Best Movies of 2021: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots

In addition to top 2021 releases, Screen Slate has once again invited contributors, friends, critics, and filmmakers—including Michael Almereyda, Jessica Beshir, Jim Jarmusch, Radu Jude, Guy Maddin, Alex Ross Perry, Josh Safdie, Paul Schrader, Sandi Tan, and Amalia Ulman—to submit lists of 2021 “first viewings and discoveries.” Find their responses below along with individual 2021 ballots if submitted.

For the aggregated list of our Best of 2021 with an introduction by guest editor Nicolas Rapold, visit here.

Lucy Allen
Michael Almereyda
Melissa Anderson
Emily Apter
Ina Archer
Mark Asch
Michael Atkinson
Anthony Banua-Simon
Margaret Barton-Fumo
Jessica Beshir
Chris Boeckmann
Joshua Bogatin
Richard Brody
Cristina Cacioppo
Jacqueline Castel
Andrew Chan
Edo Choi
K. Austin Collins
Jordan Cronk
Joost Daamen
Nel Dahl
Patrick Dahl
Nick Davis
Jon Dieringer
Ayanna Dozier
Courtney Duckworth
Michael Eby
Hanna Edizel
Nicholas Elliott
Steve Erickson
David Fear
Sarah Fensom
Dave Filipi
Veronica Fitzpatrick
Clyde Folley
Mitchell Glidden
Leo Goldsmith
Caroline Golum
Emerson Yi Wen Goo
Micah Gottlieb
Jessica Green
Julia Gunnison
Molly Haskell
Aaron Hunt
Jim Jarmusch
Radu Jude
Glenn Kenny
Nellie Killian
John Klacsmann
Alexandre Koberidze
Kaitlyn A. Kramer
Justin Laliberty
C. Lavender
Michael Lieberman
Chloe Lizotte
Beatrice Loayza
Violet Lucca
Mackenzie Lukenbill
Guy Maddin
Giovanni Marchini Camia
Mila Matveeva
Tyler Maxin
Karl Mccool
Steven Mears
Michael Mann Facts
Stephanie Monohan
Max Nelson
Christopher Norris/Steak Mtn.
Sheila O’Malley
Maxwell Paparella
Alex Ross Perry
Inney Prakash
Patrick Preziosi
Charlotte Procter
Elizabeth Purchell
Nicolas Rapold
Dana Reinoos
K.J. Relth-Miller
Jonathan Romney
Nicholas Russell
Josh Safdie
Paul Schrader
Shelby Shaw
Chris Shields
Daniella Shreir
Ilyse Singer
Will Sloan
Imogen Sara Smith
Whitney Strub
Abby Sun
Madelyn Sutton
R. Emmet Sweeney
Ryan Swen
Sandi Tan
Amy Taubin
Gina Telaroli
Kyle Turner
Amalia Ulman
Laura Van Halsema
Carlos Valladares
Kazu Watanabe
Chris Wells
Alissa Wilkinson
Sarah Winshall
Manu Yáñez-murillo
Genevieve Yue

 

LUCY ALLEN

1. Taxi Zum Klo (1980)
2. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
3. Shoplifters (2018)
4. The Handmaiden (2016)
5. The People Under the Stairs (1991)
6. Shortbus (2006)
7. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
8. Nitrate Kisses (1992)
9. They Live by Night (1948)
10. The Naked Civil Servant (1975)
11. Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989)
12. Streetwise (1984)
13. Bound (1996)
14. Time (2020)
15. Nashville (1975)
16. Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982)
17. The Vanishing (1988)
18. The Hunger (1983)
19. Juno (2007)
20. Perfect Blue (1997)

 

MICHAEL ALMEREYDA

Favorite First Viewings (in no particular order):

The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981, Karel Reisz)
Chekhov’s Motifs (2002, Kira Muratova)
Kira (2003, Vladimir Nepevny)
Multiple Maniacs (1970, John Waters)
And when I die, I won’t stay dead (2015, Billy Woodberry)
Asako I and II (2018, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Stars in My Crown (1950, Jacques Tourneur)
Love and Anarchy (1973, Lina Wermuller)
La Piscine (1969, Jacques Deray) 
Journey to the West (2014, Tsai Ming-liang) 
The Shepherds of Calamity (1967, Nico Papatakis) 
Angel (1937, Ernst Lubitsch) 
The Milky Way (1969, Luis Bunuel) 
Straight Outta Compton (2015, F. Gary Gray)
The Coward (1965, Satyajit Ray)
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018, RaMell Ross)
Kiss or Kill (1997, Bill Bennet)
The White Rose (1967, Bruce Connor)
America (2019, Garrett Bradley)
Mississippi Masala (1992, Mira Nair)
Honky Tonk (1974, anonymous video footage of RL Burnside and his dancing audience in a Mississippi establishment called the Brotherhood Sportsmen’s Lodge, courtesy of Youtube)

 

MELISSA ANDERSON

Top Five First Viewings:

Simone Barbes or Virtue (Marie-Claude Treilhou)
The Leather Boys (Sidney J. Furie)
The Hero (Satyajit Ray)
Experiment in Terror (Blake Edwards)
Working Girls (Lizzie Borden)

 

EMILY APTER

First Viewings:

Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Maeve (Pat Murphy, 1981)
Worldly Desires (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2005)
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971)
Reckless Eyeballing (Christopher Harris, 2004)
Rat Life and Diet in North America (Joyce Wieland, 1968)
Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller, 1976)
Poetic Justice (John Singleton, 1993)
Uptight (Jules Dassin,1968)
The Glass System (Mark LaPore, 2000)
The Dybbuk (Michał Waszyński, 1937)
Teach Our Children (Christine Choy & Susan Robeson, 1972)
Otolith II (Otolith Group, 2007)
Chan Is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982)
Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991)
Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)
A Time to Rise (Anand Patwardhan, 1981)
The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)
Jeniffer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, 2009)
Black Roots (Lionel Rogosin, 1970)
Five Year Diary, Reel 22: A Short Affair (and) Going Crazy (Anne Charlotte Robertson, 1982)
Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
Carmen (Anja Salomonowitz, 1999)
 

INA ARCHER

First Viewings:

The Learning Tree
Der Golem 
Four Little Girls 
Goodbye First Love
Old Acquaintance 
Between the Lines
Cracked Nuts
Dawn of the Dead
When a Stranger Calls
Sodom and Gomorrah
Martin Eden
The Deeper You Dig
The Dark and the Wicked
Leap of Faith
Posessor
Saint Maud
 

MARK ASCH

About Endlessness
Anne at 13,000 Feet
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Cry Macho
El Planeta
Slow Machine
Some Kind of Heaven
The Souvenir Part II
Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

15 first views

Black Test Car (Yasuzô Masumura, 1962)
Blue Crush (John Stockwell, 2002)
Candyman (Bernard Rose, 1992)
Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris, Jr., 1990)
Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)
Experiment in Terror (Blake Edwards, 1962)
JFK (Oliver Stone, 1991)
Laredo Sugar Mill (Neelon Crawford, 1976)
Man on a Swing (Frank Perry, 1974)
Movies for the Blind, Vol. 4 (Jeff Perkins, 2021)
One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992)
Romeo Must Die (Andrzej Bartkowiak, 2000)
Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)
Wild Mountain Thyme (John Patrick Shanley, 2020)
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021)
 

MICHAEL ATKINSON

1. Drive My Car 
2. Quo Vadis, Aida? 
3. Licorice Pizza 
4. Beginning 
5. Brighton 4th 
6. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn 
7. The French Dispatch 
8. Wheel of Fantasy and Fortune 
9. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection 
10. The Power of the Dog 

Top 25 First Viewings (in order):

1. Late Autumn (1960)
2. 25 Fireman’s Street (1973)
3. Inazuma (Lightning) (1952)
4. Miss Oyu (Oyu-sama) (1951)
5. The Sign of Leo (1962)
6. Childhood (1976)
7. La Signora di Tutti (Everybody’s Woman) (1934)
8. Mekong Hotel (2012)
9. Dreams (Kvinnodrom) (1955)
10. Crisis (Kris) (1946)
11. La Nuit du Carrefour (Night at the Crossroads) (1932)
12. Spring in a Small Town (1948)
13. Mahjong (1996)
14. The 317th Platoon (La 317ème Section) (1965)
15. Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son (1969)
16. A Dangerous Profession (1949)
17. The Amusement Park (1975)
18. Illustrious Corpses (1976)
19. 711 Ocean Drive (1950)
20. The Pedestrian (1973)
21. Il Boom (1963)
22. About Some Meaningless Event (De Quelques Événements Sans Signification) (1974)
23. Edge of Doom (1950)
24. Open Doors (1990)
25. Friendship’s Death (1987)

 

ANTHONY BANUA-SIMON

The Inheritance
Pig
Whirlybird
I Blame Society
So Late So Soon
Annette
The Card Counter
Film About a Father Who
The American Sector
Delphine’s Prayers

First Viewing:

The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
The Chase (1946)
Over-Exposed (1956)
Elmer Gantry (1960)
Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (1969)
Dillinger Is Dead (1969)
The Watermelon Woman (1996)
The Many Strange Stories of Triangle Woman (2008)
Franceska Finger NailZ (2013)
Boris Without Béatrice (2016)

 

MARGARET BARTON-FUMO

All About My Sisters
Annette
cac Azor
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Benedetta
The Card Counter
Drive My Car
Never Gonna Snow Again
The Power of the Dog
The Souvenir Part II

Unreleased:
I Want to Talk About Duras
Ste. Anne

First Viewings:
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965)
Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970)
A New Leaf (1971)
Bone (1972)
Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973)
The Watchmaker of St. Paul (1974)
The Witch Who Came In from the Sea (1976)
The Grapes of Death (1978)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979)
Crazy Thunder Road (1980)
Dead & Buried (1981)
The Human Lanterns (1982)
10 to Midnight (1983)
Working Girls (1986)
My Twentieth Century (1989)
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
One False Move (1992)
Cure (1997)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)
Magic Mike XXL (2015)
La Llorona (2019)
Sorry We Missed You (2019)
The Empty Man (2020)
Freaky (2020)

 

JESSICA BESHIR
 
Here are the ones I was able to see this year, in no particular order, old & new.
 
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)
I ran from it and was still in it (Darol Olu Kae)
Duvidha (Mani Kaul)
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Claire’s Knee (Eric Rohmer)
The Cloud in Her Room (Zheng Lu Xinyuan)
Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
Norte, the End of History (Lav Diaz)
Liberté (Albert Serra)

 

CHRIS BOECKMANN

First Viewings:
“Strike City” (Tom Griffin and John Douglas, 1967)
"I Don't Know" (Penelope Spheeris, 1970)
The Selection (Gyula Gazdag, 1970)
The Resolution (Judit Ember & Gyula Gazdag, 1972) 
“Sea Space” (William Farley, 1972)
"A Day More" (Vlatko Gilić, 1972)
Pictures of the Old World (Dušan Hanák, 1972)
"Children of the Fields" (Robert M. Young, 1973)
We’re Not the Jet Set (Robert Duvall, 1977)
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra, 1985)
Mix-Up (Francoise Romand, 1986) 
Just Like Weather (Allen Fong, 1986)
Kamikaze Hearts (Juliet Bashore, 1986)
Motel (Christian Blackwood, 1989)
Strangers in Good Company (Cynthia Scott, 1990)
These Hands (Flora M'mbugu-Schelling, 1992)
Double-Blind (Sophie Calle & Greg Shepard, 1992)
Ruby In Paradise (Victor Nuñez, 1993)
“The Trained Chinese Tongue” (Laurie Wen, 1994)
Goshogaoka (Sharon Lockhart, 1997)
Bubble (Steven Soderbergh, 2005)
"Daga’a" (Shadi Habib Allah, 2015)

 

JOSHUA BOGATIN

New Releases (unranked):
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Memoria 
The Girl and the Spider
What Do We See When We Look At the Sky?
France
Cry Macho
Days
Tommaso
Siberia
Zeros and Ones

First Viewings:
Eega (S.S. Rajamouli)
It’s Always Fair Weather (Stanley Donen)
Capitalism: Child Labor (Ken Jacobs)
A Summer’s Tale (Eric Rohmer)
The Parrot and the Swan (Alejo Moguillansky)
The Hart of London (Jack Chambers)
My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg)
La Région Centrale (Michael Snow)
<---> (Michael Snow)
India Song (Marguerite Duras)
The New King of Comedy (Stephen Chow)
Love on Delivery (Stephen Chow)
The Princess of France (Matías Piñero)
Theodora Goes Wild (Richard Boleslawski)
Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Working Class (Tsui Hark)
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
His Kind of Woman (John Farrow)
The Pirate (Vincente Minelli)
Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock)
 

RICHARD BRODY

1. The French Dispatch
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Zola
4. I Was a Simple Man
5. In the Same Breath
6. C'mon C'mon
7. Passing
8. Petite Maman
9. Procession
10. The Woman Who Ran

Best first viewings:

1. Duvidha (1973, Mani Kaul)

And in alphabetical order:
About Some Meaningless Events (1974, Mostafa Derkaoui)
Barravento (1962, Glauber Rocha)
Bontoc Eulogy (1995, Marlon Fuentes)
Broken Meat (1991, Pola Rapaport)
Crimson Gold (2003, Jafar Panahi)
A Geisha (1953, Kenji Mizoguchi)
Le Navire Night (1979, Marguerite Duras)
Passenger (1961, Andrzej Munk)
Thomasine & Bushrod (1974, Gordon Parks, Jr.)

