At the halfway point of December, there are, to put it lightly, many end-of-year lists hitting the web, and few publications have round-ups as consistently excellent as Film Comment‘s. (“Consistently excellent” translates to “aligns with my specific taste,” of course.) Their 20-film selection represents the year rather nicely, from the widely seen and frequently listed (e.g. Mad Max: Fury Road and Inside Out) landing among some of our limited-release favorites, including Timbuktu, The Assassin, and Jauja. As editor Gavin Smith says, “That balance, which happens to be encapsulated in the top five in micro form, feels about right for the agenda of this magazine, which, since the very beginning, has been to champion the best in cinema wherever it hails from, all creatures great and small. Since we managed to run features on 11 of these and sung the praises of another five, it’s a pleasure to close out the year on a high note.”
Equally worthwhile is their countdown of undistributed pictures, which mixes work we’ll gladly go to bat for — Right Now, Wrong Then; Cosmos; 88:88; Journey to the Shore; The Sky Trembles… — and that which, while missed, one should keep an eye out for.
Look at the full list below, and head to Film Comment for their writings on these selections:
RELEASED 2015
1. Carol; Todd Haynes, U.S.
2. The Assassin; Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan
3. Mad Max: Fury Road; George Miller, U.S.
4. Clouds of Sils Maria; Olivier Assayas, France
5. Arabian Nights; Miguel Gomes, Portugal
6. Timbuktu; Abderrahmane Sissako, Mauritania/France
7. Spotlight; Tom McCarthy, U.S.
8. Phoenix; Christian Petzold, Germany
9. Inside Out; Pete Docter & Ronnie del Carmen, U.S.
10. The Look of Silence; Joshua Oppenheimer, Denmark/Indonesia
11. Hard to Be a God; Aleksei German, Russia
12. Anomalisa; Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, U.S.
13. In Jackson Heights; Frederick Wiseman, U.S.
14. Son of Saul; László Nemes, Hungary
15. Horse Money; Pedro Costa, Portugal
16. Jauja; Lisandro Alonso, Argentina
17. Tangerine; Sean Baker, U.S.
18. Brooklyn; John Crowley, U.K.
19. The Diary of a Teenage Girl; Marielle Heller, U.S.
20. Bridge of Spies; Steven Spielberg, U.S.FILMS WITHOUT DISTRIBUTION 2015
1. Right Now, Wrong Then; Hong Sangsoo, South Korea
2. Chevalier; Athina Rachel Tsangari, Greece
3. The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers; Ben Rivers, U.K.
4. The Academy of Muses; José Luis Guerín, Spain
5. Don’t Blink – Robert Frank; Laura Israel, U.S.
6. Cosmos; Andrzej Zulawski, Poland
7. Journey to the Shore; Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan
8. Happy Hour; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan
9. Lost and Beautiful; Pietro Marcello, Italy
10. Minotaur; Nicolas Pereda, Mexico
11. Kaili Blues; Bi Gan, China
12. Sixty Six; Lewis Klahr, U.S.
13. Visit, or Memories and Confessions; Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal
14. El Movimiento; Benjamin Naishtat, Argentina
15. 88:88; Isiah Medina, Canada
16. Microbe & Gasoline; Michel Gondry, France
17. Pervert Park; Frida & Lasse Barkfors, Sweden/Denmark
18. Afternoon; Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan
19. Of the North; Dominic Gagnon, Canada
20. The Smell of Us; Larry Clark, U.S.