The Films of 2020

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

#76 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Dec 19, 2020 2:49 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Jun 03, 2020 3:11 pm
Thomas Vinterberg's Druk sounds fascinating (an opinion which will surprise no one if you look it up). It could easily be deeply offensive and problematic for me, but if pulled off right the possibilities are endless. Hopefully it's as bold as it sounds (and with Vinterberg at the helm, I'm optimistic).
I didn’t like Druk (Another Round) as much as I hoped, but it’s an insightful anthropological view on the western ironic need for numbness to feel joy, for inebriation to fuel identity, to feel highs to bring one back to youth and romance once stuck in a plateaued existence. Vinterberg is not afraid to recognize the positive aspects of drinking, an invaluable disinhibition which grants doses of transient serenity, reprieve from boredom and apathy. He’s also not afraid to twist the knife in the realization that there is no cure to the disease of maturity, as alcoholism becomes an allegory for the consequences of trying to have your cake and eat it too in life. The narrative moves like adult development, igniting a light comedy that slips into a tragedy when trying to keep up with the same tempo, and whether or not Vinterberg and Lindholm think we can renew the cycle so easily is for viewers to find out.

In a straightforward manner, the film follows the self-medication hypothesis of addiction where one drinks to cope with dysphoria rather than to achieve euphoria- and yet it sneakily dares to show the colorful soup of the ride rather than an alcoholic’s hindsight reflection in black and white terms. In an even bolder way, this film demands that we acknowledge that “moderation” is not a word in our vocabulary, and that there is no such thing as a static comfort zone. The word “more” is always the answer to discomfort, reflecting our inability to accept our current state, moving the goal post to account for our sensitivity to staying in place- because that would mean a comfort with ourselves as we are. Here, the notion of ‘tolerance’ in needing to drink more to get the same effect takes on ripples of meaning for unmanageability in our lives, stemming from a refusal to tolerate our lives without a tangible variable to chase for a cure.

This film speaks an unsettling truth about western male identity that few films manage to, all tied up in a neat formulaic dramedy with about the level of didacticism one might expect, though outside of the obvious content we can read between the lines as his exciting lectures quickly transform into talks around his obsessive activity for selfish reinforcement, and this says something even more alarming about nationalism’s connection to celebrated alcohol consumption. Holding these truths that Mikkelsen may be initially sharper, more fun, and more self-assured, that lowering inhibitions a bit is the best way to access life’s opportunities our anxieties and self-consciousnesses are blind to… right along with the sadness dependent on an external elixir to make him feel stable, and the fact that we cannot take a magical supplement to sustain this persona, makes for a tough cocktail to swallow. If this isn’t a healthy solution, it begs the question: Is there one? Not on our terms. We spend our lives chasing what we need to be 'present' to find.

The film is a bit bloated, a bit too on-the-nose, but it's also a strikingly apt picture of how alcoholism is woven into western culture, and even moreso, "alcoholic thinking" into the psychology of the western folks who don't even drink. Perhaps the most sobering thesis of this film is the notion of 'do-overs', the tragic awareness of our locus of control, and how reality fails to intervene with our wills- or, as a character states late in the film (in a well-placed and perverse example of positive drinking, right before the endpoint of a dire one), how we must come to terms with our own failures to intervene on reality's terms. The film reaches a spiritual place amidst a finale planted in the cultural landscape of a seemingly sleazy scene, a reminder that celebrations can be both repelling and enlightening, and Vinterberg reverts back to the blurry concentrate that makes up most of life after showing polarized extremes. To this extent, the subtle thematic reveal implicates the film's meaty drama as anti-didacticism.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#77 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Mon Dec 28, 2020 6:16 am

The Midnight Sky had real potential to be interesting but George Clooney finally made me a believer about his deficiencies as a director. I speak for myself here but I doubt few would disagree that he's possibly one of the most agreeable movie stars of the last 3 decades. This is the first time where I felt kind of tricked by that, because he is the most interesting thing happening on screen against an incredibly overdone story, with what is an interminable pace at 118 minutes. Even though it's an overdone cliche itself now (RIP David Giler, who invented it) I was really thinking/hoping one of the characters on the spaceship turned out to be a robot/AI, just for the sake of making it feel a little more sci-fi than melodrama. Then it turns out no he's human, with another half-hearted backstory in a movie already chalk full of them. This is to speak nothing of the silly twist at the end that further made me feel stupid for dedicating two hours of my life to it.

