60. Birdman (2014) Emmanuel Lubezki
In some quarters it has become accepted wisdom — which we do not accept — that Alejandro Gonzalez Iñarritú‘s admittedly flashy, show-offy, deeply smartarse “Birdman” is Not Good. Call around some time and we’ll argue about that, but for now, let’s agree on one thing: Emmanuel Lubezki‘s rollicking, swooping, deceitful, faux-one-take fake-out cinematography is exactly what the movie is — an insolently profane run-on sentence, a stream of self-consciousness and an act of smoke-and-mirrors trickery made of monstrous ego, deep self-loathing and the blinding razzle-dazzle of the footlights.
59. “The Rider” (2017) Joshua James Richards
Joshua James Richards also shot Francis Lee‘s differently gorgeous — damper, grayer — “God’s Own Country.” But with “The Rider,” Richards, also DP on Zhao’s debut “Songs My Brothers Taught Me” reaches an unusual level of synergy with his director and his subjects. His camera can canter alongside the characters with wild, airy freedom, but it is mostly attuned to quieter rhythms: the spartan poetry of the dialogue, the living commentary of the landscapes, and the tiny moments of unscriptable serendipity that only the most sensitive DP can locate.
58. “Ex Machina” (2014) Rob Hardy
Alex Garland reteamed with DP Rob Hardy on the lusher, more intricate “Annihilation,” and Hardy also shot Christopher McQuarrie‘s terrific “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” but all of his strengths are on display in the controlled and claustrophobic “Ex Machina.” In a house/bunker so designer-antiseptic it could be a petrie dish in a science lab, Hardy’s crisp, glassy, geometric photography invests the pristine surfaces with seamy undercurrents of lust, jealousy, and malice — the negative spectrum of messy humanity that Alicia Vikander‘s artificial intelligence quickly learns en route to becoming a real, murderous girl.
57. “Mother!” (2017) Matthew Libatique
It’s telling that cinematography bad-boy Matthew Libatique has shot every one of Darren Aronofsky’s films except “The Wrestler.” The melancholic restraint of that film would not perhaps have suited one of cinema’s unashamed maximalists. The gonzo, berserker vibe of “Mother!” however? Exactly his jam, and Libatique is off the leash here, with his camera terrorizing Jennifer Lawrence’s naive young wife like a vulture even before the escalating mayhem of the film’s final act — still the most thrilling, cacophonous, nonsensical 20 minutes of cinema we saw this decade.
56. The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) Thimios Bakatakis
If anyone other than Yorgos Lanthimos is largely responsible for the Greek Weird Wave aesthetic, it has to be his regular cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, and their collaboration on the clinically chilly “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” is a kind of apotheosis. The camera glides with ruthless, Godlike impersonality through Kubrickian corridors and exaggeratedly high-ceilinged rooms, and amid such steely, sharp-edged imagery, human imperfection — a messy plate of spaghetti, the acne pockmarks on Barry Keoghan’s cheek, the graying beard sported by a schlubby Colin Farrell — become heightened grotesqueries, almost fetish objects.
55. “A Hidden Life” (2019) Jörg Widmer
Jörg Widmer has been a cameraman not just on all Terrence Malick’s movies since “The New World,” but also on Haneke and Wenders films and basically any movie shot even partially in Germany for the last 20 years. So it’s satisfying to see him move into the DP role and turn in such instantaneously spectacular work. He has clearly learned a lot about wide-angle lenses from Lubezki, and the film is not devoid of late-Malick twirliness, but Widmer also brings a quality of stillness and reverence — scintillatingly appropriate for a film that tries no less than to speak to God.
54. “Macbeth” (2015) Adam Arkapaw
Adam Arkapaw got our attention as DP on both the first season of “Top of the Lake” and the first season of “True Detective,” but still, little really prepared us for the rumbling magnificence of his visuals in Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth.” Matching Shakespeare’s words for bloodsoaked grandeur and fury, using slow motion to create painterly tableaux out of charging battle columns, and clothing the mythic love-and-power-struggle story in lambent images both stark and resplendent, this is photography to make fires burn and cauldrons bubble.
53. “The Club” (2015) Sergio Armstrong
When we tout the virtues of unpretty cinematography, often the film we’re thinking of is Pablo Larraín’s excoriating broadside on the Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy around abuse and corruption “The Club.” Shot by Larraín’s brilliant longtime collaborator Sergio Armstrong with willful anti-glamor there’s a murkiness that reflects the grimy morals of the four disgraced priests living out their cooling-off period in a sullen yellow house in a depressed off-season seaside town. Mostly filmed at dawn or dusk, against this half-lit backdrop, a black soul stands out all the starker.
52. “Son of Saul” (2015), Mátyás Erdély
The first-person shooting style of László Nemes‘ bruisingly visceral Holocaust drama felt so novel that it was a surprise that DP Mátyás Erdély had been around a while, shooting 2011’s “Miss Bala,” and Josh Mond’s “James White.” But taking what could have been a mere gimmick, and applying its claustrophobic power to a WWII death camp in “Son of Saul” makes the deepest impression — an experiment in subjectivity that is grueling but compelling, and surprising in that it shows moments of beauty guttering like candles in the hellish gloom.
51. “Hereditary” (2018) Pawel Pogorzelski
Any given image from Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” might look like the negative version of a frame from his follow-up “Midsommar” — Pawel Pogorzelski’s photography is as blanched in sinister sunshine in the latter as it is shrouded in sinister shadow in the former. But “Hereditary” shows best Pogorzelski’s uncanny ability to push his images to the limit of intelligibility. So much of the horror happens out of the corner of your eye, that you start to think it’s all in your head — this is photography that wants to drive you mad, and nearly succeeds.
