Top Albums You Won’t Find on 2018’s Top Ten Lists

Every year I go through the most underrated movies and albums of the year. I couldn’t find enough movies I’ve seen that fit my criteria (on less than 3 top ten lists), so I’ll just do an albums post this year. Less work for me, less reading for you, everybody wins.

I tried to avoid albums that ended up in my Tentative Top Tens post, but I couldn’t help putting one of them here, since I was pretty surprised at the lack of recognition it’s been receiving from Christian music publications.

Colter Wall, Songs of the Plains: For someone who gets compared to Johnny Cash a lot, Colter Wall sounds very little like Johnny Cash. Those comparisons are well-meant, I’m sure, but just because an artist has a spare, low sound doesn’t make Cash the best point of reference. A better point of reference is Wall’s fellow Canadian, Gordon Lightfoot. They both have a penchant for simple melodies and casual details in their story songs. Plains is transporting, the only album from 2018 that’s likely to make you forget where you’re listening to it.

Mark Lee Townsend, 1919: The Ballad of Rexford: You may not have heard of Townsend, but if you grew up in church in the ’90s, you have definitely heard something with his fingerprints on it. He was the guitarist for dc Talk and produced a lot of Relient K’s 2000s output. He’s also had a couple of bands that he recorded with throughout his career, but 1919 is his first solo record, a tribute to his late father’s life and faith. The album plays almost like the soundtrack to a musical, and it jumps from genre to genre pretty seamlessly. If you like Relient K’s “Deathbed,” this is basically that song spread out over an album without losing any of its power.

Natalie Prass, The Future and the Past: This was a really well-reviewed record when it was released in June, but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle here at the end of the year. Prass’s first record, a self-titled one from 2015, leaned more into folk stylings and was more content to rest in a softer register. The Future and the Past is a big step forward for Prass’s sound, adopting a funkier style and addressing the world’s ills head-on in her lyrics. I think Future is just as bold a record as Mitski’s Nobody, an album that appears to have broad consensus as one of the best albums of the year, though I found it underwhelming. For me, Future was one of the most impressive and unexpected albums of the year.

Rae Sremmurd, SR3MM: I get why SR3MM didn’t feature on a lot of top ten lists. It’s far from cohesive, sprawling out over three distinct albums, a solo album for each of Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi with one from the duo. There’s nothing on here with the immediacy of “Black Beatles,” and the run length (almost 2 hours!) doesn’t help. But this is Rae Sremmurd at the top of their game, crafting hook after solid hook. Even if there aren’t any hits, SR3MM is ultimately rap’s best duo doing their thing for over 90 minutes, which is hard to beat.

Sandra McCracken, Songs from the Valley: There’s not really a good place to go for Christian music coverage. Christianity Today used to be the best, before they dissolved that department, but it left a void that no place has filled with anything resembling quality writing. So I guess it shouldn’t be too surprising that McCracken’s Songs from the Valley had trouble competing with the likes of Lauren Daigle or TobyMac in a segment of the industry where you don’t get any attention if you don’t get played on the radio. But very few albums weighed as heavily on my heart as this one. McCracken’s always been an ace songwriter, for herself and for others, but she’s topped herself with her most intimate songwriting yet on Valley.

Merry Christmas 2018

Every year I write a post about the Christmas music I loved from this year and from years past. I changed the format last year, because I hadn’t listened to as many new Christmas albums as I would have liked. This year I’m back to the usual format (three new albums, two old albums), because I’ve had a constant IV of new Christmas music pumping into my veins. If you’re wondering why I look more red and green than white lately, this is why.

New Favorites

116, The Gift: A Christmas Compilation: For those unfamiliar, the 116 Clique is a loose collective of rap and R&B artists associated with Reach Records, the home of Lecrae and Trip Lee. There are no traditional Christmas songs here; rather, the tracklist is made up of songs that take a phrase or a line from classic Christmas hymns and carols and then interpolate that into a fresh hip-hop version with an R&B hook. I tend to gravitate to soul versions of Christmas carols anyway, so this was easy listening for me. Of course, bits of truth about Advent and Jesus’s coming are sprinkled throughout, more than your average Christmas album, so it ends up being an all-around edifying listen.

