Best Movies of 2024: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots

New Releases (Ranked)

1. Juror #2
2. Challengers
3. Oh, Canada
4. A Traveler's Needs
5. Trap
6. Megalopolis
7. A Different Man
8. Refuse Room (Simon Liu)
9. Grand Tour
10. Materia Vibrante (Pablo Marin)

New to Me (Unranked)

• India Song (1975, Marguerite Duras)
• Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta desert (1976, Marguerite Duras)
• The Lorry (1977, Marguerite Duras)
• Dance Chromatic (1959, Ed Emshwiller)
• George Dumpson's Place (1965, Ed Emshwiller)
• Thanatopsis (1963, Ed Emshwiller)
• The Secret Garden (1988, Phil Solomon)
• Conical Intersect (1975, Gordon Matta-Clark)
• Brouillard #14 (2013, Alexandre Larose)
• Loving (1970, Irving Kershner)
• Hot Ticket (1993, Zoe Lund)
• The Joy of Learning (1969, Jean-Luc Godard)
• Loose Corner (1986, Anita Thacher)
• The Rain People (1969, Francis Ford Coppola)
• Workers for the Good Lord (2000, Jean-Claude Brisseau)
• Florence (1970, Erkki Kurenniemi)
• Answering the Sun (2022, Rainer Kohlberger)
• Exotica (1994, Atom Egoyan)

First Viewings:

• Dragnet Girl (Yasujirô Ozu, 1933)
• The Man Behind the Mask (Michael Powell, 1936)
• When Strangers Marry (William Castle, 1944)
• Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1948)
• His Kind of Woman (John Farrow, 1951)
• Ô saisons ô châteaux (Agnès Varda, 1958)
• The Mind Benders (Basil Dearden, 1963)
• The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates, 1973)
• Silvestre (João César Monteiro, 1981)
• The Dresser (Peter Yates, 1983)
• The Legend of Suram Fortress (Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze, 1985)
• The Owl’s Legacy (Chris Marker, 1989)
• The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet, 2015)

First Viewing:

• We Won't Grow Old Together (1972, Maurice Pialat)

• Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice, 2023)
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude, 2023)
• The Green Ray (Éric Rohmer, 1986)
• First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2019)
• A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
• Faces Places (JR & Agnès Varda, 2017)
• The Substance (Coralie Fargeat, 2024)
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof, 2014)

Favorite first-time views, limited to only those films I saw in theaters and listed in the order I saw them

• Caged Heat (Jonathan Demme, 1974, Film Forum)
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978, BAM)
• The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1949, Film Forum)
• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (Robert J. Kaplan, 1972, Anthology)
• When You Read This Letter (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1953, Film Forum)
• Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995, at BAM)
• Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988, the Roxy)
• Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971, Film at Lincoln Center)
• La Paloma (Daniel Schmid, 1974, Anthology)
• Compensation (Zeinabu Irene Davis, 1999, Film at Lincoln Center)

Unranked:

• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
• Speak No Evil (James Watkins)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• All the scenes with Denzel in Gladiatore 2 (Ridley Scott) (When in Rome…)
• We Were Here: The Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe (Fred Kudjo Kuwornu @ the 60th Venice Biennale)

First Watch:

• Audition (1999) (Takashi Miike)
• Manhunter (1986) (Michael Mann)
• Psycho 2 (1983) (Richard Franklin)
• Ghostwatch (1992) (Lesley Manning)
• Her Man (1930) (Tay Garnett) (Terrific!!)

2024 Theatrical Releases (Alphabetical)

• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Dream Team (Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski)

2024 First Watches (Chronological)

• Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936)
• Hitler: A Film from Germany (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1977)
• Xanadu (Robert Greenwald, 1980)
• In Our Time (Tao Te-chen, Edward Yang, Ko I-chen, Yi Chang, 1982)
• Hellraiser (Clive Barker, 1987)
• Homebound (Ilkka Jävi-Laturi, 1989)
• The Golden Boat (Raúl Ruiz, 1990)
• Five Year Diary: Reel 23 (1991), Reel 80 (1994), Reel 81 (1994) (Anne Charlotte Robertson)
• Love in the Time of Malaria (Sanjiv Shah, 1992)
• Fearless (Peter Weir, 1993)
• Fires in the Mirror (George C. Wolfe, 1993)
• Black Out (Med Hondo, 1994)
• Roy Cohn/Jack Smith (Jill Goodmilow, 1994)
• Spacked Out (Lawrence Ah Mon, 2000)
• Piñero (Leon Ichaso, 2001)
• Rave Macbeth (Klaus Knoesel, 2001)
• Local Legends (Matt Farley, 2013)
• Slow Shift (Shambhavi Kaul, 2023)
• Bass (Steve McQueen, 2024)
• Rap World (Conner O’Malley, Danny Scarar, 2024)

New Releases

• Ernie Gehr: Mechanical Magic @ MoMA - Best of the Bunch: Carroll Gardens, Medicine Cabinet, & Pedestrian Activities
• Scénarios + Presentation of the Trailer of a Film “Scénario” (both Jean-Luc Godard)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
• Careless Passage (Jerome Hiler)
• Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
• Revolving Rounds (Johann Lurf & Christina Jauernik)
• Here (Robert Zemeckis)
• The Gloria of Your Imagination (Jennifer Reeves)
• The Electric Kiss (Rainer Kohlberger)
• Turtle Sandwich (David Cardoza)

New To Me

• For Daniel (1992-96; Ernie Gehr)
• Aberration of Starlight (2008; Andrew Noren)
• The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939; Kenji Mizoguchi)
• Couch (1964; Andy Warhol)
• Stan’s Window & Work in Progress (2003; Stan Brakhage)
• Sotiros (1976-78/1996; Robert Beavers)
• 17 Reasons Why (1987; Nathaniel Dorsky)
• Shadow Cuts (2010; Martin Arnold)
• The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (1980/2004; Samuel Fuller)
• Getting Straight (1970; Richard Rush)
• 1981-1987 (1987; Karl Kels) - Four films on one reel: Schleuse, Heuballen, Kondensstreifen, & Nashörner
• Night Horses (1975; James Herbert)
• North Shore (2007; Fred Worden)
• Flesh (1968; Paul Morrissey)
• Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955; Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger)
• Scale-Model Sadness (1987; Robert Morin)
• Interieur Interiors (To A-K) (1978; Vincent Grenier)
• Good Riddance (1980; Francis Mankiewicz)
• Clown Torture (1987; Bruce Nauman)
• Translucent Appearances (1975; Barry Gerson)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Faces, John Cassavetes, 1968
• ITSOFOMO, David Wojnarowicz, 1991
• In Praise of Love, Jean Luc Godard, 2001
• The Clock, Christian Marclay, 2010
• Vapour, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015

Best First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli, 2022)
• Baby Blood (Alain Robak, 1990)
• The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969)
• Limbo (Soi Cheang, 2023)
• The Mad Heart (Jean-Gabriel Albicocco, 1970)
• Sex Apocalypse (Carlos Aured & Sergio Bergonzelli, 1982)
• Air Doll (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
• Brigade of Death (Max Pécas, 1985)
• Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)
• The Sensuous Nurse (Nello Rossati, 1975)
• Hollywood 90028 (Christina Hornisher, 1973)
• The Scavengers (Lee Frost, 1969)
• North Dallas Forty (Ted Kotcheff, 1979)
• Killer Nun (Giulio Berruti, 1979)
• Twilight (György Fehér, 1990)

First viewings:

• Antuca (Barea)
• Baxter, Vera Baxter (Duras)
• Die Deutsche und ihre Männer (Sander)
• Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio)
• Guns (Kramer)
• Falling Lessons (Halpren)
• Heute Nacht oder Nie (Schmid)
• I Cannibali (Cavani)
• I Fantasmi del Fallo (Belmonti, Daopoulo, Miscuglio)
• Kung Fu Master (Varda)
• La Musica (Duras & Séban)
• La Paloma (Schmid)
• Nie Wieder Liebe (Litwak)
• Nightshift (Rose)
• Rewind and Play (Gomis)
• Seguro que Bach Cerraba la Puerta Cuando Quería Trabaja (Hirsch)
• The Grasscutter’s Tale (Fukuda)

Best New Releases

1. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoebrun)
2. Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
3. Desire Lines (Jules Rosskam)
4. The Nickel Boys (Ramell Ross)
5. All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
6. Belly of a Glacier (Ohan Breiding)
7. In The Room Where He Waits (Timothy Despina Marshall)
8. Stress Positions (Theda Hammel)
9. The Becomers (Zack Clark)

I’m grateful that there are films on my list that depict the world during the covid outbreak. It seems insane that cinema and stories have historically helped audiences deal with the changing world around us, yet most of the movies (and TV) being made completely pretend Covid didn’t happen or pretend it ended, instead of using it to dramatic effect the way Theda Hammel, Jules Rosskam and Timothy Despina Marshall do in totally different ways in their great films.

Best First Watches of 2024

• Yi Yi (Edward Yang)
• The Ship of Lost Men (Maurice Tourneur)
• The Spook Who Sat By the Door (Ivan Dixon)
• Blood of the Condor (Jorge Sanjinés)
• The Benefit of the Doubt (Peter Whitehead)
• The Last Rally (YES New York, Joe Loguidice)
• 36 Fillette (Catherine Breillat)
• Testament (Lynne Pittman)
• The Rink (Charlie Chaplin)
• The Arch (Tang Shu-Shuen)
• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer)
• Light Sleeper (Paul Schrader)
• The Tin Star (Anthony Mann)
• Gums (Robert J. Kaplan)
• The Man with the Golden Soles / A Plate of Sardines (Omar Amiralay)
• Children Nevertheless (Khadijeh Habashneh Abu Ali)
• Remnants of the Watts Festival (Ulysses Jenkins)
• Bone (Larry Cohen)
• Branded To Kill (Seijun Suzuki)

Nourished during this terribly challenging year by Elizabeth Purchell, Light Industry’s and Anthology Film Archives’ incredible programming in NYC, and Criterion Channel’s programming on their app. Think about Glenda Jackson saying “I want it to get worse!” in Peter Whiteheads’s “The Benefit of the Doubt” at least once a week when new images of genocide in Gaza reach my social media feed.

Best New Releases

• A Prince
• La Chimera
• Anora
• Janet Planet
• Last Summer
• The Beast
• A Different Man
• Challengers
• Rumours
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Best First Viewings

• A Woman’s Face (1941)
• Desire Me (1947)
• Crime Wave (1953)
• Magnet of Doom (1963)
• T.R. Baskin (1971)
• Ode to Billy Joe (1976) [WTF was that?!]
• Bona (1980)
• P.P. Rider (1983)
• Enemy Territory (1987)
• Dr. Caligari (1989)
• Gipsy Angel (1990)
• Water Lilies (2007)
• Beginning (2020)
• Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (2020)
• Happening (2021)

Best New Releases

1. Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley)
2. Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
3. Gasoline Rainbow (Bill Ross, Turner Ross)
4. I Don't Even Know How To F**cking Airwalk - Emile Laurent's Part
5. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
6. Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
7. Glory: The Legend of Dime - Max Wasungu's Part
8. I Like it Here (Ralph Arlyck)
9. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
10. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Scandal Sheet (Phil Karlson, US 1952)
• What Is A Man? (Sara Kathryn Arledge, US 1958)
• A Hundred Faces for a Single Day (Christian Gazi, Lebanon 1972)
• Top of the Heap (Christopher St. John, US 1972)
• Light (Jordan Belson, US 1973)
• Work Done (Robert Beavers, US 1973)
• Homebodies (Larry Yust, US 1974)
• Road Movie (Joseph Strick, US 1974)
• Just Briefly (Louise Fleming, US 1975)
• Tattooed Tears (Nick Broomfield & Joan Churchill, US 1979)
• A Camel (Ibrahim Shaddad, Sudan 1981)
• Ellis Island (Meredith Monk, US 1981)
• Panelstory (Věra Chytilová, Czechoslovakia 1981)
• Nomad (Patrick Tam, Hong Kong 1982)
• Smorgasbord (Jerry Lewis, US 1983)
• Ashik Kerib (Sergei Parajanov, Georgia 1988)
• Spin Cycle (Aarin Burch, US 1991)
• Crooklyn (Spike Lee, US 1994)
• Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang, US 1994)
• Halimuhfack (Christopher Harris, US 2016)

New

• The Wall of Death (Live Spectacle at Catskill Mountain Thunder Bike Rally)
• Great Photo, Lovely Life (Rachel Beth Anderson, Amanda Mustard)
• Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York (Anthony Caronna)
• The Jinx S.2 (Andrew Jarecki)
• My First Film (Zia Anger)
• Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (Hannah Olsen)
• Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (Alex Gibney)
• Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg (Alexis Bloom, Svetlana Zill)

Old

• Story of Women (Claude Chabrol, 1988)
• In the Folds of the Flesh (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1970)
• Naked Ambition (Kazuo Ikehiro, 1970)
• The Whale God (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1962)
• Devils Temple (Kenji Misumi, 1969)
• Kauyaku (Shintarō Katsu, 1971)
• The Black Room (Roy William Neill, 1935)
• Tattooed Life (Seijun Suzuki, 1965)
• Singapore (John Brahm, 1947)
• The Snow Woman (Tokuzô Tanaka, 1968)
• The Psychic (Lucio Fulci, 1977)
• Time Out of Mind (Robert Siodmak, 1947)
• Naked Alibi (Jerry Hopper, 1954)
• Unman, Wittering and Zigo (John Mackenzie, 1971)
• The Cannibal Man (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1972)
• Used Cars (Robert Zemeckis, 1980)
• Dirty Money (Denys Arcand, 1972)
• Contamination (Luigi Cozzi, 1980)
• Trapped, The Crimson Bat (Sadatsugu Matsuda, 1969)
• The Valiant Ones (King Hu, 1974)

New Releases:

1.  "Jokeropolis” - Joker: Folie à Deux (Todd Phillips) and Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
2. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
3. Tell Them You Love Me (Nick August-Perna)
4. The part in the Young Thug YSL RICO trial when the judge played “Lifestyle” in its entirety for the court.
5. The Three Michaels (Tom Goudsmit)
6. All the Jobe’z World blu-ray extras we made: Catching Up with Zane / JOBE TV / The Virtual Thespian Experience (Michael M. Bilandic)
7. The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko) and www.RachelOrmont.com (Peter Vack) (tie)
8. The Twisted Tale of Mr Based & WorldOfTShirts (Alex Novell)

First Viewings:

• Au claire de la Lune (André Forcier, 1983) 
• Driggling (Larry Clark, 2005) 
• Muscle (Hisayasu Satô, 1989) 
• Bitch (Andy Warhol, 1965) 
• Green Card (Peter Weir, 1990) 
• For Example: A Critique of Never (Shûsaku Arakawa, 1971) 
• La Paloma (Daniel Schmid, 1974) 
• Superhoney (Charles Atlas, 1994) 
• Dreadnaught (Yuen Woo-ping, 1981) 
• Beethoven's Nephew (Paul Morrissey, 1985)

Favorite first viewings:

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

I watched the director's cut! Wow, this movie. I think this one affected me most on this list.

Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsey, 2002)

Samatha Morton gives such a haunting performance. The incredible movie soundtrack features Aphex Twin. Beautiful film.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes, 1976)

One of my favorite Cassavetes movies now.

Hollywoodgate (Ibrahim Nash’at, 2023)

When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, they left a significant portion of their seven billion dollar weaponry. This documentary follows the Taliban entering the American base in Kabul, which is named Hollywoodgate, the day after the last U.S. plane leaves.

Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2016)

So shocking, and creepy! I watched it a few days before Halloween. I need to watch more Kurosawa films. Fucked up adrenaline rush.

Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, 2008)

If you have seen this movie, you know that dishwasher scene is so wonderful. Upon researching it, I found out the screenwriter, Jenny Lumet, based it off a real events in her childhood: Bob Fosse watched Sidney Lumet load a dishwasher and said, “Sidney, if you put the salad bowls in the upper level along with the containers from Zabar’s, you get 10 percent more space.” Sidney told him to fuck himself and then ensued a sort of dishwashing competition between the two for an hour.

France (Bruno Dumont, 2021)

Léa Seydoux is such a phenomenal actress. I was riveted by her in this movie.

Eyes of Laura Mars (Irvin Kershner, 1978)

John Carpenter wrote a movie about Faye Dunaway being a New York fashion photographer who has psychic visions through the eyes of a killer. Amazing!

House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)

Hard Eight (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1996)

Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)

La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995)

Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2023)

This is the only new film I saw in theaters this year on this list. It really melted me.

Best Movies of the Year (Very Loosely Ranked)

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
2. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
3. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
4. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
5. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
6. Here (Robert Zemeckis)
7. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
8. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
9. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (Tyler Taormina)

Best "Worst" Movie

• The Palace (Roman Polanski) – What other movie captured so well what it was like to be alive in 2024? Vile, full of loathing, overly crass, and generally funny.

Best First Watches

• Smog En Tu Corazón (Lucía Seles, 2022)
• Jawan (Atlee, 2023)
• In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa, 2000)
• Seven Songs from the Tundra (Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio, 2000)
• The King of the Neighborhood (Gilberto Martínez Solares, 1950)
• Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)
• Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916) - First nitrate watch counts as a first watch
• Children of the Beehive (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)
• Knight of Cups (Terrence Malick, 2015)
• Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
• Belle Toujours (Manoel de Olivera, 2006)
• History is Made at Night (Frank Borzage, 1937)
• Man's Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
• The World is Full of Secrets (Graham Swon, 2018)
• House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
• The Angel (Patrick Bokanowski, 1982)
• The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
• Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
• Turn Left, Turn Right (Johnnie To, 2003)
• Route One/USA (Robert Kramer, 1989)
• The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1938)
• Maine-Ocean Express (Jacques Rozier, 1986)

First viewing:

Deranged (Jeff Gillen & Alan Ormsby, 1974)

Best New Releases (10 films)

1. Nickel Boys
2. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
3. Megalopolis
4. My First Film
5. Oh, Canada
6. Blitz
7. Between the Temples
8. The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
9. Juror #2
10. It’s Not Me

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

Twenty, only the first ranked first, the rest in random order:

• The Art of the Benshi: Program I, at BAM, including The Water Magician (1933, Kenji Mizoguchi)
• A Romance of Happy Valley (1919, D. W. Griffith)
• West Indies: The Fugitive Slaves of Liberty (1979, Med Hondo)
• Terrorists in Retirement (1985, Mosco Boucault)
• Farewell China (1990, Clara Law)
• Naked Acts (1996, Bridgett M. Davis)
• Take Me In Your Arms (1954, Julio Bracho)
• No Fear, No Die (1990, Claire Denis)
• The Stranger and the Fog (1974, Bahrām Beyzāêi)
• Bona (1980, Lino Brocka)
• Stories of A (1973, Charles Belmont and Marielle Issartel)
• I Heard It Through the Grapevine (1982, Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley)
• Bushman (1971, David Schickele)
• Freedom on My Mind (1994, Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford)
• Bad Girl (1931, Frank Borzage)
• Jamila, the Algerian (1959, Youssef Chahine)
• Apache (1954, Robert Aldrich)
• The Johnstown Flood (1926, Irving Cummings)
• King, Murray (1969, David Hoffman)
• Nós por cá Todos Bem (1977, Fernando Lopes)

Best New Releases:

1. A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
2. Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi Ryusuke, 2023)
3. A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg, 2024)
4. The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something has Passed (Joanna Arnow, 2023)
5. The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar, 2024)
6. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood, 2024)
7. In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)
8. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)
9. Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (Neo Sora, 2023)
10. American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders (Zachary Treitz, 2024)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (one per director, unranked):

• Dawn of the Capricorn (Ahmad Faruqi, 1964)
• Betty (Claude Chabrol, 1992)
• The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
• Tochka (Matsumura Hiroyuki, 2009)
• S.O.B. (Blake Edwards, 1981)
• Two People (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1945)
• Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
• A Conquista de Faro (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2005)
• Neither the Sea Nor the Sand (Fred Burnley, 1972)
• Perfect Lives (John Sanborn, 1984)
• Bushman (David Schickele, 1971)
• L’Échangeur (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1982)
• Flammes sur l’Adriatique (Alexandre Astruc, 1968)
• 240 Hours in One Day (Teshigahara Hiroshi, 1970)
• Kick the World (Kawanaka Nobuhiro, 1974)
• Maria Zef (Vittorio Cottofavi, 1981)
• Dissolution (Nina Menkes, 2010)
• The World of Geisha 2 – The Precocious Lad (Kumashiro Tatsumi, 1974)
• Beauty Reporter: Rape Broadcast (Sato Hisayasu, 1989)
• A Woman Crying in Spring (Shimizu Hiroshi, 1933)

New, Unranked:

• Last Summer, Breillat
• A Good Place, Huber
• Evil Does Not Exist, Hamaguchi
• Omen, Baloji
• Exhuma, Jae-hyun
• I Saw the TV Glow, Schoenbrun
• Problemista, Torres
• Good One, Donaldson
• Stress Positions, Hammel
• Hard Truths, Leigh

New Discoveries:

• Traffic, Tati
• Yi Yi, Yang
• Toute un nuit, Akerman
• City of Lost Souls, von Praunheim
• Dersu Uzala, Kurosawa
• Cinema Fouad, Soueid
• Ran, Kurosawa
• Abuse of Weakness, Breillat
• Sex is Comedy, Breillat
• Fat Girl, Breillat
• What a Way to Go!, Thompson
• Agnes of God, Jewison
• Principal Boy, Murray
• Pollinator, Tourmaline

Best of 2024 (Ranked, Sorta):

1. A Different Man
2. La Chimera
3. The Man Who Couldn’t Miss Screenings
4. The People’s Joker
5. Rap World
6. Horizon: An American Saga
7. Juror #2
8. The Becomers
9. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
10. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

At Home:

• A Very Curious Girl (dir. Nelly Kaplan, 1969)
• Blood on the Moon (dir. Robert Wise, 1948)
• Vengeance is Mine (dir. Michael Roemer, 1984)
• Irezumi (dir. Yasuzō Masumura, 1966)
• Dark Angel: The Ascent (dir. Linda Hassani, 1994)
• 7 Women (dir. John Ford, 1965)
• Pickup (dir. Hugo Haas, 1951) - along with other Hugo Haas titles!
• Shame (dir. Steve Jodrell, 1988)
• Goodbye, My Lady (dir. William A. Wellman, 1956)
• Best of the Best 2 (dir. Robert Radler, 1993)
• Mickey Rourke Accepts Spirit Award (2009)

In Theaters:

• Spook Who Sat By the Door (dir. Ivan Dixon, 1973), restoration @ BAM
• Call Her Savage (dir. John Francis Dillon, 1932), Clara Bow series @ Film Forum
• Bar Salon (dir. André Forcier, 1974), Quebec-core series @ Anthology
• Oh…Rosalinda! (dir. Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1955), Powell/Pressburger series @ MOMA
• She-Man: A Story of Fixation (dir. Bob Clark, 1967), Cruising the Movies series @ IFC Center
• Odd Couple (dir. Lau Kar-Wing, 1979), Sundays on Fire series @ Nitehawk

BEST OF 2024

Rap World

Conner O'Malley is the James Caan of his generation. RAP WORLD was his RAIN PEOPLE: restrained, tormented, sometimes spastic. In ten years he’ll be ready to do his THIEF. A nightmare comedy that peers through the keyhole of what some of the Domino's Pizza/AMC Theaters/ Chuck E Cheese coworkers of my youth would be up to if they were still stuck in the same pile of mud.

Terrifier 3 

Everyone’s complaining about Terrifier 3 and they haven’t even seen it. In ten years they’ll be praising it. Art the Clown will fucking kill you and you know it. Chainsaw. Shower. Santa. Masterpiece. What a picture!

Anora 

There's one film each year that I really love, and then it’s hyped-up to a pulp by everyone and loses all its taste. Anora should've been that movie but I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s full of contradictions and was so much miserable fun. Sean Baker should just bow out from the mainstream by selling his Palme d’Or at a CASH4GOLD USA spot and make sex films like Tinto Brass for the rest of his days.

Smile 2 

This guy at work put on SMILE 2 and skipped around to all the best parts and prefaced each one with “you’re ok if I spoil this for you right?” Look, I gotta rightfully watch the whole thing but it was an amazing time viewing it exactly how it shouldn’t be seen. “This is so scary” he kept saying “I cant believe how scary this is” like a boy in elementary school telling every kid at lunch about a movie they’ll never get to see.

FAVORITE FIRST TIME WATCHES 

Blonde Death (my friend Griffin's house)

Shot on video. One of the great shoulda coulda woulda movies where had this had further reach, the world would be a better place. Russ Meyer level machine-gun-fire dialouge and sin in the suburbs.

Bad Ronald (2 am on my laptop)

Every kid who draws comics today in New York looks like Bad Ronald. Bad Ronald is a bad boy. He killed a little girl and now his mom is hiding him at home in a secret room. Then she dies and a new family moves in. Ronald is still home and he’s still bad. It gets more psychotic, but you gotta see for yourself…

X: the Man with X-Ray Eyes (Museum of Moving Image, 35mm)

Anti-Jimmy Stewart movie about false prophets and an addiction to psychedelics, all in the name of science.

Hey is DeeDee Home (2am on my laptop)

Hour and a half of Dee Dee Ramone regaling us with stories of copping heroin in the burnout days of the Lower East Side. His eyes say it all: HELP ME. He died a few years later. His song lives on.

Madame Wangs (Jeff Cinimatek)

Months before he died, we celebrated Paul Morrissey with MADAME WANGS, The cinematic equivalent of eating a Big Mac off the street after it’s been run over by several cars, n doing the dirty boogie with someone’s senile mother (or was it their father? I couldn’t tell)…

Pecker (Criterion Channel)

Today there’s movies with titles like “Stuber” and “Free Guy” or “Red One”. But I like “Pecker” from 20 years ago, where a Baltimore kid who takes pictures of everyday junk on the street gets sucked and vacuum sealed into the vortex of NYs Downtown art scene. True to life in that this is not far off what happened to little Eddy Furlong.

Candy Mountain (MoMA)

I don’t remember movies so much. But this one was cold. And filled with a sadness that only exists when you’re at the edge of the world. Rudy Wurlitzer wrote it, and he’s the king of quiet, of shut up and watch.

Scale Model Sadness (Anthology Film Archives)

Shot on video. The guy who made this originally wanted it to be filmed entirely In front of a green screen. Google this flick and see how that would be totally wrong.

TH-TH-TH-TH-THATS ALL FOLKS.

Best New Releases (in alphabetical order):
I missed a lot of new releases this year, so I'm adding a few festival favorites as well.

