You Will Die at Twenty (2019)

You Will Die at Twenty (ستموت في العشرين) is a stunning Sudanese film from Amju Abu Alala, and I was enraptured by it from its very first shot. It has some really amazing moments in it, and it's visually wonderful. Unfortunately, the film's last act, which should have felt triumphant and wonderful, portrayed an act of rape, representing the old trope of raping a woman as a way to become a man. Of course, the film doesn't ask us to look at this act of rape as if it's rape, which makes the ending of the film all the more troubling. It's a shame, too, because Alala is obviously a wonderful talent, and the film is really quite extraordinary.

Oh! and I'm not including this movie on the Cinema Q list because You Will Die at Twenty is not about queerness at all, but there is a very interesting moment when a sheikh's assistant attempts to seduce our main character. It's a very strange, quite sexy moment, and although we immediately move on, it's very intriguing.

The Wanting Mare

This film was very hard to connect with. I never really knew what was happening or why characters did what they did. I also don't understand the world-building. Or rather, I like the idea of it, we just knew so little about the world that the circumstances of the world – which were designed to inform the characters' decisions – explained nothing.

For me, this film made another enormous mistake in its dramaturgy. It jumps ahead 35 years, and when it does it expects me to care about a new trio of characters making similarly inexplicable decisions. I really loved the two characters in act one (Nicholas Ashe Bateman, the director, plays one of them), but the film is done talking about those characters after 25 minutes.

This movie looks cool, and I wanted to like it. I tried hard to like it, even. But it just didn't happen.

No. 7 Cherry Lane

I really liked Yonfan's No. 7 Cherry Lane (繼園臺七號). This is an arthouse animation film from last season that I missed, but it's beautiful. I am really into animated films these days. I am not sure what has come over me. In any case No. 7 Cherry Lane is a memory film. It's an intriguing May-December love story with gorgeous animation.

I watched this on the Criterion Channel.

Nina Wu (2019)

I didn't have much to say about Nina Wu (灼人秘密) after I saw it – back in late September. I watched it with my unseen movie club, and it's a film about the film industry in Taiwan (but also, really, the film industry everywhere). Midi Z's movie is a kind of psychological thriller where we don't always know what's really happening, whether or not something is a dream or not, etc. But the film's end really does bring everything all together, and it makes things quite clear.

The performances in this film are also just excellent.

The thing for me is that I didn't really enjoy watching this very much. It's a hard film to deal with, and it doesn't offer a lot of room to breathe or space for joy. (This is, I suppose, a weird thing to complain about, but I guess what I'm saying is Nina Wu felt a little too relentless. One excellent thing in the film, to my mind, is the way it uses queerness as a kind of space of freedom or possibility. I was into that.

Nina Wu was released in Taiwan in 2019 and the U.S. in 2020.

The Kid Detective

The Kid Detective is very good. Very funny but also poignant and smart.

And I cannot stop thinking about the last scene, when the kid detective burst into tears.

Give Me the Satus Quo or Give Me Death!

The Twentieth Century: the Epic of Mackenzie King as Recounted in Ten Chapters is a brilliant comedy about early 20th-century Canadian politics. It's a wonderful satire inspired by Guy Maddin and Derek Jarman, but the genius is all Matthew Rankin. It's a hilarious, fabulously confident film. (Incidentally, all of the reviews that compare this to Monty Python are out of their minds.)

I watched this with my movie club. It was a Dave Rodriguez pick, and the entire group loved it.

Apples (2021)

Apples (Μήλα) is quirky and very funny – part of the New Weird Greek Wave – but then moves into beautifully moving territory. I really liked this.

Cherry (2021)

I hated Cherry probably a little more than it deserves, but I don't care. The main issue with this film is the way it is shot. It's photographed and colored in this flashy style as if it's a superhero movie, but it's supposed to be some sort of realistic memoir of a guy with PTSD. 

Here's the thing. The first act of the film is all dumb jokes and weird editing with tons of voiceover. I was annoyed. Then we go to war in Afghanistan and I liked the movie a little better. This stuff is all very sad, and the movie hates war as much as I do. They spent good money on this part and it all looks good, too. 

Then my dude comes back from the war and does a lot of drugs and most of the movie is actually just him and his little girlfriend being junkies. Lots of drugs, lots of slow-motion photography. Lots of ponderous, droning music. I was really, really bored.

Tom Holland can do no wrong, and I am not holding this film against him, but I hated this. Oh and to make matters worse, this is only available on AppleTV+, a streaming service no one needs.

Ammonite

I like Francis Lee, and I like both of these actresses, but I found Ammonite pretty boring.

Fire Will Come

O Que Arde (Fire Will Come) is a mostly intriguing study of light, smoke, fire, and fog. What plot there is doesn't really work, and I'm not sure the movie is trying to do much other than look at fog and fire. Not that I blame Oliver Laxe; what he shoots is certainly visually interesting.

I watched Fire Will Come on the Criterion Channel.

Lucky Grandma (2019)

Lucky Grandma (幸運的奶奶) is funny and charming, and Tsai Chen is great. It's very well directed, and it's Sasie Sealy's first feature! I enjoyed myself a lot, and laughed a lot, as well. This is good fun, and doesn't get mired in sentimentality the way one might expect a film about an irascible grandmother to get.

The Good Shepherd

With a better script Greyhound could have been a pretty exciting movie. Even with its terrible script – which focuses on religion for a risible amount of time – it's frequently exciting and often a bit of a nailbiter. But, as usual, Tom Hanks is kind of boring. And the script – which Hanks himself penned (really?!) – treats the main character as some kind of saint whose weird behavior is not quirky but instead some kind of mysteriously magical power. (This is, presumably, in the source material, a memoir by the main character that is titled (rather ambitiously) The Good Shepherd.) There is also a shallow frame with a love interest, and director Aaron Schneider weirdly insists, throughout, on referring to dead people as "souls". As in, "We lost 200 souls last night." It's weird. 

