[Poll] 2025 Insert Credit Forums Favorite Films

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Okay, let’s do it:

Oh, so you’re remaking that list? Let me think and I’ll edit and put my own 10 movies, then :blush:

Céline and Julie go boating (1974)
First of all: thanks, @captain, since I forgot (lol).
As for the film, Jacques Rivette is my favorite filmmaker, or at least one of my favorites. He’s kind of a magician that has learnt several tricks not only through his experience doing films, but also by observing them and by reading (one can see traces of Lang or several French filmmakers, but he’s known to have read and was a huge fan of Honoré de Balzac). Céline and Julie is a huge one, first for being one of the films that inspired Almodóvar’s filmmaking, but I think Pedro didn’t catch, or wasn’t as able to, get into what Rivette did with this one. This is a very playful movie that, at the same time, is incredibly deep and deceptively simple. I could also put other films by Rivette like L’amour fou, Ne touchez pas le hache or Haut, bas, fragile, but this one is my favorite.

Enthusiasm (1930)
Vertov is one of my favorite directors, and while he has a movie that is much more famous (A man with a movie camera), this one is his first movie in which he incorporated sound to it. As so, he composes a propaganda commie film about the possession of means for the people and by the people, and uses a refinery as a beautiful way to mesh light, sound and image into a symphonie of working. It’s an amazing one once you get to that part.

The Passion of Joan d’Arc (1928)
One can say Falconetti’s acting may be one of the best, if not the best, in history. Those ones are not wrong, but it’s not enough to encapsulate the beauty of the film and how impressive it is even up to today’s standards. The film mostly is shot on close ups, and contrasts very well those shots with the shots from everything else. It’s a contest of wills, and portrays the struggle of Joan d’Arc against the French church, but not only: it could be the perfect court movie, but not only, since it’s the

The Crowd (1928)
I’ve got to see an enhanced edition that is not made by AI, but it’s an amazing movie about capitalism embedded into a love story, and the way Vidor films it is amazing. It seems like a big Americana novel in how it’s spun narratively, and it’s full of irony and critique (like another movie he made in the 30s that had kind of a socialist commentary, Our Daily Bread) about the system, anticipating also the injustices of the system. Also, quite prescient considering the 1929 economic crash was about to unfold.

Film Socialisme (2010)
I love Jean-Luc Godard’s films, specially after he left the Dziga Vertov group, since his density is also conflated with more commentarys than ever, his work more polished, and his tecnique more incisive and smart. Film Socialism is the sublimation of it (or you could say The Image Book, since it’s a film using the images of other films to comment about the art of film), but here it’s still a story and a commentary while also being incredibly daring in form and in commentary. Never have I seen such an “unpolished”, “brutish”, oversaturated image being more creatively expressive than a lot of even avantgarde or experimental films.

Away with words (1999)
I am not a fan of Wong Kar-Wai’s film (he’s someone who bores me just looking at some of his images, with the exception of In the mood for love), but his DOP made a film using his techniques that appealed to my heart while also being very daring. This is a movie about communication and feeling lost in the maze of the urban, cosmopolitan cities that felt continuously decaying, and Doyle uses the techniques of Wong Kar Wai to convey that lack of communication, that indecision and feeling of being lost in the world, but also it’s a funny one (the gay manager is a magical character).

Pièce touchée (1989)
A collage image in which Martin Arnold takes a film scenes and distort it up to create art in a chaotic and distressing way. This, with Outer Space, are maybe two of my favorite experimental films that attempt to use other images to create some horrific and despairing effects.

Tea and sympathy (1956)
Now we get into the melodramas. Tea and Sympathy seems to be the first movie that attemps to generate a romantic melodrama that is not that romantic, and instead treads a little bit into the coming of age (and adresses gay matters, but not that directly) and masculinity while also being incredibly beautiful by how Minnelli uses color. It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in that term, and Minnelli is one filmmaker that makes everything really colourful and shining even in films that are a tearjerker like this one.

