By the end of 2019, The A.V. Club will have reviewed over 350 movies released this year. That’s a lot of movies—nearly one for every day on the calendar, in fact. But it’s nowhere near the total number that actually hit theaters or popped up on streaming platforms over the last 11 months. It certainly doesn’t account for the whole library of titles Netflix has fed into its content abyss (and recommendation algorithm) since January. This year, like any other, we ignored some cinema—including some really good cinema, slipping through the cracks in our review schedule, creating blind spots in our coverage. And so, an annual tradition: To atone for our oversights, we’ve looked back over the year in movies and identified the very best ones we neglected, creating an unranked shadow rundown of 2019’s finest. Did you also miss some of these unsung-by-us triumphs? Never fear: We’ve supplied info, where available, on how you can play catch-up with them—to gain a fuller vision of the year in movies than the one our critics on the beat offered week by week in 2019.
All Is Well
Netflix
Netflix has the inexplicable habit of buying up award-winning selections from the European festival circuit and then basically burying them. Case in point: Eva Trobisch’s sexual-assault drama All Is Well, which netted her a Best Director prize at Stockholm following a strong reception at Locarno, and then promptly faded into obscurity. All 12 people who found it buried deep in the Big Red N’s content avalanche were disarmed by Aenne Schwarz’s performance as Janne, a woman sinking into denial after she’s raped by a relative of her boss. Although she decides to immediately put the incident in her rearview, it keeps re-intruding on her life, as in the bloodcurdling scene where she runs into her assailant and must figure out how cordially to treat him. Trobisch refuses to shy away from the contradictory, illogical, deeply human aspects of processing trauma, affirming that there’s no right or wrong way to cope. [Charles Bramesco]
Bliss
Digital platforms and Blu-ray
Bliss jumps feet-first into uninhibited sex, psychedelic drugs, and extreme violence practically from its opening moments, presenting its hedonistic heroine’s self-destructive lifestyle in such an immersive, stylistically audacious fashion that the audience feels dazed and exhausted watching her go. Friday Night Lights’ Dora Madison reinvents herself as Dezzy, a painter whose desperate desire for dopamine-fueled inspiration ends up leading her down a very dark path. We’re talking a “craves human blood and is repelled by sunlight” kind of dark, though the film carefully avoids indulging in vampiric cliché. (There wouldn’t be any room for it amid all the 16mm grit and blaring heavy metal.) Writer-director Joe Begos has bafflingly described Bliss as his most personal film to date—a confession that would make proud Abel Ferrara and Gaspar Noé, both heavy influences here. [Katie Rife]
Burning Cane
Netflix
Try not to think about what you accomplished during your high school years while taking in the feature debut from the resourceful, prodigiously gifted Phillip Youmans. The New Orleans native was only 16 when he started production on this “faith-based drama”—a description reclaimed here after a decade of Pure Flix sermons perverting its meaning. Youmans turns a critical, mature eye on the Southern Baptist traditions with which he grew up, training his lens on a congregation and a reverend (Wendell Pierce, in a performance that deserved more attention than it got) who provides guidance and purpose to his flock while sometimes preaching intolerance. Burning Cane strikes a smart balance between exposing the failings of organized Christianity and conveying the precious value it holds to its adherents. It also announces the arrival of a talent on the cusp of both adulthood and a bright creative future. [Charles Bramesco]
Chained For Life
Select theaters now; digital platforms and Blu-ray January 7, 2020
Much of Aaron Schimberg’s small-scale showbiz satire plays like an indie version of Robert Altman’s The Player. But it’s in conversation, too, with Tod Browning’s Freaks, and the works of David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, and other filmmakers who toe the line between empathetic portrayals of disability and unadulterated exploitation. Under The Skin’s Adam Pearson, an actor with severe facial deformities caused by neurofibromatosis, plays Rosenthal, the second lead in a foreign director’s English-language debut, which also features many actors with disabilities in background parts. Although Rosenthal is treated well by his co-star, Mabel (Jess Weixler), he and the rest of the film-within-a-film’s disabled cast are subject to polite condescension through the veil of faux-woke politics. It’s a film about how the need for diversity can be exploited under the guise of good intentions. [Vikram Murthi]
The Chambermaid
Digital platforms, Starz, and DVD
Although it follows a twentysomething housekeeping attendant working at a luxury hotel in Mexico City, Lila Avilés’ supremely assured feature debut is far from a dull tract. There’s a refreshing dose of absurdist humor in the way its title character, Eve (Gabriela Cartol), interacts with the various co-workers and guests around her. Avilés, a veteran of Mexican theater, takes a natural leap into cinema, using precise, shallow-focus compositions to make the hotel’s spaces feel genuinely alien and unfamiliar. The result is a film that maintains a measured remove from its subject, while remaining true to its underlying political commitment. [Lawrence Garcia]
For Sama
PBS and DVD
As the Syrian Civil War approaches its ninth year, documentaries about the conflict have examined the formation of the Islamic State and profiled response workers and journalists. Nearly all of them have focused on men, but For Sama disrupts that pattern. From 2011 to 2016, Waad al-Kateab filmed her own life in Aleppo, from her days as a protesting student to her romance with the man who would eventually become her husband. While he works as an emergency room doctor, providing urgent medical care to Syrians trapped in the country, she struggles to raise their daughter, Sama, in a war zone. The documentary captures not only the ongoing terror and trauma of that experience but also al-Kateab’s coming of age, offering a breathtakingly honest and distinctly self-aware perspective into the ongoing humanitarian crisis. [Roxana Hadadi]
