Best Movies of 2022: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots

First viewings:

• Playtime (1967, Jacques Tati)
• La Notte (1961, Michelangelo Antonioni)
• L'Eclisse (1962, Michelangelo Antonioni)
• Chamaran (1980, Bharathan)
• Fireflies in the Abyss (2015, Chandrasekhar Reddy)
• Lajwanti (2014, Pushpendra Singh)
• The Gold-Laden Sheep & The Sacred Mountain (2018, Ridham Janve)
• Black Cat, White Cat (1998, Emir Kusturica)
• Bellissima (1951, Luchino Visconti)
• The Hand (2004, Wong Kar Wai)

First viewings and discoveries:

• A Fish Called Wanda (Charles Crichton, 1988)
• Mod Fuck Explosion (Jon Moritsugu, 1994)
• Supermarket Woman (Juzo Itami, 1996)
• The Lost Record (Ian F Svenonius, Alexandra Cabral, 2021)
• Joe and the Volcano (John Patrick Shanely, 1990)
• Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970)
• My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, 1985)

10 (ish) things "which came across my feed" in 2022 (unranked):
View on Are.na

• Katherine Frazer - thanks for eating fruit with me . . . ~ | Foundation
• Laurel Schwulst - In-Flight Entertainment
• Van Halen - Unchained (1984-04-19)
• Joel Holmberg - Garage Door Live
• Waste Fellow, Jayson on Instagram: “One month left to see His History of Art at The Fabric Workshop Museum in Philadelphia!
• Mnuchin Gallery Presents: Off The Wall, Curated by Sukanya Rajaratnam
• Mastering 'Happy' by Pharrell Williams
• Pomodoro Technique 4 x 25 min - Study Timer 2h
• you're in a bathroom at a 2013 party
• How Bill Burr MANEUVERS Psychological Attacks? w/Theo Von - Analysis
• Nakamura is STUDYING ALONE Before the Game While Nepomniachtchi is Studying with His Coach
• [hate5six] Mindforce (dog shout outs)

New releases:

1. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
2. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
3. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
4. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
5. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
6. The Super 8 Years (Annie Ernaux & David Ernaux-Briot)
7. The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)
8. Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
9. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
10. Petrov’s Flu (Kirill Serebrennikov)

First viewings:

• Love Letter (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1953)
• The Glass Wall (Maxwell Shane, 1953)
• Samurai Assassin (Kihachi Okomoto, 1965)
• Red Psalm (Miklós Jancsó, 1972)
• The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)
• Short Eyes (Robert Young, 1977)
• Mon oncle d’Amérique (Alain Resnais, 1980)
• Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, 1981)
• Reds (Warren Beatty, 1981)
• Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985)
• France 1-1 Brazil (FIFA World Cup Quarterfinal, 1986)
• The White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)
• Great Balls of Fire! (Jim McBride, 1989)
• Made in Hollywood (Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, 1990)
• Transexual Menace (Rosa von Praunheim, 1996)
• Birth (Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
• The Lake House (Alejandro Agresti, 2006)
• Ghosts and Numbers (Alan Klima, 2009)
• Leones (Jazmín López, 2012)
• Les Amandiers (Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, 2022)

New releases:

1. Vortex 
2. Crimes of the Future 
3. Hit the Road 
4. Aftersun 
5. Playground 
6. EO 
7. Brighton 4th 
8. No Bears 
9. The Cathedral

First viewings:

• Frost (Sharunas Bartas, 2017)
• Le Tourbillon de Paris (The Maelstrom of Paris) (Julien Duvivier, 1928)
• Repeat Performance (Alfred L. Werker, 1947)
• So This Is Paris (Ernst Lubitsch, 1926)
• Le Parfum de la Dame en Noir (Scent of the Woman in Black) (Marcel L’Herbier, 1931)
• Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1961)
• The Coward (Satyajit Ray, 1965)
• Dragnet Girl (Yasujiro Ozu, 1933)
• Street Scene (King Vidor, 1931)
• To Joy (Ingmar Bergman, 1950)
• Julietta (Marc Allegret, 1953)
• The Story of Temple Drake (Stephen Roberts, 1933)
• You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man (Edward F. Cline, George Marshall, 1939)
• Ilya Muromets (Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956)
• H.M. Pulham, Esq. (King Vidor, 1941)
• Confidence (Istvan Szabo, 1980)
• The Long Walk (Mattie Do, 2019)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Way of a Gaucho (Tourneur, 1952)
• Keep Your Right Up (Godard, 1985)
• Eva Hesse in Her Studio on the Bowery (Levitt Beskind, 1968)
• secondlife (Omar-S, 2020)
• Spawn of the North (Hathaway, 1938)
• Her Cardboard Lover (Cukor, 1942)
• Loren Connors and Suzanne Langille perform at home for Haino Keiji, December 1991 in Brooklyn (Herman, 1991)
• Gold Diggers of 1933 (LeRoy, 1933)
• Solo Clawhammer Banjo Kahoru Kurokawa at the Galax Fiddlers Convention, 1986. (Wells, 1986)
• Four Frightened People (DeMille, 1934)

New releases:

1. The Cathedral
2. Funny Pages
3. Flux Gourmet
4. The Banshees of Inisherin
5. The Janes
6. Bodies Bodies Bodies
7. Emily the Criminal
8. Down With the King
9. Elvis
10. Jackass Forever

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. Aftersun
3. Funny Pages
4. Ali & Ava
5. Decision to Leave
6. Flux Gourmet
7. Resurrection
8. Armageddon Time
9. The Eternal Daughter
10. In Front of Your Face

First viewings:

• History is Made at Night (1937)
• Trapped (1949)
• Thunder Road (1958)
• Kuroneko (1968)
• Knife of Ice (1972)
• Identikit (1974)
• Dark August (1976)
• Rituals (1977)
• Navajeros (1980)
• Alison’s Birthday (1981)
• Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)
• Roadgames (1981)
• Eyes of Fire (1983)
• Heartbreakers (1984)
• Something Wild (1986)
• Robinson’s Garden (1987)
• What’s Up Connection (1990)
• Clearcut (1991)
• The Duke of Burgundy (2014)
• The Night House (2020)
• Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)

New releases:

• West Side Story – Steven Spielberg
• The Scary Of 61st – Dasha Nekrasova
• Azor –  Andreas Fontana
• The Andy Warhol Diaries – Andrew Rossi
• Funny Pages – Owen Kline
• Travelin' Band: Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall – Bob Smeaton
• Decision to Leave – Park Chan-wook
• The Staircase – Antonio Campos, Leigh Janiak
• Hostages - Joshua Bennett, Maro Chermayeff, Jeff Dupre, Abbas Motlagh and Sam Pollard
• The U.S. and the Holocaust - Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein
• Marriage – Stefan Golaszewski
• Marky Ramone’s Instagram feed as curated by my wife - unknown
• Desus And Mero (RIP) - various

First viewings:
 

• Blood Of Dracula – Herbert L. Strock
• Desert Fury – Lewis Allen
• TIE: All Coppers Are... & This Is My Street – Sidney Hayers
• I, The Executioner – Tai Katô
• Jigsaw – Val Guest
• Il Demonio – Brunello Rondi
• La Rupture – Claude Chabrol
• Blue Collar – Paul Schrader
• Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure – John Guillerman
• The Beast Must Die – Román Viñoly Barreto
• Indecent Desires – Doris Wishman
• Traitor’s Gate – Freddie Francis
• The Pyjama Girl Case – Flavio Mogherini
• Female Prisoner Scorpion: Beast Stable - Shun'ya Itô
• Road Games – Richard Franklin
• Retaliation – Yasuharu Hasebe
• The Drowning Pool – Stuart Rosenberg
• Wonderful Life – Sidney J. Furie
• Devil Hunters – Yuen Ching Lee
• Kogarashi Monjirô – Sadao Nakajima

First viewings and discoveries (in no particular order):

• A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking (Michel Auder, 1981)
• The Trap Door (Beth B, Scott B, 1980)
• Blood Bothers (Mike Diana, 1989)
• Changing Fashion (Paul Morrissey, 1993)
• Kappa (Bruce and Norman Yonemoto in collaboration with Mike Kelley, 1986)
• Don’s Plum (R.D. Robb, 2001)
• Dice Rules (Jay Dubin, 1991)
• Durch die Nacht mit... James Ellroy und Bruce Wagner (Hasko Baumann, 2008)
• Plushies & Furries (Rick Castro, 2001)

I also really enjoyed delving into the complete filmographies of Nick Zedd and James Glickenhaus this year. Hopefully in 2023 we can finally see Ulli Lommel’s swan song, America: Land Of The Freeks. Can someone make that happen, please?

First viewings:

• "Children Who Draw" (dir. Susumu Hani, 1956)
• The Plaint of Steve Kreines as recorded by his younger brother Jeff (dir. Jeff Kreines, 1974)
• Canoa: A Shameful Memory (dir. Felipe Cazals, 1976)
• The Movement of Things (dir. Manuela Serra, 1985)
• “Martha” (dir. Luckas Vander Taelen, 1987)
• On the Waves of the Adriatic (dir. Brian McKenzie, 1990)
• "The Body Beautiful" (dir. Ngozi Onwurah, 1991)
• Brass Unbound (dir. Johan van der Keuken, 1993)
• Bontoc Eulogy (dir. Marlon Fuentes, 1995)
• Amsterdam Global Village (dir. Johan van der Keuken, 1996)
• La Devinière (dir. Benoit Dervaux, 2000)
• August (dir. Avi Mograbi, 2002)
• Clean Thursday (dir. Aleksandr Rastorguev, 2003)
• "4:3" (dir. Lucy Raven, 2008)
• Anton’s Right Here (dir. Lyubov Arkus, 2012)
• "letter to a friend" (dir. Emily Jacir, 2019)
• The Beach (dir. Warwick Thornton, 2020)
• Rastorguev (dir. Evgeniya Ostanina, 2021)
• Mr. Landsbergis (dir. Sergei Loznitsa, 2021)
• The Plains (dir. David Easteal, 2022)

New releases (ranked):

1. Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
2. Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)
3. Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
4. RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)
5. Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis
6. Squirrels to the Nuts (Peter Bogdanovich)
7. Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)
8. De Humani Corpris Fabrica (Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel)
9. Outside Noise (Ted Fendt)
10. TÁR (Todd Field)

 
First viewings:
 

• The Crowd (1928, King Vidor)
• The Champ (1931, King Vidor)
• Shlussakkord (1936, Dietlef Sirk)
• Cluny Brown (1946, Ernst Lubitsch)
• The Fountainhead (1949 King Vidor)
• Adieu Philippine (1962, Jacques Rozier)
• Chafed Elbows (1966, Robert Downey Sr.)
• At Long Last Love (1975, Peter Bogdanovich)
• Taking Off (1971, Milos Forman)
• Used Cars (1980, Robert Zemeckis)
• A Summer At Grandpa's (1985, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• The Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987, Eric Rohmer)
• Topsy Turvy (1997, Mike Leigh) 
• Babe: Pig in the City (1998, George Miller)
• Tale of Cinema (2005, Hong Sang-Soo)
• The Wayward Cloud (2005, Tsai Ming-Liang)
• Visage (2009, Tsai Ming-Liang)
• El Verano De Goliat (2009, Nicolas Pereda)
• Unstoppable (2010, Tony Scott)
• Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016, Khavn)

First viewings:

• NRG2000 – Michael M Bilandic
• L'Ange (1984) - Patrick Bokanowski
• Easy Living (1934) - Mitchell Leisen
• Deep End (1970) - Jerzy Skolimowski
• King Lear (1987) - Jean-Luc Godard
• The Cassandra Cat (1963) - Vojtěch Jasný
• Bitter Moon (1992) - Roman Polanski
• Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes (1967) - Jean Eustache
• Devi (1960) - Satyajit Ray

New releases:

1. Mad God
2. The Fabelmans
3. Armageddon Time
4. RRR
5. Flux Gourmet
6. Nope
7. Crimes of the Future
8. The Kingdom: Exodus
9. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
10. The Northman

First viewings & new releases (unranked):

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• Beba 
• Look at Me: XXXTentaticion
• Turning Red
• Waiting Room
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• Iris
• Away From Her
• Who Are You, Polly Magoo?
• Black Orpheus 
• Everything Everywhere All at Once
• Fire Island 
• Master 
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 
• Till 
• Nanny

New releases:

1. Benediction
2. Nope
3. Armageddon Time
4. No Bears
5. Both Sides of the Blade
6. Hit the Road
7. Amsterdam
8. Saint Omer
9. The Eternal Daughter
10. The Cathedral
     

First viewings:

• Blind Spot (Die Reise nach Lyon) (1980, Claudia von Alemann)
• The Confrontation (1969, Miklós Jancsó)
• The Eternal Breasts (1955, Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Kentucky Pride (1925, John Ford)
• Letter of Introduction (1938, John M. Stahl)
• Nainsukh (2010, Amit Dutta)
• The Olive Trees of Justice (1962, James Blue)
• Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946, Maya Deren)
• Rouge (1987, Stanley Kwan)
• Third Avenue (1980, Jon Alpert)
• Three Women (1924, Ernst Lubitsch)
• The Torture of Mothers (1980, Woodie King, Jr.)
• Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975, Jamaa Fanaka)
• Who Killed Fourth Ward? (1978, James Blue)

New releases (unranked):

• Jackass Forever (Village East)
• Ambulance (TCL Chinese Theater)
• Tar (Cinema 1-2-3)
• Banshees of Inisherin (Angelika Soho)
• Triangle of Sadness (Alice Tully Hall)
• Funny Pages (Brooklyn Army Terminal)
• Pleasure (Angelika Soho)
• Lux Aeterna (Metrograph) 
• RRR (Nitehawk Prospect Park)
• The Worst Person in the World (Walter Reade)

First viewings:

This list will be about my introduction to NYC's screening culture: I'm new here from LA, and I love that people don't just watch stuff here, *they hang out after.* How fucking cool is that? Unfortunately, there are a ton of really cool screenings, events, and shows that I've left out due to space.
 

1. Blue Collar and True Lies double feature at the Metrograph. Zero thematic connections whatsoever other than being completely perfect in every way. 
2.  All of the psychotic European shock films that I've seen at KGB on Sundays. I don't even remember what most of them are called!
3. Judas and the Black Messiah at The Roxy. Biased because I just put that screening together.
4. Touch of Evil at Syndicated's Sidewalk Cinema. This one couple brought a barking dog and they should be ashamed. 
5. Star Trek II at Nitehawk's The Deuce. The confusing mixture of trekkies and filmheads in the audience was so much fun. 
6. Richard Kern shorts night at Bella Ciao. Three people fainted! 
7. Coppola's The Conversation at Film Forum. Unbelievably sick restoration and great snack selection.
8. 9. see myself living anywhere else.
9. Showgirls at IFC Center on 35mm. Verhoeven is the king.
10. Demme's Something Wild on TV right before a disastrous breakup.
11. The Slashening and Secret of Cuck Island at Our Wicked Lady in Bushwick. Microbudget horror crowds are so fun! 
12. The short films of Yuri Alves. The guy is a genius out of Newark and all of his stuff is on Vimeo!
13. Health Ensurance 2. Michael Rees put on one of the best short film nights I've ever experienced. Electric.
     

New releases:

1. Mad God (Phil Tippett)
2. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) technically 2021 but only ever in theaters supposedly, and in NYC for a week in August 2022, so.
3. Earth II (Anti-Banality Union)
4. Petit Maman

␀. ANSWERING THE SUN
A digital attempt to outdo Helios himself. I thought this was going to explore Forbidden Colors, but it did not. No attempt at pushing the digital limit can compete with AFA’s reopening choice, full-sensory Sharits’ double-barrel film RAZOR BLADES. 
 
 

First viewings:

• All That Jazz (1979)
• Brain Damage (1988)
• Bullet in the Head (1990)
• Burnt Offerings (1976) Dan Curtis. Karen Black. Oliver Reed. I can think of two things wrong with that title.
• College Boys Live! (2009) In a just world this would screen yearly with director Q&A.
• Crimes of Passion (1984)
• Dangerously Close (1986) rest in peace, Albert Pyun. 
• Doctor Mordrid (1992)
• Doctor X (1932)
• The Flames of Royal Love (1991)
• Hangover Square (1945)
• L’Ange (1982)
• Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults supercut (1994/2022) 
• Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945) in any other director’s hands this would’ve been too schmaltzy to bear.
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (1981)
• Truck Turner (1974) rest in peace, Nichelle Nichols.

 
true to my earlier declaration this is still one of my 2022 favorites (2022)

New releases (unranked):

• Jackass Forever
• Three Thousand Years of Longing
• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
• RRR
• Ambulance
• Aftersun
• Crimes of the Future
• Tár
• Saint Omer
• Orphan: First Kill

 
First viewings:
 

At home:

• Hider in the House
• Wolfen
• Highlander 2: The Quickening
• Wish You Were Here
• Normal Life

 
In theaters:

• Violette Noziere (part of the Isabelle Huppert series at Film Forum)
• Flirting Scholar (part of Grady Hendrix’s Sundays on Fire at Nitehawk)
• Fresh Kill (part of the New Yorks 90s series at BAM)
• Made in Hollywood (part of the Bruce and Norman Yonemoto retrospective at Anthology Film Archives)
• Seed (part of the John Stahl series at Metrograph)
   

First viewings:

• Brick and Mirror (Ebrahim Golestan, 1965)
• Travolta and Me (Patricia Mazuy, 1993)
• Filme Demência (Carlos Reichenbach, 1986)
• Buccaneer Soul (Carlos Reichenbach, 1993)
• Soft Fiction (Chick Strand, 1979)
• Processo per stupro (Loredana Rotondo & Annabella Miscuglio, 1979)
• Who Killed the Fourth Ward? (James Blue, 1978)
• Arabs and Niggers, Your Neighbours (Med Hondo, 1974-1988)
• Merrily We Go to Hell (Dorothy Arzner, 1932)
• Cardiogram (Darezhan Omirbaev, 1995)
   

New releases:

1. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Poitras)
2. the catheter scene from De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Paravel and Castaing-Taylor)
3. The Fabelmans (Spielberg)
4. Eo (Skolimowski)
5. The Rehearsal (Fielder)
6. Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg)
7. Stars at Noon (Denis)
8. The Worst Person in the World (Trier)
9. Rewind & Play (Gomis)
10. Geographies of Solitude (Mills)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Rivette) on Criterion Channel
• Umitori: Robbing the Sea at Shimokita Peninsula (1984, Tsuchimoto) at Museum of the Moving Image
• Crash (1996, Cronenberg) at TIFF Lightbox
• The Evil Acid Baron Show (1988, Stakker) on YouTube
• Fake Fruit Factory (1986, Strand) via NFPF DVD
• Vengeance Is Mine (1979, Roemer) at Film Forum
• No Fear, No Die (1990, Denis) at Lincoln Center
• A nighttime car ride from Boston to Portland, ME with Éliane Radigue's Jetsun Mila (1986) on full volume
• The Runner (1984, Naderi) at Film Forum
• Medium Cool (1969, Wexler) at home ;)
• Bolt Driver (2021, Corirossi and Alpert) via boltdriver.la
• Uski Roti (1970, Kaul) on MUBI
• Banka (Northern Elegy) (1957, Gosho) at MoMA
• LBJ (1968, Alvarez) at Light Industry
• Satan Never Sleeps (1962, McCarey) at home ;)

Top 10 first viewings at festivals:

• The Eternal Daughter d. Joanna Hogg
• De humani corporis fabrica d. Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor
• Dry Ground Burning d. Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós
• Saint Omer d. Alice Diop
• Showing Up d. Kelly Reichardt
• Aribada d. Natalia Escobar & Simone(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau
• Enys Men d. Mark Jenkin
• Pamfir d. Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk
• Coma d. Bertrand Bonello
• Pacifiction d. Alberta Serra

Montréal Edition 
Full disclosure - I spent most of the year making a movie - but while in post-production in Montréal I was fortunate to catch the below. 
 
New releases:

• Fire of Love
• Vortex 
• La Piedad (Fantasia Premiere) 
• Crimes of the Future 
• Nitram 
• Jean Rollin: Orchestrator of Storms (Fantasia Premiere) 

 
First viewings and discoveries 

• Day of the Dolphin 
• I Like Bats* 
• Identikit* 
• Demonia*
• Senna (in preparation of the F1 Races) 
• Montreal New Wave 

*As part of Kier-La Janisse's brilliant House of Psychotic Women Program at Fantasia
 

New Releases:

1. Aftersun
2. Petite Maman
3. The Fabelmans
4. Jackass Forever
5. Tar
6. RRR
7. After Yang
8. Nope
9. Crimes of the Future
10. Pearl

Discoveries (unranked):

• Million Dollar Legs (Cline, 1932)
• Dr. X (Curtiz, 1932)
• The Mad Miss Manton (Jason, 1938)
• Destry Rides Again (Marshall, 1939)
• I Know Where I’m Going (Powell; Pressburger, 1947)
• Ride Lonesome (Boetticher, 1959)
• La guerre est finie (Resnais, 1966)
• The Red and the White (Jancsó, 1967)
• The Boxer From Shantung (Cheh, 1972)
• Thrilling Bloody Sword (Chang, 1981)
• The Deadly Spawn (McKeown, 1983)
• Vengeance Is Mine (Roemer, 1984)
• Kamikaze Hearts (Bashore, 1986)
• The Ladies Club (Greek, 1986)
• I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (Rozema, 1988)
• Chameleon Street (Harris, Jr., 1990)
• Color Adjustment (Riggs, 1992)
• Alma’s Rainbow (Chenzira, 1994)
• Video Diary of a Lost Girl (Denniberg, 2012)
• Squirrels to the Nuts (Bogdanovich, 2014/2022)

Top 3 Garbage Bin Discoveries:
(Or: If they’re so “bad” why are they so wonderful?)