The fights are cool. The rest of it is silly.

Pieces of a Woman

Everyone says so, and everyone is right. The first thirty minutes of this film are really, really great. The remaining 95 minutes are a predictable melodrama. The camerawork is great, and of course Mundruczó has great style. Pieces of a Woman is well made; it's just that there's not much to it.

You know... the thing about dead babies in films – this is not quite as true onstage, but I think it is true of films – is that they're replaceable. It's easy to jump forward 2 years or 1 year or whatever, and magically, poof, there can be a baby. Or even a full-grown six-year old or whatever. It's just so easy. So the stakes just don't seem very high to me in a movie when someone loses a baby. The filmmaker can get you another one without any trouble; don't worry.

It is surprising that Mundruczó decided to direct something like this after directing the intense White God. I don't really understand that, but, well, as I will say it again: the first thirty minutes are really stellar.

The White Tiger

I thought I was going to like The White Tiger a lot, but oh boy is it boring. Director Ramin Bahrani's pace is consistently off, and although he spends a ton of time explaining why the character does what he does, he never quite lets us in. In fact, he has an odd contempt – as is quite clear in the narrative frame – for a character we're supposed to love and with whom we're supposed to empathize. We wait and wait and wait for the protagonist to do something. When he finally does – after I am not kidding you 100 full minutes – it is too little, too slowly filmed, and too late.

Druk (Another Round)

Another Round is such a male film. And it's about a group of men waking up to the lives they're living and learning to see them in a new way and be better men. These are men with a lot of privilege who get away with rather a lot. This film also made me very, very anxious. While also resonated with me deeply, even though I am not very similar to these guys. It's impeccably directed, and Mads Mikkelsen is flat out brilliant.

2020+ in Review

LOVED
~ ~
1. The Personal History of David Copperfield
2. Martin Eden
3. Beanpole
4. Bacurau
5. Nomadland
6. Tenet
7. The Father
8. Another Round
9. Babyteeth
10. The Vast of Night

REALLY LIKED
~ ~
11. La Llorona
12. A White, White Day
13. Driveways
14. WolfWalkers
15. Minari
16. The Climb
17. The Half of It
18. Zombi Child
19. Two of Us
20. Onward
21. The Painted Bird
22. First Cow
23. Judas and the Black Messiah
24. The Twentieth Century
25. Apples
You Will Die at Twenty
Kajillionaire
Spoor
Nina Wu
Never Rarely Sometimes Always
No. 7 Cherry Lane
Lucky Grandma
Your Name Engraved Herein
Love and Monsters
Palm Springs
The Kid Detective
Heroes Don't Die

LIKED
~ ~
And Then We Danced
Young Ahmed
Corpus Christi
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Sound of Metal
Pinocchio
Eurovision Song Contest: the Story of Fire Saga
Preparations to Be Together for an Unknown Period of Time
Enola Holmes
Bull
Yellow Rose
Let Them All Talk
Soul
My Little Sister
Sibyl
The Traitor
Over the Moon
The Whistlers
A Girl Missing
Dear Comrades!
Fire Will Come
Ammonite
Mulan
The Trial of the Chicago 7
She Dies Tomorrow
The Wild Goose Lake
The Way Back
Being Impossible
Lingua Franca

LIKED MORE THAN I DISLIKED
~ ~
Da 5 Bloods
Promising Young Woman
Divine Love
Twilight's Kiss
Pieces of a Woman
The Midnight Sky
Greyhound
One Night in Miami...
Mank
Hope Gap
Emma.
Butt Boy
Hill of Freedom

BARELY LIKED MORE THAN I DISLIKED
~ ~
News of the World
Vitalina Varela
The Gentlemen
Blow the Man Down
Charm City Kings
Ride Your Wave
The Life Ahead
The Prom
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
I Was at Home, But...
The Wanting Mare
The One and Only Ivan

DISLIKED
~ ~
The Burnt Orange Heresy
True History of the Kelly Gang
Calm with Horses
The White Tiger
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Hillbilly Elegy
Made in Italy

HATED
~ ~
Cherry

COMPLETE AND TOTAL WASTE OF TIME
~ ~
Tesla

My Picks for Best Actress for 2020+
My Picks for Best Actor for 2020+
My Picks for Best Supporting Actress for 2020+
My Picks for Best Supporting Actor for 2020+

+The awards year for 2020 included the first two months of 2021.

The United States vs Billie Holiday (2021)

Terrible. Just terrible.

The Life Ahead

This adaptation of La Vie devant Soi takes the tactic of the film Transit – adapting a film about a woman living in the aftermath of the Shoah in France and her relationship with a Muslim boy – and transfers it into a seaside town in present day Italy. All good and well, and the spirit is in the right place in a lot of ways, but Edoardo Ponti's film is trite. We don't spend enough time with the characters really to love them, and the entire thing operates on the idea that we know every move before it happens, as if giving us familiar tropes were the same thing as emotional investment. I didn't find this affecting at all, although it did make me want to rewatch Moshé Mizrahi's excellent 1977 film.

Collective (2020)

Damning and frustrating and terrifying all at once. Collective is a stunning film. I was seven minutes in, sitting with my jaw dropped. What an excellent film.

The Father (2020)

Florian Zeller's film of The Father (based on his play) is a very smart portrait of dementia. It's also very clever. It's almost too clever, but at the center of this film is Anthony Hopkins, who gives such an extraordinarily sensitive and beautiful performance, that even amid the cleverness of Zeller's script and the genius production design, the deep humanity of the character comes through. It's a great film.