Since the school year is coming to an end, I’d like to highlight a few great movies I’ve seen either recently or revere as some of my favorites. I was going to do a top-five, but I’ve already talked about a few of them in past articles, so I’d like to highlight some other movies I love.

The Lighthouse (2019)

The Lighthouse is a well-made psychological horror movie directed by Robert Eggers. It stars Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson as a lighthouse keeper and his assistant, respectively. It’s shot in a very strange aspect ratio, that being 1.19:1, so nearly a square. It’s also filmed in black and white, and it looks like an early motion picture in that way. The acting is quite good, and although the characters get a little confusing at times, it’s an interesting movie and storyline I’d highly recommend. It’s an artistic movie with its unique style choices as well.

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project was originally fronted as real found footage, paving the way for several copycat found footage projects. It tells the tale of a group of teens exploring a local legend, and in the process they get deeply lost in the woods, slowly losing their sanity without any means to escape. Found footage projects are set up as footage shot by a character in the movie, and it switches among characters in the Blair Witch Project. This movie is a truly terrifying concept at its core and will make you think twice about going in the woods at night ever again, especially depending on the time of day you watch it.

The Batman (2022)

The Batman is Matt Reeves’s modern Batman movie with unique takes on each of the comic book characters. The Riddler abandons his unique question-mark-riddled costume for a simple mask and glasses, and the Penguin is no longer pale with his iconic top hat. Instead, the movie focuses on these villains, but also their relation to the Gotham City crime syndicates, especially crime boss Carmine Falcone. It’s just as much a mystery movie as it is a superhero movie, and it’s an interesting take on a classic hero, just like Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight films not too long ago.

The Village (2004)

The Village is a really great movie from M. Night Shyamalan, one of his classics. It stars Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix and follows the two living in an Amish-style community cut off from modern civilization, surrounded by woods in which dangerous creatures roam. These creatures will not harm them as long as they stay within the bounds of their village, but some villagers like to test the limits. There are many more facets to the movie, but without spoiling anything, I can’t detail much of it, so I’d also highly recommend trying this one, because the subliminal hints and buildup are impressive.

12 Monkeys (1995)

12 Monkeys is a really weird movie with Bruce Willis as the lead. His character is imprisoned in the future (the 2030s) and is recruited to go back in time. He’s supposed to gather information about a plague that wipes out a large part of humanity, but he rarely cooperates and is led in many different directions throughout the movie by side characters, events, and the like. Again, it’s hard to talk about without giving away some big parts of the movie, so definitely another one I very much recommend.