4v291o

Yeah, I...really don't get the hate. I see flaws, I see where fat could be trimmed in the first hour, I see hand-holding, and I see too much emphasis on The Final Reckoning being a grand ode to Ethan Hunt and the larger franchise...but not to the point where it tanks the entire film the way people are acting.

Even in that first hour, it still had me engaged constantly, which is saying something because this is by far the talkiest Mission: Impossible there has ever been. Maybe it's because I've been watching these movies my entire life, but I have enough goodwill towards them to tolerate feeling a little like I wasn't trusted to have paid attention to Dead Reckoning two years ago.

I really loved how it made some of the other entries matter, too. It actually made the plot of III have repercussions, made Ethan's choice to save Julia at all costs have consequences. Everyone loves to fawn over how III has "the best villain ever", and I do love Philip Seymour Hoffman and that character, but that film was about Ethan rescuing his wife and the "plot" was just a MacGuffin Chase. It means more now because of this film.

Did not hate the reveal of a certain lineage in the series, because it involves a character who previously appeared in another film. I actually loved that this development added so many layers to their previous appearance. If this was a brand new character who had that backstory, it would have been ridiculous. My biggest problem with The Final Reckoning, honestly, is that in all of the callbacks and recapping, in the three hour canvas of a grand finale we get here, they didn't take a moment to properly acknowledge Ilsa and the effect her loss must have had on Ethan.

Ethan could have gotten on board the submarine faster. I fully acknowledge that. I don't think that makes the first hour unbearable, I get why they did it the way they did it, and it still worked for me. I also don't see how that makes the remaining 2/3 of the movie suddenly bad when the two main setpieces of this film are right up there with Fallout. How can you claim to love these films and hate this one?

9/10

I have very frustrated, complicated feelings towards The Unrestricted War. It feels like it exists primarily as Canadian-made propaganda against the Chinese government which...sure, China isn't perfect, and maybe there was some mismanagement re: containing COVID-19 vs. the international fallout and reputation of "the party"...but our neigbours to the south completely shit the bed with the pandemic. No country on Earth did a poorer job in facing it than the United States, and if anyone deserves a giant cinematic middle finger, it's the first Trump istration.

The other issue is that the whole plot revolving around spies, the government, using a scientist as a patsy to further China's national interests...is so boring. It's an overlong cliche storm of overbearing proportions, centered around very stiffly directed performances from an actually incredible cast of character actors I've seen all be much better than they are here.

But there's another film hidden within The Unrestricted War: one about the dawning days of the outbreak, how horrific it was for the people of China, the victims, their loved ones, the medical professionals trying desperately to save them and then having to make often futile decisions about who to save. That film probably comprises ~20 minutes of screentime at most, leaving two more hours of something that otherwise really goes in one ear and out the other.

And within those 20 minutes, you get the reason to watch this: Stephanie Gibson, who is on the poster for good reason, because she gives the most dynamic, raw, and emotionally resonant performance in the film, as a nurse who experiences the tragedy of COVID-19, who uncovers a grand lie, and who we witness having to come to with this life she now must live.

Full disclosure: Steph is a very, very dear friend of mine. The feature I've been writing, While We're On the Way to There, is for her and I. I started writing it because I know she has the chops. I went to see The Unrestricted War because of her, not expecting a whole lot and knowing she wasn't in very much of the film, but wanting to her work. I pretty much got what I expected...except when it came to her performance. She delivers, and I wouldn't say that she does if she didn't. She's going to be a huge name. Keep an eye on it.

5/10

I think if this wasn't led by a performer with Kiernan Shipka's pedigree, it'd be near unwatchable. She salvages the mess - most of the would-be laughs are flat and the editing is a headache - but only so much. Pretty telling that so much of it went in one ear and out the other despite the crazy genre spin this takes.

5/10

Some of the tone is off, too many quips and punchlines flying around, but the cast are on fire - Pugh and Pullman especially - and that third act is something special. One of the biggest swings the MCU has taken since early Phase Two, which is really refreshing. Everyone from the director to the composers (Son Lux are back, baby) are really delivering a work of art here, and I forgot that the MCU was even capable of that. I can see myself liking this more and more as I revisit it, having a real Iron Man 3 kind of experience with it over time.

8.5/10

I dunno exactly how much horse screentime your western needs in order for it to actually qualify as a western - horse racing does not count - but I'd say "at least 60 seconds" is a bare minimum we can almost all agree on. Motion ed.

Or, if you aren't going to have horses, you at least have to get out of the city for a bit. It's not much of a western if 98% of it takes place in either San Diego or Las Vegas.

That sums up why On Swift Horses doesn't work: it has no actual idea what the hell it even is. An overlong, tedious film with a massive identity crisis and only one half of a compelling story. Jacob Elordi has never been better and Diego Calva reignites the screen post-Babylon; the Daisy Edgar-Jones/Will Poulter half of the film is misdirected and dull as dishwater. You can only watch someone win the long odds bet once or twice before your eyes glaze over.

It's beyond frustrating when no one along the line of production was able to see this. There's half a real movie here, and then after all that time, it doesn't even give that half a proper resolution despite an endless queue of contrivances that led us towards one. Douglas Sirk for idiots.

I almost blew a gasket because a closetcase bigot yawned and then stomped out of the theatre after, like, the fifth time that Elordi and Calva got it on, but as someone who made it to the end of this, I feel he got off easy.

4/10

It occurred to me as I went in to this that, while I saw Attack of the Clones five or six times in the cinema, I'm pretty sure I only saw Revenge of the Sith once back in 2005. Watched it a lot at home after - often on its own - but it was really amazing to come back to it on a big screen after 20(!) years.

The one big issue with re-releasing it right now is that the second season of Andor is also airing as we speak, kind of the other side of the coin for Revenge of the Sith in a lot of ways, and that season - which is masterful, you guys have no idea what you're in for these next two Tuesdays - is so much more patient, and layered in its execution. Sith is about how fascism rises; Andor is about how we bring it down. The ambition and woefully unfortunate prescience of this movie is a bit crippled by the Lucas dialogue and the steamrolling pace. I wish Anakin grappled with the killing of Dooku longer before doing it. I wish Obi-Wan was allowed to grapple longer with the sins of his apprentice. I wish the Jedi Council were a little more measured and a lot less stubborn. Big, big Democratic Party energy even in the face of a clear evil like Palpatine.

But I also love this film. It might not be perfect, but I love it. I love that Lucas was unashamedly making his movie. I suppose he was for the whole prequel trilogy, but this really feels like the pinnacle of what he wanted to achieve from the first page of Star Wars he ever wrote. It ties the saga together beautifully, and it pushed the extant film technology to its absolute limit. I only wish that this could have come out just a few years later because imagine what this would have been if it had access to the same resources as Avatar? Right?

It's also easy for me to sidestep some of the thinness on paper because the cast is spectacular. Portman, McGregor, McDiarmid, Oz, Samuel L., they're all on fire. There's so much conflict of character, so much crisis, so much despair that they all play on...well, except McDiarmid obviously, who's chewing the scenery to bits as a flamboyant but terrifying villain. Palpatine is never more imposing than he is in this film.

The absolute best thing about Revenge of the Sith, though? Hayden Christensen. In Clones he was misdirected a fair bit, but he and Lucas really figured out the collaboration here. I think that his lead turn in Sith is genuinely the performance out of Episodes I-VI. He had a gravitational task on his shoulders to complete this metamorphosis from "the love of my life is pregnant with my child" to "I am Darth Vader and the Empire is all I have left to live for", and he brought it home. The scene where Anakin finds out Pe is pregnant, just that little, wordless reaction...that is such a precise, technically wondrous moment of acting where he expresses every reasonable emotion one would have at such news. I never really understood the hate he got as an actor, I've always felt he was severely underrated, and I find his work here a gift.

