Here we are again, my 2nd year reflecting on my film viewing choices and it’s a similar story to last year. Struggling to find the time to watch as much as I would like, rare trips to the cinema, and almost nothing new release. Here’s the list and my thoughts at the end.

Films watched in 2024 (in order of viewing)

1. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (USA, 2023)
2. Hereditary (USA, 2018)
3. Dead Ringers (Canada, 1988)
4. Infernal Affairs (Hong Kong, 2002)
5. Where The Wild Things Are (USA, 2009)
6. Bandit Queen (India, 1994)
7. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring (South Korea, 2003) *
8. Belle (Japan, 2021)
9. Nina Wu (Taiwan, 2019) *
10. eXistenZ (Canada, 1999)
11. Marvellous and the Black Hole (USA, 2021) *
12. On the Waterfront (USA, 1954)
13. Backroads (Australia, 1977)
14. A Tale of Two Sisters (South Korea, 2003)
15. Children of Heaven (Iran, 1997) *
16. Talk to Me (Australia, 2022) *
17. Mad God (USA, 2021)
18. Loveland (Australia, 2022)
19. Pompo: The Cinéphile (Japan, 2021)
20. Evil Does Not Exist (Japan, 2023)
21. Peppermint Candy (South Korea, 1999) *
22. Cannes Uncut (Doco, 2023)
23. Barbie (USA, 2023)
24. Anime Supremacy! – JFF (Japan, 2022)
25. My Broken Mariko – JFF (Japan, 2022) *
26. Jungle Emperor Leo aka Kimba The White Lion – JFF (Japan, 1966)
27. A Fish Called Wanda (UK, 1988) *
28. Poetry (South Korea, 2010)
29. Wild Things (USA, 1998)
30. Single8 – JFF (Japan, 2023)
31. Best Wishes to All – JFF – Short
32. Closet – JFF – Short
33. The Invitation – JFF – Short
34. Karakasa – JFF – Short
35. After Yang (USA, 2021)
36. La Haine (France, 1995)
37. Why Don’t You Just Die (Russia, 2018)
38. Perfect Days (Japan, 2023)
39. Rain Man (USA, 1988)
40. My Worst Friend (JTV, 2023)
41. The Parades (Japan, 2024)
42. Welcome to the Dollhouse (USA, 1995)
43. Good Time (USA, 2017) *
44. Men (UK, 2022)
45. Charade (USA, 1963)
46. R100 (Japan, 2013)
47. Cobweb (South Korea, 2023)
48. Crash (Canada, 1996) *
49. Tourism (Japan/Singapore, 2017) *
50. El Topo (Mexico, 1970)
51. The Holy Mountain (Mexico, 1973)
52. Santa Sangre (Mexico, 1989)
53. La Constellation Jodorowsky (Doco – France, 1994)
54. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Australia, 2023) *
55. Fando Y Lis (Mexico, 1968)
56. La Cravate – Short (France, 1957)
57. Baby Assassins 2 (Japan, 2023)
58. Convoy (USA, 1978)
59. Project Wolf Hunting (South Korea, 2022)
60. beDevil (Australia, 1993)
61. Petrol (Australia, 2022)
62. The Goddess of 1967 (Australia, 2000)
63. Roadkill (Canada, 1989) *
64. A Samurai In Time – JFF (Japan, 2023)
65. Shadow of Fire – JFF (Japan, 2023) *
66. The Day He Arrives (South Korea, 2011)
67. Claire’s Camera (South Korea, 2017)
68. The Novelist’s Film (South Korea, 2022)
69. Tokyo Vice – Season 2 (TV, 2024)
70. Hamburger Hill (USA, 1987)
71. Woman on Fire Looks for Water (Malaysia, 2009)
72. Triangle of Sadness (Sweden, 2022) *
73. Yourself and Yours (South Korea, 2016)
74. Cujo (USA, 1983)
75. The Square (Australia, 2008)
76. Silence of the Lambs (USA, 1991) *
77. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (USA, 1975) *
78. Thelma & Louise (USA, 1991)
79. Aftersun (UK, 2022)
80. The Magnificent Seven (USA, 1960)
81. The Grinch (USA, 2018)
82. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Thailand, 2010)
83. Tales From The Gimli Hospital: Redux (Canada, 1988)
84. Showgirls (USA, 1995)
85. Falling High School Girl and Irresponsible Teacher – Lesson 2 (JTV, 2024)
86. The Rover (Australia, 2014)
87. Home Alone (USA, 1990)
88. Toy Story (USA, 1995)
89. Squid Game 2 (TV, 2024)
90. The Batman (USA, 2022)

79 Features, 2 Docos, 4 TV series, 5 Shorts. Bold * denotes favourites watched for the first time.

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So I fell short of my goal of watching 104 films this year. Perhaps might of made it if I counted all the times I watched my own film! I did make it to the cinema to see Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s new film Evil Does Not Exist and I continued seeking out Japanese cinema but not J-Horror.

