If you’re reading this blog, you are probably no stranger to the fact that I watch a lot of movies. Last year I made a big show of the fact that I was ramping up my movie intake in an effort to reconnect with a dormant passion of mine. I ended up watching 102 new (to me) movies, which felt like a ton.
This year I’m continuing my siege through Letterboxd, albeit a lot more quietly. Due to circumstances beyond my control (see: Apocalypse Lite), I have spent a lot more time at home and therefore a lot more time parked in front of a movie. At the halfway mark of 2020, I have watched 122 total movies—good for about 20 per month, 4.5 per week, and [redacted] total hours across six months.
I don’t typically write about the year of stuff at its halfway point, but being that I have a much larger well to draw from and haven’t been clogging your Twitter feed along the way, it felt appropriate to do a little six-month checkup. Here is all the best stuff I’ve seen thus far in these strange six months, starting with some old favorites before getting into some new personal discoveries.
Best Rewatches
Seen ‘em before. Still five stars.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
Eternal Sunshine has always been one I’ve referred to as a top-tier favorite since I first saw it in high school, but it’s not one I’ve revisited recently. If I’m being honest, I was afraid it wouldn’t hold up to nostalgia. I was wrong.
The flawless music—both soundtrack and score, the preposterously loaded cast, the way it doesn't take itself too seriously and isn't afraid to get weird, the genius use of lighting, the perfectly drab sets, the way it builds 'what-if' implications of its plot in as B-stories, the flawless transition between present/past and real/surreal, the daring ending, even the title.
Ask me on the right day and this might be my single favorite movie of all time.
Synecdoche, New York (2008)
Similarly to Eternal Sunshine, this is one I discovered remarkably early in my film-loving career. I was 16 when I first watched this and had no idea what I was looking at, but something grabbed me.
I don’t know that it gets enough credit for how funny it is, even in its sick way. It might be the blackest comedy ever.
All these years later, it remains an all-time favorite and still fits the shape of things I love, despite me not knowing I had a type in 2008. It’s long, opaque, and prioritizes poetry over logic. It’s not for everyone, but it’s for me.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Not a perfect movie, but a perfect blockbuster. It’s big, beautiful, and confounding in all the ways we like the pillars of our monoculture to be. Back to the Future is similarly wonderful and similarly kind of dumb and nonsensical at its core.
It’s remarkable that this came out more than a decade ago and still feels so fresh and fun. Also kind of crazy that no other superhero movie has come particularly close for me in the 12 years since. (Respect to Into the Spider-Verse though.)
Uncut Gems (2019)
I’m thrilled Uncut Gems has kind of taken up the mantle as “requisite weird indie movie the bros love.”
In some ways, yes, this is pretty accessible and does a lot of things a certain type of male audience responds to. In another sense, it’s pretty cool to see a claustrophobic and tragic New York thriller—one that feels spiritually from the ‘70s—thrust into the mainstream.
The Safdie brothers certainly draw from a few clear predecessors, but this brand of movie feels so good in 2020. They’re on a short list of filmmakers whose work I can’t imagine ever truly disliking. I’d watch ‘em do anything.
Best New (To Me)
A mix of new movies and old ones I’ve never seen, arranged in a general cascading order, starting with most-liked.
Come and See (1985)
Absolutely horrific. The only way you could tell this story without it looking like a snuff film is by imparting it with nuance and making it all meticulous. They did just that. It's an opera of horrors—absolutely beautiful in the grossest way. The score, the mud, the dogs, the fog, the flies. It's incredible how much Kravchenko conveys with his face alone.
I'm very glad this exists, but I will not be throwing this on the TV on a Wednesday night anytime soon.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
I’m embarrassed it took me this long to get into Spike Lee.
It's both amazing and heartbreaking that Do the Right Thing feels stripped right out of our current culture 31 years later, but I suppose that struggling dichotomy makes sense. The same tension runs throughout the film. Peace and violence. Martin and Malcolm. Empathy and fury. Hope and despair. Poetic and plain. Entertainment and instruction. Humor and heartbreak. Love and hate.
It unfurls in vignettes like a stage play until the bubbling tension snaps and it all spirals out of control.
Smiley hangs his photo on the wall of the pizzeria as it's burning to the ground. 31 years later and America is still on the wall, everything is still burning, and it's still so hot outside.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
My reaction to seeing a movie firing on all cylinders is to sit there with a big goofy grin (much like I did during Parasite). I smiled a lot during this one, which is not the facial expression the ending was supposed to elicit, but I appreciated it all the same.
The writing is brilliant, the cinematography is sublime, and its use of music is absolutely genius.
It will go down as an all-time Oscar debacle that this was not France’s nomination for Best International Feature.
A Serious Man (2009)
I tried to watch this when I was like 17 on account of “it's the guys who directed O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (one of my favorites of all time). I recall making it through about 20 minutes before wondering what the point was, and giving up.
Anyway, this movie is probably a bit more cynical than I am, but it's also throwing fastballs in my wheelhouse. I love this type of talk-y, absurdist, nihilistic, dark comedy.
The dentist scene is pitch-perfect Coen Brothers. It may be my favorite seven minutes of film this year.
