A Year at the Movies, with One Recommendation
AMC Theaters sent out a customer survey the other day, and I love answering surveys and studying the questions, so I answered right away.
When they asked me, “How many movies did you see in theaters in the past year” I thought I was going to have to do some counting, but the choices stopped at “8 or more,” so I chose that … My real answer is 46.
I know, that’s a lot of movies.
Movie Monday is my creative weekly ritual where I get out of the house to give Kelly space to be a badass business coach (chronicled in the hit blog post, “5 Things I Like About Going to the Movies Alone.”) I’ve found that I do some of my best copywriting, strategic thinking, and brainstorming in the hours before a movie starts, so that’s what I do most Mondays.
And while I’m sure you’d love to hear about each of those 46 of those movies, nobody has time for that!
I really only want to tell you about one in particular right now anyways, so let’s cut the list down, shall we?
Sequels, Schlock, and Cinema
I’m cutting live-action sequels right off the bat, so goodbye to all these subtitles in particular order of excellent to fun to not as much fun:
Alien: Romulus , Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, A Quiet Place: Day One, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, Twisters, Gladiator II, Deadpool & Wolverine, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Captain America: Brave New World, Venom: The Last Dance, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.
Next, let’s knock out all the formulaic action movies (also in order) that I used to LOVE but am starting to actually … care about the quality … (don’t tell anyone).
The Amateur, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, 1992, The Killer’s Game, A Working Man, Novocaine, and Love Hurts.
We just went through awards season, so there’s not much more to say about Wicked, I’m Still Here, A Complete Unknown, A Real Pain, and Anora. And if I take the absolute opposite of Academy Award-nominated movies, then let’s throw out animated fan service Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim and Transformers ONE.
We’re down to 21, and almost all of what’s left is good. But first …
The Spectacular Worst
Francis Ford Coppola’s vanity project Megalopolis was a few moments of transcendence amidst hours of incomprehensibility. The $120 million budget seems to have earned about $7.6 million in the US and Canada and $14.3 million worldwide. If you saw this let’s talk about it, because I’ve never met another one of us, and I still think about it sometimes because the man who made The Godfather sold his winery to make his lifelong dream movie and it was this, and I have a lot of questions.
Movies I Wish Were Better
I wish The Bikeriders and Mickey 17 were better. They were fine. That’s all.
Some Pretty Good Movies
I liked all of these, so they get a moment:
Black Bag is a spy playground for Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchette.
Companion felt like a Cohen Brothers plot from the future.
One of Them Days is an excellent buddy comedy where SZA and Keke Palmer shine (it’s on Netflix to watch now).
Death of a Unicorn was weird, zany fun.
I Saw the TV Glow was weird, stylish dread.
Didi was like 8th Grade but for 2008, and it’s almost perfect on Rotten Tomatoes.
Blink Twice felt like a family member of David Fincher’sThe Game.
We Live in Time was wonderfully acted by Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield.
The Fall Guy was a fun blockbuster with Emily Blunt, one of my favorite actors.
Nosferatu was made by director Robert Eggers who is officially on the “see all the movies he directs” list.
Longlegs I saw in a theater literally alone by myself and I was so freaked out.
Challengers had some really interesting characters and a frenetically interesting plot.
Two of My Favorite War Movies Ever
Warfare was co-written and co-directed by former Navy Seal Ray Mendoza, and it applies a realist’s lens to an almost real-time on-the-ground operation in Ramadi, Iraq. It’s 1.5 hours of pulse-pounding anxiety, one of the most unique viewing experiences I have ever had, and I left the theater feeling different.
My Dead Friend Zoe is a beautiful film about life after military service, and it is warm and funny and sad and heartfelt and crushing and liberating. I’ve seen it twice now and cried both times.
I think an extremely powerful doubleheader would be to watch these two back to back.
Life-Affirming Animation
If you haven’t seen these and any of them appeal to you, don’t wait:
Piece By Piece is a Lego movie about Pharrell, from the Neptunes, and I think it is a profound meditation on creativity and life that will maybe make you feel something that you never felt before.
The Wild Robot has 4.9/5 stars on Google, and I think that’s low.
Inside Out 2 feels so accurate that I had a convo on Halloween with people about how it’s hard for us to remember that it’s a fictionalized version of how our brains work and not a documentary of the little people running around inside our heads.
The Last One: Go See Sinners While It’s Still in Theaters
All of this was to tell you to go see Sinners. Ryan Coogler’s new movie is SO MUCH FUN. I feel like he is in total control as a creative, and his team spends the whole movie stacking thrilling, engaging moments of dialogue, sound, and visuals higher and higher and higher until wildly entertaining chaos erupts. It really is a thrill ride.
I want to tell you all about it, but I’ll just say that there’s a scene where one of the Michael B. Jordan’s makes this face:
It’s my favorite moment in the movie, and I pretty much made that face the whole time, and that’s why I’m really excited for what the next year has in store.
Want to go to the movies? jed@kindandfunny.com.