The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in 2022.

1. The Novelist’s Film (Hong Sang-soo)

2. EO (Jerzy Skolimowski)

3. The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg)

4. Il buco (Michelangelo Frammartino)

5. A New Old Play (Qiu Jiongjiong)

6. One Fine Morning (Mia Hansen-Løve)

7. Crimes of the Future (David Cronenberg)

8. RRR (S. S. Rajamouli)

9. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook)

10. The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher)

11. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo)

12. TÁR (Todd Field)

13. Introduction (Hong Sang-soo)

14. White Noise (Noah Baumbach)

15. El Gran Movimiento (Kiro Russo)

16. Saint Omer (Alice Diop)

17. Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron)

18. The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose)

19. Nope (Jordan Peele)

20. Fabian, or Going to the Dogs (Dominik Graf)

21. Benediction (Terence Davies)

22. Armageddon Time (James Gray)

23. Los Conductos (Camilo Restrepo)

24. Wood and Water (Jonas Bak)

25. Onoda (Arthur Harari)

26. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras)

27. Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid)

28. Riotsville, U.S.A. (Sierra Pettengill)

29. Return to Seoul (Davy Chou)

30. Expedition Content (Ernst Karel & Veronika Kusumaryati)

31. A Night of Knowing Nothing (Payal Kapadia)

2019 seems to have become my benchmark for great release years, but 2021, through the truly heroic distributors who released probably more notable arthouse films the same year they premiered than any year since probably 2016, came pretty close to equaling it. While there wasn’t quite the same amount of masterpieces, the bench was very deep for great films, and spanning a wide swath of filmmaking.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City or received a virtual commercial release in 2021. A list, not the list.

1. Drive My Car (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)

2. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

3. Days (Tsai Ming-liang)

4. The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (C.W. Winter & Anders Edström)

5. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze)

6. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Hamaguchi Ryūsuke)

7. Beginning (Déa Kulumbegashvili)

8. West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)

9. The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sang-soo)

10. Wife of a Spy (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)

11. Malmkrog (Cristi Puiu)

12. Just Don’t Think I’ll Scream (Frank Beauvais)

13. Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (Anno Hideaki)

14. Labyrinth of Cinema (Ōbayashi Nobuhiko)

15. Annette (Leos Carax)

16. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson)

17. Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke)

18. The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen)

19. The Disciple (Chaitanya Tamhane)

20. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude)

21. Procession (Robert Greene)

22. The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes)

23. France (Bruno Dumont)

24. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)

25. Notturno (Gianfranco Rosi)

26. The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (Wes Anderson)

27. Fauna (Nicolás Pereda)

28. The Souvenir: Part II (Joanna Hogg)

29. The Metamorphosis of Birds (Catarina Vasconcelos)

30. Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)

31. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2021 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2001)

1. Shanghai Express (1932, Josef von Sternberg)
2. Comrades: Almost a Love Story (1996, Peter Chan)
3. Shanghai Blues (1984, Tsui Hark)
4. Tih-Minh (1918, Louis Feuillade)
5. The Aviator’s Wife (1981, Éric Rohmer)
6. Canyon Passage (1946, Jacques Tourneur)
7. Kagemusha (1980, Kurosawa Akira)
8. Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986, Paul Vecchiali)
9. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968, Sergio Leone)
10. The Color of Pomegranates (1969, Sergei Parajanov)

While I certainly wouldn’t say 2020 approached the greatness of 2019’s release year, it certainly held up much better than could have been reasonably expected, given all the obstacles eventually overcome. The amount of films is a bit misleading; there were definitely fewer films that I adored, and Steve McQueen’s Small Axe anthology accounts for a not insignificant percentage of this list.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City or received a virtual commercial release in 2020. A list, not the list.