• Animale
• Anora
• Asphalt City
• Dead Letters
• Heretic
• Kneecap
• The Last Sacrifice
• Late Night with the Devil
• Mr. K
• The Substance

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (in alphabetical order):

• The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)
• Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis (1990)
• Habit (1995)
• The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
• The Psychic (1977)
• Seconds (1966)
• The Sender (1982)
• The Velvet Vampire (1971)
• Under Capricorn (1949)
• UnRedacted (also known as Jihad Rehab, 2022)

New Releases

• Being John Smith (John Smith)
• Careless Passage (Jerome Hiler)
• Dedication: Bernice Hodges (Robert Beavers)
• Hey Sweet Pea (Alee Peoples)
• How to Run a Trotline (Carl Elsaesser)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• Scénarios + Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc Godard)
• Suspended Time (Olivier Assayas)
• Unstable Rocks (Ewelina Rosinska)
• Youth (Hard Times & Homecoming) (Wang Bing)

Unranked, a list consisting mostly of shorts, as these were more inspiring on the whole than the features I saw this year. I've also included one festival premiere* that does not seem like it will reach U.S. theaters in 2025. A regrettable state of affairs.

Discoveries

1. Fallen Blossoms (Tamizo Ishida, 1938) - VHS rip
2. Le Ciel est à vous (Jean Gremillon, 1944) - SD stream
3. Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946) - HD stream
4. Children of the Great Buddha (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1952) - 35mm, standing for the entire Shimizu retro @ Japan Society & MoMI
5. The Leaden Echo & the Golden Echo (Margaret Tait, 1955) - 16mm, Anthology Deren
6. Change of Life (Paulo Rocha, 1966) - DCP, MoMA T2
7. Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970) - DVD rip
8. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970) - 35mm, FLC Walter Reade
9. The Dark Crystal (Jim Henson, Frank Oz, 1982) - 35mm, standing for the entire Frank Oz retro @ MoMI
10. Rumble Fish (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983) - HD stream
11. Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990) - 35mm, Metrograph
12. ENIAIOS XV-XVIII (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1948-1990) - 16mm, Temenos, Lyssarea, Greece
13. Five Year Diary, Reel 80: Emily Died (May 14 - September 26, 1994) (Anne Charlotte Robertson, 1994) - SD scan, Spectacle
14. A Summer's Tale (Éric Rohmer, 1996) - HD stream
15. The Ground (Robert Beavers, 2001) - 35mm, standing for the entire Beavers retro @ Anthology Courthouse

It doesn't count as a discovery as it's a film I know well, but seeing The Searchers in 70mm from the new 8K restoration completed by WB and the Film Foundation was... sacramental.

First Viewings:

• There Was A Father (Yasujiro Ozu, 1942)
• Running on Empty (Sidney Lumet, 1988)
• The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)
• A Child in the Crowd (Gérard Blain, 1976)
• The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar, 2011)
• Je, tu, il, elle (Chantal Akerman, 1974)
• Camera Buff (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1974)
• Alita Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez, 2019)
• Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
• A Little Romance (George Roy Hill, 1979)
• Giliw Ko (Carlos Vander Tolosa, 1939)
• The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye (Marie Losier, 2011)
• All Hands on Deck (Guillaume Brac, 2020)
• Querelle (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)
• Castro Street (Bruce Baillie, 1966)
• The Namesake (Mira Nair, 2006)
• 23rd Psalm Branch (Stan Brakhage, 1967)

First Viewings:

• Alice in Wonderland (Norman Z. McLeod, 1933)
• The Good Fairy (William Wyler, 1935)
• Desire (Frank Borzage, 1936)
• The Monster and the Girl (Stuart Heisler, 1941)
• Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1944)
• Caged! (John Cromwell, 1950)
• Gone to Earth (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1950)
• Summer Stock (Charles Walters, 1950)
• Illusion Travels by Streetcar (Luis Buñuel, 1954)
• Take Me in Your Arms (Julio Bracho, 1954)
• The Bitter Stems (Fernando Ayala, 1956)
• Private Property (Leslie Stevens, 1960)
• On Her Bed of Roses (Albert Zugsmith, 1966)
• San Diego Surf (Paul Morrissey, 1968)
• Trap (Jacques Baratier, 1970)
• Black Box (Beth & Scott B, 1979)
• So Fine (Andrew Bergman, 1981)
• A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982)
• Mr. Vampire 2 (Ricky Lau, 1986)
• The Cat (Simon Lam Ngai-Choi, 1992)

Favorite First Watches, in order of when I watched them:

1. Dekalog (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1989)
2. Bright Star (Jane Campion, 2009)
3. City Unplugged (Ilkka Järvi-Laturi, 1993)
4. Canoa: A Shameful Memory (Felipe Cazals, 2003)
5. Cute Girl (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1980)
6. The Guest (Adam Wingard, 2014)
7. Who Am I This Time? (Jonathan Demme, 1982)
8. Summer Vacation, 1999 (Shusuke Kaneko, 1988)
9. Gypsy '83 (Todd Stephens, 2001)
10. The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, 1997)
11. Lilith (Robert Rossen, 1964)
12. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996)
13. The Return of Godzilla (Koji Hashimoto, 1984)
14. Inferno (Roy Ward Baker, 1953)
15. ... And Justice for All (Norman Jewison, 1979)
16. House on Haunted Hill (William Castle, 1959)
17. The Girl on the Broomstick (Václav Vorlíček, 1972)
18. High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941)
19. On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray/Ida Lupino, 1951)
20. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg, 2021)

And here's the singular 2024 release I'll be thinking about for the rest of my life:

1. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)

2024

1. Scénarios + Exposé du Film Annonce du Film “Scénario” (Godard)
2. Eniaios XV – XVIII (Markopoulos)

[Unordered]

• Being John Smith (Smith)
• Dedication: Bernice Hodges (Beavers)
• How to Run a Trotline (Elsaesser)
• Man Number 4 (Pennell)
• Neighboring Animals (Clark)
• No. 11 (Brookshire)
• Refuse Room (Liu)
• Unstable Rocks (Rosinska)

More Than Honorable Mentions To:

• DIRECT ACTION (Cailleau + Russell)
• N’importe Quoi (Extérieur - Jour) (Fowler)
• How to Make Magic (Garcia)
• A Shifting Pattern (Sherman)
• Hey Sweet Pea (Peoples)
• Afternoons of Solitude (Serra)
• Summer Songs (Suárez-Quiñones Rivas)
• A Fidai Film (Aljafari)
• The Deep West Assembly (Smith)
• The First 40 or So Minutes of Caught by the Tides (Jia)

Pre-2024:

• My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure (Beavers) — And in particular Ruskin, Which I Think, Right Now (December 6th, c. 4 pm), Is the Best Movie I’ve Ever Seen
• Beirut, My City (Saab)
• Blessed Blessed Oblivion (Manna)
• Camp de Thiaroye (Sembene)
• Ceddo (Sembene)
• Falling Lessons (Halpern)
• Fertile Memory (Khleifi)
• Gargantuan (Smith)
• I Remember (Depth of Flattened Cruelty) (Astakhishvili + Richards)
• Infinite Column (Arc)
• It Starts With a Whisper (Niro + Gronau)
• Joseph’s New Coat (Le Grice)
• Laugh (Leggett)
• One Hour (Frank)
• Overture (Douglas)
• Puccini Conservato (Snow)
• The Raft (Viola)
• Red/Green (McLaughlin)
• A Star Athlete (Shimizu)
• Where I Am Is Here (Tait)

In No Particular Order

• Totem
• Universal Language
• Janet Planet
• The Brutalist
• Sorcerer
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
• Megalopolis
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• My Brilliant Friend S4
• If Only I Could Hibernate
• Age of Panic
• My First Film - I shot this one but it took 13 years to finish and seeing it released into the world let me see it with fresh eyes.

Best New Releases

1. Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
3. It’s Not Me (Leos Carax)
4. Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice)
5. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
6. The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
7. Music (Angela Schanelec)
8. Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
9. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
10. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Man’s Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks, 1964)
2. The Dawn Patrol (Howard Hawks, 1930)
3. The Criminal Code (Howard Hawks, 1930)
4. Histoires d’Amérique (Chantal Akerman, 1989)
5. Beijing Watermelon (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1989)
6. Zigeunerweisen (Seijun Suzuki, 1980)
7. Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern, 1992)
8. Snow Canon (Mati Diop, 2011)
9. All I Can Say (Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould, Colleen Hennessy, and Shannon Hoon, 2019)
10. Dialogues of the Exiles (Raúl Ruiz, 1975)

First Viewings:

• Nutsa Ghoghoberidze, Ujmuri (1934)
• Lewis Allen, Desert Fury (1947)
• Gordon Matta-Clark, Fresh Kill (1972)
• Noriaki Tsuchimoto, The Shiranui Sea (1975)
• Farouk Beloufa, Nahla (1979) - Anthology
• Jocelyne Saab, Beirut, My City (1982) - Pratt student screening
• Grupo Nós Também, Baltazar Da Lomba (1982) - Anthology
• Tobe Hooper, Lifeforce (1985)
• Paper Tiger TV, Peter Wollen Reads People and Scientific American (1986)
• Jacques Rivette, Gang of Four (1989) - MoMA
• Mohammad Malas, The Night (1992) - Anthology
• Robert Beavers, Work Done (1972/1999), The Stoas (1991-1997) - Anthology
• Pedro Costa, In Vanda's Room (2000) - MoMA
• João Pedro Rodrigues, O Fantasma (2000) - MoMA
• Jerome Hiler, Marginalia (2016) - MoMA
• Nathaniel Dorsky programs - MoMA
• Fireflies in High Falls, NY, June 2024, as observed with Willa Smart

Top Ten First Viewings and Discoveries:

• The Death of Louis XIV, DCP, metrograph
• Pressure, DCP, bam
• The Ghost of Yotsuya, 35mm, film forum
• Cocktail, criterion channel
• Troy: Director's Cut, amazon prime
• A Colt Is My Passport, criterion channel
• Fata Morgana, dvd (herzog)
• Compensation, DCP, nyff
• The Fall of Otrar, DCP, nyff
• Kyiv Frescoes, DCP, anthology film archives

2024 New Releases (unranked):

• All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
• The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
• By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• Good One (India Donaldson)
• Happyend (Neo Sora)
• Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
• Orbita (Yervand Vardanyan)
• Rap World (Connor O’Malley)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
• Wicked: Part One (Jon M. Chu)

2024 Best First Watches (chronological):

• Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Micklin Silver, 1979)
• Procession (Robert Greene, 2021)
• Antonia’s Line (Marleen Gorris, 1995)
• The Host (Bong Joon-ho, 2006)
• Offside (Jafar Panahi, 2006)
• Remains of the Day (James Ivory, 1993)
• Troublesome Creek: A Midwestern (Jeanne Jordan, Steven Ascher, 1995)
• Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)
• Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki, 1996)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (in no particular order):

• Footlight Parade (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
• The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971)
• The House on the Volcano (Hamo Bek-Nazaryan, 1928)
• Bushman (David Schickele, 1971)
• Lumumba (Raoul Peck, 2000)
• Candy and Daddy (Anton Perich, 1972)
• Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, 2007)
• Straight TIme (Ulu Grosbard, 1978)
• The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
• No Fear No Die (Claire Denis, 1990)
• Mädchen in Uniform (Leontine Sagan, 1931)
• All Mixed Up (Yasuzō Masumura, 1964)
• The Hunt (Manoel de Oliveira, 1963)
• The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973)
• The Roaring Twenties (Raoul Walsh, 1939)
• The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1983)
• Desert Hearts (Donna Deitch, 1985)
• Pressure (Horace Ové, 1976)
• House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
• Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931)

First viewings:

• Smiley Face (dir. Gregg Araki, 2007)
• The Pallisers (Various, 1974-1975)
• The Legend of Suram Fortress (dir. Sergei Parajanov and Dodo Abashidze, 1985)
• Invaders from Mars (dir. Tobe Hooper, 1986)
• One of Our Aircraft is Missing (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1942)
• Mary Reilly (dir. Stephen Frears, 1996)
• Normal Life (dir. John McNaughton, 1996)
• Straight Time (dir. Ulu Grosbard and Dustin Hoffman, 1978)
• The Unknown Girl (dir. Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, 2017)
• City Unplugged (dir. Ilkka Järvi-Laturi, 1993)
• The Antique Toaster That's Better than Yours (Technology Connections, 2019)

Some of My Recent New-to-Me Titles:

• Dance, Fools, Dance (Harry Beaumont, 1931)
• Smart Money (Alfred E. Green, 1931)
• The Beast of the City (Charles Brabin, 1932)
• The Crash (William Dieterle, 1932) (This Has a Wild Story, Just BTW)
• Ladies They Talk About (Howard Bretherton & William Keighley, 1933)
• Sadie McKee (Clarence Brown, 1934)
• The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding, 1939)
• Hard Times (Walter Hill, 1975)
• Open Range (Kevin Costner, 2003)
• Every Which Way But Loose (James Fargo, 1978)
• Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)

10 Best Films of 2024 (seen so far, anyway; alphabetical by English title)

1. Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice)
2. Dahomey (Mati Diop)
3. Drive Away Dykes (Tricia Cooke & Ethan Coen)
4. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
5. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
6. Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
7. Nocturnes (Anirban Dutta & Anapuma Srinivassen)
8. The People's Joker (Vera Drew)
9. Three Promises (Yousef Srouji)
10. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)

First Views (order viewed)

1. Orchard Street (Ken Jacobs 1955/2014)
2. Hour of the Furnaces (Fernando Solanas & Octavio Getino, 1968)
3. The Light Penetrates the Dark (Otakar Vávra & František Pilát, 1930)
4. Silvia Prieto (Martin Rejtman, 1999)
5. Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976)
6. Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
7. Here Is the Imagination of the Black Radical (Rhea Storr, 2020)
8. Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (Melvin van Peebles, 1971)
9. Black Tuesday (Hugo Fregonese, 1954)
10. Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998)
11. West Indies (Med Hondo, 1979)
12. Joy Street (Suzan Pitt, 1995)
13. State Legislature (Frederick Wiseman, 2007)
14. Under the Blossoming Cherry Trees (Masahiro Shinoda, 1975)
15. Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki, 1996)
16. Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019)
17. After Tiller (Martha Shane & Lana Miller, 2013)
18. Boxcar Bertha (Martin Scorsese, 1968)
19. Back Street (John Stahl, 1932)
20. All About the Illusion (Scott Stark, 2006)

As a filmmaker, I’ve always been interested in bending the genre between narrative, experimental, and documentary and trying new techniques with sound and the experience of frequencies and vibration. This year was good for viewing and listening to new works, both shorts and features.

o The Tuba Thieves, Alison O’Daniel, 2023 This film and filmmaker have entirely changed how I think about the perception of sound and sonic vibrations and how I thought about captioning films as I prepared the restoration of my feature film Compensation.

Gems seen at the 2024 New York Film Festival – Thank you programmers! Great year!

o Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, 2024, Madeline Hunt-Erhlich (so beautiful, inventive and resourceful)

Currents Shorts Program 1: The Will to Change – This program needs to travel

o Black Glass, 2024, Adam Piron. The way Adam used music in this film to enhance the story of Muybridge’s staged stereographs documenting the US Army’s war against the Modoc tribe in Northern California was so powerful; can’t stop thinking about it.

o Man number 4, 2024, Miranda Pennell – a representation from Gaza that made us stop & rethink

o An All-Around Feel Good, 2024, Jordan Lord – notions of belonging pushed to the limits!

o The Deep West Assembly, 2024, Cauleen Smith One of the best filmmakers alive right now, period. This work is everything. Performance, music, history, image, it has it all.

Insurgent Sisters: Women of the L.A. Rebellion & Beyond (all of the films were excellent; special shoutout to Matazi Weathers and LACMA for the program; classics by Julie Dash, Alile Sharon Larkin, Barbara McCullough & O.Funmilayo Makarah. New works by Garrett Bradley, Sophia Nahli Allison & Rikki Wright; particular resonance for me was

o Resume at the Point of Interruption (Segment 3) dana washington-queen, 2022

o Exhibiting Forgiveness, 2024, Titus Kaphar (My favorite actor, John Earl Jelks giving an electrifying performance as La’Ron!)

o A Quiet Place: Day One, 2024, Michael Sarnoski

o Naked Acts, 1996, Bridgett M. Davis (okay, it wasn’t a first for me, but it was for my daughter, and it was fun to see it with her in the theater! Nothing beats the waves of the audience laughing together. The restoration is beautiful!)

o Didi, 2024, Sean Wang

o Thelma, 2024, Josh Margolin

o Shirley, 2024, John Ridley

o Sing Sing, 2023, Greg Kwedar

o Fancy Dance, 2023, Erica Tremblay

o Problemista, 2023, Julio Torres

o Origin, 2023, Ava DuVernay

o The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, 2024, Tina Mabry

o Little Richard: I Am Everything, 2023, Lisa Cortes

o Wade in the Water: A Journey into Black Surfing & Aquatic Culture, 2023, David Mesfin (Yo! I am a late-in-life surfer. This film is so affirmative for me & so many others!)

First Viewings:

• The Passionate Friends (David Lean)
• There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk)
• Toute une nuit (Chantal Akerman)
• Sorcerer (William Friedkin)
• The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer)
• Shadows in Paradise (Aki Kaurismäki)
• The Hole (Tsai Ming-liang)
• Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray)
• Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven)
• Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
• The Adventures of Rosette (Éric Rohmer & Rosette)

Best New Releases: -- Not ranked in any particular order

• Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In (2024)
• The Shrouds (2024)
• Chime (2024)
• Customs Frontline (2024)

Here are my favorite first time views from 2024:

• Nomad (1982)
• Romancing in Thin Air (2012)
• Muscle (1989) - this 35mm screening at Anthology was unreal
• Destiny's Son (1962) and Kenji Misumi's whole Sword trilogy
• The Crazy Family (1984) - Alexander Fee at Japan Society killed it this year
• Sound in the Mist (1956) - As part of the MOMI/Japan Society Hiroshi Shimizu series
• Mermaid Legend (1984)
• Bona (1980)
• Beast-Man (1987)
• Sparrow (2008) - the whole MOMA Johnnie To series was lifegiving
• The Trap (1996)
• Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 (1997)

Favorites (unranked)

• Last Summer. Catherine Breillat
• No Other Land. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
• Baby Reindeer. Weronika Tofilska and Josephine Bornebusch
• Anora. Sean Baker
• A Different Man. Aaron Schimberg
• Hollywoodgate. Ibrahim Nash’at
• Art Talent Show. Tomás Bojar, Adéla Komrzý
• My Old Ass. Megan Park
• Seed of a Sacred Fig. Mohammad Rasoulof
• Dune 2. Dennis Villeneuve

First Viewings

• Midnight Run. Martin Brest, 1988
• Miller's Crossing. Coen Brothers, 1990
• Lone Star. John Sayles, 1996
• Girl Model. Ashley Sabin, David Redmon, 2012
• Pride and Prejudice. Masterpiece Theatre, 1980
• Bones and All. Luca Guadagnigno, 2022
• Margiela in His Own Words. Reiner Holzeimer, 2019
• Something Wild. Jonathan Demme, 1986
• Senna. Asif Kapadia, 2010
• The Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show. Ari Katcher, 2024

I'm just a baseball director but I get giddy when movie people ask me to trade my lineup card for a film list. I'm also a civilian so I haven't seen anything that hasn't been released wide as of December 5th, so this group could change. With that being said, these 10 movies are all a Home Run. Tune into the Mets next season to see which of these find their way into a broadcast.

2024 New Releases (Ranked)

1. Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
2. The First Omen (Arkasha Stevenson)
3. The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
4. Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)
5. Monkey Man (Dev Patel)
6. Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (Kevin Costner)
7. Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos)
8. Strange Darling (J.T. Mollner)
9. Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
10. The Piano Lesson (Malcolm Washington)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Ranked)

1. LOLA (2022, Andrew Legge)
2. Everybody Wants Some!! (2016, Richard Linklater)
3. Sugar (2008, Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
4. Cemetery Man (1994, Michele Soavi)
5. Savaged (2013, Michael S. Ojeda)
6. Sexy Beast (2000, Jonathan Glazer)
7. Birth (2004, Jonathan Glazer)
8. Handgun (1983, Tony Garnett)
9. Thomasine & Bushrod (1974, Gordon Parks Jr.)
10. The Quick and the Dead (1995, Sam Raimi)
11. The Hitcher (1986, Robert Harmon)
12. Johnny Handsome (1989, Walter Hill)
13. Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)
14. Red Rock West (1994. John Dahl)
15. Messiah of Evil (1973, Gloria Katz & Willard Huyck)
16. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans (2009, Werner Herzog)
17. Variety (1983, Bette Gordon)
18. Belle de Jour (1967, Luis Buñuel)
19. Little Darlings (1980, Ronald F. Maxwell)
20. Sands of the Kalahari (1965, Cy Endfield)

Favorite First Viewings

• Closely Watched Trains (Jiří Menzel, 1966)
• Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)
• Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)
• Toute Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982)
• Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (Mark Lewis, 1988)
• Clearcut (Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)
• The Last Angel of History (John Akomfrah, 1996)
• Big Night (Stanley Tucci, Campbell Scott, 1996)
• My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007)
• The Wonders (Alice Rohrwacher, 2014)
• Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh, 2020)

Once again I watched very few movies released this year, so can it really be a top ten if you only watch ten new movies? Anyway, here are my thoughts... Thelma was by far the best movie of the year and the best new movie I have seen in a while, anything with old people standing up for themselves is good in my book. Legendary Ohio indie auteur J.R. Bookwalter of Robot Ninja fame returns to filmmaking after 20 years with Side Effects May Vary, a gooey homage to sci-fi flicks of the 70s. Then there's Glen Coburn, director of Bloodsuckers From Outerspace dropping Brain Tumor, his first feature film in 40 years! Getting to host a cast and crew Q&A of Brain Tumor at Texas Frightmare was a highlight of my year. I can't believe I actually laughed at Deadpool Wolverine, Alien: Romulus was no Evil Dead (2013) and Conclave's Sleepaway Camp ending did not impress me. Inside Out 2 was so much fun I had to go back and immediately watch the first one, but Jim Henson Idea Man reinforced my love of the real world imagination of the Muppets and the man behind it. The other two new movies I saw this year were so bad they don't deserve mention... ok, whatever... Longlegs and Kim's Video sucked.

First Time Watches

Inside Out part one was not as good as the second one. Having a kid is exposing me to lots of things I guess I never had a reason to watch before but I really love these Miyazaki movies. Totoro, Ponyo and Kiki are all bangers. Curious George: A Halloween Boo Fest and its Legend of No Noggin was weird and welcoming. Shaun the Sheep: The Flight Before Christmas is a great introduction for the endless sheep related animation you could find yourself being threatened by a toddler for. Don't worry of course I'm showing them stuff I liked as a kid too, like The Muppets.

10 New Movies I Saw

• A Different Man
• Between the Temples
• Furiosa
• Megalopolis
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• Juror #2
• Stress Positions
• Rap World
• Trap
• Rebel Ridge

15 New Old Movies I Saw

• Madam Satan (Cecil B. DeMille, 1930) - 35mm @ Nitehawk PP
• Pit Stop (Jack Hill, 1969) - Blu-ray
• Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970) - 35mm @ BAM
• Roaches' Lullaby (Claudia Weill & Eli Noyes, 1973) - 16mm @ AFA
• Blacker Than the Night (Carlos Enrique Taboada, 1975) - Blu-ray
• Summerfield (Ken Hannam, 1977) - DVD
• The Fall of the I-Hotel (Curtis Choy, 1983) - DCP @ AFA
• FireStorm (Cecil B. Howard, 1984) - Blu-ray
• Big Time (Chris Blum, 1988) - 35mm @ Metrograph
• Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield, 1992) - DCP @ Nitehawk PP
• Red Rock West (John Dahl, 1993) - Blu-ray
• Cellar Sinema (George Kuchar, 1994) - File @ Light Industry
• August in the Water (Gakuryu Ishii, 1995) - 35mm @ Japan Society
• Normal Life (John McNaughton, 1996) - 35mm @ Nitehawk PP
• So Close (Corey Yuen, 2002) - 35mm @ Alamo BK

2024 Theatrical Releases (Unranked)

• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
• Stress Positions (Theda Hammel)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi)

Favorite First Viewings (In order by year)

• Man's Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933) (Locarno Retrospective)
• Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner, 1958) (Locarno Retrospective)
• Intentions of Murder (Shōhei Imamura, 1964) (At Home)
• Who Am I This Time? (Jonathan Demme, 1982) (Spectacle Theater)
• Sherman's March (Ross McElwee, 1985) (Le Cinéma Club)
• Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985) (Paris Theater)
• La Captive (Chantel Akerman, 2000) (At Home)
• Party Monster (Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, 2003) (Roxy Cinema)
• Everyone Else (Maren Ade, 2009) (At Home)
• Lenny Cooke (Josh and Benny Safdie, 2013) (At Home)

First viewings:

• Carnal Knowledge (Mike Nichols)
• Midnight Run (Martin Brest)
• All is Lost (J.C. Chandor)
• Amanda (Mikhaël Hers)
• Drylongso (Cauleen Smith)
• The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni)
• Alice in the Cities (Wim Wenders) 
• Summer 1993 (Carla Simón)

First Watches (Features)

1. The Beast (2024) directed by Bertrand Bonello
2. No Other Land (2024) directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
3. Malina (1991) directed by Werner Schroeter
4. Thief or Reality (2001) directed by Antouanetta Angelidi
5. La Femme Publique (1984) directed by Andrzej Żuławski
6. The Night Porter (1974) directed by Liliana Cavani
7. A New Love in Tokyo (1994) directed by Banmei Takahashi
8. Evil Does Not Exist (2024) directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi
9. Querelle (1982) directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
10. Fresh Kill (1994) directed by Shu Lea Cheang
11. La Chimera (2024) directed by Alice Rohrwacher
12. The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) directed by Ivan Dixon
13. Napoléon (1927) directed by Abel Gance
14. A Different Man (2024) directed by Aaron Schimberg
15. My First Film (2024) directed by Zia Anger
16. Violence at Noon (1966) directed by Nagisa Ōshima
17. Dahomey (2024) directed by Mati Diop
18. Fallen Leaves (2023) directed by Aki Kaurismäki
19. Lola Montès (1955) directed by Max Ophüls
20. Bird (2024) directed by Andrea Arnold

First Watches (Shorts)

1. Olla (2019) directed by Ariane Labed
2. 121280 Ritual (2008) directed by Antouanetta Angelidi
3. Familiar Phantoms (2023) directed by Larissa Sansour and Søren Lind
4. Kissy Suzuki Suck (1992) directed by Alison Murray
5. Between (1989) directed by Claudia Schillinger
6. A Radical Duet (2024) directed by Onyeka Igwe
7. Terminal Island (2024) directed by Sam Drake
8. Play Boy (1984) directed by Tessa Hughes-Freeland
9. Blank Narcissus (Passion of the Swamp) (2022) directed by Peter Strickland
10. Daphne Was a Torso Ending in Leaves (2014) directed by Catriona Gallagher

20. Unfrosted
One of the most perverted films I have ever seen. The Right Stuff parody fair-use boomer fetish art. The cinematic equivalent of a sociopath. Sarah Cooper and a Cereal Mascot January 6 sequence. Grandma’s Holes, frooty goopy fetishy marshmallow fluff “what’s the first thing a baby tastes” “applesauce.” “Milk.” Watching Jerry lip sync the end credits song by Jimmy Fallon and Meghan Trainor is like staring into Azathoth.

