MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > My Personal Favorite Movie of 2020

My Personal Favorite Movie of 2020

posted 4 years ago by ecarle (14979)
30 replies | jump to latest

So I keep this ongoing list of my "personal favorite movie" for each year. Its from 1950 on...a little before my time, but comfortably "where the movies start for me" in terms of a real interest. Its not to say that I haven't seen some films of the 30s and 40s that I really like, but they are before my time, "too far back," and rarely made the connection with me that movies later on did. That said -- the original King Kong, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, The Best Years of Our Lives, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and about half of Hitchcock's 30s and 40s films... I like 'em.

The list REALLY gets powerful and nostalgic personally from 1960 to about 2000. It is said that our favorite movies are the movies of our youth, so movies of the 60s and 70s will always be the ones where my true "emotional favorites" can be found. I've kept the list going through years in which movies seem "less than" to me. Here's a comparison.

My list for the 70's:

MASH
Dirty Harry
The Godfather
American Graffiti
Chinatown
Jaws
The Shootist
Black Sunday
Animal House
North Dallas Forty

Versus the 2000s

The Perfect Storm
Moulin Rouge
Chicago
Love Actually
Sideways
King Kong
The Departed
Charlie Wilson's War
The Dark Knight
Inglorious Basterds

..not quite as classic a group...and certainly "personal" when you get to movies like The Perfect Storm and Love Actually.

Anyway, for me, personally , its a very moving and nostalgic list.

What's getting harder these days is FINDING EVEN JUST ONE movie that I care enough about to declare favorite each year. Simply put, most years I have trouble picking a "main" emotional personal favorite -- even just one -- when in other years -- I had a LOT of them. A lot of my "also rans" in certain years I like better than my "only pick" in later years.

Take 1973:

I pick American Graffiti not only because its a good movie, but because THAT movie, THAT year and frankly in THAT month(August before school started) literally changed my life. Ir influenced me to make changes in my life. I'm too embarrassed to watch that movie anymore...it was WAY too emotional then, and I'm embarrassed now.

Which leaves plenty of other favorites for 1973: little bitty Charley Varrick(which seems to "hang on" over the years as the movie I REALLY love from that year.) Big 'ol' The Sting(with Newman and Redford in what amounts to a bigger budget riff on Charley Varrick.) Redford again with Streisand in The Way We Were (which works for me as long as you take it as a Robert Redford movie, with this woman driving him nuts.) Annnd...The Long Goodbye, Scarecrow, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Westworld, The Paper Chase, The Last Detail, Magnum Force...and The Exorcist, which I didn't like as a movie but fully respected as an event (rather weirdly matched up and against The Sting, they opened the same week and competed for mega-grosses and Oscars.)

Helluva year, 1973. If American Graffiti is my favorite, it is mainly that I feel duty bound to keep it so. Charley Varrick or The Sting could just as well have the slot.

In 2017...Molly's Game. That's it. That's the only one that really stuck that year, mainly because of the Sorkin dialogue. Different times.

How about 1960? Psycho is there, huge and overriding. But I also love The Apartment(which shares the black and white and bleak melancholy of Psycho.) And The Magnificent Seven(with its cadre of 60s male stars aborning.) And Spartacus(an epic that plays like a Western and ends as a tearjerker.)

There's this: from each list of favorite movie of the year, I pick a Favorite of the Decade. North by Northwest is my favorite of the 50's; Psycho is my favorite of the 60's - and yet they were released less than a year apart! I see NBNW as "bringing the fifties movies to a close" and Psycho as "launching the 60s." Hitchcock himself saw things this way.

There's this: I try to be "tough" about it, but I am willing to make changes to my list if I really feel that my feelings have changed. My "favorite movie of the 70's" was a tie for many years: The Godfather and Jaws (two "thinking man's blockbuster thrillers.") Over time, Jaws keeps fading(the second half on the boat gets a bit boring, and Spielberg even here at his best seems a little amateur at times) so now The Godfather gets the decade. Matters to me.

--

So, what to do about choosing a Personal Favorite Movie of 2020?

I only had January and February "going to the movies" before COVID set in. That is, "going to the movies" as if it was a usual thing. Once COVID set in, I only ventured to the theater twice more to see a movie, in both cases with a little nervousness and not many other people in the theater.

I have choices. I could "write off" 2020 as NOT legitimately deserving a "personal favorite movie." (I only saw 4 at the theater, and Hollywood barely released anything of consequence TO the theaters in 2020.)

OR

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

OR As in 2018 and 2019, I could "go to Netflix" for my favorite, even if I only watched it on TV. And I have a natural candidate for that one: "The Trial of the Chicago 7." Because: Aaron Sorkin. I"ve got Wonder Woman 1984 waiting for me this week on HBO Max...maybe it makes the grade. But I don't think so.

To lead up to my 2020 choice, I'd like to summarize my favorite "0 year" movies from 1950 on. "O" years are 1950, 1960, 1970 etc and carry a certain weight in launching a decade...even as decades supposedly wait a few years to "kick in."

