1. Anora

Pretty Woman but make it indie. A sex worker gets swept off her feet by the happy-go-lucky son of a Russian oligarch. Briefly, we allow ourselves to get carried away by their silly and sexy romance. Then the parents intervene, a group of (only semi-competent) Russian gangsters enter the scene, the Russian Prince Charming turns out to be a bit of a dud, and we find out just how feisty our heroine really is. Directed by Sean Baker, the Shakespeare of sex workers, reprobates, and loveable losers, and featuring a star-making turn by Mikey Madison in the title role.

2. Conclave

Director Edward Berger brings us the most audaciously entertaining film of the year. The pope dies and the cardinals are placed in seclusion—a conclave—to select their new leader. Egos run amok, battle lines are drawn, and everyone’s ambition rises to the surface. Ralph Fiennes is impeccable, as usual, as the cardinal in charge of the whole thing—trying to separate the righteous from the power-hungry. The twist at the end is satisfying, if a bit ridiculous. Pay close attention to the nuns.

3. Thelma

When 93-year-old Thelma (June Squibb, perfection) gets tricked by scammers, she takes matters into her own hands, inspired by her restless spirit and her love of Mission Impossible films. Her reluctant partner in crime is Ben (the late Richard Roundtree, wonderful), who tags along and tries to quell her more dangerous impulses. Meanwhile, her frantic family—including her slightly dim and doting grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger)—chases after her. But she doesn’t want to be rescued, she’s having the time of her life. And so are we.

4. A Real Pain

Ostensibly a film about a pair of cousins (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) traveling to Poland to see the hometown of their grandmother who survived the Holocaust, Eisenberg’s film is actually about how we manage to live in a world full of suffering. Most of us compartmentalize, adapt, deny. But what if someone feels everything a little too deeply? That’s Culkin’s Benji. His outsized emotions manage to be the perfect foil to Eisenberg’s well-tempered repression. We watch the cousins fumble toward a mutual understanding and see Benji interact with the world—in turns annoying, delighting, and unsettling everyone he encounters.

5. A Different Man

Edward (Sebastian Stan) has Proteus syndrome, aka Elephant Man’s disease, and lives a quiet life of desperation. His beautiful new neighbor (Renate Reinsve) shows him kindness and he briefly misunderstands her intentions. Her rejection sends him spiraling—eventually to a doctor who claims to have a cure. He emerges a new man, a handsome one, who actually begins a tentative romance with the neighbor. But his world—and worldview—are disrupted when another man (Adam Pearson) with the exact same affliction arrives on the scene. This man has a joie de vivre—he charms the world with his friendliness and openness; he’s a lesson about embracing life in the form of a doppelganger. This quirky, smart, and slightly off-kilter film from Aaron Schmiberg is reminiscent of the early collaborations between Spike Jonze and Charlie Kaufman.

6. Emilia Pérez

Like nothing you’ve ever seen. A Mexican drug lord (enthralling Karla Sofia Gascon, in a dual role) recruits an overworked and underpaid lawyer (Zoe Saldana, never better) to arrange for him to get a sex change and start a new life. Once she has the surgery, she becomes a formidable but nurturing philanthropist who helps people find loved ones who died in the drug wars. But she pines for her two children so arranges to have them come live with her, along with her “widowed” wife (Selena Gomez), under the pretense that she’s the drug kingpin’s long lost sister. How long can she keep this charade up? Did I mention that Jacques Audiard’s film is a rock opera? I loved every cockamamie second of it.

7. The Beast

A sci-fi love story, of sorts, with three distinct chapters. In the framing device, set in the future, a woman named Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux, mesmerizing as ever) fears undergoing a process that “purifies” her DNA by conjuring and then eradicating memory of her past lives. She meets and is instantly drawn to a man named Louis (George MacKay) who shares her reservations about the process.

In a flashback to the turn of the 20th century, she’s a pianist and dollmaker who meets Louis at a party, where she confides in him that she has a dark cloud of dread hanging over her. In the middle memory, set in contemporary times, Louis is, shockingly, a deadly incel, modeled after Elliot Rodger. (Here, director Bertrand Bonello seems to be making a statement about the isolation and difficulty of real intimacy in modern society.) In the final chapter, we wait to see if she and Louis will undergo the treatment, thus losing their past-life connection. What does it all mean Honestly, I’m not sure, but I was absolutely riveted.

7. Will & Harper

Sure, it was jokey and gimmicky, not the kind of serious documentary that will win awards, but no film this year moved me more than this one, in which Will Ferrell takes a cross country trip to get reacquainted with his old best friend who has transitioned and become a woman. The film is generous, open-hearted, curious, and incredibly funny, much like Ferrell himself. It felt like the exact right film at the exact right time.

