Over the last month, in addition to writing full treatments of two Kieslowski movies, I have watched an astounding 61 movies, just under two per day. This includes 13 movies watched in theater (10 at the Chicago International Film Festival) and a nearly endless string of streamed movies on the Criterion Channel and other services.

From this list, I would rate 11 movies 10 out of 10 — which would seem unusually high, but isn’t all that surprising considering that I’ve curated my movies from lists of the greatest ever made. But even so, a few movies from 2025 also receive this highest rating, and I don’t give it very often. Of the 2,010 movies I have catalogued and reviewed on Letterboxd, only about 5 percent receive the highest possible rating.

So here are the recently watched movies that made the greatest impact on me:

The Red Shoes

Black Narcissus

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

(all three films are directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. These movies heavily influenced Martin Scorsese and I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to catch up with them. All are nearly perfect.)

Weekend

King Lear

(I’ve watched more than a dozen Jean-Luc Godard movies over this stretch, and also watched “Nouvelle Vague,” a new Richard Linklater movie about Godard and his movie “Breathless,” plus I’ve read a biography on Godard. King Lear is barely a movie … it’s more a movie about why he couldn’t make a movie about Shakespeare’s play and it’s basically unwatchable, which makes it more of an artistic curiosity than a typical film. “Weekend” is also kind of a brilliant mess as well that I could just as easily give zero stars … such is the nature of Godard.)

Left-Handed Girl

Sentimental Value

The Secret Agent

(Three movies I watched at the Chicago International Film Festival — I’ve written about them in another essay.)

The Cranes are Flying

(Brilliant, heartbreaking late 50s Soviet film about a couple torn apart by World War II.)

News from Home

(Chantal Akerman’s ingenius film that consists of nothing but letters from home and documentary footage of New York City in the early 70s. This movie tells more with absences that most movies achieve with plot and dialogue.)

The Earrings of Madame de …

(Max Ophuls’ early 50s masterpiece includes the most ingenious camera movement I’ve ever seen. Each scene swirls and turns, creating long takes that feel unusually natural and assured. The plot is pure romantic melodrama, but it’s so well constructed that you never stop to ask why.)

Can I keep up this pace? Well, even after the latest binge, I still have quite a few movies from the “canon” to watch. Of the top 250 rated movies on Letterboxd, I’ve seen 65 percent of them. I’ve seen a bit more of the IMDB top 250 — 69%. I’m surprised that I’ve only seen 61% of the Academy Award Best Picture winners and 43% of the Cannes Palme d’Or honorees. Of the 254 movies that made the Sight and Sound critics poll of the greatest movies (compiled in 2022), I’ve seen 62%.

However, it should be noted that I haven’t seen a lot of these movies for a good reason — they aren’t so easy to find. Much of what remains isn’t on any major streaming service, and while some are rentable on demand, those costs can pile up after awhile.

And it’s also entirely possible that this binge will burn me out and I’ll take a break at some point. The odds of me watching 11 more near-perfect movies in the next month isn’t high … but I’m hoping for the best.