1. But Why? (2021, Terence Davies)
2. Cat Soup (2001, Tatsuo Sato)
3. The Volcano Manifesto and more (Cauleen Smith)
4. Los Huesos (2021, Cociña & León)
5. Bad Luck Blackie, King-Size Canary, Screwball Squirrel (Tex Avery)
6. Inspirace (1949, Karel Zeman)
7. Glens Falls Sequence (1937, Douglass Crockwell)
8. The Demands of Ordinary Devotion & Stone, Hat, Ribbon and Rose (Eva Giolo)
9. Hacked Circuit (2014, Deborah Stratman)
10. Glass Life (2021, Sara Cwynar)
11. The Daughters of Fire (2023, Pedro Costa)
12. There Once Was a Dog (1982, Eduard Nazarov)
13. Street Musique (1972, Ryan Larkin)
14. Unemployees (2023, Joel Potrykus)
15. The Black Tower and Om (John Smith)
16. A and B in Ontario (1984, Frampton & Wieland)
Tag: lists
2025 Favorites: Horror and Rock Docs
Shocktober faves:
1. Gemini (1999, Shinya Tsukamoto)
2. Dangerous Animals (2025, Sean Byrne)
3. House of Wax (2005, Jaume Collet-Serra)
4. The Haunted Palace (1963, Roger Corman)
5. A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991, Ching Siu-Tung)
6. Scream 3 (2000, Wes Craven)
7. It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987, Larry Cohen)
8. Oddity (2024, Damian McCarthy)
9. Bring Her Back (2025, Danny & Michael Philippou)
10. Alone (2020, John Hyams)
11. Quatermass and the Pit (1967, Roy Ward Baker)
12. Ick (2024, Joseph Kahn)
Rock docs:
1. The Beatles Anthology (1995)
2. The Cry of Jazz (1959, Edward Bland)
3. Jazz ’34 (1996, Robert Altman)
4. Amazing Grace (2018, Sydney Pollack)
5. Gowillog (2025, Billy Woods)
6. Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII (1972, Adrian Maben)
7. Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser (1988, Charlotte Zwerin)
8. Beatles ’64 (2024, David Tedeschi)
9. Gimme Danger (2016, Jim Jarmusch)
10. 20 Feet from Stardom (2013, Morgan Neville)
2025 Favorites: Older Movies and Rewatches
Not Quite New, from the past five years:
1. Flipside (Christopher Wilcha)
2. Wildcat (Ethan Hawke)
3. The Tale of King Crab (Matteo Zoppis & Alessio Rigo de Righi)
4. Spermworld (Lance Oppenheim)
5. Fifth Thoracic Vertebra (Park Sye-young)
6. Heretic (Scott Beck & Bryan Woods)
7. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
8. 100 Yards (Xu Haofeng & Xu Junfeng)
9. Circumstantial Pleasures (Lewis Klahr)
10. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo)
Older Movies:
1. The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926, Lotte Reiniger)
2. Silvestre (1982, João César Monteiro)
3. 24 City (2008, Jia Zhang-Ke)
4. Yard Work Is Hard Work (2008, Jodie Mack)
5. Secrets & Lies (1996, Mike Leigh)
6. The Extravagant Shadows (2012, David Gatten)
7. When The Levees Broke (2006, Spike Lee)
8. Vive L’Amour (1994, Tsai Ming-Liang)
9. Nowhere (1997, Gregg Araki)
10. Serial Mom (1994, John Waters)
11. O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (1985, Piotr Szulkin)
12. Amour fou (2014, Jessica Hausner)
13. Deja Vu (2006, Tony Scott)
Rewatches:
Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart (David Lynch)
Altered States (1980, Ken Russell)
Black Book (2006, Paul Verhoeven)
Citizen Kane (1941, Orson Welles)
Drowning by Numbers (1988, Peter Greenaway)
Fireworks (1997, Takeshi Kitano)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964, Sergio Leone)
Heat (1995, Michael Mann)
Koker Trilogy (1994, Abbas Kiarostami)
No Country for Old Men (2007, Coen Bros.)
