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The log truck and spaghetti kills are fantastic because they play the long game of establishing multiple possible kills with great editing in between to allow you to take in additional death options or characters who'll be locked into death's design. But there isn't a longer game played than with the clove cigarette, which is smoked by a character who looks a lot like Rachael Leigh Cook, whose earliest claim to fame was the egg and frying pan brain on drugs PSA. (Introducing it on a treill made me giggle.) A smart callback to the longest killer there is, cigarettes.

However, I can't forgive how dumb the "death's design" ing sections are where they "figure out" rules but the script can't even that the cop died first (and memorably) in the opening premonition.

Transfixing when it's a dreamy-hazed alcoholic fever dream. (Particularly all the excuses people make when they're quitting, all the more that pile up when it's two people "quitting" at the same time – "Guinness is food." "It's a 30-year Scotch." We're in Ireland and we just wrecked the car.)

It's a bit plodding and heavy footed when it's a bog monster witch thing. But Jared Harris does an ace Christopher Walken impression and it's very funny to have a house so large that the guests need a map to find grandma.

I kinda wish it was a straight drama about booze, codependency, and returning home as there's a vibrant and chaotic vibe that Michael Almereyda creates that the attempts at horror can't really replicate like the images of two people in love making bad decisions and negotiating compromises that don't add up.

This review may contain spoilers.

As a fairytale (without a fairytale ending), Chicken with Plums is beguiling. A man asks for death after his wife breaks his violin. And the Angel of Death narrates his story: what brought him to that decision, and the fate of his children after his decision.

The lost love of a beautiful woman is at the center of this, of course, as it made him a great violinist when her father rejected him as a marriageable suitor and then later in life when she says she does not him. The woman is named Iran and though she isn't afforded the ability to be a character beyond her beauty, she is an on the nose representation of Iran before the 1979 revolution that is covered in Marjane Satrapi's previous film and graphic novel, Persepolis. She is hope, promise, Western idealism, and ultimately, mournful rejection.

This isn't a man to cry over, however, despite his artistry. He is mean to his wife, negligent to his children, and stuck in the past. Satrapi is sympathetic to his emotional paralysis however there is a stark decision that sticks out to me and that's the use of smoke. His mother (Isabella Rossellini) smokes three packs of cigarettes a day. Her final request before she dies is to smoke a cigarette while her son plays violin in the courtyard. Smoke is emblematic of a soul in this work and it hovers above her grave at her funeral. Onlookers joke that it's all the trapped smoke from her body but her son knows that it his her essence. When he is visited by death, he cowers with a cigarette and asks if he can take back his request of death, but the Angel of Death says he cannot. And at his funeral, there is no smoke cloud that hovers above his grave. His soul evaporated long ago.

The title is an odd choice as it is a meal prepared by his wife whom is shown much scorn in the film. Similar to the central figure, Satrapi doesn't take her side but shows empathy for her toil in their marriage. The act of destroying his violin is a domino effect of many years of serving his ego and abandonment. Chicken and plums is an apology meal, his favorite dish, that he rejects. It’s an interesting choice for the title. A rejected comfort because who it was coming from wasn’t the ideal delivery for the comfort needed at that time. But the end result is no longer desired after. 

Chicken with Plums has all the look of a fairytale with diorama appearances and an all knowing narrator. But the narrator is Death itself. This is a fairytale of early ends. The early end of a romance, the choice to die instead of carrying on, the children who resign themselves to middling lives devoted to gambling and (worse) American mediocrity in Wyoming. It is an Iran that is stopped short of fulfilling its greatness.

Satrapi stops short of politics, however, as the American overthrow of their democratically elected leader (over oil of course) is not mentioned, despite the 60s setting (and apparently a small mention in the graphic novel itself). She also changes the instrument from an Iranian specific instrument (a tar) for the violin. This makes it a more universal tale with Iran (the woman) standing in place for all. Which makes the film a little more surface level than Persepolis but it leaps from the page to the screen with magnificent editing that matches graphic novel page breaks and asides (the smash cut from a shattered window to a flashback feels ripped from the pages but also there’s an animation break and an American sitcom aside with Christian Friedel!!). It's the surface beauty and the dark fairytale nature that makes this linger in the mind longer and affords more grace for the character of Iran as a stand in for larger meaning.

Considered a sophomore slump following the rapturous response for Persepolis, Chicken with Plums was considered a small disappointment at the time but deserves fresh eyes. It's quite wondrous and holds a lot of space for empathy for misguided but decent people.

Wes Anderson's modern-era blitzkrieg pacing continues to prohibit me from taking everything in but The Phoenician Scheme is his most direct film in ages. Not a stacked Russian doll or triptych, but just a single narrative moving forward (and into the afterlife). An absent father makes amends (again) but here Wes is grappling not only with death but capitalism (societal death).

Anderson takes the verse of Matthew 19:24 "it's easier for a Camel to through a needle than for a rich person to go to heaven" and applies it to one of the richest men in the world as he evades constant assassination attempts and attempts to negotiate a deal that will make everyone richer through instigating a famine, then instituting slave labor to rebuild in the 1950s Middle East. There are the Wes Anderson staples, of course, whimsy and peculiarities of course and some of the best design ever put on film (that the main character is named Korda is of course an allusion to the Korda brothers who produced and designed some of the most lavish 30s and 40s films). But what makes it work is the direct focus on a man learning to have values, valuing his life beyond money, and living in the same space as his children.

Benicio del Toro is fantastic and brings the right level of deadpan to Wes's world. His naturally deep and slower delivery provides beats within scenes that want to race past everything. He brings a mediative quality to the film and thus assists Wes Anderson in making this one of his most meditative films on his resume. I couldn't tell you what exactly all happened in the plot, and some of the plot reaches to bring in some of Anderson's friends when the story could function without them, but the ethos in the end, Matthew 19:24 speaks so well to the black-and-white trials before God and his angels. That's the point. The rest is beautiful window dressing. But the essence, the core, is his most solid ground in years. 

(I think seeing this far away from Cannes and not comparing to other Cannes films is helpful.)

Benicio's section of The French Dispatch would've been my favorite Wes film in a decade if it was indeed fleshed out into an entire film. But maybe now it's this? Who knows. So much of modern Wes hits the eyes and ears but misses the heart. This found some moments that managed to hit my heart, despite all the noise and quickness, and I think that primarily has to do with Benicio. Or maybe it's because I'm staring down fatherhood now. Or maybe it's just because a dude explodes in the opening couple of seconds and I wasn't expecting that from Wes Anderson. And it was done in the most Wes way possible that it made me giggle. I guess I'm pretty simple.

The 1958 film is one of my favorite melodramas. I haven't read the source material but let me start with what I liked about Preminger's film.

As performed by Niven and Seberg it's a father whose relationship with his daughter is like a contemporary. They have a similar buoyant energy that feels like she was raised at the dinner table of his playboy gatherings. The women he chose to date and his daughter all kept him young and able to skirt practicality. He missed a growing up phase and his daughter grew up too early. And they are so charismatic together, father and daughter, that it makes you feel uncomfortable. Not like boundaries have been crossed but So Deborah Kerr is the sensible step for him to attempt to grow up and the (type of) woman she replaces denotes a shift in his lifestyle that also means his daughter has more regular rules to follow which sets forth her rebellion. She was raised to have the same joie de vivre that he had in his youth but without the life experience to know that change can be good and boringness brings a stability.

In this version, all the story beats are there. What is lacking is the charismatic father figure. Claes Bang gives the one-note Kyle Chandler stoic performance with no variation of speed. There is no actual wavelength connection with his daughter and so her fussiness and rebellion makes less sense. His younger lover is intellectually stimulating and not just a fun fling. The rush to marriage made sense in a 1950s set story but here it stands out as odd because it doesn't fit with the modern setting and instead it highlights how deadweight Bang is in the narrative and how much a disservice that becomes as the film goes on.

This adaptation was made by an essayist, Durga Chew-Bose, and it's her debut feature. Some of the compositions are absolutely beguiling. The locations are beautiful, of course, but Chew-Bose frames the seaside vacation home with an expansive negative blue sky space and highlights the loungey status of her cast. The soundtrack is fabulous. The costumes are divine. There is a European chilliness despite the warm scenery. And Chloë Sevigny makes Anne her own. A stern, career woman who lost the fun in her youth and became more rigid, but she attempts to be understanding and stretch herself outside of her comfort. With Bang, I'm not sure if its his limit as an actor or the direction he received, but his performance makes the film a pretty and vibey, but keeps it from ever having a gut punch. This is a mellow drama instead of a melodrama. But if the father was more alive, then Cecile's choices to manipulate Anne makes more sense. Instead, there is no tension, and no excitement, just beautiful imagery and some very heady psychological discussions, and not a hint of a relationship that Cecile is attempting to keep for herself.

The film almost works perfectly but it is not able to level up from how it presents itself. "She's practicing how to be looked at," says her father's astute lover at the start of the film. And the film plays like a practice on being viewed and how it's presented, with precise framing, needle drops, and costumes, but it doesn't move past the surface of being watched.

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

"Jerk off, boys, while you still can..."

The Wild Boys is an experimental film where the emphasis on gender fluidity is mostly on fluid secretion and the gender of the actors. It's rather surface level on ideas — unruly, murderous boys are taken to an island where the fruits and vegetation turn boys into girls and perhaps, a doctor thinks, this could solve societal issues — however, there is a beautiful dreamlike quality to the film. Many are comparing it to Guy Maddin, and while the combination of sexual absurdity and old school film techniques of projections and black-and-white photography do conjure up Maddin, Bertrand Mandico is more interested in plot cohesion than vignettes. Very loose plot cohesion but there's more that (ahem) sticks here from scene to scene.

The sections on the boat at sea are intensely effective with a trancelike mood and general unease. There's something about men on the ocean that creates a rather stunning atmosphere — the combination of claustrophobia, the crushing force of the natural world, and rank that brings out the worst of them or the best of them and you're never really sure what it'll be. The island is primarily just a place for odd gross outs like ejaculating plants, hairy fruits, and webs that can only be untangled with urine, etc. But there's some wonderful creature imagery and I like the touch of the entity that the boys say tell them to do terrible things looks like a Michael Hurst crystal skull and is named Trevor. Kitsch!

Definitely one of the wilder #1 film of the year selections from Cahiers du Cinema that doesn't completely work and reaches for some freshman level gender studies and grossness for the sake of grossness but sections of it are quite astounding.

Looking at '90 through the lens of the entire oeuvre (so far)....

Finally, the series ties in more explicitly to the defining and painful ending moments of the original film. However, I think the final episode would have hit a stronger cord if we had seen glimpses of Combo's change over his final prison stay. An episode per season of him in prison, honestly, would've served each season well as a case study of a man in out of prison being rehabilitated. Instead we get his word and Graham's change in tenor and demeanor. All welcome, but it would've been best to see the growth over the course of the installments instead of just taking his (well delivered) words. Taking the rap for the murder of an incestuous father and rapist (i.e. one of the most vile people) carries too much weight for his redemption.

Similarly, Trev is underserved in regards to having an arc beyond being raped by Lol's father. And that she's basically just a plot point doesn't sit well for me with three installments that followed '86 and there was opportunity to give her more (and Gadget less, though Gadget assists with some levity in an otherwise bleak series).

Still, the whole enterprise is an exercise of extending warmth to people who survive the most repugnant situations and just continue to chase dreams of community, love, and (in Shaun's case) art.

I read that Shane Meadows was hoping to film a '00 set installment this year, though the news is pretty outdated. But I'd welcome further resolution, despite thinking that '88 kinda tied everything up as best as possible. But I appreciate how much care and love there is by all involved. Like life it could just keep continuing despite already having the best ending in the books already.

Instead of adding harrowing on top of harrowing, the third entry deals with the wake, as characters tread water, then swim to shore. Heavy waters are still traversed, obviously as Lol starts to open up about her abuse to a caring social worker, but, refreshingly this entry doesn't culminate in an act of violence. This is primarily a love letter to the characters and an attempt to heal together (even as the director stand-in, Shaun is the one who makes mistakes this time, it's an identifiable and relatable confusion of attraction instead of anything heinous). And as Woody becomes an island from the group, Joseph Gilgun takes center stage and delivers a great performance of sorrow, isolation, and an attempt at respectability that explodes in the street.

Lol and Woody. Woody and Lol.

Watched on Wednesday March 13, 2024.

With strong characters and a throughline of sexual abuse across the spectrum of the harrowing and wholly gutting to the comical approach to grooming (which works better than it sounds), this lands really well as a series of television but not completely as a continuation of the original film. For the younger former skinhead troupe of Lol, Shaun, Woody, Smell and Milky — it works really well as a continuation of maturation, attempts to grow up, staving off adulthood, and navigating prospects cut short by circumstances. (Vicky McClure is astounding.)

Where it feels off to me is with the older guys. And the shot at redemption from the ending brutal assault of the first film. Combo (Stephen Graham) at least has the previously established connection/disconnection with Lol but I find it hard to fathom how Milky and the anti-racist skinheads would so easily hang with Banjo in particular. It feels forced to have Banjo and Meggy around as the kids get older and would start to have some friends outside of their circle from two years ago. The only real drawback from the transition from film to series is that everyone carried over when such a terrible event happened it would make sense that a group that already splintered would splinter even further. And the redemption arcs are earned quickly without any seen penance. (Also, dare I say that the political edge of the first film feels absent or at the very least muted by this choice, as well.)

Outside of this grievance, I look forward to watching the rest. Though fucking hell, I've wanted to go watch these films and series for a few years, but only set aside time while off for newborn care. Bleak decision. Egads.

One star for the massive dollhouse set with the open front. Another half star for the concept of open mirrors and moving the camera past walls, all enhancing the artifice of the situation. Insufferable schtick and utter nonsense beyond that. The situation itself, a guy sees his crush kiss a girl and swears off women but then takes a job at a woman's boarding house. The guy is insufferable. The vignettes unfunny.

I don't need a tight plot and can appreciate loose scripts but this doesn't even seem to have an idea beyond the construction of a set. The best thing I can say for this is that it makes me appreciate how Greta Gerwig used it as a starting point to create an approach to Barbieland in a handful of minutes that this cannot even do with a feature runtime. 

Preston Sturges attacked the infantilization of men and American mommyism with wit, which the dollhouse set aside, is more my speed than this style of one-note physical comedy.

I know that massive luminaries like Godard and Scorsese have stamped genius approval on Jerry Lewis which has generated some high-minded (quality) writing on here but if this is Lewis at his best then I'm probably one and done. If his cross-eyed, mumbling, spring jump comedy is “an acquired taste” then it’s gruel for me. And the set is just cinnamon atop gruel.

You haven't gotten any tougher, you're just more miserable.

