8) Blue Ruin
Rarely have I seen a film so beautifully and intricately constructed. Only the second feature from writer-director Jeremy Saulnier, Blue Ruin is about as lean and mean as filmmaking gets. Every single shot, line of dialogue and character decision is in complete service of the plot – not a pointless love triangle or overextended visual sequence in sight. Take THAT Peter Jackson!
The violence is brutal, the script a perfect combination of muted foreboding and pitch black comedy and – in Macon Blair – we have the wussiest and most endearingly useless revenger this side of Hamlet. Let’s not even get started on the perfect pacing, the gorgeous cinematography and a terrific but unpretentious reversal of traditional revenge drama color pallet. In short, this small, perfectly contained, immaculately efficient explosion of a film is the most perfectly constructed movie you’re going to see this year – with the exception of maybe one other film a bit higher up the list.