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senseabove
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Re: The Films of 2020

#78 Post by senseabove » Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:25 pm

I haven't seen it yet, but Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is currently $1 to rent on Amazon, which means it's free if you've opted for No Rush shipping anytime recently...

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therewillbeblus
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Re: The Films of 2020

#79 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:39 pm

senseabove wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 3:25 pm
I haven't seen it yet, but Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets is currently $1 to rent on Amazon, which means it's free if you've opted for No Rush shipping anytime recently...
Ty Burr gave it some high praise and his Top Ten writeup made it sound interesting (blend of documentary and fiction, supposedly taking place in Vegas but shot in New Orleans, I think?) but I'm wary about the experience of watching drunk people for a full feature. Thanks for the head's up though, I've heard "humanism" thrown at the film in several places so it could be the empathy-for-drunks movie that America needs to combat the stigma. Or it could just make it worse.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#80 Post by domino harvey » Mon Dec 28, 2020 7:39 pm

Discussion of George Clooney as a director moved here

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Pavel
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Re: The Films of 2020

#81 Post by Pavel » Sat Jan 02, 2021 7:10 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat Jan 02, 2021 6:31 pm
Never Rarely Sometimes Always: The task of capturing youthful experience with authenticity is a challenge too few indie filmmakers can manage without an ironically grandiose-by-way-of-detaching pretentiousness or resisting the urge to insert artificial melodrama into the mix, which forces an uneven contrast of tones (as was my experience watching Nomadland). Eliza Hittman's effort here is terrific though, with nouvelle vague shots on the streets of New York, and meditations on the struggles of youth isolated within systems without transforming the themes into macro ethical statements. I hated Beach Rats, which seemed to exude all the face-slapping theatrics listed above, but this film is humble in its restraint, acknowledging that behavioral observations shot with modesty say more than words and stylistic intrusions ever could. The bond between the two girls is genuine, the drama is more intense because of the lack of verbal reveals about stakes and compromise. The single-take titular scene is one of the most incredible, raw, and honest moments in any film I've seen, not only because of the abstentions, but because the woman asking the questions is refusing to change her affect, behaving like a real provider would, where compassion is transmitted in quiet caring gestures, not in overblown responses. This is also a case where the gamble of casting is critical, and the film wouldn't work without Sidney Flanigan, who expresses so much without ever overstating anything, even in body language.
I still haven't seen Never Rarely (I was mixed on It Felt Like Love), but speaking of films that capture youthful experience with authenticity, I just finished Shithouse and quite liked it. It never ridicules its main character's homesickness, his attachment to his family, his penchant for crying at slight provocations, the fact that he talks with his stuffed animal. It refuses easy punchlines and all of the character's idiosyncrasies, most of which wouldn't generally be considered very "masculine", are portrayed in a very matter-of-fact way, and despite that the movie is still frequently very funny. Even the film's comic relief character, a supposed college archetype (I wouldn't know), is portrayed as a living person, a nice guy with a very dude-bro mentality. The film seemingly takes a relatively conventional turn at a certain point when Alex becomes romantically involved with a girl, but what follows sort of imagines a what-now, day-after scenario of the Before Midnight-type insta-romance, with both characters reacting in a deeply flawed, but richly human way. The ending does take a moderately disappointing crowd-pleaser turn (when it comes to the romance part of the film), but it also illustrates the part of the film that resonated with me the most, namely how college (or high school or any community) is often challenging, but when one finds a group to share the experience with immensely rewarding.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#82 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sun Jan 03, 2021 11:59 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat Dec 12, 2020 10:05 pm
I was worried that Lovers Rock would be similarly vapid, but at around the halfway mark I found myself utterly consumed by the atmosphere put forth. The camera drifting around the room of dancing, peering in at various characters coming in and out of the narrative and then returning to the groove, that its rhythm devolves into the hypnotic daze of culture mirroring as the marijuana smoke physically populating the space.
I had a similar experience watching Mangrove. I was a little worried at first, seeing some nascent cliches and one-dimensionality. But McQueen's bits of visual poetry find their way in, and the writing and acting really shine in the second half. It ends up being legitimately powerful without seeming overwrought.