19. The Shape of Water
Featuring Richard Jenkins as just the all time dumbest and least helpful gay sidekick of all time.

18. The Day of the Beast
A fucked up and beautiful romp about friendship, rock music, Satan, and class warfare. Gorgeous optical effects and matte paintings.

17. Near Dark
Katherine Bigelow rules, man, and so does this film (Paxton should have been the lead though). This movie is so underrated and I can't believe how hard it is to find. Favorite gore in any vampire movie ever.

16. Step Brothers
The best McKay/Ferrell joint for sure. Can't believe it took me this long to watch it. Feels like Jody Hill parodying an Apatow movie. Both the Bonnie Raitt song and the Catalina Wine Mixer made me cry.

15. Dreams in the Witch House 
Stuart Gordon is so lit, man. There should be a skin flick adaptation for every single Lovecraft story.

14. Knife+Heart
Heavenly. Like Fellini remade Cruising into a giallo. The only credit sequence to ever make me cry on its own.

13. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
Absolutely bonkers in every way, maybe even the most bonkers of the entire OG quadrilogy (and that’s saying something). Psychedelically whippet-brained sense of humor. A transgender Leatherface. An illuminati subplot. Matthew McConaughey's best performance to date.

12. Dune 
David Lynch's The People's Joker

11. The Devils
Oliver Reed is pure sex meat and at one point throws an alligator at a man who accuses him of fucking his daughter. The art direction is immaculate, the cinematography is gorgeous, and the crotches are unshaven. The way this movie effortlessly shifts from horny to hilarious to brutal to romantic to spiritual to terrifying is aspirational. I hope I can one day make something this blasphemous and this much of a tonal pogo stick.

10. Here
I cried through the whole movie. From dinosaurs to Ben Franklin. Movies are supposed to be this on the nose, you fucking hipsters. 30 years ago, this would have made a billion dollars and would win best picture.

9. MaXXXine
The best of the trilogy and honestly probably Ti’s best film. Honestly hit for me on an emotional level I wasn’t prepared for. More Michelle Monaghan in movies please.

8. Macross: Do You Remember Love?
Mecha anime + pop music + Gnostic lore + Jack Kirby Art = a movie I will be watching over and over until I die.

7. The 4:30 Movie
The year is 2024 and I cried like a little bitch during a new Kevin Smith movie. His best film in years. Do not skip it.

6. In A Violent Nature
At this moment of my own life — feeling the strains of aging, the impermanence of time and body, how scary God and the idea of soul and magick and the All have been to me lately… I can’t adequately articulate the long awaited release that I felt watching that yoga girl get ripped apart by cute little Johnny.

5. Possession
I am a little embarrassed it’s taken me this long to watch this one, but honestly… I don’t know if I would have been ready at any other point in my life. It’s obviously fantastical, nightmarish, even hysterically absurd at times. The dialogue is like poetry from another planet. I found a lot of what was happening incomprehensible while I was watching it, but at the same time felt like I was emotionally engaged and there the entire time. It’s Lovecraftian in its portrayal of relationships, family, and infidelity and for that reason it may be the most emotionally honest film I’ve ever seen about all of those things. 

4. Wild Tigers I have Known
Felt like watching a movie about my childhood as a closeted queer. Essential viewing for millennial homos like me.

3. The Visitor
Hilarious, sexy, disgusting, scary, disturbing, and beautiful. There simply no other filmmaker like Bruce La Bruce. These movies make me a better artist and a better human being when I watch them. Obsessed, transfixed, and inspired by how he casts. By how he stretches the definition of porn and genre as a whole. And with the fact that the dad in this has sex with both of his children but not his wife.

2. Aggro Dr1ft
Definitely an all-timer for me. Vibe-y, experimental, chaotic, weird, but also the perfect distillation of macho action cinema. Maybe I’m projecting but I think this movie is just about how you only become a filmmaker (a “shooter” aka the “world’s greatest assassin”) if it’s something that you’re like…destined to do. Making movies is dangerous for your ego, your mental health, it exposes you to people that say you’re their friend and they backstab you, people fuck you for cache, you might get so fucked up your mother won’t even recognize you…but there are some of us on this planet that are just born to do it. We gotta make movies. Despite the cost. In spite of the darkness it brings. An Angel (or a demon) is pulling our Chariot. I think this might be Korine’s most personal movie. I’s watching a brilliant artist say “look…yeah…I make fuckin awesome movies. I make the best movies. I’ve influenced a lot of people for better or worse. But makin movies so hard and it takes so much out of you and it pulls you away from your family and what even IS a movie anymore when you can make something that looks like this and employs technology that we couldn’t have ever dreamed of when I made trashhumpers. I don’t wanna be on set. That shit ain’t important. Saying goodnight to my kids is important. Who needs to reinvent indie cinema and inspire and infuriate audiences and artists…when you got a wife at home who fucking loves u and you fuckin love and has a huge ass and wants to bounce on ur dick. So yeah…look…I like makin movies, I like hanging out on a boat with some pals, but I’d rather be home playing video games with family.”

1. Megalopolis
I was watching this interview with Coppola where he talks about how his only regret as a filmmaker is that he and his contemporaries aren’t leaving the industry in better shape than when they found it. That the next generation of filmmakers have it harder than ever, perhaps implying that he and the other movie brats are to blame. I can’t help but think about the fact that he named a character in this Francis. That character isn’t our hero. He’s an old mayor who refuses to retire. He doesn’t want civilization to grow. He wants to build a casino. When Coppola made Jack, one of his most panned films, it was because he had always wanted to work with Robin Williams. When he made the first two Godfathers - his “masterpieces” - it was because he was broke. The role of a supposed auteur director up until our modern era has just been about megalomania. Is the selfish human grasping at the fact that it is not god. Creating worlds. Perhaps inspired from a place of purity. Your wife. Your children. Corrupted by your drive. Your mania. Your legacy.

New Movies in Order

• A Different Man
• Between the Temples
• Furiosa
• Juror #2
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• Stress Positions
• Union
• Rap World
• Oddity
• Red Rooms

New to Me

• Cold Heaven (1991)
• DOA: Dead or Alive (2006)
• Another Woman (1988)
• Normal Life (1996)

New Releases

• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Kneecap (Rich Peppiatt)
• The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng)
• Bird (Andrea Arnold)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni)

First Viewings

• Goldie: When Saturn Returns (John Akomfrah, 1998)
• Manta Ray (Phuttiphong Aroonpheng, 2018)
• Cleaners (Glenn Barit, 2019)
• The Secret Cinema (Paul Bartel, 1967)
• The Black and the Green (St. Clair Bourne, 1988)
• Manila in the Claws of the Light (1975) and Bona (1980) (Lino Brocka)
• Glass (Bert Haanstra, 1958)
• Bye Bye Africa (Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, 1999)
• Babymother (Julian Henriques, 1998)
• A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia, 2021)
• Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999)
• Rocky Road to Dublin (Peter Lennon, 1968)
• The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack, 2018)
• Dessert for Constance (Sarah Maldoror, 1981)
• Love Meetings (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
• City of Pirates (Raúl Ruiz, 1983)
• The Dupes (Tawfiq Saleh, 1972)
• We All Loved Each Other so Much (Ettore Scola, 1974)
• The Slow Business of Going (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2000)
• Rapture (Iván Zulueta, 1979)

New Releases

1. Miséricorde (Alain Guiraudie)
2. C’est pas moi (Leos Carax)
3. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
4. The Palace (Roman Polanski)
5. Third House of Saturn (Jesse Brant Howell)

First Viewings

• The Commissar (Aleksandr Askoldov, 1967)
• San Diego Surf (Paul Morrissey & Andy Warhol, 1968)
• Woodpeckers Don’t Get Headaches (Dinara Asanova, 1975)
• Race d’Ep (Guy Hocquenghem & Lionel Soukaz, 1979)
• To Woody Allen from Europe with Love (André Delvaux, 1980)
• The Games of Countess Dolingen (Catherine Binet, 1981)
• Hanky Panky (Sidney Poitier, 1982)
• Sonatine (Micheline Lanctôt, 1984)
• Sweetheart (Shinji Sômai, 1985)
• Invaders from Mars (Tobe Hooper, 1986)

Rediscoveries

• Le bled (Jean Renoir, 1929)
• The Light That Failed (William A. Wellman, 1939)
• The Great Madcap (Luis Buñuel, 1949)
• The Window (Ted Tetzlaff, 1949)
• A Run for Your Money (Charles Frend, 1949)
• Gabrielle (Hasse Ekman, 1954)
• 10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
• Le berceau de cristal (Philippe Garrel, 1976)
• Angel (Neil Jordan, 1982)
• Beauty and the Beast (Nils Malmros, 1983)

Best New Releases:

• Dahomey (dir. Mati Diop)
• About Dry Grasses (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
• Last Summer (dir. Catherine Breillat)
• The People’s Joker (dir. Vera Drew)
• Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
• Samsara (dir. Lois Patiño)
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (dir. Pham Tien An)
• In Our Day (dir. Hong Sang-soo)
• A Prince (dir. Pierre Creton)
• Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (Not Ranked):

• Near Orouet (dir. Jacques Rozier, 1971)
• A Hunting Accident (dir. Emil Loteanu, 1978)
• The Last Romantic Lover (dir. Just Jaeckin, 1978)
• Marketa Lazarová (dir. František Vláčil, 1967)
• The Stranger and the Fog (dir. Bahram Beyzai, 1974)
• Turtle Dreams (dir. Ping Chong, 1983)
• Blood Scarab (dir. Donald F. Glut, 2008)
• Puzzle of a Downfall Child (dir. Jerry Schatzberg, 1970)
• Judgement at Nuremberg (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1961)
• Enter the Ninja (dir. Menahem Golan, 1981)
• Street Law (dir. Enzo G. Castellari, 1976)
• Ouvertures (dirs. Louis Henderson, Olivier Marboeuf, 2019)
• The Last Detective (dir. Chris Shields, 2010)
• Old Punk (dir. Chris Shields, 2011)
• The Other Side of the Mirror (dir. Jess Franco, 1973)
• The Dove (music video for Holy Matter by Zhuoyun (Yun) Chen and Luca Cioci, 2024)
• Cyclone (dir. Fred Olen Ray, 1987—BMN screening by Wendy Mays)
• Yes, Giorgio (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner, 1982)
• Anno Domini 1573 (dir. Vatroslav Mimica, 1975)
• The Best of Your Life aka Sun City (dirs. Rhody Streeter and Tony Ganz, 1971)

Best New Releases

1. Challengers (Guadagnino)
2. La Chimera (Rohrwacher)
3. Nickel Boys (Ross)
4. Memoir of a Snail (Elliot)
5. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Jude)
6. Hard Truths (Leigh)
7. I Saw the TV Glow (Schoenbrun)
8. Nocturnes (Srinivasan & Dutta)
9. Never Look Away (Lawless)
10. The Deliverance (Daniels, I had a great time and think about it constantly)

Favorite First Viewings

1. The Bridges of Madison County (Eastwood, 1995)
2. The Straight Story (Lynch, 1999)
3. Muriel's Wedding (Hogan, 1994)
4. Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest (Hickox, 1995)
5. The Fall (Singh, 2006)
6. A Brighter Summer Day (Yang, 1991)
7. The Bride with White Hair (Yu, 1993)
8. Prison (Harlin, 1987)
9. The Sandpiper (Minnelli, 1965)
10. What a Way to Go! (Thompson, 1964)

BEST NEW RELEASES:

(Unranked)

• Hundreds of Beavers
• Megalopolis
• The Time That the Feeling for Doing Something has Passed
• Rap World
• The Beast
• Trap
• The Apprentice
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
• Anora

FAVORITE FIRST VIEWINGS AND DISCOVERIES:

(Unranked)

• Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972, Dir. Andy Milligan): Anora fans might appreciate this one. Most achingly romantic film I've ever seen, but very funny and also a porno.
• Ten Days' Wonder (1971, Dir. Claude Chabrol): ANTHONY PERKINS SHIRTLESS!! and alternately, in the most hideous/incredible outfits you've ever laid eyes on.
• Frenzy (1972, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock): Surprise penultimate Hitchcock masterpiece for which he returned to the homeland.
• Summer Dreams: The Story of The Beach Boys (1990, Dir. Michael Switzer): Unauthorized ABC biopic centered around Dennis Wilson that inexplicably has totally captivated me. Not that distant from "Inherent Vice", "Tough Guys Don't Dance", & "Twin Peaks"...Tread with caution.
• Secret Beyond the Door… (1947, Dir. Fritz Lang): There's a moment here, without spoiling, where you think the movie might be over...
• Targets (1968, Dir. Peter Bogdanovich): Of course the tale behind the inception of this one is a great masterclass in filmmaking, I just never really knew I could love Boris Karloff this much!!
• Freaks (1932, Dir. Tod Browning): While I do have a fondness for him, Browning had yet to really impress me until this one.
• Oh…Rosalinda!! (1955, Dir. Powell & Pressburger): Upon first watch I was somewhat enchanted but left unaltered. After a month, it had taken over my life!
• Gone to Earth (1950, Dir. Powell & Pressburger): Not of this Earth
• Macumba Sexual (1983, Dir. Jesus Franco): Title speaks for itself
• The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976, Dir. Blake Edwards): Literally the greatest film I’ve ever seen
• Bill and Coo (1948, Dir. Dean Riesner): All birds only birds
• Futureworld (1976, Dir. Richard T. Heffron): Forgotten sequel to the original Westworld, has legs of it’s own
• Cabin Boy (1994, Dir. Adam Resnick): Akin to staring at a cursed jewel
• Gun Crazy (1950, Dir. Joseph H. Lewis): Hard to love your girl if she is a gun!
• The Devil and Daniel Webster or, All That Money Can Buy (1941, Dir. William Dieterle): Fabulous score and the newest restoration is extra freaky
• International House (1933, Dir. A. Edward Sutherland): Sexy W.C. Fields moments and it predicted TV
• Sweet Charity (1969, Dir. Bob Fosse): The only movie to make me sob in years.
• The Tenant (1976, Dir. Roman Polanski): This one is for the girls.
• Cutter’s Way (1981, Dir. Ivan Passer): Always pairs well with "Winter Kills", like a fine wine and cheese. Originally titled "Cutter and Bone", if that can speak for itself at all.

Best of 2024

• Close Your Eyes
• All We Imagine as Light
• Last Summer
• Hard Truths
• Here (Devos)
• The Brutalist
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Janet Planet
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• Un Prince

Best First Views (By Release Year)

• Four Seasons of Children (Shimizu)
• Black Tuesday (Fregonese)
• The End of Summer (Ozu)
• L'amour Fou (Rivette)
• The Heartbreak Kid (May)
• Insiang (Brocka)
• They All Laughed (Bogdanovich)
• Naked Lunch (Cronenberg)
• 74 (The Reconstitution of a Struggle) (Rafei)
• Lovers Rock (McQueen)

First Viewings

• Children of a Lesser God (Randa Haines, 1986)
• Caveat (Damian McCarthy, 2020)
• Alice & Viril (Steven Shainberg, 1993)
• Doppelganger (Avi Nesher, 1993)
• La Femme Nikita (series, 1997-2001)
• Master (Mariama Diallo, 2022)
• Scream 3 (Wes Craven, 2000)
• We Own the Night (James Gray, 2007)
• 88 Minutes (Jon Avnet, 2007)
• The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar, 2024)

2024 releases UNRANKED:

• Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point
• Hundreds of Beavers
• Megalopolis
• The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed
• Anora
• Film is Dead, Long Live Film!
• Trap
• Rap World
• Juror #2
• I Saw the TV Glow

FIRST VIEWINGS and discoveries:

• X: The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963, MoMI, 35mm)
• Wise Blood (1979, Anthology, 35mm)
• Sound and Fury (1988)
• Frenzy (1972, Film Forum, DCP)
• Gone to Earth (1950, MoMA, DCP)
• Thieves Like Us (1974, BAM, 35mm)
• Summer Dreams: The Story of the Beach Boys (1990, The Jeff, Digital)
• I Walk the Line (1970, The Jeff, 16mm)
• The Bellboy (1960, TCL Chinese Theater, LA, DCP)
• Fleshpot on 42nd Street (1972, The Jeff, Digital)
• The Lusty Men (1952, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm)
• Okay, America! (1932, Capitol Theatre, Rome NY, 35mm)
• Infernal Machine (1933, Capitol Theatre, Rome NY, 35mm)
• Secret Beyond the Door (1947, Anthology, 35mm)
• Madame Wang’s (1981, The Jeff, Digital)
• The Sin of Nora Moran (1933, TCL Chinese Theater, LA, 35mm)
• The Life and Times of Charlie Putz (1994)
• Nobody Waved Goodbye (1964, The Jeff, 16mm)
• The Lickerish Quartet (1970, The Jeff, 16mm)
• A Bucket of Blood (1959, Roxy, 35mm)

Favorite First Viewings:

• Normandie - Vadim Kostrov
• The Hedge Theater - Robert Beavers
• From the Notebook Of - Robert Beavers
• A Tongue Called Mother - Eva Giolo
• Late August at the Hotel Ozone - Jan Schmidt
• Gabriel - Agnes Martin
• Reds - Warren Beatty
• Imagining October - Derek Jarman
• Rozpustilí bráškové - Hermina Týrlová

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• The Girl Can't Help It (Frank Tashlin, 1956)
• A Hard Day's Night (Richard Lester, 1964)
• In the Folds of the Flesh (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1970)
• All the Colors of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972)
• Dirty Money (Denys Arcand, 1972)
• What Have They Done to Your Daughters (Massimo Dallamano, 1974)
• Ragtime (Miloš Forman, 1981)
• Horseplayer (Kurt Voss, 1990)
• My Left Eye Sees Ghosts (Johnnie To & Wai Ka-fai, 2002)
• The Man Who Couldn't Miss Screenings (Damon Packard, 2023)

Releases (Not Ranked)

• I Heard It Through the Grapevine
• Who Is Michael Jang?
• Chronicles of a Wandering Saint
• Eno
• Mars Express
• The Settlers
• Perfect Days
• A Different Man
• Soundtrack to a Coup D'État
• All We Imagine as Light

Discoveries

• The Linguini Incident
• Tony Manero
• Rebels of the Neon God

Favorite First Viewings (Unranked)

• My Night at Maud's - Éric Rohmer, 1969
• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg - Jacques Demy, 1964
• Umberto D - Vittorio de Sica, 1952
• Les Coquilletes - Sophie Letourneur, 2012
• Design for Living - Ernst Lubitsch, 1933
• The Dupes - Tewfik Saleh, 1972
• The Pirate - Vincente Minnelli, 1948
• Stromboli - Roberto Rossellini, 1950
• Arsenic and Old Lace - Frank Capra, 1944
• Breaking the Waves - Lars von Trier, 1996
• Jofroi - Marcel Pagnol, 1933
• Limelight - Charles Chaplin, 1952
• Ivan the Terrible, Part II - Sergei Eisenstein, 1945
• A Tale of Winter - Éric Rohmer, 1992
• Palombella Rossa - Nanni Moretti, 1969
• I was a Male War Bride - Howard Hawks, 1949
• Summertime - David Lean, 1955
• It Happened One Night - Frank Capra, 1934
• A Woman's Revenger - Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2012
• Notorious - Alfred Hitchcock, 1946

First Viewings

• The Store (Frederick Wiseman, 1983)
• How History Was Wounded (Shu Lea Cheang and Jun Jieh Wang, 1989)
• Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000)
• Mahjong (Edward Yang, 1996)
• I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (Sky Hopinka, 2016)
• Deep Sleep (Basma al-Sharif, 2014)
• The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1977)
• Panelstory or Birth of a Community (Věra Chytilová, 1981)
• The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975)
• Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997)

New Release Ranked

1. Last Summer
2. The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed
3. www.rachelormont.com
4. Aggro Dr1ft
5. Piece By Piece
6. Megalopolis
7. Juror #2
8. Terrifer 3
9. The All Golden
10. Club Zero

First Time Theater Watches Ranked

1. Pola X (Metrograph)
2. Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (BAM)
3. May God Bless America (Anthology)
4. A Real Young Girl (FLC)
5. Saving Private Ryan (Film Forum)
6. Entire Days In The Trees (MoMA)
7. A Place in the Sun (Film Forum)
8. Looking for Mr. Goodbar (Roxy)
9. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Roxy)
10. Woman Is the Future of Man (Metrograph)

Fewwwbriefmentions

• The Shana Moulton Thing at MoMA
• Quebecore Major Major Series
• Knights of Cups <3
• Romance <3
• Bridges of Madison County <3

Best of 2024 (Unranked - Alphabetical):

• All We Imagine as Light - Payal Kapadia
• Cuckoo - Tilman Singer
• Kubi - Takeshi Kitano
• Music - Angela Shanelec
• Nickel Boys - Ramell Ross
• The Old Oak - Ken Loach
• Samsara - Lois Patiño
• A Stone's Throw - Razan AlSalah
• Sweetheart Deal - Elisa Levine & Gabriel Miller
• Youth - Hard Times & Homecoming - Wang Bing

Favorite Past Discoveries (Unranked - Alphabetical):

• American Movie - Chris Smith, 1999
• An Autumn Afternoon - Yasujirō Ozu, 1967
• Babylon - Franco Rosso, 1980
• Barfly - Barbet Schroeder, 1987
• Blood Nose, Empty Pockets - The Ross Brothers, 2020
• Christmas at Moose Factory - Alanis Obomsawin, 1971
• The Devil and Daniel Johnston - Jeff Feuerzeig, 2005
• The Devils - Ken Russel, 1971
• Far From Home - Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975
• Fat Girl - Catherine Briellat, 2001
• Heat - Larisa Shepitko, 1963
• The Hustler - Robert Rossen, 1961
• Limelight - Charlie Chaplin, 1952
• La Marge - Walerian Borowczyk, 1976
• Naked Lunch - David Cronenberg, 1991
• Polyester - John Waters, 1981
• Reflections of Evil - Damon Packard, 2002
• Souha: Surviving Hell - Randa Chahal Sabag, 2001
• The Target Shoots First - Chris Wilcha, 1999
• Working Girls - Lizzie Borden, 1986

My favorite discovery: the lesbianic potboiler Ladies They Talk About (1933), starring Barbara Stanwyck as the “new fish” in San Quentin women’s ward. I learned about the film via John Divola’s amazing trove of pre-Code continuity photographs, on display in March at Gallery Luisotti in Los Angeles. Another delectation: Margaret Tedesco’s movie-watching performance Cameo—Persuasive Light, part of An Opera of Whispers at Slash Art in San Francisco.

Top Ten:

1. No Other Land
2. Flow
3. The Monk and the Gun
4. Nickel Boys
5. Slow
6. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
7. Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry
8. Sometimes I Think About Dying
9. Green Border
10. Hundreds of Beavers

Top Twenty Discoveries (in order of viewing):

• Mr. Frog Went A-Courting, 1974 (dir. Evelyn Lambart)
• Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, and So Was the Nakba, 2018 (dir. Razan AlSalah)
• Kamikaze Hearts, 1986 (dir. Juliet Bashore)
• A Place of Rage, 1991 (dir. Pratibha Parmar)
• Measures of Distance,1988 (dir. Mona Hatoum)
• When Night Is Falling, 1995 (dir. Patricia Rozema)
• The Sun and the Looking Glass – for one easily forgets but the tree remembers, 2020 (dir. Miléna Desse)
• The Girls from Cafe Maxim, 1911 (dir. unknown)
• Children of the Great Buddha, 1952 (dir. Hiroshi Shimizu)
• Hollywood 90028, 1973 (dir. Christina Hornisher)
• What About Me, 1993 (dir. Rachel Amodeo)
• Slingshot Hip Hop, 2008 (dir. Jackie Reem Salloum)
• Alma punk, 1991 (dir. Sarah Minter)
• Until When, 2004 (dir. Dahna Abourahme)
• The Madwoman of Chaillot, 1969 (dir. Bryan Forbes)
• A Question of Silence, 1982 (dir. Marleen Gorris)
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door, 1973 (dir. Ivan Dixon)
• The Annihilation of Fish, 1999 (dir. Charles Burnett)
• For Cultural Purposes Only, 2009 (dir. Sarah Wood)
• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers, 1972 (dir. Robert J. Kaplan)

New Releases:

• No Other Land
• The Beast
• La Chimera
• Caught By The Tides
• The Taste of Things
• Hard Truths
• Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus
• The Room Next Door
• All We Imagine As Light
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

First Viewings:

• The American Friend - Wenders, 1977
• House of Tolerance - Bonello, 2011
• The Manchurian Candidate - Demme, 2004
• Boyfriends and Girlfriends - Rohmer, 1987
• Solarium - Weerasathekul, 2023 — as part of the "Night Particles" exhibition at Centre Pompidou
• Cyclo - Trần, 1995
• Untitled (@pegasus591 via Tiktok, 2024)
• 'Repost only, sorry' (@musikvomp via Tiktok, 2024)
• Ol Ori Buruku - Nazareth, 2015 — currently displayed at the Boros Collection
• Running on Karma - To, 2003
• Exiled - To, 2006
• The Wind That Shakes the Barley - Loach, 2006
• Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind - Hark, 1980
• Altered States - Russell, 1980
• Daughter of the Nile - Hou, 1987

Best New Releases

• Anora (Baker)
• Bird (Arnold)
• La Chimera (Rohrwacher)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong)
• My First Film (Anger)
• Kinds of Kindness (Lanthimos)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Arnow)
• Good One (Donaldson)
• Stress Positions (Hammel)
• Dune: Part Two (Villeneuve)

First Viewings

• Suspiria (Guadagnino, 2018)
• I Hired A Contract Killer (Kaurismäki, 1990)
• Johnny 316 (Ifergan, 1998)
• Irreversible (Noé, 2002)
• Enter the Void (Noé, 2009)
• The Death of Louis XIV (Serra, 2016)
• The Beach Bum (Korine, 2019)
• Earth Mama (Leaf, 2023)
• Tess (Polanski, 1979)
• Le Havre (Kaurismäki, 2011)
• Return to Seoul (Chou, 2022)
• It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (Linklater, 1988)
• Everybody Wants Some!! (Linklater, 2016)
• Take Out (Baker, 2004)
• American Honey (Arnold, 2016)

When I love a film, I want to watch everything else near it, close to it. I began with No Fear, No Die (Denis, 1990), showing at BAM this past July, and continued with Trouble Every Day (2001), High Life (2018), and 35 Shots of Rum (2008). But I might also remember this year as the year I finally saw Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pasolini, 1975).