Genesis
iTunes and DVD
As if setting out to prove the late Roger Ebert’s theory that it’s not what a film’s about but how that matters, Québécois director Philippe Lesage (The Demons) eccentrically elevates material that might look downright banal in another filmmaker’s hands. The plot is a coming-of-age helix, tracing in parallel the romantic frustrations of two half-siblings: a college student (Noée Abita) pin-wheeling from one caddish boyfriend to another, and a boarding-school troublemaker (Théodore Pellerin) becoming inconveniently infatuated with his best friend. Neither character is richly defined, exactly, but Lesage commits wholly to the emotional truth of their mirrored experiences, constantly reinforcing them through singular means: recurring musical motifs, sophisticated blocking, a classroom confession of startling candor and eloquence. And the film’s tonal shifts are unpredictable even when the arc of these adolescent love lives isn’t, straight through to a late-film narrative pivot as meaningful as it is bewildering. [A.A. Dowd]
Greener Grass
Select theaters, VOD, and digital platforms now; Blu-ray February 11
The market for big-studio comedy seems to have waned these past few years—but so, for that matter, has the audience for the smaller, cultier, sketch-influenced movies that often top best-comedy lists years later, what with so much comic talent working on streaming TV. Actual theatrical release Greener Grass isn’t quite at the level of Wet Hot American Summer, but its cracked sensibility has far more artistic ambition than the average cringe-fest. Writer-directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe star as suburbanite moms nursing despair and desperation beneath their clenched, forced smiles, and though the plot turns are often surrealistically outlandish (one mother politely gives away her baby, and regrets it; another child seems to turn into a dog), they pulse with a genuine anxiety that goes beyond deadpan subversion of conventional narrative. It may feel a little overextended at 95 minutes, but DeBoer and Luebbe sustaining it so well beyond 10 is a testament to their talent. [Jesse Hassenger]
Hagazussa
Digital platforms and Blu-ray
Although it’s been sold as a supernatural horror film, writer-director Lukas Feigelfeld’s Hagazussa is more of a grim visual poem, set to a rumbling score by experimental rock act MMMD. Ostensibly the story of a 15th-century Austrian occultist and single mother who lives on a plague-ravaged goat ranch, the movie isn’t exactly plot-driven, beyond a couple of sudden and disturbing acts of violence. The clearly gifted Feigelfeld is more concerned with crafting memorably bizarre, oddly sensuous images of blood, milk, muck, and worms as a way of illustrating the dark, primal forces that keep tugging at the heroine. Hagazussa very loosely resembles a folktale, but it’s more like a dusty box of inexplicable photos, found under a moth-eaten bed in a mysteriously abandoned cabin. [Noel Murray]
Holiday
Digital platforms
If you’ve heard anything about Isabella Eklöf’s Holiday, it’s probably that it contains a grueling rape scene. The camera remains static and unflinching during this act of sexual violence, which seems to last an eternity, recalling a similarly brutal moment in Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible. Yet Holiday’s Sascha, played fearlessly by newcomer Victoria Carmen Sonne, is nothing like the goddess-like figure Monica Bellucci portrayed in that movie. A vulnerable and materialistic young woman with no friends or family joining her cruel mafioso boyfriend at a sleek vacation home on the Turkish Riviera, Sascha proves to be a challenging protagonist whose oppression is colored by her complicity and moral ambiguity. Eschewing a traditional victim/victimizer narrative, the film has no interest in feel-good feminist empowerment, which is one reason why it’s one of the most compelling character studies of the year. [Beatrice Loayza]
Light Of My Life
Digital platforms, Blu-ray, and DVD
Some accused Casey Affleck of trying to rehabilitate his public image with this post-apocalyptic drama, which he wrote and directed, and in which he plays a man valiantly attempting to protect his young daughter from male predators after all but a tiny percentage of women on Earth are killed by a gender-specific virus. Maybe so, but that doesn’t negate the film’s excellence. Playing like a cross between The Road and Leave No Trace, it focuses almost exclusively on the bond between its two main characters, downplaying the scenario’s bleakness (except when it suddenly, violently erupts) in order to fashion a portrait of someone who’s struggling to raise his child normally in radically abnormal circumstances. Newcomer Anna Pniowsky matches Affleck’s typically delicate performance beat for beat, and together they justify and honor his seemingly sappy title, anchoring one of the year’s most tender love stories. [Mike D’Angelo]
Los Reyes
Iván Osnovikoff and Bettina Perut’s documentary builds on a fairly simple concept: Observe Los Reyes, the oldest skate park in Santiago, through the eyes of the two lovable stray dogs that call it home. More than just a cute dog movie, the film incorporates conversations between teens that touch on drug dealing, domestic abuse, and police corruption. Throughout its 78 minutes, we aren’t shown any human expressions or reactions; the focus remains squarely on the dogs’ activity. Eventually, a parallel emerges between the two strays and the Chilean youths disenfranchised by their environment, though a rigorous formalism—compositions range from extreme wides of the skate park to extreme close-ups of the dogs’ fly-ridden fur—keeps didacticism at bay. The film’s oblique but empathetic focus on unsheltered existences is certain to resonate even more strongly in light of the ongoing protests in Chile. [Lawrence Garcia]
