#steve james

Every one of these movies got under my skin in one way or another and made this difficult year that much brighter. If you like, consider this a strong endorsement for each of them.

Same rules as always: no movies from this past year (2024) or the year prior (2023). Every other year is fair game.

01. Close-Up (dir. Abbas Kiarostami, 1990; Iran; 98 min.)

"Tell him The Cyclist is a part of me."

Every now and then, you watch a film for the first time that knocks you sideways, that reminds you of the power and beauty in cinema, that lives up to every expectation you had for it, that works its way into your bloodstream to take up permanent residence as a part of you.

That was my experience finally watching Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up. While retaining his empathetic gaze, Kiarostami uses a real-life incident to crack open the very ideas of performance, escapism, identity, truth, and storytelling. Is it a love letter to cinema or a condemnation of its ability to distance people from reality? Is it both?

That this film exists at all is a miracle. Hossain Sabzian's performance (as himself) is miraculous in itself, too. There is simply nothing like Close-Up, and I am so grateful to have experienced it. I can't wait to revisit it for years to come.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

02. Paris, Texas (dir. Wim Wenders, 1984; West Germany/France; 147 min.)

"I wanted to see him so bad I didn't even dare imagine him anymore."

I mean this in the best way possible: Paris, Texas was not what I expected it to be at all. For years, I've heard it spoken of with reverence, and I've seen shots from it, and I generally knew the premise, but I didn't expect a film that was as nakedly emotional as this. Paris, Texas ripped my heart out over and over and over again, and I was grateful for it every time.

Everything about it is superb: Robby Müller's cinematography, creating poetry out of the neon-soaked desert; Ry Cooder's haunting guitar; Sam Shepard's enormously moving screenplay; Wenders' patient and precise direction. And then there are the performances! I waxed poetic about Harry Dean Stanton's performance yesterday in this post, but in short: it's a landmark performance. Nearly equally impressive, and with less screentime, is Nastassja Kinski, the key to the film's mystery.

This is an exquisite piece of work. What begins as an almost unbearably lonely film grows into one of bittersweet reconciliation, of healing. I'll be thinking about Travis and Hunter walking together on opposite sides of the street for a long, long time.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.

03. Barton Fink (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1991; USA; 116 mins.)

"I tried to show you something beautiful."

I know I'm late to the party here (isn't that what these lists are all about?), but my God, what a major work. Barton Fink is every bit as dense and as literate as No Country for Old Men and as gripping and darkly hilarious as Fargo. John Turturro's performance is the perfect anchor, a twitchy live-wire with dueling inferiority and superiority complexes falling headfirst into a nightmare. He's matched (haunted?) perfectly by John Goodman, giving one of his best performances, using his folksy charm and twinkling eyes to terrifying effect. 

Again, though, the film is primarily an incredible achievement because of the Coens. Between their writing and directing, Barton Fink pulls at so many threads and juggles a number of conflicting tones to create a singularly hellish vision of Hollywood and an entertainment industry caught between World War II and the rise of McCarthyism. It's a marvel. I can't wait to watch it again and again.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

04. Hoop Dreams (dir. Steve James, 1994; USA; 171 min.)

"That's why when somebody say, 'When you get to the NBA, don't forget about me,' and that stuff. Well, I should've said to them, 'If I don't make it, don't you forget about me.'"

Hoop Dreams is every bit as monumental as its reputation suggests, both a masterpiece of non-fiction filmmaking and the blueprint for the next thirty years of documentaries. The editing work alone here is unbelievable, with the film starting life as a 30-minute PBS short and growing into a three-hour-long epic.

The triumph of Hoop Dreams is a reminder that documentary filmmaking is an act of sculpture. Director Steve James collected 250 hours of footage over five years of shooting, which he and his Oscar-nominated team of editors, Frederick Marx and William Haugse, whittled down to a single, thrilling experience. The film is long, but not without reason. By the end, you feel like you've lived William Gates' and Arthur Agee's high school years with them.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel and HBO Max.

05. Out of Sight (dir. Steven Soderbergh, 1998; USA; 123 min.)

"It's like seeing someone for the first time, like you can be passing on the street, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of a recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it. And you always remember it because it was there, and you let it go, and you think to yourself, 'What if I had stopped? What if I had said something?' What if, what if... it may only happen a few times in your life." "Or once." "Or once."

Call it a crime thriller, call it a neo-noir, call it a rom-com, call it whatever you like: Out of Sight is all of them, and it's extraordinarily good at being all of them at the same time. Every aspect of the film is perfectly realized: Steven Soderbergh's impeccable command over tone and genre; Scott Frank's charming, intelligent, complicated screenplay; the unstoppable movie star charisma of George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. Everything that makes Clooney such a compelling actor is on full display here, and I'm not sure he's ever been better. Same goes for Lopez: she hasn't gotten nearly the respect she deserves for being such a remarkable screen presence, even in movies that don't deserve her, but she's luminous in this. 

