10) They Live (
Dir. John Carpenter)
the entire first act of
they live is piper sleepwalking around LA observing his surroundings over a deceptively chill bluesy beat. eventually he wakes up, but soon the film grinds to a halt again so he can spend six minutes waking up his buddy too. somehow, john carpenter makes this into the film's defining strength. hundreds of other movies are bigger, louder and more action-packed, but hardly any of them possess the personality, atmosphere and menace of this casual, languid thing. a true original.
9) Miracle Mile (
Dir. Steve De Jarnatt)
the epitome of reagan-era paranoia and helplessness, idealism on the verge of crumbling until it does, tangerine dream synths charting a sudden, irreversible descent into dread, destruction and doom. it almost feels like the death of the '80s; the great side-characters, each a relic of the era, slip out of the film without a goodbye and vanish into oblivion.
8) Iguana (
Dir. Monte Hellman)
no ordinary B-movie but a bleak origin story of civilisation told in blunt caveman strokes, with everett mcgill (big ed from
twin peaks) playing a slave and outcast who suffers, revolts, and builds a kingdom in the image of his oppressors, delivering brutal “justice” until his subjects either fight him to the death or accept their subjugation.
7) Akira (
Dir. Katsuhiro Ôtomo)
perhaps the only way to provide a complete picture of contemporary japan is through violent sensory bombardment, vomiting up its horrors and obsessions in a deluge of guts, neon and twisted metal.
6) Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (
Dir. Todd Haynes)
sued into the abyss by the subject's brother and collaborator richard, todd haynes' cult debut about the tragic death of karen carpenter is to this day available almost exclusively on bootleg or youtube, but this is a story told in the language of damage and death, and the extra layer of visual degradation only makes it more disturbing. many films from this year depict an america of melting plastic, but none so literally as this.
5) High Hopes (
Dir. Mike Leigh)
the social satire could be less on-the-nose, and his penchant for caricature is misguided here as it often is, but mike leigh has been one of the world's greatest dramatists for almost fifty years, and any time davis' and sheen's complex, sweet, wryly hilarious central couple are onscreen, this is my fucking jam.
4) Vampire's Kiss (
Dir. Robert Bierman)
"
and you call yourself a psychiatrist." a difficult film to approach without irony in the wake of cage's millennial memeification, but rewatches wed the hilarity with great pathos. i might theorise that peter is in love with alva and what she represents: an unattainable escape from this ambivalent city and his lonely, privileged bubble within it. in any case, it's a singular film which exists out of time or genre; an amalgam of
american psycho,
after hours and silent-era horror theatrics centred around perhaps the all-time nuttiest performance in cinema and a heartbreaking, sadly overshadowed gem from maria conchita alonso alongside him.
3) Days of Eclipse (
Dir. Alexander Sokurov)
every bit the hypnotic, otherworldly, post-apocalyptic strugatsky adaptation
stalker was, and also reminiscent of my beloved
pathologic. in other words, my kind of arthouse movie (unlike
damnation and
landscape in the mist and
sound and fury and etc...).
2) Drowning by Numbers (
Dir. Peter Greenaway)
wes anderson if you strangled the twee out of him, made him watch resnais' filmography on repeat for a year and gave him the eye of a master painter. a macabre, misanthropic deadpan comedy about women murdering their husbands, mathematically precise and artificial to a fault, philosophically dense, transporting and beguiling. when the cinematography, screenplay and performances fire on all cylinders in service of a vision as unique as this, it's hard to look away.
1) Dead Ringers (
Dir. David Cronenberg)
"
I've often thought that there should be beauty contests for the *insides* of bodies." not quite my favourite cronenberg, but probably his best looking, best written and best acted, his most surgical and invasive work, and among the most broken and frightened of all films. if
the fly suggests we're insects dreaming that we're more,
dead ringers has twins dream that they're insects, horrified when their perfect hivemind starts splitting into separate entities and the "dreams of the flesh" spill forth. no filmmaker better understands the ineffable horror of being human.
1) dead ringers
2) drowning by numbers
3) days of eclipse
4) vampire's kiss
5) high hopes
6) superstar: a karen carpenter story
7) akira
8) iguana
9) miracle mile
10) they live