10. “Toni Erdmann” (2016)
On paper, German director Maren Ade’s story of corporate synergy and parental discord sounds ripe for the kind of wacky scenarios you’d find in a dozen lowbrow comedies: a hard-working corporate type (the wondrous Sandra Hüller) has her life upended when her carefree father (Peter Simonischek, equally disarming) unexpectedly visits, bombarding her with practical jokes in an effort to reconnect. In the hands of the gifted Ade, “Toni Erdmann” is both an enormously funny film and a perceptively truthful one, packed with unusually sharp insight into familial boundaries, personal happiness, womanhood, and the masks we force ourselves to wear. While its leisurely 160-minute running time allows detours into corporate sexual politics and the loneliness of aging, this crowd-pleaser never feels messy or overstuffed. “Toni Erdmann” is the kind of film you feel nostalgic for moments after it ends, a fitting feeling for a film that so adeptly understands the nostalgic. – MR
9. “Under the Skin” (2014)
A cosmic parable about the isolation and loneliness of life on Earth as seen through the eyes of an outsider, Jonathan Glazer’s mesmerizing third feature “Under the Skin” is a haunting trip into the unknown. Released nearly ten years after his previous feature, the underrated Nicole Kidman drama “Birth,” Glazer made his most memorable and cohesive film yet. Aided by Mica Levi’s dazzling score, Daniel Landin’s simultaneously confounding and moving cinematography, and Scarlett Johansson’s deeply, daringly understated leading turn, Glazer displays his considerable gift for marrying dazzling visuals with deeper thematic concerns. This is an unsettling vision of femininity, mortality, and what it ultimately means to be human, resulting in a sci-fi classic in the making. — MR
8. “Dogtooth” (2010)
There are three common responses to Yorgos Lanthimos’ breakout film: joy, confusion, or distaste. To be fair, most viewers will cycle through all three at any given time. Considering the film’s outspoken eccentricity, the accusation of style over substance does not apply, since both elements are undeniably inseparable; the bone-dry dark comedy of Lanthimos’ creative voice fuses itself to the topics the director addresses in his work. “Dogtooth” might not harbor the emotional resonance of “The Lobster,” but this drama-thriller forces the viewer to witness a family behaving at its most cruel and least human, which not only exemplifies the film’s core theme of alienation, but converts the movie into a work that is quietly iconic and exceptionally bizarre. – JC
7. “Inside Llewyn Davis” (2013)
Not only is Joel and Ethan Coen’s mournful ode to 1960’s folk culture one of their true triumphs, it’s also their kindest picture: beneath its scabrous exterior lies a genuine sympathy for the broken-down losers of the world. Oscar Isaac gives his most sensitive performance to date as our nominal folk hero – a fine musician, perhaps even one with greatness in him, if only he could get out of his own way. T. Bone Burnett’s music is a heady, ragged distillation of mid-century Americana, and the brothers wring enchanting supporting performances out of Justin Timberlake as Llewyn’s chipper rival, Adam Driver as a spaced-out cowboy, and Coen muse John Goodman as a bellicose, heroin-addicted jazzman. – NL
6. “Moonlight” (2016)
Even the lucky few who’d seen Barry Jenkins’s warm-hearted walk-and-talk “Medicine for Melancholy” were prepared for the quantum leap from that film to “Moonlight,” the director’s wrenching and damn-near-flawless sophomore effort. “Moonlight” is a poem of sound and images, an exultant, soul-stirring human epic that somehow crafts a world as expansive as any Marvel flick, within the modest confines of a character study. Jenkins’ instant classic introduced the world to several big new talents – Mahershala Ali, who won a well-deserved Oscar for his portrait of a paternal, morally conflicted drug dealer, as well as Ashton Sanders, Jharrel Jerome, and Trevante Rhodes – all while announcing its director as one of the most essential voices in modern cinema. – NL
5. “Tree Of Life” (2011)
Terrence Malick’s epic memory play remains his most personal and emotionally intimate work, a larger-than-life celestial and philosophical elegy that attempts to do nothing less than tackle the ever-important existential questions we face: the meaning of life, death, the existence of God, and our identity as shaped by family. “The Tree of Life” is a film where Malick asks big questions: of himself, of his audience, and of the world beyond our immediate comprehension. Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain star as the 1950s parents to a trio of boys (Tye Sheridan, Laramie Eppler, Hunter McCracken), but the family is irrevocably shattered by a tragedy and even the grief of their own childhood. Sean Penn plays the older version of Jack, trying to reconcile with the past, his family and trying to make sense of his life. Little plot exists beyond that, but none of that matters. Malick’s monumental vision— cosmic, lyrical, graceful and intimate—is a rapturous tone poem and a gorgeous meditation on the human condition. – NL
