Best of the Decade Part 3 (2016-2019)

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

5 hours ago, sycasey 2.0 said:

Yeah, in the USA him being Mexican would supersede all other racial identity for most people. In Mexico I'm sure it's a different story, and indeed I think that's what he made his film about.

The demographic of Hispanics who identify as white wasn't really the demographic I grew up around. So I feel like me making any pronouncements about that demographic and how it fits into the US and its concept of race or ethnicity would be me pontificating on a subject I don't feel like I have the appropriate knowledge to talk about (and the impression Roma leaves me is Cuaron would identify himself as White, Hispanic). I'm content with leaving it at, "it's complicated," for here.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

A statistic that I don't know what to make of it:

According to letterboxd, I've logged just over 1000 films in my diary. I have diary watched dates going back to 2010 (though those were recreated from notes since I joined letterboxd in the middle of the decade).

My current list of films watched is basically the same number as my diary entries (i.e. the number of films I know I've seen that I've flagged roughly equals the number repeat watches).

Of the films I've seen, about 230 of them were from this decade.

This works out to roughly 100 movies/year (or or roughly, 2/week). But only 23 movies from this decade per year. Or about 2 per month. 

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

2 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

A statistic that I don't know what to make of it:

According to letterboxd, I've logged just over 1000 films in my diary. I have diary watched dates going back to 2010 (though those were recreated from notes since I joined letterboxd in the middle of the decade).

My current list of films watched is basically the same number as my diary entries (i.e. the number of films I know I've seen that I've flagged roughly equals the number repeat watches).

Of the films I've seen, about 230 of them were from this decade.

This works out to roughly 100 movies/year (or or roughly, 2/week). But only 23 movies from this decade per year. Or about 2 per month. 

wait, do i follow you on there? what's your letterboxd name

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 12/31/2019 at 12:51 AM, AlmostAGhost said:

wait, do i follow you on there? what's your letterboxd name

Probably not.  I haven't posted my letterboxd name (I'd prefer not posting it publicly just because of vague privacy concerns).  I'm not doing the whole ranking the AFI list, and don't really use it much for social interactions -

e.g. I don't really write reviews, more like jotting down notes out loud.

I rarely even give star ratings (and the ratings I give are often inconsistent, comparably).

I do try to give likes/dislikes, but even that's unreliable.

It's mostly just a means for me to keep track of what I've seen and when.

I do follow a few critics on there (though it turned out, they don't really post many reviews on there either - which in retrospect, isn't surprising).

 

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 12/26/2019 at 4:40 PM, ol' eddy wrecks said:

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (+) - lusciously shot, especially the interiors.  It felt like a movie that was building towards something, but as Amy pointed out, that ending wasn’t good.  At least, it didn’t really seem to work for me (I would have to go into the detail of my issues with most of the play, plus why does it exist?), but still - go see it.

Correction - Joe Talbot, the director, is not a person of color.  That was a mistake on my part.

[bleary 333]

Vacation has put me behind on my podcasts, but I finished this one today.  What Paul and Amy seem to grapple with in this episode is what I grapple with for the entire decade more or less, in that I have a lot of trouble properly contextualizing the impact of these films without the benefit of more hindsight.  And maybe that's why this decade seems to me to lack more pantheon films than the previous one.  For the set of years focused on in this episode, I much prefer 2016 and 2017 over 2018 and 2019, but like Amy, there are few that I truly adore.

My favorite films of 2016 were Moonlight, Paterson, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  I think Wilderpeople gets ruled out as not an American production (though who knows how the rules actually work), and while Paterson might be my top pick of the year, I'm not sure it's the Jarmusch film that others would vote to put on this list.  So I'm going with Moonlight.  Honorable mentions go to 20th Century Women and Arrival.

As discussed on the podcast, 2017 has a glut of very good films, such as Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, Get Out, and even Three Billboards, though I find each of McDonagh's films have been worse than the previous one (which reminds me that I should have talked more about Seven Psychopaths in the 2012 thread).  My favorite of those was Lady Bird, but my favorite film of the year was Columbus, which just spoke to me for some reason.  I love the performances of Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho in it, and Kogonada's camerawork in it is brilliant.  So if it were up to me, I'd nominate Columbus because I love it, and Get Out because it did feel like the film that most represented 2017 as a point in history.

I'll punt on 2018 and 2019 like Paul and Amy did.

[grudlian. 4725]

2 hours ago, bleary said:

My favorite films of 2016 were Moonlight, Paterson, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople.  I think Wilderpeople gets ruled out as not an American production (though who knows how the rules actually work), and while Paterson might be my top pick of the year, I'm not sure it's the Jarmusch film that others would vote to put on this list.  So I'm going with Moonlight.  Honorable mentions go to 20th Century Women and Arrival.

As discussed on the podcast, 2017 has a glut of very good films, such as Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread, Lady Bird, Get Out, and even Three Billboards, though I find each of McDonagh's films have been worse than the previous one (which reminds me that I should have talked more about Seven Psychopaths in the 2012 thread).  My favorite of those was Lady Bird, but my favorite film of the year was Columbus, which just spoke to me for some reason.  I love the performances of Haley Lu Richardson and John Cho in it, and Kogonada's camerawork in it is brilliant.  So if it were up to me, I'd nominate Columbus because I love it, and Get Out because it did feel like the film that most represented 2017 as a point in history.

I'll punt on 2018 and 2019 like Paul and Amy did.

Paterson is so good. I really loved it and I'm pretty mixed to negative on Jarmusch overall.

I can't believe I forgot Columbus in all these lists. I blame Letterboxd for how it sorted my movies (it looks like it put it last on my ratings of 4 star movies for the decade). It's such a great movie that really moved me. I can't tell how much of that is because the movie is good or how much is living near-ish Columbus and working there briefly. I think it (maybe unintentionally) tells the story of a lot of people from Columbus that could be bigger but are stuck in this medium sized city with no opportunity to go anywhere or have connections. So, they just kind of stay big fish small pond except this pond doesn't particularly appreciate big fish.