The 2024 Sibleys

My would-be awards ballot for last year.

I’m writing this even later than usual, perhaps because everything about the actual races has been so set and decided so early, with Oppenheimer‘s momentum showing up a Summer release can have enough staying power. There’s been plenty of hypothetical challengers since, but little that has been actually to match its pace, which is all the more impressive when you think about just how much of that early traction was on Nolan’s shoulders alone through the strikes.

Likewise, I had my little list of works that I figured could be late contenders, but apologies to RMN and Mad Fate for just not finding the time for them — was fully prepared to block out an afternoon for Trenque Lauquen until Radiance and Cinema Guild announced their boutique releases and set the decision to wait for their transfers over a rental — and to Godzilla Minus One, we just each kept having plans when the other was free.

But considering I’ve cut it closer to the actual red carpet than usual, that’s enough pre-show chat, here’s the ballots:

Best Picture

• Anatomy of a Fall
• Asteroid City
• Ferrari
• Magic Mike’s Last Dance
• Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros
• Oppenheimer
• Priscilla
• Showing Up
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Passengers of the Night

Best Director

• Wes Anderson for Asteroid City
• Sofia Coppola for Priscilla
• Aki Kaurismäki for Fallen Leaves
• Michael Mann for Ferrari
• Hayao Miyazaki for The Bird and the Heron
• Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer
• Kelly Reichardt for Showing Up
• Steven Soderbergh for Magic Mike’s Last Dance
• Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall
• Frederick Wiseman for Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros

Best Actor

• Adam Driver for Ferrari
• Zac Efron for The Iron Claw
• Ryan Gosling for Barbie
• Jonathan Groff for Knock at the Cabin
• Benoît Magimel for Pacification
• Charles Melton for May December
• Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer
• Thomas Schubert for Afire
• Jason Schwartzman for Asteroid City
• Channing Tatum for Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Best Actress

• Paula Beer for Afire
• Penelope Cruz for Ferrari
• Abby Ryder Fortson for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
• Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon
• Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall
• Scarlett Johansson for Asteroid City
• Alma Pöysti for Fallen Leaves
• Margot Robbie for Barbie
• Cailee Spaeny for Priscilla
• Michelle Williams for Showing Up

Best Supporting Actor

• Dave Bautista for Knock at the Cabin
• Bradley Cooper for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Robert Downey Jr. for Oppenheimer
• Tom Hanks for Asteroid City
• Glenn Howerton for Blackberry
• Judd Hirsch for Showing Up
• Milo Machado-Graner & Messi for Anatomy of a Fall
• John Magaro for Showing Up
• Holt McCallany for The Iron Claw

Best Supporting Actress

• Hong Chau for Showing Up
• Adèle Exarchopoulos for The Five Devils
• Hannah Gross & Sophia Lillis for The Adults
• Pahoa Mahagafanau for Pacification
• Rachel McAdams for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
• Julianne Moore for May December
• Cara Jade Myers for Killers of the Flower Moon
• Margot Robbie for Asteroid City
• Maura Tierney for The Iron Claw

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Ariela Barer & Daniel Goldhaber & Jordia Sjol for How to Blow Up a Pipeline
• Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig for Barbie
• Sofia Coppola for Priscilla
• Kelly Fremon Craig for Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
• William Friedkin for The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial
• Matt Johnson & Matthew Miller for Blackberry
• Troy Kennedy Martin for Ferrari
• Christoper Nolan for Oppenheimer
• Eric Roth & Martin Scorsese (and Paul Thomas Anderson [citation needed]) for Killers of the Flower Moon
• M. Night Shyamalan and Michael Sherman & Steve Desmond for Knock at the Cabin

Best Original Screenplay

• Maude Ameline, Mariette Désert & Mikhaël Hers for The Passengers of the Night
• Wes Anderson for Asteroid City
• Samy Burch for May December
• Dustin Guy Defa for The Adults
• Sean Durkin for The Iron Claw
• Hayao Miyazaki for The Bird and the Heron
• Christian Petzold for Afire
• Kelly Reichardt for Showing Up
• Celine Song for Past Lives
• Arthur Harari & Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall

Best Cinematography

• Simon Beaufils for Anatomy of a Fall
• Christopher Blauvelt for Showing Up
• Hoyte van Hoytema for Oppenheimer
• Philippe Le Sourd for Priscilla
• Erik Messerschmidt for Ferrari
• Hong Sang-soo for in water
• Steven Soderbergh for Magic Mike’s Last Dance
• Fraser Taggart for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
• Artur Tort for Pacification
• Maria von Hausswolff for Godland
• Robert Yeoman for Asteroid City

Best Costume Design

• Stacey Battat for Priscilla
• Milena Canonero for Asteroid City
• Jacqueline Durran for Barbie
• Amanda Monk for Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
• Julie O’Keefe and Jacqueline West for Killers of the Flower Moon

Best Documentary

• Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros
• Occupied City
• The Afterlight
• The Pigeon Tunnel
• The Plains

Best Editing

• Steven Hathaway for The Pigeon Tunnel
• Jennifer Lame for Oppenheimer
• Pietro Scalia for Ferrari
• Thelma Schoonmaker for Killers of the Flower Moon
• Frederick Wiseman for Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros

Best Foreign Language Film

• Afire
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Passengers of the Night

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

• Philippe Bertrand-Hudon, Dylan Twigg & Ashley Vieira for Blackberry
• Julie Dartnell & Mark Coulier for Asteroid City
• Cliona Furey, Iantha Goldberg & Jacqueline Robertson-Cull for Priscilla
• Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou & Lori McCoy-Bell for Maestro
• Ivana Primorac for Barbie

Best Score

• Alexandre Desplat for Asteroid City
• Ludwig Göransson for Oppenheimer
• Joe Hisaishi for The Boy and the Heron
• Daniel Pemberton for Ferrari
• Marcelo Zarvos (and Michel Legrand for The Go-Between) for May December

Best Original Song

• “Dance the Night” from Barbie by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt, Dua Lipa & Caroline Ailin
• “Dear Alien Who Art in Heaven” from Asteroid City by Wes Anderson, Jarvis Cocker & Richard Hawley
• “Eye For An Eye” from John Wick: Chapter 4 by Rina Sawayama, Tyler Bates and Brasko
• “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie by Mark Ronson, Andrew Wyatt & Ryan Gosling
• “Live That Way Forever” from The Iron Claw by Richard Reed Parry & Little Scream

Best Live-Action Short

• Shards of Moon
• The Daughters of Fire
• The Potemkinists
• The Swan
• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Best Documentary Short

• A Dog Called Discord
• Another Young Couple
• It’s What Each Person Needs
• Passing Time
• Presages

Best Production Design

• Ruth de Jong for Oppenheimer
• Jack Fisk for Killers of the Flower Moon
• Frosti Fridriksson for Godland
• Sarah Greenwood for Barbie
• Adam Stockhausen for Asteroid City

Best Sound

• Mark Jenkin for Enys Men
• Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo, Kevin O’Connell & Willie Burton for Oppenheimer
• Tony Lambertti, Bernard Wieser, Lee Orloff & Andy Nelson for Ferrari
• Mark Stoeckinger, Manfred Banach, Andy Koyama & Casey Genton for John Wick: Chapter 4
• Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn for The Zone of Interest

Best Visual Effects

• Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
• Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould for The Creator
• Simon Hughes for Poor Things
• Andrew Jackson, Giacomo Mineo, Scott Fisher & Dave Drzewiecki for Oppenheimer
• Ben Snow, Scott Benza, Khalid Almeerani & Sam Conway for Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

2023: A Media Diary

COMICS

Older Comics

Ahoy: Billionaire Island: Cult of Dogs #1-#2

Avery Hill: Are You Listening?

Other: Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began, Shuna’s Journey

Titan: Blade Runner 2039 #1

2023 Comics

Ahoy: Billionaire Island: Cult of Dogs #3-#6, Second Coming: Trinity #1-#6,

Boom: Abbott 1979 #1-#2, Briar #3-#4, Buffy: The Lost Summer; The Last Vampire Slayer #1-#5, Coda #1-#4, Damn Them All #4-#11, Firefly: The Fall Guys #1-#3, Mosely #1-#5, Rare Flavours #1-#3, Something is Killing the Children #28-#33,- The Seasons Have Teeth #1-#4, The Vampire Slayer #10-#16

Dark Horse: Blue Book #1-#5, Great British Bump Off #1-#4, Spy Superb #1, Where Monsters Lie #1-#4,

DC: Action Comics #1051-#1060 (+ Annual, Doomsday Special), Batgirls #14-#19, Batman #131- #140; City of Madness #1-#2, One Bad Day (Catwoman); The Brave and the Bold #1-#8 (selected stories), Urban Legends #23, Birds of Prey #1-#4, Black Adam #7-#12, City Boy #1-#6, Danger Street #2-#12, Detective Comics #1068-#1080, Flash #1-#4, GCPD: The Blue Wall #4-#6, Gotham City: Year One #4-#6, Harley Quinn #26-#27; Black + White + Redder #1-#4, Human Target #10-#12, Knight Terrors (Action Comics [Williams’ Power Girl], Detective Comics, Flash, Poison Ivy, Shazam, Wonder Woman) Monkey Prince #10-#12, New Champion of Shazam #4, Nightwing #100, Peacemaker Tries Hard #1-#6, Penguin #1-#5, Poison Ivy #8-#17, Power Girl Special; #1-#4, Shazam #1-#6, Superman: Lost #1-#9; Space Age #3; The Last Days of Lex Luthor #1, Supergirl Special #1, Sword of Azrael #6, The Vigil #1-#6, Wonder Woman #795-#800; #1-#4, World’s Finest #11-22; Teen Titans #1-#6

IDW: The Hunger and the Dusk #1-#4,

Image: 20th Century Men #6, All Against All #2-#5, Art Brut #2-#3, Black Cloak #1, Deep Cuts #1-#3, Dracula #1-#2, Eight Billion Genies #7-#8, I Hate This Place #6-#10, Kaya #4-#13, Newburn #9-#13, Night Fever, Starsigns #1, Stillwater #17-#18, Swan Songs #1-#5, Terrorwar #1-#2, The Cull #1-#4, The Enfield Gang Massacre #1-#5, The Forged #1-#2, Two Graves #3-#6, What’s the Furthest Place From Here? #10-#16, W0rldtr33 #1-#6, Where the Body Was

Other: Bad Karma #7, Binary Sea #1, Friday #7-#8, Love Everlasting #7-#8, Kit + The Wolf, Nancy, Solver (Boys Like Fun) Steeple Hell on Wheels; Maggie’s Party, The Devil That Wears My Face #1-#3, The Magic Necklace

Marvel: Astonishing Iceman #1-#2, Avengers #1-#5; Inc #1-#4, Black Panther #13-#15; #1-#7, Blade #1-#6, Bloodline #1-#5, Captain America: Cold War (Alpha); Sentinel of Liberty #8-#11; Symbol of Truth #9-#11, Captain Marvel #45-#50; #1-#3; Dark Tempest #1-#5; Assault on Eden, Children of the Vault #1-#4, Daredevil #7-#14; #1-#4, Dark X-Men #1-#4, Demon Wars (Down in Flames, Scarlet Sin), Doctor Strange #1; Fall Sunrise #3-#4, Fantastic Four #3-#14, Fury #1, Guardians of the Galaxy #1, Ghost Rider #10-#13, Hellcat #1-#5, Hulk Annual, I Am Iron Man #1, Immortal Thor #1-#5, Immortal X-Men #10-#18, Incredible Hulk #1-#7, Invincible Iron Man #2-#13, Jean Grey #1-#4, Legion of X #9-10 , Loki #1-#4, Marauders #10, Marvel Age #1000, Monica Rambeau: Photon #2-#5, Moon Knight #19-30; City of the Dead #1-#5, Ms. Marvel #1-#4, Namor #4-#5, New Mutants: Lethal Legion #1-#5, Punisher #1-2, Realm of X #1-#2, Red Goblin #1-#6, Rogue & Gambit #1-#2, Sabertooth & the Exiles #3-#5, Savage Avengers #9-#10, Scarlet Witch #1-#10 (+ Annual), Shang-Chi: Master of the Ten Rings, She-Hulk #10-#15; Sensational She-Hulk #1-#3, Sins of Sinister (#1, Immoral X-Men, Nightcrawlers, Storm and the Brotherhood of Mutants, Dominion), Star Wars #30-#41; Dark Droids #1-#5; Darth Vader #30-#40; Black, White & Red #1-#4, Doctor Aphra #28-#39; Hidden Empire #3-#5; Visions (Peach Momoko), Strange #10, Thanos #1, Thor Annual, Ultimate Invasion #1-#4, Ultimate Universe #1, Uncanny Avengers #1-#3, Uncanny Spider-Man #1-#5, Venom #15-#28, Wakanda #4-#5, Wasp #1-#4, Wolverine #29-#40, X-Cellent #1-#5, X-Force #36-#47, X-Men #18-#29; Before the Fall (Sons of X, Mutant First Strike, Heralds of Apocalypse, Sinister Four); Blue; Hellfire Gala; Red #10-#18, X-Terminators #5