1950: Sunset Blvd. It is often said that "Charade" is "the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made"(and this is said so often that I say..."Yep...that's the one!") But for "The Best Hitchcock Shot Hitchcock Never Shot" ...I'll go with the near- opening shot of Sunset Boulevard: from the bottom of a swimming pool looking up, we look at the corpse of William Holden floating dead above us, and onlookers up above HIM. Its a dramatic, mesmerizing shot and I STILL don't know exactly how Billy Wilder got it(and he explained it; something about a mirror.) So Sunset Blvd. opens with a murder...but it is not really a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition. But it is not NOT a thriller, either. Holden is effectively killed by a madwoman.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Like the greatest of movies(of which Psycho is one), Sunset Blvd is a HYBRID, several movies in one: Hollywood expose, twisted love story, Gothic, tragedy, cynical comedy, noir..thriller. And though 1950 was too early in the Hays Code for "Psycho-like" shocks, there is certainly a "pre-Psycho vibe' going on here, principally the great mix between the Gothic stopped-in-time world of Norma Desmond's mansion vs the hardbitten modern cynicism of William Holden as compared to the Gothic stopped-in-time world of Norma Bates' mansion versus the hardbitten modern cynicism of...Arbogast? (Yes, Marion Crane is the bigger deal but the Arbogast sequence in Psycho feels the most LIKE Sunset Blvd; that shot of the cool detective in suit and tie and hat walking up the hill to the mansion has the same Gothic/modern juxtaposition of Sunset Blvd.)

1960. Psycho. This is a pretty good movie. Historic, even.

1970: MASH The Movie: All of the "advances" in sex and violence and nudity in Psycho are advanced just that much farther in the R-rated MASH from a mere decade later. "This is what the new freedom of the screen is all about" was the critic's quote plastered all over the posters. The operating room blood is red and spurts from a patient's jugular vein; the nudity is really nude(in what critic Richard Corliss called "the most horrifying shower scene since Psycho," Hot Lips the nurse is exposed in her shower to a gawking crowd of tormentors. Sex is shown (and HEARD; asks the Pastor "Is this the Battling Bickersons radio show?) And ...just like Hitchcock..Robert Altman demonstrates an "auteur's style" -- henceforth, an "Altman" movie will always look the same and sound the same and play the same, no matter the subject.
(Personal note: I saw this Korean War movie with my Korean War veteran father...it meant something to both of us.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

1980: Used Cars. Really? OK, so I shouldn't be expected to go gaga for the grim Raging Bull (with one fight choreographed to the Psycho shower scene.) But what about The Shining? (Like evidently a lot of the rest of the world, I like it a lot more now than when I saw it in 1980 -- and felt that the Halloran Murder was a poor ripoff of the Arbogast Murder.) Empire Strikes Back? (Naw, that wasn't a movie, it was a "middle part, to be continued.")

Used Cars was surrounded that summer by three bigger comedy hits: Caddyshack(with two guys from SNL); The Blues Brothers(with two OTHER guys from SNL) and Airplane(a Mad Magazine spoof in the sky.) It remains charming to me that the comedy team of Kurt Russell, Garrett Graham, and Frank MacRae bested some of those SNL heavyweights for getting laughs(I'm thinking Belushi and Ackroyd; Murray and Chase were pretty competitive), in a MUCH more raucous and R-rated laughfest than the SNL films. Used Cars is "the little sleeper that could," and it holds its place on my list because the theater went nuts for it in 1980 and then I showed it at a party in 1981(on HBO) and it STILL killed. Irony: this "little movie" was produced by Spielberg(his name is on it today; it wasn't back then, he took it off because he found it too raunchy) and directed by Robert Zemickis (a few years before Back to the Future and Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump.) Its hardly a little movie anymore. I recently found a book at a book store that counted Used Cars as one of the great movies of the 80s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

1990: GoodFellas. Scorsese had a rather "bad 80's" after Raging Bull. He didn't really dominate the decade as a force. But outta nowhere, he came back in the 90s as a commercial powerhouse with this "new take on the Mafia" (as savage, inarticulate psychopathic animals -- and yet funny.) Here we get a look at Scorsese's visual cinematic flash and his penchant for 50s/60s/70s soundtracks. I think the horror comedy of the movie boils down to a scene of men in a car chatting -- and one pushes an icepick in the brain of the other, and a third asks stupid questions about whether to drive the car or not ("No, let's let HIM drive," retorts psycho Joe Pesci.) That's GoodFellas right there..setting the pace for a LOT of comedy murders to come(see: Pulp Fiction). There's a Psycho connection in the second scene of GoodFellas as we watch Pesci stab a man with a big butcher knife right there in front of our eyes(not below the frame as with Arbogast.) And we're 30 years out from Psycho in 1990. Now we're 30 years out from Goodfellas.

2000: The Perfect Storm. Comes the 21st Century, the movies start to get kinda artificial(again?) A lotta CGi in this movie, and one Great Big Giant Wave at the end(and on the poster) to go along with its brother waves in about 10 other disaster movies (audiences didn't care about the repetition, they just loved those waves.) THIS wave had personal menace because it doesn't take out a city -- it takes out six fisherman -- and "The Perfect Storm"(like Psycho) is about what it means to be Doomed -- the wrong choices, wrong decisions, wrong turns that take you from safety to death. But none of that is why I REALLY love The Perfect Storm. Its the music. The music during the first 10 minutes of the movie and during the last 20 minutes of the movie and then..over the end credits and as John Mellancamp sings a sad song with lyrics put to the main theme. Some might call this schmaltz, but I call it Total Emotion.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

2010: True Grit. I was watching the 2000 Sly Stallone remake of "Get Carter" the other day and I marveled at how it told the same story as the 1971 gritty Michael Caine original but -- transplated to supersmooth American Seattle -- ruined every single good thing in that story. Michael Caine's semi-psychotic merciless killer of men AND women became Sly Stallone's gallant action hero. A scene where Caine called his lover for phone sex with her mob boss boyfriend nearby became a "nothing scene" in which Stallone called the same character and no sex happens on the phone at all. The ending is different, and in a very bad way. A total classic becomes...nothing.

