Let’s celebrate the movies that really could feel perfect and powerful at AMC, shall we?
Honorable Mentions:
(in alphabetical order)
BERGMAN ISLAND - it’s not too Bergmanesque, but it sure knows why it’s not. A romantic metanarrative about art reflecting life reflecting art.
THE CARD COUNTER - Schrader plumbs the depths of America’s moral debt by way of poker tournaments and government-sanctioned torture.
THE SOUVENIR PART II - both an improvement on Part I and an improvement of Part I. Self-reflexive storytelling at its ouroboric finest.
TITANE - Ducournau once again allegorizes sexual violence, capturing the conflation of pain and pleasure in all its fleshy, transgressive longing.
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - Shakespeare through the lens of German Expressionism and Coen fatalism—like black box theater in hell.
15. Annette
Written by Ron and Russell Mael, directed by Leos Carax
Annette, written by art-pop duo Sparks and directed by the filmmaker behind Holy Motors, is a musical about a celebrity couple’s unsettling marionette baby (Annette herself!) who can sing with her mother’s voice. There’s really nothing like it. That it erupts into gonzo farce is perhaps expected; that it still has something to say amid its ludicrous operatics is a miracle. Brash, brusque, and boastful comedian Henry McHenry wants to kill the game; his opera singer wife wants to die for her art. From one way of looking at things, Annette is the bastard child of their dissimilar approaches to fame—talented voice, hollowed-out insides. This baby’s got subtext. Decorated in arthouse glitz, Annette is a quaint reminder of who’s left behind by the business of art.
Where to watch: Annette is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
14. Inside
Written and directed by Bo Burnham
There’s a reason that each of Inside’s songs became a TikTok phenomenon: it’s a living record of the pandemic psyche. Its frank yet artful articulation of our shared doom and gloom—climate change, COVID, the inexorable march of time—is bound to resonate with the terminally aware. Long consumed by anxiety and now quarantined with it, Burnham satirizes, reflects on, and mourns the road to despair without dulling his humor’s edge. Oscillating between uproarious theatrics and disquieting honesty, Inside strikes Bo’s best balance yet between artifice and authenticity. His sincerity has never felt less suspicious, his observations on culture and capitalism never this astute. And his backhanded praise of Bezos? A bop.
Where to watch: Inside is currently streaming on Netflix.
13. Flee
Narrated by “Amin,” directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Under the pseudonym “Amin,” an Afghan refugee walks his documentarian friend through the story of his life. It’s a story he’d never told in full before—not even to his partner—because his safety depends on secrecy. To obscure compromising details and expand its insight into Amin’s life, Flee renders his memory in animation, lending it the emotional weight of real-time experience. It’s not history reiterated so much as it’s a burden shared. Painting the unfathomable from the eyes of the personal, Flee is at once imaginative and grounded, difficult and healing. Particularly moving is Amin’s coming out story, which unfolds in concert with his flight. Unlike the political entities that displaced him, his newfound communities point to a potentially better world.
Where to watch: Flee is currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
12. Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Directed by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
It was 1969, the summer of the Harlem Cultural Festival. If you haven’t heard of the festival, it’s because white America didn’t want you to: the footage shot there was unceremoniously dumped in a basement for decades. Summer of Soul is its resurrection, courtesy of Questlove and producer Robert Fyvolent. The doc employs its share of talking heads, but for the most part, Questlove gets out of the festival’s way. This is two hours of previously unseen performances from some of the greatest musical talents in history: Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly Stone, the Chambers Brothers, and so many more. Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples’ rendition of Take My Hand Precious Lord is divine; from front to back, the film is a firework of Black joy.
Where to watch: Summer of Soul is currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
11. The Green Knight
Written and directed by David Lowery
A sometimes faithful, sometimes loose adaptation of an ancient poem, The Green Knight is a Lowery project filtered through medieval legend. Think King Arthur meets A Ghost Story. It’s a visual marvel: Lowery and DP Andrew Palermo ensure that every composition is striking. Watching the film is akin to a measured pace through an art museum. The production design is stagey yet otherworldly, like the flame-warped face of a campfire orator. The lighting design is especially impressive—what the crew pulls off with shadow, color, and mist tops the aesthetic off beautifully. Lowery’s fixation on mortality fits The Green Knight well, unearthing an old truth from its verse—roots run deeper into the ground than ink does into the page.
