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Post by Jeremy on Dec 13, 2020 17:37:34 GMT -8
So it's obviously been an... unconventional year for movies, but I still watched a lot of them that I really liked.
Unfortunately, due to limited options and being stuck inside the house for months on end, I also watched a lot of movies that I... didn't.
I'm planning to post two articles covering the "Worst Films of 2020" and "Best Films of 2020" over the next week or so, but in the meantime - anyone have any favorites (or least-favorites)? Or just want to reflect on the present and potential future of cinema? (I feel like Christopher Nolan started a significant ball rolling last week.)
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 13, 2020 18:44:22 GMT -8
I haven't seen nearly enough 2020 film releases to even begin compiling a list of favourites (or least-favourites). And the same goes for TV shows.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 13, 2020 19:41:45 GMT -8
Honestly, I spent much of the year unsure if I would be able to make a legitimate Top 10, given how slim the pickings were, and how much of the year's more acclaimed films either weren't to my tastes or were too difficult to find on streaming. But looking back now, I think I've seen enough films I really liked to put together a serious list. I've had to look outside my normal wheelhouse and watch more indie movies than I usually watch in an average year - which, in the long run, might not be a bad thing for my cultural reputation. Perusing the Metacritic compilation, it's a little jarring to see how few of the critics' favorite 2020 films I actually watched this year. (Though I did check out First Cow, the popular #1 pick, last week.) There are just so many films, even in a year that limited capacity the way this one did, and like most folks, I just stick with the ones that look interesting to me. |
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 13, 2020 23:34:45 GMT -8
I'll need to check out First Cow at some point. I liked the director's Wendy and Lucy and Night Moves, but found Meek's Cutoff way too dry (though beautifully-photographed). We'll see where I land on this one.
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 15, 2020 9:51:01 GMT -8
Here are my picks for the ten worst films of 2020.Hopefully, next year will be good enough overall that I won't be compelled to write another piece like this. Fingers crossed... |
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 15, 2020 17:37:32 GMT -8
I would've thought you'd have a more nuanced take on that Cuties controversy. I haven't watched it, but the more balanced takes I've read (from some well-regarded critics) suggest the intent was social commentary on child exploitation, even if the approach was flawed in some areas.
I don't have the energy to wade into a debate on it, though, because apparently anyone who doesn't condemn the film outright (often without having actually seen it) gets labelled a pedophile.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 15, 2020 17:46:40 GMT -8
I've had to look outside my normal wheelhouse and watch more indie movies than I usually watch in an average year - which, in the long run, might not be a bad thing for my cultural reputation. Though I'm hardly happy at the circumstances that engendered it, I think that this year is inadvertently beneficial for promulgating cinephilia as necessity has diverted attention away from the cineplex and festival darlings towards more fringe and underground offerings. Which is how I operate generally, although I've only seen ten myself anyway: 1) The Invisible Man 2) Bill & Ted Face the Music 3) Tenet 4) Onward 5) Underwater 6) The Kemps: All True 7) The Windemere Children 8) Superman: Red Son 9) The Call of the Wild 10) Sonic the Hedgehog BEST SHORT: Strasbourg 1518 BEST DOCUMENTARY: Age of the Image BEST MUSIC VIDEO: Deftones - Ohms |
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 15, 2020 17:50:25 GMT -8
And my Top 10 Films Seen in 2020 (unranked):
Valley of Love (2015, Guillaume Nicloux)
Beautiful Boxer (2004, Ekachai Uekrongtham)
A Hidden Life (2019, Terrence Malick)
The Wild Goose Lake (2019, Yi'nan Diao)
Caótica Ana (2007, Julio Medem)
Tehran Taboo (2017, Ali Soozande)
The Naked Civil Servant (1975, Jack Gold)
Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982, Robert Altman)
Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999, Hiroyuki Okiura)
Lemora: A Child's Tale of the Supernatural (1973, Richard Blackburn)
BEST SHORT: Patriotism (1966, Yukio Mishima and Masaki Domoto)
BEST DOCUMENTARY: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004, Ken Burns)
BEST MUSIC VIDEO: Mylene Farmer - L'Âme-stram-gram (1999, Ching Siu-Tung)
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 15, 2020 18:32:39 GMT -8
...although I've only seen ten myself anyway: 1) The Invisible Man 2) Bill & Ted Face the Music 3) Tenet 4) Onward 5) Underwater 6) The Kemps: All True 7) The Windemere Children 8) Superman: Red Son 9) The Call of the Wild 10) Sonic the Hedgehog BEST SHORT: Strasbourg 1518 BEST DOCUMENTARY: Age of the Image BEST MUSIC VIDEO: Deftones - Ohms Apparently only two of which you liked? |
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 15, 2020 18:36:06 GMT -8
J.C., I definitely understood the motivation behind making Cuties; my issue with the film is that the audience it's made for already agrees with the message it's pushing, so there's not much reason for it to exist outside of adding some shock value to the cultural conversation. My comment in the article was also in part alluding to Netflix's tone-deaf marketing campaign, with ads that looked as though the film was promoting the very thing it was actually condemning. (Irony does not translate well to brief social media snippets.) But yes, I agree that people should be able to discuss the film without being labeled pedophilic.
Snipe, I never thought I'd see a year where my film selection (at least from the year itself) was less mainstream than yours. Though at least one of your ten picks will be on my "Best of" list. (And I admit I forgot that Superman: Red Son came out this year! I should watch that one eventually; I quite like the graphic novel it's based on.)
