Originally published on 15 April 2021.
Last updated on 12 January 2022.
After I stopped writing my yearly “Best Of” articles in 2014, I still wanted to update my friends on what I watched and give some comments and recommendations. Since 2017 I’ve been giving quarterly updates on Facebook, and since Spring 2020 I’m also publishing them here. Below are the posts covering 2021.
As always, you can find the entire list of all the movies, series and documentaries I’ve seen here.
2021 Q1
Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan (2021)
Dangal (2016)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Heartbreak High (1994, Season 1)
History of Swear Words (2021)
The Great Wall (2016)
The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
The Social Dilemma (2020)
Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark (2017)
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)
Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan: Documentary about the end of the Sengoku period (~1551–1616 CE) in Japan. It mixes talking historians with re-enactment. The historians are shot in black-and-white, and the re-enactment is heavily desaturated, so you know it’s Serious Business. Interesting but sometimes a bit hard to follow and dry.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) on Godzilla: King of the Monsters: If you like Big Monster movies (like 2014’s Godzilla), you’ll like this one. There’s a plot, there are some scientists running around (among them Stranger Things’ Millie “Eleven” Bobby Brown), but nobody really cares what pseudoscience they’re spouting, or how big the plot holes they’re creating are. This movie is about a bunch of big monsters (“Titans”) beating each other up and it delivers that in beautiful shots.
Heartbreak High: Wrapped up the first season — read more about my thoughts here.
History of Swear Words: Nicolas Cage presents six episodes on swear words like “fuck” and “shit”. Scientists and writers deliver some real information, while comedians (like Nikki Glaser and Sarah Silverman) provide jokes and asides. Funny, fast and breezy, you’ll probably forget about it the moment you turn off your TV.
Lupin: Or, at least the first part of the first season. Omar Sy plays Assane Diop, a “gentleman thief” who tries to take revenge for wrongful conviction (and subsequent suicide) of his father. He’s heavily inspired by the fictional character of Arsène Lupin, a character I only knew from a Miyazaki Hayao-directed anime.
Sy is a charismatic powerhouse, the backstory is slowly but expertly revealed. There’s drama, there are some laughs, the tension slowly builds… and then there’s the mid-season cliffhanger. It’s probably better to wait until the rest of the season is released.
The Great Wall: You probably didn’t know, but the Great Wall of China was not built against hordes of nomadic “barbarians”, but against hordes of supernatural creatures. With a premise as ridiculous as this, it’s hard to take the movie seriously. Matt Damon is a bit of a blank action hero in this one and Pedro Pascal doesn’t get enough to do. The action shots are lovely, though, the female lead (Tian Jing) is convincing (and her character is very capable, no damsel in distress) and Willem Dafoe chews scenery as usual.
The Queen’s Gambit (2020) on The Queen’s Gambit: This was Netflix’s big hit last year, based on a 1983 novel. With all the hype surrounding it (there was an actual spike in sale of chess sets, for instance) I decided to check it out. While I enjoyed it, I’m not entirely sure why this series, out of so many, blew up.
Set against a backdrop of the Fifties and Sixties, Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an orphan who finds out that she’s a chess prodigy. With singular focus she rises to the top, distracted “only” by her addiction to tranquilisers and alcohol. Her character is a splendid mix of inner strength and vulnerability, of assuredness and self-doubt, of awkward social skills and perfectly-styled glamour.
I knew Anya Taylor-Joy from her role as a gangster’s girlfriend in Peaky Blinders, but there she gets barely any screen time. Here she’s given the limelight and she takes it, commanding every scene with her presence, her acting and her luminous beauty.
Worth seeing just for her performance, but also for a feel-good sports story (where the lows are sure to be overcome) and the splendid production design.
