2023 at the Movies at My House
Time once more to gather the family âround the appliance of your choice!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: : in 2023 I made 24 trips to the theater to see films made that same year. Meanwhile at home, I kept up with select new releases depending on what was conveniently available through our familyâs streaming subscriptions, what sounded most watchable, and/or what felt like potential future Oscar nominees that should be gotten over with in advance to ease my annual Oscar Quest time crunch. For value-added fun, as an anniversary gift from my lovely wife Anne we now have Amazon Prime, which expanded our options without expanding my available TV free time. I did what I could within the time slots allotted.
Hence the fourth annual installment of the MCC tradition borne of the pandemic: a ranking of all the brand new films I saw on comfy, convenient home video in their year of release. Sure, they couldâve been 24 separate entries written in real time as I consumed them, but thatâs not how I roll. The Academy Award nominations announcement is coming up January 23rd, which Iâve been keeping in the back of my mind as the deadline for this listicle, so that incentive to get these done clearly worked. On with the countdown!
24. Fingernails (Apple TV+). What if Love Tester machine results were incontrovertible judgments on every relationshipâs viability, all of us were required to abide by the results (even if it meant obediently breaking up), and instead of going to a dive bar for testing you went to a âscientistâ who got the answer by yanking your fingernail out and microwaving it? How many seconds do you think would pass before every negative result led to cries of Nobody Tells Me Who I Can or Canât Love? Somehow the heavyweight duo of Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed (with an assist from The Bearâs Jeremy Allen White) take an entire film to become their realityâs very first rebels to land on that 21st-century rule of romance (for better or worse) and maintain straight faces through what feels like a thin midterm project in a Twilight Zone 101 plotting class where the chapter on metaphors wasnât till second semester.
23. Luther: The Fallen Sun (Netflix). Idris Elba is up to five-seasons-and-a-movie as homicide detective John Luther, that Loose Cannon Who Doesnât Play by the Rules and (FINALLY) went to prison at the end of his last BBC season. Naturally it takes UK society about six seconds to spawn yet another monstrous string of murders that only Luther can solve â in this case a Dark Web snuff-film ring led by a creepy Andy Serkis, whose powers of manipulation are ludicrously unstoppable and whose well-staffed and funded infrastructure raises countless unanswered questions because his hundreds of minions all vanish at the end. Netflix money gives our man John his biggest budget ever, a new sort-of partner who hopefully outlives her predecessors (Cynthia Erivo, nearly keeping up), and an exotic Norway getaway for the final battle. One of the most nihilistic shows Iâve ever watched taking an ironic vacation amid the brightest possible scenery is the perfect analogy for comparing this to all of creator Neil Crossâ other, more believable (and consequently far scarier) Luther works, including the prequel novel.
22. JUNG_E (Netflix). Yeon Sang-ho, director of the definitive zombies-on-a-train flick Train to Busan, is handed a blank Netflix check to craft a post-apocalyptic drama in which Our Hero is a military weapons designer (Kang Soo-yeon, who died before its release) working on a robot mercenary project based on her own mom, who infamously died in a losing battle. Somehow âwarrior based on a loserâ does not sound like a marketable product to her boss, and their differences of opinion escalate into one shiny set piece after another, rife with twists that lost my sympathy at some point, possibly at the phrase âOur Hero is a military weapons designerâ, which does not lead down the Tony Stark antiwar redemption road.
This wouldâve been twice as funny if Murphy had done it in character as a âMr. Robinsonâs Neighborhoodâ sketch.
21. Candy Cane Lane (Prime Video). Welcome to an MCC first: our 2023 list includes a Christmas film! TWO of them, in fact! Anne and I were in a mutual carefree mood this past holiday season. The lesser of the two is an Eddie Murphy family comedy in which he strikes a deal with a wayward elf to have the grandest outdoor decorations of anyone on his blockâŠfor a price. Maybe he shouldâve held out for Satan himself â the elf is more irritating than funny, Ron Swansonâs only-in-Xmas-specials Cockney accent is a liability whenever he acts sincere, and director Reginald Hudlin (Boomerang, the original House Party) lets everything fall to pieces in the chaotic final half-hour. Iâd be up for seeing Murphy try another project with leading lady Tracee Ellis Ross (now rocking the big screen in American Fiction), but contraptions like this are why we generally avoid any and all Christmas films released after our childhoods ended. (Besides Elf, I mean.)
