Spent New Year's Day working on my Ten Best list to send off to Senses of Cinema. Actually, a very vivid and good year of movies, but the critical discourse was hijacked by considerations of box office and whether the theatrical experience was still viable in terms of the movies. Which meant considerations of movie popularity, rather than considerations of movie quality. Of course, the prime example included TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Since i had no interest in seeing it, in a theater or otherwise, the whole discussion was moot to me. What i found interesting this year were the number of films which might be termed elegies for older filmmakers. There were also films from young filmmakers which seemed to have vital historical, sociological, and cultural import. So this year was a mix. Plus there were two "extra-filmic" works which i thought were profound.

Starting off with the two "extra-filmic" works: the first was EXPEDITION CONTENT, Ernst Karel and Veronica Kusumaryati's film which used the found audio taken during the filming of Robert Gardner's ethnographic classic DEAD BIRDS, somehow this turned out to be revelatory; the other was TERRA FEMME, Courtney Stephens's "illustrated lecture" which probed amateur travelogue footage taken by American women during the 1920s and 1930s while on "exotic" excursions to places in Africa and Asia, an extraordinary display of privileged voyeurism. Highly recommended (both given week-long runs at Anthology Film Archives). Then Number 10) EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (Dan Kwan and Daniel Schienert); Number 9) EO (Jerzy Skolimowski); Number 8) ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (Laura Poitras); Number 7) TILL (Chinonye Chukwu); Number 6) HAPPENING (Audrey Diwan); Number 5) NO BEARS (Jafar Panahi); Number 4) MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY (Patricio Guzman); Number 3) A NEW OLD PLAY (Qiu Jiongjiong); Number 2) BENEDICTION (Terence Davies); Number 1) MARX CAN WAIT (Marco Bellocchio). 

So that wound up being my list. What surprised me was that so many of these films received quite strong reviews upon release, but seemed to get lost in the year-end shuffle (i'm thinking particularly of A NEW OLD PLAY and MARX CAN WAIT). But i'll have more to say about this year's films.