Here is my response to A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis’ much-abused list. We’ve got some overlap, though.
1. Yi-Yi (Edward Yang)
2. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
3. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
4. 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
5. What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang)
6. Damsels in Distress (Whit Stillman)
7. Time Regained (Raul Ruiz)
8. Kings and Queens (Arnaud Desplechin)
9. Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach)
10. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
11. Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson)
12. Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)
13. A Touch of Sin (Jia Zhangke)
14. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie)
15. Blissfully Yours (Weerasethakul, 2002)
16. Get Out (Jordan Peele)
17. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas)
18. The Son (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
19. Munich (Steven Spielberg)
20. A Serious Man (Ethan and Joel Coen)
21. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
22. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)
23. The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr)
24. A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies)
25. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami)
26. The Lost City of Z (James Gray)
27. The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda)
28. Being 17 (André Téchiné)
29. In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman)
30. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
31. Stories We Tell (Sarah Polley)
32. The Ornithologist (João Pedro Rodrigues)
33. In The Family (Patrick Wang)
34. Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
35. The Tree of Live (Terrence Malick)
36. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
37. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry)
38. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
39. Miami Vice (Michael Mann)
40. The Other Side of Hope (Aki Kaurismäki)
Humanizing The Vacuum 