__ Movies of 2019

[cincinnatus_c]

I suppose before it gets too far away I should post my annual Ten-ish Movies list, in which I see if I can remember ten movies I saw In Theatres in the just-finished calendar year. This year however I have cheated--I looked back through my google calendar, because I felt like I was going to have trouble coming up with pretty much anything. I did quickly remember one that wasn't on the calendar, which means it must have been a more or less game time decision, which was fortunate because if this was a Top Ten list it would easily be #1: the Polish film (1) Cold War, about which I have had a draft of a post unfinished since March. Come to think of it I guess it would go on a Top X movies of the '10s list, if I had one, which I can think of seven movies I would put on off the top of my head after scouring the last decade's worth of Palme d'Or contenders and filmographies of usual suspects, which would be, in no particular chronological order: (1) The Tree of Life (which, holy cow, that feels like so long ago, (2) Inside Llewyn Davis, (3) Birdman, (4) The Lobster, (5) mother!, (6) Foxtrot, and (7) Cold War ... with honourable mentions to You Were Never Really Here, Anomalisa, and Love and Mercy, the former two because I don't remember them very well but feel like they might make the list if I saw them again, and the latter one because, uh, I liked it, but I dunno.

Speaking of unfinished drafts, do you know how many drafts of posts I have on my laptop? Forty-four. Is that a lot? I think so maybe, though some of them I have probably posted already and forgot to delete. That would be going on nine years worth of drafts, on my going-on-nine-year-old laptop, nearly nine years being by far the longest I have ever had a primary computer, which I think is pretty interesting--every computer I've had prior to this one has become defunct more or less because the internet, within a few years, outstripped its mental capacities; this one, which was not a particularly high-end machine when I got it, still quite comfortably handles the internet (though it never has very comfortably handled my pictures), and I keep hearing, to my great offense, that it is becoming obsolete because it won't comfortably run what will soon be the only supported version of Windows.

Anyway, the rest of my __ Movies of 2019:

(2) Octavio is Dead: we saw this because Chester Brown plays ping pong in it. That's pretty much all I remember.

(3) Shoplifters: for the first half hour I thought this was the funniest movie I had ever seen. I need to watch it again when I'm not very drunk.

(4) Climax: this is a pretty remarkable movie about kids on drugs, which I need to see again.

(5) Stan & Ollie: uh, this was nice I guess, and made me briefly think I might give a shit about Laurel & Hardy for some reason.

(6) Us: from time to time I am tempted to think that a movie showing at the Googolplex might be good.

(7) Her Smell: yeah, I dunno.

(8) Long Shot: see (6).

(9) Marianne & Leonard: very squishy Leonard Cohen doc. Learned that Leonard Cohen did a lot of drugs in the '60s, was not such a great guy maybe until he was or whatever, but anyway there was definitively a specific person who was Marianne and they kept in touch until the end, so, that's lurvely then.

(10) Motherless Brooklyn: about which I have said some stuff. I dunno if it's really good, but it is really interesting.

(11) Parasite: about which I have also said a thing. Meh.

(12) The Lighthouse: uhhh.

(13) Marriage Story: if I had known this was a Netflix movie we probably wouldn't have bothered seeing it In Theatres, and then I probably never would've bothered watching it on Netflix either, which would've been a shame because this movie wins the 2019 award (for which, unlike the AI award for movie that made my face hurt the most most from scrunching it up at the godawful ridiculousness of it all, I don't have a name, so maybe I will call it the Marriage Story award from now on) for movie that most exceeded my expectations.

(13) Doctor Sleep: see (6). This movie wins the 2019 AI award.

(14) Jojo Rabbit: like a lot of the reviews say, the jokes get old, but I did think it had, when it went on after a point at which I really wanted it to end already, possibly the best war scene I've ever seen in a movie.

So, fourteen then? We'll see what else I've forgotten.

ETA: turns out (15) The Favourite was in 2019, which is a surprising thing to have forgotten given how it tied in here at the time.

--
Currently under my porch: -4. Currently at Crowe Lake: -3.9. High there today: -0.9.

Comments

[ayebydan]

This is an interesting list. I've not heard of most of them but I think I might look some of them up.

[cincinnatus_c]

I'd say from the 2019 list Jojo Rabbit is the one I'd most recommend besides Cold War ... and maybe Climax, but it's really, really brutal.

Ah, Winona ... I dreamt she was in love with me once. And then I dreamt I would never see her again because I wouldn't run away with her. ;)

[meanwright]

I'm not at all surprised at the number of drafts sitting around. The number of things I start to write and never finish is large.

Since the last time I posted, I wanted to talk about different meanings of "understand" (someone had quoted both Wittgenstein and Feynman using the word in different ways, and although Feynman expressly contradicted Wittgenstein, the speaker not only didn't notice it, he denied they meant something different.)

I also wanted to talk about immigration since I saw some strange data from the 1920s that makes me think that the implications of immigration may be reversed from the usual ideas.

And then there was whatever's up with employment and the new normal.

So yes, if I get an idea for a post that I don't finish about once a week, I can believe you start one you don't finish every other month or so.

[cincinnatus_c]

Naturally I want to hear about the Feynman/Wittgenstein thing now. And what's strange about the immigration data from the 1920s.

The new normal of employment is something I feel less and less like I have any grasp on.