2020, it ended! Here’s my watchlist
- The Gentlemen
- 1917
- Uncut Gems
- Seberg
- Waves
- Weathering With You
- Bombshell
- Bad Boys For Life
- Just Mercy
- The Turning
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
- Queen & Slim
- Richard Jewel
- The Rhythm Section
- Underwater
- Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
- Horse Girl
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Emma.
- To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You
- Dolittle
- A Fall From Grace
- The Call of the Wild
- Dark Waters
- Onward
- The Invisible Man
- Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back-Evolution
- Proxima
- In the Stillness of Sounds
- Only the Animals
- Two of Us
- The Truth
- The Photograph
- Military Wives
- The True History of the Kelly Gang
- Calm with Horses
- Lost Girls
- Guns Akimbo
- Strummer
- The Droving
- Fantasy Island
- My Spy
- Bloodshot
- Bruce Lee and the Outlaw
- The Hunt
- Nona: If They Soak Me, I’ll Burn Them
- Gretel & Hansel
- Ema
- Trolls World Tour
- The Grand Bizarre
- Vivarium
- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs the Reverend
- Russian Youth
- Electric Swan
- Eeb Allay Ooo
- 45 Days in Jarbar
- Sisterhood
- Beyond the Mountain
- Kmêdus
- Volubilis
- Wake Up: Stories from the Frontlines of Suicide Prevention
- SEE Factory Sarajevo mon amour
- Nasir
- Air Conditioner
- Rosalinda
- Cassandro, the Exotico!
- Vitalina Varela
- Around the World When You Were My Age
- Extraction
- The Wrong Missy
- Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen
- 365 Days
- Sea Fever
- MS Slavic 7
- Misbehaviour
- Dating Amber
- Love Sarah
- Lady and the Tramp
- Togo
- Artemis Fowl
- Da 5 Bloods
- Stage Mother
- The Day After I’m Gone
- Four Kids and It
- Scoob
- The Half of It
- The Vigil
- Let It Burn
- The Willoughbys
- Broken Law
- Unhinged
- Make Up
- Film Title Poem
- Perfect 10
- The Old Guard
- Hope Gap
- Pinocchio
- Spree
- Red Dwarf: The Promised Land
- The Portuguese Woman
- Landless
- The Assistant
- Money Plane
- Once There was Brasilia
- Again Once Again
- Tenet
- Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
- The New Mutants
- All Together Now
- Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story
- A Woman’s Revenge
- Echo
- Giraffe
- I’m Thinking of Ending Things
- Correspondences
- Seduction of the Flesh
- The Roads Not Taken
- The Broken Hearts Gallery
- The Tree House
- Savage
- Technoboss
- The Social Dilemma
- Cuties
- Bill & Ted Face the Music
- The Man in the Hat
- The Eight Hundred
- Nocturnal
- Ride Your Wave
- Book-Paper-Scissors
- Complicity
- Street Leagues
- The Blue Flower of Novalis
- Isadora’s Children
- Rebuilding Paradise
- Enola Holmes
- Rialto
- That Click
- Silêncio – Voices of Lisbon
- Caveat
- Private Fiction
- Seven Years in May
- Body of Truth
- Woman of the Photographs
- Birds (or How to Be One)
- Yes, God, Yes
- Old Timers
- Space Dogs
- Wintopia
- Breaking Ice
- Journey to Utopia
- A Maverick Islander
- Pari
- The Viewing Booth
- Ava
- Sometimes Never, Rarely Always
- Uncle Peckerhead
- Red Screening
- Bird Island
- Breeder
- I Am Toxic
- Asylum: Twisted Horror and Fantasy Tales
- Violence Voyager
- The El Duce Tapes
- Butchers
- The Deep Ones
- Death Ranch
- Anonymous Animals
- Purgatory Road
- Ropes
- The Special
- Clapboard Jungle: Surviving the Independent Film Business
- Ten Minutes to Midnight
- In the Quarry
- The Oak Room
- The Curse of Valburg
- The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
- Hubie Halloween
- The Babysitter: Killer Queen
- #Alive
- South Terminal
- The Spongebob Moviie: Sponge on the Run
- The Trial of the Chicago 7
- Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
- The Racer
- Two/One
- Maddy the Model
- Working Girls
- La Fortaleza
- I Love You I Miss You I Hope I See You Before I Die
- A Common Crime
- Keyboard Fantasies: The Beverly Glenn-Copeland Story
- Frem
- Castro’s Spies
- The Bright Side
- The 8th
- Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets
- The Edge of Chaos
- Wildfire
- Siberia
- Luxor
- I Am Samuel
- Games People Play
- County Lines
- The Castle
- Summerwar
- Falling
- The Human Factor
- Into Dad’s Woods
- My Name is Baghdad
- H is for Happiness
- Wolfwalkers
- The Trouble with Being Born
- Vivos
- Rascal
- An Impossible Project
- Bad Tales
- The Witches
- Ghost Strata
- The Young Observant
- The Devil All the Time
- To the Ends of Earth
- Crock of Gold – A Few Rounds with Shane MacGowen
- Saint Maud
- Finding Jack Charlton
- Pixie
- A Christmas Carol
- Superintelligence
- Dreamland
- Mulan
- Hillbilly Elegy
- Come Away
- Wonder Woman 1984
- Let Him Go
- Mank
- About Endlessness
- Bacurau
- Soul
- Les Misérables
- Possessor
- The Midnight Sky
- Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
- Kajillionaire
- Antebellum
- Howard
- Making and Unmaking
- Shirley
- The 40-Year Old Version
- Time
- Cemetery
- Faith
- Capone
- Feels Good Man
- Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution
- Origins-The Story of Irish Hip Hop
- The Craft: Legacy
- Bit
- She Dies Tomorrow
- Jezebel
- Promising Young Women
- Butt Boy
Weirdly enough this is the same number of new releases I saw in 2019, and this was all when cinemas were closed for most of the year!