Favorite song: “Silent Night” by Crystal Nicole or “O’ Come” by CASS, nobigdyl. & Tedashii, I can’t decide

JD McPherson, SOCKS: Like The Gift, SOCKS is an album full of originals rather than the usual suspects. McPherson, an Oklahoma artist specializing in rockabilly, is uniquely positioned to write original Christmas songs, since his style of music sounds classic anyway. You can tell from the artwork that this is going to be a cheeky album, and McPherson doesn’t disappoint. The title song captures the inevitable disappointment of a Christmas morning filled with practical gifts, and “Hey Skinny Santa!” implores Mr. Kringle to start eating so he can be fat by Christmas. There’s not much earnest Christmas spirit on SOCKS, but it’s never anything less than a rollicking good time.

Favorite song: “Claus vs. Claus (feat. Lucie Silva)”

John Legend, A Legendary Christmas: Legend is criminally underappreciated by critics. His last big hit album, Love in the Future, was pretty middle-of-the-road, but the album after that, Darkness and Light, was a better album that adventured more into funk than its predecessor. Musically, A Legendary Christmas is between those two albums. The standards are all pretty straightforward, which is fine on a Christmas album, but his covers of “What Christmas Means to Me” and “Purple Snowflakes” don’t bring anything new to the table. However, the originals are lively and funky, and his mash-up of “Merry Christmas Baby / Give Love on Christmas Day” is as good as it gets. That’s the John Legend I want, and there’s a sizable helping of him on this record.

Favorite song: “Wrap Me Up in Your Love”

An Old Favorite

Frank Sinatra, A Jolly Christmas from Frank Sinatra: Besides Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift for You and Bing Crosby’s White Christmas, there is no more classic Christmas album. Sinatra, the premier interpreter of standards in all of pop music history, makes every song clean and clear, bringing the right amount of gravitas and levity in the right places. Some of the songs are their best versions, including “Mistletoe & Holly,” “The Christmas Waltz,” and, of course, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” I may write a post just about that last song someday, that’s how deeply I love it.

A New Old Favorite

The Ventures, The Ventures’ Christmas Album: If you know anything about the Ventures, then you probably know exactly what a Christmas album by them would sound like. They’re best known as the performers of the original Hawaii Five-O theme song. All of their songs are instrumentals, but they were a big influence on rock music, pioneering the use of several different kinds of guitars in the genre. Their Christmas album feels like what Ethan Hunt or James Bond would listen to if they were psyching themselves up for a Yuletide mission. They make fun use of some sound effects, but it’s by and large a purely guitar album, which at Christmastime is just fine by me.

Tentative Top Tens for 2018

These lists will inevitably change by the time I release the official Bummys next September (fingers crossed!). But many of these movies and albums will remain near the tops of my lists. Here are my initial impressions of what the best movies and albums of this year were, along with a couple extras at the bottom:

Movies

1. Paddington 2: I get the sense that people scoff at my love for this movie, just because we have a dog named Paddington, but I promise you this movie transcends its children’s movie status and achieves the sort of transcendence I crave in films.
2. Annihilation: This is as good as science fiction gets, putting masterful special effects in the service of a beautiful story with rich themes, and taking a bold risk in the last few scenes that risked alienating its audiences.
3. First Reformed: This one hit me deeply, getting at the challenge of maintaining faith in your Creator while the world falls apart around you.
4. Black Panther: This is the one action movie of the year that got to a higher level of significance while still putting on a cracking good show.
5. Mission: Impossible – Fallout: I thought this would be higher, because it truly is a masterpiece of an action movie, but it turns out to have just missed a certain bar for me that the four above it cleared.
6. Sorry to Bother You: Unlike any movie I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I’m not sure I can say much more if I don’t want to ruin it for you.
7. Hereditary: This is a horror movie, but it also turns all of your expectations of what a horror movie should be on their heads.
8. BlacKkKlansman: As visionary as Spike Lee movies come, in the guise of a comedy.
9. Avengers: Infinity War: This could be higher on level of difficulty alone, but the kind of movie it is eschews depth of any kind- which is fine! Just means there’s a cap on how high it can get on a list like this.
10. A Star Is Born: What an achievement, instead of what could have been just a melodrama, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga deliver a great melodrama.

