Revenge of the Green Dragons(Andrew Lau & Andrew Loo)
Alex of Venice(Chris Messina)
NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage(Jeremy Whelehan)
Marie's Story(Jean-Pierre Améris)
That Lovely Girl(Keren Yedaya)
Madame Bovary(Sophie Barthes)
Life of Riley(Alain Resnais)
Low Down(Jeff Preiss)
Jamesy Boy(Trevor White)
While We're Young(Noah Baumbach)
Black Souls(Francesco Munzi)
X/Y(Ryan Piers Williams)
Effie Gray(Richard Laxton)
Theeb(Naji Abu Nowar)
Jauja(Lisandro Alonso)
American Sniper(Clint Eastwood)
Jimmy's Hall(Ken Loach)
Alive Inside(Michael Rossato-Bennett)
Cuban Fury(James Griffiths)
October Gale(Ruba Nadda)
Growing Up and Other Lies(Darren Grodsky & Danny Jacobs)
A Long Way Down(Pascal Chaumeil)
Five Star(Keith Miller)
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead(Kiah Roache-Turner)
Song One(Kate Barker-Froyland)
Hungry Hearts(Saverio Costanzo)
21 Years: Richard Linklater(Michael Dunaway)
The Rover(David Michôd)
Return to Ithaca(Laurent Cantet)
The Princess of France(Matías Piñeiro)
3 Hearts(Benoît Jacquot)
Inherent Vice(Paul Thomas Anderson)
Starry Eyes(Kevin Kölsch & Dennis Widmyer)
Moms' Night Out(The Erwin Brothers)
White God(Kornél Mundruzcó)
Shelter(Paul Bettany)
Boulevard(Dito Montiel)
Sex Tape(Jake Kasdan)
Kill Me Three Times(Kriv Stenders)
Barefoot(Andrew Fleming)
Wish I Was Here(Zach Braff)
The Riot Club(Lone Scherfig)
Good People(Henrik Ruben Genz)
All the Wilderness(Michael Johnson)
Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2(Johnnie To)
Maps to the Stars(David Cronenberg)
Before I Go to Sleep(Rowan Joffé)
Life After Beth(Jeff Baena)
Love, Rosie(Christian Ditter)
The Theory of Everything(James Marsh)
An Open Secret(Amy Berg)
Grace of Monaco(Olivier Dahan)
Time out of Mind(Oren Moverman)
Automata(Gabe Ibáñez)
Horse Money(Pedro Costa)
The Forger(Philip Martin)
Young Ones(Jake Paltrow)
An Eye for Beauty(Denys Arcand)
Tusk(Kevin Smith)
Glassland(Gerard Barrett)
Good Kill(Andrew Niccol)
Hit by Lightning(Ricky Blitt)
Happy Christmas(Joe Swanberg)
Hector and the Search for Happiness(Peter Chelsom)
Breastmilk(Dana Ben-Ari)
The Search(Michel Hazanavicius)
Freezer(Mikael Salomon)
Affluenza(Kevin Asch)
Men, Women & Children(Jason Reitman)
War Story(Mark Jackson)
Blackbird(Patrik-Ian Polk)
Premature(Dan Beers)
Dark House(Victor Salva)
Persecuted(Daniel Lusko)
For the Plasma(Bingham Bryant & Kyle Molzan)
The Bag Man(David Grovic)
Miss Meadows(Karen Leigh Hopkins)
Panic 5 Bravo(Kuno Becker)
Rather than dramatically “unveiling” a top ten list sometime in January (as if anybody who reads this site didn’t already know what it was gonna look like), I revise the sucker as I go along. Here is what my list would look like if (god forbid) I were forced to make it today.
For archival purposes, I file everything by the year it had its world premiere. Many of these films will have been commercially released in the U.S. a year or two later, so my lists won’t always match up with other folks’ lists.
Films I haven’t yet rated on that scale are marked with if I currently think they belong in my top ten. These films are subject to being shifted around or yanked altogether at any moment, after I revisit them and they get a numeral. If a film isn’t currently in my top ten, and I haven’t yet rated it, it ain’t here. There are a whole lot of those — if you’re wondering whether or not I’ve seen the masterpiece you can’t believe I omitted, check my master list.