Here’s a comprehensive list of what I watched this month:
How to Have Sex. Molly Manning Walker (2023)
State and Main. David Mamet (2000)
L.A. Confidential. Curtis Hanson (1997)
Trap. M. Night Shyamalan (2024)
Con Air. Simon West (1997)
Red Rocket. Sean Baker (2021)
Vanilla Sky. Cameron Crowe (2001) Rewatch
Picnic at Hanging Rock. Peter Weir (1975)
Cuckoo. Tilman Singer (2024)
Niagara. Henry Hathaway (1953)
Memento. Christopher Nolan (2000)
Jack Goes Boating. Phillip Seymour Hoffman (2010)
Edge of Tomorrow. Doug Liman (2014)
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Alejandro González Iñárritu (2014)
Batman Begins. Christopher Nolan (2005)
Her. Spike Jonze (2013) Rewatch
The Lady Eve. Preston Sturges (1941)
Gap-Toothed Women. Les Blank (1987)
Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino (2012)
Opening Night. John Cassavetes (1977)
The Last of the Mohicans. Michael Mann (1992)
Porco Rosso. Hayao Miyazaki (1992)
Clouds of Sils Maria. Olivier Assayas (2014) Rewatch
Alien: Romulus. Fede Alvarez (2024)
Superbad. Greg Mottola (2007) Rewatch
The Pelican Brief. Alan J. Pakula (1993)
You’ve Got Mail. Nora Ephron (1998) Rewatch
Magnolia. Paul Thomas Anderson (1999) Rewatch
The Crow. Rupert Sanders (2024)
Capote. Bennett Miller (2005)
Tampopo. Jūzō Itami (1985)
Alien Resurrection. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (1997)
Blink Twice. Zoë Kravitz (2024)
That took forever to type out! This month I quit my job and it shows. Between unemployment, transatlantic flights, and debilitating jet lag, it was a good movie month for me. It could have been better- I was up until 5a for the first week I spent in Europe waiting for my body to adjust to the nine hour time difference. I put on Arrested Development, hoping the familiar sounds of Jason Bateman and Co. might lull me to sleep. Instead, I watched episode after episode through half-slit eyes until my mind finally succumbed to familial fighting and banana stands. Could I have used that time to read a book or watch one of the many three hour movies I’ve been putting off? Sure. But I always suspect that the moment I give up on sleeping would be the moment sleep finally comes. And that is the story of how I half-watched three whole seasons of a television show I’ve already seen instead of doing something halfway productive. C’est la vie!
Favorite Movie this Month:
I watched a lot of movies this month that I can see myself rewatching later, but Opening Night was the most affecting of them all. Maybe it’s because we lost Gena Rowlands this month, (to Alzheimers, tragically mirroring her character in The Notebook) but it’s also just a phenomenal film about performance, aging, and Trying Not to Fall For John Cassavetes. Rowlands is one of the most compelling actors to watch move about a space. Her physicality is always interesting, but her close-ups are where she really sings. There’s something about the way her eyes betray the turmoil bubbling below the surface of every waking second that feels visceral and authentic. It’s a 2.5 hour watch that feels hypnotic rather than tedious.
2024 Movie to Watch:
I asked my dad to watch Alien: Romulus with me while I was in Zurich because I was jealous my boyfriend saw it without me but was too scared to see it by myself. The popcorn was a little stale but the fact that the theater only played THREE trailers before the movie more than made up for it. They also had an intermission despite the run time being sub-two hours which totally charmed me. It was the perfect amount of time for my dad and I to look at each other and say “where the hell does this movie fall in the Alien timeline???” (It’s an interquel set between Alien and Aliens, lest you find yourself in an intermission-less screening pondering the same question.)
With or without the magic of a Swiss moviegoing experience, Romulus rocked. It had the dread-inducing suspense of Alien with a central duo that provided real emotional stakes a la Aliens. Plus a final boss that felt weirdly borrowed from Alien: Resurrection? I don’t understand the hate this movie is getting- I haven’t watched the lore-building Prometheus or Alien: Covenant yet, but, if I’m honest, I don’t care about the lore. I come to the Alien franchise for goopy horror and chest-bursting gore. And Alien: Romulus delivered.
Thanks for seeing it with me, Dad! Nothing says father-daughter bonding like audibly groaning at the screen in abject disgust.
