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I am usually a fan of cringe humor (Nathan Fielder is MY GUY) but Tim Robinson's stuff has an edge of violence that makes it far more unsettling. Case in point, Friendship (written and directed by Andrew deYoung with his lead actor in mind), in which Robinson's character is menacingly aloof in the way that only a straight white man could be. Trouble is that with the extended length of a feature film, one has to wonder how his character could have existed in the world, before and after the events of the film. Like how did he end up with Kate Mara's foxy flower arranger in the first place?

Throughline of this movie is desiring to be part of the in-group, to be one of the guys. Men are definitely not okay and the themes of this film are definitely of the zeitgeist. But the atmosphere is weirdly vacuum-sealed, with Robinson's unbalanced performance leached into every other aspect of this movie. (Also the cinematographer forgot to turn the lights on!!!) Connor O'Malley's few minutes are probably the funniest bits of the whole thing.

Notable things eaten in the movie:
• Foraged mushrooms (they look like chestnuts)
• A bar of soap
• The Seal Team Six lunch deal at Ricky's Bar: Four racks of rib, mac 'n cheese, caesar salad
• Psychedelic glands of a "buffalo river toad"
• Spaghetti Freddy's
• Subway: black forest ham on Italian herb and cheese footlong

let's be real this movie sucks, but as one friend put it, "it gives me inspiration that I can make my own movie"

At least The Room, for all its oddities, has a legible story.

But I had a fun time, got drunk and ed out during the end.

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

My flight back home had both Caught by the Tides and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cloud... the latter was tempting but I try not to do first-time watches on planes.

Anyway, last week I put up my full review of this excellent film.

Those of us inhabiting the more irony-poisoned corners of the internet have come across memes about “The Chinese Century,” typically in sarcastic response to that nation’s increasing prominence on the world stage. To understand what a Chinese Century actually entails, particularly within its own borders, one can go beyond memes and watch the films of Jia Zhangke. The human effects of his country’s rapid growth is the Rolex brand ambassador’s perpetual subject, and it speaks to Jia’s talent that all of his films are about the same thing without becoming a stale retread. Maybe it's because his country is changing so quickly that there’s always fresh material to consider.

If "Make America Great Again" meant bringing back these kinds of movies then I'd be MAGA all the way. Bonkers, exuberant, brilliant. The whole movie is super fun (even the stock template plot is enlivened by some choice zingers), and Busby Berkeley's musical numbers are phenomenally staged, with camera movements that fluidly move inside and outside of the dance. Jakob pointed out that the film speaks its own cinematic language but we're never confused by it.

And just when you think it couldn't get any crazier, there's that finale sequence... ten minutes of visual insanity. We cheered at each transition like it was a sporting match. Insanely fun to watch with my film club.

I reserve five star ratings for movies that changed my life... just saying.

"The cleaner the choreo the more fascist the director" - Ashley

Watched on Wednesday May 7, 2025.

I have a fascination with movies about fictional pop stars, particularly those with songs written by real-world hitmakers. So when I received a press release for a “Cannes Breakout Glittercore 2000s-Set Queer Pop Musical” about a tortured romance between a pop idol and a punk icon, I immediately wanted to watch it. And Queens of Drama certainly matched that description.

Destined to be a midnight movie classic for the sapphics, French filmmaker Alexis Langlois’ debut feature is an exuberantly messy odyssey through the worlds of pop music and stan culture. The original songs, with contributions by influential synthpop artists Yelle and Rebeka Warrior, are certified bops. But what about the movie itself? At first, I wasn’t sure if this Y2K fantasia had more to offer besides outrageous fashions and shimmering images, but Langlois has more on his mind.

Full review on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn! "Pas touche!" is stuck in my head!

This character study of bourgeois ennui has both the intimate focus and the fleeting feel of a short story. Gena Rowlands is perfect, as is Ian Holm ("I accept your condemnation")... really all of the cast get their memorable moment, even if appearing in just one scene.

Gorgeously filmed by Sven Nyqvist, whose late career period in Hollywood continues to fascinate me. There were a couple shots where my friends gasped in iration.

First time seeing a Woody Allen film from the 20th century (I know lol)... gotta hand it to the guy; he's had some bangers. When will a rep theater be brave enough to program a complete Woody Allen retro (including the post-cancellation titles)

Feelings about this film are unchanged but seeing it again helped clarify the plot structure, much less confusing this time around. The halfway point between the two parts is a terrific transition (the cross-cuts on the train)

Q&A w/ director Du Jie

This review may contain spoilers.

Whenever Walter Matthau appears in a 1960s movie, you know his character ain't entirely on the level.

Fun, breezy entertainment. So many twists but it never felt like too much—the comedic tone a big factor there—and the plot reveals felt well-telegraphed. Audrey Hepburn is gorgeous in Givenchy, and silver fox Cary Grant makes that age gap discomfort go down more smoothly.

"Oh, you should see your face."

"What's the matter with it?"

"It's lovely."

Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland succeed in accomplishing their mission with this film. Warfare today isn't particularly exciting. It's either super boring or super scary.

My dormant celeb crush on Hailee Steinfeld is... back from the dead.

So fun, so textured, so layered. Ryan Coogler's blank check absolutely clears. Go read Kelli Weston's review in Reverse Shot.

Watched on Wednesday April 16, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

The Great Barrington Declaration, an anti-lockdown tract published in the thick of the COVID pandemic, was named after the place where it was drafted and signed, a small Massachusetts town tucked amidst the Berkshires. Great Barrington is also where Callie Hernandez and Courtney Stephens conceived of their new film Invention, in which its protagonist considers the possibility that a conspiracy surrounds the death of her father, a doctor who advocated for alternative medicine. Hernandez, who co-wrote, produced, and stars, built the film around her own dad, himself a new age doctor who believed in reptilians and the healing properties of electromagnetic frequencies. He died of COVID in 2021, and although this Great Barrington coincidence is probably nothing more than that, it gives this film a real-life parallel in its consideration of why conspiracy theories are comforting to its believers. It feels nice to believe there is a secret logic underpinning a chaotic, uncertain world, even if it’s conjured purely from noise. It’s a curdled form of faith.

Full review on Buttered Popcorn.

The funniest thing about Lurker is that the obsessed-over Oliver's music is... very mid. Like, this is who you're stanning??

More thematically complex than it initially seemed, and I love movies about fictional pop stars. Will def write more about this film later. Never meet your fans.

Q&A w/ filmmaker Alex Russell.

Near the start of this endearing story of a life stuck in intermission, forty-year-old filmmaker Joseph (Fabian Stumm, who also wrote and directed) pitches an idea to his producer. His previous movie was a tearjerking lesbian romance, and now he wants to shift to comedy. Haltingly describing the desired tone as somewhere between naturalism and absurdism — the word he’s looking for is dramedy — Joseph doesn’t sound entirely convinced of his own idea.

To be fair, he has a lot going on at the moment. His best friend Sonya (Haley Louise Jones), with whom he co-parents their young son, checks into a mental health clinic amidst a struggle with depression. He breaks his finger after an unfortunate but hilariously drawn out mishap involving a vending machine and a clueless stranger. And in what is perhaps the saddest and most relatable of jokes, the poor fellow is still not over his ex-boyfriend, three years after the breakup.

We witness Joseph juggling his various responsibilities and hangups through a series of exquisitely composed vignettes, which are shot with diffusive light of a pleasantly cloudy day and leavened with classical piano pieces from the likes of Mozart and Strauss. Stumm’s exaggerated autofiction — that’s his real, co-parented son playing Joseph’s offspring — is the kind of movie that his filmic avatar wants to make: tender, humanist, sometimes sad, sometimes funny.

Published on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn.

Before I watched No Sleep Till, I was flummoxed by its title. My brain would always autocomplete it with “Brooklyn!!!” even though, according to the synopsis, the film took place in Florida. No sleep till… Jacksonville? Now that I’ve seen the movie, the iconic song that pops in my head is no longer from the Beastie Boys. Towards the end, we catch a glimpse of a late night house party, revellers jumping up and down while outside, palm trees are whipped by the winds of an approaching hurricane. It’s Britney that I hear: keep on dancing till the world ends.

The effects of the climate crisis have been acutely felt in Florida, where hurricane seasons have increased in length and intensity. At the start of this film, one of those storms is days away from hitting the shores of Atlantic Beach, a coastal town near Jacksonville. There’s a mandatory evacuation order, and although most of the tourists and residents have already left, a few are in no hurry to leave fast. Alexandra Simpson’s slice of neo-Americana sits at the borders of atmospheric poetry and conventional narrative, much like the other films produced by Omnes Films (recent titles include Eephus and Christmas Eve at Miller’s Point). While this drifting, ambivalent style will put off some viewers, the feelings of liminal yearning it generates might as well be hypersonic missiles to my heart.

The rest of my review, which contains even more Sam Fender references, can be found on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn.

Great interview with filmmaker Alexandra Simpson in Mubi Notebook

We shift from one of Greece’s most remote villages to its most populous city in What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move, a playful exploration of antiquity and its discontents. Freely switching between vérité, man on the street interviews, and even an unostentatious musical number, director Daphné Hérétakis follows a movement of young Athenians with an intentionally provocative mission: to blow up the Parthenon. They’re taking up the charge of obscure writer Yorgos Makris, who in 1944 declared that destroying the Parthenon was the only way to subject it to “true eternity.” Random ersby are asked if they would blowing up the temple, and they stare at the camera with bemusement. Hérétakis demonstrates two impossibilities: that of demolishing a UNESCO World Heritage site, and of making a film that encapsulates the entirety of Greece’s troubled past and its stagnant present.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

On the volcanic Greek island of Nisyros is a village with only nine remaining inhabitants. Or eight now, because someone just ed away. The cemetery is full, so the local priest asks the villagers for permission to move the remains of their loved ones to a nearby mountain. Kevin Walker and Irene Zahariadis’s observational docu-fiction Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World feels like a decades-old artifact. The 16mm film is presented without the usual corrections made with digital scans: the dust marks are left in, the wobbly gate weave isn’t stabilized, and the subtitles have an analog “burned in” appearance. Combined with the knowledge that this was shot in 2024, not 1984, the film doesn’t have an air of timelessness, but rather that of stasis.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

Clocking in at seven minutes, Maidenhair is the shortest of the ND/NF shorts. (It also happens to be the only pure narrative film of the bunch; the rest are some form of documentary or essay film.) While the mid-2000s setting and camcorder cinematography initially reminded me of Rap World, the aesthetic and conceptual references for director Julia Sipowicz really point to David Lynch’s Inland Empire. That film’s tagline — “A woman in trouble” — refers to Laura Dern’s character, but could equally apply to Maidenhair, minus a few decades. Young teenager Winnie is a certified horse girl and preacher’s daughter, growing up in rural Ohio. A travelling bible salesman causes her to experience an awakening of a certain kind. This immediate crush on the pimply, gangly fellow leads to a flagrantly risqué gesture during a church hymnal. (Trouble, indeed.) What follows from there is a bit murky, the formative moment of a girl’s lost naïvety submerged into the haze of digital grain.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

