An awkward title, if I’ve ever seen one.

This might require a little more explanation: I have made an annual best of list for each of the years between 2020 and 2024. In fact, on two of those I’ve revised the list and in a third case I made an additional list later on. However, since I’m very tough here and I will not put any movies on those lists that weren’t actually released in those years, sometimes, quite often, actually, movies fall through the cracks and don’t reach the lists, because the road to an actual release that I am able to see might take a couple of years. So, this is a list of those films.

Understandably, these are relatively obscure movies. Only two of them have broken an arbitrary ceiling of 20,000 ratings on IMDb. One of them has only 1.7k ratings.

Why now? Because while researching the potential for this, I noticed that there are multiple movies I’ve apparently liked very much, but I don’t have any recollection of, so I can’t push this too much or I’ll start forgetting what the others are about as well.

With that in mind, three honorary mentions of movies I’ve apparently seen and liked, but have no recollection of:

Dorogie tovarishchi (Dear Comrades!)
Sheytan vojood nadarad (There Is No Evil)
Irish Catholic

I thought they were good at the time…

If I had to make a top 10 list for the first half of the decade based on the movies on my original lists, it would look something like this:

Relic
Pig
Tar
W
Flux Gourmet
The Banshees of Inisherin
Polite Society
Zone of Interest
The Substance
Kneecap

However, I do think there’s at least two movies below that would have a very strong chance of getting in if that was the list I was making.

Here’s the actual list of ten in no particular order.

Pigen med nålen (Girl with the Needle)

Karoline’s husband is missing, she becomes pregnant and when the mother of the rich father (who is also her employer) turns her down, she loses her job as well.

This is a bleak movie. It’s shot in black and white and shows you the squalor of the world if you were poor in this city. Karoline has nothing and is very desperate and ends up doing desperate things. Dagmar Overbye, the person on whom much of the marketing was based, doesn’t come in until very late into the movie.

Hundreds of Beavers

There’s an applejack maker who’s business is destroyed by beavers, so he sets out on a quest to take revenge. On the way he learns many skills and tries to woo the daughter of the local merchant.

Since when do people still make slapstick comedies that actually work? They are about a hundred years late on this, but it is fun. Also, there’s a weird video game structure including the learning process and just testing certain things to get them right.

Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii (Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World)

Angela is a production assistant who is interviewing people to participate in a training video regarding workplace injuries. We just follow her around as she goes through her day.

This gets into things we don’t normally see in movies. Just every day life. This could be boring, but despite the length it never becomes bogged down. There’s also a weird thread with another Angela from over 40 years ago.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

So, this movie is just cute. Marcel is just a fun little character you immediately find sympathetic and the plot doesn’t even really matter. Also, more stop-motion, please.

You Won’t Be Alone

Austrialian movie where the language is mostly Macedonian with some Aromanian thrown in.

We have a woman, who has been fated to become a witch from birth (even though her mother dies try to save her). However, she refuses isolate herself and instead wants to experience life as a human, even if she has to do it her own way.

I have, many times, talked about my love of folk horror and this is defintiely a great example of that. It’s a little weird and you don’t always really understand everything immediately, but it doesn’t matter. You understand what it’s about and how you are supposed to feel about our “hero”. There’s even some queer themes, when she steals the body and identity of a man for a while.

Censor

Enid, a censor at the British film board, becomes convinced that the movies she is watching for her job can give her hints on what happened to her sister all those years ago.

This is a weird little character study. Sure, there’s a plot, but it’s much more interesting what’s going on with Enid than what’s going on with everything else. Sure, this world of “video nasties” is in itself interesting and fun, especially how these people see themselves, b

The People’s Joker

The world of comedy has been taken over and is fully in control of The Caped Crusader. Somewhere in the shadows a small comedy club is trying to counter this in their own way while one of the owners is struggling with her gender identity.

This is like an artisanal movie. Just people coming together to make a movie that’s important to them. While this is a transstory and I am cis, just the personal touch of the movie is great. I can’t claim to understand everything, but I feel what it is about. I also love the guts to do this with Warner looming over the production.

Spontaneous

Kids in a high school just start exploding one day and no-one can figure out why. This leads to fatalism, but also a love story.

Ah, romantic comedy about teens… Of course, the theme is quite unique and while certain parts go for too long, it is still interesting because of the theme and it just also needs to go on just enough so that we forget that anyone can die at any time.

Limbo

A Syrian refuge has been placed on a remote island off the west coast of United Kingdom. It’s a harsh place, clearly meant to encourage people to leave, but going back to a wartorn country is not an option either, so he tries to live his life with his weird roommate.

The movie has been shot largely very statically with fits the theme nicely and feels like the filmmaker is interested in the people, not the action. However, it should be noted that despite some very dark themes and beats in the story, this is essentially a comedy. In the end it’s about how the human spirit can’t be crushed no matter how much adversity is thrown at it.

War Pony

Elvis’ granddaughter makes her directorial debut (with Gina Gammell). Although, clearly, as she is not a Presley, she is not trying to ride the family name.

This is a story of two young men in a reservation. They are separate stories, but eventually they intertwine. There’s a lot of hustling and a lot of drugs, but it is not about the drugs. It’s about the harshness of life in this community that is economically repressed.

Of course, I can’t speak on behalf of Native Americans and I have to keep in mind that the directors are white. Still, based on what I’ve read, the Lakota people have been very positive about the movie. It is a nice little piece of cinema.