 

CRISTINA CACIOPPO

Top first watches:
Love Crimes
Space Cowboys
Thief of Hearts
The Last Flight (1931)
Mortal Thoughts
The Silencer (1992)
Lady Beware
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit
Positive I.D.
Wind Across the Everglades
Old Enough
Stage Door
 

 

JACQUELINE CASTEL

Best First Viewings: Narrative 
Simon, King of the Witches (Bruce Kessler, 1971) 
Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom, 1995) 
Arrebato (Iván Zulueta, 1979) 
The Mind Benders (Basil Dearden, 1963) 
Fire in the Sky (Robert Lieberman, 1993) 

Best First Viewings: Documentary 
Dope Is Death (Mia Donovan, 2020) 
Vali (Flame Schon & Sheldon Rochlin, 1967)
Orange Sunshine (William A. Kirkley, 2016) 
Sisters with Transistors (Lisa Rovner, 2020) 
The Witch of Kings Cross (Sonia Bible, 2020) 

Best Theatrical Experience
Anguish (Bigas Luna, 1987) on 35MM at the Roxy Cinema Tribeca 

Best Drive-In Experience
The Wild World of David Lynch: Fire Walk With Me (1992) on 35MM at the Mahoning Drive-In Theater 

Best Festival Screening (In Person) 
Lux Æterna (Gaspar Noé, 2019) at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 

Best Festival Screening (Online) 
Woodlands Dark & Days Bewitched (Kier-La Janisse, 2021) at SXSW

Best Restoration 
Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1981) - 4K Restoration at Metrograph 
 

ANDREW CHAN

1. The Disciple
2. Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
3. Days
4. Drive My Car
5. maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore
6. Bring Down the Walls
7. About Endlessness
8. Licorice Pizza
9. The Inheritance
10. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
     

EDO CHOI

Favorite seven in order of when I got to see them:

Annette
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Drive My Car
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
The Power of the Dog
Memoria
Licorice Pizza

Some favorite newly watched films in ascending release year order:

Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo
A Letter to Three Wives
The Shooting
Razor Blades
L’amour fou
Back and Forth
Interviews with My Lai Veterans
The Shiranui Sea
Adoption
Kummatty
The Fabulous Baker Boys
The Bloody Child
A Depression in the Bay of Bengal
Pola X
Ten Skies
 

K. AUSTIN COLLINS

TK

First viewings (unranked):

Baby It’s You (Sayles, 1983)
Between the Lines (Silver, 1977)
Color Out of Space (Stanley, 2019)
First Case, Second Case (Kiarostami, 1979)
Hornet’s Nest (Karlson, 1970)
The Lake House (Agresti, 2006)
Long Train Running: A History of Oakland Blues (Riggs, 1981)
Subject to Review (Anthony, 2019)
Wishing Well (Schedelbauer, 2018)
Zone (Ito, 1995)

 

JORDAN CRONK

1. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
2. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)
5. Drive My Car (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)
6. The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo)
7. France (Bruno Dumont)
8. Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu)
9. State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa)
10. Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
11. Her Socialist Smile (John Gianvito)
12. Beginning (Déa Kulumbegashvili)
13. The Salt of Tears (Philippe Garrel)
14. Annette (Leos Carax)
15. Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood)
16. Fauna (Nicolás Pereda)
17. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
18. Siberia (Abel Ferrara)
19. Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)
20. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)

 

JOOST DAAMEN

Atlantide
Cow
First Cow
A Night of Knowing Nothing
Notturno
Quo Vadis, Aida?
State Funeral
Taming the Garden
Titane
The Velvet Queen

 

NEL DAHL

First Viewings:
Stendali (Cecilia Mangini, 1960)
Islands of Fire (Vittorio De Seta, 1955)
The Year of the Plague (Felipe Cazals, 1979)
Cane Fire (Anthony Banua-Simon, 2020) 
Bedevil (Tracey Moffatt, 1993)
Doctor X (Michael Curtiz, 1932)
The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969)
A Hero Never Dies (Johnnie To, 1998)
The Boy and the Wind (Carlos Hugo Christensen, 1967)
Mermaid Legend (Toshiharu Ikeda, 1984)

 

PATRICK DAHL

Here's my best firsts of 2021: 

1. Linda Linda Linda (Nobuhiro Yamashita, 2005)
2. AvP: Alien vs. Predator (Paul W.S. Anderson 2004)
3. The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell, 1988)
4. Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980)
5. Kid Galahad (Michael Curtiz, 1937)
6. Havoc in Heaven (Wan Laiming, 1965) 
7. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, 2008) 
8. Shopping (Paul W.S. Anderson, 1994)
9. Across the Tracks (Sandy Tung, 1991)
10. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman, 2020) 

 

NICK DAVIS

1. Notturno
2. Days
3. Prayers for the Stolen
4. The Orphanage
5. The Disciple
6. What We Left Unfinished
7. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
8. Dear Comrades!
9. Zola
10. Drive My Car

First-Time Viewings:

1. Lonely Are the Brave (1962, David Miller)
2. Fire! (1901, James Williamson)
3. A Night to Remember (1958, Roy Ward Baker)
4. Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982, Robert Altman)
5. Alice’s Restaurant (1969, Arthur Penn)
6. Back Street (1932, John M. Stahl)
7. Ruby in Paradise (1993, Victor Nunez)
8. He Ran All the Way (1951, John Berry)
9. Ice (1970, Robert Kramer)
10. Divorce Italian Style (1961, Pietro Germi)
11. The Servant (1963, Joseph Losey)
12. Going to Bed Under Difficulties (1900, Georges Méliès)
13. The Tall Target (1951, Anthony Mann)
14. Paint Your Wagon (1969, Joshua Logan)
15. My Darling Clementine (1946, John Ford)
16. Freud (1962, John Huston)
17. The Queen (1968, Frank Simon)
18. The Mattei Affair (1972, Francesco Rosi)
19. Funeral Parade of Roses (1969, Toshio Matsumoto)
20. Behind Every Good Man (1967, Nikolai Ursin)
21. Das Boot (1981, Wolfgang Petersen)
22. It Should Happen to You (1954, George Cukor)
23. Meat (1976, Frederick Wiseman)
24. Score (1974, Radley Metzger)
25. Avalon (1990, Barry Levinson)

JON DIERINGER

New films

1. Last Will and Testament + Crypts of Civilization (Frank Heath)
2. Earth II (Anti-Banality Union)

First viewings

A Hero Never Dies (Johnnie To)
Alphabet City (Amos Poe)
Blue Collar (Paul Schrader)
Dear Evan Hansen (Stephen Chbosky)
Dying Room Only (Philip Leacock)
Eve’s Bayou (Kasi Lemmons)
I Can Make You Love Me aka Stalking Laura (Michael Switzer)
The Piano and In the Cut (Jane Campion)
Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults (Devin DeHaven)
Loose Corner (Anita Thacher)
Lost Hearts (Lawrence Gordon Clark)
Love Letters (Amy Holden Jones)
Psychology Today (Jacob Ciocci)
Razor Blades (Paul Sharits)
Scanner Cop (Pierre David)
Scanner Cop II (Steve Barnett)
The Tapestry (Maya Angelou)
Wicked City (Yoshiaki Kawajiri)
Wordsmith (Host Bob Kupa'a Smith)
And generally just a lot of 80s/90s erotic thrillers.
 

 

AYANNA DOZIER

Films 2021 (unranked with the exception of This Is Not a Burial, which is #1/GOAT). 

1. This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection
directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese 

The Shape of Things (2021) 
-----This is an Installation Film 
directed by Carrie Mae Weems

Drive My Car (2021)
directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi 

Souvenir II 
directed by Joanna Hogg

A So Called Archive 
---This is a short
directed by Onyeka Igwe 

The Power of the Dog
directed by Jane Campion 

Benedetta
directed by Paul Verhoeven

Memoria 
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul 

Ste. Anne 
directed by Rhayne Vermette 

Faya Dayi 
directed by Jessica Beshir

Honorable Mention:
Working for the Knife 
---short/music video
directed by Zia Anger

First Views
The 4th Man (1983) directed by Paul Verhoeven
Gaslight (1944) directed by George Cukor
Gaslight (1940) directed by Thorold Dickinson 
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) directed by John M. Stahl
The Blue Gardenia (1953) directed by Fritz Lang
Alucarda (1977) directed by Juan López Moctezuma
Here Lies the Imagination of the Black Radical (2020) directed by Rhea Storr (short)
The Names Have Changed, Including My Own (2019) directed by Onyeka Igwe (short)
The Hand (2004) directed by Wong Kar Wai
Fallen Angels (1995) directed by Wong Kar Wai
Eyes of Laura Mark (1978) directed by Irvin Kershner
Good Manners (2020) directed by Juliana Rojas and Marco Dutra
 

 

COURTNEY DUCKWORTH

Top New-ish Movies (in order of viewing)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo, 2020)
Undine (Christian Petzold, 2020)
Days (Tsai Ming-liang, 2020)
El Planeta (Amalia Ulman, 2021)
Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo & Seo Han-sol, 2020)
The Real Thing (Koji Fukada, 2020)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, 2021)
Il buco (Michelangelo Frammartino, 2021)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021)
In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo, 2021)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021)

First Views (in order of viewing)
Le Cercle Rouge (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970)
High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
Martha (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2016)
The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton, 1964)
When the Tenth Month Comes (Dang Nhat Minh, 1984)
The Blue Sky Maiden (Yasuzō Masumura, 1957)
Fishing Boats (Vittorio De Seta, 1958)
A Story from Chikamatsu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (Albert Lewin, 1951)
Being Women (Cecilia Mangini, 1965)
Duvidha (Mani Kaul, 1973)
A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971)
Come Drink with Me (King Hu, 1966)
Marianne and Julianne (Margarethe von Trotta, 1981)
Illusions (Julie Dash, 1982)
Marguerite Duras and Stripper Lolo Pigalle (1965)
Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004)
A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan, 1969)
Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)
Thief (Michael Mann, 1981)
La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol, 1995)
The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)
Flesh+Blood (Paul Verhoeven, 1985)
 

 

MICHAEL EBY

Le Doulos, Jean-Pierre Melville
King of New York, Abel Ferrara
Rope, Alfred Hitchcock
Stroszek, Werner Herzog
Dirty Harry, Don Siegel
Umberto D, Vittorio De Sica 
The World’s End, Edgar Wright
The Apartment, Billy Wilder
Arrebato, Iván Zulueta
Scream 2, Wes Craven 
The Tall T, Budd Boetticher
Fist of Fury, Lo Wei
The Color of Pomegranates, Sergei Parajanov
Rocco and His Brothers, Luchino Visconti
Martyrs, Pascal Laugier
Khrustalyov, My Car!, Aleksey German
The Big Gundown, Sergio Sollima
Battle Royale, Kinji Fukasaku
Uptight, Jules Dassin
Death Rides a Horse, Giulio Petroni 
Days of Eclipse, Aleksandr Sokurov
The American Soldier, Rainer Werner Fassbinder
First Blood, Ted Kotcheff
22 Jump Street, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller
Straight to Hell, Alex Cox

