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Takes a bit to get going (its fidelity to ghost hunting programs means a lot of replaying the same clip in slow motion over and over), but the time travel in the back half used found footage in a clever way. Hanako’s first scare didn’t disappoint.

The kills were as clever and fantastic as ever, and tattoo man hit the exact cartoony tone of FINAL DESTINATION at its best (i.e. FD2). If they had cut about 20 mins of exposition out of the movie to make it as short as the rest of the series, then it woulda been perfect.

This review may contain spoilers.

A lot more of a Bad Vibe™️ than the feature-length I THINK YOU SHOULD LEAVE sketch I was expecting. I love that it’s never addressed that Austin is a Q-Anon guy.

Ambitious, personal, fractured, and such a vibe. Great performances from Witt and McColm too, plus Melamed is always a treat. Some sound mix issues gave me trouble getting immersed in the movie completely, but it also gives an extra unreality to the whole thing so YMMV. Definitely keen to watch BIRDS WITHOUT FEATHERS as well.

One of the prettiest movies ever made!

Now that’s what I call narrative economy! Matthau is fantastic at being vaguely annoyed at all times. Yes I did go back and rewatch the final shot 5 mins after the movie ended because I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I can say this about basically every Sean Baker protagonist, but Lucky is such a well-realized and unsentimentally composed character that I could watch him go for hours. Fascinating world being explored here. Also such a great baby performance.

Would be a great double with TALES FROM THE CRYPT: DEMON KNIGHT. Also, that one scene is as great as everyone’s saying it is.

Has the best side character performances of any Breen film. Also the most dynamic cinematography! Who knows what his movies would have ended up looking like if he never figured out how greenscreens worked.

De Palma is almost always an operatic filmmaker, but I think in this case he should have pared back a little bit. BDP is mega-directing, the entire cast is mega-acting, and the dialogue is mega-written, so when you lay Ennio Morricone’s mega-emotive score on top, it all overshadows the gravity of the story being told. That said, it’s a marvel that there was a time when a major studio would put out a film this unafraid of dispelling any notions that the American military’s atrocities are the result of ‘a few bad apples’, and the fact that De Palma felt the need to remake it in 2006 with yet another true story of the same thing happening during the Iraq War is further proof of CASUALTIES OF WAR’s relevance.

P.S. There was a surprise Dolores Park appearance! On a sunny day no less!

Thelma Schoonmaker’s title card got the biggest applause from the crowd! Well earned, too. I can’t imagine what a mess the editing room floor must have been for this movie.

Similar to my experience with L’ARGENT, I was left a little cold by AU HASARD BALTHAZAR, but I think it was more of a matter of misplaced expectations (the film was always built up as this devastating tragedy, but I forgot that it would still unfold in a detached manner like Bresson’s other films). Would be interested to revisit sometime.

First time seeing PLANET TERROR in forever, and it held up so much better than I thought it would. Kitsch remains fun when made sincerely, which all the grindhouse-y knockoffs don’t realize. DEATH PROOF also has aged gracefully, but having revisited that one more recently, it wasn’t a surprise. Stuntman Mike is one of the great self-insert art therapy villains, among the likes of Joe Gideon from ALL THAT JAZZ or Jack from THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT.

 Kind of a miracle that GRINDHOUSE exists. Great crowd movie.

The coffee scene still kills.

First time marathoning the trilogy in a theatre (with 30 min intermissions in-between) and it really is a different experience when you can’t talk or pause or do anything but watch the movies. Says a lot that I didn’t check my watch a single time during the screening. These things are just so watchable.

I like when the one ent extinguishes himself in the flood.

All killer no filler (cuz it’s theatrical, bay-bee!)

There were times when it felt like the movie was missing a reel or two, so reading afterwards about the studio interference makes sense. Really wish that the previous edit still existed to compare. The version we got is a lot of fun though, and Fishburne is such a great captain. I love how quickly he’s willing to abort the mission because the vibes are off.

