Presents Beneath the Tree

2025 has been probably the worst year of my life, and as a capper, I got COVID for Christmas, which means I’m spending the day alone, separated from my family. It also means that I’m not spending the days between Christmas and New Year’s in St. Louis with my family. This years sucks and I can’t wait for it to be gone.

On another note, it appears that at some point, 15 movies were added to the List, which (according to IMDb) is up to 1260 total entries, so I suddenly have a touch of work to do on that—I’ve seen most of them already. So I’ll be getting through few that I’m missing soon. That being the case, I’m going to suggest my yearly addition of 10 movies. I won’t include anything from 2025, but I will likely touch on 2024. As always, these are not ranked, just in the order I thought of them.

EDIT: It's been brought to my attention that one of my original picks, BlacKkKlansman, has been on the 1001 List before, so I am replacing it.

1. The VVitch (2015)

It seems insane to me that The VVitch (or The Witch if you don’t like the double-V) came out 10 years ago, but here we are. This is the first feature-length film of Robert Eggers, and it firmly established his aesthetic as a filmmaker. Everything he’s done since then, while it has been a different movie in a lot of respects, hearkens back to this—the various shots, the palette, the way the actors move and speak. Not everyone loves folk horror, but for those who do, this immediately became a subgenre classic of the same acclaim as the original version of The Wicker Man, and that’s not easy to do.

2. Gone Baby Gone (2007)

There is something joyous to me about the resurgence of the noir style, and few modern noir films do it better than Gone Baby Gone. This film is one of those that feels “ripped from the headlines,” specifically the JonBenet Ramsey case. A young girl vanishes, and the family hires a pair of detectives to track her down despite them not being experienced in missing persons cases. In a way, it’s reminiscent of Eastern Promises in the sense that I’ve rarely seen a movie this depressing that still has a happy ending. Great cast, and a better film than people remember.

3. Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kamm (1920)

Frankenstein stories are cool and all, but they owe some slight debt to the Talmud and the Biblical story of the creation of Adam. This silent movie tells the story of the Jewish people in Prague, creating a clay statue and imbuing it with the spirit of a demon to act as their protector. Naturally, due to circumstances, they eventually lose control of the creature and havoc results. This is an impressive silent movie and a good reminder that horror films have existed essentially since film existed, and the early days saw more than Nosferatu to help develop the genre. If you don’t care about genre ideas, see it for the costuming.

4. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Another classic film from the pen of Shane Black, and his directorial debut, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is another of those nearly perfect neo-noirs. This is a lively script, a great mystery, and is filled with funny dialogue and perfect chemistry between stars Val Kilmer and Robert Downey Jr. Shane Black writes films that are never going to be seen as Oscar-caliber, but that are singularly entertaining from start to finish, and this is one of his best. It’s also shocking that this was his first film in the director’s chair, because it has the polish of someone who had been doing the job for a decade.

5. Another Round (2020)

Any excuse to watch Mads Mikkelsen perform is one that should be taken, and Another Round is him absolutely at the top of his game. As a high school teacher who finds himself bored with life and boring to everyone around him, he and three colleagues decide to see what would happen if they kept themselves just south of legally intoxicated at all times. It’s an experiment that works with varying degrees of success as his life and the life of his friends start to spin out in different and unexpected ways. Mikkelsen is one of the best actors working, and this is probably his best work on camera. There’s no good reason not to watch it.

6. Polite Society (2023)

Sometimes, all you want is for a movie to be fun. When you get that, and you also get a bit of commentary on feminism, martial arts action, science fiction weirdness and a film guaranteed to piss off men's rights activists, you've found a film that demands attention. Polite Society is that film, and it's not just a fun action movie, it's also a commentary on family, womanhood, and sisterhood. This film is joyful and fun, and while director Nida Manzoor has moved on to television, I really would love for her to return to the big screen and give us more of this.

7. David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020)

Spike Lee's American Utopia is the sort of natural child of Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense. A show fronted by and written by David Byrne, featuring his own music as well as some Talking Heads tracks (and a few deep, deep cuts), this is a pared-down stage show. It’s just the music for most of it, and just the performers, and nothing more is needed. Byrne is a fantastic performer and artist; it’s not shocking after seeing this to learn that Talking Heads got their start at art school, and that for Byrne, every movement and everything on stage is intentional. Spike Lee films it as he should, injecting from the outside only when it will have the most impact. If you want to film a stage production, watch this about 50 times.

8. A Real Pain (2024)

Sometimes, I pick a movie to go here because I really like it, and sometimes it’s because there is something specific to that movie that I think film nerds need to see. With A Real Pain, it’s both. This is a marvelous film about family, about love, about history, and about the ties that bind us and how those same ties can infuriate us. Kieran Culkin won an Oscar for this and Jesse Eisenberg should have been nominated for more than just the screenplay. It’s such a great film in so many ways, but what makes it so noteworthy is how natural it all feels. Nothing here is forced. These feel like real people really going through something. The conflict, such as it is, exists in the real world and has not be sexied up to sell tickets. If only we could get more movies like this.

9. Happening (2020)

Sometimes a movie will tell a story that is an allegory for a real-life topic and we need to read into the story the actual intent from the filmmaker. Sometimes, you get Happening, a film that punches the audience in the face with its topic. This is a film that does not hide the fact that it’s about abortion and about bodily autonomy. The way that you can tell that it was done really well is that there’s no one who will watch the film who won’t come away uncomfortable. If you’re pro-choice, this film will enrage you. If you’re pro-life, it will upset you. That’s honestly the right tone to take with this topic, and this (along with Never Rarely Sometimes Always) is the definitive cinematic take.

10. Robot Dreams (2023)

One of the many areas The List is lacking on is animation, and few films are as genuinely touching and moving as Robot Dreams, a film that manages to tell a deep and heartfelt story about friendship, loss, and moving on without a single line of dialogue. Animation opens up so many avenues for storytelling—this is a film that could be made in some respects as live action, but it would not result in the same thing. This is a master class of narrative, the sort of film that every aspiring screenwriter should study in detail, because there is nothing else like it.