Category: reviews
Consumption: 2023
I maintain this list every year, for fun and for reference. I don’t do a numbered ranking, but my #1-most-fun-I-had-at-the-movies award goes to GODZILLA MINUS ONE.
For films watched on video, standouts included the hallucinatory Korean film CURE and Lena Dunham’s delightful CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY. For more film favorites consult my top-5 list on Yelling About Movies—an ongoing YouTube series featuring me and 5 friends. The title of the show says it all.
On the TV series front, favorites at our house included Bad Sisters, The Bear, and, surprisingly enough, Derek, a decade-old sitcom starring Ricky Gervais that is set at a nursing home. Who would have thought?
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022, James Cameron)
Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023, Peyton Reid)
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3 (2023, James Gunn)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)
Princess Mononoke (1997, Hayao Miyazaki)
Barbie (2023, Greta Gerwig)
Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan)
Haunted Mansion (2023, Justin Simien)
The Holdovers (2023, Alexander Payne)
Godzilla Minus One (2023, Takashi Yamazaki)
Maestro (2023, Bradley Cooper)
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Love and Monsters (2022, Michael Matthews)
Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019, Alexandre O. Philippe)
I Love My Dad (2022, James Morosini)
Italianamerican (1974, Martin Scorsese)
By Design: The Joe Caroff Story (2022, Mark Cerulli)
The Automat (2021, Lisa Hurwitz)
Ronin (1998, John Frankenheimer)
Apocalypto (2006, Mel Gibson)
The Green Fog (2017, Guy Maddin & Evan & Galen Johnson)
Get Duked (2019, Ninian Doff)
Undergods (2020, Chino Moya)
Dogtooth (2009, Yorgos Lanthimos)
La Moustache (2005, Emmanuel Carrère)
Something in the Dirt (2022, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
Top Gun (1986, Tony Scott)
The Fabelmans (2022, Steven Spielberg)
Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells)
The Forgotten Battle (2020, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.)
Fury (2014, David Ayer)
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2023, Joel Crawford)
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008, Darren Lynn Bousman)
Keane (2005, Lodge Kerrigan)
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021, Jane Schoenbrun)
La Cérémonie (1995, Claude Chabrol)
The Piano Teacher (2001, Michael Haneke)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, Rupert Wyatt)
Eyes Without a Face (1960, Georges Franju)
Frank (2014, Lenny Abrahamson)
The Salton Sea (2002, D. J. Caruso)
One, Two, Three (1960, Billy Wilder)
Dive (2022, Lucía Puenzo)
World on a Wire (1973, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, Matt Reeves)
Sisu (2023, Jalmari Helander)
Being Mary Tyler Moore (2023, James Adolphus)
Call Me Kate (2022, Lorna Tucker)
Where’s Poppa? (1970, Carl Reiner)
White Heat (1949, Raoul Walsh)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller & George Ogilvy)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022, Daniel Goldhaber)
Week-end (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
Teorema (1968, Pier Peter Pasolini)
Next Door (Naboer) (2005, Pål Sletaune, Tony Spataro)
Proof (1991, Jocelyn Moorhouse)
Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017, Matt Reeves)
Used Cars (1980, Robert Zemeckis)
Beowulf (2007, Robert Zemeckis)
Le Cercle Rouge (1970, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Cure (1997, Kyoshi Kurosawa)
La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) (1969, Jacques Deray)
L’inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake) (2013, Alain Guiraudie)
Young Adam (2003, David Mackenzie)
Studio 54 (2018, Matt Tyrnauer)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujirō Ozu)
Skinamarink (2022, Kyle Edward Ball)
Iris (2014, Albert Maysles)
Goodnight Oppy (2022, Ryan White)
Killer Joe (2011, William Friedkin)
Bone Tomahawk (2015, S. Craig Zahler)
M (1931 Fritz Lang)
Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)
The Clone Returns Home (2008, Kanji Nakajima)
Bright Future (2002, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013, Daniel Patrick Carbone)
Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Tori and Lokita (2022, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, Monte Hellman)
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1971, Agnes Varda)
El Conde (2023, Pablo Larrain)
Return to Oz (1986, Walter Murch)
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969, Sidney Pollack)
Close (2022, Lukas Dhont)
Barbarian (2022, Zach Cregger)
Der Hauptmann (The Captain) (2018, Robert Schwenke)
1944 (2015, Elmo Nüganen)
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007, Sidney Lumet)
12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
Eight Men Out (1988, John Sayles)
Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis (2022, Anton Corbijn)
The Hired Hand (1971, Peter Fonda)
Catherine Called Birdy (2022, Lena Dunham)
The Terror Within (1989, Thierry Notz)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010, Jalmari Helander)
Don’t Bother to Knock (1952, Roy Ward Baker)
Blonde (2022, Andrew Dominik)
Teknolust (2002, Lynne Hershman-Leeson)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994, John Carpenter)
May December (2023, Todd Haynes)
Asteroid City (2023, Wes Anderson)
REWATCHES
Heaven Can Wait (1978, Buck Henry & Warren Beatty)
Deathtrap (1982, Sidney Lumet)
Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022, Cooper Raiff)
The Endless (2018, Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson)
Cape Fear (1991, Martin Scorsese)
Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish)
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958, Gene Fowler, Jr.)
