Category Lists
The Best Films of 2023
The Best Films of 2023 “Part of me thinks that because it was all so idiosyncratic and so wild, it was almost like no one really knew where to start taking it apart. Like, where are you going to start hacking away at how strange it was?” – Greta Gerwig on the lack of studio notes for […]
The Best Films of 2022
“The whole system has been primed to make sure that you accept only a superhero movie….if you said to a college student today “dude, you’re a sellout” would they even know what the hell you were trying to say?” – James Gray “….if I can make a business case to spend a billion dollars on […]
The Best Films of 2021
“Movies, unlike branded entertainment, need to live in the world, not just on personal devices…because while we’re talking about infrastructure, we are also talking about pleasure — the pleasure of the cinematic object, and the pleasure of your company and conversation. It’s frustrating that people keep writing lazy obituaries for cinema, something they have no […]
The Best Films of 2020
“The history of cinema is in part an anthology of premature obituaries. Sound, color, television, the suburbs, the VCR, the internet — they were all going to kill off moviegoing, and none succeeded. Cultural forms, and the social and private rituals that sustain them, have a way of outlasting their funerals. How many times have […]
The Best Films of 2019
“Relentless normalcy is boring. Bring on the divas with their superstitions and quirks and strange routines.” –Ruth Graham “If I had to say the single biggest contributor to people preferring to watch things on Netflix versus going to theaters, it’s that the theaters nickel and dime on bulbs….more than 60 percent of American theaters are […]
The Best Films of 2018
(If 2018 was missing anything, it was a singularly great poster. But this one, from The Favourite, with its lilliputian Weisz and Stone is close.) “There are people who talk about the American cinema of the ‘70s as some halcyon period… It was to a degree but not because there were any more talented filmmakers. There’s […]
The Best Films of 2017
(My favorite poster of the year. I love the motion of Moonee, almost leaping out of frame.) The Best Films of 2017 “There are only two places left that come with an excuse for being unreachable—the shower and the movies. “Sorry, I was in the shower” or “Sorry, I was in a movie.” USE […]
Best of 2016
(Best poster of the year. I’d like to see just the torn out piece in a sister poster.) “He’d brought along “Michael,” a recent release, but twenty minutes after popping it into the VCR he got bored and switched to an old favorite, a Jean Claude Van Damme slugfest called “Bloodsport,” which he pronounced “an […]
The Best of 2015
The Best Films of 2015 “It’s no longer enough to tell a story, because television does it—not better, but more, and more easily. The power of the cinema remains undiminished, but few of the directors of this year’s run of “prestige” releases make much use of it……. The greatness of images isn’t in the coherence […]
The Best of 2014
(Favorite poster of the year. “Turn off all the lights. I want to see what it looks like from the street!”) “I am easily moved to tears and rarely survive a visit to the cinema without shedding them, racked, as I am, by the most perfunctory, meretricious or even callously sentimental attempts at poignancy (something […]
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