Movie that Most Surprised Me:
You’ve Got Mail. Just kidding, I watch it at least three times a year. I’m such a simp for Nora Ephron and her impeccable writing. I think I was most surprised by how much I loved Memento. I’m not a huge Nolan fan- his tendency to focus all of his brainpower on convoluted plot and precarious set pieces rather than character building makes every film feel tedious, constructed of impossibly high but vacuous stakes. Memento was balanced, or at least the conceit of our main character having short-term memory rendered a complex character unnecessary. It looked good, wasn’t (that) confusing, and Ralph Cifaretto from The Sopranos was the third lead. No notes!
Most Disappointing Watch:
I’m a huge Michael Mann fan, so watching an epic led by Daniel Day-Lewis and directed by Mann seemed like an obvious, resounding “yes!!!” from me. But The Last of the Mohicans bored the hell out of me. In Mann’s defense, historical epics (especially the ones centered around the colonization of America) don’t really do it for me. Like who am I supposed to be rooting for here? Love the long hair on DDL and the waterfall scene was nice. My favorite part of the movie was when I was reading about DDL after the movie ended and I discovered that he and Isabelle Adjani dated for six years and have a child together. How did I not know this???
5 Movies I Recommend:
Boyfriend and I had been meaning to watch L.A. Confidential for awhile and finally pulled it off (breaking it up into two nights after service. Not because the movie was slow but because I am so sleepy.) It’s a murky, sexy, twisty, riot of a Neo Noir with a Hollywood sheen that doesn’t gloss over the LAPD’s corrupt police force. Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce star with Kevin Spacey (sorry) and Kim Basinger in excellent supporting roles. Danny Devito does the narrating. The final shootout rules. I’m not sure I totally followed every plot twist but I nevertheless had a blast.
Jack Goes Boating, Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s first (and only) directorial endeavor, tells the story of four adult friends navigating relationships in various stages of disarray. Jack (Hoffman) is interested in pursuing a romantic relationship with Connie (Amy Ryan) but doesn’t have much experience. Clyde (John Ortiz) and Lucy (Daphne Rubin-Vega), the couple-friends of Connie and Jack, are going through growing pains of their own in their years-long relationship. It’s a bittersweet, small-stakes story where the real love stems from the bromance between Jack and Clyde. It’s technically probably mid but PSH gets swimming lessons from his friend and it’s so adorable and I miss PSH!!!
If there were a list of films that feel like a Sofia Coppola movie but aren’t, Picnic at Hanging Rock is at the top of that list. Set in the early 1900s in Australia, the film follows a group of repressed teens at a girls-only boarding school. When the students take a rare field trip to a rock formation called Hanging Rock, some of the girls go missing and send the others into a frenzy. If only Kirsten Dunst was sixteen when this was made! Though not much happens throughout the film, it’s photographed beautifully, and has a haunted feeling similar to Altman’s 3 Women. The film is based off of a popular novel where the author pulled a Blair Witch Project and marketed the story as a true event. I support all women, especially women who lie and make money off of it.
Clouds of Sils Maria is a rewatch for me, but I wanted to watch something filmed in Zurich and this was streaming for free on the Criterion Channel. This hit so much deeper the second time around, especially after watching Opening Night a couple nights before. Sils Maria is more of a two-hander splitting the focus between theater actress Maria (Juliette Binoche) and her assistant Valentine (Kristen Stewart) as one navigates growing up and the other navigates aging out. When Maria accepts the “older woman” role in the revival of a play she played the “younger woman” in twenty years ago, Valentine helps Maria come to terms with lessons and hindrances being an “older woman” offers. Both performances are all-timers for me, and the movie is really balanced in its acknowledgement that, young or old, it’s tough being a woman.
I finally watched The Lady Eve because it’s one of my friend Willow’s favorite movies of all time and also because everybody else says it’s good. I can now confirm for myself that it’s well worth a watch. The dialogue is whip-sharp and the performances are so much fun. You can’t blame Charles (Henry Fonda) for repeatedly falling for con artist Jean (Barbara Stanwyck) because Stanwyck is just that magnetic. Partway through the movie I got excited about future rewatches. There’s nothing better than that!
If anybody wants to discuss either The Crow (2024) or Blink Twice (2024), I’m your guy. Both were aesthetically-driven, flawed movies that I nonetheless enjoyed more than I expected to. I liked the updated plot elements in The Crow and I thought the more detailed backstory between Eric and Shelly gave us stakes in a way the OG The Crow (1994) lacked. As for Blink Twice, I thought it was an amusing, mildly entertaining thriller with a really bad ending. I have literally no opinion on Channing Tatum but I hope Zoë Kravitz is having fun :)
dad was just talking about the alien movie with a friend this morning!!