What cinematic DNA does Damien Chazelles hit musical share with Ken Loachs issue driven drama While they may seem drastically different, their quality links them. Perhaps more than ever, we need different voices from around the world in our filmmaking. Watch Gnomeo And Juliet Free. This top ten list indicates how much 2. Advertisement. About the rankings We asked our ten regular film critics and two assistant editors to submit top ten lists from this great year, and then consolidated them with a traditional points system1. Well publish all of our individual lists, along with many more by our regular contributors and some with detailed entries, tomorrow. I, Daniel BlakeThe social service workers in Ken Loachs surprise Palme DOr winner, I, Daniel Blake sound like insane conspiracy theorists spouting their craziest beliefs What theyre saying is almost as unbelievable as the conviction with which it is being said. The rules Daniel Blake Dave Johns must adhere to are Rube Goldberg esque contraptions, overcomplicated to the point of madness and enforced by robotic bureaucrats transplanted from a Terry Gilliam satire. Do these enforcers hear how ludicrous their demands sound Or have they been beaten into zombie like emotional detachment by both the sheer rote of their jobs and the unspoken fear that they could just as easily wind up on the same side of the desk as those seeking help Whatever the case, the horrifying frustrations felt by Daniel and Katie Hayley Squires seep into the viewers skin, causing the blood to boil. Loach masterfully constructs his film as a series of small scenes, each of which give his lead actors moments to quietly shine. Johns, who gives one of the years best performances, is devastating as an older man who just wants to return to work. He takes a fatherly shine to the much younger Squires, equally good as a mother whose relocation situation traps her in the same giant ball of red tape that ensnares Daniel Blake. When Katies story arc passes through a predictable plot point, Johns delivery of a single line Youre breaking my heart, here shatters the familiarity of the clich, kicking us in the gut. Being poor is treated as a crime in our society. I, Daniel Blake rails against the dirty little secret that those in power secretly hope the impoverished will simply give up and go away. Its timely anger is palpable. Odie Henderson9. Love FriendshipIn the same year that Jane Austen devotees saw her most famous work debased on movie screens via the already forgotten atrocity that was Pride Prejudice Zombies, they also got to experience one of the very best cinematic takes on her body of work. It came via this adaptation of an unfinished novella as brought to the screen by Whit Stillman, whose previous wry comedies of manners including Metropolitan, Barcelona and The Last Days of Disco have invoked comparisons to Austens work over the years. This wickedly funny comedy stars Kate Beckinsale in the best performance of her career as a widow with a decidedly colorful past who crashes at the estate of her former in laws while scheming to marry off both herself and her daughter to secure their futures. Advertisement. Rather than the stuffy museum piece that this might have become in other hands, Stillman made an absolutely hilarious film that feels fresher and more vitally alive than most contemporary stories of late. Additionally, his pitch perfect screenplay manages to translate Austens prose in such a way that the characters actually sound as if they are talking to each other instead of merely reciting a series of familiar quotations. The result is a perfect melding of sensibilitiesit has the loose and relaxed feel of Stillmans other work while still maintaining the contours of the original narrative. Stillman comes up with an ending, the element that eluded Austen herself, that is smart, ironic and deeply satisfying. Like the film as a whole, it is pretty much perfect. Peter Sobczynski8. CamerapersonVeteran documentary cameraperson Kirsten Johnsons film was billed as an autobiography of sorts, but its approach was so unusual that you might not have immediately discerned that the claim was true. The first fifteen minutes feel like a footage dump by a woman who helped shoot some of the more notable nonfiction films of recent times, including Citizenfour, Darfur Now and Fahrenheit 91. Theres a bit from a documentary about the aftermath of the Bosnian war, another bit from a visit to a Nigerian hospital where a woman tries to deliver babies without proper equipment or medicine, moments from a womens clinic in Alabama, Michael Moore interviewing a corporal back from Iraq, and so on. And then theres Johnson interviewing her mother, or taking care of her own kids. But after a while we start to tune into her wavelength, and we realize that what were seeing is a complex essay film that conveys its ideas entirely by arranging its material in certain patterns once you figure out what particular moments or scenes have in common with others that appear before or after them, you start to deduce why the director put them there. And as the film unfolds, transitions or segues become implied a section about the pain of loss turns into a section about legacy, which in turn gives way to a scene about the responsibility of journalists or artists toward the individuals whose stories they tell. Your mind starts connecting the dots, and you realize this is a movie about all sorts of things about being a parent and a child, about what it means to grow old, witness tragedy, listen to confessions, search for truth, grapple with the question of whether anything you do really makes a difference in the larger scheme, and appreciate work and friendship, family and home for their own sakes about what it means to be alive on this planet at this particular moment. This is a movie like no other, one that seems to contain several movies, several stories, many lives. Matt Zoller SeitzAdvertisement. The first documentary ever chosen to open the New York Film Festival, Ava Du. Vernays follow up to Selma is a brilliantly mounted American history tour that examines the ways African Americans have been continually subjugated from the end of the Civil War to todays prison industrial complex and its mass incarceration of black men. The story begins with the 1. Amendment in 1. 86. This opened the door for blacks to be locked up for offenses like loitering and then used as de facto slaves in prison farms and similar institutions. The practice, as Du. Vernay shows, entailed not only legal chicanery but also a racist mythology that saw blacks as subhuman and dangerous, a message integral to D. W. Griffiths 1. 91. The Birth of a Nation, which helped re launch the Ku Klux Klan and make it a national political force. The intertwining of legalpolitical oppressions and mentalmythological ones has continued ever since. Even after the civil rights battles put an end to the Souths Jim Crow laws in the 6. Passionate yet poised, Du. Vernays masterful synthesis of historical eras and evidence is quite simply one of the most powerful and compelling films ever made about race in America. Godfrey Cheshire6. Toni ErdmannApart from delivering the largest and longest sustained laugh Ive heard in a theater since Little Miss Sunshine, Maren Ades film is extraordinary for many other reasons.