Like many franchises, Pirates of the Caribbean should have walked the plank after its third entry—and even then, it had already overstayed its welcome.
Author: Tomas Trussow
My Winnipeg (Maddin, 2007)
Guy Maddin is a singular filmmaker, whose vision is his and his only. You can’t say that about many filmmakers, but it applies unconditionally to Maddin.
Pickpocket (Bresson, 1959)
Pickpocket is my first Bresson (and I’m certainly not alone in that camp), and though the sheer austerity of his style takes a bit of getting used to, in the end I understand why so many historians deeply admire it—if not love it outright.
In Bruges (McDonagh, 2008)
Welcome to Bruges, where the architecture is pretty, the beer is good, and the hitmen are… philosophical?! Then again, they’re played by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, so a level of sophistication is to be expected.
Being John Malkovich (Jonze, 1999)
Damn. I’m normally a fan of Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman, but their first feature reeks of amateur hour all around.
Lady Macbeth (Oldroyd, 2016)
The Brontës meet Gillian Flynn in Lady Macbeth, a tasty period noir that slithers with menace at each turn.
Get Out (Peele, 2017)
Jordan Peele has crafted a fantastic send-up of some of pop culture’s most famous horror stories (Ira Levin’s, in particular), mixing it together with a screamingly good social satire that skewers those fluffy white, bourgeois liberals who, gosh darn, try so hard to prove they’re not racist, and in the process show that, yeah, they really are (even if unintentionally).
Ingrid Goes West (Spicer, 2017)
Matt Spicer’s Ingrid Goes West juggles a boatload of contemporary issues, whether it be the influx of social media influencers who take pictures of trendy foods, furniture and art as their primary source of income, or people living “auxiliary” lives who crave the world’s approval.
Okja (Bong, 2017)
Awww, this was magical. I have a soft spot for adorable fantasy critters, and Okja the superpig takes the cake. The way Mija, our pint-sized heroine, bonds with her pet is so beautiful, and as an animal lover myself, my heart was swelling at their interactions.
Kedi (Torun, 2016)
I would say I’m more of a dog person than a cat person (even though, in another life, my current personality would be more catlike than doglike), but Kedi is very hard to resist either way.
Free Fire (Wheatley, 2016)
Ben Wheatley is—and always has been—an imperfect filmmaker. And I don’t think he gives a flying shit about it, to be honest. His filmography speaks for itself: frequently bold and daring confections that blow carefree raspberries to sparkly prestige pics and big-budgeted blockbusters.
Baby Driver (Wright, 2017)
Edgar Wright’s innate savviness is on full display here, especially during the first half: the diegetic sound squarely in Baby’s ears being grafted into the minutiae of the real world, the songs seamlessly orchestrating the sheer joie de vivre of adrenaline rushes and high octane pedal-to-the-metalling.
Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger, 1947)
Beautifully haunting, with pulsating eroticism as vivid as the Technicolor onscreen, Black Narcissus is something to watch when modern generic schlock grinds you down and you need reassurance from Saints Powell and Pressburger that film can express the very heights of creative genius when said genius knows what it’s doing.
The Beguiled (Coppola, 2017)
In a sense, I’m glad I haven’t seen the 1971 film prior to watching Sofia Coppola’s version—the inevitable comparisons would have clouded my judgment and prevented me from seeing this work on its own terms. Because truly this is a fabulous and multifaceted splendour, so richly evocative of the bygone past as it is of amorphous gender constructions and motivations.
Tour de Pharmacy (Szymanski, 2017)
I think this 40-minute mockumentary format is quite effective in making some truly funny jabs at the doping culture of sports like cycling (and getting Lance Armstrong to play a shamefaced talking head version of himself was a stroke of genius).