1. Martin Eden (Pietro Marcello)

2. To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

3. Fourteen (Dan Sallitt)

4. I Was at Home, But… (Angela Schanelec)

5. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)

6. The Traitor (Marco Bellocchio)

7. Heimat Is a Space in Time (Thomas Heise)

8. Vitalina Varela (Pedro Costa)

9. First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)

10. The Whistlers (Corneliu Porumboiu)

11. Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen)

12. Ghost Tropic (Bas Devos)

13. Tesla (Michael Almereyda)

14. Liberté (Albert Serra)

15. Bacurau (Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles)

16. The Wild Goose Lake (Diao Yinan)

17. City Hall (Frederick Wiseman)

18. Sibyl (Justine Triet)

19. Red, White and Blue (Steve McQueen)

20. Education (Steve McQueen)

21. Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (Bill & Turner Ross)

22. Mangrove (Steve McQueen)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2020 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

1. Perceval le Gallois (1978, Eric Rohmer)
2. Femmes Femmes (1974, Paul Vecchiali)
3. High and Low (1963, Akira Kurosawa)
4. Beijing Watermelon (1989, Nobuhiko Obayashi)
5. His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
6. The Love Eterne (1963, Li Han-hsiang)
7. Peking Opera Blues (1986, Tsui Hark)
8. Yearning (1964, Mikio Naruse)
9. The Rocking Horsemen (1992, Nobuhiko Obayashi)
10. Dirty Ho (1979, Lau Kar-leung)

As I’ve said elsewhere, 2019 was one of the most extraordinary American release years for film I’ve ever seen, benefiting from both a truly fantastic 2018 premiere year and a wonderful slate of American films in 2019. The variety and sheer ingenuity provided so many pleasures and bewitching moments, without ever feeling rote or perfunctory.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City in 2019. A list, not the list.

1. La Flor (Mariano Llinás)

2. Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)

3. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)

4. I Heard You Paint Houses (Martin Scorsese)

5. Transit (Christian Petzold)

6. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

7. Grass (Hong Sang-soo)

8. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)

9. High Life (Claire Denis)

10. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie)

11. In My Room (Ulrich Köhler)

12. Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)

13. An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)

14. The Image Book (Jean-Luc Godard)

15. Hotel by the River (Hong Sang-soo)

16. “I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians” (Radu Jude)

17. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)

18. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)

19. Little Women (Greta Gerwig)

20. Too Late to Die Young (Dominga Sotomayor)

21. What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (Roberto Minervini)

22. Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)

23. Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)

24. 3 Faces (Jafar Panahi)

25. Ad Astra (James Gray)

26. Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2019 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

1. Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette)
2. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933, Fritz Lang)
3. The Awful Truth (1937, Leo McCarey)
4. The Mother and the Whore (1973, Jean Eustache)
5. Mahjong (1996, Edward Yang)
6. A City of Sadness (1989, Hou Hsiao-hsien)
7. The End of Evangelion (1997, Hideaki Anno)
8. Out 1: Spectre (1972, Jacques Rivette)
9. A Confucian Confusion (1994, Edward Yang)
10. India Song (1975, Marguerite Duras)

This year, I definitely cut back on both film watching and writing on films released this year in favor of viewing for my podcast. Perhaps because of this general consistency of viewing, despite an even lower number of films that I truly loved than the doldrums of last year, I feel much more enthusiastic about the riches that this film year had to offer. Many of these filmmakers were known quantities, but they seemed to surprise me and reveal heretofore unknown depths or avenues, in ways that augmented their strengths rather than serving as the sole overwhelming asset.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City in 2018. A list, not the list.

1. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)

2. The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)

3. The Day After (Hong Sang-soo)

4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)

5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen)

6. Bisbee ’17 (Robert Greene)

7. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)

8. Zama (Lucrecia Martel)

9. Un beau soleil intérieur (Claire Denis)

10. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)

11. Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

12. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson)

13. Claire’s Camera (Hong Sang-soo)

14. Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher)

15. Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)

16. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2018 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

