★ 2024 ★ '24 Criterion Challenge ★

italics=in theater, *=rewatch

category#	date	title	poster	thoughts
1	09/04	Bottle Rocket		funny as hell. i love iñez.
2	02/09	Repo Man		what a crazy fucking story!!! the setting was bleak in a goofy way, and all the characters were insane. great way to spend my labor day evening.
3	28/11	Tampopo		watched on thanksgiving bc i thought that a movie all about food would suit the day and all. i couldn't stop smiling in almost every scene (exception: the turtle).
4	06/01	Electric Dreams		i am partial to cheesy '80s movies, so this one was a hit. my love of/sympathy for computers has increased manyfold (miles why did you have to treat him like that :( !!!!). also this movie gave me me an urge to listen to synthpop some more. so that's something i guess.
5	16/08	My Heart Is That Eternal Rose		watched this on a whim bc criterion had it this month and the title sounded cool. omg it was magical... everything glows, even the blood on rick's face, the synth soundtrack fits in great, and goddd the shots and lighting. and also the story is pretty good (ah cheung my #1 man!!!). one more thing—in the first scene where rick is gambling in cheung's bar, there's this drink machine behind the counter, and it's branded "vitasoy". for the entirety of that scene, i was just thinking of those memes where they mark up a piece of text with a word that could be misheard/read as something else, in this case vitasoy -> vitya tsoi. it's a lot less funny when i have to explain it ugh.
6	14/09	Andrei Rublev		i found the plot kind of hard to follow because my knowledge of medieval russian history is not too great, and also i can't tell apart most of the actors (they're all white guys with beards! cyril and andrei look so similar!). i didn't really get what all the guys who saw it in 1980 were saying in the comments, but i'm sure it has a deep and wonderful message behind it. my personal highlights: the girl braiding hair in the ruined chapel, cyril and danila's final conversation, the jester, boris's breakdown.
7	xx/xx	Portrait of a Lady on Fire		----
8	06/07	Chess of the Wind		set design was fire. loved the litte interludes by the laundry pool. also i cannot believe that they got away with the dust scene in 1976.
9	28/01	Trances		the title's accurate; i was certainly put in a trance (almost fell asleep in the cold, dark living room with my dad). it is very good though! there's a lot of beautiful footage of morocco + the muisc is nice if you like percussion and drone-y singing.
10	xx/xx	Masculin Féminin		----
11	xx/xx	Quadrophenia		----
12	18/02	True Stories		i started cackling during the sermon scene. god i wish texas was real u_u.
13	29/11	Close Up		a very strange movie about a very strange crime. my viewing was interrupted by my friends texting me, but i quite liked the ending.
14	08/07	On the Waterfront		i quite honestly wasn't paying attention for the entire movie, but the parts i was focused for were solid. lots of yelling and intensely religious speeches. oh also the music and sound design was good.
15	02/11	Charade		fun movie! gave me a chuckle, but was also quite suspenseful. the opening credits sequence was fantastically ~groovy~. it reminded me a bit of north by northwest, though maybe that's just because of cary grant—wait no, both of those films have all those mistaken/faked identities!
16	26/11	Fat Girl		deeply depressing. did not enjoy.
17	23/11	Stalker		very very good. the filming is such a beauty, and it really carries the slower beats of the story. i particularly like the shots of the stalker lying on various grounds in the zone. the plot is also great; i'm always entertained by guys arguing. i did space out a couple of times, so i had to rewatch some parts, but that's okay.
18	xx/xx	Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence		----
19	xx/xx	The Power of the Dog		----
20	10/08	O Sport, You Are Peace		the most i saw of the olympics this year was memes of that one gymnast guy with glasses, so i guess this kinda made up for missing out. the soundtrack was very 80s (positive <3).
21	25/06	Lilies		the sort of film that you watch through the ending credits. big fan of the play within a play within a movie. i have at least 3 people that i'm gonna recommend this one to (best friend, guy in my bio class, guy i follow on tumblr).
22	14/06	The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie		i think it is very funny that i actually watched this on june 14. also rich people suck so bad it's hilarious.
23	17/08	The Girls		i found this to be deeply, deeply dull. i'm sure it was somewhat revolutionary when it came out in 1968, but to me it just seems like a means of saying "men bad, women good" without any further depth, dressed up in surrealistic sequences. that thing they did with the camera in the ending scene was interesting i guess.
24	01/09	Hour of the Wolf		i tried to watch this last night, but after 30 mins i got really sleepy out of nowhere and ended up going to bed at like 20:00. the film itself really reminds me of david lynch―weird, cackling antagonists; long sequences without much talking; unknown settings. pretty nice!
25	07/06	Bitter Rice		so sad... francesca and silvana were gay as hell imo.
26	07/01	Happy Together		waugh that was sad. cinematography was on point!!!!
27	xx/xx	Pixote		----
28	02/07	Poison		three movies for the time of one! i didn't really get it, but the "hero" section was cool. good cinematography.
