“Every December, I carefully pick my top ten favorite films and albums of the year. Over the years, I’ve posted my lists on Tumblr or whatever blog I had a the time.”
I had no readers, yet for some reason it’s become a thing I’ve looked forward to every year - I even get made fun of for taking it so seriously! My Decembers have been reserved for canceling every plan I may have so that I can binge watch the remaining movies of the year. I’m not going to lie, I’m glad I started Passerbuys because now I have a better platform to inflict my list upon (I’m sorry!) I’m not much of a writer, so I’ll let the synopses take it from here, but I do hope that you enjoy these films as much as I did.
1. Elle by Paul Verhoeven
After being attacked in her own home, the ruthless head of a video game company tracks down her rapist and is drawn into a thrilling game that threatens to spiral out of control at any moment.
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2. Embrace of The Serpent by Ciro Guerra
Karamakate is an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people. In the early 1900s, he befriends two German scientists as they search for a rare healing plant over the course of 40 years.
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3. Wiener Dog by Todd Solondz
A dark, starkly funny story of a single dog and the many different people she touches over the course of her short lifetime that offers an honest look at the American experience.
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4. Everybody Wants Some!! by Richard Linklater
In 1980, a group of college baseball players navigate their way through the freedoms and responsibilities of unsupervised adulthood.
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5. American Honey by Andrea Arnold
A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending, and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.
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6. Our Little Sister by Hirokazu Koreeda
Three sisters who live together travel to the countryside for the funeral of their estranged father and meet their shy teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with their orphaned sibling, they invite her to live with them.
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7. Handmaiden by Park Chan-wook
In 1930s Korea, during Japanese occupation, a new girl hired as a handmaiden to a Japanese heiress is secretly involved in a plot to defraud her.
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8. Moonlight by Barry Jenkins
A young man deals with his dysfunctional home life and comes of age in Miami during the "War on Drugs" era. The story of his struggle to find himself is told across three defining chapters in his life as he experiences the ecstasy, pain, and beauty of falling in love while grappling with his own sexuality.
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9. Things to Come by Mia Hansen-Løve
Nathalie is a philosophy teacher with a seemingly settled existence, juggling a rich life of the mind with the day-to-day demands of career and family. But beginning with the bombshell revelation that her husband of twenty-five years is leaving her, one by one the pillars of Nathalie's life start to crumble.
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10. I, Daniel Blake by Ken Loach
A middle aged carpenter recovering from a heart attack befriends a single mother and her two children as they navigate their way through the state welfare system.
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Honorable Mentions
Words by Clémence Polès