feb challenge week 1 - top 10 films

[shyshyshiloh]

inspired by this! lists feel easier than writing rn. i’m also going with films as my choice of standalone media despite being largely uncultured as a movie watcher… idk we’ll get into it.

i am both so terrible at setting aside time to watch anything and also at remembering what i do manage to watch that i wouldn’t even necessarily call this “top 10 films” like, quality-wise. it’s more like “top 10 films that had some kind of impact on me even if that impact was really unwarranted”. and also if any #realfilmbros are reading this know that my taste is supremely basic, please be nice to me.

10. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), dir. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman — DON’T click off yet i promise i have cooler and higherbrow choices coming down the line (mostly a lie). and anyway maybe now we all think it’s a given how good the spiderverse movies are, but seriously at the time this rocked my world.


11. Suzume (2022), dir. Makoto Shinkai — shinkai is such a frustrating filmmaker to me because his ideas are so compelling and fantastical and yet he still always has to make the same boring boy get the same cute magical martyr girl, so i can never like anything he puts out without having to put a big asterisk on it. suzume isn’t really an exception because i could have done without the whole “i, a high schooler, have a crush on this grad student”, but i do appreciate how much narrative good comes from having suzume be the protagonist instead of another boring boy. and anyway the heart of this movie is the power of place and the power of kindness and the power of people in the everyday and road trips!! it’s my favorite of his filmography.


12. The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), dir. Derek Cianfrance — this is not a good movie. it’s divided into three parts and each one is stupider than the last. but i literally haven’t stopped thinking about it since i watched it and i have absolutely no idea why.


13. 3-Iron (2004), dir. Kim Ki-duk — gorgeous movie with such quietly confident storytelling. i never thought i could be so taken with something that has almost no dialogue (also 3-iron walked so that the anne hathaway twelfth night photo could run).


14. Blue Gate Crossing (2002), dir. Yee Chih-yen — sometimes growing up really did feel like a big long dream i had by empty poolsides and in darkened gyms and on long bike rides into nowhere. blue gate crossing famously has no answer to a lot of the questions it raises, but i don’t want it to.


15. Sunny (2011), dir. Kang Hyeong-cheol / Sunny: Our Hearts Beat Together (2018), dir. Hitoshi One — i watched the japanese remake before i watched the korean original, but they’re both really good in their own ways. maybe it’s not the most cerebral thing out there but god. i love friendship.


16. I Saw the TV Glow (2024), dir. Jane Schoenbrun — i don’t have anything to say that hasn’t already been said, except maybe that no movie captures the lonely fluorescent horror of growing up (trans) in the suburbs as well as this one.


17. Our Times (2015), dir. Frankie Chen — this is a wacky little movie with awkward pacing and a cliche plot but it went platinum with every taiwanese person i know. i simply would not be the same person without it. and anyway i will die on the hill that the first 30 minutes are really truly rock-solid, whatever happens after that i’m pretending not to see.


18. Battle Royale (2000), dir. Kinji Fukasaku — really one of my all-time favorites. it’s the social allegory and the world-building and the character work and of course the brutal splattery stakes. sicko voice yes!! yes!!!


19. Try Harder! (2021), dir. Debbie Lum — i am not kidding when i say that a documentary about college applications is the closest thing i have to a comfort movie. i didn’t have the quote-unquote typical american high school experience (what even is that, anyway?), so for the longest time i didn’t relate to any “classic” coming-of-age movies… john hughes when i get you. try harder! was the first time i saw a reflection of what my high school life was really like. it made me reminisce and it made me cry and it really stuck with me — though of course in comparison to my life it is turned up almost hyperbolically to 11 (i did not go to a hypercompetitive majority-asian school! the pressure was instead, as they say, coming from inside the house). it’s hard to explain exactly how i feel in full but at the end of the day, i really do love this one so much.