Ending 2020

When I first considered what I might write in the introduction to my 2020 films ranked best to worst -- the introduction you are currently reading -- I thought there were two very simple ways to go about it. 

One would be to acknowledge the year we've had, which I've already done a couple times on this blog, and which would highlight COVID and the political strife of the past year.

The other would be to talk about how this is the first time I have ever released this list on a morning other than when the Oscar nominations are announced, which is the deadline I have always set myself for completing this project. That's not happening until March this year, and I just can't wait that long.

But in the last few days I realized that something else about this list was at the risk of getting lost in the shuffle: It's the 25th one I've ever done. 

That's right, I first got the idea to rank my movies from worst to first in 1996, back when my complete list was a mere 43 titles long. A quarter of a century later, I regularly watch at least 100 more new releases than that per year. 

Times have changed, but I haven't. I still find this an incredibly personally satisfying way of taking snapshots of my current perspective on film. I doubt I will ever stop. And even if I'm no longer writing a blog when I'm a decrepit old man -- God help me, I hope I'm not, that would be sort of pathetic -- I'm sure I'll still be keeping such a list for my own private consumption.

I've been sharing this list with you on my blog for 13 years now, starting with the 2008 list less than a month after I started the blog in January of 2009. I hope you've enjoyed them, or at least enjoyed laughing at the eccentric obsessiveness of it all.

I'm going to have some controversial choices this year, especially my #1 choice, but that's probably 2020 for you in a nutshell.

So without any further ado, my top ten counted down, followed by my five worst, and then the list of all 149 films:

10. The Platform - I didn't figure that the first thematically appropriate movie I watched after the pandemic started, which was also the first of about 40 Netflix movies I reviewed for ReelGood, would endure in my top ten long enough to finish the year there. But 2020 was full of unexpected things, including this Spanish horror, which follows a similar template to other geometrically named, tight little horrors I've enjoyed over the years, particularly Cube and Circle. (Triangle is a bit more expansive in scope.) In an unforgettable metaphor for what we were already going through, when people were fighting each other for the last roll of toilet paper, Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia's film considers inmates stuck in a towering concrete prison, two per floor, who feed once a day on a banquet lowered on a platform though the shaft at the center of each floor. The lower the floor, the less remnants of food and drink there are on which to sustain yourself. You can imagine the possible permutations of that idea, and they all get explored in grisly detail. High-concept horror is my favorite when it is done this well, and the fact that it commented on our have's vs. have not's world, where we either live or die by our willingness to cooperate with each other, was just a bonus. 

9. Onward - How does Pixar do it? Onward starts out like mid-range Pixar, even meanders in the middle, before ultimately landing in the same spot emotionally as the other great tear-jerkers the studio has produced. But I might not have fully recognized the power of the story of two elf brothers in a land where magic has grown stale from disuse, trying to complete a spell that will resuscitate their father for one day, if it hadn't absolutely wrecked my older son. He'd kill me for writing this -- though I already did in this post, when he was less likely to be so embarrassed (he's growing up quickly) -- but the very end of Dan Scanlon's film left him absolutely bawling. Like, so uncontrollably, his younger brother started asking my wife all sorts of questions about what was happening to him. What was happening to him was that he was having his first real cinematic experience of the fragility and bitter sweetness of life, the very thing Pixar perfectly delivers more than half its times out. Remembering some of those slow spots in the middle, I was going to watch Onward again before finalizing this list, but missed out on an available time slot last weekend. So instead I just went with my gut, which stated that instead of being mid-tier Pixar, this was one of the best films of the year -- which still might make it mid-tier Pixar, given how good Pixar is. 

8. Time - Documentaries about people trying to get their loved ones out of prison should be a dime a dozen, right? Or so I would have felt going into Time if I hadn't heard the praise that preceded it. For starters, Rob Richardson was not wrongly accused -- he did rob that bank -- but he was wrongly sentenced, earning 60 years behind bars when his wife, who pled guilty, served only a couple. Sybil Richardson, also known as Fox Rich, is the tireless crusader here, but her story is told in a way most of us have never seen. The lion's share of this footage is collected videos of her family over the course of 20 years, as she works indefatigably on her husband's behalf, and as their infant children grow into impressive young men. That only hints at the ways things turned out differently than you might expect for a family unwittingly abandoned by its patriarch when he was sent to prison. It's a spine-tingling portrait of a family rising from the ashes into something glorious, but a family that nonetheless does not feel complete until that father joins them on the outside. There are rousing montages of Sybil as she speaks to other people in similar circumstances, and moments of great frustration as the bureaucracy spins her in circles. But Garrett Bradley's film closes with a jaw-dopping consideration of the titular concept, presented in a manner that transcends the form into something truly profound. 

7. Sound of Metal - A few days into January I wrote a post "despairing" about the number of recent new contenders for my top ten, and those still yet to come. Sure enough, I watched Sound of Metal a few days after that. I think I am unduly affected by films that attempt to simulate another person's experience of the world; it goes back to Roger Ebert's definition of film as an "empathy machine" that promotes mutual understanding. Sound of Metal takes an extremely intimate and immersive approach to that by showing us what it's like for a person going deaf, in this case, Riz Ahmed's heavy metal drummer, who first loses about 80 percent of his hearing, and then the rest of it. The sound design of Darius Marder's film ranges from the somewhat familiar portrayal of tinnitus we may have seen previously, to the "underwater" quality of the indistinct sounds of near deafness, to total deafness, to the harsh distortion of the cochlear implants that mimic sound for the brain. If any of that is a spoiler, you should know going in that Sound of Metal is not the type of film where a person miraculously recovers his hearing at the end. Life is not like that. Life is, however, like Ruben Stone's desperate attempt to maintain normalcy in an existence that is finally going as he wants it after years of addiction. He's fixed his drug problems, but there may be no fix for this, and Ruben's road to acceptance of that notion is one of the most powerful cinematic journeys of the year. 

6. Feels Good Man - How can something that feels so good feel so bad? Pepe the Frog felt good, when he peed with his pants down around his ankles (the origin of the film's title) as a stoner twentysomething character in a comic book that focused on him and his animal housemates. But most of us know Pepe as an alt-right symbol of hatred, which is how the internet transformed the character through memes, to the anger and total befuddlement of its creator. Director Arthur Jones interviews artist Matt Furie and countless others about the scary phenomenon that is this unwitting little green dude, who has since been dressed in Nazi general outfits and made to look like Donald Trump. Furie is trying to reclaim his happy beginnings, without much success, but the film has an earnest hope that Furie might succeed in the long term. The film is a jaw-dropping document about how the internet works as a social paradigm, and how it can change something innocuous into something malevolent when that thing falls into the wrong hands. Feels Good Man inspires both anger and hope, and its one of the most thoroughly researched documentaries I saw this year. Possibly exceeded only by ... 