• Governor Gabbi
• New York Ninja
• Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven

• A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)
• Armageddon Time (James Gray)
• Belle (Mamoru Hosoda)
• Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
• Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
• EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
• Hit the Road (Panah Panahi)
• The Tsugua Diaries (Miguel Gomes, Maureen Fazendeiro)
• We Are All Going To The World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
   

First viewings:

• Der Berg des Schicksals, Arnold Franck (1924)
• Stützen der Gesellschaft, D. Sirk (1935)
• Summer Storm, D. Sirk (1944)
• The Little Fugitive, Morris Engel, Ray Ashley, Ruth Orkin (1953)
• Pale Flower, Masahiro Shinoda (1964)
• Beirut the Encounter, Borhane Alouié (1981)
• Typhoon Club, Shinji Somai (1985)
• Us, Jordan Peele (2019)

First viewings (unranked):

• Duvidha (Mani Kaul, 1973)
• I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, 2006)
• Killing Time (Fronza Woods, 1979)
• Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)
• Pacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)
• The Wandering Princess (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1960)
• Kaskara (Dore O., 1974)
• Simone Barbès ou la vertu (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980)
• A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1926)
• Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981)
• Ste. Anne (Rhayne Vermette, 2021)

First viewings:

• October: Ten Days That Shook the World (Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, 1928)
• Steamboat Bill Jr. (Reisner, Keaton, 1928)
• Island of Lost Souls (Kenton, 1932)
• Forget Love for Now (Shimizu, 1937)
• The Breaking Point (Curtiz, 1950)
• India: Matri Bhumi (Rossellini, 1959)
• On the Road: A Document (Tsuchimoto, 1964)
• The Long Farewell (Muratova, 1971)
• Taking Off (Forman, 1971)
• Love in the Afternoon (Rohmer, 1972)
• Sambizanga (Maldoror, 1972)
• Je Tu Il Elle (Akerman, 1974)
• Ātman (Matsumoto, 1975)
• The Minamata Mural (Tsuchimoto, 1981)
• Bless Their Little Hearts (Woodbery, 1984)
• Streetwise (Bell, 1984)
• Umitori: Robbing the Sea at Shimokita Peninsula (Tsuchimoto, 1984)
• D'Est (Akerman, 1993)
• Cure (Kurosawa, 1997)
• Rosetta (Dardenne, 1999)

First viewings:

• Charulata (1964, Satyajit Ray)
• Amarcord (1973, Federico Fellini)
• Police Story 3: Supercop (1992, Stanley Tong)
• Au Pan Coupé (1968, Guy Gilles)
• Pacific Rim (2013, Guillermo del Toro)
• The Cherry Orchard (1990, Shun Nakahara)
• Confidences pour confidences (1979, Pascal Thomas)
• I Am a Sex Addict (2005, Caveh Zahedi)
• The Card Counter (2021, Paul Schrader)
• Le Garage (1979, Collectif Mohamed) (short)
• Manège (1986, Jacques Nolot) (short)

Best New Releases

1. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
2. The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sangsoo)
3. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
4. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
5. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sangsoo)
6. Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino)
7. The Tsugua Diaries (Miguel Gomes & Maureen Fazendeiro)
8. A Couple (Frederick Wiseman)
9. The Girl and the Spider (Ramon Zürcher and Silvan Zürcher)
10. The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)

 
First viewings and discoveries:
Seen at Locarno (1-4), Viennale (5-7), Play-Doc (8-9), and Visions du Réel (10)

1. Bourbon Street Blues (Douglas Sirk, 1978)
2. New Year’s Eve (Douglas Sirk, 1977)
3. Talk to Me Like the Rain (Douglas Sirk, 1975)
4. Schlußakkord aka Final Accord (Detlef Sierck aka Douglas Sirk, 1936)
5. Good-for-Nothing (Kijū Yoshida, 1960)
6. 18 Roughs (Kijū Yoshida, 1963)
7. A Story Written With Water (Kijū Yoshida, 1965)
8. Willie (Danny Lyon, 1985)
9. Winter adé (Helke Misselwitz, 1989)
10. Vacation in Val Trebbia (Marco Bellocchio, 1980)

First viewings (in no particular order):

• I Know Where I'm Going! (Powell and Pressburger)
• Dead Birds (Robert Gardner)
• Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (Lewis Milestone)
• Happer's Comet (Tyler Taormina)
• About the Art of Love or a Film with 14441 Frames (Karpo Godina)
• The Plains (David Easteal)
• Fannie's Film (Fronza Woods)
• The Demands of Ordinary Devotion (Eva Giolo)
• West Indies (Med Hondo)
• The Story of Temple Drake (Stephen Roberts)
• Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle)
• Mélo (Alain Resnais)
• Man Hunt (Fritz Lang)
• Calendar (Atom Egoyan)
• Faust (Murnau)
• America as Seen by a Frenchman (Francois Reichenbach)
• Diane (Alan Clarke)
• Gimme Shelter (the Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin)
• Something Wild (Demme)
• Notebook (Marie Menken)

First viewings:

• Haru (1996, Yoshimitsu Morita)
• Fuses (1967, Carolee Schneemann)
• Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1992,  Aerlyn Weissman, Lynne Fernie)
• All the Sins of Sodom (1968, Joseph W. Sarno)
• Times Square (1980, Allan Moyle)
• Simone Barbes or Virtue (1980, Marie-Claude Treilhou)
• Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, Alanis Obomsawin)
• Asuncion (1975, Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo)
• Kotoko (2011, Shinya Tsukamoto)
• Blanche Fury (1948, Marc Allegret)

First viewings:

I saw practically nothing released in 2022, but this alphabetical list has the stuff I saw this year that got me most excited about cinema and people:

• Bronco Bullfrog (Barney Platts-Mills, 1969)
• Chuy, The Wolf Man (Eva Aridjis, 2014)
• Heartbeeps (Allan Arkush, 1981)
• Hudson Hawk (Michael Lehmann, 1991)
• HydraulicPress Dance Series (Smac McCreanor, 2021) Magnolia Remastered (@MMEExperienceEnt and @DVDivision, 2022)
• Pilgrims (Laurynas Bareisa, 2021)
• Taxidermy: Stuff the World (Morgan Matthews, 2005)
• Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Michael Cimino, 1974)
• ‘What A Wonderful World’ Series (Molly McCrann, 2021-22)

New releases:

1. Cow
2. Happening
3. Vortex
4. Compartment no. 6
5. Paris 13th District
6. Hit the Road
7. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
8. Memoria
9. Decision to Leave
10. The Worst Person in the World

Favorite First viewings - cinemas were for big part of the year closed so watched little classics this year in the cinema. A few I recall.

• Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1994)) And Life Goes On was the last film I watched in the cinema in March 2020 when the first lockdown started. Finally saw Through the Olive Trees in the cinema summer 2022.
• The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami, 1999) - there was a retro in town this summer. First viewing. Not as brilliant as Taste of Cherry, but in every way brilliant.
• Mahanagar (The Big City)  - (Satyajit Ray, 1963). Progressive, modern cinema on every level.
   

First viewings (unranked):

• The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)
• The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, 2021)
• Surprise Package (Stanley Donen, 1960)
• Everyday Rebellion (Arash T. Riahi, 2013)
• Exile Family Movie (Arash T. Riahi, 2006)
• Eismayer (David Wagner, 2022)
• After Love (Aleem Khan, 2020)
• Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

New releases:

1. Donbass - I still think it's criminal that it took epic devastation for this to interest US distributors, but it's as astonishing and ambitious now as when I saw it four years ago, and even more essential. For all that, I still don't think it got its due in this long-deferred Stateside rollout, but I'll keep beating the drum.
2. Aftersun
3. Happening
4. EO
5. Great Freedom
6. Careless Crime
7. RRR
8. TÁR
9. Decision to Leave
10. Holy Spider

 
Honorable mentions: Compartment No. 6; Both Sides of the Blade; another inexplicably delayed arrival on these shores, A Man of Integrity; and another, very different Loznitsa triumph, Babi Yar. Context
 
First viewings:

1. Europa '51 (Rosellini) - Surely the least discussed of the Rosellini/Bergman collaborations (albeit hardly an obscurity), which may explain what took me so long but also gave my awestruck response an extra veneer of welcome surprise
2. Malina (Schroeter)
3. Little Dorrit (Edzard)
4. The Oak (Pintilie)
5. The Story of Qiu Ju (Zhang)
6. The Life of Oharu (Mizoguchi)
7. The Black Stallion (Ballard)
8. The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (Ozu)
9. Ju Dou (Zhang)
10. Unknown Pleasures (Jia)
11. Monsieur Hire (Leconte)
12. Once Around (Hallström)
13. La Cérémonie (Chabrol)
14. The Killing Floor (Duke)
15. Casque d'or (Becker)
16. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Lynch)
17. The Unbelievable Truth (Hartley)
18. Crush (Maclean)
19. Dangerous Game (Ferrara)
20. Too Beautiful for You (Blier)

New releases:

1. Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
2. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
3. RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)
4. Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)
5. Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
6. Murina (Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović)
7. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
8. Bunker (Jenny Perlin)
9. Happer’s Comet (Tyler Taormina)
10. Inspector Ike (Graham Mason)

First viewings and discoveries:

College Boys Live (George O'Donnell, 2009)
Definitively the overlooked masterpiece of the 00s.

A Strange Harvest (Linda Moulton Howe, 1980) & Endangered Species (Alan Rudolph, 1982)
Struck upon this cattle mutilation doc/fiction double feature while researching our UFO series. I think Amos Vogel would have lost his shit over A Strange Harvest.

The Ondekoza (Tai Kato, 1981)
Incredible taiko drummer performance film featuring great butts.

One Fall (Marcus Dean Fuller, 2011)
Bizarre vanity project by actor Marcus Dean Fuller, playing a character “James Bond” who returns to his small hometown with healing powers after he survives a 200-foot drop off a cliff. On Tubi, of course.

Sister Act 2 (Bill Duke, 1993) w/ Lion King’s “The Circle of Life”
Lauryn Hill is a force of nature. Mitchell slotted Sister Act 2 into our "Bad Habits" nun series at Roxy, and the 35mm print had the opening number of The Lion King attached as a promo. Animation on film is unsurpassed.

Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998) & Mermaids (Richard Benjamin, 1990)
Programming this as a Sunday brunch double feature in October would be printing money. Free idea for NYC movie theaters.

The Appointment (Lindsey C. Vickers, 1982)
Had been clamoring for an upgrade from VHS for this for years—it appears the film elements are lost, but BFI released a much improved video transfer. The analog fuzz doesn't hurt this bizarre, narcotic gem. The first scene, tacked on after-the-fact, is a standalone masterpiece, even if you spend the rest of the film puzzling over what it has to do with anything.

Analog horror shorts on YouTube
Emerson Goo turned me onto this scene where accounts post short—typically two-to-five minute—abstract, non-narrative horror films steeped in analog aesthetics. One of them, Kyle Edward Ball, is poised for a breakout with the release of his feature Skinamarink in January.

The Plaint of Steve Kreines as Recorded by His Younger Brother Jeff (Jeff Kreines, 1974) & Ricky and Rocky (Jeff Kreines & Tom Palazzolo)|
Kreines is best known for co-directing the essential Seventeen with Joel DeMott. But these earlier portraits of white middle-class midwestern life are more evidence of why he was considered a young prodigy.

Bullet in the Head (John Woo, 1990)
On glorious bullet-sprayed celluloid. Sources tell me the rights to John Woo's films are being held hostage by a hotel chain. Free John Woo.

Shredder Orpheus (Robert McGinley, 1990)
Post-apocalyptic industrial metal skateboarding adaptation of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Would make a sick double feature with Jacques Demy's Parking.

The Night of Counting the Years (Shadi Abdel Salam, 1975)
Heavy.

After a rather busy fall, I will finally have free time beginning December 11th, three days after the deadline, to watch critically acclaimed films that my friends have raved about all year. This includes titles like Tár, Eo, Bones and All, Corsage, Aftersun, Saint Omer, All the Beauty and Bloodshed, and Nanny. Titles that may possibly end up on my "best of" list for 2023, but who knows? What I've assembled below is a combined list of first watches for the year that include several (but not 10) titles from 2022. 
 
First viewings:

• Lust Caution (2007) directed by Ang Lee
• The Eternal Daughter (2022) directed by Joanna Hogg 
• God's Creatures (2022) directed by Saela Davis and Anna Rose Holmer
• Dans Ma Peau (2002) directed by Marina de Van
• School of the Holy Beast (1974) directed by Norifumi Suzuki
• Deadly Illusion (1987) directed by Larry Cohen
• The Cathedral (2022) directed by Ricky D'Ambrose
• Onanism (1969) directed by Nalini Malani
• When I Put My Hands on Your Body (1989) directed by David Wojnarowicz and Marion Scemama
• Night Vision (Red as never been) (2022) directed by Na Mira
• White Dust from Magnolia (1980) directed by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha
• Decision to Leave (2022) directed by Park Chan-wook
• Elvis (2022) directed by Baz Luhrmann
• Nosferasta: First Bite (2021)  directed by Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil
• Rewind and Play (2022) directed by Alain Gomus

First viewings and discoveries:

• College Boys Live (George O'Donnell, 2009)
• Dead Bang (John Frankenheimer, 1989)
• Deadly Illusion (Larry Cohen & William Tannen, 1987)
• Flesh+Blood (Paul Verhoeven, 1985)
• The Gift (Sam Raimi, 2000)
• High Tide (Gillian Armstrong, 1987)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine, 2022)
• Light Sleeper (Paul Schrader, 1992)
• The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983)
• Das Millionenspiel (Tom Toelle, 1970)
• Prince of Darkness (John Carpenter, 1987) 
• Robin Redbreast (James MacTaggart, 1970)
• Schalcken the Painter (Leslie Megahey, 1979)
• Serial Mom (John Waters, 1994)
• Snake Eyes (Brian De Palma, 1998)
• Spetters (Paul Verhoeven, 1980)
• Thief of Hearts (Douglas Day Stewart, 1984)
• White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)

Although I saw more than ten new releases this year, there is only one that I expect I will still be thinking about at the end of 2023. So I am using the nine extra slots for first viewings of movies made in years past. Notable for me, if not the list you see below—this December, I watched my ten thousandth movie. And still, I have things like Peter Watkins’ Resan ahead of me. Never, in this game, does one run out of things to look forward to.

New release:

1. Earwig (Lucile Hadžihalilović)

First viewings:

• Hu-Man (Jérôme Laperrousaz, 1975)
• Smashing the 0-Line (Seijun Suzuki, 1960)
• L’homme aux yeux d’argent (Pierre Granier-Deferre, 1985)
• Not of This Earth (Roger Corman, 1957)
• Movement Studies in Paris (Joris Ivens, 1928)
• Pour le Mistral (Joris Ivens, 1966)
• Bed and Sofa (Abram Room, 1927)
• The Psychic (Lucio Fulci, 1977)
• What Scoundrels Men Are! (Mario Camerini, 1932)
• The White Bus (Lindsay Anderson, 1967)
• Le voyou (Claude Lelouch, 1970)
• Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Umberto Lenzi, 1972)
• Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson, 1952)
• More American Graffiti (Bill Norton, 1979)
• The Boob (William A. Wellman, 1926)
• Plein sud (Luc Béraud, 1981)
• Mouth to Mouth (John Duigan, 1978)
• A Man in Love (Diane Kurys, 1987)
• Perfect Strangers (Alexander Korda, 1945)

New Releases:

•  “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”  
• “The Cathedral” 
• “The Eternal Daughter”  
• “Feast” 
• “Jackass Forever” 
• “Neptune Frost”  
• “Resurrection”  
• “Saint Omer”  
• “Something in the Dirt” 
• “We’re Going to the World’s Fair” 

Best First Viewings:

• "The Bedroom" (Hisayasu Sato)
• "Blue" (Derek Jarman)
• "Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast" (Nobuhiko Obayashi) 
• "Brain Damage" (Frank Henenlotter)
• "A Camel" (Ibrahim Shaddad)
• "The Carpathian Mushroom" (Jean-Claude Biette)
• "Communion" (Philippe Mora)
• "Deep Cover" (Bill Duke)
• "The End" (Christopher Maclaine)
• "Freak Orlando" (Ulrike Ottinger)
• "Libera Me" (Alain Cavalier) 
• "The Long Gray Line" (John Ford)
• "Melody for a Street Organ" (Kira Muratova)
• "Morning Patrol" (Nikos Nikolaidis)
• "Neige" (Juliet Berto & Jean-Henri Roger) 
• "Order" (Sohrab Shahid Saless)
• "Rape" (Yoko Ono & John Lennon)
• "Sada" (Nobuhiko Obayashi)
• "Traps" (Vera Chytilova)
• "West Indies" (Med Hondo)

New releases:

• Hit the Road
• Lingui, the Sacred Bonds
• Decision to Leave
• Till
• No Bears
• Aftersun
• Benediction
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Athena
• Fire of Love

First viewings:

• Threads
• Buck and the Preacher
• The Terrorizers
• Death Laid an Egg
• Goodbye South, Goodbye
• Little Man, What Now
• Steamboat Round the Bend
• House of Whipcord
• Django the Bastard
• Hotel du Nord
• My Journey Through French Cinema
• Noise (Assayas, 2006)
• Harry and Tonto
• The Exiles (1961)
• Alias Nick Beal
• The Mysterious Lady
• Massacre Time
• The Boss (Di Leo, 1973)

New releases:

1. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
2. The Afterlight (Charlie Shackleton)
3. A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
4. Nope (Jordan Peele)
5. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
6. RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)
7. Întregalde (Radu Muntean)
8. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
9. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
10. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Journey to Avebury (Derek Jarman, 1973)
• Sulphur (Derek Jarman, 1973)
• Flaming Ears (Ursula Pürrer, A. Hans Scheirl, and Dietmar Schipek, 1991)
• Scenes From Under Childhood: section 3 (Stan Brakhage, 1969)
• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
• Still/Here (Christopher Harris, 2001)
• Glass Life (Sara Cwynar, 2021)
• The Bitch (Gerry O’Hara, 1979)
• Haircut (Barbara Hammer, 1978)
• Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl, 1945)
• The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1984)
• Série noir (Alain Corneau, 1979)
• The Fan (Edward Bianchi, 1981)
• Honeycomb (Carlos Saura, 1969)
• The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971)
• The Europeans (James Ivory, 1979)
• The Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell, 1988)
• Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, 2021)
• Predatory Lender (Evertis S. Wright, 2014)
• The Hireling (Alan Bridges, 1973)

New releases:

• The Afterlight (Charlie Shackleton)
• Apollo 10 ½ (Richard Linklater)
• As Mine Exactly (Charlie Shackleton)
• Il Buco  (Michelangelo Frammartino)
• Film, the Living Record of Our Memory (Inés Toharia)
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer-Camp)
• Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• My Imaginary Country (Patricio Guzman)
• Nope (Jordan Peele)
• The Woman King (Gina Prince-Blythewood)

First viewings:

• Alma’s Rainbow (Ayoka Chenzira, 1994)
• Deveti Krug (The Ninth Circle) (France Štiglic, 1960)
• Japan’s Longest Day (Kihachi Okamoto, 1967)
• One Way or Another (Sara Gomez, 1977)
• The Raid (Hugo Fregonese, 1954)
• Thamp (Aravindan Govindan, 1978)
• The Warrior’s Husband (Walter Lang, 1933)

New releases (unranked):

• Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris
• RRR
• Tár
• Ambulance
• 3,000 Years of Longing
• Nope
• The Woman King
• Jackass Forever
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Barbarian

First viewings and discoveries (unranked):

• Birth
• Speed Racer
• French Exit
• Notting Hill / Pretty Woman
• Aline
• Lost Highway
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
• Law of Desire
• Yi Yi
• Inherent Vice
• Happiness
• Final Destination

First Viewings and Discoveries:

1. Monsieur Hire (Patrice Leconte, 1989)
2. Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, 2022)
3. Soft Fiction (Chick Strand, 1979)
4. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, 2022)
5. TÁR (Todd Field, 2022)
6. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells, 2022)
7. The Night House (David Bruckner, 2020)
8. Stanley & Iris (Martin Ritt, 1990)
9. Top of the Heap (Christopher St. John, 1972)
10. Perfect Love [35mm, IFC] (Catherine Breillat, 1996)
11. Emily in Paris: Season 3 [anticipatory]
     

New releases (unranked):

• Taming the Garden 
• Parallel Mothers
• Murina 
• Petite Maman
• Saint Omer
• Everything Everywhere All at Once 
• Zero Fucks Given
• Crestone
• Benedetta (can't remember if this came out in '21 or '22)

First Timers:

• Rude Boy
• The Night Porter 
• Beast of 20.000 Fathoms 
• Starship Troopers

First viewings:

• Blood Ritual (Yuen Ching Lee, 1989)
• The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984)
• The Last Waltz (Martin Scorsese, 1978)
• The Magic Crane (Benny Chan, 1993)
• Malena (Werner Schroeter, 1991)
• Unstrap Me (George Kuchar, 1968)
• Vampire’s Kiss (Robert Bierman, 1988)
• Vengeance (Johnnie To, 2009)

New releases (unranked):

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
• Armageddon Time (James Gray)
• The Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonaugh)
• Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine & Johnny Knoxville)
• Lingui, The Sacred Bonds (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun)
• Mad God (Phil Tippett)
• Mariner of the Mountains (Karim Aïnouz)
• Ponniyin Selvan – I (Mani Ratnam)
• Wet Sand (Elene Naveriani)
• Honorable “Is it a Movie?” Mention:
• Captain Ahab, The Story of Dave Steib (Jon Bois & Alex Rubenstein)

 
First viewings:
(one per director)

• Midori (Hiroshi Harada, 1992)
• Chess of the Wind (Mohammed Reza Aslani, 1976)
• Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (Terence Dixon, 1970)
• La chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
• Down and Out in America (Lee Grant, 1986)
• Bye Bye Africa (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 1999)
• Ilya Muromets (Aleksandr Ptushko, 1956)
• Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)
• 36 Chowringhee Lane (Aparna Sen, 1981)
• Drug War (Johnnie To, 2012)
• The Golden Glove (Fatih Akin, 2019)
• Contes Immoreaux (Walerian Borowczyk, 1973)
• The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963)
• Three Colours: Blue (Krzyzstof Keislowski, 1994)
• Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989)
• Scanners (David Cronenberg, 1981)
• Leviathan (Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, 2012)
• Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947)
   

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. One Fine Morning
3. EO
4. Il Buco
5. The Tsugua Diaries
6. Mr. Bachmann and His Class
7. Ahed's Knee
8. We're All Going to the World's Fair
9. Introduction
10. The Cathedral

First viewings and discoveries (chronological):

• Apache Drums (1951, Hugo Fregonese)
• The Raid (1954, Hugo Fregonese)
• Invasion (1969, Hugo Santiago)
• A Simple Event (1974, Sohrab Shahid-Saless)
• The Passion According to Berenice (1976, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo)
• Matinée (1977, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo)
• Blood Relatives (1978, Claude Chabrol)
• Dirty Ho (1979, Lau Kar-leung)
• C’est la vie! (1980, Paul Vecchiali)
• Vengeance Is Mine (1984, Michael Roemer)
• Noir et blanc (1986, Claire Devers)
• Road (1987, Alan Clarke)
• The Cry of the Owl (1987, Claude Chabrol)
• Song of the Exile (1990, Ann Hui)
• The School of Flesh (1998, Benoît Jacquot)
• Peppermint Candy (1999, Lee Chang-dong)
• Brief Crossing (2001, Catherine Breillat)
• Oasis (2002, Lee Chang-dong)
• In Comparison (2009, Harun Farocki)
• Let Each One Go Where He May (2009, Ben Russell)

New releases:

1. The Banshees of Inisherin 
2. Fire of Love 
3. Strawberry Mansion 
4. Babylon 
5. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed 
6. The Eternal Daughter 
7. Girl Picture 
8. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 
9. Nanny 
10. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

First viewings and discoveries:

• Kind Lady (1935)
• Opening Night (1977)
• Girls of the Night (1961)
• The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928)
• A Man There Was (1917)
• Arrows (1984)
• Down and Out in America (1986)
• Bless Their Little Hearts (1983)
• Ganja & Hess (1973)
• 4 Little Girls (1997)
• Alma’s Rainbow (1994)
• No Down Payment (1957)
• The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968)
• The Cool Lakes of Death (1982)
• The Love of the Little Dancer’s Life (1924)
• The Tango Lesson (1997)
• Dream Life (1972)
• Angie (1994)
• Girl with Hyacinths (1950)
• Taiga (1992)

First viewings:

• Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
• My Sex Life... Or How I Got into an Argument (Arnaud Desplechin, 1996)
• Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
• Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)
• Hiroshima mon amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
• Kaili Blues (Bi Gan, 2015)
• Home (Ursula Meier, 2008)
• Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954)
• Great Freedom (Sebastian Meise, 2021)
• Towards Tenderness (Alice Diop, 2016)
• Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
• Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
• Grass (Hong Sang-soo, 2018)
• The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo, 2022)*
• Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas, 2008)
• King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard, 1987)
• The White Album (Arthur Jafa, 2018)
• Pacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)
• What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001)
• Terrorizers (Edward Yang, 1986)

*A total work of love; for anyone who believes they know their heart.

