★ 2024 ★ Criterion Challenge '24 ★

italics=in theater, *=rewatch

date	title	poster	thoughts
03/01	Aguirre, the Wrath of God		i feel like many scenes in this film were made up on the fly. very surreal, very good imagery, and very interesting ideas about the conquest of the americas.
09/01	Amadeus		my piano teacher put this on for class. it was a pretty good dramatization of mozart's life. i just wish she wasn't fast forwarding to save time.
16/01	The Seventh Seal		despite my love of speculative fiction, i haven't actually watched/read many historical fantasy stories. this one was really funny for a film about people dying in the middle ages. glad i had a snow day to do this.
21/01	Labyrinth		yippee the cinema was screening this on my birthday! it was an incredibly silly film, and i liked it a lot. sarah would have done numbers on tumblr i think. actually no, she's too good for tumblr (strong enough to stand up to manipulative magic twinks). i'm gonna have "magic dance" stuck in my head for the next few days.
26/01	Super Size Me		we watched ~half of this in health class. it's not particularly good.
15/02	Mysterious Skin		god this was good, but also what the fuck gregg araki. i got physical discomfort for like 60% of the screening. it freaked me up so bad that he was my age during the first playground scene. god, fuck.
17/02	We Are From Jazz		this would have been a very fun and charming musical if it wasn't for the nonzero amounts of blackface. what was karen shakhnazarov thinking.
25/02	Repo! The Genetic Opera		bad in a funny way. still not worth the $7 theater ticket. they needed more of the grody graverobber guy. and also lyrics that didn't sound like shit.
17/03	The End of Evangelion*		it was nice seeing this film in a better quality than my laptop screen could provide. a little before the film, i had read ~100 pages of donna tartt's "The Secret History", where richard's talking about the bacchae and the beauty of terror and all that. i think that idea kinda permeates this film, as the animation is so gory and yet so clean and good. and also there's the split mindset of the viewers, who want to see the evas being sick af and also the pilots being mentally sound. idk maybe i'm onto something or maybe i'm just rambling.
21/03-22/03	The Sandlot 2		we watched this in health because we finised all the curriculum and there were still two days left in the quarter. the movie is weirdly misogynistic in ways i can't really describe. i'd say its only redeeming quality is that it's free on youtube.
21/03-22/03	The Last Repair Shop		we watched this in piano because we had nothing else to do before the quarter ended. it's charming
22/03	Fight Club		jesus christ that was good. so glad i went into it w/o spoilers. the credits song was one i've only heard at some school performances, and i don't think i'll listen to it anywhere else to preserve the feeling i get from it.
28/03	The Thin Man		seen at home w/my grandparents + father. reasonably funny for something made 90 years ago.
02/05	Twelfth Night		we're at the end of the play in english class, and my teacher played the film for us in chunks every time we finished an act. sorry to be a dweeb, but shakespeare's good. i adore feste.
14/05-17/05	The Wind Rises		our permanent sub made us watch this in apwh after the exam. very pretty, but i didn't like how miyazaki got so buddy-buddy with nationalism and militarism. idk it just didn't rub me the right way.
24/05	The Color of Pomegranates		i tried watching this in sixth grade for some not-like-the-other-girls cred, but i didn't get more than ~15 mins in because i was 11 lmao. this time i watched it because my good friend seems to be into it. very pretty and artsy. i like the costuming.
29/05	She's the Man		watched during our english final period. solid, albeit very 2000s.
31/05	The Needle*		rewatched this at home after finals to destress. i think it might be my top film of all time. god i love viktor tsoi and the kazakh new wave.
02/06	Rain Man		learned that this film existed via the "History of Autism" wikipedia article. it was fine ig.
10/06	Man With a Movie Camera		very cool stuff. i've been trying to come up with a program of soviet avant-garde films to present to my local cinema, and this one is 100% going on there.
27/06	I Saw the TV Glow		godddd this was so insane and incredible. like, it's so nostalgic, and i'm not trans or a 90s kid. and also the ending really makes you feel owen's distress (and yet again, i don't share her experience! schoenbrun is just that good! also i really fucking hate being in arcades). i will riot if smith and lundy-paine don't get awards for their performances.
01/07	Unbelievable Adventures of Italians in Russia		i found out about this movie from that girl on tumblr who makes marx x engles yaoi. it was really funny and nice for turning the brain off. that lion must have been a nightmare for the crew though.
08/07	Water Lilies		melancholic and relatable. kind of crushes the soul, but there is hope for us girls yet.
20/07	Night Is Short, Walk On Girl*		the final part of my tatami galaxy rewatch!!! all of the songs and backing tracks were literally so good idk how i forgot about that aspect of the film.
29/07	Perfumed Nightmare*		i saw this back in 2023 at the local cinema. was really psyched to see that criterion had it this month. roped my dad into watching it with me; he seemed to like it too.
31/07	Nowhere		some will say this is the best teen movie; some will say this is the worst teen movie. i will say that this is the horniest teen movie. and what an absurd ending. thanks gregg araki.
09/08	North by Northwest*		seen in 70mm yay! it was a very lovely screening except for the two times when the sound cut out :( . i saw this aaaages ago—i really only remembered bits of the crop duster scene—so it was nice to rewatch.
23/08	Dìdi		i'm am very much so not part of the group of people that can relate to this (not male, not asian, not from mid-00s california), but i liked it a lot as a teen girl slightly older than didi. as a film, it's sooo awkward and second-handedly embarrasing (just like me), but also deeply self-aware (just like meeee). if i could be a different person, i definitely would choose to be a teenage guy in the 90s or 00s — like sure most of them suck, but i think i could pull off the suckiness really nicely.
15/09	Vertigo		a story about terrible cycles, before and after the big twist. the plot wasn't as clean as i would've liked it to be, but it was generally an alright movie. those scenes at the very beginning of the story where john is just driving around after madeline are dull asf though.
02/10	Like Water for Chocolate		incredibly dramatic and romantic; it embodies the genre. i loved watching all of the cooking scenes. there were some parts that were supposed to be funny i think (rosaura's death), and others that are quite serious but make you chuckle (rosaura trying to get pedro to sleep with her). i loved gertrudis and john's aunt. tita was alright as a protagonist, but she really should have gone for the other man... such tragedy.
09/10	The Great Gatsby		this is the latest version with dicaprio and stuff. watched in english class. i thought it was an utterly dreadful adaptation; much too straightforward, unnuanced, and melodramatic. also, the color grading and shots were really bad to look at.
19/10	Lancelot du Lac		saw this with my good friend. it was solidly alright. i had to stop myself from laughing during the first scene; all the fake blood was just too absurd. the last scene was good; i love a good slow, tragic death. i've noticed that i get really sleepy whenever i watch a movie at night. maybe i should just stick to matinees so i don't fall asleep and miss the plot.
02/11	Mahjong		four taipei boys get megahumbled by love and debt. has a large cast and many branching yet interconnecting storylines. it's quite cynical at first, but in the end the people i was rooting for got what they wanted. the setting is so well-portrayed, what with the music and lighting (oh that headlight glow!). the people live, cheat, kill, and die for money—markus's line at the end of the film about the 19th century being the age of imperialism and the 21st being... truly a little amber preservation of 90s taipei (not that i was there). oh and also it's funny as hell. seen with my father.