Best Movies of 2025: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots

First Viewings

• Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936)
• Enamorada (Emilio Fernandez, 1946)
• Europa ‘51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952)
• Pedro Paramo (Carlos Velo, 1967)
• Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1967)
• A Man on his Knees (Damiano Damiani, 1979)
• Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986)
• Franz Schubert’s Last Three Piano Sonatas (Chantal Akerman, 1989)
• Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, 2003)
• Aferim! (Radu Jude, 2015)
• Notfilm (Ross Lipman, 2015)
• What Means Something (Ben Rivers, 2015)The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (Ben Rivers, 2015)
• I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Radu Jude, 2018)

Best New Releases

1- Sirat
2- Bugonia
3- Zodiac Killer Project
4- Misericordia
5- Filhos Do Meio
6- If I had Legs I Would Kick You
7- Twinless
8- Duas Vezes João Liberada
9- Final Destination: Blood Lines
10- Boys Go To Jupiter

Favorite First Viewings

Love & Pop
Anatomy of Hell
Jamon Jamon
Huevos de Oro
Inflatable Sex Dolls Of The Wasteland
The Little girl who Lives Down the Street
The Seventh Continent
Exotica
Miracle Mile
Laurel canyon

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

• La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000, Anthology)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981, Anthology)
• The Damned (Luchino Visconti, 1969, BAM)
• Passing Through (Larry Clark, 1977, Film at Lincoln Center)
• Drive a Crooked Road (Richard Quine, 1954, MoMA)
• Shanghai Blues (Tsui Hark, 1984, Metrograph)
• Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981, Film at Lincoln Center)
• In the Spirit (Sandra Seacat, 1990, Roxy Cinema)
• La mujer de todos (Julio Bracho, 1946, MoMA)
• Amok (Antonio Momplet, 1944, MoMA)
• Fade In (Alan Smithee, 1968, Anthology)
• Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961, Film Forum)

My favorite new releases (unranked)

• Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs)
• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• Magellan (Lav Diaz)
• Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
• The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• My Mom Jayne (Mariska Hargitay)
• Water Sports (Whammy Alcazaren)

My favorite first viewings

• Independencia (Raya Martin)
• Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky (Maria Estela Paiso)
• Yearning (Mikio Naruse)
• Two in the Shadow (Mikio Naruse)
• The Birdcage (Mike Nichols)
• Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli)
• Shall We Dance? (Masayuki Suo)
• Looking for Langston (Isaac Julien)
• Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa)
• The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges)
• The Hours and Times (Christopher Münch)

New Releases

• Sorry, Baby
• One Battle After Another
• Die My Love
• Weapons
• Black Bag
• 28 Years Later
• Final Destination: Bloodlines
• Friendship
• After the Hunt
• Train Dreams

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Vibrations - Lives up to its’ premise. A musician gets both of hands cut off and has to resort to DJing. Ew.
• Tiptoes - Matthew Bright with about half the effort of Freeway or Freeway 2.
• Sliver - I can’t believe I hadn’t seen this. Ira Levin files another HOA complaint, this time against video voyeurism.
• Two Moon Junction - This film should get its respect for the profound impact it had on Twin Peaks and just David Lynch in general. Zalman King is a master.
• The Blackout - Not the best Ferrara film by far but somewhere in there Hopper delivers a feisty manifesto on video art. Loses the plot after that but it wasn’t much of one any way.
• Jumpin Jack Flash - Someone needs to check Whoopi’s WPM in this movie. It feels record breaking.
• Contraband - Shout out to Spencer for turning me on to this. Fulci showing his range and the lead character’s name is Luca.

New Releases

• Sinners Ryan Coogler
• We Were Here - the Untold History of Black Africans in Renaissance Europe Fred Kudjo Kuwornu
• BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions by Kahlil Joseph
• Next Life Tenzin Phuntsog
• "Brick by Brick" (Tijolo por Tijolo) by Victória Álvares and Quentin Delaroche
• Weapons Zach Cregger
• Once Upon a Time Time In Harlem Davis Greaves
• Celetine (Florida Storm) Allison Janae Hamilton

Faves/First Time Viewing

• Henry Fonda for President Alexander Horwath
• On Becoming A Guinea Fowl Rungano Nyoni
• Battle Royale Kinji Fukasaku
• Pressure Horace Ové
• Compensation Zeinbu irene Davis (not really but the preservation felt like the first time!)
• Symptoms (1974 ) José Ramón Larraz
• Ben Gazzara Arthur Jafa (Overwhelming installation. I'm good-Don't need to see this again for a while tho')

First Viewing

• Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang)

2025 Theatrical Releases (alphabetical)

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Alpha (Julia Ducournau)
• Caught By the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Eephus (Carson Lund)
• Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• WTO/99 (Ian Bell)

2025 First Watches (chronological)

• The Outlaw and His Wife (Victor Sjöström, 1918)
• Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)
• The Stranger Within a Woman (Mikio Naruse, 1966)
• Secrets of Sex (Anthony Balch, 1970)
• The Man on the Roof (Bo Widerberg, 1976)
• Big Wednesday (John Milius, 1978)
• Blue Mountains, or Unbelievable Story (Eldar Shengelaia, 1983)
• Polly Perverse Strikes Again! (Dan Sallitt, 1986)
• The Apostate (Valeri Rubinchik, 1987)
• The Comedy of Work (Luc Moullet, 1987)
• American Hunter (Arizal, 1988)
• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1990)
• White Homeland Commando (Elizabeth LeCompte, 1993)
• Double Team (Tsui Hark, 1997)
• Ride with the Devil (Ang Lee, 1999)
• La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000)
• 25 Watts (Pablo Stoll and Juan Pablo Rebella, 2001)
• The Best of Me (Heather Landsman, 2024)
• Felt (Blake Williams, 2025)
• Game 7, 2025 World Series

Here are my lists for the year, new and old. Now, last year when I submitted my lists, they were ranked and for some reason on the site they were not. Both of these lists are ranked!

Best New Gems

1. Playboi Carti @ Barclays Center, 11.6.25 // Charlie XCX @ The Grammy Awards, 2.2.25

2. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg) // The Empire (Bruno Dumont)

3. Thunderbolt Fantasy: The Final Chapter (Chris Huang/Jia-Shiang Wang/Pao-Pin Cheng) // Mononoke the Movie Chapter II: The Ashes of Rage (Kenji Nakamura/Kiyotaka Suzuki)

4. In Whose Name? (Nico Ballesteros) // aka Charlie Sheen (Andrew Renzi) // The Fastest Boxer In The World (Griffin Conner) // X-Ray Eros (Bradley Eros)

5. Graph Theory in State-Space aka I Solved Klotski (2swap) // Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)

6. Kirk-ified AI Slop Timeline (ChatGPT/Gemini/Claude) // Baby Invasion (Harmony Korine) // “I Hate Antichrist,” John Maus (Andrew Norman Wilson)

7. The Stage (Chen Pei-Si) // The Lychee Road (Dong Chengpeng) // Nobody (Shui Yu) // Tom and Jerry: Forbidden Compass (Zhang Gang) // Operation Hadal (Dante Lam Chiu-Yin)

8. Toward a Fundamental Theory of Physics (Victor Van Rossem) // A laser pointer at 2 billion fps makes the speed of light look… kinda weird (Brian Haidet)

9. King of the Hill S14 (Mike Judge) // Tulsa (Scott Stark)

10. “Surrounded: Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists,” Jubilee // “Tucker Carlson Confronts Ted Cruz on His Support for Regime Change in Iran,” The Tucker Carlson Show

Best Old Gems

1. Upper Blue Lake (1996; James Otis)

2. Humanité (1999; Bruno Dumont)

3. Horizons (1973; Larry Gottheim)

4. Children of Paradise (1945; Marcel Carné)

5. Angel Beach (2001; Scott Stark)

6. Metamedia: A Film Journal of Intermedia and the Avant-Garde 1966-1970 (1972; Jud Yalkut)

7. Mountaineer Spinning (2004; Ken Jacobs)

8. Camino Real (1972; Martha Edelheit)

9. Belfast, Maine (1999; Frederick Wiseman)

10. Gawrsh, I Didn’t Know You Was a Lady (1982; Sandy Moore)

11. Lineage (1979; George Griffin)

12. Scooter - Live In Hamburg (2010; Frank Dittmann)

13. Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975; Chantal Akerman)

14. The Princess and the Pea (2002; Mark Swan)

15. Destiny… The Universal Fantasy (1974; Jon Voorhees)

16. The Third Generation (1979; Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

17. The Paradine Case (1947; Alfred Hitchcock)

18. Better than Ever (2015; Ernie Gehr)

19. The Chair (1997; Zhang Tielin)

20. In Prison Awaiting Trial (1971; Nanni Loy)

Discovery of the year:
 

Secret Chronicle: She Beast Market aka The Oldest Profession (1974)
Dir: Noboru Tanaka

Other great discoveries:

Save the Tiger (1973)
The Cat (1992)
Ebola Syndrome (1996)
Red to Kill (1994)
The Great Chase (1975)
Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)
Marketa Lazarová (1967)
Love Hotel (1985)
White Whore: Flower Core (1974)
The Pick-Up (1968)
The Olive Trees of Justice (1962)

Unranked list for best new releases

• Sirat
• The Shrouds
• Caught by the Tides
• Afternoons of Solitude
• The Ice Tower
• The Secret Agent
• Through a Mirror Darkly
• Bombay Tilts Down
• Little Boy
• Bogancloch

Fav first viewings

• The Memory of Justice
• Flamingo Road
• Winter Kept Us Warm
• Hanno cambiato faccia
• Cafe Flesh
• Brève traversée
• The Merry Monarch (on nitrate)
• Hell is a City
• Doomed Love
• Mitchell’s Death

New Releases

• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Castration Movie 1 and 2 (Louise Weard)
• Sleep #2 (Radu Jude)
• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
• The Naked Gun (Akiva Schaffer)
• The Piano Accident (Quentin Dupeiux)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
• Drunken Noodles (Lucio Castro)
• Bel Ami (Jun Geng)
• Pee-Wee As Himself (Matt Wolf)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nypni)

Short Films

• Breakfast Time (Peter Cage)
• The Handyman (Fabio Leal)
• Meat (Marian Thompson-McLain)
• Homemade Gatorade (Carter Amelia Davis)
• This Unremarkable Life (Jake Brush)
• Les Fantômes du hard 1 and 2 (Lazare Lazarus)
• The Fault Line (Brydie O'Connor)

First viewings

• First Time Viewings and Discoveries
• Highway Hypnosis (Ken Camp)
• Mouse Klub Konfidential  & The Brady Bunch (James Robert Baker)
• L’Amour, Spike of Bensonhurst, Madame Wang’s and Forty Deuce (Paul Morrissey, RIP)
• Fellini’s Casanova
• Modern Times (Charlie Chaplin)
• Pilgrim Farewell (Michael Roemer)
• The films of Julius Amédée-Laou (on Criterion)
• A.I.D.S.C.R.E.A.M. (Jerry Tartaglia)
• Hookers on Davie (Holly Dale and Janis Cole)
• Heaven (Diane Keaton, RIP)
• Epiphany (Cerith Wyn Evans)

New Releases

• The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
• The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadzihalilovic)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Caught By the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)
• My Mom Jayne (Mariska Hargitay)
• Sirat (Oliver Laxe)
• (NYFF Faves: Late Fame, Pillion & Mirrors No. 3)

New and Recently Watched Killer “B”’s:

• Final Destination: Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky & Adam B. Stein)
• Dogman (Luc Besson)
• Den of Thieves: Pantera (Christian Gudegast)
• Dead of Winter (Brian Kirk)
• Red Sonja (MJ Bassett)
• In the Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson)
• Emmanuelle (Audrey Diwan)
• Pretty Thing (Justin Kelly)
• Trouble Man (Michael Jai White)
• Sisu: Road to Revenge (Jalmari Helander)

• haunted house (1921, d. cline and keaton) (light industry) for the scene with the money and the glue
• the encampments (4/21/25, lenfest center for the arts, columbia university) a lot of people tried to stop this from happening. a small victory. police would shut down the screening at ucla 9 days later.
• dodsworth (wyler, 1936)
• days and nights in the forest + hero (ray, 1970 + 1966)
• caught by the tides (jia, 2024)
• freud home movies (narrated by hannah zeavin) (light industry)
• napoleon (gance, 1927) (film forum)
• perfect film (jacobs, 1986) (momi)
• gods of times square (sandler, 1999) (anthology)
• the brig (mekas, 1964) (anthology)
• travolta et moi (mazuy, 1993)
• les coueurs verts (luntz, 1966)
• unknown number: the high school catfish (netflix, 2025) not a good film, but i think a lot about the mom
• mamdani-trump press conference (PBS)

2025 Top 10

1) Paul Thomas Anderson - One Battle After Another

2) Oliver Laxe - Sirat

3) Myrid Carten - A Want in Her

4) Bob LaSalle - Poser Purge Phase 1: Confinement & Interrogation and Phase 2: Extermination & Disposal [Dr

nochugger V]

5) Kaouther Ben Hania - The Voice of Hind Rajab

6) Geeta Gandbhir - Perfect Neighbor

7) Nellie Kluz - The Dells

8) Reid Davenport - Life After

9) Caron Lund - Eephus

10) Trey Jones - Post Time

2025 Favorites (Unranked)

• As I Said at Microscope Gallery (Copper Frances Giloth, solo exhibition)
• Eraserhead Xiu Xiu at Elsewhere
• Heaven and Earth Magic (Harry Smith) with a live score by JG Thirlwell at Brain Dead Studios
• Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs)
• Weapons (Zach Cregger)

Favorite First Viewings (Unranked)

• Criminal Woman: Killing Melody (Atsushi Mihori, 1973)
• Atman (Toshio Matsumoto, 1975)
• Violent Panic: The Big Crash (Kinji Fukasaku, 1976)
• Sukeban Deka (Tarou Sakamoto, Hideo Tanaka, Michio Konishi, 1985)
• White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)
• Lady Reporter (Mang Hoi, 1989)
• Motorama (Barry Shils, 1991)
• Trava: Fist Planet (Katsuhito Ishii, Takeshi Koike, 2002)
• Self-Referential Traverse (Kim Gok, Kim Sun, 2008)
• Hiroshima (Pablo Stoll, 2009)

First Viewings & Discoveries

• My Name Is Julia Ross (Joseph H. Lewis, US 1945)
• Gunman's Walk (Phil Karlson, US 1958)
• Evening Primrose (Paul Bogart, US 1966)
• Mi aporte (Sara Gómez, Cuba 1969)
• Greaser's Palace (Robert Downey, US 1972)
• The Cannibal Man (Eloy de la Iglesia, Spain 1972)
• Hard Labour (Mike Leigh, UK 1973)
• The Plaint of Steve Kreines as Recorded by His Younger Brother Jeff (Jeff Kreines, US 1974)
• The Little Girl of Hanoi (Hải Ninh, Vietnam 1974)
• Girls at 12 (Joyce Chopra, US 1975)
• Sholay (Ramesh Sippy, India 1975)
• The Best Way to Walk (Claude Miller, France 1976)
• Louder, Faster, Shorter (Mindaugis Bagdon, US 1978)
• Kummatty (G. Aravindan, India 1979)
• A Different Image (Alile Sharon Larkin, US 1982)
• Streetwalkin' (Joan Freeman, US 1985)
• An Autumn's Tale (Mabel Cheung, Hong Kong 1987)
• Samba Traoré (Idrissa Ouedraogo, Burkina Faso 1992)
• Kokoa (Moustapha Alassane, Niger 2001)
• Being Frank: The Chris Sievey Story (Steve Sullivan, UK 2018)

LBX: Stertorious
No ranking, no order.

New

Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2024)
Gorgeously shot, puzzlingly wrought.

The American Revolution (Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, David Schmidt, 2025)
“Forget it, Your Majesty - it’s Chinatown.”

Revelations Of Divine Love (Caroline Golum, 2025)
She’s leaving home.

Pee-wee As Himself (Matt Wolf, 2025)

Crossfire (Tessa Hoffe, 2022)
Die Hard in a crap marriage.

John Waters’ Criterion Channel Adventures In Moviegoing intros (??, 2024)

Sybil Danning’s LinkedIn feed

Old

Legend Of the Lost (Henry Hathaway, 1957)
Hathaway’s L’Avventura

Set Me Free! (Raymond Lee, 1988)

The Ghost Of Kasane Swamp/The Masseur's Curse (Kimiyoshi Yasuda, 1970)
Period Japanese town of Jim Thompson-grade predatory provincial lowlifes. Life sucks, then you die, then it sucks even more.

The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (Harald Reinl, 1962)
Theater of cruelty and absurdity.

Blonde Venus (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
35mm at Pre-Code Parade, Nighthawk Prospect Park

Lili (Charles Walters, 1953)
“Something I think’s worthwhile, if the puppet makes you smile.” IB Tech 35mm at CFS Technicolor Weekend

Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
Indochina, Mon Amour. 35mm at both Japan Society & Metrograph.

Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)
Appropriately lush 35mm print intro’d by Mike Koresky at MoMI.

The Pizza Triangle (Ettore Scola, 1970)
35mm at FSLC. Commie dell'arte

Sudden Rain (Mikio Naruse, 1956)
35mm at Metrograph

Seven Days From Now/Seven Waves Away/Abandon Ship (Richard Sale, 1957)
End stage Ty Power and Mai Zetterling making out with they-hooked-up-offscreen intensity in period underwear while bobbing within a life ring circled by studio tank shark fins and that’s in the first five minutes. Grand Hotel meets Lifeboat meets Lord Of The Flies.

The Bounty Hunter (André De Toth, 1954)

Sincerity (Mikio Naruse, 1939)
35mm at Japan Society

Demons Of The Mind (Peter Sykes, 1972)

A Certain Killer (Kazuo Mori, 1972)

Girl On Fire (Sang Lung, 1994)

Supervixens (Russ Meyer, 1975)

Dr. Who: The Robots Of Death (Michael E. Briant, 1977)

Hokuriku Proxy War (Kinji Fukasaku, 1977)

This Day And Age (Cecil B. DeMille, 1933)
35mm at Pre-Code Parade, Nighthawk Prospect Park

My ten favorite theatrical moments of 2025 below. A huge THANK YOU to the curators, venues, projectionists, musicians, moderators, and special guests who made all of these so memorable.

Programmer's note: It goes without saying that my proudest experience this year was co-presenting 'Paul Reubens Selects' - a collection of the singular pop star's favorite films - with documentarian Matt Wolf at BAM Cinema. BONUS: Matt won three Emmys in the midst of our series!! Congratulations, Matt... Paul is looking down at you, smirking.

1) Highway Hypnosis (1982), Ken Camp. Co-presented by Narrow Rooms and Liz Purchell at Anthology Film Archives, 8/15/25. To quote John Waters: "If you don’t like this film, I hate you."

2) Dying (1976) and Pilgrim, Farewell (1982), Michael Roemer. New restorations by The Film Desk. With the late Michael Roemer in attendance at Film Forum, 1/25/25. The two finest films about the end of life that I've ever seen.

3) Vampyr (1932), Carl Theodor Dreyer. With live musical accompaniment by Elissa Nahkleh (piano), Zein Nahkleh (violin), and Parker Bert (percussion). Presented by Le Cinéclub de Montréal at Église Anglicane St-Georges, 10/18/25. Afterwards, I was devastated to learn that their performance was entirely improvised, after only one rehearsal. They moved me so profoundly, I was angry to discover that they hadn't spent 18 months writing the score.

4) AKA Martha's Vineyard (2025) and Radioactive City (2011), Richard Sandler. Part of 'Eyes of the City: Richard Sandler' presented by The Film Desk. With Sandler and me in conversation at Anthology Film Archives, 6/8/25. Sandler is a genius and the new Blu-ray of The Gods of Times Square plus shorts is a must-own.

5) The Black Room (1982), Norman Thaddeus Vane. Presented by The Deuce (Jeff and me!) at Nitehawk Williamsburg, 10/9/25. A perfect horror movie - funny in all the right places, deeply harrowing when it needed to be.

6) Love Me Deadly (1972), Jacques Lacerte. Presented by Liz Purchell for Weird Wednesday at Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn, 2/12/25. Sick and beautiful.

7) Ma mère (2004), Christophe Honoré. IFC Center, 1/30/25. Sick and beautiful.

8) The Mack (1973), Michael Campus. Presented by Alfreda's Cinema at BAM Cinema, 3/26/25. Another perfect movie, not a single frame out of place. 35mm expertly projected by Dylan Soltis, despite being slightly warped - a feat of great technique and care.

9) Funny Pages (2022), Owen Kline. With Owen and guests in attendance at Film Forum, 8/12/25. Owen made an American comedy classic, which I missed in its original release. Silly and cringy and weird and touching.

10) The Fireworks Woman (1975), "Abe Snake" (aka Wes Craven). Presented by Liz Purchell for 'Skin Deep' at Nitehawk Williamsburg, 10/7/25. Brilliant use of superimpositions, dissolves, music in the public domain, and pubic hair.

First Viewings

• Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock 1945)
• Koroshi no rakuin (Seijun Suzuki 1967)
• What Have I Done to Deserve This? (Pedro Almodóvar 1984)
• Faust: Eine deutsche Volkssage (F.W. Murnau 1926)
• Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (Fritz Lang 1933)
• Krtek (Zdeněk Miler 1957)

First Viewings

AMERICA Land of the FreeKS (Ulli Lommel, 2018)

Is effective social satire achievable in a culture that's already absurd to the core? Of course, but only if you're a septuagenarian former Fassbinder and Warhol collaborator with a museum-grade bedazzled cowboy hat collection and 64 director credits to your name. For everyone else: good luck.

The Rhythm of Jess (Naxo Fiol, 2013)

This observational on-set doc follows a wheelchair riding Jess Franco as he directs his swan song, Al Pereira vs. the Alligator Ladies. It’s endlessly fascinating to watch the 82 year old outré elder stunt on his haters for the 184th time.

The Entire Star Wars IP (George Lucas & Co., 1977-Present)

My bad: I overdosed on Star Wars films, spinoffs, and episodic content this year. Catapulting through the sprawling intergalactic all-ages dork opera in chronological order from The Acolyte to The Rise of Skywalker was a perverse, gruelling and occasionally enlightening odyssey.

New Releases

• The Dells (Nellie Kluz)

• Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (Göran Hugo Olsson)

• Maddie's Secret (John Early)

• Materialists (Celine Song)

• Revelations of Divine Love (Caroline Golum)

• SK13: Kubrick's Endgame (Tony Zierra)

• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

• The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)

First Viewings

• Blue Crush (John Stockwell, 2002)

• Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)

• Filmworker (Tony Zierra, 2017)

• The Great Muppet Caper (Jim Henson, 1981)

• Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett, 1978)

• Kissing Jessica Stein (Charles Herman-Wurmfeld, 2001)

• Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan, 2012)

• Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)

• Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

• Muriel's Wedding (P. J. Hogan, 1994)

• No Reservations (Scott Hicks, 2007)

• Ricochet (Russell Mulcahy, 1991)

• Under the Tuscan Sun (Audrey Wells, 2003)

This year I had very memorable and enjoyable experiences watching new films, which is so rare for me and made me feel hopeful. These are the things I watched in 2025 that I liked best, in the order I saw them:

Narrative

• Hard Truths, Mike Leigh
• The Shrouds, David Cronenberg
• Weapons, Zach Cregger
• One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
• Pillion, Harry Lighton
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Mary Bronstein
• Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier
• Resurrection, Bi Gan

Documentary

• The Alabama Solution, Andrew Jarecki & Charlotte Kaufman
• Cover-Up, Laura Poitras & Mark Oberhaus

Favorite First Viewings, by Year

Making this list really showed me that one of the reasons my cup feels extra full this year is because I got to see these twenty truly wonderful, magical films.

