Finally got around to seeing Belfast. The story arc is a little shallow, but it kept my interest all the way through. One thing though: My lifetime recommended dosage of Van Morrison has been exceeded and I will be careful to limit my exposure from here on out.
OK, so I looked at the last 20 winners or so and I would say movies that could possibly have been the best of their year were:
Parasite - 2020
Return of the King - 2004
Certainly no others the last twenty years were the year’s best movie. I would say Parasite probably was for 2020. Maybe? It was a weak year and despite Parasite being a good movie, it isn’t something I think about all that much.
Return of the King, however, was the best movie of 2003.
I just looked at all the Best Picture winners from 1972 to 2020. I think that five of those would be my personal choices for the best film of the year. None of my five are the same as your two. I think this proves nothing. There is no such thing as a completely objective standard for achievement in any artistic field. That doesn’t mean that there are no tendencies for the choice of one person who has experienced a lot of examples of that art form to be have some correlation with the choice of another person with a lot of experience in it. Art is not science, nor is it random. That’s why when I’m trying to decide what films (or books or music or paintings or plays, etc.) I will experience next I don’t rely on the recommendations of a single person or organization. I try to get as many viewpoints as I can about what to experience next. Having experienced it, I form my own opinion. I make no pretense that my opinion is any better than anyone else’s with some experience with that art form. If someone asks me why they should see a movie or read a book (or any other such art form) and why my opinion counts more than anyone else’s, I say that I have seen X many movies or Y many books, but that doesn’t make me necessarily a better recommender than anyone else.
I’ve read a bunch of think pieces in the last week or so, bemoaning the state of the movies and the Oscars. The consensus seems to be that the combination of Marvel and streaming has killed the movie-going experience, the movie-making experience, and as an after-effect, the Oscars.
Movie-going has entirely been taken over by CGI-driven superhero movies. Everything else has been pushed to streaming services, primarily low-budget, “artsy” and/or foreign language, less-accessible fare. Given the choice between the 2 categories, the Oscar goes with the latter. Nobody cares, so nobody watches. The Academy keeps tweaking the format trying to drive interest, but it’s just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (ironically, the last time there was a huge audience for the broadcast.)
And the middle ground – movies for grown-ups, accessible, plot-driven, no CGI, big name stars – are not being made any more.
Which is too bad as I for one am looking to see movies for grownups.
Dad and I just got back from seeing The Batman. I loved it. This is the best Batman movie I’ve seen yet.
The Michael Keaton Batman was novel so at the time, I was smitten, but in hindsight, I cannot watch that movie. I’m embarrassed for Jack Nicholson mostly. The sequels sucked balls. Then we suffered through Val Kilmer and George Clooney and while I like those moves fine for what they are - schlocky little affairs you can blow a dull afternoon on - they are basically horribly done movies.
Then we got Christian Bale and his “I just gargled a quart of Tequila” Batman voice and his ridiculous looking chipmunk cheeks cowl. Sure, Heath Ledger was fantastic as The Joker, but again, mostly I just thought the sequels were just as shitty as the first one. Sorry, I just never really got into that version of the style of Batman. I don’t know why it rubs me the wrong way but … I blame it on Christian Bale.
I have no hard and fast loyalties to Robert Pattinson, in fact, I think this may be the first movie I’ve ever seen him in and I thought he friggin’ nailed it. For the first time the actor did a better job as Batman than as Bruce Wayne. Very noire, no cartoony foolishness, very well done how they got all the main bad guys and deep background characters in on the deal with gritty realism. Three hours long but that was fine with me.
Obvious sequel is set up and I’ll see it.
A few weeks ago we wanted to see Belfast in a theater. In the entire Bay Area it was showing on one screen in the middle of the afternoon-- every other screen in every other theater* was showing Spider Man.
*ok, a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
I’ve found that the grownup movies have a short window in the theaters.