20. Saltburn (Prime Video). From Eternals to The Green Knight to The Batman to The Banshees of Inisherin, Barry Keoghan has worked triple overtime to stand out from Dunkirkâs lookalike pack of pasty British youngsters. With a little help from Oscar winner Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman), I will never, ever, ever again mistake him for any of those other lads, or cleanse my brain of the final, eye-scarring minutes of this maniacally âdaringâ British cross between Six Degrees of Separation and What About Bob? that mischievously prances along the ever-nebulous rated-R boundaries, waiting for its chance to lambada with Poor Things.
19. Maestro (Netflix). Director/co-writer/star/notorious schnozz-fraudster Bradley Cooper is so passionate about his Leonard Bernstein biopic that the top of his to-do list was a PSA teaching us itâs pronounced Bern-STINE, not Bern-STEEN, so it rhymes with Alan Mooreâs John Constantine. Heâs also so passionate that he assumes we all know the celebrated conductorâs career as well as he does (sorry, nope), thus freeing him to deliver an expensive Behind the Music episode about the unbreakable relationship with his wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan, who only does Oscar-hopeful films these days) and the male lovers whose dalliances hypothetically threatened his career. Judging by the complete lack of external pressures in those subplots, we can conclude the entire music industry granted him a lifetime hall pass, in which case, why are we here? As for his actual accomplishments, Cooper loves telling us how awesome Bernstein was, but only shows him doing the thing onceâŠand that six-minute podium-channeling of Mahlerâs orchestral grandeur is the best scene. So this is more about the mildly inconveniencing consequences of fame than about why he was famous.
18. Inside (Peacock). Willem Dafoe is nearly the only actor in the quietest, most luxurious survival thriller ever. As a mostly prepared burglar who gets trapped in some one-percenterâs multi-million-dollar cutting-edge automated penthouse fortress, heâs convincingly agonizing as he runs out of food, new wounds keep happening, his mental state deteriorates into deprivation lunacy, and he keeps finding reasons to trash the ownerâs possessions. Then half our pent-up anxiety is cathartically, prematurely released once he discovers a dependable water supply, he never comes near the brink of eating his own flesh, and itâs all little more than an escape room. This isnât an indoor 127 Hours but rather a rich-people-suck polemic about how everything we own, no matter how unique or expensive, is ultimately just disposable stuff in the grand scheme, especially if weâre a rich. To be fair, the premise wouldnât work if he were trapped in a tenement rat-hole from The Wire because then he could just punch through the flimsy walls like the Kool-Aid Man.
Chickens only have a lifespan of 5-10 years, but 23 years later somehow our tasty heroines returned!
17. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (Netflix). Aardmanâs 2000 Chicken Run was a wondrously daffy send-up of The Great Escape and other prison-camp classics, which in turn led Americans to discover Wallace & Gromit, for which I remain grateful. Two decades later the sequel brings back some of the original hensâ voices, adds The Last of Usâ Bella Ramsey as the daughter of the two leads, replaces the since-canceled Mel Gibson with TVâs Chuck, and inverts the plot to a necessary break-in to a chicken nugget factory where all the inmates are free-range but mesmerized into food-cycle compliance. Everythingâs as fun as Aardman can be for a good while, but then the inspiration and surprises dwindle over time and the wackiness begins to feel by-the-numbers, like a just-okay non-Aardman kiddie movie.
16. A Biltmore Christmas (Peacock). We watched our very first Hallmark Christmas movie! Of course our gateway narcotic was the one with time travel and Trek actors in it. Bethany Joy Lenz from One Tree Hill, a veteran of at least six prior holiday TV-movies, is a jaded screenwriter ârealistâ who thinks happy romantic movies are dumb, takes a tour of real-life attraction Biltmore Mansion in North Carolina, then trips back to a â40s film set for a meet-cute with an old-fashioned actor played by Kris Polaha, a.k.a. the innocent guy whose soul was destroyed so Steve Trevor could live in Wonder Woman 1984âs âhappyâ ending. Typical rom-com hi-jinks and broad homages to yesterdayâs filmmakers benefit from the two notable guests whoâd lured us in: Jonathan Frakes as Biltmoreâs friendly, infinitely patient curator and hotelier; and, too briefly, Voyagerâs Robert Picardo as an angry boss with a TV-Brooklyn accent. Weâre not making a habit of these even if sci-fi actors are building their own bandwagon (did you know Billy from Battlestar Galactica has been starring in and writing these?), but I can say in all sincerity we got what we expected, and had to laugh at Frakes verbally wink-winking at us when escorting Ms. Lenz to Room Three-Five-Nine, which he pronounces exactly so for maximum Easter-egginess.
