La Gradiva La Gradiva | La Semaine de la Critique of Festival de Cannes

idk anything about the films in the Critics' Week selection but this one sounds fun www.semainedelacritique.com/en/edition/2...

big day for Valeska Grisebach fans (me)

best firsts, Mar '26

Death By Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, 1968)
Moving (Shinji Somai, 1993)
Va Savoir+ (Jacques Rivette, 2001)
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)
Charley Varrick (Don Siegel, 1973)
The Outfit (John Flynn, 1973)

feel as if i've lived several weeks in this past week or so, but today i had some rare time to myself and spent it watching Corey Yuen's Yes, Madam! (1985) and Shinji Somai's Moving (1993) — feeling pretty good about how the day's played out tbh

went to see Prima Facie today, and I gotta say that a 100 minute Jodie Comer monologue is a hell of a thing to witness

best firsts, Feb '26

The Bridesmaid (Claude Chabrol, 2004)
No Life King (Jun Ichikawa, 1989)
The Funeral (Abel Ferrara, 1996)
Lady J (Emmanuel Mouret, 2018)

it's been a while since i last watched a Chabrol movie, and The Bridesmaid (2004) might be one of his best — i can see why Kiyoshi Kurosawa loves this so much

I've been meaning to watch more Sautet since seeing Cesar and Rosalie a few weeks ago, which I liked a lot — didn't even know this retro happened!

catching up on Berlin reviews, keen to see a lot of things but most intrigued by Eva Trobisch's Home Stories and André Novais Oliveira's If I Were Alive, new films from filmmakers I've read a lot about in the past couple of years without ever having seen anything that they've made

new Joyce Manor album is v v v v v v v good, i gotta say

Strange Days #28 January 2026 | Chipping Away

just sent this month's newsletter, on Pokemon Emerald and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (have a read + subscribe maybe?)

I find everything about Substack that isn't sending newsletters pretty ignorable tbh, and if it's full of AI then I unsub — though thankfully I've not encountered that very often (unless it's tricked me). Idk if there are good alternatives but if you find one pls let me know!

best firsts, Jan '26

Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, 2000)
A Tale of Winter (Eric Rohmer, 1992)
To The Starry Island (Park Kwang-su, 1993)
The Round-Up (Miklós Jancsó, 1966)
The Family Game (Yoshimitsu Morita, 1983)

currently consumed by an overwhelming desire to once again play through (and finally complete) Trauma Center: Under The Knife

Eternal Sunshine still holds up, thank god

Amadeus | Miloš Forman, 1984 A review of the 1984 Oscar winning film Amadeus, directed by Miloš Forman and starring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, based on Peter Shaffer's play.

watched Amadeus yesterday morning (first time in ~15 years, never a film I held with much reverence) in a cinema filled with old people talking loudly to each other and not turning off their phones — even so, a good time at the movies thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2026/01/amad...

absolutely wild that this exists

Yoshimitsu Morita's The Family Game (1983), a very funny movie about a family who speak but don't listen, wedged awkwardly around a table facing a camera but never each other

2025 (discoveries) A list of 25 films compiled on Letterboxd, including The Eel (1997), The Pelican (1974), Rosa la rose, fille publique (1986), Stella Dallas (1937) and Gilsodom (1986).

another good year of watching movies at home boxd.it/EBS8e

excellent! really looking forward to reading it

some A+ secondhand pickups this afternoon

finished my thirtieth novel of the year this morning, hitting the arbitrary target I set in January — best one, either Paul Auster's Leviathan (1992) or Kurt Vonnegut's Galápagos (1985). Ready to go again in 2026.

2025 in Cinema A personal roundup of my experience of the year 2025, from film to music to literature and more

it's nice to keep the old traditions alive, so I've written about my 2025 in cinema (and beyond) this Xmas Eve, including fav new films, best discoveries + some stuff about music + novels + other miscellany — have a wonderful festive season! 💫💫💫 thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/12/2025...

duly noted!

Avatar: Fire and Ash (great movie, imo) has got me wanting to revisit Aliens and The Abyss, feel like I've been severely underrating most if not all of the Big Jim Classics and these two have always fared quite poorly in my mind, for reasons I cannot even begin to remember

Saul Bass's Phase IV (1974) is such a great feel bad movie, and a surprisingly lowkey one considering it's about a plague of superintelligent ants in the Arizona desert — Bass should've directed more movies!

credit where it's due, the Dijon album is a very good soundtrack to making a basa biryani

Kill Bill | Quentin Tarantino, 2003 A personal history of a writer's experience with Quentin Tarantino's film Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman

spent a bit of time writing about my history with Kill Bill, and how extraordinary it was to see it for the first time in more than a decade last week thistheaterishaunted.blogspot.com/2025/12/kill...

so so fun to see Kill Bill in its entirety last night, and wild how much of it I remembered word-for-word, shot-for-shot — I guess that's what happens when you watch a movie 20+ times as a teenager (see also: Face/Off, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Goldeneye etc etc)

watched Jun Ichikawa's Kaisha monogatari: Memories of You (1988) this afternoon, a lovely film about lost time and the sad anonymity of a decades-long corporate career coming to an end — and how, sometimes, the joy of starting a jazz band with the boys is enough to make up for everything else.