An affair to remember (1957)
The most perfect romantic melodrama. Sensitive as fuck, subtle, but also funny, it touches a lot of corners and is stunning in terms not only of color, but of photography, and it is well-accompanied by the use of space. The 15 last minutes are amazing by how it slowly unfolds into that beautiful climax.

Mammame (1986)
I could also put other films by Raoul Ruiz, but this one kicks ass. It’s an avantgarde movie in which the Chilean writer collaborates with a ballet director to put an amazing piece of art in which the movement of bodies collides with the use of space. There are several things that are from Ruiz’s tool arsenal, but it’s also a very vivid and surreal one, and I’m amazed by how he even takes a little bit of the techniques from Orson Welles’ uses he did with camera.

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Not the premise which can work, as you well know being a Bergman affficionado, but its execution. Not only because of the many leaps of logic it kept asking for or the wasted actors like Amanda Seyfried, but also with how everything was so on the nose–like the computer screen in the bg showing the drastic climate changes during the initial debate, or Ethan’s character then having the infamous polar bear pic as his desktop background.

It had a budget of 13M. Melania’s upcoming documentary has a budget of 40M. I know many of you watched The Daily Show’s skit on this but goddang I can’t help myself from bringing this up

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That’s fair! Sometimes why art works for me and why it doesn’t is due to reasons beyond my understanding, but I do notice myself sometimes liking things that are so on-the-nose and obvious that they warp back around on themselves and become mineral rich again.

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<3
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Did you mean to add a description here? Granted it does speak for itself

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Thanks! I thought I wrote something about it, but I forgot.

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The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)

Animation appeals to me the most when it captures subtle or delicate physical action, especially involving hands. This is one of several reasons I gravitate toward Ghibli’s films in general—they do this all the time, cut to closeup on hands interacting with tools, clothes, machines—but it seems to be the subject itself of Kaguya. She and Sutemaru cut and eat fruit together; her mother works the loom; she plays the koto; a woman carves bowls. To observe and record these activities affirms the humanity in all of them, and that life on Earth is both mundane and precious. When celestial emissaries descend to reclaim their princess, she refuses: she declares there can be no happiness in their numb paradise. This movie makes me cry.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

Copy/paste the above about quotidian action and place it in the context of high school, late spring, baseball, biking, romantic yearning. The hands! If you in fact (can) redo, what do you change? Can you change anything? Should you? The score is great.

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

If Blade Runner asks whether beings who look and behave exactly like people are themselves people, the first GITS movie takes it further to ask whether those beings can’t skip the looking like part, or at least whether the body itself is not mutable. We are defined by environment, relationships, memory. There’s also cyberpunk grit which is way cool dude and not a small part of what makes this a pleasure to watch. Among other Oshii movies, this edges out over Patlabor for example because of the more introspective focus.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Karasu and Tracy already mentioned Falconetti’s performance, which is pretty much the movie. Even though this is 97 years old, and even though closeups are basically the cornerstone of modern American film grammar, ‘The Passion’ today, composed mostly of closeups, still feels like a bold experiment. Adding to the effect are the dramatic overhead lighting and the apparently minimal or (as the story goes) total lack of makeup—these are not the painted faces you’re used to seeing in silent cinema, and they (Falconetti’s chief among them, obviously) are no less expressive for it. Also… the Voices of Light score is incredible. The Goldfrapp/Portishead score (also on Criterion) is totally different and interesting! I’m so glad not only that someone found a nearly untouched print of this in a psychiatric institution in Norway, but that @TracyDMcGrath put it on her list in this poll four years ago and inspired me to see it.

Marius (1931)

Sometimes you have to choose between intimate companionship and the open ocean, between an old life and a new one. When you choose the latter, the world you leave behind doesn’t stop and wait for you. The wind keeps on blowing in Marseille. Sometimes you devote your life to loving someone and they still choose adventure and the new over sharing a life with you. These are questions of drama more than image—certainly the least cinematic film on the list, being a filmed play.