Following a bellhop who wants to be a cowboy and heads out on an adventure with his hotel's biggest client, Cowboy traverses a similar path about manliness to Delmer Daves' 3:10 to Yuma except with a far looser lasso. Jack Lemmon's hospitality worker witnesses loads of dude Darwinism and tries to be vindictive with a double cross of Glenn Ford after he's been cut at the knees multiple times, and when he thinks he gets the upper hand, Ford's cattleman delivers that great line above that lends some steadiness to an otherwise baggy Western. This isn't a romantic Western, it's a shatter-the-illusion miserable Western. The reason these guys bust into the hotel hooting and hollering for whiskey and women is not because their life is so grand it's because the hotel provides a reprieve from their lifestyle and the constant seesaw battle of egos. They confuse toughness with misery. It's a pretty great observation, probably from the pen of the uncredited Dalton Trumbo. And Lemmon's reaction is all knowing.

A difficult coming of age film, but an extremely well made coming of age film. After routine bullying, a young fatherless boy falls in with some older skinheads in 1983.

That summary should come with some pre-text for modern viewers, however. The group of lads, ranging in age from teenagers to upper 30s, has a splintering moment when the oldest (and just released from prison) goes on a diatribe about England using immigration to push white workers out of jobs and replace them with Pakistani laborers. He spits on the ground and rubs his boot over his discharge and says it's a line for the group, you either agree with him and want to make this group about returning England to people like them or you leave. Half of the younger faction oppose the stance of "Real England" needing to be defended and they leave the room, calling the stance despicable. Later in the film, one of the young men who left after this line of demarcation, a Black member nicknamed Milky (Andrew Shim), reconnects with the older skinhead (Stephen Graham) over his love of Black American soul music and Rude Boy culture. The older man says that's because "he was an original skinhead from the 60s."

This, plus the earlier line to cross moment, made me pause the film to look up the history of the subculture of skinheads. Most anyone my age and younger (and let's be honest for Letterboxd, I'm fuckin' old lol) hears the word "skinhead" and thinks of ne0-Nazi white supremacist racist extremists. Particularly in the USA. Though I just did a quick perusal of historical chronology of skinheads from the Southern Poverty Law Center and Wikipedia, it really opened up what Shane Meadows film is doing. To my surprise, skinheads were originally a subculture for musical taste and style that countered the more commercially viable mod culture of music and fashion with industrial boots and closely trimmed hair for blue collar jobs. The close alignment with blue collar workforce did allow some anti-immigrant violence into some of the groups but primarily its first decade-plus was rabble-rousing groups aligned with Black working class music (American soul, reggae) and British rock n roll without the long hair and free love expressionism of the hippie and glam movements. What I, and probably most, think of when they hear the word skinhead is the mid-80s shift to White racism. As views got more extreme, so too did the haircut, from a simple buzzcut down to raw exposed (white) skin. A subculture that had recognizable uniforms and haircuts was easy to spot at meetings and as White Nationalist groups in England saw more and more in their ranks and with working class grievances growing under Thatcher the look started to signify something more fascist. In the mid-80s, the look started to spring up in the USA and solely with neo-Nazi and White Power groups. There was no previous history until the racist schism had occurred overseas and was exported as a subculture of hate in America.

I dance around spoilers ahead but still probably reveal too much if you haven't seen it; I'll note the end of spoilers

I unclicked pause after taking in this information and everyone who's seen it will know that something deeply repugnant and terrifying happens right after where I paused. Something that reinforces what we all know now. But what Shane Meadows' film is doing is capturing a time of splintering. The youngest member, based on Meadows himself, isn't a sweet boy who is bullied, he is a lost boy who is lashing out at everyone for reasons unknown to him until he hears Graham's nationalist speech. He even attacks Graham for it because what's eating at him is his loss of a father, particularly not having a father while he's being picked on at school and needs guidance on how to channel his anger without fighting but without looking weak. Part of Graham's speech is about the Falklands War, a short British military skirmish on their Argentine island outpost. The young boy's father died in the war that Graham labels pointless and ties it to his thesis on how England should only care about their homegrown, ancestral ties. For the slightly older skinheads who primarily want a group to party and lounge with, a culture war rooted in racism isn't how they want to spend their hours. It's key who stays, it's the youngest boys who need community (and father figures) the most and the oldest men who harbor so much hate and resentment. And the leader is fresh out of prison, where many of his diatribes that he says with great authority (and didn't hold prior to going in) were probably pulled from.

The two rival groups overlap in a few more instances and there are small asides to their differences. The more extreme of them openly handing out pornography as gifts and putting centerfolds directly on the wall of their hangout spots. The previous group had a few young women, but the more extreme group is only male. And once they're gender exclusive, the body of a woman becomes something only to look at, to put on a wall with your mates.

This Is England is looking back but is prescient about so much now. Brexit, young men grouping up hangout to then openly embracing extremism. But it all happens in the story organically and not through the viewpoint of innocence lost. The young boy is a misguided brat and he doesn't become a monster in the end, he gets caught in the wake. And the older man that he's trying to impress and receives approval from, his explosive act of violence is a powder keg moment that starts far earlier in the day, when he's rejected by a woman he expressed his love for and she gives a different response back to him. This rejection sends him to his lads for comfort, but he wants to supply them drugs to get them all together, and during their druggy hangout, what sends him over the edge is a discussion of fathers. He cannot confront what a lack of a father figure has done to him so instead he attacks others. Hatred springs from a moment of lack. The day started with lack in his confession to a woman. What happens in his hangout burst of violence is extra horrific by the actions of their most outwardly racist member, pinning down the boy who wants to stop what's happening and then asking Graham, with a smile on his face, if he can have "his turn" with violence.

Meadows astutely navigates every harrowing beat of this pivotal childhood scene as Graham turns on every man in that room. And attacks the gleeful skinhead and then attempts to regain father status by telling the young boy to stop crying, a man doesn't cry, as he attempts to undo the awful thing he's done.

End spoilers

On IMDb there is a bit of trivia that's a time capsule. It states that Graham's "This Is England" speech is not meant to be the film's stance on what England is but rather a character's state of mind . Obviously, it's more than a state of a character's mind because a decade later Brexit happened and Trump entered the White House. Meadows made the film on the shift of a subculture after a decade as it aligned with political unrest at the time. Viewing this through the vantage point of post-Brexit fallout from isolationism and during a second Trump presidency that openly embraces white supremacy and many men's rights factions as the government tries to isolate more, I can't help but think of what JD Vance and Donald Trump have in common: lack of father approval leading to their open embrace of every group that will exalt them.

The night before our daughter's birth, Kathleen said she'd watch Marie Antoinette again. The reason being because our daughter would end up sharing a birthday with my favorite famous person (Kirsten Dunst, someone who I've always told Kathleen she looks like even though they don't share the same hair color) and Marie Antoinette is my favorite movie of hers. This was an immense gesture from my wife because she rolls her eyes at celebrity obsessions (though she herself has a few, John Turturro and Seth Rogen both get called "my guy" for example). I've been defending my fellow 1982 Taurus Queen Kirsten as an actress for decades and this film in particular, and the culture only recently caught up with her being one of the greats of our generation and Marie Antoinette being a misunderstood masterpiece. I suggested, since she had to wake up early for her last chance of food before surgery, that we put it on after her meal since we’ll be up so early.

What a perfect rise to the occasion this was on that morning. Starting with reclined cake, and innocence in bed, before approaching an arbitrary location where everything in her past life had to be left behind because she'll step onto the same soil but become a completely different person with her whole known left behind. A dreamy and gorgeous way to start such an important morning where our lives would never be the same once we got into our carriage. It was a lovely and dreamy way to start our journey that day. I've always viewed the ending of the film as a commentary on the distance the rich and powerful have from their subjects from birth til death — it's the destruction of her palace that we see, not her beheading or any of the revolutionaries (just a glimpse of faces from the balcony when they march to Versailles) after all — however, this go around, I paid more attention to the start, how her life ended with one step and then a role began which she could only inject life into but never become larger than the role she's meant to play.

I wrote a little more about the film itself in a previous entry. But for this space I'm just shouting loudly and proudly, I love my daughter, I love my wife, and despite returning home a new person (on my birthday, no less), I will always champion Kirsten Dunst and can't wait to show my lil girl all my favorite movies and for her to find her own favorite everything.

Marching in the streets for business women discounts at diners everywhere

Watched on Thursday May 1, 2025.

The documentary is the closest filmmaking medium to how we tell stories. It can shift viewpoints more than a change in POV can in a narrative film: in a documentary you're being told something from someone else, and their manner of speech and attention to detail is likely entirely different than the other subjects.

On first watch, I knew nothing about Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell other than the festival praise it received, and that it was a documentary that the (then) actress, Polley had made about her family and how familial stories were told and altered. I say this because I was new in receiving the story, listening in awe to its first telling to me, whereas, if you've seen the trailer you've been shown the narrative shift and therefore you've now become the listener at the table who's heard the shortened version before, but this time you're receiving the fuller details. (It definitely would work better if you go in cold, on rewatch I didn't it really at all but my wife watched the trailer before we started and I was like oh yeah. That softened it somewhat but the father figure, more later, enhanced it still.)

If you are interested in the craft of storytelling and/or documentaries I highly suggest that you see Stories We Tell. If you prefer dinner parties to dance clubs, I highly suggest that you see Stories We Tell. If you like dissections of the modern family make-up/shake-up, I highly suggest that you see Stories We Tell. If you've ever told a story a hundred times, gotten laughs or awe, but still find ways to inject new life into it, I highly suggest that you see Stories We Tell.

Without giving away the story, Stories We Tell is a feat in honesty and dishonesty. To tell this story (as she makes it clear, it isn't just her story), Polley interviews her family, uses Super 8 footage and appropriately, and hilariously utilizes scenes from Mr. Nobody, the film that Polley was acting in at the time she was finding out family secrets. Polley chose her father, Michael, to be the narrator of this film and reads his own written s of their family history. In a great use of theater, Polley's father being the narrator almost makes him the Greek Chorus, as he chimes in on family situations that should paint him tragic, but instead he seems slightly detached, like viewing from afar, because it's a story about more than him. He also might be in awe of how the other players have handled it, and thus lost the tragic figure that he could have been. Sarah Polley as director and performer, has also detached a little from her own story for the purpose of telling a better one. By making this film, she is not content to just listen, and in of narration, she knows she needs a strong voice, and will ask Michael to reread certain ages to make it clearer, and coach re-enactments of situations, and sometimes even breaking the fourth wall; all to tell the best, most inclusive, personal story.

There is one individual in Stories We Tell who believes that he is the only one that can tell the story in question (about Sarah Polley's mother). If the film has tragic elements, he is the true tragedy of the film, for the same way that sharing stories can bring people together, or make each other understand each other more, it can also distance people from each other if they don't perceive it the same way. Indeed there are many people in the film and in his life that say he doesn't matter outside of a brief moment in the past that he's clung to and Polley has reawakened.

What made her want to tell this story? It seems that this man sending her an email of something he's written upset her but when her father did the same thing, someone she knows better, it inspired her to make this project. Why did she release it? In watching it, it's a love note to her father, whom is a performer. Half of the movie we hear primarily about her mother's desire to perform, her ability to light up a room and how everyone loved her. By letting him narrate in his own words and including some asides about flies and climbing into a swimming pool, Polley is letting film do what an active party cannot: highlight the reasons why you'd want to be around the man who raised her.

My previous Gone Girl entry is close to a decade old. It was answering the prompt Best Ben Affleck Movie Ever as part of a weekly column that I participated in with two other critics for a handful of years, taking a star or theme from a new release to answer the Best ________ Movie Ever. I wrote it before I got married and it felt like a pretty simple answer for Best Ben Affleck Movie of all time.

However, as I months away from my six year wedding anniversary and am ending the anniversary year of wood with a baby due in two days.... I think I can unequivocally call Gone Girl David Fincher's best film he's ever made. It's the perfect thriller. In addition to every way that Affleck is perfectly cast and directed every single role in this is cast to perfection. From giggling Tyler Perry to hinky Kate Dickens to bespeckled Carrie Coon to "I won't force myself on you" Doogie Howser to the "cum-on-me-tits" who dresses like a Mennonite and the pregnant idiot. And of course, the incomparable Rosamund Pike. Plus early roles for Lola Kirke and Boyd Holdbrook! Gone Girl is top to bottom my favorite casting ensemble of the modern era. Everyone falls into the mechanisms of their role in the service of the story and the story only continues to get better every time I watch it. It's as perfectly plotted as Amazing Amy's notebook. And it only gets funnier and funnier with age.

Gillian Flynn and Fincher are dissecting tropes. The career man/mama's boy who grows bitter and turns his wife into a nag once he doesn't have the identity that he'd created for himself as safety. And the idle hands of a bored housewife. They both desire vengeance for the status of their lives and the status of their lives pit them against each other when what they're upset about actually very closely aligns they've just turned the other person into the villain because it's easier to do. The final moments try hard to put the audience squarely in Nick's camp (despite all the bad things he's done which), that he's trapped with a psycho but with each rewatch I come around to thinking Nick and Amy are perfect for each other and they should and can work this out. They merely just started to take each other for granted. A recession created a pathway to safely become a big fish in a small pond, a hero to others. But they need to be heros to each other. For marrying Amazing Amy before the character walks down the aisle. For apologizing to a national television audience for betraying trust. And her assignment? Killing her trust fund counterpart. In the closing moments, she has a new belief in her husband (all that she really wanted) and eventually that belief will wash over him and as he feels on a pedestal again (all that he wants) the more he'll protect her and be able to say the things she wants to hear and then he'll be treated how he wants to be treated. And Margot will just be left wondering what the fuck?/i>

What have we done to each other? Marriage is learning how to cohabitate with erosion and erasure and the completely different person who grows out of the stub of wood. Where do we go from here? A child! The roots dig in and travel deep. It's just the surface area that's pruned. Leaves and limbs fight for sunlight but it's the soil and what's underneath that keeps a foundation strong.

This is a perfectly made thriller, perfectly cast, and it just gets better with each anniversary. I'm glad I realized this before year 15, which is crystal. It'll be crystal clear by then (2029) that Fincher's final theatrical film was his best movie ever. Hitchcock for the never date era. But the wrong lessons were learned. This is an epic portrait of two people who need each other, actually.

He's "tired of being picked apart by women" and she's tired of playing "the cool girl" to attract dudes. The plan is perfect, it's only diverted by two things: some poor folks she thinks she's better than, and his ability to manipulate an audience of women by reflecting on just how he's been picked apart. It's sick! It's perfect!

Watched on Monday April 28, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 27, 2025.

The first three episodes of Dying for Sex really turned me off. Simplistic and overbearing narration, fast cuts, and odd tone. But each episode was under 30 minutes and my wife was enjoying it so I stuck with it. Episode four through 8 is ittedly pretty special. The narration stops, the moments become more meditative, and the exploration of sexual abuse and the inability to orgasm with a partner and the ease of forgiving a parent who cannot forgive themselves so many decades later, is quite well done.

In some ways, this follows the formula of Baby Reindeer of having an isn't this all so crazy introduction as the hook to have you sat by the time it explores sexual abuse. But Baby Reindeer used narration to explain every step of the way and Dying for Sex uses interpretive dance, scenes of friendship, scenes with a mother, sex scenes interrupted by the thoughts that take her mind away from intimacy. Michelle Williams, Jenny Slate, and very briefly Sissy Spacek (as Michelle's mother) all do great work. The sum, ultimately, is better than the parts and it is quite rewarding after a very odd and twee start.

