4v291o

First this rewatch spurred on a fascinating story from my mom about being pregnant with one of my older sisters while on jury for a civil trial of a drunk driving case, then not even an hour later, while driving back to Boulder to pick up some last things from my old place I got pulled over and threatened by a power-tripping, fragile ego cop speed-trapping in an unmarked vehicle for a truly immersive experience with our justice system lol

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

benevolent psychopathology beckons towards us

Somewhere between the torment of sex and the ecstasy of death. Twisted metal and cum-soaked fingers across the upholstery. Bloody hairpieces beside their crime scene victims. Steel and flesh. Steam valves & fluid release. Fertilization through destruction. Liberation through mediation. Energy moving throughout the blacktop and its vessels. The body is evolving. Once it moves beyond us what will remain? The modern affliction. That itch you can’t scratch. A void that can never be filled. Not only a perfect movie but a fitting Rorschach test for an industrialized world afraid to look at itself in the mirror. A road film with no destination.

Jennifer Jason Leigh explored my bioport

“I need me a time machine with a loud radio to take me where I’m going.”

Broke me into a million pieces

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

“You took the motherfucking legendary photo of the Antifa massacre!”

The average Call of Duty campaign mission has sharper writing and better set pieces (I’ll take the Battle of Burger Town over this any day) but more importantly the competence to understand that it’s trashy fun and lean into it in an artfully pulpy way. But I guess my fragile mind is no match for Alex Garland’s self-serious radical UK centrism. Contains many heartfelt scenes of characters bonding over their shared obsession with war crimes yet suspiciously zero scenes of Cailee Spaeny reloading her film camera which really bothered me lol also weirdest soundtrack ever – Sturgill Simpson + De La Soul + Silver Apples??
I love the part where they all look at each other and scream in silence Paul Haggis’ Crash style

“It’s best not to understand anything.”

Kinetic and completely grueling. Sits alongside a small handful of films like Angst and Possession as one of the most exhausting and feral things I’ve ever bore witness to. The way Żuławski transforms the literal into essentially an extended interpretive dance of fornication, murder, sin, hysteria and psychic trauma – actors foaming at the mouth and writhing across the screen like rabid animals – is something that can’t be captured on the page. Theatricality unbound by pure spontaneity, messy and uncontrolled. Walking into one of his movies is giving yourself over to the highest form of shared cinematic madness in the hopes that you might come out the other side intact. And in the process finding some sort of truth within the bounds of physical experience. Dance for your soul. An unbridled death drive for the aristocracy.

Watched on Saturday April 26, 2025.

easily my favorite film at One and Done this year, as soon as Labi Siffre came in I could tell I was in for something great

My first time working on 16mm and far from the last. Premiered last month at the 63rd Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival and at CU Boulder courtesy of Program Council. Not much to say about this one other than that working on it was a breath of fresh air amidst the very rough production of my more ambitious BFA project, which I’m still meditating on and tinkering with but does not resemble my original idea. There’s nothing more liberating than personal filmmaking which is totally spontaneous & intuitive like this though. Hoping to build off the visuals here a lot more in the future and add to it. If you enjoy the music of Grouper, check it out!

Shoutout to everyone who came out to the One and Done Film Festival last night to see it on the big screen, was a really cool experience <3

LINK

Watched on Friday April 25, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 24, 2025.

Goodbye, Solomon Screening Room

“I don’t think you can tell.
How in the world are we gonna know their spirit?”

While it’s not something I like to dwell on or have shared before, I’ve been told I look like a school shooter on the internet and in everyday life more times than I can count. While it should go without saying that it’s in poor taste to say something like that to someone who may actually be battling their own private demons, looking for an identity and a way out and then being told that this is how society views them, it is true that I feel I’m in the target demographic for this sort of thing. Almost every day for the past 10 years I’ve thought about killing myself. Not always a serious contemplation but that unwavering feeling of longing to escape, to self-destruct, of wanting to be considered and loved – to be a part of a world that you don’t feel you belong in. So many times I’ve wanted to cry out to the people around me that come and go through my life like a revolving door of fleeting perfect strangers that I’m in pain and alone and why can no one see that? And then feeling guilty for my own self-pity, knowing how fortunate I’ve been in many ways. Like I’m not allowed to feel sorry for myself when I’ve lived such a privileged existence in the face of genocide, incarceration, addiction, domestic and sexual violence, and so many other of the world’s endless woes that I’ve never had to contend with. So I suffer in silence, and yearn as I always have to be understood.

