25) Cloud Atlas – 2012
Most movies about the generational, interdimensional span of connectivity are usually self-aggrandizing, onanistic dross such as Grand Canyon. However, the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer collude for a film that is unrelentingly ambitious and juxtaposes storylines that are so pulpy that they could easily be the central plot for a self-contained movie (I would adore a spin-off about Tom Hanks’ Cockney gangster or the cannibalistic clan skulking after futuristic survivalists). By the finale, the motifs aligned in a scene of cosmic divinity so sprawling and all-encompassing that I wept at the magnitude and message of radicalized change-makers throughout the epochs.
24) Mission: Impossible- Fallout – 2018
Tom Cruise might sprain an ankle or nearly drown in a whirlpool for our adrenaline-surging entertainment. More than being a ferociously lilliputian actor with a Napoleon complex, Cruise is volitional to be a derring-do stuntman for feats of on-screen athleticism without safety nets or doubles. Fallout is the nexus in the prolific Mission: Impossible series in which the hyperkinetic sequences are countervailed with ethical questions (ex. Should an Interpol agent be sacrificed in order to maintain anonymity?). At this point, the trope of latex masks shouldn’t hoodwink the viewers but the chicanery is still dazzling. The race-against-the-clock climax intercuts expertly between a mountainside tussle and a wire-snipping detonation. Palms will be clammy as the digital readout ticks down to the zero second.
23) Jackie – 2016
Vanishing completely inside the female empowerment of Jackie Onassis, Natalie Portman should’ve been the recipient of an Oscar here instead of her overrated turn in Black Swan. She imports the dulcet genteelness of Jackie during a documentary tour of the furniture and interior restoration of the White House. The film is about the disenchantment of incompletion when her husband could’ve accomplished so much more in the wake of his assassination. Pablo Larrain directs with a melancholic sensitivity towards Jackie who must project national strength amidst a march towards St. Matthews Cathedral.
22) Parasite – 2019
This is a film that is surreptitious in its off-kilter ability to be emotionally devastating. Bong Joon-ho masquerades his class-system black comedy inside a congenial movie about a family on dire straits who must systematically prevaricate in order to acquire multifarious positions at an affluent family’s house. The flim-flam scheme of the aforementioned, impecunious family begins to unfurl in garish, haunting ways such as when the housekeeper is rescinded for what appears to be tuberculosis. Like Joon-ho’s The Host, the film dabbles in several genres with an ambidextrous equilibrium (the underground portion could be a subterranean, J-horror potboiler and the beginning is a viciously funny Billy Wilder satire). The Morse code finale will be etched into your tearducts for days.
21) The Lost City of Z – 2017
Since the true story upon which this is based is unsolved, the ending itself is ambiguously open-ended. The gaping lack of closure is better than any artistic license that James Gray could’ve fabricated. Jungle adventures on this tier are endangered species in cinema nowadays and Gray is emulating John Huston in the grandest sense here. This is also the inception of Robert Pattinson as a thespian who can’t be brusquely dismissed based on his escapades in the Twilight universe. The Amazonian forest is not a sound stage. It is a vibrant, blossoming area of peril for the explorers and it is a spellbinding expedition for the protagonists and the viewers.
20) Toy Story 3 – 2010
In many fashions, Andy is the surrogate for the audience. He has matured to ripe adulthood and his toys are fixtures of his nostalgia for youth. When he gasps at Bonnie with his cherished action figures, it will be an identifiable sensation for anyone who has been aghast at the passage of time. For me, that was the moment Toy Story 3 was elevated from an insidious Holocaust allegory (some of the daycare toys are the Sonderkommando escorting their peers to their cages and the incinerator could be emblematic of the gas ovens from Auschwitz) to Pixar’s crown jewel. These are supposedly expendable characters who are the torchbearers to our unblemished innocence.
19) Blue Valentine – 2010
By flashing back to the origins of a torrid, heartfelt love story, Derek Cianfrance charts the gradual dissolution and deglamorization of when adoration fades in oblivion, resentment and diminishing returns. How does a couple with such effulgent feelings for one another become the embittered cliche of a married duo who must resort to tinseled motel to reignite a spark between them? Truth be told, based on the perspectives of the genders, people will either affiliate themselves with Ryan Gosling or Michelle Williams and both arguments are meritorious. For men, Gosling was manipulated into fatherhood by Williams. For women, Gosling has regressed into arrested development and inebriated misbehavior.
18) Prisoners – 2013
Outside of Wolverine, Hugh Jackman’s skills have been sputtered on overblown star vehicles. However, Prisoners was a brooding, flinty invitation into Denis Villeneuve’s airtight craftsmanship and Jackman is the vessel of retribution who is a blustery animal when his daughter is abducted. Additionally impressive is Jake Gyllenhaal who is a bundle of twitching eyelids and coiled fury as the detective in charge. The Academy Award-nominated cinematography by Roger Deakins is a striking assemblage of moonlight that contorts suburban neighborhoods and cul-de-sacs with malevolent auras.
