This year may have been my personal record (at least in recent years) for the number of movies seen for a given year in anticipation of putting together a top 10 list. I saw 66, the vast majority of those at home and over the last four months as more and more became available. And since I prioritize only highly rated films, I saw a lot of movies I really enjoyed and picking only ten was tough… though there were also several I didn’t particularly care for despite their positive reviews, but that’s all part of the process. Of many potential honorable mentions, the one I do want to highlight is the French-Canadian film Red Rooms. It was intense and captivating and the only reason it is left off of my final ten is that it’s not really my kind of movie. It deals with the dark web and violent crime and is just not something I normally enjoy, but I highly recommend it to those not averse to such things.
If you’d like to hear this breakdown in podcast form it is in two parts here and here. Many more titles come up in those conversations than you will find here.
Anyway, let’s get started.
10. A Complete Unknown – The first half of this movie was probably the most enjoyable of any I saw this year. I was completely swept up into the world of 1960s NYC. I’m not even a Bob Dylan fan necessarily, but found myself on the verge of tears seeing him emerge on the folk music scene from out of nowhere. Ultimately, the third act failed to pay off in any kind of satisfying way and I was kinda left thinking, “that’s it?” But for the first half alone, it’s one of my favorites of the year.
9. Touch – This one is starting to fade from memory a bit already, but it’s a wonderfully sweet and gentle tale of lost love. A young man from Iceland in the 1960s starts working at a Japanese restaurant in London because he fell instantly in love with the owner’s daughter. Just as things may be getting serious between them, her family sells the restaurant and disappears without a word. 50 years later he travels to Japan to see if he can track her down. The movie goes back and forth between the past and present following his story.
8. Anora – Even though I only have this at 8, I’m rooting for it big time to bring home all the Oscars this year. It’s an underdog of a movie, by an underdog filmmaker (Sean Baker), about an underdog character. Baker always chooses marginalized characters to focus on and forces you to sympathize with them through all their many flaws. Anora is stubborn and superficial, but she doesn’t take crap from anyone, so you’re always rooting for her even while she’s making horrible decisions. It’s a fun ride, leading to the most beautifully devastating final minute of any movie this year.
7. Sing Sing – I was shocked this one didn’t get more Oscar attention. It’s in the realm of Nomadland with its use of non-professional actors. In this case, it’s prisoners (or at least former prisoners) of Sing Sing prison playing versions of themselves as members of a theater troupe within the prison. The tensions are high and the stakes go beyond the play they are putting on to their real lives and whether or not they’ll ever get out of prison.
6. Close Your Eyes – This film manages to be slow and captivating at the same time. A former film director in Spain, revisits the past surrounding an actor who vanished in the middle of production twenty years earlier. Some of the actor’s things had been found near a cliff, so suicide is everyone’s best guess, but no body was ever recovered. It’s all just unbelievably methodical in dealing with his daily life as new information comes to light. And it’s all bookended with this wonderful framing device involving scenes from the uncompleted movie within the movie that parallels characters in the film.
5. Transformers One – I had very low expectations for this one, but the reviews were great so I gave it a chance and figured it would be some light fun. It was fantastic. I was grinning throughout, laughing out loud at times, and completely gripped by the story. I wasn’t necessarily the biggest Transformers fan growing up, but there was undoubtedly a nostalgia factor at play — though that same factor couldn’t save the awful live-action Transformers from 2007. I’d call this the best popcorn, fist-pumping movie of the year.
4. My Old Ass – This would then be my favorite comedy of the year and maybe on par with something like Palm Springs from a few years back. The premise is whacky — a teenager gains the ability to communicate with her older self. But the feelings, both high and low, are as intense as the humor. It probably hits so hard because it’s impossible to watch without examining your own life.
3. Dune: Part Two – This series has just become the best thing in action movies right now, but I wouldn’t call them popcorn movies because they’re paced like dramas. It’s hard to fully assess this film until the series is completed, but it seems to be doing its job perfectly – build upon the characters and stakes from the first movie and give us a dramatic shift that sets up the third act. It’s all shaping up to be the best epic trilogy since The Lord of the Rings.
2. Green Border – One of the most important movies to watch in recent years. It shows the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe from the perspective of refugee families, border guards, and humanitarian volunteers. Specifically, we see a family who has escaped Syria only to be treated like a volleyball and forced back and forth across the Poland-Belarus border. The fear, the pain, the heartache, and the hope are all explored deeply and the humanity of everyone is highlighted. There are no heroes or villains — only people. Devastating.
1. Kneecap – This just ended up being the perfect combination of fun and important. The movie takes place in Northern Ireland and deals with a political referendum regarding the use of Gaelic as an official language in the country. A Gaelic hip-hop group called Kneecap forms out of a sense of pride and a refusal to treat English as the only language that matters in Ireland. There is political pushback as Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and those in power see the Gaelic-speaking community as just trying to cause trouble. They further think Kneecap may have ties to the IRA and potential terrorist activities. The two main characters are low-stakes drug dealers mostly partying their days away and running from the cops. The third member of the group is a school teacher with the musical and technical knowledge to tie it all together. Ultimately, this is a comedy, but it also manages to be a compelling political thriller and underdog story at the same time, with a little mystery and romance thrown in for good measure. It didn’t occur to me until well after watching the movie that Kneecap is a real hip-hop group and this is essentially a fictionalized biopic of their band. In real life they do support a unified Ireland and a complete separation of Northern Ireland from the UK, but they admit they’re just a band and want everyone to have fun. So, to those reading this, don’t take life so seriously — take your shoes off and just kick back and enjoy a couple hours with the boys of Kneecap.