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1. Zack Snyder's Justice League
2. The Matrix Resurrections
3. Shoplifters of the World
4. The Suicide Squad
5. Army of the Dead
6. Godzilla vs. Kong
7. Halloween Kills
8. The Last Duel
9. Malignant
10. Old

1. Benediction (Terence Davies)
2. Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire (John Mavety)
3. Aline (Valeria Lemercier)
4. I'm Your Man (Maria Schrader)
5. After Love (Aleem Khan)
6. Fabian: Going to the Dogs (Dominik Graf)
7. Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
8. Happening (Audrey Diwan)
9. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar)
10. Everything Went Well (Francois Ozon)

Guernsey is Aces
Cinemas are places
Open to see films at.

People are at large
Grown Ups are in charge
We're not governed by a twat.

(I could have sworn I'd done this before, slightly differently..., but obviously not posted).

As usual, based on UK release dates

1) Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)
2) Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
3) Spencer (Pablo Larrain)
4 Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)
5) Rebel Dykes (Harri Shanahan, Sian Williams)
6) In the Earth (Ben Wheatley)
7) The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen)
8) Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King)
9) No Time to Die (Cary Fukunuga)
10) King Rocker (Michael Cumming)

01. Annette (Leos Carax)
02. Quo Vadis, Ada? (Jasmila Zbanic)
03. The Tragedy Of Macbeth (Joel Coen)
04. The Sparks Brothers (Edgar Wright)
05. Titane (Julia Ducournau)
06. Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)
07. Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
08. The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes)
09. Dear Comrades! (Andrey Konchalovsky)
10. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)

1. The Card Counter
2. Drive My Car
3. The Power of the Dog
4. The Lost Daughter
5. Pig
6. Oxygen
7. The Hand of God
8. The Disciple
9. Passing
10. Dune

HMs: Nightmare Alley, Stowaway, Fear Street, Licorice Pizza, The Green Knight

1. Dear Comrades

1. Can't Get You Out of My Head (Curtis)
2. Ema (Larrain)
3. Memoria (Apichatpong)
4. The Green Knight (Lowery)
5. Titane (Ducournau)
6. Game Changer: "The Official Cast Recording"
7. Licorice Pizza (P.T. Anderson)
8. Candyman (DaCosta)
9. Procession (Greene)
10. There is No Evil (Rasoulof)

1. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude)
2. Can’t Get You Out of My Head (Adam Curtis)
3. Cenote (Kaori Oda)
4. Zola (Janicza Bravo)
5. French Exit (Azazel Jacobs)
6. Fear Street Trilogy (Leigh Janiak)
7. MLK/FBI (Sam Pollard)
8. Mandibles (Quentin Dupieux)
9.
10.

It's taken me seven months to watch a 2021 debut!

1. The Green Knight
2. Spencer
3. Passing
4. The Last Duel
5. House of Gucci
6. Dune: Part One
7. Drive My Car
8. The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun
9. Licorice Pizza
10. No Time to Die
...
11. West Side Story
12. Benedetta
13. Nightmare Alley
14. The Little Things
15. Cruella
16. Luca
17. The Matrix Resurrections

Arbitrary criterion: anything that premiered before 2020 is ineligible for my 2021 list (but can go on my 2021 first watch list instead, which is limited to one film per director to keep anyone in particular from completely dominating it)

1. A New Old Play (Qiu Jiongjiong)
2. Decameron (Rita Hui Nga Shu)
3. The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher)
4. Cane Fire (Anthony Banua-Simon)
5. Point and Line to Plane (Sofia Bohdanowicz)
6. The Good Woman of Sichuan (Sabrina Ruobing Zhao)
7. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)
8. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)
9. Bird Thief (Sounak Kar)
10. Memoria (Apichapong Weerasethakul)

Honorable mentions (alphabetical by title): Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude), The Beta Test (Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe), Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke), Fan Girl (Antoinette Jadone), Radiograph of a Family (Firouzeh Khosrovani), Short Vacation (Kwon Min-pyo), The Suicide Squad (James Gunn), Tunes of Nostalgia (Farid Ahmad), Uppercase Print (Radu Jude)

Best ineligible first watches:

1. Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998, Aleksey German)
2. Perceval le Gallois (1978, Éric Rohmer)
3. Fatal Pulse (2018, Damon Packard)
4. MS Slavic 7 (2019, Sofia Bohdanowicz and Deragh Campbell)
5. Détruisez-vous (1968, Serge Bard)
6. In Bed with Victoria (2016, Justine Triet)
7. Memories to Choke On, Drinks to Wash Them Down (2019, Leung Ming-kai and Kate Reilly)
8. Actua 1 (1968, Philippe Garrel)
9. Possession (1981, Andrzej Żuławski)
10. The Wandering Rock (2019, Cui Zhaosong)

Not seen most of the films I want to see in 2021, but for now:

1. Riders of Justice
2. The Green Knight
3. The Worst Person in the World
4. Spencer
5. Malignant
6. Agnes
7. The Suicide Squad
8. Dune
9. Candyman
10. Breaking Surface


If The White Lotus had been a film, it would have been tops.