Van Sant’s floating omniscient camera shows here how every one of us carries these invisible struggles. Every person carries with them the potential for creation and beauty. All search though many never find, and you can never truly know what’s going on inside. The act of reaching out is what ultimately matters. To open yourself up to the lost spirits whose lives crisscross the same fluorescent hallways of youth without a set destination. Empathy requires giving something of ourselves, and connection is the only weapon we wield stronger than violence. 22 years later and nothing has changed. The quiet ambivalence to destruction that has slowly become the norm can be paralyzing if you let it. But despite all of this, I also love in silence. I adore the people in my life. I feel responsible for everyone around me, for whom I want nothing more than happiness and spiritual fulfillment. I would hope that they want the same for me, and to share their essence with me in some capacity. I’m just tired of being silent anymore. I only want to embrace & be embraced. I love every person in this movie, who were raised for slaughter by a diseased culture, facilitated by corporate and political powers who refuse to try to understand & change this ceaseless narrative. Death may hover all around us but love is in us all. Art can invent new ways of seeing and perceiving. Radical change requires a radical imagination.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

On the one hand, you have Anthony Dod Mantle’s grainy, expressionistic digital cinematography and a young Cillian Murphy wandering around post-apocalyptic London to Godspeed You! Black Emperor instrumentals. On the other, this is a deeply corny movie with a lackluster screenplay full of references to Romero’s far superior Dawn of the Dead, has one of the messiest third acts I can , and is directed by king of mid: Danny Boyle (Sunshine & Trainspotting notwithstanding). Truly surprised that he doesn’t get clowned on more. Very disappointing but it had its moments.

Anthropological horror. The most harrowing and honest depiction of apocalypse ever rendered. Part nature documentary on the downfall of mankind, part speculation on the bleak aftermath. Chillingly mundane and all the more real for it. Never thought I’d get the chance to see this on the big screen but the experience only affirmed for me Threads’ grueling, sickly, prescient power. Unbelievable sound design, editing, and use of archival materials to construct a vision of modern life, humanity, and our gradual de-evolution. The patient accumulation of minute details and days ing by building a sense of history & inevitable doom as we see the collateral damage of nuclear war across entire generations. All until that jarring final frame that has haunted me since I first saw it: the daughter of this dark new world holding a child of her own for the first time and looking on in absolute terror. Violence has mutated the face of our collective future beyond recognition.

A film about the importance of finding work-life balance within a volatile, hellish, digital purgatory. I would lean back in discouragement too if every time I tried to eat my digital pizza it disappeared. Gave me the same uneasy feeling as when you have to watch a corporately-produced employee training video and your brain starts to slowly shut down as you dissociate from reality. Also kind of like how I felt as a kid watching that nightmarish Spongebob episode where Squidward is stuck wandering alone through time / different realities and tripping or whatever. Especially liked the part where in order to fit into the work restroom they had to merge into a cube. Also love the idea that this reality got so weird because all they watch is JPEGs and Michael Snow animations from the 50s

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Monday April 14, 2025.

This review may contain spoilers.

Kevin Bacon was born to play a narcissistic ghost rapist who murders his coworkers and eats a ton of Twinkies

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

I’m just an animal looking for a home

A resurrection for the weary, an invitation to experience joy on earth amongst other animals.

How I Met Your Führer

Johnny Rico getting his ass kicked in the mess hall to Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is what Tarkovsky would deem poetic cinema. Love that he can’t bring himself to fuck Dina Meyer until his superior officer gives him permission. The way sex in this movie is tied directly to violence and domination is perfect, Johnny clearly has a bondage fetish of some kind. Also the way organized sports like the future football train the youth of Buenos Aires for war – there’s a shot where their military uniforms are covered in orange and green bug juice and it looks just like their football uniforms, even some of the infantry bugs have orange and black stripes just like one of the football teams earlier in the movie. Genius satire from Verhoeven, the fascist ideologies and aesthetics, brainwashing, and discussion of citizenship are so eerily prescient. Neil Patrick Harris would be leader of the reich. Triumph of the Will by way of Beverly Hills, 90210.

Funny how I feel like I have such a close and storied relationship to this even though it’s the first time I’ve actually seen it. The nearly 6-minute uncut online trailer was incredibly formative for me, used to literally watch it every day for some reason. Was completely taken by the notion of its crisscrossing interconnected stories, each a motif of a larger piece of music that carries characters across time, M83’s Outro perfectly matching the scope of the Wachowskis’ ambition and my idea of what a modern cinematic epic would sound like. It all seemed too good to be true, and I’ve avoided seeing the real thing for all these years in order to preserve the movie that existed in my adolescent dreams and imagination.

Turns out this is certifiably insane and, while not quite as good as the movie I once saw in my head, totally arresting to watch unfold. Stretches of Cloud Atlas absolutely sing, with a rapid montage of revelations around the film’s midpoint being a clear highlight, but the sweeping presentation & grand gestures towards a radical intersectionality, unbound from time, ultimately fall victim to questionable makeup & even more questionable representations of past and future world cultures. Utilizing the composition of the film’s theme, the Cloud Atlas Sextet, as the organizing framework for the various stories was very exciting to me in the first half but ultimately feels abandoned by the film’s end, which really could’ve hit a lot harder considering the dramatic possibilities of its sprawling, Intolerance-esque cutting & structure.

An incredibly flawed but dynamic work, genuinely feels like the Wachowskis got close to reaching some sort of cinematic enlightenment and pulling off one of the greatest movies ever. Still, it’s the kind of dumb sandbox ambition and boundless imagination that the art-form was made for.

