I used to be able to tell you when pretty much any movie came out. It was an equally helpful and useless gift to have. I couldn’t remember much in school and struggled to pass math nearly every year of my academic life, but I could tell you that “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and “What Women Want” were both released on the same December weekend in 2000. I didn’t just know the dates of alien-stoner hybrids and pre-scumbag era Mel Gibson movies, but those are just two random films I have catalogued in my brain that most people on Planet Earth choose to forget about.
Today, most of those dates have faded. I’m almost 30, balancing a lot more in my life than I did when I was a teenager getting stoned and working in video stores and my memory has started to fail me. But what hasn’t left me is the ability to identify films with specific chapters of my life. It’s interesting to look back at the things you loved or cherished even a few years ago because it helps define who you were at that point in time. You get to see the way your tastes have evolved over the years.
Over the last few months, top critics and film blogs have been counting down their favorite films of the 21st century so far. Being a complete sucker for these types of things, I found myself making my own list. A list that changed on an almost daily basis as I compiled it. This list is a reflection of my favorites of the 21st century. Films that are unforgettable. Films that polarize. Films that defined an era. Films that are essential and vital to modern cinema. And of course, films made by Paul Thomas Anderson.
So, here’s my 50 best/essential films from 2000–2017. Yes, there’s 50. Deal with it. You don’t have to read it all. Just scroll through if you want and if you haven’t seen something, add it your potentially neverending queue.
Rick Alverson’s 2012 anti-comedy prompted walkouts at Sundance and even managed to polarize some dedicated Tim & Eric fans, but it also became a transcendent, generation-defining pitch-black comedy about white male entitlement set against the backdrop of gentrified Brooklyn. Tim Heidecker gives a perfectly aloof and disturbing performance as a trust-fund hipster waiting for his dad to die so he can obtain his part of the will, while spending his days trolling and terrorizing nearly everybody he comes into contact with.
If there’s one film that I’ll probably catch the most shit for including, it’s most definitely the 2014 Ukranian drama “The Tribe”. The story of a lonely, deaf teenager infiltrating an underground gang at a school for the deaf, the film was made entirely with deaf actors, no score and most importantly, no subtitles. The effect is disorienting and mesmerizing. It delves into a world never portrayed on screen with an unflinching eye for senseless violence and toxic masculinity gone awry, leaving you shaken, repulsed and maybe even laughing out of pure shock. It’s a film you can love, hate or just admire from a distance, but it’s not a film you’ll ever forget.
A massively ambitious, towering achievement that casts a feverish spell on you, “The Tree of Life” is probably one of the hardest films on this list to write about. At the time of its release, it was unquestionably brilliant and haunting. In retrospect, it marks the beginning of a strangely prolific and frustrating period in a notoriously not-so prolific filmmakers career. Malick’s poetic meditation on everything from motherhood and fatherhood to life during wartime to religion to nature to the beginning of time itself is awe-inspiring, dizzying and often baffling in its sheer ambition.
Of all the modern directors I’ve recently familiarized myself with, Lynne Ramsay is the one I wish I had come to sooner. After finally checking out her spectacularly intimate debut “Ratcather”, I moved on to some of her fantastic early shorts and her 2002 follow-up, “Morvern Callar”. Following a slightly unstable woman in the aftermath of her boyfriends suicide, Ramsay uses her natural gift for intimate storytelling to immerse you into the psyche of the title character, played with an aloof brilliance by the always incredible and supremely underrated Samantha Morton. Ramsay has an uncanny ability to maneuver seamlessly from darkly comic to darkly grim and the way she explores the state of mind of Morvern is always fascinating. It also boasts what is definitely one of the dopest, most low-key fantastic soundtrack line-ups in modern film history. From Aphex Twin to CAN, the soundtrack is moody, euphoric, groovy and intoxicating, just like the film itself.
When I was 16, I got my first job at my local movie theater, a 16-plex Pacific Theatre that showed mostly mainstream films with the occasional art-house flick that usually got lost in the shuffle and disappeared after a week or two. The one I remember most from my short lived time as a “Talent” as Pacific Theatres was Jonathan Glazer’s beautiful and bonkers “Birth”. A film that confidently blazes ahead throughout its runtime, never once suggesting anything but utter sincerity in its truly insane plot. Shot by the master Harris Savides, “Birth” follows a widow preparing to marry a new man when a young boy shows up in her life telling her he’s her dead husband reincarnated. What plays out from here is a film of operatic, tender and moving power, aided by my favorite Alexandre Desplat score and some truly gorgeous cinematography by the late Savides.
Critically divisive, often maligned for being misogynistic and irresponsible, Jody Hill’s first big-budget film is one of the most daring and subversive films ever produced by a major studio. Utilizing Seth Rogen at the height of his fame, Jody Hill made a big budget studio comedy about a mall cop who thinks he’s the only thing standing between good and evil. A modern day “Taxi Driver” for the Trump era that served as a perfect example of what Hill is best at: unapologetic portrayals of dangerous white men, their toxic egos and the power they seek. It’s rare that a studio backs a movie about a mentally ill security guard who dreams of being a cop, living with his alcoholic mother and pining for the affections of a superficial, delusional pill-popper while trying to protect mall patrons from a pervert with a micro-penis, but for one reason or another, Warner Bros. did. Misunderstood upon release, “Observe & Report” should be remembered as an underrated, risky cult film in the making that also managed to predict the age of delusional white entitlement in the Trump era.
Shrugged off by most as a sophomore slump in the budding career of newly minted Oscar winner Sam Mendes, “Road to Perdition” is still for my money, the best film he’s made. “American Beauty” captured the zeitgeist at the peak of 1990’s suburban malaise and was undeniably well crafted and shot, it feels like a relic of that particular time. Comparatively, “Road to Perdition” is a film that could have worked well in any decade and is a perfect encapsulation of Mendes’ strengths as a director and Tom Hanks’ undeniable ability to slip into morally complicated men he so rarely gets to play. “Perdition” also offered a fresh glimpse at Jude Law doing what he does best: playing a fucking slimeball. Both Hanks and Law are working against type and it pays off wonderfully. It’s classic Hollywood through the eyes of a fresh talent with an impeccable eye for detail and knack for getting the best out of his A-list performers.
