So, finally, here we go. I mean, you don’t have any idea how much time I’ve spent on this, so no-one can have the same kind of emotional connection to this list as I do, but here hopefully there are people out there who do find this interesting at the very least.

Today we get real and as far from real as we can get.

100. Flux Gourmet (Peter Strickland, 2022, United Kingdom)

A collective of three artists has been granted a residency at an institute specialized in food-related art. The conflicts within the collective, as well as the the conflict between the self-appointed leader of the collective and the actual head of the institute are being documented by a writer, who himself is struggling with issues with his congestion, which is hardly being helped by a local doctor.

In Finnish, there’s widely used term “tekotaiteellinen paska”, which would be “faux-art shit” in English. This is a movie, which would probably be categorized as such by many, but is also totally self-aware and about faux-art shit itself, even if as far as performance art goes, some of the ones in the movie actually seem kind of interesting (although we only see snippets of them).

Much of the powerstruggles between the various characters is done through attempting assert dominance through elitism. The doctor, who visits the institution regularly, shuts people often down by referencing various Greek classics and trying to make people feel ashamed when they don’t know them (although the references seem to be the kind you wouldn’t have to read very far to know).

Collectives are supposed to be egalitarian and driven by concensus, but in this particular case one member has completely hijacked the decision-making. The other two are not happy about this and confront her on various occasions, but mostly go with her. Further trouble arises, as this leader does not like the head of the institute offering her opinions on their work. This leads to a stand-off where neither side is willing to budge.

Generally this world is quite egalitarian in regards to gender (not quite, but we’ll get to that), but this subject is discussed within the movie. Each member of the collective gives a speech at a dinner they have regularly with outside guests and Elle di Elle (the aforementioned leader of the “collective”) reads from an old housekeeping guide to show how sexist the approach of the book is. This is contested by the doctor on the spot, but more importantly, when the only male of the collective uses his slot to tell a story about his burgeoning sexuality when he found himself interested in a woman working at the breakfast at a hotel, Elle is not happy with him objectifying women, especially in the context of food.

In general, the unhealthy hierarchies within the movie are built on just self-importance. As mentioned above, the doctor likes to embarrass people with Greek classics, but also Elle likes to think her vision is always more important than anyone elses and any kind of compromise would somehow taint it. However, this also leaves her open to attacks, when she doesn’t live up to her image.

Billy, the male member of the collective, is also a sort of weakness. He is very quiet and easily manipulated. The head of the institute uses this to gain insight into the collective through sex. He also divulges that Elle has done the same to him in the past. Because he is young and seemingly naive, these older women seem to feel they can use him as they please.

But the movie definitely understands all this. This isn’t accidental. All the various interactions are well planned out and they are part of the story.

99. L'Hypothese du Tableau Vole (The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting) (Raúl Ruiz, 1978, France)

Moving on to another piece of faux-art shit, which knows exactly what it is.

Two men, one behind the camera and one in front of it, discuss a set of paintings, one of which is missing. This has become an obsession to the man in front of the camera, the Collector, who has used and is using a lot of resources in order to understand how the one missing painting ties the set of paintings together. This includes even hiring actors to play out the other works of art in order to simulate the action within the set. (This must be horrific for the actors, who seem to be there, just waiting in a specific posture for the old man to come around to watch them for a second.)

There isn’t much of a story here. The movie is barely over an hour long and mostly consists of musings based on speculations on history from late 19th century France, where apparently a scandal was forcibly supressed and the paintings are tied to that event supposedly telling the truth of the matter in a very convoluted way.

The collector has been trying to figure this out for so long that he seems to have convinced himself of various things, which seem very unlikely to me, and at the same time he shoots down ideas from the other, unseen, man. Sometimes this is justified, sometimes it seems to be justified in his mind as he needs to conform those ideas with his own.

This is somewhat understandable. Art is often easy to understand from a specific point of view, if you choose to do so. You see this all the time with people of very different philosophical perspectives assuming a certain piece of art representing them and their ideology. The series of paintings lends itself very easily to this, as they don’t even really know what the order of the paintings is. Their thinking on this is just an educated guess.

Part of this “education” on which they base their guesses on is assumed societal roles. Women are objects of love, not active participants. Men will fight duels over them (although they are also manipulated to do so).

Part of me wants to know whether this is based on existing phenomena of the period (late 70s). Today, we have a lot of people overly obsessed with singular pieces of media. There’s a feature length documentary on the people too obsessed about Shining called Room 237. Were there people like that back in the day? Obviously it would have been quite different, because you didn’t have that kind of access in those days. Even VHS wasn’t around yet (it was around, but hadn’t really broken through to mainstream yet as studios kept the price exceedingly high to protect theatre incomes).

What I’m not seeing from the online discussion I was able to find on this, because there doesn’t seem to be much, is that this is a parody. It is very, very dry. It never goes for outright laughs, but prefers to just make everything just a little absurd instead of going overboard on anything.

A lot of the modern art of the past century or so has been about art itself. This just feels very masturbatory to me. Sure, it’s an interesting topic, but when it’s the major topic, art suffers as it can’t focus on other important topics in the same way and it leaves people behind, when art should be addressing those people. That’s why I love these kinds of takes where artists are able to make fun of themselves.

This is the shortest movie on the list at just 66 minutes. There is another movie under 70 minutes coming up soon and there’s several under 80. You’ll have to read through quite a bit to find the longest.

98. Voskhozhdenie (The Ascent) (Larisa Shepitko, 1977, Soviet Union)

During World War II, in the middle of winter somewhere in Belarus, Soviet partisans Sotnikov and Rybak are sent to find food for their group they are trying to evacuate from the frontlines, who are both tired and hungry. They find the house of a local collaborator, where they are able to find meat, but as they try to return, they are found by a group of German soldiers. A short firefight ensues, where Sotnikov is shot in the leg and they need to find help. Things only get worse from there.

No one is safe from the invading Germans. Even the collaborator is immediately suspected of helping the partisans when the two soldiers are seen around his house. Or maybe he just wasn’t collaborating hard enough. I guess if he would have bothered to read Mein kampff, he would have known that he would be eliminated anyhow, because the reason Hitler wanted Belarus and Ukraine was the fertile soil for farming, so there would not have been any room for the current holders.

After Sotnikov is wounded and needs help, they visit another house, where a woman is living alone with her children. Again, the Germans find out about this and the woman is taken into custody as well, but her children are left behind to fend for themselves. They don’t matter. To the Nazis they were just Slavs, who were seen as a lower race.

