Month: December 2018

Books of 2018

Here is a ranked list of the books which I finished reading in 2018:

  1. Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark
  2. Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brien
  3. Moons of Jupiter, Alice Munro
  4. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
  5. Outside Stories, Eliot Weinberger
  6. Preludes & Nocturnes (Sandman #1), Neil Gaiman
  7. Works on Paper, Eliot Weinberger
  8. Post Captain, Patrick O’Brien
  9. Empires of the Word, Nicholas Oster
  10. At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell
  11. HMS Surprise, Patrick O’Brien
  12. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest hemingway
  13. Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher
  14. Fixed Ideas, Joan Didion
  15. The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie
  16. Fables, Vol. 1, Bill Willingham
  17. The Mauritius Command, Patrick O’Brien
  18. The Reactionary Mind, Corey Robin
  19. Batman: The Killing Joke, Alan Moore
  20. Desolation Island, Patrick O’Brien
  21. The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
  22. The Surgeon’s Mate, Patrick O’Brien
  23. The Chapo Guide to Revolution
  24. The Doll’s House (Sandman #2), Neil Gaiman
  25. The Fortune of War, Patrick O’Brien
  26. The Art of Smart Football, Chris Brown
  27. The Essential Smart Football, Chris Brown
  28. Big Game, Mark Leibovich
  29. The Secret of Chimneys, Agatha Christie
  30. The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
  31. The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie
  32. It Crawled from the South, Marcus Gray
  33. The Big Four, Agatha Christie
  34. Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff

Currently reading, ranked in order of how close I am to finishing:

  1. The Ionian Mission, Patrick O’Brien
  2. The Power Broker, Robert Moses
  3. Middlemarch, George Eliot
  4. A World to Win: The Life and Work of Karl Marx, Sven-Eric Liedman
  5. Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
  6. The Fourth World Omnibus, Jack Kirby

The Best Older Movies I Saw in 2018

An annual tradition here at The End, this is a look at my favorite film discoveries of the year, any movie more than a few years old that I saw for the first time in 2018. Previous years include: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006. I watched just over 350 films this year, about 60 of which qualified for this list, and these are 31 of my favorites.

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Hana and Alice (Shunji Iwai, 2004)

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Kamikaze Taxi (Masato Harada, 1995)

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Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)

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Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)

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Long Arm of the Law (Johnny Mak, 1984)

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The Longest Summer (Fruit Chan, 1998)

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Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard, 1932)

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Final Victory (Patrick Tam, 1987)

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Dream Lovers (Tony Au, 1986)

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Love Letter (Shunji Iwai, 1995)

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That Day, on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)

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Love Unto Waste (Stanley Kwan, 1986)

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List (Hong Sangsoo, 2011)

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The Boxer’s Omen (Kuei Chih-hung, 1983)

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Crime Story (Kirk Wong, 1993)

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Tonight Nobody Goes Home (Sylvia Chang, 1996)

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Detective Chinatown (Chen Sicheng, 2015)

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Something Good – Negro Kiss (William Selig, 1898)

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Cops and Robbers (Alex Cheung, 1979)

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Siao Yu (Sylvia Chang, 1995)

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Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sangsoo, 2009)

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Princess D (Sylvia Chang, 2002)

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Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-tung, 1983)

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Nine to Five (Colin Higgins, 1980)

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Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)

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Little Forest: Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn (Junichi Mori, 2014-15)

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Bewitched (Kuei Chih-hung, 1981)

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Women (Stanley Kwan, 1985)

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Man of Steel (Zack Snyder, 2013)

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Seeding of a Ghost (Chuan Yang, 1983)

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Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? (Shunji Iwai, 1993)

This Week in Rankings

Since the last rankings update I wrote about Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night over at The Chinese Cinema and Shunji Iwai’s Last Letter at Mubi. Over at Seattle Screen Scene I reviewed Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana, Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird, Kim Sunghoon’s Rampant, John Carpenter’s The Fog, and RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Over at Frame.land I contributed a review of Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses. 

If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.

These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.

Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard) – 4, 1932
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks) – 17, 1936
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1966
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (Bill Melendez & Phil Roman) – 37, 1973
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper) – 7, 1974

Halloween (John Carpenter) – 7, 1978
The Fog (John Carpenter) – 11, 1980
Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? (Shunji Iwai) – 27, 1993
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) – 30, 1993

City Hunter (Wong Jing) – 56, 1993
Love Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 11, 1995
All About Lily Chou-chou (Shunji Iwai) – 10, 2001
Hana and Alice (Shunji Iwai) – 6, 2004
Little Forest: Summer/Autumn (Junichi Mori) – 36, 2014

Kaili Blues (Bi Gan) – 11, 2015
Little Forest: Winter/Spring (Junichi Mori) – 41, 2015
The Rider (Chloé Zhao) – 51, 2017
Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani) – 75, 2017
First Reformed (Paul Schrader) – 85, 2017

You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) – 97, 2017
Liz and the Blue Bird (Naoko Yamada) – 6, 2018
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles) – 10, 2018
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan) – 11, 2018
Last Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 12, 2018

Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman) – 15, 2018
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen) – 17, 2018
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross) – 21, 2018
Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) – 22, 2018
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) – 23, 2018

Shirkers (Sandi Tan) – 24, 2018
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper) – 25, 2018
Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (Graham Carter) – 34, 2018
Burning (Lee Changdong) – 39, 2018
Destination Wedding (Victor Levin) –  50,2018

Hereditary (Ari Aster) – 51, 2018
The Gilligan Manifesto (Cekin Soling) – 53, 2018
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) – 54, 2018
Cam (Daniel Goldhaber) – 55, 2018
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (Morgan Neville) – 57, 2018

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino) – 65, 2018
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Susan Johnson) – 66, 2018
The Great Buster (Peter Bogdanovich) – 67, 2018
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Hunter) – 81, 2018
Widows (Steve McQueen) – 85, 2018

Won’t You be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville) – 92, 2018
Illang: the Wolf Brigade (Kim Jiwoon) – 93, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer) – 94, 2018
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Lasse Hallström & Joe Johnston) – 100, 2018
Rampant (Kim Sunghoon) – 104, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon Chu) – 105, 2018