Well, we’ve arrived at what would normally be finals week for the strangest school year of my teaching career. Even though nothing else feels normal, I’m still putting out my annual list ranking all of the movies I’ve watched since the end of last school year. Among the many things that I’ve missed during this quarantine is being able to go see a film in the theater. At least there will be a new Christopher Nolan movie waiting as soon as the theaters do open. Despite having three streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus), I feel like I’m running out of things to watch, so as always, please send recommendations my way if you see something good that isn’t on this year’s list. This year I added an also recommended that is in some way connected at the end of each movie capsule for those of you that also need something else to watch. And lastly, don’t forget that this isn’t necessarily my ranking of how good the movies are, just which ones I enjoyed the most. I know that the new Star Wars isn’t better than Parasite, but I enjoyed it more so I ranked it higher.
32. Midsommar If there were any two hours I could have back this year, it would be the two hours I spent watching Midsommar. It’s billed as a horror movie, but it isn’t really scary, it’s just horrifying. The premise of the movie is that a group of American friends travel to a midsummer festival in Sweden, but it ends up being a cult that gradually starts killing all of them. If that just spoiled anything for you, good, then I just saved you being traumatized by watching the movie. It wasn’t a bad movie per se - the acting is good, especially Florence Pugh, and the scenery is beautiful, but some of the stuff in the movie is just so disturbing and sadistic that I couldn’t get the images out of my head. It is hard to enjoy the acting or the scenery when people are having their heads flayed open on the rocks or being put inside a bear skin suit and lit on fire as a sacrifice. I can’t see how anyone would enjoy watching this.
Also recommended: If there are any other movies like this out there, my recommendation is that you probably want to avoid watching that one too.
31. Uncut Gems I disliked this movie so much I ended up watching parts of it on fast forward. It looked really good in the trailers, but when I saw that it was directed by the Safdie brothers I suspected it wouldn’t be very fun to watch, and it wasn’t. The Safdie brothers specialize in movies where all of the characters are unlikeable, and the main characters continue to make one bad decision after another, leading to an overall sense of dread the entire movie. Adam Sandler plays Howard, a jewelry store owner and overall lousy human. He’s in debt to a lot of people, his wife hates him, and he’s trying to keep a mistress happy. Reviewers that liked it talked about the movie being gritty, intense, about how it puts you inside of the mind of a delusional man, blah blah blah. I know some people enjoy watching this kind of thing. I hate movies where you are just tense the whole time and you know it’s going to end poorly, and the only reason I even made it to the end was that it was free on Netflix and I could skip through a lot of it.
Also not recommended: The Safdie Brothers previous film was called Good Time, starring a rough-looking Robert Pattinson. It’s more of the same - all of the characters are so unlikeable and so many bad things happen to people that you’re just thankful when it’s over, no matter how good the acting or cinematography.
30. Murder Mystery Murder Mystery is the most watched Netflix movie to date. If you are watching a Netflix original, especially a Netflix movie starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston, you probably know you are not signing up for a night of quality cinema. But at some point in the last year, many of us reached the point where there wasn’t anything else to watch, and it was free, so what the heck. It was good enough for me to watch all the way to the end, and that’s probably all I was shooting for. Murder Mystery continues Netflix’s string of creative movie names, including The Marriage Story, Money Heist, and Tall Girl. For the record I have not, nor will I stoop to the level of watching Tiger King.
29. Venom Venom is one of those movies where I think everyone involved must’ve known that it wasn’t very good, but they leaned into the campiness of the whole thing and that made it fun. A movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously can still be enjoyable even if it isn’t good, and let’s be clear, Venom is not very good. It was a bit surprising to me because Venom/Eddie Brock is played by Tom Hardy, who seems like someone who normally takes himself pretty seriously, and in Venom he is having debates with himself about whether or not to eat people.
Also recommended: The boss/bad guy in Venom is Carlton Drake, played by Riz Ahmed, who seems to have found a niche playing sleazy types (The Night Of, Nightcrawler). But in The Sisters Brothers he plays the wonderful Hermann Kermit Warm, a prospector/inventor who crosses paths with the notorious Charlie and Eli Sisters. It was one of my favorite movies last year.
