by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

What a strange and varied year it has been. Every year is a good year for movies, but this has been a year where I have felt out of step with a lot of the bigger releases this year. But for this list, here are 15 of the movies I have truly loved and will carry forward into the years to come.

15. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (dir. Adam Wingard)

From my review:

In a time of so much uncertainty, where it feels like the world is crumbling around us, having a Godzilla or a Kong coming along and stomping things to bits–giving us a tangible face to our faceless problems–feels almost like a relief. It is the best time to be a Godzilla fan, and when so many long-running franchises seem to collapse under their own weight, it is also wonderful to have so much from a series where each release feels like a decent jumping on point for newcomers.

14. She is Conann (dir. Bertrand Mandico)

As a fan of Robert E. Howard’s Conan character, I was extremely impressed by Bertrand Mandico’s reinterpretation of the character here. And it is a reinterpretation. She is Conann is absolutely in conversation with the original version of the barbarian and uses the character as a jumping off point to explore aging and changes to society over time. Plus, it looks like a Wagnerian nightmare. 

13. Look Back (dir. Kiyotaka Oshiyama)

Look Back is an hour-long anime film about two girls who learn how to grow up through their collaboration on making manga together. There is a lot of nuance in the central relationship here, especially in regard to how friendships evolve over time based on the needs of each person. Additionally, the slice of life perspective of this film includes a lot of focus on building skills as an artist/writer, and the kinds of everyday sacrifices (and luck) that are often needed to find success in that field. While animation is often used as a showcase for things that would be difficult or impossible to do in live action, Look Back demonstrates the kind emotionality that makes animation so great.

12. The Fall Guy (dir. David Leitch)

After being let down by every David Lietch movie since Atomic Blonde, I was completely elated by The Fall Guy, a fantastic romantic comedy that is also a love letter to action movies and especially stunt people. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are both excellent in this, as are the needle drops, movie references, and especially Jean-Claude (the dog). 

11. Anora (dir. Sean Baker)

Sean Baker’s latest film is a deconstruction of the hold that the Cinderella narrative has on the collective unconscious–with a dose of America’s “land of opportunity” branding–as personified by a sex worker named Ani as she winds up in a whirlwind romance with a Russian oligarch’s son. In what becomes the best “eat the rich” movie of the year, watching Ani navigate love, money, and power becomes a joyous celebration of getting that bag and finding things in yourself that you didn’t know were there. 

10. Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt)

Saying Kneecap is a music biopic feels reductive. This is more like a comic book origin movie for the Irish rap group. There are many impressive things about this movie, including that the band members play themselves and all give excellent performances, but the fact that it manages to be both a raucous, fun time and a fierce argument for the importance of the Irish language.

9. The People’s Joker (dir. Vera Drew)

Vera Drew’s film is far more than just a Joker parody. That alone would have been enough to be a fun project. But The People’s Joker is so much more. Lovingly conceived as equal parts coming out narrative, DC Comics love letter, and comedy scene satire, The People’s Joker floored me. As someone who has a deep love of how weird and strange and piecemeal superhero comics are, I was laughing out loud at all of the Easter eggs and the clear adoration for the source material. But at the same time, it made me further realize how queer superheroes and their universes actually are, and DC/Marvel’s continued efforts to remain on the “straight” and narrow feels more and more silly. 

8. Your Monster (dir. Caroline Lindy)

We all have a monster inside us. Sometimes that monster will surface, often causing chaos in the name of protecting us. This is something writer-director Caroline Lindy understands very well, as she turns this concept into a romantic comedy/musical. Melissa Barrera (Abigail, the last two Screams) excels at playing Laura, giving the character a full range of (messy) emotions. I don’t have enough room here to fully unpack the amount of emotional catharsis this gave me, so you’ll have to see it out for yourself.