5. Disclosure - When so many documentaries you see these days are a variation on another documentary you've seen, or just completely frivolous in nature, Sam Feder's Disclosure felt like a revelation to me. It's the absolutely exhaustive -- please don't confuse that term with "exhausting" -- collection of instances where transgender characters have been depicted on film throughout cinema history, and interviews with the people most affected by those depictions. The latter group is comprised of trans actors, both male and female, as well as writers, directors, producers and so forth. (Lilly Wachowski makes an appearance.) While the stories of what these people have dealt with, both in their regular lives and in the entertainment industry, are moving as hell, Disclosure should not be confused for some kind of strident political harangue about our ignorant past. That's not what Feder or any of these interviewees is on about. In fact, on a number of occasions, the actor in question (I'll use the gender neutral term for the profession) follows up their comments by saying "But I really liked that movie." Disclosure understands these are complicated issues, which we are only just beginning to understand in the clear light of day -- the clear light of how casually hurtful we may have been in the past, and how we can do much better going forward. With films like Disclosure, we will. 

4. Soul - Yes, you read that correctly -- that's two Pixar movies in my top ten. The last time Pixar released two movies in the same calendar year, one of them was The Good Dinosaur, which might not have even made my top 100. (Not even close, actually -- it was my #121 of 2015.) Not only did we get a wealth of Pixar in 2020, but both this and Onward were original creations, reminding us of the Pixar of old that regularly introduced us to brand new worlds each time out. The world of Soul reminds us perhaps a little too much of the other Pixar 2015 film, Inside Out, which was my #1 of that year, especially as it is also directed by Pete Docter. But when reminders are as well-made and absolutely breathtaking as Soul, we needn't quibble about similarities. I was so swept up in this story of a jazz musician fighting to return to his body so he can live out his dreams, I spent a good deal of it with chills, and I don't think that was just because we projected it on the wall of our hotel room for my son's seventh birthday. It's a chill-inducing combination of the Great Before, the environment where souls are nourished, and a lovingly created, jazz-inflected New York populated by memorable characters, scored in equal measure by Jon Batiste and my own favorite musician of all time, Trent Reznor. And yes, cue the hankies at least twice. I was so enthralled that for a moment, I thought it might be my #2 of the year. It ends up almost that high at #4. 

3. The Killing of Two Lovers - I purchased tickets to The Killing of Two Lovers at this year's virtual MIFF with a bit of a wince -- knowing I was interested from the title, but worried that something unpleasant and emotionally scarring might be about to unfold before me. Well without giving too much away, let's just say there are multiple interpretations to that title, and this film had me thinking about the good sides to humanity in this awful year of 2020, rather than the bad ones. The film is set in Utah and concerns a husband and wife (Clane Crawford and Sepideh Moafi) who are also the parents of three children, but are in the midst of a trial separation. She begins dating someone else, and he ... well, he reacts in ways that are both predictable and unpredictable. You should be worried for these two but you should not lose hope, and that's as good a 2020 message as I can think of. Director Robert Machoian films the movie in a square aspect ratio, capturing both wide landscape shots where characters are little more than a speck, and also extremely intimate shots in which their faces fill the whole frame. Life is a combination of the remote and the intimate, isn't it? Like my last year's #3 film, the 2019 MIFF film Vivarium, The Killing of Two Lovers won't reach most audiences until February, but then it is well worth you finding, and hopefully, loving. 

2. The King of Staten Island - Judd Apatow? In my top five? It's happened before. The 40-Year-Old Virgin reached not quite these heights 15 years ago, landing at #3 of 2005, and The Cable Guy, which he produced, was my #4 of 1996. Not since 2005 have I so wholeheartedly embraced one of Apatow's films, and from the evidence of Trainwreck in 2015, I wasn't sure I even liked them anymore. This movie made matters worse with its poster of a shirtless, tattoeed Pete Davidson standing on a car with his arms outstretched in the universal gesture for "Are you not entertained?" I carried all sorts of baggage in with me and yet I was entertained -- and moved, and prompted into hearty bouts of laughter, and overall, more impressed than I ever could have imagined. Apatow meanders no less than usual here, but he finds more purpose in his meandering than I've ever seen, and that is, unveiling the complexities of the life of a 24-year-old kid who has no direction and whose mother is dating a firefighter -- the very same job his father died doing. Scott Carlin just has to figure this shit out, with help from his good-natured slacker buddies, his sort-of girlfriend (the terrific Bel Powley), his mother (the equally terrific Marisa Tomei) and even his mother's new boyfriend (Bill Burr, who has also done fantastic work in The Mandalorian). It's a lovely dose of humanism that left me with an exquisite sense of its improbable perfection. 

1. I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Charlie Kaufman can now be pronounced king of my year-end rankings. This is the third film Kaufman has written that's topped my list after Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but since he directed neither of those, he keeps alive my streak of anointing 25 different directors in the 25 years I've been doing this. Given the largely negative reaction to this movie by audiences, particularly large numbers of my friends, I had to watch I'm Thinking of Ending Things again to make sure I was not just in an unusually receptive mood that night. If so, I was in that same receptive mood three months later, as I quivered with exhilaration throughout my second viewing. The critics, who have been largely supportive of the movie, have gotten it right on this one, the most Charlie Kaufman of Charlie Kaufman movies, even if the idea originated in a novel written by someone else. This is not even the place for me to try to tackle this plot, or to figure out if the movie even has a plot, but what I loved so much about this film was the kaleidoscope of possible interpretations I mentioned in my review, each of which has enough evidence to support a full journey down that particular rabbit hole. It's like the mother! of 2020. The movie was such a success with me that I've named it my favorite of the year despite scratching my head for its final five minutes, and not in the good way the rest of the movie made me scratch my head. Kaufman didn't need to stick the landing when he's sticking the rest of the movie so completely. As a final note about it, it marks my first #1 movie of all time that debuted on a streaming service, Netflix specifically -- and my first #1 I originally watched on a TV rather than a movie screen since Ruby Sparks in 2012. 

And now the five worst. These do not get pictures. Be better movies if you want pictures.

5. Dolittle - Sometimes the first movie you see in a year is the worst. Or, in this case, the fifth worst, though for a while I didn't know how I would see something less good. But then I saw the next three on this list in the space of a week, at which point, Robert Downey Jr.'s massive misfire got to go into hiding, like a frightened gorilla.

4. The Grudge - How many remakes/sequels/reboots of The Grudge have there been? I can't keep track. But I don't know how any of the previous ones could have been worse than this. It's all over the place in terms of time periods, storylines and acting styles, with the one constant of the now exceedingly boring horror iconography that hasn't probably been truly scary since the original Japanese film 20 years ago.

3. The Jesus Rolls - Oh no he doesn't. The Jesus sits there like an inert bump on a log. That this man was a bowler first and foremost in The Big Lebowski is essentially forgotten here. And unfortunately, beyond bowling, this guy ain't got much. Someone -- maybe John Turturro -- should have taken a good long look at this movie and realized how pointless it was. 

