Last seen in 1997 in Film Forum’s “Killer B’s” series, I liking it a lot but I had no memory of how riveting Glenn Ford is in it. He’s incredible. Learning afterwards what a notorious womanizer he was (he had affairs with 146 actresses) his seductiveness in this makes sense. We saw it with a Q&A afterwards with the son of the film’s blacklisted screenwriter Halsted Welles, during which it came out that much of what Welles had added to the slim Elmore Leonard story (everything before the bridal suite) was vaguely autobiographical. Gorgeously shot (by the man who had shot Lady from Shanghai a decade earlier) I’m only docking it half a star for the implausibility of its final 5 minutes.

Watched on Saturday February 15, 2025.

I was going to give this two stars (for the occasional chuckle) but then it kept going on and on past various false endings for no good reason. Would not have expected anything from this film until a couple of raves online (including a New York Times Critics Pick!?) and the presence of Leo Woodall suckered me into thinking it might be good.

Watched on Tuesday February 11, 2025.

Takeaways from this: They did Sheila E dirty. Huey Lewis is a nice guy. Fascinating to watch Dylan here right after A Complete Unknown. Waylon Jennings drew the line at singing Swahili. Cyndi Lauper sure made the most of her moment. All the “old” people in this now seem so young (Kenny Rogers was only 45!). Prince missed out. That song isn't so bad.

• Red Desert
• Pierrot le Fou
• Andrei Rublev
• PlayTime
• Once Upon a Time in the West
• The Color of Pomegranates
• Zorns Lemma
• McCabe & Mrs. Miller
• We Won't Grow Old Together
• The Long Goodbye

...plus 51 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Only including films where Letterboxd is using my design. Some of these (Bill Cunningham, The Falls) are actually dvd covers and some have been pointlessly stripped of their non-title type by whoever does that for TMDb. You can see the unadulterated posters here: www.impawards.com/designers/adrian_curry.html

• After Tiller
• Alma's Rainbow
• Ballets Russes
• Bill Cunningham New York
• Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts
• The Bit Player
• Blue
• Born to Be
• Bushman
• Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters

...plus 49 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Working my way through this list: windinthetrees.wordpress.com/2008/10/10/holy-grails.

1. The Enchanted Desna
2. Distant Thunder
3. Out 1
4. The Death of Empedocles
5. A Bee in the Rain

   On YouTube without subtitles: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajlsqaVZE6U

6. The ionate Friends
7. Doomed Love
8. Along Brighton Beach Avenue

   Listed as Untitled, Part One in Jim Hoberman's Top Ten of 1982 or 83. Almost got to see it at NYU in the fall of 2017 but Ernie said the print was too faded to red to show. Showed at MoMA in early 2024.

9. An Independent Life
10. The Report

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 10 in order of preference, 10 runners-up in alphabetical order.

1. Drive My Car
2. Lamb
3. Red Rocket
4. The Worst Person in the World
5. The Card Counter
6. Malmkrog
7. About Endlessness
8. Nomadland
9. The Velvet Underground
10. Annette

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
2. There Will Be Blood
3. No Country for Old Men
4. I'm Not There
5. Zodiac
6. Red Road
7. Knocked Up
8. We Own the Night
9. Quiet City
10. Day Night Day Night

Delivered November 29, 2023

1. Godland
2. The Zone of Interest
3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
4. May December
5. Four Daughters
6. Beau Is Afraid
7. Emily
8. Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
9. Close to Vermeer
10. R.M.N.

Top Ten in Order of Preference. Next 15 in alphabetical order.

Caveats: Cow and Hit the Road—both released in 2022—were in my 2021 Top 20. Memoria, technically a 2021 release, was only released at the very end of 2021 and took forever to get to Sag Harbor, so I'm counting it. I Like it Here hasn’t yet been released. 

Haven't yet seen these potential contenders: Saint Omer, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, All That Breathes, Il Buco.

