Under The Skin

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Silver Screen Fiend

The Blair Witch Project

Blade Runner

From Hell Chapter 2: A State of Darkness

-takes place over most of William Withey Gull's life (1816-1890)
-characters: James Hinton, Dr. William Gull, Mr. & Mrs. Gull, Joseph Merrick (The Elephant Man), Charles & Florence Bravo, John Netley, Theodore Acland MD, HM Queen Victoria

From Hell Chapter 1: The Affections of a Young Mr. S.

Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell
Originially published in Taboo #2, 1989

-begins in London in July 1884 (39 years earlier than the prologue)
-characters: Annie Crook, Walter Sickert, "Albert Sickert" (later revealed to be Prince Edward), Netley, Mary Kelly, Alice Margaret
-Alice Margaret born April 1885
-Edward & Annie are discovered in 1888 (4 years later)

Inside Llewyn Davis

Joel & Ethan Coen, 2013

From Hell Prologue: The Old Men On The Shore

Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell
Originially published in Taboo #2, 1989

-takes place in Bournemouth (resort town on the south coast of England) in September 1923
-characters: Mr. Lees (a psychic), Fred Abberline (retired policeman)

Incredible Hulk #331

Peter David, Todd McFarlane
May 1987

Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage

Sam Dunn & Scott McFadyen, 2010

Meru

Chai Vasarhelyi & Jimmy Chin, 2015

Walk The Line

James Mangold, 2005

Age of Bronze Vol. 1

Eric Shanower, 2001, (originally published as Age of Bronze #1-9, 1998-2000)

The Diary of A Teenage Girl

Marielle Heller, 2015

Celebrated Summer

Chuck Forsman, 2014

Meek's Cutoff

Kelly Reichardt, 2010

This Is Spinal Tap

Rob Reiner, 1984

Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief

Alex Gibney, 2015

Epileptic

David B., 2005 (originally published in 6 volumes from 1996-2003)

The Tree Of Life

Terence Malick, 2011

For his fifth feature, Terrence Malick seemingly set out to tell both the smallest story possible and the biggest. Drawing from his own life growing up in Texas, it’s primarily a coming-of-age tale in which Jack (Hunter McCracken) confronts the twin influences of his nurturing mother (Jessica Chastain) and oppressive father (Brad Pitt), and also his notions of right and wrong. But its perspective shifts more than once over the course of the film, to years after Jack’s childhood, to a present in which the grown-up Jack must sort through the past, to some kind of afterlife, and back to the beginning of time and the first stirrings of life on the planet. These shifts, particularly that last one, should be jarring, but they’re as graceful and beautiful as the rest of the film, which comes as close as any movie has come to simulating what it might be like to see the universe through the eye of God—as simultaneously aware of the whole of time and space as the smallest torments in the heart of one kid in the suburbs outside Waco in the 1950s. That isn’t the only element of Malick’s film that approaches the miraculous, either. It sustains a tone of wonder and heartbreak through remarkable imagery, lyrical narration, and musical selections that match so perfectly to the film around them, they could have been composed with Malick in mind. It’s a singular film, particular to the vision of a one-of-kind filmmaker, but also the most universal movie this decade has yet produced. —Keith Phipps

