Love the thoughtfulness and yes, I absolutely must find 'Worst Person In The World' on my local streaming service.
But how sad that even in this decade, I'm not sure more than half the films on your list (I haven't seen them all) include named female characters talking with each other about something other than men? Even sadder, you're more likely to see that in 'Dungeons and Dragons' or a Marvel movie, than in 'serious' contemporary cinema.
Is Northman a boy film? For me this film was porn for anyone attracted to men. I saw it with my bf at the time. By the end he was visibly sick of my salivating. Obviously it’s also fucking quality, but just saying.
Crazily, there was a fire alarm right in the middle of his big scene w Nicole Kidman. You know. We all had to go outside into dull afternoon sun and stand around for ten mins then file back in and pick up where we left off. Something set it off! ❤️🔥
The only two on here I have seen are Tar and The Northman, which are both on my list of favorites from the past 4 years. Here's 11. Couldn't cut one out. My list is boring and too American. I have to watch more foreign films this year.
* Tenet (Yes I like Tenet)
* The Northman
* Tar (cancel her!)
* Oppenheimer (The Best movie I've seen in the past 4 years. IMAX 3 weekends in a row)
* Barbie (most fun I had at the movies watching this with my sister)
* Dune 1&2 (I have gone back to these and discussed these more than any other movies)
* The Boy and the Heron (2nd fav by him, just behind Spirited Away)
* Killers of the Flower Moon (is the most devastating movie seen recently. I think it will go down as an all-time great, eventually)
* Across the Spider-verse (saw this in IMAX with my son and it broke my brain)
* The Power of the Dog (watched this thing like 5 times for some reason. Probably drinking a lot)
* The Last Duel (not sure why this one wasn't enjoyed by more people)
I saw all of these in the theater except Tenet, The Northman, and Tar. I don't know about you guys, but the IMAX has spoiled me. Dune and Oppenheimer aren't the same movies at home.
If you like ambiguity, Tár is really a great film that holds up to repeated viewings. One of the interesting things about the film are the many hints that Tár is not a musical genius at all, she is probably kind of a fraud. She never studied with Bernstein. Her interpretations of the great composers are technically proficient but unoriginal and borrowed. She is dismissive of any music written after the 1910 as far as we can tell. She is a person who through great force of will tried to turn herself into a female Bernstein or Karajan in a world that doesn't want Bernsteins and Karajans anymore. Her fate can be read both as a tragedy or as deserved punishment for hubris, depending on your perspective.
very interesting list and there are a couple on there I haven't seen which I will definitely check out, so thanks for that. Yours is a much better list than the one you referenced with Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer in the top three, both of which struck were deeply mediocre and overrated in my view.
Since I agree with many on your most overrated film list I'm guessing we may have something in common, which when it comes to recommending films I might enjoy, is everything. I have a list to share of my favorites, which I have learned, may or may not correspond with anyone else's list. The whole point of these lists is not to be confirmed in our taste, or to try to change others reactions but simply to find others who have similar taste so we can feed new films to each other which we might enjoy. Here is my list of favorite old and new films. https://ssobo.substack.com/
As a movie aficionado you might be interested in my little interaction with Pauline Kael, when she discovered me after I sent her one of my reviews. It is buried somewhere in this post https://simonsobo.substack.com/p/why-i-should-be-read
I've enjoyed the other films on the list that I watched, but I have to disagree about How to Have Sex. Certainly not a masterpiece, and I think it will be forgotten sooner or later by history, unless remembered as an early film of Manning Walker if she makes something more noteworthy later in her career (which I think she is capable of doing).
I wouldn't call it bad, and it treats an important topic with more complexity than I would have expected had I listened to interviews with Manning Walker talking about the film before I had watched it.
It has a major flaw: it presents a conflict without resolving it. Or not even a conflict, more of a ‘shitty thing that had happened to somebody’ which is exactly why, I think, you are left with the feeling of ‘just wanting to give her a hug‘ at the end (incidentally, also how the film ends, spoiler alert). I think it's well produced, well directed but it is well written only in its detail and not on the whole.
That's interesting. I have two responses, the first of which is: are you American? (Or not British, anyway?) I think one of the things I loved about it was how accurately it captured a certain very UK type of Med holiday, and interactions between different groups of people particularly of a certain social class in a very subtle and well observed way. But I can see that not being a universal reaction, of course.