Saulnier is so good at this kind of thing. Netflix fucked up so bad not giving this a theatrical release. I really don’t understand how they decide what to platform and what to bury. Maybe it portrayed the police too realistically and the company is a coward? Either way, this is one of those rock-solid thrillers that would be renowned as a genre classic if we still had a ‘90s-era film ecosystem. Whatever is lost in the inelegance of how it needs to explain the bureaucracy of corruption is more than made up for by everything else.

This worked so well. The modern music does a fantastic job of contextualizing Marie Antoinette as, at her core, just a teenager in an incredibly bizarre circumstance. She didn’t really stand a chance. Oh, also, greaaaaat use of Rip Torn.

I love cinematic shitposts.

Feels like there might be a reel missing before the end, unless it was intentional that the moral of the story is “Machiavelli was right”.

Oh to have Neil Breen staring serene only 2 inches from my face with and without his rubber mask on…

Got to see this with Christiane Cegavske giving a presentation/Q&A after. Still a gorgeous otherworldly film! Love how food-motivated everyone is in it. Also very excited for her next film SEED IN THE SAND. The preview clips were rad.

Not fully sure how I feel about THE BEAST as a whole or if I really got it but it’s really going for something and that’s to be commended. Also, great insult to Elliot Rodger by putting a version of him in a movie where Léa Seydoux wants to make out with him.

P.S. Just ed that clips from TRASH HUMPERS are in this! Don’t really know why, but I’m not complaining.

I just loved hanging out with these people. Very charming, and while I’m not sure the more experimental camera flourishes were wholly successful, they did add another layer of neuroticism that fit Schwartzman’s vibe. Obligatory mention of Carol Kane’s greatness. Beyond the comedy, her reactions during her album listening were powerful.

I’m torn because on one hand most of the jokes were kinda insufferable and I didn’t laugh a single time, but on the other hand they destroyed a lot of stuff and the dancehall set-piece was so great that it gave me a second wind in the amount of bullshit I could handle. Borderline unforgivable that Spielberg got Toshirō Mifune and Christopher Lee together and gave them absolutely nothing to do.

Captures the quiet thrill of having a secret rendezvous with your partner while still young. It becomes like you’re the only two people in the world who exist.

The first time I watched this in 2018, I thought it was mid as hell, but it turns out *I* was mid as hell. It fully worked this time around. Fantastic movie about when the hyper-fixation gets too strong. Hot take, but Spielberg is great at capturing awe.

David Lynch’s work means so much to me and I always took a bit of comfort knowing that no matter what madness was going on in the world, there was a bit of brightness and calm somewhere because Lynch was probably sitting in his compound painting or building a table or just enjoying a cup of coffee. It’s difficult to process his absence. This one hurts.

He loves tuna so much.

Didn’t really connect with this, but not sure if I was just a little too tired before starting it, or if the movie was playing everything too safe and Sundance-friendly. Perhaps a little of both.

Tonally very reminiscent of THE MASTER (even got an angry handy in there!), so I was fully on board. Still not sold on Corbet as the visionary auteur he’s being positioned as yet since the film is at its best when it’s aping other directors’ styles (in this case PTA), and the flourishes that are the most clearly by the same person who made VOX LUX are by far the weakest parts of the film. That said, the first half is astounding and the second half, even when it’s not quite hitting the mark, still gives a lot to chew on w/r/t the post-war Jewish experience, art as an extension of the artist, the antagonistic symbiosis of art and commerce, and so on. Would like to give it another watch sometime to see if everything clicks together better knowing the destination.

Such an odd choice slowing down the sketch reenactments to dramatic narrative pacing to make sure we see that the characters in the movie think it’s funny, rather than just letting the sketches be funny. I guess it’s the lesser of two evils; cutting to the reaction at least *tells* us it’s supposed to be funny no matter what, whereas if they try to let the reenactment speak for itself and it’s not funny, then they’ve failed to both show and tell. I dunno. Mythologization of comedy rubs me the wrong way in general (see also: SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS), but I loved the costumes and literally every person in the cast looks hot in this, so it was a fairly easy watch.

Effective cautionary tale against having children. I was pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Yeah it’s schmaltzy enough to feed an entire Ashkenazi community, but I ired the attempt to create a chamber play version of CLOUD ATLAS, fumbling and all. The entire La-Z-Boy subplot was tops.

