54. TROPICAL MALADY
 
Thailand
dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
world premiere 2004
U.S. release 2005
 

 
Because despite the director's enviable four-for-four track record, and despite the fact that I seem to have a different favorite every week, Malady takes his trademark bifurcated structure into the strangest, most insinuating places, chronicling the tenderest amalgam of friendship and desire in any of his movies, as well as, to date, his only talking baboon.