My movie-watching buddy is going out of town this weekend, and I anticipate being wholly absorbed by The Sims 2 Legacy Edition Friday night, so I think I’ve watched my last movie for this month. Interestingly, all of my movies this month were watched with either my main cinema buddy or the ladyfriend (2).

FEBRUARY

Nights of Cabiriai, 1957.  An Italian lady of the night is thrown into a river and her money stolen by her last john – or should I say, her last giovanni?  – and nothing good happens. 

Blow Out, 1981. John Travolta is a sound engineer who accidentally records evidence of a politically explosive murder.  Thriller with a downer ending, but if you’re into ‘70s & ‘80s audiotech it’s promising. 

The Baader Meinhof Complex. 2008. Obnoxious young activists pretend to be socialists and steal and blow up stuff. Most of them get shot. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The Illusionist, 2010. A beatiful but melancholy animated film, the screenplay of which was done by Jacques Tati (Mon Oncle), about a musician in the 1950s whose work is being supplanted by rock and roll and blockbuster movies. While performing in Scotland, he meets a young woman who has  a childlike wonder about his illusions and believes him to be a real magician she follows him as he pitches his tent in Edinburgh,  sleeping in the bed he rents while he makes do on the couch.  Her belief in him seems to give his career a little new life, but as time passes, they both ‘put away childish things”.  There is an amusing Mon Oncle cameo in the film. 

Saturday Night, 2024. A dramatization of the chaos leading to SNL’s first-ever episode. The cast is solid,  especially the guy playing Akyroyd who  was eerily good. 

Tammy and the Bachelor, 1957. A sheltered young woman who was raised by her granddad, Walter Brennan,    discovers the survivor of a plane wreck in the rver, and nurses him back to life.   She develops feelings for the man, Pete,, despite his being a bit older than her, and is crushed when he leaves. However, Walter Brennan is arrested for  bootlegging and tells her to go to Pete’s family house.  There she discovers him to be the scion of a wealthy southern family with a failing estate, which he is applying experimental farm techniques in hopes of reviving. 

Better Man, 2024.  A young boy with a talent for showmanship and a lust for fame achieves stardom by joining a boy band before setting out on his own, but his egoism and inner demons see him alienate his friends and get caught in a cycle of self-destructive drug abuse; his self-loathing and abusive behavior grow even as his fame does.  Said pop star is portrayed by an anthropomorphized chimpanzee because the real-life pop star whose story this is based on viewed himself as ‘less evolved’ than other people. 

Lunatic Farmer, 2025.  Part-biopic, part documentary about Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farms, which is organically and traditionally oriented. 

Silence of the Lambs, 1991.  An FBI trainee with a promising background is asked to profile a notorious serial killer and cannibal, only to realize she’s been sent in to convince said cannibal to help the FBI profile another serial killer currently at large.  Great character drama and thriller: I’m a Jodie Foster fan and enjoyed her West Virginia accent. It sounded like she’d worked on it. 

Pixote, 1980. This was described to me as “Oliver Twist, but set in Brazil”.   After a man is pushed into the street,  the police scoop up as many street kids as they can, including young Pixote:  from there we witness abuse after abuse, and Pixote become ever more drawn into violence. This is an odd film to describe: as drama it was extremely successful, but it was a horrific film to watch.