10*. Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski)

Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski has an impossible mission — making a case for theatrical release after a long pandemic lull — and they accepted it. They had the tapes and held them until audiences could see their big, loud, return to Navy’s Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program (TOPGUN) on big screens. All the better to take in cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s stunning in-cockpit camerawork and bask in the glow of an oddly neutral militaristic nostalgia-fest that nevertheless improves on the plot, narrative coherence, emotional resonance, and thrills of the original, so much so that much of it feels like afterlife wish fulfillment (and the director hasn’t said it isn’t). Either way it’s a heck of a ride. The breathtaking aerial choreography may be the draw, but it also manages to make the age-defying Cruise begin to reckon with the passage of time while holding the spotlight among a cast of impossibly fit newcomers who caused legions of young men give “summer mustaches” a try.

(Maverick hits Paramount+ on December 22)

10*. Women Talking (Sarah Polley)

An “act of female imagination” in the form of an epic multi-generational hayloft debate determines the future of the women of a Mennonite colony in response to generations of unspoken violent sexual assaults, deemed for generations to the the work of demons, self-harm, or hallucinations. In the face of incontrovertible evidence that the crimes were coming from inside the house, three families spend two days deciding whether to do nothing, stay and fight, or leave. Rather than foregrounding the crimes, Polley depicts them with strategically swift flashes and allows outstandingly nuanced performances from the likes of Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, and Jesse Buckley to fill in the awful blanks. It’s heavy material, but handled deftly and with surprising moments of levity. As the gears of their debate turn toward a decision, the large, incredibly talented cast and director’s triumphant collaboration is empowering, enlivening, and deeply thought provoking.

(Women Talking will be released in local theaters on January 6)

9. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)

Feels weird to ask this, but do we appreciate Spielberg enough? You’d think that one of our greatest living filmmakers waiting until his eighties to lay bare his creative inspirations in a lightly fictionalized autobiography written in collaboration with Tony Kushner might have made an even bigger splash. No mere treacly tale celebrating the magic of movies, Spielberg shares a coming-of-age tale that works both as an episodic film as well as a skeleton key to some of his own innovations and inspirations. Chief among them, his family’s displacement to the American West and the slow dissolution of his parents marriage. Michelle Williams phones in from space as his artistic mom and Paul Dano brings heartbreaking interiority to his science-minded dad. In a film stocked with seasoned actors (including some incredible cameos), it’s Gabriel LaBelle who takes over as Sammy Fabelman in the second act and heroically carries the movie on his young shoulders. He manages both teenage hijinks as well as a quiet and heartbreaking sequence about film editing that forms the heart of the whole movie. Stick around for the last scene, one of the year’s best.

(The Fabelmans is video on demand and in theaters)

8. Nope (Jordan Peele)

Sure, Jordan Peele’s latest is a scathing examination of power dynamics in image making and a scathing indictment of the cycles of exploitation therein. But it’s in the form of a tremendously fun tale of weird happenings in a lonely gulch of inland California where Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer play siblings descended from cinematic royalty who decide to flip the script, Steven Yeun is a once traumatized child actor leveraging his fame, and there’s something seriously mysterious in the night sky. Like Spielberg, he recognizes the power of an awestruck look at the heavens and is willing to subvert it for maxium effect. With jaw-dropping cinematography from Hoyte van Hoytema, Nope is easily Peele’s most complete and enjoyable, an unsettling delight that executes on all levels from unnerving start to bombastic finish.

(Nope is available on VOD and to stream on Peacock)

7. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)

A simple retrospective about Nan Goldin’s photography would have been enough. A sensitive investigation of the artist’s motivation to leave suburbia, pick up a camera, and become a groundbreaking participant and photographer of the heady counterculture would have been fascinating. A ferocious documentary exposing the evils of the Sackler family, their role in the opioid epidemic, and the infinite harms caused to society and families could’ve stood alone. But Laura Poitras weaves these themes together into revelatory documentary driven by Goldin’s vital activism against one family’s “artwashing” of their name through large donations to major cultural institutions. Each piece — intimate conversations, art retrospectives, staged “die-ins” — informs the others, sparks resonances, and makes for an incendiary gestalt.

(All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is currently in theaters.)