Albums

1. Brandi Carlile, By the Way, I Forgive You: I’d be worried about Carlile’s recent Album of the Year nomination making this album uncool, but it was already about as uncool as you get. Earnest, simple, melodramatic folk music abounds on this album, and it’s everything I could want.
2. The Carters, EVERYTHING IS LOVE: It’s just effortless for Beyoncé and JAY-Z now. Everything they touch turns to gold.
3. Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer: No album gave me more fun than this one from Monáe, who has found her sweet spot of Prince-style eccentricity and funk.
4. Robyn, Honey: The Swedish songstress had leaned darker as her career progressed, but she’s perfected melancholy pop you can dance to on her comeback album.
5. Sandra McCracken, Songs from the Valley: She’s long been one of my favorite singer-songwriters, but Songs from the Valley was McCracken dealing with the grief and suffering following her divorce, and it’s cathartic.
6. Courtney Marie Andrews, May Your Kindness Remain: I can’t get enough of the alt-country ballads from this former Jimmy Eat World stalwart. Her voice is unparalleled in Americana.
7. Ariana Grande, Sweetener: Far be it from me to expect the Grammys to get anything right, but it is outrageous that Ariana Grande’s best album yet, which really is a perfect pop album, didn’t get nominated for Album of the Year, considering its quality and the fact that it’s one of the biggest hits of the year.
8. Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy: I didn’t think I’d like Cardi’s album, chalking “Bodak Yellow” up to catching lightning in a bottle, but she proves to be a singular talent on every song. No one-hit wonder here.
9. The Gray Havens, She Waits: I liked the Gray Havens, a husband-and-wife folk duo from Illinois, after their first two albums, but they’ve reached a new level on their most recent album, pushing them into the upper echelon of Christian artists working today.
10. Various Artists, Black Panther: The Album: I’m glad no one told Kendrick Lamar that these sorts of movie marketing gimmick albums are supposed to be terrible, because he curated a real winner from front to back.

Best Book I Read

The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz: The modern American church culture emphasizes non-fiction more than fiction, which needs remedying. A good place to start: this novel following three pastors in three different time periods in the same little Swedish parish. The nature of showing the same parish spanning different periods of time means the book has a lot to say about faith and congregations sustaining through tragedy and the grinding away of time.

Best Comic I Read

Silver Surfer by Dan Slott: The Silver Surfer is a hard character to take seriously, and not just because he rides a surfboard through space (the ’60s were crazy, y’all). But somehow Slott (who also wrote the Spider-Verse storyline that’s been adapted into the new Spider-Man animated movie that is apparently a big hit) makes it work. He gives the Surfer a human love interest to travel through space with and takes full advantage of serial comics’ episodic nature by telling literally any story he wants about the different planets they visit. The diversity of aliens and civilizations they encounter and the free reign Marvel gave Slott to do whatever the hell he wanted result in one of the most poignant comic books I’ve read so far.

WIDOWS Is a Success in Every Way but the Box Office

A heist movie doesn’t have to be interesting beyond the heist. The great heist movies usually double down on their entertainment value. Ocean’s Eleven, probably the most recognizable of the genre, goes all in on the wit and charm of its cast and its screenplay. Heat, maybe the most technically proficient heist film, reveals its hand from the very beginning, relying on the gravitas of its star power (Al Pacino and Robert De Niro face off! Fireworks ensue!). And other movies, like A Fish Called Wanda, fold, giving the heist plot over to the cast’s high jinks.

Widows, on the other hand, is impeccably written and takes itself very seriously. Director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) makes the case that a thrilling heist film can double as social commentary and deliver an actual emotional payoff for its characters. The movie lacks the lightness common to other movies in this genre, but McQueen makes up for it with a deftness of touches throughout the movie. There’s dark subject matter here, but he uses several cinematic flourishes to keep you on the edge of your seat rather than off it walking out of the theater.

Viola Davis stars as Veronica, the widow of the leader of a gang of thieves (Liam Neeson), who wants the wives of the rest of the gang (also killed in the same police incident that killed Veronica’s husband, Harry) to carry out the next heist Harry had planned to pay off the last person Harry stole from. Michelle Rodriguez and Elizabeth Debicki are two of the other widows, each of them wanting the money from the heist so they can make their own way in the world after their husband’s deaths. Brian Tyree Henry also stars as Jamal Manning, an ambitious Chicago politician who lost $2 million in Harry’s botched last heist. He and his brother (a chilling Daniel Kaluuya) threaten Veronica if she is unable to get them the money paid back.

