20. “The Master” (2012)
Like a few others on this list, “The Master” is a beautiful example of how time is a great film’s best friend. A quick glance at our Best of 2012 will show you that only two of eight Playlisters counted Paul Thomas Anderson‘s elliptical post-WWII headcase among their Top 10 of that year. But three years of mulling over (and repeated viewings) revealed that beneath the incredibly dense psychoanalytical exterior, and Anderson’s first real instance of giving conventional plot-structure the middle finger, lives a film pulsating with frighteningly formidable cinematic stamina. Joaquin Phoenix and the late Philip Seymour Hoffman give the kind of iconic performances that crush all Oscar winning portrayals of the decade so far, and Anderson cements the undeniable fact that he’s one of a very select few handful contemporary American directors who prospers on the dividing edge between mainstream and arthouse.
19. “Frances Ha” (2013)
From Hitchcock’s blondes to Allen’s Keaton, there’s a long and rich cinematic history of the muse, into which Greta Gerwig deftly steps, having inspired director (and now, partner) Noah Baumbach to his warmest, funniest, and possibly best work to date with “Frances Ha.” Shot essentially in secret (the first anyone knew of it was when it was announced in the TIFF line-up), the premise is essentially indistinguishable from other hip indies: a young aspiring dancer struggles with friendship, employment, and following her dreams as she makes her way through her late 20s. But in Baumbach’s hands, it feels entirely fresh, with a joyous, featherlight Lubitschian tone, gorgeous photography, and pin-sharp editing, truly sparkling dialogue and, at its center, a glorious, career-defining performance from Gerwig, who turns what could have easily become a manic pixie archetype into an identifiable, lovable human being.
18. “Enter The Void” (2010)
Not so much a film as an experience, “Enter The Void” was cinematic enfant terrible Gaspar Noe’s belated follow-up to his brutal “Irreversible,” but no one expected something quite as far out, trippy, and generally astonishing as “Enter The Void,” essentially a two-and-a-half-hour epileptic-fit-cum-out-of-body experience. Originally premiering at Cannes in 2009 in a longer form before hitting U.S. theaters in its completed version in late 2010, the film’s mostly shot from a first-person perspective, as we see through the eyes of Tokyo-based ex-pat Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) on a drug-dealing mission, only to be betrayed by a friend and killed by the police, at which time his soul leaves his body and travels through the past, present, and into the heads of his various friends and family members. A bad psychedelic trip of a movie (in the best possible sense), ‘Void’ demonstrated again that Noe is one of the most inventive and fearless filmmakers working today.
17. “Tabu” (2012)
Miguel Gomes is one of the least well-known directors on our list, but one whom we’re always excited to talk about. We’ve been eagerly anticipating his “1001 Nights” (hopefully unveiling at some point this year), but until then we have his enchanting fable “Tabu” to tide us over. Tipping its cinematic hat to F.W. Murnau‘s silent classic of the same name in both structure and philosophy, Gomes’ version is at once an ode to his home country of Portugal, and the mystical endurance of romance and silent films (the second act, “Paradise,” is entirely silent in dialogue). Like many truly great films, “Tabu” breathes both inside and outside its frames. It contrasts an old woman’s life in urban Portugal with her more exotic, youthful past in a Portuguese colony where she met the love of her life, and wraps romance, comedy, and history in insurmountably charming mysticism. If “Holy Motors” celebrates cinema through performance art, “Tabu” does it by crooning a woeful and magical ballad.
16. “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” (2011)
If there’s one irritating trope of highbrow film criticism we’d like to expunge, it’s the idea that narrative (or genre) must always represent a “compromise” of auteurist vision. Case in point: Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s last film before his Cannes-winning “Winter Sleep.” Vast and brooding, rich and dark, that ‘Anatolia’ is loosely structured as a police procedural (it’s largely spent driving around the Anatolian countryside trying to find a buried body) is actually a liberation of Ceylan’s more obscurist tendencies, giving his ideas and beautiful bleak images a skeleton to cling to. As such, it’s an elevation, not just of this type of story, which unfolds with a keen eye for character detail and atmosphere, but also of Ceylan’s recurring concerns of alienation, introspection, and the impossibility of connection. Here Ceylan acknowledges the sophisticated storytelling landscape in which we live, warps it to his own magnificent agenda, and during a long dark nighttime of the soul, makes his actual masterpiece.