Thematic intentions are much clearer in Camille Vigny’s Crushed, in which metaphor allows domestic violence to be rendered without re-enactment. As the Belgian filmmaker recounts the narrative arc of a traumatic relationship, we see the setup, events, and aftermath of a demolition derby. It’s an effective juxtaposition, seeing hot rods smash into each other while listening to an of physical abuse, the experience of dissociatively floating away from one’s body as cars are launched above the muddy earth and towards the sky. Vigny also draws our attention to the inherent misogyny of the male racers. Is it a coincidence that these cars — with names like “Hélèna” or “Chloe — are lovingly built, only to be battered, sometimes irreparably, for the thrill of it? As these vehicles are driven around in a muddy pit, men and women alike watch the destruction. “Marvel at my bruises and shudder at my smile,” proclaims the narrator. At the end of her film, Vigny describes the night she finally left her abuse with halting intimacy, paired with shots of wrecked cars sitting in permanent repose. She was able to walk away, but not everything can be repaired.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

In Life Story, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli applies video art stylings to what is essentially a filmed reading of a text by philosopher and media theorist McKenzie Wark. Transforming two works by Guy Debord into something of her own, Wark muses on her gender transition and the modern fragility of life and love. As the camera glides over her nude body, an orange tint flashes on and off the screen, recalling the oscillating lights of a nightclub. It’s an abstract rave of the mind.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

We love to root for the underdog, whether it's a sports team or a movie character. But what about an entire city? Oakland has forever existed in the shadow of its splashier sibling from across the Bay. San Francisco may be a bit beleaguered itself these days, but Oaktown has always been the place you want to succeed.

The Captain Marvel directing team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck have followed up their billion-dollar grosser with a scrappier, personal tale inspired by Fleck's own upbringing in Oakland. We've got a small but mighty canon of Oakland-set films, and Freaky Tales certainly earns its place. It's super fun, super chaotic, and super violent. A great time at the movies!

There are four freaky tales in this anthology film, all set on the night of May 10, 1987. They are based on a true events, but they're amped up into the realm of the fantastical. Punk rockers fight back against Nazi skinheads, a female hip-hop duo is invited to rap battle with the legendary Too $hort, a loan shark enforcer does one last job, and a shocking tragedy strikes Warriors Legend "Sleepy" Floyd — after his record-setting performance in a playoff game against the Lakers — but he gloriously takes revenge.

Fittingly, everything was shot in Oakland, mostly on location. KQED put out some great writeups about the real-life tales behind the film and a cheatsheet of all the easter eggs that Bay Area natives will recognize.

Feels like this film has been dumped by Lionsgate... they only got the rights because they acquired one of the financiers). The marketing has been minimal at best which is crazy when you have Pedro Pascal sharing a scene with Tom Hanks. The film has a great ensemble of both Hollywood stars and lesser-known actors, some who grew up in Oakland, and some who did not. They all mesh well together. The last (?) screen appearance from Angus Cloud, who has a small-ish but memorable part as a basketball nerd.

Given that this is an anthology film where the stories all culminate at the end (which is very fun!!), it does feel too much like you're getting the first act of three different movies. Only the last tale had a beginning, middle, and end. It's a shame because the first two tales with the punk rockers and rappers have a raw energy that is unmatched by the rest of the film, and our time with those characters was far too brief. Pedro Pascal takes the lead in the crime story, but it's the least successful segment and gets rather dull. Fortunately, that fourth and final tale recaptures some of the magic I saw at the beginning.

Lovingly wears its influences on its sleeve: The [Golden State] Warriors, Hollywood Shuffle, Mystery Train, and of course Quentin Tarantino, not just with Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill but also a little bit of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in its fantastical treatment of past events.

You can call this film Once Upon a Time in Oakland, not just for the Tarantino reference, but because this film is a tribute and a time capsule to the Town's multicultural art scene. As vibrant as things may have been in the 80s, it's a bygone era now that Silicon Valley has thoroughly taken over the Bay. And it stings to see everyone decked out in Warriors, Raiders, and A's gear. The Chase Center taunts Oaktown from across the Bay, the Raiders are now in Vegas, and the A's will also be there after spending a few ignominious years in West Sacramento in a stadium a third of the size of the now-empty Coliseum. As the film presents itself as an artifact from the 1980s (with blurry VHS-style clips and fake reel change marks), so it doesn't have the right format to make this disconnection between past and present explicit.

Despite a smaller budget, you can see how Boden and Fleck learn a few things from the Marvel machine, with slick action sequences and smart scheduling (wrangling all these actors must have been tough!) Wish they used real blood instead of CG though.

Overall, Freaky Tales is imperfect, but it's made with so much ion and heart that I can't help but root for it, much like I want to root for the underdogs in this movie, and the underdogs of all Oaktown. And at a time when far-right racists are feeling emboldened to re-emerge, there's a lot of fun in watching a movie where the Nazis get the shit beat out of them.

Xenophobia doesn’t always manifest with violence. Sometimes it’s banal intolerance, as we see in The Inhabitants. Maureen Fazendeiro riffs on the Chantal Akerman classic News From Home to question exactly who gets to call a place home. Tranquil images of Périgny, the Parisian suburb where she grew up, are narrated with letters from her mother. A Roma community has settled in this quiet commune, and Valérie is one of the few residents to have befriended and assisted them. Although the film grain texture and pastoral still lifes have the glow of a nostalgic past, the more recent maternal missives fix us to the present. Perhaps it’s a constraint of the format, but it is curious that the film itself keeps a distance from these new arrivals.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

Designed to commemorate the 1972 Olympics, Munich’s Olympia shopping mall was largely built by “guest workers” from Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey. Four decades later, it was the site of a mass shooting by a self-proclaimed Iranian-German “Aryan” who allegedly targeted people with Turkish or Arab origins. With their film In Retrospect (Rückblickend betrachtet), Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhlutenko place this past and present in conversation, tracing the path from the construction of the mall towards this racist attack. Woven throughout are excerpts from Addressee Unknown, a 1983 film by Sohrab Shahid Saless, in which a white German woman and a Turkish architect have an affair in Munich. The only extant copy is a blurry VHS recording, shared on a Farsi Telegram channel, and the visual degradation becomes a comment on whose lived experiences are preserved in a culture’s memory. One of the shots we see from that film is of the side of a building, upon which “ for the Germans” is spray painted. That graffiti from over forty years ago is practically the slogan for AfD, the far-right anti-immigrant party that came second in ’s elections earlier this year.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

The current wave of migration from Latin America to the United States is the backdrop for You Can’t See It From Here (No se ve desde acá), by Enrique Pedráza-Botero. Miami has long been a landing spot for Spanish-speaking arrivals, who are typically associated with displaced families fleeing poverty and unrest. But in response to the ascension of left-wing politics in countries like Colombia, wealthy expats are starting to buy luxury condos in The 305, as second, third, and even fourth homes — people and capital are both flowing northward. Pedráza-Botero contrasts this high-priced real estate with the charities and networks that provide the less fortunate with food, clothing, and shelter. The film’s last scene is a rebuttal to nativism: Latino immigrants are making American interment flags, meant to be draped over the caskets of fallen soldiers.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

The first shorts program of New Directors/New Films offers global views of migration and displacement. Landscapes of Longing is the most abstract invocation of this theme: through three generations of her family, Anoushka Mirchandani, co-directing with Alisha Tejpal and Mireya Martinez, explores the ongoing legacy of India’s partition by intertwining the examination of artifacts and satellite imagery with first-person testimonies. The associative structure, with captions silently quoting from various texts as a counterpoint, makes this more of an art piece than a straightforward documentary.

For my newsletter Buttered Popcorn, I reviewed all nine short films playing at New Directors/New Films!

Lisa's lifelong obsession with the playboy pianist who can never seem to her isn't pathetic so much as it is romantic. She wants to believe in the idea of this man being her soulmate, when the reality is that she's just another notch on his bedpost. Is that delusional or is that just the most extreme crush of all time?

Gorgeous gowns and beautiful camera movements, there's a level of craft here that makes up for a sometimes unclear script.

"Emails are for geeks and pedophiles."

If you wanna take this seriously you'd read this as a cautionary tale about the ever-shifting social dynamics: your status can flip in an instant. The upper class Upper East Siders have only a front of morality. As Kathryn says, "everybody does it; it's just that nobody talks about it."

But this ain't a serious picture. It's icky yet titillating, and the Gen Z puritans would not be able to handle this movie. Very much a product of the 90s but it's also so so fun. Soundtrack slaps. Ending with "Bittersweet Symphony" is so funny and so fitting.

The week after watching this movie for the first time I attended a live reading of the script that was hosted by Film Independent and Mubi. Julio Torres directed the table read, with a very stacked and inspired cast: Cristin Milioti (Annette), Amy Sedaris (Mrs. Caldwell), Julia Fox (Celia), Justice Smith (Sebastian), James Scully (various roles), Tomas Matos (various), Martine Gutierrez (Kathryn), Jaboukie Young-White (Robert), and Spike Einbinder (stage directions & Sebastian's aunt), with special appearance by Boy Radio to sing "Bittersweet Symphony"

It's the meta-narrative around this film that gives it power; without knowing the story behind the story, this would be a fairly inert revisionist western. But if you know the context (which I won't repeat here because other reviews cover it exhaustively), The Misfits becomes this heartbreaking portrait of people caught in the tides of a changing country and the stirrings of a New Hollywood. A sense of doom pervades this entire production, as palpable as the Nevada air is dry.

We watched this film to close out the Method Acting section of my film club. The other two pictures were Elia Kazan-directed adaptations, and it's in The Misfits that we directly see classical and method acting side by side, sometimes within the same shot: Eli Wallach vs. Marilyn; Monty Clift vs. Clark Gable. The most obvious manifestation of the difference between these acting schools are seen in movement: physical gestures versus introspective stillness, and neither approach is inherently better than the other.

The first act was entertaining, largely thanks to a wisecracking Thelma Ritter who then disappears so that we can see three aging cowboys lust after Marilyn. (To be fair, who among us... funny that this era was supposed to be Marilyn Monroe at her most busted up and she is still one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen.) That midsection is flabby and could have used a trim. But it's that third act where Arthur Miller's playwright background makes this whole thing sing, engaging in those capital-T Themes while John Huston delivers brutally exhilarating footage of wild horses being captured, ready for slaughter. (More than one friend expressed discomfort about these scenes, and clearly, the American Humane Association did not exist back in 1960.)

And perhaps Marilyn's finest acting moment of her too-brief career happens in that last bit. With the camera placed at an extreme distance, she unleashes her bottled-up rage at these three "dear, sweet, dead men." My God, I teared up, because of what she was saying and how she was screaming it, a cry of anguish against the vast American sky. I wonder if George Miller took some inspiration from this scene for shooting Furiosa's famous scream in Mad Max: Fury Road.

