Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened (Lonny Price, 2016) – Using 30+-year-old archival footage from a shot, but never completed, making-of documentary and present-day interviews from some of the original cast (including Jason Alexander), this fascinating documentary explores the legacy of Stephen Sondheim’s famous musical flop Merrily We Roll Along.

Along Came Polly (John Hamburg, 2004) – Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s hilarious, go-for-broke supporting performance is worth the price of admission/VOD rental fee/however you watch this Ben Stiller/Jennifer Aniston rom-com.

Matilda the Musical (Matthew Warchus, 2022) – After multiple viewings of the Rob Zombie’s Dragula/Matilda mash-up (still one of the greatest things on the Internet), I decided to check out the delightful, incredibly well-scored and well-choreographed source material.

The Mountain Between Us (Hany Abu-Assad, 2017) – I love a good man (or, in this case, man and woman) against the wilderness survival movie, and this one, about two strangers (Idris Elba and Kate Winslet) who charter a plane that crashes in a remote snow-bound mountain range, delivers the goods.

Hands on a Hardbody: The Documentary (S. R. Bindler, 1997) – This documentary about a contest to see who will win a truck by standing next to it for days and nights on end without removing their hand from its body is both compelling and depressing in its depiction of the lengths desperate people will put themselves through in order to improve their lot in life. The most interesting tidbit of the whole thing might be the guy who installed an industrial strength (i.e., one meant for a warehouse) AC unit in his regular-sized house.

Revenge (Satsuo Yamamoto, 1963) – Black and white, surprisingly hard-core historical ninja action. Need I say more?

The Magician (Scott Ryanb, 2005) – Though it’s not one of the better mock-documentaries I’ve ever seen, the fact that it’s the proof-of-concept that would eventually lead to Mr. Inbetween, one of the greatest TV shows ever made, makes The Magician noteworthy.

PTU (Johnnie To, 2003) – There are a lot of great Hong Kong action filmmakers, and Johnnie To is arguably the best of them. This movie, which is about a corrupt cop trying to track down his stolen gun over the course of a single night, is incredible.

The Gleaners and I: Two Years Later (Agnes Varda, 2002) – This follow-up to Agnes Varda’s documentary The Gleaners and I is, like its predecessor, superb, thus making it one of the best sequels I’ve ever seen.

Fresh (Mimi Cave (2022) – I can’t honestly say that I particularly enjoyed watching this horror movie about the perils of modern dating (that’s as much as I can say about the plot without spoiling it), but I do admire that director Mimi Cave, screenwriter Lauryn Kahn, and actors Sebastian Stan and Daisy Edgar Jones fully committed to the extreme bit/premise.

The Giant Mechanical Man (Lee Kirk, 2012) – This Chris Messina/Jenna Fischer rom-com is so low-key it’s almost an anti-rom-com – almost, but not quite. I particularly like how every character, however broad they may initially appear, is allowed to be a three-dimensional human.

Knightriders (George Romero, 1981) – While this wasn’t one of the best first-watches I had this year, it was one of the weirdest. Directed by zombie-maestro George Romero, it stars Ed Harris as an intensely humourless, fully committed head of/king to a group of pseudo-LARPers who travel from town to town putting on motorcycle jousting exhibitions.