The first month of the new year and decade is officially behind us! And for me, January helped kick off what I hope is another promising year of film discoveries and movie-going adventures. As I did last year, I went to the first Saturday of the Noir City film festival in San Francisco, so I got to see four French noirs introduced by the Czar of Noir himself, Eddie Muller. Before that, I took a weekend trip to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival with my sister, where I saw plenty of great, famous faces, including another wonderful TCM host, Dave Karger! It’s a fun festival to attend purely for the conversations with some of the season’s awards contenders (though of course, Santa Barbara serves as a lovely backdrop for it all); you can check out a few of my photos from what I saw on my Instagram here. Speaking of awards, today TCM kicks off its 31 Days of Oscar program, which I look forward to every year as there’s still plenty of movies for me to check out. But while there’s a whole month of Oscar-nominated and winning films, the Academy Awards themselves are already next weekend! As usual, I’ll be posting my picks and predictions, but before that, I’ll be making a separate post highlighting a certain group of my Oscar favorites through the years. Until then though, onto what I watched in January.

New-to-Me: 38

Re-Watched: 4

New-to-Me Films by Decade:

• 1910s – 0
• 1920s – 1
• 1930s – 0
• 1940s – 1
• 1950s – 8
• 1960s – 6
• 1970s – 9
• 1980s – 4
• 1990s – 3
• 2000s – 1
• 2010s – 5
• 2020s – 0

List of New-to-Me Films:

1. Opening Night (1977)
2. Something Wild (1986)
3. Band of Outsiders (1964)
4. The Furies (1950)
5. The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1981)
6. Machine Gun McCain (1969)
7. The Shop on Main Street (1965)
8. 1917 (2019)
9. One from the Heart (1982)
10. Tetro (2009)
11. Bombshell (2019)
12. Greenberg (2010)
13. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (2017)
14. The Big Night (1951)
15. Coquette (1929)
16. Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
17. Closely Watched Trains (1966)
18. THX 1138 (1971)
19. Mad Max (1979)
20. Boxcar Bertha (1972)
21. Juliet of the Spirits (1965)
22. Rambling Rose (1991)
23. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
24. The Omega Man (1971)
25. The Ultimate Warrior (1975)
26. The Captive City (1952)
27. Panique (1946)
28. Razzia (1955)
29. Any Number Can Win (1963)
30. Try and Get Me! (1950)
31. Pete Kelly’s Blues (1955)
32. Week-End with Father (1951)
33. The Member of the Wedding (1952)
34. True Confessions (1981)
35. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight (1971)
36. Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor (2018)
37. The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)
38. The Last Detail (1973)

A Few Favorite Discoveries:

Something Wild (1986), directed by Jonathan Demme

This was just the second movie I watched in the new year, and I enjoyed it much more than I anticipated. Something Wild starts out as a quirky sort of rom-com involving some crime when Charles (Jeff Daniels) meets Audrey a.k.a Lulu (Melanie Griffith) but then takes quite a dramatic turn once her ex Ray (Ray Liotta) enters the picture. Despite the tonal shifts, the movie still works for me and is highly entertaining. This is definitely one of my favorite roles Griffith has played, and she’s wonderful alongside Daniels and Liotta, who are also both good in this. I also enjoyed the soundtrack and a fun cameo from John Waters!

Panique (1946), directed by Julien Duvivier

This was the first film that was screened on the day I went to the Noir City film festival, which is highlighting international film noir this year. And France was the destination for the day I was in attendance, and Panique was easily my favorite of the four French noirs that screened, and it’s one that I had been interested in checking out since it joined the Criterion Collection, much of it thanks to the very intriguing design to its cover. I was fully engrossed in the story throughout the running time, and haven’t fully stopped thinking about it since. I didn’t know too much about it going in, so I won’t say much more other than I highly recommend seeing it! If you’re subscribed to the Criterion Channel, it’s available to stream on there now.