Total films watched in Jan: 19
Best: All The Beauty and the Bloodshed, Bubble Bath. M3gan, My Neighbour Totoro, In the Aisles, Great Freedom (good month!)
Worst: The Intouchables, The Menu
169 days until Barbie Movie!
I was watching the latest series of Stranger Things where each episode was film length and the last one was 2½ hours long and so I haven’t seen as many films as usual. I did see these over the last two weeks or so:
Homicidal (1961) - Hammed up, gimmicky horror directed by William Castle who’s did similar with House On Haunted Hill and The Tingler.
Liked the twist at the end and I didn’t see it coming, somewhat because the film wasn’t great and I wasn’t paying too close attention to it. Not bad after thinking about it. 5.5/10
Smooth Talk - Coming of age 80s drama with Laura Dern. Got some great reviews but it hasn’t aged well and didn’t really click with me. 4/10.
Jung_E - Korean futuristic sci-fi with clones, AI, evil corporations that sort of stuff. I got pretty bored with it pretty quickly and had to turn off after an hour. 1.5/10.
Ride The Eagle - Jake Johnson is set a set of quirky tasks to do after his mum Susan Sarandon dies in order to get his inheritance. A light comedy of sorts.
Supposed to be one of those reflective and “don’t waste the time you have” films. D’Arcy Carden and JK Simmons as supports too. Decent enough. 6.5/10.
Berberian Sound Studio - Peter Strickland psychological horror film. I hadn’t heard of it before despite having seen a few of his films before. Thanks for those here that mentioned it.
Unfortunately it didn’t quite click for me. Toby Jones is reliably good here but the decent into madness thing and turning into a different person/version didn’t work. Stylish but unfortunately not for me. His debut film Katalin Varga was brilliant and worth checking out for those that haven’t seen it. It’s almost an anomaly in its style and genre compared to Strickland’s subsequent ones.
This one gets 5/10.
Strange Woman - Hedy Lamarr is after a man with money to get her out of her poverty…and then his son…and then…etc.
The usual dated femme fatale/Lady Macbeth premise thing of the time and also now but I enjoyed it. Lamarr was good and a film with a young-ish George Sanders too. 6.5/10.
Black Adam - Not as shit as I thought it would be but just above average. The Rock has allies in a bunch called The Justice Society who consist of Pierce Brosnan who’s a bit like Dr Strange, an Anthony Mackie mechanical birdman thing, a woman who makes things windy and a clumsy bloke in a Deadpool rip off costume. Didn’t see the point of the wind woman and rubbish Deadpool guy; both pointless.
The Rock is a pretty decent enough comedy actor but the intentional cheesy lines didn’t work. The action was average but generally things got blown up as expected and because my expectations were so slow, this did exceed them 5.5/10.
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Watched 8
Best - Aftersun, Rashomon, Final Account
Worst - The Menu
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Watched 19 - 13 new to me, 6 rewatches
Best - Dog Day Afternoon, Tár
Worst - Enys Men, Weird Al Story
Watched: 13 (2 were rewatches)
Best: Tar, Megan, Corsage
Worst: Peter Von Kant (but was fine, it was a strong month!)
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These 2 movie challenges I’ve undertaken have well and truly lit a fire under me.
The 3 month MUBI deal has been great value too. Will be watching Atersun today.
Watched: 42 (+5 shorts)
A Brighter Summer Day (5/5)
The Act Of Killing (5/5)
A Matter Of Life And Death (4.5/5)
Man With A Movie Camera (4.5/5)
The General (4.5/5)
Stagecoach (4.5/5)
Odd Man Out (4.5/5)
Babylon 4.5/5)
Think it might be the most 4.5 and 5 films i’ve watched in a month since I started properly recording in Jan 2021.
Have you seen The Shootist? John Wayne’s final film?
Kind of bookends something like Stagecoach or another early Wayne film pretty well. It’s got an aging Jimmy Stewart and Lauren Bacall and a young Ritchie Cunningham. Brilliant film and a nice twilight of their careers type of film. Don Seigel directed it too.
Edit. Found my review of it. Oh…only a year since I saw it.
My January bests:
Tár
France
Parallel Mothers
Playground
Censor
Empire of Light
About to go and see Babylon. Quite excited
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Playground was the only film I saw at the cinema last year and loved it.
Sorry for the repeated replies on here already. Don’t worry I’ll go back to my usual of how underrated Scott Adkins films are.
Such a good film.
Once I got past the opening 20-30 seconds I really liked it.
I keep thinking about the bit with the shoelaces near the start. Really appreciated how it took such a different direction than it could have there.
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Watched: 46
Best: Tár and Avatar: Way of Water
Best from other years: The Informers (1963), The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), The Tin Star (1957)
Worst: Stranger from Venus (1954)
Hey look at Danny Fanboyle over here
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(They’re doing him on Blank Check at the moment so I’m taking the opportunity to fill in blank spots that I’ve avoided because Ewan McGregor is fucking shite)
Not a good director imo
Sometimes a good director IMO but more often than not a not good director
Films watched in January: 46
Best: Stalker, City Lights, Shoah, Peter and the Farm, L’avventura
Worst: The Ninth Gate, The Mummy (2017)
Danny Oh Boyle
Gonna watch 3 films tonight