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.

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But as soon as Daniel leaves, Thelma always takes off the bracelet. It’s uncomfortable, and she likes her independence, even though her license was taken away a few years ago. She misses driving, she says longingly at one point.

When Thelma gets a phone call from “Daniel,” who says he’s in prison after getting in a car crash and tells her to wait for instructions from his lawyer, we gasp, immediately knowing what’s up.

“You sound funny,” Thelma says to fake Daniel.

“I broke my nose,” he says. (Not so fun fact: Scammers are already using AI to create realistic voice simulacrums of our loved ones, so we’re all screwed.)

Next she speaks to the “lawyer” who says she needs to get $10,000 in cash to a P.O. Box right away.

She finds the money, tucked away in book shelves and under the bed, and puts it in an envelope. As she slowly slides the money into a mailbox, we watch, in horror: Nooooooo.

But it’s too late. The money has been sent.

Thelma calls her daughter, Gail (Parker Posey), who gets a bit frantic herself. She tries Daniel’s number, but he doesn’t pick up. Then she tells her husband, Alan (Clark Gregg), who calls their son again. This time, he picks up, groggily. He was just sleeping.

They go to the police, but it’s fairly useless, because it was sent via regular post.

When the police officer explains that scam artists find private information—Daniel’s name, for example—on social media, Thelma moans, “How can Zuckemborg let this happen?”

To the family, it’s an unfortunate incident, but one they can easily put behind them. But Thelma is outraged. She wants her money back.

She’s doubly frustrated when she hears her family discussing her in an adjacent room—maybe it’s time to put Grandma in a home, they’re saying.

“I just lost my wallet,” Daniel says, defending her. “Are you going to put me in a home?” (From there, the conversation immediately pivots to whether or not Daniel has arranged to get a new driver’s license, because it’s extremely dangerous to drive without one, and he needs to get on that right away. I am related to these people.)

Fueled by a sense of injustice—and a newfound appreciation for Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible—Thelma sets out to find the scammers and reclaim her money.

There’s only one problem: She knows the family won’t support her mission and she can’t drive. So she goes to the retirement home where her friend Ben (Richard Roundtree, wonderful) lives and, after a bit of small talk, steals his motorized scooter. He steals another scooter and chases her around the center. She and Ben come to an impasse—but not before a head-to-head collision—and he reluctantly agrees to tag along on her mission.

One of the many ingenious things about Thelma is it’s treated like a (low-stakes) Mission Impossible film, with snappy, caper music accompanying Thelma’s every move. This starts with the chase scene at the senior center—that scooter corners like it’s on rails, by the way—and continues when Thelma outsmarts her family, who are now frantically searching for her, by tossing her Life Line bracelet over a fence. (An aside: Fans of The Daytrippers will delight in seeing Parker Posey driving in the back seat of another family vehicle on a quest.) But the film’s greatest set piece comes when Thelma finds herself in an extremely cluttered antique store hoping to confront the bad guys. Ben is waiting outside, wearing an ear piece (actually, his iPhone, set to hearing aid mode), and he guides her, as though she’s Tom Cruise navigating lasers next to a priceless safe. When she lands with a thud on a bed in the store and rolls off it like a cat burglar, I lost it.

On top of the delightful performances by its entire cast and those winking action sequences, Thelma is genuinely one of the funniest films I’ve seen in a while.

At one point, Daniel makes his way through the retirement home, looking for Thelma.
“Grandma?” he yells out—and several hopeful voices reply, “Yes?”

There’s a running gag where Thelma bumps into people who look familiar, and they cheerfully try to figure out their connection. Mutual friends? No. The same synagogue. No. The sly joke is that when you hit 93, everyone looks familiar.

Another good joke also captures the poignancy of this film. The workers at the retirement home ask Thelma’s family if she has any ailments.

Well, she had valve replacement, hip replacement, a double mastectomy, and has a slow-growing brain tumor, they say. Besides that, she’s fine.

Getting old is not for the faint of heart, the film reminds us. But if you approach life as the great adventure it is, you’ll leave with no regrets.

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