According to my Letterboxd, I saw a grand total of 12 movies in February. Now considering the position I find myself in of having a blog where I can now gush about movies all I like, I decided to start the film section of the page with some of my personal favorites I've experienced recently. This won't be a list of just films that came out in February, instead encompassing my favorite movies I saw in general in that month.

Now without further ado,

To start off with, I was not well-versed with Gregg Araki's work prior to this point. I have seen maybe three episodes of Dahmer total and came away with a certain level of distaste from that experience for everyone involved. To my surprise, on a random Thursday evening, I decided to watch this movie from a random selection that Max had to offer and came away..with mostly positive thoughts.

White Bird in a Blizzard is well directed and mostly well shot with some great acting across the board. I had underestimated Shailene Woodley's acting chops going into the movie similar to Araki's direction, and was very impressed with how well she plays the character of Kat Connor. She's always believable in the role, and that's very much a compliment considering the genre mix of a film she finds herself in. 

The film is about a 17-year-old girl whose mother goes missing and what her life is like after that. Throughout the movie we see more and more the dysfunction and abuse present in the family, and how the seemingly idyllic suburban life so often aspired to, is quite dull and soul-destroying in the end. It's a plot that very much feels like something you've seen before, and I will say that it most definitely is. The twist at the end of the movie is kind of laughable because the second you read the synopsis; you already know what happened to the mom and who is responsible. Instead what kept me engaged with the film were the little moments of introspection on suburban life and the nuclear family. It is often critiqued by film, but I can't lie and say I wasn't engaged with the vision here.

Unlike Dahmer, I didn't find myself very repulsed by the film and thought it treated its subject matter....ok maybe not maturely, I think its depiction of sex and intimacy is a bit...we'll say undercooked to be generous, alright. I am more interested to check out more of Araki's work as a quick glance at his Letterboxd page says he's involved with something called the New Queer Cinema movement, which implies some level of influence he's had and gets me interested to see what his best work entails as this film is competently made if not a little dry.

For a mostly boiler plate film, I had fun with it and White Bird in a Blizzard kept me warm on a cold Thursday evening despite its harrowing subject matter.

Ok, now we're getting into the good stuff.

This movie is a trip. It's a "one-take" french horror film that plays throughout a single night. The film shifts perspective from multiple characters throughout and maintains a chaotic atmosphere that never lets up which makes watching the movie in anything other than a single sitting impossible, as you are always desperate to find out what happens next.

The essential conceit of the movie and where the horror is derived from is its take on zombies. While I would say the film is a zombie movie, I also wouldn't say that gets the whole picture across. These zombies are very much intelligent kind of like the infected you see in Garth Ennis's "The Crossed" or the recent Taiwanese horror hit "The Sadness", meaning that them eating you is the least of your concerns. The infected in MadS, want to make your last moments on earth as miserable as possible and the disease is spread through everything from bites to getting a bit of blood or spit in your mouth, seeing as how the main characters of this movie are decision impaired teenagers going through regular teenage things.

The one take in this movie is probably my favorite use of the technique I've seen. While it's been used to great effect in movies like "1917" or the similar long take technique used in "Oldboy", I think the one take is maybe best geared for horror. It adds to the intensity when you're following a central character trying their best to get out of a bad situation, your view of the situation is only as good as the character on screen. The camera limits your perspective to being contained by what it sees, making it so you don't cut away from the brutality of what's on-screen even when you don't want to experience it.

MadS is excellent and one of my favorite films I've seen recently, I'm really holding back on some specifics as well because I want you to experience this film for yourself and the surprises and shocks throughout the movie are a big part of what makes this film so excellent.

Of course, one cannot mention Sanjuro without mentioning the final duel that became a film legend through its fortuitous blood splatter. If you are unaware, the explosion of blood that comes from Sanjuro's final hit against his rival, Hanbei, in this film was an error. The blood splatter was supposed to be smaller and last longer, but a mistake in the props department led to the blood all coming out at once in a big explosion. They didn't have the budget to remake the prop and reshoot the scene, so they had to do with what they had, little did they know this would cement Sanjuro's (and Kurosawa's by extension) influence on film to this day. This scene alone led to the reputation of the bloody samurai film and influenced Kurosawa's later works and how he would approach their action.