The cops were great, but overall the film feels a bit too much like it’s confusing vagueness for subtlety. Maybe the relative anonymity of the family is meant to allow the viewer to more easily imprint their own baggage onto it, but since I don’t share the movie’s experience, it comes across as overly nostalgia-bait-y.

A Comedy Bang-Bang-esque anti-comedy improv dare but without the layers of irony and mischief that make this kind of thing actually work.

Rise and grind.

Cammie didn’t wanna play gin rummy with me afterwards :( I guess that’s just how it crumbles, cookie-wise.

Crazy how they were able to keep iterating on every joke for as long as they did without it going stale. I might change my tune about this in a few years, but hopefully HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS becomes as monumental for micro-budget indie film in the 2020s as CLERKS was for the 1990s.

Still my favorite Xmas movie. Also, first time watching this since moving to LA, which added a new dimension since the movie takes place like 5 mins away from where I live. Too bad the Donut Time isn’t around anymore, I can’t imagine the Trejo’s Coffee & Donuts gets up to this many shenanigans.

Could be a little too syrupy for my taste at times, but once the final act rolled around I was fully locked in. Also Jack Cardiff composes some of the most gorgeous frames I’ve ever seen. Nobody can make colors pop like him.

Those judges were—and I don’t use this word lightly—nincompoops. The entire calculator fumble should have disqualified them. Bev deserved better!

Lol at Nina Paley having to painstakingly animate her dad telling her to please get a job.

Great use of Guitar Hero as shorthand for pre-teen boy mediocrity. Only thing that would’ve made it better would be if Esther got good at “Through the Fire and the Flames” out of spite.

People sure do things! I’ve known about this doc since it came out but managed to go unspoiled, and the slow unraveling of info lived up to the hype.

Why did we ever stray from this path?

It’s more Dune! Continues to be a great adaptation of a book series I want to love but am never actually emotionally invested in at any point. Very pretty, could have used some cat milking or at least a pug.

Baker and Tsou show an entire working class ecosystem through a straight-forward day in the life of soul-deadening delivery work. The lie of bootstrap individualism vs. allowing help from one’s community, the adversarial relationship between different marginalized groups caused by capitalism working as intended, and the dehumanizing effect of gig work are all dug into without the filmmakers every having to directly state it. Like every Baker film, I’ll be thinking about it for days.

Sidenote: I don’t understand why one would be mean to delivery workers. Even if they get your order wrong, the fact that you got restaurant food without having to leave your home is a miracle and the people involved should be compensated as such.

I kinda love that VAMPS is essentially the director of some of the most iconic young people movies of both the 80s and 90s throwing up her hands and saying “iPhone, iPad, more like I don’t fuckin know what young people are like anymore! Please let me stop!” Might never become a JENNIFER’S BODY-style cult classic, but it’s silly and clever and has a weirdly stacked cast. Would 100% go to a repertory screening just to see how a crowd would react to it.

Since I can never see everything I wanted to from the year, here are all the 2024 releases I did see, ranked.

1. The Substance
2. ME
3. The People's Joker
4. AGGRO DR1FT
5. Trap
6. Rebel Ridge
7. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
8. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
9. Cruel, Usual, Necessary: The ion of Silvio Narizzano
10. Hundreds of Beavers

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Favorite first watches in 2024. Top 2024 films list will be when I catch up more.

1. Malcolm X
2. Josie and the Pussycats
3. The Vanishing
4. Panic Room
5. A New Leaf
6. Take Out
7. A Matter of Life and Death
8. Donkey Skin
9. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight
10. Faust

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

All the movies I own. Physical media is good.

• 10,000 BC

  “Colossal Monster Collection” 4-film blu-ray set

• 127 Hours

  DVD

• 2001: A Space Odyssey

  Blu-ray and Stanley Kubrick Collection DVD

• 21 Jump Street

  Blu-ray 

• 22 Jump Street

  Blu-ray 

• 28 Days Later

  Blu-ray

• 8½

  Criterion Essential Fellini box set Blu-ray

• Adaptation.