2. Fatal Affair - If the title of this movie doesn't set off warning flags for you, everything else about it will. This is what an erotic thriller would look like if it were stripped of every single hint of personality, quirkiness or character. It is Character A doing things to Character B, strung together by the most functional and expository dialogue possible. Omar Epps and Nia Long can do much, much better. 

1. Hubie Halloween - Adam Sandler said he was going to make the worst movie ever as revenge on Hollywood if the Oscars snubbed him for Uncut Gems. Which they did. Hubie Halloween had already been shot at the time he made this statement. Which only means that Adam Sandler has mastered time travel and has not yet shared this discovery with the rest of us. 

And all 149, the exact same number I watched in 2017:

1. I'm Thinking of Ending Things

2. The King of Staten Island

3. The Killing of Two Lovers

4. Soul

5. Disclosure

6. Feels Good Man

7. Sound of Metal

8. Time

9. Onward

10. The Platform

11. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

12. My Octopus Teacher

13. True History of the Kelly Gang

14. Nocturne

15. Another Round

16. La Llorona

17. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

18. The Vast of Night

19. Bill & Ted Face the Music

20. The Forty-Year-Old Version

21. The Furnace

22. The Nest

23. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

24. Antebellum

25. Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey

26. The Hater

27. The Rental

28. Palm Springs

29. Becky

30. Love in Dangerous Times

31. Emma

32. Les Miserables

33. Dick Johnson is Dead

34. Rams

35. The Assistant

36. Swallow

37. Sonic the Hedgehog

38. Blow the Man Down

39. Mank

40. Promising Young Woman

41. Tigertail

42. #Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump

43. Kajillionaire

44. Boys State

45. The Invisible Man

46. A New York Christmas Wedding

47. Just 6.5

48. Bacurau

49. The Prom

50. Marona's Fantastic Tale

51. Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics

52. Becoming

53. John Lewis: Good Trouble

54. Circus of Books

55. Da 5 Bloods

56. Selah and the Spades

57. Shiva Baby

58. The War With Grandpa

59. Black Bear

60. Uncle Frank

61. Evil Eye

62. Irresistible

63. The Old Guard

64. Yes, God, Yes

65. Horse Girl

66. Uncorked

67. Spenser Confidential

68. Possessor

69. The Trip to Greece

70. Tesla

71. Black Box

72. Cuties

73. Enola Holmes

74. Roald Dahl's The Witches

75. Arkansas

76. Sputnik

77. Valley Girl

78. Hearts and Bones

79. The Personal History of David Copperfield

80. Prayer for a Lost Mitten

81. Tenet

82. Nomadland

83. Ema

84. First Cow

85. 23 Walks

86. Miss Juneteenth

87. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

88. The Midnight Sky

89. Desperados

90. Totally Under Control

91. Downhill

92. Color Out of Space

93. Wonder Woman 1984

94. Rebecca

95. She Dies Tomorrow

96. Saint Frances

97. Love Wedding Repeat

98. Shirley

99. The Trial of the Chicago 7

100. Project Power

101. Mulan

102. Wolfwalkers

103. The Social Dilemma

104. Hillbilly Elegy

105. The Truth

106. Burden

107. A Fall From Grace

108. Dreambuilders

109. The Burnt Orange Heresy

110. Greyhound

111. Kala Azar

112. Spree

113. Gretel & Hansel

114. Fantasy Island

115. The Secrets We Keep

116. Dogs Don't Wear Pants

117. Resistance

118. Crip Camp

119. The Willoughbys

120. All Day and a Night

121. Trolls World Tour

122. Extraction

123. Buffaloed

124. The Last Days of American Crime

125. My Summer as a Goth

126. All Together Now

127. The Trouble With Being Born

128. On the Rocks

129. Superintelligence

130. Wendy

131. The Lie

132. The Lovebirds

133. Wasp Network

134. Relic

135. A Christmas Gift from Bob

136. The Kissing Booth 2

137. Capone

138. Endings, Beginnings

139. How to Build a Girl

140. Coffee & Kareem

141. Impractical Jokers: The Movie

142. The Devil All the Time

143. Fatman

144. The Wrong Missy

145. Dolittle

146. The Grudge

147. The Jesus Rolls

148. Fatal Affair

149. Hubie Halloween

Five movies I chose not to see

In a weird year like this, the weirdest thing is that I had access to pretty much every film I might have wanted to see. There was nothing getting released at the end of the year in the U.S. in time for awards consideration that wasn't coming out in Australia until February or March. So here are five films that I chose not to see, for one reason or another (including not choosing to pay for the streaming service that carried them), which is why you don't see them in the list above:

1. Small Axe (Lovers Rock, Mangrove, Red White & Blue, Alex Wheedle, Education) - As you recall from this post, I determined that a category error for Steve McQueen's five "films" shot for the BBC prevented me from watching them in time to include them for this list, either individually or collectively. I'll worry about whether I consider them TV or movies when I watch them a few weeks from now. (The fact that Lovers Rock was the #1 film for all four of the year-end roundtable podcasters on Filmspotting -- with the technicality that one of them chose to honor all five films together in that slot -- makes me understand that I have missed out on something truly special.)

2. American Utopia - I was originally blocked from watching Spike Lee's filmed version of a David Byrne concert by the fact that it was available on HBOMax, a streaming service I do not have. However, it did play theatrically in Australia, including in the small town of Castlemaine, where I spent part of my last week before this list closed. I decided just to skip it despite its massive critical acclaim, in part because concert movies also bring up a little category ambiguity for me (but far less than Small Axe). 

3. Never Rarely Sometimes Always - Again from a rant in one of my posts (this post), you will recall that the slippery availability of this movie as a rental ultimately annoyed me too much to go out of my way to watch it. (I can't be forced into buying a movie to watch it.) This makes the third of three movies mentioned so far that factored into the top ten of the Filmspotting roundtable. But that's often the case with this roundtable, just for other reasons (like a few years ago when I couldn't watch If Beale Street Could Talk, a #1 film for one of the roundtable, because it didn't release in Australia in time, but it ultimately became my #16 film of the decade). 

4. Let Them All Talk - The only HBOMax-only movie I sort of regretted missing, as another critic I respect had it in her top ten. (I can live without An American Pickle.) I usually try to see everything Steven Soderbergh releases in time to rank it; in fact, not since 2006 have I missed ranking one of his features (The Good German) in the year of its release. (I did miss, and still have not seen, two "category error" movies of his, Behind the Candelabra and the Che movies, the latter of which are legitimate theatrical movies I suppose, but their double release in the same year gave me fits that I apparently have never recovered from.)

5. Vitalina Varela - This is just one of a handful of acclaimed films that I only started really hearing about at top ten time of the year, and you just can't see them all. I had one time slot left last night after returning from a couple nearly week-long trips out of town, in which I knew I was going to watch something I rented on iTunes to finish off this year's list, and I ended up going with Bacurau. That meant that some others like Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and Beanpole also got left out in the cold.