My second is that I liked the ending, precisely because it isn't resolved, which is the case in most situations like this. It was a weird, ambiguous, horrible assault where most of the main character's friends think she got laid, pure and simple, and the film is brilliant at capturing the sense of shame and confusion she feels about that. It's not a "stranger down a dark alley attacks you" film, which ends neatly in the rapist being convicted. The lad who assaults her goes home *without ever even realising he did so*, which makes it so much more devastating and, I think, arguably that much more realistic. The film's strength is in its realism, and the lack of resolution is part of that.
I agree with you on all the points (I'm not British but that sort of tourism is notorious... they talk about your at your wake. Nevertheless, I'd have believed it even if it was completely alien). For me verisimilitude, realism, is a prime merit of fiction, and I hoped to convey that on that front the movie excelled.
I should say that I had spent much thought on this movie some time ago. I don't remember what I thought of it at the beginning, or when I left the movie theater, but the comment above summarizes what I thought at the end of my meditation. In a piece of writing (that might still one day appear on substack, it was a a part of a part of a sequence that got stalled) I was comparing it to another piece of narrative fiction that was important to me as a young lad. It was only when I began to put the comparison on the proverbial paper that I reckoned the crucial difference between the two. The other piece was helpful to me (life defining in a way, really) precisely because the protagonist overcomes, even if symbolically, what burdens him. Tara doesn't — she mopes the entire rest of the film and the end. I'd dare say that that it is not resolved is ‘more common’ rather than ‘more realistic’; but, to put it roughly, I don't want to see the common, I want to see the extraordinary, I want to see triumph. I don't mean flying men or lazers, but give me at least a character who figures out how to handle the tribulations of life.
Ultimately I think it was Manning Walker's intention to provide a push back, for a lack of a better word, and I think she did not accomplish that. It's not like we didn't know that such things happen (and, as you said, it was ambiguous), not like it had not been a major talked about issue for a decade at least, and in that sense she doesn't tell us anything new. Whether you watched it or not, when you later get screwed you wouldn't know what to do with yourself all the same.
Fair enough, at this point it just becomes a difference of opinion, I guess. What was the companion piece? If you ever publish the comparison, let me know – I'd love to read it.
Yes, I suppose any work of art is multifaceted, and whether you judge it overall as ‘good’ depends on the standards you pay attention to.
Not a ‘companion piece’ per se, but a contrast. It's the series ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion.’ I looked now at my manuscript (pronounced with a French flair) and saw that the discussion of How to have Sex is right there at what would be the next installment. Your petition certainly motivates me to drive out of the hiatus!
For whatever it's worth, I'll drop here the sequence. It's rather niche and supposedly too long to be read off the screen:
I really liked Civil War and thought Plemons and Dunst were fantastic. I remember the reactions at the time were slightly disappointed about it not making more of a political statement or making loose comparisons to past or future U.S. governments.
I thought that it was more about journalism and about the role journalism plays in keeping a record of what happens in seismic events and staying impartial in that and how dangerous that role can be. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it.
I totally agree, and it's quite rare to find people who think that way about Civil War – most people reacted to it badly because they felt they had been promised something else, I think.
Good list though I thought Civil War was a pretty average film. It made me ask "why was this film made?" We live in politically high tension times and there have been rumblings of civil war for a few years now. The movie Civil War was even marketed in a way to say "what if?" and "what side are you on?" then you end up watching a movie that glorifies journalism of all things - in a real near future Civil War, journalists would likely be one of the most demonized groups. In the film, you're in this Civil War world where very little reason or context is given as to why this conflict is happening and why two states, California and Texas, form a highly unlikely alliance. We are just supposed to accept all these things (like how do states like California and Texas get the resources to field a military strong enough to defeat the US military). Then the movie ends when the main character behaves uncharacteristically leading to her demise. If you wanted to make a movie about war journalism then why not choose from any conflict in recent history? Why create this fictional future conflict set in the USA during a time where domestic political tensions are at an all-time high?
"in a real near future Civil War, journalists would likely be one of the most demonized groups"
I agree, but I think they are demonized in the film, aren't they? Jesse Plemons' character essentially plans to kill them all because they stumble across him committing war crimes (hence the mass grave). The film lionizes them, at points, but the characters in the film mostly see them as pests or the enemy. And actually, the film also shows them ultimately to be egotistical adrenalin junkies.
"very little reason or context is given as to why this conflict is happening and why two states, California and Texas, form a highly unlikely alliance."
