island, he forms an emotional bond with Atari that gives Anderson’s movie its heart and soul. Anderson, ever the brilliant curator of music, twice uses the song I Won’t Hurt You by the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band to nearly tear-inducing results.

Perhaps the film’s greatest asset is the visualization of these creatures – like Gore Verbinski’s Rango (2011), Isle of Dogs isn’t afraid to show us textured, battered, sometimes unattractive animals weathered by their circumstances. And yet, when one stares at these canines head-on and watches tears form in their eyes, it’s an indescribable feeling. That’s something I won’t soon forget about Isle of Dogs – the eyes of the dogs. Anderson also really puts these canines in danger and makes the stakes truly high for them – they’re treated like real characters. It’s rare than an animated film is rated PG-13, but I think the emotional power Isle of Dogs achieves through going to darker places is rewarding for children. The kids in my audience really responded to where the movie took them and the range of emotions onscreen.

It’s worth mentioning that I always find myself looking at all edges of the frame in Anderson’s movies – he has a way of drawing my eyes to different corners and details, making the absolute most of the visual medium. And on a side note, I have a hard time believing Anderson and Noah Baumbach, close friends and sometimes collaborators, both included the line “You should see the other dog” in their most recent films by coincidence (it’s Dustin Hoffman’s repeated punchline to a joke in Baumbach’s wonderful The Meyerowitz Stories from 2017). Well done.

16. Ben is Back (Peter Hedges)

Ben is Back, starring Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges (and directed by Hedges’ father, Peter Hedges), is another excellent 2018 film about addiction. This one deals heavily with the guilt and shame associated with, in this case, opioids. There are a number of great scenes in which Ben (Hedges) comes face to face with what he’s inflicted upon his family, namely his mother Holly (Roberts) – including a church sequence in which he breaks down into tears during a performance of O Holy Night, and an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting where he speaks openly about his addiction.

This film kept surprising me with every passing minute – just when you think you’ve settled into its rhythm, sudden bursts of tension erupt. Whether it’s Holly freaking out over an offhand joke Ben makes about keeping drugs in his shoes, or Holly confronting the doctor who first prescribed her son painkillers in a shopping mall, Ben is Back is full of the uneasiness that comes from spending time around a family member on the verge of a relapse.

The second half of this film is one long nightmare, in which the endless cycle of addiction comes into full focus (particularly when Holly has to sell Ben’s drugs to another addict in order to get information about her son). From the beginning, she wants so badly to trust Ben, making excuses and enabling him in the process. But by the end, she has to let him find his own path, which could mean either death or recovery. Ben is Back is a harrowing experience, and the performances from Roberts and Hedges deserved far more recognition that they received.

17. Green Book (Peter Farrelly)

Peter Farrelly’s Green Book is a delightful holiday surprise. The film is based on the real-life friendship between two men – Tony Lip (Viggo Mortensen), an Italian-American bouncer from the Bronx, and renowned concert pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), an African-American man who lives atop Carnegie Hall in an almost secluded castle. The two meet when Shirley is planning his concert tour of the American South in 1962, and he interviews Lip to serve as his driver (and, in a sense, bodyguard) as they venture into heavily segregated territory. The two aren’t a natural fit, but the arrangement is settled, and they’re on the road.

Green Book is packed with all of the hallmarks of a great road trip film. We’re given two instantly likeable and fascinating lead characters, and it’s simply a pleasure to sit back and spend time with them. Even as the film follows the conventional arc of hostility giving way to mutual respect, the excellent writing (by Farrelly, Brian Hayes Currie, and Nick Vallelonga, Lip’s real-life son) and the specificity of these two men (the characterization by both actors is exceptional) helps overcome such tropes.

As they travel further south, of course, they’re met with even greater racial bigotry – including from the hosts of Shirley’s concerts. I was particularly struck by the nuanced look at how Shirley doesn’t feel he fits in with either the white southerners for whom he performs or his fellow contemporary African-American musicians. Some of the more striking moments in the movie involve Shirley simply watching other black southerners from afar, observing their way of life and his removal from their experience. The film also delves into how Lip and Shirley are separated not just by race, but also by class – and an inversion of the one you might expect in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, there have been folks out in droves online bashing this film ever since it entered this year’s awards race. Never mind the level of thought and care put into this film by all parties, the strong sense of time and place invoked by the filmmaking, and the consideration Mortensen and Ali have put into making us feel the bond between these two men – some people, many of whom haven’t even seen the film, aren’t happy with its conventions and apparent variation from actual history. But for those who actually see it (and there will be many – Green Book is a crowd-pleaser through and through), the film that awaits you is an excellent one.