Poltergeist (1982, Tobe Hooper)
Starship Troopers (1997, Paul Verhoeven)
Svankmajer shorts
2025 Favorites: New and Recent Movies
1. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
2. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
3. The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)
4. Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Cattet & Forzani)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
6. Train Dreams (Clint Bentley)
7. Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)
8. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-Ke)
9. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
10. Miroirs No. 3 (Christian Petzold)
11. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
12. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)
13. Dead Talents Society (John Hsu)
14. The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
15. Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus)
Babygirl (2024, Halina Reijn)
Kidman is married to Vanilla Antonio Banderas but is intrigued by Triangle of Sadness Harris Dickinson. “It’s a positive to be vulnerable, not a negative.” Has script weaknesses, which are more glaring when you just finished watching Heat. I was a quarter of the way through this and I paused to check what else the director had made… BodiesX3 and a Carice van Houten movie… oh, Carice, I’ve thought about Black Book every day since it came out, I should be watching that instead… so I did.
I saw Black Book twice in 2007, both times before it “opened” (probably playing for one sad week at the Landmark in April), but if we run with its NYC/festival date of 2006, the first year of the blog, I can still live with that year’s top ten (incl. honorable mentions). Three of these ten (Scanner, Slither, Fountain) are due a rewatch, some others (Prairie, Promise, all the HMs) possibly as well, and I’ll drop everything the moment Princess Raccoon (or Pistol Opera) gets remastered.
Besides Black Book, great 2006 movies I watched in ’07 after the year-end list deadline included Volver, The Host, Old Joy, The Namesake, Miami Vice, The War Tapes, Dry Season, Offside, Bamako, Ten Canoes, Screwfly Solution – a whole alternate top-ten here.
Watched even later: Manufactured Landscapes, The Brand Upon the Brain, Coeurs, Bug, Opera Jawa, Big Bang Love, Exiled, Syndromes and a Century, Inland Empire, Colossal Youth, Election 2, and Deja Vu.
Oh shoot, it turns out I’ve already done this before, reassessing 2006 movies based on their awards-qualifying release dates instead of their real dates – a silly enterprise since I’m not an awards voter – with a sort of must-see list at the bottom. What would I add to that now… Half Moon, Woman on the Beach, La-Bas, Blood Tea and Red String… the Holy Modal Rounders doc… The Guatemalan Handshake?
What were we talking about? Oh, Babygirl, I came back and watched the last 15 minutes a couple weeks later, got to see Harris fight Antonio. I guess Nicole learns to be happy with her husband, asserts herself at work, and Harris gets himself a dog.
2024 Favorites: New and Recent Movies
The best 2024 movies:
1. Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik)
2. She Is Conann (Bertrand Mandico)
3. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
4. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
6. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
7. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)
8. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)
9. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
10. Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
The best from the previous five years, watched this year:
1. May December (Todd Haynes)
2. The Kingdom 3: Exodus (Lars Von Trier)
3. Detective vs. Sleuths (Wai Ka-Fai)
4. The Kid Detective (Evan Morgan)
5. Ham on Rye (Tyler Taormina)
6. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)
7. The United States of America (James Benning)
8. Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)
9. Gemini Man (Ang Lee)
10. Evangelion 4.0: Thrice Upon a Time (Hideaki Anno)
2024 Favorites: Older Movies and Rewatches
The filmmaker of the year award goes to Tsui Hark. After beginning 2024 with his Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind, I moved on to the six-film Once Upon a Time in China series, stopping between episodes to check out other films he directed (Green Snake, The Blade, Love in the Time of Twilight) or produced (Iron Monkey, Burning Paradise, Dragon Inn) and related Wong Fei-hung stories (Drunken Master 2, The Magnificent Butcher).