The Social Dilemma: Even if you think you know how social media work, and are immune to their charms… I think this still is a documentary you should see. In it, various industry insiders are interviewed about their work, how social media actually work, and what you give them if you’re using them. These interview snippets are mixed with a fictional, dramatised story about a family whose children fall prey to social media (and those who use them as a tool to influence people). This is not an objective look at the phenomenon, it’s very much a biased wake-up call.
Trevor Noah: Afraid of the Dark: Some great bits by Noah, using his skills to imitate people’s voices and manners. Yes, he heavily uses (racial) stereotypes, but there are some really sharp remarks made along the way… so that makes it kind of OK?
Dangal: Before watching this, I hadn’t watched any Bollywood movie, ever. So I asked my Indian team member for recommendations and these were among them. Dangal is an expertly crafted sports movie, where the main character is a national champion in wrestling. He wants a son so he can train him and make him compete on the international level. Of course, he “only” gets four daughters. So he decides to train two of them, going against traditions. From there on out you can probably sketch most of the movie as it indeed follows the sports movie template, even though it’s based on a true story. Doesn’t matter, the acting is very good, the vibe is positive, the colours luscious.
Zindage Na Milegi Dobara (2011) on Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara: The promo picture on Netflix for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (which translates to “Life Doesn’t Come Again”) seemed to promise a The Hangover ripoff, but it’s so much more. Three childhood friends reunite before one of them will get married. They go to Spain and make a road trip. Along the way, each friend will choose a dangerous sport for the group to partake in.
As it behooves a road movie, it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey and how it changes the travelers. The fiancé learns he’s not ready yet, the clown confronts his family’s past and the materialistic workaholic falls in love with a free spirited beauty.
Again, the movie mostly follows a template but it’s (again) executed with such craft and joy that I was defenseless and fully swept along. Charismatic and beautiful leads (Hrithik Roshan and Katrina Kaif as the workaholic/free spirit couple are ridiculously good-looking), magnificent scenery (Spain in summer, ¡me encanta!), gorgeous cinematography, fun songs: this is my recommendation for this quarter.
The trailer is without subtitles but they’re not really needed:
Rewatch-Watch
Probably triggered by the upcoming adaptation by Denis Villeneueve, I’ve been re-reading Frank Herbert’s Dune books, and I rewatched the 2000 miniseries. The books, especially Dune itself, the one that started it all, still hold up very well. I re-read the book every few years and it never disappoints, but I honestly can’t tell anymore if it’s good.
Frank Herbert’s Dune (as it is named on the DVD cover) is an adaptation rather different from the 1984 movie by David Lynch. That version tried to stuff the epic novel into a 136 minute movie and while I really like the result, it’s barely comprehensible for those who haven’t read the book. A mini-series makes much more sense, as it has the runtime (4½ hours) to let the character and the plot breathe.
In a lot of ways, this adaptation is much more faithful, using more scenes from the book. Some of the deviations make sense (Princess Irulan is a non-presence in the book and her role gets beefed up here) while some are really strange. The production design is more realistic, less outlandish or glossy. Unfortunately some of the CGI is really showing its age as it is rubbish by today’s standards.
The biggest name in the cast is William Hurt, which makes the characters feel more immersed. In Lynch’s Dune there’s always the question “why are Special Agent Cooper, Jean-Luc Picard and Sting in this movie?” I can’t say that any of the actors made a big impression on me: they’re mostly adequate to OK.
The “groundedness” and more restrained performances mean that there’s also less memorable scenes, be they amazing or terrible. All in all, a perfectly adequate adaptation.
2021 Q2
Annihilation (2018)
Arjen Lubach Live (2019)
Baahubali: The Beginning (2015)
Creating the Queen’s Gambit (2021)
Dota: Dragon's Blood (Season 1)
Hamilton (2020)
Inferno (2016)
Jason and the Argonauts (1963)
Marvel One-Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer (2011)
Marvel One-Shot: Item 47 (2012)
Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant (2011)
Money, Explained (2021)
On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Promising Young Woman (2020)
ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads (2019)
The Crown (2016, Season 4)
Ultimate Iron Man (2010)
Annihilation (2018) on Annihilation: one of those “what did I just see?” movies. Written (based on a book by Jeff VanderMeer) and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina), this weird movie comes close to Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space in some ways. I won’t tell anything because you should experience the twists yourself, and decide for yourself what Garland wants you to take away from it. Worth the price of admission just for the beautiful and eerie production design. (“The price of admission” being an active Netflix subscription, but you catch my drift.)