And, my God, Anne V. Coates' editing -- the brilliant story structure feels like it might fall apart at the seams if she hadn't held it together. Between a legend in the editing room and a legend in the making in the director's chair, Out of Sight seems to come together effortlessly. It's as graceful and entertaining a film as you'll ever see. I loved everything about it.

Currently available to rent on demand.

06. Punch-Drunk Love (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson, 2002; USA; 95 min.)

"It really looks like Hawaii here."

This one really is magical, huh? Between the cinematography (Robert Elswit, a legend) and the music (Jon Brion, a legend) to the beautifully funny script by director Paul Thomas Anderson, just about every individual aspect of the film sings. This is true, too, for the performances -- Emily Watson is always so lovely, and Luis Guzmán should probably be in every PTA film ever made, but especially Adam Sandler (who, Uncut Gems be damned, has never, ever been better), and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who makes a three-course meal out of minimal screen time.

I feel like I've seen or catastrophized the worst possible version of a movie like this so many times -- an off-kilter indie love story between two #weirdos, the kind of thing that aimed to replicate this film or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- but the experience of actually seeing Punch-Drunk Love knocked me out. It's just so funny and romantic and sad and sweet and winning. It's a thing of real beauty.

Currently available to rent on demand.

07. Female Trouble (dir. John Waters, 1974; USA; 97 min.)

"This is so exciting! Just think of all the little horror stories that go on in other people's lives!"

What a terrific vehicle for Divine. What a brilliant continuation of the Dreamlanders' work. I certainly appreciated Pink Flamingos, even if it made me genuinely sick, and I understand why it's still seen as Waters' masterpiece, but to me, Female Trouble almost feels like a more complete, more precise, and more vicious variation of the earlier film. As a hit job on the sensibilities of good taste, its aim is deadly.

The film's look and sound is more polished and impressive than in Pink Flamingos, too, particularly Van Smith's astonishing costumes, Vincent Peranio's production design, and the horribly catchy theme song. The whole film feels like a fever dream, and it would be very easy to imagine this as a straight-up horror movie if there wasn't such a relentlessly funny rebellious spirit to it. Even still, the final act is genuinely disturbing. "Who wants to die for art?"

It's horrible. It's wonderful. It's kind of a masterpiece in its own sick way.

Currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.

08. Memories of Murder (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2003; South Korea; 131 min.)

"What did he look like?" "Well... kind of plain." "In what way?" "Just... ordinary."

At the risk of saying something extremely obvious, Bong Joon-ho is a really great director, huh? Purely looking at how he manages to make Memories of Murder -- one bleak, bleak, bleak film -- both extremely funny and extremely upsetting and, in multiple sequences, genuinely frightening, it's clear that Bong is a generational talent. 

The cast is stacked (of course) -- Song Kang-ho holds the whole thing together beautifully, lending the final shot its gravitas, but he's flanked by the likes of Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roi-ha, Byun Hee-bong, and, most memorably, the chilling Park Hae-il.

It's just kind of a knockout on all levels, from that gorgeous golden hour cinematography at the beginning giving way to the muted grays of the procedural to the way Bong milks an overwhelming sense of dread out of something as mundane as a rainstorm.

Currently available to rent on demand.

09. The Long Goodbye (dir. Robert Altman, 1973; USA; 112 min.)

"It's okay with me."

A neo-noir crime thriller with the vibes of a 70s hangout movie, The Long Goodbye is everything you could ever want from a Robert Altman/Philip Marlowe movie: grimy, rambling, uncomfortable, and very funny in its own bone-dry way. The soundtrack consisting of just one song? Inspired.

Elliott Gould is the perfect center for the film, giving a wonderfully relaxed, effortlessly cool performance. Altman's naturalistic conversation style mixes beautifully with the genre's stylized dialogue (and every other character tells Gould how cute he is, and you know what? It's true!). Also, it's got one of the great movie cats.

I'm positive I missed some of the inner workings of it, but it washed over me like a wave at the beach, and I loved every bit of it.

Currently available to rent on demand.

10. Crooklyn (dir. Spike Lee, 1994; USA; 114 min.)

"Ladybug, you turned out pretty good considering you were raised in a house full of ashy, rusty-butt boys."

