It’s that time again.
Starting off, here is my watchlist. Less than the last few years as I’m trying not to rush to see literally every movie ever made, but I still saw 260 releases for the year, and here they are:
- Welcome to Marwen
- Zubawa Zubawa
- Stan & Ollie
- Glass
- Mary Queen of Scots
- On the Basis of Sex
- Vice
- The Mule
- Escape Room
- Destroyer
- How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
- Can You Ever Forgive Me?
- Green Book
- An Impossible Love
- A Private War
- The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part
- 1985
- All is True
- Velvet Buzzsaw
- Happy Death Day 2 U
- The Kid Who Would Be King
- Eight Grade
- Peranbu
- Boy Erased
- The Hole in the Ground
- Alita: Battle Angel
- Kobiety Mafii 2
- Lola & her Brothers
- The Time of Forests
- A Faithful Man
- In Safe Hands
- Keep Going
- Captain Marvel
- The Mongol Rally by the Irish Reasonable Adventurers
- Isn’t it Romantic?
- Serenity
- Miss Bala
- Fighting with my Family
- Ben is Back
- Mute Date
- Us
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Fisherman’s Friends
- Pet Sematary
- Dumbo
- The Kindergarten Teacher
- Eaten by Lions
- Wonder Park
- Unicorn Store
- Missing Link
- Paddleton
- Shazam
- The Sister’s Brothers
- Leaving Neverland
- Bed
- I Want to Eat Your Pancreas
- Jesus
- Bone Born Bone
- Penguin Highway
- Wild Rose
- Of Love and Law
- Twisted Pair
- Greta
- Avengers Endgame
- The Dirt
- At Eternity’s Gate
- Red Joan
- Dragged Across Concrete
- Out of Blue
- Long Shot
- Tolkien
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu
- Loro
- High Life
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
- Vox Lux
- Aladdin
- Mid90s
- Booksmart
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters
- The White Crow
- Ma
- Dark Phoenix
- Rocketman
- Woman at War
- Papi Chulo
- Diego Maradona
- Late Night
- Amazing Grace
- Men in Black: International
- Brightburn
- Toy Story 4
- Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
- Gloria Bell
- Sometimes Always Never
- The Silence
- Yesterday
- Spider-Man: Far From Home
- Midsommar
- Dirty God
- Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
- Prisoners on the Moon
- Bait
- The Dead Don’t Die
- Apollo 11
- Anna
- Stuber
- The Lion King
- Vita and Virginia
- Pavarotti
- The Current War
- The Intruder
- The Brink
- Varda by Agnes
- Blinded by the Light
- Gaza
- Animals
- Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
- The Angry Birds Movie 2
- Good Boys
- Dora and the Lost City of Gold
- Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love
- Never Grow Old
- Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark
- Crawl
- The Mustang
- It: Chapter 2
- Pain and Glory
- Polityka
- Extra Ordinary
- Hustlers
- The Chambermaid
- Ad Astra
- The Souvenir
- The Kitchen
- Ready or Not
- Hello, Privilege? It’s Me, Chelsea
- The Goldfinch
- Hotel Mumbai
- Don’t Let Go
- The Shock of the Future
- Never Look Away
- Steven Universe: the Movie
- Joker
- Judy
- Best Before Death
- The Rollover
- Hungary 2018
- A Bump Along The Way
- A Regular Woman
- Push
- Letters to Paul Morrissey
- The Day I Lost My Shadow
- Good Posture
- Becoming Animal
- Where Would You Like the Bullet?
- Corpus Christi
- Pahokee
- Advocate
- Flatland
- Lift
- The New Music
- Sibyl
- Splitting the Sop
- Forman vs. Forman
- Dark Lies the Island
- Gemini Man
- Official Secrets
- A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmaggedon
- Land Without God
- The Farewell
- In the Shadow of the Moon
- The Edge of Democracy
- The Laundromat
- Murder Mystery
- Here Comes Hell
- 1BR
- Bliss
- Scream, Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street
- Kindred Spirits
- Colours Out of Space
- Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made
- The Magnificent Obsession of Michael Reeves
- The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil
- The Wretched
- Why Don’t You Just Die?
- Terminator: Dark Fate
- The Beach Bum
- One Child Nation
- The Haunting of Sharon Tate
- That Day Shall Come
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco
- Countdown
- Non-Fiction
- The Aeronauts
- Brittany Runs a Marathon
- Lost Lives
- Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway
- The Golden Glove
- The Nightingale
- Tall Girl
- Dolomite is my Name
- The King
- So Long My Son
- A Hidden Life
- Jojo Rabbit
- Mother
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- The Lighthouse
- Greener Grass
- The Other Lamb
- The Iron Sky-The Coming Race
- Little Monsters
- Luce
- 2040
- The Good Liar
- 21 Bridges
- Le Mans ‘66
- Monos
- By the Grace of God
- Frozen II
- Them That Follow
- Harriet
- Last Christmas
- Midway
- Knives Out
- Shooting the Mafia
- Sorry to Miss You
- Blue Story
- The Irishman
- Parasite
- The Last Right
- Ordinary Love
- A Dog Called Money
- Motherless Brooklyn
- The Cave
- Honey Boy
- Marriage Story
- Citizen K
- I Lost My Body
- El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
- Cats
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
- Always Be My Maybe
- An Elephant Sitting Still
- Unplanned
- Charlie Says
- The Pool
- The Two Popes
- The Knight Before Christmas
- Under the Silver Lake
- Doctor Sleep
- Let it Snow
- The Peanut Butter Falcon
- Asako I & II
- Polar
- 6 Underground
- The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
- Transit
Now onto my so-bad-it’s-good list! Way more entries than I was expecting, I’m happy to say
Cats
I already talked about this film on this blog recently, so I don’t feel like repeating myself. What I will say is that it’s truly unlike any other thing I’ve seen all year. I admire its creativity, but mostly I love the baffling decisions that went into its production. The unfinished effects after it was rushed into cinemas, the nightmare fuel mice and cockroaches with human faces, the overabundance of cat puns, the random scene where they break into a fantasy tap dancing sequence, Ray Winstone. It’s truly strange and kind of disturbing, but that’s what makes it so memorable and funny.
