The Films of 2020

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
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AidanKing
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Re: The Films of 2020

#51 Post by AidanKing » Tue Jun 30, 2020 7:07 am

Thomas Clay (previously suspected to be 'Nothing' on this forum) has finally managed to get his new film 'Fanny Lye Deliver'd', on which he has apparently been working for several years, released, albeit only on streaming obviously. I think it actually looks rather interesting and the trailer seems to show a great deal of technical sophistication in the making in a very 1970s Brit-film sort of style. Unfortunately, it only looks as if it is going to get a DVD release with no Blu Ray: I suspect Nothing would have had something to say about that.


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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#53 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:53 pm

Yes, God, Yes was a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of emerging adulthood within a bubble that doesn't reinforce typical sexual development but still retains the other universal social maladies that don't discriminate during those formative years. Maine avoids cheap shots, with even the moments that are definitely wavering toward silly like the In Your Eyes scene, still preserving a compassionate energy in the unity of the situation. This is not a film you gawk at, but sift through the differences to get at the similarities, wavering between objective meditations and subjective connectedness, like in that previously mentioned scene- accomplished through a simply methodology of changing camera placement between removed and intimate, and infusing a subtly somber score that refuses to allow these scenes to be played for jokes. The film's aims are too humble to emerge into anything revolutionary, but also doesn't bare itself into a vulnerable place that would venture too far on the spectrum toward comedy or drama, at the expense of the other.

One quirk that I really liked was how the sought-after badge to wear is literally an amulet signifying a platonic club retreat, rather than the metaphorical badge-of-honor in being a sexually-promiscuous girl amongst your high school clique. Little flourishes like this may get missed but forced me to reflect on my own bias continuously and remove any pejorative lens from examining this film through. Not a great movie, but a much better and relatable- yet less raunchy or bombastic- one than you may expect from reading the description.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: The Films of 2020

#54 Post by Aunt Peg » Mon Aug 10, 2020 2:11 am

Something that appears to have gone under the radar is Jan Komasa's Sala samobójców. Hejter (The Hater) (2020). Jan Komasa's previous film Boze Cialo (Corpus Christi) (2019) received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film last year and was much lauded.

His new film was apparently released in Poland right before the pandemic hit and was then shunted off to streaming. I would like to think if it wasn't for COVID that The Hater would have played the festival circuit worldwide as well as receiving a multi country cinema/psychical media release. But as things are Netflix have acquired the film and I believe it is playing in most countries.

Really worth seeking out, very topical and relevant 'hot off the press' subject matter, directed with flair and imagination and topped off with a dynamic lead performance from Maciej Musalowski. With a running time of 135 minutes that flies by, I highly recommend the film for anybody with Netflix.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Films of 2020

#55 Post by MichaelB » Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:31 am

It’s a sequel to Komasa’s 2011 debut The Suicide Room, which greatly impressed me at the time. Although the impression I’m getting is that the new film works just as well as a stand-alone piece.

(I haven’t seen it yet, or Corpus Christi - my workload right now makes watching stuff for pleasure all but impossible - but I do have definite plans to watch all four of Komasa’s features back to back this year; he’s unquestionably one of the most interesting of the younger generation of Polish directors.)

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Aunt Peg
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Re: The Films of 2020

#56 Post by Aunt Peg » Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:46 am

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:31 am
It’s a sequel to Komasa’s 2011 debut The Suicide Room, which greatly impressed me at the time. Although the impression I’m getting is that the new film works just as well as a stand-alone piece.

(I haven’t seen it yet, or Corpus Christi - my workload right now makes watching stuff for pleasure all but impossible - but I do have definite plans to watch all four of Komasa’s features back to back this year; he’s unquestionably one of the most interesting of the younger generation of Polish directors.)
I can confirm that The Hater stands on its own. I would love to see The Suicide Room. Hopefully with the exposure of The Hater and Corpus Christi are getting it will lead to The Suicide Room being more widely accessible.

