Films in 2017 Review

We’re now a week into 2018, but before pushing ahead into a new year in movies, I wanted to look back at what I watched in 2017. I’m not listing all the new-to-me movies I watched this year (you can look at that on my Letterboxd here, or look through my monthly entries), but I’ll…

Films in 2017: December

Happy New Year! 2017 was one for the books, especially in movie-watching (more on that later in the week when I recap all I saw). As for December, I saw a good number of movies and revisited several others, including a few new releases I had seen within the last couple of months. But for…

2017 Blind Spots: Hiroshima mon amour

While shooting a film on location in postwar Hiroshima, a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a fleeting but passionate affair. In the hours before she has to leave, the two recount their previous romances and experiences during wartime as they ponder the devastation following the atomic bomb dropped…

Films in 2017: November

Somehow I ended up watching a ton of movies in November, way more than I was expecting! Of course, it was Noirvember, so I watched lots of film noir and neo-noir. My favorite actor, James Stewart, was also TCM’s Star of the Month so I made an effort to watch as many of his movies…

2017 Blind Spots: Heat

Master criminal Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) is planning one last big heist before retiring, despite his latest operation with his group of thieves going wrong. Meanwhile, LAPD robbery-homicide detective Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) is closing in on the criminal crew, becoming more and more obsessed with taking down McCauley at the expense of his private…

Films in 2017: October

October ended up being an exciting movie-watching month, at least more than usual. Not only did I watch the equivalent of a new-to-me movie a day, plus a dozen re-watches, I also took a quick trip to New York City for the last weekend of the New York Film Festival! It was a lot of…

2017 Blind Spots: Secrets & Lies

After her adoptive mother dies, Hortense Cumberbatch (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), a successful black middle-class optometrist in London, seeks out her birth mother. Her research leads her to a working-class white woman named Cynthia Purley (Brenda Blethyn), who has a dysfunctional family with a few secrets of their own affecting their everyday life.

Films in 2017: September

This past month saw a good variety of films, as far as watching at least one film across almost every decade beginning in the 1920s (didn’t get a chance to watch anything from the 2000s). I also ended up bookending September with a few films starring Jane Fonda; throughout the beginning of the month I…

Films in 2017: August

August was mostly filled with watching movies from TCM’s annual Summer Under the Stars festival, though towards the end of the month I wasn’t able to keep up with every star honored (and there are still a few movies I still want to catch on the Watch TCM app). There were, of course, a few…