Below are some of my favorites of the year. As always, ties are OK because we’re coming from a thematic space rather than a place that is rigidly hierarchical — 20 films in 10 slots. An asterisk denotes something that’s never played theatrically in Nashville.
Stay tuned for next week’s annual Jim Ridley Memorial Film Poll, which will feature our countdown of the year’s best movies, as selected by a large assortment of our critics and film-expert friends.
1. The Five Devils
There was a moment, maybe about 25 minutes before the end of this film, when I thought it was going to twist into an ending that would literally unmake my existence. I’d just flicker out of reality. The fact that it didn’t but still managed to stick a landing that opens up whole other possibilities is a testament to an insane amount of imagination. Magical realism, sci-fi, horror — The Five Devils excels at all genres.
2. All of Us Strangers / Long Long Time*
I guess one of the lingering after effects of the many decades that featured gay men as sacrificial victims or The Doomed and Suffering is that there’s a reckoning as regards the power of death. Absolutes feeling not quite so absolute. A specific power in finding other paths of meaning.
3. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret / Barbie / Bottoms / Poor Things
Cathartic journeys of actualization and the most profound of fun. Violent, ribald and joyful reshapings of that which is ancient and stifling. In a just world, there would be a Bella Baxter Barbie Dreamhouse.
4. Pacifiction / Occupied City* / Skinamarink / The Zone of Interest
You couldn’t find a more varied series of approaches to the intersection of liminal spaces and historical record. Steve McQueen’s Occupied City is rooted in the concrete legacy of Amsterdam, while Kyle Edward Ball’s Skinamarink is moored in the psychological minefield of childhood terror. And on the opposite facets of this cube of perceptive experience, Jonathan Glazer tests the far-too-relevant and shameful tendencies of humanity to adjust to any obscenity with The Zone of Interest, and Pacifiction director Albert Serra slowly, delicately grinds the viewer between a gorgeous and supple vibe and the ill intentions of systems of power (as well as vivisecting the way colonial France’s tendrils still drain from much of the world).
5. Card Zero* / Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny / The Outwaters
Buy expansive tickets, take expansive rides. These are incisive examples of how unprepared we as audiences can be when a film shows us what we intrinsically want to see.
6. Taylor Mac’s 24-Decade History of Popular Music*
Ambitious and educational in a way that you just don’t see very often.
7. Menus-Plaisirs les Troisgros
A soak in the pleasure of procedure, as well as a real-time journey through benevolent evolution.
8. Bad Girl Boogey* / Slotherhouse
No one really talks about the gutbucket side of genre cinema as the lab/Thunderdome from which emerges new ways of exploring the dreams and nightmares of the public. They really should. It’s still true.
9. Saint Omer
Has anyone introduced themselves as a movie star in quite the way Guslagie Malanda does in this film? It’s a staggering performance, and a remarkable debut.
10. Talk to Me
Physically, emotionally, cosmologically the most upsetting film of the year.
Honorable mentions: Beau Is Afraid, Country Gold, The Creator, Dicks: The Musical, Down Low, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Enys Men, Jason Momoa’s scenes in Fast X, Horror in the High Desert 2: Minerva, Infinity Pool, the part in John Wick: Chapter 4 when Rina Sawayama climbs that guy like a mountain with daggers, Killers of the Flower Moon, Kokomo City, Maestro, Mamamoo: Mycon World Tour, Passages, Past Lives, Perpetrator, Sanctuary, Showing Up, Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain, Trenque Lauquen, Virupaksha, Where the Devil Roams
Performances: Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple), Penelope Cruz (Ferrari), Colman Domingo (Rustin), Ryan Gosling (Barbie), Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall), Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon), Patti LuPone (Beau Is Afraid), Marshawn Lynch (Bottoms), Guslagie Malanda (Saint Omer), X Mayo (The Blackening), Paul Mescal (All of Us Strangers), Cillian Murphy as Anthony Perkins (Oppenheimer), Rosamund Pike (Saltburn), Natalie Portman (May December), Margaret Qualley (Sanctuary), Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), The Sewer Boys (Dicks: The Musical), Snoopy (Maestro), Ben Whishaw (Passages), Sophie Wilde (Talk to Me)
Coming in 2024 and worth your attention: All You Need Is Death, The Beast, Birder, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World, Eureka, Evil Does Not Exist, Fairyland, Frogman, New Religion, Piaffe, Pictures of Ghosts
Outstanding restorations: The Doom Generation, Drylongso, The Dupes, Messiah of Evil, Party Girl, Un Rêve Plus Longue Que la Nuit, Stop Making Sense, The Strangler, Tokyo Pop, Victims of Sin, Werckmeister Harmonies, Winter Kills