I haven't seen Corpus Christi either. Did see a trailer at the cinema a couple of weeks ago but I've already got a Blu Ray on it's way to me.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Films of 2020

#57 Post by MichaelB » Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:50 am

My Sight & Sound review of The Suicide Room:
One wouldn’t expect a teen-angst melodrama to open with a concert recital of Schubert’s ‘Der Doppelgänger’, still less that a song from 1828 would offer such astute psychological commentary on the downside of adopting online avatars, but Jan Komasa’s debut is full of similar surprises. When a party dare triggers a series of events leading to abject online humiliation, the teenage Dominik seeks sanctuary in a virtual environment called The Suicide Room, which provides Samaritans-style support while stimulating an already nascent interest in the philosophy and practice of suicide. This comes to a head when he develops a strictly virtual relationship with pink-haired Sylwia, self-immured in her bedroom for three years. These sequences are rendered in animation whose occasionally blocky digital artefacting emphasises their artificiality, the onscreen doppelgängers enjoying rich fantasy lives as their real ones fall apart. Komasa (himself young enough to get away with a Polanskian cameo as a thug on a bus) said that he wanted to scare the bejesus out of his teenage target audience, and though he ultimately overdoes both the melodramatics and the cultural reference points, there’s no faulting his ambition.

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Aunt Peg
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Re: The Films of 2020

#58 Post by Aunt Peg » Mon Aug 10, 2020 10:28 am

Sounds very interesting.

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Michael Kerpan
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Re: The Films of 2020

#59 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Aug 17, 2020 10:54 am

A Whisker Away / Nakitai Watashi wa Neko wo Kaburu (lit. Wanting to Cry, I Pretend to Be a Cat) (2020)

Directed by Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama, written by Mari Okada. This animated film was scheduled for wide release (in Japan, at least) until coronavirus hit -- it was then re-directed to release via Netflix.

A junior high school girl badly affected by the divorce of her parents (dumped by her mother and living now with her father and his new wife/girl friend -- and the interloper's cat) is considered "weird" by her classmates (except for one grade school pal). She encounters a rather creepy cat mask seller, who gives her a mask that allows her to turn into a cat temporarily -- and she uses this ability to spend time with the one boy in her class that she has feelings for. Alas, this is the only way she can get a positive response from him. It turns out the cat mask seller has ulterior motives for his "generosity" -- and our heroine gets trapped more and more into her feline persona.

A much better "cat girl" show overall than Ghibli's Cat Returns a Favor. As far as I can tell, Mari Okada playing a significant role in creation of a show is as good a hint as any about whether a series or movie is likely to be worthwhile. Visually quite lovely -- despite little flashy animation. The show is about 10 minutes too short -- so one has to pick up the end of the story in abbreviated fashion during the credit sequence. Highly recommended.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#60 Post by cdnchris » Tue Aug 25, 2020 1:22 am

Fantasy Island... oh, I'm sorry, Blumhouse's Fantasy Island is pretty terrible. A horror take on the television show it suffers primarily from not being scary, being predictable, dull, and wasting Michael Rooker.

The film actually takes the formula for the show and is pretty true to it: guests show up and they can live their fantasies, apparently learn a lesson. But, as this is a horror take, the fantasy turns on each character and can be deadly. This, on its own, could work, but the film is so dull in the handling (bad pacing and editing doesn't help), comes off a bit cruel, and there isn't much of a point to any of it. Like, why would you take the show and then just have the premise act cruel towards the characters? That's not an interesting enough twist and the characters are so thin there's nothing particularly remarkable or revelatory about what any of it has to do with the characters. Peña, in the Montalban role, is also aloof and just sort of there. His character is obviously shady, but it was hard to give a damn. He's been horribly miscast here.

There are no surprises, characters do stupid shit, nothing connects.

It's fucking stupid through and through.

BUT once the stupid twist occurs and all is revealed, there was actually a smidgen of a good idea in here, and expanded or focused upon it might have made for a good, or at least enjoyable, movie. It's just that the writers decided they needed a twist and had to save tye good idea for the end, and we had to sit through a bunch of bullshit to get to it.
SpoilerShow
It turns out Peña isn't an evil mastermind that enjoys torturing people for no reason. What's actually going on is that someone's morbid fantasy is being acted out.

One of the characters is fantasizing a revenge on the people she feels are responsible for the death of a potential boyfriend (and it's ridiculous and stupid complicated how all these people were involved). She apparently went to the island earlier with this fantasy in mind and since Peña and the island HAVE TO fulfill her fantasy, all of the involved people are brought to it and the games begin, against Peña's will. That sort of explains his aloofness and some other things, but by this point all of that is too late. It's been so frustrating nothing could have saved it.