Teenagers from Outer Space (1959, Tom Graeff)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, Joe Johnston)
The Rocketeer (1991, Joe Johnston)
Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas)
Shakespeare in Love (1998, John Madden)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1941, Maya Deren)
The Fall (2008, Tarsem Singh)
Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966, Gordon Flemyng)
Strange Days (1995, Kathryn Bigelow)
His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
The Worst Person in the World (2021, Joachim Trier)
Phase IV (1974, Saul Bass)
Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
The French Connection (1971, William Friedkin)
The Poseidon Adventure (1971, Ronald Neame)
Hauser’s Memory (1970, Boris Sagal)
Splice (2009, Vincenzo Natali)
Upgrade (2018, Leigh Whannell)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, Woody Allen)
Home For The Holidays (1995, Jodie Foster)
The Cooler (2003, Wayne Kramer)
Terror From the Year 5000 (1958, Robert Gurney Jr.)
Dredd (2020, Pete Travis)
TELEVISION
Bad Sisters
The Last of Us
Poker Face
Ted Lasso
Derek
Mrs. Davis
The Bear
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Welcome to Wrexham
Rampatrouille Orion (Space Patrol Orion)
Julia
BOOKS
White Noise (Don DeLillo)
CONCERTS
Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew (12/30, Warfield Theater, San Francisco)
*a footnote!
Consumption: 2021
In 2021, Year Two of the pandemic, I saw three movies in the theater. Pretty pathetic for someone who used to average one a week. But three movies is still three more than I managed to attend the year before. Not coincidentally, 2021 was also Year Two of Yelling About Movies, a.k.a. my social life on Zoom.
I never recommend anyone watch this film discussion podcast thing my friends and I do. Nevertheless, some of the titles below are linked to our Yelling About Movies discussion. You can’t say I didn’t warn you. A few titles, when clicked, instead take you to more info on the film: an iMDB page or whatnot. And then lots of them don’t do anything because I got lazy. But, linked or not, most of these titles are Yelling About Movies picks and if it is, a discussion can be found on YouTube. If you’re curious, here are all the videos.
In our year-end-wrapup show, each of us picked the best things we’d seen last year. You’ll see my favorites highlighted in the list below by an asterisk.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN (3)
Dune (2021)
The Velvet Underground
The Matrix Resurrections
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN (76)
Antarctica
Insomnia (1997)
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden
A Prophet*
Thirst
Another Round (Druk)*
WR: Mysteries Of The Organism
The Little Things
Come and See
Sound Of Metal
Hero (2002)
Targets
The Last Picture Show
Compliance
Burning
Eisenstein in Guanajuato
Buck
A Woman In Berlin
Hannah Arendt
Synchronic
One From The Heart
The Petite Charm Of The Bourgeoisie
Mikey And Nicky
Alphaville
Begotten
The Skin I Live In
Inherent Vice
Four Against The Bank
Stander
Asperger’s Are Us
The Big Sleep
A Ghost Story*
Oxygene
Blowout
The Bad and the Beautiful
All About Eve*
The Terminal Man
Alfie
The Mole Agent
Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion
Warlock
Grizzly 2: Revenge
Pumpkin
Irma Vep
The Flat
Der Lachende Mann (The Laughing Man)
The Baader-Meinhof Complex
Derek Delgaudio’s In and Of Itself*
The Sleepless
Barry Lyndon
Rebellion in Patagonia (La Patagonia Rebelde)
Odd Man Out
Blue Collar
Crawl
Before Sunset
Point Blank (1967)
The Yellow Sea
Coup de Grâce (1976)
Zardoz
The Brotherhood of the Wolf
The Haunting (1963)
Margaret (Extended Cut)
Introducing, Selma Blair
Morning Glory
Before Midnight
Thelma
Real Life
Beasts of No Nation
The Rules of the Game
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Enter the Dragon
Into The Inferno
Salesman
Encanto
Beast (2017)
REWATCHES (30)
The H-Man
Force Majeure
Miami Blues
Bohemian Rhapsody
Elle
Battleship Potemkin
Happy Go Lucky
Timecrimes
I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore
J.T.
