Year in Review: Top 10 First Watches of 2020

by Christopher James

Many people discovered new hobbies while under quarantine. I, however, re-discovered my love for movies. As many film fans can attest, it sometimes feels like you have to watch so many new films each year that it can be hard to find time to fill in classic blind spots. But with the 2020 quarantine (plus the fun of insomnia), I turned to the Criterion Collection and basically got a whole second film school education. As 2020 comes to a close, I’ve had over 120 new-to-me watches for the year, not counting films released in 2020. They span from silent era cinema through Camp (2003). 

Since the final week of December is always about lists, here are my top 10 favorite first-time-for-me watches from 2020...

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56 Days 'til Oscar Nominations. Let's talk 1956

by Nathaniel R

1956 is not, from our vantage point, a particularly lauded year in cinema but it's an Oscar field we tend to think of regularly for various reasons including but not limited to:

-Camp value (Ten Commandments, Bad Seed)
-Musicals (The King and I, High Society)
-Strange snubs (The Searchers received zero nominations despite Oscar's obsession with John Ford)
-Delayed foreign grandeur (La Strada and Seven Samurai, 1954 films both, were up for Oscars)
-not one but two kaiju movies (Godzilla and Rhodan)...and more.

What's your favorite movie of 1956? I don't think I've seen enough to feel comfortable with a full top ten but here are the five I like best currently (with much more to see) after the jump...

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26 Days Until Oscar. Sing-along with Sammy Cahn

On this 26th day before Oscar, why not sing along to classic tunes co-written by Sam Cahn who received an incredible 26 Oscar nominations. He was so popular in his time that he even posed for pictures like this! Hee.

Yes, dear reader, there are people with more Oscar nominations than Meryl Streep.  Not many of them, mind you, and the bulk of them seem to be from the sound or music branches...

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Podcast: Joy & Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In this week's podcast Nathaniel and Nick return happily to that galaxy far far away and go off consensus to enjoy the Jennifer Lawrence hit Joy. (Plus miscellania but you'll have to listen to see how Carol and Batman v Superman show up since you know how we do...)

43 minutes 
00:01 Written on the Wind (1956)
03:00 David O. Russell's Joy feat. Isabelle Rossellini, Virginia Madsen, Robert De Niro and Elisabeth Röhm
12:00 Loving Star Wars: The Force Awakens and sexy Oscar Isaac.
27:00 Childhood fascinations with the original trilogy and minor quibbles with the new/old plot and the First Order. 
36:15 Nasty Baby & Mississippi Grind (2015)
40:10 The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

Further Reading for Context:
Nick's Oscar Isaac Theory & Ordinary People Tweet
David Ehrlich's A24 Article

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

a gif of poe biting his lip while talking to finn pic.twitter.com/GGm4mm5oze

— Nicole (@hughmhd) December 22, 2015

Star Wars and Joy