Reflections from watching 100 movies + favorites from 2025

I can't go back to anime

I made it a goal this year to get into movies. I didn’t grow up watching them, and slowly accumulated a backlog of cultural references and memories of awed reactions from friends who told me such-and-such film had changed them. But beyond my desire to stay in the loop, I wanted to understand cinema as an art form and tool for self-inquiry. What makes a film great? Do the “greatest films of all time” live up to the hype? And more specifically, how do I engage with the medium? What kind of films do I like, and what does that reveal about how I see the world?

So I watched 102 of them. I started with the AFI 100 list and movies people were usually shocked I had never watched (e.g., Titanic, Inception), then quickly branched out to tailored recommendations from ChatGPT and friends.

The first thing I noticed—I think while watching The Godfather—is that movies are rich with detail and nuance. For example, if a character says one thing with their face showing a contradicting emotion, the viewer picks up the dissonance between the two as subtext. In the beginning of the movie, there is a wedding where a singer named Johnny Fontane (inspired by the real-life Frank Sinatra) performs. Michael, the youngest son of the mafia family, explains to his girlfriend Kay how his father helped Fontane’s career by freeing him from a contract so he could go solo. How did he do that? By putting a gun to the boss’ head. Kay, learning about the nature of his family for the first time, looks at him in shock, and he says, “That’s my family, Kay. That’s not me.” The line is reassuring, but somehow you can’t quite believe him, because he’s averting her gaze for most of its delivery—as if he’s saying it in an attempt to convince himself. This unease lingers with the audience as the movie progresses over the next three hours to show Michael taking over as head of his family, doing all the things he swore he wouldn’t do.

The amount of information embedded in the backgrounds and interiors is also stunning. Movies feel like time capsules containing artifacts from the period they were filmed, and a good set manufactures believability. In The Apartment, I noticed two Tiffany lamps (stained glass lamps made by Louis Comfort Tiffany, popular in the late 19th and early 20th century and now priced in the tens of thousands) in the apartment of the supposedly poor protagonist and was confused, until I learned that by 1960 when the film was made, those lamps had temporarily fallen out of fashion and were frequently found in thrift stores. The set designers had made a deliberate choice to depict his social standing. Every detail, whether it went consciously noticed or not, existed to serve the story and augment its plausibility, its immersiveness.

This ruined anime for me, save for some rare exceptions. By that point I had watched a lifetime total of over 5,000 episodes, and it was like realizing I had been drinking diluted Kool-Aid without knowing it. In anime, the expressions are flat and exaggerated, the characters speak every thought they have out loud, and the backgrounds are usually an afterthought. The exceptions are those that leverage the medium of animation to do what would be impossible or implausible with cameras: tell fantastical stories divorced from reality through sequences of drawings. I came away appreciating the best of animation (e.g., Paprika, Spirited Away) even more than before, and most of the rest of anime much less.

The second thing I noticed was: There really is something for everybody. You could learn about the Watergate scandal and political corruption in All the President’s Men, watch the janitor with impeccable music taste in Perfect Days clean toilets, or smoke opium with the flower girls in the high-end brothels of Flowers of Shanghai. There doesn’t even have to be dialogue—long stretches of 2001: A Space Odyssey are devoted to the vastness and silence of space. Or it can be all dialogue: One, Two, Three is a frenzied stream of jokes as its characters snake across both sides of the Berlin Wall.

Given that there are so many choices, enough to simulate the multifaceted nature of reality at large, getting into movies will inevitably reveal your default mental inclinations. The movies that fascinate you are a reflection of how you like to parse reality, or which aspects of experience you like to tune into. You learn you do, after all, have preferences. You have an aesthetic. And once you know roughly what that is, you can find more of it—more self-organizing clusters of stimuli that evoke resonance, meaning, and beauty as experienced by you. You discover what is called your sensibility.

Looking back at the films that moved me the most this year, many were tender, contemplative, or related to personal transformation, which also happens to be what this blog is about. I probably could have guessed that, but I wanted to go through the discovery process to let themes emerge on their own. I’m grateful that I now have pieces of media I can point to to share the things I care about and find beautiful.

Which brings me to my list of favorites below. If you end up watching them or have recommendations for other movies based off this list, please share in the comments.

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Top 10 films from this year:

1. Drive My Car (2021)

   The first thing you need to know about Drive My Car is that it’s a beautiful story about two people who help each other process grief and regret. The second thing you need to know is that the aesthetics are godly. I mean, look at that red Saab 900 Turbo. The movie is loosely based off of a Haruki Murakami short story by the same name in which the car is originally yellow (I’m so glad they changed it). Despite all the shots of the two main characters together, it’s not a romance, which in my opinion makes it better. It has the vibe of going on a long, intimate road trip by the sea.

   

   

2. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)
   If you like meditation, you have to watch this. It features a floating temple in a lake in Korea where an elderly man raises a boy and teaches him how to be a monk. The passage of time and the endless cycle of life, death, and suffering are central themes. My favorite scene is the one where he carves the Heart Sutra out of wood. If you like nature, philosophy, Buddhism, and movies that feel unrushed, you’ll enjoy this.

   

   

3. Columbus (2017)

   Drop dead gorgeous film about architecture. Cassie dreams of becoming an architect and regularly stares at modernist buildings around town in awe, but her troubled past keeps her from leaving. Her passion is so pure; it’s one of the best media representations I’ve seen of aesthetic appreciation with some scenes bordering on spiritual transcendence. It’s almost entirely still shots (the camera barely moves, intensifying the meditative mood) with lots of Wes Anderson-inspired symmetry.