Emotionally wrecked this time around. I found myself completely overwhelmed by the tragedy at least five different times, and continuously awed by the spectacle. The final duel on Mustafar is at least on par with the final confrontation between Vader and Luke in Return of the Jedi. And to end this grand saga with the first sunset in the life of the hero who would restore light to the galaxy? Chef's kiss, George Lucas. Bravo.

8.5/10

This is kind of a bizarre Palme winner, no?

Easily David's most unhinged work. I mean it takes all of 30 seconds after the main titles for Cage to start bashing a guy's skull into a bloody paste while shrieking at the top of his lungs. Cue the most fucked up and foreboding romance maybe in the history of movies. And it's all an allegory for The Wizard of Oz which is fucking hysterical. Love it more than I did years ago. The birth of the Nic Cage we really know and love!

8/10

"I'm seeing something that was always hidden. I'm in the middle of a mystery, and it's all secret."

I will miss David Lynch for the rest of my life. World needs some robins in it real quick.

I think you can dissect and debate the themes, the characters, the iconography of Blue Velvet all you like, but I think this actually constitutes one of David's most straightforward narratives. It's a mystery and a love story both experienced through Jeffrey's eyes. It's not a movie that makes you go "what the fuck is happening?" as a viewer, it's a movie that makes you ache to know what's going to happen next. Two of the fastest hours you will ever experience.

I actually see a lot of common ground between this and Eraserhead now, but with the abstract and ambiguous elements removed. I mean Sandy's house is almost the same as Mary's in a lot of ways! Blue Velvet is about being a son and boyfriend before the father and husband roles Eraserhead deconstructs. It makes a lot of sense to me that David started writing Blue Velvet years before Eraserhead was released.

One of the most mindblowingly stellar casts of all time. Hopper is giving an all-timer here, elevating everyone else around him who are already on their A-game. I'm trying to think if anyone in this movie has ever been better than they are in this movie. Laura Dern in that scene where Jeffrey's infidelity is dragged into the light is spellbinding. And then Stockwell shows up for five minutes and almost steals the entire movie from under Hopper's feet! Those little flamboyant narrowings of the eyes he does!

One of the major reasons I love movies so much is this movie. An eternal, unpayable debt I owe to David Lynch. We should all try and go a little dreamy every day.

10/10
THE BEST FILM OF 1986
#4 of the 1980s

It just does not get much better than Sinners. Everything Ryan Coogler has been developing over the past 15 years, the tools he's been sharpening, the skills he's honed, the relationship he's built with Michael B. Jordan, has all come to its zenith with a vampire epic to rival Nosferatu and a testament to the power of Black music that stands high on the stage next to Round Midnight.

Black music is forever. Black music is the template. No amount of white vampires will ever usurp Black music. It's timeless, ageless, immortal. There's a oner about halfway through this that reaches out a century ahead from the 1920s to cut through all the bullshit of the 2020s. No one's gonna who Morgan Wallen or Luke Combs were in a decade, but a thousand years from now, people are going to still be listening to Buddy Guy and Tracy Chapman.

10/10
THE (New) BEST FILM OF 2025 (so far...)

Alright, let me address the Shai-Hulud in the room first: it's very irritating - and, honestly, a little insulting - that, in a programme which had no space for The Elephant Man; Inland Empire; and most tragically of all, The Straight Story; somehow, David's most reviled of his own works, the one where he was robbed of his artistic vision and had a world of storytelling he was most ionate about turned into a mucky gibberish, is the last one to squeak in.

Now, after what happened last time...I really expected to never revisit this again. I had such a godawful experience a few years ago, that I pretty much disavowed this version of Dune entirely, and that was still a whole year before Denis Villeneuve gave me - and, I hope, David Lynch as well - something to render this adaptation entirely unnecessary. Tonight in the theatre, I was white-knuckling the armrests in anticipation of losing my will to live over the ensuing 140 minutes.

Let me just get a whole load of the (persisting) problems out of the way:
- Duncan Idaho is played by one of the greatest actors who ever lived, has about two minutes of screentime, and promptly dies like a bitch
- All of the back projection - every single usage! - has aged like a carton of milk from 1984
- Holy fucking exposition! The first line of dialogue that isn't exposition, or a character listening to exposition, or a voiceover observing a character listening to...you get it...the first single line of dialogue that is allowed to float freely in the world happens fifteen minutes into the movie!!!
- It's amazing how everything pretty much up to Paul and Jessica escaping the Harkonnens encomes more or less exactly the same amount of screentime as the respective story beats do in the 2021 Dune, and yet here it snoozes to The Fall of House Atreides whereas in the latter film you can't take your eyes off the screen. And then it speedruns through the second half of the book like no one's business! In Dune: Part Two, an hour and a half separate Jessica and Paul's respective takings of the Waters of Life, whereas here it's like fifteen minutes if that!
- As much as David Lynch's fingerprints can be seen all over this thing, and his vision and the spectacle are irable, it's actually more irritating when the few sequences that are clearly his - Paul's visions, Jessica giving birth - remain intact because the rest of the film surrounding it has been neutered
- Why the fuck would you hire the director of Eraserhead to helm this and then not see that hiring choice through
- Bad performances almost universally across this thing. Whole lotta stiff at best and embarrassing at worst line deliveries. "THUPAAAAAAIIIIINNNN!" "The RYE-GHTCHEYUS?" I blame the edit. Brad Dourif, Max von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, Patrick Stewart, and Jürgen Prochnow are about the only ones to get away unscathed. They also collectively contribute about five pages' worth of dialogue to the film, so that's a whole lot of bad surrounding them. Stockwell is the MVP, the anguish and tension and grief and vindication inside of Yueh are all palpable, and it's the most cleanly conveyed character arc in the film
- The score is fucking terrible. Are we sure this was composed by Toto the band and not Toto the dog?

The good, on the other hand? I dunno...it was kind of a fun ride in an almost empty theatre with how absolutely ridiculous some of this movie is? I probably would have had a better time if I still did drugs. But then as I was walking out after, I once again ed that David Lynch got completely fucking robbed of his own creation here. I would rather watch The Straight Story - a movie which is, seemingly, impossible to get one's hands on these days - a thousand times in a row than watch this again.

2.5/10

If Come and See were released today, half the people on this site would have a fucking stroke.

10/10
THE (New) BEST FILM OF 2025 (so far...)

Watching this as a kid: "haha alien baby go BOOM"
Watching this on the cusp of 30: "Yeah I'm never having kids"

Honestly did not entirely know what to expect going back in to Eraserhead as this is kind of Lynch's other film that I haven't revisited in nearly two decades. It's oppressively bizarre.

Of course it's David's most personal, "most spiritual" film, and the anxieties around fatherhood and urban decay and "oh my God will this be what my life is like for the rest of my life?" are all readily present, I felt a lot of feelings...but it almost becomes too internal for its own good. It's the Lynch film above all others that places you there with the main character...and then you kind of become Henry. Eugh.

I would like to put this back in the rotation soon, I still loved the experience of revisiting it - especially the audible recoiling of at least three audience who were definitely first-timers - but coming back to it after so long, like I say, is almost like having never watched it before at all.

9/10

"This is the girl."

The entirety of Mulholland Drive hits differently now that I've been to Los Angeles. It's the mad descent and slow death of a starlet's dreams. The portions of the film that seem incongruous are, in fact, perfectly in place. The film industry will chew you up and spit you out, and if you aren't ready for that, it'll scare you to death instead.