This is how things are for women outside of the cities. They have been left to fend for themselves. Running a farm is difficult by itself, but if you are also in an active warzone, where various people can just drop by and take whatever little food you have, it becomes impossible. Their only pig had already been confiscated by the Germans. Nevermind the risk of just being arrested for whatever excuse the arrester can come up with. Actually, the interrogator just assumes they are going to execute the woman and he gives the soldiers an opportunity to save her, but that’s just a lie as well. He just needs enough people to execute, because otherwise the Germans would turn against him. He even decides to execute a girl.

And this was for the Soviet women. In some ways they were actually in a better position than women in other countries, because they were often seen as equal to the Russian men. Not that it translated to very much in most cases. There never was a female general secretary, for example. They did have their own army corps’, most famously the Night Witches, who were pilots (and there is another movie from Shepitko about one trying to conform to normalcy after the war called Wings), but those were often belittled by the men despite clearly being able to pull their weight.

While I have never experienced the life of a partisan, this feels like it captures it pretty well. The men are always at their wits end, trying to figure out what to do now and having to take less than desirable options. The snow isn’t helpful and makes many things more difficult (I guess with the exception of dragging things, if you have a sled). You can’t run in it, you will leave traces, unless there’s a snowstorm going on, and if there is, that’s just going to make things worse in many other respects.

This feeling of realism is what pulls me in. Honestly, I do find it a bit hard to feel sympathy for Russian soldiers… for kind of obvious reasons, but at the same time, it’s not the soldiers on the field, who make these decisions. They were pushed into this situation by outside forces and they are just trying to cope with everything.

And because everything is completely messed up, it turns out that traitor was actually working for the commander the group of partisans are trying to reach and Rybak actually turns against his people by volunteering to work for the Germans. Can you blame him? That was his only chance of survival. At least until the Germans find an excuse to get rid of him as well.

97. W (Anna Eriksson, 2022, Finland)

The name is not helpful when trying to search for it. There’s so, so many movies with the exact same name and you need to know to look for exact matches on IMDb, unless you want to wade through pages of WALL-E’s and Whiplashes. It’s not helpful either that there’s a fairly prominent Swedish producer, who shares her name with the star/writer/director of this movie.

Also, I’ll admit upfront that part of me liking this movie as much as I do, is because it is Finnish. It is actually quite probable that I would have enjoyed this and then quickly forgotten about this, if it was a French movie. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good movie, but I know I wouldn’t have reflected on this nearly as much as I have, if there wasn’t just little bit of national pride behind it (and I’m not a very patriotic-slash-jingoistic person in general). Also, just knowing some of the history of the auteur behind it just changes my perspective quite a bit.

And to be honest, for the longest time Finnish movies were shit. I mean absolute garbage. Basically completely unwatchable. There were highlights here and there, but it wasn’t until the last 10 years or so that we seem to finally have found a voice (and I’m not talking about the very unimaginative, but fine, third version of Unknown Soldier, but actually good movies).

Honestly, many people would put W into the “absolute garbage” and/or “completely unwatchable” category. When asked, I have in the past verbally explained this movie to friends as “very good, would not recommend”. Another category this could easily be pushed into would be “self-aggrandizing faux-art bullshit”.

The movie itself is about Madame Europa and her robot male attendant, who are hiding away from a war and forces who are after her. They are currently in an institute full of nurses trying to desperately maintain a fascist state that doesn’t exist anymore.

Now, Anna Eriksson, for those who don’t know, is or was a big star in Finland. She was one of the best-selling musical artists for her 20 year career starting from mid-90s. However, she did not enjoy her time in the music industry and has stopped making music altogether (not live performances, however). Then one day she came out and told the world that she is now going to make movies. Her first one was M, which wasn’t very good, but interesting. W was her second movie. Neither gained much of an audience. Still, it was interesting to see someone with so carefully manicured public persona as the clean and beautiful (one could even say virginal) girl next door just throw that away in order to make microbudgeted art movies.

And these are art movies. Part of me liking this so much might just be that I’m not that well-versed in that specific world. For the people in that world this might be just boring. Who knows?

Anyway, another thing I like here is how Eriksson took it upon herself to do the physically torturous parts of the movie. In general, I’m not a fan of this. Like Leo eating meat is not an actual thing he should be getting any kind of accolades for (he did get an Oscar for that). Directors should not put their actors into that kind of situations. However, Eriksson took the high road and just did it herself. Mostly just freezing herself as she is naked except for a metallic harness in a very cold environment for all of the movie she is in.

There is a history of male directors putting their female stars into risky situations. Uma Thurman was seriously injured during the filming of Kill Bill, vol 2 in a shot that didn’t really need to happen. Ellen Burstyn also had to spend some time in a hospital after a stunt in The Exorcist, which was set up in an unnecessarily dangerous way and there’s plenty of video of the crew just laughing about the whole incident. Or Wes Craven just letting her two female stars think they were in real danger during the filming of The Last House on the Left (and apparently he was so high during the whole filming that he couldn’t have done anything anyhow).

I was also thinking about how nudity in movies has changed from the actor’s point of view. If you were nude on screen back in the 50s, that would be only there on the screen. Sure, people would see it, but they would see it in context. Not that there was much nudity on screen in those days. Movies were only in theatres or on TV, in some cases, but there wasn’t home media or streaming services or endless celeb porn fetish websites where anyone can access those images at any time. I would assume that changes the decision process.

Otherwise, the movie is a weird collection of metaphors. Naming the main character ‘Europa’ makes certain things kind of obvious. Still, the movie is kind of weirdly fun. It is supposedly a psychological drama in a sci-fi setting, but the combination of various things just gets so absurd at times that I couldn’t help but laugh. Whether I’m laughing at it or with it is completely different question.

96. Polite Society (Nida Manzoor, 2023, United Kingdom)

Ria is a British-Pakistani high schooler, who dreams of becoming a stuntwoman. Her older sister, Lena, has dropped out of art school to return home to rethink her life, but doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Then, one day, their family is invited to a party by a rich Pakistani woman, where the older of the sisters meets a man and starts a relationship with her to her younger sisters ire and the relationship between the two sisters becomes strained as Ria does her best to break up the two up.

Oh yeah, and it’s a martial arts movie. And a comedy.

