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Nearly five years on from the initial Covid outbreak, movies seem to be healing. For the past decade we\u2019ve witnessed the exploits of newer talents like Greta Gerwig, Celine Sung, Jordan Peale, and Shawn Baker, among others who have delivered movies that have moved the industry forward. At the same time, more established talents like Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson, David Fincher, Kathryn Bigelow, and Ava DuVernay have continued to cement their legacy while the old guard represented by folks like Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg never stopped cranking out work. With that in mind, The Metropole\u2019<\/em>s <\/em>senior editors, who enjoy time in front of the silver screen as much as anyone offer up their favorite movies of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ryan Reft<\/strong><\/p>\n As a Spike Lee devotee, I thought Highest to Lowest<\/em>, featuring Black capitalist and music mogul David King (Denzel Washington) trying to reclaim his record label Stackin\u2019 Hits while recovering his kidnapped son, a bit of a high wire act, but one that worked. The twist being that King discovers it wasn\u2019t his son who was nabbed, but rather that of his friend, confidante, and employee Paul Christopher (Jeffrey Wright), and the film revolves around the decisions King makes subsequently. It\u2019s a worthy remake of the Akira Kurosawa classic of the same name even if it doesn\u2019t offer the critique of American capitalism voiced by the original (a point Bomani Jones and Howard Bryant made in their discussion of the film in a recent podcast<\/a> discussing it and One Battle After Another<\/em>). It\u2019s hard to beat Denzel and Spike (I\u2019d argue their 2006 collaboration Inside Man<\/em> is another one of the great films of the 21st<\/sup> century.).<\/p>\n Highest to Lowest<\/em> came out shortly after Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s One Battle After Another<\/em>. Adapted from Thomas Pynchon\u2019s 1990 novel about former 1960s Weathermanesque dissidents dealing with Reagan\u2019s America, Vineland<\/em>, (I found the book nearly impenetrable, even if Salman Rushdie<\/a> thought it a triumph; no matter, Anderson largely abandons its plot except for its broadest strokes), the movie explores the travails of one-time political radicals from the early aughts who find themselves threatened by shadowy fascist forces in the modern day. PTA foregrounding Black revolutionary women at the center of the film has elicited very mixed responses which I won\u2019t delve into here. If you want to read one critical take on the film and its racial politics, see Jason England\u2019s<\/a> deconstruction of the movie at Defector<\/em>. I\u2019ve long dug PTA. My now-wife and I saw There Will Be Blood <\/em>on one of our early dates. At the time, she said she liked it, only to tell me a decade later she thought it was shit and that his films are like watching paint dry. Admittedly, while critics have praised the film as a generational accomplishment, I didn\u2019t feel it\u2019s in his top three, but even if one believes it fails in its dissection of racial politics and doesn\u2019t measure up to his finest works, I found it a compelling three hours that still has me thinking. Plus, Benicio del Toro is excellent as an American dissident and karate instructor running an underground railroad for undocumented folks.<\/p>\n Finally, a short round up of other films worth mentioning. In I\u2019m Still Here,<\/em><\/a> Fernanda Torres manages to hold her family together after her husband is arrested, tortured, and eventually executed by the ruling authoritarian government of Brazil in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Considering the current moment, it\u2019s obviously not the easiest watch but Torres\u2019 Eunice Paiva remains steely while eschewing bitterness, as she fights for her family\u2019s safety and later for the recognition of the government\u2019s heinous acts.\u00a0<\/p>\n I still don\u2019t know what exactly was going on in Steven Soderbergh\u2019s Black Bag<\/em><\/a>, but count me in. At a lean ninety minutes, it\u2019s a high-level spy noir that I need to watch again, so I can\u00a0piece together the plot. Both Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender are darkly luminous in their roles as a married couple swimming in subterfuge.\u00a0<\/p>\n While I thought Wes Anderson\u2019s Asteroid City<\/em> was stunningly boring, I remain a big fan (see here<\/a>), and thankfully enjoyed the The Phoenician Scheme<\/em><\/a>. While he needs no further praise from me, Benicio del Toro excels as a less than transparent and morally questionable industrialist at once trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter (Mia Threapleton) while maintaining his controversial business empire. Ramell Ross\u2019s Nickel Boys<\/em><\/a>, based on the very good Colson Whitehead novel of the same title, is uniquely captured and worth a watch while A House of Dynamite<\/em><\/a> \u2013 a movie in three parts depicting the same 18 minutes before a nuclear strike hits Chicago \u2013 by one of my favorites Kathryn Bigelow more than held my attention. Folks who have dinged the movie have focused on its third act, which isn\u2019t as strong as the first two but isn\u2019t bad by any stretch. Ultimately, it\u2019ll make you think even if it won\u2019t leave you feeling very good about the state of the world. I don\u2019t need to tell you about Sinners<\/em><\/a>, but I normally avoid horror\/vampire films, which is why I haven\u2019t recommended Weapons<\/em><\/a> (if you are into horror check it out). But it was hard not to be entertained by the Ryan Coogler production. If you haven\u2019t seen it, make sure you stick around for after the credits; the scene kind of ties everything together.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mike Flanagan\u2019s The Life of Chuck<\/em><\/a>, adapted from a Stephen King short story, is told in three parts from the end to the beginning. It\u2019s an existential journey that reveals itself slowly and leaves you pondering the proverbial big themes of life, like who we are and what do our lives mean. As my friend Alex Sayf Cummings<\/a> wrote over at Tropics of Meta<\/em>, the film\u2019s strength lay in its \u201cdeep commitment to what is real, whether it\u2019s as seemingly ironclad as mathematics or physics or if it\u2019s as subjective as one being In an endless universe\u2019s tiny meaning-seeking in the irrelevant blankness.\u201d In the end, \u201cyou ought to enjoy life, in spite of its flaws and fears and embarrassments.\u201d<\/p>\n Katie Uva<\/strong><\/p>\n Admittedly this has been a year of very little moviegoing for me, but I did see several excellent documentaries that I would recommend:\u00a0<\/p>\n Shari & Lamb-Chop<\/a>,<\/em> which is a tribute to the warmth, the humor, the virtuosity, and the intensity of Shari Lewis. It takes us from Shari Lewis\u2019 childhood as the daughter of Abraham Hurwitz, who was ceremonially named \u201cNew York City\u2019s Official Magician\u201d by Fiorello La Guardia, to her being mentored in ventriloquism by influential Black ventriloquist John W. Cooper<\/a>, to her long career from the 1950s to the 1990s. She experienced the vagaries of show business, from her enormously successful tv show in the 1950s to unmoored years in the 1960s and 1970s that saw her performing on the late night circuit and in Branson Missouri, to her triumphant return to children\u2019s television and hilarious guest role on The Nanny<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Seeking Mavis Beacon<\/em><\/a>, which came out in 2024 but is newly available on streaming services, is a quasi-documentary, quasi-art piece about two young women who explore the origins and significance of both Mavis Beacon, the fictional persona that guided millions of people through instructional typing games in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, and Ren\u00e9e L\u2019Esp\u00e9rance, the Haitian woman who was the original model for the character. Jazmin Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross go on a multi-faceted journey to find out how the company decided on the character of a Black typing expert at a time of zero representation of Black women in tech, reflect on the character\u2019s significance to them and other Black computer enthusiasts, and also brush up against questions about ethics and privacy when they confront how their own desire to meet Ren\u00e9e L\u2019Esp\u00e9rance and \u201cgive her her flowers\u201d conflicts with her desire to be left alone. It\u2019s a film that is difficult to describe but funny, poignant, and fascinating.<\/p>\n