2023 and 2024 Theatrical Releases

Wow, I guess I haven't been keeping this blog up at all. Okay, let's at least backfill the last two end-of-year favorite film lists.

2023 was a weirdly thin year for me, at least in terms of theatrical one-week runs. In fact, I think I'd rather do a five-best than a ten-best list.

1. Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo)
2. Nobody's Hero (Alain Guiraudie)
3. Rise (Cédric Klapisch)
4. Tori and Lokita (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
5. Vera (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel)

I would fill this list out with some subset of the following films, which are listed in alphabetical order: Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet), Barbie (Greta Gerwig), Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki), The Holdovers (Alexander Payne), Men of Deeds (Paul Negoescu), Passages (Ira Sachs), Past Lives (Celine Song), and Winter Boy (Christophe Honoré). There are some belated theatrical releases that I deem too old, like Kira Muratova's Brief Encounters (1967) and Mikko Niskanen's Eight Fatal Shots (1972).

2024 looked a little better, although that's due to the vagaries of theatrical distribution - a lot of the below films were first screened in 2023: 

1. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)
2. Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)
3. This Closeness (Kit Zauhar)
4. Un Prince (Pierre Créton)
5. Matt and Mara (Kazik Radwanski)
6. You Have to Come and See It (Jonás Trueba)
7. The Shadowless Tower (Zhang Lu)
8. I'll Be Your Mirror (Bradley Rust Gray)
9. Slow (Marija Kavtaradze)
10. Santosh (Sandhya Suri)

Releases I deem too old for this list include Shinji Sômai's Moving (1993) and Lee Chang-dong's Peppermint Candy (1999) and Green Fish (1997).