The family is fun. They are living somewhere between the two cultures. The parents are doing their best to understand their daughters, but they also feel peer pressure from other Pakistani. They try their best, though. There’s a moment early on in the film where they actually commend Lena for taking a shower, so they definitely don’t want to be harsh, but they also want honor their culture.

The man Lena meets is pursued by every eligible woman in their community, but he gravitates toward her. The relationship moves forward quite quickly, which just adds to Ria’s anxiety.

Is Ria just overreacting to losing her sister or is there something deeper going on? I don’t even think they try to maintain the facade of the former very long, although of course no one takes Ria seriously, as she is seen as the bratty kid, who isn’t ready to lose her sister. Her dedication to her sister is great and she does go to great, almost heist movie, lengths to get what she wants.

This is very much a female driven movie. Sure, there’s the groom and the father of the family, but they are in no way driving the plot. It’s all about the women navigating the difficult waters between modern British culture and their more conservative Pakistani culture. Even secondary characters, such as Ria’s friends and her bully in school, are women.

Even the bad gal of the movie, groom’s mother, has suffered from cultural pressures despite being extremely rich. This is where the movie would go fully off rails if it wasn’t already. The reason her son is dating and then marrying Lena is the mother’s desire to clone herself and she needs a strong enough womb for the purpose. Lena was the one that passed their secret testing. She feels she needs that clone, because she couldn’t live her own life before and wants a new opportunity. The rich just see the rest of us as disposable.

The ending, something of which I often moan about, is kind of glorious and very satisfactory. And much happier than usual. I can’t claim there aren’t clumsy parts in the movie, but the fun overshadows those.

The Pakistani culture is in full display here, I believe. I can’t really judge. I have to believe the people behind the movie knew what they were doing. Still, there’s something great about a martial arts fight in very traditional dresses and I also like their takes on western music often used in action movies. It feels like they managed to find a very happy middleground.

95. El día de la bestia (Day of the Beast) (Alex de la Iglesias, 1995, Spain)

Father Ángel Berriartúa has been studying the Book of Revelation for all his career and now he has finally identified its real message, which is the birth date of the Anti-Christ. The problem is that its going to be next day. What is he to do? After trying to find help from a colleague, who immediately dies in a weird accident (a huge cross falls on him in the church just after their discussion), he leaves for Madrid to commit as many sins as possible in order to be able to sell his soul to the Devil, so that he might be trusted to learn the location of the birth. Due to having spent his whole career in the church, he isn’t quite ready for this, so he enlists a guy from a record store, who happens to be a fan of heavy metal music, and a popular TV occultist, who also happens to be a fraud and requires quite a bit of convincing.

Yes, this is a pretty stupid movie. I’m not going to try to argue that. Still, it is also also a good movie and this is my list. This is partly a guilty pleasure thing, but I do also like the themes here. For some reason I’m just more self-conscious about adding this one to the list than any of the other 99.

Would you be willing to risk your eternal soul to save the world? That is what the father is doing. He is knowingly sacrificing himself for others, which should be something he is rewarded for, but because Christianity is weird, he would get the worst possible punishment.

And it doesn’t really even work. They do eventually figure it out, but the whole making a deal with the devil only helps in so far as for the occultist to get an example of Satan’s handwriting, which then he uses to do a convoluted inference to resolve the whole thing.

On the feminist front, there’s a section of the movie where the father needs to figure out where to get the blood of a virgin. Apparently, his own doesn’t do, so he finds a woman, who works in the hotel (of sorts) he lives in. So, why is virginity of women better than that of men? This is quite sexist.

Historically, virginity was sort of a guarantee that the woman had never had sex before, so at least the oldest child would be from the husband, but I don’t think this kind of thinking was as prevalent as we like to believe. I mean, people did remarry, not all women bleed on first penetration, and in the royal circles there would often be witnesses to the act.

Still, virginity is seen as something of value, especially among the religious. But doesn’t these situations also mean that having virgins around is risky? Shouldn’t we let women do as they please, so that their blood couldn’t be used to for bargaining with the devil? For the record, I am not advocating for any kind forced sex, but at the same time, the woman stated that she wouldn’t have sex before marriage. Is there a reason to that besides religion? Not really.

That also exposes women (and men) to situations where they might find out that they aren’t really compatible in ways that can very important in a relationship. Just one more thing religions messes up for everyone involved.

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

Gil and Art have just returned to town after being away for the winter. Soon, news arrives in a frontier town that one of the local farmers has been murdered. First Gil and Art are suspects as well, but a posse is formed and soon enough they find three other suspects. Some of the posse are ready to enact a little bit of field justice, while others wish to wait for a proper trial.

I like this as an indictment of democracy. Sure, democracy has it’s good side as well, but majority rule without any concern for minority rights is not good (even if protecting minority rights has at times caused huge problems, such as with the Senate in the US). Nor is the idea that you can just have trials without proper representation and procedure just based on majority opinion, which is often easily manipulated.

In this case they just decide to hang three people, because they are strangers and just happen to be there. Sure, there’s something shady here, but if you look hard enough, you can always find something suspicious about anyone. It is easy to convince yourself that any word or gesture or expression is a sign of guilt, if that is what you want to believe. And when we have prejudices, this becomes even easier. One of the men doesn’t speak English (well, at first), so he must clearly be extra suspicious (although it does turn out that he wasn’t exactly clean).

Women are scarce as they tend to be in Westerns. There’s two credited females, one of which is a lost romantic prospect of the main character who only appears for a very short time (she had married while he was away for an extended period of time) and the other is a leading figure in the posse.

While the former of these is quite common, the latter is more interesting. Ma Grier is played by Jane Darwell, one of the ubiquitous character actors of early Hollywood appearing in over 200 roles. She had a 50 year career starting in the 1910s when she was already in her 30s. I remember her mostly from Grapes of Wrath where she plays the matriarch of the family.

She is equally formidable here, but in a lot more scary way. The actual West did have women as well and they were probably closer to Ma Grier than Rose (the other credited character). At least early on. Obviously civilization moved in fast and much of the genre is specifically about how the frontier is getting smaller, but certain people, who don’t quite fit in the society are more inclined to move there. We just don’t generally see POC or queer folk in these movies made by white people for white people. Or more precisely, white men for white men. So, the history of these women has been largely suppressed.

Ma Grier sort of represents a large group of people, who isn’t really talked about. She just isn’t that good of a representative. She seems to understand that in order to protect herself, she has to maintain a harsh reputation, so that’s what she does. She is one of the most fervent proponents of frontier justice apparently just to avoid seeming weak.

