Just realized we have two months left in the year without this annual thread yet!
Printable View
Just realized we have two months left in the year without this annual thread yet!
1. Luca
2. Pig
3. Dune: Part One
4. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
5. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
6. The Green Knight
7. Judas and the Black Messiah
8. Summer of Soul (…or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
9. The Suicide Squad
10. Ema
1. In & of Itself
2-10. Other movies.
Will certainly be a confusing year to do this, with movies like Judas & Black Messiah, The Father, and some others that came out as late as March being "2020 Movies" for oscar, but even Oscars pushed their release date back.
Titane, Dune, and Judas and the Black Messiah are the only movies I've liked this year. Award season better hit hard.
U.S. Theatrical Releases
Spicy
Duelle (une quarantine) (Jacques Rivette)
Ema (Pablo LarraĂ*n)
Warm
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)
To the Ends of the Earth (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Cold
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakstan (Jason Woliner)
Premiers
Cold
Love in the Time of Corona (Mark Rappaport)
Operation Varsity Blues (Chris Smith)
Glad you loved Ema, it’s such a transfixing film.
Isn’t the US theatrical release of To the Ends of the Earth in 2020 though?
Remaining to see:
MUST SEE:
Licorice Pizza
Nightmare Alley
Matrix Revolutions
Tragedy of Macbeth
French Dispatch
Candyman
Should see, will attempt:
Worst Person in the World
King Richard
Being the Ricardos
Benedetta
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Belfast
Drive My Car
Cruella (need to finish)
Night House
The Humans
The Lost Daughter
Not for me, but highly esteemed or will be:
West Side Story
House of Gucci
Mass
tick tick... BOOM
Eternals
Eyes of Tammy Faye
The Souvenir Part II
Likely trash, but will see anyway:
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
Missed it... will be lucky if I get to it:
Halloween Kills
Shang-Chi
U.S. Theatrical Releases
Spicy
Duelle (une quarantine) (Jacques Rivette)
Ema (Pablo LarraĂ*n)
Warm
About Endlessness (Roy Andersson)
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (Wes Anderson)
To the Ends of the Earth (Kurosawa Kiyoshi)
Mild
Tout est pardonné (Mia Hansen-Løve)
Cold
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakstan (Jason Woliner)
Frozen
Titane (Julia Ducournau)
Premiers
Warm
The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun (Wes Anderson)
Cold
Love in the Time of Corona (Mark Rappaport)
Operation Varsity Blues (Chris Smith)
Frozen
Titane (Julia Ducournau)
1. Spencer
2. Bergman Island
3. Dune
4. Val
5. Quo vadis, Aida?
6. Judas and the Black Messiah
7. Flee
8. The Pink Cloud
9. The Card Counter
10. One Night in Miami
1. Titane
2. Bo Burnham Inside
3. The Last Duel
4. The Card Counter
5. The French Dispatch
6. No Sudden Move
7. Pig
8. The Velvet Underground
9. Woodstock 99
10. kid 90
10. Dune: Part One
09. Last Night In Soho
08. Mass
07. Titane
06. The Harder They Fall
05. Spencer
04. Summer of Soul (...or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
03. Licorice Pizza
02. Days
01. The Tragedy of Macbeth
1. The Power of the Dog
2. Luca
3. Pig
4. The Last Duel
5. Dune: Part One
6. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
7. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
8. Passing
9. The Green Knight
10. Judas and the Black Messiah
1. The Power of the Dog
2. West Side Story
3. Luca
4. Pig
5. The Last Duel
6. Drive My Car
7. Dune: Part One
8. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
9. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
10. Passing
Year-end snapshot.
1. The Power of the Dog
2. West Side Story
3. The Matrix Resurrections
4. Luca
5. Pig
6. The Last Duel
7. Drive My Car
8. Dune: Part One
9. Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar
10. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Incredibly weak list, but I finally have a #1 to feel good about and am very much looking forward to Licorice Pizza, Red Rocket, The Tragedy of Macbeth, Drive My Car, Flee, Bergman Island, and The Worst Person in the World.
1. Annette
2. The Power of the Dog
3. The French Dispatch
4. Spencer
5. Pig
6. Dune
7. Titane
8. The Humans
9. Judas and the Black Messiah
10. Barb and Star
So far:
1. Last Night In Soho
2. The Green Knight
3. The Sparks Brothers
4. Candyman
5. Malignant
6. Godzilla vs Kong
7. The Suicide Squad
8. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
9. No Time To Die
10. A Quiet Place II
Still really behind and I didn't realize I had seen 20 from this year.
1. Licorice Pizza
2. Annette
3. Memoria
4. The Power of the Dog
5. Dune
6. Titane
7. Red Rocket
8. Paris, 13th District
9. True Mothers
10. Pig
If Adam Curtis's Can't Get You Out of My Head and The Beatles: Get Out count they are probably in my top 3
Two more to go before I more or less shut the books on 2021.
When I was in my early twenties, I used to feel an obligation to "keep up" with new movies and produce an annual top ten list, but over the years, I've increasingly come to see both activities as a form of work that benefits no one, except perhaps distributors selling new movies. If a movie is worth seeing, it'll still be worth seeing six months from now or six years from now; there's no reason for me to rush out to see a movie the moment it appears, especially during a pandemic when theatres are frequently closed. Also, no matter how many movies you watch, there's always more to see, which makes it self-defeating to "shut the books" on a given calendar year--as if movies were only worth seeing as long as they're eligible for a ten-best list. Movies don't have expiry dates. And for the most part, the people who do produce top ten lists in a relatively timely fashion only seem to watch the same twelve or fifteen well-promoted year-end releases, which for me makes the whole enterprise a rather depressing exercise in groupthink.
As someone who often feels overwhelmed by the viewing selections available to me (my MUBI watchlist currently has ninety-two items on it), I think waiting six months to a year until interest is low is a good way of figuring out which movies I really want to watch. Although I missed Benedetta when it was in theatres, I'll still probably see it at some point because I'm a big Paul Verhoeven fan, whereas I have no strong interest in The Lost Daughter (even though my brother recommended it to me) as I have no strong investment in either Maggie Gyllenhaal, Olivia Colman, or Elena Ferrante--which is not to say that I might not change my mind later and decide to give it a whirl, depending on a range of variables (one of which is whether it's a movie people continue to talk about months or years after its release or whether it disappears into that vast memory hole where most Oscar hopefuls go to die).