First viewings:

Clementi’s 1960’s: A Quartet of Short Films (at MoMA) https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/8244 
 
Irani Bag by Maryam Tafakory (via Films from Iran for Iran at Another Screen, also Camden International Film Fest) https://www.another-screen.com/films-from-iran-for-iran 
 
Liquid Limits set (via Leo Goldsmith at Rockaway Film Festival) https://www.rockawayfilmfestival.org/event/liquid-limits
 
menswear in No Fear, No Die (via The Film Desk for NYFF) and Deep Cover (Criterion)
 
Pink Narcissus along with Jerovi (via Elizabeth Purchell for Austin Film Society) https://www.austinfilm.org/films/pink-narcissus-2/
 
Rebecca DeMornay between 1983 - 1995 (via Nitehawk Cinema’s Nitehawk Diaries) including the music video for Starship’s Sara https://youtu.be/32ScTb6_KHg
 
Robinson’s Garden (via Kani at Metrograph) https://www.kani-releasing.com/films/006-robinsonsgarden
 
Vengeance is Mine (via The Film Desk) https://www.thefilmdesk.com/vengeance-is-mine 
 
Watch the Skies: Ufology on Film series (via Screen Slate at Anthology) https://www.screenslate.com/series/screen-slate-presents-watch-skies-ufology-film
 
BROCKHAMPTON’s videos for the family particularly Big Pussy https://youtu.be/OHAGO5e8nBo 
Kerwin Frost for Adidas Summer 2022 promo https://youtu.be/PlG5PqNT5LQ 
trailers for M3GAN, best when played before Tar on a Tuesday night at the Regal Essex Crossing https://youtu.be/BRb4U99OU80 
Nope three times already, best at the Regal Gateway IMAX

New releases and first viewings (unranked):

• Anhell69 (Theo Montoya, 2022)
• Challenge of the Gamesters (Wong Jing, 1981)
• Déjå Vu (Tony Scott, 2006)
• Exotica (Atom Egoyan, 1994)
• The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg, 2022)
• Girl 6 (Spike Lee, 1996)
• Happy Together (Wong Kar Wai, 1997)
• Hollywood, California: A Loser’s Opera (William Klein, 1977)
• Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (Leiji Matsumoto, Kazuhisa Takenouchi, Hirotoshi Rissen, Daisuke Nishio, 2003)
• Je T'aime Je T'aime (Alain Resnais, 1972)
• Local Hero (Bill Forsyth, 1983)
• Mad God (Phil Tippett, 2021)
• Nope (Jordan Peele, 2022)
• To Live and Die in LA (William Friedkin, 1985)
• Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, 1964)
• Pacifiction (Albert Serra, 2022)
• Secret Superstar (Advait Chandan, 2017)
• Señorita (Isabel Sandoval, 2011)
• Small Wonder (Elias ZX, 2022)
• Waterworld (Kevin Reynolds, 1995)

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. Expedition Content
3. El gran movimiento
4. The Cathedral
5. In Front of Your Face
6. Aftersun
7. The Eternal Daughter
8. Il Buco
9. A Night of Knowing Nothing
10. Cane Fire 

First viewings:

• Eniaios XII-XIV (Markopoulos)
• The Eternal Breasts (Tanaka)
• Simone Barbès or Virtue (Treilhou)
• Blind Spot / Voyage to Lyon (von Alemann)
• Street of Chance (Hively)
• My Name is Kahentiiosta (Obomsawin)
• Reckless Eyeballing (Harris)
• Secondary Currents (Rose)
• Eyes of Fire (Crounse)
• Miss Universo en el Perú (Grupo Chaski)
• ... and seeing again, for the first time, Barbara Hammer's Pond and Waterfall with a new live score by C Lavender at Rockaway Film Festival

New releases (chronological):

• Jackass Forever, Dir. Jeff Tremaine
• Kimi, Dir. Steven Soderbergh
• AmbuLAnce, Dir. Michael Bay 
• The Cathedral, Dir. Ricky D’ambrose
• Edwin Diaz Walks Out to “Narco”, New York Mets vs. Atlanta Braves (Director’s Cut), Dir. Jon DeMarsico 
• Riotsville, USA, Dir. Sierra Pettengill
• Funny Pages, Dir. Owen Kline
• 3,000 Years of Longing, Dir. George Miller
• Crimes of the Future, Dir. David Cronenberg
• Mad God, Dir. Phil Tippett
• TAR, Dir. Todd Field
• Armageddon Time, Dir. James Gray

First viewings and discoveries (chronological):

In lieu of a “First Viewings,” I’ve chosen to compile a list of in-person film events, because “going to” the movies takes personal precedence over merely “watching” them. 

Clara Bow and Ina Ray Hutton, Newly Rediscovered!
January 18 at MoMA, Manhattan, NY

Seed (1931) (35mm)
February 6 at Metrograph, Manhattan, NY

Careful (1988) (35mm)
March 21 at Nitehawk Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY (I introduced this screening on my birthday, sorry haters)

Hong Kong-A-Thon (1987-1993) (35mm)
April 9 at Anthology Film Archives, Manhattan, NY

A NIGHT OF DAGIE BRUNDERT’S SUPER-8MM FILMS (8mm)
May 19 at Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY

6th Nitrate Picture Show (35mm)
June 2-5 at George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY

Tally Brown, New York (16mm)
June 24 at Spectacle Theater, Brooklyn, NY

Supernova (1999) (35mm)
July 21 at Nitehawk Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

Captain Eeyore (1987) + Blonde Death (1984)
August 4 at Chaos Computer, Brooklyn, NY

Alfreda’s Cinema Presents WATERPROOF at Rockaway Film Festival
September 23 at Averne Cinema, Queens, NY

Esther Shatavsky's Bedtime Story (1981) + Lewis Seiler's Women's Prison (1955) (16mm)
October 11 at Light Industry, Brooklyn, NY

The Woman Chaser (1999) (35mm)
November 19 at Nitehawk Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY

New Releases:

1. Cane Fire (Anthony Banua-Simon)
2. El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo)
3. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
4. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
5. Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino)
6. Fast and Feel Love (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit)
7. We (Alice Diop)
8. Hold Me Tight (Mathieu Amalric)
9. A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)
10. Every Day in Kaimukī (Alika Tengan)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Batang West Side (Lav Diaz)
• Dark Days (Marc Singer)
• Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
• Goodbye South, Goodbye (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
• Heliography (Hiroshi Yamazaki)
• The Last Time I Saw Macao (João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata)
• Limbo (Soi Cheang)
• Magino Village: A Tale / The Sundial Carved with a Thousand Years of Notches (Shinsuke Ogawa)
• The Minamata Mural (Noriaki Tsuchimoto)
• My Crasy Life (Jean Pierre-Gorin)
• My Skin, Luminous (Lazaro Gabino Rodríguez & Nicolás Pereda)
• The Ondekoza (Tai Kato)
• Overseas (Anocha Suwichakornpong, Wichanon Somunjarn)
• Paradise View (Go Takamine)
• Rust (Cesar Hernando, Eli Guieb III, Jimbo Alano)
• A Song I Remember (Kyoshi Sugita)
• Storytellers (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
• Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke)
• Tokyo Park (Shinji Aoyama)
• Train Again (Peter Tscherkassky)

New releases:

1. Nope
2. Petite Maman
3. Neptune Frost
4. Mija
5. Top Gun: Maverick
6. Dos Estaciones
7. The African Desperate
8. We're All Going to the World's Fair
9. The Inspection
10. Fire Island

 
First viewings:

• Murder in Harlem (1935)
• Moon Over Harlem (1939)
• Cat People (1942)
• The House on 92nd Street (1945)
• In the Street (1948)
• Topaz (1969)
• Q: The Winged Serpent (1982)
• Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads (1983)
• Born in Flames (1983)
• Little Senegal (2001)

First viewings:

• The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)
• Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (Bruno Barreto, 1976)
• Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978)
• Over the Edge (Jonathan Kaplan, 1979)
• Soft Fiction (Chick Strand, 1979)
• Maeve (Pat Murphy, 1981)
• Beirut: The Encounter (Borhane Alaouié, 1981)
• Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (Henry Jaglom, 1983)
• Robinson's Garden (Masashi Yamamoto, 1987)
• Diary for My Loves (Márta Mészáros, 1987)
• Metal and Melancholy (Heddy Honigmann, 1994)
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
• Erie (Kevin Jerome Everson, 2010)
• Another Year (Mike Leigh, 2010)
• Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel, 2012)

New releases:

1. Tar
2. The Eternal Daughter
3. Eo
4. The Fabelmans
5. Saint Omer
6. One Fine Morning
7. Decision to Leave
8. Aftersun
9. In Front of Your Face
10. Broker

New releases (unranked):

• As Mine Exactly (Charlie Shackleton)
• Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg)
• Earth II (Anti-Banality Union)
• Exaltation of the Porous Body (Peter Clough)
• I, Pencil (Ben Hagari)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
• An Evening with Simon Liu @ MOMA
• Quarries (Ellie Ga)
• The Rehearsal (Nathan Fielder)
• Top 10 Wisconsin Dells Haunted Houses For Free Pulled Pork (Connor O'Malley)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Aline (Valérie Lemercier, 2020)
• Cloak and Dagger (Richard Franklin, 1987) Vinegar Syndrome 
• Communion (Philippe Mora, 1989)
• The Doomsday Flight (William Graham, written by Rod Serling, 1966)
• L'Inferno (Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, and Giuseppe De Liguoro, 1911)
• Overnight (Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith, 2003)
• Patterns (Fielder Cook, written by Rod Serling, 1956)
• Route One/USA (Robert Kramer, 1989)
• Seinfeld: The Return (Dominick Nero, 2021)
• Six Films by Nikolaus Geyrhalter (Icarus Films set, 2018)
• Wolfen (Michael Wadleigh, 1981)
   

New releases:

1. Flux Gourmet
2. Armageddon Time
3. RRR
4. The Fabelmans
5. Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood
6. Aftersun
7. Murina
8. Tar
9. Ahed's Knee
10. Spiderhead

First viewings:

• Wildwood, NJ (1994) via Metrograph’s streaming platform
• The Dream is Alive (1985) in IMAX at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the National Air and Space Museum, Chantilly, VA
• Vengeance is Mine (1985) at Film Forum
• Pursued (1947) at Museum of the Moving Image
• Zeppelin (1971) via TCM Watch (a movie I watched at 3 a.m. when I could not sleep and found so peculiar I watched it a second time with my wife the following night.)
• Alligator (1980) via Shudder
• Phish at Madison Square Garden, April 22, 2022, Moment Factory, designers, and Chris Kuroda, chief lighting technician. (While the viral “MSG whales” were more theater or sculpture, Kuroda’s lighting patterns are, and always have been, cinema.)

First viewings:

• Singapore Sling (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1990)
• Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (William Greaves, 1969)
• The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981)
• Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)
• Grapes of Death (Jean Rollin, 1978)
• Magic World of Ania (Youtube series) (Unknown, 2017)
• I Am Sophie (Youtube series) (Tom Ransom, 2020-2021)
• Terminal USA (Jon Moritsugu, 1993)
• The Other Side of the Underneath (Jane Arden, 1972)
• I Blame Society (Gillian Horvat, 2020)
• Medea (Pasolini, 1969)
• Shaft (Parks, 1971)
• Written on the Wind (Sirk, 1956)

First viewings:

1. Rock and Rule (1983). This animated, punk-soundtracked Sci-Fi epic will have you rooting for the villain (or maybe that's just me)--discovered through Kier-La Janisse's too-good-to-be-true cinema podcast, "A Song From the Heart Beats the Devil Every Time." 
2.  "Third from the Sun," Twilight Zone, season 1, episode 14 (1960). Although actor Fritz Weaver later got typecast as a bad guy, he reveals himself as a model leading man with a Mid-Atlantic accent to die for; the consummate Cold War episode--how did it sneak past censors?
3. Hopper/Welles (2020). I have become evangelistic about this 1970 conversation between Dennis Hopper and Orson Welles--although Orson hardly appears during their 130-minute exchange, he is the driving force of this film for his lapidary but respectful off-camera probing, impelling Dennis to drop all masks.
4. Ice Station Zebra (1968). Gloriously free of CGI and reminding of what can be done on a soundstage; outstanding performances by Rock Hudson and Patrick McGoohan.
5. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2012). I'm cheating here because I constantly rewatch this cerebral spy thriller--its infectious characters, depictions of the loneliness of field intelligence work, and characterological study of betrayal make it among the finest cinematic portraits of espionage.

First viewings:

1. Fisting: Never Tear Us Apart
2. Octogod
3. Fall of the I-Hotel
4. What’s Up Connection
5. Testament
6. It’s Only A Movie
7. In the Claws of a Century Wanting
8. People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose
9. Tremble All You Want
10. Tomorrow’s Promise
11. Le Cérémonie
12. Gusto Kita With All My Hypothalamus
13. a child dies, a child plays, a woman is born, a woman dies, a bird flies off
14. O’Sangue
15. Top of the Heap
16. Macho Dancer
17. Alma’s Rainbow
18. Moral
19. The Moon Has Risen 
20. The Gossips of Cicadidae

First viewings and discoveries:

• Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard, 1978)
• Blue Collar (Paul Schrader, 1978)
• Out for Justice (John Flynn, 1991)
• The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973)
• Sharky’s Machine (Burt Reynolds, 1981)
• Vice Squad (Gary Sherman, 1982)
• Running Cool (Beverly & Ferd Sebastian, 1993)
• Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, 1980)
• Quick Change (Bill Murray & Howard Franklin, 1990)
• The Crazy Rulers of the World (Jon Ronson, 2004)

First viewings:

1. Johnny Guitar (1954), Criterion Channel
2. The Player (1992), Criterion Channel
3. Blue (1993), MoMA
4. Belfast, Maine (1999), Metrograph
5. Face (2009), MoMA
6. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Criterion Channel
7. Insiang (1976), Criterion Channel
8. Killer of Sheep (1978), Metrograph
9. El Dorado (1966), MoMI
10. Pursued (1947), MoMI
11. My Blueberry Nights (2007), IFC
12. Three Colors: Red (1994), FLC
13. The Raid (1954), MoMA

First viewings:

1. The Black Cat (1934)
2. Christine (1983)
3. August in the Water (1995)
4. Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
5. The Flying Luna Clipper (1987)
6. California Split (1974)
7. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
8. Space is the Place (1974)
9. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000)
10. Trouble in Paradise (1932)
     

First viewings:

• Dealing Or The Berkeley To Boston Forty Brick Lost Bag Blues
• Whistle Down The Wind
• Stroszek
• A Special Day
• Desire (1936)
• Angel (1937)
• Trouble In Paradise
• …no Lies (1973)
• The Deadly Trap
• Top Of The Heap
• The Apple
•  Murder In A Blue World
• Rivals
• Crossfire
• Repeat Performance  (1947)
• Payment Deferred (1932)
• The Shiek
• Docks Of New York
• Too Much Too Soon
• I Walk The Line 
• Marriage Italian Style
• Dangerous (1935)
• The Fall Of The Roman Empire

New releases:

• Armageddon Time
• Both Sides of the Blade
• The Cathedral
• Deception 
• Decision to Leave
• Emily the Criminal 
• Flux Gourmet 
• Lux Aeterna 
• One Fine Morning
• Saloum

New releases (unranked):

• Answering the Sun (Rainer Kohlberger)
• Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
• Earth II (Anti-Banality Union)
• Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
• George Carlin's American Dream (Judd Apatow & Michael Bonfiglio)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
• Outside Noise (Ted Fendt)
• The Rehearsal "The Fielder Method" (Nathan Fielder)
• Riotsville, USA (Sierra Pettengill)
• Triangle of Sadness (Ruben Östlund)
• Sadly, I haven’t seen All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Laura Poitras) yet. And I never saw Decision to Leave (Park Chan Wook) either.

First viewings:

• An All-Ethnic Electric Program (Paul Haines, 1966)
• Impasse (Frank and Caroline Mouris, 1978)
• Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926) x 2 presented by P. Adams Sitney
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Paul Shrader, 1985)
• One Fall (Marcus Dean Fuller, 2016)
• Prime Cut (Michael Ritchie, 1972)
• The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978)
• Shulie (Elisabeth Subrin, 1997)
• Twelve Tales Told (Johann Lurf, 2014)
• UFOria (John Binder, 1984)
• Xoanon (Dore O., 1994)

 
Bonus Content:

• Affinities: A Journey Through Images from The Public Domain Review by Adam Green
• (Thames & Hudson)
• All Your Racial Problems Will Soon End: The Cartoons of Charles Johnson (New York
• Review of Comics)
• Anti-Drug Propaganda zine by Gabe Fowler (Desert Island)
• Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998) Blu-Ray (Criterion Collection)
• Chicago Film Society’s Celluloid Now festival
• David Nance - If You're Hungry, You Get Fed & Pulverized And Slightly Peaced (Western Records)
• Folding Cassettes Greatest Hits LP (Drag City)
• The Films of Doris Wishman: The Moonlight Years Blu-Ray (AGFA)
• Frownland (Ronald Bronstein, 2007) Blu-Ray (Criterion Collection)
• Harry Pussy - You'll Never Play This Town Again 2LP (Palilalia)
• Kali Malone - Living Torch LP (Portraits GRM)
• Les Rallizes Dénudés reissues (Temporal Drift)
• Natural Enemies (Jeff Kanew, 1978) Blu-Ray (Fun City Editions)
• Naujawanan Baidar - Naujawanan Baidar, Vol. 1+2 LP (Cardinal Fuzz + Feeding Tube)
• Squeak The Mouse by Massimo Mattioli (Fantagraphics)
• Los Tacos No. 1
• Terry Jennings Piece for Cello and Saxophone LP (Saltern)
• Ty Segall - Hello, Hi LP (Drag City)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Gothic (Ken Russell, 1986)
• Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters and Ricky Jay (Rex Bloomstein, 1996)
• Six of A Kind (dir. Leo McCarey, 1934)
• Untitled Jan & Mickey Rooney Reality Show Pilot (???, 2009)
• Director’s Cut of Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich, 1990)

First viewings:

• Little Man, What Now? (Frank Borzage, 1934)
• Unfaithfully Yours (Preston Sturges, 1948)
• The Sound of the Mountain (Mikio Naruse, 1954)
• Here at the Water's Edge (Manfred Kirchheimer, 1962)
• The Shiranui Sea (Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1975)
• Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1977)
• Marianne and Juliane (Margarethe Von Trotta, 1981)
• Halloween 3: Season of the Witch (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1982)
• Ghostwatch (Lesley Manning, 1992)
• Howl's Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004)

New releases:

• Blonde
• RRR
• Barbarian
• Triangle of Sadness
• Ambulance
• Aftersun
• Sick of Myself
• Banshees of Inisherin
• Planet Heaven
• Funny Pages

First viewings:

• Secret Ceremony
• Hawks and Sparrows
• Wings
• Martin Eden
• Parallel Mothers
• Seeing in the Rain
• Voorbij, Voorbij
• The Westerner (Peckinpah TV Show)
• Pyaasa
• Mad Detective
• Shadows and Fog
• Superbad
• Red Rocket
• Famine '33
• I Like Bats
• Wrath of Man
• Diane (Alan Clarke)
• Achilles' Heel
• Puzzle of Downfall Child
• Diary of an Unknown Soldier (Watkins)

First viewings:

“Shigeko Kubota: Liquid Reality” at MoMA
A collection of Kubota’s alluring and cunning video sculptures that drew me in close—at times even too close—into the splash zone.
 
TOMORROW’S PROMISE (Edward Owens, 1967) on MUBI
Owens’ images are unforgettably beautiful and sad, arranged in a rhythm like a heartbeat racing in and out of love.
 
Yto Barrada’s A Day is a Day (2022) & Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Permutations (1976) at the Whitney Biennial
In this otherwise loud and dense iteration of the Biennial, two films stood out for their profound quiet: both Barrada’s 16mm double projection of the colorful and geometric forms at two weather acceleration facilities and Cha’s silent moving portrait of her sister offer powerful perspectives of intimacy and labor.
 
“Ellie Ga: Quarries” at Bureau Gallery
Ga’s signature method of slide-projector storytelling is intelligently evoked in this new film, which meanders between the history of a particular type of Portuguese stone pavements and letters exchanged by the artist and her brother.
 
James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany (2012) at Rice University
On a mound in the center of Rice’s campus, an LED light sequence is projected onto the ceiling of a square overhang, and that’s it! Cinema!
 
“Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca: Five Times Brazil” at the New Museum
I was invigorated by each of the five films comprising this exhibition, from the scripted political satires to the lively and diverse interpretations of traditional Brazilian dance.
 
WOMEN’S PRISON (Lewis Seiler, 1955) at Light Industry
What an absolute delight to watch an evil Ida Lupino in a 16mm print of this riotous film, double billed with Esther Shatavsky’s BEDTIME STORY (1981), at Light Industry’s new space.
 
“Set and Reset by Trisha Brown” at Tate Modern
This exhibition restructured Brown’s 1983 performance in a multimedia installation, where original set design by Robert Rauschenberg, music by Laurie Anderson, lighting by Beverly Emmons, and rehearsal footage filmed by Babette Mangolte are each given unique and contemplative displays.
 
