365 Films in 365 Days

Featured

The beginning

I am very good at starting new projects, I love setting up all the minutia and planning everything out, and then walking away and never finishing it. It’s kind of my MO. so this is not only a new project, but it’s a new movie watching project that gathers up all the old movie watching projects under its wing, hopefully to if not finish them, at least make them more finished!

365 Films in 365 Days is what it says, watching one film a day, minimum, for 2021. By the way, a day goes until I go to sleep, so if I start watching a film at midnight it counts for the previous day, not the next day, I don’t have to frantically start it at 11:59 PM. Of course, now we are not seeing films in the theater, but when we did I often went to midnight movies at Secret Movie Club, and so I want to make sure that this is part of the original rules if we are lucky enough to be able to go back to see movies in theaters later this year.

The previous movie watching projects were 24 Weeks of Bond movies in a non-linear order (2020), movies from 2000 that I had never seen (2019), movies from 2001 that I had never seen (2020), (now that I’m thinking of it, I may add in movies from 2002 once I make a list of them), Marvel movies in spaghetti order (I might have started this in 2019 or 2018), Disney animated features in order (2019), Disney other films in order (2019), movies by year from the dawn of moviemaking (2020, and I’m at 1909), the Film Chain (2016) (movies connected by someone in them from one to the other), and 482 Movies (literally started in 2006).

Here is a link to 482 Movies, if you are interested, https://482movies.livejournal.com/2006/09/26/. Of course, when I went through the list I saw an error. The Apu Trilogy was listed as one thing when it is three films, obvs, and one of them Pather Panchali, is listed separately. At the time, I did not know from The Apu Trilogy, is my only excuse. Which means that 482 Movies consists of 484 movies, in reality. And, of course, all of the movies on the list are from 2006 and prior, if I ever finish it, I’ll have to do a catch-up that includes films post 2006.

Then, if that isn’t enough, I am adding some other movies that I want to see, movies from podcasts that I am saving to listen to after watching the movie (some of these episodes are several years old), and Filmspotting Marathon movies (mostly the ones I haven’t seen, but possibly some that I have if I really love them or if they also appear on another list), and films released in 2020 that I never got around to watching, i.e. most of them.

And, of course, I’m not required to watch any of them, I can watch any film I want, but I thought I’d throw those in there to maybe chip away at these projects. There aren’t that many in the 2000 list, I’ll bet I can finish that one!

Anyway, this is the project, today is January first, here we go!

#69 Kung Fu Panda

March 7, 2021
Kung Fu Panda (2008) ****
Google Play
$3.99
Wildcard

“Panda, we do not wash our pits in the pool of sacred tears.”

For today’s movie I didn’t choose carefully, Kung-Fu Panda just leapt into my brain like the Dragon Warrior getting cookies from the top shelf, and who am I do deny him?

Po is a panda obsessed with kung fu, and who accidentally gets chosen to be the Dragon Warrior and defend his village from Tai Lung, the big bad who thinks that he should be the Dragon Warrior. Can a big fat panda be the Dragon Warrior, or was it a mistake? There are no mistakes.

I missed this movie when it first came out, and only saw the second movie first, but loved it so much that I went back and watched the original, which is so charming and so fun. The voice work is terrific, and the character design is entirely lovable.

Jack Black was born to play the teenage girl in Jumanji, that is a given, but other than her, he was born to play this goofy, enthusiastic, and ultimately heroic panda. Other great performances are the great James Hong as his dad, the goose (how is a goose the father of a panda? It gets explained in the sequels, never fear), Randall Duk Kim as Master Oogway, the turtle, and Dustin Hoffman as Master Shifu, the red panda.

Thank you for leaping into my brain, Kung Fu Panda, this was the perfect movie to watch at the end of a somewhat tricky day.

#68 American Utopia

March 6, 2021
David Byrne’s American Utopia (2020) ****
HBO Max
Free
Movies from 2020

“Loved ones, loved ones visit the building,
Take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important”

I had to get back to Movies from 2020 today, but I decided not to spin the wheel, but just to choose a movie that I knew I wanted to see, and that was David Byrne’s American Utopia.

This was the filmed (by Spike Lee) version of the show that Byrne had taken on tour and then to Broadway, and it makes an interesting contrast with Stop Making Sense, which I rewatched in January. This 35 year older David Byrne, without the rest of Talking Heads, but with a different group of musicians and dancers, in a highly choreographed show, seemed freer and more relaxed and natural than he was at 32 at the height of the band’s fame.