10/10
THE BEST FILM OF 2001
(New) #4 of the 2000s

Lost Highway was the third David Lynch film I saw after Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, but unlike those other two which I've revisited many times, in the near 20 years since I have never yearned to revisit this. I absolutely despised it back then and it long stood alone at the bottom of the pile for me out of his work, at least until my disastrous revisit of Dune a few years back.

In the wake of David's ing in January, I knew I had to confront all of his work again. Not just the stuff I love - which is nearly all of it - but the things that didn't work for me, too. It's fitting that Lost Highway happens to be the first I watched from Cineplex's retrospective of seven of his features for April. It's the biggest challenge for me, the one that I went in most filled - in equal measure - with excitement and fear towards my perception of it.

The bad news: I have the same general issues I had all those years ago. Lost Highway really tests your patience. I don't even think Inland Empire moves as glacially as this, and it's 45 minutes longer! The first time I saw this, I got too many blatant clues that the story was a time loop, and the tediousness of the pacing got to the point where, when the twist was confirmed, as a kid I had a reaction of "why didn't you just say so?!?!?! I had to wait another hour and a half for this?!" And I also think that because the film spells out its structural twist, that distracts from the deeper ideas of misogyny and possessiveness and psychosis that are much more interesting than the story itself. This movie is the fever dream of a singular artist - one of the greatest artists of any medium - and it just feels like it doesn't lean deep enough into it. There's a lot about the structure and atmosphere that makes it feel like a trial run for Mulholland Drive, makes the latter film feel like a deeper, more uninhibited dive into David Lynch's mind.

The good news: despite feeling all of the same downside, I was able to go along on the ride this time, the performances and atmosphere really hooked me, and I don't hate Lost Highway anymore!

6/10

It'll always be The Departed...but it'll never quite be Infernal Affairs.

9/10
#7 of 2006

I have way too much swimming in my mind at once about Adolescence to even try and speak on it properly. A few hours now since I finished it, and I'm pretty much still curled into a ball. A titanic technical achievement that only serves to complement some of the greatest writing and acting television has ever had. It will absolutely annihilate you, I will probably never watch it again, but it's mandatory viewing for all.

11/10

Romance isn't dead but uhhhhh a bunch of dudes are hahahaha

7/10

Man...this is exactly what I want and need to be making. Messy fables about messy humans pursuing art. That's life, dude.

Could shout-out any performance, but my really incredible friend Daniel Gravelle stole the film every second he was on screen. I joke with him about "the Timothée allegations" but it's also not a coincidence: he fountains charisma and amazing comedic timing only to pivot into deeply expressive drama and sadness in moments that can wring your heart right out. Every time his character reaches a new musical height, he physically evolves...only for the rest of life to push him right back onto that sofa again. He's not even the lead let alone the focus...but - and this might sound odd - I think the movie sort of accidentally finds its purpose through him the same way the little girl crying at the end of Husbands does.

Art's fucking hard, man. It's hard and it's vicious and life will not stop for it. No matter what platform you make it up onto. Karen Knox fucking gets it, man. Tremendously present, powerful spearhead of a voice in Canadian cinema! I can't wait to work with her.

8.5/10
(New) #4 of 2025 (so far...)

There's sex, there's lies, there's even videotape; hey it's the Steven Soderbergh Espionage Extravaganza, folks!

9/10
(New) #3 of 2025 (so far...)

Let me get this out of the way: this film is a wonderful bit of nonsense. It's consistently heaps of fun - huge laughs even in some of the darker moments, Grant telling Hepburn "don't take it so hard, kid" about five seconds after she sees Edmund Gwenn's dead body is a (probably unintentional) riot - and everyone is having the time of their life, none more than Hepburn. But its story is such barely even in name only, a total trainwreck which obliterates all logic and structure. Characters will make decisions to impede another character and then immediately undo that decision for no reason other than to go in a circle and pad the runtime. A mess!

The thing is...that doesn't matter, actually, because you're absolutely enraptured by this cast the whole way through. There's a gag about a third of the way in where the whole company break into a spontaneous musical number, and at first I thought "oh God, they were even doing stealth musicals 90 years ago?!", but it's a one-off setpiece that lasts all of 20 seconds, and the sense of play here is stupefying. I don't know how in the hell the box office woes of this thing tainted Hepburn so badly - well, sexism - because anyone with a tenth of a brain watching this is absolutely glued to her. In a time where so many actors were still adjusting to sound in their movies, Hepburn is right there blowing the nitrate off the film reel, ready on a dime for when The Philadelphia Story comes waiting for her a few years later.

But the reason I really loved Sylvia Scarlett is because it felt shockingly ahead of its time. I mean I'm surprised there wasn't a violation slapped on this thing from that moronic fucking Hays Code! A same-sex kiss! Hepburn in drag for half the runtime! Every key element - the writing, the direction, the editing, and most of all Hepburn - is so confident in slipping the Sylvia character into Sylvester and letting her stay there, explore this weird world she lives in for a while. It makes you wonder if someone on the crew were trying to put trans-coded storytelling out there in Hollywood all those decades ago. After all, it's not as though trans people didn't exist back then. It's not in a rush to have Sylvia give up the ruse either, even after she no longer needs to keep it up. Hell, the only reason she even gets out of drag is because she falls in love with a straight man, and even then the movie makes you think Michael Fane would've probably gone for "Sylvester" anyway.

One of the most stunningly progressive and ahead-of-its-time films that I've ever watched, and in an age where, 90 years on, horseshit like Emilia Pérez is still being churned out that has no fucking clue what it's talking about, still being heralded by old straight cis white men who think they're doing the bare minimum amount of work, that makes Sylvia Scarlett, as enjoyable as it is, that much sweeter.

8.5/10

The Egyptian has the best sound and one of the best screens of any theatre I've ever been to. Look it up!

Born Yesterday is a landmark in the history of American comedies, and Judy Holliday's performance is genre-defining. Look it up!

9/10
#8 of 1950

Donald Trump please go to Niflheim and take all your dipshit cult with you, you fucking expendable

7/10

Obviously far and away the best Potter film (largely due to the fact that Prisoner is probably the best of the books) but, despite some really inspired craftwork from Cuarón, I think it's beginning to fray at the edges as a product of its time.

The pacing is so oddly slow in a bunch of scenes, and I forgot how punishing these movies are if you didn't come here from reading the books, nevermind how you might as well be comatose watching this if you haven't at least watched the first two at some point. And as someone who hasn't done either in at least a decade, even being someone who knows these stories so well, I felt a bit adrift without a lifejacket.

I feel like so much of the real emotional weight of the book gets steamrolled over by this screenplay, and the actors - Thewlis especially; YES this is the movie that introduced Gary Oldman to my generation, but David Thewlis is the greatest casting choice of this series not named Alan Rickman - are making up for a lot of the thinness.

Still, a delight. Lupin the best DADA teacher fr

8/10

"I know that everybody dies, and that's life, but this is, like...everybody dies."

8/10

We all need Paddington as much as he needs us.

I thought that this was on rocky ground without Sally Hawkins and I thought it was doomed without Paul King. But Emily Mortimer came in and incredibly faithfully carried the torch from my favourite living actress, and Dougal Wilson - with his first film - has proven that the brilliance of these films is so beyond just its director.

Final 10 minutes absolutely wrecked me. Over the moon that they're making a fourth one. "Weakest" of the trilogy and it still gets a

10/10

The sequels to masterpieces that are the ones most often cited as "better" than said masterpiece - The Godfather Part II, The Empire Strikes Back, Before Sunset - are really just companion pieces to it, peers or perhaps marginal improvements where the contest is neck and neck.

