(I'll have the Jarmos posted sometime in the next month - I really just wanted to get this up before the Oscars started).
10. Hereditary (dir. Ari Aster)
The horror in Hereditary sneaks up on you. For the first third of the movie, you're not entirely sure what to expect as you watch this family - Annie (Toni Collette), Steve (Gabriel Byrne), Peter (Alex Wolff), and Charlie (Milly Shapiro) - barely holding themselves together as Annie struggles with a dark history. Then, out of the blue, THAT happens - a moment so sickening plausible that it elicited all sorts of pained reactions from the audience I saw it with - and all hell breaks loose. Despite the film's more Satanic turn, however, the real horror is what was there from the very beginning: the traumas we inherit from our families, and how those traumas become an inescapable part of who we are. First-time filmmaker Aster constructs a delicate film to explore these ideas, but the whole endeavor is anchored by Collette's volcanic performance as a woman so traumatized that the latest grief finally breaks her. The contortions of her face in a chilling dinner scene are just as terrifying as anything else in the film. I saw this film in mid-summer, and I've yet to shake it. Perhaps that's the point.
Much of the praise for Crazy Rich Asians centered around one embarrassing fact: this was the first studio-produced Hollywood film with an all-Asian cast in 25 years. The film, therefore, would have been a representational triumph if nothing else. It's more than that, of course: it's a winning romantic comedy that provides everything you want from the genre - hunky men, lavish weddings, upbeat pop songs in makeover montages - with an eye toward the culturally-specific issues at the heart of the film. Rachel (Constance Wu, wonderful) accompanies her boyfriend Nick (Harry Golding) to Singapore for a wedding, only to discover that is family is one of the wealthiest on the island. Nick's disapproving mother, Eleanor (the terrific Michelle Yeoh), presents a dilemma: Nick must choose between his family and Rachel. If you've seen a romantic comedy before, you'll think you know where this is going. But the film, magnificently directed by Chu, dances around those expectations in ways that make the genre's conventions feel fresh and particular to this story. Plus there's plenty of spectacle to look at, to the point where it often feels like the film is about to tilt into a full-fledged musical. Few films matched the levels of joy Crazy Rich Asians reached this year.
More after the break.