I have always been a fan of Peter Farrelly. He and his brother Bobby Farrelly wrote and directed some of the defining comedies of the 1990s, including Dumb and Dumber (1994), Kingpin (1996) and There’s Something About Mary (1998). When I was thirteen, I had the opportunity to interview Farrelly when he was in Austin shooting The Ringer (2005), a film starring Johnny Knoxville on which Farrelly served as a producer. The interview was concerning the upcoming release of his film Stuck on You (2003), one of the most underrated comedies of the 2000s. I was so impressed not only by Farrelly’s kindness (he spent an hour with me in his trailer and then led me around the set), but also by the breadth of his interests (he’s written two novels, The Comedy Writer and Outside Providence). When I learned earlier this year that he’d leapt into dramatic filmmaking with Green Book, I was thrilled. This movie is a testament to his range as a director, and I’m excited to see where it takes him from here.

18. Wildlife (Paul Dano)

Paul Dano’s directorial debut, Wildlife, is a powerful study of the dissolution of a marriage in 1960s Montana. Based on a novel by Richard Ford, the story is told from the perspective of Joe (Ed Oxenbould), a teenager watching helplessly as his mother Jeanette (Carey Mulligan) fends for herself after Jerry (Jake Gyllenhaal), his recently laid-off father, leaves them to fight wildfires upstate.

Joe is forced to abandon all of his goals and interests (including a relationship with a girl from school, playing football and a part-time job assisting a photographer) to deal with his parents – they become his full-time job. The most powerful moment comes in the film’s final scene, in which Joe brings Jeanette and Jerry to the photo studio where he works and shows them what he does. As Gyllenhaal remarked at a post-screening Q&A at the Walter Reade Theater, it’s the first time in the movie Joe isn’t passive. Throughout the film, Joe takes portraits of “normal” nuclear families, intensely aware that he has nothing of the sort at home. In Wildlife’s final scene, he asks his parents to sit down for a surprise portrait, hoping to capture how he sees them and, potentially, the love they still have for one another. He’s finally able to accept what his own family looks like.

Dano, who co-wrote the film with Zoe Kazan, is a born director, giving us so many memorable images in this film – Joe and Jeanette staring at a wildfire together, attempting to understand what drove Jerry away; a long shot on Jerry as he leaves town in the back of a pick-up truck, heading toward the unknown; the helpless silence between two adults vying for their son’s loyalty. Wildlife is also full of strong blocking and use of space – I felt like I knew this family’s house, inside and out. Mulligan and Gyllenhaal give two of the year’s best performances (boy, Gyllenhaal’s eruption upon returning home is so memorable), and I can only hope Wildlife is the first of many films from Dano as a director.

19. Damsel (David and Nathan Zellner)

Every year, there’s a cinematic surprise I simply don't see coming - one that completely defies my expectations and lingers in my memory far longer than anticipated. In 2017, I was unexpectedly delighted by Dave McCary’s Brigsby Bear, and nearly a year later, I was similarly blown away by the Zellner Brothers' Damsel. The brothers are Austin-based filmmakers (David Zellner studied at UT Austin's film school), and they're not just talented writers and directors - they both prove remarkable actors in this film, too.

Damsel is a film about starting over and our basic need for someone else to save us. There's a wonderful parallel set up in the opening scene between those who travel west to start over, and those who have failed and return from where they came. We're introduced to both an Old Preacher (Robert Forster) and a younger man, Parson Henry (David Zellner), crossing paths as one attempts to start a clean slate out west, while the other drifts back east in defeat.

We're then taken on a journey of one man's longing and loneliness (the ever-surprising and amazing Robert Pattinson), only for it to be unexpectedly replaced by another character's similar desires midway through the picture. Although we're swept up in the delusions of our initial protagonist, the Zellners find creative ways to supplant no less profound desires onto our two other central characters who carry the second half of the film.

This is a movie full of surprises and long scenes with wonderful and winding conversations. Damsel took me places I did not expect, and it's one of the buried treasures of 2018.

20. Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)

If it seems like I proclaim each new entry into the Mission: Impossible franchise as “the best one yet,” that’s because this is the rare series in which every new movie tops the last. With Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have raised the bar even higher – this film is just a flat-out action masterpiece, outclassing every other summer blockbuster by miles and giving us one exhilarating set piece after another. It’s the ultimate summer movie, with exceptional filmmaking and storytelling on every level.

