Love that in 2009 Tarantino made a big Hollywood movie that forced Americans to read subtitles.

*
( 💥💥💥 FILMBRO-ARY ’25 💥💥💥 )

Just goes to show that no matter what art you make there’s always gonna be somebody who won’t like it and will take it personally and be a psychopathic cop who goes rogue and tries to hunt you down and make you pay for it using any means necessary…

Comedy is the best drama.

For all the times I caught this on TV growing up as a 90’s kid, I never knew what a truly hilarious madcap screwball comedy it is 😂

keep him here...🥶

"Really trusting someone is a hard thing..."

An appropriately operatic rendering of what it feels like to be a teenager.

Definitely was not expecting this to be such a...dare I say…poetic exploration of the melancholy of life? Melodrama generally doesn’t work for me, but I guess I’m just a sucker for when you strand a group of people on a menacing island full of life-or-death situations while intercutting the action with emotional character flashbacks.*

Overall—a horrifying, funny, sad, hopeful experience.

Truly an incredible feat.

(*Yes—the show Lost was formative for me as a person.)

The movie embodiment of “yes and…” 

aka—

The remedy to all those comedies out that feel like they need to have that one character whose whole thing is to snarkily comment on how silly everything is.

🔥👍🔥

buckle up

feelin' like this might end up being a “film bro february” for me guys 😎

(“filmbro-ary”?)

Hard to believe this isn't Blood Meridian.

Can't wait for Blood Meridian.

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

Jordan Peele choosing to go Bernard Herrmann on the score here is just one of the countless perfect choices he made with this film.

Saulnier’s newest neo-western thriller is about as meat-and-potatoes as it gets—and definitely an outlier in my Top 10, for a year so jam-packed with weirdo gems—but as a person who loves meat-and-potatoes, this was an absolute feast.

Buckle up—this review for Lost Highway will take an appropriately winding road, exploring my relationship to Lynch's work as a whole.

I think David Lynch's work functions in two primary ways: it opens up a completely new lens with which to see and experience the world—or—it validates a way someone already sees and experiences the world, but haven’t seen expressed in art before. For a lot of people, it's probably both. But those seem to be the two sides of the spectrum, and everyone just leans to one side or the other. I definitely lean towards the latter.

The first time I saw Eraserhead, it was epiphanic. I loved the film itself, but also—being fledgeling filmmaker myself—it instilled me with a sense of liberation, proof of the value of a filmmaker seeking to express something about their own personal experience and sensibility in a bold, imaginative, and unashamed way.

Which leads me to what is so strange about my relationship to Lynch's work…

After having watched Eraserhead (and Mulholland Drive at some point earlier in my life) I made a decision: to not continue watching through his work until I had made some films myself.

The idea was that I responded so deeply to his work that I felt like if I started watching through his films right as I started filmmaking myself, the gravitation pull of such a seemingly like-minded but Olympian artist would be just too strong and I’d just start unconsciously aping his ideas and style wholesale—or just simply be crushed by it. Which might've been pointless overthinking, but it's what I chose to do. Which was extra weird for me because I generally love and embrace other artists’ influence in my own work.

But David Lynch felt different.

I think one of the main reasons that decision worked for me was because I had already found a kindred spirit in Haruki Murakami, someone truly foundational for me, even before I became a writer myself. Before I found Lynch. So by the time I started screenwriting and making films, the attempt to translate what I got from Murakami’s work into film was already so personally and creatively fulfilling, that adding another titan like Lynch could’ve end up being overkill.

So, long story short, I made a bunch of short films, wrote a bunch of scripts and stories, trying to get a sense of myself—what I was trying to explore, where my imagination went with those ideas, how I wanted to express them.

Then it was time.

I started watching (and rewatching) through Lynch's work…and it was really complicated for me.

And when I say “complicated”, I mean that in the most positive and loving sense. Every moment of every film was both such an eye-opening *and* validating experience. I felt understood on a level I had only ever experienced while reading Murakami. But whereas Murakami was formative, Lynch entered my life as I was already somewhat well-formed as an artist and storyteller. At least on some basic, foundational level.

