What I've been watching: February 2025

My latest media diary featuring the good, the bad, the television, and one (1) video game

I always look forward to February in Seattle.

Not because of the weather, which tends to be the stereotypical rainy and gray picture outsiders¹ have of the city, but because of the movies.

Every year in February, the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) partners with Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation and Turner Classic Movies to put on what I believe is the single best cinematic event of the year: Noir City.

It is a weeklong series of detectives, femme fatales, double crosses, and heists; most of the films are from the heyday of Hollywood noir, though sometimes the series focuses on foreign language stories.

At any rate, I was only able to make it to 3 of the screenings this year, but I’ll begin my monthly media recap with those.

Noir City 2025

• Out of the Past- Available to buy/rent digitally. I watched this Jacques Tourneur film last fall, but I wasn’t about to miss the chance to see one of the greatest of all noirs in the theater. Robert Mitchum is reliably excellent as a gruff private eye drawn back into a life he tried to leave, but it’s Jane Greer who steals the show as a dangerous, duplicitous femme fatale.² Kirk Douglas also shows up!

• The Narrow Margin- Streaming on Max. An amazing 70-minute exercise of suspense. Set almost entirely on a train, it follows a detective (Charles McGraw) trying to protect a mobster’s wife (Marie Windsor) on a cross-country trip so she can testify in court. Director Richard Fleischer makes the most of the cramped quarters, putting danger around every corner.

• Hell’s Half Acre- Available to buy/rent digitally. The one miss I saw at this year’s festival. An irredeemably boring, tonally jarring Tiki Noir about a woman (Evelyn Keyes) who goes searching for her MIA husband in Hawaii. At least Elsa Lanchester shows up as a nosy taxi driver!

Best first watches

• No Other Land- Now in select theaters. The best new release I watched this month. A harrowing, gut-wrenchingly personal documentary about a Palestinian man, Basel Adra, and his years-long fight against displacement by the Israeli government in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank. If the Oscars are good for anything this year, it will be helping this film find U.S. distribution, and by extension a wider audience. I won’t hold my breath, though!

• The Servant- Streaming on Prime Video. This shape-shifting chamber drama from Joseph Losey is the best new-to-me thing I watched this month. The Servant is rife with psychosexual power plays involving an aristocrat (James Fox), his new butler (Dirk Bogarde), and the butler’s sister (Sarah Miles). As their relationships morph, so too does the immaculate Georgian townhome where they all reside.

• The Umbrellas of Cherbourg- Streaming on The Criterion Channel, Max, and Kanopy. When I came home from seeing Jacques Demy’s bittersweet musical in the theater, I immediately Googled stills so I could look at the wallpaper and costumes again. Tells you all you need to know!

• sex, lies, and videotape- Available to buy/rent digitally. I watched this at the tail-end of January and forgot to include it on last month’s recap… oops! Steven Soderbergh’s debut feature is a fully-formed, provocative dissection of desire. The interview sequences alone are breathtaking in their formal simplicity and psychological intensity.

• Farewell My Concubine- Streaming on The Criterion Channel. A grand historical epic about social upheaval, queer desire, and opera! Chen Kaige’s film follows two singers (Leslie Cheung and Zhang Fengyi) as they rise to fame against the tumultuous tide of history in 20th century China. Overflowing with sumptuous images and volatile emotional reckonings, I found Farewell My Concubine totally exhausting. (Complimentary)

• Giant- Available to buy/rent digitally. Another historical epic, this one a sweeping tale of oil and betrayal about a wealthy Texas rancher (Rock Hudson), his more progressive East Coast wife (Elizabeth Taylor), and a ranch hand (James Dean). Directed by George Stevens, this film starts in the 1920s and follows these increasingly miserable people across decades. The unrelenting passage of time moved me, as it usually does.

Please bffr

Eh

• A Complete Unknown- Now in theaters. Propulsive, inoffensive, handsomely mounted³; the best a musician biopic directed by James Mangold can be! Timothee was adequate, Monica Barbaro was quite good, and Edward Norton gave one of the corniest performances I’ve seen in some time. Every time he and his forehead showed up I had such a laugh.