The quest for experiencing the pleasure that seemingly everyone else has experienced but was taken away at such a young age, is not something I've seen explored before. The visual metaphor here can be a little on the nose but as a survivor of abuse I'm way more on board with using visuals to convey to the audience how the mind can drift into the abyss than to using narration and simply walking through a very complicated and confusing feeling that honestly even be conveyed entirely with words. It's mind altering and fractured.

I did laugh and I did cry. (Yes, it's largely a comedy, and it skirts kink-shaming the different sexual experiences that Michelle Williams encounters.)

Watched on Friday April 25, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday April 23, 2025.

I dunno, after fifteen years of hype... Bruce Springsteen's "The River" is a more haunting and emotional experience for me and it covers the same landscape in five minutes total.

Blistering performances aside, it's disappointingly surface level. Well made, well intentioned, but detached. Bookends hold up the middle but this is just bookends without a center. I think for it to emotionally resonate you place your own past (both past relationships and familial upbringing) into the center but the film didn't earn that from me to hand those over.

Both recent watches, but Take This Waltz hit me way harder. This has better aesthetics but it never punched me in the gut like I was promised it would.

Camila's grandmother, who will be locked up on her son's estate for some perceived societal impropriety (likely sexual) asks her young granddaughter "do you like love stories?" The young Camila response "I don't know."

A dozen or so years later, as Camila reads European literature that must be hidden from the government. She revels in reading aloud her grandma's love letters to her in confinement. Like, I, the Worst of All, María Luisa Bemberg keys in on 19th century Argentinian repression of what a woman reads and criticizes the two longstanding paths for a woman: marriage or the convent, nothing else. In I, the Worst of All the real life figure chooses the convent so that she can read and study. In Camila, after the book merchant is killed and the new priest condemns the actions of rogue federalists, the real life figure of Camila chooses to pursue marriage with the priest.

The opening question about enjoying love stories, asked by a woman sent to live in isolation only with her memories and a young woman who will read them aloud to her, gives a different exchange in the middle of the film, once she's decided she loves her confessor.

Another priest confronts her, saying, "Camila, human love has its limitations. Only God’s love is endless."
And Camila turns to a book to read a age in response: "On summer days an insect is born at 9 a.m. and dies at 5 p.m. How can it understand the word “night”?" She then retorts, "You see? How can you understand the word “love”?"

Camila charts the path you'd expect for a true story of oppression that opens to a dedication to the two lovers. It probably pushes the envelope for 1984 in a very Catholic country. What I'm most impressed by is how Bemberg channels her righteous anger like a story a rebellious woman would tell her grandmother.

Watched on Monday April 21, 2025.

With a manic phone call, expertly performed by Tom Wilkinson, played over a montage of late night work without seeing the caller as we hear him get worked up, snarling, and saying more than once "this is not a relapse," Michael Clayton has one of the best cold opens of any legal thriller. Who is this man? My mind was already asg him so many different roles who could be calling the titular fixer. Is he a senator? A high positioned individual on the board? His brother? His mentor? It hangs over the film like a dark cloud for most of the first act. But the key to what makes this film work so well is his forceful declaration that "this isn't a relapse."

Michael Clayton is a legal thriller with a straightforward case in the center but the construction of the script makes it feel labyrinthian. And the script itself, though politically charged and with righteous anger at a large corporation that is knowingly issuing a product that is damaging a community of Wisconsin farmers, is constructed as a labyrinth because that's what undoing addiction is like. It's messy. There are deep rooted causes. Behavior can change but the root of those behaviors squirm out and relocate to different, modified behaviors.

George Clooney is Clayton, an expert fixer of rich client's problems. He is a gambling addict. It's not explained to the audience outright but his vice makes sense because if his job is to help people beat the odds to maintain their wealth and in doing that job he's described as a "miracle worker" then his confidence at beating the odds would naturally move to card tables. It wouldn't move to alcohol because, as we learn, his brother already has destroyed his life through drinking and drugs. Wilkinson, a hugely successful lawyer, has a crisis of conscience when he stops taking his prescribed drugs for an intense bipolar disorder. The pills allowed him to functionally work but the work that he was doing, defending evil corporations from paying fines from settling obvious wrongdoing and changing their products, manifested as a bipolar persona atop his already afflicted disorder. Hence the drinking. Remove the drinking, the coping mechanism, and the need to drink leads to exploration of his mind without his medication. And the epiphany that comes from that is a gap too large to cross.

Both of these men are addicted to power and it has brought them both wealth. But Michael Clayton never ascended. He stayed put for 17 years. Others who are directed by power, such as Tilda Swinton's CEO of the corporation at the center, see this as a character flaw that he never made partner. But perhaps Clayton never pursued becoming a partner because he saw what it did to other men. They lost their soul.

Clayton is on a conquest to save his brother's soul, not by actually engaging with his problems, but by fixing them. By trying to raise the money to buy the family bar back. A place that has the power to feed the addictions of others. Addiction as a legal revenue stream. Faced with $70K owed to the building owner, Clayton returns to gambling tables, leaving early, pocketing a little at a time. Attempted moderation.

But with any thriller that has a solid opening, for it to really pack a wallop, it needs to match it with a stunning ending. And though the middle of Clayton feels like its ping-ponging around too many plots, it does all come together in the end. The reason Clayton pulls to the side of the road one fateful morning. The other brother who works at the NYPD. The young Wisconsin farmer at the center of Wilkinson's complete mental break. But the reason why the final moments work so magnificently is because Clayton is manipulating powerful people's conception of himself. He never made partner. He stayed put. But he's playing with house money: being someone who knows how to keep powerful people in power, he knows how to use their preconceived notions about his lack of power to overpower them. And in the end, what he walks away with is breaking even because breaking even is what saves an addicts soul. Breaking even is 17 years without advancing. Breaking even is a ticket out the door.

The final line, to the taxi driver, "give me $50 worth. Just drive." has entered my top three final lines (Eyes Wide Shut and Haynes' Mildred Pierce, which funny enough both end in moments of giving into addictions to cope, whereas this one does the opposite). With a camera on Clooney's face through the credits, in a very smart directorial debut, Tony Gilroy gifts a calm meditative ending that perfectly matches the snarling, disembodied voice at the start. It ends in silence. Both men wanted to save their souls. The calm one was able to. And he was able to by re-channeling his addictive instincts into a different but familiar approach.

I had so much déjà vu while re-watching Velvet Goldmine for the first time since I watched it a handful of times early in college. At that time, I was starting to dive into David Bowie albums (beyond greatest hits) and Brian Eno and Lou Reed (solo). I was also obsessed with Placebo at the time. And those mates had the most important lines in the whole movie. I being in my apartment in 2002, rewinding and putting captions on for the following, quick spinning roundtable camera exchange, and when it was happening my mind zoomed back there and I did the same thing in 2025:

"I don't think there's much of a future to speak of. We're in a bit of a decadent spiral, aren't we? Sinking fast. Big brother, baby, all the way. Which is why we prefer impressions to ideas. Situations to subjects. Brief lights to sustained ones. Exceptions to types."

Todd Haynes' glam rock opera is a concept album with a classic Citizen Kane structure: a modern day journalist (Christian Bale) investigates the truth behind the enigma after his death (here a disappearance from public view). Except in this version the journalist's own story of sexual awakening as a young man is part of the picture beyond the narrative device. (And he even gets fucked by the Marion Davies of the story, Curt Wild).

The reason that the brief moment of dialogue above by The Flaming Creatures (a band played by Placebo and whose name comes from an iconic queer orgy film from 1963) is so important that it made me pause the film 20 years apart is because what Haynes is working on is how gender fluidity gushes then gets dammed up. We are observing how the 60s free love generation opened up space for outward queerness to emerge in pop culture. Underground clubs that have always existed but the timing was right to go brighter, more excessive, strap manly instruments to their neck and put them on television and across full magazine spreads. Men in makeup, sequin and feathered costumes and platform shoes. The visual of queerness with a confusing rock and roll sound that signified something opposite. Superfuzz big muff. But masks and personas were still required for broad appeal. Alter egos explained by space. The movement was decadent and it flourished at a time of economic downturn and paranoia. As things turned around in the 80s and capitalism showed its strength, this outward visibility became a brief light. An impression that put so many masks on the ideas were lost but the act of masking and cloaking one's self provided the ability to survive the new Capitalist decadence: by retreating, repackaging as a "normal" suit-wearing pop star or leather-jacketed journalist.

The only person who remains the same throughout the entire realm of noise is Ewan McGregor's Curt Wild. Much like Iggy Pop and Lou Reed whom he's an amalgamation of. They might've added some doo wop and Bowie-isms to their recordings but their presentation always remained the same. It's no coincidence that as Curt Wild, Ewan McGregor looks exactly like Kurt Cobain. Who sometimes wore dresses on stage with the thickest stubble that never became a beard and a t-shirt on the cover of Rolling Stone that said "corporate magazines still suck." His music didn't harken back to glam rock in any way but as a young man who was incredibly well-versed across multiple genres of music, he'd been touched and informed by the glitter dust, too. (Nirvana covered a Bowie song on MTV's Unplugged, of course).

The film opens with a spaceship delivery of Oscar Wilde as a baby to a doorstep in Dublin. It's primarily set in the 70s at the height of glam rock. But it's about queerness across the spectrum of time. How it presents itself (Wilde was of course jailed for presenting himself) and how it retreats (even in the most outward and decadent displays via masks and alter egos as a prop to disguise oneself). Brian Slade the more layers of costume he puts on the more he places himself in a castle. The distance from the rooftops where Wild and the future journalist have sex in the open air compared to his walled in performance on a staircase is an immense chasm.

The film hums at the surface with magnificent costume and production design, fabulous songs both original and known, but its the ripples of time that is the idea that pushes Velvet Goldmine (and Jonathan Rhys Meyers and McGregor as the Bowie and Pop/Reed standins) beyond impression. And into sustained light.

Haynes' most queer-forward scripts that he's written himself (so not Carol) adopt all of these devices to maintain an elusive surface. He throws a rock that sinks, but hundreds if not thousands of ideas reverberate in the ripples that extend forward and backward at once. In the words of Eno, Oh cheeky, cheeky. Oh, naughty, sneaky. (You’re so perceptive and I wonder how you knew…)

Watched on Thursday April 17, 2025.

Generally, we say "they don't make movies like this any more" about great films. I tend to say it more for middling studio fare that was out every week that had lots of locations, was competently made, entertained, and even though it had no franchise capabilities, a decent audience would actually showed up. In the case of Savages, it's all of those for a 2.5 hour movie about a throuple caught in between an extremely violent drug cartel and the DEA. Himbo Love Triangle canon, baby!

Oliver Stone's Savages is a good enough yarn, with some very bad narration, but a committed ensemble. And Stone is entertained enough that he even briefly shows up dancing with Blake Lively across a map of !

Aaron Taylor-Johnson is one of the all time great himbo actors, but he hadn't fully embraced it in this early role. He might be one note, but I remain a Taylor Kitsch believer. John Travolta and Salma Hayek are having fun. Blake Lively is properly cast (but her performance feels worse because she narrates the movie, which has some all time bad lines like "I had orgasms, he had wargasms" and something about looking up the word "savages" in the dictionary). But Savages belongs to Benicio del Toro. Adorning a devil's haircut and his eyes and jowls fixed to permanent intimidation, he's abhorrently heinous (very complimentary).

Stone pushes the R-rating about as far as he can but he also takes it too far with Benicio's character, though, with an added reveal that's added for no reason other than shock value. And this thing only needed one ending (but the trailer probably needed more action shots). But ultimately, Savages is big, brawny, and erratic. Willing to follow oddities mixed in with the Tony Scott-isms. And it adds a grimy and nasty edge to the Breaking Bad era of drug trade-ment.

Let's (again) normalize three-star movies as being good for theaters.

Eerie and soooo Austrian (complimentary). Creepy hallways and crafty still camerawork. Elusive and intriguingly unknown beyond polite society is rude, service work creates hostilities between workers because they can’t push back against the guests, and how enhanced this becomes when femininity is overlaid atop that existing culture.

Margot and Lou express their love through ritualistic language, a one-up verbal violence. They use baby voices. She puts his fingers in his mouth when he's on an important work call and he dumps cold water on her in the shower. Their partnership is solid foundationally but their youth in getting married has stunted their ability to actually talk through desires and goals. There are only two instances where we see one of them (Margot) attempt to express her needs. First, the bravery in attempting to seduce him outside of their normal routine. And second, a desire for conversation beyond "how are you doing?" when they go out for their anniversary. They navigate the uneasiness of adult expression and come back to homeostasis not by talking but miming through a window until they can laugh together again. Laughter is how they live together but it only aids a moment. It provides a band aid over a gap and signals that the gap itself doesn't need to be worked on.

We see Margot and Lou host a large family gathering. We see her talk to her older sister-in-law about her sobriety. We get the sense that these two had to grow up fast (marriage and family issues) and so they never really grew up at all.

This summary is not a dismissal of their marriage. Sarah Polley's film has a stranger enter the picture. A handsome and confident man who goes to the lake each morning to think. When given permission to flirt, he delivers a monologue over 2pm martinis that arouses not just Margot but the audience. We know very little about him. We see Margot caught in the throes of a ionate exploration as she tries her best to not hurt her partner. She says this. He is in the center of her thoughts, but she isn't. New people have the power to make us feel seen, to feel sexy, and asking them to do this takes us further from ourselves and places the power of self gratification in other people's hands.

Sarah Polley's film is about emotional cheating. But what it captures magnificently is how routines form. How the lights will always turn on. Margot takes the man who intrigues her to a special place for her: a simple theme park ride that affords her an excuse that she's not transgressing because "it moves to fast for us to make a mistake" but their bodies are close and they lean into and away from each other, staring into each other's eyes and it's a level of intimacy that we don't see in her home life, where her attempt at seducing is to walk behind her husband and to kiss his back. In a brilliant scene, Polley captures the excitement of new forming love which comes with deep eye but then the ride ends and the lights come on and the room looks drab. The setting has moved from something that felt new to something that is familiar and boring. The magic is in the movement, the lighting and the music. 

This plays out in a different way with a spinning camera in a flat. The setting and experiences are new to Margot. The movement of the camera provides excitement and the disguise of change, but eventually the camera stops spinning and reality sets in. For her to find happiness she'll have to learn to make herself laugh. To make herself smile. When she's only with herself.

The start of Take This Waltz is very twee, very meet cute and perhaps too easy (the stranger she flirts with on a work trip lives across the street from her and her husband). Michelle Williams' performance, at times beguiling and at times purposefully grating, feels like a commentary on a manic pixie dream girl done by two women: Polley and Williams. Her cuteness is exhausting but it's revealed to be an attempt to connect, like this is how she learned to exist with a man who is gentle and kind but unwilling to engage with her beyond cohabitation and shared plans. And despite his emotional limitations, Seth Rogen's Lou deserves our sympathy.