“Jonas Mekas: The Camera Was Always Running” at the Jewish Museum
This dizzying exhibition of excerpts from Mekas’s films was often transfixing, and provided a unique and disjointed first-viewing experience of AS I WAS MOVING AHEAD OCCASIONALLY I SAW BRIEF GLIMPSES OF BEAUTY (2000) across the installation’s thirteen screens.
 
CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (Mike Nichols, 1971) at Film Forum
Carol Kane wordlessly enduring Jack Nicholson’s slideshow, "Ballbusters on Parade”... I think about that a lot.
 

First viewings:

• A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang)
• Cruel Story of Youth (Nagisa Oshima)
• Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
• Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini)
• Le plaisir (Max Ophuls)
• Our Hospitality (Buster Keaton and John G. Blystone)
• Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman)
• The Soft Skin (Francois Truffaut)
• A Summer at Grandpa’s (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
• The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
• The Wind Will Carry Us (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Tout va bien (Jean-Luc Godard)

New releases: 

1. Ambulance (Michael Bay)
2. EO
3. We're All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
4. Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine) 
5. Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis) 
6. Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
7. The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)
8. Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland)
9. Kimi (Steven Soderbergh)
10. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
11. Dead for a Dollar (Walter Hill) 

First Viewings and discoveries:

• The Alien Factor (Don Dohler, 1978)
• All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich, 1981)
• The Appointment (Lindsay C. Vickers, 1981)
• Bingo (Matthew Robbins, 1991)
• Cookie (Susan Seidelman, 1989)
• Dressed In Blue (Antonio Giménez Rico, 1983)
• Ernest Borgnine On the Bus (Jeff Krulik, 1997)
• The Farmer (David Berlatsky, 1977)
• Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin, 1993)
• Love Letters (Amy Holden Jones, 1983)
• Man on the Brink (Alex Cheung, 1984)
• Mortuary (Tobe Hooper, 2005)
• Next Door (Tony Bill, 1994)
• Pandora's Mirror (Shaun Costello, 1981)
• Pompeii (Paul W.S. Anderson, 2014)
• Run and Kill (Billy Tang, 1993)
• Shredder Orpheus (Robert McGinley, 1990)
• Solomon King (Jack Bomay & Sal Watts, 1974)
• Twisted Issues (Charles Pinion, 1988)
• What's Up Connection (Masashi Yamamoto, 1990)

New releases:

1. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)
2. Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen)
3. All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen)
4. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
5. Întregalde (Radu Muntean)
6. The Balcony Movie (Paweł Łoziński)
7. Terra Femme (Courtney Stephens)
8. Corsage (Marie Kreuzer)
9. TÁR (Todd Field)
10. Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert)

First viewings:

• Millennium Mambo, D. Hou Hsiao-Hsien
• Spain, D. Esfir Shub
• Goodbye, Dragon Inn, D. Tsai Ming-liang
• Killer of Sheep, D. Charles Burnett
• The Mona Lisa Without a Smile, D. Malvina Urșianu
• The Smiling Lieutenant, D. Ernst Lubitsch
• The Big Night Bathe, D. Binka Zhelyazkova
• Yi Yi, D. Edward Yang
• The Garden, D. Derek Jarman
• The House is Black, D. Forugh Farrokhzad
• Chekhov's Motifs, D. Kira Muratova
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew, D. Pier Paolo Pasolini
• Alexander Nevsky, D. Sergei Eisenstein
• Drylongso, D. Cauleen Smith
• Winter Adé, D. Helke Misselwitz
• The Structure of Crystals, D. Krzysztof Zanussi
• Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, D. Kenneth Anger
• West Indies, D. Med Hondo
• The Unforgettable, D. Yuliya Solntseva
• Vampyr, D. Carl Theodor Dreyer
• Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait, D. Douglas Gordon + Philippe Parreno

New releases (unranked):

• Aftersun
• Babylon
• Crimes of the Future
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Expedition Content 
• The Fabelmans
• Godland
• Nope
• Pacifiction
• Trenque Lauquen

First viewings and discoveries:

• Afterschool (dir. Antonio Campos; 2008)
• The Age of Innocence (dir. Martin Scorsese; 1993)
• The Band Wagon (dir. Vincente Minnelli; 1953)
• Day of Wrath (dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer; 1943)
• The Devil, Probably (dir. Robert Bresson; 1977)
• Drowning By Numbers (dir. Peter Greenaway; 1988)
• Ever Is Over All (dir. Pipilotti Rist; 1997)
• Five Graves to Cairo (dir. Billy Wilder; 1943)
• Grim (dir. Takashi Ito; 1985)
• Head (dir. Bob Rafelson; 1968)
• Hi, Mom! (dir. Brian de Palma; 1970)
• Hollywood, CA: A Loser's Opera (dir. William Klein; 1977)
• Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (dir. Chantal Akerman; 1975)
• The Life of Oharu (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi; 1952)
• Love at Sea (dir. Guy Gilles; 1964)
• The Mother and the Whore (dir. Jean Eustache; 1973)
• Mystery of the Wax Museum (dir. Michael Curtiz; 1933)
• The Wages of Fear (dir. Henry-Georges Clouzot; 1953)
• The Women (dir. George Cukor; 1939)
• World on a Wire (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder; 1973)

First viewings:

• Dream Life (Mireille Dansereau)
• Moulin Rouge (John Huston)
• Passing Strangers (Arthur J. Bressan Jr.)
• Robinson's Garden (Masashi Yamamoto)
• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer)

New releases:

1. Barbarian
2. Sissy
3. Bodies Bodies Bodies
4. Nope
5. Glorious
6. X
7. Not Okay
8. Jackass Forever
9. Deadstream
10. Fresh

 
First viewings and discoveries:

• Pin (1988)
• Small Town Ecstasy (2002)
• Stranger By The Lake (2013)
• 3 Women (1977)
• Another Round (2020)
• Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)
• Love Exposure (2008)
• The Pain of Others (2018) -- a youtube documentary about Morgellons
• Watching The Pain of Others (2019) -- a documentary on the above documentary.
• The Sadness (2021)
• Slasher (2004)
• Showgirls (1995) -- this is a film I had been saving for a rainy day for a very long time, so I know it's funny to have only seen this for the first time in the year 2022 but I simply adored every moment.
• Crash (1996) -- see note for Showgirls
• The Whaler Boy (2020)
• Roh (2019)
• Raw! Uncut! Video! (2021)
• Calvaire (2004)
• I May Destroy You (2020)
• United States of Insanity (2021)
• Carnage: The Legend of Quiltface (2000)

New releases (unranked):

• Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
• Close (Lukas Dhont)
• Dinner’s Ready (Yuan Li Elizabeth Xu)
• Divine Factory (Joseph Mangat)
• Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Everything Everywhere All At Once (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)
• Leonor Will Never Die (Martika Ramirez Escobar)
• The Narrow Road (Lam Sum)
• Nope (Jordan Peele)
• When the Waves Are Gone (Lav Diaz)

First viewings:
This year was a process of connecting to parts of cinema's history inaccessible to me as a provincial Filipino child.

• Biyaya ng Lupa (Manuel Silos, 1959)
• The Moises Padilla Story (Gerardo de Leon, 1961)
• Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag (Lino Brocka, 1975)
• Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
• Itim (Mike de Leon, 1976)
• Mababangong Bangungot (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977)
• Mary is Happy, Mary is Happy (Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit, 2013)
• Manila by Night (Ishmael Bernal, 1980)
• Kisapmata (Mike de Leon, 1981)
• Possession (Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)
• Oro, Plata, Mata (Peque Gallaga, 1982)
• Turumba (Kidlat Tahimik, 1983)
• Juan Gapang (Roxlee, Yeye Calderon and At Maculangan, 1987)
• Batang West Side (Lav Diaz, 2001)
• Evolution of a Filipino Family (Lav Diaz, 2004)
• Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan (Lav Diaz, 2013)
• Honor Thy Father (Erik Matti, 2015)
• Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar (Josh Greenbaum, 2021)
• The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, 2021)
• Happening (Audrey Diwan, 2021

New releases:

1. Irma Vep (Olivier Assayas)
2. Riotsville, USA (Sierra Pettengill)
3. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
4. Horse Opera (Moyra Davey)
5. Exhibition (Mary Helena Clark)
6. Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin)
7. The African Desperate (Martine Syms)
8. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
9. Stop-Zemlia (Kateryna Gornostai)
10. Medusa (Anita Rocha de Silveira)

First viewings and discoveries:

• The Corruption of Chris Miller (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1973)
• Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (Curtis Harrington, 1978)
• Rompiendo el Silencio (Colectivo Cine Mujer, 1979)
• The Voyeurs (Michael Mohan, 2021)
• The Midnight Swim (Sarah Adina Smith, 2014)

1) Jackass 4 was the best film of the year.  I need to go see EO sometime this week, so maybe this will all change, but best is hardly the word I would think to use for anything I caught in theaters. That said, Nope wins for being the most unexpectedly boring film. White Noise wins for being the film I least want to see in a theater, on a plane, in a hotel room, or in my life.
 
2) The best movie of this year, and possibly any other, was William Klein's The Little Richard Story at Anthology. After a botched first screening that ended with a cancelled show, the only English-language subtitled 16mm print was rescheduled in the Deren theater where it stunned the packed audience and, many say, melted the screen. Made for German television, this underseen gem deserves the full Film Foundation restoration treatment. Whoever actually owns the rights needs to be cajoled into doing something about it. I deeply hope that Jake Perlin or some other intrepid Lover of Cinema will take this film on as a cause. A wop bop a loo bop a lop bom bom.

Top First Viewing + Viewing Experience: Geographies of Solitude (Mills, 2022) in the sand pit under the open sky at Rockaway Film Fest.

Favorite First Viewings - Queer Cinema
I watched so many deeply inspiring queer movies this year that they deserve to be highlighted in their own category!

• Pond and Waterfall (Hammer, 15 min, 1982) - A personal highlight of the year was getting to perform a live score for this film at Rockaway Film Fest. Barbara Hammer makes you want to dive in the water with her and splash around for a bit.
• Flaming Ears (Puerrer, Scheirl, Schipek, 1992) - Bless the team that restored this film from very limited remaining material so that I could have my mind totally blown away by this hypersaturated lesbian sci-fi anarchic-apocalyptic world.
• Sex, Lies, Religion (Kennerley, 6 min, 1994) - Delete the apps, meet me in the cemetery .
• Muscle (Satô, 1989) - Features an unauthorized Coil soundtrack, decades of obsessive love, and Pasolini worship to emerge as the Pinku-Eiga king’s most surreally touching love story.
• Duffer (Despins, Dumaresq,1972) - Harsh noise, poorly dubbed paranoid inner monologues, and bad choices permeate this tragically bizarre bisexual cautionary tale.  
• Naked Killer (Fok, 1992) - Revels in the difficult to maintain energy of being offbeat and 80’s glamour shot style sexy at the same time.
• Kamikaze Hearts (Bashore, 1986) - An energizing and powerful experimental documentary (or is it??).
• Ask Any Buddy (Purchell, 2020) - Pure archival queer power plunder.
• Annea Lockwood / A Film About Listening (Green, 30 min, 2021) - Annea Lockwood is a musical treasure, as was her late-partner Ruth Anderson. A stunning, but too brief portrait of a brilliant mind.

Favorite First Viewings - General

• Flux Gourmet (Strickland, 2022) - Absolutely destroys the preciousness of sound art with messy band dynamics, hydrophones in the sauce, and flanger jokes. My favorite film of 2022. Hilarious & cringe-inducing.
• Memoria (Weerasethakul, 2021) - As someone that’s always considering the role of sound in my personal and professional life, I wrote pages upon pages of reflection after watching “Memoria.” This is “Deep Listening” cinema.
• The Appointment (Vickers, 1981) - Masterful tension and suspense with a dark fairytale narrative. One of those films that lingers with you.
• Eyes of Fire (Crounse, 1983) - Slowburn psychedelic folk horror.
• The Last Angel of History (Akomfrah, 45 min, 1996) - Insightful experimental Afrofuturism documentary featuring interviews across music/science/literature/criticism, archival footage, and dial-up era cyber graphics.
• Death Powder (Izumiya, 1986) - An early entry in the Japanese cyberpunk film genre - a freaky face melter!
• Disgusting Spaceworms Eat Everyone!! (Keller, 1989) - Repo Man’s lo-fi feral child; featuring a raw LA industrial soundtrack, delightful use of green screen, and lots of sarcastic wit. Two exclamation marks means it’s fun!!
• Southland Tales (Kelly, 2006) - "We're a bisexual nation living in denial.”
• I’m No Longer Here (Fries, 2019) - A heartbreaking journey from Mexico to NYC narrated by Cumbia music.
• Ceremonial (Monnet, 3 min, 2018) - Built upon a blend of 16mm, 8mm and digital footage; this hypnotic short explores ritual practices among Indigenous First Nation tribes in North America while maintaining their sacred privacy.
• The Viewing (Cosmatos, 2022) - Visually stunning with brilliant sound design to boot. S/O to 
• Lapsang Souchong tea! 
   

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. Eo
3. Benediction
4. The Kingdom: Exodus
5. Kimi
6. Barbarian
7. Bodies Bodies Bodies
8. Ambulance
9. Terrifier 2
10. Nope

First viewings:

• Crimes of the Future (1970) David Cronenberg via Criterion
• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) Ryusuke Hamaguchi via Criterion
• My First Film (2019/2022) Zia Anger via Spectacle Theater and Metrograph
• Ingreen (1964) Nathaniel Dorsky via The Jewish Museum presenting at Film at Lincoln Center
• Harmonica (1971) Larry Gottheim via Spectacle Theater
• The Orchid (1971) Samuel R. Delany via Ubuweb
• Happy End (1996) Peter Tscherkassky via Light Industry
• Sketches for Late City Final (c. 1991) Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Jeff Preiss, Adam Grossman Cohen via the Collection of Jake Perlin at Light Industry
• Terra Femme (2021/2022) Courtney Stephens via Anthology Film Archives
• Cemetery of Splendour (2015) Apichatpong Weerasethakul via Google Drive (ask for link)
• Shelley Hirsch’s performance of No! (2019) by Christian Marclay  
• Talk (slice): duplex (1993) Jerry Hunt via Blank Forms
• Color Correction (2015) Margaret Honda via Anthology Film Archives
• Itinerary of Surfaces (2020) Carl Elsaesser
• Inland Empire (2006) David Lynch via IFC

New releases:

1. The Rehearsal
2. The Girl and the Spider
3. Friends and Strangers
4. Crimes of the Future
5. Petite Maman
6. Armageddon Time
7. The African Desperate
8. The Tsugua Diaries
9. The Eternal Daughter
10. We Met in Virtual Reality
11. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Best Discoveries: First Viewings and Media Experiences:

• Love and Death on Long Island (Richard Kwietniowski)
• The People's Joker (Vera Drew)
• Our Hobby is Depeche Mode (Nicholas Abrahams and Jeremy Deller)
• Mabel's Strange Predicament (Mabel Normand)
• Deck of Cards (Eric Notarnicola "and Gregg Turkington")
• The Long Good Friday (John Mackenzie)
• Home When You Return (Carl Elsaesser)
• The First Annual Boss Baby Symposium
• R100 (Hitoshi Matsumoto)
• Mr. Freedom (William Klein)
• Tetsuo: The Iron Man (Shinya Tsukamoto)
• Teenage Emotions (Frédéric Da)
• "Poland"—Lil Yachty (Cole Bennett)
• Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer (Thom Andersen)
• Stereo (David Cronenberg)
• Série Noire (Alain Corneau)
• "Can the Police Legally Lie to You?" (Kevin Kennedy @kennedylawfirm, TikTok)
• The Dark Horse (Alfred E. Green)
• The History of the Seattle Mariners (Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein)
• Bar Rescue: Piratz Tavern

Clip of the Year: "Hillary Clinton interviewing a 100-year-old French clown"
 

First viewings and discoveries:

• The Black Vampire (Román Viñoly Barreto, 1953)
• Night World (Hobart Henley, 1932)
• So Sweet, So Perverse (Umberto Lenzi, 1969)
• David Wharry, 1980 cycle of films (European Crisis/ A Touch of Venus/ Suddenly Once More/ Entr’acte)
• Sunshine for the Poor (Alain Guiraudie, 2001)
• Love Unto Death (Alain Resnais, 1984)
• No Way Out (Roger Donaldson, 1987)
• Show People (King Vidor, 1928)
• La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 1996)
• The People Under the Stairs (Wes Craven, 1991)
• Dore O. 1968 - 1971 (Kaldalon / Kaskara / Blonde Barberei / Jum-Jum)
• M. Butterfly (David Cronenberg, 1993)
• The Hard Way (Vincent Sherman, 1943)
• Sentimental Education (Alexandre Astruc, 1962)
• La dérive (Paula Delsol, 1964)
• Loose Corner (Anita Thatcher, 1986)
• Él (Luis Buñuel, 1953)
• The Limits of Vision (Laura Harrison, 2022)
• Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)
• Love with Obstacles (Dora García, 2020)
• Paraguayan Hammock (Paz Encina, 2006)
• The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner, 1929)

First viewings and discoveries:

• Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1979)
• Framed (Phil Karlson, 1975)
• The Sin of Nora Moran (Phil Goldstone, 1933)
• Lust for Ecstasy (George Kuchar, 1963) -- Maybe the purest Kuchar film of all!
• Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1985)
• Desire Me (Jack Conway, George Cukor, Mervyn LeRoy, and Victor Saville, all uncredited, 1947) 
• All the Way Home (Alex Segal, 1963) -- Adaptation of James Agee's novel A Death in the Family
• Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948)
• Two Men in Manhattan (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1959)
• Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967)
• The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949)
• Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)
• A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir, 1936)
• The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)
• The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1962)
• Whistle Down the Wind  (Bryan Forbes, 1961)
• Seanceon a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964)
• The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)
• The Comedian (John Frankenheimer, 1957) -- a live Playhouse 90 television broadcast
• Vivacious Lady (George Stevens, 1938)

New releases (unranked):
 

• The African Desperate (Syms)
• Aftersun (Wells)
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Poitras)
• EO (Skolimowski)
• Fire of Love (Dosa)
• The Kingdom: Exodus (von Trier)
• The Maiden (Foy)
• Nope (Peele)
• Sick of Myself (Borgli)
• TÁR (Field)

First viewings:
 

• All That Jazz (1979, Fosse)
• Anguish (1987, Luna)
• The Balcony (1963, Strick)
• Camera Buff (1979, Kieślowski)
• Dead Ringers (1988, Cronenberg)
• Dragon Inn (1967, Hu)
• The Hand (2004, Wong)
• I Shot Andy Warhol (1996, Harron)
• I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987, Rozema)
• La Bouche de Jean-Pierre (1996, Hadžihalilović)
• Kid with the Golden Arm (1979, Cheh)
• Life Is Sweet (1990, Leigh)
• Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976, Mazursky)
• Out of the Blue (1980, Hopper)
• Phantom of the Paradise (1974, De Palma)
• The Secret Cinema (1967, Bartel)
• Simone Barbès ou Le Vertu (1980, Treilhou)
• Supermarket Woman (1996, Itami)
• Without You I’m Nothing (1990, Boskovich)
• Working Girls (1986, Borden)

New releases:

1. Funny Pages
2. Ambulance
3. Elvis
4. Fire of Love
5. Triangle of Sadness
6. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
7. Prey
8. Jackass Forever
9. Blonde
10. The Worst Person in the World

First viewings and discoveries:

Visiting with Huell Howser / California’s Gold

Huell’s shows make me want to move to California. His gee-golly-gosh style of interviewing is incredible and irreplaceable.

RRR

Best movie I’ve ever seen. It makes you realize how pretentious Marvel movies are.

Overnight

Incredible lo-fi documentary about the blowhard bartender-turned-filmmaker who made Boondocks Saints. Everyone thought he was crazy at the time for hating Harvey Weinstein.

The Card Counter

There’s an emerging trend of septuagenarian and octogenarian filmmakers making these insanely-crisp HD swan songs that make some wild stylistic decisions (see also, The Irishman and EO). Schrader’s decisions are the coolest of all (that crazy-wide Gitmo 360 camera…).

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

I’m way too late to the Herzog game, and I just started watching everything from the newest to the oldest. I love the moment where we hear the origin of the movie's title.

TramuaZone

I can’t add too much to what’s already been said about this amazing series, but even if you’re not a Curtis fan, the footage alone is mind-blowing.

Videos of People Playing Piano at Costco

There’s an abundance of these on YouTube. Really soothing, and makes you realize that Costco may be one of the only public forums we have left for free entertainment in the suburbs.

Daybreakers

Unhinged movie about a dystopian Earth where society is run by Vampires. I love the absurd world-building that includes the industrialized production of blood and cars with blacked out windows for driving during the day.

Transformers: The Premake

A movie that’s at least partially about how film production invades our public spaces. I think about this kind of thing when I see movies filming in my neighborhood, it’s of no benefit to us as citizens whatsoever. These films should have to feed everyone on the block for the day and pay prorated rent.

Earth II

The latest installment of the Anti-Banality Union’s blockbuster collages about humanity declaring war on Earth itself.

