I haven't seen the majority of the nominations, so I can't give a preliminary reaction to many of them. But here's some quick notes on what I have seen:
The Sword of Doom: I haven't seen this since I was a teenager, and I'm certainly mixing parts of it up with some other films I saw in that period. I basically went on a huge Japanese bender in high school, so a lot of it blends together. I'm looking forward to seeing it again!
Millennium Actress: I've been meaning to rewatch this film for awhile now. I absolutely loved
Tokyo Godfathers when I watched it for the Animation HoF, which made me excited to rewatch Kon's other films, since I wasn't a huge fan of either when I first saw them. I rewatched
Paprika and
Perfect Blue when they were nominated for the Animation Tournament, and liked both a lot more than my first time through (particularly
Paprika). So it'll be interesting to see if my opinion has changed about
Millennium Actress as well.
Pan's Labyrinth: I love Guillermo del Toro's style, but I've never really loved any of his films as a whole. I've been wanting to rewatch this one since I met Doug Jones last year, but haven't really gotten around to it. Now's the perfect opportunity!
Phoenix: This is my nomination. Anyone who followed the 12th HoF should see some similarities between this and
Barbara, since they are directed by the same guy, and star the same actress. I won't say much about this now since I'm going to do my write-up for it very soon.
Thelma: I watched this about a month ago for our 2017 Film Awards. I nominated it in a couple of categories, but it didn't make the final cut. I found it quite interesting, but again I won't go into too much detail since I'll likely post my review of this film sometime this weekend.
I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the films, particularly all the thrillers.