28. Zombieland Double Tap The original Zombieland is a terrific movie. It was a top 10 movie for me when it came out in 2009 during the height of zombie-related content: books, movies, TV shows, etc. Woody Harrelson was great, Emma Stone, still a bit of an unknown at the time was terrific, and Jesse Eisenberg was perfecting his goofy neurotic persona. By 2019 The Walking Dead has long since jumped the shark, Max Brooks (World War Z, The Zombie Survival Guide) has moved on to writing about Bigfoot (seriously), and this sequel felt about 5 years too late. It’s still funny, but it mostly treads the same ground as the original, just not as well. It even has another Bill Murray scene, arguably the funniest part of both movies.
Also recommended: The Zombieland movies play the undead for laughs, but I’ve always thought the scariest zombie movie is Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which was followed by a solid sequel 28 Weeks Later.
27. Under the Silver Lake - This movie is a trip. Andrew Garfield plays a 30-something slacker living in an LA apartment. He meets and falls for a mysterious woman that he spies on when she’s swimming in the courtyard pool. And just as he starts to connect with her, she vanishes. He spends the rest of the movie trying to figure out what happened, and it leads to some truly bizarre places. It’s beautiful to look at, and at times I thought it was going to be a really interesting movie, but at other times it tried to be so complicated and weird it just seemed silly. In the end it was kind of a mess.
Also recommended: This is director David Robert Mitchell’s third movie. His second movie was one of the creepiest and best looking horror movies of the past decade, It Follows.
26. Okja Okja is a couple of years old, but when Parasite won best picture it reminded me that one of Boon-Jong Ho’s earlier movies was on Netflix, and that I hadn’t seen it yet. The premise is that a corporation sets out to create a “super-pig” that will provide a delicious, sustainable food source for the world. Okja is one of the test pigs that is raised and befriended by a young girl in the mountains of Korea. With all of Bong Joon-Ho’s movies, things tend to go badly at some point, and in this case it occurs when the big pig gets taken away to be made into super bacon or whatever it is they make from the giant pigs. It manages to be fun and thought provoking at the same time.
25. The Irishman There was a lot to like and also a decent amount to dislike about the Irishman, a Netflix original movie that was nominated for best picture. The good starts with the cast, including legends Al Paccino, Joe Pesci, and Robert DeNiro. I tend to think of all three of them as being well past their prime, but Paccino in particular gives an impressive performance as Jimmy Hoffa. I didn’t know much about Hoffa, other than that he had been killed and never found, so it was interesting to learn a little about him, even if it was a fictionalized version. Martin Scorcese is another all-time great, so you know that any movie that he directs is going to be done well. Unfortunately Scorcese has become such a larger-than-life director that when he makes a movie now, no one seems to be able to tell him to edit his movies so they aren’t 3 ½ hours long. There were also a lot of parts to this movie that I felt like I’d seen done before - it hits all the familiar notes of an organized crime movie, but not in a particularly original way. I mostly enjoyed this, but it didn’t deserve to be nominated for best picture.
Also recommended: If you haven’t seen it yet, the last truly great movie Scorcese made was The Departed in 2006. But I’m also cautiously optimistic about his next movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, which is based on the book of the same name that was one of my top 20 books of the last decade.
24. Fighting With My Family Based on a true story, Fighting With My Family is the tale of a British family that makes a living on the low-level professional wrestling circuit in England. When the WWE comes through town, both Zak and Saraya (Florence Pugh) go to an open audition, and Saraya ends up getting a chance to go to America for a tryout to wrestle in the WWE. This was a movie that I watched because it was free to stream on Amazon Prime, and while it was predictable, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
Also recommended: Florence Pugh has been all over in the last couple years, but the first time I saw her was in The Little Drummer Girl, a movie-quality miniseries that came out last year, based on a John LeCarre novel.