Watched on Wednesday April 9, 2025.

“Man’s search for faith, that sort of shit.”

Operates on an entirely different plane of reality. Swayze might be my favorite movie star.

“Okey dokey, doggy daddy.”

Was way too hard on this first time around. Everyone in this movie is a fucking idiot and it’s just too much fun. Illicit affairs at the peak of a rollercoaster, Floyd’s honeybear bongs, purple convertibles, top-lit dances with death, proto-Spring Breakers motel carnage. Of course it steals the Badlands music, that’s the whole point. An indulgent, anything goes, post-modern noir that never takes its eye off of fun. Needless to say, the amazing ing ensemble absolutely carry. Gandolfini, Pitt, Walken, Oldman, and Hopper??

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

“I’m a needle starting at zero, going the other way, a double blank. Then all of a sudden…. someone like you comes along.”

My favorite observation on Mann’s masterwork is and always will be my buddy Frank timing Neil’s third-act indecision with a stopwatch, and finding that his 31-second hesitation to leave Eady upon exiting the airport hotel and spotting Vincent around the corner, breaking his own rule about emotional attachment, ultimately leads to his demise. If you said this is the greatest Hollywood movie ever made I wouldn’t argue. RIP Val <3

“You’re the bright red cherry on top of my sundae.”

Watched on Friday March 28, 2025.

“What happened to the American Dream?
It came true. You’re looking at it.”

Hard to overstate just how much of a revelation this new restoration is. First time I streamed this it was some of the worst video quality I’ve ever sat through – highly compressed / pan-and-scanned / sub-VHS level stuff (some of the visuals actually looked like PS2 graphics). While there can be a certain appeal to that obfuscation, it did such a disservice to the primordial atmosphere Mann and company created here. The Keep absolutely drips with this sense of ancient evil & impending doom. As strange of a follow-up to Thief as it may seem, the opening 25 minutes set to the pulsing, foreboding synths of Tangerine Dream may genuinely be some of the most arresting stuff Mann ever directed. Some truly mind-blowing shots here that didn’t even as anything to me before, felt like I was actually seeing things for the first time. For better and worse, this also brings clarity to the “plot” and stiff performances, which are made slightly less incomprehensible, all their flaws & virtues put on full display, though I must say I had a lot more fun with the fantasy, videogame-like absurdity of it all. Reminded me of 90s FPS games like Quake and Wolfenstein. This went from being an intriguing, minor early Mann curiosity to something I feel weirdly protective over. Honestly really dug the vibe, can see myself venturing back into the keep many more times.

Over the past few years I’ve become a bit of an Animal Collective completionist, going through every studio album, EP, single, live release, and the solo works of each of its four core . Their visual album Oddsac was one of the very last releases I had to get around to experiencing from one of my all-time favorite bands, and I was saving it for a rainy day being that its from such a classic era for the group – sandwiched between their most pop-friendly, successful flagship release Merriweather Post Pavilion and the noisy, glitched, psychedelic sounds of its somewhat contentious studio follow-up Centipede Hz, though apparently they began work on the film as early as 2006 on the heels of the earlier freak-folk albums Sung Tongs and Feels. The result feels like a mash-up of their entire 2000s body of work, recalling the primal, ritualistic forest chants of Ark (fka Here Comes the Indian) over the glitchier, looped production style of 2012’s Centipede Hz. 

Highlights include the hypnotic oasis of Screens, a track I first encountered unexpectedly at a live show in 2022, whose strummed instrumentation grounds the winding psych-pop melodies that earned the band those inescapable Beach Boys comparisons, the ethereal floating reveries of Green Beans, and campy melt-movie slasherism of Fried Camp / Vamp, which sees murderous marshmallows wreaking havoc on a campsite and a vampiric Deakin feasting on the victims before melting into a colorful soup in dawn’s early light.

Oddsac also marked the first major collaboration with Danny Perez, who would go on to direct many of the visuals, aesthetics, and music videos of the band’s future work. Perez’ contributions work to obscure the strange sounds here even further through low-res digital photography and abstractions, filling the whole thing with this fuzzy, garish haze that turns the abstract narrative vignettes into impressions of a low-budget, shot-on-video horror film. It’s about as druggy as AC ever got by my estimation, and while not nearly every idea here works, taken in its totality all the chaos does become quite interesting. Perez’ loud visual style has long been my least favorite part of the Animal Collective experience, but the harsh textures & colors of Oddsac become distorted by the low-resolution in a way that softens their effect. Some sequences function not unlike a hand-painted Brakhage film while others evoke grubby low-budget genre flicks like Street Trash. ittedly very stupid but undeniably hypnotic.

Overall very trippy ion project and fun way to begin capping off the psychedelic, deeply messy and emotional journey this band has taken me on. An endurance test that I already want to return to.

Watched on Friday March 21, 2025.

