10. “Toni Erdmann”
There is a moment in Maren Ade’s superb, bizarre comedy-drama that simply shouldn’t work. A thirtysomething corporate consultant from Germany (Sandra Hüller) is trying to put up with her more freewheeling father (Peter Simonischek), who has decided to extend his trip to visit her in Bucharest over his concerns for her overall well-being. Much to her initial amusement (and surprise), he throws on a wig and some fake teeth and takes on the identity of the title character, a businessman and coach who her colleagues and friends strangely take seriously. After a number of tense encounters, she’s pretty much lost her patience with him when he brings her to a local diplomat’s modest home, crashing their Easter-egg painting party. In this decidedly awkward situation he tries to convince her to sing an iconic song from the ’80s, a song from her childhood she likely loved as a young girl. In any other film, Hüller’s character Ines, a stiff, ambitious corporate exec, would refuse and the confrontation would lead to a dramatic turn of events. Instead, she musters the courage up to sing the song and knocks it out of the park. It’s a symbolic moment for her, a freeing moment, and it’s resulted in spontaneous applause in every screening any of us have attended. When a movie can do that to different audiences around the world, it’s truly worthy of your attention. —Gregory Ellwood
9. “The Handmaiden”
Park Chan-wook has made slick crowd-pleasers, and he’s made movies that challenge audiences with their unflinching perversity, but he’s never fused the two sides of his aesthetic as splendidly as he does in “The Handmaiden,” the film that may end up being his crowning achievement. Adapting Sarah Waters’ 2002 novel “Fingersmith,” Park and co-screenwriter Chung Seo-kyung transfer the action from Victorian England to early 20th-century Korea, at a time when the Japanese occupation had citizens playing roles and adopting identities they weren’t born into. That’s the frame Park puts around Waters’ tale of an elaborate con, involving a skilled thief (played by Kim Tae-ri) and the abused heiress (Kim Min-hee) with whom she falls in love while posing as her servant. Broken into three parts, with mind-blowing twists at the end of each, the movie is long but consistently exciting, filled with moments of gripping suspense and explicit erotica. But Park also barbs his most classically entertaining picture with observations on how two marginalized women are forced to weaponize their sexuality — and men’s mindless obsession with the pornographic — to avoid being exploited forever. Like the best of Hitchcock, De Palma and Clouzot, “The Handmaiden” is fun to watch and uncomfortable to contemplate. —Noel Murray
8. “Green Room”
Few movies fill with you with the kind of intense dread “Green Room” does. You’re on the edge of your seat during every interaction, and certain gruesome scenes may well stick with you for months after seeing it. That may not sound like the most glowing review, but, like it or loathe it, the visceral experience of watching “Green Room” is unlike anything else this year. Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who previously made “Murder Party” and the critically acclaimed “Blue Ruin,” “Green Room” is about a punk band called The Ain’t Rights who agree to play pretty much any show that pays. This need for food and gas money leads them to a gig in the middle of nowhere at what turns out to be a neo-Nazi event. Saulnier pulled from his own experience in the ’90s DC punk scene to make the band feel as real as possible, and the cast clearly benefitted from his direction, delivering an insightful portrait of struggling, fringe gig-band life even before the blood starts to splatter. Star Anton Yelchin sadly passed away shortly after the film’s release, making this one of his final performances as well as one of his most memorable, while Alia Shawkat, Imogen Poots, Eric Edelstein, and Patrick Stewart all do strong work in support of this grimy, no-holds-barred story. “Green Room” is a fun, suspenseful film that manages to combine realistic situations and characterizations with a fantastic blend of horror and gore, in a truly punk-rock way. —Stephanie Ashe
7. “Manchester By The Sea”
An exercise in catharsis, the long-awaited follow-up to writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s operatic “Margaret” is a study of the unrelenting nature of grief and the way it haunts, heals, rallies, and returns; the way, ultimately, it colors the minutiae of life. ‘Manchester’ is cathartic in much the same way that writing and directing the film was, according to Matt Damon, meant to be for Lonergan: an act of defiance against the paralysis of grief. Centered around a brittle, awards-worthy turn from Casey Affleck, ‘Manchester’ revels in the ugly details of life — the uncinematic moments — and tells a story of a shattered man learning (barely) to live again after an unbearable tragedy. It’s far from an original tale, but in Lonergan’s perceptive hands, and with the outstanding performances he coaxes from his supporting cast (especially Michelle Williams and Lucas Hedges), ‘Manchester’ transcends its more familiar trappings to become a searingly imperfect film: because perfection has no place in a representation of grief and the tornado mess it wreaks. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, ‘Manchester’ is utterly human, a delicate film that succeeds in its lack of a pointed, easy epiphany; in its deep love for its characters; and in its pitch-perfect portrayal of the tender, graceless yet charming disorder of life. —Gary Garrison
6. “Jackie”
What is a legacy? That’s a question that lies at the heart of Pablo Larraín’s haunting “Jackie,” an up-close-and-personal peek into the fractured mind of First Lady Jackie Kennedy in the days following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy. Natalie Portman delivers the best performance of her career, playing the famous First Lady as a woman plowing through grief by meticulously planning a state funeral that will help enshrine her husband’s mythic legacy. Larraín, cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine and editor Sebastián Sepúlveda never allow the audience to become situated and comfortable as the camera pulls in tight on Portman’s haunted face, or as settings and positions of actors jump and alter mid-sentence. It’s unnerving but hypnotic, drawing us into Jackie’s own personal world and giving a hauntingly intimate impression of her intense isolation and loneliness, despite her incredible fame. Underscored by Mica Levi’s horror-movie score (accented by some choice “Camelot” needle-drops), “Jackie” ends up inadvertently becoming the perfect film for this depressingly “post-truth” era: As Jackie herself says “People like to believe in fairy tales.” —Chris Evangelista
