Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Movie-mber Edition

[kihei]

Sight and Sound's list hot off the press

What Does Sight & Sound Consider to Be the 50 Best Films of 2020?

I likes it. My top three are at 3, 6. and 7. respectively. (First Cow, Dick Johnson Is Dead, and Never, Rarely, Sometiimes, Always)

 

[Osprey]

Holiday Inn (1942) - 8/10 (Loved it)

A crooner (Bing Crosby) opens a rural inn in Connecticut that performs holiday-themed song and dance shows, but must contend with his former stage partner (Fred Astaire) trying to steal his love interest... for the second time. It's a fun love triangle with Bing as the nice guy, Fred as his womanizing "friend" and Marjorie Reynolds as the one caught between them. It's very much a musical that's packed with catchy song and dance numbers, including "White Christmas," which was written for and first performed in this film. It begins and ends at Christmas, so it's enough to make it a Christmas classic, but it also hits on many other holidays throughout the year, like Valentine's Day and the 4th of July. Speaking of which, half of the celebrated holidays are American, so non-Americans may get slightly less out of it. The plot is thin and exists largely to connect the holidays and the songs and dances, but it's easy to follow and is fun. It's one of my favorite musicals and favorite holiday films.

 

[kihei]

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (2020) Directed by Steve McQueen 8A

I have never felt so white watching a movie about black people than I did with Lovers Rock, a movie about young courtship in the British-Jamaican community in London. It is like I got invited to a party and, by accident, walked into the wrong apartment and entered a party all right but one where I didn't belong. And I am stuck there for 7/8s of the movie trying to navigate a culture that seems very foreign, a culture where I don't know the patois, and where the mating rituals seem decidedly different. Everything seems vaguely threatening until I notice that the young men and young women at the party are navigating these seemingly turbulent waters just fine. It's me; I'm the one that suddenly feels out of place and self-conscious. I think this is no accident. For the portion of director Steve McQueen's audience who is white, that sense of being the "other" and seeing what it feels like is very much a big part of why his movie provides the experience that it does. And then there is the last 1/8 of the movie where McQueen flips this dynamic on its head like it was the easiest thing in the world to do: The only white character in the movie with speaking lines says a few words to a black character and the balance of power shifts, embarrassingly, cringingly, to the dominant white culture again. Just like that a familiar social balance is restored---and it feels awful, a violation, a degradation. Man, I'll say one thing for McQueen, he sure knows how to make a point.

subtitles not absolutely necessary, but they come in handy sometimes

Prime Video

Best of 2020 so far

1) First Cow, Reichardt, US
2) Lovers Rock, McQueen, UK
3) Dick Johnson Is Dead, Johnson, US
4) Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Hittman, US
5) Swallow, Mirabella-Davis, US
6) His House, Weekes, UK
7) Corpus Christi, Komasa, Poland
8) Da 5 Bloods, Lee, US
9) Beanpole, Balagov, Russia
10) Relic, James, Australia

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Small Axe: Lovers Rock (2020) Directed by Steve McQueen 8A

I have never felt so white watching a movie about black people than I did with Lovers Rock, a movie about young courtship in the British-Jamaican community in London. It is like I got invited to a party and, by accident, walked into the wrong apartment and entered a party all right but one where I didn't belong. And I am stuck there for 7/8s of the movie trying to navigate a culture that seems very foreign, a culture where I don't know the patois, and where the mating rituals seem decidedly different. Everything seems vaguely threatening until I notice that the young men and young women at the party are navigating these seemingly turbulent waters just fine. It's me; I'm the one that suddenly feels out of place and self-conscious. I think this is no accident. For the portion of director Steve McQueen's audience who is white, that sense of being the "other" and seeing what it feels like is very much a big part of why his movie provides the experience that it does. And then there is the last 1/8 of the movie where McQueen flips this dynamic on its head like it was the easiest thing in the world to do: The only white character in the movie with speaking lines says a few words to a black character and the balance of power shifts, embarrassingly, cringingly, to the dominant white culture again. Just like that a familiar social balance is restored---and it feels awful, a violation, a degradation. Man, I'll say one thing for McQueen, he sure knows how to make a point.

subtitles not necessary, but they come in handy sometimes

One of the dance moments in this is among the most intimate, sexiest fully clothed scenes I've seen filmed.

 

[Franck]

Now I just got a reminder that the Swedish version of Prime Video is absolute rubbish, they don't even bother adding their own original content to the service.

