by Kevin Murphy, Staff Writer

By keeping track of what I watch every year, I’m also able to keep a list of my favorite stuff that I watched during that time. The list is often front-loaded with award nominees that I catch up on in the first couple months, but there’s a lot of older works, too, many of which are first-time watches. Here are some of those films that stuck out to me–dramatic powerhouses, refreshingly hopeful stories, or whimsical delights. 

Incendies (dir. Denis Villeneuve, 2010)

This film WRECKED me and stands as one of the best movies I watched all year, hands down. I’ve seen a lot of Villeneuve’s feature filmography, but this film has been a gap for a long time. It tells of an arduous journey filled with hardship and tragedy from the outset, and there are three scenes that hit like a truck. The first is the bus scene, which sat in my gut like a stone of despair; the second, the moment of realization, which relays so much in a single haunting gasp; and the ending, which offers a faint glimmer of hope at the end of this nightmare hell of violence and hatred. It’s a miracle to be able to perceive hope after all the bleakness, and I feel like this capacity for something positive is the point of the story, along with the work required to get there.

Cabaret (dir. Bob Fosse, 1972)

My girlfriend is a musical fan and was very excited about the Broadway revival, so we watched it on one of her visits. I’d never seen Liza Minelli before, but the moment she hit the screen here I immediately got it–and then kept “getting” why this was such a major work, with its style and pacing and melodrama matched by (mostly) endearing characters and strong performances. It’s a story of love, loss, and realization set against the backdrop of the rise of Nazi Germany, and the Emcee (Joel Gray) serves as a representative of this changing society within the club itself. It’s unfortunate that it still holds such direct relevance, but at least we have good movies to look to in our tumultuous present.

La Prima Cosa Bella (The First Beautiful Thing) (dir. Paolo Virzi, 2010)

I took part in an Italian movie “club” at my local library this summer, watching a movie a week for a month to discuss with other book club members. I’d never heard of any of them, and each was a treat in one way or another. Of the four films, La Prima Cosa Bella is the one that really stuck with me. There’s a lot that gets crammed into the two-hour runtime here, and a lot that sets it apart from other “estranged child goes to the bedside of their dying parent” stories which either lean into the tragedy (Incendies) or use a more lighthearted approach to reconciliation (Big Fish) because it’s a series of dramatic punches in a story about some heavy topics that never feels overwhelming, and its moments of levity are never discordant. No characters are all good or bad, and the way that this film handles that idea is so satisfying.

Dead Man’s Shoes (dir. Shane Meadows, 2004)

I feel like I've found a new bar for the sense of gritty realism that some movies strive for with the tone here. Kind of a kitchen sink drama, more of a revenge thriller, and definitely an example of putting the audience into the head of someone who could be a horror villain. The vengeance is extreme and understandable at the same time: Paddy Considine (the best part of House of the Dragon) knocks it out of the park here as a character of such pent-up, terrifying anger, all the more so because we can so easily get where it comes from. It’s truly a feel-bad movie that does a lot to separate itself from its influences and leaves a sense of hollowness at the end because there’s no way to come out of this scenario without losing something of oneself, even just as a witness to it.

3-Iron (dir. Kim Ki-duk, 2004)

This one’s a rediscovery–it was an impulse purchase almost 20 years ago at a video store that was going out of business, and I'm so glad that it is just as capable of casting a spell on me now as it was when I was still a teenager. Kim Ki-duk puts some magic on screen here with the physicality of the two main actors (in lieu of dialogue) and a worldview that is idealistic but never fully out of reach. One of the scariest things is to have one's space unknowingly invaded; 3-Iron takes this violation and drains it of that sense of danger by instilling it with the sort of karmic belief and kindness present in all of Kim's works that I've seen, asking “what if people are inherently good even in these invasive cases?” We’re so scared and angry these days, and films like this can chip away at the paranoia and cynicism that build up over time in our cultures. 

Až přijde kocour (When the Cat Comes/The Cassandra Cat) (dir. Vojtěch Jasný, 1963)

This Czech New Wave film (with so many translated names!) is a wild ride that bears such a high dose of whimsical delight and reinforces the importance of childlike wonder and sincerity. The storytelling is magnetic–I would have been happy just to have Uncle Oliva narrate the day’s events from the clocktower for ninety minutes–but it’s the cat and its glasses, and the fantastic results when those are taken off, that really make the film. People’s true colors come out: yellow for the unfaithful, grey for thieves, violet for liars, and red for those in love. Chaos ensues, and it's a psychedelic whirlwind of color, dance, and silliness. The children love it, the adults hate it, and we as viewers are thrust into the conflict that is, ultimately, between art and authority. The world needs more of these fairy tales that are for adults to remind them to be kids.

The Core (dir. Jon Amiel, 2003)

I have to mention this one just to further offset some of the hard stuff at the top of the list. No, it’s not good, but it’s probably the best worst movie I saw this year and I loved every ridiculous minute of it. I offer no defense aside from the pure enjoyment factor of watching something so magnificently stupid that it passes through being bad as a film into the realm of being a great viewing experience. Moonfall (2022) could never.