Arjen Lubach Live: I was getting a bit bummed by the American stand-up stuff, so I moved to… Dutch stand-up. I always thought that Lubach was best taken in small doses, but he can easily carry a full hour by himself.
Baahubali: The Beginning is a South-Indian mythological epic. Starring Prahbas in a dual role as the hero Mahendra Baahubali, a foundling who has godlike powers and fights to discover and claim his birthright, and his father. It was the most expensive Indian film at the time of release and it shows. Beautifully shot and bombastic in all the good ways, this is an EPIC alright. However, it’s also very much a part 1 of 2: the movie stops abruptly after 2 hours and 39 minutes and leaves you with many questions. One of them being: “Why is part 2 (prosaically named Baahubali: The Conclusion) not on Netflix, like its predecessor is?”
Another question: why does his love interest, a fierce and capable resistance fighter, forget all that the moment she meets Baahubali?
Creating the Queen’s Gambit: a breezy behind-the-scenes which doesn’t really offer much insight in the hit TV series. Skippable.
Dota: Dragon’s Blood: an anime based on one of my favourite computer games — what a time to be alive. The lore of the game is obscure and made up on the go and the anime wisely starts a new storyline with some more relatable characters, so anybody can watch it and make sense out of it. The voice-acting is great, bringing the characters to life. The main duo (Davion the Dragon Knight and Mirana, Priestess of the Moon) have a nice chemistry and give us something relatable to ground us while there is magic and dragons and gods running around. The plot is… kind of haphazard and all over the place, hinting at a lot of things that could be explained in the second season. I don’t care, I just want more Marci, for she is the best sidekick ever created.
Hamilton (2020) on Hamilton: apparently this musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda was a runaway success on Broadway. I mostly didn’t notice it but one of my friends corrected this oversight. Thanks! As Hamilton is a musical about one of the lesser-known Founding Fathers of the United States, it’s easy to see why I skipped it. But it has rap and hip-hop and jokes and a (mostly) non-white cast and history. I mean, there’s a rap battle between Founding Fathers, what else do you want? Only two drawbacks are that it’s rather long (2h40) and that it’s very intense. There’s barely any moment where you can let things sink in — from the get-go the cast and songs are firing on all cylinders.
Inferno: Entertaining movie with the always charming Tom Hanks (who can do this in his sleep, and partially does so here) and Felicity Jones. Blessed with a great supporting cast (Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen) and some awkward expository dialogue explaining the Assassin’s Creed-lite plot, this is a nice popcorn movie. The vision sequences are great, as is the lavish set for the climax. If you’ve been to Florence, Venice or Istanbul, you get bonus “I’ve been there!” moments.
Jason and the Argonauts: a lovely swords-and-sandals movie with special effects (amazing stop-motion animations for the monsters) by Ray Harryhausen. Very much a Part 1, but unfortunately Part 2 never materialised.
Marvel One-ShotsThe Consultant, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer, Item 47: I’m pretty sure I watched these when they were released but apparently I didn’t list them. Still perfectly fun shorts to tie the early Marvel movies together.
Money, Explained: another great series of five explainers by Vox. Made me really happy that the Netherlands doesn’t handle study costs the way the USA do.
On the Basis of Sex: Felicity Jones is here playing the late Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the beginning of her career that would bring her eventually to the Supreme Court. As with practically every biopic, the movie takes liberties with the historical facts. Still, an interesting look into the women’s liberation movement and one of its leading figures.