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler, 1939

The Social Network

David Fincher, 2010

Eleven years after Fight Club blitzed American movie theaters, David Fincher directed another film about two men who found a radical organization, but are torn asunder when the enterprise takes on a life of its own. Which film was more ideologically potent? Project Mayhem could never exist in real life. Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin’s friends-club currently claims more than 1.35 billion active members. The Social Network is a confluence of so many elements going exhilaratingly right in perfect tandem. There’s hundred-take Fincher directing in full perfectionist mode; a towering script that deflates Aaron Sorkin’s signature histrionics until all that’s left is a bulletproof core; a host of fully realized performances, from one-scene-wonder Rooney Mara to double-dutied Armie Hammer to a too-cool-for-school Justin Timberlake, with Jesse Eisenberg’s nuanced, bitter nerd brooding above it all; even Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor’s sinister, sinuous score fits perfectly. It’s a morality play for the digital age, a geek tragedy without the divine comeuppance. It’s a slobs-vs.-snobs college movie. It’s the rare biopic that sympathizes with its subject, but never absolves him. It’s a crackling courtroom drama. It’s a work of entertainment that swings for the fences in its grand statements on the modern era, and clears it with yards to spare. Like the solitary piano-plinks within the misty strings on Ross and Reznor’s “Hand Covers Bruise,” a poignant irony hums at the center of The Social Network: Even as technological leaps appear to bring us all closer together, we feel more alone than ever. Several Facebook layout updates later, Zuckerberg’s screeds about keeping the site ad-free seem adorably dated. But with every passing year, the film’s understanding of its time and place seem savvier. —Charles Bramesco

Selma

Ava DuVernay, 2014

It seems unconscionable that it took until 2014 for audiences to get a theatrical Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic, but Ava DuVernay’s Selma proved the wait worthwhile, with a portrayal of the civil-rights movement that’s as relevant to the present as it is reverent of the past. Though set in 1965 during the voting-rights marches in Alabama, Selma arrived in theaters just as the modern-day echoes of that struggle had grown deafening, lending the film an added emotional and moral heft. But Selma is timeless, too, as a nuanced portrait of a great man that deftly sidesteps hagiography; as an examination of the tension and compromise involved in wide-ranging political movements; and as a celebration of the bravery of those who gave themselves to the cause, both willingly and unwillingly. It’s a great, important story, but it’s also a wonderful piece of filmmaking, thanks to Bradford Young’s breathtaking, refined cinematography, DuVernay’s canny grasp of staging and timing, and a nuanced lead performance by David Oyelowo that brings unforced humanity and ambiguity to a historical figure who’s rarely allowed either. —Genevieve Koski

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson, 2012

The fictional children's story books Moonrise Kingdom’s Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) packs to take on her clandestine camping trip with orphan Sam Shaukusky (Jared Gilman) serve as an appealing distillation of Wes Anderson’s film: familiar yet not quite of this world, childlike yet imbued with free-floating nostalgia, and just the tiniest bit bizarre. Moonrise Kingdom is set within its own storybook world, a cloistered island off the New England coast—an island populated by typical Andersonian eccentrics, plus Bob Balaban—that reveals other little worlds inside it: the quietly chaotic Bishop home, haunted by Suzy’s gloomy, distracted parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand); Camp Ivanhoe, a Khaki Scout enclave presided over by a be-shorted Edward Norton; and the hidden cove discovered by Suzy and Sam that gives the film its name. It’s a typically lovely and quirky Anderson diorama, as satisfying from beginning to end as anything the director’s done. By focusing his story on children who act like little adults, and adults who often act like children, Anderson achieves a sort of balance that makes his signature whimsy feel more natural and emotionally charged than some of his other efforts. It’s unmistakably an Anderson film, and unmistakably one of his best. —Genevieve Koski

Seconds

Wanderlust

David Wain, 2012

Parenthood

Ron Howard, 1989

Fun Home

Alison Bechdel, 2006

Boyhood

Richard Linklater, 2014

Shot over 12 years, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood is less a sweeping story than a series of episodes offering annual check-ins on the progress of Mason (Ellar Coltrane) from age 6 to his first day of college at age 18. Apart from a mid-film section in which an alcoholic stepfather figures prominently, there’s little conventional drama. Mason and his sister Samantha (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter) bounce back and forth between his father (Ethan Hawke) and mother (Patricia Arquette, doing standout work). He develops interests, has his heart broken, and watches as the world changes around him, growing a little more observant with each passing year.

