Movies

We're doing favorite first watches of each month? I can do that.

January: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
February: Ikiru (1952), A Room With a View (1986) a close second. Edit: forgot I watched Malcolm X (1992) this month too.
March: Paterson (2016)
April: A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
May: Nebraska (2016)
June: Past Lives (2023)
July: Oppenheimer (2023)
August: The Tree of Life (2013)
September: Cure (1997)
October: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Anatomy of a Fall (2023) close second or maybe a toss up, idk.
November: A Seperation (2011)
December: Poor Things (2023)
 
I’m gonna end the year with a post that might be better suited for Hot Takes: I just watched my first Miyazaki. It was Howl’s Moving Castle, and my reaction ran the gamut of “This is impenetrable” to “At least it looks great” to “This is childish, but not in the way that it’s capturing childlike wonder and more like it’s my three year old trying to make up a story on the fly.”

I know this thing is critically acclaimed, but apart from some of the visual creativity I was pretty much out on it.

I did really enjoy imagining Christian Bale standing in a room trying to deliver a performance grounded in…anything. Billy Crystal is in a completely different movie from everyone else.

Someone please tell me this is a weird entry point and one of the other Ghibli efforts would have impressed me more. Was my mistake in watching the dub first?
I’d strongly recommend trying Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke; those were my first entry points to Miyazaki and i actually avoided Howl’s for a long time.
 
I watched "Inside" last night which was a really great watch.

The concept sees Willem Dafoe as an art thief that gets trapped in a high end apartment after the security system malfunctions. The majority of the film is him trying to survive and escape whilst slowly losing his mind. Dafoe puts in a great solo performance throughout and despite the ending being a bit heavy handed, its a great film.

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Combing through my letterboxd, I've got some...uneven...months:

January: The Conformist (1970)
February: Beau Travail (1999)
March: Triangle of Sadness (2022)
April: No Bears (2022)
May: Showing Up (2023) (hon. mention: To Die For 1995)
June: Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse (2023) (hon. mention: Asteroid City, depending on feelings upon rewatch)
July: Past Lives (2023) (hon. mention: Oppenheimer)
August: Beauty is Embarrassing (2012)
September: Just. One. Mile. (2023)
October: Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
November: May December (2023)
December: The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Looking back, I wish I'd seen more older films; there are plenty in the diary, but they're mostly rewatches.
 
I wait until the end of January to finalize my top 20 of the previous year to watch all of the late wide releases. Still have plenty from last year I need to see (If A24, Neon, and Searchlight ever release/let us see them, come on guys)
Yeah, I still need to see All of Us Strangers, the Zone of Interest, Passages, and Priscilla. I felt comfortably making my list as I have seen a good chunk of films available to me!
 
The beginning of the end of my involvement in anything Potterverse related
I like the first one (not quite as much as 7 years ago) but they get very mid after that. The plots are all over the place and drags out and has nothing really to do with Newt or fantastic beasts. Don't know why they thought a 5-film series was a good idea. They should have gotten an actual screenwriter and then maybe make a trilogy focusing on Dumbledoor/Grindelwald and all that.
But i'm not interested in what they got coming now like the TV show remake of the Potter books. I'm perfectly fine with the Potter movies/books.
 
I really enjoyed Past Lives. So subtle and beautiful.
It's so good. I think I need to watch it again!
One of the more unintentionally funny bluesky posts I saw recently was someone watching that movie real-time on a plane saying "the moment you see a boyfriend on the couch playing video games in a movie you know that guy's cooked."

About thirty minutes later they came back to say they were both surprised and emotionally wrecked.
 
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