So when I finally chose to dive into Lynch’s worlds, I felt like I had truly found another kindred spirit…but there was also a highly productive friction.

He’d start exploring something that felt very much like something I’d written or imagined before, and I’d be flabbergasted that someone else had thought of the same thing, but then he’d take it in a different direction or just articulate it in a different way than my imagination had, and I’d get frustrated, because I thought I was about to get exactly what I wanted, but instead he did it his way. And also in such a vivid and masterful way—something that embodies the absolute height of not just cinema but art itself—that made whatever my version would be seem like a redundant, amateurish rip-off. On top of that, I also knew that, despite having waited to watch his stuff for so long, almost all of my favorite artists where directly influenced by him, so maybe I was ripping him off already. Maybe none of the ideas I thought were my own, even the ones that seemed to float out of nowhere, maybe they were all Lynch the whole time. Maybe I didn’t ever exist and everything is just David Lynch.

And I think that’s the power of Lynch’s work. What he taps into. His work is somehow the most imaginative stuff out there, and also the most intuitive.

Which leads me—finally—to Lost Highway.

Lost Highway is the defining example of this positive friction I’ve had with Lynch and his work. The reason being that it hit on multiple specific surrealist horror elements that I had been playing around with at the time, things I hadn’t seen anyone use or explore, things that felt like they came from deep place in my own personal subconscious...and then there they were. On screen. Lynch had done it decades before.

So then I went down that spiral that always happens after a Lynch movie. That spiral that I hate because it seems so self-obsessed and ugly, that I wish I could be better than. An ugliness that fundamentally contradicts my values about art—that no matter if it has or hasn’t been done before, your personal take on it is what matters and will be unique in some way because everyone is different and unique. (Wait didn’t Lynch say something like that?) Eventually I stabilized, but I did abandon that story and most of those ideas.

But again—why? Why do that? What a pointless and juvenile response.

So later, I tried watching it again, to get over myself. Because again, , I *think* it’s very dumb to have that kind of response to a movie…but then, again, my *instinctual emotional gut response* came back, as dumb and ugly and disoriented as ever…and I got like 30 minutes into the film and stopped. I wrote a thousand-word review trying to unpack my frustration with my response (which will never see the light of day). The whole time just super annoyed with myself, baffled by the question...

How could one guy’s work have this intense of an effect on me?

Here’s how...

By exposing who I really am *to myself*, confronting me with that self, the one under the surface, that likes to think of myself as person fully consistent with my values, without facing the parts of myself that are the most uncomfortable.

But I think this movie, and all Lynch’s work, has helped me along in that process. By making me feel uncomfortable. And I’m grateful for that.

And look—I finally re-watched it. I re-watched it all the way through. And I loved it.

Grateful for those rare artists like Lynch whose work is so frustratingly rewarding.

“I never really knew that it was possible to be an artist in a modern world. I just never figured that you could do that. Forget being the best of anything—that’s the fruit of the action. And you do the work, they say, for the doing. Not the fruit. You can never really know how it’s going to turn out in the world, but you know if you enjoy doing it. And ideas start flowing and you start getting excited about stuff. Then you’re having a great time in the doing. And that’s what it’s all about. If you don’t enjoy the doing, then do something else.”

Sometimes you watch a movie at just exactly the right moment.

This was definitely that moment.

Strangely enough I had basically finished this review before the re-watch of the series itself…which ended up being one day after the news of Lynch’s death.

Got way more emotions about that than I anticipated but, that said, I guess this review ended up being a time capsule of the last thoughts I had on one of my favorite filmmakers just before he died.

So here they are:

This is my second time through The Return and this time I did it in a very different (and maybe controversial) way:

I skim-watched the whole series over the course of a week.

