Happy May! It’s sure to be a promising month ahead, with the virtual TCMFF coming up next weekend and soon after when I’ll probably be making my first trip back to a movie theater in more than a year! I just got my second vaccine dose on Thursday, so in just a couple of weeks, I’ll be fully vaccinated. And with that said, I’m keeping my wrap-up post short by highlighting just one film I watched for the first time this month, as I’m still recovering a bit from the shot (fortunately I seem to be on the upswing now; yesterday was a little rough). Anyway, April was this year’s big Oscar month, as I tuned into TCM’s annual 31 Days of Oscar program, and watched some other Academy Award winners and nominees on other streaming services. I also caught up with a few of this year’s nominated films, as well as several films made by or featuring this year’s contenders such as Chloé Zhao, Thomas Vinterberg, Carey Mulligan, Anthony Hopkins, Chadwick Boseman, and Steven Yeun (and even last year’s big winner, Bong Joon Ho!). So let’s take a look back at what I watched over the last 30 days.
New-to-Me: 65
Re-Watched: 11
New-to-Me Films by Decade:
- 1910s – 0
- 1920s – 0
- 1930s – 7
- 1940s – 8
- 1950s – 3
- 1960s – 4
- 1970s – 4
- 1980s – 6
- 1990s – 9
- 2000s – 4
- 2010s – 13
- 2020s – 7
List of New-to-Me Films:
- Private Benjamin (1980)
- Crimes of the Heart (1986)
- Burning (2018)
- Okja (2017)
- Snowpiercer (2013)
- Wildlife (2018)
- The Dig (2021)
- Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
- The Hunt (2012)
- The Celebration (1998)
- Reversal of Fortune (1990)
- Country (1984)
- Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
- Hell’s Angels (1930)
- Dishonored (1931)
- Block-Heads (1938)
- Honeysuckle Rose (1980)
- Dead Man Walking (1995)
- Affliction (1997)
- I vitelloni (1953)
- Ice Castles (1978)
- Ladies in Retirement (1941)
- 42 (2013)
- Get On Up (2014)
- Mashall (2017)
- Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015)
- A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)
- Juarez (1939)
- Nixon (1995)
- Amistad (1997)
- The Rider (2017)
- Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
- Lies My Father Told Me (1975)
- Wolfwalkers (2020)
- Over the Moon (2020)
- Operator 13 (1934)
- Our Very Own (1950)
- Paisan (1946)
- Passion Fish (1992)
- Old Boyfriends (1979)
- My Octopus Teacher (2020)
- Crip Camp (2020)
- Monster’s Ball (2001)
- Hotel Rwanda (2004)
- What’s Love Got to Do with It (1993)
- Tenet (2020)
- The Midnight Sky (2020)
- The Oscar (1966)
- Sands of Iwo Jima (1949)
- The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969)
- Star Witness (1931)
- Step Lively (1944)
- The Story of Three Loves (1953)
- Stand by for Action (1942)
- Stage Door Canteen (1943)
- Summer of ’42 (1971)
- Pieces of April (2003)
- I Am Sam (2001)
- Marvin’s Room (1996)
- Tunes of Glory (1960)
- Twice in a Lifetime (1985)
- 2010 (1984)
- Far from the Madding Crowd (1967)
- Under Western Stars (1938)
- Kismet (1944)
A Few Favorite Discoveries:
Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), directed by Thomas Vinterberg
As I mentioned earlier, among the many films I watched in April were some made by or featuring this year’s Oscar nominees, and it happened to be both in the case of the 2015 adaptation of Far from the Madding Crowd, which was directed by Best Director nominee Thomas Vinterberg and starred Best Actress nominee Carey Mulligan. I haven’t read the original novel by Thomas Hardy, so I don’t know how faithful this film is to the source material, but I thought this was beautifully made, from the production and costume design to the cinematography, all under Vinterberg’s sharp direction. After watching this film and a couple of his other films made in his native Denmark, I’m definitely curious to check out even more of his work. Mulligan is one of my favorite actresses of her generation, and here she gives one of my favorite of her performances, playing the independent heroine Bathsheba Everdene who juggles between three different suitors while taking charge of the farm she has inherited. She plays well off of her co-stars as she usually does, and I especially love her chemistry with Matthias Schoenaerts. I also have to add, I just watched the 1967 film adaptation yesterday as it aired during TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar, and I enjoyed it as well, so I should read the book at some point!
