Next, don’t let the indie gem of the year, The Baltimorons, pass you by. It’s a bit early in the year for holiday fare, but this film, nonetheless, is earmarked to become a new cozy Christmas staple for me, much like the recent The Holdovers has become. Directed by Jay Duplass (Jeff Who Lives at Home, Cyrus, The Puffy Chair) and co-written by Duplass and Michael Strassner (who also stars), The Baltimorons is an absolute charmer, and it's no surprise that it won the Audience Award this year at the SXSW film festival. 

It's a warm hug of a shaggy-dog, May-December rom-com, in the vein of the Duplass brothers' reality-based oeuvre, and it tells the story of Cliff (Strassner), a newly sober comedian who cracks his tooth on Christmas eve and seeks out the only dentist in Baltimore who will take him, Didi (played by a wonderful Liz Larsen). The no-nonsense Didi, who is hiding loneliness and a rejection from her own family during the holidays, can’t quite resist the open warmth and self-effacing jokes from Cliff, and the two form an unlikely alliance that takes them through Baltimore for some misadventures--and a bit of romance. It’s wonderful.

Set just before, during, and after WWI, the story follows Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) who discover a shared love of music, specifically folk songs, and who eventually find love in one another, too. It’s a film that centers the same kind of restraint we saw in director Oliver Hermanus’s earlier film--the beautiful Living (which we also played here at the Pickford)--but the romance is nonetheless tender for that, and the music of the film is passionate and moving.  You may remember one of the loveliest scenes in Living, which features a folk song, an indication of Hermanus’s gift for pairing song and cinema, and it’s a taste of what you’ll see in this film. One of the most wonderful sequences of the film is when Lionel and David travel through rural Maine, seeking out those who know the folk songs that have been passed down through generations; they record the songs, capturing them for posterity. 

As you might expect, given the era, romantic happiness cannot be the fate for David and Lionel, but the songs they shared and loved together remain, and they form the poignant core of the film that lingers long after the credits roll.

We have an especially exciting entry this week in our Alfred Hitchcock Presents series: not only are we playing the iconic Psycho, Hitchcock’s masterpiece from 1960, we are also thrilled to welcome director Alexandre Philippe to Bellingham with an in-person Q&A following his documentary, 78/52 (2017), which examines the famous shower scene in Psycho, a scene that contains 78 camera set-ups and 52 cuts within the space of just 45 seconds and changed the face of cinema forever. 

Alexandre is not only a phenomenal filmmaker--making one terrific new documentary every year on average--he is also a cinephile of the highest caliber, and many of his documentaries are about movies.  In fact, his newest film, Kim Novak’s Vertigo (2025), is currently on the world festival circuit, after premiering at Venice this month, and it is an incredible honor to have Alexandre making this quick stop in Bellingham to talk with us about his films -- and about our shared love for Hitchcock -- on his international travels. 

Psycho will be playing on Sunday at 1:00 pm on Bay St. (when I’ll be giving my usual introduction); then, directly following Psycho, you can see 78/52 at 4:15 pm at The Grand, where Alexandre will be joining us for the Q&A.  (Note: If you show your Psycho ticket at the box office, you can get a discount on 78/52 -- special double feature pricing! If you have questions about ticketing, please feel free to reach out to Abby, our membership and box office manager: abby@pickfordfilmcenter.org 

Encores of Psycho and 78/52 will also be playing Thursday evening, but I’d encourage you to join us if you can for Alexandre’s in-person visit on Sunday!