I haven't seen any of the other movies in the series, but I'm thinking Lovers Rock next.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#83 Post by The Curious Sofa » Thu Jan 07, 2021 2:49 pm

The film which gave me the most joy in 2020 was Spontaneous, a teen high school comedy about students randomly and inexplicably exploding, leaving only blood and viscera behind.

Spontaneous starts as your typical high school movie, with our heroine Mara your standard sarcastic cool girl, breaking the fourth wall every so often. So far, so familiar.

One day a student in her class suddenly explodes without evidence of an incendiary device. Mara doesn't let this bizarre tragedy get to her and the film promises to be an amusing, if slightly glib black teen comedy. Then more students keep exploding, in the middle of the ensuing chaos Mara starts falling for a boy and from there the film started to take me by surprise.

I'm not the demographic for teen romantic comedies and a recommendation of a film being "heartwarming" usually makes me run a mile but Katherine Langford and Charlie Plummer are so appealing and in tune with each other and their dialogue so funny, I came to really root for them. The snappy dialogue and splatter premise make the film schmalz-proof and Spontaneous becomes an genuinely affecting film about first love, as it ventures to increasingly dark places. More students keep exploding, scientists and law enforcement can't figure out why and the situation becomes desperate. Still, the splattery sight of students bursting like viscera filled balloons never loses the edge of a sick joke.

One thing I appreciated was that Spontaneous side steps the usual cliches of the high school movie. There are no villains, everybody tries to be a good person. There are no mean girls, the jocks may be a little dim but they are genuinely sweet and the adults (parents, teachers, law enforcement) are decent people with a sense of humour, who understand and care for the kids.

I needed a film about the potential of good in people and didn't expect to find it in a gory, splatter comedy. Spontaneous is a film about the unpredictable randomness of life and how to make sense of the world despite of that. Its central metaphor may be on the nose but it works and it also happens to be a great film for this pandemic.

Don't let the poster for this turn you off, it's terrible.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#84 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jan 07, 2021 10:41 pm

Pieces of a Woman

I’ve read some criticisms of this film claiming that it’s too heavy-handed, but (at least for the majority of the film) I don’t know how else you authentically capture this kind of devastating narrative than the way Kornél Mundruczó does. I didn’t find it exploitative to the processes of trauma, but relentlessly precise, allowing us to become fully immersed in an overwhelming experience with full knotted-stomachs, and knowing full well that if this is how we feel so far removed from the situation, we can’t imagine the experience of actually going through it. The long takes in the first pre-credits act examine the process of being in labor with a rare fearlessness, as a suspenseful nightmare of pain and confusion. The entire picture is a thriller of domestic crises, where Kirby and LaBeouf (who, for obvious current-event human-cancelation reasons, will unfortunately be unfairly ignored from the bulk of praise being thrown at the performances), are so good they almost singlehandedly stop this film from devolving into manipulative tragedy-porn. However, Mundruczó’s willingness- hell, demand- to remain transfixed on the emotion without cutting from the unbearable discomfort, yet somehow still taking a (predominantly) humble stance that allows the actors to do the real work, is a challenging balancing act of restraint and involved commitment, pulled off with commendable composure. I’m sure plenty of people will find aspects to criticize here, and there are some easy targets
SpoilerShow
yes, there are expositional shots of dead plants and a disconnected bridge that are as on-the-nose as metaphors come, but I found moments like Benny Safdie finding a common proverb “time heals all wounds” as somehow profound- as if he had never heard it before- to be emblematic of the stupid things people say when you’re grieving and the hypervigilence of Kirby’s subjectivity in noticing them. I get how objectively it seems like a lame insert, but having been to my fair share of funerals, I’ve heard plenty worse.

