40 Films Before 40
I turn 40 in about 6 weeks. Last night, on a whim, I decided that I'd like to watch 40 films I've never seen before in advance of that happening. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to ask Bluesky to recommend some of these films to me.
I asked people to recommend their favourite "I've never met anybody else who's seen this" film. As always when you ask for recommendations online, some people are shit at understanding the task. But sometimes you strike gold.
I discarded responses where:
- I've already seen the film. Obviously nobody recommending things blindly can know what I have or haven't seen, but I know what's new to me.
- They recommended more than one film in the same post. I asked for a recommendation, not every film you've ever seen.
- The person indicated that they haven't actually seen the film they're recommending. You'd be amazed how often this happens.
- Horror comedy / comedy horror.
- The person responding to me had an American flag in their profile picture.
I've also removed any films recommended by people I don't know where I've looked at it and thought, "this sounds terrible".
I of course got more than 40 recommendations, so I've had to do some pruning. Here's the list I ended up with:
- Coherence (2013)
- The Plague Dogs (1982)
- La Jetee (1962)
- Suspiria (1977) - a film I should have seen but somehow haven't
- Help, I'm A Fish (2000)
- Yakuza Apocalypse (2015)
- Trenque Lanquen (2022)
- Kin Dza Dza (1986)
- From Beyond (1986)
- The Falls (1980)
- Aniara (2018)
- Gandahar (1987)
- Orlando (1992)
- Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025)
- Welcome to Woop Woop (1997)
- Upstream Color (2013)
- Hundreds Of Beavers (2022)
- The Man From Earth (2007)
- Tulpan (2008)
- Koyaanisqatsi (1982)
- Miracle Mile (1988)
- Asphalt Watches (2013)
- Accumulator 1 (1994)
- The Chess Of The Wind (1976)
- The Nines (2007)
- The Shout (1978)
- How To Get Ahead In Advertising (1989)
- Mad Dog Time (1986)
- Bigfoot: The Lost Coast Tapes (2012)
- The Standoff At Sparrow Creek (2018)
- They Don't Cut The Grass Anymore (1985)
- What A Carve Up! (1961)
- Avalon (1990)
- 96 Souls (2016)
- Casa De Mi Padre (2012)
- Hysteria (2011)
- Kontroll (2003)
- Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998)
- Anarchy TV (1998)
- Zinda Laash (1967)
Will I watch all of these? Probably not, purely because I already had a couple of films in mind that I want to prioritise watching soon - Miloš Forman's The Fireman's Ball is at the top of that list, for example - but these will be good to dip into if I'm stuck for something.
I'm not going to blog my way through them all because that would be ludicrous but I'll revisit this in a month and change to see how I got on. If you're interested in real-time thoughts then my Letterboxd is here.