6u532b

One of Scorsese’s underrated. Very similar to Taxi Driver, but utterly distinct in its more comedic, satirical execution, and a thoughtful piece on celebrity worship and how the media can warp our perception of the world and how to interact with people. I like how we explore both perspectives here, we see Rupert’s situation, his genuine love for comedy and desire for fame, but we see Jerry Langford who already has it, who sees it’s not all that Rupert fantasizes and gives the third person perspective on the unhealthy extent of Rupert’s obsession. Both Robert De Niro and Jerry Lewis give fantastic performances and the ending is one of the best in Scorsese’s portfolio.

Scorsese Ranked

Me when I just watched Wicked

The first time I saw this movie was with a group of friends in high school, we told one friend that we were going to see 300: Rise of an Empire, only last minute upon handing him the ticket did he realize he’d been deceived we were seeing this instead. Honestly, the better deal, does anyone even Rise of an Empire?

What could easily have been a cynical product movie ends up being wildly entertaining, creative and full of genuine heart and morals for kids to take into adulthood, encouraging them to think and build, and to never let any system take their individuality from them. No wonder Fox News at the time tried to smear this movie as dangerous.

Me frequenting Bay St Video in Toronto, secretly hoping to run into Ayo Edebiri.

Charming, funny, and carried by Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts’ great chemistry. What makes this film for me, beyond the fun personalities and the chemistry, was that subtle intimidation factor, at that gap in power and success between them. When they’re apart, you definitely feel it in the back of Will’s mind. It’s exaggerated here by Anna being a Hollywood actress, but it’s a relevant thing to normal relationships, I know whenever I like a girl, it does not take much for me to think that she’s above me. But also like Anna and Will, it melts away in the heat of chemistry, and the way the film tackles that is really uplifting.

A Sharday recommendation ☺️

Watched on Wednesday June 4, 2025.

Why did nobody tell me a Beat Takeshi film came out last year? And a parody of a Beat Takeshi film? Satisfies as a throwback to his 90s crime films, then hard right turns into something completely unexpected, mocking every rule, convention and problem he has with the industry. It's rare that we ever see a movie just say "fuck it" the way this one does, that ending made me die laughing.

Takeshi Kitano Ranked

Lots about this movie is very technically impressive, the grand, lavish sets, the costumes, the epic scale of set pieces with hundreds of choreographed extras. If nothing else it’s a spectacle. But that only does so much when the fundamentals are this shallow and the story is this heavy handed and dated. Charles Huston’s Charles Gordon is presented as this Christ-like saviour whose influence the locals would fall apart without, while Lawrence Oliver’s Mahdi, aside from…y’know, is played like a cartoon villain. Every character in this is a caricature, and between the big epic battle scenes, we’re treated to nothing but dry, patronizing, expository filler. I see a lot of comparison to Lawrence of Arabia among this film’s discourse, but I think a more appropriate positive reference would be Zulu, a film that fleshes out every perspective, and doesn’t talk down to anyone. This is comparatively very black and white and unambiguous about who’s good and who’s bad, which real history isn’t.

Watched on Saturday May 31, 2025.

First Criterion I ever bought, fun fact.

It’s a little upsetting how relevant this still is. The cycle of hate and the factors that feed it along, cultural marginalizing, socioeconomic disparity, that all around sense of societal hopelessness. Very Do The Right Thing now that I think about it. Also like Do The Right Thing, I like how it captures the other side as well, what it has to say isn’t as black and white as the characters think and the cinematography projects. Performances across the board are fantastic, there are tons of creative camera and editing tricks, whether showy or subtle, like in that mirror scene. It’s a landmark film and everyone should see it.

