1. Moonlight- “Who is you?”

The question seems to knock Chiron backward. That’s because when it’s asked toward the end of Barry Jenkins’ moving, intimate epic, everything that preceded it seems to wash over him at once.  Told in three stages of his life — as a young boy, a teenager and an adult — Moonlight charts Chrion’s evolution from a quiet, cripplingly shy child to a more confident adult without losing sight of his pent up frustration and insecurity.  Jenkins crafts scenes filled with long, winding conversation where Chiron slowly unfolds his inner desires as well as moments of loud, visual splendor, as in a scene where Chrion’s father figure Juan brings him to the beach.  Chiron’s entry into the water is overwhelmed by Nicholas Britell’s stirring, string-heavy score, the camera seemingly placed on the water’s surface as Juan supports Chiron as he floats on his back.

It’s exceedingly rare to see a film like this, a black, queer coming-of-age story that morphs into a beautifully observed romance, get a nationwide release and even an awards push. It’s nice to see the film get this kind of exposure, and hopefully it leads to Jenkins getting more resources for his next endeavor. However, the breathtaking artistry with which he realizes this deeply personal vision transcends whatever awards hype Moonlight might garner.  Jenkins charts Chiron’s inner life and emerging queer identity with extraordinary empathy and images of overwhelming power, finding rhyming verbal and visual cues that echo across decades. –Matt

2. Manchester by the Sea-  Films often portray grief as a series of steps characters move through to reach the end of a dark tunnel and emerge back into the light. Kenneth Lonergran’s exceptional Manchester by the Sea is one of the few to acknowledge that, sometimes, a tidy reconciliation never arrives. The past continues to haunt and inform the present.  Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck) is a janitor living in Massachusetts – he sulks through his work with a dead-eyed stare, sometimes snapping to life at slight transgressions from customers and bar patrons. It is clear he is a man suffering, unable to rectify himself. Chandler is called back to his hometown, Machester-by-the-Sea – a place that holds painful memories – when he is informed his brother Joe has had a heart attack. Joe’s son, Patrick, comes under the temporary guardianship of Lee as the two negotiate the best course of action and form a strained – and often humorous – reconnection.

Lonergran’s 2011 film Margaret was an operatic and ambitious melodrama about a teenager emerging from solipsism in New York City, with narrative threads that piled on and split off in all directions to overwhelming effect. The tangled narrative structure is still here, albeit on a much smaller scale, absent of the escalating drama and more attuned to the ways comedy can coincide with tragedy. Its script is unconcerned with easy resolutions or adhering to formulaic notions of “growth” and “change” – most of the characters here end up much the same as before. As we all often do. -Sam

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1. Krisha Fairchild- Krisha- Even though our introduction to the title character of Trey Edward Shults’ debut film seems relatively calm at first, erratic energy soon reverberates off of her.  Krisha mutters to herself as she exits her vehicle, stops mid-track to retrieve her suitcase and then trudges through a lawn until she arrives at the front door of her sister’s house.  She is there to make amends for her turbulent past, but the reunion only causes her to retreat back into it, opening up old wounds and carving out fresh ones. The camera shares her frantic perspective, sometimes observing at a nervous distance and other times focusing on Fairchild’s face as she searches for a way back into the family. She gives a volatile tour de force here, playing Krisha as a woman who desperately wants to make things right but is unable to escape her demons.

2. Casey Affleck- Manchester by the Sea- Kenneth Lonergan’s third feature is one of the great recent films about guilt and grief.  At its center is Lee Chandler (Affleck), a man drawn back to his hometown Manchester from Boston after the death of his brother.  He’s shocked to find out that his brother’s will leaves him custody of his teenage nephew, and he’s forced to linger in town as he decides what to do.  Manchester is a place of unspeakable pain for him, and Affleck is tremendous at showing the weight of his character’s torment in both the present and in the movie’s many extended flashbacks.

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Best Picture: The Big Short, Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian, The Revenant, Room, Spotlight

• Will Win: Spotlight. I think (and hope) a lot of the hype behind The Revenant is empty in this category.
  
• Should Win: Mad Max: Fury Road is my top pick in this category, though Brooklyn, Bridge of Spies and Spotlight are all worthy contenders.
  
• Left out: I was tempted to put “Not Carol” eight times for the list of nominees.  I’d have also included either Magic Mike XXL, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Results or Unfriended in this category instead of Room, The Martian, The Revenant and The Big Short.  (The Big Short is solid, for the record. I just think the others I mentioned are better). 
  