Films I didn't like as much as everyone else: Tár, Petite Maman, Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Films I didn’t like as much as I hoped to, considering how much I like their directors: Triangle of Sadness, After Yang, The Girl and the Spider, Intregalde, Armageddon Time and even Crimes of the Future (despite it still being in my Top 25).

1. The Banshees of Inisherin
2. EO
3. The Cathedral
4. Memoria
5. Aftersun
6. Compartment No. 6
7. Kimi
8. Three Minutes: A Lengthening
9. I Like It Here
10. Benediction

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 10 in order of preference, 10 runners-up in alphabetical order.

Absenting myself from including Kino Lorber and Zeitgeist releases (Beanpole, Bacurau, Sorry We Missed You, Oliver Sacks, Young Ahmed and Martin Eden), though all are top-notch.

1. Beginning
2. Lovers Rock
3. I'm Thinking of Ending Things
4. Liberté
5. Heimat Is a Space in Time
6. I Was at Home, But . . .
7. First Cow
8. Never Rarely Sometimes Always
9. David Byrne's American Utopia
10. Swallow

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 10 were my favorite theatrical releases of the year, 11-15 were fave unreleased (at the time) films of the year and 16-20 were fave docs.

1. Bloody Sunday
2. What Time Is It There?
3. Solaris
4. Russian Ark
5. Femme Fatale
6. All or Nothing
7. 25th Hour
8. Far from Heaven
9. Adaptation.
10. Talk to Her

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top ten in order, the rest of the top 30 alphabetical. Originally published here: windinthetrees.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/my-favorite-films-of-the-’00s/. For some reason I forgot my favorite 2009 films when I made this list. Two Lovers, 35 Shots of Rhum and La Danse should all be in here somewhere.

1. Dogville
2. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
3. Werckmeister Harmonies
4. The New World
5. Gerry
6. Distant
7. Platform
8. Flight of the Red Balloon
9. On the Occasion of ing the Turning Gate
10. Far from Heaven

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Originally published with runners-up et al here: windinthetrees.wordpress.com/best-of-2009. Fred Wiseman's La Danse was my favorite documentary of 2009 and should probably be #2 in this list as I listed it as my favorite film made in 2009 here: letterboxd.jeux1001.com/adriancurry/list/my-favorite-film-of-each-year-of-my-life.

• Two Lovers
• 35 Shots of Rum
• Ponyo
• Antichrist
• Three Monkeys
• Moon
• The Hurt Locker
• The Limits of Control
• ing Strange
• The White Ribbon

Originally published with runners-up et al here: windinthetrees.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/best-of-2011/

1. The Turin Horse
2. Hugo
3. The Four Times
4. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
5. This Is Not a Film
6. Tuesday, After Christmas
7. The Tree of Life
8. Mysteries of Lisbon
9. Pina
10. House of Tolerance

Originally published with runners-up et al here: windinthetrees.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/best-of-2010/

1. I Am Love
2. Symbol
3. Fish Tank
4. The Arbor
5. To the Sea
6. Boxing Gym
7. Black Swan
8. Another Year
9. Catfish
10. The Ghost Writer

1. Roma
2. First Reformed
3. The Green Fog
4. Amazing Grace
5. Western
6. Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc
7. John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection
8. Hale County This Morning, This Evening
9. Cold War
10. Burning

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. A Christmas Tale
2. Synecdoche, New York
3. Flight of the Red Balloon
4. The Wrestler
5. Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
7. Encounters at the End of the World
8. Ballast
9. Happy-Go-Lucky
10. Momma's Man

#11 and #12 were the best unreleased (at the time) films I saw in 2006

1. Climates
2. A Prairie Home Companion
3. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
4. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
5. Pan's Labyrinth
6. The Queen
7. The Child
8. Children of Men
9. Casino Royale
10. Mutual Appreciation

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Caché
2. The New World
3. The White Diamond
4. Grizzly Man
5. A History of Violence
6. The Holy Girl
7. Games of Love and Chance
8. Good Night, and Good Luck.
9. The Squid and the Whale
10. Me and You and Everyone We Know

1. Dogville
2. The Return
3. Before Sunset
4. Fahrenheit 9/11
5. Sideways
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Bourne Supremacy
8. The Five Obstructions
9. The Brown Bunny
10. Collateral

1. Dancer in the Dark
2. Yi Yi
3. The House of Mirth
4. The Gleaners and I
5. Chuck & Buck
6. Nightfall
7. American Psycho
8. Code Unknown
9. The Wind Will Carry Us
10. Water Drops on Burning Rocks

1. A Brighter Summer Day
2. Satantango
3. Naked
4. The Age of Innocence
5. GoodFellas
6. Heat
7. Dream of Light
8. Breaking the Waves
9. My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
10. Boogie Nights

1. eXistenZ
2. The Straight Story
3. Election
4. Being John Malkovich
5. The Blair Witch Project
6. Eyes Wide Shut
7. Besieged
8. Beau Travail
9. The Insider
10. Romance

1. The Thin Red Line
2. Nil by Mouth
3. Seventh Heaven
4. The Mirror
5. There's Something About Mary
6. Flowers of Shanghai
7. Buffalo '66
8. Out of Sight
9. Bulworth
10. My Name Is Joe

1. Werckmeister Harmonies
2. Memento
3. Platform
4. Songs from the Second Floor
5. Under the Sand
6. The Taste of Others
7. Moulin Rouge!
8. In the Mood for Love
9. Fat Girl
10. Donnie Darko

This was my Top Ten as it stood at the end of 1987. Nothing added or changed. I still stand by Wings of Desire, but The Fly and Blue Velvet should have been a very close #2 and #3 (and I've never seen Little Dorrit or Dark Eyes since).

1. Wings of Desire
2. Little Dorrit
3. Dark Eyes
4. The Dead
5. Something Wild
6. Angel Heart
7. Blue Velvet
8. Prick Up Your Ears
9. The Fly
10. Siesta

This was my Top 10 as it stood at the end of 1996. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Breaking the Waves
2. The Portrait of a Lady
3. My Sex Life... or How I Got Into an Argument
4. Goodbye South, Goodbye
5. Crash
6. Dead Man
7. Basquiat
8. Irma Vep
9. The Son Of...
10. Secrets & Lies

This was my Top 10 as it stood at the end of 1997. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Boogie Nights
2. Mother and Son
3. Nenette and Boni
4. Taste of Cherry
5. In the Company of Men
6. Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist
7. Love’s Debris
8. A Moment of Innocence
9. Happy Together
10. Titanic

This was my Top 10 as it stood at the end of 1995. Nothing added or changed since, though Heat should now be #1.

1. Institute Benjamenta, or This Dream People Call Human Life
2. The Bed You Sleep In
3. Heat
4. Georgia
5. Happy, Too Happy
6. Flamenco
7. Cyclo
8. The Convent
9. Strange Days

This was my Top 10 as it stood at the end of 1994. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Satantango
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Sure Fire
4. Bitter Moon
5. Little Buddha
6. Dear Diary
7. 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance
8. Through the Olive Trees
9. The Days
10. What Happened Was...

This was my Top 10 as it stood at the end of 1993. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Naked
2. The Age of Innocence
3. Three Colours: Blue
4. The Long Day Closes
5. Blue
6. Short Cuts
7. Center Stage
8. Groundhog Day
9. Chasing Butterflies
10. M. Butterfly

This was my Top 20 as it stood at the end of 1992. Nothing added or changed since.

1. A Brighter Summer Day
2. Dream of Light
3. The Hours and Times
4. It Wasn't Love
5. Stone
6. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. Bad Lieutenant
9. Laws of Gravity
10. Light Sleeper

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top Ten in order of preference, 11-30 in alphabetical order.