1. The White Lotus (Mike White)
2. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
3. Can't Get You Out of My Head (Adam Curtis)
4. Annette (Leos Carax)
5. Bad Trip (Kitao Sakurai)
6. Old (M. Night Shyamalan)
7. Friends & Strangers (James Vaughan)
8. Topology of Sirens (Jonathan Davies)
9. Benediction (Terence Davies)
10. Azor (Andreas Fontana)

1. Titane (Julia Ducorneau)
2. Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma)
3. The Humans (Stephen Karam)
4. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
5. Hit the Road (Panah Panahi)
6. The Great Indian Kitchen (Jeo Baby)
7. Spencer (Pablo Larraín)
8. Annette (Leos Carax)
9. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
10. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

Honorable Mentions:
Bergman Island, Mass, Help, Judas and the Black Messiah, Ninjababy, Procession, The Worst Person in the World, Red Rocket, The Last Duel, Drive My Car, Belle, A Hero, Compartment No. 6, The Good Boss

1. The French Dispatch
2. Drive My Car
3. The Worst Person in the World
4. Licorice Pizza
5. About Endlessness
6. Can’t Get You Out of My Head
7. Petite Maman
8. Atlantis
9. The Card Counter
10. The Mitchells vs the Machines

1. Licorice Pizza
2. The Lost Daughter
3. The Souvenir Part II
4. Petite Maman
5. Hit the Road
6. The French Dispatch
7. After Yang
8. Drive My Car
9. The Card Counter
10. Dune


Honourable Mentions: Passing, Nightmare Alley, Red Rocket, Spencer, Compartment No 6, Yuni, Bad Luck Banging or Looney Porn, No Sudden Move, A Hero, The Power of the Dog, C'Mon C'Mon, In Front of Your Face, Are You Lonesome Tonight, Parallel Mothers, No Time to Die, The Exam

Others Seen: Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, Memoria, Bergman Island

As per usual I wait until I am done to make a post, what’s the fun in a placeholder? I am like, extremely caught up and there’s not a single title left I have any interest or feel any need in seeing unless Luca suddenly appears theatrically in my general area.

01 Memoria
02 The Souvenir Part II
03 The French Dispatch
(And I like movies Tilda Swinton isn’t in too!)
04 The Velvet Underground
05 Quo Vadis, Aida?
06 Licorice Pizza
07 Mass
08 Dune
09 Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
10 The Humans

But as I saw so much this year will stretch my list out to 20 as I love all these movies essentially as much as the bottom half of the above list:

11 The Worst Person in the World
12 The World to Come
13 The Tragedy of Macbeth
14 The Human Factor
15 Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street
16 Cyrano
17 Godzilla vs. Kong
18 Nightmare Alley
19 The Power of the Dog
20 Drive My Car

8/10
1. The Card Counter
2. Wrath of Man
3. Licorice Pizza
4. Benedetta
5. No Sudden Move
6. The Green Knight
7. Titane
8. Dune
9. Power of the Dog
10. Nightmare Alley

11. Malcolm and Marie

7/10
12. Old
13. Many Saints of Newark

6/10
15. Annette
16. Lansky
17. Woman in the Window
18. Last Night in Soho
19. The Matrix Resurrections

5/10
20. The Last Duel
21. THE Suicide Squad
22. Resident Evil Raccoon City

4/10
23. Army of the Dead

I used to see every new film, but stopped the last three years. Here are the few I've seen.

1. Licorice Pizza
2. Red Rocket
3. Benedetta
4. The Card Counter
5. About Endlessness

Good: Annette, The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Sun, Titane

Bad: Into the Earth, Last Night in Soho, The Scary of Sixty-First, The Sparks Brothers, The Suicide Squad

1. Ascension
2. Licorice Pizza
3. Red Rocket
4. The Green Knight
5. Power of the Dog
6. Dear Mr. Brody

No round-up from zedz this year?

Mine:

1. Memoria (Weerasethakul)
2. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi)
3. Petite Maman (Sciamma)
4. The Tsugua Diaries (Fazendeiro/Gomes)
5. What Do We See When We Look At The Sky? (Koberidze)
6. Beginning (Kulumbegashvili)
7. Identifying Features (Valadez)
8. Friends and Strangers (Vaughan)
9. Azor (Fontana)
10. Maat Means Land (Maxy)

While I don’t think I’ve seen ten films from 2020, at least I can say I crossed that threshold for 2021, I’ve clocked 17 so far, not enough for a top ten as of yet, but I can get to a top five if one is allowed to include populist films here

now at [s]25[/s] 27 seen, can form a top ten

1. Dune
2. CODA
3. Spider-Man no way home
4. King Richard
5. Encanto
6. Shang-Chi
7. Don’t Look Up
8. The Tragedy of Macbeth
9. The power of the dog
10. Flee

Bumped:
Black widow
West side Story

Surprise of the year: Cruella, b/c it turned so entertaining after a cringy first ten minutes (but it needs that bad set up to establish all of its ending beats)

Still a few I need to catch up on, but since I probably won’t have access to them for another few weeks, I might as well post where I’m at so far:

1. Benedetta
2. Drive My Car
3. The Souvenir Part II
4. The Humans
5. The Card Counter
6. The Velvet Underground
7. The Power of the Dog
8. Zola
9. Bergman Island
10. Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Still unseen: Benediction, Hit the Road, Happening

1. Private Desert (Muritiba)
2. The Matrix Resurrections (Wachowski)
3. Annette (Carax)
4. Nightmare Alley (del Toro)
5. The Worst Person in the World (Trier)
6. The Card Counter (Schrader)
7. House of Gucci (Scott)
8. Spencer (Larraín)
9. Passing (Hall)
10. France (Dumont)