6. Gaslight (1944)

On the one hand, a movie that spawned a whole word ough to be good. On the other, you’d think that would inflate the hype to a level that it can’t meet. And yet this movie does just that. It’s a relatively simple story plotwise, but the writing and acting really sell this movie so well. It definitely earned its place among the canon of film history.

5. Strange Days (1995)

Strange Days is not a very well remembered film in Kathryn Bigelow’s catalog, probably not in a small part due to the difficultly of being able to watch it. Luckily, I was able to get it through inter-library loan. The film itself is set in the at-the-time near future of the waning days of the 20th century, leading up to new year’s day 2000. Like many near future films of that era, it postulates a new technology; in this case, a technology called SQUID to record experiences–visual, senual, and emotional–and then play them back. Ralph Fiennes msaterfully plays a dealer in this grey market of squid recordings gets into a familiar noir scenario where he comes into possession of a recording of a murderer from the murderer’s perspective. It’s a solid noir in a specific microgenre that just presses all my buttons. If it sounds like your kind of thing, I highly recommend checking it out.

4. Enemy Mine (1985)

Enemy Mine has definitely been paraodied to death, but it still holds up quite well. In a pretty blatant Cold War metaphor, a human fighter pilot crash lands on a dagngerous planet alongside an alien pilot. Forced to work together to survive, they end up forming a bond. I don’t want to spoil the rest, but the writing is surprisingly heartfelt. It’s definitely a sci-fi classic that I’m glad I got around to.

3. Locke (2014)

I love single-location films and this one is an excellent example. Tom Hardy stars as Ivan Locke, a construction foreman who is travelling to a far away hospital to meet the mother of his newest child. Most notabaly, the mother is not his wife. Over the course of the night he has to make calls to coordinate a massive construction effort coming in the morning, calm the mother, and tell his wife about his cheating. We only ever see his side of the calls, but the writing and performances build up the tension perfectly. It’s a nailbiting thriller, but all the tension is inside your mind. Quite the masterstroke.

2. Pride (2014)

This movie is almost too good to be true, and yet it’s based on a true story. The movie centers on a London-based org called Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, who raised money in the queer community during the 1984-85 British Miners' Strike. The solidarity between the two groups is shown as being hard, but also powerful. It’s an incredibly hopeful and uplifting movie despite some of the difficult and tragic events it depicts. I highly recommend if you’re feeling cynical about the world.

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

I doubt I can add much to the discourse about this movie but I’ll try. It’s a perfect movie. No qualifications, limits, or caveats. It’s an incredibly inventive sci-fi movie; it writes about generational trauma in a way that few works have ever matched; it is funny as hell; it’s all three. You owe it to yourself to check this out if you haven’t already. Hell, maybe to rewatch if you have.