Every year I make it a goal to watch more new movies than I do movies I’ve already seen. While new releases make up a solid chunk of that watch time, it also gives me a great opportunity to check out classics, recent movies I’ve missed, and anything that doesn’t already sit on my Blu-ray shelf. Here are this year’s top ten “new to me” first watches.

Honorable Mentions

Ikiru

I wanted to round out some of my Kurosawa viewing this year and this title was a big one on my list; namely because its one of Kurosawa’s biggest “non-Samurai movies”. It’s a really intricate look at what it means to matter and how product can overgrow producer.

The Great Muppet Caper

This movie is perhaps the funniest of Muppet movies and has two of the greatest recurring gags I’ve ever seen baked into a film. Just an absolutely absurd blast from start to finish.

Rocky (I,II,III, & Rocky Balboa)

I’ve seen most of the Rocky franchise before but I hadn’t seen any since I was a kid. It was a nice revisit to a franchise that I didn’t remember much of outside of Rocky IV. While I’ll never be able to call Rocky IV or V a good movie, the first three and the legacy sequel are fantastic. You could rank these four in any order and I’d consider it correct, A+ effort from everyone on each of these movies.

Another Round

My greatest discovery of 2021 was Thomas Vineberg, a Danish director who won best foreign film at the academy awards this year. The only reason why I didn’t put this movie in my top ten is because I saw it a few months late and despite being a 2020 release it missed my original 2020 post. This movie cracked my all time top five on my second viewing and is something that I am continually floored by. This movie is somehow both heartwarming and uplifting and unbelievably morose and depressing. Simply put, it is a film about being alive; what it means to be present, and what it costs not to be.

Top Ten

10. Cool Hand Luke

I’m a sucker for hopeful movies. As depressing as Cool Hand Luke can be at times, its message of hope through resistance is incredibly powerful. It manages to perfectly balance absurd moments like an egg eating contest with dramatic examples of abuse and the cool craftiness of Paul Newman’s cool handed Luke. I adored this movie from start to finish.

9. All About Eve

This movie feels very thematically ahead of its time, providing commentary on the perverse mechanisms of Old Hollywood that are sadly still indicative of the woman’s world today. Bette Davis plays the “aging” Margo to tremendous effect and the admiration turned conflict between her and Anne Baxter’s titular Eve is some of the best ever put to film. This one deserves its designation as a classic.

8. Gone Girl

David Fincher isn’t a director I want to pull off the shelf every night, but I’m hardly ever less than floored when I do. Gone Girl is no exception and I’m sorry that I was so late to the party on this one. Ben Affleck gives a career best performance and Rosamund Pike’s modern femme-fatale is one for the ages.

7. Prisoners

The movie that thrust Denis Villeneuve into the spotlight; Prisoners is a tough watch. I say this not because it is bad, but because it allows its characters to unlikeably explore the darkness within themselves. This movie takes its cast to their limits and watches them squirm under the weight and consequences of each other’s actions.

6. Up

Another movie that I’d seen before but not for such a long time that I had little memory of it outside of the Married Life sequence. This is a very cold take, but Up is a fantastic movie. Pete Docter is the king of Pixar, in my opinion. Up follows the intense emotional trajectory of his first work, Monsters, Inc., and makes it more realistic and complex. It’s a wonderful stepping stone between the fantastical Monsters, Inc. and the more existential Inside Out and Soul.

5. Apocalypse Now

It’s hard to imagine George Lucas outside of Star Wars, but long before he was taken by a galaxy far, far away he was one of the industries most auteur up and comers. I have no doubt that Copolla’s end product is stark in contrast to Lucas’ original development but this chaotic, decade long production of Apocalypse Now is very much deserving of its label as one of the greatest movies of all time. This dark exploration of the Vietnam war, the soldiers fighting as interchangeable cogs in a machine, and the iconic performances of Sheen and Brando created an epic up there with the likes of Lawrence of Arabia and Gone With the Wind in scale and impact.

4. Do the Right Thing

Spike Lee is a director I made an effort to explore more this year and while I got a lot out of all his work, Do the Right Thing is the one that really stuck with me. It bears startling resemblance to many of the protests and riots we saw last year at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, and its plea for the unheard still rings uncomfortably true. This is a tough movie to watch, but it is a very necessary film in the shifting culture and rising tension of our times.

3. Roman Holiday

Sometimes you just need a movie that makes you feel good, and while not every movie starring Audrey Hepburn manages to accomplish that; Audrey herself always turns in a performance that does. The lead actress and the movie are indelibly endearing and this love story sits above all cinematic others as Peck’s reporter gets caught up in his own scoop over Princess Ann.

2. Bridge on the River Kwai

I saw David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia for the first time last year and even managed to catch it on the silver screen this summer. I enjoyed it so much that I knew I needed to catch his other great epic, and this one did not disappoint. I really appreciate how this movie is able to be cynical towards the war effort and the meaning of honor earned from killing others without the film itself ever feeling dark. This movie has surprisingly little in the way of plot or objectives but Lean’s masterful eye and style make it completely captivating even in the little moments.

1. The Man Who Would Be King

I’ve made no secret of my love of a good Sean Connery movie, and The Man Who Would Be King is no exception. Director John Huston has made many genre defining classics and this movie deserves to be up there with the best of his work. Connery and Michael Caine play off of each other in perfect comedic sync as two British rogues who hatch a plan to impose Connery as the earthbound god of a middle eastern people. As happens in movies, this goes wrong and chaos ensues. This movie provides great commentary on the nature of imperialism and the grandeur filled delusions of imperials. It is not only one of Connery and Caine’s best, but one of my new all time favorites.

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