My top 35 films of 2025

This year, despite all the shit going down, I watched 614 films. If that sounds unreasonable, it does include a couple of hundred shorts. Of those 614, I saw 359 for the first time, and because there were so blinking many top-notch movies among them, I’ve broken my top 35 into three lists.

But first, my top cinema moments of the year
– seeing Tremors yet again, but this time on an IMAX screen, thanks to Forbidden Worlds, who we’ve been begging for years (next campaign: Night of the Lepus)
– seeing the massively underrated Solomon Kane on an IMAX and getting my old copy of Ramsey Campbell’s novelisation autographed not only by director MJ Bassett and star James Purefoy (while chatting with him about Hap and Leonard) but also by the couple to whom Campbell dedicated the novel who happened to be in the audience
– chatting with Gale Anne Hurd about her perfect movies (Tremors, Dick), Fred Ward, Clancy Brown, practical effects, the IAT occupation of Alcatraz, and other stuff

Top 6 films from the last five years in roughly this order
Sinners (Ryan Coogler 2025)
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew 2022)
Women Talking (Sarah Polley 2022)
We Are Fugazi from Washington D.C. (Joe Gross, Jeff Krulik and Joseph Pattisall 2023)
Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson 2025)
Aku was sonzai shinai/Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi 2023)


Top 21 earlier films in roughly this order
La Nature (Artavazd Peleshian 2019)
Northern Lights (John Hanson and Rob Nilsson 1978)
An/Sweet Bean (Naomi Kawase 2015)
Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov 1964)
Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi/A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano 1991)
Gibel Otrara/The Fall of Otrar (Ardak Amirkulov 1991)
Plunder Road (Herbert Cornfield 1957)
Ohayô/Good Morning (Yasujirô Ozu 1959)
Du bei dao wang/Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh 1969)
Akai tenshi/The Red Angel (Yasuzô Massumura 1966)
Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy 1967)
The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg 1928)
Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sterberg 1935)
Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa 1943)
Gibel sensatsii/Loss of Feeling (Aleksander Andriyevsky 1935)
Incident at Raven’s Gate (Rolf de Heer 1988)
The Moon and the Sledgehammer (Philip Trevelyan 1971)
Wafa seishunn ni kuinashi/No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa 1946)
Yajû Shisubeshi/The Beast to Die (Tôru Murakawa 1980)
Sanshiro Sugata, part two (Akira Kurosawa 1945)
Yumemiru yôni nemurital/To Sleep So as To Dream (Kaizô Hayashi)

Top 8 short films in roughly this order
The Impossible Convicts (G.W. Bitzer 1906)
The Furies (Slavko Vorkapich 1934)
H20 (Ralph Steiner 1929)
Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve/A Night on Bald Mountain (Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker 1933)
Twenty-Four Dollar Island (Robert Flaherty 1927)
The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber 1928)
Forgotten Faces (Victor Schertzinger 1928)
The Telltale Heart (Charles Klein and Leon Shamory 1928)

And here, for the curious, is the full list: 
Die 3 Groschen-Oper/The Threepenny Opera (G.W. Pabst 1931)
4:44 Last Days on Earth (Abel Ferrara 2011)
13 East Street (Robert S. Baker 1952)
28 Years Later… (Danny Boyle 2025)
The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock 1935)
1941 (Francis Lee 1941)

Abigail (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett 2024)
Absolute Beginners (Julien Temple 1986)
Abstract Movies (George L.K. Morris 1947)
The Abyss (James Cameron 1989)
Aeon Flux (Karyn Kusama 2005)
Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes/Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog 1972)
Ai Nu/Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan (Yuen Chor 1972)
Akai tenshi/The Red Angel (Yasuzô Massumura 1966)
Aku was sonzai shinai/Evil Does Not Exist (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi 2023)
Alien Nation (Graham Baker 1988)
Aliens (James Cameron 1986)
Ambush In Leopard Street (J. Henry Piperno 1962)
Amigo (John Sayles 2010)
An/Sweet Bean (Naomi Kawase 2015)
And His Ghost May Be Heard (Richard Franklin 1973)
And Soon the Darkness (Robert Fuest 1970)
Anémic Cinéma/Anemic Cinema (Marcel Duchamp 1926)
Annabelle Butterfly Dance 1 (William K.L. Dickson 1894)
Annabelle Butterfly Dance 3 (Edison – no director credited 1895)
Annabelle Serpentine Dance 1 (William K.L. Dickson 1894)
Annabelle Serpentine Dance 4 (James H. White 1897)
Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi/A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano 1991)
Armageddon (Michael Bay 1998)
L’Arroseur arrosé/The Sprinkler Sprinkled (Louis Lumière 1895) 
L’arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat/The Arrival of a Train (Auguste and Louis Lumière 1896)
Ascend (Roshan Balu 2025)
Les Astronautes (Walerian Borowczyk 1959)
Autoreiji/Outrage (Takeshi Kitano 2010)
Autumn Fire (Herman G. Weinberg 1931)

The Babadook (Jennifer Kent 2014)
Bad Dreams (Andrew Fleming 1988)
Badnam Basti/Neighhourhood of Ill Repute (Prem Kapoor 1971)
Bakuchiuci: Sôchô Tobaku/Big Time Gambling Boss (Kôsaku Yamashita 1968)
Ballerina (Len Wiseman 2025)
Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy 1924)
Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117 (André Hunebelle 19649
Battle Beyond the Stars (Jimmy T. Murakami 1980)
The Beast Must Die (Paul Annett 1974)
The Bedford Incident (James B. Harris 1965)
Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze 1999)
Below (David Twohy 2002)
Ben-Hur (William Wyler 1959)
Berserk! (Jim O’Connolly 1967)
Les Bêtes (Michael Granberry 2024)
Better Man (Michael Gracey 2024)
The Big Blockade (Charles Frend 1942)
The Big Picture (Arthur Cauty 2025)
The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols 2023)
Billy Blazes, Esq. (Hal Roach and H.M. Walker 1919)
Black Bag (Steven Soderbergh 2025)
The Black Diamond Express (James H. White 1896)
Blade (Stephen Norrington 1998)
Blade II (Guillermo del Toro 2002)
Blade Trinity (David S. Goyer 2004)
Bleak Salvation (Alexandru Siantiu 2024)
“Blessed” (William Strobeck 2018)
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada 2018)
Blood, Sweat and Shoes (Thomas Visperas 2025)
Blutgletscher/Blood Glacier (Marvin Kren 2013)
Borderlands (Eli Roth 2024)
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Francis Ford Coppola 1992)
Bride of the Monster (Edward D. Wood Jr, 1955)
The Bridge (Charles Vidor 1929)
Brief Ecstasy (Edmond T. Gréville 1937)
Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks 1938)
A Bronx Morning (Jay Leyda 1931)
Buddy (William Strobeck 2012)
Burden of Dreams (Les Blank 1982)

Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Wiene 1920)
Caesar and Cleopatra (Gabriel Pascal 1945)
Cage of Gold (Basil Dearden 1950)
Calcutta (John Farrow 1946)
Candyland (William Strobeck 2019)
Captain America: Brave New World (Julius Onah 2025)
Captain Nissen Going Through Whirlpool Rapids, Niagara Falls (Edison Company 1901)
Carlos the Jackal: The Movie (Olivier Assayas 2010)
Carry On Screaming! (Gerald Thomas 1966)
La cartomancieene/The Fortune Teller (Jerome Hill 1932)
Carousel: Animal Opera (Joseph Cornell 1938)
Cast a Deadly Spell (Martin Campbell 1991)
The Cat’s Paw (Sam Taylor 1934)
Le chagrin et la pitié/The Sorrow and the Pity (Marcel Ophüls 1969)
Champs de Mars (James H. White 1900)
Cheer Up (Leo Mittler 1936)
Chef Gustav (Luke Frangeskou 2023)
“Cherry” (William Strobeck 2014)
Chik geuk siu ji/The Bare-Footed Kid (Johnnie To, Patrick Leung and Johnny Mak 1993)
Children of the Damned (Anton Leader 1964)
Children of the Damned (Anton Leader 1964)
The Children’s Jury (Joseph Cornell 1938)
Choctaw Code Talkers (Valerie Red-Horse 2010)
The Chronicles of Riddick (David Twohy 2004)
Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz 1963)
Clockstoppers (Jonathan Frakes 2002)
Le cochon danseur/The Dancing Pig (Millard Mercury 1907)
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo/The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte 2024)
Conclave (Edward Berger 2024)
Coney Island at Night (Edwin S. Porter 1905)
Conquest of Space (Byron Haskin 1955)
Contrathemis (Dwinell Grant 1941)
Cops! (Buster Keaton and Edward F. Kline 1922)
Cops and Robin (Allen Reisner 1978)
Le coucher de la mariée/The Bride Retires (Albert Kirchner and Eugène Pirou 1896) 
Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sterberg 1935)
Crissie Sheridan Serpentine Dance (William K.L. Dickson 1897)
The Crow (Rupert Sanders 2024)

Da dao ge wang/The Singing Thief (Chang Cheh 1969)
Dancing on Thin Ice (Benny Maglinao 2020)
Danger: Diabolik (Mario Bava 1968)
Dante’s Peak (Roger Donaldson 1997)
Davey Jones Locker (Frederick S. Armitage 1900)
David Golder (Julien Duvivier 1931)
Dawn to Dawn (Josef Berne 1933)
Death Drives Through (Edward L. Cahn 1935)
Les demoiselles de Rochefort/The Young Girls of Rochefort (Jacques Demy 1967)
Demolishing and Building Up the Star Theatre (Frederick S. Armitage 1901)
Deo killeo: Jugeodo deoneun ai/The Killer (Jae-Hoon Choi 2022)
Destination Moon (Irving Pichel 1950)
Dial M for Murder (Alfred Hitchcock 1954)
Dick (Andrew Fleming 1999)
Die! Die! My Darling! (Silvio Narizzano 1965)

Die Hard (John McTiernan 1988)
Dil Se.. (Mani Ratnam 1998)
The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich 1967)
Dirty Mary Crazy Larry (John Hough 1974)
The Docks of New York (Josef von Sternberg 1928)
Domino (Tony Scott 2005)
Doroga k zvezdan/Road to the Stars (Pavel Klushantsev 1957)
Down the Hudson (Frederick S. Armitage and A.E. Weed 1903)
Dracula (Terence Fisher 1958)
Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (Wallace McCutcheon and Edward S. Porter 1906)
Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn 2011)
Dr Jack (Sam Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer 1922)
Dr Mabuse, der Spiele: Der große Spieler: Ein Bild der Zeit/Dr Mabuse, der Spieler: The Great Gambler: A Picture of the Time (Fritz Lang 1922)
Dr Strangelove: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick 1964)
Drugstore Cowboy (Gus Van Sant 1989)
Du bei dao/One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh 1967)
Du bei dao wang/Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh 1969)
The Duel (Kieran Darcy-Smith 2016)
Dünyayi Kurtarab Adam/The Man Who Saves the World aka Turkish Star Wars (Çetin Inanç 1982)

Early Superimpositions (Frederick S. Armitage 1900)
Earwig (Lucile Hadzhihalilovic 2021)
An Eastern Westerner (Hal Roach 1920)
Ed Wood (Tim Burton 1994)
Ed Wood: Look Back in Angora (Ted Newsom 1994)
Eiffel Tower from Trocadero Palace (James H. White 1900)
Ensouled (Moe Najati and Asif Limbada 2023)
Eolomea (Herrmann Zschoche 1972)
Eraserhead (David Lynch 1977)
Escamotage d’une dame chex Robert-Houdin/The Vanishing Lady (Georges Méliès 1896)
Escape! (Basil Dean 1930)
El expreso de Andolucía/Andalusia Express (Franciscoo Rovira Beleta 1956)
Even – As You and I (Roger Barlow, Harry Hay and LeRoy Robbins 1937)
The Extraordinary Miss Flower (Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard 2024)

Fail Safe (Sidney Lumet 1964)
Fair Game (Mario Andreacchio 1986)
The Fall of the House of Usher (James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber 1928)
Family Plot (Alfred Hitchcock 1976)
The Fantastic 4: First Steps (Matt Shakman 2025)
FBI Girl (William Berke 1951)
Feet First (Clyde Bruckman 1930)
Fisshu sutôr î /Fish Story (Yoshihiro Nakamura 2009)
Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog 1982)
Five (Arch Oboler 1951)
Following (Christopher Nolan 1998)
Footnote to Fact (Lewis Jacobs 1933)
Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox 1956)
Forgotten Faces (Victor Schertzinger 1928)
The Four Just Men (Walter Forde 1939)
Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro 2025)
Frenzy (Alfred Hitchcock 1972)
Frieda (Basil Dearden 1947)
The Furies (Slavko Vorkapich 1934)

Garden State (Zach Braff 2004)
Gaslight (Thorold Dickinson 1940)
Gaslight (George Cukor 1944)
The Gay Shoe Clerk (Edwin S. Porter 1903)
Geung see sin sang/Mr Vampire (Ricky Lau 1985)
Geung see ga zuk/Mr Vampire II (Ricky Lau 1986)
Geung see suk suk/Mr Vampire Saga 4 (Ricky Lau 1988)
The Ghost and the Darkness (Stephen Hopkins 1996)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch 1999)
The Ghost Train (Frederick S. Armitage 1901)
Gibel Otrara/The Fall of Otrar (Ardak Amirkulov1991)
Gibel sensatsii/Loss of Feeling (Aleksander Andriyevsky 1935)
The Girl on the Train (Tate Taylor 2016)
Girl Shy (Sam Taylor and Fred C Newmeyer 1924)
Glen or Glenda (Edward D Wood, Jr 1953)
Glens Falls Sequence (Douglass Crockwell 1946))
Goldfish (Spike Jonze, Rick Howard and Wing Ko 1993)
Gothic (Ken Russell 1986)
Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding 1932)
The Great Train Robbery (Edwin S. Porter 1903)
Grossstadtschmerrerling/Pavement Butterfly (Richard Eichberg 1929)
Der große Verhau/The Big Mess (Alexander Kluge 1971)
Guling jie shaonian sharen Shijian/A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang 1991)