Best of 24 (Sort of Ranked):

1. Aggro Dr1ft (dir. Harmony Korine)
2. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (dir. Joanna Arnow)
3. Bluish (dirs. Lilith Krazner, Milena Czernovsky)
4. Here (dir. Robert Zemeckis)
5. In Search of Gladys Glover (dir. Gina Telaroli)
6. Trap (dir. M. Night Shayamalan)
7. Baby Blue Benzo (dir. Sara Cwynar)
8. Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)
9. Last Summer (dir. Catherine Breillat)
10. Club Zero (dir. Jessica Hausner)

First Watches:

1. It Should Happen to You (dir. George Cukor)
2. Unfaithful (dir. Adrian Lyne)
3. Ode to Seeker (dir. Andrew Norman Wilson)
4. Smartschoolboy9 (dir. Nick Crowley)
5. Landscape Suicide (dir. James Benning)
6. NRG2000 (dir. Michael M. Bilandic)
7. Crimes of Passion (dir. Ken Russell)
8. The Wasp Woman (dir. Roger Corman)
9. The Drifting Classroom (dir. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi)
10. Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America (dir. Douglas Buck)
11. The Girl on a Broomstick (dir. Václav Vorlícek)

2024 - Ranked

1. Spermworld
2. The Cats of Gokogu Shrine
3. Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat
4. Chime
5. A Different Man
6. Trap
7. Aggro Dr1ft
8. Rap World
9. Hollywoodgate
10. Onlookers

First Watches

• An American Family
• Frontier House (2002 PBS reality show)
• Butt Boy
• Récréations
• The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
• Children Who Draw
• Domestic Violence
• Ernest Borgnine Rides the Bus
• Supermarket Woman
• Reflections of Evil
• The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh
• Margaret
• Missing
• Pumping Iron II: the Woman
• A Woman Captured
• Not a Pretty Picture
• Clotheslines
• Summercamp!
• Larry Larissa Linda
• Strange Victory

Best of 2024, Ranked

1. Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell)
2. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
3. Youth (Hard Times) (Wang Bing)
4. Being John Smith (John Smith)
5. 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré)
6. Man #4 (Miranda Pennell)
7. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
8. Revolving Rounds (Christina Jauernik & Johann Lurf)
9. Archipelago of Earthen Bones—To Bunya (Malena Szlam)
10. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)

Best Firsts, Chronological

1. The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)
2. Massacre (Alan Crosland, 1934)
3. The Black Network (Roy Mack, 1936)
4. Love Under the Crucifix (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1962)
5. Beneath the Planet of the Apes (Ted Post, 1970)
6. A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982)
7. Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1983)
8. Nightbreed (Clive Barker, 1990)
9. Dirty Girls (Michael Lucid, 1996)
10. Sunshine State (Steve McQueen, 2022)

Best of 2024 (Unranked)

• She Is Conann
• Last Year of Darkness
• A Different Man
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
• Rap World
• The French-Italian
• The Becomers
• Between the Temples
• Rumours
• Dream Team

Best First Views (Also Unranked)

• The Rock (1996)
• Silvestre (1981)
• The Face Behind the Mask (1941)
• Patty Hearst (1988)
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
• Au Claire de la Lune (1983)
• Daddy's Gone a Hunting (1969)
• Queens at Heart (1967)
• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972)
• The Long Journey Home (1941)

• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
• The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Brief Encounters (Kira Muratova)
   

New releases:

• Molokaʻi Bound (Alika Tengan)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• 100,000,000,000,000 (Virgil Vernier)
• All the Long Nights (Sho Miyake)
• Taman-taman (Park) (So Yo-hen)
• Youth (Hard Times) (Wang Bing)
• Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
• An All-Around Feel Good (Jordan Lord)
• Listen to the Voices (Maxime Jean-Baptiste)

First viewings and discoveries

• 03:04 (Huang Ting-fu)
• Blessed Blessed Oblivion (Jumana Manna)
• Blue Cooler (Laura Margulies)
• Bona (Lino Brocka)
• The Clinic (Midi Z)
• Crossing Voices (Raphaël Grisey, Bouba Touré)
• Day of the Dead (George A. Romero)
• GAMA (Kaori Oda)
• K-Family Affairs (Nam Arum)
• Knit’s Island (Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse, Quentin L'helgoualc'h)
• Lauchabo (Tsai Yann-Shan)
• Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke (Tomonari Nishikawa)
• The Masked Monster (Syeyoung Park)
• Nargis: When Time Stopped Breathing (The Maw Naing, Pe Maung Same)
• Nidoïsh Naisseline, une parole qui ne meurt pas (Nunë Luepack)
• Revolution+1 (Masao Adachi)
• Saving a Dragonfly (Hong Daye)
• Secret Sunshine (Lee Chang-dong)
• The Solitude of Memory (Juan Pablo González)
• Tongpan (Isaan Film Group)

Top 10 of 2024 (Ranked) As of 12/5

1. The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
2. Anora (Sean Baker)
3. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
4. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
5. No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal)
6. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
7. Queer (Luca Guadagnino)
8. Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Chelslik)
9. Scenarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
10. It’s Not Me (Leos Carax)

First Viewings (Unranked)

• 79 Springs (Santiago Alvarez, 1969)
• Ashik Kerib (Sergei Parajanov, 1987)
• The Book of Life (Hal Hartley, 1998)
• Christine F (Uli Edel, 1983)
• Cutter’s Way (Ivan Passer, 1981)
• Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
• El (Luis Buñuel, 1953)
• Flesh (Paul Morrissey, 1968)
• Gone to Earth (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1950)
• Ici et Ailleurs (Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville, 1976)
• L’atlante (Jean Vigo, 1934)
• La Soufrière (Werner Herzog, 1977)
• Lucifer Rising (Kenneth Anger, 1972)
• Mikey and Nicky (Elaine May, 1976)
• Recollections of the Yellow House (João César Monteiro, 1989)
• Rendezvous (Claude Lelouch, 1976)
• Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960)
• Route One USA (Robert Kramer, 1989)
• The Saragossa Manuscripts (Wojciech Jerzy Has, 1965)
• The Second Circle (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1990)
• There Once Was a Singing Blackbird (Otar Iosseliani, 1970)

Favorite First Viewings:

• Bad Company (1972, Robert Benton) - Fun City Blu-ray
• Bona (1980, Lino Brocka) - Screener
• Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977, George Barry) - Blu-ray
• Dreadnaught (1981, Yuen Woo-ping) - Criterion Channel
• Evil Dead Trap (1988, Toshiharu Ikeda) - Blu-ray
• Frankenhooker (1990, Frank Henenlotter) - Criterion Channel
• Forty Guns (1957, Samuel Fuller) - Criterion Channel
• Full Time (2021, Eric Gravel) - Prime Streaming
• Gone to Earth (1950, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) - Academy Museum - 35mm
• Mermaid Legend (1984, Toshiharu Ikeda) - Screener
• Near Orouet (1971, Jacques Rozier) - American Cinematheque - DCP
• Smog (1962, Franco Rossi) - Academy Museum - DCP

New Releases (Not Ranked)

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller)
• Blitz (Steve McQueen)
• All We Imagine As Light (Payal Kapadia)
• Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
• The Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)
• Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
• Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
• Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
• Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes (Nanette Burstein)

First Viewings

• Sympathy (Andy Amenechi, 2004)
• Omar (Hany Abu-Assad, 2013)
• Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973)
• The Crimson Kimono (Sam Fuller, 1959)
• Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935)
• Three Resurrected Drunkards (Nagisa Oshima, 1968)
• The Gay Deceivers (Bruce Kessler, 1969)
• The Window (Ted Tetzlaff, 1949)
• Punching at the Sun (Tanuj Chopra, 2006)
• Rich Kids (Robert M. Young, 1979)
• Aaron Loves Angela (Gordon Parks Jr, 1975)
• So Young, So Bad (Bernard Vorhaus, 1950)
• All This Panic (Thomas Betterton, Jenny Gage, 2016)
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Jeff Rowe, 2023)
• For Example (A Critique of Never) (Shūsaku Arakawa, 1971)

The Last Laugh (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1924)

Best First Watches

• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
• Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
• Take Me in Your Arms (Julio Bracho, 1954)
• Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)
• Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)
• Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980)
• Fertile Memory (Michel Khleifi, 1981)
• A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982)
• Broken Mirrors (Marleen Gorris, 1984)
• Morning Patrol (Nikos Nikolaidis, 1987)
• No Fear, No Die (Claire Denis, 1990)
• No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle, 1996)
• The Neighbor Before the House (CAMP, 2012)
• From Gulf to Gulf to Gulf (CAMP, 2013)
• The American Sector (Courtney Stephens, Pacho Velez, 2020)
• Shared Resources (Jordan Lord, 2020)
• Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryūsuke Hamaguchi, 2021)

First Viewings/Discoveries (Alphabetical)

• Anatolian Leopard (Emre Kayis, 2021)
• Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991)
• Calcutta 71 (Mrinal Sen, 1972)
• Dead-End Drive-In (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1986)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931)
• Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016)
• Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today (Stuart Schulberg, 1948)
• Petrified Forest (Masahiro Shinoda, 1973)
• Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2008)
• Yeast (Mary Bronstein, 2008)

New Releases:

1. Close Your Eyes
2. Evil Does Not Exist
3. Chime
4. The Beast
5. Juror #2
6. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In
7. Last Summer
8. Here (Robert Zemeckis)
9. Eureka
10. Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat

First Viewings:

• Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)
• Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
• You and Me (Fritz Lang, 1938)
• I’ve Always Loved You (Frank Borzage, 1946)
• Children of the Beehive (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)
• Apache Drums (Hugo Fregonese, 1951)
• Picnic on the Grass (Jean Renoir, 1959)
• The Wild, Wild Rose (Wong Tin-Lam, 1960)
• The Young One (Luis Buñuel, 1960)
• This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (José Mojica Marins, 1967)
• Love for an Idiot (Yasuzo Masumura, 1967)
• The Castaways of Turtle Island (Jacques Rozier, 1976)
• Matinee (Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, 1977)
• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)
• Texasville (Peter Bogdanovich, 1990)
• Samba Traoré (Idrissa Ouédraogo, 1992)
• Travolta and Me (Patricia Mazuy, 1993)
• The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999)
• Fragile as the World (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2001)
• The Green Fire (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 2008)

Best New Releases:

• Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice)
• Concrete Valley (Antoine Bourges)
• Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
• Failed State (Christopher Jason Bell, Mitch Blummer)
• The Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)
• Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Thien An Pham)
• Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
• Nevermore Eleanor (Jake Barningham)
• This Closeness (Kit Zauhar)
• Universal Language (Matthew Rankin)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Aladdin (a.k.a. Superfantagenio) (1986, Bruno Corbucci)
• Almost Invisible (2010, David Allingham)
• The Black Tower (1987, John Smith)
• Call Me (1988, Sollace Mitchell)
• Fear is the Key (1972, Michael Tuchner)
• Fresh Kill (1994, Shu Lea Cheang)
• The Gods of Times Square (1999, Richard Sandler)
• Handgun (a.k.a. Deep in the Heart) (1983, Tony Garnett)
• I Do Not Know What it is I Am Like (1986, Bill Viola)
• In Order Not to Be Here (2002, Deborah Stratman)
• Invisible Adversaries (1977, Valie Export)
• The Minis (2007, Valerio Zanoli)
• Personal Problems (1980, Bill Gunn)
• Petscop (2017-2019, Tony Domenico)
• Santet (1988, Sisworo Gautama Putra)
• Sleep Has Her House (2017, Scott Barley)
• Still Life (2006, Jia Zhang-ke)
• Suffer Little Children (1983, Alan Briggs)
• Werckmeister Harmonies (2000, Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky)
• What About Me (1993, Rachel Amodeo)

• The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, 2024
• Black Black Moonlight, Ina Archer, 2024
• Black Glass, Adam Piron, 2024
• Dahomey, Mati Diop, 2024
• The Deep West Assembly, Cauleen Smith, 2024
• The First Time, Frank Tashlin, 1952
• Hallelujah, King Vidor, 1929
• Hemel, Danielle Dean, 2024
• Lago Gatún, Kevin Jerome Everson, 2021
• Make Way for Tomorrow, Leo McCarey, 1937
• Mascon: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy, The Otolith Group, 2024
• No Other Land, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, 2024
• Occupied City, Steve McQueen, 2023
• On the Battlefield, Little Egypt Collective, Theresa Delsoin, Lisa Marie Malloy, J.P. Sniadecki, Ray Whitaker, 2024
• On The Way to the Moon, We Discovered the Earth, Crystal Z Campbell, 2018
• Public Surfaces, Gillian Waldo, 2023
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’État, Johan Grimonprez, 2024
• Street of No Return, Samuel Fuller, 1989
• The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer, 2023

New Releases (Unranked):

• A Different Man (dir. Aaron Schimberg)
• Between the Temples (dir. Nathan Silver)
• Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)
• Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

First Viewings:

• Aerosmith: The Making of Pump (dir. Martin Torgoff, 1990)
• Backyard (dir. Ross McElwee, 1984)
• The Color of Pomegranates (dir. Sergei Parajanov, 1969)
• Dead Mountaineer's Hotel (dir. Grigori Romanov, 1979)
• Deja Vu (dir. Tony Scott, 2006)
• The Descent (dir. Neil Marshall, 2006)
• Foragers (dir. Jumana Manna, 2022)
• Innocents Abroad (dir. Les Blank, 1991)
• Local Hero (dir. Bill Forsyth, 1983)
• Looker (dir. Michael Crichton, 1981)
• Memorial Day 2000
• The Opportunists (dir. Myles Connell, 2000)
• The Plains (dir. David Easteal, 2022)
• Six o’Clock News (dir. Ross McElwee, 1996)
• Telefon (dir. Don Siegel, 1977)

Unranked:

• Strange Darling
• Nickel Boys
• Wicked
• Oddity
• Conclave
• Dune 2
• Seed of Sacred Fig
• Kneecap
• The Brutalist
• The Substance

New Releases (in alphabetical order)

• A Complete Unknown (James Mangold)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• A Real Pain (Jesse Eisenberg)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Conclave (Edward Berger)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• Here (Bas Devos)
• Nosferatu (Robert Eggers)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni)
• Phish Live at Sphere (seven officially released videos)

Discoveries

• All the King’s Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) - I thought I had seen this. I’d seen A Face in the Crowd.
• Queen Rock Montreal (Saul Swimmer, 1981/2024) - This was released as a VHS back in the early 1980s, but it showed in IMAX, the format in which it was shot, in January 2024. I got a good look at Freddie’s tonsils at the AMC Lincoln Sq.
• “Raga Piloo” performed by Anoushka Shankar and Patricia Kopachinskaja in Berlin in 2016, which I discovered on the Stage+ app, but is also on YouTube, and is absolutely worth 17 minutes of your time.
• Roseland (James Ivory, 1977) - This Merchant Ivory production, based on an original Ruth Prawer Jhabvala screenplay, is as if a late style Woody Allen movie somehow got plopped into 1970s New York. I mean this as the highest compliment.

Films I liked in 2024 were Emilia Pérez, Vermiglio, April, and Queer.

New Releases (Unranked)

• The Last Showgirl
• The Last Sacrifice
• The Last Waltz (Kidding)
• Heretic
• Kneecap
• V/H/S/BEYOND
• The Substance
• Anora
• Asphalt City
• Late Night with the Devil

Faves and Discoveries

• The Servant (1963), Directed by Joseph Losey
• Apocalypse Covid Screened at Heriticon
• The Picture of Dorian Grey (1945)
• Dracula 1972 A.D.

First Viewings

• Bone (Larry Cohen 1972)
• Caliber 9 (Fernando Di Leo 1972)
• The Outfit (John Flynn 1973)
• Radio On (Chris Petit 1979)
• Serie Noire (Alain Corneau 1979)
• Vigilante (William Lustig 1982)
• Last Night at the Alamo (Eagle Pennell 1983)
• Comfort and Joy (Bill Forsyth 1984)
• Godzilla 1985 (RJ Kizer, Koji Hashimoto 1985)
• Where Are We? Our Trip Through America (Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman 1993)

Holiday Horror Viewings

• 36.15 code Pere Noel (Rene Manzor 1989)
• Dead End (Jean Baptiste Andrea, Fabrice Canepa 2003)
• P2 (Franck Khalfoun 2007)
• Rare Exports (Jalmari Helander 2010)
• Better Watch Out (Chris Peckover 2016)

First Viewings

• Morgan Quaintance, Repetitions
• Rungano Nyoni, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
• Radu Jude, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
• Miryam Charles, Cette Maison
• Jonas Mekas, Guns of the Trees
• Alexandre Koberidze, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
• Jenn Nkiru, “Get Lit” (music video)

First Viewings for 2024!

• Pure Country - Christopher Cain (1992)
• North Dallas Forty - Ted Kotcheff (1979)
• Urban Cowboy - James Bridges (1980)
• American Gigolo - Paul Schrader (1980)
• Rolling Vengeance - Steven Hilliard Stern (1987)
• Breaking In - Bill Forsyth (1989)
• The Last Detail - Hal Ashby (1973)
• The Indian Runner - Sean Penn (1991)
• Deadly Force - Paul Aaron (1983)
• Avenging Force - Sam Firstenberg (1986)
• L.A. Bounty - Worth Keeter (1989)
• Live Wire - Christian Duguay (1992)
• Man on Fire - Elie Chouraqui (1987)
• The Getaway - Sam Peckingpah (1972)
• Fat City - John Huston (1972)

Best New Releases (Ranked)

1. Nickel Boys
2. Look Into My Eyes
3. No Other Land
4. Janet Planet
5. Between the Temples
6. The Seed of the Sacred Fig
7. About Dry Grasses
8. Good One
9. Hit Man
10. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World / Sasquatch Sunset

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (Unranked)

• Baseball Is Cinema (John DeMarsico, 2023-24)
• Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show (2024)
• Would You Have Sex With An Arab (Yolande Zauberman, 2011)
• Moment of Impact (Julia Loktev, 1998)
• Tomboychik (Sandi DuBowski, 1993)
• Thank You and Good Night (Jan Oxenberg, 1990)
• Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980)
• An Arab Israeli Dialogue (Lionel Rogosin, 1974)
• We're Alive (Christine Lesiak, Kathy Levitt, Michie Gleason, 1974)
• Introduction to the Enemy (Haskell Wexler, 1974)

New Releases (Alphabetical)

• Anora (Sean Baker)
• The Beast (Bertrand Bonnello)
• Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Taormina)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Do Not Expect Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
• The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)
• Rap World (Danny Scharar & Conner O’Malley)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Alphabetical)

• The Baby (Ted Post, 1973)
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway, 1989)
• Dark Angel: The Ascent (Linda Hassani, 1994)
• Down (Dick Maas, 2001)
• Lust, Caution (Ang Lee, 2007)
• Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles, 2003)
• My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (Patrick Tam, 1989)
• The Phenom (Noah Buschel, 2016)
• Playing with Fire (Ivan Nagy, 1985)
• The Rare Blue Apes of Cannibal Isle (Donn Greer, 1972)

New Releases (unranked)

• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• Razeh-del (Maryam Tafakory)
• Subterranean Moon (Sky Hopinka)
• Being John Smith (John Smith)
• The Wanda Coleman Songbook (Cauleen Smith)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Union (Brett Story & Stephen Maing)

First Viewings

• Eye/Machine I-III (Harun Farocki, 2001-2003)
• BLACK TV (Aldo Tambellini, 1968)
• The Forgotten Space (Allan Sekula and Noël Burch, 2010)
• Disorder (Huang Weikai, 2009)
• La Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)
• Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)
• Friendship’s Death (Peter Wollen, 1987)
• Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin, 2022)
• Child of Resistance (Haile Gerima, 1973)
• Girl Pack (Lisa Baumgardner, 1978)
• The Night of the Minotaur (Juliana Zuluaga Montoya, 2023)
• 28.IV.81 (Bedouin Spark) (Christopher Harris, 2009)

First viewings, in the order they came to mind:

• Dying (Michael Roemer)
• Love On The Run (Francois Truffaut)
• Good Riddance (Francis Mankiewicz)
• No Fear No Die (Claire Denis)
• Pieces of April (Peter Hedges)
• El Super (Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal)
• Seventeen (Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines)
• Homebodies (Larry Yust)
• A Tale Of Winter (Eric Rohmer)

Top 10:

1. The People’s Joker
2. Aggro Dr1ft
3. Love Lies Bleeding
4. Dogman
5. Riddle of Fire
6. In A Violent Nature
7. Femme
8. She Is Conann
9. The Substance
10. Kill

THE NICKEL BOYS. Full stop!

Favorite First Viewings in 2024

1. High School II (1994), Roxy
2. The Go-Between (1971), MoMA
3. Compensation (1999), FLC
4. The Right Stuff (1983), MoMI
5. Malcolm X (1992), Paris Theater
6. Crash (1996), Roxy
7. Wild Style (1982), Roxy
8. The Magic Flute (1975), FLC
9. Viridiana (1961), MoMA
10. Black Narcissus (1947), MoMA
11. Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), FLC
12. A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), MoMA
13. Dersu Uzala (1975), FLC
14. High and Low (1963), Metrograph
15. Mad Max 2 (1981), Film Forum
16. Los olvidados (1950), MoMA
17. A Tale of Summer (1996), Metrograph
18. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), MoMA
19. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Metrograph
20. Bona (1980), FLC

2024

1. The Shrouds - David Cronenberg
2. The Beast - Bertrand Bonello
3. Here - Robert Zemeckis
4. Caught by the Tides - Jia Zhangke
5. Cloud - Akira Kurosawa
6. Victor Erice - Close Your Eyes
7. Shadow of Fire - Shinya Tsukamoto
8. The Deliverance - Lee Daniels
9. Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In - Soi Cheang
10. Ricky Stanicky - Peter Farrelly

Best First Watches

• La Noche de los Asesinos (1974) - Jesus Franco
• Chromium Blue (2000) - Zalman King
• Women of the Night (2001) - Zalman King
• Traviata '53 (1953) - Vittorio Cottafavi
• Drzewa (1996) - Grzegorz Krolikiewicz
• Caccia Tragica (1947) - Giuseppe De Santis
• K Street (2003) - Steven Soderbergh
• Dead End (1993) - Hisayasu Sato
• Timebomb Y2K (2023) - Brian Becker & Marley McDonald
• Jagko (1980) - Im Kwon-Taek
• Motel Cactus (1997) - Park Ki-Yong
• Rawhide (1951) - Henry Hathaway
• When Will I Be Loved (2004) - James Toback
• Eldorado (1988) - Geza Veremenyi
• Without Fear (1972) - Ali Khamraev
• I Survived Certain Death (1960) - Vojtech Jasny
• Liberty Belle (1983) - Pascal Kane
• The Sieges of Alcazar (1989) - Luc Moullet
• A Friend of Vincent (1983) - Pierre Granier-Deferre

new films:

• Scénarios + Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc Godard)
• A Traveler's Needs + By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)

old films:

• Lupe + Couch + Taylor Mead's Ass + Camp (Andy Warhol)

First Viewings:

• Gargantuan (John Smith, 1992) on YouTube
• Rain (Lewis Milestone, 1932) on TCM
• Double-Blind: No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle & Greg Shephard, 1996) on Le Cinéma Club
• Woman in Chains (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1968) on a torrent
• The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation (Avi Mograbi, 2021) on a torrent
• Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973) at Digital Gym
• Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967) at a friend’s house
• Film About a Woman Who… (Yvonne Rainer, 1974) at Nowe Horyzonty
• It is Night in America (Ana Vaz, 2022) at Nowe Horyzonty
• Hi Octane (Sofia Coppola and Nicoletta Munroe, 1994) on YouTube

• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, 2025)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher, 2024)
• The Florida Project (Sean Baker, 2017)
• Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee, 1989)
• Age of Panic (Justine Triet, 2013)

Films

• Smog (1962)
• Tokyo Twilight (1957)
• Perfect Blue (1997)
• Summer with Monika (1953)
• Keyboard Fantasies (2019)
• Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (2001)
• Fort Apache (1948)
• Once in a Lifetime (1932)
• Sex Is Comedy (2002)
• Playgirl (1966)
• Unman, Wittering and Zigo (1971)
• The Linguini Incident (1991)
• Barbara (1970)
• Pickup (1951)
• The Best Man (1964)
• The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952)
• Forbidden (1932)
• Mee Pok Man (1995)
• Max My Love (1986)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)

Best of 2024 (unranked):

• Baby Blue Benzo (Cwynar)
• Being John Smith (Smith)
• The Brutalist (Corbet)
• Challengers (Guadaginino)
• Chime (Kurosawa)
• Do Not Expect Too Much From The End Of The World (Jude)
• The Beast (Bonello)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Arnow)
• The Heirloom (Petrie)
• Hemel (Dean)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Bar Salon (1974)
• False Faces (1932)
• Lovers Rock (2020)
• Maine-Ocean Express (1986)
• Noises Off… (1992)
• Office Hours Live with Tim Heidecker
• The Belovs (1992)
• The Long Farewell (1971)
• The Text of Light (1974)

BEST OF 2024

• About Dry Grasses (Ceylan)
• Limbo (Sen)
• The Beast (Bonello)
• Eno (Hustwit)
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Miller)
• Green Border (Holland)
• Good One (Donaldson)
• The Bikeriders (Nichols)
• Oh, Canada (Schrader)
• Hard Truths (Leigh)