Mickey And The Bear
Select theaters
James Badge Dale is horrifyingly intense as loud-mouthed, traumatized, addicted veteran Hank Peck in this first feature from writer-director Annabelle Attanasio. His performance rattles and unnerves, but it’s matched by Camila Morrone’s turn as the character’s teen daughter, Mickey, who yearns to escape her toxic domestic life and the small town that enables her father. The quarrels are bruising—look, especially, at one late in the film, when Hank guesses at Mickey’s plot to leave him. But Mickey And The Bear, a spiritual successor to Winter’s Bone, refuses to abandon hope, eventually building to an unforgettable final image. [Roxana Hadadi]
Ms. Purple
Digital platforms
From its thoughtful screenplay to the weary neons of Ante Cheng’s cinematography, there’s a lot to recommend in this pressure-cooker drama from director and cowriter Justin Chon (Gook). Ms. Purple lives and dies on the masterful restraint of Tiffany Chu, who stars as a Koreatown karaoke hostess and occasional sex worker struggling to care for her dying father. When the character, Kasie, lets loose a rare, genuine smile, Chu quietly fills the moment to the brim—with Kasie’s guilt about feeling happy while a loved one suffers, with her mistrust of that happiness, and with deep relief, because the sun has come out at last. When the moment retreats, as it must, the chill is that much sharper. [Allison Shoemaker]
One Cut Of The Dead
Shudder
It’s fair to be skeptical of the claim that One Cut Of The Dead “reinvents the zombie movie.” How many times have we heard that one? So how about a bolder assertion: This out-of-nowhere Japanese hit reinvents the horror-comedy more generally, taking the audience’s expectations about low-budget filmmaking and playing them for laughs through context, backstory, and the element of surprise. It does so by means of an innovative structure that we won’t spoil here, except to say that if you don’t understand why critics are praising this zombie movie that looks like it cost about $20 to make, just keep watching. The “single extended take” conceit teased by the title adds yet another layer of winking gimmickry, but perhaps the most surprising thing about One Cut Of The Dead is how heartfelt it is underneath all of its absurdity. [Katie Rife]
The Raft
In 1973, Mexican anthropologist Santiago Genovés enlisted five men and six women to sail across the Atlantic Ocean on a small raft. The goal: to study their behavior and document the tension that would surely arise from exclusively providing leadership roles to the women. When the group settled into a state of bored harmony instead of tending toward violence, Genovés started provoking discord out of frustration. Marcus Lindeen’s documentary tells the story of the experiment through archival materials, including eight hours of 16mm footage and Genovés’ personal diary. While that would have been plenty compelling, Lindeen also tracks down and reunites the seven surviving members of the expedition to reflect on how a mad scientist had to rely on reality-show provocation to enliven a peaceful journey driven by female solidarity. Peace, after all, isn’t as sexy as war. [Vikram Murthi]
They Shall Not Grow Old
Select theaters, digital platforms, HBO, and Blu-ray
Cinephiles of decades past expended a great deal of time and energy fighting colorization, and ultimately more or less won the battle. So it’s ironic that one of the year’s most acclaimed documentaries—directed (though “assembled and tweaked” would be more accurate in this case) by Peter Jackson—consists entirely of colorized footage shot during World War I, with the addition of color being its primary selling point. In truth, the process, while much improved since the ’80s, still looks ever so slightly fake. What really brings the horrific events of a century ago to life is the soundscape that Jackson and his team devised for these originally silent images—including, in a few cases, dialogue that perfectly matches people’s lip movements, allowing us to “hear” words that were spoken but never recorded. The resulting illusion creates a jarring immediacy unlike any such footage from the era you’ve seen before. [Mike D’Angelo]
This Is Not Berlin
Digital platforms
Set in a turbulent Mexico City circa 1986, This Is Not Berlin plays like a smaller-scaled corollary to last year’s Roma. It’s another heartfelt, detailed movie about how larger historical and political forces subtly shape the experiences and attitudes of ordinary people. In Hari Sama’s finely observed slice-of-life, a middle-class teenager from a broken home explores the local underground punk and arts scene, and gets pulled further away from his friends and family as he dives headlong into a world of libertine drug-taking, pansexuality, and anti-authoritarian activism. Neither a tongue-clucking cautionary tale nor a rosy nostalgia piece, the film is remarkably honest about both the appeal and the limits of testing social norms. It’s also about how young folks sometimes get led astray by the kind of adults they most want to become. [Noel Murray]
The Wandering Soap Opera
The career of Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz is replete with arcane mysteries and visions of lost worlds. It’s somewhat fitting, then, that his latest feature arrives from beyond the grave, premiering Stateside almost a decade after his death, in 2011. Shot in 1990 as part of a series of actor workshops, The Wandering Soap Opera was only completed in 2017 by Ruiz’s wife and regular collaborator, Valeria Sarmiento, a noted director in her own right. This inventive, absurdist romp depicts Chilean “reality” as a series of interconnected telenovelas, featuring self-aware scenarios that poke fun at the popular genre’s conventions. Shot on 16mm, the film has a boldly artificial look to match its hilarious proceedings, which are as demented as they are pointedly political. Ruiz claimed the project was his way of reckoning with the aftermath of Pinochet’s dictatorship. As always in his work, the past is never just the past. [Lawrence Garcia]