9. Challengers

Why aren’t there more films about tennis? Not only is the sport itself cinematic—all that thwacking and sweating and skidding across the court—it’s a showdown between two people, the ultimate war of wills. Ingeniously, Luca Guadagnino made his tennis film about two best friends (Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor) turned rivals who are both in love with the same woman, Tashi Donaldson (Zendaya). A threesome of sorts plays out off the court—it’s possible the young men are a little in love with each other, too. But on the court, they’re playing for nothing less than Tashi’s heart.

10. The Apprentice

Films are empathy machines, as Roger Ebert famously said. Which is why I was afraid to watch Ali Abbasi’s film about Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong) and his Svengali-like mentorship of Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan). It’s true, young Trump seems a little sheepish here, a little too eager to get out from under his father’s shadow, and almost something resembling sweet. But as Cohn teaches him the three rules of business combat: attack, attack, attack; admit nothing and deny everything; and claim victory no matter the outcome—he creates a monster in his own image.

Trump’s star surpasses his own and suddenly, the rapacious narcissist we all know emerges, treating the man who invented him like a mere rung on the ladder to success. Both performances are excellent—we watch Stan slowly become Trump, mannerisms and all, and Strong actually makes us pity one of the worst humans who ever lived.

Runners up (in alphabetical order): Ex Husbands, Good One, Hit Man, Janet Planet, Love Lies Bleeding, Messy, My Old Ass

*As of writing this, I had not yet seen a few highly praised films, including The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, and Hard Truths.

Source

So it was a rather genius move for Eisenberg to cast himself against Culkin in the film he wrote and directed, A Real Pain. They are an “odd couple” to be sure, but while Neil Simon’s play was mostly a vehicle for laughs—the slob and the neatnik living together—Eisenberg is reflecting on no less than how humans process grief and come to terms with global atrocities.

Eisenberg’s David and Culkin’s Benji are first cousins who were once best of friends but have since drifted apart. This is largely because David has moved to Manhattan, with a wife and a mop-headed toddler son and a normie job (he sells banner ads on websites). Meanwhile, Benji is a bit adrift. He still lives in the basement of his childhood home, in Binghamton, NY. And he’s still reeling from the death of his grandmother, his “favorite person in the world.”

It’s the death of their grandmother that compels the cousins to travel to Poland, to see the home where she grew up before she escaped the Nazis. They also will pay a visit to the nearby Majdanek concentration camp, where millions of others didn’t benefit from “a series of tiny miracles” to survive. They join a tour group of mostly well-heeled Jewish people, led by the earnest and knowledgeable James (White Lotus’ Will Sharpe). In the group: a retired married couple (Daniel Oreskes and Liza Sadovy); a recent divorcee named Marcia (Jennifer Grey) seeking meaning in her life; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a survivor of the Rwandan genocide who converted to Judaism.

“Oh snap!” exclaims Benji when he finds out that Eloge is a genocide survivor. Everyone stares at him, but this is what Benji does—he expresses his feelings, loudly and without a filter. David finds himself apologizing for his cousin throughout the trip, but something curious happens—Benji’s brutal honesty and outsized emotions have a way of loosening the tour group up and bringing them to some greater truth. Marcia starts confiding in him. Eloge and Benji become real friends.

At one point, the tour visits a statue of Polish soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising. Benji wants to take a photo with the statue, pantomiming himself in battle. “That’s inappropriate,” David stutters, but Benji plows ahead, and soon everyone is joining him—all playing various roles (Eloge is a medic, using his scarf as a torniquet).

Next, at a Jewish graveyard, Benji tells tour guide James he’s talking too much. Just let them feel.

James is affronted and, again, David apologizes for his cousin’s rudeness, but later, James realizes that Benji was right about that—and about the fact that they should spend more time among actual Polish people—and he thanks him.

When the group finally arrives at Majdanek, they all do the solemn thing we do on such tours—walk slowly, hands behind their backs, their faces silently registering the shock. On the train ride back to the hotel, however, Benji is the only one who openly weeps.

Both Eisenberg and Culkin are playing variations of their well-worn personas, but neither has ever been better. Eisenberg’s David is so heartbreakingly familiar, a kind and fastidious man who has learned how to manage his fears and neuroses, but they’re always burbling just under the surface. And Culkin is a sheer life force as Benji—a human truth bomb, all id, no filter, equal parts charming and unsettling.

It’s clear that Benji feels too much, is honest to a fault, takes up too much space. He would be exhausting to be around, a “real pain.” But Eisenberg is also suggesting that our ability to compartmentalize grief, to take in the horrors of the world without being leveled by them is not always a good thing. And thus we get the double entendre of the title: Sometimes it’s important to sit with that real pain.

Source