The cinematic equivalent of an anxiety attack, Ronald Bronstein’s DIY anti-comedy is independent film personified. An uncompromising, dark as night escapade into the psyche of a man who is unraveling by the minute, succumbing to his worst tendencies as a “troll in human form”. It’s a personal film hellbent on capturing its uniquely fucked up vision of madness and anxiety at any cost necessary, even if that means alienating as many viewers as the main character alienates in his own life throughout the course of “Frownland”.
Every few years, a film comes around and completely captures the cinematic zeitgeist. A film that every film lover is talking about. In 2011, “Drive” was that film. It wasn’t a commercial success but it managed to quickly retain cult status in the film world. I saw it several times when it came out and each time was completely enraptured by its throwback moodiness, electro-throbbing score and pop music soundtrack, the gorgeous fairytale LA cinematography and of course, its slow building escalation to pure carnage. Today, “Drive” feels like a film that’s been unfortunately underappreciated for how exciting and fresh it felt when it came out. That happens to a lot of great films though. They’re hyped, praised and obsessed over and then slowly disappear or get the unfortunate “overrated” label plastered on them. But when you remember the first time you heard that soundtrack or watched Ryan Gosling eviscerate a man’s head in the small confines of an elevator, you remember the incomparable joy of experiencing something truly special.
A film so impeccably gorgeous, you want to crawl into the screen and live inside of it forever, “Carol” is a cinematic dream come true. A feast for the eyes and ears, Todd Haynes’ spellbinding 2015 film is a landmark in queer cinema as well as Haynes’ terrifically unpredictable and ambitious career. A love story that actually feels romantic and invigorating. A film told through distant glances, suggestive conversations where the things left unsaid linger long after and the yearning for somebody with all your heart and desire. Restrained and mannered but never in danger of losing its passion and dreaminess, “Carol” is the kind of film that envelops you in its warmth and romance and when it finally releases you back into the real world, its power still holds a part of you in its delicate grasp.
This list wouldn’t be complete without at least one film from the uber-talented Borderline Films group, composed of Sean Durkin, Antonio Campos and Josh Mond. A New York based film company of college friends and filmmakers who back one anothers projects by taking turns directing and producing, this trio of dark and unsettling minds have been quietly making some of the finest films of the last few years. My favorite of them is unquestionably the 2011 cult drama “Martha Marcy May Marlene”. Overcoming all clichés that directors are faced with when setting out to make a film about cults, Durkin digs deep into the psyche of a cult survivor by exploring the aftermath of a young girls experience in a cult trying to adjust to normal life. By flashing back to her experience throughout the narrative, Durkin deftly examines the emotional scars and psychological damage a cult can have on someone. Its power lies in its quietly disturbing moments like the truly unforgettable and chilling scene of the group entering a strangers house and refusing to leave and of course in the star-making performance by Elisabeth Olsen.
The 2000’s saw a new wave of comedy enter the mainstream in the form of Judd Apatow’s man-child stuck in a perpetual state of arrested development. At the time, his films were a refreshing change from mean-spirited, gross-out flicks and teen sex comedies. What spawned from this new era of comedy were films from directors like Jody Hill, David Gordon Green and of course, Adam McKay. McKay had already struck gold with “Anchorman” but his 2008 Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly comedy “Step Brothers” was the one that took the man-child sub genre to brilliantly absurdist and bonkers new heights. Like all of McKay’s work, “Step Brothers” has more subtext beneath the surface. The way “Anchorman” tackled sexism and the absurdity of masculinity in the 70's, “Step Brothers” tackles American entitlement, more specifically that of delusional white men. McMay’s films work as ingeniously as they do because they know how to pander to a mainstream audience while still managing to slip in a timely, depressingly accurate portrait of the average dumb white male in America.
Out of all the directors to emerge in the early 2000’s, David Gordon Green has proven to be the most eclectic and shape-shifting of them all. Before turning in a string of studio comedies that ranged from madly funny to downright bad, Green debuted quietly on the indie film scene at the turn of the century with his achingly beautiful and humanistic Southern coming of age dramedy, “George Washington”. A film that wears its influences from Terrence Malick and Charles Burnett’s LA classic “Killer of Sheep” on its sleeve, just as much as its tender heart, “George Washington” is one of the finest, most exemplary debuts in a long time. From the borderline Avant-garde “All the Real Girls” to the Southern Gothic thriller “Undertow” to his most underrated and dramatically fulfilling “Snow Angels” all the way to his big-budget studio comedies like the zany, darkly absurd “Pineapple Express”, Green’s signature poetic and humanistic vision is always on full display.
Few working directors know how to truly get under your skin and make your blood run cold the way Michael Haneke does. His films are deceptively brilliant and complex and the material he mines for horror and tragedy always leave you with something to meditate on. In “Caché”, Haneke begins with the primal fear that somebody is watching you and from there builds a story of guilt, damaged childhoods and a common Haneke theme, miscommunication. Haneke slowly twists the knife and keeps the audience guessing as he examines the repercussions of a seemingly innocuous moment in one man’s life and the horrifying repercussions it has on him and his family.
When I first laid eyes on director Andrew Stanton and mega-studio Pixar’s 2008 creation “Wall•E”, it was truly love at first sight. A lonely, lovesick robot left alone to clean up the remainder of Earth’s trash as the human race has been wiped out by global warming. Playing out like a Buster Keaton-era silent film for its first 45 minutes, “Wall•E” is by far the boldest, most experimental film Pixar has released to date and also its best. Packing more heady subject matter into its runtime than most live-action films, it manages to explore global warming, American unexceptionalism, corporate consumption and loneliness over the course of 98 gorgeously cinematic minutes. It’s rare to see a big budget spectacle from one of the biggest studios in the world create something this sweeping and ambitious and actually pull it off with the kind of levity and heart that “Wall•E” does.
A landmark documentary and the most original made in years, “The Act of Killing” is masterful, disturbing and essential filmmaking. Joshua Oppenheimer’s brilliantly realized concept of revisiting the atrocities of the past by putting a face to the evil that reigned in an unspeakable age of violence in Indonesia is a film that is intended to shock, provoke and leave you in a state of absolute horror. By not just revisiting the men who participated in executing thousands of innocent lives, but by having them reenact the atrocities they committed on film, the film challenges its subjects to larger questions without ever having to directly ask them. It forces evil to face their crimes and reflect on their everlasting damage years on, culminating in a disorienting and chilling examination of human nature.
