PROFESSOR'S PICKS: 5 Films I Missed in 2020

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, I am kind of cheating with this one. The original March release date actually passed with little ceremony for me as I wasn’t yet on the Quiet Place train. I wouldn’t even see the original 2018 film until a few months into quarantine season. (What can I say? Horror films are a harder sell for me.) Eventually the universe corrected itself, and I found myself dying to see what happens next for the Abbot family.

This sequel takes place shortly after the events of the first film when the Abbot family must abandon the home that has kept them safe and brave the outside world. Krasinski, who returns to direct the sequel, has shared that where the first film was more a study of family, this sequel is interested in community and how far you will go to help your neighbor.

There’s a lot to be said about how A Quiet Place innovates many conventions and ideologies of the horror genre (hm, someone should write an essay about that . . .) and this follow-up has every opportunity to continue in that tradition.

2. In the Heights

~~June 26, 2020~~ June 11, 2021

My reverence for the musical genre is well-documented on this blog. It’s so rare that we see Hollywood spend their dollars on a musical (it’s even rarer to see one led by a minority cast), and just as often as not, the results range from passable to Cats.

I myself am familiar with the source musical mostly by reputation, having only listened to one song in fulness (I prefer to experience a soundtrack for the first time in its narrative context). But I understand In the Heights takes place in a New York district where opportunities are low but community is rich. This is a contrast to La La Land or most musicals where the setting is the red carpeted streets of LA. When the music doesn't come from the sparkle of Hollywood tinsel, it can only come from the story itself. From what we've seen so far, this offering seems to understand that. The trailer displayed an array of snapshots of a vibrant, kinetic, lyrical world where, indeed, the streets themselves are made of music. (Why aren't there more dance numbers in swimming pools?) Maybe Hollywood won’t drop the golden egg this time.

3. The Tomorrow War

~~December 25, 2020~~ July 23, 2021

The Tomorrow War was originally going to be Paramount gifting us a summer movie for Christmas, now it gets to be just a straight summer movie.

Originally titled "Ghost Draft," this blockbuster imagines a future war between mankind and an alien threat. So overwhelming is the invasion that the future enlists the help of the past, drawing in our main character (Chris Pratt, also a producer on this film) from our time to fight in this war. The cast is rounded out by a vast ensemble, enlisting Yvonne Strahovski, JK Simmons, Seychelle Gabriel, Keith Powers, and Mary Lynn Rajskub, among others.

As someone who wants the signature films of the 2020s to amount to more than just remakes and spin-offs of films of the 1990s, I try to take special interest whenever studios gamble on a non-franchise project. The medium’s creative-lifeblood obviously hinges on more than the returns of any single film, but in a post-coronavirus landscape where major studios like Warner Bros and Disney are actively shifting their model to favor streaming over theaters, the success of an original property like The Tomorrow War should be of special interest to all of us. Can Chris Pratt save the future of humanity? And theaters? We’ll have to wait until this summer to find out.

(EDIT: Okay, maybe I spoke too soon.)

4. BIOS

~~October 2, 2020~~ ~~April 16, 2021~~ August 13, 2021

First announced in October 2017, the film follows “a robot that lives on a post-apocalyptic earth. Built to protect the life of his dying creator’s beloved dog, it learns about love, friendship, and the meaning of human life.” Tom Hanks’ casting as the robot’s inventor was announced alongside the synopsis. The cast is rounded out by Caleb Landry-Jones as the robot with Skeet Ullrich, Samira Wiley, and others.

While few plot details have been revealed, the logline proves tantalizing. The desolation of a post-apocalyptic setting seems a stark contrast to the pathos inherent in a story about a robot learning to care for another living thing. I imagine the final product as something between Children of Men and The Art of Racing in the Rain. There are all sorts of directions the filmmakers could go with that, and I’m eager to see any of them.

5. Raya and the Last Dragon

~~November 25, 2020~~ March 5, 2021

I set my movie calendar by Disney and Pixar titles the way most audiences do with Marvel or Star Wars films, but in between the company’s conquest over the last few years their animated offerings have gotten lost in the shuffle. Walt Disney Animation Studios hasn’t released a non-franchise film since Moana back in 2016. (Imagine a four-year wait between Frozen and Big Hero 6.) Raya and the Last Dragon brings an end to that drought.

Drawing inspiration from southeast-Asian cultures, Raya and the Last Dragon tells the story of a young warrior (voiced by Kelly Marie Tran) on a quest to find Sisu, the last dragon (voiced by Awkwafina), who holds the key to restoring peace to her divided kingdom.

