Toni Erdmann (rollicking German satire about parents and children)
After the Storm (Japanese complacent class, plus pending doom)
Magnus (the chess prodigy)
Tower (animated with graphics, about the Texas tower shooting in Austin, history of violence and how people respond to it)
Dunkirk (uses angles better than any movie ever)
Get Out (racial discrimination, plus a satire on both horror and Sidney Poitier)
Columbus (architecture in the Indiana town, when to leave home)
Two Trains Runnin’ (history of rediscovering the blues)
The Florida Project (the Brazilians and Cubans find American lower income groups tough to deal with)
Faces, Places (Agnes Varda, travel, memories, art, and the transience of it all)
The Square (European intellectual mainstream is bankrupt)
For visuals and the staging of scenes, the winner was Dunkirk. For social science, Get Out and The Square and Paths to the Soul (pilgrimage) were the richest. If I had to pick a single winner, it would be the Chinese-Tibetan Paths to the Soul, replete with tales of signaling, social cooperation, journeying, and life and death, especially when seen on the large screen.
