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Seen on 35mm nitrate as my final film at the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week.

Seen on 35mm at the New Beverly Cinema

Melville is the premier chronicler of the existential doom that awaits anyone thinking they're going to get away with a heist.

Seen at the Vista Theater in 35mm

Skirts close to being sentimental pablum and then avoids it at almost every turn. A story extremely fitting for Nick Offerman to narrate.

Seen on 35mm at the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week followed by a Q&A with Brady Corbet

My favorite Von Trier and Dunst does one of the best depictions of depression on film. It was given such a shoddy release that this is the first time I ever watched it on a big screen which made a big difference.

Seen on 35mm at the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week followed by a Q&A with Gabriel Byrne

"it you don't like me seeing Leo because you're jealous. it that you've got a heart, even though it may be small and feeble, and you can't the last time you used it."

"If I'd known we were casting feelings into words, I'd have memorized the Song of Solomon."

Seen on 35mm as part of the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week.

Seen on 35mm at the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week followed by a Q&A with Elliott Gould.

On 35mm as the opening film of the American Cinematheque’s Bleak Week with an intro by Bill Hader.

There are those who want to contribute something to the world and those who just want to get by as a cog in the machine.

Seen at the UCLA Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum as a double feature with the film itself.

Seen at the UCLA Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer Museum on a brand new 35mm print restored by the Library of Congress and Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation

Well, they didn't want you to see the movie then, but maybe now's the time for everyone to watch this film with all the racist fuckery in the world.

At the Academy Museum's Geffen Theater

Steve McQueen as "The Cooler King"

While the multiplexes will mostly play the same old tired junk this summer, it was good to revisit a classic that re when movies were fun, but also not trivial.

Seen as part of a Carl Franklin double feature at the New Beverly Cinema on 35mm

I hadn't seen this in a long time but it reminded me of a time when an indie film that was hard and adult would break out. Rejected from Sundance, Siskel & Ebert championed the film which has now lasted longer than probably 99% of what came out of that festival.

Seen as part of a Carl Franklin double feature at the New Beverly Cinema on 35mm

"Easy, look. If you ain't want him killed, why'd you leave him with me?"

It's been great watching this film evolve over 30 years from box office disappointment into an all-time classic.

At the Aero Theatre

It's been a long time. Some of the jokes don't land like they used to, but what hasn't aged is the shameless scamming of Bialystock and Bloom whose entire plan is built on the success of failure only to wind up with the failure of success. The scams still blow in con artists' faces but nowadays a jury finding them "incredibly guilty" would be rare as there likely would be scammers sitting on that jury.

At the Egyptian Theatre followed by a Werner Herzog Q&A.

Seen on 35mm at the Academy Museum Geffen Theater

People forget there was a second great romance between Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in film.

This was the biggest screen I ever saw it on and it was a feast of images.

4K Restoration of the Director's Cut

Never seen any version of this before. Better than the initial reviews when this was first released almost exactly 20 years ago. I wish there was a better center to this than Bloom though he gets better as the film moves into the final hour. However, I'm assuming this cut is a more sprawling version of what got released in theaters including what I feel is a very secular attitude towards the Crusades.

At the TCM Film Festival with a Michael Schultz Q&A.

At the TCM Film Festival with an intro by Patton Oswalt

TCM Film Festival followed by a Q&A with Kathy Bates and Rob Reiner

TCM Film Festival preceded by a Q&A with Michelle Pfeiffer

TCM Film Festival preceded by a Q&A with James Cromwell

Seen on Easter Sunday at the Egyptian Theatre

The almost darkly comical underpinning of this film is that all the arguments go around in circles because no one can possibly it they're wrong. And it made me wonder whether fighting over the forever unknowable until you die is just a major waste of time in many of our lives. A conflict started in which no one can possibly proven wrong and rejecting the silence and peace of accepting never understanding what will always be a mystery to all of us instead of just having the lives we sometimes forget to live.

Seen on 35mm at the Egyptian Theatre

When I first watched this back in 1995, the whole idea of a virus wiping out mass amounts of people felt like a science fiction concept. If only future me had time-traveled back to that moment when I first walked out of the Beekman Theatre after my first viewing and tried to warn me.

Seen on 70mm Ultra Panavision at the Vista Theater

Ryan Coogler has made a film about the intrusion of white people and all their grievances upon the joy and celebration of others. My main quibble with this was specifically calling them vampires. It maybe should have taken a note from 28 DAYS LATER to embrace the metaphor for what's infecting people instead of naming it.

I feel like Coogler has found himself with this film. If being a filmmaker is about having your inner music come out in images, then this is a film that's moving at its own distinct beat.

THIS IS NOT A FICTION Closing Night Film at the Egyptian Theatre

Followed by a Q&A with Coulson's friend Jenny Sullivan, filmmaker Richard Green, producer Sabrina Sutherland, Kyle MacLachlan and TWIN PEAKS co-creator Mark Frost

Catherine Coulson is an interesting subject, but this film has been so spastically edited with digital post-production gimmicks, poor structuring and somehow both overlong but over-paced to shove so much material into it the filmmaker (acting as his own editor) didn't trust enough to leave on the floor when this film desperately needed less information and more breathing room to feel something.