Paddington 2 takes every single thing that made Paddington wonderful, refined it, and then leapt a light year forward. There has never been a better "kids' movie" than this.

My ★★★★★ score for Paddington might be partly based on emotion. I think it's incredible, but I could nitpick things about it if I wanted to...the thing is, I just don't want to.

Paddington 2, though? I won't hear it. Paddington 2 is one of the greatest movies ever made, full stop.

10/10
#4 of 2017
#8 of the 2010s

This is such a special film to me. It's bizarre that, prior to tonight, I had only watched each of the Paddington films once all the way through, because I love them.

I when this film came out, I had no interest in it. The cartoons of Paddington Bear were a fundamental part of my childhood, and the way that this was marketed to American audiences (and therefore to Canada as well) made it seem like a juvenile cash grab aimed at viewers aged 5 and under.

It was probably close to a year after this came out that it was on TV, and I happened to glimpse at the screen during the black-and-white "old timey film reel" intro, and I thought it was Up, which I also hadn't seen in a while and very much wanted to rewatch. A few moments later, I realized it was Paddington, and I decided to give it a shot, sure that I'd be revolted away from it after five minutes.

It only took those five minutes for me to be completely engrossed in and rooting for this movie. That earthquake sequence is a bold thing to just thrust on an audience of, ostensibly, kids, nevermind right at the start of the movie. There's a particular shot - of Aunt Lucy and the as-yet-unnamed Paddington hugging amidst their grief - that I still think is the most impressive CGI shot of all time. The handheld camera, the hair blowing in the wind, the sheer amount of sadness on the faces of two anthropomorphic bears who appear completely real...it would have been next to impossible for Paddington to lose my good will towards it after that.

It never did.

And it still never has.

Such a special, special movie. I never appreciated before how much of its story is about Mr. Brown learning to open his heart, to not be such a helicopter parent, to take chances, and to do what's right. That really hit me hard and I already cry at, like, 80% of this movie. Maybe that's why I waited so long to properly rewatch it.

I'm never waiting that long again.

10/10
#3 of 2014

Really, really complicated feelings about Brave New World. Some really irable, ambitious ideas but next to none of them are really explored so much as simply mentioned. Lot of hand-holding dialogue, particularly in regards to it following up both a miniseries and what is now a 16 year-old movie. I appreciate some of the swings this is trying to make, but a lot of it falls flat because the film can't commit to any of them.

Still, one of the better-looking and best-shot MCU films - while you can criticize it for copying The Winter Soldier's homework, I also think it took the right ideas from its filmmaking - and Harrison Ford absolutely excelled. He turned what was very muddy and thin on the page re: Ross into a beautiful performance and something that kept me invested in that part of the story. Anthony Mackie, of course, is great as always, finding the fun in being Captain America even in a dangerous situation, and he deserves to at least get his own Cap trilogy from this.

I'm going to be thinking about Brave New World for a while, and it's going to need some time to settle in my mind. This score could go up or down on rewatch, and I do want to rewatch it, which is more than I can say for a lot of post-Endgame MCU.

6.5/10

Holy shit! Where the fuck has this Soderbergh been?! What a wild clusterfuck of a swing, told in only 32 shots and leaving me inspired as fuck! Shocked at the divisiveness. Time will vindicate this as one of his absolute best films if not the best.

9.5/10
THE (New) BEST FILM OF 2025 (so far...)

Totally fine? It's cool to see some of this footage blown up in IMAX, but the constant inserts of random footage of the band over songs where nothing on screen syncs up became quickly grating. There's ample footage of Led Zeppelin playing any Zeppelin song, just use something that's close!

Unfortunately, this is also really just a dull story. These guys had it together quick and then they blew up because they made two of the greatest albums of all time in one year and they were massive commercial successes, the end...at least where this movie ends. Can't wait to find out how the 70s treated them in the sequel!

Half a star extra for all the unearthed audio of John Bonham, the greatest to ever pick up a pair of drumsticks, and the rest of the band's reactions to hearing him speak. More than any of the concert footage, Bonzo is the reason to watch this.

7/10

Ke Huy Quan deserves everything and I had a lot of fun. I dunno what else to tell you guys 🤷‍♂️

6/10

Well, it's early in the race, but...

9/10
THE (New) BEST FILM OF 2025 (so far...)

Xerox!

8/10

Decidedly the "A Night in Sickbay" of the Trek films, which is to say this is one of the most outwardly shit things the entire franchise has ever done. This is what I imagine people who hate Discovery see when they watch Discovery.

It's like TikTok wrote the dialogue. Unceasing cringe comedy and a storyline that means nothing other than I guess it's supposed to set up some sort of series from this? Good luck.

All of the basement dwellers who try and say Discovery or Picard are "fan fiction"...don't you feel sorry now that you see how bad things can actually be?

Michelle Yeoh innocent. Philippa Georgiou deserves better than this. Really glad I waited five years for what essentially amounted to a "fuck you" for Discovery fans.

0.5/10

Fuck.

Undeniably staggering in its grandness even though it fundamentally never really leaves the Paiva family, showing us the dictatorship and its legacy through their eyes. If we aren't with Eunice, we're with her daughter's camera lens or her son's writing or her husband's determination. It has all the sweeping weight of a classic period epic even when ⅔ of it takes place in a living room.

I saw The Motorcycle Diaries when it was first released, when its protagonist and Che Guevara were two separate entities to me, Central Station not long after...I've always loved Salles. I've also always loved Fernanda Montenegro. I now firmly believe that Fernanda Torres deserves the world and every award in it. Absolutely undeniable powerhouse of a lead performance and film.

9.5/10

Give these two a nice romcom stat because 👨‍🔬🧪👩‍🔬

No corkscrews in the screenplay, please!

8/10
THE (New) BEST FILM OF 2025 (so far...)

This movie's even better at being a movie than Arthur Leigh Allen was at not getting caught!

10/10
#3 of 2007
#7 of the 2000s

I see the skeleton of what this wants to be, but only just. The Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and All That Jazz and The Wrestler influences are all evident, but all of those movies are 20+ minutes longer, and the other side of the coin is that this feels like all of those movies spun into a blender only for the top to come off and half the fucking shake's now painted every surface in the kitchen. There just isn't enough real estate to explore Shelly, nevermind any of the storylines around Shelly's daughter, or Annette, or the other showgirls. Stories about artistry - especially the decline in one's grasp on their own artistry - need more to chew on.

The performances are spectacular, though. They're entirely keeping the ship afloat. Pamela Anderson has forced the world to give her back her narrative, and it's beautiful. She's beautiful, and she deserves this, and I'm delighted for her. She's really affecting in this, but Jamie Lee Curtis - because Annette isn't developed at all - is essentially giving the more seasoned version of Anderson's performance, and it shows because they're literally side by side at all times that Annette is on screen. If they aren't in the same room, they're sharing a montage. As great as Curtis is, I think the film - and particularly Anderson - would have been better served without her. Honestly, Bautista was the standout to me. There's so much sensitivity and pain behind that performance, showing us the details behind Mickey, in a film whose script so frustratingly often tells rather than shows, and even as someone who's championed him for a while, I think it's his best work to date.

So, worthwhile to watch, doubly so for the Pamela Anderson Renaissance, but ultimately kind of just lacking the depth it deserved.

Also, if you think Showgirls is somehow the antidote to the flaws present here...maybe delete your , I dunno?

7/10

"You're not an asshole, Mark.

You're just trying so hard to be."

