34 feature length movies and 12 shorts. Towards the end I was having a little bit of trouble connecting scenes into narratives so it’s probably just as well that my last two movies were a magic realism fable and a sociological essay. That was a very good time and I hope to do it again sooner than a decade from now. Since I’m that kind of person, I made ranked lists for features and shorts. It was a pretty good year. Hippo is particularly good if you like thinking about conspiracies and cult dynamics and such. Baby Assassins 2 Babies has a martial arts fight scene that’s probably going to wind up in my top ten ever. I’m also particularly pleased that the Southeast Asian films I saw were more mature than some I’ve seen in previous years — it feels like the programmers have a solid handle on how to program the good stuff. ...

Movies reviewed this week: The Fantastic Golem Affairs, Stay Online, The Primevals, Tiger Stripes, Paragon, Restore Point, In My Mother’s Skin, Good Condition, Lovely, Dark, and Deep, Rascals, If Footmen Tire You, What Will Horses Do?, The Burning Hell, A Chinese Ghost Story, Insomniacs After School, Femme, Devils, The Perfect Place to Cry, Blackout, Drumming Makes You Happy, The Becomers, Lollygag, Hippo, Baby Assassins 2 Babies, Every House is Haunted, Where the Devil Roams, Aporia, Pett Kata Shaw, River, Saint-Sacrifice, The Sacrifice Game, Ms. Apocalypse, School Girl, The Man Traveling with the Brocade Portrait, Kurayukaba, Home Invasion, Hellmark, With Love and a Major Organ, and Ms. Apocalypse.

We had eight days of movies scheduled; we have completed four days. Halfway mark! I am tired but very happy; our hotel continues to be perfectly positioned and the food’s still quite good. There’s this little counter service Chinese place next to the hotel which is unexpectedly tasty. Highlights so far: Lovely, Dark, and Deep, which is some of the best cosmic horror I’ve seen in a while. Not Lovecraftian. It lays out the situation in the first fifteen minutes, so that as Georgina Campbell discovers the scope of the horror, we have the same retroactive realizations she does. Smart movie. ...

It’s so good to be back. Previously: 2004, 2006, 2015. So I guess this is my 20th anniversary Fantasia, which is unplanned but nice. I’d like to go more than once every ten years — remind me in 2028, right? We might have squeezed one in around 2020, but the pandemic. View of a modernist college building with a line of people curved around the corner. ...

Movies reviewed this week: Yield to the Night, Mandy, Scenes from a Marriage, AKARI, Shin Kamen Rider, The First Slam Dunk, Sympathy for the Devil, Divinity, Ride On, Talk to Me, Uberlinks, and New Normal.

Movies reviewed this week: The Limits of Control, Green for Danger, Biosphere, The Neon Demon, Five Dolls for an August Moon, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and Jane B. by Agnès V..

Movies reviewed this week: Clean, Elite Squad, No, the Case Is Happily Resolved, The Man from Laramie, Point Break, Bringing Up Baby, Flesh + Blood, and Prospect.

Movies reviewed this week: Past Lives, Attica, Two-Lane Blacktop, Santa Sangre, Computer Chess, Paranoia, Wheels on Meals, Nimona, and And God Said to Cain.

Movies reviewed this week: Judas and the Black Messiah, A Lesson in Love, In the Line of Duty 4, Le Mans, The Lovers on the Bridge, Asteroid City, and In the Earth.

Movies reviewed this week: Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Topsy-Turvy, The Cannonball Run, In a Lonely Place, Tetsuo: The Iron Man, In the Line of Duty 3, Night Moves, Election 2, and Party Girl.