Catherine Breillat’s brilliant dark comedy is probably the most underrated coming of age film of the century. Playing out like a French import Todd Solondz with an ending so fucking perfect and disturbing, it will embedded deep into your brain for life. A primal, uncomfortable and occasionally shocking exploration of teenage sexuality seen through the eyes of an overweight girl over the course of one lonely summer. The film lures you into the darkness, leads you down unexpectedly human and brutally honest moments and then sideswipes you, leaving you reeling from what you just experienced.
The 70’s and 90’s introduced us to two of the most influential generations of directors in the history of film. Cinematic rulebreakers, anarchists and masters of the form infiltrated the studio system and film festival arena, inspiring future generations for years to come. This current generation hasn’t had the same luck, with peak TV, streaming and superhero films clogging up most of the marketplace. But if there is one director, or in this case pair of directors, that has the pure energy and skill of those generations, it’s brothers Josh and Benny Safdie. Queens-born filmmakers with a manic, lo-fi, DIY attitude reeking havoc on indie cinema. With the 2014 horror show “Heaven Knows What”, the Safdies made their first major leap into the indie mainstream with a dizzying, hypnotic and hyper-realistic depiction of heroin on the streets of New York. Based on the life of real life addict Arielle Holmes, the film takes you on a relentless journey into Hell on Earth with a piece of junkie cinema that immediately joins the ranks of the greats. It’s not a stylistic tour-de-force PSA like “Requiem for a Dream”, it’s its own beast. A purposefully redundant, numbing, blackly comedic slice of authentic New York street life from two of the most vital voices to emerge this century.
If you’ve ever been under the weightless, joyous spell of falling in love or had that awful knot in your stomach you feel when you know you’re losing someone, you’ll be hard-pressed to not be impacted by the cinematic gut punch that is Derek Cianfrance’s “Blue Valentine”. Two separate timelines intertwine the hopeful beginnings and tragic ends of a love story. Playing out like a modern-day Cassavetes romance, Cianfrance has such a lived-in touch that you can’t help but be utterly absorbed by what he puts in front of you. He’s also blessed to have the gifted talents of two of the best actors of their generation acting their hearts out, giving perhaps the best performances of their careers. Cianfrance makes us face the harsh realities of relationships and marriage. There’s not always a defining moment that tears us apart, it’s sometimes just time itself slowly stripping us of any semblance of what that love once was.
Every Andrea Arnold film is bursting with life and authenticity, but “Fish Tank” is so far the crowning achievement of her ever-growing career. Arnold’s 2009 film about an angry youth coming of age through dance and the unlikely relationship with her mothers newest boyfriend is a breathtaking slice of life and triumphant in nearly every single moment. Arnold has a gift for lived in details and dramatizing small moments and making them feel life-changing. Her films often feel like the love child of Ken Loach and Lynne Ramsey, her keen eye and woozy camera always moving effortlessly, capturing the smallest of moments and giving them an authenticity that no other filmmaker of her generation has frankly come close to matching.
A mercilessly bleak, harrowing journey into the depths of addiction. A morality tale that never misses an opportunity to drown its viewers in the tragic and destructive realities of drug abuse. A cinematic achievement in drug cinema unrivaled by most contemporary filmmakers. The same way “Pulp Fiction” became such a heavily influential landmark in the crime genre during the 90’s, Aronofsky’s Coney Island-set nightmare became the definitive stylistic reference point for every aspiring indie filmmaker who wanted to make their mark in junkie cinema. It’s punishing, unflinching, essential filmmaking and to this day the high point of Aronofsky’s career.
In 1995, Michael Mann made the definitive LA film with the crime epic “Heat” and in 2004, he returned to the city with another thriller that was able to capture the city at night like nobody before him. A crime thriller set mostly in the confines of a cab as a two-hander between Tom Cruise’s ruthless hitman and Jamie Foxx’s lonely cab driver, Mann used their quest through the night as a travelogue through some of the most iconic and underseen regions of the city. But even outside of being a fantastic LA film, “Collateral” is just a straight up great action film. None of this any surprise, considering Mann is probably the best living director of action. From tense alley way altercations to hyperkinetic shootouts in nightclubs to a late night chase on the city’s underseen transit system, “Collateral” is an adrenaline-fueled excursion into the belly of the city through the eyes of two very different men.
This is actually the hardest film on this list to write about. It’s a film that defies genre and narrative explanation. You have to approach “Uncle Boonmee” and the rest of Weerasethakul’s (a.k.a. “Joe”) filmography with the same approach to a lot of David Lynch’s later works. While “Joe” and Lynch are completely different filmmakers, they both still exist as the antithesis of current film culture. When nearly every film released is dissected beyond any necessary means, a film like “Uncle Boonmee” exists to simply move you, awe you and enrapture you in its cinematic beauty. It’s majestic, thought-provoking, unexpectedly funny and for some viewers, it can be healing. A thoughtful meditation on the afterlife, “Uncle Boonmee” doesn’t need you to dissect it and analyze every moment of meaning, it just needs you to live inside of it for two hours. It’s cinematic bliss.
Something of a career revival after a series of failed late 90’s rom-coms, Noah Baumbach burst back onto the filmmaking scene with a lean, 80-minute, no-bullshit tale of divorce in mid-80’s Park Slope. With his gifted ear for punchy, acidically funny dialogue and unflattering portraits of upper-middle class intellectuals, Baumbach made what I still believe is his best film. Painfully observant about the occasionally lonely and strange world of childhood, the way we look up to our parents before we can see them as real people and the ramifications of a divorce on everyone in the family. From Jeff Daniels’ bitter, self-serving intellectual father to Owen Kline’s cum-obsessed adolescent, “The Squid and the Whale” is a perfect portrait of the insecurities and fallibility of being human.
Spike Lee’s blistering post 9/11 cautionary tale uses a mourning city as a backdrop to tell the story of one man’s final day of freedom and the mistakes he made along the way. It’s Lee at his most urgent, ferocious and stylistically cohesive. In many ways, it was the first film of the 21st century to capture what contemporary life felt like, infusing its narrative with paranoia, betrayal, hatefulness and ultimately, forgiveness. It’s a film that’s simultaneously cynical and hopelessly earnest and in doing so, it takes major narrative risks that could sputter out into the realm of absurdity, but against all odds, becomes a brilliant portrayal of one man’s redemption in a city that that’s struggling to rebuild itself.
