IBJoel

Posted mine in the 2021 Top 10 thread, but wanted to make a new thread for it. What were your favorite films you saw for the first time this year? However many you want to list. Mine in no particular order:

• They Live
• Return of the Living Dead Part II
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• Police Story
• Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
• The Seventh Seal
• Parasite
• For All Mankind (1989)
• Samsara
• Modern Times
• Tokyo Story

Dan

Good thread idea!

• Paddington & Paddington 2 - I had heard all the love for these over the last couple years, but just had no interest. Finally watched them with my family, and we loved them both.
• Black Narcissus - Just watched this the other day. If criterion does a 4K with Dolby Vision, I'm down for a double-dip.
• Take Shelter - I loved Midnight Special when it came out, and finally worked my way backwards to TS. Excellent flick.
• Leprechaun Returns - Yes, it's a cheesy horror franchise, and the dialog is... bad. But the kills in this are worth it!
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - heavy film from a legendary director.

I'm sure I have a few more at least, but I'll have to think about it a bit more.

Mondo Kane

Flash Point (2007)
Boy (2010)
Sacco & Vanzetti (1971)
The Tracker (2002)
Blood Games (1990)
Pickup (1951)
Himalaya (1999)
Black Tight Killers (1966)
When The Clouds Roll By (1919)
The Crimes of The Black Cat (1972)
Wildlife (2018)
War Witch (2011)
The People Who Own The Dark (1979)
Raining Stones (1993)
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (2018) (Although I still need to see this in Spanish)

milo bloom

I'm terrible at tracking these things, so I'm just going to watch other people's responses for reminders

So from above I'm only seeing Police Story as a match for me, and that was pretty impressive.


I also watched A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars more for the first time recently, and those were well made and generally enjoyable.

rw2516

Guilty Bystander
Calcutta
The Web
Nebraska
The Naked Face
Vanilla Sky

bluetoast

My Cousin Vinny
Halloween (1978)
Tootsie
Hoop Dreams
Hara Kiri

Lot of classics I missed out on.

milo bloom

I think I finally watched Casablanca this year now that I think about it. That was fantastic, I was not expecting the dialogue to sparkle like it did.

Norm de Plume

Two great documentaries, both of which I gave 9/10: The dispiriting American Factory (2019) and the wonderful Gleason (2016).

Paff

Wendy and Lucy
Notorious
Invasion of the Body Snatchers ('78)
Deadline
The Human Tornado
The Candy Tangerine Man
The Harder They Come

TheAllPurposeNothing

The Wages of Fear
Rebel without a Cause
Punch Drunk Love
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Anthem of the Heart
The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
Castle in the Sky
Blackmail
The Guns of Navarone

asianxcore

Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999)
Hack-O-Lantern (1988)

Runaway

Pocahontas (1995)
Frozen
Adam's Apples
Clue
The General (1998)
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
The Silent Partner
Beast of No Nation
Lord of the Flies (1963)
Evil Under the Sun (1982)
Leviathan

IBJoel

The Alien-cash-in with Peter Weller? I dug that

Crocker Jarmen

The Human Condition trilogy. I was hooked by the sequence of prisoners arriving by train car within the first half-hour of part one. I'm surprised I'd never heard of this movie before, I found it a stunning achievement in filmmaking. Gripping, horrifying in parts.

More fun was seeing all the Showa era Godzilla movies. I'd foolishly assumed watching men in rubber monster suits wrestling one another would be too silly and childish. Instead, it creates a unique visual, almost like a style of animation. Sure, most of the human parts in those movies are forgettable, but all the Godzilla sequences are gorgeous. Sorry I waited so long.

Mondo Kane

So glad to finally run into someone who knows of this great film!

rocket1312

A lot of times I find that there are certain popular films/genres that I avoid purely on the basis of what I THINK they are. I question why they're so popular and sometimes even look down on people who like them despite the fact that I've never actually seen them. But then I watch one and it suddenly occurs to me exactly why this thing that I downgraded in my mind is so popular and I realize I'm the one who has been missing out all this time. That's not to say that everything that is popular is good, but when something has stood the test of time and seems to have universal acclaim amongst a wide cross section of movie fans, odds are I'm the one who is wrong.

I'll give you an example. Suspiria is a movie that for years I knew nothing about beyond the title and a vague notion that it's a horror movie. With a few exceptions I'm not a big horror guy at all. Just not my jam. In this case I didn't necessarily look down on the people who liked it, I just assumed it wasn't for me based on the fact that it's a horror movie and I don't generally like horror movies. But over the years I kept coming across massive thread after massive thread about the movie on forums like this. I'd see it referenced in articles and piles of praise being heaped on it, and while I still didn't really know anything about it, I started to think that maybe I was missing something. Sure enough, I finally watched it and almost immediately understood what all the fuss was about. It didn't turn me into a horror fan per se, but it made me open up my eyes a little wider and that much more willing to try something outside my comfort zone. That has happened numerous times in my film loving journey and as annoyed as I am sometimes at my own closed-mindedness, when I do discover something I've been avoiding is actually really special, it's exciting that I have this whole new road to explore to see what else I might have been missing.

L Everett Scott

• Circle (2015)
• Hard Core Logo 2 (2010)
• The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020)
• Rain Man (1988)
• Sputnik (2020)
• Them (2006)
• Here Comes the Devil (2012)
• The Night House (2020)
• Carrie (1976)
• One Cut of the Dead (2017)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
• Inside Out (2015)
• Half Nelson (2006)
• Pride (2014)

davidlynchfan

Straight Time (1978)
Upgrade (2018)
The Choirboys (1977)
Mortal Engines (2018)
Throw Down (2004)
The Black Marble (1980)
Rich Kids (1979)
Big Wednesday (1978)

Shannon Nutt

Yeah, that's why I love it...Casablanca is one of the few movies from that era where people talk like normal people instead of like they are in a play or stage presentation, which is rare for 1940s film.

DeFan

Pickup on South Street (1953) Sam Fuller and Richard Widmark in a rare sympathetic role.
Bulworth (1998) Heavy handed but still fun. A lovely young Halle Barry.
Knight and Day (2010) Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. Silly fun
Odds Against Tomorrow (1959) Desperate, unpleasant people in a bank hold-up gone wrong.
Is This our Life (1942) Strained melodrama but Bette Davis is always great as a bitch.
To Die For (1994) For people who think Nicole Kidman can't act.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) Fun send-up of 30s serials.
Nude on the Moon (1961) Doris Wishman makes Ed Wood look professional.
Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (2019) A loving survey looks at the life of this extraordinary song stylist.

DeFan

I worked as an extra on the first Transformer movie. The PA's had to keep yelling at us to stop laughing as we exited a bus and ran away from a tennis ball.

rbrown498

In order of year of release:

The Great White Silence (1924)
The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
The Big Parade (1925)
It's a Wonderful World (1939)
June Bride (1948)
To Joy (1949)
Summer Interlude (1951)
On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Prizzi's Honor (1985)
Hellfest (2018)
Freaky (2020)
Love and Monsters (2020)
Minari (2020)
Possessor Uncut (2020)

L Everett Scott

Been combing through my Letterboxd diary and found a few more:

• Fruitvale Station (2013)
• Rollerball (1975)
• Arthur Christmas (2011)
• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017)
• The Mole Agent (2020)
• Teeth (2007)
• Mr. Church (2016)
• Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
• Hard Candy (2005)
• Booksmart (2019)
• Resolution (2012)

rocket1312

Who thinks Nicole Kidman can't act?

Paff

Idea for the next thread. Movies from THIS thread that you can't believe someone has only just seen this year for the first time.