A few 10s this month, including one first-time watch, A New Leaf. Elaine May’s 1971 directorial debut, it has the ideal casting of Walter Matthau as a middle-aged trust fund playboy who has spent all his money and must find a wealthy wife in order to continue his accustomed lifestyle. Enter May’s daffy heiress, a klutzy botanist who genuinely (and literally!) falls for Matthau’s scoundrel. I’d heard for years how great this acerbic neo-screwball comedy was; now streaming on Criterion Channel, it did not disappoint, from opening car gag to deliriously wet finale. It also coincided with my reading of Mark Harris’ great new Mike Nichols bio, which naturally delves into his professional relationship with May, who is also deserving of such an extensive overview.
With five of them falling in March, Maddin Mondays continued strong, split between four re-watches and three new-to-me shorts. Regarding the former, the two early-aughts features impress slightly less now, if only because they precede what would prove Maddin’s most fertile period (which My Dad is 100 Years Old definitely belongs to); The Forbidden Room, on the other hand, proves enriching to revisit, almost as if by design. As for those shorts, Only Dream Things is the prize and easily the closest the filmmaker has ever come to David Lynch-ian dreamscape fantasia.
Many terrific re-watches beyond Maddin this month, from the still-startling movie that killed Michael Powell’s career to Los Angeles Plays Itself, a three-hour-long film history lecture that hasn’t lost any of its power since I last viewed it sixteen years ago. More revelatory, however, was my first viewing of The Grand Budapest Hotel since its theatrical run in 2014. As with The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson’s jewel box perfection resonated more at home for me than it did on a very large screen; it’s now ahead of The Life Aquatic and Fantastic Mr. Fox (but still not Moonrise Kingdom) in my ranking of the director’s features.
Elsewhere, with his classic run of eight films in the ‘40s now streaming on Criterion, my Preston Sturges watch has begun with The Great McGinty and Christmas In July; a month-long subscription to Disney+ for WandaVision allowed me to catch up on some Pixar features, including a rewatch of The Incredibles in preparation for the slightly inferior but still very good sequel; the absolutely deranged The Legend of the Stardust Brothers, which I may watch again in April before my MUBI subscription runs out; and The Movie Orgy, a pioneering found footage collage curated by a young Joe Dante, four-plus hours of it currently available to stream on Archive.org and essential for connoisseurs of trashy 50s/60s movies and TV.
Films viewed in March in chronological order, with director, year of release and my rating (out of 10); starred titles are re-watches:
Only Dream Things (Guy Maddin, 2012) 8
A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971) 10
The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959) 7
Sylvie’s Love (Eugene Ashe, 2020) 6
Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen, 2003)* 10
The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges, 1940) 7
Black Bear (Lawrence Michael Levine, 2020)* 8
Soul (Pete Docter, Kemp Powers, 2020) 8
Keep An Eye Out (Quentin Dupieux, 2018) 7
Glorious (Maddin, 2008) 6
Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (Maddin, 2002)* 7
The Rabbi Goes West (Gerald Peary, Amy Geller, 2019)**
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)* 9
Gutterbug (Andrew Gibson, 2019) 5
Stray (Elizabeth Lo, 2020) 6
The Last of Sheila (Herbert Ross, 1973) 8
Farewell Amor (Ekwa Msangi, 2020) 7
Coming 2 America (Craig Brewer, 2021) 5
Inside Out (Docter, 2015) 8
The Movie Orgy (Joe Dante, 1968) 9
The Piano (Jane Campion, 1993)* 9
Sinclair (Maddin, 2010) 6
The Incredibles (Brad Bird, 2004)* 9
Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax, 1984) 7
The Quiet Man (John Ford, 1952) 7
Christmas In July (Sturges, 1940)* 8
Incredibles 2 (Bird, 2018) 8
The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson, 2014)* 10
My Dad Is 100 Years Old (Maddin, 2005)* 8
Cowards Bend The Knee (Maddin, 2003)* 7
The Legend of The Stardust Brothers (Makoto Tezuka, 1985) 8
Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)* 10
The Inheritance (Ephraim Asili 2020) 6
Slim Aarons: The High Life (Fritz Mitchell, 2016) 4
As Tears Go By (Wong Kar-wai, 1988) 7
The Forbidden Room (Maddin, Evan Johnson, 2015)* 9
Bugsy Malone (Alan Parker, 1976) 7
The Color Wheel (Alex Ross Perry, 2011) 5
(**not rated, because I know the filmmakers personally!)
Haunted Jukebox 