My favorite movies (Favorites: 1)

Posted on 2026-05-17 by [lily]

This is the 1st post in a series about my favorite media

Movies!

I love them so much.

Probably my third favorite medium after manga and animation. Oh video games, maybe a tie with video games. And with books...

Uhhh.

I love stories and I love storytelling and I love every way that stories can be told.

But anyway, movies!

You get visual splendor, music and sounds, cinematography, actor minutia, and all the amazing storytelling that you can tell through all of the above and the scriptwriting itself.

I love the movies.

Let's talk about my favorites. I'll limit myself to 10 films

Spoiler warning

Heavy spoilers, absolutely do not read that section before watching the movie

Minor spoilers, mostly of themes and ideas in the movies, fine to read before watching

That being said, most, if not all, of these movies are best enjoyed completely blind.

Table of contents

Tier 1: My top 5 (unordered)

Unordered because I could not possibly ever rank them.

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Oh boy what could I say about PHM that I haven't written about already.

Let's talk music and visuals since we've already belaboured the point on it's amazing themes and how they make me feel.

The soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton is so much fun to listen to, it carries on his leitmotif style of OST composing that elevates the story it accompanies so much. It's wide and epic and creepy, unlike his other bombastic score later on in this list.

The visuals of Rocky are so amazing and I love them so much. The idea to puppet Rocky and have them be an actual animatronic was so so so good for the movie.

The massive expanse of space is so clearly demonstrated and it's so beautiful. From the shots of Adrian to shots of the Petrova Line they're all so pretty.

But there's also the ethereal beauty of some of the small human scenes. Things like the God Willing scene + karaoke scene, the funeral scene, and the final scenes of Rocky and Grace on the beach. They're all so beautifully shot and scored and directed and mwah mwah mwah they're so good!

I love this movie!

It's also just so so so funny. For how serious and dramatic this film can be, it's also so funny, which surprised me. From the first scene of Grace crawling like a worm, to the Blip A scene, to "Rocky invades the Project Hail Mary" scenes, they're all just so funny!

Such a great film I could talk about it forever.

Ocean's Eleven (2001)

The greatest heist movie of all time, what else can I say.

The creation of the Soderbergh shot-in-a-shot direction, the music, the comedy, the sheer chemistry of the cast.

So good so good!

The heist itself is just so well told and so well executed. The absolute rug pull of the heist going off in a way where you could've known it before it happened but surely would never have.

What a great execution on a great story.

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

This perhaps deserves it's own blog post once I rewatch it.

Actually scratch that, it definitely does.

I've only watched this movie once. Months after my Taiwanese immigrant dad passed away.

My loving, kind to a fault, just-a-guy-in-a-scary-world dad.

My teacher, my coach, my wall to bounce ideas off of.

My dad.

You can guess why this film hits so hard for me.

I'm also just a Taiwanese-Canadian second generation immigrant, who's queer and had a tenuous relationship with my mom.

You can guess why this film hits so hard for me.

I won't spoil and I won't talk any more because I'll save that for the EEAAO blog post that I'll surely write.

But yes, amazing movie. Amazing film.

One of my favorites of all time, even though I've only seen it once.

Into the Spider-verse (2018) and Across the Spider-verse (2023)

Yes I'm going to cheat and count these two as one movie, fight me this is my blog.

Where do I start with these two movies.

Lemme just link some better analysis of the film than what I could possibly write.

The score. Daniel Pemberton you fucking madlad.

The way musical themes are interwoven with the story makes it so so so fun to listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbKHKntpCc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqCcbdeubZ0 cover it very well.

The animation. God the animation. GOD THE ANIMATION.

SO MUCH LOVE WAS POURED INTO THE ANIMATION OF THESE FILMS.

AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jH0wDp5GnQ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-wUKu_V2Lk

Let's talk themes and story.

The story is great! It's fun, it's inspiring, it's so so so much fun.

But the themes.

I love the themes of spiderman movies.

The relation to puberty and the awkwardness of being a teenage superhero. The ways that the stories of spiderman movies can always have parallels with any awkward identity that you have to keep a secret from everyone.