• In a Lonely Place, Nicholas Ray, 1950
• The Swimmer, Frank Perry, 1968
• The Cremator, Juraj Herz, 1969
• Taking Off, Miloš Forman, 1971
• Bye Bye Love, Isao Fujiwara, 1974
• Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog, 1992
• The Player, Robert Altman, 1992
• Naked, Mike Leigh, 1993
• Belly, Hype Williams, 1998
• Dick, Andrew Fleming, 1999
• Together, Lukas Moodysson, 2000
• May, Lucky McKee, 2002
• Ma Mère, Christophe Honoré, 2004
• Ellie Parker, Scott Coffey, 2005
• Grizzly Man, Werner Herzog, 2005
• Inland Empire, David Lynch, 2006
• Thirst, Park Chan-wook, 2009
• The Oath, Laura Poitras, 2010
• Maps to the Stars, David Cronenberg, 2014
• Benedetta, Paul Verhoeven, 2021

Best New Releases

1. Last One for the Road
2. Peter Hujar's Day
3. The Secret Agent
4. The Mastermind
5. The Love that Remains
6. One Battle After Another
7. Carol & Joy
8. Bugonia
9. Cloud
10. 28 Years Later

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Le cirque de Calder (Carlos Vilardebó, 1961) @ Whitney Museum
• Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies, 1988) @ MoMI
• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1990) @ Walter Reade
• The Clock (Christian Marclay, 2010) @ MoMA
• Model (Frederick Wiseman, 1980) @ Walter Reade
• Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)
• Deja Vu (Tony Scott, 2006) x1 at home x4 in segments of The Clock
• Slums of Beverly Hills (Tamara Jenkins, 1998)
• Rap World (Conner O'Malley, Danny Scharar, 2024)
• Girls at 12 (Joyce Chopra, 1975)

First Viewings

All Is Forgiven (Mia Hansen-Løve, 2007)
Tomboy (Céline Sciamma, 2011)
Water Lillies (Céline Sciamma, 2007)
Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade, 2016)
Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981)
Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay, 2025)
Sister Midnight (Karan Kandhari, 2024)
Nouvelle Vague (Richard Linklater, 2025)
Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski, 2025)
On Body and Soul (Ildikó Enyedi, 2017)

Best New Releases (loosely ranked):

1. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)

2. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

3. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

4. You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro)

5. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

6. Henry Fonda For President (Alexander Horwath)

7. Gettysburg (Joshua Bogatin)

8. Eddington (Ari Aster)

9. Magellan (Lav Diaz)

10. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

Favorite Discoveries:

Dream of Light (Victor Erice, 1992)

Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (Aditya Chopra, 1995)

Maskerade (Willi Forst, 1934)

Voltati Eugenio (Luigi Comencini, 1980)

American Hunter (Arizal, 1988)

Shipwrecked on Route D17 (Lu Moullet, 2002)

The Journey to Tilsit (Veit Harlan, 1939)

Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

The Journey (Peter Watkins, 1987)

The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)

I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (Tsai Ming-liang, 2006)

Meat (Frederick Wiseman, 1976)

I'm Going Home (Manoel De Oliveira, 2001)

The Spousals of God (João César Monteiro, 1999)

The Doctor's Dream (Ken Jacobs, 1978)

Don't Go Breaking My Heart (Johnnie To, 2011)

Rap World (Connor O'Malley & Danny Scharar, 2024)

New York Subway (Billy Bitzer, 1905)

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)

My Son (Yevgeni Chervyakov, 1928)

La Ronde (Max Ophüls, 1950)

Three Idiots (Rajkumar Hirani, 2009)

Best New Releases (10 films)

1. “Sinners”
2. “The Mastermind”
3. “The Secret Agent”
4. “The Phoenician Scheme”
5. “Hedda”
6. “Afternoons of Solitude”
7. “Highest 2 Lowest”
8. “Misericordia”
9. “One Battle After Another”
10. “Marty Supreme”

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries
[unranked, alphabetical]

• “Born to Win” (1971, Ivan Passer)
• “Dying” (1976, Michael Roemer)
• “Love Letters” (1983, Amy Holden Jones)
• “Ombres de Soie” (1978, Mary Stephen)
• “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” (1972, William Greaves)
• “The Pocketbook” (1980, Billy Woodberry)
• “The Shining Hour” (1938, Frank Borzage)
• “A Wanderer’s Notebook” (1962, Mikio Naruse)
• “Too Wise Wives” (1921, Lois Weber)
• “Woo Who? May Wilson” (1969, Amalie R. Rothschild)

Best New Releases

1. By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo, 2024)
2. Baby Assassins: Nice Days (Sakamoto Yugo, 2024)
3. You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro, 2024)
4. Cloud (Kurosawa Kiyoshi, 2024)
5. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, 2024)
6. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)
7. The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania, 2025)
8. Ghost Killer (Sonomura Kensuke, 2024)
9. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, 2025)
10. Invention (Courtney Stephens, 2024)

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

• Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (Naruse Mikio, 1935)
• Image of a Mother (Shimizu Hiroshi, 1959)
• Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959)
• Skin Deep (Blake Edwards, 1989)
• Grim (Ito Takashi, 1985)
• The Satin Slipper (Manoel de Oliveira, 1985)
• Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998)
• Document of Collision: The Whiplashed Ones (Ko Hiroh, 1969)
• Invitation of Lust (Kumashiro Tatsumi, 1975)
• O Rio do Ouro (Paulo Rocha, 1998)
• Traffic Jam (Luigi Comencini, 1979)
• Traviata ‘53 (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1953)
• Woman’s Trail: Wet Path (Takeda Kazunari, 1980)
• Seisaku’s Wife (Masumura Yasuzo, 1965)
• It’s My Turn (Claudia Weill, 1980)
• Psychic Rose (Sato Hisayasu, 1980)
• Bone (Larry Cohen, 1972)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981)
• Sofia and Sexual Education (Eduardo Geada, 1973)
• Solo Sunny (Wolfgang Kohlhaase & Konrad Wolf, 1980)

New

1. Sorry Baby. Eva Victor

2. One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson

3. Weapons, Zach Cregger

4. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Mary Bronstein

5. Cloud, Kiyoshi Kurosawa

6. Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie

7. Two Times João Liberada, Paula Tomás Marques

8. Just Kids, Gianna Toboni

9. After the Hunt, Luca Guadagnino

10. The Perfect Neighbor, Geeta Gandbhir

Sorry to the many films I did not get to see and the many films I hated.

Old

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,

Dogma, Kevin Smith, 1999

To Die For, Gus Van Sant, 1995

Coffy, Jack Hill, 1973

The Seats of Alcazar, Luc Moullet, 1989

The Comedy of Work, Luc Moullet, 1988

Ash is Purest White, Jia Zhangke, 2018

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Richard Brooks, 1958

Waiting for Guffman, Christopher Guest, 1996

The Janes, Emma Pildes and Tia Lessin, 2022

2025 Films I Watched (Not Ranked)

• April
• Blue Sun Palace
• Caught By The Tides
• Cloud
• Final Destination Bloodlines
• It Was Just an Accident
• Jetty
• One Battle After Another
• Universal Language
• Your Touch Makes Others Invisible

First Viewings (Not Ranked)

• All We Imagine As Light
• A New Love in Tokyo
• The Assassin
• Batch ’81
• Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel
• Giants and Toys
• Jackass 3D (Museum of Moving Image)
• Kisapmata
• Leila and the Wolves
• Nothing But a Man
• Palestine Vainer (Palestine Will Win)
• Passing Through
• Red Spectacles
• Talking to Trees
• When A Woman Ascends The Stairs
• Wolf’s Hole
• A Zed and Two Noughts

Best new releases (unranked)

• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
• It Was Just an Accident
• Final Destination: Bloodlines
• Sinners
• The Naked Gun
• One of Them Days
• Familiar Touch
• Pee-Wee As Himself
• Roofman
• No Other Choice

Top First Watches

In Theaters

• Spike of Bensonhurst (1988) (Paul Morrissey @ Metrograph)
• Leila and the Wolves (1984) (BAM)
• Lightning (1952) (Japan Society Naruse series)
• Albert Pyun’s Cut of Captain America (Asian American International Film Festival)
• Into the Fire (1989) (Sundays on Fire @ Nitehawk)

At Home

• Other Men’s Women (1930)
• Bitter Victory (1957)
• Nightmare in Badham County (1976)
• Scarred (1984)
• A Knight’s Tale (2001)

New Releases (unranked)

• BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions
• Sorry, Baby
• One Battle After Another
• Blue Moon
• The Mastermind
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
• Hold Me Close (dirs. Aurora Brachman and LaTajh Simmons-Weaver)
• Black Bag
• The Shrouds

first viewing (often first public viewing but...)...

• KILLER OF SHEEP sold-out restoration premiere at THE AERO
• WHEN THE WORLD BROKE OPEN: KATRINA AND ITS AFTERLIVES at MoMA (Selfishly including the program I co-curated with K. Austin Collins)
• THE LAKE HOUSE at Vidiots with Amanda Salazar and friends
• The 0:46 video of the “birthday party gone wrong” and the woman who calmly saves the day after the cake flambe and table catches on fire.
• Compensation re-juvenation L.A. release at Vidiots
• Zola at the Academy Museum with friends and a packed crowd.   
• Black Girl restoration at NYFF with an intro from J.E. Franklin

NEW FILMS:

• ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

  I love hearing my friends talk about how this flick is a leftist conspiracy to sweep the Oscars, or how this film isn’t actually good because it bears no controversy for something that's supposed to polarize. Then I think of what PTA would probably say at a Q&A in response to all that…“Wow. That’s good. I like that.” Shine a light.

• BARRIO TRISTE 

  Going entirely BLIND into something as grand as this is like falling asleep not knowing you’ve just hit a fever and tossing and turning with the most assaulting nightmares where nothing really actually happens…it’s all about that TERROR you just can’t shake. Filmed close to home in Medellin Colombia.

• IN WHOSE NAME?

  Terrence Malick jr. breathing through each frame as we bear witness to a culture giant gone tumbling down a hill like one of those cartoon snowballs that collects debris and gets bigger and bigger and bigger until…

• ROSE OF NEVADA 

  Plunging into Mark Jenkin’s world of hand-processed super-8 fitted for a 200 foot screen felt MASSIVE. It’s equal parts Twilight Zone as it is Kitchen Sink drama. But there’s a microscopic quality to the image, like watching amoebas eating at the flesh of the last men on earth…STUNNING.

• SOFTSHELL 

  Keyhole-into-the future type filmmaking from Jinho Myung, who pairs us with a brother and sister, both Thai-Americans living in NYC…The film opens with a quote about how if you are not from a place, you will never TRULY be seen as yourself or understood, and that HIT like an anvil straight from the ACME warehouse…An existential torment anyone who is first-generation knows too well. But the beautiful thing here is, at least they have each other.

• THE FASTEST BOXER IN THE WORLD 

  Chronicle of the speediest swiftest foolhardy hustler in all of Brooklyn. Ten uplifting minutes of Matthew Morales - A true stick of dynamite who has created his own brand of shadowboxing that is either the most poetic l thing I’ve ever seen, or pure stupidity. Belief is a powerful thing.

• IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU

  Being awash in someone else’s skin to the extent that you feel like you have to go home and take a shower is a rare treat when going to the movies. I was in the chokehold of motherhood and what it means to be ANGRY and uptight and all things out-of-control in this first-person fight to the death. Her “Cheap Thrills” T-Shirt puts her cynicism in full perspective.

• MARTY SUPREME

  Was never sold on the whole Timmy-phenom but seeing him here weaponized like a heat-seeking missile soaked in Khondji-light had me smiling from ear to ear. Also there’s no denying I was an arrogant little prick at Marty’s age too, shaking anyone down to get what I wanted so’s to make my dreams into reality. True to life, it's almost scary.

• EDDINGTON

  Seen in literal 4-D on opening day at 2pm in a theater full of baby-boomers scrolling on their phones with their ‘ping’ notifications on at full volume. Facebook was so thick in the air you could slice it with a machete.

• THE AI FILMS OF DAMON PACKARD

  These are important historical documents that will undoubtedly be buried in the media vortex we live in today, but still, in what other world can a decrepit unhinged manchild bring his blockbuster fantasies to life with the painstaking push of a button?? Damon Packard 4EVER.

HORNY-ABLE MENTIONS: BUGONIA, ROOFMAN

NEW DISCOVERIES:

• SPIKE OF BENSONHURST (METROGRAPH) - Morrissey is the undisputed KING of turning real locations into spiritual epicenters of great art. Every corner and sign post and abandoned building in this loudmouth movie lives and breathes. Ridgewood friends will recognize that the incredible block party dance sequence was filmed on Myrtle Ave off Madison & Wykoff where the El Dorado restaurant currently stands. Fuckin A fuckin B fuckin C!!

   

• FINDERS KEEPERS LOVERS WEEPERS (AT HOME, 2 AM) - I like this Russ Meyer flick a lot cause it lands right in the middle of his filmography when he was transitioning from black n white desert movies to his Eastman-color softcore shenanigans. This one’s photographed like an episode of DRAGNET and there’s an incredible sex scene filmed underwater in a pool.

• THE STRAIGHT STORY (AT HOME, 2 AM) - I’d seen this on The Disney Channel as a little boy. Which makes me wonder how I reacted THEN to Alvin’s incredible monologue about gunning down enemy soldiers in World War 2. The soundtrack is very good for waking up in the morning and forgetting everything that’s bad in this world.

• THE SHORT FILMS OF MICHAEL SMITH - If you’ve been to MoMA you’ve surely walked through Mike Smith’s fallout shelter installation at least once. Discovering his treasure trove of home-movie style films was the highlight of my year. DOWN IN THE REC ROOM, IT STARTS AT HOME, MIKE BUILDS A SHELTER, and SECRET HORROR are each little echo chambers of hanging out and killing time. Though his masterpiece might be his collaboration with William Wegman, WORLD OF PHOTOGRAPHY, featuring an emotional song about if pursuing a passion is really where it’s at…

• SMORGASBORD (ROXY CINEMA) - Anyone whose been to the Roxy when Owen Kline and Bob Furmanek are putting on a show, knows they’re in for a funhouse of unsupervised absurdity, wars n all, a whose-who of who cares - a 60 year old man doing Lou Costello impressions in one ear, Bob Greenberg's loony toon laughter in the other. This is the kind of contagion that Jerry Lewis will bring to any basement abyss in NYC...a full on PLAGUE of funnymen obsessives.

• BAKED BABY JESUS/AFFLICTION (GRIFF’S PLACE) - When a package arrives in the mail labeled “free gift” it’s usually a bible or a pamphlet on reincarnation. Instead I got a DVD from comix legend Mike Diana of full-on smut! GG Allen’s projectile diarrhea, exploding dicks, nipple torture, a visit to a baby cemetary, and somehow, my buddy and I were able to stomach the whole thing while slurping down several plates of spaghetti!!

• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (WITH MY GIRLFRIEND) - There’s a scene in this movie, where a crippled kid magician defends himself from a neighborhood bully played by Martin Sheen. The kid magician holds Sheen at knife-point, and it’s so difficult for him to do that there’s tears streaming down his face. This was a gut-punch depiction of standing up to bullying. I had to pause the movie because I too, started crying.

• THE CELTS BBC DOCUMENTARY (ON THE TRAIN FROM LONDON TO EDINBURGH) - Enya’s early music serves as the score to this ghostly documentary about the mythic formation of what is now Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. There’s something heroic too about listening to a Cambridge professor sitting on a log talking about Pagan water gods while droning synths hum in the distance…

• DEVIL DOG: THE HOUND OF HELL (YOUTUBE) - As if torn from the pages of a lost Daniel Clowes comic, the darkness within a newly adopted German Shepard begins to eat at the hearts of an unassuming suburban family, turning their souls black. What a watch.

• FUN WITHOUT LIMITS/ANIMAL LOVE (AT HOME, 2 AM) - Just when you think you love something more than anyone else…there’s some sicko half way across the globe whose got you beat. These “Fun Park” fanatics make Disney Adults look like amateurs. And the lonely loners in “Animal Love” might have a bond with their pets beyond anything any of us could ever humanly stomach…

• HOLIDAY WEEKEND (ARCHIVE.ORG) - I’ve long been a champion of Giuseppe Andrews and his bottomless pit of trailer park dramas, all shot on video in his home turf of Ventura California. His crass dirty-dog troupe of off-kilter actors could hold court against Cassavete’s or Fassbinder’s bunch any day. And to know that there will always be a treasure trove of his films to be discovered, despite his disappearance from the craft, is a reason to keep on living. Thanks for lighting the torch for us Giuseppe. Big love.

NEW RELEASES 
In no order:

1. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
2. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
3. No! You're Wrong or Spooky Action at a Distance (Crispin Glover) 
4. Bring Her Back (Danny & Michael Philippou) 
5. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović) 
6. The Uninvited (Nadia Conners) 
7. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch) 
8. Companion (Drew Hancock) 
9. Videoheaven (Alex Ross Perry) 
10. Schneewittchen (Stanley Schtinter)

Short Film: The Occupant of the Room (Kier-La Janisse) 

FIRST VIEWINGS 

1. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (Kenneth Anger, circa 1953 - previously unreleased workprint with alt score) for the Cameron exhibit at Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery 
2. Archical Interviews with Robert Monroe at the Monroe Institute, Faber, Virginia (circa 1980s) 
3. Salvation! (Beth B, 1987) 
4. Secret Beyond the Door (Fritz Lang, 1947) 
5. Martha Graham: The Dancer Revealed (Catherine Tatge, 1994) 
6. Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Roger Vadim & Louis Malle, 1968)  
7. L'Etoile de Mer (Man Ray, 1928) as part of the exhibit When Objects Dream at the Met 
8. Archival Footage of LSD Experiments (various, 1960s), as part of the exhibit Higher Love: The Psychedelic Roots of Modern Sexuality at the Museum of Sex
9. Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers, 1962) 
10. When Pigs Fly at MoMA (Sara Driver, 1993) 

Favorite first viewings
in the order I saw them

• Beau-père (Bertrand Blier, 1981)
• The Moustache (Emmanuel Carrère, 2005)
• Inherent Vice (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)
• Jamón, Jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992)
• Swoon (Tom Kalin, 1992)
• Late Chrysanthemums (Mikio Naruse, 1954)
• Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)
• Where Is the Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
• AGHDRA (Arthur Jafa, 2021)
• Motel Destino (Karim Aïnouz, 2024)
• I’m Hungry, I’m Cold (Chantal Akerman, 1984)
• The Long Goodbye (Robert Altman, 1973)
• In Paris Parks (Wendy Clarke, 1954)
• Cold Water (Olivier Assayas, 1994)
• Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986)

New Releases

• April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)
• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
• F1: The Movie (Joseph Kosinski)
• Happyend (Neo Sora)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir)
• Resurrection (Bi Gan)
• Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)
• Who By Fire (Philippe Lesage)

First Viewings

• All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)
• Angel’s Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985)
• Another Woman (Woody Allen, 1988)
• Baby Blue Benzo (Sara Cwynar, 2021)
• Kisapmata (Mike de Leon, 1981)
• Model (Frederick Wiseman, 1980)
• Once a Thief (John Woo, 1991)
• The Store (Frederick Wiseman, 1983)
• Vengeance Is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)

• RESURRECTION, Bi Gan
• MERLUSSE, Marcel Pagnol
• MEKTOUB MY LOVE CANTO DUE, Abdellatif Kechiche
• NUESTRA TIERRA, Lucrecia Martel
• SILENT FRIEND, Ildiko Enyedi

FIRST VIEWS (Unranked)

• Female Perversions, dir. Susan Streitfeld (1996)
• Lost Book Found, dir. Jem Cohen (1996)
• Drylongso, dir. Cauleen Smith (1998)
• Prêt-à-Porter, dir. Robert Altman (1994)
• Slow Machine, dir. Paul Felton & Joe DeNardo (2020)
• Flores, dir. Jorge Jácome (2017)
• Ombres de Soie, dir. Mary Stephen (1978)
• D.E.B.S, dir. Angela Robertson (2005)
• The Secret Agent, dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho (2025)
• The Beguiled, dir. Don Siegel (1971)

Top ten (ranked):

1. One Battle After Another
2. Caught by the Tides
3. Blue Moon
4. It Was Just an Accident
5. Below the Clouds
6. My Undesirable Friends - Pt. 1
7. Nouvelle Vague
8. Afternoons of Solitude
9. Desert of Namibia
10. No Other Choice
     

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Headhunters of Borneo (Friedrich Dalsheim, Nazi Germany, 1936) - DCP, Il Cinema Ritrovato
2. Girl with Hyacinths (Hasse Ekman, Sweden, 1950) - 35mm, Il Cinema Ritrovato
3. Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland, 1961) - 35mm, Nitrate Picture Show
4. Nothing But a Man (Michael Roemer, US, 1964) - 35mm, Anthology
5. White, White Storks (Ali Khamraev, Soviet Uzbekistan, 1966) - 35mm, Asia Society
6. Scattered Clouds (Mikio Naruse, Japan, 1967) - 35mm, Metrograph*
7. Political Portraits (Gregory J. Markopoulos, 1969) - 16mm
8. Journey (Bahram Beyzaie, Iran, 1972) + Bashu the Little Stranger (Bahram Beyzaie, Iran, 1989) - DCPs, Il Cinema Ritrovato + TIFF
9. Horizons (Larry Gottheim, US, 1973) - 16mm, MoMA
10. The Little Girl of Hanoi (Hai Ninh, North Vietnam, 1974) - DCP, Metrograph
11. Primate (Frederick Wiseman, US, 1974) - DCP, FLC
12. The Shootist (Don Siegel, US, 1976) - 35mm, Metrograph
13. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, US, 1977) - 70mm, Il Cinema Ritrovato
14. Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, Philippines, 1977) - 16mm, Anthology
15. Silvestre (João Cesar Monteiro, Portugal, 1981) - 35mm, MoMA
16. Mortu Nega (Flora Gomes, Guinea-Bissau, 1988) - DCP, Il Cinema Ritrovato
17. The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, USSR, 1989) - 35mm, FLC
18. Khayal Gatha (Kumar Shahani, India, 1989) - 35mm, Anthology
19. Swan Lake. The Zone (Yuri Illienko, Soviet Ukraine, 1989) - 35mm, Metrograph
20. My Favorite Season (André Téchiné, France, 1993) - 35mm, L’Alliance

*this one was not technically a first viewing, as I had watched the film during research for the series, but seeing it on the Japan Foundation's 35mm print was as if seeing it for the first time.

First Viewings

• Attenberg (2010), Athina Rachel Tsangari
• The Apartment (1960, Billy Wilder)
• Trenque Lauquen, 2022, Laura Citarella
• Eega, S.S Rajamouli, 2012
• The Arch (1968) dir. Cecilia Tang Shu Shuen
• Himala, 1982, Ishmael Bernal
• Distance (2001), Kore-Eda

Best of 2025 (unranked)

• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
• Megadoc (Mike Figgis)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-Ke)
• Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)

First viewings

• Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)
• The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)
• Eye of God (Tim Blake Nelson, 1997)
• The World (Jia Zhang-Ke, 2004)
• Love Letters (Amy Holden Jones, 1983)
• Wedding in White (William Fruet, 1972)
• The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968)
• Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)
• Lake Mungo (Joel Anderson, 2008)
• Dogfight (Nancy Savoca, 1991)

Gangsterism (Isiah Medina)
Felt (Blake Williams)
Full Out (Sarah Ballard)
Landscape #256 (Douglas Dixon-Barker)
Lover Lovers Loving Love (Jodie Mack)
Morgenkreis (Basma al-Sharif)
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Pictures of the Warm South (Vanessa Rossetto)
Site Watch (Simon Liu)
With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

First Viewings

Yearning (Mikio Naruse, 1964)
The Sheepman and the Sheared (Mike Leggett, 1970)
The Seventh Bullet (Ali Khamraev, 1973)
Untitled (Ernie Gehr, 1977)
Salve (Sharon Couzin, 1981)
The Asthenic Syndrome (Kira Muratova, 1989)
The Khayal Saga (Kumar Shahani, 1989)
Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)
Hotel Diaries (John Smith, 2001-07)
Bombay Tilts Down (CAMP, 2022)

2025 Releases (unranked)

• 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Pierre Creton & Vincent Barré)
• By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Fuck the Polis (Rita Azevedo Gomes)
• Redwood Souvenirs (John Winn)
• Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)
• Bonjour la langue (Paul Vecchiali)

First Viewings

• Terror in a Texas Town (Joseph H. Lewis, 1958)
• Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat, 1991)\
• The Carpathian Mushroom (Jean-Claude Biette, 1990)
• Ruby Gentry (King Vidor, 1952)
• The Enclosed Valley (Jean-Claude Rousseau, 1995)
• Stars in my Crown (Jacques Tourneur, 1950)
• Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse, 1955)
• Mountain Pass (Jean-François Stévenin, 1978)
• Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962)
• Jacques Rivette, the Watchman (Claire Denis, 1990)
• The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950)
• The Journey (Peter Watkins, 1987)
• Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995)
• The Gunfighter (Henry King, 1950)
• Voyage to the Beginning of the World (Manoel de Oliveira, 1997)

Best New Releases

1. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

2. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

3. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

4. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)

5. Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)

6. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)

7. By the Stream (Hong Sangsoo)

8. Grand Tour (Miguel Gomes)

9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

10. Father Mother Sister Brother (Jim Jarmusch)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Vengeance Is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984)*

2. Simon and Laura (Muriel Box, 1955)

3. Cockfighter (Monte Hellman, 1974)

4. Tausend Augen (Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, 1984)

5. The Beatles Anthology (Geoff Wonfor and Bob Smeaton, 1995)

6 .Va, Toto! (Pierre Creton, 2017)

7. False Expectations, 3 x 16mm projection w/ live score by Shrine Maiden (Erica Sheu, 2023)

8. Drifting States (Denis Côté, 2005)

9. Wall (Takashi Ito, 1987)

10. Gabriel Over the White House (Gregory La Cava, 1933)

*Along with every other Michael Roemer film I saw at Play-Doc 2025

2025 New Releases

• Afternoons of Solitude, Albert Serra
• Cloud, Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• City Wide Fever, Josh Heaps
• Eddington, Ari Aster
• The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadzihalilovic
• One Battle After Another, Paul Thomas Anderson
• Misericordia, Alain Guiraudie
• Reflection in a Dead Diamond, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani
• Resurrection, Bi Gan
• The Shrouds, David Cronenberg

Discoveries

• Floating Clouds, Mikio Naruse
• Jade: Director’s Cut, William Friedkin
• One False Move, Carl Franklin
• The Red Pony, Lewis Milestone
• The Return of Godzilla, Koji Hashimoto

Best new releases (unranked)

• Escape (Masao Adachi)
• 7 Walks With Mark Brown (Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré)
• With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)
• Misericordia (Alain Giraudie)
• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro)
• Final Destination Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein)
• The Fence (Claire Denis)
• Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love (Jodie Mack)

First viewings and discoveries 

• LA COMMUNE (PARIS, 1871) - FULL VERSION, 1999 - an ecstatic collective viewing at Anthology on January 4. Vive la commune, farewell Peter Watkins!
• The Razor’s Edge, 1985 (Jocelyne Saab)
• Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse)
• Living on the River Agano, 1992 (Makoto Satô)
• Clichy pour l’example, 2006 (Alice Diop)
• The Asthenic Syndrome, 1989 (Kira Muratova)
• Va Savoir, 2001 (Jacques Rivette)
• The whole Creton and Barré program at BAM, programmed by my friend Graham Carter. They are wonderful artists and people, and great lovers of plants and animals. I have a photograph of Pierre with my late cat.

2025 New Releases

1. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
2. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
3. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
4. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
5. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
6. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
7. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
8. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
9. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
10. Bridget Jones 4 (Michael Morris)

2025 Best First Watches

• Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski, 2024)
• Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012)
• Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939)
• The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)
• Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
• Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)
• Addams Family Values (Barry Sonnenfeld, 1993)
• BlackBerry (Matt Johnson, 2023)
• Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2023)
• I Hate Myself :) (Joanna Arnow, 2013)

First Viewings

1. Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)
   A phantom landmark in American Cinema.
2. Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978)
   Geraldine Chaplin’s performance ranks with Gena Rowlands in Woman Under the Influence and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight. Astonishing!
3. Domestic Violence 2 (Frederick Wiseman, 2002)
4. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke, 2018)
5. People’s Park (Libbie Dina Cohn & J.P. Sniadecki, 2012)
   An inexhaustible template for nonfiction filmmaking. Take this approach into every public space worldwide
6. War and Peace (Sergey Bondarchuk, 1965)
   An unassailable argument against green/blue/whatever screens.
7. Four Nights of a Dreamer (Robert Bresson, 1971)
   I can’t think of another film that convincingly ennobles the inherent narcissism of loving someone.
8. Breathless (Jim McBride, 1983)
   https://www.screenslate.com/articles/breathless
9. Vagabond (Agnès Varda, 1985)
10. The Pigeon Tunnel (Errol Morris, 2023)
    Made me wonder for the first time in almost two decades if EM had anything left in the tank.

