The Cinéaste's Progress from This List to That Which Is to Come (He Hopes)


Once upon a time, I used to play a coy, rather pointless game w/r/t my annual top ten list -- dramatically "unveiling" it sometime in January, as if most everybody who reads this site didn't already have a pretty good idea of what it was gonna look like. Instead, I now publicly revise the sucker as I go along, so that the whole affair becomes a suspenseful Journey Toward Aesthetic Nirvana. Or something.

Here, then, is what my list would look like if (god forbid) I were forced to make it today:


THE "PURE" LIST (2015 premiere)

01. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, USA)
02. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
03. Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, USA)
04. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, USA)
05. The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, Canada)
06. Carol (Todd Haynes, UK)
07. The Witch: A New England Folktale (Robert Eggers, USA/Canada)
08. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, USA)
09. The Martian (Ridley Scott, USA)
10. London Road (Rufus Norris, UK)


THE "POLLS" LIST (2015 commercial release)

01. The Duke of Burgundy (Peter Strickland, UK)
02. Sicario (Denis Villeneuve, USA)
03. Magic Mike XXL (Gregory Jacobs, USA)
04. Mad Max: Fury Road (George Miller, USA)
05. The Forbidden Room (Guy Maddin, Canada)
06. Carol (Todd Haynes, UK)
07. It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, USA)
08. Anomalisa (Charlie Kaufman & Duke Johnson, USA)
09. The Martian (Ridley Scott, USA)
10. Breathe (Mélanie Laurent, France)