17) Won’t You Be My Neighbor? – 2018
Fred Rogers is such a beloved role model that his off-screen life is a subject of debate as to whether he was tattooed underneath his sweaters or a military infantryman with a history of sanctioned kills. Of course, the truth is that Rogers was unimpeachable and yet Morgan Neville’s documentary isn’t vanilla idolatry. None of this is hagiography when Neville italicizes that Rogers was a frontrunner for civil and homosexual rights in miscellaneous episodes that were momentous without being preachy despite Rogers’ minister background (the African-American mailman soaks his feet next to Rogers). What the film truly extols is that no other entertainer will be such a square, unhurried peg and yet possess such a philanthropic, altruistic impact on its impressionable audience.
16) Drive – 2011
Borrowing liberally from Walter Hill’s The Driver, Nicolas Winding Refn’s existential action movie is both elemental in storytelling and yet the spurts of Takeshi Miike ultraviolence are jolting to the unsuspecting viewers (the elevator cranial stomping transmutes Gosling’s getaway driver from avenger to certifiable psychopath). Albert Brooks aborts his pulmonary nervousness and nebbish persona for a viper-like mafioso who can embed a fork into one of his henchman upon a moment’s provocation. All of the choreography is interspersed conservatively and due to those respites, the cat-and-mouse chases are more visceral as a result.
15) Flight – 2012
From Days of Wine and Roses to The Lost Weekend, movies around alcoholism are normally presumptuous with their seminar soapboxes. Flight allows the main character to be irresponsible on the behalf of a conspiracy with his cohorts. Denzel Washington’s ebriose behavior is venial since his instinctual savoir-faire as a pilot salvages a plane of passengers. A scene of Whip (Washington) internally tormented over a hotel refrigerator with booze is nerve-racking. By the end, Whip finally capitulates his professional arrogance and denial for acceptance that he will always be a culprit unless he accepts the consequences.
14) 12 Years a Slave – 2013
Movies about slavery and America’s indignities to African-Americans are usually coddled to avert any national shame. However, director Steve McQueen fulgurates straight into the fray and it is an enormously frightening experience to watch Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) stripped of his freedom and ultimately his pride. Caucasian viewers who are benighted to the plight will definitely be strangulated by the gut-punch, incendiary onslaught here. The scariest interludes are when Solomon’s eyes are scanning the landscape in search of refuge that probably won’t materialize.
13) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – 2019
Instead of the Cameron Crowe methodology of needledrop period songs on the soundtrack, Quentin Tarantino ingeniously inserts radio spots from 1969 during the car rides to encapsulate the era via gonzo journalism. Tarantino is a road scholar of western character actors and this is his valentine to the obscure thespians who were never in the limelight yet bulwarked many of the television shows of yore. Leonardo DiCaprio is a stammering wreck of popularity insecurity (his flubbed line is the catalyst for a hilarious trailer meltdown). Meanwhile, Brad Pitt is effortlessly laissez-faire as his valet, bodyguard and stunt double. Until the conclusion, the film is less lethal than most Tarantino movies and the coda with Sharon Tate is unusually sanguine and optimistic for the auteur of grindhouse.
12) Gone Girl – 2014
Some readers have criticized Gillian Flynn’s book as a misogynistic, tawdry piece of sensationalized trash. I supplicate for those people to reconsider their kneejerk reactions. Gone Girl doesn’t flatter Nick Dune (Ben Affleck who channels his media scrutiny into overanalyzed weariness). He’s an adulterer and he becomes indolent after the loss of his job. Rosamund Pike is a black-widow revelation and she coldly manipulates the male pawns in her path towards righteousness. She neuters everyone on her journey and her calculating frigidity chills the spine. Tyler Perry deflates his ministrel-show detractors with a silver-tongued performance as Dune’s attorney. David Fincher and Flynn are a match made in Men are from Comeuppance Mars, Women are From Svengali Venus heaven.
11) Life Itself – 2014
“Movies are a machine that generates empathy” is a significant quote from renowned film critic Roger Ebert and no other picture on the list crystallizes that principle than this endlessly ensorcelling, comprehensive documentary on Ebert himself. While his Saturday televised, capsule reviews were a staple for my generation of film tenderfoots, Ebert was always an intrinsic enigma. Steve James traces back from Ebert the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to his barfly origins, bedfellows with smut filmmaker Russ Meyers and ultimately his legendary collaboration with fellow cinephile Gene Siskel. For acolytes, it was sorrowful to see Ebert deprived of his speech (due to salivary cancer complications) but his indelible voice (the champion for filmmakers everywhere including James for his basketball memoir Hoop Dreams) and passion for cinema never eluded him.
Interjections 