Sanjuro is excellent and definitely a film I'm going to revisit frequently in the years to come. I would wholeheartedly recommend this film, and I can give it an even easier recommendation because you find the whole movie for free to watch on YouTube right now. In fact, I also watched Kurosawa's Rashomon this month through YouTube as well, which may or may not make its way onto my favorites of March page.

So it's very hard to talk about this movie without spoilers, so I'm not really even going to attempt to. This is definitely one movie that I really strongly believe you should go into knowing absolutely nothing about beforehand. Just know this is fantastic and a wild ride and even my parents liked it and they don't like any movies I like so that should tell you something.

If you want a brief plot synopsis, basically: Iris and her boyfriend go to a cabin in the woods to have a small getaway with some of his friends before some things happen, truths get revealed, there's a bit of murder in there, and a dash of some feminist talking points. Watch the movie it's great.

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Have you watched it yet? Good, welcome back

So yeah let's talk about this. Going into Companion I was a bit wary because it was a film directed by a man touching upon issues faced by women. I am not saying a man can't or shouldn't direct a movie with a female lead, but what I am saying is that I'm a bit wary of movies that are specifically about issues faced by women that are made by men. A good example of this would be Alex Garland's 2022 film "Men" which I loathed as I felt that was a movie made by someone who looked at himself as "one of the good ones" and was trying desperately to express that in film. Another example of this type of film is Edgar Wright's "Last Night in Soho", though that was a little more interesting in its own right and felt less braggadocious than Garland's attempt at addressing the same topic. Back to Companion though, I was very happy to discover that the film didn't feel as indulgent as those efforts. Instead coming across as more natural with its approach to its discourse. Never feeling the need to entirely stop the movie to tell you its message or feel like posturing. 

Companion is mainly interested in discussing the way men view women and specifically the types of men Jack Quaid's Josh represents. The self-entitled tech bro who pretends to be more special than he is. The sort of faux male feminist that is a dime a dozen here in California. We get to see the film's position on this issue through that of Sophie Thatcher's Iris, who is Josh's semi-girlfriend. Iris's position as a "sexbot" marks her as disposable to Josh, something to have sex with and use for emotional validation when needed but something that is ultimately easy to get rid of and abandon. Is the metaphor on the nose? Yes. Accurate to a certain type of man? Absolutely. I think in a way this film utilizes the ethos of the magical realism technique to its fullest despite its place in the sci-fi horror genre. It is an exaggeration by nature, taking out our inner feelings and emotions and placing them visually on screen through hyper-realized concepts and playing them out in an obvious and unignorable context. 

Companion has more than just social commentary as it's a compelling horror-comedy in its own right and I think it's probably more enjoyable to the average filmgoer than some of the other choices I have on this list, for that reason it's probably the film I'd recommend you see the most.

The Vourdalak is a French horror film about a vampire that prefers to drink the blood of family members and the proper French gentleman, Marquis Jacques Antoine Saturnin d Urfe, who places it upon himself to save them.

I saw this movie after getting a free Shudder trial for a week to see MadS. After seeing the puppet they used to bring the main antagonist Gorcha to life, I knew I had to see this movie. The movie is beautifully shot and edited in this gorgeous technicolor-esque aesthetic that adds so much texture to the film, the colors pop in almost every scene as the black values of the film are almost pitch dark. The puppet work for Gorcha is also fantastic and makes the vampire feel all the more sinister in a way, he feels so out of place in the best possible way bringing out-of-this-world energy with him. The director of the film, Adrien Beau, also voices Gorcha and brings the character to life vividly.

Like Sanjuro earlier on this list, I found myself very surprised by how comedic the film could be at times. However, I think the comedy in this film comes from a more self-aware place than Sanjuro. Sanjuro was deliberately attempting to make the audience laugh with some of its jokes while the Vourdalak is more acknowledging how strange its premise and characters are. 

The Vourdalak is shocking and gross at times as well which makes the film all the more memorable, there were moments where I legitimately cringed at how uncomfortable the scenes were making me. Its visual atmosphere really brings it all together when something horrific does happen, really making it feel all the more disturbing and gut-wrenching. 

Emotion is really the name of the game here as the Vourdalak is very gothic horror. The emotions of all the characters are heightened to 11 and the horror of the situation they find themselves in only serves to make them express themselves all the more. 

If you just saw Nosferatu and want a little more vampire action in your life, I really cannot recommend you give the Vourdalak more of a shot. It's really a great companion piece to that movie to show how different the age-old legend of the vampire can be when given to different people.