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