And finally, five films that I thought required further explanation at the spot where they landed:

24. Antebellum - The average of my initial surprised enthrallment over the movie, the fact that I entirely stopped thinking about it a few days later, and my understanding that some people really loathe it.

40. Promising Young Woman - Shouldn't have seen such a challenging movie so close to the end. Could go either up or way down the longer I think about it.

81. Tenet - Spectacle without purpose can be pretty empty. 

99. The Trial of the Chicago 7 - Yes, it is possible for Aaron Sorkin to completely wear out his welcome.

128. On the Rocks - Sofia Coppola's latest has been given a pass by a lot of people. It does not deserve one. 

That brings us to the end. But it is just the beginning! Please comment and tell me what I got right, what I got wrong, and the 72% of these titles you have never heard of because you were spending your quarantine learning to bake or writing the great American novel. 

Last one to die, turn out the lights

It seems appropriate that I should be ending my viewing year with something apocalyptic.

I have one more movie to go tonight before I post my list tomorrow, but I don't yet know what it will be. I'm returning home from a trip tonight and will select one of a few remaining titles from iTunes.

And boy is The Midnight Sky apocalyptic. I'll give you a SPOILER WARNING in case you haven't seen it. 

But first, some context. 

It seems appropriate I should be watching something apocalyptic given the year we had, but also in this exact moment in my life. I also happen to be reading a novel called The Last by Hanna Jameson, which is about 20 survivors in a remote Swiss hotel in the immediate aftermath of global nuclear war. 

Oh, then of course there was the attempted coup at the Capitol the other day.

The Midnight Sky stars George Clooney as the last man at an Arctic station that communicates with space missions, in the wake of a never-named "event" (nuclear war, most likely) in February of 2049 that has left the rest of the planet uninhabitable, the air toxic. Everyone else evacuates to unknown fates elsewhere. A terminal cancer patient, Clooney stays to keep the lights on, for really no reason, except that here is as good a place to die as any.

Except he does have a purpose, because he has to. There is one more mission still out there, a crew of five returning from K23, a previously unidentified moon of Jupiter, which has the size and atmosphere to support a human relocation from Earth. They were coming back to say yes, indeed, we can start sending people now. Irony of ironies. He just needs to tell them what has happened so they can turn around and go back, but right now his communications are too weak, and it might involve relocating to a weather station that's not so far that you wouldn't try it, but far enough that it seems like really a wasted effort considering what has happened.

After three weeks of solitude, he realizes he's not alone. During evacuation we saw a mother trying to find her missing daughter, only to be told that the daughter went ahead on a different helicopter. I guess that wasn't true, as here she is, unspeaking, holed up in the center along with Clooney, with whom she slowly starts to bond, though still without speaking. Actually, she doesn't really start to bond with him because it turns out she's just in his imagination, and is actually the daughter he was once too swept up in his career to ever meet. We don't find this out until the very end, though.

Before that realization arrives, we spend a heck of amount of time on board the returning spacecraft, piloted by familiar faces like Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Demian Bichir and Kyle Chandler. They have a whole series of unrelated adventures like repairing the ship after it gets hit by a field of debris (director Clooney was obviously thinking of his Gravity experiences here). In fact, Clooney's long periods of time stepping away from one story or the other enhances the idea that they are two different movies jammed together into one -- the lonely Arctic mission that seems tainted with certain doom, and the comparatively jovial shipboard interactions that involve group singalongs to Neil Diamond songs. It can be a bit jarring.

Of course, they are both going to end up in the same place, which is: doom.

One of the astronauts dies while trying to repair the ship, and when the remainder finally get in touch with Clooney, two are so despondent that they decide to return to Earth anyway, even though they have no place to land, and even if they do land, no safety to get to. One wants to return to his family, whatever condition they may be in, and the other is older, and kind of goes along for moral support, or really, giving the first a suicide partner.

That leaves only Jones and Oyelowo on board the ship, I guess with enough fuel to catapult back toward Jupiter around the Earth's orbit. Catapulting is something they always talk about in these movies so I guess it must be a real thing.

Jones -- who is Clooney's daughter, it turns out -- is pregnant, so the human species can go on. Or can it? The two adults will live out the 30-40 remaining years of their natural lives on this Jupiter moon -- assuming one of them doesn't fall off a cliff, or bleed out from a simple injury -- but then what's left for that child? To live out her natural life (it's a girl) and then just to die alone on a distant planet, ending the human race?

Bleak.

Then again, I guess "bleak" is where we are at the end of 2020.

The metaphor I liked most was the first 15 minutes of the film, when Clooney is kicking around a 2049 Arctic comms station meant to house several hundred people, gleaming in all its technological advancement but sentenced to rust and decay just like everything else. He feels a bit like a janitor working the overnight shift, only he's cleaning the building for no returning staff the next morning. There's something about him being the last human on Earth -- the radiation would figure to take longest to reach the Arctic circle, I suppose -- and then "turning out the lights" when he finally succumbs. It's the sort of romantic notion of apocalypse I can get behind, if I am required to.

I'll be turning out the lights on my list tomorrow. Join me to find out how I rank all 149 films I saw in 2020.

Apt(ed) P(up)il

When plays on words get out of control, you have my post subject for this morning: A way of honoring recently deceased British director Michael Apted that includes a pun related to his name and an invocation of his most famous project, joined together by a reference to a Stephen King novella that was later turned into a movie starring Sir Ian McKellen.

Probably not the best way to start an in memoriam piece, but you're reading these words so I guess it means I didn't change it.

But there's another, more serious meaning intended by calling Apted, who died Thursday at age 79, an "apt pupil." 

Michael Apted did not launch the Up series, which started with the film Seven Up! and continued onward until 63 Up, the last film released in Apted's lifetime, in 2019. Whether any more will be released may be a matter of whether Apted had his own person serving the role of apt pupil that he once served.

If you need a little more explanation of what I'm talking about -- though I hope you don't -- the documentary film series started out as a television series in 1964, as the initial installment aired on British television and was only 40 minutes long. It took a look at a cross-section of British seven-year-old children, intending to follow their progress every seven years throughout their lives, to see how factors like social class and intelligence affected their lives and the choices they made. Who knows if creator Paul Almond had any idea what this would become, but in 1964 his driving inspiration was the quote "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man."

There were girls involved as well of course, and the reason we saw them become women, as well as their male counterparts fulfill their part of the deal, was not Paul Almond, but Michael Apted. Almond was not even around for the second movie, Seven Plus Seven in 1971, which at 53 minutes gradually started approaching the feature length that would characterize all subsequent entries, with all films from 28 Up onward exceeding two hours. Almond went on to pursue narrative feature filmmaking, while his researcher, Apted -- his pupil, if you will -- carried the torch for the series and made it his life's most recognizable accomplishment.