First Viewings

• Three Days (Šarūnas Bartas, 1991)
• Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971)
• Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)
• White Hunter, Black Heart (Clint Eastwood, 1990)
• The Landlord (Hal Ashby, 1970)
• Cracking Up (Jerry Lewis, 1983)
• Yeleen (Souleymane Cissé, 1987)
• The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000)
• The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
• Forever a Woman (Kinuyo Tanaka, 1955)

First Viewings

• “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923)
• “The Man Who Knew Too Much” (1934)
• “The Life of Emile Zola” (1937)
• “Hangmen Also Die” (1943)
• “Black Angel” (1946)
• “Repeat Performance” (1947)
• “Trapped” (1949)
• “Too Late for Tears” (1949)
• “The Man Who Cheated Himself” (1950)
• “Woman on the Run” (1950)
• "Another Man’s Poison" (1951)
• “Kansas City Confidential” (1952)
• “Sudden Fear (1952)
• “Suddenly” (1954)
• “High and Low” (1963)
• "Twelve Chairs" (1970)
• “Predator” (1987) I WATCHED ALL THE PREDATOR MOVIES BUT I'LL JUST LIST THIS, LOL
• "Spaceballs" (1987)
• “De Palma” (2015)
• “The Clearing” (2004)

10 best new films of 2025 (seen so far, anyway; alphabetical by English title)
 

Charlie Chaplin, the Genius of Liberty (Yves Jeuland) 
Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay)
Israel-Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989 (Göran Olsson)
The Mastermind (Kelly Reichart)
Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
Outerlands (Elena Oxman)
Powwow People (Sky Hopinka)
Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
Walk With Me (Heidi Levitt)
With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)

20 best first Views of older films (in order viewed)        

Ladies in Retirement (Charles Vidor, 1941) 
Crazy Horse (Frederick Wiseman, 2011) 
If I Should Die Before I Wake (Carlos Hugo Christensen, 1952) 
Barn Rushes (Larry Gottheim, 1971) 
The Arboretum Cycle (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2018) 
Heat (Michael Mann, 1995) 
Days and Nights in the Forest (Satyajit Ray, 1970) 
Manhattan One Two Three Four (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2014) 
Pleasures of War (Ruth Lingford, 1998)
The Narrow Margin (Richard Fleischer, 1952) 
To Be Free (Adepero Oduye, 2017) 
L’Amour Fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969) 
Shimásání (Blackhorse Lowe, 2009) 
Our Body (Claire Simon, 2023) 
Nalujuk Night (Jennie Williams, 2021) 
The Mafu Cage (Karen Arthur, 1978) 
Avalanche (Mikio Naruse, 1937) 
India Cabaret (Mira Nair, 1985) 
Fog Pumas (Gunvor Nelson & Dorothy Wiley, 1967) 
Meditation (Jordan Belson, 1971)
 

New Releases

• Surviving Earth (Thea Gajić, 2025)
• Dreamers (Joy Gharoro-Akpojotor, 2025)
• Lollipop (Daisy-May Hudson, 2024)
• Amoeba (Siyou Tan, 2025)
• Skin of Youth (Ash Mayfair, 2025)
• The Heart Is a Muscle (Imran Hamdulay, 2025)
• East of Wall (Kate Beecroft, 2025)
• The President's Cake (Hasan Hadi, 2025)
• Ish (Imran Perretta, 2025)
• Leaving Ikorodu In 1999 (Rashida Seriki, 2024)

First Viewings

• TCB - Toni Cade Bambara School of Organizing (Louis Massiah & Monica Henriquez, 2024)
• Third Act (Tad Nakamura, 2024)
• Do the Impossible: Sun Ra (Christine Turner, 2024)
• Drip Like Coffee (Anaïs Cisco, 2023)
• Garvey’s Ghost (Frances-Anne Solomon, 2024)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024)
• The Fisherman (Zoey Martinson, 2024)
• Before the Moon Falls (Kimberlee Bassford, 2024)
• The Wedding Banquet (Andrew Ahn, 2025)
• The Road to Sydney (Benito Bautista, 2011)
• Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore (Shoshannah Stern, 2024)
• Rosemead (Eric Lin, 2024)
• Sands Street (Claro de los Reyes, 2024)

Favorite 2025 Releases (unranked)

• Bionico’s Bachata (Yoel Morales)
• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
• Cover-Up (Laura Poitras)
• Desert of Namibia (Yoko Yamanaka)
• Diciannove (Giovanni Tortorici)
• Emergent City (Jay Arthur Sterrenberg and Kelly Anderson)
• No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
• Pavements (Alex Ross Perry)
• Toward a Fundamental Understanding of Physics (Victor Van Rossem)

Favorite First Viewings (in order watched)

• Woodcutters of the Deep South (1973, Lionel Rogosin)
• Out of the Blue (1980, Dennis Hopper)
• Sea Countrymen (1955, Vittorio De Seta)
• 9-1-75 (1975, James Benning, at The Film-makers’ Cooperative)
• Weegee’s New York and Coney Island (1948, Weegee, at Anthology Film Archives)
• Stromboli (1950, Roberto Rossellini)
• Boxing Gym (2010, Frederick Wiseman, at Film at Lincoln Center
• [William Banks] Jail Saga (Peter McIndoe, released on Instagram and Twitter between November 2024 and March 2025)
• Festival (1978, Murray Lerner)
• Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959, Bert Stern)
• Untitled (1977, Ernie Gehr, at Anthology Film Archives)
• Platform (2000, Jia Zhangke, at The IFC Center)
• You Only Live Once (1937, Fritz Lang, at The Nitrate Picture Show)
• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960, Mikio Naruse, at Metrograph)
• Christo’s Valley Curtain (1974, Albert Maysles, David Maysles, and Ellen Giffard)
• The Flying Luna Clipper (1987, Ikko Ohno, at Spectacle Theater)
• Hypnosis Display (2014, Paul Clipson, at Rockaway Film Festival)
• Morvern Callar (2002, Lynne Ramsey)
• Miami Blues (1990, George Armitage)
• Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon (2016, Tomonari Nishikawa, at Anthology Film Archives)

2025

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
4. Weapons (Zach Cregger)
5. No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
6. Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos)
7. Eephus (Carson Lund)
8. Eddington (Ari Aster)
9. The Ugly Stepsister (Emilie Kristine Blichfeldt)
10. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Two-Minute Warning (1976) - Larry Peerce
2. Unstoppable (2010) - Tony Scott
3. Mute Witness (1995) - Anthony Waller
4. One from the Heart (1982) - Francis Ford Coppola
5. Bound (1996) - The Wachowskis
6. Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977) - Richard Brooks
7. Stoker (2013) - Park Chan-wook
8. Red Sun (1971) - Terence Young
9. Night Moves (1975) - Arthur Penn
10. Predators (2010) - Nimród Antal
11. Miracle Mile (1988) - Steve De Jarnatt
12. The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) - Norman Jewison
13. Loro (2018) - Paolo Sorrentino
14. Pulse (2001) - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
15. Instinct (2019) - Halina Reijn
16. A Simple Plan (1998) - Sam Raimi
17. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) - Sidney Lumet
18. A Bigger Splash (2015) - Luca Guadagnino
19. Crossing Delancey (1988) - Joan Micklin Silver
20. Frostbiter: Wrath of the Wendigo (1995) - Tom Chaney

Best New Releases, Unranked

• Little Trouble Girls (Urska Djukic)
• Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)
• Mare's Nest (Ben Rivers)
• Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)
• Evidence (Lee Anne Schmitt)
• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Pipe rock theory (Conner O'Malley)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins)
• Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell)
• Zebulon Footage and Hypnosis Display (Paul Clipson) -- thank you Rockaway Film Festival
• The Clock and Doors (Christian Marclay)
• Everybody in the Place (Jeremy Deller)
• The Juche Idea (Jim Finn)
• Peeping Tom (Michael Powell)
• Mikaël (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

Barely scraping past ten new releases watched in 2025, narrowing down my list was easy. Wallace & Gromit Vengeance Most Fowl was robbed at the Academy Awards this year. I demand a recount. I bet that Feathers McGraw was behind this injustice. Rats! was offensively funny and over the top in all the best ways, but of course what do you expect from the son of the guy who produced Blood Beach! Comic Book Movies, the every-man's taste. 2025 treated us to two great film adaptations of cult indie comics in Sook-Yin Lee's take on Chester Browns' Paying For It a story about a guy who decides he's better off havig sex with prostitues and Todd Rohal's version of Johnny Ryan's Fuck My Son! a story about a mother who forces a woman to have sex with her mutant son. Rats! Fuck My Son! Boy do I like movies with exclamation points in their titles. Jurassic Park Rebirth is a most welcome jolt of life into the franchise and almost felt like a classic Roger Corman flick. Final Destination Bloodlines might be the best of the series since the original but when are they going to set one of these on one of the 9/11 flights already. Gloria Estefan as a grandma was not on my 2025 movie bingo card or I would have totally scored with Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie a sprinkle filled good time that my daughter loved and made me very aware of my age. SOV visionary Mark "The Shark" Polonia strikes again with Jurassic Shark 4 Metal Machine Mako and splatter king Todd Sheets blasts into outer space... with werewolves, in his latest Wolf Moon Rising. Both produced by Wild Eye Releasing doing the lord's work keeping these underground genre legends active. The Toxic Avenger remake was a movie I'm glad I supported by seeing in a theater, but like the kids say... 6-7?

For my first watch list of 2025 I am ranking all the Minions movies, which was a series I think I enjoyed watching more than my daughter. From best to worst here we go...

Despicable Me
Minions
Despicable Me 2
Minions The Rise of Gru
Despicable Me 3
Despicable Me 4

I don't think I actually really like the Minions themselves but I like Gru... I hate his brother Dru.

Among the films that I saw in 2025, only one I felt had profoundly elucidated a truthful understanding of culture and the human condition. That film is All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia. I saw it 40,000 feet above ground inside a Cathay Pacific on my way to New York City; by the time the film ended, I was weeping, not for its earnest melodrama, but for its sublime vision—that humanity shall survive. The film gave me back my faith in life.

New Releases

1. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
2. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
3. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
4. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
5. Resurrection (Bi Gan)
6. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
7. Escape (Masao Adachi)
8. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
10. Legend of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants (Tsui Hark)

First Time Viewings

1. Enchanted Island (Allan Dwan)
2. The Pleasure (Joe D’Amato)
3. Blue Lagoon: A Summer Experience (Toshiharu Ikeda)
4. East End Hustle (Frank Vitale)
5. Castle of the Banned Lovers (Riccardo Freda)
6. Crime Hunter: Bullets of Rage (Toshimichi Ohkawa)
7. Skinheads (Claudio Fragasso)
8. Female Leopard (Koyu Oharu)
9. Holy Weapon (Wong Jing)
10. Love Thy Neighbor (Mark Sandrich)

First Viewings

• Bearslayer (Aleksandrs Rusteiķis, 1930) ^[1]
• This Day and Age (Cecil B. DeMille, 1933)
• Supernatural (Victor Halperin, 1933)
• The Devil Is a Woman (Josef von Sternberg, 1935)
• Wife! Be Like a Rose! (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
• Dark is the Night (Cleveland Street and Highway Lighting Safety Bureau, c. 1950) ^[2]
• Black Tight Killers (Yasuharu Hasebe, 1966)
• O Fovos (Kostas Manoussakis, 1966) ^[3]
• A Touch of Zen (King Hu, 1971)
• The Pinchcliffe Grand Prix (Ivo Caprino, 1975) ^[4]
• Image of the Beast (Donald W. Thompson, 1981) ^[5]
• The Devonsville Terror (Ulli Lommel, 1983)
• Cocaine Blues (Malcolm Barbour & John Langley, 1983)
• El Keif (Ali Abdel-Khalek, 1985)
• Dreamchild (Gavin Millar, 1985)
• Surviving Edged Weapons (Dennis Anderson, 1988) ^[6]
• All About Ah-Long (Johnnie To, 1989)
• Spider (Vasili Mass, 1992) ^[7]
• Vrooom Vroom Vrooom (Melvin van Peebles, 1995)
• The Longest Nite (Patrick Yau Tat-Chi, 1998)
• Despiser (Philip Cook, 2003) ^[8]

Honorable mention: Phrogging: Hider in My House, as presented in the Tubi 500

New releases

1. Your movie
2. The Cinephile Siege (Damon Packard)

[1] The copy of this ultra metal Latvian silent film that I viewed had no soundtrack, so I watched it with Earth's Earth 2.

[2] This was a blind eBay 16mm purchase. It was made to show to women's clubs to encourage them to lobby for more street lights. Some proto-Halloween shots of empty suburbia at night, a hilarious reporter-narrator—the absolute platonic ideal of an ephemeral film.

[3] Desolate, perverse psychosexual drama about a rural Greek family. Manoussakis is a top-notch director, and had this movie's reception not led to his abandoning filmmaking, he'd probably be recognized as one of the "greats of world cinema." Needs to be more widely seen and appreciated.

[4] '70s Norwegian stop-motion Mario Kart.

[5] After the Ormond family, Donald W. Thompson is the best in the Christian scare film biz. This was another 16mm eBay pick—the third film in the unsettling and bizarrely twee Thief in the Night series.

[6] Had never sat down and watched this notorious police training film all the way through like a real movie. Psychotronic gold.

[7] Rapturously gorgeous horror film that's sort of like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders with Screaming Mad George effects. A little gauche but worth watching.

[8] The absolute zenith of homemade CGI madness. What if the cover of a '90s CD-ROM occult FPS were an actual movie? Philip Cook is a genius.

2025 Theatrical Releases (Unranked):

-The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

-Invention (Courtney Stephens)

-Evidence (Lee Anne Schmitt)

-Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

-If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Mary Bronstein)

-Queerpanorama (Jun Li)

-Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) (Joel Alfonso Vargas)

-Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)

-One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

-The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson)

Favorite First Viewings (in order by year):

-Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937) (Roxy Cinema)

-Seisaku's Wife (Yasuzō Masumura, 1965) (NYFF Revivals)

-Juvenile Court (Frederick Wiseman, 1973) (Film at Lincoln Center)

-Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka, 1975) (Roxy Cinema)

-Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981) (Film at Lincoln Center)

-The Passing (John Huckert, 1984) (Spectacle Theater)

-Smile at Last (Leida Laius, 1985) (Berlinale Classics)

-Three Bewildered People in the Night (Gregg Araki, 1987) (IFC Center)

-Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis, 1996) (Museum of Modern Art)

-Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, 2000) (Asia Society)

My selection reflects the films that bruised me: Be that from me gripping my thigh trying not to vomit while watching Peter Cage eat up a breakfast in dog bowl that has passed through him or feeling the weight of time, grief, and memories like a leather boot pressed into one’s chest in the films When the Phone Rang, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, and Predator: Badlands. This list gathers the encounters that pained and unnerved me made by freaks, feminists, and perverts alike.

Main Slate

1. On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, directed by Rungano Nyoni

2. When the Phone Rang, Iva Radivojević

3. The Pleasure is Mine, directed by Sacha Amaral

4. Fucktoys, directed by Annapurna Sriram

5. Caught by the Tides, directed by Jia Zhangke

6. Atropia, directed by Hailey Gates

7. Predator: Badlands, directed by Dan Trachtenberg

8. Cidade; Campo, directed by Juliana Rojas

9. Peter Hujuar’s Day, directed by Ira Sachs

10. The Shrouds, directed by David Cronenberg

First Watches

Shorts + Music Videos

1. (be)cum(ing): on humanist edging … a crit-p0rn0 (2025), directed by Zalika U. Ibaorimi

2. Korg Funk5 (2025), directed by Nadia Cohen for Aphex Twin

3. The Center Cannot Hold (2025), directed by Ufouma Essi

4. Jacob’s House (2025), directed by Lucas Kane

5. Breakfast Time (2025), directed by Peter Cage

6. Safer Sexual Techniques in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1988), Michelle Handelman

7. Hearts, Chains, and Flowers (1995), directed by Silvianna Goldsmith

8. Edges (1992), directed by Ayanna U’Dongo

9. Double Labyrinthe (1976), directed by Maria Klonaris, Katerina Thomadaki

10. The Miracle (1948), directed by Roberto Rossellini

Features + Installations

11. Nightshift (1981), directed by Robina Rose

12. Vive L’amour (1994), directed by Tsai Ming-liang

13. Hard Truths (2024), directed by Mike Leigh

14. Love and Anarchy (1973), directed by Lina Wertmüller

15. Terrorizers (1986), directed by Edward Yang

16. Of Human Bondage (1934), directed by John Cromwell

17. The Ocean of One’s Pause, Rosa Barba for the Museum of Modern Art

18. I’m Still Here (2024), directed by Walter Salles

19. La Cérémonie (1994), directed by Claude Chabrol

20. Story of Women (Une Affaire des Femmes), directed by Claude Chabrol

2025 (unranked):

• Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
• Seeds (Brittany Shyne)
• Nuestra tierra (Lucrecia Martel)

First viewings:

• Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
• A Woman’s Sorrows (Mikio Naruse, 1937)
• Traveling Actors (Mikio Naruse, 1940)
• The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Margaret Tait, 1955)
• Barn Rushes (Larry Gottheim, 1971)
• Kummatty (G. Aravindan, 1979)
• Panelstory (Věra Chytilová, 1979)
• The Town Within Reach (Dang Nhat Minh, 1983)
• Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)
• The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
• Living on the River Agano (Makoto Sato, 1992)
• Go, Toto! (Pierre Creton, 2017)

First Viewings

• Dreamchild (Gavin Millar, 1985)
• It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (Larry Cohen, 1987)
• Something Weird (Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1967)
• Shattered (Wolfgang Petersen, 1991)
• Blonde Venus  (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)
• Twisted Nerve (Roy Boulting, 1969)
• Death Dream (Bob Clark, 1974)
• Angel (Robert Vincent O'Neil, 1983)
• Lady Blue (Robert Vincent O'Neil, 1985)
• Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (William Asher, 1982)

2025

• Their Eyes (Nicolas Gourault)
• Go Ye Afar (Frank Sweeney)

First Viewings

• Ali in Wonderland (1975, Djouhra Abouda, Alain Bonnamy)
• The Sun (1988, Pierre Clementi)
• Duffer (1972, Joseph Despins, William Dumaresq)
• A Game of Chess (2011, Marcel Dzama)
• Time to Love (1965, Metin Erksan)
• Talking About Trees (2019, Suhaib Gasmelbari)
• Hush-a-Bye Baby (1990, Margo Harkin)
• Cyclo (1995, Tràn Anh Hùng)
• All We Imagine as Light (2024, Payal Kapadia)
• The Secret of the Grain (2007, Abdellatif Kechiche)
• The Runner (1984, Amir Naderi)
• Diamonds of the Night (1964, Jan Němec)
• Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky (2024, Maria Estela Paiso)
• Poitín (1978, Bob Quinn)
• The Wonders (2014, Alice Rohrwacher)
• Nightshift (1981, Rubina Rose)
• Leila and the Wolves (1984, Heiny Srour)
• Parsi (2019, Eduardo Williams, Mariano Blatt)
• A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard (2018, Tegen Williams)
• The World (2004, Jia Zhangke)

New Releases:

1. The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović)
2. Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
3. When Fall Is Coming (François Ozon)
4. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham)
5. Serpent’s Path (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
 

First Viewings:
 

- Unstrap Me (George Kuchar, 1968)
- Athanor (Philippe Garrel, 1972)
- L’Amour (Paul Morrissey & Andy Warhol, 1972)
- Number 20: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (Harry Smith, 1980)
- Noto, Mandorli, Vulcano, Stromboli, Carnevale (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1992)
 

Rediscoveries:
 

- Rembrandt (Alexander Korda, 1936)
- It Happened Tomorrow (René Clair, 1944)
- Death Is a Caress (Edith Carlmar, 1949)
- The Bottom of the Bottle (Henry Hathaway, 1956)
- A Week’s Vacation (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)
- Night of the Juggler (Robert Butler, 1980)
- Unguided Tour (Susan Sontag, 1984)
- Lightning Over Braddock: A Rustbowl Fantasy (Tony Buba, 1988)
- The Neon Bible (Terence Davies, 1995)
- The Apostate (Federico Veiroj, 2015)
 

New Releases

• Sirat (Oliver Laxe)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Sotto Le Nuvole (Gianfranco Rosi)
• Sound of Falling (Mascha Schilinski)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Girl (Shu Qui)
• Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
• No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
• The Things You Kill (Alireza Khatami)
• Sorry Baby (Eva Victor)
• Arco (Ugo Bienvenu)

Top 10 2025 releases (in alphabetical order)

• CAUGHT BY THE TIDES (Jia Zhangke)
• CLOUD (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• THE LONG WALK (Francis Lawrence)
• THE MASTERMIND (Kelly Reichardt)
• MISERICORDIA (Alain Guiraudie)
• MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS: PART I (Julia Loktev)
• PREDATORS (David Osit)
• REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (Helen Cattet & Bruno Forzani)
• THE TEMPLE WOODS GANG (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche)
• VULCANIZADORA (Joel Potrykus)

Favorite First-Time Viewings and Discoveries

• ANGEL’S EGG (Mamoru Oshii, 1984)
• BIG WEDNESDAY (John Milius, 1978)
• CHILLY SCENES OF WINTER (Joan Micklin Silver, 1979)
• COMPENSATION (Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999)
• DYING (Michael Roemer, 1976)
• FORGETTING VIETNAM (Trinh T. Minh-ha, 2016)
• GERDY, THE WICKED WITCH (Ljubomir Simunic, 1976)
• HAJJI WASHINGTON (Ali Hatami, 1982)
• HIGHWAY HYPNOSIS (Ken Camp, 1984)
• JAIME (Antonio Reis, 1974)
• JIN-ROH: THE WOLF BRIGADE (Hiroyuki Okiara, 1999)
• LET THE CORPSES TAN (Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani, 2017)
• LOST IN NEW YORK (Jean Rollin, 1989)
• THE MAN WITH THE SUITCASE (Chantal Akerman, 1983)
• THE NINE MUSES (John Akomfrah, 2010)
• OUR NAZI (Robert Kramer, 1984)
• THE PLEA (Tenguiz Abuladze, 1968)
• SHATTER DEAD (Scooter McCrae, 1999)
• WESTFRONT 1918 (G. W. Pabst, 1930)
• WOODS ARE WET (Tatsumi Kumashiro, 1973)

Favorite First Viewings, 2025, Ranked

1. The Other Side (Roberto Minervini, 2015)
2. Toute Une Nuit (Chantal Akerman, 1982)
3. Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024)
4. Stranger by the Lake (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
5. Jordan Belson EC at Anthology
6. Mixed Blood (Paul Morrissey, 1984)
7. Pola X (Leos Carax, 1999)
8. Instrument (Jem Cohen, 1999)
9. Climax (Gaspar Noe, 2018)
10. Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs, 2025)
11. The Pillow Book (Peter Greenaway, 1996)
12. Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023)
13. Small Things Like These (Tim Mielants, 2024)
14. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
15. Eephus (Carson Lund, 2024)

Favorite Re-Viewings, 2025, Ranked

1. Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)
2. The Godfather, Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
3. Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (Mark Leckey, 1999; I watch this every year)
4. The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
5. Hot Pepper (Les Blank, 1973)
6. Happiness (Todd Solondz, 1998)
7. The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995)
8. Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1999)
9. 1991: The Year Punk Broke (Dave Markey, 1992)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark) - IFC Center
• Fat Choi Spirit (Johnnie To, Wai Ka-fai)
• Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges) - 35mm, MoMA
• The Town Within Reach (Đặng Nhật Minh) - Metrograph
• Dream of Light (Víctor Erice) - 35mm, The Theater of the Matters x Metrograph
• There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk) - 35mm, Film at Lincoln Center
• The Stranger Within a Woman (Mikio Naruse) - 35mm, Metrograph
• The White Bird Marked with Black (Yuri Illienko) - Metrograph
• John Ford and Throwing (Shiguéhiko Hasumi, Sho Miyake)
• Swept Away (Lina Wertmüller, 1974) - Film Forum
• Red Beard (Akira Kurosawa, 1965) - Film Forum
• Pride and Prejudice (Simon Langton,1995)

First Viewings

I heard more and more programmers complain about FIAF archives refusing to lend perfectly fine prints to other FIAF archives, even as those same archives screen digital facsimiles of those films which they refuse to lend. I also noticed more and more series consisting of digital facsimiles of movies that were shown on freshly struck prints within the past 10-15 years. It was a true joy to see on film:

• 9 film Alain Jessua retrospective at DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut und Filmmuseum, Frankfurt am Main
• 5 film Mark LaPore series at exf f., Frankfurt am Main
• 4 films by John Carpenter during the full retrospective at the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna
• Three Wise Girls (William Beaudine, 1932) at Zeughauskino, Berlin
• Lumière d'été (Jean Grémillon, 1943) at Cinematek, Brussels
• The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (Ted Kotcheff, 1974) at Zeughauskino, Berlin
• Der Hauptmann von Köpenick und seine Begnadigung (Karl Jaensch und Franz Mletzko, 1908) at Zeughauskino, Berlin
• Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini (Vittorio de Sica, 1970) at Bundesplatzkino, Berlin
• The Glass Wall (Maxwell Shane, 1953) at Zeughauskino, Berlin
• Candy Mountain (Robert Frank, 1987) at Zeughauskino, Berlin

Best New Releases

Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

Dracula (Radu Jude)

Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)

It Must Be Because I Decided to Leave (Zhuoyun Chen)

Queerpanorama (Jun Li)

Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds (Louise Weard)

No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)

It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

Mid/Evil Times (Devon Green)

The Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

First viewings, kind of ranked, not really

He Never Dies: The Films of Kalil Haddad (Los Angeles Filmforum program)

Tsai Ming-liang's WALKER Series (American Cinematheque marathon)

Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981, screening at LA Festival of Movies)

Love & Pop (Hideaki Anno, 1998)

Frameup (Jon Jost, 1993)

Deadendz (Jon Jost, 2023)

Jon Jost crashing at our house after a screening and everything that entailed

Hell of Shadows (Chris Shields's instagram, 2025)

Fruits of Passion (Shūji Terayama, 1981)

Halloween on Ice (TV Special produced by Nancy Kerrigan, 1996; 1998)

Specter's Rock (Josh Eisenstadt, 2022, with Q&A with Mr. Q&A)

A Lack of Clarity (Stefan Kruse, 2020)

Hammersmith is Out (Peter Ustinov, 1972)

Grand Prix (John Frankenheimer, 1966)

Salome's Last Dance (Ken Russell, 1988)

Castle Keep (Sydney Pollack, 1969)

The Sister of Ursula (Enzo Milioni, 1978)

Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie, 2024)

Universal Language (Matthew Rankin, 2024)

The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)

New Releases (Unranked)
 

• No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
• Rental Family (HIKARI)
• Pillion (Harry Lighton)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Fucktoys (Annapurna Sriram)
• Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor)
• 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
• If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)

First Viewings
 

• Hiroshima, Mon Amour (Alain Resnais, 1959)
• Tea and Sympathy (Vincente Minnelli, 1956)
• Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)
• Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)
• Seconds (John Frankenheimer, 1966)
• Lady Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 2005)
• Caged (John Cromwell, 1950)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2000)
• Lilies (John Greyson, 1996)
• The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1972)
• Ms .45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)
• Jeff Bezos Rowing Boat - Bobby Fingers
• Papota - Paco Amaroso & Ca7riel
• Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)
• The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
• Jacquot de Nantes (Agnès Varda, 1991)
• A Woman Under The Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)
• After Hours (Martin Scorsese, 1985)
• Out Of Sight (Steven Soderbergh, 1998)
• How To Rob A Bank (Stephen Robert Morse & Seth Porges, 2024)

New Releases

• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Nyoni)
• Sinners (Coogler)
• One Battle After Another (Anderson)
• Blue Moon (Linklater)
• Familiar Touch (Friendland)
• Predators (Osit)
• The Secret Agent (Mendonça Filho)
• Sorry, Baby (Victor)
• The Naked Gun (Schaffer)
• Peter Hujar’s Day (Sachs)

New to me (unranked) 

• Girls Town (McKay, 1996)
• Thelma & Louise (Scott, 1991)
• Dark Angel: The Ascent (Hassani , 1994)
• Siméon (Palcy, 1992)
• The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (Lau, 1984)
• Invisible Beauty (Hardison & Tcheng, 2023)
• Hard Boiled (Woo, 1992)
• Bugsy Malone (Parker, 1976)
• The Celluloid Closet (Epstein & Friedman, 1995)
• All the President’s Men (Pakula, 1976)
• Eat Drink Man Woman (Lee, 1994)

New Releases (Unranked)

• L'accident de Piano
• Eddington
• One Battle After Another
• The Strangers: Chapter 2
• No! You're Wrong or Spooky Action at a Distance
• Money Talks
• Fior Di Latte
• Zucchini
• Turtle Sandwich
• The Fastest Boxer in the World
• The Code

First Viewings

• Jaws
• Colossus the Forbin Project
• Portrait of Jennie
• Demonseed
• Duck You Sucker
• Eadweard Muybridge Zoopraxographer
• Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
• Adam's Rib
• Road to Morocco
• Road to Utopia
• Road to Hong Kong
• Down and Dirty Duck
• Suddenly Last Summer
• Apocalypse now
• Prime Cut
• Lenny
• 52 Pick-Up
• Night of The Juggler
• Who Killed Teddy Bear

Best New Releases (unranked):

Peter Hujar's Day

The Mastermind

Harvest

Happyend

Misericordia

Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps

The Love That Remains

The Secret Agent

The End

Fucktoys

20 Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

The year was dominated by Naruse and Wiseman thanks to the retrospectives at BAMPFA and the Roxie, so I'll sidebar those.

Unbelievable Naruse:

Two in the Shadow

A Wife's Heart

Sound of the Mountain

Lightning

Wife! Be Like a Rose

Great Naruse:

Husband and Wife 

Wife

Yearning

Two Wisemans that should be talked about more:

Canal Zone

Missile

And ten others:

The Docks of New York (von Sternberg)

Lady for a Day (Capra)

My Darling Clementine (Ford)

Devil's Doorway (Mann)

Pink Narcissus (Bidgood)

Choose Me (Rudolph)

Rich and Famous (Cukor)

Summer Vacation 1999 (Kaneko()

Serial Mom (Waters)

Speed Racer (Wakowskis)

First Viewings


Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer, 1984), 35mm at Anthology
Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978)
Goodbye Emmanuelle (François Leterrier, 1977)
The Center of the World (Wayne Wang, 2001)
God's Own Country (Francis Lee, 2017)
The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989)
Insomnia (Erik Skoldbjærg, 1997)
Der Pass [Pagan Peak], TV series, 2019-2023
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (Michael Morris, 2025)
Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975)

New Releases

• BLUE MOON
• THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP
• THE DELLS
• EEPHUS
• EDDINGTON
• IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU
• ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER
• SENTIMENTAL VALUE
• SPLITSVILLE
• TURTLE SANDWICH

FIRST VIEWINGS AND DISCOVERIES (alphabetical)

• THE AFFAIR OF SUSAN (1935, Capitolfest @ Capitol Theatre, Rome, NY, 35mm)
  Completely unseen remake/parody of Paul Fejos’ LONESOME - astonishingly good.
• BONJOUR TRISTESSE (1955, Metrograph, 35mm)
• THE BOY FRIEND (1971, Cinephobe Cinema, 16mm)
• CAMPING DU LAC (2023, Home) Somebody distribute this here!
• EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, ZOOPRAXOGRAPHER (1975, NYPL Performing Arts Library, 16mm)
• THE GOOSE WOMAN (1925, Kevin Brownlow Festival, Film Forum, DCP, live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner)
• IT HAPPENED TOMORROW (1944, René Clair Festival, Film Forum, 35mm)
• L’AMOUR (1973, Anthology Film Archives, 35mm) First screening in America since 1978 was truly a magical evening.
• LA RONDE (1950, Nitrate Picture Show @ Dryden Theater, Rochester, NY, Nitrate 35mm)
• L'ATLANTIDE (1932, G.W. Pabst Festival, Anthology Film Archives, DCP)
• THE LITTLE GIRL WHO LIVES DOWN THE LANE (1976, 24 hr Horrorthon @ Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville, PA, 35mm)
• MIXED BLOOD (1984, Morrissey After Warhol, Metrograph, 35mm)
• TEA AND SYMPATHY (1955, MoMI, 35mm)
• SYNCOPATION (1942, Quad Cinema, DCP)
• YOU’RE A BIG BOY NOW (1966, The Deuce @ Nitehawk Williamsburg, 35mm)

(unranked, in roughly chronological order from most recently watched):

The Threepenny Opera - G.W. Pabst
As A Tree Walks to Its Forest - Jiayi Chen
Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love - Jodie Mack
Watermen - Holly Fisher
Eniaios IV (two reels) - Gregory Markopoulos
Dream of Light - Victor Erice
Later That Same Night - Will Hindle
Frame for a Few Poses - Karpo Godina
Devotio Moderna - Shellie Fleming
The Antiquities of Rome - Jean-Claude Rousseau
Upper Blue Lake - James Otis
Temple Sleep - Nathaniel Dorsky
Shells and Rushes - Sharon Couzin
The Red Thread - Larry Gottheim
Four Shadows - Larry Gottheim
Nightshift - Robina Rose
Les Rendez-vous d’Anna - Chantal Akerman
Was Once One - Linnea Nugent
Pastoral: To Die In the Country - Shuji Terayama

First Viewings

• Flaming Star (Don Siegel, 1960)
• Yearning (Mikio Naruse, 1964)
• Catch Us If You Can aka Having a Wild Weekend (John Boorman, 1965)
• Elvis: That’s the Way It Is (Denis Sanders, 1970)
• The Last Valley (James Clavell, 1971)
• Shampoo (Hal Ashby, 1975)
• Matador (Pedro Almodóvar, 1986)
• Crimson Tide (Tony Scott, 1995)
• Rogue (Greg McLean, 2007)
• MacGruber (Jorma Taccone, 2010)

First Viewings

One Hour With You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932)
The Scarlet Empress (Josef von Sternberg, 1934)
Allotria (Willi Forst, 1936)
Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)
Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940)
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940)
The Earrings of Madame De… (Max Ophuls, 1953)
Les mistons (François Truffaut, 1957)
8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963)
Elsa la rose (Agnès Varda, 1966)
Belle du jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
Christine (John Carpenter, 1983)
Love Streams (John Cassavetes, 1984)
Todo sobre mi madre (All About My Mother, Pedro Almodóvar, 1999)
Chaos (Coline Serreau, 2001)
Le repos des braves (Guillaume Brac, 2016)
Nuit Obscure - Au Revoir Ici, N'Importe Où (Obscure Night - Goodbye Here, Anywhere, Sylvain George, 2023)
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)
Éric Rohmer, esprit d'enfance (Pascale Bouhénic Noël Herpe, 2025)

Note: Elsa la rose was my favorite; the rest is unranked.

• Occidente (Ana Vaz, 2014)
• Perfumed Nightmare (Kidlat Tahimik, 1977)
• Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)
• The Gold Bug (Alejo Moguillansky and Fia-Stina Sandlund, 2014)
• Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke, 2024)
• Toxic (Saulė Bliuvaitė, 2024)
• Jams Run Free (Claire Denis, 2006)
• Vive L’amour (Tsai Ming-liang, 1994)
• The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
• Denim Sky (Rosalind Nashashibi, 2022)

First Viewings (Alphabetical)

• Amarcord (Federico Fellini, 1973)
• Being John Smith (John Smith, 2024)
• La Commune (Paris, 1871) (Peter Watkins, 2000)
• Deepwater Horizon (Peter Berg, 2016)
• Hyenas (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1992)
• I'm Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001)
• The Last Laugh (F. W. Murnau, 1924)
• Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)
• The Lovers on the Bridge (Leos Carax, 1991)
• Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981)
• Palindromes (Todd Solondz, 2004)
• Rose Lowder's Bouquets films
• Red Psalm (Miklós Jancsó, 1972)
• Sleep Walkers/Zoo Mantras (Simone Forti, 1990)
• The Traveling Players (Theo Angelopoulos, 1975)
• Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996)

New Releases

1. Eddington
2. Misericordia
3. Cloud
4. Peter Hujar's Day
5. It Was Just an Accident
6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
7. Caught by the Tides
8. Naked Gun
9. Resurrection
10. The Secret Agent

first-time watches - in no particular order

• Vengeance is Mine (Michael Roemer)
• Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein)
• The Vanishing (George Sluizer)
• Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev)
• Palindromes (Todd Solondz)
• Peppermint Candy (Lee Chang-dong)
• An Unmarried Woman (Paul Mazursky)
• Paper Moon (Peter Bogdanovich)
• Oasis (Lee Chang-dong)
• The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley)

New release ranked 

1. Castration movie 2: best of both worlds (Weard)
2. The shrouds (Cronenberg)
3. What does that nature say to you (Sang-soo)
4. Castration movie 1 : traps (Weard)
5. Cece’s interlude (Park)
6. 28 years later (Boyle)
7. Baby Invasion (Korine)
8. Cloud (Kurosawa)
9. Warfare (Garland)
10. Misericordia (Guiraudie)

Rep Ranked 

1. Forty Deuce (Morrissey) @metrograph 
2. Blue Movie (Warhol) @moma 
3. Stars at Noon (Denis) @home
4. Junior War (Trecartin) @roxy
5. Wild Beasts (Prosperi) @kgb
6. America Land of the Freeks (Lommel) @roxy
7. The Loss of Sexual Innocence (Figgis) @roxy
8. Domestic Violence 2 (Wiseman) @lincolncenter
9. What time is it there? (Ming-Liang) @metrograph 
10. Morocco (Sternberg) @paris
11. The Crystal Cradle (Garrel) @roxy
12. Love Torn in a Dream (Ruiz) @metrograph
13. Equation to an unknown (Salieri) @roxy
14. Almost Transparent Blue (Murakami) @kgb
15. Trepan (Alina Yakirevitch) @stbimbo
16. The Gates of Paris (Clair) @filmforum
17. Red Hook Summer (Lee) @home
18. Twentynine Palms (Dumont) @metrograph
19. Funny Pages (Kline) @filmforum
20. SuicideGirls must die! (Remetch) @alamo 

TOP 10 BEST OF 2025 (no rank, alphabetical)

 

April – Dea Kulumbegashvili

Bogancloch – Ben Rivers

It Was Just An Accident – Jafar Panahi

Peter Hujar’s Day – Ira Sachs

Reflection in a Dead Diamond – Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani

Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hour Glass – The Quay Bros.

The Secret Agent – Kleber Mendonça Filho

Sirāt – Oliver Laxe

Souleymane’s Story – Boris Lojkine

The Things You Kill – Alireza Khatami

BEST FIRST VIEWS OF 2025

Central Park – Frederick Wiseman

The Piano Teacher – Michael Haneke

The Swimmer – Frank Perry

Songs from the Second Floor – Roy Andersson

Toute Un Nuit – Chantal Akerman

Sampo – Aleksandr Ptushko

Come Drink With Me – King Hu

Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence – Mamoru Oshii

Hiroshima Mon Amour – Alain Resnais

Khayal Gatha – Kumar Shahani

All About Lily Chou-Chou – Shinji Iwai

Gosford Park – Robert Altman

Night of the Juggler – Robert Butler & Sidney J. Furie

Return of an Adventurer – Moustapha Alassane

A Drop Too Much – Břetislav Pojar

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – Mike Nichols

Florentina Hubaldo, CTE – Lav Diaz

Nothing But a Man – Michael Roemer

Keane – Lodge Kerrigan

Tokyo Godfathers – Satoshi Kon

My Brother’s Wedding – Charles Burnett

First Viewings & New Releases

[In no particular order]

• On Becoming A Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni, 2024)
• Riefenstahl (Andres Veiel, 2024)
• Bouchra (Oriane Barki, Meriem Bennani, 2025)
• Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton, 2025)
• Extreme Private Eros: Love Song (Kazuo Hara, 1974)
• Dracula (Radu Jude, 2025)
• Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924)
• A Wedding Suit (Abbas Kiarostami, 1976)
• Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973)
• Three Promises (Yousef Srouji, 2023)
• A Farewell to Arms (Frank Borzage, 1932)
• Youtube clip of Pianist Maria João Pires realizing on stage that she has prepared the wrong Mozart concerto (Frank Scheffer, 1998)
• Arguments in Favor of Love (Gabriel Abrantes, 2025)
• Punishment Park - Rewatch RIP (Peter Watkins, 1971)

New Releases

· It Was Just an Accident

· Invention

· Direct Action

· Afternoons of Solitude

· Cover-Up

· Urchin

· The Shrouds

First Viewings

· Totem (Avilés, 2023)

· The House is Black (Forugh Farrokhzad, 1963)

· Leila and the Wolves (Srour, 1987)

· Kisapmata (De Leon, 1981)

· The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (Ritt, 1965)

· The Pleasure of Love in Iran (Varda, 1976)

· Lola (Demy, 1961)

· Once a Thief (Woo, 1991)

· Distant Voices, Still Lives (Davies, 1988)

· Miami Vice (Mann, 2006)

· Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 1960s in Brussels (Akerman, 1994)

· Che: Part One/Part Two (Soderbergh, 2008)

· Desert Rose (Cordeiro and Reis, 1989)

· Twin Peaks; Fire Walk with Me (Lynch, 1992)

· All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Poitras, 2022)

· Street of Shame (Mizoguchi, 1956)

Favorite First Viewings / Discoveries

• Early Works (Želimir Žilnik, 1969): Peak New Left hijinks in the Yugoslav hinterland, Woodbine.
• 9 to 5 (Collin Higgins, 1980): Presented by Cinema Workers NYC on the eve of the Alamo Workers’ strike, Woodbine.
• The Drivetime (Antero Alli', 1995): Low-budget sci-fi from Seattle that prophecized the WTO riots of 1999 and the political malaise of the 2020s, Spectacle.
• Full Metal Yakuza (Takashi Miike, 1997): Part of Miike Madness marathon, Spectacle.
• Hopital Brut (Le Dernier Cri, 1997) and Le Mauvauis Oeil (Le Dernier Cri, 1999): two lost masterpieces of mindflaying comix-film presented by Desert Island, Spectacle.
• Source Family (Jodi Wille, Maria Demopolous, 2012): a screening that inspired the cult’s last devotee to finally quit during the Q&A, Roxy.
• Tropico (Anthony Mandler, 2013): Lana Del Rey’s underappreciated manic short film/mini-album screened with the inverted-Lolita thriller The Crush (Alan Shapiro, 1993), Roxy.
• Death of a Business Jerry (Jeremy Finch, 2019): Time capsule of the 2010s death of Hipsters Bushwick, Low Cinema.
• Water Drops on Burning Rocks (François Ozon, 2000): A perfectly done posthumous Fassbinder, Spectacle.
• The Present Situation (Joel Stanley, 2024): Part sincere montage of the director’s YouTube leftist propaganda playlist, part cynical short film portraying an idiotic r/WallStreetBets cadre turned to quixotic Maoist armed struggle as a result of watching such videos, Spectacle.

First Viewings

• Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974) One of the best giant floating heads in cinema history.
• Hello my Beautiful Creatures (Joel Haver, 2024) A great DIY animated film on Youtube.
• The Family that Preys (Tyler Perry, 2008) Tyler Perry’s best movie out of dozens and dozens: a sprawling multi-generational family epic. Entire thing is a scene-chewing contest between all the actors and Kathy Bates comes out on top.
• Steel Magnolias / Erin Brokovich / Mystic Pizza / Eat Pray Love (Various) Big Julia Roberts year for me.
• Beast Games (2024) - Slurp Slurp I’ll watch any slop the algorithm puts in front of me, sorry.
• Hamlet (Lawrence Olivier, 1948) A perfect Shakespeare adaptation. Leans into the drama, the pretense, and the mopeyness of one of the greatest performative males to ever do it.
• Yellow Submarine (George Dunning, 1968) Yellow Submarine is great??!?! I’m Beatles-neutral so I never gave it a chance until this year.
• Ricochet (Russell Mulcahy, 1991) - You put Denzel in a movie? I’m interested. You put that movie on Tubi? I’m watching.
• The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) Ok wow. Another cultural blind spot for me. Hard to imagine anyone reading this hasn’t seen it. But it’s a gorgeous banger.
• El Hoyo (Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia, 2019).  I didn’t know the title and had to google “movie where food is lowered down on a platform.” This is the archetypical “watch it in 200 parts on Tik Tok with bad voiceover” movie.

screen slate 25

new: 

the shrouds (david cronenberg)
castration movie 2 (louise weard)
afternoons of solitude (albert serra)
after the hunt (luca guadagnino)
baby invasion (harmony korine)
cloud (kiyoshi kurosawa)
the code (eugene kotlyarenko)
henry fonda for president (alexander horwath)
no concept (vogue giambri)
shifty (adam curtis)

first watch:

forty deuce (morissey, 1982, metro)
www.rachelormont.com (vack, 2024, roxy)
castration movie 1 (weard, 2024, roxy)
bébé colère (poggi/vinel, 2020, youtube)
madame wangs (morissey, 1981, youtube)
traumazone (curtis, 2022, youtube)
the final insult (burnett, 1997, crit channel)
osaka elegy (mizoguchi, 1936, crit channel)
sisters of the gion (mizoguchi, 1936, crit channel)
apart from you (naruse, 1933, crit channel)
cutie honey (anno, 2004, youtube)
bluebeards eighth wife (lubitsch, 1938, crit channel)
thunder on the hill (sirk, 1951, crit channel)
honor among lovers (arzner, 1931, crit channel)
no time for love (leisen, 1943, crit channel)
record of a tenement gentleman (ozu, 1947, crit channel)
the winner dir. cut (cox, 1996, youtube)
the narrow margin (fleischer, 1952, anthology)
beyond therapy (altman, 1987, youtube)
confessions of a young american housewife (sarno, 1974, alamo)

1. Caterpillar (Mandelup, fest premiere 2023 and kept doing fests '24, but had DCTV awards qualifying 1-week run followed shortly thereafter by streaming release just last month)

2. Life of Ivanna (Serrano, saw this at DOC NYC 2021, never released stateside until it just went up on Kanopy last month)

3. Eephus

4. Broken Rage (Kitano, dropped on US prime in Feb 25)

5. Zodiac Killer Project

6. Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps (pretty widely available online in 2024 but caught the theatrical premiere at Frameline in June)

7. WTO/99

8. Eddington

9. Vulcanizadora (know it did fests last year but proper release was this year)

10. Flophouse America (just had a US premiere at DOC NYC, who knows what'll happen with it having been on the circuit and not picked up most of the year)

11. Suburban Fury (NYFF 24 world premiere, havent seen it do theatrical but know it has an FYC campaign going, nominated for the Best Editing IDA Award now)

12. The Best of Me (Landsman, hasnt really had a proper release as far as I can tell but screened at both Spectacle and Filmmaker's Co-op earlier this year, Landsman's one of Filmmaker mag's 25 new faces of independent film)

13. Baby Invasion

14. John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (caught it at True/False, screened at MoMA's Doc Fortnight, think they're planning a proper release in 2026)

15. Resurrection (Hu Sanshou, another pick from True/False, 2024 release, honestly not sure if it'll ever have a proper US rollout)

16. Our Hero Balthazar (caught it at Tallgrass, premiered at Tribeca, prob doesnt count huh)

17. A Want in Her (Carten, doing UK theatrical now, who knows if it'll do a proper US release, saw at T/F)

18. Bring Her Back

19. Requiem for a Tribe (Khosravi, another T/F screening)

20. The Shrouds

21. Universal Language

2025 favorite first-time viewings - in chronological watch order:

• Mix-Up (Romand, 86)
• Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs. Judas Priest (Van Taylor, 92)
• Eat Your Catfish (Tüzen & Arjomand, 21)
• The Disappointment: OR, The Force of Credulity (Springer, 07)
• Where the Heart Roams (Csicsery, 87)
• Let It Ride (Pytka, 89)
• Pennies From Heaven (Ross, 81)
• Hi, Mom! (De Palma, 70)
• Bix: Ain't None of Them Play Like Him yet (Berman, 82)
• The Day of The Jackal (Zinnemann, 73)
• National Gallery (Wiseman, 2014)
• Eyes of Stone (Vachani, 90)
• Sean (Arlyck, 70)
• Drakmar: A Vassal's Journey (Cretton & Frank, 2006)
• Prisoner of Consciousness (Miller, 86)
• Secret Honor (Altman, 84)
• Triumph Over Violence aka Ordinary Fascism (Romm, 65)
• Personal Problems (Gunn, 80)
• Bug (Friedkin, 2006)
• i hate myself :) (Arnow, 2013)

New Releases

1. Levers (Rhayne Vermette)
2. Sirāt (Óliver Laxe)
3. Toward a Fundamental Theory of Physics (Victor Van Rossem)
4. The Wayfinders (Peggy Ahwesh)
5. Dry Leaf (Alexandre Koberidze)
6. Miroirs, No. 3 (Christian Petzold)
7. Escape (Masao Adachi)
8. Evidence (Lee Anne Schmitt)
9. Dooni (Kevin Jerome Everson & Claudrena N. Harold)
10. Fiction Contract (Carolyn Lazard)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Afrique Sur Seine (Paulin Soumanou Vieyra & Mamadou Sarr, 1955)
• Athanor (Philippe Garrel, 1972)
• Audience (Barbara Hammer, 1982)
• The Bus (Haskell Wexler, 1965)
• Compañeros (Sergio Corbucci, 1970)
• Gabriel Over The White House (Gregory La Cava, 1933)
• Hollywood (Kevin Brownlow & David Gill, 1980)
• In Youth, Beside The Sea (?, 1925?)
• Ladies Of Leisure (Frank Capra, 1930)
• Music Land (Wilfred Jackson, 1935)
• Night Has A Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948)
• Porn Theatre (Jacques Nolot, 2002)
• Portrait Of A Young Girl At The End Of The 60s In Brussels (Chantal Akerman, 1994)
• Ritmes D'un Dia (Doménec Jiménez, 1933)
• Something Self Explanatory (15x) (Harun Farocki & Hartmut Bitomsky, 1971)
• Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (Robert Rodriguez, 2003)
• The Station (Sudanese Film Group, 1989)
• Take Your Bags (Camille Billops, 1998)
• Van Gogh (Maurice Pialat, 1991)
• Va, Toto! (Pierre Creton, 2017)

Best First Views (Unranked)

1. The Clock (Dir. Christian Marclay, 2010)
2. V for Vendetta (Dir. James McTeigue, 2005)
3. The Narrow Margin (Dir. Richard Fleischer, 1952)
4. My Friend Ivan Lapshin (Dir. Aleksei German, 1985)
5. Kameradschaft (Dir. G. W. Pabst, 1931)
6. It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (Dir. Larry Cohen, 1987)
7. Cocktail Party (Dir. Arthur 'Weegee' Fellig, 1946)
8. Racetrack (Dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1985)
9. La Ronde (Dir. Max Ophüls, 1950)
10. Supernatural (Dir. Victor Halperin, 1933)

Best New Films (Unranked)

1. Familiar Touch (Dir. Sarah Friedland)
2. Measures for a Funeral (Dir. Sofia Bohdanowicz)
3. Black Bag (Dir. Stephen Soderberg)
4. The Mastermind (Dir. Kelly Reichardt)
5. No Other Choice (Dir. Park Chan-wook)
6. Peter Hujar's Day (Dir. Ira Sachs)
7. Henry Fonda for President (Dir. Alexander Horwath)
8. 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Dirs. Vincent Barré and Pierre Creton)
9. The Vanguard Tapes (Dir. Bill Morrison)
10. Forgetting You is Like Breathing Water (Dir. Ayanna Dozier)