Surprise; Van Sant's Psycho is a LOT better than Stallone's Get Carter. Because at least Van Sant DID tell the same story and got at least SOME of the feeling of the original. And the Coens "True Grit" delivers the same satisfaction. Like Van Sant's Psycho, the new "True Grit" gives us a LOT of the same scenes from the 1969 original; its better than Van Sant's Psycho because the re-casting is right this time. Jeff Bridges is his own kind of fun in the John Wayne role.(though not as important to this movie as Wayne was to the other one); the girl who plays Mattie is intelligent and more age-accurate(though Kim Darby made the role HER own) and Matt Damon is a BIG improvement over Glen Campbell. I think that the original has a better final 20 minutes than the remake(additional scenes) but the remake has its own strengths and feels more professional.

Interesting to me: with both Van Sant's Psycho and the Coens True Grit, when word came early in the year that they were being remade for December release -- I was EXCITED for those movies more than any other, I was NOT bothered by the remake aspect, and I counted down the months til they came out. True Grit was the better one and did better. But I will always be impressed that Van Sant took the risk he took with Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

So...2020.

I'll dispense with Sorkin's "The Trial of the Chicago 7" first. On the surface, it could and should join Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Molly's Game as a favorite based solely on good actors ping-ponging Sorkin's patented one-liners and righteous speeches back and forth. Sasha Baron Cohen (as Abbie Hoffman) is somewhat liberated with a real character to play and great lines to read. And Michael "Batman" Keaton shows up near the end as Ramsey Clark to own his scenes with Senior Star authority and comic crackle.

I think what holds Chicago 7 back for me, ultimately, is that the story was too dramatic and messy and "off topic"(the flashbacks to the demonstrations and riots undercut the trial) to really fit Sorkin's strengths. And if "you were there" (at least to watch and read about it) you know that once these folks got the draft and Vietnam resolved...they sort of kept on going into various political sidetrips and power plays that this movie can't cover. (And Hoffman killed himself.) Its "incomplete." Once over lightly.

Anything else?

Well, "at the theater," I saw Guy Ritchie's "The Gentlemen" with Matthew McConaghey kinda doing his " Wolf of Wall Street" nutzo wiseacre while surrounded by trademark British gangtas(plus Hugh Grant in a whack comic relief role.) The Invisible Man intrigued me with its coverage of the premise -- and REALLY impressed me with a shock scene that simultaneously cast star Elisabeth Moss as Cary Grant in the UN scene in North by Northwest. This movie will be forever famous in my life as "the last time I went to the movies as a regular thing" and I'm still waiting for that to return.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Post-COVID, I was harassed into going to a near -empty COVID protocol movie theater and seeing "Unhinged" with a corpulent Russell Crowe committing gory murders as an Angry White Man pushed too far(into psychopathy.) I risked my life for THAT? (I saw this in summer when we're SUPPOSED to have all our big blockbusters -- instead, this minor thing. It was somewhat depressing -- I was back in a movie theater, but the movies weren't back. By a long shot.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

And then in October, once more out and into a movie theater. Still with COVID-19 protocols, still a little unnerving just to be there. A somewhat better "crowd" than Unhinged got -- 35 or so, spread all around the theater.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. On the big screen from Turner Classic Movies.

And that's my bona fide, entirely legitimate choice for my personal favorite movie of 2020.

Here's why:

Yeah, sure, I've seen Psycho many, many times and many of them were on the big screen. Famously in 1979 with the "bona fide screaming audience," but also on double bills with North by Northwest, Saboteur, and The Birds (everybody laughed at The Birds at that screening, I might add.) I've seen Psycho on broadcast TV, cable, VHS, DVD (not on streaming yet, but there's time.) I've seen Psycho at a public library, one reel at a time when a reel fell off the projector just as Arbogast was getting killed(Mother stabbed the projectionist?) I've seen Psycho at a pizza parlor in the backstreets of Washington DC with families all around, slurping their slices as Marion got sliced. And I saw Psycho in 1999 on Hitchcock's Centennial at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

But this time was special:

The 60th Anniversary. Of its release. For me it was the 55th Anniversary of Psycho coming into my consciousness(1965 re-release) and the 50th Anniversary of seeing it for the first time(1970.)

Director's cut. Officially, this IS a "new movie." It has approximately 30 seconds of restored footage spread across three scenes. Infinitesimal, on the one hand. But meaningful on the other. It took SIXTY YEARS to restore these cuts. Hitchcock himself sent this print out somewhere...its a Directors Cut.

The German Footage. As an alternate to this being "the Directors Cut," this contained footage called "The German footage" because evidently this uncut print was projected in Germany sometime.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Hitchcock/Truffaut. As a "movie history quest," Hitchcock scholars spotted the additional "coverage" of Janet Leigh's back as Norman peeps on her, from the 1967 edition of Truffaut's seminal book -- here, the quest finally ends in triumph.

