The YouTube Channel CineFix-IGN, which releases regular and top-notch film analysis and exploration videos this week dropped another of their ‘Top 10′ lists, this time for movies released by those lovers of indie cinema A24.
Consistent with their previous top 10 lists they broke the list down into categories. I found it amusing that I had seen 7 of the 10, a personal record for me I think, and own 3 of them on physical media.
Here is the listing of their top 10 A24 titles.
10) Debut features: Lady Bird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig
9) Science Fiction: Ex Machina (2015) dir. Alex Garland
8) Fantasy: Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) dir. The Daniels
7) Coming of Age: The Green Knight (2021) dir. David Lowery
6) Survival Horror: Green Room (2016) dir. Jeremy Saulnier
5) Supernatural Horror: Hereditary (2018) dir. Ari Aster
4) Existential Horror: The Witch (2016) dir. Robert Eggers
3) Traumatic Drama: Midsommar (2019) dir. Ari Aster
2) Quirky Character Drama: Uncut Gems (2019) dir. Josh and Benny Safdie
1) Capital ‘D’ Drama: Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins
The three I have not yet seen are, Lady Bird, Green Room, and Moonlight. The owns I own are Ex Machina, The Witch, and Midsommar.
Green Room is the film I have the most anxiety about watching. It is a strange quirk of character that fantastical horror, monsters, witched, zombies, cam create dread in me but far from enough to cause any hesitation in starting the film, but grounded realistic horror, such as trapped in a back room while a gang of fanatical neo-Nazis led by Patrick Stewart try to kill you can set my hand trembling. The utter banality and real-world nature makes such a prospect more terrifying than all the zombies or Swedish death cults.
Of the seven that I have seen the one that worked the least for me was Uncut Gems. While exceptionally made and Adam Sandler’s performance was fantastic, I found his character so repellent and unsympathetic that I cared nothing for his fate. Nor was he interesting enough as a character to leapfrog over his repulsive nature. It was not the actor, but the character as written that left me cold.
Still, when the A24 logo appears on the screen I know that quality and vision will follow.
