by A. Freedman, Staff Writer

Another year, another round of great movies. However we watched them, in whatever form, in whatever place, the movies had a lot to offer us this year, as they do every year. Movies are great. Here are my ten favorites, plus some honorable mentions!

10. Wrath Of Man (dir. Guy Ritchie)

I never dreamed that I would be putting a Guy Ritchie/Jason Statham heist movie on my end of the year list- much less one that I watched on my phone on a recent flight to Texas. Wrath Of Man sees Ritchie aping the Taylor Sheridan thing: tough guys and gals with huge biceps and dark pasts, shooting the shit for a while before ultimately shooting each other. Jason Statham plays an armored car guard who is a little too good at violence to be doing what he's doing. As his true motive becomes clearer, he comes into conflict with a group of highly skilled veterans moonlighting as thieves- out to get what they are owed. The weapons of American empire returned home vs. scorched earth Jason Statham…who will win? It's a super mean movie for super mean times, big lunks of meat fighting for shreds of dignity left by a society in decline.

9. tick, tick...BOOM! (dir. Lin Manuel Miranda)

I know a number of friends who are musical theater agnostics who were truly taken in by this, and I count myself among them. Part biopic, part period piece, part prequel, part musical adaptation, all interesting and new, tick, tick...BOOM! tells the story of the early career of composer Jonathan Larson. The film is set years before he wrote Rent, on the cusp of 30 and trying to make something great before it's too late. Andrew Garfield is fantastic as Larson, and Lin Manuel Miranda knows how to create a rich storytelling structure from behind the camera. Of course, Larson died tragically and suddenly right as Rent was debuting, so he never got to see his dreams come true. The truth is often stranger than fiction, and tick, tick...BOOM! is an appropriate ode to how life itself can be your work of art.

8. Red Rocket (sir. Sean Baker)

This was hands down the funniest new movie I saw all year. Sean Baker's triumphant return, his first film since 2017's The Florida Project, showcased yet again his daring ultra-realist filmmaking style paying off in spades. Casting former MTV VJ/Scary Movie star Simon Rex as a thinly veiled characterization of himself, Red Rocket is a crackling story about how easily Americans fall for charismatic bozo con men- and how the joke is always funny until suddenly it isn't.

7. The Velvet Underground (dir. Todd Haynes)

One of the best rock n' roll bands of all time gets a deserving documentary treatment from Todd Haynes (I'm Not There, Velvet Goldmine), a filmmaker intimately appreciative of great music. In some ways this is a traditional rock doc, with talking head interviews and the basic story of the band from their individual childhoods up through their late careers. For such an important band, they never broke into the zeitgeist the same way many of their peers did, so this film feels like it sets out to do right by them. It doubles as a portrait of the 1960's art music scene, one of the most fertile creative periods in American history. By the time the credits rolled, I felt not only an affirmation of the power of music, but in awe of the artistic heights that ordinary humans are capable of reaching.

6. Last Night In Soho (dir. Edgar Wright)

Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie) is sure that things were better in the swingin' London of the 1960's–it's why she wants to go to fashion school there. Eloise's rosy-eyed view of the past soon becomes a blood red horror story, as she finds herself entangled with the soul of Sandy (Anya Taylor Joy), a beautiful woman her age who seems to have been swallowed up by the sinister patriarchal forces of those times. Both Last Night In Soho and Edgar Wright's The World's End are films about the paradox of nostalgia. Just because the music and all the things you love the most were better doesn't mean the times were better, not for everyone, at least. But that wouldn't be enough to hang the film on if it didn't come to such a thrilling, surprising conclusion.

5. Titane (Dir. Julia Ducournau)

It is always exciting when a young director not only avoids their sophomore slump, but makes the big step up to masterpiece. Julia Ducournau did just that with the Palme D' Or winning Titane. No one who saw Ducournau's debut Raw will watch Titane without expecting something shocking and nauseating, but it is the surprising tenderness between Alexia/Adrien (Agathe Rouselle) and Vincent (Vincent London) that makes Titane such a memorable experience. It is such a rich work that it will mean many different things to many different people- to me, I saw it as a moving story of a father loving their child with the unconditional love and acceptance that we all deserve from our parents. This, in a movie where a woman has a, er, physical relationship with a sentient car.

4. Memoria (Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

In the first minute of Memoria, something very jarring and very brief happens. It is jarring enough that you can't help notice it, but it is brief enough that you wonder if you were imagining it. That is the most I would want to say about the beguiling, beautiful Memoria- where Tilda Swinton plays a Scottish orchid farmer visiting her sister in Bogota, Columbia. It is the type of slow cinema that lulls you in and reorients your nervous system. You become entrained to its peculiar rhythms and leave the theater seeing the world with fresh eyes.

3. Wild Indian (dir. Lyle Mitchell Corbine)

The year's most affecting debut, Wild Indian is another of so many recent films that seek to excavate the impact of childhood trauma on adult selves. Michael Greyeyes gives a star-making performance as the adult version of Makwa, who as a child struggling to survive an abusive home, did something unspeakable. Seeking to escape his past, he becomes a successful corporate guy (his boss is Jesse Eisenberg!) and goes by "Michael." Yet when his old accomplice Teddo gets released from another prison stay, Makwa finds himself on a collision course with his own past. Combining the brutality of Blue Ruin with the identity searching of Smoke Signals, it is a film that will leave you haunted.

2. The Power Of The Dog (dir. Jane Campion)

Jane Campion made a powerful return to form with The Power Of The Dog, a riveting, hootin', hollerin' western that is pure Campion all the way. Like her breakthrough film The Piano, it is a story of the transformative power of desire. The days after I watched it, all I wanted to listen to was Michael Nyman's signature "The Heart Asks Pleasure First." Yet what The Power Of The Dog brings to the table is a sense of the sinister, of desire as both a liberating magic and a vulnerable weak spot that could cost you everything. Benedict Cumberbatch gives the performance of the year, and of his career as well.

1. The Worst Person In The World (dir. Joachim Trier)

Julia (Cannes-winner Renate Reinseve) is about to turn thirty, and even if it seems awfully young still, The Worst Person In The World is a masterful evocation of that time when the ticking clock of middle age first starts to make itself known. She is already living with her older boyfriend Aksel (an incredible Anders Danielsen Lie), a successful comic book artist already a stage of life ahead of her. Julia doesn't want to do anything that feels untrue to her, whether it is in career, love, or the specter of motherhood- and yet she doesn't really know what her truth even is yet. None of this back and forth prevents life events from coming in and absolutely shattering her world though, as a plot item that may seem Deus Ex Machina still reflects this discernible truth - that life goes that way sometimes.

Even so, The Worst Person In The World ends on a note of ambivalence- a power move from Joachim Trier, one of cinema's deftest explorers of emotional complexity. After everything she's been through, Julia seems to remain on the outside of a life she isn't sure she will ever want. The Worst Person In The World is the perfect film for anyone still waiting to reach the age when suddenly everything makes sense.

and ten more...Bad Trip, Coming Home In The Dark, Dune, The Last Duel, Malignant, The Mitchells Vs. The Machines, Nobody, Quo Vadis Aida?, Riders Of Justice, Pig