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1. Carol- Todd Haynes’ Carol is a prolonged and profound examination of the sparks that lead to romance.  Featuring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara in the year’s two best, most intwined performances, Carol is a sublime 1950s-set melodrama about falling in love in a dangerous time.  Almost every rapturous frame lets us in on these strangers’ secret, from the first time they make eye contact in a department store to every brief moment of intimacy.  Each of Therese and Carol’s muted exchanges is whisked out of the sexually repressed time period by the deep longing in Carter Burwell’s score.  Haynes captures the fragile intimacy at the core of Phyllis Nagy’s script (adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt) with confident restraint. Carol is a masterpiece, and one of the most ravishing movie romances.

2. Hard to be a God-  This decades-long passion project from the late Russian director Aleksey German is one of the filthiest feeling movies you’re ever likely to see.  Set on Araknar, a planet similar to Earth that is experiencing its own Middle Ages, Hard to Be a God tells the story of scientists from our planet who were sent there to study it and then become deities.  Araknar is also in the midst of a violent rebellion where all intellectuals are being publicly executed.  German’s camera is so embedded in the feelings of this world, of its eternal wetness and clogged sinuses, that narrative all but disappears.  Almost every black-and-white frame of this grotesquely beautiful epic is coated in some kind of slime, whether it’s snot, shit or mud.  Hard to be a God captures human cruelty in a ferociously close proximity; it’s a depraved, totally unforgettable experience.

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1. Under the Skin– Music video veteran Jonathan Glazer proved to be 2014’s most indelible image-maker. The director’s follow-up to 2004’s underrated Birth proved to be even more audacious a statement, a cult classic in the making. Teaming with wiz-kid multi-instrumentalist Mica Levi and DP Daniel Lantin, Glazer’s masterpiece is about being outside one’s own environment, prowling through a nocturnal cityscape trying to feign connection. Seen through the eyes of Scarlett Johansson’s stalking, seductive alien, the everyday feels extraordinary. Familiar environments (the beach, a shopping mall, a nightclub) appear ominous; sounds, such as a baby’s distressed cries, or a group of excited women on their way to party, seem strange and terrifying. The first half, especially, is an ambitious depiction of a de-realization experience; the world is three-steps ahead, everything is out of touch, the body and mind forever trapped in an inexplicable waking dream.

It’s easy to get caught up in the score and visuals of Under the Skin, but there is a story that emerges here with any number of ostensible interpretations. Glazer’s film forgoes the didacticism often associated with science fiction, though, preferring to keep his images impressionistic and the story shrouded in ambiguity. In turn, his movie is one of the most moving and deeply empathetic works to come from the genre. Although unquestionably feminist, it has numerous pervasive ideas: systemic dehumanization, the effects of loneliness, the futility of attempting to understand the external world and the self. And for a guy who has only made three features, all of this is handled with remarkable assurance—taking pages from the handbooks of Kubrick, Grandrieux, and Roeg, Under the Skin somehow remains entirely its own beast. One can only imagine where a talent as formidable and evolving as Glazer will go next. But if his latest ends up being a career-best, his one major contribution to cinema, it’s surely enough to label him one of the greats.

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1. Isabelle Huppert- Abuse of Weakness- To stare into the deep recesses of Isabelle Huppert’s face as her character tries to regain control of her life and body after a stroke is to watch screen acting of the highest order.  Huppert’s intensely physical performance as Maud captures the minutiae of her character’s physical affliction while also creating a portrait of a frustrated director whose inspiration is sparked by a known con man.  In realizing Catherine Breillat’s semi-autobiographical vision, Huppert nearly swallows the movie whole.

2. Rosamund Pike- Gone Girl-  Gone Girl spends a large chunk of its run-time cruelly answering the opening and closing questions posed by Amy Dunne’s husband Nick: “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other? What will we do?” Amy is the year’s most sinister enigma, and the calculated chill that Rosamund Pike brings to the role jolts David Fincher and Gillian Flynn’s vision to intoxicating, grotesque life.  Whether she’s rolling her eyes through one of her parents’ book release parties or [REDACTED] Neil Patrick Harris’ character, Pike tears through the role, the movie and Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) with menacing precision. This was the most on-the-button casting choice of the year.

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