1. Poor Things — Yorgos Lanthimos movies have always poked at assumed social norms as if they were a corpse he found in the woods.  That naive interrogation has never been as scientifically thorough nor as perversely fun as it is here, though, to the point where it feels like he’s articulated the entire human experience through repurposed dead flesh. It’s clearly the movie of the year and, so far, the movie of his career.

2. The Royal Hotel — I’m shocked by how much I loved this service industry thriller, even though I bought in early on director Kitty Green & star Julia Garner stock back when prices were low (Casting JonBenet & Electrick Children, respectively). It plays like a slightly more grounded version of Alex Garland’s Men, except the men in question swarm their victims like George Romero zombie hordes. A great film about misogyny, social pressure, and alcoholic stupor.

3. Enys Men — In a year where the buzziest horror titles were slow-cinema abstractions, I’m glad one stabbed me squarely in the brain stem after a couple near-misses (see: Skinamarink, The Outwaters).  A pure psychedelic meltdown of id at the bottom of a deep well of communal grief.  It restructures the seaside ghost story of Carpenter’s The Fog through the methodical unraveling of Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, dredging up something that’s at once eerily familiar & wholly unique.

4. Priscilla — Sofia Coppola’s downers & cocktails antidote to Baz Luhrmann’s brain-poison uppers.  Technically, both directors are just playing the hits in their respective Graceland biopics, but only one of them successfully recaptures the magic of their 1990s masterworks.  It’s one of Coppola’s best films about the boredom & isolation of feminine youth, by which I mean it’s one of her best overall.

5. Barbie — Combines the bubbly pop feminism of Legally Blonde with the menacing, high-artifice movie magic of The Wizard of Oz to craft the first truly great Hollywood studio film of the decade. It’s fantastic, an instant classic.

6. Shin Ultraman — A 60s-throwback kaiju comedy that looks like it was shot by Soderbergh in full show-off mode.  It more often recalls Big Man Japan than it does Shin Godzilla, but that’s at least a comparison that does it a lot of favors.  Come for the absurdist skyscraper action; stay for the adorable go-getter humanist spirit.

7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem — Not only the best Ninja Turtles movie in thirty years, but also the best mutation of the Spider-Verse animation aesthetic to date and the most a Trent Reznor score has actually sounded like Trent Reznor’s band. I was particularly delighted that it leans into the “teen” portion of its title by making everything as gross as possible and by making the turtles’ ultimate goal Saving Prom.

8. Smoking Causes Coughing — An anthology horror comedy disguised as a Power Rangers parody.  Quentin Dupieux is apparently getting antsy about having to spend 70min on just one absurdist premise, so now he’s chopping them up into bite-sized, 7-minute morsels, which is great, since every impulse he has is hilariously idiotic. He’s in his goofball Roy Andersson era. 

9. Asteroid City — In The French Dispatch, Wes Anderson self-assessed how his fussy live-action New Yorker cartoons function as populist entertainment. In Asteroid City, the self-assessment peers inward, shifting to their function as emotional Trojan horses. I found the former funnier, the latter more affecting, and I suspect they’re both worthy of repeat viewings to fully sink into their dense detail.

10. Godzilla Minus One — It was a great year for nostalgic throwbacks to vintage tokusatsu (see also: Shin Ultraman, Shin Kamen Rider, Smoking Causes Coughing), but this is the only title in that crop to hit the notes of deep communal hurt from the original 1954 Godzilla film that started it all. That sincerity is incredibly rewarding, if not only because it’s the only Godzilla movie I can remember making me cry.

11. Infinity Pool — Among its many fellow recent “Eat the Rich” satires, this most reminded me of Triangle of Sadness, mostly for how far it pushes its onscreen depravity for darkly comedic, cathartic release – careful to put every possible substance the human body can discharge on full, loving display.  Plenty audiences are turned off by both works’ disregard for subtlety & restraint, but that’s exactly what makes them great.

12. Rimini — In which a has-been pop singer drinks and fucks away the remaining scraps of his life in off-season beachside hotel rooms.  It’s commendable both as a wryly grim character study and as the Euro counterpoint to recent American films only using geriatric sex for gross-out jump scares.  Sure, the racist, alcoholic protagonist is gross, but the sex he’s having is refreshingly matter of fact in its vulgarity.

13. The Taste of Things — An aggressively sensual romance about the joy of sharing thoughtfully prepared meals. It’s absurdly cozy & warm, likely the best movie about food since Pig.

14. The Five Devils — An intensely fucked up little time-travel family drama, punctuated by volatile jabs of style & emotion. Petite Maman for sickos.

15. Piaffe — Ann Oren’s follow-up to her outsider-art cosplay documentary The World is Mine is high-art pony play erotica.  It’s the closest thing we got to a new Peter Stickland movie this year, which automatically earns it a slot on this list.

16. Give Me Pity! — Amanda Kramer’s feature length spoof of disco era one-woman TV specials, one that pushes well past the initial layers of irony & artifice to dig at something deeply ugly about all artists’ outsized, fragile egos.  It’s a vicious takedown of fame-obsessed LA Brain from women who seem like they’ve suffered it first-hand.

17. Sick of Myself — A hilariously squirmy satire about art-world narcissism in which neither of the competing egos at the center actually make art; one is a designer furniture thief, and the other is an ambitionless barista who medically self-harms for attention.  In a way, their dual addiction to the spotlight makes them a perfect couple.  It would almost be romantic if they weren’t constantly, viciously fighting for flash-in-the-pan media coverage. Love is petty, love is benign.

18. M3GAN — What’s most important here is that the killer doll gives the best side-eye since Michelle Pfeiffer in French Exit.  Hell, maybe even the best side-eye since Michelle Pfeiffer in mother!.  No small feat.

19. Shin Kamen Rider — All of the retro kitsch of Shin Ultraman and the volatile brutality of Shin Godzilla streamlined into one unfathomably efficient superhero saga.  Zips through a half-century of TV episode storylines so quickly you have no time to care whether you have any idea what’s going on or not. Just do your best to tag along for the high-speed motorcycle rides & insectoid hyperviolence or you’ll miss a season’s worth of plot reveals in a single blink.

20. Suzume — I don’t know that Makoto Shinkai will ever match the soaring teen emotions of Your Name., but the visual artistry of his two lesser loved follow-ups still coasts miles above most modern animation.  His work remains impressively gorgeous & earnest in the moment even if it’s no longer surprising or novel in the larger context of his career, since he keeps repeating the same beats every picture. If anything, at this point the defiant tripling down on his schtick is starting to become endearing in a Wes Andersonian way.

-Brandon Ledet