Notes / Twelve on the front wall

Ellis Ward

Twelve on the front wall

August 21, 2026

The front wall this season is Parasite, Moonlight, Dune, Poor Things, Past Lives, Anora, La La Land, Decision to Leave, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Challengers, Oppenheimer, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. They are not the twelve we think are best. They are twelve that hold a wall: different companies, different decades, a mix of faces and type.

Dune is the 2021 film, not a stand-in for the sequel. Part Two is in the catalog, on its own page, because the trailer is a different video. The same rule split Get Out, Us, and Nope. A director is not a folder.

If you came from the list and the front wall feels narrow, it is. The full list is longer than the wall, and it is still a shelf, not a history of cinema. The notes say what we were looking at when we hung these. They are dated so a later wall does not pretend to be the first one.