  DVD

• After the Rehearsal

  Criterion Ingmar Bergman’s Cinema Blu-ray

• Airplane!

  DVD

...plus 576 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

UPDATED LIST IS HERE

When the customers leave, we can watch what we wanna watch in theater 1. Date and staff member who chose it is in the notes. Will update until I lose access to the screening info (which was 3/28/24 due to moving)

1. Speed Racer

   8/28/22

2. Young Frankenstein

   9/11/22

3. Crash

   9/18/22

4. Blade

   9/25/22

5. The Nightmare Before Christmas

   10/2/22

6. Drag Me to Hell

   10/9/22

7. Train to Busan

   10/16/22

8. Female Prisoner Scorpion: #701's Grudge Song

   10/23/22
   

9. Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky

   10/23/22

10. Get Out

    10/30

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All the 2023 releases I’ve seen, ranked. Still have a bunch to catch up on, will keep updating list until the Oscars. Stuff from IndieFest is not included, with the exception of UNICORN WARS, which already had distribution when it played.

1. Beau Is Afraid
2. May December
3. Unicorn Wars
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
5. John Wick: Chapter 4
6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
7. The Killer
8. Thanksgiving
9. The Holdovers
10. Knock at the Cabin

...plus 26 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Eega
2. Sorcerer
3. Come and See
4. Tenet
5. Frankenhooker
6. Serial Mom
7. After Hours
8. Duel
9. Gremlins 2: The New Batch
10. To Live and Die in L.A.

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

It’s great to take a dip in the Waters.

1. Pink Flamingos
2. Serial Mom
3. Female Trouble
4. Cry-Baby
5. Cecil B. Demented
6. A Dirty Shame
7. Hairspray
8. Polyester
9. Desperate Living
10. Pecker

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

1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Burn After Reading
4. A Serious Man
5. Barton Fink
6. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
7. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
8. Fargo
9. True Grit
10. No Country for Old Men

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

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

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

1. Sherlock Jr.
2. Steamboat Bill, Jr.
3. Battling Butler
4. The Cameraman
5. College
6. The General
7. Seven Chances
8. Go West
9. The Navigator
10. Our Hospitality

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

1. Trainspotting
2. 28 Days Later
3. T2 Trainspotting
4. 127 Hours
5. Steve Jobs
6. Shallow Grave
7. Sunshine
8. Slumdog Millionaire
9. Millions
10. Trance

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

Movies I still gotta watch (in no particular order):

See How They Run
The Whale
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
“Sr.”
Fall
Caster
Vikram
Crimes of the Future
Aftersun
Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers
EO
The Northman
Ambulance
Moonfall
You Won’t Be Alone
Speak No Evil
The House
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
Vortex
Masking Threshold
Scream
Kimi 
After Yang
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
Dual
Hustle
The Black Phone
Thor: Love and Thunder
They/Them
Orphan: First Kill
Funny Pages
Clerks III
Stars at Noon
V/H/S/99
Wendell & Wild
Aftersun 
Armageddon Time
Something In the Dirt
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
The Menu
Bones and All
Strange World
White Noise
The Eternal Daughter

1. The Fabelmans
2. RRR
3. TÁR
4. The Batman
5. Jackass Forever
6. Terrifier 2
7. Barbarian
8. Moonage Daydream
9. Everything Everywhere All at Once
10. Three Thousand Years of Longing

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

All these movies are great! Feels weird to put SHOAH and DEADLY LESSONS next to each other, but such is the nature of art I suppose.

1. Shoah
2. Deadly Lessons
3. Holy Smoke
4. Hi, Mom!
5. The Gleaners and I
6. Werckmeister Harmonies
7. The Insider
8. Blade
9. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
10. Labyrinth of Cinema

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

What the title says. An ongoing project. Make a case in the comments if a choice seems wrong.

1. Bringing Out the Dead
2. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans
3. Deadfall
4. Vampire's Kiss
5. Leaving Las Vegas
6. Mom and Dad
7. Color Out of Space
8. The Wicker Man
9. Mandy
10. Pig

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

Here’s all the movies I was obsessed with before I hit adolescence, the incessant childhood rewatching burning every frame into my retinas forever. Memories of VHS, Blockbuster/Hollywood Video/Global Entertainment rentals, and early DVDs. These are probably a big part of why my personality is like how it is. Blame these.