Fish Tank
Henry Fool
Mulholland Drive
The Mother and the Whore
World of Tomorrow
In The Bedroom
The Wild Bunch
Sing Street
Narc
Before Sunrise
Paris, Texas
The Hidden
Sorry To Bother You
Kentucky Fried Movie
Uncut Gems
The Hurt Locker
Total Recall (1990)
TELEVISION
The Crown
Mom
Star Trek: Lower Decks
How To With John Wilson
Avenue 5
Resident Alien
Wandavision
Expecting Amy
Ghosts (UK version)
Debris
Ted Lasso
Bo Burnham: Inside
The Great
BOOKS (1)
Cessation by Michael DiBiasio-Ornelas
* Highly recommended!
Nine Tweets About LITTLE WOMEN
1. Greta Gerwig made a perfect thing. If I had actually written that “best-of 2019” list, right now I’d be flinging it dramatically into the flames.
2. LOVED the time-shifting storyline. Culminating with cross-cutting to the publisher during the happy ending which was *chef’s kiss* Also: the cinematography. I wanted to eat the beach scene with a spoon.
3. Seriously I’d be very happy to see it win Best Picture (it won’t) and Best Adapted Screenplay (it’d better).*
4. I think one reason I loved LITTLE WOMEN so much is that it is probably the only Best Pic nominee (of those I’ve seen) that is aspirational. Given the preoccupations of the other nominees, and our current real-world hellscape, it feels like a balm.
5. No one’s in danger of getting shot. No one wallows in dysfunction. The stakes are fulfillment/self-actualization vs. conforming and settling.
6. It’s full of kindnesses. Neighbors look out for each other. The lonely are befriended. Wrongs are forgiven. Kind gestures are reciprocated.
7. Even the ‘antagonist’ characters are just people with different opinions who are doing their best. And after blundering around and making mistakes, most of the characters end up where they ought to be.
8. I like movies that explore the stakes of the everyday. People trying to figure out how to live. (It’s why I’m so often on here evangelizing about HOLIDAY, one of my favorite films) And dammit, I like happy endings. So? Also I’m a big sissy and think everybody should be nice.
9. On that note, see also: A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. (Nice to see so much of Chris Cooper lately.)
*Nope. Taika got it for JOJO RABBIT. Which I haven’t seen. Not in protest, you understand. But since I didn’t see it, I won’t render an opinion here about how Greta obviously got robbed.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
Consumption: 2019
I make this list every year, for fun and as a reference. It only reflects things seen for the first time; “POLTERGEIST was on again” doesn’t make the list. There are plenty of 2019 releases I haven’t gotten to yet. Of the films I did see, here are some noteables:
THE LIGHTHOUSE brought the crazy. Dafoe, Pattinson and director David Eggers deliver absolutely everything one could ask for in a two-guys-go-nuts-in-a-lighthouse movie. Shot on vintage cameras in black-and-white in 1.55 AR Claustro-vision.
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD was my favorite Tarantino in a long time. 2018’s THE FAVOURITE was another, uh… favorite. Ditto for THE FAREWELL. Awkwafina, so good. Lulu Wang, so good. Most of PARASITE is watching grifters build a Jenga tower of lies and wondering when and how it’s gonna fall, and that = a good time at the movies! Meanwhile, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER was an imperfect end to an imperfect saga. I cried anyway.
What’s on TV? Well, I finally saw KLUTE. TCM, thank you. Jane Fonda, holy shit. They don’t make movies like this anymore; do they? Watching films from the 70s you realize how sanitized and smug most mainstream movies are now. We’re backsliding.