6. The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

A severed friendship on a tiny Irish island oblivious to the civil war raging across the water sets the stage for a mournfully hilarious acting showcase for Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. To refocus his twilight years in pursuit of the arts and something bigger than their insular emerald isle, one will go to brutally extreme measures to free himself of the distractions of his simple-minded friend. The other is a contented farmer can’t be made to understand his friend’s wishes and can’t get out of his own way even when he tries. McDonagh casts the row as a darkly comic farce, as their standoff escalates, the actors never lose sight of the love between their characters. Oh, and there’s a very good sheep dog and a cute miniature donkey!

(The Banshees of Inisherin is currently playing in theaters)

5. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Rian Johnson)

For all the talk about visual effects blockbusters bringing audiences back, there’s no special effect as powerful as being in a crowded cinema and having a laugh with strangers. Sad then, that Glass Onion, the second installation in what we can only hope is a long-lived Knives Out franchise, only got a week on big screens before heading to Netflix. Seeing it at TIFF was hands-down the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year. Linked to the previous film only through Daniel Craig’s great “southern” detective Benoit Blanc, Rian Johnson’s uproarious mystery with an extremely-online, very-2020s script skewers its broad ensemble of wealthy thought leaders, egotistical geniuses, and banal influencers. The whole glittering cast scheming on a billionaire’s private island for a pandemic retreat — especially Kate Hudson, Dave Bautista, Kathryn Hahn, and Ed Norton — are in on the joke, but Janelle Monáe is the one to watch.

(Glass Onion will be available on Netflix beginning December 23)

4. Everything Everywhere All At Once (DANIELS, Kwan and Scheinert)

Everything Everywhere All at Once’s themes of confronting the appeal of nihilism in the face of [gestures wildly] ~all of this~ felt ever more relevant with each passing month of this chaotic and frequently dispiriting year. Yet just as experiencing a multiverse in which every possibility was real galvanized Michelle Yeoh’s perpetually-frazzled, frequently-underachieving, small-business-owning mother into an improbable adventure to salvage her strained family, the DANIELS’s maximalist, infinitely-entertaining, and deeply sentimental yarn encourages its audience to choose googly eyes over a dark swirling bagel of despair. “If nothing matters, why not choose kindness?” is pretty squishy as a grand unifying moral code, but it’s been getting me through more than a few days.

(Everything Everywhere All At Once is available to stream or purchase)

3. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

I can’t bray the praises of Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s sentient donkey story loudly enough. A circus performer parted from his loving human companions, the clever and curious EO (named for the sound he makes and played by six Sardinian donkeys) is set adrift on a journey across Europe. As the impish creature is passed from farm to farm, escapes to face fearsome forests and small town soccer hooligans, we see the full spectrum of human kindness, cruelty, and indifference. On a minute by minute, scene by scene basis, it was the most perpetually surprising cinema I saw all year. Over ninety breathless minutes, the innovative cinematography brings us into EO’s perspective, fills our hearts, and then breaks them wide open.

(EO is playing in limited theatrical release, including stints at SIFF and NWFF)

2. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

On the surface, Aftersun is straightforward: a young divorced father (Paul Mescal) takes his eleven-year-old daughter (Frankie Corio) on a summer holiday to a no-frills resort in Turkey. Aside from some typical travel stuff, it goes well. They go diving, visit mud baths, play pool, and get along well. She forms an age-appropriate crush and begins to take notice of the older kids. But Charlotte Wells’s beguiling film is so much more than what happens on the summer getaway. With it’s long cuts, occasional punctuations, and exquisite pacing, we’re witnessing an act of remembering, reframing, and struggling to understand one’s parents from the vantage of adulthood. I saw it months ago and am surprised how firmly it remains etched in my memory. Like its silent protagonist watching her childhood videos, I’m still longing to make sense of the pervasive sadness lingering around the corners and to imagine the parts of the story not caught on tape.

(Aftersun is in theaters and available for digital purchase)

1. TÁR (Todd Field)

A towering act of cinema, with a monumental central performance. Todd Field introduces us to Lydia Tár, a supremely accomplished conductor at the peak of her powers. With filmmaking this controlled and Cate Blanchett so convincingly conjuring the role, it’s no wonder that it’s not uncommon to find people who are convinced that her character is a real person. While all of this precision might sound chilly and unapproachable, it’s exactly this cool mastery that draws us to Lydia and makes it impossible to escape as she’s drawn into a swirling vortex at least partly of her own making. This is thrilling stuff, a haunting story of hubris gone wrong that supports many convincing interpretations, and you never want to look away as it spins to a gasp-worthy finale.

(Tár is in theaters and available for digital purchase)