23. Booksmart - A lot of people that have a similar taste in movies to mine recommended this coming of age story starring Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever. Both actors are great, and I really wanted to like this movie. Perhaps it fell victim to my high expectations but I didn’t enjoy it that much. It was funny at parts, but not quite as funny or heartwarming as I had hoped. But since everyone else seemed to love it, you probably shouldn’t take my word on this one.
Also recommended: Beanie Feldstein plays the best friend character in Ladybird, another recent coming-of-age film, and one of my top five movies of the last decade.
22. Jo Jo Rabbit Jo Jo Rabbit is a charming, if silly movie set during WWII. JoJo is a 10 year old German who wants to fight for his country but is a bit of a coward, and has a strange version of Hitler as his imaginary friend. His nationalism is put to the test when he realizes his mother (Scarlett Johansen) is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic. It was surprising to me that this was nominated for best picture because I didn’t think it was all that memorable, but it was a pleasant enough movie.
Also recommended: Director Taika Waititi is best known for directing one of the Thor movies, but he also directed the humorous vampire mockumentary What We do in the Shadows.
21. The Spy Who Dumped Me This was not the first time that I’ve watched a movie that I expected to be formulaic, only to have Kate McKinnon absolutely steal the show. So far the movies roles she’s had have been mostly supporting characters, but how is she not starring in her own movies yet? She’s by far the best thing on Saturday Night Live, but I would go as far to say she is the funniest person in movies or TV right now. It’s a combination of being a gifted physical comedian, and having a weird, manic charisma that only a handful of SNL alums like Chris Farley and Will Farrell have ever matched. We need more Kate McKinnon movies. As far as this particular movie, yes, it’s pretty formulaic - Mila Kunis finds out her boyfriend is a spy, he gets killed, then she and her best friend (Kate McKinnon) have to save the day. It’s basically the same movie as Spy starring Melissa McCarthy, but both are worth watching because of their stars.
Also recommended: The all-female Ghostbusters remake a couple years ago was mostly considered a failure, but not for any good reason. Watching that cast (Kate McKinnon, Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig and Leslie Jones) alone is a reason to see the movie, and that is coming from someone that considers the original Ghostbusters one of the best comedies ever made.
20. The Forgiven I had never even heard of this movie until it popped up as a recommendation on Amazon Prime. It’s set in South Africa shortly after Nelson Mandela has been elected president, and Desmond Tutu (Forest Whitaker) is leading the Truth and Reconciliation Committee Mandela assembled in an attempt to bring healing to a hurting country. Most of the movie focuses on the interactions between Tutu and Pier Blomfield (Eric Bana), a convicted death squad assassin and overall horrible human being. The movie feels a bit manipulative at times, but there are some powerful scenes, and Whitaker and Bana are terrific, and make the movie worth watching.
Also recommended: Roland Joffe, the director of The Forgiven made a movie in 1984 about a Cambodian journalist trying to escape from the horror of the Khmer Rouge regime. The Killing Fields was a best picture nominee, won Oscars for best cinematography and best supporting actor (Haing Ngor) and is worth checking out or revisiting.
19. Spider Man Far From Home During the coronavirus quarantine I started working out on the treadmill every day, and the only thing that motivates me to keep going is watching part of a movie while I work out. Marvel movies are pretty much the perfect treadmill movie. Entertaining, not too complicated, good special effects, people that are fun to watch. This Spider Man installment was the last Marvel movie that I hadn’t seen yet. The bad guy in this one is Mysterio, played by Jake Gyllenhall. Enjoyable movie, but nothing spectacular.
Also recommended: I’m not a huge Spider Man fan, and I’m also not that big of an animation fan, but Spider Man Into the Spiderverse is an wildly creative and interesting movie, one of my all-time favorite superhero movies.