But, before you accuse me of heresy, hear me out.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something I heard somebody say about Lynch films being “impressionistic” in the sense that you have to step back from them, focus less intensely on the moment to moment, and more on the overall picture. I don’t what podcast or vid essay or person in conversation I got this idea from, or if they were quoting someone else or just a general common Lynch interpretation, so I don’t know how to give them credit. Either way, it seemed to sum up pretty succinctly my relationship to Lynch and his work. I’ve never really had that impulse to try and decode every moment and detail. As a person who loves surrealistic stories and writes them myself (yes, Murakami is my favorite author) it just seems obvious that if you’re obsessing over every detail to try to “solve” the story, you’ve completely missed the point. But by not putting that kind of post-Nolan-puzzle-box-explainer-video attitude to the work, it allows for nearly infinite layers of meaning to be explored.

But, that said, with a work this massive and free-wheeling, the first time I watched it I had a hard time knowing how to do that. I couldn’t make sense of what was “important” to the overall picture—the major brush-strokes—and what wasn’t. With every new scene or character or non sequitur, I just had no idea how to step back without losing context of everything completely. So I just ended up being compelled to watch it with much more of an intention to understand every moment of every scene—just from a sense of complete disorientation—examining every line because I didn’t know if it contained some vital information to the story or was just some purely textural moment. It felt like Lynch was forcing me to stand closer to the canvas than I ever had before, for his largest work yet.

So, this time—I tried to step back.

I have no idea what I learned from skim-watching this, but I feel like I got way more out of it. I love slow films—most the films I’ve made up to the point could probably be described as surrealist slow cinema—but moving through this work at a faster pace definitely showed it in a completely different light. In other words—I felt like I could actually see the painting as a whole, even if that painting was itself something impossible to describe.

Anyways, thank you to whoever gave me that “impressionistic” analogy to crystallize my feelings about Lynch’s work in a more succinct way.

And—most of all—thank you to David Lynch for being a big dang weirdo.

P.S.
I guess all can say now is “Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.”

Schrader is one of those rare filmmakers who has truly taken seriously what they are trying to explore with the medium as they enter the later era of their career, and that vision is incredibly clear in this film.

Not that there isn’t something valuable in the films of directors in that same stage of career who seem to slip into more of a “comfort zone”, but—undeniably—there’s something inspiring about a guy like Schrader who is obviously still trying to push himself to express something vital, and maybe even uncomfortable, in a stage where it could be easy to start leaning back instead of leaning forward.

That said, this feels like the most “accessible” of his last four films—despite definitely being Schrader—as well as his most adventurous on a formal level, which I was pleasantly surprised with honestly. 

One of those films that I’m gonna to keep thinking about a lot.

A film that forces you to grapple with the big questions in life.

...like...

What is the point at which someone goes from being a “man with a receding hairline” to being a “bald man”?

“Does hell exist?”
“It does if you think it does. It doesn’t if you don’t.”
“Which do you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I see.”

This review may contain spoilers.

Well the American version's not gonna end like that.

Awkward dad energy Snake Eyes.

( movies starring hayley mills with “trap” in the title )

This review may contain spoilers.

Toni Collette, dysfunctional family pressure cookers, spooky grandmas with secrets, fireplace tragedies, unsettling shots of ceilings, sisters with some pretty “bad luck”, attic showdowns, supernatural hangings, dollhouse-like framing devices, general arcana horror vibes…

…this movie walked so Hereditary could run.

• Black Narcissus
• To Catch a Thief
• Leave Her to Heaven
• The French Dispatch
• North by Northwest
• Floating Weeds
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Mon Oncle
• Luz
• PlayTime

...plus 125 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• House
• The Night of the Hunter
• Mandy
• Cure
• It Follows
• The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
• Lost Highway
• Luz
• VISITOR
• Eraserhead

...plus 104 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

NOT an exhaustive list, just a SMALL MIXTAPE of some my personal favorites...

• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• The Endless
• A Serious Man
• Cure
• Burning
• The Lighthouse
• The Last Wave
• The Man Who Wasn't There
• Caché

...plus 65 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Birds
• Hour of the Wolf
• The Brood
• Phantasm
• Eraserhead
• Alice
• The Night of the Hunter
• Manos: The Hands of Fate
• Donnie Darko
• Last Year at Marienbad

...plus 45 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Not just weird/surreal/absurd/magical realist 
 cinema 

Something  that feels feels tied to scifi/horror/fantasy genre, but closer to the origins of those genres, that were allowed to be much stranger…the “weird tales” before things got fully codified

• Nope
• The Creatures
• Dreamcatcher
• Phantasm
• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• The Birds
• Donnie Darko
• Strawberry Mansion
• Phenomena
• Charisma

...plus 127 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Oh, Canada
• Lynch (one)
• Rebel Ridge
• Creepy
• The Proposition
• Battle Royale
• To Live and Die in L.A.
• Nosferatu
• Plan 9 from Outer Space

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

strange and inexplicable in the way real life and real people are...

• Fargo
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• The Curse
• Triangle of Sadness
• Slacker
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Parasite
• Daddy Longlegs
• Adaptation.

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

• Wild Strawberries
• Weekend
• Trafic
• Twin Peaks: The Return
• Something Wild
• Broker

WARNING:

This another of my SUPER SUBJECTIVE and CONTRADICTORY lists based on my own PERSON, SUBJECTIVE gut feelings for than anything.

Some general elements are:

~ Probably a more distant technical approach (but sometimes not).
~ Probably less of a focus on one character’s subjective point-of-view, but instead gives a more “bird’s eye view”—both in cinematographic style and narrative focus—and might veer off or linger to spend time with a “side character” (but sometimes not).
~ Probably just a general sense that it could be a novel written in 3rd person (but sometimes not).

Ironically some of these will actually have a 1st person voiceover. Go figure…

• Yi Yi
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• No Country for Old Men
• High and Low
• Bacurau
• Cure
• In the Mood for Love
• A Brighter Summer Day
• Once Upon a Time in the West

...plus 84 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films where regularly something interesting is happening in every distance in the frame.

• Punch-Drunk Love
• Mon Oncle
• A Brighter Summer Day
• The Long Goodbye
• Pulse
• PlayTime
• Yi Yi
• Youth of the Beast
• Inherent Vice
• Persona

...plus 125 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

No, I do not know exactly what it means or what qualifies, as always...

It's just a SUBJECTIVE list, based on my own personal GUT FEELING.

Akerman, Kaufman, Lanthimos.

• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• I'm Thinking of Ending Things
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Mulholland Drive
• Cure
• A Man Escaped
• Wendy and Lucy
• The Truman Show
• Dogtooth
• Persona

...plus 181 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Rabbits
• Persona
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Being John Malkovich
• The Lobster
• Long Day's Journey into Night
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared
• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Greener Grass
• Mirror

...plus 249 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Luz
• The Lighthouse
• Berberian Sound Studio
• Let the Corpses Tan
• Eraserhead
• Cure
• Stalker
• Uncut Gems
• Mirror
• Strawberry Mansion

...plus 129 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• House
• Branded to Kill
• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
• The Big Short
• Swiss Army Man
• Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair
• World on a Wire
• Let the Corpses Tan
• Sorry to Bother You
• Possessor

...plus 97 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Charisma
• Le Cercle Rouge
• A Serious Man
• Nope
• The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
• Sorry to Bother You
• Pale Flower
• The Monkey
• Meek's Cutoff
• Rabbits

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

Collection of films that remind me of my favorite author Haruki Murakami in some way or another—whether in the type of story, a character, or, probably most of all, an intangible feeling.

I guess this could also be a recommendation list in a way, because if you like any of these films, you might like his writing. Definitely in the vein of Lynch or the more esoteric Coen Brothers stuff. If you are unfamiliar with Murakami, I’d start with The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or his short fiction collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.

Also, I just started sharing my thoughts on Goodreads as well, if you're into that kind of thing. At a much slower pace, obviously, because, like, books are long and I am a slooooowwwww reader.