Western Stars
Select theaters
Bruce Springsteen’s best album in decades is a tuneful reflection on aging and decline, from the perspective of exhausted characters who—like the Boss himself—once defined themselves by their youthful restlessness. Because the record’s sound was inspired by the heavily orchestrated late-’60s pop of Glen Campbell and Harry Nilsson, Springsteen chose not to tour behind Western Stars, and instead turned his most cinematic set of songs into a movie, calling on his frequent collaborator Thom Zimny to help him film a concert in his barn. Zimny and Springsteen flesh out the running time with pensive voice-over introductions and slow-mo footage of wild horses. But the intimate setting, the quietly passionate performances, and the melancholy beauty of the songs are enough to paint a vivid picture of a man striving to connect who he used to be with where time and circumstance have led him. [Noel Murray]
Wild Nights With Emily
Digital platforms and DVD
This year brought two irreverent, stylistically bold looks at the life of Emily Dickinson. While the Apple TV+ series Dickinson cast Wiz Khalifa as Death, Wild Nights With Emily took on the author a bit more quietly, while still blowing the dust off of her life. Writer-director Madeleine Olnek openly condemns the popular picture of Dickinson as a timid, stodgy, morbid recluse; her posthumous closeting and the commodification of her work runs parallel to the story of Emily as she lived and loved. As the Belle Of Amherst, Molly Shannon radiates both warmth and confusion, the former shared with “romantic friend” Susan (Susan Ziegler), the latter directed at a world hostile to or dismissive of her obvious gifts. Olnek similarly, often comically tweaks the image of the Victorian era itself, but Shannon keeps even the Drunk History moments grounded. [Allison Shoemaker]
The Wind
Digital platforms, Blu-ray, and DVD
A thoughtful criticism of manifest destiny, Emma Tammi’s The Wind is simultaneously coy and unrelenting. A pamphlet given to American frontierswoman Lizzy (Caitlin Gerard) as she travels to her new home is decorated with a gleeful devil and emblazoned with “DEMONS.” There are sins everywhere, a preacher warns Lizzy, and she has to guard herself and her family. But in this desolate, barren place, what could the danger be? Lizzy’s female neighbor, who catches her husband’s eye? Native Americans, who could be lurking just outside her line of sight? Or is it the wind howling through Lizzy’s home, whispering in her ear, shaking her to her bones? The sound design exacerbates the spookiness as The Wind insistently pushes its heroine toward madness, while Gerard’s impassioned performance captures a woman desperate to maintain her selfhood. The film opens with Lizzy drenched head to toe in blood, and it never lets up. [Roxana Hadadi]
102 Comments
What about Turner and Hooch 2: A Turner of Phrase?!
I’m sorry to tell you this, but Hooch was shot to death at the end of the original warm-hearted Tom Hanks family-friendly picture. In fact I believe he gets drilled in Peckinpah slo-mo, which is apt since the movie was directed by Roger Spottiswoode, who used to edit Peckinpah movies.
B-but, they told me Hoochy went back to his home planet!
No, to a farm upstate where he peacefully still resides…I promise…
Uh, this is the puppy from the end of the movie, duh. Clearly not a fan of the Turner & Hooch Cinematic Universe like myself.
Also: please send me the URL for the hilarious Hollywood name generator you’re using!
Here you go!http://hiitsburl.blogspot.com/
I’m waiting for K 10 , the sequel to tge OTHER dog movie of the mid to late 80s.
“Western Stars” is Springsteen’s best album in over 30 years. It’s a gorgeously produced, remarkably moving, often quirky return to form. I was surprised by the AV Club’s unconvinced review of it. It’s one of the very few negative reviews I’ve read of the album. (I’ve had to make a conscious effort to stop playing it over and over again. I grew borderline obsessed with it for a while there.)
It’s wild that They Shall Not Grow Old grossed $18M domestic, when it was originally only supposed to be a museum piece, and later was only supposed to air on the BBC.
I have it DVR’ed but haven’t watched it yet. May change that this weekend.
Best moviegoing decision I made this year was ponying up to see it in IMAX 3D. It was a Fathom Events thing, which I usually hate, but it was well worth it in this case.
I didn’t realise it had made so much money. The Imperial War Museum will be thrilled that it has reached so many people.And *that moment* when it transitions from flickery, bleached black and white to smooth colour is going to be one of those pieces of cinema history. I saw it on BBC TWO when it premiered back in 2018 and I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the ground. It’s up there with ‘The Wizard of Oz’’s transition from sepia to TechniColor as a genuine piece of magic – albeit a much darker form.Still grey? (Gray if you will) – why? I’m lovely! Please release me from purgatory.
The AV review undersells the colourisation, I think. Yeah, fine, it’s not perfect and certainly isn’t ‘true’ colour – but it has such a humanising affect on the subjects/events, alongside the added sound & conversations. Really, really mind blowing.
I saw it in a movie theatre a few weeks back, and I think the jaws of everyone in the audience hit the floor when ‘that moment’ came. I knew going in that at some point it transitioned from black and white to colour, but wasn’t prepared for when it happened, and the immediacy that the film suddenly gained. Yes, the colourisation isn’t 100 per cent realistic, but the colour – along with the sounds and voices (especially the moments when you could hear what people were obviously saying as the cameras rolled) – made these long-gone men come alive in a way that is stunning.