Shortbox: Cuckoo, Fight Like Hell, Fishing

Titan: Blade Runner 2039 #2-#8

Vault: Giga #5, Godfell #1-#5, The Nasty #1-#5,

FILMS

An up-to-date log can be found here: https://letterboxd.com/Matt_Sibley/

TV

Older TV

Man to Man with Dean Learner, Party Down, For All Mankind, Seinfeld (S1-5), Doctor Who (4×12 & 4×13)

2023 TV

Mythic Quest, Copenhagen Cowboy, Servant, Poker Face, Nolly, Party Down, The Mandalorian, Perry Mason, Yellowjackets, Succession, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, Mrs. Davis, The Other Two, Jury Duty, Dead Ringers, I Think You Should Leave, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Nevers, The Bear, Secret Invasion, The Great, What We Do in the Shadows, Full Circle, Control Z, Justified: City Primeval, How To With John Wilson, The History of the Minnesota Vikings, Only Murders in the Building, Ahsoka, Boiling Point, Frasier, Loki, The Curse, For All Mankind, Doctor Who, Fargo, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off

The 2023 Sibleys

My would-be awards ballot for last year.

They’ve got to get back to ending the season earlier than goddamn March before it breaks all of our brains. Granted, the slightly longer deadline for getting this post up meant I had chance to fit in Saint Omer and EO as part of 2022 catch-up — though one admittedly doesn’t feature below — but the point still stands, especially if it means that Steven Spielberg can premiere one of his best in September, have zero momentum in the race six months down the road.

As for this post, yes, there were still shortlists that were oh so tough to cut the last couple from, but I won’t prognosticate for too long considering my above complaint. So, here’s the ballots:

Best Picture

• After Yang
• Armageddon Time
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• Crimes of the Future
• Il Buco
• In Front of Your Face
• Nope
• The Eternal Daughter
• The Fabelmans
• Women Talking

Best Director

• James Cameron for Avatar: The Way of Water
• David Cronenberg for Crimes of the Future
• Alice Diop for Saint Omer
• Michelangelo Frammartino for Il Buco
• Joanna Hogg for The Eternal Daughter
• Kogonada for After Yang
• Jordan Peele for Nope
• Sarah Polley for Women Talking
• Hong Sang-soo for In Front of Your Face
• Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans

Best Actor

• Adeel Akhtar for Ali & Ava
• Adam Driver for White Noise
• Colin Farrell for After Yang
• Daniel Kaluuya for Nope
• Gabriel Labelle for The Fabelmans
• Jack Lowden for Benediction
• Paul Mescal for Aftersun
• VIggo Mortensen for Crimes of the Future
• Robert Pattinson for The Batman
• Pablo Schils for Tori and Lokita

Best Actress

• Anne Hathaway for Armageddon Time
• Lee Hye-young for In Front of Your Face
• Kayije Kagame for Saint Omer
• Vicky Krieps for Hold Me Tight
• Joley Mbundu for Tori and Lokita
• Keke Palmer for Nope
• Margaret Qualley for Stars at Noon
• Rooney Mara for Women Talking
• Lea Seydoux for One Fine Morning
• Tilda Swinton for The Eternal Daughter
• Michelle Williams for The Fabelmans

Best Supporting Actor

• Don Cheadle for White Noise
• Paul Dano, Judd Hirsch & Seth Rogen for The Fabelmans
• Jake Gyllenhaal for Ambulance
• Anthony Hopkins for Armageddon Time
• Justin H. Min for After Yang
• Mark Rylance for Bones and All
• Brian Tyree Henry for Causeway
• Steven Yeun for Nope

Best Supporting Actress

• Jessie Buckley for Women Talking
• Kerry Condon for The Banshees of Inisherin
• Carly-Sophia Davies for The Eternal Daughter
• Chloe East for The Fabelmans
• Guslagie Malanda for Saint Omer
• Billie Piper for Catherine Called Birdy
• Haley Lu Richardson for After Yang
• Kristen Stewart for Crimes of the Future
• Sigourney Weaver for Avatar: The Way of Water
• Cho Yun-Hee for In Front of Your Face

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Mathieu Amalric for Hold Me Tight
• Noah Baumbach for White Noise
• James Cameron, Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver for Avatar: The Way of Water
• Claire Denis & Léa Mysius & Andrew Litvack for Stars at Noon
• Lena Dunham for Catherine Called Birdy
• Joanna Hogg for The Eternal Daugher
• Rian Johnson for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
• Kogonada for After Yang
• Sarah Polley for Women Talking
• Matt Reeves & Peter Craig for The Batman

Best Original Screenplay

• David Cronenberg for Crimes of the Future
• Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne for Tori and Lokita
• Terence Davies for Benediction
• James Gray for Armageddon Time
• “Asghar Farhadi” for A Hero
• Mia Hansen-Løve for One Fine Morning
• Richard Linklater for Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood
• Tony Kushner & Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans
• Jordan Peele for Nope
• Hong Sang-soo for In Front of Your Face

Best Cinematography

• Renato Berta for Il Buco
• Russell Carpenter for Avatar: The Way of Water
• Roberto De Angelis for Ambulance
• Greig Fraser for The Batman
• Éric Gautier for Stars at Noon
• Janusz Kamiński for The Fabelmans
• Claire Mathon for Saint Omer
• Luc Montpellier for Women Talking
• Ed Rutherford for The Eternal Daughter
• Hoyte van Hoytema for Nope

Best Costume Design

• Jacqueline Durran for The Batman
• Gersha Phillips for The Woman King
• Deborah L. Scott for Avatar: The Way of Water
• Neil Simon for Inspector Ike
• Mayou Trikerioti for Crimes of the Future

Best Feature Documentary

• All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
• Descendant
• Fire of Love
• Riotsville, U.S.A.
• The People You’re Paying to Be In Shorts

Best Editing

• Helle le Fevre for The Eternal Daughter
• Michael Kahn & Sarah Broshar for The Fabelmans
• Alex Mackie for Benediction
• Pietro Scalia, Calvin Wimmer & Doug Brandt for Ambulance
• Steven Soderbergh for Kimi

Best Foreign Language Film

• Hold Me TIght
• Il Buco
• In Front of Your Face
• Stars at Noon
• Tori & Lokita

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

• Louisa Anthony, Bablawa Mtshiselwa & Jamika Wilson for The Woman King
• Naomi Donne, Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine for The Batman
• Terri Farmer & Lesley Vanderwalt for Three Thousand Years of Longing
• Marese Langan for Catherine Called Birdy
• Heba Thorisdottir & Jamie Leigh McIntosh for Babylon

Best Original Score

• Michael Giacchino for The Batman
• Hildur Guðnadóttir for Women Talking
• Justin Hurwitz for Babylon
• Howard Shore for Crimes of the Future
• John Williams for The Fabelmans

Best Original Song

• “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun Maverick by Lady Gaga & BloodPop
• “Naatu Naatu” from RRR by M. M. Keeravani & Chandrabose
• “New Body Rhumba” from White Noise by LCD Soundsystem
• “Stars at Noon” from Stars at Noon by Tindersticks
• “(You Made It Feel) Like Home” from Bones & All by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

Live-Action Short

• Black Narcissus: Passion of the Swamp
• Nest
• Nosferasta: First Bite
• The Night
• Train Again

Best Production Design

• Stéphane Collonge & Naomi Reed for The Eternal Daughter
• Ruth De Jong & Gene Serdena for Nope
• Rick Heinrichs & Elli Griff for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
• Alexandra Schaller & JoAnne Ling for After Yang
• Carol Spier for Crimes of the Future

Best Sound

• Benni Atria, Paolo Benvenuti, Florian Holzner & Simone Paolo Oliver for Il Buco
• Johnnie Burn & Jose Antonio Garcia for Nope
• Felix Bussmann, Balthasar Jucker and Denis Séchaud for The Girl and the Spider
• David Giles & Jovan Ajder for The Eternal Daughter
• Mark Weingarten, James H. Mather, Al Nelson, Chris Burdon & Mark Taylor for Top Gun: Maverick

Best Visual Effects

• Christa Tazzeo Morson & Tony Turnbull for Crimes of the Future
• Dan Lemmon, Russell Earl, Anders Langlands and Dominic Tuohy for The Batman
• Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon and Daniel Barrett for Avatar: The Way of Water
• Guillaume Rocheron, Jeremy Robert, Sreejith Venugopalan and Scott R. Fisher for Nope
• Ryan Tudhope, Seth Hill, Bryan Litson and Scott R. Fisher for Top Gun: Maverick

The Best Films of 2022

I’m putting this out at least a month later than I would’ve liked. Now I’m no longer on a hospitality schedule, it’s not as easy to come home in the night when no-one else is around and crack on with it. But I always like doing this one even as it gets easier to brush aside the idea of doing accompanying ones for television and comics the second I fall behind. Perhaps it’s easier that films are (largely) distinct units compared to needing to consider the peaks and valleys of serialised media and I think that’s true of all the ones you’ll find below. Even the Hongs, from a director who gets pigeonholed into “variations on a theme”, are distinct despite their contributions and continued expansion of his wider project. There’s a couple things I would’ve liked to see before the year was out — All the Beauty and the Bloodshed and Saint Omer are two that I’ve already caught up with that would’ve placed, while EO and No Bears have eluded me thus far — but as usual, I’m happy with it came together. Without further ado, my top 25 of the year:

25. The Novelist’s Film

What Hong did with colour this year is nothing short of astounding, but more on that later.

24. The Girl and the Spider

Would probably be higher up the list if I hadn’t felt the need to catch up with the Zürchers’ debut prior, as their meticulous formal approach is most surprising the first time you see it in the ways they establish space and then cause ruptures in just as controlled a fashion. Their world is getting bigger, as evidenced by opening on two front doors, one by one, just not for everyone, not the ones who remained. And yet their dialogue never truly opens things up, it remains opaque in what is said and thus what is not as well. Around the time this came my way, a close friend was moving away. That last time we were all in the kitchen, animatedly talking away, it lingered in the back of my mind that the conversation will continue (and has since), just not there. Helped to crowdfund their next film, hopefully the time between this and that isn’t quite as long as between The Strange Little Cat and this.

23. One Fine Morning

Not sure there’s another face in modern cinema as entrancing as Seydoux, in particular she has some of the saddest eyes you’ll ever see. Hansen-Løve said in her BFI Screen Talk that she attempted to balance the tragedy of the family’s situation, the mental decline of an elder, with moments of brightness, but it’s most moving as a depiction of the pain that the circumstances create. How much we’re willing to put ourselves through in order to preserve love. Even having to hold it at arm’s lengths to prevent any echoes of real-life reverberating through my mind, it paints a picture of a person she loves even though we never really meet them.

22. Top Gun: Maverick

The thing about the original is that the planes might as well be incidental. They’re not perfunctory by any means though, when talking about the volleyball scene, Tony Scott himself said he shot the shit out of it, and that’s true for every other frame in the movie. Just its real pleasures don’t come from the jet combat, but getting to hangout at the academy. In an alchemic blend of Hawks meets Sirk, the professionalism is just as intense as the photography and the homoeroticism. The Hawksian is retained here, as now we have the best of the best of the best, but the latter is missing. With Cruise at a distance from the cadets and it being his film to the point that the third act rejects its own legacy sequel designation, their interpersonal lives are skimped on. The absence is filled however by ruminations of fleeting life, relationships past, digital simulations, birds and a climax that if all goes well will only last a few minutes; better known as late Eastwood, which I just so happen to like quite a bit. The original is one of a kind, Cruise and Scott couldn’t replicate it 100% when it came to Days of Thunder, but this is as good as this could’ve possibly been. What has proved to be most interesting about it for me is the reaction to it; in macro that this has become the most celebrated work to come out of the Cruise/McQ partnership, in micro that my Mum walked out saying that the man putting in overtime to be Our Last Movie Star was somehow less cocky here, at a moment where he put the world’s multiplexes on his shoulders and said he would carry them to safety. But I don’t see much point pushing back on him too hard, like he said, see you at the movies.

