what are your 3 favorite movies of 2020 so far?

Desert One
Koko-Di Koko-Da
What Did Jack Do?

showoff!

no sonic, no credibility

The Traitor
God of the Piano

No third yet.

I couldnt finish What Did Jack Do?

Lol, I love that you love Koko-Di Koko-Da, ulysses. Do you have any previous feelings about Peter Belli?

don't think i'd ever heard of him before this film but his face is familiar... he gives good Dennis Hopper vibes in this! "kiss the kitty-cat!"

the twee rabbit puppetry was a bit much and it sometimes spins off the rails but Koko-Di was genuinely unsettling and slowly opened up into something much more complex than it seemed. As far as surreal Swedish meditations on loss and shattered identity told through horror tropes go, it would be a good back-to-back with Persona.

I caught it at a late-night pre-release free screening in the city and the woman next to me clearly thought she had come to a standard horror movie and spent the third reel loudly opining out loud variations on "THIS SHIT CRAZY" and "What the fuck GOING ON in this movie?"

we should maybe open up this thread to encompass non-2020 films?

rip fred b

if we're sticking to year of origin, i would revise to

The Truth (Kore-eda)
Whistlers (Porumboiu)
Desert One (Kopple)

1. the invisible man
2. elephant

that's my 2020 so far.

1. la france contre les robots (straub)
2. days (tsai)
3. beautiful young ladies (batteault)

The Assistant
Bacurau
Onward

which is mostly everything I've managed to see, but I quite liked them all so

still alita battle angel

I liked both The Hunt and Daniel Isn't Real but I doubt I'll be thinking of either much by year's end

https://vimeo.com/410263705
Now, At Last! by Ben Rivers.
For forty languid minutes, we observe the sloth as she sleeps, from time to time moving but mostly hanging, or indefinitely between these states. From the minimalism of the black and white image, we move onto images shown in tricolor separation, exaggerating the slowness and shaking our senses, accompanied by The Righteous Brothers singing extra-diegetically.

Seriously, get in on this now. Streaming free through April 24 to 30.

okay, i got a top ten as of July.

América (Stoll and Whiteside, 2020)
The Painter and The Thief (Ree, 2020)
Desert One (Kopple, 2020)
The Whistlers (Porumboiu, 2020)
The Truth (Kore-eda, 2020)
Bad Education (Finley, 2020)
South Mountain (Brougher, 2020)
Be Water (2020, Nguyen)
Jasper Mall (2020, Thomason and Whitcomb)
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Iannucci, 2020)

The Assistant (Kitty Green)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
The Truth (Kore-eda)

More of the rest.

1. la france contre les robots (straub)
2. days (tsai)
3. beautiful young ladies (batteault)

― devvvine, Thursday, 23 April 2020 19:19 (three months ago) bookmarkflaglink

slide vache premiere in the bottom here

uhh happy to ilxmail ppl re the new tsai

Greyhound was good. Not a masterpiece but interesting and Hanks is always good and it’s only 90 minutes.

At the moment I couldn't care less. Focusing entirely on repertory.

Cinemas opening here on friday... anyone jonesing to go? I have to say I’m not tempted and haven’t even really missed it as much as I would have thought, I hope they still exist at the end of all this but I will wait to find out. Could not give a shit about tenet. Doesn’t help that I kind of hate my local “arthouse” which has been going downhill for years and years and is part of the shitty Picturehouse chain who are terrible to their staff

apparently Ontario movie theaters have been open for a while, with a max capacity of 50 people total in the building. they're trying to get it raised to 50 a screen. if they fail I might check something out at some point, depending on the ordering process

man, i wanna go back but i dunno when nyc theaters make the leap

Because I go to theaters for first shows (10 a.m. in most cases), I'm often the only person in them. I've got no problem sitting masked in an empty or near empty theater.

Publicists asked my film critics circle last month if we wanted to make screenings critics-only.

my local drive in opened for the first time in around a decade this month. seems like a good idea.

"Cinemas opening here on friday... anyone jonesing to go?"

Love some of the arthouse cinemas around London but I really can't go just yet. I don't feel confident the infection rate won't increase over the next month or two.

Just sad.

Kore-eda is on mubi, might watch, but just getting a bit tired of it.

That Kore-eda is good? International arthouse director goes European feels like almost as bad a success ratio as European director goes Hollywood.

Yes, it's goo.

