Best Movies of 2023: First Viewings & Discoveries and Individual Ballots
Screen Slate Amy Taubin Lucy Talbot Allen Elizabeth Purchell Hannah Bonner
Each year Screen Slate invites our dozens of contributors—along with filmmakers, critics, performers, programmers, cinema workers, community organizers, and other friends—to submit their lists of favorite "First Viewings and Discoveries."
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Screen Slate
Aaron A.K.

Writer

First Viewings in 2023!

Howards End (James Ivory, 1992)

The Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismaki, 1990)

The Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki, 2002)

Mukundan Unni Associates (Abhinav Sunder Nayak, 2022)

Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky, 2000)

Aavasavyuham: The Arbit Documentation of an Amphibian Hunt (Krishand, 2022)

Kharij (Mrinal Sen, 1982)

The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)

Michael Almereyda

Filmmaker

The First Year (Patricio Guzmán, 1971)

Manhattan Melodrama (W.S. Van Dyke, 1934)

Manderlay ( Michael Curtiz, 1934)

Experience (Abbas Kiarostami, 1973)

Stranger and the Fog (Bahram Beyzaie, 1972)

The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro, 2001)

Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman, 2011)

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1989)

Nadja in Paris (Eric Rohmer, 1964)

Sketches for Late City Final (Jem Cohen, Peter Hutton, Jeff Preiss & Adam Grossman Cohen; 1991)

Melissa Anderson

film editor, 4Columns

Nuts in May (Mike Leigh, 1976)

Ashes and Embers (Haile Gerima, 1982)

Baxter, Vera Baxter (Marguerite Duras, 1977)

The Boy Who Liked Deer (Barbara Loden, 1978)

The Black and the Green (St. Clair Bourne, 1983)

Neige (Juliet Berto and Jean-Henri Roger, 1981)

The Munekata Sisters (Yasujiro Ozu, 1950)

A Foreign Affair (Billy Wilder, 1948)

Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández, 1951)

L’amour fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969)

Ina Diane Archer

Artist/Media Conservator

I saw one new release:

American Fiction (which reminded me of reviewing Sorry to Bother You way back when)

I gotta get out more!

First Time Views

I've been following The Evolution of Horror Podcast and the theme subgenre is Home Invasion. I’ve seen about ½ of the 60+ movies on the list. Here’s a selection:

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) "Eek" says my notes.

Someone's Watching Me (1978)

When a Stranger CALLS BACK (1993)

Home Alone (1990)

Creep/Creep 2 (2014, 2017)

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) This was Big! I was very afraid to see this movie.

I've been reading The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act so:

The Goddess (1958)

Weirdest “system” movie I've seen since Something Wild.

Inland Empire (2006) because I wanted to read Melissa Anderson's fantastic monograph on the film.

That’s what I like about the South quartet:

tick...tick...tick (1970) Sheriff Jim Brown leading a town of Good Ole Boys? Featuring Black

Chariot (1971) cast members; Bernie Casey, Richard Elkins, and Pauline Myles.

Poor Pretty Eddie (1975) starring Leslie Uggams and Shelly Winters (!!!) Mind. Blown. Cracker- Horror right up there with Two Thousand Maniacs.

Chloe: Love Is Calling You (1934) Sort of Imitation of Life but terrible and set in a Louisiana swamp. I Loved it!

The Brood (1979)

Sissy (2022)

Wex Festival of Restoration 2023:

The Black and the Green (1983), St. Clair Bourne

Dream Life (La vie rêvée) (1972), Mireille Dansereau

The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962), Wiggly Timothy Carey

Él (1953), Luis Buñuel

Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Redux)(1988), Guy Maddin

Greta Snider Early Films (1989-1999)

A Temperamental Wife (1919), David Kirkland

Burning an Illusion (1981), Menelik Shabazz

Race and the Suburbs in American Film edited by Merrill Schleier, led me to

Take A Giant Step (1959) I think it should be more widely seen and leads me back to the portrayal of middle and upper middle class Black characters those in my sole new release viewing, American Fiction (2023).

Terrence Arjoon

Secret Honor

Strange Days

Abigail's Party

Green Snake

The Plot Against Harry

Shin Godzilla

The Cloud Door

Trouble Every Day

Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

The Far Country

Mark Asch

2023 Theatrical Releases (alphabetical)

A Woman Escapes (Blake Williams, Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik)

Dad & Step-Dad (Tynan DeLong)

Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Our Body (Claire Simon)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

The Plains (David Easteal)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Still Film (James N. Kienitz Wilkins)

2023 First Watches (chronological)

The Big Break (Joseph Stick, 1953)

The Cobweb (Vincente Minnelli, 1955)

L’Amour fou (Jacques Rivette, 1969)

The Student Nurses (Stephanie Rothman, 1970)

Still Life (Sohrab Shahid-Saless, 1974)

Deprisa, deprisa (Carlos Saura, 1981)

Which side are you on? (Ken Loach, 1984)

Moonlighting (ABC, 1985-89)

Mist Melodies in Paris (Julius-Amédée Laou, 1985)

Typhoon Club (Shinji Sōmai, 1985)

Lilly’s World of Wax (Tom Palazzolo, 1986)

Running on Empty (Sidney Lumet, 1988)

Pin: A Plastic Nightmare (Sandor Stern, 1988)

Tiger Cage 2 (Yuen Woo-ping, 1990)

The Rapture (Michael Tolkin, 1991)

Broken Mirror (Song Dong, 1999)

The Target Shoots First (Christopher Wilcha, 1999)

Junebug (Phil Morrison, 2005)

Over the Rainbow (Rachel Maclean, 2013)

Untitled “cop slide” video (@ryanwhitney6, 2023)

Paul Attard

Critic/Curator/Researcher/Moving Image Artist/Lifeform

New Releases

Queens of the Qing Dynasty

Piaffe

Knock at the Cabin

In Water

May December

The Delinquents

Nobody’s Hero

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros

Silent Night

Jawan

New To Me

The Rainbow Bridge (1975; Vicki Z. Peterson) - A stunning study of the horizon line, where each succeeding frame differs from the previous, creating rapidly alternating geometric patterns via our persistence of vision. The only copy of this in-camera-edited masterpiece (that I’m currently aware of) is located at the NYPL’s Performing Arts branch and is faded as hell; if anyone has any leads to Peterson, her other work, or both, please give me a ring.

Groups I-VIII (1969-80; Barry Gerson) - I was lucky enough to spend a day with Barry Gerson—experimental cinema’s best kept secret—at his studio in Preston Hollow, where we watched a handful of his minimalist 16mm vignettes. For those interested, all of these will be screened at Anthology early next year!

Ken Jacobs: Up The Illusion (2023) - May Ken continue to teach us new ways of seeing for another 90 years!

He Weeps for You (1977; Bill Viola) - Cry me a river, drowning in my own tears, etc.

Batman Dracula (1964; Andy Warhol) - Chris Nolan could learn a thing or two from this one…

Babylon Series #3 (1990; Stan Brakhage) - I saw a handful of great Stan Brakhage films this year—such as Interpolations I-V, Spring Cycle, Airs, Tortured Dust, and Faust’s Other: An Idyll, to name a few—but this one, easily the most “minor” of the bunch, is Stan at his most breathtakingly ephemeral. Perfectly replicates those fleeting early morning moments of slowly waking up on a blindingly snowy day.

Ecosystem 7 ~ A Sedimentary Heat (1990; Teruo Koike) - The late Teruo Koike and his ecological films are unknown entities to most stateside experimental cinema enthusiasts, something that will hopefully be rectified in the coming years. This one could easily be mistaken for a hand-painted Brakhage film.

Room Film 1973 (1973; Peter Gidal) - Sorta like Skinamarink, except not terrible.

Hours for Jerome (1982; Nathaniel Dorsky) - I watched this on a (stunning, breathtaking, gorgeous, etc.) 16mm print at the Harvard Film Archives. After the screening, they proceeded to officially award me an honorary PhD in “based grail hunting.”

Romeo and the Black Brothers (1995; Kōzō Kusuba, Shinpei Miyashita, Yasuo Iwamoto, Tomomitsu Matsukawa, & Kenichi Nishida) - My first go-around with World Masterpiece Theater and, suffice to say, I was deeply impressed with its simple, yet economic production values, consistently magnificent artistry, and masterful storytelling instincts. For those who are on the fence about anime in general, I’d gladly recommend this wonderfully anti-weeb enterprise any day.

And here’s ten other noteworthy titles:

Nike Air Max 180 Commercial (1991; Jean-Luc Godard) - In a year where we got a trailer for a movie that will never exist, it’s only fitting to mention Godard's Nike ad that almost never saw the light of day.

Early Summer (1951; Yasujirō Ozu) - GOAT-zu strikes again!

The Dagger of Kamui (1985; Rintaro) - Turns a series of pulpy historical novels into a mythic soap-opera epic. Includes some of the most visually stunning animated sequences to come out of 1980s Japan and features a cameo from cowboy Mark Twain.

Monkey Business (1952; Howard Hawks) - “What a knee-slapper!”

Fall (1971; Tom DeWitt Ditto) - Tom Ditto, a future NASA researcher, once worked on experimental films like Scott Bartlett’s OnOff. This one, which gave me slight vertigo, is somehow even more technically impressive.

Particle Dreams (1988; Karl Sims) - Love these early computer animation doodles that exist at the intersection of art and science.

Electramorphic (1987; Bradley Eros, Aline Mare) - Bradley, you crazy for this one!

The Flesh (1991; Marco Ferreri) - Ferrari remains the true Italian Stallion.

Spiders in Love: An Arachnogasmic Musical (1999; Martha Colburn) - Creepy-crawlies of the world, unite!

Brickwall (1975; Paul Winkler) - Takes a while for this one to really get going, but once it does, it hits like… well, you get the idea.

Jon Auman

Writer

First Viewings

The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renior)

Spacked Out (Lawrence Ah Mon)

Easy Living (Mitchell Leisen)

Four Daughters (Michael Curtiz)

List (Hong Sangsoo)

Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

No Highway in the Sky (Henry Koster)

Daughter of the Nile (Hou Hsiao-Hsien)

Sailor Suit and the Machine Gun (Shinji Sōmai)

The Quest (Nippon TV)

Adam-12

That Night's Wife (Yasujiro Ozu)

Lila Avilés

Filmmaker, Tótem

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor)

Goodbye Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-Liang)

Black Girl (Ousmane Sembene)

The Process (Orson Wells)

The Naked Island (Kaneto Shindō)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

All The Beauty And The Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)

Vera (Tizza Covi & Rainer Frimmel)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

Sean Baker

Filmmaker, Red Rocket

Delitto d'amore aka Somewhere Beyond Love (Luigi Comencini, 1974)

Extra Terrestrial Visitors (Juan Piquer Simón, 1983)

Delirio caldo aka Delirium (Renato Polselli, 1972)

The Magnificent Cuckold (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1964)

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Shinji Somai, 1981)

The Sex of Angels (Ugo Liberatore, 1968)

Love Affair, or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967)

Malèna (Giuseppe Tornatore, 2000)

Il demonio aka The Demon (Brunello Rondi, 1963)

Typhoon Club (Shinji Somai, 1985)

On the Silver Globe (Andrzej Żuławski, 1988)

Erika Balsom

Critic/Academic

New Releases

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

Mutzenbacher (Ruth Beckermann)

Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

Orlando (Paul B. Preciado)

Youth (Spring) (Wang Bing)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Unrest (Cyril Schäublin)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Allensworth (James Benning)

Tori & Lokita (Luc Dardenne & Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

11 favourite first views, no particular order

Impatience (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1928)

Monsieur Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976)

The Woman in the Moon (Fritz Lang, 1929)

Pressure (Horace Ové, 1975)

The Legend of Lylah Clare (Robert Aldrich, 1968)

Vitesse Women (Claudine Eizykmann, 1974)

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1971)

Bushman (David Schickele, 1971)

La pudeur ou l'impudeur (Hervé Guibert, 1992)

Une sale histoire (Jean Eustache, 1977)

Eventide (Sharon Lockhart, 2022)

Anthony Banua-Simon

Filmmaker

New Releases

After Sherman

The Adults

I Like Movies

The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology

Pacifiction

De Humani Corporis Fabrica

Knock at the Cabin

Geographies of Solitude

Kokomo City

Rewind & Play

First Viewings and Discoveries

The Phantom of the Monastery (1934)

Love is News (1937)

The Clock (1945)

Simon of the Desert (1965)

American Revolution 2 (1969)

Tout va bien (1972)

Manila in the Claws of Light (1975)

Prefab Story (1979)

Reds (1981)

The Atomic Cafe (1982)

The Coca-Cola Kid (1985)

Caravaggio (1986)

Working Girls (1986)

Walker (1987)

Alma’s Rainbow (1994)

Bulworth (1998)

The Net (Das Netz) (2003)

Don’t Let the Riverbeast Get You! (2012)

