Things we watch in the cinema or on tape, DVD, and streaming
Nothing. I may have only seen a handful of films in theaters before the Rona hit. I haven’t been back. I’m too scared.
Going to movie theaters was a fun thing for me. The fact that I haven’t been back in a while, that I don’t know if I’ll ever go back, and that they may all disappear is just another of those things that 2020 has robbed us of.
The best film of 2020? I don’t think I have the heart to muster up such a sad, sad list.
Bill & Ted Face the Music is the first movie that I have seen in a long while. I did not see it at the movie theater. I paid to watch it at home.
Paying for first run movies this way is going to be the wave of the future. We’ll never go back to sitting in the dark with a couple dozen strangers staring at the large silver screen. Who wants to laugh and then inhale someone else’s COVID-19? Sadly, I would as I think the experience of watching it at home on my television diminished the awe. It was literally watching television and not a film.
So the third installment finds Bill and Ted needing to write that hit song that would unite the world. They had spent 20 years not writing it. They thought they had, but it wasn’t it, so we got the sequel to the sequel. Again some time traveling hi-jinks ensue. Add in their daughters and more historical dudes and the phone booth, which is very anachronistic nowadays, and you have a righteous romp back to simpler days.
The film very much would like to make these troubling times better. It wants us to feel that we can overcome these roadblocks. It was written for us to have fun in the days of Trump, but now after it was delayed, it was written for us to smile in the Covid-19 Days. That’s what I felt. Some happiness to spend time with some characters that I sort of been attached to for most of my life. I need it. We need it. Bill and Ted make it happen.
3 of 5 stars.
Toshiro Mifune would’ve been 100 years ago today. You can celebrate his legacy by catching a few of his films which TCM (Turner Classic Movies) will be showing all day. I think you should because you’re definitely stuck home because of the rona.
And if you don’t want to watch them all, I suggest Seven Samurai in prime time. Then stay up late to finish off the rest of his samurai epics!
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1565927|0/Toshiro-Mifune-100th-Birthday-Tribute-4-1.html
1917 is not just a year, but a movie that competed for Best Picture at the 2020 Oscars… It didn’t win.
But that shouldn’t stop you from watching this film. It’s not the best and it does have some problems, like the fact that it is trying to be one continuous take which is an artifice that is distracting, but it is rather entertaining.
3 of 5 stars.
Bad Boys for Life was missing the Micheal Bey. The swirling cameras. The spinning shots. The larger than life poses. I wanted Beyham to remind me, “Bad boys for life!”
This film is trying hard to become like the Fast and the Furious films. It’s trying to pivot to being a franchise. It introduced a back story which was ridiculous. It filled in the past 20 years with stories and characters that look interesting but. And it gave us one of the most outrageous twists I have seen in films since… Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. No not a child of Palpatine, but something equally dumb. It’s also set up for a sequel which I guess continues the franchise, but what a nutty premise to get to the end and to start again.
Hopefully, Beyham returns.
3 of 5 stars.
Weathering With You is Makoto Shinkai respectable followup to his fantastic, world-wide hit, Your Name. It also follows the template to much of his work: star-crossed lovers, separated by a distance, eager to realize the fate that was meant to be. Sometimes it adheres to it too much as this one really just reminded me of the previous film. His style could be a blessing or a curse. I found it rather pleasant and kind of wish for more.
Weathering With You is about a ‘weather girl,’ a girl that can control the weather. In this instance, rain. In the Japan of the film, it is a rainy season that lasts every season. The people wish for it to stop and only one person can make it pause for a few hours — the ‘weather girl.’
At first, she is a myth pursued by the main protagonist as a reporter for a shlock paper. He had run away from his home in the provinces. He was taken in by the paper’s owner/writer/editor, and he was tasked to debunk that myth. He founds out that it wasn’t. That it was real and he’s all for protecting (and profiting) the girl.
When the citizens take too much from her, the protagonist protests and wishes for her to stop using her powers. Let the rain fall so that he can continue to love her.
I did like the film. I wish it wasn’t too much like his previous. I’m hopeful that the next Makoto Shinkai anime is something different. I’m hopeful that it is also familiar.
3 of 5 stars.
Down to the last few days of 2019. Will I get to see a movie and add it to this list of best films I saw in the theatre? Maybe, there’s still a couple out there that I really want to watch, but I haven’t gotten around to. Also, maybe this list has a few films released the previous year, but once again, for those new to this blog, these are films I saw in the theatre in the year 2019.
Those are all 4 star films. Nothing really knocked me out this year, and there wasn’t really that many good ones I saw.
What’s your list?
Episode IX was the fitting end to decade when movies became all about the franchise. A once moribund, but beloved film franchise, restarted in the middle of the decade amongst other franchise films, ending in a somewhat leaden finale. It sums up the breakdown of Hollywood as they chase the movie franchise devil. The entirety of movie making is broken. Maybe the salvation for good story telling is really in the streaming realm. Or has that broke, too.
I did not like what they did with the premise of The Last Jedi. I thought the previous film was brilliant and would give us a different type of Star Wars ending. Of course, because of its controversy the studio decided to give us a conventional ending. It was very much a “Return of the Jedi” ending to the trilogy — same thing as the first but bigger, louder, and more of.
Not to say I didn’t enjoy myself, but the themes presented from the previous installment were abandoned (as was Rose Tico). The sense that the Force is not destiny — abandoned. It was missing. To be a Force user then you have to be born with the midiclorians. Sucks. I wish Rey wasn’t from any family, because it was more interesting.
#FreeRoseTico
3 of 5 stars.
Oh, wow. What an egregious mistake. I was making my year end list of best films I saw in the theatre this year (wait for it!), and I see that I missed posting a review of Parasite. It’s one of the best films of the year — well reviewed and well deserved. It was a comedy, then it was a thriller, then it was a tragedy, and it wraps up as hope.
Also, the funniest thing ever. I went to the bathroom in the middle of the film. I was trying to find a spot to go. There was the down time as the protagonist family was getting drunk. I did not step out. I went as the scene finished with the previous housekeeper knocking on the door in the rain. Imagine my surprise as to what happened when I got back in. Alls I can say is, “Who’s that guy?”
I don’t remember too much, but I did like it. Actually, I remember a lot, but I think I’m still trying to process it months later.
4 of 5 stars.
As I watched the movies this past few months, I knew from looking at the trailer that I was going to be seeing The Good Liar. It looked like a film my mother would want to see. Not me. So we went to see it.
It was fine for a Saturday afternoon. This is a film that still need to be made. It allows people to find something in the theatre to watch besides superhero films and scary movies. Hollywood should try to make more of these, but the public doesn’t believe in watching movies in the theatre.
3 of 5 stars.