I saw only 5 films over 3 trips in the cinema this year. The aforementioned Evil Does Not Exist, El Topo & The Holy Mountain as a Monday Double, and A Samurai In Time & Shadow of Fire back-to-back at the Japanese Film Festival. Getting to the cinema is so difficult these days I gotta make the most of it by squeezing in a double!

El Topo is THE film that inspired me to pursue making my own movies back in 1999 so the opportunity to see it on the big screen for the first time was too good to miss. Both El Topo & The Holy Mountain looked and sounded great! I was surprised by how many people turned up to watch them and even more stunned by the applause at the end of each. Not bad for 50 year old movies. Having only ever seen these films on my own the one thing that really became more apparent with an audience was the humour. For all the deep allegory and existentialism in Jorodowsky’s work there is an equal dose of satire, mockery and piss-taking. Becoming reacquainted with my earliest influence set me on a Jorodowsky retrospective, digging out the DVD’s I owned yet hadn’t gotten around to viewing: Santa Sangre, Fando Y Lis, and La Constellation Jodorowsky. I even forgot I had the soundtracks for Topo & Mountain! The soundtrack for The Holy Mountain is excellent!

Another major cinema influence for me is Shinya Tsukamoto and I got to view his latest Shadow of Fire during the Japanese Film Festival, despite already owning the Blu Ray. It’s a rare occasion for his films to get a cinema screening in Australia so they take priority. Although I’m incredibly biased as a fan, Shadow of Fire was fantastic, probably Tsukamoto’s best in years, and that’s not to say his recently films haven’t been good but this one was really on point. The film sets you up to believe the entire film will unfold in a burnt out ruins between 3 people. It doesn’t, but it easily could have as the lead performances, setting and direction are superb. For a filmmaker that made his mark with such vivid dissections of modern life Tokyo he seems to have become more interested exploring Japan’s past as means to warn of our future.

On the J-cinema front I binged a bit from the Japanese Film Festival online in the middle of the year, the standout discovery there was My Broken Mariko. A poignant film with solid performances deserving to be seen by more widely. I also enjoyed an even more obscure film Tourism a quirky film about two Japanese girls that win a trip to Singapore and get lost there. Interestingly the film was commissioned as installation piece for a Singaporean museum and found it’s way onto SBS OnDemand.

I also ventured into the work of Hong Sang-Soo for the first time. The prolific Korean filmmaker is turning out 2 films a year all premiering at the world’s most prestigious festivals. Having spent 6 years making my first feature there are obviously lessons to be learnt from someone making features every 6 months! On a surface level his films could be wrongly dismissed as basic from a technical perspective but this minimalism is in service of his film’s real strengths which are the characters and their intertwined complexity. Hong very much follows the adage of write about what you know as every film is about a filmmaker or an artist type reflecting scenarios that Hong himself has been though it would seem. Despite or perhaps because of the sheer simplicity of his later films they seem to get under the skin and left me thinking about them for several days. His muse Kim Min-hee is captivating and I’m keen to see more of their collaborations.

So what really made an impression this year? Crash.

I’ve watch a number of David Cronenberg films and I always love the concepts and topics he explores but for some reason I fall short loving his films. Well now I have found one I can love, kind of. For me Crash is his best film. It’s so provocative, so challenging, so unsettling that you can’t even recommend it to anyone. It’s like it was made for a total of 5 people in the world! But this is what I love about it, it goes all in, no compromise, no punches pulled. A slight parallel to Fight Club could be drawn with underground groups carrying out subversive clandestine activities but really what goes on in Crash is far more taboo, still to this day, than the most anti-capitalist of actions. Elias Koteas is the Tyler you’d never want to meet.

Back to South Korea cinema for a bit. Peppermint Candy was a beautiful yet tragic tale of one man’s lost hopes and dreams. The reverse structure of the film is what makes the story so compelling as we unravel his life from the present to the past. Kim Ki-duk’s early masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring is a flawless effort (unlike the director himself). There’s some about the early 2000’s Korean cinema that had a level of poetic craft that seems to have been sidelined for showy Western stylistics in the current milieu of Korean film.