Coming two years after the ambiguous brilliance of “The Master”, Paul Thomas Anderson made what I believe is one of the most layered and nearly impenetrable films of the last twenty years. A film that can frustrate on first viewing because of its fierce devotion to Pynchon’s source material and a plot that seems to be endlessly convoluted to the point of incoherence, reveals itself as something so much more than the sum of its parts on repeat viewings. The pieces come together. The array of colorful characters reveal newer dimensions you didn’t notice while you were trying to piece together a mystery that really isn’t the central part of the film anyway. You get a sense of a film that isn’t just a slapstick noir yarn about the end of an era. It’s a deeply layered, insightful, mournful love letter to the end of an era and a city that although is fictionally named Gordida Beach, is obviously Los Angeles. Littered with subtle references to Charles Burnett’s “Killer of Sheep” to post-Manson paranoia, PTA made a film that not only remains faithful to Pynchon’s material but adds an undeniable touch of his own. Like all of his films, I’d argue even “The Master” and “There Will Be Blood”, there is a love for his characters that few other directors are able to convey in their work. It’s a film that is simultaneously hysterical and melancholy, woozily entertaining and hauntingly tragic.
A gut-wrenching three hour exploration of sexual identity with a love story at its center that stands tall among the best romances in recent history, the 2013 Palme d’Or winning “Blue is the Warmest Color” is painful and honest in ways most love stories only scratch the surface of. Anchored by two brilliantly layered and internally realized performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, Abdellatif Kechiche’s film is made with incredible depths of passion, humor and realism that catapult it past most love stories. Scenes are pushed to their breaking point and aside from a now notoriously misguided scissoring scene, it’s a film that bathes in authenticity, delivering a painfully familiar examination of the difficulties of young love and following your heart.
It’s rare that films as original, brilliantly off-kilter and and bizarre as “Dogtooth” come along. Yorgos Lanthimos’ 2009 black comedy is the most fiercely original film of the 21st century so far. A surrealist nightmare that can play as a deadpan black comedy movie and Buñuel-esque horror show, “Dogtooth” is one for the books and announced Lanthimos as one of the most distinct voices in cinema today.
Upon its release in 2007, Roger Ebert called Joel & Ethan Coen’s bleak modern-day Western “No Country for Old Men” a “perfect film”. As time passes, some films fail to hold up to the pedestal we put them on during their initial release. “No Country for Old Men” does not. It’s perfectly shot by Roger Deakins. It’s perfectly balanced by suspense, humor and brilliant dialogue by the Coens, from the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It’s perfectly acted by Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem and Tommy Lee Jones. Every scene has an impeccable eye and ear for detail. Every shot matters. Every motivation, choice and action has repercussions that give the film a mounting sense of dread and terror. It was also released in a year that offered several modern-day classics and because of that, it occasionally gets forgotten. Don’t sleep on “No Country” though. It stands head and shoulder among the best films the Coens have made and represents that rare thing that comes around every once in a while: the perfect film.
A cosmic sci-fi parable about the isolation and loneliness of life on Earth seen through the eyes of an outsider that also uses female sexuality and male naiveté as a narrative driving force, Jonathan Glazer’s “Under the Skin” is one of the most confounding, oblique and ultimately brilliant films to come along in quite a while. A film that initially left me feeling cold, “Under the Skin” is no doubt a divisive film for most of the general public, but one that deserves a second or even third viewing from any doubter. Glazer has always been a visual technician, but aided by Mica Levi’s absolutely enthralling and dazzling score and Scarlett Johansson’s underrated performance, his skills are able to thrive in a way never seen in his film or music video work. It’s a sci-fi classic in the making with imagery that will haunt you, unnerve you, disturb you and strangely enough, even move you. It’s one of the best modern films about death and what it ultimately means to be human.
Rarely have films felt as cinematically rich and dreamy as the films of Wong Kar-wai. In the 90’s, he gave us one of the coolest, most stylistically inventive films of the decade with “Chungking Express” and at the turning point of the 21st century, he gave us one of the most unabashedly, painfully romantic films ever committed to celluloid. Wong Kar-wai’s films have always had a loose, semi-improvised feeling pulsating through them, but never has his instinctual eye for small moments of human interaction felt more gorgeously realized. A breathtaking, stylistically galvanizing love story of unspoken feelings and urges, it’s a film that you don’t just watch, it’s a film that completely absorbs you.
Told over the course of five parts, Ezra Edelman’s eight hour opus immerses us in a meticulous, painstakingly well-researched account of the “crime of the century”. But what separates Edelman’s film from the other numerous accounts of O.J., is that the film does not just regurgitate the same old information on the most famous modern day court case in American history. He uses it as a jumping off point to dissect race, police brutality, abuse, celebrity and America itself. He weaves an incredibly well-edited tale of one man’s skyrocketing rise to fame and his catastrophic, disturbing fall from grace, who in the process inadvertently became the face of the new civil rights movement in America. A highly addictive, insanely ambitious, thought-provoking and sobering account of an American tragedy, Ezra Edelman has turned the trial of the 20th century into the most vital piece of documentary filmmaking of the 21st century.
Depending on who you talk to, Kenneth Lonergan’s operatic exploration of the contradictions of youth in the aftermath of a tragedy is either a disaster or a masterpiece. I like to think of it as a flawed masterpiece. Its flaws are evident throughout its epic runtime, due to years of tinkering in the editing room, major lawsuits and time itself. A film that feels so of its time — the film was shot in 2005 — that by the time it was dumped into a handful of theaters in 2011 it might as well have been a period piece. There’s also two versions of the film: the 150 minute cut released into theaters or the 180 minute directors cut released on DVD. The directors cut is the version to watch when you seek it out. Anna Paquin’s performance as an idealistic teenager is perfection. She’s real, contradictory, irritating and deeply relatable. She’s the perfect Lonergan creation. A writer who’s spent most of his career specializing in a certain kind of broken human trying to doing their best and find their place in the world, Lisa is a character who wears her heart on her sleeve and wants to battle everyone she comes into contact with as she struggles to find her own identity in the face of a tragedy she’s morally grappling with. The film detours into so many other lives that its ambition occasionally overreaches and not every moment lands, but when a film is this exceptionally well-written and brutally honest, who cares about an ambitious misstep here and there. The film is an emotionally galvanizing experience and the ending is a knockout.
