LEE DAVIES

If a Terrence Malick film had a plot... The magic hour shots in Chloe Zhao's modern day Western are genuinely breathtaking and completely justified by the genre. From the first scene of protagonist Brady pulling staples out of his head, the film has a painful documentary realism. Later, working in a supermarket, he poses for pictures with fans he earned in the rodeo, and the film poses the question “if a man is defined by what he does, what if he's all washed up at 20?” At the end I was praying for him to make the right choice. A few days later I thought about it whilst driving and burst into tears, again. That's why it's my film of the year.