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (2023)

I’m not sure how to explain this one.

  • consider the calculus of running a restaurant
  • consider the economic, industrial, and class tensions in the production and sale of “good food”
  • watch people make food

News from Home (1976)

For me this appeals on two fronts, the first of course being the relationship expressed in letters from Akerman’s mother. The one-sidedness of the conversation is illuminating rather than limiting. The other thing is the portal to 1970s New York/urban America, a world which no longer exists despite the city and the country’s obsession with its own iconography and efforts to mythologize itself. The way people react (or don’t) to the camera seems so different from how we do today.

An Elephant Sitting Still (2018)

I’m not a pessimist, and a sense of pessimism isn’t necessary to feel the power of this movie even as it is at times superlatively hopeless. There is immense sadness, hardship, and cruelty in the supposedly “developed” world. We have to live through it.
Not related but Béla Tarr’s introduction of the film at a screening in Paris is very moving.

We have to listen to each other.

I’d like to read Hu’s fiction but I haven’t been able to find any English translations, if any exist. There was a French version of the short story 大象席地而坐 (the basis for the film) included with the DVD but it’s out of stock.

Amadeus (1984)

The Viennese court in Amadeus are framed just like everyone else in the film, that is to say as ordinary—their airs and obsequious gestures of fealty are obvious put-ons. Salieri operates in a milieu where others act in the name of good taste but are merely social climbers; he himself allows approval from this class of people to validate his good taste. Mozart arrives and makes clear that everything Salieri ever believed was, of course, wrong, and laughs while doing it. Wish I could’ve seen this in its recent US theatrical run…

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Traumkino.

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I subbed in The Matrix (1999) and took out Cure (1997).

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It took a lot to get my list (no order) down to just ten movies but this is a list of movies I’ve watched over and over again in my life. I don’t think there is a movie I’ve watched more than West Side Story, that’s probably my favorite movie ever, and my favorite horror movie tends to rotate between Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, and The Blair Witch Project, depending on my mood. I feel like the rest of the list if pretty typical for a millennial movie nerd. Special mention goes to Gladiator (2000), Princess Mononoke (1997), Alien (1979), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) and Rope (1948).

  1. West Side Story (1961)
  2. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
  3. Donnie Darko (2001)
  4. High Fidelity (2000)
  5. Fight Club (1999)
  6. A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
  7. The Exorcist (1973)
  8. Perfect Blue (1997)
  9. The Blair Witch Project (1999)
  10. Se7en (1995)
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I’ll take a shot at this explaining yourself thing that everyone is so into. As I’m writing these, I’m finding it hard to describe holistically what I like about these movies, rather than the singular details that have made themselves indelible to me.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) dir. Lubitsch
This is probably the least essential of my ten picks, chosen because I really really like it. It’s such a technically proficient film - a perfect christmas movie, a perfect romcom - it just feels like everything is in its right place here. I enjoy the movie’s sweetness. I had a great time watching this in a theater with my mom around christmastime a few years ago
I was debating between a few of the other romcoms of the era such as Bringing Up Baby (1938) and The Philadelphia Story (1940), but I went with the one that I’d want to put on and watch right now. Unfortunately that leaves my list without a film starring my favorite actor (Cary Grant)

All About Eve (1950) dir Mankiewicz
Bette Davis here is insane. Just insane! Crashout of the century. Thoroughly watchable through and through. It’s a fun showbiz film with commentary that only gets more and more incisive with time.
The debate over whether this film or Sunset Boulevard (1950) is the better 1950s film is eternal, and I chose to hedge my bet here, thinking it more likely that someone else would nom Sunset Boulevard (thanks @Tradegood). Also, I felt it important to nom this film to laud the better Mank, not that fraud who made Citizen Kane