What also makes the film so compelling is that in addition to the restored picture and colourisation, the speed has been adjusted. So much of the original footage is undercranked, leading to speeded-up footage, and the subjects chugging along like jerky wind-up puppets. See it in 3D and the effect is even more remarkable. A fantastic piece of work.
I’d actually completely forgotten about this film until I saw the DVD at my local library this afternoon. Almost borrowed it, and now I wish I had.
Bruce Springsteen: Man of the PeopleBut finds time to sneak in hair transplants, and a few face lifts. Just like his brothers on the picket line.
Well done, Average Internet Dumbfuck Who Will Die Alone!
My dad is 8 years older than Springsteen, has his own hair and his original face, and looks basically like that. It’s not unusual. I wonder what this guy thinks old people are supposed to look like.
OK, boomer
sigh…
Typical boomer. “We fucked it all up, yet you just sit around and complain and aren’t fixing our disasters fast enough. You’re a bunch of dummies!”
You have a stupid point somewhere?
I’ve met him a couple times and saw no indication of any work whatsoever. Maybe the above photo was cleaned up, but there was no work. on him. I’m not a boomer so you will need to dig deeper into your hatred archive for an insult. Judging by your posts though you can do it!
Damn, it sounds like Mickey and the Bear and For Sama fall directly into that category of “movies that I want to watch and would probably love, but I just don’t have the emotional fortitude right now.” Goddamn parenting.
I hear ya. With my own kid sleeping in the next room, just the trailer of For Sama was hard for me to watch.
Bliss is empty, pretentious trash that has been done a million times and has been done much, much better a million times.
See Addiction, The, or Larry Fessenden’s Habit.
So, is it a vampire movie or not? I can’t tell from the not-a-review posted.
I bet it’s a vampire movie that never uses the word “vampire”
A vampire movie that never uses the word vampire? Like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room?
Why not just watch the thing? You sound disappointed that the review did not spoil the thing for you. Sounds like good writing to me if you end up actually asking.
“Sounds like good writing to me if you end up actually asking.”
No spoilers = good writing?
k
Man, I remember when The Addiction was the go-to example of horror’s most empty, pretentious trash.
And?
And…it’s not good? I’m not sure what you want here.
Oh, I thought you were going to tell us why you thought we cared about your negative opinion.
That’s an incredible story. You should save it for your grandchildren.
I loved Greener Grass. It was so ridiculous in all the best ways.
Loved Western Stars the movie even better than the album. Several people I know who saw it thought that the narration had a pretentious affectation to it. I agree it didn’t sound like Bruce’s looser concert speaking voice, but I thought it was earnest and moving.
Have to laugh at the people who point to the low box office receipts as “proof” that Springsteen is irrelevant and faded. Gee, an under-promoted movie showing in limited release from a 70 year old rock star playing songs without the E Street Band, inspired by Glen Campbell’s sound. I’m stunned that it wasn’t the next Titanic or Gone With the Wind.
I couldn’t help myself, and addressed one particular MAGA dingbat who crowed about the low box office for Western Stars, pointing out that, A-Not many concert films make huge money at the box office, and B-The eventual DVD, BluRay, streaming, cable, and soundtrack albums will be spinning revenue forever. As I didn’t get a witty comeback, I can only hope that particular chud enjoyed his steaming cup of STFU.
How can you watch Los Reyes? It seems it doesn’t exist on any platform
“It’s a film about how the need for diversity can be exploited under the guise of good intentions”soooo it’s about the entire marketing apparatus of the american entertainment industry in the past 3 years? wow I’m so surprised this didn’t get reviewed on AV club, the website that tells me which products are my friends and which are BAD
I can’t speak for everyone at the A.V. Club, but I’m sorry about all of those times I broke into your home and made you listen to me tell you what products are bad.
“B” – Jesse Hassenger, on Ghostbusters 2016
Yes, that film represented a MAJOR exploitation of, uh, a movie series about comedians goofing around with slime. It didn’t have the same honor and integrity of Ghostbusters II.
“B” – Jesse Hassenger, on Ghostbusters II I guess.You’re not doing yourself any favors
Yeah, I’d say B/B- is pretty accurate for Ghostbusters II, with the first one as an A-.It never fails to amaze me how worked up people can get about a positive review—not even a rave! A “B” grade is not in fact accompanied by me holding your eyelids open and screaming at you to watch this masterpiece or else. It’s accompanied by 800 or so words that you can read and decide if the movie in question sounds like something you’d enjoy.
Eh, I thought Don K’s response was pretty dry and funny, but maybe misreading it. I think the OP was trying to be witty about calling AV Club SJWs but just managed to be incoherent, I think he meant the products are bad in the way a chik fil-a sandwich is bad.I think the AV Club should add an A+ and be less stingy with As. I mean…any system that doesn’t give the first Ghostbusters an A is flawed, like how could it have been better? B- is not the same thing as like two and a half stars, even B means “probably don’t see this if you have something better to do.” The grading often winds up as just a B+/B/B- mash. I think critics can combine the analysis of artistic merit (more John Simon) with whether people should spend their time on something or not (more Siskel and Ebert)…and whether they want to go by artistic merit in total isolation (Simon) vs. achievement of what was attempted (Ebert by himself) should be more announced ahead of time as an ethos rather than ad hoc. also I definitely think there are a number of ever-changing curves things are graded on, where expectations often deflate grades and things unexpectedly not shitty are overpraised and the reader is left wondering just what is the rubric. Usually the reply is that the grade is just one critic’s opinion but that’s clearly not how anybody thinks about it. And how surprised can you be that people who obsessively rank and classify everything are hung up on grading?