Also caught FIRST REFORMED on video. Paul Schrader’s still got the goods, and brings ’em. AT ETERNITY’S GATE features Willem Dafoe again, this time as Van Gogh. Heartbreaking and beautiful. In its own way, so was RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET… and it feels like this one kinda got overlooked. It’s endlessly clever, has great visuals, and an emotionally affecting core all about friendships and how they can change.
Marvel recently announced they will do a superhero movie centered on a gay character. But, they already have CAPTAIN MARVEL! I mean, come on…
If you like docs, TICKLED dives into the weird world of “competitive endurance tickling.” You’ll want to shower after. Also finally caught up with Berlinger and Sinofsky‘s 1992 doc BROTHER’S KEEPER – riveting. Highly recommended.
On the series side of things, I liked HBO’s “Dead to Me.” Great performances, and the first episode delivered not one but two A+ OMG moments. Held up throughout the season, too. Season 3 of “The Crown” introduced an entirely new cast without a hiccup. If I ever write anything as perfect and delightful as the last two scenes of episode 5 (“Coup”) I can hang up my mouse and die happy.
Adult Swim’s “Primal” was an amazing, totally dialogue-free animated series about a caveman and his dinosaur. The season (series?) finale may be the goriest thing I’ve ever seen on TV. “Undone” (Amazon) was another fine adult animated show. Come for the mind-bending premise and trippy visuals, stay for the writing and performances.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Mary Poppins Returns
Welcome to Marwen
The Favourite
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Vice
The Kid Who Would Be King – Every boy in this movie has chapped lips. England’s cold.
Ralph Breaks The Internet
Apollo 11
High Life – Infuriating “art movie.” Somebody explain to me why this wasn’t terrible.
Pill Head
Avengers: Endgame
Booksmart
Toy Story 4
Yesterday
Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood
The Farewell
Ad Astra
The Lighthouse
Parasite
Terminator: Dark Fate
Knives Out – My mom would have loved this movie. I loved it too.
Frozen 2
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Mary Poppins
Obvious Child
Avengers: Infinity War
First Reformed
Ant-Man and The Wasp
Eighth Grade
The First Monday In May
At Eternity’s Gate
Vox Lux
The Peanuts Movie
Blackboard Jungle
Victoria & Abdul
Lean On Pete
Where The Boys Are (1960)
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
Swim Team
The Invitation (2015)
Clouds Of Sils Marias
Miracle Mile
Spiderman: Homecoming
The General (1926)
Brother’s Keeper (1992)
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Wendy And Lucy
Late Night – Needed a rewrite
Captain Marvel
Klute
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Thunder Road
I Lost My Body
Marriage Story – Alan Alda, MVP
Rocketman – Bohemian Rhapsody ain’t brilliant, but still better than this mopey pity party
Tickled
Empire of Dreams
TELEVISION
Supergirl
Mom
The Orville
Russian Doll
Better Things
What We Do In The Shadows
Archer: 1999
Game of Thrones
Shrill
Dead To Me
Barry
The Great British Baking Show
The Good Place
Fleabag
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal
Undone
Bless This Mess
The Crown
Catastrophe
A Year In Space
Mike Birbiglia: The New One – Delivered to me my single biggest belly laugh of 2019
Rick and Morty
Encore
The Mandalorian
###
Consumption: 2017
I make this list every year, for fun and as a reference. As always, it only reflects things seen for the first time. “POLTERGEIST on TV, 14th viewing” doesn’t make the list. Nor do films not viewed in their entirety, for example, Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E, which got ejected from the Blu-Ray player after 15 minutes. I’d never seen Henry Cavill in anything before but he seems to emit some kind of anti-charisma particle.
I didn’t bother making a numbered best-of list this year. But if I had, LOGAN would be at the top. It’s perfect. Damn you James Mangold, for making me cry at your Wolverine movie.
Some of my other favorite releases of 2017 include THE BEGUILED, COCO, ATOMIC BLONDE, THOR: RAGANOK, and THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES. Of course, DUNKIRK was impressive – but cold, as is Christopher Nolan’s way. MOTHER! is a movie, alright. Darren Aronofsky swings for the fences. And whatever you think of the film, Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Pfieffer were very good. The BLADE RUNNER sequel was amazing, and very nearly great: only Jared Leto’s messianic super-villain seemed out of place, like a character from a different, dumber movie. THE LAST JEDI: wonderful, about 50% of the time. The compelling Rey/Kylo/Luke storyline almost makes up for how they couldn’t find anything interesting for Poe, Finn, or Rose to do. (Yeah I get that the casino plot is a critique of capitalism and arms dealers and yes intellectually that’s interesting for a Star Wars movie but dramatically it was a big bag of nothing and visually it looked cheap & reminded me of the prequels and like this sentence that movie is too long.)
