Best first viewings, 2024

Pre-2024 releases only.

TOP 10 VIEWINGS (one per director)

Die Nibelungen, Part II: Kriemhild’s Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924)
Cleopatra (Cecil B. DeMille, 1934)
Three Comrades (Frank Borzage, 1938)
Mogambo (John Ford, 1953)
Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954)
The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (Richard Fleischer, 1955)
Peyton Place (Mark Robson, 1957)
The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (Terence Fisher, 1959)
Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk, 1959)

ADDITIONAL STANDOUT VIEWINGS

City Girl (F. W. Murnau, 1930)
Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)
The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)
The House of the Seven Gables (Joe May, 1940)
Carnival of Sinners (Maurice Tourneur, 1943)
The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946)
The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949)
Wagon Master (John Ford, 1950)
The Tall Target (Anthony Mann, 1951)
Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952)
Pickup on South Street (Samuel Fuller, 1953)
The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955)
The Quatermass XPeriment (Val Guest, 1955)
Summertime (David Lean, 1955)
Quatermass 2 (Val Guest, 1957)
The Last Hurrah (John Ford, 1958)
The Reluctant Debutante (Vincente Minnelli, 1958)
A Summer Place (Delmer Daves, 1959)
Tender is the Night (Henry King, 1962)
Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)
Danza Macabra (Antonio Margheriti, 1964)
War-Gods of the Deep (Jacques Tourneur, 1965)
Island of Terror (Terence Fisher, 1966)
Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (Freddie Francis, 1968)
The Unfaithful Wife (Claude Chabrol, 1969)
The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1972)
The Stone Tape (Peter Sasdy, 1972)
Messiah of Evil (Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz, 1974)
The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)
Burnt Offerings (Dan Curtis, 1976)
The Nixon Interviews with David Frost (Jørn Winther, 1977)
Losing Ground (Kathleen Collins, 1982)
The 4th Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983)
Angel Dust (Gakuryū Ishii, 1994)
Devil in a Blue Dress (Carl Franklin, 1995)
Perfect Blue (Satoshi Kon, 1997)
Serpent’s Path (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 1998)
Ju-On: The Curse 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2000)
Nightcap (Claude Chabrol, 2000)
Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)
Shallow Hal (Bobby Farrelly & Peter Farrelly, 2001)
Ju-On: The Grudge 2 (Takashi Shimizu, 2003)
Swimming Pool (François Ozon, 2003)
The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004)
Speak (Jessica Sharzer, 2004)
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2004/2018)
Reincarnation (Takashi Shimizu, 2005)
A Girl Cut in Two (Claude Chabrol, 2007)
Australia (Baz Luhrmann, 2008)
Missing (Tsui Hark, 2008)
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat, 2009)
Occult (Koji Shiraishi, 2009)
Watchmen [director’s cut] (Zack Snyder, 2009)
Untold History of the United States (Oliver Stone, 2012)
A Cure for Wellness (Gore Verbinski, 2016)
The Putin Interviews (Oliver Stone, 2017)
Sharp Objects (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2018)
The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade, 2018)
I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter (Erin Lee Carr, 2019)
Hemingway (Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, 2021)
The Deep End (Jon Kasbe, 2022)
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso, 2023)
Immersion (Takashi Shimizu, 2023)
Last Summer (Catherine Breillat, 2023)
Tell Them You Love Me (Nick August-Perna, 2023)
The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, 2023)

Best first reads, 2024

Pre-2024 releases only.

TOP 10 (one per author)

Daisy Miller, by Henry James (1879)
A Room with a View, by E. M. Forster (1908)
Pan’s Garden: A Volume of Nature Stories, by Algernon Blackwood (1912)
The Custom of the Country, by Edith Wharton (1913)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)
Cassandra at the Wedding, by Dorothy Baker (1962)
Another World, by Pat Barker (1998)
Heartbreaker, by Maryse Meijer (2016)
Babysitter, by Joyce Carol Oates (2022)
The Guest, by Emma Cline (2023)

ADDITIONAL STANDOUT READS

We Are Here to Hurt Each Other, by Paula D. Ashe (2022)
This Mortal Coil, by Cynthia Asquith (1947)
The Space of Literature, by Maurice Blanchot (1955)
The Writing of the Disaster, by Maurice Blanchot (1980)
Dandelion Wine, by Ray Bradbury (1957)
Wieland; or, The Transformation: An American Tale, by Charles Brockden Brown (1798)
Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker, by Charles Brockden Brown (1799)
The Sublime and the Beautiful, by Edmund Burke (1757)
The Daughters of Block Island, by Christa Carmen (2023)
Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene, by Jodey Castricano (2021)
The King in Yellow, by Robert W. Chambers (1895)
Don’t Look Now, by Daphne du Maurier (1971)
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life, by Ruth Franklin (2016)
Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories, by Craig Laurance Gidney (2008)
Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837)
The Marble Faun, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1860)
The Talented Mr. Ripley, by Patricia Highsmith (1955)
The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill (1983)
The Witchcraft of Salem Village, by Shirley Jackson (1956)
Let Me Tell You, by Shirley Jackson [edited by Laurence Hyman & Sarah Hyman DeWitt] (2015)
Burn Man: Selected Stories, by Mark Anthony Jarman (2023)
Man and His Symbols, edited by C. G. Jung & M.-L von Franz (1964)
Uzumaki, by Junji Ito (2013)
The Red Tree, by Caitlín R. Kiernan (2009)
The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative, by Thomas King (2003)
Something Like an Autobiography, by Akira Kurosawa (1981)
What Are You, by Lindsay Lerman (2022)
Existence and Existents, by Emmanuel Levinas (1947)
Peyton Place, by Grace Metalious (1956)
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, by Lorrie Moore (1994)
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, by Toni Morrison (1992)
Devil in a Blue Dress, by Walter Mosley (1990)
Black Water, by Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
New England’s Gothic Literature, by Faye Ringel (1995)
The Gothic Literature and History of New England, by Faye Ringel (2022)
The Devil’s Candy: The Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, by Julie Salamon (1991)
The Last Man, by Mary Shelley (1826)
The Craft of Writing, by William Sloane (1979)
Lost Boy Lost Girl, by Peter Straub (2003)
The Door, by Magda Szabó (1987)
The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, by Tzvetan Todorov (1970)
A Fatal Inversion, by Barbara Vine (1987)
The Color Purple, by Alice Walker (1982)
Star-Begotten, by H. G. Wells (1937)
Ghosts, by Edith Wharton (1937)
The Bonfire of the Vanities, by Tom Wolfe (1987)
Strange Seed, by T. M. Wright (1978)

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