21. Bones and All

The wooziness draws you in so someone can take a bite, there’s great tonal management on display here, as Guadagnino and Kajganich navigate desiccated landscapes that allow for as much swooning as they do let it haunt you. Violence is sharp and blunt, right up until it isn’t in the final moments, so they can deliver a beat grosser than anything than anything they swung for with Suspiria. They never let themselves get as giddy as they were with getting away with that though that doesn’t stop Rylance from having as much as fun as he evidently did. Was not a performance I came out of my screening expecting to be divisive, I’m still a big fan; it’s not often that you can see someone wearing all white about to settle in for a meal like that and laugh only for him to scare the shit out of you just a little ways further down the road.

20. Benediction

The poetics of late style. Immediate reaction was more focused on how catty it was, barbs being traded like a tennis rally. With time, that aspect hasn’t faded away, just the wounded soul has risen to the surface. Davies has never aimed for histrionics, and the milieu here lets the pain sneak its way into your brain and body like a trojan horse and then claw its way back to the surface.

19. A Hero

“Nothing in this world is free.”

Enhanced by the fact that a year ago this was a return to form for Farhadi and in the time since, the plagiarism scandal is exactly the kind of thing that would happen to one of his protagonists.

18. Hold Me Tight

Amalric grants you fragments that fit together faster than most would rather than waiting until the end to see what it’s really a picture of. Doing this earlier means you ascertain there’s a hole in the world that can’t be so easily filled, some pieces are missing. Another great Krieps performance, from holding her own (at worst) against DDL, to fitting into as dynamic and lively an M Night ensemble can be to how much she commands the screen just by herself here.

17. Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood

Would’ve been content for this to eschew the actual space stuff that it was sold on in favour of the channel surfing-akin memory film, however the way that Linklater brings those two strands together in the end is wonderful. “Even if he was asleep, he’ll someday think he saw it all.” An age so vivid because it’s been filtered through the warm glow of a colour TV.

16. Tori & Lokita

The thing about the Dardennes is that I always think they’ve made more than they actually have, which might just be because their style became the de-facto social realist aesthetic. As such, I always been cautious of burning through their work too quickly. Seeing this was a reminder of how short the imitators come to matching the heights they can reach. The makeshift brother and sister have a dynamic that staggers you in the sense of how the collaboration achieves that palpable proximity without it having become too rehearsed, yet their strongest gambit is dividing them. Their narrative decision fits neatly with their existing aesthetic concerns as you’re always aware of the danger the other sibling is in.

15. Ambulance

Haven’t wholly succumbed to the Bayhem in the months since — the Transformers series demonstrated to me the ceiling on my vulgar auteurism, though 13 Hours proved to be the platonic ideal of military tech fetishism that teenage highly-aware-of-the-arsenal-in-any-Call of Duty me would’ve gone even crazier for — but I don’t see anything hitting the highs of this overwhelming experience. Picture Unstoppable, with its depiction of a geographical area and its inhabitants being drawn into the orbit of increasing calamity, only made made by a nihilist. Even as these people come together, they can’t help but shoot venom at one another, which coupled with how Eiza Gonzalez’s character is introduced means that the ending has always felt phonier than people seem to have bought into. This isn’t to say there’s an absence of emotion however. Amidst the careening drone shots, California Dreaming getting drowned out of the sound mix almost as soon as it gets cued up and sheer sensory overload of the assemblage, Jake G’s coked-up love for this Yahya Abdul-Mateen is felt. It’s a situation born out of strongarming, and the latter’s screen-coolness is frequently tested but it might be the most genuine aspect of his work, save for Revenge of the Fallen‘s tears down the illusion of Spielberg aping in order to do the same dog-humping joke in the space of fifteen minutes.

14. White Noise

Still not sure what to actually say about this. Haven’t read the novel, many who have seem to think this a failed adaptation. Perhaps it is. Still a heck of a movie, even if you take it as part and parcel to the trajectory that him meeting Gerwig set off.

13. Stars at Noon

The Midnights visual album. What separates this from Denis’ previous overt stories of colonialism — her debut Chocolat and collaboration with Isabelle Huppert, White Material — is how she nods to the perverse humour of it here. Qualley and Alwyn traipse and fuck their way through Nicaragua leaving a trail of bodies in their wake and they just don’t care. It’s a hangout movie because they have nowhere else they’re able to go but to each other and the former in particular gives a physical performance up with there with the best of Denis’s collaborations. That this got laughed off the Croisette is a tragedy, not to mention reason enough to be skeptical of anyone contributing to said cacophony, like for gods sake, Holy Spider was right there.

12. Glass Onion

Rian Johnson has been a director destined to be miscategorised since he had the gall to make the best Star Wars movie. In a general sense, people just don’t understand what he does, deconstruction is not the aim, but reconstruction and the genre here is his own work. To break himself down and build himself back up. People aren’t really noticing because it clicks into place so easily, the old money of the original phenomenon and the new money on display here, to the point that you wonder what he could do with a third one, much less Poker Face later this month. Just look at how this ends, he doesn’t quite put everything back together the way he usually does in a way that suggests where he’ll go from here. The path he’ll take isn’t that obvious, and perhaps it wasn’t to him either, which makes this the most exciting point in his career because where will he go? I wouldn’t be so confident about that optimism if this wasn’t the superior of the franchise thus far.

11. Nope

Cowboys and cameras; point and shoot.

Much smarter people have written about this one. I’m already getting this out later than I intended, I’m not sure I’d have it out at all if I tried to say anything at large, but I will note that everyone who argues that Peele gets caught up in overexplanation and allegory is ignoring how much he’ll let you sit with the images and see where that pushes your mind.

10. Crimes of the Future

Cronenberg from A Dangerous Method onwards is a discourse, this in particular being him in conversation with himself, one that clearly started 20+ years ago whenever the original version of this story first came to him and has continued in the years since in order to deepen the impact of it. It’s a true shame that he hasn’t made a movie in 8 years, yet that gap also manages to have resonance as others have tried to fill the space without being that successful, so to return with something this muted suggests a concern with if the world has been so desensitized that it won’t even register what he’s doing. (Which I suppose is true considering some have been unsatisfied with the level of body horror and Neon’s attempts to promote it off the glimpses it can). Existing in the space of looking forwards and backwards simultaneously, a time which is always changing as are we, makes that final shot’s callback to Dreyer and one of the most moving pictures that much more successful as he finds a way to repurpose it, his fascinations. It’s a new world, it’s an old world, it’s a dying one and it’s changing. But he is him, thus he is changing too and he finds the beauty in that.

9. The Batman

The third act is great, you fools. Admired it quite a bit at the time, but after the 8(!) MCU projects that dropped through the remainder of the year, the fact that this is actually directed from start to end in service of a vision that’s everyone committed to deserves even more props. Bruce Wayne shambling downstairs in a black t-shirt, having missed most of the morning – finally a superhero for the failson generation.

8. Armageddon Time

They say write what you know and that’s key to understanding Gray’s approach here, in that there’s much more of Paul than there is Johnny. He has his own perspective on the events that have rippled through memory and on to the screen, and in addition, knows that he can’t really put himself in the shoes of his counterpart. And so he doesn’t attempt to. Perhaps because we’ve seen these types of films before — and will again considering Empire of Light allegedly threatens to be Mendes’ treatise on racism — this has been treated as a deficiency, that Johnny’s perspective is lacking as if the first day at the private school isn’t build around his structuring absence. Instead, it’s much easier to comprehend, without being any easier to process, as a movie that approaches their relationship, like the others in the film, as one of class, about the world at large and the way it is fragmented into a bunch of smaller ones. How much they accept you, and you them. There are the things we can’t change, our elders will pass. There are the things that will, but not until we realise that moment has already happened, kids being beaten becoming an action of horror. There are the things we hope will change, that our youth will be better than we were. It understands personal responsibility and culpability, putting the onus on us to break down the barriers that keep others out of a particular ecosystem while also acknowledging how much one person can really impact these. Without the Reagan bookending, the title is still appropriate on a familial level, found its first half carried a crushing weight to itself even before the real troubles began. He establishes such a web of relationships around the dinner table that one of them was bound to go off, mutually assured destruction, no-one has a choice about the first world you’re born into.

7. Women Talking

This might stand as the most controversial entry on this list and reading the reviews of detractors, I get it, whether they take issues with it in terms of its aesthetic properties or its characterisation of the collective. My screening at LFF was just a couple of days away when the trailer dropped and the wave of “but why does it looks like that” began, so out of curiosity, I scrubbed though a few seconds without watching it in full and was off-put by that first glimpse of Polley and Montpellier’s desaturation. My qualms faded quite quickly into actually sitting down and watching the full thing, the images proving more fluid in sequence than expected, they never lean all the way into b&w or give way to complete colour but navigate the spectrum between the two throughout. As for the narrative that the images are in service of, they deliver this deliberations with urgency. Every silence is a moment lost that they could’ve settled a decision as much as it necessary to process the traumas that have led the ensemble to this barn. It’s not just about the dream of a better world, but the strength it takes to turn it into something beyond the theoretical. The grass must be greener elsewhere.

6. Il Buco

A dialectical film, but not a didactic one as the ideas at play between north/south, up/down and rich/poor are largely left unsaid after the text and television footage set them up, instead letting you luxuriate in the textures as if you’re exploring the caverns alongside the crew while also situated within the makeshift cavern of a darkened screening room. And for a visual medium such as this, light and shadow might as well be the original dialectic of both its creation and distribution. That paper just falls all the way down, huh?

5. In Front of Your Face

A major experience to finally see a Hong on the big screen — his first here since Nobody’s Daughter Haewon — and what a one to see that way. Have been gradually catching up with his work over the past four years, but being able to lock into the conversations on a screen that isn’t my laptop was like encountering him for the first time. The embodiment of grace; Sangok has made peace with what will come, she doesn’t let it colour the way she experiences the world. It’s in keeping with how his production model was already equipped to handle the last couple of years. And life goes on, I guess.

4. Avatar: The Way of Water

Biggest cinematic regret for the year is that I somehow haven’t found the time to take repeat trips to Pandora over the past couple of months. The original looks better than practically every visual effects-orientated movie since and this makes it look like a PS3 game in comparison. Back when Josef von Sternberg was making Anatahan, he was annoyed he had to use real water, what do you imagine he’d think if he could see this. Big Jim’s best sequel, how good it is to know we’re getting three more.

3. The Eternal Daughter

The Tildas only share the frame once, reflected; in keeping with The Souvenirs’ interrogating the ideas we believe of people we think we know. However more crucial in situating this within Hogg’s filmography is that it plays like an Archipelago follow-up. She’s finally tuned into the particulars of family holiday stressing, the kind that arises when you want to be free and easy-going and not worry too much about what you do for dinner, only to be met by equally attempting-aloof forces, leaving you in a holding pattern of no-one really wanting to become the decision maker because you all know it won’t just be a one-off. It’s also quietly the best covid movie too, and not just because it was secretly shot during the early stages of the pandemic, the central conceit necessitates shot/reverse shot. The isolation is there in every cut and her filmmaking is so nimble that she can convey this with every cut and still increase the distance when the time comes.

2. After Yang

The constellation of memory. The film that Farrell should be nominated for. Someone is not just how you remember them, it encompasses all they remember as well.

1. The Fabelmans

Can’t say that I’ve ever found such a clear organising principle in an end of year list before, but my top five here speaks to the many facets of family. This one also speaks to a lot more, in the sense that how often do you get a film which lets you see an entire career differently. The best of the decade thus far, Kushner is obviously no slouch, but you really just have to take a moment and recognise how fascinating it is that Spielberg rarely writes yet his best works are the ones he’s had a credited hand on the pen for.

Here’s what I said in the immediate wake of seeing it. For something I was desperately trying to process into coherency, I think it gets just how astonishing it is beyond a basic magic of the movies memory play that some people are somehow looking at it and seeing.