The group of performers, all wearing wireless mics and with their instruments strapped to them, are a tight and joyful ensemble, and David Byrne is a member of the group as well as the leader. Everyone wears grey suits and their feet are bare, which is somehow not as dismal as it sounds, but as bright and sunny as their faces are.

There were songs I knew and songs I didn’t remember (I had the My Life in the Bush of Ghosts album, but I didn’t listen to it all too much), but the absolute highlight of the film is the cover of Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout,” which calls out the names and shows the pictures of black men and women who were unjustly murdered. I knew it was coming, I heard about it in detail in reviews back when the film was first released on HBO Max, but it was still incredibly moving, and brought me to tears.

This is an excellent show, not only in the fact that it’s a concert film with great music, but it’s a film about how we learn and grown and connect with our fellow humans. It’s a film about hope.

#67 A Matter of Life and Death

March 5, 2021
A Matter of Life and Death (1946) ****
TCM
Free
Wildcard

“One is starved for Technicolor up there!”

A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) is one of my all-time favourite films, full stop. I don’t actually remember the first time I saw it, but it must’ve been when I was a child, because only the films you see at your most impressionable ages are dug that deep into you as A Matter of Life and Death is into me. It is a part of me, like Les Enfants du Paradis and The Point.

David Niven is an airman in WWII, and his plane is going down. He has no parachute, he is going to die. But before he does, he talks to Kim Stanley over the radio, and in that moment they fall in love, so when he crashes, he doesn’t die, because he made that connection, and because Conductor 71 (the Angel in charge of his case) lost him in the fog.

He was supposed to die, but he didn’t, which means the books in Heaven are out of balance, and something must be done about it. Should he live and have a new life with Kim Hunter, or should he die as he was supposed to? Only the heavenly court can decide.

This is as perfect a movie as is possible, and not at all as soppy as I made it sound. The Archers movies are never sentimental, romantic, but hard-headed. And it’s the kind of movie where when someone dies, it’s okay because we know we’re going to see them again.

The fact that earth is in Technicolor and Heaven is monochrome is so different than what one would expect, but it works perfectly, in that earth is where there is love and life and things change and grow, but Heaven is fixed and steady, beautiful, but cold, like a marble statue.

(This parenthetical is inserted the day after seeing the movie and writing this post. I suddenly noticed a joke! Raymond Massey plays the heavenly prosecutor, and David Niven’s Peter is trying to think of who to defend him. Conductor 71 suggests Lincoln, and Peter says “It’s hardly fair to drag him in.”

It took nearly 24 hours for me to remember that Raymond Massey was famous for playing Lincoln! I looked up the date, and Abe Lincoln in Illinois was released in 1940, so they were definitely making a sly joke that audiences of the time would have gotten. And now you will, too!)

This time watching it, I realized that Kim Hunter was born one year before my mother, and the Conductor says that her character, June, would live to be 97. Mom lived to be 94. Mom worked for the American Army in Berlin after the war, June works for the American Army in England near the end of the war. Mom was in love with an American soldier, Ziggy, who died during the war, but not of the war, he died for a different reason, Mom never knew what, probably cancer. June is in love with Peter, a British RAF pilot who is trying to win the right to live, and might die due to brain damage. I am overwhelmed in a way that I never have been before watching this film.

Great movies change as you watch them in different times of you life. But I think, for me, this will always be Mom and Ziggy.

Week 9 wrap-up 2/26-3/4

This week will be easier than last to pick a worst, but the best still has several choices!

I saw seven movies, 100% of them for the first time! I think this may have been the first week where they were all fresh films to me.

Four of them, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Emma, Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, and Disclosure, were four star films, with The Sword and the Rose was three stars, Coffy was two and a half, and True Romance was only two sad little stars.

To the surprise of zero people who are able to count, True Romance was definitely the worst of the week. Maybe I would have liked it better had I seen it when it first came out, but unfortunately it’s 2021 me who has to judge the film, and 2021 me thinks it is a movie about a couple of real assholes who just make foolish and disastrous decision after foolish and disastrous decision, and get rewarded for it anyway.

Also, the movie appears to think of these assholes are the epitome of awesome. The movie is so wrong. It is clearly written by a young nerd who really wants to be cool, which would be Quentin.

For the best film, I think I’m going to go with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, if for no other reason that it is a real original piece of animation. I know it’s from a book, but the film itself seemed like it sprang fully-formed from Zeus’ forehead. Fiddler and Disclosure cancel each other out, both being documentaries, and Emma was brilliant, but there are load of other Emmas. There is only one Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. (I know there is a Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, but I haven’t seen it yet, so it doesn’t count).

