Films by Collection

Staff Picks: Michael McDonnell

Here are the six films I've enjoyed the most this year plus the six I'm most looking forward to seeing. Also look out for great short films by Jennifer Reeder and Don Hertzfeldt, each a mini-masterpiece, plus Mark Rappaport's entertaining cine-essays on 50s Hollywood.

Inherent Vice

Paul Thomas Anderson

“Paul Thomas Anderson has taken Thomas Pynchon’s novel about the death of the hippie counterculture and turned it, reasonably faithfully, into a surreally funny, anxious and beautiful film noir.” — The Telegraph

The Lobster

Yorgos Lanthimos

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth) casts Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, John C. Reilly and Léa Seydoux in a surreal English-language fable set in a world where singles are forced to couple up or be turned into animals.

The Assassin

Nie Yinniang

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Shu Qi plays the eponymous killer in this ravishingly beautiful foray into historical martial arts territory from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien. Winner of the Best Director Award at Cannes.

Embrace of the Serpent

El abrazo de la serpiente

Ciro Guerra

A lone shaman inducts two European ethnographers into the mysteries of the Amazon in this breathtakingly photographed tale of exploration, vividly reimagined from the indigenous point of view.