 

[kihei]

Small Axe: Mangrove (2020) Directed by Steve McQueen 7A

With the exception of Wives, which hardly anybody saw, Mangrove is the most conventional movie British director Steve McQueen has made. Compared to the slyly subtle Lovers Rock, Mangrove takes a very direct, head-on approach to dealing with its important story about systemic racism in Noting Hill, London in the '60s and '70s. After about an hour presenting the dimensions of the problem, focusing primarily on a racist cop and police force terrorizing a restaurant owner, McQueen creates a stirring courtroom melodrama with, for good or ill, all the expected cliches and familiar beats that are usually associated with such works. Mangrove is the first film in McQueen's Small Axe, a five part mini-series about racism in British-Carribean neighbourhoods in England, and I think its placement as the first film in the series sheds light on why McQueen takes such a direct approach. I believe McQueen wants to get the series off to a good start in a way that is easy to follow and understand; in short, in a way, that is entertaining and might catch the attention of a broad audience. This is difficult to do with a story so distressing as the one we have here. When the term "systemic racism" is used, often people's eyes glaze over. It's a term that can become abstract very quickly and disregarded as mere agitprop--a term that is easy to repeat without actually thinking about how lives are ruined or destroyed by racism's inherent emotional and physical violence. Turning an important, fact-based story about the grisly particulars of systemic racism into a conventional courtroom drama places the issue in a familiar framework that makes the scenes that McQueen constructs more easily digestible to a wider audience. The familiarity of the form is the sugar that allows the brutality of the subject matter to become palatable to a broad audience. At least, that's my theory. It's powerful stuff, though.

subtitles useful

Prime Video


Best of 2020 so far

1) First Cow, Reichardt, US
2) Lovers Rock, McQueen, UK
3) Dick Johnson Is Dead, Johnson, US
4) Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Hittman, US
5) Swallow, Mirabella-Davis, US
6) His House, Weekes, UK
7) Corpus Christi, Komasa, Poland
8) Mangrove, McQueen, UK
9) Da 5 Bloods, Lee, US
10) Relic, James, Australia

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015) - On its own, I guess it'd be a decent film. The constant reminders, from the droid getting away with the message to the ultimate death star, that this is an unavowed remake of the original are deterring to most enjoyment or enthousiasm. 4/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017) - Didn't enjoy it as much as I did in its theater run. The first hour is pretty boring and has some of the less cohesive material of the whole series (and the undead Leia rivals with its most stupid stuff). It's still the most interesting film of the bunch. I'm no fan of Rian Johnson, and I have no idea what his intentions were, but he clearly shows he's a better filmmaker than everyone who touched the material before him. Very subtle reflexive elements (the sudden break to silence, the sudden switch to voice-over narration*) point to the film's crafting as a discourse, of which the white threads are shown and dismantled. Heroes are shown to be flawed and often flat-out wrong, expectations are built and dropped unsatisfied, the whole thing is an introduction to relativism, sometimes a little obvious (Benicio Del Toro's character is mostly there to explain the film), but always kind of rewarding (the three versions of the Luke/young Ben confrontation being the high point of the film). 5/10

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2019) - I guess they just didn't know where to go from The Last Jedi, the whole thing is a mess and makes very little sense. Rey's parents being nobodies was one of the great many things Johnson did: killing the dumb and childish expectation, typical to Star Wars, that she'd be a Skywalker, like there's only one family in that galaxy. So let's make her not only a Palpatine, but a Skywalker too (if only through adoption at the end). 2.5/10


*edit: Oh and about The Last Jedi's reflexivity, forgot to mention the parody of the parody with the Hardware Wars bit, I don't know how Johnson got that through, but it was amazing.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Abrams, 2015) - On its own, I guess it'd be a decent film. The constant reminders, from the droid getting away with the message to the ultimate death star, that this is an unavowed remake of the original are deterring to most enjoyment or enthousiasm. 4/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Johnson, 2017) - Didn't enjoy it as much as I did in its theater run. The first hour is pretty boring and has some of the less cohesive material of the whole series (and the undead Leia rivals with its most stupid stuff). It's still the most interesting film of the bunch. I'm no fan of Rian Johnson, and I have no idea what his intentions were, but he clearly shows he's a better filmmaker than everyone who touched the material before him. Very subtle reflexive elements (the sudden break to silence, the sudden switch to voice-over narration) point to the film's crafting as a discourse, of which the white threads are shown and dismantled. Heroes are shown to be flawed and often flat-out wrong, expectations are built and dropped unsatisfied, the whole thing is an introduction to relativism, sometimes a little obvious (Benicio Del Toro's character is mostly there to explain the film), but always kind of rewarding (the three versions of the Luke/young Ben confrontation being the high point of the film). 5/10

