So yesterday I talked about the films that surprised me in a good way… today’s the other list. The ones that I had some hopes for that just did not meet them. Not that I necessarily disliked them, but they just felt like they didn’t achieve what I was hoping they’d achieve, to varying degrees of disappointment. I’ll specify just how each of the films disappointed me, but in each one’s own way, it disappointed me. Again, I’ll specify that the list is only based on my own personal opinions, before you get all butt hurt about me putting something on here (hence the word “Me” in the title).

Here are the films that disappointed me most in 2020: Read the rest of this page »

This is a list that’s slightly harder in a pandemic year, when a lot of the calendar was pushed to next year, but it’s not impossible, since if you’re gonna try to watch every movie that comes out, you’re gonna have some ones that you go into thinking will be one thing and come out going, “You know, that was way better than I thought.” I think the variance will probably be smaller this year, and the lack of big budget blockbusters will hurt it, but overall, I think I was able to find some movies that did, to some extent, made me go, “Oh, that was better than I was expecting.”

To put a finer point on it: this is mainly about why the films surprised me. The fact that they’re here is an implicit recommendation to go see them, and they count just as much as the Hidden Gems or any other list that I’ve put out around this one. I’m just trying to turn people on to some good movies here.

As usual, I’ll remind you that this list is entirely subjective and based solely on me and my own personal opinions on what I thought the films were gonna be versus what I actually thought of them. That said, here are the films that felt like pleasant surprises to me from 2020: Read the rest of this page »

And so the lists begin. In a year like this, I feel like these lists are actually more important than they usually are (even though some of them will be made incredibly more difficult without having the theatrical experience and audience reaction to draw on), especially this one. Given that for the majority of this year, all the films that mattered essentially came out on VOD, a streaming service or PVOD, I’m guessing most people didn’t do a whole lot of movie watching. Maybe you watched some stuff here and there, but I’m thinking most people, if they could overcome the general dread and anger from the social and political events of 2020 and bring themselves to actually watch things, probably spent the majority of the year catching up on stuff they’d been meaning to watch from previous years and a lot of TV. Which means that you can use a list like this to tell you about all the cool stuff you probably missed.

Normally this list comes before my month wrap-up lists, so if you actually read those (doubtful, but possible), you’ll be aware of my feelings on most of these. But it’s still nice to have them out there. The next few lists (Films That Surprised Me/Disappointed Me and the Overrated and Underrated lists) are trickier, since they are more based on a shared viewing experience and reaction, but this one isn’t. So let’s just focus on this one.

Though I will say — I endeavor to only use films on one list. So if you see a movie on this list, you won’t see it on the, say, Underseen list. I try to spread the wealth as much as I can (with the possible exception being the Overrated list. That feels like it can afford a double entry if that’s how I feel).

Anyway, here’s just a sampling of some films I thought were really good and worth seeing that maybe you might not have seen or heard of: Read the rest of this page »