Speaking on The Big Picture, Adam Nayman said late Spielberg is a matter of the film it looks like he’s making and what he’s actually making. Here it is a case of dialectics, albeit not the one that the opening moments set up via Bert and Mitzi’s explanations of what Sammy is about to see. It’s not a case of the scientists versus the artists, instead it is of a born(-again) formalist whose mind is blown apart by Cecil D Demille, pieces together the fragments and then devotes his life to doing that in as wide an array as possible and the way the family unit destabilises over the years. If we didn’t know it to be semi-autobiographical, we’d call it a masterstroke that Sammy’s eye comes about before domestic crisis rather than the other way around and what would be easy pathologising in the form of an origin story. And Spielberg can get away with it because we’ve have 50+ years of seeing the results, he’s long walked the walk and is now choosing to talk.

But even in laying it out in this way, there’s no straightforward path through the material. That Sammy’s talent is what uncovers his mother’s torn heart, much less the meeting with Ford, are both ideals of “you can only make this stuff up, it’s too perfect and writer-ly to be real life” and yet they appear to be true to life. Or at least, this telling of life. The echoes and inversions of his career — Close Encounters as the story of a dad who left, The Sugarland Express‘s overlaying of cartoons against the skin of convicts, Crystal Skull‘s explosion of nuclear family so the Jones’ can take another crack at it amidst the wreckage, how the introduction of the gun West Side Story is close to how the camera almost exits this — grant a metatextuality that enriches them, this and further complicates it.

Dancing in the headlights, perhaps the most unnerving sequence he’s shot in the past twenty years, the characters themselves grapple with what’s being shown, obscured and if they should look away. But you can’t take your eyes off Williams’ performance here or at any point. From the first moment she speaks, she’s evoking Garland as much as she must Spielberg’s own mother. This composite is not just those two people of course, Williams herself factors in as much as anyone else from her life she brings to the performance that only she knows internally. They are the closest he’s ever gotten to laying it all bare on the screen and they still remains ideas of the real life people. Thus if we follow the connection of what was the biggest influence on her performance, we come The Wizard of Oz (an association which can also be backed up by Lynch’s presence). It ends with Dorothy waking up on the farm, surrounded by the people she knows. But they’re no longer just those single entities, she just saw them as others. Were they real? Perhaps not, but her internal truth — “and you were there” — is that they are. She says there’s no place like home, yet any recreations, facsimiles and memory plays at hand here demonstrate that you can’t go home again either.

My Favourite Cinematic Discoveries of 2022

The best of yesteryear.

A smaller list this year, not strictly by design. Perhaps a reflection that after you see enough, your tastes start to compound in such a way that it takes specific works to really speak to them. But it could also be a result of my projects for the year being more rewatch-oriented, as I returned to Wes Anderson, the Coens and Terrence Malick as well as more than a handful of John Ford (which still only accounts for a fraction of his filmography). Last year, I used the restriction of one per director, this year I didn’t feel so inclined to, David Lean and Vincente Minnelli both managed to wallop me twice with works that couldn’t be more stylistically and tonally distinct from each other that it felt wrong not to acknowledge the variety. Speaking of variety, the list spans genres from family drama, monster movie, war pictures and even a comic book movie. There are movies I expected to love and ones that took me by complete surprise. I may not have seen as many towering films than I have in the previous couple of years where I was stuck inside for great deals of time and had little else to do, however each one of these more than makes up for the stretches where I was searching for that sense.

In the order I saw them, the twenty new-to-me films that left the greatest impact in the past year:

Toyko Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008)

The typical reaction to this is that Kurosawa isn’t doing horror, but those people clearly don’t know the terror of running into someone you know at the mall.

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

The 60s are no stranger to roadshow epics like this, although I can’t say I’ve encountered another one that still retains such a handle on interiority that its biggest scenes are more so the ones between just a couple of people. And in the end, it’s just Lawrence, no home, no people, no place; renders the opening as an act of cosmic compassion, that a man without the world he desires shouldn’t have to live in the one he’s left himself with. First half stands as Lean’s greatest achievement brought to screen and the second half is no slouch either. Next time this plays in 70mm, I will likely drop everything to see it that way.

Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)

Codes itself as setting up tragedy in some form or another from the very start, however the journey to the end is so slippery — those first 50 minutes make you wonder if this will be a short layover for a couple of days in Parkman for Dave before he sets off for somewhere else to try and call home — and it never stays in one shape for too long that you end up thinking, just maybe, he and everyone else might be able to slip away themselves. Which is quite a feat considering its posters and physical media covers. Not that this list is ranked, but this is probably the best on here.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)

A cacophony until it’s not. Just ice cubes rattling in the night. Elizabeth Taylor might say simp, but there’s little to be found after in terms of good vibes. By the third act, you’re thankful just to get out of the house; even if you’re still in their company, at least you might be able to escape.

Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty, 1990)

Pacino scoring an Oscar nod is the reason we invented the phrase king shit. Easily the most beautiful comic book movie ever made, courtesy of Vittorio Storaro.

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1942)

Obviously this was never intended as such, certainly not in the way that say Once Upon a Time in the West plays upon Henry Fonda’s star image, but in our modern world where 12 Angry Men is likely a gateway classic film for many, this is the flipside to that jury’s outcome.

Cabaret (Bob Fosse, 1972)

“Do you think you can still control them?”

About as easily as recorking champagne. Been thinking about the final pan since I saw it.

(Also saw the stage show this year. If you’re in London while it’s running, take an afternoon and head down to the Kit Kat club especially if Callum Scott Howard is still the MC.)

The Killer (John Woo, 1989)

Sirk with sub-machine guns.

Fixed Bayonets! (Samuel Fuller, 1951)

War movies where the threat of combat is abstracted into the contours of the landscape is not a massive subgenre, but they really do it for me.

Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Bound to the island, but no more trapped than Bergman herself is in the mobius strip of art and life.

Heaven’s Gate (Nikki Cimino, 1980)

There are worse ways to bring down an cinematic era. As with Coppola’s One from the Heart last year, this is an incredible achievement to wrangle it all together and heartbreaking to watch it play out. The idea they were treated as laughing stocks at the time is criminal.

The Branches of the Tree (Satyajit Ray, 1990)

Back in July, I spent an entire afternoon in the comfort of the BFI Southbank with three of Ray’s features that I’d never heard anyone discuss. According to Letterboxd, this is his least seen and I’ve still got a lot of the major ones to get to, but as of now it’s my favourite. As big as the house is, the extended scene durations keep us confined in rooms with the family as they discuss, or more frequently argue, lingering long enough in the atmosphere that arises to fully comprehend just how much distance exists between brothers. Final sequence had me sobbing in a way that confirmed its power. If you take anything away from this post, it’s that you must not pass up an opportunity to see it should one come your way because I’m not sure just how easy it is to obtain. The 35mm print saw I was divine, hopefully it ends up in your neck of the woods before too long.

Summertime (David Lean, 1955)

Katharine Hepburn never quite integrates her ways into the locales the way her contemporary Bergman does, in the film mentioned above and her other collaborations with her eventual husband. This is on the exact opposite end of the spectrum to their neorealism, yet that never deprives the film of its spontaneity, that whimsy of taking the trip in the first place. What makes it so heartbreaking is that Hepburn is desperate to belong, to find the place she’s been looking for and that you’ll be just as desperate to believe that she has. I’m glad that Lean found the time for this last intimate drama before the epics.

Vive L’Amour (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1994)

The Apartment is already one of the loneliest movies ever made, so just going into this, you have to admire Tsai’s confidence considering how early he was into his career to tackle that. He pushes the hollow, transactional space into even more abstract territory. Without a presence like Shirley MacLaine, all that emptiness is just filled with more wallowing.

Trust (Hal Hartley, 1990)

Adrienne Shelley.

The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg, 1927)

Words can’t do this one justice. A plot summary makes it look slight rather than anything else, it is of course JvS’ detailed mise-en-scene that succeeds in striking up such a vivid simulacrum of the setting that it becomes as real and true as if it were shot on location.

Godzilla (Ishirō Honda, 1954)

Contended for saddest blockbuster ever made. After close to a decade of discourse about Legendary’s Monsterverse being too focused on human characters, going back to the original creation is a reminder about the intentions of the monster being allegorical for the consequences of destruction wrought on a populace. How weird the ones that followed seem to get warrants some intrigue from me, but at least for the moment, I’m content to sit with the tenor of this a little longer.

Deep Red (Dario Argento, 1975)

Look you can all have Suspiria; as delectable its colour palette and as horrifying its Goblin score is, this one has a bit with a little car, so it’s the one for me.

The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minelli, 1952)

“I hope your movie of it makes me as happy as the cheque did.”

That Day, on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)

An instant addition to the “holy shit, this was a debut” canon.

And also, my five most rewarding rewatches:

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, 2009)

Was my first Anderson more than a decade ago — and I’d wager it so for most twenty-somethings — though I didn’t know it was that then. I instead came to it for the Dahl of it all, who’s many books had captivated me from a young age. Of course, this doesn’t quite resemble the source material. My parents were baffled by the off-kilter rhythms, and still are considering Dad couldn’t understand why I wanted this for Christmas and Mum wondered aloud “how many has he made?” when she’s caught glimpses of this Weswatch. Me, on the other hand? Well, I found myself quite charmed with that energy and coming back to it now more than a decade later, it’s interesting to see just how bits and pieces had percolated into my subconscious, waiting until the beat before to awaken and go “oh yeah, and now this happens” like with whackbat, what the blueberries do to a beagle’s eyes and the tubesock bandit hat. Has a fidelity to the way it moves that you can’t believe it was made, which is wild in and of itself, but even more insane when you think about how that means this should’ve been the point that Anderson disappeared into animation forever because in theory he can manipulate it more than live-action, yet somehow he brings everything he’s learned back into the real world and unlocks even more inventive ways of depicting his melancholy tableaus. Goes down as easy as Bean’s cider.

My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)

One of my most watched Fords and films in general. We were taught it in first year for the editing portion of the introductory module and then had enough time for about five or six rewatches during the final term of the year as part of revision. Yet never felt like I quite got it at the time — something that’s arguably true for a lot of classic cinema for me prior to my time on here — so having this kind of rapturous reaction to it this time around felt like seeing the light, ironic considering how dark a movie it is to look at. Which is not to say that it is without its moments of poetry, the dance in particular, just the film exists much like Earp on that chair on the point of balance between these two states. Tragedy comes early to his family yet there is no major rush on his or Ford’s behalf to get to the OK Corral, lending the film and the new world forming around a state of construction to lanquish in, in doing so allowing us all the more time to spend with these characters and observe the minutiae of relationships, blossoming and former. This is a work of myth, yet it never overreaches for allegorical meaning or grand status because it remains with at least one foot in the world as they do, as it is, rather than looking purely in terms of what it will be.

The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)

Last couple of minutes held this back when I initially saw it for the Hays Code-esque whiplash of its seeming narrative conclusion and subsequent swerve, but it all landed this time around. You cannot control another’s desires, and in ways that may surprise, you cannot even control your own. If The Magnificent Ambersons is missing a reel and we have no qualms calling that a masterpiece, why should I let a couple of indelible looking minutes that threaten me to weep get in the way of calling this one too?

Avatar (James Cameron, 2009)

Despite being a vocal fan of the movie for many years now, I never actually saw it in cinemas. It came with our blu-ray player, so in recent years, I’d been hoping for an opportunity to see it big and Big Jim was more than happy to indulge me back in September. So I made sure to make the trek to BFI Imax and see it in as large a capacity as possible. Easily one of the most overwhelming theatre experiences anyone could ever have, by the time Worldtree was being razed, I was sobbing. The sequel makes it looks like a tech demo, but even so, the craft poured into the visual effects means this looks better than basically everything to come out in the past thirteen years. Zoe Saldaña should have got an Oscar for this.

The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940)

Not sure why this didn’t become an instant favourite for me first time around, but returning to it on 35mm at the start of December ensured it is now. Carried off so lightly by Lubitsch, Stewart, Sullavan and everyone else despite the tension of identities withheld running all the way to the end and a suicide attempt that would upend its atmosphere in lesser hands, it makes every romcom since that attempts less and delivers in even smaller fashions look even more shoddy.

