Brian Tallerico

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.