FIRST TIME VIEWS

• The Spider Labyrinth (Gagni, 1988)
• Mahjong (Yi, 1996)
• Tale of Tsar Sultan (Ptushko, 1966)
• Rhubarb (Lubin, 1951)
• Bluebeard’s Castle (Powell, 1963)
• Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (Asher, 1981)
• Blood Suckers (Hartford-Davis, More, 1971)
• Daughter of Deceit (Buñuel, 1951)
• Desperate Journey (Walsh, 1941)
• Merry-Go-Round (Fabri, 1956)
• The Fall of Ako Castle (Fukasaku, 1978)
• The Model and the Marriage Broker (Cukor, 1951)
• Barbara (Burns, 1970)
• The Spook Who Sat By The Door (Dixon, 1973)
• The Valiant Ones (Hu, 1975)
• Allonsanfan (Taviani and Taviani, 1974)
• Bad Company (Benton, 1972)
• Blood and Sand (Mamoulian, 1941)
• The Unknown (Browning, 1927)
• Beauty of Beauties (Le-Han Hsiang, 1965)
• Bruiser (Romero, 2000)

Natalia Keogan

Top 10, Ranked

1. The Beast
2. Janet Planet
3. No Other Land
4. The Brutalist
5. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
6. All We Imagine as Light
7. Hard Truths
8. Green Border
9. Last Summer
10. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Favorite First Watches

• Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, 2000)
• Clearcut (Ryszard Bugajski, 1991)
• Local Legends (Matt Farley, 2013)
• The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)
• Tampopo (Juzu Itami, 1985)
• House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
• Desperate Living (John Waters, 1977)
• Landscape Suicide (James Benning, 1986)
• The River (Tsai Ming-liang, 1997)
• YiYi (Edward Yang, 2000)
• Sex Is Comedy (Catherine Breillat, 2002)
• Jobe’z World (Michael Bilandic, 2018)
• Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2015)
• Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin, 2003)
• Ape (Joel Potrykus, 2012)
• Fucking Amal (Lucas Moodysson, 1998)
• Brewster McCloud (Robert Altman, 1970)
• Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
• The Piano Teacher (Michael Haneke, 2001)
• 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002)

Viewings I found remarkable in the sense that I am here remarking on them -- some of which may also be new releases, but I don't know anymore because what even is time, or, more accurately, what is the opportunity cost of building my life around marketing imperatives? Anyway, I like and admire these:

• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
• Giant's Kettle (Markku Hakala, Mari Käki)
• The Hypnosis (Ernst De Geer)
• Judy Versus Capitalism (Mike Hoolboom)
• Memory (Michel Franco)
• My First Film (Zia Anger)
• New Strains (Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Artemis Shaw)
• The Practice (Martín Rejtman)
• Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot (William Kentridge)
• A Traveler's Needs (Hong Sang-soo)
• The Tuba Thieves (Alison O'Daniel)
• The Visitors (Ragnar Kjartansson)

Unranked

• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
• Green Border (Agnieszka Holland)
• Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
• Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
• Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
• The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodovar)

New Releases (Unranked)

• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• The Curse, episode 10: “Green Queen” (Nathan Fielder)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
• Here (Robert Zemeckis)
• Kinds of Kindness (Yorgos Lanthimos)
• Realm of Satan (Scott Cummings)
• Social Studies (Lauren Greenfield)
• Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
• Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus)

First Viewings and Discoveries

• Anna Nicole (Mary Harron, 2013)
• Bitch (Andy Warhol, 1965) + Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966) double feature at MoMA
• Brighton Beach (Susan Wittenberg, Carol Stein, 1980)
• The Driller Killer, 35mm (Abel Ferrara, 1979)
• Portrait of Andrew Noren (Barry Gerson, 1972)
• Tomato’s Another Day, 35mm nitrate (James Sibley Watson, 1934)
• Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023) [saw too late in 2023 to make last year’s list]

Bonus Content

• A.S. Hamrah’s “Last Week in End Times Cinema” newsletter
• “Distant Ruptures” by CF (NYRC)
• dummy zine no. 1: The Art of PeeWee’s Playhouse (makeReady Press)
• “I Know You Are, but What Am I?: On Pee-wee Herman” by Cait McKinney (University of Minnesota Press)
• “Frank Johnson, Secret Pioneer of American Comics Vol. 1” (Fantagraphics)
• “Going Home is Leaving It” by Jen Fisher (F)
• “Little Joe: A book about queers and cinema, mostly” edited by Sam Ashby (SPBH Editions)
• The Lost Record soundtrack LP (In the Red Records)
• Rehman Memmedli, “Azerbaijani Gitara, Vol. 2” (Bongo Joe)
• Santo vs. The Riders of Terror blu-ray (Indicator)
• Open source software: LibreWolf web browser, Mull mobile web browser, DivestOS Mobile

10 New Favorites Living in My Head for Better or Worse:

• Go As Messy As Messy Can Be (Mio Ezaki, 1971)
• Stranger In Between (Charles Crichton, 1952)
• Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939)
• Noon Wine (in color) (Sam Peckinpah, 1966)
• The Big Crime Wave (John Paizs, 1985)
• A Better Day In Every Way (aka Muzak) (Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter, 1972)
• The Ritz (Richard Lester, 1976)
• Bone (1972, Larry Cohen)
• Norman...Is That You? (1976, George Schlatter)
• The Doberman Gang (1972, Byron Ross Chudnow)

Haven't seen the new Mike Leigh but I have a good feeling about it.

Best New Releases

1. Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
2. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
3. Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
4. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
5. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
6. Juror No. 2 (Clint Eastwood)
7. Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
8. Dahomey (Mati Diop)
9. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
10. Good One (India Donaldson)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Working Girls (Dorothy Arzner, 1931)
• The Story of Temple Drake (Stephen Roberts, 1933)
• A Hero of Tokyo (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1935)
• Desert Fury (Lewis Allen, 1947)
• Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957)
• Score (Radley Metzger, 1974)
• A Comedy in Six Unnatural Acts (Jan Oxenberg, 1975)
• Pressure (Horace Ové, 1975)
• Toute Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982)
• If From Every Tongue It Drips (Sharlene Bamboat, 2022)

2024 (Unranked)

• La Chimera
• Christmas Eve at Miller's Point
• Rap World
• Challengers
• Dune 2
• Furiosa
• Megalopolis
• Anora
• Coreys (Short - Dan Streit, Connor O'Malley)
• Gooners (Short)

1st Time Watch

1. The Funeral (Juzo Itami, 1984)
2. The Pizza Triangle (A Drama of Jealousy) (Ettore Scola, 1970)
3. We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola, 1971)
4. Ricochet (Russell Mulcahy, 1991)
5. The Conquerors (William A. Wellman, 1932)
6. In Search of Famine (Mrinal Sen, 1981)
7. Ride On (Larry Yang, 2023)
8. The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)
9. Wildmen of the Greater Toronto Area (Solmund MacPherson, 2023)
10. Valet Girls (Rafal Zielinski, 1987)
11. Theater Camp (Molly Gordon & Nick Liberman, 2023)
12. Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931)
13. The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)
14. The Beauty of the Devil (René Clair, 1952)
15. Damon Packard's 2023 AI Movies

Discoveries

• Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin, 1955)
• Begone Dull Care (Evelyn Lambert and Norman McLaren, 1949)
• Beijing Watermelon (Obayashi Nobuhiko, 1989)
• The Big Red One (Samuel Fuller, 1980/2004)
• Children of the Beehive (Shimizu Hiroshi, 1948)
• Deep Sleep (Basma al-Sharif, 2014)
• Duelle (Jacques Rivette, 1976)
• Floating Weeds (Ozu Yasujirō, 1959)
• Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang, 1994)
• The Green Fire (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 2006)
• Hiroshima Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
• The House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
• The Insider (Michael Mann, 1999)
• Lightning Over Water (Wim Wenders, Nicholas Ray, et al., 1980)
• A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf, 1996)
• Moving (Sōmai Shinji, 1993)
• Now and Then (Lesli Linka Glatter, 1995)
• The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice, 1992)
• Variety (Bette Gordon, 1983)
• Yum, Yum, Yum! A Taste of Cajun and Creole Cooking of Louisiana (Les Blank, 1990)

New Releases

• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice)
• Exergue - On Documenta 14 (Dimitris Athiridis)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
• Newsreel 242 - Sunny Railways (Nika Autor)
• No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor)
• Twice Into Oblivion (Pierre Michel Jean)
• Welcome Interplanetary and Sidereal Space Conquerors (Andrés Jurado)

Releases (Not Ranked)

• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Dìdi (Sean Wang)
• Dune Part 2 (Denis Villeneuve)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
• My Sweet Land (Sareen Hairabedian)
• Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)
• Rap World (Danny Scharar, Conner O’Malley)
• Ren Faire (Lance Oppenheim)
• The Substance (Coralie Fargeat)

Still some things I want to see like The Brutalist, Y2K, The Code, Babygirl, etc.

Favorite First Viewings

• Affliction (1997, Paul Schrader)
• Boy (1969, Nagisa Ōshima)
• Burden of Dreams (1982, Les Blank)
• Documenteur (1981, Agnès Varda)
• In a Lonely Place (1950, Nicholas Ray)
• Kyoto, My Mother’s Place (1991, Nagisa Ōshima)
• Mayak or The Lighthouse (2006, Mariya Saakyan)
• Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992, Mikhail Vartanov, Sergei Parajanov)
• Prêt-à-Porter (1994, Robert Altman)
• Real Life (1979, Albert Brooks)
• Rumble Fish (1983, Francis Ford Coppola)
• Saved! (2004, Brian Dannelly)
• Serial Mom (1994, John Waters)
• Slums of Beverly Hills (1998, Tamara Jenkins)
• Spacked Out (2000, Lawrence Ah Mon)
• Starlet (2012, Sean Baker)
• Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder)
• Targets (1968, Peter Bogdanovich)
• The Sweet East (2023, Sean Price Williams)
• Tokyo-Ga (1985, Wim Wenders)
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989, Peter Greenaway)
• Until the End of the World (1991, Wim Wenders)
• Watermelon Man (1970, Melvin Van Peebles)
• Wings of Desire (1987, Wim Wenders)

NEW RELEASES (unranked):

• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• GIFT (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, live performed by Eiko Ishibashi)
• Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
• Trap (M. Night Shyamalan)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sangsoo)

FIRST VIEWINGS (unranked):

• Age of Panic (2013, Justine Triet) on MUBI
• Bar Salon (1974, André Forcier) at Anthology Film Archives
• Merci pour le Chocolat (2000, Claude Chabrol) on blu-ray
• Model (1980, Frederick Wiseman) at the New York Film Festival
• Not a Pretty Picture (1975, Martha Coolidge) at Nitehawk
• Novecento (1900) (1976, Bernardo Bertolucci) at the Museum of Modern Art
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975, Miloš Forman) at Metrograph
• Opening Night (1977, John Cassavetes) at BAM
• The Searchers (1956, John Ford) at the Museum of the Moving Image
• Serpent’s Path (1998, Kiyoshi Kurosawa) on Ok.ru

First Viewings & Discoveries

• Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953)
• The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick and Buster Keaton, 1928)
• Infinite Football (Corneliu Porumboiu, 2018)
• James Baldwin: I Heard It Through the Grapevine (Dick Fontaine and Pat Hartley, 1982)
• Milestones (Robert Kramer, 1975)
• Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica, 1951)
• The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973)
• Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
• Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood, 2019)
• The Traveler (Abbas Kiarostami, 1974)

Top Ten US New Releases (Unranked)

• Better Man (Michael Gracey)
• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• Coreys (Dan Streit)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
• Local Legends: Bloodbath (Matt Farley)
• The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (Braden Sitter Sr.)
• The People’s Joker (Vera Drew)
• Rap World (Conner O'Malley, Danny Scharar)

If festival premieres counted, four would have been bumped to include: Dead Talent's Society, Eephus, The Gesuidouz and Universal Language.

Fave First Viewings (Unranked)

• Almost Invisible (2010) D. David Allingham - watched at The The Important Cinema Club's 2024 Halloween Movie Mind Melter
• Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret (2023) D. Kelly Fremon Craig - plane viewing
• Chasing Dream (2019) D. Johnnie To - watched at the Important Cinema Club's 2024 The 24-Hour Musical Movie Mind Melter
• Dirty Work (1998) D. Bob Saget - watched at The Roxy, New York
• Dolores Claiborne (1995) D. Taylor Hackford - home viewing
• Enduring Destiny (2014) D. Thomas Reilly-King - home viewing
• The Fan (1996) D. Tony Scott - watched at TIFF Lightbox, Toronto
• First Reformed (2017) D. Paul Schrader - home viewing
• Ghosts… of the Civil Dead (1988) D. John Hillcoat - watched at the Los Feliz 3, Los Angeles as part of the American Cinematheque's Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair
• Glass Chin (2014) D. Noah Buschel - home viewing
• Jules (2023) D. Marc Turtletaub - home viewing
• The Last Wagon (1956) D. Delmer Daves - watched at The Important Cinema Club's 2024 Summer Mind Melter
• Madman (1981) D. Joe Giannone - home viewing
• The Missing Person (2009) D. Noah Buschel - home viewing
• The Phenom (2016) D. Noah Buschel - home viewing
• Roadkill (1989) D. Bruce McDonald - watched at The Revue Cinema, Toronto
• Shock Troops (1967) D. Costa-Gavras - watched at The Important Cinema Club's 2024 Summer Mind Melter
• Sparrows Dance (2012) D. Noah Buschel - home viewing
• Stalked by My Doctor (2015) D. Doug Campbell - home viewing

New Releases:

1. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
2. Longlegs - First Five Minutes Only (Osgood Perkins)
3. Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
4. Furiosa (George Miller)
5. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
6. Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
7. An article I wrote getting mentioned on the Minnesota Twins Broadcast (Bally Sports North): https://www.instagram.com/p/C8IJTelvF_Q/
8. Reform! (Jon Bois)
9. Fishing Garret’s “Yoink” Videos: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzrxGJgrG2z/
10. Trap (M. Night Shaymalan)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Once in a Lifetime (Russell Mack, 1932)
• Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933)
• Massacre (Alan Crosland, 1934)
• Hold It! (Dave Fleischer, 1938)
• The Man on the Eiffel Tower (Burgess Meredith, 1950)
• Gone to Earth (Powell & Pressburger, 1950)
• The Tales of Hoffman (Powell & Pressburger, 1951)
• Suspicion, “Four O’Clock” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1957)
• Way Out, “Button, Button” (Tom Donovan, 1961)
• Assault on the Pay Train (Roberto Farias, 1962)
• The Groundstar Conspiracy (Lamont Johnson, 1972)
• Unholy Rollers (Vernon Zimmerman, 1972)
• Fear is the Key (Michael Tuchner, 1972)
• The Richard Pryor Special? (John Moffitt, 1977)
• Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)
• The Outlaw Josey Wales (Clint Eastwood, 1976)
• Thunder (Takashi Ito, 1982)
• Cheers, “Diane’s Nightmare” (James Burrows, 1985)
• The Thief and the Cobbler (“Moment in Time” Version) (1993)
• The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett, 1999)

Chronological Order, but Massacre was the best film I saw this year (thanks Adam Piron). 115 works seen on film (70/35/16). 69 works seen on DCP. Multiplex visits: 12. Netflix viewing: 2 (Rebel Moon Part 1 & 2 during COVID).

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Naked Blue, 2022
• Deliver Us from Evil, 2020
• Vanya on 42nd Street, 1994
• One Rode to Asa Bay Official music video by Bathory, 1991 & Quorthorn introducing the video for MTV
• Lady Snowblood, 1973
• Le Samouraï, 1967
• Chantal Ackerman D’est, 1993/D’est: au bord de la fiction,1995 installation (at Jeu de Paume)
• Bruce Nauman Art Make-Up, 1976 (at Centre Pompidou)
• Georgie Nettell projections in her show Isn’t It Beautiful (currently at Reena Spaulings)
• Seeing the new restoration of The Devil, Probably, 1977 on the big screen at Film Forum
• Akira Kurosawa being interviewed by Takeshi Kitano wearing his Laker’s shirt (youTube) and...
• freshly made Shawn Kemp dunk highlight reels. Whoever said cinema is dead is clearly wrong.

New Releases

1. Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
2. Trap / The Watchers (Shyamalan Gang)
3. By the Stream / A Traveler’s Needs / It Snows on You (Hong Sangsoo)
4. In Search of Gladys Glover (Gina Telaroli)
5. Careless Passage (Jerome Hiler) / Carroll Gardens (Ernie Gehr)
6. Madame Web (S. J. Clarkson)
7. Juror #2 (Clint Eastwood)
8. Dream Team (Lev Kalman, Whitney Horn)
9. Here (Robert Zemeckis)
10. The Killer (John Woo)

First Watches

• Coma: Spit Painting (Dillon Friend)
• Lorna, The Exorcist / A Virgin Among the Living Dead (Jesús Franco)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Rouben Mamoulian)
• Madame Satan (Cecil B. DeMille)
• Drunk (Andy Warhol)
• Diary (Giuseppe Andrews)
• Maine-Ocean Express / Near Orouët (Jacques Rozier)
• Urban Menace (Albert Pyun)
• Tiny Giants 3D (Mark Brownlow)
• The Margin (Walerian Borowczyk)
• Silesilence (Jacques Perconte)
• The Or Cloud / Automatic Writing 2 (Fred Worden)
• The Sandpiper (Vincente Minelli)
• Winged Dialogue / The Count of Days / Palinode (Robert Beavers)
• DOA: Dead or Alive (Corey Yuen)
• Morning Patrol (Nikos Nikolaidis)
• San Diego Surf (Paul Morrissey)
• May God Bless America / Scale Model Sadness (Robert Morin)
• Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu)
• In the Stone House / Words of Mercury (Jerome Hiler)
• Sarabande / April (Nathaniel Dorsky)
• Mare’s Tail (David Larcher)
• The Bridges of Madison County / Bronco Billy (Clint Eastwood)
• Cloak and Dagger / Fury (Fritz Lang)
• Diesel (Robert Kramer)
• Strange Fruit (Skip Norman)
• The Theater of the Matters (Jean-Claude Biette)
• La Machine (Paul Vecchiali)

Best New Releases 

1. A Different Man
2. Rap World
3. Janet Planet
4. Anora
5. Furiosa: A Mad Max Story
6. Love Lies Bleeding
7. (tie) Megalopolis & Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1
8. Hard Truths
9. Good One
10. Christmas Eve In Miller's Point

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries 

in no particular order

• Not a Pretty Picture (1976, Martha Coolidge)
• My Heart Is That Eternal Rose (1989, Patrick Tam)
• The Plot Against Harry (1971, Michael Roemer)
• The Scenic Route (1971, Michael Rappaport)
• Texasville (1990, Peter Bogdanovich)
• Zu Warriors (2001, Tsui Hark)
• 10:30pm Monday (1975, Lucas Severin)
• Bona (1980, Lino Brocka)
• The Borrower (1991, John McNaughton)
• The Demoniacs (1974, Jean Rollin)
• Future Cops (1993, Wong Jing)
• Household Saints (1993, Nancy Savoca)
• If Footmen Tire You, What Will the Horses Do? (1971, Ron Ormond)
• The Mark (1977, Ilias Mylonakos)
• Orders (1974, Michel Brault)
• Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996, S.S. Wilson)
• Street of No Return (1989, Samuel Fuller)
• Out of It (1969, Paul Williams)
• Pretty Smart (1987, Dimitri Logothetis)
• Rich Kids (1979, Robert M. Young)

Best New Releases:

• The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
• Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Adil El Arbi, Bilall Fallah)
• The Order (Justin Kurzel)
• My First Film (Zia Anger)
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Birth (Jonathan Glazer)
• Mr. and Mrs. Smith S1 E4 (Christian Sprenger)
• Not Like Us (Dave Free & Kendrick Lamar)

Top Viewing Experience

• Sitting in the front row at the Jordan Belson collection screening at Anthology Film Archives was a transcendent and deeply moving experience — "5 million stars."

Top Listening Experience

• Programming The Shout (Skolimowski, 1978) and experiencing its full sonic intensity on an excellent theatre sound system for the first time.

Favorite First Viewings in Alphabetical Order

• Corpse Mania (Chih-Hung, 1981)
• Day of Wrath (Dreyer, 1943)
• King of New York (Ferrara, 1990)
• Lovers Beyond Time (Panayiotatos, 1990)
• Mermaid Legend (Ikeda, 1984)
• Night of the Hunter (Laughton, 1955)
• One Day Pina Asked… (Akerman, 1983)
• Phase IV (Bass, 1974)
• School of the Holy Beast (Suzuki, 1974)
• Successive Slidings of Pleasure (Robbe-Grillet, 1974)
• Sugar Cookies (Gershuny, 1973)
• Sunset Boulevard (Wilder, 1950)
• The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Argento, 1970)
• The Empire of Desire (Reichenbach, 1981)
• The Legend of Hell House (Hough, 1973)
• Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Mailer, 1987)
• Zabriskie Point (Antonioni, 1970)

Favorite First Viewings, Short Films

• Crystal (Yamada, 1988)
• Grim (Ito, 1985)
• Shaman, A Tapestry for Sorcerers (de Hirsch, 1967)
• Transfiguration (Marti, 1979)
• Untitled 77-A (Ok-hee, 1977)

Best New Releases Unranked:

• All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia
• La Chimera by Alice Rohrwacher 
• Nocturnes by Anirban Dutta & Anupama Srinivasan
• Dahomey by Mati Diop
• Conclave by Edward Berger
• Nickel Boys by RaMell Ross
• Samsara by Lois Patiño
• Looking She Said I Forget by Naomi Pacifique
• The Beast by Bertrand Bonello
• Universal Language by Matthew Rankin

Fav First Viewing Unranked:

• Still/Here by Christopher Harris
• Emergency Needs by Kevin Jerome Everson
• Life on Earth by Abderrahmane Sissako
• Meeks Cutoff by Kelly Reichardt
• Old Joy by Kelly Reichardt
• Blissfully Yours by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
• The Blue Planet by Franco Piavoli
• Bushman by David Schickele
• Un Trabajo de Verano by Joie Estrella Horwitz & Sergi Castellà
• McCabe and Mrs. Miller by Robert Altman

Best New Releases (10 Films)

1. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, D: Mohammad Rasoulof
2. Intercepted, D. Oksana Karpovych
3. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, D. Radu Jude
4. Dahomey, D. Mati Diop
5. Vermiglio, D. Maura Delpero
6. About Dry Grasses, D. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
7. Universal Language, D. Matthew Rankin
8. Black Box Diaries, D. Shiori Ito
9. All We Imagine as Light, D. Payal Kapadia
10. Nickel Boys, D. RaMell Ross

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Mädchen in Uniform, D. Leontine Sagan
• Life Flows Slowly By..., D. Binka Zhelyazkova
• Extreme Private Eros, D. Kazuo Hara
• Napoléon, D. Abel Gance
• A Dream Longer Than the Night, D. Niki de Saint Phalle
• Cyber Palestine, D. Elia Suleiman
• The Color of Armenian Land, D. Mikahail Vartanov
• Our Songs Were Ready for All Wars to Come, D. Noor Abed
• Promised Lands, D. Susan Sontag
• The Wild Party, D. Dorothy Arzner (1929)
• Sisters!, D. Barbara Hammer
• Taipei Story, D. Edward Yang
• They Do Not Exist, D. Mustafa Abu Ali
• Our Small Houses, D. Kassem Hawal
• Caged, D. John Cromwell (1950)
• Arab Israeli Dialogue, D. Lionel Rogosin
• Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, D. Eyal Sivan
• The Bremen Town Musicians, D. Inessa Kovalevskaya
• The Raven, D. Bahram Beyzaie
• Essene, D. Frederick Wiseman

New Releases

1. Here (Bas Devos)
2. La Chimera
3. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
4. Chime
5. A Prince
6. Challengers
7. A Traveller’s Needs
8. Rebel Ridge
9. Rumours
10. The Vourdalak

Best New Releases

1. Dune: Part Two
2. Anora
3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
4. Challengers
5. Gladiator II
6. Juror #2
7. The Beast
8. Last Summer
9. Janet Planet
10. Trap

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• A Girl Cut in Two (Chabrol, 2007)
• American Honey (Arnold, 2016)
• Cowards Bend the Knee (Maddin, 2003)
• Déjà Vu (Scott, 2006)
• Edmond (Gordon, 2005)
• Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (McNaughton, 1986)
• House of Tolerance (Bonello, 2011)
• In the Cut (Campion, 2003)
• Invincible (Herzog, 2001)
• Kingdom of Heaven (Scott, 2005)
• Lone Star (Sayles, 1996)
• Made in Hong Kong (Chan, 1997)
• Maps to the Stars (Cronenberg, 2014)
• Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven (Fassbinder, 1975)
• Nenette and Boni (Denis, 1996)
• Psycho (Van Sant, 1998)
• Romance (Breillat, 1999)
• The Driller Killer (Ferrara, 1979)
• Traffic (Soderbergh, 2000)
• U Turn (Stone, 1997)

New Releases (Unranked)

• Songs from the Hole (Contessa Gayles)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimburg)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
• Mountains (Monica Sorelle)
• Problemista (Julio Torres)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Dìdi (Sean Wang)
• Dad and Stepdad (Tynan DeLong)

Favorite First Viewings (Unranked)

• Sister Salad Days (Adesola Thomas)
• Here and There Along The Echo (Cameron Granger)
• Booty Call Nothing Defeats Desire (Chad Murdock)
• Living Reality (Philip Thompson)
• A Gavillero in the Sierra (Ricardo Ariel Toribio)
• Retrospection of a Home (Once Upon A Time) (Sebastian Marcano-Perez)
• The Archive: Queer Nigerians (Simisolaoluwa Akande)
• How to Save a Dead Friend (Marusya Syroechkovskaya)
• 2024 (LOUIEKNOWS)
• Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King)
• Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross)
• The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson)
• The Challenge (Yuri Ancarani)
• The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons (Harold Crooks, Judd Tully)
• Please (Sarah Evalt, Dennis L. Reed II)
• The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin)
• Jenifa (Muhydeen S. Ayinde)
• Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July)
• Shrek (Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson)

Best New Releases (Alphabetical):

• All We Imagine As Light (dir. Payal Kapadia)
• Anora (dir. Sean Baker)
• Babygirl (dir. Halina Reijn)
• The Beast (dir. Bertrand Bonnello)
• Caught By The Tides (dir. Jia Zhangke)
• Chime (dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Christmas Eve in Miller's Point (dir. Tyler Taormina)
• The Girl With The Needle (dir. Magnus von Horn)
• Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)
• Queer (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

First Viewings (Alphabetical):

• Anthony McCall Show, Tate Modern (2024)
• A Perfect World (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1993)
• The Best of Cinerama (1963)
• Curtains (dir. Richard Ciupka, 1983)
• Dream Work (dir. Peter Tscherkassky, 2001)
• From Here to Eternity (dir. Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
• Hellzapoppin’ (dir. H.C. Potter, 1941)
• Hollywood, 90028 (dir. Christina Hornisher, 1973)
• Hollywood Boulevard (dirs. Allan Arkush & Joe Dante, 1976)
• In the Darkness of Time (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 2002)
• Le Trou (dir. Jacques Becker, 1960)
• Life, and Nothing More… (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1992)
• The Love Parade (dir. Ernst Lubitsch, 1929)
• Mute Witness (dir. Anthony Waller, 1995)
• Polyester (dir. John Waters, 1981)
• Toolbox Murders (dir. Tobe Hooper, 2004)
• Top Hat (dir. Mark Sandrich, 1935)
• Violent Saturday (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1955)
• Vivacious Lady (dir. George Stevens, 1938)
• Women in Love (dir. Ken Russell, 1969)

New Releases:

1. Rumours (dir. Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson)
2. My First Film (dir. Zia Anger)
3. No Other Land (Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal)
4. The People’s Joker (dir. Vera Drew)
5. The Beast (dir. Bertrand Bonello)

First Viewings:

• “From the East: Bordering On Fiction” (1995) by Chantal Akerman at BOZAR, Brussels
• “Ma’loul Celebrates Its Destruction” (1985) by Michel Khleifi
• “New York Story” (1980) and “Hotel New York” (1984) by Jackie Raynal at Anthology Film Archives
• “Domestic Performance Agency 24 Hour Diner” by Athena Kokoronis w/ Lydia Rodrigues Collection
• “Fresh Kill” (1994) by Shu Lea Cheang at BAM
• “GIFT” (2023) by Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi at Film @ Lincoln Center
• Shahzad Ismaily + Tatsuya Nakatani playing at sunset at Stephen Spaccarelli’s, Marlboro, NY
• “Buy-Write” (2012-ongoing) by Este Lewis at the Emily Harvey Foundation
• “The Sacrifice” (1986) by Andrei Tarkovsky at Film Forum
• “Eniaios XV-XVIII” (1947-1991) by Gregory Markopoulos at Temenos
• “Le 15/8” (1973) by Chantal Akerman and Samy Szlingerbaum
• “Brussels Transit” (1980) by Samy Szlingerbaum
• “And So It Was and Was and WaAAass” by Shelley Hirsch with live projections by Scott Kiernan at Roulette
• “Dersu Uzala” (1975) by Akira Kurosawa at Film @ Lincoln Center
• “Lux Perpetua I & II” (1999-2002/2016) by Nathaniel Dorsky at Anthology Film Archives
• “Sotiros” (1976-78/1996) by Robert Beavers at Anthology Film Archives
• “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) by Carl Theodor Dreyer at Carriage Trade
• “Permutations” (1976) by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Contemporary Greek Institute
• “Untitled (A Portrait)” (1991/1995) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres at the National Portrait Gallery

Best New Releases:

• Youth (Homecoming) (Wang Bing)
• Youth (Hard Times) (Wang Bing)

Favorite First Viewings:

• An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo, 2018)
• Nocturama (Bertrand Bonello, 2016)
• House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
• White Material (Claire Denis, 2009)
• Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)
• Bitter Cane (Jacques Arcelin, 1983)
• 1900 (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1976)
• The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (Heiny Srour, 1974)
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973)
• Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shūji Terayama, 1971)
• 79 Springs (Santiago Álvarez, 1969)
• LBJ (Santiago Álvarez, 1968)
• Hasta la Victoria Siempre (Santiago Álvarez, 1967)
• 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)
• The Cranes Are Flying (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957)

Best New Releases (Ranked)

1. The Substance
2. Birdeater
3. Off Ramp
4. The People’s Joker
5. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed
6. Red Rooms
7. Riddle of Fire
8. Strange Darling
9. Stopmotion
10. Dead Mail

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries NOT RANKED

Bug (2006)

I would fly anywhere in the world to see the original stage play this was based one. Immediately went into my LB top 4 upon first view because I AM the super mother bug.