H20 (Ralph Steiner 1929)
The Hand (Henry Cass 1960)
The Hatton Garden Job (David Beton2017)
The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman 1963)
Haunted Summer (Ivan Passer 1988)
The Hearts of Age (William Vance and Orson Welles 1934)
He bian de cuo wu/Only the River Flows (Wei Shujun 2023)
Hell (Tim Fehlbaum 2011)
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (Brian Taylor 2024)
High Sierra (Raoul Walsh 1941)
His Wooden Wedding (Leo McCarey 1925)
The Hitcher (Robert Harmon 1986)
Hockey III (Benny Maglinao 2017)
Hockey X (Benny Maglinao 2022)
Holiday (George Cukor 1938)
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (Fred Olen Ray 1988)
L’homme à la tête de caoutchouc/The Man with the Rubber Head (Georges Méliès 1901)
Honeydripper (John Sayles 2007)
Hot Water (Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor 1924)
The House with Closed Shutters (D.W. Griffith 1910)
Hue and Cry (Charles Crichton 1947)
Hulk (Ang Lee 2003)
Humanoids from the Deep (Barbara Peeters and Jimmy T. Murakami 1980)
Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (Rovert Aldrich 1964)

I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence 2007)
Ichiban utsukushiku/The Most Beautiful (Akira Kurosawa 1944)
I Confess (Alfred Hitchcock 1953)
Ikarie XB 1 (Jindrich Polák 1963)
The Impossible Convicts (G.W. Bitzer 1906)
Im Staub der Sterne/In the Dust of the Stars (Gottfried Kolditz 1976)
Incendies (Denis Villeneuve 2010)
Incident at Raven’s Gate (Rolf de Heer 1988)
The Incredible Hulk (Louis Letterier 2008)
Indagin su un cittadine al di soper di ogni sospetto/Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri 1970)
In the Grip of the Blizzard (Biograph – director unknown 1899)
In the Lost Lands (Paul W.S. Anderson 2025)
In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea (Winston Miller 1925)

Jack and the Beanstalk (George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter 1902)
Jack’s Dream (Joseph Cornell 1938)
Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock 1939)
Java head (Thorold Dickinson and J. Walter Rubin 1934)
Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama 2009)
Je t’aime, je t’aime (Alain Resnais 1968)
La jetée (Chris Marker 1962)
La jetée (Chris Marker 1962)

Jin pu sa/The Golden Budha (Wei Lo 1966)
John Wick (Chad Stahelski 2014)
John Wick: Chapter 2 (Chad Stahelski 2017)
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (Chad Stahelski 2019)
John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski 2023)
Judex (Georges Franju 1963)

Kalamita/Calamity (Věra Chytilová 1982)
Keanu (Peter Atencio 2016)
Kenjû zankoku monogatari/Cruel Gun Story (Takumi Furukawa 1964)
The Kid Brother (Ted Wilde 1927)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes 1976)
Killer’s Moon (Alan Birkinshaw 1978)
Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer 1949)
King Kong (Ernest B Schoedsack and Merian C Cooper 1933)
Kokoro (Kon Ichikawa 1955)
Kozure Ôkami: Ko o kashi ude kashi tstkamatsuru/Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi 1972)
Kraven the Hunter (J.C. Chandor 2024)
Kujira gami/The Whale God (Tokuz Tanaka 1962)
Kurîpî: Itsuwari no rinjin/Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa 2016)
Kuro no hôkokusho/Black Report aka Black Statement Book (Yasuzô Masumura 1963)
Kurutta ichipêji/A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa 1926)
Kurutta ichipêji/A Page of Madness (Teinosuke Kinugasa 1926)

The Landlord (Hal Ashby 1970)

Land of Bad (William Eubank 2024)
The Last Command (Josef von Sternerg 1928)
The Last Dumpling (Jadey Duffield 2025)
The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton 1951)
Legacy of a Hollywood Extra (Slavko Vorkapich 1928)
The Librarian (Peter Mason 2025)
Lie mo zhe/Mercenaries from Hong Kong (Jing Wong 1982)
The Life and Death of 9413, a Hollywood Extra (Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich 1928)
The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (John Huston 1972)
Lifeboat (Alfred Hitchcock 1944)
Life of an American Fireman (George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter 1903)
Light Rhythms (Oswell Blakeston and Francis Bruguière 1931)
Ling wan sin sang/Mr Vampire Part 3 (Ricky Lau 1987)
Linnea Quigley’s Horror Workout (Kenneth J. Hall 1990)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly (Werner Herzog 1997)
Little Geezer (Theodore Huff 1932)
Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz 1986)
Looney Lens: Anamorphic People (Al Brick 1927)
Looney Lens: Split Skyscrapers (Al Brick 1924)
Looney Lens: Tenth Avenue, NYC (Al Brick 1924)
Long hang tian xia/The Master (Tsui Hark 1992)
Longlegs (Osgood Perkins 2024)
Long quan/Dragon Fist (Wei Lo 1979)
Lost Boundaries (Alfred L. Werker 1949)
Love, Life and Laughter (Maurice Elvey 1934)
The Love of Zero (Robert Florey 1928)
Lullaby (Boris Deutsch 1925)

Mandy (Panos Cosmatos 2018)
The Man from Cairo aka Crime Squad (Ray Enright 1953)
Manhatta (Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand 1921)
Manhattan Medley (Bonney Powell 1931)
The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick 1951)
Mankiller (Valerie Red-Horse 2017)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock 1956)
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On (Dean Fleischer Camp 2021)
Marnie (Alfred Hitchcock 1964)
Mask of the Dragon (Sam Newfield 1951)
Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July 2005)
Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli 1944)
Megaforce (Hal Needham 1982)
Mein Liebster Feind – Klaus Kinski/My Best Fiend (Werner Herzog 1999)
Melody on Parade (Irving Kaufman and Lew White 1933)
Memory Screen (Alien Workshop 1991)
Menschen am Sonntag/People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer 1930)
Mickey 17 (Bong Joon Ho 2025)
Midnight Movies: From the Margins to the Mainstream (Stuart Samuels 2005)
Midship Man Easy (Carol Reed 1935)
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz 1945)
The Milky Way (Leo McCarey, Ray McCarey and Norman Z. McLeod 1936)
Mind Goblin (William Strobeck 2021)
Minna – yatteru ka!/Getting Any? (Takeshi Kitano 1994)
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie 2025)
Mo/The Boxer’s Omen (Chih-Hung Kuei 1983)
Money Movers (Bruce Beresford 1978)
Moods of the Sea (Slavko Vorkapich and John Hoffman 1942)
The Moon and the Sledgehammer (Philip Trevelyan 1971)
Moonland (William A. O’Connor 1926)
The Motorcycle Diaries (Walter Salles 2004)
Mottomoto kiken na yuugi/The Most Dangerous Game (Tôru Murakawa 1978)
Mouse (Spike Jonze and Rick Howard 1997)
Mr and Mrs Smith (Alfred Hitchcock 1941)
Museum Hours (Jem Cohen 2012)
La mujer murciélago/The Bat Woman (René Cardona 1968)
Mulher de Verdade/A Real Woman (Alberto Cavalcanti 1954)
Multiple Maniacs (John Waters 1970)
Musashino fujin/The Lady of Musashino (Kenji Mizogichi 1951)
Mutual Appreciation (Andrew Bujalski 2005)

Nachts wenn der Teufel kam/The Devil Strikes at Night (Robert Siodmak 1957)
Nan bao Shao Lin/Martial Arts of Shaolin (Chia-Liang Liu 1986)
The Nanny (Seth Holt 1965)
The Nanny (Seth Holt 1965)
Neptune’s Daughters (Frederick S. Armitage 1900)
New York Subway (G.W. Bitzer 1905)
No Escape (Martin Campbell 1994)
Nora inu/Stray Dog (Akira Kurosawa 1949)
North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock (1959)
Northern Lights (John Hanson and Rob Nilsson 1978)
Nosferatu (Robert Eggers 2024)
Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock 1946)
Now or Never (Fred C. Newmeyer and Hal Roach 1921)
Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve/A Night on Bald Mountain (Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker 1933)
Nuoc 2030 (Minh Nguyen-Vo 2014)
Nuoc 2030 (Minh Nguyen-Vo 2014)
A Nymph of the Waves (Frederick S. Armitage 1900)

Objectif 500 millions/Objective 500 Million (Pierre Schoendoerffer 1966)
Object Lesson (Christopher Young 1941)
On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray 1951)
Ong-Bak (Prachya Pinkaew 2003)
Ong-Bak 2 (Tony Jaa and Panna Rittikrai 2008)
Ohayô/Good Morning (Yasujirô Ozu 1959)
Oil: A Symphony in Motion (M.G. MacPherson 1933)
Orca (Michael Anderson 1977)
OSS 117 se déchaîne/OSS 117 is Unleashed (André Hunebelle 1963)
Out of the Melting Pot (no director credited 1927)

Paddington in Peru (Dougal Wilson 2024)
Palace of Electricity (James H. White 1900)
Panorama from the Tower of the Brooklyn Bridge (G.W. Bitzer 1899)
Panorama from Times Building, New York (Wallace McCutcheon Sr 1905)
Panorama of Eiffel Tower (James H. White 1900)
Panorama View, Street Car Motor Room (G.W. Bitzer 1904)
Parabola (Mary Ellen Bute and Ted Nemeth 1937)
The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock 1947)
Paris Qui Dort (Renè Clair 1925)
Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius 1949)
A Patch of Blue (Guy Green 1965)
Payroll (Sidney Hayers 1961)
Penny Paradise (Carol Reed 1938)
The People’s Joker (Vera Drew 2022)
Pie in the Sky (Ralph Steiner 1935)
Pitch Black (David Twohy 2000)
Plan 6 from Outer Space (Suki 2012)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (Edward D. Wood Jr 1957)
Plan 9.1 from Outer Space (Ernie Fosselius 2009)
Play As It Lays (Frank Perry 1972)
“Play Dead” (William Strobeck 2022)
Plunder Road (Herbert Cornfield 1957)
Poem 8 (Emlen Etting 1932)
Pollux et le chat bleu/Dougal and the Blue Cat (Serge Danot and Eric Thompson 1970)
Portland Exposé (Harold Schuster 1957)
Posle smerti After Death (Evgenii Bauer 1915)
Posse (Mario Van Peebles 1993)
A Prize of Gold (Mark Robson 1955)
The Professor and His Field Glass (George Albert Smith 1900)
The Protector (Bruce Chong 2024)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960)
Pursuit of Happiness (Rudy Burckhardt 1940)

Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas 2019)
Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy 1951)
The Quick and the Dead (Sam Raimi 1995)

Radio On (Chris Petit 1979)
Railroad Smashup (Edison 1904)
Raising Cain (Brian De Palma 1992)
Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa 1950)
Razzia sur le Chnouf (Henri Decoin 1955)
Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock 1954)
Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock 1940)
Red Planet Mars (Harry Horner 1952)
Red Sonja (MJ Bassett 2025)
The Relic (Peter Hyams 1997)
Remando al viento/Rowing with the Wind (Gonzalo Suárez 1988)
Repas de bébé/Baby’s Meal (Louis Lumière 1895)
Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino 1992)
Resident Evil: Degeneration (Makoto Kamiya 2008)
The Retirement Plan (Tim Brown 2023)
Le retour à la reason/Return to Reason (Man Ray 1926)
Rhythm in Light (Mary Ellen Bute, Melville Webber and Ted Nemeth 1934)
Riddick (David Twohy 2013)
Roadgames (Richard Franklin 1981)
Roadhouse (Jean Negulesco 1948)
The Robe (Henry Koster 1953)
Robin Redbreast (James MacTaggart 1970)
Rocketship X-M (Kurt Neumann 1950)
Rope (Alfred Hitchcock 1948)
Rubbish Heap (Spike Jonze 1989)

Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock 1936)
Saboteur (Alfred Hitchcock 1942)
Safety Last! (Fred C Newmeyer and Sam Taylor 1923)
Sanjuro (Akira Kurosawa 1962)
Sanshiro Sugata (Akira Kurosawa 1943)
Sanshiro Sugata, part two (Akira Kurosawa 1945)
Scene from the Elevator Ascending Eiffel Tower (James H. White 1900)
Scene on Lower Broadway (Robert K. Bonine 1902)
Scherzo (Norman McLaren 1939)
Der schweigende Stern/The Silent Star (Kurt Maetzig 1960)
The Searchers (John Ford 1956)
Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock 1936)
Secret People (Thorold Dickinson 1952)
Seeing New York by Yacht (Frederick S. Armitage and A.E. Weed 1903)
Seeing the World: Part One – A Visit to New York, NY (Rudy Burckhardt 1931)
Seisaku no tsuma/The Wife of Seisaku (Yasuzô Masumura 1965)
Seperti dendam, rundu harus dibayar tuntas/Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash (Edwin 2021)
Serpentine Dance (Louis Lumière 1897)
Serpentine Dance by Annabelle (William K.L. Dickson 1896)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock 1943)
Shatter (Monte Hellman and Michael Carreras 1974)
She Creature (Sebastian Gutierrez 2001)
Shichinin no samurai/Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa 1954)
Shijûshichinin no shikaku/47 Ronin (Kon Ichikawa 1994)
Shizuka naru kettô/The Silent Duel (Akira Kurosawa 1949)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann 1985)
Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven 1995)
Shûbun/Scandal (Akira Kurosawa 1950)
Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer/Signals: A Space Adventure (Gottfried Kolditz 1970)
Sing As We Go! (Basil Dean 1934)
Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen 1952)
Simple Destiny Abstractions (Douglass Crockwell 1938)
Sinners (Ryan Coogler 2025)
Sinners (Ryan Coogler 2025)
Sinners (Ryan Coogler 2025)
Sisters (Brian De Palma 1972)
Skeletons (Nick Whitfield 2010)
Skyscrapers of New York City, from the North River (J.B. Smith 1903)
Skyscraper Symphony (Robert Florey 1929)
Sleep Furiously (Gideon Koppel 2008)
Smile (Parker Finn 2022)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (William Cottrell, David Hand and Wilfred Jackson 1937)
Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky 1972)
Solaris (Steven Soderbergh 2002)
Solomon Kane (MJ Bassett 2009)
Sonachine/Sonatine (Takeshi Kitano 1993)
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley 2018)
La sortie de l’usine Lumière à Lyon/Workers Leaving the Factory (Louis Lumière 1895)
Soy Cuba/I Am Cuba (Mikhail Kalatozov 1964)
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Mann 1960)
Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock 1945)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Perischetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman 2018)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers and Joaquim Dos Santos 2023)
‘Sredni Vashtar’ by Saki (David Bradley 1940)
Stage Fright (Alfred Hitchcock 1950)
Stallion (William Strobeck 2021)
Starting a Skyscraper (American Mutoscope and Biograph – director unknown 1902)
Star Trek: Section 31 (Olatunde Osunsanmi 2025)
Starve Acre (Daniel Kokotajlo 2023)
Sting (Kiah Roache-Turner 2024)
Storm (Paul Burnford 1943)
The Story of Film: An Odyssey (Mark Cousins 2011)
The Straight Story (David Lynch 1999)
Strait-Jacket (William Castle 1964)
Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock 1951)
Straume/Flow (Gints Zilbalodis 2024)
Stuck (Stuart Gordon 2007)
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat 2024)
Sudden Fear (David Miller 1952)
Sud pralad/Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2004)
Sulayman (Blog Caliguia 2023)
Sumerki zhenskoy dushi (Evvgenii Bauer 1913)
Superman (James Gunn 2025)
Surf and Seaweed (Ralph Steiner 1931)
The Surfer (Lorcan Finnegan 2024)
Suspense (Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley 1913)
Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock 1941)
The Swimmer (Frank Perry 1968)
Synchromy No. 2 (Mary Ellen Bute and Ted Nemeth 1935)