1. Under the Skin
2. Winter Sleep
3. National Gallery
4. Force Majeure
5. Goodbye to Language
6. Norte, The End of History
7. Manakamana
8. Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
9. The Strange Little Cat
10. Leviathan

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Top 5 in alphabetical order, 6-20 also in alphabetical order, and followed by 30 more films I really liked and highly recommend, out of 104 new releases seen. (Zeitgeist Films releases recused.)

Best straight-to-digital release that would have been in my Top Ten: Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (Jonathan Demme, USA)

Best unreleased new film: Sieranevada (Cristi Puiu, Romania); runner-up: All This Panic (Jenny Gage, USA)

Best 2015 release caught up with in 2016: Office (Johnnie To, Hong Kong)

Best 2017 release seen in 2016: A Quiet ion (Terence Davies, UK)

Best old film seen for the first time: Ilych's Gate (Marlen Khutsiev, USSR, 1961); runners-up: A Taste of Honey (Tony Richardson, UK, 1961) and July Rain (Marlen Khutsiev, USSR, 1966)

Best retrospective: Straub-Huillet at MoMA

Best new short film: The Day Before the End (Lav Diaz, Philippines)

2016 release I most wish I'd seen but didn't: Happy Hour (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan)

1. American Honey
2. La La Land
3. O.J.: Made in America
4. Sunset Song
5. Toni Erdmann
6. Allied
7. Cameraperson
8. Elle
9. Embrace of the Serpent
10. Everybody Wants Some!!

...plus 40 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Century of Birthing
2. Two Years at Sea
3. The Master
4. The Turin Horse
5. Amour
6. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
7. This Is Not a Film
8. The Deep Blue Sea
9. Neighboring Sounds
10. Cosmopolis

These are my 20 favorite 2013 US theatrical releases that I saw in 2013 (or a year earlier at festivals) ranked in order of preference.

1. Beyond the Hills
2. Inside Llewyn Davis
3. Leviathan
4. The Wolf of Wall Street
5. Before Midnight
6. The Past
7. Her
8. The Wind Rises
9. Like Someone in Love
10. Let the Fire Burn

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. It Follows
2. The Assassin
3. The Pearl Button
4. The Look of Silence
5. Anomalisa
6. Journey to the West
7. Goodnight Mommy
8. Phoenix
9. Timbuktu
10. Court

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Phantom Thread
2. A Ghost Story
3. Loveless
4. Good Time
5. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library
6. The Florida Project
7. A Quiet ion
8. Nocturama
9. The Square
10. I, Tonya

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This was my Top Ten as it stood at the end of 1991. Nothing added or changed since.

1. The Garden
2. Europa
3. Naked Lunch
4. The Silence of the Lambs
5. Thelma & Louise
6. To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror
7. The Double Life of Véronique
8. Point Break
9. Edward II
10. The Killer

This was my Top Ten as it stood at the end of 1990. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Dekalog
2. GoodFellas
3. Piravi
4. Black Rain
5. Season of Monsters
6. Freeze, Die, Come to Life
7. Siddheshwari
8. Time of the Gypsies
9. Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
10. Pièce touchée

This was my Top 15 as it stood at the end of 1989. Nothing added or changed since.

1. The Thin Blue Line
2. Let's Get Lost
3. Broken Noses
4. Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie
5. Roger & Me
6. Crimes and Misdemeanors
7. Another Woman
8. sex, lies, and videotape
9. Do the Right Thing
10. Sidewalk Stories

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This was my Top 20 as it stood at the end of 1988. Nothing added or changed since.

1. Distant Voices, Still Lives
2. A Short Film About Killing
3. Bagdad Cafe
4. King of the Children
5. Midnight Run
6. Beetlejuice
7. High Hopes
8. The Runner
9. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
10. The Debt

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.