18. A Head Full of Dreams Coldplay is often dismissed by a lot of music fans, which is nonsense. Until I went to see them in concert, I enjoyed their music, but didn’t necessarily consider myself a hug fan. But during the Head Full of Dreams tour I got a chance to see them live, and it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to. You don’t realize until you go to their concert just how many songs they have that you can sing along to, and the show they put on is unbelievable. Seeing music live is one of my favorite things to do, and something I’ve missed tremendously during quarantine. The night I went to their show was the night after the Las Vegas shooting, and the day that Tom Petty (maybe my all time favorite musician) died, and the concert was in some way a healing and joyful thing in the middle of a dark day. The documentary isn’t just a concert film, it’s the story of the band coming together in college, playing their first gigs together, and rising to stardom. One of Chris Martin’s lifelong friends has been filming the band since before they were even together, so the footage makes for a pretty great narrative. I’m not sure I’d recommend this if you aren’t a Coldplay fan, but if you like their music at all you’ll enjoy the documentary.
Also recommended: An even better music documentary that I saw recently is Peter Bogdanovich’s Running Down a Dream, a 4-hour history of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers that follows the band from the 1970’s when Tom Petty first started playing with Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench who kept making music together for part of 5 decades until Petty’s untimely death. More on this movie at the end.
17. American Factory Last year’s Best Documentary winner, American Factory follows a GM plant in Ohio that is shut down, but then re-opened a few years later as an American subsidiary of a Chinese auto-glass plant. Many of the old workers come back to work at the plant, where they work under Chinese management. It is a fascinating look at the differences between the two cultures and approaches to factory work. The directors do a great job of not telling the viewer what to think, but letting the story unfold as clashes occur over unionization, working conditions, and profit.
Also recommended: I don’t watch that many documentaries, but the one documentary that made my list of the best movies of the last decade was Undefeated, an incredibly powerful story of a high school football team in Memphis.
16. Captain Marvel I enjoyed Captain Marvel more than I’ve enjoyed any Marvel movie since Black Panther. The Avengers movies are fun but feel a bit bloated at this point, and the Spider Man movies are fine but predictable. This is the origin story of Captain Marvel, played by the terrific Brie Larson, who also appears in The Avengers movies and probably lots of other future Marvel movies. Again, you pretty much know what you’re going to get with a Marvel movie, and this is a fun one. Plus there is a very interesting….cat.
Also recommended: In 2013 there was a small independent movie about a group home for teenagers that had a bunch of actors no one had ever heard of, including Brie Larson, Rami Malek, Kaityln Devers, and Lakeith Stanfield. Now two people from that movie have won best actor/actress, and all of them have successful careers. The movie is called Short Term 12, and you should see it because it’s really good.
15. Bohemian Rhapsody - By the numbers music biopic about Freddy Mercury and Queen. Rami Malek rightfully won Best Actor for his portrayal of Mercury, and between that and Queen’s music it was an enjoyable watch.
Also recommended: You can see Rami Malek in one of his first roles working at a foster care group home in Short Term 12.
14. It Chapter 2 The first installment of the movie It was one of the better movies I watched last year. It was as much a coming-of-age story as a horror movie, and it ended up being the most successful horror movie ever made. It 2 is set 27 years later, when the killer clown emerges again. The old gang gets back together to finish off the clown once and for all. I know that sounds like a terrible movie, but I actually enjoyed the sequel a lot. The cast of adults is almost as good as the teenagers in the first movie (Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader, among others), and it is interesting to watch how the characters deal as adults with the trauma from their childhood. The ending kept me from enjoying it as much as the first chapter, but it was still a worthy sequel.
Also recommended: If you’re a fan of thoughtful horror movies, Jordan Peele’s first two movies, Get Out and Us are modern classics.
13. The Art of Self Defense When Jesse Eisenberg gets badly beaten by a motorcycle gang walking home from the store one night, he enrolls in a self defense class at a dojo in his neighborhood, and it ends up being both life-changing and more than he bargained for. The movie satirizes the macho environment where Eisenberg’s character is transformed from a shy accountant into an aggressive and confident martial arts student. He’s encouraged to become more masculine by listening to heavy metal music and getting a more masculine dog. This is a weird but smart movie that didn’t get a whole lot of attention but I really enjoyed.
Also recommended: Jesse Eisenberg is a well known quantity now, but perhaps my all time favorite movie he’s in is the 2009 coming of age movie Adventureland.