Is this stealthily The Civil Wars fanfiction, if the duo were British and open about their romantic relationship? Either way, this is a delightfully charming comedy with music that is a remarkably grounded story about letting go of the past. Really delightful picture, Once with a dash of Local Hero, and if I let Carey Mulligan get away I'd never stop thinking about that, either.

My full review is on Buttered Popcorn.

Watched on Monday March 24, 2025.

A lot of the weirdness was probably due to less than ideal filming conditions, but the assembled result is a very unique and compelling because of the technical imperfections.

This is a screwball comedy without any romance. Considered to be a minor Wilder, which compared to the likes of Sunset Boulevard or The Apartment, that's not particularly a pejorative. But this shouldn't be too overlooked; it's an absolute blast. Probably the last film to have shot in Berlin just before the Wall went up, made by a director who had fled that city the day after the Reichstag was set aflame, nearly thirty years prior. Love seeing Jimmy Cagney do his impression of Cary Grant à la His Girl Friday and absolutely hating it: this movie made him quit acting for two decades. Delicious dialogue; the amount of brutal, topical jokes left us in disbelief (tossed off quips involve Cuban missiles, Adlai Stevenson, and bombing Laos). Sure, there's the usual jingoism and sexism inherent to films of the period, but much of the one-liners are aimed at America itself. I don't think you could get away with similar gags if you made something like this today.

Another favorite of mine from New Directors is this whimsically sensitive portrait of ordinary people by Georgian filmmaker Tato Kotetishvili. The film has the trappings of European arthouse stoicism (stationary cameras, long takes, showcases of local customs) but it’s directed with flourishes of comedic panache, with a literal smash cut destroying initial impressions of dull solemnity. Twentysomething Gonga and his uncle Bart (Nika Gongadze and Nikolo Ghviniashvili, making their acting debuts) eke out a living by selling items salvaged from scrapyards. Upon discovering a suitcase containing rusty crosses, they refurbish them into neon crucifixes. With dreams of financial success, the enterprising duo sell their glowing creations from door to door. They encounter a friendly bunch of characters, from a lone woman living with dozens of cats to a gregarious gang of old men having a massive feast for lunch. These vignettes of the humans of Tbilisi are pleasant, and what grounds the film from floating away towards abject quirkiness are Gonga and Bart’s hardscrabble emotions. Details of those characters were taken from the actor’s own lives, namely the Gonga’s punk rock fandom and Bart’s gender identity. This slice of life, although abruptly cut short, is suffused with tranquil yearning and a subtly defiant recognition of the right to live authentically.

More reviews of the New Directors/New Films lineup are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

In eastern lies the Jura, a region of valleys surrounded by tree-covered hills and mountains. Each morning, fog clings to the pastures where cows leisurely graze, and truck drivers begin their rounds, collecting milk from farm to farm — milk that will become the renowned Comté cheese. This is the area where Louise Courvoisier grew up, and her debut feature is a Western-influenced yarn that pays tribute to its people, traditions, and cheese. The story centers on Totone (Clément Faveau), a miscreant youth who, after a sudden tragedy, must care for his younger sister and find a way to make money. Spotting a flyer for a cheese competition with a 30,000€ grand prize, he tries his hand at making Comté, but it’s no easy journey. Both he and the fromage must come of age.

The film’s French title, Vingt Dieux, is a common expression in the Jura. It literally means “Twenty Gods” and is often translated to “Holy Cow!” and it’s a happy coincidence that the English title takes on a double meaning. There’s another French idiom, the equivalent of “having your cake and eating it too,” that goes: “il a eu le beurre, l’argent du beurre, et le cul de la crémière” — he had the butter, the money from selling the butter, and the ass of the dairymaid. That’s basically the plot of Holy Cow, and one wonders if Courvoisier reverse-engineered her script from that phrase, in a feature-length feat of wordplay.

My full review is on Buttered Popcorn and I maybe had too much fun with the cheesy puns. And obviously I had to get some comté and vin jaune after seeing this movie about making cheese, so I wrote a bit about that wine and cheese pairing too.

It only took a couple years to feel Aftersun’s influence in other films. For Kostis Charamountanis’s bittersweet tale about the decaying relationship between a single father and his children, the director swaps out the Turkish resort setting of Aftersun for the sun-dappled Grecian coast of his own youth. Snakebit fisherman Babis (Simeon Tsakiris), stubbornly hewing to traditional methods, can’t seem to catch a break (or a sea bream, for that matter). Meanwhile, twin teens Elsa (Elsa Lekakou) and Konstantinos (Konstantinos Georgopoulos) unknowingly encounter their estranged birth mother (Elena Topalidou), setting off a chain of events that lead to a boiling over of seething resentment. While Kyuka employs many of Aftersun’s themes and devices — fuzzy VHS aesthetics, freeform narrative, summer vibes gone sour — it lacks the rigorous framework of that masterpiece. Charamountanis similarly breaks cinematic conventions, particularly in the climactic finale. But the intended impact is neutered by the lack of an underlying structure; too often it feels like the filmmaker is throwing in experimental interventions without fully formed logic behind them. Despite these flaws, the film is laced with retrospective anguish and personal history.

More reviews of the New Directors/New Films lineup are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

The best film I’ve seen of the New Directors lineup (so far) is a fitting selection for Opening Night. In her career as a choreographer and video artist, Sarah Friedland has long been attuned to the motion of bodies, with subtle movements conveying the littlest big things. Such attention translates well to her debut narrative feature, an unsparing yet comionate portrait of a woman grappling with dementia. Newly moved into assisted living, Ruth (Kathleen Chalfant) may no longer recognize her son, but she can perfectly recite her recipe for borscht.

Working in collaboration with the residents and staff of a real facility in Pasadena, with some of them appearing as extras, Friedland employs an observational style reminiscent of a Frederick Wiseman documentary, with no dramatic plot arcs or music score. (The Father, this is not.) You still keenly feel Ruth’s loss of autonomy, particularly in no longer being able to cook her own meals. Her culinary instincts remain strong: at one point she commandeers the care center’s kitchen, deftly segmenting citrus and cubing honeydew melons for a fruit salad. (The influential cookbook author Mollie Katzen served as the production’s food consultant.)

Friendland also spotlights the responsibilities balanced by the home’s caregivers, particularly with a stressed yet gracious nurse (Carolyn Michelle) and a sardonically charming doctor (Andy McQueen). Chalfant disallows sentimentality from seeping into her leading performance, letting Ruth’s vivacious spirit shine through. But the most astonishing acting turn comes from H. Jon Benjamin, who plays her son. Known for voicing the cartoon spy Archer, the actor’s ironic deadpan seems to have softened with age into a wounded sensitivity. The conversations between him and Chalfant are the most outwardly heartbreaking scenes in an otherwise restrained film.

More reviews of the New Directors/New Films lineup are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

At the onset of the COVID pandemic, migrant laborer Mahesh Jena bicycled 1,700 kilometers (1,056 miles) across India to reach his home village. (His Strava logs must have been crazy.) His trek from Maharashtra to Odisha went viral, but those fifteen minutes of fame didn’t improve his material circumstances. This remarkably unsentimental hybrid film by Suhel Banerjee playfully blurs the lines between biopic and documentary, with actors reenacting this very long bike ride while the real Mahesh lurks offscreen. Banerjee resists the narrative of noble peasantry and pastoral mysticism: an unemployed construction worker biked across the country with the promise of a farming job back home, and that’s all there was to it. Even making this movie seems to leave Mahesh with no discernible difference in his life. As suggested by its title, CycleMahesh is the story of a man, and a society, spinning in circles.

More reviews of the New Directors/New Films lineup are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

As someone who enjoys hosting dinner parties *and* putting my friends into psychological crucibles, next time I host I'm gonna do that "state a resolution for the person sitting to your right" gimmick.

The kind of movie where you can get cute and adequately describe it by riffing on the titles of other movies. Sex, lies, and subterfuge. Scenes from a marriage. Marriage story. Tinker, tailor, chef, spy.

A fun, sexy romp of a spy mystery. Dare I say it's even a lil' horny? At least for one character... There's no particular insight on contemporary geopolitics as Soderbergh and Koepp are just trying to give you a good time. Perhaps you could see it as a gentle indictment of the constant obfuscation within intelligence services leading to different factions essentially fighting each other. The slick surfaces and hermetic interior spaces make the proceedings feel more serious than they actually are. Amp up the satire and this is just Veep transposed to MI6 (the British CIA).

I love the discordant cuts during the polygraph scene. Soderbergh (who edits his own pictures under a pseudonym) crosscuts between different interviewees to collapse them into one sequence. But sometimes the cut is to the same person, just at a different angle, so you're thrown off balance, never knowing if the next edit would stay on the same character or not.

Dinner party notes: Spiked chana masala. Some kind of roast?? And a cake topped with fruits, wrapped in saran wrap because everyone left before dessert. Lots of red wine consumed throughout. Not too perturbed by Michael Fassbender wearing a crisp white oxford whilst cooking. He's clearly wealthy enough to afford a top-notch laundry service.

Very stylish, gorgeous movie to look at. Can't be too mad about a couple hours spent watching hot people laze about in beautiful costumes in the Sud-de-. (Gorgeous gorgeous gowns was a common phrase I heard at the reception.) But the psychological motivations of the characters are communicated at a surface level. We don't see past the artifice that they (and the director?) have constructed for themselves. The shots are beautifully constructed, but what are they in service of beyond vibes? Call Me By Your Name-core.

There were a lot of shots, particularly with food, that felt laden with meaning at first, but as the film went on I realized it was an aesthetic exercise. The way that the three women ate an apple, or buttering a piece of toast by rubbing a hunk of beurre all over it like you were greasing a cake pan, or Chloë Sevigny intricately cutting a pineapple (so that's how you do it...).

Q&A with director Durga Chew-Bose and star Lily McInerny

Three strangers, each reckoning with different forms of loss, make brief in this often beguiling meditation on absence and memory. Sugamoto (Minami Ohba), unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé shortly before their honeymoon, follows the itinerary on her own, venturing to a remote cape in the south of Japan. In the wake of his girlfriend’s suicide at that same place, Rin (Soichiro Tanaka) remains there, hoping to catch a glimpse of her ghost. And after a family man loses his wedding ring at the beach, his wife disallows him from returning home without it. (This semi-surreal plot thread, which bookends the film, is the slightest one in of time but the most significant in impact.) Director Du Jie aims for profundity, and while the resulting film can be frustratingly opaque, certain moments linger in the mind. Call it a haunting of sorts.

Working as a cinematographer in the Chinese film industry, Du has worked on productions of every scale, including the wildly successful Detective Chinatown franchise. His independently financed directorial debut was made in Japan, where Du now lives, citing family reasons and censorship concerns in his native country, essentially swapping artistic limitations for budgetary constraints. Recalling the films of Eric Rohmer by way of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, The Height of the Coconut Trees is an expression of a longtime craftsman expressing his own voice for the first time.