New releases (ranked)

1. I Was, I Am, and I Will Be! (Yoshiyuki Itakura)
2. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
3. A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)
4. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
5. SPI (Sayun Simung)
6. Whispers (Kivu Ruhorahoza, Christian Nyampeta)
7. Gangsterism (Isiah Medina)
8. Remathau: People of the Ocean (Daniel Lin)
9. Left-Handed Girl (Shih-Ching Tsou)
10. With Hasan in Gaza (Kamal Aljafari)
11. Deaf President Now! (Nyle DiMarco, Davis Guggenheim)

First viewings and discoveries (unranked, alphabetical by title)

• El Sur (Victor Erice)
• Europe ‘51 (Roberto Rossellini)
• The Final Insult (Charles Burnett)
• Labyrinth of Dreams (Gakuryu Ishii)
• Léon G. Damas (Sarah Maldoror)
• L’homme-vertige: Tales of a City (Malaury Eloi Paisley)
• Malqueridas (Tana Gilbert)
• Ma’loul Celebrates Its Destruction (Michel Khleifi)
• Obscure Night - Wild Leaves (The Burning Ones, the Obstinate) (Sylvain George)
• Phantoms of Nabua (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• The Plains (David Easteal)
• Rising Up at Night (Nelson Makengo)
• Route One/USA (Robert Kramer)
• Sister Stella L. (Mike de Leon)
• That Old Dream That Moves (Alain Guiraudie)
• They Do Not Exist (Mustafa Abu Ali)
• Vaimoe (Edith Amituanai)
• Variations on the Theme of (The Ocean View Resort) (Futoshi Miyagi)
• What Did You Dream Last Night, Parajanov? (Faraz Fesharaki)
• what was or could be today (again) (Shannon Te Ao)

Current Favorite Films of 2025 loosely ranked as of 12/4/2025

1. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

2. Resurrection (Bi Gan)

3. The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

4. Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)

5. It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

6. Sirāt (Oliver Laxe)

7. Universal Language (Mathew Rankin)

8. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)

9. The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)

10. Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus)

Best First Viewings/Discoveries in No Particular Order

1. Many Works by Raul Ruiz, specifically The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978), Dog's Dialogue (1979), On Top of the Whale (1982), Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983), City of Pirates (1983), Time Regained (1999), and Love Torn in a Dream (2000)

2. Everything that I managed to catch at Moma's Retrospective of João César Monteiro, specifically Hovering over the Water (1985), The Last Dive (1992), God's Comedy (1995), Snow White (2000), and Vai e Vem (2003)

3. Several Seijun Suzuki Movies, in particular Gate of Flesh (1964), A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977), and The Taisho Trilogy (1980-1991)

4. Abraham's Valley (1993) by Maneol de Oliveria

5. Children of Paradise (1945) by Marcel Carné

6. Edvard Munch (1974) by Peter Watkins

7. The Holy Girl (2004) by Lucrecia Martel

8. Hub City (1997) by Bill Brown

9. In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

10. The Innerview (1973) by Richard Beymer

11. The Lion Has Seven Heads (1970) and The Age of the Earth (1980) by Glauber Rocha

12. Noroît (1976) by Jacques Rivett

13. On Dangerous Ground (1951) by Nicolas Ray and Ida Lupino

14. Pastoral: To Die in the Country (1974) by Shūji Terayama

15. The Psychic (1977) by Lucio Fulci

16. The Seats of the Alcazar (1989) by Luc Moullet

17. Shanghai Express (1932) by Joseph Von Sternberg

18. The Tenant (1976) by Roman Polanski

19. Typhoon Club (1985) by Shinji Sōmai

20. WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) by Dušan Makavejev

I didn’t see a lot of movies this year but here were my top 10 “cinematic experiences” of 2025 (unranked)

1. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (presented by LAFCA at the Egyptian) - A thrill to see Annie Mumolo emotional over the crowd’s response (and standing ovation) for likely the best of the COVID cinema canon.
2. Castration Movie Anthology I. Traps at Whammy! Analog Media - Thrilling moviemaking followed by a great Q&A with Louise Weard moderated by Vera Drew (who’d just watched it for the first time). So good I went back for the next night’s Q&A just to be back in the wild world of Vancouver for a few more Qs and As
3. Central Park at La Cinémathèque Américaine - I went to a number of the Frederick Wiseman restorations this year. They were all terrific but I picked this one because Screen Slate is a New York publication. A highlight of every single one was a famously disgusting screenwriter/ should-be-disgraced columnist who snored through most of the movies then clapped outrageously over just the restoration credits.
4. Little Murders- presented by La Cinémathèque and Larry Karaszewski at the Egyptian during Bl*ak W**k - An honor to hear Mr. Gould speak about the 2nd greatest movie ever made!
5. The Livonion Cinema’s Silent Sci-Fi Spectacle at the Mt. Wilson Observatory- a lovely mountaintop 35mm lineup hand-cranked on a player from 1909 by silent cinema historian/photoplayer expert Professor Joe Rinaudo (of Hit It, Joe fame) with accompaniment by Ed Torres
6. Peter Weller, Ph.D.’s presentation at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club - a gorgeously discursive romp through art history, personal and universal cinema history, jazz, lost loves, Wellerisms and musings (“Aristotle is NOT a Johnny-come-lately”) in the best place to hear folks give incredibly rich lectures at a psychotic hour. Join it!!!
7. Shelf Life with Q&A at La Cinémathèque - I love Shelf Life
8. Skinned Deep at Whammy! Analog Media - An absolutely incredible first-time-watch and a terrific Q&A with Gabe Bartalos and “Mr. Q&A” Chris Shields featuring stunning anecdotes such as the truck in the car chases being a car Bartalos repeatedly borrowed overnight (??) to “test drive” from a dealership in the Valley
9. War 2 at one of the AMC Burbanks with the horrible recliners - I think the world will soon learn that the Yash Raj Films Spy Universe is the best thing going these days!!!
10. Zeinabu irene Davis - A Powerful Thang (REDCAT) and Compensation (Vidiots) - Simply a great year for great conversations with Zeinabu irene Davis with the great Jheanelle Brown and Maya Cade, respectively

Honorable mention: Paranormal Activity (“A New Story Live On Stage”)at the Ahmanson Theatre. It wasn’t too good and it wasn’t screen-based horror but it’s fun to hear a thousand people screaming and laughing.

New Releases (alphabetical)

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions (Kahlil Joseph)
• Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps (Louise Weard)
• Cent mille milliards (Virgil Vernier)
• Dead Lover (Grace Glowicki)
• Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)
• Happyend (Neo Sora)
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• Pee Wee as Himself (Matt Wolf)
• Room Temperature (Dennis Cooper & Zac Farley)

First Viewings/Discoveries

• The Annihilation of Fish (1999, Charles Burnett) - 35mm at American Cinematheque
• Daisy Kenyon (1947, Otto Preminger) - Kino Lorber Blu-ray
• Dying (1976, Michael Roemer) - screener - The Film Desk
• Eternity’s Pillar (1988, Alice Coltrane) - Criterion Channel
• Letter to Three Wives (1949, Joseph L. Mankiewicz) - 16mm at Video Archives
• Little darlings (1980, Ronald F. Maxwell) - Cinématographe Blu-ray
• The Long Farewell (1971, Kira Muratova) - Criterion Channel
• May (2002, Lucky McKee) - Criterion Channel
• Meet…Bradley Harrison Pickleseimer (1988, Heather McAdams) - 16mm at Academy Museum
• Night of the Hunted (1980, Jean Rollin) - Indicator Blu-ray
• Onda Nova (1983, Ícaro Martins and José Antonio Garcia) - screener
• Parpaillon (1993, Luc Moullet) - screener
• Portrait of Jennie (1948, William Dieterle) - nitrate 35mm at American Cinematheque
• Reds (1980, Warren Beatty) - Kanopy
• Reflections of Evil (2002, Damon Packard) - Tubi
• Sex is Comedy (2002, Catherine Breillat) - Criterion Channel
• Squirrels to the Nuts (2014, Peter Bogdanovich) - American Cinematheque
• Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (1985, Elizabeth Lennard) - screener

Best New Releases (Unranked)

• Freaky Tales (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck)
• The Friend (Scott McGehee and David Siegel)
• Hedda (Nia DaCosta)
• A House of Dynamite (Kathryn Bigelow)
• Materialists (Celine Song)
• My Mom Jayne (Mariska Hargitay)
• The Perfect Neighbor (Geeta Gandbhir)
• Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)
• Selena y Los Dinos (Isabel Castro)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler) 

Best New Releases (Films + select mixed media in no particular order)

·  Jacklean (Mariana Valencia) at Redcat Los Angeles

·  Sirãt (Oliver Laxe)

·  Situations (Greg Vrotsos)

·  Megadoc (Mike Figgis)

·  RATS! + I Killed Osama!? (Maxwell Nalevansky, Carl Fry)

·  Two Cuckolds Go Swimming (Winston DeGiobbi)

·  BASHKKA at The SAT Montreal - 360° Dome

·  Life on Venus (Awkward Moments) at ICA London

·  It Ends (Alexander Ullom)

·  One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

·  Groove (Greg Harrison, 2000)

·  James (Max Train, 2004)

·  The Prodigal Pup (Jack Rollens, 1929)

·  Infinity Mirror at The Broad Los Angeles (Yayoi Kusama, 1965-present)

·  Maria Sabina, Spirit Woman (Nicolás Echevarría, 1978)

·  The Midnight Gospel (Pendleton Ward, 2020)

·  The Smashing Machine (John Hyams, 2002)

·  The House Bunny (Fred Wolf, 2008)

·  Kneecap (Rich Peppiatt, 2024)

·  Butt Boy (Tyler Cornack, 2019)

·  The Settlers aka Los colonos (Felipe Gálvez, 2023)

·  Blackberry (Matthew Johnson, 2023)

·  About A Hero (Piotr Winiewicz, 2024)

·  Steal (Gérard Pirès, 2002)

·  Among the Palms the Bomb, or: Looking for reflections in the toxic field of plenty (Lukas Marxt, Vanja Smiljanić, 2024)

My Top Ten New Acts of Doing Something Real in 2025 in Rough Order

• MY UNDESIRABLE FRIENDS PART 1: LAST AIR IN MOSCOW (Loktev)
• WEST END GIRL (Album by Lily Allen)
• AFTERNOONS OF SOLITUDE (Serra)
• MISTRESS DISPELLER (Lo)
• PREDATORS (Osit)
• THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB (Ben Hania)
• JOHN CENA HEEL TURN SCENE (WWE)
• ISRAEL PALESTINE ON SWEDISH TV 1958-1989 (Olsson)
• REEL POLITIK (Book by Nathan Gelgud)
• COVER-UP (Poitras)

New Releases

• Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho)
• Yes (Nadav Lapid)
• The Neon People (Jean-Baptiste Thouret)
• The Life of Chuck (Mike Flanagan)
• One Battle After the Other (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi)
• A Useful Ghost (Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke)

Favorite first watches

• Letter from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)
• The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953)
• Centuries of June (Joseph Cornell, 1955)
• Rosaura at 10 O'Clock (Mario Soffici, 1958)
• The Earth is a Sinful Song (Rauni Mollberg, 1973)
• The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)
• Model (Frederick Wiseman, 1981)
• Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)
• If This Ain't Heaven (Roberta Cantow, 1985)
• Return to Oz (Walter Murch, 1985)
• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1990)
• Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991)
• Zoo (Frederick Wiseman, 1993)
• A Couch in New York (Chantal Akerman, 1996)
• Love & Pop (Hideaki Anno, 1998)
• Belfast, Maine (1999)
• The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, 2005)

New Releases

• Punku (Juan Daniel Fernandez Molero, 2025)
• Sirât (Oliver Laxe, 2025)
• The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2025)
• I Only Rest in the Storm (Pedro Pinho, 2025)
• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra, 2024)
• Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, 2025)
• little boy (James Benning, 2025)
• In the Manner of Smoke (Armand Yervant Tufenkian, 2025)
• Bogancloch (Ben Rivers, 2024)

First Viewings

• The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)
• Angel's Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

Diaries, Notes, and Sketches (Jonas Mekas, 1968)
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross, 2018)
The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, 2024)
Aspen (Frederick Wiseman, 1991)
Bush Mama (Haile Gerima, 1979)
Mascon (The Otolith Group, 2024)
If This Ain’t Heaven (Roberta Cantow, 1985)
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg, 2024)
The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960)
Benjamin Smoke (Jem Cohen, 2000)
Northern Lights (John Hanson, Rob Nilsson, 1978)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavettes, 1976)
American Hunter (Arizal, 1988)
Hypnosis Display (Paul Clipson, 2014)
The Margin (Walerian Borowczyk, 1976)
Perfect Film (Ken Jacobs, 1986)
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982)
Ménilmontant (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1926)
Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971)

2025

• Hot Spring Shark Attack
• Highest 2 Lowest
• War of the Worlds
• King Baby
• Splitsville
• Paranormal Activity ON STAGE
• 28 years later
• Eephus
• the phone commercials where Jeff Bridges lives with Zoe Saldaña. as of recently Druski has moved in as well

First Viewings

• Return to Greendale- Neil Young & Crazy Horse
• The Center of the World
• Deep Cover
• Dinner Rush
• Mercy (what if Ellen Barkin did cruising)
• Crime + Punishment in Suburbia
• Olivia
• The Wolf House
• Jolene
• We Don’t Live Here Anymore
• Lake George (a love letter to the most beautiful place on earth Glendale)
• Personal Velocity
• Mr. Wonderful
• The Line
• Candy
• Special Effects

First Viewings

1. God's Comedy, João César Monteiro - Livro dos Pensamentos...
2. Spanglish, James L. Brooks - "what am I going to do about me?"
3. Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2, Johnnie To - loved both, but the second is more evil by far
4. Hanging Up, Diane Keaton - pure joy..."Cleo..."
5. Still Life, Harun Farocki - Benjaminian camambert...the Bildraum...
6. Henry Johnson, David Mamet - satanic and fascinating. fuck him.
7. Nobody's Hero, Alain Guiraudie - totally uncompromised. Noémie Lvovsky...
8. Ricky Stanicky, Peter Farrelly - redemption of lost souls
9. Twisted Romance, José Celestino Campusano - the truth at last...
10. Victor/Victoria, Blake Edwards - beauty of Robert Preston, beauty of Julie Andrews

New Releases (Alphabetical)

Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhang-ke)
Die My Love (Lynne Ramsay)
Eddington (Ari Aster)
Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Shifty (Adam Curtis)
Sirât (Óliver Laxe)
Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus) 

First Viewings (Alphabetical)

• Breakfast of Champions (Alan Rudolph, 1999)
• Cossacks in Exile (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1939)
• The Judge and the Assassin (Bertrand Tavernier, 1976)
• Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)
• Naked Acts (Bridgett M. Davis, 1996)
• Oil Lamps (Juraj Herz, 1971)
• The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1977)
• The Sound of Fury aka Try and Get Me! (Cy Endfield, 1950)
• The Stranglers of Bombay (Terence Fisher, 1960)
• Supermarket Woman (Juzo Itami, 1996)

New U.S. Releases

1. The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)

2. By the Stream (Hong Sang-soo)

3. Henry Fonda for President (Alexander Horwath)

4. The Fishing Place (Rob Tregenza)

5. Eephus (Carson Lund)

6. Broken Rage (Takeshi Kitano)

7. Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)

8. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

9. Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)

10. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)

+ 3 great films without U.S. distribution:

Escape (Masao Adachi)

Scorched Earth (Thomas Arslan)

Three Friends (Emmanuel Mouret)

First Viewings / Discoveries

Street Angel (Frank Borzage, 1928)

Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim, 1932)

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (Mikio Naruse, 1935)

Enamorada (Emilio Fernández, 1946)

Miss Oyu (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1951)

7 Women (John Ford, 1966)

The Big Mouth (Jerry Lewis, 1967)

Three Poplars on Plyuschika Street (Tatyana Lioznova, 1968)

La Rupture (Claude Chabrol, 1970)

Juvenile Court (Frederick Wiseman, 1973)

Hustle (Robert Aldrich, 1975)

Hunter in the Dark (Hideo Gosha, 1979)

Pilgrim, Farewell (Michael Roemer, 1980)

At the Top of the Stairs (Paul Vecchiali, 1983)

Fire Festival (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1985)

Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1985)

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (Alanis Obomsawin, 1993)

Doctor Mack (Lee Chi-Ngai, 1995)

Inquietude (Manoel de Oliveira, 1998)

The Wolberg Family (Axelle Ropert, 2013)

New Releases

1. Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
2. Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
3. Sirāt (Óliver Laxe)
4. F1: The Movie (Joseph Kosinski)
5. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
6. 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)
7. Eddington (Ari Aster)
8. The Materialists (Celine Song)
9. The Accountant²  (Gavin O'Connor)

-- Final slot is a neutralizing counter-vote against Sorry, Baby

First Viewings (Ranked)

1. Holy Smoke (Jane Campion, 1999)
2. Playtime (Jacques Tati, 1967)
3. Kid Icarus (Carl Bird McLaughlin, Mike Ott, 2024)
4. Barcelona (Whit Stillman, 1994)
5. A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch, 1966)
6. Downhill Racer (Michael Ritchie, 1969)
7. It Ends with Us (Justin Baldoni, 2024)
8. The Cooler (Wayne Kramer, 2003)
9. Hooker on Campus (Lena Dunham, 2025)
10. Manodrome (John Trengove, 2023)

New releases (unranked)

• Big Bear Bald Eagle Live Nest Cam (Friends of Big Bear Valley, Youtube)
• The Chair Company, S1 E5, “I won. Zoom in.” (Aaron Schimberg)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Eephus (Carson Lund)
• Hot Dog Baby (Jan Terri, Jordan Chini and Adam Chini)
• The Rehearsal Season 2 (Nathan Fielder)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

First viewings

• 52 Pickup (John Frankenheimer, 1986)
• Babfilm (Ottó Foky,1976)
• Crazy Wisdom (Andy Anderson, 2024)
• Crossing Delancey (Joan Micklin Silver, 1988)
• Death Watch (Bertrand Tavernier, 1980)
• The Guano (David Snyder, 2016)
• I Hate Myself :) (Joanna Arnow, 2013)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981)
• Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981)
• Still Life (Harun Farocki, 1997)
• The Store (Fredrick Wiseman, 1983)
• What Time Is It There? (Tsai Ming-liang, 2001)

Best new releases in 2025 (ranked):

1. Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle after Another
2. Bi Gan, Resurrection
3. Kleber Mendonça Filho, Secret Agent
4. Pietro Marcello, Duse
5. Richard Linklater, Nouvelle Vague
6. Miguel Gomes, Grand Tour
7. Paolo Sorrentino, La Grazia
8. Sergei Loznitsa, Two Prosecutors
9. Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value
10. Christian Petzold, Miroirs no. 3

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries (ranked):

1. Kira Muratova, Asthenic Syndrome, USSR (Ukraine), 1990
Caps, and tops, the European cinema of late-Cold War alienation and disenchantment that flourished in the decade whose end was marked by that of official “socialism,” with pointless rage and narcoleptic dysphoria as protest. 

2. Oksana Karpovych, Intercepted, Ukraine, 2024
In a formally perfect manner that is also readily generalizable, this film about Ukraine under Russian invasion uses the modernist trope of juxtaposing modes of presentation to contrast devastated living spaces with an intercepted call soundtrack of babbling mothers encouraging soldiers in dehumanizing rhetoric. 

3. Chantal Akerman, Man with a Suitcase, France, 1983
From the greatest of experimental and narrative visual examiners of (1968-2014) modern life, I found this minimalist story involving a man in an empty office space among the revelations amid classics in MoMA’s complete Akerman retrospective.

4. Jia Zhangke, Caught by the Tides, China, 2024
With appropriate visual melancholy Tao Zhao, alter-ego of China’s cinematic social historian Jia, is witness to what development’s take and give may leave one struggling to understand. 

5. João César Monteiro, ‘trilogy’ (Recollections of the Yellow House, God’s Comedy, and God’s Wedding, Portugal, 1899/95/99) (screened at MoMA with complete filmography):
Traditional society, painted classically, is normally perverse. 
 

6. Ali Khamraev, Man Follows Birds, Uzbekistan/USSR, 1976
Poetic cinema masterpiece visualizing traditional peasant folk tale in Ukrainian Soviet style.
 

7. Bertrand Bonello, The Beast, France, 2023
Encounters, which the young woman hopes she can manage, with nerdy man playing several roles, ending repeatedly with her as corpse, in scenes of European/American life, 1890s and ‘60s-to-now, at last awakening with a scream as she sees him, not as socialite proprietor of a doll factory vulnerable to fire and flood, nor lonely and sexlessly aggrieved American outsider whose narrative possibilities include a tentatively welcomed entry (spatial/bodily), but invitingly agreeable type embarked on promising government career. 
 

8. Barbara Loden, Wanda, US, 1973
Justly canonized for its working-class feminism, involves moving performance by actor/director in road-trip of vulnerability to so much shit.
 

9. Anthony Harvey, The Dutchman, US, 1966
Unsettling LeRoi Jones piece allegorizing America’s unsolvable dramatic race conflicts, as hysterical white girl in bravura performance of manic hate provokes earnest if naive young black man on subway.
 

10. Abel Ferrara, Pasolini, Italy, 2014
Classically compelling, illuminatingly faithful treatment of the life and assassination of Italy’s most provocative postwar intellectual and cultural figure.

11. Pablo Larraín, Maria, 2024 (seen with Spencer, 2021, and Ema, 2019)
A study of the agonizingly problematic character of (female) subjectivity as (compulsive, perhaps self-destructive) performance.

12. Pablo Larraín, Post Mortem, Chile 2010
Tense portrayal of cowardice, as solitary man is shaken intimately by murderous dictatorship, where leftism is now a celebrity corpse he must examine, hospitals sites for staging live massacres, and the attractive, endangered married neighbor pleading for aid is in his desperation finally entombed alive. 

13. Ardak Amirkulov, The Fall of Otrar, USSR, 1991
Epic of obliterated and forgotten heroic resistance to a conquering barbaric empire. 

14. Manoel de Oliveira, The Letter, France, 1999
Classic French novel about a woman torn between impotent husband and insouciant admirers is set by the Portuguese master of historical melancholy amid 1990’s French high society and pop culture, with a colonial missionary exile as curious denouement. 

15. Sean Baker, Anora, USA, 2024
Screwball comedy in which playboy brat of contemporary Russian plutocrats (assimilated Jews with a Brooklyn dacha who control him with mafia-esque fixers) sets off comically unsolvable problems focused on working girl, who when tossing the expected riches as vanity will give an unprincipled matriarch such a comeuppance that even her husband can only share our scornful laughter. 

16. Pedro Almodovar, The Room Next Door, Spain/USA, 2024
Friendship is lived enigmatically in the shadow of death’s immanence. 

17. Paul Schrader, Oh, Canada, USA, 2024
A formally complex image of Vietnam-era America as viewed by a filmmaker for whom the desired elsewhere is as much a narrative as social possibility.

18. Francesca Comencini, The Time it Takes, Italy, 2024
I so empathized with the girl’s faltering commitments to various political and cultural goods on offer while admiring her (in real life) mentoring filmmaker dad, in this story from Italy’s leftism-soaked and terrorism-haunted 70s, considered here as bad-trip countercultural comedown from which a filmmaking that honors its easily-forgotten history is what saves. 

19. Andrea Segre, The Great Ambition, Italy, 2024
A dramatically compelling story of the Italian Communist Party leader who, with partial success (1970’s, again), brought democratic socialism into the government in the face of violent Soviet, American, and domestic opposition.

20. Barbara Albert, Blind at Heart, Germany, 2023
This fascinating allegory of German history (and highlight of the of the NY Jewish Film Festival’s avoidantly cautious programming) from Weimar to defeat and occupation, ends with the priceless promissory demand uttered by the Jewish mother to the estranged son by the German soldier husband she has survived: “Tell me a story.”

New & Recent Releases

• Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) theatrical re-release
• Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) first viewing
• Pola X (Leos Carax, 2000) first viewing; rare theatrical release in U.S.
• Joker II (Todd Phillips, 2024) but seen repeatedly by me in 2025 including on a giant theater screen
• Sly Lives (Questlove, 2025)
• Warfare (Ray Mendoza & Alex Garland, 2025)
• Eephus (Carson Lund, 2025)
• The Other Side [Louisiana] (Roberto Minervini, 2015) first viewing
• Mr. Scorcese (Rebecca Miller, 2025)
• Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse (Molly Bernstein & Philip Dolin 2025)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
• The Vourdalak (Adrien Beau, 2023 [U.S. 2024-2025]) 

New Releases
Alphabetical (so much I still need to see this year...)