2022: A Media Diary

COMICS

Older Comics

Boom: Giant Days: As Time Goes By, Lumberjanes Volumes 1-4

DC: John Constantine: Hellblazer Volume 1, Monkey Prince #0

Other: Glitter Vipers, Maus, Roxy Rocket #1

2022 Comics

Aftershock: The Brother of All Men #1-#2,

Bad Idea: Spark #1

Boom: Angel #1-#8, Briar #1-#2, Buffy #33-#34 (+ 25th Anniversary, ’97); Last Vampire Slayer #2-#4, Damn Them All #1-#3, Firefly #3; All-New #1-#10 (+ Big Damn Finale); Keep Flying, Grim #1-#2, Once & Future #24-#30, Once Upon a Time at the End of the World #1, Regarding the Matter of Oswald’s Body #3-#5, Something is Killing the Children #21-#27, The Vampire Slayer #1-#9, We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #10-#15,

Dark Horse: Minor Threats #1,

DC: Action Comics #1039-#1050 (+ Annual, Warworld Apocalypse), Arkham City: The Order of the World #4-#6, Artemis: Wanted, Aquaman: Andromeda #1-#3; The Becoming #5-#6, Aquamen #1-#6, Batgirls #2-#13 (+ Annual), Batman #125-#130 (+ Annual); /Catwoman #10-#12 (+ Special); Killing Time #1-#6; One Bad Day (Riddler, Two-Face, Penguin, Mr. Freeze); One Dark Knight #2-#3; The Knight #1; Urban Legends #11-#22, Black Adam #1-#6, Black Manta #5-#6, Catwoman #39-#47; Lonely City #3-#4, Danger Street #1, Dark Crisis #1-#2 (+ Superman, Wonder Woman), Detective Comics #1047-#1067 (+ Annual), GCPD: The Blue Wall #1-#3, Gotham City: Year One #1-#3, Harley Quinn #11-#25 (+ Annual), Human Target #4-#9 (+ Tales), Jurassic League #1-#6, Justice League #71 (+ Annual); vs. Legion #1-#6, Monkey Prince #1-#9, Multiversity: Teen Justice #1-#6, Naomi #1-#6, New Champion of Shazam #1-#3, Nice House on the Lake #7-#12, Nightwing #88-#99(+ Annual), Nubia and the Amazons #4-#6; Coronation Special; Justice League Special; Queen of the Amazons #1-#4, Olympus: Reborn, One-Star Squadron #2-#6, Peacemaker #1, Poison Ivy #1-#7, Pride, Riddler: Year One #1, Robin #10-#17, Rogues #1-#4, Saved by the Belle Reve Suicide Squad: Blaze #1-#3, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #7-#8, Superman: Space Age #1-#2; Son of Kal-El #6-#15, Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen’s Boss Perry White #1, Swamp Thing #11-#16, Sword of Azrael #1-#5 (+ Dark Knight of the Soul), Trial of the Amazons #1-#2 (+ Wonder Girl), Wonder Girl #7 (+ Annual), Wonder Woman #783-#794; Historia #2-#3, World’s Finest #1-#10,

Image: 20th Century Men #1-#5, Above Snakes #1-#5, Adventureman #8-#9, All Against All #1, Art Brut #1, Blood-Stained Teeth #1-#6, Crowded #13-#18, Department of Truth #15-#22, Eight Billion Genies #1-#6, Ghost Cage #1-#3, Golden Rage #1, Good Asian #8-#10, Home Sick Pilots #11-, Farmhand #16-#20, I Hate This Place #1-#5, Image! #5, #7-#9 (I Think I Might Be Evil; Closer; Casanova; Criminal), It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, Kaya #1-#3, Monkey Meat #1-#5, Newburn #3-#8, Public Domain #1-#5, Rain #1-#2, Reckless: The Ghost in You; Follow Me Down, Silver Coin #8-#15, Starhenge #1-#6, Step by Bloody Step #1-#4, Stillwater #12-#16 (+ The Escape), That Texas Blood #14-#20, The Closet #1-#3, Two Graves #1-#2, What’s the Furthest Place from Here? #3-#9,

Marvel: Amazing Fantasy #1000, Amazing Spider-Man #10, Ant-Man #1-#4, Black Panther #3-#12, Black Widow #13-#15, Captain America #0; Sentinel of Liberty #1-#7 (+ Winter Soldier Special); Symbol of Truth #1-#8, Captain Carter #1-#5, Captain Marvel #35-#44, Carnage #1-#8, Daredevil #1-#6; Woman Without Fear #1-#3, Darkhold Omega, Death of Doctor Strange #5 (+ Bloodstone, X-Men/Black Knight), Defenders #5; Beyond #1-#5, Demon Days: Blood Feud, Demon Wars: The Iron Samurai; Shield of Justice, Devils Reign #3-#6 (+ Moon Knight, Omega, Superior Four, Winter Soldier, X-Men), Doctor Strange: Fall Sunrise #1-#2, Edge of Spider-Verse #2, Elektra: Black, White & Blood #1-#4, Eternals #9-#12 (+ The Heretic), Fantastic Four #47-#48; #1-#2, Full Circle, Giant-Size X-Men: Thunderbird, Hawkeye #3-#5, Ghost Rider #1-#9 (+ Vengeance Forever), Immortal X-Men #1-#9, Inferno #4, Invincible Iron Man #1, Iron Cat #1-#5, Iron Fist #1-#5, Iron Man #16-#25 (+ Hellcat Annual), Jane Foster & The Mighty Thor #1-#5, Judgement Day #1-#6 (+ Eve of Judgment, Death to the Mutants, Avengers/X-Men/Eternals, Starfox, Iron Fist, Omega), Ka-Zar #5, Knights of X #1-#5, Legion of X #1-#8, Marauders #27; 1-#9 (+ Annual), Mary Jane & Black Cat: Beyond, Miles Morales: Spider-Man #34-#42; #1, Monica Rambeau: Photon #1, Moon Knight #7-#18 (+ Annual); Black, White & Blood #1-#4, Ms. Marvel #2; & Wolverine/Moon Knight, Namor #1-#3, New Mutants #24-#33, Sabretooth #1-#5; and the Exiles #1-#2, Savage Avengers #1-#8, Secret X-Men #1, Shang-Chi #7-#12; & the Ten Rings #1-#6, She-Hulk #1-#9, Silk #1, Star Wars #20-#29 (+ Revelations); Crimson Reign #2-#5; Darth Vader #20-#29; Doctor Aphra #17-#27; Hidden Empire #1-#2; Obi-Wan #1-#5, Strange #1-#9, The Thing #3-#6, Thunderbolts #1, The Variants #1-#5, Venom #4-#14 (+ FCBD), Wakanda #1-#3, Wolverine #20-#28, X-Force #27-#35 (+ Annual), X Lives/Deaths of Wolverine #1-#5, X-Cellent #1-#5, X-Men #6-#17 (+ Annual); Hellfire Gala, Red #1-#10, X-Terminators #1-#4

Oni: Blink #1-#5, Jonah and the Unpossible Monsters #9-#12,

Other: Bad Karma #6, Black Square, Charlotte Grote: Solver (Spring Special, Autumn Special, Green Door, The Urn, Holiday Surprise ), Filth & Grammar, Foulbrood #1-#2, Friday #5-#6, Giant Days/Batman, Love Everlasting #1-#6, Nancy, Steeple: Brian’s Insides; Clotted Crime, The Miracles, The O.Z. #2, US Route 31

Titan: Blade Runner 2029 #11-#12,

Vault: A Dark Interlude #3-#5, Blue Flame #7-#10, Radio Apocalypse #2, The Rush #3-#6,

FILMS

An up-to-date log can be found here: https://letterboxd.com/Matt_Sibley/

TV

Older TV

Lost, Station Eleven (1×01-1×07), Superstore (3×14-6×15), Starstruck S1, The Dick Tracy Special, Yellowjackets (1×01-1×07), The Hunger (1×01, 2×01), Cucumber, Banana, Servant (S1-S2), Derry Girls (1×01-2×01), Buffy 6×07, Garth Merengi’s Darkplace

2022 TV

Doctor Who (Specials), The Book of Boba Fett, Search Party, Station Eleven, Peacemaker, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Dorktown: Captain Ahab, Better Things, The Dropout, Mr. Mayor, Atlanta, Moon Knight, Tokyo Vice, Better Call Saul, Russian Doll, Barry, We Own This City, Smiling Friends, The Essex Serpent, Conversations With Friends, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Under the Banner of Heaven, Kenobi, Irma Vep, Ms. Marvel, Starstruck, The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, The Afterparty, Pachinko, Tuca & Bertie, What We Do In The Shadows, The Rehearsal, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, State of the Union, She-Hulk, Yellowjackets, The Last Movie Stars, The Patient, Andor, Inside Man, Servant, Documentary Now!, The White Lotus, Tales of the Jedi, Cabinet of Curiosities (The Autopsy & The Murmuring), Big Mouth, Traumazone, Mythic Quest, Severance, Modern Love Tokyo (1×05), I Hate Suzie Too

The 2022 Sibleys

My would-be awards ballot for last year.

2021 was the year a fair few of us went *Tom Cruise voice* back to the movies, but also the year that the movies came back to us. While I found enough to enjoy in 2020 that perhaps wouldn’t have gotten the same level of attention in a more normal year, it was a somewhat lacking awards season as many, like Wes Anderson and Steven Spielberg, chose to push releases back. Which, by proxy now that their movies have come out in addition to everyone’s who has come to grips with shooting amidst a pandemic, means that this was an exceptionally tricky year to whittle down the (long) shortlists for the various categories — Petite Maman being the unfortunate one that got trimmed from three right at the end — but enough with what’s not on here, let’s see what is:

Best Picture

• Annette
• Bergman Island
• Days
• Spencer
• The French Dispatch
• The Matrix Resurrections
• The Power of the Dog
• The Souvenir: Part II
• Undine
• West Side Story

Best Director

• Wes Anderson for The French Dispatch
• Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
• Leos Carax for Annette
• Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
• Mia Hansen-Løve for Bergman Island
• Joanna Hogg for The Souvenir: Part II
• Pablo Larrain for Spencer
• Tsai Ming-Liang for Days
• Christian Petzold for Undine
• Steven Spielberg for West Side Story

Best Actor

• Benedict Cumberbatch for The Power of the Dog
• Adam Driver for Annette
• Clint Eastwood for Cry Macho
• Oscar Isaac for The Card Counter
• Len Kang-Sheng & Anong Houngeuangsy for Days
• Hidetoshi Nishijima for Drive My Car
• Keanu Reeves for The Matrix Resurrections
• Frank Rogowski for Undine
• Denzel Washington for The Tragedy of Macbeth

Best Actress

• Carrie Anne-Moss for The Matrix Resurrections
• Paula Beer for Undine
• Kirsten Dunst for The Power of the Dog
• Vicky Krieps for Bergman Island
• Toko Miura for Drive My Car
• Kristen Stewart for Spencer
• Honor Swinton Byrne for The Souvenir: Part II
• Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo for Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar
• Rachel Zegler for West Side Story

Best Supporting Actor

• Richard Ayoade for The Souvenir: Part II
• Anders Danielsen Lie for Bergman Island
• Elkin Diaz for Memoria
• Jamie Dorman for Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar
• Mike Faist for West Side Story
• Kiyohiko Shibukawa for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
• M. Night Shyamalan for Old
• Masaki Okada for Drive My Car
• Kodi Smit-McPhee for The Power of the Dog
• Jeffrey Wright for The French Dispatch

Best Supporting Actress

• Jessie Buckley for The Lost Daughter
• Ariana DeBose for West Side Story
• Kotone Furukawa, Katsuki Mori, Fusako Urabe & Aoba Kawai for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
• Devyn McDowell for Annette
• Thomasin McKenzie for Old
• Tessa Thompson for Passing
• Mia Wasikowska for Bergman Island

Best Adapted Screenplay

• Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog
• David Chase & Lawrence Konner for The Many Saints of Newark
• Patrick DeWitt for French Exit
• Maggie Gyllenhaal for The Lost Daughter
• Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe for Drive My Car
• Joanna Hogg for The Souvenir: Part Two
• Tony Kushner for West Side Story
• David Lowery for The Green Knight
• M. Night Shyamalan for Old
• Lana Wachowski & David Mitchell & Aleksandar Hemon for The Matrix Resurrections