Stylish and atmospheric, but emotionally vacant. It’s a movie that insists it’s hiding away some profound, interpretive, deeper meaning, but all there is to interpret is what’s spelled out at the very surface level: He’s sad about a girl. Jenna Ortega is good, Barry Keoghan is good, the film is tolerable up to a point, but then you reach the third act when it really shits the bed, turning into what’s almost a parody of an Ari Aster film. There’s also a scene where Jenna Ortega explains to The Weeknd how profound all of his own songs are (in this film written and produced by The Weeknd) and it’s the most masterbatory thing I’ve seen in a film in a long time.

2025

Every other scene in this feels like a clip from a fake movie in an episode of The Simpsons.

I feel like I’m getting the short end of this cultural exchange. DoodleBarb is getting movies that make her laugh, I’m getting movies that make me hurt.

One of those movies that would be vastly improved by most of its cast dying in a hail of gunfire by the end. My god too, the score is one of the most bewildering things I’ve heard in a while. 

DoodleBarb, your retribution will be swift and merciless.

“The Pope had doubts about God?”

“No. Never about God. What he had lost faith in was the Church.”

I’m late, I know. But this film was riveting. A dense movie that juxtaposes faith and doubt, fear and love, tradition and progress, humanity and corruption. The performances were top notch, Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rosselini can do no wrong, and the twists constantly kept me guessing. There’s lots of petty gossip, quiet procedures and ballot counting, yet even at the most surface level, the film is always entertaining.

2024

The idea of a filmmaker going back and remaking one of his own films, seeing what he would do differently, is interesting to me. Unfortunately though, this feels mostly arbitrary. It has a couple of standout setpieces and stunts that remind you that you’re watching a John Woo movie, but that just makes the rest of the film being cheap, generic streaming slop all the more disappointing.

2024

I think this movie is the default most people imagine when they picture a heist movie. Most of the cast has peaked far higher than this, but it’s a sharp, entertaining, quotable well-rounded little crime caper and everyone here is on their A-game.

The fuck was Don Cheadle’s accent though?

Without a single iota of irony, this is what I would present if asked to provide definitive proof that culture peaked in the 1990s.

It's not often that I'm so genuinely bored watching a movie that I go and turn the playback speed to 1.25x just to be done with it faster, but this film earned that rare honour. You can barely understand the dialogue, partially because of the shitty auto quality, partially because every performance, every line of dialogue sounds like it comes from an alien trying to itself off as human. The film is one shot (maybe two?) and the frame(s) they chose is so ugly and poorly blocked, half the time we’re zoned in on nothing while whatever’s happening happens at the edge, or off the screen. It has audacity to be as pretentious as it is, I'd call it some amateur film thrown together in a weekend by a bunch of high school friends, but come the fuck on, we had higher standards than this, plus we never put ourselves in gimp suits.

High and Low, both morally and socioeconomically. Kurosawa is second to none when it comes to blocking, movement and framing, that holds true when he’s directing an epic war with hundreds of extras, or three people in a room. I think the first hour of this film is him at his very best. Every character is compelling and flawlessly performed, the dilemma is one that keeps you on edge, and it features some of the smartest blocking and framing I’ve seen in any film. Notice how Gondo, when he’s not the direct focus of the characters, always wanders off to the edge of the frame, like he’s trying to avoid the moral dilemma. Notice Aoki, who mostly just hangs out anxiously in the background, has almost no agency in what’s going on, yet always seems to take up significant space in the frame, because he’s taking up significant space in Gondo’s mind. And notice how opposite Aoki, there’s always Kawanishi, the two of which almost forming an angel and devil on Gondo’s shoulders putting pressure on either side. As far as I’m concerned, the first hour of this film is perfect. For me, it drops off a little bit in the latter half. The first half was lightning in a bottle with its characters, morals and just raw filmmaking. The second half, while not bad by any means, seeing what consequences a conservative Japanese society has in store for Gondo is very necessary, but it turns to a fairly standard procedural with police characters who feel practically interchangeable. It does build to an ending though, that does a fantastic job tying everything full circle.

Better not fuckin do this like you did my Oldboy, Spike.