12. Parasite This is an excellent movie. I am a fan of director Bong Joon-ho, and have enjoyed recommending some of his earlier movies to friends. But when I went to see Parasite it was already getting best-picture buzz, and I have to admit my expectations were probably too high. The first half hour I thought was really fun. The dad (Song Kang-ho) in particular was terrific. But as it progressed it made you more and more uncomfortable, which of course was the point of the movie, but made it not that enjoyable to me. I will also admit that I went into the movie expecting some sort of monster or supernatural element to the film, and it wasn’t until about halfway through that I realized that wasn’t happening, making me disappointed, which was stupid, but that is also how my brain works.To be fair, the reason I thought that is that the first Bong Joon-ho film I saw was called The Host, and there is a giant monster in the movie that is caused by people dumping pollution into the river, and I figured this would be more of the same. It wasn’t, and I was disappointed, similar to how you probably feel after reading a long paragraph about the best picture-winning movie that doesn’t actually say a single thing about the movie.
Also recommended: Just about all of Bong Joon-ho’s movies are interesting, but I’d recommend The Host, a Korean monster movie that stars some of the same cast as Parasite and is also a not-so-subtle social commentary (as are all of his movies).
11. Stuber Every year I complain about the death of the comedy. I even tried to quantify it by looking at all of my past movie lists to see how many true comedies I had in my top 20, and found that there were a lot fewer funny movies on my list in recent years. So the bar isn’t too high when I say that this was the funniest movie I saw all year. But it was a really pleasant surprise! Kumail Nunjiani plays an Uber driver who gets roped into driving around Dave Bautista, a cop that just had eye surgery. The two have great chemistry and there are lots of laughs.
Also recommended: Nunjiani is great in the based-on-his-real-life movie The Big Sick, a comedy with surprising depth.
10. The Mandalorian I love pretty much anything Star Wars related, so I’ll use that as an excuse to bend the rules and include a TV series in my movie list. This was a pure nostalgia trip for me, with solid storytelling, fun casting (Carl Weathers and Werner Herzog) and good production. Not to mention my favorite character of the year in any show or movie, Baby Yoda.
9. 1917 1917 is a bit short on character development, but it more than makes up for it in pacing and cinematography. It tells the story of two British soldiers in WWI that must cross through enemy territory in order to help prevent more than 1,000 men from being led into an ambush. What sets it apart from most war movies is that it is filmed to look like it is one continuous take. It’s a good story and the cinematography makes it worthy of a best-picture nomination.
Also recommended: If you’re looking for another good recent war movie, Dunkirk by Christopher Nolan would be an excellent choice.
8. The Last Dance Michael Jordan is the best basketball player I have ever seen. He was one of the first stars where I was old enough to watch his entire career arc - I remember seeing him play in college, rise to stardom and 6 championships in the NBA, and now onto doing a terrible job as General Manager of the Charlotte Hornets. This documentary is a treasure trove of old highlights, interviews, and behind the scenes footage from Jordan’s whole career, with a focus on the 1997-1998 season, his last with the Bulls. There is so much great stuff - the interesting cast of characters that made up the Bulls (Rodman, Pippen, Phil Jackson, Steve Kerr), formidable opponents (Magic, Bird, Barkley), lots of footage from a great era of NBA basketball, a soundtrack of 80’s and 90’s hip hop that fit perfectly with the action, and even good villains (Jerry Krause, Isaiah Thomas). I got to see that Bulls team once; In1996 I flew to Colorado to go to the Nuggets/Bulls game. It was an incredible game - the Nuggets took a 20 point lead at the half, eventually blew the whole lead, and then came back to win in the 4th quarter despite Jordan’s 39 points. It was one of only 10 losses for the Bulls the entire year as they set the NBA record for the best record ever. It was probably the most enjoyable basketball game I’ve been to, in part because there was such a charged atmosphere around that Bulls team wherever they went - you knew at the time that you were watching one of the greatest teams that had ever played the game.
Also recommended: One of the best movies I’ve ever seen also happens to be a basketball documentary set in Chicago, the unparalleled Hoop Dreams, which follows two young men pegged as future stars as they enter high school.
