30. “Only Lovers Left Alive” (2013)
In a filmography filled with left-of-center classics, one is tempted to look at “Only Lovers Left Alive,” Jim Jarmusch’s spooky vampire hangout movie, as a minor entry in the canon of the white-haired iconoclast. Like many films from this last leg of Jarmusch’s career (his miniaturist masterwork “Paterson”), “Only Lovers” never insists on its own importance. However, subsequent viewings reveal an abundance of both philosophical insight and deliberate craft. Among other things, ‘Only Lovers’ is a beautifully directionless ode to the things that Jarmusch loves: vintage guitars, anti-Stratfordian theory, mushroom trivia, and the unholy nighttime beauty of Detroit, to name a few. Tom Hiddleston’s Adam and Tilda Swinton’s Eve have maintained their relationship for centuries, and both actors manage to lend tremendous feeling to what might be a too-cool-for-school genre exercise in another director’s hands. Bolstered by alluring nocturnal imagery from cinematographer Yorick Le Saux, a delicious stoner-rock score from Jarmusch’s band SQÜRL, and appealing supporting turns from John Hurt, Mia Wasikowska, and Anton Yelchin, “Only Lovers Left Alive” is an exquisitely major work about the lonely melancholy of existence, deftly masquerading as something minor. – NL
29. “Jackie” (2016)
Many would be forgiven for glancing at the admittedly gorgeous poster for “Jackie” – Pablo Larraín’s audacious and deeply troubling rumination on grief and celebrity disguised as an unconventional biopic about former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis – and subsequently expecting a piece of safe, audience-tested Awards fluff. Because there is nothing conventional or audience-tested about “Jackie,” which is another one of Larraín’s fearless cinematic deconstructions of public lies and private truths. Practically everything about the film is weird, unsubtle, and totally go-for-broke, from Mica Levi’s lurching, funereal score to Natalie Portman’s intrepid lead performance, which is as fierce in its scorched-earth desperation as a turn by Gena Rowlands in her Cassavetes heyday. “Jackie” understands that it doesn’t matter if you’re the most powerful woman in the world, or just a regular schmoe watching the president catch a bullet from the comfort and safety of your home television set: we’re all prone to fall to pieces when crisis befalls us. The miracle of “Jackie” is how it enriches our understanding of bereavement without ever trivializing the considerable sorrow sustained by its subject. – NL
28. “Frances Ha” (2013)
Noah Baumbach pivoted unexpectedly from the sour bitterness of his 2000s efforts with this cheerful, charming story of a young woman’s journey of self-discovery and self-confidence in contemporary New York City. Set adrift by the new romance of her best friend (a dryly funny Mickey Sumner), Frances (Greta Gerwig) faces the difficulties of working, dating, and New York housing with infectious good cheer (and occasional melancholy). Presumably drawing much of its warmth from the influence of Gerwig (who also co-wrote the script), ‘Frances’ jettisoned the acidity of Baumbach’s earlier efforts while retaining its creator’s acute ear for the dialect of well-educated but emotionally stunted adultescent city-dwellers. Mix in sumptuous black-and-white cinematography by regular Baumbach D.P. Sam Levy (it’s half “Manhattan”, half “Jules and Jim”) and a soundtrack that finds room for everything from T. Rex to David Bowie, and you’ve got the director’s most vibrant and emotionally generous picture to date. – NL
27. “The Lobster” (2015)
Few directors managed to leave a mark on the film world this decade like Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek director started the 2010s off with a surprise Academy Award nomination for his wonderfully insane “Dogtooth” and spent the second half amassing a cult following from cinephiles and actors alike. They’re all keepers, but 2015’s absurd anti-love story “The Lobster” is especially weird. A deadpan dystopic tragicomedy that introduced Lanthimos to a larger American audience, the film presents a world where single members of society are given 45 days to find a companion, or else be turned into the animal of their choosing. Like most of Lanthimos’s films, “The Lobster” could easily become glib or obnoxiously quirky, but his humanity is always evident, even when his stories venture into the bleakest of territories. The film also gave us one of the most unlikely director/actor pairings we’ve seen with Lanthimos finding the perfect muse in Colin Farrell, channeling a desperate, schlubby everyman quality the actor has never been afforded the opportunity to portray. “The Lobster” is Lanthimos firing on all cylinders and a perfect introduction for skeptical viewers into his beautifully bonkers mind. — MR
26. “Manchester by the Sea” (2016)
If one has to solely measure a film based on its emotional devastation, Kenneth Lonergan’s heart wrenching, humanist drama, “Manchester By The Sea,” registers off the charts unbearably. In Lonergan’s bruising look at the everlasting effects of grief, a broken Casey Affleck is ravaged by tragedy, wrought with trauma — he’s always living life at half-mast. And yet through fate, the already ill-equipped uncle is forced to act as his nephew’s guardian following the untimely death of his brother and return to the scene of his greatest pains and failures. It’s impossible not to empathize and it’s a stunning, achingly textured performance by Affleck, but a stoic one that never invites pity. Lonergan’s solemn drama also resists the temptation to simply play the sad bastard card. Full of unexpected riches, including a beautifully operatic score that lends the movie a woeful, but elegant tenor, ‘Manchester’ is startlingly funny in places too — the storyteller sensible enough to understand life doesn’t break for tragedies and cruel ironies don’t yield to suffering. ‘Manchester’ provides no easy answers for its protagonist, suggesting sometimes we carry on despite wounds that never heal. In this case, it’s the burden of living with a gaping hole in your heart while the gulls around the bay no longer sing. – RP