Polley is not black and white about the decisions in front of Margot because in the end it's not about either man but just the growth that she needs to make herself. Making the correct move isn't something that smooths over gaps in life. It's learning how to maintain yourself in the presence of gaps. Sarah Silverman says this in a moment of personal weakness, after a mistake, but she knows what power she has given outside of herself (to alcohol). Margot doesn’t understand this yet: And it's the ending shot that reinforces Polley's intent throughout. If someone is afraid of being afraid then what they're really afraid of is being with themselves. That's the gap to work on and another person can't fill it for you.

A solid encapsulation of being in your late twenties and desiring more, but not sure what that more even is... yet. But just knowing that desire for something new is there. That’s waiting for the connection. 

PS hot rickshaw ran so that hot priest could walk.

Watching this post-Adolescence feels like a calling card experiment for Philip Barantini and Stephen Graham with the fluid one-take format. However, confined to a single runtime it feels more like its marching toward an inevitable conclusion than it is earning an ending. While I had some issues with how the one-take sped up naturally slow bureaucratic processes in Adolescence, Boiling Point crystalizes the reason why Adolescence is able to end strong is the natural stopping points of each episode, the age of time — not real time — is the strongest asset.

Should I watch the show for that?

Anora hive and/or Formo friends... Out April 29!

If you purchase the Criterion Collection disc of the 2025 Best Picture winner, on disc two, click "new interview with Sean Baker and Mikey Madison" and that's an interview done and produced by me! Will you see me? No! But you'll see my name in the credits. The disc says in this 2025 interview, but the interview itself was done in August 2024, after winning Cannes but before the fall film festival blitz. Criterion re-edited it in 2025 to re-order the discussion somewhat, include nudity and certain scenes that Letterboxd could not. It looks and sounds great. If title card says "Ani's World," you're in the right place. And though it's very similar to our Scene Breakdown video that it pulls from, it was like watching something entirely new and different even though I was there and worked on our own edit. After producing a massive chunk of Letterboxd's video for the past two years, this must be like what our on screen talent appears, just seeing it out in the world for the first time. Shoe, meet the other foot. It was an honor to be told that Sean wanted to include something from this shoot. And I'm still so giddy about it. Thanks Sean, Spencer and Kim.

It's my first time my name has appeared on a disc or liner notes like this and it's extra special not just because the film is a big deal or that Sean and Mikey are both very nice and giving people (same with the Criterion crew, just so hard working) or that it's on Criterion (!!), the holy grail — but it's for my wife's favorite film of the last couple of years. Hearing "great job" from Kathleen as she then spins into talking about why she loved this movie so much, and using our interview as talking points, while we enter our last days of pregnancy, was like having a closed family and friends screening. It was the best way to step away from work for a little while. Hitting the eject button and making space for it on the shelf.

🤰spring into action🫃

Watched on Thursday April 10, 2025.

Construction paper, spandex, and dioramas: Consider me seduced.

Watched on Tuesday April 8, 2025.

A howlin' wolf of a film. Michael B. Jordan plays twin prohibition era gangsters Smoke and Stack who return to the Delta from Chicago to open up a juke t in the woods of their hometown. Newcomer Miles Caton is a preacher's son who's a guitar virtuoso and desires to take the blues to Chicago himself. (There are many an allusion to Howlin' Wolf here that it actually shows some restraint by not being a werewolf film. Yes I know it's Buddy Guy over the closing credits, another southern guitar player to make it big in Chicago, but I'm just stuck on "Smokestack Lightning.")

There's a slim explanation of some musicians being so talented that when they play their music traverses time in all directions — to ancestors and into the future — which attracts the attention of a wandering Irish vampire. What's fat and juicy here is the long walk to the single location standoff. The road movie template affords beautiful character strokes from Jordan but also Delroy Lindo in particular. I wish that modern movies didn't have to keep VOD and streaming in mind by always starting a horror film or thriller with something that will happen later in the film to make sure you know there will be violence down the road. Because the journey to get where the film is going is the most interesting part of Sinners.

Sinners maneuvers in story form like The Hateful Eight or From Dusk Til Dawn but strums some notes from Black Snake Moan before it becomes a who'll survive the night film. It's a genre mashup of a prohibition-era gangster film, a blues spiritual, and a boggy vampire movie. Even though it traverses a small area, it's also a road movie. The standout moments, for me exist in the cars they drive around the town to assemble the blues band for opening night. Delroy Lindo talking about a night he made a lot of money and the life he spent drinking it away as he stands to sing at the chain gang. He tells a story of Jim Crow torture that befell his friend and Coogler uses sound but stays on Lindo's face which carries the horror without showing the audience what he describes.

It's these types of moments that make Sinners special. You know it's traveling to a violent standoff but Coogler is investing time in creating the landscape of an area and a rich and deep history for so many characters. This is about a community losing its lines over generations. The third act standoff is lackluster in comparison to the character and community work. However the exploration of vampirism providing borderless freedom that a country cannot, is worth the collision. (Props too for the sex positive nature of the film.)

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

Van Helsing's bicycle made me smile.

The ennui and overall vibe was inspiring until I saw that it cost $1M which kinda scuttled some of the DIY pixelated charm. But there is a nice shoegaze-navel gaze spell that's cast here that starts to lose the narrative once it veers from Dracula's daughter to Dracula's daughter's brother. But 90s indie stabs sure are my thing even if it doesn't completely work. But the mood of the first 45 minutes or so is undeniable. NYC is the perfect setting for vampire movies. And this movie explains why right from the start

Nadja is not as steady overall as Abel Ferrera’s similar The Addiction but the highs (Portishead in the alley) ate higher.

Stilted to great effect, Jessica Hausner's religious critique plays like an 80s Rohmer. Post morality, but longing. Set at the base of the Pyrenees where Catholics with afflictions congregate in hopes of a healing miracle, the camera is mostly from a distance from the ill and their nun caretakers. We don't get to know characters intimately but this off-kilter approach helps to position the camera as God's point of view. Zoomed out. Not close to any one person. By using pauses and awkward interactions, we don't know if anyone is "a good person" but that helps the thesis that miracles, if they can even be called miracles, happen at random and not because someone is a "good person." When Sylvie skips the orderly line to be closer to the blessings, she is onished by a nun, politely. Everything in this film is polite. People are just waiting to observe something happen to anyone. They aren't present with each other. They always look around. Small mishaps start to occur when caretakers and patients alike start to take an interest in an Italian soldier who shows politeness to the various patients and nuns. There is a great cut that Hausner does with a conversation in a field with the mountains in the background. She crosscuts to where it looks like no one is there at all, but instead she's zoomed out and two people kissing are obscured by the vastness of nature. Reinforcing the inability to see God's creatures against God's creation.

Lourdes is deceptively simple and deadpan. Like it wants to tell a joke but it politely keeps it to itself. It worked really well for me despite very little happening as everything felt so purposeful in the end. And there isn't a mocking bone in its body, despite the criticisms it leaves you with. There is an aloof and distant kindness here that is revelatory.

"She'll know in about five minutes."

Just a solid all around thriller that's perfectly cast (hoping this is the type of stuff that gets nominated for the Best Casting Oscar and not just whatever movie has a ton of a-listers in it; but I'm not holding my breath). You can smell the location and feel the neighborhood beneath your feet. It takes a turn in the middle that was unexpected and made me wary of how it would navigate the Little Fires Everywhere questions that it was raising but Affleck (both Ben and Casey) deftly land the ending with an absolutely phenomenal final scene that reinforces the establishing neighborhood shoots so perfectly.

I was a big fan of Mystic River the year it was released so the only real reason I suppose I'd have for missing Gone Baby Gone in theaters is just that it wasn't until Gone Girl that I started to like Ben Affleck. Well, turns out Gone Girl just made Benny 2 for 2 with films that started with Gone. (Guess he should've just called his third film Gone by Night, eh?)

In regards to cinematic tropes, being an honest Catholic sure seems like the hardest thing in the world.

I'll start this review with my cynical and clinal response to this limited series. And like the series itself it will build to truths after it engages with the technical gimmick. I think there is a battle of form and content going on here. The continuous take as a format for discussion and buzz vs. the content of what the series is tackling.

The continuous take for the first two episodes is largely a disservice to the material. By following people in hallways it provides the disguise of reality. But this is a series set in a bureaucratic landscape. A girl is murdered just before 10pm. A police squad is consoling her family by midnight and apparently diving into the online behavior of a boy caught on camera simultaneously. By 6am he is arrested by this crew. By 6:10 he is booked. By 6:20 he is given counsel and by 6:40 he is being interviewed about the type of models he follows on the internet and by 6:50 he is shown the damning camera evidence. By staging a police station for a continuous take, which is no doubt a feat of blocking, direction of bodies driving and moving throughout a space, there is an emphasis on efficiency and implausible readiness within a system that detains individuals and builds a case. More time would be spent amassing evidence throughout the day before that interview. More time would be spent with the appointed counsel before the interview. More time would be spent letting the boy think in isolation. But that would require cuts. Everyone performs their role perfectly and concisely for the camera and within the episodic allotment of time.

The hallway provides breaks for streaming viewing behavior, look at your phone until dialogue occurs. My cynical brain immediately starts to think of home viewing ruining attention spans and the long take usage actually aids this while also immersing and impressing the viewer. But the first and second episode are more detached from reality by adhering to the rules of the long take. The shortest fire drill a school has ever endured. The speed of getting back to class after not just a fire drill but an assault of a child at the fire drill. The open window providing an opportunity for a chase. Authority figures stopping where the blocking requires them instead of finishing a conversation like one would in reality or pursuing a child past the stairs. It's all artifice disguised as something real but it keeps you watching. It pushes you into the next episode quickly. It serves its purpose.

The third and fourth episode is what quiets the cynical part of my viewing habit brain. The third episode, contained mostly to a room, starts with a benefit that the police procedural episodes both lack. This is the seventh meeting between the boy and the psychologist. They have a history of interactions we haven't seen. She has amassed enough of a profile to bring two items of food, one that he will like (hot chocolate with marshmallows) and half of a sandwich that she made but his least favorite kind. How will he react to being listened to (the drink) and not listened to (the sandwich). Provided by an authority figure. By a woman.

The camera is unnecessarily fluid, spinning around the room, in the third episode. But the content of the meeting, the dialogue, the reactions, all feel real. The boy wants the woman to like him. He tries to impress her, confide in her, scare her, and also withhold from her. And in the end, he knows that years of his life will be determined by a few minutes of her summary in court. And the conversation that they do have is equal parts frightening for young people in the world and also deeply sad. This boy wants the warmth of attention and feeling of being heard. He is only being heard in regards to his case. It is confusing. His desires are intrinsic and provide some humanity to terminology that can be flippant and dismissive (incel, men's rights). The root of the issue is feeling dismissed and then we use the to disengage as once a boy is that they are unreachable, unteachable and that act is a dismissal that reinforces the harder rhetoric.

"I didn't touch her, most boys would." What he sees as noble in his act of violence contains how young people (going back much further than the Internet) think that what they are mocked for is because everyone else is partaking. Boys lie to impress other boys and this informs boys behavior or false knighthood for not doing something that most of the other boys are boasting about but not doing. The psychologist keys in on something that honestly saved my adolescence from becoming bitter beyond repair. "Can you be friends with a girl?" She asks after he says that he likes girls. And the boy is silent. 

Boys being contained to only boys in friendship creates an eocsystem of half truths and misunderstandings and outright lies. Becoming friends with girls that I didn't fancy or who had a boyfriend already was supremely key to my development. Frustrated with romantic pursuits and believing myself ugly and too short, I briefly stumbled onto some heinous early message boards early on in the internet, but my real friendship with young women gave me the visuals to know that what I was reading was despicable. Kelsey, Emalee, Erika, Kim, none of them deserved the vitriolic descriptions that I'd come across. They listened to me and I listened to them. Some frustrations and confusions would ramp up, for sure, but I always felt like the truest version of myself. Like this boy, my father did not have female friends. But what I liked early on about having female friends was that I didn't feel like I had to perform. I didn't use dirty language. My wit was sharper rather than coarse. Of course, I did have male friends but the only one I got really close to, my best friend, we talked about our feelings 1:1 but we both were different in groups. (20 plus years later, this is all so much harder due to how we project ourselves or interpret people online. There really and truly should be an age limit to all social media.)

I think this entire conversation in the third episode is not only incredibly revealing and truthful but unlike the police section it actually follows similar to the flow of a session, after establishing a rapport, doing research, figuring out how to get the desired reactive moments. The camera is overactive, yes, but this was when the series started to feel real and not like a well-executed gimmick. Erin Doherty and Owen Cooper are fantastic. Doherty, in particular, is underpraised for finding the pauses. And I even think the security guard is decent, despite being on the nose, here is a man who knows he's lesser than the professional. He is trying to engage with her, but she is only trying to work. He's stuck there, has an interest in his job, but she will move onto the next. It's a microcosm of the issues in the room. But he is able to manage it better. It's another cheese and pickle sandwich. His is a book he's reading about his work. Perhaps most interested in the young boy because unlike all the other mental patients at the facility, he's present and he's living in the same existence. She has the freedom to move and he doesn't but the boy will stay a little longer at least. He can be observed. My mother worked at a psychiatric unit for decades and though, again, I think the continuous take makes their interactions feel heavy handed, the content within them feels achingly true to that situation. There is so much turnover in all three of their lives.

The fourth episode is the emotional release from all the tension. You barely notice the camera at all. Like the third episode, there is immense truth in it and there are two incredible performances from Stephen Graham and Christine Tremarco. You can raise your children. But the closed doors with the computer on at 1am can become a different plane of existence. He liked to draw and then he got away from it. Kids just want to feel like they're good at something. But the internet will almost exclusively tell us how bad everyone else is at seeing it. But the series smartly doesn't take a black-and-white approach. It ends in a gray area. So much of being a parent going forward is about teaching what you can control, what you can't, what is real and what is information/communication overload.

What's missing is the perspective of the murdered girl's family. But there are countless limited series about exactly that. I think, smartly, instead of attacking all angles, Adolescence is about boys and men. There is an unevenness to "you agree that she's a bitch, right?" about the dead girl but the exhaustion and mix of horror and sadness on Erin Doherty's face carries just enough of the feminine narrative to allow the series to be what it is: a condemnation of the platformed Andrew Tates of the world but also an attempt to understand and hear those who fall into their traps. Not to absolve them of obvious wrongdoing. But to perhaps help the next potential adolescent who is suffering from the projections of everyone around him and isolating him further. 

Thinking of my therapist and my reaction to when she was pregnant with a boy. Hopeful that she could raise a good one. She has all the tools. But I am constantly aware of my different reaction when a friend is pregnant with a girl or a boy. With a boy there’s a pang of awareness that this will just be harder to not only raise a good son but also for that boy to find good men. An announcement of a new girl bring immediate joy and a new boy, hope. Hope brings more need for . And that’s the final shot here. His father was not a bad father, look at his daughter. But he didn’t know that his son needed guidance. It’s not his fault but we should all know that being better than our fathers isn’t the whole job anymore. There’s more work now for adolescents than ever before.