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Abrams, 2019) - I guess they just didn't know where to go from The Last Jedi, the whole thing is a mess and makes very little sense. Rey's parents being nobodies was one of the great many things Johnson did: killing the dumb and childish expectation, typical to Star Wars, that she'd be a Skywalker, like there's only one family in that galaxy. So let's make her not only a Palpatine, but a Skywalker too (if only through adoption at the end). 2.5/10

I was (and still am) ok with the fact that TWA basically runs back the original movie. I would have preferred something more original but at the time and still today, I think it kinda resets things nicely. It's a reminder of the series' most basic, core charms. Undoubtedly derivative, but pleasing nonetheless. You're going to laugh, but I almost think it's clever for doing that.

Of course it becomes painfully obvious in the next two movies that certain people are deathly afraid of any new ideas or challenges to old ideas and the only counter move they could come up with was to again just run back some rehashed, generic BS. And they couldn't even execute that well! It might be one of the deadest horses to beat on this website, but my god does TROS suck so bad. I can't even imagine myself going back to give that movie another chance.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I was (and still am) ok with the fact that TWA basically runs back the original movie. I would have preferred something more original but at the time and still today, I think it kinda resets things nicely. It's a reminder of the series' most basic, core charms. Undoubtedly derivative, but pleasing nonetheless. You're going to laugh, but I almost think it's clever for doing that.

Of course it becomes painfully obvious in the next two movies that certain people are deathly afraid of any new ideas or challenges to old ideas and the only counter move they could come up with was to again just run back some rehashed, generic BS. And they couldn't even execute that well! It might be one of the deadest horses to beat on this website, but my god does TROS suck so bad. I can't even imagine myself going back to give that movie another chance.

I don't think it's laughable at all and it makes sense and might have been kind of the plan. As for the rest, well, for my defense, my gf offered me Disney+ and I'm trying really hard to find some value in it. The SW films were still more fun than the Mighty Ducks ones.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I don't think it's laughable at all and it makes sense and might have been kind of the plan. As for the rest, well, for my defense, my gf offered me Disney+ and I'm trying really hard to find some value in it. The SW films were still more fun than the Mighty Ducks ones.

I'm a defender of The Last Jedi and agree wholeheartedly with your assertion that Rian Johnson is the best director to ever do a Star Wars movie. It's really not much of a competition, but he runs away with it. Not everything works, but I do like a lot of what's there and what could have followed ... but the added bummer of TROS is that it also manages to now ruin TLJ. Hard not to separate those two movies, at least in my mind.

Now go watch The Black Hole!!!

 

[NyQuil]

Of course it becomes painfully obvious in the next two movies that certain people are deathly afraid of any new ideas or challenges to old ideas and the only counter move they could come up with was to again just run back some rehashed, generic BS. And they couldn't even execute that well! It might be one of the deadest horses to beat on this website, but my god does TROS suck so bad. I can't even imagine myself going back to give that movie another chance.

I get irritated at the suggestion that negative reviews for the 2nd film are solely the result of an inability to accommodate change, or challenge your beliefs, or some kind of deep seated resentment against non-traditional and minority characters.

It's just a bad movie. That's all. It's not very good.

I like Rey, I like Rose, I like Finn, I don't have any problems with the characters they invented.

I have an issue with the bizarre fuel chase and Leia flying through space, and Poe's absurd mutiny because of a secret plan that had no reason to be secret, and a pointless Casino planet and a villain (Snoke) that we know nothing about before he is offed without any real fanfare or understanding.

There are a few solid moments (like Luke's send-off) but ultimately I found that they were relatively few and far between. I liked Kylo and Rey's interactions throughout the film.

You get the sense that Rian just wants to wipe the slate clean of anything that came before him, and put his own stamp on the franchise, which is fine if you're not doing the second movie of a trilogy.

And Rise of Skywalker wasn't very good either. Personally, I blame TLJ for painting Rise of Skywalker into a corner that the franchise was clearly not happy with, but the corrective surgery just caused the whole house of cards to fall apart.

Everything about RoS just came out of nowhere.

Finn is a side character all of a sudden, a giant fleet of planet killing spaceships is assembled on a single planet (with crews presumably) without anyone knowing about it. Palpatine was behind it all along despite not one hint or clue as to that fact in the previous two films. They erase C-3POs personality without even blinking even as they mourn Chewbacca. Somehow they wrangle the entire galaxy's stock of ships in a few hours and bring them to bear.

