Category: Uncategorized
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The Best Films of 2020
To get technicalities out of the way- this goes by U.S. commercial release date, and I understand why many people object to that method. It’s always a little confusing, and the lines are especially blurred in this year of all-virtual festivals, but the simple fact is that I’m not a professional critic, and as such…
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The 100 Best Movies I Watched This Year, #25-1
It’s the electrifying conclusion! Before we finish I’d like to shout out Filipe Furtado, God of Letterboxd, as well as the great Dave Kehr, the two people whose critical sensibilities and recommendations likely shaped this list more than anyone else. When I look at these pictures all in a row I see 25 masterpieces that…
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The 100 Best Films I Watched This Year, #50-26
We’re getting into serious masterpiece territory with most of these, folks. As such you should remember not to put much stock into these rankings- even I’m looking at them with a certain amount of disbelief (#46 should be higher, you moron!). Just take my word, they all kick ass. 50. Golden Eighties (Chantal Akerman, 1986)…
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The 100 Best Films I Watched This Year, #75-51
If you read the first entry of this list, I commend you for sticking with me! If you didn’t, you didn’t miss much. I realize I didn’t say this in the last entry, so here goes: I promise not to couch any of this in extremely cliched “omg 2020” sentiments. I’m sure you’ve had your…
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The 100 Best Films I Watched This Year, #100-76
I’d like to be able to claim that this list is so long because I had so much down time this year in particular, but I actually watched more movies in 2018 than I did in 2020. I’ll try to keep each entry as mercifully short as possible, and keep in mind that this ranking…
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Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007)
There are clear issues with the script here- the overheated macho posturing, the dim view of its women, the humorless look-at-me nihilism- that the film almost leans into, from its relentlessly dour tone to its highly-pitched performances. But there’s something in Lumet’s direction, in its caustic spareness and jagged spatial constructions, that takes this from…
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Only Yesterday (1991)
A walk through histories, of the mind and the land. Takahata takes detours into Americanization, agricultural politics, sexual awakenings, slumming, and so much more, the richness of his world elevating the personal travelogue into such a tender, sublime melancholy. This possesses a sense of reverent beauty and patiently accumulated detail worthy of Ozu and Naruse…
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Our Daily Bread (1934)
I guess you could point to the government formation scene and call this politically confused, and you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but I think the whole point of the movie is the rejection of discursive ideology and replacing it with pure action that is itself political. While the farm rejects socialism in name, what they…
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Da 5 Bloods (2020)
Pretty much a recent Spike Lee picture: Uneven, occasionally ham-fisted, at once clear-eyed and complicated, never less than engaging. The film is at its best when focusing on the twin trauma and exploitation of black soldiers and the Vietnamese, and most of all when it cedes space to Lindo’s astonishing, truly terrifying performance. For Lee,…
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