Really fantastic yet horrific all at once, each time I revisit this, to see how The Social Network has progessively made Zuckerberg go from "he's an asshole of a business partner who fucked over everyone he ever depended on, but he's not that much of an asshole as a person" to "wow, this movie makes Mark Zuckerberg look really good."

10/10
THE BEST FILM OF 2010

I can think of, like, 50 other actors who should've been the one to break the glass ceiling that Emilia Pérez broke yesterday, and to just make it more insulting it came at the expense of Marianne Jean-Baptiste who's at least as good if not better here than she was in Secrets & Lies being acknowledged by everyone except the Academy, so fuck Emilia Pérez and whenever I do get around to it it will be a hatewatch, thank you

9/10

Lot to unpack here, but Almodóvar has proven that he can reach the deepest recesses of our humanity - our ion, our suffering, our love, our grief - in any language, and Tilda Swinton has continued her unbroken streak of mastery.

8.5/10

Every time I watch this, it gets even better, and I've probably watched this more times than any other Fincher. Arguably his fastest-paced, most gripping film despite also being - yes, even against the viscera of Seven - his ugliest, most harrowing work. Seven, Zodiac, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo constitute, to me, Fincher's "Procedural Trilogy", and because he excels so wonderfully in this space, I think they're probably his three greatest films to date with the one caveat being that The Social Network might break them up somewhere in the ranking.

All of Fincher's films - even Alien³ - are about human nature. "I think people are perverts." I was thinking about the pre-roll Cineplex has been running in front of all of Fincher's films - not a separate intro for each individual movie akin to what they did with Kubrick, but instead the same intro encoming Fincher's entire catalogue and ethos - and there's a remark towards the end that he's defined "the movies we watch and the way we watch them", and that's absolutely true from any technical perspective, but it also speaks to us as voyeurs to the unfoldings on screen. Are we participants? Bystanders? Are we guilty? Are we being invited? Scorned? Lesser filmmakers need to break the fourth wall to have such a dialogue with us; Fincher instead simply holds that conversation out to us in every shot. I think it's what makes his films so goddamned fucking tense.

One of the greatest adaptations of a novel, to be sure. It's a cardinal sin that we never got Fincher's vision of The Girl Who Played with Fire. And while Daniel Craig is doing some of his best work here and this boasts one of the most ridiculously stacked casts of any movie made this century - there are younger versions of characters shown in flashback with no audible dialogue who are played by some of the best to ever do it; Julian Sands, David Dencik! Joel Kinnaman is in three shots and barely gets a word in! Alan Dale gets one dialogue exchange that lasts all of 20 seconds! - everyone is overshadowed by Rooney Mara. Her interpretation of Lisbeth Salander is everything that the craft of acting was incepted to be. I could throw any superlative at The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but this lead performance is one of the absolute best you will ever watch and quite possibly the single best of its decade. At worst, it is unquestionably the best performance David Fincher has ever directed, and that's a director who knows how to work with actors on a level that few can even aspire to.

But of course, no, let's just mock up a British accent and play an old right-wing hag that measurably made the world a worse place to live in, that's definitely what deserves the Oscar over this.

10/10
#2 of 2011

Fincher made an Elon Musk biopic like 20 years before Elon Musk was on anyone's radar lmfao

Anyway, terrific film, ending is dark as hell, and Jefferson Airplane still sucks

9/10

*1,000TH DIARY ENTRY!*

Fincher's most stylized film, maybe? In some ways Panic Room is the most early-aughts movie ever - and the colour palette is guilty above all of dating it - but it has some really strong characterization and it's a magnificent exercise in tension!

Jared Leto's easily the weak link, giving this weird-ass moustache-twirling caricature of a villain, but it's a decent twist that he's not the most fucked up one out of the burglar trio. Whitaker's fantastic, he's kind of the heart of this whole thing. And this is peak Jodie Foster! Also featuring what must surely be Fincher's best child performance to date courtesy of a very, very young Kristen Stewart showing all of the promise of her post-Twilight years.

Definitely a big bump up for me now! Not one of his top tier films, but I didn't give Panic Room enough credit before.

8/10

The United States is a stupid, despicable, shithole country that has a lot of great people trapped within it, doomed by its shittiest bigots and most moronic decisionmakers.

Worthy of particular scorn is the way in which it brutalizes Black boys into becoming men at a far younger age than should ever be right - within a legal framework mind you - and then sets the cities and towns and neighbourhoods in which they've settled on fire. Tulsa. Rosewood. Detroit. Ferguson. Altadena. It's all the same.

Places like the Dozier School are only one radar blip along the course institutionalized racism charts across the stupid, despicable, shithole country that is the United States.

Nickel Boys has devastatingly reshaped the form of cinema...and just as devastatingly shows that, whether it be 1900, 1962, 1988, 2011, or 2025, it's all the same.

10/10
(New) #7 of 2024

Watching Seven (stop, stop with this "Sesevenen" nonsense) in IMAX with an almost blinding migraine? Sure, let's start off 2025 like that.

Anyway I dunno, guys, this Fincher fella might have an okay future in filmmaking. And that Brad Pitt, too! Not too shabby!

10/10
#4 of 1995
#10 of the 1990s

"You're not what I expected from what I read about you."
"I'm not what I expected, either."

The Brutalist, in its first 30 seconds, announces itself loudly by redefining the idea of what an overture can be in a film. At first beginning as the expected black screen with "OVERTURE" broadcast front and center, Brady Corbet - in unison with his visionary composer Daniel Blumberg, who has crafted 2024's greatest film score here - is not content to just leave it at that.

Suddenly, the film itself begins over the first triumphant swell of brass, revealing that card - "OVERTURE" - to more appropriately be described as an act title card reading "PROLOGUE". A marriage of Blumberg's ten-minute entry music to a frenetic capturing of the first day of the emigrant experience ensues, a meticulous explosion with the precision of a controlled demolition, yet simultaneously the wonder of building something new in the footprint of what was lost in the collapse. The ruin of Europe from World War II, and then the hope of arriving on the other side of the Atlantic for a new opportunity.

The teaser trailer for The Brutalist used "MONUMENTAL" as a pull quote from not one, not two, but five reviews, and to say they were all right is one of the cinematic understatements of the 21st century. I have absolutely no notes for Brady Corbet, or for any element of this. Watching this in 70mm was like being there for the opening nights of Lawrence of Arabia and The Godfather at the same time.

This is probably my last new film of 2024. How in the hell could I follow this up, anyway?

10/10
(New) #2 of 2024
(New) #4 of the 2020s

"Holy shit I'm gonna cum" for 114 minutes

9.5/10

I'm so glad I came back around to this with a less tired mind. I still think the first two acts flow better than the third act, but being able to really absorb everything this time made it come together better, and it felt much faster knowing the world of these characters going in. We are all lost creatures longing for connection and beauty. Features possibly the best final line in any movie this year. And that score by Topshe is fucking unreal!

9/10

Acting class exercises are supposed to STAY IN FUCKING ACTING CLASS

Jesus fucking Christ! Who blackmailed Joshua Oppenheimer into making this?

1.5/10

The eight Mission: Impossible films, ranked from best to the John Woo one.

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
3. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
4. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
6. Mission: Impossible III
7. Mission: Impossible
8. Mission: Impossible II

1. Sinners
2. Warfare
3. Presence
4. Bring Them Down
5. Black Bag
6. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
7. Thunderbolts*
8. We Forgot to Break Up
9. The Monkey
10. Companion

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2025, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2025 do not count.

1. Sinners
2. Warfare
3. Presence
4. Bring Them Down
5. Black Bag
6. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
7. Thunderbolts*
8. We Forgot to Break Up
9. The Monkey
10. Companion

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

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2023, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2023 do not count.