Akira Kurosawa Ranked

Quiet, thoughtful and empathetic. The two leads never say a word, but the film has a way of putting you in their heads and making you feel like a part of the bond they develop. The scenery is beautiful, the Joe Hisaishi score is beautiful, the side characters are hysterical, and the ending gives me depression.

Takeshi Kitano Ranked

I imagine this would make a fantastic double feature with Drive (2011).

I heard once that Micheal Mann kept a water truck on set to wet down the streets when they filmed at night, and that every director thereafter had to do the same so their nighttime scenes could look half as gorgeous as the ones in this film. And I don’t blame them one bit, between the neon lights glistening off the wet roads and that sick ass Tangerine Dream score, this film just oozes style and atmosphere. James Caan is fantastic in the lead role. He’s somewhat of an asshole, but when you hear his backstory he becomes a lot more sympathetic and you really respect that “I am the boss of my own life” kind of attitude. The scene in the Adoption Agency blew me away, and at this point it’s safe to assume that any scene taking place in a diner in a Micheal Mann film is just automatically going to be a 10/10.

So all I have to do to conquer racism is force a black friend to eat fried chicken? Cool, I’ve done that twice in the last year, that means I’m twice as not racist.

Not technically incompetent, but it’s the kind of movie where you can watch 5 minutes of it from any point in the runtime and you probably know how the entire rest of the film plays out based just on that. It’s predictable, banal, oversimplified and there’s really not much you can get out of it that you can’t also get by just watching this instead.

Watched on Wednesday April 30, 2025.

Like a blacksploitation film that got old and tired. Powerhouse performances across the board, everyone is someone you can sympathize with in some capacity, and that soundtrack is classic.

When Jack the Steve started singing the lava chicken song, me and Shar’s brains both cracked simultaneously and we spent the remainder of the film’s runtime in a Walter White crawlspace kind of state. Much like 2022’s Moonfall, it very much has the skeleton of a generic shitty studio movie, but in execution it’s so much more (or less depending on who you are) than the sum of its parts. I honestly couldn’t believe what I was watching at points, what we thought we knew about reality went out the window for the entire 101 minute duration and after a certain point all we could do was submit to the lunacy. Will be watching this again under the influence.

This review may contain spoilers.

More like Ad ASStra, am I right?

But no, this was good. Visually dazzling, a solid lead performance in Brad Pitt, a poignant ending. All that holds it back in my eyes is some tonal inconsistency. For most of it, the film wants to be slow and contemplative, like Arrival, like Apocalypse Now, and it works as that, but every now and again you’ll get some out of place action scene where we’re having laser shootouts with moon pirates, or fighting a killer monkey on a derelict ghost ship, these scenes are pure schlock and it feels like some out of touch executive complained that the movie was too boring and had them forced in. It also got an accidental laugh out of me when the crew all accidentally killed themselves one by one in quick succession, like this is a top priority mission with existential stakes for the entire solar system and these are the guys you trust with it? Hiccups aside though, this was a thoughtful, well constructed film, and it’s only because it released in an already stacked year for film that I can reconcile it not getting the attention that it deserved.

Watched on Sunday April 20, 2025.

Sharp as hell, dense with memorable characters and layers, but original and digestible in a way that reminds me of a good John Carpenter film. Could absolutely go up on a repeat viewing.

There’s a point early on where Murphy’s wife shows up at the station, and I thought it was going the route of him gaining his family back, but it ended up just being a fakeout and honestly I’m glad for it. Robocop is about the tragedy of this guy whose life is gone, he’s never getting it back. It chooses instead to savour the emotion in little moments of regained humanity, like him ing his name. It’s above that easy, predictable kind of storytelling and I’m glad the sequel didn’t buck the original vision.

It’s far from a perfect movie, but it’s so bold, meta and out of left field at points, and it maintains much of what the first was about from the characters to the satire, I really can’t see there being a more appropriate sequel to Robocop.

This scene as well was a 10/10.