   

   

4. Yi Yi (2000)

   The way I pitch this film to people is that it’s like watching samsara. You are waterboarded with a never-ending stream of chaotic events in and around a Taiwanese family: business deals, debts, illness, death, unrequited love…but somehow it feels fundamentally okay. This has been going on since the beginning of time, and will continue even after we are gone. There is no build-up and climax followed by a resolution. Don’t sit waiting for something to occur—just watch. This is true slice of life, with all its complexity and bittersweetness.

   

5. The Apartment (1960)
   I love rom-coms. This one is hilarious and charming and will probably make you want to move to New York City. I’m a sucker for the outfits and interiors. The premise is absurd: a low-level employee at a bureaucratic insurance company rents out his apartment to his superiors for them to take their mistresses to. The events of these affairs, as well as his budding romance with the company’s elevator girl, all take place one after another in his apartment as things get increasingly out of control.

   

   

6. Little Women (2019)

   I don't know if there's a better film to express the ambitions, fears, and internal conflicts of being a woman. This takes place during the American Civil War, a time when marriage was all a woman was good for. Each of the four sisters has a unique temperament and path in life, but they are all equally valid. I find Jo, an aspiring writer, incredibly relatable. (One of my favorite scenes is when she becomes a hermit in her attic and writes her novel by candlelight. I’m also obsessed with this devastating proposal scene.) The aesthetics are peak cozy. I want my life to be imbued with the same warmth and liveliness found in their home.

   

   

   Imagine locking in this hard

7. Paris, Texas (1984)

   A mysterious and dreamlike movie that gradually reveals the backstory of Travis, a man you meet in the first scene stumbling in the desert wearing a red cap. He had been missing for four years and his brother tries to figure out what happened to him, but this is made difficult by the fact that Travis refuses to talk at all. Heartbreaking and entrancing. I could say it's about fatherhood, or the American West, or love, or memory, or longing, but you should just watch it for the vibe. Same director as Perfect Days, but I preferred this.

   

   

8. The Godfather (1972)

   There is one word that comes to mind when I think of The Godfather, and that is gravitas. Don Corleone is a powerful man, and every word and action of his holds weight. Even though it presents a romanticized account of 1950s New York and mafia families, it’s based on the real lives of Sicilian immigrants who came in contact with the grittiness and optimism of America while upholding traditional values of family and loyalty. My favorite line, which was apparently improvised, is “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.” Widely recognized as one of the greatest films of all time and I think it’s deserved. The second one is just as good, but the third one sucks.

   

   

9. Past Lives (2023)

   Loving a childhood friend for decades and not ending up with them in this life due to circumstances outside your control is just painful. Nora lost touch with Hae Sung after she moved from Korea to Canada, and this is the story of their reunion in New York. You can feel the heartbreak and longing as they think about what could have been. If a part of you still loves every person you’ve ever loved even if you’re not in each other’s lives anymore, this one is for you. Prepare tissues.

   

   

10. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

    Watching this feels like reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. It’s about two women who secretly fall in love by the sea. Marianne is a painter, hired by a mother to paint her daughter Héloïse’s portrait in secret under the guise of being a companion for her daily walks. Visually gorgeous and so thick with tension you could cut it with a knife; even the smallest glances and most subtle movements are charged. They share a quiet but burning passion.

    

    

Runners-up:

11. Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond (2017) but watch Man on the Moon first

12. Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

13. An Autumn’s Tale (1987)

14. Incendies (2010)

15. It Happened One Night (1934)

For the sake of completeness, here are the other 87 alphabetized:

(500) Days of Summer / 10 Things I Hate About You / 2001: A Space Odyssey / Adaptation. / Aftersun / All About Lily Chou-Chou / All the President’s Men / Amélie / Annie Hall / Anora / Apocalypse Now / At Eternity’s Gate / A Spy in the House of Love / Before Midnight / Before Sunrise / Before Sunset / Black Swan / Blade Runner / Blue Valentine / Breakfast at Tiffany’s / Casablanca / Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc / Challengers / Chungking Express / Close-Up / Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon / Dìdi (弟弟) / Fight Club / Flowers of Shanghai / Flow / Fallen Angels / Ghost in the Shell / Gone Girl / Gone with the Wind / GoodFellas / Hard Boiled / How Drug Trafficking Actually Works — From Heroin to Cocaine / How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days / Inception / Interstellar / It’s a Wonderful Life / Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold / Kill Bill: Vol. 1 / Kill Bill: Vol. 2 / Koyaanisqatsi / KPop Demon Hunters / Lady Bird / Legally Blonde / Lost in Translation / Man on the Moon / Me Before You / Miss Americana / Midsommar / Mulholland Drive / Nightcrawler / Oldboy / One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest / One, Two, Three / Paprika / Perfect Days / Pride & Prejudice / Pulp Fiction / Rental Family / Rocky / Rounders / She is a Shaman / Sylvia Plath: Inside The Bell Jar / Taxi Driver / Tampopo / Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour / Taylor Swift | The Official Release Party of a Showgirl / The Brutalist / The Devil Wears Prada / The Godfather Part II / The Godfather Part III / The Graduate / The Handmaiden / The Princess Diaries / The Social Network / The Tree of Life / This Is Marshall McLuhan: The Medium Is The Massage / Titanic / Tokyo Godfathers / Vertigo / Wake Up Dead Man / When Harry Met Sally… / Whiplash