02/24/2019
Andy’s top 10 (seen) this year
1 The Greasy Strangler (2016)
Genius is rarely appreciated in its time.
2 Eyes Wide Shut (1999) / Full Metal Jacket (1987) / Dr. Strangelove (1964)
If I were to show an alien the visual distillation of human nature, I might just have them watch a few Kubrick movies (probably...Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, and A Clockwork Orange?).
3 8th Grade (2018)
Elsie Fisher gives my favorite performance of the year. I was stunned at her ability to play such awkward, emotionally riveting situations with such a perfect mixture of confidence and humor.
4 Mandy (2018)
The scene where Nic Cage breaks down in one long, single, wide-angle shot in the bathroom is my second-favorite individual scene of the year.
5 Blood Simple (1984)
The perfect shot-to-shot craft in the Coen Bros’ debut displays that their visual imagination has always been stellar. The movie ages very well, playing on the Coen Brothers’ typical noir-ish themes of chance, greed, and the banality of evil, subverted by McDormand’s final-act turn from damsel to ass-kicking heroine.
6 Roma (2018)
I don’t know how he does it, but all of Cuarón’s best movies have this foreboding sense that something terrible is about to happen. Children of Men’s one-take car-chase scene was one of the most intense movie-watching experiences I’ve ever had. Roma’s one-take scene at the ocean was right up there in terms of sheer terror.
7 Wind River (2017)
Jeremy Renner.
8 A Ghost Story pie scene (2017)
At one point in this movie Rooney Mara eats pie for almost ten minutes. The entire Death Star sequence in Star Wars is 12 minutes. Rooney Mara eats pie for almost as long as it takes Luke Skywalker to save the entire galaxy. The rest of the movie was fine.
9 Annihilation (2018)
The world of bizarre, cancerous, mutated flora and fauna left me with an unsettled, sick feeling that lingered with me for days. And that F**KING BEAR
10 Mr Robot (uh, recently)
This show is so dauntlessly, indescribably weird. I could never quite figure out what it was trying to do, but kept being drawn back. And I can’t laud the cinematography work enough for creating such a disturbingly warped psychological worldview. @ Portland, Oregon