Out of all three of my major passions, writing is by far the most difficult for me. Never in my life have I felt more doubtful of myself than when I’m sitting at my computer attempting to build a world and characters out of almost nothing. The amount of self-loathing and self-doubt involved in writing can be enough to turn almost anyone off to it. It’s hard, occasionally soul-crushing stuff. Nobody has managed to capture the agony and ecstasy of writing like Charlie Kaufman. He finds humor, pathos and a beautifully surreal outlook on worlds that look simultaneously tragically and comfortingly like our own. I would argue that his worldview has never felt more painfully human and optimistic than in “Adaptation.” though. Ironically, as I try to write about why “Adaptation.” means so much to me not just as a writer, but as a human being who feels crushing anxiety and self-doubt on a daily basis, I hit a wall. I feel that wall go up in my mind, as if I’ve suddenly forgotten how to communicate an idea that I feel deep in my heart. It’s one of the most frustrating feelings you’ll ever encounter as an artist. I guess that’s maybe the best way to explain it though. “Adapation.” reminds you we’re all just trying to be loved and accepted and do our best, even when we feel useless and disposable. It’s a reflection of the creators process as well as the human process.
Like “No Country for Old Men” and a few other instances of the rare “deserving” Best Picture winner over the last few years, I occasionally take for granted the power and brilliance of Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave”. A sobering, unflinching look at what America was and now struggles to escape through erasing a past it refuses to directly acknowledge. It’s a film that doesn’t aim to educate or scold necessarily. It doesn’t need to. It lets the atrocities speak for themselves. It presents a story that is simultaneously hopeful and bleak. It knows there is no real happy ending because slavery is still a part of this country, no matter how desperately some people want to erase it. It’s complex, unflinching, brutal and a rare film that earns its importance.
The 2000’s brought a heavy onslaught of post-9/11 political drama, most of which felt heavy-handed or preachy. For every “United 93”, you got a laughable misfire like “World Trade Center”. Coming at the tail-end of the decade though was Kathryn Bigelow’s nerve-shredding action thriller “The Hurt Locker”. Acting as a career revival and return to form for Bigelow, the film also marked the beginning of a new politically charged era in her career. What separates “The Hurt Locker” from the other post-9/11 dramas was that it didn’t feel weighed down by its politics. It worked as a character study, a matter-of-fact presentation of war and a straight-up action movie. The film is divided into five parts by five set-pieces that rank among some of the most well-shot action sequences the medium has ever seen. Some argued that its lack of political perspective is a default, while I would argue it’s actually one of the films strongest virtues. It doesn’t take sides, preach or sympathize. Its episodic format informs the repetitive nature of war, how one man uses his skill-set in a hellish environment and eventually becomes addicted to the adrenaline rush of it all. Is it a genuine thrill? Is he masking deep-seated pain? Is the only form of escape in an endless war? The film doesn’t grant us an easy answer and it’s better off for it.
The first time I saw “Synecdoche, New York”, my girlfriend at the time turned to me when it ended and said “I feel like I’m dying.” Or maybe it was “I want to die.” Either one is really an acceptable thing to say the moment the screen fades to white and the credits roll in Charlie Kaufman’s maddeningly brilliant, apocalyptic and mega-ambitious “Synecdoche, New York”. There’s always an incredible amount of ambition in Kaufman’s work but the amount of himself he puts on the screen in “Synecdoche” is absolutely soul-bearing, all or nothing vulnerability. A film that slowly unravels in its bleak and deeply human search for the meaning of our existence, “Synecdoche” is a sprawling, existential portrayal of artistic narcissism, the polarizing fear of our own mortality and the quest for understanding and connection we all strive to have in our lives. Kaufman made a film that is about so much, it’s nearly impossible to write about it without leaving out several brilliant moments, performance or line of dialogue that rings so true, it’s almost painful to revisit. In maybe the best monologue of Kaufman’s career, a priests eulogy becomes a perfect summation of life itself — the pursuit of finding something meaningful to make us feel whole and the exhausting, occasionally painful moments in between.
In Paul Thomas Anderson’s uncompromising “The Master”, we watch as one man searches for his definition of meaning and promise in post-WWII America. A delinquent, an alcoholic, a loner hopping from one job to another, trying to find his place. A world of empty promises, broken dreams and false prophets capitalizing on the emotional wounds of everyday Americans awaits him. With “The Master”, Anderson seems to have entered a new chapter in his career. One that is far less concerned with technical trickery and showmanship and one that has found confidence in allowing his actors’ faces to help tell the story. Through the brilliant, unmatched talents of Joaquin Phoenix and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, we see the wounds of men who seek meaning and claim to have all the answers. Two deeply flawed portraits of mid-century American men. It’s Anderson’s most enigmatic and evocative film and one whose real power lies beneath the surface, leaving you feeling uneasy about the world at large.
An oblique, slow-burn meditation on the origins of evil. A black and white historical take on “Village of the Damned”. A contemplative, deeply unsettling masterpiece and the best film of Michael Haneke’s career. “The White Ribbon” is a film created to haunt you, provoke you and leave you in a disturbed state of unease. Haneke is maybe the best horror director that isn’t considered a horror director. His films explore the deepest regions of evil and hatred that plague our world and with “The White Ribbon”, he slowly peals back layer after layer of a morally bankrupt society living under the guise of a religious, righteous one. Shot in stark, gorgeous black and white that contributes masterfully to the horror unfolding scene by scene, Haneke’s film is a vivid depiction of the evil living among us.
One film that’s topped pretty much every best of list for the 21st century or at least appeared more frequently than any other film is David Lynch’s 2001 surrealist LA fever dream, “Mulholland Drive”. There’s plenty of good reasons this film has stood the test of time and only grown in popularity. It’s Lynch’s most complete, fully realized film and works as an industry satire, existential nightmare, horror film and black comedy. It’s also one of the most essential, no frills exposes on Los Angeles itself. It’s not easily digestible and leaves plenty of room for debate with critics and cinephiles attempting to unpack the meaning of it all. But what I think makes Lynch so enjoyable and distinct and really, one of the best directors we’ve ever had, is that his films defy modern film criticism and dissection. He makes art films that are wholly the vision of one man, his imagination and the meaning of everything isn’t necessary to enjoy the experience. “Mulholland Drive” looks and feels like our own reality, especially that of Los Angeles, but is undeniably the work of Lynch. It feels like what a dream should feel like on film. Every moment is grounded in our own world, but slowly but surely, things begin to alter and something is amiss. You know you’re dreaming, you know things aren’t what they should be, but you’re helpless to change the circumstances of what’s to come. With “Mulholland Drive” and this years return to “Twin Peaks”, Lynch reminds us of what real transformative, uncompromising art can look like.