The costume, hair and makeup all look straight out the era, the performances all know exactly what they’re going for, the colours are right out of a Jacque Demy film. While the illusion is occasionally broken by a modern car or seeing a smartphone every now and again, I’ve otherwise yet to see anything capture that look, sound and feel of a 60s pulp thriller quite this faithfully. It rides the line between genuinely moody and self-aware camp, bordering on parody at points in a way that might go over some people’s heads. The runtime did definitely drag a bit, but it’s a unique vision that I’m glad I gave my time before it left Mubi.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Boy, I sure did feel the glory of the American military complex when they barge into some family’s home and leave it bloodied and blasted to pieces by the end, or when they send their Iraqi interpreters out as bait and they eat an IED, or when the one guy we unambiguously see the Americans kill on screen is done so over a hammer that they left behind and probably didn’t need to go back for. Seriously, I don’t know where the discourse that this is some glorification of war comes from. The Iraq war was obviously shitty and immoral, but it’s not like this film is trying to brush anything under the rug. The note it ends on is one of “Okay, what was the point?” which I figured it was applying to the conflict as a whole. Considering this was made by someone who was there, I respect the honesty of it. The ride is tense, brutal, and lifted up by that booming loud sound design.

2025

Cinematic equivalent to a saltine cracker, and a pretty fuckin stale one at that.

Watched on Sunday April 6, 2025.

Been saving this one for a rainy day, and honestly what I’ve been having is closer to a rainy month. I think I’m quite a bit more cynical than I let on to most people, but I feel like I walked away from this a little bit less so which is some of the highest praise I can give any movie.

As whimsical and enchanting as it is cruel and heart-wrenching. A story about fantasy as escapism in a very literal sense, a child’s escape from cruel circumstances into a fairy tale. The sets, the costumes, the performances, it’s all dazzling, and it’s one of the most creative and poignant commentaries on the horrors of war, fascism, rebellion, and how an innocent mind copes with it all. Few directors are as visionary and transportive as Guillermo Del Toro, and I think this film shows off every single one of his talents to the fullest effect.

God damn though, if I was that one fairy in the feast scene, I’d be pissed.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 is the best movie I’ve seen all day. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since the credits rolled 10 minutes ago. In a time when the market is saturated with nothing but factory produced drivel like Mickey 17 and Dune Part 2, or politically biased woke left trash like Barbie and Schindler’s List, along comes something that reminds us of a time when we used to get real movies like Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III. Meticulously crafted, effortlessly performed, with an original sense of humour, a showcase of storytelling in film the likes of which we wouldn’t see again until The Emoji Movie, flexing its knowledge of the arts through homage to other famous works across other mediums like Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, Barnyard for the Playstation 2, and the Nostalgia Critic review of Pink Floyd's The Wall. But it’s also a film with a lot to say about real life. Paul Blart’s overtly sexualized appearance speaks for itself, but you might notice how the emblem he wears on his shirt and on his scooter has a blue background, as if to say his indulgence in such carnal pleasures does nothing to help the blue he feels within. I could provide countless other examples of this, but then I’d be here for at least another 2 minutes.

They say life imitates art, well maybe life should imitate BLART.

Again, there are tons of movies on my blu-ray shelf. Classics, cult classics, rare things I had to go out of my way for, Natural Born Killers, Bridge Across The River Kwai, When Harry Met Sally, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Rio Bravo, Ad Astra, Wild Strawberries, Eastern Condors, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 3 Days of The Condor, the Librarian trilogy, countless recommendations from Joseph and Shar that I’ve just been sitting on.

But today I chose instead to watch How I Saved The fucking President.

I gotta give special mention to a scene where the kid goes to a psychiatrist, and there’s just a dog licking an orange in the corner. It felt like a David Lynch visual.