My wife and I watched the Up series in 2011. Maybe our interest was boosted by the fact that we had our own newborn who was in his first year of life, or maybe we just thought it was time to tackle this landmark achievement. The series had gotten as far as 49 Up by that point, and I'm sorry to say that we have never resumed to watch the two subsequently released entries.

But I've always had a special fondness for this series, getting to know its characters and their tendencies, and the profound sociological experiment that has grown out of what they signed up for -- what their parents signed up for, actually -- before any of them had any idea how it might affect their lives.

Which means I've always had a fondness for Apted as well. He also had a busy career directing narrative features, including one of the worst James Bond movies (The World Is Not Enough) and a couple acclaimed film I still haven't seen (Gorillas in the Mist and The Coal Miner's Daughter). His other credits include Nell, which I liked, and bizarrely, the third movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series, which I also have not seen. 

But for me, Apted's narrative features always felt like outliers from the project that defined his career, and seems like what he was put on this earth to do. I didn't have any sense of him personally, but for the way he deftly steered that series -- not always without controversy -- he earns my eternal kudos.

We didn't follow him from age seven, but Michael Apted did "give us the man," every last bit of it until he literally had no more to give. I hope someone will continue his life's work now that he's gone. 

Rest in peace. 

Acknowledging the awfulness

When you write a blog about something as ultimately frivolous as movies, you have a duty to consider how what you write appears in the moment it goes live, whether it's in sync with what's happening in the world.

Whimsical stories about movies I'm watching before closing my year-end list, and previews of my upcoming 2021 viewing projects, are not in sync with an angry pro-Trump mob trying to overthrow the government, and even possibly considering mock trials and executions of leaders of the party that holds opposing views.

But if I stop writing about movies, the terrorists win.

Even Mike Pence, of all people, told the terrorists -- because that's what they were -- "You did not win today." And in truth, they did not. They created some havoc, and unfortunately the loss of five lives (four of which were their own), but the physical damage to the building can be repaired. The emotional and foundational damage to the country may take a lot longer.

That said, let's hope it was a wakeup call to everyone involved that a dangerous and violent fringe element of the country no longer has any business speaking for people who may hold similar views, but would never engage in similar tactics. Chances are, the greatest damage they did to anybody on Wednesday was to their own personal lives and livelihoods, and to the cause they mistakenly think has any validity outside of the feverish despair of a manchild who can't admit defeat.

So after this brief respite I will return to writing about movies, because that's what I do.

The terrorists could not derail the time-honored mechanisms of government, and they cannot derail me either.

And in 11 days, there will be a new president who brings with him a new hope of better days ahead.

Knowing noir in 2021

I have long struggled with a very unpopular opinion:

I don't really like Humphrey Bogart.

Among cinematic icons, he's one of the iconiest. Put him up there with Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and John Wayne, and you've probably got your Mt. Rushmore of classic Hollywood. These are probably the four most popular dead stars to appear on posters, in any case. 

The reason I've thought I don't really like Humphrey Bogart has to do with his personality. I've never particularly gravitated to actors who speak in a sharp, clipped way, endlessly confident and effortlessly cool. The fact that Bogart was a symbol of cool was what didn't jive with me. I didn't think he was that cool, nor did I think being cool was really that cool.

But recently -- actually as long ago as 2019, when I first considered this series -- I started to wonder whether it wasn't Bogart I didn't like, but the genre of films with which he is most associated. 

Bogart more than anyone is the face of film noir, a genre that has often left me cold. I might have trouble putting into words what it is I don't like about noir, but it's some of the same things I've said above I don't like about Bogart. Fast-talking, cool-seeming, cigarette-smoking private dicks talking tough to femme fatales, who are also talking fast, seeming cool, and smoking cigarettes. I guess it just feels like a dated sort of artifice to me, with very specific and limiting signifiers, like light coming in through venetian blinds. No genre looks more like itself than film noir.

But my general antipathy toward the genre has also meant that I have not seen many of its landmark films. It could be like westerns, which I also didn't like much originally, but which have seen a huge jump in my appreciation over the past decade, when I've really started to dig into the genre's classics. 

So, in 2021, I will watch those landmark noirs, one per month.

I will call the series Knowing Noir. I can't seem to get away from a clever title for these year-long monthly series, one that makes a play on the word Audient if possible, but uses alliteration if not possible, as in the current example. I was going to go with Audient Noir as the title, but just during the writing of this piece I decided to revert back to an earlier contender. So Knowing Noir it is.

I have no organizing principle for the order I will watch these films. I thought of trying to go chronologically, to see one movie's influences on the next, but I decided against it. As the titles I've gathered on my Letterboxd list all have release years between 1944 and 1955, that's a fairly tight period of time as it is, meaning we may not see that chain of influence as clearly as we would with more modern noirs.

Which is not to say I won't watch any modern noirs. I only have ten of the 12 titles selected so far, and that's pending their availability. But generally speaking, I've actually seen a lot more of the recent noirs, which are trying to build on or subvert a tradition established 80 years ago. It's that tradition I want to study in 2021, to get to the heart of whether I'm a noir fan or whether I really don't actually like them.

And I think there's a lot of potential for the former result. I have some noirs I absolutely love, first and foremost being Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. That of course was made in the 1970s and not the period in question, but I do have an example from the period in question as well -- an example that illustrates the possibilities for my own personal growth in this area. When I first saw Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), I didn't care for it -- in large part due to all my instinctual gut reactions to the genre, outlined above. But when I forced myself to rewatch it, to audit my own impression of it, I came away loving it on second viewing. 

I hope that will be the case with the whole genre. And to get started, since I have no other organizing principle, I'm going to watch a movie that has come up more times than I can count in various film discussions and on various film podcasts over the years. And appropriately, it stars Humphrey Bogart.

So I will in fact kick things off in January with Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950), which falls in about the middle of the range of release dates of the movies I've identified. I don't know if that makes a huge amount of sense as a starting point, as a way to get a person's feet wet with noir, but it will allow me to scratch an itch I've been wanting to scratch for maybe five years now. The next time someone mentions In a Lonely Place, I'll finally be able to join the discussion.

I won't reveal the rest of the titles for now, as some will probably be inaccessible to me, and I'll have to replace them with others. There should be plenty to choose from, though.

And who knows? Maybe at the end of 2021, Bogart will seem like an old pal, someone I actually find cool rather than just "cool." 

Is Wonder Woman 1984 even called Wonder Woman 1984?

I have finally caught up with Wonder Woman 1984. In the end, I really could have just gone by myself at the small town theater in Mansfield last week, since I didn't end up seeing it with either my wife or my kids. 

My wife ultimately determined it was too grown up for the seven-year-old, which ended up not being the case. He's seen Captain Marvel and Ant-Man, and this was really no worse than those -- possibly better, in terms of potentially disturbing content. A guy gets transformed into a tiny green globule and wiped up and thrown in the toilet in Ant-Man. Nothing like that happens here. 