7. Chernobyl This is another miniseries that I’m bending the rules to include on my list because it is so great. I remembered following stories about the Chernobyl accident when it happened in 1986, but didn’t know much about what really happened. This series dives in with fascinating detail to what happened that led to the explosion, the bureaucracy that tried to cover it up, and the terrible human cost of the people that died from radiation exposure. I was very impressed with the way the series explained the science behind how the nuclear reactors work and what went wrong. The cast is great, and the detail and story arc are all cinematic. This was the best thing I saw on TV this year.
Also recommended: I thought Chernobyl was so interesting I bought the book Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higgenbotham. It’s even better than the miniseries.
6. Joker This is a movie that most people seem to either love or hate. I thought it was spectacular. If you go in expecting any kind of superhero or comic-book type movie, you will be disappointed and possibly shocked by the brutality of the movie. Joaquin Phoenix is Best Actor-winning good in the lead role. It is a completely different take on the character than Heath Ledger’s version; still great but in a very different way. He is a true psychopath, yet Phoenix manages to make us care about the character and be revolted by him at the same time. The cinematography is dark, but spectacular. I felt like there were countless times where you could’ve frozen the screen and created a poster from the image.Some scenes were hard to watch, but overall it was a masterpiece.
Also recommended: The movie Joker reminded me of the most was Taxi Driver, another portrait of a loner male descending into violent madness. With the casting of Robert DeNiro in a major role, I’m sure that was no coincidence.
5. Blinded by the Light What a fun movie. Blinded by the Light is the true story of Javed, a teenage Pakistani immigrant in 1980’s England. Javed deals with a strict, overbearing father and racial prejudice at school and in his neighborhood, but finds salvation in the songs and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen. It sounds like a pretty corny premise, but this is one of those wears-its-heart-on-its sleeve movies that is too fun to not enjoy. Everything about the movie, including the lead, feels very earnest and familiar, in a good way, sort of like Springsteen’s music. I happen to be a huge Springsteen fan - some of the first rock music I actually liked during my teenage years spent mostly listening to rap music was my dad’s copy of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band’s live box set. But you don’t have to be a Springsteen fan to enjoy the movie - it’s really more of a coming of age story about a young man finding his voice and finding hope in tough circumstances. If you’re a fan of The Boss or not, this is a must-see.
Also recommended: Director Gurinder Chadha has made a bunch of movies I’ve never seen, but in 2002 she made a terrific movie about two teenage soccer players called Bend it Like Beckham.
4. Just Mercy I didn’t hear much about this movie before seeing it, but wow, is it powerful. It’s the true story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan, who is amazing) who graduates from Harvard Law School and moves to Alabama to start the Equal Justice Initiative in order to work with men on death row. It’s equally tragic and inspiring, and it has an incredible cast, led by Jamie Foxx (a wrongfully accused inmate), Brie Larson (Stevenson’s legal assistant), and Tim Blake Nelson who gives absolutely steals his scenes as Ralph Myers, a fellow prisoner who gave the incriminating testimony against Foxx’s character. I went in expecting a formula courtroom movie and was blown away by how great it was. This should have been a Best Picture nominee.
Also recommended: You have already heard me recommend Short Term 12 two other times. The person that directed Just Mercy also directed Short Term 12. You can stream it for free on Amazon Prime - you should probably just go do it now so I can stop recommending it to you.
3. Knives Out The most pleasant surprise of the year. Knives Out is a whodunit, and it’s pretty much perfect. A spectacular ensemble cast, memorable characters, lots of twists, and fun throughout. Daniel Craig steals the show as a private investigator hired to help solve the murder of the family patriarch who almost everyone seems to have a motive to want him dead. Every single member of the wealthy, dysfunctional family is a treat to watch. Great fun.
Also recommended: Director Rian Johnson is best known for The Last Jedi, which I thought was somewhat disappointing, but it is an earlier science fiction movie, Looper, starring Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon-Levitt that I think is his best work.