Ellen Burnstyn’s (annoyingly uninterrupted) speech is a much much tho, as is the final act stuff in the courtroom, which really undid a lot of the modesty exhibited throughout the earlier part of the film. I didn't buy Kirby's self-actualization in the way it was presented to us, but I did believe that, based on the complex trauma symptoms we had seen thus far, she would forgive the midwife, and not take into account appropriateness of context on where and when to express that stage of grief.
However, if you can look past some of these details, it’s worth seeing on the merits of the opening birth scene alone, let alone these two actors' unflinching perfs. If there’s justice come awards season, Kirby will take home the gold statue.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#85 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 08, 2021 11:02 pm

Mr Sheldrake wrote:
Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:26 pm
The Invisible Man

An effective Elizabeth Moss vehicle, she delivers emphatically as a terrorized woman in peril, escaping the clutches of spousal abuse, and then struggling with the invisible force of its memory. The film is at its best in the early slow building tension, Whannell teasing the audience with potential scares and then pulling back.

Once the battle erupts full scale, he gets a bit carried away with the gruesomeness, too much collateral damage. It overwhelms the abuse metaphor while upping the ante on the scares. I nearly jumped out of my seat a couple of times. Moss is superb here in her resilience. There’s a vast modernist mansion used as a setting that is as eerie as the proverbial haunted house of old, Whannell demonstrating how to dramatize interior space. A terrific looking film considering an 8 million dollar budget.
I thought this was as theoretically creative as the buzz suggested: spinning the attention away from the manipulative toxic male as even a co-protagonist and reducing him to the shadows to make his victim solely worthy of surrogate alignment and empathic validation. The first half is a nice slow-burn, though I didn't expect it to go full-Gaslight using the strategy of relational aggression via indirect emotional abuse as the primary method of violence. As Sheldrake points out, this can only last for so long, and although I suppose it needs to get wilder, I wish Whannell found a path to raise the stakes while remaining in that grounded discomfort of brutal manipulation for the duration. Whannell does his best to keep this as the key weapon even between bits of violence, though a third-act narrative decision seems to exist solely to add another half hour to this film, feed into expected wish-fulfillment (why jump the shark now?), and comes off as cheap and unearned.
SpoilerShow
The choice of showing us the villain, and allowing him to flaunt his sociopathic behaviors in the flesh, is aimed at granting us catharsis; yet this undermines the film's central conceit in the process, personifying what was best left to our imagination as a stand-in for the person such feelings elicit in each audience member. Making him specific spoils the metaphor of a woman disempowered by ubiquitous -invisible yet debilitating- patriarchal energy as well, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes at how Moss uses his own tools to best him in the end, something that's a) metaphorically reinforcing a problematic lens that women are able to use patriarchal platforms to actualize their equality, and thus, b) out of step with any encouragement of women relying on their own strengths for empowerment (or is the strength in exposing male weakness?) I suppose I can get on board with the reading that this is showing how, on an even field, women are more cunning than men, and that by showing us this guy as a pathetic individual powerless beyond his suit invalidates his power over Moss... but then why did he have power over her for so long? Because she let him have that narrative? I don't know, it all feels a bit disingenuous when picked apart, even if I understand why they felt this was necessary to shift power drastically for the viewer's satisfaction.
Before this unfortunate extra chapter, the consistent deliberate pace and gradual, patient camerawork induces tension just a few notches below the norm, enough to stand out without detaching the viewer. I was reminded of David Sandberg's shorts during the best moments here, and even if it runs a bit long with frustrating developments, overall I remained impressed with the commitment of dragging this out until all the traumas of domestic abuse were excoriated.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#86 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Jan 11, 2021 11:57 am


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Re: The Films of 2020

#87 Post by knives » Mon Jan 11, 2021 1:13 pm

I was worried we wouldn’t get one this year.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#88 Post by DarkImbecile » Mon Jan 11, 2021 3:02 pm


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Pavel
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Re: The Films of 2020

#89 Post by Pavel » Mon Jan 11, 2021 5:06 pm

He's raised well over $7,000 in a few hours, so it seems pretty certain we'll be getting one for 2021.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#90 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 11, 2021 5:17 pm

I laughed when the raft in First Cow was edited moving back and forth to Sabotage's DJ scratching

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Re: The Films of 2020

#91 Post by colinr0380 » Wed Jan 13, 2021 4:33 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Mon Jan 11, 2021 5:17 pm
I laughed when the raft in First Cow was edited moving back and forth to Sabotage's DJ scratching
I did as well, and thought it may have been a nice allusion to the moment in Tenet where the same thing briefly happens to the imagery!

