2020 movies - Personal review and Awards -

Notes: I have to admit that I was rather sceptical at first. Indeed, I have to admit that I had never heard of this musical of even of Alexander Hamilton himself before watching this flick. To make things worse, in general, I’m not a huge fan of musicals and the idea of watching 150 mins of non-stop singing with no straight dialogue whatsoever on a single stage didn’t sound really appealing to me. However, to my surprise, I really loved the damned thing. Indeed, right from the very first song, I was impressed by the lyrics and the singing skills of this crew and I was pretty much hooked. It did help that Lin-Manuel Miranda had some major hip-hop influence for his lyrics and it was rather surprising how well it worked within such an historical context. But the damned thing was not only seriously entertaining, it was educational and, within a little more than 2 hours, you get also some fascinating crash-course about a crucial period of the history of the United States. Eventually, this movie was also a great reminder that the USA as a country, in spite of its flaws and various mistakes, remains intriguing and, to go back to its foundations and focus on its most overlooked founding father was just so fascinating.

Notes: Even if I probably didn’t learn anything really new, it was still an intriguing documentary with a whole bunch of people much smarter than me. I have to admit that, at first, the content was fairly depressing and it slowly became even darker and, towards the end, it was pretty much the most nightmarish doomsday scenario that you could imagine. At least, I’m glad I’m part of the last generation which was born before the internet and the smartphones and, as a result, I don’t actually use any social media such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram so I didn’t really have to feel guilty while watching the damned thing. Still, as a parent, I became slightly worried for my youngest daughter though. Indeed, she is now 14 years old and pretty much spends all her free time on her smartphone so, to hear how hurtful it could be for her on so many levels was slightly distressing. Anyway, is the situation so bad after all? I mean, when I was growing up in the 80’s and the 90’s, people were complaining that we were watching too much television, then they were complaining that our video-games were just too violent,... On the other hand, in this case, the scale is actually here much bigger and the usage is also so much intense, it just never stops. Furthermore, there is also an actual conscious choice to actually manipulate the users which was never really the case with TV and video-games. Eventually, how will it all end? Difficult to say and, if you would believe some people, nobody even knows what is really actually going on anymore.

Notes: Well, even though I enjoyed this movie which was a decent follow-up to the seriously impressive 'BlacKkKlansman', to be honest, in my opinion, not everything did work in this movie though. Basically, there was so much stuff going on, most of it was pretty good, but I wonder if it wasn’t maybe too much and there were also some rather bewildering artistic choices. However, even if there were maybe too many characters involved, Paul did stand out and, in my opinion, Delroy Lindo probably gave here the best performance of his career.

Notes: To be honest, I still think the concept was really flimsy but there is no doubt that Leigh Whannell made the most of it. Indeed, in spite of its title which was there only for some marketing purposes, he basically made the ultimate stalker movie and the fact that the guy had the possibility of becoming invisible was eventually almost an afterthought. Well, I have never been a huge fan of the stalker genre but what made this movie still work was above all another fearless performance by Elisabeth Moss. Indeed, from the very beginning, her character was just so completely strung out and only became worse as the movie moved along. In this genre, they usually shows the main character has being terribly strong and resilient but, here, they put much more focus on the psychological turmoil experienced by this woman and, combined with a strong performance from Moss, it was really compelling to behold.

Notes: Well, the guys from Pixar have done it again. Indeed, they have produced yet another masterpiece. Of course, the animation was gorgeous, I wouldn’t expect less from them, and the jazz music was really sweet as well, but, above all, the depth of the story and the themes developed was just really impressive. You might argue that it might be too similar to ‘Inside Out’, Pete Docter’s previous directing effort, but I didn’t bother me. Basically, this movie was some kind of a mix of ‘Inside Out’ with ‘Coco’ and ‘Up’ with some body-switching as well. Regarding the body-switching thing, you can imagine that they could have made the whole movie about this (how many movies have been made around this concept?) and it would have been still fairly successful anyway. However, and that’s where the movie really stands out from the competition, they went just way beyond that. Basically, they tackled the biggest question ever which is ‘What is the meaning of life?’, even if both characters were not even aware of this quest and this journey was just quite spellbinding. I also really appreciate the fact that, even though the main character seemed to be a decent guy, he was also flawed which made him so much more human and identifiable. Basically, the damned thing was just fascinating to behold.

Notes: This year was rather terrible, obviously for many reasons, but, on top of that, I haven't seen so many 'fun' movies ever and this one was pretty much the only one that more or less fit the bill. Indeed, I always had a weak spot for Jerry Seinfeld so I thought I might as well check it out. Well, first of all, watching the damned thing made me feel even more guilty about the fact that I have never seen enough episodes of ‘Seinfeld’. Anyway, I always thought that Jerry Seinfeld was really funny and it was pretty neat to see him for the first time around doing a stand-up show like this one. Concerning the jokes themselves, to be honest, I thought it was pretty random and I think it would have been interesting if there would have been a specific theme through the whole show. For example, the best bits were about when he was talking about his life as a married man and, in my opinion, he could have done the whole show around this theme. It wasn’t a deal-breaker though, most of it was really sharp and funny and there were only a very few missers.