15. The Killer (Netflix). David Fincher bounces from Mank back into more familiar men-of-violence territory with Michael Fassbender as a pro assassin who â despite his meticulous, calmly narrated preparations and days of advance surveillance â screws up a job like a chump, goes on the Bond-style international lam, then switches gears to revenge. It works okay if you consider it an allegory for the filmmakerâs career, how even the perfectly set-up production can be unwound with a single random accident or an unseen agent of chaos in the careeristâs blind spot. It works even better if you consider it Fincherâs idea of deadpan comedy. On simpler levels, thereâs one wrenching bare-knuckle brawl, one engrossing dinner chat with special guest Tilda Swinton as a fellow pro, but then thereâs the rudeness with which the film dead-stops on a suspiciously too-benign note.
14. No One Will Save You (Hulu). Kaitlyn Deverâs performance in the Netflix miniseries Unbelievable was one of the hardest hitters we caught up to during the pandemic. For the Halloween season she starred in this less traumatic yet differently frightening high-concept vehicle, an alien-invasion thriller with nearly no dialogue. Dever pulls off all the feels as a small-town pariah with a tragic backstory whose curiously enormous house becomes ground zero for intruders from beyond. Itâs a slickly run genre gauntlet that naturally resolves only when Our Heroine dares confront her Dark Secret, as one always does best in times of stress. What hobbled its score here was the epilogue, a twisted Happily Ever After with a great big âWHY?â that unravels what had only just started to make sense.
âHey, get a load of this Wish trailer! Weâre just gonna wait for that one to come to Disney+, right?â
13. Elemental (Disney+). The award for the yearâs Least Accurate and Most Damaging Trailer goes to Pixarâs latest, which looks from all outward appearances as if they were branching out into rom-coms for kids but mightâve blown the âcomâ part in favor of groaner puns and formulaic cutesy world-building. The âcomâ portion is weak, but the âromâ ainât half bad thanks to charming chemistry between our leads Leah Lewis (The CWâs Nancy Drew) and Mamoudou Athie (Unicorn Store) as Wet Romeo and Burning Juliet. To us olds the most interesting part is what they omitted from the ads: the tale of a decades-old family legacy thatâs about to be passed on to a young-adult heir who has zero interest in it. Should the beneficiary accept it anyway and let aspiration die, or walk away to chase her own dreams and que sera, sera? The solution is beyond obvious to any rational adult, but the strain of familial communication breakdown is too, too real. And yes, clearly millions of labor-hours were poured into the reliably cool animation, but frankly Pixarâs always made that look like the easiest part. Maybe someday theyâll recapture their former status as essential weekend-of-release viewing.
12. Avenue of the Giants (Heartland Film Festival rental via Eventive). Not yet released outside the festival circuit, the latest film from Pontiac Moon writer Finn Taylor tries with best intentions to weld two disparate kinds of movies into one. In one corner is a Holocaust-survivor true story â how Czech-born Herbert Heller escaped the atrocities of World War II, fled to America, became a beloved childrenâs store owner, and lived happily every after into 2021. (Believe it or not, this kind soul is played by Stephen Lang, the ĂŒber-macho Big Bad from James Cameronâs Avatar series.) In the other corner, Eighth Gradeâs Elsie Fisher plays a fictional teen anguished over sexual identity and a recent suicide attempt. This deeply unlikely duo is not exactly straddling a perfectly balanced teeter-totter. The only thing they share is that, ostensibly like everyone else theyâve ever known, very sad things have happened to them. (âYouâve had trauma? Hey, I too have had trauma! Weâre trauma twins!â) Even though their histories look nothing alike, these two polar opposites with almost nothing in common can still find an extremely narrow middle ground to form a human connection and one can teach the other It Gets Better. Also, to be clear, itâs not a rom-com.
11. Asteroid City (Peacock). First rule of Film Twitter Club is you must love all things Wes Anderson, one among dozens of reasons why Iâve never progressed beyond lurker status there. Some of his films have won me over, whenever they feel like knowingly jokey throwbacks to the Coen Brosâ youth and I should respond by donning a tweed smoking jacket and chuckling intellectually into a patched elbow. Some leave me stone cold whenever the primly stylized mannerisms, fastidiously symmetrical shots, and uniform staccato patois are overbearingly numbing and you canât tell by looking when anyone is actually emoting unless their dialogue spells out that they are. This one leans more toward the former with its imagined setting of a 1950s kiddie astronomic-con, its superfluous nesting-doll story-in-story structure, and an all-star cast the size of a Love Boat three-parter. The grand finale spirals out of control â I mean, more so than Anderson may intend â but its saving grace is Scarlett Johansson, the actress playing an actress playing an actress, who definitely, noticeably, winningly emotes. And in my weaker moments, I do love me some visual symmetry.