The Telltale Heart (Charles Klein and Leon Shamory1928)
Teorema/Theorem (Pier Paolo Pasolini 1968)
The Terminal Man (Mike Hodges 1974)
The Terminator (James Cameron 1984)
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron 1991)
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow 2003)
The Thaw (Mark A. Lewis 2009)
Themis (Dwinell Grant 1940)
The Thicket (Elliott Lester 2024)
The Thieving Hand (J. Stuart Blackton 1908)
Thimble Theater (Joseph Cornell 1938)
The Thing (Matthijs van Heijningen Jr 2011)
Thirst (Park Chan-wook 2009)
Thunderbolts (Jake Schreier 2025)
Tie guan yin/Angel with the Iron Fists (Lo Wei 1967)
The Titfield Thunderbolt (Charles Crichton 1953)
To Catch a Thief (Alfred Hitchcock 1955)
To hok wai lung/Fight Back to School (Gordon Chan 1991)
Tomatos Another Day (James Sibley Watson 1930)
Tombstone (George P. Cosmatos 1993)
Tômei ningen to hae otoko/The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly (Mitsuo Murayama 1957)
Tom Horn (William Wiard 1980)
Tom yum goong/Warrior King aka The Protector (Prachya Pinkaew 2005)
Tom yum goong 2/Warrior King 2 aka The Protector 2 (Prachya Pinkaew 2013)
Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock 1969)
Topio stin omihli/Landscape in the Mist (Theo Angelopoulos 1988)
Tora no o o fumu otoko-tachi/The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (Akira Kurosawa 1945)
Tornado (John Maclean 2025)
Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock 1966)
Tough Assignment (William Beaudine 1949)
Trap (M. Night Shyamalan 2024)
Travel Notes: Schooner, Islands, Islanders (Walker Evans 1932)
Tremors (Ron Underwood 1990)
Triangle (Christopher Smith 2009)
Triebwerk-Husten (Alexander Kluge 1996)
The Trouble with Harry (Alfred Hitchcock 1955)
Trust Thy Sister (Molly Wise 2025)
Tsuma wa Kokuhaku suru/The Wife Confesses (Yasuzô Masumura 1961)
Tumannost Andromedy/Andromeda Nebula (Evgeniy Shersrtobitov 1967)
Twelve Monkeys (Terry Gilliam 1995)
Twenty-Four Dollar Island (Robert Flaherty 1927)

Ukigumo/Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse 1955)
Umirayushchiy lebed/The Dying Swan (Evgenii Bauer 1917)
Underworld (Josef von Sternberg and Arthur Rosson 1927)
Unreal News Reel No.2 (Slim Summerville 1924)

Valerie a týden divů/Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jireš 1970)
Valkoinen peura/The White Reindeer (Erik Blomberg 1952)
The Velvet Vampire (Stephanie Rothman 1971)
Venom: The Last Dance (Kelly Marcel 2024)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock 1958)
Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla 1960)
Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla 1960)
Village of the Damned (John Carpenter 1995)
Virus (John Bruno 1999)
Le voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon (Georges Méliès 1902)

Wafa seishunn ni kuinashi/No Regrets for Our Youth (Akira Kurosawa 1946)
Wake Up Dead Man (Rian Johnson 2025)
Waltzes from Vienna (Alfred Hitchcock 1934)
Die Wand/The Wall (Julian Pölsler 2012)
Weapons (Zach Cregger 2025)
We Are Fugazi from Washington D.C. (Joe Gross, Jeff Krulik and Joseph Pattisall 2023)
The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess (Anna-Ester Volozh 2024)
Welcome to the Jungle (Peter Berg 2003)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt 2008)
West of Zanzibar (Harry Watt 1954)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich 1962)
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (David Greene 1991)
What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (Lee H. Katzin and Bernard Girard 1969)
What Happens on Earth (Tristan Patrick Sherfield 2025)
What’s the Matter with Helen? (Curtis Harrington 1971)
Where Eagles Dare (Brian G. Hutton 1968)
Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick 1949)
The White Diamond (Werner Herzog 2004)
Who Killed Captain Alex (Nabwana I.G.G. 2010)
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (Curtis Harrington 1972)
Why Worry? (Sam Taylor and Fred C. Newmeyer 1923)
The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders 2024)
The Witches (Cyril Frankel 1966)
Wolf Man (Leigh Whannell 2025)
Woman in Hiding (Michael Gordon 1950)
A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes 1974)
Women Talking (Sarah Polley 2022)
Wong Fei Hung V: Tit gai dau ng gung/Last Hero in China (Jing Wong 1993)
The Working Girls (Stephanie Rothman 1971)
The World Today: The Black Legion – Shadow of Fascism over America (Ralph Steiner 1937)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall 1959)
The World, the Flesh and the Devil (Ranald MacDougall 1959)
The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock 1956)

X (Ti West 2022)
Xin du bi dao/The New One-Armed Swordsman (Chang Cheh 1971)

Yakuza no hakaba: Kuchinashi no hana/Yakuza Graveyard (Kinji Fukasaku 1976)
Yajû Shisubeshi/The Beast to Die (Tôru Murakawa 1980)
Yet mei dou yan/Vampires vs. Vampire (Ching-Ying Lam 1989)
Ying hung book sik/A Better Tomorrow (John Woo 1986)
Yi tun to lun gei: Moh gaau gauu jue/The Evil Cult aka Kung Fu Cult Master (Jing Wong and Sammo Hung 1993)
Yoidore tenshi/Drunken Angel (Akira Kurosawa 1948)
Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa 1961)
You Don’t Nomi (Jeffrey McHale 2019)
Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford 1939)
Young Sherlock Holmes (Barry Levinson 1985)
Yumemiru yôni nemurital/To Sleep So as To Dream (Kaizô Hayashi)

Zhong kui niang zi/The Lady Hermit (Meng-Hua Ho 1971)
Zulu (Cy Endfield 1964)

My top 27 books of 2025

This year, despite all the shit going down, I read 284 books, 255 of them for the first time. Of those 255, these are my top 27 reads of 2025:

My top 18 novels in roughly this order: 
Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (1965)
Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev (1949)
Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009)
Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943)
H.T. Tsiang, The Hanging on Union Square (1935)
Pepetela, The Return of the Water Spirit (1995)
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye (1953) – the one Chandler I’d never read because I hate the Altman film so much
Andrei Bely, Petersburg (1916)
Maxim Gorky, The Life of a Useless Man (1908)
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (2004)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise (1933), which I suspect works so well cos I was reading them all in order for the first time and this is the odd one out
Geoff Ryman, Animals: A Tale of Terror (2025)
Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole (2017)
Ian McGuire, The North Water (2016) 
Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwhal (1998)
Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Four Hands (1990)
Ira Wolfert, Tucker’s People (1943)
Gypsy Rose Lee, The G-String Murders (1941)

Jacek Dukaj’s Ice (2007, translated 2025) would probably have been in second place but events this shitty December conspired to prevent me finishing it yet.

My top 8 non-fiction books in roughly this order
Paul B. Preciado, Dysphoria Mundi (2025)
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (2024)
Samuel R. Delany, About Writing: 7 Essay, 4 Letters, 5 Interviews (2005)
Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
Amiri Baraka (as LeRoi Jones), Blues People (1963)
Ben Sidran, Black Talk (1971)
Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019)
Matthew T. Huber, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (2022)

My top poetry collections in exactly this order
Tony Harrison, Collected Poems (2007)

Here, for the curious, is the full list

The majority world = 145 (75 women)
Straight white men writing in English = 110
Multi-authored or otherwise don’t fit = 29

Kia Abdullah, Those People Next Door (2023)
Carol J. Adams, The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990)
José Eduardo Agualusa, The Book of Chameleons (2004)
Nikil Anand, Akhil Gupta and Hannah Appel, eds, The Promise of Infrastructure (2018)
David Andress, The Terror: Civil War in the French Revolution (2005)
Robbie Arnott, The Rain Heron (2020)
Ashley Audrain, The Push (2021)

Amiri Baraka (as LeRoi Jones), Blues People (1963)
Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwhal (1998)
Andrei Bely, Petersburg (1916)
Cyprian Bérard, The Vampire Lord Ruthven (1820)
Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key (1925)
Rob Boffard, Tracer (2015)
–. Zero-G (2016)
Mark Bould, Solaris (2014)
–. The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture (2021)
André Brink, Devil’s Valley (1998)
Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead (2006)
Tobias S. Buckell, Shoggoths in Traffic and Other Stories (2021)
Eugene Burdick and Eugene Wheeler, Fail-Safe (1962)
W.R. Burnett, The Asphalt Jungle (1949)
Brendan C. Byrne, Accelerate (2021)
Lord Byron, The Giaour (1813)

Juan Díaz Canales, Juanjo Guarnido et al., Blacksad: They All Fall Down, part one (2021)
–. Blacksad: They All Fall Down, part two (2023)
Jordan S. Carroll, Speculative Whiteness: Science Fiction and the Alt-Right (2024)
Vera Caspary, Laura (1942)
Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (1950)
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
–. Farewell My Lovely (1940)
–. The High Window (1942)
–. The Lady in the Lake (1943)
–. The Little Sister (1949)
–. The Long Goodbye (1953)
–. Playback (1958)
John Christopher, The Year of the Comet (1955)
–. The World in Winter (1962)
George Makana Clark, The Raw Man (2011)
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., Monster Theory: Reading Culture (1996)
Ralph Cooper with Steve Dougherty, Amateur Night at the Apollo: Ralph Cooper Presents Five Decades of Great Entertainment (1990)
Susan Cooper, Over Sea, Under Stone (1965)
–. The Dark is Rising (1973)
–. Greenwitch (1974)
–. The Grey King (1975)
–. Silver on the Tree (1977)
Caroline Corcoran, The Baby Group (2020)
Julio Cortázar, Fantomas Versus the Multinational Vampire: An Attainable Utopia (1975)
Bernard Cornwell, Crackdown (1991)
Mia Couto, Under the Frangipani (1996)
Jessica Cuello, Yours, Creature (2023)

Joanna Davis-McElligatt, Black Aliens: Kinship in the Cosmic Diaspora (2026)
Len Deighton, The IPCRESS File (1962)
Samuel R. Delany, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (1999)
–. About Writing: 7 Essay, 4 Letters, 5 Interviews (2005)
Philip K. Dick, Confessions of a Crap Artist (1975)
–. Puttering About in a Small Land (1985)
–. In Milton Lumky Territory (1985)
–. Mary and the Giant (1987)
Dilman Dila, Where Rivers Go To Die (2023)
Isak Dinesen, The Angelic Avengers (1946)
Bryony Dixon, 100 Silent Films (2011)
Jules Dornay, Lord Ruthven Begins (i.e., Douglas le Vampyre 1865)
Benjamin Dreyer, Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style (2019) 
Alexandre Dumas, The Return of Lord Ruthven (i.e., Le Vampire 1851)
Masha du Toit, Crooks & Straights (2014)

Robert Edric, Salvage (2010)
Junius Edwards, If We Must Die (1963)
Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman (2013)
Percival Everett, James (2024)
Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin (1947)
Silvia Federici, Wages Against Housework (1974)
Paul Féval, The Vampire Countess (1856)
–. Knightshade (1850, 1875)
–. Vampire City (1867)
C.S. Forester, Mr Midshipman Hornblower (1950)
–. Lieutenant Hornblower (1952)
–. Hornblower and the Hotspur  (1962)
Athol Fugard, Tsotsi (1980)

Alan Garner, The Owl Service (1967)
–. Red Shift (1973)
Cecily Gayford, ed., Murder in a Heatwave (2023)
Peter George, Red Alert (1958)
–. Dr Strangelove: or, How I Learned Not to Worry and Love the Bomb (1963)
Sam George and Bill Hughes, eds, The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and Its Progeny (2024)
Aaron Gerow, A Page of Madness: Cinema and Modernity in 1920s Japan (2008)
Rumer Godden, Black Narcissus (1939)
Tao Leigh Goffe, Dark Laboratory: On Columbus, the Caribbean and the Origins of the Climate Crisis (2025
Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (1910)
Witold Gombrowicz, Possessed (1939)
Maxim Gorky, The Life of a Useless Man (1908)
Richard Gott, Britain’s Empire: Resistance, Repression and Revolt (2011)
Stefan Grabinski, The Dark Domain (1918/22; 1993)
Barry Keith Grant, 100 Science Fiction Films (2013)
Jen Green and Sarah LeFanu, eds, Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind (1985)

