Tag: lists
-
Favorite Books of 2022
Gotta be honest: 2022 wasn’t a great reading year for me. I read 22 books, which was much worse than 31 in 2021 and just barely better than the 18 in 2020. A lot of my potential reading opportunities were either taken up by movie watching, Cinema Sugar, or other leisure activities. Not a bad […]
-
2022 in review
See previous year in review posts. My view from the end of all things 2022: (Not visible: the buffalo plaid pocket square accompanying the bowtie.) The biggest thing that happened to my family this year was trying to have a second child. It was a long and demoralizing journey that ultimately ended successfully (due in late May), […]
-
Top 5 Christmas Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. It’s A Wonderful Life The once and future king of Christmas movies. I could praise a lot of things: the cinematography, the supporting cast, the dramatic depth of Jimmy Stewart’s first postwar performance. But its magic ultimately comes down to Harry’s closing line—“A toast to my big brother, George, […]
-
7 Hard-Boiled Lessons from Noir Films Old and New
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. These are dark times. It’s tempting to feel that it’s never been darker, that the weight of our modern struggles is unprecedented. But I take comfort in knowing that film noir—a genre that has existed for almost 100 years—has been there before. It’s seen some shit. To show this, I’ve […]
-
Top 5 Noir Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. Double Indemnity This isn’t the first major noir (fedora-tip to The Maltese Falcon) but damned if it isn’t the genre’s absolute peak: femme fatale, no-nonsense narration, crime gone wrong, investigator on the case. It’s hard to pick Billy Wilder’s best movie but this has to be near the top. […]
-
Top 5 Horror Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. The Ring Seeing this Gore Verbinski joint in early high school did three important things: it initiated my undying love of Naomi Watts, it showed me how artful scary movies can be, and it scarred me so deeply that I subsequently swore off horror for a long time. So […]
-
Top 5 High School Movies
Originally published at Cinema Sugar. 1. Brick If you found high school to be a dark, inscrutable enigma with a rigidly enforced social-class structure and impenetrable lingo, you’ll deeply appreciate Rian Johnson’s lean and masterful debut feature that renders adolescence as gritty film noir. A young, sphinx-like Joseph Gordon-Levitt investigates his ex-girlfriend’s mysterious disappearance like […]
-
Favorite Films of 2000
I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them. As usual with this silly but enjoyable series, I started by consulting my logbook for all the movies from 2000 I’ve seen. That initial list of 36 films had some pretty easy cuts (Men of Honor, My Dog Skip) and plenty of titles I […]
-
The Greatest Films of All Time
Recently I thought I should make a list of my top 10 films of all time. Making best-of lists is a hallowed tradition on this blog after all, so why not go for the big kahuna? Because it’s insane, that’s why. As Roger Ebert wrote: “Let us agree that all lists of movies are nonsense.” […]
-
Favorite Films of 2001
I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them. We’re now over 20 years away from the films in question. This means my impressions of the ones I haven’t rewatched somewhat recently are encased in metaphorical amber, for better or worse. It also means I wouldn’t have seen a good number of them […]