93. Tár (Todd Field, 2022, USA)

Lydia Tár is a composer and a conductor at Berlin Philharmonic, one of the most respected orchestras in the world. However, there’s a scandal that is brewing and Lydia can’t really keep that away from the limelight indefinitely.

After I first saw this in early 2023, I wondered whether the movie was written for a male lead. And what do you know, according to Cate Blanchett herself, it was at least started that way. However, would exploring this theme be as interesting, if there was a male lead? I bet we would feel very differently.

While it takes it time getting there, it is eventually a movie about cancellation. The journey is important. We start with a hint that there’s some former member of the orchestra, who has issues with Lydia (and I’m going to keep calling her Lydia instead of Tár, because that accented character doesn’t come easy for my Finnish fingers on this keyboard). Then, we learn how Lydia uses her position to manipulate the situation to gain access to young women.

Her approach is quite insidious. She pushes buttons and pulls on strings to make others do the actual decisions for her. Often she seems reasonable, but the people she is talking to might not be in a position to go against her. After all, she is a quite powerful figure in the field with contacts apparently all over the world.

The way she talks about conducting is also about manipulation. She is once again pulling string to get what she wants out of the people around her. She often takes a self-ironic tone in order to seem more approachable, but at the same time that is hollow as she will reference highly esoteric things to make her points.

There’s a scene in which Lydia gives off this feel some liberal people give in which they are very accepting of people, but then there comes a point in which they don’t get it anymore and it becomes something they can’t quite openly despise, but they are willing to do it privately. Lydia is lesbian and references at one point the difficulty of coming out with her partner, she is still willing to take someone down a peg, because they (might be ‘he’, although they are very male presenting) identifies as bipoc and pangender (and sorry, while I understand the semantic differences between pangender, genderfluid and non-binary, I don’t necessarily understand quite what that means in practice, becuase I have not lived that life).

In that very scene, the person says they don’t like Bach and Lydia seems to almost take this as a personal attack. She sees only Bach’s contribution to artform, while their approach also considers his life and actions outside of his work. Who is right here? Should we disregard the bad actions of important people? Personally I have decided to do that for dead people (which is evident in the evolution of this list, if you look at the earlier versions), but otherwise I don’t acknowledge their work. However, this should be a personal choice. What can you live with? I would still think that finding ones own way is also important. They are studying music. If everyone studies the same music, music will, in the long run, lose much of it’s creativeness, if everyone needs to follow in the steps of the same people.

I wonder how Anna Bogutskaya, the author of Unlikeable Female Characters and the co-founder of The Final Girls podcast, would feel about her. The tagline for her book was “[h]ow bitches, trainwrecks, shrews, and crazy women have taken over pop culture and liberated women from having to be nice”. In the future Lydia can probably be seen as part of this evolution.

Cate Blanchett would be the right person to do this. She is one of the great actors of all time. (I mean, if you take Oscars seriously, she has eight nominations and two wins as I’m writing this in early 2024.) To me, the best thing about her is that she is similarly at home in parts like Galadriel and Hela, as she is in parts like Lydia and Carol Aird (in Carol). It doesn’t seem like she is doing Thor Ragnarok for the big check, because it appears she is having so much fun in that role.

92. Orlando (Sally Potter, 1992, United Kingdom)

Orlando is a young man, who is ordered by Elizabeth I to remain young. As he is not one to disobey an order from the queen, this is exactly what he does. He experiences romance, tries his hand at art, then diplomacy, which leads her to fully discard his gender in order to become a woman.

Actors, who identify as non-binary are now becoming more commonplace, but in the early 90s I can’t say there was anyone else who could have done the role justice than Tilda Swinton. She has a history of genderbending in her work. Just that same year she starred in an episode of a British drama anthology series called ScreenPlay in which she played a woman, who took on her dead husband’s identity in order to be able to work in a factory and the story is her starting to forget who she actually is. Then there’s Dr. Klemperer in Suspiria, Gabriel in Constantine and maybe The Ancient One in Dr. Strange, who some seem to interpret as a man, but I assume The Ancient One is above such conventions. Swinton doesn’t really adhere to rules in this regard. Or in other ways. Orlando breaks the fourth wall regularly in this movie and by the end of the movie has lived over 400 years. Swinton herself doesn’t like seem to like to commit to a gender. She has in the past identified as queer and as, in her words, “probably a woman”. She has also spoken in favor of removing gendered categories from various awards (as Independent Spirit Awards did in 2023 as the first film-centered awards and while many have opposed this on the grounds that men will just take all the awards, the first time they handed the awards this way, out of the ten nominees for Best Lead Performer, eight were women, including the winner, Michelle Yeoh). (Regarding rules not really applying to Swinton, she says she doesn’t really know languages, but picks up things here and there as a European. She downplays her language skills, but still did a role in Man from London in French, despite saying that she has an inhibition about it. She also stated that she speaks German like a child and can’t really speak Italian fluently, but still did a role in an Italian movie.)

The movie, as a whole, is very episodic. There doesn’t seem to be much of a throughline between the different parts of the movie, but they are all part of Orlando’s evolution as he, later she, starts to realize that perhaps it’s not worth it. His romantic endeavors fail, his court poet finds his poems funny, and finally, when he realizes the consequences of his decisions on others, when he must confront a dying man, she finally emerges.

Her reaction to that? “Same person. No difference at all… just a different sex” she states to the camera after discovering her new body. That’s it. No explanation needed. The story just continues, although it takes her almost another 200 years before she feels that she has finally freed herself from her destiny, as she puts it.

From a feminist point of view, the attitude towards women is not good, but it is representative. After all, this is a movie written and directed by a woman based on a book by Virginia Woolf. Still, Orlando just assumes that because she is infatuated by a woman, of course that woman belongs to him. He develops a deep misogyny, even though the woman, who was of Russian nobility, probably wasn’t even free to choose her. After Orlando becomes a woman, she also loses her house, because of her sex, even though at that point the country is rules by another woman (this time Queen Victoria).

Orlando is in a unique position to understand patriarchy, so the movie does explore that, although at the same time Orlando is an outsider and doesn’t always understand how things work or it just takes him/her a little more time to learn (like 400 years).

And if you are wondering at this point whether this movie is here because of my fascination with Tilda Swinton, the answer is largely yes. It’s not the only reason, but a big reason.

91. Vampyr (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932, Germany)

Allan Gray, an occultist, becomes involved in a series of weird and dangerous situations after receiving a packet from an old man, who instructs him not to open it until the old man is dead.

