Movies Recap
What movies that are actually worth the time
Intro
It’s the Christmas holidays and I’ve been dreadfully bored and slightly comatosed by excessive consumption of baked goods.
I’ve been trying to stay productive by writing and while it has made the days go by quickly, all the writing has crashed and burned and will never see the light of day. The result: I still don’t feel productive. So when fiction doesn’t work, it’s time to go to non-fiction.
New Years is a time to reminisce of the past years. What have I been doing all these past months. Well, there’s been a lot of movies. I’ve had a movie pass at my local theatre for the past two years, and it’s resulted in a blur where I can’t can’t remember anything. So here’s an attempt of organizing the past to hopefully give a sense of purpose to the wasted time by recapping the movies that were not a waste of time.
Foreword
Before we get into the movies list, there should be a note on my subjectivity. I have a taste that makes me like a movie or hate it. The main is how immersive it is. When I forget that I’m sitting in a chair among friends or strangers watching a screen, but instead I’m in the story. It’s all about immersion for me. Otherwise if I’m not immersed the dark thoughts intrude to my head again.
Anyways, I’m biased on setting. Not where the movie takes place but where I am when watching. I’ve been lucky to so easily be immersed by wathcing a lot of movies at my local art house theatre. It’s the ideal way to see a movie. Large screen, good sound, and a mature audience of movie lovers. It’s easy to watch a 3 hour movie in a theatre when I can’t check my phone or get distracted by anything. I actually find it incredibly hard to finish a movie when I watch it at home. And recently I’ve seen movies at the regular theatre and it’s been terrible! The worst ads I’ve seen in my life set me off in a foul mood, the seats are these grotesque abominations that have no where to put my feet against, obnoxious popcorn eaters, someone talking on their phone, etc. It was hell and it’s made me never to want watch a movie again.
Finally I have particular things I love and hate in movies.
- Love when characters die quickly with no fanfare. It’s brutal and something about it brings me glee.
- Hate the opposite. Slow motion, dramatic music, final last words. Ugh!
- Bitter sweet is the best way to end.
- Hate cute stuff. I have no heart.
Okay let’s get to the movies. Let me just open my email to go through all my receipts to remember what movies I’ve seen. This will only list the movies that I found significant. Good movies aren’t good enough, it has to be something that stays with me for me to mention. This will be in order of when I saw them, starting at the oldest. Also there might be some old movies that my theatre just happened to be playing on here.
Finally, I might not have too much to say about each movie, but almost all of them are high recommendations from me. It’s just really boring to write for each one that the acting/directing/visuals/music/etc where all very very good. It’s a given.
This list starts at September 2021 to the present, December 2023.
The Movies List
Annette
This is a weird movie. Originally written by the Sparks Brothers to be an album, but turned into a movie, so that’s pretty neat. And you can kind of see it as an album when you think about.
But the standout is that without a doubt, this movie has one, if not the, best beginning of a movie. Afterwards however… I don’t know. It’s a very awkward movie to watch and I felt slightly uncomfortable because it felt quite bad. It’s hard to recommend a movie that’s bad but has a great ending, but it’s incredibly easy to recommend a bad movie with an excellent beginning cause you can just leave whenever you want.
Also has a great sex scene pretty early on.
In the Mood for Love
A Hong Kong movie directed by Kar-Wai Wong (we’ll probably see another of his movies on this list). I don’t remember much except it’s incredibly slow and really really good looking. Colours look gorgeous in it as the smoke trails from their cigarettes consume the room. Bla bla bla. It’s one of those movies that repeats the same song over and over which I always love. I barely remember it’s love story plot, but the mood still lingers on the tip of my tongue.
Chungking Express
Okay I didn’t expect the next movie to be another Kar-Wai Wong movie. Another Hong Kong movie obviously, I didn’t like it as much as In the Mood for Love. This movie feels a little more immature, the characters a little more young, dumb, and less likeable. The plot is split up into like three or four different stories that are loosely related to the point that it may as well be separate films. This movie is almost not on this list, except for two things.