Rian killed the big villain and supplanted him with Kylo, but without another villain, there's no redemption arc for the pretty Sith. So time to bring back the guy that Darth Vader heroically defeated. Wait, he didn't!?! He's still alive (surviving being dropped down a well and exploding) so I guess Anakin's redemption arc fell a bit short.

I did like the scene showing Leia and Luke training together which answered the question as to why Leia didn't have a lightsaber. I also liked the references to past Jedi - they did a decent job with the voice-overs for that part.

Lost in all of the identity politics and the finger pointing and the neckbeards and snowflakes and accusing everyone of hate are a trilogy of generally uninspiring movies.

The Mandalorian is like a huge splinter in the finger that is the Star Wars sequel trilogy in that it shows how effortlessly you can make a Star Wars story look that is appealing while not trying to one-up whatever came before it.

I'm a defender of The Last Jedi and agree wholeheartedly with your assertion that Rian Johnson is the best director to ever do a Star Wars movie. It's really not much of a competition, but he runs away with it.

It's pretty clearly Irvin Kirshner IMO, as far as SW films are concerned.

As far as Rian’s entire catalogue, you have a point.

 

[NyQuil]

Now go watch The Black Hole!!!

Watched it as a kid.

Not a kid's movie.

 

[Osprey]

Watched it as a kid.

Not a kid's movie.

That describes most of the movies from our youth. I struggle to think of a single kid-appropriate movie that was made from 1975 to 1985...

The Secret of NIMH? Nope.
The Hobbit? Nope.
The Dark Crystal? No.
Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain? No.
Disney's The Black Cauldron? No.
Disney's The Watcher in the Woods? No!
The Last Unicorn? No!
Watership Down? No No NO!

So many nightmares. So many scars.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Watched it as a kid.

Not a kid's movie.

Definitely not. But I watched it as a kid and liked it ... went back to it as an adult and was like "WHOAAAA why did my parents let me watch this????"

I still like it but for different reasons.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

I get irritated at the suggestion that negative reviews for the 2nd film are solely the result of an inability to accommodate change, or challenge your beliefs, or some kind of deep seated resentment against non-traditional and minority characters.

It's just a bad movie. That's all. It's not very good.

.....

The Mandalorian is like a huge splinter in the finger that is the Star Wars sequel trilogy in that it shows how effortlessly you can make a Star Wars story look that is appealing while not trying to one-up whatever came before it.

Totally fair on the first point. The discourse certainly ... flattened ... on TLJ and I'm playing right into that there. Actually agree with some of your criticisms.

Spot on with The Mandalorian.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

I'm a defender of The Last Jedi and agree wholeheartedly with your assertion that Rian Johnson is the best director to ever do a Star Wars movie. It's really not much of a competition, but he runs away with it. Not everything works, but I do like a lot of what's there and what could have followed ... but the added bummer of TROS is that it also manages to now ruin TLJ. Hard not to separate those two movies, at least in my mind.

Now go watch The Black Hole!!!

I'm glad I found a defender of The Last Jedi, I was accused of trolling the nerds when I said it was top-2 for me in the SW films.

The Black Hole? Never heard of it.

Watched it as a kid.

Not a kid's movie.

Ok, I'll watch it.

I get irritated at the suggestion that negative reviews for the 2nd film are solely the result of an inability to accommodate change, or challenge your beliefs, or some kind of deep seated resentment against non-traditional and minority characters.

I didn't follow the reactions to the films when they came out, didn't care, but if you have a look at the thread here, there's a lot of "inability" to cope with variations to the main/common SW narrative, especially regarding Luke's failure.

It's just a bad movie. That's all. It's not very good.

I won't disagree with that. It's a pretty dumb film. It's still more interesting and certainly more complex, as a film, than anything else SW related.

I have an issue with the bizarre fuel chase and Leia flying through space, and Poe's absurd mutiny because of a secret plan that had no reason to be secret, and a pointless Casino planet and a villain (Snoke) that we know nothing about before he is offed without any real fanfare or understanding.

[...]

Rian killed the big villain and supplanted him with Kylo, but without another villain, there's no redemption arc for the pretty Sith.

A lot of what you dislike of The Last Hope is what makes it IMO a far more interesting narrative than the other films of the series. The "absurd" or "pointless" or the lack of "fanfare", to me it's all pretty much saying: "things don't go as they normally would have gone in that type of films" - and that's all part of what makes it (somewhat) interesting. Rian offed the "big villain" and supplanted him with characters that were more nuanced and that could have got away from the light/dark dichotomy that makes these films so dumb. Someone said something about "grey jedis", I have no idea what it really refers to, but that was what the third film should have been about. The door was wide open to do something different that could have worked.