Yikes

• You’re Cordially Invited- Streaming on Prime Video. Looking for a romantic comedy that isn’t remotely romantic or funny? I’ve got just the thing!⁴

• SNL50: The Anniversary Special - Streaming on Peacock. A couple of genuinely funny (Meryl Streep) and poignant (Adam Sandler) moments amid a sea of eyerolls, so business as usual for Saturday Night Live. Also had the gall to do an “In Memoriam” for characters that have aged poorly, and then followed it up with a new sketch that was 5 minutes of non-stop homophobia and prison sexual assault jokes.

Best rewatches

• Jeanne Dielman and Uncle Boonmee- I saw these two masterworks of slow cinema theatrically for the first time.⁵

• Written on the Wind- Available on Blu-ray and DVD. To say Douglas Sirk luxuriates in every grand plot maneuver and big emotional outburst is to undersell both the movie and his method. His Technicolor films, particularly this one and All That Heaven Allows, are some of the boldest, most mesmerizing films I’ve ever seen.⁶

• Gone Girl- Available to buy/rent digitally. I rewatch this every Valentine’s Day.

• Goodfellas- Available to buy/rent digitally. One Sunday this month I was struck with the urgent need to make a slow-simmering meat sauce and use it to make a baked pasta dish. Naturally, I rewatched this Martin Scorsese classic with dinner.

• No Country for Old Men- Streaming on Paramount+. Watched the new Criterion Collection 4K release of this, which is stunning! I think Tommy Lee Jones is best in class, but this is also a movie where every performance, no matter how small, is perfectly cast.

• Star Wars: Episode III- Revenge of the Sith- Streaming on Disney+. The finale of this film is the synthesis of everything George Lucas sought to do in The Prequels. It’s as if he has cracked open the heart of his universe and let it bleed out with an apocalyptic blend of dance combat, CGI fire and brimstone, and industrial production design.⁷

• The Birdcage- Streaming on Max. RIP Gene Hackman. You were convincing as a Republican senator, and even more convincing as a drag queen.

• Apocalypto- Streaming on Prime Video, Hulu, Peacock, Kanopy, and Tubi. As Michael Chernus says in Mistress America, the Blu-ray of this is indeed stunning!

• Beauty and the Beast (1991)- Streaming on Disney+. A tale as old as time!

Normal lawyers posing normally!

Television

• Boston Legal- Streaming on Hulu. For reasons unknown, my friend (and Normal Newsletter devotee) Jake Bart both started rewatching this relic of sleek 2000s legal procedural television. There is a strange pleasure in viewing something that is so of its time it feels forbidden. This show was not meant to be seen in 2025, but I am bearing witness.

• The White Lotus- Streaming on Max. Many of my friends seem to have a tepid response to this new season, but I think it’s on the same level as the others. That is to say, it is a well-polished story of mostly mediocre or downright awful rich people and the hotel employees who must deal with them. And there is a murder, which is somehow the least interesting thing going on. Anyway, Walton Goggins! Parker Posey! Monkeys!

• The Traitors- Streaming on Peacock. The showdown between Danielle and Carolyn in the ninth episode of this season is currently the only thing on my ‘Best Films of 2025’ list.

Video Games

• Avowed- I don’t play a ton of new video games, but when I do, I tend to play them obsessively. So it goes with Avowed, a new fantasy RPG that has you navigating a politically fraught realm while trying to stop a Lisa-Frank-tinged killer mushroom plague. The most interesting aspect of this narrative, to me, is how it sets you up as a colonizer who must decide whether to tow your empire’s line or forge your own path. You are not well liked at the start, and must go from there. The choices you must make carry real emotional weight; the combat may be basic and straightforward, but I feel like future playthroughs will be just as narratively rich.

Anything you’re looking forward to in March? Personally, I can’t wait for the new Bong Joon-ho film and a local theatrical screening of Battle Royale. I’m also looking forward to Conan O’Brien’s monologue at the Oscars, if little else in the ceremony.⁸

1. I’ve lived here for over 6 years now, I can call myself a local if I want to.

2. Likely things for a femme fatale to be.

3. 😏

4. My review of You’re Cordially Invited

5. My post about Jeanne Dielman, Uncle Boonmee, and slow cinema

6. A longer word on Written on the Wind and Dorothy Malone’s all-timer performance

7. I wrote about Revenge of the Sith here

8. Mentioning this was mostly a way for me to plug my Oscar predictions