Starting Film’s Cool has been a rewarding and time-consuming project. It has expanded my capacity for creativity, allowed me to attend my first feature film festivals and host my first film club, and taken away from ability to focus on my full- and part-time work. The combination of the mental fatigue caused by seeing and writing about movies together with my lack of formal training as a critic has also been a major challenge. While I did not reach my goal at the beginning of the year to review 50 movies, I am proud of what I accomplished. That being said, this will be my final post on the blog/newsletter. Thank you all for supporting me in this project!
Here are my favorite movies from this year:
Past Lives (A24), directed by Celine Song [now streaming on VOD]
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (A24), directed by Raven Jackson [pre-order on VOD]
Perfect Days (Neon), directed by Wim Wenders [out in select theaters in 2024]
Earth Mama (A24), directed by Savanah Leaf [now streaming on Paramount+/Showtime]
Anatomy of a Fall (Neon), directed by Justine Triet [now streaming on VOD]
Killers of the Flower Moon (Apple Films), directed by Martin Scorsese [now streaming on VOD]
May December (Netflix), directed by Todd Haynes [now streaming on Netflix]
Poor Things (Searchlight Pictures), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos [out in theaters]
Barbie (Warner Bros. Pictures), directed by Greta Gerwig [now streaming on Max] / Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Lionsgate Films), directed by Kelly Fremon Craig [now streaming on STARZ] / Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé (AMC Theatres), directed by Beyoncé [out in AMC Theatres] (tied)
Honorable Mention
Oppenheimer (Universal Pictures), directed by Christopher Nolan [now streaming on VOD] & Richland (Komsomol Films), directed by Irene Lusztig
Of An Age (Focus Features), by Goran Stolevski [now streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (Neon), directed by Daniel Goldhaber [now streaming on Hulu]
Air (Amazon Studios), directed by Ben Affleck [now streaming on Amazon Prime Video]
Creed III (United Artists Releasing), directed by Michael B. Jordan [now streaming on MGM+]
There are a lot of movies from this year I didn’t see: Blackberry, The Zone of Interest, All of Us Strangers, The Boy and the Heron, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Taste of Things, Ferrari, American Fiction, Origin, La Chimera, Eileen, Elemental, The Iron Claw, Maestro, Asteroid City*, Wes Anderson’s Netflix Shorts, Theater Camp, You Hurt My Feelings, John Wick: Chapter 4, Rye Lane, Priscilla, Fremont and so many more that I hope to watch soon.
And hopefully, something new will be coming in 2024!
Oh man! Wait...like over over? or like Black Album over?