4. “The Master” (2012)
The 2010s were the decade in which the already-accelerating Paul Thomas Anderson advanced to his next level, solidifying his status as the Kubrick of the video store generation. If “There Will Be Blood” was an examination of turn of the century American capitalism, “The Master” is a mid-century reckoning with the false promise of post-war America wrapped in an enigmatic story of friendship and love, a burgeoning cult, and a wild dog protégé that just cannot be tamed. Anderson refutes our culture’s ubiquitous nostalgia for the “Greatest Generation,” instead depicting damaged men returning to a world of empty promises, manufactured patriotism, and false prophets waiting to capitalize on their undiagnosed trauma. At a time where half the country is mourning the days when “America was still great,” “The Master” is a stark dissection of American exceptionalism— a haunting portrayal of two men’s relentless search for connection and happiness, and the country that duped them into believing it was achievable in the first place. It also functions as a heartbreaking love story about two souls (outstanding, for-the-ages performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix) whose magnetic polarities eventually pull them apart — MR
3. “The Act of Killing” (2012)
It’s hard to think of many films this past decade that have changed the way we look at films and narrative like “The Act of Killing” (and its stellar 2014 companion piece “The Look of Silence”). Director Joshua Oppenheimer spent years crafting his searing indictment of the 1960s Indonesian genocide that history almost erased, interviewing black market criminals-turned-genocidal war criminals Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry about their part in wiping out upwards of three million communist Indonesians and Chinese from 1965-1966. But Oppenheimer decided to play with the very notion of what a documentary can be, asking Congo and Zulkadry to recreate their crimes on movie sets designed to replicate the types of films they grew up adoring (westerns, musicals, and gangster dramas). By allowing Congo and Zulkadry to reflect on their crimes through the lens of genres that helped normalize warfare and violence, Oppenheimer prods the paradox of warfare as entertainment, and places blame not only the men responsible, but the systems that perpetuate the never-ending cycles of violence. It’s an undeniably brutal but absolutely essential piece of filmmaking, admirably seeking to uncover the atrocities that history wants us to forget. — MR
2. “A Separation” (2011)
Throughout his filmography, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi has explored the various stratums of internal pressure that can implode into tragedy when an otherwise equable routine is upended. “A Separation” is Farhadi’s grand statement—truly, one of the great films of our time— in which a middle-class Iranian family is plunged into disarray upon the arrival of a caregiver for the patriarch’s Alzheimer’s-stricken father. The emotional violence unleashed in this potent slice of urban realism is unflinching and often painful to witness, and it’s only Farhadi’s steadfast compassion for his two leads that prevents the whole thing from being too much to bear. “A Separation” is an aggressively personal work from a master director— one that does not relent or compromise, all the way to its bitterly abstruse conclusion. – NL
1. “Burning”(2018)
“Life to me is a mystery,” Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) says at the opening of “Burning,” and so begins one of the most elusive, angry and searing movies of the decade—a love triangle, a mystery, a serial killer movie, a bruising meditation on society. From both a socially conscious and formally artistic standpoint, international film historians will look back on this period in Korean cinema and point to achievements like Lee Chang-dong’s “Burning” as highlights of a renaissance. Lee’s scorching, enigmatic film not only captures the deep anxiety of a nation’s beating heart, it’s also one of the greatest authorial screen translations ever produced — adapted straight from a Haruki Murakami short story, “Barn Burning,” it’s an unrequited love letter to a writer that’s captured the attention of readers across the globe. Yet even though the material is literary-minded, the adaptation is driven by haunting film language. It’s a pitch-perfect example of how to retain a singularly cinematic vision, simultaneously capturing the feeling of an internal, unfathomable yearning through captivating imagery. Steven Yeun‘s unknowable affluent character is unforgettably evocative and the disappearance of Jeon Jong-seo— a vanishing both the audiences and lead will never reconcile—is a haunting sensation that will never relent. – AB
And yes, a denoument and honorable mention on the last page.