Edward Yang made films with such an effortless intimacy and lived-in detail, it’s a shame I only recently came to discover his work. In his quietly affecting masterpiece “Yi Yi”, Yang ponders life and death through the eyes of one Taiwanese family, all in various stages of life. It’s the very definition of a film that sneaks up, overwhelms you with its sincerity and humanism and bowls you over before you even know what hit you. Yang has such an adept understanding of family and how they relate to one another that it’s hard to think of another filmmaker who possesses what Yang gave to cinema. He was a gifted humanist and a vital voice in the filmmaking world, whose contributions will be cherished and missed as long as film exists.
The end of 2013 was a difficult period for me. I had experienced a terrible break-up, watched a passion project fall through, fell into the deepest depression of my life and unwisely charged an entire trip to New York on a credit card that I’m still paying off today. I felt artistically and emotionally drained. Around that time I first watched “Inside Llewyn Davis”, the Coen Brothers’ character study of an irritable folk singer gigging around New York in the wake of his former partners suicide. It wasn’t the ideal film to watch during an artistic crisis where I felt like I was a talentless failure on a daily basis.
But after I revisited it on DVD a few months later, I found myself completely enamored with it. I literally watched it every night before bed for two weeks straight. What once hit too close to home and caused me to do some serious soul-searching was now my comfort movie. Llewyn Davis is irritable, condescending, cynical and can’t seem to get out of his own way. But he’s also one of the most human and fully realized characters the Coens have ever created.
In most films revolving around struggling artists, we’re given a familiar rise and fall arc and a character that is unrealistically talented but just can’t seem to catch a break. With “Llewyn Davis”, we get a man who loves his craft but continues to sabotage himself and his career by letting his ego and cynicism get the best of him. He’s a painful character to watch because his failures ring so true. He’s not some undiscovered genius. He’s a talented, difficult, self-centered, deeply cynical and bitter artist who can’t fake it. He’s so committed to his art and the purity of his music that he refuses to sell out or even entertain the notion of commercial appeal. What’s so tragic and unsettling for most artists who watch “Llewyn Davis” is that it holds up a mirror to a lot of artists — mostly white men — and doesn’t give you a hopeful tale of redemption or succeeding against all odds. It gives us the bitter truth that some people, no matter how talented they are, just aren’t going to make it. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but a necessary one.
“Love, make me clean.
Love, touch me, cure me.
The pure always act from love.
The damned always act from love.”
Within the first five minutes of Josh & Benny Safdie’s electric crime drama and pitch black comedy “Good Time”, you know pretty much everything you need to know about Connie and Nick Nikas. They’re Greek-American brothers living in Queens, New York who dream of a better life. Nick is mentally handicap and Connie is his protector. They want to escape. They want to be free of the roles society has given them. Victims of circumstance. Victims of their own environment. “Good Time” is a race against the clock, all-night descent into madness and late night depravity in the tradition of “After Hours” and “48 Hours”, a grimy and detailed depiction of New York crime and desperation a la Abel Ferrara and a timely indictment of the judicial system and capitalist failures in America. In short, “Good Time” is a product of its time and a product of its influences. The Safdies have such an infinite, rich knowledge and love of cinema that they bring to the table but they also so clearly have their finger on the pulse of this generation, that everything they put on the screen feels 100% them. Everything about the film works perfectly to me. It’s everything I could ever want in a film, aesthetically and otherwise. It’s an electric shock of cinema in its rawest and most exciting form. Featuring a brilliant, possessed, career-defining performance by Robert Pattinson and a criminally underrated and extremely naturalistic, heartbreaking turn by co-director Benny Safdie, “Good Time” is the kind of urgent, uncompromising, bold and relentless filmmaking we need right now. The Safdies represent a new tide in cinema and might just be the future of it.
Some films can move you or challenge you. Some films, you just feel in your gut. “Un Prophete” is one of those films. Jacques Audiard makes films that sweep you up, rock you to your core and spit you back out into the world, feeling like you’ve just had every emotion in your body worked out. In “Un Prophete”, Audiard has made not just his best film, but really an all-out crime masterpiece. Yeah, there’s that word again. We’re in the top 10 of the 21st century though and if there’s not a few masterpieces in there, then something must be wrong. Audiard crafted a crime thriller that doesn’t glamorize or point the finger. Like Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker”, it’s not interested in morality or messages. It simply wants to immerse you in a world you’ve never quite seen before. Yes, there’s been countless prison dramas in cinematic history. Even more crime thrillers. But few have the vitality and operatic suspense of “Un Prophete”. And fuck it, for the sake of this being an opinion piece, I can go ahead and make possibly hyperbolic, polarizing claims here. It stands with “Goodfellas” as one of the very best films in the crime genre. Oh, and it’s better than any “Godfather”. Yeah, even part 2. Come at me.
Over the course of its patient, meticulously crafted run time, director Andrew Dominik manages to reinvent the western and pay tribute to what makes the genre so great. A moody, peculiar and poetic portrayal of obsession and celebrity. An elegiac and mesmerizing historical tale of a larger than life presence that never glamorizes or condemns. Most surprisingly of all, it’s absolutely hysterical at times. Dominik has proven to have a twisted and shockingly funny sense of humor in all of his films, but the way he subtly and seamlessly weaves humor throughout the entirety of the film is one of the many keys to its brilliance.
There’s also scenes of unnerving terror and suspense. Almost any scene with Jesse James alone with another character has an underlying sense of dread packed into every beat and a lot of that credit is due to the career best work from Pitt himself. Pitt’s always been my favorite “movie star actor” mostly because he always seems to be challenging himself more than his contemporaries. He’s a movie star doing everything he can to exist as a character actor. He channels his unrivaled charisma and charm and layers it into all of his work and is consistently giving spectacularly nuanced performances. There’s a handful of films that were unfairly ignored upon release only to find a new audience years later, but “Jesse James” is proving to be the one that will one day stand as a modern classic of cinema.
The first time I saw “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, I was a very sensitive, sad and stoned 15 year-old who had just been kicked out of high school. I was still very in love with a girl who did not love me back and I felt really out of place in the world and with my group of friends. In the privacy of my room, I would listen to “Transatlanticism” on repeat and write really morose and bizarre screenplays nobody would ever read. So “Eternal Sunshine” was pretty much the perfect film for this sad ass teenage boy. It’s probably the most humanistic, imaginative and heart-shattering screenplay Kaufman has written and certainly, his most universally relatable.