Watched on Monday March 31, 2025.

A bit too shaggy and elusive (who are these guys and why are they tagging along together this long and far after their meet cute?) to be a freewheelin' god time. But the opening—dusty windswept beauty captured by Vilmos Zsigmond—and the final 20 minutes—stunted male emotional paralysis, the thing you've granted power to force you to grow up being taken away—show that there could've been something great here if the story structure had were tighter and pushed past the ending here. 

Whether it’s a place or a child, men grant power to nouns outside of themselves to prove their worth. There’s something here with two game performers but it can’t capture a similar wayward men two-hander like Midnight Cowboy or The Last Detail, etc. did.

Wings of Desire with rollerblades, a bike helmet, and surprise voices. I'd let Parker Posey and Adrienne Shelly direct my life however they want.

Watching this so close to seeing the original for the first time is definitely a disservice. By ramping up Ben Wade's menace and violence, it makes his decisions toward the end all the more stranger and worse, unearned. The Glenn Ford-Felicia Farr scene in Delmar Daves' film is my favorite scene from any movie I've seen this year. Not only was it expertly performed but it served a purpose of giving a soft center to a hardened man; so too did the scene that preceded it, with his men, ordering them whiskey. Though those scenes exist here, to reveal the sentimentally of the outlaw, it’s not in those scenes. Mangold only gives Russell Crowe bird art for that here. (I did really like how bird art was used, here, though; Crowe annoyed at the heist happening while he has a live specimen for his sketchbook.)

There's also just some extra heft to Van Heflin having to "man up" in the original, like you can see why he's discounted despite being great with a rifle. With Christian Bale, it's more inevitable. The action cooks but it doesn't carry the same feeling of stakes to the more docile man.

This film itself is fine but the only green in its eyes is money. Double the budget of 2007's double neo-Western whammy of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood — but standing half the size. There is a canvas and a scope here, but what made the original really work is how zeroed in on the hero and anti-hero it was where their interplay revealed the transactional shifts in their dynamic.

* stay for the rest of the ride
beautifully shot, erotic, and anyone who says that they're gratuitous can Cary Grant "Get Out!"

also, this is only for consensual moments; wrote a note if a film in question also features assault in addition to a beautifully consensual moment.

(open to suggestions)

• The 4th Man
• All the Sins of Sodom
• American Gigolo
• Ammonite
• Amélie
• Angel Heart
• Annette
• Anomalisa
• Anora
• Babygirl

...plus 174 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Inspired by ages; now with Challengers and Poor Things

• ages
• Two Lovers
• Design for Living
• Bull Durham
• Challengers
• Fight Club
• Poor Things
• Love
• Wild Things
• Y Tu Mamá También

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Look, I've been busy, but here's all the released before 2024 films that I watched in 2024 and gave four stars or higher to.

This was far fewer than previous years as I did more re-watches in 2024

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. War and Peace
2. Sherlock Jr.
3. The General
4. Sense and Sensibility
5. Yellow Sky
6. Seven Chances
7. Fate of a Man
8. A Grand Day Out
9. Frankenweenie
10. The Magdalene Sisters

...plus 8 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films I watched in 2023 that were released prior to 2023 and I gave four stars or higher to.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Labyrinth of Dreams
2. Green Snake
3. La Haine
4. How Green Was My Valley
5. Maborosi
6. Scarface
7. Blonde Death
8. The Taste of Tea
9. 3-Iron
10. Rosa la Rose, Public Girl

...plus 21 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films I watched in 2022 that were released prior to 2022 and I gave four stars or higher to.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Christ Stopped at Eboli
2. White Hunter, Black Heart
3. Edvard Munch
4. Millennium Mambo
5. The Captive
6. All or Nothing
7. The Duke of Burgundy
8. Heaven's Gate
9. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
10. The Gleaners and I

...plus 33 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

not counting new releases. I watched 580 films during 2020, an insane number of movies due to work from home, and also watching a movie while I worked out on my water rower. I will not go overboard in 2021 and part of my resolution will be to watch fewer movies, read more, and write more. However, I did see a lot of great films in 2020 so I'll share that before starting a reduction. If I watch max 3 movies a week in 2021, I'll be doing great (EDIT: I'm doing REALLY BAD right now). So enjoy the spoils of 100 great movies I watched this year because next year hopefully I only watch around 150 total. Thanks for being here during this year, however, as I discovered many a film through you! And not to sound too atoning for how I spent a lot of time in 2020, I was very happy that I was able to devote more time to Old Hollywood than the average year!

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Like Someone in Love
2. The Cremator
3. M
4. Stop Making Sense
5. Rio Bravo
6. Leave Her to Heaven
7. Pickup on South Street
8. Padre Padrone
9. Holiday
10. The Scarlet Empress

...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

not including 2016/17 releases; these were all new to me. and this was my first year on letterboxd, happy to find a number of these movies just by following trustable folks; so a percentage of this is a thank u list, too.

✮✮✮✮ and up

supposedly I watched 450+ movies this year.
these were the best non-2017 movies I watched for the first time in 2017.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Exotica
2. What's Up, Doc?
3. The Heiress
4. The Prowler
5. Make Way for Tomorrow
6. To Live
7. Angst
8. Our Mother's House
9. Dodsworth
10. Meshes of the Afternoon

...plus 73 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

*not new releases, purely repertory. all first time viewings that I gave 4 stars or higher to. i.e. highly recommended.

Out of these 104 films I only ordered them in tiers of five stars, 4.5 and 4. The Letterboxd challenges that I watched them for were from my personal challenges of watching 100+ Movies Directed by Women and cramming in the final month of FilmStruck. The challenges I partook with others were Film School Dropouts and Hooptober. The rest of the films were just a personal watchlist check-off, which is never-ending and ever-growing. All of these challenges were immensely worthwhile.

In 2018, I watched a ton of movies, over-compensating that in 2019 I'm getting married and attempting to write a novel. Have to reduce my watching habits, so I went overboard in 2018. I'm an addictive personality.

Next year, the only challenges I will do is 52 films by African American directors and the annual Hooptober. Look for those lists in 2019 and a sincere thanks to everyone who follows and comments, I really love this community and outlet and I've been introduced to some amazing films and people through it.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. The Age of Innocence
2. Lucifer Rising
3. The ion of Joan of Arc
4. Morvern Callar
5. Come and See
6. Police, Adjective
7. 12:08 East of Bucharest
8. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
9. Joan the Maid I: The Battles
10. Joan the Maid II: The Prisons

...plus 94 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In order from oldest to most recent; please read notes to see whom I spoke with for each movie. I didn't link these yet because it's too many. Many of these you can find by searching the outlet my name and the subject. But from Fandango onward, as I worked more in video, I've been edited out of most interviews — talent comes first! Those types of videos are often my favorite things I've worked on — and not just because I don't have to watch myself. Even though you never get the glory that you might get from being seen — those ones often take more work before the shoot, after the shoot, and in convincing publicists to give you more time for it — because it'll be special.

I started this racket by covering the AFI Film Festival for HuffPost Los Angeles (back when they had city specific verticals). My first interview ever was with Eva Mendes, whom I'd met before when I dog sat her and Ryan Gosling's beautiful German shepherd. It was for a fantastic movie Holy Motors. What luck! Those are #1-3 and then I did a few more interviews for that vertical (for free) until I had enough bylines to get paid as a freelancer.

23 onward was when I became a staff writer/producer. It was a mix of print and video through 54 and then primarily video onward from there (with occasional print interviews). Most videos that I have produced I have cut around myself and made the executions more like I'm not there and it's just the actors/filmmakers talking to the viewer. Here's Jake Gyllenhaal explaining my process for me.

Due to the nature of media — some of the places I published have changed names. Many of the videos I worked on at Fandango (including 100s not with talent) are now under the Rotten Tomatoes Movieclips page but most of them can be found by searching for Fandango due to their social pages. And some only exist on social media pages. Because they’ve been sold a number of times since o left, all of the Collider video interviews are only on Facebook now because there were different video players they used when I was there.

It's so hard to keep track of things so I put this together to feel proud of a lot of work and how far I've come. But also to remind myself how much I've done, who I've been lucky enough to talk to. Some of my favorite films, filmmakers, and actors are on this list. Some I completely forgot I did. What a pleasure to look back!

Here are a few quick favorites:
For Collider, Todd Haynes on Carol and meeting my school boy crush, Natalie Portman and one my favorite filmmakers of all-time, Paul Verhoeven with one of the greatest actresses alive, Isabelle Huppert.

For Fandango, this Jodie Foster career retrospective, plus Barry Jenkins and, at the start of Covid lockdowns, <a href="running Martin Scorsese through Zoom for his interview with Josephine Decker. Two of the bests in my lifetime. Fandango was a treasure trove, really, because this put me in the room with Barry Jenkins, the Safdie Brothers, Adam Sandler, and Margot Robbie for more time than I would've gotten elsewhere. It's part of the road to theaters.

For Letterboxd, though, I get to build their access and have some pretty big wins out of the gate. None bigger than Cate Blanchett for my favorite movie of 2022 and one of my favorite performances of all time. Did a few Spider-Verse executions with Hailee Steinfeld and Shameik Moore, including this one.

Here are whom I've had multiple interviews with:

Guillermo del Toro - 3*
Xavier Dolan - 3**
Robert Eggers - 3****
James Gray - 3***
Rosamund Pike - 3***
Kristen Stewart - 3
Anya Taylor-Joy - 3****

Yahya Abdul-Matteen II - 2
Bong Joon Ho - 2
Roger Deakins - 2
Greta Gerwig - 2*****
Adèle Exarchopoulos - 2******
Hildur Guðnadóttir — 2
Anne Hathaway - 2
Pablo Larraín
Laura Linney - 2
David Oyelowo - 2**
Teresa Palmer - 2
Natalie Portman - 2
Margot Robbie - 2
Léa Seydoux - 2******
Tilda Swinton - 2

Quentin Tarantino*******

* My set visit to Crimson Peak was where I first my future Collider co-workers; it was also unlike other set visits because Guillermo del Toro built the entire set and took us around for lengthy periods at a time. And Jessica Chastain played piano for us. Anyway, I'm bumping GDT up to three because I saw him in the Academy Museum gift shop after I'd booked him on the Letterboxd podcast I co-host and, even though I didn't do that interview, we all had coffee for about 90 minutes and chatted about movies in the Academy Museum coffeeshop. I loved his William Friedkin stories most. Friedkin is absent from my list as is someone unnamed because I’ve only chose to not run an interview due to how the subject would look.. twice in my career. 

** I was selected twice by Xavier Dolan's personal PR twice because I was one of the only interviewers who didn't write with condescension about his youth or highlight moments that could seem credulous. He was very wary of press coverage. I was flown out to London to be the only press on site for his English language debut and I spent a week there and had a pretty rare view of this type of production. I even got to meet Adele on our birthday since we are both May 5 — then I took a flight back to NYC for my birthday dinner. I moved on from Collider by the time it was set to premiere at TIFF and the piece never took shape as it normally would have. But it was a unique experience.

*** In addition to the published interviews, I also hosted a Q&A with James Gray for The Immigrant that you can watch here. Whenever James Gray has a new movie coming out his publicity team is in my inbox on their own, which is a privilege since he's such a fantastic filmmaker.

Similarly, I interviewed Rosamund Pike and David Oyelowo a few times for A United Kingdom so they get bumped up an extra spot.

**** My first interview with Anya Taylor-Joy and Robert Eggers was in Salem, Massachusetts at the site of the witch burnings. A few journalists were put up for a few nights and this included dinner with them as well. Anya told me I looked like Joseph Gordon Levitt and we shared a cigarette outside the premiere. It was special how new she and Robert were to this racket because they hung out with us way more than established industry types would.

***** here's a photo of me ducking out of Greta Gerwig's selfie from the first time I met her — for my favorite movie of her's and Noah's, Mistress America.

****** When I first interviewed Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux it was mere hours after the news broke on the discomfort from their sex scenes in Blue Is the Warmest Color and we were instructed to not ask any questions about that — which was difficult to navigate. But in the lobby is where I met William Bibbianni who became my first editor after that encounter — my first interview outside of a film festival.

******* I've never interviewed Quentin Tarantino for anywhere I've worked but he's the filmmaker I've talked to at greatest length over a few dinners with a friend. Hoping I could put something out there in the world with him sometime. Maybe when he's "retired."

********* Some of these films from set visits — I still need to see. And I'm going to try to see most of the unwatched this year. But my first international travel was through this work. It's not something we get to do post-Covid but I wouldn't be where I'm at without that opportunity. Particularly the Point Break one. But I'll get into that with a review when I finally see it.

• Holy Motors

  Interviewed Eva Mendes for The Huffington Post

• The Central Park Five

  Interviewed Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Jr., and Korey Wise for The Huffington Post

• Laurence Anyways

  Interviewed Xavier Dolan, Melvil Poupaud, and Suzanne Clément for The Huffington Post

• Blue Is the Warmest Color

  Interviewed Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux for The Huffington Post

• Short Term 12

  Interviewed Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., and Lakeith Stanfield for The Huffington Post

• The Punk Singer

  Interviewed Kathleen Hannah for The Huffington Post

• Snowpiercer

  Interviewed Bong Joon Ho and Tilda Swinton for CraveOnline (now called Mandatory)

• The Wolf of Wall Street

  Interviewed Margot Robbie and Jonah Hill for CraveOnline (now called Mandatory)

• The Past

  Interviewed Asghar Farhadi for CraveOnline (now called Mandatory)

• Need for Speed

  Interviewed Aaron Paul for CraveOnline (now called Mandatory) on set got to remind him that we went to the same high school and we had one class together before he graduated. I haven't seen this movie lol.

...plus 179 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

here's all the released before 2019 films that I watched in 2019 and gave four stars or higher to.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Deep Cover
2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
3. Angels in America
4. Looking for Langston
5. Paris Is Burning
6. Demons
7. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
8. The Color of Pomegranates
9. The Apartment
10. School Daze

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

here's all the released before 2021 films that I watched in 2021 and gave four stars or higher to.

same exercise for other years.....
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

1. Throw Down
2. Fanny and Alexander
3. The Battle of Chile: Part I
4. American Movie
5. Late Spring
6. Marty
7. Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
8. Ivan the Terrible, Part I
9. Mauvais Sang
10. A Moment of Innocence

...plus 46 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Named after Fritz Lang, I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; check out what else I nominated for each year if you like in the link.

I change these up from time to time, of course, depending on what I see!