Notes: Surprisingly, I have seen only a few movies in this category this year when there are usually so many sequels released every year. Anyway, it was nice that this time around most of the team behind this movie, not only the characters but also the people behind the camera, were some women and they made sure that these characters were not displayed as some lust objects (which is usually the case with female comic-books characters) but, to be honest, I wasn’t really impress by the end-result. For example, before watching this movie, I kept hearing that Mary Elizabeth Winstead was amazing but, seriously, her outfit was just so lame. The fact that her character came really late in this story didn’t help either. Even worse was Rosie Perez who was completely miscast. Indeed, they should have hired someone like Sigourney Weaver or Linda Hamilton or someone slightly younger like Angelina Jolie or Milla Jovovich. Basically, they should have chosen someone who could really kick some ass convincingly. However, a bigger issue was that the whole plot of having all the characters chasing some diamond was just so generic and tedious. I mean, it was a great idea to focus on Harley Quinn’s breakup with the Joker and showing how she struggled to get her life back together without him. Unfortunately, it seemed that the makers struggled to expand her story beyond this promising beginning. Still, there is no doubt that Harley Quinn remains such a neat character and, once again, Margot Robbie completely rocked this performance.

Notes: To be honest, when I heard that we would watch the latest movie directed by Johan Nijhenhuis, I can't say I shared the enthusiasm displayed by the rest of my film club. Well, at least, Nijenhuis probably did deliver the best movie of his career but it doesn't mean I really liked it though. Basically, this Dutch director has made a career delivering some really successful but also really fluffy romantic-comedies and, while this movie definitely had more substance than his usual work, I'm afraid it was still too shallow for my taste. First of all, even though I have to admit that some of the jokes were really funny, most of the characters were actually more annoying than actually entertaining. Then, I really liked the idea of making a comedy about Alzheimer's disease but the whole concept was rather poorly handled, especially since the tone was so light, and it would have worked so much better with some pitch-black humor. Eventually, during the last 30 minutes, they finally dealt more seriously with the main issue within this relationship but it came just too late in my opinion. Still, Herman Finkers is definitely a really charismatic man and I have to admit that it was really entertaining to see a movie in Twents dialect.

Notes: Like so many film buffs, I have been closely following Christopher Nolan's career for years and, once again, this new directing effort was my highest priority for 2020. On top of that, because of the Coronavirus, even though the movie was completed, it kept getting postponed increasing my expectations in the process but also for everyone else. Well, I wish I could say it was worth the wait, as it is usually the case with this director. Unfortunately, I'm afraid Nolan has delivered the first misfire in an otherwise pretty much flawless career so far. The saddest thing is that it was, according to Nolan, his most ambitious movie so far. Anyway, what went wrong? Well, for me, it felt like they gave permission to David Lynch to direct a blockbuster with a 200 million dollar budget. The difference would be that Lynch would probably deliver something just as weird, bonkers and nonsensical as Nolan did but, at least, it would have been on purpose. I mean, it is not as if Nolan was working for the first time with a rather far out complex. However, the question I keep asking myself is 'was it really such an awesome idea?'. Well, I'm not so sure. I mean, for more than 2 hours, the viewers and the characters struggle with the dammed idea but it never became really fascinating. Concerning the cast, this time, Nolan didn't have so many characters to deal with which was probably a good thing. John David Washington and Robert Pattinson were both pretty good and had some good chemistry but, unfortunately, their characters were barely developed whatsoever. Anyway, was it really some complete garbage? Of course, not. The time passed by very quickly, the soundtrack was badass, it was visually still impressive and it felt good to go back to the movie theatre after almost 6 months but there is no doubt that the damned thing was seriously disappointing.

Notes: To be honest, I think there was in fact a couple of good ideas but most of it was just terribly average at best and some of it was some total garbage. Eventually, the most bewildering thing was why such a generic action flick required a whopping running time of 150 mins?!? Seriously, it was as if they forgot to actually edit the damned thing and put every single shot in the actual movie. As a result, they did end up with a whole bunch of scenes going on for way too long with no actual purpose whatsoever. At least, they could have given us plenty of interesting or fun characters, after all, there was apparently plenty of time for that but, no, there were only 3 characters who were not even developed at all. I almost forgot that there was in fact a 4th character played by Sharlto Copley but his sub-plot was so half-baked and completely useless, I wonder why he was even there at all. Seriously, who was this guy and what did he have to do with the rest of the story? It’s too bad because the concept was not bad, at least, it was not much worse than the concept developed in ‘The Purge’ and this movie did manage to spawn several sequels.