The beginning is excellent, another intro that is up there on best intros, with it’s distinct tone setting soundtrack and this interesting blurry slow motion chase scene. All to top with a voice over of falling in love.
The last story just plays California Dreaming over and over. And sometimes that’s all it takes for me to love a movie.
Nosferatu the Vampyre
For a while I joked that I rated a movie based on how many rats are in it. Well, this movie takes the cake with that rating system. If you want to see an insane amount of real rats scurrying about, this is it.
Dear Future Children
A documentary about three separate major protests happening in the world at the same time (Hong Kong, Chile, and Uganda). I might be biased because this is the first observational documentary I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have interviews. Gets quite emotional with a lot of good footages of the riots.
The Green Knight
It’s a good surreal retelling of a King Arthur story. All round just a really good solid movie.
The Souvenir Part II
I’ve still haven’t seen part 1 yet, but I love this movie. I’ve seen the trailer for part 1 once so I kind of understood the gist, it’s about our protagonist falling in love with a man.
Part 2 starts with grieving the loss of that man. It was interesting for me to piece together slowly what happened in part 1. So that by itself was interesting.
But Part 2 continues to intriguing as it’s about the protagonist directing part 1 for her film school project.
There’s a lot more meta elements like how part 1 is a true story for the director of this movie. Our protagonist is Tilda Swinton’s real daughter (Tilda Swington of course plays the mother in the film), and in real life the director’s film school project starred Tilda Swinton in her first role.
The music is also good, kind of got me into Anna Calvi.
I still haven’t watched part 1 and I kind of don’t want to ruin that experience.
Drive my Car
Biased because it’s an adaptation of a story from my favourite author, Murakami. And the crazy part is the movie is actually nails and captures the essence of a Murakami story.
However it’s stupid long, but is that a bad thing when you don’t want a good thing to end? A Murakami movie wouldn’t be right if it wasn’t boringly long.
Bonus movie: Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Also saw this months later. Same director, I think he filmed this when covid made him stop filming Drive my Car or something. It’s a collection of short stories. A movie not worth mentioning by itself on this list, but it does have a really funny short story where a student talks to her prof who recently published a very sexual story. The prof seems very akin to Murakami himself.
Bonus Movie #2: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
I didn’t know it was a Murakami movie until a few minutes in. It’s a mix mishmash of his stories all merged into one. It’s animated in a dreamy way that works quite well. Any Murakami fan should definitely try to see it, but also I completely forgot I saw it until I saw the receipt just now.
The Worst Person in the World
I saw this movie shortly after Drive my Car and I feel like they’re both pretty similar. Both are 3 hours long, subtitled, about loss, and have the exact same epilogue. But if I had to pick one, I prefer this movie.
It starts by saying it’s in 12 parts with a prologue and epilogue. The dread I felt when I saw that. But the split of chapters makes the story pace out really well.
It’s a perfect drama. It feels like a slice of life, but it’s much more than just a slice. A half of life story.
I don’t have much to say about this movie except it’s pretty perfect. It’s not an easy drama to watch (very serious and sad sometimes), but I believe it’s one of the best ones out there.
The Tragedy of Macbeth
I’m always a sucker for Shakespeare movies. This one’s done by the Coen Brothers and is a reminder that Denzel Washington is actually a really fucking great actor. Also the sets are insane in their abstractness.
Memoria
This might be the closest I was to walking out the theatre. It’s beyond boring. Tilda Swinton hears a random rumble that no one else hears. So she slowly searches for the source.
Here’s an example scene from the movie:
Swinton goes to a music producer person asking him to replicate the sound. She slowly explains what it sounds like, then he fidgets with his sound board to create it. This scene lasts for like 15 minutes of watching him work.
