In Barry Jenkins’s film, it’s not merely about the implications of the title word, Moonlight, but about the natural elements and their intoxicating power. They shake a young boy, a young man, and an adult man’s life. The water that Juan bathes Little in, carrying him from the sea; the swirling wind of the camera, without reason or calculation, moving around and about Chiron; the red hot embers and the falling ashes of Kevin’s cigarette which leaves Black completely entranced; the pebbles of sand and specks of dirt that find themselves underneath everyone’s nails and smeared across everyone’s heart. “Moonlight” itself certainly has political implications about the way men of color, particular black men, negotiate sexual and masculine spaces. But the classical elements together join together to become foundation to the film’s lead character. By Kyle Turner

What happens when you give incompetent people guns? As with Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier mines incredible amount of suspense from this simple operating principle while creating what is essentially a plausible genre movie. With such a handle on trope and audience expectation, one of the more memorable performances from Patrick Stewart is just a nice bonus. By Shawn Hazelett

How do you make provocations in a romantic comedy? And not just provocations in the Seth MacFarlane/Seth Rogen/Kevin Smith vein, but the kind of taunt that forces the viewer to ache. You have Ben Whishaw break his nose on a table, force Rachel Weisz to become blind, and tell Colin Farrell to kick his dead dog. All in the name of love. Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster is a cactus of a movie: sharp, prickly, even maybe a little inaccessible due how caustic it is; but open up the inside and it’s tender and raw, as vulnerable as anything. It’s a film that recognizes and both condemns and cherishes the idiocy of trying to find love in a hopeless place. By Kyle Turner

By far the most low key movie on this year\‘s list, Everybody Wants Some!! is Richard Linklater\‘s take on college life in the early 80s. The perfect mix of Slacker\‘s laissez faire, meandering narrative structure, and Dazed and Confused\‘s nostalgic charm and humor, Everybody Wants Some!! may not be the most mind-blowing but it is certainly the most rewatchable movie of the year. By Sarah Winshall

Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor ain\‘t just for Robin Hood anymore. The deep south is turned into a nihilist Nottingham in David Mackenzie\‘s Hell or High Water, the grim saga about a pair of bank robbing brothers (Chris Pine, ruefully scruffing up his pretty boy image, and a wily Ben Foster). Hot on their heels is a dogged near retirement sheriff (the always excellent Jeff Bridges) and his Native American partner (an equally fantastic Gil Birmingham). What could have been a standard heist and car chase shoot-em-up is risen best-of-the-year caliber by the cast\‘s superb performances, Mackenzie\‘s jaw dropping panoramic Americana camera work, and—above all—the script\‘s deft treatment of marginalized small town southerners who all long to stick up the real robbers: bankers, of course. That rich subtext helps Hell or High Water reach unexpected depths as the year\‘s biggest sleeper hit. By Kyle Mullin

Manchester by the Sea succeeds because of many things, from emotionally honest performances to a script that deftly blends melancholy and levity. It has a surprising amount of funny beats that momentarily distances it from the bubbling sadness permeating through the rest of the film. What makes it an instant classic is that it never shies away from the idea that tragedy can break us, and it wisely avoids schmaltz and forced hope. As such, the tragedy at the heart of Manchester is palpable without being overkill. It\‘s bleak, but true, and it lingers long after the credits have stopped rolling. By Jason Wilson

A devoutly religious family in Colonial New England endures a rash of unexpected tragedies; as the crops die and their outlook shows no signs of improving, a suffocating paranoia builds and suspicion turns to their young daughter, Thomasin, whom they fear may have allied herself with the devil. The year’s best new horror film builds its greatest scares not into what it shows, but in the things it only hints at. So much of the movie’s freakiest stuff happens off-screen, leaving the darker recesses of the viewers’ imagination to connect he ghastly dots, that when the movie does decide to peel away the curtain, the effects are truly shocking. By Austin Trunick

Kubo feels like a throwback to the darker kids’ fantasy movies of the 1980s, like The Dark Crystal, NeverEnding Story, and Return to Oz. Featuring some of the most imaginative monster design this side of a Guillermo Del Toro film, it’s also a grand adventure that adults will enjoy just as much as their (most brave) children. By Austin Trunick

There’s nothing Hollywood loves as much as itself, but self-absorption is fine when it leads to something as magical as La La Land. Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to Whiplash switches gears from intense drumming to a full-blown musical romantic comedy as Emma Stone’s aspiring actress and Ryan Gosling’s frustrated jazz pianist fall in and out of love around Tinseltown. Packed with glitzy showstoppers, imaginative choreography, surprisingly haunting sequences, and engaging central performances, Chazelle marries heady nostalgia with a thoroughly modern feel. The end result is a colorful delight. By Stephen Mayne

Watch Park Chan-wook’s, mastermind behind Lady Vengeance and Stoker, new film twice: once as con movie, once as romantic melodrama. And then out of the two viewings, figure out which game is best of all: the class game that characters try to play with one another, or the game of sex and love. Park’s great gambit is both being able to balance its many tonal and narrative shifts, but also in making, essentially, Congratulations, You Played Yourself: The Movie. By Kyle Turner