Cruise stars as Ethan Hunt, the leader of the Impossible Missions Force, or IMF. The film opens as Ethan and his trusted team members Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) lose a shipment of plutonium to a group of terrorists. The failed mission calls into question whether Ethan is more concerned with the fate of the world or the safety of his team – thus beginning a new chapter in which the film really addresses the toll these missions have taken on Ethan.

Cruise and McQuarrie make some bold choices here – there are quiet sequences in Ethan’s mind, where he considers the consequences of his actions and what he’s become in the process. They’re almost kind of eerie – particularly a sequence near the mid-point of the film where we see how their next mission could go – and what it could lead Ethan to do. And then, ultimately, we see how Ethan defies that premonition and makes a harder choice.

As Ethan and his team attempt to relocate and obtain the plutonium, CIA director Erica Sloan (Angela Bassett) assigns a new agent, Walker (Henry Cavill), to follow them and complete the mission on his own. After skydiving into Paris (one of the many incredible and tense set pieces), they cross paths with Ethan’s fellow spy and romantic interest, Isla (the great Rebecca Ferguson), who is on an opposing mission of her own.

Mission: Impossible – Fallout is brilliant in the way it brings all of the elements introduced throughout the entire franchise together seamlessly, with significant characters from Ethan’s past (his wife Julia, as played by Michelle Monaghan) and present (IMF secretary Alan Hunley, as played by the always welcome Alec Baldwin) not just making appearances, but advancing the central ideas of the narrative forward. Each character gets his or her own arc, as well – no actor is wasted in this ensemble.

One of the central reasons the film is so enjoyable is the tone – the proceedings are serious and have dramatic weight, but this is definitely a movie, with star performances and humor. Most summer blockbusters nowadays revel in so-called gritty realism, but Mission: Impossible – Fallout is quite aware of its primary mission – to give the audience a really great time. And it does that in aces – the action is so well directed, and every scene is imaginatively shot (there were several instances where I marveled at McQuarrie’s use of the frame).

Even relatively low-key scenes, such as a foot chase in which Isla follows Ethan through the streets of Paris and they eventually meet face to face in a field, have a dance-like quality to them – the movie has both the elegance of a classic spy thriller and the slam-bang set pieces of a Die Hard movie.

As for Cruise, what can I say? He’s the movie star to end all movie stars – none of these great scenes would work if we weren’t drawn to him as a character and as an actor (as a side note, Cruise hasn’t looked this cool walking through a dance club since Collateral). His stunts add so much to the movie because they have a truly human quality – because Cruise is really doing these things (jumping out of an airplane, flying a helicopter wildly, driving a motorcycle at a ridiculous speed through Paris), the movie really makes our palms sweat. I don’t care how entertaining some of last summer’s blockbusters may have been – there wasn’t one where I felt something was actually happening to a character. You don’t have to perform crazy stunts to achieve this kind of thing (good filmmaking and less reliance on CGI helps), but Cruise wants to entertain us above and beyond the call of duty. With Mission: Impossible – Fallout, he not only succeeds – he’s given us one of the most entertaining and well-made action films in a long, long time.

21. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)

I wish I had been nearly as kind, considerate and proactive in middle school as Kayla (Elsie Fisher) in Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. I fell in love with this movie starting with Kayla’s late-night submergence into the world of Twitter, a montage of web engulfment set to Orinoco Flow by Enya. As Burnham plays the song nearly in its entirety, I was lost and transfixed by the endless scroll of Kayla’s Twitter feed. The Christmas lights in her room providing the only source of light just adds to this haunting sequence – it’s a sort of cave where she’s consumed by the lives of others and, through her YouTube blog, enters her own private world.

There are so many deeply relatable moments in this film – Kayla’s excitement and near tears upon being asked to hang out with her new high school friends at the mall; coming face to face with the expectations and hopes of her younger self; changing her beliefs on the spur of the moment to appear more likable. I think these moments resonate so deeply because they continue, albeit in less extreme ways, throughout our entire lives.

The film doesn’t condemn social media, either – it seems to suggest that it’s simply the new normal in terms of how adolescents interact with the world and their surroundings. Our fears as children have always manifested themselves in some form of distraction and comparing ourselves to others. And, ultimately, it’s not so much about being seen by many as it is by just a few caring people.

I wonder what it would be like to watch this film as a middle-school student. I remember seeing Catherine Hardwicke’s Thirteen (2003) in cinemas when I was actually thirteen, and the experience was so foreign to me – it didn’t register that the characters in that film were supposed to be my age. Here, Kayla’s specific experience feels so beautifully ordinary. Much like in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014), we connect because there’s nothing inherently extraordinary about her journey – the seemingly mundane is anxiety-inducing enough.