Admittedly I find this movie hard to follow at times. Many things seem quite unmotivated or unexplained. Still, that’s not the point of the movie. It manages to invoke a very distinct feeling of uncomfort. There’s a hint of the whole being just in the mind of Gray, but at the same time, we are also given information Gray doesn’t have, which would imply that whatever is happening is real, at least to an extent. Gray isn’t even the real hero of the story in the end. There’s another nameless man, who seems to be much more capable in handling the whole situation.

Dreyer chose to make the whole movie seem kind of hazy, which gives it a bit of nightmarish look, like you can’t quite remember what went on, but will still have some idea. In a way it feels a bit like the German expressionistic movies of 20s, but it isn’t really like that either. In expressionism, the inner feelings of the point-of-view character are imposed on the world around them. Here that might be true, if Gray is in a haze. While the expressionist movies have stark differences between shadow and light, here everything is muted and just gray. Like the name of the character. Don’t read anything into that. It could just be coincidence. I think the book this movie is based on has a character by the same name (haven’t read it, though, and I don’t even know whether it would be readily available, except that it is old enough to perhaps be available on something like Project Gutenberg).

One expressionist technique is the use of stark shadows. Again, I don’t know if this is intentional, but there is a segment in this movie, where shadows leave their hosts to party before they are stopped. Some academic somewhere could have easily interpreted this as making fun of expressionist movies.

This is an early evolution in psychological horror. Germans were already quite good at it, again, with the expressionist movies, but this feels like something that’s more discomforting, like the danger is less than obvious. You can’t trust what you think is going on.

Here, women are put into the role of victims. They don’t have much in the way of agency. Well, neither do the men, but at least they have an illusion of it. The big scary thing is something that can affect people’s minds and force them to do things against their will. While no-one outright says this, it would seem women are more susceptible to this in this movie. It’s also women, who are left behind to take care of the victims (at least the living ones) while the men are figuring out the mystery.

There is also a final image in the film I wonder about. In it two characters are in a moving boat, but the woman is standing. This seems uncomfortable and unnecessary, so why did they do it? Would sitting have been impossible with her complicated dress or was there some point to it? I don’t know, but at the same time I don’t want to make too much of this, as the whole movie seems pretty hard to analyze.

90. Journal d’un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest) (Robert Bresson, 1951, France)

A young priest (only credited as Priest of Ambricourt) takes over a parish. He finds himself struggling with an unknown physical malady, which reflects the spiritual malady hanging around the rest of the small community. Much of the movie is centered on his suffering and his self-pity because of it.

Clearly our young priest is not fit for this job. Besides his sickness, he is not the kind of strong, charismatic figure a parish needs. He seems more inclined to work in academia, but it is possible that that kind of a career would not have been open to him without this experience. He just can’t handle the locals, who seem incapable of taking him seriously, including the priest of the neighboring parish and many of the local kids.

He is especially unequipped to handle the women of the parish, but most of his discussion are with them. Perhaps he feels women are weaker and thus he doesn’t have to feel inferior with them, but he always seems to chew more than he can swallow in those situations. The men he speaks to are much more frank with him and often bring up what they see as his weaknesses, especially the priest the neighboring parish.

There is one girl, who seems to be fond of him for a moment, but even this falls apart quite quickly, as he just can’t seem to approach things in a way that suits the context. Even this situation just leaves a bunch of people miserable.

The place all of this is set in is very small and as of today, the real Ambricourt has been in decline populationwise for a very long time. The earliest listed population on Wikipedia is 163 from 1962 (the latest from 2015 is just 116). In such a small community everyone will know everyone else and trying to insert oneself forcibly into such a network of social connections is going to be difficult, even if you know what you are doing. Our priest just doesn’t.

Much of the movie is narrated through the eponymous diary. There our priest opens up about both his disease and his feelings on the villagers. He doesn’t seem to be very frank even in this context and in the one case where he is, he destroys the pages afterwards. So, why can’t he be honest even to himself? Is it the religion? I know religious people who are clearly and demonstrably lying to themselves on various topics. Like, if you acknowledge evolution on microlevel, you know that it also works on macrolevel, but if you are a creationist, you can’t make the connection, however obvious it it.

As an atheist, I can’t help but think whether we actually need such religious authority figures, especially ones with no capability for authority. Sure, he has some authority from his position, but he is unable to use it because of his demeanor. Is the parish any worse off because of this? He is trying to fix things, but he didn’t cause them. Some other priest with more authority could as easily just dismiss the worries of the people around him as something that is none of his business (and at this point it would have been a ‘he’).

89. Spiklenci slasti (Conspirators of Pleasure) (Jan Svankmajer, 1996, Czech Republic)

The movie begins with old erotic art, which has a comedic bent to it. After that, we get into the masturbation practices of six people. Various plot summaries like to remind us how average the people seem, as if average people don’t have fetishes. Maybe average people don’t have fetishes that are quite this… specific.

It is a comedy. Again, various sources seem to think of it as a dark comedy, but should we really see sexual practices as dark, if there aren’t victims? They are just out to fun in their own unique way. Okay, it does get somewhat darker near the end, but it is still hard for me to see this as a dark comedy.

The six keep running into each other as if to show us that there are people like this everywhere. I guess that’s also the conspiracy of the title of this movie, even if the conspiracy isn’t knowing (can it be conspiracy then?).

Each of them is willing to go pretty far in order to do whatever it is they feel they need to do. The simplest practice is to roll bread into little balls to snort through short hoses and otherwise cram into the various orifices of her head before going to bed, while one of the others owns an abandoned church (or at least has access to one, hard to say as there isn’t any dialogue) in which she whips an effigy of her neighbor, who in turn has built himself an elaborate cockerel costume in order to have his way with an effigy of her in turn… which seems to be some sort of ritual way of trying to make an impression on her. (I guess these two latter ones aren’t as innocent as one might hope, as there is murder as part of each of these fantasies, although in both cases that of a doll only.)

There isn’t really even nudity in the movie. Just images cut from a porn magazine (and one bare butt). In that sense all these fantasies are quite innocent. They seem to have been planning these things out for quite a while, based on their elaborate nature.

While Svankmajer is known for his animations, in some cases even going so far as to animate his human actors, this doesn’t have that much of it. The animations only come into play during the various fantasies, which sort of implies that they are mere fantasies and only happen in their heads. (Although, something seems to always be interrupting these, so perhaps they are also a little bit embarrassed of them, even when they are on their own.)

