Below, we collect every year-end Top Ten list published by major film critics and publications. This page will be updated throughout December and January whenever new lists are published; be sure to check back frequently.
Critics pick the best movies of 2019
Recent updates:
Added 1/11: IndieWire (additional lists), The Playlist (additional lists)
Added 1/10: IMDb, Metacritic, Pajiba, San Diego Reader, Slashfilm (additional writers), Toledo Blade
Added 1/7: Parallax View, Slashfilm
Added 1/6: Cahiers du Cinéma, Cape Cod Times, FIlm Stage (additional critics), Filmspotting, Idaho Press, The New Zealand Herald, NOW Magazine, Salt Lake City Weekly, San Jose Mercury News, Scene360, Smashcut, Star Tribune, Time Out London, The Virginian-Pilot, We Are Movie Geeks, The Young Folks
Added 1/5: Deadline, FIlm Stage (additional critics), Idolator, Miami New Times, Nerdist, Orlando Sentinel, Reverse Shot, Third Coast Review
Added 1/1/2020: Blackfilm, Collider (additional critics), Dark Horizons, Film Pulse, Glide, LA Weekly, The Playlist (additional critics), San Antonio Current
Added 12/31: Buffalo News, CBS News, CriterionCast, Den of Geek (UK), FIlm School Rejects, FirstShowing, Flickering Myth, HeadStuff, Heat Vision, National Post, ReelViews, San Francisco Examiner, Screen Rant
Added 12/30: Arizona Republic, Brief Take, Cleveland Scene, Goomba Stomp, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Relevant, Screen Anarchy
Added 12/28: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, CinemaBlend, Dazed, Everett Daily Herald, The Film Stage, mxdwn, The Observer, Paste, The Playlist (subbing individual critic lists for consensus list), The Wichita Eagle
Added 12/27: The Arts Desk, Awards Campaign, The Beat, Birth. Movies. Death. (additional critics), Boston Herald, Business Insider, CBC News, Chicago Daily Herald, Columbus Alive, ComingSoon.net, Complex, The Daily Beast, Deseret News, Florida Weekly, GateHouse Media, Gothamist, The Independent, io9, JoBlo, Lincoln Journal-Star, Little White Lies, London Evening Standard, Memphis Commercial Appeal, New York Post, People, The Salt Lake Tribune, Spectrum Culture, Tulsa World, We Got This Covered
Added 12/24: Birth. Movies. Death., Chicago Sun-Times, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, San Francisco Chronicle, Thrillist, Toronto Star, WhatCulture
Added 12/23: Charlotte Observer, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Den of Geek! (USA), Far Out Magazine, GameSpot, Houston Chronicle, Hyperallergic, Irish Independent, National Review, Sydney Morning Herald, The Telegraph, WBUR/The ARTery, White City Cinema
Added 12/20: Austin360, Boston Globe, The Guardian, NME, Screen Daily, Sioux City Journal, Total Film, WGBH
Added 12/19: Austin Chronicle, The Economist, Flavorwire, NPR, Uproxx, Wired, Yahoo!
Added 12/18: CineVue, HuffPost, Parade
Added 12/17: Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Daily News
Added 12/16: A.V. Club, Houston Press, The Wrap
Added 12/15: Gay City News, World of Reel
Added 12/13: Baltimore Magazine, Collider (Chitwood), i-D, RogerEbert.com, Slant, Vogue
Added 12/12: Asbury Park Press, Christian Science Monitor, Entertainment Weekly, Flood Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter
Added 12/11: Collider (Reimann), Film Comment, New Statesman, Polygon
Added 12/10: Collider (Mancuso), Consequence of Sound, Exclaim!, Wall Street Journal
Added 12/9: Collider, Empire, The Globe and Mail, Mashable, Misc-Ehrlich, Popsugar, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post
Added 12/8: Associated Press, The Irish Times, TimeOut New York
Added 12/6: Detroit News, IGN, Los Angeles Times, The Playlist, The Ringer, ScreenCrush, Slate, Us Weekly
Added 12/5/2019: Scorecard launched with 22 lists.