It’s well directed and the performances are good and the chemistry is there and there are countless hacks I'd be willing to sacrifice so Theodore Witcher could direct more features. But holy shit is every character in this completely toxic and stupid. On some level that's definitely the point, that people are emotionally complex and things don't always fit together perfectly, and that you have to work through it to some extent, but I think the line was definitely crossed a couple times like when he took her address off the cheque and stalked her home, that scene had me like this. Can't deny though, I did get sucked into their chemistry from time to time, and the film ends on a note that leaves it ambiguous where they ultimately go from there.

Recommended by Sharday 😊

Lots of layers here, it’s a hard movie to articulate my thoughts on, but with a number of happenings in my life as of late, I related to Arthur in this a tremendous deal. It’s hard to move on from the past when it feels like that’s where most of the things you love and value seem to be stuck, but it’s necessary so as to not block good things out of your present or future.

It’s hard to make a satire of times that have become a fucking parody themselves, but somehow Bong Joon-Ho found a way. Ridiculous and unsubtle, but it leans right into it with one of the most original and entertaining so far this year. Robert Pattinson is great, Naomi Ackie is great, but Mark Ruffalo really takes the bar and leads with it.

Also, happened into good friends Gavin and Vivian in the theatre, couple of neat people these two.

“Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night.”

That Neil Young score is one of my favourites in any film. It has the backbone of a traditional western, but it’s much more mysterious and sad, like it laments something stolen from it, like an idyllic life, by the cruel circumstances of this world.

I’ve found myself thinking of this movie a lot recently, and of William Blake’s journey, how he’s completely screwed over through no fault of his own, but finds some freedom in giving in to the chaos and to his inner artist. A particularly poignant moment to me is when he curls up next to the dead fawn, like he sees this poor innocent creature that had a chance at life dangled before it before having it unfairly snatched away, and he relates.

With that lurid, hazy atmosphere and the endless stream of small but memorable performances, this has gradually grown into a big boy favourite of mine.

Jim Jarmusch Ranked

Oh my goodness, it’s my dear friend hilyelo!

Very traditional 80s fantasy. Cheesy as hell, but charming and heartfelt and it’s a kind of film that feels like home to me. Let's go back to when blockbusters tried to be Spielberg movies, not Joss Whedon movies.

Just catching up on NakeyJakey lore.

“We wanted it, the film, to be very realistic looking uh, and, um, like it was actually photographed in someone’s backyard, and that the elves and fairies and everything were actually real, and um that demanded a certain, um, stretching of the technology, and then at the same time it, um demanded a very very delicate balance between realism and stylized animation, because the key to animation is it has to be stylized otherwise you just use real people, uh and that’s the magic. The point of the movie is that everybody deserves to be loved, and that love finds a way for the strangest people to actually fall in love with each other, regardless of what it appears, and true love doesn’t have anything to do with the way you look, it really has to do with your soul and with what kind of person you are, and it’s the magical match, not the superficial one. The dust represents, uh, infatuation which is mostly on um, you know, appearance and or status or some of those things that hover around people, and the movie says basically those people that have the shiny armor, those people that have the great haircut, those people that are the knight who can take over the kingdom aren’t necessarily the one you want to fall in love with, uh, if you fall in love with, it’s infatuation, but when you find your true love who actually shares your view, uh shares your morality, shares your interests, that’s true love.”

Watched on Saturday March 15, 2025.

All of you are cowards for not rating this what it deserves.

Creative and chaotic yet pinpoint precise. Every performance knows exactly what it’s going for, every joke is perfectly delivered and timed, and the final twenty minutes are an all time masterstroke.

Funny and clever, with an excellent cast, and a fun way of incorporating its technical faults as part of the joke. It pokes fun at the source material, but it always feels like it comes from a place of love for it, never feeling mean spirited. And the way it pokes fun at the consumer nature of Star Wars has aged like wine, given the exponentially more mercenary state of the franchise nowadays.

An endearing little family movie. I lament somewhat that sometime in the last decade or so these types of movies seem to have died out, like a live action cartoon almost.

Things My Pal Joseph Forced Me To Watch Kicking and Screaming

How you Dune?