New releases:

1. Beatrix (Czernovsky, Kraxner)
2. Stars at Noon (Denis)
3. Jackass Forever (Tremaine)
4. RRR (Rajamouli)
5. The African Desperate (Syms)
6. Funny Pages (Kline)
7. The Girl and the Spider (Zürcher, Zürcher)
8. The Munsters (Zombie)
9. Outside Noise (Fendt)
10. Benediction (Davies)

 
First viewings:

1. Don't Play Us Cheap (Van Peebles)
2. XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX (Jacobs)
3. Kuichisan (Endo)
4. Soul City (Jones)
5. Vampires (Carpenter)
6. Spike of Bensonhurst (Morrissey)
7. Whoregasm (Zedd)
8. Dead and Buried (Sherman)
9. EVENTIDE (Lockhart)
10. 1 P.M. (Godard, Pennebaker)
11. Introducing Mr. Diana (Waters, Cramer)
12. The Pirate (Minnelli)
13. Unstrap Me (Kuchar)
14. Analogies: Studies in the Movement of Time (Rose)
15. The World the Flesh and the Devil (MacDougall)
16. Dice Rules (Dubin)
17. L'Ange (Bokanowski)
18. B.A.P.S. (Townsend)
19. Under the Influence (Neistat, still without distribution sadly)
     

New releases:

I’ve mostly been in Japan this past year so haven’t seen enough US releases to have a list but I hate to see a good film go under the radar!:

• Bruiser (dir. Miles Warren)

Also have to include: 

• Aftersun (dir. Charlotte Wells)

New Releases in Japan: 

• Petite Maman (dir. Céline Sciamma)
• YAMABUKI (dir. Juichiro Yamasaki)
• Gravity and Radiance (dir. Umi Ishihara)

First viewings:

• Eternal Heart (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1929)
• 14 Juillet (René Clair, 1933)
• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)
• A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang, 1996)
• Stay Awake, Be Ready (Pham Thien An, 2019)
• T (Keisha Rae Witherspoon, 2019)
• Transparent, I Am (Yuri Muraoka, 2020)
• Karaoke Cafe Bosa (Kaori Oda, 2022)
   

First viewings:

• The Fatal Glass of Beer (Clyde Bruckman, 1933)  
• Granton Trawler (John Grierson, 1934) 
• The Strawberry Blonde (Raoul Walsh, 1940) 
• Wind Across the Everglades (Nicholas Ray, 1958) 
• Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965)
• A Countess from Hong Kong (Charlie Chaplin, 1967) 
• Garage Sale I + II (Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, 1976 and 1980) 
• Nor Was This All By Any Means (Anthony Ramos, 1978) 
• KabbaLAmobile (Rachel Rosenthal, 1984) 
• O.C. and Stiggs (Robert Altman, 1985) 
• What's Up? (The Masada/Taper Workshop Students with Branda Miller, 1987) 
• Hostage (Dara Birnbaum, 1994) 
• The Red Strokes (Garth Brooks and Jon Small, 1994) 
• Painter (Paul McCarthy, 1995) 
• Castle Freak (Stuart Gordon, 1995) 
• Ed Halter at the opening of The Life Casts of Cynthia Plaster Caster: 1968-2000 at Thread Waxing Studio (insound.com/RUMUR, 2000)
• Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman, 2001) 
• The Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical and Musical Automata (The Morris Museum, 2007 to present) 
• Bunker (Jenny Perlin, 2021) 
• The Amazing Kreskin Farewell Tour at the Tropicana Atlantic City (Kreskin, 2022) 

New Releases (Alphabetical):

• Aftersun (Wells)
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Poitras)
• Benediction (Davies) 
• Both Sides of the Blade (Denis) 
• EO (Skolimowski) 
• The Fabelmans (Spielberg)
• Funny Pages (Kline)
• Return to Seoul (Chou)
• Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (Curtis)
• Stars at Noon (Denis)

Best First Viewings and Discoveries (Alphabetical)

• The Adventures of Antoine Doinel (Truffaut, 1959-1979)
• All seen at Film Forum in order of release (before this year, I had only ever seen The 400 Blows).
• Bicentennial Man Trailer (1999)(35 mm)
• Played before a 35 mm print of Michael Mann’s The Insider at The Roxy Cinema.
• Bigas Luna’s Iberian Passion Trilogy (1992-1994)
• Thanks to the Bigas Luna Tribute, a fascinating roadshow fronted by Professor Santiago Fouz Hernández of Durham University.
• A Confucian Confusion (Yang, 1994)
• My first Yang.
• Gulch - 07/31/2022 (Live @ Sound and Fury 2022 (197 Media, 2022)
• Hell on earth.
• It Felt Like A Kiss (Curtis, 2009)
• A great precursor for what his work becomes... the TraumaBones, if you will.
• King Lear (Godard, 1987)
• Experienced in a packed house the same week he passed. Introduced by Lee Ranaldo.
• Kung-Fu Master! (Varda, 1988)
• Seen on Mother’s Day, because when else would you watch this?
• The Missing (2003, Lee)
• Lee Kang-sheng, per the post-screening Q&A: “I imagined the whole time the grandfather and grandchild were missing, they were actually together in the theater from Goodbye, Dragon Inn.”
• My Weekend as a 28-year-old in Chicago Illinois (@snotwurst420, 2022)
• A truly meaningless video, i.e., the best ever parody of influencer culture.

New releases:

1. Tȧr
2. Barbarian
3. The Fablemans
4. Moonage Daydream
5. Resurrection
6. Everything Everywhere All At Once
7. The Northman
8. Glass Onion
9. Three Thousand Years of Longing
10. Pearl

First viewings:

• Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island - A hard to find mash-up of the three network Amy Fisher TV movies, but so worth it. Both hilarious, and great cultural commentary.
• Deep Red - After some underwhelming experiences with Italian horror, this is the movie that made me realize that I may not be wild about their horror, I DO love giallo movies.
• Eega - I didn’t manage to see RRR, but I did catch up with this earlier romcom/action movie from the same director, about a vengeful man reincarnated as a housefly.
• Scream for Help - A movie that defies labels of “good” and “bad” – so many choices are “wrong,” and you’ll laugh a lot, but it’s also consistently entertaining and suspenseful.
• Crimes of Passion - Somehow simultaneously one of Ken Russell’s wildest and most focused films.
• Midsommar - If a folk horror film was… weirdly comforting?
• The Cat (1992) - You will believe a space cat can fly (and also fight monsters)
• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair - This went wide in 2022, but the release date says 2021, so I put it here.
• Video Diary of a Lost Girl - The video store fever dream of a certain type of movie fan’s dreams.
• Koyaanisqatsi - Look, I recently discovered pot.
• The Addiction - I’m tired of “vampirism as addiction metaphor” movies, but this is one of the earliest and best.
• Akira - I have no idea what happened in this movie, but it sure looks gorgeous.
• Happy Birthday to Me - As beautifully absurd a thriller ending as any giallo.
• Perfect Blue - One of the most prescient movies about celebrity ever?
• No Sudden Move - Kimi got more attention of Soderburgh’s two HBO Max pandemic films, but I preferred this one. Devil in a Blue Dress meets Chinatown vibes.
• Tenebre - Some of the showiest, most beautiful suspense shots.
• Possibly in Michigan - A bizarre horror (?) shot-on-video musical art film from 1983. Transfixing.
• Rolling Thunder - Revenge movie as descent into sadness.
• All that Jazz - This movie has a whole editing language all its own.
• The Neon Demon - Look at this movie. It’s got (metaphorical) demons, it’s got a lot of neon… what more do you want?

New releases:

1. Benediction
2. Aftersun
3. The Fabelmans
4. Tár
5. Three Minutes: A Lengthening
6. EO
7. Happening
8. The Banshees of Inisherin
9. Lost Illusions
10. Vortex

First viewings and discoveries:
 

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
2. Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)
3. The Roads to Freedom (1970 BBC miniseries)
4. The Last of Sheila (1973)
5. The Railway Children (1970)
6. A Tale of Winter (1992)
7. Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)
8. Where’s Poppa? (1970)
9. Out of the Blue (1980)
10. Deep End (1970)
11. The Patsy (1928)
12. Get Carter (1971)
13. Diva (1981)
14. Park Row (1952)
15. Possession (1981)
16. Kongo (1932)
17. Personal Best (1982)
18. Decision Before Dawn (1951)
19. Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971)

New releases:
 

1. EO
2. The Banshees of Inisherin
3. Jackass Forever
4. The Fabelmans
5. Decision to Leave
6. Fire of Love
7. Funny Pages
8. Barbarian
9. Crimes of the Future
10. Pearl

First viewings and discoveries:
 

• Picnic (1955, Joshua Logan)
• Happiness (1998, Todd Solondz)
• Toby Dammit (1968, Federico Fellini)
• The Women (1939, George Cukor)
• Lake Mungo (2008, Joel Anderson)
• Alaska (1968, Dore O.)
• The Cremator (1969, Juraj Herz)
• Cluny Brown (1949, Ernst Lubitsch)
• I Know Where I’m Going (1945, Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell)
• The Afterlight (2021, Charlie Shackleton)
• Stop-Zemlia (2021, Kateryna Gornostai)
• A Colt Is My Passport (1967, Takashi Nomura)
• Pink Narcissus (1971, James Bidgood)
• Poison Ivy (1992, Katt Shea)
• Bunker (2021, Jenny Perlin)
• Inspector Ike (2020, Graham Mason)
• All That Heaven Allows (1955, Douglas Sirk)
• The Law Enforcement Guide To Satanic Cults)
• The negroni sbagliato tiktok
• “Irish Mob” - Conner O’Malley
   

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. Compartment No. 6
3. Funny Pages
4. TÁR
5. Aftersun
6. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
7. The Worst Person in the World
8. Strawberry Mansion
9. Home When You Return
10. Stop Zemlia

 
First viewings:

• Morvern Callar (2002)
• Careful (1992)
• Deep Cover (1992)
• Diva (1981)
• Punks (2000)
• The Heartbreak Kid (1972)
• High Tide (1987)
• The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995)
   

Sorry for the two long lists, but the marathoning aspect of those screenings were also part of why the experiences were so great. best first viewings of 2022:

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022, Laura Poitras)
• Bernadette (2008, Duncan Campbell)
• Eo (2022, Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Eyeworks programs 1 + 2 (feat. Krišs Salmanis, Lars-Arne Hult, Andy Cahill, David Daniels, Paul Vester, Miranda Javid, Sebastian Buerkner, Pallavi Agarwala, Sarah Pucill, Brandon Blommaert, Joanna Priestley, Hayoun Kwon, Jane Aaron, Selina Trepp, Rastko Ćirić, Barry Doupé, Matthew Thurber, Yoriko Mizushiri, Yara Elfouly, Justin Jinsoo Kim, Sondra Perry, Michel Bret, Rose Lowder, Tim Macmillan, Zekkereya El-magharbel, Kathleen Daniel, Kate Renshaw-Lewis + Madoka)
• Kaldalon / Kaskara / Alaska (Dore O.)
• L’eau De La Seine / Pas De Ciel / Nuestra Señora de Paris (Teo Hernández) on 16mm at Maysles 
• Mono No Aware XVI expanded cinema programs 1 + 2 (feat. Blinn & Lambert, Erica Sheu, Janika Herlevi, Peaches Goodrich, Simone Barros, Connor Kramerer, Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh, Hasabie Kidanu, Elena Pardo, Millie Wissar, Misha Marks, Optipus, Nung-Hsin Hu, Lilan Yang, Ray Chang, Julia Zanin de Paula, Iman Selachii, Dominick Rivers, Tessa Hughes-Freeland, Sara Scur, Hugo Wai, Chae Yu, Ayanna Dozier, Ieva Balode + Maksims Shentelevs.)
• Nosferasta: First Bite (2021, Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer + Oba)
• Petite Maman (2021, Céline Sciamma...or Scarlet (2022, Pietro Marcello), choose your French fairytale.
• Pond and Waterfall (1982, Barbara Hammer) live scored by C. Lavender
• Saint Omer (2022, Alice Diop)
• Scintillating Scotoma YouTube videos. Like this one.
• The Boxer’s Omen (1983, Kuei Chih-Hung)
• The Plains (2022, David Easteal) 
• The Salamander (1971, Alain Tanner)
• This Is Not a Film (2011, Jafar Panahi + Mojtaba Mirtahmasb)
• Vera Drake (2004, Mike Leigh)
• Water Ritual #1: An Urban Rite of Purification (1979, Barbara McCullough)

New releases:

1. Benediction
2. Armageddon Time
3. The Eternal Daughter
4. EO
5. Crimes of the Future
6. Ahed’s Knee
7. Rock Bottom Riser
8. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
9. Great Freedom
10. Nope

First viewings and discoveries:

1. Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes, 1971)
2. Pompoko (Isao Takahata, 1994)
3. The Last Movie (Dennis Hopper, 1971)
4. Sopralluoghi in Palestina per il vangelo secondo Matteo (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1965)
5. Veinte años no es nada (Joaquim Jordà, 2004)
6. Els tres porquets (Three Little Pigs, Albert Serra, 2012)
7. The Kingdom – Riget I and II (Lars Von Trier, 1994-1997)
8. Our Century (Artavazd Peleshyan, 1982)
9. We Are Who We Are (Luca Guadagnino, 2020)
10. Klaus (Sergio Pablos, 2019)
     

New releases:

1. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
2. Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)
3. Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
4. TÁR (Todd Field)
5. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
6. Nope (Jordan Peele)
7. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
8. KIMI (Steven Soderbergh)
9. Confess Fletch (Greg Mottola)
10. Banshees of Inisherin (Martin McDonagh)

Honorary Mentions: The Tsugua Diaries (Maureen Fazendeiro/Miguel Gomes); Apollo 10 ½ (Richard Linklater); Paris, 13th District (Jacques Audiard); There There (Andrew Bujalski); Wood and Water (Jonas Bak)

First viewings:

• Sherman’s March [Ross McElwee, 1986, Metrograph, 16mm]
• Beware of a Holy Whore [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971, Metrograph, 35mm]
• Property [Penny Allen, 1979, MOMA, DCP]
• Part-Time Wife [Leo McCarey, 1930, MOMA, 35mm]
• Out of the Blue [Dennis Hopper, 1980, Torrent]
• Night World [Hobart Henley, 1932, MOMA, 35mm]
• Radio On [Christopher Petit, 1980, Criterion Channel]
• Sleepwalk [Sara Driver, 1986, Criterion Channel]
• Paydirt [Penny Allen, 1981, Torrent]
• Any Given Sunday [Oliver Stone, 1999, HBO Max]
• Huevos de oro (Golden Balls) [Bigas Luna, 1993, Quad Cinema, 35mm]
• Squirrels to the Nuts [Bogdanovich, 2022/2015, MOMA, HDCam]
• Altered States [Ken Russell, 1980, Roxy Cinema, 35mm]
• Julia [Erick Zonca, 2008, Amazon Prime Rental]
• Dead Ringers [David Cronenberg, 1988, Roxy Cinema, 35mm]
• Naked Lunch [David Cronenberg, 1991, Roxy Cinema, 35mm]
• Vengeance Is Mine [Michael Roemer, 1984, Film Forum, 35mm]
• Chameleon Street [Wendell B. Harris Jr., 1989, Criterion Channel]
• The Big Steal [Nadia Tass, 1990, MOMI, 35mm]
• Love and Death on Long Island [Richard Kwietniowski, 1997, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm]
• Johnny Guitar [Nicholas Ray, 1954, Roxy Cinema, 35mm]
• King Lear [Jean-Luc Godard, 1987, Roxy Cinema, 35mm]
• Taking Off [Milos Forman, 1971, Film Forum, 35mm]
• The Mother and the Whore [Jean Eustache, 1973, Walter Reade Theater (NYFF), DCP]
• Gremlins 2: The New Batch [Joe Dante, 1990, Music Box Theater, 35mm]
• A Confucian Confusion [Edward Yang, 1994, Elinor Bunim Munroe Film Center (NYFF), DCP]
• Face [Tsai Ming-Liang, 2009, MOMA, 35mm]
• Vive L’Amour [Tsai Ming-Liang, 1994, MOMA, DCP]
• What Time Is It There? [Tsai Ming-Liang, 2001, MOMA, 35mm]
• The Wayward Cloud [Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005, MOMA, 35mm]

As an official Screen Slate™ resident DJ it feels appropriate to hype the finest music movies I encountered in 2022 :)

• The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
• Thunderdome '96 - Dance or Die (???, 1996)
• The Punk Syndrome (Jukka Kärkkäinen, Jani-Petteri Passi, 2012)
• Dark City Beneath The Beat (TT The Artist, 2020)
• The Ondekoza (Tai Katô, 1981)
• Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022)
• Tokyo Pop (Fran Rubel Kuzui, 1988)
• Laibach: A Film From Slovenia (Daniel Landin, Peter Vezjak, 1993)
• TÁR (Todd Field, 2022)
• Who Killed the KLF? (Chris Atkins, 2021)

New releases and first viewings (unranked):

Benediction (Terrence Davies, 2021)
Terry the God!
 
The Beatles: Get Back: The Rooftop Concert in IMAX (Michael Lindsay Hogg and Peter Jackson)  (2022)
The four lads…they went off here you have to admit
 
The Rehearsal (Nathan Fielder) (2022)
I wouldn’t shut up about this all summer
 
Armageddon Time (James Gray) (2022)
The #grayhive is strong…and we will not be defeated
 
Memoria (Apitchatpong Weerasethakul) (2021)
One of those movies that gives you hope for the future of movies….
 
Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook) (2022)
This too…shoutout to Mubi!
 
Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinsk) (2022)
I wish all defense department propaganda was this good
 
An American Tragedy (Josef Von Sternberg) (1931)
May not scale the dreamlike heights of the Dietrich films but still really great
 
King Lear (Jean-Luc Godard) (1987)
RIP JLG
 
Incontinence: A Diarrhetic Flow of Mismatches (Manuel De Landa) (1978)
Can’t find this on the web but check out Raw Nerves: A Lacanian Thriller online too
 
Three Thousand Years of Longing (George Miller) (2022)
Saw this after Jon said it reminded him of Myst, he was right. 
 
2022 New York Mets Season (John Demarsico et al)
There’s always next year…
 

New releases (unranked)

• EO 
• No Bears
• Elvis
• What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
• Aftersun
• Dinner in America
• Jackass Forever
• Both Sides of the Blade
• Holy Spider
• Strawberry Mansion

First Viewings:

• Caught (Max Ophuls)
• Saturday’s Children (1940; d. Vincent Sherman)
• Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? (docuseries - probably doesn’t count. But here it is.)
• Cure (1997; d. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Double Wedding (1937; d. Richard Thorpe)
• Kiss and Make Up (1934; d. Harlan Thompson)
• I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2019; d. Radu Jude)
• Reprise (2008; d. Joachim Trier)
• Snowtown Murders (2011; d. Justin Kurzel)
• The Big Steal (1949; d. Don Siegel)
• Crime of Passion (1957; d. Gerd Oswald)
• Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint (2020; d. Halina Dyrschka)
• short films:
• Brontosaurus - short animated film, d. Jack Dunphy
• 100 Boyfriends Mixtape (2016; d. Brontez Purnell),
• Let’s Get Lost (2020; d. Sam Stillman)
• Håber , directed by Amour Luciani, and written by Imani Love and Lorenzo Pozzan
• Tricks, directed by Beaty Reynolds and Chris Graves
• Last Call - directed by Ryan Czerwonko

New releases (unranked):

• Jackass Forever
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• Inu-Oh
• Decision to Leave
• Byron & Shelley: Illuminati Detectives
• Coma
• We’re All Going to The World’s Fair
• Expedition Content
• Nope
• Pearl

First viewings:

• Center Stage (1991)
• The Flying Luna Clipper (1987)
• The House of Mirth (2000)
• Shiki-Jitsu (2000)
• Jeremy Fragrance (ongoing durational performance)
• The Shape of Night (1964)
• Birth (2004)
• Manhunter (1986)
• Night of the Demon (1957)
• Saturday Night Fever (1977)

New releases (unranked):

• EO
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Blonde
• Vortex
• Triangle of Sadness
• We're All Going to the World's Fair
• Funny Pages
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Other, Like Me: The Oral History of COUM Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle
• TAR

New releases:

• Strawberry Mansion - Birney and Audley
• Hit the Road - Panah Panahi
• Memoria - Weerasathakul
• We're All Going to the World's Fair - Schoenbrun
• Petite Maman - Sciamma
• Crimes of the Future - Cronenberg
• Thirteen Lives - Howard
• The Wonder - Lelio
• Leonor Will Never Die - Escobar
• Dos Estaciones - Gonzales

First viewings:

• Daisies (1966) -  Věra Chytilová - long overdue
• Ratcatcher (1999) - Lynne Ramsay
• Something’s Gotta Give (2003) - Nancy Meyers
• All About Lili Chou Chou (2001) - Shunji Iwai
• Spring Night, Summer Night (1964) - Joseph L. Anderson
• The Gospel According to Brad - Salem Hughes - an astonishing short by an unsung prolific talent
• Lizzo's Watch Out for the Big Grrrls - more fun than most things i put in front of my face
• Prismatic Ground - Various Shorts - an exciting film program by Inney Prakash 
• A series of short films by Nashville Artist SECK - seen in front of a 35mm print of Belly, an incredible night
• Written on the Wind (1956) - Douglas Sirk
• Gross Pointe Blank (1997) - Armitage
• Streetwise (1984) - Bell 
• Twin Peaks - Season 2, Episode 29 - Lynch
• Joni Mitchell “Both Sides Now” with Brandi Carlile & Wynonna Judd Live at Newport Folk Festival - made me sob 
• Match Factory Girl - Aki Kaurasmaki
• France (2021) - Bruno Dumont
• The Coward (1965) - Satjayit Ray

New releases (unranked):

• Nosferasta: First Bite (dir. Adam Khalil, Bayley Sweitzer, & Oba – at Rockaway Film Festival)
• Earth II (dir. The Anti-Banality Union – at Anthology)
• Riotsville, U.S.A. (dir. Sierra Pettengill – at MoMA)
• Crimes of the Future (dir. David Cronenberg)
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica (dir. Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor – at TIFF)
• When Angels Speak of Love (dir. Helen Piña – at Prismatic Ground)
• Blue Island (dir. Chan Tze-woon – at Metrograph)
• Dry Ground Burning (dir. Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós – at TIFF)
• Life on the CAPS (dir. Meriem Bennani – at NYFF)
• Pacifiction (dir. Albert Serra – at NYFF)

First viewings (chronological):

• The Girl with the Hat Box (1927, dir. Boris Barnet)
• The Black Beyond Trilogy (1992, dir. S. Torriano Berry – at Spectacle)
• Where Is My Friend's House? (1987, dir. Abbas Kiarostami)
• Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? (1983, dir. Harry Jaglom)
• The Wobblies (1979, dir. Stewart Bird & Deborah Shaffer – at Metrograph)
• Regrouping (1976, dir. Lizzie Borden – at Anthology)
• Vengeance Is Mine (1984, dir. Michael Roemer – at Film Forum)
• Summer 1993 (2017, dir. Carla Simón)
• Deep Cover (1992, dir. Bill Duke)
• Stations of the Elevated (1981, dir. Manfred Kirchheimer – at Light Industry)

New releases (alphabetical):

• Answering the Sun (Rainer Kohlberger)
• Eo (Jerzy Skolimowski)
• Fire of Love (Sara Dosa)
• Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
• El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo)
• Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
• Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
• The Plains (David Easteal)
• Shin Ultraman (Shinji Higuchi)
• Vortex (Gaspar Noé)

First viewings:

• All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
• Arvo Pärt: And Then Came the Evening and the Morning (Dorian Supin, 1990)
• Ashik Kerib (Sergei Parajanov, 1988)
• Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (Alan Clarke, 1985)
• Blue (Derek Jarman, 1993)
• Chicago Loop (James Benning, 1976)
• Cinderella (Ericka Beckman, 1986)
• Doomed (Allen Riley, 2021)
• Fellini (Satyricon) (Federico Fellini, 1969)
• Go! Go! Go! (Marie Menken, 1964)
• Je t’aime, je t’aime (Alain Resnais, 1968)
• Limite (Mário Peixoto, 1931)
• The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)
• The Offenders (Scott B & Beth B, 1980)
• Public Hearing (James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2012)
• The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)
• The Vampires of Poverty (Carlos Mayolo & Luis Ospina, 1977)
• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)
• Wheel of Ashes (Peter Emmanuel Goldman, 1968)
• The Woman of the Port (Arcady Boytler & Raphael J. Sevilla, 1934)

