1. Mysteries of Lisbon
Stories grow out of stories and suffering begets suffering in Raúl Ruiz’s labyrinthine, pan-European 19th century Romantic costume drama about questing orphaned sons, lost mothers, and lovers sundered by fate. Dabbed with Surrealist brushstrokes, this four-and-a-half masterpiece, which was culled from a six-hour Portuguese miniseries based on Camilo Castelo Branco’s three-volume novel and suggests the influence of Balzac, Hugo, and Dickens, is a darkly-lit, sumptuous glory — a fitting valediction for the prolific Chilean filmmaker, who died in August.
2. Melancholia
Damned by its maker Lars von Trier’s self-destructive “OK, I’m a Nazi” quip at Cannes, “Melancholia” failed to win the Palme d’Or and has been pointedly spurned by American awards-givers. A shame, because it’s his most exhilarating and accessible film: deeply personal in its explication of depression and the malign influence of unsympathetic acquaintances and dysfunctional families, and a pyrotechnical marvel in its blend of Surrealism, Dogme-style realism, and “Marienbadish”-ish opulence. Kirsten Dunst is breathtaking as the anguished Justine who grows in serenity as she almost wills the rogue planet to smash into Earth. Critics who disparaged the film as anti-life missed the point.
3. Meek’s Cutoff
Kelly Reichardt’s haunting “slow cinema” Western, a downscaled depiction of a tragic incident that befell a wagon train on the Oregon Trail in 1845, depicts the travails of seven lost pioneers and their scout who encounter a lone Cayuse Indian as they search the desert for drinkable water and a path to salvation. The scout, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), wants to kill him; standing in his way is the young wife (Michelle Williams), who believes the Cayuse can help them — plus, you know, he’s a human being. “Meek’s Cutoff” is a revisionist historical drama about the belligerently racist masculine creed of Manifest Destiny confronted by the female urge to share, protect, and trust; it’s also an allegory about blinkered American leadership in times of peril. Not the least impressive aspect of this stark, lyrical odyssey is the sound design, which makes the creaks of the canvas and the whines of the wagon wheels resound in the wilderness.
4. A Dangerous Method
Adapted by Christopher Hampton from his play “The Talking Cure” and John Kerr’s eponymous book, David Cronenberg’s tragicomedy explores the rift between Carl Gustav Jung (Michael Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), the catalyst being Jung’s affair with the Russian medical student Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who in 1904 had come to him in Zurich as his first analysand, her hysteria induced by the sexual excitement she took in being thrashed by her father. With Freud as Jung’s repressive Oedipal father, Spielrein as his Oedipal mother (who flees to Freud for analysis when Jung dumps her), and the psychoanalyst Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) as the movie’s libertine id, “A Dangerous Method” is a shrink’s wet dream. The mood is thoughtful — notwithstanding the spankings Spielrein craves and Jung administers — yet this is one of Cronenberg’s most moving films.
5. Aurora
A leader of the Romanian New Wave, Cristi Puiu is one of few filmmakers who admits to disliking F.W Murnau’s 1927 classic Sunrise, which he has characterized as a fairytale. Partly made as a riposte, Aurora is the second of Puiu’s “Six Stories from the Outskirts of Bucharest,” his follow-up to “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” (2005), and possibly the most dauntingly slow thriller of the century so far. Little happens in its three hours: a somber middle-aged man (played by Puiu) has enigmatic conversations with people to whom he may or may not be related, hangs out in a leaky flat that’s being remodeled, and furtively spies on others in a grim neighborhood. He acquires a shotgun, later wrests his daughter out of school. Eventually, there’s an eruption, though even then little is explained — sometimes “why?” is inadequate. “Aurora” isn’t an emotional rollercoaster like Radu Muntean’s adultery drama “Tuesday, After Christmas” (with Mirela Oprişor outstanding as the betrayed wife) and its focus on the quotidian is guaranteed to try patience, but once seen, it’s never forgotten.
6. Hugo
The tone is relishably bittersweet, the kids (Asa Butterfield and Chloë Grace Moretz) make intrepid storybook adventurers, the automaton is a magical talisman, and the 1930s Paris train station a splendidly exotic environment for Martin Scorsese’s first venture in 3D. But what makes “Hugo” gleam are the loving re-creations of the studio sets built and peopled by the movie pioneer George Méliès (Ben Kingsley) and the fin-de-siècle fantasies enacted on them. It’s Scorsese’s sweetest hommage.
7. The Princess of Montpensier
Bertrand Tavernier’s 1987 “Beatrice” was a full-blooded evocation of medieval France as the cold and brutal place it undoubtedly was. Virtually a companion piece, “The Princess of Montpensier” is a gripping aristocratic saga centering on a married heroine (Mélanie Thierry) passionately in love with a man she can’t have and unrequitedly adored by her protector; it brings a similar remorselessness to France’s 16th century-religious wars. Stunningly immediate, it’s a contemporary, psychologically acute swashbuckler comprised of vicious intrigues, duels and ambushes and rendered with fierce tracking shots and explosive cutting. Poetry in dynamic motion.
8. City of Life and Death
Lu Chuan’s widescreen epic, which looks like it was filtered through ash and charcoal, depicts the Japanese Imperial Army’s siege and rape of Nanking in December 1937. It has been shown in films before, in documentaries (including the HBO-backed “Nanking,” inspired by the late Iris Chang’s controversial book), dramas (“Don’t Cry, Nanking”) and exploitation films, but never with such concentrated awe and mournfulness. It is to the Japanese genocide what “Schindler’s List” is to the Holocaust.
9. The Descendants
More quizzical than twinkling, George Clooney excels here as the latest of Alexander Payne’s unresolved middle-aged men — a shlubby Hawaiian lawyer suddenly confronted with the knowledge that his comatose wife had been having an affair and forced to get to know the daughters, one a rebellious college student, the other a preadolescent puzzle, whom he’d long ignored. He also has to figure out what to do with the swathe of virgin land that his greedy relatives want to sell to resort developers. Based on the novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings, “The Descendants” was an ideal vehicle for Payne’s calm yet surprising serio-comic storytelling.
10. Midnight in Paris
The mythical Paris of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, the Fitzgeralds, and Salvador Dali (and eventually the Belle Epoque) comes seductively alive for an unfulfilled American screenwriter (Owen Wilson) as he unconsciously seeks escape from his crabby philistine fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and her bourgeois parents. Woody Allen’s comedy, his best in years, harks back to “Play It Again, Sam,” “Alice,” and “The Purple Rose of Cairo” as it champions the liberating spirit of art and dreams over materialism, though Wilson’s Woody surrogate has to overcome the poisoned perfume of nostalgia in order to find his way.