Vertigo (1958) dir. Hitchcock
I mean it’s literally the greatest movie of all time, so…
So sharp. Has more to say about identity and being human than Blade Runner ever will. Greatest use of color on film. It’s rare to see a red/green color palette on film (compared to the too-ubiquitous blue-orange) and, yes, Christmas, but also a lot of that has to do with the color in this film being used so well that there’s no use in competing. Greatest plot twist on film. A great love letter to a city I don’t even like but occasionally call home. I love a movie about obsession and paranoia (see: All About Eve). I love a melodrama (see: half of this list).
As those on the book thread may know, my taste skews classic, and I’d say Hitchcock is my favorite director. I wanted to include Rear Window as well but decided to keep it to one per director

The Graduate (1967) dir. Nichols
There was a month in high school, toward the end, when I was so burnt out I’d come home from high school, sit in the dark, and just watch The Graduate every day. It’s not quite melodrama but like some of the other films on my list, it does explore those heightened emotions, the impulsiveness, and the naivete that comes with the bildungsroman. I love that stuff. I think that at a time when I felt I was losing the ability to feel the world around me, I found the conduit of this film comforting and cathartic.
What’s interesting is that I typically cite the New Hollywood era as my favorite in film, yet this is the only one that made the cut :man_shrugging:
Also, I want the Robinson house so bad. That room in the back of the house with the bar and the plants… exquisite

Paris is Burning (1990) dir. Livingston
This is kinda the full experience of life, yea? Devastating, heartening, humbling, hilarious, beautiful. You can’t not root for these people who seem like the only ones honest and optimistic about what life should be

Clueless (1995) dir. Heckerling
The script is weapons-grade. There are a number of scripts out there that purport to capture the way teenagers talk, but Heckerling’s heightened choices capture that language, satirize it, and then fed it back to its audience, changing the way teens (and then everyone) talked forever. “As if!” was an underground phrase mostly used in gay/black slang, but less than ten years after this movie brought it to the mainstream, it shows up in Kingdom Hearts - not as a reference, it’s just that embedded in culture by that point.
Similarly timeless is the fashion, which does a lot of the storytelling from scene to scene. Not only does it denote the passage of time, but it acts as a peek into the psyche of characters and how they want to/feel like they should present themselves. Dionne makes subtle changes to her wardrobe before/after losing her virginity. Cher wears her clothing like a suit of armor until she doesn’t.
I relate(d) a lot to Cher, especially in high school. I share her starry-eyed commitment to self-improvement, even if misguided. I always liked this scene because at my ultracompetitive high school I was made to feel like my interest in movies/pop culture/fashion etc. was frivolous, whereas I saw those interests as knowledge

Eyes Wide Shut (1999) dir. Kubrick
I get it. I fully get it now. This is the first Kubrick to really click for me after a few attempts (I love him now, and have reversed on 2001). I don’t know that I have much novel to say. I need to watch this one again. It felt colossal on my first viewing. And as state before, I love a melodrama so this was extremely my shit.

Mulholland Drive (2001) dir. Lynch
I… am kinda struggling for what to say about one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve told practically everyone under the sun to watch this movie, so I must’ve talked about it before. But you’ve all seen this, yea? Like I have to imagine some Lynch film (surprisingly maybe Inland Empire?) is going to top this film list, and if we did a TV list Twin Peaks would top that. Lynch is like, the Insert Credit director. If a Ridley Scott film tops the list, we might as well throw the whole forum away.
I love Lynch’s commitment to telling stories with the plot of “what if there was one blonde woman… but also a brunette”
I’ll go back to the word I used to originally describe the films on my list - seismic. Mulholland Drive has stuck with me so deeply over the years after an absolutely insane first watch. I didn’t know a director could capture what it felt like to dream like that - how abstract and kinda horrifying they can be. But I also just think this movie is fun. It’s fun to watch a director and an actor so at the height of their powers, just going for it. Even before the movie was over, I found myself tinged with a little bit of sadness, upon realizing the ephemerality of it all. Y’know, like a dream.

