Hey sorry. I spent last night making a lemon blueberry loaf instead of typing a blog post.
BUt today we'll move on to movies, a subject I'm not well experienced in as I'll default to watching TV if given the choice. But occasionally I'm on a plane or want to do something different so i will pick up a movie or two. It would probably take forever to go over everyone's favorites, there's literally over 100 years of movie (for example the masterful Nosferatu is 98 years old this year) so how about we limit it to the past few years.
This way I can literally just list the movies I've seen
I've seen nothing that has come out this year
2019
I saw Harriet and Ready or Not on my last plane ride. Ready or Not was fun. It could have been great but it was still good and that girl can scream. Harriet was also good but with any historical story a little hard to get real drama going. I know she isn't dying.
I got kids - however the one that can watch movies isn't into them either so I've seen Frozen II (ok not better than the original) and Aladdin (eh)
ummm... that is it. Like I said I don't watch movies
2018
Ant Man and the Wasp - It's good. This is the only series I've seen all (technically both) the movies. I pretty much have seen zero sequels. Part of it is bc I like my super hero movies to lean kiddie. They shoot beams out of their hands and fly around. I don't need that to be serious at all.
Crazy Rich Asians - also on a plane. It's really good. Not as funny as I thought it would be but nails what it is.
Halloween - not great. Part of what made the first great is ramping up the horror with a vaguely human antagonist that kills like 4 people. This is more like later horror movies with an unstoppable baddie that mows down a dozen plus. Story is good but needed someone to tone down the killing and up the horror.
Rampage - plane movie. Honestly the best type of plane movie bc if I never saw the end it'd be ok. But still I think this is the best Rock hero movie of the bunch. He's overgrown in size and personality and he needs a backdrop that's similar. This gives it to him. It's not good but it's fun
The Spy who Dumped Me - look I prefer to be on my computer if I'm at home and so I want something on in the background. This was allright. Oddly violent. I mean watch it if you think you want to.
Three Identical Strangers - I also like documentaries. This one is a trip that starts and ends in totally different places.
Kids - Ralph breaks the internet (see Frozen II)
Nutcracker and the Four Realms - there's a good movie in here somewhere but it didn't make the screen
Teen Titans GO! to the Movies - I really liked this. Sometimes I listen to the song for fun.
OK that's enough - so in the past 2+ years - give me your movies to watch. I probably won't get to them but someone here might.
My wife and I watch a lot of movies. She tries to see everything nominated for a major category (Acting, Writing, Directing, Picture, Foreign Film). I skip some, especially some histories (I have the same problem taking the drama seriously. I also resent how much power the movie versions have to foreground a fictionalized version of what happened into our collective memories.)
ReplyDelete2020 - I've seen nothing released this year. These are thin months every year, and we've been ducking enclosed spaces containing a few hundred people for a while now.
2019 - Last year was a pretty weak one for movies. I skimmed a list and think I only saw about a dozen. I'd recommend Marriage Story, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Two Popes and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood for serious movies, and Knives Out and Ford v Ferrari for fun distractions. Parasite was very ambitious and definitely worth watching, but I didn't think the movie really worked. The Irishman and 1917 were awful. For 1917, I get the arguments that it was impressive technically, but I found it super dull. Really one of the worst movies I've ever seen. There's a reason that narrative time is not the same linear time. And if you're going to do an aggressive formal structure like this, I feel like you need to have more realistic dialogue and plotting. You shouldn't force your fictional world to fill your character's day with coincidences because you decided you wanted to only use one jump cut. Just terrible. And the Irishman had lots of bad parts but the hardest scene for me to watch was De Niro kicking the grocer who was rude to his kid with all the realism you'd expect from the stage fighting at a high school play. Every actor except Pesci did a terrible job. And it'a 3 hours long!
2018 - A more typical year. I saw about 35 movies, about half in theaters. Here's some I'd recommend.
Good movies: The Favourite, Shoplifters, If Beale Street Could Talk, Free Solo, BlacKKKlansman, First Reformed, Won't You Be My Neighbor, Sorry to Bother You, Tully, Death of Stalin, Blindspotting
Fun distractions / Plane Movies: Black Panther, Deadpool 2, Red Sparrow, Tag, Game Night, Borg vs McEnroe
Notable others that are probably worth watching: Vice (Bale does a great job, but I was bothered by McKay's oversimplification and condescension), Cold War (it's a good movie, but it's really really sad), A Quiet Place, Colette, McQueen
From the last few years, the movies that I always watch if they are on:
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Game Night
Baby Driver
Anon - I knew I'd forget some. I did see "Won't you be my Neighbor" and it's very good. And Borg vs McEnroe which is the usual HBO sports doc good job.