 

HANNA EDIZEL

In the Cut - 2003 Jane Campion
Miami Blues -1990 George Armitage
Wiseblood -1979 John Huston
Action USA -1989 John Stewart
Stream Slate -  Jacob Ciocci & David Wightman: Psychology Today
Manhunter - 1986 Michael Mann
'GTA V - Heat (1995) Shootout - Remake' - W Alan 2019
Eve's Bayou - 1997 Kasi Lemmons
Love Letters - 1983 Amy Holden Jones
2 Lane Blacktop - 1971 Monte Hellman
Bad Ben - 2016 Nigel Bach
Scanner Cop - 1994 Pierre David
Clifford - 1994 Paul Flaherty
Arrebato - 1987 Iván Zulueta
Cherry 2000 - 1987 Steve De Jarnatt
Miracle Mile - 1989 Steve De Jarnatt
Anguish - 1987 Bigas Luna
Popcorn - 1991 Mark Harrier
I Know Who Killed Me - 2007 Chris Silverston
Never Talk to Strangers - 1995 Peter Hall

 

NICHOLAS ELLIOTT

France – Bruno Dumont
Memoria – Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Days – Tsai Ming-liang
Benedetta – Paul Verhoeven
All Is Forgiven – Mia Hansen-Løve
Parallel Mothers – Pedro Almodóvar
Annette – Leos Carax
The Inheritance – Ephraim Asili 
The Woman Who Ran – Hong Sangsoo
Azor – Andreas Fontana

First Viewings (by level of enthusiasm):

Peaux de vache – Patricia Mazuy
Only Angels Have Wings – Howard Hawks
Rude Boy – Jack Hazan & David Mingay
Frenzy – Alfred Hitchcock
Sambizanga – Sarah Maldoror
La Cosa – Nanni Moretti
Don’t Look Back – D.A. Pennebaker
I Am Self-Sufficient – Nanni Moretti
Ecce Bombo – Nanni Moretti
First Graders – Abbas Kiarostami
Dragon’s Return – Eduard Grecner
The Cremator – Juraj Herz
The Yards – James Gray
Ministry of Fear – Fritz Lang
Hahaha – Hong Sang Soo

 

STEVE ERICKSON

Drive My Car
The Empty Man
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
The Power of the Dog
Siberia
Her Socialist Smile
Labyrinth of Cinema
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched
This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection
Zeros and Ones

First Viewings:

Nat Turner: A Troublesome Property (Charles Burnett)
Welcome to New York (Abel Ferrara, in his cut)
The Amusement Park (George A. Romero)
Razor Blades (Paul Sharits)
As the Gods Will (Takashi Miike)
Casting Blossoms to the Sky (Nobuhiko Obayashi)
Chameleon Street (Wendell Harris)
The Deer (Masoud Kimiai)
The Discarnates (Nobuhiko Obayashi)
The Enchanted Desna (Yuliya Solntseva)
Family Life (Jacques Doillon)
Gremlins (Joe Dante)
Killed My Family and Went to the Movies (Julio Bressane)
The Miracle of Morgan Creek (Preston Sturges)
Nightmare on Elm St. Part 3 (Chuck Russell)
Nostos: The Return (Franco Piavola)
Occult (Koji Shiraishi)
Penance (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Road (Alan Clarke)
Simone Barbes or Virtue (Marie-Claude Treilhou) 
What Happened Was... (Tom Noonan)
Wolf's Hole (Vera Chytilova)
Fishing Boats (Vittorio de Seta)
The Body Beautiful (Ngozi Onwurah)
His Motorbike, Her Island (Nobuhiko Obayashi)

 

DAVID FEAR

1. Drive My Car
2. The Human Voice
3. Beginning
4. The Viewing Booth
5. The Souvenir Part II
6. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
7. Shiva Baby
8. The Velvet Underground
9. Quo Vadis, Aida
10. Licorice Pizza

Best First Viewings:

Alice in the Cities (1974)
Alias Nick Beal (1949)
Death Laid an Egg (1968)
The Ear (1970)
Everybody Street (2013)
Fireworks Wednesday (2006)
Machine Gun McCain (1969)
Massacre Time (1966)
To Joy (1950)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974 – at the Paris, my first film in a theater with an audience in 2021)

 

SARAH FENSOM

Here's my list, which is primarily a "First Viewings" with a couple new releases peppered in.

The Chess Players (1977)
Caprice (1986)
The Human Factor (1979)
Sweat (2020)
Last Night at the Alamo (1983)
No Maps on My Taps (1979)
Rich and Famous (1981)
Mistress (1987)
Annette (2021)
The Hand (1981)
Raging Fire (2021)
All Through the Night (1942)
Personal Best (1981) 
"Bad Movie Mondays," an ongoing community-generated series organized by Kevin Cecil, and "Spader Saturdays," a James Spader-forward series organized by Wendy Mays

 

DAVE FILIPI

The Beatles: Get Back
Delphine’s Prayers
Exterminate All the Brutes
Malni – Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore
The Power of the Dog
Prism
Summer of Soul
The Velvet Underground
The Village Detective
Zola

First time in 2021:

Chameleon Street (1990)
Chess of the Wind (1976)
Cycles (1989)
Elles (1966)
Greased Lightning (1977)
Kummatty (1979)
Lingua Franca (2019)
Lumumba, Death of a Prophet (1991)
The Olive Trees of Justice (1962)
La Piscine (1969)

 

V. FITZPATRICK

Best First Viewings:

Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)
To Sleep with Anger (Charles Burnett, 1990)
The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021)
Frantic (Roman Polanski, 1988)
Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020)
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
The Hand (Wong Kar-wai, 2004)
Space Sweepers (Jo Sung-hee, 2021)
Vampire’s Kiss (Robert Bierman, 1989)

 

CLYDE FOLLEY

First Viewings:

Faceless (Jess Franco, 1987)
The Fan (Ed Bianchi, 1981)
A Hero Never Dies (Johnnie To, 1998)
People’s Hero (Derek Yee, 1987)
Peter Gabriel: Live in Athens 1987 (Michael Chapman, 2013)
The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)
The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1932)
Songs for Drella (Ed Lachman, 1990)
The Stuff (Larry Cohen, 1985)
10 (Blake Edwards, 1979)

 

MITCHELL GLIDDEN

1. Can’t Get You Out of My Head
2. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
3. Old
4. France
5. Minamata Mandala
6. Memoria
7. Worlds
8. Ema
9. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
10. El Planeta

First Views (no particular order)

1. A Slightly Pregnant Man (1972)
2. When I Get Home (2019)
3. Sky Blue Water Light Sign (1972)
4. Holy Flame of the Martial World (1983)
5. Life of Pi (2012)
6. Izy Boukir (1970)
7. Fog Line (1970)
8. At Long Last Love (1975)
9. After School Knife Fight (2017)
10. Pluto Version 1 (1970)
11. Stormy Weather (1943)
12. Episodic Generation (1978)
13. Dil Se (1998)
14. Love Song (2000)
15. The Basilisks (1973)
16. 0s & 1s (2011)
17. A Dirty Shame (2004)
18. Nothing Happened This Morning (1965)
19. Petey Wheatstraw (1977)
20. The Heroic Trio (1993)

 

LEO GOLDSMITH

1. Souvenir Part II
2. Memoria
3. Drive My Car
4. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
5. The Power of the Dog
6. Slow Machine
7. In Front of Your Face
8. Annette
9. Licorice Pizza
10. Godzilla vs. Kong (4DX version)

 

CAROLINE GOLUM

The Ten New Movies I Watched This Year (including 2020 so I can make the full count)

1. The Last Duel
2. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
3. The Card Counter
4. The Pill
5. Let Them All Talk
6. Earth II
7. Queen of Glory
8. Licorice Pizza
9. Saint Narcisse
10. Cry Macho

Top Ten First Views (not including the above):

1. Sex Demon (1981)
2. Altered States (1980)
3. To Sleep as to Dream (1987)
4. Sign of the Cross (1932)
5. Unforgiven (1992)
6. Topsy-Turvey (1999)
7. Dance Goddess (1989)
8. The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956)
9. The Island of Lost Souls (1932)
10. Bliss/Gammelion (1968/1972)

 

EMERSON YI WEN GOO

Drifting (Jun Li)
Ferny & Luca (Andrew Infante)
I Was a Simple Man (Christopher Makoto Yogi)
Kim Min-young of the Report Card (Lee Jae-eun, Lim Ji-sun)
Maat Means Land (Fox Maxy)
Shared Resources (Jordan Lord)
Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Worlds (Isaac Goes)

25 Best New-to-Me

A New Leaf (Elaine May)
The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo)
Before My Eyes (Mani Kaul)
Blind Detective (Johnnie To)
Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg)
Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman)
City of Jade (Midi Z)
Collateral (Michael Mann)
Fireworks (Takeshi Kitano)
Good Men, Good Women (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Kau ʻeliʻeli kau mai, kau ʻeliʻeli ē (kekahi wahi)
Kisapmata (Mike de Leon)
The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah)
Love in the Time of Twilight (Tsui Hark)
Main Hoon Na (Farah Khan)
Moonlit Winter (Lim Dae-hyung)
Oliver (Nick Deocampo)
Paisan (Roberto Rosselini)
People on Sunday (Tulapop Saenjaroen)
The Pit Where We Were Born (Alexander Bocchieri)
Red River (Howard Hawks)
Twin Peaks (Al Wong)
The Way We Are (Ann Hui)
We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice (Alanis Obomsawin)

 

MICAH GOTTLIEB

25 favorite first viewings:

Accident (1967, Joseph Losey)
Annette (2021, Leos Carax)
Barbara Broadcast (1977, Radley Metzger)
Bones (2001, Ernest R. Dickerson)
Bouquets 1-10 (1994-95, Rose Lowder)
Coming Apart (1969, Milton Moses Ginsberg)
Dance, Girl, Dance (1940, Dorothy Arzner)
Days (2021, Tsai Ming-liang)
Gushing Prayer (1971, Masao Adachi)
Halloween II (2009, Rob Zombie)
Iguana (1988, Monte Hellman)
Ivans Xtc (2000, Bernard Rose)
The Last Seduction (1994, John Dahl)
Les Sièges de l’Alcazar (1989, Luc Moullet)
The Master (1992, Tsui Hark)
Memoria (2021, Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Nine Days in Wahat al-Salam (2010, Ahlam Shibli)
Paydirt (1981, Penny Allen)
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion (1997, David Mirkin)
Skin Deep (1988, Blake Edwards)
Son of the White Mare (1981, Marcell Jankovics)
The Souvenir Part II (2021, Joanna Hogg)
The Velvet Vampire (1971, Stephanie Rothman)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021, Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Wildwood, NJ (1994, Carol Weaks Cassidy & Ruth Leitman)

 

JESSICA GREEN

Memoria
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
I Was a Simple Man
Mogul Mowgli
Eyimofe
Beans
El Planeta
Red Rocket
The Woman Who Ran
Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It
In Our Mothers’ Gardens
Coming 2 America
The Inheritance
Bad Trip
Tina
Summer of Soul
Night of the King
MLK/FBI
North by Current
She Had a Dream
Bushwick Bill: Geto Boy
Luchadoras
Whether the Weather Is Fine
Liborio
Neptune Frost

 

JULIA GUNNISON

Best first watches:

Madhumati (Bimal Roy, 1958)
The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May, 1972)
About Some Meaningless Events (Mostafa Derkaoui, 1974)
Hester Street (Joan Micklin Silver, 1975)
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)
Yeelen (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)
Strangers in Good Company (Cynthia Scott, 1990)
Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
Chronicle of a Disappearance (Elia Suleiman, 1996)
Ginger Snaps (John Fawcett, 2000)
The Legend of Rita (Volker Schlöndorff, 2000)
In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003)
August at Akiko’s (Christopher Makoto Yogi, 2018)

 

MOLLY HASKELL

Undine, Christian Petzold
Drive My Car, Hamaguchi Ryusuke
Licorice Pizza, Paul Thomas Anderson
Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven
About Endlessness, Roy Andersson
The Souvenir Part II, Joanna Hogg
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?, Alexandre Koberidze
The Worst Person in the World, Joachim Trier
Memoria, Apichatpong Weerasethakul
The Hand of God, Paolo Sorrentino
In Front of Your Face, Hong Sangsoo

Best films not yet released: Petite Maman, Céline Sciamma; Ahed’s Knee, Nadav Lapid; and Vortex, Gaspar Noé

 

AARON HUNT

1. After the Rain – Jian Fan
2. All About My Sisters – Wang Qiong
3. Ste. Anne – Rhayne Vermette
4. A Night of Knowing Nothing – Payal Kapadia
5. Surviving You, Always – Morgan Quaintance
6. To Pick a Flower – Shireen Seno
7. Pebbles – P.S. Vinothraj
8. Ferny & Luca – Andrew Infante
9. Bad Trip – Kitao Sakurai

Fav First Watches

1. Harvest 3,000 Years – Haile Gerima
2. Weighed But Found Wanting – Lino Brocka
3. Manila by Night – Ishmael Bernal
4. Welcome II the Terrordome – Ngozi Onwurah
5. Money’ll Eat You Up – S. Torriano Berry
6. Return to Burma – Midi Z
7. Smooth Talk – Joyce Chopra
8. Intimate Stranger – Alan Berliner
9. Emma Mae – Jamaa Fanaka
10. Chameleon Street – Wendell B. Harris Jr.

