Movies

gaporter said:
I remember seeing a tweet a while back that suggested going through each month and picking the best movie that you watched for the first time that month. I thought it sounded like a fun idea so I used Letterboxd to look back through my first-time viewings this year and this is what I came up with:

January: Silence (2016)
February: Nightmare Alley (2021)
March: The Batman
April: The Northman
May: The Devils (1971)
June: Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe
July: Michael Clayton (2007)
August: The Night House (2020)
September: Mad God (2021)
October: The Invisible Man (1933)
November: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
December: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
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I decided to do this again for 2023; I think it's a fun experiment and a nice way to look back on what all I watched throughout the year, so maybe this will become a little tradition for me every January 1st. I feel obliged to note that some months I watched maybe two or three new movies at most, so I'm not saying that I think every movie listed here is necessarily a masterpiece, just that they were my favorite thing I watched for the first time that given month.

January: High and Low (1963)
February: The Virgin Suicides (1999)
March: John Wick: Chapter 4
April: Liar Liar (1997)
May: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
June: Galaxy Quest (1999)
July: Oppenheimer
August: Talk to Me
September: The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
October: Carnival of Souls (1962)
November: Blade (1998)
December: Jennifer's Body (2009)
 
This is an inexact science because I didn't start my Letterbox til the end of September and then went back and guessed when I had watched what--

January: Pearl
February: Return to Seoul
March: Aliens (yeah, I know)
April: Starship Troopers
May: Titane
June: Asteroid City
July: How to Blow Up a Pipeline
August: Oppenheimer
September: Bottoms
October: Killers of the Flower Moon
November: Kramer vs Kramer
December: Poor Things
 
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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)
 
Indymisanthrope said:
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?
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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.
 
ayayrawn said:
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)
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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!
 
ayayrawn said:
The beginning of the end of my involvement in anything Potterverse related
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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.
 
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