#66 True Romance

March 4, 2021
True Romance (1993) **
Secret Movie Club Drive-In
$31
Wildcard

“You’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”

So, I have spent the last 28 years thinking, “I really should watch True Romance.” Now I don’t mean every day, I wasn’t obsessed with the overwhelming need to watch it while also keeping myself from watching it just so that the anticipation would build, it was just that every time it flitted through the transom of my mind, I thought, “I really should watch True Romance.”

Not to mention the fact that I kept hearing about how good it was! And that cast, those wonderful actors in these chewy roles, and Tarantino back when he was young and hungry, I was really looking forward to watching True Romance.

Finally, tonight, I went to go see it at the drive-in. And boy howdy did it suck. All those people who kept saying how good it was over the years? Liars, liars to a man.

There’s a chance that I am just seeing it too late. Perhaps if I had seen it in ’93, I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more. I was 29 years old in 1993, only a few years older than the young idiot lead characters played by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, perhaps I wouldn’t have found them to be such shitheads.

I didn’t dislike the whole movie, I particularly really liked Bronson Pinchot, Saul Rubinek, and Michael Rapaport, but most of it was a stone drag. Had I been watching it at home, I would have turned it off around the point that Slater goes off to find the pimp, which isn’t that far into the movie. But you have to stay until the end of a movie at the drive-in.

Also a lie? That quote. He is NOT so cool. Not by a mile.

#65 Disclosure

March 3, 2021
Disclosure (2020) ****
Netflix
Free
Movies from 2020

“Martin Wright Edelman said, “Children cannot be what they cannot see.” And it’s not just about children, it’s about all of us. We cannot be a better society until we see that better society. I cannot be in the world until I see that I am in the world.”

I decided I still didn’t want to see Come to Daddy, so I spun the wheel again to get a new 2020 movie for tonight. It came up Disclosure, and I had no memory at all of what this movie was.

I looked it up, and it is a documentary about representation of trans people in media. And I thought, boy howdy does that sound dry and possibly a little depressing. And maybe like a lecture? But it does have 98% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so I’ll give it a whirl. I thought maybe I’d watch 10 or 15 minutes and if I didn’t like it I’d try and find something else.

Dry? Depressing? Lecturing? Not on your life! This is absolutely a terrific documentary, enjoyable from the beginning, but as it keeps going, it gets deeper and more moving and powerful, until the last half hour, when it becomes one of the best things I’ve seen in a long time.

It never crossed my mind before, but most of the time throughout most of the history of trans characters in television and movies, they are either jokes, victims, crazed killers, or disgusting. I mean, the montage of clips of men vomiting because they find out that the woman they are with is trans, is horrifying. Can you imagine what it would be like if that was all you saw when you saw yourself on screen? Also, sex workers, they are mostly sex workers.

But this film is not a diatribe against popular culture, there is a Variety review that I saw when I was googling the movie that said, “Rather than making audiences feel bad about trans-themed movies they may have naively enjoyed in the past, it educates on the larger issues while unpacking a legacy of problematic representation.” It doesn’t scold, it just alters your perspective.

They have a marvelous number of trans men and women talking heads, Laverne Cox, of course, who is also the producer of the film, and Lilly Wachowski, and Chaz Bono, but my absolute favourites were the fabulous Candis Cayne from Dirty, Sexy Money, Jen Richards from I Am Cait, and Sandra Caldwell, who had been spending most of her life as an actress hiding the fact that she was trans, but now she is out and talks about how amazing that feeling is.

The most moving part, for me, was Jen Richards talking about how on I Am Cait they had some parents of trans children on, and how this one guy was not only loving and accepting of his trans son, but enthusiastic and over the moon about what a great kid he was. Jen said she had to spend so much time being okay with the fact that her mother said that she could never call her Jen because Jen had murdered her son, that she couldn’t see her grandmother before she died because her family wouldn’t let her in the house without her dressing like a boy, that one of her best friends won’t allow her to meet his children, but when she saw that man, she was like, (and I am paraphrasing) why wasn’t my mother like that? Why weren’t my friends like that? And most of all, why wasn’t I like that? Nobody has ever felt about me like that man did about his child, including me.

This is so good, so good. Somehow it’s not on the shortlist for this year’s Oscars, but I think it belongs on any list of great documentaries. And it reminds me that I have never seen The Celluloid Closet, so I should see that soon.