Favorite non-Tsui Hark older movies watched this year:
1. Fanny & Alexander (1982, Ingmar Bergman)
2. Minnie and Moskowitz (1971, John Cassavetes)
3. The Decline of Western Civilization (1981, Penelope Spheeris)
4. U.S. Go Home (1994, Claire Denis)
5. Lone Star (1996, John Sayles)
6. Of Great Events and Ordinary People (1978, Raoul Ruiz)
7. Messiah of Evil (1973, Willard Huyck)
8. Body Melt (1993, Philip Brophy)
9. Cobra Verde (1987, Werner Herzog)
10. Brief Encounters (1967, Kira Muratova)
11. Deep Cover (1992, Bill Duke)
12. Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980, Les Blank)
13. Ga-ga: Glory to the Heroes (1986, Piotr Szulkin)
14. Junk Head (2017, Takahide Hori)
15. Serpent’s Path / Eyes of the Spider (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
16. The Music Lovers (1970, Ken Russell)
17. Gerry (2002, Gus Van Sant)
18. The Doom Generation (1995, Gregg Araki)
19. Demon Knight (1995, Ernest R. Dickerson)
20. The Right Stuff (1983, Philip Kaufman)
21. Body Bags (1993, John Carpenter & Tobe Hooper)
22. The Big Gundown (1967, Sergio Sollima)
23. The Big Parade (1925, King Vidor)
24. The Big Sleep (1946, Howard Hawks)
25. À nous la liberté (1931, René Clair)
26. National Gallery (2014, Frederick Wiseman)
27. Red Psalm (1972, Miklós Jancsó)
28. Hamlet (2000, Michael Almereyda)
29. Torque (2004, Joseph Kahn)
30. Pauline at the Beach (1983, Eric Rohmer)
Favorite rewatches of the year (alphabetical):
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter)
Blade (1998, Stephen Norrington)
Careful & Archangel & Gimli Hospital (Guy Maddin)
Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)
Fallen Angels (1995, Wong Kar-Wai)
Flesh for Frankenstein & Young Frankenstein
Lancelot of the Lake (1974, Robert Bresson)
Nadja (1994, Michael Almereyda)
Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)
Sense and Sensibility (1995, Ang Lee)
The Sixth Sense (1999, M. Night Shyamalan)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper)
Twin Peaks season 3 (2017, David Lynch)
Underground (1995, Emir Kusturica)
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr)
2024 Favorites: Rock Docs and Shorts
Favorite rock docs watched this year:
1. Athens GA Inside/Out and Two Headed Cow (Tony Gayton)
2. Zorn I-III (Mathieu Amalric)
3. The Little Richard Story (1980, William Klein)
4. The Elephant 6 Recording Co. (2022, Chad Stockfleth)
5. Hot Pepper (1973, Les Blank)
6. Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda (2017, Stephen Schible)
7. Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind (2022, Ethan Coen)
8. Travelin’ Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall (2022, Bob Smeaton)
9. Oulaya’s Wedding and The Divine River (Hisham Mayet)
10. Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (2023, Ryan Daly & Will Oldham)
11. The Other One (2023, Henry Threadgill)
12. Bad 25 (2012, Spike Lee)
Favorite shorts watched this year:
1. Bouquets (Rose Lowder)
2. Pas de deux (1968, Norman McLaren)
3. Persian Series / I Take These Truths / Yggdrasill (Stan Brakhage)
4. Face Like a Frog / Quasi at the Quackadero (Sally Cruikshank)
5. E-Ticket (2019, Simon Liu)
6. The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933, Clyde Bruckman)
7. The Secret Cinema (1968, Paul Bartel)
8. Hedgehog in the Fog / The Heron and the Crane (Yuri Norshteyn)
9. Contractions (2024, Lynne Sachs)
10. Cowboy Jimmy / Cow on the Moon / The Playful Robot (Dusan Vukotic)
11. Remedial / Institutional / Saxon (Owen Land)
12. Scénario de Sauve qui peut la vie (1979, Jean-Luc Godard)
13. Sand or Peter and the Wolf (1969, Caroline Leaf)
14. Wee Wee Monsieur (1938, Del Lord)
Needs further study:
Me (2024, Don Hertzfeldt)
2023 Favorites: New and Recent Movies
The best 2023 movies:
Not strictly ranked – divided into three tiers, then alphabetized.
Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)
Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
Mission: Impossible 7: Dead Reckoning 1 (Christopher McQuarrie)
–
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
Barbie (Greta Gerwig)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
The Last Movie Stars (Ethan Hawke)
Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
Mutzenbacher (Ruth Beckermann)
Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)
You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)
–
Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen)
Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)
Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster)
Enys Men (Mark Jenkin)
EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
The Five Devils (Lea Mysius)
M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone)
A Man and a Camera (Guido Hendrikx)
One Fine Morning (Mia Hansen-Love)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Dos Santos & Powers & Thompson)
Topology of Sirens (Jonathan Davies)
–
The best from the previous five years, watched this year:
1. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Frederick Wiseman)
2. Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)
3. The Wild Goose Lake (Yi’nan Diao)
4. Hotel by the River and In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
5. On the Count of Three (Jerrod Carmichael)
6. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
7. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
8. 2nd Chance (Ramin Bahrani)
9. After Yang (Kogonada)
10. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)