Only real ones know about this

One of my more recent little atmospheric shorts – screened tonight courtesy of Program Council and GUT-C at The University of Colorado Boulder, and showing again next week as part of the New Voices installation at the Ann Arbor Film Festival

Available to watch here if you’re interested

Watched on Thursday March 20, 2025.

“Till the wheels come off, baby.”

Interpersonal relationships as plate tectonics

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

“Well if this is being nuts, then I don’t ever want to be sane.”

Joyous feels like too small a word here for a lonely country bachelor looking for love such as myself. Helped me see part of my own essence that I’ve been losing sight of with new eyes and speaking it in that I’ve never been able to articulate. The capacity for love is held within everything. Everyone has tones, rhythms, their own station. Equally life-affirming, hilarious, and absurd. Ready to call this one of the great humanist works of art.

I really don’t get this magical realism trend in modern movies. Totally clashes with the sweaty genre energy, horniness, and raw physicality that this worked so hard to establish in the otherwise very solid first act. Much better when it was trying to be Thelma & Louise, yet reminding me of a far better movie doesn’t exactly do you any favors. Katy O’Brian ends up strangely underutilized as a performer, Jena Malone turns into a caricature of domestic trauma, and Ed Harris isn’t fleshed out nearly enough. The entire plot hinges on them burning a car and attracting unwanted attention, on purpose, for some reason? Wanted to love this. The whole anabolic steroid meet-cute was fun.

Fellini channeling Edgar Allan Poe is such a trip. Italian gothic post-punk fever dream with one of the most haunting endings ever. Easily among the strangest movies I’ve seen. Self-reflexive, surreal, disorienting, borderline incoherent in its uniquely heightened theatrics & psychedelic rhythms yet clearly a massive influence on future aesthetics of everything from cinema to ment. Filmmakers like Lynch and Kubrick love to bring up Fellini as a source of inspiration and creative influence yet this is one of the first times I’ve seen a direct connection to their work. Major shades of Lost Highway especially. Kubrick def watched this so many times while making A Clockwork Orange, as did the man Billy Friedkin before shooting those street-level driving sequences in The French Connection + Regan’s childlike innocence being corrupted by demonic forces in The Exorcist.

Truthfully very torn on how I feel about this one after initial viewing, I just thought it was too funny how László is so architect-brained that when he first gets off the boat to mingle with an American woman at a New York brothel he can only flirt by complimenting how shapely and “proportionate” she is as if he’s iring a blueprint design. Dude really can’t turn off his OCD / concrete fetish can he? Lady Liberty is probably his ideal woman.

an artist of the inner landscape

I’m aware I’m doing Videodrome dirty

1. Crash
2. A History of Violence
3. The Fly
4. Eastern Promises
5. Cosmopolis
6. Naked Lunch
7. Dead Ringers
8. Videodrome
9. eXistenZ
10. Crimes of the Future

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“I'll show you light now. It burns bright forever. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now, love.”

1. Inland Empire
2. The Elephant Man
3. Mulholland Drive
4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
5. Twin Peaks: The Return
6. Blue Velvet
7. Lost Highway
8. Twin Peaks
9. Eraserhead
10. Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces

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

“Because it’s so much fun, Jan! Get it!”

1. Jackie Brown
2. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
3. Death Proof
4. The Hateful Eight
5. Reservoir Dogs
6. Kill Bill: Vol. 2
7. Pulp Fiction
8. Inglourious Basterds
9. Kill Bill: Vol. 1
10. Django Unchained

“sellin candy, gettin money”

1. Act da Fool
2. Julien Donkey-Boy
3. Gummo
4. Spring Breakers
5. The Beach Bum
6. Blood of Havana
7. Trash Humpers
8. Mister Lonely
9. AGGRO DR1FT
10. Curb Dance

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“Tell us a story from before we can .”

1. Badlands
2. The New World
3. The Tree of Life
4. Days of Heaven
5. To the Wonder
6. The Thin Red Line
7. Voyage of Time: Life's Journey
8. Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience
9. Knight of Cups
10. Song to Song

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

still don’t think of myself as a filmmaker, yet here we are…. everything of note so far

INNERSPACE & HEX are probably the best ones

• HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY
• Same Skies
• FGH-144
• House of the Setting Sun
• INNERSPACE
• The Honeybears
• HEX
• astral motions

best American filmmaker possibly

1. Heat
2. Thief
3. The Insider
4. Manhunter
5. Public Enemies
6. Collateral
7. Blackhat
8. Miami Vice
9. The Keep
10. The Last of the Mohicans

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

one of our great perverts

1. Phantom of the Paradise
2. Scarface
3. Carlito's Way
4. Blow Out
5. Dressed to Kill
6. Snake Eyes
7. Body Double
8. Femme Fatale
9. Carrie
10. Redacted

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“Anybody interested in grabbing a couple of burgers and hittin' the cemetery?“

1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. The Darjeeling Limited
3. The Grand Budapest Hotel
4. Moonrise Kingdom
5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Rushmore
7. Asteroid City
8. The French Dispatch
9. Fantastic Mr. Fox
10. Bottle Rocket

