30 Years… 30 Movies
This list contains one film that encompasses every year of life I have already experienced, the rest are pure speculation on my part about what these future years may contain…
1.Window Water Baby Moving
Stan Brakhage, (1959)
You cannot understand anything at age one, except maybe your own birth! If you have forgotten, please be reminded: thank you Stan Brakhage.
2. The Sick Kitten
George Albert Smith, (1903)
This particular short is historically relevant because it one of the first cases the camera emphasises a subject completing a particular action through zooming on the moment where the kitten is being fed, then zooming out, back to its original point of view. At two years old, you are learning new actions, you are experimenting, learning to walk…ultimately this one minute short would be quite legible for a two year old.
3. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Tobe Hooper, (1974)
A friendly childhood tale able to imbue a genuine sense of morality throughout the early, turbulent years of toilet training. Like a soothing cold rag upon a boiling strip of flesh, Hooper’s masterpiece is a relieving, moralistic journey!
4. The Last Unicorn
Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr., (1982)
This animated masterwork follows a unicorn on a journey to search out other members of her kind. As one's social skills develop around age four (for the purposes of both survival and company), I believe all children become little mobile unicorns, searching out the others.
5. The Night of the Hunter
Charles Laughton, (1955)
Charles Laughton’s only feature film follows an archetypal trickster-priest who hunts a stash of money hidden by two children. Perfect for age five because it is fable-like with its warning against the “evil white-van stranger” underscored by a consistent, unbearable tension.
6. The General
Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton (1926)
Goes incredibly hard, watch with the Joe Hisaishi score for ultimate whimsy. A necessary step-up within the locomotive genre from Thomas the Tank Engine.
7. The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T
Roy Rowland, (1953)
Dr. Seuss considered this film—his only attempt to write for the live action screen—a disappointment, not having lived up to what he envisioned. I think this is hardly the case, not only because I personally relate to the main character’s plight (being transported to a nightmarish world where he is tormented by his autocratic piano tutor), but because of the arrestingly wacky/wonderful music, costuming, set, and production design.
8. Deliverance
John Boorman (1972)
At age eight, I tried to run away from home—I think if I had seen Deliverance, I would have been too scared of the wilderness to even try. This film, beyond its portrayal of “masculine bonding”, showcases precisely what happens when humanity does not show deference to nature (Like another one of my favourites, Clouzot’s 1953 The Wages of Fear). When I ran away, I returned the same day.
9. Paper Moon
Peter Bogdanovich, (1973)
Every time I think of Paper Moon a soft smile overwhelms my face and my nostalgic heart swells and opens up. Ryan O’Neal and Tatum O’Neal—real-life father and daughter (obviously)—masterfully reprise their relationship through their tragicomic performances. I would have loved for Tatum to be my role model at nine.
10. Pixote
Héctor Babenco, (1980)
Heavy, visceral, and intense. If you are reading this and are currently ten-years-old do not watch this one. Pixote examines juvenile delinquency in Brazil, exposing both institutional and social failures. This film really drains you, though it is incredibly emotionally stirring, revealing the extent of resilience and determination children are capable of.
11. The Flying Luna Clipper
Ikko Phno, (1987)
Letterboxd reviewer Scumbalina summarises the film: “The Flying Luna Clipper is an 8-bit computer animation about an airplane that flies a bunch of anthropomorphic fruit and one snowman around the world so they can fulfil their dreams”. This is more than just a silly animation, it is a true reflection of my deep connection to the internet and hauntological thirst for 1980s aesthetics during this time in my life; I guess a desire for something simpler and sweeter that may have never even existed at all.
12. Bird
Andrea Arnold, (2024)
Twelve-year-old Bailey lives with her single Dad and though she is forced to mature fast, she distracts herself from her problems through using her imagination to create adventure elsewhere. Bird is extremely earnest and imitates how I remember experiencing the world as a pre-teen, re-shaping the less-desirable “real” into something more magical.
13. Christiane. F
Uli Edel, (1981)
For me, age thirteen was a year of evil friends and mistakes like Catherine Hardwicke’s 2003 film Thirteen. Christiane. F recreates the teenage spirit of “loitering”, while also showing the darker sides and consequences of drug-laden scenes. Watch for a taped 80s Bowie concert in Berlin, or watch with squinted eyes (either to avoid what is happening on screen or to cry).
14. Blue
Hiroshi Ando, (2002)
I discovered this film at the perfect time: I was fourteen trapped in the throes of an intense limerent crush on someone at school. This is the age I felt desire begin to operate, and I wanted to discover cinema that reflected these intense emotions I was experiencing. Blue is not intense in its delivery, but in its emotional undercurrents. It's like an unripe pear; appears perfect but is hard to swallow. This one holds a special place in my heart.
15. Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
Hideaki Anno, Kazuya Tsurumaki, (1997)
After being driven crazy and listless by both my wants and failures (which were amplified by obsessive journaling), one does wonder how they can dissolve themselves into a mass of orange goo, returning to the primordial soup that is the origin of all human life…
16. Four Nights of a Dreamer
Robert Bresson, (1971)
One of two amazing adaptations of Dostoyevsky’s White Nights (the other directed by Visconti!) Bresson reflects the experience of an artist desperately trying to find inspiration through connecting with others. This inspiration ultimately refracts onto the street, making Four Nights of a Dreamer a fitting tale for any flâneur, which I certainly considered myself to be at sixteen.
17. A Moment of Innocence
Mohsen Makhmalbaf, (1996)
Seventeen was the year I fell head-first in love with cinema. Though I only watched this film for the first time last year, Makhmalbaf utilises cinema as a repository for history and emotion, playing with traditional narrative structure to rehearse moments of recollection. It’s perfect, it’s dreamlike, it’s incredibly engaging and makes you believe in life again.
18. Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore
Sarah Jacobson, (1996)
Main character Mary Jane works at a movie theatre (something I did in both my early and late teens), she hangs around and either criticises or gets involved with a bunch of her twenty-something slacker co-workers. Brilliantly captures the awkwardness of early sexual experiences and their frequent coupling with angst and/or wistfulness.
19. The Sweet East
Sean Price Williams, (2023)
It is both a zoomer odyssey and a loopy commentary on post-covid American society. Like Alice in Wonderland, Price-Williams takes you down a referential rabbit-hole that you never really want to climb back out of. Extra points for this one as it was a very memorable cinema experience for me watching it for the first time in 2024.
20. Night of Cups
Terence Malick, (2015)
You are wading through life like Rick (played by Christian Bale), you stop to notice the sunset, the dew shining off small blades of grass, you take a breath. Every outcome feels as though you have pulled a card from a tarot deck: random and charged.
21. News From Home
Chantal Ackerman, (1976)
Although almost everything is lost with distance and time, Ackerman reminds us it can be rebuilt and immortalised through film. Watching News From Home feels like growing up, growing distant from your family, fading away, almost becoming invisible in the cityscape. However, there can be comfort in watching everything ceaselessly move forward.
22. Céline
Jean-Claude Brisseau, (1992)
Twenty-two year old Céline inherits most of her dead father’s estate and is taken care of by nurse Genevieve who assists as Céline struggles with mental illness. The two women intensely love each other. This film translates love as something mystical—almost intangible, it is the movement of grace throughout this world: something we all need to notice or harness.
23. Bad Timing
Nicholas Roeg, (1980)
Purple tossed sheets, antique ceramics, theatre masks…Bad Timing is about obsession, which it ultimately warns against, while examining the spiritual weight that secrecy places upon relationships. I really hope I don’t ever have to relate to this one any further.
24. The Long Goodbye
Robert Altman (1973)
This is how I want to feel reaching my mid-twenties, something close to steady; with a fun job, a cat, maybe a bit of action here and there. The Long Goodbye is the perfectly polished peak of not only Altman’s style but 1970s art direction.
25. Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog, (1982)
Sometimes you need to be reminded that it is possible to push a boat up a mountain, if you really try. Though sometimes, there is a dark side to achievement…
26. Until the End of the World
Wim Wenders (1991)
A five-hour-epic international cat and mouse chase, capable of spurring philosophical reflections on memory, family, and the purpose of it all really! Though a commercial failure, Until the End of the World is both towering and intimate, expanding across time in all ways as it sketches a spiritual apex.
27. Caché
Michael Haneke, (2005)
Haneke is one of the best at allowing particular moods to dominate the products of his filmmaking. Here, he creates a subtle, persistent atmosphere of torment and paranoia through his manipulation of the film’s diegesis, shifting between mysterious voyeuristic VHS tapes and the objective camera. Get lost in the eerie.
28. Cosmopolis
David Cronenberg, (2012)
Main character Eric Packer is a twenty-eight year old businessman. He is slick, he is sigma, he is not at all aspirational. As we grow up, perhaps we grow busier even as we become more aimless. The lasting message of Cronenberg’s weaponised pretentious drivel is that everything is quickening, and losing meaning even quicker.
29. Happy-Go-Lucky
Mike Leigh (2008)
As my friend Ronan said in his review, a cheat code to life is watching this movie whenever you are sad or stressed. If you need to feel the touch of a feminine, maternal presence: Sally Hawkins is here! She has a huge smile on her face! She is fun! She is silly! She takes pride in herself! You should too! If you act like her you will never be upset again!
30. La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)
Paolo Sorrentino (2013)
Nothing else could end this list on such a perfect note: Jep Gambardella is the selfish, wandering, befriendable heathen who I desperately want to encapsulate as I enter my next decade. Nothing is subtle and beauty is everywhere. What is the point of any personal reflection when you can stare into the holy contours that reveal themselves in your visual surroundings every day? Your eyes can be wider and more adoring than any camera lens.