 

JIM JARMUSCH

First Viewings (no order):

Memoria
The Velvet Underground 
I Knew Her Well
Ash Is the Purest White
The Sparks Brothers
Annette
Stranger Than Rotterdam (short)
The Truffle Hunters
Summer of Soul
The Grass Is Greener
Borom Sarret (short)
Girl in the Window 
Crash (1971, J.G. Ballard - short)
Taste the Blood of Dracula 
Unknown Pleasures 

RADU JUDE

First Viewings:

1. Venom and Eternity (Isidore Isou)
2. Queen of Diamonds (Nina Menkes)
3. Beauty #2 (Andy Warhol)
4. Pour la suite du monde (Pierre Perrault & Michel Brault)
5. The cronophotographical films of Étienne Jules Marey

 

GLENN KENNY

The Salt of Tears (Garrell)
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Mosese)
State Funeral (Loznitsa)
Undine (Petzold)
Days (Tsai)
Fire Music (Surgal)
The Village Detective (Morrison)
France (Dumont)
Memoria (Weerasethakul)
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi)

 

NELLIE KILLIAN

These are my 30 best watches of 2021: new, new to me, and rewatches.

Back Street (Stahl) 1932
Trade Tattoo (Lye) 1937
5th Ave Girl (La Cava) 1939
The Ox-Bow Incident (Wellman) 1943
The House on Telegraph Hill (Wise) 1951
The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Walsh) 1956
One Hundred and One Dalmatians (Luske & Reitherman) 1961
Charulata (Ray) 1964
The Pumpkin Eater (Clayton) 1964
Petulia (Lester) 1968
Indecent Desires (Wishman) 1968
Top of the Heap (St. John) 1972
The United States of American (Gordon & Benning) 1975
Night of the Hunted (Rollin) 1980
Shoot the Moon (Parker) 1982
The Stuff (Cohen) 1985
That’s Life (Edwards) 1986
Faceless (Franco) 1987
White Hunter Black Heart (Eastwood) 1990
Deep Blues (Mugge) 1992
Cabin Boy (Resnick) 1994
Secrets & Lies (Leigh) 1996
Honey Moccasin (Niro) 1998
The Gates (Maysles) 2007
Project X (Nourizadeh) 2012
Subject to Review (Anthony) 2019
Patrick (Fowler) 2020
Film About a Father Who (Sachs) 2020
Dear Chantal (Pereda) 2021
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Koberidze) 2021

 

JOHN KLACSMANN

Can't Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World (Adam Curtis)
Color & tunable white LED dimmable smart light bulbs
Common Tones: Selected Interviews with Artists and Musicians 1995–2020 (Alan Licht) -- Blank Forms book
Dear Evan Hansen (Stephen Chbosky)
earthearthearth (Daïchi Saïto)
Film as a Subversive Art (Amos Vogel) -- Film Desk Books reissue
Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King)
1991: The Year Punk Broke (Dave Markey, 1992) -- 16mm screening with Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley Q&A by Brian Turner
Outside Noise (Ted Fendt)
Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986) -- digital restoration by The Criterion Collection and UCLA Film & Television Archive

First Viewings:
The Hart of London (Jack Chambers, 1970)
"Rameau's Nephew" by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen (Michael Snow, 1974)

Bonus Content:

"Armageddon News" (Inpatient Press)

Can "Live In Stuttgart 1975" & "Live In Brighton 1975" CDs (Mute)
Shary Flenniken "Trots and Bonnie" (New York Review of Comics)
J. Lansdowne "J. Lansdowne" LP (Automatic Dope)
Jurij Meden "Scratches and Glitches: Observations on Preserving and Exhibiting Cinema in the Early 21st Century" (FilmmuseumSynemaPublications)
Peacers "Blexxed Rec" LP (Drag City)
Gary Panter "Jimbo: Adventures in Paradise" (New York Review Comics) & "Crashpad" (Fantagraphics)
Michael Pollan "This is Your Mind on Plants" (Random House)
Predator "Spiral Unfolds" LP (Total Punk)
Samplerman "Action COVID" (Desert Island)
Sun Ra "Lanquidity" 4 LP box set reissue (Strut)
"Tex Avery Screwball Classics: Volume 3" Blu-Ray (Warner Bros. Archive Collection)
Title TK "Metallic TK" Cassette (self released)
John Wilson "Free Stuff" (Topos Press)

 

ALEXANDRE KOBERIDZE

First Viewings:

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols)
Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
Pechki-lavochki (Vasily Shukshin)
Gogi Ratiani (Kote Marjanishvili)
The Story of Yanagawa's Canals (Isao Takahata)

 

KAITLYN A. KRAMER

25 First Viewings in 2021:

All Is Forgiven (2007, Mia Hansen-Løve)
Butterfield 8 (1960, Daniel Mann)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979, Joan Micklin Silver)
Clockwatchers (1997, Jill Sprecher)
Faceless (1987, Jesús Franco)
Heat (1995, Michael Mann)
High Hopes (1988, Mike Leigh)
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992, Leslie Harris)
Living in Oblivion (1995, Tom DiCillo)
Lydia (1941, Julien Duvivier)
Malice (1993, Harold Becker)
My Sex Life… or How I Got into an Argument (1996, Arnaud Desplechin)
Razor Blades (1968, Paul Sharits)
Roadblock (1951, Harold Daniels)
See You in the Morning (1989, Alan J. Pakula)
Songs for Drella (1990, Edward Lachman)
Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967, Melvin Van Peebles)
Sunrise (1927, F.W. Murnau)
Ten Skies (2004, James Benning)
The French (1982, William Klein)
The Paper Chase (1973, James Bridges)
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (2019, Jessica Sarah Rinland)
Tricheurs (1984, Barbet Schroeder)
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, Monte Hellman)
Wildwood, NJ (1994, Ruth Leitman & Carol Weaks Cassidy)

 

JUSTIN LALIBERTY

2021 (ranked order)

1. Titane
2. Zeros and Ones
3. Benedetta
4. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
5. Petite Maman
6. Project Space 13
7. All Light, Everywhere
8. Slow Machine
9. One Shot
10. Bergman Island 

First Viewings (alphabetical)

Baby It’s You (1983)
Blade (1973)
Cain & Abel (1982)
Coldblooded (1995)
Delta Space Mission (1984)
The Ernie Game (1968)
Extreme Close-Up (1973)
Fatal Exposure (1989)
Full Eclipse (1993)
The Leather Boys (1964)
Limbo (1999)
Lookin’ to Get Out (1982)
Mind Trap (1989)
Montana (1998)
Naked Killer (1992)
Nobody’s Fool (1994)
Parole Violators (1994)
The Silencer (1992)
Sister, Sister (1987)
Son of the White Mare (1981)
The Sound and the Fury (1988)
Timebomb (1991)
The Train (1964)
White Room (1990)
Who Am I This Time? (1982)

 

C. LAVENDER

New Documentaries:
Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle
Sisters with Transistors
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror

Top First Viewing + Viewing Experience:
Singapore Sling (1990) at 2AM in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska (Cathode Cinema virtual screening)

Rest of My Favorite First Viewings in Alphabetical Order:
2046 (2004)
The 4th Man (1983)
964 Pinocchio (1991)
Arrebato (1979)
The Beaver Trilogy (2000)
The Cat (1992)
Death Game (1977)
Deep End (1970)
Eye of the Cat (1969)
Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (1977)
Peeping Tom (1960)
Red Lips (1995)
Remember My Name (1978)
Seeding of a Ghost (1983)
Why Don’t You Play in Hell? (2013)
The Wicker Man (1973)

 

MICHAEL LIEBERMAN

First Viewings:

Buchanan Rides Alone (Budd Boetticher)
Chess of the Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani)
Faceless (Jess Franco)
Group Marriage (Stephanie Rothman)
A Hero Never Dies (Johnnie To)
Ivans Xtc (Bernard Rose)
Songs for Drella (Ed Lachman)
The Perfect Furlough (Blake Edwards)
Stop (Bill Gunn)
Young People (Allan Dwan)

 

CHLOE LIZOTTE

1. Drive My Car / Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
2. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
3. The Souvenir Part II
4. Annette
5. Memoria
6. France
7. El Planeta
8. Slow Machine
9. małni: towards the ocean, towards the shore
10. Bolt Driver

Best First Viewings:

Clifford (Paul Flaherty)
Hellraiser (Clive Barker)
He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjöström)
The World of Gilbert and George (Gilbert and George)
Streetscapes [Dialogue] (Heinz Emigholz)
Le Franc (Djibril Diop Mambéty)
An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa)
Ticket of No Return (Ulrike Ottinger)
The Unauthorized Beverly Hills, 90210 Story (Vanessa Parise)
The Third Generation (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach)
A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan)
Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno (Abdellatif Kechiche)
Afternoon (Tsai Ming-liang)
The Old Dark House (James Whale)
Center Stage (Stanley Kwan)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Schrader)
Come Back to the 5 and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman)
Lance Lizardi (Xander Robin)
Classic Albums: Steely Dan, Aja (Alan Lewens)

 

BEATRICE LOAYZA

First Viewings:

A World Without Women - Guillaume Brac
So Is This/Wavelength/ ‘Rameau’s Nephew’ by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen - Michael Snow
The Golden Coach - Jean Renoir
Blood of the Beasts - Georges Franju
The United States of America - James Benning
What Is a Woman? - Marin Håskjold|
Malina - Werner Schroeter
25th Hour - Spike Lee
Untitled 77-A - Han Ok-hee
We Aim to Please - Robin Laurie & Margot Nash
Jungle of Desire - Wong Ping
Original Cast Album: Company - D. A. Pennebaker
Razor Blades - Paul Sharits
Moving - Adinah Dancyger
Goodbye, My Lady - William A. Wellman
Farewell, My Queen - Benoît Jacquot
It’s My Turn - Joyce Chopra
Cesar and Rosalie - Claude Sautet
Heaven Is Still Far Away - Ryusuke Hamaguchi
Melons - Patty Chung
Any Given Sunday - Oliver Stone
Pit Stop - Jack HIll
Buddies - Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.
The Slumber Party Massacre - Amy Holden Jones
Maîtresse - Barbet Schroeder
Wolf’s Hole - Věra Chytilová
Sea Countrymen - Vittorio De Seta
Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie - Henry King

 

VIOLET LUCCA

Best First Viewings (unranked)

War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966-67)
Byzantium: The Lost Empire (Ron Johnston, 1997)
The Story of a Three-Day Pass (Melvin Van Peebles, 1967)
The Other Side of Underneath (Jane Arden, 1972)
Paper Flowers (Guru Dutt, 1959)
Bernice Bobs Her Hair (Joan Micklin Silver, 1976)
The Long Good Friday (John MacKenzie, 1980)
The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969)\
Possibly in Michigan (Cecelia Condit, 1983)
Meio-Dia (Helena Soldberg, 1970)