Plus he's been watching The Mandalorian, where no fewer than 60 stormtroopers are slaughtered in every episode. A friend and I were discussing it and we don't think there was actually a single death in all of Wonder Woman 1984. 

Anyway, what happened happened. I said I was over not going to see it in Mansfield, and truly, I am. 

So, eager to review it, I went by myself on Monday night, which did have the benefit of allowing me to see it on the largest possible screen with the boomingest possible sound. Whether that helped or not is something you can find out in my review, which I will link to the right if it is not already there at the time of this posting.

So I won't talk too much about my thoughts on the movie in this post. I will talk about how this movie challenges my ideas of how to write a movie's title when I write about it.

We all know of this movie as Wonder Woman 1984, but the movie doesn't know itself that way. Both times the title appears on screen -- at the beginning and at the end -- it appears as WW84. Almost like a political slogan. Almost like a sequel to WWI and WWII, though you'd have to tell me what happened in the 82 other world wars because I wasn't paying attention. 

It's really just a shorthand for us, since we know the movie is called Wonder Woman 1984. Abbreviations are cool. Acronyms are cool. Other examples exist in cinema. We've been doing this since T2, though in that case, the full title did appear on screen. 

It also gets at the DCEU's hesitation about actually referring to the character as Wonder Woman. If I'm not mistaken, this is now the fourth movie Diana Prince has appeared in without ever once being referred to as Wonder Woman. It's like the change to calling it KFC because they were so darn worried people would realize the chicken is fried. 

But the most problematic aspect of WW84 for me right now is that according to my own logic on movie titles, WW84 is actually the title of this movie.

Take my recent (nearly four years ago) post on Se7en, which you can find here. I only write it as Se7en because that's the only way the movie refers to itself within its own runtime. It never once, in the same two instances of appearing at the beginning and at the end, appears as "Seven." So Se7en is not just some cheeky way they advertised it, it's the actual title. 

If we consider Wonder Woman 1984 -- the film itself -- as the only available evidence to determine its title, we have to reach the same conclusion. If we just handed the film over to an alien life form studying earth culture, and asked them to use what they know of earth culture to tell us the title of the film, they would called it WW84.

But that's not the only available evidence we have. We have the poster above, which lists the abbreviation in bigger letters but also includes the full title below that. We have interviews with cast and crew. We have its IMDB page, which, granted, is only trying to use the available evidence to reach the same conclusions I'm trying to reach here. For what it's worth, WW84 is not even listed as an alternate title on IMDB. 

As with many of my discussions on The Audient, this one is pretty academic. We instinctively know the difference between a real title of a film and a more Twitter-friendly abbreviation of it. 

I still wonder, though -- pun not intended -- when they will finally commit to calling this character Wonder Woman. Sure, it's a kind of silly name that's left over from pulp comic books, a relic from another era. But I'm sure if either Superman or Batman were being named today, their creators would come up with something slightly less on the nose and slightly more "rad." That doesn't prevent those characters from being constantly referred to by those names, even with a certain fetishism when it comes to Batman. You don't hear those characters constantly referred to as Clark and Bruce, do you?

I'm wondering if we'll ever get the chance. I don't really know the future of DCEU movies -- I've been flocking to comic book movie headlines even less than usual lately -- so I don't even know if another Wonder Woman movie is planned, especially since this movie, whether it's Wonder Woman 1984 or WW84, is not nearly so beloved as the original. (Though it has a higher Metacritic score, 60, than I thought it might.) Also, they are running out of possible years in which to set such a sequel, if you want to set it significantly before the present day setting of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League. Wonder Woman 1997 might work, but then again it might not.

Maybe WW97 would work better. 

Ripoffs don't get ripoffier than this

We're accustomed to seeing all sorts of movies ride the coattails of other movies, whether it's the explicit ripoffs of the Asylum (like Transmorphers) or the more benign "similar subject matter in slightly different form" (Antz vs. A Bug's Life). 

What we don't usually see is movies that are just so obviously a retread of another movie getting a theatrical release, which is the case with Dragon Rider, as evidenced by its appearance on this bus stop.

Now, I'm not going to deign to read the plot synopsis of this movie, which might show me the ways it is not actually a cheapie carbon copy of How to Train Your Dragon. But whether it has the same plot or not is kind of beside the point. The intention is to fool people into thinking this might be How to Train Your Dragon 4, and hope they'll already have a ticket in hand before they realize it isn't. 

It does have decent vocal talent, which I guess is not an indication of anything. Since I'm sure you can't read the tiny names on the poster, Freddie Highmore and Thomas Sangster are both past their prime child stars, and Patrick Stewart probably just wants a little more retirement money. But Felicity Jones is right in the prime of her career, coming off a recent Oscar nomination, the lead role in a well-liked Star Wars movie, and playing Ruth Bader Ginbsurg. 

I guess there's no law against appearing in derivative, sub-par material, is there? 

Or really, you can't put a price on having something for Australian families to do with their kids during the summer holidays.

Okay, rant over. Return to your regularly scheduled reading of other blogs.

Not enough space in my top ten

I don't mind telling you that in order to post the three year-end wrap-up pieces I'll be posting next week, on consecutive days as is my tradition, I have to start drafting them early. In fact, I think I started writing up my annual portmanteaus post a full month ago, just because that's when the ideas started flowing.

That post, though, is not really subject to change. The names of the movies are the names of the movies, and it's not any more complicated than that.

The complication comes when I'm drafting posts that involve the quality of films I have yet to see.

Most problematic in this regard is the first post, the one where I reveal my complete rankings from #1 to #147 (or whatever the case may be in a particular year; I may actually exceed that this year). Part of that post is a dramatic countdown from #10 to #1, in which I write 200-300 words on each film, as well as include a small image from each. 

Now, I have always written quickly. But I know I can't leave everything until the last minute, so I do tend to write up the blurbs on films I know are not going to exit my top ten, because they're currently nestled in my top five. As I creep closer to publication date and nothing has overtaken the films in the lower part of my top ten, I write those blurbs too. 

This year, though, has been a weird year. I hardly need to tell you that. But I hadn't anticipated how this particular aspect of the weird year would be affecting me now.

Usually the last 15 or so movies I need to see, from Christmas onward, are a combination of prominent films, mixed equally between films that have gotten critical acclaim (making them "prominent" even if they would not otherwise be) and those that are popular.

This year, I have about as many films as usual to catch up with, but very few of those are "popular" films -- for example, the latest in some franchise that I just didn't catch in the theater because it didn't quite interest me enough, but which I wanted to watch before closing my rankings. Last year, for example, that included Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbes & Shaw.

