21. If Beale Street Could Talk
Writer/director Barry Jenkins follows up his 2016 Oscar-winning masterpiece of a debut, Moonlight, with the insanely high expectations of movie lovers everywhere. If Beale Street Could Talk meets those expectations with grace.
Based on the writing of James Baldwin (never a bad idea), the film follows a struggling couple as a means to illustrate the intersecting forms of oppression facing African Americans in this country. Jenkins’s poetic camera, the elegance of his interpretation of Baldwin’s world, and the tenderness of the performances — especially from the always wonderful Regina King — weave together to create a hypnotic, heartbreaking story of American resilience.
22. Disobedience
Sebastian Lelio continues his interest in stories of women struggling to be free and live as their true selves, exerting their power to disobey. The message is love and mercy, and how these basic tenets of religion are often forgotten in the name of enforcing a preferred social order. Lelio and his committed actors — Rachel McAdams, Rachel Weisz and Alessandro Nivola — make it intensely intimate but never salacious, a parable with a powerful grip.
23. Mid90s
More than just a time stamp, Mid90s emerges as a completely engaging verite-styled slice of place and person, a clear-eyed and visionary filmmaking debut for writer/director Jonah Hill. Though the film does feel like a labor of love for Hill, it’s not draped in undue nostalgia, but rather a gritty sense of realism resting comfortably between 1995’s “Kids” and Bing Liu’s skateboarding doc, “Minding the Gap.” An often funny, sometimes startling and endlessly human film, Mid90s is a blast from the past that points to a bright filmmaking future for Hill.
24. Thoroughbreds
Wicked, surprising, unapologetic, cynical and buoyed by flawless performances from Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy, writer/director Cory Finley’s Thoroughbreds is a mean little treat. It’s a fascinating look — blackly comedic and biting — at how the other class comes of age.
25. Mandy
Writer/director Panos Cosmatos’s hallucinogenic fever dream of social, political and pop-culture subtexts layered with good old, blood-soaked revenge, Mandy throws enough visionary strangeness on the screen to dwarf even Nicolas Cage in full freakout mode.
26. Annihilation
Alex Garland’s work as both a writer and a writer/director has shown a visionary talent for molding the other-worldly and the familiar. Annihilation — an utterly absorbing sci-fi thriller where each answer begs more questions — unveils Garland at his most existential.
27. Border
Border director/co-writer Ali Abbasi has more in mind than your typical Ugly Duckling tale. He mines this story of outsider love and Nordic folklore for ideas of radicalization, empowerment, gender fluidity and feminine rage. The result is both a sincere crime thriller and a magical fantasy.
28. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
The fascinating and true story of biographer turned felon Lee Israel offers a weirdly optimistic if cautionary tale for misfit women. It’s also a great reminder that Melissa McCarthy can really act.
29. Mission: Impossible — Fallout
Tom Cruise’s next mission – and he’ll most likely accept it – is to try and outdo the stunts he pulls in this latest Mission: Impossible entry. Good luck with that, because Fallout delivers the GD mail.
30. Death of Stalin
Opening with a madcap “musical emergency” and closing with a blood-stained political coup, The Death of Stalin infuses its factual base with coal-back humor of the most delicious and absurd variety.
All reviews written by George Wolf and Hope Madden.
Read more from George, Hope and the MaddWolf Pack at MADDWOLF and listen to their weekly podcast running down all that’s new in theaters and home entertainment, SCREENING ROOM.