At the Orpheum Theatre followed by a Jeff Bridges Q&A.

Different jokes become stronger in each viewing and this time it was Julianne Moore turning from the television screen playing LOGJAMMIN' to proclaim, "The story is ludicrous!"

On 35mm at the Academy Museum

Cinema is a Paul Newman close-up shot.

THIS IS NOT A FICTION

35mm screening at the Egyptian Theatre

THIS IS NOT A FICTION

35mm screening at the Egyptian Theatre 

Fuck the police.

THIS IS NOT A FICTION 2025 at the Egyptian Theatre.

I had never seen or even heard about this before and was blown away by it. A film that makes you ponder if the main character is either a heroic figure fighting the system and bringing justice or a completely insane person who might not be going about this the best way. Perhaps, it's both.

Intro by Bill Hader and followed by Errol Morris interviewing Kazuo Hara.

THIS IS NOT A FICTION 2025

On 35mm at the Los Feliz 3 with an Errol Morris Q&A

My favorite documentary of all time. This is what you watch when you want to wrestle with figuring out what the meaning of life is and this happened to be the right time for me to revisit this and do just that.

35mm matinee at the Vista Theater

On 35mm at the New Beverly Cinema

On 35mm at the New Beverly Cinema

LA Premiere at the Vista Theater

A MINOR PAIN

Doomsday Prep Watch fittingly on Amazon Prime.

West coast premiere at the LA Festival of Movies

We're about to enter an era of movies with broken and lost men who also seemingly never grew up because...

Look around us right now.

And Tim Robinson is the perfect vessel for all their bullshit.

First time ever viewing on 35mm at the Egyptian Theatre

Fuck the police.

Seen on Hulu

Counterculture Karaoke

On 35mm at the New Beverly Cinema.

Still my favorite film of the ones Schrader directed which ittedly I've only liked 3 or 4 of his others. One wonders how the same director handled race in this film compared to the weird slavery fetishes in THE MASTER GARDENER decades later.

Noir City Hollywood 2025 at the Egyptian Theatre

Noir City: Hollywood on 35mm

Noir City: Hollywood on 35mm

This played before HUNDREDS OF BEAVERS at the New Beverly.

The LA premiere of the 35mm print at the New Beverly.

Pure cinema going back to the beginning of film so we can rebuild it the right way this time.

Noir City Hollywood 2025

"Isn't that like that Tilda Swinton movie I saw a long time ago?" I asked before finding out they were both based on the same book.

Bennett and Mason are excellent and would've been better if the turns their relationship make had been given more than 80 minutes to breathe.

Noir City Hollywood 2025

Funny enough, a better title for this would've been BLACK HAT.

Other than that, there's an Elisha Cook Jr. Horny Drum Solo.

On 35mm at the Egyptian Theatre for Noir City: Hollywood with an Annette Bening Q&A

Such a pitch black noir that even film noir historian Eddie Muller said the last 20 minutes of this movie is as much as he can handle how dark this genre can get.

Noir City Hollywood at the Egyptian Theatre

Nowadays, rich people wouldn't feel this much guilty about their sins to course correct as Barbara Stanwyck and Kirk Douglas do here.

As with any year-end lists, this will probably change in the future and it already changed a dozen times in the past couple of weeks. But this list reflects where I am and how I'm feeling at this moment.

1. Hundreds of Beavers

   Cinema has long needed to be taken apart and put back together after a quarter century of paralysis via nostalgia and sometimes you have to go back to the very beginnings of film to find the way forward.

2. Conclave

   Lapsed Catholics love to poke holes in its beliefs by coming up with questions the bible contradicts itself which is why the ending of this is such a hilarious Fuck You we wish we had concocted.

3. Nickel Boys

   A film that demands everyone who watches it walk in the shoes of its characters.

4. His Three Daughters

   I was the youngest of three brothers who dealt with their father’s death 33 years ago and somehow saw myself in all three of these characters.

5. Hard Truths

   A portrait of post-pandemic depression and anger that many people are clearly going through right now and refusing to it to themselves the damage it’s doing to their families.

6. Hit Man

   To quote the old Chris Rock joke, I can’t officially condone what they did…but I understand.

7. Green Border

   Our world is an international system demonizing immigrants trying to survive, but treated more like the pawns of xenophobic governments and their citizens.

8. The Brutalist

   An epic about a true artist who’s exploited by a rich and privileged asshole just because America treats its immigrants like property, welcomed by an upside down Statue of Liberty.

9. A Real Pain

   The answer for the pain of present lives may or may not be found in the pain of past ones.

10. Sing Sing

    For all the bad movies in recent years about the power of cinema, we finally get a very good one about the necessity for artistic expression.

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