Below is our updated running tally of the films most frequently mentioned by individual critics on the year-end Top Ten lists. Note that if a critic ranks more than the standard 10 films, we will not include films ranked 11th or worse. (We do include unranked lists of 11-20 titles, though each film gets just one-half of a point.) In case of a tie for first or second, each film will receive the full points for that position. Our points system works as follows:
- 3 points for each 1st place ranking
- 2 points for each 2nd place ranking
- 1 point for being ranked 3rd - 10th, or for being included on an unranked list of 10 or fewer titles
- 0.5 points for being included on an unranked list of 11-20 titles
Movie and Metascore | # 1st Place | # 2nd Place | # Other | Points | |
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1 | ▣ Parasite | 77 | 33 | 137.5 | 434.5 |
2 | ▣ Once Upon a Time in Hollywood | 38 | 27 | 124.5 | 292.5 |
3 | ▣ The Irishman | 24 | 45 | 118 | 280 |
4 | ▣ Marriage Story | 14 | 27 | 117 | 213 |
5 | ▣ Uncut Gems | 20 | 18 | 87 | 183 |
6 | ▣ Portrait of a Lady on Fire | 12 | 10 | 79 | 135 |
7 | ▣ Little Women | 5 | 12 | 85 | 124 |
8 | ▣ Knives Out | 9 | 5 | 82 | 119 |
9 | ▣ Pain and Glory | 10 | 7 | 66.5 | 110.5 |
10 | ▣ The Farewell | 2 | 7 | 87.5 | 107.5 |
11 | ▣ The Souvenir | 3 | 9 | 55.5 | 82.5 |
12 | ▣ Us | 1 | 1 | 73.5 | 78.5 |
13 | ▣ Booksmart | 2 | 5 | 52 | 68 |
14 | ▣ 1917 | 5 | 5 | 42.5 | 67.5 |
15 | ▣ Midsommar | 3 | 2 | 52.5 | 65.5 |
16 | ▣ The Lighthouse | 3 | 2 | 50.5 | 63.5 |
17 | ▣ The Last Black Man in San Francisco | 4 | 2 | 46.5 | 62.5 |
18 | ▣ Transit | 4 | 7 | 28.5 | 54.5 |
19 | ▣ Ad Astra | 1 | 3 | 45 | 54 |
20 | ▣ Joker | 4 | 5 | 30.5 | 52.5 |
21 | ▣ Jojo Rabbit | 4 | 2 | 34 | 50 |
22 | ▣ Avengers: Endgame | 3 | 1 | 38.5 | 49.5 |
23 | ▣ A Hidden Life | 3 | 2 | 34 | 47 |
24 | ▣ Atlantics | 0 | 3 | 37 | 43 |
25 | ▣ Hustlers | 1 | 0 | 37.5 | 40.5 |
26 | ▣ Waves | 4 | 1 | 25 | 39 |
27 | ▣ Ash Is Purest White | 3 | 2 | 24 | 37 |
28 | ▣ High Life | 1 | 1 | 31.5 | 36.5 |
29 | ▣ Her Smell | 2 | 2 | 25.5 | 35.5 |
30 | ▣ Apollo 11 | 0 | 2 | 28.5 | 32.5 |
Note that it is possible for some films to repeat from last year's list due to differences in USA and UK release dates.
Individual critic top ten lists
Below are the 340 individual top ten lists published by the film critics regularly included in Metacritic's score calculations, as well as a few extra lists from additional prominent film sources. Some critics merely list films without ranking them in order; such lists are displayed below, without numbers, in alphabetical order.
Staff consensus View full list |
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Philip Martin View full list |
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Melissa Anderson |
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J. Hoberman |
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James Quandt |
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Amy Taubin |
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John Waters |
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Alex Biese View full list |
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Lindsey Bahr View full list |
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Jake Coyle View full list |
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David Sims View full list |
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Joe Gross View full list |
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Eric Webb View full list |
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Marjorie Baumgarten View full list |
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Steve Davis View full list |
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Kimberley Jones View full list |
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Josh Kupecki View full list |
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Matthew Monagle View full list |
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Marc Savlov View full list |
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Richard Whittaker View full list |
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Charles Bramesco View full list |
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Mike D'Angelo View full list |
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A.A. Dowd View full list |
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Lawrence Garcia View full list |
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Roxana Hadadi View full list |
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Jesse Hassenger View full list |
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Beatrice Loayz View full list |
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Noel Murray View full list |
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Vikram Murthi View full list |
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Katie Rife View full list |
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Caroline Siede View full list |
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Ignatiy Vishnevetsky View full list |
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Gregory Ellwood View full list |
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Max Weiss View full list |
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Kyle Pinion View full list |
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Amelia Emberwing View full list |
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Britt Hayes View full list |
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Leigh Monson View full list |
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Evan Saathoff View full list |
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Emily Sears View full list |
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James Emanuel Shapiro View full list |
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Andrew Todd View full list |
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Wilson Morales View full list |
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Ty Burr View full list |
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James Verniere View full list |
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Daniel Reynolds View full list |
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Jeff Simon View full list |
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Jason Guerrasio View full list |
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Tim Miller View full list |
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Eli Glasner View full list |
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David Morgan View full list |
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Lawrence Toppman View full list |
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Dann Gire View full list |
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Ben Sachs View full list |
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Richard Roeper View full list |
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Michael Phillips View full list |
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Peter Rainer View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Laura DeMarco View full list |
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John Petkovic View full list |
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Melodie Smith View full list |
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Chuck Yarborough View full list |
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Sam Allard View full list |
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Adam Chitwood View full list |
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Haleigh Foutch View full list |
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Matt Goldberg View full list |
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Vinnie Mancuso View full list |
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Tom Reimann View full list |
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Brad Keefe View full list |
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Jeff Ames View full list |
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Maggie Dela Paz View full list |
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Max Evry View full list |
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Kylie Hemmert View full list |
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Grant Hermanns View full list |
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Josh Plainse View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Joshua Brunsting View full list |
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Marlow Stern View full list |
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Garth Franklin View full list |
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Nick Chen View full list |
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Pete Hammond View full list |
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David Crow View full list |
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Don Kaye View full list |
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Natalie Zutter View full list |
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Josh Terry View full list |