How about less John Simon, in general. But no, “any system that doesn’t give the first Ghostbusters an A” is not flawed, because no one “gave” Ghostbusters anything except me literally making a comment about what I think of the movie Ghostbusters, and that can’t be a flawed system in the sense that it accurately reflects what I think of the movie. Of course, there are limitations with using grades or star ratings or whatever. But, as with most people’s problems with criticism metrics, these are problems that are mostly solved by more people reading more. (Which is to say, they’ll never be solved.)
The Grim Reaper recently gave John Simon a “must have” rating.I don’t see the use in denying there is a mixed message when the review is pretty okay and the rating is C+, or the review is that it’s the best film at Cannes and it’s still an A-.I went to two different high schools, one of them gave you your GPA down to a decimal. The other gave you an A if you had an 89.6. The second one was a much better school with much better outcomes. Lots of grad schools have even stopped giving out grades, because they couldn’t justify it finely enough. Maybe what is needed for transparency is an announced set of principles and standards by which critics measure artworks for the specific publication, like a mission statement, so that it’s not just somebody saying what they thought about it off the top of their head (or saying the grade they gave shouldn’t be considered the grade of the publication itself). Not meaning: Mise en scene: A; Acting: B; etc., although I’d be interested at least to see that attempted, somebody must do it that way.
OR, and hear me out, grades and ratings are more like approximations than math. I don’t see “best at Cannes” and “A-” or “pretty okay” and “C+” as especially contradictory either with each other, or internally.
Asking for an “announced set of principles” makes it sound like you’re looking for mathematical accountability, and also, no one would read that shit and people would still complain about how THAT movie got a B+ but THIS movie got a B- and blah blah blah.
Dude, get a hobby
One Cut of the Dead is an absolute delight. One of the best movies of the year.
The only thing I could think about when looking down this “films the AV Club didn’t review” list was how many Great Job, Internet articles have run this year.
Don’t forget the multiple articles about every single shitty SNL episode.
Yeah, because guess which one pays for which.
Yep, my first thought when I saw “best list of films we didnt review” was, why the fuck werent you reviewing them?I get there is too much tv now to review all of it but a pop culutre site should absolutely reviewing every single major movie release (which includes netflix)
I would LOVE to be a contributor at a site that reviews every single major movie release, but beyond MAYBE the Ebert site or the New York Times (which is not a pop culture site), no such site exists—at least not using whatever terms you have that doesn’t count the 350+ AVC-reviewed movies as the “major” releases. If you include every movie that plays in 1,000+ theaters, AND then add in movies that don’t reach 1,000 screens but make more than the lowest wide-release grossers (more than a couple million), that gets you to about 200 movies. On the other side, if you try to cover everything that plays in at least 50 theaters, you start to get into 400+ movies, and if you include everything on Netflix, you really should include a bunch of other straight-to-VOD-or-streaming titles (otherwise you’re pretty much just doing Netflix PR, even when the reviews are bad), which would get you up to approximately 500 movies. And because writing movie reviews is work, reviewing an extra 150 movies per year costs money!So while I’d LOVE it if more sites reviewed 300, 400, 500 new releases per year, I’d maybe ask questions about why there are so many pop culture sites that try to get away with reviewing like, 60 movies a year (and they have their reasons, but that strikes me as a bit more egregious than the A.V. Club not having the time or money to cover every single movie that Netflix voms out onto their servers).
With one or two exceptions, I would argue that none of these were major movie releases. I can see a legitimate argument towards there being plenty of other movies/shows/whatever to focus their staff on. And, as someone else said, the Great Job Internet column is written by other staffers.
But the thing is that most of these aren’t major releases. The only reason I’ve heard of a lot of these is because they played at Sundance, where I work. Most of them I haven’t even heard of since then, and I’m someone who pays attention to indie film.
And I’m a weirdo who likes to see reviews of festival stuff that I won’t have any way to see this year, but lots of people aren’t; I wish I had a dollar for every time someone showed up in the comments for reviews like that to rant about how critics only write about that hard-to-find stuff because they’re snobs who hate their readers.
That’s because deep inside, they know they basic.
“I get there is too much tv now to review all of it but a pop culutre site should absolutely reviewing every single major movie release (which includes netflix)”
Which one of the movies on this list strikes you as a major release?
Also, find me a single reviewer in the history of film criticism that has reviewed every movie ever released.
Mmost of the movies listed here aren’t major releases, you dolt
You know that Great Job, Internet isn’t written by the film critics, right?
Yeah! I’m going to switch to one of those other sites that does a much more comprehensive job of providing high quality movie reviews… oh, wait.
You write about They Shall Now Grow Old having color and sound added, but neglected to mention the meticulous restoration of the film footage itself. Film reels that were falling apart, full of defects and degradations, and formerly looked like a janky mess of nonsense, were restored to something so smooth and flawless that it looks as though it could have been shot yesterday.
Chained For Life is the best movie this year bar none. I can’t believe nobody is talking about this film. The lead performances are breathtaking and some of the humor is very dry and subtle, but it’s there. Adam Pearson does an incredible job.
someone tell what is the dog sitting at a desk film shown in the header image? if there is a dog goes to school film I am interested in checking it out.