Local Legends (2013)

So Pretty (2019)

Juan Barquin

Writer/programmer

New Releases

Our Home Out West (Drew Tobia)

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Sanctuary (Zachary Wigon)

Knock at the Cabin (M. Night Shyamalan)

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Véréna Paravel)

Return to Seoul (Davy Chou)

Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Frankenhooker

Freeway

Sorcerer

Yi Yi

Phase IV

Light Sleeper

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance

Alan Wake/Alan Wake 2

Untitled “cop slide” video

Untitled "cop slide" video in reverse

Margaret Barton-Fumo

New Releases (alphabetical)

The Adults

Chile ‘76

Fallen Leaves

Killers of the Flower Moon

May December

Our Body

Priscilla

Scarlet

Showing Up

You Hurt My Feelings

First Viewings

Hangover Square (1945)

The Strangler (1970)

The Laughing Policeman (1973)

Busting (1974)

Report to the Commissioner (1975)

Buffet Froid (1979)

Neige (1981)

Love Rites (1987)

The Last Seduction (1994)

Pacifiction (2022)

Abe Beame

New Releases

The Taste of Things

May December

Showing Up

Oppenheimer

Spider Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Napoleon

Ferrari

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Killers of the Flower Moon

Blackberry

Firsts

Intentions of Murder, Imamura, 1964

Le Corbeau, Georges-Clouzot, 1943

The Last Run, Fleischer, 1971

Sorcerer, Friedkin, 1977

The Spook Who Sat By The Door, Dixon, 1973

A Man Escaped, Bresson, 1956

In a Lonely Place, Ray, 1950

The Exorcist III, Blatty, 1990

Youth of the Beast, Suzuki, 1963

Reds, Beatty, 1981

Chan Is Missing, Wang, 1982

The Watermelon Woman, Dunye, 1996

In The Bedroom, Field, 2001

The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Wenders, 1972

The Seventh Continent, Haneke, 1989

3 Women, Altman, 1977

Caliber 9, Di Leo, 1972

The Great Silence, Corbucci, 1968

The Seven-Ups, D’Antoni, 1973

Le Mans, Katzin, 1971

Brian Belovarac

American Dream (Barbara Kopple, US 1990)

Ask Any Buddy (Elizabeth Purchell, US 2020)

Ceddo (Ousmane Sembène, Senegal 1977)

The Dupes (Tawfiq Saleh, Syria 1973)

Friendly Witness (Warren Sonbert, US 1989)

Hookers on Davie (Holly Dale & Janis Cole, Canada 1984)

Kajillionaire (Miranda July, US 2020)

The Night It Rained (Kamran Shirdel, Iran 1967)

Open Mic Solitaire (Julius-Amédée Laou, France 1983)

Pressure (Horace Ové, UK 1975)

The Quince Tree Sun (Víctor Erice, Spain 1992)

Serpents of the Pirate Moon (Jean-Louis Jorge, US 1973)

Snow Canon (Mati Diop, France 2011)

Statues Hardly Ever Smile (Stan Lathan, US 1971)

Still Life (Sohrab Shahid Saless, Iran 1974)

A Time for Burning (Barbara Connell & William C. Jersey, US 1966)

Tobacco Farmers (Yugantar, India 1982)

Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island (Dan Kapelovitz, US 2012)

Twin Peaks (Al Wong, US 1977)

The Vampires of Poverty (Carlos Mayolo & Luis Ospina, Colombia 1978)

Bruce Bennett

TV & movie writer

New:

Mike Hodges: A Filmmaker’s Life (David Cairns)

The Pigeon Tunnel (Errol Morris)

Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble In Mind (Ethan Coen)

Smile (Parker Finn)

The Lying Life Of Adults (Edoardo De Angelis)

May December (Todd Haynes)

The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams)

32 Sounds (Sam Green)

Old:

Outlaw: Goro The Assassin (Keiichi Ozawa,1968)

Death Walks At Midnight (Luciano Ercoli,1972)

Seven Days to Noon (Roy & John Boulting 1950)

Tie: Ivy (Sam Wood, 1947) & So Evil My Love (Lewis Allen, 1948) & Ambush At Tomahawk Gap (Fred F. Sears,1953)

The Day Of the Owl (Damiano Damiani, 1968)

One Way Passage (Tay Garnett 1932)

Tie: Zatoichi And The Chess Expert (Kenji Misumi, 1965) & Zatoichi In Desperation (Shintarō Katsu, 1972)

The Tell-Tale Heart (Ernest Morris, 1960)

Tie: One on Top Of The Other (Lucio Fulci, 1969) & Lizard In A Woman’s Skin (Lucio Fulci, 1971)

Savage Mutiny (Spencer Gordon Bennet, 1953)

Carmen From Kawachi (Seijun Suzuki, 1966)

Hitokiri/Tenchu! (Hideo Gosha, 1969)

La Cérémonie (Claude Chabrol, 1995)

Interlude (Douglas Sirk, 1957)

The Appointment (Lindsay C. Vickers, 1981)

Yield To The Night (J. Lee Thompson, 1956)

The Monster Squad (Fred Dekker, 1987)

In the Mouth of Madness (John Carpenter, 1994)

Fear Is The Key (Michael Tuchner, 1972)

Giampaolo Bianconi

Curator

New Releases

Barbenheimer – I couldn’t care less about these movies. But a mass psychological hallucination sublimating murderous rockets, sexy plastics, and the paranoid, corporate nightmare of 20th century America? Page Dr. Pynchon and check me in.

The World’s UnFair, New Red Order – It’s cinema, it’s a theme park, it’s an installation, it’s a world’s fair

May December

The Master Gardener

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Menus-Plaisirs—Les Troisgros

Anatomy of a Fall – Above all, a movie about the frustrations of having a conversation with a German

In Water

Foragers, Jumana Manna, 2022

Grenfell, Steve McQueen

First Viewings and Discoveries

Rosemarie Trockel Continental Divide 1994 — seeing this in Trockel’s MMK show earlier this year felt like the first time…

Elda Cerrato (with Ramiro Larraín, Luis Zubillaga, and Luciano Zubillaga), RF: Segmentos_CPV: Okidanokh (1964–2022)

Sam Bodrojan

Freelance Critic

Favorite Films With a 2023 US Theatrical Release

La Chimera

Asteroid City

Pacifiction

Showing Up

Our Body

Human Flowers of Flesh

The Zone of Interest

Fallen Leaves

Killers of the Flower Moon

Queens of the Qing Dynasty

First-Time Viewings

American Graffiti

Bad Education (‘04)

Bull Durham

The Cow (‘69)

Diary of a Country Priest

Drylongso

The game where you type in “IMG_[any number]” on YouTube and watch whatever comes up

Janet Planet

Kamikaze Hearts

LA Plays Itself

Mouchette

The Office, Season 3, Episode 17 “Business School”

The 7th Victim

Sexy Beast

Simone Barbès or Virtue

Slums of Beverly Hills

Still Life (‘06)

The Strangler (‘70)

Too Early / Too Late

The Wolf Knife

Joshua Bogatin

New Releases (unranked)

Afire (Christian Petzold)

Human Surge 3 (Eduardo Williams)

The Feeling That The Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

Kubi (Takeshi Kitano)

Coma (Bertrand Bonello) – This was on my list last year and will be every year until it gets released; I love The Beast, but unhinged, unrefined Bonello beats masterpiece theater Bonello any day of the week.

Here (Bas Devos)

A Woman Escapes )Blake Williams, Burak Çevik, and Sofia Bohdanowicz)

Last Things (Deborah Stratman)

The Plains (David Easteal)

Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster) – I've never hated a film that's ended up on my top 10 as much as this one, but here it is.

Best First Watches

The Report (Abbas Kiarostami)

George Carlin, Jammin in New York

When I am Dead and White (Živojin Pavlović)

The 5th Annual On Cinema Oscar Special (Eric Notarnicola)

The Trial (Eric Notarnicola)

Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette)

Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh)

Love Torn in A Dream (Raul Ruiz)

Chinese Shadows (Raul Ruiz)

Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes)

The Unknown (Tod Browning)

West of Zanzibar (Tod Browning)

Avanti! (Billy Wilder)

The Man From London (Bela Tarr)

Torque (Joseph Kahn)

Human Geographies (Claire Simon)

Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer)

From What is Before (Lav Diaz)

The Terminal (Steven Spielberg)

Late Autumn (Yasujiro Ozu)

Bertrand Bonello

Filmmaker, The Beast

I haven’t seen many films this year because of work.

And all the “old” films I saw were not for the first time.

Except one, which I found really beautiful:

Le grand amour, by Pierre Etaix (1969)

Jihane Bousfiha

New Releases (unranked)

Passages

May December

Afire

Anatomy of a Fall

Fallen Leaves

Texas Death Match: Hangman Adam Page vs. Swerve Strickland (AEW Full Gear)

La Chimera

Last Summer

Past Lives

The Zone of Interest

First Viewings

Working Girls (1986)

Exotica (1994)

Bull Durham (1988)

Out of Sight (1998)

Point Break (1991)

The Foul King (2000)

The Match Factory Girl (1990)

Creed (2015)

Solaris (2002)

Hold Me Tight (2021)

The Sting (1973)

Annabel Brady-Brown

Fireflies Press, Metrograph

First Viewings (in no order)

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976)

The Skeleton of Mrs Morales (1960)

Dirty Grandpa (2016)

Lady Killer (1937)

Barfly (1987)

Dragons Forever (1988)

Trailer Town (2003)

The Errand Boy (1961)

The Flowers of St. Francis (1950)

Midnight (1939)

Charles Bramesco

Critic, Freelance

New Releases

10. Passages

9. The Killer

8. Oppenheimer

7. May December

6. How to Blow Up a Pipeline

5. The Boy and the Heron

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

3. Showing Up

2. Asteroid City

1. De Humani Corporis Fabrica

First Viewings and Discoveries

Household Saints, Nancy Savoca

The Rapture, Michael Tolkin

Dagmar's Hot Pants, Inc., Vernon P. Becker

Fat City, John Huston

Double Booked: Honeymoon (a.k.a. Hot Honeymoon Surprise), Andre Madness

Werckmeister Harmonies, Béla Tarr

Deep End, Jerzy Skolimowski

"Overnight Celebrity," Twista and Gun Drummer

"How to Clean Your Ears," John Wilson

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Samuel Brodsky

First Viewings

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun

My Little Loves

La Libertad

Caché

Yeast

Innocents Abroad

In Another Country

Bug

Dillinger is Dead

I Walked with a Zombie

A Difficult Life

Relics: Einstein's Brain – A man looks for Einstein's brain. Available on YouTube. Watched it over breakfast and cried at the end. Maybe my favorite movie from this list.

Richard Brody

The New Yorker

New releases:

Killers of the Flower Moon

Asteroid City

Barbie

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Showing Up

Passages

Civic

A Thousand and One

Earth Mama

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game

First viewings:

Dogfight (1991, Nancy Savoca)

Suzhou River (2000, Lou Ye)

L’Adolescente (1979, Jeanne Moreau)

La Rosière de Pessac (1968, Jean Eustache)

La Rosière de Pessac 79 (1979, Jean Eustache)

The End of Summer (1961, Yasujiro Ozu)

Something Like a War (2003, Deepa Dhanraj)

Quick Millions (1931, Rowland Brown)

I Don’t Want to Be a Man (1918, Ernst Lubitsch)

Winter Kills (1979, William Richert)

Mister E (1959, Margaret Conneely)

500 Francs (1961, Melvin Van Peebles)

The Fifteen-Year-Old Widows (1965, Jean Rouch)

The Botanical Avatar of Mademoiselle Flora (1965, Jeanne Barbillon)

Kansas City (1996, Robert Altman)

The Delta (1996, Ira Sachs)

Ceddo (1977, Ousmane Sembène)

Aimless Bullet (1960, Yu Hyun-mok)

The Losers (1963, Sam Peckinpah)

The Salvation Hunters (1925, Josef von Sternberg)

Bingham Bryant

Filmmaker

New Releases

Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo, 2022)

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)

In Water (Hong Sang-soo, 2023)

Mad Fate (Soi Cheang, 2023)

Trailer of a Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars (Jean-Luc Godard, 2023)

Saturn Bowling (Patricia Mazuy, 2022)

Fast X (Louis Leterrier, 2023)

Viens je t'emmène (Alain Guiraudie, 2022)

The Killer (David Fincher, 2023)

Afire (Christian Petzold, 2023)

First Viewings and Discoveries (one per director, unranked)

Ruido (Karen Lamassonne, 1984)

Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (Jerry Belson, 1982)

In the Spirit (Sandra Seacat, 1990)

Hollywood 90028 (Christina Hornisher, 1973)

Minnie and Moskowitz (John Cassavetes, 1971)

Le Journal d'une femme de chambre (Luis Buñuel, 1964)

L'Escargot noir (Claude Chabrol, 1988)

The Arc (Rob Tregenza, 1991)

Defending Your Life (Albert Brooks, 1991)

Margie (Henry King, 1946)

Flower Picking Diary (Ishida Tamizo, 1939)

Under the Heat Lamp an Opening (Zachary Epcar, 2014)

The Man with the Balloons (Marco Ferreri, 1967)

11 Harrowhouse (Aram Avakian, 1974)

Guele d'amour (Jean Grémillon, 1937)

Advise & Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962)

Queen of Diamonds (Nina Menkes, 1991)

Espoir - Sierra de Teruel (André Malraux, 1939)

Frágil Como o Mundo (Rita Azevedo Gomes, 2001)

Opfergang (Veit Harlan, 1944)

Samy Burch

screenwriter, May December

First Viewings

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

There's Always Tomorrow (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)

Hard Labour (Mike Leigh, 1973)

Breaking Away (Peter Yates, 1979)

Looking for Richard (Al Pacino, 1996)

Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997)

Caché (Michael Haneke, 2005)

Danielle Burgos

writer/layabout

New Releases (ranked)

Maybe it’s the state of cinema or the world, but I saw only three new releases this year and one of them at the start of December.