29	27/11	Beyond the Valley of the Dolls		it was a pretty normal comedy drama type thing until the absolutely batshit insane ending. the random lesbianism and z-man's constant serving of cunt were the major highlights.
30	xx/xx	Do the Right Thing		----
31	09/11	The Last Picture Show		i zoned out multiple times throughout this one, but i didn't fall asleep. yay! the ending was very, very bleak. also, i couldn't make out what 90% of the food items in the movie were for some reason.
32	xx/xx	Ali: Fear Eats the Soul		not very antiracist tbh. also i kept getting annoyed about people leaving their unfinished drinks behind in the bar.
33	04/11	Chungking Express		the plot was quite simple, but the colors and compositions were incredible. wong kar wai really went ham with the shaky cam in some scenes—it's more like blurry cam, even. for a romance movie, there wasn't much actual relationship-ing going on (which is alright by me). it's really a story about lonely people coming within "0.01 cm" of each other for just seconds—zhiwu and the wig lady don't see each other again, and it's ambiguious if faye and 663 stick together.
34	30/11	The Rules of the Game		i found this to unfortunately be deeply boring. the plot was kind of hard to follow, in part due to the fact that i couldn't tell many of the characters apart. jackie was cool though. perhaps the subtleties of the french go over my head.
35	27/10	Alphaville		a very strange blend of spy movie and scifi dystopia. it was alright. i wasn't really interested in all the philosophical monolgues that each character said, but there were some cool shots (esp during the conversation with the dude who spoke russian and english (i forget his name sorry)).
36	xx/xx	The Magic Flute		----
37	07/07	Good Morning		v v quaint movie. obviously made for kids, but in a cute way. the random english was so silly.
38	01/09	The Fabulous Baron Munchausen		this was very clearly made on a tight budget with lots of greenscreen, but that just adds to its fun fantasy vibes. the visuals are so wonderfully stylized, and i love everything about it: the drawn backgrounds, the tinted film, the weird claymation bits, everything!!!
39	24/03	The Battle of Algiers		a movie theater in town was doing a series on morricone (the guy who did the soundtrack), and i'd heard good things about this one, so i went. it was very good! i think the guy who sat in front of me has a wikipedia article regarding his actions against the vietnam war. my dad and i went out to eat after, and he ranted about his time traveling in algeria yesterday.
40	25/11	Memories of Murder		continuing my detective thriller kick from m. also very good. the plot follows through with what you expect most of the time, but in a compelling and rewarding way. the few times it did divert from my guesses were incredibly interesting. it's honestly impossible to side with anyone bc of how pretty much every character is a terrible person at some point. so many character 180s right there. and goddd is the film haunting.
41	xx/xx	The Passion of Joan of Arc		like watching a train crash happen in slow motion.
42	24/11	M		really really compelling story. reminded me of high and low what with the children-targeted crimes. it had a more obvious messaging than high and low, though, and the antagonists' reasonings were wayyy different—"fuck the rich" vs "i hear voices!!!". wonderfully chilling twist on the detective story!
43	28/07	The Third Man*		i've seen this before, but i was like eight so i didn't remember jack except that they went up in a ferris wheel and down in the waterways. it was really good — the music was delightful, and the shots were quality.
44	xx/xx	Diabolique		----
45	21/07	High and Low		saw this with my dad in 35mm! it was really really intense with these wonderful little jokes thrown in out of nowhere. i loved the club scene and that shot of takeuchi in the flowers. at some point in the film, i got really into the idea of being a police investigator (i love data and patterns and puzzles), but by the end i came back around to my marxist-sympathetic ideals (capital punishment is bad, 1312, etc). in all honesty, takeuchi's fate was pretty horrifying. still a good movie though.
46	11/01-12/01	Solaris		this was playing at my local university's student film club, so i went to see it there! it was very beautiful, especially in a nice university theater, but the screening was kind of late (and on a school night!), so i fell asleep in the last 50-ish minutes. i finished it on youtube the next day. good stuff, thanks tarkovsky :)
47	11/08	Mala Noche		the google plot synopsis sounded hilarious, so i watched this. started out thinking walt as a scumbag (which he is), but he does progress quite a bit throughout the film yayyy. those little clips of johnny and roberto goofing off were lovely. do not expect a good romance to come of the film.
48	05/02	Missippi Masala		nice romance. hella good costumes/set design. time to wikipedia ugandan history.
49	30/07	The Royal Tenenbaums		what an intensely mid film. i hated the incest-as-happy-resolution plotline and soundtrack choice. everything else just kinda happened idk.
50	14/08	Pariah		ohhhh this was rough. so good though. soundtrack was fire.
51	xx/xx	Eyimofe		----
52	07/04	Revenge		so i ended up watching this because i watched the needle, thought it was very lovely (for reasons other than tsoi!), and wanted to know more about the kazakh new wave. i went into this thinking it was going to be ancient korea imperial court drama, but this was great too. quite possibly the most beautiful movie i've watched this year.