Top 5 First Watches of March
1.
The Little Foxes
2.
Logan
3.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
4.
20th Century Women
5.
The Gold Rush
Top 5 Rewatches of March
1.
Before Sunset
2.
Before Midnight
3.
Two Days, One Night
4.
Before Sunrise
5.
The Handmaiden
M (1931): One of Fritz Lang's last German films, and his first sound film (sound is still a work in progress, so the sound design here renders many moments as virtually like a silent film -- there's a spooky lack of ambient noise, especially). This is widely identified as one of the best films of its era (and, perhaps, ever made). That's a pretty high bar, one this doesn't remotely clear; I'm sure it has been influential, and the cinematography is impressive throughout, but virtually everything that's interesting about it comes in the last couple of scenes (particularly the extended
sequence). It's interesting to see Peter Lorre acting in his native German, before he became the weird/eccentric foreigner in every Hollywood film.
Julius Caesar (1953): Wow, what a cast: James Mason, Marlon Brando, John Gielgud, Edmond O'Brien, Greer Garson, Deborah Kerr, a variety of other respected character actors from the period (Garson and Kerr are pretty much wasted in the play's throwaway female roles, admittedly). The film is exceptionally strong in the portion corresponding to the first three acts, but I've always felt the play somewhat deflates after Antony's iconic funeral oration. This feels like the climax; after that, you just have the drawn out resolution to the civil war subplot (including the character of Octavian, who just appears out of nowhere).
The Salesman (2016): Asghar Farhadi's most recent film, and last year's winner for the Foreign Language Film Oscar thanks to a timely assist from President Trump. It's a good film, to be sure, though I think it falls a bit short of Farhadi's full ambitions for it. The title is taken from
Death of a Salesman, a production of which is being put on by the characters in it, but I don't find the links that the director is trying to make between the play and the events of this movie to be terribly meaningful. Stars Shahab Hosseini (Farhadi's favourite leading man) and Taraneh Alidoosti are both excellent (Alidoosti's portrayal of a woman haunted by a traumatic experience is particularly moving; one wishes we saw more of her separate from her husband)