• 50 First Dates
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls
• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
• Agent Cody Banks
• Airplane!
• Aladdin
• Alice in Wonderland
• An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
• Anastasia

...plus 160 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

When future generations ask, “What was it like during the 2020/21 Pandemic?”, I can point them to this list and go back to sleep. Multiple viewings in notes.

3/17/20 - 6/15/21*

*since herd immunity on a global scale is practically impossible (let alone even on a local levels thanks to certain parties), the end date coincides with when the state of California decided to fully re-open. Fairly arbitrary, especially because I was fully vaxxed on 5/5/21, but I had to use some measure and that seemed like a fairly official one.

1. Lady and the Tramp
2. Good Morning
3. Mulholland Drive
4. Sherlock Jr.
5. The Adventures of Prince Achmed
6. Blue Velvet
7. Pink Flamingos
8. Platoon
9. Gate of Hell
10. Zero for Conduct

...plus 281 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Finally got around to watching em all, which means it’s time to rank. Turns out even bad Carp can be pretty good.

1. The Thing
2. In the Mouth of Madness
3. Escape from L.A.
4. They Live
5. Dark Star
6. Prince of Darkness
7. Big Trouble in Little China
8. Christine
9. Memoirs of an Invisible Man
10. Assault on Precinct 13

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

This list was requested by a friend lamenting that he “avoid[s] anything with substance [and will] enjoy mindless drivel more than an objectively good movie, maybe because good movies try to make you sad.” Then another friend said “someone should make a list of movies that are mindless drivel but are actually really good”, so I made them that list.

To be clear, “mindless drivel” is not a value judgment on any of these movies, but rather a term of endearment. I am choosing to interpret it as “a movie that does not demand much from its audience, that can go down easy, and is not trying to pose challenging questions as its primarily goal.” They are entertainment first, and while every story has some form of message/theme, these ones tend to go for very broad strokes or are mostly just about themselves. And making these kind of movies well is really really hard to do, so each one is a miracle to be cherished. The other criteria is that I have to have seen it and given it at least 4 stars because this is my list. I made this list for literally five people so why are you reading this if you’re not one of those five people?

• 21 Jump Street
• 22 Jump Street
• Airplane!
• Alien Resurrection
• Aliens
• An American Werewolf in London
• Army of Darkness
• Baby Driver
• Back to the Future
• Batman

...plus 107 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Evil Dead II
2. The Evil Dead
3. Drag Me to Hell
4. Spider-Man 3
5. The Quick and the Dead
6. Darkman
7. Spider-Man 2
8. Army of Darkness
9. Spider-Man
10. A Simple Plan

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

All the 2021 movies I’ve seen, ranked.

Below is my “Still gotta see” list. I’ll likely update this list as I continue watchin stuff. Unless I forget. Which I won’t because I’m on this app all the time.

Agnes
All Light, Everywhere
Army of the Dead
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Belfast
Bergman Island
The Beta Test
Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry
Candyman
Can’t Get You Out of My Head
The Card Counter
Censor
Coda
Cruella
Evangelion 3.0 + 1.0 Thrice Upon A Time
Flee
Framing Britney Spears

Godzilla vs. Kong
The Green Knight
A Hero
The Humans
In the Earth
I Was a Simple Man
Lamb
The Last Duel
Lost Daughter
Luca
Mad God
The Mitchells vs. The Machines
Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
The Most Beautiful Boy in the World
Nobody
Nobody Sleeps in the Woods Tonight 2
On the Count of Three
Oxygen
Petite Maman
Pleasure
Raging Fire
Raya and the Last Dragon
The Rescue
The Scary of Sixty-First
The Souvenir Part II
Spencer
Spider-Man: No Way Home
The Suicide Squad
Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
Tick, Tick…BOOM!
Vortex
Willy’s Wonderland
Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage
The Worst Person in the World

1. Red Rocket
2. Titane
3. The Matrix Resurrections
4. On-Gaku: Our Sound
5. Old
6. Bo Burnham: Inside
7. Annette
8. The Power of the Dog
9. C'mon C'mon
10. Dune

...plus 27 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

As we all know, art is a competition. With that in mind, here are my personal favorite movies as of January 1, 2022, empirically ranked by a rigorous bracket system. TV movies, specials, shorts, and limited event series are excluded from the list. Films #1-6 can be considered tied for first more or less, since they could be probably be shuffled into any order and still feel right. Quite a lot of shifting around since the previous version a couple years ago. Almost as if tastes constantly change and this is all arbitrary. Probably not the reason tho.

