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