And perhaps most importantly of all: I risked my life to see Psycho this time. That's never happened before. To watch this great movie about Mortality and Death...I was in an emotional state where I had to CONSIDER mortality and death. Mine. Given my age. From watching this movie in this theater. It sort of brought back the fear factor in Psycho...yes? But I'm fine. For now.

With a postscript: maybe I am giving this special weight to Psycho as a personal favorite because I might just not make it to the 70th Anniversary of the movie, ten years from now. I'm betting that I WILL, but I might not. Psycho's study of death -- Mother's, Marion's and Arbogast's - now carries a certain weight that it did not when I saw it as a teen.

Signing out in proper context, my personal favorites of the past 11 years:

2010: True Grit
2011: Moneyball
2012: Django Unchained
2013: The Wolf of Wall Street
2014: John Wick
2015: The Hateful Eight
2016: The Magnificent Seven
2017: Molly's Game
2018: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
2019: tie: The Irishman and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood
2020: Psycho: The 60th Anniversary COVID-19 Directors Cut with the German Footage

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I don't really have a 2020 fave at this point; nothing's blown me away that's for sure.

I can report on a couple of quite widely praised indie films wth young female protagonists: Yes God Yes (about an early teen girl in a very Christian small town setting discovering & dealing with her own horniness and the questions it raise about her community) and Never Rarely Sometimes Never (about a late teen rural gal who needs to terminate her pregnancy). Both films are too small, too minimal to be candidates for greatness in my view. Very little happens in either film, and NRSN's main characters especially are mute most of the time and barely articulate the rest. General slice of life tone in both cases is impressive with good (but not great) performances, but there just wasn't enough going on in either case that was gripping or surprising or interesting enough for the films to rise beyond mildly diverting. These films aren't close to the standards set by things like Fishtank or Winter's Bone or 4 months 3 weeks 2 days or Diary of A Teenage Girl or Leave No Trace, to mention 5 small indie films with young female protagonists that blew me away and were among their respective years' bests. Sorry YGY and NRSN.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I don't really have a 2020 fave at this point; nothing's blown me away that's for sure.

--

And you generally know of practically all the movies that are out there in some sort of release, swanstep.

I have noted that "Promising Young Woman" -- originally promised for April pre-COVID, is now getting a "Christmas Day at theaters" release date to compete with WW2 (perhaps a "feminist Xmas?")

But this: the original trailer for "Promising Young Woman" had a proto woman's vengeance angle that made for a VERY compelling trailer. The NEW trailer for "Promising Young Woman" throws out almost all of that, and promotes a different movie -- maybe closer to what the movie REALLY is? I dunno. I'll find out. Likely not at at theater on Xmas day.

---

I can report on a couple of quite widely praised indie films wth young female protagonists: Yes God Yes (about an early teen girl in a very Christian small town setting discovering & dealing with her own horniness and the questions it raise about her community) and Never Rarely Sometimes Never (about a late teen rural gal who needs to terminate her pregnancy). Both films are too small, too minimal to be candidates for greatness in my view. Very little happens in either film, and NRSN's main characters especially are mute most of the time and barely articulate the rest.

--

I suppose that 2020 was the year to show us just how many indie and "mini-indie" films there are in a film year when all the big studio releases disappear. The critics over at Roger Ebert's sight rather disingenuously chose a list of 10 best for 2020 as if there was no problem doing so at all. But c'imon -- what is this ? "10 Best Films Nobody Saw Because They Weren't Shown Anywhere." (?)

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

These films aren't close to the standards set by things like Fishtank or Winter's Bone or 4 months 3 weeks 2 days or Diary of A Teenage Girl or Leave No Trace, to mention 5 small indie films with young female protagonists that blew me away and were among their respective years' bests. Sorry YGY and NRSN.

--

Sorry indeed. Boy, you know your stuff!

I expect that you may just have to put an asterisk on film year 2020, swanstep.

And the question is still begged: Exactly how is an Oscar contest going to be handled for 2020?

I can see Hollywood mocking the 2020 Best Actor winner: "Oh, you won for 2020. You don't REALLY count."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I expect that you may just have to put an asterisk on film year 2020, swanstep....
I can see Hollywood mocking the 2020 Best Actor winner: "Oh, you won for 2020. You don't REALLY count."

Yes, I think that asterisking is inevitable at this point. There's really only one standard of greatness (however amorphous and hard to discern that might be) that everyone tries to apply year after year. If nothing's anywhere near the customary level but still they insist on giving out awards then, at least privately, it's time to break out the asterisks. Do LA Lakers fans *really* value this year's Championship quite as much as their others?

Semi-relatedly, I've recently watched some youtube reactions from a channel called 'James vs. Cinema'. James is a smart, 22 year old black guy who's an aspiring filmmaker who in the last month has mostly been checking off '90s classics:

Memento
Fargo
Heat
Boogie Nights
Leon The Professional
LA Confidential
Magnolia
American Psycho
Usual Suspects
Trainspotting

That's the standard right there - the standard that Parasite met or exceeded last year of course. All of these films were mighty impactful (and they all still rock James's world!). Not all won awards at the time but all could have or should have, and all have maintained or developed big followings ever since. Now, if 2020 hasn't got any films of this ambition or level to be in the awards conversation then (at least privately) asterisk away I say.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Memento
Fargo
Heat
Boogie Nights
Leon The Professional
LA Confidential
Magnolia
American Psycho
Usual Suspects
Trainspotting

That's the standard right there - the standard that Parasite met or exceeded last year of course. All of these films were mighty impactful (and they all still rock James's world!). Not all won awards at the time but all could have or should have, and all have maintained or developed big followings ever since.

