19. Let It Ride

"It really is the kind of movie they don't make anymore, on several counts. First of all, it's a Runyonesque race-track comedy, a genre one might well have thought past reviving. Second, its humor is gentle and unpretentious: There's no going for hard, slam-bang yocks or elaborate set-piece catastrophes requiring a legion of stunt people. Believe it or not, the abundant humor in the sterling screenplay Ernest Morton adapted from Jay Cronley's 'Good Vibes' actually derives from the foibles of human nature and not from special effects."

--excerpt from a full review in the L.A. Times


 

18. Only Lovers Left Alive

"What all these vampires share is a tendency to swoon. When slaked, they fall back, crimson mouths agape, and the camera hungers after them. In the opening shots, it even spins and descends simultaneously, as if beckoned into a vortex. Swooning, prompted as it is by fear and desire alike, has a distinguished place in the history of horror. (For further details, consult the opening of Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.”) The master swooners, though, were the Romantic poets, and the pining or sickened souls of whom they wrote, and, in that light, I’m not sure that Jarmusch has really made a vampire film at all, still less a horror flick. “Only Lovers Left Alive” is, at heart, a Byronic riff. It may start with red Gothic lettering in the credits, as if in homage to old Hammer pictures, but Adam and Eve are more like junkies than like predators, and their eternal addiction—to each other, not just to hemoglobin—allows them to float above the fads of common folk." 

--excerpt from a full review in The New Yorker

17. Slow West

"Slow West could easily turn punishing, like many a post-modern Western. One of Smit-McPhee’s earliest screen roles was as The Boy in John Hillcoat’s adaptation of The Road, which took the grit and misery of the westward trek to its logical extreme by setting it in a dystopian future. Slow West is salted with necessary cynicism—early on it’s clear to Silas, and the viewer, that Jay’s interest in Rose is very one-sided—and features Ben Mendelsohn as Payne, a brooding, cold-blooded bounty hunter also on Rose’s trail. But the film never loses sight of the bizarre humor of Jay’s situation (trekking through the wilderness looking for a girl who barely remembers him) and the real charm of his friendship with Silas, even though Fassbender’s dialogue consists mostly of growls." --excerpt from a full review in The Atlantic

16. Mountain Patrol

"What is remarkable is that this film is based on a true story, and filmed on the actual locations. These are hard, violent men, risking their lives to save an animal species. In appearance and behavior, they could be commandos, insurgents, terrorists. The poachers are no less desperate, and the film opens with the murder of a patrolman. In a strange way, the patrol and the poachers feel a bond; they are the only humans on this high plateau, both drawn there by a fascination for the antelope, and they share an existence no one else knows."  --excerpt from a full review by Roger Ebert on RogerEbert.com

15. Star Wars: Episode VII-The Force Awakens

"...an exhilarating ride, filled with archetypal characters with plausible psychologies, melodramatic confrontations fueled by soaring emotions, and performances that can be described as good, period, rather than 'good, for 'Star Wars.'

And it’s a treat to see beloved older characters placed beside new ones in situations that respect Lucas' myth-making but correct his flaws as a storyteller, including the default whiteness of his casts. Not only have Abrams and his co-writers, Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt, centered the story on a young woman and a man of color (played respectively by Daisy Ridley and John Boyega), they've made them so compelling and quirky that the film never seems to be putting an up-to-date wrapping on moldy clichés." --excerpt from a full review on RogerEbert.com

 

13. Hero

"Zhang Yimou's 'Hero' is beautiful and beguiling, a martial arts extravaganza defining the styles and lives of its fighters within Chinese tradition. It is also, like 'Rashomon,' a mystery told from more than one point of view; we hear several stories which all could be true, or false. The movie opens, like many folk legends, with a storyteller before the throne of an imperious ruler, counting on his wits to protect his life." --excerpt from a full review on RogerEbert.com

 

14. Guardians of the Galaxy

"Blessed with a loose, anarchic B-picture soul that encourages you to enjoy yourself even when you're not quite sure what's going on, the scruffy "Guardians" is irreverent in a way that can bring the first "Star Wars" to mind, in part because it has some of the most unconventional heroes — would you believe a raccoon and a tree? — this side of the Mos Eisley cantina." --excerpt from a full review in The Los Angeles Times.