Honorable mention: The Incredible Adventure (Justin Stewart/Nick Pinkerton/Peter van Hyning)

 

MACKENZIE LUKENBILL

Terra Femme (Courtney Stephens)
my favorite software is being here (Alison Nguyen)
Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)
North by Current (Angelo Madsen Minax)
El Planeta (Amalia Ulman)
Slow Machine (Joe DeNardo & Paul Felton)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Chess of the Wind (Mohammed Reza Aslani)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)
Film About a Father Who (Lynne Sachs)

First Viewings:

Single White Female (Barbet Schroeder, 1992)
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)
Home Movies Gaza (Basma Alsharif, 2013)
The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (Heiny Srour, 1974)
Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (Grigori Kromanov, 1979)
Bedevil (Tracey Moffat, 1993)
The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili, 2020)
I Don't Know (Penelope Spheeris, 1971)
A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982)
Silence=Death (Rosa von Praunheim, 1990)
Someone is Watching You (Gustavo Cova & Horacio Maldonado, 1988)
All the Vermeers in New York (Jon Jost, 1990)
IT’S IN THE GAME ‘17 or Mirror Gag for Vitrine and Protection (Sondra Perry, 2017)

 

GUY MADDIN

All the Way Home (1963, Alex Segal) 
Stars in My Crown (1950, Jacques Tourneur)
Paper Moon (1973, Peter Bogdanovich)
Possession (1981, Andrzej Żuławski)
Canyon Passage (1946, Jacques Tourneur)
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976, John Cassavetes)
The Sleeping Tiger (1954, Joseph Losey)
Smorgasbord/Cracking Up (1983, Jerry Lewis)

 

GIOVANNI MARCHINI CAMIA

First Viewings:

In the Street (1948) – Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, James Agee
Un chant d’amour (1950) – Jean Genet
I’ll Take Her Like a Father (1974) – Alberto Lattuada
Anna (1975) – Alberto Grifi & Massimo Sarchielli
Toute une nuit (1982) – Chantal Akerman
The Black Cat (1990) – Dario Argento
The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996) – Hong Sangsoo
Belly (1998) – Hype Williams
Be My Star (2001) – Valeska Grisebach
Import/Export (2007) – Ulrich Seidl
Fiction (2018) – Apichatpong Weerasethakul

 

MILA MATVEEVA

First Viewings:

Southland Tales (2006, Richard Kelly)
Paprika (2006, Satoshi Kon)
Ghostwatch (1992, Lesley Manning)
The Lords of Salem (2012, Rob Zombie)
Radio On (1979, Chris Petit)
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992, Leslie Harris)
The Twentieth Century (2019, Matthew Rankin)
Notting Hill Carnival, 83-86 (1986, Dick Jewell)
What Happened Was... (1994, Tom Noonan)
Coherence (2013, James Ward Byrkit)
Clockwatchers (1997, Jill Sprecher)
A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)
Klute (1971, Alan J. Pakula)
Dead of Winter (1987, Arthur Penn)
The Underneath (1995, Steven Soderbergh)

 

TYLER MAXIN

First Viewings:

The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955) 
Life With Video (William Walker, 1972) 
Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979) 
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
Without Your Interpretation (Ulysses Jenkins, 1983) 
Iguana (Monte Hellman, 1988)  
Hot Rox (Leslie Singer, 1988) 
Video Installations, 1970-1994 (Shigeko Kubota, 1994) 
High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell (Jon Alpert, Maryanne DeLeo & Richard Ferrell, 1995) 
Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam (Nick Broomfield, 1996) 

 

KARL MCCOOL

1. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun) 
2. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude) 
3. All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony) 
4. Wood and Water (Jonas Bak) 
5. Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai) 
6. Malignant (James Wan) 
7. Annette (Leos Carax) 
8. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma) 
9. The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes) 
10. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader) 

New to me:

1. Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore (Sarah Jacobson, 1996) thanks to Metrograph 
2. Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978) thanks to Turner Classic Movies
3. The Lords of Salem (Rob Zombie, 2012) thanks to happenstance … why oh why had I never seen this before?! 
4. The Wasps Are Here (Darmasena Pathiraja, 1978) thanks to MUBI
5. Her Man (Tay Garnett, 1930) thanks to MoMA (and their beautiful new restoration) 
6. Valerie (Joseph Horning, 1975) thanks to Dirty Looks and REDCAT
7. I Don’t Know (Penelope Spheeris, 1971) thanks to Dirty Looks and REDCAT
8. Blessed Blessed Oblivion (Jumana Manna, 2010) thanks to Another Screen/Another Gaze 
9. Clockwatchers (Jill Sprecher, 1997) thanks to Criterion Channel 
10. The Aviator’s Wife (Éric Rohmer, 1981) thanks to Metrograph 
11. The Mutations (Jack Cardiff, 1974) thanks to Turner Classic Movies
12. Angst (Gerald Kargl, 1983) thanks to Criterion Channel 
13. Ouija: Origin of Evil (Mike Flanagan, 2016) thanks to HBO 
14. The Velvet Vampire (Stephanie Rothman, 1971) thanks to Metrograph
15. The Plague Dogs (Martin Rosen, 1982) thanks to Criterion Channel 
16. The Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (Grigori Kromanov, 1979) thanks to Anthology Film Archives 
17. The Ballad of Maria Lassnig (Maria Lassnig, 1992) thanks to Media City Film Festival and Thousandsuns Cinema 
18. Life with Video (William Walker, 1972) thanks to Screen Slate contributor Tyler Maxin 
19. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (Otto Preminger, 1970) thanks to Turner Classic Movies 
20. A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982) thanks to Another Screen/Another Gaze 
21. Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra, 1985) thanks to Criterion Channel 
22. One False Move (Carl Franklin, 1992) thanks to Criterion Channel 
23. The World of Gilbert & George (Gilbert & George, 1981) thanks to Criterion Channel 
24. Three on a Match (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932) thanks to Turner Classic Movies 
25. Killing Time (Fronza Woods, 1979) thanks to Another Screen/Another Gaze 

 

STEVEN MEARS

1. Pig
2. The Power of the Dog
3. The Father
4. Red Rocket
5. The Lost Daughter
6. The Hand of God
7. The Souvenir Part II
8. Judas and the Black Messiah
9. Identifying Features
10. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

First Viewings:

1. For Heaven’s Sake (1926)
2. Blow Out (1981)
3.  À Nous la Liberté (1931)
4. Salt of the Earth (1954)
5. La Piscine (1969)
6. Fresh (1994)
7. A World Apart (1988)
8. Horror of Dracula (1958)
9. Duck, You Sucker! (1971)
10. Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
11. True Confessions (1981)
12. 7th Heaven (1927)
13. Flesh and Blood (1985)
14. Lies My Father Told Me (1975)
15. So This Is Paris (1926)
16. The Black Marble (1980)
17. Menace II Society (1993)
18. The Man Without a World (1992)
19. Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)
20. Hard Knocks (1980)
21. Logan’s Run (1976)
22. All the Right Moves (1983)
23. Psych-Out (1968)
24. La Bamba (1987)
25. The Bacchus Lady (2016)

 

MICHAEL MANN FACTS

2021, unordered:

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi)
Drive My Car (Hamaguchi)
Red Rocket (Baker)
West Side Story (Spielberg)
Memoria (Weerasethakul)
Licorice Pizza (Anderson)
The Card Counter (Schrader)
The French Dispatch (Anderson)
Stillwater (McCarthy)

First views, unordered:

The Green Ray (Rohmer, 1986)
Let the Sunshine In (Denis, 2017)
Pusher III (Refn, 2005)
Army of Shadows (Melville, 1969)
Eureka (Aoyama, 2000)
Retribution (Kurosawa, 2006)
The Mule (Eastwood, 2018)
The River (Tsai, 1997)
Exiled (To, 2006)
Time and Tide (Tsui, 2000)
A Hero Never Dies (To, 1998)
Tropical Malady (Weerasethakul, 2004)
Fireworks (Kitano, 1997)

 

STEPHANIE MONOHAN

First Viewings:

1. The Work (Jairus McLeary, 2017)
2. Talk Radio (Oliver Stone, 1988)
3. Murder Death Koreatown (Anonymous, 2020)
4. Dead of Winter (Arthur Penn, 1987)
5. Hard Boiled (John Woo, 1992)
6. Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (William Asher, 1981)
7. The Bad Sleep Well (Akira Kurosawa, 1960)
8. Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981)
9. Fade to Black (Vernon Zimmerman, 1980)
10. Clockwatchers (Jill Sprecher, 1997)
11. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg, 2020)
12. The Organizer (Mario Monicelli, 1963)
13. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach, 2019)
14. Mother Küster’s Trip to Heaven (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)
15. The Servant (Joseph Losey, 1963)
16. In the Cut (Jane Campion, 2003)
17. Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-tung, 1983)
18. Dementia (John Parker, 1955)
19. Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver, 1979)
20. Popcorn (Mark Herrier, 1991)
21. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932)
22. Chess of the Wind (Mohammed Reza Aslani, 1976)
23. Funeral Parade of Roses (Tohio Matsumoto, 1969)
24. Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
25. The Crimson Kimono (Samuel Fuller, 1959)

 

MAX NELSON

26 older

A Time to Rise (Anand Patwardhan & Jim Monro, 1981) via Prismatic Ground
Ali au pays des Merveilles (Djouhra Abouda & Alain Bonnamy, 1976) via Another Screen
Amma Ariyan (John Abraham, 1986) via the Potato Eaters Collective
Apple in the River (Aivars Freimanis, 1974) via Anthology
Back Street (John M. Stahl, 1932) on Criterion via a tip from Gina Telaroli’s patreon
Beirut Trilogy (Jocelyne Saab, 1976-1982) via Mizna
Between the Lines (Joan Micklin Silver, 1977) 
Chircales (Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva, 1972) at Art of the Real
The Dream (Mohammad Malas, 1987) twice, first via Mizna, then at Woodbine
Duvidha (Mani Kaul, 1973) on Criterion
Essere Donne (Cecilia Mangini, 1965) via Another Screen
Exile Shanghai (Ulrike Ottinger, 1997) via BAM/PFA
Four or Five Accidents, One June... (Roddy Bogawa, 1989) via My Sight is Lined with Visions
The Girl with the Hatbox (Boris Barnet, 1927) 
The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934) at MoMA
Hreash House (Rosalind Nashashibi, 2004) via Another Screen
The Killing Floor (Bill Duke, 1984) on Criterion
Méditérrannée (Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1963)
Night Nurse (William Wellman, 1931)
Pakeezah (Kamal Amrohi, 1972)
Sacred Places (Jean-Marie Téno, 2009) via Maysles Documentary Center
Saworoide (Tunde Kelani, 1999) 
Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004) at Light Industry
Thank You and Goodnight (Jan Oxenberg, 1991) on Criterion
Winter Adé (Helke Misselwitz, 1988) via Kanopy on the occasion of Anthology’s retrospective
Xiao Wu (Jia Zhangke, 1997) at Film at Lincoln Center

10 newish

7-7-94 For my babe (Paige Taul, 2018) via Prismatic Ground
A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021) at the NYFF
Ember Days (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2021) at MoMA
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir, 2021) via Criterion
Letter from Your Far-Off Country (Suneil Sanzgiri, 2020) via Prismatic Ground
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021) at NYFF
State Funeral (Sergei Loznitsa, 2019) at Film Forum
The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg, 2021) at NYFF
Tonalli (Los Ingrávidos, 2021) at NYFF
Wasteland No. 2: Hardy, Hearty (Jodie Mack, 2019) at Art of the Real

 

CHRISTOPHER NORRIS/STEAK MTN.