Linked titles take you to my review, or more info on the film.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Manchester by the Sea
Elle
La-La Land
Logan
Get Out
Life
Pollyanna
Colossal
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (live from the Old Vic)*
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
Baby Driver
The Beguiled
Dunkirk
Atomic Blonde
Dave Made A Maze
Dawson City: Frozen Time
The Big Sick
mother!
Blade Runner 2049
Spoor (Pokot)
Suburbicon
Thor: Ragnarok
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Lady Bird
Coco (saw it January ’18)
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
The Jungle Book (2016)
The Nice Guys
Shadow of a Doubt
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
The Handmaiden
The Trip (Steve Coogan, not Dennis Hopper)
Back To The Future III
Eat Pray Love
The Meyerowitz Stories
Hidden Figures
Passengers
Bullitt
The Godfather (pretty good! why didn’t anyone tell me about this flick sooner?)
Personal Shopper
TELEVISION
Travelers
Westworld
Orphan Black
Modern Family
Incorporated
New Girl
The Good Place
The Expanse
Supergirl
Better Things
Game of Thrones
Girls
Mom
Downward Dog
I Love Dick
Odd Mom Out
The Orville
Star Trek: Discovery
POV: What Tomorrow Brings
Big Little Lies
Abstract: The Art of Design
BOOKS and OTHER READING
Other People’s Trades – Primo Levi
Broken Frontier (graphic novel) – Various
Lightspeed Magazine – Various
A whole bunch of screenplays
*I am calling this a movie. I saw it at a movie theater. Harry Potter guy was in it. It counts.
12 tweets about FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
- Caught FANTASTIC BEASTS & ETC over the weekend. Despite a few moments I liked, I’d still rate the experience as “mostly unpleasant”
- So, Eddie Redmayne. Is there a reason he played the lead as a creepy weirdo? Or, is he just a creepy weirdo?
- Also there’s a dour missionary-type char. who hands out anti-wizard leaflets & mistreats her pack of creepy orphans. Ick.
- Colin Farrell, villain, is trying to steal one orphan away for evil purposes. He meets him in dark alleys and hug & caresses him a lot. Ick.
- Colin’s big villain monologue: he doesn’t want magic to be a secret. As evil plans go, not super compelling. On his side, kinda
- In this universe it’s REALLY important regular people don’t learn magic people exist. Witnesses get mind-erased a la MEN IN BLACK…
- Nevertheless there’s a huge skyscraper full of wizards/magical stuff right in dwntwn NY. Sure hope nobody walks in looking for DMV or whatev
- Not a Potter fan so this went over my head but at the end SPOILER? Colin Farrell turns into Johnny Depp w/an Aryan Nation haircut.
- Look for him in the sequel, I guess
- I did like subplot lumpy bakery guy, who falls in love with cute floozy sister-wizard. Anytime I didn’t have to look at Redmayne = +.
- So. Much. CGI. This is virtually an animated film w live-action elements. Climax is an exhausting light-show of black clouds & lightning.
- Act 3: one vial of memory eraser (b)rain-washes all NYC. Wave a wand, devastated city reassembles. Ho-hum. Magic sure makes things easy.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
6 tweets about COLOSSAL
- Given COLOSSAL’s fun premise, the film that unfolds is not quite the romp you might expect.
- COLOSSAL puts Kaiju monsters & indie-film slackers into a genre blender. Like many smoothies the result is a bit lumpy & faintly sour
- The lumps: Characters poorly defined. Plot threads meander. Some end abruptly and add little. Even the monster origin story is half-baked.
- The sour: characters aren’t typical indiefilm losers. Not clever/charismatic enough. The range is more like “pathetic” to “pathological”
- Premise pulls you through the rough patches, even as COLOSSAL turns darker. One scene evokes mass carnage without showing a drop of blood.
- And as stakes rise, COLOSSAL rallies. The film deploys its cleverest notion near the end, delivering a satisfying resolution.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
6 tweets about LIFE (the movie, not the existential dilemma)
- LIFE is not a bad movie, but it’s a B-movie. #LIFEmovie #rental
- So yeah, if you liked the trailer that’s what the movie is. No more, no less.
