February was a big movie-watching month for me thanks to Oscar season. I watched some films featuring this year’s nominees leading up to the ceremony, which I have to mention, ended in such an amazing way with the historic Best Picture win for Parasite (along with its other three incredible wins)! Anyway, after the actual Academy Awards ended, the rest of the month was mostly focused on TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar, and I’ve watched dozens of films from its schedule (and I have a dozen or so more I want to catch in March before they leave the Watch TCM app). With that said, let’s take a look at all that I watched over the past few weeks.

New-to-Me: 55

Re-Watched: 4

New-to-Me Films by Decade:

• 1910s – 0
• 1920s – 0
• 1930s – 3
• 1940s – 18
• 1950s – 4
• 1960s – 10
• 1970s – 3
• 1980s – 1
• 1990s – 3
• 2000s – 2
• 2010s – 9
• 2020s – 2

List of New-to-Me Films:

1. Black Orpheus (1959)
2. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
3. Harriet (2019)
4. Richard Jewell (2019)
5. For Sama (2019)
6. American Factory (2019)
7. The Edge of Democracy (2019)
8. I Lost My Body (2019)
9. Klaus (2019)
10. Paterson (2016)
11. Lady Macbeth (2016)
12. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
13. My Cousin Vinny (1992)
14. Legends of the Fall (1994)
15. Inland Empire (2006)
16. The Host (2006)
17. The Entertainer (1960)
18. None Shall Escape (1944)
19. Army of Shadows (1969)
20. When You Read This Letter (1953)
21. A Kind of Loving (1962)
22. To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You (2020)
23. Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973)
24. Interiors (1978)
25. True Grit (1969)
26. Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
27. Road to Morocco (1942)
28. The Facts of Life (1960)
29. The Caretakers (1963)
30. Back Street (1941)
31. The Valley of Decision (1945)
32. Pride and Prejudice (1940)
33. Air Force (1943)
34. To Sir, with Love (1967)
35. The Portrait of a Lady (1996)
36. Madame Bovary (1949)
37. The Green Goddess (1930)
38. The Green Years (1946)
39. The Southerner (1945)
40. Kind Lady (1951)
41. The Red Danube (1949)
42. Mister Buddwing (1966)
43. Always in My Heart (1942)
44. Raffles (1930)
45. When Ladies Meet (1933)
46. The Subject Was Roses (1968)
47. The Hasty Heart (1949)
48. Mighty Joe Young (1949)
49. Tulsa (1949)
50. Torch Song (1953)
51. The Perils of Pauline (1947)
52. George Washington Slept Here (1942)
53. Best Friends (1982)
54. The Seventh Cross (1944)
55. Brewster’s Millions (1945)

A Few Favorite Discoveries:

I finally got around to watching Black Orpheus in preparation for my post highlighting my favorite Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominees and ended up including it on my list because of how much I enjoyed it (I even just bought it during Criterion’s flash sale last week!). It’s a great take on the “Orpheus and Eurydice” legend, setting it in Rio de Janeiro during Carnaval, which makes for a very exciting atmosphere full of colorful cinematography and lively bossa nova music throughout. If you have the Criterion Channel, I highly recommend checking it out as a part of the service’s Foreign-Language Oscar Winners collection (which also includes some of the other picks in my aforementioned post).

This is actually the first film I’ve seen directed by Jim Jarmusch, and I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed it. Paterson is a tender, simple story following the week in the life of a poet bus driver named Paterson (Adam Driver) and his artistic wife Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). There’s not too much of an overarching plot as the film really just shows their daily routines living in Paterson, New Jersey, but I found myself quite engrossed throughout, and I just really loved seeing the contentment of this couple’s life. This is definitely among my favorites among Driver’s films, and I’m now more curious to see more of Jarmusch’s work.

When Ladies Meet is easily my favorite of the films I watched as a part of TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar, as it was yet another movie that took me by surprise with how much I loved it. It’s an excellent pre-code that’s brilliantly written and boasting a truly great cast, from the always reliable Robert Montgomery to the scene-stealing Alice Brady. But it’s the scenes shared between Ann Harding and Myrna Loy that really elevate this from being more than enjoyable, giving it a more feminist approach to the love triangle their characters in with Frank Morgan. I’d probably regard this as one of my favorites of the era.