MOVIES 2020

  Film Going in the Year of the Plague.
  

Unforgivable Blackness

 I’ve now been sorting the films I saw for the first time in the year longer than most people have been breathing. I’m not sure whether that’s something I should be letting on to. I guess it’s not surprising that the range of choice was much smaller this year. Covid means I haven’t been out of the country and less material has been shipped in by people who don’t want to take the luster off it with release in empty theatres. 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - Rhys, Hanks.

Only about one in ten of the titles that make it onto overseas lists appear to have had a screening here which make you wonder about the festivals. The absence of big, English-speaking spectaculars can be put down to my taste and the low level of ambition of the films. Broadcast TV and limited theatrical releases fill the gap. I’d like to think that the small number of archival titles means that I’ve caught up the backlog more than the fact that the sources are drying up - good bye ethnic video! 

2020’s list sort of in order - Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Ken Burns 2004 two parter), A HIDDEN LIFE (approachable Terence Malick), Quelque jours avec moi (A Few Days With Me 1988 via a Claude Sautet retro), BA BAI (The Eight Hundred, Guan Hu block buster), A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD (Marrielle Heller), HORS NORMES (Extraordinary - Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano), DETROIT (Kathryn Bigelow 2017), LA BONNE EPOUSE (How to be a Good Wife Martin Provost) 

La Dea Fortunata - Stefano Accorsi, Sara Ciocca, Edoardo Leo, Edoardo Brandi.

LA DEA FORTUNA

(The Goddess of Fortune, Ferzan Ozpetek), Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg 2014), So Big (Wm. Wellman 1931), MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN (Ed Norton), Il TRADITORE (The Traitor, Marco Bellocchio), THE KING OF STATEN ISLAND (Judd Apatow), INCH ALLAH (Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette 2012) Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi), Richard Jewell (Eastwood), Portrait d’un jeune fille en feu (Céline Sciamma), Wade (toon short - Kalp Sanghvi & Upamanyu Bhattacharyya), Moy Drug Ivan Lapshin (Alexei Gherman’s My Friend Ivan Lapshin 1986, at last) Boze Cialo (Corpus Christi Jan Komasa) La buena estrella (Lucky Star Ricardo Franco 1996) Trailin' (Lynn Reynolds 1921), The Accountant (Gavin O'Connor). 

 

 

 

 

 

Not a bad year but I don’t think there’s anything there I’ll regard with the awe that I can summon up for Wings, Le Diable au corps or Spirited Away. We’ll see.

Wade.