7. Me (dir. Don Hertzfeldt)

My capsule review from the Chicago Critics Film Festival: 

The latest short from animation auteur Don Hertzfelt, Me continues his journey with existential science fiction, this time focusing on the mere aspect of existence in late stage capitalism. Featuring no real dialogue, Hertzfelt’s blob people bypass verbal communication and access our emotions directly from visual representation. At first, Me feels like a simple metaphor for a dad going through a midlife crisis, ignoring his family for the sake of some new hobby. But from there it evolves and shifts and expands its scope into a commentary on daily life. Me shows us how the internet promised us better ways to connect with each other, but actually makes us more isolated. Meanwhile, the vast resources needed to run it are sapping the planet of resources, and we more readily ignore the suffering all around us in favor of staring into the backlit void. But being a Hertzfelt film, this is all told with a wry sense of humor, deep pathos, and excellent musical pairings. 

6. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (dir. Soi Cheang)

Equal parts John Woo and The Three Musketeers, Twilight of the Warriors Walled In uses Kowloon Walled City as a setting for a martial arts epic about friendship and lost causes. Packing in a ton of masculine melodrama, incredible fight scenes, and a masterful use of setting, this is the best action movie of the year. 

5. Good One (dir. India Donaldson)

From my review from the Chicago Critics Film Festival: 

Good One can proudly stand alongside the adult male friendships of Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy and the father-daughter dynamics of Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace as another hiking movie that pieces together a layered emotionality through conversations and time away from the cacophony of urban life. All three films are fantastic, and I expect Good One to stick with me as much as Old Joy and Leave No Trace have, showing there is so much room in this microgenre for compelling relationship stories in among the green and quiet of nature. 

4. Challengers (dir. Luca Guadaingo) 

From my review:

Challengers is a masterfully constructed psychological thriller about the desires of the body and spirit. Not since Bull Durham has a sports movie been this focused on character development, not to mention the relationship between sex, sports, and psychology. While Descartes and his Enlightenment brethren posited that there was a separation between mind and body, Guadagnino’s recent work (as well as many other artists, especially queer storytellers) is pushing back against this notion. In Challengers, there is no distinction between the desire of the mind and the body. It is social mores, expectations, and, yes, capitalism that cause the mind and body to fall out of sync. Challengers offers much to dig into, with its juxtapositions, reversals, and consistent tension that I know it will be a movie I revisit several more times, trying to fully unpack everything within. 

3. A Real Pain (dir. Jesse Eisenberg)

From my review:

A Real Pain takes the form of a buddy road trip comedy, pairing two cousins who were close growing up but have drifted apart: David–described by his cousin as “an awesome guy stuck inside the body that is always running late” due to his anxiety and OCD–while Benji seems like the typical slacker stereotype, nonchalant about most things until he suddenly isn’t. Both men struggle with their mental health, and one component of that is survival guilt that comes from this third post-Shoah generation. It’s something I experience myself.

Seriously, if you only read one thing I wrote this year, make it this review.

2. I Saw the TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

From my review from the Chicago Critics Film Festival: 

Jane Schoenbrun deconstructs the relationship between us and our favorite media, using it as a lens to explore gender and sexual identities in adolescence. The film is extremely effective in creating the feeling that something is wrong but not being sure if the wrongness  is in yourself or the world you are forced to live in. While the film embraces some of the visual language of horror movies, I Saw the TV Glow sits within the existential horror of being alive in a confusing and uncaring world rather than stabbings and jump scares. The film is anchored by an incredible performance from Justice Smith, who carries much of the film using mostly disaffected facial expressions and placid body language. As Owen, an adolescent growing up a boy in a small town–a boy who has a pink sleeping bag and loves a show “for girls”–Smith captures the feeling of dissociation. He moves through life languidly, shaped by his experiences, but you also get the sense that he feels like he is hiding in plain sight. Like he has a secret that he himself does not even fully understand, let alone have the courage to say out loud. 

1. Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

Megalopolis is the movie from this year I have thought the most about, and one I look forward to revisiting the most. From my review: 

Coppola weaves such large tapestry it would be easy to get lost among the threads. But there is much here that asks to be engaged with and, for those of us who feel the future is even further out of reach, calls to keep looking ahead. Better days can come, but only if we create them. Megalopolis deserves to be considered in conversation with The Godfather and Apocalypse Now not just as explorations of the American Empire, but as proof to the power of cinema to convey the nuance and complexity that shapes the human experience itself.

Honorable Mentions:

• Rebel Ridge

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

• The Wild Robot

• Mars Express