More reviews of the New Directors/New Films lineup are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

I'm just happy that Bong Joon-ho got a truckload of money to make a bizarre, satirical sci-fi movie about the intersections of capitalism and authoritarianism and imperialism, a Warner Bros studio project that leaves the director's distinctive voice intact.

Was fully on board with the zanier material that dominates the first two acts, especially the horny romance between Mickey and Nasha that swells with the film's emotional high point. Didn't love Mark Ruffalo putting on the Trump voice, especially when the character feels like it would map better onto different real-life analogues (interviews w/ the director suggest a mishmash of unnamed Korean and American politicians, but they had specific people in mind). Third act largely becomes sci-fi action, and while it's still entertaining, Bong doesn't fully combine the mishmash of tones in this movie — same as most of his work outside of Parasite, if we're being honest.

There are some very hot people in this movie: Robert Pattinson, Naomi Ackie, Anamaria Vartolomei. Was hoping for a Mickey 4-some :(

Food in the film: raw tenderloin (could serve as a tartare) with a mysterious red "sauce" and frozen TV dinner tray of rations

No delusions coming in that this would have reached the heights of Paddington 2, but doesn't quite hold a candle to the first film either. By taking Paddington outside of London, it loses much of its charm and becomes a family adventure film — albeit a very good one.

You can feel the absence of original writers Paul King and Simon Farnaby in the finished screenplay, but their touch persists in the overall plot (they have story credits). The ending gets us back to the magic of both Paddington movies. If the first two movies are celebrations of a multicultural Britain, a kind and polite rebuttal to the Brexit era, this movie is about an immigrant getting back in touch with his roots without losing any love for his adopted country.

Oscars season is finally over, and I've just published the first part of my dinner party recap! Ten courses, one for each Best Picture nominee.

God this was so, so grim. Ending saves this from being too maudlin but sheesh this was depressing!

I typically complain about these internationally-aimed Eurostyle arthouse movies, and it seemed like it would be a typical example of this common style, so I had put it off until two days before the Oscars. But layering in elements of horror and transcendental cinema makes it an effective riff on the form. This is the opposite of a "true crime" story: it immerses us into the impoverished, post-Great War Denmark, leading us to understand the circumstances behind what is otherwise an inexplicably evil act. Bleak but compelling; my mom came in about twenty minutes into the film and ended up finishing the movie with me.

The shadowy cinematography from Michał Dymek is gorgeous, with what appears to be at least one non-digital fade to black. Trine Dyrholm has such a tricky role as Dagmar and she nails it. We're repulsed by her actions, yet we understand her motivation.

A personal tribute to Orin O’Brien, the first woman to ever be a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic. The legendary double bassist’s niece tells the story of her remarkable journey, from being hired by Leonard Bernstein to retiring after 55 years in the NY Phil. Media coverage at the time focused on her looks and her gender instead of her talent. O’Brien remains vivacious even at the age of 87, speedwalking to the Lincoln Center (familiar ground for this correspondent) and expertly plucking the strings of her chosen instrument, a ing bedrock of the symphony. A touching, if fleeting, testimony to a remarkable musician in the twilight of her life.

My full run down of the Oscar nominated live action and documentary shorts are over on Buttered Popcorn!

This wrenching, humanistic film begins six days before John Henry Ramirez is scheduled to be executed for murdering a gas station attendant during a robbery. Smriti Mundhra, now a two-time Oscar nominee and the creator of Indian Matchmaking, tells Ramirez’s story, as well as those of the killer's son and the victim's son. It’s a hard watch, but I’m astonished by the multifaceted portrait that the director has assembled. The local District Attorney, who morally opposes the death penalty, tries to halt the execution. Ramirez comes to with his impending death. Aaron Castro, the son of the man that Ramirez killed, prepares himself to see justice carried out for his father’s death. Through these personal perspectives, we grapple with the ethics and effects of capital punishment. It’s a documentary that leaves us with questions rather than answers, and one of the final scenes is so powerfully raw that you can’t believe a camera was recording it.

My full run down of the Oscar nominated live action and documentary shorts are over on Buttered Popcorn!

Four topics, three films each: Method Acting. Musicals. Cult Classics. Noir

• A Streetcar Named Desire
• East of Eden
• The Misfits
• Charade

  Member Selection - Elle

• The Gang's All Here
• Fateful Findings

  Member Selection - James

• Funny Girl
• Little Shop of Horrors

Favorite first time watches each month (not necessarily the one I thought was the best), regardless of release date.

Starting in 2021 I've decided to exclude anything released in that year (or coming out in the next one). I make "best of" lists each year already and want to use this list to highlight any older discoveries.

• Sorry to Bother You

  July 2018

• Searching

  August 2018

• Juliet, Naked

  September 2018 (only saw two films this month though)

• The Old Man & the Gun

  October 2018

• Tampopo

  November 2018

• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

  December 2018

• Paddington 2

  January 2019

• All About Eve

  February 2019

• To Be or Not to Be

  March 2019

• Long Day's Journey into Night

  April 2019

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

Movies that made me tear up when I saw it in a theater / public place. Sometimes I even cried. Sorta ranked by the amount of eye watering that occurred.

Not including things I watch at home cause this list would be wayyyy too long.

• Her Smell
• Interstellar
• Coco
• Marriage Story
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire
• Blinded by the Light
• Searching
• Ad Astra
• Little Women
• Call Me by Your Name

...plus 35 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranked by how much I like them.

I broke down every single category and made my initial predictions- read all about it here!

1. Nickel Boys
2. Dune: Part Two
3. A Complete Unknown
4. The Substance
5. Anora
6. The Brutalist
7. I'm Still Here
8. Conclave
9. Emilia Pérez
10. Wicked

What I think will be nominated for Best Picture in 2025 as of January 8, in order of likelihood to win the Oscar. Using this to track my predictions over time.

A full list of my nomination predictions across every category is on my newsletter!

Confidence in each film getting nominated:
Solid: Anora, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

Likely: Dune: Part Two, A Complete Unknown

Lean: A Real Pain

Toss-Up:September 5, Sing Sing

• A Complete Unknown
• Anora
• Emilia Pérez
• Wicked
• The Brutalist
• Conclave
• Sing Sing
• A Real Pain
• September 5
• Dune: Part Two

Ten new to me movies. In the order in which I saw them.

A bunch of other year end lists and superlatives are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn.

• A Brighter Summer Day
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• Sherlock Jr.
• Rope
• Cabaret
• Harakiri
• Paper Moon
• Cinema Paradiso
• The Fall
• The Holiday

An oft-repeated quote on social media is that if you thought the year was weak for cinema, you just had not seen enough movies. This applies for 2024, which was certainly weak if your scope was limited to unusually disappointing Hollywood fare. And the year’s crop of Oscar hopefuls isn’t nearly as strong as last year. But there are always great people making great movies, and this year is no exception.

Blurbs for all twenty films are on my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn!

And separately, I have a list of movie-related lists, including foodie movie moments, the Most New York movies, and my favorite screening experiences.

1. Robot Dreams
2. The Taste of Things
3. All We Imagine as Light
4. I Saw the TV Glow
5. Nickel Boys
6. Sing Sing
7. Perfect Days
8. Evil Does Not Exist
9. Dune: Part Two
10. Rap World

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

On my mind, for no reason in particular: movies that reveal the dark side of America’s heartland, where wide open spaces instill narrow minds, and reveal a fundamentally broken society. Call it Dark Americana. These excellent films pictures are the real hillbilly elegies.

Notes on these movies are on my newsletter.

Honorable mentions that don’t quite fit this niche category because they take place in the suburbs: The Ice Storm and Prisoners.

• A Face in the Crowd
• Ace in the Hole
• Elmer Gantry
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• The Last Picture Show
• Paris, Texas
• True Stories
• Red Rocket

  Suggested by Mark Metzger!

• The Brutalist

  Also suggested by Mark Metzger!

What I think will be nominated for Best Picture in 2025, in order of likelihood to win the Oscar. Using this to track my predictions over time.

A full list of my nomination predictions across almost every category is on my newsletter!

• A Complete Unknown
• Anora
• Conclave
• Wicked
• The Brutalist
• September 5
• A Real Pain
• Sing Sing
• Dune: Part Two
• Blitz

• Steamboat Willie

  January: the 1920s

• Sherlock Jr.

  January: the 1920s

• The General

  January: the 1920s

• Snow-White

  February: 1930s

• Gone with the Wind

  February: 1930s

• Meshes of the Afternoon

  March: 1940s

• Fireworks

  March: 1940s

• Rope

  March: 1940s

• Cabaret

  Elle's Birthday Pick

• Along the Coast

  April: 1950s

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

I have press credentials for this year's New York Film Festival!

Subscribe to my newsletter, Buttered Popcorn, to get more in depth reviews now and in the future :)

(short films not included in this list)

1. Happyend
2. All We Imagine as Light
3. Nickel Boys
4. The Shrouds
5. Hellraiser
6. Anora
7. Misericordia
8. Oh, Canada
9. Compensation
10. The Room Next Door

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

Brief words on the surprising connections between some of these films are on my newsletter, along with some miscellaneous lists!

Don't pay too much attention to the exact ranking as I grouped some films that had thematic resonance.

1. Rye Lane
2. Showing Up
3. ing Every Night
4. Oppenheimer
5. Godzilla Minus One
6. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
7. The Holdovers
8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
9. The Sweet East
10. Beau Is Afraid

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

Non-new releases that I saw for the first time in 2023.

1. Magic Mike XXL
2. Titanic
3. Yi Yi
4. Lawrence of Arabia
5. Ikiru
6. Oldboy
7. All Quiet on the Western Front
8. I Am Suzanne!
9. Dil Chahta Hai
10. The Abyss

• The Smiling Madame Beudet

  1 Tue 1/17/2023 FSDO: 100 Years Ago (1923)

• Our Hospitality

  1 Tue 1/17/2023 FSDO: 100 Years Ago (1923)

• The Fabelmans

  2 Tue 1/24/2023 Oscar Contenders: Best Picture

• An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It

  3 Tue 1/31/2023 Oscar Contenders: Animated Feature

• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

  3 Tue 1/31/2023 Oscar Contenders: Animated Feature

• My Year of Dicks

  4 Tue 2/7/2023 Oscar Contenders: Lone Wolves

• To Leslie

  4 Tue 2/7/2023 Oscar Contenders: Lone Wolves

• Babylon

  5 Mon 2/13/2023 Oscar Contenders: Original Score

• How Do You Measure a Year?

  6 Thu 2/23/2023 Oscar Contenders: Lone Wolves

• Aftersun

  6 Thu 2/23/2023 Oscar Contenders: Lone Wolves

...plus 38 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Apartment
• Barry Lyndon
• Star Wars
• Beauty and the Beast
• The Social Network
• Her
• Moonlight
• Lady Bird
• Parasite
• Drive My Car

Still have a handful of things to watch, but I needed to make this list at some point. Overall 2022 has been much weaker year than the prior year, but there's still some good movies. Here are twenty of them, plus a couple short films I loved.