1. Memoir of a Snail
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Challengers
4. Nosferatu
5. Anora
6. The Substance
7. Love Lies Bleeding
8. The Apprentice
9. Broken Rage
10. Kinds of Kindness

...plus 43 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A perpetual work in progress.
One per franchise rule, honourable mentions in the notes.

1. Synecdoche, New York
2. Pulp Fiction
3. The Empire Strikes Back

   - Star Wars 

4. Oldboy
5. Magnolia
6. Paterson
7. The Shining
8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

   - Once Upon A Time In The West (Not technically the same franchise, but they’re similar enough and virtually interchangeable for me)

9. Blue Velvet
10. Nashville

...plus 88 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Sinners
2. Mickey 17
3. Warfare
4. Opus
5. Ash
6. Death of a Unicorn
7. Hurry Up Tomorrow
8. Flight Risk
9. A Working Man
10. A Minecraft Movie

*puts on sunglasses and walks to cool music*

1. Fireworks
2. Sonatine
3. Violent Cop
4. A Scene at the Sea
5. Kikujiro
6. Broken Rage
7. Boiling Point
8. Brother
9. Zatoichi

Pretty good aside from the bad ones.

1. The Zone of Interest
2. The Boy and the Heron
3. La Chimera
4. Poor Things
5. The Holdovers
6. Andragogy
7. Oppenheimer
8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
9. Past Lives
10. Perfect Days

...plus 50 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Paterson
2. Django Unchained
3. The Master
4. First Reformed
5. La La Land
6. Blade Runner 2049
7. Under the Skin
8. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
9. Roma
10. The Grand Budapest Hotel

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

“By protecting others, you save yourself.”

1. Seven Samurai
2. Ran
3. High and Low
4. Ikiru
5. Rashomon
6. Yojimbo
7. Drunken Angel
8. Kagemusha
9. Red Beard
10. Throne of Blood

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

1. Shrek 2
2. The Prince of Egypt
3. Kung Fu Panda
4. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
5. Kung Fu Panda 2
6. Megamind
7. Shrek
8. How to Train Your Dragon
9. Orion and the Dark
10. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

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

Can’t believe Karsten Runquist stole my list idea.

• Bulworth
• Magnolia
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
• Spirited Away
• Punch-Drunk Love
• Oldboy
• Spider-Man 2
• Brick
• Children of Men
• No Country for Old Men

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

Beautiful, immersive, mature, moving, there’s a feeling to (nearly) every one of these films that simply can’t be put into words.

1. Spirited Away
2. The Boy and the Heron
3. Princess Mononoke
4. The Tale of The Princess Kaguya
5. My Neighbor Totoro
6. Porco Rosso
7. Grave of the Fireflies
8. Howl's Moving Castle
9. Kiki's Delivery Service
10. Whisper of the Heart

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

One word review for each entry in the notes.

1. Aftersun

   Personal

2. Nope

   Cinematic

3. Decision to Leave

   Tantalizing

4. TÁR

   Brazen 

5. The Banshees of Inisherin

   Lonely

6. The Northman

   Animalistic

7. Everything Everywhere All at Once

   Playful

8. BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths

   Maximalist

9. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

   Energetic

10. The Fabelmans

    Endearing

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

His films have an atmosphere like no other. He’s very good at just capturing life.

1. Paterson
2. Dead Man
3. Mystery Train
4. Down by Law
5. Night on Earth
6. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
7. Coffee and Cigarettes
8. Stranger Than Paradise
9. The Limits of Control
10. Broken Flowers

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

My best pal Joseph Duffy sure has shown me things.

1. Come and See
2. The Shawshank Redemption
3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
4. Fight Club
5. Midsommar
6. Se7en
7. Papillon
8. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
9. The Color of Pomegranates
10. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

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

The Blue Skies and Golden Sunshine are there, they’re just hiding.