I do believe that the following line of dialogue would resonate with most junior high students, and if it’s at all possible during this stage in life, perhaps even comfort them: Just because things are happening right now, doesn’t mean they’re always going to happen.

22. Beautiful Boy (Felix van Groeningen)

Beautiful Boy, starring a characteristically excellent Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, will strike a nerve with anyone who has ever had to live through the pain of addiction – whether directly or through a loved one. Although there are harrowing scenes of the Chalamet character’s drug usage, the most anxiety-inducing scenes involve Carell waiting for a phone call after not hearing from his son for days, or frantically searching for him in the middle of the night.

Carell finally comes to understand he must cut Chalamet off entirely, both financially and in terms of emotional support – his son must hit rock bottom if he's going to get any better. Nobody, not even his father, can help him unless he really wants to be sober. It's in this final section of the film, in which Carell and his wife start attending Al-Anon meetings, that the endless cycle of recovery and relapse comes to a kind of haunting close for the family.

It’s a miracle that Beautiful Boy has a happy ending, but it’s carried through by an end credits reading of the poem Let It Enfold You by Charles Bukowski. Chalamet’s reading indicates the complex struggle of waking up every morning and knowing it could all start again.

23. Boy Erased (Joel Edgerton)

The other major Boy movie of the year is a powerful drama about gay conversion therapy, from a true story by survivor Garrard Conley. Although I initially smiled at the prospect of a film about Bible Belt Southerners starring three Australian actors (Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and director Joel Edgerton), I was surprised and moved by the subtlety and authenticity of their performances – not to mention the work by Lucas Hedges as Jared Eamons, the son of Baptist preacher Marshall (Crowe) and Nancy (Kidman). Edgerton does a great job of putting a human face on a truly horrific practice, and the result feels not like an afternoon special, but a compelling and heartfelt story of survival and understanding.

24. Paterno (Barry Levinson)

I’ll be damned if I don’t acknowledge a great Al Pacino performance, and as we gear up for a year in which he stars in new films from both Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, I have to express my love for Barry Levinson’s Paterno. Pacino stars as the late Penn State head football coach, who was ousted in 2011 after the revelation that his defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky had been sexually abusing children for decades. The central question in this excellent film is, how much did Joe Paterno know? He undoubtedly knew enough to have stopped it, but part of what makes Paterno so haunting is that even he doesn’t seem to know the extent of his culpability. Paterno has been laser-focused on football for so long that it’s hard for him to grasp the seriousness of the situation, and in Pacino, we see a man searching his soul and coming up with few answers. After exploring the inner life of Bernie Madoff (Robert De Niro) in 2017’s The Wizard of Lies, Levinson brings us another complicated portrayal of a major American figure fallen from grace. Both The Wizard of Lies and Paterno were made for HBO, but in a just world, these would have been major cinema releases.

25. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville)

Morgan Neville’s documentary about the life and work of Fred Rogers, host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood on PBS and a general force for good in the universe, is one of the most moving cinematic experiences of the year. The fact that last summer’s radical alternative to cynical, cash-grab entertainment was a film about love and kindness says so much about the state of… everything.

I’ll admit that I didn’t grow up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood – my main point of reference was Eddie Murphy’s send-up (Mister Robinson’s Neighborhood) on Saturday Night Live. But in a remarkably dense ninety-four minutes, Neville captures the spirit and life’s work of someone who engaged directly with the deepest and most pure emotions of young people.

An ordained minister, Rogers never directly referenced his Christian beliefs on his show, but he created an environment of empathy and care, in which the emotions of children were taken every bit as seriously as those of adults. His program, which began on PBS in 1968, oftentimes dealt with incredibly mature and difficult issues that he felt were essential to discuss with children. What is an assassination? Why do parents get divorced? He even spent an entire week on death – hardly the typical, mindless entertainment provided by other children’s programs.

As I watched clips from his show and observed the impact his program had on children, I was fascinated by many of its formal qualities. His was a show with low production values, simple sets, and the audacity to actually be about something – it spoke to children about real things, rather than engulfing them in nonsensical violence. As Rogers says in his testimony before a United States Senate Subcommittee in 1969 (in which he successfully persuaded Senator John Pastore to keep PBS funded), he wanted children to know feelings were both mentionable and manageable. During his testimony, you can almost see the adults in the room wishing they had such a program growing up.

