My Movie List Rules
Relevant because on Sunday I’ll be sending out one, but for the last several years I do three big list-type things related to movies every year:
A letterboxd “<Year> Ranked” list for ranking all the newly released movies that I saw during the year, that is public and edited all year but locked on December 31st (example)
A general “<Year> in Lists” post that is locked and sent on December 31st, which includes my top 10 (and up to 10 honorable mentions) movies from the letterboxd list (example)
An Oscies post that is locked and sent the day of the Oscars, which describes my fantasy ballot if I could pick (a sub and superset of) the awards for the year (example)
The rules have fluctuated over the course of the 9 or so years of doing this, but here’s where they’ve generally settled!
Locking the list
I started doing these lists in earnest in 2018 (when I started using letterboxd and started listening to Blank Check, lol.) From 2018 onward I’ve done these posts in realtime, meaning I lock my 2025 Ranked list on Dec 31st 2025, and will be posting my 2025 Oscies list on Mar 15th, 2026 (the day of the 2025 Oscars.)
Accordingly, these lists are frozen in time. I am not allowed to go back and edit these as I see new movies or change my opinions. These are the reflections of my thoughts as of the day they were posted.
This also means that as I catch up on 2025 movies in the first months of 2026 in prep for the Oscies post, those movies cannot be added to the Dec 31st “2025 Ranked” list, but are eligible for the 2025 Oscies list, up until the moment I hit send1.
In contrast, because it’s fun, I also have in my Oscies spreadsheet a bunch of personal picks for awards pre-2018 (currently going back to 2006) and on letterboxd I have top 10 ranking lists for years going back to 2009. These lists were all created after the fact, and so they are fluid. I can tweak and edit these to my heart’s content over the years, because they don’t represent my opinions of a specific point in time2.
Relatedly, the 2018-and-beyond vintages of the letterboxd “<Year> Ranked” lists also serve as time capsules of the movies of that year that I saw during that year, which I think is neat!
I will probably at some point figure out a way to post or annotate those frozen lists to be able to have it both ways: I can reflect my current thinking and show how it compares to what I thought in the moment. Alternatively, in 2020 I did a Best of the 2010s list (and secretly did my own best of the decade Oscies in my spreadsheet, but never published it) so maybe that’s the best way to capture changing opinions and new movie watches.
Anyway, tl;dr: 2018 and later lists are created in realtime and locked after publishing, 2017 and earlier lists are free to edit forever.
Eligibility
First eligibility rule, I have to have seen it before I make the relevant list!
But the question then is what year does a particular movie count for? I don’t follow Oscar eligibility rules regarding years, necessarily; rather I’ve settled on a Venn diagram between “when did I see it?” and “when was its widest release?”
Generally, I rank in this order of precedence for “release year”:
Wide theatrical
Straight-to-Digital/Home video (including straight-to-streaming)
Limited theatrical
Festival premiere
Other limited release
When I say “straight-to-digital” I mean movies that bypass wide theatrical, so a movie Netflix picks up from Sundance would count for #2, but a movie that Netflix airs after its theatrical run wouldn’t.
So, all else being equal, a movie that:
Released to theaters in 2025
After a limited theatrical preview in 2024
After being picked up from a festival premiere in 2023
After being shown at a random college in 2022
Would generally count as a 2025 movie, to me, even if it came on home video in 2026.
However, the other half of the Venn diagram is when I saw the movie, and I’ve settled on saying if I see it in the year of any of these premiere types, then I count it for that year, even if it will have a wider release in a later year. So again, for this hypothetical movie above, if I saw it at the random college screening in 2022, I count it as a 2022 movie (because as of the end of 2022 it hadn’t yet had its 2023 festival premiere.) If instead I saw it at the festival in 2023, it’s 2023, etc etc etc.
An example of this is my 2021 Best Picture and best of the year winner, Cathy Yan’s Dead Pigs. This film had its festival premiere in 2018, but it had its streaming debut on Mubi in 2021, which is when I saw it. I count that as a 2021 movie, for me, even though it was years past its festival date. In contrast, last year I watched some Sundance films during the festival, and those count as 2025 movies for me, regardless of when/if they end up having wider releases (and same for the Sundance movies I watched this January, those are on my 2026 Ranked list.)