---

Absolutely. A few of those were my personal favorites of their years -- Fargo for 1996 and LA Confidential for 1997 -- and others COULD have been. Memento -- which shares with LA Confidential the interesting but not-well-used actor Guy Pearce -- was actually my favorite of 2001 for awhile but I went with Moulin Rouge after watching that more "emotional" show over and over.

Boogie Nights is from that banner American year of 1997 -- that OR LA Confidential OR Jackie Brown -- could have been my Number One; they rather float around each other. But I liked LA Confidential for its old-fashioned craft and its new-fashioned willingness to look at multiple issues(crime, politics, entertainment, race) in a complex weave.

---

Now, if 2020 hasn't got any films of this ambition or level to be in the awards conversation then (at least privately) asterisk away I say.

---

It has to be an asterisk...there just isn't enough to choose from. THAT said, in most years, I suppose the Oscar race only really comes down to a handful of films , usually released on purpose together at the end of the year.

But the years releases also need a bunch of "summer blockbusters" for a movie year to be "real." It remains a matter of some low-level depression to me that the only movie I saw at a theater in the summer of 2020 wasn't a blockbuster type biggie...but rather a very coarse and gruesome slasher type movie that starred one of the stars OF LA Confidential.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I have noted that "Promising Young Woman" -- originally promised for April pre-COVID, is now getting a "Christmas Day at theaters" release date to compete with WW2 (perhaps a "feminist Xmas?")

I've been looking forward to this one too. It got good buzz out of Sundance in early 2020 and was set for a big alternative-to-blockbusters summer release.

I've recently become even more intrigued by PYW because it turns out to have been written and directed by Emerald Fennell, who did a great job on The Crown playing Diana's rival and Prime Charles's actual great love, Camilla Parker-Bowles. It's a difficult role because she's playing an unsympathetic, relatively low charisma figure... you can't be *too* interesting but still have to seem obviously right (though impossible because married to someone else and so on) for Charles, and she nailed it. It wasn't until I finished The Crown Season 4 that the latest wave of PYW buzz hit and I suddenly clicked that *that actress* was writer-director of one of year's *it*-movies.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've been looking forward to this one too. It got good buzz out of Sundance in early 2020 and was set for a big alternative-to-blockbusters summer release.

--

Again, I note that the new trailer seems determined NOT to say what the movie is really about -- that or the original trailer lied?

It is interesting that this movie -- which looked so interesting back when it was set for April -- has been determined to be "the one" to bring out with the year almost done(other than the big deal of Wonder Woman 84.)

---

I've recently become even more intrigued by PYW because it turns out to have been written and directed by Emerald Fennell, who did a great job on The Crown playing Diana's rival and Prime Charles's actual great love, Camilla Parker-Bowles. It's a difficult role because she's playing an unsympathetic, relatively low charisma figure... you can't be *too* interesting but still have to seem obviously right (though impossible because married to someone else and so on) for Charles, and she nailed it. It wasn't until I finished The Crown Season 4 that the latest wave of PYW buzz hit and I suddenly clicked that *that actress* was writer-director of one of year's *it*-movies.

---

Well, there you go -- an interesting but unexpected connection. I am not watching The Crown, but not for any good reason. The whole Diana/Camilla thing WAS an interesting drama in its time -- the idea that Charles REALLY loved a woman who was at once less pretty/glamourous than his "chosen bride" but more to his taste and emotional needs.

I might just get around to watching this, and "joining a different crowd."

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

I might just get around to watching this, and "joining a different crowd."

I think it's worth it. I just jumped in with Season 4 (The Diana/Thatcher/1980s season) and had a great time. Really top-notch writing, acting, production values so that at least 6 of the 10 episodes are As in my view and no episode is less than a B.

Note that one interesting feature of The Crown is that it often recasts roles for age between seasons. So Season 4's Diana (played by a relative unknown who killed and now seems set for quite a career) had to cover D. from about 1978 (at age 15 I think) until 1990 (late '20s). Season 5 Diana, covering her '30s and death, however, has been recast with Elizabeth Debicki (Great Gatsby, Tenet). This seems like a mistake. Not only does Debicki have quite severe, flapperish features (which worked well in Gatsby but seems un-Diana-like), while Diana was tallish for a woman (5' 10" - same height as Theron, an inch shorter than Kidman & Thurman), Debicki, famously, is over 6' 2" (she towered over John David Washington and Branaugh recently in Tenet) which really reads as extraordinary height on screen. Maybe this seeming miscast means something about how the show's going to portray Diana once she splits from The Royal Family in the '90s. Maybe she'll only be seen, as it were, from a distance then.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Promising Young Woman is pretty good. Not quite great, at least on first viewing, but in 2020/2021 and after the flat-out disappointments of everything from Tenet to Mank to Wonder Woman 1984, we'll take moderately ambitious, bratty, fun & unpredictable! Could be an out-of-nowhere zeitgeisty hit a la, say, Get Out or John Wick, or could be destined only for cult appreciation. We'll see.