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

• Anora

  2024: Best Original Screenplay, Sean Baker

• The Beast

  2024, US Release Date: Best Adapted Screenplay, Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, and Benjamin Charbit

• Anatomy of a Fall

  2023, Best Original Screenplay: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari

• How to Blow Up a Pipeline

  2023, US Release Date: Best Adapted Screenplay, Daniel Goldhaber, Ariela Barer, and Jordan Sjol

• TÁR

  2022: Best Original Screenplay, Todd Field

• Everything Went Fine

  2022, US Premiere Date: Best Adapted Screenplay, François Ozon and Philippe Piazzo

• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

  2021: Best Original Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi

• The Green Knight

  2021: Best Adapted Screenplay, David Lowery

• The Whistlers

  2020, US Release Date; Best Original Screenplay, Corneliu Porumboiu

• Martin Eden

  2020, US Release Date: Best Adapted Screenplay, Pietro Marcello and Maurizio Braucci

...plus 180 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Based on US Release Dates

1. The Beast
2. The Brutalist
3. Good One
4. No Other Land
5. Emilia Pérez
6. Evil Does Not Exist
7. Kinds of Kindness
8. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
9. Anora
10. Civil War

...plus 81 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Named after Fritz Lang, I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; check out what else I nominated for each year if you like in the link.

I change these up from time to time, of course, depending on what I see!

Number of "Best Director"/"Best Picture" splits: 34/110 (30% of the time)

Multiple Winners:
Terence Malick — 4
Martin Scorsese — 4
+
Alfred Hitchcock — 3
Stanley Kubrick — 3
Fritz Lang — 3
+
Joel Coen — 2
Francis Ford Coppola — 2
Federico Fellini — 2
John Ford — 2
Todd Haynes — 2
Akira Kurosawa — 2
F.W. Murnau — 2
Steven Spielberg — 2
Paul Verhoeven — 2

Winning women directors: Kathryn Bigelow, Sofia Coppola, Claire Denis, Julia Ducournau, Lynne Ramsay, Kelly Reichardt, Agnès Varda

NOTE: All films are slotted in the year they debuted in the USA, because that's how I and most U.S. critics make their best of lists so I've done that through research going way back.

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

• The Brutalist

  2024: Brady Corbet

• May December

  2023: Todd Haynes

• The Fabelmans

  2022: Steven Spielberg

• Titane

  2021: Julia Ducournau

• First Cow

  2020, US Release Date: Kelly Reichardt

• Uncut Gems

  2019: Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie

• If Beale Street Could Talk

  2018: Barry Jenkins

• Phantom Thread

  2017: Paul Thomas Anderson

• Elle

  2016: Paul Verhoeven

• Carol

  2015: Todd Haynes

...plus 101 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Named after Fritz Lang, I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; check out what else I nominated for each year if you like in the link.

I change these up from time to time, of course, depending on what I see!

Countries of origin outside of the USA to "win"
- 13
- 8
ITALY - 5
RUSSIA - 5
UK - 5
JAPAN - 4
SWEDEN - 2
CANADA - 1
CHINA - 1
DENMARK - 1
MEXICO - 1
THE NETHERLANDS - 1
SPAIN - 1
YUGOSLAVIA - 1

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

NOTE: All films are slotted in the year they debuted in the USA, because that's how I and most U.S. critics make their best of lists so I've done that through research going way back... unless a film took more than five years to screen in the USA with English subtitles (examples include Aguirre, the Wrath of God and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, in which case I slotted their UK release years as the first English subtitled releases).

• The Beast

  2024, US Release Date (Country of Origin: )

• May December

  2023 (country of origin USA)

• TÁR

  2022 (country of origin USA)

• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

  2021: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Country of Origin: JAPAN)

• First Cow

  2020; US Release Date (Country of Origin: USA)

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

  2019 (Country of Origin: )

• If Beale Street Could Talk

  2018 (Country of Origin: USA)

• Phantom Thread

  2017 (Country of Origin: USA)

• Elle

  2016 (Country of Origin: )

• Carol

  2015 (Country of Origin: USA)

...plus 95 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Named after Fritz Lang, I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; check out what else I nominated for each year if you like in the link.

I change these up from time to time, of course, depending on what I see!

Multiple Fritz Golden Winners:
Roger Deakins — 4
Jack Cardiff — 3
Emmanuel Lubezki — 3
Vittorio Storaro — 3
Lol Crowley — 2
Benoît Debie — 2
Gianni Di Venanzo — 2
James Wong Howe — 2
Yoshio Miyajima — 2
Harris Savides — 2
Gregg Toland — 2
Haskell Wexler — 2
Vilmos Zsigmond — 2

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

• The Brutalist

  2024: Lol Crowley

• Asteroid City

  2023: Robert D. Yeoman

• White Noise

  2022: Lol Crowley

• The Tragedy of Macbeth

  2021: Bruno Delbonnel

• Ema

  2020 (US Release Date): Sergio Armstrong

• Long Day's Journey into Night

  2019, U.S. Release Date: David Chizallet, Jingsong Dong, and Yao Hung-i

• First Man

  2018: Linus Sandgren

• Blade Runner 2049

  2017; Roger Deakins

• Moonlight

  2016: James Laxton

• Carol

  2015; Ed Lachman

...plus 85 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Named after Fritz Lang, I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; if you don't like what's here you can check out what else I nominated for each year. Also, I change these whenever I like!

*note: I am taking a cue from LAFCA and just doing two lead acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

• The Brutalist

  2024: Best ing Performance #1: Guy Pearce
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• Emilia Pérez

  2024: Best ing Performance #2: Zoe Saldaña
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• May December

  2023 Best ing Performance #1, Charles Melton
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• The Taste of Things

  2023, Best ing Performance #2, Juliette Binoche
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• The Batman

  2022: Best ing Actor, Paul Dano (plus The Fabelmans)

• The Fabelmans

  2022: Best ing Actor, Paul Dano (plus The Batman)

• Saint Omer

  2022: Best ing Actress, Guslagie Malanda

• The Power of the Dog

  2021: Best ing Actor, Kodi Smit-Mhee

• The Tragedy of Macbeth

  2021: Best ing Actress, 2021: Kathryn Hunter

• One Night in Miami...

  2020: Best ing Actor: Leslie Odom Jr.

...plus 186 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; if you don't like what's here go check out what else I nominated for each year.

*note: I am taking a cue from LAFCA and just doing two lead acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

Multiple Fritz Golden acting winners:

Daniel Day-Lewis — 3 (with ing win)
Robert De Niro — 3 (with ing win)
Gene Hackman — 3 (with ing win)
Nicole Kidman — 3 (with ing win)
Jack Nicholson — 3 (with ing win)
Al Pacino — 3 (all leading)
Joaquin Phoenix — 3 (all leading)
Barbara Stanwyck — 3 (all leading)

Humphrey Bogart — 2
Sandrine Bonnaire — 2
Marlon Brando — 2 (with ing win)
Charles Chaplin — 2
Cary Grant — 2
Tom Hanks — 2
Katharine Hepburn — 2
Isabelle Huppert — 2
Robert Mitchum — 2
Paul Newman — 2
Michelle Pfeiffer — 2
Meryl Streep — 2
Denzel Washington — 2

Additional Fritz Golden lists on Letterboxd —
🏆 Best Picture 🏆
🏆 Best Director 🏆
🏆 Best Leading Performance 🏆
🏆 Best ing Performance 🏆
🏆 Best Screenplay 🏆
🏆 Best Cinematography 🏆
(will add more sometime. whenever I have the time. when is there ever time?)

NOTE: All films are slotted in the year they debuted in the USA, because that's how I and most U.S. critics make their best of lists so I've done that through research going long back... unless a film took more than a decade to screen here or the U.K. If so, then those films are slotted in the year of release (primarily this effects many Russian/Soviet films because of the decades long Cold War).

• The Brutalist

  2024: Best Leading Performance #1: Adrien Brody
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• Challengers

  2024: Best Leading Performance, Josh O'Connor Challengers AND La Chimera
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• La Chimera

  2024: Best Leading Performance #2, Josh O'Connor Challengers AND La Chimera
  * taking a cue from LAFCA, the Fritz Goldens are now just doing two lead and ing acting wins from 2023 forward, regardless of gender.

• Poor Things

  2023, Best Leading Performance 1: Emma Stone

  *note: taking a cue from LAFCA and just doing two lead acting wins from this year forward, regardless of gender.

• May December

  2023, Best Leading Performance 2: Natalie Portman, May December

  *note: taking a cue from LAFCA and just doing two lead acting wins from this year forward, regardless of gender.

• Great Freedom

  2022, US Release Date: Best Actor, Franz Rogowski

• TÁR

  2022: Best Actress, Cate Blanchett

• Annette

  2021: Best Actor: Adam Driver

• Parallel Mothers

  2021: Best Actress, Penélope Cruz

• Da 5 Bloods

  2020: Best Actor, Delroy Lindo

...plus 187 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

based on marketed US release dates; i.e. for me unmarketed Oscar qualifying showings don't count when trailers/press days all point toward a date in the next calendar year.

1. May December
2. Oppenheimer
3. The Taste of Things
4. Poor Things
5. Anatomy of a Fall
6. Return to Seoul
7. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
8. The Holdovers
9. Killers of the Flower Moon
10. Ferrari

...plus 83 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Click "notes" to see who suggested certain films, a few are some Letterboxd heavyweights!

• Ryan's Daughter

  COASTLINE GIRLIES: paired with Margaret's Museum

• Margaret's Museum

  COASTLINE GIRLIES: paired with Ryan's Daughter

• Cool Hand Luke

  JESUS CHRIST POSE: Christmas via unlikely baby Jesus movies (picked by me, paired with 3 Godfathers)

• 3 Godfathers

  JESUS CHRIST POSE: Christmas via unlikely baby Jesus movies (picked by me, paired with Cool Hand Luke)

• Deep Cover

  CAPITALISM IS POLICING: Paired with The Murder of Fred Hampton; chosen by Brian Formo

• The Murder of Fred Hampton

  CAPITALISM IS POLICING: Paired with Deep Cover; chosen by Brian Formo

• Beau Travail

  DANCING AROUND COLONIALISM: paired with Strictly Ballroom; chosen by Sarah Anne Bargatze

• Strictly Ballroom

  DANCING AROUND COLONIALISM: paired with Beau Travail; chosen by Sarah Anne Bargatze

• Pelle the Conqueror

  SHIT SUCKED:De-romanticizing the Historical Coming of Age Story (paired with Sugar Cane Alley; chosen by Emett Casey)

• Sugar Cane Alley

  SHIT SUCKED:De-romanticizing the Historical Coming of Age Story (paired with Pelle the Conquerer; chosen by Emett Casey)

...plus 48 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In addition to work watches, buzzed choices, and family time this is my check these off my watchlist ability list. 80 for the decade of my birth.
Public list for my Taurus sign, holding myself able and wanting a lil applause for it, too. (I reserve the right to change it here n there throughout the year depending on ever-changing vibes.) listed in order of watching, at end of year will order by rating.

• Secrets & Lies
• Hi, Mom!
• The English Patient
• The Celebration
• The Firm
• The Sound of Music
• The Hidden
• Pillow Talk
• Loves of a Blonde
• Millennium Actress

...plus 70 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Based on U.S. Release Dates;

Director of the Decade: Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master (2012), Inherent Vice (2014), and Phantom Thread (2017)

Actor of the Decade: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master (2012), Her (2013), The Immigrant (2014), Inherent Vice (2014), Irrational Man (2015), Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018), You Were Never Really Here (2018), The Sisters Brothers (2018), Joker (2019)

Actress of the Decade: Amy Adams, The Fighter (2010), The Muppets (2011), The Master (2012), On the Road (2012), Her (2013), American Hustle (2013), Man of Steel (2013), Big Eyes (2014), Arrival (2016), Nocturnal Animals (2016), Vice (2018)

New Voice of the Decade: Greta Gerwig; Actress: Greenberg (2010), Damsels in Distress (2012), s Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), 20th Century Women (2016); Screenwriter: s Ha (2013), Mistress America (2015), Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019); Director: Lady Bird (2017), Little Women (2019)

Screenwriter of the Decade: Asghar Farhadi, A Separation (2011), The Past (2013), The Salesman (2016), and Everybody Knows (2019)

Producer of the Decade: Megan Ellison, True Grit (2010), Killing Them Softly (2012), The Master (2012), Spring Breakers (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Her (2013),
American Hustle (2013), Foxcatcher (2014), Everybody Wants Some!! (2016), 20th Century Women (2016), Detroit (2017), Downsizing (2017), Phantom Thread (2017), The Sisters Brothers (2018), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), Hustlers (2019)

Cinematographer of the Decade: Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2011), Arabian Nights (2015), Call Me By Your Name (2017), Suspiria (2018)

Composers of the Decade: Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Social Network (2010), The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Gone Girl (2014), Blackhat (2015), Love & Mercy (2015), Mid90s (2018), and Waves (2019)

Editor of the Decade: Marion Monnier, Carlos (2010), Goodbye My First Love (2011), Clouds of Sils Maria (2015), Eden (2015), Things to Come (2016), Personal Shopper (2017)

Production Designer of the Decade: Adam Stockhausen, Moonrise Kingdom (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), While We’re Young (2014), Bridge of Spies (2015), Isle of Dogs (2018), Ready Player One (2018), Widows (2018)

Costume Designer of the Decade: Sandy Powell, Shutter Island (2010), The Tempest (2010), Hugo (2011), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Cinderella (2015), Carol (2015), Wonderstruck (2017), The Favourite (2018), Mary Poppins Returns (2018), The Irishman (2019)

multiples:
Paul Thomas Anderson - 3
Maren Ade - 2
David Fincher - 2
Miguel Gomes - 2
Abbas Kiarostami - 2
Mike Leigh - 2
Joshua Safdie, Benny Safdie - 2
Martin Scorsese - 2

1. Under the Skin
2. The Tree of Life
3. A Separation
4. Like Someone in Love
5. If Beale Street Could Talk
6. Carol
7. Phantom Thread
8. The Act of Killing
9. House of Tolerance
10. Her

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Once again I am going to try to reduce my movie watching this year to try a lil more creative writing (this hasn’t worked, saying this, ever since I got a Letterboxd ). Once again this list is inspired by the always inspiring J, here are the hold-me-able priority films from my watchlist that I will watch—barring coma or death—in 2022. An attempted mix of arthouse and popcorn favorites.

The Gleaners and I
The Outlaw Josey Wales
Walk Hard
Demonlover
Mayerling
Nazarin
Breathless
Everybody's Woman
Millennium Mambo
Golden Eighties
Naked Gun
Hyenas
A Virgin Among the Living Dead
A Better Tomorrow
Scandal
Europa Europa
Duel
Unlawful Entry
Stormy Monday
Christ Stopped at Eboli
Beetlejuice 
Last Embrace
Miracle Mile
Vivre L'Amour
Revenge
The Meetings of Anna
the 5,000 Fingers of Dr T
A Dog Called Vengeance
Nosferatu, the Vampyre
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler
"The Wayward Cloud
The Tall T
Akira
The Duke of Burgundy
Hulk
Edvard Munch
Bullet in the Head
Diner
All or Nothing
Natural Born Killers
A Fish Called Wanda
Rendezvous in Paris
Eureka
Fandango
The Hole
Rescue Dawn
The Cobweb
Home from the Hill
Detour
The Daytrippers
Heaven's Gate
White Hunter, Black Heart
An Autumn Afternoon
The Verdict
The Brown Bunny
Stroszek
Six Degrees of Separation

Updated with reviews as they get crossed off...

