5. American Honey
In a way, American Honey is an epic, and not just because of its nearly three hour runtime. The film is a deeply emotional character piece that follows Star (Sasha Lane), a teenage girl who escapes a fraught home life of poverty and joins a caravan of young people that sell magazines and journey across the country. Among the caravan’s members is Jake (Shia Labeouf), who takes a liking to Star, and Krystal (Riley Keough), the group’s enigmatic leader.
Andrea Arnold’s style of filmmaking is both haphazard and specific; the various escapades that Star and her friends have flow together like the viewer is experiencing their everyday lives, and they culminate in moments of pure elation that summarize their development as adolescents. It’s a credit to Arnold that she’s able to keep the story consistently interesting without ever denying the characters their humanity, and she uses small moments to explore how Star comes into her own.
4. Molly’s Game
Aaron Sorkin is without a doubt one of the best and most influential writers of the past several decades. Sorkin revolutionized television with The West Wing, and has written a number of modern classics, including The Social Network, Moneyball, Steve Jobs, The American President, and A Few Good Men, and has made the quippy “walk and talk” style his signature. Molly’s Game was exciting, as it is not only based on the fascinating true story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a former Olympic skater who ran a high profile underground poker ring, but it was also Sorkin’s first project as a director.
Sorkin is completely in his element here; Molly is the sort of snarky, quick witted character he excels at writing, and Chastain brings with her emotional intelligence, making the character’s relentlessly unapologetic nature rooted in key moments from her early life. The much discussed sequence in which Molly’s father (Kevin Costner) opens up to her is a rare moment of sincerity for the character, and it only works as well as it does thanks to the chill charisma that Chastain has. The film also features a stellar supporting performance from Idris Elba, who gives one of the best monologues in recent years when he calls out Molly’s prosecutors for hypocrisy.
3. 20th Century Women
What a shame it is that a film as joyously sincere and wonderfully truthful as 20th Century Women underperformed; directed by Mike Mills in his follow up to the brilliant Beginners, it is the story of an untraditional family of sorts that experiences love, loss, and acceptance in 1979. Dorothea Fields (Annette Bening) is a single mother who tries to raise her teenage son Jamie (Lucas Jade Zumann) by enlisting the help of her tenants Abbie (Greta Gerwig), who is undergoing treatment for cancer, and Julie (Elle Fanning), who Jamie is infatuated with.
It’s a joy to see these unabrasive, sincere characters interact and converse; Mills has a way of writing that is existential without being pretentious, and he’s able to work through complex ideas about love and meaning by simply allowing the characters to bounce their ideas off of each other. While Mills utilizes a lot of monologues and idiosyncratic situations, the film never becomes too obsessed with its own quirks that it takes away from the integrity of the characters. In addition to the wonderful performances at the center, there’s also a terrific supporting turn from Billy Crudup as another one of Dorothea’s tenants who gives Jamie a different type of role model.
2. Burning
Many American audiences have been inspired to catch up on the renaissance of great South Korean films following the unprecedented crossover success of Parasite, and there’s few better examples than Lee Chang-dong’s stunning masterpiece Burning. Burning is the type of film that simply envelops the audience; it’s a story that keeps the viewer guessing, as it transitions between romantic drama and thriller elements. It’s one of the quintessential stories of the haves and the have nots, and it’s handled with such profound ambiguity that it becomes a film that demands multiple viewings.
Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) has a chance encounter with his childhood crush Jeon Shin Hae-mi (Jong-seo), and the two develop a warped relationship after Jong-su agrees to care for her cat while she’s away. Jong-su’s romantic ambitions are halted when Hae-mi returns with her new boyfriend Ben (Steven Yeun), who embodies the confidence and charisma that Jong-su has always lacked. The seeds of jealousy, doubt, and confusion that emerge are enrapturing, particularly as Ben reveals secret pastimes to Jong-su that may or may not be real. Any film fan that has missed Burning should catch up with it immediately; it is one of the masterpieces of the 21st Century.
1. The Other Side of the Wind
In 2018, a new Orson Welles film was released. Welles shot The Other Side of the Wind haphazardly throughout the 1970s, but due to financial issues and production stalls, the film remained incomplete for decades after Welles’s death in 1985. Considered to be the “Holy Grail” of cinema, the project was finally restored and completed by Frank Marshall and Peter Bogdonavich, who was one of the film’s stars. The result is an unmissable moment in cinematic history.
It’s impossible to examine The Other Side of the Wind without looking at Welles’s own life and career, his views on cinema and the studio system, and the untraditional ways in which the film made it to screens. The story follows legendary director Jake Hannaford (John Huston) who gathers his cast and crew for a screening of his latest unfinished work, which is shown through long sequences of “film within a film” footage. It’s a film that inspires immediate discourse; the audience learns about Hannaford through the film he’s made, and in turn, they learn more about Welles through his characterization of Hannaford.
The film is brash and austere, satirizing both classical filmmaking and experimentalism by indulging in both, and it may be impossible to tell whether the haphazard editing style is purely part of Welle’s style, or if it’s a result of the similarly haphazard reconstruction. Either way, a new film from one of the greatest filmmakers of all-time is certainly worth checking out, and anyone who wants to explore the life and legend of Welles should consider The Other Side of the Wind an essential work.