4. Brooklyn
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% From 168 Reviews In the words of WhatCulture's
film editor Alex Leadbeater they simply do not make them like Brooklyn any more. It might sound cliched, but the film is its own reassuring evidence. The film is timeless, broad in scope but entirely personal to the characters who are its chief concern, and while films with perfect scores are inevitably to be held in some suspicion, Brooklyn appears to be a bona-fide hyperbole buster. Saoirse Ronan is brilliant and wholly deserving of the inevitable Oscar attention, and both Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson are great as her love interests. All-in-all, the film is a stunningly intelligent portrait of a journey to adaptation, slow in gestation but entirely rewarding, and it would be a disservice to try and phrase the praise of its approach any way other than Alex's:
"That feeling of pausing for a moment and assessing your life, seeing how the once so crisp and clear present has become the distant past and the person who occupies those memories is a far cry from the one reliving them? Thats what Brooklyn is. It flawlessly recreates that emotion so gradually over its runtime that its like growing up and discovering the world for first time in microcosm. Beautiful."
Sample Review:"Brooklyn is a simple story affectingly told, bridging the emotional gulf one feels when ambition and home are an ocean apart and love is uncertain in either place." - Peter Howell, Toronto Star