Lotte and Søren Hammer, The Girl in the Ice (2010)
Dashiell Hammett, The Continental Op (1975)
Elizabeth Hand, A Haunting on the Hill (2023)
Donna J. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant Otherness (2003) 
Nick Harkaway, Titanium Noir (2023)
MacDonald Harris, The Balloonist (1977)
Tony Harrison, Collected Poems (2007)
Paula Hawkins, The Girl on the Train (2015)
Lily Herne, Deadlands (2011)
Olive Higgins Prouty, Stella Dallas (1923)
Jim Hillier and Alastair Phillips, 100 Film Noirs (2009)
Jim Hillier and Douglas Pye, 100 Film Musicals (2011)
Eric Hobsbawm, Bandits (1969; 2000 edition)
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (1994)
Nalo Hopkinson, Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions (2024)
Matthew T. Huber, Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (2022)
Marie-Hélène Huet, Monstrous Imagination (1993)
Charlie Human, Apocalypse Now Now (2013)
Leon Hunt, Danger: Diabolik (2018)
Andrew Michael Hurley, Devil’s Day (2017)

Mehita Iqani and Wamuwi Mbao, eds, Flow (2023)
–. The Night Sky (2024)

Vicki Jarrett, Always North (2016)
Gayl Jones, Corregidora (1975)

Franz Kafka, The Castle (1926)
John Kessel, Pride and Prometheus (2018)
Joseph Kessel, Belle de jour (1928)
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place (1988)
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts (1976)
Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late Capitalism (2024)
Ailton Krenak, Life is Not Useful (2020)
Rebecca F. Kuang, Yellowface (2023)

Lady Caroline Lamb, Glenarvon (2016)
Joe R. Lansdale, Sam Keith et al., 30 Days of Night: Night Again (2011)
Károly Lathjay and Mihály Kertész (Michael Curtiz!) (?) and László Tamásfi, Dracula’s Death (1924, 2020)
Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon, The Virgin Vampire (1825)
John le Carrè, A Murder of Quality (1962)
–. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963)
–. The Looking Glass War (1965)
–. A Small Town in Germany (1969)
–. The Naïve and Sentimental Lover (1971)
Gypsy Rose Lee, The G-String Murders (1941)
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris (1961)
–. Highcastle (1975)
Lilian Le Mesurier, The Socialist Woman’s Guide to Intelligence: A Reply to Mr Shaw (1929)
Maja Lunde, The End of the Ocean (2017)

Ed McBain, Heat (1981)
Andrew McCoy, The Insurrectionist (1979)
Amy McCulloch, Midnight aka The Girl on the Ice (2023)
Ian McGuire, The North Water (2016) 
Peter McPhee, Liberty or Death: The French Revolution (2016) 
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas aka Epitaph of a Small Winner (1881)
Charles Eric Maine, The Tide Went Out (1958)
–. The Darkest of Nights (1962)
Clarence Major, All-Night Visitors (1969; restored 1998 version)
Alberto Manguel, ed., Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature (1983)
Edward Margolies and Michel Fabre, The Several Lives of Chester Himes (1997)
Paule Marshall, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
Richard Matheson, Hell House (1971)
Seichô Matsumoto, Tokyo Express (1958)
Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized (1957)
Charles Mingus, Beneath the Underdog (1971)
Octave Mirbeau, Diary of a Chambermaid (1900)
Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, eds, The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (2012)
Michael Moorcock, An Alien Heat (1972)
–. The Hollow Lands (1975)
–. The End of All Songs (1976)
C.L. Moore, Jirel of Joiry (1934–39; 1977)
John P. Moore et al, The Martian Trilogy (2025)
Ward Moore, Greener Than You Think (1947)
–. Bring the Jubilee (1953)
Bob Mortimer, The Hotel Avocado (2024)
Benjamin Myers, The Gallows Pole (2017)

Kris Neville (and uncredited, despite Neville’s protests, Mel Sturgis), Invaders on the Moon (1970)
Marie Nizet, Captain Vampire (1879)
Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism (1965)
Charles Nodier, Smarra, or the Demons of the Night (1821)
Charles Nodier, Achille de Jouffroy, Toussaint Merle and Carmpouche, The Vampire (1820)
Masande Ntshanga, Triangulum (2018)

Lizzie O’Shea, Future Histories: What Ada Lovelace, Tom Paine, and the Paris Commune Can Teach Us about Digital Technology (2019)
Joyce Carol Oates, Jack of Spades (2015)
Brandon O’Brien, Can You Sign My Tentacle? (2021)
Nnedi Okorafor, Akata Warrior (2017)
Chibundu Onuzo, The Spider King’s Daughter (2012)

Pepetela, The Return of the Water Spirit (1995)
–. Jaime Bunda, Secret Agent (2001)
Chris Petit, The Psalm Killer (1996)
Gary Phillips, Violent Spring (1994)
Pierre-Alexis Ponson du Terrail, The Vampire and the Devil’s Son (1852)
Richard Powers, The Gold Bug Variations (1991)
–. Playground (2024)
Paul B. Preciado, Dysphoria Mundi (2025)
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, The Ice Limit (2000)
–. Beyond the Ice Limit (2016)
Stephen Prince, A Year in the Country: Wandering through Spectral Fields (2018)

Ann Quin, Berg (1964)

Mark Rascovich, The Bedford Incident (1963)
Olga Ravn, The Employees (2020)
Mack Reynolds, Tomorrow Might Be Different (1960/1975)
Luke Rhinehart, The Dice Man (1971)
John Rieder, Truth, Lies, and Speculative Fiction: Confronting Dogmatism, Demagoguery, and Disinformation (2026)
Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938)
Sally Rooney, Intermezzo (2024)
Jordy Rosenberg, Confessions of the Fox (2018)
Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (2019)
Geoff Ryman, Animals: A Tale of Terror (2025)

James Sallis, The Long-Legged Fly (1992)
–. Sarah Jane (2019)
Albert Sánchez Piñol, Cold Skin (2002)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? (1923)
–. Clouds of Witness (1926)
–. Unnatural Death (1928)
–. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1928)
–. Strong Poison (1930)
–. The Five Red Herrings (1931)
–. Have His Carcase (1932)
–. Murder Must Advertise (1933)
–. The Nine Tailors (1934)
–. Gaudy Night (1935)
–. Busman’s Honeymoon (1937)
Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace, The Documents in the Case (1930)
John Sayles, To Save the Man (2025)
Paul Scheerbart, The Perpetual Motion Machine: The Story of an Invention (1910)
Steven Jay Schneider, ed., 100 European Horror Films (2007)
Eugène Scribe and Mélesville, The Vampire (1821)
Ousmane Sembene, Niiwam and Taaw: Two Novellas (1987)
Victor Serge, The Case of Comrade Tulayev (1949)
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Zastrozzi (1810)
Kim Sherwood, A Spy Like Me (2024)
M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud (1901
Ben Sidran, Black Talk (1971)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony (1977)
Herbert Simmons, Corner Boy (1957)
Lillian Smith, Strange Fruit (1944)
J.E. Smyth, Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood (2018)
Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland (2021)
Dickon Springate, ed., 1816: The Year Without Summer – 12 Original Stories of Lovecraftian Horror (2019)
Wallace Stegner, The Big Rock Candy Mountain (1943)
Harry Stein, Malt Leav et al, The Heap, volume one (1942–48; collected 2013)
–. The Heap, volume two (1948–50; collected 2013)
–. The Heap, volume three (1951–1953; collected 2013)
James Stephens, The Charwoman’s Daughter (1912)
Fred Strydom, The Raft (2015)

Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Four Hands (1990)
Shaun Tan, Tales from the Inner City (2018)
Adrian Tchaikovsky, The Doors of Eden (2020)
–. Alien Clay (2024)
Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009)
B. Traven, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927)
Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun (1939)
H.T. Tsiang, The Hanging on Union Square (1935)
Two Fingers and James T. Kirk, Junglist (1995)

Herbert van Thal, ed., The Pan Book of Horror Stories (1959)
Jules Verne, The Underground City (1877)
–. The Castle in Transylvania (1892)
Harl Vincent, The Doomsday Planet (1966)

Dave Wallis, Only Lovers Left Alive (1964)
Rosie Warren, ed., Salvage 15: Bewitched and Distorted (2024–25)
David E. Weaver, Black Diva of the Thirties: The Life of Ruby Elzy (2004)
James White, Hospital Station (1962)
–. Star Surgeon (1963)
–. Major Operation (1971)
Paul Wild, Akira Kurosawa (2014)
Kate Wilhelm, The Mile-Long Spaceship (1963)
Ally Wilkes, All the White Spaces (2022)
Charles Willeford, Cockfighter (1972)
Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (1944)
D. Harlan Wilson, Strangelove Country: Science Fiction, Filmosophy, and the Kubrickian Consciousness (2025)
–. A Scanner Darkly (2026)
Ira Wolfert, Tucker’s People (1943)
Jason Woods, 100 American Independent Films (2004)
Cornell Woolrich, The Bride Wore Black (1940)
–. I Married a Dead Man (1947)
Helen Wright, A Matter of Oaths (1988)
Jonathan Wright, ed., Adventure Rocketship! Let’s All Go to the Science Fiction Disco (2013)
Richard Wright, Black Boy (1937)
John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951)
–. The Kraken Wakes (1953)
–. The Chrysalids  (1955)
–. The Midwich Cuckoos (1957)
–. The Trouble with Lichen (1960)
–. A Plan for Chaos (2009)
John Wyndham and, well, John Wyndham (as Lucas Parkes), The Outward Urge (1959/1961)

Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My Darling (1965)

George Zebrowski, The Omega Point (1972)
–. Ashes and Stars (1977)
–. The Monadic Universe (1977)
–. Mirror of Minds (1983)
Sarah Zettel, Kingdom of Cages (2001)

The stuff what I done in 2025 (with a long preamble justifying doing so little in 2025)

This is the first year since 1994 that I’ve not published a single thing, and it’s been a tough year so 2026 might go the same way.

My seizures remain undiagnosed. My heart monitor continued to reveal nothing so I had it cut out of my chest (he said, melodramatically). My neurologist decided to treat my condition as if it were epilepsy. So ten weeks of spring and summer were spent slowly increasing the dosage of meds that gave me brain fog, lethargy, depression, and – more so than usual – a tendency to do self-evidently stupid things. At least I didn’t get the side-effect where you lose a third of your skin and die. Once I got used to the meds, the side-effects mostly vanished, apart from the aphasia around names/titles and certain kinds of words. Students quickly got used to my abrupt mid-sentence interregna, visible brain strain, angry mutterings about ‘these fucking meds’ and vain attempts to triangulate an elusive word.

Mum had a bad fall in June, was released from hospital, had a week of deteriorating health at home, was readmitted, spent another ten-and-a-bit weeks in hospital, returned home permanently bed-bound, and became increasingly frail over the following months.

Then one of our ducks, Sarah Jane, was sick.

Sarah Jane at the vet
Sarah Jane celebrates her recovery by promptly getting her beak stuck through a leaf

And then, at the start of December, dad had some CT scans; a week later we were told to get him to hospital as quickly as possible because they’d incidentally revealed a pulmonary embolism. Next day, it was confirmed he has pancreatic cancer, which has spread too far for surgery; and he is not robust enough for chemotherapy.

And then mum caught the flu, followed by a chest infection and then pneumonia. She died on Xmas Eve. 

We’re waiting for dad’s treatment plan, but it will only be palliative care. We’ll probably lose him in the next few months.

Mum and dad on their wedding day – 23 October 1965

So Climate Monsters, my sort-of sequel to The Anthropocene Unconscious, remains almost completely unwritten, and I’ve not written anything else this year beyond drafting three (pretty sketchy) research presentations, two of which should eventually be developed into something publishable:

‘In the Chinks of the Wyndham Machine’, A Very British Catastrophe: John Wyndham Then and Now, School of English Colloquium, University of St Andrews, 7 June 2025

‘Nuoc 2030 and Climate Change Cinema’, Apocalypses: Expected, Imagined, Dreaded, University of Warwick, 24–25 June 2025

‘The Geographies of Monsters are the Geographies of Climate Change’, Weathers of the Future, University of Katowice, Poland, 3–4 September 2025, which meant we got to spend a week in Poland with our old friend Karolina (and have a drink at the deepest bar in Europe, at the bottom of a now-disused coal mine)

I did do some media stuff, though:
my first ever DVD/Blu-ray extra: a half-hour feature of me talking about sf and communism and things, called Blast Off, included in the Strange New Worlds: Science Fiction at DEFA boxset from Eureka 

my first ever appearance in a documentary feature film, The Big Picture (Arthur Cauty 2025), about the re-opening of the Bristol IMAX (now Bristol Megascreen), where it premiered

my first full-spectrum dominance* of a four-part TV documentary series, Wonderland – Science Fiction in the Atomic Age, episodes 1–4, Sky Arts, 3–24 April 2025

and half a dozen podcasts:

Guest on Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever, Episode 43 – La Jetée: French New Wave’s 1962 Sci-Fi Classic (14 September 2025) with Lisa Yaszek

Guest on Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever, Episode 41 – Village of the Damned: Creepy Kids and Cosy Catastrophe (17 August 2025) with Roger Luckhurst

Guest on The Climate Pod (2025) discussing The Anthropocene Unconscious

Guest on Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever, Episode 34 – The World, The Flesh, and the Devil: Harry Belafonte, Race and Apocalypse (11 May 2025) with Stéphanie Larrieux 

Guest on Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever, Episode 28 – Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space: The Worst Movie Ever? (3 February 2025) with Rodney F. Hill

Guest on Brainland – Solaris: Probing the Lem/Tarkovsky Masterpiece (21 January 2025)

A sketch of me by Brainland host Ken Barrett; you need to raise your game, Ayesha

And I did some conference- and event-organising:
I was a Member of Programme Committee for The Future is Here: Fictions in the Age of Climate Change, University of Rijeka, Croatia (May 2025) but I don’t recall actually doing anything other than lending my name

I co-organised Psychobiddies, Harpies and Hags: Interrogating Ageing and Gender on Screen, at the Watershed, 3 May 2025. I was only responsible for the admin stuff but used the opportunity to arrange an accompanying screening of All About Eve (Mankiewicz 1950) at the Watershed and, on the following day and in collaboration with 20th Century Flicks and Horror Without End, A Psycho Biddy and Hagsploitation Double Bill: The Nanny (Holt 1965) and X (West 2022) at Bristol Megascreen. We’ve done nukesploitation and hicksploitation before; HWE want to do snacksploitation next but I’m holding out for hatsploitation (not that I’ve managed to convince anyone that that’s a thing).

