Get ready for the craziest summer movie season any of us have ever seen.
First of all, I hope that everyone reading this post is safe and healthy as the world continues to deal with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has made for a movie year, and personal year, like no other in my lifetime. My full-time job shuttered back in mid-March, and it’s aiming to re-open in June. By that point, I hope that we have a clearer idea of how a “new normal” is going to look; I hope we have a treatment plan beyond “social distancing” that will allow life to resume; and I hope we come out of this as better human beings, more empathetic towards one another, and finding new, creative ways to connect with one another.
The movie year was blown a massive hole in with COVID-19, as movie theatres have shuttered, movie releases have been delayed, and studios have tried to figure out how to make money off of the films whose releases were cut short. And yet, I’ve still seen over 100 films I will consider as part of my moviewatching year, when all is said and done. Part of that is the influx of independent studio screeners, but most of that comes from the three days I spent covering this year’s Women in Horror Film Festival in Marietta, Georgia. Starting on the day this is being posted, I was to begin my second year of covering the Atlanta Film Festival, but that has been delayed until September; I hope that, by that point, it will be safe for festivals to commence, and I will have more on that as the time gets closer.
As theatres closed, most of the tentpole movies made their way later in the schedule, with this coming Fall looking to be the most stacked we’ve seen in quite a while. Some studios have chosen to make films available on VOD- I’ll have more on that in a bit- and some are going straight-to-streaming (with Disney’s “Artemis Fowl” and the romantic comedy “The Lovebirds” being two of the biggest examples). As for the movies where their releases have been cut short, most found their way onto VOD sooner than expected; I have seen a few of them (like “The Call of the Wild” and “Bloodshot”); waited for the streaming debut of one (Pixar’s very fine adventure, “Onward”), and held off on others. The reasons I’ve held off on films like “The Invisible Man,” “Emma.,” “Trolls: World Tour,” “The Way Back” and “The Hunt” has nothing to do with lack of interest- I genuinely wish to see all of them- but expense. Like many people, my wife and I were furloughed from our jobs in March, and while we’re fortunate enough to not struggle as others have, we haven’t exactly been keen on spending $20 a hit to rent movies like “The Invisible Man” and “The Hunt” just to lose access to them in a couple of days. With the ones we did put down for, at least we have them in the Queue for future viewing. That said, I think this time is going to be an interesting test run for what the future of film distribution looks like; the theatre chains could see more day-and-date theatrical/VOD releases happening on certain films (like kids films, for example), changing the release strategy forever. In that case, I think the rental model that Universal has adopted during this time could thrive, and feel less gouging, but we’ll see.
Without working, without movies to see in theatres, there’s been nothing but time. That time has been spent, mostly, watching movies and TV shows, often with my wife; sometimes as part of virtual watch parties; many still for review. We’ll get to the latter in a bit. I’ve seen a lot of movies and TV in the past six weeks; as far as TV, my wife and I binged the SyFy show “Haven,” and are currently in the middle of my first, full “X-Files” watch through; individually, I’m watching some “Community,” and- after having them on loan from my father-in-law for years- I’m finally watching through the “Lonesome Dove” miniseries, which I will be writing about for patrons. Speaking of the Patreon, they have been getting a rundown of the old movies I’ve watched for the first down with brief thoughts, and it’s been great to log those, and not feel pressured to write about each and every one of them, although I make a point of mentioning the ones I will write about in the future. Some of my favorite Self-Isolation first time watches have been Powell and Pressburger’s “Black Narcissus”; “Mephisto”, a drama about an actor thriving by selling his soul in Nazi Germany; Glenn Danzig’s “Verotika”, not because the movie is good (it’s really not), but because it was a blast being part of a live-tweet event which you can ready my contribution to in the link on the title; James L. Brooks’s “Terms of Endearment”; Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Wind Rises”; “Death Race 2000”; “Local Hero”; and Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces.” There have also been some good rewatches, like “Jerry Maguire”; Martin Scorsese’s trilogy of faith; a “Repertory Revues” rewatch of John Frankenheimer’s “Seconds”; and a virtual watch party of Scorsese’s “Shutter Island”. I’ve also spent time finally re-organizing our movie collection, and getting a definitive movie collection list done on Letterboxd. Factor in that I’m looking to really get going on the podcast in the next month, and have a great start right now, it’s going to be a productive self-isolation without work.
So, that brings us to the 2020 movie year, such as it is. I’ve mentioned many of the films I have not seen yet- what has stood out among the ones that I have? Rather than just rattle off everything, let me just list the best films I’ve seen, the performances (and other Oscar hopefuls) that have stood out, and other things that I appreciate about the movies this year. I hope you enjoy!
10 Best of January-April 2020
1. “Black Lake”
2. “Sorry We Missed You”
3. “Blur”
4. “Taxicab Ride with Jesus”
5. “The Shadow”
6. “Premature”
7. “Corpus Christi”
8. “Bacurau”
9. “In Her Shoes”
10. “Cleanse”
“I’d Love to See It” Oscar Hopefuls
1. Zora Howard (Best Actress) for “Premature”
2. Best Cinematography for “Bacurau”
3. Best Live-Action Short for “Lili”
4. Haley Bennett (Best Actress) for “Swallow”
5. Best Cinematography and Best Original Score for “Black Lake”
6. George MacKay (Best Actor) for “True History of the Kelly Gang”
7. Ewan McGregor (Best Supporting Actor) and Best Costume Design for “Birds of Prey”
8. Best Animated Feature for “A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon”
9. Best Cinematography and Best Original Score for “Color Out of Space”
10. Best Production Design for “Gretel & Hansel”
Things I Loved and Cherished in Early 2020 Movies
1. The vision of unleashed emotional pain in “Black Lake”.
2. The thoughtful debate on faith, and God’s place in it, in “Taxicab Ride with Jesus”.
3. Nicolas Cage on alpacas in “Color Out of Space”.
4. Harley Quinn’s breakfast sandwich in “Birds of Prey”.
5. The old-school sense of adventure in “The Call of the Wild”.
6. The collective energy between creators and audience at the Women in Horror Film Festival.
7. The wild deconstruction of genre and theme in “Bacurau”.
8. The painful final act of “Sorry We Missed You”.
9. The suspenseful true-life escape to freedom in “Balloon”.
10. David Lynch interrogating a monkey in “What Did Jack Do?”.
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