ReplyDeleteI heard that about the Irishman. You can de-age a face, but you can't de-age a 76 yo version of beating someone up.
For movies/shorts with kids you can't beat Wallace and Gromit
ReplyDeleteFor TV (sorry, I'm a day late): big fan of Futurama
There so many movies every year! I guess it's because people's tastes and interests vary so much- there's something for everyone! We're not movie experts nor do we go to many movies in theaters. We mostly watch older movies at homes. However here are the movies we have liked in the last few years in no particular order:
ReplyDeleteOnce Upon A Time in Hollywood
John Wick 3 (you will need to be a John Wick fan to appreciate this one)
Jo Jo Rabbit (surprisingly heartfelt and thought provoking)
A Star is Born (I love Lady Gaga in this!)
The Green Book (another surprisingly thought provoking movie)
They Shall Not Grow Old (interesting cinematography using old WW I footage. Only for military buffs though)
Avengers: Infinity War (this is just watch if your an Avengers fan and seen the movies)
Jo Jo Rabbit -- agree with Chas. R. Heartfelt and thought-provoking, and in no way glorifies Nazis. Quite the opposite.
ReplyDeleteGet Out -- just a terrific movie. Highly entertaining, great plot twist, thought-provoking social commentary. The ending was overdone and unnecessary (I don't want to give anything away).
Movies are my main hobby. I'm unhealthily obsessed. I see legit everything--foreign, highbrow, mainstream blockbusters, etc. I just made a BEST 50 FILMS OF DECADE list recently for a friend. (Organized by category/genre, not ranked):
ReplyDeleteBest SCI FI
Her
Ex Machina
The Martian
Arrival
BEST ACTION (Incl. War, Spy, Superhero)
Dunkirk
Zero Dark Thirty
Sicario
Mad Max Fury Road
Skyfall
Thor Ragnarok
Logan
Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol
John Wick
Django Unchained
BEST COMEDY
Grand Budapest Hotel
Isle of Dogs
Ladybird
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
American Hustle
Crazy Stupid Love
BEST SPORTS
I Tonya
Moneyball
The Fighter
Everybody Wants Some!
Whiplash (it is a sports movie basically)
BEST CRIME
Uncut Gems
Wolf of Wall Street
The Town
A Most Violent Year
BEST FOREIGN
Cold War
Transit
Phoenix
Assassin
Parasite
Burning
Force Majeure
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
BEST HORROR
Get Out
Midsommar
The Witch
BEST DRAMA/ROMANCE
Tree of Life
The Master
Social Network
Blue Valentine
Little Women
Spotlight
A Hidden Life
The Souvenir
BEST KIDS/ANIMATED
Coco
Inside Out
@Bx Thanks for posting that list. I haven't seen 15-20 of those, and I can't wait to check out the trailers, but I will say that are a lot on your list that I thought were good but not great. (That said, I don't think you have any movies I hate on there...though when I'm feeling ungenerous towards Terrence Mallick, that one comes closest.)
ReplyDeleteOf course, you also left off some of my favorites. In the interest of giving everyone as many ideas as possible, here's my top 12 of the decade among only movies not on Bx's list:
Boyhood
Call Me By Your Name
I Am Not Your Negro
The Lobster
Still Alice
The Trip
Moonlight
Shoplifters
Big Sick
Interstellar
Columbus
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
@Bx That's great stuff! Many thanks!
ReplyDeleteI know this is supposed to be about Movies, but I'll fit this under the larger category of viewing content. My wife and I have been watching the Netflix series entitled, 'The Greatest Events of World War II in Colour'. Definitely recommend it, if you like war documentaries.
ReplyDelete@Anon. Yup, some of it comes down to personal taste--I obviously love Tarantino and Wes Anderson and Malick, for example. Some is I purposefully tried to list a cross section of genres including, like, a couple superhero things (not my favorite)...some of it comes down to "I want to include at least one Scorsese movie" (could easily have tapped "Silence" instead of 'Wolf'). Then some are movies that I just feel bad they were somehow unjustly overlooked when, in another year with different awards politics, they could have won Oscars! ('A Most Violent Year' and 'Ex Machine' =good examples of that).