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Love Exposure
3. Spring Breakers
4. Speed Racer
5. Phantom of the Paradise
6. Shaun of the Dead
7. It's Such a Beautiful Day
8. Eraserhead
9. House
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

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

Still gotta see TOP OF THE LAKE, but also that’s a TV miniseries so it doesn’t count. Anyway, more people should watch HOLY SMOKE. It rules.

1. Holy Smoke
2. The Piano
3. The Power of the Dog
4. In the Cut
5. Sweetie
6. The Portrait of a Lady
7. Bright Star
8. An Angel at My Table
9. Two Friends

All the 2020 movies I’ve seen, ranked. [Note: I include Don Hertzfeldt’s animated shorts because they’re as monumental as features. If SMALL AXE counts as 5 movies, then WORLD OF TOMORROW 3 is a movie too.] 

Stuff I still gotta see:

An American Pickle 
The Assistant 
A Sun 
Bacurau 
Bad Education 
Bill & Ted Face the Music 
Black Bear 
Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets 
Capone 
Collective 
Da 5 Bloods 
David Byrne’s American Utopia 
Dick Johnson is Dead 
Feels Good Man 
Hamilton 
Hillbilly Elegy 
Horse Girl 
I’m Thinking of Ending Things 
Jasper Mall 
Jumbo 
Kajillionaire 
The Kid Detective 
The King of Staten Island 
Let Them All Talk
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom 
Mayor 
The Mole Agent 
Never Rarely Sometimes Always 
The Nowhere Inn 
On the Rocks 
The Painted Bird 
Palm Springs 
Peninsula 
Possessor 
Red Post on Escher Street 
She Dies Tomorrow 
Shithouse 
Shirley 
Small Axe: Lovers Rock
Small Axe: Mangrove
Small Axe: Red, White, and Blue
Small Axe: Alex Wheatle
Small Axe: Education 
Swallow
Synchronic 
Tenet 
Tesla 
The Vast of Night
We Can Be Heroes 
The Wolf of Snow Hollow 
Wolfwalkers
Wonder Woman 1984

1. World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime
2. Minari
3. First Cow
4. Another Round
5. Sound of Metal
6. The Father
7. Time
8. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
9. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
10. Onward

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

As I was compiling this, I noticed an odd trend in my top 10, where a majority of the movies were either deeply silly (e.g. SHOWGIRLS, GLASS, FINAL DESTINATION 2), deeply religious (ANDREI RUBLEV, LAST TEMPTATION), or both (NOAH). I guess both camps share a sense of wild sincerity and ion that I guess I was craving this year.

1. Andrei Rublev
2. In the Mouth of Madness
3. Memories of Murder
4. Glass
5. Head
6. Showgirls
7. The Last Temptation of Christ
8. Nights of Cabiria
9. Noah
10. Final Destination 2

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

1. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
3. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
5. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
6. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

As silly as it is, I’m really bummed out that the awards-season conversations felt so small/fractured this year as a result of the state of the world. I love that the Oscars operate in this delicate balance of being both an important barometer of American cinema trends, while also being one of the stupidest events imaginable, pitting a bunch of art against each other like race-horses. And that mix of high and low stakes makes arguing over the awards such a fun way to close the book on the previous year in movies. But I didn’t get really get that this time, so it feels as anti-climactic as everything else has been. Either way, it was nice playing catch up, and I’m looking forward to being able to rave about things that ultimately don’t matter face-to-face with other people next year.

