10. “Synonyms”
“Repress… Restraint… Rein in…” Written vocabulary and film grammar merge as perhaps they never have before in Nadav Lapid’s dictionary dance diary, “Synonyms,” an ethnic tug-of-war of cultural identity that is always in flux. Dramatic urgency is easy to feign, but Tom Mercier’s astounding performance as a traumatized Israeli soldier immediately allows viewers a window into his damaged soul. Opening in media-res, the first few frantic minutes find his character, Yoav, running across the rainy streets of Paris (a perfect example of how to implement stressful shaky cinematography uniquely, and not just a way of fabricating easy tension) before he ends up all alone, freezing in a bathtub of an empty luxury hotel room after his clothes are stolen. Caught in between countries that often view humans as absolutes, Yoav hops around the city with a pocketbook of adjectives, sometimes humming details of Hector and Achilles’ mythic battle around the ancient city of Troy. But does a promised land ever belong to any one faction; and, if so, what qualifies whoever lays claim to the land the right to do so? Exploring impossible questions of racial consciousness while interrogating individual guilt and shame, “Synonyms” is the kind of film that’s so layered every viewer may take something different and special away from it. – AB
9. “Donnybrook”
Easily the most underseen film on this list that some people seem to actively hate (they are dead wrong), filmmaker Tim Sutton‘s (“Dark Night“) provocative, confrontational, bruising “Donnybrook” is not an easy watch, but it is an urgent and searing one. Set in the heart of what is essentially MAGA country, impoverished, uneducated, unemployed bitter white America, no “Donnybrook” is not a movie about America, U.S. politics, White supremacy, or racism. However, it is about the struggle to survive and the notion that much of America has been left behind and the film definitely reverberates with the toxified, angry, disillusioned division that helped elect Trump. It’s also a kind of operatic tragic odyssey, about a young family man and discarded veteran (Jamie Bell), who makes his way to the infamous Donnybrook—a notorious bare-knuckle brawling fight club—to win a huge payday because he’s running for the law and basically desperate to feed his family. But along his journey into this unforgiving hades, he bumps heads with a psychotic meth dealer (Frank Grillo), his emotionally damaged sister and partner (Margaret Qualley), and a corrupt cop (James Badge Dale) chasing them all down. Its violence is ferocious, but its emotional violence is far more disturbing and saddening even. “Donnybrook” is a scorching portrait of desperation, but it’s a harrowing portrayal of our time; incensed, disenfranchised, ill and full of heartbreaking despair. – RP
8. “In Fabric”
Another film on our main, the Best Films Of 2019 list, the inclusion here bears repeating, given that this phantasmagorical wackjob horror comedy has been seen by virtually no one and was sort of an A24 VOD release (it received a small, limited theatrical release). At the risk of repeating ourselves, as we feel like we’ve beaten the drum for English cinematic fetishist, sensualist, Peter Strickland over and over again, “In Fabric” is a riot. Strickland adores obscure ’60s and ’70s cinema, including strong affinities for Italian giallo horror, kaleidoscopic psychedelia and softcore, and so with “In Fabric,” he marries those sensibilities to English kitchen-sink realism, borrowing one of Mike Leigh’s old leads (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) and coming up with something very bizarre, outlandish, strange, eerie and hilariously absurd. About a cursed dress that basically haunts and kills everyone who wears it and the spooky department store clerks inexplicably connected to the hexed garb, there’s just nothing out there like “In Fabric” and who knows if there ever will be. Co-starring folks like Gwendoline Christie, Hayley Squires, Fatma Mohamed, and Steve Oram, Strickland’s “In Fabric” is a delicious outré delight that adventurous cineastes should seek out immediately. – RP
7. “Diane”
Mary Kay Place gives one of the best performances of the year in “Diane,” Kent Jones’ poignant portrait of a Massachusetts mother wrestling with her shame over the one sin she’s committed that’s still haunting her. Diane has taken it upon herself to become a kind of communal caretaker. She serves warm meals to those struggling in the world, visits her cousin in the hospital – bringing along some Agatha Christie novels – before dropping off her drug addict son’s (Jake Lacy) dirty laundry, walking in to find a woman in his bed she’s seen all too many times who can’t remember her, while her offspring maintains all she does is nag him. “Diane” is a grounded and nuanced examination of complex family dynamics, wrestling with conflicts such as substance abuse and codependency. Jones doesn’t play it safe and is not content with an easy ending, his movie continuing to address always-evolving human struggles long after the point at which a more typical domestic drama would have found a handy resolution. Both Place and Lacy are outstanding, and will push and pull your heart in a multitude of directions; it’s an incredibly wise and mindful film that rewards repeat viewings with quiet moments of brilliance. – AB
6. “Transit”
German filmmaker Christian Petzold has a gift for we-found-love-in-a-hopeless-place genre thrillers with a political texture, and it’s arguably the cornerstone of his career. That melange of ideas, one he’s been using over and over again for a while, but not to any diminished results, comes into play again with “Transit,” about a man trying to flee Nazi-occupied France. The discomfiting twist, as it were, only adding to an unsettling air in a movie about flux, is that Petzold’s movie is no period piece, instead set in modern-day and modern dress, which gives it an extra urgency in our contemporary age of growing fascism, and issues of immigration and refugees. Petzold’s lead (a terrific Franz Rogowski) assumes the identity of a dead author to use his transit papers but soon finds himself stuck in Marseilles, where he falls in love with a young woman searching for her missing husband, an author. A moral drama emerges, and despite the weight of what may sound like contrivances of convenience in the plot, Petzold crafts an immaculately made movie about desperation, fear, love, and honor. He’s one of the great filmmakers of the world right now, sort of just occupying his own space right now, untouched and unbothered, and he also feels just one step away from an outright masterpiece. Get in on the ground floor while you can. – RP