And since Gale Ann Hurd was in town as the Forbidden Worlds film festival’s Guest of Honour, she suggested doing an event for film students and young filmmakers, so I ended up organising and hosting In Conversation with Gale Anne Hurd at the Watershed, 31 May 2025

Gale’s selfie with me
Gale’s selfie with film student and young filmmakers

I examined a PhD: Marta Alvhild Mboka Tveit, Earthrise: An Ecocritical Study of African and Norwegian Speculative Fiction, which included not only few days’ break for us in Oslo but also remuneration so handsome that, for the first time ever, I must have got close to making minimum wage. 

I became second-supervisor for a PhD at Freie Universität Berlin on domestic noir.

Oh, and on 5 December, just four days before everything went completely to shit, I finally did my professorial inaugural lecture – My Favourite Thing Is Monsters – at the Bristol Megascreen. Trust me: seize any chance you ever have to do a powerpoint on an old school IMAX screen – not one of the pissy little multiplex ones, but a proper one from before Hollywood started using the format. Doesn’t even matter what you say: the ppt alone bludgeons the audience into awed submission, like a bunch of Romantic poets seeing an alp for the first time…

* In this instance, ‘full-spectrum dominance’ means I was the first person interviewed – for a whole day – when they clearly still had no idea what the series was really about, so although I do appear in each episode there are about six hours of footage of me on the cutting room floor (i.e., a couple of drives that have been wiped and used for something else).

The asburd reading challenge of 2025

Each year, I come up with an absurd reading challenge, such as reading books published in unnecessarily large formats (2023) or by specific authors (2023 and 2024) or in specific series (2024) or for completism’s sake (2024). For 2025, something a little different:

To be unsystematic.

To not work through lists.

To choose randomly, according to whims, sudden enthusiasms and the rediscovery of books I’d forgotten I had.

To not plough through everything at the same relentless pace.

To take time to pause, to relish, to reflect.

To see how long I can persist in such hippy nonsense.

My top 28 films of 2024

This year I have seen 416 films, 257 of them for the first time, and of those 257 these are my top 28, in roughly this order:

Comrades (Bill Douglas 1986)
Wanda (Barbara Loden 1970)
Yukinojô henge/An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa 1963)
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby 2013)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer 2023)
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat 2024)
Blood Quantum (Jeff Barnaby 2019)
The Circus (Charles Chaplin 1928)
El Bruto/The Brute (Luis Buñuel 1953)
Joy Ride (Adele Lim 2023)
Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik 2022)
Jui kuen/Drunken Master (Yuen Woo-Ping 1978)
Manbiki Kazoku/Shoplifters ((Hirokazu Kore-eda 2018)
Pouring Water on Troubled Oil (Nariman Massoumi 2023)
Shao Lin da peng da shi/Return to the 36th Chamber (Chia-Liang Liu 1980)
Street Scene (King Vidor 1931)
Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann 1992)
Sandome no satsujin/The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda 2017)
Tai gik Cheung Sam Fung/Tai Chi Master (Woo-Ping Yuen 1993)
Biruma no tategoto/The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa 1956)
Umi yori mo mada fukaku/After the Storm (Hirokazu Koreeda 2016)
Llévame en tus Brazo (Julio Bracho 1954)
Bastarden/The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel 2023)
Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby 1976)
Eshtebak/Clash (Mohamed Diab 2016)
The Garment Jungle (Vincent Sherman and Robert Aldrich 1957)
Unrueh/Unrest (Cyril Schäublin 2022)
Coming Home (Hal Ashby 1978)

Should anyone care, here is the full list of titles:

3-4 x jûgatsu/Boiling Point (Takeshi Kitano 1990)
5 Against the House (Phil Karlson 1955)
7 jin gong/Wonder Seven (Siu-Tung Ching 1994)
1990: I guerrieri del Bronx/1990: Bronx Warriors (Enzo G Castellari 1982)
2019: Dopo la caduta di New York/2019: After the Fall of New York (Sergio Martino 1983)

Against All Flags (George Sherman 1952)
Ak Kam/The Stunt Woman (Ann Hui 1996)
Akô-jô danzetsu/The Fall of Ako Castle (Kinji Fukasaku 1978)
Alien: Romulus (Fede Alvarez 2024)
All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh 2023)
The Amazing Transparent Man (Edgar G. Ulmer 1960)
À Meia Noite Levarei Sua Alma/At Midnight I will Take Your Soul (José Mojica Marins 1964)
An American Werewolf in London (John Landis 1981)
Anatomie d’un chute/Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet 2023)
The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett 1999)
Another Day in Buenoseres (Cameron Medford-Hawkins and Benjamin Scrase 2023)
Antebellum (Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz 2020)
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (James Wan 2023)
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Kelly Fremon Craig 2023)
Arson, Inc. (William Berke 1949)
The Atomic Café (Jayne Loader, Kevin Rafferty and Pierce Rafferty 1982)
Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (Nathan Juran 1958)
Aventurera/The Adventuress (Alberto Gout 1950)
The Awful Truth (Leo McCarey 1937)

Baby It’s You (John Sayles 1983)
Bad Boys: Ride or Die (Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah 2024)
Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks 1941)
El barón del terror/The Brainiac (Chano Urueta 1962)
Bastarden/The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel 2023)
Ba wong fa/The Inspector Wears Skirts (Wellson Chin 1988)
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (Eugène Lourié 1953)
The Beekeeper (David Ayer 2024)
Being John Malkovich (Spike Jonze 1999)
The Big Country (William Wyler 1958)
The Big Heat (Fritz Lang 1953)
The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks 1946)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (Alejandro González Iñárritu 2014)
Biruma no tategoto/The Burmese Harp (Kon Ichikawa 1956)
Black Friday (Arthur Lubin 1940)
Black Jack (Ken Loach 1979)
Blackmail Alfred Hitchcock 1929)
Blink Twice (Zoë Kravitz 2024)
Blood Quantum (Jeff Barnaby 2019)
Blue Beetle (Angel Manuel Soto 2023)
Blue Velvet (David Lynch 1986)
Bodigâdo Kiba/The Bodyguard (Ryûichi Takamori 1973)
Bogart: Life Comes in Flashes (Kathryn Ferguson 2024)
Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden 1983)
Bottle Shock (Randall Miller 2008)
Bound for Glory (Hal Ashby 1976)
Boxcar Bertha (Martin Scorsese 1972)
Boyhood (Richard Linklater 2014)
Brian and Charles (Jim Archer 2022)
Broken Arrow (John Woo 1996)
The Brother from Another Planet (John Sayles 1984)
El Bruto/The Brute (Luis Buñuel 1953)

Cadaveri eccelenti/Illustrious Corpses (Francesco Rosi 1976)
Capricorn One (Peter Hyams 1977)
Carita de Cielo (José Díaz Morales 1947)
Carnosaur (Adam Simon and Darren Patrick Moloney 1993)
Casa de los Babys (John Sayles 2003)
Champagne (Alfred Hitchcock 1928)
Christmas in July (Preston Sturges 1940)
Cinerama Adventure (David Strohmaier 2002)
El cine soy yo (Luis Armando Roche 1977)
Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur 1951)
The Circus (Charles Chaplin 1928)
City Girl (FW Murnau 1930)
City of Hope (John Sayles 1991)
The City of the Dead (John Llewllyn Moxey 1960)
Civil War (Alex Garland 2024)
Cocoon (Ron Howard 1985)
Cocoon: The Return (Daniel Petrie 1988)
Coffee and Cigarettes (Jim Jarmusch 2003)
The Colony (Jeff Barnaby 2007)
Coming Home (Hal Ashby 1978)
Comrades (Bill Douglas 1986)
Cops (Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton 1922)
The Creator (Gareth Edwards 2023)
The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold 1954)
The Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold 1954)
The Creature Walks Among Us (John Sherwood 1956)

Danger: Diabolik (Mario Bava 1968)
Dark Passage (Delmer Daves 1947)
Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch 1995)
Deadpool (Tim Miller 2016)
Deadpool 2 (David Leitch 2018)
Deadpool & Wolverine (Shawn Levy 2024)
Dead Slow Ahead (Mauro Herce 2015)
Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis 1992)
Deep Blue Sea (Renny Harlin 1999)
Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman 1985)
Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer 1945)
Diary of a Mad Housewife (Frank Perry 1970)
Die Hard  (John McTiernan 1988)
Dolls (Stuart Gordon 1986)
Domino (Tony Scott 2005)
Don’t Fuck with Dolphins (Nick Hearne 2024)
Don’t Worry Darling (Olivia Wilde 2022)
Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch 1986)
Downhill (Alfred Hitchcock 1927)
Drive-Away Dolls (Ethan Coen 2024)
The Drop (Michaël R. Roskam 2014)
Dune: Part Two (Denis Villeneuve 2024)
Dünyayi Kurtaran Adam/The Man Who Saved the World (Çetin Ínanç 1982)

Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper 1969)
Eight Men Out (John Sayles 1988)
The Elephant Man (David Lynch 1980)
Eraserhead (David Lynch 1977)
Eshtebak/Clash (Mohamed Diab 2016)
Etlinisigu’niet (Bleed Down) (Jeff Barnaby 2015)

The Fall Guy (David Leitch 2024)
The Fantastic Four (Oley Sassone 1994)
Far from the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg 2015)
The Farmer’s Wife (Alfred Hitchcock 1928)
Feng hou/Mad Monkey Kung Fu (Chia-Liang Liu 1979)
File Under Miscellaneous (Jeff Barnaby 2010)
Fingerprints Don’t Lie (Sam Newfield 1951)
Fisshu sutôrî/Fish Story (Yoshihiro Nakamura 2009)
The Flash (Andy Muschietti 2023)
Flash Gordon (Frederick Stephani 1936)
Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges 1980)
Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges 1980)
The Florida Project (Sean Baker 2017)
Fong Sai-Yuk/The Legend (Corey Yuen 1993)
Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock 1940)
Frankenstein: The True Story (Jack Smight 1973)
Frankenstein Unbound (Roger Corman 1990)
From Cherry English (Jeff Barnaby 2004)
Fuga dal Bronx/Escape from the Bronx (Enzo G Castellari 1983)
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (George Miller 2024)

Ganja & Hess (Bill Gunn 1973)
The Garment Jungle (Vincent Sherman and Robert Aldrich 1957)
Gerry (Gus Van Sant 2002)
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (Gil Kenan 2024)
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (Jim Jarmusch 1999)
Gilda (Charles Vidor 1946)
Girl in the Headlines (Michael Truman 1963)
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (Adam Wingard 2023)
Gojira – 1.0/Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki 2023)
Gojira – 1.0/Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki 2023)
Golok Setan/The Devil’s Sword (Ratno Timoer 1984)
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson 2014)
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson 2022)
Guangdong shi hu xing yi wu xi/Ten Tigers of Kwangtung (Cheh Chang 1980)
Gunpowder (Norman J. Warren 1986)
Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat/From Beijing with Love (Lik-Chi Lee and Stephen Chow 1994)

Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh 2008)
Häxan (Benjamin Christensen 1922)
High Noon (Fred Zinnemann 1952)
The Hitch-Hiker (Ida Lupino 1953)
The Hitman and the Assassin (Will Axtel 2023)
Holiday (George Cukor 1938)
Un homme et une femme/A Man and  a Woman (Claude Lelouch 1966)
The Hounds of Annwn (Bryony Evans and Beth Hughes 2023)
How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall and Richard Thorpe 1962)
How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker 2023)
Huang jia shi jie/Yes, Madam! aka Police Assassins (Corey Yuen 1985)
Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik 2022)
Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik 2022)
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (Francis Lawrence 2013)
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (Francis Lawrence 2014)
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 (Francis Lawrence 2015)

I’ll Get You (Seymour Friedman and Peter Graham Scott 1952)
I Married a Witch (René Clair 1942)
The Incredible Petrified World (Jerry Warren 1959)
Incubo sulla città contaminato/Nightmare City (Umberto Lenzi 1980)
In the Soup (Alexandre Rockwell 1992)
L’invenzione di Morel/The Invention of Morel (Emido Greco 1974)
The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer 1935)
The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin 2023)
I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun 2024)

Jane Eyre (Cary Joji Fukunaga 2011)
Jason X (James Isaac 2001)
Jennifer’s Body (Kaaryn Kusama 2009)
Jin bi tong/Kid with the Golden Arm (Cheh Chang 1979)
Joy Ride (Adele Lim 2023)
Jui kuen/Drunken Master (Yuen Woo-Ping 1978)
Juno and the Paycock (Alfred Hitchcock 1929)
Just Mercy (Destin Daniel Cretton 2019)

Kaette kita onna hissatsu ken/Return of the Sister Street Fighter (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi 1975)
Kaibutsu/Monster (Hirokazu Koreeda 2023)
Kanashimi no Beradonna/Belladonn of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto 1973)
Key Largo (John Huston 1948)
Killer Klowns from Outer Space (Stephen Chiodo 1988)
Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese 2023)
Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka/The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki 2023)
Kin-dza-dza! (Georgiy Daneliya 1986)
Kin-dza-dza! (Georgiy Daneliya 1986)
King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack 1933)
King of Thieves (James Marsh 2018)
Kozure Ôkami: Ko wo kashi ude kashi tsukamatsuru/Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance (Kenji Misumi 1972)

