Moonlight

Four college girlfriends, too broke to enjoy their spring break, hold up a nearby restaurant for travel funds. Using the cash to get to Florida, besties Brit, Candy, Cotty, and Faith live out every imaginable party fantasy until a brush with the law brings them closer to local baddie Alien, who takes them under his odious wing. An early success for distribution powerhouse A24, Harmony Korine’s polarizing crime comedy holds an unflinching mirror to the mindless consumerism that dominates pop culture. Set to an unrelenting score by Cliff Martinez and Skrillex, peak MTV aesthetics find resonance on the big screen thanks to Benoît Debie, the cinematographer who lensed Enter the Void three years earlier.

This story about tensions between a reggaeton dancer, a choreographer, and their adopted-then-abandoned pyromaniac child is carefully constructed as a charged, impressionistic vision of modern Chile by one of contemporary cinema’s ultimate stylists. On the heels of Naruda (2016) and Jackie (2016), director and cowriter Pablo Larraín stages both massive performances and intimate rehearsals bathed in colorful light, mimicking the nighttime streets of Valparaíso, a port city popular with artists and the film’s primary location. Part dance film, part family drama, part portrait of an artist, the vibrant Ema pulses with vivid hues and thumping electronic music by Darkside founder Nicolas Jaar.

Shot primarily in first-person point-of-view among the dark alleys, nightclubs, and tiny apartments of Tokyo’s Kabukichō district, Gaspar Noé’s self-proclaimed “psychedelic melodrama” takes its visual cues from the director’s own experiences with hallucinogenic drugs.

In the 1990s, the aesthetic of hip-hop was forever changed by visionary director Hype Williams, whose music videos for Busta Rhymes, Missy Elliott, LL Cool J, and dozens of other artists created an entirely new visual style. Near the end of that decade, Williams directed his only feature film, Belly, which, despite making its modest budget back at the box office threefold, was derided by critics for its complicated depictions of Black male characters. Though accused of being style over substance—the film is replete with gorgeous black- and redlight washes—contemporary audiences have embraced the film as a cult classic, reappraising it for shifting the trajectory of both hip-hop and Hollywood before the industry could see what was coming.

Writer-director Steven Soderbergh and producer James Cameron teamed up for this stylish adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s 1961 sci-fi novel that was also the source for Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic 1972 film of the same name. When psychologist Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent on a mysterious mission to a space station orbiting the planet Solaris, he finds unthinkable mysteries, as well as an impossible encounter with the love of his life (Natascha McElhone). Soderbergh’s film is romantic, thought provoking, and a feast for the eyes with dazzlingly colorful visual effects, Philip Messina’s lived-in production design, and Soderbergh’s moody widescreen 35mm cinematography (shot under the pseudonym Peter Andrews).