There’s a few other stories of love lost and love found on this list, but none have the power to impact the soul the way “Eternal Sunshine” does. The way Kaufman and director Michel Gondry take us on an emotional, bittersweet journey through one failed relationship is affecting in ways most love stories can’t even scratch the surface of. Every single moment in the film is infused with a profound amount of truth. The way the couple share their deepest fears and insecurities. The pettiness of the arguments. The self-destructive patterns of behavior they both fall into. The desire to be free of one another, but the fear of being alone in the world.
Kaufman takes us through a greatest hits collection of the best times and the worst times and asks us if it’s worth the pain and heartbreak we experience when we lose somebody close to us. And of course it is. Whether it’s the death of a relationship or the death of a loved one, loss is essential to our lives. They devastate us but they help us grow and understand who we are. You can learn a lot being by yourself, but you can learn even more sharing a life with someone else. This is nothing necessarily groundbreaking, but in typical Kaufman fashion, he manages to make the loss of a relationship and the need to forget how we once felt, feel fresh. Along with Paul Thomas Anderson, I don’t think there’s a been a more essential or brilliant voice to emerge in cinema since the late 90's.
Every once in a while you see a film that completely changes the game. You know when you’re watching it, you’re experiencing something important and refreshing. Last year, Barry Jenkins returned to the film scene after debuting with his 2008 micro-indie stunner “Medicine for Melancholy” with the most vital piece of American filmmaking in a long time. From the opening moments of “Moonlight”, I was one hundred percent immersed in the world Jenkins had created. Watching the camera race around Mahershala Ali and break focus to the young Alex Hibbert, I immediately knew I was in the hands of a gifted filmmaker.
Made for a million dollars in a matter of weeks and released with the backing of Brad Pitt and the best film studio in town, A24, “Moonlight” is the rare film that can break down barriers in the industry. Awards season can make or break film in a lot of ways. It’s the unfortunate season where occasionally great films are pushed on the public and voters in the hopes of taking home a few awards. Lots of money is spent and by the time it’s all over, you never wanna hear about half of these films again. “Moonlight” was a rare case of a film benefiting from the over-exposure. It’s a film that should have a wider audience. “Moonlight” is a once in a blue moon film that actually has the power to transform, heal and change lives and out of all the best pictures winners this decade, the most likely to stand the test of time and be revisited for generations to come.
Paul Thomas Anderson makes epics. Whether he’s tackling the porn industry in the 70's and 80's or a serendipitous rainy day in the lives of a dozen Angelenos, the size of Anderson’s films is almost always larger than life. His films are a volatile force of nature that have given a whole new generation of aspiring directors their Scorsese. Their Orson Welles. But what happens when the so-called greatest living American director and the so-called greatest living actor team up? Well, it’s just about as fucking insanely brilliant as you might expect.
In 2007, Anderson turned his focus from eccentric loners and aspiring stars in the San Fernando Valley to turn of the century American capitalism. Initially setting out to adapt Upton Sinclair’s “Oil!”, Anderson stumbled upon something even greater, something more cinematic and compelling than even the most devout Anderson fans could have been prepared for. He created Daniel Plainview. A character who’s endlessly fascinating to watch because he represents the darkness that lurks in almost all of us. He’s utterly driven by ego and success. He’s paranoid, cutthroat and most likely a serious alcoholic. He’s the Gordon Gecko of early 1900's oil. He’s the original face of modern American capitalism and as played by Day-Lewis in the crowning achievement of an already ludicrously outstanding career, he’s fucking mesmerizing. A historical epic. A horror movie. A pitch black comedy. A study of greed. Anderson set out to make the next great American film and with “There Will Be Blood”, he did it.
Movies can change us. They have the power to truly move us and change who we are. Movies help inform who we are as a society. We don’t even notice it but they impact our sense of humor growing up. And of course on a purely superficial level, they can entertain the hell out of us. Or today, they can take up hours of your time as you search for the perfect one to watch on Netflix or any of your other 25 streaming services before eventually going to sleep out of pure frustration and exhaustion. But they also have the power to make us feel connected to the world. We watch films and subconsciously look for those moments that speak to us. That comfort in seeing a piece of yourself or a moment in your life reflected on screen. It gives us a sense of clarity.
When I watched “Punch-Drunk Love” for the first time, I was 14 years old and just starting high school. I didn’t quite know who I was except that I loved movies and telling stories. But when I watched Adam Sandler channel a deeper shade of his inner rage portrayed in his numerous studio comedies, I felt like I was watching a part of myself I had never consciously come to terms with. Barry Egan is socially awkward, lonely and filled with an uncontrollable rage he masks in everyday life. At 14, I didn’t quite understand all those parts of myself but I knew it was in me. The same way when I saw Anderson’s “Magnolia” at 11, I felt I was finally seeing a part of my life featured in a film that I had never seen before. I saw a portrait of my family and more specifically my mother on screen that no other film had shown me before. It completely chaned me.
Time passes and I revisit “Punch-Drunk Love” on a regular basis. Years later, I’m approaching my twenties and my temper gets worse and my social anxiety is often debilitating. I find myself more and more coming to terms with the fact that a very unflattering part of myself is Barry Egan. It used to make me insecure, but now it brings me great comfort. The same way watching “Inside Llewyn Davis” fucked me up in ways I couldn’t quite articulate at first and then became something of a comfort film for me after the realization that the central character represented artistic anxieties and personal flaws I didn’t want to face, “Punch-Drunk Love” gave me a glimpse inside of myself.
So when I say “Punch-Drunk Love” is the second best film of the century, I don’t mean that it’s technically a “better” film than “There Will Be Blood”, but it connects with me more than any other film I’ve ever seen. It makes me laugh, it fills me with joy and I continue to find new things in every viewing. That’s not to say it isn’t an unbelievable film. It literally goes against almost every rule of filmmaking and cinematography, but Anderson and Elswit pull it off magically. It reimagines the stock Adam Sandler character as a lonely, insecure and deeply pained man trying to connect with another human being. The Jon Brian score is nothing short of pure and utter magic. Philip Seymour Hoffman appears on screen for a collective ten minutes and you know everything you need to know about him. It’s technically daring and experimental and raw and so fucking painfully human and lovely, I get butterflies just thinking about it. It’s a film that’s inspired me more than almost any other and is a constant reminder to me of the power of film and its infinite influence on my life.