Colin Farrell also plays a role as Jamal’s sleazy opponent in an upcoming alderman election, Jack Mulligan, standing for the privileged white sector of Chicago politics that wants to keep power while actually representing a ward populated by black neighborhoods. There’s a much-celebrated long take in which Mulligan gets in a car after leading a poorly attended event in a black neighborhood and the camera follows the car from a poor area of town to Jack’s obviously wealthy neighborhood, clearly portraying the thin divide between the two versions of Chicago. The movie has more on its mind than just a heist, also dealing directly with the effects of police brutality and the brutal lengths to which women have to go to succeed in a man’s world.

Widows works on nearly every level. I was taken out of the movie a bit by Farrell’s shaky Chicago accent, but everything else landed for me, including a twist in the middle of the movie that changes the entire tenor of Veronica’s quest for some semblance of justice. It also worked for critics; Widows has a high score of 84 on Metacritic (a better aggregation of critic opinions than Rotten Tomatoes), and most of the critics I’ve read felt about the same as I did. Awards pundits were predicting Viola Davis would compete for Best Actress this awards season and that maybe the movie itself might land some big nominations as well, if it was even a little bit commercially successful.

Well, it wasn’t. Audiences aren’t going to see Widows, and the audiences that are going to see Widows aren’t raving about it. You can usually look to marketing as the culprit in a case like this; audiences aren’t enticed by the trailer or the movie they see isn’t the one that was advertised to them. But that’s not the case for Widows. The trailer is a pretty good indication of the kind of movie you’re going to get: not quite an action movie and not quite a straight drama. I’m not sure what angle would have gotten more eyeballs on the screen; maybe the trailers could have played up the political subplot in an election year?

It’s really a shame, because Widows is one of the smartest studio movies of the year. Given that its studio, Twentieth Century Fox, guided The Hate U Give (a similarly thrilling, socially aware film) to a successful run, you’d think they could have done better by Widows. But some movies are destined to go under the radar and then rise to the top over time. That’s what Widows feels like to me: it’s got the makings of a slow-burn, cult favorite. Eventually, it’s going to be on listicles of the best heist movies next to Ocean’s Eleven and Heat. It deserves that company.

Movie Bummys: Best Movies of 2017

For some reason this took me forever this year. I’ve had the list made for months, I just got to writing other things. Oh well.

Top Ten

10. Lady Bird: Around Oscar time earlier this year, some of my friends commented that they didn’t quite understand why Lady Bird was in the Best Picture race; they liked the movie a lot, but something about it didn’t strike them as a Best Picture kind of movie. I’m inclined to agree with them, but I think this kind of coming-of-age movie, when done right, really appeals to artists. Lady Bird sees herself as wholly unique from everyone around here, and what artist doesn’t feel the same? The screenplay and performances are directed into such a perfect imitation of life that her experience of being humbled as she starts her life is all too relatable.

9. The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Yorgos Lanthimos (this year’s contender The Favourite) made one of my favorite movies from 2016, The Lobster, but where The Lobster is unsettling in its weirdness, Sacred Deer is unsettling in its terror. Colin Farrell stars as Steven, a surgeon who is faced with an impossible decision given to him by a strangely powered young man, Martin (Barry Keoghan): he must kill one of his family members or all of them will die. Lanthimos never explains how Martin is able to inflict the debilitating, paralyzing disease on Anna (Nicole Kidman), Steven’s wife, and their kids, or how he might be able to cure them if Steven follows through with Martin’s demands, but that’s the beauty of Sacred Deer. Nothing is explained, so the unsettling nature of the stark filmmaking is allowed to take on a life of its own.

8. Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Lost among the Neanderthal frustrations some people had with the more diverse cast and some misinterpretations of Luke as a character were genuine critiques that made a lot of sense: the jokes didn’t feel like they fit organically with the tone of the other Star Wars films, there are some storylines that feel unnecessary, and, oh yeah, Leia can fly through space without dying now? I heard those criticisms many times over the last year, and I do think they’re good, valid points of contention. I just don’t care. I loved The Last Jedi so much for its balance of theme and action, for the way it turns the entire franchise on its head, for the almost balletic action sequences – it’s not perfect, but to me, it’s damn close.