Lady Godiva of Coventry (Arthur Lubin 1955)
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock 1938)
The Last Detail (Hal Ashby 1973)
Late Night with the Devil (Cameron and Colin Cairnes 2023)
Lat sau san taam/Hard Boiled (John Woo 1992)
Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee (Shane Meadows 2009)
LEGO Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite (Jon Burton 2013)
Lianna (John Sayles 1983)
Limbo (John Sayles 1999)
Llévame en tus Brazo (Julio Bracho 1954)
Loan Shark (Seymour Friedman 1952)
The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (Alfred Hitchcock 1927)
Lone Star (John Sayles 1996)
Lone Star (John Sayles 1996)
Lost in the Sky (Simon Öster 2023)
The Lost World (Irwin Allen 1960)
Love Lies Bleeding (Rose Glass 2024)
Luca (Enrico Casarosa 2021)

Machibuse/Ambush at Blood Pass (Hiroshi Inagaki 1970)
Madame Web (SJ Clarkson 2024)
Mai ming xiao zi/The Magnificent Ruffians (Cheh Chang 1979)
La maldición de la Llorona/The Curse of the Crying Woman (Rafael Baledón 1963)
The Maltese Falcon (John Huston 1941)
Manbiki Kazoku/Shoplifters ((Hirokazu Kore-eda 2018)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos 2018)
The Man from Hong Kong (Brian Trenchard-Smith 1975)
Mannequins für Rio/They Were So Young (Kurt Neumann 1954)
The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock 1934)
The Manxman (Alfred Hitchcock 1929)
Marie Antionette (Sofia Coppola 2006)
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh 1994)
Matewan (John Sayles 1987)
MaXXXine (Ti West 2024)
Meek’s Cut-Off (Kelly Reichardt 2010)
Menschen am Sonntag/People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer 1930)
Menschen am Sonntag/People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak and Edgar G. Ulmer 1930)
Men with Guns (John Sayles 1997)
Midnight Run (Martin Brest 1988)
Mo him wong/Dr Wai in the Scripture with No Words (Siu-Tung Ching 1996)
Mondocane/Dogworld (Allesandro Celli 2021)
Monkey Man (Dev Patel 2024)
Monstrosity (Joseph V. Mascelli and Jack Pollexfen 1963)
Moon of the Wolf (Daniel Petrie 1972)
Las mujeras panteras/The Panther Women (René Cardona 1967)
Multiple Maniacs (John Waters 1970)
Murder! (Alfred Hitchcock 1930)
My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin 1940)

Nan Shao Lin yu bei Shao Lin/Invincible Shaolin (Cheh Chang 1978)
Nekojiru-sô/Cat Soup (Tatsuo Satô and Masaaki Yuasa 2001)
Neptune Frost (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman 2021)
Night and the City (Jules Dassin 1950)
The Nightcomers (Michael Winner 1971)
A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (Ralph Thomas 1979)
Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch 1991)
No Trees in the Street (J. Lee Thompson 1959)
Nou fo/Raging Fire (Benny Chan 2021)
Nowhere to Go (Seth Holt and Basil Dearden 1958)
Number Seventeen (Alfred Hitchcock 1932)
I nuovi barbari/The New Barbarians aka Warriors of the Wasteland Enzo G Castellari 1983)
Nuovo Cinema Paradiso/Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore 1988)

The Old Oak (Ken Loach 2023)
Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (Shane Meadows 2002)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman 1975)
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt 1969)
Onna hissatsu ken: Kiki ippatsu/Sister Street Fighter: Hanging by a Thread (Kazuhiko Yamaguchi 1974)
Onna hissatsu godan ken/Sister Street Fighter: Fifth Level Fist (Shigehira Ozawa 1976)
Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed 1959)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur 1947)
Outland (Peter Hyams 1981)

Pale Rider (Clint Eastwood 1985)
The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula 1974)
Passion Fish (John Sayles 1992)
Past Lives (Celine Song 2023)
The Phantom (Simon Wincer 1996)
The Phantom of the Opera (Dwight H. Little 1989)
Pi li shi jie/Disciples of the 36th Chamber (Chia-Liang Liu 1985)
Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon 1959)
The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli 1948)
Plane (Jean-François Richet 2023)
Plan 9 from Outer Space (Edward D. Wood Jr 1957)
Pleasure (Ninja Thyberg 2021)
The Pleasure Garden (Alfred Hitchcock 1925)
Point Blank (John Boorman 1968)
Point Break (Kathryn Bigelow 1991)
Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos 2023)
Il Postino (Michael Radford and Massimo Troisi 1994)
Pote tin Kyriaki/Never on Sunday (Jules Dassin 1960)
Pouring Water on Troubled Oil (Nariman Massoumi 2023)
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion 2021)
Pride & Prejudice (Joe Wright 2005)
Primal (Nick Powell 2019)
The Punisher (Jonathan Hensleigh 2004)
Punisher: War Zone (Lexi Alexander 2008)
Puromea/Promare (Hiroyuki Imaishi 2019)

Q – The Winged Serpent (Larry Cohen 1982)
Queen of the Amazons (Edward Finney 1946)
A Quiet Place: Day One (Michael Sarnoski 2024)

Radio On (Chris Petit 1979)
Ralph Breaks the Internet (Phil Johnston and Rich Moore 2018)
The Rare Breed (Andrew V. McLaglen 1966)
Rats – Notte di terrore/Rats: Night of Terror (Bruno Mattei and Claudiio Fragasso 1984)
Raumpatrouille Orion – Rücksturz ins Kino (Theo Metzger and Micahel Braun 1968/2003)
Red One (Jake Kasdan 2024)
Regan (Tom Clegg 1974)
Relatos salvajes/Wild Tales (Damián Szifron 2014)
Retfærdighedens ryttere/Riders of Justice (Anders Thomas Jensen 2020)
Return of the Secaucus Seven (John Sayles 1980)
Revenge of the Creature (Jack Arnold 1955)
Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Jeff Barnaby 2013)
Rich and Strange (Alfred Hitchcock 1931)
The Right Stuff (Philip Kaufman 1983)
The Ring (Alfred Hitchcock 1927)
Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks 1959)
Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger 2023)
The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman 1975)

Safety Not Guaranteed (Colin Trevorrow 2012)
Le samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville 1967)
Sandome no satsujin/The Third Murder (Hirokazu Koreeda 2017)
Santo contre los jinetes del terror/Santo vs. The Riders of Terror (René Cardona 1970)
Sasquatch Sunset (David and Nathan Zellner 2024)
Saw X (Kevin Greutert 2023)
Scrapper (Charlotte Regan 2023)
The Searchers (John Ford 1956)
The Secret of Roan Inish (John Sayles 1994)
The Set-Up (Robert Wise 1949)
Shadow Man (Richard Vernon 1953)
Shao Lin da peng da shi/Return to the 36th Chamber (Chia-Liang Liu 1980)
Shao Lin san shi liu fang/The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Chia-Liang Liu 1978)
Sharpe’s Sword (Tom Clegg 1995)
Sharpe’s Regiment (Tom Clegg 1996)
Sharpe’s Siege (Tom Clegg 1996)
Sharpe’s Mission (Tom Clegg 1996)
Sharpe’s Revenge (Tom Clegg 1997)
Sharpe’s Justice (Tom Clegg 1997)
Sharpe’s Waterloo (Tom Clegg 1997)
She (Avi Nesher 1984)
She Gods of Shark Reef (Roger Corman 1958)
Shin Zatôichi: Yabure! Tôjin-ken/Zatoichi Meets the One-Armed Swordsman (Kimiyoshi Yasuda 1971)
Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Oreta tsue/Zatoichi in Desperation (Shintarô Katsu 1972)
Shin Zatôichi monogatari: Kasama no chimatsuri/Zatoichi’s Conspiracy (Kimiyoshi Yasuda 1973)
Shoot to Kill (William Berke 1947)
The Shop Around the Corner (Ernst Lubitsch 1940)
Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven 1995)
Shuang ma lian huan/The Mystery of Chess Boxing (Joseph Kuo 1979)
Silver City (John Sayles 2004)
Singin’ in the Rain (Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen 1952)
The Skeleton Twins (Craig Johnson 2014)
The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcok 1931)
Sleepaway Camp (Robert Holtzik 1983)
Somers Town (Shane Meadows 2008)
Sono otoko, kyôbô nit suki/Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano 1989)
The Sound of Music (Robert Wise 1965)
Source Code (Duncan Jones 2011)
Spark of Being (Bill Morrison 2010)
Speed (Jan de Bont 1994)
Stargate (Roland Emmerich 1994)
Star Wars (George Lucas 1977)
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner 1980)
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand 1983)
Step Up (Anne Fletcher 2006)
Street Scene (King Vidor 1931)
Strictly Ballroom (Baz Luhrmann 1992)
Strike: An Uncivil War (Daniel Gordon 2024)
The Student Nurses (Stephanie Rothman 1970)
Studio 666 (BJ McDonnell 2022)
The Substance (Coralie Fargeat 2024)
Suffragette (Sarah Gavron 2015)
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder 1950)
Sunshine State (John Sayles 2002)

Tai gik Cheung Sam Fung/Tai Chi Master (Woo-Ping Yuen 1993)
Talk to Me (Danny and Michael Philippou 2022)
También la Lluvia/Even the Rain (Icíar Bollaín 2010)
Tang shan wu hu/Five Superfigthers (Mar Lo 1975)
Tenet (Christopher Nolan 2020)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974)
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper 1974)
Thank You For Smoking (Jason Reitman 2005)
Three Baths (Rafael De Leon Jr 2023)
Timecop (Peter Hyams 1994)
Timestalker (Alice Lowe 2024)
Tin lung baat bou/Sakra (Donnie Yen and Ka-Wai Kam 2023)
To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch 1942)
To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks 1944)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Robert Mulligan 1962)
To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin 1985)
Ein Toter hing in Netz/Horrors of Spider Island (Fritz Böttger 1960)
The Toxic Avenger (Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman 1984)
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Steven Caple Jr 2023)
Les trois mousquetaires: Milady/The Three Musketeers: Milady (Martin Bourboulon 2023)
Tucker and Dale vs Evil (Eli Craig 2010)
Twisters (Lee Isaac Chung 2024)

Uchu kara no messeji/Message from Space (Kinji Fukasaku 1978)
Umi yori mo mada fukaku/After the Storm (Hirokazu Koreeda 2016)
Unrueh/Unrest (Cyril Schäublin 2022)

Victimas del Pecado/Victims of Sin (Emilio Fernández 1951)
Video Days (Spike Jonze 1991)
Virus: L’inferno dei morti viventi/Zombie Creeping Flesh (Bruno Mattei 1980)
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (Pavel Klushantsev and Curtis Harrington 1965)

Wanda (Barbara Loden 1970)
The Wasp Woman (Roger Corman 1959)
The Weak and the Wicked (J. Lee Thompson 1954)
Werckmeister harmóniák/Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr 2000)
The Westerner (William Wyler 1940)
Wicked Little Letters (Thea Sharrock 2023)
The Wild Party (Dorothy Arzner 1929)
The Woman in Question (Anthony Asquith 1950)
Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (Kier-La Janisse 2021)
Working Girls (Lizzie Borden 1986)

Yod ai jian wang/The Swordsman of All Swordsmen (Joseph Kuo 1968)
You and Me (Fritz Lang 1938)
Yukinojô henge/An Actor’s Revenge (Kon Ichikawa 1963)

Zatôichi tekka-tabi/Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (Kimiyoshi Yasuda 1966)
Zatôichi umi o wataru/Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage (Kazuo Ikehiro 1966)
Zatôichi rôyaburi/Zatoichi the Outlaw (Satsuo Yamamoto 1967)
Zatôichi chikemuri kaidô/Zatoichi Challenged (Kenji Misumi 1967)
Zatôichi hatashi-jô/Zatoichi and the Fugitives (Kimiyoshi Yasuda 1968)
Zatôichi kenka-daiko/Samaritan Zatoichi (Kenji Misumi 1968)
Zatôichi to yôjinbô/Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (Kihachi Okamoto 1970)
Zatôichi abare-himatsuri/Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival (Kenji Misumi 1970)
Zatôichi goyô-tabi/Zatoichi at Large (Kazuo Mori 1972)
Zhang bei/My Young Auntie (Chia-liang Liu 1981)
Zimna wojna/Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski 2018)
Zombi 2/Zombie Flesh Eaters (Lucio Fulci 1979)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer 2023)

My top 21 (or 29) books of 2024

This year, I have read 277 books, 268 of them for the first time:

Majority world 132 (though only 64 by women)
Straight white men writing in English 118
Multi-authored or otherwise don’t fit 27

Of those 268 titles, here are my top 21 (or 29) books

Fiction
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015)
Geoff Ryman, Him (2023)

and then in alphabetical order:

Nina Allan, Conquest (2023)
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1859–1860)
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
Jessie Greengrass, The High House (2021)
Lauren Groff, Matrix (2021)
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat (2021)
Daniel Mason, North Woods (2023)
Benjamin Myers, Cuddy (2023)
Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (2022)
Abraham Polonsky, The World Above (1951)
–. A Season of Fear (1956)
Max Porter, Shy (2023)
Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, The Book of Elsewhere (2024)

and somewhat to my surprise, John Galsworthy’s The Forsyte Chronicles (1906–1933), most especially every moment spent in the company of Soames Forsyte.

