Greg Arietta — Features — Cinema As We Know It

Greg’s Top Ten Films of 2022

In 2022, I saw fewer new releases than any previous year I’ve made a top ten. How or why this year was different could be any number of things, but truth be told, I just think 2022 was just an okay year for new releases. It might be heresy to say, but I found greater enjoyment from the loud brass of the big screen spectacle than the vast majority of quieter award contenders (and even some festival favorites). This is usually never the case, but credit where credit is due, the blockbuster, and the adjacent $100 million passion project, were frequently among my favorite films of the year.

The Kids Are Alright, or an Abridged History of NFFTY

NFFTY is home to the world’s largest film festival for young filmmakers, and it resides here in Seattle. Each year, the four day festival showcases over 250 remarkable films from up and coming filmmakers while also the providing tools and resources to help realize their next project. As it enters its fifteenth year, NFFTY has grown into one of the most significant, lesser known festivals in the country, and it began with someone who was once in the shoes of a young filmmaker…

Seattle International Film Festival 2022 Review Feature

The 2022 Seattle International Film Festival is underway and Cinema As We Know It is covering as many films as possible so you know which films to see! From April 14th and through the 24th, we’ll be regularly updating this article with capsule reviews for festival films. Check back every couple days to see whats new!

Seattle International Film Festival 2022 Preview

As my home court film festival, the Seattle International Film Festival will always hold a special place in my heart. After five years, I still come back to this festival not only for nostalgia purposes, but also to continue seeing films outside the mainstream. With 155 feature films and 107 short films at this year’s 48th incarnation, there is no shortage of films to watch. The perennial problem is which ones. Below I have compiled a handful of my recommendations for films at this year’s festival. Some I have seen at other festivals, others are total wildcards. Either way, there’s always something in the lineup for everyone. If you’re willing to “seek new cinema,” as this year’s theme suggests, you’re bound to find something.

Greg’s Top Ten Films of 2021

Looking back on 2021, the major theme has to be the return of theaters. What they have to offer — spectacle, shared experience, dialog — cannot be replicated at home in isolation, and more so than any one release, the return of theaters was notable based on the simple fact that they enable exhibition. Going from sitting at home and streaming movies for most of 2020 to being able to finally watch a film on the big screen served as a potent reminder of what is lost when theatrical exhibition is removed from the equation. While you should seek out these films by any means necessary, my favorite films from 2021 go hand in hand with the cinematic experience.

Back to the Movies

The movies are back! As theaters begin to reopen and restrictions are lifted, we can begin to take our places again, seated alongside friends or strangers, and find fresh joys in the world on screen. The celebration and preservation of film and filmgoing will be ongoing, but the best reasons for returning to the theater and committing to making them as accessible as possible, with as much selection as possible, are those personal. In honor of their return, our August & September theme is all about our favorite theatrical experiences and why in the light of the big screen anything is possible.

Visions from the LA Rebellion: An Interview with Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry

In the late 1960s, the first generation of Black filmmakers at UCLA broke new ground for with their thoughtful, thorough, compassionate portrayals of the Black Americans on film, forming the cinematic movement that would eventually be known as the LA Rebellion. In honor of the retrospective at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, we sat down with cinematic legends Charles Burnett and Billy Woodberry to discuss the films that changed Black representation in cinema, the factors that influenced their work, and their enduring legacy that continues to inspire generations of filmmakers

Take It To Print! : April - May Theme

For our April & May theme, we’re selecting films that focus on journalism, and more specifically print journalism. As much as the medium has shifted to online publication, there remains a special place in our hearts for ink and paper and the means with which it arrives in our hands every morning without fail. These films embody the age-old tradition of journalism — hitting the streets, getting the facts, writing the story, and breaking the news — and define the complicated relationship between the profession and the public and do so through the lens of printing presses and Sunday editions.

Features, ThemesCinema As We Know ItApril 4, 2021Features, Themes, Greg Arietta, Kevin Conner, Theo Rollason, 2021

SXSW Online 2021 Review Feature

Want to read about all of Cinema As We Know’s SXSW Online 2021 coverage in one place? Check out our review feature! We’ve got capsule and full reviews for all the films we’ve seen at this year’s festival. We’ll be adding more throughout the remainder of festival and in the days after as we get caught up, so check back regularly for new additions.

SXSW Online 2021 Preview

For the second year in row, we’ll be experiencing SXSW from the remote isolation of our living rooms, covering as many films as we can for the next few weeks. Before the festival kicks off on March 16th, we want to highlight a smattering of films that are on our radar and that we think should be on yours too. Whether they feature familiar faces, one-of-a-kind premises, or word-of-mouth buzz, these are the films you should check out for SXSW Online 2021.

Sonic Dreams : February - March Theme

Like a good mix tape, a soundtrack cherry picks songs from disparate sources and strings them together to create an auditory experience all its own. The best films with soundtracks do this over and over again, playing track after track that cultivates a rhythmic liminal state of euphoria where sound and image become greater than the sum of their part. A Sonic Dream so to speak. For our February — March theme, we’re selecting our favorite film soundtracks that make us feel what cannot be rendered visually and add to the cinematic experience in ways only music can.

