Best Films of the Teens

1. This Is Not a Film (Jafar Panahi, 2011)

2. Autumn (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2016)

3. Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife + Heart) (Yann Gonzalez, 2018)

4. For the Plasma (Bingham Bryant and Kyle Molzan, 2014)

5. Sleep Has Her House (Scott Barley, 2017)

6. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

7. Wishing Well (Sylvia Schedelbauer, 2018)

8. Nightlife (Cyprien Gaillard, 2015)

9. Margaret (186-minute version, Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

10. Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2016)

Best Films of 2019

Best Films of 2019

10. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
Yes, Scorsese is still obsessed with goodfellas, wise guys, and tough nuts. The intractable machismo is still suffocating. The narrative trajectory is still Oedipal. But. Women do talk in this film, contrary to some of the negative reviews. In fact, in the last hour or so, they turn the film, if not Scorsese’s entire oeuvre, on its head. What, finally, has all this macho posturing been about, the last hour asks, especially if it ropes you off from those you love the most, and it’s quite possibly Scorsese‘s most moving work ever. I was fighting back tears all the way up until the soon-to-be-classic final shot.

9. Climax (Gaspar Noé) 
Stupid, obnoxious, juvenile, unrelenting, and great! If you don't like this film, then you're no rock 'n' roll fun. 

8. Uncut Gems (The Safdie Brothers)
A thoroughly exhausting film, starting at 10, shifting down to 8 or 9 about halfway through, and then revving up to 11 if not beyond in its nail-biting last half hour. Adam Sandler's superb performance brings to mind Divine's in Female Trouble (John Waters, 1974) in that it's an extended aria (to borrow Jonanthan Rosenbaum's words, I think), a suffocating series of fuck ups. No spoilers but even though you should be able to see the end coming from leagues away, it's no less shocking. All this and another slimy, neon-soaked score by Daniel Lopatin. One of the best films ever made about toxic masculinity (what do these guys want?!?). I've never been so excited about the outcome of a sportsball game in my life! 

7. The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)
Hogg's film keeps you abuzz and relaxed like the best art films. Your mind is working to make sure you haven't missed any narrative information. But the overall languor lowers the blood pressure. It's all about the interstices of a relationship, not to get at The truth but simply, A truth. Pungently observed and transfixing throughout. I'm baffled at all the hate I've read. It's a challenging film but no more so than the art film norm. How did the haters wind up watching it in the first place? And perversely, a sequel is coming albeit sadly without Robert Pattinson.

6. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa) 
The moment the end credits appeared, a sense of longing washed over me, the feeling of wanting time spent with loved ones to continue. More here.

5. Zombi Child (Bertrand Bonello)
Before exegesis, there is observation. More here. 

4. Show & Tell: Josh B. Mabe
Mabe himself may not believe it. But Anthology Film Archives' retrospective of his work proves he's a major filmmaker. Ranging from one to thirty-seven minutes and mostly silent, Mabe's films evoke Brakhage's Arabics in that you cannot possibly imagine the profilmic event. Color-field oblivions alternately terrify and lull you. Light stretches objects like so much taffy. Etudes and leader collapse into one another. I was lifted. 

3. Liberté (Albert Serra) 
My favorite film at NYFF 57, Albert Serra's Liberté recalls my favorite film of the century, Jacques Nolot's La chatte à deux têtes (aka Porn Theatre, 2002). Based on a play Serra mounted for a controversial performance at Berlin's Volksbühne last year (according to an Artforum review by Dennis Lim, patrons shouted “Louder!” and “Some acting please!”), Liberté's central presentational mode is cruising: a dozen of so 18th-century libertines roam a German forest at night and engage in a variety of polymorphously perverse acts with one another. More here. 

2. Empire (Andy Warhol et al., 1965) at the Whitney
Saturday, January 12 at 1 p.m., the Whitney Museum of American Art, in conjunction with their Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again exhibit, showed Warhol's silent Empire at 16fps making for a screening of eight hours and five minutes. It was one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life. More here. 

1. Un couteau dans le coeur (Knife + Heart) (Yann Gonzalez) 
Un couteau dans le coeur is one of those impossible things - a great slasher film AND a film with a great ending. In fact, it may be the greatest slasher film ever made (unless something like Psycho counts). The most moving of its many, many fine qualities is a compassion for secondary characters (and not just the murder victims). This is a film that shows care for a group of people even though the main character (Vanessa Paradis!) has individual goals of her own. Despite never stinting on seedy sex and violence, Gonzalez infuses every moment with hope and warmth, not nihilism and misanthropy, the slasher/giallo’s default mode. And then the ending...gawd, I’m choking up now just thinking of it. Poetic, dreamy, inviting, astonishing, an absolute stunner from frame one to frame last.