The Royal Hotel (2023)

Taking a job in the outback as a couple of cute chicks only to realize you’re stuck in a dead industry town full of creepy dudes? Could it get any more effed?!

Hotel Coolgardie (2016)

Wow! Turns out it can get more effed! This is the documentary that The Royal Hotel (2023) is reenacting, and it turns out the movie was not embellishing, this is way more effed.

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang (2009)

This is what A Serbian Film was trying to be, probably. I promise it’s better.

Come and See (1985)

Bought this on DVD at Videodrome, ATL. Sat on my shelf for years, waiting for the perfect day when I wanted to feel absolutely miserable from a movie, and that day came this year.

Eden Lake (2008)

I listened to a fucking podcast discussion of this movie afterward, I liked it so much (and that’s not a thing I am known to do.)

The Coffee Table (2022)

I was so stoned when I watched this that I can’t make an articulate case for this one… but I don’t easily dole out 4.5 stars on LB and this sucker earned it.

Pontypool (2008)

Radio, eh???

Salvage (2015)

Some Filipino found footage that is difficult to find a copy of but well worth the hunt.

Violence Voyager (2018)

I got anime-pilled this year, which led me to finding this absolute nightmare. WATCH IT.

Serial Mom (1994)

As a Marylander by birth, I am supposed to love John Waters, but I am lukewarm on his films. This? INCREDIBLE.

Dogs Don’t Wear Pants (2019)

This made me horny and that is a hard thing for a film to do to me.

Fire of Love (2022)

I got married this year so this is a good time for me to brag about how I became one with my own metaphorical wacky vulcanologist <3

My House Walk-Through (2016)

It’s a YouTube video, please watch “the making of” video directly after viewing this.

Honeydew (2020)

WHAT’S IN THE Bo0o0o0o0o0o0o0oX?! Hehe

Good Boy (2022)

This film really fucked up by not letting me be their pup play product sponsor…

Advantages of Travelling by Train (2019)

One of those uncanny stressful drama/thriller triptychs… would be good to watch right after Good Boy (2022)

Around Midnight (2023)

I went to this year’s Hearse Festival in Fowlerville, MI, and met the filmmaker James Bell, which is how I acquired this on DVD. Please make sure you look up the props he sells via his website, Very Fine Crap Videos.

Stalked By My Doctor (2015)

I played the first 3 films in this series for my discord the day after the election, would recommend it.

The Daniel Larson Documentary Parts I-III (2023)

This is the Kusari YouTube documentary about Daniel Larson. This prompted one of my deepest, most existential reflections on society, spurred from a “film”.

Uh Oh! (2004)

This film was Dove Approved by Dove.org: Faith and Family-Focused Reviews for Today’s Media, and deemed safe for all ages and families.

New Releases (Unranked)

I have loved many films this year but this list (which I wish were longer) is me at my most emotionally honest and is composed of the titles that have made me fall in love with cinema again.
 

• Việt and Nam (dir. Trương Minh Quý)
• Time to Be Strong (dir. Namkoong Sun)
• How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (dir. Pat Boonnitipat)
• Challengers (dir. Luca Guadagnino)
• A Dying Tree (dir. Vincent René-Lortie)
• Please Keep This Copy (dir. Miko Peralta)
• Vox Humana (dir. Don Josephus Eblahan)
• Are We Still Friends? (dir. Al Ridwan)
• Honey Bunny (dir. Gracjana Piechula)
• Kay Basta Angkarabo Yay Bagay Ibat Ha Langit (Objects Do Not Fall Randomly From the Sky, dir. Maria Estela Paiso)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Unranked)

• Iskalawags (2013; dir. Keith Deligero)
• Network (1976; dir. Sidney Lumet)
• Bona (1980; dir. Lino Brocka)
• Karnal (1983; dir. Marilou Diaz-Abaya)
• Lust, Caution (2007; dir. Ang Lee)
• Itim (1976; dir. Mike de Leon)
• Conversations with a Koel Bird (2022; dir. EXYL)
• Room in a Crowd (2023; dir. John Torres)
• Moeder (2023; dir. Salomon Ligthelm)

Exhibitions and Festival Sections

• The Edward Yang retrospective at the Asian Film Archive
• Jafar Panahi in Focus at the 2024 Singapore International Film Festival
• The countless Palestinian short films that have been since uploaded online and available for viewing
• The brilliant films from the Binisaya Film Festival, programmed by Keith Deligero, that have been accessible across the Philippines thanks to its commitment hybrid cinema

Favorite New Releases
Unranked. Festival premieres and new-to-me 2024 theatrical releases, in alphabetical order.

• Between the Temples
• Cloud
• Dahomey
• A Different Man
• Hard Truths
• Hundreds of Beavers
• Invention
• Misericordia
• Rumours
• The Shrouds

Favorite Discoveries & First Viewings

1. The Sleeping Audience (Damon Packard)
2. Moving (Shinji Somai)
3. Themroc (Claude Faraldo)
4. Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
5. Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire (Alan Clarke)
6. The Ernie Kovacs Show
7. Rewind and Play (Alain Gomis)
8. Crank (Mark Neveldine & Bryan Taylor)
9. "Being Frank," It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, S11 E06
10. The German Sisters (Margarethe Von Trotta)
11. Passion (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
12. Age of Panic (Justine Triet)
13. Jawan (Atlee Kumar)
14. Murder by Contract (Irving Lerner)
15. Targets (Peter Bogdanovich)
16. Missing (Costa Gavras)
17. Brother (Takeshi Kitano)
18. Shakedown (Leilah Weinraub)
19. The Your Name Here Story (h/t Rick Prelinger's "Spectrum of Sponsorship" program, To Save and Project)
20. My Favorite Shapes by Julio Torres

First Viewings

• Le Grain de Sable (Pomme Meffre)
• The Widow (Park Nam-ok)
• Le jardin qui bascule (Guy Gilles)
• Hollywood 90028 (Christina Hornisher)
• Mortal Thoughts (Alan Rudolph)
• Our Man (Pedro Costa)
• The Rapture (Michael Tolkin)
• Son of Sam and Delilah (Charles Atlas)
• The Castaways of Turtle Island (Jacques Rozier)
• Veslemøy's Song (Sofia Bohdanowicz)
• Caballerango (Juan Pablo Gonzales)
• AKA Serial Killer (Masao Adachi)
• The Flower in Hell (Shin Sang-ok)
• Allures (Jordan Belson)
• Geneviève (Michel Brault)
• Abigail’s Party (Mike Leigh)
• The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol)
• Take Me Somewhere Nice (Ena Sendijarevic)
• Along Brighton Beach Avenue (Ernie Gehr)
• Susana (Luis Buñuel)

First Viewings:

• Terrestrial Verses (2023)
• Dancing on the Edge of a Volcano (2023)
• Brick and Mirror (1964)
• The Raven (Bahram Beyzaie, 1977)
• Anxiety (1962)
• Stranger and the Fog (1972)
• Born in Flames (1983)
• The Wonders (2014)
• A Star Is Born (1976)
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) 

New Releases

• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• My First Film (Zia Anger)
• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor)
• Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass)
• You Never Did Anything Wrong (Nan Goldin) at Gagosian
• Union (Brett Story, Stephen Maing)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)

First Viewings

• The "Visualizations of Revolution" Series at Selva
• Nine Films by Stephanie Barber at Light Industry
• Excerpts from Five Year Diary (Anne Charlotte Robertson, 1981-1997) at Spectacle
• Golf (1957)/Cowboy and "Indian" Film (1958)/Newsreel (1958) (Raphael Montañez Ortiz)
• Pumping Iron II: The Women (George Butler, 1985)
• Summer Vacation 1999 (Shusuke Kaneko, 1988)
• The Long Weekend (O' Despair) (Gregg Araki, 1989)
• Fertile Memory (Michel Khleifi, 1981)
• Depot (1974)/Hothouse Flower (1978) (Susan Brockman)
• Tomato's Another Day (James Sibley Watson, 1934) at Nitrate Film Festival
• Birth of Life (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1930) at Nitrate Film Festival
• So Close (Corey Yuen, 2002)
• I Like Bats (Grzegorz Warchol, 1985)
• Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 (Hiroki Hayashi, 1998)

First Viewings:

• Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960)
• Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
• Léon Morin, Priest (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961)
• La Libertad (Lisandro Alonso, 2001)
• The Sweet Hereafter (Atom Egoyan, 1997)
• Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi, 1996)
• A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood, 1993)
• Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952)
• The Bed You Sleep In (Jon Jost, 1993)
• Safe in Hell (William A. Wellman, 1931)

Much gratitude to everyone who offers me FREE entry...I wouldn't have these magical moments without you.

Best New Releases

• Exhibiting Forgiveness (Titus Kaphar)
• Origin (Ava DuVernay)
• Monuments Are Here (Nuotama Bodomo + Solange)
• Down the Barrel (of a Lens) (Single-channel, Kameron Neal)
• It Was All a Dream (Dream Hampton)
• Ernie Barnes
• Danielle Mckinney
• Josh Farria at the BK Circus
• Renell Medrano

Favorite Firsts & Discoveries

• Zion Estrada and Mitch McGwen's, 2,340 Miles to 1880 | at the Rockaway Film Festival, Critical Viewing!
• Ina Archer's Black Black Moonlight (Single-channel)
• Iverson White's The Johnson Girls (1996, Story by Toni Cade Bombara)
• Uqdah Hameen's Unspoken Conversations (1987) | programmed by Ina Archer at BAM
• Malt Disney a.k.a Mustard Brain...craziest edits, takes video montage to the next level
• Black Chariot (1971. Robert L. Goodwin)
• The Devil Queen (1974. Antonio Carlos da Fontoura) | The "Gay Godfather"...a delicious film, loved every minute!
• Tintu Pakani: Sunrise Awakening (1976. Andreea Kindryd) | Everyone needs to know her and this film.
• The Oscar Micheaux festival at Film Forum | like being in a literal time travel portal...wished more Black ppl were there though.
• Sweet Sweetback's Bad Ass Song (1971.) | saw it for the first time in a theater, no other way to see it after that.
• Ina Archer's Memorium tour of Pearl Bowser's film collection, spanning BAM and Film Forum. Asè
• Black Power—We’re Goin’ Survive America (1968, Tom Day) | at Light Industry

New Releases (Unranked):

• Janet Planet (Annie Baker) – DCP, Gene Siskel Film Center
• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver) – DCP, Music Box Theatre
• Mrs William Horsley’s Vexations (Matthew Thurber) – Live performance +16mm, Chicago Film Society Office
• Anora (Sean Baker) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre

First Viewings:

• Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone, 1984) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1956) – 35mm, Chicago Film Society
• Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (Stanley Donen, 1954) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams, 2023) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• Jackass 3D (Jeff Tremaine, 2010) – 3D DCP, Music Box Theatre
• Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang, 1996) – 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• Tigre Real (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916) - 35mm, University of Chicago Film Studies Center
• Pumping Iron 2: The Women (George Butler, 1985) – 35mm, Chicago Film Society
• Toccata for Toy Trains (Charles & Ray Eames, 1957) - 35mm short, Chicago Film Society

Best Films (Unranked):

• Music
• Nickel Boys
• The Brutalist
• Juror #2
• No Other Land
• Anora
• ‘******’ (dir. Arthur Jafa)
• Red Rooms
• Seeking Mavis Beacon
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

First Watches:

• Threads (dir. Barry Hines)
• Broken Spectre (dir. Richard Mosse)
• Je T'aime, Je T'aime (dir. Alain Resnais)
• Umberto D. (dir. Vittorio De Sica)
• Altered States (dir. Ken Russell)
• My Heart is That Eternal Rose (dir. Patrick Tam)
• Actual People (dir. Kit Zauhar)
• On Dangerous Ground (dir. Nicolas Ray)
• Obsession (dir. Brian DePalma)
• Lake Mungo (dir. Joel Anderson)
• The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow)
• Fast Times at Ridgemont High (dir. Amy Heckerling)
• In Another Country (dir. Hong Sang-soo)
• Human Desire (dir. Fritz Lang)
• Northern Lights (dir. John Hanson and Rob Nillson)
• Burial Pyramid (dir. Ana Mendieta)
• The Wrong Man (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
• Report from Hollywood (dir. Ed Lachman)
• The Last of Sheila (dir. Herbert Ross)
• The Sniper (dir. Edward Dymtryk)

First viewings:

• Hunger: The National Hunger March to Washington, 1932 (Leo Hurwitz for the Workers Film and Photo League, 1933)
• Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
• Jofroi (Marcel Pagnol, 1933)
• Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
• Arsenic and Old Lace (Frank Capra, 1944)
• Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1952)
• Dancing Girl (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1957)
• Sleepless (Salah Abuseif, 1957)
• The 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1960)
• Something Different (Vera Chytilova, 1963)
• The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)
• Sing a Song of Sex (Nagisa Oshima, 1967)
• Galaxy (Masao Adachi, 1967)
• Naked Childhood (Maurice Pialat, 1968)
• Scenes From the Occupation of Gaza (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1973)
• Arabesque on a Pirosmani Theme (Sergei Parajanov, 1985)
• The Donkey Who Drank the Moon (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 1988)
• A Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
• Faat Kiné (Ousmane Sembene, 2001)
• Early Monthly Segments (Robert Beavers, 1968/2002)

Ranked by release date. Twenty is too few – how can one leave off Nanni Moretti’s Palombella Rossa, Eric Rohmer’s Pauline at the Beach (and about half a dozen others), Skip Norman’s Black Man’s Volunteer Army of Liberation, Hitch’s Torn Curtain, Jean Renoir’s Whirlpool of Fate, Gustaf Molander’s Ordet (1943), Vittorio De Sica’s The Roof, or Stan Brakhage’s Egyptian Series and still feel good about oneself…

New Releases (Unranked)

• All We Imagine as Light (Kapadia)
• The Beast (Bonello)
• Close Your Eyes (Erice)
• The Heirloom (Petrie)
• Matt and Mara (Radwanski)
• Nickel Boys (Ross)
• Seeking Mavis Beacon (Jones)
• Stress Positions (Hammel)
• Trap (Shyamalan)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong)

First Viewings

• All I Desire (1953, Sirk)
• Another Prayer (2013, Bohdanowicz)
• La Belle Noiseuse (1991, Rivette)
• Cemetery Man (1994, Soavi)
• The Colored Museum (1991, Wolfe, Wilk)
• Dance 7 (1975, Chase)
• El Sur (1983, Erice)
• Every Man for Himself (1980, Godard)
• Full Moon in New York (1989, Kwan)
• Ghostwatch (1992, Manning)
• Happy-Go-Lucky (2008, Leigh)
• The Hustler (1961, Rossen)
• Kabhi Kabhie (1976, Chopra)
• Official Welcome (2001, Fraser)
• So This Is Paris (1926, Lubitsch)
• Space Is the Place (1974, Coney)
• Summer of Sam (1999, Lee)
• Waiting for Guffman (1996, Guest)
• What a Way to Go! (1964, Thompson)
• Winter Kills (1979, Richert)

NEW

• Rap World
• A Different Man

1st

• The Stunt Man
• Animalicious
• One From the Heart
• The Player (rewatch)
• The Knick (Season 1)
• Journeys With George
• Innerspace
• Aniara
• Pret-a-Porter

New Releases (Unranked)

• Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi)
• Careless Passage (Hiler)
• Light, Noise, Smoke, and Light, Noise, Smoke (Nishikawa)
• Last Summer (Breillat)
• A Different Man (Schimberg)
• N'importe Quoi (Extérieur - Jour) (Fowler)
• Under the Flower Moon (Scheihing)
• Dedication: Bernice Hodges (Beavers)
• A Sense of Nothing (Rojas)
• Last Things (Stratman)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Unranked)

• Drink aka Drunk (Warhol, 1965)
• Broadway Light (Klein, 1959)
• The Wages of Fear (Clouzot, 1953)
• Outer Space (Tscherkassky, 2009)
• Strangers When We Meet (Quine, 1960)
• Ruskin (Beavers, 1974/1997)
• Come Out (Hirsch, 1974)
• Agatha et les Lectures Illimitées (Duras, 1981)
• Fascination (Rollin, 1979)
• Mirage (Gehr, 1981)
• The Butcher (Chabrol, 1970)
• Body and Soul (Micheaux, 1925)
• Nothing But a Man (Roemer, 1964)
• Translucent Appearances (Gerson, 1975)
• Funeral Parade of Roses (Matsumoto, 1969)
• Playtime (Tati, 1967)
• Deux fois (Raynal, 1968)
• Engram of Returning (Saito, 2015)
• Nocturne 29 (Portabella, 1969)
• August and After (Dorsky, 2012)

Best New Releases

1. Hard Truths
2. Nickel Boys
3. Janet Planet
4. La Chimera
5. My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow
6. Good One
7. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
8. Anora
9. A Different Man
10. My Old Ass

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Blackhat (2015)
2. Nashville (1975)
3. The Bridges of Madison County (1995)
4. Clifford (1994)
5. The Devils (1971)
6. The Long Goodbye (1973)
7. Thief (1981)
8. Manhunter (1986)
9. The Fabelmans (2022)
10. In the Loop (2009)
11. Army of Shadows (1969)
12. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
13. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
14. O Death (2023, Dorsky)
15. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
16. Poor Cow (1967)

Top Ten Films of 2024:

1. The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
2. I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
3. Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point (Tyler Thomas Taormina)
4. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Jonan Grimonprez)
5. Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger)
6. Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)
7. Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
8. All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia)
9. Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
10. Stress Positions (Theda Hammel)

Still haven’t watched: The Brutalist, Hard Truths, Nickel Boys, No Other Land, Nosferatu

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries of 2024 (in order of when watched):

1. Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983)
2. Bubble Bath (György Kovásznai, 1979)
3. Sodom (Luther Price, 1989)
4. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
5. The Company of Strangers (Cynthia Scott, 1990)
6. The Small Back Room (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1949)
7. Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1995)
8. Mad Men (2007-2015)
9. Delicious in Dungeon Season One (2024)
10. Thundercrack! (Curt McDowell, 1975)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Elvis (Baz Luhrmann, 2022)
• POLA X (Leos Carax, 1999)
• Sense8 (Lana Wachowski, Lilly Wachowski, J. Michael Straczynski, 2015)
• The Abyss: Special Edition (James Cameron, 1989)
• Letter Never Sent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1960)
• Ishtar (Elain May, 1987)
• Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001)
• The White Diamond (Werner Herzog, 2004)
• The Heroic Trio (Johnnie To, 1992)
• The Travelling Players (Theodoros Angelopoulos, 1975)
• Glass (Bert Haanstra, 1958)

New releases (unranked):

• Occupied City (Steve McQueen)
• Mambar Pierrette (Rosine Mbakam)
• Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)
• On the Adamant (Nicolas Philibert)
• The Stimming Pool (The Neurocultures Collective)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• The Body Politic (Gabriel Francis Paz Goodenough)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johan Grimonprez)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)

(the unintended thread: collective memory and trauma)

First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Toute Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman) @ MoMA
• R 21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (Mohanad Yaqubi) @ BAM
• Bidoun: A Plate of Sardines / The Man with the Golden Soles (Omar Amiralay) @ Anthology Film Archives
• A Magical Substance Flows into Me (Jumana Manna) @ Vancouver Cinematheque
• El Super (Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal) @ Film Forum
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon) @ BAM
• The Landlord (Hal Ashby) @ Anthology Film Archives
• Audition / If There Were No Music (Milos Forman) @ Czech Center NYC
• Irish Ways (Arthur MacCaig) @ DCTV Firehouse Cinema

New Releases

1. Afternoons of Solitude (dir. Albert Serra)
2. Dream Team (dir. Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn)
3. Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker)
4. Kinds of Kindness (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
5. The Shrouds (dir. David Cronenberg)
6. Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
7. Soundtrack to a Coup d'État (dir. Johan Grimonprez)
8. Rap World (dir. Conner O'Malley & Danny Scharar)
9. Grand Tour (dir. Miguel Gomes)
10. Cinema Before 1300 (dir. Jerome Hiler)

First Viewings

• One-Eyed Jacks (dir. Marlon Brando, 1961)
• A Woman Under the Influence (dir. John Casavettes, 1974)
• The Society of the Spectacle (dir. Guy Debord, 1974)
• The Third Generation (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
• The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972)
• Blood for Dracula (dir. Paul Morrissey, 1974)
• Café Flesh (dir. Stephen Sayadian, 1982)
• Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (dir. Frank Tashlin, 1957)
• Glen or Glenda (dir. Ed Wood, 1953)
• Taipei Story (dir. Edward Yang, 1985)

A great recent first watch and on the big screen was Cassavetes’s Love Streams, in November.

Just last Thursday, also in the cinema, the new restored print of Jorge Bodanzky’s O Terceiro Milênio (1981), a strong film about one peculiar politician in the Amazon.

The Quiet Earth (1985), on Blu-ray. Geoff Murphy. Loved it.

Between the touring and the jet lag, I saw less film in 2024 than in any year of my adult life (except 2020). Tragic!

• Burden of Dreams, Film Forum
• Rumours, at Landmark E St Cinema (Washington, D.C.)
• The Face of Another, at Film Forum (and most of the Japanese Horror Festival)
• NY Shorts Festival, Cinema Village
• Look Into My Eyes, Film Forum
• S/He Is Still Her/E: The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary, AMC 19
• The Vourdalak, IFC Center
• Eno, Film Forum (four times)
• Bird, Roxy Cinema

New Releases (Unordered)

• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Lost Country (Vladimir Perišić)
• Civil War (Alex Garland)
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Wes Ball)
• Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (Tim Burton)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• Queer (Luca Guadagnino)
• Smile 2 (Parker Finn)
• Here (Robert Zemeckis)
• Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Links Where Applicable)

• Blackhat (Director’s Cut) theatrical screening at The Roxy
• “A whole orchestra!”
• “Quebec-Core” at Anthology Film Archives
• Twilight on 35mm at The Roxy
• Bradley Cooper calling his daughter “dude” on the IF purple carpet
• ABBA Voyage at ABBA Arena
• Addison Rae’s music videos for “Diet Pepsi” and “Aquamarine”
• The Schooner Scorer reviews Straker’s
• The title sequence and act 2 opening number of SUNSET BLVD on Broadway

Stephanie Monohan

New Releases (Unranked, Alphabetical Order)

• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
• Good One (India Donaldson)
• Green Border (Agnieszka Holland)
• Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• My First Film (Zia Anger)
• The Old Oak (Ken Loach)

First Viewings and Discoveries (Alphabetical Order)

• A Day in the Country (Jean Renoir, 1946)*
• Archipelago (Joanna Hogg, 2014)
• Bulworth (Warren Beatty, 1998)
• Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman, 1972)
• Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1948)*
• Exiled (Johnnie To, 2006)
• The Fifth Cord (Luigi Bazzoni, 1975)
• Five Easy Pieces (Bob Rafelson, 1970)
• Homicidal (William Castle, 1961)
• House of Tolerance (Bertrand Bonello, 2011)
• I Like Bats (Grzegorz Warchol, 1986)
• The Intruder (Roger Corman, 1962)
• Landscape Suicide (James Benning, 1987)
• Night Moves (Kelly Reichardt, 2013)
• Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)
• Slap the Monster on Page One (Marco Bellocchio, 1972)
• Stalked by My Doctor (Doug Campbell, 2015)
• Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)*
• Trouble in Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
• Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1958)

* These films I had the pleasure and privilege of seeing on beautiful nitrate prints at the 8th Annual Nitrate Picture Show (George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY)!