7. The Shape of Water: I’ve already written extensively about Sally Hawkins’s performance in this wonderful little fable of a movie, and how her mute performance speaks for all those people who cannot speak for themselves, so I’ll try not to rehash that entry here. Instead, I want to take a moment to appreciate how unlikely this movie is. Somehow, a fantasy movie that couldn’t be more in-your-face with its own weirdness, a movie that became known as the “fish sex” movie, ended up winning Best Picture. It’s a testament to how well the film works on multiple levels: as a fairy tale, as subtext, and as a big-picture allegory.

6. After the Storm: My enjoyment of After the Storm, a small Japanese movie made by Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda (Still Walking, also brilliant), is probably reflective of why The Last Jedi works so well for me: it doesn’t bother me when a plot doesn’t have a definite purpose. If it troubles you when a plot meanders, then After the Storm won’t be for you. But if you think it sounds constructive to sit through a movie that is basically a mostly uneventful day in the life of a failed writer and his family, a snapshot of his life, then find this movie however you can. I found it at my library, and I’m better for it.

5. A Ghost Story: If you think The Shape of Water is weird, A Ghost Story may be a bit too much for you. I’m having a hard time coming up with comparisons for the story that A Ghost Story tells, which focuses on a ghost (played by Casey Affleck, with a sheet over his head) watching the life of his wife (Rooney Mara) play out without him until she moves out of their house, and then things get weird. The closest analogs I can come up with are Malick’s The Tree of Life or 2001: A Space Odyssey, movies with an epic scope and epic themes. Director David Lowery went from making the great, family-friendly Pete’s Dragon with Disney to making this oddity, and I hope he keeps balancing out his more straightforward movies with bold ones like this.

4. Dunkirk: I had friends last year who were left cold by Dunkirk, saying the movie never quite lets you get to know its characters enough to involve you in the story. It’s a fair criticism, to be sure, and Dunkirk may be the most your-mileage-will-vary movie of last year. But for me, Dunkirk eschews a lot of the clichés that run rampant through war movies by pulling back from the soldiers and looking at the big picture. The story of Dunkirk isn’t one that could be told by isolating your focus onto a single group of soldiers with different personality traits; there were too many moving parts, which makes it the perfect story for the master of storytelling-via-editing, Christopher Nolan. Dunkirk is a story about heroism and the way men either fail to live into it or rise to the occasion. Obviously it’s the selflessness of the English citizens that gives this movie its soul, but Tom Hardy’s pilot, knowing there is no way he comes out of this without being killed or captured and choosing to spare the soldiers a little more time anyway, is the movie’s heart.

3. The Florida Project: Indie filmmaking at its best, the kind of filmmaking that isn’t hampered by obligations to studio interests, is the most exciting kind of filmmaking. While you may be acutely aware of the effects a lower budget has on a movie (fewer locations, amateur actors), you can still get lost in a well-presented story. And the upside is, literally anything could happen. Which is exactly what happens in The Florida Project, the second release from director Sean Baker to receive major attention after 2015’s Tangerine. You think you’re following a pretty straight-forward (if exceptionally acted by Willem Dafoe, Bria Vinaite, and breakout Brooklynn Prince, seen above mischievously licking her ice cream) story about a down-on-her-luck mom and her daughter at a motel in Orlando. But in the very last scene, Baker takes the camera down a rabbit hole I never expected, leaving me both broken-hearted and full of joy.

2. Get Out: I thought I had put Get Out a little lower on my tentative Top Ten list at the end of last year, but it’s actually at the same spot. What changed is that Dunkirk dropped a little bit past Get Out while Get Out remained as close to the top as you can get without actually being at the top. But the fact that Get Out is still at No. 2 doesn’t reflect how my estimation of the movie’s quality has changed. I’ve seen more movies since I made that list; there are six movies on that one that dropped out of the Top Ten and into the honorable mentions below, replaced by movies I hadn’t seen yet, but Get Out remained at the top, because my appreciation for it increased after seeing it for a second time. After seeing it in theaters, I was unsure if it was a sharp, smart horror movie or a transcendent, historically great movie. Seeing it again around Christmas last year, I became convinced: it’s both.

1. Call Me by Your Name: Coming-of-age movies can be hard to resist. If any part of you sees any part of your childhood on screen, the nostalgia factor can lock that movie into a certain status in your brain and throw away the key. I had this experience with 2009’s Adventureland– not that I worked at an amusement park, but that I had a crappy summer job before college, and I remembered the aimless restlessness of that few months before leaving. Adventureland may not have been as good as I remember; I may have been drawn in because I saw enough of my own story in its story.