Features, ThemesCinema As We Know ItFebruary 8, 2021Features, Themes, Greg Arietta, Kevin Conner, Theo Rollason, Sonic Dreams, 2021

Best of the Rest - 2020

Each year, the Cinema As We Know It writing team publishes features for our personal top ten films in tandem with our favorite scenes and performances. However, no matter how much write for those features, there are always a handful of achievements that fall outside their purview. While we don’t have dedicated lists for each and every category under the sun, we still want to recognize a few items from last year that we think deserve notice. Loosely, this feature is a forum for us to write about the categorical ‘other’ in the media landscape, so for one reason or another, these are the best of rest for 2020.

Best Scenes of 2020

Every year we watch hundreds of films that contain thousands of scenes within them, and through it all, we come away with a handful of moments that stick with us. They contain the one liners, the gut punches, the tear-inducing, pull on your heartstrings, make you want to cry and you don’t know why moments that leave lasting impressions on us for days or even weeks at a time. Whether it be a climatic revelation, a subtle moment of directorial brilliance, or a poignant punctuation to conclude a film, these scenes scenes display a creative, technical, and thematic mastery that we simply can’t stop thinking about. As selected by our writing team, these are our favorite scenes of 2020.

Best Performances of 2020

Taking what’s on the page and performing at the behest of the director, actors serve as the conduits for with which a film’s message is channeled. This year saw no shortage of performances that do just that. While it’s difficult to string a unifying theme between actors and their performances in a single year, what remains consistent, year over year, is that we get to see life on the screen in ways that help us better understand ourselves and others. It’s one way we become sympathetic to the world around us, and it’s the actors we have to thank for it. From rising talents to career bests, these are our favorite performances of 2020.

Greg's Top Ten Films of 2020

2020, a sinisterly bad year. While the world caught fire all at once and every facet of normalcy went up in flames, cinema was a true comfort in these troubling times. The last 365 days were a challenge all their own, full of hardship and loss, but from the other side, I can say I appreciate the movies that made things a little easier on the days that couldn’t get any worse. The sheer act of ranking art with numerical values is in and of itself a contradiction, but these ten films prove that, even when the world turns sideways, cinema will always be there to renew faith in our collective existence, now and into the future.

New Around Here : November - December Theme

You only get one chance to make a first impression. For our November - December theme we’re focusing on directorial debuts, films that immediately left an impression and inscribed the director’s name on everyone’s watchlist. These films broke rules and gave us perspectives that only come from a fresh pair of eyes and the desire to prove your worth. Debuts that declared, “My name is ________ ________. And I have something to say.” If there’s only the one first impression, then these nine films showed themselves to be unforgettable, and part of their legacy would be us returning to them and their directors over and over again.

New York Film Festival 58 Review Feature

For fifty-eight years, the New York Film Festival has been a bellwether for cinema. Despite the coronavirus preventing the traditional in-person event, the resilient team at Lincoln Center still managed to put on this year’s iteration with stunning success. A well-executed virtual cinema made this year’s incarnation more accessible than ever before, including for us. From the safety of our homes and on the other side of the country, we were able to watch selections from the 58th New York Film Festival and provide coverage for a handful of films.

The Social Network - 10th Anniversary Commentary

Ten years ago on October 1st, 2010, The Social Network was released, and anyone who’s seen it knows just how great it is. From the Aaron Sorkin script to the meticulous direction by David Fincher, it continues to stand as an ever evolving piece of art that continues to change with current events and our political climate. To celebrate the film’s 10th Anniversary, Greg Arietta, Kevin Conner, and Jamie Housen convened to create an audio commentary where they talk about final clubs, marlins & trouts, Armie Hammer, fuck you flip flops, and how drunk blogging led to the fall of democracy.

Bump in the Night : September - October Theme

Did you hear that? There was… a noise… a murmur emerging from across the house. Probably nothing you tell yourself. But you can never be sure of a BUMP IN THE NIGHT. For our September & October theme, we’re picking a selection of some of our favorite horror films. Slashers, creature features, home invasions, 80s camp, Cronenberg body horror, final girls, and the like find their way on this list, and while we could make this list a hundred times over, we managed to select just eight for your consideration.

Fantasia 2020 Capsule Reviews

For the 24th installment of the Fantasia Film Festival, the entire event is moving online. The annual gathering in Montreal, Canada known for assembling the best in genre filmmaking continues its legacy in 2020 by showcasing some of the strangest, weirdest, most rule-breaking, out-there films created in the last year. For the next ten days, we’ll be covering as many films as we can from our quarantine bunkers and sharing our thoughts on what we’ve seen. Come back daily to see what we’ve been watching from this year’s virtual Fantasia film festival.

Festival Coverage, FeaturesCinema As We Know ItAugust 19, 2020Fantasia, Fantasia2020, 2020, Kevin Conner, Greg Arietta