New releases (alphabetical):

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
• Armageddon Time (James Gray)
• The Cathedral (Ricky D'Ambrose)
• Emily the Criminal (John Patton Ford)
• Favorite Daughter (Dana Reilly)
• Free Chol Soo Lee (Eugene Yi and Julie Ha)
• Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel (Bo Burnham)
• The Picture Taker (Phil Bertelsen)
• Quitting Time (Cameron Yates)
• The White Album (Arthur Jafa)

First viewings and discoveries:

Christopher Harris program - Maysles, programmed by Inney Prakash

Cien Niños Esperando un tren/100 Children Waiting for a Train (Ignacio Agüero) 
Harvard Film Archive, classroom screening by Haden Guest

Le Damier (Balufa Bakupa-Kanyinda)
New York Film Festival Revivals, programmed by Florence Almozini, Dan Sullivan and Gina Telaroli

In the Images, Behind the Camera: Women's Political Cinema, 1959 - 1992
programmed by Yasmina Price - BAM:
Chircales (Marta Rodriguez)
These Hands (Flora M'mbuga-Schelling)
Horse of Mud (Ateyyat El Abnoudy)
Kaddu Beykat/Letter from My Village (Safi Faye)
Selbé et tant d'autres/Selbë: One Among Many (Faye)

Jeopardy - Amy Schneider's run
Channel 7

Light - Manny Kirchheimer 
16mm projected by Manny at his apartment

Light and the Country (Leo Hurwitz and Peggy Lawson) 
New York Poets: Manfred Kirchheimer and Leo Hurwitz, programmed by Edo Choi and Eric Hynes - MoMI

Moana (John Musker and Ron Clements)
hundreds of 20 minute intervals - Disney+

On the Road: A Document (Noriaki Tsuchimoto)
Noriaki Tsuchimoto, programmed by Max Carpenter - MoMI

Orphans: In Not So Many Words
programmed by Dan Streible - MoMA
https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/7517

Peppa Pig
innumerable episodes - youtube

Scrubbers (Mai Zetterling)
Mai Zetterling, programmed by Elspeth Carroll - Film Forum

Sisters in Cinema (Yvonen Welbon)
Home to Harlem, programmed by Ina Archer - Maysles

Something of Value (Richard Brooks)
Sidney Poitier and His Trailblazing Contemporaries, programmed by Donald Bogle and Bruce Goldstein - Film Forum

Street Music & London Songs (Nick Doob)
New Yale Restorations, presented by Brian Meacham, organized by Illyse Singer - Roxy

The Super Bob Einstein Movie (Danny Gold) - HBO

Le Volcan interdit/The Forbidden Volcano (Haroun Tazieff)
Harvard Film Archives (short version), and Congo in Harlem (long version), programmed by Nelson Walker and Lynn True - Maysles

New releases (unranked):

• actors
• the batman
• crimes of the future
• jackass forever
• pearl
• speak no evil
• turning red
• white noise
• woodlands dark and days bewitched
• X

First viewings and discoveries (in order that I saw them):

• unzipped
• brother's keeper
• fun (zalenski)
• the wind that shakes the barley
• career girls
• paradise lost 2: revelations
• paradise lost 3: purgatory
• blood ritual ( yuen ching lee)
• the wings of the dove
• running on empty
• mr and mrs. bridge
• rawhead rex
• moneyball
• the celebration (vinterberg)
• leave her to heaven
• hoop dreams
• city hall (wiseman)
• butcher, baker, nightmare maker
• dark waters (mariano baino)
• the house on telegraph hill

Limited solely to films I saw in theaters! Because that's where things felt alive.
 
New releases (unranked):

• The African Desperate - Martine Syms   (New Directors/New Films, NY) - 2022
• The Cathedral  - Ricky d'Ambrose (New Directors/New Films, NY) - 2022**
• Congress of Idling Persons - Bassem Saad (Doc Fortnight, MoMA) - 2022
• God's Creatures - Saela Davis & Anna Rose Holmer (Angelika, NY) - 2022
• Memoria - Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Lincoln Center, NY) - 2022
• Myanmar Diaries - Myanmar Film Collective (HRWFF, NY) - 2022
• Other, Like Me - Dan Fox & Marcus Werner Hed (Doc Fortnight, MoMA) - 2022
• Sorte - Mónica Martins Nunes -  (Porto/Post/Doc, Portugal) - 2022

First viewings:

• Dragon Inn - King Hu - (Metrograph) - 1967
• Get Rid of Yourself - Bernadette Corporation (Metrograph) - 2003
• In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal - Pierre Clémenti (MoMA) - 1985
• L’Ange - Patrick Bokanowski - (The Roxy, City Dudes blindfolded screening series, NY) - 1982
• Malina - Werner Schroeter (Film Forum, NY) - 1991
• O Amor Natural - Heddy Honigmann (Spectacle Theater, NY) - 1996
• The Runner - Amir Naderi  (Film Forum, NY) - 1984
• Uforia - John Binder (Anthology Film Archives, Watch the Skies: Ufology on Screen Screen Slate series) - 1984
• Unstrap Me - George Kuchar (The Roxy, City Dudes blindfolded screening series, NY) - 1968
• Where Evil Dwells - David Wonjarowicz & Tommy Turner (Screen Slate special screening, NY)**

**besides being two of my favorite things I saw this year, these should both top any 'Best Long Island Films Of All Time' lists (and I don't care if one is technically set in Jersey.)

New releases:

1. In Front Of Your Face (Hong Sangsoo)
2. Crimes Of The Future (David Cronenberg)
3. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
4. The Novelist Film (Hong Sangsoo)
5. A Night Of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)
6. Intregalde (Radu Muntean)
7. Return To Seoul (Davy Chou)
8. Ahed's Knee (Nadav Lapid)
9. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
10. Stars At Noon (Claire Denis)

First viewings:

• Eight Deadly Shots (Mikko Niskanen)
• Girls Of The Night (Kinuyo Tanaka)
• The Moon Has Risen (Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Forever A Woman, Aka The Eternal Breasts (Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Love Under The Crucifix (Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Sois Belle Et Tais-Toi (Delphine Seyrig)
• One Way Or Another (Sara Gomez)

Favorite First Viewings:

• De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Verena Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor
• Rewind&Play, Alain Gomis
• Adeus Capitão, Vincent Carelli

New releases:

• The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang Soo)
• Introduction (Hong Sang Soo)
• In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang Soo)
• Brainwashed (Nina Menkes)
• Los Conductos (Camilo Restrepo)
• Outside noise (Ted Fendt)
• A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)
• Neptune Frost (Saul Williams & Anisia Uzeyman)
• The Cathedral (Ricky D’ambrose)
   

First viewings:

• Eternal Breasts (Kinuyo Tanaka)
• Dodsworth (William Wyler)
• Days (Tsai Ming Liang)
• A wife’s heart (Mikio Naruse)
• Black Tuesday (Hugo Fregonese)
• The Raid (Hugo Fregonese)
• The colors (Abbas Kiarostami)
• Untamagiru (Gō Takamine)
• 42/83 No Film (Kurt Kren)
• The Bloody Child (Nina Menkes)
• Profondo Rosso (Dario Argento)
• Blaise Pascal (Roberto Rossellini)
• Isole de fouco (Vittorio de Seta)
• Tapage Nocturne (Catherine Breillat)
• When tomorrow comes (John M. Stahl)
• Symbiotic Earth:how Lynn Margulis rocked the boat and started a scientific revolution (John Feldman)
• Rickshaw man (Hiroshi Inagaki)
• L’emperatore di Roma (Nico D’Alessandria)
• Les Bas-Fonds (Jean Renoir)
• Still/here (Christopher Harris)

These films moved me.
They made me cry, laugh and think. They amazed me.
 

I am grateful that I could find them in a movie theater; sometimes by chance or other times by determination. These films made my year worthwhile. They made me tender company during some uncertain moments of this peculiar 2022.

New releases:

1. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
2. Ambulance (Michael Bay)
3. Tár (Todd Field)
4. Smile (Parker Finn)
5. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
6. Resurrection (Andrew Semans)
7. Riotsville, USA (Sierra Pettengill)
8. Long Line of Ladies (Shaandiin Tome & Rayka Zehtabchi)
9. The Headhunter’s Daughter (Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan)
10. Proof of Self (Maya Daisy Hawke)

First viewings and discoveries:

• First Blood (dir. Ted Kotcheff, 1982)
• Nemesis (dir. Albert Pyun, 1992)
• Matango (dir. Ishirō Honda, 1963)
• Lost Highway (dir. David Lynch, 1997)
• Videophobia (dir. Daisuke Miyazaki, 2019)
• Hit Man (dir. George Armitage, 1972)
• Coonskin (dir. Ralph Bakshi, 1975)
• Inland Empire (dir. David Lynch, 2006)
• Kinetta (dir. Yorks Lanthimos, 2005)
• The Hole (dir. Tsai Ming-liang, 1998)
• One Day Before the Rainy Season (dir. Mani Kaul, 1971)
• Murders in the Zoo (dir. A. Edward Sutherland, 1933)
• Welcome Home, Brother Charles (dir. Jamaa Fanaka, 1975)
• Ramona (dir. Edwin Carewe, 1928)
• L.A. Plays Itself (dir. Fred Halsted, 1972)
• Morvern Callar (dir. Lynne Ramsay, 2002)
• Blue Communiqué (Adam Khalil and Maria Meinild with Walter Scott, 2020)
• BLKNWS (dir. Khalil Joseph, 2019)
• Possession (dir. Andrzej Żuławski, 1981)
• Every Man for Himself (1980)

First viewings (chronological):

• Heaven is Still Far Away (Ryuske Hamaguchi, 2016)
• A String of Pearls (James Hatch, Camille Billops, 1992)
• Anne Devlin (Pat Murphy, 1984)
• On a Paving Stone Mounted (Thaddeus O’Sullivan, 1978)
• Distant Shores (Christopher Harris, 2016)
• Dutchman (Anthony Harvey, 1967)
• Love Jones (Theodore Witcher, 1997)
• Eniaios (Gregory Markopolous, 1997)
• Kleftis i I pragmatikotita (Antouanetta Angelidi, 2001)
• The Pillar of Salt (Burak Cevik, 2018)
• Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1987)
• STOP (2012, Jeff Preiss)
• ABC da Greve (Leon Hirszman, 1990)
• Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern, 1992)
• Danton’s Death (Alice Diop, 2011)
• A Confucious Confusion (Edward Yang, 1994)
• Le Damier (Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda, 1996)
• The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)
• Minamata Revolt: A People’s Quest for Life (Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1973)
• Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski, 2018)

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg)
2. Benediction (Davies)
3. Stars At Noon (Denis)
4. Three Thousand Years of Longing (Miller)
5. Fabian: Going to the Dogs (Graf)
6. The Novelist's Film (Hong)
7. EO (Skolimowski)
8. Armageddon Time (Gray)
9. A Couple (Wiseman)
10. The Eternal Daughter (Hogg)

 
TV/Unreleased (someone release these!): Irma Vep (Assayas), Limbo (Cheang), Master Gardener (Schrader)

First viewings:
In lieu of titles, a few directors whose bodies of work I went through this year, and feel all the more enriched for it:

• Frank Borzage
• Erich von Stroheim
• Jaime Humberto Hermosillo
• Luis Buñuel
• Terence Fisher
• Catherine Breillat 
• Shinji Sômai
• Manoel de Oliveira
• Frederick Wiseman
• Andre de Toth
• James B. Harris
• Valerio Zurlini
• Richard Lester
• Jean Grémillon 
• Shôhei Imamura
• Jean Renoir
• Max Ophüls
• Chor Yuen
• Sohrab Shahid Saless
• Franco Piavoli
• Helmut Käutner
• Ritwik Kumar Ghatak
• Mario Camerini
• Straub-Huillet
   

First viewings:

• Contras’ City (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1969)
• Miss Universe in Peru, (Grupo Chaski, 1982)
• Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997)
• The Night Before The Strike (Chang Dong-hong, Lee Jae-goo, Chang Yoon-hyun, Lee Eun-ki, 1990)
• Simone Barbès ou la vertu (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1980)
• Popsicles (Gloria Camiruaga, 1982)
• Screaming Susan (Betzy Bromberg, 1977)
• You can practically taste it with your eyes (Betzy Bromberg & Lauren Abrams, 1977)
• Untitled 77-A, (Han Ok-Hee, 1977)
• Not Just Tea and Sandwiches - (Miners Campaign Tape Project, 1984)
• Mi aporte (My Contribution) (Sara Gomez, 1972) 
• American Revolution 2 (The Film Group, 1969)
• July Rain (Marlen Khutsiev, 1967)
• Letter to an Unborn Child, (Sepideh Farsi,1988/2018)
• In The Magic Cottage, aka Zombie Cottage (Joe Orr, 1993)
• Is This Fate? (Von wegen 'Schicksal') (Helga Reidemeister, 1979)
• The Sibyls (Le Nemesiache, 1977)
• The Sea Called Upon Us (Le Nemesiache, 1978)
• Cinderella (Le Nemesiache, 1977)

First viewings:

• Cambio de Sexo (1977, dir. Vicente Aranda)
• Dressed in Blue (1983, dir. Antonio Giménez-Rico)
• The Embalmer (1996, dir. S. Torriano Berry)
• Fangs (1974, dir. Art Names)
• Fresh Kill (1994, dir. Shu Lea Cheang)
• Hedy (1966, dir. Andy Warhol)
• Hookers on Davie (1984, dir. Holly Dale + Janis Cole)
• I Know Who Killed Me (2007, dir. Chris Sivertson)
• Pandora’s Mirror (1981, dir. Shaun Costello)
• The Plug Lady (2004, dir. Anthony Saladino)
• Private Pleasures (1985, dir. Debi Sundahl)
• Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985, dir. George Butler)
• Red Lips (1995, dir. Donald Farmer)
• Ricochet (1991, dir. Russell Mulcahy)
• Squalor Motel (1985, dir. Kim Christy)
• Terminal USA (1993, dir. Jon Moritsugu)
• A Town Called Tempest (1963, dir. George Kuchar)
• Transexual Menace (1996, dir. Rosa von Praunheim)
• The Unholy Rollers (1972, dir. Vernon Zimmerman)
• VooDoo Williamson: The Dona of Dance (1996, dir. Vaginal Davis)

First viewings:

To date of submission, I have watched 340 films in 2022. 74 of those films were from this year. The rest were a grab bag of titles screened for work and titles viewed for pleasure. 8 of the 20 are directed by women; half are international films.

• Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, 1946)
• He Ran All the Way (John Berry, 1951) 
• Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Robert Aldrich, 1964)
• Rachel, Rachel (Paul Newman, 1968) 
• Buck and the Preacher (Sidney Poitier, 1972)
• Behindert (Stephen Dwoskin, 1974) 
• Property (Penny Allen, 1979) 
• Body Heat (Lawrence Kasdan, 1981) 
• Chronopolis (Piotr Kamler, 1982) 
• Diary for my Children (Márta Mészáros, 1984) 
• Lovers of the Lord of the Night (Isela Vega, 1986) 
• Celia (Ann Turner, 1989)
• Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern, 1993) 
• Floating Life (Clara Law, 1996)
• Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997) 
• The Dreamlife of Angels (Erick Zonca, 1998)
• Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
• Oh (Anouk De Clercq, 2010) 
• Lemon (Janicza Bravo, 2017)
• What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, 2021)

New Releases:

1. Kimi
2. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood
3. El Gran Movimiento
4. Friends and Strangers
5. Wood and Water
6. Crimes of the Future
7. The Tsugua Diaries
8. Lvx Æterna 
9. Onoda
10. Armageddon Time

 
First viewings and discoveries:

• Refutation of All the Judgments, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film “The Society of the Spectacle”
• Glass Life
• Motorcyclist’s Happiness Won’t Fit Into His Suit
• Arnulf Rainer
• The Daytrippers
• The Hidden
• The Hips of J.W.
• The Girl Chewing Gum
• Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow
• Armageddon (1977)
• Withnail & I
• I Like It Like That
• Evil Under the Sun
• The Prodigal Son
• Dear Mother, I’m All Right
• Night World 
• The Crimson Curtain
• Silence and Cry
• Running on Empty
• Frame

All seen in theatres, in the order I saw the films:
(I mixed old and new films)
 

• The Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) Allan Dwan 
• Passion (1954) Allan Dwan 
• Silver Lode (1954) Allan Dwan (first time in a theatre)
• Tenesse’s Partner (1955) Allan Dwan (first time in a theatre)
• Escape to Burma (1955) Allan Dwan 
• While Paris Sleeps (1932) Allan Dwan 
• The River’s Edge (1957) Allan Dwan 
• Frontier Marshall (1939) Allan Dwan 
• Enchanted Island (1958) Allan Dwan 
• East Side, West Side (1927) Allan Dwan 
• Robin Hood (1922) Allan Dwan 
• Chances (1931) Allan Dwan 
• Manhattan Madness (1916) Allan Dwan 
• Stage Struck (1925) Allan Dwan 
• A Night of Knowing Nothing (2021) Payal Kapadia 
• The Tingler (1959) William Castle
• Working Girls (1986) Lizzie Borden 
• She’s Funny That Way (2014) Peter Bogdanovich
• Directed by John Ford (1971/2006) Peter Bogdanovich (2006 version for the first time)
• The Batman (2022) Matt Reeves
• Viens Je T’Emmène (2021) Alain Guiraudie
• Koibumi / Love Letter (1953) Kinuyo Tanaka
• Doraibu Ma Kâ / Drive My Car (2021) Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
• Solo (1970) Jean-Pierre Mocky
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022) Véréna Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor
• The Unstable Object II (2022) Daniel Eisenberg
• À la Mémoire du Rock (1963) François Reichenbach
• The Cathedral (2021) Ricky d’Ambrose
• La Jauría (2022) Andrés Ramírez Pulido
• Schlussakord (1936) Detlef Sierk
• 2 Lizards (2020) Meriem Bennani, Orian Barki (seen at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto)
• Canyon Passage (1946) Jacques Tourneur
• Showing Up (2022) Kelly Reichardt
• Ni De Lian / Your Face (2018) Tsai Ming-liang
• As Bestas / The Beasts (2022) Rodrigo Sorogoyen
• Jang-e jahani sevom / World War III (2022) Houman Seyyedi
• Vera (2022) Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel
• Mars Exalté (2022) Jean-Sébastien Chauvin
   

New releases:

For me, it's rather archaic to equate the best of the year with U.S. theatrical premieres when the Internet offers so many international options. The list below is alphabetical, not ranked.

• The Case of the Vanishing Gods (Ross Lipman)
• The Fabelmans
• Hit the Road
• Memoria
• Men
• Potemkinistii (Radu Jude)
• The Runner (Amir Naderi)
• Stars at Noon
• Tár
• 3,000 Years of Longing

New releases:

• Blonde
• Holy Spider
• The Good Boss
• Inu-Oh
• Jackass Forever
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• Resurrection
• God Forbid: The Sex Scandal That Brought Down a Dynasty
• Funny Pages
• Top Gun: Maverick

First viewings: 

• American Pop
• White of the Eye
• Tales from the Hood
• Shattered (1991)
• Stay Tuned
• The Forest of Love: Deep Cut
• Dead & Buried
• Analife
• The Molly Maguires
• Evil Dead Trap
• Serie Noire
• Wolfen
• The Brink’s Job
• Endangered Species
• L’amour Braque
• The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane
• Freeway
• The Stendhal Syndrome
• I Shot Andy Warhol
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
• Desert Blue

New Releases:

• Los Conductos
• El Gran Movimiento
• The African Desperate
• Expedition Content
• Friends and Strangers
• The Girl and the Spider
• Crimes of the Future
• Blue Island
• Leonor Will Never Die
• In Front of your Face

First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Soft Fiction (Chick Strand, 1979)
• Tokyo Twilight (Yasujiro Ozu, 1957)
• Privilege (Yvonne Rainer, 1990)
• Subarnarekha (Ritwik Ghatak, 1965)
• About Some Meaningless Events (Mostafa Derkaoui, 1974)
• Adoption (Márta Mészáros, 1975)
• Kyiv frescoes (Sergei Parajanov, 1966)
• Mandabi (Ousmane Sembène, 1968)
• The Moon Has Risen (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955)
• Emerald (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2007)
• In the heat of the night (Norman Jewison, 1967)
• The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, 2019)
• No No Nooky TV (Barbara Hammer, 1987)
• The place which isn't necessarily wrong (Hiromi Saiki, 1996)
• Miss Universe in Peru (Grupo Chaski, 1982)

Exhibitions / works:

• Fujiko Nakaya. Nebel Leben @ Haus der Kunst
• Tony Cokes. Fragments, or just Moments @ Haus der Kunst
• Nguyen Trinh Thi - And They Die a Natural Death @ Documenta
• No Master Territories @ The Haus der Kulturen der Welt
• Carolee Schneemann: Body Politics @ The Barbican

New releases:

1. Tár
2. Jackass Forever
3. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
4. Nope
5. We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
6. The Girl and the Spider
7. Great Freedom
8. Ambulance
9. Stars At Noon / Both Sides of the Blade
10. Aftersun

First viewings:

• Pumping Iron II: The Women (dir. George Butler, 1985)
• Love Under the Crucifix (dir. Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955)
• Fucking Åmål (dir. Lukas Moodysson, 1998)
• Girl Internet Show: A Kati Kelli Mixtape (dir. Jordan Wippell, Jane Schoenbrun, 2022)
• City of Lost Souls (dir. Rosa von Praunheim, 1983)
• Regrouping (dir. Lizzie Borden, 1976)
• Antoinette Zwirchmayr Program, Anthology Film Archives (2014-2022)
• Je vous salue, Sarajevo + Notre musique (dir. Jean-Luc Godard 1993, 2004)
• Kisapmata (dir. Mike DeLeon, 1981)
• Leones (dir. Jasmin López, 2013)

New releases (unranked):

• Nope
• Crimes of the Future
• Resurrection
• The Fabelmans
• Decision To Leave
• Jackass Forever
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Armageddon Time
• The Outfit
• We're All Going to the World's Fair

First viewings (unranked):

• The Horror of Dracula (1958, Fisher)
• Three Days of the Condor (1975, Pollack)
• Halloween III: Season of the Witch  (1982, Wallace)
• Dark Waters (2019, Haynes)
• The Innocents (1961, Clayton)
• The Empty Man (2020, Prior)
• The Quick and The Dead (1995, Raimi)
• REC (2007, Balagueró and Plaza)
• The Village (2004, Shyamalan)
• The Atomic Cafe (1982, Rafferty, Loader, and Rafferty)
• Winter Light (1963, Bergman)
   

New releases (unranked):

• Decision To Leave
• Saint Omer
• Petite Maman
• Crimes of The Future
• Top Gun: Maverick
• All The Beauty and The Bloodshed
• Happening
• Tar
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Return to Seoul

 
First viewings and discoveries:

• Caught by Max Ophüls
• The House of Mirth by Terence Davies
• A Nos Amours by Maurice Pialat
• The Lady from Shanghai by Orson Welles
• Independencia by Raya Martin
• Bayaning Third World by Mike de Leon
• In A Lonely Place by Nicholas Ray
• Tales from the Gimli Hospital by Guy Maddin
• Mother Joan of the Angels by Jerzy Kawalerowicz
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Joseph Mankiewicz
• Two For The Road by Stanley Donen

“I’d like to shout out the Video Vortex at Alamo Drafthouse Raleigh for making accessible two of my favorite first-time watches—Independencia, House of Mirth + the work of Kenneth Anger—when I couldn’t find them on the arthouse streamers earlier this year.)”

