Top New-to-Me Films of February 2023

An unofficial tradition of the Laserdisc Party community is to list our top new-to-us films that we viewed during a particular month. I tend to ramble on those posts and figured if I'm gonna ramble, I might as well do it on that dang new fangled blog I just started, right? Anyway, that's enough of a preamble - let's check out some cool movies!

5. Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)

Director: Carl Frankin

Wow. Wow wow wow. This is some amazing noir right smack dab in 1948 Los Angeles. It leans hard into the setting in a way that places the racism of the era into focus. In most noir, the protagonist is beget at all sides by dangers and it's even more palpable in this flick, following right in the footsteps of Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night and doing it so dang well. I had a blast with this film and am more than a little upset there isn't a whole damn franchise built around Easy Rawlins and Mouse taking down rich white folk trying to get richer. Fortunately the author, Walter Mosley, is still out here cranking out Easy Rawlins novels, so I can go hunt those down instead.

4. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)

Director: William Greaves

One of the films from my 10 Movies 10 Decades from this month, this one really grew on me. I actually didn't like it at first, feeling it was a little obvious in what it was trying to do. And that's when the meta discussion came in. You see, it's a film which is filming a film crew filming potential actors doing line reads. It captures everything. Everything. Including critiques by the crew while the "camera is off" commenting on how they don't know if audiences will believe the finished film is real or not. And that's when you as a viewer start questioning where does the script end and candid reality begin? Is the cop in on it? The lady on a horse? The homeless guy near the end? It's in that quantum realm where the film gets fun. And I loved playing in that realm.

3. Shaft (1971)

Director: Gordon Parks

Another film from the 10 Movies 10 Decades project and god DAMN how did it take me this long to watch this film? Walking the line between blacksploitation and hard boiled noir is John Shaft not ready to take anyone's shit. Not only was it a fun watch and a real time capsule of the era but it helped define that era. While the threat of racism violence isn't looming over as eminently over Shaft's shoulder as it does Easy Rawlins' or Virgil Tibbs', it's still there and still ready to pin everything on Shaft. This should be required viewing, y'all.

2. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006)

Director: Spike Lee

Yet another film from the 10 Movies 10 Decades project for February. This one hit hard. I volunteered to help clean up New Orleans in Spring Break 2006 and this film made that week come back to the forefront of my mind with a vengeance. It's a look at how brittle a "first-world country" is the further you get from those in power. The more disenfranchised the population is the more vulnerable they are. It also reminded me of Harlan County, USA as a documentary of the USA and how brittle our support systems truly are. Both come at our addiction to capitalism from different angles: no one gave a shit that the little Kentucky company town just like no one gave a shit when the great jewel of the South was submerged for a week. Much like Harlan County, USA this is something that should be required viewing.

1. Knock at the Cabin (2023)

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Really, John? Knock at the Cabin was the best film you watched in February? Well, it was my favorite film. I saw two films in the theater and this was one of them, knocking it above the other (arguably superior) films, but I also really enjoyed this flick, especially when you look back at the rest of the corpus of Shyalamalan's films. Specifically with Signs and Lady in the Water (two films I really didn't like), Shyamalan played with themes of fate, things happening for a reason, and having faith in something. That is on full display here and I just felt like he landed those themes well here without being as overt as he was with the other films. Just like Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One having that quantum realm of not knowing what's scripted or what's real, Knock at the Cabin plays in that realm in ways: is Leonard (Dave Bautista with his best performance yet) kind or a malicious threat? He lives in both so much that both are true. Is the world ending or is all this coincidence? Well... that's the real question that's up to the viewer and I love that.

I love it when all of my favorite films from a month are all from different decades. There is such great cinema out there to enjoy. If you're reading this, I encourage you to pick a new random film from a decade or director you've never checked out and just, enjoy it. Thanks for reading.