Promising Young Woman (2020) on Promising Young Woman: Carey Mulligan plays the titular, broken protagonist in a twisty thriller that probably could only be released in a post-#MeToo era and is all the more effective for it.
ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads: explains the myth of blues guitarist Robert Johnson who allegedly sold his soul to the devil in return for being Really Good at playing the guitar. Lovely production design.
The Crown: Season 4 delivers what we expect from this series: beautiful sets, great acting, bombastic plotlines about royals that are sometimes hard to like. Seriously, this version of Prince Charles is all kinds of terrible. Gillian Anderson and Emma Corrin do a great job of portraying Margaret Thatcher and Lady Diana. There are many episodes that are hard to watch in which Princess Diana is treated in an absolutely horrid manner by the assorted royals, and everybody knows that her marriage with Charles is a bad idea, but it still goes ahead. The more we get to the present day, the more the series deviates from the known facts.
Ultimate Iron Man: pleasant making-of of Iron Man 2. In between the pats on the backs that everybody gives each other and themselves, you can pick up some nice trivia and a confirmation that making movies is complicated. It’s part of the Extras that the movie comes with on Disney+, along with a bunch of deleted scenes.
Rewatch-Watch
Free To Play
A documentary released in 2014, about the Dota 2 world championships held in 2011. Following three players in their quest to be the best in the world at this particular esport. While the details might have aged, the sentiments have not. Maybe most surprising is how many of the players are still around, given that in esports, you’re pretty much old if you’re above 25.
Children of Dune
After rewatching the first Dune series, I was wondering why I’d remembered it as good. I mean, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. After watching the sequel series, it was clear why. Apparently I’d projected my opinion of the sequel to the original. Children of Dune is an adaptation of the second and third books in the saga (Dune Messiah and Children of Dune), and improves upon the first series in pretty much every way. There are some changes in the casting, most of them at least as good as the original actors. Susan Sarandon and a young James McAvoy (Professor X in the later X-Men movies) are in this. Even Alec Newman as Paul Atreides is now convincing. The special effects, no longer visibly weighed down by terrible technology, are adequate. The story is a nicely streamlined version of the plot of the books, not hampered by the tonal shifts that the books have between them. There are changes between books and series, but nothing too jarring.
When I started my Disney+ subscription I was looking forward to WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and the then-upcoming Loki. Before that, I thought to slowly ease into the MCU again with Season 4 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. After a few episodes I was kind of lost where the timeline was, looked it up and apparently was halfway through Phase 2. “Let’s refresh my memories and watch Phase 2 again!” So I re-watched Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man. OK, cool, good stuff, but then I wanted to revisit how it all began… so Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk (which is not on Disney+, by the by), Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America: the First Avenger followed. Which is a rather haphazard way of traversing the time-line and in retrospect I should just have started at the beginning!
The Phase 1 movies are mostly good. Even the first two acts of The Incredible Hulk are good, but then it is brought down by the slugfest-heavy, plodding third act. The Iron Mans are nice with some scenes that peak at great. A lot of it is carried by the great cast and their chemistry (lead by Downey and Paltrow). What didn’t age so well is the way how Stark treats women as disposable commodities, or how Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow is basically only there to look hot (until she gets her fighting scenes). Thor is fun, but again the leading lady role is lacklustre — not even Natalie Portman can do much with the material given. Also: so many Dutch angles!
I feel that with Captain America it really became apparent that Marvel was onto something: their superhero movie could do a 1940s secret forces movie about a walking flag, and make it work.