#64 Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles

March 2, 2021
Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles (2019) ****
Amazon Prime
Free
Wildcard

“Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles
I was afraid that God would frown
But like he did so long ago, at Jericho
God just made a wall fall down”

I spun the Tiny Decisions wheel to pick another 2020 movie today, deciding not to start watching all of those different Emmas all in a row, which might make me crazy, and it popped up a horror comedy called Come to Daddy.

I wasn’t really feeling it, but neither could I think of anything different, so I went over to Prime and what popped up on the first page was Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles, because I recently put it on my watchlist when I was reminded that I had planned on seeing it in 2019 and then completely forgot about it! So, perfect timing.

For me, Fiddler on the Roof is Zero Mostel. I even saw him play Tevye onstage when I was a kid, because he toured that thing forever. Also, there is a great book by his wife, Kate Mostel, about her life and Zero’s, and Jack and Madeline Gilford, called 170 Years of Show Business, and it is one of my favourite books of all time, and of course there is a lot about Fiddler in it. And the blacklist, of course.

Zero was blacklisted, Jerome Robbins, director of the original production of Fiddler, was a friendly witness. For awhile I thought they weren’t going to go there in the film, but they they did devote a small amount of time to it, which I am glad about.

I always resented the fact that Topol did the movie instead of Zero, and when I saw it I did NOT like it. But seeing the clips in this film, it looks really good, and Topol is great! And much more grounded than Zero would have been. I should give it another shot.

Many years ago I read a wonderful book about the making of the original production called The Making of a Musical. In fact, I stopped after typing that sentence and bought it used online for eight bucks. Looking forward to reading it again!

Now, this documentary is not only about the original production but also about subsequent productions and the movie and the recent production in Yiddish (which was directed by Joel Grey, a thing I did not know!), and it’s just as interesting as that book was, even more so, because it is able to take a longer perspective.

Great works of art are universal, because that is how they speak to so many people, and sometimes a great work of art is very specifically about a time and a place and particular experiences, but is still universal, and we see these stories in our lives and our history, even if we aren’t a Russian Jewish family on the shtetl in 1905.

At one point, one of the writers tells the story about how they went to the first production in Japan, and at the interval they said to him, “Do they understand this show in America? It’s so Japanese!”

This is a terrific documentary about a terrific show. I might make a point to watch more theatre docs, I can think of several that I have never seen and want to. So, yesterday I saw Emma and was like, “Moar Emma!” Today I see a theatre doc and I’m like, “Moar theatre docs!” What will tomorrow bring?

#63 Emma

March 1, 2021
Emma (2020) ****
HBO Max
Free
Movies from 2020

“Emma, you should not make matches or foretell things. Whatever you say always comes to pass! You must not make any more.”

There are many, many versions of Emma, there’s Gwyneth’s, Kate Beckinsdale’s, a couple of BBC miniseries, and, of course, Clueless. But the thing about Jane Austen, like Shakespeare, is that there is always room for a new version.

Emma Woodhouse is handsome, clever, and rich as both the title card and the first line of the book tell us. She has no issues of poverty, or the house being entailed away from the female line, or difficult siblings, or parental death as the heroines of Austen’s other books tend to have to deal with. I mean, she does have an idiotic sister, but who only appears briefly, and a mother who died long before the film started, so she has had some issues in her life, just none recently.

As this film takes place long before television or films, when people really had to entertain themselves, Emma has taken to matchmaking. Her first match, of her governess and a local widower, comes off a treat, so she tries next on Harriet Smith, a pretty local schoolgirl (on the older side, nearly of age) who knows nothing of her parentage, which Emma is sure means she is the daughter of a gentleman. She decides to fix Harriet up with the local vicar, which doesn’t go quite as well as her first try, I must admit.

This newest of Emmas is absolutely charming, with Anya Taylor-Joy in the title role, Johnny Flynn (and his nekkid butt eight minutes into the film, trying to outdo Colin Firth’s swimming scene in Pride and Prejudice, no doubt) as Mr. Knightly, Mia Goth as the sweet and easily led Harriet Smith, Josh O’Connor as the jackass Mr. Elton, Callum Taylor as the odious Mr. Churchill, and Bill Nighy and Miranda Hart as Mr. Woodhouse and Miss Bates respectively, each stealing every scene they are in.

Blake complained that the problem with this film is that there is not enough Bill Nighy, and of course there isn’t, because it is not possible to have enough Bill Nighy, but every time he is on screen, terrified of any chill, or of anyone getting married and leaving him, it is such a wonderful gem of a performance, you almost wish you could follow his character around, watching him hide behind screens.