*excluding films actually based on his work (i.e. Burning, Tony Takitani, Norwegian Wood, etc...)

• Copenhagen Cowboy
• The Discarnates
• Lost Highway
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Barking Dogs Never Bite
• The Last Wave
• A Serious Man
• Sunset Boulevard
• Charisma
• Being John Malkovich

...plus 168 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Charisma
• Punch-Drunk Love
• The Big Lebowski
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1
• Mon Oncle
• The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
• Ida
• House
• Pale Flower
• Barking Dogs Never Bite

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

Films that keep camera movement to a minimum and let moments breath. 

Stillness on a more formalistic level. A tendency towards "locked down" or very simple pans & dollies. Not just movies that are thematically about the quiet moments in life (though obviously most of these will lean that direction).

There's plenty I'm leaving off this list. Obviously I could add all of Ozu and Roy Andersson, but I'm trying to keep this relatively uncluttered. I'm on the fence about adding any Wes Anderson because though he does have a more tableau style, he ends up jumping back and forth between that and highly energetic cinematography.

Obviously my rules here are kind of subjective and who really knows why some of these are here and not others. I'm more going with my gut with this one.

• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• L'Argent
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• Columbus
• The Farewell
• The Sacrifice
• Dogtooth
• The Lobster
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• Le Samouraï

...plus 134 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Whether an ensemble cast* or just a movie that makes an intentional point of showing secondary characters as having their own lives/interests and seem independent of the main character’s story.

*Not just any ensemble movie, only ones I like and feel do a great job handling them as individuals, not just primarily pawns or pieces of a bigger puzzle.

• A Brighter Summer Day
• Magnolia
• Bacurau
• Rebels of the Neon God
• Pulp Fiction
• The Hateful Eight
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Inherent Vice
• No Country for Old Men
• Maniac

...plus 116 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Maybe my definition is broader than others...

• Blue Velvet
• Lady Bird
• It Follows
• A Brighter Summer Day
• The Florida Project
• Licorice Pizza
• Submarine
• Rushmore
• The Squid and the Whale
• Moonlight

...plus 100 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Monkey
2. Mickey 17
3. Sinners

films where the score is drenched in synths...

aka

you can't tell where the film ends and the synths begin...

• Manhunter
• Luz
• It Follows
• Good Time
• Beyond the Black Rainbow
• TRON: Legacy
• Akira
• Kung Fury
• In the Earth
• Uncut Gems

...plus 36 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I realize our definition of 'fantasy' may differ and I also do not care.

• Mandy
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• The Green Knight
• The Matrix
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
• Princess Mononoke
• The Visitor
• Star Wars
• Pan's Labyrinth

...plus 76 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Berberian Sound Studio
• Daisies
• Meshes of the Afternoon
• Long Day's Journey into Night
• Eraserhead
• Stalker
• The Lighthouse
• Under the Silver Lake
• Hour of the Wolf
• House

...plus 63 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Visitor
• Mandy
• Beyond the Black Rainbow
• Luz
• Color Out of Space
• House
• Possessor
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters
• Vampyr
• My Winnipeg

...plus 123 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Stalker
• The Endless
• The Thing
• Beyond the Black Rainbow
• Annihilation
• The Visitor
• Vivarium
• Rabbits
• Solaris
• Color Out of Space

...plus 71 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Another one of those lists of movies that remind me of one of my favorite authors in some intangible way.

See also:
movies that felt more like the book "annihilation" than the movie "annihilation"

my thoughts on books @ Goodreads

• The Lighthouse
• Devs
• The Thing
• Mandy
• Arrival
• Beyond the Black Rainbow
• The Endless
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
• Ex Machina
• Possessor

...plus 77 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

NOTE:
NOT—I repeat—NOT an actual list of “fable/folklore/fairy-tale/fantastical” movies (though, most of them will be).

The title “cinematic fables” was the closest I could get to describe the intangible feeling these films give me—in a VERY SUBJECTIVE, PERSONAL way.