Where to watch: The Green Knight is available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
10. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
Written and directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese
Starring veteran South African actress Mary Twala Mhlongo, who died shortly after the film was completed, This Is Not a Burial is as much a revelation as it is a resurrection. Twala plays Mantoa, an 80-year-old widow who’s just lost her last living relative. Mosese realizes her grief with astounding sublimity: the black of her mourning dress contrasts the deep, vibrant colors of her home and the warm African landscapes outside; Yu Miyashita’s score, reminiscent of Mica Levi’s work, pierces the silence with trembles and shrieks. The film’s funereal spirituality is akin to Costa’s Vitalina Varela. When the narrative shifts to a community-led campaign to save Mantoa’s village, its righteous anger melds with patience for the intangible sacred to form a kind of transcendence.
Where to watch: It’s currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
9. Benedetta
Written by David Birke and Paul Verhoeven, directed by Paul Verhoeven
What’s more Christian, students witnessing to their professors in God’s Not Dead, or nuns using a statuette of the Virgin Mary as a dildo in Benedetta? Cheeky provocateur Paul Verhoeven makes a strong case for the latter. As funny, satirical, and titillating as anything Verhoeven’s made, Benedetta circumvents blasphemy with genuine insights into sex and faith. Verhoeven, lest we forget, is a scholar of the historical Jesus: he was the only non-theologian invited to participate in the Jesus Seminar. His portrayal of these real-life queer nuns is provocation as deconstruction. Its bawdy embrace of carnality goes beyond censure of repression—to Benedetta, Christian hedonism isn’t divine unless you’re taking hedonism all the way.
Where to watch: Benedetta is currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
8. The Worst Person in the World
Written by Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier, directed by Joachim Trier
Julie, the person in question, isn’t that bad—she just can’t decide what she wants to do or whom she wants to be with (and if that’s the criteria, you could be the worst person in the world.) The film rounds out Trier’s “Oslo trilogy,” an informal trio of stories set in the filmmaker’s home city. Lightly surrealistic and rife with playful formalism, Worst Person enlivens the rom-com by eschewing high drama for expressionistic subjectivity. Trier and the terrific Renate Reinsve (who, despite what your eyes tell you, is not Dakota Johnson) paint minor feelings in vivid color. Their depiction of personal and romantic longing is uncomfortably honest—so much so that Wikipedia describes the film as a “dark romantic comedy-drama.” Now that’s what I call life!
Where to watch: The Worst Person in the World is available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
7. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Written by Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, directed by Josh Greenbaum
God bless this wacky movie. It couldn’t have come at a better time—the last thing I expected while knee-deep in lockdown was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Starring and written by the ladies behind Bridesmaids, Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar is one of the funniest movies of the last 10 years. It’s brilliantly, ceaselessly bonkers. You could use it like a nicotine patch but for acid trips. I watched it repeatedly throughout the year with different groups of friends and each time discovered jokes that I had laughed over the time before. It’s bright, giddy, and impossibly silly, and given its straight-to-VOD pandemic release, it’s destined for cult classic status. Jamie Dornan’s comedic turn is his best performance yet. I’d watch 18 more of these.
Where to watch: It’s currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
6. Memoria
Written and directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Weerasethakul’s first English-language film is not so easily translated. Like his other work, Memoria is more sensory experience than narrative journey. The long, meditative shots and ambient sound design seem tuned into some metaphysical presence. Sound is of particular significance to Memoria: Jessica, a Scottish expatriate living in Colombia, wakes up one day to a loud, metallic thud—or maybe a muted sonic boom. For reasons unknown, the sound resonates with her very core, and she spends the film trying to identify and recreate it. The film circles the idea of preservation, both concrete and incorporeal: if sound waves never die, can we hear the cries of the past? And if so, are we up to the task of listening? Hark! Our every move reverberates.