1. Oppenheimer
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
3. Riceboy Sleeps
4. Maestro
5. Mutt
6. Perfect Days
7. The Holdovers
8. American Fiction
9. Barbie
10. Theater Camp

...plus 130 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 35* films of the MARVEL Cinematic Universe, ranked from best to worst.

* - I have not yet seen Deadpool & Wolverine.

1. Avengers: Endgame
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier
3. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
4. Captain America: Civil War
5. Black Panther
6. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
7. Spider-Man: Far From Home
8. Iron Man 3
9. Avengers: Infinity War
10. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The ten feature-length films directed by David Lynch, ranked from best to worst.

1. Blue Velvet
2. Mulholland Drive
3. The Straight Story
4. Eraserhead
5. The Elephant Man
6. Inland Empire
7. Wild at Heart
8. Lost Highway
9. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
10. Dune

Real easy: a ranked list of my top 100* films released between January 1st, 2000; and December 31st, 2009. This could easily be a list of 250, or even 500; I've stuck to just 100 here for the sake of simplicity, as well as to showcase the best of the best. If you'd like to see more excellent examples of 2000s filmmaking, there are more entries in my top 1,000 films of all time list.
My Other Decade Lists
Top 100: 2010s

* - There are technically 102 films in this list; I have elected to include the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a collective film, in part due to the obvious reason that it tells a complete narrative; and because the quality of the three films is so uniformly excellent that they would likely rank together anyway.
On the other hand, although all three films in the Bourne trilogy are present, I consider them at least somewhat separate from one another, in the sense that you can watch any one of the three at any time and be told a whole story in a way that you miss if you decide to just randomly put The Two Towers on.

1. In the Mood for Love
2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Mulholland Drive
5. Casino Royale
6. Memento
7. Before Sunset
8. Zodiac
9. Lost in Translation
10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

...plus 92 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 39 feature-length films* directed by Martin Scorsese (26 narrative, 13 documentary), ranked from best to worst.

* - All short films (e.g. The Key to Reserva) and mini-documentaries (e.g. The Neighborhood) are not included; Street Scenes 1970 is not included as Scorsese was only involved with its post-production; and New York Stories, while technically a feature-length film, is only 1/3 a work of Scorsese's. A Letter to Elia was previously included here by mistake, but has since been removed, as I forgot it was only partially directed by Scorsese as well.

1. Raging Bull
2. Taxi Driver
3. Casino
4. The King of Comedy
5. My Voyage to Italy
6. After Hours
7. GoodFellas
8. Killers of the Flower Moon
9. The Irishman
10. Silence

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Every film that has at one point held the place of being my favourite ever made, in the order that they took the throne. As you'll see, it hasn't changed that many times in 25+ years.

I still think every single one of these movies is a masterpiece.

Lawrence of Arabia currently holds the record for the longest reign, having been my #1 from late 2012 to early 2023.

• Toy Story
• Star Wars
• Cool Hand Luke
• Casino
• Philadelphia
• The Godfather
• Lawrence of Arabia
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 7* feature-length films directed by Bong Joon-ho, ranked from best to worst.

* - All short films have been excluded, although I did consider including Influenza as I think it is actually one of the best short films ever made; Tokyo! has also been excluded, as only one third of it was directed by Bong Joon-ho.

1. Mother
2. Memories of Murder
3. Okja
4. Parasite
5. Snowpiercer
6. The Host
7. Mickey 17
8. Barking Dogs Never Bite

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 97 winners of the Best Picture Oscar, ranked best to worst.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. The Godfather
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Oppenheimer
6. Moonlight
7. The Bridge on the River Kwai
8. Casablanca
9. The Best Years of Our Lives
10. Schindler's List

...plus 87 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 25 films of the official EON Productions James Bond franchise, ranked from best to worst.
Casino Royale (1967) and Never Say Never Again do not count, will not count, can not count, and shall never count.

1. No Time to Die
2. Casino Royale
3. Licence to Kill
4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service
5. From Russia with Love
6. Skyfall
7. The Living Daylights
8. Octopussy
9. The Spy Who Loved Me
10. Dr. No

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

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2024, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2024 do not count.

1. Dune: Part Two
2. The Brutalist
3. I Saw the TV Glow
4. Nosferatu
5. Anora
6. Queer
7. Nickel Boys
8. A Complete Unknown
9. The Wild Robot
10. A Different Man

...plus 87 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Real easy: a ranked list of my top 100 films released between January 1st, 2010; and December 31st, 2019. This could easily be a list of 250 or even 500; I've stuck to just 100 here for the sake of simplicity, as well as to showcase the best of the best. If you'd like to see more excellent examples of 2010s filmmaking, there are many more entries in my top 1,000 films of all time list.
My Other Decade Lists
Top 100*: 2000s

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. The Lighthouse
3. Moonlight
4. Columbus
5. The Souvenir
6. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
7. Phantom Thread
8. Paddington 2
9. Thunder Road
10. Manchester by the Sea

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

LAST REVISED: February 9th, 2025
This is a list of 1,000 movies I initially created over the course of a few days in April of 2019, and have been revising constantly since. It is meant to be an unranked* list of my all-time top 1,000 films. However, I don't claim to have it down to a science; I have seen about 6,000 films in my lifetime, and I have greatly enjoyed a majority of them. Therefore, there will always be some close calls and omissions that I am not 100% sure of and, combined with the fact that I will never stop watching and discovering movies, this list will be a lifelong work in progress.
The list is ordered alphanumerically based on the titles used by Letterboxd; 0-9 comes first, and then A-Z; titles beginning with 'a', 'an', or 'the' are ordered based on the next word in their titles; this standard applies to films with non-English titles as well.
Thank you to the entire Letterboxd team for the work they've done in building and maintaining such an incredible resource to catalogue films, and thank you for taking the time to read through this list of my favourite films. I hope here you can make some discoveries - or even re-discoveries - of films you end up falling in love with.
* - I will probably, at some point, start ranking my absolute top films until I have my top 100-200 or so; I'm just wary about the time it would take to seriously, thoughtfully rank 1,000 of anything... and also of how quickly it would lose any meaning the further and further down I went. For example: imagine if I said to you something along the lines of "X is my 693rd favourite film ever made"... I'm willing to bet you'd look at me as if I had two heads. Not only that; I'm just as sure that the conversation would end up not being about said film's merits, but rather about why the other 692 are better.

• 12 Angry Men
• Twelve Monkeys
• 12 Years a Slave
• 13th
• 1917
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• 2046
• 25th Hour
• 28 Days Later
• The 39 Steps

...plus 990 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2022, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2022 do not count.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. After Yang
3. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. The Batman
5. TÁR
6. Top Gun: Maverick
7. RRR
8. "Sr."
9. The Eternal Daughter
10. The First Slam Dunk

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

The 12* live-action films to star BATMAN, ranked from best to worst.
* - I'm only including films where Batman is either the main character or at least a co-lead. So, for example, Suicide Squad is out.

1. The Batman
2. Batman Begins
3. Batman
4. Batman Returns
5. The Dark Knight
6. Zack Snyder's Justice League
7. Batman
8. The Dark Knight Rises
9. Batman & Robin
10. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 14 films of the STAR TREK franchise, ranked from best to worst.

1. Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
2. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
3. Star Trek: First
4. Star Trek
5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
6. Star Trek Beyond
7. Star Trek Into Darkness
8. Star Trek III: The Search for Spock
9. Star Trek: Nemesis
10. Star Trek: The Motion Picture

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 12 feature-length films directed by David Fincher, ranked from best to worst.