Best Original Screenplay

• Wes Anderson for The French Dispatch
• Leos Carax and Sparks for Annette
• Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Wheel of Fantasy and Fortune
• Mia Hansen-Løve for Bergman Island
• Steven Knight for Spencer
• Christian Petzold for Undine
• Paul Schrader for The Card Counter
• Céline Sciamma for Petite Maman
• Ed Solomon for No Sudden Move
• Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo for Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar

Best Cinematography

• Caroline Champetier for Annette
• Bruno Delbonnel for The Tragedy of Macbeth
• Alexander Dynan for The Card Counter
• Mike Gioulakis for Old
• Chang Jhong-yuan for Days
• Janusz Kamiński for West Side Story
• David Raedeker for The Souvenir: Part Two
• Steven Soderbergh for No Sudden Move
• Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog
• Robert Yeoman for The French Dispatch

Best Costume Design

• Kirsty Cameron & Alice Baker for The Power of the Dog
• Milena Canonero & Patricia Colin for The French Dispatch
• Dave Davenport, Paul Tazewell, Megan Ehrling, Randi Featherstone & Tom Soluri for West Side Story
• Lindsay Pugh, Caroline Hill & Javier Arrieta for The Matrix Resurrections
• Malgosia Turzanska & Ciara McArdle for The Green Knight

Best Feature Documentary

• All Light, Everywhere
• Procession
• Swimming Out Until the Sea Turns Blue
• The Inheritance
• The Velvet Underground

Best Editing

• Sean Baker for Red Rocket
• Lee Chatametikool for Memoria
• Affonso Gonçalves & Adam Kurnitz for The Velvet Underground
• Michael Kahn & Sarah Broshar for West Side Story
• Andrew Weisblum for The French Dispatch

Best Foreign Language Film

• Days
• Memoria
• Petite Maman
• Undine
• Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy

Best Make-Up and Hairstyling

• Judy Chin & Kay Georgiou for West Side Story
• Audrey Doyle & Eileen Buggy for The Green Knight
• Frances Hannon for The French Dispatch
• Heike Merker, Flora Moody & Shunika Terry for The Matrix Resurrections
• Cristina Waltz & Michelle Diamantides for Old

Best Original Score

• Alexandre Desplat for The French Dispatch
• Jean-Baptiste de Laubier for Petite Maman
• Jonny Greenwood for Spencer
• Eiko Ishibashi for Drive My Car
• Sparks for Annette

Best Original Song

• “Edgar’s Prayer” from Barb & Star Go To Vista Del Mar by Jamie Dorman, Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo
• “Mercy of Man” from The Card Counter by Robert Levon Been feat. S.G. Goodman
• “No Time to Die” from No Time to Die by Billie Eilish & Finneas O’Connell
• “Remain” from Old by Saleka
• “So May We Start” from Annette by Sparks & Leos Carax

Best Live-Action Short

• All Too Well
• Hidden
• Nian
• Shangri-La
• Stump the Guesser!

Best Production Design

• Ephraim Asili for The Inheritance
• Stéphane Collonge for The Souvenir: Part Two
• Jade Healy for The Green Knight
• Adan Stockhausen for The French Dispatch & West Side Story

Best Sound

• Thomas Gauder, Paul Heymans, Katia Boutin, Maxence Dussère & Erwan Kezanet for Annette
• Skip Lievsay, Sean Garnhart & Chris Chae for Old
• Raúl Locatelli, Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr, Richard Hocks & Javier Umpierrez for Memoria
• Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson & Shawn Murphy for West Side Story
• Tsao Yuan-Feng & Hsiang-Ling Ho for Days

Best Visual Effects

• Dan Glass, Huw J. Evans, Tom Debenham & J. D. Schwalm for The Matrix Resurrections
• Kelvin McIlwain, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner & Dan Sudick for The Suicide Squad
• Edwardo Mendez, Ryan Cunningham, Brian Budak & Cristin Pescosolido for Old
• Eric Saindon & Michael Cozens for The Green Knight
• Eric Schneider, Lev Kolobov & Simon Weisse for The French Dispatch

The Best TV of 2021

After assembling the lists you’ll see shortly, I realised just how expected they are. Which is not to say that I wish I’d pushed myself to be more esoteric with them, more so that I think I’ve hit the point where my likes and dislikes are clear enough that what features could be predicted. It would have been nice if some of the buzzier shows of the year, say Hacks and The White Lotus, would’ve provoked as big a response as they did for others, but then again, it would be boring if we were all the same. No doubt there’s stuff I missed this year, didn’t get to Station Eleven until the week it ended, decided to save Yellowjackets until we’re closer to its second season and considering more TV is produced than any person can actually keep up with, there’s sure to be shows I’ve never even heard of that you could recommend. Anyways, if this is my brand, so be it and let’s get on with it:

Best TV

Honourable Mentions: I Think You Should Leave, Mr. Mayor, The Beatles: Get Back, The Nevers, The North Water, What We Do in the Shadows

10. Mare of Easttown

Has that lived-in texture we always want these type of things to have. Gives us a sense the place and its people existed before its airing, and will continue to do so, using the central investigation as the means of examining what happens when the safety of that communal fabric becomes more frayed. As a result this doesn’t just play home to a great Kate Winslet performance, as there’s stellar work from Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, Evan Peters & Guy Pearce, the latter of whom stepped in as a favour to his former Mildred Pierce co-star, turning what could’ve been a perfunctory role to fill out the list of potential killers into tactile proof of that richness.

9. Search Party

Ever the restless show, it once again shakes itself up in order to allow Dory the possibility of self-reflection while confined to imprisonment in a simulacrum of her apartment by a psychotic Cole Escola. Alia Shawkat’s performance as the primary member of the show’s ensemble is bold and willing to go whether the wild change-ups of the writing team take her, in this case from the promise of freedom to even more trappings of existentialism that previously thought possible. It’s the darkest that the show got — I say this having written this after S5 concluded the run — in pushing the character to see if she’d actually confront herself, culminating in a finale that up until its very last moment, seemed like it could be the show’s final statement on her narcissism, yet the season never got bogged down and sunk by this introspectiveness, as evidenced by its inclusion of a knee-slapping comic set piece on a roundabout as well as allowing new cast members Susan Sarandon and Ann Down to let loose. I know that some have looked at the show with diminishing returns after its lengthy hiatus, but I continue to admire how well it navigates the tightropes of its own making in Seasons 3 and 4 (and I’ll guess we’ll see this time next year if I managed to reach that point with Season 5).

8. Dorktown: The History of the Atlanta Falcons

The farce to Seattle Mariners‘ tragedy. A big ol’ bird god is looking down and laughing, might as well laugh back.

7. Dickinson

Perhaps the only show that isn’t a Netflix animation to release two seasons in the same calendar year, but nevertheless one that honed its voice across them. The first season understood what it wanted to be, a fanciful mix of poetry and magical realism just as much as a bridge between the 19th and 21st centuries, though the ambition was clearer than the execution at points. There’s no Jason Manztoukas-voiced talking bee to be found come season two, in its place, there is instead a greater clarity in how to express Emily’s journey of how to express herself. Meanwhile, the third season — produced in the time of the ‘rona — draws connections between this current period to the Civil War with a delicate touch that prevents both rendering the series into blunt allegory nor trivialising either through ironic detachment. If the show took a while to find itself, what it did have from the outset is Hailee Steinfeld’s sheer magnetism as a performer and seeing her play this character through to the show’s conclusion cements it as her greatest performance. It’s been just as much of a joy to watch her as it is to have seen the show fine-tune itself and ultimately get to tell its whole story, a combination of factors that seems increasingly rare in the streaming era.

6. How To With John Wilson

Continues to translate B-roll into a majestic assembly that you can never predict where it’ll take you. Could listen to Wilson talk about anything.

5. The Other Two

On one level, a stomach-churning examination of how fame in modern times requires turning yourself into a recognisable brand and how to navigate the subsequent depersonalisation. On another, a truly riotous comedy that comes out swinging with every scene. A network change coupled with a pandemic meant a lengthy period between its initial season and this sophomore one, but it reminds you instantly of what you’ve been missing and makes sure you get repeated doses of this until the concluding punchline. So happy to have it had back and hopefully it won’t be too long until it is again.

4. The Underground Railroad

Amazon did Barry Jenkins no favours by dumping this all in one go with little to no promotion. Like with Beale Street, it is wild just how little attention his projects have received post-Moonlight‘s Best Picture win. (Thinking about it that way, you can’t really blame him for helming a Lion King sequel). What’s lingered longest about this miniseries is the sheer level of confidence with which he and the rest of the production team unveiled this alternate-history world. Piece by piece, we come to understand a greater amount about the various states and how they’re operating just like we do with the characters themselves. Episodes use location changes to mark themselves as distinct units rather than attempting to blend flashbacks and the present storyline in a more free-flowing fashion. Its technical craft is as inversely beautiful to the horror of some events depicted, but that sheer ambition is exactly what major filmmakers should be taking streamer’s money for while they’ve got access to it.

3. Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Comes at a time with the potential for great change in the world. For much of this, Adam Curtis tells similar types of stories to the ones he’s always been telling — doing the Leo pointing meme when Nixon and his shadow pops up for a cameo — in a similar fashion, yet he ultimately circles back to the David Graeber quote “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently” which he opened with. The first half of the sentence seemed most pertinent at the beginning, with the second half being so at the end. Just we’ve got to make a choice soon. If we end up returning to normalcy, we can’t just go on telling the same old stories.

2. Succession

This year the London Film Festival decided to include a dedicated series strand in its programming, the first two episodes where its centerpiece inclusion. It says a lot about how the show’s meteoric rise from a small, dedicated fanbase extolling its virtues in the first season to how it can now fill the Royal Festival Hall with enough people cheering at every opportunity that it took an extra fifteen minutes to get through the introductions. Heck, you can even go viral just tweeting half a line reading. Of course they were all excited (myself included) because that mic-drop at the end of the second season promised major fallout from what Kendall intended to bring to light and the first couple episodes picked up in the immediate aftermath of that as battle lines were drawn and then immediately teased with the possibility of the conscripted changing sides. As such, it took a little bit more time to remember that this is a show about how much things threaten to change rather than actually happening. The FBI coming into search the Waystar Royco offices is a big cliffhanger for a thread of storyline that gets resolved off-screen and relayed to us via phonecalls that we only bear witness to one end of. That the show can repeatedly illustrate this to us while still suggesting major shifts are imminent — see: the end to the ninth episode and basically the entirety of the tenth — and letting us get rapped up in the possibility of such is the cornerstone of its tragedies, its abuses. The saddest thing about these cycles is thinking another go around will be any different.

1. It’s a Sin

Has stood firm at the top of this list since the night I realised that the entire miniseries had dropped. Russell T Davies just has this way of introducing you to characters that feel alive and human the second you meet them, a skill that goes a long way within a period piece about gay men dying while being met with silence outside of their community. It also makes those twists of the knife that much sharper, even when you expect ramifications to that effect. Just like he made each and every finale of his Doctor Who run feel massive, this is just as great a fight into the face of Armageddon.

Best Episodes

Honourable Mentions: Can’t Get You Out of My Head — 1×05 — “The Lordly Ones”, Dorktown: The History of the Atlanta Falcons — 1×07 — “It’s a Funny Story”, I Think You Should Leave — 2×05 — “Didn’t you say there was gonna be five people at this table?”, Mare of Eastown — 1×05 — “Illusions”, The Goes Wrong Show — 2×01 — “Summer Once Again”, The Great — 2×09 — “Walnut Season”

10. WandaVision — 1×01 — “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”

Gave me such hope for the series — which I ultimately took great issue with — in how well it recreates the 50s style as well as showing how well Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany can adjust to that manner of acting.

9. The Nevers — 1×06 — “True”

Like half of this episode is absolute nonsene sci-fi lingo and I couldn’t love it more. The other episodes of the show entertained me insomuch as the Whedonian patter is still enjoyable to my ears even as the show had clear growing pains of him adjusting how to make TV without network constraints around runtime and content, but this is both a Dollhouse Epitaph redux and repositioning of the X-Men riff to a more specific Days of Future Past one. I absolutely understand if you’re not interested in it (and would even if it were just a matter of writerly traits and not monstrous behaviour) but I would like to see where it goes from here.

8. The Beatles: Get Back — 1×03 — Part 3: Days 17-22

It’s the one with the concert footage. What else do you expect?

7. Search Party — 4×08 — “The Imposter”

Manages to return the show to where it began and advance it all the same via a fascinating shift in perspective. How far we’ve come, yet how little some have grown.