10. Jailhouse to Milhouse (Heartland Film Festival rental via Eventive). Another thus-far festival-circuit exclusive â which in fact had its official world premiere here in Indianapolis, though we opted for a virtual screening â Buddy Farmerâs Kickstartered documentary charts the hard-knock life of Pamela Hayden, best known as the voice of Bart Simpsonâs whiny best friend (and a few other Simpsons characters, not to mention her other gigs like Adventures in Odyssey). The crew follows along as she gives inspirational talks to at-risk girls about her own checkered childhood, and how her parents tried curing her early rebellious streak by enrolling her in a series of increasingly abusive boarding/reform schools, like the ones they used to profile on 60 Minutes. Undiagnosed depression and other contributing factors made things worse, but ultimatelyâŠwell, today everythingâs coming up Milhouse! Nevertheless, sometimes thereâre tears along the way.
Belgiumâs finest mustache is BACK and no wayward Winklevoss twin is gonna slow him down.
9. A Haunting in Venice (Hulu). Kenneth Branaghâs adaptive do-over of Agatha Christieâs most well-known novel was a fine update, but its sequel couldnât quite muster up enthusiasm in touristy Egypt during the pandemic, especially when Fox realized all the sand in the world couldnât bury its canceled costar Armie Hammer. Branagh is back with his best Poirot film yet, which time-jumps to post-WWII when the Belgian detectiveâs faith in anything â God, humanity, his own usefulness â is ebbing lowest and heâs tempted to walk away from it allâŠtill he is of course faced with solving maybe just one more case. Branagh avoids the sometimes stodgy feel of the first two Poirots with experiments in starkly colored German Expressionism, classed-up Roger Corman shocks, a string of unpredictable deaths, specters that pirouette on the line between reality and nightmare logic, and a new lineup of as-yet-uncanceled persons of interest â Michelle Yeoh, Fifty Shadesâ Jamie Dornan, Yellowstoneâs Kelly Reilly, Mayor of Kingstownâs Emma Laird, Tina Fey (???), and Branaghâs Belfast proxy-prodigy Jude Hill â ready to spook it up in the Venetian catacombs and one aged, most haunting house. (Is it also haunted? Therein lies the mystery!)
8. Godland (Criterion Channel). Icelandâs submission for Best International Feature at this yearâs Academy Awards is a grim psychodrama in which a young Danish priest (Elliot Crosset Hove) is sent forth on a perilous journey to go plant a church in the farthest Icelandic regions. Environmental hazards and language barriers have already worn him down by the time the surviving party arrives and begins overseeing the steeple-raising, to say nothing of the ongoing tension with his appointed local guide Ragnar, played by Ingvar SigurĂ°sson (Rebel Moon, The Northman) as a contrarian manly-man who, unbeknownst to the young man of God, is listening and rethinking more than he realizes. The Nordic panoramas are ugly and spellbinding; writer/director Hlynur PĂĄlmason is prone to judicial, welcome use of tracking shots to capture emotional ambiance rather than Marvel hallway fights; and the tragic final act is unsurprisingly bleak yet allows the viewer to finish immersing in the desolation and ponder where it all went wrong, here in the broad wasteland of captivating religious failures between Gareth Evansâ Apostle and Robert Duvallâs The Apostle.
7. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar / Poison / The Rat Catcher / Swan (Netflix). While Film Twitter gives Asteroid City 11 stars out of 5, I was more enamored of Wes Andersonâs quartet of shorts that couldâve been packaged as a single anthology film. By indexing them as separate Netflix works, it tames the algorithm into constantly recommending only Andersonâs works, their library of which has now doubled. All four are adaptations of Roald Dahl stories (as was his Fantastic Mr. Fox) that interlock in varying tangents and feature a rotating cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, Richard Ayoade, and Rupert Friend. As with Asteroid City Anderson employs a story-within-story structure with more intentional whimsy, and the storied ensemble sometimes takes turns performing Dahlâs own flourishing narration straight off the page, often preserved at great length. Anderson should set aside his proclivities in service of other writers way more often.
