Everything I Watched in February

Throughout my childhood, The Academy Awards weren’t a part of my family rhythm. February was dominated by Super Bowl Sunday, Presidents’ Day trips, and Valentine’s Day candies. But things changed once I started working at Imagine Entertainment. “For your consideration” billboards filled bus shelters and major billboards along my daily commute into Beverly Hills. I never understood the primary CTA; who wanted my consideration? Well, of course the answer to that was nobody, but things clicked once I learned that executives in my office were Academy voters! “The Academy” transformed from an amorphous entity - like “the city council” or “the board” - to people that I’d see in the lunch room, that drove the same roads as me, and watched movies in theaters or at home, just like me.

Our office held Oscars ballot competitions like others do for March Madness. A paper form was distributed to each person to make their predictions for who would win each award. The printout was organized by each award category and listed its corresponding nominees.

Do you remember those library summer reading challenges? The library curated a list of books for young students to read, and if you read enough of them, you’d be entered into a raffle. I never won, but I’m a sucker for gamified challenges. That list of novels (usually printed on a bookmark) kept me tied to books all summer. Well, that childhood, try-hard conscience was awakened when I scanned that Oscars ballot form and only recognized Black Panther (2018) and a few animated films. The prediction ballot became my Spring watch list.¹

Whenever the calendar flips to February, my content appetite submits to a Pavlovian cue, and I start cramming the year’s Best Picture slate. This year is no different, and I’m behind on my 2026 nominees. This month’s screenings included 2026 Best Picture nominees F1 (2025), One Battle After Another (2025), and Sinners (2025). On top of those, I threw in I, Tonya (2017)² and La La Land (2016).

I, Tonya (2017)

In college, I took a class called “Bookpacking.” The pedagogical premise of the course was to enrich literature by reading it in the settings the stories were set in. As nerdy and kitschy as that sounds, there’s something metaphysical about reading The Awakening while sitting on the white beaches of Grand Isle. A vignette of Ignatius J Reilly’s daily life in A Confederacy of Dunces passes by as you see Lucky Dog carts rolled around the French Quarter. When “Portland, OR” splashed on the screen 3 minutes into I, Tonya, the personal potency of the film jumped to 11/10.

The 2017 biopic of Tonya Harding’s life - childhood through the infamous bashing of Nancy Kerrigan’s knee - covers a lot of serious themes: generational trauma, domestic abuse, the struggle of America’s working class, and the unforgiving scrutiny of media on public figures. But I watched this film from my Portland apartment, a day after watching the American media gush over Alyssa Liu’s return to ice skating stardom, so my mind was stuck on that “Portland, OR” title throughout the screening.

Each scene was a reminder of the world I live in.³ When Tonya receives a death threat, I was focused on the department label - “Clackamas County” - patched onto the sheriff’s uniform, or when Tonya is training for her second olympics, I imagined myself walking by the Lloyd center’s boringly normal community ice rink. Had I watched this one year earlier, these small setting details would have meant nothing. But now, as a Portland resident, my physical proximity to the story immerses me just as powerfully as a 1.43:1 IMAX scene fills my field of view. B-Roll shots of trees and neighborhoods remind me of the roads I pass by on my morning runs, and I’m caught up in the magic of the story. Wow! The first woman to ever land a triple axel walked these streets of Portland.

I’ve been fortunate to live most of my life in Los Angeles, which is often showcased in movies. However, now that I must actively seek films set in the place I live, it’s something I’d like to practice more. I’m looking forward to Wildwood (LAIKA) this Fall.

One Battle After Another (2025)

People think I’m a film buff just because I used to work at a production studio, went to USC, and evangelize 70mm IMAX every chance I get. But the truth is, I haven’t seen that much stuff; One Battle After Another was my first Paul Thomas Anderson film! I screened the year’s Best Picture favorite in 70mm at Portland’s Hollywood Theatre, and it was a delightful experience.

The film is a satirical action drama that follows the life of Bob (Leonardo Di Caprio), a guy whose life is constantly associated with struggles for power: first as a revolutionary, later as a victim, and at times as an unaware bystander. Maybe it’s because I watched this film one day after watching I, Tonya, but my mind was constantly reminded that time and place of viewing inform the film’s impact-fulness. Similar to horror, satire hits best when you’re sitting with company that’s in on the joke. Try to watch a comedy with people who don’t get it, and the screening experience is busted.

I found One Battle After Another’s strength to be its ability to weave comedic dichotomies throughout: Bob’s doomer franticness trying to remember a silly passcode contrasting Sensei’s (Benicio Del Toro) controlled peace while leading an exodus of refugees; or the benign “Christmas Adventurers” name conflicting with the group’s evil intentions and violent practices. I felt a light-heartedness watching the film that chiseled the weight of revolution to its most basic, personal challenge; it’s the same prompt that Willa (Chase Infiniti) is left with - “maybe you will be the one to put the world right.”

This film slaps in Portland. People were locked in, laughing at the same jokes, not taking any particular political slight personally. I felt energized walking out of that theater and overhearing the conversations fellow viewers were having.

F1 (2025)

When F1’s credits started rolling, I was left with questions: “If this film is a Best Picture nominee, what does that tell me about what a “Best Picture” nominee is?” and “If this is a Best Picture nominee, do I actually want to set aside 10/52 weekly screenings of the year to watch Best Picture noms?”

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, F1 centers around the story of Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt) leading a last ditch effort to salvage his friend’s Formula 1 team. To save it, he’ll need to win a race, which is really hard to do in F1. Along the way Sonny gets into a spats with the team’s rookie driver, falls in love with the lead engineer, and nearly dies in a crash. We take a tour around all the quintessential sports movie tropes - a predictable plot, on-the-nose dramatic dialogue, and a romance that had no business being mentioned. But F1 doesn’t pay out with the standard victory lap; Sonny’s character leaves the celebration just as it’s getting started.