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

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

Real easy: a ranked list of my top 100 films released between January 1st, 1990; and December 31st, 1999. This could easily be a list of 200; I've stuck to just 100 here for the sake of simplicity, as well as to showcase the best of the best. If you'd like to see more excellent examples of 1990s filmmaking, there are more entries in my top 1,000 films of all time list.
My Other Decade Lists
Top 100*: 2000s
Top 100: 2010s

1. Jackie Brown
2. Magnolia
3. Schindler's List
4. Fargo
5. Casino
6. Heat
7. Satantango
8. The Big Lebowski
9. La Haine
10. Se7en

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

1. Dune: Part Two
2. The Brutalist
3. I Saw the TV Glow
4. Nosferatu
5. Anora
6. Queer
7. Nickel Boys
8. A Complete Unknown
9. The Wild Robot
10. A Different Man

Every film from The Criterion Collection that I own on either Blu-ray or 4K Ultra HD. Listed the way I have them arranged at home: alphabetically for individual releases, followed by films that appear as part of a larger set.

• The 39 Steps

  Blu-ray

• The 400 Blows

  Blu-ray

• 45 Years

  Blu-ray

• After Hours

  4K UHD

• All That Heaven Allows

  Blu-ray

• Anatomy of a Murder

  Blu-ray

• Army of Shadows

  Blu-ray

• Badlands

  Blu-ray

• Barry Lyndon

  Blu-ray

• Blow Out

  4K UHD

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

1. Oppenheimer
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
3. Riceboy Sleeps
4. Maestro
5. Mutt
6. Perfect Days
7. The Holdovers
8. American Fiction
9. Barbie
10. Theater Camp

Turns out, I love a lot of movies that run 2.5 hours (or longer): these are just the ones I've given ★★★★★ to...

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Dune
3. Dune: Part Two
4. Blade Runner 2049
5. The Godfather
6. The Godfather Part II
7. Oppenheimer
8. Jackie Brown
9. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
10. A Woman Under the Influence

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

Some movies are exceptionally awful; you watch them, and every aspect - the writing, the acting, the directing, the editing - is usually a total failure.
Sometimes, the collapse of just one of these elements, if catastrophic enough, can still manage to undermine the entire thing even if everyone else brings their A game. That kind of movie is what my 0/10 and 0.5/10 ratings are for.
The list you are about to read, is not made of that kind of movie. No, these films are even worse. They're beyond being a cinematic abomination; they're a complete waste of every second of the time you spend watching them, they're so horrendous that cinema - nay, the world itself - is worse for the mere reason that they exist.
These are the 21 worst films ever made, the very unlucky 21 films that have earned -1/10, my absolute lowest possible rating. Listed in release date order for your viewing displeasure.

• The Babe Ruth Story
• The Conqueror
• Twilight Zone: The Movie
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
• North
• Battlefield Earth
• Freddy Got Fingered
• Glitter
• Catwoman
• Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

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

1. Oppenheimer
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
3. Riceboy Sleeps
4. Maestro
5. Mutt
6. Perfect Days
7. American Fiction
8. Barbie
9. Theater Camp
10. The Holdovers

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 13* films directed by Stanley Kubrick, ranked from best to worst.
* - Kubrick's three mini-documentaries - Day of the Fight, Flying Padre, and The Seafarers - are not included.

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

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The first 17* films of Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, ranked from best to worst.
* - I still have not seen The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

1. Raising Arizona
2. Fargo
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Miller's Crossing
6. No Country for Old Men
7. Blood Simple
8. The Man Who Wasn't There
9. Barton Fink
10. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 10* feature films directed by my favourite living director, Denis Villeneuve, ranked from best to worst.

* - Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024) are ranked together as one film.

1. Dune
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Blade Runner 2049
4. Incendies
5. Prisoners
6. Arrival
7. Polytechnique
8. Sicario
9. Maelström
10. August 32nd on Earth

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 12 films of Christopher Nolan, ranked from best to worst.

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

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

1. Soul
2. Da 5 Bloods
3. The Half of It
4. Nomadland
5. Minari
6. Possessor
7. Tenet
8. Sound of Metal
9. Kajillionaire
10. The Invisible Man

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2020*, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2020 do not count.
* - For example: Sound of Metal premiered at TIFF 2019, but did not have a release of any kind until its limited theatrical debut on November 20th, 2020 in the United States, and therefore counts; Beanpole, on the other hand, while unavailable in North America until 2020, did have theatrical releases in Europe during 2019, and therefore does not count.

1. Soul
2. Da 5 Bloods
3. The Half of It
4. Nomadland
5. Minari
6. Possessor
7. Tenet
8. Sound of Metal
9. Kajillionaire
10. The Invisible Man

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

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. After Yang
3. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. The Batman
5. TÁR
6. Top Gun: Maverick
7. RRR
8. "Sr."
9. The Eternal Daughter
10. The First Slam Dunk

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 9 feature-length films directed by PTA, ranked from best to worst.

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 12* feature films of the master of American independent cinema himself, my favourite filmmaker of all time, my cinematic hero, John Cassavetes, ranked from best to worst.

* - Big Trouble really shouldn't count, I know, but I'm a completionist and it's John's name on the poster. Also, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie's placement is based on the original, 1976 version, which I greatly prefer; I have indicated in the notes where the 1978 recut, which is almost an entirely separate film but does not have its own Letterboxd entry, would place.

1. A Woman Under the Influence
2. Love Streams
3. Opening Night
4. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

   *1976 Version*

   The 1978 version would be placed between A Child is Waiting and Faces.

5. Minnie and Moskowitz
6. Gloria
7. Husbands
8. Too Late Blues
9. Shadows
10. A Child Is Waiting

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

The five Indiana Jones films, ranked from best to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

1. Raiders of the Lost Ark
2. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
3. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
4. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

You know, all the British Film Institute needed to do was ask...

• Lawrence of Arabia

  Funnily enough, it was right around when the last list would have been published in the later part of 2012 that Lawrence became my favourite film. It had been The Godfather for several years before that. It's #1 for an incredibly simple reason: I can think of no other film where my qualitative evaluation of every single element - every performance, every scene, every piece of score, every shot, every cut, every frame - is anything other than "perfect." Not just A masterpiece; THE masterpiece.

• Everything Everywhere All at Once

  It's very possible that, the next time I do this in 2032 - hopefully, *clears throat* on an OFFICIAL ballot - this might be #1. I have never watched a movie that has simultaneously reminded me more why I love movies while also making me want more of the human condition, an experience I have tended to despise in years prior. Another film that I consider perfect.

• Blade Runner 2049
• The Godfather
• The Godfather Part II
• Chinatown
• 2001: A Space Odyssey
• Jackie Brown
• It's a Wonderful Life
• A Woman Under the Influence

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2021, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2021 do not count.

1. Dune
2. The Souvenir: Part II
3. No Time to Die
4. Malcolm & Marie
5. Drive My Car
6. King Richard
7. Titane
8. Raya and the Last Dragon
9. Petite Maman
10. Licorice Pizza

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

Criterion has an ongoing series on their site, brought to you by filmmakers, performers, writers, musicians, artists all over the world, where they list, rank, and talk about their top ten Criterion Collection spines. These are mine.

One day - I don't know when, but one day - this list will be on the Criterion site; as such, I am saving my elaborations and discussions about these ten films for then.

1. A Woman Under the Influence
2. In the Mood for Love
3. Love Streams
4. Raging Bull
5. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
6. Ran
7. Blue Velvet
8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
9. Days of Heaven
10. Come and See

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 9* films of the Fast & Furious franchise, ranked from best to worst.