Later in the movie the music producer meets up with Swinton at the park, letting her hear his finished product. She puts on the headphones and we watch her listen. We of course don’t hear the recording, we just hear the sounds of the park. For five minutes we watch in silence.
I was so close to leaving but I kept staying for one more scene. Maybe the next scene will have something happen.
But as the time passed I slowly realized that I entered a meditative place. I’ve never felt like this before. I embraced it and I kind of enjoyed the unique experience.
However, the end is terrible and cheap.
Later I heard the director talk in an interview and he said he’s okay with people falling asleep in his movies.
The Graduate
The best Wes Anderson movie I’ve ever seen. And it came out before Wes Anderson was making movies.
Blade Runner
I’m already a big fan of Blade Runner and seen it numerous times before. Well in principal I’m a fan of Blade Runner, but I actually never really loved the film; always got bored. But seeing it in the theatre and not being able to get my phone out when it’s slow was a whole different experience. I’ve rewatched a lot of old movies at my theatre and Blade Runner was the one that really blew me away.
Fire of Love
A documentary about a couple that photograph volcanos. But heavily stylized that utilizes the subject of volcanoes more as a metaphor for the true subject of the film: the relationship between the two photographers. A very romantic and strange documentary, maybe my favourite documentary (but I am biased as I typically hate the normal format of docs).
Girl Picture
I don’t know why this movie has stuck with me. It’s a painfully typical alternative coming of age movie focused on three friends. The writing is both good and stupidly typical. The characters are like in highschool but talk and party like late 20s (maybe they’re just European). Girl Picture is like the perfect calculated alt coming of age movie, which makes it both great and terrible. Regardless, I’ll always remember the ending scene, where the three characters are at a party, all sitting together looking so happy on the couch. Perfectly happy.
Bardo, False Chronicles of a Handful of Truths
I saw the movie, and then I went to the theatre the following day to see it a second time. It’s absurd, dreamy, very weird, beautiful, political, and too long.
I have lots of things to say about Bardo, but I’d rather not say anything.
Tar
An interesting movie about following the perspective of a person of the perpetrator who abuses their power to sexually assault the ones below them. It’s interesting with a very well written script and acting by Cate Blanchett. But while that’s the main plot, it equally spends time focused an the orchestra lifestyle and interpretation/translating old art. Very smartly and interestingly done. Very serious.
All That Breathes
A documentary about someone in India saving birds. At least that’s what I think it was about. My theatre screwed up and accidentally played the movie without subtitles. Half the theatre left but I remained. It was a strange experience watching a movie where i had no clue what was going on. Luckily it was another documentary that was observational, that had little talking and mostly crazy visuals of life in India. Except there were scenes where it was the protagonist and his brother(?) having a ten minute conversation and I couldn’t do anything but zone out.
Half way through the movie they’re constructing a building and I thought, “Oh that must be their day job: construction workers.” But at the end of the movie it turned out they were building there very own bird sanctuary!
This movie probably wouldn’t be on this list if the version I saw had subtitles.
Anyways, it’s a rare opportunity to see footage of India. It’s a wild jungle of a city out there.
Bones and All
A very disturbing and beautiful movie. A love story. A horror story. A story about two young lovers road tripping to no where along the American frontier.
The less I say about the movie, the better it is.
But I will say this. Never have I felt more connected to an audience in a theatre until this movie. There was a shared sense of WTF horror as everyone left the theatre that I won’t forget.
And Bones and All is a phrase I find myself saying every so often now.
“You really read this whole entire review list of movies?”
“Yep, bones and all.”
Babylon
Wow. This is my go-to movie for #1.
However, I’ve talked to a few people that didn’t like it.
It’s kind of plotless, explicit, loud, demanding, and three hours long.
But wow. It’s the reason I love movies. It’s the movie for movie lovers.
I want to watch it right now. The whole thing. That first half is a non stop roller coaster.