Miranda Hart has never given anything but a splendid performance, it’s just not in her nature, and she is equally brilliant in drama or in comedy, just as she has the kind of looks that can be made pretty or very plain indeed, and she seems to have no ego about it. Poor Miss Bates is a ridiculous character, silly and boring, and Miranda Hart just breaks your heart in the picnic scene. O that picnic scene. It’s a killer.

But if you don’t have an Emma, in Emma, you don’t have a movie, and that’s all there is to it. Anya Taylor-Joy is quite a favourite of mine, ever since Split, though it actually took me a while to realize that dark-haired American girl was the same as the blonde British girl in The Witch. She is not only striking-looking, with those astonishing eyes, but is a really strong actress, with a light enough touch for Austen. She makes a marvelous Emma, where we see her faults, but love her anyway.

Now I must watch or rewatch all of the other Emmas! Stay tuned.

February wrap-up

Here we are, at the end of February, though, as you can see from the date stamp, I am actually writing this in April.

I would definitely say that my great fault of procrastination has reared its ugly head, not in the watching of the films, but in the writing about them. Some of them I have written about right away, but then there are earlier ones that I haven’t put down my thoughts on, and if enough time goes by, I don’t remember any of those thoughts, and then I have to make time to watch the movie again, and all is ashes, ashes.

But I am soldiering through like the brave little toaster that I am.

February was Disney month, with my goal of watching fourteen Disney films in the twenty-eight days of the month, and I actually managed to watch sixteen, go me! Nine animated films, three hybrid animation/live action, three live action, and one nature documentary.

Here are the movies I watched in order of excellence, with the new to me (or occasionally I might have watched it, but I am not entirely certain), and then re-watches.

New movies

Fantastic Planet ****
Jab Tak Hai Jaan ****
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs ****
Melody Time *** 1/2
The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men *** 1/2
The Sword and the Rose ***
The Saint Strikes Back ***
Treasure Island ***
The Living Desert ***
The Kennel Murder Case ** 1/2
The Falcon’s Brother ** 1/2
Mystery House ** 1/2
The Song of the South ** 1/2
So Dear to My Heart ** 1/2
Coffy ** 1/2
The Trouble With Girls **
Murder By Death **
Tenet **
The Mystery of the 13th Guest **
Pop Gear **

Rewatch

Casablanca ****
All the President’s Men ****
Blazing Saddles ****
Sleeping Beauty ****
Bambi ****
Cinderella ****
Harold and Maude ****
Lady and the Tramp ****
The Point ****
One Hundred and One Dalmatians ****
The Sword in the Stone ****
Alice in Wonderland *** 1/2
Peter Pan *** 1/2
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad ***

******************

Now, the theme for March is Movies From 2020, as I saw nearly no new films actually in 2020, so the goal is to watch a minimum of fifteen. I wonder what is going to happen? (Again, don’t look at that date stamp!)

#62 The Sword and the Rose

February 28, 2021
The Sword and the Rose (1953) ***
Google Play
$3.99
Disney other

“Ladies, have I the honour to find the Princess Mary among you?”
“Is the Princess Mary a person of so little consequence that she is not known to a mighty Captain of the Guard?”
“Pray, forgive a blundering stranger of the Court. Since Princess Mary is reputed to be gracious, I presume she cannot be here.”

So many of the early Disney live-action films are not available on Disney +, this being one of them. Is it worth $3.99 cash money to watch this utterly unremembered film about Henry VIII’s sister wanting to marry the man she loves? I’m going with yes.

The film stars an absolutely captivating Glynis Johns as Princess Mary, eleven years before she was Mrs. Banks singing about being a suffragette, (still alive at 97, I see, stay well!), Richard Todd as Charles Brandon, the commoner she loves (recently seen as Robin Hood the other week), and a terribly young Michael Gough (Alfred in Batman) as the third corner of this love triangle, the jackass Duke of Buckingham.

But even with two such suitors, the man King Henry wants her to marry is the elderly King of France, for political purposes. Henry is played by James Robertson Justice, who was Little John in Robin Hood and, even better, Lord Scrumptious in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a movie that I must rewatch tout suite.

Glynis Johns is heart-stoppingly lovely, and though I have seen and loved her in many roles as an older actress (Grandma in awhile You Were Sleeping is a definite favourite), I really must do some catching up with her earlier work.

This is a completely charming and fun film, and I’m sorry that after this, there is only Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue left in this little series of films made in England by Disney at this time. Rob Roy also has the identical cast of Todd, Johns, Justice, and Gough, and I’d say I would watch it right away, but that it is the last day of February, and Disney month has ended.