Raya won’t be the studio’s next musical (audiences will have to wait until Disney’s November offering, Encanto, for that) but the genre does catch my interest. The movie has been billed as a kung-fu adventure film a la House of Flying Daggers set against a fantastical backdrop that animation so effortlessly provides. Disney’s marketing campaign has yet to start, but so far all signs point to Raya being Disney’s next animated champion.

One of the hardest things about 2020 for me has been the waiting. The waiting, the waiting, the waiting. We're not quite out of the woods yet, but we may only have to wait a little longer. Whatever we've missed out on these last several months, we can take some consolation that there are good times still to be had. Raise a glass to 2021.

--The Professor

Honorable Mentions: Jungle Cruise, Black Widow, West Side Story, The Batman, Death on the Nile, The Woman in the Window, Sound of Freedom

Comments

REVIEW: The Fall Guy

Someone show me another business as enthusiastic for its own self-deprecation as Hollywood. From affectionate self-parodies like Singin' in the Rain to darker reflections of the movie business like Sunset Boulevard , Hollywood has kind of built its empire on ridicule of itself. And why wouldn't it? Who wouldn't want to pay admission to feel like they're in on the secret: that movie magic is just smoke and mirrors? That silver screen titans actually have the most fragile egos? But these are not revelations, and I don't think they are intended to be. Hollywood doesn't really care about displaying its own pettiness and internal rot because it knows that all just makes for good entertainment. A t some point, this all stops feeling like a joke that we, the audience, are in on. At some point, it all stops feeling less like a confession and more like gloating. At what point, then, does the joke turn on us, the enablers of this cesspool whose claim to

Finding Nemo: The Thing About Film Criticism ...

Film is a mysterious thing. It triggers emotional responses in the audience that are as surprising as they are all-encompassing. As a medium, film is capable of painting stunning vistas that feel like they could only come to life behind the silver screen, but many of the most arresting displays on film arise from scenes that are familiar, perhaps even mundanely so. It’s an artform built on rules and guidelines–young film students are probably familiar with principles like the rule of thirds or the Kuleshov effect–but someone tell me the rule that explains why a line like “We’ll always have Paris,” just levels you. There are parts of the film discussion that cannot be anticipated by a formula or a rulebook, and for that we should be grateful. Arrival (2016) But the thing about film–and especially film criticism–is that film critics are not soothsayers. Their means of divining the artistic merit of a movie are not unknowable. There are patterns and touchstones that

REVIEW: All Together Now

The unceasing search for new acting talent to mine continues with Netflix's new film, All Together Now, which premiered this week on the service. This film features Moana alum Auli'i Cravalho as Amber Appleton, a bright but underprivileged high schooler with high aspirations. Netflix's new film plays like a trial run for Cravalho to see if this Disney starlet can lead a live-action film outside the Disney umbrella. Cravalho would need to play against a slightly stronger narrative backbone for us to know for sure, but early signs are promising. All Together Now follows Amber Appleton, a musically talented teen overflowing with love for her classmates, her coworkers, and her community. Amber reads like George Bailey reincarnated as a high school girl, throwing herself into any opportunity to better the world around her, like hosting her high school's annual for benefit Variety Show. But Amber's boundless optimism conceals an impoverished home life. She and her moth

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Clash of the Titans

Anyone else remember the year we spent wondering if we would ever again see a movie that wasn't coming out in 3D? T hat surge in 3D films in the early months of 2010 led to a number of questionable executive decisions. We saw a lot of films envisioned as standard film experiences refitted into the 3D format at the eleventh hour. In the ten years since, 3D stopped being profitable because audiences quickly learned the difference between a film that was designed with the 3D experience in mind and the brazen imitators . Perhaps the most notorious victim of this trend was the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans . Why am I suddenly so obsessed with the fallout of a film gone from the public consciousness ten years now? Maybe it's me recently finishing the first season of Blood of Zeus on Netflix and seeing so clearly what Clash of the Titans very nearly was. Maybe it's my evolving thoughts on the Percy Jackson movies and the forthcoming Disney+ series inevit

