Favorite First-Time Watches of January 2025
January was a great month for movie-watching. In the interest of keeping these from droning on I culled this down to five. I had eight listed. So let me just say, you should watch: The Apprentice by Ali Abbasi, A Dry White Season by Euzhan Palcy, and Better Man by Michael Gracey.
Deja Vu (2006) – Tony Scott
ATF Agent Doug Carlin (Denzel Washington) is called in to investigate a terrorist attack blowing up a ferry. He is taken to a top-secret government lab using time-shifting surveillance to find the culprit.
Honestly, as this film goes on the premise gets sweatier (strain belief). However, Tony Scott’s eye for action and Denzel being Denzel grounds the film and keeps you on the edge of your seat. Probably a lesser Tony Scott film but one worth your time.
Nickel Boys (2024) – RaMell Ross
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. It follows Elwood, a good kid mixed up in an incident that forces him to go to a reform school. The school is worse than anyone could even imagine.
It is based on the Dozier School, a reform school in Florida, which was revealed to be highly abusive. Years later several unmarked graves were discovered on the property unearthing the emotional and physical abuse the students suffered.
The film is told through the first-person perspective. By that I mean we see everything from Elwood’s perspective until he meets Turner, and then some of the film is told from Turner’s perspective.
Movies are machines that generate empathy, Roger Ebert. With the first-person perspective, RaMell is able to tell Elwood and Turner’s story with incredible empathy. It makes this film, in my opinion, necessary viewing. Our generations Do the Right Thing,
The Brutalist (2024) – Brady Corbet
Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody, in a career-best) is a Hungarian Jewish architect who leaves Hungary to come to America and work for his cousin in his furniture shop. He then meets rich man Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce also career best) who commissions him to build a community center in honor of his mother.
There is so much film here that it is too much to discuss in a few sentences. Shot on Vistavision for 10 million dollars, Brady Corbet truly made something impressive. It's massive in scale and ambition. It’s the kind of film we don’t get anymore.
It’s one of the many reasons this film is so special. It even has a built-in intermission. I won’t get into theories, meanings, and spoilers here. Just know that if there are any movies you should watch at least once from 2024, it should be The Brutalist and Nickel Boys.
Sansho the Bailiff (1954) – Kenji Mizoguchi
During the Heian period of Feudal Japan, a governor loved by his people was banished by a feudal lord. His family traveled in search of him, but along the journey, they were tricked and sold into slavery. Never giving up hope, his two children vowed to reunite with their parents one day.
I watched this film on Jan. 20th, which was simultaneously the perfect and worst day to watch it. As we get further along in this presidency, this film becomes increasingly prescient. However, possibly the saddest thing is that it has always remained prescient, which is why it is on Sight and Sound’s list of the 100 greatest films ever made.
Oh, Canada (2024) – Paul Schrader
Based on the Russell Banks novel Foregone; a celebrated documentarian Leonard Fife, is doing a tell-all documentary about his life. Near his death, he has regrets and wants to tell the truth to his loved ones and his fans.
No film is a coincidence. Paul Schrader did not make this film by accident. I don’t know if this is his last film but it would be a worthy one to walk out on. He clearly has wrestled with the mythologies his fans put on him and wishes to demythologize them.
This one is for the real Schrader heads.