Non-fiction
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, Chokepoint Capitalism (2022)
Dan Hassler-Forest, Fast and Furious Franchising (2025)
Paul B. Preciado, Can the Monster Speak? A Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts (2020)
Steven Shaviro, Fluid Futures: Science Fiction and Potentiality (2024)
Julie A. Turnock, Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of the 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetic (2015)

And, should anyone care, here’s the complete list of titles

John Joseph Adams, ed., Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015)
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023)
Roma Agrawal, Built: The Hidden Stories Behind our Structures (2018)
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women (1868)
–. Good Wives (1869)
Nina Allan, Conquest (2023)
Nicolò Ammaniti, Anna (2015)
Anonymous, ed., The New Economy Starter Pack (2019)
Stephen T. Asma, On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears (2009)
Anushka Asthana, Taken as Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party (2024)

D.A. Baden, ed., No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet (2022)
Neil Badmington, Perpetual Movement: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (2021)
Arturo Barea, The Forge (1941)
–. The Track (1943)
–. The Clash (1946)
Becky Bartlett, Badfilm: Incompetence, Intention and Failure (2021)
Giorgio Bassani, The Gold-Rimmed Spectacles (1958)
H.E. Bates, Love for Lydia (1952)
Kate Beaton, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022)
Ned Beauman, Venomous Lumpsucker (2022)
William Beckford, Vathek (1786)
Hannah Berry, Adamtine (2012)
Mark Bould, Andrew M. Butler and Sherryl Vint, eds, The New Routledge Companion to Science Fiction (2024)
Chris Beckett, America City (2017)
–. Beneath the World, a Sea (2019)
–. Two Tribes (2020)
–. Tomorrow (2021)
Guy Boothby, Pharos the Egyptian: A Romance (1899)
Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History (2005)
Ken Bruen, Galway Girl (2019)
Gary Budden and Marian Womack, eds. Invite to Eternity: Tales of Nature Disrupted. (2019)
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903)
Season Butler, Cygnet (2019)

Josef and Karel Čapek, The Insect Play (1921)
Karel Čapek, R.U.R. (1920)
J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country (1980)
B. Catling, The Vorrh (2015)
Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (2013)
Christophe Chambouté, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (2014)
Anton Chekhov, Ivanov (1887)
–. The Bear (1888)
–. The Proposal (1889)
–. The Festivities (1891)
–. The Seagull (1896)
–. Uncle Vanya (1897)
–. The Three Sisters (1901)
–. The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)
Steen Ledet Christiansen, Drone Age Cinema: Action Films and Sensory Assault (2017)
Edmund Crispin, The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944)
Kateřina Čupová, R.U.R.: The Karel Čapek Classic (2020)

Angela Y. Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement (2016)
Don DeLillo, Great Jones Street (1973)
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Joël Dicker, The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer (2018)
Thomas M. Disch, ed., The Ruins of Earth (1971)
Cory Doctorow, A Place So Foreign, and Eight More (2003)
–. Eastern Standard Tribe (2004)
–. With a Little Help (2009)
–. Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century (2011)
–. Homeland (2013)
–. Attack Surface (2020)
–. How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism (2020)
–. The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation (2023)
Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land (2021)
Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (2013)
Arthur Conan Doyle, His Last Bow (1917)

Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space (2014)
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860)
David Ellis, Byron in Geneva: That Summer of 1816 (2011)
Percival Everett, Assumption (2011)
Rupert Everett, Vanished Years (2012)
Chukwunonso Ezeiyoke, Nigerian Speculative Fiction: The Evolution (2025)

J. Jefferson Farjeon, The Z Murders (1932)
Anna Feigenbaum, Tear Gas: From the Battlefields of World War I to the Streets of Today (2017)
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Cuckoo (2024)
Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Book Two (2024)
Ford Madox Ford, Some Do Not . . . (1924)
–. No More Parades (1925)
–. A Man Could Stand Up–– (1926)
–. The Last Post (1928)
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (1924)
Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, Undine (1811)
Nancy Fraser, Cannibal Capitalism: How Our System Is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet – and What We Can Do About It (2022)

Anthony Galluzo, Against the Vortex: Zardoz and Degrowth Utopias in the Seventies and Today (2023)
John Galsworthy, The Man of Property (1906)
–. In Chancery (1920)
–. To Let (1921)
–. The White Monkey (1924)
–. The Silver Spoon (1926)
–. Swan Song (1928)
–. Maid in Waiting (1931)
–. Flowering Wilderness (1932)
–. Over the River (1933)
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (1853)
Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow, Chokepoint Capitalism (2022)
William Godwin, Things as They Are; or, The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794)
Robert Graves, I, Claudius (1934)
Jon Greenaway, Capitalism, A Horror Story: Gothic Marxism and the Dark Side of the Radical Imagination (2024)
Graham Greene, The Comedians (1966)
Jessie Greengrass, The High House (2021)
Lauren Groff, Matrix (2021)

Andrea Hairston, Archangels of Funk (2024)
Sarah Hall, Burntcoat (2021)
Patrick Hamilton, The Slaves of Solitude (1947)
Indrek Hargla, Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St Olaf’s Church (2010)
–. Apothecary Melchior and the Ghost of Rataskaevu Street (2010)
Dan Hassler-Forest, Fast and Furious Franchising (2025)
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1941)
Mick Herron, The List (2015)
–. The Drop (2018)
Ben Highmore, The Great Indoors: At Home in the Modern British House (2014)
Susan Hill, The Woman in Black (1983)
E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Devil’s Elixir (1815)
James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner: Written by Himself: With a detail of curious traditionary facts and other evidence by the editor (1824)
Matthew Holness (as Garth Marenghi), Garth Marenghi’s TerrorTome (2022)

Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt (1867)
–. The Pillars of Society (1877)
–. A Doll House (1879)
–. Ghosts (1881)
–. An Enemy of the People (1882)
–. The Wild Duck (1884)
–. Rosmersholm (1886)
–. The Lady from the Sea (1888)
–. Hedda Gabler (1890)
–. The Master Builder (1892)
–. Little Eyolf (1894)
–. John Gabriel Borkman (1896)
–. When We Dead Wake (1899)
Rachel Ingalls, Mrs Caliban (1982)
Kotaro Isaka, Three Assassins (2004)

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady (1881)
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (2015)
N.K. Jemisin, The City We Became (2020)
Alexia Kannas, Giallo! Genre, Modernity and Detection in Italian Horror Cinema (2020)
Jan Kaplinski, The Same River (2007)
Malaika Kegode, Body Buffet (2023)
Kim Bo-Young, I’m Waiting for You, and Other Stories (2021)
Jessie Kinding, Mark Krotov and Marco Roth, eds, There Is No Outside: Covid-19 Dispatches (2020)
Lucy Kissick, Plutoshine (2022)
Paul Klee, On Modern Art (1924)
–. Pedagogical Sketchbook (1925)
Naomi Klein, The Battle for Paradise: Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists (2018)
Bill Krohn, Letters from Hollywood, 1977–2017 (2020)
Jaan Kross, The Ropewalker, book one (1970?)
–. The Ropewalker, book two (197?)
–. A People without a Past (197?)
–. A Book of Falsehoods (1980?)
R.F. Kuang, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution (2022)
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake (2024)

Jake Lamar, Viper’s Dream (2021)
Francis Lathom, The Midnight Bell, A German Story, Founded on Incidents in Real Life (1798)
Isiah Lavender III, Critical Race Theory and Science Fiction (2025)
D.H. Lawrence, The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories (1930)
John Le Carré, Call for the Dead (1961)
Ann Leckie, Translation State (2023)
Roger Luckhurst, Gothic: An Illustrated History (2021)

Aric McBay, Kraken Calling (2022)
Ross Macdonald, Blue City (1947)
Martin MacInnes, In Ascension (2023)
Sir John Mandeville, The Book of Marvels and Travels (c.1357–1371)
Florence Marryat, The Blood of the Vampire (1897)
Helen Marshall, The Migration (2019)
Daniel Mason, North Woods (2023)
W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915)
So Mayer, A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (2020)
Gavin Miller, Anna McFarlane and Donna McCormack, eds, The Edinburgh Companion to Science Fiction and the Medical Humanities (2025)
Denise Mina, Gods and Beasts (2012)
David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (2014)
Michael Moorcock, Byzantium Endures (1981)
–. The Laughter of Carthage (1984)
–. Jerusalem Commands (1992)
–. The Vengeance of Rome (2006)
Glyn Morgan, ed., Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of the Imagination (2022)
Mark Morris, ed., I’m with the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet (2011)
Benjamin Myers, Cuddy (2023)

Ray Nayler, The Mountain in the Sea (2022)
–. The Tusks of Extinction (2023)
Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers (2023)
Gregory Norminton, ed., Beacons: Stories Four Our Not So Distant Future (2013)

Malka Older, Null States (2017)
–. State Tectonics (2018)–.
The Mimicking of Known Successes (2023)

Chris Pallant, Beyond Bagpuss: A History of Smallfilms Animation Studio (2022)
Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettesse, Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics (2022)
Karen Pinkus, Subsurface (2023)
Frederik Pohl, Slave Ship (1956)
Abraham Polonsky, The Enemy Sea (1943)
–. The World Above (1951)
–. A Season of Fear (1956)
–. Zenia’s Way (1980)
Max Porter, Shy (2023)
Paul B. Preciado, Can the Monster Speak? A Report to an Academy of Psychoanalysts (2020)

Ann Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance (1790)
–. The Romance of the Forest: interspersed with some pieces of poetry (1791)
–. The Italian, or The Confessional of the Black Penitents: A Romance (1796)
Clara Reeve, The Old English Baron (1777)
Keanu Reeves and China Miéville, The Book of Elsewhere (2024)
Keanu Reeves et al, Brzrkr, volume one (2021)
–. Brzrkr, volume two (2022)
–. Brzrkr, volume three (2023)
— Brzrkr Bloodlines, volume one (2024)
Alastair Reynolds, Blue Remembered Earth (2012)
–. On the Steel Breeze (2013)
–. Poseidon’s Wake (2015)
Phil Rickman, The House of Susan Lulham (2014)
Ben Rivers, ed., Collected Stories (2023)
Adam Roberts, The Real-Town Murders (2017)
Regina Maria Roche, The Children of the Abbey: A Tale (1796)
James Rose, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (2013)
Geoff Ryman, Him (2023)
–. The Many Different Kinds of Love (2023)

Sathnam Sanghera, Empireland: How Imperialism Shaped Modern Britain (2021)
George Saunders, Liberation Day (2022)
Miranda Sawyer, Mary Shelley (2000)
Friedrich Schiller, The Ghost-Seer (1789)
Walter Scott, Walter Scott, Marmion (1808)
–. Ivanhoe (1819)
Max Sexton and Dominic Lees, Seeing It On Television: Televisuality in the Contemporary US ‘High-End’ Series (2021)
Steven Shaviro, Fluid Futures: Science Fiction and Potentiality (2024)
R.C. Sheriff, Journey’s End (1928)
Scott Cutler Shershow and Scott Michaelsen, The Love of Ruins: Letters on Lovecraft (2017)
Vernon Shetley, Dark Film, Blood Money: The Economic Unconscious of American Neo-Noir Cinema (2025)
Lewis Shiner, Say Goodbye: The Laurie Moss Story (1999)
Georges Simenon, Pietr the Latvian (1930)
–. A Maigret Christmas (1951)
–. Maigret’s Memoirs (1951)
–. Maigret Sets A Trap (1955)
Greg Singh, Dark Mirror (2025)
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz (2023)
Peter Stamm, To the Back of Beyond (2017)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
Jonathan Strahan, ed., Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond (2016)

Wole Talabi, Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023)
Shaun Tan, Cicada (2018)
–. Eric (2008)
–. The Lost Thing (2000)
–. The Red Tree (2001)
–. Rules of Summer (2013)
Shaun Tan and John Marsden, The Rabbits (1998)
Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory (2023)
Josephine Tey, The Franchise Affair (1948)
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (1847–8)
Rosemary Tonks, The Bloater (1968)
Francine Toon, Pine (2020)
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857)
Julie A. Turnock, Plastic Reality: Special Effects, Technology, and the Emergence of the 1970s Blockbuster Aesthetic (2015)

Gordon Van Gelder, ed., Welcome to the Greenhouse: New Science Fiction on Climate Change (2011)
Peter Van Greenaway, The Crucified City (1962)
–. The Evening Fool (1964)
–. Doppelganger (1975)
–. Take the War to Washington (1975)
–. Suffer! Little Children (1976)
–. ‘Cassandra’ Bell (1981)
–. Manrissa Man (1982)
–. Graffiti (1983)
–. The Immortal Coil (1985)
–. Mutants (1986)
–. The Killing Cup (1987)
Francesco Verso, Nexhuman (2013)
Tony M. Vinci, Ghost, Android, Machine: Trauma and Literature Beyond the Human (2020)
Paul Virilio, The Administration of Fear (2012)
Nghi Vo, The Empress of Salt and Fortune (2020)
–. When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (2020)
–. Into the Riverlands (2022)
–. Mammoths at the Gate (2023)
–. The Brides of High Hill (2024)

Edgar Wallace, The Feathered Serpent (1927)
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto (1764)
Ruth Ware, The Woman in Cabin 10 (2016)
Rosie Warren, ed., Salvage #14: Shrouded in Darkness (2024)
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies (1930)
Martha Wells, System Collapse (2023)
Mary Woodbury, ed. Winds of Change: Short Stories about Our Climate (2015)
Virginia Woolf, Kew Gardens and Other Short Fiction (2022; 1917–1929)
–. Reviewing, with a Note by Leonard Woolf (1939)

The stuff what I done in 2024

This has been an oddly exhausting year, although it feels like I haven’t done as much as usual.

Partly that’s because for the first time in two decades I have spent most of the year without publishing contracts or other writing commitments, so there’s been less external pressure to slog on through stuff. Plus I dug deep and eventually found the good sense to walk away from a potential project. And I also had to pull out of three conferences  (one for political reasons, two for health reasons) but in each case did so early enough to steer the replacement invitations to others every bit as, if not more, qualified than me, apart from not being middle-aged white guys.

Also, everything slowed down and became more complicated because we had builders working on the house for nearly four months, and then in November my still-undiagnosed-after-a-decade seizures returned, with a longer tail of fatigue and sludgy cognitive processing. (To add to the fun, NHS Wales has no access to NHS England records, so they know nothing in terms of the results of previous neurological and cardiological investigations. Which means I am right back at the start of the whole process, with a slew of hospital visits to look forward to in the new year.)