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

For me, the single most undervalued filmmaker ever

1. Remains to Be Seen
2. Seasons...
3. By This River
4. Last Days in a Lonely Place
5. Psalm II: Walking Distance
6. Clepsydra
7. The Exquisite Hour
8. Rehearsals for Retirement
9. Nocturne
10. Psalm III: Night of the Meek

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

An absolute legend

1. Raging Bull
2. GoodFellas
3. The Wolf of Wall Street
4. The Irishman
5. The Aviator
6. Taxi Driver
7. The Last Waltz
8. Casino
9. The King of Comedy
10. After Hours

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Phantom of the Paradise
2. Killer of Sheep
3. Silent Light
4. A Woman Under the Influence
5. Kwaidan
6. House of Tolerance
7. Wavelength
8. Dreams
9. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover
10. The Last Detail

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 23rd Psalm Branch
• 3:10 to Yuma
• 3:10 to Yuma
• 8½
• The Abyss
• Achala
• After Life
• Aftermath
• AGGRO DR1FT
• AI and I

...plus 190 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

"I have come to realize that I am a pornographer of the cinema. I make films based on what arouses me, what I want to see and feel."

1. Too Old to Die Young
2. The Neon Demon
3. Drive
4. Pusher III
5. Pusher II
6. Pusher
7. Only God Forgives
8. Bronson
9. Valhalla Rising
10. Fear X

1. The Master
2. Inherent Vice
3. Phantom Thread
4. There Will Be Blood
5. Magnolia
6. Punch-Drunk Love
7. Boogie Nights
8. Licorice Pizza
9. Hard Eight

"If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed."

1. Eyes Wide Shut
2. The Shining
3. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
4. 2001: A Space Odyssey
5. Spartacus
6. A Clockwork Orange
7. Barry Lyndon
8. Full Metal Jacket
9. Lolita
10. The Killing

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Immigrant
2. The Lost City of Z
3. We Own the Night
4. Two Lovers
5. The Yards
6. Little Odessa
7. Ad Astra
8. Armageddon Time

One of the greatest artists to ever live, certainly one of the best to work in the movies, and a true pioneer and innovator of the cinematic medium. I am continually astounded by this man and the overwhelming legacy he has created. Francis is the kind of filmmaker whose work you need to revisit multiple times to fully comprehend the vision, so I expect this ranking to shift quite frequently as time goes on [the top 3 in particular are painfully hard to rank]

1. Apocalypse Now
2. The Godfather Part II
3. The Godfather
4. The Cotton Club
5. One from the Heart
6. Bram Stoker's Dracula
7. Twixt
8. The Conversation
9. Tucker: The Man and His Dream
10. Tetro

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

"A pig's gotta fly."

1. Porco Rosso
2. The Wind Rises
3. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
4. Princess Mononoke
5. Kiki's Delivery Service
6. Ponyo
7. Castle in the Sky
8. Spirited Away
9. The Boy and the Heron
10. Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

brewed some poison for you

• Faust
• Mr. Arkadin
• Kwaidan
• Targets
• Let's Scare Jessica to Death
• The Last Picture Show
• The Hot Rock
• Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid
• The Last Detail
• Killer of Sheep

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

“Youse fancy-pants, all a’ youse.”

1. Miller's Crossing
2. Fargo
3. The Big Lebowski
4. The Man Who Wasn't There
5. Burn After Reading
6. Blood Simple
7. Inside Llewyn Davis
8. Barton Fink
9. The Hudsucker Proxy
10. Raising Arizona

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

Scarface on repeat…. constant ya’ll

• Spring Breakers
• Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
• Slacker
• Y Tu Mamá También
• Kaili Blues
• Rebels of the Neon God
• Cemetery of Splendor
• Lone Star
• Naked Lunch
• The Tree of Life

...plus 30 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

2049 is his best and it's not even close

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dune
3. Arrival
4. Polytechnique
5. Dune: Part Two
6. Prisoners
7. Incendies
8. Enemy
9. Sicario

one of the best in the game currently

1. Silent Light
2. Our Time
3. Japón
4. Post Tenebras Lux

ranked by how glazed they are

1. Under the Skin
2. Sexy Beast
3. Birth
4. The Zone of Interest
5. The Fall
6. Strasbourg 1518

sick year honestly

1. Sleep Has Her House
2. Blissfully Yours
3. Tropical Malady
4. Yi Yi
5. Act da Fool
6. Two-Lane Blacktop
7. Husbands
8. Psalm II: Walking Distance
9. The House That Jack Built
10. Showgirls

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 2/60: 48 Heads from the Szondi-Test
• 3 Women
• 15 Song Traits
• 22 Light-Years
• Absent Objects
• Act da Fool
• Aftersun
• Aguirre, the Wrath of God
• Ali
• Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

...plus 222 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

just my favorites

12 | 3 | 2023

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. Memoria
3. The Godfather
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Apocalypse Now
6. The Bridges of Madison County
7. Shoah
8. GoodFellas
9. Remains to Be Seen
10. Sleep Has Her House

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

The modern king of rollercoaster procedural dramas and twisted psychological thrillers.

