2025 Film Challenge

Yay!

I've currently completed 12/52 Movies.



Instead of a master list, I like to post sections as I complete them.




B. Eat, Pray, Love

1. Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

2. Faust (1911)

3. Past Lives (2023)

That's how I like to post, too. The whole list (mine and those of other posters) is just overwhelming for me to look at. When people post each section, I feel like I can actually read and absorb what they've watched.

It's good to have both options. In the end you guys can make a collective post for the year and I can link it for posterity.

@CharlesAoup welcome! I don't think I've seen you attempt this before. Please send us some recommendations (at least 10) when you have the time.

PS. Where is @Iroquois?

I've been skimming over the previous recommendations given and, my gosh, I've never heard of at least 75% of these. Lots of googling ahead.

Here are my recommendations:

Angel's Egg (1985)
Neo Tokyo (1987)
Memories (1995)
The Pond (2021)
Redline (2009)
Bad Ben (2016)
Torque (2004)
Christine (2016)
Southbound (2015)
The Similars (2015)
The Congress (2013)
Occult (2009)
Uzumaki (2000)

That's the beauty of that category. Thank you for sending recommendations!

I think most of us know that it's usually a waste of time to recommend Psycho, The Godfather, The Matrix, etc because so many have seen them. I like to use that category to champion stuff I think is underseen.

Super strong recommendation for Flux Gourmet, which I just watched, for the food category.

It's like a more abrasive, food-centric and oddly sexual absurdist comedy version of Berberian Sound Studio. No meaningful plot on the horizon, but incredible texture and atmosphere. I know a lot of people care a lot about story and character development; I don't, but I think this one is universally worth recommending.

I ducked out of this one because it seemed like there might be some animal stuff about to happen, but I do want to finish it at some point.

For that category I watched Chicken for Linda.

There's suggestion that something happened to an animal, but you just see an allegedly dead animal without any sign of violence.

Thank you!

I saw that this is available on Criterion last year and it got my interest. Looks cute. What was your take on it?

I thought it was okay, but not great. Starts really strong and then I just didn't love it. I think that part of it is that there are a lot of harmful things done to the chicken or almost done to the chicken (aside from it just being killed and eaten) that made me squicked out. (Like at one point, a child tries to catch it with a fishing hook which is a horribly cruel thing to do to any animal).

I did like the animation style a lot. It seems like the kind of film that would have been great at around a 30-40 minute runtime.

This one kind of sneaked up on me... just finished my first category of the year:

E. I have always depended on the lists of strangers:
[watch one film featured in each of the following prominent lists]
1. Roger Ebert’s Great Films: All About Eve (1950) - Joseph L. Mankiewicz
2. Steven Jay Schneider’s 1001 Movies: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) - Frank Capra
3. Sight & Sound’s Top 100 (any edition): Blue Velvet (1986) - David Lynch
4. Cahiers du Cinéma’s Annual Top 10: Belle de Jour (1967) - Luis Buñuel
5. MoFo Hall of Fame (nominations included): Blood Simple (1984) - Joel Coen

4 out of 5 are great films! Only one I didn’t care for much, was Blue Velvet. And I’m a huge fan of Lynch.

Okay, thanks!

So there are . . . things . . . happening right now that are making me very anxious, and I'm having trouble even thinking about the movies in this category, especially number 4:

K. The End is Nigh
[watch a film matching each of the world-ending themes below]
1. an environmental collapse film
2. a film about Artificial Intelligence Wallace And Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
3. a film concerning nuclear issues
4. a totalitarian control film

As you can see, I was able to find a light-hearted movie for the AI category. I'm looking for other films that meet the assigned themes, but that aren't total bummers and that wouldn't be too triggering in terms of stuff happening in the real world right now. Any suggestions welcome!

I would go straight back to the 1950s for the nuclear one. They just make a rubber suit and slap the word radiation on it. Shin Godzilla, if you haven't seen it, is essentially about Fukushima.

There's no way you haven't seen it, but The Day After Tomorrow is super cozy, and The Day The Earth Stood Still, with Keanu, is about the environment.

Thank you!

I'm just not in a place to be watching, like, Threads or The Act of Killing.

I actually haven't seen The Day After Tomorrow because at the time it came out I thought it looked kind of dumb. But "kind of dumb" might be what I need right now.