New releases:

• Saint Omer
• De Humanis Corporis Fabrica
• The Eternal Daughter

New releases (unranked):

• Nope
• The Tale of the King Crab
• Riotsville, USA
• Crimes of The Future
• Vortex
• Saint Omer
• Happening
• The Cathedral

First viewings (chronological):

• Lucie Loses Her Horse, 2021, Claude Schmitz
• Game Keepers Without Game, 2009, Emily Wardill EMAF Osnabrück
• Hétpróba/Seven Trials, 1982, Dóra Maurer EMAF Osnabrück
• Introduction to the End of an Argument, 1990, Jayce Salloum and Elia Suleiman ?EMAF Osnabrück
• Struggle in New York, 1976, Zoran Popović
• Terra Femme, 2021, Courtney Stephens
• Soft Fiction, 1979, Chick Strand
• The Damned, 1969, Luchino Visconti
• Regrouping, 1976, Lizzie Borden
• Never Rest/Unrest, 2020, Tiffany Sia
• MURDER and murder, 1996, Yvonne Rainer
• L.A. Plays Itself, 2003, Thom Andersen

First viewings and discoveries:

1. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
2. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
3. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
4. Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu, 1953)
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar Wai, 2000)
6. 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
7. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, 1998)
8. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
9. Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
10. Singin' in the Rain (Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, 1951)

New releases (unranked):

• The Godfather reissue
• Benediction (Terence Davies)
• The Cairo Conspiracy (Tarik Saleh)
• Bardo (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
• The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
• The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
• All Quiet on Western Front (Edward Berger)
• The Whale (Darren Aronofsky)
• Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
• Tár (Todd Field)

First viewings and discoveries:

• The World's Greatest Sinner (Timothy Carey, 1962)
• The Seventh Continent (Michael Haneke, 1989)
• A Simple Death (Alexander Kaidanovsky, 1985), a Tarkovskyan adaption of Ivan Ilyrich

First viewings and discoveries:

• John C. Depp, II vs. Amber Laura Heard (trial live stream: Fairfax County Circuit Court, 2022)
• Home Suite (film: John Smith, 1993-94)
• Alice in Russialand (film: Ken Russell, 1995)
• Casa Malaparte (journey to: 2022)
• Luis Carricaburu (film: Manuela De Laborde, 2020) 
• Discontent (alternative trailer: Chris Petit, 2023)
• From Signal to Decay: Volume 1 (exhibition of video, sound, drawings: Trevor Mathison, 2022)
• For Marx... (film: Svetlana Baskova, 2013)
• The Lack (podcast: 2021-)
• Mutzenbacher (film: Ruth Beckermann, 2022)
• After Time (film work-in-progress: Therese Henningsen, 2023)
• The Queue (mourning: the masses + the media, London, 2022)
• Earwig (film: Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2021)
• A Spoonful of Sugar (karaoke: Ilana Blumberg at Biddle Bros, London, 2022)
• The Rehearsal (series: Nathan Fielder, 2022)
• Police Mortality (film: Anti-Banality Union, 2013)
• Jean-Luc Godard insisting his publicist make it clear that the choice to end his own life was not due to illness, but because he was 'exhausted’ 

First viewings:

• Muriel, or the Time of Return (dir. Alain Resnais, 1963) seen at Metrograph
• Limits of Vision (dir. Lauren Harrison, 2022), world premiere at Museum of the Moving Image, during First Look 

A pair of mind-expanding works, playfully creating dynamic new forms to express the inner lives of their heroines; a widow/antique dealer revisited by her romantic past in Resnais's masterpiece, and a 1970s suburban London "housewife" whose obsession with dust reveals much more in Lauren Harrison's endlessly surprising animation, which premiered at MoMI's First Look festival.

New releases:

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• The Woman King
• Decision to Leave
• We're All Going to the World's Fair
• Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
• The Banshees of Inisherin
• Crimes of the Future
• Aftersun
• Nope
• Elvis

 
First Viewings and Discoveries (unranked):

1. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee)
2. One Sings, The Other Doesn't (Agnes Varda)
3. Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis)
4. A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick)
5. Running on Empty (Sydney Lumet)
6. I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)
7. Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara)
8. The Fall (Tarsem Singh)
9. In the Realm of the Senses
10. Shocker (Wes Craven)
11. Matinee (Joe Dante)
12. Young Soul Rebels (Isaac Julien)
13. Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita)
14. Talk Radio (Oliver Stone)
15. Sudden Impact (Clint Eastwood)
16. The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg)
17. History of the World: Part 1 (Mel Brooks)
18. Gilda Live (Mike Nichols)
19. Ricochet (Russell Mulcahy)
20. Bedevil (Tracey Moffatt)

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future
2. The Novelist’s Film
3. Claydream
4. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
5. Evangelion 3.0+1.01 Thrice Upon a Time
6. Flux Gourmet
7. Neptune Frost
8. The Cathedral
9. Stars at Noon
10. Vortex

 
Favorite first viewings:

• The animated shorts of Walerian Borowczyk
• 1970s animated Clairol Herbal Essence Shampoo commercials
• Kind Hearts by Claes and Rochette
• The Devil’s Eye by Ingmar Bergman
• The Ladies Club by Janet Greek
• Scenes Seen with Allen Jones, by Michael Blackwood and Christian Blackwood
• Lady in a Cage by Walter Grauman
• Crestone by Marnie Hertzler
• Space Firebird 2772 by Taku Sugiyama
• Pyaasa by Guru Dutt
   

First viewings and discoveries:

• The Orchestra (Zbigniew Rybczynski, 1990)
• the (live) camerawork and sound (with stagework) of Hamlet as performed by Schaubühne Berlin (Thomas Ostermeier, 2008-ongoing?)
• Dangerous Liaisons (Stephen Frears, 1988)
• Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders, 1987)
• I'm Here (Spike Jonze, 2010)
• Is There Sex After Death? (Jeanne & Alan Abel, 1971)
• Spectres of the Spectrum (Craig Baldwin, 1999)
• A Letter to Black Men (Kiosa Sukami, 2021)
• Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life (Peter Capaldi, 1993)
• Love's Presentation AKA Fourteen Poems of CP Cavafy Chosen and Illustrated by David Hockney (James Scott, 1966)
• Artful History: A Restoration Comedy (Jason Simon & Mark Dion, 1987)
• Yellow Scream (Kim Beom, 2012)
• Teenie Weenie Boppie (Kim Gordon, Katie Erdman, Chris Habib, 1997)
• Speedy (Ted Wilde, 1928)
• Dough (Mika Rottenberg, 2005-2006)
• Three Transitions (Peter Campus, 1973)
• A Feast of Man (Caroline Golum, 2017)
• Zupa (Soup) (Zbigniew Rybczynski, 1974)
• Late Night Shopping (Saul Metzstein, 2001)
• Super Mario Movie (Cory Arcangel & Paper Rad, 2005)

New releases:

• Barbarian, Zach Cregger
• Devil’s Peak, Simon Liu
• Nazarbazi, Maryam Tafakory
• A Night of Knowing Nothing, Payal Kapadia
• Nope, Jordan Peele
• Rock Bottom Riser, Fern Silva
• TÁR, Todd Field
• Triangle of Sadness, Ruben Östlund
• We Had the Day Bonsoir, Narimane Mari
• Wisdom Gone Wild, Rea Tajiri

First viewings:

• Amisk (Alanis Obomsawin, 1977, Canada)
• Atlantis (Valentyn Vasyanovych, 2019, Ukraine)
• Black on White (Jörn Donner, 1968, Finland)
• The Blazing Sun (Youssef Chahine, 1954, Egypt)
• Elixir (Amy Halpern, 2012, US)
• ENIAIOS cycles 1–3 + 12–14 (Gregory Markopoulos, 1947–91)
• Free Time (Dainius Liškevičius, 2012, Lithuania)
• Icarus (after Amelia) (Margaret Salmon, 2021, UK)
• Integration Report 1 (Madeleine Anderson, 1960, US)
• Introduction to the End of an Argument (Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman, 1990, Canada)
• Lady Lazarus (Sandra Lahire, 1991, UK)
• A Lover and Killer of Colour (Wanjiru Kinyanjui, 1988, Germany)
• Managa Bar/Rustam's Habitat (Svetlana Romanova, 2017, Russia)
• Merry Working Class (Bojana Marijan, 1969, Yugoslavia)
• Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991, US/UK)
• Seven Songs from the Tundra (Markku Lehmuskallio & Anastasia Lapsui, 2000, Finland)
• Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000, Spain/UK/US)
• Shari (Nao Yoshigai, 2021, Japan)
• Sketches of Myahk (Koichi Onishi, 2012, Japan)
• Struggle in New York (Zoran Popović, 1977, US)

New releases:

1. Leonora addio (Paolo Taviani)
2. Intergalde (Radu Muntean)
3. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
4. The Afterlight (Charlie Shackleton, Charlie Lyne)
5. Mad God (Phil Tippett)
6. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
7. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
8. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
9. Official Competition (Gaston Duprat, Mariano, Cohn)
10. A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
11. RRR (S.S. Rajamouli)
12. Nope (Jordan Peele)

First viewings and discoveries:

• A Thousand Billion Dollars (Henri Verneuil, 1982)
• The Hireling (Alan Bridges, 1973)
• Flaming Ears (Ursula Purrer, A. Hans Scheirl, Dietmar Schipek, 1992)
• The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1985)
• Babobilicons (Daina Krumins, 1982)
• Sulfur (Derek Jarman, 1973))
• The Twonky (Arch Oboler, 1953)
• Figures in a Landscape (Joseph Losey, 1969)
• Arnold (George Fenady, 1973)
• Honeycomb (Carlos Saura, 1969)
• Robot (S. Shankar, 2010)
• Corpse Eaters (Donald R. Passmore, Klaus Vetter, 1974)
• The Balcony Movie (Pawel Lozinski, 2021)
• The Fan (Edward Bianchi, 1981) 
• Scenes from Under Childhood: section 3 (Stan Brakhage, 1969)
• Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2004)
• La tia Alejandra (Arturo Ripstein, 1980)
• The Dead Season (Savva Kulish, 1968)
• Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)
• Sting of Death (William Grefe, 1966)

New releases (unranked):

• Last Flight Home
• Moonage Daydream
• Aftersun
• Tár
• The Eternal Daughter
• EO
• Happening
• Funny Pages
• Neptune Frost
• One Fine Morning

First viewings:

• Normal Love (Jack Smith)
• John Wilson’s Program at the Roxy
• King Lear (Godard)
• Betty Blue
• Ron Rice’s Senseless
• Bitter Moon

Some 2022 Releases I Liked a Lot

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
• Both Sides of the Blade (Claire Denis)
• The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
• In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
• Magic Spot (Charlie Roxburgh)
• Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
• RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)

Best First Viewings
 
A great year for first-time viewings. Canonical classics that lived up to the hype. Obscurities and cult items that opened up whole new worlds for me. Folks, let’s hear it for movies.

• The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
• Buddies (Arthur J. Bressan Jr., 1985)
• Edvard Munch (Peter Watkins, 1974)
• Entranced Earth (Terra em Transe) (Glauber Rocha, 1967)
• Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979)
• Forbidden Letters (Arthur J. Bressan Jr., 1979)
• Hellaware (Michael Bilandic, 2013)
• High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
• The Iron Rose (Jean Rollin, 1973)
• Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders, 1976)
• Moolaadé (Ousmane Sembene, 2004)
• My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava, 1936)
• Odd Couple (Lau Kar-Wing, 1979)
• Rape (Yoko Ono, John Lennon, 1969)
• Reflections of Evil (Damon Packard, 2002)
• Sound and Fury (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1988)
• Squalor Motel (Kim Christy, 1985)
• The Three Superboys Strike Again (Natuk Baytan, 1976)
• A Time for Dying (Budd Boetticher, 1969)
• Who Killed Teddy Bear (Joseph Cates, 1965)

New releases:

1. EO
2. Petite Maman
3. The Eternal Daughter
4. Decision to Leave
5. Lingui, the Sacred Bonds
6. Aftersun
7. Fire of Love

 
First viewings and discoveries:

1. Él (Luis Buñuel, 1953)
2. Forever a Woman (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955)
3. Una familia de tantas (A Family like Many Others, Alejandro Galindo, 1949)
4. Deveti krug (The Ninth Circle, France Štiglic, 1960)
5. Die riese nach Lyon (Blind Spot, Claudia von Alemann, 1980)
6. The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1962)
7. L’amour à la mer (Guy Gilles, 1965)
8. Dans la nuit (Charles Vanel, 1929)
9. Pyaasa (Guru Dutt, 1957)
10. Tri (Three, Aleksandr Petrović, 1965)
11. Love Under the Crucifix (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1962)
12. Cuatro contra el mundo (Four Against the World, Alejandro Galindo, 1950)
13. Apache Drums (Hugo Fregonese, 1951)
14. Ich bei tag und du bei nacht (I By Day, You By Night, Ludwig Berger, 1932)
15. La souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet (Germaine Dulac, 1923)
     

New releases:

• Elvis (Baz Luhrmann)
• Vortex (Gaspar Noe)
• The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)
• Benediction (Terence Davies)
• Ambulance (Michael Bay)
• Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
• The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
• TÁR (Todd Field)
• Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg)
• The Munsters (Rob Zombie)

First viewings:

• At Long Last Love (Peter Bogdanovich, 1975)
• An Unsuitable Job for a Woman (Chris Petit, 1982)
• The Appointment (Lindsey C. Vickers, 1981)
• Cash on Demand (Quentin Lawrence, 1961)
• Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978)
• Daisy Miller (Peter Bogdanovich, 1974)
• L’Escargot noir (Claude Chabrol, 1988)
• The Farmer (David Berlatsky, 1977)
• Five Graves to Cairo (Billy Wilder, 1943)
• The Greenaway Alphabet (Saskia Boddeke, 2017)
• Hooper (Hal Needham, 1978)
• Limbo (Soi Cheang, 2021)
• The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh, 1946)
• Murder, He Says (George Marshall, 1945)
• Nobody’s Fool (Robert Benton, 1994)
• Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
• Track of the Cat (William A. Wellman, 1954)
• Trackdown (Richard T. Heffron, 1976)
• Twilight (Robert Benton, 1998)
• Warning Shot (Buzz Kulik, 1967)

I watched very little as I was working so intently in 2022 - mostly harsh reality to save up for a much needed Writers’ Guild Strike. I recognize as I send this in that the films that resonated with me most in 2022 had to do with not just diagnosing inequities and oppression but actively breaking with oppressive forces of the past. The possibility of imagining that felt so much more inspiring than the dull trodding of things made that merely diagnose the powerful have won as misguided, toothless, pointless “satire.”
 

TraumaZone - Adam Curtis tells us yet again that our future is not a conspiracy, but one that increasingly looks like Russia starting in 1985, an ambient history portrait of a nation so traumatized it cannot form any effective political resistance against an overnight dismantling of its ideals and public services into the hands of a pack of greedy, corrupt, violent oligarchs that leaves its populace too scared to engage in politics. What am I also describing here..?
 

Beyond Hypothermia - a 1996 Hong Kong hitwoman thriller with all the dreamlike action no other era has ever produced, but also the melancholy & isolation of the rise of globalism, dissolution of identity, and the inevitable handover of Hong Kong. 30 years later I am still discovering new films from 90s Hong Kong that deliver never-ending highs.
 

Nanny - Nikyatu Jusu’s film’s only true genre is the filmmaker’s own. Utterly unique, and about the folklore immigrants carry into America. Jusu makes a date sing as much as her horror elements. And Rina Yang’s cinematography perfectly loves and looks askance at NYC.
 

RRR - 20 minutes into this movie I kept thinking there’s no way they can top what I just witnessed. Every 20 minutes for the next 3 hours they do. There are arguments that Rajamouli is conservative at heart, but he understands the catharsis of showing imperialists getting fucking obliterated. He also may be one of the best shooters of movie stars working today. Weird fact: the showstopping “Naatu Naatu” scene was filmed in Ukraine shortly before the war.
 

Top Gun: Maverick - formally exquisite and pleasurable but deeply melancholy. The entire movie is a fetish farewell to the beautiful things the US Empire made: fighter jets, gas-powered motorcycles, tough single moms who sail catamarans, the P51 mustang… And ultimately, movies and their human stars.
 

Knights (Albert Pyun) - cinema’s ultimate underdog passed away weeks ago. Here he was yet again ahead of Hollywood’s action curve, bringing Tsui Hark’s wuxia style to Monument Valley, defacing John Ford’s legacy with cyborgs and wu-shu. 
 

Nope - the quality I look for most in movies in this era is how memorable they. I haven’t stopped thinking about this film since I saw it. Peele is particularly gifted at single images that exude bottomless occult significance.  It’s deeply, deeply weird in the most pleasant way. And like anything that you really have to gaze into, you can’t stop thinking about it, it starts to gaze back at you.
 

Crayon Shin Chan: The Adult Empire Strikes Back  - I had never seen this anime film from the long running series made in 2001. It’s about adults getting trapped in a nostalgic theme park that recreates a Japan that is long gone, regressing to the comforts of their youth, while the rebellious child protagonist and friends drag them screaming back away from the mind poison and recognize we must embrace change in the future. 
 

Andor - a perfect heist story: a 66-year-old veteran screenwriter sneaks into Disney and gets them to pervert their precious, failing billion-dollar “IP" into Marxist praxis.  Does more with a single brick than Gavras does with 10,000 fireworks in the muddled, reactionary Athena. Makes all other Star Wars films look like religious wartime propaganda. Unreal. They even snuck a Fuck 12 reference into Disney’s streaming service.
 

JiDion visits a civil war reenactment on YouTube - I will just say this made me cry laughing
 

First Viewings, in chronological order:

• French Cancan (1955)
• Les bonnes femmes (1960)
• Lust for Ecstasy (1963)
• Peppermint Frappé (1967)
• Dyn Amo (1972)
• Betty Tells Her Story (1972)
• Duvidha (1973)
• Woman of the Ganges (1974)
• Regrouping (1976)
• Diary of an African Nun (1977)
• Org (1979)
• Babylon (1980)
• Simone Barbès or Virtue (1980)
• The House of Lost Women (1983)
• Joan of Arc of Mongolia (1989)
• Flowers of Shanghai (1998)
• Autumn Tale (1998)
• Happy Hour (2015)
• The Chambermaid (2018)
• Outside Noise (2021)

New releases (unranked):

• The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)
• The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)
• Corsage (Marie Kreutzer)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
• We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Great Freedom (Sebastian Miese)
• Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
• Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
• Please Baby Please (Amanda Kramer)

First viewings:

• Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan 2019)
• Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)
• Indian Summer (Valerio Zurlini, 1972)
• Property (Penny Allen,1987)
• The Green Years (Paulo Rocha, 1963)
• Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock,1964)
• Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)
• Spree (Eugene Kotlyarenko, 2020)
• Terre Femme [live performance] Courtney Stephens, 2021)
• Wildwood, NJ (Carol Weaks Cassidy & Ruth Leitman, 1994)
• Short Stay (Ted Fendt, 2016)
   

First viewings and discoveries:

• Il Demonio (dir. Brunello Rondi, 1963)
• The Spook Who Sat By The Door (dir. Ivan Dixon, 1973)
• Report to the Commissioner (dir. Milton Katselas, 1975)
• Curse of the Dog God (dir. Shunya Itō, 1977)
• Violette Nozière (dir. Claude Chabrol, 1978)
• All That Jazz (dir. Bob Fosse, 1979)
• Tell Me A Riddle (dir. Lee Grant, 1980)
• The Appointment (dir. Lindsey C. Vickers, 1981)
• Missing (dir. Costa-Gavras, 1982)
• Agnes of God (dir. Norman Jewison, 1985)
• Iron Angels (dir. Teresa Woo, 1987)
• Walker (dir. Alex Cox, 1987)
• Dream Demon (dir. Harley Cokeliss, 1988)
• Benedetta (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 2021)

New releases:

1. RRR
2. Belle
3. Dead for a Dollar
4. The Girl and the Spider
5. Ponniyin Selvan: I
6. Sycorax
7. Jackass Forever
8. Kimi
9. Accident Man: Hitman's Holiday
10. Kantara

First Viewings and Discoveries:

1. The Magnificent Scoundrels (1991)
2. Pushpaka Vimana (1987)
3. It's a Flickering Life (2021)
4. The Catch (1983)
5. Buffalo Bills TikTok that excerpts a Stan Brakhage interview
6. A Day Is a Day (2022, Whitney Biennial)
7. Edwin Diaz entrance for New York Mets (8/7/2022)
8. Good-bye, My Lady (1956)
9. Part Time Wife (1930)
10. Where's Officer Tuba? (1986)
11. Tamako in Moratorium (2013)
12. The Sunshine Girl (1963)
13. Spy Games (1999)
14. Slappy and the Stinkers (1998)
15. Banana Cop (1984)
16. When Marnie Was There (2014)
17. Inner Outer Space (2021)
18. Moondram Pirai (1982)
19. JLG/JLG (1994)
20. Nouvelle Vague (1990)

New releases:

1. The Novelist's Film (Hong Sang-soo)
2. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
3. Il buco (Michaelangelo Frammartino)
4. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
5. A New Old Play (Qiu Jiongjiong)
6. RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)
7. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)
8. The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher)
9. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
10. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)

 
First viewings and discoveries:

1. Ruggles of Red Gap (1935, Leo McCarey)
2. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, Howard Hawks)
3. Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948, Max Ophuls)
4. L’Argent (1983, Robert Bresson)
5. The Heiress (1949, William Wyler)
6. Flowers of Shanghai (1998, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
7. Once Upon a Time in China (1991, Tsui Hark)
8. The Docks of New York (1928, Josef von Sternberg)
9. The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964, Pier Paolo Pasolini)
10. Tree of Knowledge (1981, Nils Malmros)
11. Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, John Carpenter)
12. The Seventh Victim (1943, Mark Robson)
13. Once Upon a Time in China II (1992, Tsui Hark)
14. Avanti! (1972, Billy Wilder)
15. Amanda (2018, Mikhaël Hers)
16. Pom Poko (1994, Takahata Isao)
17. La libertad (2001, Lisandro Alonso)
18. Deja Vu (2006, Tony Scott)
19. Choose Me (1984, Alan Rudolph)
20. Face/Off (1997, John Woo)
     

First viewings:

I saw way more movies than this, but these are the ones burning in my memory
 

• Tsugua Diaries, Maureen Fazendeiro & Miguel Gomes
• Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon
• My Beautiful Laundrette, Stephen Frears
• Tage in Quiberon, Emily Atef
• Fresh Kill, Shu Lea Cheang
• A Brighter Summer Day, Edward Yang
• Notebook on Cities and Clothes, Wim Wenders
• Lady Vengeance, Park Chan-wook
• Taste of Cherry, Abbas Kiarostami
• The Sting, George Roy Hill
• Suzanne, Suzanne, Camille Billops
• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Laura Poitras
• When There Was Water, Nicole Otero
• 38, Daniel Chew and Micaela Durand
• No Homo, DIS
• Pray, Korakrit Arunanondchai & Alex Gvojic
   

New releases (unranked):

My caveat: I have not yet seen EO, Aftersun, Babylon, The Woman King, Riotsville USA, Pearl, RRR and others. Any or many of the above could *totally* rearrange my list. 