---

Its not where I can see it in a theater, and I have not been able to find it on streaming.

Seems to been hurting bad in getting properly seen or making much money.

Still, I'm intrigued by the premise and the first trailer really "sold" the idea to me. (The second trailer weirdly, seemed to screw up the perfection of the first trailer; I've rarely seen that happen in marketing.)

I watched the first ten minutes or so of Wonder Woman 1984. Pretty bad, though I expect I will finish it. Here's a weird comparison: I watched some of Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" on HBO Max and I took note of some "little animated people" in the film's opening "Psycho-like" sweep from a high viewpoint over a train station and down into the window of a mountain inn. Well, Hitchcock's "fake animated people" of 1938 didn't look like much worse than the MANY "fake animated people" in the opening Amazon Island shots of WW84, which are like watching a cartoon.

WW84 then moves to 1984 DC and an opening "rescue fight" by Wonder Woman of little girls from the clutches of bad bank robbers. The sequence is clearly(it seemed to me) played "for little kids" and is silly for adults to watch. (WW delivers all the bad guys tied up in a bow to the cops.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The bad reviews for WW84 reflect a salutary "equal opportunity" panning of director Patty Jenkins, who is to be commended for being a woman in her field and knocked for being a bad screenwriter here. "The play's the thing." I'll watch the rest of this, but it seemed to really betray the "gravitas" of the World War I original, with its great "No Man's Land" sequence. That ALMOST edged into "serious" territory for a comic book hero(ine) film; so far WW84 plays a like a simple-minded Disney B.

--

About HBO Max. I subscribed, not simply to see WW84 but to be ready to view the 2021 Warner Brothers slate.

That said, this channel sure has a lot of older movies to look at it. There is a section "curated" by Turner Classic Movies with a sub-section called "Film School 101" that has North by Northwest as the sole Hitchcock film. Recall that TCM has long owned this MGM movie(which Time-Warner obtained)...North by Northwest is sort of the "Flagship Hitchcock Movie For Turner Classic Movies" and always has been. (TCM has to pay extra to show the Paramount/Universal collection with Psycho and Vertigo.)

HBO Max does NOT have the Hitchcock Universal Paramounts, nor(at the moment) even the other Hitchcock Warner Brothers films like Strangers on a Train and The Wrong Man. It DOES have the key British works plus Foreign Correspondent.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've been using HBO Max to do two things : (1) Catch movies I always wanted to see(or put off seeing) like Love Story(from long ago) and Kate Winslet's "commuter suburb" dramas Revolutionary Road and Little Children, and (2) drop in on some old favorites.

As to those old favorites: HBO Max does not have Psycho...but it does have Jaws and it does have The Exorcist and I found Jaws as great as I remembered it and The Exorcist as flat and repellant as I remembered it(and hey, the dialogue by the "esteemed" William Peter Blatty in The Exorcist is far worse than the dialogue in Psycho and Jaws...and the dialogue in Psycho is better than the dialogue in Jaws, except for Shaw's USS Indianapolis speech.)

As we enter 2021, hopes are high that "the movies are going to come back," but right now theatrical distribution really looks to be gut-shot. I start to wonder if streaming is going to be where we are going to HAVE to see our movies for the indefinite future.

An era just might be over...but it could come roaring back if theaters are opened again in full.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

WW84 then moves to 1984 DC and an opening "rescue fight" by Wonder Woman of little girls from the clutches of bad bank robbers. The sequence is clearly(it seemed to me) played "for little kids" and is silly for adults to watch. (WW delivers all the bad guys tied up in a bow to the cops.).

Yep, that light '80s tone of the opening rescue fight at the mall is very much the tone of the rest of the film - very Superman 2 with bits of Gremlins, Big Trouble in Little China, WarGames, even, with Kristen Wiig's character, Single White Female. (My 14 year old niece who loved the first WW said WW84 was 'too mushy' and 'didn't have enough action'.)

The score shocked me: they brought in Han Zimmer (publicizing the hell out of this fact) and he just recycled bits of his Pirates and Dark Knight scores, and for one of the biggest scenes in the movie they (insulting Zimmer? bailing on his nonsense?) just used the whole of John Murphy's Adagio/Kaneda's Death from Sunshine (2007)!

Anyhow, as I've posted on WW1984's board, WW84 isn't worse than crap, time-wasting sequels like Pirates 2, Thor 2, The Hobbit films, most recent Star Wars films, even Avengers 2, etc. but the drop off in quality makes you sigh for the elegance of the first film. WW84 also had a killer trailer so people had their hopes up - a lot of very disappointed fans are now having a bit of a group-hate on the new film as a result of that.