The Daytrippers (1996)
Aesthetically it feels cozy, nostalgic, and familiar. Like any number of great '90s sitcoms. Narratively, meanwhile, this could've been pulled from a modern HBO-type show. This story would fit right in an episode of something like Girls. Or Crashing. Or Ramy.
Mottola does a fantastic job creating characters and writing them into situations that hilariously put their flaws on display in beautifully messy harmony.
Columbus (2017)
Man, this is my jam. Showy, symmetrical, stationary cinematography. Muted colors. Slow and soft and quiet. Navel gaze-y. Kind of like what the best version of Garden State would be.
Inevitably with this sort of movie, the characters are a bit flat, occasionally substituting quasi-emotional moments for character depth and development. I think in this case Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho paper over most of that really nicely, but it could've used some Linklater Before touches.
Mother (2009)
Bong Joon-ho has this incredible ability to provide more resolution (and parting gut punches) than you could possibly imagine, only to ultimately leave the story in a somehow even more disconcerting place than he started it. Much like Parasite, I feel like I’ve been to hell and back with these characters only to leave them in a more fraught place than I found them.
Really beautiful, tragic stuff.
Enemy (2014)
I don’t even know what to say other than it’s crazy to see Denis Villeneuve doing what amounts to a student film—in both tiny budget and reckless ambition.
I can’t figure out how seriously I’m supposed to take this, which is awesome. What a fascinating, perplexing 90 minutes.
United 93 (2006)
I think it must've been tempting (although maybe too early) to mold this film into a Titanic-style drama about a few fictional characters in an attempt to make this a more personal story of tragedy, bravery, and love. Instead, Greengrass brilliantly composed a film that feels like a documentary, watching the day unfold in a naturalistic collage of frantic horror.
It's not easy to construct a gripping narrative out of a story to which viewers know the ending, but they pulled it off.
Hell or High Water (2016)
It carries a swagger in its Western-ness, but I wish it lathered up a bit more poetry. I admire the ways in which it stays grounded, but let this thing soar! Bring in some True Detective Season 1 and get spiritual. It flirted at the end, and it was electric. Regardless, it's hard to beat an old west tale about outlaws too desperate for their own good but maybe just smart enough to get what they were searching for.
The best urgent familial bank robbing movie since The Place Beyond The Pines.
Starred Up (2013)
Same director as the movie above! I think what I love most about each of these films is the way they click on the strength of their dynamics alone. Neither are what I'd call "high-brow" but both are excellent. I'll admit to being easily charmed by long, showy, operatic family epics—in fact, my review of Hell or High Water laments the absence of this exact thing. But I think I’m learning that Mackenzie is more interested in trying to distill the same essence into 100-minute barnburners that cut to the chase and thrust relationships to the forefront without any frills or made-for-Cannes theatrics.
It’s hard to make prison movies that feel like something new. We know the tropes. Mackenzie does a really good job at pushing convention with Starred Up.
Raging Bull (1980)
An absolutely punishing watch. It feels like 129 minutes going on 350. It's operatic, only rewarding viewers with the beauty of its brutality—both physical and spiritual. If Shakespeare lived in 1970s New York, this is the type of stuff he’d be doing.
I don't have anything unique to add to a conversation that's been going on for 40 years without me, but this might be the most beautifully composed movie I've ever seen, and it's to the film's credit that typing that sentence feels stupid and obvious.
Frances Ha (2012)
I eat up everything Baumbach writes, but nothing I've seen from him is quite like Frances Ha. All of his work is quick-witted and sharp like this, but something like Marriage Story leaves breathing room for his dialogue to settle. (And I love that.)
Frances Ha is the opposite. The pacing is absolutely breakneck, making it his most vibrant and full-of-life film, which of course juxtaposes beautifully against the black and white imagery.
Rounders (1998)
Did anyone say “Folks, this one should be called Cut Gems” yet?
While it’s not quite as chaotic as the Safdie Brothers’ latest film, the stakes similarly climb as a pitch-perfect Edward Norton does everything he can to sow mayhem in the life of a young Matt Damon. Oh, and John Malkovich’s character is fantastic.
It feels so ‘90s.
Magnolia (1999)
Paul Thomas Anderson makes movies like he's planning on dying tomorrow.
Everything he touches seems towering, urgent, and epic, yet he always manages to imbue them with certain elements that you’d think are out of place in a “capital ‘I’ important” type of film. Magnolia has several of these, and the dissonance between these odd, disruptive moments and PTA trying to hit a 600-foot homer with the rest of the film is what I love. It makes everything feel strangely Biblical.
Inside Man (2006)
Spike Lee took a well-worn genre and found new pockets to play in. Throw in Denzel, Jodie Foster, and some slick, noir, jazzy sex appeal and it's just fun as hell. Entertaining from front to back. I feel like legendary filmmakers don’t make rock-solid genre movies like this anymore.
Give me a Spike horror movie with this kind of watchability.
It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
One of my favorite feelings is "The person who made this has a brain that operates very differently than mine, in a way I didn't know was possible."
Anyway, this gave me a minor existential crisis.