In 2022, I watched 216 features (new and old) and 68 shorts!

2023/undated releases to look out for (they otherwise would have been on this list): Showing Up, Master Gardener, Small, Slow But Steady, Full Time

1. RRR

   I rented out a luxury apartment building's screening room to screen this for nearly twenty of my friends because I am so ionate/unhinged about this movie.

2. Aftersun

   The movie that made me cry the most this year. Like a tan — or a scar — the effects of Aftersun aren't fully realized until its over.

3. A New Old Play

   Sadly, the most obscure movie on this list.

4. TÁR

   Tackles nearly every hot button issue of the liberal elite class from the past two years in an utterly organic fashion.

5. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

   I will miss making people uncomfortable when I would point to the big "THE SACKLER WING" sign in the Met.

6. The Fabelmans

   Seeing the physical, tactile work of image/sound making is far more compelling than digital editing ever will be.

7. Nope

   I can see Nope baffling the types of people who don't like to think about their media the minute it is over. So I'll just say it — those people are babies.

8. Babylon

   Was lukewarm when I first saw it, but since then I've become obsessed and my rating will go up when I see it a second time.

9. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

   Jenny Slate in two of the best movies of the year.

10. Everything Everywhere All at Once

    The world would be a better place if every effects driven action movie were so achingly personal.

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

Film club with my friends for 2022. Films will be picked at least one week in advance so this will continually be updated. Each week there's a different theme!

Most themes are taken from the Letterboxd Season Challenge or Film School Dropouts or Jason Bailey's Fun City Cinema.

Google Doc schedule with dates

• Rebecca

  1 Mon 1/3/2022 FSDO: Actor - Olivia de Havilland or Joan Fontaine

• Speedy

  Week 2 Mon 1/10/2022 Fun City Cinema: 1920s

• Drop Dead Gorgeous

  Week 3 Tue 1/18/2022 LSC: One-and-Done Week

• Mahogany

  Week 4 Wed 1/26/2022 LSC: Dee-lightful Week

• Volver

  Week 5 Mon 1/31/2022 FSDO: Actor - Penélope Cruz and/or Javier Bardem

• Space Is the Place

  Week 6 Mon 2/7/2022 FSDO: Genre - Afrofuturism

• The Last Angel of History

  Week 6 Mon 2/7/2022 FSDO: Genre - Afrofuturism

• In the Cut

  Week 7 Tue 2/15/2022 LSC: Sensual Healing Week

• The Windshield Wiper

  Week 8 Mon 2/28/2022 Oscar Contenders

• The Power of the Dog

  Week 8 Mon 2/28/2022 Oscar Contenders: Best Picture

...plus 39 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Best old movies that I saw in 2022. List of my top 2022 releases to come after catching up on a few things!

1. Babe: Pig in the City
2. Barry Lyndon
3. Secrets & Lies
4. Bicycle Thieves
5. The Goat
6. A Confucian Confusion
7. The Catch
8. La Jetée
9. Mad Max 2
10. Speedy

I'm not a filmmaker but I was... Whether in story or in form, this is the kind of stuff I'd make. In the notes I've written what I'd attempt to emulate.

• Asako I & II

  High concept premise as trojan horse. How world shaking events can impact the personal aspects of one's life, the disquieting blur between comfort and complacency in relationships, the always shifting dynamics between friends.

• Straight Up

  Quirky update of screwball. The neurotic characters are obsessed with cinema.

• Fourteen

  Abrasively casual realism. Friendship falling apart. Trying not to be self conscious.

• Skyscraper

  Tongue in cheek. Story of a city told through one building.

• Days

  The rhythms of the every day. Metropolitan isolation. Making the viewer put some effort into it.

• Long Day's Journey into Night

  Bi Gan is a cinema obsessed nerd and it shows. Slow yet entrancing.

• An Elephant Sitting Still

  Very bleak and hopeless. Uses personal stories to illustrate a societal problem.

• End of the Century

  Lone tourist in a strange city. Like Long Day's Journey Into Night, messes around with time and memory to ponder the "what if" and "if then" but not in a super stylized way like Eternal Sunshine.

• One for the Road

  Cocktails, pop music soundtrack, dissolution of a friendship. Would definitely use an Elton John needle drop.

• Heathers

  Dark comedy in an off kilter world. Fucked up teenagers. Stylish costumes.

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

Recommend reading the list in reverse order (click here).

The Coronavirus Year, part two, is almost over. Personally it had a really rough start. But as summer began, everyone was getting fully vaccinated, and that launched what turned into a truly fantastic year. There's nothing I can really complain about, and I'm at a level of peace I had always strived towards. That's not something that many people have, so I don't take it lightly. (Only one thing I would change: more romance in my life would be fun 🤪)

And there's the movies. Some of the films on this list I watched on my TV. Others I saw in one of my many solo outings to the movie theater. But my most cherished moviegoing experiences this year always involved a friend or two or seven. It's not just seeing the movie, but it's the meal beforehand, or the drinks afterward, that build it up to an entire night of bonding.

Some highlights: Took a few friends to In the Mood For Love at the Lincoln Center (they'd never seen it). Then a couple months later, 2046 screened at the IFC Center, and I went to see it with that same group, plus others who had already seen it. Nearly bought out an entire row in the theater.

Also: Sitting among a thousand strangers at the New York Film Festival was subtly life affirming. Q&A screenings returned, and it was a treat to hear the chaotic audience questions at NYFF, and subsequently edifying to listen to Jane Campion and Bennett Miller talk shop in a more private setting.

Anyways. Here are my favorite movies of 2021, along with some of the best shorts I watched. In the notes, I've written a very brief note on something I took away from the experience, please read it.

Happy new year, and I hope our 2022 in film is just as enriching.

(There's still like thirty films on my "to watch" list for the year, so I may add to this list if anything warrants inclusion. Going to give myself a deadline of end of January to lock this in though, since 2021 (fortunately) cannot go on forever.)

1. The Mitchells vs. the Machines

   I'm just as surprised as you are that I'm marking this as my favorite movie of the year.

2. Drive My Car

   It's so hard to write out what this movie makes me feel; it's such an interior experience for me. The three hour duration is imposing but it is so so worth the effort. I could watch an even longer version of this film, yet it's also perfect as it is.

   Hidetoshi Nishijima gives the best acting performance of the year. Here's a professional who explains why:

   Unassumingly shattering, a description just as applicable to the film as a whole, Nishijima’s turn astounds for its unshowiness. As a grief-stricken husband and father masking his continued distress with professional diligence, he maintains strenuous composure until he can no longer swallow his anger towards the person he loved most. The actor’s stoic gestures provide an impenetrable fortress unwilling to give away any hint of his true self.

3. The Worst Person in the World

   Love to give my friends existential crises in the cinema and this was the one to do the trick. The friends I went with were late twenties/early thirties women, just like the beautifully realized protagonist in this film. She's messy and caring and flighty and compelling.

4. Nine Days

   The indie version of Pixar's Soul is the most underseen movie on this list, in the sense that it should have been far more widely known. First time I saw this I was compulsively crying through the end credits. Second time I saw this, I didn't cry, but it led to one of the best discussions I've had with my film club all year.

5. Memoria

   Seeing this in the Lincoln Center's cavernous Alice Tully Hall was incredible. Not hyperbole to say this was a total sensory experience. Most of the movies on this list can be seen at home (though not ideal) but this is essential to see this one in a theater or similar environment.

   I bought the art book which is beautifully designed and also illuminating on the film's themes and production process.

6. The Father

   No one wants to see this movie based on its premise but some of my most resistant friends loved it. A tour de force in every way imaginable. The rare time that the best acting performance won the Best Actor Oscar.

7. Dune

   Forgot how much I can love these grandiose, big budget sci-fi films that offer up moments of sheer awe and beauty. I think the moments leading up to the first sand worm encounter was my favorite part.

8. Petite Maman

   Céline Sciamma riffing on Studio Ghibli with magical results. This will always be the movie you need right now.

9. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn

   A shitpost in arthouse clothing. Put on the first five minutes of this movie during a party and see how many friends you'll lose. It didn't make the Oscars shortlist for International Film. Expected but unfortunate; giving this movie an Oscar nomination would have been demented.

10. CODA

    Wanted to cheer and cry so hard, watching this in my bedroom during virtual Sundance. So it was extremely cathartic to re-watch it some months later with some good friends of mine.

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

Film club with my friends for 2021. Films will be picked at least one week in advance so this will continually be updated. Started tracking everyone's star ratings in May.

Most themes are taken from the Letterboxd Season Challenge

Google Doc schedule with dates

• Pulp Fiction

  Week 1 1/5/21 Popular Quality Week

  This week's challenge is to watch the most popular film you haven't seen from the Letterboxd Top 250.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week1"

  (From top 4 lists submitted by film clubbers, it was a tie between Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, and Whiplash. I have seen Whiplash, and then flipped a coin to decide between the two "finalists.")

• Ernest & Celestine

  Week 2 1/12/21 GKIDS Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film distributed by GKIDS.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week17"

• Orlando

  Week 3 1/19/21 Contemporary Performers: Tilda Swinton Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film starring Tilda Swinton.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week18"

• I Know Where I'm Going!

  Week 4 1/26/21 Powell & Pressburger (& Ted & Alice) Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen Powell & Pressburger film; AND/OR Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week19"

• Sleepless in Seattle

  Week 5 2/2/21 Shot by Sven Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film with cinematography by Sven Nykvist film.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week21"

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

  Week 6 2/9/21 Director Recommendations: Bong Joon-ho Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film recommended by Bong Joon-ho.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week31"

• Nine Days

  Week 7 2/16/21 Member Selection - Alice

• Near Dark

  Week 8 2/23/21 Tangerine (Dream) Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen with a soundtrack by Tangerine Dream; AND/OR Sean Baker's Tangerine.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week23"

• The Piano

  Week 9 3/2/21 Southern Exposure: Jane Campion Week

  This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film directed by Jane Campion.

  Weekly tag: "lsc6 week24"

• Crooklyn

  Week 10 3/9/21 Member Selection - Esther

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

Films (and TV series when on Letterboxd) with a nomination for the 37th Film Independent Spirit Awards. See full list of nominees here.

These juried grant awards go to an individual, rather than a particular film:
PRODUCERS AWARD
(The Producers Award honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films)

Brad Becker-Parton
Pin-Chun Liu
Lizzie Shapiro

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD
(The Someone to Watch Award recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition)

ALEX CAMILLERI
Director of Luzzu

GILLIAN WALLACE HORVAT
Director of I Blame Society

MICHAEL SARNOSKI
Director of Pig

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD
(The 27th Truer Than Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition)
JESSICA BESHIR
Director of Faya Dayi

DEBBIE LUM
Director of Try Harder!