Greener Grass
thank you.
“How was school honey?”“Ruff”“Aww sorry to hear that”
I went into Greener Grass completely blind and was definitely not prepared for how aggressively weird it was.
Greener Grass is an absolute riot. The last quarter of the film devolves into an anxiety nightmare, but it still remains strong. It’s like if they tasked David Lynch with filming an SNL movie.
Glad to see Hagazussa getting some end of the year love. Watched it on Prime a couple months ago and was extremely impressed. It was very much like if “The Witch” was injected with the general vibes of “Mandy,” and while it is very deliberately paced I really enjoyed it. Also really impressive that the director made this as what amounts to his film school thesis project. (At least, that’s what I read.) Strong recommend for anyone who likes a slower horror film, especially with strong elements of folklore and psychedelia.
Impressed to find The Wind at the end of the list – watched a month or so ago and it really blew me away (accidental pun). I can’t believe it hasn’t been getting more attention.
I was surprised how negligible a release Light of My Life got. It’s merely good rather than great, but you’d think a post-apocalyptic premise and a recent Best Actor winner would have made it relatively sellable compared to the similar (albeit better) Leave No Trace.
The twist in One Cut of the Dead is amazing.
I’ve told everyone I know who love movies to watch One Cut of the Dead.
It was as good movie and on my Shudder/Amazon watchlist and because of your and others twist comment I watched it last night. It was pretty clever and original but for some reason and on my first guess I guessed correctly what it was. Then later when I thought about the name ox the movie I wondered if that subconsciously helped me or what. Because I don’t know how I got it right on the nose.
The Raft sounds amazing. Incredible that there is an anthropologist with a dumber and more offensive and theory and more recklessly dangerous experiment (also involving a “raft”) than Thor Heyerdahl!
I think that’s quite unfair to Heyerdahl. His theory has been largely refuted (and was ill-founded in the first place), but it was hardly offensive, and the Kon-Tiki expedition was not recklessly dangerous — at least not more than any crossing of the Pacific by sail.
I will concede that my joke was a bit unfair to Thor Heyerdahl. His theory however hinged on seeing the native peoples of the Americas as being inferior & unlikely to have founded their own cultures so, I think offensive is fair
That’s not correct. The Kon-Tiki expedition was about his theory that Polynesia (and in particular the Easter Island) was originally settled from South America rather than from Asia. Incidentally, recent genetic evidence indicates that although the theory is wrong in general, there apparently was some contact between the Easter Island and South America shortly after its settlement.You’re probably thinking about his later Ra expeditions, which were meant to show that it was possible that people from North Africa had crossed the Atlantic to South America (and, implicitly, introduced certain aspects of American civilization).I know some argue that such theories are inherently racist, but I think seeing Heyerdahl’s ideas in context tends to contradict that.First, there’s the fact that of course there has been cultural diffusion between various parts of the world, and I would insist that trying to understand how that has happened is a valid line of inquiry, not inherently racist. Often, in fact, it’s the idea that some civilizations developed entirely natively and independently that is espoused by racists and nationalists (for example some Hindu supremacists who insist that Vedic people founded the Indus Civilization, rather than being relative latecomers to the region). Heyerdahl’s theories were romantic and rather unscientific, but he did demonstrate the possibility of journeys previously thought impossible, and we’ve later come to understand that there was indeed more prehistoric contact between some parts of the world than previously believed, even if Heyerdahl’s specifics were wrong.
I also don’t agree that the ideas are inherently disparaging to native Americans, or assume that they were inferior. By comparison, take his late-in-life theory that Norse civilization came from Azerbaijan. If Ra is disparaging to indigenous Americans, is that theory then disparaging to Scandinavians? I would argue that it demonstrates that he was simply someone who liked to think there was lots of contact and cultural influence between different parts of the ancient world. (And I would note that a similar argument to this is often used by those who argue that medieval Europe was not as white as it’s stereotypically thought.)The fact that he made an effort on his later expeditions to have international crews with people from all parts of the world also underscores that what he believed in, and thought his expeditions helped prove, was universal human brotherhood.
It’s a high bar, as history is littered with recklessly dangerous and offensive anthropology experiments, but I give points for originality to “Talking with dolphins by giving them LSD and handjobs”.
It’s ultimately about talking to aliens, which I think falls under anthropology.
“All 12 people who found it buried deep in the Big Red N’s content avalanche”You know what, this “Netflix has too much content and it’s too hard to find things” meme is bullshit. Saying Netflix has too much content is like saying a library has too many books. The Internet has literally thousands of websites dedicated to providing recommendations for things to watch. Being able to find stuff that meets your needs is easy, and then when you find out it’s on Netflix, you just go to Netflix and search by title.
I think the point is not that Netflix has too much content, but that it resembles an avalanche in that it is overwhelming and haphazard. And sure it’s easy to find a movie if you already know its name, but when you want to watch a certain type of film, the search engine performs poorly. And Netflix’s algorithm for suggestions is completely bonkers. Because I watched The Irishman, apparently I should try Dolly Parton’s Heart Strings.
Sure, Netflix’s search engine is crap, but who says you have to use it? I don’t go to the library or Amazon to try to find things I might like to read. I go there when I already know what I want to read, having found it somewhere else.