Dark Lies the Island
Man, this film really wants to be a McDonagh-calibre outing. It’s just a weird, poorly thought out dramedy where the humour doesn’t really work and the dark moments miss by about a mile. And yet there’s something oddly compelling about it. I mean that BDSM scene will haunt my nightmares, but I’m here for it! There’s such great talent here for this meandering, pretentious nonsense, but when it really goes for gold by the end I’m just here for the ride and to see where the fuck it ends up landing.
Escape Room
This is not a good movie, but it is a fun one. I’d probably prefer following characters I like in a plot that makes sense, but given my options it’s pretty fun to see these guys get put into the most nonsense situations possible. Their attempts to recreate Saw are laughable, and trying to cash in on the escape room craze is cynical and so lazily handled. They really will make trash out of anything for a cheap scare, but if the trash is this much fun, bring me the trash!
Gemini Man
This was a mistake. An entire movie made because of a gimmick based on a script that has been bouncing around for over 20 years handed to a director who has no real success with conventional action films and you toss a coin about whether you’ll get a good movie from him. But goddamn, when Ang Lee fails, he fails spectacularly! The relationship between Will Smith with both himself and Mary Elizabeth Winstead makes no sense, the latter have one of the most ill-thought out meet cute ever conceived. How Smith gets through his younger self is embarrassing, and this may have two of the funniest action shots ever conceived to film. It looks ugly, it has zero personality, it’s a 90s script made in fucking 2019, but fuck if it ain’t a trip!
The Intruder
Can an entire movie be saved by one performance? Because this entire movie was saved by one performance. I do not know what Dennis Quaid was thinking in this part-it’s like he’s from an entirely different movie planted onto this generic thriller. Like, most of this movie is boring as hell, but he’s so fascinating in how miscalculated this is. Do not see it for any other reason than you wanna get your bizarre Quaid fix. Sadly his brother is unavailable to give us that…
Iron Sky: The Coming Race
I actually contributed to the Indiegogo campaign for this. About 90 years later I got the digital download. And I really wasn’t sure what to think about it after finally sitting down to watch it. It made me wonder if I overpraised the original on how smart it is-this really was the film everyone imagined when shitting on the original. Yet, isn’t that kind of fun? Daft, out of place political commentary, over the top badly composed action set pieces, wooden as hell performances and random appearances both historical and real (where did they dig up Tom Green from?!). If Hitler on a Dinosaur doesn’t hook you in this film’s appeal is lost on you, otherwise give it a shot.
Kindred Spirits
Imagine someone said “Lucky McKee should make a Lifetime movie”? Wouldn’t that be dumb? Wouldn’t that be stupid? Well, here you are. From the opening frame I could tell this would be a garbage fire, but just how misjudged and confused it ended up being is a fucking trip. I do not know how this movie is meant to make me feel, what exactly it’s going for or where it wants its characters to end up. And it’s a shame, as Thora Birch (oh, there she is) and Macon Blair are really trying to add weight to this massless mess, but it just crumbles all around them. Some really entertaining trash all the same.
The Knight Before Christmas
This is the silliest, most haphazard idea ever, and doesn’t do anything with its story threads or characters, but you know what? It’s really charming in its earnestness. The guy who plays the knight just goes all out for this, he’s really trying where the rest of the cast aren’t. It’s so dumb and the plot just meanders forever, but it goes all in on the schmaltz and becomes a surprisingly cosy treat if you’re willing to ignore how dumb and generic it is. Not one I’ll watch every Christmas, but perhaps you’ll get a kick out of it.
Kobiety Mafii 2
The first Kobiety Mafii is a weird Polish female-focused mafia flick that is all over the place in terms of story and tone, but also deliriously entertaining in its silliness. Now we have a sequel, with a bit more of a budget, and equally as daft. Like one of the main characters getting romantically attached to a terrorist, or a character just…wandering into a job I guess? It doesn’t have the fresh dumbness of the original and feels a little more self-aware, but it’s still pretty goofy and takes no prisoners in how out there it will go to push these ensemble pieces to their breaking point. If there’s another sequel, I’m already there.
The Pool
I don’t really know how to even describe this one. It’s a Thai thriller about a man and his girlfriend who get stuck in an emptied, abandoned pool where a terribly-CGed crocodile decides to join them. The amount of stupidity both character showcase is baffling and equally parts frustrating and hilarious, and some of the set pieces they pull out to make this pretty limited setting exciting need to be seen to believe. The lengths they go to to rack up tension just suspends disbelief, and eventually you want these two to die because they’re too stupid. Manic and really funny, it’s one to search out.
Twisted Pair
Is any so-bad-it’s-good list even complete without a Neil Breen release? And this time he has a budget kind of. It’s full of his usual trappings-awkwardly shit framing, his own character being overpowered to ridiculous beliefs, a conspiracy that barely makes sense if at all, sheer clumsiness. But this time there are two Neil Breens! And one is an eeeeevil Neil Breen…who doesn’t really do that much evil. This guy’s sheer narcissism and complete lack of talent will always be compelling to watch, and with promises of a sequel, our continued adventures in the Breeniverse don’t look set to end too soon.
You Call Yourself a Film Critic 