Every January, I promise myself to establish a stricter film-evaluation system, only to end up challenged by more than 50 highly rated films as December draws to a close. And although I do my best to catch up with all the current offerings, somehow there's always a lot left to see next year, and not to mention out-of-nowhere blasts from the recent past, which is why you'll find a few mid-decade releases hereinafter.
Emerging from six continents and ranging from the uncompromising experiments to eccentric genre-benders to hyper-stylized dramas to fairy tale deconstructions to video game-like adventures, sixty features - twelve of which are animated - capture my cinephilia at its most eclectic, and represent a counter-balance of sorts to the majority of both mainstream and alternative lists I've checked out so far. They are grouped in six categories whose titles (hopefully) suggest their nature.
BOLD CINE-DREAMS & CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPO-ALCHEMY
1. Last and First Men (Jóhann Jóhannsson, 2020)
2. Valley of the Gods (Lech Majewski, 2019)
3. Accidental Luxuriance of the Translucent Watery Rebus (Dalibor Barić, 2020)
4. Black Sun (Daniel & Clara, 2017)
5. Desire Path (Marjorie Conrad, 2020)
6. Siberia (Abel Ferrara, 2020)
7. Call for Dreams (Ran Slavin, 2018)
8. The Bottomless Bag (Rustam Khamdamov, 2017)
9. Homo Sapiens Project (200) (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2000-2020)
10. Shell and Joint (Isamu Hirabayashi, 2019)
11. The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror (Raúl Ruiz & Valeria Sarmiento, 2020)
12. Its Existence Commenced This Hour (Wolfgang Lehmann, 2019)
13. The Scream (Phillipe Grandrieux, 2019)
14. Sofa (Bruno Safadi, 2019)
15. Minotaur (Zulfikar Filandra, 2020)
1. This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, 2019)
2. Angel (Harry Cleven, 2016)
3. The Portuguese Woman (Rita Azevedeo Gomes, 2018)
4. Paul Keller – Silence in the Scream (Axel Loh, 2020)
5. Undine (Christian Petzold, 2020)
6. Mank (David Fincher, 2020)
7. Tesla (Michael Almereyda, 2020)
8. Nevrland (Gregor Schmidinger, 2019)
9. About Endlessness (Roy Andersson, 2019)
10. You Go to My Head (Dimitri de Clercq, 2017)
1. WolfWalkers (Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart, 2020)
2. Children of the Sea (Ayumu Watanabe, 2019)
3. A Yellow Animal (Felipe Bragança, 2020)
4. The Last Fiction (Ashkan Rahgozar, 2018)
5. The Bra (Veit Helmer, 2018)
6. Gretel & Hansel (Osgood Perkins, 2020)
7. Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simó, 2018)
8. Pinocchio (Matteo Garrone, 2019)
9. Primal: Tales of Savagery (Genndy Tartakovsky, 2020)
10. Hoffmaniada (Stanislav Sokolov, 2018)
1. Monos (Alejandro Landes, 2019)
2. Diner (Mika Ninagawa, 2019)
3. True History of the Kelly Gang (Justin Kurzel, 2019)
4. The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul, 2019)
5. Amulet (Romola Garai, 2020)
6. Luz (Juan Diego Escobar Alzate, 2019)
7. Why Don't You Just Die! (Kirill Sokolov, 2018)
8. Beasts Clawing at Straws (Kim Yong-hoon, 2020)
9. The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil (Won Tae-Lee, 2019)
10. Lily Lane (Benedek Fliegauf, 2016)
1. Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (Miguel Llansó, 2019)
2. Spontaneous (Brian Duffield, 2020)
3. L.O.R.D: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties 2 (Jingming Guo, 2020)
4. Max Cloud (Martin Owen, 2020)
5. Human Lost (Fuminori Kizaki, 2019)
6. Promare (Hiroyuki Imaishi, 2019)
7. Altered Carbon: Resleeved (Takeru Nakajima & Yoshiyuki Okada, 2020)
8. Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge (Ethan Spaulding, 2020)
9. Knives and Skin (Jennifer Reeder, 2019)
10. Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan, 2020)
DISSOLVE THE SILENCE...
1. Adam’s Passion (Andy Sommer, 2015)
2. Kasper Bjørke Quartet: The Fifty Eleven Project Full Visual Album (Justin Tyler Close, 2018)
3. Island Songs (Baldvin Z & Ólafur Arnalds, 2017)
4. Heavy Trip (Juuso Laatio & Jukka Vidgren, 2018)
5. Qlimax – The Source (Daan Jansen & Stijn Verlinde, 2020)
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