But it was also the year in which we got a pair of Indian runner ducks, Sarah Jane and Servalan, who lived in the house with us from the age of five days until their feathers came through properly six or seven weeks later, shitting everywhere and insisting on trying to stand on our shoulders to make us look like particularly crap pirates. With duck crap down their backs. (Thanks Dave and Daisy for bringing them home to us, and for unexpectedly turning them into a housewarming gift from the world’s oldest continuously operating video store.)

And it was, as that parenthesis skilfully foreshadows, the year in which we belatedly had our housewarming party.

It was also the year in which, in the same week, I got to introduce a 50th anniversary IMAX screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and to meet John Sayles and Maggie Renzi (sort of). Oh, and we went to a party with Keanu Reeves (sort of, but in a different way).

Thanks to an invitation from Sarah Lohmann to speak about cinema, time-travel and sf for the Speculative Temporalities Literaturwissenschaftliches Kolloquim at ETH Zürich, we got to spend an April week in Switzerland, during which I could have died on an alp from my own stupidity and we saw, an hour later in an unrelated incident, an avalanche.

Thanks to a bunch of invitations from Jaak Tomberg (initially via David Hartley), we got to spend a May week in Estonia, mostly Tartu, where I: 

  • gave a paper on 150 climate fiction short stories at SFRA 2024: Transitions (the above-mentioned wisely abandoned project I’d backed myself into for the conference I ended up pulling out of for political reasons)
  • hosted an event with Cory Doctorow on the enshittification of the internet (for The Grand Futurological Congress literary festival)
  • gave a reading from The Anthropocene Unconscious and, embarrassed by quite how long I’ve been dining out on that book (whether counted from the 2016 Cardiff keynote where I first started talking about the Anthropocene or the 2018 Liverpool keynote where I first presented a version of the book’s key idea to a room full of people), also read the first three paragraphs, written that morning, hopefully my next book, Climate Monsters (for Translation Agency, the guerilla programming running alongside the literature festival)
  • was interviewed, along with Amy Cutler and David M. Higgins by the Estonian equivalent of the BBC (at least, that’s how it was described to me)

And thanks to María Abizanda Cardona, I spent a couple of October hours in Spain (sadly only virtually) in conversation with the Association for American Studies/ Sociedad española para el estudio de los Estados Unidos de América Young Scholars Reading Group at the University of Zaragoza.

Late 2023 and early 2024 were taken up with line-editing, copy-editing and proof-reading a pair of edited volumes with old friends, both of which were then published within a couple of months, which is freakily swift and rather disorienting for academic publishing:

I suspect the latter is the last book I will ever do with a for-profit academic press – Routledge have always been okay to work with apart from the outrageous exploitation of authors/editors and the sometime shoddy subcontracting of production work, but I’m just so fed up and disgusted with the whole sector’s naked profiteering and increasingly obvious lack of interest in the content of what they publish. So I’m kinda done with that, I guess.

I also

  • wrote my first ever introduction to a graphic novel, the English translation of Kateřina Čupová’s adaptation R.U.R.: The Karel Čapek Classic (Rosarium 2024)
  • published a review of ‘Steven Rawle, Transnational Kaiju: Exploitation, Globalisation and Cult Monster Movies’, Transnational Screens 15.1 (2024): 118–119
  • drafted a chapter on contemporary dystopian cinema, with which I remain deeply dissatisfied but hopeful that my editor and fellow contributors can help me figure out why it doesn’t work – and how to fix it
  • examined Tom Andrews’s PhD, Climate Change in Anthropo-Temporal Quasi-Fantasy and New Weird Fiction (Anglia Ruskin University 2024).

I have also been a guest on three Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever podcasts – on King Kong, Flash Gordon and The Creature from the Black Lagoon – and am currently sidling up to doing prep for a different podcast series to talk about Solaris and for my first ever DVD extra, where I will be talking about…oh, wait, I’m not supposed to tell anyone about that yet…

On 17 May, I introduced Georgiy Daneliya’s bonkers Kin-dza-dza! for Forbidden Worlds festival at Bristol Megascreen, and on 21 July Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at Dale and Tucker vs. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre: A Double Bill of Hicksploitation Classics for Horror Without End/Forbidden Worlds at Bristol Megascreen (21 July) – and just four days later (25 July) I finally met John Sayles. Sort of.

I was supposed to meet him back in the late 2000s for a TV thing back when I was writing The Cinema of John Sayles: Lone Star but that fell through. And then I was supposed to do a live on-stage event with him for the UK premiere of the 4K restoration of Matewan, but Covid hit and he caught it and the festival was cancelled for lockdown anyway. But now finally, albeit via Zoom, I was going to interview him and Maggie Renzi for 15 minutes at the Cinema Rediscovered festival at the Watershed directly before the UK premiere of the 4K restoration of Lone Star (the first of his films I actually saw in a cinema, back in 1996).

So I’m sat there, at the front of an absolutely packed cinema, with half a minute to go, when the tech guy comes down for one final check of my mic, and says ‘You know he’s still not there, but Maggie’s happy to go ahead with it anyway’.

Reader, this was the first I’d heard of John’s absence. Apparently, he was out playing basketball (he’s 73!) but was on his way back and would join us – and no sooner than I’d been told this than it was time to begin.

Fortunately, I’m so fucking woke I’d already planned for my first question to be for Maggie. Who was beyond fabulous. And we had fifteen minutes of fun. The crowd loved it. And then sadly it was time to wrap up.

And I was just about to say “Sadly, it’s time to wrap up” when suddenly John appears in the background in a basketball shirt and the kind of tiny tiny shorts you see him wearing in photos back in the 1970s and 1980s, prompting some discussion later as to whether he was actually wearing any. I’ve checked the footage: he was, but it was all a bit Basic Instinct, especially when – 16 minutes into a 15 minute interview – he Will Rikered over the back of the chair next to Maggie. There was just time to ask one question: while you’re still obviously active as a writer, it’s been 11 years since Go For Sisters, so is there ever going to be another John Sayles movie?

Which is when, at Maggie’s prompting, he told us about the western they hope to start filming in February. Based on a pulp story from the 1920s (presumably unearthed while researching his new novel, To Save the Man, due out next month). Shot on Leone’s old sets in Spain. With Chris Cooper. All they needed was a saleable name to play the younger cowboy and the money would fall into place…

I have now read all the great writers!

Or, more accurately, I have now read the last 22 titles in the Marshall Cavendish 54-installment Great Writers partwork that I bought, but did not read, religiously every week for a year in the mid/late 1980s, and which I blogged about last year.

And since those blogs were really about transclass identity and cultural capital, what better way to report my findings than star ratings!

In ascending order:

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Walter Scott, Ivanhoe 

★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
H.E. Bates, Love for Lydia
W Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆
Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford
DH Lawrence, The Virgin and the Gypsy, and Other Stories
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair 

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh
Graham Greene, The Comedians 
EM Forster, A Passage to India 
Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady 
Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers

★★★★★★☆☆☆☆
Anthology of Fear: 20 Haunting Stories for Winter Nights

★★★★★★★☆☆☆
George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss 
Robert Graves, I, Claudius 
Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

★★★★★★★★
Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim 
Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
John Galsworthy, The Forsyte Saga 
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

I will not be taking any questions at this time.

Beyond the Canon, part two

Last year, I was one of 839 people who contributed lists of 100 ‘great’ films not nominated by anyone at all in the latest BFI/Sight and Sound decadal poll.

Today, the result are out.

I am of course mortified to discover that only twenty of my choices went unnamed by any of those other 838 respondents

Furthermore, my taste has become so mainstream and debased that a further 27 made it onto the A-list, and that my other 53 selections were mentioned 181 times by others in (that’s 3.4 times each).

How vulgar and commonplace I’ve become!

My orphan films
Movie Crazy (Clyde Bruckman 1932)
First A Girl (Victor Saville 1935)
The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer 1935)
The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason 1938)
The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass (Seijun Suzuki 1961)
Bushman (David Schickele 1971)
Hapkido (Feng Huang 1972)
Death Line aka Raw Meat (Gary Sherman 1972)
Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee 1972)
The Soul of N***** Charley (Larry G Spangler 1973)
The Terminal Man (Mike Hodges 1974)
The Trial of Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin 1974)
Queen Kong (Frank Agrama 1976)
Diggstown aka Midnight Sting (Michael Ritchie 1992)
Fish Story (Yoshihiro Nakamura 2009)
Animal Factory (Steve Buscemi 2000)
The Last Winter (Larry Fessenden 2006)
Crumbs (Miguel Llansó 2015)
Rams (Grímur Hákonarson 2015)
Keanu (Peter Atencio 2016)

My A-list films (with total number of mentions)
The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh 1924) 12
The Italian Straw Hat (René Clair 1928) 8
Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin 1928) 8
Under the Roofs of Paris (René Clair 1930) 7
Emil and the Detectives (Gerhard Lamprecht 1931) 4
Le Million (René Clair 1931) 22
La kermesse héroïque (Jacques Feyder 1935) 7
The Million Ryo Pot (Sadao Yamanaka 1935) 22
Murder, My Sweet (Edward Dmytryk 1944) 13
Death of a Cyclist (Juan Antonio Bardem 1955) 15
Rififi (Jules Dassin 1955) 75
The Deadly Invention (Karel Zeman 1958) 9
Plein Soleil (René Clément 1960) 34
The Face of Another (Hiroshi Teshigahara 1966) 29
The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich 1967) 10
God Told Me To (Larry Cohen 1976) 11
Violent Cop (Takeshi Kitano 1989) 10
King of New York (Abel Ferrara 1990) 33
Matinee (Joe Dante 1993) 23
True Romance (Tony Scott 1993) 21
Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng 2000) 6
Lagaan (Ashutosh Gowariker 2001) 12
Primer (Shane Carruth 2004) 22
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin 2007) 50
The Raid (Gareth Evans 2011) 12
The Neon Demon (Nicolas Winding Refn 2016) 20
Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi 2016) 18

My non-orphan, non-A-list films (with total number of mentions (including mine))
The Black Pirate (Albert Parker 1926) 3
The Emperor Jones (Dudley Murphy 1933) 2
Captain Blood (Michael Curtiz 1935) 5
The Talk of the Town (George Stevens 1942) 4
Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk 1947) 7
The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich 1955) 4
Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji (Tomu Uchida 1955) 3
Ilya Muromets (Aleksandr Ptushko 1956) 3
The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden 1960) 2
The Damned (Joseph Losey 1962) 7
Pitfall (Hiroshi Teshigahara 1962) 9
It Happened Here (Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo 1964) 2
How to Steal a Million (William Wyler 1966) 5
Support Your Local Sheriff (Burt Kennedy 1969) 3
Bone (Larry Cohen 1972) 5
The Longest Yard aka The Mean Machine (Robert Aldrich 1974) 6
Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston 1978) 7
Bush Mama (Haile Gerima 1979) 10
Flash Gordon (Mike Hodges 1980) 6
The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy 1985) 6
Celia (Ann Turner 1989) 8
Roadkill (Bruce McDonald 1989) 3
Highway 61 (Bruce McDonald 1991) 2
Suture (Scott McGehee and David Siegel 1993) 4
Three Kings (David O. Russell 1999) 9
Little Otik (Jan Svankmajer 2000) 7
The Grudge aka Ju-on 3 (Takashi Shimizu 2002) 5
A Snake of June (Shinya Tsukamoto 2002) 9
Blind Shaft (Yang Li 2003) 6
Big Man Japan (Hitoshi Matsumoto 2007) 3
The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson 2008) 2
Frozen River (Courtney Hunt 2008) 3
JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri 2008) 3
The House of the Devil (Ti West 2009) 6
Stingray Sam (Cory McAbee 2009) 2
Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn 2009) 8
Las Acacias (Pablo Giorgelli 2011) 2
Two Years at Sea (Ben Rivers 2011) 2
The Angel’s Share (Ken Loach 2012) 3
Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin 2012) 12
Dead Slow Ahead (Mauro Herce 2015) 3
Men & Chicken (Anders Thomas Jensen 2015) 2
Mustang (Deniz Gamze Ergüven 2015) 6
Creepy (Kiyoshi Kurosawa 2016) 5
The Nothing Factory (Pedro Pinho 2017) 2
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada 2018) 4
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos 2018) 9
Bait (Mark Jenkin 2019) 6
Possessor (Brandon Cronenberg 2020) 7
Earwig (Lucille Hadzihalilovic 2021) 2
Summer of Soul (Questlove 2021) 9
Judas and the Black Messiah (Shaka King 2021) 5
Enys Men (Mark Jenkin 2022) 4

Socialism or Barbara-ism

so while watching Barbara Loder’s materialist-feminist road movie Wanda (1970) last night, I came up with the idea for a new module, Socialism or Barbara-ism: The Cinematic Critique of Capitalist Patriarchy, focusing on:
Barbara Bach in The Spy Who Loved Me (Gilbert 1977)
Barbara Bel Geddes in Caught (Ophuls 1949) and Vertigo (Hitchcock 1958)
Barbara Carrera in Embryo (Nelson 1976),
Barbara Eden in The Feminist and the Fuzz (Paris 1971)
Barbara Flynn in A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–88)
Barbara Hershey in Boxcar Bertha (Scorsese 1972)
Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA (1976)
Barbara Loden in Barbara Loden’s Wanda (1970)
Barbara Stanwyck in Baby Face (Green 1933), Double Indemnity (Wilder 1944) and Cattle Queen of Montana (Dwan 1954)
Barbara Steele in Shivers (Cronenberg 1975)
Barb(a)ra Streisand in The Way We Were (Pollack 1973)
Barbara Windsor in Carry On Girls (Thomas 1973) and Comrades (Douglas 1986)
oh, and Barbara Bain in Commander Xenophobe and His Rogue Moon (1975–77)
plus
Barbie (Gerwig 2023)
Barbara (Petzold 2012)
Bubbara Ho-Tep (Coscarelli 2002)
Barb Wire (Hogan 1996)
Barbara-ian Queen (Olivera 1985)
Barbaraella (Vadim 1968)
Nights of Carbarbara (Fellini 1957)
Major Barbara (Pascal, French and Lean 1941)
The Winning of Barbara Worth (King 1926)
and Barbaraship Potemkin (Eisenstein 1925)