But I liked the idea of taking the show's premise, technically staying true to every aspect of what usually led to light and fluffy episodes, but twist it around by introducing an unstable character taking advantage of the island's powers. And if the film was better written I feel it could have done something really interesting with it, instead of saving it for a twist. Sure, it explains everything that happened beforehand, but by that point the audience is beyond caring; the journey to get to the revelation wasn't worth it by any means.

Or maybe it's still a bad idea and I'm giving said idea too much credit. Maybe it's just hard for me to accept the fact I wasted my time on a film that really had no earthly business ever being made and I have to trick myself into thinking the film had some semblance of a good idea just to justify the fact actual breathing people considered making this film. Because I just can't accept people would willingly waste their time on such horseshit.

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knives
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Re: The Films of 2020

#61 Post by knives » Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:00 am

If I remember right there was an episode of the original show with that exact story, but instead of a twist we dig into Molteban’s attempts to fix things.

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MichaelB
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Re: The Films of 2020

#62 Post by MichaelB » Tue Sep 01, 2020 7:15 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:31 am
It’s a sequel to Komasa’s 2011 debut The Suicide Room, which greatly impressed me at the time. Although the impression I’m getting is that the new film works just as well as a stand-alone piece.

(I haven’t seen it yet, or Corpus Christi - my workload right now makes watching stuff for pleasure all but impossible - but I do have definite plans to watch all four of Komasa’s features back to back this year; he’s unquestionably one of the most interesting of the younger generation of Polish directors.)
Having now seen it, I can confirm that The Hater works perfectly well as a stand-alone film - there's one character common to both it and The Suicide Room (Agata Kulesza's monstrous Beata), and one fairly oblique reference to events in her past that's presumably only there to give fans of the earlier film a brief thrill of recognition, but otherwise there's no continuity at all aside from a certain stylistic similarity (characters communicating through 3-D avatars, portentous classical music interludes). Although now that I've watched The Hater, I'm very tempted to watch The Suicide Room again, as I suspect that will be a fair bit more resonant knowing what lies in Beata's future.

And I'm very happy to echo the recommendation - it gets a tad melodramatic towards the end (and it's not at all hard to guess where it's going), but it's one of the most vivid depictions I've seen about the use and abuse of current social media channels.

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soundchaser
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Re: The Films of 2020

#63 Post by soundchaser » Tue Sep 15, 2020 8:45 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Jul 28, 2020 5:53 pm
Yes, God, Yes was a surprisingly sensitive portrayal of emerging adulthood within a bubble that doesn't reinforce typical sexual development but still retains the other universal social maladies that don't discriminate during those formative years.
I liked this film quite a bit, though I really, really wish it trusted its audience more. It operates in this weird gray area of hoary clichés and genuinely surprising humanism — although maybe the fact that in high school I went on (and led!!) similar retreats to the one presented here means I knew a few of the things that had to be spelled out for those who might not. But wow, Natalia Dyer is *excellent,* and everything in the last twenty minutes is worth the previous missteps (numerous though they may be).
Last edited by soundchaser on Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#64 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:01 pm

Yeah the film never strays into any territory that would make it stand out loudly but I admired the surprisingly gentle path it took, even if that meant less risks that could have spelled greatness.

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Wowee Zowee
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Re: The Films of 2020

#65 Post by Wowee Zowee » Thu Sep 24, 2020 7:26 am

The Nest (Sean Durkin)

I have been eagerly awaiting Durkin's return to feature length films since his 2011 debut "Martha Marcy May Marlene", which caught me completely off guard in it's non-linear unvieling of psychological terror and isolation. Now, after the longest absence of a theater going experience in my life, I happily returned to the empty Landmark to watch his quiet, equally brilliant second feature.