Aka, more of a tighty curated “mixtape” than an extensive “collection” of every film that might fit into the category.

• It Follows
• The Lobster
• The Babadook
• The Creatures
• Charisma
• Black Moon
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1
• Eraserhead
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• The Lighthouse

...plus 201 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies where the score...
~ carries a lot of the weight...in a good way.
~ is forefront and obtrusive--makes its presence know.
~ is an intrinsic part of the DNA, not just there to amplify the story/characters.

Definite bias towards electronic or non-traditional score because I dig that kind of stuff.

NOT an exhaustive list, just assorted examples I like.

NOT including modern music needle-drops. (Aka must be original score made for the film OR a repurposed classical work. I realize that is stupid but my list my rules.)

Another one of those very subjective lists based on some personal gut impulse that I can't fully explain.

• Good Time
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Uncut Gems
• There Will Be Blood
• Luz
• The Lobster
• It Follows
• Sorry to Bother You
• Akira
• The Master

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

films that feel like heightened "copy" of reality--or--a "copy of a copy"--or--a "copy" of a reality that never existed in the first place--or.....

• Pulp Fiction
• House
• Mandy
• Eraserhead
• Poor Things
• I'm a Virgo
• The Twentieth Century
• Greener Grass
• Asteroid City
• I Saw the TV Glow

...plus 99 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Live-action films that blend reality and matte painting/backdrops/greenscreen or feel like they're in an elevated stage-play environment. The kind of films that have backgrounds that look like cut-outs or call attention to the fact that the space they inhabit is a fabrication.

Some of these feature this approach extensively, and others sparingly but in a way that struck me.

The Masters:
~ Karl Zeman
~ Nobuhiko Obayashi
~ Wes Anderson

***NOTE***
Like with all my lists, the reason why some movies are on here and others aren't is mostly a gut feeling thing that I can't even really explain myself.

• House
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
• Poor Things
• The Twentieth Century
• Kung Fury
• The Wizard of Oz
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
• The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
• Barbie

...plus 100 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

*leslie knope voice* Formalism! More like fun-malism!

• Tokyo Drifter
• House
• Barbie
• The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
• Mon Oncle
• The Twentieth Century
• Pulp Fiction
• The Falls
• Daisies
• Poor Things

...plus 152 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

kinda but not exactly horror but kinda but not exactly sci-fi but kinda but not exactly fantasy but kinda but not exactly...

(...all of them but also none of them but also...)

• Sorry to Bother You
• Donnie Darko
• Greener Grass
• The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
• Phantasm
• Get Out
• Maniac
• It's a Wonderful Life
• The Fabulous World of Jules Verne
• The Night of the Hunter

...plus 220 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Kill List
• Rabbits
• Charisma
• House
• The Creatures
• The Drifting Classroom
• Cure
• Alice
• Borgman
• Sorry to Bother You

...plus 227 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

just a bunch of film being weird for the sake of it and I love it...

(generally with the inherent premise...)

• Swiss Army Man
• Lamb
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• Koko-di Koko-da
• The Endless
• Being John Malkovich
• A Ghost Story
• November
• Border
• Charisma

...plus 116 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Poltergeist
• Strawberry Mansion
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Beetlejuice
• The Endless
• The Shining
• The Fog
• Pulse
• Donnie Darko
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind

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

NOT actually about dreams...

just a feeling...

• Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
• Picnic at Hanging Rock
• Eraserhead
• Berberian Sound Studio
• Stalker
• Daisies
• The Creatures
• Point Blank
• Mandy
• Enter the Void

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

DISCLAIMER: I don't yet know what this is really referring to, just going off a gut-level instant thing and seeing what happens. LET ME REITERATE: I am not referring to this in any hard-scifi kind of way, it's just me throwing things into a stew and seeing if I like it. Staying away from this turning into a "time-travel" or strictly "time displacement" movies like Groundhog Day/Palm Springs.

We'll see what it becomes.

