My Provisional Top 5 Movies Of The Year

With only one month to go and a handful big movies left to see, here's a sneak peak of my year-end rankings

What’s up everybody,

Dropping into your Feast Week once again with a little bonus for paid-tier subscribers!

Several people have asked me since I started sending out movie newsletters in 2018 why I don’t put grades on my write-ups. You know…three and a half bags of popcorn out of five or some such gimmick.

The primary reason is philosophical. I have never considered myself a “movie critic” or my newsletters “movie reviews.” I am a movie lover who watches a ton of movies and I share my thoughts and opinions on them, but I never want someone to mistake my perspective for the definitive statement on whether a movie is good or bad.

But the other reason is practical. Most movies I watch are…ok. Fine. Two-and-a-half or three stars out of five, and that’s not very interesting to slap on the bottom of everything.

I know this for a fact because I do score them on my Letterboxd profile (yes, I am holding out on you!) and of the 1,000 movies I’ve logged on there, my scores are an almost perfect bell curve.

A screenshot of my actual Letterboxd reviews of 1,000 logged films.

However, for six consecutive years, I’ve sent out a newsletter on New Year’s Eve ranking every movie released that year that I saw, ranked from top to bottom. Here’s the one from 2023 for reference. It’s a fun exercise and really the only attempt I ever make to quantify my opinion.

I will be doing that again this year (70 movies and counting!) but in the meantime, I wanted to give my paid-tier subscribers a little sneak peak on my absolute favorite movies of the year…so far.

There are still a handful of heavy hitters I haven’t seen — The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, September 5, Babygirl, A Complete Unknown, Nosferatu — so there’s a chance that something can sneak into this elite tier between now and Dec. 31.

So without further ado…here’s my top five and where you can stream/watch them:

1 - Conclave

Theaters, $ VOD and eventually Peacock