ReplyDeleteI liked a lot of your listed movies, especially "Call Me By Your Name" despite being ready to hate it due to my love of the novel...I prefer Dunkirk over Interstellar for Nolan, but I enjoy almost all Nolan; and prefer 'The Favourite" over "The Lobster" for Lanthimos (he has some amazing Greek language movies too).
Which Girl in the Dragon Tattoo? the Fincher US one or the foreign one?
@ Bx I agree with a lot of that.
ReplyDeleteI get wanting to advocate for great movies that fell short of the major awards. I was 13 when Pulp Fiction lost to Forest Gump and it still bothers me a little (it also made me basically ignore the Academy for 20 years until my wife got me back into it). Boyhood is a big one for me in terms of being robbed. I forget where I saw it, but I remember one headline: "Boyhood loses to movie about how hard it is to make art as good as Boyhood". I mean, I liked Birdman just fine, but it wasn't that year's best film and it wasn't close.
On the Dragon Tattoo, I meant Fincher's version (the Swedish one is pre-2010), though both are good and very much worth watching. And you are right about wanting to keep the standards and comparisons within genre. John Wick 1 was really good for what it was. Same with the first the Trip. Ditto the Town. They aren't going to be one of the top 100 films of the century, but 50 slots over 10 years leaves a lot of space to recognize a few best in breeds. Those are great movies, even if they aren't the most ambitious. Plus, for the actual exercise here -- not going insane while we're all hiding from the plague -- you definitely want a wide range of tone and viewing experience. Sometimes you want an excellent genre movie, and that's different than a "real" movie that uses genre structures, settings, and tropes like Get Out or Logan.
For what it's worth, I really liked Dunkirk and the Favourite as well, and they would definitely be on my list of 50. In both cases, though, I do prefer the one you omitted over than the one you included. And I'd have the same two Tarantino films on my list as you. I've been drifting slowly away from Wes Anderson, though. It feels like, as the worlds have become more elaborate and stylized, the characters have become flatter, especially beyond the main protagonists. Remember how weird and individual everyone was in Rushmore and Bottle Rocket and even Royal Tenenbaums? I really need that to balance out all the clever symmetry of his plots and conflicts. Otherwise, it can feel bloodless (even when it gets literally quite bloody). I don't know, I still see them and enjoy them well enough, but they're a little disappointing at the same time for me. I don't think I'd have Grand Budapest Hotel on my list, and I didn't even see Isle of Dogs.
@Anon. Yeah I understand all that. I think I find the stylistic baroqueness of the Wes Anderson sufficiently entertaining that even when the characters are just goofy archetypes in things like Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest, I still enjoy them, even if they're less complex or shaded----e.g. Monsieur Gustave from Grand Budapest (Ralph Fiennes) is like one of my favorite recent movie characters, not because he's a brilliantly constructed character in a novelistic sense...simply bc I can't stop laughing at everything that comes out of his mouth and quote him incessantly.
ReplyDeleteI would recommend trying "Isle of Dogs"...I think that perhaps ironically (since it's stop motion capture), it's probably WA's most serious attempt to actually SAY SOMETHING profound in a film about the adult world (I feel like childhood and adolescence is usually his subject)....its very much an allegorical critique of everything from authoritarianism to the demonization of the 'other' by demagogue populists, weaponization of the media as propaganda....a possible commentary on Trumpism, expulsion of refugees, and/or environmental degradation, specifically the Fukijima nuclear reactor accident. That may sound insane for a movie about Japan expelling its dogs to an island to blame them for a made up disease, but what can I say—it's my favorite of his movies after Rushmore and Tenanbaums, and again....viewed a certain way, arguably his most serious and his most playful at same time. I have no doubt its far superior to Darjeeling, Life Aquatic, Moonrise Kingdom, and Fantastic Mr Fox.
It's also possible I overestimate it because I somehow lucked into attending the world premiere. But I think you will see what I mean when you watch it. It's just incredibly clever IMO. But you may really dislike allegory/parable and/or things that are not live action.
@Bx
ReplyDeleteI would say I'm skeptical of non-live action, but it's not a deal breaker for me. I loved Anomalisa, for example (which is another movie that is definitely in my top 50 of 2010s).
I'll check out Isle of Dogs. I'm not sure I'll like it, but you certainly make it sound complex and interesting enough to be worth watching.
Chiming in again to suggest The Death of Stalin. Man that's a great movie.
ReplyDeleteGiven I can't find paper products, I've taken to buying plastic spoons and rewatching The Room in some sort of cabin fever induced masochistic self loathing session.
ReplyDeleteCP - you wanted paper spoons?
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