Annette (Leos Carax)
Days (Ming-liang Tsai)
Cryptozoo (Dash Shaw)
France (Bruno Dumont)
Oxygen (Alexandre Aja)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
The Souvenir: Part 2 (Joanna Hog)
West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)
The Works and Days (of Tayoka Shiojiri in Shiotani Basin) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)

25 Positive Firsts

Vortex (Gaspar Noé, 2021)
An Officer and a Spy (Roman Polanski, 2019)
La Flor (Mariano Llinás, 2018)
Valentine (Jaime Blanks, 2001)
Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Pedro Costa, 2001)
Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1998)
Hellraiser: Bloodline (Kevin Yagher, 1996)
Beyond the Clouds (Michelangelo Antonioni & Wim Wenders, 1995)
Love Rites (Walerian Borowczyk, 1987)
La Femme-Objet (Claude Mulot, 1981)
The Last Hunter (Antonio Margheriti, 1980)
Zoom Up: Rape Site (Kôyû Ohara, 1979)
Sextool (Fred Halsted, 1975)
L.A. Plays Itself (Fred Halsted, 1972)
Return from Africa (Alain Tanner, 1973)
The Lion Has Seven Heads (Glauber Rocha, 1970)
Copacabana Mon Amour (Rogério Sganzerla, 1970)
Play Dirty (André De Toth, 1969)
La Musica (Marguerite Duras/Paul Seban, 1967)
Cairo Station (Youssef Chahine, 1958)
The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951)
The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)
Shepherd of the Hills (Henry Hathaway, 1941)
Love Affair (Leo McCarey, 1939)
State Fair (Henry King, 1933)

 

SHEILA O’MALLEY

First Viewings:

Kept Husbands (1931, Lloyd Bacon)
La Cabina (1972, Antonio Mercero)
Sally, Irene and Mary (1925, Edmund Goulding)
Heat Lightning (1934, Mervyn LeRoy)
Picture Snatcher (1933, Lloyd Bacon)

 

MAXWELL PAPARELLA

First Viewings (in order of viewing):

Nationtime (1972, William Greaves)
The Double Life of Véronique (1991, Krzysztof Kieślowski)
Orlando (1992, Sally Potter)
A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)
24 City (2008, Jia Zhangke)
Dorian Gray in the Mirror of the Yellow Press (1984, Ulrike Ottinger)
My Life as a Dog (1985, Lasse Hallström)
I Want More, I Want Less (2018, Bryce Richardson)
The Souvenir (2019, Joanna Hogg)
Chameleon Street (1989, Wendell B. Harris Jr.)

 

ALEX ROSS PERRY

2021 (alphabetical)

benedetta
bergman island
the card counter
censor
cryptozoo
the french dispatch
in the earth
last night in soho
licorice pizza
the scary of 61st

First Viewings (20, in the order that I saw them)

mr turner
secrets and lies
topsy turvy
europa europa
p the last metro
kanal
the cranes are flying
national gallery
ex libris
hunger
the empty man
remains of the day
terms of endearment
it should happen to you
i am wanda
the fan (1981)
the house on sorority row
death game
angst
blood on satan’s claw

 

INNEY PRAKASH

New releases (unranked)

Night Colonies (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)
I Was a Simple Man (Christopher Makoto Yogi)
All About My Sisters (Qiong Wang)
Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette)
Listening to Kenny G (Penny Lane)
This Is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)
Shared Resources (Jordan Lord)
The Village Detective (Bill Morrison)
Four Roads (Alice Rohrwacher)
The Halt (Lav Diaz)

First watches:

Voluptuous Sleep (Betzy Bromberg, 2011)
Nuestra Señora de Paris (Teo Hernández, 1982)
Elegy of a Voyage (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2001)
Maeve (Pat Murphy, 1981)
La Région centrale (Michael Snow, 1971)
En La Otra Isla (Sara Gómez, 1968)
Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris, Jr., 1989)
Emerald (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2007)
Reckless Eyeballing (Christopher Harris, 2004)
West Indies (Med Hondo, 1979)
Mundane History (Anocha Suwichakornpong, 2009)
Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage, 1934)
A Depression in the Bay of Bengal (Mark LaPore, 1996)
Razor Blades (Paul Sharits, 1968) // Episodic Generation (Paul Sharits, 1978)
Loose Corner (Anita Thacher, 1986)
The Alcohol Years (Carol Morley, 2000)
Ten Skies (James Benning, 2004)
Between the Lines (Joan Micklin Silver, 1997)
Conto para a liberdade – A Festa do Ticumbi (Orlando Bomfim Netto, 1978)
Specialised Technique (Onyeka Igwe, 2019)
Divino Amore (Cecilia Mangini, 1963)
Fuses (Carolee Schneeman, 1964)
The Snowman (Phil Solomon, 1995)
Tambaku Chaakila Oob Ali (1982, Yugantar)
The Cruise (Bennett Miller, 1998)

 

PATRICK PREZIOSI

1. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
2. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
3. Drive My Car / Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
4. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
5. The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg)
6. Wife of a Spy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
7. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
8. Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
9. Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
10. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)

First Views (alphabetical by director):

Outskirts / A Good Lad (Barnet, 1933/1943)
Kill, Baby…Kill! (Bava, 1966
Working Girls (Borden, 1986)
Street Angel (Borzage, 1928)
Le Boucher / La Rupture (Chabrol, 1970)
Emma Mae (Fanaka, 1974)
Les Belles Manières (Guiguet, 1978)
Southern Comfort (Hill, 1981)
The Funhouse (Hooper, 1981)
One Day Before the Rainy Season (Kaul, 1971)
The Naked Spur / The Far Country (Mann, 1953/1954)
Mirch Masala (Mehta, 1986)
The Rocking Horsemen / Hanagatami (Obayashi, 1992/2017)
Late Autumn (Ozu, 1960)
Cutter’s Way (Passer, 1981)
Bandini (Roy, 1963)
Adieu Philippine (Rozier, 1962)
Maya Darpan (Shahani, 1972)
Chilly Scenes of Winter (Silver, 1979)
Gate of Flesh / Kagero-za (Suzuki, 1964/1981)
Love Massacre / Final Victory (Tam, 1981/1987)
Simone Barbes or Virtue (Treilhou, 1980)
Drugstore Romance (Vecchiali, 1979)
The Big Parade (Vidor, 1925)
Me and My Gal / The World in His Arms (Walsh, 1932/1952)

CHARLOTTE PROCTER

First Viewings (in no particular order): 

Europa (Stefan & Franciszka Themerson, 1931)
Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
This is Not an AIDS Advertisement (Isaac Julien, 1987)
The Road to Palestine (Layaly Badr, 1985)
Newsreel One: The Build Up + Newsreel Two: We Object! (Richard Philpott / Archway Road Movie Group, 1982 & 1983/4)
They Haven't Done Nothing (Bea Freeman / Liverpool Black Media Group, 1985) 
Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)
The Cherry Tree with Gray Blossoms (Haneda Sumiko, 1977)
The Secret Formula (Rubén Gámez, 1965)
The Present (Robert Frank, 1996)

ELIZABETH PURCHELL

First Viewings:

Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)
Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde (Roy Ward Baker, 1971)
Fuck You Santa Claus (Robert Opel, 1978)
I Don’t Know (Penelope Spheeris, 1970)
Like a Prayer (DIVA TV, 1991)
Nick and John (Edd Dundas and Mark Freeman, 1978)
The Roman Springs on Mrs. Stone (Connie B. DeMille, 1963)
Sex Demon (J. C. Cricket, 1975)
Slaves (Christopher Rage, 1988)
That’s Entertainment! (Jack Haley, Jr., 1974)
Truck It (Fred Halsted, 1973)
Unfolding (Coni Beeson, 1970)
Valerie (Joseph Horning, 1974)
Watermelon Man (Melvin Van Peebles, 1970)
Working Girls (Lizzie Borden, 1986)

 

DANA REINOOS

1. Annette (Carax)
2. Titane (Ducournau)
3. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Schoenbrun)
4. Working for the Knife (Mitski, dir. Anger)
5. Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over (Beth B)
6. Zola (Bravo)
7. Days (Tsai)
8. No Sudden Move (Soderbergh)

New-to-me (in chronological order):

1. Exit Smiling (Sam Taylor, 1926)
2. Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
3. When Tomorrow Comes (John M. Stahl, 1939)
4. The More the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943)
5. Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, 1946)
6. The Furies (Anthony Mann, 1950)
7. The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955)
8. The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
9. The Tiger of Eschnapur / The Indian Tomb (Fritz Lang, 1959)
10. Poor Little Rich Girl (Andy Warhol, 1965)
11. Two Wives (Yasuzo Masumura, 1967)
12. The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1969)
13. Companeros (Sergio Corbucci, 1970)
14. Axe (Frederick R. Friedel, 1974)
15. The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (Heiny Srour, 1974)
16. The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1980)
17. Babylon (Franco Rosso, 1980)
18. Coup de Torchon (Bertrand Tavernier, 1981)
19. Antonio Gaudi (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1984)
20. Starman (John Carpenter, 1984)
21. Taipei Story (Edward Yang, 1985)
22. Nenette and Boni (Claire Denis, 1996)
23. The Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love, 2009)
24. Goodbye, First Love (Mia Hansen-Love, 2011)
25. Helter Skelter (Mika Ninagawa, 2012)

 

K.J. RELTH-MILLER

Top from 2021 (in alpha order) 

Actual People 
Annette 
Another Gaze’s Films for a Free Palestine: Films by Palestinian Women
El Planeta 
Licorice Pizza 
Opacity: The 66th Flaherty Film Seminar
The Power of the Dog 
Prismatic Ground’s wave two: kill the colonizer in your head
racertrash's Vertigo
The Tsugua Diaries 

First Viewings (in order of release date)

Hold Your Man (Sam Wood, 1933) 
I’ve Always Loved You (Frank Borzage, 1946) 
Elevator to the Gallows (Louis Malle, 1958) 
The Big City (Satyajit Ray, 1963) 
Night Games (Mai Zetterling, 1966) 
The Story of a Three-Day Pass (Melvin Van Peebles, 1968) 
Black Girl (Ossie Davis, 1972) 
As Above, So Below (Larry Clark, 1973) 
Jeremy (Arthur Barron, 1973) 
Group Marriage (Stephanie Rothman, 1973) 
Womanhouse (Johanna Demetrakas, 1974)
The Witch Who Came In from the Sea (Matt Cimber, 1976) 
Simone Barbes or Virtue (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980) 
Veronica Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) 
Ornette: Made in America (Shirley Clarke, 1985) 
Face Like a Frog (Sally Cruikshank, 1988)
Paperhouse (Bernard Rose, 1988) 
Mod Fuck Explosion (Jon Moritsugu, 1994)
Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (Aki Kaurismaki, 1994) 
Habit (Larry Fessenden, 1995) 
The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah, 1996) 
The Sticky Fingers of Time (Hilary Brougher, 1997)
Fun Without Limits (Ulrich Seidl, 1998) 
Honey and Ashes (Nadia Fares, 1998) 

 

JONATHAN ROMNEY

Best First Viewings:

1. El Verdugo – Luis Garcia Berlanga
2. The Bill Douglas Trilogy
3. I Basilischi – Lina Wertmüller
4. The Belovs – Viktor Kossakovsky
5. Sacro GRA – Gianfranco Rosi
6. Atlantis – Valentin Vasyanovich
7. The Housemaid – Kim Ki-Young
8. Cairo Station – Youssef Chahine
9. Mandabi – Ousmane Sembene
10. Il Sicario – Gianfranco Rosi

 

id="russell">NICHOLAS RUSSELL

Dune
The Green Knight
Saint Maud
C’mon C’mon
All Light, Everywhere
Zola
West Side Story 
The Last Duel
Get Back
Old

1st Viewings: 

Silence
Night of the Hunter
Thelma
Cam
Thief
Strangers on a Train
Dragons Forever
Glengarry Glen Ross
Clueless

 

JOSH SAFDIE

Get Back (2021) (devastating and beautiful portrait of family, creation, artistic pursuits, fame and ego) 

Thieves Highway (1949) (MASTERPIECE, cannot believe i hadn’t seen it… Suspense & Emotions of love, discovery and betrayal… as a friend of mine called it, ‘Wages of Fear… with fruit’… Also Lee Cobb) 

Which Way Is Up? (1977) (Laugh out loud hilarious and of course deep… Richard Pryor has given us so much more than we will ever really understand) 

The Hit (1984) (existential vibe, heroic performances) 

Dummy (1979) (LeVar Burton and Paul Sorvino give brave and special performances… Had never seen an ending erase the sympathies the entire film worked so hard to construct — whether confused or not…) 