As always, if any of these you contest being Irish 2020 releases feel free to let me know! Now onto the main event:
Guilty Pleasures
365 Days
I originally planned to write a piece around this film’s popularity after it dropped on Netflix, and how stuff like this and 50 Shades of Grey tackling darker sexual themes targeted at women get these dumb moral outrages over them. I eventually didn’t because 1. I’m really not equipped to make this argument, and 2. This film is too stupid to defend even on those principles. But where 50 Shades legitimately annoyed me, this one I just find silly and really over the top. I don’t think this will, like, entice women to be kidnapped or enter abusive relationships-it’s a fantasy involving rough sex and is so crude and terribly presented that I found it more funny than sexy. Enjoy cheap thrills all you want, no matter how you get them from this shit.
The Deep Ones
One of my favourite 2019 releases was Richard Stanley’s contemporary interpretation of Colours out of Space (he said it would make you shit yourself), so the idea of another contemporary Lovecraft tale was something I was gunning for*. Then I…watched. This. How confused and tone deaf is one thing, but this fucker is cheap in a way that’s incredibly distracting (it looks like they shot at their mate’s holiday home) and that’s before we get into what I laughably refer to as the “horror” elements. Really ineffective cult-based horror, but I kind of admire the effort, and despite it being so off-kilter and misguided it was compelling throughout. Intentionally so or likely not.
*No, I haven’t seen Lovecraft County-I will get to it
Guns Akimbo
Commentary…kind of? This is absolute trash of the trashiest variety, but it’s my trash and I roll in the trash it keeps on trashing. I tend to just hate satires of internet culture that has this cynical a lens, as it comes across as edgy for edginess sake, and this film is incredibly stupid with a flimsy plot structure and really loathsome characters. But Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving are just so effortlessly gung-ho (gun-ho ha) with everything thrown at them. It went from boring and obnoxious to absolutely hilariously gonzo in a matter of minutes, and I’m just so on board by that point. Not very smart, but very, very fun if you’re in that mindset.
Horse Girl
This is one of the weirdest, most uncomfortable films I sat through all year. And like it’s really hard for me to gleam whether this is some avant garde masterpiece or just strange nonsense for its own sake. It really does border on both and, honestly, that makes it fascinating, and not because it’s a fucking trainwreck like a lot of other films. I think it’s on the cusp of being an awkward masterpiece, but it’s too incoherent and baffling for baffling’s sake to really have me give them that credit. Alison Brie is awesome however, and I can say the film is never weird or annoying. Strange one to put on a list like this, there’s no guilt here, except the guilt of not getting it. I guess.
Money Plane
The kid from Recess made a heist movie. No, seriously. The lad who played TJ on Recess directed this. This isn’t the only famous person involved, however, as they got Denise Richards, Punisher himself Thomas Jane and Kelsey Grammar, who looks so invested it appears they didn’t even leave his house and shot the scenes over the course of, like, an hour. This film is really, really bad, but it’s kind of entertaining in a “Let’s watch money burn on screen” kind of way. The plot is rote and predictable, but its Ocean’s Eleven-inspired heist shit is so clumsily handled, and the film is so flat and awkward that I can’t help but laugh at how bafflingly shit it is. There’s not much else to really say here-it’s just good for a laugh and terrible for literally anything else.
Only the Animals
A French movie I reviewed here. I’m way more negative on it here than I will be now, but honestly I kind of appreciated the wild ride of ridiculous melodrama and loathsome human beings getting what they deserve (for the most part). It’s just so misguided, and I really think it’s trying to be a taut, interconnected melodrama similar to something like 21 Grams, but instead comes off like it’s on 21 grams of coke. Maybe you’ll watch it and find a masterpiece, or just find it a boring piece of shit, I don’t know. I just kind of found it hilariously tryhard and really floundering in how it tries to weave its convolutions and wayward threads into something that feels satisfying and whole. It’s a whole lot of something, alright.
Unhinged
Gonna take a leap and say everybody’s made the “Russell Crowe’s weekend filmed” joke. This is really, really dumb. Like, a lot of things here; the physics, how intensely stupid the characters are, how fast and crazy this escalates. But like that’s also part of the fun, it’s a wild ride where nothing comes together to be narratively tight, but if you can ignore the eye-rolling plot contrivances you’re in for a ride (hah). Russell Crowe is a hell of a lot of fun here-he really dives into this perception people have of him (to the point that he advertised the fucking movie with it), and there’s something really magnanimous and gripping about him here. It’s not, like, a good performance, but it’s the most spirited and passionate I’ve seen the man in a long time, and he really makes the film. A car crash in every sense of the word, but you can’t help but look on.
Wanna hear my opinions on the Best and Worst of 2020? Look no further:
Worst of 2020
Best of 2020
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