SHIN ULTRAMAN: slight edge for goofiness, vfx blending cgi and analog, and maintaining a strangeness akin to the original Ultra Q but fitting for this alien tale.

GODZILLA MINUS ONE: America is no longer allowed to make Godzilla movies. We have to stick to King Kong, giant bugs, and RAMPAGE.

BARBIE: it was fine.

New To Me (not ranked)

Many of these were theater viewings; I’m not watching fewer movies in public spaces, I’m just detaching from the present as much as possible.

The Abomination (1986)

Hookers On Davie

The Ginseng King: Taiwan saw NEVERENDING STORY and said give us two weeks and $2000. Marvelous.

Dawn Of The Dead

The New Cosmos: Takashi Makino Short Film Works

The Pricemaster: I am very behind on this, as the Pricemaster passed away this year. No cheating watching an edit.

Righting Wrongs (1986)

Bell From Hell (1983)

Crystal Miracles/Crystal Mysteries: if this is some kind of cult propaganda, it worked. I want in.

Pankow 95

I Hate Myself And I Want To Die

Backtrack

Action Jackson

Invaders From Mars (1953): I love a child’s fever dream on film.

Timekeepers Of Eternity (2021)

I’ll See You In Hell, My Darling

C.H.U.D. surprised by its political bent and baby John Goodman.

Undefeatable (1993)

Lemora: A Child’s Tale Of The Supernatural

Violent New Breed (1997) the director’s 14 year old stepson on seeing one of his stepdad’s movies for the first time: “I saw boobies.”

Grace Byron

New Releases

Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Afire (Christian Petzold)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

Monica (Andrea Pallaoro)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber)

The Stroll (Kristen Lovell & Zackary Drucker)

Bottoms (Emma Seligman)

Playland (Georden West)

I regret to say while I enjoyed it, Indigenous critiques for me bar Killers of the Flower Moon.

Fun Rediscoveries

Drylongso, Cauleen Smith

The work of Barbara Hammer at Company Gallery

Malina starring Isabelle Huppert

By Hook or By Crook on the Criterion Channel under Masc programming.

The Skin I Live In, Almodovar's surprise trans revenge thriller.

Bound

They Glow in the Dark, a strange film about two HIV positive gay ex-lovers turned friends in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Party Girl – after seeing her in a play, was lovely to be reminded what Parker Posey does best.

The Doom Generation – nihilism is in, for better or worse, but Araki captures why it's so appealing and sexy to Gen Z queer people.

Pipilotti Rist returns to NYC with Prickling Goosebumps at Hauser and Wirth and Luhring Augustine.

Un rêve, dreamy phallic revival of a Niki de Saint Phalle film.

Cristina Cacioppo

Director of Programming, Nitehawk

New Releases

May December

The Holdovers

New Strains

Jawan

Godzilla Minus One

Plane

A Thousand and One

Passages

Skinamarink

The Devil Conspiracy

First Viewings and Discoveries

At home

Home from the Hill (1960)

Virtuosity (1995)

Cohen and Tate (1988)

Full Eclipse (1993)

Lower Level (1991)

Celia (1989)

The Age of Consent (1932)

In theaters

I Am Suzanne! (1933) (MOMA)

God of Cookery (1996) (Nitehawk, Subway Cinema’s Sundays on Fire series)

Law Abiding Citizen (2009) (Metrograph, F. Gary Gray series)

The Unknown (1927) (MOMA)

World’s Greatest Sinner (1962) (Restoration at Anthology)

The Last Woman (1976) (Film Society at Lincoln Center, Marco Ferreri series)

Hollywood 90028 (1973) (The Deuce series at Nitehawk)

Canal Street Research Association

First Viewings and Discoveries:

Wavelength (dir. Michael Snow, 1967)

Permanence and ephemerality evoked through the window at 300 Canal Street — the former studio of the artist Michael Snow (1928 - 2023). At the suggestion of Peter Scott, we screened an abbreviated version on our window in 2021, generously edited by the artist himself "for those who don't have time." In this full length version, a long camera zoom recalls the storytelling of comedies, Westerns, and gangster films.

My Dinner with Andre (Dir. Louis Malle, 1981)

Two friends meet for dinner and muse about life, revealing some fundamental differences. Opening scene sees them ambling down Canal Street — a once common activity for the out-of-work artist seeking inspiration.

Party Girl (Dir. Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995)

Mary (Parker Posey) cleans up her act and becomes a librarian at Seward Park Library (Essex and Canal) — in the process falling in love with a sexy falafel vendor.

Canal Street: First Stop in America (Dir. Keiko Tsuno, Peter Kwong, 1990)

A portrait of Canal Street, landing place for waves of immigrants, produced by DCTV and this year re-screened as part of their retrospective at the Firehouse Cinema for Documentary Film, sadly sans the inimitable Peter Kwong (1941-2017).

Pom Poko (Dir. Isao Takahata, 1994)

Shapeshifting raccoons fight to save their forest home from developers. Human destruction of nature is a running thread through basically all of Studio Ghibli's films but this one is most literal, comical, and inspiring. Thanks to our colleagues at the Shape of Cities to Come for bringing it to our attention!

Foragers (Dir. Jumana Manna, 2022)

With tenderness and verve, Jumana Manna’s documentary depicts the struggles of Palestinians to forage for native plants ‘akkoub and za’atar where their families have foraged for generations – while facing increasing persecution from Israeli authorities whose laws claim to “protect” the environment while functioning to further alienate Palestinians from their land.

Rabble Rousers (Dir. Kathryn Barnier, Ryan Joseph, Kelly Anderson, 2022)

A film about how Francis Goldin and her neighbors in the LES resisted Robert Moses' slum clearance plan and, after 50 years, established New York State's first community land trust on 4th Street.

Secret Society Roller Club (Dir. Yalda Afsah, 2022)

Sensorial and intimate portrait of pigeon breeders in Compton.

Batteries Not Included (Dir. Matthew Robbins, 1987)

Gentrification fighting aliens come to the aid of a band of neighbors fighting a losing battle against developers on 9th and C. This film screened recently at Citygroup as part of their exhibition “Patterns of Change.”

Drummer’s Gonna Drum #03 (Dir. Julian Togar, 2023)

Part of Togar's debut solo exhibition at SculptureCenter this year, this film was shot on Run, a tiny island in the Indonesian archipelago which was traded by the British to the Dutch (who aspired to monopolize the nutmeg trade) in 1667 for another island: Manhattan.

Max Carpenter

New Releases

Our Body (Claire Simon)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Takaaki Itoh (Concert Hall, A38, Budapest, September 30)

Amotik (Basement, Queens, July 28)

Slam (Basement, Queens, December 1)

Flavia Laus (Basement, Queens, December 1)

x3butterfly (Studio, Basement, Queens, November 10)

Lloyd (Good Room, Brooklyn, May 27)

Isabella Koen (Basement, Queens, June 16)

James K (Zone One, Elsewhere, Brooklyn, July 1)

Nina Farrina (Concert Hall, A38, Budapest, September 30)

Patrick Holland (Zone One, Elsewhere, Brooklyn, July 1)

Both extant episodes of Turn-On (1969) are finally available on YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDpum0Jp7Gw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwRYpqTpCU4

Jacqueline Castel

Filmmaker, My Animal

First Viewings and Discoveries

Top ten in alphabetical order:

Angel’s Egg, Dir. Mamoru Oshii, Japan, 1985

And Accompanying Mamoru Oshii Show at LOMEX Gallery, NYC

Bluebeard’s Castle by Anna Biller, Verso Fiction

Unfinanced Film Project re-envisioned as a Novel

Corridor of Mirrors, Dir. Terence Young, UK, 1948

John Waters “Pope of Trash” Exhibit at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles

And his inclusion on the walk of fame as spearheaded by Outfest

Kim’s Video, Alamo Drafthouse, NYC

Organization and Cataloging of the original Kim’s Video collection in the basement of Alamo Drafthouse in Downtown Manhattan

Last Movies by Stanley Schtinter at Nighthawk Cinema, Spectacle Theater & Light Industry

Book & Accompanying Screening Series by English Filmmaker Stanley Schtinter, documenting the last film watched by various luminaries before their deaths. I viewed the last films of Lee Harvey Oswald (War Is Hell, Dir. Burt Topper), John Dillinger (Manhattan Melodrama, Dir. W.S. Van Dyke), and Pier Paolo Pasolini (Oedipus Rex, Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini).

Sade: La Libertado O El Mal, CCCB, Barcelona, Spain

Marquis de Sade exhibit, including several films and interview excerpts with artists inspired by Sade, and other televisual horrors (i.e. The Stanford Prison Experiment)

Sexe + Desires + Data: An Interactive Experience, Centre Phi, Montréal, Canada

Multi-media exhibit examining desire & technology at one of my favorite museums in Montréal

Suspiria, Dir. Luca Guadagnino, Italy/USA, 2018

The restoration of the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood <3 and the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz (now with 70MM)

Kevin Cecil

Nitehawk Movie Trivia Co-host

New Releases

Past Lives

Killers of the Flower Moon

Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret

Oppenheimer

The Holdovers

Return to Seoul

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning: Part One

May December

Asteroid City

You Hurt My Feelings

First Viewings and Discoveries

Ticket of No Return (Ottinger, 1979)

The Smiling Madam Beudet (Dulac, 1923)

The Plot Against Harry (Roemer, 1971)

The Ceremony (Ōshima 1971)

Cooley High (Schultz, 1975)

Tiger Cage 2 (Yuen, 1990)

The Creatures (Varda, 1966)

The World's Greatest Sinner (Carey, 1962)

The Law in These Parts (Alexandrowicz, 1911)

Robot Monster 3-D (Tucker, 1953)

Nico Chapin

New Releases

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor)

About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)

First Viewings

Passion (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

The Idiots (Lars von Trier)

The Dupes (Tewfik Sale)

Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache)

Él (Luis Buñuel)

The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman)

Death by Hanging (Nagisa Ōshima)

Splendor in the Grass (Elia Kazan)

Contemporary Color (Turner Ross, Bill Ross IV)

Jonah Who Will Be 25 In The Year 2000 (Alain Tanner)

Matinee (Joe Dante)

To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin)

Deep Cover (Bill Duke)

Original Cast Album Company (D.A. Pennebaker)

Absolute Power (Clint Eastwood)

Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski)

Phoebe Chen

Critic

First Viewings

Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990)

Chilsu and Mansu (Park Kwang-su, 1988)

Dust in the Wind (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1986)

Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001)

Amma Ariyan (John Abraham, 1986)

The Silent Holy Stones (Pema Tseden, 2005)

Divino Amore (Cecilia Mangini, 1963)

Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)

The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993)

Edo Choi

Five of my most memorable first viewings of the year:

Numéro Zéro (Jean Eustache, 1971) - DCP of digital restoration, FLC

The Catch (Shinji Somai, 1983) - imported 35mm print, Japan Society

Is This What You Were Born For? (Abigail Child, 1981-89) - 16mm, Anthology

Green (Luther Price as Tom Rhoads, 1987) - Super 8mm, Anthology

Dottie Gets Spanked (Todd Haynes, 1993) - DCP of digital restoration, MoMI

Davy Chou

Filmmaker, Return to Seoul

The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (Djibril Diop Mambety, 1999)

The Sky is Ours (Jean Grémillon, 1944)

The Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)

Feu Follet (Louis Malle, 1963)

Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948)

You Deserve a Lover (Hafsia Herzi, 2019)

Horrors of Malformed Men (Teruo Ishii, 1969)

Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

Jinpa (Pema Tseden, 2018)

The Gambler (Karel Reisz, 1974)

+ The Watchmen (Damon Lindelof, 2019, TV series)

