Brian Tallerico

For the bulk of Shoplifters, Kore-eda works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same time. We get to know these characters so deeply, watching them all at their jobs.

David Byrne’s American Utopia is a joyous expression of art, empathy, and compassion.

It’s got that finely-tuned, perfect blend of every technical element that it takes to make a great action film, all in service of a fantastic script and anchored by great action performances to not just work within the genre but to transcend it. This is one of the best movies of the year.

Moonlight is a film that is both lyrical and deeply grounded in its character work, a balancing act that’s breathtaking to behold. It is one of those rare pieces of filmmaking that stays completely focused on its characters while also feeling like it’s dealing with universal themes about identity, sexuality, family, and, most of all, masculinity.

It is a true peek into the life of a private superstar. How did he become a rock icon? How did he turn his childhood pain into art? How did his emotional demons overtake him? These are much more difficult questions for a filmmaker to answer than “Nirvana vs. Pearl Jam” or other such garbage of the traditional rock doc.

This is rare, nuanced storytelling, anchored by one of Brad Pitt’s career-best performances and remarkable technical elements on every level. It’s a special film.

It is scary, sexy, and strange in ways that American films are rarely allowed to be, culminating in a sequence that cast the whole film in a new light for this viewer. We're all just sitting in that banquet hall, listening to the story requested by King Arthur, told by a master storyteller.

The movie is more stunning than ever, a daring blend of history and personal storytelling with one of the most striking performances of its era from Leslie Cheung, a performer who left us way too soon.

Whiplash is cinematic adrenalin. In an era when so many films feel more refined by focus groups or marketing managers, it is a deeply personal and vibrantly alive drama.

There’s something so rewarding about going to a movie and giving yourself over to a master like Park Chan-wook, someone whom you trust through all the twists and turns of a film as tonally complex as No Other Choice. It’s so easy to see all of the places where this unique gem could have gone wrong, and so satisfying to see it only make good choices from beginning to end.

So many visions of the future seem distant, but “After Yang” hits home in how it centers connection and experience to which we can all relate. It’s a powerful, moving drama about what it means to be alive.

Midnight Special respects your intelligence, letting you come to its themes emotionally instead of narratively. It is a breathtaking display of visual storytelling, confidently rendered by someone who understands the power of cinema.

The Brutalist is a work that incorporates well-known world history into two of the definitive forms of expression of the 20th century in architecture and filmmaking, becoming a commentary on both capitalism and art.

Anchored by three of the best performances in a very long time and a graceful script from Jacobs himself, this is one of the finest films of the year, a movie that moves me so much that I can get emotional just thinking about it. Because it’s not just a showcase for powerhouse acting at its finest. Because it feels true in ways that movies about death are rarely allowed to be.

It’s also, crucially, a deeply humanist movie. Anderson cares about these characters deeply. Bob’s frustration becomes our own, as does his concern for Willa. So many “films of our moment” have felt angry or cynical, but Anderson’s movie transcends that by being human and even offering optimism. It’s not one loss after another. It’s one battle. Keep fighting.

It’s a powerful feeling to witness art that reminds us that all aspects of our existence are valuable, especially our pain.

This is a moving drama about people pushed together by fate who end up not merely helping each other survive but elevate through an increasingly harsh world.

It’s a film that somehow plays as both a child’s heroic journey and an old man’s wistful goodbye at the same time, a dream-like vision that reasserts Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s voice and international relevance. It’s gorgeous, ruminative, and mesmerizing, one of the best of 2023.

In the end, Killers of the Flower Moon is like a puzzle—each creative piece does its part to form the complete picture.

I do know this for sure — I can’t wait to see this film again. It’s so layered and ambitious, the product of a confident filmmaker working with collaborators completely in tune with his vision. Every piece fits. Every choice is carefully considered.

All That Breathes blends a verité-style character study with gorgeous nature cinematography while never losing the film’s overall commentary on how man interacts with nature—or merely chooses to destroy it through inaction.