Note that the film Wonder Woman 1 was closest to in the Marvel Universe was Capt America 1:The First Avenger. That was followed up by Cap 2:Winter Soldier one of the very best Marvel entries (the directors of that got the Avengers 3&4 job on its strength). WW84 is no Cap 2 (it's somewhere between Thor 2, Edward Norton's Hulk film, and Iron Man 2). All of this is a reminder of how important Cap 2 was to raising Marvel's game (and the Thor side of Marvel was floundering until Thor 3). DC has its work cut out for it again after WW84 I'd say.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

WW84 then moves to 1984 DC and an opening "rescue fight" by Wonder Woman of little girls from the clutches of bad bank robbers. The sequence is clearly(it seemed to me) played "for little kids" and is silly for adults to watch. (WW delivers all the bad guys tied up in a bow to the cops.).
--

Yep, that light '80s tone of the opening rescue fight at the mall is very much the tone of the rest of the film - very Superman 2 with bits of Gremlins, Big Trouble in Little China, WarGames, even, with Kristen Wiig's character, Single White Female.
---

That's a good group of 80s into 90s influences, swanstep. I can't say I caught all of them, but I'll add one(that I read somewhere): Wiig's transformation from mumbling milquetoast into sexy villainess(and then monstrous Cheetah) has a forbear in Michelle Pfeiffer's arc as Catwoman in Batman Returns.)

---

(My 14 year old niece who loved the first WW said WW84 was 'too mushy' and 'didn't have enough action'.)

--

I have now seen WW84 all the way through and I would concur somewhat with your niece -- who is among the real target age audience for this. It does take awhile for the action to arrive. I enjoyed the "ode the Raiders of the Lost Ark truck chase"(complete with WW hanging under the moving vehicle.)

My disorientation with the opening sequences (too much CGI in the Amazon island flashback; too much child-level silliness in the mall fight)....was somewhat reversed as the movie continued on and felt, well, like most other comic book hero movies. I could picture seeing this in a theater.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I've always hated Kristen Wiig's name because I'm always unsure of the spelling. I may get it wrong here on out. I felt she didn't quite rise to the occasion of this major role -- too much of her SNL mumbling schtick in the beginning. That said, I recall how the main promotion of WW84 for many months was "what will Wiig look like as Cheetah?" And that is a revelation in the final 30 minutes of the movie. What she looks like in close-up is -- a refugee from "Cats." What she looks like in fighting longshots doing battle with Wonder Woman is: a CGI cartoon. So does Wonder Woman. In the olden days, the actors would leave the shot and the stunt people would come in. In WW84, the actors leave the shot and are replaced by animated cartoon figures. Oh, well.

Meanwhile, we've got this fellow Pedro Pascal as the oddly sympathetic villain "Max Lord." I'm reminded that way back when, studios would pay for Jack Nicholson or Arnold Schwarzenegger to play the villains. Now its...oh, whoever's around. I understand that Pascal is good in The Mandalorian(will I pony up for Disney, too?) ; I saw him a few years ago in the Kingsman sequel. He's OK, I guess...but his character is very unfocussed here.

The big sticking point to me about WW84 is the MacGuffin: a rock that becomes a person (Pascal) who can grant any wish a person makes -- while taking something away as a cost of the wish. So Wonder Woman gets her "dead" lover back(Steve Trevor, played by Chris Pine of the big eyebrows)...but loses her powers. Its like Superman and Kryptonite and this whole section of the movie is...moving. Wonder Woman bleeding and tired from battle; Wonder Woman having to decide to give up her lover(again) to save herself, and the world. Nice stuff.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

But then it gets all silly and out of control. Max Lord granting the wishes of everybody in the WORLD? What is he, Santa Claus? God? And the plot mechanism of "I renounce my wish" as the mechanism to reverse things. A bit too easy, too silly, IMHO.

Which brings up the "internal confrontation" about a person of my age with these movies. If the target audience is KIDS , and the MacGuffin is meant to appeal to a kid's mentality("Make a wish/renounce your wish.")....what should I say about anything.

Not much. But this. By now, we know that the comic book movie is our biggest studio asset, and will likely "re-cycle through time," as new actors are brought forth to play and play again Batman, Superman, Spider-Man...Wonder Woman..Joker...

So the best one can do is to "rank the movies" and to perhaps find the ones that best can please "audiences of all ages" -- with (sometimes) a direct appeal to adults.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

The score shocked me: they brought in Han Zimmer (publicizing the hell out of this fact) and he just recycled bits of his Pirates and Dark Knight scores, and for one of the biggest scenes in the movie they (insulting Zimmer? bailing on his nonsense?) just used the whole of John Murphy's Adagio/Kaneda's Death from Sunshine (2007)!

---

Hmm...I didn't notice any of this ..its educational.

I will say this. As you brought to our attention some time ago, the age of the "distinctive credit overture theme" seems to be over.

Sitting here, I can hear John Williams Superman theme in my head...and Danny Elfman's Batman theme. I can hear Herrmann's overtures of North by Northwest, and for Vertigo, and for Psycho.

But for Wonder Woman, one or two? Nope.

Note in passing because, well...why not?

I like John Williams theme for Superman better than his theme for Star Wars.

I like John Williams theme for 1941 better than his theme for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

...and I wished he switched them!

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Anyhow, as I've posted on WW1984's board,

---

I'm too chicken to go over there. I prefer some OT chat here at a board for an older movie with older people. Its my Modus Operandi. I don't want to get in flaming matches with people 1/3 my age. Ha.

---

WW84 isn't worse than crap, time-wasting sequels like Pirates 2, Thor 2, The Hobbit films, most recent Star Wars films, even Avengers 2, etc. but the drop off in quality makes you sigh for the elegance of the first film.

