The Oscar Project
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy. It is March and we are only a week away from this year’s Oscars. The top prizes in Hollywood will be given out next Sunday, March 12 and while I’m a bit behind in my own Oscar nominee viewing this year, I’m excited for the show. It looks like there are going to be a number of live musical performances of the songs nominated for Best Original Song, and the announced list of presenters is already full of some of the top stars of today. But you’re here for the announcement of the next category in the film challenge along with my pick for the week. After some films the last few weeks that might not have been that great for the kids, this week the category is a Family-Friendly Movie. Believe it or not, this was actually a harder category for me to find a film I hadn’t seen before. I have kids so some of the movies I see sooner than others are the newest animated films. This list I found from PureWow.com give us “The 80 Best Family Movies of All Time” and out of the 80, I have seen 58. That said, I did have a decent amount of choices from this list. And before I reveal my pick, I’m not sure I agree that everything on that list is truly family friendly. The Hunger Games appears on the list as does Jurassic Park and The Adam Project, all of which I wouldn’t recommend for younger kids. But by and large, the list is a great look at films the entire family can enjoy. My Selection-Akeelah and the BeeThis film is one that I heard about when it first premiered in 2006, but haven’t seen in the ensuing years. I love the cast of this, especially Laurence Fishburn and Angela Bassett, but also Keke Palmer who was a brand new young actress at the time, and has grown into a star with voice appearances in two Ice Age films and more recent roles in last year’s Lightyear and Nope. I stumbled on her excellent performance opposite Samuel L. Jackson in the 2007 film Cleaner which she made soon after Akeelah and was interested to see another film of hers from this period.
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Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy. Last week was a little lighter on big releases after Quantumania the previous week, but Cocaine Bear and Jesus Revolution still did pretty well at the box office. Creed III What is continuing as one of the biggest movie franchises of all time, Creed III joins the ranks as another film from the Rocky universe, but this spin off has taken on a life of its own. In this follow up to the 2018 film Creed II, Michael B. Jordan is back as Adonis Creed. He has risen to new heights and must face off against a childhood friend, Damian Anderson, played by Jonathan Majors. Majors is turning into a big draw recently and looks to have a bright future ahead of him. It will be interesting to see these two talented young actors go toe to toe on screen and in the ring. Demon Slayer: Kemetsu No Yaiba – To the Swordsmith Village I'm not the biggest fan of anime in general, but this series has plenty of buzz. There was a similar release last fall that did decently well in theaters, so it's fair to say that we will continue to see these releases periodically going forward as long as American audiences continue to buy tickets. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre If there's one thing you can count on with Guy Ritchie and Jason Statham, it's action and judging from the trailer for Operation Fortune, it won't be lacking in that area. Statham is joined by an all-star cast including Aubrey Plaza, Cary Elwes, Josh Hartnett, Bugsy Malone, and Hugh Grant in a film about a secret agent who hires a movie star to help him complete a secret mission. Limited ReleasesThere are plenty of limited releases, many of which will be in most areas this weekend:
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy.
Here we are at the beginning of March, and if you’ve been following along, you should be almost 20% through your 52 films for the year. I recently posted the full list of films I’ve chosen for the year on Letterboxd. If you’re on Letterboxd, please give that list a like or comment to show your appreciation. If you’re not on Letterboxd, I highly recommend signing up for a free (or paid) account on that site as it’s great for keeping track of the movies you watch, and even better for finding new movies to add to your watchlist.
Given the movies that I’ve watched this year so far, I wanted to take a little pause and just recap my feelings overall through the first two months of the year. To review the movies I’ve watched so far, the current list is:
Let’s start with the highlights. By far the best movie I’ve watched so far in this challenge is Parasite, which I just watched this week and wrote about yesterday. This film deserves all the accolades it received from multiple groups for the 2019 awards season, culminating in in the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars in February 2020. However, a few other films I’ve selected have really popped for me and I’m so glad this challenge has given me a reason to watch them.
My third and fourth films for the challenge (Little Miss Sunshine and Life of Pi) both rate among the best films I’ve seen over the last year and when I have a little time, both will be re-watches for me at some point. Little Miss Sunshine was a huge breath of fresh air. It made me laugh out loud at parts, and also allowed for moments of quiet thoughtfulness as it tackled issues like suicide and depression. And while that film was a wonderful ensemble cast, I was stunned at how strong Life of Pi was with essentially one actor (Suraj Sharma) carrying the bulk of the film. Not only that, he did it when he was only 20 years old and having to act against many scenes where everything around him would be added digitally in post-production.
Two of the films I’ve watched so far have been disappointing, but for completely different reasons. Tom Hanks’s early film Bachelor Party was one I didn’t expect much of, and it delivered on those expectations. It’s a low brow comedy meant to titillate and that’s exactly what it did. I was a bit bummed that it wasn’t a better movie, but even an actor as great as Hanks is going to have some clunkers in his career.