For all five hours, Loktev’s camera is positioned close to her subjects, much like a friend in the same room, lending the project an intimacy and empathy that it would have otherwise lacked. And the length allows us to really get to know these people, feeling their frustration and their tension. It becomes our own. We don’t just see it. We feel it in our bones.

Safdie’s daring choices merge with the best performance of Timothee Chalamet’s career for a story of a man who thinks he’s the best in the world at something, and that thinking is as important as actually being it.

It is a smart, thrilling piece of work that reminded me of other great part twos like “The Dark Knight” and “The Empire Strikes Back."

Memoria is a sensory experience, but it takes a performer like Swinton to amplify Joe’s technique.

James White is a masterful examination of how our behavior and the excuses we make about our lives fall away under certain, life-changing conditions.

Cuaron has made his most personal film to date, and the blend of the humane and the artistic within nearly every scene is breathtaking. It’s a masterful achievement in filmmaking as an empathy machine, a way for us to spend time in a place, in an era, and with characters we never would otherwise.

One of the best documentaries of the year so far.

It’s a narratively simple film that has been interpreted differently by dozens of critics since its Cannes premiere last May, but it’s one that is impossible for this critic to shake, a reminder of what movies can do when they loosen the restraints of traditional narrative and remember that images are meant to evoke as much as they are to explain.

A film this satisfying on every level — one that can be enjoyed purely for its narrative while also providing material for hours of discussion on its themes — is truly rare.

It’s a movie that sneaks up on you like great fiction, blending theme and character in a way that allows it to live in your mind after you see it, rolling around what it means to both the people in it and your own life.

Parasite is unquestionably one of the best films of the year. Just trust me on this one.

Waves is unexpectedly ambitious and confident, the work of a filmmaker in complete control of his talents and using them to challenge himself. This is a deeper and more profound film than your average character drama, a masterpiece that’s hard to walk away from without checking your own grievances and grief. The ripple effect continues.

From its very first scenes, Fury Road vibrates with the energy of a veteran filmmaker working at the top of his game, pushing us forward without the cheap special effects or paper-thin characters that have so often defined the modern summer blockbuster.

This devastating drama is an act of remembrance for its filmmaker, who has been open about how much of this story is her own. It’s also a reminder of the power of filmmaking to turn the deeply personal into relatable art, and an announcement of a major talent, one who has made the best film of the year to date.

A birth-to-death character study, “Train Dreams” is a meditation on the beauty of everyone and everything, how we are connected to both the earth and those who walked it before us.

It is daring, riveting, and the first great movie of 2019.

McQueen’s masterful film is the kind that works on multiple levels simultaneously—as pure pulp entertainment but also as a commentary on how often it feels like we have to take what we are owed or risk never getting it at all.

A movie that finds poetry in the story of a seemingly average woman. It is a gorgeous film that’s alternately dreamlike in the way it captures the beauty of this country and grounded in its story about the kind of person we don’t usually see in movies. I love everything about it.

Anger is an energy in Martin McDonagh’s brilliant Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, one of the best films of the year.

It’s that honesty that makes The Florida Project so powerful. This is a remarkable film, one of the best of the year.

With remarkable grace and compassion for his characters, Baumbach portrays divorce as a great equalizer, turning us into versions of ourselves we didn’t expect to become.

The Amusement Park is a concise film (only 52 minutes), but Romero packs it so full of detail and ambition that it contains more to appreciate than most films that run three times as long.

Mitchell makes a very solid case that the Black cinema of the ‘70s was just as formative and influential as the white auteurs who so commonly define that revolutionary era.

In the end, [Cregger] wants to take you on a ride, and so he’s got to provide both hills and valleys, producing a horror film that’s equally hilarious and chilling.

It is an infuriating reality that The Hunting Ground exposes. I was rattled watching it, finding it hard to catch my breath and harder still to imagine how many people are in positions of power who have heard these stories so many times and turned their backs on victims.