6. Missing (Netflix). No relation to the 1982 Best Picture nominee, this spiritual sequel from the producers of the 2018 high-concept Searching once again contrive a taut, fashionably of-the-moment thriller in which every shot, every scene is composed of screens-within-the-screen. Storm Reid (A Wrinkle in Time, Invisible Man, that one episode of The Last of Us) is average modern teen June, whoâs extremely online like the rest of us and freaking out when her mom Nia Long (everything from Boyz n the Hood to NCIS: Los Angeles) disappears on vacation in Colombia with her boyfriend Ken Leung (Rush Hour! Saw! X-Men 3!). Letting curiosity overcome fear, June assumes the position of a literal armchair detective and begins hunting for clues in every text sheâs been sent, scouring every account she can log into, analyzing every pixel of every photo or video, and reaching out for as much assistance as she can afford to hire or plead for remotely. In this frantic virtual journey with potential flesh-ânâ-blood consequences, her unexpected bedrock is Joaquim de Almeida (Fast Five, Queen of the South) as a Taskrabbitâą freelancer she hires for a single errand, but who sticks around to offer further assistance at no charge, partly out of kindness and partly because he really needs to see where this is all going, just like the rest of us.
Did you know you can sing âSeth Rogen and Evan Goldbergâ along to the cartoonâs theme song? Good luck getting it out of your head now!
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount+). I was one of those â80s comics fans who read the original Eastman/Laird comics, which were black-and-white and magazine-sized for the first four issues, and later turned up my college-age nose at the â90s full-color sellout kiddie cartoon that became a phenomenon whose crude, humble roots were all but forgotten by mainstream fandom, by which I mean millions of kids who loved those famous-artistsâ reptilian namesakes forever. Turtles media has waxed and waned over the years, but the latest feature from director Jeff Rowe (of the great Mitchells vs. the Machines) is a rousing revival that a fan of any TMNT version can get behind. A number of feats had to be pulled off: a strong emotional hook, a rarity in past versions (here Our Heroes are a family of home-schooled teens arguing with their overprotective parent that they really want to start living and schooling in the open world with others their age); actually funny jokes and pop-culture riffs (via Rowe and at least five other writers, including Seth Rogen and his BFF Evan Goldberg); voice-casting that was more than todayâs hottest stars (Jackie Chan as their adoptive, overprotective rat-dad/sensei Splinter! The Bearâs Ayo Edibiri as April OâNeil! Giancarlo Esposito! Maya Rudolph! Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows! tons more!); and, of course, they must fight-and-fight-and-fight, and it needed to be awesome, up to and including a bombastic kaiju-riffic finale thatâs an excitingly earned payoff. Then bring all that to life with dexterous street-art-stylish animation (Spider-Verse ran so the Turtles could leap) and this is the best Turtle-forward anything in ages.
4. May December (Netflix). Either a cringe-inducing romantic drama or a deceptively low-key literary-level comedy depending on your mindset, the latest composition from director Todd Haynes (last thing I saw of his was the 2002 Best Picture nominee Far from Heaven) is a complicated ripped-from-old-headlines potboiler in which Julianne Moore is Schmary Schmay Schmetourneau, an ex-convict who went to prison for bedding a young teen, did her time in the clink, married him and had kids. Her hermetically bizarre family life is interrupted by a visitor from the outside â Natalie Portman as TV actress Elizabeth Berry, best known as the star of the cheesy hero-veterinarian drama Norahâs Ark. Elizabeth has been cast in an ostensibly prestigious Schmetourneau biopic (more likely a Lifetime movie) and wants to shadow the real deal so she can better become her. Moore is suitably weird as a woman whoâs basically claimed victimhood for herself and created her own uninterrogated happy ending, yet Portman one-ups her as Elizabeth exhibits her own peculiarities even before she descends into half-baked Method immersion. Itâs soon apparent Haynesâ biggest and/or saddest joke is that Elizabeth is a terrible actress. (Her into-character monologue near the end is a painful scream.) This Single White Female duel between two paragons of utter self-unawareness might be unbearable if it werenât for their go-between, Riverdaleâs Charles Melton as the former junior-high seduction victim who grew up to become a family man far too young, but who becomes the first and maybe only character to discover the rare quality of introspection.
