The 75 Films I watched in June

June Film Journal

Home stretch my dudes. It is July and I’m here to talk about the 75 films I got in during the month of June. Sure that’s not 77 so I guess I’m slipping, but May had one more day so we’ll call it even. My top 100 is officially under 50 films so holy shit, that might even be the next blog post, although there are another 60 write-ups I need to get done.

Despite my intentions of getting to the movie theater for Spiderverse 2 and Asteroid City, I saw neither. Still time for both of them, but tunnel vision is on. Which naturally means the designation of “worst film of the month” is going to fall on a pretty solid hardcore flick. Nothing against it, and boy do I love Hyapatia Lee, but if you’re not a 5-star picture then you are in the running. Cue Ricky Bobby, “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”

Speaking of Ricky Bobby, Nascar is in Chicago and I have nearly the same disdain for Lightfoot as I did for Daley when he sold out our parking meters right before leaving office. Well yesterday’s traffic wound up not being too bad, but sucks for everyone on the south side as always.

So one thing that stuck out to me this year is that 4th of July weekend suddenly became Black Friday-lite. At first it seemed a nice gesture of Severin to move their summer sale back a couple weeks to allow some recovery from Vinegar Syndrome. Well then Vinegar Syndrome decided this would be a good time to do a week long sale for their “Mini-subscriber week”. Oh and even if Barnes and Noble stores are dropping like flies, the Criterion sale is still very much on. To a lesser extent Grindhouse Releasing and Synapse also have sales going on, and I apologize for the several others I’m probably forgetting.

What does this mean? Well it means that by the end of this month there will be a lot of new (to me) movies to watch. So assuming this journal keeps a rolling, the selections are going to be decidedly more low-brow. Perhaps I’ll try and formulate all this cult-cinema into something more productive, but we shall see.

Now, about what I watched in June, let’s get to that. The month started with a glorious day off so I made some progress on that front. Putting the finishing touches on John Cassavetes, and wrapping up the Rocky franchise. You may be wondering why I stopped at 4, but by this point everyone should know better. For the record I haven’t seen Creed 3, and I don’t know if I will. The franchise has been solid but when you take Rocky out of a Rocky movie, well you better have a good reason. With all due respect to the movie it is no Raging Bull. Rocky 4 on the other hand, I’m yet to watch the re-cut of it, but I can’t imagine changing one montage of it. It will probably forever remain my favorite of the series and one of my favorite movies period.

I also wrapped up plenty of French cinema, from Jean Renoir, Max Ophuls, Robert Bresson, Marcel Carne and probably a few others. At this point, nearly every film I watch is wrapping up another director/country/star/genre. Of course as I close the book on more subsets of cinema the overall list starts to round into its final form. My current list of nearly 50 “maybe” movies on the list is probably going to need to be whittled down to about 10 when I’m done watching everything. So many movies and only 100 spots for them.

As always with this list, some absolute no-doubters from the past are now questionable. On the flipside of that, even some movies I’ve seen a half-dozen times or more are hitting me like a ton of bricks. I won’t reveal the order now, but my top 3 Scorsese films have done some shuffling, and after I work out the logistics there might be a few changes in my top ten. Oh yeah, I also finally watched Pearl, it was fine, probably should have gotten to it sooner.

So if you read all this, I apologize for largely re-iterating what the last few entries have said, let’s see the films themselves:

06/01
I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)-*****
Marriage Story (2019)-*****
Love Streams (1984)-****½
Heaven Can Wait (1943)-*****

06/02
Rocky III (1982)-*****
Rocky IV (1985)-*****

06/03
The River (1951)-****½
Lola Montes (1955)-*****
Vagabond (1985)-****½

06/04
Mouchette (1967)-*****
A Day in the Country (1946)-****½
Predator (1987)-*****

06/05
Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)-*****
Fight Club (1999)-*****
Rebecca (1940)-*****

06/06
Peeping Tom (1960)-*****
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994)-*****

06/07
The Passenger (1975)-*****
Senso (1954)-****½

06/08
Saving Private Ryan (1998)-*****
Seven Samurai (1954)-*****
The Dark Knight (2008)-*****

06/09
The Thing (1982)-*****
Rebel Without a Cause (1955)-*****
Pearl (2022)-****

06/10
A Clockwork Orange (1971)-*****
Shoeshine (1946)-****

06/11
Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)-*****
Out of the Past (1947)-*****

06/12
The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1964)-*****
The Traveling Players (1975)-*****

06/13
Eternity and a Day (1998)-*****
Raging Bull (1980)-*****

06/14
Children of Paradise (1945)-*****
Umberto D (1952)-****½

06/15
Pandora’s Box (1928)-*****
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966)-*****
Kings of the Road (1976)-*****
Moonrise Kingdom (2012)-****½

06/16
Lost Highway (1997)-*****
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)-*****

06/17
Pickpocket (1959)-*****
Taxi Driver (1976)-*****
Touch of Evil (1958)-*****

06/18
On the Waterfront (1954)-*****
Pulp Fiction (1994)-*****

06/19
Body Girls (1983)-***
Do the Right Thing (1989)-*****
The Pianist (2002)-*****

06/20
The Wrong Move (1975)-****½
Parasite (2019)-*****

06/21
Unforgiven (1992)-*****
A City of Sadness (1989)-****½

06/22
Platoon (1986)-*****
The Shining (1980)-*****

06/23
The Phantom Thread (2017)-****½
All That Jazz (1979)-*****
Short Cuts (1993)-*****

06/24
Blow-Up (1966)-*****
The Lady Eve (1941)-*****

06/25
Ordinary People (1980)-*****

06/26
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)-*****
Paris, Texas (1984)-*****
Ben-Hur (1959)-*****
Mulholland Drive (2001)-*****

06/27
Ace in the Hole (1951)-*****

06/28
LA Confidential (1997)-*****
Syndromes and a Century (2006)-*****
All That Heaven Allows (1955)-****½

06/29
Boyhood (2014)-*****
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)-*****

06/30
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)-*****
Once Upon a Time in America (1984)-*****
The Fire Within (1963)-*****
Hard Boiled (1992)-*****

Best Film of the Month - Mulholland Drive

Worst Film of the Month - Body Girls