More than an explainer of motives behind a single person mass shooting, Nitram is a character study wrapped in a tone poem, an unpacking of a man who feels like he has run out of all potential paths to happiness and believes that acts of violence spark action.

This is a fascinating piece of work that approaches “Citizenfour” in its deconstruction of governmental failure and the systems underneath the war on terror that are not only failing to keep us safe but impacting the entire world political scene.

Most modern sports movies feel a few years behind the story—purposefully nostalgic for a feel-good, motivational story. High Flying Bird feels like a product of the 2018-19 NBA season, which may not have a lockout but is dealing with the same issues.

What elevates Hide Your Smiling Faces is Carbone's gentle, lyrical touch where other filmmakers would have turned the same thematic concerns into melodrama.

Without making it blatant, this is a film that is obviously building to disaster, a story of a man who is the human iteration of one of his high-speed vehicles, just hoping not to crash.

It is purposefully slow, a film meant to be lived in and considered carefully when it’s done. Almost none of it feels as “important” as my teacher explained and yet it is still great drama.

A Quiet Place shreds the nerves, but it does so in a way that feels rewarding. You don’t just walk out having experienced a thrill ride, you walk out on a high, the kind of high that only comes from the best horror movies.

Inspired by tales of people on the fringe by Mike Leigh, Sean Baker, and the Safdie Brothers, “Urchin” stays committed to presenting Mike’s story without frills, recognizing that it’s just a tragically common one of a man spiraling down the drain of society.

This Much I Know to Be True is masterfully directed, an example of when a filmmaker and a musician are working in unison creatively instead of just going through the motions.

Gosling and Stone get these characters, finding grace in their movement but emotional depth in their arcs; Stone has never been better.

Most of all, Rebel Ridge is just a reminder of how thrilling it can be to see a genre piece with this level of artistry.

Gibney crams as much material as possible into a quick two hours (he really knows how to edit and pace a piece like this one as it feels much shorter) and yet, to be fair, there’s still an angle missing just by virtue of the fact that he couldn’t get anyone from the Church of Scientology today on camera.

Even after everything that Alexei Navalny exposed, he’s still behind bars, where it feels he will spend the rest of his life. "Navalny" is a film that can’t find justice for its subject. But it can expose the truth.

Jasmila Zbanic’s Quo Vadis, Aida? is a razor-sharp incrimination of failed foreign policies from around the world embedded in a deeply humanist and moving character study of the kind of person that these policies leave behind.

There’s so much beauty in this West Side Story. It merges things that have truly shaped pop culture from the graceful precision of Spielberg—who has always had a musical director’s eye in terms of how he choreographs his scenes—to the masterful songwriting of Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein to the brilliant writing of Tony Kushner to the immigrant experience in this country. It grabs you from the very beginning and takes you there. Somehow, someday, somewhere.

Dunham displays a remarkable skill when it comes to using limited space, trapping his characters in a warehouse on a life-changing night and watching the insecurities that they have shrouded in macho masculinity come bubbling to the surface.

Starred Up is HEAVY with slang and accents. You won’t understand a third of it. But there’s so much going on in between the lines of dialogue that you won’t care.

Night Moves eschews traditional tension-building through plot twists and betrayals to focus on its characters, as Reichardt uses her increasingly impressive sense of composition and intuitive pacing to slow burn the audience into a state of anxiety instead of manipulatively pushing them there.

Hokum rises above so many films like it because it takes its character’s plight seriously, never winking at the audience, even as the impossible happens.

Baby Driver feels both influenced by the modern era of self-aware, pop-culture filmmaking and charmingly old-fashioned at the same time, which is only one of its minor miracles. It’s as much fun as you’re going to have in a movie theater this year.

It’s one of the most stunningly shot films of not just this year, but the last several. I can’t wait to just see it again, just to bask in its visuals without trying to follow its plot. And the sound design is so remarkable that it’s almost overwhelming—this is a film you don’t passively watch, you experience it.

