Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here. I’m the damned fool who waits until the year actually ends before rolling out my Best Of list every year, and that’s because I’m often able to squeeze in about a dozen or more films in the last few weeks of December, mostly stuff that others have told me is worth checking out that I either missed when it came out in Chicago or things that simply never came out locally.

This time of year brings a barrage of lists — critics and journalists telling you the 10 best movies you need to see, or need to feel bad for not seeing. Admittedly, many of us in media-land tend to lockstep to the same films, or throw in a requisite foreign outlier.