1. David Lynch Cooks Quinoa
2. Blue Velvet
3. Lost Highway
4. Wild at Heart
5. Mulholland Drive
6. Eraserhead
7. Inland Empire
8. The Elephant Man
9. Dune

A modern master of historical fiction

1. The Lighthouse
2. The Witch
3. Nosferatu
4. The Northman

Mister Cinema himself

1. GoodFellas
2. Taxi Driver
3. The Irishman
4. After Hours
5. The Departed
6. Raging Bull
7. Gangs of New York
8. The King of Comedy
9. Casino
10. Silence

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

Put that thing back where it came from or so help me.

1. The Incredibles
2. WALL·E
3. Toy Story 2
4. Monsters, Inc.
5. Ratatouille
6. Finding Nemo
7. Up
8. Toy Story
9. Luca
10. Soul

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

Now this right here is a goddamn filmmaker

1. Phantom of the Paradise
2. Blow Out
3. Scarface
4. Body Double
5. Carlito's Way
6. Hi, Mom!
7. The Untouchables
8. Femme Fatale
9. Mission: Impossible
10. Sisters

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

1. Nashville
2. McCabe & Mrs. Miller
3. The Long Goodbye
4. The Player
5. A Prairie Home Companion
6. California Split
7. 3 Women
8. M*A*S*H
9. Kansas City
10. Secret Honor

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

Some catching up to do...

1. New Rose Hotel

   1 - A film from the year you were born (1998)

2. One Night in Miami...

   2 - A film featuring an actor who ed away in 2023 (Lance Reddick)

3. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

   3 - A sci-fi movie from the 80s

4. Repo Man

   4 - A film with a profession in the title

5. The Doom Generation

   5 - A film with a runtime under 90 minutes

6. Amadeus

   6 - A music biopic

7. Harold and Maude

   7 - A film with the "relationship comedy" tag on LB

8. Chameleon Street

   8 - A film by a black director

9. Aladdin

   9 - A fairy tale adaptation

10. Memoirs of a Geisha

    10 - A film a woman won an Oscar for (Colleen Atwood)

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

The bad guy from Metroid makes some interesting movies.

1. Alien
2. Blade Runner
3. The Duellists
4. Thelma & Louise
5. Gladiator
6. Black Hawk Down
7. The Last Duel
8. The Martian
9. Gladiator II
10. Prometheus

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

“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and you cry alone.”

1. Oldboy
2. The Handmaiden
3. Decision to Leave
4. Lady Vengeance
5. Thirst
6. Three... Extremes
7. t Security Area
8. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
9. I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK
10. Stoker

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

After the top 4 it’s pretty much flavour of the month.
Links to rankings of each director’s filmographies in the notes.

• Magnolia

  Paul Thomas Anderson

• Synecdoche, New York

  Charlie Kaufman

• The Shining

  Stanley Kubrick

• Pulp Fiction

  Quentin Tarantino

• Spirited Away

  Hayao Miyazaki

• Blue Velvet

  David Lynch

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

  Steven Spielberg

• Oldboy

  Park Chan-wook

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

  Sergio Leone

• Nashville

  Robert Altman

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

One of the most thorough, intelligent, inventive, honest and personal storytellers of all time. His films are all original, layered and always have some brutally honest things to say or show about people as a whole.
I’m including some of his screenwriting work since they still feel very much his.

1. Synecdoche, New York
2. Adaptation.
3. Anomalisa
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
5. Being John Malkovich
6. I'm Thinking of Ending Things

A consistent stream of emotionally vulnerable, fearlessly ambitious, original, layered, entertaining, thorough masterworks.

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

Things I want to recommend to mutuals who don't have a dedicated spot for recommendations.
For the most part I tried to stick to things that not a lot of my mutuals have seen.

