The Life-Changer Canon
10 movies that defined my 20s.
Greetings from the fleeting moments of my roaring twenties! I am currently partaking in my birthday eve ritual of choice, watching Frances Ha and observing how my response to the film mirrors the ways in which I’ve changed since my previous year’s viewing.
This year’s transition is something a little bit bigger as it’s not just the changing of a year but also a decade. The big 3-0 is tomorrow. For those wondering, I’m feeling quite zen about it (at least for now). I think I laid a lot of groundwork for great things to come while also learning to enjoy the moments as they happened. Thanks for being along for part of the ride, as professionalizing my writing over the course of the last ten years has been a major factor in unlocking maturity, growth, and happiness.
It also helps to have incredible works of art to respond to, like the aforementioned Frances Ha. Especially as I passed through the corridor from adolescence to adulthood, out of college into Real Life, I began to gravitate towards movies that had a real sense of perspective on how to move through the world with grace, goodness, and gentility.
Teenage me liked smart movies. Twentysomething me loved wise movies. Here are ten of them that shaped my worldview and attitude. If you’ve enjoyed reading my words or being in my presence over the last few years, you can thank these movies for informing my state of being. And rather than try to explain them in my own words, I will let them speak for themselves — just as they spoke to me.1
NB, I am not including the following formative films about which I have written at great lengths: Frances Ha, Lady Bird, Little Women, and Easy A.
20th Century Women, Showtime Anytime and rental
“It's 1979, I'm 55 years old, and in 1999 I will die of cancer from the smoking. They don't know this is the end of punk. They don't know that Reagan's coming. It's impossible to imagine that kids will stop dreaming about nuclear war and have nightmares about the weather. It's impossible to imagine HIV. What will happen with skateboard tricks. The Internet.”
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, rental
“Do you know what that means? To forgive? It's a decision we make to release a person from the feelings of anger we have at them.”
Boyhood, The Criterion Channel and rental
“You know what I'm realizing? My life is just going to go. Like that. This series of milestones. Getting married. Having kids. Getting divorced. The time that we thought you were dyslexic. When I taught you how to ride a bike. Getting divorced... again. Getting my master’s degree. Finally getting the job I wanted. Sending Samantha off to college. Sending you off to college. You know what's next, huh? It's my fucking funeral! I just thought there would be more.”
Inside Out, Disney+
“I ... I know you don't want me to, but ... I miss home. I miss Minnesota. You need me to be happy, but I want my old friends and my hockey team. I wanna go home. Please don't be mad.”
Manchester by the Sea, Amazon Prime Video
“I can't beat it. I can't beat it. I'm sorry.”
Paterson, Amazon Prime Video
“Sometimes an empty page presents more possibilities.”
Philomena, Netflix
“I want you to know that I forgive you … it’s not 'just like that.’ It's hard. That's hard for me. But I don't want to hate people.”
Stories We Tell, Freevee via Amazon Prime Video
“She spent her whole life looking for love, and I remember feeling really happy that she had found love … and she had been loved that much.”
Two Days, One Night, Tubi TV (free with ads) and rental
“We put up a good fight. I'm happy.”
Wild, rental
“My life, like all lives, mysterious, irrevocable, sacred, so very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.”
You can always keep up with my film-watching in real-time on the app Letterboxd. I’ve also compiled every movie I’ve ever recommended through this newsletter via a list on the platform as well.
I’ve been listening to this beautiful, tender Nina Simone song since swooning for Saint Omer…
...and this since seeing Aftersun.
Not necessarily film-related, but this piece about “calendar culture” — which I both love and loathe — has really been rattling around in my head. Worth reading.
I had what I think is one of my best interviews ever with Ruben Östlund, the two-time Palme d’Or winning director of Triangle of Sadness. We talked about sociology, social media, and the ending of his next film. That conversation is on Slant Magazine.
For Decider, I gave an enthusiastic “stream it!” to Lena Dunham’s Medieval teen comedy Catherine Called Birdy (on Amazon Prime Video) and a somewhat reluctant “skip it” to the paranormally-tinged two-hander Significant Other (on Paramount+).
Subscribers also got two unpublished interviews from the archives with directors from the defunct filmmaking collective Borderline Films:
Back later this weekend with a recap of NYFF for paid subscribers!
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall
Also, I want to get this out while I’m still 29 and only have so much time.