Boyhood won this poll by a healthy margin, which raises a question: Why? Were we all still so dazzled by the consensus choice for the best film of 2014? Or was there something else at work in Boyhood turning up on so many ballots? Its structure makes it unique, but it might also have made it merely an interesting experiment. Ultimately, its everydayness is what makes it so compelling. Mason’s story is particular to his character—and to the corner of the world and era in which he grows up—but the passing of time is universal, as are many of the rites of passage he encounters along the way. Linklater almost goes out of his way to gloss past many of those rites of passage—Mason’s first kiss, his first drink, the loss of his virginity—leaving viewers to piece together what’s happened from the way he behaves. But they’re still felt. The drama comes less from individual incidents than what it’s like to live in the wake of change. Much of how we experience life is in that idea: Time is less a series of milestones passed than the long stretches between those milestones. Boyhood compresses 12 years of life, but it also slows them down, pausing at telling points to capture what life means for this boy at this point in time, and finding a much bigger story in those small moments. —Keith Phipps

True Detective Season 2 Finale

August 9, 2015
Episode Title: "Omega Station"
writer: Nic Pizzolatto
director: John Crowley

Wet Hot American Summer

David Wain, 2001

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp (Complete Series)

July 31, 2015
writers: David Wain, Michael Showalter
director: David Wain

Oculus

Mike Flanagan, 2013

Margaret

Kenneth Lonergen, 2011

Shot in 2005, finished in 2008, and dumped in a few theaters for a week in 2011, Kenneth Lonergan’s looooong-delayed follow-up to You Can Count On Me remains one of the great critical (and social-media) success stories of the new millennium. Clocking in at seconds shorter than its contractually obligated 150 minutes, after a lengthy studio war over its editing, the film feels unfinished, with abandoned subplots and other visible scars. But to some degree, Margaret was always going to be messy, because the moral issues it engages so thoughtfully and passionately resist tidy answers. Anna Paquin holds it together with a volatile performance as a strong-willed but typically narcissistic teenager who witnesses a woman getting killed in a bus accident, gives a false report to protect the driver (Mark Ruffalo), then attempts to reverse course and seek justice in the case. This aligns her with the victim’s closest friend (an outstanding Jeannie Berlin), but also finds her meddling in people’s lives recklessly, as if their tragic crises are merely the catalyst for her personal growth. At the same time, her idealism is genuine, and sullied by adults who have less-than-noble motives of their own. With Margaret, Lonergan has taken a single incident and built a drama of prismatic fascination, with insights into morality, family, adulthood, and the state of New York City after 9/11. It is the very definition of a flawed masterpiece. —Scott Tobias

So Many Roads

David Browne, 2015

49 Up

Michael Apted, 2005

Ex Machina

Alex Garland, 2015

Bernie

Richard Linklater, 2011

42 Up

Michael Apted, 1998

Certified Copy

Abbas Kiarosami, 2010

Maybe there’s a lot to unravel in Certified Copy, and maybe there’s nothing at all. The bulk of Abbas Kiarostami’s film concerns an afternoon journey through Tuscany taken by English writer James Miller (opera singer William Shimell) and a never-named French antiques dealer (Juliette Binoche). Fraught with nervous tension from the start, much of their conversation concerns the notion of authenticity in art, the subject of Miller’s latest book. Then, at a certain point, the conversation takes a turn that calls into question the nature of the couple’s relationship. From that point on, it becomes impossible to find solid footing in the narrative of the film, which Kiarostami shoots in long, immersive takes, using his signature driving scenes. Still, it’s easy to get lost in its emotions as the couple struggles to reach an understanding, and possibly save a relationship in desperate need of saving. Maybe who these people are matters less than what they feel—and what they make viewers feel. Maybe that’s as close to an understanding of how art works as we’ll ever get. —Keith Phipps