American Beauty is Bad for your Soul

The 1990s was a relatively stable period of time in American history. We weren’t scared of the communists or the nuclear bomb, and social unrest for the most part took the decade off. The white-picket fence ideal was as accessible as it had ever been for most Americans. Domesticity was commonplace, mundane even, and we had time to think about things like the superficiality of modern living. It's in an environment like this that a movie like Sam Mendes' 1999 film American Beauty can not only be made but also find overwhelming success. In 1999 this film was praised for its bold and honest insight into American suburban life. The Detroit News Film Critic called this film “a rare and felicitous movie that brings together a writer, director and company perfectly matched in intelligence and sense of purpose” and Variety hailed it as “a real American original.” The film premiered to only a select number of screens, but upon its smashing success was upgraded to

REVIEW: ONWARD

The Walt Disney Company as a whole seems to be in constant danger of being overtaken by its own cannibalistic tendency--cashing in on the successes of their past hits at the expense of creating the kinds of stories that merited these reimaginings to begin with. Pixar, coming fresh off a decade marked by a deluge of sequels, is certainly susceptible to this pattern as well. Though movies like Inside Out and Coco have helped breathe necessary life into the studio, audiences invested in the creative lifeblood of the studio should take note when an opportunity comes for either Disney or Pixar animation to flex their creative muscles. This year we'll have three such opportunities between the two studios. [EDIT: Okay, maybe not. Thanks, Corona.] The first of these, ONWARD directed by Dan Scanlon, opens this weekend and paints a hopeful picture of a future where Pixar allows empathetic and novel storytelling to guide its output. The film imagines a world where fantasy creatur

REVIEW: Belfast

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the world needs more black and white movies. The latest to answer the call is Kenneth Branagh with his semi-autobiographical film, Belfast . The film follows Buddy, the audience-insert character, as he grows up in the streets of Belfast, Ireland in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Though Buddy and his family thrive on these familiar streets, communal turmoil leads to organized violence that throws Buddy's life into disarray. What's a family to do? On the one hand, the father recognizes that a warzone is no place for a family. But to the mother, even the turmoil of her community's civil war feels safer than the world out there. Memory feels safer than maturation. As these films often go, the plot is drifting and episodic yet always manages to hold one's focus. Unbrushed authenticity is a hard thing to put to film, and a film aiming for just that always walks a fine line between avant-garde and just plain

The Great Movie Conquest of 2022 - January

This fool's errand is the fruition of an idea I've wanted to try out for years now but have always talked myself out of. Watching a new movie a day for one full year is a bit of a challenge for a number of reasons, not in the least of which being that I'm the kind of guy who likes to revisit favorites. As a film lover, I'm prone to expanding my circle and watching films I haven't seen before, I've just never watched a new film every day for a year. So why am I going to attempt to pull that off at all, and why am I going to attempt it now? I've put off a yearlong commitment because it just felt like too much to bite off. One such time, actually, was right when I first premiered this blog. You know ... the start of 2020? The year where we had nothing to do but watch Netflix all day? Time makes fools of us all, I guess. I doubt it's ever going to be easier to pull off such a feat, so why not now? Mostly, though, I really just want to help enliven my

Nights of Cabiria: What IS Cinema?

So here’s some light table talk … what is cinema? What is it for ? On the one hand, film is the perfect medium to capture life as it really is. With the roll of the camera, you can do what painters and sculptors had been trying to do for centuries and record the sights and sounds of a place exactly as they are. On the other hand, film is the perfect medium for dreaming. Is there any other place besides the movies where the human heart is so unfettered, so open to fantasy? If you’ve studied film formally, this is probably one of the first discussions you had in your Intro to Film theory course, in a class that may have forced you to read about Dziga Vertov and his theory about film and the Kino-eye (another day, another day …) In some ways, we could use basically any of thousands of cinematic works to jumpstart this discussion, but I have a particular film in mind. The lens I want to explore this idea through today is not only a strong example of strong cinematic cra

Mamma Mia: Musicals Deserve Better

Earlier this week, Variety ran a piece speculating on the future of musicals and the roles they may play in helping a post-corona theater business bounce back. After all, this year is impressively stacked with musicals. In addition to last month's fantastic "In the Heights," we've got a half dozen or so musicals slated for theatrical release. Musical master, Lin Manuel-Miranda expresses optimism about the future of musicals, declaring “[While it] hasn’t always been the case, the movie musical is now alive and well.” I'm always hopeful for the return of the genre, but I don't know if I share Lin's confidence that the world is ready to take musicals seriously. Not when a triumph like "In the Heights" plays to such a small audience. (Curse thee, "FRIENDS Reunion," for making everyone renew their HBO Max subscription two weeks before In the Heights hits theaters.) The narrative of “stop overthinking it, it’s just a musical,”

Films and Feelings

Search This Blog