May was much more low-key with my movie-watching compared to April, though there was still a lot that I watched. Anna May Wong was TCM’s Star of the Month, so I watched several of her films that I hadn’t seen before. A few of them were from the 1930s, which ended up being the decade I watched the most films from last month, as I also went through the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Paramount collection before those movies left the service. Anyway, this will be another brief wrap-up post, so I’ll just highlight one movie I saw recently that I really enjoyed before moving on to a new month of movie-watching.
New-to-Me: 35
Re-Watched: 10
New-to-Me Films by Decade:
- 1910s – 0
- 1920s – 3
- 1930s – 16
- 1940s – 2
- 1950s – 0
- 1960s – 2
- 1970s – 0
- 1980s – 1
- 1990s – 2
- 2000s – 3
- 2010s – 0
- 2020s – 6
List of New-to-Me Films:
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (2022)
- The Northman (2022)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
- Resurrection (1980)
- The Toll of the Sea (1922)
- The Virtuous Sin (1930)
- Ladies’ Man (1931)
- The Cheat (1931)
- The Devil Is Driving (1932)
- Million Dollar Legs (1932)
- Murders in the Zoo (1933)
- International House (1933)
- This Day and Age (1933)
- Torch Singer (1933)
- Kiss and Make-Up (1934)
- Stage Struck (1936)
- Hollywood Hotel (1937)
- Little Man, What Now? (1934)
- Men (2022)
- Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
- Mr. Wu (1927)
- Old San Francisco (1927)
- Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
- A Study in Scarlet (1933)
- When Were You Born (1938)
- Two on a Guillotine (1965)
- The Argyle Secrets (1948)
- Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
- Lady from Chungking (1942)
- Portrait in Black (1960)
- Irma Vep (1996)
- The Thing Called Love (1993)
- The Terminal (2004)
- Billy Elliot (2000)
- You Can Count on Me (2000)
A Few Favorite Discoveries:
Billy Elliot (2000), directed by Stephen Daldry
Billy Elliot has long been on my radar, and I finally got around to watching it when I saw it was leaving HBO Max at the end of May. It’s a wonderful coming-of-age story of the titular character finding his true self and his family and the people around him recognizing his talents and accepting him. Young Jamie Bell does an excellent job in his portrayal and carries the movie through, along with great support from Julie Walters as his ballet teacher and Gary Lewis as his father.