Bad Education (2004) dir. Almodovar
Gagged. I mean, what an absolutely insane watch. It’s like staring at the sun. Trying to describe this movie to another person could probably get you institutionalized. Just what an insane film. Almodovar just gets it, and it was so hard for me to choose which of his films I prefer. Volver was the first one I watched and it felt similarly seismic. All About My Mother is also such a perfect film. I’ve really like Pain and Glory as well…

Margaret (Extended Edition) (2012) dir. Lonergan
This is a magnitude 10 motherquake. This is the film that gives Mulholland Drive a run for its money re: greatest film of the 21st century. And I have to suspect that out of the films I’ve chosen it’s among the least-watched. Margaret is either a 2005 film (when it was shot), a 2011 film (when it was theatrically released) or a 2012 film (when the extended edition became available via blu-ray).
I found Margaret in the wake of some twitter discourse about The Irishman and how Anna Paquin’s character in that movie has maybe 10 lines over the course of 3 hours. “Oh you want a 3+ hour movie starring Anna Paquin where she NEVER shuts up??” a tweet read w/ an image of Margaret’s movie poster. And under that tweet was a bevy of replies talking about the movie as an all-timer, how underrated it is, how few people saw it, and how you MUST watch the extended edition. And after that it seemed like Margaret had a tiny moment of sorts: ranked as a “Best New York City” movie here (one spot above The Godfather :face_with_hand_over_mouth:) and Paquin’s performance singled out as one of the best of the 21st Century here. But it still remains word-of-mouth (with an added “watch the extended edition!” if you have a friend who cares about you).
Margaret is a dazzling epic that’s brazenly anti-consumer. The film (extended edition) runs 186 minutes. Characters are unlikeable if not outright grating. There is no character named “Margaret” in the film. The studio hated it and entered a six year litigious battle with Lonergan over making edits to the film. Eventually, pressure from Scorsese and Schoonmaker (they loved the film) caused the studio to back off so long as they could run a 150-minute theatrical cut (bad, apparently. I have not watched it). the movie finally released. “Like, three people saw it,” Paquin described.
The people who did see it loved it, and a few more people have seen it since, but it’s remained cult. I find the film hard to evangelize. If I mention Kenneth Lonergan’s next film Manchester by the Sea then I’m usually met with a “Oh. Sad.” that shuts down the conversation.
Margaret stars J. Smith Cameron from Succession and Kieran Culkin from Succession and Jeannie Berlin from Succession, but also a bunch of people not from Succession like Mark Ruffalo, Allison Janney, Matt Damon, and Matthew Broderick. Anna Paquin stars as Lisa (not Margaret). A completely batshit inciting incident (…what if I told you this movie only happens because Mark Ruffalo puts on a cowboy hat?) sets a dizzying set of eight or nine different plots into action. Plotlines disappear and reappear and intersect over the course of three+ hours. The most consistent movement the plot does is move away from “the teenage world” in the first half of the movie and into “the adult world” in the second half of the movie.
I don’t know where this quote comes from - seriously if anyone can find it I will be indebted to you -
but it’s something like “If Hillary Clinton read her biography she could sigh in relief and know that her secrets were safe. If Natasha Rostova read War and Peace she’d break down sobbing, ‘how could he know? how could he know?’ she’d say repeatedly.”
I’m not the subject of Margaret, but the truth of the storytelling cuts so close that I feel exposed by Lisa’s rampage across New York and all of the toes she steps on along the way. It’s all there in Lonergan’s script - the semi-combative dust-ups in English class, the paradox of “being yourself” as a teenager, which mostly amounts to parroting the last influential person or thing to touch you, the arms race to be the smartest, meanest person at your ultracompetitive high school. How could he know?
Lonergan gave a quote about what he thinks distinguishes Margaret from other coming-of-age films, and had this to say about other teen shows and movies:
“there’s something about how hip and in control the kids are that is so false that bothers me a bit”
What’s interesting is that I think from the perspective of a teenager, they are that in control. It’s only after that you realize that was never the case. He and the movie reckon with this dissonance that makes teenagers so conceptually interesting but concretely annoying. I find this admission that I was never as in control as I thought I was, that I was ruder and more selfish than I thought I was, that I might’ve not known more than the adults around me, ultimately cathartic.
I’m not really into video essays, especially not from randoms off youtube, but I came across this one about the film that I found thoroughly interesting (the plot twist about the episode of Doug absolutely floored me). As an essay about Margaret, it’s a little too elliptical (he only talks about the film for maybe 15 minutes of the 50, but his asides are interesting, so I think it’s worth the watch

