This was the first full year where I had access to some kind of streaming service for all of it. As a result, I watched a lot of movies this year, but in a lot more mainstream fashion than previously. I used the opportunity to fill the gaps I have in pop culture of movies that ‘everyone’s seen’, so now I’ve seen “Legally Blonde”, “Grease” and so forth. Unfortunately, most such movies are just OK, and it’s just some weird cultural coincidence that makes them of outsize importance. Still, I did see some good movies.
Minari (2020, dir. Lee Isaac Chung, trailer) I was hesitant to watch this movie after seeing the trailer, fearing the cookie-cutter immigrant-children-learn-a-lesson narrative arc. Here’s how it goes: they (we) start by wanting to assimilate and rebel against their roots, unsatisfied that their families are “weird” and “not normal”. But with time, as they themselves assimilate, they come to appreciate their heritage and cherish the differences and things that tie them back to their culture. As symbolized by the interaction of the kids and grandma, this movie is just that, in part. But there’s more to it, and a more interesting relationship that serves as the main structure underpinning the movie. It’s the relationship between husband and wife, and the conflict is that the husband’s risk-taking, adventurous spirit leads not to some great adventure but to a trailer in rural Arkansas. I suppose this is also a well-known story, but it was just different enough, and the interactions so precisely acted by Steven Yuen and Han Ye-ri that this movie is elevated above the cliché to something that rings true.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, dir. Robert Zemeckis, trailer) my extreme enjoyment of this madcap, lovable kids comedy action adventure was dampened only slightly by the suspicion that it was this very movie that created a formula that has been successfully co-opted by to make superhero blockbuster upon superhero blockbuster: short, fast-paced set pieces, action sequences that can best be described as zany, winking gags to ensure the viewers are aware that the moviemakers are smarter than they’re letting on, references to an extended universe of intellectual property for that warm glow of recognition. Still, I can’t think of a superhero movie with a gag as good as the Roger handcuff gag.
Dune (2021, dir. Denis Villeneuve, trailer) As V. says, one of the great things about this movie is the awesome sense of world depth: that there’s a lot more to this world than the snippets you’re shown. As this Thomas Flight video explains, this movie has great visual effects. The interesting thing is that it’s the visual effects that give that sense of world depth. You get to believing there’s a deep lore and some kind of internal logic that you as a viewer are ignorant of, and you want more, you want to explore further. Not since I first saw the first Lord of the Rings can I remember a movie where visual effects were used for this purpose, and so effectively.
The French Dispatch (2021, dir. Wes Anderson, trailer) I used to have an overarching theory of Wes Anderson: that his movies can be subdivided into two archetypes based on plot. Patriarch discovers that what he considers his lovable adventurousness is (viewed by others as) irresponsibility and derangement (Gene Hackman’s arc in the Royal Tanenbaums, Life Aquatic, Fantastic Mr. Fox). Or, precocious youth discovers that being “serious” as in doing things that get you approval from adults is not at all the same as being serious in the sense of caring about meaningful things (the kids’ arcs in the Royal Tanenbaums, Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom, Grand Budapest Hotel). The fun thing about this movie is that there is a vignette that is each of these in reverse: the Chalamet/McDormand vignette is in part about precocious youth deciding caring about important things isn’t that important. And the Benicio del Toro/Léa Seydoux vignette is about discovering that what seems at first as derangement is actually appreciated by others as adventurousness. But I can’t claim that that’s why I liked it. It’s that somehow it felt less bloated and self-parodic to me than the Grand Budapest Hotel, even as the quirkiness and the depth of references and sheer density is at an all-time high. Reinforcing once again that, like most people, I don’t actually know why I like the things I like. Or maybe I just enjoyed getting the Mavis Gallant reference.
Cabaret (1972, dir. Bob Fosse, trailer) Although I’d heard of this movie, its plot and premise, and many of the songs from it for years and years, it still had the power to surprise. So if you think you know this movie just from osmosis, I would strongly suggest seeing it. In a way, it’s a paean to melodrama. The overwhelming sensation in this movie is that just because something is lurid and full of pathos and over the top, doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful and it’s not real. Cabaret is the best movie I saw this year and it wasn’t particularly close.
Get Back (2021, dir. Peter Jackson, trailer) The reason this movie is great is that it’s a cultural phenomenon. You can talk about it to almost anyone, whatever generation. But the reason behind the reason, why everyone is in fact talking about it, is that everyone digs a bit of Beatlology. Here’s zuuko’s take on it, which I also endorse: we got the munchies and were standing in line for some A&W after about two hours of the movie, and he explained what he’d write about it in the blog if he still did that. He’d title it “Schroedinger’s Camera”: over and over, the movie shows how the band are both at their musical best and their tempermentally most harmonious when the camera is least on them — when the film crew goes for lunch and so forth. And yet, by nature of it being a movie, you only get to see the parts where the camera was there to begin with. You kind of ask watching this movie: was it Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the person directing the original documentary, that broke up the Beatles? The answer is no, of course, but it’s not as clear cut as you’d think. The thing that I personally like most about this movie is watching the lyric creation process. Because the songs are so well known, you know just where they’ll end up, and it’s like you’re cheering them on as they’re trying to figure out a puzzle. The other thing is that the personalities are very different from what I was expecting. I thought, John is the cerebral one, Paul the silly fun-loving one, George the introspective, and Ringo the happy-go-lucky anything goes one. That’s correct for pretty much only Ringo. If you haven’t watched it yet, watch it so we can talk about it.
Rated Zed 