2. John Wick: Chapter Four Directed by Chad Stahelski 170 min. "I'm *going* to kill them all." Morningless midnight chaos for the glimmer of the memory of a dream long forgotten. An action epic so broken & desperate in spirit, yet happens upon peace before even achieving it.
3. Shin Kamen Rider Directed by Hideaki Anno 121 min. "Why must you reject my happiness!" "I'm so happy the scarf suits you." Inhabiting & amending the broken fantasies of the desperate writ large. A batshit action odyssey of its own! A funhouse of Anno's malformed imaginary!
4. Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake Created by Adam Muto 248 min. Your top fantasy, another's tragedy. Your tragedy, another's salvation. Adventure Time's concise form stunningly intertwines life's heartaches & joys, as mundane, eerie or demented as they can be.
5. Killers of the Flower Moon Directed by Martin Scorsese 206 min. A slow, horrifying stranglehold in the needle-thin guise of affection & concern. Scorsese's fascinated with passive cruelty masked as love, its host's malformed soul & the hope, rage & dejection of its victims.
6. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig 107 min. The table-extender is the shot of the year, for me. A simple, but sharp & devasting visual cue - the contraction of space & familial trust - in a film full of incisive suburban discord.
7. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off Directed by Abel Gongora Created by BenDavid Grabinsky & Bryan Lee O'Malley 207 min. Sometimes you can only grow when the story's broken. The euphoria of not being a centerpiece of someone else's arc; settling cozily into yourself & not your role.
8. Knock at the Cabin Directed by M. Night Shyamalan 100 min. Humanity's on trial, and the jury has every reason to rule against. A stunning tragedy of the sacrifices queer people & their allies are expected to sustain while the world fails to rise to save them in return.
9. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Directed by Kemp Powers, Joaquim Dos Santos & Justin K. Thompson 140 min. A kaleidoscope of bitter abandonment. When you feel strained to stick up for kindred spirits cause your life's fragile equillibrium is so vulnerable itself.
10. Asteroid City Directed by Wes Anderson 105 min. Wes' artifice has become a labyrinth of layered intimacies & fond happenstance. The reality we identify with is thin, chaotic, circumstantial - prone to time constraints - but no less a sincere, vividly tragic death dream.
11. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé Directed by Beyoncé Knowles-Carter 170 min. Homecoming had a more exacting thesis, yet Beyoncé has never so firmly or ecstatically rode the high of experience like she does here. From voice to body to artifice to community to inspiration.