Maybe it's just how inundated we currently are with this subgenre -- Esteemed Filmmaker Reflects On Their Childhood, à la Belfast and The Fabelmans and Roma -- but I can't help but feel like Crooklyn would become something of an awards darling in 2024. Like the best of the subgenre's newer films, Spike Lee's look back isn't really about him. He's definitely there (or at least a spectacled Knicks-loving stand-in is), but Crooklyn is primarily about growing up from the perspective of his sister Joie -- or rather, her stand-in Troy.

It's also more generally about the dynamics of the family and, by extension, their neighborhood. In both regards -- as a portrait of Black girlhood in the early '70s and as a memory piece of a family on the precipice of a major turning point -- the film is a triumph. The cast is tremendous, from the parents played by Alfre Woodard and Delroy Lindo, to the miraculously well-cast group of kids. Their chemistry together is magical (and my God, they are all so cute -- the scene of them singing along to the Partridge Family is instantly iconic to me).

There are so many well-observed slice-of-life moments in the film: all of the scenes of the family spending time together, RuPaul(!) in the bodega, Aunt Song (a very good Frances Foster) singing Christian songs while Troy stares at her. And, because it's a Spike Lee joint, Crooklyn is a stylistic and technical achievement. It has one of the most audacious aspect ratio changes I've ever seen (and honestly, I'm not sure if it's successful, but I admire the swing!), plus one of the funniest uses of the floating dolly shot in any of Lee's movies.

A supremely lovely film.

Currently available to rent on demand.

Other films I loved (in alphabetical order): After Hours (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1985); Aguirre, the Wrath of God (dir. Werner Herzog, 1972); An Autumn Afternoon (dir. Yasujirō Ozu, 1962); The Bad News Bears (dir. Michael Ritchie, 1976); Baseball (dir. Ken Burns, 1994); Big Trouble in Little China (dir. John Carpenter, 1986); Blue Velvet (dir. David Lynch, 1986); Burn After Reading (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 2008); The Cassandra Cat (dir. Vojtěch Jasný, 1963); Eyes Wide Shut (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1999); Green Porno (dir. Isabella Rossellini, 2008); Heaven Can Wait (dir. Warren Beatty and Buck Henry, 1978); High Hopes (dir. Mike Leigh, 1988); History is Made at Night (dir. Frank Borzage, 1937); The Hunt for Red October (dir. John McTiernan, 1990); I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (dir. Patricia Rozema, 1987); The Insider (dir. Michael Mann, 1999); It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (dir. Stanley Kramer, 1963); Joy Street (dir. Suzan Pitt, 1995); La Haine (dir. Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995); La Roue (dir. Abel Gance, 1923); Leave Her to Heaven (dir. John M. Stahl, 1945); Love Letter (dir. Kinuyo Tanaka, 1953); Marnie (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1964); The Match Factory Girl (dir. Aki Kaurismäki, 1990); Miller's Crossing (dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, 1990); Morning for the Osone Family (dir. Keisuke Kinoshita, 1946); Oslo, August 31st (dir. Joachim Trier, 2011); Querelle (dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982); Robert Frost: A Lover's Quarrel with the World (dir. Shirley Clarke, 1963); RoboCop (dir. Paul Verhoeven, 1987); The Salesman (dir. Asghar Farhadi, 2016); Seconds (dir. John Frankenheimer, 1966); The Shop on Main Street (dir. Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, 1965); Simon of the Desert (dir. Luis Buñuel, 1965); Spellbound (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1945); The Thing (dir. John Carpenter, 1982); Tokyo Godfathers (dir. Satoshi Kon, 2003); Tokyo Olympiad (dir. Kon Ichikawa, 1965); Twister (dir. Jan de Bont, 1996); The Unknown (dir. Tod Browning, 1927); Walking (dir. Ryan Larkin, 1968); When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (dir. Mikio Naruse, 1960); Wooden Crosses (dir. Raymond Bernard, 1932)

And finally, some miscellaneous viewing stats:

First movie watched in 2024: The Cassandra Cat (dir. Vojtěch Jasný, 1963)

First movie seen in theaters in 2024: I Know Where I'm Going! (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945)

Final movie watched in 2024: Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson, 2023)

Final movie seen in theaters in 2024: Interstellar (dir. Christopher Nolan, 2014)

Least favorite movie: Viva Zapata! (dir. Elia Kazan, 1952)

Oldest movie: How a Mosquito Operates (dir. Winsor McCay, 1912)

Longest movie: La Roue (dir. Abel Gance, 1923 - 413 min.)

Shortest movie: Stellar (dir. Stan Brakhage, 1993 - 2 min.)

Month with the most viewings: February (54)

Month with the fewest viewings: October and November (7 each)

First movie from 2024 seen: Drive-Away Dolls (dir. Ethan Coen)

Total movies seen in theaters: 30 (including shorts)