So without a lot of popular films to watch -- I have yet to decide on whether I'm going to bother with Bad Boys for Life -- those 15 films this year are pretty much all critically acclaimed films, films that have shown up on a lot of top ten lists. And though some years I may end up not caring for those films, this year, I've really been going for them. 

I still don't know how this is all going to shake out, so don't read anything into me mentioning these titles, but recent viewings that have really impressed me have included Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Time, Soul, The Vast of Night, and this post's poster boy (or should I say poster girl), The Forty-Year-Old Version. That's five very strong top ten contenders -- just since Christmas.

Among the ten or so I'm still targeting, at least half have the potential for just this kind of prominence on my chart. 

So it seems very premature indeed that I already wrote the blurb for what was then my #7 film of the year. As I said, I'm still moving things around, but that #7 may have already dropped out of my top ten, with another ten films still to go. 

This wouldn't be such a problem if I'd seen some of these films when they first came out. Ma Rainey and Soul were not options until recently, but The Forty-Year-Old Version was one I had on my spreadsheet to review back in October when it debuted on Netflix. It lost out in a numbers crunch, I think in part because I was already feeling documentaried-out at the time. Lo and behold, I watch the film and it's not even a documentary. The director-star (Radha Blank) is playing herself, but it's like the Seinfeld-Louie-Master of None version of herself, fictionalized just a tad, but keeping a strong foot in her reality in order to be all the more provocative and thoughtful.

The Vast of Night I started back in early November, on one of the nights when the election had not yet been decided, and I was just too distractible to keep watching it, as the cleverness of its dialogue requires a keen ear if you want to stay oriented. I think I ended up with R.I.P.D. that night instead. 

Whatever decisions I've made in the past, I'm here now. And the only decision that's really up to me now, if I want to stop throwing my top ten into chaos, is just to stop watching movies that I know are going to be good.

But that's really no choice at all, is it? At least not for a dedicated cinephile like me.

In reality, every film we watch is one we want to end up in our top ten for the year, if only because the act of pressing play on a movie (or purchasing a ticket in the "olden days," ha ha) is a supreme act of hope. Even if you don't think the movie is going to amount to much, you still want it to be great. That's your time you're spending on it, and you wouldn't waste that time unless you thought there was some chance you'd really dig it. (Either that or it's your job to review it.)

Still, I think I may have to consider a Bad Boys for Life or two (Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen also qualifies) down the stretch if I want a break from all this quality, and want my current #7 through #10 to have a fighting chance to stay blurb-worthy. 

Needing a palette cleanser between 4+ star quality films is a good place to be, I suppose.

Personal growth

Never let it be said that an old dog can't learn any new tricks.

In past times, my "trick" on a five-night trip to a small country town that had its own movie theater would have been to get to that theater, at least once if not twice. With five nights at your disposal, it's not even a hindrance on any of your fellow travelers. Just this past summer -- winter in Australia -- I went to the local cinema in Lakes Entrance to see both Sonic the Hedgehog, and a repertory screening of Mary Poppins, which I had never seen.

This past week, I made it to the Mansfield Armchair Cinema, pictured above, exactly zero times.

Oh, it had been my intention to go. I had not yet seen any of the films playing there, which at different times during our stay included Wonder Woman 1984, The Croods: A New Age, The Dry and Words on Bathroom Walls. And I got as far as the lobby on our second-to-last full day, when I asked about whether the next day's shows were in danger of selling out. They were, so if we were to buy tickets, we probably ought to do it today. 

But when it didn't work out, I let it go without further comment, and that's the part that encourages me about my own ability to surprise myself.

It wasn't that we didn't have the time, but that we, collectively, did not have the inclination. 

I had expected to take my younger son, who turned seven on January 1st, to The Croods on his birthday. We had known it was going to rain that day. My wife was even planning a concurrent viewing of The Dry for her, her sister and her mother -- an escape to The Dry to get out of the wet, you could say. I guess we figured we'd force my older son along to The Croods.

But then it was revealed that not only did my older son not want to see The Croods -- which we already knew -- but neither did his brother. Forcing one would have been achievable, but not both -- especially if the second one we were forcing was having a birthday. (Incidentally, I sort of blame myself, for making a dismissive comment about this movie sometime in mid-December, when I did not know this scenario would arise.)

Wonder Woman was my next best hope, but my wife was uncertain whether it would be too adult for the seven-year-old. He's watched a handful of Marvel movies, but my wife was not willing to extend that logic to exposing him to this movie. The fact that she wanted to see it on a bigger screen -- we have that option in Australia, at least for now -- also factored into her thinking.

I still could have seen one of the other movies, but this small community theater plays its last show each day by about 6:40. I just couldn't see my way to skipping out on a whole night's dinner just to scratch my itch to visit small theaters in small towns. 

To be sure, my wife would have still helped me work it out. Our trip was long enough that I could have gotten away in one of the afternoons, especially since our kids are accustomed to some afternoon downtime -- meaning time playing video games. 

But instead I just decided to let it go. 

And part of letting it go was never mentioning it again once it was clear it was not going to happen. In the past, had I been thwarted in such an attempt, I might have made solemn, regretful comments which would have let my wife know I had not really let it go. This time, I just decided that what was done was done, and it would never get mentioned again.

Besides, I think we'll be back to Mansfield. If this place is great in the summer, it's even better in the winter, where it serves Mt. Buller, a rare Australian spot with the elevation to support skiing. Which, incidentally, has its own theater, where we saw Aladdin on a visit in 2019. 

And if for some reason we don't get back here, life will go on. 

I can't visit every small theater in every small town, and knowing that is a part of growing up as an evolved human being. 

Soul on the big screen

One of the movies it was most disappointing not to see on the big screen in 2020 was Pixar's Soul, which debuted on Disney+ at Christmas. (Without the $30 rental price they slapped on Mulan, though I would have gladly paid it.)

Unless, of course, you made your own big screen.

That's what we did on the night of January 1st, which was also the seventh birthday of my younger son, pictured here. (And no, I don't usually put up photos of my family or myself -- but since you can't see his face, I bent my rule in this case.)

Soul was the perfect way for my new projector to strut its stuff, in its third use since I bought it back in late October (fourth if you count a test run), and only the first time my kids were aware of its existence. Which made it an extra special great surprise for my son on his birthday, especially as he'd already been asking when we would watch Soul.

When you buy an expensive projector (mid-range expensive, not high-end expensive), you never really know what ROI you will get on it. Last night was the kind of ROI that goes well beyond dollars and cents.

Pictured above is the room where we've been staying since Monday at the Alzburg Resort in Mansfield, Victoria. We've been very lucky to be able to travel a bit this holiday season, if only locally, as COVID has been under control for more than two months now. As seems always to be the case with this virus, our luck has just run out, as there's been a (small) outbreak in Victoria just as of the past few days, whose parameters are not yet known. So who knows if we'd still have been able to make our trip if this outbreak happened a week ago.