There’s a danger of that happening with Call Me by Your Name as well. Not that I spent much of my life in Italy (I’ve been once though! It’s as beautiful as it looks in this movie.) or that I had a fling with my father’s older graduate assistant. But I see myself in Elio’s insecurity, his shame, and his desire to be special. Maybe I’m projecting, but I think all of that is up there on the screen. I wrote a little about this when I put Timothée Chalamet’s performance as Elio as No. 2 in the Top Performances from last year. He captures the in-between of your late teens so well, which is crucial to a coming-of-age story.

But Call Me by Your Name goes a little farther than most coming-of-age movies in its scope. The bare bones of the story fit into the genre, but its themes are more ambitious. Elio, 17, falls in a sort of love with Oliver (Armie Hammer), 24. Call Me by Your Name, in its luscious cinematography and languid screenplay, revels in the time that Elio and Oliver have together in which they just enjoy each other. But it also deals honestly with the decision any couple has to make: what does this relationship actually mean for my life?

I’ve had friends express concerns over pederasty and the power dynamic therein; while such concerns are valid on their surface, the movie doesn’t reveal any problematic abuses of Oliver’s power as an older man. Indeed, I think the situation in the movie is far more complex than such concerns credit it as. The movie isn’t so much “age ain’t nothing but a number;” rather, their ages do matter, but they’re both discovering who they are, and the conclusion they come to at the end of the movie says more about who they are than their ages.

I feel as though some of my Christian friends have let these concerns over pederasty (or even just homosexuality) keep them from seeing this movie. Everyone is entitled to well-considered convictions, so I would never say everyone should see any movie. I only hope that such concerns are truly well-considered and not simply the result of not wanting to be challenged. Call Me by Your Name is a technical marvel, beautiful by any standard. It’s also wonderfully empathetic and sees right through its characters. It could help you see right through yourself as well, if you let it.

Another Fifteen (alphabetical)

Baby Driver: The best music video of the year.

The Big Sick: The best romantic comedy of the year.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2: The best Marvel movie of the year not named Logan. In all seriousness, as clever as the first with nearly as much heart and a tad more nuance.

It: The best horror movie of the year, because Get Out isn’t a horror movie.

John Wick: Chapter 2: The best action movie of 1999.

Logan: The best Marvel movie of the year not named Thor: Ragnarok. In all seriousness, a great example of how genre enhances themes.

The Lost City of Z: The best movie of 1949, and truly the most beautiful-looking movie of the year that wasn’t set in Italy.

mother!: The most biblical movie of the year. I realize that’s not saying much. But really, mother! is an experience.

Mudbound: The best Netflix movie of the year- as good as any released in cinemas, to be sure.

Okja: The best Netflix movie of the- damn it, I used that one already, didn’t I? The best movie with a super pig in it, not including Casey Affleck.

Phantom Thread: The Paul Thomas Anderson movie of the year that everyone praises, no one understands, and everyone will regret not putting higher on their list ten years later.

The Post: The best movie of the year that is in no ways prescient or relevant at this political moment in time, not at all, no sirree.

Thor: Ragnarok: The best Marvel movie of the year not named Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. In all seriousness, this was the funniest movie of the year.

War for the Planet of the Apes: The best movie about our inevitable future of the year.

The Work: The best documentary of the year. Seriously, this one’s a doozy.

Past Top Tens

2016

Moonlight
The Witch
American Honey
Arrival
Jackie
Green Room
Kubo and the Two Strings
La La Land
Everybody Wants Some!!
Hell or High Water

2015

Mad Max: Fury Road
Inside Out
The Look of Silence
It Follows
Creed
Ex Machina
Phoenix
The Big Short
Sicario
Spotlight

2014

Selma
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Whiplash
Inherent Vice
Two Days, One Night
Boyhood
Guardians of the Galaxy
Ida
Snowpiercer
Blue Ruin

2013

12 Years a Slave
Before Midnight
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Gravity
Captain Phillips
The World’s End
Short Term 12
American Hustle
The Past

2012

Zero Dark Thirty
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Dark Knight Rises
Silver Linings Playbook
Amour
Chronicle
Django Unchained
Moonrise Kingdom
Holy Motors
Life of Pi