Yeah, you're totally right – but I personally think that's a good thing. It muddies the waters a little; it makes the film not so much about "which side is who?" but instead puts the politics in the background and focuses on the human impact of the war: the refugees in football stadiums, the guys hanged by the vigilantes at the petrol station, the PTSD the war inflicts on the journalists and others. The Texas-California thing is meant to be an unlikely alliance, so people can't just draw simple Democrat/Republican lines between the opposing sides (I think).
"Then the movie ends when the main character behaves uncharacteristically leading to her demise."
Do you mean Kirsten Dunst's character saving Cailee Spaeny's character? I think her character arc is well developed, so that while she's a hardened, jaded photographer at the beginning, by the end she has these doubts as to whether her work changes anything at all (which she says aloud in the film) – I saw her saving the younger photographer in the shootout as a moment where she could a) have an actual impact on something and b) she's looking after a girl who reminds her of herself at the same age.
"If you wanted to make a movie about war journalism then why not choose from any conflict in recent history? Why create this fictional future conflict set in the USA during a time where domestic political tensions are at an all-time high?"
Fair enough, I suppose the answer would be "because we're having conversations like this about it". It prompts questions and discussion, and turns the lens on ourselves (in a loose sense; I am not actually American). They did just make Lee, a biopic about photographer Lee Miller and World War Two, and as far as I can tell there was nowhere near the level of discourse around that film.
But these are all just my opinions, at the end of the day.
I thought Red Rocket was great, my girlfriend did not. Triangle of Sadness would be in my top ten. I thought Licorice Pizza was quite good for such a low-key movie.
Love the thoughtfulness and yes, I absolutely must find 'Worst Person In The World' on my local streaming service.
But how sad that even in this decade, I'm not sure more than half the films on your list (I haven't seen them all) include named female characters talking with each other about something other than men? Even sadder, you're more likely to see that in 'Dungeons and Dragons' or a Marvel movie, than in 'serious' contemporary cinema.
A great selection - and a few to add to my ‘to watch’ list.
A US remake of Another Round sounds about as good as the US version of Peep Show (read: not good at all).
I shall be watching all the Sean Baker movies having just watched Anora - thanks for solidifying my interest in this director.
Is Northman a boy film? For me this film was porn for anyone attracted to men. I saw it with my bf at the time. By the end he was visibly sick of my salivating. Obviously it’s also fucking quality, but just saying.
Damn, that's such a good point. I guess you’re right, it was a great opportunity to enjoy the bearded himbo-fication of Alexander Skarsgård...
Crazily, there was a fire alarm right in the middle of his big scene w Nicole Kidman. You know. We all had to go outside into dull afternoon sun and stand around for ten mins then file back in and pick up where we left off. Something set it off! ❤️🔥
The only two on here I have seen are Tar and The Northman, which are both on my list of favorites from the past 4 years. Here's 11. Couldn't cut one out. My list is boring and too American. I have to watch more foreign films this year.
* Tenet (Yes I like Tenet)
* The Northman
* Tar (cancel her!)
* Oppenheimer (The Best movie I've seen in the past 4 years. IMAX 3 weekends in a row)
* Barbie (most fun I had at the movies watching this with my sister)
* Dune 1&2 (I have gone back to these and discussed these more than any other movies)
* The Boy and the Heron (2nd fav by him, just behind Spirited Away)
* Killers of the Flower Moon (is the most devastating movie seen recently. I think it will go down as an all-time great, eventually)
* Across the Spider-verse (saw this in IMAX with my son and it broke my brain)
* The Power of the Dog (watched this thing like 5 times for some reason. Probably drinking a lot)
* The Last Duel (not sure why this one wasn't enjoyed by more people)
I saw all of these in the theater except Tenet, The Northman, and Tar. I don't know about you guys, but the IMAX has spoiled me. Dune and Oppenheimer aren't the same movies at home.
If you like ambiguity, Tár is really a great film that holds up to repeated viewings. One of the interesting things about the film are the many hints that Tár is not a musical genius at all, she is probably kind of a fraud. She never studied with Bernstein. Her interpretations of the great composers are technically proficient but unoriginal and borrowed. She is dismissive of any music written after the 1910 as far as we can tell. She is a person who through great force of will tried to turn herself into a female Bernstein or Karajan in a world that doesn't want Bernsteins and Karajans anymore. Her fate can be read both as a tragedy or as deserved punishment for hubris, depending on your perspective.
very interesting list and there are a couple on there I haven't seen which I will definitely check out, so thanks for that. Yours is a much better list than the one you referenced with Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer in the top three, both of which struck were deeply mediocre and overrated in my view.