Where to watch: In a truly weird move, NEON is doing a “never-ending release” of Memoria: for ostensibly forever, it’s showing in a few cities at a time for one week each. You can find the list of dates and locations here.
5. Drive My Car
Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Drive My Car, a three-hour film adapted from a 20-page Murakami story, doesn’t roll its opening credits until 40 minutes in—that’s how you know it’s good. Despite its lengthy interpolations, none of the plot beats feel anything but essential. The screenplay is so suffused with detail that it’s hard to believe its source material wasn’t Murakami’s magnum opus. Hamaguchi’s direction is just as accomplished: out of his actors, he draws layered and involved performances that pierce the veil of emotional restraint; with his camera, he fixes an intense, revealing gaze on the characters, recalling the directness of Ozu. But Hamaguchi’s style is distinctly his own, and he imbues the story with a Chekhovian weight worthy of its theatrical parallels.
Where to watch: Drive My Car is currently streaming on HBO Max and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
4. C’mon C’mon
Written and directed by Mike Mills
Mills’ follow-up to the immensely heartwarming 20th Century Women dabbles in the experimental without losing a drop of its humanist bona fides. The uncle-and-nephew drama adopts elements of documentary: Joaquin’s character, a radio journalist, interviews real-life kids throughout the film, centering their thoughts on our collective trajectory—out of the mouths of babes and into the mic. In sound design and story, C’mon C’mon illustrates how a microphone lends its speakers authority, laying bare cinema’s mission as a similar amplifier. The film’s self-acknowledgment turns what could’ve been cloying into heart-on-sleeve edification. It’s an affecting and sincere ray of hope with a tremendous performance from child actor Woody Norman.
Where to watch: C’mon C’mon is currently streaming on Showtime and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
3. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Ryusuke Hamaguchi is a goddamn force. After watching this and Drive My Car, I felt embarrassed that I hadn’t heard of him earlier. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is his anthology film: three separate tales of romance and connection. It’s a triptych of little masterpieces. Hamaguchi’s screenplays are exceptional—in a matter of minutes, he bestows characters and relationships with remarkable density, fleshing out discursive internal lives and genuine yearnings at a compelling, measured pace. Each segment feels playful, creative, and lived-in, and they’re tonally diverse enough to run the gamut of passion. Tense, erotic, wistful, tender—and not a wasted moment in the film. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a major work three times over.
Where to watch: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
2. Pig
Written and directed by Michael Sarnoski
Pig, in which Nicolas Cage plays a lonely, gruff widower on a warpath through Portland’s food scene to retrieve his stolen truffle pig, is a movie of contrasts. Early scenes in the Oregon wilderness are slow, quiet, and awash in muted colors, but when Amir—the wannabe mogul who buys Robin’s truffles—pulls into the frame, it’s in a bright yellow Camaro, shattering the silence with roaring cylinders. This dichotomy permeates Pig’s soul. Robin’s cabin is dusty and cluttered, sunlight pouring in through the gap in the door; Portland’s high-end eateries are symmetrical, sterilized, sanitized. Robin’s anger, fervent and righteous, bubbles up like lava, burning away the artifice and eulogizing what little we have. Pig is a poignant palette cleanser that rejects pearls for swine.
Where to watch: Pig is currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
1. About Endlessness
Written and directed by Roy Andersson
About Endlessness has been showing at festivals and abroad since 2019, but it didn’t get a U.S. release until 2021. Thank god for that: it plays even better in a bleak, beaten-down world. The film unfolds in brief vignettes, each exquisitely composed in a motionless frame. A doubting priest visits a doctor, a man ties his daughter’s shoe in the rain, a legless musician busks at a metro station—simple but evocative tales, acute summations of human conditions. Moments joyful and terrible, lovely and sorrowful, momentous and passing: all are basked in grey and brightly lit, coalescing into a droll liminal space between meaningful and meaningless. When compassion and intimacy peek through these dioramas, they feel like the only reasons to exist at all.
Where to watch: It’s currently streaming on Hulu and available for rental or purchase on multiple VOD platforms.
Until next year, friends.