My queerness is always represented in some way in spiderman movies, and it means a lot to me.

Primer (2004)

Okay. This is a cult classic movie made on a shoestring budget.

It is a time travel movie.

Here's what the movie's timeline is like

A picture of xkcd 657

Need I say more?

Tier 2: I love these movies (also unordered)

My next 5 favorites are movies I love love love but not on the same level as the top 5.

The top 5 stand head and shoulders above the rest, but that doesn't mean I don't love these movies as well!

The Prestige (2006)

Like Primer, this is a movie that is hella complicated.

One of Nolan's earlier films, this movie experimented with non-linear storytelling, cutting back and forth from different times to pull off the greatest magic trick of all time.

It's an amazing movie and I really ought to rewatch it.

Watch the nerdwriter analysis after watching it.

Tenet (2020)

Let's just put the three complex time-travel-y films next to each other.

Tenet is another complicated movie about time-fuckery with reversing the flow of time.

It's another Nolan film. I was close to including a third (Inception, duh) but I decided it didn't fit into my top 10.

But yes Tenet is great and just a straightforwardly great action film which keeps my brain occupied with it's great time-fuckery.

Time-fuckery combined with sick action.

For context, one of my least favorite series of all time is John Wick, because it's just nothing but brainrot action. I don't like John Wick.

I'm not a fan of action movies in general.

But Tenet? Combining action with a really interesting time travel system? Really really fun movie to watch.

Love it!

Kara no Kyoukai (2007-2013)

Yes, I will combine 7 films into one entry because fuck you that's why.

Anyway

The animation. Just watch this

This is animation from the fucking 2010s.

People point to Fate/Zero to talk about how ahead of the game ufotable is on the rest of the animation industry.

Everyone knows about the Demon Slayer scenes.

But please please please put some respect on Kara no Kyoukai and its fucking amazing godlike truly amazing animation.

ufotable my goats.

Oh god the score. THE SCORE. GOD!

Yuki Kajiura has probably scored some of your favorite, most memorable anime osts if you grew up watching anime in the 2010s. Fate/zero. Madoka magica. Sword art online. Erased. Princess Principal (yes this is obscure but it's one of my favorites). Demon Slayer.

Yuki Kajiura is the fucking GOAT anime ost composer.

Just listen to this:

But let's talk about my favorite movie in the series, the fifth movie: Paradox Spiral.

Kara no Kyoukai 5: Mujun Rasen

Paradox Spiral is the second movie on this list to be told out of chronological order (can you tell I like this storytelling lens?) about Shiki going into a hotel.

Shiki goes to a fucked up hotel and has a fucked up time in the fucked up hotel.

Shiki kills some stuff with her knife and has some amazing fights.

Shiki experiences a heartfelt, fucked up, hard to parse story.

Time travel, clones, magic, metaphors, visual storytelling? This movie's got it all.

Amazing amazing movie!

(Maybe this belongs in tier 1. The other Kara no Kyoukai films are definitely tier 2, but Mujun Rasen is definitely tier 1)

The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl (2017)

Let's talk another anime movie, this time by the legendary Yuasa.

If you've watched The Tatami Galaxy, this is a tangential movie to that series, but self contained in it's own right.

A whimsical film that follows a girl and her long night.

It's ambitious in the story it tells, it's so inventive in it's animation, it's just so much fun to watch.

So so so much stuff happens in this short movie, it's hard to even capture it all into one short paragraph.

I don't even know how to describe this movie haha, it leaves me at a loss for words.

It's so much fun to watch. That's one thing I can say for sure.

It's romantic, it's fun, it's exciting, it's a love letter to animation.

Amazing movie!

Past Lives (2023)

A romance movie that is anything but simple.

A refreshingly inventive romance movie about a romance that lasts over the decades, about the one who gets away.

About a pair who were probably intense lovers in a past life, but doomed to be apart in this one.

It's amazing, it's so gutwrenching, it's so romantic.

It's so well shot. The cinematography elevates the storytelling so much.

It's a story told with so much heart and so much love, seeing as it's a semi-autobiographical movie.

Amazing amazing amazing.

Go watch it!

Honorable mentions

Movies I ought to go watch



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