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
2. The Social Network
3. Gone Girl
4. Zodiac
5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
6. Se7en
7. Panic Room
8. Fight Club
9. The Killer
10. The Game

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Malcolm X
2. Gimme Shelter
3. Seconds
4. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
5. Midnight Cowboy
6. They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
7. Dont Look Back
8. JFK
9. In the Heat of the Night
10. I Am Not Your Negro

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My watchlist is way too long and vast at this point but when it comes down to it, these are the films that I am truly anticipating the most

• After Hours
• AGGRO DR1FT
• Amarcord
• Ashes and Diamonds
• As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty
• Bamboozled
• Basic Instinct
• The Birth of a Nation
• The Black Dahlia
• Blue

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

1. Interstellar
2. Oppenheimer
3. Inception
4. Dunkirk
5. The Dark Knight
6. Batman Begins
7. Tenet
8. Memento
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Following

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Things to do in / around Boulder:

–Hike at Chataqua / Flatirons / around Golden
–Pearl St.
–Ride bikes / walk around town
–Day-trip to Estes / Nederland / Stanley Hotel
–Boulder creek
–Denver actitivies?
–Hang out by the pool
–Listen to music (Deakin, Pharoah, Swans, Avalanches, CAN, Animal Collective, Comus, Velvet Underground, Tangerine Dream, etc.)
–Watch Pharoah's final live performance / YouTube playlist
–Red Rocks show
–Collab on something / workshop ideas
–Go on a road trip? Camping?

• 3 Women
• Act da Fool
• Blood of Havana
• Dennis Cleveland
• Knight of Cups
• Leviathan
• Memoria
• Morvern Callar
• ODDSAC
• Psalm II: Walking Distance

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The Three Sigmas

1. I Wish I Still Believed In God
2. The Lad Goodbye
3. Wanton
4. For Myself, Alone
5. Solitary Comfort
6. Tasteless
7. He Will Find A Way Inside
8. Who's Asking About That?
9. Hi, Lad!
10. Photograph

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

hell of a year

1. Shoah
2. Memoria
3. Stop Making Sense
4. The Fabelmans
5. Crash
6. I Wish I Still Believed In God
7. Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania
8. Old
9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
10. Gimme Shelter

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 4 Little Girls
• 13th
• After the Ball
• After Earth
• After the Facts
• Anticipation of the Night
• Arabic Numeral Series 5
• Arabic Numeral Series 8
• Arabic Numeral Series 18
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

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

Where dreams are born

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. The Fabelmans
3. Minority Report
4. War of the Worlds
5. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
6. Jaws
7. Catch Me If You Can
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark
9. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
10. West Side Story

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Climax
• I Wish I Still Believed In God
• Last Days in a Lonely Place
• Lux Æterna
• Memoria
• Persona
• Seasons...
• The Tree of Life
• Upstream Color

First annual update to my 100 favorite films. There are so many more rewatches I would have liked to get to before posting this but it'll just make for a more interesting list next year. While not entirely different from Volume I, there's still a lot of new stuff on here. Hope you guys check out some of the ones you haven't seen yet and let me know what you think :)

This past year has been absolutely wild for me, with some of the highest highs & lowest lows of my life. I finally tried my hand at making short films – to some degree of success – learned so much about myself, and had many memorable cinematic experiences. In the worst of times, it became more clear to me than ever that artistic expression in its many forms is what really keeps me going. Hopefully some of you have enjoyed my rambling stream-of-consciousness takes. I've had a blast talking to each and every one of you about the movies we love and I look forward to seeing what the future brings us.

-Kyle (7/5/2022)

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. The Master
3. The Godfather
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Apocalypse Now
6. The Bridges of Madison County
7. Raging Bull
8. GoodFellas
9. Roar
10. Gummo

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

The vibes for this summer 😎

• 3 Women
• 92 in the Shade
• After Earth
• All That Jazz
• Amarcord
• Ambulance
• American Graffiti
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Avanti!
• Backbeat

...plus 110 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Remains to Be Seen
2. Too Old to Die Young
3. The Insider
4. Last Days in a Lonely Place
5. The Immigrant
6. Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
7. Nathan for You: Finding s
8. Seasons...
9. Seven Samurai
10. The Place Beyond the Pines

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• 3-Iron
• 21-87
• 35 Shots of Rum
• The Alphabet
• The Amputee
• Andrei Rublev
• Another Round
• Pather Panchali
• Aparajito
• Apur Sansar

...plus 141 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This fall I had the privilege of seeing a number of Stan Brakhage’s archived 16mm films projected courtesy of The University of Colorado Boulder. It’s been such a pleasure getting to explore his work on its intended format thus far and I can’t wait to see what gets shown at future screenings (unranked for now).

