Movies Worth Watching #1
Hello, I hope your week is starting off okay. I did absolutely nothing yesterday but sit around and watch a slew of sports, catching the end of the World Cup and various NFL games. How exciting. Nevertheless, I thought I’d begin a series I’ve wanted to do called Movies Worth Watching. As you can assume by the title, it’ll recommend five movies or so I’ve seen recently that are worth checking out.
I’m going to utilize the template I have in the movie recommendation book I’m working on (The Movie Fanatics Guide: 100 Movies to See Before You Die) and might include a couple of entries from the book. I plan on making this a weekly segment and will be doing similar segments called Albums Worth Hearing and Books Worth Reading. I’m sure you can figure out what those will be about; yay for writing. Also, don’t worry, I’m not going to spoil any major plot points, so you can view these at ease if you have any interest in them.
Side Note - Thank you to everyone who recently subscribed. Your support means the world to me, and I hope you enjoy my substack.
1. You Can Count On Me (2000)
Genre - Drama
Director - Kenneth Lonergan
Writer - Kenneth Lonergan
Starring - Laura Linney, Matthew Broderick, Amy Ryan
About - A single mother's life is thrown into turmoil after her struggling, rarely-seen younger brother returns to town.
Why You Should Watch
I became a massive fan of Kenneth Lonergan as soon I saw 2016’s Manchester By The Sea. Such a powerful film about grief, loss, and how nightmare scenarios can haunt and affect those involved for years to come. I decided to dive back into Lonergan’s earlier work, leading me to view You Can Count On Me last night. It didn’t disappoint. Though the beginning is a little melodramatic and it takes a second to set its story up, it emotionally impacted me the same way as Manchester By The Sea did.
You have two siblings in Terry (Mark Ruffalo) and Sammy (Laura Linney), who could not live in more opposite circumstances. Terry is a drifter easy-spirit type who also gets easily upset, while Sammy is a single mother with a stable job who hasn’t left her hometown her entire life. The two’s only real sharing characteristic is their affinity toward cigarettes, but their paradoxical life decision-making doesn’t prevent them from caring about one another. It’s an enormously touching drama and one I’ll never forget.
2. Alphaville (1965)
Genre - Mystery/Sci-Fi
Director - Jean-Luc Godard
Writers - Jean-Luc Godard, Paul Éluard (Poem "Capitale de la douleur")
Starring - Eddie Constantine, Anna Karina, Akim Tamiroff
About - A U.S. secret agent is sent to the distant space city of Alphaville, where he must find a missing person and free the city from its tyrannical ruler.
Why You Should Watch
Alphaville is Godard’s attempt at noir meeting sci-fi, and boy, it pays off. It follows the stranger comes to town trope, with Eddie Constantine as detective Lemmy Caution, who looks for a missing person in a distant space city. Though the logline may make the film seem deep in a sci-fi appearance (think Blade Runner or Dune), it feels relatively close to a standard city, at least on the surface.
The film’s antagonist, a sentient computer system that watches over the city, called Alpha 60, utilizes propaganda to control the individual. So much so, Alpha 60 chooses the words the population is allowed to use. It’s a pretty wild flick, and there’s a lot to analyze, primarily through the lens of how it influenced Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
3. Anomalisa (2015)
Genre - Animation/Comedy/Drama
Directors - Duke Johnson, Charlie Kaufman
Writer - Charlie Kaufman
Starring - David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan
About - A man crippled by the mundanity of his life experiences something out of the ordinary.
Why You Should Watch
Anomalisa is an underrated stop-motion film that only did $5.7 million at the box office against an $8 million budget. Though the film definitely has accolades from critics, it’s a shame it didn’t do better from the audience side. The film focuses on living each day like a schedule with nothing to look forward to or back on. Most people can relate in a sense, no matter how much they declare themselves as a free spirit.
Michael (David Thewlis) hears and sees everyone around him as the same (quite literally all voiced by Tom Noonan with the same face). When Michael meets someone who appears different from everyone else (Jennifer Jason Leigh as Lisa), his world is turned upside down, and he does everything he can to have this interaction turn into something special, with the hope of elevating his mundane life. It’s a beautifully sad yet realistic depiction of the malaise of life.
4. The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Genre - Comedy/Drama
Director - Martin McDonagh
Writer - Martin McDonagh
Starring - Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Kerry Condon
About - Two lifelong friends find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship, with alarming consequences for both of them.
Why You Should Watch
2022 has been a great year for movies, and at the moment, my film of the year is The Banshees of Inisherin by filmmaker Martin McDonagh. McDonagh has a natural knack for writing, which shows in his previous three films (In Bruges, Seven Psychopaths, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). In my opinion, Banshees is McDonagh’s magnum opus, combining every element that many would consider auteur filmmaking. In this case, McDonagh takes a very simple premise: “What if a friend decided to cut you out of their life for no real reason?”
Take that idea with great acting and combine the setting of a small island off Ireland in the 1920s, and you have The Banshees of Inisherin. Without giving away too much, everything about this film works for me. It’s painfully truthful despite its non-familiar setting, features immaculate performances, and ponders about someone’s memory living on past their life. Does niceness live on? Or is it just the arts or respective accomplishments that continue without us? I suppose that’s the dynamic between Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson).
5. Another Round (2020)
Genre - Drama/Comedy
Director - Thomas Vinterberg
Writers - Thomas Vinterberg, Tobias Lindholm
Starring - Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Magnus Millang
About - Four high-school teachers consume alcohol on a daily basis to see how it affects their social and professional lives.
Why You Should Watch
Soon to be re-made by Leonardo DiCaprio (not sure why, but whatever floats DiCaprio’s boat), Another Round is one of my favorites from 2020. Few films have utilized a drug—alcohol in this case—as realistic as Another Round. Rather than follow the typical story structure of someone’s life falling apart with doom and gloom around it, Another Round shows why these characters are consuming alcohol instead of just the end state of alcoholism. At a birthday party, a group of middle-aged friends decide to test the theory of psychiatrist Finn Skårderud—that humans are born with a blood alcohol content deficiency of 0.05% and that being at 0.05% makes one more creative and relaxed.
We see the characters have fun, become more social, and have a better overall life from their initial alcohol consumption. It gives the characters a reason to further their consumption—something that’s forgotten in most films about drugs. Obviously, the character’s heightened experience comes crashing down. Still, it’s nice to see the explanation for why these characters are doing what they're doing instead of just the crash for two hours like we usually experience in film. In the end, it still carries the same message that alcohol or drug abuse could ruin a person’s life; it’s just more realistic from their initial consumption reasoning and how they act intoxicated (not every drunk character in a film needs to be incoherent or a total slosh).