Good too.

incredible if true that binoche and deneuve have apparently never been in the same movie before??

It took a moment to realize it at the time.

I guess that's just what happens when you tend to be the leads. See also, idk, Tom Cruise and Nic Cage.

At the moment I couldn't care less. Focusing entirely on repertory.

I'm with Morbs. Tho I do have First Cow locked and loaded.

fetch the bolt gun

Driveways
Da 5 Bloods
The Invisible Man

possessor
she dies tomorrow

that's it so far

Beanpole
The Assistant
The Truth
First Cow

I liked a lot about First Cow like especially the odd couple partners-in-crime and the whole premise of it really, but I feel the last act let the movie down a bit and should have been a lot more moving than it was but it just sort of fizzled out.

The Painter and The Thief
Deux (Meneghetti)
The Personal History of David Copperfield
maybe?

I have now seen 3 2020 releases (per letterboxd dates), they are

Emma.
Shirley
Let Them All Talk

So they’re my 3 favorite movies of 2020 so far I guess!

Oh I saw First Cow, that’s catalogued as 2019 for whatever reason, I liked that too.

Possessor
Lovers Rock
Beanpole

Lovers Rock
Saint Maud
Ema

Driveways
David Byrne's American Utopia
I'm Thinking of Ending Things

I've seen maybe 10 new releases, and Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project was the only one I really liked (bending a little--IMDB dates it Nov. 15 of last year, but I didn't see it till months later).

i feel like this is the year when giving a fuck about specific release dates needs to fuck right off.
a lot of what i loved that i saw this year isn't going to be released in the US until 2021 at the earliest and maybe later; plenty was shown in festivals in 2019. if you're in the general vicinity of 2020, that should count.

Most of the new movies I've seen this year were ones that went straight to streaming services, so release dates are easy to determine. I'm treating Driveways as a 2020 release even though it did the festival circuit last year; I figure that it, like a lot of things, it would have made the rounds in theatres this year (I saw it through my library's streaming service; no idea what kind of release it has beyond that).

Driveways was great btw, definitely in my top 20

So far nothing's topped The Assistant for me, disappointed I wasnt able to see it in a theater

Dennehy in Driveways was terrific; with him and Anthony Hopkins, 'tis the year for white men in their dotage.

i feel like this is the year when giving a fuck about specific release dates needs to fuck right off.

NYT said this year's Oscar for best actress should go to Cher in Moonstruck because ... because.

1. Mank
2. Mangrove
3. The Wild Goose Lake

a lot of what i loved that i saw this year isn't going to be released in the US until 2021 at the earliest and maybe later

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/218/301/e61.png

For now my 3 are:

Mank
The Assistant
Boys State

Really want to see Possessor, First Cow, and She Dies Tomorrow before settling on 3. They've all been on my watchlist since August or September, and I have a feeling at least one of them will sneak in there.

I've not seen many new movies in 2020 but my fave this year was Last and First Men. A doom-laden audiovisual sci-fi essay (well an adaptation of an "unfilmable" 20's sci-fi novella) on the extinction of humanity with a very nice soundtrack and Tilda Swinton's voice. Probably sold it shit there, but it worked for me!

damn i really didn't see much either. i guess:

First Cow
Emma
Palm Springs

First Cow
Lovers Rock (or all of Small Axe, w/ one left to see)
House of Hummingbird (2020 in US)

The Assistant still pretty high on the list, too

Yeah, Small Axe taken as a whole is #1 if the new one can keep that pace

my favorite new-to-me thing was Joe Begos' wonderful 16mm LA exploitation movie Bliss (2019)

Big fan of tenet there Whiney?

Aw, Driveways. Didn't all work for me but yeah, great main cast, and I loved how it shows two people at opposite ends of life developing an understanding/friendship while the adult who's making that possible just stays stressed.

I should add the Michael Jordan ESPN documentary as a second film I liked this year. Whether it should count, much less clear-cut for me than the ESPN O.J. documentary--probably not.

i feel like calling Last Dance a film is a bit out of bounds... the OJ doc was screened in its entirety at some festivals whereas the MJ thing was not. Though perhaps it would've been if we weren't all living in hell!

And MJ was much more episodic--think OJ was three parts, MJ 10. If I end up making a year-end, I'll probably include it just because of pandemic-induced scarcity.

This ended up as

Possessor
The Assistant
Boys State

oh wait Never Rarely Sometimes Always was really good. i will tie that with Boys State.