• Hamnet
• It Was Just an Accident
• One Battle After Another
• Peter Hujar’s Day
• Sentimental Value
• Sinners
• The Lost Bus
• Train Dreams
• Weapons
• Zootopia 2

Not my first time — but this year I saw them in entirely new formats at the Southampton Playhouse

• Back to the Future - IMAX
• Stop Making Sense - IMAX
• Apollo 13 - IMAX
• The Wizard of OZ - IMAX 3D
• Romance and Cigarettes - 35 MM

First Viewings that stuck with me…

• The Pawnbroker (dir. Sidney Lumet)
• Scarecrow (dir. Jerry Schatzberg)
• Ball of Fire (dir. Howard Hawks)

First Viewings & New Releases

• Woyzeck (Werner Herzog, 1979)
• Oda Sa Wala (Dwein Baltazar, 2018)
• Lions Love (. . . and Lies) (Agnès Varda, 1969)
• El Pico (Eloy de la Iglesia, 1983)
• A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano, 1991)
• Urchin (Harris Dickinson, 2025)
• La Garce (Christine Pascal, 1984)
• Heartburn (The Novel) (Nora Ephron, 1986)
• Trees Lounge (Steve Buscemi, 1996)
• Violette Nozière (Claude Chabrol, 1978)
• Les Jeux de la Comtesse Dolingen de Gratz (Catherine Binet, 1981) — CAROL KANE!
• Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple, 1976)
• Mike Tyson explaining “legacy” to 10 year old (2025)
• Interiors (Woody Allen, more importantly Diane Keaton, 1978)
• Erupcja (Pete Ohs, 2026)
• What Does That Nature Say to You (Hong Sang-soo, 2025)
• Emily Davis in Moliere’s Tartuffe (Sarah Benson) 2026
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein, 2025)
• Lucy Kaminsky in Optimistic Voices (Juliana F. May) 2025
• River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt, 1994)
• Peter Hujar’s Day (Ira Sachs, 2025)

New Releases

Sirāt

• Electrical Gaza (2015, Rosalind Nashashibi)
• The Town Within Reach (1983, Dang Nhat Minh)
• A Dark Room (2025, Heehyun Choi)
• Buseok (2024, Kyujae Park)
• Bye Bye Love (1974, Isao Fujisawa)
• Fucktoys (2025, Annapurna Sriram)
• Bounded Intimacy (2024, Ayanna Dozier)
• Market Street (2005, Tomonari Nishikawa)
• Alice in the Cities (1974, Wim Wenders)
• 逆立ち逆立ち : If pinholes were right side up, I would be doing handstands. (2024, Kioto Aoki)
• Mind Game (2004, Masaaki Yuasa)
• Leila and the Wolves (1984, Heiny Srour)
• Showgirls of Pakistan (2020, Saad Khan)
• Peking Opera Blues (1986, Tsui Hark)
• Softshell (2024, Jinho Myung)
• A Journey from North to South (2024, Tiffany Sia)
• Correct Me If I’m Wrong (2025, Hao Zhou)
• Ring of Fire - Solar Yang & Lunar Weerasethakul (2024-2027, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Haegue Yang in Naoshima)
• For those who share mornings and evenings (2025, Chang Yuchen at Smack Mellon)
• Ichiko Aoba Plays Live on a Rock - https://youtu.be/OZXH9iXqFbI?si=vX47bmRvZpDtTgyV

First Viewings

• Altyn At (Svetlana Romanova, 2025)
• Letter to Jane (Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972)
• Levers (Rhayne Vermette, 2025)
• Lost Book Found (Jem Cohen, 1996)
• Remake (Ross McElwee, 2025)

Best New Releases

· No! YOU'RE WRONG. or: Spooky Action at a Distance directed by Crispin Glover

· The Uninvited directed by Nadia Conners

· Schneewittchen (Snow White) directed by Stanley Schtinter

· Father Mother Sister Brother directed by Jim Jarmusch

· Bugonia directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

· Weapons directed by Zach Cregger

· Becoming Led Zeppelin directed by Bernard MacMahon

· Eric LaRue directed by Michael Shannon

· Friendship directed by Andrew DeYoung

First Viewings and Discoveries

· Mock Up on Mu directed by Craig Baldwin (2008)

· Judgment at Nuremberg directed and produced by Stanley Kramer (1961)

· Idiocracy directed by Mike Judge (2006)

· The Apprentice directed by Ali Abbasi (2024)

· Yacht Rock directed by Garrett Price (2024)

· The Brutalist directed by Brady Corbet

First Viewings

• Master of the House (Denmark 1925, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
• Listen to the Voices of the Sea (Japan 1950, Hideo Sekigawa)
• La finestra sul Luna Park (Italy 1957, Luigi Comencini)
• The Wife of Seisaku (Japan 1965, Yasuzo Masumura)
• A New Leaf (USA 1971, Elaine May)
• The Journey (Iran 1972, Bahram Beyzaie) – SHORT
• Those Whom Death Refused (Guinea-Bissau 1988, Flora Gomes)
• The Sweet East (USA 2023, Sean Price Williams)
• Am Telefon Milena Fina (Austria 2025, Albert Sackl) – SHORT
• Phantoms of July (Germany 2025, Julian Radlmaier)

First Viewings

• Worlds Greatest Sinner (Timothy Carey 1962)
• Charlie is My Darling (Peter Whitehead 1966)
• The Swimmer (Frank Perry 1968)
• Bye Bye Braverman (Sidney Lumet 1968)
• 92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane 1975)
• Chilly Scenes of Winter (Joan Michelin Silver 1979)
• Winter Kills (William Richert 1979)
• Lightning Over Water (Nicholas Ray, Wim Wenders 1980)
• Tough Guys Don’t Dance (Norman Mailer 1987)
• Pumpkinhead (Stan Winston 1988)
• Dead Bang (John Frankenheimer 1989)
• Cold Dog Soup (Alan Metter 1990)
• Linguini Incident (Richard Shepard 1991)
• China Moon (John Bailey 1994)
• Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Anderson 2003)
• Lawrence of Belgravia (Paul Kelly 2012)
• Phrogging: Hider in My House (Zaki Rubenstein 2022)
• Favorite Music Moment: Hot Freaks (Guided by Voices) If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)

First Viewings

• Apollo 11 (2019)
• Rollercoaster (1977)
• Vigilante Force (1976)
• Earnhardt (2025)
• Heart Like a Wheel (1983)
• Night of the Juggler (1980)
• Breathless (1983)
• Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
• Body Parts (1991)
• Last Man Standing (1995)
• State of Grace (1990)

New Releases

1. One Battle After Another
2. Blue Moon
3. The Secret Agent
4. Mistress Dispeller
5. Predators
6. Misericordia
7. It Was Just an Accident
8. April
9. Sirat
10. My Undesirable Friends Part 1: Last Air in Moscow

First Viewings and Discoveries

• The Children's Hour (William Wyler)
• Sound of the Mountain & Sudden Rain (Mikio Naruse
• Southern Comfort (Kate Davis)
• Well-Founded Fear (Shari Robertson, Michael Camerini)

New Releases (Unranked)

• Direct Action
• Radu Jude’s 2025 trifecta: Dracula + Kontinental ’25 + Little Poems in Prose
• Final Destination: Bloodlines
• The Mastermind
• M3GAN 2.0
• Jean-Luc Mélenchon at CUNY Graduate Center
• The broken poster display outside the Angelika emitting a constant electrical buzz

First Viewings

• La Commune (Paris 1871) (2000) at Anthology
• Uptight (1968) at The People’s Forum
• Dogfight (1991) on Criterion Channel
• The Asthenic Syndrome (1989) at Walter Reade
• Streets of Fire (1984) at Anthology
• Rap World (2024) several times in a row on YouTube
• The Panic in Needle Park (1971) on Criterion (holy shit!!)
• Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) on Tubi
• Hellbent (2004) at Spectacle
• Still Life (1997) at Anthology

BEST NEW RELEASES (IN ORDER)

1. ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson; Warner Bros.)
2. THE PLAGUE (dir. Charlie Polinger; IFC)
3. REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND (dir. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani; IFC/Shudder)
4. EEPHUS (dir. Carson Lund; Music Box Films)
5. MARTY SUPREME (dir. Josh Safdie; A24)
6. EDDINGTON (dir. Ari Aster; A24)
7. IF I HAD LEGS, I'D KICK YOU (dir. Mary Bronstein; A24)
8. BUGONIA (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos; Focus)
9. FUCK MY SON! (dir. Todd Rohal; self-released)*
10. SPLITSVILLE (dir. Michael Angelo Covino; NEON)

*Hosting the 35mm premiere of FUCK MY SON! with Todd in conversation with Mike Kuchar (prior to his short THE STRANGER IN APARTMENT 9F) at the Alamo New Mission made for a banner evening.

FAVORITE FIRST VIEWINGS AND DISCOVERIES (ALPHABETICAL)

• ANGEL'S EGG (dir. Mamoru Oshii, 1985)
• CASUALTIES OF WAR (dir. Brian De Palma, 1989)
• CHRISTIANE F. (dir. Uli Edel, 1981)
• THE CRAZY FAMILY (dir. Gakuryu Ishii, 1984)
• DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING (dir. Mark Robson, 1968)
• ELECTRA GLIDE IN BLUE (dir. James William Guercio, 1973)
• THE EROTIC RITES OF FRANKENSTEIN (dir. Jess Franco, 1973)
• GOING DOWN (dir. Haydn Keenan, 1983)
• THE INTRUDER (dir. Roger Corman, 1962)
• FOLIES MEURTRIERES (dir. Antoine Pellissier, 1984)
• THE MISSION (dir. Johnnie To, 1999)
• ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (dir. Robert Wise, 1959)
• A PERFECT COUPLE (dir. Robert Altman, 1979)
• SCHOOL IN THE CROSSHAIRS (dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1981)
• SPIKE OF BENSONHURST (dir. Paul Morrisey, 1988)
• THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD (dir. Martin Ritt, 1965)
• TRACK 29 (dir. Nicolas Roeg, 1988)
• TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! (dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis, 1964)
• VENGEANCE IS MINE (dir. Michael Roemer, 1984)
• WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (dir. Mike Nichols, 1966)

Maybe one day I'll log a film from the 21st century, but not today!

New Releases

(some favorites, in no particular order, with many new films yet to see)

• Bunny (Ben Jacobson)
• Vulcanizadora (Joel Potrykus)
• Where To Land (Hal Hartley)
• Die My Love (Lynne Ramsey)
• Carol & Joy (Nathan Silver)
• I’m Not Everything I’d Like To Be (Klára Tasovská)
• Roofman (Derek Cianfrance)
• Peter Hujars Day (Ira Sachs)
• Megadoc (Mike Figgis)
• Eddington (Ari Aster)
• All Of You (William Bridges)
• Toxic (Saule Bliuvaite)
• Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie)
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

2025 favorite first viewings

• Nightfall (1957)
• Blaise Pascal (1972)
• Jacques Lacan. Psychanalyse 1 & 2 (1974)
• Koko (1978)
• Shoah (1985)
• Microcosmos (1996)
• Phantom Beirut (1998)
• Saint-Cyr (2000)
• Avenge But One of My Two Eyes (2005)
• La guerre des centimes (2019)
• (Unranked / No 2024 releases either / Cinema not as an "experience" but as a synthesis)

First Viewings

• Anora (Sean Baker, 2024)
• Sing Sing (Greg Kwedar, 2023)
• Sister Midnight (Karan Kandhari, 2024)
• Bogancloch (Ben Rivers, 2024)
• Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)
• Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002)

New Releases

• Urchin (Harris Dickinson, 2025)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)
• Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025)
• Islands (Jan Ole Gerster, 2025)

First viewings in 2025
 

1. Apocalypse Now (1979), Redux cut, Metrograph (I know, I know—I just saw it)
2. The Man from Laramie (1955), MoMA
3. 7th Heaven (1927), MoMA
4. Dream of Light/The Quince Tree Sun (1992), Metrograph
5. Nothing but a Man (1964), Anthology
6. Cat People (1982), MoMA
7. Hot Pepper (1973), MoMA
8. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017), FLC
9. What's Up, Doc? (1972), Paris Theater
10. Dick Tracy (1990), Nitehawk Williamsburg
11. Bend of the River (1952), MoMA
12. The Big Trail (1930), MoMA
13. Street Angel (1928), MoMA
14. Onibaba (1964), MoMI
15. Offside (2006), Metrograph
16. Time of the Wolf (2003), Metrograph
17. Lola Montès (1955), Metrograph
18. Scarface (1983), Metrograph
19. The Damned (1969), BAM
20. Sholay (1975), FLC

Best New Releases

1. Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Battaggia - The Story of "Scenario"

2. Albert Serra - Afternoons of Solitude

3. Harmony Korine - Baby Invasion

4. Bi Gan - Resurrection

5. Jia Zhangke - Caught By the Tides

6. Kiyoshi Kurosawa - Cloud

7. Masao Adachi - Escape

8. Virgil Vernier - 100.000.000.000.000 (Cent Mille Milliards)

9. Atom Egoyan - Seven Veils

10. Rob Tregenza - The Fishing Place

Favorite First Viewings

1. Budd Boetticher - My Kingdom For... (1985)

2. "Knots Landing" Season 6 (1984)

3. Vittorio Cottafavi - Maria Zef (1981)

4. Hisayasu Sato - Soft Skin (1998)

5. Roberto Gavaldon - Autumn Days (1963)

6. Roger Leenhardt - The Last Vacation (1948)

7. José Giovanni - Where Did Tom Go? (1971)

8. King Vidor - Beyond the Forest (1949)

9. Raoul Walsh - Uncertain Glory (1944)

10. David Hamilton - Laura (1979)

11. Sergei Gerasimov - The Young Guard (1948)

12. Dorothy Arzner - Working Girls (1931)

13. Alf Sjöberg - Iris and the Lieutenant (1946)

14. Florestano Vancini - The Long Night of '43 (1960)

15. John Landis - The Stupids (1996)

16. Ralf Kirsten - Chronicle of a Summer (1963)

17. Maurice Cloche - Monsieur Vincent (1947)

18. Youssef Chahine - Dark Waters (1956)

19. Marcel Pagnol - Angele (1934)

20. Sacha Guitry - The Virtuous Scoundrel (1953)

New Releases

• The Voice of Hind Rajab (Kaouther Ben Hania)
• Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvold)
• Landmarks (Lucretia Martel)
• Hedda (Nia DaCosta)
• My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr.)

The greatest thing was to see Michael Witt's reconstruction of Jean-Luc Godard's montage film Sauve la vie (qui peut). I proposed it as my carte blanche in FID Marseille and it was truly amazing. Michael also wrote an amazing book about Godard's unfinished projects. Also I loved A Page of Madness by Kinugasa and the discovery of a few Maurice Lemaître's letterist films, especially Un soir au cinema and Pour faire un film. Also Amos Poe's The Foreigner. Michael Almereyda was so kind to offer me a Garry Winogrand's album with color photographs (edited by him), and it is truly amazing.

Then, from the new films, I liked a lot Dry Leaf by Alexander Koberidze, Yes by Nadav Lapid, Julia Loktev's My Undesirable Friends, With Hasan in Gaza by Kamal Aljafari, and Richard Linklater's double bill, Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon.

The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les Demoiselles de Rochefort,1967) is Jacque Demy and Michel Legrand’s follow-up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. I had never seen the film before this year—and it was a bright, colorful delight: tuneful, inventive, romantic, completely original. Less melodramatic than Umbrellas, it is full of life, full of dancing, with a restless jazz score that propels the film with urgent, kinetic energy. Gene Kelly offers a memorable character portrait—and his dancing outshines everyone else in the film.

For Your Consideration (2006) was another film I’d somehow missed until recently. Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy fashioned a satire of Hollywood awards mania that managed to be sardonic and affectionate—and even, occasionally, poignant. We watch the cast of a dreadful period drama called Home for Purim as they’re bewitched by the prospect of an Academy Award nomination. The film is nearly stolen by Fred Willard as a crassly self-absorbed co-host of an Entertainment Tonight-style show. Willard is merciless and hilarious.

Top 10 (unranked)

• BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions
• Caught Stealing
• Dead Lover
• Lloyd Wong, Unfinished
• Maddie’s Secret
• Nickel Boys
• One Battle After Another
• Peter Hujar's Day
• The Mastermind
• The Naked Gun

First Watches

• Audition (1999)
• A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate (1923)
• Big Wednesday (1978)
• Crime Wave (1953)
• Dodsworth (1936)
• It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)
• Joan Mitchell: Portrait of an Abstract Painter (1980)
• Southern Comfort (1981)
• The Vietnam War (2017)
• Touchez Pas au Grisbi (1954)

First Viewings

• Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (Shuji Terayama, 1971)
• Young & Beautiful (Francois Ozon, 2013)
• Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, 2000)
• Lipstick (Damiano Damiani, 1960)
• The Most Beautiful Wife (Damiano Damiani, 1970)
• A Difficult Life (Dino Risi, 1961)
• Fat Girl (Catherine Breillat, 2001)
• Overlord (Stuart Cooper, 1975)
• The Disappearance (Stuart Cooper, 1977)
• The Man Who Left His Will on Film (Nagisa Oshima, 1970)
• Boy (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)
• Ariel (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)
• Shin Godzilla (Shinji Higuchi, Hideaki Anno, 2016)
• Missile (Frederick Wiseman, 1988)
• I'm Still Alive (Irving Reis, 1940)
• The Hang Up (John Hayes, 1969)
• The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950)
• Nobody Waved Goodbye (Don Owen, 1964)
• Prince of Broadway (Sean Baker, 2008)
• My Forbidden Past (Robert Stevenson, 1951)

SHORT FILMS: You (1983) removed (1999) Craig's Cutting Room Floor (2011) Standard Gauge (1986) The Boy Who Liked Deer (1975) Movie Pests (1944) The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) Beirut Outtakes (2007) America: Everything You've Ever Dreamed Of (1973) Make Me A Pizza (2024)

New Releases

• Becoming Led Zeppelin
• Grand Theft Hamlet
• The Actor
• Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants
• Black Bag
• The Shrouds
• One to One: John and Yoko
• Henry Fonda For President
• The Friend
• One Battle After Another
• Afternoons of Solitude
• Cloud
• My Undesirable Friends
• Weapons
• Frankenstein
• Caught Stealing
• Sentimental Value
• If I Had Legs I'd Kick You
• Die My Love
• The Running Man

New Releases (Unranked)

If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

The Secret Agent

Sirat

Misericordia

Familiar Touch

The Perfect Neighbor

Eephus

Vulcanizadora

One Battle After Another

It Was Just an Accident

First Viewings

The Lovers on the Bridge (1991, Leos Carax)

The Wayward Cloud (2005, Tsai Ming-liang)

Yeast (2008, Mary Bronstein)

No Sex Last Night (1991, Sophie Calle, Greg Shephard)

In My Skin (2002, Marina de Van)

The Childhood of a Leader (2015, Brady Corbet)

Christiane F (1981, Uli Edel)

Freaked (1993, Alex Winter)

Cruising (1980, William Friedkin)

In the Cut (2003, Jane Campion)

Split (2016, M. Night Shyamalan)

The Century of the Self (2002, Adam Curtis)

Cane Toads: An Unnatural History (1988, Mark Lewis)

Dirty Work (1988, Bob Saget)

Saving Face (2004, Alice Wu)

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986, Richard Pryor)

High School II (1994, Frederick Wiseman)

Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)

May (2002, Lucky McKee)

Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion (1997, Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki)

First Viewings

• Remorques (Jean Grémillon, 1941)
• Night Train (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, 1959)

Favorite First Viewings

1. The Affected (Rikke Gregersen, 2020)
2. Aleph (Iva Radivojević 2021)
3. André François: Artist-Poet (Sarah Moon, 2002)
4. Blind Spot (Claudia von Alemann, 1981)
5. Correspondences: Víctor Erice, Abbas Kiarostami, José Luis Guerín, Jonas Mekas, Albert Serra, Lisandro Alonso, Isaki Lacuesta, Naomi Kawase, Jaime Rosales, Wang Bing, Fernando Eimbcke, So Yong Kim (2005 - 2011)
6. The Culture (Ernst De Geer, 2018)
7. The Days When I Don’t Exist (Jean-Charles Fitoussi, 2002)
8. Edith and the Tall Child (Kohana Wilson, 2023)
9. Fire of Wind (Marta Mateus, 2024)
10. The Hummingbird Wars (Janie Geiser, 2014)
11. I, Daniel Blake (Ken Loach, 2016)
12. INAATE/SE/ [it shines a certain way. to a certain place./it flies. falls./] (Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, 2016)
13. Journey to the Beginning of Time (Karel Zeman, 1955)
14. Kin-dza-dza! (Georgiy Daneliya 1986)
15. Marathon (Amir Naderi, 2002)
16. Nibbles (Christopher Hinton, 2003)
17. Peace (Soda Kazuhiro, 2010)
18. Three Examples of Myself as a Queen (Anna Biller, 1994)
19. Volcanic Saga (Joan Jonas, 1989) 
20. Waiting for Bas (Daniel & Clara, 2024)

Favorite first viewings (alphabetical):

• ...All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich, 1981)
• Always for Pleasure (Les Blank, 1978)
• The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett, 1999)
• The Black and the Green (St. Clair Bourne, 1983)
• Christiane F. (Uli Edel, 1981)
• Early Spring (Yasujiro Ozu, 1956)
• Going Down (Haydn Keenan, 1982)
• High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
• The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955)
• Love Letters (Amy Holden Jones, 1983)
• Marseille (Angela Schanelec, 2004)
• Miss and the Doctors (Axelle Ropert, 2013)
• Moral (Marilou Diaz-Abaya, 1982)
• Night of the Juggler (Robert Butler and Sidney J. Furie, 1980)
• Noir et blanc (Claire Devers, 1986)
• One Way Passage (Tay Garnett, 1932)
• The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952)
• Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
• The Temple Woods Gang (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, 2022)
• Will (Jessie Maple, 1981)

New Releases (Unranked)

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• The Alabama Solution (Andrew Jarecki & Charlotte Kaufman)
• The Chair Company (season 1, episode 8): “Minnie Mouse coming back wasn't on my bingo card." (Aaron Schimberg)
• Eric LaRue (Michael Shannon)
• Orwell: 2+2=5 (Raoul Peck)
• Pee-wee As Himself (Matt Wolf)
• The Rehearsal (season 2, episode 6): “My Controls” (Nathan Fielder)
• Shifty (Adam Curtis)
• Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
• This is the Tom Green Documentary (Tom Green) 
First Viewings and Discoveries
• In Jackson Heights (Frederick Wiseman, 2015)
• The Lighting Field (Walter De Maria, 1977–present)
• Sticks and Bones (Robert Downey Sr., 1973)
• Total Recall (Paul Verhoeven, 1990) in 70mm 
Bonus Content
• “H. C. Westermann: Anchor Clanker” ed. Giampaolo Bianconi (AIC)
• “The Complete C Comics” by Joe Brainard et al (NYRB)
• “Go Figure: Figurative Social Surrealist Paintings” by Guy Colwell (Fantagraphics)
• “Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook” by Lori Emerson (Anthology Editions)
• “Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde” by J. Hoberman (Verso)
• Kilynn Lunsford - “Promiscuous Genes” LP (Feel It Records)
• Bennie Maupin - “The Jewel In The Lotus” LP reissue (ECM)
• Shonen Knife - “Minna Tanoshiku” “P reissue (P-Vine)
• Michael Smith - “Mike's Box” DVD boxset (Drag City)

Creator and co-star of Hulu’s Difficult People and host of How Was Your Week.

First Viewings

• Zardoz (John Boorman, 1974)
• Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
• Who Killed Teddy Bear? (Joseph Cates, 1965)
• The First Nudie Musical (Mark Haggard & Bruce Kimmel, 1976)
• Supergirl (Jeannot Szwarc, 1984)
• Arthur 2: On The Rocks (Bud Yorkin, 1988)
• Go into Your Dance (Archie Mayo, 1935)
• The Fly (David Cronenberg, 1986)
• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987)
• The Poseidon Adventure (Ronald Neame, 1972)
• Swimming to Cambodia (Jonathan Demme, 1987)
• The One and Only (Carl Reiner, 1978)
• Lucky Lady (Stanley Donen, 1975)
• Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (Sidney J. Furie, 1987)

 First viewings and discoveries

-Ornette: Made in America (Shirley Clarke)
-Eye of the Devil (J. Lee Thompson)
-Ten Days’ Wonder (Chabrol)
-Sholay (Ramesh Sippy)
-The High Lonesome Sound (John Cohen)
-“Dirty Cut” of Dirty Work (Saget)
-Grandma’s Boy (Harold Lloyd)
-Queen Christina (Mamoulian)
-In the Spirit (Sandra Seacat and possibly Elaine May)
-The Journey/'Resan' (Peter Watkins)

And a bonus:
Strong Medicine by Richard Foreman, rest in peace.