I was going to include honorable mentions but I ended up listing like 30+ movies, including the ones I’ve already mentioned. Fuck it I’ll list a couple (not exhaustive) I really wanted on here that I haven’t already talked about:

  • Cabaret (1972)
  • The Godfather (1972)
  • The Age of Innocence (1993) [best Scorsese]
  • Showgirls (1995)
  • Perfect Blue (1997)
  • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
  • Josie and the Pussycats (2001)
  • Marie Antoinette (2006)
  • Uncut Gems (2019)
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Listing more (non-eligible) moves as prophesied above.

15 MORE

Hard Target
Grosse Pointe Blank
Zodiac
Blade Runner 2049
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Mad Max Fury Road
The Raid
Beetlejuice
Akira
Duck Soup
True Stories
The Grand Budapest Hotel
The Jerk
Darkman
Young Frankenstein

Honorable Mentions

Batman - 1989
UHF
The Naked Gun
Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Dumb and Dumber

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groucho-marx

I have a very fond place in my heart for Duck Soup, although I couldn’t place ot on my list because it feels more to me like a series of barely connected sketches than a true film, and those sketches are more about setting up punchlines for Groucho and Chico than anything.

It is my favorite film from the era though.

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Sickos_yes.gif

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Ive really enjoyed reading through this thread, you all have some very thoughtful things to say. A top ten is really difficult and it feels almost dishonest to not include more if that makes sense. But these are all movies that moved me, touched me, gripped me, or otherwise felt particularly special when i watched them.

  1. Rear Window (1954)
  2. Holiday (1938)
  3. The Shining (1980)
  4. Gates of Heaven (1978)
  5. Close Up (1990)
  6. The Kid (1921)
  7. Safe (1995)
  8. Style wars (1983)
  9. High and Low (1963)
  10. The River (1951)

The top two couldnt change, but i could switch out the next 8 with some of my Honorable Mentions pretty easily (which I’m tempted to do to boost some numbers!)
I could also easily make a full top ten of just hitchcock movies or horror movies!

Honorable Mention Pit:

Meet me in St. louis
Philadelphia Story
Caché
florida project,
heartworn highways,
Blaire Witch Project,
ghost watch,
yi yi,
mirror,
pride and prejudice BBC series,
Desire,
Raging Bull
My Darling Clementine
The Snowman
Wages of Fear
Dont look now
A Night at the Opera

Ill just cut it off there…

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I’ve got a few ineligible, non-nominated films list. I tried to avoid putting in too much nonsense but these are all Good Movies IMO.

Rashomon (1950)
Woman in the Dunes (1964)
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1965)
Super Inframan (1975)
Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (1983)
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
Righting Wrongs (1988)
Tremors (1990)
The Grifters (1990)
Sonatine (1993)
Being John Malkovich (1999)
Pitch Black (2000)
One Cut of the Dead (2017)
Blackkklansman (2018)
Nope (2022)

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They’ve double crossed me! They’re coming by land and sea!

