Annie Hall

In my late teens, I saw 500 Days of Summer for the first time, and hated it. It didn’t help that I watched it with a girl I was hopelessly and unrequitedly infatuated with, but what really got to me was how messy it felt. Like they couldn’t settle on a theme, and how inconsistently it broke the fourth wall, and how fucking true all of it was. Not to compare the two, but if I had seen Annie Hall first, perhaps things would have been different.

Die Hard

Die Hard has jumped the list. It’s one of my favourite films, certainly my favourite action film, and I was saving the joy of talking about it. There seems to be no more appropriate time.

My Neighbour Totoro

I’m a reluctant member of the generation of Western cinephiles who have embraced Studio Ghibli’s exotic storytelling, characters, and fantasies. This reluctance in no way comes from the source material. It comes from not wanting to be misallocated to the kawaii Tumblr crowd who get the fucking Totoro tattooed on themselves because they’re just so unique.