This is a very egalitarian in that everyone gets to have and enact their fantasies. It doesn’t really matter who you are, there are three men and three women in the six, and they are of different social classes. Even the beautiful news presented has her two carps, which she likes to stroke when her husband is in the shed stroking himself all over his body with various self-built complicated tools.

There isn’t much of a plot here. Only these characters having fun in their own ways or 80 or so minutes.

88. Rekopis znaleziony w Saragossie (The Saragossa Manuscript) (Wojciech Has, 1965, Poland)

Two soldiers from opposing sides of the war come together to read a book on the history of one of their ancestors. The ancestor, one Alfonse Van Worden, encounters all sorts of weird events, but he also hears stories, which keep getting deeper into stories within stories. The themes of these stories vary wildly, but there are some which are purely jokes and others that revolve around love.

This movie has a weird flex: Luis Buñuel apparently watched it three times when he would otherwise hardly ever watch movies more than once. Not that watching movies more than once was even common in his era, as of course home media didn’t exist and most movies, especially of this kind, had a very narrow window where you were able to watch them. So many movies have been totally forgotten because of this. Even this one might have been lost, if other directors weren’t advocating for it (Buñuel died before home media, but Scorsese and Coppola took over talking about it in his stead). Is this worth the attention of these big name directors? I don’t actually know. In a way it feels as if it’s just random chance, but it is a great movie as well.

The movie is based on a Polish book known in English as The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. It was written by Jan Potocki during the Napoleonic Wars and has been described as picaresque. I haven’t read the book, but the movie definitely doesn’t feel picaresque. That is a quite specific genre, where a lower class hero fights against a corrupt society by using his wits alone. You can still see this tradition in so many movies, but this specific movie just isn’t one. Some of the stories within the stories might qualify, however.

Alfonse Van Worden is a fun character. He is imcompetent, easily manipulated and kind of cowardly. He is not really a hero or even a protagonist, except in the sense that he is the point of view for us. He is not really pushing the story further. He just meets people and let’s them pretty much push him around.

There are certain recurring events. On many occasions Van Worden meets two princesses, who are also his cousins despite being Moors, who are destined to marry him. He also regularly wakes up at gallows, where sometimes he is being hanged.

Has (that’s a difficult surename for use in written English sentences) clearly was fascinated with different cultures and religions, as well as hidden parts of society, such as conspiracies, secret societies and the supernatural. I don’t know how much of this is from the book, but we see a number of these things here, some of which would probably have been very unfamiliar to the Polish, although Potocki was known as a traveller, which would have been rare in his lifetime. Some parts of the movie could be seen as problematic, as they are based on various stereotypes, although I don’t think Has had any malicious intents.

There is a surprising number of female characters in the movie, but they are never the center of the stories (although this is arguable in at least one case). They are the objects of desire or tools for manipulating people, who desire them. In a way this is understandable, as women didn’t have much in the way of agency during the time this takes place in, but at the same time, I don’t think this is one of those movies where this is defendable. If this is indeed picaresque, the protagonists should sometimes be female, because they are often in a situation, where they need the wits to win and while they might not technically have been of a lower class, they were definitely were treated as second-class citizens. From this point of view, we also have way too many white protagonists in a world with so many people from other backgrounds.

87. Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992, USA)

William Munny has been retired for a while. He is living on a farm with his two kids after his wife has died and things are not going well. So, when he hears of a bounty from a wanna-be gunslinger, he convinces his old partner, Ned Logan, to join them on their mission.

Things are kind of different here. Munny leaves his two young children alone at the farm. What else is he going to do? There isn’t exactly a babysitting service in the middle of nowhere. He just gives them some instructions and leaves them to handle it on their own. Their only source of help is Ned’s (assumed) wife, who seems to live a fair distance away.

The mission they are on is to avenge a prostitute, who was mutilated by a client after the client didn’t take too well to her reaction to his genitalia. The money comes from a whole group of prostitutes at a specific establishment. An older sex worker organizes the whole thing in order to communicate clearly, that they are not to be messed with.

While slavery is already over at this point (at around 15 years after the American Civil War), everyone seems to just agree that the women are owned by the owner of the establishment. He does have paperwork that he paid for their travel and so-forth, so there must have been some sort of agreement on becoming basically indentured servants, but I would assume this would be considered human trafficking these days.

The owner is not even that interested in the safety of Delilah, the mutilated girl. He is interested in her ability to work for him. The older sex worker does push back against this and he caves, but there is still a huge power imbalance here. He sees the women as investments, even though they are the closest thing he has to a network. The cowboys come and go, but the women stay. Well, because they have to.

The women have pooled their money to pay this bounty. They even promise more than what they have in order to entice a proper killer. They just assume they can pay the rest in kind. But this money is all they have. Alice, the older member of the group, probably understands that the money she has saved is her retirement fund. That is all she has, if she can’t make more money in her current line of work. Despite this, she sees the safety of her community important enough to do this. Of course, that safety does affect her as well.

There’s also the question of how the women ended up here. They must have been desperate in some way. Either they were destitute or there was some other reason they needed to get out of the east coast. They were forced into this situation.

It’s actually kind of weird how progressive the movie is in regards to sex work, considering Clint Eastwood is a lifelong republican, but I guess he is more of an old school libertarian republican than the modern day anti-woke assholes. Still, the prostitutes are very humanized here. They are actual people with their own agency and motivations, who are not in any way portrayed as bad people. Okay, they do hire killers, but in the context of the genre of revisionist westerns, their approach is very much understandable.

The people in the movie don’t think much of women, but the movie is on their side on this one. Eastwood himself just doesn’t seem to have as good of a history with women, especially with Sondra Locke. This movie came out only four years after their relationship ended, so the question might be whether Eastwood reflected upon that in any way while making this movie. At this time, he had made sure she was unable to pursue any kind of a career in movies by setting her up with a development contract and then paying the studio not to take up any of her proposed ideas. That’s just wild.

This history does make me wonder about certain aspects and scenes in the movie. For example, in one scene Delilah, the victim of the attack, hints at the possibility that Munny might want to take an advance on the payment the same way his partners have (you know, “in kind”). Munny declines the offer while Delilah tries to deflect and says that she didn’t mean with herself. Munny tries to salvage the situation by calling her beautiful and telling her that if he would be interested in such an advance it would be her, but he isn’t, because he has a wife (well, he tells her a half-truth here).