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 15, 2020 19:01:03 GMT -8
J.C., I definitely understood the motivation behind making Cuties; my issue with the film is that the audience it's made for already agrees with the message it's pushing, so there's not much reason for it to exist outside of adding some shock value to the cultural conversation. But you referred to it as child porn, which is a lot more reductive than what you're saying here. That aside, should "messages" only exist in movies to convince people that remain unconvinced (to try to sway the opposite side)? From what I've read about the film, it goes beyond just saying "child exploitation is bad", and highlights some more subtle cultural blindspots that many folks may have in relation to the subject. And you sort of had a similar response to Black Kkklansman a while back ("it's only preaching to the choir", etc.). Films exist to convey different cultural perspectives, so while your average white supremacist may never indulge the film, there are plenty of more moderate folks who may underestimate the level of systematic racism that has existed, and continues to exist today. Films like that can better allow said individuals to empathize with something that they don't often experience firsthand, particularly if they live in a social bubble of sorts. Packaging it as entertainment just makes it more palatable to a wider audience. |
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Post by Jeremy on Dec 15, 2020 19:34:48 GMT -8
Well, the comment in the article wasn't meant to critique the film itself as much as the way it was marketed (as I said, I haven't seen it) - it may not mean to be exploitative, but the ads were certain to make it appear exploitative. Whether that is the fault of the filmmakers or Netflix is debatable, but that is how the film appeared. (Certain clips from the film that floated around social media did not help matters either.)
There are a lot of films that rightly condemn terrible subjects that, out of plot necessity, heavily feature that subject in question. Cuties may not have been able to tell its story without featuring the inappropriate scenes it featured, but that doesn't necessarily mean these scenes should have been filmed, or that the movie should be marketed on a global streaming platform.
It's true, my critique of BlacKkKlansman (and this year's Antebellum, which has a similar problem) is that it pushes a message that its audience will already agree with. And sure, that's not necessarily a bad thing - a story doesn't need a controversial message to leave an impression, and I can't act as if no one watching it will come away with an altered perspective. But these films seem to carry themselves as though they're saying something big and important, when they're... really just parroting the standard political talking points that are everywhere nowadays. Feels like a buildup of so much for so little.
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 4:41:21 GMT -8
Apparently only two of which you liked? I'd say they're all varying degrees of "like" up until Call of the Wild, which felt decidedly baggy and listless for a 100m film, and that's when I wasn't routinely distracted by the CGI dog. I certainly had issues with Tenet, but I'd say that it was a good film overall, but I felt I needed to air my grievances right off the bat. I think that Nolan could benefit in general from hiring a screenwriter each time (or simply borrowing his brother), because it strikes me that the more complex his vision directorially, the further the distance he has to go in penning a script that will befit it. In other words, I think he has a picture in his mind from the get-go (like most directors), but can struggle to work backwards to arrive at a reason for its appearance, as with Inception and Interstellar. This is partly why I thought the opener was brilliant; shorn of context, the scene simply unfolds of its own accord, unconcerned with hitherto rhyme or reason. Dunkirk, by contrast, is an absolute triumph because its screenplay is so minimal and characters so perfunctory that there's nothing blocking the path towards its excellent imagery and the tension and atmosphere of its setpieces. |
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Post by guttersnipe on Dec 16, 2020 5:02:22 GMT -8
Snipe, I never thought I'd see a year where my film selection (at least from the year itself) was less mainstream than yours. Though at least one of your ten picks will be on my "Best of" list. (And I admit I forgot that Superman: Red Son came out this year! I should watch that one eventually; I quite like the graphic novel it's based on.) I'm not a big fan of Supes myself (I like my heroes to have more obvious limitations), but this one sounded interesting because I often dig on "what if" stories and parallel universes, and I like the inherent irony of a collectivist society championing an ubermensch. Unfortunately, it's rushed as hell; Superman finds out about the gulags in as little as quarter of an hour and incinerates Stalin literally minutes of screentime later, so there's actually precious little world built for it to suddenly U-turn on. Indeed, without the Saul Bass-ified Soviet credits, the film itself doesn't do much to persuade that anyone would ever hew towards this system by choice or coercion. Add to that the shoehorning-in of Batman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern (there's a reason why the more 'stocked' Marvel films run to nearly three hours) and the film feels like it's got far too much on its plate to contend with and should probably have been a miniseries (I loved X-Men's Age of Apocalypse, but I wouldn't have appreciated it being crammed into an hour or so). There is, however, some quite nice animation (chunky but smooth with good light sourcing) and I like some of its reversed ideas, like the Watchmen parallel of Supes winning the Korean War for the North and him destroying the American-built Wall. |
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Post by ThirdMan on Dec 16, 2020 7:49:38 GMT -8
Snipe, I definitely agree with your thoughts on Nolan. Sometimes the plot exposition in his films can get way too convoluted, making the narrative seem more confusing or messy than it actually is. I wish he'd just allow the visuals more room to breathe in some of his films, as he did with Dunkirk. As in, let us soak in the ambitious images rather than always explaining their mechanics.
I think he got away with more overt character exposition in his Batman films, for the most part, because comic book characters are notorious for monologuing, so it fit the format, particularly with the familiar character iconography. In his movies where the characters are more in service of an elaborate plot concept, it gets too muddled.
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