Zach Clark

Filmmaker, The Becomers, Little Sister

New Releases

May December (Todd Haynes)

Jethica (Pete Ohs)

This Closeness (Kit Zauhar)

The Feeling That The Time For Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)

Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)

Shin Ultraman (Shinji Higuchi)

Booger (Mary Dauterman)

Rotting In The Sun (Sebastián Silva)

Tommy Guns (Carlos Conceiçāo)

Bottoms (Emma Seligman)

First Viewings

Batman Dracula (Andy Warhol, 1964)

Blood & Sand (Rouben Mamoulian, 1941)

A Bloodthirsty Killer (Lee Yong-Min, 1965)

God Of Cookery (Stephen Chow & Lee Lik-Chi, 1996)

Gumrah (Mahesh Bhatt, 1993)

Love Letter (Seijun Suzuki, 1959)

The Movie Orgy (Joe Dante, 1968)

The Strangler (Paul Vecchiali, 1970)

Weather Diary 5 (George Kuchar, 1989)

West Of Zanzibar (Tod Browning, 1928)

You And Me (Fritz Lang, 1938)

Rebecca Cleman

Executive Director, Electronic Arts Intermix

First Watches of the Year

I didn’t get to the cinema as much as I wanted, but loosely defined moving-image discoveries for me this year included:

Don Siegel’s Flaming Star (1960)

Ibisazi Designers Nyabyo at Haul Gallery

Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting (nope, never saw it before - much better than expected

Pope.L’s Impossible Failures, paired with works by Gordon Matta-Clark at 52 Walker, projected too large, askew, washed out – one of my favorite shows of the last decade

Clint Eastwood’s The Mule (2018)

Philippe Parreno’s Hertzian Tales at Gladstone Gallery

Leslie Thornton’s HANDMADE on the huge media wall in the MoMA lobby

Ernest R. Dickerson’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

The Wooster Group’s Symphony of Rats (work in progress, a new production based on a play by Richard Foreman) – no one appropriates film and television like the Wooster Group

New York Islanders “Exclusive Experience” video featuring the Empire State Building and the Montauk Lighthouse, projected on the ice

Alexandra Coburn

Writer

New Releases (no order, only felt very strongly about three thus far!)

Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)

Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara)

May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)

No Hard Feelings (Gene Stupnitsky)

Favorite Viewing (no order)

I, the Worst of All (María Luisa Bemberg, 1990)

Spectacle’s Gialli Marathon

Viva (Anna Biller, 2007) screening plus q&a at Nitehawk

Captain Lightfoot (Douglas Sirk, 1955)

Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965)

Red Eye (Wes Craven, 2005)

Snow (Juliet Berto, 1981)

Innocents Abroad (Les Blank, 1991)

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)

The Little Mermaid (Karel Kachyňa, 1976)

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shōhei Imamura, 2001)

Don't Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)

The Creators of Shopping Worlds (Harun Farocki, 2001)

Bram Stoker's Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola, 1992)

K. Austin Collins

Critic

My casual first-time watches were at an all-time low this year — they’ve lagged since March 2020, to be frank. Writing projects account for the Manns and Wisemans; plane rides, sleeplessness, and a dire need for distraction account for most of the rest.

Four by Anthony Mann:

Bend of the River (1952)

The Man from Laramie (1955)

The Naked Spur (1953)

Winchester ’73 (1950)

Four by Frederick Wiseman:

High School II (1994)

Juvenile Court (1973)

Primate (1974)

Welfare (1975)

And:

Dredd (Pete Travis, 2012)

Final Destination 2 (David R. Ellis, 2003)

Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, 2011)

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)

National Treasure (Jon Turteltaub, 2004)

Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953)

Special mention: Terence Davies’s The Deep Blue Sea — not strictly a first-time watch, but seeing it on 35mm at MoMI, mere days after Davies died, was like seeing it for the first time. RIP to the greatest.

Ashley Connor

Cinematographer

Top 10 for 2023

RMN (Cristian Mungiu)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (Kelly Fremon Craig)

Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf)

Revelations:

Window Water Baby Moving (Stan Brakhage, 1959) - have seen before but watching it the night before I went into labor felt like watching it for the first time. I also attempted to film my own labor with my Bolex, we’ll see how I did when I get around to developing the film.

Cat POV videos on TikTok - could honestly watch these forever, it’s everything I wanted to accomplish while shooting Madeline’s Madeline but couldn’t, because I’m not a cat.

Having a Newborn - the most psychedelic image I’ve experienced this year, feels like the cutest episode of The Twilight Zone and it doesn’t end. We’ve watched about 30 films together and she’s only 5 weeks old.

Pedro Costa

Filmmaker, The Daughters of Fire

The four 4-minute films that Chantal Akerman shot in 1967 (a year before Saute ma ville) as her application to film school.

Jordan Cronk

Critic/Programmer

New Releases

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Véréna Paravel)

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

The Plains (David Easteal)

Youth (Spring) (Wang Bing)

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)

Discoveries and Blindspot Corrections

Diaries (1971-76) (Ed Pincus, 1980)

Travolta and Me (Patricia Mazuy, 1993)

The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952)

French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955)

Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)

Examen d'entrée INSAS: Films 1–4 (Chantal Akerman, 1967)

Donovan’s Reef (John Ford, 1963)

Silvia Prieto (Martín Rejtman, 1999)

The Innerview (Richard Beymer, 1973)

Room 666 (Wim Wenders, 1982)

Benjamin Crossley-Marra

Janus Films

Ten Favorite Viewings of 2023

Payback: Director’s Cut, Bluray

Christmas in July, 35mm Film Forum

The Handmaiden, Extended Cut, Bluray

The Docks of New York, 35mm, MoMI

The Hour of Liberation Has Arrived, Mp4, Communist Film Club

Copenhagen Cowboy, Netflix

The Idiots, DCP, Metrograph

Take Me in Your Arms (Llévame en tus brazos), DCP, Telluride

Lady Killer, DCP, Metrograph

Vengeance is Mine (Roemer), Bluray

Olivia Crough

Writer/educator

New Releases (unranked)

Youth

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros

Pacifiction

Trenque Lauquen

Human Surge 3

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World

A Common Sequence

Unrest

First Viewings and Discoveries

The Dupes (1972, Tewfik Saleh) – nyff revival

Neige (1981, Juliet Berto) – restoration at Bam

I’ll Bet You Ain’t Seen Noth’n Like This Before (1981, Rodney Werden) – two people fainted during this screening at Light Industry!

Les belles manières (1978, Jean-Claude Guiguet) – Metrograph

The Dream (1987, Mohamad Malas) – programmed by Kaleem Hawa at Anthology

Open Water (2003, Chris Kentis and Laura Lau)

Dead End (2003, Fabrice Fabrice Canepa and Jean-Baptiste Andrea) – xmas road trip from hell, love Ray Wise

There’s Always Tomorrow (1956, Sirk) – Barbara Stanwyck forever <3

Taiwanese Indigenous Documentaries program at Anthology (1994 – 2000)

Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean) – Paris Theater

Blanche Fury (1948, Marc Allegret) – magnificent technicolor noir

Not Channel Zero Goes to War (1992, Black Planet Productions) – MoMA

Barres (1984, Luc Moullet) – how to jump metro turnstiles

Three Hypotheses on the Death of Anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli (1970, Elio Petri) – Spectacle

Vampyr (1932, Dreyer) – Anthology EC

Heterodyne (1967, Hollis Frampton) – a couple was making out during this Anthology Members screening

Stendali – suonaro ancara (1960, Cecilia Mangini) – also at Anthology, a funeral lamentation in Puglia

Ricky D'Ambrose

Filmmaker, The Cathedral

The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931)

Madonna and the Child (Terence Davies, 1980)

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1943)

Canyon (Jon Jost, 1984)

The Music Room (Satyajit Ray, 1958)

The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978)

A Hen in the Wind (Yasujirō Ozu, 1948)

Railway Station (Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1980)

House of Games (David Mamet, 1987)

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)

Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983)

Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973)

A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)

Le Paris des mannequins (Francois Reichenbach, 1956)

Mystery Train (Jim Jarmusch, 1989)

Night After Night (Archie Mayo, 1932)

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1969)

La theatre des matieres (Jean-Claude Biette, 1977)

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese, 1999)

The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964)

The Bloody Child (Nina Menkes, 1996)

I’m No Angel (Wesley Ruggles, 1933)

Safe in Hell (William Wellman, 1931)

Nel Dahl

First Viewings in 2023

Dark Night (1986, Fred Tan)

Thief of Hearts (1984, Douglas Day Stewart)

The Debussy Film (1965, Ken Russell)

Spider (1992, Vasilijs Mass)

Queen of Spades (1949, Thorold Dickinson)

Double Fixation (1987, Yonfan)

For the Plasma (2014, Kyle Molzan & Bingham Bryant)

Patrick Dahl

Contributor, Screen Slate

First Viewings

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader, 2022)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023) – Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart exemplifies the white American character more exactly than any other figure, real or imagined: irredeemably stupid, casually evil, gracelessly horny, impressionable, craven, greedy, grandiose.

Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (Gus Van Sant, 2018)

Minute Bodies: The Intimate World of F. Percy Smith (Stuart Staples, 2016) – Pure heaven

The Five Devils (Léa Mysius, 2022) – Best song outro ever?

I Hate Myself and I Want to Die (Greg Eggebeen and Benjamin Shapiro, 2012-2023)

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973) – When spiritual desolation hits like fentanyl

Dior and I (Frédéric Tcheng, 2014)

Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk, 2022) – Starting a petition to demand a change back to Soda_Jerk

Talking to Strangers (Rob Tregenza, 1988)

The Dark, Sad Life of Boogie2988 (Mike Clum, 2023) – An engrossing portrait of monodimensional internet stardom until Clum acknowledges he’s overwhelmed by the bleakness of his subject and starts clumsily reaching for uplift.

Dan Welch & David Cardoza

CARTOONISTS/EDITORS, CASHIERS DU CINÉMA

First Viewings and Discoveries:

Panic in Needle Park at Film Forum:

Recently a fellow cartoonist told me that the ideal readership for an anthology he publishes would look something like the Needle Park junkies in the scene where they’re shooting up and drooling over copies of Zap Comix. I think this is a strong indicator that the NY comics scene is the sharpest it’s been in years.

Lost Weekend at Film Forum:

One of the most honest movies I’d seen in a long time… I hit up the 4-D experience (smuggled in a bag of 24oz. Bud Heavies).

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! at Walter Reade:

The lady with the black hair is like if Lucy from Peanuts grew up.

Gloria at Film Forum:

The crowd at this screening really put me on edge: a gaggle of cynical chuckleheads who’d mistake deeply sad lines of dialogue for insult comedy (and thought a shot of a car flipping over was also really funny …???). My pal Luke put it best as he swept up their trash: “Some people assume any movie made before 1995 is a fucking satire.”

Tale of Princess Kaguya + Scary Movie at IFC:

The most emotionally jarring double feature I have ever subjected myself to. Outside afterwards the married couple I’d watched Scary Movie with got into an argument about whether the part where Ana Faris gets repeatedly kicked in the stomach for no reason was offensive and I just stood there.

Sorcerer at the new Paris “Atmos” (I still don’t know what this means???) Theater:

I have never seen a film punish its audience so ruthlessly for simply being interested in its protagonists… sort of like the Metal Machine Music of action movies.

“This is what driving as a woman feels like.” - my date when I caught it again at the Roxy

Shaolin Soccer in Walter’s grandparents’ TV room:

My friend’s golden retriever sat down and watched this whole movie start to finish without blinking.

Small Town Ecstasy on Youtube:

The head projectionist at this theater I used to work at in Boston would come into work every day wearing one of his much-cherished, Robert Crumb-esque “1930’s newspaperman” suits (fedora included)... which mostly struck me as being funny and kind of embarrassing, until later on I found out that he used to dress like a normal, basketball shorts-wearing schlub before his wife divorced him and took the kids away. That revelation engendered a deep-seated paranoia in me – that halfway through our lives God just starts button-mashing the controller, and sometimes (as in this poor soul’s case and the case of the Small Town Ecstasy guy) it results in a totally mortifying personality reset.

Wonderful World at home on my laptop, half-drunk, stapling zines together:

If there’s one movie whose excision from the timeline would leave a zero-percent impact on cinema history, it has to be this 2009 Matthew Broderick vehicle. For most of my adult life I’ve felt drawn to this mysterious power a work of art gains when not a single sane person would ever claim it as their favorite; like the Dave Berman line goes, “I’m perfect in an empty room.”

O.C. and Stiggs at the Roxy

Yet again affirmed a belief I have that Altman was the only director who would’ve ever been capable of adapting Pynchon. Nobody’d better be making a Vineland movie.

– D.W

Over The Brooklyn Bridge at home, wide awake:

I once had an “aspiring filmmaker” coworker who’d pitch his movie idea to any high roller who came walking through the door…Annoying as shit. Wasn’t until I watched Elliot Gould do the same sort of dance as a bottom-rung restaurateur that I realized there’s an art to this persistence, passion, and perspiration: it’s the American Dream.