Now, Munny is pretty clumsy here. He doesn’t really know how to handle the situation, but he does the best he can, which is fine. The reason I brought this up was that it’s kind of obvious, that Delilah has needs too, but is it Munny or Eastwood who missed this?

It might very well be a 19th century version of chivalry in play here, or it might be that Eastwood doesn’t really understand women.

86. Siu lam juk kau (Shaolin Soccer) (Stephen Chow, 2001, Hong Kong)

A wannabe Shaolin monk gets the opportunity to form a football (or soccer, if you prefer to call a sport with hardly any kicking football instead) team. They use their various kung fu related talents (and creative special effects) to their advantage. Is it enough against the scientific approach of the evil team owner? Also, is it actually worth it?

Stephen Chow doesn’t go halfway with his comedy. He pushes it into complete absurdity and that is on purpose. There is nothing subtle or dry here. When someone tosses his character, Mighty Steel Leg Sing, a can, he kicks it, but he doesn’t just kick it away, instead the man who tossed it him finds the can later on, embedded into a wall, which crumbles as he removes the can. The name of their ultimate opposing team is known as Team Evil and that team trains underwater with additional weights on. The movie just doesn’t shy away from being stupid, but in a good way.

Sing’s love interest is a woman, who bakes goods on the street. Well, it takes him some time to realize she is the love interest, as he is just fascinated with her grace in her work. Sing tries to drag her with him into stardom as he starts to become seduced by the good life. She understands this as an expression of love and she makes an attempt to respond to this by assuming a look she thinks he expects of her, but he just crushes her without understanding her feelings.

This is an interesting take. It isn’t often that a man in a movie rejects a beautiful woman and “friend-zones” her. This doesn’t last too long and the two end up together, but it is an interesting little twist, as usually in movies, especially in comedies, beautiful women are the most important thing in the world for the men, which does feed into the real world masculine toxicity as well.

There is also a pair of women I don’t really know what to think about. They are credited as Team Moustache Player 1 and Team Moustache Player 2. They are obviously women, who are wearing fake moustaches, but that is the extent of the joke. Is that supposed to be funny in itself? Or is the joke that no-one within the movie notices? For all I know, they could be just playing this straight and there could be two women playing males. I mean, I can’t really claim to fully understand Chinese culture and I should be careful about judging them. Still, this felt weird. These two also seem to be the two best technical players in the movie. They just lose because of the Shaolin techniques.

Also, I would like to know how Chinese actually feel about the Shaolin content of the movie. Shaolin, as seen on film, and I don’t just mean this movie, is fictional, but based on real Buddhist practices of the Shaolin Temple. Is there a western equivalent of this? Do we give Christians similar superpowers? I guess exorcists, maybe.

85. Allegro non troppo (Bruno Bozzetto, 1976, Italy)

Okay, so, hear me out. How about we make a bunch of animations around classical music and tie it all together into one movie with vignettes. I mean, it’s not like anyone has done it before. No, not this American Prisney either, you just came up with.

It’s Fantasia, but with a smaller budget, more weirdness and less attention to civility. Since Fantasia itself is arguably quite weird… well, it isn’t actually that different. It just has a very different energy. Fantasia is presented as a piece of important art, Allegro Non Troppo is presented as a poor attempt at that.

Some of the animated parts are pretty straightforward homages to the original, while others take a different ideas, but the themes are mostly quite similar. They are just done cheaper.

The segments in-between the animations are a totally different deal. In this world, the animations are done real time. The single animator, who is locked up in the basement before being brought up for this recording. The orchestra is composed of elderly women, for some reason, who are brought into the theater from a farm, where they were held captive. There’s also a younger cleaning woman around for some reason, as if cleaning is such a strong priority that recordings don’t stop it (she does act as the waiter as well).

The live action segments get sometimes as wild as the animations. There’s even a Loony Toons style scene. They also transition quite organically by the animator gaining inspiration from somethng he sees and often the animations spilling into the live action world.

The animation segments are (according to Wikipedia):

1. Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune – which is about an older faun trying to find a mate
2. Antonín Dvořák’s Slavonic Dance No. 7, Op. 46, – here we see a man trying to better himself and become frustrated that everyone around him keeps up very easily.
3. Maurice Ravel’s Boléro – A Coca-Cola bottle left behind by astronauts spawns new life, which eventually evolves into a society capable of destroying itself. This is a simple, but great piece of classical music that works very well in this context.
4. Jean Sibelius’s Valse triste – For once I get to include something Finnish here, as Sibelius is from Finland (there’s a Sibelius Hall less than a kilometer away from me). This one is about a cat in an abandoned house, meeting ghostly memories.
5. Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto in C major, RV 559 – A bee is having trouble having her dinner, as two human lovers keep messing everything up for her.
6. Parts of Igor Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite – The serpent in Eden ends up eating the forbidden fruit instead of Adam and Eve.
7. bunch of different stuff (Wikipedia put this somewhat better than I did) – a series of escalating acts of destruction

Is there a common theme here? Not really. At some point I thought it might be about inevitability and how time will destroy everything, but that falls apart in the latter half of the movie. In the end it would seem each one has it’s own inspirations without a concern for some overarching message.

While these are cheaper than those from Fantasia, these are not without artistic merit. Quite the opposite. Disney Company has actually embraced this movie and is not shy about this either.

84. Soy Cuba (I Am Cuba) (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1964, Cuba)

This movie comprises of four stories from a pre-revolution Cuba. The aim is clearly to explain why the revolution needed to happen. It is also an ode to the people, who were willing to do it. All of this written by a Russian poet with Soviets being very actively involved in the production.

The first story is about Maria, who prostitutes herself as Betty to the rich Americans, who own many of the businesses in town. She has been pushed into living in a hovel in a ghetto, while the foreigners use her as they please.

Next, we have the story of Pedro, a farmer who loses his lands to an American fruit company. Quite a common tale throughout Latin America.

After that, the revolution is about to begin, as some students plot to kill the chief of police. That fails, as the student designated to do it doesn’t want to risk hitting the chief’s children.

Finally, Mariano is asked to join the revolution, but he would rather take care of his family, but soon after his son is killed in an air raid.

This is clearly a propaganda piece, which I do find somewhat off-putting, but it is also just beautiful. It does help that the propaganda is not extreme. These are things that could have easily been happening and the movie does attempt to bring a human side to all of this. These are flawed heroes. They don’t have to exaggerate anything. The movie has gladly been able to remain very grounded.