Triangle of Sadness was a perfect anarchic take down on high society, the twist after the shipwreck really takes the film from being good to great. Talk to Me lived up to the hype, easily one of the best Australian films in last 10 years, not bad for YouTube brothers Philippou but real credit must also go the to the producers (of The Babadook fame) who I imagine wrangled it into a taught horror film. Petrol was an intriguing Australian film with a more European sensibility. A Fish Called Wanda was an excellent comedy, great script and stand-out performance from Kevin Klein. And Barbie was the surprising disappointment after all the hype last year. A film so passionately anti-patriarchy you come out of it viewing Ken as the victim.

My goals for 2025 are much the same as last year. 2 films a week or 104 films for the year. The one film viewing project I’ve been wanting to start for years now is viewing the Top 100 of the most recent Sight & Sound Greatest Films of all time pole. 2025 might be the year I finally commit to it! I’m going with the critics pole as it’s longer running and from a more broad sample base… although at a glance I feel the director’s pole might more accurately reflect my own opinion.

Let’s see what comes!

riche
31.12.24

1. Asako I & II (Japan, 2018) *
2. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Japan, 2021) *
3. The Rescue (Doco – USA, 2021) *
4. Drive My Car (Japan, 2021)
5. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (USA, 2022) *
6. Ju-on: The Grudge (Japan, 2002)
7. The Roundup (South Korea, 2022)
8. Corpse Bride (USA, 2005)
9. Dangan Runner (Japan, 1996)
10. Gemini (Japan, 1999)
11. Decision to Leave (South Korea, 2022) *
12. Broker (South Korea, 2022)
13. Daises (Czechoslovakia, 1966) *
14. Below (Australia, 2019)
15. Annihilation (UK, 2018) *
16. The Whistleblower (China, 2019)
17. The Producers (USA, 1967)
18. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (USA, 1985)
19. Ran (Japan, 1985) *
20. The King of Comedy (USA, 1982)
21. Red Notice (USA, 2021)
22. Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard (USA, 2021)
23. The Lost City (USA, 2022)
24. Legend (USA, 1985)
25. Memories of Murder (South Korea, 2003) *
26. American Psycho (USA, 2000) *
27. Free Fire (UK, 2016)
28. 1% (Australia, 2017)
29. The Trial of Joan of Arc (France, 1962)
30. Sex, Lies, and Videotape (USA, 1989) *
31. Body Double (USA, 1984)
32. Blade of the Immortal (Japan, 2017)
33. Rashomon (Japan, 1950)
34. Jacob’s Ladder (USA, 1990) *
35. High Ground (Australia, 2020)
36. BMX Bandits (Australia, 1983)
37. Hello Dankness (Australia, 2022) *
38. Carrie (USA, 1976) *
39. The Heroic Trio (Hong Kong, 1993)
40. Far Away Eyes (Taiwan, 2021)
41. What Six Survivors Told… (JTV)
42. Falling High School Girl and Irresponsible Teacher (JTV)
43. The Sun Sets and Once Again the Earth is Upright (Short)
44. Tokyo Vice (TV)
45. A Janitor (Japan, 2021)
46. Shin Ultraman (Japan, 2022)
47. Console Wars (Doco – USA, 2020)
48. The Big Steal (Australia, 1990)
49. The Heroic Trio 2: Executioners (Hong Kong, 1993)
50. Shiki-Jitsu (Japan, 2000) *
51. Suspiria (Italy, 1977)
52. Mandy (USA, 2018) *
53. Jurassic Park (USA, 1993)
54. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (USA, 1997)
55. Jurassic Park III (USA, 2001)
56. Jurassic World (USA, 2015)
57. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (USA, 2018)
58. Jurassic World Dominion (USA, 2022)
59. Single8 (Japan, 2023) *
60. Baby Assassins (Japan, 2021)
61. Labyrinth (USA, 1986)
62. The Dark Crystal (USA, 1982)
63. Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Doco – USA, 2019)
64. Dawn of the Felines (Japan, 2017)
65. I, Tonya (USA, 2017) *
66. You Were Never Really Here (UK, 2017)
67. Missing (Japan, 2021)
68. Kin (USA, 2018)
69. FLCL (Anime Series)
70. High Life (France, 2018)
71. Baby Assassins (Japan, 2021)
72. Stand By Me (USA, 1986)
73. Stop Making Sense (USA, 1984) *
74. Punk Samurai (Japan, 2018)
75. Fantastic Mr. Fox (USA, 2009)
76. Ju-on: The Grudge 2 (Japan, 2003)
77. John Wick: Chapter 4 (USA, 2023)

69 Features, 3 Docos, 3 TV series, 1 Short, 1 Anime. Bold * denotes favourites watched for the first time.

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In 2023 I’m still finding it difficult to spare the time & money to watch films in the cinema, I only managed 5 this year (Decision to Leave, Broker, Hello Dankness, Single8, and Stop Making Sense). As the post production on my own feature film has ground on for another year I feel guilty investing any spare time into anything other than slogging away at the computer eternally finishing my film . This means I can only discover things in my own time and likely years after the hype. I managed only 69 features this year while I know someone who did over 700! I gotta lift my game.