I did the same, and came up with four. Some of them were close calls over other nominees, and in some years, mind you, I never saw the Best Picture winner:
Gladiator (2000)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Slumdog Millionaire (2008)
The King’s Speech (2010)
As always, of course, to each their own.
Over the weekend my husband and I streamed two movies: a musical comedy called Barb and Star Visit Vista Del Mar (or at least it was a comedy with several song and dance numbers) and The Conductor, a documentary about Marin Alsop, the conductor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
I have never seen two such different movies back to back. Both of them were very good.
Maybe that’s because Belfast opened in theaters last November…
Oooh - which platform is that on?
XX (Prime, Hulu) and collection of 4 unrelated 20 minute horror movies written and directed by women. Meh. The Box was a cool idea, but felt unfinished. The Birthday Party was bizarre, and they were trying something different which is cool but again it felt unfinished. Don’t Fall a classic slasher flick, pretty good special effects on a tight budget. Her Only Living Son incredibly predictable. I’d say solid pass.
Mr. Right (Netflix) I like Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell, but their chemistry and personality were not enough to distract me from this being a complete rip off of Grosse Point Blank. My wife liked it, I suspect because she has never seen GPB, but she agree to watch the better version tomorrow.
A once-popular genre that seems to have largely disappeared is the Romantic Comedy, the “When Harry Met Sally” type of film that was often promoted as a “date movie.” In fact, it seems like Hollywood isn’t making many comedies of any type nowadays, romantic or otherwise. Sure, there may be a few exceptions here and there, but if there’s ever a time in which we need laughter, it’s now.
We watched “The Adam Project.” It’s enjoyable fluff, forgettable after one viewing. That might be considered a comedy of sorts, but it’s more of a time-travel science fiction flick with a few smart-alecky lines thrown in.
Always Be My Maybe was a good one from recent years and one of the best movies of the year it came out.
I watched it on Great Performances for free, but it’s also on Amazon Prime, iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu. Important: This is the 2021 documentary, not the 2018 film, which is a movie from the Netherlands set in the 1920’s and is also available on Amazon Prime.
I started watching The Trial (1962) a few days ago. It was directed by Orson Welles.
I think it’s one of those movies shown in film schools: excellent acting, excellent and innovative photography, excellent direction, etc. It checks all the boxes for being a “great” film. But for me it just wasn’t… entertaining, or interesting. And every time Anthony Perkins was on screen my mind said, “That’s Anthony Perkins.” I ejected the Blu-ray about halfway through.
I am now watching a 1931 film by Fritz Lang called M. So far it’s pretty good. I’ll let you know how it goes.
What platform is The Conductor on?
For Harry Potter it’s 9 3/4
Ok. This is OT, but it’s Movies, so I’ll go for it.
It’s not really 9 3/4. I can confirm as I sat regularly on the Kings Cross to Cambridge train every Monday morning for a year, on Platform 9, looking at the train in the way of Platform 10. It’s in the middle of the tracks.
There’s a HP tourist thing at Kings Cross, (of course there is, there’s a shop in every city in the UK and lots in the US about HP), but this thing which has queues all day till nearly 10pm, is a chopped off luggage trolley, someone with a camera, and a long scarf. People get their photos taken for 20 quid (I think) all day and night. This is at the ticket offices, but if you want the location, it’s kind of between 8 and 9. And it faces across the tracks.
The films choose to place it at one of the pillars either between 2-3 or 3-4. There are few. Bit thin, but would do from some angles. Behind ticket barriers and on the platforms, so impractical to have hundreds of people queued all day and night.
Apparently originally JKR, who is from Edinburgh, the city where the trains go to via Kings Cross railway station, got it wrong, and was thinking of Euston (where the trains go to Glasgow), which has more thicker pillars, and probably one between 9 and 10 (not been there on that platform for a few years and its probably torn up for the High Speed 2 railway line being built).
I saw that sometime ago. I thought it was great. It has been nominated as the smokiest movie in the history of movies. And smoke.