Tsugua Diaries (2021) (only good movie so far about early covid and friendship)

Der Fan (1982) (Song still stuck in my head)

Narrow Margin (1990) (great neo-noir… Hyams shoots all his own films: here masterfully)

The Onion Field (1979) (vibe aligned with the cult of personality… and James Woods skipping across the street)

Split Image (1982) (Kotcheff made this the same year as First Blood… a film about how a cult works and operates… very memorable deprogramming scene… ) 

The Lost Weekend (1945) (The bat…)

Can’t Get You Out of My Head (2021) (Adam Curtis’s contemporary read on society through our past is an educational and emotional treasure) 

LIFE OF CRIME 1984-2020 (2021) (Jon Alpert is an American treasure)

 

PAUL SCHRADER

1. The Card Counter
2. Memoria
3. Bergman Island
4. Parallel Mothers
5. Belfast
6. A Hero
7. The Rescue
8. West Side Story
9. Velvet Underground
10. Spencer

 

SHELBY SHAW

First Viewings:

Meeting People Is Easy (Grant Gee, 1998)
Shucking the Curve (Todd Verow, 1998)
The Net (Irwin Winkler, 1995)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003)
The Singularity Is Near (Anthony Waller, Toshi Hoo & Ray Kurzweil, 2010)
Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990)
Kramer vs. Kramer (Robert Benton, 1979)
A Zed and Two Noughts (Peter Greenaway, 1985)
Little Old New York (Sidney Olcott, 1923)
Zazie dans le Métro (Louis Malle, 1960)
Into the Woods (James Lapine, 1991)
Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988)
Kiki’s Delivery Service (Hayao Miyazaki, 1998 dub)
Subject to Review (Theo Anthony, 2019)
Still Life (Harun Farocki, 1997)
REX (Cate Giordano, 2020)
The Witches of Eastwick (George Miller, 1987)

 

CHRIS SHIELDS

1. Annette
2. Nina Wu
3. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue
4. Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts
5. About Endlessness
6. Film About a Father Who
7. Beginning
8. Raging Fire

First Time Viewing:

The Offence (1973)
Figures in a Landscape 
The Things of Life (Claude Sautet)
Hotel des Amériques (Téchiné)
La Carne (Marco Ferreri)
No Maps on My Taps (1979)
All Through the Night (1942)
Time Stood Still (Olmi 1959)
Riddle of the Sphinx (1977)
Zodiac
The Human Factor
The Hand
Requiem for a Village (1975)
Repeater (1978)
Skinflicker (1972)
Last Night at the Alamo
Last Chants for a Slow Dance
Madhumati 

 

DANIELLA SHREIR

1. Drive My Car

(The rest in no particular order)

A River Runs, Turns, Erases, Replaces (Shengze Zhu)
The Cloud in Her Room (Xinyuan Zheng Lu)
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Aleksandre Koberidze)
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time (Lili Horvát)
All About My Sisters (Wang Qiong)
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)
Shared Resources (Jordan Lord)
Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)
Delphine’s Prayers (Rosine Mbakam)

First viewings:

Applause (Rouben Mamoulian, 1929)
School for Village Women, Women’s College in the Village (Sumiko Haneda, 1957)
Aquarelle (Otar Iosseliani, 1958)
‘Maria e i giorni’ (Cecilia Mangini, 1960)
A Wife Confesses (Yasuzō Masumura 1961)
Marguerite Duras and Stripper Lolo Pigalle (1965)
Elles (Ahmed Lallem, 1966)
The Sweet Number – An Experience of Consumption (VALIE EXPORT, 1969)
History of Postwar Japan as Told by a Bar Hostess (Shōhei Imamura, 1970)
Mes Voisins (Med Hondo, 1971)
About Some Meaningless Event (Mostafa Derkaoui, 1974)
Ali in Wonderland (Djouhra Abouda, Alain Bonnamy, 1976)
Step Forward Youth (Menelik Shabazz, 1977)
The Far Road (Sachiko Hidari, 1978)
What Shall We Do Without Death (Elfi Mikesch, 1980)
Lianna (John Sayles, 1983)
Rosa la Rose, Public Girl (Paul Vecchiali, 1986)
Working Girls ([Restoration], Lizzie Borden, 1986)
Unsere Kinder (Roland Steiner, 1989)
Beautiful Thing (Hettie Macdonald, 1996)
Blue (Hiroshi Ando, 2002)
Emerald (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2007)
The Other Side of Everything (Mila Turajlić, 2017)
The White Elephant (Shuruq Harb, 2018)
To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2019)
Moonscape (Mona Benyamin, 2020)

 

ILYSE SINGER

Benedetta
Passing
Bergman Island
Prayers for the Stolen
The Velvet Underground
Zola
All Light, Everywhere
Summer of Soul
Vortex
The French Exit
MDVL: 1,000 Years of Darkness
Project Space 13

Best First Viewings on a Big Screen:

Arrebato
The American Friend
Phantom of the Paradise
Body Double
Contempt
Purple Noon
Def by Temptation
Fuses
Johnny Minotaur
Idaho Transfer
Demonlover
Boarding Gate
Celine and Julie Go Boating

 

WILL SLOAN

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude)
The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson)
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve)
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
Cry Macho (Clint Eastwood)
Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)
Heard She Got Married (Charles Roxburgh)
The Making of 'Rocky vs. Drago' (John Herzfeld)

First Viewings:

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (Fritz Lang, 1956)
The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995)
The Brown Bunny (Vincent Gallo, 2003)
Love in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, 1972)
On the Society File of Shanghai (Wang Chu-Chin, 1981)
Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)
The Red and the White (Miklós Jancsó, 1967)
Sextool (Fred Halstead, 1975)
Sudden Fury (Brian Damude, 1975)
Taoism Drunkard (Yuen Cheung-Yan, 1984)
Trilogy of Lust (Julie Lee, Tun-Fei Mou, 1995)
Weather Diary 1 (George Kuchar, 1986)

 

IMOGEN SARA SMITH

New Releases (Unranked)

About Endlessness
Drive My Car
Faya Dayi
Memoria
The Souvenir Part II
Summer of Soul
Undine
The Village Detective: A Song Cycle

First Viewings (In chronological order by release year)

La Signora di Tutti (Max Ophuls, 1934)
Frenchman’s Creek (Mitchell Leisen, 1944)
Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951)
Something to Live For (George Stevens, 1952)
A Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji (Tomu Uchida, 1955)
Le Sang à la tête (Gilles Grangier, 1956)
Araya (Margot Benacerraf, 1959)
We Were Young (Binka Zhelyazhkova, 1961)
Les Oliviers de la justice (James Blue, 1962)
The Organizer (Mario Monicelli, 1963)
Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)
Hester Street (Joan Micklin Silver, 1975)
Kumatty (Govindan Aravindan, 1979)
The Silence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1998)
Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)

 

WHITNEY STRUB

First Viewings:

Atlantics (2019)
Hyenas (1992)
Mail Order Murder: The Story of W.A.V.E. Productions (2020)
Invisible Adversaries (1977)
Fresh Kill (1994)
The Shout (1978)
Life of Crime 2 (1998)
Les Enfants jouent à la Russie (1993)
Berliner Ballade (1990)
Killing Time (1979)
Just Don't Fuck! (1973)
Sleeping Dogs (1977)
The Carpetbaggers (1964)
Hats Off to Hollywood (1972)
The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (1974)
Open Mic Solitaire (1983)
Queen of Diamonds (1991)

 

ABBY SUN

Days
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
El Planeta
Compartment No. 6
The Inheritance
Downstream to Kinshasa
Delphine’s Prayers
Bergman Island
The Woman Who Ran

 

MADELYN SUTTON

Of the few new releases I saw, these were standouts to me, a degenerate - in no particular order:

About Endlessness
Exterminate All the Brutes
The Power of the Dog
Titane
Cryptozoo
The Card Counter
The Medium
V/H/S/94
Summer of Soul 
Night of the Kings

New-to-me highlights, listed chronologically:

Youth: The 50th National High School Baseball Tournament (1968)
Black Rodeo (1972)
Satanico Pandemonium (1975)
We’re Going to Eat You (1980)
Son of the White Mare (1981)
Trances (1981)
Local Hero (1983)
StageFright: Aquarius (1987)
Child’s Play 2 (1990)
Reversal of Fortune (1990)
Dark Waters (1993)
Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
The Piano (1993)
Set It Off (1996)
Drive (1997)
Black Cat, White Cat (1998) 
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Amazing Grace (2018)

 

R. EMMET SWEENEY

Karnan
Annette
Ready Mix
Bad Trip
Red Moon Tide
About Endlessness
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
The Works and Days (Of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin)
The American Sector
Cry Macho

First Viewings:

1. Geethanjali (1989)
2. Working Class (1985)
3. Thiruda Thiruda (1993)
4. The Art of Dying (1991)
5. I Spy (1934)
6. No Publicity (1927)
7. The Drudgery Train (2012)
8. The Bitter Stems (1956)
9. Pacific Liner (1939)
10. Riding Shotgun (1954)
11. Crossing Delancey (1988)
12. The Bonnie Parker Story (1958)
13. Jigarthanda (2014)
14. Laugh and Get Rich (1931)
15. Circumstantial Pleasures (2020)
16. Vice Squad (1982)
17. Duvidha (1973)
18. Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
19. Sullivan’s Banks (2001)
20. Pizza (2012)
21. Living to Die (1990)
22. Night Game (1989)
23. Nayakan (1987)
24. The Killers Edge (1991)
25. Fast Getaway (1991)

RYAN SWEN

1. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
2. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
3. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
4. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)
5. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
6. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
7. Beginning (Déa Kulumbegashvili)
8. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
9. The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)
10. Wife of a Spy (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)

First Viewings:

1. Shanghai Express (1932, Josef von Sternberg)
2. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996, Peter Chan)
3. Shanghai Blues (1984, Tsui Hark)
4. PTU (2003, Johnnie To)
5. Tih-Minh (1918, Louis Feuillade)
6. The Aviator's Wife (1981, Éric Rohmer)
7. Canyon Passage (1946, Jacques Tourneur)
8. Kagemusha (1980, Kurosawa Akira)
9. Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986, Paul Vecchiali)
10. The Hand (2004, Wong Kar-wai)
11. Tokyo Sonata (2008, Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
12. Disorder (2009, Huang Weikai)
13. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, Sergio Leone)
14. La France (2007, Serge Bozon)
15. The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov)
16. Present.Perfect. (2019, Zhu Shengze)
17. Sons of the Good Earth (1965, King Hu)
18. The Story of a Cheat (1936, Sacha Guitry)
19. Contact (1985, Alan Clarke)
20. Aragane (2015, Oda Kaori)
21. Hercules Conquers Atlantis (1961, Vittorio Cottafavi)
22. 4 Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Éric Rohmer)
23. Tirez la langue, mademoiselle (2013, Axelle Ropert)
24. Every Man for Himself (1980, Jean-Luc Godard)
25. Not My Type (2014, Lucas Belvaux)

 

SANDI TAN

This is a big caveat: I have not seen Hand of God or Licorice Pizza yet, so they are not included, but I suspect they’d be on my list.

The Souvenir Part II
Zola
Ascension
The Velvet Underground
No Time to Die
The Worst Person in the World
Procession
The Power of the Dog
Drive My Car
Faya Dayi

 

AMY TAUBIN

1. The Power of the Dog ( Jane Campion)
2. AGHDRA (Arthur Jafa)
3. The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes)
4. The Summer of Soul (Ahmir Questlove Thompson)
5. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
6. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
7. Azor (Andreas Fontana)
8. In the Same Breath (Nanfu Wang)
9. Faya Dayi (Jessica Beshir)
10. Cryptozoo (Dash Shaw)  

I can’t give you a list of films I haven’t seen before because there are at least 50 of them, and I, stupidly, didn’t keep a list of titles, but there was one remarkable source, the streaming site Another Gaze/Another Screen where I’ve just watched a 1976 political/experimental documentary “Ali au pays des merveilles” (Ali in Wonderland) by Djouhra Abouda and Alain Bonnamy, about Algerians living in France. I also saw Michelle Porte’s two-part documentary “Les Lieux de Marguerite Duras”, a series of short pieces Duras made for a TV magazine show, and an extensive program of films by Palestinian women. 

