1. The Great Beauty: This Best Foreign Film winner out of Italy is set in Rome. It’s modern and involves a successful but lonely film director, I think. It stuck with me. “You know why I eat roots? Because roots matter.”
2. Gravity: There are worse things that can happen to a girl than being lost in space with George Clooney… but being George Clooney, of course he drifted away. Stay for the heavily symbolic final scene.
3. Inside Llewyn Davis: Yes, that’s Oscar Isaac, Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver recording a hit record. My favorite scene in this Coen Brothers film.
4. 20 Feet From Stardom: Yes, a documentary about backup singers is actually pretty good. If for no other reason than to learn the backstory of how Merry Clayton came to sing backup on “Gimme Shelter.” Oscar winner, Best Documentary.
5. Rush: Before there was Ford V Ferrari, there was this other real-life auto racing tale of tragedy and redemption (or at least near tragedy). This one from the 1970s, focusing on the Formula One rivalry between Austrian introvert Niki Lauda and British extrovert and playboy James Hunt.

Never saw Before Midnight or 12 Years A Slave or Frances Ha. Liked The Way, Way Back and Frozen.