25. “Lil Quinquin” (2015)
Released as a 3.5-hour film at Cannes, and later as a mini-series in France, Bruno Dumont’s 2014 French murder mystery is perhaps a controversial “is it film or is TV?” pick, but Cannes +, a brief limited theatrical run in the U.S., + a Sight & Sound #1 Top 10 List appearance that year as a film, are enough for us. Dumont’s difficult, challenging, provocative mien is transformative when thrown in the format of an existential procedural about the mysterious, unknowable nature of evil and mankind—full of typical despair and dread—and mixed with Keystone Cops’ bumbling comedy and an incompetent inspector straight out of the Inspector Clouseu/”Pink Panther” films. Comedy does Dumont’s dour worldview wonders. About the misadventures of a little miscreant boy and the hopeless French constables tasked with investigating gruesome murders in their seaside village—with the encroaching European immigrant crisis on its mind too— “Lil Quinquin” blends absurdism, horror and Dumont’s detached, rigorous formalism to create a jaw-dropping commentary on the unease and anxiety about to engulf the world. – RP
24. “Pain & Glory” (2019)
Pedro Almodovar has been making films for over 30 years now and like most auteurs, it’s impossible to not feel his visual and thematic stamp on everything he touches. One of the most singular, visually arresting filmmakers we have, Almodovar capped off another decade of achievements with his most personal film to date. “Pain & Glory” follows renowned director Salvador Mallo (Almodovar’s pseudonym, played by Almodovar regular Antonio Banderas) as he reflects on his childhood, career and of course, the mistakes made along the way. Although it couldn’t be more artistically or thematically different, the film feels like Almodovar’s “A Serious Man,” in that we’re finally able to see behind the curtain and get a glimmer of the man responsible for some of our favorite, most groundbreaking pieces of cinema. Almodovar’s distinctiveness is almost always felt in his work, but watching the director wrestle with his own legacy and mortality is refreshingly moving and vanity-free. He also gives Banderas an opportunity to remind us what an underrated actor he is. Long miscast or underutilized in American films, Banderas has always found challenging roles in Almodovar’s films, but this is the crowning achievement of his career. Bittersweet and moving, it’s Almodovar’s best of the decade and definitive proof that every filmmaker Q&A should be hosted on speakerphone while the director does heroin from the comfort of his own home. — MR
23. “The Comedy” (2013)
Dismissed as hipster indulgence upon release and easy to despise given its (now-prescient) look at reckless Williamsburg-set white privilege and callous toxic masculinity, filmmaker Rick Alverson’s provocative meditation on the white American male at his worst, is so much more. Recreational cruelty and inert boredom is a strong and often hilarious facade for the lonely, lost and unfulfilled and Alverson is acutely aware. His movie about emotionally-stunted punchable assholes is mean-spirited, offensive and often inappropriately funny— the drunken heartless pranks on innocent people will grind some gears—but underneath the nastiness is a disturbing generational cry for help about aging hipsters desperately in search of something real. Simmering underneath their misguided rage is a particularly forsaken soul (Tim Heidecker) truly unable to connect. Deeply misunderstood, Alverson’s transgressively bold film might feature infantile shitheads, but the confrontational ugly challenge to find humanity in the irredeemable is exactly the point. – RP
22. “Stories We Tell”
A film in which the entire artifice of filmmaking is interrogated, Sarah Polley’s profound hybrid-film “Stories We Tell,” excavates Polley’s own familial history, confronting her mother’s infidelity and, in the process, questioning the nature and purpose of storytelling. Beginning with the revelation that Polley was conceived during an extramarital affair, “Stories We Tell” mines the genre of traditional memoir, layering standard talking-head interviews, with diary entries and, in the film’s most brilliant decision, recreated home footage. In foregrounding the fluidity of memory, Polley openly wonders about the purpose behind not only the stories we tell ourselves, but the medium in which they are presented. In fictionalizing the past for Polley, the film combines the personal with these larger genre questions. “Stories We Tell” openly confronts simplistic conceptions of “truth” and really the entire purpose behind film, itself. Why do we gravitate towards this particular mode of storytelling, and what does it tell us about ourselves? How can fiction coexist with fact, and what even are the distinctions between the two? That “Stories We Tell” offers no particular answers to these problems is entirely the point. -CG
21. “Arrival” (2016)
Charges of technical brilliance blunted by emotional coldness have haunted director Denis Villeneuve throughout the decade, but this science fiction epic seems dispatched purely from the heart. Adapting Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life,” Villeneuve and screenwriter Eric Heisserer reappropriate the tropes of alien-invasion fiction into a moving story of sacrifice, connection, and communication, giving “Arrival” a scaled-down quality that makes it one of Villeneuve’s most restrained and rewatchable works. Bradford Young brings even the movie’s most out-there images down to earth, and the score by the late, great Jóhann Jóhannsson is a thing of alien beauty. Amy Adams, meanwhile, provides an inestimably human turn in a film whose concerns are with what lies beyond our terrestrial grasp. – NL