ANGELO MADSEN MINAX
Director of North By Current

TV series not on Letterboxd:
BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES - THE CHOE SHOW

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES: BLINDSPOTTING, RESERVATION DOGS, WE ARE LADY PARTS

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE IN A SCRIPTED SERIES:
Deborah Ayorinde, THEM: Covenant
Jasmine Cephas Jones, Blindspotting
Jana Schmieding, Rutherford Falls
Anjana Vasan, We Are Lady Parts

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES:
Olly Alexander, It’s a Sin
Murray Bartlett, The White Lotus
Michael Greyeyes, Rutherford Falls
Ashley Thomas, THEM: Covenant

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES:
RESERVATION DOGS

• To Chiara
• C'mon C'mon
• The Lost Daughter
• The Novice
• Zola
• 7 Days
• Holler
• Queen of Glory
• Test Pattern
• Wild Indian

...plus 37 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Info about the showcase

• BJ's Mobile Gift Shop

  Writer/Director/Producer, Jason Park (PI 2015)

  A young Korean-American hustler runs throughout the city of Chicago making sales out of his “mobile gift shop”.

• Parachute

  Editor, Sara Schultz (PI 2021)

  Wendy, a Chinese “parachute kid,” is struggling to adapt to her new American life.

• A Poem by Alba

  Writer/Director, Yoo Lee (PI 2021)

  An elderly woman living alone in her apartment deals with loneliness and her eventual end.

• Of Hearts and Castles

  Writer/Director, Rubén Navarro (PI 2018); Cinematographer, Bongani Mlambo (PI 2018); Producer, Sheri D. Bradford (PI 2018)

  A man struggling emotionally after a breakup meets another man for one night. A few hours together ease their emotions and create a momentum that will stay with them forever.

• The Goldfish

  Producer, Diana Ward (PI 2018); Cinematographer, Bongani Mlambo (PI 2018); Editor, Melanie Annan (PI 2017)

  An adopted woman is forced to confront her darkest fear about motherhood at her sister’s baby shower.

• The State of Being a Father

  Director, Diante Singley (PI 2020)

  Three friends discuss the Past, Present and Future of black masculinity and fatherhood.

• Huella

  Cinematographer, s Kroon (PI 2020)

  When the death of her grandmother unleashes a generational curse, a disenchanted flamenco dancer resigned to a desk job is forced to experience the five stages of grief through a visit from her female ancestors, pushing her to finally break the cycle.

It's been two months into the next year, so I guess I have to cut myself off at some point to make a list of my favorite films of 2020! I still haven't seen everything that I've wanted to see, but if there's anything I see before the Oscars that blows me away, I'll update this. At the end of this list are the best shorts from 2020 (that I saw).

Since it was weird year (for a myriad of reasons) I'm just gonna consider any movie that had a general release last year, or is still undistributed, to be a 2020 film. Festival screenings don't count if the film is gonna get an actual release in 2021.

With that criteria, there's some excellent movies I saw last year that I'd count as a 2021 release. Keep these films on your radar and they'll probably be on my list next year!!
• Nine Days
• The Killing of Two Lovers
• Minari
• The Father

1. City Hall
2. Hamilton
3. Lovers Rock
4. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
5. What the Constitution Means to Me
6. There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse
7. The Metamorphosis of Birds
8. Sound of Metal
9. Promising Young Woman
10. Wander Darkly

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Watching 26 movies in less than seven days makes time blur, as hard as I try to keep hold each film as a discrete event. It does seem like some of the films are conversing with each other, exploring similar ideas, often in diverging ways. So instead of making the typical "ranked" list, I've structured this to spotlight film pairings — some double features, others short & feature — that I think would work well together, so please read this list as a set of pairs. I added brief note for each on what connects these pairings, which are roughly ranked in how much I'd recommend the constituent films to other people.

But really, I'm making this list mostly so I have an outlet to reflect on my experience at Sundance.

This was the first virtual film festival I've "been to" that captured some semblance of a communal atmosphere. The live chats before and after the premieres made them feel like a true event, rather than just streaming another movie at home. There was also the virtual New Frontier lounge, where I replicated my experience of going to real life afterparties: walking around aimlessly and hovering on the edges of conversations. I popped in when the director of Mass was giving candid advice about how others could get their films produced which was fun, and wish I had spent more time in that space to encounter those kind of serendipitous exchanges..

Festival regrets:
• Not making a real effort to chat with fellow attendees in the weird, but also fun New Frontier virtual lounge
• Not finding out about Sundance's "speakeasy" until the festival was ending. It was too late to do virtual karaoke.
• I should have watched the short films on day 1, when there was actually time to do so
• And of course, not watching everything that I wanted to. But that would have been nearly impossible without totally foregoing sleep (which I see a lot of people here have done!)

(Some of the shorts and films I saw outside of Sundance, but including here since they're part of the lineup)

1. Bambirak

   Completely different tonally, but both Bambirak and CODA feature a daughter who helps her family interface with the world around them.

2. CODA
3. A Concerto Is a Conversation

   Celebrations of music, specifically of Black musicians, and connections to history and cultural moments. Both are uplifting and informative.

4. Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
5. Souvenir, Souvenir

   Standout animated documentaries about personal histories and what we choose to exclude from them.

6. Flee
7. President

   Two (not animated) riveting and timely documentaries suited for our political moment. Both emphasize the importance of a free and open society.

8. In the Same Breath
9. Don't Go Tellin' Your Momma

   Proof that formally inventive and experimental films do not have to be pretentious!

10. All Light, Everywhere

...plus 25 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Lots of great stuff that I watched in 2020, that weren't released in 2020. This list excludes any 2020 or 2021 releases (will make a top of 2020 list in a couple months once I've seen more new stuff).

Sorted in chronological release order! Some short films included too.

• His Girl Friday
• Here Comes Mr. Jordan
• My Name Is Julia Ross
• Brief Encounter
• The Breaking Point
• 12 Angry Men
• Sweet Smell of Success
• Bridges-Go-Round 1
• Some Like It Hot
• Skyscraper

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

Film club that I'm hosting with my friends :)

A modified version of the Film School Dropouts weekly challenge (original list here)

Schedule of themes since the FSDO calendar dates don't align with the dates for this film club.

Substituting some of the FSDO themes so that there will be five weeks of this year's Oscar contenders to kick off the year, and on a club member's birthday week we'll watch their personal selection!

List is highly subject to change and a constant work in progress.

1. The Irishman

   Week 1 - 1/7 - Oscar nominees

2. I Lost My Body

   Week 2 - 1/14 - Oscar nominees

3. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

   Week 3 - 1/21 - Oscar nominees

4. Rocketman

   Week 4 - 1/28 - Oscar nominees

5. Hair Love

   Week 5 - 2/4 - Oscar nominees (this was the group pick for best animated short)

6. Nefta Football Club

   Week 5 - 2/4 - Oscar nominees (this was the group pick for best live action short)

7. Hell-Bound Train

   Week 8: Feb. 17-Feb. 23

   Movement - African American Cinema Pioneers (1910s-1940s) - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2020Week8

8. Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

   Film Club Week 6 - 2/10

   FSDO Week 1: Jan. 1-Jan. 5

   Auteur - F.W. Murnau - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2020Week1

9. Station Content

   Week 2: Jan. 6-Jan. 12

   Actor - Gloria Swanson - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2020Week2

10. Sunset Boulevard

    Week 2: Jan. 6-Jan. 12

    Actor - Gloria Swanson - Filmography

    Tag: FSDO2020Week2

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

May use these for my film club in 2021 or follow along with the schedule. Who knows!

Original list

1. Pulp Fiction

   Week 1: September 7th-13th
   Popular Quality Week

   Gonna try to start this Season out with a challenge that aims to guarantee you a good watch. The Letterboxd Top 250 allows us to see what our community considers the best of the best. Here's the catch: we're having a bit of a popularity contest. I want you to watch the most popular film you haven't seen on this list. Its well regarded by a significant number of people, so why haven't you seen it yet?

   Note: This may fluctuate between the time you create your list and when you start the Challenge. Feel free to stick with your original or you can update it if it changes, up to you.

   This week's challenge is to watch the most popular film you haven't seen from the Letterboxd Top 250.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week1"

2. Better Luck Tomorrow

   Week 2: September 14th-20th
   Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award Week

   From Wikipedia:

   "The Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award is presented to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000 by the Film Independent, a non-profit organization dedicated to independent film and independent filmmakers. It is named after actor/screenwriter/director John Cassavetes, a pioneer of American independent film.

   Created for the 15th Independent Spirit Awards, it was originally called the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature (Under $500,000). After that, the rules changed so that any feature film budgeted under $500,000 could be eligible (regardless of how many films the director has made), hence the new name."

   We're going low budget this week. Let's see what can be done with limited funding and unlimited ion.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film that has been nominated for the Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award.

3. In the Heat of the Night

   Week 3: September 21st-27th
   Classic Performers: Sidney Poitier Week

   Famously known as the first black actor to win the Oscar for Best Actor, Sidney Poitier's career is filled with rich tapestries of social disparities and intense moments. Though his early roles in racially charged films left him a tad pigeon holed in of characters, he always put his all into his roles, with a lot of them becoming nothing less than iconic. There are plenty of picks within his filmography for all of us to enjoy, so let's take a look back at one of the greatest to ever play the game of cinema.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film starring Sidney Poitier.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week3"

4. Diva

   Week 4: September 28th-October 4th
   Cinéma du Look (Who's Talking) Week

   ...and its a This or That!

   For the first in this series of special challenges, you get to choose between super stylized French films, or a John Travolta/Kirstie Alley vehicle about a talking baby, both from the same period in time. Its French underground vs. American mainstream in our first This or That!

   From Wikipedia:

   "Cinéma du look was a French film movement of the 1980s and 1990s, analysed, for the first time, by French critic Raphaël Bassan in La Revue du Cinéma issue n° 448, May 1989, in which he classified Luc Besson, Jean-Jacques Beineix and Leos Carax as directors of 'le look'.

   These directors were said to favor style over substance, spectacle over narrative. It referred to films that had a slick, gorgeous visual style and a focus on young, alienated characters who were said to represent the marginalized youth of François Mitterrand's . Themes that run through many of their films include doomed love affairs, young people more d to peer groups than families, a cynical view of the police, and the use of scenes in the Paris Métro to symbolise an alternative, underground society. The mixture of 'high' culture, such as the opera music of Diva and Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, and pop culture, for example the references to Batman in Subway, was another key feature. French filmmakers were inspired by New Hollywood films (most notably Francis Ford Coppola's One from the Heart and Rumble Fish), late Fassbinder films (Lola), as well as television commercials, music videos, and fashion photography."

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen Cinéma du Look film; OR Amy Heckerling's Look Who's Talking.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week4"

5. Il Soro

   Week 5: October 5th-11th
   Commedia all'italiana Week

   From Wikiperdia:

   "Commedia all'italiana (i.e. "Comedy in the Italian way") or Italian-style comedy is an Italian film genre...widely considered to have started with Mario Monicelli's I soliti ignoti (Big Deal on Madonna Street) in 1958 and derives its name from the title of Pietro Germi's Divorzio all'italiana (Divorce Italian Style, 1961).