The film is told mainly from the point of view of Allison, played to icy perfection by Carrie Coon, who is the wife of a 1980s businessman and mother of two. Near the beginning, her husband (played brilliantly by Jude Law) presents an "opportunity" for the family to leave the United States and move to his home country of Britain, where a lucrative job awaits. But like Durkin's first film, nothing is really as it seems, and the layers of marital deception are slowly peeled away over the course of the film. Where "MMMM" had a non-linear structure to creepily reveal the effects of PTSD and the origin of our title character, here, everything is linear as we slowly get a picture of what kind of man Jude Law's Rory is, and the world he has created for his wife and children. Through small actions (like two family photographs), little lines of dialogue, or even a brief soccer match in the beginning ... we start to realize like Allison the charade going on around her. Durkin does some nice things with close-ups, particularlity with Coon, that help establish her character as a reluctant, manipulated victim who slowly starts taking control of her own life. And Law's general charm and charisma are perfect for this "Greed is good" type of character.

Durkin does some nice things behind the camera to create a sense of unease. The film almost feels like a horror, with ultra slow zooms, autumn-esque cinematography (that also captures the time period quite well), and an almost atonal music score. The country estate where the family settles is perfectly utilized, with it almost becoming it's own character commenting on the deceit within its walls. This film might be too quiet for some, and I can imagine it leaving most viewers with the sense of wanting more. I really liked this almsot chamber-piece/character study of a marriage, a family, caught up with the idea of success and the lies it creates. An interesting, slow burn of a movie that reminds me of films from decades ago. Like his first film, I am sure it will reward on a rewatch.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#66 Post by Nasir007 » Sun Sep 27, 2020 8:23 pm

Enola Holmes

A YA movie on Netflix. Don't quite know why I saw it but it is nice enough. I do think it takes forever to get going, the "adventure" doesn't start until about 20 minutes in. I think that's a huge mistake. The young count is the main plot basically and the start of that plot coincides with the start of the adventure, so again, your main plot doesn't start until 20 mins in.

But once it does start, it is pleasant enough. And the film is engaging in that it has many things going on - there are several subplots. There is the aforementioned young count plot, there is the disappearance and search for Enola's mother which seems like it will be the main plot initially but is discarded part way through, there is the impending reform bill, there is the suffragette movement, there is the story of her brothers and her coming-of-age and development of life purpose and of course the overarching feminist angle. The film juggles all these things rather well and mostly resolves them satisfactorily while also leaving room for a sequel.

This movie does for Brown what Brooklyn did for Ronan - turns her into a full blown leading lady fit to carry films. She's charismatic and you can definitely see a movie star in there. The design and photography are appealing.

I can't say I really cared for the post modern touches - there is constant voiceover, constant flashback, constant talking to the audience, constant diagrams etc. on screen and constant trivia - a la Lars von Trier in his last 2 films. It is harmless enough and lets Brown's personality shine through, but I think the movie might have worked without them as well though I could be mistaken. It does rely heavily on Brown' charm.

And finally, the film's most spectacular aspect might be the original score. I think it is rather memorable and works very well.

A good harmless family entertainment. I think the message is nice and should speak to young girls particularly. Better than the shit disney puts out for young girls.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#67 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:47 pm

zedz wrote:
Tue Aug 11, 2020 11:19 pm
IF I WERE THE WINTER ITSELF (Jazmin López, Argentina, 2020) – Amazing cinema that sounds oppressively academic on paper but is breathtaking on the screen. A group of people congregate in a vast run-down mansion in the middle of nowhere and set about filming reenactments of Godard’s La Chinoise, Ana Mendieta’s Untitled (Facial Hair Transplant) and Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire. Meantime, lead actress Carmen is haunted by a recently ended relationship and that distraction starts to infect the band’s quixotic project. Linear time begins to break down, and the cast seem to be reenacting their own lives as well as those classics of activist art. The whole thing unfolds in long, sensuous prowling tracking shots, and the elaborate choreography spins off into a couple of arresting dance sequences. It’s like a reflexive, slow cinema, architecture porn, musical ghost story.
I found this film more interesting than enjoyable, but it accrues energy that builds worlds on its ideas in an elliptical fashion, and I get the feeling that revisits will do it great justice. Essentially this is yet another broad-minded and brilliant Argentinian film, creating labyrinths of cerebral material that cannot contain the emotion within its walls, which inevitably cuts through and disintegrates the attempts at tangibility. Early on, two of the actors discuss how Godard’s film questioned the limitations of intellectualization in activism, and this film’s reflexivity seems born from the idea that the filmmaker can try her best to implement versatile arrangements to convey insight, but these tools of medium cannot adequately evoke the enigmatic emotions swimming around in the conflicting experience of true psychosocialspiritual dysregulation.