• Autumnal
• Sirius ed
• Burial Path
• Blue Value
• Micro Garden
• Coupling
• Lovesong
• Loving
• Persian Series #13
• Persian Series #14

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My favorite films. After 5 years on Letterboxd & countless life-changing viewing experiences, I wanted a way to memorialize the movies I love. The plan is to make an updated top 100 once a year, each year, to see how my tastes evolve over time for as long as this site exists. Each volume will serve as a time capsule to where I was in my life in film at that particular moment, and will remain unchanged after I hit publish. Some years the list may not change almost at all, some years it may end up looking radically different. Fresh rewatches will yield new rewards and some old favorites may fall off along the way. I’m excited to see what new hidden gems I uncover and the new influences that will help shape my understanding of the medium over the course of the next decade.

I’ve had an amazing time using this site since 2016 and met so many cool people here. As I head into this next phase of my life pursuing filmmaking as a career, I’m more ready than ever to make these memories last. Can’t wait to see what the future holds and I sincerely hope you’ll all stick around for the ride. This shit is forever.

-Kyle (5/1/2021)

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence
2. The Master
3. Mulholland Drive
4. The Godfather
5. The Godfather Part II
6. Gummo
7. Apocalypse Now
8. The Apartment
9. Blue Velvet
10. Blade Runner 2049

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

Reviews are linked in the notes.

There were so many good movies I watched this year that, as always, this was a tough list to narrow down. It should go without saying that there are many more films which nearly made the list and after some time and repeated viewings I’m sure things would look wildly different, but right now these are my favorite films that I watched for the first time in 2020:

Honorable Mentions: Apocalypto, Panic Room, Comingled Containers, Mothlight, Stellar, Old Joy, Perfect Blue, Targets, LA 92, Threads, Only Angels Have Wings, The Freshman, Scarface, Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, Big Night, and An Elephant Sitting Still.

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

   REVIEW

2. The Bridges of Madison County

   REVIEW

3. Woman in the Dunes
4. Faust

   REVIEW

5. West Side Story
6. Dressed to Kill

   REVIEW

7. Little Women
8. Tampopo
9. The Last Picture Show
10. Wendy and Lucy

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A year of highs and lows. 2020 was the year I was planning on finally starting to make films rather than just watching them. Film has grown from being a small hobby for me to a large part of my life and something that takes up a sizeable portion of my free time, thoughts, dreams, and aspirations. Unfortunately, due to circumstances outside of my control, the entire world changed in the blink of an eye and after years of aimlessness and indecision I made the hardest choice of my life: to put those dreams on hold and regress back to my old ways.

However amidst this challenging and dark period, I spent that time which would have been so valuable to my personal growth both as an artist and a person re-evaluating who I've been and the person I want to become. And a key part of that reflection and self-work was, you guessed it, watching movies. Not only did I have some great times watching films with my family who I was cooped up with, but also solitary experiences which resonated very deeply with my volatile emotions and developing creativity. While there were a few lengthy periods where I simply couldn’t bring myself to watch anything on of world events and struggling mental health, cinema was always there when I needed it. Through all of it, the good and the bad, I came out with a greater appreciation for this medium which I have grown to love so dearly as well as this wonderful community. Hopefully there's still potential for me as an artist finding his voice, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. Below is the full list of every movie that I saw for the first time in 2020.

Top Directors

Kelly Reichardt - 5 movies
Brian De Palma - 5 movies
Federico Fellini - 3 movies
Éric Rohmer - 3 movies
Howard Hawks - 3 movies
Peter Bogdanovich - 3 movies
George Roy Hill - 3 movies
William Friedkin - 3 movies
Terrence Malick - 3 movies
Stan Brakhage - 14 shorts

By Decade

1920s - 5 movies
1930s - 5 movies
1940s - 2 movies
1950s - 6 movies
1960s - 10 movies
1970s - 15 movies
1980s - 18 movies
1990s - 25 movies
2000s - 16 movies
2010s - 36 movies

Most Significant Rewatches

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - 2.5 stars to 4 stars
Raging Bull - 3.5 stars to 5 stars

Resolutions

In 2021, I hope to continue to explore the works of directors like Robert Altman, Werner Herzog, Claire Denis, John Sayles, Sergei Eisenstein, F.W. Murnau, Satoshi Kon, David Cronenberg, Steve McQueen, Thomas Vinterberg, Spike Lee, and Atom Egoyan, as well as familiarize myself with filmmakers like Tony Scott, Baz Luhrmann, Maya Deren, Paul W.S. Anderson, Wong Kar-wai, John Cassavetes, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Adam Curtis, Terence Davies, Bernardo Bertolucci, Michelangelo Antonioni, Oliver Stone, Alan J. Pakula, Derek Cian, Eli Hayes, and Phil Solomon.