The Act of Killing

Joshua Oppenheimer, 2012

It’s a mark of The Act Of Killing’s creative ambition that a film about the Indonesian mass murders of 1965-66 manages to create a thematic connection between killers justifying their actions and dancers cavorting in front of a defunct restaurant shaped like a giant fish. Director Joshua Oppenheimer found and interviewed some of the original killers, now in positions of minor power. Unraveling the ways they identified with Hollywood gangsters, he enlisted them to re-create their murders for the cameras, moving from abstract, colorful, and stylized re-enactments to a grotesque realism that throws his subjects off balance. The process brings a grim, awful humor to the process of puncturing their self-images, and trying to bring them to understand and confront their crimes. But while it’s informative, surreal, and astonishingly bold in exploring the psychology of these specific murderers in this specific environment, it reaches significantly further in exploring the banality of evil. As Oppenheimer’s subjects justify their actions, or even boast about the people they framed and slaughtered, they reveal a great deal about the ways people distance themselves from their own actions, and in the process do unconscionable things without feeling the pangs of conscience. Oppenheimer’s film is innovative, stylish, and strange, but it’s also staggeringly important for anyone trying to understand why terrible things happen in the world. —Tasha Robinson

They Came Together

David Wain, 2014

The Host

Bong Joon-ho, 2006

Short Term 12

Destin Daniel Cretton, 2013

On paper, Destin Daniel Cretton’s coming-of-age drama Short Term 12 sounds like a typical Sundance exercise in trembling, low-key earnestness: A troubled social worker (Brie Larson, in a revelatory performance) works through her deeply buried issues and inability to love while counseling a series of troubled group-home kids who desperately yearn for love and connection, but are unwilling to let down their defenses. In actuality, Short Term 12 is something much greater and more lasting: an exquisitely wrought exploration of the troubled psyches of both the staff and the clients of a foster home that radiates compassion and empathy for all of its characters. It’s a deeply humane, ultimately devastating, legitimately tearjerking movie with plenty of acting-friendly moments of high drama and almost unbearably intense emotion. But it’s defined as much by its portrayal of those wonderful, life-affirming in-between times when kids with nothing to do and all day to do it toy with each other, savor rare moments of connection and humor with their peers and mentors, and generally behave like kids, albeit fucked-up kids who have seen more of the ugly side of life than anyone should in a lifetime. —Nathan Rabin

What Happened, Miss Simone?

Liz Garbus, 2015

35 Up

Michael Apted, 1991

The Master

Paul Thomas Anderson, 2012

Much was made of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master being shot on 70mm, and for good reason: Those lucky enough to live close to a theater projecting the film in that format had a much different experience than other viewers. While some puzzled why Anderson would use a format traditionally associated with epics for a film dominated by conversations captured in close-up, an optimal format viewing quickly clarified this reasoning: There are strong lights behind the characters, and in 70mm, viewers are positively irradiated by dazzling levels of whiteness.

Moving away from the entrancingly over-the-top, aggressively in-your-face Punch-Drunk Love and There Will Be Blood, The Master outlines the relationship between the loosely L. Ron Hubbard-ish figure Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and sexually troubled World War II vet Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). After sneaking onto Dodd’s yacht during a party, Quell becomes Dodd’s aide-de-camp: ad hoc bartender, attack dog against skeptics, and partner in partying. Both lead actors are at their rhythmically idiosyncratic best, justifying Anderson’s confidence in paring back his visual fireworks.

The film’s investigation of male bonding through bad behavior is one thread in a rare film that wonders, without snickering, how trauma and asocialization are shaped and expressed through sexual dysfunction. If it’s not as memorable a spectacle viewed at home, that just means Anderson made his point about the glories of shooting on and projecting celluloid. Even stripped of that factor, The Master is typically dense, unexpectedly funny, and predictably unpredictable, an actor-fueled installment in Anderson’s ongoing portraits of 20th-century American history. —Vadim Rizov

Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks

Brad Dukes, 2014

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Terry Gilliam, 1998