2. The Rise of Skywalker If you’ve read my movie list before, you know that I am a huge Star Wars fan. A New Hope is my all-time favorite movie. I’ve even seen all the not-so-good ones multiple times. Fortunately, The Rise of Skywalker was one of the good ones. Daisy Ridley ended up being a great, charismatic lead throughout the trilogy, and the chemistry between her and Adam Driver was terrific. I know critics didn’t really like this movie, but critics are not normal human beings. People that watch hundreds of movies a year are looking for something original and unique, and The Rise of Skywalker is not that. But for those of us that grew up on the original trilogy, this was a fitting end to a story arc that has lasted almost our entire lives.
1. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Maybe my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie of all time. One of my complaints about his movies is that they are so violent that they can be unpleasant to watch, but they are almost always entertaining. Once Upon a Time has one overly violent scene that was hard for me to watch, but the rest of the movie was mesmerizing. Brad Pitt plays the stunt double for Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), an aging actor that may be past his prime. It’s some of DiCaprio and Pitt’s best work. The storytelling is great, the acting is great, but my favorite thing about the movie is the way Tarantino re-creates the feel of 1969 Hollywood. The attention to detail is incredible, and it made for one of my most enjoyable movie-going experiences of the year.
Also recommended: Revisionist history has kind of been Tarantino’s thing lately, and he doesn’t do it any better than in Inglourious Basterds.
Older Movies that I watched this year
Zodiac 2007 David Fincher movie starring Robert Downey Jr, Mark Ruffalo, and Jake Gyllenhall about the Zodiac killer. Don’t know why I had never seen it until this year, it’s terrific.
Nacho Libre Silly but fun comedy from the people that made Napoleon Dynamite.
Inception An all-time great science fiction movie.
Raiders of the Lost Ark I’ve probably seen it 20 times, but not recently. It’s another of my all-time favorites.
Ant Man Between quarantine, a Disney Plus subscription, and watching movies every morning on the treadmill, I finished all of the Marvel movies. The Ant Man movies were fun but nothing special.
Ant Man and the Wasp See above.
Spiderman Homecoming Another of the Marvel movies that I was able to watch on the treadmill during quarantine. Entertaining, but I didn’t think that Michael Keaton’s bad guy was on par with some of the other villains in the Marvel universe.
The Big Lebowski Worth watching every couple of years, it never gets old. The best of many great Cohen brothers movies.
Christmas Vacation Still funny
Gorky Park When this movie came out in 1983 I saw the previews it looked really cool and sort of dangerous. I was only 10 so I was a long ways from being able to see an R-rated movie. Maybe 3 years later I checked out the book from the library and remember feeling like it was a rique thing to be reading a book that an R-rated movie was based on (this was a time when our family didn’t even have a VCR and they actually enforced not letting people under 17 into R rated movies at the theater). I remember loving the book, but when I was thirteen I also thought Weird Al Yankovic was really cool, so I don’t exactly trust my taste from back then. When the movie version recently popped up on Amazon Prime I decided I had to watch it for nostalgia’s sake. It was awful. Despite having a cast that seemed pretty cool (William Hurt, Brian Dennehey, Lee Marvin), the acting was beyond brutal. People always talk about how great things used to be, but the quality of movies today is so much better it’s not even close.
Running Down a Dream Tom Petty was the greatest. In junior high and high school I mostly listened to rap music. When I got a copy of the Joshua Tree for Christmas one year I took it to the record store and traded it for a copy of Rhyme Pays by Ice-T. At the time I thought it was a great decision. I owned a couple of typical high school student rock albums (Led Zeppelin IV), and I’d occasionally listen to some of my dad’s Bruce Springsteen records, but for the most part I wasn’t that into rock music. Tom Petty changed all of that. I started listening to his music when Full Moon Fever came out and the girl I liked my senior year of high school was into him. Things didn’t work out with the girl, but I will be forever thankful that she introduced me to Petty’s music. I was able to see him in concert three times, including my all-time favorite concert, where a friend and I drove 16 hours to Colorado to see him play at Fiddler’s Green. This movie captures some of what made him great.
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