---

Yes. I consider Wonder Woman I one of the best of the comic book movies. Gal Gadot is a looker for sure, but she found the sweet and empathetic heart of her character and she clearly has star power for future films. Interesting, a Gadot movie currently held up from COVID is "Death on the Nile," an Agatha Christie remake in which Gadot is playing a villain(not necessarily whodunit, but "bad.")

Meanwhile, the first film had the historic power of World War I (only recently getting the emovies it deserves) for "gravitas."

---

WW84 also had a killer trailer so people had their hopes up - a lot of very disappointed fans are now having a bit of a group-hate on the new film as a result of that.

---

Well, 80's nostalgia is here and folks who lived through it wanted to go back -- and their kids wanted to see mom and dad's childhood, etc.

A thought: while I feel that the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s all have a distinctive look, sound and feel -- I'm waiting to see what 90s and 00's nostalgia is going to be like. Its as if the decades have "flattened out" in distinction. For instance, rap has been the defining music for decades.

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Note that the film Wonder Woman 1 was closest to in the Marvel Universe was Capt America 1:The First Avenger.

--

Agreed. Both films went near the top of my "favorite comic book movies" because of the period settings -- WWI for WW, WWII for Captain America 1. Post films also shared a template -- Captain America the most -- in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Which was a good thing. And both movies also postulated a kind of "Dirty Dozen less 8" of commando teams.

--

That was followed up by Cap 2:Winter Soldier one of the very best Marvel entries (the directors of that got the Avengers 3&4 job on its strength).

--

Yes, Winter Soldier(with a Washington DC setting like WW84 except modern day) disappointed me in the loss of the "period gravitas" but impressed me with its great action scenes, the presence of Robert Redford as a villain(he was great), and Samuel L. Jackson getting something more meaty to do with Nick Fury.

--

WW84 is no Cap 2 (it's somewhere between Thor 2, Edward Norton's Hulk film, and Iron Man 2).

---

That's nice and precise, swanstep. And I can SEE it.

---

All of this is a reminder of how important Cap 2 was to raising Marvel's game (and the Thor side of Marvel was floundering until Thor 3).

---

Well, I suppose we realize now that all those "stand alone" Marvel movies were necessary to set up the Avengers; Cap 2 was making the final run...

---

DC has its work cut out for it again after WW84 I'd say.

---

I read the younger generations passionate debates about MCU vs DCU and I am convinced that this is why the movies STILL matter. I'm not to be a part of the debate, but I read it in real admiration and I "connect" with the fact that the movies MATTER to a younger generation more than to anyone.

That said, I have to wonder: why HAVE the DC movies suffered in comparison. I think maybe there is something more youthful, radical and "gonzo" about the Marvel characters -- I mean Supes and Batman hail from the 30s.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

That said, I think that Batman may just be the "top of the line" comic book hero. One reason is : the villains. (Hitchcock's credo: "The better the villain, the better the movie.") The Joker has proven to be a gold mine at the box office, with powerful audience connection and now a string of great actors playing him(twice winning the Oscar!) Catwoman always adds a sensual dimension, and guys like The Riddler and The Penguin have their own unique qualities.

Superman seems to be stuck with Lex Luthor as the villain in the main. It remains amusing to me that in the first one, Gene Hackman refused to play Luthor bald (except for a few seconds at the end ), thereby not even giving that movie the villain it was supposed to have! It took a few decades for Kevin Spacey to do it bald -- and right. And then that kid actor took the role.

Batman also benefits from the fact that Bats has no superpowers; he's "relateable to the average person" and he has a lot of gadgets, a great car, a great plane, a great boat ("Where does he get all those wonderful toys?" muses Jack Nicholson's Joker.)

Batman is actually a James Bond variant WHEN Robin is kept out of it (Robin has proved to be a real thorn in the side of the franchise -- the best Batmans don't have Robin in them at all.)

As for Wonder Woman, cut to the chase: in commix and on film: she's hot. Her outfit is skimpy. A role model for women and girls; a magnet for men and boys. Something about a strong woman who can beat you up....well....

And for all those other folks? The Avengers and the Justice League and the Suicide Squad (where Harley Quinn gives us the dark side of Wonder Woman with equal sex appeal)...for another place.

Wonder Woman 1984 has served its singular and historic role, now: opening on TV the same day as in theaters. We've waited decades for this to happen -- and many of us hoped it wouldn't happen. But it has.

Remember: 1959's North by Northwest didn't reach TV until...1967.

[–] swanstep (2715) 4 years ago

That said, I have to wonder: why HAVE the DC movies suffered in comparison. I think maybe there is something more youthful, radical and "gonzo" about the Marvel characters -- I mean Supes and Batman hail from the 30s.

I think that this *is* the core of it - DC lacks Marvel's simple natural connection to the '60s' & '70s' big change to a more individualistic, confessional, inclusive, countercultural but very technological society.

Interestingly, DC comics realized that this was the deep problem themselves in the '80s and so they started commissioning all these new 'radical, darker grimmer' takes on their key characters and properties. So Frank Miller gets brought in to write psychotic, grizzled middel-aged Batman stories like The Dark Knight Returns, crazed Superman stories emerge, and Allan Moore gets brought into do Watchmen, his disturbing takes on The Joker ('The Killing Joke'), Swamp Thing, and so on.

DC at the movies is now stuck, perennially oscillating between its deep Golden-Age-ness and its frentic, depressed, cynical, deconstructive '80s incarnations.