Being Different at home, half asleep:

Sideshow freaks hangin out still chasing tail in their sunset years. Will the Ripley’s Believe it or Not of the future showcase the human oddities of today dancing the Floss or Toosie Slide on Tik Tok with a special consideration under God???

Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! at The Walter Reade:

I was so drunk when I saw this I imagined the actresses were just giant talking breasts with mouths on them. Is that so wrong?

Jimmy Buffet: Tales From Margaritavision at my Girlfriends place as the sun was rising:

The morning he died I watched ol’ Jimmy Buffet go down his very own memory lane.

Sorcerer at the Paris Theater:

As the credits were rolling, I was cracking my friends up doing a pretty over-the-top William Friedkin impression. Some guy physically smacked me on the back of the head and told me to KNOCK IT OFF. I turned around. It was Gene Hackman. He was not pleased.

Oc & Stiggs at the Roxy Theater in mouthwatering crunchy 35mm:

If OC and Stiggs were around in NYC today, they’d be pouring toxic waste in the Dimes Square water supply and kicking the asses of all the gaunt downtown scenester misanthropes like they were volleyballs at a King Sunny Adé concert.

– D.C

Brian Darr

Contributor

10 Best Films of 2023 (seen so far, anyway; alphabetical by English title)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Aurora’s Sunrise (Inna Sahakyan)

Matter Out of Place (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV (Amanda Kim)

Return to Seoul (Davy Chou)

Rewind & Play (Alain Gomis)

Sam Now (Reed Harkness)

Silver Dollar Road (Raoul Peck)

Will O’ the Wisp (João Pedro Rodrigues)

First Views (also so far; order viewed)

Blind (Wiseman)

Deep End (Skolimowski)

Where Chimneys Are Seen (Gosho)

Bad Girls Go To Hell (Wishman)

Near Death (Wiseman)

Stories We Tell (Polley)

There’s Always Tomorrow (Sirk)

Central Park (Wiseman)

Aspen (Wiseman)

American Odyssey (Huey, Meader & Williams)

Attica (Firestone)

On Body and Soul (Enyedi)

King of New York (Ferrara)

High School II (Wiseman)

Who By Water (Morrison)

Ballet (Wiseman)

The Big Parade (Vidor)

The Young One (Buñuel)

The Wildcat (Lubitsch)

Forgotten Faces (Schertzinger)

Dustin Guy Defa

Filmmaker, The Adults

To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)

Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995)

Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946)

Leave Her to Heaven (John M, Stahl, 1945)

Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)

After Life (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998)

Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)

In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

Career Girls (Mike Leigh, 1997)

Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray, 1956)

Nora DeLigter

writer and filmmaker based out of New York City

Best of 2023

RMN (Cristian Mungiu)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

Rotting in the Sun (Sebastian Silva)

Three Promises (Yusef Srouji)

Kokomo City (D. Smith)

Time Bomb Y2k (Brian Becker; Marley McDonald)

May December (Todd Haynes)

New Strains (Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan)

You Hurt My Feelings (Nicole Holofcener)

Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)

First Viewings / Mixed Media

In a Dream (Jeremiah Zagar)

Nobody’s Business (Alan Berliner)

Street Fight (Marshall Curry)

Telemarketers (Adam Bhala Lough; Sam Lipman-Stern)

Vengeance (BJ Novak)

High School (Frederick Wiseman)

I am Not Your Guru (Tony Robbins doc) (Joe Berlinger)

Balloonfest (short) (Nathan Truesdell)

Real Life (Albert Brooks)

Life without Dreams (short) (Jessica Bardsly)

John DeMarsico

New York Mets Director - SNY

New Releases

This list is likely to evolve because I'm a civilian and don't get screeners but these are the 10 releases that have stayed with me the most in 2023 thus far:

Infinity Pool (Brandon Cronenberg)

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

The Killer (David Fincher)

When Evil Lurks (Demián Rugna)

The Eight Mountains (Felix Van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch)

The Holdovers (Alexander Payne)

El Conde (Pablo Larraín)

Talk to Me (Danny & Michael Philippou)

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (William Friedkin)

Blood & Gold (Peter Thorwarth)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)

The Comfort of Strangers (Paul Schrader, 1990)

Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)

Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)

The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook, 2016)

Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis, 1995)

Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)

Sonny and Jed (Sergio Corbucci, 1972)

Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979)

Switchblade Sisters (Jack Hill, 1975)

Dinner in America (Adam Rehmeier, 2020)

Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014)

To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)

Belly (Hype Williams, 1998)

The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)

Killer Joe (William Friedkin, 2011)

Bringing Out the Dead (Martin Scorsese, 1999)

Truck Turner (Jonathan Kaplan, 1974)

The Great Waldo Pepper (George Roy Hill, 1975)

Matthew Desiderio

Horror Boobs

New Releases

Top 10 in order and I probably watched less than 15 that would qualify because as a new parent I have had little time to watch movies for pleasure but still wanted to participate, so what I'm trying to say is I like the first 4 but the rest are pretty meh.

Evil Dead Rise

Talk To Me

Super Mario Brothers Movie

They Cloned Tyrone

Megan

Showing Up

Asteroid City

Renfield

Scream VI

The Last Voyage of the Demeter

First Time Viewing Highlights (in no order)

Fighting Back

Deadbangers

Dinner in America

Muppets Most Wanted

John Wick

And, Bluey is the most emotional thing I've watched all year.

Bas Devos

Filmmaker, Here

New Films

The Human Surge 3 by Eduardo Williams. A two hour long exploration of a poetic dream space that is always just out of reach. It’s funny and weird but somehow, miraculously, very worldly.

If you don’t watch the way you move by Kevin Jerome Everson. 12 minutes long and like all of KJE’s work moving and impressive in its formal proposition. His world is a world I want to deal with, come to terms with and live in.

Mambar Pierrette by Rosine Mbakam. I know no one who is so generous in sharing her work with her subjects. This film is Pierrette's, as much as it is Rosine's and both women I admire and learn from.

Jon Dieringer

Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Screen Slate

First Viewings, chronological

The Mystic (Tod Browning, 1925)

I Change I Am the Same (Alice Anne Parker Severson, 1969)

Un, dos, tres... al escondite inglés (Ivan Zulueta, 1969)

Sympathy for the Underdog (Kinji Fukasaku, 1971)

Big Guns (Duccio Tessari, 1973)

They Do Not Exist (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1974)

Stigma (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1977)

XCXHXEXRXRXIXEXSX (Ken Jacobs, 1980/2022)

Smash Palace (Roger Donaldson, 1981)

Breathless (Jim McBride, 1983)

Hookers on Davie (Janis Cole & Holly Dale, 1984)

Go for Broke (Genji Nakamura, 1985)

Lady Beware (Karen Arthur, 1987)

Maniac Cop 3: Badge of Silence (William Lustig, 1993)

A Goofy Movie (Kevin Lima, 1995)

Affliction (Paul Schrader, 1997)

Animalicious (Mark Lewis, 1999)

The Wolf Knife (Laurel Nakadate, 2010)

Stalked by My Doctor original trilogy (Doug Campbell, 2015–2018)

Donald Cried (Kristopher Avedisian, 2016)

When the LAPD Blows Up Your Neighborhood (Nathan Truesdell, 2022)

Bonus: Favorite screening – After Hours 35mm at midnight in the underground cinema at La Filmothèque du Quartier Latin, Paris.

Illeana Douglas

Actress/Writer, Connecticut in the Movies

First Viewings

The Cardinal (1963) Directed by Otto Preminger. I came across this film while doing research for my book Connecticut in the Movies as a few scenes were shot in Stamford. It was a reminder of how old-fashioned story telling with a superb group of actors just works. And? Can we please bring back the intermission with films over 3 hours? Plus, best scene of a man unexpectedly jumping out of a window I have ever seen.

Boomerang (1947) Directed by Elia Kazan and starring Dana Andrews and Arthur Kennedy. Kazan begins to weave his passion for social causes into his first “neo realist” film. Plus Arthur Kennedy is a standout.

The Secret Life of an American Wife (1968) Written and Directed by George Axelrod and starring Anne Jackson and Walter Matthau. This is a daring 60’s sex comedy told from a woman’s point of view.

The Last House on the Left (1972) Written and Directed by Wes Craven. The scenes of sexual violence and torture were too much for me—I barely got through it.

The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964) Written, Directed and Coproduced by Del Tenney . This was the year I discovered Del Tenney. Really liked this folk horror story with screen debut of Roy Scheider.

Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird (2013) Directed and Photographed by Steven-Charles Jaffe. If you are like me, just at the point of forgetting the impact of cartoonist Gahan Wilson (National Lampoon, The New Yorker) watch this doc. Terrific insights from director Guillermo del Toro have stayed with me.

Bang! The Bert Berns Story (2016) Directed by Brett Berns and Bob Sarles. Any doc about The Brill Building I’m in, but I was unaware of the impact of songwriter and record producer Bert Berns, who among other things launched the career of Van Morrison and oh yea, wrote Twist and Shout.

The gothic melodramas Ivy (1947) Directed by Sam Wood, So Evil My Love (1948) directed by Lewis Allen, and Obsession (1949) directed by Edward Dmytryk all came my way via The Criterion Channel. If there’s a throughline that links all three it might be, when in doubt, use poison. If I had a favorite it would be So Evil My Love. Ray Milland is just so deliciously unscrupulous turning the beatific Ann Todd—a former missionary—into his love slave and criminal accomplice.

Ken Burns’s Baseball (1994). Having missed this along the way I thought it would be a great way to get into baseball season. Who says there’s no crying in baseball? Incredibly moving document to our very American pastime. Ken Burns is a national treasure.

The Holdovers (2023) Directed by Alexander Payne. From the credits I knew I was in good hands. Let me be specific. From the font he chose for the credits I knew I was in good hands. I watched this the day after Norman Lear died. It was Lear who said he made comedies about, “the foolishness of the human condition.” Well, that’s The Holdovers. Just a beautiful film, filled with love and compassion and pathos, about our very human need to find connection.

Ayanna Dozier

Artist

Best Films of 2023

Hello Dankness, directed by Soda Jerk

May December, directed by Todd Haynes

Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet

Saint Omer, directed by Alice Diop

Piaffe, directed by Ann Oren

Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese

Passages, directed by Ira Sachs

Godland, directed by Hlynur Pálmason

Fly in Power (2023), directed Yin Q and Yoon Grace Ra

John Wick 4, directed by Chad Stahelski

First Watches (+Shorts)

Cette Maison (2022), directed by Miryam Charles

Sombre (1998), directed by Philippe Grandrieux

Succubus (1968), directed by Jesús Franco

Gothic (1986), directed by Ken Russell

The Hourglass Sanatorium (1973), directed by Wojciech Has

Szamanka (1996), directed by Andrzej Zulawski

The Bat Woman (1968), directed by René Cardona

The Doll (1919), directed by Ernst Lubitsch

The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Kraff (2022), directed by Werner Herzog

Mano Destra (1986), directed by Cleo Übelmann

Shorts

Fighting Looks Different to Me Now (2022), directed by Fox Maxy

Quiet As It’s Kept (2023), directed by Ja’Tovia Gary

Traces of Yarrow (2023), directed by Shahkeem Williams

Let’s Talk (2023), directed by Simon Liu

Yaangna Plays Itself (2022), directed by Adam Piron

Bloom (2023), directed by Helena Girón and Samuel M. Delgado

Exterior Turbulence (2023), directed by Sofia Theodore-Pierce

A-Dios (1984), directed by Narcisa Hirsch

Dressing for Pleasure (1977), directed by John Samson

Sodom (1989), directed by Luther Price

Kit Duckworth

Infernal Affairs II (Andrew Lau, Alan Mak)

Towards the Sun (Nour Ouayda)

Ceddo (Ousmane Sembène)

Harlan County, USA (Barbara Kopple)

Our Mother’s House (Jack Clayton)

La chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)

Abattoir, USA! (Aria Dean)

Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)

Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

Jenin, Jenin (Mohammad Bakri)

Michael Eby

Writer

New Releases

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Master Gardener (Paul Schrader)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie)

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)

Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)

The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams)

Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Matchstick Men (Ridley Scott, 2003)

Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976)

Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)

Coogan's Bluff (Don Siegel, 1968)

High Plains Drifter (Clint Eastwood, 1973)

There's Something About Mary (Peter Farrelly, 1998)

Cremaster 4 (Matthew Barney, 1994) & Cremaster 1 (Matthew Barney, 1995)

The Shooting (Monte Hellman, 1966)

Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950)

The Working Class Goes to Heaven (Elio Petri, 1971)

Platform (Jia Zhangke, 2000)

Galaxy (Masao Adachi, 1967)

The Last of England (Derek Jarman, 1987)