First and favorite marx movie, personally.

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I’ve been meaning to see Margaret for a number of years, and you’re pushing me over the edge (if only so I can read your thoughts here and watch that video!). I had no idea about the fraught history of the production/the version differences—I’ll be sure to see the longer one. Speaking of which…

It looks like there are two versions of this which are quite different from one another. Do you know which one you saw?

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The version I watched was around two hours long. There’s a longer version out there that I haven’t seen, but my understanding is that what was cut from it is that kind of overbearing Soviet ideological talk that pads out most other movies from the era (I’ve seen this in other movies and it’s not nearly as interesting as folks might think). OH and it looks like there’s a 2025 Chinese movie that as far as I can tell has nothing to do with the 1981 one.

There’s also a direct to VHS English dub from the 80’s or 90’s out there titled Humanoid Woman that’s so edited down that it’s practically incomprehensible and that I wouldn’t recommend (if you can even find it). It’s the version I originally saw and I think the wild aesthetic is just about the only positive about it.

I hope that helps! I’m also really curious what you think of it if you watch it!

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I should have said there were three versions! I suppose I wasn’t sure if you had seen the Humanoid Woman cut, but in that case you might have listed it as Humanoid Woman.

I would like to see this at some point, though as with Margaret I’m going to have to wait at least until I visit the US next month.

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every one of these lists is quite good.

very happy to see some of my candidate-favourites represented already. specifically: rebels of the neon god, la flor, the wicker man (1973), ghost dog: the way of the samurai, mulholland drive, inland empire, the matrix, do the right thing, house, annette, perfect blue, gone girl, funny games, monos, memories of murder, caché, eyes wide shut, videodrome, and la dolce vita. so, i won’t pick any of those.

edit: @Gaagaagiins very kindly pointed out to me (re: “so, i won’t pick any of those”) that redundancy is valuable in this kind of survey, so i’m going to revisit my candidate-favourites and re-write my list some time this week. but i’m guessing at least half of the 0 vote movies will still make my list-cut.

edit edit: new cut.

uncle boonme who can recall his past lives (2010)

one of the gentlest movies i’ve seen all about death and dying. it lulls you into thinking it is simple and then nudges you awake with unassuming cinematic sights and sounds. it has all of my many favourite types of movies inside of it.

the forbidden room (2015)

if uncle boonme enters from the mouth, then the forbidden room enters from the anus. this movie is a film within a film within a film within a film within a film digital tribute to the gunk that has built up and across the non-digital silent era pulp from the last century. may make you laugh, may give you a headache.

a traveller’s needs (2024)

i’ve fallen for every hong sang-soo movie i’ve seen so far, but i’ll bring y’all this one specifically to celebrate how effortlessly it repeats itself, deceives you, and makes novel use of language barriers, broken english, and self-translation.

caché (2005)

one of the great chiller-thrillers. these days, in which the thriller is kinda dead, i could use more not-trashy ones like this, quietly discoursing about racism, immigration, and how rich people could easily do better, with more than two-dimensional characters, without cartoonish sacks of shit for people filling the screen.

la flor (2018)

la flor feels pretty insert credit to me. a fourteen-hour, six half-movies in one, that somehow marries x files pulp to melodrama to the classics to an inland empire of sorts. it took me a while to get through it all, but i’d do it again.

teorema (1968)

closing out this list’s “hang out and dream weirdly” trilogy (one: uncle boonme; two: a traveller’s needs) is teorema, in which a stranger comes into the lives of a rich family and completely changes them in very surprising ways. i like it when a philosophical drizzle turns into a weird art film i guess.

vive l’amour (1994)

a completely unique movie about three people who squat in the same apartment but are unaware of their companion-squatters. if you’re only allowed to see one tsai ming-liang movie i’d probably recommend this one, so far. (but really, see them all!)