2021 Q3
A Brothers' Journey: Thor & Loki (2014)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013, Season 4-5)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot (2016)
Avengers: Age of Ultron - From the Inside Out: Making of Avengers - Age of Ultron (2015)
Black Widow (2021)
Bones (2005, Season 6)
Captain America: On Set with Anthony Mackie Cut the Check! (2014)
Captain America: The First Avenger - Outfitting a Hero (2011)
Captain America: The First Avenger - The Transformation (2011)
Captain America: The Road to Civil War (2016)
Doctor Strange: A Strange Transformation (2017)
Dune (2021)
Guide to the Galaxy with James Gunn (2014)
I Am 'Iron Man' (2008)
Iron Man 3 Unmasked (2013)
Iron Man: The Actor's Process (2008)
Iron Man: The Road to Civil War (2016)
Loki: The God of Mischief (2014)
Making of an Ant-Sized Heist: A How-to Guide (2015)
Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter (2013)
On the Frontline: An Inside Look at Captain America's Battlegrounds (2014)
Scoring 'Thor: The Dark World' (2014)
Team Thor (2016)
Team Thor: Part 2 (2017)
The Butterfly Circus (2009)
The Expanse (2015, Season 3)
The Intergalactic Visual Effects of 'Guardians of the Galaxy' (2014)
The Invincible 'Iron Man' (2009)
The Music of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 (2017)
WHIH News Front (2015, Season 1-2)
Wired: The Visual Effects of 'Iron Man' (2008)
This quarter’s list brings 3 seasons of TV series, a bunch of Marvel rewatching, a lot of “behind the scenes” / “making of” pieces accompanying that rewatching, and precious few new movies. Let’s dive in.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: After a rough first season AoS found its footing, and in Season 4 & 5 really delivered on its promise. Strictly speaking it’s a superhero show, but it doesn’t feel like that. Most of the regulars are “normals”: highly trained normals, but normals nonetheless. The budget isn’t large, so in some episodes there are a lot of drab corridors and grey industrial rooms. But when there’s CGI, it’s stellar and all the more appreciated.
Of course, that’s all irrelevant if there wasn’t a great overarching plot each season, and sympathetic characters interacting with each other. But especially Season 4 has a knock-out plot and the characters bouncing off of each other in interesting, unexpected but believable ways. Highly recommended, if you can stomach the lacklustre first season to get there.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot is a side-story for a specific character in Season 4, which is OK but only for completists. It’s basically half an episode cut into short snippets.
Black Widow: A belated instalment in the MCU — belated in at least three ways. Of course, the movie was delayed several times because of the pandemic. But even within the MCU timeline, this takes place after Civil War and before Infinity War, so it feels weird to revisit that time. Maybe most importantly: why did it take so long for Marvel to get a Black Widow solo movie out? Johansson’s Black Widow has been a very important part of the MCU ever since her introduction in Iron Man 2, and it was clear that Johansson can easily carry a movie as a leading lady. Supposedly former Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter blocked it until he was shuffled off. In the end, the movie has to serve both as an origin story for the character, and a set-up for her successor.
Bones: Some episodes in, I became rather convinced that I’d already seen Season 6, but my list showed no record so I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I watched it all (again) and much like Castle, it’s such comfort viewing. Likeable leads, a warm supporting cast, a lot of “crime of the week” and some attempts at an overarching storyline. It’s formulaic and rather predictable, but that’s sometimes what I want and this summer I needed it more than other times.
Dune (2021) on Dune: As mentioned earlier, I’m a big fan of the Frank Herbert book and the 1984 David Lynch adaptation, so it was with some trepidation that I went into this one. Villeneuve’s previous movie, Blade Runner 2049 was interesting and certainly visually impressive, but it felt as bit too in love with itself and its heady themes.
Villeneuve’s Dune continues the trend of being visually astounding, overwhelming the senses with beautiful vistas, beautiful sets and costumes. Absurdly good cast, few of which have anything worthwhile to do, unfortunately. Zendaya for example, is barely in it. The score by Hans Zimmer, never one for subtlety, hammers it all down.
That what was cut (mostly) makes sense, making the story more approachable for new-comers while losing relatively little for fans. (That said, there are two iconic scenes from the book not in the movie, and I personally missed them dearly. However, one of them would be very hard to translate to the screen, and the other one is important for a storyline that so far has not been touched upon.)