It’s hard for me to write about how much I love this movie. And it’s weird to recommend because I’m really not sure if you’ll like it. But I don’t care if you don’t like it. It’s my #1.
Living
It’s a movie about an old british guy getting dementia. It’s okay. The memorable part was finding the theatre completely full, filled with old people. I swear, it was every single old person in the city gathered at this theatre. There were groups bumping into each other saying their hellos and shaking hands. It was a weird experience.
Beau is Afraid
The movie where I audibly said the most, “What the fuck”.
It’s insane and brilliantly done, until you get used to it’s formula, you’re starting to get tired, and realize it’s three hours long and you’ve only been there for an hour.
This is one of the few movies I saw people walk out (and that was two hours in). Unless you’re stuck in a theatre, I think it’s pretty impossible to last until the very end. And that’s okay, the best scenes are the first hour. But oh man, there’s scenes near the end that I occasionally remember, and I again say aloud, “What the fuck”.
Asteroid City
This is probably the least fun Wes Anderson movie to watch. There’s a lot of ai generated Wes Anderson stuff out there right now cause his style is so formulaic, and this movie doesn’t help. It checks all the bingo cards. Which would be fine except it’s boringly slow.
But the final bit of the movie kind of flips the table very subtly. It goes way off the tracks. I can’t tell if Wes Anderson intentionally made a generic movie that derails only. And I don’t want to give the impression that there’s a big ol twist at the end, there isn’t. It’s just a subtle thing that differentiates itself from being cookie cutter. It was something special and magical that can’t be generated.
You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.
David Lynch
He gets his own special category at the end. You either like him or you don’t. And I love him.
Blue Velvet might be my favourite for how grounded it is.
Wild at Heart is outrageously bad but all the actors just nail it. And it’s fun to see that the majority of the Twin Peaks cast make an appearance.
Inland Empire is probably the most memorable one for me. Three hours of being tense, confused, and wowed. I really have no words for Inland Empire.
The Fabelmans is a Spielberg movie that’s basically autobiographical of his youth. I kind of hate Spielberg movies and this one isn’t an exception to that rule. But it ends with Spielberg’s character meeting John Ford who is played by David Lynch. It’s a complete record scratch to the movie (they literally play a record scratch) and it’s glorious and actually makes the movie worthwhile just for that ending scene.
Other Movies
Here’s a list of movies that I didn’t see at my local theatre, so I’m just remembering off the top of my head instead of looking through receipts.
Tenet
I’m a big fan of Christopher Nolan so take that as you will. Tenet might be my favourite “most fun” of his movies. I’ve rewatched it a lot, just to watch the beginning, and then I’m sucked in and end up watching the first half. It’s a fast paced exciting movie. Shame I can’t say that for the second half.
Song to Song
This is actually the first movie I saw at my local theatre years ago. It’s my go-to movie to watch in the background while I’m doing something else. It’s just a really beautiful looking movie that doesn’t really have any plot or talking.
The Batman
When I left the theatre at like 2am, a couple next to me said, “That was terrible.” And I agree with them. I also loved it. This movie is a vibe. The first few lines in the movie are both epically cool and stupidly cringe. It’s up to you if you’re into that or not.
But also I mentally checked out at the half way point.
Conclusion
So I’ve been going through my email receipts to remember all the movies I’ve seen. Half of them I had to look up the title to remember. There’s also a lot of movies that will stick with me purely out of hatred but I decided to leave them out.
Also a neat stat is that a lot of movies I saw in 2022 are on this list while I skipped the majority I saw in 2023.
These aren’t only just movies that I really like, but movies that I highly recommend. They’re movies that I think are definitely worth your time, or at least they were worth my time. (With the exception of Nosferatu, Memoria, and All that Breathes, they’re on here for personal reasons).
But while we’re here, if I have to order my top 3 fav:
-
Babylon
-
The Worst Person in the World
-
Bardo
What do they all have in common? All are 3 hours long!
Goodnight
COMMENTS