toni erdmann (2016)

i didn’t know that i needed a two-and-a-half-hour father-daughter comedy in my life, but i really did. it is simultaneously a very upsetting movie about familial boundaries and people getting old.

the wicker man (1973)

probably the only musical i’ve truly loved. it goes down so easy and managed to be both funny and scary as all hell. i could watch this every day.

rebels of the neon god (1992)

an incredible first film, and the second tsai ming-laing movie on this list, rebels of the neon god contains many unforgettable images and sequences. i’ll never unsee tze’s flooded apartment, and i’ll never forget the appallingly mean-spirited act of vandalism. and it’s hard to make me feel desperate about anything, but this one did. love it so much.

original message for posterity

uncle boonme who can recall his past lives (2010)

one of the gentlest movies i’ve seen all about death and dying. it lulls you into thinking it is simple and then nudges you awake with unassuming cinematic sights and sounds. it has all of my many favourite types of movies inside of it.

the forbidden room (2015)

if uncle boonme enters from the mouth, then the forbidden room enters from the anus. this movie is a film within a film within a film within a film within a film digital tribute to the gunk that has built up and across the non-digital silent era pulp from the last century. may make you laugh, may give you a headache.

a traveller’s needs (2024)

i’ve fallen for every hong sang-soo movie i’ve seen so far, but i’ll bring y’all this one specifically to celebrate how effortlessly it repeats itself, deceives you, and makes novel use of language barriers, broken english, and self-translation.

grand tour (2024)

there’s something in the air lately between this movie and universal language, about displacing cultures and languages across space and time, that feels true to me as someone who’s been a cultural and time-traveling tourist through via movie-loving for all of my adult life. of all of the hybrid docufictions i’ve seen, i appreciate how boldly grand tour goes into deep “this cannot exist” territory.

my night at maud’s (1969)

let’s make this the third movie on this list in which characters sit around and talk. of the three, this one contains the least ordinary conversations but presented in the most ordinary ways. i really love all the french new wave stuff i’ve seen but this pick is the one i’d sit back and chill with every day.

malcolm x (1992)

i’m generally a biopic hater, but after watching malcolm x last year i remembered that spike lee can basically make any kind of movie good. and after reading more about what might have been made, if spike lee didn’t get involved, i’m extra grateful that he took such great care in unpacking the story of this figure in such a nuanced and not-annoying, not-biopicy way.

toni erdmann (2016)

i didn’t know that i needed a two-and-a-half-hour father-daughter comedy in my life, but i really did. it is simultaneously a very upsetting movie about familial boundaries and people getting old.

ms slavic 7 (2019)

a pretty short movie about doing research and the pain of getting access to research material that is… personal. lots of really beautiful scans of handwritten letters, and it’s nice to see vitality thrown at subject matter that could be so dull and often montaged out of the movies.

teorema (1968)

closing out this list’s “hang out and dream weirdly” trilogy (one: uncle boonme; two: a traveller’s needs) is teorema, in which a stranger comes into the lives of a rich family and completely changes them in very surprising ways. i like it when a philosophical drizzle turns into a weird art film i guess.

list sans commentary:

  • uncle boonme who can recall his past lives (2010)
  • the forbidden room (2015)
  • a traveller’s needs (2024)
  • grand tour (2024)
  • my night at maud’s (1969)
  • vive l’amour (1994)
  • malcolm x (1992)
  • toni erdmann (2016)
  • ms slavic 7 (2019)
  • teorema (1968)

updated list sans commentary:

  • uncle boonme who can recall his past lives (2010)
  • the forbidden room (2015)
  • a traveller’s needs (2024)
  • caché (2005)
  • la flor (2018)
  • teorema (1968)
  • vive l’amour (1994)
  • toni erdmann (2016)
  • the wicker man (1973)
  • rebels of the neon god (1992)
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345

excellent list! what I have seen I liked and what I have not definitely intrigued me, putting some of these on my watchlist.

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