First Viewings

• 'Fermat's Last Theorem' (1996) BBC Horizon episode, dir. Simon Singh
• Very Gentle Work (2024) dir. Nate Lavey
• Canal Zone (1977) dir. Fred Wiseman
• Klute (1971) dir. Alan J. Pakula
• I Remember You (1985) dir. Ali Khamraev
• Mai's America (2002) dir. Marlo Poras (hadn't seen in 10+ years and it felt like a new film)
• The Best of Your Life (aka Sun City) (1971) dirs. Tony Ganz and Rhody Streeter
• Beirut Jamais Plus (1976) dir. Jocelyne Saab
• Soft Shell (2024) dir. Jinho Myung
• Citizen Ruth (1996) dir. Alexander Payne

New Releases

• Holy Electricity (Tato Kotetishvili)
• Magellan (Lav Diaz)
• Phantoms of July (Julian Radlmaier)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Headshots (Johanna Schorn Kalinsky)
• Nobody in Sight (Kote Kalandadze)
• Leleka (Harald Hutter)
• Mr. Turner (Mike Leigh)

Favorite First Viewings 2025

• Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen, 1937)
• The King and the Mockingbird (Paul Grimault, 1952/1980)
• Wife! Be Like a Rose (Mikio Naruse, 1935)
• The Bride Wore Red (Dorothy Arzner, 1938)
• Kitty (Mitchell Leisen, 1946)
• D.E.B.S. (Angela Robinson, 2003)
• Le Dortoir (François Girard, 1991)
• Rogue (Greg McLean, 2007)
• Gay USA (Arthur J. Bressan Jr., 1977)
• It's My Turn (Claudia Weill, 1980)

Best 2025 Releases, unranked

• Misericordia (Alain Guiraudie)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Final Destination: Bloodlines (Zach Lipovsky, Adam Stein)
• Landmarks (Lucretia Martel)
• It Was Just An Accident (Jafar Panahi)
• Nurses (Steve Zultanksi and Ed Atkins)
• Impediment is Information (JJJJJerome Ellis)

Best First Viewings/Discoveries, unranked

• Primate (Frederick Wiseman, 1974)
• El Vampiro Negro (Román Viñoly Barreto, 1953)
• Mahabharat (BR Chopra, 1989)
• New Rose Hotel (Abel Ferrara, 1998)
• A Real Young Girl (Catherine Breillat, 1976)
• Victimas del Pecado (Emilio Fernandez,1951)
• The Core (John Amiel, 2003)
• A New Love in Tokyo (Banmei Takahashi, 1994)
• Marquis (Henri Xhonneux, 1989)
• The Fall of Otrar (Ardak Amirkulov, 1991)
• Death of Yazdgerd (Bahram Beyzai, 1982)
• Queen Kelly (Erich von Stroheim, 1929)
• Man Follows Birds (Ali Khamraev, 1975)
• Kalyug (Shyam Benegal, 1981)
• Los Tallos Amargos (Fernando Ayala, 1956)
• Letters from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls, 1948)

First Viewings

• Mermaid Legend (1984)
• Kameradschaft (1931)
• One to One: John & Yoko (2024)
• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• A Tale of Winter (1992)
• Carol (2015)
• Prince of Darkness (1987)
• Main Theme (1984)
• Endless Waltz (1995)

Rep titles

• 7^th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927)
• The Approach of Autumn (Naruse Mikio, 1960)
• The Doctor’s Dream (Ken Jacobs, 1978)
• Fireworks (Keneth Anger, 1947)
• Genet à Chatila (Richard Dindo, 1999)
• Harat (Sepideh Farsi, 2007)
• In the Darkness of Time (Jean-Luc Godard, 2002)
• Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984)
• Life Without Principle (Johnnie To, 2011)
• Love Torn in a Dream (Raúl Ruiz, 2000)
• Man Follows Birds (Ali Khamraev, 1975)
• Moonbird (John and Faith Hubley, 1959)
• Off-White Tulips (Aykan Safoğlu, 2013)
• One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1975)
• Release (Nasser Taghvai, 1971)
• The Runner (Amir Naderi, 1984)
• Something Between Us (Jodie Mack, 2015)
• Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
• Typhoon Club (Sōmai Shinji, 1985)
• Walker (Alex Cox, 1987)

Contemporary releases

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Back Home (Tsai Ming-liang)
• The Flowers Stand Silently Witnessing (Theo Panagopoulos)
• GAZA.MP4 (Diaa Lagan, Mohannad El-Masria, and Fuad Halwani)
• It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
• Morgenkreis (Basma al-Sharif)
• Nuestra Tierra (Lucrecia Martel)
• Put Your Soul On Your Hand and Walk (Sepideh Farsi)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• You Burn Me (Matías Piñeiro)

2025 Favorites in Alphabetical Order

• Atropia (Hailey Benton Gates)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
• Eddington (Ari Aster)
• Friendship (Andrew DeYoung)
• If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• Messy (Alexi Wasser)
• No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
• www.RachelOrmont.com (Peter Vack)

2025 Honorable Mentions

Lurker (Alex Russell), Sorry, Baby (Eva Victor), The Code (Eugene Kotlyarenko), The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson), Universal Language (Matthew Rankin), Weapons (Zach Cregger)

2025 movies I have yet to see that might influence this list

Bugonia, It Was Just an Accident, Marty Supreme, The Mastermind, The Secret Agent

Favorite First Viewings in Alphabetical Order

• A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)
• Beirut, My City (1983, Jocelyne Saab)
• Crooklyn (1994, Spike Lee)
• Cry-Baby (1990, John Waters)
• Deep End (1970, Jerzy Skolimowksi)
• Devil in a Blue Dress (1995, Carl Franklin)
• Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Isao Takahata)
• High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
• Ms. 45 (1981, Abel Ferrara)
• New Rose Hotel (1998, Abel Ferrara)
• Nowhere (1997, Gregg Araki)
• Polyester (1981, John Waters)
• Prince of Broadway (2008, Sean Baker)
• Reprise (2006, Joachim Trier)
• Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (1972, Julian Cooper)
• Siméon (1992, Euzhan Palcy)
• Suburbia (1983, Penelope Spheeris)
• The Battle of Algiers (1966, Gillo Pontecorvo)
• The Rules of the Game (1939, Jean Renoir)
• Trouble in Paradise (1932, Ernst Lubitsch)
• Weekend (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
• Wang Chung performing their soundtrack for William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) at The Belasco with synced footage from the film!

First Viewings & Discoveries

• The Boys from Fengkuei (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1983)
• Christo’s Valley Curtain (Albert and David Maysles, 1974)
• The Eve Before Ivan Kupala (Yurii Illienko, 1968)
• Giants and Toys (Yasuzo Masumura, 1958)
• Love Meetings (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)
• The Mystery of Picasso (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1956)
• Notes on Displacement (Khaled Jarrar, 2022)
• À Propos de Nice (Jean Vigo, 1930)
• Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman, 1997)
• Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)

Here are the films that have been on my mind lately- 

• Afternoons of Solitude
• Chronology of Water
• Sound of Falling
• Fire Will Come
• One Battle After Another
• Sirat
• Silent Friend
• Rain Fell On Nothing New - this is a German first feature by director/writer: Steffen Goldkamp

Top Ten New Releases (Unranked)

• 28 Years Later, d. Danny Boyle
• Evil Puddle, d. Charlie Roxburgh
• The Mastermind, d. Kelly Reichardt
• Nobody, d. Shui Yu
• One Battle After Another, d. Paul Thomas Anderson
• Plainclothes, d. Carmen Emmi
• Room Temperature, d. Zac Farley, Dennis Cooper
• Retro, d. Karthik Subbaraj
• Sirāt, d. Olive Laxe
• War 2, d. Ayan Mukerji

Honorable Mention

• Aero Horrorthon: The Movie, d. Damon Packard
• The Polar Express - Off the Rails!, d. Landon Fernald
• "Tom Francis performs Sunset Boulevard in Time Square" from Sunset Boulevard, d. Jamie Lloyd

Ten Memorable First Viewings and Discoveries:

• Bone, d. Larry Cohen
• Body Parts, d. Eric Red
• Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps, d. Louise Weard
• Ghostly Revenge, d. Gary Castro Churchwell, Erick Ferman
• God of Gamblers' Return, d. Wong Jing
• Experiment in Terror, d. Blake Edwards
• Heartbreaker: With Love from A Bullet, d. Soichiro Komatsu
• Kill Me Again, d. John Dahl
• Night of the Living Dead, d. Tom Savini
• Neighbors, d. John G. Avildsen

New Releases

1. Eephus (Carson Lund)

2. The Woman in the Yard (Juame Collet-Serra)

3. Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)

4. Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

5. Japanese Food Noodles YouTube Channel

First Viewings

• Les Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915-1916, DCP, Academy Museum)
• Die Drei von der Tankstelle (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930, Digital, Home Viewing)
• Japanese Paper Film Project (Various, 1930s, Paper Film to Digital, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• The Fresh Vegetable Mystery (Dave Fleischer, 1939, DCP, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• Dead Man's Eyes (Reginald Le Borg, 1944, 35mm, New Beverly Cinema)
• Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948, Nitrate 35mm, Egyptian Theatre)
• Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948, Nitrate 35mm, Egyptian Theatre)
• Comanche Territory (George Sherman, 1950, 35mm, New Beverly Cinema)
• The Brigand (Phil Karlson, 1952, 35mm, New Beverly Cinema)
• The Bigamist (Ida Lupino, 1953, 35mm, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1956, 35mm, American Cinematheque Los Feliz)
• Alfred Hitchcock Presents, "The Man from the South" (Norman Lloyd, 1960, DCP, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• The Liberation of L.B. Jones (William Wyler, 1971, 35mm, American Cinematheque Los Feliz)
• Das Millionenspiel (Tom Toelle, 1971, Digital, Home Viewing)
• The Waiting Room (Karen Sperling, 1973, Digital, Wirtz Center Chicago)
• Popeye (Robert Altman, 1980, 35mm, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• Dessert For Constance (Sarah Maldoror, 1981 DCP, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• Surely Bach Closed the Door When He Wanted to Work (Narcisa Hirsch, 1981, DCP, Academy Museum)
• The Meeting (Bill Duke, 1989, Digital, Hammer Museum @ UCLA)
• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1990, DCP, American Cinematheque Los Feliz)
• Domestic Violence (Frederick Wiseman, 2001, DCP, American Cinematheque Los Feliz)

Viewing Stats: DCP: 98, 35mm: 68, 70mm: 3, Nitrate: 6. Getting soft in my old age.

Caught by the Tides, Jia Zhangke
Sorry Baby, Eva Victor

*

Bait (Mark Jenkin, 2019)
Nine Gross and Conspicuous Errors (Red Krayola with Art & Language, 1975) 
Four Nights A Dreamer (Robert Bresson, 1971)
White Nights (Luchino Visconti, 1957)
The Chronicle of A.M. Bach (Ken Okiishi, 2025)
Friday Night (Claire Denis, 2002)
Where is the Friend’s House? (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987)
The House in the Woods TV series (Maurice Pialat, 1971)
Drugs are Nice: A Suckumentary (Lisa Carver, 2005)
Joe Mazzulla 2025 postgame press conferences

New Releases

1. Resurrection (Dir. Bi Gan)

2. Black Bag (Dir. Steven Soderbergh) x Presence (Dir. Steven Soderbergh)

3. It Was Just an Accident (Dir. Jafar Panahi)

4. The Shrouds (Dir. David Cronenberg)

5. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

6. Reflection In a Dead Diamond (Dirs. Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)

7. Sinners (Dir. Ryan Coogler)

8. Highest 2 Lowest (Dir. Spike Lee)

9. Magellan (Dir. Lav Diaz)

10. Blue Moon (Dir. Richard Linklater) x Peter Hujar’s Day (Dir. Ira Sachs)

Discoveries (in no order)

● Compensation (Dir. Zeinabu irene Davis, 1999)

● Action : The October Crisis of 1970 (Dir. Robin Spry, 1973)

● King Lear (Dir. Jean-Luc Godard, 1987)

● Mermaid Legend (Dir. Toshiharu Ikeda, 1984)

● Running on Karma (Dirs. Wai Ka-Fai & Johnnie To, 2003)

● Suroh: Alien Hitchhiker (Dir. Patrick McGuinn, 1996)

● The Sword (Dir. Patrick Tam, 1980)

● The Tin Star (Dir. Anthony Mann, 1957)

● Totally Fucked Up (Dir. Gregg Araki, 1993)

● Leila and the Wolves (Dir. Heiny Srour, 1984)

● The Cat (Dir. Lam Nai-Choi, 1992)

● Blood Brothers (Dir. Mike Diana, 1989)

● Bronco Billy (Dir. Clint Eastwood, 1980)

● Love Hotel (Dir. Shinji Sōmai, 1985)

● Thomasine & Bushrod (Dir. Gordon Parks Jr., 1974) x Three the Hard Way (Dir. Gordon Parks Jr., 1974)

● Freeze Me (Dir. Takashi Ishii, 2000)

● Evolver (Dir. Mark Rosman, 1995)

● Black Girl (Dir. Ossie Davis, 1972)

● The Perfume of the Lady In Black (Dir. Francesco Barilli, 1974)

● Portrait In Crystal (Dir. Hua Shan, 1983)

● School In the Crosshairs (Dir. Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1981)

● Girls Town (Dir. Jim McKay, 1996)

● Campfire Tales (Dirs. Martin Kunert, David Semel & Matt Cooper, 1997)

● Skin Deep (Dir. Blake Edwards, 1989)

● The Wrong Man (Dir. Jim McBride, 1993)

Due to the intensity of the work on YES and the demanding releases of the movie and the long festival circuit, I missed several films that I can imagine that could have figured on this list. I Only Rest in the Storm by Pedro Pinhio, The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonca Filho, What Does That Nature Say to You by Hong Sang-soo, as few examples for movies that I can imagine myself really appreciating but that I haven't yet watched. That's why this list is in no way the best of the year but some revealing films I had the opportunity to bump into. While several others movies seemed to me not daring or/and not deep enough:

Mektoub my love, Canto due: Maybe it's not his best film or not even even the best of the trilogy. But there's so much life here, Kechiche's mysterious capacity to be so alive, that almost everything looks half dead in comparison.

Nouvelle Vague: The celebration of this marvelous and hilarious moment in the history of art, the appearance of Godard and of La nouvelle vague. A gesture of joy. You should be so confident and talented as a filmmaker to skip the tendency to be always ambivalent. To simply say: A bout de Souffle: What a marvel.

And another four films I really loved.

Afternoons of Solitude

A Poet

Eddington

and Kontinental 25 which is for me the definition of a small big film.

Then an old film which I discovered this year:

Saute ma ville by Chantal Akerman. A first short film. All her cinema, her life and life in general are already found in these 12:30 min she shot at the age of 18.
 

And to finish, Melancholia by Von Trier which I already saw when it was released so actually it doesn't really belong to this pole. But since I saw it again two days ago and I can't think of anything else, I couldn't help myself not to mention the evidence of its unique hugeness.
 

Best of 2025 (Ranked)

1. Sinners (Ryan Coogler)
2. One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions (Kahlil Joseph)
4. Weapons (Zach Cregger)
5. Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh)
6. My Father’s Shadow (Akinola Davies Jr)

New Discoveries

• The Rehearsal S2E2 (Nathan Fielder)
• House of Games (David Mamet)
• Uncle Uncle (Amar Ahmad)

Top Viewing Experiences
 

Watching “A Dream Longer Than the Night” (1976) by Niki de Saint Phalle at the American Cosmograph cinema in Toulouse, France with my very limited French language skills. 

Sharing a root beer float with a friend while watching Coil's depraved short films.

Favorite First Viewings in Alphabetical Order:
 

Akai nawa: Hateru made (Suzuki, 1987)
Animalicious (Lewis, 1999)
A Way to Die: The Films of Peter Christopherson and John Balance (Timeless, 2023)
Cemetery Without Crosses (Hossein, 1969)
Cyclone (Ray, 1987)
Electra Glide in Blue (Guerico, 1973)
Emanuelle and Françoise (D’Amato, 1975)
Flower and Snake (Konuma, 1974)
His Motorbike, Her Island (Obayashi, 1986)
Hollywood 90028 (Hornisher, 1973)
Identikit (Griffi, 1974)
Mirrored Mind (Ishii, 2005)
Queens of Evil (Cervi, 1970)
See You in Hell, My Darling (Nikolaidis, 1999)
Shredder Orpheus (McGinley, 1990)
The Apartment (Wilder, 1960)
The Girl from Rio (Franco, 1969)
The Horrors of Malformed Men (T. Ishii, 1969)
The Innerview (Beymer, 1973)
Trans-Europ-Express (Robbe-Grillet, 1966) 

2025 New Releases:

1. One Battle After Another, D. PTA
2. Sound of Falling, D. Mascha Schilinski
3. The Secret Agent, D. Kleber Mendonça Filho
4. My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, D. Julia Loktev 
5. Silent Friend, D. Ildikó Enyedi
6. April, D. Dea Kulumbegashvili 
7. Predators, D. David Osit 
8. Bonjour Tristesse, D. Durga Chew Bose
9. BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, D. Kahlil Joseph
10. The Perfect Neighbor, D. Geeta Gandbhir

Favourite First Viewings:

The Rose of Stamboul, D. Arthur Wellin (1919)

The Holy Night, D. Elvira Notari (1922)

My Son, D. Evgeny Cherveakov (1928)

Aloha Wanderwell's With Car and Camera Around the World (1929)

Seventh Heaven, D. Frank Borzage (1927)

Erotikon, D. Gustav Machatý (1929)

Sentimental Romance, D. Sergei Eisenstein & Grigorij Aleksandrov (1930)

One Hour With You, D. Ernst Lubitsch (1932)

Maskerade, D. Willi Forst (1934)

Melody of Murder, D. Bodil Ipsen (1944)

Till We Meet Again, D. Frank Borzage (1944)

Death is a Caress, D. Edith Carlmar (1949)

Summertime, D. David Lean (1955)

And That on Monday Morning, D. Luigi Comencini (1959)

Bube's Girl, D. Luigi Comencini (1963)

Winter Kept Us Warm, D. David Secter (1965)

Location Hunting is Palestine, D. Pier Paolo Pasolini (1965)

Komissar, D. Aleksandr Askoldov (1967)

Somewhere Beyond Love, D. Luigi Comencini (1974)

Calamity, D. Věra Chytilová (1982)

Best New Releases (ranked)

1. Eddington
2. One Battle After Another
3. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
4. After the Hunt
5. F1
6. TRON: Ares
7. The Shrouds
8. Misericordia
9. Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning
10. Bugonia

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. The Devil is a Woman (Von Sternberg, 1935)
2. You Can Count on Me (Lonergan, 2000)
3. La Vie de Jésus (Dumont, 1997)
4. As Bodas de Deus (Monteiro, 1999)
5. Some Came Running (Minnelli, 1958)
6. Spree (Kotlyarenko, 2020)
7. Escape from Alcatraz (Siegel, 1979)
8. A Couch in New York (Akerman, 1996)
9. We Own the Night (Gray, 2007)
10. Bloody Mama (Corman, 1970)
11. Prince of the City (Lumet, 1981)
12. Blue Steel (Bigelow, 1990)
13. Star 80 (Fosse, 1983)
14. How Green Was My Valley (Ford, 1941)
15. 35 Rhums (Denis, 2008)
16. The Rapture (Tolkin, 1991)
17. The Color Wheel (Perry, 2011)
18. Revenge (Scott, 1990)
19. Way Down East (Griffith, 1920)
20. Observe and Report (Hill, 2009)

New releases

The Best of Me (Heather Landsman)
Caught by the Tides (Jia Zhangke)
Debut, or, Objects of the Field of Debris as Currently Catalogued (Julian Castronovo)
Direct Action (Guillaume Cailleau, Ben Russell)
Fiume o morte! (Igor Bezinović)
Invention (Courtney Stephens)
Magellan (Lav Diaz)
My Undesirable Friends: Part I - Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev)
The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
Softshell (Jinho Myung)

 

New to me

 

Baby It’s You (1983) dir. John Sayles
A Camel (1981) dir. Ibrahim Shaddad
The Clock (1945) dir. Vincente Minnelli
Cluny Brown (1946) dir. Ernst Lubitsch
Cosmopolis (2012) dir. David Cronenberg
Exotica (1994) dir. Atom Egoyan
Following the Sun (1961) dir. Mikhail Kalik
Haut bas fragile (1995) dir. Jacques Rivette
Leila and the Wolves (1984) dir. Heiny Srour
Near Orouët (1971) dir. Jacques Rozier
The Novelist’s Film (2022) dir. Hong Sang-soo
Portrait of Jennie (1948) dir. William Dieterle
The Razor’s Edge (1985) dir. Jocelyne Saab
Road to Nowhere (2010) dir. Monte Hellman
Route One/USA (1989) dir. Robert Kramer
Some Came Running (1958) dir. Vincente Minnelli
Stars at Noon (2022) dir. Claire Denis
Stars in My Crown (1950) dir. Jacques Tourneur
A Walk with Johnny Guitar (1996) dir. João César Monteiro
Zeroes and Ones (2021) dir. Abel Ferrara

Note: The best things I watched in 2025 were the IndyCar Snap-on Milwaukee Mile 250 and the Motul Petit Le Mans IMSA season closer.

2025 films I liked in NO particular order

• Athina Tsangari. HARVEST (US theatrical in 2025)
• Kate Beecroft EAST OF WALL
• Janie Geiser SUDDEN TOURNIQUET (short)
• Julie Murray ESTUARY (TIDAL) (EBB) (short)
• Raoul Peck ORWELL: 2+2=5
• Dea Klumbegashvili APRIL (US theatrical in 2025)
• Jafar Panahi IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT
• Radu Jude SLEEP # 2 (US release in 2025)
• Radu Jude KONTINENTAL (though not among his best)

Favorite First Viewings (Unranked)

Andor (Tony Gilroy) The empire will fall.

The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola) I stood up in the middle of this watch and paused it and yelled this is real cinema to my scurrying cat.

Dislocations (Josefa Ntjam) Watched with my partner at MACAAL.

Tampopo (Jūzō Itami) My partner and I went on a quest for ramen in Florence and told the head chef at the restaurant we found about Tampopo. He proceeded to pull out the dvd from behind the counter.

The Hand of God (Paolo Sorrentino) Shoutouts to Naples and shoutouts to their patron saint Maradona.

One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) Are you shitting me?

Yukon (Cole Bennett) Gopro printed on 16mm.

I am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov) I love how Americans are depicted in this cuz this is legitimately how white people are in my head.

Rap World Day (Edward Frumkin) The ultimate going to the movies film made by everyone’s favorite moviegoer.

Travel Companion (Travis Wood, Alex Mallis) This really how it feels to be a broke filmmaker.

My Top 10 Repertory Viewings

• January 2 - Hold That Blonde! (George Marshall, 1945) projected with friends in my backyard
• January 25/February 1 - Wild at Heart + Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 1990 / 2001) both at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood; 35mm projections
• April 20 - Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992) projected in my friend Josh's home theater in Brooklyn
• April 22 - Water and Power (Pat O'Neill, 1989) at the Film-Makers' Cooperative in Manhattan; 16mm projection
• June 2 - A New Life (Phillipe Grandrieux, 2002) at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica; 35mm projection
• June 26 - Side Phase Drift (John Whitney Jr., 1965) at 2220 Arts + Archives in Los Angeles; 3-channel 16mm projection
• August 26 - The Doll (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) on TV at my fiance's mom's house in Santa Cruz
• Sept 28 - The Hidden (Jack Sholder, 1987) on my desktop computer monitor at home
• Nov 1 - Popcorn (Mark Herrier, 1991) on my laptop in a Nashville hotel room

For first views, my favorites are below (unranked)

• Michelangelo Antonioni “Zabriskie Point” (1970) at Anthology Film Archives
• Robert Ashley “Perfect Lives” (1984) at Spectacle Theater
• Michel Auder “A Coupla White Faggots Sitting Around Talking” (1981) at Anthology Film Archives
• David Lynch “The Straight Story” (1999) at Livvy and Charlie’s
• The Otolith Group “Mascon” (2024) at Light Industry
• Sophie Calle and Greg Shephard “No Sex Last Night” (1996) at BAM
• Marcel Broodthaers “Rendez-vous Mit Jacques Offenbach” (1972) at Anthology Film Archives
• Raymond Pettibon “Sir Drone” (1989) via UbuWeb
• Jodie Mack “Unsubscribe #1: Special Offer Inside” (2010) at Rockaway Film Festival
• Chantal Akerman “One Day Pina Asked…” (1983) at MoMA
• Chantal Akerman “Night and Day” (1991) at MoMA
• Chantal Akerman “Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels” (1994) at MoMA
• Gregory Markopoulos “ENIAIOS IV” (1947-1991) at Anthology Film Archives
• Theresa Hak Kyung Cha “Translations from a Willow Tree” (1976) at Palais de Tokyo
• Yair Oelbaum “Untitled (Slide Projection for Aléa)” (2014-2022/2025) at Aléa

TOP 10 of 2025 (Theatrical Features)

1. Afternoons of Solitude
2. The Fishing Place
3. Henry Fonda for President
4. Magellan
5. The Testament of Ann Lee
6. Final Destination: Bloodlines
7. The Secret Agent
8. The Shrouds
9. No Other Choice
10. The Mastermind

Special mention to Bahram Beyzai’s shadow-play Jana and Baladoor on YouTube

 

Best First-Time Views of 2025

1. The Annunciation of Marie (Alain Cuny, 1991)
2. Rome Wants Another Caesar (Miklós Jancsó, 1974)
3. Night at the Crossroads (Jean Renoir, 1932)
4. Tol’able David (Henry King, 1921)
5. The End of an Old Song (John Cohen, 1969)
6. The Ice Palace (Per Blom, 1987)
7. Ghost Trio (Samuel Beckett, 1977)
8. The Mongols (Parviz Kimiavi, 1973)
9. Sia, the Myth of the Python (Dani Kouyaté, 2001)
10. The Satin Slipper (Manoel de Oliveira, 1985)
11. The Colors of Iris (Nikos Panayotopoulos, 1974)
12. Le dernier caravansérail (Odyssées) (Ariane Mnouchkine, 2006)
13. The Hips of J.W. (João César Monteiro, 1997)
14. The White Sister (Henry King, 1923)
15. The Ghost Ship (Mark Robson, 1943)
16. The Garden of Stones (Parviz Kimiavi, 1976)
17. The Last Flight (William Dieterle, 1931)
18. Daddy and Them (Billy Bob Thornton, 2001)
19. Snow Country (Shiro Toyoda, 1957)
20. The Crime of Aldeia Velha (Manuel Guimarães, 1964)

First Viewings

• XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX (Ken Jacobs, 1970)
• MY BROTHER’S WEDDING (Charles Burnett, 1983)
• THE LONGEST SUMMER (Fruit Chan, 1998)
• THE BLACKOUT (Abel Ferrara, 1997)
• THE LONGEST NITE (Patrick Yau, Johnnie To, 1998)

New releases:
 

1. Sirat
2. The Ugly Stepsister
3. Familiar Touch
4. Magic Farm
5. If I Had Legs I Would Kick You
6. Bugonia
7. Weapons
8. Bring Her Back
9. Secret Mall Apartment
10. Final Destination: Bloodlines

First viewings (not ranked)

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969)
The Long Walk wishes it was this

Babycat (2023)
Surprisingly wholesome

MadS (2024)
How did I miss this masterpiece last year?!?!?!

The Endless (2017)
I was trying to watch films with a fate worse than death, and I succeeded

Caveat (2020)
Run down cabin as a film location will always work for me

Bloody Nose Empty Pockets (2020)
It’s like spending a night at a dive bar in Hamtramck, MI, or anywhere in the world, really!

Tar (2022)
I thought this was a documentary so I skipped it initially, turns out, not a documentary

Santa Sangre (1989)
I love mommy enmeshment films.

Boxing Helena (1993)
Really good usage of Sadeness - Enigma

Der Bunker (2015)
All child roles should be played by adults.
Waffle House Training - Pull Drop Mark Order Calling Method
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jky5ZXI0axc
This is the most insane video I’ve seen on YouTube in a very long time.

Itchy Boots (2018-present)
Noraly is a Dutch motorcycle adventurer, and I absolutely adore watching her adventures.

Tales From The Hood (1995)
I love short stories made into a narrative!

Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023)
UGH I bet this would have been on a previous new releases top 10 if only I had watched it in time!!

Two Moon Junction (1988)
It’s not a good film, but was an extremely fun watch with a group.

Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers (1980)
I now eat the garlic chunks that make it into my salad dressings instead of casting them aside.

Aliens (1986)
Fuck it, I need to see the whole franchise.

