1) Pig
Nic Cage spellbinds in this slow-boil stew of friendship, loss, and the possibility of redemption. Quoth Styx: “Babe, I love you.“
2) The Mitchells vs the Machines
I laughed so hard I cried. Absolutely the kind of wackadoodle (animated) movie we need right here, right now.
3) Titane
Ducournau’s outrageous body-slash-psychological horror show truly out-Cronenbergs Cronenberg. Best first date movie of the year!
4) Swan Song
Udo Kier’s most astonishing performance since Andy Warhol’s Blood for Dracula. Those eyes! (Bring a hankie.)
5) Riders of Justice
There’s something rotten in Denmark in this balls-to-the-wall revenger. Mads Mikkelsen out-Neesons Neeson.
6) Stray
Dogs. Are. Gods. Who’s a good movie? You are! Yes you are! G’boy!
7) Gaia
MIT just predicted the end of civilization by 2040 and Gaia proves edibles may be the way-out way out.
8) The Card Counter
Paul Schrader never stops beating the holy shit out of my sense of morality. Oscar Isaac crackles.
9) Coming Home in the Dark
This overlooked Kiwi suspenser will test the mettle of your soul.
10) The Velvet Underground
If every wannabe filmmaker watching this makes their own VU-style doc, that’d be pretty meta-cool.
Near Misses
Minari, Raging Fire, The Power of the Dog.
Most Overrated
F9, The Tomorrow War, Free Guy.
Most Underrated
Small Engine Repair, In the Earth, Silent Night.
Wild Card
Stuck inside, redux, I’ll just paraphrase Chief Brody: We’re gonna need a bigger home theatre system.
Acting Kudos (Male)
Udo Kier (Swan Song), Benedict Cumberbatch (The Power of the Dog), Timotheé Chamolet (Dune)
Acting Kudos (Female)
Agathe Rousselle (Titane), Katsuki Mori (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy), Morfydd Clark (Saint Maud)
Best Director
Edgar Wright (The Sparks Brothers), Michael Sarnoski (Pig), Benny Chan (Raging Fire)
Best Original Screenplay
Todd Stephens (Swan Song), Wes Anderson (The French Dispatch), Chris Green (The Pebble and the Boy)
Best Adapted Screenplay
John Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, Eric Roth (Dune), Rebecca Hall (Passing), Magali Pouzol, Patrick Imbert, Jean-Charles Ostorero (The Summit of the Gods)
TV Series/Event
Voir Netflix’s incisive series on why we love the darkness of the cinema and how it loves us back.Worst Film
The Addams Family 2 May the shade of Charles Addams plague all involved forevermore.
The Little Film That Could
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror Documentarian scholar of cinéma outré (and former Alamo programmer), Kier-La Janisse’s 3-hour-plus masterpiece is the final word on the creepy-crawliest of horrors subgenres. /p>
This article appears in December 17 • 2021.