Now that I am tracking all the movies I watch via Letterboxd, it seems worthwhile to go over the results at the end of the year, and look for lessons, patterns and highlights.
WARNING: PLEASE BEWARE OF SPOILERS! I will strike down anything important that isn't labeled at all, but people ARE going to make it easy for you to see things you might not want to, and I can't always respond right away.
Really, this is a big plot point, skip this thread if you haven’t seen it!
*****
I liked Paul Schrader’s Letterboxd review, where he pointed out the only thing didn’t like was that Anora accepted the $10k “green card marriage” settlement without negotiating.
Which made me wonder: if you’re Anora (and not a lawyer), and a Russian oligarch is pressuring you to take a payout, what number do you counter with?
And then the next question is, if you’re Sean Baker and you already wrote a (much more lighthearted) negotiation scene earlier in the movie, why do you skip or cut this from the movie later?
I felt that way at the time as well. But I've come around - the whole point is that in the previous situation, she had the power. She could dictate terms. And she doesn't negotiate at first because she thinks once they track him down, he'll back her, so she'll win, and she doesn't want to give him reason to doubt her by negotiating.
Then, once her counteroffer of 'half' to the mother got responded to with power (which WAS the negotiating scene), she doesn't have the power anymore - power (and wealth) have come down on her, and she can't be herself, she's lost, and once her bid for half fails it doesn't occur to her to dare to counteroffer at all.
My attitude going into a theatre dominates the determining factors of my attitude going out of the theatre. I get my popcorn and comfy seat and enjoy the film, regardless of what's on the screen. Maybe it's simply poor taste, or my amateur film-making past allowing me to enjoy even the low-quality-high-grade and high-quality-low-grade films I see.
Video game top lists have the problem that you can't realistically try a substantial portion of even the very good games in a given year, which you can do for movies - the answer to 'what did you think of game [X]' will almost always be 'I dunno, didn't excite me enough to try it, not enough hours in day.'
I think it pretty clearly wasn't terrible acting - e.g. Nicole Kidman got nominations for it. The kid didn't impress me, but the role kind of didn't require it?
I can see how that plot would turn some people off (as it were) and be high variance. It's not for everyone. But I did 'buy it'.
I just watched Fall Guy, and it was delightful. Also delightful was the opportunity to watch a movie that I knew absolutely nothing about, based on a single recommendation. It's been a while since I've done that, and it was refreshing to go into a movie without a consensus rating, trailer, or multiple review snippets in my head. Thanks!
For Sumner's movie picks, my advice would be to lean hard on your note about "if the movie sounds like work or pain, it probably is." His taste is great, but a lot of his favorite movies really are a slog. In general, I'd suggest favoring newer movies over old, and focusing on specific directors. Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Wong Kar-Wai, Bong Joon-Ho, Wes Anderson (Kore-eda and Ceylan if you're ok with something slow, but not Tarkovsky-slow). A lot of great, entertaining movies have come out of Asia over the last 40 years. Some of the ones Sumner liked that I second are The Wailing, Black Coal Thin Ice, Oldboy, Parasite, and if you're feeling up for something slow but completely mesmerizing, Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Yeah, it worked for me, what can I say. And there's a lot of easter eggs in there and an entire meta level parallel (including the stuff with Blake Lively, which is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence)
Hm... Surprised by the lack of non-english movies. Do you avoid them on purpose or it so happens that the theatre close to you doesn't usually have them?
The places close to me usually don't offer them and they don't typically seem salient. But I do think there's a higher bar for watching something in another language. At some point I should see Her Story but I don't remember seeing it in theaters.
WARNING: PLEASE BEWARE OF SPOILERS! I will strike down anything important that isn't labeled at all, but people ARE going to make it easy for you to see things you might not want to, and I can't always respond right away.
**** Anora Spoiler ****
Really, this is a big plot point, skip this thread if you haven’t seen it!
*****
I liked Paul Schrader’s Letterboxd review, where he pointed out the only thing didn’t like was that Anora accepted the $10k “green card marriage” settlement without negotiating.
Which made me wonder: if you’re Anora (and not a lawyer), and a Russian oligarch is pressuring you to take a payout, what number do you counter with?
And then the next question is, if you’re Sean Baker and you already wrote a (much more lighthearted) negotiation scene earlier in the movie, why do you skip or cut this from the movie later?
