Favorite Viewing of The Month?

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I just started getting into Fassbinder (finally!) now that I have Criterion (also….finally!). I’ll be binging more of his films in the Coming months.
You've definitely started with a high point! It might be my favorite of his.



You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
I watched 68 feature films plus 11 short films in January. My top 3 first time watches:

1. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
2. TÁR
3. Lilya 4-ever


Marcel the Shell with Shoes On was adorable. It reminded me of this YouTube video:

Pet Interviews - Guinea Pig
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OPEN FLOOR.



January 2023:

The Unbelievable Truth (1989) -


Being my second Hartley film, he's definitely someone I'll pay close attention to down the road as I really enjoy the vibes of his films. The characters in his films act somewhat strange and don't always behave like real people, but since I don't view them as real people and accept the off-kilter behavior they show, this works really well for me. Yet, in spite of this, there are clear emotional stakes in his films and I form connections to the characters anyways. Topped with this being the opposite of a laugh out loud-style comedy (which I'm usually not a fan of), this is currently my favorite first-time viewing of this year.

Un Chant D'Amour (1950) -


I can only imagine how shocking this short was when it was released. I already knew the sexual content in it would be explicit, but...damn. It's much more than just sexual content though as, given the photography and the mood of the film, it's rather hypnotic. Whether you're referring to the grounded scenes of the prisoners interacting with each other, the recurring shot of the prisoners attempting to swing a small bouquet of flowers between cells (which is a microcosm for their situation), or the fantasy-based love scenes between them which occur outside the prison cells, this is a rather beautiful film since the two leads are so close, yet so far away from each other.

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So far, I feel like I've been giving out more 7/10's and 6/10's than I usually do. Hopefully, February will fare better for me.
Update: Just watched The Servant, which also would've made this list.
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I didn't watch anything super-exiting last month (3/5 was the best rating I gave to a movie). So, my top 3 for January would be:

Project Wolf Hunting
Limbo
The Patriot (rewatch)

Actually, season 4 of Fauda from Netflix was the best thing I watched, but I'm not sure if this is supposed to be about movies. One of the best ongoing series.
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I watched 68 feature films plus 11 short films in January. My top 3 first time watches:

1. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
2. TÁR
3. Lilya 4-ever
Lilyah!!!!!!!!! One of my favourite films of all time.



First watch: Master Cheng
Rewatch: The Guard



So this thread is here for discussing what your favorite movie you saw this month was. This could work for any month of the year really, but today is the end of January.

Here is everything I saw this month:

Three Women
High Hopes
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
The Mikado
The Fabulous Adventures of Baron Munchausen
Jules and Jim
A Woman Is A Woman
Sullivan's Travels
It Happened One Night.
Deep End
Hopefully one more film could come by... but for now the MVF of the month is (drumroll please)...
So I did manage to watch one more film for the month.

Deep End(1970) which is a British movie that has Jane Asher(best known for her relationship with Paul McCartney) in it. The movie had music by Cat Stevens & Can and while I kind of expected more music, it was fair enough for the film. For the sake of Future Days, I should be listening to Can more and maybe watch this movie a second time. This film's main idea is that this 15-year old bathhouse worker named Michael who has an unhealthy infatuation with another worker named Susan(Jane Asher). However, she is already bounded to get married and Michael does everything in his power in order to take her for himself. He walks all across the street ordering hot dogs and walking into clubs for the sake of this one woman. He wants her, he wants her so bad that it is driving him mad. Even though Jane Asher did influence several famous Beatles songs, she did not influence "I Want You(She's So Heavy)" which is the song that best characterizes the protagonist at this moment. Moments later, after a foot race, and finding the missing piece of Susan's engagement ring in the snow, the shocking ending occurs. Mike ends up killing the woman by hitting her in the back of the head with a pool light after she refuses to talk to him. Unlike It Happened One Night where the protagonist does get the woman who has already been married, the protagonist of Deep End ends up getting so obsessed with the woman that it kills her. That is probably because Clark Gable's character took it slow and did not expect anything(he just wanted to take her back to New York) while John Moulder Brown's character was expecting everything from her.



I mostly caught up on 2022 this month, so my favorite was:




Also, bummed High Hopes wasn’t your favorite. Absolutely love that movie.

Hopefully this thread does well. Cool idea.
I'm going to have to check out this one, a matter of local curiosity. I've read that the inspiration for the conductor was Marin Alsop, a conductor, one of whose jobs was as music director for the Baltimore Symphony, back in the "00's". I was attending their series back then and, my recollection was, unlike what I've read about the movie, just how un-dramatic her tenure was. She was "out" when she arrived, nobody made much out of it, she was an excellent conductor and a likable person, popular right up to when she left, well received by the audience.

I'm guessing that Alsop wouldn't make a good movie script.



Deep End is amazing. It was one of my favourites from a couple years back. I think all I knew about it before hand was it had some Can music in it, but was happily surprised to find out that was only one of its many pleasures.



I just started getting into Fassbinder (finally!) now that I have Criterion (also….finally!). I’ll be binging more of his films in the Coming months.

Fassbinder filmography can be a very rocky road. Also very varied. If you come across a dog, don't let it discourage.



Some of his best:



Ali (obviously)
Fox and his Friends
In a Year With 13 Moods (beware: has a very graphic slaughterhouse scene)
Merchant of Four Seasons
Beware of a Holy Whore (beware: I'm the only one who seems to love this one)