The most memorable films I saw this month were:

• The Casandra Cat (1963)
• Decision at Sundown (1959)
• Ninja Hunter (1984)
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951)
• Red Hot Riding Hood (1943)
• Heavy Metal (1981) – Rewatch, but in 4k

I only got to the theatre once and caught Poor Things (2023), which has received more praise than it deserves. The performances and costumes were great, but at some point, it was like a record on repeat in the middle, and I had a hard time differentiating between it and Erin Brown’s body of work as Misty Mundae. This isn’t to suggest I didn’t enjoy it; I did, but probably for the wrong reasons. At the mainstream level, it’s the type of filmmaking that breeds faux-progressiveness when, on closer inspection, it’s not progressive at all. Even without my blessing, I’m positive it will do just fine at the Oscars.

Casandra Cat was the first film of the new year that grabbed me—also known as When the Cat Comes, it was among the bizzaro curation that Criterion Channel led Jan. ’24 with devoted entirely to cats and cinema. An exemplary movie of the Czech New Wave, the film is filled with ruptures, dance, color, and magic. It’s not going to be for everyone, but I’m also that person who is telling you that Poor Things is overrated and will be protesting this year’s Oscars by watching Barbie on Blu-Ray instead; so, you know, take my words with a grain of salt.

Decision at Sundown (1959) came in the way of a gift from my brother, who gave me the Ranown collection of films for Christmas: a group of late 50s/early 60s collaborations between Budd Boetticher (director) and Randolph Scott (actor), as well as some other folks like Burt Kennedy (screenwriter). Generally, I’m only really into Westerns if they are set in outer space, but these films have been an epiphany. Working on modest budgets, they have some of the leanest, meanest filmmaking I’ve ever seen. Every film was utterly different, and as I worked through the set, each new movie competed to be my favorite. (There was only one stinker, the undercooked Comanche Station from 1960.) However, Decision at Sundown resonated to my core. This past year, I had a couple of experiences, which I won’t recount here, that gave me pause to reexamine my life and my outlook on it. It was the ending of Decision at Sundown, which brought this all into focus for me. I’ve heard people make arguments that cinema can be a form of life, and I’ve never really read Deleuze close enough to even weigh in on what those texts meant, but Decision at Sundown gave me a second life. I’m thankful for this.

My favorite so-bad-it’s-good film was Ninja Hunter (1984), a Taiwanese action film. It’s a pointless exercise to try and explain the plot, but I saw a film that creatively figured out how to represent a finger – like a single-digit, or max, two-digit – fighting style. The training sequences in this film, it is safe to say, there is nothing quite like them. I busted my pinky a month ago, and now I’ve got at least a couple of months ahead of me of recovery and attempting to get the finger right again. I love playing my PS5, Mordhau, the DS series, but I’ve had to pause due to my busted hand. The point is, Ninja Hunter with its deadly finger fighting, made me nostalgic for the days of working hands again. Trust me, though, even if your fingers work, this movie takes “finger bang-bang” to delirious new heights.

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), starring Ava Gardner and James Mason, was the movie that surprised me. Going into it, I thought I would get some standard romance, but I received something utterly different. A supernatural love/ghost story in golden technicolor, it felt like something Edgar Allen Poe would have penned if he’d written screenplays for Hollywood. Haunting and narratively complex, I almost didn’t watch it, but I noticed a friend scored it highly on Letterboxd, and I figured why not. I’m so glad I gave it a watch, and you should too.

My final two picks for January are animations. The first is Red Hot Riding Hood, by Tex Avery. I am confident I saw this somewhere as a young child – but I clearly should have paid more attention to it. It’s lewd, offensive, progressive, self-reflexive, and indeed a masterpiece. The other animation was Heavy Metal, which who knows how many times I’ve seen this, but picked up the 4k UHD of it. I wish the film were brighter, but the UHD still looked good, and I was happy to see that they had a stereo mix for the soundtrack. I am irritated at Disney’s new 4k release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), which only includes 5.1+ whatever-mixes. Please stop being idiots, Disney, and put out Snow White with the original mono mix.

Those are my thoughts for January, and here’s hoping I’m motivated to post again in February.