I had extremely high expectations for this film, given Kosinski’s success with Top Gun: Maverick,⁴ but ultimately, it fell short for me. As I debriefed with friends who really liked this film, a pattern emerged - people who watched it in theaters loved it, and people who watched it at home didn’t. We watched the same story, yet the screening format made all the difference. I’m not surprised that a disparity exists (hello! I’m a 70mm IMAX evangelist here!), but I was shocked that a film I thought had very little character development and didn’t step into deeper emotional waters could be bolstered so high with just a superior projection and sound format. This reminds me of my relationship with Dunkirk (2017), a film I watched on an airplane seat back and proceeded to fall asleep in ~10 times. When Tarantino named it as his #4 favorite film of the 21st century, I felt like we watched two different movies!

If F1 ever gets an IMAX re-release 5 or 10 years from now, I’m not sure I’d give it a shot, $25 and 2.5+ hours is a lot to pay for a movie I’m not expecting to enjoy. But if I ever needed a reminder that format and venue matter, F1’s shortcomings in my home theater fit the bill.

La La Land (2016)

When La La Land first came out, I was in college, had been dating a girl for just under a year, and had never lived anywhere other than Los Angeles. I remember watching La La Land with zero context for the first time. Stepping out of The Culver Theater, the bookends of the story were what I remembered most. A few weeks later, I watched it a second time at The Vista on a date with my girlfriend. This time, my emotions peaked during Seb and Mia’s “City of Stars” duet at the piano.

Fast-forward 9+ years. I’m a remote-working salaryman; I’ve been married for 5 years to the same girl I watched La La Land with; and now, we live in Portland. Times change; I’ve changed; and what resonates with me in La La Land today is so different than 2016-2017.

This time, the levity and joy of love portrayed in the film’s “Spring” chapter pulled me in. I loved the way Damien Chazelle linked the motif of dance to the butterflies we feel, caught up in the wonder of a love interest - e.g. Seb’s brief dance spats on the Hermosa Pier while singing “City of Stars” or Mia’s whimsically brief bounce as she dances into her cafe job the next morning. It’s moments like these that made my heart smile this time, and I left encouraged by the giddiness that is so apparent in nascent relationships.

Sinners (2025)

This film has a lot to say. Like… a lot a lot. On the end credits crawl, the group I watched it with were speechless, trying to make sense of the motif salad thrown our way. The weeks after watching the film, I’d remember random scenes and consistently realize that there’s meaning from the shot I hadn’t previously explored. Ryan Coogler went big and intentionally placed many stones throughout the film to slowly turn over.

The thing I’ve been spinning on most has been Remmick’s offer for “love and fellowship.” I’m a runner, and one thing I do while running is praying for my community. When you pray and run, your mind is partially occupied by breathing, muscle awareness, and avoiding life-threatening vehicles, so sometimes the content of your prayers takes a hit. When I get to someone on my prayer list and don’t recall what to intercede for, I’ll pray something like: “I pray that this person would be drawn into closer fellowship with Jesus, centered on love.” It’s low-key a filibuster prayer, checking off that I prayed for the person without taking time to think through or ask what this person needs prayer for. Just like other things that become rote, “love and fellowship” prayers feel lifeless and impersonal. So now, whenever I hear words like that come out of my mouth, Remmick’s red eyes stare into my soul, and I am challenged to pray for more. If this is all I can pray for someone, am I really in community with them? Love and fellowship are good things, but they’re impersonally generic. Remmick offers the people in the juke these generically great things, but in doing so, he’s watering down their individuality.

I don’t think this is Coogler’s primary point of the film, but when a film has too much packed into it, I think it’s viewer’s choice for takeaways. Loosely connected thematic threads litter Sinners, so I anticipate this film will be rattling around the head for a lot longer than I’m expecting as those threads latch onto other films I watch.

Each of these films is fantastic in its own right (well maybe not F1 🙈…), but it’s been I, Tonya - the film with the least Oscar nominations on this slate - that I’ve been circling. The film explores the relativity of truth through its unique narrative structure, a patchwork narrative, driven by a series of re-enacted interviews of how various people recall the events of Tonya Harding’s life. Each character lived through the same events, yet each of them retells the story like they’re in the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.

This one-to-many relationship between single experiences and splintering perspectives reminds me of the film viewing experience. Film is not an efficient communication format. The impact of movies are nondeterministic, and they do not reliably transmit knowledge nor world views from the creators to the audience. Each time any of us sits in front of the silver screen, we experience something unique - influenced by where we are, who we’re with, how we slept the night before, the era we’re living in, and the snacks we’re chomping on.

I’ve noticed that after I leave a theater, my mind scrambles through critique, attempting to assess if the film was good or bad. I fall into conclusions, taping together arguments that bolster a perspective that says I’m an astute film student with exquisite taste. Steven Rogers, the screenwriter of I, Tonya, reflected on the story - “To me, that’s what the movie’s really about—the things we tell ourselves in order to be able to live with ourselves. And how we change the narrative, and then want that to be the narrative.”

I want to avoid this inclination. I am not a film critic, and this is not a film criticism newsletter. Instead, it’s a medium for me to process what I’ve seen and share with other movie fans.

February Superlatives:

My favorite things from the month.

• Film: One Battle After Another
• Scene: OBAA’s car chase - incredible piece of directing, cinematography, and music
• Acting performance: Paul Walter Hauser as Shawn Eckhardt (I, Tonya)
• Non-film thing: Johannes Høsflot Klæbo crushing the Klæbo climb throughout the 2026 Winter Olympics