There’s some new material, which helps with getting to know the main characters. This is very much “Part One” as the movie abruptly ends.
The Butterfly Circus: This short movie was “homework” for a workshop/training I attended. Not expecting much, this turned out to be quite a charmer. In the Depression-era Dust Bowl, a man without limbs leaves one “freak show” travelling circus and joins another, hoping for a better life. Subtlety is for the weak, but there’s a lot packed into 20 minutes. It’s on Youtube.
The Expanse: The plot keeps thickening in The Expanse, with the many characters spreading out and crossing paths in unexpected ways, making it hard to summarise. So I won’t, and will just recommend it for its brilliant cast, its humour, the slow-burn mystery plot and the gorgeous visuals.
WHIH Newsfront: not a “making of” or “behind the scenes”, this bunch of short clips adds some background around Age of Ultron, Ant-Man and Civil War in the form of a faux news show by a supporting character from Iron Man. They’re fun but skippable, unless you’re a Marvel completionist. If you are, you can find it here.
Rewatch-Watch
The Avengers: It remains really good, actually. You don’t have to take my word for it, though. Above you’ll find Moviebob’s take on it.
Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2.: both deliver an ensemble space opera comedy with a surprisingly warm heart. Maybe the first movies where Marvel really leaned into the comedy.
Captain America: Civil War: Much better than I remember, with a believable difference in philosophies between the leads while doing a lot of table-setting for the rest of the MCU. Also much bigger role for T’Challa than I remembered.
Dr. Strange: “Iron Man but with a neurosurgeon instead of an arms dealer” is selling it short, but apart from the Inception-like visuals, there’s not that much to recommend this MCU movie over all the others.
Spider-Man: Homecoming: worth it for the “dad talk” scene alone, the high school movie is a welcome breather in the intense Phase 3 of the MCU.
Black Panther (2018) on Black Panther: apparently I never wrote down what I thought of this movie back when I saw it on release. I remember not being as hyped or wowed as the rest of the world, but then I’m not a Black person who finally saw a Black, aspirational superhero on the silver screen. (I had to add “aspirational” otherwise there’s Blade…) I also thought Chadwick Boseman was playing a bit of a boring T’Challa. Watching it again, two things stood out. Yes, the late Boseman’s T’Challa is “boring” if you compare him to the snarky motormouths like Tony Stark, Spider-Man or Dr. Strange — but he’s a grounded, confident character with a strong moral center, trying to be a good king. He also has a warm bond with the women in his life, who in some ways outshine him — which doesn’t bother him in the least because he’s confident in himself.
Everything else
All the other titles are (short) extras that accompany the Marvel movies on Disney+, together with deleted and extended scenes. I’m a glutton for this kind of background material like “making of” or “behind the scenes”, although I must admit that the Marvel extras are very much promotional puff pieces. It does shine a light on how much work making one of these is, though.
Be careful with watching them: whoever is in charge of adding them sometimes adds them to the wrong movies, spoiling later revelations. The deleted scenes are also not listed in any chronological order for the film, which makes it a very haphazard experience.
