2010s

Through László Nemes’ rigid, principled application of close-up tracking shots and a shallow focus that keeps the horrors of the Nazi concentration camp setting just barely out of sight, he effectively narrows the scope of Son of Saul to a single, harrowing perspective of an otherwise monumental blight on human history, and in doing so…

Even though comparisons might be drawn between Instagram aesthetics and Mommy’s poppy style, Xavier Dolan’s film is far more artistically rich than anything one might find scrolling through social media feeds, as he finds both profound joy and grief in the strained relationship between a mother and son who can’t quite attain the long-lasting happiness…

Beneath the epic weight of Margaret’s three-hour runtime, Kenneth Lonergan’s rich, operatic character drama holds strong, using a layered emotional journey of guilt and rage to speak directly to the specific kind of trauma that unified New Yorkers in the wake of 9/11.

The awkward transition of learning to live with uncomfortable changes in one’s psychological state is always lurking within the subtext of Raw, but Ducournau’s ability to bring formal complexity in drawing out the visceral body horror of female sexuality makes for a confronting descent into parts of the human mind that are entirely untameable.

In turning his provocative, neon-tinted stylings to Hollywood’s cutthroat fashion industry in The Neon Demon, Nicolas Winding Refn quite literally puts his cast of models and actors under the knife, carving out a hellish underworld of cannibalistic cultism kept hidden behind a façade of attractiveness.