The other film that truly disappointed me was Mad God, Phil Tippett’s stop motion passion project. I wrote in my recap of the film that Tippett has long been someone I admire, even before I knew his name. He has given life to so many creatures in classic films from Star Wars to Jurassic Park and beyond, but this film was a huge let down. The stop motion was great in parts, but wildly inconsistent, which made the whole viewing experience less than ideal. Even now, if you asked me to tell you what it’s about, I would be hard pressed to come up with someone coherent. Maybe that’s the point, but it just wasn’t for me. The other four films I’ve watched this year (for the challenge at least) could all fall under the heading of film classics. Midnight Cowboy, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 8 ½, and The Dirty Dozen are all from the 1960s and tell such different stories from around the world. Midnight Cowboy and Breakfast at Tiffany’s made an incredible double bill at the beginning of the year, both being set in New York City, but dealing with entirely different segments of society. 8 ½ also was an interesting juxtaposition against Mad God the following week since both felt like directors who didn’t know where the film was going when they started making them. However, 8 ½ was created by a master filmmaker (Federico Fellini) who understood his craft as a director while Mad God was clearly created by someone more comfortable in the creature shop and not creating stories.
And last but not least is The Dirty Dozen. Out of all the films I’ve seen in this challenge this year, I’ve probably seen the most of this one previously, catching it on TCM or other cable channels over the years. But like all the rest, I had never sat down and watched the entire film beginning to end. It is excellent from the casting to the way the characters come together, to the surprises thrown in at the end.
In summary, I’m so far very pleased with the movies I’ve picked for this year’s challenge. I hope I will be able to continue on through the rest of the year at this pace and that you will continue to join me each week and expand your own film horizons.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy.
In my experience, when people say that a movie is great, to the point where almost no one you talk to has anything bad to say about it, things can go one of two ways. I had the first thing happen many years ago when I finally watched Napoleon Dynamite after friends raving about it for months. I watched it and was thoroughly unimpressed, something I wrote about after returning to the film when I did a 30-day film challenge in late 2020.
The second thing that can happen is the film can completely live up to the expectations, or sometimes even exceed all the glowing things people said about it before you saw it. Parasite is one of those films. It feels like a little more than just three years since Parasite swept the awards season and capped it off with four Oscar wins including Bong Joon-ho for Best Director and the Best Picture award. It’s also hard to believe that just about a month after the Oscars where Parasite led the pack, the world shut down and things have never been the same since.
Ki-woo meets with a friend and agrees to take his place as an English tutor for the daughter of wealthy family. Once he gets his foot in the door with the Park family, he recommends his sister (re-named “Jessica” to avoid detection as his sister) as an art tutor for the Park’s young son. “Jessica” then recommends Ki-taek as a new driver for Mr. Park, who in turn recommends Chung-sook as a new housekeeper when the Park’s long-time housekeeper is let go. The Kims slowly insinuate themselves into the lives of the entire Park family, latching on to the wealthy in order to improve their own station in life. Once they have forced the existing driver and housekeeper out of the picture, the Kim’s begin to settle into their new way of life, but before they can get too comfortable, things take a drastic turn.
The first half of this film was a slow burn the way it set the scene. While initially feeling bad for the Kim’s in their destitution, I soon turned to feeling for the Park family, especially because of how easily they are duped into trusting the Kim family. The two families are mirrors of one another, both having four members, a mother, father, son, and daughter, and part of the genius of the film is how they could almost be considered the same family that diverged at some point in history.
Where the film really shines is in the second half, once the Kims are fully in place working for the Parks. Mr. Kim ingratiates himself with Mr. Park, gaining his trust and helping with whatever needs doing when it comes to driving him and Mrs. Park around. But we find out in the second half that while Mr. Park appreciates the service provided by Mr. Kim (and the rest of the Kim family) he doesn’t truly respect them, even complaining about the smell that Mr. Kim has in the car as they drive around town. We also learn that the Kims are not the first ones to latch on to the wealthy family in the house. This is where things start to unravel for the Kims and ultimately leads to a deadly conclusion.
If you were to ask me what this film reminds me of, my initial thought would be something along the lines of Hitchcock. Rear Window jumps to mind in the way the first half of that film is a lot of set up where not much really happens, but once the action starts, it doesn’t stop. Just like Hitchcock, there are moments throughout the second half of Parasite where things are quiet and you know something’s coming around the corner, but the quiet lasts just long enough to allow you to let down your guard, before the director smacks you in the face with a new twist.
Several times in the second half of the film I was certain I knew where it was heading, but every time I was wrong. It’s rare in movies today that things can catch seasoned viewers completely off guard, and this film is the exception that proves that rule. Director Bong delivers a trail of breadcrumbs that oftentimes seem to lead to safety, but only serve to take the film in a new direction completely different from where you expect it to go.
Plenty has been written about this film and the statements on class and social inequality, specifically in Korea but also in the world at large. At the end of the film, Ki-woo narrates over the last few scenes that he has a plan in place to bring the Kim family out of poverty, but the very last image shows him still residing in the same basement apartment where he started. Despite the proximity to the wealthy Park family, his position in life hasn’t changed, and the Kim family as a whole is in a much worse situation. It can even be argued that by associating with the Kims, the Park family has collapsed and begun a fall from grace…the host succumbing to the infection of the parasite that has invaded. This film is one that I absolutely plan to revisit at least once in the next few months. I need a little time to sit with it in my consciousness, but I know there are things I missed on my first viewing. Just like watching Rian Johnson’s Knives Out a second time last fall, there will surely be little details that I pick up on now that I know the outcome of the story. Bravo Bong Joon-ho! This is truly a masterpiece. |
AuthorI'm just a film buff who wants to watch great movies. Where else to find the best, than the list of those nominated by the Academy each year? Archives
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