Oh I definitely only use Netflix’s search tool occasionally. And I do use the approach you have described. Which is a frustrating experience, what with searching for things on other sites, flicking back to the Netflix tab to search for a show, only to find about 70% of what I want to watch is not available. If Netflix had a decent search tool, I wouldn’t have to go through what is effectively a manual cross-match. Plus it’s not even smart enough to allow you to mark a show for notification if it comes onto Netflix in the future (a standard feature on other streaming sites). All it does is show things ‘like’ what I’m searching for, which are by and large nothing like it and do not interest me or I’ve already seen.If Netflix can throw $15 billion this year to produce or license content, they can create a better search tool. Particularly because this flood of content, most of which is mediocre, actually adds to the problem of searching for good content among the dross. This is the essential problem. I don’t mind if Netflix only streams 10% good stuff to 90% dross because that’s still more than I’m going to watch in a year — until the problem becomes wading through all the rubbish. If Netflix had any sense, they would recognise that their original content strategy is failing not because of the content itself but because the job of sifting for it puts off consumers — this is a lesson supermarkets learned years ago. If you have too many choices on the shelves, customers buy less product. Which not only means you have less revenue, but you’ve paid more in distribution, storage, and staff costs for the privilege.
I guess I haven’t had that experience because I basically never browse for things to watch: my dance card is already full with shows that have been brought to my attention (mostly by the A.V. Club and Entertainment Weekly). In terms of numbers, we’re keeping up with about 25 shows right now, though all of them are 8-13 episode series, so it’s not even that much of a time commitment per year (under 300 hours total). Sitting and browsing for something to watch just isn’t something we do.
I’m also affected by being in Australia, where stupid international distribution conglomerates mean that a lot of shows available in the US are not available here. This is not Netflix’s fault. Just because a show is listed as being on Netflix doesn’t mean I can access it.
Fair enough. Although I would expect by now there’s a “what’s available on Netflix in my region” service of some sort.
“You know what, this “Netflix has too much content and it’s too hard to find things” meme is bullshit.”
Clearly. Everything is easy to find, that’s why so few people have seen All Is Well. Because it’s so clearly and obviously a big title that Netflix has promoted in any tangible way.
I mean, Jesus god damn fucking Christ, you’re COMPLAINING that people wish it was easier to find new and acclaimed stuff on Netflix?
It was meant as an angry rant, not a completely logical analysis, so lighten up, Francis.There’s actually several different conflated issues here and I think what mostly annoys me is that they all get lumped together rather than being sorted out properly. To wit:1) “Netflix’s search engine sucks.”2) “Netflix releases too much content.”3) “Netflix doesn’t promote things properly.”Taken one at a time:“Netflix’s search engine sucks.” This hasn’t been my experience; when I search for a thing, they tend to show a lot of similar things, which… I dunno, it makes sense to me. But then I usually use their search to find specific titles, not in order to browse for things that I might like. Although once I searched for “murder” and of the 12 tiles it produced, 10 were murder or crime related, while the other 2 were Friends and Always Be My Maybe. So anyway, this is really two separate issues: Netflix can’t find specific titles (I have never observed this being a problem), and Netflix recommends weird, unrelated shit when I search for certain terms.This is similar but distinct from “Stuff is too hard to find on Netflix,” a complaint which conflates the promotional angle and the search angle.“Netflix releases too much content.” This one I don’t get at all. There have been literally hundreds of new books published every single day for the last several hundred years but anyone complaining that there’s “too many books” would be greeted with, at best, a raised eyebrow. An average of two new movies are released theatrically in the U.S. every single day of the year, with more going straight to streaming. So what? All it means is more options. Like I said, there’s a thousand places you can go to get recommendations. Nobody needs to keep up with everything, and the idea that people “used to be able to keep up” is false. It’s more that of the vast amount of things released, a far smaller number of them entered the pop culture consciousness. It was easy to keep up with those, but there were still tons of things the most dedicated cineastes never saw or even heard of. Content has been a firehose longer than any of us have been alive.“Netflix doesn’t promote things properly.” This is actually “Netflix doesn’t promote the things I want them to promote, so people aren’t watching the things I watch as much as I want.” This is a selfish approach, but understandable: if people watch the things I like, there’s more people I can talk to about it, and the things I like are more likely to get renewals/sequels. Netflix spends plenty on promotion, it’s just that they’re not promoting the things you (not you personally, but whoever’s complaining) think they should promote.Anyway, mostly I’m bitching about people’s imprecise complaints. I in no way believe that Netflix is perfect or blameless, but I think we can do better in identifying and naming the problems, not to mention proposing solutions.
“There have been literally hundreds of new books published every single day for the last several hundred years”
Ah, so we’re just blatantly making things up? Cool.
I based that on Wikipedia’s article saying there were >300k books published in the U.S. in 2013, or ~800 per day. Ok, maybe it was only in the dozens per day a couple of hundred years ago, but it’s still been far more content than any one person could ever hope to consume since long before any of us were alive.
How’s that wrong?
Goddamn it. Just when I thought I had caught up on half the good films from this year…
So it doesn’t sound like The Wind is a straight-up remake of the 1928 Lilian Gish silent classic of the same name, which itself was based on a novel by Victor Sjöström, but it sure sounds like it should sport an “Inspired by…” tag.
“but it sure sounds like it should sport an “Inspired by…” tag.”
The only thing they have in common in “single woman in the west”.