New Releases:

• The Beast (Bonello)
• Juror #2 (Eastwood)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Hamaguchi)
• Trap (Shyamalan)
• I Saw the TV Glow (Schoenbrun)
• Close Your Eyes (Erice)
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Jude)
• Chime (Kurosawa)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong)
• All We Imagine as Light (Kapadia)

First Viewings & Discoveries (Alphabetical):

• The Beguiled (Siegel, 1971)
• La Belle Noiseuse (Rivette, 1991)
• Black Narcissus (Powell/Pressburger, 1947)
• Chimes at Midnight (Welles, 1965)
• The Discarnates (Obayashi, 1988)
• Ed Wood (Burton, 1994)
• Every Man for Himself (Godard, 1980)
• He Got Game (Lee, 1998)
• Irezumi (Masamura, 1966)
• Losing Ground (Collins, 1982)
• Noises Off… (Bogdanovich, 1992)
• Passing Strangers (Bressan, 1974)
• The Saddest Music in the World (Maddin, 2003)
• Secretary (Shainberg, 2002)
• Special Effects (Cohen, 1984)
• Summer of Sam (Lee, 1999)
• Throw Down (To, 2004)
• Touch of Evil (Welles, 1958)
• Trust (Hartley, 1990)
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Zemeckis, 1988)

Best New Releases (Unranked, Alphabetical Order)

• Art Talent Show (Tomas Bojar and Adela Komrzy)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World (Radu Jude)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
• Flipside (Chris Wilcha)
• Good One (India Donaldson)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• No Other Land (Basel Adra & Rachel Szor & Hamdan Ballal & Yuval Abraham)
• Red Rooms (Pascal Plante)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (Alphabetical Order)

• 49th Parallel (Powell, 1941, MOMA, 35mm)
• Bar Salon (Forcier, 1974, Anthology, 35mm)
• The Big Red One: The Reconstruction (Fuller, 1980/2005, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm)
• Bigger Than Life (Ray, 1956, BAM, 35mm)
• A Canterbury Tale (Powell, 1944, MOMA, DCP)
• Cape Fear (Scorsese, 1991, Nitehawk Cinema (Williamsburg), 35mm)
• The Castaways of Turtle Island (Rozier, 1976, Walter Reade Theater, DCP (2K Restoration))
• Children of Paradise (Carné, 1945, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm)
• Dishonored (von Sternberg, 1931, Anthology Film Archives, 35mm)
• The Go-Between (Losey, 1971, MOMA, DCP (4K Restoration))
• Hi, Mom! (de Palma, 1970, Nitehawk Cinema (Prospect Park), 35mm)
• House of Tolerance (Bonello, 2011, Roxy Cinema, 35mm)
• A Matter of Life and Death (Powell, 1946, MOMA, 4K DCP)
• Not a Pretty Picture (Coolidge, 1975, Anthology Film Archives, 16mm-to-DCP)
• Our Hitler: A Film From Germany (Syberberg, 1977, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm)
• Pret-a-Porter (Altman, 1994, Walter Reade Theater, 35mm)
• The Small Back Room (Powell, 1948, MOMA, 4K DCP)
• Stolen Kisses [Truffaut, 1968, Metrograph, 35mm]
• Toute une nuit [Akerman, 1982, MOMA, DCP (4K Digital Restoration)]
• Vanishing Point [Sarafian, 1971, MOMA, DCP (4K Digital Restoration)]

First Viewings:

• Beijing Watermelon (Nobuhiko Kobayashi, 1989)
• Idées Fixes / Dies Irae (Antonia Angelidi, 1977)
• Iguana (1988, Monte Hellman)
• In the Dark (Clifton Holmes, 2000)
• Intimate Lighting (Ivan Passer, 1965)
• Night of the Hunted (Jean Rollin, 1980)
• Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982)
• Uptight (Jules Dassin, 1968)
• Wild Style (Charlie Ahearn, 1982)
• Woman in Chains (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1968)

First Viewings (Alphabetical)

• Abiding Nowhere (Tsai Ming-liang)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• Bluish (Milena Czernovsky & Lilith Kraxner)
• Here (Robert Zemeckis)
• The Hyperboreans (Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León)
• It’s Not Me (Leos Carax)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
• Spectateurs! (Arnaud Desplechin)
• Teki Cometh (Daihachi Yoshida)

Discoveries (Alphabetical)

• Adieu Philippine (Jacques Rozier, 1962) — Perhaps the closest I’ve seen a movie come to hitting the rolling-excitement-with-lingering-dread of Scott Walker’s “Little Things (That Keep Us Together),” an energy to be replicated in the forthcoming series Fellas.
• Chantrapas (Otar Iosseliani, 2010) — Not so much forgotten as outright disregarded that nobody in the modern era had a better grip on the point between pictorial sensibility and narrative drift than Iosseliani.
• Claro (Glauber Rocha, 1975) — A roundelay of impotent rage à la Gravity’s Rainbow’s thesis that wars and empires drive insane everyone in their orbit. One of Rocha's remarkable abilities was conveying titanic scale through close-up; then again, there's nothing a director couldn't express with Juliet Berto's face.
• La Crime (Philippe Labro, 1983) — Jean-Patrick Manchette’s script puts the policier narrative into an off-balance spin that Labro matches with far greater images than I could’ve anticipated. Jean-Louis Trintignant shows up in what I can only assume is some repaid favor.
• Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947) — Humphrey Bogart’s Vanilla Sky.
• El Sur (Víctor Erice, 1983) — More movies should look like this.
• In the Shadow of the Blue Rascal (Pierre Clementi, 1986) — Fewer movies should look like this.
• The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1987) — Whether or not the Emperor's threesome was actually interrupted by a great fire, I’ve no doubt that's the tale Bertolucci wished to tell. A Storaro-shot epic of obsession and myopia to anticipate Rifkin's Festival.
• Rhapsody in August (Akira Kurosawa, 1991) — Late Kurosawa was nearly as ascetic as Straub-Huillet, but Straub-Huillet never had Richard Gere speak Japanese.
• The Rising of the Moon (John Ford, 1957) — Every shot in the last third being a canted angle — John Ford’s Battlefield Earth? I wish Irish people were real.
• The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks, 1936) — Howard Hawks and Gregg Toland and William Faulkner. Just a mite more optimistic than Paths of Glory because this director must always extol the beauty of male friendship.
• Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011) — Epsteincore. How is this the only film she’s made?
• Temptation (Kōzaburō Yoshimura, 1948) — Yoshimura puts center-stage Setsuko Hara's registers often kept in-check — the face this close, the expressions that joyous or desolate or confrontational. Like discovering a new actor. Movie's great, too.
• Thunder Island (Jack Leewood, 1963) — I watched 53 of this Jack Nicholson-scripted thriller’s 63 minutes deliriously exhausted on a plane and the final ten after this year's On Cinema Oscar special. One million stars out of five.
• The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927) — Viewed on a personal recommendation.
• Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950) — Brecht noir.
• Will of Iron (David Chiang, 1991) — Alongside Patrick Tam’s Nomad, an example par excellence of Hong Kong cinema’s interplay between tender love and astonishing physical threat.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001). A masterpiece. My friend Hisham says that the best (and only good) sci-fis are also fairytales, and this is the prime exhibit of that argument. I wept.

The Beast (Bertrand Bonello, 2024). I was filled with terror watching this film, which is about a woman’s demise by a curse I was convinced I had. I felt better when I learned the original story, Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle, has a different ending––one that gives agency to the accursed to set herself free.

Hanoi, Tuesday 13th (Santiago Álvarez, 1968). When Álvarez was in Hanoi and caught wind of the US’s plans to bomb the capital, he swiftly set up his camera at the bridge near the Red River because he suspected it would be a target. And it was. I find how intimately the Cuban filmmakers knew the city, as part of their solidarity with the Vietnamese people, incredibly moving.

To Singapore, With Love (Tan Pin Pin, 2013). A doc that's banned in Singapore, on its political exiles from communist movements that have been stamped out of public memory. I watched this from a hotel in Singapore while looking out over the now authoritarian city-state, where every citizen is tracked, even every tree catalogued and monitored.

Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024). Lifted me right out of a depressive episode. Felt like being on 2C-D.

Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami, 2010). Unlocked a new erotic fantasy of meeting a stranger and spending the day roleplaying that we have been married for fifteen years.

The Lady of Saigon (Jocelyne Saab, 1996). It may surprise non-Vietnamese people that only certain stories about the national revolution are permitted in Vietnam. It is an utter shame that this film, on the heroic Dr. Hoa of the South Vietnam National Liberation Front, would be difficult to publicly screen in the country today.

New Releases (Unranked)

• The Beast
• La Chimera
• A Real Pain
• Anora
• Rumours
• Last Summer
• I Saw the TV Glow
• Afternoons of Solitude
• Between the Temples
• The Curse ep. 10

First Viewings (Unranked)

• Terminal USA
• Four Nights of a Dreamer
• The Hourglass Sanatorium
• The World's Greatest Sinner
• The Death of Louis XIV
• Blast of Silence
• Sorority Girl
• Hukkle
• Maurice
• Blackhat

New Releases

• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
• Seed of a Sacred Fig
• Green Border
• Hundreds of Beavers
• Kidnapped: The Abduction of Edgardo Mortara
• Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
• The Brutalist
• Small Things Like These
• No Other Land
• All We Imagine as Light

First Viewings

• Bless Their Little Hearts (1983)
• Working Girls (1931)
• The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
• No More Orchids (1932)
• Lured (1947)
• Cane River (1982)
• A Question of Silence (1982)
• Uppercase Print (2020)
• Children Who Labor (1912)
• With Babies and Banners (1979)

BEST NEW RELEASES: Have missed many of the Big Awards movies and have been dying to see them… but here are ones I did catch that moved me (in no particular order):

• Civil War
• Megalopolis 
• A Different Man
• Didi
• Challengers
• Look Into My Eyes
• Y2K
• Juror #2 
• Thelma
• Tim and Toni's Guide to Couple's Massage 
• Coreys
• Hoard
• The Apprentice 
• The Featherweight 
• The Code

FIRST WATCHES / DISCOVERIES:

• Six O Clock News
• The Dead Zone
• Unstoppable
• Now You See Me
• The Hollywood Complex
• Prime Cut
• In Time 
• The Yards
• Light Sleeper
• Fatal Attraction 
• Vengeance is Mine
• The Incredible Shrinking Man 

First Viewings:

• Autumn Sonata (1978)
• Fanny and Alexander (1982)
• Hard Truths (2024)
• Kinds of Kindness (2024)
• No Other Land (2024)
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024)
• The Seventh Seal (1957)
• The Virgin Spring (1960)
• Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other (2024)
• Wild Strawberries (1957)

Favorite Movies of the Year - Unranked

• A Different Man - Aaron Schimberg
• The Taste of Mango - Chloe Abrahams
• Between the Temples - Nathan Silver
• The Featherweight - Robert Kolodny
• Dogleg - Al Warren
• Last Summer - Catherine Breillat
• Union - Brett Story & Stephen Maing
• Good One - India Donaldson
• Problemista - Julio Torres
• About Dry Grasses - Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Favorite Shorts of the Year - Unranked

• THE STAG - AN CHU
• LIVING REALITY - Philip Thompson
• NIGHT MILK - Tiger Hornby
• DEEPFAKE APOLOGY VIDEO - Brooke Bundy & Jerzy Rose
• BOGOTÁ STORY - Esteban Pedraza
• BEYOND FAILURE - Marissa Losoya
• CHRISTMAS, EVERYDAY - Faye Tsakas
• GOODNIGHT, MOON - Michael Patten
• JUNK - Charlotte Hornsby and Jesse Rutilla
• MELODY OF LOVE - Guy Kozak
• The Days Fly Galloping from Me; Yet the Long Dragging out of Each One Makes Me Weary, Weary - Tynan Delong
• GRUNFELD - Albert Birney
• A CERTAIN KIND - Gabriel Gutiérrez Morales
• WEREE - Tal Amiran
• ROOM FOR TWO - Ej Yah

New Releases (Unranked)

• A Different Man (dir. Aaron Schimberg – at MoMA)
• Janet Planet (dir. Annie Baker – at Digital Arts)
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (dir. George Miller – at AMC Kips Bay)
• Universal Language (dir. Matthew Rankin – at TIFF)
• Youth (Homecoming) (dir. Wang Bing – at TIFF)
• Misericordia (dir. Alain Guiraudie – at IFC Center)
• Neighboring Animals (by Mary Helena Clark – at Bridget Donahue)
• The Shrouds (dir. David Cronenberg – at TIFF)
• Dream Team (dir. Lev Kalman and Whitney Horn – at Metrograph)
• Megalopolis (dir. Francis Ford Coppola – at Village East)

First Viewings (Chronological)

• The Heartbreak Kid (dir. Elaine May, 1972 – at MoMI)
• Man’s Castle (dir. Frank Borzage, 1933 – at MoMA)
• Fertile Memory (dir. Michel Khleifi, 1981 – at Prismatic Ground / MoMI)
• The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (dir. Peter Greenaway, 1989 – at IFC Center)
• Dirty Money (dir. Denys Arcand, 1972 – at Anthology)
• Moving (dir. Shinji Somai, 1993 – at Film at Lincoln Center)
• Public Hearing (dir. James N. Kienitz Wilkins, 2012 – at Anthology)
• On the Mountain (by Margaret Tait, 1973 – at the Barbican)
• The Band Wagon (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1953 – at Il Cinema Modernissimo)
• Madison Brookshire’s Number films (2022–ongoing – at UnionDocs)

First Viewings:

1. A Foreign Affair (1949, Billy Wilder)
2. Only Yesterday (1933, John M. Stahl)
3. Hobson’s Choice (1954, David Lean) - Not my first viewing, but my first in many years and a reminder of how sensational it is.

Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer
Writer, Editor, Film Programmer

2024:

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• The Brutalist (Brady Corbet)
• It’s Not Me (Leos Carax)
• Knit’s Island (Ekiem Barbier, Guilhem Causse and Quentin L’helgoualc’h)
• El Mirador (Diego Hernández)
• Of Living Without Illusion (Katharina Lüdin)
• Pepe (Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias)
• Scénarios (Jean-Luc Godard)
• The Secret World (Jeff Preiss and Josiah McElheny)

First Viewings:

• August in the Water (Gakuryu Ishii, 1995)
• Book of Days (Meredith Monk, 1989)
• Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
• Community Action Center (A.K. Burns and A.L. Steiner, 2010)
• Dog’s Dialogue (Raúl Ruiz, 1979)
• From the Clouds to the Resistance (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 1979)
• Full Moon in Paris (Éric Rohmer, 1984)
• In Praise of Love (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001)
• Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000 (Alain Tanner, 1976)
• Milestones (Robert Kramer, 1975)
• No Fear, No Die (Claire Denis, 1990)
• No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle and Greg Shepard, 1996)
• Out 1 (Jacques Rivette, 1971)
• Le Pont du Nord (Jacques Rivette, 1981)
• Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels (Chantal Akerman, 1994)
• Recollections of the Yellow House (João César Monteiro, 1989)
• San Diego Surf (Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey, 1968)
• The Sidewalks of Saturn (Hugo Santiago, 1986)
• Tabula Rasa (Vincent Grenier, 2004)
• Unfinished Diary (Marilú Mallet, 1982)

Best of 2024 (Unranked):

• The Gloria of Your Imagination - Jennifer Reeves
• Juror #2 - Clint Eastwood
• Careless Passage - Jerome Hiler
• Carroll Gardens - Ernie Gehr
• Caught by the Tides - Jia Zhanke
• A Traveler’s Needs - Hong Sang Soo
• The Periphery of the Base - Zhou Tao
• Direct Action - Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell
• The Flame of a Candle - André Gil Mata
• Epiphany (III) - Forrest Sprague

Best First Viewings:

• Foolish Wives - Erich von Stroheim
• The Story of a Cheat - Sacha Guitry
• Summer Light - Jean Grémillon
• Monsieur Verdoux - Charlie Chaplin
• Fort Apache - John Ford
• Silver Lode - Allan Dwan
• Acto da Primavera - Manoel de Oliveira
• La Musica - Marguerite Duras, Paul Seban
• Lancelot du Lac - Robert Bresson
• West Indies - Med Hondo
• Silvestre - João César Monteiro
• Toute une nuit - Chantal Akerman
• Antigone - Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
• Hours for Jerome - Nathaniel Dorsky
• The Power of Speech - Jean Luc Godard
• Cantico - James Herbert
• Panels for the Walls of Heaven - Stan Brakhage
• My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure - Robert Beavers
• Aberration of Starlight - Andrew Noren
• In the Stone House - Jerome Hiler

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Un Dessert Pour Constance (1981, Sarah Maldoror)
• New Shores (1971-87, Jerome Hiler)
• Tongpan (1977, Isan Film Group)
• The Desert Archipelago (1969, Katsu Kanai)
• L'Homme Atlantique (1981, Marguerite Duras)
• Milestones (1975, Robert Kramer)
• Lessons from a Calf (1991, Hirokazu Kore-eda)
• Music from the Edge of the Allegheny Plateau (2019, Kevin Jerome Everson)
• Sophie Calle's Video of Moving Out Her Entire House of Taxidermied Animals, Clothes, Furniture to the Picasso Museum in Paris
• A Tale of Love (1995, Trinh T Minh Ha)
• Open Mic Solitaire (1983, Julius-Amédée Laou)
• Nighthawks (1978, Ron Peck)
• Garden Pieces (1998, Margaret Tait)
• A Princess's One-Sided Love (1967, Choi Eun-hee)

2024 releases:

• Anora
• Civil War
• The First Omen
• Hard Truths
• In A Violent Nature
• Janet Planet
• Joker: Folie A Deux
• Juror #2
• Love Lies Bleeding
• Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros

First watches:

• Das Boot (Long Version)
• The Best Years Of Our Lives
• A Passage To India
• Lady Beware
• Pressure Point (1962, Hubert Cornfield)
• Threads
• Tales From The Darkside: The Movie
• Blood Harvest
• The Core (2003)
• Roseland (Merchant-Ivory)
• Leviathan (George P. Cosmatos)
• Light Of Day (Schrader)
• Witch Story (Alessandro Capone)

New Releases

• Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, No Other Land
• Nate Lavey, Very Gentle Work
• Edward Berger, Conclave
• Bertrand Bonello, La Bête
• Aaron Schimberg, A Different Man
• Alice Rohrwacher, La chimera
• Honorable mention for being forgettable but enjoyable: Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, Evan Johnson, Rumours

Best New Releases (Unranked)

• A Different Man
• Between the Temples
• No Other Land
• Rapworld
• Rumours
• Soundtrack to a Coup d'État
• Oh, Canada

Best First Watches (Unranked)

• India Song (Marguerite Duras, 1975)
• The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)
• Moonshine (André Forcier, 1983)
• The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969)
• Serpent (Buntarō Futagawa, 1925) in The Art of the Benshi, BAM
• The White Caravan (Tamaz Meliava and Eldar Shengelaya, 1963)
• The World's Greatest Sinner (Timothy Carey, 1962)
• 'R Xmas (Abel Ferrara, 2001)
• Let's Get Lost (Bruce Weber, 1988)

In Her Time (Iris’s Version) (Diane Severin Nguyen, 2023-24) Whitney Biennial

The Land at the Bottom of the Sea (Jen Liu, 2023) Small World Cinema, Sculpture Center

Art Handler (Daniel Terna, 2014) Means of Production at Shisanwu LLC/Sheerly Touch-Ya warehouse

First viewings:

• Exposé du film annonce du film “Scénario” (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)
• River of the Night (Kōzaburō Yoshimura, 1956)
• Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1967)
• The Man I Love (Raoul Walsh, 1947)
• The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1989)
• Ginza Kankan Musume (Koji Shima, 1958)
• Un vivant qui passe (Claude Lanzmann, 1997)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1990)
• The United States of America (James Benning & Bette Gordon, 2004)
• Historia de Pastores (Jaime Puertas Castillo, 1992)
• The Mission (Johnnie To, 1999)
• Bushman (David Schickele, 1971)
• No Other Land (Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal, 2023)
• Speed Racer (Wachowski Sisters, 2008)
• Lázaro de noche (Nicolás Pereda, 2008)
• The Damned (Roberto Minervini, 2019)
• By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo, 2010)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop, 2024)
• A Traveler’s Needs (Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
• The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)

• Even God (Liz Roberts, 2024)
• Speakn’ Trane (Shahkeem Williams, 2024)
• Black Internet (Allen-Golder Carpenter, 2024)
• Minute Movies: the daily diary video work of Julie Perini (Julie Perini, exhibition, 2024)
• Alcohol Diaries (Marcelese Cooper, 2024)
• Palcorecore (Dana Dawud, 2023)
• Isla Flotante/Floating Island (Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez, 2022)
• Pappyshow in the dark time, my love (Kearra Amaya Gopee, 2022)
• Spacked Out (Lawrence Ah Mon, 2000)
• Pecker (John Waters, 1998)
• Suburbia (Richard Linklater, 1996)
• Hackers (Iain Softley, 1995)
• Living Inside (Sadie Benning, 1990)
• Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1982)

Best New Releases (unranked):

• Familiar Touch (dir. Sarah Friedland)
• Smile 2 (dir. Parker Finn)
• Guts and Glitz (dir. Fox Maxy)
• The Shrouds (dir. David Cronenberg)
• The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat)
• Hexham Heads (dir. Mattijs Driesen & Chloë Delanghe)
• Vox Humana (dir. Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan)
• Dusty Tapes (dir. Fox Maxy)
• A Black Screen Too (dir. Rhayne Vermette)
• Man Number 4 (dir. Miranda Pennell)

Favorite First Watches/Discoveries (unranked):

• Hollywood 90028 (dir. Christina Hornisher, 1973)
• Parajanov: The Last Spring (dir. Sergei Parajanov & Mikhail Vartanov, 1992)
• The Boyfriend (dir. Ken Russell, 1971)
• In MacArthur Park (dir. Bruce R. Schwartz, 1976)
• WR: Mysteries of the Organism (dir. Dušan Makavejev, 1971)
• The Silent Partner (dir. Daryl Duke, 1978)
• The Music Room (dir. Satyajit Ray, 1958)
• The Human Surge (dir. Eduardo Williams, 2016)
• Tenement (dir. Roberta Findlay, 1985)
• Long Arm of the Law (dir. Johnny Mak, 1984)
• Threads (dir. Mick Jackson, 1984)
• Birth (dir. Jonathan Glazer, 2004)
• Phantom Beirut (dir. Ghassan Salhab, 1998)
• The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived (dir. Heiny Srour, 1974)
• Bye, Bye Love (dir. Isao Fujisawa, 1974)
• Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (dir. Fritz Lang, 1924)
• Stigmata (dir. Beth B., 1991)
• Compensation (dir. Zeinabu Irene Davis, 1999)
• Logistics (dir. Erika Magnusson & Daniel Andersson, 2012)
• Grace’s World (dir. Grace Mulgrew, 2014 - present)

First Viewings (Unranked)

• Towards Tenderness (Alice Diop, 2016)
• Moral (Marilou Diaz-Abaya, 1982)
• Thief or Reality (Antoinetta Angelidi, Rea Walldén, 2001)
• Ma'loul Celebrates its Destruction (Michel Khleifi, 1984)
• Fertile Memory (Michel Khleifi, 1981)
• Their Newspapers (Haroun Farocki, 1968)
• Two Paths (Haroun Farocki, 1966)
• Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis, 1996)
• I Signed the Petition (Mahdi Fleifel, 2018)
• Two Rode Together (John Ford, 1961)
• The Gate of the Sun (Yousry Nasrallah, 2004)
• My Sister Eileen (Alexander Hall, 1942)
• Antigone (Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub, 1992)
• Apples (Narcisa Hirsch, 1973)
• Mahmoud Darwish: As the Land Is the Language (Simone Bitton, Elias Sanbar, 1998)
• The Return of Amilcar Cabral (Flora Gomes, Sana Na N’Hada, 1976)
• Work Done (Robert Beavers, 1973)
• Black Is (Aldo Tambellini, 1965)
• Resistance, Why? (Christian Ghazi, 1971)
• Samba Traoré (Idrissa Ouedraogo, 1992)

First Viewings:

• The Ambulance (1990, dir. Larry Cohen)
• August in the Water (1995, dir. Gakuryū Ishii)
• Ballads (1993, dir. Naoyuki Tomomatsu)
• Bleu Shut (1971, dir. Robert Nelson)
• Bonnie’s Kids (1973, dir. Arthur Marks)
• Bully (2001, dir. Larry Clark)
• Drunk (1965, dir. Andy Warhol)
• Handgun (1983, dir. Tony Garnett)
• Hours for Jerome (1980-1982, dir. Nathaniel Dorsky)
• Macumba Sexual (1983, dir. Jess Franco)
• Normal Life (1996, dir. John McNaughton)
• Prophecy (1979, dir. John Frankenheimer)
• Quick Billy (1971, dir. Bruce Baillie)
• Road Movie (1973, dir. Joseph Strick)
• San Diego Surf (1968/1995, dir. Paul Morrissey and Andy Warhol)
• Singapore Sling (1990, dir. Nikos Nikolaidis)
• Small Town Ecstasy (2002, dir. Jay Blumenfield)
• Summer Vacation 1999 (1988, dir. Shusuke Kaneko)
• The Trap Door (1980, dir. Beth B and Scott B)
• Valet Girls (1986, dir. Rafal Zielinski)

Best New Releases:

1. Janet Planet
2. Hard Truths
3. La Chimera
4. Nickel Boys
5. All We Imagine as Light
6. Dahomey
7. Matt and Mara
8. A Traveler's Needs
9. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point
10. Megalopolis

Favorite First Viewings (unranked):

• A Legend for Fountains (Joseph Cornell, 1957)
• An Empty Dream (Yu Hyun-mok, 1965)
• Du Côté d'Orouët (Jacques Rozier, 1971)
• The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1977)
• Entire Days in the Trees (Marguerite Duras, 1977)
• Bach Probably Closed the Door When He Wanted to Work (Narcisa Hirsch, 1979)
• Comfort and Joy (Bill Forsyth, 1984)
• The Island Closest to Heaven (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1984)
• Hour of the Star (Suzana Amaral, 1985)
• Dogfight (Nancy Savoca, 1991)