   Rather than a specific genre, the term indicates a period (approx. from the late fifties to the early seventies) in which the Italian film industry was producing many successful comedies, with some common traits like satire of manners, farcical and grotesque overtones, a strong focus on "spicy" social issues of the period (like sexual matters, divorce, contraception, marriage of the clergy, the economic rise of the country and its various consequences, the traditional religious influence of the Catholic Church) and a prevailing middle-class setting, often characterized by a substantial background of sadness and social criticism that diluted the comic contents."

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen Commedia all'italiana film.

6. Blue Ruin

   Week 6: October 12th-18th
   Mumblegore Week

   What we got here is what's known in the business as a sub-genre, a more specific type of film within a specified genre. Here, we can see the horror spinoff of the Mumblecore genre: films characterized by low budgets and a focus on naturalistic acting and dialogue over plot, now stained with fake blood and jump scares. Time to get spooky.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen Mumblegore film.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week6"

7. Millennium Mambo

   Week 7: October 19th-25th
   Vampires of the New Millennium (Mambo) Week

   ...and its a This or That!

   These creatures are immortal, both in life and in film. Sure they've been around forever, but what have they been up to lately? Maybe you'd like to find out. Or maybe you want a break from the horror to indulge in some Taiwanese drama. Up to you.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen vampire film released in 2000 or later; OR Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week7"

8. American Psycho

   Week 8: October 26th-November 1st
   Women Directed Horror Week

   When people think horror creators, a lot of the big names tend to be men. Carpenter, Hooper, Romero, Craven, Argento, etc. And sure, these men have created some fantastic works, but it often leaves horror films directed by women underappreciated. In an effort to combat this, let's round out October by observing the greatness that female-driven horror has to offer.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen horror film directed by a woman. Try looking here or here for starters.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week8"

9. On Dangerous Ground

   Week 9: November 2nd-9th
   Ray, Ray, Ray, or Wray Week

   One of my favorite running bits, this challenge is a superficial as it seems. There's little that ties these films together, except for the inclusion of folks with similar names. If for nothing else, it allows for a nice range of selection, so finding something you're interested in watching shouldn't be too hard.

   This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film directed by and/or starring Nicholas Ray, Satyajit Ray, Ray Winstone, or Fay Wray.

   Weekly tag: "lsc6 week9"

   P.S. I know Satyajit's is technically pronounced like "rye", but just shhhjustgowithitshhh.

10. 3-Iron

    Week 10: November 9th-15th
    Korean Cinema Homework Week

    Following Parasite's incredible hot streak and the pleasant surprise of it winning Best Picture at the Oscar's, a lot of people were curious as to where start when looking into more South Korean cinema. Thankfully, Katie Rife, senior writer at The A.V. Club, offered up some recommendations for those looking for some guidance. Take a look!

    This week's challenge is to watch a previously unseen film from Katie Rife's Korean Cinema Homework list.

    Weekly tag: "lsc6 week10"

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

Ranking what I watched at this year's New York Film Festival. Since it was virtual I went wayyyyy overboard in buying "tickets" for films. (and adding a few films from the lineup that I watched after the festival)

At the end of this list are a handful of the short films that I really liked!

1. City Hall
2. In the Mood for Love
3. There Are Not Thirty-Six Ways of Showing a Man Getting on a Horse
4. The Spook Who Sat by the Door
5. Nomadland
6. The Disciple
7. I Carry You with Me
8. Simone Barbès or Virtue
9. The Human Voice
10. The Plastic House

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

I'm not doing 31 films lol...

Source list here

QUICK EASY RULES:

6 countries
6 decades
7 2nd films of franchises*
4 body horror films
2 films from this year
3 disease based films
The highest rated horror film from the 50s that you haven't seen and can access.
1 film that is set entirely inside one location
1 Invisible Person film
1 Non Dracula Hammer Film
2 films with a black director or predominantly black cast or lead.
1 film with a movie theater in it.

And 1 Tobe Hooper Films (There must ALWAYS be a Hooper film)

• Godzilla

  Country 1 - Japan
  Decade 1 - 1950's

  The highest rated horror film from the 50s that you haven't seen and can access.

• Häxan

  Country 6 Sweden

• Bride of Frankenstein

  2nd films of franchises 3

  Decade 3 1930s

• Pan's Labyrinth

  Country 3 Mexico

• Ganja & Hess

  black director or predominantly black cast or lead 1

• Alien

  Decade 5 1970s

  Body Horror 1

• Thirst

  Country 4 South Korea

  Decade 4 2000s

  Disease based

• The Shining

  Country 2 - USA

  Set in one location

  Decade 2- 1980s

• Aliens

  Body Horror 2

  2nd film of franchise 1

• Phantom of the Paradise

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

Info about the showcase

The filmmakers gave some recommendations during a Q&A which I've added in the notes.

• First Generation

  First Generation
  Cinematographer, Andrew Yuyi Truong (PI 2020)

  We explore the depths of a Vietnamese-American teen’s psyche through a series of vignettes as she exists on the brink of two diverging worlds.

  Recommendations: Anything Tarkovsky, anything Kieslowski (Dekalog), After Life

• Balloon

  Balloon
  Editor, Bowei Yue (PI 2020); Cinematographer, s Kroon (PI 2020)

  For fourteen-year-old Sam, surviving junior high means staying below the radar. But that becomes impossible after he becomes the target of the school’s next viral video. He’s pressured to “hit back,” but Sam isn’t so sure—even if he does have superpowers.

  Recommendation: too late to die young

• La Cachera

  La Cachera
  Director, Felipe H. Caro (PI 2012), Producer, Maria Teresa (PI12)

  When couples fight, leave each other and reconcile, the neighbors organize a CACHERA; a bizarre serenade to ridicule them with verses and trumpets in the middle of the night.

  Recommendations: Monos, I'm No Longer Here, City of God (all time favorite), Atlantics

• Buck

  Buck
  Cinematographer, Zamarin Wahdat (PI 2018)

  Caught in the throes of a depressive fugue, young Lynn resorts to debauchery to find joy — only to discover that happiness is a much more complicated proposition.

• Ruby’s Quinceañera

  Ruby’s Quinceañera
  Director, Andrew Vasquez (PI 2020)

  On her ceremonial transition into womanhood, a quinceañera princess’s involvement with her chambelanes leads to visible tension between two young suitors. Partially recorded over with a wrestling title match and a Mexican Banda video, things come to a head in the final quince dance sequence when the chambelanes fight it out to be her number one guy amidst cosmic VHS tracking misalignment.

  Recommendations: Border, Biutiful, Ugetsu, Ed Wood, Baby Boy

• Bambirak

  Bambirak
  Director, Zamarin Wahdat (PI 2018); Cinematographer, Lorena Durán (PI 2020)

  When 8-year-old Kati from Afghanistan stows away in her father’s truck, Faruk must juggle his responsibilities as a single dad while holding down his first job in a new country. As their relationship deepens, a brush with covert racism tests the bond between a father and daughter.

  Recommendations: Cria Cuervos, The Spirit of the Beehive

• La Gloria

  La Gloria
  Director, Mary Evangelista (PI 2019); Writer, Stephanie Adam-Santos (PI 2019); Producer, Gia Rigoli (PI 2019); Producer, Adanne Ebo (PI 2019); Producer, Apoorva Charan (PI 2019); Cinematographer, Lorena Durán (PI 2019); Editor, Sunghwan Moon (PI 2019)

  In the days following her suicide attempt, a queer lovelorn teen finds connection and solace with her Abuela through the secret language of dreams.

  Recommendations: how to disappear completely, la cienaga, Lawrence anyways

There's no way I actually finish this in March lol ... film selections subject to change. New Directors/New Films has a diverse lineup but not 100% certain of what I'll be watching yet.

editND/NF got postponed so RIP an easy way of seeing tons of different countries' films :(

The Challenge:
Watch and review 30 feature films from 30 different countries in the month of March including 1 film from the featured country: Brazil.

____________________________________________________________
The rules
1. Feature films only (over 60 min). No re-watches.
2. One film must be from Brazil.
3. Log your films with 2 separate tags:
30 countries 2020
and the country the film is from, e.g.,
4. Films must be logged and reviewed during the month of March.
5. And as always, the most important rule: forget the rules. Just watch some foreign films in March.

1. The Killing

   usa

2. Made in Hong Kong

   hong kong

3. Emma.

   uk

4. The Goddess

   china

5. The Piano

   new zealand

6. Leap Year

   ireland

7. M

8. And Then We Danced

   georgia

9. City of God

   brazil

"Simple question: what are the most uplifting films in cinematic history? The movies that make you la la just thinking about? The cinema stories you take pride in turning to when, mamma mia, things are all askew? Whether they inspire, delight, excite or calm you, list the ten most wonderful films that will never, ever let you down. The movies you’d happily isolate yourselves with, because they always seem to bridge the social distance. One person’s comfort movie is another’s twisted, dark thriller, so let’s be clear, babe: the films we are looking for in this Showdown are the ones that make you feel, above all else, happy."

Ranked by the largeness of smiles induced.

• Paddington 2
• Blinded by the Light
• Top Hat
• Paddington
• To Be or Not to Be
• Little Women
• Call Me by Your Name
• 20th Century Women
• About Time
• Moana

My ballot for the Film Independent Spirit Awards. Categories specified in the notes :)

With one exception, I only voted for a film/performance if it wasn't nominated for an Oscar in that category. Though it didn't really have to be a conscious choice - these were genuinely my favorites for each category!

Would love to someday get better insight into how nominations are determined. I know each category basically has its own committee but even still, there are some bizarre choices.

My predictions & my actual votes overlap for four categories. Director, Male Lead, Documentary, International Film.

Full list of nominees here

• The Farewell

  Best Feature
  Best ing Female Zhao Shuzhen

• Uncut Gems

  Best Director Benny Safdie, Josh Safdie
  Best Male Lead Adam Sandler

• Booksmart

  Best First Feature

• Apollo 11

  Best Documentary

• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

  Best International Film

• Her Smell

  Best Female Lead Elisabeth Moss

• The Last Black Man in San Francisco

  Best ing Male Jonathan Majors

• Marriage Story

  Best Screenplay Noah Baumbach

• See You Yesterday

  Best First Screenplay Fredrica Bailey, Stefon Bristol

• The Third Wife

  Best Cinematography Chananun Chotrungroj
  Best Editing Julie Béziau

Despite the twitter fistfights and Disney reaching its artistic nadir, this has been an absurdly good year for films that seek to connect, to build worlds. Not just to entertain or provide means of escape. All you have to do is seek them out.

Here's my top 20 of 2019. See the notes for a very brief writeup.

Non-films that I'd add to the list if I could:
- The first trailer for Cats
- NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs, 04/23/19 First Round, Gm7: Golden Knights @ Sharks
- "Hadestown" (musical)
- Terrace House: Tokyo 2019-2020 - Part 1 Episode 9 "Girlfight"
- toad sings chandelier

List subject to change, and will change, as I catch up with more 2019 releases but will lock it in before the Oscars in early February.

