Censor: February's Films

01 Mar, 2024

Short reviews of every movie I watched in February.

This year, I'm trying to watch more movies. To keep myself accountable, I'm writing short reviews for the ones I ended up watching at the end of each month. That's the short version – for a longer one, you can check out the January edition.

For this post, I added links to all movies and split up the collage so you don't have to scroll up and down all the time.

I also wrote my own collage generator, since the one I used previously reversed the order of the posters, putting the one I watched most recently at the beginning, which was mildly confusing. This also means that the collage now has a somewhat higher quality – and that the poster for Dune: Part Two is in Russian for some reason. Oh well, you can't have everything. Also, some movies still don't have a poster at all, but that's on TMDB, not me!

#!/usr/bin/env bash

USER="" # Your Trakt username
MONTH="" # 2024-02 in this case
TRAKT="" # A Trakt client ID
TMDB="" # A TMDB API key

START="$MONTH-01T00:00:00.000Z"
END="$(date -d "$START + 1 month" "+%Y-%m")-01T00:00:00.000Z"

DIRECTORY="$(mktemp -d)"
INDEX=1

echo "Retrieving Trakt history..."

curl "https://api.trakt.tv/users/$USER/history/movies?start_at=$START&end_at=$END&limit=99" -H "trakt-api-key: $TRAKT" -s |
        jq "reverse | .[].movie.ids.tmdb" |
        while IFS= read -r MOVIE; do
                FILE="$DIRECTORY/Poster $(printf "%02d" "$INDEX").jpg"

                echo "Getting image URL for $MOVIE..."
                URL="https://image.tmdb.org/t/p/original$(curl "https://api.themoviedb.org/3/movie/$MOVIE/images?api_key=$TMDB" -s | jq -r ".posters[0].file_path")"

                echo "Downloading image for $MOVIE..."
                curl "$URL" -o "$FILE" -s

                echo "Resizing downloaded image..."
                convert "$FILE" -resize 500x750^ -gravity Center -extent 500x750 "$FILE" 2>/dev/null

                ((INDEX++))
        done

echo "Generating montage..."
montage "$DIRECTORY/Poster "* -background none -geometry 500x750+0+0 -tile x3 "$DIRECTORY/Montage.jpg" 2>/dev/null

echo "Splitting up montage..."
convert "$DIRECTORY/Montage.jpg" -crop x3@ -scene 1 "$DIRECTORY/Row %d.jpg"

for FILE in "$DIRECTORY/Row "*; do
        [[ $FILE =~ Row\ (.*)\.jpg ]]

        echo "Uploading row ${BASH_REMATCH[1]} to Imgur..."
        echo "Uploaded to $(curl https://api.imgur.com/3/upload -F "image=@$FILE" -s | jq -r .data.link)."
done

echo "Deleting temporary files..."
rm -r "$DIRECTORY"

This month features the most exhausting cinema experience of my life, an animated film that made me feel like a kid again, and everything in between. Let's get started...

• John Wick: The first one. My colleagues had been talking about the latest chapter the day before, so I finally decided to check it out. And honestly? It's okay. No more, no less. I'm still going to check out the other parts at some point, but I'm not really dying to see them as soon as possible, you know?

• Baraka: Just as impressive as its sequel in spirit, Samsara. Considering how much technology had evolved in the meantime, I was surprised to learn these films were made almost two decades apart from each other, because, wow, they both look absolutely stunning.

• Willi und die Wunder dieser Welt: This is a weird one. I watched this when I was a kid, then randomly decided to give it a rewatch a few months ago, and now I was visiting my family and my sister wanted to rewatch it as well – so I sat down and saw it for the third time, which I wouldn't have done if wouldn't still hold up even as an adult. I can't get over how atmospheric that one scene in the Japanese alleyway was.

• The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: I already watched this last month and talked about it in my previous post. Nothing to add here!

• Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: Happened to be on the TV, so I missed the first couple minutes, but it was still very entertaining! I liked it way more than John Wick, too, though I don't know if that's a fair comparison to make, since I've only ever seen one installment of either franchise.

• Glassy Ocean: Recommended by a friend of mine. I feel like I didn't get quite as sucked in by its world as it wanted me to, but it was still an entertaining watch, and you can't deny that there was a lot of creativity involved.

• La citadelle engloutie: I was finally able to get hold of this, though only without subtitles. I don't speak French, but there wasn't a ton of dialogue, so I probably (hopefully) didn't miss anything huge. If there's one thing to praise here, it's the atmosphere: Most of its runtime plays out in a pool, and by the end, I felt like I myself had just taken a long, cool bath. I felt fresh.

• The Assistant: I love movies like this: Slow but never dragging. Terrifying, but only under the surface. You may even be forgiven for thinking that there's nothing really happening here, but if you're like me (meaning you like both slow movies and horror equally), this one is for you.