This is more “Reservoir Dogs” than “Ringu.” But whatever box one wants to place it in, it’s a reminder of Kurosawa’s remarkable skill with pacing and plotting, delivering a brisk film that leaves one pondering its themes, especially what it means to live in an era when nothing is real.

Textured in ways that family entertainment is rarely allowed to be and even more visually ambitious that the other Cartoon Saloon films, this is a special movie.

Witty, goofy, and glorious, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is Terry Gilliam’s best film in two decades.

Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding” is a gentle, empathetic ode to resilience—a story of a man at a crossroads he never planned to reach.

It’s one of those rare movies that makes you feel edgy, conveying its protagonist’s dilemma in ways that prey on your nerves and emotions more than just relaying a night-from-hell anecdote.

It is both light as a feather and emotionally resonant. It is defiantly episodic and yet has a cumulative power in its storytelling. It is both airy and emotionally lived-in at the same time.

A few of the daringly ambitious punches don’t completely land, especially in a frenetic final act, but it’s a minor complaint for a film that confirms that Glass is a major talent with an uncompromising vision.

The trip to a remote farmhouse is just the narrative skeleton on which Kaufman hangs arguably his most challenging film to date, a piece that verges on Lynchian in its surreal register, moving back and forth between reality and a dreamlike commentary on connection, although there may be even less of the former than it first appears.

The Holdovers is a consistently smart, funny movie about people who are easy to root for and like the ones we know. Its greatest accomplishment is not how easy it is to see yourself in Paul, Angus, or Mary. It’s that you will in all three.

No Sudden Move is like watching a musician return to the themes and ideas explored throughout a career but with the renewed insight that comes after decades of success.

With robust direction in an incredibly confined space and Laurent’s phenomenal work, Oxygen should feel like a breath of fresh air for people looking for something to watch on Netflix. (Sorry.)

Our favorite films often drop questions like these into our lives, allowing us to appreciate the world a little differently than before we saw them. The Revenant has this power. It lingers. It hangs in the back of your mind like the best classic parables of man vs. nature. It will stay there for quite some time.

The Killer may be based on a graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent, but it feels like Fincher's most personal film to date.

It’s an absolute blast of an action movie, another showcase for Jalmari Helander’s increasing skill with action choreography and inventive set pieces.

It’s a fascinating, moving documentary that transcends mere profile piece to reclaim a legacy, and it’s as inspirational as its subject.

It’s a beautiful, captivating piece of work that gets off to kind of a rocky start but achieves remarkable momentum toward an emotional, powerful ending. And you won’t see a better-looking animated film all year.

A daring, studied, mannered true story that is at once remarkably genuine and deeply cinematic at the same time. It’s one of the best films of the year.

With stunning performances from two completely genuine young leads, this is a movie people will talk about all year.

It’s a powerful piece of work with poetic direction and incredible work from Krieps, an actress who increasingly feels like she’s never going to miss.

Dune: Part Two is a robust piece of filmmaking, a reminder that this kind of broad-scale blockbuster can be done with artistry and flair.

Mungiu doesn’t traffic in easy hero and villain narratives. He’s more interested in revealing how easily anyone can be both.

This is a ridiculously fun movie, anchored by a movie star in a part that fits him perfectly and a director who really has been working toward this film for his entire career.

The result is a project that feels true to its source, a well-crafted epilogue for a beloved character who vividly understands the concept of consequences.

Intercutting interviews with Marcos and her son with archival footage and other experts on the Marcos regime, Greenfield has put together her best film yet.

mother! is at times horrifying, at times riveting, at times baffling, and at times like nothing you’ve ever seen before.

Chime is yet another reminder that Kurosawa is one of the world’s masters when it comes to unpacking the remarkably fragile line between good and evil.

La Cocina is a phenomenal showcase for Briones, who gives one of the most mesmerizingly multi-faceted performances of the year.

Logan is the rare blockbuster that could be a game-changer. It will certainly change the way we look at other superhero movies and how history judges the entire MCU and DC Universe of films.

An ambitious, challenging piece of work that people will be dissecting for years. Don’t miss it.