• White Hunter, Black Heart
• Christ Stopped at Eboli
• Millennium Mambo
• The Duke of Burgundy
• Edvard Munch
• All or Nothing
• Heaven's Gate
• The Gleaners and I
• The Outlaw Josey Wales
• Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

...plus 50 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Inspired by the always inspiring J, here are the hold-me-able priority films from my watchlist that I will watch—barring coma or death—in 2021. (Reordered at end year by rating)

Updated with reviews as they get crossed off...
The House of Mirth
The Battle of Chile, Part I
The Battle of Chile, Part II
The Battle of Chile, Part III
Ivan the Terrible, Part I
Ivan the Terrible, Part II
Soldier of Orange
Big Night
Dig!
The Parallax View
Late Spring
American Movie
Now, Voyager
Farewell My Concubine
Love Exposure
Days of Being Wild
Dark Victory
Diary of a Chambermaid
Before Sunset
Stalker
Juliet of the Spirits
Center Stage
Strike
Enter the Void
Giant
Comrades, Almost A Love Story
Love and Anarchy
For a Good Time, Call...
Dogfight
Mauvais Sang
Election
Hallelujah I'm a Bum!
A Moment of Innocence
Medicine for Melancholy
Starting Over
Shadow of a Doubt
The New Kids
Boy Meets Girl
Frantz
Yoyo
Rosetta
The Marriage of Maria Braun
8 Women
House
The Fabulous Baker Boys
The Dark Crystal
Bastards
Electra, My Love
Orpheus

1. Ivan the Terrible, Part II: The Boyars' Plot
2. American Movie
3. The Battle of Chile: Part I
4. Late Spring
5. Ivan the Terrible, Part I
6. The House of Mirth
7. Mauvais Sang
8. A Moment of Innocence
9. Shadow of a Doubt
10. The Battle of Chile: Part III

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Season finale alert: listen
The Fritz Goldens
This was all so much work and I can't believe it's over haha — love to the team who worked on it with me and everyone who listened

• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• A Good Person
• Parasite
• Ratatouille
• I Love My Dad
• Crash
• Nomadland
• The Departed
• The Hurt Locker
• The King's Speech

...plus 78 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Hi, it's me shillin' again! But as you can see our After Party gets pretty damn fun here. And we recorded at my house — all of us! In person! An occasion worth sharing (especially since Slim confused the sound of a peacock scream for my cat) (listen). Also The Quiet Girl is in US theaters now!

• The Quiet Girl
• Betty Blue
• The Lives of Others
• To Leslie
• C.H.U.D.
• A Love Song
• Emily the Criminal
• Nanny
• TÁR
• Women Talking

...plus 41 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Hi,
it's our biggest and best episode yet

• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
• Bruiser
• Mafia Mamma
• The Night of the 12th
• Aftersun
• Saint Omer
• Other People's Children
• Stars at Noon
• One Fine Morning
• Pacifiction

...plus 59 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

please lend a hand in filling this up.

• The Whale
• American Beauty
• Eileen
• PVT Chat
• Not Another Teen Movie

MY FULL 2022 AWARDS

Based on US release dates; single city, not-marketed Oscar qualifiers don't cut it for me (hence Petite Maman, and The Worst Person in the World, and a few others being on 2022 instead of 2021). It's all about when the public can see during a full/marketed release, for me.

MY FULL 2022 AWARDS

1. TÁR
2. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
3. The Fabelmans
4. Petite Maman
5. Blonde
6. Crimes of the Future
7. The Banshees of Inisherin
8. Saint Omer
9. Decision to Leave
10. Nope

...plus 74 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Listen listen listen it was a lot of work!

• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Kadaisi Vivasayi
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel
• Moonlight
• La La Land
• After Yang
• Swiss Army Man
• Parasite
• The Godfather

...plus 96 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Hello, this is the Letterboxd podcast I co-host with the lovely Mia and Gemma. We started by chatting with Roger Deakins, no big deal! Give it a listen: boxd.it/1Om

The films that Deakins mention in our chat with him I moved toward the top of this list.

• Alphaville
• Last Year at Marienbad
• The 400 Blows
• The War Game
• The Old Man and the Sea
• Nineteen Eighty-Four
• Empire of Light
• WALL·E
• How to Train Your Dragon
• Chariots of Fire

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I call these THE FRITZ GOLDENS and I do 'em every year for many categories; if you don't like what's here you can check out what else I nominated for each year. Also, I change these whenever I like!

• The Fabelmans

  2022: (in alphabetical order) Jeannie Berlin, Julia Butters, Paul Dano, Chloe East, Oakes Fegley, Mateo Zoryon Francis-DeFord, Judd Hirsch, Keely Karsten, Isabelle Kusman, Gabrielle LaBell, David Lynch, Sam Rechner, Seth Rogen, and Michelle Williams

• King Richard

  2021: (in alphabetical order) Jon Bernthal, Layla Crawford, Aunjanue Ellis, Tony Goldwyn, Daniela Lawson, Dylan McDermott, Demi Singleton, Saniyya Sidney, and Will Smith

• The Assistant

  2020, US Release Date: (in alphabetical order): Juliana Canfield, Alexander Chaplin, Dagmara Dominczyk, Julia Garner, Bregje Heinen, Makenzie Leigh, Matthew Macfadyen, Jonny Orsini, Noah Robbins, Jay O. Sanders and Clara Wong

• Parasite

  2019 (in alphabetical order): Choi Woo-sik, Jang Hye-jin, Jo Yeo-jong, Jung Ji-so, Lee Jeong-eun, Lee Sun-kyun, Park Myeong-hoon, Park Seo-joon, Park So-dam, and Song Kang-ho

• The Favourite

  2018 (in alphabetical order): Joe Alwyn, Olivia Colman, Martin Gatiss, Nicholas Hoult, James Smith, Emma Stone, and Rachel Weisz.

• Lady Bird

  2017 (in alphabetical order): Timothee Chalamet, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Tracy Letts, Jake McDorman, Laurie Metcalf, Saoirse Ronan, Odeya Rush and Lois Smith

• Everybody Wants Some!!

  2016 (in alphabetical order): Temple Baker, Will Brittain, Zoey Deutch, Ryan Guzman, Tyler Hoechlin, Blake Jenner, J. Quinton Johnson, Glen Powell, Wyatt Russell, and Juston Street

• Magic Mike XXL

  2015: (in alphabetical order) Elizabeth Banks, Matt Bomer, Stephen "tWitch" Boss, Donald Glover, Amber Heard, Gabriel Iglesias, Andie MacDowell, Joe Manganiello, Kevin Nash, Adam Rodríguez, Jada Pinkett Smith, Michael Strahan, and Channing Tatum

• Inherent Vice

  2014 (in alphabetical order): Josh Brolin, Hong Chau, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Donovan, Jena Malone, Joanna Newsom, Joaquin Phoenix, Sasha Pieterse, Eric Roberts, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short, Serena Scott Thomas, Katherine Wasterston, Owen Wilson, Michael Kenneth Williams and Reese Witherspoon

• Inside Llewyn Davis

  2013 (in alphabetical order): F. Murray Abraham, Robin Bartlett, Adam Driver, John Goodman, Garrett Hedlund, Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, Ethan Phillips, Jeanine Serralles and Justin Timberlake

...plus 73 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Based on US release dates; subject to change all the time

Note: Petite Maman, and The Worst Person in the World and a few others will be on my 2022 list because they will be released to the public in 2022 (outside of -only screenings or single week qualifiers that aren't marketed but their 2022 releases dates are).

1. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
2. The Green Knight
3. Titane
4. The Souvenir: Part II
5. Undine
6. Drive My Car
7. A Hero
8. Memoria
9. The Tragedy of Macbeth
10. Parallel Mothers

...plus 68 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Moderna, dose one: I just slept.

Moderna, dose two: I felt shivers and a body high; giggly and kinda horny (Love Exposure)

Moderna, does three: pain in my arm (House by the Cemetery) but I made it through three international film festivals on different continents without Covid; superhuman feeling

Moderna, dose four + flu shot: shivers, sleepy as hell (A Date for Mad Mary, Detour, Lawrence of Arabia)

• Love Exposure
• The House by the Cemetery
• A Date for Mad Mary
• Detour
• Lawrence of Arabia

Not (all are) great, Oscar!
(But some are)

1. No Country for Old Men
2. Moonlight
3. Million Dollar Baby
4. Parasite
5. Spotlight
6. The Shape of Water
7. 12 Years a Slave
8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
9. The Hurt Locker
10. Gladiator

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Director of the Decade: Martin Scorsese, Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Kundun (1997), Bringing Out the Dead (1999); runner-up: Wong Kar-Wai

Actor of the Decade: Al Pacino, Dick Tracy (1990), The Godfather: Part III (1990), Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), Scent of a Woman (1992), Carlito’s Way (1993), Heat (1995), The Devil’s Advocate (1997), Donnie Brasco (1997), Any Given Sunday (1999), The Insider (1999)

Actress of the Decade: Gong Li, Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991), The Story of Qui Ju (1992), Farewell My Concubine (1993), Flirting Scholar (1993), To Live (1994), Shanghai Triad (1995), Temptress Moon (1996), Chinese Box (1997), The Emperor and the Assassin (1998)

Screenwriters of the Decade: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998)

New Voice of the Decade: Quentin Tarantino, Director: Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997); Screenwriter: Reservoir Dogs (1992), True Romance (1993), Pulp Fiction (1994), Natural Born Killers (1994), From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), Jackie Brown (1997)

Cinematographer of the Decade:Roger Deakins, Barton Fink (1991), ion Fish (1992), The Secret Garden (1993), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Dead Man Walking (1995), Fargo (1996), Courage Under Fire (1996), Kundun (1997), The Big Lebowski (1998), The Hurricane (1999)

Composer of the Decade: Danny Elfman, Dick Tracy (1990), Darkman (1990), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Batman Returns (1992), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), To Die For (1995), Dead Presidents (1995), Dolores Claiborne (1995), Freeway (1996), Mission: Impossible (1996), The Frighteners (1996), Mars Attacks! (1996), Good Will Hunting (1997), A Simple Plan (1998), A Civil Action (1998), Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Editor of the Decade: Thelma Schoonmaker, Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995), Grace of My Heart (1996), Kundun (1997), Bringing Out the Dead (1999)

Production Designer of the Decade: Luciana Arrighi, Howards End (1992), The Remains of the Day (1993), Only You (1994), Sense and Sensibility (1995), Surviving Picasso (1996), Oscar and Lucinda (1997), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1998), Anna and the King (1998)

Costume Designer of the Decade: Sandy Powell, Edward II (1991), The Crying Game (1992), Orlando (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Michael Collins (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), The Wings of the Dove (1997), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Hilary and Jackie (1998), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Felicia’s Journey (1999), The End of the Affair (1999)

Producer of the Decade: Christine Vachon, Killer Films; Poison (1991), Safe (1995), I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), Happiness (1998), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Boys Don’t Cry (1999)

1. My Own Private Idaho
2. Carlito's Way
3. Jackie Brown
4. Exotica
5. The Long Day Closes
6. Election
7. The Age of Innocence
8. GoodFellas
9. Eyes Wide Shut
10. Joan the Maid I: The Battles

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

in my opinion, babe
(no, I haven't seen a number of blockbusters like F9, Black Widow etc.)
still, the ones that I'm most interested in, Deep Water (an adult erotic thriller!!) and Blonde (NC-17 biopic!!), are being held all the way to 2022.

1. The Green Knight
2. West Side Story
3. Annette
4. Dune
5. The Last Duel
6. Benedetta
7. King Richard
8. The French Dispatch
9. The Suicide Squad
10. No Time to Die

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

(the original posting)
QUICK EASY RULES:

6 countries
8 decades
2 folk horror
4 films from 1981
2 films from your birth year
2 haunted house films
The worst Part 2 that you haven't seen and can access. (I realize that this will take a little work)
1 film set in the woods
1 Kaiju or Kong film (not the new K v. G)
2 Hammer films
3 films with a person of color as director or lead. (excluding Asian)
3 Asian horror films

(yes there are a few embarrassing how did I not see this before movies)

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer

  Decade 1990s

• The Vampire Lovers

  Hammer Film; Decade 1970s

• Dagon

  Horror in the Woods; NOTE: I found Dagon on some horror in the woods lists on Letterboxd and since I like Stuart Gordon I added it but this is entirely a seaside setting. There's a brief moment driving away from the coast into the woods, I suppose, but don't follow my lead for this prompt.

• Roadgames

  4 from 1981; plus country Australia

• Next of Kin

  Horror Movie from the Year of My Birth

• Salomé

  Decade 1920s

• Pumpkinhead

  Folk Horror #1

• The Virgin Spring

  Folk Horror #2; Country Sweden

• The Uninvited

  Decade 1940s; Haunted House #2

• Godzilla

  Kaiju; Decade 1950s; Country Japan; Asian Horror Movie

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I am so pleased to have covered Cannes for Letterboxd and also that I get to drop my appearance on their latest Letterboxd Show podcast episode. From this ranked list, I would recommend pretty much everything through spot 22, so a pretty solid festival in my books!

also, here's me talking on Dutch television about Paul Verhoeven from the festival (I'm Mr. Moustache).

1. Titane
2. A Hero
3. The Souvenir: Part II
4. Drive My Car
5. Memoria
6. The French Dispatch
7. Benedetta
8. The Worst Person in the World
9. Bergman Island
10. Annette

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Vulture's 101 Best Movie Endings has a lot of great entires, but hey, let's add some more!! (But not Amour and no superheroes, this is a space for movies that actually end lol. Like Vulture, I too prefer a downbeat/unexplained/spiteful ending, but there's more space for things that let the heart flutter here, too.) Made it to 101 and still open to some suggestions!

1. Irma Vep
2. Like Someone in Love
3. Two Lovers
4. Blow Out
5. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
6. No Country for Old Men
7. Chinatown
8. Alien
9. Sunset Boulevard
10. The Servant

...plus 91 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Today I appeared on Dutch television to talk about Paul Verhoeven and they were excited that I'd seen all of his Dutch feature films (shoutout to The Lincoln Center for providing me discs of a few I hadn't seen, prior to interviewing Verhoeven).