When I was a kid, I was never frightened by ghosts or supernatural elements in horror films. The thing that always scared me was the idea of a stranger coming into your house at night and murdering you. Serial killers scared the shit out of me. My logic was that ghosts, vampires, werewolves, all that shit wasn’t real. A deranged man coming into your house at night to murder you at random was more plausible, thus far more scary. When I was 11 years old, I remember seeing the ad’s for Spike Lee’s David Berkowitz inspired serial killer drama “Summer of Sam” nearly every time I turned on the TV. The image of a man wandering the streets of 70’s era New York shooting women and couples at random scared the living shit out of me. I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about it. But for some strange reason, it also fascinated me and spawned a lifelong interest in true crime and specifically, serial killers. I stayed up late at night when I was a teenager reading about famous killers and watching any film on the subject I could find. And of course because I have no self-control, I always clicked the link that read “Explore Crime Scene Photos” because I’m a glutton for punishment.
Serial killers are endlessly fascinating subjects. What makes someone snap? What lives inside a man’s soul that makes him want to takes another person’s life? What brought on the surge of mass murders in the 1970’s and 80’s that brought the FBI to finally categorize these psychopaths as “serial killers”?
David Fincher is a director who has long expressed fascination with true crime and serial killers in his work. His seminal 1995 thriller “Se7en” was a landmark film in the serial killer sub-genre and helped reinvigorate a revival of the genre in the late 90’s. The other biggest thematic thread in his work as a director is obsession. Fincher himself is a self-professed obsessive who spends hours on scenes, sometimes days, doing upwards of 100 takes to get a scene right. He’s pushed actors to the breaking point and alienated a few in his time, but the meticulousness in his work is always evident in the finished product.
In 2007, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. quietly dumped “Zodiac” into a couple thousand screens across the U.S. and sold it largely as a broad serial killer thriller. To this day, this is probably the biggest mishandling of a major studio film this century. “Zodiac” isn’t just another lurid, dark serial killer piece with a murder occurring every 20 minutes or so to keep horror audiences invested. In fact, every single murder that happens in the film happens in the first 25 minutes. For the next two hours, “Zodiac” becomes something so much more than another whodunit. It becomes a film about the end of an era. It becomes a film about the obsessions that drive us in life. It becomes about what happens after a serial killer has reeked havoc on society.
Seen through the eyes of a cartoonist turned sleuth, a crime reporter battling alcoholism and a celebrity detective whose lives all becomes intertwined and inevitably destroyed by the toll the case takes on them. Careers are lost and families are ruined in the pursuit of putting a face to a series of horrible murders. The film is patient, detailed, observant and tragic. It’s about the answers we seek to make sense of tragedies and the time we lose along the way. It also separates itself from other serial killer films because unlike most of these cases, the Zodiac case was never solved. It wasn’t a man breaking into homes at night and murdering who he found or a loner coming undone in a New York heatwave and murdering young women at the behest of a neighbor’s dog. The Zodiac was an enigma. A force of nature that lurked in the shadows of Northern California whose motives were never completely deciphered. A murderer who sought fame and notoriety and enjoyed toying with law enforcement and reporters while keeping an entire city on its toes. Like Charles Manson in Los Angeles, the Zodiac Killer represented the end of the peace and love era. The post-WWII American dream had been shattered and a new era of mentally unstable men preying on innocent victims was becoming a national epidemic.
David Fincher understands obsession better than any other director outside of Stanley Kubrick, which is why he’s usually referred to as the heir to Kubrick. “Zodiac” is maybe the best pairing of director and material this decade, if not the last few. Fincher has always been one of the most technically savvy directors we have, but he directs “Zodiac” like his life depends on it. He puts every ounce of his being and his technical prowess into ensuring the final product brings justice to the most fascinating unsolved mystery of the 20th century as well as the lives lost along the way. Just look at the infamous Lake Berryessa murder scene. Most murder scenes inevitably takes place at night as did all the rest of the Zodiac’s murders, but the Lake Berryessa scene is the most horrific because it’s broad daylight and a stark reminder of the insidious nature of a serial killer. The marriage of Fincher’s direction and the brilliant sound mixing of Ren Klyce give this scene an unspeakable horror that will linger with you long after the film is over.
2007 still remains one of the best years we’ve had for film. From “No Country For Old Men” to “The Assassination of Jesse James” and “There Will Be Blood”, 2007 gave us several films that will long live in the cinematic canon of the greatest films ever made, but it’s David Fincher’s criminally underrated and underappreciated “Zodiac” that I believe will inevitably be recognized as the greatest cinematic achievement of the 21st century.
Critics have been declaring the end of film for years now. It’s become even more of a popular opinion in the 21st century. With more distractions and content filling our lives every day, film isn’t the medium it used to. Audiences seek out Marvel properties in droves. They eat up nostalgic reboots like “It”. The mid-budget adult film has all but disappeared. Studios like Annapurna, Amazon and A24 represent a beacon of light though. There are still producers and studios willing to take risks on bold and experimental films still. There may be fewer of them now as audiences turn more and more to TV, as do some of our biggest directors like Fincher and Steven Soderbergh, but the notion that film is on the verge of extinction is bullshit.
Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson still get to make films in the studio system. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” was funny, scary and worked on a sociological level and was the most profitable movie of the year. Barry Jenkins made “Moonlight” for 1.5 million and took it all the way to the Oscars where it won Best Picture. Film has changed and evolved like anything but it’s far from dead. Going to the theater and experiencing something with an audience will always be something millions of people around the world treasure. It’s an unmatched experience. There’s no TV show that can replicate the power of seeing something larger than life on the big screen with a room full of strangers.
But it’s also a responsibility to go out and support young artists trying to make a name for themselves in the industry. It’s easy to wait for Netflix with the price of movie tickets these days, but it’s also important we do support those that need it. Give Barry Jenkins your money. Give the Safdie Brothers your money. Give Kelly Reichardt your money. Those are the artists that need your support. It ensures that we continue to get thoughtful, bold and game-changing films in a climate more and more saturated with bullshit. Film isn’t dying, but it is up to us to cherish and preserve it. I can’t speak for everybody, but I don’t know what I’d do without it and I’m thankful every day that there’s still a community out there of like-minded individuals who want to share their stories and visions with the rest of us.