1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

   Inspires the feeling of first falling in love. The film is slow, which means it gives you the space to immerse yourself. Portrait will rapture you if you only let it. And I can't quite explain why it has affected me so much besides saying that it's just perfect. It's just magic.

2. Parasite

   Thrilling and fun and impeccably crafted. But also delivers a message and it's made with heart. Wish I could wipe my mind of this film and see it for the first time again. Best cinematography this year - the nighttime scenes look gorgeous and doesn't try to emulate film stock.

3. Long Day's Journey into Night

   Saw this three times (!!!) in theaters. Don't think too hard while watching it, treat it like the dream that it is. But then see it again, after some time, because that's where I found it to be the most rewarding. Rewatching Long Day's is a form of dream journaling.

4. Ad Astra

   Clearly interfered with by the studio, yet it is beautiful and profound on a philosophical level. I often think about the last line in the film, especially the last word.

5. Apollo 11

   A big screen spectacle that weirdly made me really emotional for something that everyone knows happened fifty years ago. Landmark achievement in editing and sound design.

6. For Sama

   In contrast to Apollo 11, this is an intimate experience that made me really emotional for something that is happening right now, and largely unknown in the US. Landmark achievement in cinematic creation and communicating empathy. Freely available on YouTube via PBS Frontline.

7. The Farewell

   Literally every Asian American I regularly speak to saw this film in theaters, and I hang out with a lot of Asians.

8. The Report

   Adam Driver's best performance in a year of great performances, because he adds so much depth to a character who spends the whole time reading legal documents.

9. Little Women

   Such a warm, cozy, loving, wholesome experience. Felt like I was being hugged the entire time.

10. Marriage Story

    It's not really about divorce - it's about loving. The lyrics to Sondheim's "Being Alive", which I heard for the first time when Adam Driver sings it near the end of the film, was a personal revelation. It's been added to my karaoke repertoire.

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

Main list and more info: letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/bjones1297/list/film-school-drop-outs-weekly-challenge-2019/detail/

1. Pandora's Box

   Week 1: Jan 1-7

   Actor - Louise Brooks - Filmography or Clara Bow - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2019Week1

2. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

   Week 2: Jan 8-14

   Genre - Horror - Silent Horror (1913-1928) - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2019Week2

3. Ménilmontant

   Week 3: Jan 15-21

   Movement - French Impressionism (1918-1929) - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2019Week3

4. Frankenstein

   Week 4: Jan 22-28

   Studio - Universal Pictures - Universal's Monsters - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2019Week4

5. The Rules of the Game

   Week 5: Jan 29-Feb 4

   Auteur - Jean Renoir - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2019Week5

6. Metropolis

   Week 6: Feb 5-11

   Movement - German Weimar Cinema (1919-1933) - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2019Week6

7. All About Eve

   Week 7: Feb 12-18

   Composer - Alfred Newman - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2019Week7

8. Stagecoach

   Week 8: Feb 19-26

   Genre - Western - The Dying Western (1930s) - Examples

   Tag: FSDO2019Week8

9. The Wizard of Oz

   Week 9: Feb 26-Mar 4

   Production Designer - Cedric Gibbons - Filmography

   Tag: FSDO2019Week9

10. Olympia: Part One – Festival of the Nations

    Week 10: Mar 5-11

    Movement - Third Reich Cinema (1933-1945) - Examples

    Tag: FSDO2019Week10

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

• The Social Network
• Attack the Block
• Cloud Atlas
• Her
• The Lego Movie
• Inside Out
• 20th Century Women
• Lady Bird
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Supplement to my main Film School Dropouts list here: letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/yarrpiracy/list/film-school-dropouts-2019-personal-selections/

I turned this into a weekly film club with friends but ended up watching more films that fell in with the week's theme, either due to my interest or just incidentally viewing them.

Any of those films that wasn't specifically part of film club viewings are included in this list (stuff I plan to watch soon are in here too).

• Dodsworth

  Week 7: Feb 12-18

  Composer - Alfred Newman - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week7

  
  
  

  Week 13: Mar 26-Apr 1

  Editor - Daniel Mandell - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week13

• The Band Wagon

  Week 9: Feb 26-Mar 4

  Production Designer - Cedric Gibbons - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week9

• In a Lonely Place

  Week 11: Mar 12-18

  Actor - Humphrey Bogart - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week11

• The African Queen

  Week 11: Mar 12-18

  Actor - Humphrey Bogart - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week11

• High and Low

  Week 19: May 7-13

  Movement - Golden Age of Japanese Cinema (1950-1963) - Examples

  Tag: FSDO2019Week19

• Top Hat

  Week 20: May 14-20

  Studio - RKO Radio Pictures - Examples

  Tag: FSDO2019Week20

• Army of Shadows

  Week 22: May 28-June 3

  Actor - Simone Signoret - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week22

• Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

  Week 26: June 25-July 1

  Costume Designer - Danilo Donati - FIlmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week26

• The Battle of Chile: Part II

  Week 27: July 2-8

  Movement - New Chilean Cinema - Examples

  Tag: FSDO2019Week27

• Cléo from 5 to 7

  Week 28: July 9-15

  Producer - Carlo Ponti - Filmography

  Tag: FSDO2019Week28

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

Inspired by GQ's list: www.gq.com/story/every-best-picture-nominee-of-the-2010s-ranked

And because I have a lot of time on my hands today.

Excludes the nominees I haven't seen. Some of these films I haven't seen since they came out and/or was a wee child so the ranking is based off what I of my impression at the time so this is all pretty arbitrary.

2014 was the first year I started my goal of watching every BP nominee before the Oscars. I will update this for the 2019 Oscars as well! :)

If you want a handy dandy spreadsheet of all the BP nominees from this decade see here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w9EHnNEFIkmg6vh-rk0x2wvk43mCLg8Y5h8xdq-CYek/edit?usp=sharing

1. The Social Network
2. Lady Bird
3. Moonlight
4. Her
5. Get Out
6. Call Me by Your Name
7. Inception
8. Black Panther
9. The Grand Budapest Hotel
10. La La Land

...plus 52 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ranking what I saw at the 57th New York Film Festival, plus films part of the lineup that I didn't watch as an NYFF screening (Parasite, Joker, Pain and Glory).

1. Parasite
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
3. Uncut Gems
4. Dodsworth
5. American Trial: The Eric Garner Story
6. Pain and Glory
7. Bacurau
8. The Tree House
9. Saturday Fiction
10. Motherless Brooklyn

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

www.criterion.com/current/top-10-lists/363-dennis-lim-s-top-10

Dennis Lim is the director of programming at Film at Lincoln Center and the author of the critical biography David Lynch: The Man From Another Place. He has contributed to the New York Times, Artforum, Film Comment, and other publications, and taught film studies and arts criticism at Harvard and NYU. Summer of Film at Lincoln Center, a season of expansive programming featuring special double-feature pricing and free double bills every Thursday, is currently underway. In the spirit of that series, Lim has put together ten pairings that highlight thematic and stylistic parallels throughout our collection.

1. Chronicle of a Summer
2. Close-Up

   Two crossroads films about human nature and the nature of truth. Viewed from a certain angle, they seem to hold all the possibilities—even as they acknowledge all the limits—of cinema.

3. Love Streams
4. Punch-Drunk Love

   Maximalists of affect, Cassavetes and Anderson are always asking versions of the same question: How much emotion can a movie contain? Or maybe: How many emotions? These two films run the gamut, moving in surges of joy and sorrow, erasing the line between tragedy and comedy.

5. Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia
6. News from Home

   Frampton’s structural riddle (nostalgia) and Akerman’s city symphony News From Home are brilliant experiments in self-portraiture and sound-image relationships that both derive their power from paradox. His film enacts a tug of war between memory and anticipation; hers conjures an indelible sense of both place and displacement.

7. The Exterminating Angel
8. La Ciénaga

   Dramas of entrapment and enervation—sly, haunting, eternally strange—from two of the most singular and most class-conscious directors the cinema has seen.

9. Death by Hanging
10. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

    Oshima is often likened to Godard, but I think the true kindred spirit is Fassbinder—for the restless intellect and furious productivity, and the rage, wit, and lucidity with which they probed their respective national psyches. These are also two of the most devastating films ever made about racism.

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

Lineup for BAM CinemaFest 2019

www.bam.org/programs/2019/bamcinemafest

Not in this list:
The Cancer Journals Revisited

• The Farewell

  Opening Night

• South Mountain

  Spotlight

• Give Me Liberty

  Centerpiece

• De Lo Mio

  Closing Night

• So Pretty
• Jawline
• The Sound of Silence
• The Amazing Johnathan Documentary
• Premature
• music from the edge of the allegheny plateau

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

Festival info.

Ranking the films (feature and short) that I've watched at NDNF!

1. End of the Century
2. Monos
3. Honeyland
4. The Chambermaid
5. Midnight Family
6. Share
7. Clemency
8. A Land Imagined
9. The Load
10. All Good

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

The worst 1-2 films I saw each year. The counterpoint to my Top 15 lists.

• Kingsman: The Golden Circle
• Vox Lux
• Bohemian Rhapsody

My 15 favorite films released in 2018, plus two of the best movies I saw this year that happened to be released in the past.

As a bonus, my least favorite movies of 2018 are on this list at the end.

Locked this in @ end of Feb 2019.

1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
2. Sorry to Bother You
3. Burning

   After watching this I rated it 4 stars but I think about this movie almost every day since and would probably give it 5 at this point were I to watch it a second time.

4. Black Panther
5. Paddington 2
6. The Old Man & the Gun
7. The Favourite
8. If Beale Street Could Talk
9. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
10. Annihilation

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

I told myself I'd make this a top 10 but turns out I really liked 2017 in film so this is a top 15 now!

Plus the worst 2017 movie I saw.

1. Lady Bird
2. The Florida Project
3. Get Out
4. Your Name.
5. Call Me by Your Name
6. Coco
7. Mudbound
8. Icarus
9. The Big Sick
10. Columbus

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

Showdown

"Screw you, Valentine’s Day! If movies are good for even one thing, it’s showing the pitfalls of love in great, big, snotty, ugly-crying close-ups. We want your top ten films about lost love, and love lost. We’re talking romantic tragedy. Kaput. Broken. Over… or is it? No matter what happens when the credits roll, your selections should ooze heartbreak. People only die of love in the movies, so help us be human and begin again."

1. Her
2. Call Me by Your Name
3. Carol
4. La La Land
5. Lost in Translation
6. Cloud Atlas
7. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
8. Certain Women
9. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
10. (500) Days of Summer

This is around when I first started tracking what I watched via Letterboxd

1. 20th Century Women
2. Moonlight
3. Sing Street
4. Arrival
5. Swiss Army Man
6. Moana
7. La La Land
8. The Edge of Seventeen
9. Manchester by the Sea
10. Silence

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