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Adam Graham View full list |
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[uncredited] View full list |
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Leah Greenblatt View full list |
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Nick Schager View full list |
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Robert Horton View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Ken Bakely View full list |
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Blake Crane View full list |
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Raul de Leon View full list |
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Amanda-Marie Howard View full list |
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Brooks Laurentino View full list |
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Chris Luciantonio View full list |
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Adam Patterson View full list |
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Kevin Rakestraw View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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John Fink View full list |
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Mike Mazzanti View full list |
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Jared Mobarak View full list |
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Nick Newman View full list |
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Jason Ooi View full list |
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C.J. Prince View full list |
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Jordan Raup View full list |
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Christopher Schobert View full list |
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Zhuo-Ning Su View full list |
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Ryan Swen View full list |
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Adam Kempenaar View full list |
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Josh Larsen View full list |
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Adam Frazier View full list |
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Jason Bailey View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Dan Hudak View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Ed Symkus View full list |
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Steve Erickson View full list |
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James Roberts View full list |
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Barry Hertz View full list |
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Ben Yakas View full list |
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Peter Bradshaw View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Candice Frederick View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Borys Kit View full list |
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Jon Frosch View full list |
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Sheri Linden View full list |
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Todd McCarthy View full list |
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David RooneyView full list |
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Cary Darling View full list |
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Pete Vonder Haar View full list |
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Matthew Jacobs View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Kristen Yoonsoo Kim View full list |
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Sean McBride View full list |
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Mike Wass View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Col Needham View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Christian Baluvelt View full list |
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Tom Brueggemann View full list |
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Bill Desowitz View full list |
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Ann Donahue View full list |
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Jude Dry View full list |
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Kate Erbland View full list |
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Leo Garcia View full list |
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Libby Hill View full list |
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Eric Kohn View full list |
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Ryan Lattanzio View full list |
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Chris Lindahl View full list |
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Leah Lu View full list |
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Chris O'Falt View full list |
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Tambay Obenson View full list |
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Zack Sharf View full list |
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Anne Thompson View full list |
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Ben Travers View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Paul Whitington View full list |
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Donald Clarke and Tara Brady View full list |
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Chris Bumbray View full list |
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JimmyO View full list |
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Jared Richards View full list |
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Lina Lecaro View full list |
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L. Kent Wolgamott View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Harry Fletcher View full list |
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Bob Strauss View full list |
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Justin Chang View full list |
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Kenneth Turan View full list |
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Angie Han View full list |
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John Beifuss View full list |
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Marc Doyle, Editor-in-Chief |
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Juan Antonio Barquin View full list |
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David Ehrlich (IndieWire critic, but published independently) Video countdown |
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Katie Walsh (Tribune News Service, published on Twitter) View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Chris Knight View full list |
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Kyle Smith View full list |
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Lindsey Romain View full list |
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Mike Scott View full list |
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Ryan Gilbey View full list |
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Johnny Oleksinski View full list |
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Sara Stewart View full list |
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Manohla Dargis View full list |
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A.O. Scott View full list |
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Wenlei Ma View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Kevin Ritchie View full list |
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Radheyan Simonpillai View full list |
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Norman Wilner View full list |
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Linda Holmes, Bob Mondello, Glen Weldon View full list |
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Mark Kermode View full list |
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Hal Boedeker View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Samuel R. Murrian View full list |
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Sean Axmaker View full list |
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David Coursen View full list |
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Robert C. Cumbow View full list |
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Richard T. Jameson View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Tom Gliatto View full list |
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Charles Barfield View full list |
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Oktay Ege Kozak View full list |
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Nicholas Laskin View full list |
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Kimber Myers View full list |
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Ryan Oliver View full list |
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Lena Wilson View full list |
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Karen Han View full list |
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Matt Patches View full list |
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Tasha Robinson View full list |