Top 10 Screenings in Order of Date Watched:

• The Pillow Book (dir. Peter Greenaway, 1996), Roxy
• Cape Fear (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991), Roxy
• The Bridges of Madison County (dir. Clint Eastwood, 1995), Roxy
• Special Effects (dir. Larry Cohen, 1984), Anthology
• In Praise of Love (dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 2002), L’Alliance
• The Substance (dir. Coralie Fargeat, 2024), Wburg Cinemas
• Dancer in the Dark (dir. Lars von Trier, 2000), Roxy
• New Jack City (dir. Mario van Peebles, 1991), Tubi
• A Fiddai Film (dir. Kamal Aljafari, 2024), Anthology
• Yol (dir. Yılmaz Güney/Şerif Gören, 1982), Roxy

New Releases

• Between the Temples (Nathan Silver)
• The Curse (Nathan Fielder & Benny Safdie)
• Dahomey (Mati Diop)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• A Fidai Film (Kamal Aljafari)
• Furiosa (George Miller)
• Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
• Look Into My Eyes (Lana Wilson)
• Losing Faith (Martha Mechow)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

First Viewings

• Dreaming Out Loud (Jo Andres, 1990)
• Dirty Money (1972) / Réjeanne Padovani (1973) / Gina (1975) (Denys Arcand)
• Chess of the Wind (Mohammad Reza Aslani, 1976)
• Hail the New Puritan (Charles Atlas, 1986)
• The Exorcist III (William Peter Blatty, 1990)
• Romance (Ed Bowes, 1976)
• Cette Maison (Miryam Charles, 2022)
• The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon, 1973)
• Bitter Cane (Ben Dupuy & Kim Ives (as Jacques Arcelin), 1983)
• Short Films by Tony Ganz + Rhody Streeter
• Films by Vincent Grenier
• Short Films by Christopher Harris
• Dirty Girls (Michael Lucid, 2000)
• Ellis Island (Meredith Monk, 1979) + 16 Millimeter Earrings (Robert Withers & Meredith Monk, 1979)
• Short Films by Alee Peoples
• Introduction to the End of an Argument (Jayce Salloum & Elia Suleiman, 1990)
• Shulie (1997) + Maria Schneider, 1983 (2022) + Manal Issa, 2024 (2024) (Elisabeth Subrin)
• Films by Lily Jue Sheng
• ****, Reel 75 – “Sausalito” (Andy Warhol, 1967)
• Public Hearing (2012) + Indefinite Pitch (2016) + Mediums (2017) + This Action Lies (2018) (James Kienitz Wilkins)

New Releases:

1. A Different Man - Aaron Schimberg
2. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World - Radu Jude
3. Close Your Eyes - Victor Erice
4. Vulcanizadora - Joel Potrykus
5. No Other Land - Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
6. L’incidente - Giuseppe Garau
7. Anora - Sean Baker
8. The Beast - Bertrand Bonello
9. Evil Does Not Exist / GIFT - Ryusuke Hamaguchi
10. Failed State - Christopher Jason Bell, Mitch Blummer

New to Me (in no particular order):

• Puzzle of a Downfall Child (1970, Jerry Schatzberg) - Easily one of the greatest debut features I’ve ever seen. Hypnotic fashion. (Roxy Cinema)
• Back to the Wall (1958, Édouard Molinaro) - “What’s sadder in the world than being sad for no reason?” Starring the great Jeanne Moreau, this is simply a brilliant film noir. (Kanopy)
• Two Men in Manhattan (1959, Jean-Pierre Melville) - Every time I finally see a new-to-me Melville, I’m convinced that it’s my favorite film. (Film Forum)
• Human Desire (1954, Fritz Lang) - Every time I finally see a new-to-me Lang, I’m convinced that it’s my favorite film. Gloria Grahame is incredible in this one. (Criterion Channel)
• Illuminated Hours: The Cinema of Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler - Must-see 16mm devotional cinema, but having them attend in-person is an absolute thrill. (MoMA)
• Time Masters (1983, René Laloux) - René Laloux’s less-successful animated follow-up to Fantastic Planet is still weird, charming, and hilarious. Based on designs by Mœbius. (IFC Center)
• Daughter of Shanghai (1937, Robert Florey) - Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn onscreen for 62 minutes – you can’t beat it. (Metrograph)
• The Mills in Joy and Sorrow (1912, Alfred Machin) - National Gallery of Art, D.C.: Brutally dark 10-minute silent Dutch revenge film with a bleak, unforgettable ending.
• Spacked Out (2000, Lawrence Ah Mon) - The great label Kani has been remastering some gems AND re-releasing them theatrically. Highly recommended if you like drugs, bootleg VCDs, and “god-forsaken satellite cities.” (Metrograph)
• Over Feeling: Celebrating Arthur Russell - The Wordless Music Orchestra performs the long-overdue North American premiere of The Tower of Meaning (1983) for FREE in Brooklyn with stunning animated visuals by animator Rosa Sawyers. (Prospect Park Bandshell)

So lucky to attend Cinema Ritrovato for the first time this year! Also took delight in retrospectives at the Berlinale and Locarno. Twenty of my favorite first-watches appear below in order of release date.

1. Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932) at home with a dear friend
2. Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933) at Locarno
3. City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak, Jean Negulesco, 1940) on 35mm at Cinema Ritrovato
4. Brute Force (Jules Dassin, 1947) on 35mm at Noir City
5. The Snake Pit (Anatole Litvak, 1948) on 35mm at Cinema Ritrovato
6. The Glass Wall (Maxwell Shane, 1953) on 35mm at Locarno
7. Andriesh (Sergei Parajanov, 1954) on 35mm at Cinema Ritrovato
8. The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) on 70mm at the TCM Classic Film Festival
9. Undercurrent (aka Night River, Kōzaburō Yoshimura,1956) at Cinema Ritrovato
10. Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957) on 35mm at Cinema Ritrovato
11. Hud (Martin RItt, 1963) at home with my husband, who also, shockingly, had never seen it
12. Deliverance (John Boorman, 1972) on a 35mm Technicolor dye-transfer print at Cinema Ritrovato
13. Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980) on a link and then in a packed theater at the Academy Museum for the West Coast restoration premiere
14. Deprisa deprisa (Carlos Saura, 1981) on the Criterion Channel
15. Itam Hakim, Hopiit (Victor Mesayesva, Jr., 1984) presented by COUSIN in Hopi without subtitles + a printed visual guide and English interpretation at Now Instant Image Hall (thx Adam Piron)
16. The Germans and Their Men (Helke Sander, 1989) at the Berlinale with the filmmaker in person
17. RSVP (Laurie Lynn, 1992) on a Vimeo link; immediately shared with so many loved ones
18. Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995) at home
19. The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett, 1999) at the UCLA Festival of Preservation West Coast restoration premiere, with Burnett in person
20. The Talented Mr. Ripley (Anthony Minghella, 1999) at home

New

• The Beast
• Evil Does Not Exist
• Music
• Red Rooms
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something has Passed
• Between the Temples
• Pictures of Ghosts
• The Settlers
• Coma
• A Different Man

First Viewings and Discoveries

• Any Given Sunday (Oliver Stone)
• Bar Salon (André Forcier)
• City Slivers (Gordon Matta-Clark)
• Come Out (Narcisa Hirsch)
• Cotton Comes to Harlem (Ossie Davis)
• Early Monthly Segments (Robert Beavers)
• The Glass Wall (Maxwell Shane)
• The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (Raúl Ruiz)
• i hate myself :) (Joanna Arnow)
• King of Comedy (Stephen Chow, Lee Lik-chi)
• Lives of Performers (Yvonne Rainer)
• Maine-Ocean Express (Jacques Rozier)
• Mediums (James N. Kienitz Wilkins)
• My Way Home (Miklós Jancsó)
• Oh… Rosalinda!! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
• Simon of the Desert (Luis Buñuel)
• Snack Bar Special (Thomas Heise)
• Star 80 (Bob Fosse)
• The Tale of Iya (Tetsu Tetsuichiro)
• Zelig (Woody Allen)

Unlike my previous lists, this year I'm dividing it into groups:

First, a revelation:

• Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shūji Terayama, 1971)
• Pastoral: To Die in the Country (Shūji Terayama, 1974) - Revealed at the Portuguese Cinematheque by the film curator Miguel Patrício, Patrício-san, a fair heir to the lineage of our late filmmaker Paulo Rocha and my dear friend Tony Rayns.
• The Women of Ginza (Kozaburo Yoshimura, 1955) - One more Japanese film brought to the Portuguese film theaters by Miguel and his accomplices at The Stone and the Plot, one of the most interesting Portuguese distribution companies.

In a world where artistic freedom and freedom of expression, the pillars of democracy, are increasingly under threat from all sides of the political barricade, it was very important to look back at the Pre-Code films, also at the Portuguese Cinematheque:

(from now on, all the films are listed in alphabetical order)

• Baby Face (Alfred E. Green, 1933)
• Christopher Strong (Dorothy Arzner, 1933)
• Female (Michael Curtiz, 1933)
• Man’s Castle (Frank Borzage, 1933)
• The Power and the Glory (William K. Howard, 1933)

6 films from 2024 + 1 from 2023 (which I only had the chance to see this year) that defy conventions with that same fierce and iconoclastic spirit:

• 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré, 2024)
• The Empire (Bruno Dumont, 2024)
• Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath, 2024)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola, 2024)
• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, 2024)
• Tiger Stripes (Amanda Nell Eu, 2023) - The only film watched on the computer, all others were seen in a film theater.
• You Burn Me (Matías Piñero, 2024)

It was a particular good year for Portuguese cinema (and due to the number of films allowed in this list, I’m leaving a couple of films out):

• The Buriti Flower (Renée Nader Messora & João Salaviza, 2023)
• We are on Air (Diogo Costa Amarante, 2024)
• Fire of Wind (Marta Mateus, 2024)
• Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes, 2024)
• Sempre (Luciana Fina, 2024)

+ 3 shorts:

• Water Hazard (Alexander David, 2024)
• Interview (Vasco Araújo, 2024) - Part of the exhibition “Ritornare” at Gallery Francisco Fino, Lisboa
• The Hunters (David Pinheiro Vicente, 2024)

Extras:

Last but not the least, an extraordinary and revolutionary event: A Conversation with the Sun (VR) by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, experienced on October 4 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and two extraordinary film lectures, first by Ehsan Khoshbakht on Anatole Litvak, on December 6 (I could add 1948’s Sorry, Wrong Number by Litvak) and another by my dear friend Bernard Eisenschitz on Chris Marker, on December 7 (adding 1990’s Cat Listening to Music and 1993’s Slon Tango by Marker), both at the Portuguese Cinematheque.

First Viewings, In Chronological Order:

1. Taki no Shiraito (1933, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi)
2. The Face Behind the Mask (1941, dir. Robert Florey)
3. Under Age (1941, dir. Edward Dmytryk)
4. Address Unknown (1944, dir. William Cameron Menzies)
5. Mulher de Verdade (1954, dir. Alberto Cavalcanti)
6. Zwei unter Millionen (1961, dir. Victor Vicas)
7. She-Freak (1967, dirs. Byron Mabe and Donn Davison)
8. Streets of Fire (1987, dir. Walter Hill)
9. The Hitcher (1986, dir. Robert Harmon)
10. Krysar (1986, dir. Jiri Barta)

2024 US Releases, In Alphabetical Order:

• All We Imagine as Light (dir. Payal Kapadia)
• Dahomey (dir. Matti Diop)
• The Devil’s Bath (dirs. Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz)
• Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (dir. Radu Jude)
• Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
• Green Border (dir. Agnieszka Holland)
• I Saw the TV Glow (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)
• Inside the Cocoon Shell (dir. Thien An Pham)
• Nickel Boys (dir. RaMell Ross)
• Pictures of Ghosts (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

New Releases - Unranked

• La Chimera
• Stress Positions
• The Fall Guy
• Caligula: The Ultimate Cut
• Between the Temples
• Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara
• The Apprentice
• The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man
• Rap World
• The Palace

Viewings and Discoveries - Unranked

• Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video
• The Skin
• Anatomy of Hell
• Plot of Fear
• In the Dark
• Braid
• Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974
• #Horror
• Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell
• The Lost Realities of Hog Caller

Best New Releases

1. A Conversation with the Sun (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) @ BOZAR, Brussels & Lights and Shadows @ Centre Pompidou, Paris
2. The Wanda Coleman Songbook (Cauleen Smith) @ 52 Walker, New York
3. exergue - on documents 14 (Dimitris Athiridis)
4. Animal Farm by João Maria Gusmão @ 99 Canal, New York
5. Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell)
6. Dahomey (Mati Diop)
7. Dark was the Night (Taiki Sakpisit) @ SAC Gallery, Bangkok
8. Chime (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
9. Koute Vwa (Maxime Jean-Baptiste)
10. Nature Bores the Monster by Alexandre Estela @ Culturgest, Barcelona

Favourite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)
2. A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang, 1991)
3. Camp de Thiaroye (Thierno Faty Sow & Ousmane Sembène, 1988)
4. Amsterdam Global Village (Johan van der Keuken, 1996)
5. 16 Millimeter Earrings (Meredith Monk & Robert Withers, 1980)
6. The Dream (Mohammad Malas, 1987)
7. Wan Pipel (Pim de la Parra, 1976)
8. Mass for the Dakota Sioux (Bruce Baillie, 1964)
9. Songdelay (Joan Jonas, 1973)
10. Isla del tesoro (Sara Gómez, 1969)
11. The Cockpit (Sho Miyake, 2015)
12. Bushman (David Schickele, 1971)
13. The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1996)
14. The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (Brett Story, 2016)
15. Jakub (Jana Ševčíková, 1992)
16. Equinox Flower (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958)
17. Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton, 1970)
18. A Grin Without a Cat (Chris Marker, 1977)
19. Foreign Parts (Verena Paravel & J.P. Sniadecki, 2010)
20. Beyond the Mountains (Aya Koretzky, 2011)

Top 10:

1. Our Body
2. Bluish
3. Last Things
4. Dahomey
5. The Beast
6. Kokomo City
7. No Other Land
8. Union
9. Love Lies Bleeding
10. Conclave
11. A Different Man
12. Red Rooms
13. Club Zero
14. Coma
15. La Chimera

Best First Viewings:

• Partners (James Burrows, 1982)
• Not A Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)
• No Fear No Die (Claire Denis, 1990)
• The Happening (M. Night Shyamalan, 2008)
• Maria Schneider, 1983 (Elisabeth Subrin, 2023)
• Shulie (Elisabeth Subrin, 1997)
• Die Räuberinnen (Isa Schieche, 2023)
• Gently Down the Stream (Su Friedlich, 1981)
• Smalltown Ecstasy (Jay Blumenfield, 2002)
• Freddy Got Fingered (Tom Green, 2001)

First Viewings (chronological order)

• The Savage Innocents (1960, Nicholas Ray) → Awkward, blunt quagmire of an anti-colonial ice-western from the best to ever do it
• Rush to Judgment (1967, Emile de Antonio) → Vital and enraging document happenstantially delighting in people, people, people!
• Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow) → "Strawberry fields forever..."
• Boom! (1968, Joseph Losey) → Forever seared into my mind, scrumptious tragic delirium
• Head (1968, Bob Rafelson) → "That song was pretty white..." "So am I, what can I tell ya?"
• Bushman (1971, David Schickele) → Makes me miss and despise (but ultimately miss) San Francisco
• Scarecrow in a Garden of Cucumbers (1972, Robert J. Kaplan) → I <3 you Holly Woodlawn
• Bloodsucker (1975, Mike Kuchar) → Halloween costumes soaked in ink and lightning bolts
• Bubble Bath (1979, György Kovásznai) → I wanna eat this thing like fruit
• Loads (1980, Curt McDowell) → Wonderful, ruminative cinediary-cum-cabin fever
• The Dream (1987, Mohammad Malas) → Capturing the oneiric in the face of massacre. Cinema is not enough, but we need to believe in it
• Warm Broth (1988, Luther Price) → Wrenching, retching, obsessive conjuration of a soul
• Introduction to the End of an Argument (1990, Jayce Salloum) → Scathing détournement of the Zionist (and American) mytho-project. Necessary viewing
• Oasis (2002, Lee Chang-dong) → Ferociously difficult to watch, but necessarily so. As uncomfortable as it is rebelliously lovely
• The Net (2003, Lutz Dammbeck) → Truly adventurous, calmly crazed cine-specula. Dammbeck please come back we need you
• Moolaadé (2004, Ousmane Sembène) → The most powerful final pair of shots to leave a lifetime of cinema on
• Tony Manero (2008, Pablo Larraín) → Jaundiced parable straight out of the gutter... amazing repulsive stuff
• Your Father Was Born 100 Years Old, and So Was the Nakba (2018, Razan AlSalah) → Ghostly nightmare of digital erasure breached by the yearn for return
• The Tuba Thieves (2023, Alison O'Daniel) → Light about sound, sound about light, and the labyrinths they create of the world. Genius, purposeful moviemaking
• Vexations Part One (2023, Mrs William Horsley Film Studio) → Dumpster-dived records and dual projectors singing in seance to resurrect CIA sleeper agent musicians from limbo. The purest of kino

New Releases

• Challengers
• Anora
• A Different Man
• Strange Darling
• The Substance
• Civil War
• Good One
• Free Time
• La Chimera
• Trap

First Watch

• High and Low
• Straight Story
• Lost Highway
• Doctor Sleep
• Double Indemnity
• Ghostwatch
• The Foot Fist Way
• Prometheus
• Night Moves
• Before Trilogy
• Freddy Got Fingered
• Jackie Brown
• Creep
• Serial Mom

New Ones:

• Anora (Sean Baker)
• Good One (India Donaldson)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Rap World (Conner O'Malley and Danny Scharar)
• Role Models (Salome Oggenfus)
• The Apprentice (Ali Abbasi)

New for Me:

• Bread (Charles and Ray Eames)
• Eat Drink Man Woman (Ang Lee)
• In Our Day (Hong Sang-soo)
• Le Bonheur (Agnès Varda)
• Luca (Enrico Casarosa)
• Metamorphosis (David Lebrun)
• Metropolitan (Whit Stillman)
• Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes)
• Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis)
• Supermarket Woman (Juzo Itami)
• The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan)
• The Net (Lutz Dammbeck)

First Viewings:

• Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
• Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)
• The Good Fairy (William Wyler, 1935)
• Midnight (Mitchell Leisen, 1939)
• Hold Back the Dawn (Mitchell Leisen, 1941)
• Know For Sure (Lewis Milestone, 1941)
• Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948)
• Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan, 1950)
• Wuthering Heights (Luis Buñuel, 1954)
• Pale Flower (Masahiro Shinoda, 1964)
• Night Games (Mai Zetterling, 1966)
• Someone's Watching Me! (John Carpenter, 1978)
• Diary of a Young Comic (Gary Weis, 1979)
• Vengeance Is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)
• Miami Vice Seasons 1 & 2 (1984-86)
• Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (Brigitte Berman, 1985)
• The Firm (Alan Clarke, 1989)
• Stinking Heaven (Nathan Silver, 2015)
• I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Radu Jude, 2018)

Best New Releases (in alphabetical order):

• The Beast/Coma
• La Chimera
• Close Your Eyes
• Club Zero
• A Different Man
• Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
• Evil Does Not Exist
• Furiosa
• The Human Surge 3
• Rap World

Hmm, I wonder if modernity's chasm between the real and the unreal is widening, further destabilizing all sense of personal identity.

...Nah, things are probably fine.

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (roughly in viewing order):

• Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Roxy
• The Mission, King of Comedy, Righting Wrongs, and Too Many Ways to Be No. 1, thanks to the wonderful Sundays on Fire series at Nitehawk
• Not a Pretty Picture
• Trafic, Dersu Uzala, Salò, and Our Hitler at Lincoln Center's Serge Daney series (shout out to Maddie Whittle and Nicholas Elliot)
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at Metrograph
• Pumping Iron/Pumping Iron II: The Women (shout out to Liz Purchell and Nitehawk)
• Clifford at BAM
• Happy Hour/Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy at Lincoln Center's Hamaguchi retro
• Shout out to Keith Uhlich's movie club recs: Youth Without Youth, the Demme cut of Swing Shift, Baby It's You
• Peeping Tom at the Jacob Burns Film Center's Restored and Rediscovered series (shout out to Monica Castillo)
• Kurosawa at Metrograph: Dreams, High and Low
• Intolerance, Homecoming, A Day in the Country, The Strawberry Blonde, and Day of Wrath at the Nitrate Picture Show
• Chess of the Wind at Anthology
• Heard She Got Married/Magic Spot at Spectacle (shout out to Brianna Zigler)
• August in the Water at Japan Cuts
• GOAT Joan Micklin Silver: Crossing Delancey at Roxy/Hester Street at Metrograph
• the Richard Serra film exhibition at Dia:Chelsea
• Vertigo (shout out to the projectionist who didn't burn the 70mm print... this time) and The Remains of the Day (shout out to the projectionist who did burn the 70mm print... twice... in front of James Ivory... making them switch to digital) at the Paris Theater's See it Big series
• Green Snake at the Brooklyn Center for Theater Research (shout out to Nick Newman; someone hire him already)
• Throw Down, Mad Detective, and Life Without Principle, courtesy of MoMA's Johnnie To series
• Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and The Legend of Suram Fortress, thanks to the Parajanov centennial celebrations
• Basic Instinct and Crumb, thanks to BAM's 80s/90s culture wars series

First Viewings, unordered:

• I Could Go on Singing (Ronald Neame, 1963)
• Too Much Too Soon (Arturo Ripstein, 1958)
• Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968)
• Sleeping Car Murders (Costa-Gavras, 1965)
• Sodom and Gomorrah (    Michael Curtiz, 1922)
• House of Mirth (Terence Davies, 2000)
• Hollywood Story (William Castle, 1951)
• The Sniper (Edward Dmytryk, 1952)
• There's No Tomorrow (Ray Milland, 1939)
• The Executioner (Peter Collinson, 1963)

Top of the Pyramid in 2024 Is...

• Man Number 4 (Miranda Pennell)

& (Unranked)

• Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las Over and Over and Over (Forever)
• Invention (Courtney Stephens)
• Mette’s Dinerschole (Sara Sjölin)
• Baby Jesus (Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Therese Henningsen)
• Drama 1882 (Wael Shawky)
• Being John Smith (John Smith)
• Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell)
• Anora (Sean Baker)
• The Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump (?)
• Ricochets [Exhibition, Barbican/Serralves] (Francis Alÿs)
• Marguerite Duras Retrospective Programmed by Another Gaze

& (First Viewings)

• God’s Comedy (João César Monteiro)
• Vincent & Theo (Robert Altman)
• Juliette & the Herbs (Tish Streeten)
• Films by Marina Gržinić and Aina Šmid
• Programmes by Freya Field-Donovan and Brontë Dow

New releases are ranked, first viewings random. A few shout-outs for extraordinary programming. Jed Rapfogel’s "Verbatim" series at Anthology—films whose scripts are drawn verbatim from preexisting texts—was the smartest show of the year. The essential retrospective was the amazing two-part Hiroshi Shimizu programmed by Edo Choi (Museum of the Moving Image), Alexander Fee (Japan Society), and Akinaru Rokkaku (The Japan Foundation). Film at Lincoln Center’s Maddie Whittle crushed it with the "Serge Daney" series (with guest programmer Nicholas Elliott), and "Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen" with Annie Baker: (with Baker as guest programmer). But the city’s programming MVP award must go to Jake Perlin, who was behind a bunch of amazing series and revivals all over town and has quietly and brilliantly taken over and reinvented the programming at L’Alliance New York.

New Releases (Ranked):

1. A Traveler’s Needs
2. Nickel Boys
3. All We Imagine As Light
4. Close Your Eyes
5. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
6. Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat
7. Matt and Mara
8. Vermiglio
9. Nocturnes
10. Universal Language

First Viewings (Random):

• Intolerance - D.W. Griffith, 1916
• Bitch - Andy Warhol, 1965
• The Americans (TV series, 2013-2018)
• Law and Order - Fred Wiseman, 1969
• Essene - Fred Wiseman, 1972
• Floating Weeds - Yasujiro Ozu, 1959
• The Lusty Men - Nick Ray, 1952
• Frenzy - Alfred Hitchcock, 1972
• Ruskin - Robert Beavers, 1975-97
• America: Everything You’ve Ever Dreamed of: The Films of Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter (1971-73, compilation by Jake Perlin)
• Near Orouet - Jacques Rozier, 1971
• Back in the Park - Ernie Gehr, 2018
• I Know Where I’m Going - Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945
• Bluebeard’s Castle - Michael Powell, 1963
• Leon Morin, Priest - Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961
• Vanishing Point - Richard Sarafian, 1971
• The Good Fairy - William Wyler, 1935
• Wagon Master - John Ford, 1950
• Toute Une Nuit - Chantal Akerman, 1982
• The Parallax View - Alan Pakula, 1974
• Adieu Philippine - Jacques Rozier, 1962

All Unranked

Best New Releases

• I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)
• Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross)
• Janet Planet (Annie Baker)
• Babygirl (Halina Reijn)
• Problemista (Julio Torres)
• La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
• Challengers (Luca Guadagnino)
• A Different Man (Aaron Schimberg)
• Queer (Luca Guadagnino)
• The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• The Spook Who Sat by the Door (Ivan Dixon)
• Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge)
• Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
• Dogville (Lars von Trier)
• A Perfect World (Clint Eastwood)
• Compensation (Zeinabu Irene Davis)
• Pumping Iron 2: The Women (George Butler)
• Little Murders (Alan Arkin)
• Vengeance Is Mine (Michael Roemer)
• Targets (Peter Bogdanovich)
• Clockwatchers (Jill Sprecher)
• Polyester (John Waters)
• Titus (Julie Taymor)
• Ali (Michael Mann)
• Coma (Bertrand Bonello)
• Shortbus (John Cameron Mitchell)
• Hulk (Ang Lee)
• Darkman (Sam Raimi)
• Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis)
• Bird (Clint Eastwood)

Favorites of 2024:

1. Dune: Part Two by Denis Villeneuve
2. Last Things by Deborah Stratman
3. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World by Radu Jude
4. Chicken for Linda! by Chiara Malta & Sébastien Laudenbach
5. Look into my Eyes by Lana Wilson
6. Look Back by Kiyotaka Oshiyama
7. Challengers by Luca Guadagnino
8. Hayao Miyazaki and the Heron by Kaku Arakawa
9. Dahomey by Mati Diop
10. The Beast by Bertrand Bonello