Happy holidays, FITI readers!
I wish you great movie watching in whatever time off you are able to enjoy in the days to come. Hopefully, the selection of films below will offer a few possibilities for movies you haven’t seen.
When I assemble my list of the best films of the past 12 months I find I have a number of films, usually lesser-known gems, that don’t fit on my primary Top 10 list. You could consider this alphabetical collection my numbers 11-to-20 if you like, but of the two lists this could be the more helpful. That’s because it’s more likely to feature obscurities that appeal to weirdos like you and I who will watch almost anything for that endorphin kick of finding something wonderful, unusual, and unexpected. Amirite?
My official Top 10 List is a few days away — I’d like to see Poor Things and Ferrari before I do, and maybe catch up with a couple of other titles. In the meantime, consider these other 10 for your seasonal viewing. (Click on the titles to read my original, longer form reviews, and I also include where you can find the films online in Canada in parentheses.)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
One of the things I love about movies is talented filmmakers can make you feel something about material where on the face of it, when the lights went down, you were unconvinced you’d care. This happened a couple times this year, and this was one of them. The much-beloved-by-girls Judy Blume novel about awkward puberty (is there any other kind?) finally makes it to the screen and is entirely earnest and winning. (Crave Starz)
The most outrageous ROTFL comedy I saw this year, Bottoms will likely not appeal to everybody — and that’s just given its body count — but it’s hard to deny the movie goes big and goes long. It’s a tale of misfit high school lesbians who form their own fight club in order to meet other girls, and includes the best use of a former NFL star I’ve seen in years — former Seattle Seahawk Marshawn Lynch is a laugh riot as the girls’ teacher. (Amazon Prime)
Following Mandy and Pig (we won’t count his brief appearance in this year’s The Flash), the Cageassance continues (though is anyone really calling it that?) with this extraordinarily weird but hilarious movie about a shlubby, insecure professor (Cage) who becomes a celebrity when first his friends, then even people he doesn’t know, start to dream about him. (Available to rent on digital platforms)
The return of Finnish master filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki, with a typically deadpan romantic dramedy about a working class couple whose paths cross and love beckons, but the hard truths of their lives get in the way. The only film we screened at Carbon Arc Cinema this past season where we brought it back for an encore due to audience demand. (Not yet available)
Combining coming-of-age comedy with science fiction and terrific martial arts action, featuring two female leads and set in the Pakistani community in London — these disparate elements work together to make Polite Society maybe the year’s most original feature. If there’s any justice in the world the actors who play the film’s occasionally warring sisters, Priya Kansara and Ritu Arya, will ascend to stardom — I’d watch them in anything. (Amazon Prime)
An indie thriller based on transcripts of the actual arrest of a woman named Reality Winner for the leaking of classified documents, the film places us at her home while it happens and allows us a deep understanding of the power dynamics between a young woman — ably played by Sydney Sweeney — and an all-male cadre of FBI agents looking to bust her. Unnerving, compelling stuff with a lot to say. (Crave)
Kitty Green, director of The Assistant, reunites with her with Julia Garner to tell another story of women in a toxic workplace surrounded by male entitlement — this time in a remote bar in the Australian outback, the kind of place where you’d never want to go the bathroom. As an exercise in ratcheting suspense, this one left a mark. (Available to rent on digital platforms)
A two-hander of the sort that shouldn’t work beyond the theatrical proscenium, the two performers here — indie stars Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott — make the places where the script might steer into implausibility work with sheer charisma and a whole lot of actorly elbow grease. Exploring the the relationship between a dominatrix and her client, we get the sex but that’s not at all what it’s really about. (Amazon Prime)
A deeply self-aware, sometimes cringy comedy about a funny, intelligent, but ultimately judgmental cinephile who has a tendency to screw up his relationships (and no, I didn’t relate). Set in the Asian-American community, it’s a strong first feature from actor-turned-director Randall Park and graphic novelist Adrian Tomine, adapting his own comic. (Available to rent on digital platforms)
Kelly Reichardt’s determinedly low-stakes dramedy is about the ordinary lives of artists trying to put their work out in the world, with wonderfully anti-glam performances from Michelle Williams and Hong Chao. The kind of film that refuses to manifest while you’re watching it, but you end up thinking about after the fact. (Available to rent, and on Hoopla)