 

GINA TELAROLI

2021 (new movies I saw this year, including those that crossed over the 2020 line because LOL the “calendar year”) + some notes

1. Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg) – It forces you to sit with the uncomfortable truth that one person’s survival can destroy another’s... which is really the most heartbreaking thing.
2. Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven) – I spent much of this movie picturing Paul Verhoeven sitting in his director’s chair giggling. 
3. The Tsugua Diaries (Miguel Gomes & Maureen Fazendeiro) – Watching friends make a movie. Temporal disorientation. Pure joy!
4. Worlds (Isaac Goes) – Watching friends make a movie. Temporal disorientation. Pure joy!
5. The Demon’s Waltz (Ryan Callaway) – Weird, wonderful, homegrown, uncomfortable, scary. A true discovery from my friend Jeff. 
6. Monster Hunter (Paul W.S. Anderson) – I started 2021 in a movie theater watching this masterpiece of big-screen cinema: a silent action movie with no intertitles because the plot just doesn’t matter at all, only the forward momentum. It perfectly mirrored how I felt: nothing makes sense, many of us are alone, there are monsters everywhere, and yet... we have to try to survive because if we didn’t, well, there wouldn’t be a movie to watch...
7. Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry (RJ Cutler) – It’s heartbreaking to watch Billie end a relationship with someone she loves because he simply won’t be there for her... won’t spend actual time with her. The contradiction of that—of that rejection—in the face of all the people that connect with her and her work is devastating.
8. Nature (Artavazd Peleshian) – The world is indeed a little blurry these days.
9. Zeroes and Ones (Abel Ferrara) – I watched a screener of this while in the middle of packing to move, in between bouts of crying, surrounded by chaos—the physical objects of my pre-pandemic life—and it was perfect. 
10. tick, tick...BOOM! (Lin-Manuel Miranda) – a Lin-Manuel Miranda movie made for Netflix in my top 10? Climate change is real!!!

+11 – Dune – when seen in IMAX on shrooms

Pre-2021 – After a year Without: A Return to Cinemas, A Return to Celluloid

(8 out of 13 were new to me but everything on 35mm this year truly felt new)

Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990), 4/10/21, 35mm – The Paris Theater
Escape from New York (John Carpenter, 1981), 4/27/21, 35mm – The Mahoning Drive-In
The Fabulous Baker Boys (Steve Kloves, 1989), 5/22/21, 35mm – MoMI
They Won’t Believe Me (Irving Pichel, 1947), 8/7/21, 35mm – Film Forum
Midnight Run (Martin Brest, 1988), 8/14/21, 35mm – Cleveland Cinematheque
2046 (Wong Kar-wai, 2005), 8/22/21, 35mm – Cleveland Cinematheque
Project X (Nima Nourizadeh, 2012), 10/16/21, 35mm – Metrograph
Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974), 10/21/18, 35mm – Roxy Cinema
Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey, 1932), 10/24/21, 35mm – MoMI
Herzsprung (Helke Misselwitz, 1992), 11/15/21, 35mm – Anthology Film Archives
Wild at Heart (David Lynch 1990), 11/20/21, 35mm – Film Forum
Rameau’s Nephew (Michael Snow, 1974), 12/5/21, 16mm – Anthology Film Archives
Presents (Michael Snow, 1981), 12/7/21, 16mm – Anthology Film Archives

 

KYLE TURNER

1. Zola
2. Lamb
3. Days
4. Memoria
5. Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar
6. Test Pattern
7. The Woman in the Window
8. The Voyeurs
9. Censor
10. Listening to Kenny G

First watches:
DEBS (2004, Angela Robinson)
Eve's Bayou (1997, Kasi Lemmons)
Smiley Face (2007, Gregg Araki)
Clockwatchers (1997, Jill Sprecher)
Born in Flames (1983, Lizzie Borden)
Working Girls (1986, Lizzie Borden)
Silent Hill (2006, Christophe Gans)
AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)
La Piscine (1969, Jacques Deray)
My Blueberry Nights (2007, Wong Kar-Wai)
Señorita (2011, Isabel Sandoval)
The Earrings of Madame de... (1953, Max Ophüls)
Casino (1995, Martin Scorsese)
Bells Are Ringing  (1960, Vincente Minnelli)
Pale Flower (1964, Masahiro Shinoda)
2046 (2004, Wong Kar-Wai)
Chan is Missing (1982, Wayne Wang)
Suture (1993, Scott McGehee and David Siegel)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, David Lean)
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1959, Aram Avakian and Bert Stern)
Office Killer (1997, Cindy Sherman)
Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006, Tom Tykwer)
Chess of the Wind (1976, Mohammad Reza Aslani)
The Scarlett Empress (1934, Josef von Sternberg)
Lured (1947, Douglas Sirk)

 

AMALIA ULMAN

Annette
The French Dispatch
Imaculat
In Front of Your Face
Introduction
Licorice Pizza
Pig
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
The Woman Who Ran
You Resemble Me

 

LAURA VAN HALSEMA

First Viewings:

Beginning by Déa Kulumbegashvili
Blue Collar by Paul Schrader
Cow by Andrea Arnold
Ema by Pablo Larrain
First Cow by Kelly Reichardt
Mr. Landsbergis by Sergei Loznitsa
A Night of Knowing Nothing by Payal Kapadia
Spencer by Pablo Larrain
State Funeral by Sergei Loznitsa
Taming the Garden by Salomé Jashi

 

CARLOS VALLADARES

1. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi)
2. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi)
3. Annette (Carax/Sparks)
4. Memoria (Apichatpong)
5, Days (Tsai)
6. Ferny and Luca (Infante)
7. We're All Going to the World's Fair (Schoenbrun)
8. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Koberidze)
9. Minamata Mandala (Hara)
10. May June July (Everson)

Special Mention: Licorice Pizza (my favorite PTA), Zeroes and Ones (Ferrara), I Want to Talk About Duras (Simon)

Best First-Time Watches
1. A Idade Da Terra (Glauber Rocha, 1980)
2. L'amour fou (Jacques Rivette, 1968)
3. The Crucified Lovers (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954)
4. Le fond de l'air est rouge (Chris Marker, 1977)
5. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin Van Peebles, 1971)
6. The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956)
7. Ludwig (Luchino Visconti, 1973)
8. The Hourglass Sanatorium (Wojciech Has, 1973)
9. Om Dar-B-Dar (Kamal Swaroop, 1988)
10. <—> (Michael Snow, 1969)
11. Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1988)
12. Rocco and his Brothers (Visconti, 1960)
13. The War is Over (Alain Resnais, 1966)
14. The Big Gundown (Sergio Sollima, 1966)
15. Pizza Pizza Daddy-O (Bess Lomax Hawes, 1967)
16. The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968)
17. Razor Blades (Paul Sharits, 1968)
18. Memoirs of a Strangler of Blondes (Julio Bressane, 1971)
19. Los Traidores (Raymundo Glezer/Cine de la Basa, 1972)
20. Coonskin (Ralph Bakshi, 1975)
21. Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)
22. They All Laughed (Peter Bogdanovich, 1981)
23. Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)
24. Chan is Missing (Wayne Wang, 1982)
25. Historias Extraordinarias (Mariano Llinás, 2008)

 

KAZU WATANABE

Listed alphabetically

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
Bad Trip
The Beatles: Get Back
Benedetta
Drive My Car
Dune
Labyrinth of Cinema
Memoria
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Wife of a Spy

First viewings:

Listed alphabetically — I stopped writing down the movies I watch and have shit memory, but here's a few I can recall: 

Buck and the Preacher (1972, Poitier) — The Criterion Channel
Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012, Obayashi) — digital file
Chan Is Missing (1982, Wang) — The Criterion Channel
Goldfinger (1964, Hamilton) — Amazon Prime
In the Cut (2003, Campion) — Netflix
Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. (1992, Harris) — The Criterion Channel
The Many Faces of Chika (2005, Hara) — digital file
Midnight Run (1988, Brest) — Netflix
Original Cast Album: "Company" (1970, Pennebaker) — The Criterion Channel
Robinson's Garden (1987, Yamamoto) — digital file
Sergeant Rutledge (1960, Ford) — The Criterion Channel

 

C. MASON WELLS

25 favorite 2021 first viewings, and the ways seen: 

The Apaches of Athens (1929, Dimítrios Gaziadis) – Telluride Film Festival (DCP)
Breezy (1973, Clint Eastwood) – Metrograph (35mm)
A Casing Shelved (1970, Michael Snow) – Anthology Film Archives (35mm slide with audio)
Def by Temptation (1990, James Bond III) – Vinegar Syndrome blu-ray
Dessert for Constance (1981, Sarah Maldoror) – UCLA streaming
Fear (1996, James Foley) – Nitehawk (35mm)
Foxes (1980, Adrian Lyne) – Kino Lorber blu-ray
A Hero Never Dies (1998, Johnnie To) – Roxy Cinema private screening (35mm)
Hubie Halloween (2020, Steven Brill) – Netflix streaming
Let the Summer Never Come Again (2017, Alexandre Koberidze) – Museum of the Moving Image (DCP)
Lucky You (2007, Curtis Hanson) – JetBlue in-flight
Nocturne (1946, Edwin L. Martin) – Film Forum (35mm)
The Pelican Brief (1993, Alan J. Pakula) – HBOMax streaming
Ripley’s Game (2002, Liliana Cavani) – Criterion Channel streaming
Schizoid (1980, David Paulsen) – TCM app streaming 
Screaming Mimi (1958, Gerd Oswald) – torrent file via Cinemiscellany viewing group
Someone’s Watching Me! (1978, John Carpenter) – Ok.ru streaming
Smile (1975, Michael Ritchie) – Fun City Editions blu-ray
Stormy Monday (1988, Mike Figgis) – Tubi streaming
The Target Shoots First (2000, Christopher Wilcha) – Vimeo streaming
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble One Another (2019, Jessica Sarah Rinland) – MUBI streaming
Thirteen Days of Love (1935, Louis Valray) – MoMA streaming
Urban Cowboy (1980, James Bridges) – New Beverly (35mm)
The White Rose (1967, Bruce Conner) – Paula Cooper Gallery (digital of 16mm-to-35mm blowup)
Wildwood, NJ (1994, Carol Weaks Cassidy & Ruth Leitman) – Le Cinéma Club streaming

ALISSA WILKINSON

1. Bergman Island
2. The Worst Person in the World
3. The Lost Daughter
4. Procession
5. The Power of the Dog
6. The Viewing Booth
7. The Souvenir Part II
8. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
9. Licorice Pizza
10. West Side Story

As for first viewing:

Italianamerican
Le Chambre
Portrait of Jason
Faces
Broadcast News
Misery
To Die For
The Anderson Tapes
Poltergeist
Scenes from a Marriage
Bad Influence
Dog Day Afternoon
Shadows
Logan’s Run
The Omega Man 

SARAH WINSHALL

Titane
Out of the Blue
El Planeta
Annette
Ema
All Light, Everywhere
Censor
I Blame Society
Saint Maud

[I haven’t seen the Nov/Dec releases that everyone is raving about yet, so my top 10 may feel a little passe. I hope that isn’t a dealbreaker!]

First Viewings:

All the Vermeers in New York
Kajillionaire
Starlet
Nights of Cabiria
Imitation of Life
Suzanne’s Career
Guiseppe Makes a Movie
In the Cut
The Piano
The Entity

MANU YÁÑEZ-MURILLO

1. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
2. Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
3. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
4. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
5. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)
6. The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
7. Undine (Christian Petzold)
8. All Light, Everywhere (Theo Anthony)
9. Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
10. Annette (Leos Carax)

GENEVIEVE YUE

What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
Drive My Car
State Funeral
Azor
Benedetta
The Velvet Underground
Flee
The American Sector  

First viewings (unranked)

Homework (Kiarostami)
Taming the Garden (Jashi)
Shared Resources (Jordan Lord)
Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar Wai)
Cow (Arnold)
Polycephaly in D (Michael Robinson)
Brief Encounter (Lean)
Jamal (A Camel) (Sudanese Film Group)
Donkey Skin (Demy)