Is it just me or were a lot of Ehrlich's top films very orally fixated in nature? Lots of gaping mouths and swallowing things going on over the last year, it appears! Also it is interesting to note that the director of Minari is about to direct the live action remake of Your Name as their next project.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#92 Post by senseabove » Sun Jan 17, 2021 1:51 am

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets — The last eighteen hours in the life of a dive bar, and it's really a dive, not a trendily decrepit backdrop for a trend-setting crowd sipping cocktails on Friday night. The walls are papered with torn and faded pictures of regulars. There are no IPAs on tap—I don't think there are any taps at all, actually. And these folks are the lifers, whether they're 25 or 60, and all of them already know it. The barstool is palliative care. The movie's strength is that it refuses to pathologize its characters: no sob backstories or sad excuses or recitations of trauma (well—we get some of those, but they're not presented as justification or explanation, just the traumatic facts of exploitation and loss). Everyone here is intimately familiar with all of the character beats in the day, from the tipsy heart-to-heart to the end-of-night braggadocio to the morning blear. It's not exactly empathetic toward alcoholics so much as serving up proof that even the sad, failed, and fully aware of it are not only sad, failed, and fully aware of it. I don't even know that I'd call it humanist, as the movie doesn't concern itself with convincing us of the value or dignity of anyone here, but it's aware that there is community even in such depths, and it's not healthy or pretty, but it's no less real a comfort.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#93 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Jan 27, 2021 6:09 am

MLK/FBI

Technically a 2020 film, but it's starting to roll out in more virtual cinemas. It just finished its Lincoln Center run, but if you're a MoMA member, you can view it in their virtual cinema until the end of this month.

This was one of the very best films I've seen from last year, and it was spurred by newly declassified FBI documents on MLK. Among the handful of interviewees is an unseen James Comey.

The broader points have been discussed many times before: that the FBI had MLK under surveillance and that through surveillance they knew of his extramarital affairs. Thanks to the sheer amount of detail, much of which is new, a lot of this can be put in a far more damning context, and the way this is framed soberly reminds us that MLK was highly unpopular with the American public - it's not just a history lesson, the public's arrogant dismissals and the refusal to engage on issues of racial inequality resemble a clear and damning reflection of what continues to this day.

As the film depicts the maliciousness of Hoover's growing obsession with King, we're constantly reminded that his actions are never out of step with mainstream America - if anything, he was the embodiment of mainstream American values, and he garnered far more approval than King. Some of this was by design - Hoover made sure the FBI was promoted in American culture as not only keepers of the peace but as the guardian of American values. It's mentioned (and shown) how Hollywood played a big role in fostering this idea in the culture, and it arguably continues beyond Hoover's death. I've already mentioned the Oscar-nominated hit Mississippi Burning in other threads and how Julian Bond and others have called out its gross distortions of history - the film gets no mention here, but the case does, as MLK mentions it as one of several horrendous civil rights abuses where the FBI had yet to make an arrest. (By this time, the Civil Rights Act has been signed into law by LBJ, which also puts the FBI in charge of enforcing it.) The topic comes up because it’s part of MLK’s rebuttal when it’s reported that Hoover has called MLK one of the country's worst liars, and it's later implied that Hoover may have been openly critical because he was outraged that MLK had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The low point is when the FBI actually fabricates a letter to MLK, pretending to be one of his followers and telling him that he needs to kill himself for his extramarital deeds (all of which is still secret to the public). This accompanies a graphic tape recording of MLK engaging in one of these affairs. Comey confirms this, admitting he has seen the actual letter (which they show). That pathetic act alone is sickening, but the FBI's own surveillance also shows that it succeeded in throwing MLK into emotional turmoil. The possibility of his secret affairs being leaked or reported not only threatened him but also the entire movement, which was indeed the FBI's intent - they believed the Civil Rights Movement was a threat to internal U.S. security and wanted to undermine it by bringing down King.

