***Completed***

My attempt at the Second Annual Anti-Criterion Challenge.

Categories:
1. A film from the year you were born that is NOT in the Criterion Collection
2. A film by a director whose work you haven’t seen before
3. 1920s
4. 1930s
5. 1940s
6. 1950s
7. 1960s
8. 1970s
9. 1980s
10. 1990s
11. 2000s
12. 2010s
13. An Anti-War, Protest, or Social Change Film
14. A Science Fiction Exploitation film (or Science Fiction B-Movie)
15. A Dance film (Dance prominently featured!)
16. Directed by Stephen Chow
17. Directed by Naoko Yamada
18. Directed by Margarethe von Trotta
19. Directed by Catherine Breillat
20. A film from Isabel Sandoval’s In the Mood for Sensual Cinema list
21. A film from Cole Thompson’s Candy Cinema list
22. A film from Sarah’s Sarah’s great big somehow controversial lesbian cinema recommendation list list
23. A film from Stephen Gillespie’s Anti-Capitalist, Anti-Imperialist and Anti-fascist ‘Canon’ list
24. A film from Leo Koziol’s 100 Native Directors, 100 Native Films list
25. Made in Ukraine by a Ukrainian Director
26. Made in Palestine by a Palestinian Director
27. Made in Africa by a Woman, Trans, or GNC Director
28. One of the films mentioned in Alonso Aguilar’s Shared Diaspora: The Faces of Identity in Central American Cinema
29. A documentary about the making of a film
30. A film from a countercultural movement that is NOT the French New Wave or an American countercultural movement
31. A film that one an Oscar in the first decade of the awards
32. A film whose plot prominently features a cult
33. A film by a Trans, Nonbinary, or GNC director whose work you haven’t seen before
34. A 20th century film that was remade in the 21st century
35. A giallo horror (or other non-English thriller/horror film)
36. A film that was later adapted into a play or musical
37. A film with a queer protagonist from before 1980
38. A road trip film that is not set in America
39. A classic Bollywood film
40. A film made with predominantly stop motion, puppetry, or rotoscoping
41. Starring Machiko Kyō
42. Starring Aïssa Maïga
43. Starring Rachel House
44. A film with a color in the title
45. An American film from Tori🐛’s If you like (American film) watch (foreign film) list
46. That American film’s foreign film companion (see above)
47. A film from Black Directors: The Official Top 100 Narrative Feature Films
48. An adaptation that changes the setting of the source material
49. A film from claira curtis’ ”Good for Her” Cinematic Universe list
50. Random number generator for any list of films (like Edgar Wright’s 1000 Favorite Movies or 1001 Movies to See Before You Die) (Women Directors: The Official Top 100 Narratives)
51. A film from JulieC’s Neverending Christmas movie list list
52. Any film on your watchlist!

Progress: 52/52


This challenge took from January 4, 2022 to December 17, 2022. The average score I gave for this challenge was a 3.6.

The biggest surprise was Zombie Girl: The Movie. I could never have expected a documentary about a twelve year old making a zombie movie would become one of my Top 50 favorite films of all time, but the way this documentary plays out more like a coming of age narrative than anything was an extraordinarily delightful surprise. The biggest disappointment was The Tribe. I was expecting something stirring, something powerful, something moving. It’s instead incredibly boring and gross. Genuinely unforgivably terrible actually and one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.

Top Three:

1. Zombie Girl: The Movie
2. Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge
3. Madeline’s Madeline

Bottom Three:

1. Romance
2. The Mother and the Whore
3. The Tribe

Other Superlatives:

Best Performances: Helena Howard in Madeline’s Madeline/Paul Richter in Die Nibelungen: Siegfried 

Worst Performances: Caroline Ducey in Romance/Hryhoriy Fesenko in The Tribe
Most Beautiful: The Fall
Most Thought-Provoking: Madeline’s Madeline
Made Me Cry: The Act of Killing
Most Fun: Starship Troopers