But make it we did, as did my sister-in-law and mother-in-law. It's been a week of hiking and boating and swimming in the pool, and going in the hot tub, and playing tennis and shooting baskets on the normally coin-operated baseball game, and playing foosball, and playing ping pong, and barbecuing, and eating at an assortment of scrumptious restaurants. We've really had it all. I repeat, we are very lucky, though we can also credit one of the world's most stringent lockdowns back in July and August.

The movie last night was the cherry on top. (He says, as he eats the remainder of the yummy roadside cherries we bought for his final morning's breakfast.) After a birthday BBQ by the resort's pool, I hurried back to our room, where I rearranged the furniture, removed a painting from the wall and set up the projector. I also popped some microwave popcorn for the older one, who can't have family movie night without popcorn.

The big reveal was as impressive as I'd hoped, as the kids' grandmother might have been most impressed of all. As you might guess, the seven-year-old, who has not yet figured out tact or how to put things in perspective, had to mention that there was a hanger for the aforementioned painting screwed into the wall that represented a small flaw in our projection viewing area. It was a small flaw indeed, and, I assume, one we all began quickly to ignore.

The movie was loved by all, or at least I think it was. There was plenty of laughter, and some glistening on some adult cheeks as well. I'll find out over our final meal before we leave how much everyone really loved it, but I think the answer is "a lot." In any case, it was 9:20 when it ended so people scattered pretty quickly.

I of course loved it -- in about ten days you will find out exactly how much, which I myself am still mulling in my early days of having just watched it.

More than that I loved being able to see it BIG, to emphasize the beautiful animation and color of a film that was never meant to be watched on your TV. 

Fighting to preserve the sanctity of the big screen movie experience since 2020. 

Health check: Lookin' good

The decline in everything related to movies, which has been prominently discussed in 2020, has already been underway for a number of years on movie blogs.

That might be in part just the blog format itself, but I feel like movie blogs in particular have taken a hit, what with there being all sorts of entertaining YouTubers who discuss and review movies. I know many of the blogs I read when I first start blogging have ceased to exist, while others continue to plug away in the same sort of semi-anonymity that my blog has. 

Two years ago at this time, I myself wrote this post, commiserating the slow and steady demise of the movie blogger. It was after a particularly anemic 2018 on The Audient, in which I wrote a mere 171 posts. That's less than one every other day, and it was the only time I'd written fewer than 200 posts other than 2013, the year I moved to Australia and my computer situation was in chaos for a large part of the second half of the year. That year I managed only 151. It was the only time under 200, that is, until the very next year, when I wrote a mere 190 posts in 2019.

Twenty twenty has been a different story. If I wrote my second fewest posts all time in 2018, I wrote my second most in the year just completed.

That's 234 total posts, fewer only than the 264 I wrote in 2010 -- which was only the second year of my blog, when the ideas still felt limitless. Somehow, the ideas where limitless as well this past year, as I slid just head of the 231 posts I wrote in 2016.

It started with my record consecutive days streak of posting on The Audient, commemorated here. And since I never do more than one post per day, that meant that I wrote 40 consecutive posts from January 6th to February 14th. Once those were already in the bank, I probably only needed to have a relatively average output for the rest of the year to reach these heights.

Certainly my prolific production had to do with the pandemic. For sure, being at home from March 24th onward made it easier to squeeze in a cheeky blog post during working hours, when no one was looking over my shoulder and shaking their head at my failure to be dedicated to work. 

But you still need something to write about, and for this entire year, I had that something. I don't remember forcing any posts; if you force yourself, you can write something every day. But I've generally only written blog posts when I've had something to say, throughout the history of this blog, excepting only a time here or there where I'd gone a whole week without writing, and felt like I just needed to post something to reassure you I was still alive.

Will this carry on into 2021? Your guess is as good as mine. But I see no reason why it shouldn't. I'm feeling limber, and except for a callous and some resulting numbness on two fingers due to an ill-advised, high-impact Christmas project, my typing fingers are ready to go.

Stay tuned, and see how I go. 

I suppose this post wouldn't be complete without the requisite wishing of Happy New Year! to you. We did that about eight hours ago in Australia. And even if I wrote a lot in 2020, it's a year I am eager to put behind us. Looking forward to you doing the same in a few hours. 

Movies named like infinity stones, movies named like hurricanes

Unless something changes, Time will have been the last movie I watched in 2020. (I watched it last night, and thought the title itself was rather appropriate for the transition between years.)

Unless something changes, Soul will be the first movie I watch in 2021. (We're planning to watch it the night of January 1st for my son's birthday.)

Realizing this, I wondered, what other 2020 movies were named after the stones in Thanos' infinity gauntlet?

None as perfectly as that. However, there were films called Project Power and Color out of Space, so I think that's pretty good. Most years would probably not have films that had either of those bolded words in their titles. You probably almost never get a movie with the word "Reality" in its title, so that was never going to happen. "Mind" would have a chance, but there are only eight in the list of all the movies I've seen, so not a great one. (There's only one "Reality," that being Reality Bites of course.)

So I figure, the year after Thanos was finally dissolved from existence, his infinity stones were up for grabs?

While we're at it, I thought this was a good time to jam in another observation about 2020 films.

Have you noticed how many films released this year have had a woman's name as their title? Like, just the first name?

In other words, have you noticed how many films have been named like hurricanes?

I was planning to write this post when I finally see Shirley, which will be sometime before January 12th, but since my infinity stone observation was so brief, I decided just to piggyback on it with this one.

In addition to Shirley, we have the following this year, which either actually did come out, were scheduled to come out but were pushed back, or which (in one case) I saw at a (virtual) film festival.

In alphabetical order:

Annette
Becky
Clementine
Ema
Emma
Mulan
Rebecca
Wendy
Zola

And then there are two movies named after nicknames for female characters:

Babyteeth
Beanpole

And if you want to get into near misses -- or "missies," as the case may be -- you can consider also the following, which either consist of a woman's full name, or have a woman's name somewhere in the title:

Black Widow
Enola Holmes
The Glorias
Gretel & Hansel
Judy & Punch
Saint Frances
Selah and the Spades
Vitalina Varela
Wonder Woman 1984
The Wrong Missy

Incidentally, "Gloria" was the name of an actual powerful hurricane I experienced as a child. Hurricane Gloria whipped through New England in late September of 1985, according to Wikipedia, which also tells me it was the first significant tropical cyclone to hit the northeast of the United States since Hurricane Agnes in 1972. We all prepared for the worst and I can clearly remember the way it rained and the way the trees were blowing. We didn't evacuate and the only property damage we sustained was that a tree fell in our backyard, knocking down our "space trolley," which was kind of like the kiddie version of a zipline.

I guess I'd have to look at surrounding years to figure out if this is actually a significant number of movies named after female characters, but I can tell you that at one point, I looked down my Letterboxd Watchlist, and every other movie was one of these. 

Circumstantial evidence for the increased focus on women at the movies, maybe?