1. The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Orson Welles)
2. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944, Vincente Minelli)
3. Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Howard Hawks)
4. Late Spring (1949, Yasujiro Ozu)
5. Napoléon (1927, Abel Gance)
6. A Star Is Born (1954, George Cukor)
7. Sansho the Bailiff (1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)
8. Taipei Story (1985, Edward Yang)
9. Gertrud (1964, Carl Theodor Dreyer)
10. That Day, on the Beach (1983, Edward Yang)

2017 was, to put it mildly and flippantly, an utter oddity of a year in so many ways. When I look at my list, the overall quality of the films themselves was perhaps no poorer than in the monumental selections of the past two years, but there was a certain bewilderment, a malaise that put me at a distance. With the exception of Twin Peaks: The Return, there was practically no film where my love was not complicated in some way, and it seems equally due to the films as it is to the year at large.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues (plus a few more) that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City in 2017. It is a snapshot rather than a permanent fixture.

1. On the Beach at Night Alone (Hong Sang-soo)

2. The Work (Jairus McLeary and Gethin Aldous)

3. Faces Places (Agnès Varda & JR)

4. Princess Cyd (Stephen Cone)

5. Good Time (Josh & Benny Safdie)

6. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (S.S. Rajamouli)

7. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)

8. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (Noah Baumbach)

9. Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson)

10. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (Paul W.S. Anderson)

11. The Son of Joseph (Eugène Green)

12. 120 BPM (Beats Per Minute) (Robin Campillo)

13. Marjorie Prime (Michael Almereyda)

14. Call Me by Your Name (Luca Guadagnino)

15. The Post (Steven Spielberg)

16. Hermia & Helena (Matías Piñeiro)

17. Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson)

18. The Human Surge (Eduardo Williams)

19. Downsizing (Alexander Payne)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2017 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

1. A Touch of Zen (1971, King Hu)
2. The Terrorizers (1986, Edward Yang)
3. Rear Window (1954, Alfred Hitchcock)
4. Rio Bravo (1959, Howard Hawks)
5. A New Leaf (1971, Elaine May)
6. Ashes of Time (1994, Wong Kar-wai)
7. Surviving Desire (1991, Hal Hartley)
8. Do the Right Thing (1989, Spike Lee)
9. The Unbelievable Truth (1989, Hal Hartley)
10. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974, Tobe Hooper)

2016 definitely wasn’t my first year of cinephilia, but it feels in many ways like the first concrete step towards it becoming my all-consuming passion. From joining and becoming immersed in Twitter to watching more and more to writing on here, Seattle Screen Scene, and Brooklyn Magazine, it’s been rather extraordinary.

The following list is formed from the reds, oranges, greens, and blues that I have seen at time of writing that were commercially released in New York City in 2016. It is woefully inadequate and incomplete, but nothing ever is in cinephilia.

1. Manchester By The Sea (Kenneth Lonergan)

2. Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)

3. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson)

4. My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)

5. The Handmaiden (Park Chan-wook)

6. Right Now, Wrong Then (Hong Sang-soo)

7. Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene)

8. Henry Gamble’s Birthday Party (Stephen Cone)

9. O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman)

10. Elle (Paul Verhoeven)

11. Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)

12. Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Løve)

13. SPL II: A Time for Consequences (Soi Cheang)

14. Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

15. The Edge of Seventeen (Kelly Fremon Craig)

16. Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)

17. Aquarius (Kleber Mendonça Filho)

18. Sunset Song (Terence Davies)

19. The Shallows (Jaume Collet-Serra)

20. Sully (Clint Eastwood)

21. Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno)

22. Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)

23. Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman)

My Top 10 Discoveries During 2016 (for first-time viewings of films made before 2000)

1. A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Edward Yang)
2. Chungking Express (1994, Wong Kar-wai)
3. Trust (1990, Hal Hartley)
4. Wavelength (1967, Michael Snow)
5. Manhunter (1986, Michael Mann)
6. The Devils (1971, Ken Russell)
7. Carlito’s Way (1993, Brian De Palma)
8. Out 1 (1971, Jacques Rivette)
9. Ran (1985, Akira Kurosawa)
10. Days of Being Wild (1990, Wong Kar-wai)

In conclusion: