mcc

andi

@mcc

glitch girl

Avatar by @girlfiend

Also on Bluesky
Also on Mastodon.

log inask
mcc
@mcc

I am developing a theory that 2018-2019 was a high point for film

Reasoning:

  • The filmmaking techniques of the current moment were pretty much locked down, even genre junk looks absolutely fantastic
  • But COVID hadn't yet ripped through and run all filmmaking into Hard Mode
  • Streaming players were still in their expansion/"fund prestige media for no clear business reason" phase and hadn't yet flipped over to burning libraries to the ground
  • I mean come on just look at these movies

In other words: I think we were increasingly entering a golden age for film at the end of the last decade and we just don't notice because it so abruptly halted in 2020

You must log in to comment.

in reply to @mcc's post:

mcc
@mcc

Notes:

  1. I actually don't care for Midsommar, personally, and kind of wish I'd given its space to Matthew Rankin's "The Twentieth Century", but I was trying to be persuasive more than I'm trying to make a list of good films.

  2. "The Irishman" should have been named "I Heard You Paint Houses" (which it kind of seems like was the title Scorsese was trying to give it). I am still pissed off about this. "The Irishman" is not only generic but gives you (along with the "it's like a greatest hits album for Martin Scorcese!" marketing of the thing) a totally false impression of what you're about to watch.

  3. To be clear, I am not trying to suggest there are no good 2020 or post-2020 movies. Just that the absolute explosion I felt like we were seeing did not continue (and a lot of film from this time seems to betray either COVID-related difficulties or a COVID-dictated small scope).

login to reply
Nfinit
@Nfinit

To build on this, there's a lot of amazing stuff that's probably not on your radar and/or you might not personally care for, like Once Upon a Time In Hollywood-- probably QT's best work. Mandy is fantastic; probably the best modern Nick outside of Pig, Joker is-- look, Joker has it's problems and I understand why not everyone is into it but still my personal favorite superhero movie, Suspiria is fucking great and I'd be shocked if you haven't already watched it.

The only things I don't like out of this period is that I hated the one Cohen Brothers film, Buster Scruggs and the action movie scene was and continues to be dire-- It was the last gasp of YA franchise adaptations so you wound up with Mortal Engines, they managed to make a bad Hellboy movie somehow, Fucking... Ready Player One, it was just bad.

login to reply
mcc
@mcc

Oh, I really want to watch Mandy. Beyond the Black Rainbow was close enough to incredible it made me want to give that director another shot.

I liked Susperia. I even liked Mortal Engines, kind of, somehow, it was just trying so hard. I actually really liked Wandering Earth and Detective Pikachu, I legitimately had more movies I wanted to put on this chart than I had room to put on and have it still thumbnail well.

login to reply
whimsyvision
@whimsyvision

this reminded me how lucky I was in those two years, it was my first two years of film school, there was always a film to see and people to see it with (and argue afterwards) I've been craving that since!!

login to reply
mcc
@mcc

Thanks, this is all very useful.

Natchathiram Nagargiradhu sounds really interesting— is there a specific local political subject or search keyword I could/should read up on before watching? Or is the only thing to do to watch it and be aware I'm missing some context?

login to reply
razetime
@razetime

Natchathiram Nagargiradhu touches on themes that express the fractures in romantic and non-romantic relationships in the current day, with a particular focus on how caste politics and general familial setups keep the youth of india backward. It has references to old Tamil texts and songs, Ambedkarites and some other specific literature. There's a lot of specifics in it which are hard to appreciate from an outsider perspective. It's better to watch older films and understand what it is critiquing beforehand, but that takes a long time. I hope this explanation helps.

login to reply
Pinned Tags