• Decision to Leave (Park Chan-Wook)
• Good Night Oppy (Ryan White)
• Tár (Todd Field)
• The Batman (Matt Reeves)
• The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg)
• Bardo (Alejandro González Iñárritu)
• Fire of Love (Sara Dosa)
• The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier)
• Navalny (Daniel Roher)
• Everything Everywhere All at Once (The Daniels)

PS. I have to salute THE DEEP END (on Freeform/Hulu from director Jon Kasbe), a verite mini-series that's as cinematically and dramatically compelling as the best fiction films of the year. Just plunge in and binge the four eps of gorgeously shot (by Kasbe and David Bolen) and constructed storytelling. 

I haven’t seen any good movies since years 
Last good films were: Reygadas, Costa and Apitchatpongs movies.
I like their works
That’s all what I can say to you.
Best
Bela 

Sent from my iPhone

New releases:

1. Costa Brava, Lebanon
2. Sirens
3. Decision to Leave
4. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
5. Hit the Road
6. Neptune Frost
7. Clara Sola
8. Piggy
9. Barbarian
10. Anonymous Club

First viewings:

1. Office Killer (Cindy Sherman, 1997)
2. The Velvet Vampire (Stephanie Rothman, 1971)
3. Souha, Surviving Hell (Randa Chahal Sabbag, 2001) 
4. Beats of the Antonov (Hajooj Kuka, 2014)
5. Civilized People (Randa Chahal Sabbag, 1999)

New releases:

• Radical Thought (Bradley Eros)
• Jackass Forever (Jeff Tremaine)
• Regrouping (Lizzie Borden)
• Fabian: Going To The Dogs (Dominik Graf)
• Three Thousand Years Of Longing (George Miller)
• Ambulance (Michael Bay)
• Expedition Content (Veronika Kusumaryati, Ernst Karel)
• Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)
• After Yang (Kogonada)
• Avatar: The Way Of Water (James Cameron) 

Note: I haven’t seen AVATAR yet. This vote is kind of a DUH!!!! vote + a protest against the fact that we do these lists in late November/early December. Why? Why do we do this? Why not wait until February?

First viewings:

• 42/83: No. Film (Kurt Kren, 1983) – Seen In 16mm
• Balaoo The Demon Baboon (Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1913) – Seen In 35mm
• Blood Brothers (Mike Diana, 1989) – Seen Digitally
• Comment Ça Va (Jean-Luc Godard & Anne-Marie Miéville, 1976) – Seen In 16mm
• A Corner In Wheat (Dw Griffith, 1909) – Seen In 16mm 
• Day Of Wrath (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1943) – Seen In 35mm
• Deadly Illusion (Larry Cohen, 1987) – Seen In 35mm
• El Cafetal (General Picture – Episode 11) + Written On The Wind (General Picture – Episode 12) Double Bill (David Wharry, 1981/1983) – Seen Digitally
• Happy Feet– (George Miller, 2006) – Seen In 16mm
• Kuichisan – (Maiko Endo, 2011) – Seen In 35mm
• Max Turnheim (Friedl Kubelka Vom Gröller, 2002-2021) – Seen In 16mm
• Messiah (William Klein, 1999) – Seen In 35mm
• No More Excuses (Robert Downey Sr., 1968) – Seen In 35mm
• Protéa (Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1913) – Seen Digitally
• Remembrance: A Portrait Study (Edward Owens, 1967) – Seen In 16mm
• Seven Thunders (Hugo Fregonese, 1957) – Seen In 35mm
• Susan After The Sugar Harvest (Peter Robinson, 1970) – Seen In 16mm
• A Tale Of Cinema (Hong Sang-Soo, 2005) – Seen In 35mm
• Zombie (Lucio Fulci, 1980) – Seen In 35mm

Note: I’d seen four of these films before this year (the Downey, the Dreyer, Godard/Mieville, and the Griffith) but they felt new to me—and as necessary—as anything/everything on this list. I also tried to list only celluloid screenings—they continue to become more and more rare—but I had to make an exception for the revelatory PROTEA by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, an incredible David Wharry double bill, and Mike Diana’s insane—and perfect—BLOOD BROTHERS. 

New release:
Fire of Love (2022) Sara Dosa
 
First viewing:
E-Ticket (2019) Simon Liu

Misc. moving image culture discovery:
Finding out that amateur sleuths believe Joe Gibbons and Tony Oursler are the thieves responsible for the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist and that they leave clues about it in their work. The theorists suspect the heist took 81 minutes because Gibbons and Oursler were filming a movie of the robbery. If only!

First viewings:

• Wild Ones (Joyce Chopra, 1965) 
• Mai Zetterling’s Night Games (1966) and Scrubbers (1982)
• I Like Life A Lot (Kati Macskássy, 1977)
• Madame X: An Absolute Ruler (Ulrike Ottinger, Tabea Blumenschein, 1978)
• Panelstory or Birth of a Community (Vera Chytilová, 1980)
• The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1984) 
• Magdalena Viraga (Nina Menkes, 1986) 
• Michael Roemer’s Vengeance Is Mine (1984) and The Plot Against Harry (1989)
• Kamikaze Hearts (Juliette Bashore, 1986) 
• Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988) 
• La Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000) 
• Thirteen (Catherine Hardwicke, 2013) 
• Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004) 

New releases:

1. Everything Everywhere All At Once 
2. Tár
3. Bones and All
4. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 
5. The Northman
6. Nope
7. Decision to Leave 
8. Bodies Bodies Bodies
9. Banshees of Inisherin
10. Resurrection 

 
First viewings:

1. A Hard’s Day Night (1964)
2. Small Axe: Mangrove (2020)
3. Paprika (2006)
4. Memories of Murder (2003)
5. Sorority Row (2009) 
6. Se7en (1995)
7. May (2002)
8. The Fly (1986)
9. House (1977)
10. Frenzy (1972) 
11. Uptight (1968)
12. Jackass: The Movie (2002)
13. Summer of Soul (2021)
14. Black Christmas (1974)
15. The Descent (2005)
16. The Faculty (1998)
17. Fatal Attraction (1987)
18. Evil Dead (1981)
19. Amazing Grace (2018)
20. B.A.P.S (1997)

New releases:

1. The Novelist's Film (Hong Sang-soo)
2. Amsterdam (David O. Russell)
3. The Beatles: Get Back (Peter Jackson)
4. The Afterlight (Charlie Shackleton)
5. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)
6. A Couple (Fred Wiseman)
7. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
8. Introduction (Hong Sang-soo)
9. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
10. Bones and All (Luca Guadagnino)
     

First viewings (chronological):

• Eternal Heart (Shimizu, 1929)
• Forever a Woman (Tanaka, 1955)
• Testament of Orpheus (Cocteau, 1960)
• Freud: The Secret Passion (Huston, 1962)
• The Married Woman (Godard, 1964)
• A High Wind in Jamaica (Mackendrick, 1965)
• Sunflower (De Sica, 1970)
• Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970)
• Four Nights of a Dreamer (Bresson, 1971)
• Blaise Pascal (Rossellini, 1972)
• Elektra My Love (Janscó, 1974)
• Mon Oncle d'Amérique (Resnais, 1980)
• Reds (Beatty, 1981)
• Vengeance Is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)
• Bitter Moon (Polanski, 1992)
• Vive l'Amour (Tsai, 1994)
• A Tale of Love (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 1996)
• Secrets and Lies (Leigh, 1996)
• Slums of Beverly Hills (Jenkins, 1998)
• Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)

New releases:

1. Vortex 
2. Compartment No. 6 
3. Cow 
4. Triangle of Sadness 
5. Hit the Road 
6. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed 
7. Decision to Leave
8. Memoria 
9. Worst Person in the World
10. All That Breathes 

New releases:

1. Pacifiction, dir. Albert Serra
2. Eniaios XII – XIV, dir. Gregory Markopoulos
3. De Humani Corporis Fabrica, dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel
4. The Novelist's Film, dir. Hong Sang-soo
5. Will-o'-the-Wisp, dir. João Pedro Rodrigues
6. The Plains, dir David Easteal
7. Crimes of the Future, dir. David Cronenberg
8. Fairytale, dir. Aleksandr Sokurov
9. Man on Earth dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson
10. The United States of America, dir. James Benning

First viewings and discoveries:

• Anatahan (1952) dir. Josef von Sternberg
• The Long Farewell (1971), dir Kira Muratova
• The Asthenic Syndrome (1989) dir. Kira Muratova
• Él (1953), dir. Luis Buñuel
• The Cabinet of Dr. Larifari (1930) dir. Robert Wohlmuth
• Wedlock House: An Intercourse (1959) dir Stan Brakhage
• Blind Spot (1981) dir. Claudia von Alemann
• Contras City (1969) dir. Djibril Diop Mambéty
• Les Mains négatives (1978) dir. Marguerite Duras
• Perceval (1978) dir. Érich Rohmer
• The Round-Up (1966) dir. Miklós Jancsó
• Violin Fase (1986) dir. Eric Pauwels
• Kummatty (1979) dir. Govindan Aravindan
• Carnal Knowledge (1971) dir. Mike Nichols
• Ride Lonesome (1959) dir Budd Boetticher
• Canyon Passage (1946) dir. Jacques Tourneur
• The Flying Train (1902) dir. Unknown
• The Fairy of the Stars (1902) dir. Unknown
• The Girl (1968) dir. Márta Mészáros
• Balaoo the Demon Baboon (1913) dir. Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset

First viewings:

• Baby Blood (1990, Alain Robak) – IFC Center (DCP)
• The Barefoot Contessa (1954, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) – TCM app streaming
• Bronco Bullfrog (1969, Barney Platts-Mills) – Film Forum (DCP)
• The Chess Players (1977, Satyajit Ray) – Metrograph (35mm)
• Comrade X (1940, King Vidor) – Film at Lincoln Center (35mm)
• Decoder (1984, Muscha) – Tubi streaming
• Dream Life (1972, Mireille Dansereau) – Vimeo link streaming
• Eega (2012, S.S. Rajamouli) – Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn (35mm)
• The Garden (2005, Frederick Wiseman) – Mkv file
• The Hidden (1987, Jack Sholder) – Criterion Channel streaming
• Innocence (2004, Lucile Hadzihalilovic) – BAMfilm (35mm)
• Irreconcilable Differences (1984, Charles Shyer) – Ok.ru streaming
• The Killer Elite (1975, Sam Peckinpah) – Museum of the Moving Image (35mm)
• Love Letters (1984, Amy Holden Jones) – Kino Lorber blu-ray
• Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964, Don Owen) – Canadian International Pictures blu-ray
• Ricochet (1991, Russell Mulcahy) – HBO Max streaming
• Squirrels to the Nuts (2014, Peter Bogdanovich) – MoMA (DCP)
• Speed Racer (2008, The Wachowskis) – Roxy Cinema (35mm)
• Tomorrow's Promise (1967, Edward Owens) – MUBI streaming
• Women's Prison (1955, Lewis Seiler) – Light Industry (16mm)

New releases (unranked):

• The Worst Person In The World (Joachim Trier) 
• Fabian: Going To The Dogs (Dominik Graf) 
• Aftersun (Charlotte Wells) 
• Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen) 
• The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg) 
• Armageddon Time (James Gray) 
• All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Laura Poitras) 
• Tár (Todd Field) 
• Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland) 
• Return to Seoul (Davy Chou) 

 
First viewings (unranked):

• Home Sweet Home (Mike Leigh, 1982) 
• Kamikaze Hearts (Juliet Bashore, 1986) 
• The Last Of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973) 
• To Live And Die In L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)
• Broadway By Light (William Klein, 1958) 
• In The Soup (Alexandre Rockwell, 1992) 
• The House On Telegraph Hill (Robert Wise, 1951) 
• Me And My Brother (Robert Frank, 1965-1968) 
• Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1999) 
• Violets Are Blue… (Jack Fisk, 1986) 
• The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
• Scum (Alan Clarke, 1979)

New releases (unranked):

• Aftersun
• Dos Estaciones
• The Eternal Daughter
• Smile
• All the Beauty & the Bloodshed
• Nope
• Decision to Leave
• Neptune Frost
• Corsage
• Everything Everywhere All at Once

First Viewings and Discoveries:

• The Invisible People (1972)
• For Personal Reasons (1973)
• The Divorce of Lady X
• Internes Can't Take Money (1937)
• Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1972)
• The Red House (1947)
• The Snow Woman (1968)
• The Parson's Widow (1920)
• The Rental (2020)
• Violets Are Blue (1986)

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)
2. The Novelist's Film (Hong Sang-soo)
3. The Eternal Daughter (Joanna Hogg) tied with All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)
4. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)
5. TÁR (Todd Field)
6. Elvis (Baz Luhrmann)
7. Funny Pages (Owen Kline)
8. We're All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenbrun)
9. Riotsville, USA (Sierra Pettengill)
10. Aftersun (Charlotte Wells)

First Viewings and Discoveries (unranked):

• Fourteen (Dan Sallitt)
• Dirty Work (Bob Saget)
• Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)
• A Confucian Confusion (Edward Yang)
• Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
• High Hopes (Mike Leigh)
• Clifford (Paul Flaherty)
• The Heartbreak Kid (Elaine May)
• Le Livre D'image and Histoire(s) du Cinéma (Jean-Luc Godard)

New releases:

1. Moonage Daydream
2. EO
3. Ennio
4. One Man Dies a Million Times
5. Vortex

 
First viewings:

• It's Me 1976 Frans Zwartjes
• Remembrance: A Portrait Study 1967 Edward Owens
• Keep On Rockin' (Sweet Toronto) Unreleased full feature D.A. Pennebaker
• Dehors-dedans 1975 Alain Fleischer
• Nike 180 1991 J-L Godard
• Dr. Chicago 1968 George Manupelli
• Cry Dr. Chicago 1971 George Manupelli
• Identikit a.k.a. The Driver's Seat 1974 Giuseppe Patroni Griffi
• Trip Down Memory Lane 1965 Arthur Lipsett
• A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking 1981 Michel Auder
• Rheingold 1978 Niklaus Schilling
• Hors-la-loi 1985 Robin Davis
   

First viewings:

• Three Businessmen (Alex Cox, 1998)
• Who's Camus Anyway? (Mistuo Yanagimachi, 2005)
• Warm Water Under the Bridge (Shohei Imamura, 2001)
• Time and Tide (Tsui Hark, 2000)
• Monday (SABU, 2000)
• Songwriter (Alan Rudolph, 1984)
• Morning Patrol (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1987)
• Plunder Road (Hubert Cornfield, 1957)
• Public Toilet (Fruit Chan, 2002)
• Utsav (Girish Karnad, 1984)
• Samba Traore (Idrissa Ouedraogo, 1992)
• Pirated Copy (He Jianjun, 2004)
• Ensayo de un crimen (Luis Buñuel, 1995)
• UFOria (John Binder, 1981)
• My Left Eyes Sees Ghosts (Johnnie To &Wai Ka-fai, 2002)
• Godass (Esther Bell, 2000)
• The Cats of Chityalova ( Eirini Tampasouli, 2021)
• Sheperdess & the Seven Songs (Pushpendra Singh, 2020)
• On the Beat (Ning Ying, 1995)
• Invasion (Hugo Santiago, 1969)

New releases:

1. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg) -- far and away the best movie of the year
2. We Are All Going to the World's Fair (Jane Schoenburn) 
3. Nope (Jordan Peele)
4. The Stars at Noon (Claire Denis) 
5. Pearl / X (Ti West) -- well the Mia Goth parts anyway

First viewings and discoveries:

1. Dario Argento season at Lincoln Center - While I missed my favorite (Tenebre), and didn't get to see Argento introduce any of the films, getting a season pass and seeing as much as I could felt like a reminder of everything I love about movies. I love to feel like I'm drowning in the brain of someone both so strange and so masterful.
2. Mitchell Mailoux Glidden and Steve Mcfarlane live mixing subtitles at the roxy for a screening of Leones (2012), dir. Jazmin Lopez - The kind of one of a kind communal high of something rare happening that people think happens all the time in NYC rep cinema and you only get once or twice.
3. Boss Gives Employee Facial installation at Cafe Forgot - Mara McKevitt's proof of concept / installation for her upcoming mass surveillance-era erotic scifi film, with lingerie shoots screen printed on the walls and branded privacy class thongs for sale. Feels like the first new idea about sex on film in decades.
4. Salem Anhedonia's video work (2019-present) - Salem shoots and edits exclusively on VHS, and her work this year mostly consisted of brief fragments or vlogs, but she has released 3 short films/mixtapes also only available on VHS. Her work is a miracle of instinctual editing, abstract distortion, found sources, an eye for gesture and moments that can be lived in forever; usually in tandem with her own music under the name E_DEATH. Hers is a wholly unique voice that will explode the second she releases a feature. 
5. Blade (1998), dir. Stephen Norrignton - A Kilbourne rescore (2017) - The Wesley Snipes vampire hunter aesthetic confection of the goth techno 90s with a new soundtrack by NY Terror icon Kilbourne. Transforming a movie with one (1) great rave scene into a barrage of the hardest shit you've ever heard. 
6. Lux Aeterna (2019), dir. Gaspar Noe - A magic trick that only works in its specific duration (51 mins) and in a 1/3-full theater. So much of this movie is watching the light bend around the heads of the people in front of you. 
7. No Alternative Girls (1994), dir. Tamra Davis - Dated but important gen x feminist artifact, everyone embarrasses themselves in an endearing way. The exception is Kathleen Hanna who shows up in a ski mask and manages to be perfect and humane. 
8. Phantom of Regular Size (1986), dir. Shinya Tsukamoto - Zero-budget miracle that manages to be more inventive and disturbing than its feature length remake, the cyberpunk and pegging classic Tetsuo, The Iron Man.
9. Barry - S3E6 - "710N" (2022), dir. Bill Hader - Bike chase.
10. Action Button Reviews Boku No Natsuyasumi (2022), dir. Tim Rogers - This is a "video game review" consisting of 6 hours of grappling with the chasm between Rogers' near perfect memory and geographic memory of growing up in a housing project in Kansas. It traces an aching feeling of non-nostalgia surrounded by impermanence, death and melancholy. 

First viewings and discoveries:

All That Jazz (1979, Bob Fosse)

The best film I saw this year. 

ANTFILM (2021, Tetsuya Maruyama)

Total Cinema with no camera, no editing software, no actors, no script, no girl, no gun, just a strip of film, a few hundred ants, and the light of a projector.

Keep Your Right Up (1987, Jean-Luc Godard)

Godard was cinema’s greatest artist and also a giant dumbass, two things which were not mutually exclusive.

Young Pappy - Killa music video (2015)

Drill videos have always been just another part of Chicago’s rich history of documentary art (see: Kartemquin, The Film Group, Tom Palazzolo, Studs Terkel, etc.) Fuck Rahm Emanuel.

Le camion (1977, Marguerite Duras)

Depardieu seemingly chosen for how nakedly confusion reads on his face. A perfect surrogate, often felt like I had the brain of a dog watching this brilliant film.

The Sopranos (1999 - 2007)

Shocked to sample this most holy text for 21st century culture bloggers and find a show closer to Cheers than Mad Men (a good thing!)

Tartarughe d’acqua (2016, Rose Lowder)

25 minutes of turtles basking in the sun.

Triangle Strategy (2022)

If there is art in video games, it’s in the architectural elegance of turn based combat systems found in the otherwise puerile and aesthetically hideous JRPG genre.

A Trojan House (1981, Sharon Couzin)

Correctly identified Couzin as a fellow Cancer while viewing (art-making as a soft form of self-destruction).

Walk For Walk (2004, Amy Lockhart)

For the back half of this year I’ve just had “Mister baby mister baby open up the door!” going on a loop in my head.

The work of Eva Claus, Hangjun Lee, Cherlyn Hsing-Hsin Liu, Ж, Anna Kipervaser, Mike Rollo, Sara Sowell, etc. I encountered enough great films by working avant-garde filmmakers this year to fill this whole list. The artists mentioned here only represent a small sample. The margins of film culture are teeming with more talent than you’ll find in most major festival slates and adventurous cinephiles would do well to pay attention.

New releases (unranked):

• RRR
• The Sadness
• Crimes Of The Future
• Barbarian
• Pearl
• Mad God
• Speak No Evil
• Riotsville, Usa
• The Woman King
• All Quiet On The Western Front

New releases: 

1. Piggy 
2. Fresh 
3. X
4. In Front of Your Face 
5. Decision to Leave 
6. The Cathedral 
7. Free Chol Soo Lee
8. Friends and Strangers
9. MEDEA
10. There, There

First viewings and discoveries:

• Happy Hour 
• Asako I and II
• Toni Erdman 
• Letter from an Unknown Woman
• Het Debut 
• Scenes from a Marriage 
• Junebug 
• Scenes with Beans 
• Amateur 

Some TikToks I love:

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