6. How To With John Wilson — 2×05 — “How To Remember Your Dreams”

Few would stumble across this group of people and manage to depict them with such a honest sense of understanding, if not necessarily for their obsession, but at least for their kinship.

5. Dickinson — 2×08 — “I’m Nobody! Who are You?”

In the From Dickinson, With Love featurette which dropped earlier this month, showrunner Alena Smith considers the question of who gets seen and who doesn’t. If there’s a moment of the show that best exemplifies that, it’s this; its finest (half)-hour.

4. The Other Two — 2×09 — “Chase and Pat Are Killing It”

“Are you taking a hole pic too?”

3. Succession — 3×07 — “Too Much Birthday”

To be honest, any of the episodes save for the opener could be on this list. Raises spirits up with Tom’s incredible response to not going to prison — Emmy for Matthew Macfadyen or we riot — just so the party of the title can provide a greater come down. “You’re not a real person.” But are any of them at this point? Kendall might be able to spend month replicating Marcia’s birth canal, but true rebirth for him and the rest of the Roys will always be out of reach.

2. The Underground Railroad — 1×07 — “Chapter 7: Fanny Briggs”

The shortest episode by far, which is just as unexpected as what it actually does; turning the clock back narratively, pick up a thread assumed to be concluded and write a warmer alternate history for the titular character. The miniseries in microcosm.

1. It’s a Sin — 1×04 — “Part Four”

“I’m never going to do those things.”

A matter of life and death.

The Best Films of 2021

Looking back at my list for last year, I saw just 3 of the films featured in a cinema, which really drives home just how much viewing was done at home on a tv or my laptop. This year, it’s almost 50/50, with cinema viewing just taking it. It was a real joy to be able to go *Tom Cruise voice* back to the movies on a regular schedule, and in particular have an in-person London Film Festival experience where I saw a good deal of what features below. As usual, there were a few films that I wasn’t able to get to before the year was up — Licorice Pizza (which ended up disappointing me anyways), Red Rocket and Parallel Mothers being the big three in my mind — but also as usual, I’m quite happy with how this list ended up coming together. So presenting my top 25 of the year:

25. The Lost Daughter

Snuck onto the list just under the wire, hopefully Netflix releasing this on the last day of the year won’t cause it to get buried by the algorithm. (Although considering by the time you read this it will have been over two weeks since then), maybe it already has. Regardless, this is what you hope for when performers turn to directing in that they utilise the foundations of rock-solid material — in this case, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adapting a slippery and thorny Elena Ferrante novel — and allow their own actors to inhabit the space and build out the characters. Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson and Jessie Buckley (the latter of whom is the best she’s ever been and finally made me see the hype around her) work as a collective to strike up a complex portrait of motherhood from multiple angles, one that doesn’t shy away from acknowledging not everyone is right to handle life’s most entrenched expectations.

24. Procession

aka The Act of Healing. Robert Greene looks at cinema, the sheer capability of storytelling potential found within and believes in both without reducing them to saccharine ends. Collaboration is communication.

23. Memoria

The botched release strategy in the middle of an ongoing pandemic hasn’t made this easy, but as long as you can, you’ve got to see this big. And you’ve got to see it loud. To let that sound burrow its way into your head just as it does to Tilda Swinton’s Jessica Holland. It needs to make you feel small in order to make you think about how big the universe really is in order to make you think about your place in it all. The guy diving to the ground while in the middle of crossing the road has not strayed far from thought since I saw him do it.

22. The Many Saints of Newark

A work of anti-nostalgia; the past existing only to remind that it traps us. In about five years, every Twitter personality that loves the show but said this was like a miniseries cut down to movie-length will love it too. I’ll welcome them with open arms, but I’ll also never forget that I was one of the people there from the jump. Wrote a touch more here about the nature of prequels, the line between performances and impersonations and how David Chase finds a new way to link the damning ending to the original series to its first conversation between Tony and Dr. Melfi.

21. The Inheritance

Blurs the line between realism and fiction while also observing the arc from personal inheritance to a communal one within the space of the house to then passing knowledge onto its audience. Creating a better world might not be something that we can accomplish and Asili acknowledges this by leaving us with a reminder to pass on the teachings and methods to the next generation in the hopes that they might be the ones that can.

20. All Light, Everywhere

Imagemaking has been weaponised in order to aid the agenda of the powerful. A company called Axon makes both tasers and body cams. Like Alice said in Resident Evil: Retribution, “It’s just like a camera. Point and shoot.”

19. Drive My Car

When discussing the credits-drop some forty minutes into the film, what people neglect to mention is how this is indicative of Ryusuke Hamaguchi bridging his long-form feature-making (despite being three hours, he has made two longer works already in the four+ hour Intimacies and Happy Hour which is just shy of five and a half) and his shorts. The opening prologue that centers on the Kafuku marriage could stand alone in theory as its own narrative instance capped off by a grim irony, yet it accrues further weight from how the following two hours and change continue to explore the nature of communication in a variety of different ways — rehearsals, the drives with Watari and the overlap between these interactions and those with the play’s performers — which in turn are more charged knowing this is all spinning out of a conversation that could never be had. That second stretch spent with Takutsuki is the most entrancing in my book.

18. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar

The greatest movie that ZAZ never made. Always finds the time to throw in another gag from a direction you’d never expect. In honour of Richard Cheese, we’re gonna take a short break. And we’re back; everyone commits to every bit, but perhaps none moreso than Jamie Dornan who relishes in an absurdity he’s never been allowed to play before. Already looking forward to the day that this gets a screening at somewhere like the Prince Charles Cinema and I can experience it with dozens of others that are on its wavelength.

17. Swimming Out Until the Sea Turns Blue

An elegiac ode to a country and a people that are no longer are. Which could be said of every one of Jia’s works, as his filmography continues to spiral and stack upon itself, so it’s a good thing that they’re all good. If only every talking head documentary could be this considerate with regards to its staging.

16. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy

Starting to see more and more people say they prefer this to Drive My Car and proud to say that I’m one of them. The narrative conceits of each of the three shorts all recall Hong at points, and in turn Rohmer’s Les Rendez-vous de Paris. As with those two great directors, this is a carefully modulated piece of work designed to center the performances in, but his style also leads to moments like a quick zoom-in, a door closing and a set-up from thirty minutes prior being mirrored all being pulled off with such grace that they have major emotional ramifications for the texture of the scenes they can be found within. It is the sign of a director completely in control of his craft and methods that instances of relative simplicity can leave you awestruck. What a year’s he had.

15. Old

A grant improvement on its source material as M Night finds ways to shoot this that no-one else would ever think of. Some sole scenes contain more formal innovation than most other movies, see: freeze tag. So glad that he and Mike Gioulakis found each other. Just absolutely goes for it, right down to his obligatory cameo which should not be forgotten when you’re all putting together Best Supporting Actor ballots. Went longer on this here.

14. The Green Knight

Just gorgeous to look at, which was enough to keep me entranced through to the grandeur and bravado of that final sequence, which served to clarify just how much I actually liked this. Finally, Dev Patel has starred in a good film.

13. No Sudden Move

Steven Soderbergh doing what he can do in his sleep, yet he ensures that it never comes across as sleepwalking. The fisheye lensing distorts period Detroit (and rules, actually) as if the actual walls are closing in on those caught in this capitalist affair. It’s a wholly game cast that allows for a wide range of types of performance, from Julia Fox to David Harbour to Don Cheadle. Ed Solomon’s script achieves a liveliness through its various tonal shifts and maintains a perverse levity throughout that not many could pull off. As nice as it is that Soderbergh’s found a place where he can knock out a movie every nine-months or so — The Kimi trailer just dropped the other day — it’s a shame that this wasn’t a theatrical release because it would play like gangbusters as an eventual cable movie.

12. The French Dispatch

Walked out of seeing this at London Film Fest wondering if this was lacking a certain emotional power beyond the connection between Benicio del Toro and Léa Seydoux prisoner/jailor romance, only for it to immediately start growing on me and for a ensuing rewatch to get me on board with the Jeffrey Wright story being the best of the three. The majority of the anthology’s segments are some of Wes Anderson’s most downright prosaic sequences and for any other filmmaker this would be apparent. Instead, they’re coupled with some of his most dense visual stylings and that sheer sensory overload means it makes sense that no everyone can find a way into it. But if you let him take you within the nesting doll structure that makes up the macro structure of the anthology format starting in the final moments of the magazine’s existence and the micro of how the stories are relayed to us, you’ll find a host of characters caught up in the act of another’s creation, trying to find a way to express themselves without smothering this or themselves in the process. They’re a makeshift community that managed to find a home, only for it now to be on the verge of closing up shop. Ennui is not just a state of mind, but a place too. I wonder if they’ll end up leaving either.

11. The Souvenir: Part II

Hogg’s precision in processing her grief = Thesis.

Julie’s struggle in finding the words to express her’s, seeing the images that might be able to but still unsure about how to convey these to others = Antithesis.

This film = Synthesis.

The outpouring of emotion that comes with seeing this realised is followed shortly after by the morose knowledge that once you start trying to process these feelings you’ll likely never stop. The first had an impeccable craft to it yet never quite landed the wallop it wanted to on me, while this knocked me flat. Of a piece with that first part, while still managing to be its own thing. Namely, it’s more of an ensemble — performers like Charlie Heaton, Joe Alwyn and the powerhouse Richard Ayoade all come in for a spell, knock it out of the park and disappear just as quickly as they said hello — without sacrificing the primary goal of charting Honor Swinton Byrne’s coming into her own as a director. Hogg’s homage to the Archers breaks from her otherwise established sense of naturalism at just the right time to open this up even more.

10. Cry Macho

One of the most emotional films of the year, simply for the fact that this could be the last time we ever see Clint Eastwood on screen. It’s a pleasure to watch him as he shows no concern about hiding his age on screen, even when it seems counterintuitive to the narrative, which is where a lot of people seem to be getting hung up. Of course, it’s the man himself, not the source material, which is the text of the work; the last cowboy, the only actor nowadays we wholly believe in that situation. When they reach the cantina, it basically turns into a Late Hawks picture, which is fine by me. Just means more time to hang out in his presence. Maybe he’s still got another one or two in the tank, but if this was the last outing in front and behind the camera, there are worse ways to go than that final fade to black.

9. Petite Maman

When you’re eight, thirty-one seems so far away. Never would’ve expected Céline Sciamma to have a sci-fi in her, but here it is and it’s her best to boot.

8. Days

This was my first Tsai Ming-liang back when I saw it at London Film Fest 2020, however in that time, it has lost absolutely none of its acuity and tenderness. He captures moments of modern living that manage to be so personal despite their relative mundanity prior to Lee Kang-sheng and Anong Houngheuangsy’s paths converging that the sheer act of watching them feels like intruding, even more so when they actually do. Even the rain that opens the film, as it clatters against the roof above; like you’re actually there.

7. Spencer

Complete understand how people look at this Steven Knight script only to see a constant thrum of symbols, ideas and metaphors yet that’s reflective of what Diana became in the public and private eyes. The one that’s lingered most is the idea of currency, of a woman trying not to be old money, all the while the royal family tries to keep themselves and their traditions in circulation. Pablo Larrain’s previous women’s pictures Jackie and Ema have ranked highly in their respective years for me, what gives this the edge over them both is that remarkable KStew performance. Amidst all the ideas encased within the chilly Gothic of Sandringham, she’s nevertheless given a great freedom compared to the Natalie Portman and Mariana Di Girolamo of those aforementioned works because she’s allowed to be messier than the widow trying to keep it together and a mother waiting until the last moment to reveal her hand; she spirals like the twisting thoughts in her head and the movie’s. She’s a ghost who doesn’t know she’s dead and appropriately haunting.

6. West Side Story

The ambitious movie brat who was there when New Hollywood got replaced and the elder statesman in his late — and perhaps pop cinema’s most fallow — period collaborate on a dazzling display of how his formal prowess has only improved amidst the wreckage. Obviously echoes to the original, likewise to the teens of Nicholas Ray, but also to The Quiet Man; not visually like ET‘s on tv crosscutting, more in terms of Tony’s awareness of doing harm and the subsequent attempt to move beyond that. Though the colours aren’t as bright as they once were, they’ve long since stained the streets like blood. Reminds you what it’s like when someone puts effort into movies; musicals; remakes, and makes it look easy all the same.

