Category: year end

Total: 50 (full list here)
Revival: 6

That’s the lowest number since I started tracking in 2006! It’s also fewer films than 2020, despite the fact that I only went to films for about 2 months in 2020 compared to 6 in 2021. The difference is: no film festivals. I miss festivals SO MUCH y’all. I want to stand in a line and complain about passholders while also being a passholder. The dream!

Anyway, so the the strategy this year is looking at anything I watched for the first time in 2021 that was released in 2019-2021. And here we go!

Favorite films: Titane, Thin Skin, The Power of the Dog, Passing

Also: Spencer, Wisdom Tooth, Romeo & Juliet at the National, Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time, The Souvenir Part II

More after the jump!

Continue reading “[2021 Film Wrap-up]”

Total: 61 (full list here)
Revival: 23
Avg cost: $2.40, which is not bad considering I think I paid for a month of A List that I didn’t use.

Wrap-ups for previous years live under the year-end tag & I just spent my first year on letterboxd where I’m wickedjaws. My 2020 stats are here.

No one needs me to tell you it was a weird year. The last film I saw in the theater was The Invisible Man on March 13th. I was the only person in the second-largest house at Pacific Place, which was possibly the best, creepiest way to watch it. But since then, it’s been hard to get excited about new movies, even when there are exciting new movies to be had. I just don’t enjoy paying $10-20 to watch a movie alone on my television.

So instead, I watched a lot of free theater, mostly opera, which is listed here. And I also got deeper into trashy television, by which I mean BL & mostly Thai, which I wrote dumb zines about here and here.

I did watch some good films in those two and a half months (here’s my best of the decade because why not), and I did stream a little new work, mostly through festivals, so let’s give this a go anyway. For tradition’s sake & in no particular order:

Best films: First Cow, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Emma, Birds of Prey, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Best films directed by men: The Personal History of David Copperfield, Beanpole, And Then We Danced, Sylvie’s Love, Your Name Engraved Herein

More categories after the jump.

Continue reading “[2020 Film Wrap-Up]”

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!

Continue reading “[2019 Film Wrap-Up]”

I threw together some lists for fun; obviously these are canonically the best films.

 

25 maybe underseen movies of the decade in alphabetical order:

• BPM
• Castaway on the Moon
• Columbus
• Damsel
• En El Septimo Dia
• Fill the Void
• GETT: The Trial of Viviane Ameselam
• girl walk // all day
• Girlhood
• Girl Asleep
• God Help the Girl
• Holy Motors
• I Do Not Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians
• Liza the Fox Fairy
• Mommy
• Never Let Me Go
• Novitiate
• Our Little Sister
• Retrospekt
• Sworn Virgin
• Toni Erdmann
• Torrey Pines
• Trigger
• Upstream Color
• Zoology

DOCS

• Cameraperson
• Dawson City: Frozen Time
• Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock & Roll
• Faces Places
• Hooligan Sparrow
• Maiden
• Marwencol
• Planet of Snail
• Project Nim
• Shirkers

SUPERHEROES

• Black Panther
• Captain America: Winter Soldier
• Colossal
• Fast Color
• K-20: The Fiend with 20 Faces
• Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
• Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse
• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• Thor: Ragnarok
• The Widowed Witch

SCI-FI/FANTASY

• Annihilation
• Attack the Block
• Ex Machina
• Ghostbusters: Answer the Call
• In the Beginning (short)
• John Carter
• The Last Jedi
• The Mermaid
• Monster Hunt 1&2
• We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (short)

ACTION

• Cell 211
• Europe Raiders
• Furie
• Gravity
• The Heat
• Mad Max: Fury Road
• Mission Impossible: Fallout
• Fast & Furious series
• John Wick trilogy
• Planet of the Apes trilogy

QUEER MOVIES

• Closet Monster
• Pariah
• Suicide Kale
• 3
• Tomboy
• Undertow
• The Way He Looks
• Wild Nights with Emily
• Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
• Yossi

ROMANCE

• Amira & Sam
• The Big Sick
• A Bride for Rip Van Winkle
• Crazy Rich Asians
• Friend Zone
• The Mountain Between Us
• Obvious Child
• Phantom Thread
• This Is Not What I Expected
• The Wedding Plan

HORROR

• Absentia
• The Conjuring
• Creep
• Goodnight Mommy
• In Fabric
• Rift
• Ruby Sparks
• Under the Shadow
• Us
• We Are Still Here

PODCASTS

• Wolf 359 above all but also…
• Alice Isn’t Dead
• Limetown
• The Penumbra Podcast: Juno Steel
• Wooden Overcoats

TEEVEE

• The Americans
• Call the Midwife
• Catastrophe
• Halt & Catch Fire
• Hannibal
• Jane the Virgin
• One Day at a Time
• One Mississippi
• Russian Doll
• Yuri!!! on Ice

Total: 280 (full list here)
Revival: 45
SIFF: 81
Avg cost: $2.58

Wrap-ups for previous years live under the year-end tag.

This year I wrote bimonthly posts of varying timeliness and hotness of take, and they live under the whatdidjacithink tag. I also managed a bit of SIFF coverage, available here. Finally, I wrote a handful of standalones, which are linked in this thread:

On top of my bimonthly posts this year, I wrote a handful of standalones, largely about whose stories we tell & how we tell them. Thread!

—
jaci as in jackie not jaycee. (@letterboxed) December 17, 2018

Or, you know, you can just scroll back.

Onward!

Films of my heart: Annihilation, Eighth Grade, Black Panther, Dirty Computer, Shoplifters

Other faves: En El Septimo Dia, Support the Girls, Hereditary, The Favourite, Crazy Rich Asians, You Were Never Really There, If Beale Street Could Talk, Tully, Blindspotting, Leave No Trace

Continue reading “[2018 Film Wrap-Up]”