Top 5 In-Theater Films
- X Super fun horror and well made throw-back horror film. Lots of awesome gory deaths and great characters. Honorable mention for it’s surprise sequel Pearl which didn’t make the top 5, but was still really fun.
- Babylon One of two amazing movies about the magic of films this year (Shout out to The Fabelmans). Great spectacle and music set in old Hollywood. Excited to see this one again.
- The Banshees of Inisherein Always excited for whatever Martin McDonagh does. Still doesn’t beat In Bruges or Seven Psychopaths, but still great.
- Bones and All Best coming of age cannibal movie of the decade for sure!
- Scream 5 Never had a ton of nostalgia for the Scream films outside of the first one, so wasn’t super excited to see this, but wow, what a fun time! Excited for part 6!
Full list can be found here
Top 5 Prestige Films
If we’ve talked in person over the last year or so, you’re probably sick of hearing this, but one of the ‘projects’ I started, was to watch as many of the Official Letterboxd 250 Narrative Films. I had only seen about 100 of them pre-2022, so I was able to mostly get through the rest this year. I’ve just got a few left on the list, but here are the top 5 so far!
- Harakiri Samarai revenge style movie told through flashbacks. So good.
- All That Jazz Decadant song and dance movie that I always thought sounded boring…glad to be proven wrong here.
- Stalker This was only the second Tarkovsky movie I’d ever seen (The first being Solaris). While I don’t fully understand what was happening in the movie, and may never, it was still a really cool and haunting film that I’ll never forget.
- Cinema Paradiso This movie has been popping up in my recommendation list for a long time, but was another one that just looked boring to me. Way wrong, the movie is amazing. Oddly another film about the magic of movies, I guess that’s a theme.
- The Best of Youth That’s right, the movie is 6 hours long and in Italian. Mateo!! 😭🤌
Ratings for all the films I’ve watched for this list can be found here
Top 5 New Horror
Excluding items in the In-Theater Top 5, these are my top 5 new horror films for the year.
- Speak No Evil If you want to ruin an evening, watch this movie.
- Mad God Super fun stop motion horror
- Fresh Surprisingly good Hulu horror movie. Made me sick to my stomach a couple times. 👍👍
- The Cursed Werewoof movie with a really bad CGI werewolf. As long as they aren’t showing the wolf though, it’s really great
- Barbarian Muh bay bay!!
All new horror films I watched over there year can be found here
Movies with a still shot that lasts so long I had to make sure I didn’t accidentally pause the movie multiple times
Unfortunately, as part of the ‘prestige’ watch list previously mentioned, I’ve had to adjust my expectations around movie pacing. Only 2 films on this specific list.
- Satantango A 7 hour ‘vibe’ film…Can’t say I hated it, but wow are there some long still shots.
- Sleep has her House I guess it’s the best film I’ve watched that has neither dialogue or characters.
5 Worst In-Theater Films
All films are important in some way, except these 5, they sucked
- Prey for the Devil Dumb posession movie where literally every exciting scene was spoiled in the trailer
- Avatar: The Way of Water As someone who enjoyed the first one, I was expecing at least some memorable moment or experience with the new movie, but nope. Space whales…🙄
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 I think it was better than the first one at least
- Morbius “To bats…it’s lethal. To humans, it’s deadly” 🤔
- Jurassic World Dominion Forgot everything about this movie as the credits rolled