5. The Power of the Dog

Trades Monument Valley for the uncanny valley in two key respects. The first being Benedict Cumberbatch’s central performance, Jane Campion gets one out of him which is far more rugged than anything the typically fussy actor has produced before, and very distinctly a work of performance. Phil Burbank as he plays him always has a layer of artifice attached, you have the sense that he’s putting on his displays of masculinity. Think it would be wrong to claim this as deliberate miscasting, instead the tension that comes from this enhances the melodrama. Second, this looks like no other Western that I can think of as a result of shooting in New Zealand. The terrain dwarfs these characters and as stable as it first appears, it is continually shaken up by the shifting power dynamics. And as with Spencer, a great Jonny Greenwood score heightens the anxiety and tension of the experience.

4. The Matrix Resurrections

The only perfect franchise continues to be just that. “Love is the genesis of everything.” In an age where actors like Alfred Molina and Willem Dafoe are being digitally made to look younger, how beautiful this is to place so much on Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss’s faces in order to see how they’ve changed.

3. Bergman Island

The generosity that Mia Hansen-Løve affords to her characters shines through in the pairing of Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie in the film within a film. It could easily feel like an obligation, but they might even feel more real a couple than Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth. Thrilling in a way that she’s never made me feel before, the moment you realise that she’s doing a Goodbye, First Love quasi-sequel in addition to the metatextual conceits in the film itself takes it up another level on top of all that. Løved it.

2. Annette

Leos Carax and the Sparks Brothers constructed a dense simulacrum of artifice that calls back to early filmmaking techniques just as much as the current cinema of green screened-Atlanta-warehouses standing in for everything, even Atlanta warehouses, just to see how much they make you feel when you can get past that right upfront. Went longer on this at the time as a result of a very special viewing experience, this piece might as well be called On Cinema and The Cinema.

1. Undine

Christian Petzold operating at his most brazenly romantic as he reconfigures a myth meant to dissuade straying to a modern day narrative about it being okay to break apart, go your separate ways and hopefully move on. If Transit is about being displaced in time, this is that for space as so many scenes take place around train journeys and stations, cafes and a museum. It’s not just a love of Vertigo leading to these doublings, they’re also interstitial spaces. Points of transition. No-one’s hanging around them forever. Hope he works with Frank Rogowski and Paula Beer forever because they’re doing dynamite stuff together, that scene where she just lectures to him in the apartment captures what it is when you care so much for someone that you hang on their every word.

2021: A Media Diary

COMICS

Older Comics

Avery Hill: On a Sunbeam

Boom: Giant Days #48

Dark Horse: Grafity’s Wall, The Seeds

DC: Batman: Year One, Ostrander & Yale’s Suicide Squad

Marvel: Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, Books of Doom, Fantastic Four by Lee/Kirby Annual #2; by Byrne #258; by Waid/Wieringo #67-#500; 1234, Gillen’s Journey into Mystery, Loki: Agent of Asgard, Gillen/McKelvie’s Young Avengers

Other: Angel, Black Mumba, Mr. Boop, Sandcastle

2021 Comics

Aftershock: I Breathed a Body #1-#5, Lonely Receiver #5, Project Patron #1, Scout’s Honor #1-#5, Undone by Blood #1-#4

Ahoy: Second Coming: Only Begotten Son #2-#6

Archie: Sabrina: Something Wicked #5

Boom: Abbott: 1973 #1-#5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #21-#32 (+ Faith, Tea Time); Last Vampire Slayer #1, BRZRKR #1-#3, Firefly #25-#35 (+ Holiday Special, River Run); Brave New ‘Verse #1-#6, Luna #1-#5, Many Deaths of Laila Starr #1-#5, Once and Future #15-#23, Proctor Valley Road #1-#5, Regarding the Matter of Oswald’s Body #1-#2, Something Is Killing The Children #14-#20, We Only Find Them When They’re Dead #5-#9

Dark Horse: Dead Dog’s Bite #1-#4, Joy Operations #1, Mazebook #1, Orphan and the Five Beasts #1-#2

DC: Action Comics #1029-#1038 (+ Annual, Midnighter), Aquaman: The Becoming #1-#4,  Arkham City: The Order of the World #1-#3, Batgirls #1, Batman: Black and White #2-#6, Batman/Catwoman #2-#9, Batman/Superman #16-#22 (+ Annual, Authority Special), Batman: The Detective #1-#6; One Dark Knight #1; Secret Files (Huntress); Urban Legends #1-#10, Black Manta #1-#4, Catwoman #29-#38 (+ Annual); Lonely City #1-#2, Checkmate #1-#6, Death Metal #7, Detective Comics #1034-#1046 (+ Annual), Far Sector #10-#12, Festival of Heroes, Future State (Aquaman, Batman/Superwoman, Catwoman, Dark Detective, Flash #1, Green Lantern, Harley Quinn, House of El, Immortal Wonder Woman, Justice League, Kara Zor-El – Superwoman, Legion of Super-Heroes, Next Batman, Nightwing #1, Robin Eternal #1, Shazam, Suicide Squad #1, Superman of Metropolis, Superman/Wonder Woman, Superman – Worlds at War, Superman vs Imperious Lex, Swamp Thing, Teen Titans #1, Wonder Woman), Gotham City Villains, Green Lantern: Season Two #11-#12, Harley Quinn #1-#10 (+ Annual), Human Target #1-#3, Infinite Frontier #0, Joker #1, Justice League #59-#70; Dark Annual; Last Ride #1-#7, Legion of Super-Heroes #12, Nice House on the Lake #1-#6, Nightwing #78-#87 (+ Annual), Nubia and the Amazons #1-#3, One-Star Squadron #1, Other History of the DC Universe #2-#5, Robin #1-#9 (+ Annual), Rorschach #4-#12, Strange Adventures #8-#12, Suicide Squad #1, Supergirl: World of Tomorrow #1-#6, Superman #29-#32; Red and Blue #1-#6; Son of Kal-El #1-‘5 (+ Annual); & the Authority #1-#4, Swamp Thing #1-#10; Green Hell #1,  Wonder Girl #1-#6, Wonder Woman #770-#782 (+ Annual); Evolution #1; Historia #1; White and Gold #1-#6; 80th Anniversary

Image: Adventureman #5-#7, Bitter Root #11-#15, Commanders in Crisis #4-#12, Crossover #3-#7, Decorum #7-#8, Department of Truth #5-#14, Die #16-#20, Echolands #1-#3, Good Asian #1-#7, Haha #1-#6, Helm Graycastle #1-#4, Home Sick Pilots #2-#10, M.O.M: Mother of Madness #1, Newburn #1-#2, November: The Mess We’re In, Old Guard: Tales Through Time #1-#6, Radiant Black #1-#6, Reckless: Friend of the Devil; Destroy All Monsters, Shadecraft #1, Silver Coin #1-#7, Six Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton #1-#6, Stillwater #5-#11, Tartarus #9-#10, That Texas Blood #7-#13, Ultramega #1-#2, What’s the Furthest Place From Here? #1-#2

Marvel: Alien #1, America Chavez: Made in the USA #1-#5, Avengers Annual, Beta Ray Bill #1-#3, Black Cat #2-#10 (+ Annual, Giant Size), Black Knight #1-#5, Black Panther #23-#25; #1-#2, Black Widow #5-#12, Cable #7-#12 (+ Reloaded), Captain America #27-#30 (+ Annual), Captain Marvel #25-#34, Champions #4-#10, Children of the Atom #1-#6, Curse of the Man-Thing, Daredevil #26-#36, Darkhold (Alpha, Black Bolt, Blade, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Wasp), Death of Doctor Strange #1-#4 (+ Avengers, Blade, Spider-Man), Defenders #1-#4, Demon Days (X-Men, Mariko, Cursed Web, Rising Storm), Devil’s Reign #1-#2, Eternals #1-#8 (+ Thanos Rises, Celestia), Excalibur #17-#26, Fantastic Four: Life Story #1-#2, Gamma Flight #1-#5, Guardians of the Galaxy #10-#18 (+ Annual), Hawkeye #1-#2, Hellions #8-#18, Immortal Hulk #42-#50 (+ Flatline, Time of Monsters), Inferno #1-#3, Iron Man #5-#15, Juggernaut #5, Ka-Zar #1-#4, Kang #1-#5 King in Black #3-#5 (+ Black Knight, Captain America, Marauders, Return of the Valkyries, Thunderbolts, Wiccan and Hulkling), Last Annihilation (Wakanda, Wiccan and Hulkling), Legend of Shang-Chi #1, Magnificent Ms. Marvel #18, Marauders #17-#26, Marvel #4-#6, Marvels #1-#2, Mighty Valkyries #1-#5, Miles Morales: Spider-Man #22-#33 (+ Annual), M.O.D.O.K.: Head Games #2-#4, Moon Knight #1-#6, Ms. Marvel: Beyond the Limit #1, New Mutants #15-#23, Planet-Size X-Men, Runaways #33-#38, Shang-Chi #5; #1-#6, Silk #1-#5, Spider-Man: Life Story Annual; The Spider’s Shadow #1-#5, Star Wars #10-#19; Crimson Reign #1; Darth Vader #9-#19; Doctor Aphra #7-#16; The High Republic #1-#5; Life Day; War of the Bounty Hunters #1-#5 (+ Alpha, Boushh, IG-88), S.W.O.R.D #2-#11, Taskmaster #3-#5, Timeless #1, The Thing #1-#2, Thor Annual, The Union #2-#5, United States of Captain America #1-#5, Venom #32-#35; #1-#3, Voices: Identity, Warhammer 40,000: Marneus Calgar #4-#5, Way of X #1-#5 (+ Onslaught Revolution), Wolverine #9-#19, Wolverine: Black, White & Blood #3-#4, Women of Marvel #1, X-Corp #1-#5, X-Factor #6-#10, X-Force #16-#26, X-Men #17-#21; #1-#5; Trial of Magneto #1-#5,

Oni: Jonah and the Unpossible Monsters #1-#8,

Other: Champions of the Wolf, Circus Windows, LDN, Louise Spence Stole My Heart, Monsters, Nancy, Next Door, Secret to Superhuman Strength, Steeple: Author Unknown; Clotted Crime, Trve Kvlt #1-#4

Panel Syndicate: Bad Karma #4-#5, Friday #3-#4

Shortbox: A Photograph, Barn Owl, Bun’s Comfort Food Corner, Control Option Shift, Dance Till Dawn, Diamond Defense, Don’t Look, Gristle, Harvest, I See a Knight, Itching, Inching, Intertidal, Love in Space, Moving, Path of the Knight, Spit Dog, Sweeper, Temple, The Sucker, Viscera,

Titan: Blade Runner 2029 #2-#10

TKO Studios: Hand Me Down, Roofstompers

Vault: Bleed Them Dry #6, Giga #3-#4, Heavy #4-#5, Radio Apocalypse #1, The Blue Flame #1-#6, The Picture of Everything Else #2-#3, The Plot #8, The Rush #1-#2

FILMS

An up-to-date log can be found here: https://letterboxd.com/Matt_Sibley/

TV

Older TV

Frasier S9-S11, Torchwood S1-2, Utopia S1, Undeclared, The Critic, State of the Union, Penance, Doctor Who S1-S4 (+ Specials), How I Met Your Dad (Pilot), Torchwood: Children of Earth, Terriers, Justified, Queer as Folk, Sense8, Superstore S1-3×13

2021 TV

Doctor Who (+ New Year’s Special), Star Trek Discovery, Pretend It’s a City (1×01-1×03), Dickinson, Search Party, WandaVision, It’s a Sin!, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, Falcon and the Winter Soldier, The Nevers, Exterminate All The Brutes! (1×01-1×02), Mare of Easttown, The Girlfriend Experience, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Pose, Mythic Quest, The Underground Railroad, M.O.D.O.K (1×01-1×03), Loki, Betty, Mr. Mayor (+ Christmas Special), Tuca & Bertie, Hacks, Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, I Think You Should Leave, The White Lotus, Uprising, Naomi Osaka, The North Water, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The History of the Atlanta Falcons, The Other Two, Only Murders in the Building, What We Do in the Shadows, American Crime Story, Scenes from a Marriage, The Goes Wrong Show, Succession, Insecure, Big Mouth, Hawkeye, The Beatles: Get Back, How to With John Wilson, The Great, The Book of Boba Fett