2022 Q4
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013, Season 6-7)
Avengers: Infinity War - Strange Alchemy (2018)
Avengers: Infinity War - The Mad Titan (2018)
Black Panther: The Warriors Within (2018)
Don't Look Up (2021)
From Page to Screen: A Roundtable Discussion (2018)
Getting in Touch with your Inner Thor (2018)
Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years - The Evolution of Heroes (2018)
No Time To Die (2021)
Reservation Dogs (2021, Season 1)
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
Stage Beauty (2004)
The Beatles: Get Back (2021)
The Darjeeling Limited (2007)
Thor: Finding Korg (2018)
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 6: a shorter, punchier season, it makes things a bit lighter after the oppressing seasons 4 and 5. The power level has steadily been climbing, so now we’re dealing with time and space travel as if they’re nothing special. Also climbing: the body count. Whoooo boy, it’s not a good time to be an unnamed agent in S.H.I.E.L.D.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013) on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., season 7: apparently the mission statement was “Let’s just have fun” and it shines through. Especially in the first few episodes, where the titular Agents end up in 1930s, ’50s and ’70s period pieces, complete with colourful costuming and lively set design. Then, after leaving the period pieces behind, we get to episode 9, “As I Have Always Been”, maybe the best execution of the Groundhog Day concept ever. Across the season, the time-travelling plot gets a bit pretzel-y at certain points, but the shout-outs and references to earlier seasons are a delight for those of us that stayed with the show from the beginning. It wraps up most of the many storylines and gives us closure to a 136-episode run.
Don’t Look Up: Adam McKay (The Big Short) brings a satire of the climate crisis and the inattention of the media (and the big public), and the greed of big tech. Except that it’s not about the climate crisis, it’s about two astronomers who discover a comet that’ll smash into earth in 6 months. Subtlety in Hollywood is, once again, for cowards. It’s funny, the star-studded cast is having fun, and there are some sharp lines and scenes — but it never goes any further.
No Time To Die: Daniel Craig is my favourite Bond, but I’ve come to realise that that’s mostly based on Casino Royale. The other movies are less and less interesting. (Don’t ask me anything about Spectre, because I barely remember it.) No Time To Die has good action, and its ending is a (surprisingly) emotional send-off for this Bond. But the movie isn’t just long (2h43m), it also feels long. Everything is heavy and dreary. We’re asked to care for Léa Seydoux’s Madeleine, but she’s barely a character. Only when we go to Cuba there’s some levity and chemistry, when Ana de Armas’ Paloma enters the field. Unfortunately, we quickly leave Cuba and her behind.
Reservation Dogs: Co-created and co-written by Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit) this down-to-earth (well, except for the clumsy ancestor spirit) comedy series follows a group of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma. The dry wit and outstanding performances make this an easy recommendation.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: It took a while but Marvel finally followed up on the promise of their and Netflix’s Iron Fist and delivered a martial arts fantasy movie. It’s not Iron Fist (which has a problematic set-up, what with the “rich white boy being the bestest kung fu dude ever”), it’s Shang-Chi. Who? Yeah, I didn’t know of him either, but the movie works. The villain (Tony Leung as Xu Wenwu) is up there with Killmonger as a credible threat with believable motivations. Too bad the end fight is another heavily-CGI-ed slugfest. Upper mid-tier Marvel, I guess?
Stage Beauty: Claire Danes (My So-Called Life, Homeland) plays Maria, a theatre dresser in 17th-century London. This was a time when women were not allowed on the stage, and female roles were played by men. Our plucky protagonist dresses the most famous of these, Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup — Almost Famous, Watchmen), a bi-curious man she admires and lusts after. But then the law changes and female roles can now only be played by women, rendering Maria a star and Ned jobless. You wouldn’t know it from this summary, but it’s a surprisingly affecting movie, carried with grace by Danes and Crudup.
The Beatles: Get Back (2021) on The Beatles: Get Back: A documentary about the Fab Four’s “Get Back” sessions. For those of you, like me, who didn’t know about these, let me offer some background: The Beatles got together in January 1969 to write new songs and practice them over 3-ish weeks, then the songs would be performed live. All this would be filmed by multiple cameras, and a documentary would be created. The whole process didn’t go as smooth as that, to say the least: there were long-running tensions between the Beatles, George Harrison left the band (temporarily), the plans for the final concert morphed along the way (at one point a Roman amphitheatre in Tripoli is suggested as a venue), finally settling on the now-famous rooftop concert on top of Apple studios. The album and documentary (both named Let It Be) would be shelved until after Abbey Road was released, and after the Beatles had split up.
