Next to animated studios, there are few movie studios that have a reassuring voice when it comes to their output. There's been a recent crop of successes, including Annapurna. However, there's one that is celebrating a surprising amount of success in its short existence: A24. Along with racking up a lot of potential Oscar wins next week, A24 is responsible for some of the most surreal and inventive independent cinema of the past three years. With The Witch currently in theaters, it feels like an appropriate time to rank their 10 best films (so far), which is likely going to change drastically by this time next year, provided they keep up the great work.
1. Under the Skin (2014)
While it isn't their first breakout film, it's arguably their defining achievement as a studio. From director Jonathan Glazer, it's one of the most beautifully strange films of the decade, providing haunting imagery alongside Mica Levi's eerie score. Even if the story doesn't make any sense, it still embodies what cinema can be when asked to be an experience. It is an uncompromising film and with a performance by Scarlet Johansson in which she may just be an empty vessel, but at least one that becomes thought provoking the further along it goes. It will be difficult for A24 to make anything this singular, though they've come very close in the years since.
2. Spring Breakers (2013)
Following their mediocre debut with A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, A24 kicked into high gear with one of the most eyebrow raising films possible. With a bunch of former Disney child actors and yet another weird performance by James Franco, this film about Florida's spring break tradition goes into violent and sexual directions that were appetizing to audiences who would quickly be turned off by the presence of director Harmony Korine's meditative and nonlinear story that set up the studio's insistence of challenging cinema in any way possible. It's an art film with schlock on its mind, and it results in an effectively attention-grabbing product that wears the comparison "Terrence Malick on bath salts" as a badge of pride, as it should.
3. Room (2015)
Among the few films that A24 has up for awards season this year, Room is the surprising favorite that became the studio's first to get a Best Picture nomination. With great performances by Brie Larson and Ethan Tremblay, it's a complicated film that challenges the very notion of parenting and experience the world, creating strange dichotomies that become overwhelming as well as beautiful. It's not an easy film and avoids the Oscar bait moniker, even though it's easily among the best and (sort of) direct dramas that they have ever released. If this is their attempt at competing during awards season, then they're going to be one of my favorites for the years going forward.
4. Ex Machina (2015)
If one was to provide a list of A24 films to the average viewer today, it is likely that Ex Machina would be the most popular selection. For a variety of reasons, the film became the sleeper hit of 2015 and has been touted as one of the greatest sci-fi films of the decade. With a few Oscar nominations to its credit, the film's update of Frankenstein mythology is fascinating and features great performances by a cast who's only become bigger in the time since (Alicia Vikander was nominated for Best Supporting Actress this year... for the inferior The Danish Girl). Still, it's an effective genre film worthy of its acclaim and one that will likely only grow in stature as the years continue.
5. The Witch (2016)
Over the past few years, there has been a resurgence of horror films that are as well made as they are scary. While 2016 is only two months old, The Witch is looking to be the unnerving champion of the year thanks to a convincingly 17th century period piece that mixes witch culture with faith based paranoia that results in something just as singular as A24 at its best. What's more impressive is that for a film so intense, it manages to be one of the shortest films that they have ever released at 90 minutes. That isn't an insult, as it is likely that you'll need another 90 minutes to comprehend the madness that you've just witnessed.
6. The Spectacular Now (2013)
Not all of A24's output is mind-bending, genre-challenging fare like Under the Skin or Room. There are those few films that are simply just charming coming-of-age tales about two alcoholic teenagers. With great performances by Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller as the central couple, director James Ponsoldt's film (one of two he's done for the studio so far) finds a deeper earnestness in a familiar genre and makes for a definitive look into teenage romance unlike any other seen in the past few years. It could just be that the camera lingers long enough to capture the moments that other films don't, which makes all of the difference in the end.
7. Locke (2014)
Last year was a breakout year for Tom Hardy, thanks to appearances in Mad Max: Fury Road and an Oscar-nominated role in The Revenant. While he's been consistently great for almost a decade now, one can simply turn to Locke to understand his charisma without distillation. It's a film where Hardy drives home from work while taking a few important calls that inform everything about his character. It's essentially a one act play on a freeway, but with Hardy providing an excellent performance that somehow works better than its limitations would suggest. Even if he's given showier performances, one cannot deny the impact that Hardy has when he's the only character seen on screen for the entire running time without it ever seeming like a problem.
8. The Bling Ring (2013)
Following Spring Breakers, A24 chose another attention-grabbing film from director Sofia Coppola that shows Harry Potter actress Emma Watson playing a risky role as a vapid teenage thief. It's a very nuanced film that perfectly embodies the shallowness of youth and how it's unfortunately going to overthrow the world. More than any other film on this list, it's one of the few that feels like a real life cautionary tale for those who see celebrity worship as not having any problem. The undertones are haunting and the film's divisive nature definitely helped to cement A24's reputation for provocative work, even if there's not a lot that's all that weird stylistically here.
9. Enemy (2014)
In a year that featured several actors playing multiple roles (The One I Love, The Double), there was something immediately striking about Enemy. Following his success with Prisoners, director Dennis Villeneuve went further into the psychological thriller area with a strange tale that pitted two Jake Gyllenhaal performances against each other and somehow came out the other end with one of the most striking finales of the year. It's a film that works as a puzzle, asking you to unravel its various clues to better understand its purpose. It may not be the director's best, but its existence as a stylistic exercise is itself an impressive achievement worthy of comparisons to the great thriller directors.
10. Slow West (2015)
In a year where The Hateful Eight and The Revenant stole all the credit for great westerns, Slow West ended up being the unrecognized best of the bunch, serving more as a throwback to traditional genre fare where the adventure was the reason to see it. With impressive choreography and some of the best cinematography, this is a western for those who want to believe that the genre can still be good without giving into gritty reboot culture. With great performances all around, this is a film worthy of acclaim and evidence that fun westerns aren't dead. They're just being made at niche studios like A24.
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