• The Drifting Classroom
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen
• Coherence
• It Follows
• Spirited Away
• A Ghost Story
• The Endless
• Interstellar
• Vivarium
• Journey to the Beginning of Time

...plus 71 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

filmmakers who show that there are a lot more possibilities for the medium than how people usually use it

• Mon Oncle
• Floating Weeds
• L'Argent
• Eraserhead
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Persona
• A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
• Ida
• Yi Yi
• Pale Flower

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

• The Events at Mr. Yamamoto's Alpine Residence
• Rabbits
• Necktie
• Gruenfeld
• Thing from the Factory by the Field
• Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

  *whole series*

• Shiva Baby
• Incoherence
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
• Nimic

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

• Being John Malkovich
• Swiss Army Man
• Spirited Away
• The Discarnates
• Border
• Sorry to Bother You
• Ruby Sparks
• Maniac
• Midnight in Paris
• The One I Love

...plus 148 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Some films I like that value aesthetics and stylization as a vital part of what they are trying to express in the medium. (Yes, Wes Anderson is on this list.) As always, why certain ones are here and others are not is super subjective and based solely on my gut instincts.

Some are pretty roundly adored, others people complain are "style-over-substance" but I'm like...😍😍😍

Could probably double as a "favorites" list.

• House
• Midsommar
• Branded to Kill
• Tokyo Story
• mother!
• Moonlight
• Her
• Eraserhead
• Stalker
• Luz

...plus 385 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

movies that are not very interested in plot (even if there technically is plot), but texture, tone, etc...

aka

the movie is not ABOUT the plot.

• Eraserhead
• Mon Oncle
• Blue Velvet
• Inherent Vice
• NIGHT LAUNDRY
• Mulholland Drive
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• The Master
• A Brighter Summer Day
• Yi Yi

...plus 276 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A mixtape of films that just observe people...

***THIS IS A PERSONAL SUBJECTIVE LIST ONLY INCLUDING FILMS I'VE PERSONALLY WATCHED AND LIKED***

• Stray Dogs
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
• Yi Yi
• The Man with the Suitcase
• 11 x 14
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• In the Mood for Love
• A Ghost Story
• Taipei Story
• MOONFLOWER

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

• Parasite
• Borgman
• The Plumber
• The Killing of a Sacred Deer
• mother!
• Suddenly in the Dark
• Sunset Boulevard
• Sexy Beast
• LATCHKEY
• Speak No Evil

  kinda inverted?

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

films with vivid colors. (not just posters.)

some of it isn't wes anderson...

feels like this list might be a little redundant because of all the other color-centric lists out there, but i'll add mine to the mix.

• Maniac
• Sorry to Bother You
• Color Out of Space
• Inherent Vice
• Daisies
• Greener Grass
• Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• Shirkers
• Palm Springs
• The Grand Budapest Hotel

...plus 131 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films where the protagonist and antagonist kinda feel like they’re buddies but also one might likely kill (or at the very least cause bodily harm to) the other.

Aka, they are outwardly antagonistic but also have a rapport.

NOT a "friend-turns-to-enemy" list (though the line gets kinda blurry)...

• Inherent Vice
• The Long Goodbye
• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Casablanca
• Palm Springs
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• Borgman
• A Field in England
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
• Uncut Gems

...plus 53 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies that seem to be exploring some intangible thing “outside human perception” in some way or other, or at least puts me in that kind of mental state.

As with all my lists--very subjective, very just based on my own personal gut reaction.

• Long Day's Journey into Night
• Point Blank
• Pale Flower
• Inherent Vice
• Branded to Kill
• Vertigo
• Fallen Angels
• Cure
• Under the Silver Lake
• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

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

• Mon Oncle
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• Under the Silver Lake
• Inherent Vice
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• A Brighter Summer Day
• Eraserhead
• Stalker
• Yi Yi
• Once Upon a Time in the West

...plus 69 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

movement within frame is highly choreographed...

• Mon Oncle
• Trafic
• Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
• PlayTime
• Early Summer
• Floating Weeds
• Equinox Flower
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• Moonrise Kingdom

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.