Kingpin (Peter Farrelly & Bobby Farrelly, 1996)

IBM: A Self Portrait (Albert Maysles & David Maysles, 1964) & In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997)

The Missouri Breaks (Arthur Penn, 1976)

Road (Alan Clarke, 1987)

The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978)

The Fever (Carlo Gabriel Nero, 2004)

Hanna Edizel

Editor

First Viewings

Action Jackson

Agoraphilia

Animalicious

Arrowhead (1994)

Breakdown

Dynasty (1981-1989)

Identikit

My Degeneration

My house walk-through by nana825763

Observe and Report

Smash Palace

Traces of Red

The Wolf Knife

Alexa Efune

New Releases (unranked)

Tótem (Lila Avilés)

The Innocent (Louis Garrel)

Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania)

Joyland (Saim Sadiq)

The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

First Viewings (unranked)

Mariner of the Mountains (Karim Aïnouz, 2021)

Kafr Kassem (Borhane Alaouié, 1975)

Aristotle’s Plot (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 1996)

Handsworth Songs (Black Audio Film Collective, 1986)

About Some Meaningless Events (Mostafa Derkaoui, 1974)

August in the Water (Gakuryu Ishii, 1995)

Blue (1993) and Jubilee (1978) (Derek Jarman)

London (Patrick Keiller, 1994)

Open Mic Solitaire (Julius-Amédée Laou, 1983)

Modulations (Iara Lee, 1998)

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (2001) and Children of Shatila (1998) (Mai Masri)

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) and Song of Avignon (1998) (Jonas Mekas)

Hovering Over the Water (João César Monteiro, 1986)

Mississippi Masala (Mira Nair, 1991)

White Men Are Cracking Up (1994) and Flight of the Swan (1992) (Ngozi Onwurah)

Step Forward Youth (1977) and Blood Ah Go Run (1982) (Menelik Shabazz)

Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1982)

Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and Cyber Palestine (2000) (Elia Suleiman)

Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (Jang Sun-woo, 1997)

Inspiration (Karel Zeman, 1949)

Greg Eggebeen

First Viewings

Actual People (Kit Zauhar, 2021)

All That Jazz (Bob Fosse, 1979)

Chuck & Buck (Miguel Arteta, 2000)

Divorce Iranian Style (Kim Longinotto and Ziba Mir-Hosseini, 1998)

Of Great Events and Ordinary People (Raúl Ruiz, 1979)

Psychosynthesis (Barbara Hammer, 1975)

Seasons of the Year (Artavazd Peleshyan, 1975)

Something Wild (Jonathan Demme, 1986)

Twilight (György Fehér, 1990)

Universal Hotel (Peter Thompson, 1986)

Carl Elsaesser

New Releases

Allensworth (James Benning)

If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move (Kevin Jerome Everson)

Quiet as it Kept (Ja'Tovia Gary)

Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin whatever)

Spark from a Falling Star (Ross Meckfessel)

May December (Todd Haynes)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Margaret (Kenneth Lonergan, 2011)

Match Factory Girl (Aki Kaurismäki, 1992)

Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995)

Hell Notes (Moyra Davey, 1990/2017)

Let's Talk (Simon Liu, 2023)

Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

Miles Emanuel

Filmmaker/Actor

Five new releases of epic proportions:

Nobody’s Hero (Alain Guiraudie)

Last Summer (Catherine Breillat)

The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (Joanna Arnow)

The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams)

Notables from three retrospectives I had been waiting years for — Lincoln Center’s Marco Ferreri, Japan Society’s Shinji Sômai, & MoMA’s Warren Sonbert:

The Story of Piera (Marco Ferreri, 1983)

The Future Is Woman (Marco Ferreri, 1984)

Diary of a Maniac (Marco Ferreri, 1993)

Luminous Woman (Shinji Sômai, 1987)

Friendly Witness (Warren Sonbert, 1989)

And ten discoveries not soon forgotten:

The Golden Fern (Jiří Weiss, 1963)

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (Stephen Kijak, 2006)

Koko Sees Spooks (Dave Fleischer, 1925)

Polar Bonzo (William A. Ward, 1925)

In Spring (Mikhail Kaufman, 1929)

Sandu Follows the Sun (Mikhail Kalik, 1962)

In the Prime of Life (Sándor Simó, 1972)

Hello, Vera (János Herskó, 1967)

Miracles for Sale (Tod Browning, 1939)

You’re Telling Me! (Erle C. Kenton, 1934)

Matthew Eng

New Releases

May December (Todd Haynes)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

A Still Small Voice (Luke Lorentzen)

Other People's Children (Rebecca Zlotowski)

First Viewings (alphabetical)

The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1975-1979)

Black Is... Black Ain't (Marlon Riggs, 1994)

Le bonheur (Agnès Varda, 1965)

The Circle (Jafar Panahi, 2000)

The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1928)

Fists in the Pocket (Marco Bellocchio, 1965)

Flesh (Paul Morrissey, 1968)

Kes (Ken Loach, 1969)

Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu, 1949)

Matewan (John Sayles, 1987)

Moonlighting (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1982)

The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache, 1973)

The Mouth Agape (Maurice Pialat, 1974)

Nil by Mouth (Gary Oldman, 1997)

The Oak (Lucian Pintilie, 1992)

Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968)

Remember My Name (Alan Rudolph, 1978)

Since Otar Left (Julie Bertuccelli, 2003)

Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990)

Steve Erickson

New Releases (in alphabetical order)

All Of Us Strangers

Bottoms

Earth Mama

The Killer

Kokomo City

Pacifiction

The Plains

Rewind And Play

Rotting In The Sun

When Evil Lurks

First-Time Viewings

Anhell 69 (Theo Montoya)

Animalicious (Mark Lewis)

The Audience (Marco Ferreri)

Coma (Bertrand Bonello)

Days Of Sintra (Paula Gaitan)

Downpour (Bahram Beyzai)

Factory Of The Sun (Hito Steyerl)

High Tide (Gillian Armstrong)

In The Shadow Of The Blue Rascal (Pierre Clementi)

Knightriders (George A. Romero)

My House Walk-Through (Piropito)

One Man’s War (Edgardo Cozarinsky)

The Pleasure Of Love (Nelly Kaplan)

Salome (Alla Nazimova & Charles Bryant)

Sankofa (Haile Gerima)

Shield Of Straw (Takashi Miike)

The Strangler (Paul Vecchiali)

Through The Forest (Jean-Paul Civeyrac)

Typhoon Club (Shinji Somai)

The Ugly Swans (Konstantin Lopushansky)

Jason Evans

This Long Century

New Releases (10 films)

Afire (Christian Petzold)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

The Daughters of Fire (Pedro Costa)

Dry Ground Burning (Joana Pimenta & Adirley Queirós)

Lakota Nation vs the United States (Jesse Short Bull and Laura Tomaselli)

Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf)

Return to Dust (Li Ruijun)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Eileen (William Oldroyd)

First Viewings

Palestinian Women (Jocelyne Saab, 1974)

Frontiers of Dreams and Fears (Mai Masri, 2001)

Tell Your Tale, Little Bird (Arab Loutfi, 2007)

Jamila’s Mirror (Arab Loutfi, 1993)

Jenin, Jenin (Mohammad Bakri, 2002)

Soraida, Woman of Palestine (Tahani Rached, 2004)

Children of Shatila (Mai Masri, 1998)

The Dupes (Tewfik Saleh, 1972)

The Memory (Mohammad Malas, 1975)

The Dream (Mohammad Malas, 1988)

They Do Not Exist (Mustafa Abu Ali, 1974)

The Palestinians (Johan van der Keuken, 1974)

Spaces of Exception (Matt Peterson and Malek Rasamny, 2019)

R 21 AKA Restoring Solidarity (Mohanad Yaqubi, 2022)

House (Amos Gitai, 1980)

Occupied Palestine (David Koff, 1981)

Drying Up Palestine (Rima Essa & Peter Snowdon, 2007)

Souha, Surviving Hell (Randa Chahal Sabbag, 2001)

Untitled, Part 1: Everything and Nothing (Jayce Salloum, 2001)

The Battle of Chile (Patricio Guzmán, 1975)

Ted Fendt

Filmmaker

One New Release

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman, 2023)

One Video Drop

WASSER / WASSER – "Red (Taylor Swift Cover)" music video dir. Tricks mit Kamelen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnxAl_vVYnk

Eight Old Discoveries

Illibatezza (Roberto Rossellini, 1963)

Banditi a Milano (Carlo Lizzani, 1968)

La fin du jour (Julien Duvivier, 1939)

Le Ring (Lumière cameraman, 1901)

Die Wartburg (Günther Mühlpforte, 1953)

Zvenigora (Alexander Dovzhenko, 1928)

Liefde voor hout (Jop Pannekoek, 1979)

Toutes les nuages sont des horloges (Raoul Ruiz, 1988)

Sarah Fensom

Writer

New Releases

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

Rotting in the Sun (Sebastián Silva)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

Walk Up (Hong Sang-soo)

Pacifiction (Albert Serra)

Stonewalling (Huang Ji)

A Little Love Package (Gastón Solnicki)

The Roundup 3: No Way Out (Lee Sang-yong)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

The Eight Mountains (Felix Van Groeningen, Charlotte Vandermeersch)

First Viewings

Francisca (Manoel de Oliveira, 1981)

Suzhou River (Lou Ye, 2000)

The Wounded Man (Patrice Chéreau, 1983)

Up Down Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995)

Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983)

Rolling Thunder (John Flynn, 1977)

Falling Lessons (Amy Halpern, 1992)

Going South (Jack Nicholson, 1978)

Supermarket Woman (Juzo Itami, 1996)

Play Misty for Me (Clint Eastwood, 1971)

A Very Curious Girl (Nelly Kaplan, 1969)

Mr. Thank You (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1936)

The Sting 2 (Jeremy Paul Kagan, 1983)

Portland (Greta Snider, 1996)

Born of the Wind (Mike Kuchar, 1964)

The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1991)

Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt, 2018)

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (Grigori Kromanov, 1979)

César and Rosalie (Claude Sautet, 1972)

lovelike, a mixed reality performance by Jenna Caravello with Celia Hollander

Shay Filmore

Programmer

Top 10 of 2023

Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé

The Disappearance of Shere Hite

Your Fat Friend

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project

Anatomy of a Fall

Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry

Öte

A Haunting in Venice

First Viewings!

Action Jackson

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Domino

Drylongso

A New Leaf

Not a Pretty Picture

Alien from L.A.

Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion

Hollywood Shuffle

Staying Alive

The Others

Raising Arizona

The Conformist

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

Stop Making sense

Celine and Julie go Boating

The Cassandra Cat

The Green Ray

Little Women (1994)

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

Elsie Fisher

Actor

First Viewings

Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)

The Awakening of Jim Burke (Lambert Hillyer, 1935)

Speed Racer (Lilly & Lana Wachowski, 2008)

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1971)

Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

Janet Planet (Annie Baker, 2023)

Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979)

Husbands and Wives (Woody Allen, 1992)

Bulworth (Warren Beatty, 1998)

Typhoon Club (Shinji Sōmai, 1985)

Stephen Fisk

Editor, Screen Slate SF Bay

New Releases

Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Tótem (Lila Aviles)

Rotting in the Sun (Sebastián Silva)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

Last Things (Deborah Stratman)

Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf)

Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann)

Our Home Out West (Drew Tobia)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella)

First Viewings

The Wildcat (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921)

Forgotten Faces (Victor Schertzinger, 1928)

Liebelei (Max Ophüls, 1933)

Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata, 1933)

Humanity and Paper Balloons (Sadao Yamanaka, 1937)

Where Chimneys Are Seen (Heinosuke Gosho, 1953)

Viridiana (Luis Buñuel, 1961)

Yvonne Rainer: A Retrospective (7 films, 1972-1996)

Fill ’er Up with Super (Alain Cavalier, 1976)

Regrouping (Lizzie Borden, 1976)

A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (Seijun Suzuki 1977)

Pennies from Heaven (Piers Haggard, 1978)

Winter Kills (William Richert, 1979)

Anguish (Bigas Luna, 1987)

Malcolm X (Spike Lee, 1992)

Araki restorations: The Doom Generation (1995) & Nowhere (1997)

Blissfully Yours (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2002)

In the Stone House (Jerome Hiler, 2012)

Larry Fitzmaurice

Critic/Writer

New Releases (Unranked)

A Thousand and One (A.V. Rockwell)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet)

Beau Is Afraid (Ari Aster)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Passages (Ira Sachs)

Rotting in the Sun (Sebastian Silva)

Sick of Myself (Kristoffer Borgli)

Tori and Lokita (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne)

Black Holes and Revelations:

Cabin Boy (Adam Resnick, 1994)

Grown-Ups (Mike Leigh, 1980)

Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, 1969)

"That is my som" (@brianjordanalvarez, TikTok)

The Idiots (Lars Von Trier, 2000)

Weyes Blood's "God Turn Me Into a Flower" video (Adam Curtis)

Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (Adrian Tofei, 2015)

White of the Eye (Donald Cammell, 1987)

Eric Adams' cameo in New York Masali

Lord of Illusions (Clive Barker, 1995)

AI Homer Simpson singing Muse's "Starlight" (@mememusic117, TikTok)

Dangerous Game (Abel Ferrara, 1993)

Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Next Generation (Kim Henkel, 1995)

Pinkydoll accompanied by Yves Tumor's "Limerence" (@jetskitosway, Twitter)

The Last Seduction (John Dahl, 1994)

Peter Griffin says UK Garage (@yeahbeter, Twitter)

Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991)

The Falls (Peter Greenaway, 1980)

Four dozen oysters at Fontaines Oyster Bar (@equanaaa, TikTok)

Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky (Lam Ngai Kai, 1991)

Veronica Fitzpatrick

Writer

First Viewings and Discoveries

American Reflexxx (Alli Coates and Signe Pierce, 2015)

Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, 2023)

Cure (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1997)

Damage [35mm, the Quad] (Louis Malle, 1992)

Ferrari (Michael Mann, 2023)

May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)

A Murder at the End of the World (Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij, 2023-)

Resurrection (Andrew Semans, 2022)

Sleep, My Love (Douglas Sirk, 1948)

Talk to Me (Danny and Michael Philippou, 2023)

EC Flamming

Writer

First Viewings

Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)

Moonstruck (Norman Jewison, 1987)

Bound (Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski, 1996)

Pink Flamingos (John Waters, 1972)

Party Girl (Daisy von Scherler Mayer, 1995)

Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai, 1994)

Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy's Revenge (Jack Sholder, 1985)

Arrebato (Ivan Zulueta, 1980)

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)

Shane Fleming

Man about town

I saw something around 450 movies this year, these are a few of the best ones I saw, and ones that I feel don’t get enough credit.