The movie Let It Be is supposedly a nasty piece of work, focusing on the negative parts of the process. Peter Jackson got access to all the recorded material and set out to bring the world a more balanced account of the process.
Of course, Jackson is not necessarily known for his brevity, and once the pandemic changed the plans for a theatrical release to a documentary to be streamed on Disney+, the project ballooned in size. In the end we now have three episodes, spanning almost 8 hours! And after the first hour, I was kind of bored. We see the Beatles and their retinue in a dreary movie studio, faffing about. Not much seems to happen, so we turned it off.
I later returned to the documentary and watched it anyway, spreading it over about 6 evenings. Get Back is made by a true Beatle fan, for fellow Beatle fans. You get to hang out with the Beatles for 8 hours! Some of it is indeed very boring: endless practice of songs, countless takes, listless variations. But there are a lot of gems, too: the Beatles working together on songs, creating them out of thin air, from tiny germ to full-fledged tracks. We see Billy Preston, a keyboardist and old friend of their Hamburg days, arrive and pull them out of their sulk. He’s just happy to be there and jam with the friggin’ Beatles, and his groove is infectious. We see John and Lennon write songs together, we see George mostly being ignored by Paul, we see Ringo being the foundational rock. We see Paul desperately trying to make things work, thrust into a leadership role that he never wanted. We see all of them struggle with communicating to each other, they’re friends who obviously mean a lot to each other. We also see them goof around, having fun, jamming on covers.
One of the peculiarities of the documentary is that Peter Jackson gives minimal context, and doesn’t necessarily try to make a point or take a position. The drawback is that if you’re not already familiar with the context, the ins and the outs of the Beatles in general and the last few years of the band in particular, it’s easy to miss the importance of certain scenes, remarks or conversation. There are no swelling violins when George leaves, he just does. There’s no triumphant crescendo when Paul hits upon the basics of “Get Back”, it just happens. When John arrives late, we don’t know whether that’s just who he is, because he’s spending time with Yoko Ono, or because he’s doing drugs. This light touch is unexpectedly refreshing and everybody will take something else from the documentary.
This is what streaming is made for: a painstaking and loving portrait of a topic made by an author taking their time. Did we need to see all of it? Do we need to see so many minutes of Heather Eastman (Linda’s daughter from a previous marriage) being an annoying kid? Do we need to see the 10th take of a song? Maybe not, and maybe 8 hours is too long. Maybe 6 or 7 would be more powerful. But it’s certainly fascinating stuff, and now that I read up a bit on the history of the Beatles, I kind of need to watch it again.
The Darjeeling Limited: a Wes Anderson film means a heavily stylised movie, with very deliberate and unnatural camera movements and perfect (symmetrical) shots. The three leads (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody, Jason Schwartzman) do a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting and thread the needle on being neurotic (even annoying) but also affecting. The Indian backdrop is lovely.
Rewatch-Watch
Finishing my effort on rewatching every Marvel Cinematic Universe to date:
Thor: Ragnarok: an amazing balance between heartfelt drama and silly jokes, the reinvention the franchise needed and still one of the best Marvel movies.
Avengers: Infinity War: a very dark movie where our heroes actually fail, and do so repeatedly. It doesn’t feel as dark as it could be because there are plenty of snarky one-liners and little jokes. If you start paying attention to that, it’s rather distracting. In a way, it feels as if the directors (the Russo brothers, following up from the Captain America movies) don’t trust the audience to bear with them and the gut-wrenching drama on screen.
Ant-Man and the Wasp: funny but kind of forgettable, a welcome bit of levity after the darkness of Infinity War
Avengers: Endgame: as I said before, this is how you do a victory lap.
Spider-Man: Far from Home: it’s a high-school comedy at its core so that means a certain amount of cringe. It unfortunately made the rewatch a lot less fun, especially because the “big twist” is already known.
Everything else
The other titles are again extras for the MCU movies, and are only interesting if you’re a massive fan.