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Oh and The Mandalorian is fun, but- IMO - it ain't really good. Last episode was cool but it's still way too close to The Littlest Hobo (with great production values) for my tastes.

 

[NyQuil]

Oh and The Mandalorian is fun, but- IMO - it ain't really good. Last episode was cool but it's still way too close to The Littlest Hobo (with great production values) for my tastes.

I actually likened it to that as well, nice reference, but also shows like the Fugitive, Have Gun, Will Travel or the Incredible Hulk.

I think that is part of the nostalgia factor.

 

[NyQuil]

Definitely not. But I watched it as a kid and liked it ... went back to it as an adult and was like "WHOAAAA why did my parents let me watch this????"

I still like it but for different reasons.

I had the storybook with tape for this movie as well, where you would turn the page when it made the sound.

Needless to say, the hellscape scene is missing.

 

[NyQuil]

That describes most of the movies from our youth. I struggle to think of a single kid-appropriate movie that was made from 1975 to 1985...

The Secret of NIMH? Nope.
The Hobbit? Nope.
The Dark Crystal? No.
Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain? No.
Disney's The Black Cauldron? No.
Disney's The Watcher in the Woods? No!
The Last Unicorn? No!
Watership Down? No No NO!

So many nightmares. So many scars.

Great list.

Another one is Light Years which is an animated tale that is brutally depressing and probably not for kids but my Mom, bless her heart, couldn’t tell so she rented it and brought it home for me anyway. Apparently it was called Gandahar in the original French.

Wizards by Ralph Bakshi is another adult animated film that snuck through probably earlier than it should have.

 

[Osprey]

Miracle on 34th Street (1947) - 8/10 (Loved it)

An old man who systematically seduces little children by inviting them onto his lap, putting his arm around them and promising them gifts is persecuted by parents who are jealous that he's more popular with them than they are. Edmund Gwenn won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his accurate portrayal. Maureen O'Hara won nothing for playing a Macy's event director responsible for hiring a person literally off of the street to be around kids without even doing a background check first. A very young and sassy Natalie Wood plays her daughter and the biggest skeptic, yet even she can't resist falling victim to his charms. In fact, in the end, everyone in town is converted and the old man consequently escapes justice and skips town to no doubt try again with a new, unsuspecting community. The story was remade in 1994, but, to me, you can't beat the original war on Christmas classic.

 

[kihei]

Small Axe: Red, White and Blue (2020) Directed by Steve McQueen 6A

With its recruitment drive for minorities, the London Police Force seems to be finally addressing its racism problems. Despite the disapproval of his father, who has suffered abuse at the hands of the police and has become permanently embittered as a result, Leroy Logan (John Boyega) decides to become a beat cop, giving up an academic career in the forensic sciences to do so (for reasons that never seem entirely convincing). He is fueled by an idealism that leads him to believe he can make a difference and become a force for good in the community and in police culture, too. But racist attitudes haven’t changed so much as shapeshifted themselves into the new era. In the end, Leroy’s despair differs little from his father’s. Despite an excellent performance by Boyega, a surprise after his bland work in other movies, Red, White and Blue feels more ordinary than Mangrove and Lovers Rock, the first two installments in director Steve McQueen’s Small Axe mini-series. Part of the reason is that sadly the narrative is an all too familiar one, a racist institution dashes the hopes of an “outsider” who tries to enter its gates. That being said, Red, White and Blue certainly fits in thematically with the purposeful nature of Small Axe.

Sidenote: Why Small Axe for a series title? Pretty clearly it is a direct reference to a Bob Marley song with the same title: “If you are the big tree, we are the small axe, sharpened to cut you down, ready to cut you down.”

subtitles helpful

Prime Video

 

[Pranzo Oltranzista]

Oh and about The Last Jedi's reflexivity, forgot to mention the parody of the parody with the Hardware Wars bit, I don't know how Johnson got that through, but it was amazing.

 

[Pink Mist]

Fando y Lis (1968) directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

This film caused actual riots in Mexico City when it premiered in 1968 due to its blasphemous nature, and while I didn’t resort to violence, I’m certainly angry with how much of a waste of time this film is. Some individually interesting/fun moments, but mostly just a hodgepodge of self-indulgent and self-serious stoned surrealist images akin to walking through a bad dream.

 

[deadinthewater]

Sound of Metal (2020) - Best film of the year, IMO. I am hoping Ahmed gets some recognition. He was fantastic in this.