So, having disinterred a list of films what I watched in 2020 (minus those I kept no record of), an alphabetical top ten. I struggled — there are a few here I admired but didn’t like. Poor stamina didn’t help.
Continue reading →Category / 2020 films
Watch Out (and in)
Having found various film absent from my list, I can’t claim to be complete. Various others will have been watched for teaching or research (and I think I watched 2010 twice, which is punishment enough). I really ought to make sure I watch more of Curzon 12 before I talk myself into BritBox…
Continue reading →Amirite?
Ammonite (Francis Lee, 2020)
Women are often written out of science.
In the nineteenth century, Charlotte Murchison (1788–1869) collected fossils and was somewhat overshadowed by her husband, Roderick Impey Murchison, who used many of her ideas and illustrations in his books. On one journey, to Rome in 1816, she contracted malaria and this would impact on her health for the rest of her life.
Continue reading →Manic But No Dream Girl
Pixie (Barnaby Thompson, 2020)
There is a great film in here trying to get out — but it just throws too much into it. This isn’t the first two men and a woman crime caper movie — it’s a long time since I saw it, but Shooting Fish springs to mind — and its rural Irish/Northern Irish location gave it a feel of some of the films Channel 4 made in the 1980s. Musically, it wants to be a western, especially of the western variety, but the caption Once Upon a Time in the West of Ireland gag is a one off and risks being mistaken as the film’s actual title.
Like a Version
The Forty-Year-Old Version (Rhanda Blank, 2020)
Wait — a film directed by a woman of colour? Who also wrote, produced and starred?
And utterly charming it is in a try not to think too much about Woody Allen way. Continue reading →
Most Bogus
Bill & Ted Face the Music (Dean Parisot, 2020)
At the tail end of the 1980s was a science fiction comedy, which was just about silly enough — two Californian slacker dudes have to pass their assignment to guarantee the future and are aided in doing so by a man from the future with a time travelling phone box. Continue reading →
Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas
Tenet (Christopher Nolan, 2020)
complexity. their of because follow to impossible almost are that thrillers intellectual producing for reputation a gained has Nolan Christopher, Curiously. Continue reading →
Unbelouvrable
A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo da Vinci (Pierre-Hubert Martin, 2020)
Don’t confuse this with the Night at the Museum series of films — those sound like a whole lot more fun, but I’ve never seen them.
This film does something remarkable. Continue reading →
Sally Potter and the Deathly Allows
The Roads not Taken (Sally Potter, 2020)
Potter has produced some tremendous films over the years — Orlando and The Man Who Cried, plus Ginger & Rosa and The Party — and the initial success of the latter allowed her to make this deeply uncomfortable film, inspired by caring for her brother, Nic Potter, the bassist for the rock group Van der Graaf Generator. Continue reading →
Has a Screw Lose
Unhinged (Derrick Borte, 2020)
Apparently, this was the first new film released since cinemas reopened — have we not suffered enough? Are we willing to accept any old guff or Christopher Nolan?
Continue reading →