Here’s my Oscar predictions. I’m too lazy to sort them into a “What I think should win/What I think will win” kind of thing like I usually do, so this is an amalgam that will likely ensure that I get as close to 0% correct as possible. I also haven’t seen many of the non-heavyweights: I haven’t seen any of the live action or documentary shorts, and only one animated short (BURROW, which I was lukewarm about). Only seen one Foreign Language nom (ANOTHER ROUND), only seen one Feature Documentary nom (TIME), and only seen the two Pixar Animated Feature noms. Again, the Oscars are arbitrary anyway, so let’s have fun at the horse-races.

BEST PICTURE
MINARI – Christina Oh

BEST ACTOR
Riz Ahmed, SOUND OF METAL

BEST ACTRESS
s McDormand, NOMADLAND

BEST DIRECTOR
Lee Isaac Chung, MINARI

BEST ACTOR IN A ING ROLE
Lakeith Stanfield, JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

BEST ACTRESS IN A ING ROLE
Maria Bakalova, BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM: DELIVERY OF PRODIGIOUS BRIBE TO AMERICAN REGIME FOR MAKE BENEFIT ONCE GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
SOUL - Pete Doctor and Dana Murray

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
THE FATHER - Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller, based on the play by Zeller

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
MINARI - Lee Isaac Chung

BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
ANOTHER ROUND (Denmark) - directed by Thomas Vinterberg

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
TIME - Garrett Bradley, Lauren Domino and Kellen Quinn

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
MINARI - Emile Mosseri

BEST ORIGINAL SONG
"Husavik" from EUROVISION SONG CONTEST: THE STORY OF FIRE SAGA Music and Lyric by Savan Kotecha, Fat Max Gsus and Rickard Göransson

BEST SOUND
SOUND OF METAL - Jaime Baksht, Nicolas Becker, Philip Bladh, Carlos Cortés and Michelle Couttolenc

BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
MANK - Production Design: Donald Graham Burt; Set Decoration: Jan Pascale

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY 
NOMADLAND - Joshua James Richards

BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
EMMA. – Laura Allen, Marese Langan and Claudia Stolze

BEST COSTUME DESIGN
EMMA. – Alexandra Byrne

BEST FILM EDITING
SOUND OF METAL – Mikkel E.G. Nielsen

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
TENET - Scott R. Fisher, Andrew Jackson, David Lee and Andrew Lockley

1. Minari
2. Sound of Metal
3. The Father
4. Judas and the Black Messiah
5. Nomadland
6. Promising Young Woman
7. Mank
8. The Trial of the Chicago 7

I rewatched the full saga recently, which means ranking them is the next logical step. Official episodes only, but SOLO and ROGUE ONE would be 2nd and 3rd from the bottom, respectively.

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

This is my top 10 of 2017 as of the end of 2017. The order may be different now that there’s more distance from the year, but I’m gonna keep it like this as a time capsule.

1. The Florida Project
2. Brigsby Bear
3. Raw
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi
5. Baby Driver
6. Good Time
7. The Lego Batman Movie
8. Get Out
9. The Killing of a Sacred Deer
10. mother!

I saw around 438 movies released this decade. So here’s the top 25% of those. If your fave is not on the list, there’s a high likelihood either:
1. I haven’t seen it yet, or
2. We have differing tastes. The power of cinema!

Excluding Twin Peaks: The Return because I consider it a TV show, but it would be #1.

Not sure yet if this will be a living document, but it probably won’t.

1. World of Tomorrow
2. Spring Breakers
3. It's Such a Beautiful Day
4. Super
5. The Master
6. Inside Llewyn Davis
7. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
8. Eighth Grade
9. Swiss Army Man
10. The Lobster

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

This is my top 25 of 2018 as of the end of 2018. The order may be different now that there’s more distance from the year, but I’m gonna keep it like this as a time capsule.

1. You Were Never Really Here
2. Eighth Grade
3. Paddington 2
4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. The House That Jack Built
7. Blindspotting
8. Hereditary
9. Mandy
10. An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn

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

As we all know, art is a competition. With that in mind, here are my personal favorite movies as of March 13, 2020, empirically ranked by a rigorous bracket system. Films #1-7 can be considered tied for first, though, since they could be probably be shuffled into any order and still feel right.