A live example will be (assuming I watch it!) The Testament Of Ann Lee, which is generally considered a 2025 movie, but had its wide theatrical expansion in 2026. If I watch it in 2026, even if I’m watching it on digital after it’s left theaters, I will count it for 2026. Had I watched it in 2025 though, then I would count it in 2025.
There is one notorious exception that in retrospect I would change: I saw Portrait of a Lady on Fire in December 2019 during its limited engagement in LA, and I counted it as a 2020 movie because that’s when it had its wide release. Following my current rules, I should instead count it as a 2019 movie for the purposes of my lists because that’s when I actually saw it.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, I put it in 2020 at the time and the lists are locked (and it gave the movie the chance to win my 2020 favorite movie lol, vs it would’ve probably been a close second to Midsommer in 2019) but it’s the black mark that helped crystalize the current eligibility rules.
Additionally, I take a looser definition of “Movie” than the Oscars do. For example, I will include some full-length Youtube feature films (like Pretend That You Love Me) and documentaries (like some Defunctland videos.) I will include made-for-TV movies (like Bad Education.) I haven’t ever included limited series (so no Over The Garden Wall or Twin Peaks: The Return) but we’ll see, never say never.
TL;DR: I don’t follow Oscar eligibility, instead it’s a Venn diagram between when I saw it and when it had its widest (to that point) release
<Year> Ranked
This list is compiled in real-time as I watch movies throughout the year, but I can reshuffle it as many times as I like… up until Dec 31st publication. See “Locking the list” above. As mentioned, this is what powers the “Top 10 Movies of <Year>” and Honorable Mentions portion of my “<Year> in Lists” list. And it’s entirely based on vibes and preferences (more a “favorite” movies than “best”, though obviously the two relate.)
Oscies
This uses the same eligibility rules as the <Year> Ranked list, though with the addendum of it counts movies I watch in, say, 2026 but were “released” (according to my rules) in 2025. This usually leads to a slightly (to significantly!) different Best Picture top 10 than the 10 from my best of the year list.
I overlap with some of the Oscars categories: as of this 2025 it’s:
Actress
Actor
Supporting Actress
Supporting Actor
Director
Picture
Score
But I also semi-recently added some new categories:
Ensemble
Debut Film
a combined Screenplay category (for both Adapted and Original)
And I reserve the right to add or drop categories as I see fit.
I pick 5 nominees per award for everything other than Picture, where I pick 10.
For acting awards, I don’t go by how the actors choose to self-categorize themselves between Lead and Supporting: I go based on my vibe of their role and function in the movie. For example, in 2022 I put Ke Huy Quan in my Lead Actor category (which he won!) vs he ran as and got his Oscar for Supporting.
Also, I don’t have a separate voice acting category, and will gladly nominate (or award!) an actor for a voice performance (2014: Bradley Cooper for Supporting Actor for Guardians of the Galaxy.)
I generally only nominate people for one movie at a time. This can lead to circumstances where the same person is double-nominated across categories (2020: Chadwick Boseman for Supporting in Da 5 Bloods and Lead in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom; 2019: Florence Pugh in Supporting for Little Women and Lead for Midsommer, which was also a double win!) or theoretically within category (hasn’t happened yet, I’m sure it will!)
The one exception is in 2022 I did give Tyler Bates and Tim Williams a split nom for Score across both X and Pearl, but that’s kinda a special case. Dunno if I’ll ever do that again.
Also, in 2023 I considered nominating the combo of Jenna Davis and Amie Donald for their joint work on the titular M3GAN from the movie M3GAN, but they didn’t make the five.
Hopefully that helps (ignoring the fact that, lol, who cares) and this will now be linked in all of my Oscies posts going forward!
By way of example, as of writing for 2025, that means Marty Supreme, Hamnet, Bugonia, The Mastermind, and Train Dreams are all 2025 Oscies eligible since I watched them in 2026, though they were not “2025 Ranked” eligible because I hadn’t seen them by Dec 31st. And few more will be added in the coming days!
Or rather they represent my opinions on 2006 from <whatever point in 2022 I put the list together>, which I don’t care about preserving the same way I do for my 2018 opinions from 2018.