Top 20
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- DirectorTerrence MalickStarsColin FarrellQ'orianka KilcherChristopher PlummerThe story of the English exploration of Virginia, and of the changing world and loves of Pocahontas.When I saw this film when I was 20, I found it so overwhelming that I went back to the theater and saw it again twice. I've never done that with any other film before or since, and I sometimes doubt if I will ever experience anything like it at the movies again. Even Malick's newer film Tree of Life, while in some ways is even more ambitious and artistically accomplished, did not hold quite the same elusive power over me. There are other films I love very much, but none quite the same way as The New World.
- DirectorHal HartleyStarsAdrienne ShellyMartin DonovanRebecca NelsonAfter being thrown out of her house, Maria encounters a married woman who complains of not having children. Maria ends up in an abandoned house, where she meets Matthew. When a baby is kidnapped Maria sets out to find the woman.On the other hand, it took me a few viewings to even like this film before deciding I loved it. But eventually Hal Hartley became one of my favorite directors and signaled a very significant evolution of my cinematic taste that has defined the way I've looked at films in the second half of my 20s. By learning to embrace his deadpan vision and self-conscious artifice, worlds have opened up for me beyond adolescent adherence to realism and "emotional sincerity". Or rather, Hartley taught me to see "truthfulness" in a different, more sophisticated way.
- DirectorChris MarkerStarsAmilcar CabralFlorence DelayArielle DombasleA woman narrates the contemplative writings of a seasoned world traveler, focusing on contemporary Japan.I vividly remember seeing this for the first time, drunk on vodka, fixated on my computer screen as I watched it as a low-quality stream on Youtube (this was before the Criterion reissue). This seems like a terrible way to experience any film, except that in this particular case Marker's vision was so prophetic and so perceptive of our digital, post-modern, late capitalist age that viewing it in this manner almost feels appropriate. I also remember pausing the video to write down lines from the narration that sounded particularly revelatory to me in my drunken state. To this day, I find Marker's prose incredibly beautiful and poetic, and Alexandra Stewart's voice strangely, almost uniquely soothing and inviting.
- DirectorKar-Wai WongStarsLeslie CheungTony Leung Chiu-waiChang ChenA couple take a trip to Argentina but both men find their lives drifting apart in opposite directions.Discovering Wong Kar-wai in my late teens was a huge deal for me, and to this day he is probably my favorite director. My favorite of his films fluctuates, but this one is pretty consistently near the top. It's a perfect middle ground between his freewheeling, Nouvelle Vague-inflected films that preceded it, and the more mature and luxuriously textured work that came after. And like all his films, it is just outrageously beautiful.
- DirectorCharlie KaufmanStarsPhilip Seymour HoffmanSamantha MortonMichelle WilliamsA theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.I was never fully sold on Charlie Kaufman's brilliance until this film, which is just as conceptually clever and funny as his earlier screenplays, but with a layer of deeply personal pathos and philosophical inquiry that I find incredibly moving. So ambitious, so many layers, and beneath all the dazzling words, feelings. The closest thing I have seen in film to a Don DeLillo novel.
- DirectorPeter GreenawayStarsBrian DeaconEric DeaconAndréa FerréolTwin zoologists lose their wives in a car accident and become obsessed with decomposing animals.Greenaway is another masterfully clever artist, almost too clever for his own good, and very cold. But also so funny, and smart, and his films are sublimely constructed, very self-consciously artificial. I think this is definitely his masterpiece, the one where all the pieces of his art come together the most seamlessly.
- DirectorMichelangelo AntonioniStarsMonica VittiAlain DelonFrancisco RabalA young woman meets a vital young man, but their love affair is doomed because of the man's materialistic nature.Antonioni is a true master filmmaker, maybe one of the few. I think this is his most perfect, and perhaps most perfectly opaque, work. It is often said that he deals with "alienation" and yes, this is true. It is about alienation between people, specifically two potential lovers, and their dance of desire is captivating. But it is also about the world around them, and in Antonioni's filmmaking the physical world is constantly imposing itself onto the narrative action. So it is that the film is as much about a piece of wood or a matchbook as it is about Monica Vitti or Alain Delon. And it is the eminence Antonioni gets from these objects, and the way they endlessly reverberate with potential meaning around the human drama, that lingers with me most of all.