Little Children (2006)
The novel has been sitting untouched in the nearby “Free Little Library” for a year now, love that someone put that there.

The Reflecting Skin (1990)
I watched this on my phone on a plane and it was still an incredible experience.

Favorite new releases
Festival premieres and new-to-me 2025 theatrical releases. Unranked and in alphabetical order.

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Broken Rage (Takeshi Kitano)
• Endless Cookie (Seth Scriver & Peter Scriver)
• Escape (Masao Adachi)
• If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (Mary Bronstein)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• Paul (Denis Côté)
• A Poet (Simón Mesa Soto)
• Writing Life: Annie Ernaux Through the Eyes of High School Students (Claire Simon)

Favorite first viewings, discoveries, etc:

1. Stoney Knows How (Pacho Lane and Alan Govenar)
2. The Black Tower (John Smith)
3. Deep Crimson (Arturo Ripstein)
4. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks)
5. Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale)
6. Totò Nudo (Diego Perrone)
7. The Blue Gentleman (Dan Hentschel)
8. Time Without Pity (Joseph Losey)
9. Jacques Pépin Cooking at Home: James Beard’s Famous Onion Sandwich
10. The House of Mirth (Terence Davies)
11. Foul Play with Anthony Davis
12. The Life and Death of 9413: A Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey, Slavko Vorkapich)
13. No Sex Last Night (Sophie Calle & Greg Shephard)
14. My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
15. Everything for a Scrambled Pancake! (Irena Dodalová, Karel Dodal)
16. The Worm (Ed Atkins)
17. Popping a choccy milk (OP unknown)
18. The Beekeeper (David Ayer)
19. Shadowboxer (Lee Daniels)
20. Gelli Haha at Night Club 101

First Viewings

• Yeast (Mary Bronstein, 2008)
• May (Lucky Mckee, 2002)
• Three Days (Sarunas Bartas, 1991)
• Wall (Takashi Ito, 1987)
• Anatomy of a Relationship (Luc Moullet, 1976)
• Rosa la rose, fille publique (Paul Vecchiali, 1986)
• The Kidnapping (Dimitri Kirsanoff, 1934)
• Chaos (Coline Serreau, 2001)
• Seisaku’s Wife (Yasuzo Masumura, 1965)
• Female Perversions (Susan Streitfeld, 1996)
• Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, 1964)
• Clubbed to Death (Yolande Zauberman, 1996)
• The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948)
• Bread (Manoel de Oliveira, 1959)
• I’m Going Home (Manoel de Oliveira, 2001)
• Love Hotel (Shinji Somai, 1985)
• Nightshift (Robina Rose, 1981)
• Gyromorphosis (Hy Hirsh, 1954)

I've been editing Part II of My Undesirable Friends all year, so I haven't gone to as many movies as I usually do. I realized my most memorable film experiences of the year were about the act of sharing films I love with people I love. Rewatching In The Mood for Love and 2046 over consecutive days with my 17-year-old goddaughter—who was seeing them for the first time—seeing them through her eyes and seeing her so moved walking out of 2046, she cried over an ex-boyfriend, who we later decided was definitely not worth crying over. Rewatching Fellini's 8 1/2 and Billy Wilder's The Apartment with my Mama, who hadn't seen them in years. Watching Sentimental Value, It Was Just an Accident and The Secret Agent with Ira Dolinina and No Other Choice with Ksenia Mironova—all in the giant Alice Tully Hall at NYFF, and thinking wow it's so amazing to be in such a huge space sharing great movies with strangers. And there's one movie I saw for the first time this past year that I can't seem to share with anyone because it disappeared from streamers (so I'm hoping someone sees this and helps), Alice Rohrwacher's The Wonders.

New Releases

• Afternoons of Solitude (Albert Serra)
• Dreams (Michel Franco)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Orphan (László Nemes)
• The Garden of Earthly Delights (Morgan Knibbe)
• Short Summer (Nastia Korkia)
• Wind, Talk to Me (Stefan Djordjevic)
• Yes! (Nadav Lapid)
• The Most Precious of Cargoes (Michel Hazanavicius)
• The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Mohammad Rasoulof)

Best New Releases

1. Afternoons of Solitude (dir. Albert Serra)
2. One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. April (dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili)
4. By The Stream (dir. Hong Sang-soo)
5. My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow (dir. Julia Loktev)
6. It Was Just An Accident (dir. Jafar Panahi)
7. The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (dir. Braden Sitter Sr.)
8. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (dir. Mary Bronstein)
9. Castration Movie Anthology i. Traps / ii. The Best of Both Worlds (dir. Louise Weard)
10. Eephus (dir. Carson Lund)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

1. Italian for Beginners (2000, dir. Lone Scherfig)
2. Let It Ride (1989, dir. Joe Pytka)
3. Inserts (1975, dir. John Byrum)
4. Afterglow (1997, dir. Alan Rudolph)
5. Pilgrim, Farewell (1980, dir. Michael Roemer)
6. Shipwrecked on Route D17 (2002, dir. Luc Moullet)
7. Go Go Tales (2007, dir. Abel Ferrara)
8. True Crime (1999, dir. Clint Eastwood)
9. Sugar (2008, dir. Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck)
10. Valerie Flake (1999, dir. John Putch)
 

New Releases (unranked)

• WTO/99 (Ian Bell)
• Invention (Courtney Stephens)
• River of Grass (Sasha Wortzel)
• Predators (David Osit)
• Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)
• Eraserhead Xiu Xiu (Xiu Xiu, performed at Elsewhere)
• Eight Postcards from Utopia (Radu Jude, Christian Ferencz-Flatz)
• Lover, Lovers, Loving, Love (Jodie Mack)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries
 

• Watersmith (Will Hindle, 1969)
• Hypnosis Display (Paul Clipson, 2014) + 16mm reel of rare Paul Clipson material, live scored by Jefre Cantu-Ledesma at Arverne Cinema
• As I Said at Microscope Gallery (works by Copper Frances Giloth, 1979-1994)
• Both at Once: Video by Peer Bode at Spectacle (Peer Bode, 1977-1983)
• Adolescence of Utena (Kunihiko Ikuhara, 1999)
• The Devonsville Terror (Ulli Lommel, 1983)
• His Motorbike, Her Island (Nobuhiko Obayash, 1986)
• Virgin Machine (Monika Treut, 1988)
• My Father is Coming (Monika Treut, 1991)
• Letters Not About Love (Jacki Ochs, 1998)
• The Flying Luna Clipper (Ikko Ono, 1987)
• The Parapraxis Film Festival at Light Industry

2025 Discoveries

• Sudden Rain (Naruse, 1956)
• Pilgrim, Farewell (Roemer, 1980)
• Henry Fonda for President (Horwath, 2024)
• One Week (Keaton, 1920)
• Trouble Every Day (Denis, 2001)
• Dog Day Afternoon (Lumet, 1975)
• Wife (Naruse, 1953)
• 36 Fillette (Breillat, 1988)
• I Will Buy You (Kobayashi, 1956)
• Devil in a Blue Dress (Franklin, 1995)
• The Vessel’s Isle (Wang Di, 2024)
• La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet (Wiseman, 2009)
• Hideko the Bus Conductress (Naruse, 1941)
• Repast (Naruse, 1951)
• The Height of the Coconut Trees (Du Jie, 2024)

Best New releases (unranked)

As an overworked movie theater employee I didn’t actually see that many new releases (in a theater) this year. Fire me!

• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson) - 70mm, Music Box Theatre
• Eephus (Carson Lund, 2025) - DCP, Music Box Theatre
• "Two Projectors & A Barrel Full of Monkeys" (Bruce McClure, 2025) - live projector performance, Church of the Three Crosses
• infinite column (arc, 2022–2025) - live performance, Celluloid Now

First viewings and Discoveries

• Lemora (Richard Blackburn, 1973) 16mm, Music Box Theatre
• Dreadnaught (Yuen Woo-ping, 1981) 35mm, Music Box Theatre
• Jardin du Sel (Rose Lowder, 2011) - 16mm, Celluloid Now
• Light, Noise, Smoke and Light, Noise, Smoke (Tomonari Nishikawa, 2023) - 16mm, Celluloid Now
• Music of the Spheres (Jordan Belson, 1977) 16mm, Constellation (Chicago Film Society)
• L for Leisure (Whitney Horn & Lev Kalman, 2009) DCP, Music Box Theatre
• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960) 35mm, Music Box Theatre (Chicago Film Society)
• Lightning (Mikio Naruse, 1955) 35mm at Gene Siskel Film Center, (Chicago Film Society)
• The Bandwagon (Vincente Minnelli, 1953) - 35mm, Northeastern Illinois University (Chicago Film Society)
• Madonna: Truth or Dare (Alek Keshishian, 1991) DCP, Music Box Theatre
• Going Down (Haydn Keenan, 1983) - DCP, Music Box Theatre
• “Knife Throwing Mom” (Universal Newsreel, 1950s) - 16mm from the collection of Heather McAdams

First Viewings

• Die Bergkatze (The Wildcat, Ernst Lubitsch, 1921)
• Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931)
• Wahlkampf 1932 (Letzte Wahl) (Election Campaign 1932 (Last Election), Ella Bergmann-Michel, 1933)
• De Mayerling à Sarajevo (From Meyerling to Sarajevo, Max Ophuls, 1940)
• Bambini in città (Luigi Comencini, 1946)
• Husband and Wife (Mikio Naruse, 1953)
• The Far Country (Anthony Mann, 1954)
• Jet Pilot (Josef von Sternberg, 1957)
• Run of the Arrow (Samuel Fuller, 1957)
• En el balcón vacío (On the Empty Balcony, Jomí García Ascot, 1961)
• Lettre à la prison (Marc Scialom, 1969)
• Journey (Bahram Beyzai, 1972)
• L'Olivier (Groupe Cinéma Vincennes, 1976)
• Chickens (Omar Amirlay, 1977)
• Gehenu Lamai (The Girls, Sumitra Peries, 1978)
• El Sur (Víctor Erice, 1983)
• Movimento das Coisas (The Movement of Things, Manuela Serra, 1985)
• Rosa de Areia (Margarida Cordeiro, António Reis, 1989)
• Celebrity (Woody Allen, 1998)
• Un petit cas de conscience (Marie-Claude Treilhou, 2002)

First Viewings & New Release:

• Eddington (Ari Aster, 2025)
• They Were Sisters (Arthur Crabtree, 1945)
• Madonna of the Seven Moons (Arthur Crabtree, 1945)
• Freud (John Huston, 1962)
• Deadline at Dawn (Harold Clurman, 1946)
• My Foolish Heart (Mark Robson, 1949)
• I Walk the Line (John Frankenheimer, 1970)
• Ladies in Love (Edward H. Griffith, 1937)
• Seven Women (John Ford, 1966)
• Exclusive (Alexander Hall, 1937)

New Releases (Unranked)

• Gangsterism (Medina)
• Hair, Paper, Water (Graux, Quy)
• The Ice Tower (Hadzihalilovic)
• It Was Just an Accident (Panahi)
• Magellan (Diaz)
• The Mastermind (Reichardt)
• Peter Hujar’s Day (Sachs)
• The Phoenician Scheme (Anderson)
• Razeh-del (Tafakory)
• The Secret Agent (Filho)

First Viewings

• 3 Women (1977, Altman)
• The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter (1984, Lan)
• Ballet (1995, Wiseman)
• Barres (1984, Moullet)
• Betty Tells Her Story (1972, Brandon)
• Compensation (1999, Davis)
• Doctor Zhivago (1965, Lean)
• Double Team (1997, Tsui)
• Elvira Madigan (1967, Widerberg)
• Evil Under the Sun (1982, Hamilton)
• The Little Prince (1974, Donen)
• Mermaids (1990, Benjamin)
• Miracle in Milan (1951, De Sica)
• No Sex Last Night (1996, Calle, Shephard)
• Parking (1985, Demy)
• Sholay (1975, Sippy)
• Side/Walk/Shuttle (1992, Gehr)
• Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971, Mills)
• The Wages of Fear (1953, Clouzot)
• The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926, King)

First Viewings

• The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill (Irving, 2003)
• Streetwise (Bell, 1984)
• The Red Shoes (Powell + Pressburger, 1948)
• Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (Prigent, 2007)
• Kid Icarus (Ott + McLaughlin, 2008)
• Shut Up and Sing (Peck + Kopple, 2006)
• The Day the Earth Blew Up (Browngardt, 2024)
• Miracle Mile (De Jarnatt, 1989)
• Juror #2 (Eastwood, 2024)
• Mai’s America (Poras, 2002)
• Escape from L.A. (Carpenter, 1996)

Top 11 2025 films (in reverse alphabetical order)

- Vulcanizadora

- Sirat

- One Battle After Another

- Marty Supreme

- Invention

- If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

- Happyend

- Eephus

- The Code

- By The Stream

- Afternoons of Solitude

Favorite First Viewings

- Dig! (2004)

- WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971)

- Chained for Life (2019)

- Wanda (1970)

- Welfare (1975)

- Belfast, Maine (1999)

- Near Death (1989)

- Domestic Violence (2001)

- The Bellboy (1960)

- Freaked (1993)

- The Asthenic Syndrome (1989)

- No Sex Last Night (1996)

- Les Sieges de L'Alcazar (1989)

- I'm Not Fascinating (1996)

- Christiane F. (1981)

- Einstein's Brain (1998)

- Unforgiven (1992)

- Rachel Getting Married (2007)

- The Village (2004)

- Night of the Juggler (1980)

- Umberto D. (1952)

New Releases (Unordered)

• Zootopia 2 (Jared Bush, Byron Howard)
• Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper)
• Caught Stealing (Darren Aronofsky)
• Shifty (Adam Curtis)
• Eddington (Ari Aster)
• F1: The Movie (Joseph Kosinski)
• Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie)
• Warfare (Ray Mendoza, Alex Garland)
• Superman (James Gunn)
• 28 Years Later (Danny Boyle)

First Viewings and Discoveries

The Doors (Oliver Stone, 1991) on 70mm at The Paris Theater.
The scene in After the Hunt (Luca Guadagnino, 2025) where Andrew Garfield orders Indian food.
Jon Hamm’s Criterion Channel merch in Your Friends and Neighbors.
Keith Richards as Jack Sparrow’s dad “Edward Teague” in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Rob Marshall, 2011).
Dwayne Johnson’s performance as Mark Kerr in The Smashing Machine (Benny Safdie, 2025).
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler, 2018).
Jim’s wedding speech.
The scene in Materialists (Celine Song, 2025) where Dakota Johnson orders a Coke and a beer.

The other scene in Materialists where Dakota Johnson and Pedro Pascal have dinner at Nobu and it’s shot like the diner scene from Heat.
Jurassic World Dominion - Extended Edition (Colin Trevorrow, 2022) over two or three work days on Peacock Premium.
Variety Coffee in Thunderbolts* (Jake Schreier, 2025).
The Yards (James Gray, 2000) at home with mild food poisoning from I Sodi.
Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright, 2005) at Regal Essex Crossing on Easter Sunday.
The Joe Wright directed episodes of Showtime’s The Agency: Central Intelligence (formerly known as The Agency) on Paramount+ Premium.
“Ten Mickey Chunks."
The “King Size” cat burglary in Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (Christian Gudegast, 2025).
Oasis Live ‘25 at MetLife Stadium.
The Aerosmith preshow from Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster at Walt Disney World.
A very cinematic dinner at the newly re-opened Babbo.
The Chair Company on HBO Max.

Best New Releases (10 films)
In no order:

• Megadoc (dir. Mike Figgis)
• Mickey 17 (dir. Bong Joon-ho)
• On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (dir. Rungano Nyoni)
• One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
• One of Them Days (dir. Lawrence Lamont)
• Resurrection (dir. Bi Gan) - Making an exception to my “no films I’m working on” rule here because I cannot stress enough how much regret folks will have if they miss seeing this on the biggest screen possible. The pros will sit a few rows closer than normal, too.
• Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)
• Sirât (dir. Oliver Laxe)
• The Testament of Ann Lee (dir. Mona Fastvold)
• The Voice of Hind Rajab (dir. Kaouther Ben Hania)

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Compensation (dir. Zeinabu irene Davis)
• Highest 2 Lowest (dir. Spike Lee)
• Angel’s Egg (dir. Mamoru Oshii)
• Eyes Without a Face (dir. George Franju)
• Floating Clouds (dir. Mikio Naruse)
• The Long Night (dir. Woodie King Jr)
• Pokiri (dir. Puri Jagannadh)

New releases (unranked)

• It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)
• Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
• One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson)
• The Mastermind (Kelly Reichardt)
• Sentimental Value (Joachim Trier)
• Eephus (Carson Lund)
• The Shrouds (David Cronenberg)
• Little, Big, and Far (Jem Cohen)
• Invention (Courtney Stephens)
• Cloud (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
   

First viewings and discoveries (unranked)

• Hollywood 90028 (Christina Hornisher, 1973)
• Early Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1956)
• The Past is Past [but there is something now that I regret like I was about to do it] (Josh Lewis, 2015)
• Heroic Purgatory (Yoshishige Yoshida, 1970)
• La vallée close (Jean-Claude Rousseau, 1995)
• When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Mikio Naruse, 1960)
• American Hunter (Arizal, 1989)
• 2/Duo (Nobuhiro Suwa, 1997)
• Confessions of a Young American Housewife (Joe Sarno, 1974)
• Central Park (Frederick Wiseman, 1990)
• Huge Pupils (Andrew Noren, 1968)
• Who Killed Teddy Bear? (Joseph Cates, 1965)
• Spacey (Takashi Ito, 1981)
• The Shape of Night (Noboru Nakamura, 1964)
• Untitled (Ernie Gehr, 1977)
• Trans-Europ-Express (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1966)
• The Killer (John Woo, 1989)
• Corruption (Roger Watkins, 1983)
• Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1964)
• Offering (Claudio Caldini, 1978)

New Movies I Liked (Not Ranked)

• Universal Language - Matthew Rankin
• Invention - Courtney Stephens
• Cloud - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Reflection in a Dead Diamond - Bruno Forzani, Hélène Cattet
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl - Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham
• One Battle After Another - PTA
• Weapons - Zach Cregger
• Eddington - Ari Aster
• Misericordia - Alain Guiraudie
• The Heirloom - Ben Petrie

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

• Gösta (2019) Lukas Moodysson (this is a wonderful mini series)
• Dirty Money (1972) - Deny Arcand
• Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) - Edward F. Cline
• Rubin & Ed (1991) - Trent Harris
• To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) William Friedkin
• Stranger by the Lake (2013) - Alain Guiraudie
• In the Spirit (1990) - Sandra Seacat
• A League of Ordinary Gentlemen (2004) - Christopher Browne
• Revenge (2017) - Coralie Fargeaut
• Red Rooms (2023) Pascal Plante
• Freaky Farley (2007) - Charles Roxburgh
• Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (1996) - Ricky Jay & David Mamet
• Petite Maman (2021) - Céline Sciamma

Best New Releases

1. Sentimental Value

2. The Secret Agent

3. It Was Just an Accident

4. Sorry, Baby

5. Black Bag

6. Die My Love

7. Sirat

8. Blue Moon

9. Boys Go to Jupiter

10. Frankenstein

Favorite First Viewings and Discoveries

The Wicker Man (1973)

Persona (1966)

The Wages of Fear (1953)

The Fog (1980)

Gimme Shelter (1970)

Ran (1985)

Bad Black (2016)

Waiting for Guffman (1996)

You Can Count on Me (2000)

Black Narcissus (1947)

Top Ten Films of 2025

1. Castration Movie Anthology ii. The Best of Both Worlds (Dir. Louise Weard) 
2. Caught by the Tides (Dir. Jia Zhangke) 
3. Castration Movie Anthology i. The Fear of Having No One to Hold at the End of the World (Dir. Louise Weard)
4. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)
5. Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk (Dir. Sepideh Farsi)
6. Sinners (Dir. Ryan Coogler)
7. Universal Language (Dir. Matthew Rankin) 
8. Afternoons of Solitude (Dir. Albert Serra)
9. 9. Wake Up Dead Man (Dir. Rian Johnson)
10. Blue Moon (Dir. Richard Linklater)

Major Releases I Haven’t Watched Yet: Marty Supreme, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, and Viet and Nam

My Ten Favorite Cinematic Experiences in San Francisco in 2025 (One per Venue)

• Blue Velvet (Dir. David Lynch) on 35mm at the Balboa Theatre: January 16th (on the day David Lynch died)
• Hard Truths (Dir. Mike Leigh) in an empty Cinemark Century at Tanforan: January 30
• Buddies (Dir. Arthur J. Bressan Jr.) at the Roxie Theater (as part of 40 Years of Queer): February 22
• The Best of Me (Dir. Heather Landsman) on a laptop in my cluttered room: March 13
• Princess Mononoke (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki) on the IMAX at AMC Metreon: March 29
• Brewster McCloud (Dir. Robert Altman) on 35mm at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission: April 2
• The entirety of Light Field 2025 at The Lab (in particular In-Out Around by Luis Macias): April 11-13
• Sinners (Dir. Ryan Coogler) on 70mm at the Grand Lake Theater: May 2
• Flowing (Dir. Mikio Naruse) on 35mm at BAMPFA (as part of Mikio Naruse: The Auteur as Salaryman): July 19
• Red River (Dir. Howard Hawks)/Rio Bravo (Dir. Howard Hawks) on 35mm at the Stanford Theater (as part of Classic Westerns): November 2

First Viewings

The Annihilation of Fish (Burnett)
The Antiquities of Rome (Rousseau)
Baseball (Burns)
The Big Heat (Lang)
La Cabale des oursins (Moullet)
Charade (Donen)
The Craving (Francis Ford)
The Devil is a Woman (Sternberg)
Dying (Roemer)
Fragments of an Alms-Film (Monteiro)
Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (Godard)
Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen)
Immanence (Shahani)
Méditerranée (Pollet)
New Desk (Valentin)
Pachamama: Our Land (Nestler)
Paris s’en va (Rivette)
La Religieuse (Rivette)
Rosa de Areia (Reis-Cordeiro)
Shoulder Arms (Chaplin)
Stolen Kisses (Truffaut)
Stop for Bud (John, Thorsen, Leth)
What’s up, Doc? (Bogdanovich)
Zodiac (Fincher)

New Releases

By the Stream
7 Walks with Mark Brown
The Annihilation of Fish
Henry Fonda for President
You Burn Me
Love Hotel
Cloud
Fire of Wind
The Mastermind

• Seventeen - Joel Demott & Jeff Kreines (1982)
• Aloha - Cameron Crowe (2015)
• Animalicious - Mark Lewis (1999)
• Australia - Baz Luhrmann (2008)
• Get Shorty - Barry Sonnenfeld (1995)
• Limitless - Neil Burger (2011)
• Bowling for Columbine - Michael Moore (2002)
• Eddington - Ari Aster (2025)
• The Mosquito Coast - Peter Weir (1986)
• Bigbug - Jean-Pierre Jeunet (2022)
• Megadoc - Mike Figgis (2025)
• Fraud - Dean Fleischer-Camp (2016)

Here are  some of the films I saw in 2025 that I really liked:

• Bird, dir. Andrea Arnold
• I’m Still Here, dir. Walter Salles
• Apocalypse in the Tropics dir. Petra Costa
• Writing Life: Highschoolers reading Annie Ernaux, dir. Claire Simon
• Misericordia, dir. Alain Guiraudie
• Sentimental Value – dir. Joachim Trier
• Dreams for a Better Past, dir. Albert Kuhn
• Bend in the River, Robb Moss

New Releases

In 2024 I saw over 80 films in the theater - in 2025 it was much less, due to 6 months in Atlanta on a job (during which I experienced daily Screen Slate email FOMO…). But here’s what I saw and liked:

• Görünür Görünmez: Bir (Oto) Sansür Antolojisi (Seen Unseen: An Anthology of (Auto)Censorship) (Doc Fortnight)
• No Other Land (Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor)
• Blue Moon (Richard Linklater)
• Peter Hujar's Day (Ira Sachs)
• Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro)
• Bogancloch (Ben Rivers)
• I'm Still Here (Walter Salles)
• Oceans are the Real Continents (Tommaso Santambrogio)
• Enzo (Robin Campillo)
• It Was Just an Accident (Jafar Panahi)

2025, unranked

• Peter Hujar’s Day
• Zodiac Killer Project
• Late Fame
• One Battle After Another
• Videoheaven
• Black Bag
• The Mastermind
• Father Mother Sister Brother
• Nouvelle Vague
• Sentimental Value
• Bugonia

First viewings

• The Spirit of the Beehive (Erice, 1973)
• Lily, aime-moi (Dugowson, 1975)
• The Ghost Goes West (Clair, 1935)
• Hue and Cry (Crichton, 1947)
• Strongroom (Sewell, 1962)
• La valigia dei sogni (Comenicini, 1953)
• Erotikon (Machaty, 1929)
• Girl with Hyacinths (Ekman, 1950)
• Of Mice and Men (Milestone 1939)
• 11 Harrowhouse (Avakian, 1974)
• Russian Roulette (Lombardo, 1975)
• Montage V: How to Play Pinball (Sourbeer, 1965)

Top Ten
10. Cover-Up (dir. Laura Poitras & Mark Obenahus)
9. Bugonia (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
8. Shifty (dir. Adam Curtis)
7. Friendship (dir. Andrew DeYoung)
6. Caught By The Tides (dir. Jia Zhangke)
5. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (dir. Mary Bronstein)
4. The Phoenician Scheme (dir. Wes Anderson)
3. Magellan (dir. Lav Diaz)
2. Afternoons of Solitude (dir. Albert Serra)
1. One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

First Viewings
Matador (dir. Pedro Almodóvar, 1986)
L'Eclisse (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)
The Quince Tree Sun (dir. Victor Erice, 1992)
The Clock (dir. Christian Marclay, 2010)
Anatomy of a Relationship (dir. Luc Moullet, 1976)
Wind Across the Everglades (dir. Nicholas Ray, 1958)
I Am Curious (Yellow) (dir. Vilgot Sjöman, 1967)
I-Be Area (dir. Ryan Trecartin, 2007)
The Wayward Cloud (dir. Tsai Ming-Liang, 2005)
Central Park (dir. Frederick Wiseman, 1990)