Read my Cannes diary for more

Basically of Verhoeven’s moves up through Flesh + Blood rule to me; after they have redeeming moments but are below a fuck yeah, PV

1. The 4th Man
2. Starship Troopers
3. RoboCop
4. Elle
5. Black Book
6. Showgirls
7. Basic Instinct
8. Total Recall
9. Katie Tippel
10. Benedetta

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 1990s
Top 2000s
Top 2010s

Director of the Decade: Paul Verhoeven; Spetters (1981, US Release Date), The 4th Man (1984, US Release Date), Flesh + Blood (1985), RoboCop (1987)

Actor of the Decade: Jack Nicholson; The Shining (1980), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981), Reds (1981), The Border (1982), of Endearment (1983), Prizzi’s Honor (1985), Heartburn (1986), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Ironweed (1987), Batman (1989)

Actress of the Decade: Sandrine Bonnaire; A Nos Amours (1984, US Release Date), Police (1985), Vagabond (1986, US Release Date), Under the Sun of Satan (1989, US Release Date), A Few Days with Me (1989, US Release Date), Monsieur Hire (1989, US Festival Premiere)

New Voice of the Decade: Spike Lee, Writer/Director: She’s Gotta Have It (1986), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989); Actor: She’s Gotta Have It (1986), School Daze (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989)

Screenwriter of the Decade: Éric Rohmer; The Aviator’s Wife (1981), A Good Marriage (1982), Pauline at the Beach (1983), Full Moon in Paris (1984), The Green Ray (1986), Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987), Boyfriends and Girlfriends (1987)

Cinematographer of the Decade: Chris Menges
Babylon (1980), Looks and Smiles (1981), Made in Britain (1982), Angel (1982), Local Hero (1983), Comfort & Joy (1984), The Killing Fields (1984), Marie (1985), The Mission (1986), Shy People (1987), A World Apart (1988, directed)

Composer of the Decade: Philip Glass; Koyaanisqatsi (1982), Mishima: A Life in a Four Chapters (1985), Hamburger Hill (1987), Powaqqatsi (1988), The Thin Blue Line (1988), The Church (1989)

Producers of the Decade: Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, and Frank Marshall
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981; Marshall and Spielberg only), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982; Spielberg and Kennedy only), Poltergeist (1982), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985), Fandango (1985), The Goonies (1985), Young Sherlock Holmes (1985), The Color Purple (1985), The Money Pit (1986), Empire of the Sun (1987), Innerspace (1987), *batteries not included (1987), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989; Marshall and Spielberg only), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Always (1989)

Editor of the Decade: Ronald Sanders; Scanners (1981), Videodrome (1983), The Dead Zone (1983), Firestarter (1984), The Fly (1986), Dead Ringers (1988)

Production Designer of the Decade: Dean Tavoularis;
One from the Heart (1981), The Escape Artist (1982), Hammett (1982), The Outsiders (1983), Rumble Fish (1983), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986), Gardens of Stone (1987), Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Costume Designer of the Decade: James Acheson;
Time Bandits (1981), Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983), Brazil (1985), Highlander (1986), The Last Emperor (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

1. Do the Right Thing
2. Come and See
3. Fanny and Alexander
4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
5. The Fly
6. Blow Out
7. A Short Film About Killing
8. The 4th Man
9. RoboCop
10. My American Uncle

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

based on US release dates

Director of the Decade: Sofia Coppola, The Virgin Suicides (2000), Lost in Translation (2003), Marie Antoinette (2006)

Actor of the Decade: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Almost Famous (2000), Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Love Liza (2002), 25th Hour (2002), Owning Mahoney (2003), Cold Mountain (2003), Capote (2005), Mission: Impossible III (2006), The Savages (2007), Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007), Charlie Wilson’s War (2007), Doubt (2008), Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Actress of the Decade: (TIE) Nicole Kidman AND Naomi Watts, Kidman: Moulin Rouge! (2001), The Others (2001), The Hours (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), Birth (2004), Dogville (2004), Margot at the Wedding (2007)

Watts: Mulholland Drive (2001), The Ring (2002), 21 Grams (2003), We Don’t Live Here Anymore (2004), I Heart Huckabees (2004), King Kong (2005), The Painted Veil (2006), Eastern Promises (2007), Funny Games (2007)

Screenwriters of the Decade: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), Intolerable Cruelty (2003), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), A Serious Man (2009)

New Voice of the Decade: Park Chan-wook, Writer/Director: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2003), Oldboy (2005), Lady Vengeance (2006), Thirst (2009)

Cinematographer of the Decade: Emmanuel Lubezki, Ali (2001), Y Tu Mama Tambien (2002), The New World (2005), Children of Men (2006), Burn After Reading (2008)

Composer of the Decade: Howard Shore, The Cell (2000), The Yards (2000), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Panic Room (2002), Spider (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), Gangs of New York (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), The Aviator (2004), A History of Violence (2005), Eastern Promises (2007), Doubt (2008)

Editor of the Decade: Sally Menke, Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Production Designers of the Decade: Dante Ferretti and sca Lo Schiavo, Gangs of New York (2002), Cold Mountain (2003), The Aviator (2004), The Black Dahlia (2006), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Costume Designer of the Decade: Emi Wada, Taboo (2000), Hero (2004), House of Flying Daggers (2004)

1. Morvern Callar
2. Mulholland Drive
3. No Country for Old Men
4. In the Mood for Love
5. The New World
6. Beau Travail

   2000, US Release Date

7. Marie Antoinette
8. Two Lovers
9. The Virgin Suicides

   2000, US Release Date

10. Police, Adjective

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Really good stuff, give it a read <<
I was working from top to bottom entering this, becoming increasingly annoyed that many movies weren't on here but Us was. HOWEVER, I think this is a such a great list and am just recreating it so I can watch the ones that I have not seen yet. Happy in particular to see Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Heiress and multiple documentaries place here. And 9 of the top 10 are pretty perfect, so I guess I'll have to see Big Night!

I've made a list of some great endings that aren't on this list here

1. Beau Travail
2. The Third Man
3. Mother
4. Big Night
5. Some Like It Hot
6. Phoenix
7. 8½
8. Eyes Wide Shut
9. In a Lonely Place
10. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

...plus 91 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

based on US release dates; subject to change all the time.

NOTE: I have Nomadland, Minari etc in 2021 because that's when they truly became available for people to watch on services that weren't through film festivals and it though they might've played a few days via virtual screenings at the Lincoln Center, it just feels really strange to include here in an already strange year. 2021 is also when most coverage for these films will start for general release to the public. So look for those in 2021.

My personal 2020 picks —

Best Actor: Delroy Lindo, Da 5 Bloods
Best Actress: Haley Bennett, Swallow
Best ing Actor: Leslie Odom Jr., One Night in Miami
Best ing Actress: Sandra Hüller, Sibyl
Best Director: Kelly Reichardt, First Cow
Best Original Screenplay: Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons, Mangrove
Best Adapted Screenplay: Pietro Marcello and Maurizio Braucci, Martin Eden
Best Cinematography: Dariusz Wolski, News of the World
Best Film Editing: Chris Dickens, Lovers Rock
Best Original Score: Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Jon Batiste, Soul
Best Production Design: Sergey Ivanov, Beanpole
Best Costume Design: Suzie Harman and Robert Worley, The Personal History of David Copperfield
Best Documentary Feature: Alexander Nanau, Collective
Best Animated Feature: Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, Wolfwalkers
Best First Feature: Darius Marder Sound of Metal
Best Ensemble Cast: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (dir: George C. Wolfe), in alphabetical order: Chadwick Boseman, Dusan Brown, Jonny Coyne, Viola Davis, Colman Domingo, Taylour Paige, Michael Potts, Jeremy Shamos, and Glynn Turman

1. First Cow
2. Martin Eden
3. Collective
4. Lovers Rock
5. The Whistlers
6. Da 5 Bloods
7. Mangrove
8. Sound of Metal
9. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
10. Shirley

...plus 73 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

aka Childhood Classics
inspired by Robert Franco's list; listed in order of release (with the exception of Oh, God!. I’m very impressed with all the young people on here who have starting film school literacy already before 17 years. It took me a little longer, but then again the Internet was quite different in the 90s and Idaho video stores, while robust, didn’t have the same curation engine and copies that Kanopy/Criterion, etc offer.

These are the films that I watched the most and loved the most before I became obsessively interested in film; often times, these are the films that comforted me on sick days because I was a very sick child with asthma and constant bronchitis until I finally hit my growth spurt. White Men Can't Jump will definitely stick out in 1992 as I was only 10, but that's because I was obsessed with basketball and convinced my parents to take me. I ended up getting the sex talk during and after this movie because it had a sex scene. I have a humorous story where I later got to tell Woody Harrelson about this but just reach out to me elsewhere if you're interested in that because it makes people blush.

In putting this together, I can see myself getting more into dramas in 1992 but then torn between serious cinema and watching comedies with friends thereafter; 1993-1995 was when I rewatched The Fugitive, In the Name of the Father, In the Line of Fire, Crimson Tide, The River Wild, Heat and 12 Monkeys over and over on my own because none of my friends liked those types of movies. That's also when I started to use my lawnmowing allowance money to buy VHS tapes and start a collection.

1996 was the year everything changed for me. I quit playing basketball competitively and just stuck to my own driveway because there was a Senior at the high school I was about to start at who molested, assaulted, and threatened me repeatedly at the YMCA. One summer day, my family and I had just gone to watch A Time to Kill and when we got home this person called me at home (he got the number from someone else) to ask why I wasn't at the gym that day. And I was so scared, I dropped competitive basketball entirely. The man is currently serving a life sentence in an Ada County Jail. A Time to Kill was such an odd film to tie that trauma to, it being a vigilante justice against a rape. I can't overstate how big a thing basketball was to me, though, as I was good at it, even though I was so small and asthmatic (the growth spurt was still two years away). Every summer I went to basketball camp. I loved it. But in dropping it, I needed something else. Luckily, I was starting to get into movies on my own and watching them not just socially or when sick but with a more keen eye on the craft. As I transitioned into high school, that soon became my new thing.

The cutoff isn't 1996 simply because of that but because in 1997, I started to become a cinephile. The gateway drug was the one-two punch of L.A. Confidential and Boogie Nights, which led me to Chinatown and film noir and Robert Altman and then foreign film, and subscriptions to Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. I started writing about film in 1998 for the high school newspaper and won an Idaho State Journalism Award two years running before becoming a professional film critic at The Spokesman Review in Spokane, Washington in the year 2000. But, though it became my profession and largest interest age 15 onward, I think a number of these movies shaped my interest in movies, perhaps none more than E.T. for The Quiet Man usage and all the spoof movies I loved (Fatal Instinct, Loaded Weapon, Hot Shots) and would later see the movies they spoofed and I think this awareness guided my love of how movies can speak to each other and other eras, etc.

Heat and The Man from Snowy River were the movies I watched the most with my dad. Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Clueless, Kindergarten Cop, and Beethoven were the ones I watched the most with my sister. Spoofs were for if I had a sleepover. Heart and Souls, City Slickers, and Captain Ron I most associate with my mother. And Jurassic Park was the movie I saw the most in the theaters (3x), while E.T. was probably the one I watched the most on sick days.

Anyway, childhood through the end of middle school, 1996, these are the movies I wore out. Oh and me and some friends recorded ourselves singing the Bryan Adams' Robin Hood ballad using paint cans for percussion and brooms for guitar. That is lost to time and just in my memory.

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• The Man from Snowy River
• The NeverEnding Story
• Spaceballs
• The Bear
• Willow
• Big
• The Land Before Time
• The Great Outdoors
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids

...plus 59 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Republishing this to also note that seen before this experience, some additional beloved movies from Black filmmakers are:

Do The Right Thing, The Devil in a Blue Dress, Killer of Sheep, To Sleep with Anger, Mo' Better Blues, Emma Mae, Summer of Sam, Daughters of the Dust, The Watermelon Woman, etc.

Last year, I challenged myself to watch 100 films directed by women that I'd never seen before. And it was a supremely worthwhile challenge, particularly when it came to films in the 90s and early 2000's when I was honing my cinema obsessions and letting established film writers guide what I watched and I missed a number of great films that received mixed or negative reviews at the time (from mostly established old male critics).

This year, I will do a weekly challenge for African American film directors and I imagine I'll encounter a similar bubbling pain of works that never got the proper attention from mainstream media outlets and directors whose careers that were siphoned off to television with only a few films being made in between. Note: I'm specifically saying African American and not black because I want to focus on the Black American experience/directorial viewpoint for this challenge and not open it up to other countries. Each challenge is something for me to reframe my view of film criticism and the necessity of an array of new voices now, the content that gets a shine now, and looking back at where that shine could've been helpful for cinephiles and directors before.

This list will be updated throughout the year with titles that I have seen this year, so this isn't a wishlist. I'll add the tag AfAm52 if anyone wants to take up the challenge themselves. I'm also doing 52 instead of 100 because I need to watch less this year as I've got a lot on my plate for 2019. Thanks for stopping by! Also, watch The Devil in a Blue Dress and To Sleep With Anger for chrissakes.

• Looking for Langston
• Deep Cover
• Chameleon Street
• HOMECOMING: A film by Beyoncé
• Black Mother
• School Daze
• Field Niggas
• Hollywood Shuffle
• Street Wars
• Love Jones

...plus 42 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Based on US Release Dates; subject to change, all the time.

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
2. Uncut Gems
3. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
4. Peterloo
5. Ash Is Purest White
6. The Irishman
7. The Nightingale
8. Asako I & II
9. Ad Astra
10. Parasite

...plus 95 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Happy to Cinemonster again with his list.

(re-arranged to a personal ranking of films after completed)

September 15 onward prompts:
6 films from before 1966 -Beast with Five Fingers, Mad Love, The Pit and the Pendulum, House on Haunted Hill, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, Mill of the Stone Women; includes decades 1930s, 1960s, 1950s

6 countries - Knife of Ice (Spain), Short Night of Glass Dolls (Italy), Demons (Japan), Company of Wolves (UK), The Blood Drinkers (Philipines), Tigers Are Not Afraid (Mexico)

6 decades - a new nightmare, signs, twixt, blood bath, company of wolves, knife of ice

6 films whose year ends in '6' - Blood Bath, Alice Sweet Alice, From Dusk Til Dawn, An Angel for Satan, Grizzly, Beast with Five Fingers

6 films featuring work from the following: John Carl Buechler,
Jack Pierce, Rob Bottin, Screaming Mad George, Lon Chaney
and Carlo Rambaldi: Jack Pierce: I Bury the Living, Humanoids from the Deep, The Wolf Man, Primal Rage, Freaked

The 6th film of a franchise - the curse of la llorona

1 Reptile Rampage film as tribute to Crawl - alligator

2 women directed films - humanoids from the deep, ravenous

The lowest rated film from the 80s that you can access: evils of the night

1 film where the men and women of the church are having a bad day: Alice sweet Alice 

1 Larry Cohen or Dick Miller film: the howling, man with x-ray eyes

1 Classic Universal - wolf man

1 film with Dee Wallace in it - the howling

1 film with a black director or predominantly black cast. (NO JORDAN PEELE) - tales from the hood

1 film from a Mexican director to honor 2 great films from Gigi Saul Guerrero & Issa López. (NO GDT, but it can be GSG or Issa): Tigers Are Not Afraid

And 1 Tobe Hooper Films (There must ALWAYS be a Hooper film): Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2

1. Ravenous
2. Demons
3. Alligator
4. The Pit and the Pendulum
5. Blood Bath
6. The Howling
7. The Company of Wolves
8. Signs
9. Mad Love
10. An Angel for Satan

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

100 (or more 🤞) already well on the way to 52, so I will up the ante.

I've been trying to watch more films by female directors for a few years but here's a weekly structure. I like structure. I will add as I go and this does not include re-watches.

COMPLETED; added a comment below

1. Morvern Callar
2. Zama
3. Fat Girl
4. Wanda
5. The Ascent
6. Madeline's Madeline
7. Sweetie
8. Portrait of Jason
9. Blue Steel
10. Wings

...plus 94 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.