Here that example is post-breakup mourning, and the hypothetical phrasing of the title hints at the powerlessness to overcome the inherently nebulous direction in even beginning a formulation beyond obscurity. Or perhaps it’s the final surrender that grows to greater and vaguer signifiers, an exhausted attempt at seasonal metaphor that is eventually externalized into actuality, featuring another extreme attempt to achieve finality, and finally a return to the inability to escape the experience as soon as Carmen tries to sit with her own thoughts.

Resurrecting these artistic works of activism, and contextualizing their restrictiveness against an overwhelming reality-testing/destroying psychological state, helps redefine the constraints of our own activism in regards to our agency, as well as the subjective realities that are so saturating they highlight objectivity as superficial and leave those realities obsolete. The dance scene to the Ameno remix is the best moment in the film, and I wish there were a few more of these scenes, even if its inclusion as an isolated extravagance mirrors Portrait of a Lady on Fire's own musical impact due to its segregation.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#68 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Oct 17, 2020 1:50 pm

Watched The Trip to Greece on Hulu last night. I guess this is going to be the last one. Each of the sequels to the original 2010 film feel a bit more safe and predictable than the first one did, funny and pleasant to take in with some more serious undertones here and there. Still got my fingers crossed that Criterion will do a big box set of the series as there's a lot more in what I've seen of it as a TV series compared to movies.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#69 Post by ianthemovie » Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:52 pm

I wonder if anyone else has seen Dean Kapsalis' The Swerve. Apparently it was made in 2018 but was only recently got a (streaming) release. It showed up on my radar because it has gotten a couple of rave reviews and so has something like a 90 on Metacritic. It sounds to be an intriguing and dark psychological thriller/horror movie. Can anyone speak to whether it's worth checking out?

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MichaelB
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Re: The Films of 2020

#70 Post by MichaelB » Fri Oct 23, 2020 7:41 am

Aunt Peg wrote:
Mon Aug 10, 2020 6:46 am
I haven't seen Corpus Christi either. Did see a trailer at the cinema a couple of weeks ago but I've already got a Blu Ray on it's way to me.
I have now seen Corpus Christi, and the hype is amply justified: it's not just Jan Komasa's best film (and as far as I'm concerned he's yet to make a bad one, and I've seen all four features) but one of the most intelligent and absorbing dramas I've seen since Asghar Farhadi's A Separation - with which it shares a welcome fondness for complexity and nuance in its treatment of its major (and indeed minor) characters.

It reminded me in many ways of Paper Mask, a long-forgotten British film from 1990 in which a hospital porter managed, thanks to a series of coincidences, to get hired by another hospital as an actual doctor - although the crucial difference is that while Paper Mask focused exclusively on the deception and the suspense as to when he'll be unmasked (dramatically, a given) and was otherwise pretty thin gruel, Komasa and screenwriter Mateusz Pacewicz realise that while the core narrative structure of a parolee successfully pretending to be a priest (surprisingly, this has happened for real on more than one occasion) offers similar opportunities for constant suspense as to when he'll be exposed, they're much more interested in the real dramatic/psychological meat of this particular topic.

Which is to ask fundamental questions about what a priest is actually for, and whether a time-serving veteran who's dutifully ticked all the right boxes but is otherwise pretty much detached from his community except for the contractual minimum (Mass, confession, etc.) is intrinsically superior to someone whose track record as a petty criminal actively disqualifies him from the priesthood, but who would appear to have more natural talent in a single fingertip than his predecessor has in his entire body - and the entire community is visibly energised by his presence, not least because he actually starts doing what his predecessor only talked about, while grasping tricky diplomatic nettles that had been brushed under the carpet until his arrival.