It's also been suspected that the FBI had informants planted within African American organizations - very difficult given how Hoover recruited very few African Americans to begin with, but not impossible - and MLK's close associates warned King because they had very strong suspicions of who might be an informant. Those suspicions have been confirmed with the film identifying one associate within the SCLC and astonishingly a photographer who has taken some of the most widely-seen photos of King as he took part in high profile protests.

There are more revelations, but at the end, we're reminded that all of the FBI's audio tapes will be released to the public in 2027, so who knows what else is there? It's pointed out that one of the FBI's reports had a bizarre and unusual hand-written update that inserts the damning assertion that MLK observed a young woman's rape. A lot about it is highly dubious and most likely it's slander - it came when Hoover was ramping up his efforts to discredit MLK because he was now speaking out against Vietnam, something MLK was reluctant to do because it was certain to ruin his relationship with LBJ. (It pretty much did.) However, in light of the possibility of more revelations, it leaves a fairly uncomfortable end to the film.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#94 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Feb 26, 2021 7:07 pm

Naomi Kawase's True Mothers (Asa ga kuru literally Morning Comes) has been picked up by Film Movement and has been showing virtually here and there (probably its virtual run is near its end). It struck me as a return to form, of sorts. I certainly liked it more than any other Kawase film I've seen in many years. The basic story involves a middle schooler (Aju Makita) who gets pregnant and gives up her baby for adoption. The baby is adopted by a couple (Hiromi Nagasaku and Arata Iura) who have been able to have a baby of their own, despite best efforts. Then, one day a scruffy girl claiming to be the birth mother enters the story. The best aspects of this are the performances of Makita and Nagasaku -- and the often (nostalgic to me) documentary feel of many bits of the film. It is a longish movie (around 2.5 hours), but while slow-moving most of the time, it did not feel overly long. If you want to see this, you may need to act fast.

Theaters are listed here: https://www.filmmovement.com/true-mothers

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Re: The Films of 2020

#95 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:54 pm

Kawase's True Mothers is currently streaming (apparently for free) via Japan House in LA:

https://www.japanhousela.com/events/fil ... e-mothers/

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Re: The Films of 2020

#96 Post by OldBobbyPeru » Thu Mar 04, 2021 4:09 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:
Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:54 pm
Kawase's True Mothers is currently streaming (apparently for free) via Japan House in LA:

https://www.japanhousela.com/events/fil ... e-mothers/
I watched this last night via that link and quite enjoyed it, so thank you for posting that. She's really good.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#97 Post by aox » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:31 pm

TheKieslowskiHaze wrote:
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.
This was the surprise of the year for me. It seemed to balance the line a melodrama and sentimentality quite well. It never went for the cheap and easy portrayal of racism and instead remained nuanced focused on larger issues of both (im)migration and integration. It's an expensive rental, but well worth it if you have been saving money this year not going to the cinema during lockdown. I cannot wait to revisit this again.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#98 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:33 pm

True Mothers is probably my favorite Kawase film since her Sharasojyu back in 2003.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#99 Post by knives » Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:48 pm

I saw that Domino Harvey favorite Michael Polish came out with a movie last year called Force of Nature and the advertising suggested something terrible and trashy, Mel Gibson, and I had to figure out who that squared with Dom’s interest. Simple answer is that Gibson’s hardly in this and is mostly present as a selling point with a bit of a meta commentary possibly showing up.

The film immediately communicates how it is not the poster with a sparse sort of editing more focused on in camera movement than the cheap hyperactivity I’ve seen in a million Nic Cage films. Even the cinematography which while teal and orange has a brightness I hadn’t expected. That leads into a character focused first act as Emile Hirsch’s apathetic cop takes the lead. Without getting into too many details throughout Polish seems to defeat the idea of this as an action movie not only with the focus on character, but also with a sense of the magical that is reminiscent of the only other Polish film I’ve seen, but also Garcia Marquez with this isolated community of shadows.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#100 Post by DarkImbecile » Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:58 pm

Is guessing the name of the movie part of the fun?

EDIT: Just saw the exchange in the Sound of Metal thread... this discussion starter is going well!

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