- DirectorGuy MaddinStarsPascale BussièresShelley DuvallFrank GorshinPeter Glahn is released after years of incarceration as a political prisoner and is now returning to his homeland, the mythical Mandragora where the sun never sets. On board the ship home, he meets the mysterious Juliana Kossel who vanishes after stealing his heart. Once he arrives on the island, he goes to the family ostrich farm run by his sister Amelia. He finds Amelia living with a farmhand named Cain Ball who fears that Peter's return will endanger the agreement he made with Amelia that will see him inherit the farm. Amelia has since fallen for the vain Dr. Isaac Solti who controls the island and has a hold on both Zephyr Eccles, the widow of a local fisherman, and Juliana, Peter's dream girl from the ship. Solti's true obsession is a recently discovered statue of Venus that possesses strange powers. All the characters meet at Solti's lab where the sexual tensions erupt.I love Guy Maddin, probably more than most people, and I love this film of his more than even most of his fans do. Maybe it is not more well-loved because it is a bit of an anomaly, a sole departure from his usual skewed silent-film pastiche. Instead he gives us a spellbinding kitsch phantasmagoria, all garish colors and stylized lighting. Such utter ravishing artifice I have never seen. This is the film late 19th century aesthetes would have dreamed of (indeed a key influence on the film is French Decadence literature and the art of Gustav Moreau). On top of that we get Maddin's typical hilariously deadpan and bizarre dialogue and memorable performances from Shelley Duvall and Frank Gorshin (aka The Riddler from the 60s Batman TV show). The results are strangely campy and moving at the same time, which is a good summation of Maddin's style as a whole.
- DirectorLeos CaraxStarsJuliette BinocheDenis LavantKlaus-Michael GrüberAlex, who's homeless and addicted to alcohol, and Michèle, who's losing her sight, form a relationship while sleeping rough on Paris's Pont-Neuf bridge.A personal favorite of mine for many years now. An almost staggeringly ambitious film, as deeply personal as it is stylistically exuberant, from one of the greatest and most overlooked directors of the last 25 years. To think this was at one time the most expensive film in French history is almost mindblowing, it's vision is so idiosyncratic. Stylistically encompassing everything from the grittiest documentary-style realism to the wildest flights of surreal fantasy, painted in the impressionistic steaks of a love-sick romantic. Of course the film was a huge financial failure and Leos Carax has worked only sporadically ever since. Yet this feels almost appropriate for a work as private and heartfelt as this, an almost singular revelation.
- DirectorJean-Luc GodardStarsMyriem RousselThierry RodePhilippe LacosteA college student gets pregnant without having intercourse, affecting people close and unrelated to her in different ways.Ah, and my top 10 ends as it should, with a work by one of cinema's true geniuses, proceeded as it was by three of his greatest disciples (Hartley, Wong, and Carax). This is not one of Godard's more well-loved '60s New Wave films, but rather one from his later mature period, which is where I think he was actually doing much of his best work (other filmmakers including Hartley and Harmony Korine would agree with me).
- DirectorDavid CronenbergStarsRobert PattinsonJuliette BinocheSarah GadonRiding across Manhattan in a stretch limo in order to get a haircut, a 28-year-old billionaire asset manager's day devolves into an odyssey with a cast of characters that start to tear his world apart.
- DirectorMichael AlmereydaStarsBarry Del ShermanIsabel GilliesBob GosseAn ordinary-looking guy proves to be an unusually successful womanizer, and his East Village apartment begins to assume aspects of Grand Central Station.
- DirectorSlava TsukermanStarsAnne CarlislePaula E. SheppardSusan DoukasA small, heroin seeking UFO lands on a Manhattan roof, observes a bizarre, drug addicted fashion model and sucks endorphin from her sexual encounters' brains.
- DirectorMark RappaportStarsJane CampbellBob HerronDolores KenanMark Rappaport's off center soap opera parody concerning several characters including a barber, his wife, and a pair of incestuous twins.
- DirectorWhit StillmanStarsCarolyn FarinaEdward ClementsChris EigemanA group of young upper-class Manhattanites are blithely passing through the gala debutante season, when an unusual outsider joins them and stirs them up.
- DirectorAki KaurismäkiStarsJanne HyytiäinenMaria JärvenhelmiMaria HeiskanenIn Helsinki, a lonely night watchman is caught up in a series of misadventures with a femme fatale and a crooked businessman.
- DirectorJane CampionStarsGeneviève LemonKaren ColstonTom LycosAn introspective young woman's life is upturned by the arrival of her maladjusted sister.
- DirectorChantal AkermanStarsGuilaine LondezThomas LangmannFrançois NégretJack and Julie live in a bare flat in Paris. At night, Jack drives a taxi while Julie wanders around the city, and in the day they make love. One day Julie meets Joseph, the daytime driver of the taxi, and soon Julie is spending her nights with Joseph and her days with Jack.
- DirectorPhilippe GrandrieuxStarsMarc BarbéElina LöwensohnGéraldine VoillatA sexually frustrated serial killer takes a liking to a woman he comes across.
- DirectorPedro AlmodóvarStarsCarmen MauraAntonio BanderasJulieta SerranoA television actress encounters a variety of eccentric characters after embarking on a journey to discover why her lover abruptly left her.