• The Adventures of Prince Achmed
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Angst
• Apocalypto
• The Aviator
• Belladonna of Sadness
• Big Night
• The Big Sleep
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
• A Bittersweet Life

...plus 128 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked by my personal enjoyment of the movies. I am by all means an extremely casual Star Wars fan, so this is a pretty loose ranking that I don’t expect anyone else to share. I tend to prefer the lighthearted, fun side of Star Wars over its more serious, dramatic counterpart, which is the reason why neither Sith nor Empire are at the top of the list. This is a franchise that I have only started gradually delving into over the past 5 years, and it will take more viewings to form more concrete opinions on each film and nail down a ranking on such a complicated franchise (bear in mind that 1-4 are all quite close; not sure that I have a clear favorite yet).

1. Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
2. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
3. Star Wars
4. Return of the Jedi
5. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
6. The Empire Strikes Back
7. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
8. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
9. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Lmao

• She's the Man

  The good ‘ol days. Parents wouldn’t let me rent it from Blockbuster

• A Hidden Life

  Terry brought the grand total up to 2

This was another very difficult year-end favorites list to make, as I had such a variety of wonderful film experiences in 2019. I have reordered the top 4 alone countless times over the course of January, thus the reason why I am barely getting this list out before the second month of the new year is already upon us. But regardless, this ranking was a lot of fun to wrestle with and it just goes to show how many fantastic first-time viewings I had over the past year.

What really jumped out at me when looking back at this year compared to the last few is how unsure I was of which film to award the top spot. If it wasn't obvious already Lars von Trier ruled 2019 for me, taking the top 2 spots on this list as well as an honorable mention, but Breaking the Waves and Dogville could have just as easily been numbers 3 and 4, as this is essentially a 4-way tie if I'm being honest. With all that said though, I'm sticking to my guns on this one and right now I am confident in saying that these are my favorite films that I watched for the first time in 2019:

Oh, and a special shoutout to Roar for being the absolute shock of the entire year, somehow working its way up to number 7 on the year-end favorites list through sheer will despite being arguably one of the worst films ever conceived. I have never laughed, gasped, or cringed so hard, or been as wildly entertained, by a movie. And for that, it has truly won we over. Long live Togar.

Honorable Mentions: War of the Worlds, Rope, Ace in the Hole, Crac, Thelma & Louise, Blow Out, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Images, Dog Soldiers, Bringing Out the Dead, The Cotton Club, Sunshine, It's a Wonderful Life, Nymphomaniac: Vol. I, and Point Blank.

1. Breaking the Waves
2. Dogville
3. Nashville
4. Once Upon a Time in the West
5. Gummo
6. Inland Empire
7. Roar
8. Angel's Egg
9. Burning
10. The Wind Rises

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

In some ways I think 2019 may have been my favorite year of movie watching yet. It's been a full 5 years since I started getting into movies and what I really loved about this year in particular was the feeling of beginning to truly discover and refine my personal tastes. I wasn't just watching capital-C Classics that may or may not end up meaning anything to me personally in an attempt to understand "the cannon", but instead focusing more on things I was specifically interested in. As a result this may have the been the most fun that I've had watching films yet and I aim to continue that trend into 2020 as well. Some of the highlights of this year included finishing up the feature filmographies of David Lynch and Hayao Miyazaki, discovering more exciting modern filmmakers like Panos Cosmatos, Lee Chang-dong, Gaspar Noé, Olivier Assayas, and Lynne Ramsay, and diving deep into the works of Lars von Trier and Harmony Korine. There are so many films that I'm excited about watching over the course of the next year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what surprises 2020 brings. Below is the full list of every movie that I saw for the first time in 2019.

Top Directors

Lars von Trier - 5 movies
Martin Scorsese - 4 movies
Steven Spielberg - 4 movies
Brian De Palma - 3 movies
Danny Boyle - 3 movies
Gaspar Noé - 3 movies
Harmony Korine - 3 movies
Michael Mann - 3 movies
Lynne Ramsay - 3 movies
Yorgos Lanthimos - 3 movies
Francis Ford Coppola - 3 movies
Alfred Hitchcock - 3 movies
Hayao Miyazaki - 3 movies

By Decade

1910s - 1 movie
1920s - 0 movies
1930s - 2 movies
1940s - 3 movies
1950s - 2 movies
1960s - 6 movies
1970s - 11 movies
1980s - 16 movies
1990s - 18 movies
2000s - 18 movies
2010s - 46 movies

Most Significant Rewatches

Death Proof - 3 stars to 4.5 stars
The Godfather: Part II - 3.5 stars to 5 stars

Resolutions

In 2020, I'm hoping to become more acquainted with renowned Asian filmmakers like Satoshi Kon, Wong Kar-wai, Bong Joon-ho, Lee Chang-dong, Takeshi Kitano, Bi Gan, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Park Chan-wook, as well as explore the works of filmmakers like F.W. Murnau, D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, Robert Altman, Stan Brakhage, Elaine May, Federico Fellini, Baz Luhrmann, Werner Herzog, Nicholas Ray, John Cassavetes, and Olivier Assayas.

• 127 Hours
• Ace in the Hole
• Ad Astra
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
• Aliens
• Alien³
• Alien Resurrection
• Angel's Egg
• Another Earth

...plus 113 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.