To summarize my viewing, I’m hardly on the bleeding edge of new cinema, more wandering alone through mostly Asian cinema and cult films with a smattering of mainstream crap.

There was some logic though. For 2023 I made a conscious effort to watch a lot more Japanese cinema. I’ve long been a fan of Japanese films and they’ve had a big influence on me but I must admit my interest waned through the mid to late 2010’s. Japanese films have struggled to reclaim the heights of its last heyday with the J-Horror wave 20 years ago and have been left in the shadow of a rising Korean cinema, long dominate in Asia and now breaking out in the West.

The catalyst for this renewed interest was unequivocally watching Baby Assassins at the Japanese Film Festival at the end of 2022. It’s a film I entered with little expectation but ended up loving. Hell I watched it twice more this year! It sparked a curiosity in what a new generation of filmmakers are doing in Japan, enticed me to start learning Japanese (very casually) and dare I say, made me too big a fan of Akari Takaishi! In all I managed 18 Japanese films, 2 JTV series, 1 Anime and 2 American movies/TV shows set in Japan. I also reached A1 Level Japanese… すごい!

I started the year diving into the work of Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Japan’s newest highly acclaimed filmamker and I can see why the acclaim is warranted. I feel I was so enamoured by the earlier films Asako I & II, and Wheel of Fortune & Fantasy that it took away from appreciating the latter Drive my Car, despite it winning an Oscar. What really stood out is the exceptional dialogue in his films, I’d consider them a must watch for this alone. The way that a single scene will twist and turn in unexpected ways purely through dialogue and without the far-fetched histrionics of Western cinema was captivating. I’m hoping to catch his latest Evil Does Not Exist next year, in the cinema.

There were a bunch of older films I viewed for the first time that really made an impression Ran, Memories of Murder, American Psycho, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Jacob’s Ladder, and Carrie. All exceptional and a reminder of how much compelling cinema is there to be discovered in the past.

Films that struck me visually were Annihilation, Shiki-Jitsu and Mandy.

If you’re a Neon Genesis fan like I am then you’ll love the aesthetic of Hideaki Anno’s live action Shiki-Jitsu, it’s similar in visual language but without the Mecha’s. Instead we get Steven Seagal’s daughter Ayako Fujitani who’s novella it’s based on and she is delightfully mesmerizing.

Mandy was visually sublime in a most unexpected way. I’m not a horror film fan so I was reluctant to watch. The only reason I gave it a chance was for the late Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score and I’m so glad I did. Yes it’s violent, bloody, extreme, demented even… but none of that stands out over it’s fever-dream imagery. Probably the most unexpectedly stand-out movie I watched this year.

A conversation with my sister-in-law lead me on a Jurassic Park binge. This was an interesting although mostly painful excursion. The original Jurassic Park is actually exceptional filmmaking, it’s Spielberg at his peak. What’s interesting is contrasting the original to the increasingly woeful sequels it spawned. Even the Spielberg-directed sequel is weak which makes it an interesting series to deconstruct. A big part of what works in the original is the characters, the pacing of the script, and the limitations of VFX at that time demanding more creative solutions to storytelling. Even Sam Neill can’t save the sequels. In the modern era where you can do anything with CGI we’re now lacking in the restraint of old, even if that was less by choice but technical limitations.

Decision to Leave I feel I need to see again to absorb all the details. Hello Dankness is a must watch if you get the chance. I, Tonya was an unexpected take on real life events with superb performances by the 4 leads. Stop Making Sense in the cinema felt like I legit experienced Talking Heads live for real, 40 years after the fact.

I could ramble on but it’s 4 hours to midnight so lets wrap this up.

My viewing goals for 2024. Watch 104 films in the year, that’s 2 a week. Continue my exploration of Japanese films and perhaps revisit the best of J-Horror. Get to the cinema a bit more often. I might start writing 1 paragraph reviews again to track my first impressions as well.

We’ll see… My own feature film will be out next year so fingers crossed on where that might lead, hopefully to a couple of festivals and I can tick off some viewing goals there 🙂

riche
31.12.23