I love the movies! Here are thirteen of my favorites this year. Great comedies, crime, suspense, animation, and blockbusters. Watch them all!
13. Dune: Part 2
Finally, good Dune movies! Well-paced, great effects, and climactic finale to the first one. Go ahead, give us more Dune! Give us the worm!
12. I Saw the TV Glow
A vibey movie about transitioning, media, and the suffocating suburbs hit me. The lonely light of a television through plastic blinds. Life as a big hole slowly burying us alive.
11. Problemista
The American immigration system, working for rich people, making a movie, eggs: it’s all labyrinths. Julio Torres is hilarious, and Tilda Swinton completely embodies Elizabeth.
10. The Bikeriders
It’s an outlaw movie that’s secretly a bad-boy biker romance! Not much crime, mostly hanging out in the west Chicago suburbs with guys in denim drinking Schlitz. It felt like I understood Harleys.
9. Loves Lies Bleeding
The perfect lesbian bodybuilder neo-noir, all smokey, wet, weird, and erotic testosterone injections, spoiled bodybuilding competition, gunrunning, murder-for-hire, quiet country roads, and real cigarettes!
8. Sasquatch Sunset
No dialogue, just the missing link. Sasquatch, Big Foot, and the pre-hominid are our genetic ancestors. It’s funny, gross, and kinda like a stoner comedy. I found it meditative. We could live like these sasquatches.
7. Trap
As culture shifts from the surveillance era to the PSYOP era, this is the movie of the moment. What’s a trap? Everything! Celebrity. Fandom. Family. Trauma. Compulsion. Everything is a trap in our trap world.
6. Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga
Combining the pleasures of vehicular ultra-violence with deep lore, a good story, characters I already like, and Australian satire of KKKalifornia. It looks great, it moves fast, and it’s funny. What more could you want?
5. Mars Express
Singularity cyberpunk made by French otaku who understand computers. With all the talk of AI this year, “natural” language, consciousness, and robotics. This stylish SF cyberpunk detective anime brings clarity.
4. Serpent’s Path
Two hopeless French people take revenge on a network of billionaire pedophiles. A dark, disturbing movie about getting someone like Marc Dutroux chained up in a warehouse. Originally a grimy V-Cinema revenge thriller, now an arthouse Euro thriller funded by The Belgian Tax Shelter…
3. Flow
A cat flees a flood in this incredibly 3D animated film. In Blender! So tense! Somber! Scary! Fun! A great year for silent movies, andThe Wild Robot and Robot Dreams qualify, but I like Flow best because Black Cat is so good!
2. Hundreds of Beavers
This movie has hundreds—probably thousands—of beavers. It’s incredible, a live action cartoon. Hilarious slapstick recalling Chaplin, Keaton, The Three Stooges, Looney Tunes, The Simpsons and Attitude Era WWF. The world is deep and multi-layered and the sheer fun of it all is incredible. Go watch it on Hoopla!
1. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Hysterical, sad, profound, eerily prophetic. The end of the world is slow, a series of whimpers. People like us want money, food, sex, sleep, and trips to the woods. But our vampire overlords don’t care. They need flesh robots. A slow march toward species obsolescence. I can’t stop thinking about the line, “At least we’re not Americans. They made them work to death during a hurricane!”
Favorites From Years Past
And here are a few cinema classics I saw this year that I enjoyed.
- The Rage (1997) – A genuinely deranged Gary Busey joint!
- Pulse (1999) – Haunted by the ghosts of the internet
- The Fall (2007) – One of the best movies of the century. 2007 is the best year for movies!
- Scarface (1983) – The American Dream is cocaine!
- Hands on a Hard Body (1997) – A brand new Nissan truck with all the accessories!
- Hollywood Boulevard (1976) – Every movie is an exploitation film if somebody was exploited!
- Ninja Scroll (1993) – More Ninjas!
- The Apartment (1960) – You know it smells crazy in there.
- Django (1966) – He’s got a frickin gun in that coffin!
- Heat (1995) – AND SHE’S GOT A BIG ASS!