1. Swallow – Although this will not get a wide release until later this year, I was so impressed with it at 2019’s New Orleans Film Fest that I feel like I need to gush about it now. It’s a horror film that perfectly captures the female experience, illustrating the complete lack of control you have over your own body & destiny if you’re born on the wrong end of class & gender dynamics.

2. Midsommar – Ever dated an absolute asshole? Ever dated someone you knew wanted to break up with you, but stuck around because you wanted to see how they’d end it, so you wait for them to do something as months & months go by? If so, this is the cathartic breakup horror you need in your life.

3. In Fabric – A bleak, surrealistic story about a murderous dress that fully indulges in the Theatre of the Absurd. It’s a fun watch, but it also makes both fashion photography and corporate employers legitimately menacing.

4. The Last Black Man in San Francisco – A powerful debut feature brimming with beautiful cinematography and compelling performances from distinctive non-professionals. Its broader themes touch on gentrification & race politics, but it also makes room to emphasize the power of storytelling & nostalgia. It’s a beautiful tale of an unlikely friendship, one that explores how the stories we tell about ourselves sustain us.

5. Parasite – It’s a genuine phenomenon that such a savage commentary on class politics became so universally popular, packing theaters for months on end. Usually when filmmakers tackle class so furiously (like Boots Riley with Sorry to Bother You), they earn strong critical attention but not such widespread popularity. It’s been amazing to see.

6. Knife + Heart – This is great smut, especially if you enjoy slashers. It really turns the usual male gaze & female victim empathy of that genre on its head in a fascinating way.

7. Come to Daddy – A darkly fun, weirdly plotted film that went in totally surprising directions I did not expect. It also doesn’t hurt that Elijah Wood is super cute.

8. Aniara – Based on a Swedish-language epic poem from the Golden Age of Science Fiction, Aniara explores the futility of being alive and trying to build anything in the face of the vast emptiness of space and time. It’s deeply sad, but also deeply relatable.

9. Little Women – Previous adaptations of Little Women (and even the novel itself) have been criticized for weighting their drama too heavily on the story’s opening childhood half, so that the adulthood drama of the second volume feels like a rushed afterthought. The remixed timelines of this adaptation allow director Greta Gerwig to draw beautiful parallels between both halves of the story and to highlight powerful moments & lines of dialogue that other adaptations tend to skip over. It’s the best version of the story to reach the screen yet.

10. Violence Voyager – I’ve never seen anything animated quite like this before. The way it uses such a cute, handmade, feminine animation style to tell such a nasty story makes for a haunting juxtaposition. It’s beautiful, unique, and original, but its artistry also makes for a discordant clash with its grotesque subject matter. That accomplishment deserves more attention than what it’s getting. At the very least we should be keeping an eye on the filmmaker, who genuinely seems like a potential danger.

-CC Chapman