• Work on the Grass: At this point, it was the 17th, and I had only watched eight movies thus far, so I decided to quickly knock out some short films that had been on my list for a while, starting with another flick where emotions and tensions are very much lingering beneath the surface (just like in The Assistant). Beautiful nature shots too (even though there's not much to see besides, well, grass).

• Elephant: 38 minutes, 18 killings, three lines of dialogue, no structure, rhyme, or reason – just the elephant in the room. I can't help but feel like there's a political message behind this, but if there is, it went completely over my head. (I'm not from the UK, sorry!)

• Iblard Time: Resembling a picture book more than an actual movie, I was able to completely lose myself in its world. There's only the slightest hint of a story here, but that's completely okay, because the focus is clearly on the environment – which, in turn, takes some getting used to, but is nothing short of breathtaking.

• Cycling the Frame: Tilda Swinton rides her bike around the Berlin Wall – and that's really all there is to it. Having only read the premise, I thought there would be some history, or story, or even more talking, but no. It's just the wall. Which would make it feel almost ominous at times, if it weren't for the occasionally unexpectedly funny monologue.

• The Inextinguishable Fire: The last in my series of short films I watched all in one day. Terrifying and eye-opening, but not by means of trying to instill fear, but by simply stating the facts. The final scene gave me goosebumps. "At home I want to put together the vacuum cleaner, but no matter what I do, it always turns into a submachine gun."

• And So We Put Goldfish in the Pool.: I watched this one a while ago, and damn, I forgot how bonkers the editing in this goes sometimes. Combine that with amazing cinematography and a central theme that might have hit a little too close to home, and you get what might be my favorite short film of all time.

• Away: One man, three years: I'm not referring to the story of this film, but rather the film itself. Gints Zilbalodis did everything himself: Writing, directing, producing, editing, even composing. What you get is a 75-minute epic without words. An indie video game as a movie. A labor of love. An animated film that allows you to form your own interpretations as to what it might be trying to say. And lastly, as mentioned in the intro to this post, the film that made me feel like a kid again, even if just for a little while. I don't think I've said "DUDE" out loud this many times while watching a film before. If you decide to check out just one item from this list, make it Away.

• Fortini/Cani: This one was weird, man. First it hits you with political statements left and right, then it throws you into a montage of static and panning shots of the Italian countryside. I believe I can only do this movie justice by quoting its premise: "The film is a [...] presentation of Franco Fortini’s book ‘I Cani del Sinai’. Fortini, an Italian Jew, reads excerpts from the book about his alienation from Judaism and from the social relations around him, the rise of Fascism in Italy [and] the anti-Arab attitude of European culture."

• Victoria: One absolutely baffling two-hour shot. Like, not a film made to look like one – an actual two-hour shot. And not only that: Victoria is so well-made that you forget this fact while watching, meaning it turns from a novelty into a utility. Even the pacing feels just right, which is especially astonishing considering the story plays out in real time. And at the end of the day, it's just nice to see an actually decent German movie pop up every once in a while.

• The Million Game: Another pretty good German film – and an early example of what would later be dubbed unfiction. As such, I, of course, had a great time. I accidentally listened to the first minute or so of the director's commentary, which mentioned that there were at least some people at the time who thought it was real, but I wonder how many. Maybe it was a War of the Worlds-esque situation?

• Putins Bears – The Most Dangerous Hackers in the World: This one is really just a long YouTube video essay, but it was released exclusively in the ARD Mediathek (and it's on IMDb and every other database in existence), so I'm counting it. Great stuff from Simplicissimus, and as always, the animations stand out in particular.

• Censor: The first horror film in a long time that, like, really got under my skin. Perhaps the most creative use of aspect ratio since The Grand Budapest Hotel. The very last shot made me chuckle.

• Dune: Oh boy, here we go. I'm lumping this together with the second part because of two reasons: First, I thought they were both essentially equal in quality. Second, I watched both parts back to back as a double feature at my local cinema, which, on the one hand, I'm glad I did, because there are so many scenes where a lot of the atmosphere requires you to have a sense of scale – something that is much easier to acquire on a big screen – but on the other hand, it was also really, really exhausting to spend six hours in a cinema. I recommend everyone do something like this once in their lives and then never again.

• Dune: Part Two: See above.

Even though I was sick for a good week and didn't really have the attention span for a full movie (meaning I just ended up watching a lot of Taskmaster instead), I still managed to watch 22 films in 29 days – a step up from last month! I'm really satisfied with how this challenge is going so far.

By the way, if you want to follow along, I have profiles on Trakt and Letterboxd, where I'm tracking what I watch as I go. Until next month!