- There IS a long, lovely single-take intro that’s maybe the best zero-g scene ever in a space movie
- There’s also a major action scene toward the end that just doesn’t work very well, IMO
- But there’s tension/suspense, gross-outs & scares. Things zip along in a 10-little-Indians way that can’t help but remind you of ALIEN.
- The ending (SPOILER!) reminded me of the ’70s when big studio pictures more often than not went “tails” at the end instead of “heads”
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
Consumption: 2016
I’ve kept an annual list of films, TV and books every year since 2014. This year I’m going to add a ranked list of my favorite films of 2016 as well. My list is better than all the other “top 10” lists, because… mine goes to eleven.
1. Hell Or High Water
2. Manchester By The Sea
3. Moonlight
4. Arrival
5. American Honey
6. Certain Women
7. Deadpool
8. Toni Erdmann
9. Don’t Think Twice
10. Zootopia
11. Moana
The above ranking obviously doesn’t include pictures I haven’t seen yet, and that’s a list of its own that includes THE HANDMAIDEN, SILENCE, SING STREET, PATERSON, HIDDEN FIGURES, FENCES, and JACKIE. I’m working on it.
Below is a complete list of everything I saw in 2016. As always, the list only reflects things seen for the very first time. If I came across JAWS or GROUNDHOG DAY or YOU’VE GOT MAIL already in progress on TV and sat there like a zombie through ’til the end, well, that’s not considered worthy of note. What is worthy of note: ZOOLANDER 2 is so very, very bad it makes you feel stupid for having liked the first one. THE LOBSTER is the other movie I regret having made the effort to go see in the theater. I’ll give it points for originality, I guess. Then I’ll take those points back for being a miserable, cruel, misbegotten thing.
Linked titles will take you to either my review or more information on a particular film.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Room
Hail, Caesar!
Anomalisa
Creed
Zoolander 2
Deadpool
My Name Is Doris
Don’t Think Twice
The Lobster
Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words
Star Trek Beyond
Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie
Pete’s Dragon (2016)
Hell Or High Water
Toni Erdmann
American Honey
Arrival
Certain Women
Moana
Moonlight
Rogue One
20th Century Women
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
What We Do In The Shadows
Spotlight
Amira & Sam
Today’s Special
Prisoners
Captain America: The First Avenger
Shaun The Sheep Movie
The Libeled Lady
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Amy
Jodorowsky’s Dune
Zootopia
Jack Reacher
Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels
The Visitor
Finding Dory
Sicario
Lassie Come Home
Chappie
The Shop Around The Corner
Swiss Army Man
TELEVISION
Orphan Black
Togetherness (RIP)
Archer
Modern Family
New Girl
Jessica Jones
The Expanse
Supergirl
The Mindy Project
Odd Mom Out
Moone Boy
Stranger Things
Mike Birbiglia: My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend
Better Things
The Good Place
Game of Thrones
Girls
Westworld
BOOKS and OTHER READING
Devotion – Dani Shapiro
60 or so screenplays for the Austin Film Festival competition
12 tweets about ZOOTOPIA
- Obviously ZOOTOPIA is allegory for race/crime issues that are very top-of-mind in America right now.
- Gutsy to take on this theme in a “kids’ movie.” If this film is even that.
- I squirmed during the confrontation after Judy’s speech; Nick (the fox) leaning in: “are you afraid of me?”
- If you haven’t seen it, here’s the scene. It’s kind of amazing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbbdW4wVo6o
- So yeah, prejudice… But, using animals to tell the story puts a whole ‘nother layer on ZOOTOPIA, doesn’t it?
- Just kind of astonishing seeing a Disney movie using talking animals to take on nature red in tooth and claw.
- Here’s a global media empire built largely on drawing cute animals that act like people. Imagery so commonplace in our culture we hardly think about it.
- And now they make a movie that says, “think about it.”
- “Think how we sentimentalize animals, and how that insulates us from the natural world.”
- “Also: think about what they eat. And what you eat.”
- Apparently everyone in ZOOTOPIA lives on berries, ice cream, and donuts. There must be a lot of hungry, malnourished lions and bears there.
- ZOOTOPIA doesn’t address the topic of vegetarianism overtly. in fact, they carefully avoid the issue. But it’s there.
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