Since I agree with many on your most overrated film list I'm guessing we may have something in common, which when it comes to recommending films I might enjoy, is everything. I have a list to share of my favorites, which I have learned, may or may not correspond with anyone else's list. The whole point of these lists is not to be confirmed in our taste, or to try to change others reactions but simply to find others who have similar taste so we can feed new films to each other which we might enjoy. Here is my list of favorite old and new films. https://ssobo.substack.com/
As a movie aficionado you might be interested in my little interaction with Pauline Kael, when she discovered me after I sent her one of my reviews. It is buried somewhere in this post https://simonsobo.substack.com/p/why-i-should-be-read
Thanks! Of course you're right; it's entirely subjective. Will take a look at yours.
If you are looking at my list for films to watch that you haven't seen yet,I've added 10 new ones. Gradually, as I recall them, they get on the list
Having read both this and your list of overrated films, it is uncanny for anyone's taste in anything to overlap so neatly with mine.
Glad to hear it!
I've enjoyed the other films on the list that I watched, but I have to disagree about How to Have Sex. Certainly not a masterpiece, and I think it will be forgotten sooner or later by history, unless remembered as an early film of Manning Walker if she makes something more noteworthy later in her career (which I think she is capable of doing).
I wouldn't call it bad, and it treats an important topic with more complexity than I would have expected had I listened to interviews with Manning Walker talking about the film before I had watched it.
It has a major flaw: it presents a conflict without resolving it. Or not even a conflict, more of a ‘shitty thing that had happened to somebody’ which is exactly why, I think, you are left with the feeling of ‘just wanting to give her a hug‘ at the end (incidentally, also how the film ends, spoiler alert). I think it's well produced, well directed but it is well written only in its detail and not on the whole.
That's interesting. I have two responses, the first of which is: are you American? (Or not British, anyway?) I think one of the things I loved about it was how accurately it captured a certain very UK type of Med holiday, and interactions between different groups of people particularly of a certain social class in a very subtle and well observed way. But I can see that not being a universal reaction, of course.
My second is that I liked the ending, precisely because it isn't resolved, which is the case in most situations like this. It was a weird, ambiguous, horrible assault where most of the main character's friends think she got laid, pure and simple, and the film is brilliant at capturing the sense of shame and confusion she feels about that. It's not a "stranger down a dark alley attacks you" film, which ends neatly in the rapist being convicted. The lad who assaults her goes home *without ever even realising he did so*, which makes it so much more devastating and, I think, arguably that much more realistic. The film's strength is in its realism, and the lack of resolution is part of that.
I agree with you on all the points (I'm not British but that sort of tourism is notorious... they talk about your at your wake. Nevertheless, I'd have believed it even if it was completely alien). For me verisimilitude, realism, is a prime merit of fiction, and I hoped to convey that on that front the movie excelled.
I should say that I had spent much thought on this movie some time ago. I don't remember what I thought of it at the beginning, or when I left the movie theater, but the comment above summarizes what I thought at the end of my meditation. In a piece of writing (that might still one day appear on substack, it was a a part of a part of a sequence that got stalled) I was comparing it to another piece of narrative fiction that was important to me as a young lad. It was only when I began to put the comparison on the proverbial paper that I reckoned the crucial difference between the two. The other piece was helpful to me (life defining in a way, really) precisely because the protagonist overcomes, even if symbolically, what burdens him. Tara doesn't — she mopes the entire rest of the film and the end. I'd dare say that that it is not resolved is ‘more common’ rather than ‘more realistic’; but, to put it roughly, I don't want to see the common, I want to see the extraordinary, I want to see triumph. I don't mean flying men or lazers, but give me at least a character who figures out how to handle the tribulations of life.
Ultimately I think it was Manning Walker's intention to provide a push back, for a lack of a better word, and I think she did not accomplish that. It's not like we didn't know that such things happen (and, as you said, it was ambiguous), not like it had not been a major talked about issue for a decade at least, and in that sense she doesn't tell us anything new. Whether you watched it or not, when you later get screwed you wouldn't know what to do with yourself all the same.