Second Fiddle (Frank Tuttle, 1922)

Seen at Capitolfest 20 at the Capitol theater in Rome, NY. An incredibly well-made low budget action-packed silent melodrama.

La roue (Abel Gance, 1923)

Seen at NYFF, in a new restoration - the complete 7 hours and original score!

Sunny Side Up (David Butler, 1929)

Seen at MoMA in a new restoration. The first great American musical!

The Warrior’s Husband (Walter Lang, 1933)

Seen at MoMA in a new restoration. 1933 sexual politics at their zaniest!

Invisible Ghost (Joesph H. Lewis, 1941)

Watched at home. Part of my 2023 Bela Lugosi binge.

Violated (Walter Strate, 1953)

Watched on YouTube. Seemingly not available anywhere else! Thrilling, violent independent noir shot on location in NYC.

Pete Kelly’s Blues (Jack Webb, 1955)

Watched on TCM. Jack Webb the auteur!

Scarecrow (Jerry Schatzberg, 1973)

Seen at Film Forum with Q&A with Bruce Goldstein and Schatzberg.

Cannonball! (Paul Bartel, 1976)

Seen on 16mm at a friend's house.

Backtrack (Dennis Hopper, 1990 - director's cut of Catchfire)

Seen on 35mm at Roxy.

Clyde Folley

editor/programmer

First Viewings

Body Parts (Eric Red, 1991)

Enemy Territory (Peter Manoogian, 1987)

Extreme Justice (Mark L. Lester, 1993)

Hornets' Nest (Phil Karlson, 1970)

The Hunted (William Friedkin, 2003)

The Last Woman (Marco Ferreri, 1976)

Seven Beauties (Lina Wertmüller, 1975)

The Taking of Beverly Hills (Sidney J. Furie, 1991)

Taxi Hunter (Herman Yau, 1993)

U2: Rattle and Hum (Phil Joanou, 1988)

Isabel Fondevila

Director of Programming, Roxie Theater

New Releases

Anselm

The Boy and the Heron

Fremont

Past Lives

Trenque Lauquen

The First Slam Dunk

Joyland

Lynch/Oz

Fallen Leaves

Anatomy of a Fall

First Viewings and Discoveries

The Fall (Tarsem Singh, 2006)

Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández, 1951)

Dressed in Blue (Antonio Giménez Rico, 1983)

Rewind and Play (Alain Gomis, 2022)

Force Majeure (Ruben Östlund, 2015)

The Cramps and The Mutants: The Napa State Tapes

Katherine Franco

Writer/artist

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Th. Dreyer, 1928)

Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989)

Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella, 2022)

The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov, 1969)

Color Sound Frames (Paul Sharits, 1974)

Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1977)

Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2018)

From Its Mouth Came a River of High-End Residential Appliances (WangShui, 2018)

Center Jenny (Ryan Trecartin, 2013)

I Was Born, But... (Yasujirō Ozu, 1932)

“Forget your mind. Courage and sex, that’s what love is” (Sweetie). Dreyer’s wiles and Citarella’s roads. I see Rebecca in these because she showed me Sharits and Jenny. At some point in the year, I downloaded that song they play before the previews @ FilmLinc. “Hotels.” You know?

Dillon Friend

young prince of the Roxy cinema

New Releases

Padre Pio (Roxy)

Caine Mutiny Court Marshall (Metrograph)

Thanksgiving (Regal Essex)

The Sweet East (FLC)

De Humani Corporis Fabrica (IFC)

First Viewings

The last woman (1976 / FLC)

College boys live (2009 / KGB)

Palindromes (2004 / Roxy)

Bottom (2012 / Roxy)

I am Suzanne! (1933 / MoMa)

The ceremony (1971 / Anthology)

Temple of Doom (1984 / Roxy)

Black and White (1999 / Roxy)

Backtrack (1990 / Roxy)

Knock Knock (2015 / Roxy)

The Wolf Knife (2015 / Roxy)

Husbands and Wives (1992 / Roxy)

The Rats are coming! The Werewolves are here! (1972 / Nitehawk)

Soham Gadre

2023 US Releases (alphabetical)

Against the Tide (Sarvnik Kaur)

Geographies of Solitude (Jacquelyn Mills)

Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros (Frederick Wiseman)

Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam (Lijo Jose Pellissery)

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

The Plains (David Easteal)

Skinamarink (Kyle Edward Ball)

Youth (Spring) (Wang Bing)

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

Best First Watches & New Discoveries (one per director, alphabetical)

Angel’s Egg (Mamoru Oshii, 1985)

La belle noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, 1991)

Centipede Horror (Keith Li, 1982)

Charley Varrick (Don Seigel, 1973)

Coffy (Jack Hill, 1973)

Crimson Gold (Jafar Panahi, 2003)

Drifting Clouds (Aki Kaurismäki, 1996)

Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998)

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates, 1973)

Gōke, Body Snatcher from Hell (Hajime Satô, 1968)

Heaven’s Gate (Micheal Cimino, 1980)

Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)

Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

Memory Lane (John M. Stahl, 1926)

Mr. Majestyk (Richard Fleischer, 1974)

Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)

Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Opening Night (John Cassavetes, 1979)

A Real Young Girl (Catherine Breillat, 1976)

Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959)

Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer, 2000)

Sorcerer (William Friedkin, 1977)

Supervixens (Russ Meyer, 1975)

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Park Chan-wook, 1999)

The Tale of Tsar Saltan (Aleksandr Ptushko, 1966)

The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969)

Marya E. Gates

Writer/Critic, Freelance

Top Ten of 2023 (alphabetical)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)

Amanda (Carolina Cavalli)

The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani)

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)

Fremont (Babak Jalali)

Godland (Hlynur Pálmason)

Kokomo City (D. Smith)

Lakota Nation vs. United States (Laura Tomaselli, Jesse Short Bull)

Past Lives (Celine Song)

Plan 75 (Chie Hayakawa)

First Viewings and Discoveries (alphabetical)

L’Argent (Marcel L’Herbier, 1928)

Au Bonheur des Dames (Julien Duvivier, 1930)

Blue Sky Maiden (Yasuzō Masumura, 1957)

The Burning Bed (Robert Greenwald, 1984)

By Hook or by Crook (Harry Dodge, Silas Howard, 2001)

Chocolate Babies (Stephen Winter, 1996)

Drylongso (Cauleen Smith, 1998)

Far From Home (Sohrab Shahid Saless, 1975)

Fresh Kill (Shu Lea Cheang, 1994)

Girl 6 (Spike Lee, 1996)

Killing Time (Fronza Woods 1979)

The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003)

Not a Pretty Picture (Martha Coolidge, 1976)

Flaming Ears (Rote Ohren fetzen durch Asche) (Ursula Pürrer, Dietmar Schipek, Ashley Hans Scheirl, 1992)

La Roue (Abel Gance,1923)

Sambizanga (Sarah Maldoror, 1972)

The Slow Escape (Sativa Peterson, 1998)

A Dream Longer Than the Night (Un rêve plus long que la nuit) (Niki de Saint Phalle, 1976)

Our Heavenly Bodies (Wunder der Schöpfung) (Hanns Walter Kornblum, 1925)

Mick Gaw

New Releases (10 films max)

The Zone of Interest

Return to Seoul

Monster

Anatomy of a Fall

May December

One Fine Morning

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt

Tori and Lokita

The Innocent

Enys Men

First Viewings

Oro, Plata, Mata (1982)

Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003)

Opening Night (1977)

Ashes of Time (1994)

Summer Hours (2008)

The Sting (1973)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Funeral Parade of Roses (1969)

The Housemaid (1960)

Mikey and Nicky (1976)

Paris Blues (1961)

An Autumn's Tale (1987)

Suzhou River (2000)

Written on the Wind (1956)

Certain Women (2016)

Metropolitan (1990)

I Vitelloni (1953)

Millennium Mambo (2001)

Air Doll (2009)

Sexy Beast (2000)

Annie Geng

High Heels (Almodóvar, 1991)

Holy Motors (Carax, 2012)

Gush (Maxy, 2023)

On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong, 2017)

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Stahelski, 2023)

Birth (Glazer, 2004)

De cierta manera (Gómez, 1975)

Inherent Vice (Anderson, 2014)

Afire (Petzold, 2023)

River Rites (Russell, 2011)

Winter Kills (Richert, 1979)

The Battle of Chile: Part II (Guzmán, 1976)

The Taste of Things (Hùng, 2023)

Anna (Sarchielli and Grifi, 1975)

House of Tolerance (Bonello, 2014)

By the Time It Gets Dark (Suwichakornpong, 2016)

East of Eden (Kazan, 1955)

All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Jackson, 2023)

Mamma Roma (Pasolini, 1962)

Fluid Frontiers (Asili, 2017)

Leah Giblin

Film Flaneuse

First Viewings

At Theaters

Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (1985) - Anthology Film Archives

Tokyo Melody: A Film About Ryuichi Sakamoto (1985) - Spectacle Theater

In The Spirit (1990) - Roxy Cinema

Not a Pretty Picture (1975) - Museum of Modern Art

Encore (1988) - on 10/15 at Metrograph

Re-Animator (1985) & From Beyond (1986) - Anthology

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) - 3D at Film Forum

Black God, White Devil (1964) - Film Forum

The Treasure (1973) - Anthology

Bonbast (1977) - Museum of Modern Art

Living (1971) - KGB Bar

At Festivals

You and Me (1938) - Nitrate Picture Show

Fantasia (1940) + Fischinger- Rockaway Film Festival

Un rêve plus long que la nuit (1976) - NYFF

How Do You Spell Home? (2023) - IDFA

Glass: My Unfulfilled Life (2023) - IDFA

Spectral Transmissions: Love Bends Time performance (2023) - IDFA

In the Rearview (2023) - IDFA

At Home

Twin Peaks en toto consecutively

Crash (1996)

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)

Society (1989)

Favorite Revisits

"Rock Me Tonite" (1984) on youtube

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) in widescreen at Metrograph

Blissfully Yours (2002) at Walter Reade

Starman (1984) in Museum of Moving Image’s Redstone

Wild at Heart (1990) at Nitehawk Prospect Park

Stop Making Sense (1984) in IMAX

Peter Goldberg

Filmworker and writer

New Releases

I believe these are all 2023 theatrical releases. I didn't get to see many new releases this year. Presented in no particular order.

Saint Omer

May December

Revolution + 1

Geographies of Solitude

R21 AKA Restoring Solidarity

Dry Ground Burning

The Daughters of Fire

A rundown of the most significant moving image works of the year would be incomplete without mentioning the video journalists working in Gaza, for presenting the truth that their oppressors refuse to show.

Best New To Me

In chronological order

The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)

History is Made at Night (Frank Borzage, 1937) - Romance isn't a genre, it is about how two lovers shape genres around themselves and live forever.

Lady Killer (Jean Grémillon, 1937)

Monangambee (Sarah Maldoror, 1969)

The Strangler (Paul Vecchiali, 1970)

La Région Centrale (Michael Snow, 1971) - Saw this twice this year on the big screen. The second had a reel change in which the lights barely came up. Changing seats in the theater in the half-light felt like hurtling through space.

