Films and Feelings

                  Given the peculiar nature of this year’s run of movies, neither a traditional “Best Films of 2020” nor a traditional “Most Anticipated Films of 2021” feel appropriate. Instead, I’m going to do something in between: A spotlight of movies that I was looking forward to in 2020 that have now been bumped into a 2021 release date. There are other films set to release in 2021 that I have on my radar (most of them simply premiering later in 2021 than originally planed), but here are five films that I missed this year in 2020. This installment of Professor’s Picks is partway between a memorial and a forecast. Weep with me, celebrate with me, whichever jives with your inner truth. Anyways . . . five movies long eager to graduate from my list of anticipated movies.   1. A Quiet Place: Part II March 20, 2020   April 23, 2021   September 17, 2021  May 28, 2021 Admittedly,...

Pixar's latest film, Soul , dropped on Disney+ Christmas day, another regrettable casualty of the virus. This time around, we follow a hopeful musician bursting with enthusiasm. Music is an oddly appropriate metaphor for the film: both certainly touch the outer rim of mankind's emotional faculty, but good luck summarizing the experience to your friends. Joe Gardner is a music teacher at a public school whose enthusiasm for music is spilling out of the walls of his classroom. Opportunity strikes Joe the same day that misfortune does, and a fatal accident lands him in a celestial plane of existence known as "The Great Before," where souls are developed and finessed before being sent to earth to experience human existence. Joe is saddled with mentoring 22, a soul sapling who has settled in The Great Before for several hundred years and has no intention of ever giving mortality a chance. But in 22, Joe sees a chance to return back to earth and fulfill his purpose if he ca...

Wonder Woman, the superhero we need this year, hits HBO Max and theaters today with the hotly anticipated sequel Wonder Woman 1984 . Wonder Woman (2017) was itself a bold statement about representation. By the end of the film there's no doubt about what sermon Patty Jenkins (director) wanted to deliver with Diana Prince's second round, and it is a stirring thing to say . . . though I'd be dishonest to not admit the film does take a few shortcuts to get there.  After her peace quest from the first film, Diana has spent the last sixty years sanctifying her life as a mission of love for humanity, and her missions, as far as we can tell, have been largely absent of vengeful gods or alien warlords. She mostly spends her intervening days yearning for the love she had with Steve Trevor, her lover who met a fiery end in the first movie. The plot is set in motion when a mundane artifact with enigmatic origins is dropped into the hands of the Smithsonian. "I wouldn't value i...

    The further I dive into classical Hollywood, the more taken I am by all its fascinating contradictions.  The Mark of Zorro (1920)     This wasn't, for example, a period in American history which we think of as being kind toward women or recognizing their autonomy. I think the collective point of reference most people have for women in old movies is the sort of hero's trophy who waits around for the guy to swoop in and carry her out of the mess she has made for herself, and that image has some basis in how Hollywood itself behaved.  But film history covers a lot more than just that one type.                 The Hays Code prohibited illicit sexual material on film, among other things, and was in effect until the early 1960s. Because sexual content was greatly monitored and regulated, female characters weren’t really objectified--at least not in the way we'd understand it today. (And it...