February 2023 Favorite Watches & Supercut Recap

That month I watched a few amazing experimental films and also had my eyes leak during a documentary.

[posted to IG on February 28, 2023]

February Recap:

No 10/10s this go around, but the good streak continues with some exceptional experimental films in Skinamarink (2022) and Limite (1931), both of which blew my socks off in their approach to form. I also got to add another fantastic silent psychological drama from my Swedish grandpappy, Victor Sjöström, to my watched list with The Wind (1928); I rewatched Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou (1929) for the umpteenth time and finally comprehended the full scope of its influence on surrealism; and I got to watch capitalist elites literally get shit on in the Palm d’Or-winning and Oscar-nominated Triangle of Sadness (2022), a movie that Buñuel is probably smiling down on from whatever afterlife he’s in. And oh yeah, I cried like a fucking baby watching the incredibly moving and perspective-shifting documentary Bad Axe (2022).

Supercut song credit belongs to Lane 8’s “All I Want (feat. Arctic Lake).”

Top Ten Favorite Watches of the Month:

Bleak, barren, bombed out: G.W. Pabst's influential anti-war film depicts the psychological toll of war as well as the physical.

Essentially an Australian giallo flick, Next of Kin bleeds style with its fluid, roving camerawork, woozy atmosphere, and rad synth score.

Anchored by top-notch performances from Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, director Howard Hawks sneers at everything from the media to policing to politics in this cut-throat rom-com with surprisingly sharp edges.

Early cinema extraordinaire Victor Sjöström masterfully shapes the windswept Western setting of this dusty silent into a chilling psychological drama that borders on eco-horror.

You’d be hard-pressed to find much like Louise Brooks’s Lulu back in the day. Her performance crackles with electricity and jumpstarted female sexual agency on-screen.

16 minutes of nonsensical stream-of-conscious free association visual anarchy that popularized the surrealist movement in film and changed the medium forever.

A darkly humorous absurdist satire with captivating characters and brilliantly weird dry comedy - until it goes full fucko mode in one of the most memorable scenes of the decade - highlighting how out of touch the uber-wealthy are with reality.

Limite displays nothing short of a visionary artistry from Brazilian filmmaker Mário Peixoto, who seemed to have liberated his camera from all constraints, treating it like a living breathing organism that was just as much a part of the story as the characters.

Skinamarink is on another level entirely. Peep the link for an in-depth review of its brilliance.

A remarkable documentary. Beautiful and profound and puts a whole lot of shit in perspective, and is one of only like a dozen movies that have ever made the tears come out of my eyeholes.