• Magnolia

  Every PTA film

• Synecdoche, New York

  Every Charlie Kaufman film

• Django Unchained

  A rite of age film among me and my friends

• Miami Connection
• Paterson
• Fireworks
• Black Dynamite
• First Reformed
• Dead Man
• PlayTime

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

1. Mad God
2. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
3. The French Dispatch
4. Licorice Pizza
5. Drive My Car
6. The Green Knight
7. Pig
8. El Planeta
9. Dune
10. The Last Duel

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

"One plus one equals two, right?"

1. Blade Runner 2049
2. Dune: Part Two
3. Incendies
4. Prisoners
5. Arrival
6. Sicario
7. Dune
8. Maelström
9. Enemy

I don’t think he’s the consistent purveyor of masterpieces that everyone else thinks, but he’s a blockbuster filmmaker who isn’t afraid to be weird and ambitious, doesn’t resort to CG’ing everything, and can wrangle a big budget out of studios while holding onto his integrity, and for all that I think he shouldn’t be taken for granted.

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

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

1. No Country for Old Men
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
5. Blood Simple
6. Fargo
7. Miller's Crossing
8. True Grit
9. A Serious Man
10. Raising Arizona

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

Makes like one movie a decade, but it's probably going to be the best movie of that decade.

1. Under the Skin
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Sexy Beast
4. Birth

A fun little thing I’m doing with some friends where each week we watch something we’ve never seen before that meets a given criteria.

1. Galaxy Quest

   1 - A film set in space

2. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

   2 - A film with your favourite actor (Phillip Seymour Hoffman)

3. Who Killed Captain Alex?

   3 - A film set or produced in Africa

4. The Tomorrow War

   4 - A time travel film

5. City of God

   5 - A film in the top 50 of the Letterboxd Top 250

6. The Killing

   6 - A film from the 1950s

7. Six Shooter

   7 - An Oscar winning short film

8. Titanic: The Legend Goes On...

   8 - A film with a Letterboxd average lower than 2.0 (1.0)

9. Smokey and the Bandit

   9 - One of a family member’s favourite films (my mother’s)
   

10. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

    10 - A film produced in

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

Probably the greatest blockbuster filmmaker to ever live. I struggle to think of a name who's put out anywhere close to the number of pop culture classics that this man has.

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Schindler's List
4. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
5. Jurassic Park
6. Catch Me If You Can
7. Saving Private Ryan
8. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
9. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
10. The Fabelmans

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

*spooky Goblin music*

1. Suspiria
2. Tenebre
3. Deep Red
4. Phenomena
5. Inferno
6. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
7. The Cat o' Nine Tails
8. Dracula 3D

Quite unique

1. Why Don't You Play in Hell?
2. Love Exposure
3. Cold Fish
4. Strange Circus
5. Guilty of Romance
6. Hazard
7. Suicide Club
8. The Land of Hope
9. Exte: Hair Extensions
10. Tokyo Tribe

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

Who cares anymore

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

    The show itself would rank higher

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

Some directors I love for being challenging, Carpenter I love for being easy. I think of him as a very blue collar kind of filmmaker, never all that artsy or fancy, just very simple, creative and digestible.

1. The Thing
2. Big Trouble in Little China
3. Halloween
4. In the Mouth of Madness
5. The Fog
6. They Live
7. Escape from New York
8. Prince of Darkness
9. Starman
10. Assault on Precinct 13

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Cliché as hell, but this was the first filmmaker I really found myself obsessing over. Quentin was my gateway into a broad range of different types of films.

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

“You don’t try to photograph the reality, you try to photograph the photograph of reality.”
Quite possibly the greatest filmmaker to ever live.

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

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

1. Fantastic Mr. Fox
2. The Grand Budapest Hotel
3. The Royal Tenenbaums
4. The French Dispatch
5. Rushmore
6. Isle of Dogs
7. The Darjeeling Limited
8. Asteroid City
9. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Ranked from best to least best

• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• Once Upon a Time in America
• A Fistful of Dollars
• For a Few Dollars More

1. Lawrence of Arabia
2. Brief Encounter
3. Summertime

1. Children of Men
2. Roma
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Gravity