Fair enough, at this point it just becomes a difference of opinion, I guess. What was the companion piece? If you ever publish the comparison, let me know – I'd love to read it.
Yes, I suppose any work of art is multifaceted, and whether you judge it overall as ‘good’ depends on the standards you pay attention to.
Not a ‘companion piece’ per se, but a contrast. It's the series ‘Neon Genesis Evangelion.’ I looked now at my manuscript (pronounced with a French flair) and saw that the discussion of How to have Sex is right there at what would be the next installment. Your petition certainly motivates me to drive out of the hiatus!
For whatever it's worth, I'll drop here the sequence. It's rather niche and supposedly too long to be read off the screen:
https://markneznansky.substack.com/p/ikari-shinji-and-i
Can I offer a contender for the list? Puss in Boots The Last Wish deserves to be in the hall of fame for the best movies of 2020s
I really liked Civil War and thought Plemons and Dunst were fantastic. I remember the reactions at the time were slightly disappointed about it not making more of a political statement or making loose comparisons to past or future U.S. governments.
I thought that it was more about journalism and about the role journalism plays in keeping a record of what happens in seismic events and staying impartial in that and how dangerous that role can be. It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it.
Eight Mountains looks a good movie.
I totally agree, and it's quite rare to find people who think that way about Civil War – most people reacted to it badly because they felt they had been promised something else, I think.
Good list though I thought Civil War was a pretty average film. It made me ask "why was this film made?" We live in politically high tension times and there have been rumblings of civil war for a few years now. The movie Civil War was even marketed in a way to say "what if?" and "what side are you on?" then you end up watching a movie that glorifies journalism of all things - in a real near future Civil War, journalists would likely be one of the most demonized groups. In the film, you're in this Civil War world where very little reason or context is given as to why this conflict is happening and why two states, California and Texas, form a highly unlikely alliance. We are just supposed to accept all these things (like how do states like California and Texas get the resources to field a military strong enough to defeat the US military). Then the movie ends when the main character behaves uncharacteristically leading to her demise. If you wanted to make a movie about war journalism then why not choose from any conflict in recent history? Why create this fictional future conflict set in the USA during a time where domestic political tensions are at an all-time high?
Hmm, I have a few points about this:
"in a real near future Civil War, journalists would likely be one of the most demonized groups"
I agree, but I think they are demonized in the film, aren't they? Jesse Plemons' character essentially plans to kill them all because they stumble across him committing war crimes (hence the mass grave). The film lionizes them, at points, but the characters in the film mostly see them as pests or the enemy. And actually, the film also shows them ultimately to be egotistical adrenalin junkies.
"very little reason or context is given as to why this conflict is happening and why two states, California and Texas, form a highly unlikely alliance."
Yeah, you're totally right – but I personally think that's a good thing. It muddies the waters a little; it makes the film not so much about "which side is who?" but instead puts the politics in the background and focuses on the human impact of the war: the refugees in football stadiums, the guys hanged by the vigilantes at the petrol station, the PTSD the war inflicts on the journalists and others. The Texas-California thing is meant to be an unlikely alliance, so people can't just draw simple Democrat/Republican lines between the opposing sides (I think).
"Then the movie ends when the main character behaves uncharacteristically leading to her demise."
Do you mean Kirsten Dunst's character saving Cailee Spaeny's character? I think her character arc is well developed, so that while she's a hardened, jaded photographer at the beginning, by the end she has these doubts as to whether her work changes anything at all (which she says aloud in the film) – I saw her saving the younger photographer in the shootout as a moment where she could a) have an actual impact on something and b) she's looking after a girl who reminds her of herself at the same age.
"If you wanted to make a movie about war journalism then why not choose from any conflict in recent history? Why create this fictional future conflict set in the USA during a time where domestic political tensions are at an all-time high?"
Fair enough, I suppose the answer would be "because we're having conversations like this about it". It prompts questions and discussion, and turns the lens on ourselves (in a loose sense; I am not actually American). They did just make Lee, a biopic about photographer Lee Miller and World War Two, and as far as I can tell there was nowhere near the level of discourse around that film.
But these are all just my opinions, at the end of the day.
another round mentioned!!!!!!!
You’ve inspired me to watch some good movies this week. Worst Person is rentable on the library app!
I thought Red Rocket was great, my girlfriend did not. Triangle of Sadness would be in my top ten. I thought Licorice Pizza was quite good for such a low-key movie.
Licorice Pizza is great!