3. They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix). The shadow government is controlling us all through its secret fried chicken recipe, drugged communion wine, and evil hair-care products! And theyâre cloning people and replacing them when they die! And the only ones who can save us all are a pimp, a drug dealer, and a prostitute! And those three are their primary clone subjects! For the reasons why, first-time director and co-writer Juel Taylor (Creed II, the Space Jam sequel) leads us through a merry satirical mystery with Jamie Foxx, John Boyega and his real MVP, The Marvelsâ Teyonah Parris as the lady-of-the-evening whoâs also a Nancy Drew superfan, has all the books and is ready to show off her rarely tried-out detective skills. Behold the power of reading in action! In case the revelations arenât scathing enough in their perceptive indictments, decide for yourself how many levels itâs funny on when the Big Bad turns out to be Kiefer Sutherland.
2. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie (Apple TV+). Gen-X remembers growing up with this guy. He was Alex P. Keaton, he was Marty McFly, he was OG Teen Wolf, and then he was the most world-famous person with Parkinsonâs. Fox granted ride-along powers to documentarian Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth, He Named Me Malala) to see what his everyday life is like â the pitfalls of fame, the awkwardness of his gait, the nonstop jittering, the reliance on meds to achieve ânormalityâ for public appearances, the wounds that happen if he missteps, the loving family, and the indefatigable sense of humor. By the time you realize that perhaps some things are being kept off-camera, itâs hard to blame him for redrawing his boundaries, but Fox isnât pandering to us for tears. Heâs dropping his guard, showing us what itâs like, and humbly demonstrating life can find a way, laughter and all.
THE MOD SQUAD 2023.
1. The Holdovers (Peacock). We couldâve caught this when it screened as the Heartland Film Festivalâs closing-night grand finale, but the trailerâs silly âWe Love the â70s!â vibe turned me off. Eventually I remembered I liked director Alexander Payneâs Nebraska, really liked Sideways even though I donât drink, and loved The Descendants, all of which were Best Picture nominees. When the time came to start guessing which films I might have to catch for my annual Oscar Quest, I gave in and queued this upâŠand cursed myself for procrastinating. The bonding of misfits is a theme near to my heart as long as it isnât expressed through crude â80s teen-sex romps, but Payne leapt over that decade for this funny, poignant tale of a trio of loners who end up spending Christmas vacation at an upscale boarding school. Dominic Sessa (a newcomer with immense promise) is a constantly irritated teen whoâs alone due to circumstances entirely out of his control â i.e., his family has dumped him there; DaâVine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building) is the boss lunch-lady whoâs now alone after her son just died in the Vietnam War; and Sideways star Paul Giamatti is a literature teacher and extreme history geek whose life choices have left him alone in a crowd, which he doesnât think about much because he uses school pride and âDID YOU KNOWâŠ?â monologues to drown out the sounds of his flaws. They stop short of upgrading to found-family status, but their snowed-in detente soon gives way to exploring their respective stories in candid, sometimes painful ways.
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âŠthus endeth the list. For anyone curious, I also kept track of all the other films I watched â not just new ones â regardless of release date, platform, or worth. This yearâs roster released between 1931 and 2022:
Alita: Battle Angel
All That Breathes ***
Animal House
Argentina, 1985 ***
Battle Royale (2001 Special Edition)
The Big Sleep
Calvary
City Lights
Coming 2 America ***
Death on the Nile (2022)
Denial
Devotion
Doctor Dolittle (1967)
Dog Day Afternoon
Duel
Fall
Game Night
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
The Great Escape
The Great War of Archimedes
Greenland
Greyhound
Gunpowder Milkshake
Heaven Can Wait
Hollywood Shuffle **
How Do You Measure a Year? ***
If Beale Street Could Talk
Ip Man 4: The Finale
Kill Bill: Volume 2
The Killing Fields
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Laura
Love Story
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
The Music Man (1962)
Night of the Hunter
1984
The Old Dark House
The Pale Blue Eye
Permanent Vacation
Psychokinesis
Road to Singapore
Rome, Open City
Serpico
The Seventh Seal
She Said
The Sorrow and the Pity
Stranger Than Paradise
Swiss Army Man
Synecdoche, New York
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
To Catch a Thief **
Triple Frontier
Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut
When We Were Bullies ***
White Noise
The Woman King
** Denotes encore viewings 25+ years later
*** Oscar nominees from the past two years I couldnât catch during their respective Oscar seasons, but finally caught this year, so Iâve now seen every single Academy Award-nominated work released in 2021 and 2022. All of them.
Feel free to ask about any of these. Otherwise, see you around for next yearâs movie lists!
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Photo Credit: Tailfins
