That’s a wrap!

Sundance 2026!

Faves of 2025

December

Hamnet (dir. Chloé Zhao)
Eternity (dir. David Freyne)
Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam)
Sirāt (dir. Oliver Laxe)

(Sorry forgot about this place)

November (2/2)
[I got really into Frankenstein movies this month]

The Curse of Frankenstein (dir. Terence Fisher)
The Bride (dir. Franc Roddam)
Gods and Monsters (dir. Bill Condon)
May (dir. Lucky McKee)

November (1/2)

Some of My Best Friends Are… (dir. Mervyn Nelson)
It Was Just an Accident (dir. Jafar Panahi)
Rot (dir. Marcus Koch)
Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)

Honorary mention Bugonia! Yorgos killed it again 🙂‍↕️

October (2/2)

Tongues Untied (dir. Marlon Riggs)
Blue Moon (dir. Richard Linklater)
A Foreign Affair (dir. Billy Wilder)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (dir. Mary Bronstein)

October (1/2)

Magic Mike (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
She’s the He (dir. Siobhan McCarthy)
Color Adjustment (dir. Marlon Riggs)
Ganja & Hess (dir. Bill Gunn)

September (2/2)

Diciannove (dir. Giovanni Tortorici)
True Stories (dir. David Byrne)
The History of Sound (dir. Oliver Hermanus)
One Battle After Another (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

September (1/2)

Maddie’s Secret (dir. John Early)
Between Dreams and Hope (dir. Farnoosh Samadi)
The Captive (dir. Alejandro Amenábar)
Taxi zum Klo (dir. Frank Ripploh)

August

Hud (dir. Martin Ritt)
Shin Godzilla (dirs. Shinji Higuchi and Hideaki Anno)
Crank (dirs. Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine)
Dazed and Confused (dir. Richard Linklater)

July

The American Friend (dir. Wim Wenders)
I am Cuba (dir. Mikhail Kalatozov)
The Devil’s Backbone (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
Swoon (dir. Tom Kalin)

June (2/2)

Top Secret! (dirs. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker & Jerry Zucker)
Secret Mall Apartment (dir. Jeremy Workman)
Elio (dirs. Domee Shi, Madeline Sharafian & Adrian Molina)
28 Years Later (dir. Danny Boyle)

June (1/2)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (dir. John Cameron Mitchell)
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (dirs. Jeffrey Friedman & Rob Epstein)
Buddies (dir. Arthur J. Bressan Jr.)
Bound (dirs. Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski)

May (2/2)

Malcolm X (dir. Spike Lee)
The Warriors (dir. Walter Hill)
Friendship (dir. Andrew DeYoung)
Bring Her Back (dirs. Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou)

May (1/2)

Trouble Every Day (dir. Claire Denis)
Reservoir Dogs (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Final Destination Bloodlines (dirs. Zach Lipovsky & Adam B. Stein)
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (dir. David Fincher)

April (2/2)

Dancer in the Dark (dir. Lars von Trier)
A Man Escaped (dir. Robert Bresson)
Minority Report (dir. Steven Spielberg)
Maggots and Men (dir. Cary Cronenwett)

April (1/2)

The Paperboy (dir. Lee Daniels)
Stranger Inside (dir. Cheryl Dunye)
Chuck & Buck (dir. Miguel Arteta)
What’s Up, Doc? (dir. Peter Bogdanovich)

March

Point Blank (dir. John Boorman)
Blush: An Extraordinary Voyage (dir. Iiti Yli-Harja)
The Chambermaid (dir. Lila Avilés)
I Am My Own Woman (dir. Rosa von Praunheim)

MON AMI QUI BRILLE DANS LA NUIT - Animated short film 2020 YouTube video by GOBELINS Paris

youtu.be/sJIHLiYvsCk?...

Ranking best picture winners I’ve seen (don’t be mean to me)

February (2/2)

A Matter of Life and Death (dirs. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Girl with the Needle (dir. Magnus von Horn)
Suspiria (dir. Dario Argento)
Universal Language (dir. Matthew Rankin)

February (1/2)

Sauna (dir. Mathias Broe)
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene)
I’m Still Here (dir. Walter Salles)
The Seed of the Sacred Fig (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof)

Finally, my pick for animated really stood out from the rest of the nominees. Wander to Wonder gives us a behind-the-scenes look at an old, Mr. Rogers-style tv show with a fantastic twist that you’ll never forget. This one is available to rent on Vimeo: vimeo.com/852947956

And my other pick for documentary short is Incident. Trigger warning: this film contains real graphic violence. Using body camera footage, this film gives viewers a real-time vision of an instance of police violence that led to the death of an innocent man www.newyorker.com/video/watch/...

For documentary I also have a split decision. The first is Instruments of a Beating Heart. A simple but heart-wrenching story of a first grade band overcoming self-doubt to put on a show for incoming students. I nearly sobbed the whole time 😭 tinyurl.com/36dsza62

My other pick is The Last Ranger. This felt the most epic of all the nominees to me. It’s the story of a big game reserve in South Africa and all the lives that intertwine there. It is unfortunately not available online but you can see the trailer here: youtu.be/SPedyo5uU9w

For live action I have two that I think are very worthy of the win. The first is A Lien. This short is a harrowing portrayal of the real life entrapment ICE officers use to arrest people trying to go through the proper channels to gain citizenship vimeo.com/997805490

Posting about my fav nominated shorts! 🧵