I'd seen a couple of features with Bartosz Bielenia in supporting roles (he had a tiny part in Wojciech Smarzowski's scabrously score-settling Clergy, for instance), but nothing that signalled the power of his performance here - and Corpus Christi simply wouldn't work without a barnstormingly charismatic lead. And about halfway through I realised that the camera was barely moving aside from one tiny, almost imperceptible track into his face - when I give it a second viewing (and it's definitely "when", not "if"), I'll keep an eye out to see if the framing really is mostly static, because I suspect this may be a deliberate aesthetic choice on Komasa's part, as if to symbolise the rigidity of the system that the protagonist Daniel is fighting against.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#71 Post by Persona » Sat Oct 31, 2020 8:45 pm

HIS HOUSE

Best horror movie since I'm not even sure.

Effective not just in its depiction of genre horror but societal horror and seamlessly communicates those two things in a dark, disturbing harmony rather than trying to graft one on the other.

Exceptional lead performances, cinematography, editing.

Great debut from Remi Weekes, who has immediately become a director I will follow closely from here on.

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willoneill
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Re: The Films of 2020

#72 Post by willoneill » Thu Dec 03, 2020 2:56 pm

Possessor (Dir. Brandon Cronenberg)

Honestly, if I were David Cronenberg's son, I don't think I'd have the courage to make a body horror film, but good on you Brandon. Possessor (or, uh, Possessor Uncut ... is that the official title or just an indication that in Canada, the film is uncut?) has great visuals and sound design, and an intriguing premise, but doesn't really say much. There's very context for how the film's fictional "service" is supposed to work properly, which makes it hard to understand what's malfunctioning. You get bits and pieces, but not enough to care about the protagonist. I also didn't pick up the motivation (or even who's paying) for the central job of the plot, but maybe I just missed that detail. But, back to the visuals, a lot of the work was done practically and it looks quite striking. It definitely stayed with me in my long, cold walk home from the theatre late last night. Both that, and the sound design, reminded me almost of Beyond the Black Rainbow, in a way.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#73 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Dec 03, 2020 6:23 pm

It does look very interesting from its trailer. It also got a review on the BBC's Front Row arts radio series last week where the apparently 'extreme and unnecessary violence' grossed out two of the three reviewers too much, so that probably means that it is doing its job! It apparently has the Andrea Riseborough character as a hitperson able to carry out perfect contract killings by 'possessing' the bodies of people close to them who might avoid suspicion and murdering them that way, with the latest job seemingly going a bit wrong. The main film critic brought in for the Front Row segment, Larushka Ivan-Zadeh, (the only member to unreservedly like it) mentioned that its 'like Avatar or Inception in premise but emphasises the bodily violence of entering into another person as compared to the slickness of those films'. Maybe its going to be a kind of commentary on the acting profession too, as it does look as if it is going to be getting into ideas of what inhabiting different races, sexes, nationalities etc and having to convincingly play a part can end up doing to the psyche of the person inhabiting that role, even if only for a brief period before discarding the role permanently and moving on to the next one.

I had not realised that Sean Bean was in the film as the next target for assassination who is apparently provoking a crisis of conscience until watching that trailer, which I presume is meant to be a wry joke about how easy his characters are to kill in every other film! And it was already getting clear after Oblivion, Mandy and The Grudge but Riseborough is really tackling some interesting roles at the moment, especially in sci-fi and horror.

(But all of this mostly reminds me that I really need to dig out and watch Antiviral at some point)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#74 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 12, 2020 7:19 pm

Cold Meridien: Peter Strickland's latest is a short 7-minute experimental film (available on MUBI and backchannels). Like most avant-garde films, it's hard to figure out what to make of it all- though it's definitely provocative in its presentation of voyeurism as a numbed paradox of engagement and displacement with/from content, as we watch pleasurable and horrific images spliced with pleasant ASMR and ominously jarring sound designs, making this a cocktail of contrasting vibes using the medium's many tools to reinforce that point.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#75 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sat Dec 12, 2020 11:02 pm

Minari (Dir. Lee Isaac Ching)

I got to see this with Lincoln Center's virtual cinema.

There are a few moments that come close to crossing the line into sentimentality, but, in my view, it never does. It's genuinely lovely. A tension--due to race, American religious fundamentalism, and/or capitalism--undergirds the whole thing, but so does a genuine appreciation for the beauty of family and the American landscape. Shades of Malick and Steinbeck. I was legitimately moved. Also, the music is great, punctuating scenes without taking over, heightening the sublimity of it all. I recommend this movie pretty strongly.

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