Favourite Watches of January

North By Northwest

This is how you use VistaVision. It has one of the silliest plots out there, and quite ridiculous when you break it apart. But who cares about the plot, and why break it? Don’t be a malicious child. This is Hitchcock’s more relaxed and free movie because of that, and every frame is perfectly expressive of itself, of everything beautiful and magnetizing and grand. The corn field scene is one example of how perfect this movie’s rhythm is, both in terms of each single cut and composition and Grant’s performance. This would make a great double bill with Notorious by contrasting the role Grant plays in either film. Also works great with Vertigo for the gorgeous colour, and this being Hitchcock’s lightest and that being his most perverse; neither would work if Grant and Stewart swapped movies.

Linda Linda Linda

Kind of like a Hong movie but with a real budget, or at least some scenes provided me the emotional intimacy of watching one of his films. No stakes, just high school kids jamming and dealing with crushes; experiences I mostly missed out on because I spent half of my high school years during the COVID lockdown. Yamashita has a real delicacy towards composing characters in spaces and the physical relation between each of them. The way Bae maps out the awkward cadence and mannerism of speaking a second language is wonderful.

My Mother’s Smile

One of the finest, funniest, and most depressing midlife crisis movies. During the month of Marco Bellochio’s retrospective, this was my favourite from a filmmaker I’m previously unfamiliar with; seeing this on 35mm was an astounding experience as well. The film is centred around a religious malaise inflicted by the protagonist’s mother being deemed eligible to become a saint, and everyone around him trying to achieve this status for their own gains. Like the rest of Bellocchio’s work, two factors are weighing against each other. Here, it is the irrational rationality against the rational irrational, where the untangible emotional connection of the main character traps him between the spiritual and the secular. Besides that, it features an incredibly goofy sword fight, Sergio Castellitto, what a presence.