*FURTHER SPOILERS FOR ANORA*
I felt that way at the time as well. But I've come around - the whole point is that in the previous situation, she had the power. She could dictate terms. And she doesn't negotiate at first because she thinks once they track him down, he'll back her, so she'll win, and she doesn't want to give him reason to doubt her by negotiating.
Then, once her counteroffer of 'half' to the mother got responded to with power (which WAS the negotiating scene), she doesn't have the power anymore - power (and wealth) have come down on her, and she can't be herself, she's lost, and once her bid for half fails it doesn't occur to her to dare to counteroffer at all.
Please edit this to make the spoiler warning more prominent - it's a pretty big thing to tell someone by accident.
My attitude going into a theatre dominates the determining factors of my attitude going out of the theatre. I get my popcorn and comfy seat and enjoy the film, regardless of what's on the screen. Maybe it's simply poor taste, or my amateur film-making past allowing me to enjoy even the low-quality-high-grade and high-quality-low-grade films I see.
Podcast episode for this post:
https://open.substack.com/pub/dwatvpodcast/p/zvis-2024-in-movies
Would love to see a similar post of 2024’s video games. Would even be down to collab with you on such a post.
But it’s cool either way. I know you’re a busy man.
Video game top lists have the problem that you can't realistically try a substantial portion of even the very good games in a given year, which you can do for movies - the answer to 'what did you think of game [X]' will almost always be 'I dunno, didn't excite me enough to try it, not enough hours in day.'
I haven't seen a lot of movies this year but I quite liked A Real Pain and would put it at about a 4 as you rate them.
Check out Civil War. It was in my top 3 for the past 12 months, and I agreed with your rating on Dune 2, Challengers, The Fall Guy.
I saw The Fall Guy and was entertained.
Was it one of the best movies of the year? Probably not. But, sure, I enjoyed it, though I think it would not fair nearly as well on a re-watch.
Piling on: great entertainment, perhaps not "cinema" in some artistic sense. But probably the most enjoyable thing I saw last year.
Anyone who liked Anora should see Sean Baker's last film (Red Rocket), which in my view was even better and got ~ 1% the attention.
I’ve heard this now several times, enough to probably sway me to commit to watching it.
My wife and I walked out of baby girl. So did 10 others in the theatre. From our perspective it was terrible acting and plot.
I'm curious, what are we missing? What did you like about the movie?
I think it pretty clearly wasn't terrible acting - e.g. Nicole Kidman got nominations for it. The kid didn't impress me, but the role kind of didn't require it?
I can see how that plot would turn some people off (as it were) and be high variance. It's not for everyone. But I did 'buy it'.
(I think this is pretty reasonable: https://filmcolossus.com/babygirl-explained-for-cinephiles-romy-milk/)
I just watched Fall Guy, and it was delightful. Also delightful was the opportunity to watch a movie that I knew absolutely nothing about, based on a single recommendation. It's been a while since I've done that, and it was refreshing to go into a movie without a consensus rating, trailer, or multiple review snippets in my head. Thanks!
For Sumner's movie picks, my advice would be to lean hard on your note about "if the movie sounds like work or pain, it probably is." His taste is great, but a lot of his favorite movies really are a slog. In general, I'd suggest favoring newer movies over old, and focusing on specific directors. Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Wong Kar-Wai, Bong Joon-Ho, Wes Anderson (Kore-eda and Ceylan if you're ok with something slow, but not Tarkovsky-slow). A lot of great, entertaining movies have come out of Asia over the last 40 years. Some of the ones Sumner liked that I second are The Wailing, Black Coal Thin Ice, Oldboy, Parasite, and if you're feeling up for something slow but completely mesmerizing, Long Day's Journey Into Night.
Deadpool and Wolverine though? It had some fun moments, but I couldn't really get into it, even though the previous Deadpool movies were great.
Yeah, it worked for me, what can I say. And there's a lot of easter eggs in there and an entire meta level parallel (including the stuff with Blake Lively, which is not a coincidence because nothing is ever a coincidence)
Dune part 2 is the best movie ever made.
Hm... Surprised by the lack of non-english movies. Do you avoid them on purpose or it so happens that the theatre close to you doesn't usually have them?
The places close to me usually don't offer them and they don't typically seem salient. But I do think there's a higher bar for watching something in another language. At some point I should see Her Story but I don't remember seeing it in theaters.