Each story is very different and looks at the situation from a very different point of view. We have people oppressed in the city, then people oppressed in the countryside, then people actively taking part in the liberation and finally people resisting joinging the movement.

It has a very unique look. It’s black and white, but sometimes it goes further than this and employs infrared film, which gives extreme contrasts to the colors. The camera work is also distinct, as the camera often moves around very freely, dancing around the subjects, which gives off the feeling that whoever is in picture lacks control of the situation.

Considering how Communism should be more egalitarian, women are pushed to the side. Only the first story focuses on a woman and even in that case, the real victim seems to be his boyfriend, as he walks in on her client leaving her hovel. That’s the end of Maria’s story: how she brought shame to a man and her community, as her secret life is revealed to everyone.

Okay, that’s somewhat exaggerated. She clearly hates having to do her job, so the story is also her tragedy, but I just dislike the need to bring the man into the picture as well. Isn’t her suffering enough? Why do we need to bring in the man to suffer as well to make this relatable?

This is another movie saved by Scorsese’s and Coppola’s interest in World Cinema. This is the kind of thing that could easily have been lost to time (at least in the West) due to it’s political nature. You can or should be able to appreciate the filmmaking no matter what your political inclinations are. My leftist leanings do definitely help here.

83. Relic (Natalie Erika James, 2020, Australia)

Kay and her daughter, Sam, return to Kay’s family home to look for Edna, their mother and grandmother respectively, who has gone missing. Something seems to be off in the house, but it isn’t clear whether they are just imagining it due to the situation, or whether there’s something going on. When Edna suddenly turns up on her own back at the house, it becomes clear that there is indeed something going on with her.

From the point of view of the year’s theme, having three generations of women is of course interesting. You don’t see this very often. Maybe in a drama, but not in a genre movie. At least I can’t remember one. Obviously you can find movies where three generations of women are present, but that they are the focus of the movie. This does allow the movie to explore the intergenerational relationships between women in a way not many movies can. Especially, as that is what the movie is largely about.

The grandmother is suffering from dementia, which is horrible situation on it’s own and many families have to face that at some point or another. It is hard, when someone you have known all your life doesn’t recognize you anymore.

In many ways it is just a very intense family drama, but it is also still a horror movie, but horror movies work best when you are invested in them. There is a this very special category of horror movies, where critics love them and audiences hate them. I always seem to be on the side of critics on these. In this case it’s 92% versus 51% and you know it’s gold for anyone who likes these movies. There will be more of them on this list.

Of course, the easy comparison for three generations of women is the mythological Moirai from Ancient Greece. While they were sisters, they are often depicted as representing different phases of womanhood, which makes them appear to have mother-daughter relationships. Moirai are the Fates, who control the the fates of all mortals.

In a way these women are the opposite of Moirai. Sam doesn’t really know where she is going with her life, while Kay seems to have a better idea, but eventually strays from her previous path.

So, here’s the big reveal: Edna is no more. Her skin has been co-opted by an alien. It isn’t even the first time this has happened in the family, but Kay and Sam are not aware of this.

We see hints of this from early on, but it is not a big focus of the movie. The movie just moves very slowly through this situation. It takes it’s time with every scene. The horror is much more about the atmosphere than a monster, even though there is one present.

The alien is actually kind of a pathetic being. It would seem that it can’t even take over people until they are very old and fragile. Kay recognizes this and her ultimate decision is that she will stay behind and take care of the being, whether it’s her mother or not.

How similar is the feeling of having someone with dementia around? They don’t feel familiar, but you still feel the need to take care of them. I don’t have personal experience of this, but when Mimi Parker (of Low) died in 2022, there were a lot of stories regarding the importance she had had in the lives of many people through her music. One of these was about someone, who had a father suffering from dementia, who had not spoken for a couple of weeks. So, this experience was meaningful enough for this person that they remembered this years after it had happened.

So, you lose connection and you just have to live with it. There’s no options there. I guess this is how Kay sees it. She might be now living with the shell of her mother, but at least it’s something.

82. Petite maman (Celine Sciamma, 2021, France)

Nelly’s grandmother has just died and the family visits her mother’s childhood home to empty it, but the mother can’t handle it and leaves Nelly alone with her father at the house. While he is busy, she wanders around the house and the nearby woods, where she meets a girl her age, whom she befriends quickly.

So, here’s the spoiler: The girl Nelly meets is actually her mother’s 8-year-old self. There is no explanation for this and none is needed either. That would just take away from the magical realism of this movie. I mean there are more pertinent questions you could be asking. For example, why isn’t the mother living in her childhood home as a child? Well, I guess she does, but space-time is weird. The fact that the two houses are identical is part of how Nelly figures out who she is talking to. That’s not a dramatic reveal either. The two just accept it.

The movie has a great approach. This could have been very dramatic, as Nelly’s mother is grieving and Nelly is somewhat unsure of things, but instead it’s just a nice little tale of Nelly having a nice childhood experience connecting with her mother in a new and unexpected way. (She also does have some great moments with her father.) The kids have great chemistry, but that is pretty easy to do, when you cast twins for the parts.

The movie is quite slow and not very long. I don’t know how much the pandemic affected it (it started shooting in late 2020), as Sciamma previous movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire felt in many ways quite similar, but it does feel like a pandemic movie with it’s very small cast (although again, Portrait had a very small cast as well). While the subject matter can be tough, the movie feels very cozy and warm. You know, as safe as children can hopefully feel. There are stakes, but at the same time we know certain things are going to be fine, because Nelly exists.

I wonder how many movies about growing up with main characters of this age take a girl’s perspective? (I guess all movies with characters of that age are going to be about growing up in some sense, but I’m not thinking about movies like Home Alone or Goonies here.) Historically so many of the writers and directors have been male that those experiences must have received much more attention over the 120-something history of the media. As I’m trying to remember these movies, the ones that come to mind are things like Sandlot, Stand By Me and Christmas Story.

I’ve seen Sciamma described as a feminist director, but I think that is unfair. Do we think of Nolan as a chauvinist director because all his main characters are male? So, why try to put Sciamma into a box? She’s just a great director. To me, it almost feels like she has been exploring a new film language with her latest movies. And people are taking notice. This movie was the newest movie on the Sight & Sound’s 2022 Critics Poll, so it has garnered fans in a very small amount of time (also, the second newest film on that list was… Portrait of a Lady on Fire).