Now it’ll be easier for everyone to razz/applaud my horrible/stellar taste!

1. Mulholland Drive
2. Love Exposure
3. Spring Breakers
4. Phantom of the Paradise
5. Shaun of the Dead
6. Speed Racer
7. It's Such a Beautiful Day
8. Eraserhead
9. House
10. 2001: A Space Odyssey

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

Since I have finally seen all 100 movies on the 2007 AFI list, the logical next step is to re-rank them all. This re-ranking is purely based on personal preference, not trying to correct the order empirically (whatever that means). If I were to do that, there probably wouldn’t be 3 Kubrick movies in the top 10, and also, at least 36 movies shouldn’t even be on the list. Look in the notes to see which ones they are.

So, is it worth it to watch all 100? Yes and no. There’s some really cool stuff I’m glad I watched, but it also confirms just how flawed the idea of a “canon” is. Does the list really need that many Vietnam movies, Westerns, and Dustin Hoffman? And that’s not even to mention the lack of diversity. Why the hell is TOOTSIE or SOPHIE’S CHOICE on there instead of, I dunno, a movie by a woman? Some odd choices in there for sure. But overall it’s a pretty good list of pretty good movies.

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Taxi Driver
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Casablanca
6. A Clockwork Orange

   Shouldn’t be on the list.

7. Duck Soup
8. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
9. Citizen Kane
10. The Silence of the Lambs

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

I didn’t get to watch a lot of movies this year, so I feel like this will be very different as I catch up on everything I wanted to see. [EDIT: nah, it didn’t change much]

Movies I still want to see:
Velvet Buzzsaw
High Flying Bird
Her Smell
John Wick Chapter 3 — Parabellum
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Toy Story 4
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
Doctor Sleep
Honey Boy
Waves
6 Underground
Synonyms
Ready or Not
Mister America

1. Parasite
2. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
3. Cats
4. The Beach Bum
5. Knives Out
6. Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus
7. Little Women
8. Ad Astra
9. The Lighthouse
10. Climax

This year sucked away my desire to keep up with current releases which meant I had way more time to get through some of my backlog. Here’s 50 pre-2020 movies I saw for the first time this year that I really loved. The ranking is mostly based on how emphatically I’d recommend the films, though they’re all very worth watching.

1. Miracle Mile
2. Bound
3. Fanny and Alexander
4. Mikey and Nicky
5. Stop Making Sense
6. Streets of Fire
7. The Turin Horse
8. Man with a Movie Camera
9. One Cut of the Dead
10. Dark Horse

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

Stumbled upon a top 25 list that I made on February 26, 2013 and felt like it should be put over here since Facebook's notes feature has been completely buried. Interesting what's still on there and what's not even in my top 100 anymore. Was there a time where I liked LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE that much? Weird. Anyway, compare and contrast with this list here.

1. Boogie Nights
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Big Lebowski
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Shaun of the Dead
6. Oldboy
7. Fight Club
8. Taxi Driver
9. Children of Men
10. Mulholland Drive

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

• The Father

  Picture, Actor, ing Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Editing

• Judas and the Black Messiah

  Picture, ing Actor x2, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Song

• Mank

  Picture, Director, Actor, ing Actress, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Original Score, Sound

• Minari

  Picture, Director, Actor, ing Actress, Original Screenplay, Original Score

• Nomadland

  Picture, Director, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, Editing

• Promising Young Woman

  Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Editing

• Sound of Metal

  Picture, Actor, ing Actor, Original Screenplay, Sound, Editing

• The Trial of the Chicago 7

  Picture, ing Actor, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Song, Editing

• Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

  Actor, Actress, Production Design, Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling

• One Night in Miami...

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

A friend asked for comedy recs since he’s a big ol’ sourpuss who doesn’t care for comedies. Not all the movies on here are 100% what one would consider a comedy, but I went off my gut.

• 21 Jump Street
• 22 Jump Street
• 50/50
• 8½
• Adaptation.
• Airplane!
• Alien Resurrection
• Amarcord
• An American Werewolf in London
• Amélie

...plus 166 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Boogie Nights
• The Favourite