The first month of 2019 is officially in the books! As I usually do during the first month of the year, I caught up with several movies from the previous years, especially those in awards contention. But I also squeezed in some older films in between, including spending last Saturday in San Francisco for my first Noir City Film Festival! It was great seeing TCM Noir Alley host Eddie Muller in person, as well as seeing a few noir films on the big screen, which included a good movie I hadn’t heard before called The Well. Hopefully, TCM gets the chance to show it on the channel sometime. But anyway, unfortunately, I was only able to go to Noir City for that day, but it got me more excited for my first TCMFF coming up in just a couple of months! Until then, let’s take a look back at what I watched in January.
New-to-Me: 31
Re-Watched: 7
New-to-Me Films by Decade:
- 1920s – 0
- 1930s – 2
- 1940s – 3
- 1950s – 6
- 1960s – 3
- 1970s – 0
- 1980s – 6
- 1990s – 1
- 2000s – 0
- 2010s – 10
List of New-to-Me Films:
- Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980)
- My Foolish Heart (1949)
- Frances (1982)
- Silkwood (1983)
- Women in Love (1969)
- Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)
- Vice (2018)
- Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
- Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
- Viva Zapata! (1952)
- Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
- Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
- On the Basis of Sex (2018)
- Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
- Man on a Tightrope (1953)
- Albert Nobbs (2011)
- Destroyer (2018)
- Leave No Trace (2018)
- Forty Guns (1957)
- The Arrangement (1969)
- Over the Moon (1939)
- Shirkers (2018)
- Minding the Gap (2018)
- Two Sisters from Boston (1946)
- It Happened in Brooklyn (1947)
- Cold War (2018)
- She’s Gotta Have It (1986)
- The Well (1951)
- The World According to Garp (1982)
- Damn Yankees (1958)
- Sweet Charity (1969)
A Few Favorite Discoveries:
My Foolish Heart (1949), directed by Mark Robson
The song “My Foolish Heart” has been one I’ve loved since hearing it in the trailer for Carol a few years back, so I was always curious to see the film from which it originated (which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song). My Foolish Heart is based on a short story written by J.D. Salinger, who was so disappointed in this adaptation that he decided not to allow any of his work to be adapted for film. I haven’t read the short story itself, so I can’t compare the two, but this was one of those instances where I was in just the right mood to see the film, as I was moved by the wartime romance between Susan Hayward and Dana Andrews. Both have really nice chemistry here, and Hayward gives an exceptional performance, which earned her the second of her eventual five Academy Award nominations.
Cold War (2018), directed by Pawel Pawlikowski
Cold War was a movie I was very interested in seeing after watching the trailer a few months ago, as the whole story and tone seemed to be right up my alley. The film chronicles the tumultuous relationship between Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) over the course of 20 years, beginning in post-war Poland. Director Pawel Pawlikowski does an incredible job here packing in such a great period of time into such a short running time, coming in just under 90 minutes. Along with earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, Pawlikowski also got a well-deserved nod for Best Director, having previously won the award at Cannes. The movie also features some gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, which I was very happy to see among the Oscar nominees.
