Total: 256 (full list here)
Revival: 45
SIFF: 63
Avg cost: Two bucks!
Wrap-ups for previous years live under the year-end tag, canonical best-of-decade lists are here, and I’m now on letterboxd as wickedjaws so add me fer crissakes.
I skipped three film festivals as well as missing a third of SIFF for work, so. It was a rough year in general. But the movies? The movies were great.
Best films: Parasite, Better Days, I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Pain & Glory, Little Women
Also: Booksmart, The Farewell, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Transit, Hustlers, High Life, Swing Kids
More vital categories after the jump!
Best popcorn movies: John Wick: Parabellum, Furie, Terminator: Dark Fate, Knives Out, Shadow
Stand-out performances: Lupita Nyong’o in Us, Tom Mercier in Synonyms, Mary Kay Place in Diane, Maisa Abd Elhadi in The Reports on Sarah and Saleem
Best horror movies: In Fabric, Greta, One Cut of the Dead, Midsommar (Director’s Cut), Us
Best queer films: Pain & Glory, End of the Century, The Heiresses, Wild Nights with Emily
Best superhero films: Fast Color, Woman at War
Best romcoms: Friend Zone, Last Christmas, Top End Wedding
Best documentaries: Maiden, Midnight Family, Honeyland, Apollo 11, The Woman Who Loves Giraffes
Best PRC 70th anniversary propaganda: The Captain
Favorite animated film: Ne Zha
Best night at the movies: Hedwig and the Angry Inch unofficial singalong in a packed Uptown 1.
Best argument for upzoning: A Breath Away
Film with the most relentless misandry, bless it: Charlie’s Angels
SIFF favorites: A Family Tour, Retrospekt, Little Tickles, Socrates, Hala, Vai, The Third Wife, Banana Split, Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins
Movie that made me give up entirely and attempt to learn some goddamned Chinese thanks to Wang Talu the goddamned gremlin: Fall in Love at First Kiss
…as for everything else? I don’t really know what was on TV this year, except Call the Midwife is still one of the best shows of the decade, also I loved Russian Doll & Shrill. This summer my television life was taken over first by The Untamed and then by a whole world of Chinese & Thai tv that The Untamed revealed to me, so, taking recs to add to my suddenly very long queue on MyDramaList I guess!
What did you love that I missed?
wicked jaws 