* - I haven't seen Hobbs & Shaw yet. I haven't seen the short films either, but those wouldn't count anyway.

1. 2 Fast 2 Furious
2. Furious 7
3. Fast X
4. The Fast and the Furious
5. Fast Five
6. Fast & Furious 6
7. The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
8. The Fate of the Furious
9. Fast & Furious
10. F9

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 10* feature films of Quentin Tarantino, ranked from best to worst. This one is definitely not a crowd pleaser.
* - I debated including True Romance, which, while only written by Tarantino, has so many of his famous hallmarks that it is inseparable from his filmmaking identity; however, this standard would arguably mean I'd have to also include From Dusk till Dawn, and the list would become too muddled at that point; I've also not included Four Rooms because he only directed one of its four segments... and said segment is also atrociously bad.

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

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 11 films (9 main entries and 2 spin-offs) of the STAR WARS franchise, ranked from best to worst.

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

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

All of the films I have seen whose first theatrical and/or digital release - anywhere in the world, whether limited or full - occurred between January 1st and December 31st, 2019*, ranked from best to worst. Films with festival premieres but no other release in 2019 do not count.
* - No specific examples that apply for this year/list, but: if a film premiered at, say, TIFF 2018, but did not receive any other type of release before 2019, it would count; a film that premiered in 2019 but did not release until 2020 (such as Sound of Metal) will not be found here, but rather in my 2020 list; and a film that premiered AND released in 2018, no matter how late in the year, where in the world, and whether it was theatrical, digital, or both, will also not be found here.

1. The Lighthouse
2. The Souvenir
3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
4. Pain and Glory
5. Uncut Gems
6. Marriage Story
7. Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
8. 1917
9. Avengers: Endgame
10. Joker

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

A snapshot of my top 50 films of 2022 as it was on March 9th, 2023, when I submitted it for BestEverAlbums' aggregate top 50.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. After Yang
3. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. The Batman
5. TÁR
6. The Eternal Daughter
7. Top Gun: Maverick
8. "Sr."
9. RRR
10. Triangle of Sadness

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

It's real simple: you take the 9 films in the Rocky and Creed franchises, and you rank 'em best to Rocky V.

1. Rocky
2. Creed
3. Rocky Balboa
4. Creed II
5. Creed III
6. Rocky III
7. Rocky II
8. Rocky IV
9. Rocky V

There have been 591 films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture; these are my top 10.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. Lawrence of Arabia
3. The Godfather
4. The Godfather Part II
5. Chinatown
6. It's a Wonderful Life
7. Dune
8. The Bridge on the River Kwai
9. There Will Be Blood
10. Moonlight

It's over!
The FilmSpeak team all got together with our individual top 10 lists for 2022, and tallied the results up to bring you this. Check out the full article here.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once

   From me:

   "It’s impossible to do justice to a film like this in only a couple hundred words, for the same reason that it would be impossible to do so with a million words, for the same reason that there’s nothing meaningful I could add to the conversation about any of the other films that have served as touchstones across the history of cinema; it’s so much more, so much greater, than anything I or anyone else could possibly write about it."

2. Top Gun: Maverick

   From me:

   "...there’s nothing like this film. Even up against Avatar: The Way of Water, there is nothing that has ever been put on movie screens that compares to Top Gun: Maverick. What Tom Cruise and Joseph Kosinski did with these F-18s is so ridiculous, so in defiance of what cinema would do - of what, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe would do if it wanted to put its characters in the same planes - that it’s doubtful we’ll ever see anything like it again. You haven’t been to a movie theater if you haven’t seen this film on a square-ratio IMAX screen.

3. The Batman

   From me:

   "It’s the comic book film to end them all. I’m only sort of joking when I say they needn’t make any more now that The Batman exists. Well, Matt Reeves can make as many Batman films starring Robert Pattinson as he desires, but short of that, anything else is probably going to pale by comparison."

4. The Fabelmans

   From me:

   "...that core feeling of wonder, that catharsis, the voice in our heads that echoes out, 'God, I love cinema,' is universal. The Fabelmans might not have been the #1 film of the year for anyone on our team, but there hasn’t been a single dissenting voice, either, because Steven Spielberg understands what makes our cinematic minds tick.

5. TÁR

   From me:

   "'Time is the thing,' Tár says pointedly in an interview with The New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik, which might be an all-time great instance of a real-world journalist appearing within a fictional universe, and time indeed becomes something that ticks away prestissimo for Tár from that interview onwards. For her, she’s convinced it’s ticking away to her career-defining performance of Gustav Mahler’s 5th Symphony, but in actuality it ticks away to the unraveling of her career, as her sexual misdeeds are thrust into the limelight with their dynamics marked fortississimo."

6. The Banshees of Inisherin

   From me:

   "To reunite McDonagh with his two main In Bruges stars is something long overdue for our screens, and the results are electrifying. The Banshees of Inisherin is a slow-simmering tragedy borne out of miscommunications, stubbornness, and - perhaps saddest of all - an aloof innocence and sincerity that Pádraic cannot keep to himself."

7. Nope

   From Jack:

   "Both Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer absolutely soar in their lead roles, playing restrained characters that are overcome within Peele’s unforgettably haunting narrative, yet drive things forward at an impeccable pace. Nope is the kind of story that only comes around once every so often, and when it does, its greatest achievement is reminding the audience of just how powerful movies can be."

8. Aftersun

   From Jack:

   "...it’s a story of family, parenthood, and childhood independence, one which every audience should be able to see a part of their life reflected in. There’s not a single wasted moment in the entire screenplay, which is rarely found in debut features."

9. Babylon

   From me:

   "...with electrifying performances from Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, a beautifully poignant and subdued turn from Brad Pitt that feels like a reflection on his own superstar career, and all brought together by [Tom] Cross’ Oscar-worthy edit, Babylon is the best film Damien Chazelle has ever made."

10. Elvis

    From Griffin:

    "Elvis Presley has left the building, and all we’ve been left with in the 45 years since is a visage of what we imagined him to be. Elvis might be maximalist filmmaking to the highest order, but it’s a film with a deeply ingrained purpose and message."

A snapshot of my top ten films of 2022 on December 31st, 2022, when I submitted it for FilmSpeak's top 10 of the year.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once
2. After Yang
3. The Batman
4. TÁR
5. The Eternal Daughter
6. Top Gun: Maverick
7. "Sr."
8. RRR
9. Broker
10. Cha Cha Real Smooth

A snapshot of my top ten films of 2021 on December 31st, 2021, when I submitted it for FilmSpeak's top 10 of the year.

1. Dune
2. The Souvenir: Part II
3. No Time to Die
4. Malcolm & Marie
5. Drive My Car
6. King Richard
7. Titane
8. Raya and the Last Dragon
9. Petite Maman
10. Licorice Pizza

Exactly what it says on the tin. The 35* feature films of Steven Spielberg, ranked from best to worst.
* - There are, technically, 43 Spielberg films: of the eight excluded from this list, I haven't seen West Side Story; one - Firelight - is almost entirely a lost film of which only 3 minutes and change survive; and five - The Last Gun, Fighter Squad, Escape to Nowhere, Amblin, and Slipstream - are short films, the last of which was also unfinished. I've also excluded Spielberg's segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie for two reasons, the first of which is obvious: it's only 1/4 of a film. The second, less obvious reason, is that that movie can go fuck itself with a pitchfork, and hopefully impale John Landis in the process of doing so.

1. Schindler's List
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Jaws
4. Munich
5. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
6. Lincoln
7. The Post
8. Saving Private Ryan
9. Minority Report
10. The Sugarland Express

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