I was particularly taken with his use of silence and slowness as a tool on television – there’s a section of the film devoted to Neighborhood segments like spending an entire minute in silence, or simply watching a turtle crawl across the floor. Rogers brought a similarly thoughtful approach to a new show for older audiences called Old Friends… New Friends in 1978, but adults weren’t nearly as open to his genuine and leisurely approach as children. Perhaps by a certain age, many adults have been corrupted by real-word distractions. But Rogers had a gift for nurturing and exploring the emotions of children before they reached that stage – while they were still open, impressionable and possessing an innate curiosity about the world. I think this is one of many reasons why Won’t You Be My Neighbor? resonated with adult audiences – here is a man who attempted to cultivate the best in us at an early age, before the cynicism of adulthood began its course.

Neville uses beautiful, evocative animation to illustrate many of the inadequacies Rogers felt as a child, many of which went on to inspire the ideas and characters in Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. For instance, the character of Daniel Tiger (a worn-out sock puppet voiced by Rogers on his show) articulates many of his childhood fears – particularly the feeling of being different from everyone else.

The film also addresses questions about Mister Rogers from those who could never fathom that such a nice, gentle man could exist. Certain people always seem to assume creepiness or something sinister behind genuineness. But Fred Rogers was, by all accounts, exactly the man you see on television. That doesn’t mean, however, that he wasn’t consumed by doubt – particularly as to whether his attempt to use television for a greater good had any impact at all.

In a summer full of so many bland, cynical reboots and sequels simply redesigned to fit our modern age, I was far more interested in original pieces aiming to engage us about the horror surrounding us and what it means to try to be a good person. Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, the best film of the year, does this so well, and Won’t You Be My Neighbor? fits into this category, as well. It’s never helpful for a film to preach about doing the right thing – it’s far more interesting and moving to watch someone wrestle with how to do it.

Ultimately, this film weighs whether Fred Rogers’ mission succeeded. Late in the film, one of his sons quotes his father as saying that, in a time of tragedy or strife, one must always look for the people who are helping – they will always be there. I sat there and thought to myself, yes, I think there are good humans like Fred Rogers still around – they’re just no longer on television.

The Rest of the Best

26. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)

27. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)

28. Tully (Jason Reitman)

29. Annihilation (Alex Garland)

30. Three Identical Strangers (Tim Wardle)

31. Welcome to Marwen (Robert Zemeckis)

32. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)

33. Blaze (Ethan Hawke)

34. Blindspotting (Carlos Lopez Estrada)

35. mid90s (Jonah Hill)

36. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima)

37. Hereditary (Ari Aster)

38. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)

39. A Quiet Place (John Krasinski)

40. Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence)

Best Director

Winner: Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

Runners-Up: Paul Schrader, First Reformed; Joel and Ethan Coen, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman; Steve McQueen, Widows; Adam McKay, Vice; Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here; Alfonso Cuaron, Roma; Damien Chazelle, First Man

Best Actor

Winner: Bradley Cooper, A Star is Born

Runners-Up: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed; Christian Bale, Vice; Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here, The Sisters Brothers and Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot; Ryan Gosling, First Man; Viggo Mortensen, Green Book; John David Washington, BlacKkKlansman; Robert Redford, The Old Man & the Gun; Clint Eastwood, The Mule; Lucas Hedges, Ben is Back and Boy Erased; Al Pacino, Paterno

Best Actress

Winner: Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

Runners-Up: Viola Davis, Widows; Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, Leave No Trace; Yalitza Aparicio, Roma; Julia Roberts, Ben is Back; Carey Mulligan, Wildlife; Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade; Charlize Theron, Tully; Mia Wasikowska, Damsel

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Sam Elliott, A Star is Born

Runners-Up: Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman; Jake Gyllenhaal, Wildlife; Mahershala Ali, Green Book; Robert Duvall, Widows; Tim Blake Nelson, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Jonah Hill, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot; Ben Foster, Leave No Trace; Russell Crowe, Boy Erased; Sam Rockwell, Vice; Steve Carell, Vice; Daniel Kaluuya, Widows; Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Zoe Kazan, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Runners-Up: Amy Adams, Vice; Elizabeth Debicki, Widows; Claire Foy, First Man; Amanda Seyfried, First Reformed; Sissy Spacek, The Old Man & the Gun; Nicole Kidman, Boy Erased

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: First Reformed

Runners-Up: Vice; Green Book; Isle of Dogs; Roma; Blindspotting

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Runners-Up: BlacKkKlansman; A Star Is Born; Widows; You Were Never Really Here; First Man; Leave No Trace; Wildlife; The Old Man & the Gun

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Saturday, July 13, 2019

A Trailer for Harvey's Last Night on the Avenue and More!

Sunday, January 27, 2019

The Best Films of 2018