Kashima Paradise (Yann Le Masson, Bénie Deswarte, 1973)

Everyday Life in a Syrian Village (Omar Amiralay, 1974)

Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Kazuo Hara, 1974)

The Marshes (Kassem Hawal, 1976)

Le Théâtre des matières (Jean-Claude Biette, 1977)

Egypt, City of the Dead (Jocelyne Saab, 1978) - Patience. The scenes of music and poetry make the bodies onscreen so close.

Neige (Juliet Berto, 1981)

Nocturne (Phil Solomon, 1980)

Our Voice of Earth, Memory and Future (Marta Rodriguez, Jorge Silva, 1982) - Powerfully combines landscape and land struggle in a way I haven't seen before. The devil is real and you pay him rent.

Remains to be Seen (Phil Solomon, 1983)

The Secret Garden (Phil Solomon, 1988) - Applies to all the Phil Solomon. Saw them together and for a week I only dreamed of dark expanses of water spanned by bridges and pierced by small lights.

Une Histoire de Vent (Joris Ivens, 1988)

The Bridges of Madison County (Clint Eastwood, 1995)

La Captive (Chantal Akerman, 2000)

Daniel Goldhaber

Filmmaker, How to Blow Up a Pipeline

First Viewings

Deep Cover (Bill Duke, 1992)

Cyberpunk Edgerunners (Yoshiyuki Kaneko, Hiroyuki Imaishi, Yuichi Shimodaira, Mai Owada, Akira Furukawa, Kodai Nakano & Tomoyuki Munehiro; 2022)

Little Children (Todd Field, 2006)

The Evil Within (Andrew Getty, 2017)

The Idiots (Lars von Trier, 1998)

Saloum (Jean Luc Herbulot, 2021)

The Plot Against Harry (Michael Roemer, 1971)

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008)

Belly (Hype Williams, 1998)

Leo Goldsmith

New Releases

Man in Black (Wang Bing

Last Things (Deborah Stratman)

Mast-del (Maryam Tafakory)

Janet Planet (Annie Baker)

The Night Visitors Carol Goodman

Abattoir U.S.A.! (Aria Dean)

Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)

The Fist

Hello Dankness (Soda Jerk)

Ferrari (Michael Mann)

First Viewings and Discoveries

Lambs Are Born in the Snow

Modesty and Shame

L’homme blessé

Nuts in May

The Third Generation

The Disappearance

The Glenn Miller Story

Guns

Neige

Pitch Black/Chronicles of Riddick/Riddick

Caroline Golum

New Releases

Nota bene: As a lifelong rep goer I prefer instead to leave festival coverage to my more serious and talented peers! However, I did manage to catch a few recent efforts, the most enjoyable of which I've listed below in chronological order.

New Strains (Dirs. Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan)

Hello Dankness (Dir. Soda Jerk)

The Apocalyptic is the Mother of All Christian Theology (Dir. Jim Finn)

Honeycomb (Dir. Avalon Fast)

A Woman Escapes (Dirs. Blake Williams, Sofia Bohdanowicz, Burak Çevik)

Maestro (Dir. Bradley Cooper)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Dir. Martin Scorsese)

May December (Dir. Todd Haynes)

Petrol (Dir. Alena Lodkina)

Godzilla Minus One (Dir. Takashi Yamazaki)

First Viewings and Discoveries (chronological)

The value and joy of filmgoing as a social act is all too often lost in the tweetstorm (or is it a "postnado"?) of year-end-discourse. As with last year, I appreciate using this bit of column-space to tout my favorite screenings of 2023.

January:

Alfreda's Cinema Presents: You Wanted to See Me Broken, presented at a secret location. Fantastic program to start the year off right, featuring short films by Ladan Osman, a live performance by singer Sam Diaz, and closing out with an all-killer-no-filler vinyl set from legendary NYC DJ Donna Edwards. Melissa Lyde has done it again!

February:

N/A, made a movie instead.

March:

The Errand Boy, Roxy Cinema (35mm)

My first in-theater screening after six weeks of shooting, and the best possible reminder of why I've foolishly devoted my life to the seventh art. Not the hardest I've cried in a cinema this year, but definitely a close second.

April:

The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings, Metrograph (35mm)

My colleague Matt Folden and I programmed this must-include for a baseball series at our place of employment. We managed to fenagle an intro from none other than SNY's auteur-in-house John DeMarsico, whose own directorial artistry is often the most exciting aspect of the local New York Mets broadcasts.

May:

The Apple, Nitehawk Cinema (35mm)

A special birthday screening programmed and hosted by birthday boy Joe Berger of The Deuce! After the movie we kibitzed about our respective histories with this fantastic film maudit, turns out we have a mutual friend in NuArt Theater manager/programmer emeritus Marc Edward Heuck, who showed this on the regular when I was hanging around there in high school.

June:

I Am My Own Woman, Spectacle Theater

This year's follow-up to Elizabeth Purchell's 2022 Rosa von Praunheim retrospective at Spectacle, once again with some special elements from NYPL. Of all the films in the series, this was my favorite - part period drama, part documentary, all queen shit. Liz crashed with me that week and left behind her copy of subject Charlotte von Mahlsdorf's memoir (which I summarily devoured).

July:

Safe in Hell, Nitehawk Cinema (35mm)

Screened on a print from the Library of Congress! This is another indulgent gimme, since I introduced the screening with my wife Cristina Cacioppo. What a wild-ass ride this movie is, truly. Might be my most stoned intro to date.

August:

Here At Water's Edge / Duelle Films, Rockaway Film Festival

Perfect weather for an outdoor screening that ticked every box on my list of expanded cinema must-haves. Gina Telaroli and Carolyn Funk presented a live projection before the feature presentation of Leo Hurwitz and Charles Pratt's 1962 experimental doc about NYC's waterways. You haven't seen either picture unless you've experienced them as soundtracked by the wind and waves of Rockaway Beach!

September:

Wladyslaw Starewicz, Len Lye and Oskar Fischinger, MoMA (16mm/35mm)

Strong contender for my favorite screening this year and the hardest I cried in a movie theater this year. Stacked program, but the laurels go to Starewicz's The Magic Clock and The Song of the Nightingale - the former a fantastical bricolage of Brothers Grimm, William Morris, and Aesop's Fables, the latter a heartbreaking love story that doubles as a passionate plea for environmental conservation.

October:

Ordinary Madness of a Daughter of Cham / Mist Melodies of Paris, BAM

The first US retrospective of filmmaker/playwright Julius-Amédée Laou, featuring new restorations of his criminally-underseen oeuvre, and programmed by my cinema-brother Steve Macfarlane. I went in completely unaware of what to expect, and left the theater feeling as if I'd run a psychic and emotional marathon. Daughter of Cham has some of the finest screen performances I've seen this year, if not this decade.

November:

Last Movies, Nitehawk Cinema (35mm), Spectacle Theater (16mm), Light Industry

I love an all-day roving film program that brings multiple venues together, and on November 4 we all hosted visiting artist/provocateur Stanley Schtinter for a program of last films seen by notable 20th century luminaries: 20,000 Years in Sing Sing/Waterloo Bridge at the 'hawk, The Kid with a live score at Spec, and Manhattan Melodrama/Oedipus Rex at Light Industry. I think November 4 should be Last Movies Day in perpetuity!

December:

Archangel, Metrograph

Dear Penthouse Forum, I can’t believe it happened to me… I moderated a Q&A with my favorite living director. Is this an auspicious omen for the year to come or the last good thing that will ever happen in my miserable life? TBD!

Emerson Goo

New Releases:

I Didn’t See You There (Reid Davenport)

Small, Slow, but Steady (Sho Miyake)

Stonewalling (Huang Ji & Ryuji Otsuka)

Dry Ground Burning (Adirley Queirós & Joana Pimenta)

The Potemkinists (Radu Jude)

May December (Todd Haynes)

Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara)

Bye Bye Tiberias (Lina Soualem)

Against the Tide (Sarvnik Kaur)

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie)

First viewings and discoveries

Ahupuaʻa, Fishponds and Loʻi, archival footage screening (Hoʻomau Nā Maka o ka ʻĀina)

Baldwin’s N—er (Horace Ové)

Blue Island (Chan Tze-Woon)

Carlito’s Way (Brian De Palma)

A Family Tour (Ying Liang)

Forever A Woman (Kinuyo Tanaka)

Infinity According to Florian (Oleksiy Radynski)

Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Shinji Aoyama)

Love Hotel (Shinji Somai)

Old Long Stay (Yuki Iiyama)

Repatriation (Kim Dong-won)

Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski)

Snow In September (Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir)

Sorcerer (William Friedkin)

Ta’ang (Wang Bing)

Tobacco Embers (Yugantar Film Collective)

Ukraine-Poland: The Solidarity Border (Lech Kowalski)

When Cinema Reflects the Times: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang (Hirokazu Koreeda)

Woman of Tokyo (Yasujiro Ozu)

Julia Gorden

Roxy Cinema Attendant

Sudden Manhattan (Adrienne Shelley)

Song to Song (Terrence Malick)

I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur)

Beautiful Creatures (Richard LaGravenese)

I Used to Be Darker (Matthew Porterfield)

A Man Vanishes (Shōhei Imamura)

Rhubarb (Arthur Labin)

Knock Knock (Eli Roth)

Out 1: Spectre (Jacques Rivette)

May (Lucky McKee)

Take This Waltz (Sarah Polley)

The Rocky/Creed franchise in its entirety

Micah Gottlieb

programmer/archivist

"First Viewings and Discoveries" rather than any 2023 releases:

Compensation (1999, Zeinabu irene Davis) - Academy Museum (DCP)

The Cure in Orange (1987) - Academy Museum 35mm

The Dupes (1972, Tewfik Saleh) - Film at Lincoln Center (DCP)

Flames (1978, Adolfo Arrietta) - Mkv file

Foragers (2022, Jumana Manna) - Vimeo link

The Grateful Dead (1977, Leon Gast) - Shout Factory blu-ray

I Know Where I'm Going! (1945, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger) - Criterion streaming

In My Skin (2002, Marina de Van) - Mkv file

Jaffa: The Orange's Clockwork (2009, Eyal Sivan) - Mkv file

The Last House on Dead End Street (1973, Roger Watkins) - Vinegar Syndrome blu-ray

Late Autumn (1960, Yasujirō Ozu) - Academy Museum (35mm)

The Lighthouse (2006, Maria Saakyan) - Mkv file

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994, Alan Rudolph) - Criterion streaming

No Sex Last Night (1996, Sophie Calle & Greg Shephard) - Mkv file

The Rapture (1991, Michael Tolkin) - Criterion streaming

Rewind & Play (2023, Alain Gomis) - 2220 Arts + Archives (DCP)

Rhythm Thief (1994, Matthew Harrison) - Kino Lorber blu-ray

Récréations (1993, Claire Simon) - Mkv file

Shadows in Paradise (1986, Aki Kaurismaki) - Criterion streaming

Suzhou River (2000, Lou Ye) - Landmark Nuart (DCP)

Jessica Green

Independent Film Programmer

New Releases

Afire (Christian Petzold)

A Thousand and One (A.V. Rockwell)

Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

Dry Ground Burning (Joana Pimenta, Adirley Queirós)

Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project (Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Daniel Goldhaber)

Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

Love to Love You, Donna Summer (Brooklyn Sudano, Roger Ross Willliams)

Rye Lane (Raine Allen-Miller)

Silver Dollar Road (Raoul Peck)

First Viewings

Manhandled (Allan Dwan, 1924)

Gold Diggers of 1933 (Mervyn LeRoy, 1933)

The Divorcee (Robert Z. Leonard, 1930)

Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)

The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall, 1959)

Serpents of the Pirate Moon (Jean-Louis Jorge, 1973)

Saving Face (Alice Wu, 2004)

Triple Fisher: The Lethal Lolitas of Long Island (Dan Kapelovitz, 2012)

Kewekapawetan: Return After the Flood (Jennifer Dysart, 2014)

Mistress America (Noah Baumbach, 2015)

Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt, 2016)

Around India with a Camera (Sandhya Suri, 2019)

Playback (Agustina Comedi, 2019)

Nature (Artavazd Peleshian, 2020)

Ask Any Buddy (Elizabeth Purchell, 2020)

I’ll Finish When I Can (Cat Jones, 2020)

Daniel Grosz

Film programmer

New Releases

I have no idea how to figure out a “best of” list really, so consider this more of a whirl around 2023. Lots of films were best in their ways… bit of a cop-out answer, but here are some that stuck in my brain

Avatar: The Water One - Start of the year, bottom of the barrel. I haven’t walked out of a movie halfway through since the first Harry Potter. I couldn’t tell if it was the ™blue vodka drink I got or the Best Buy motion capture, but I was losing my mind. When the blueboy bonded with the whale, that