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Quinn Keaney View full list |
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James Berardinelli View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Sean Fennessey and Adam Nayman View full list |
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Simon Abrams View full list |
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Carlos Aguilar View full list |
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Nick Allen View full list |
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Monica Castillo View full list |
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Godfrey Cheshire View full list |
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Seongyong Cho View full list |
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Robert Daniels View full list |
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Mark Dujsik View full list |
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Matt Fagerholm View full list |
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Odie Henderson View full list |
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Ben Kenigsberg View full list |
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Glenn Kenny View full list |
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Tomris Laffly View full list |
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Christy Lemire View full list |
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Kristen Lopez View full list |
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Nell Minow View full list |
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Max O'Connell View full list |
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Michal Oleszczyk View full list |
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Sheila O'Malley View full list |
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Kristy Puchko View full list |
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Matt Zoller Seitz View full list |
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Allison Shoemaker View full list |
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Justine SmithView full list |
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Peter Sobczynski View full list |
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Collin Souter View full list |
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Scout Tafoya View full list |
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Brian Tallerico View full list |
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Peter Travers View full list |
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Scott Renshaw View full list |
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Sean P. Means View full list |
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Kiko Martinez View full list |
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Scott Marks View full list |
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Mick LaSalle View full list |
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Jeffrey M. Anderson View full list |
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Anita Katz View full list |
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Randy Myers View full list |
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Martyn Conterio View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Matt Singer View full list |
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Tim Grierson View full list |
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Fionnuala Halligan View full list |
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Allan Hunter View full list |
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Wendy Ide View full list |
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Lee Marshall View full list |
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Lisa Nesselson View full list |
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Jonathan Romney View full list |
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Sarah Ward View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Bruce Miller View full list |
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Chuck Bowen View full list |
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Pat Brown View full list |
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Jake Cole View full list |
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Clayton Dillard View full list |
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Ed Gonzalez View full list |
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Christopher Gray View full list |
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Wes Greene View full list |
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Oleg Ivanov View full list |
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Joshua Minsoo Kim View full list |
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Carson Lund View full list |
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Sam C. Mac View full list |
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Niles Schwartz View full list |
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Diego Semerene View full list |
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Derek Smith View full list |
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Keith Uhlich View full list |
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Keith Watson View full list |
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Ethan Anderton View full list |
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Hoai-Tran Bui View full list |
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Chris Evangelista View full list |
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Jacob Hall View full list |
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Ben Pearson View full list |
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Dana Stevens View full list |
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Michael Atkinson View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Chris Hewitt View full list |
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Robbie Collin and Tim Robey View full list |
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Steve Prokopy View full list |
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Dan Jackson View full list |
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Stephanie Zacharek View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Joshua Rothkopf View full list |
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Kirk Baird View full list |
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Peter Howell View full list |
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Jack Shepherd View full list |
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Michael Smith View full list |
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Staff consensus |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Mara Reinstein View full list |
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Brian Truitt View full list |
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K. Austin Collins View full list |
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Richard Lawson View full list |
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Peter Debruge View full list |
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Owen Gleiberman View full list |
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Mal Vincent View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Alissa Wilkinson View full list |
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Bilge Ebiri View full list |
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David Edelstein View full list |
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Alison Willmore View full list |
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Joe Morgenstern View full list |
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Ann Hornaday View full list |
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Sean Burns View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Asher Luberto View full list |
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Jared Bowen View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Michael Glover Smith View full list |
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Rod Pocowatchit View full list |
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Angela Watercutter View full list |
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Jordan Ruimy View full list |
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Alonso Duralde View full list |
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Ethan Alter, Marcus Errico, Kevin Polowy View full list |
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Staff consensus View full list |
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Want more of 2019's best?
View our updated 2019 Film Awards Scorecard for the latest awards and nominations from over 60 different film critic groups and industry organizations.
We are also tracking best of 2019 critic top 10 lists in TV and film. You can also see which films are landing on critics' best movies of the decade lists.
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