Top Discoveries of 2020
10 - A Triple Double: Undisputed 3: Redemption, dir Isaac Florentine, 2010 & Ninja III The Domination, dir Sam Fistenberg, 1984
Yes, in the discoveries list I am cheating. But I watched a lot of movies in 2020. I was home a lot. So my number 10 pick is a double feature. An action double feature. I don't really have the language to talk about the intricacies of how the action movies move. All this to say is that after watching Undisputed 3, Scott Adkins is now known as 'The Flippy Guy'. Host of the Adkins Undisputed Podcast Mike Scott (which every one should be listening too, has called Adkins a human special effect, and he's not wrong. There are moments where you are not exactly sure how Adkins defied gravity with multiple spiny kick things. Undisputed 3 is a simple movie - a Flippy Man looking to win a martial arts contest and maybe try to get his life back. Scott Adkins is a charismatic and charming presence on screen, and when he gets to his flippy stuff it's incredible.
Ninja 3: The Domination is maybe one of the more bug nutty first time watches of 2020. The first two movies in the series already start at a high eleven - Franco Nero from the original Cannon-piece in a sparking white Ninja outfit sneaking around Human Cigarette's Christopher George Office that includes an Olympic sized pool is quite a sight. And then there is Ninja 3. An unsuspecting aerobic instructor is possessed by an ancient Ninja Spirit with her own secret Ninja Lair - because what is the point of being a ninja without a lair - and thus proceeds to kick all the ass. Lucinda Dickey, a solid and really likable Cannon stalwart player. She has a great and strong presence on screen. Actually I think at one point might have up for Sarah Conner. It's a historical what if, I wouldn't mind checking out based on this performance. Ninja 3 is just one of those movies where you will just keep giggling at every new bonkers thing you see on screen. Because it is pure Cannon Madness.
9 - Star Trek VI Undiscovered Country, Nicholas Meyer, 1991
As Covid started to become a more a real and dangerous presence, I dug into watching all the Star Trek movies. This in fact started me on the Movie Kicks that defined most of my 2020 watching habits. I never grew up watching Star Trek, in fact hard science fiction was never something I gravitate toward. Something my Partner is always trying to rectify. But, I have to say I had a blast with going where no me has gone before. My favourite of the original cast was Unknown Country. Christopher Plumer as a Shakespeare quoting Klingon is the greatest. I'm not entirely sure how the original cast felt about each other, but on screen there is an easy chemistry of people who have known each other for a long time. It's a really nice send off of the original cast, and I enjoyed it very much.
8 - Gold Diggers of 1933, Busby Berkely & Merven LeRoy, 1933
My main takeaway from The Gold Diggers of 1933? Joan Blondell is the greatest - I actually should have realized this from Nightmare Alley (1947). But every time Blondell is on screen she glows.
My other slightly not as important take away is that Gold Diggers feels more percipient in 2020 than if I had probably watched a couple of years ago. Filmed and set at the height of The Great Depression, Gold Diggers does not shy away from what was happening to many of the people sitting in the theater. It's women trying to make a living. And if I had been a bigger fan of Busby Berkely or Merven LeRoy it might have ended up on my Discovery Triple on the A Double of Triple Episode on Schlock & Awe (S&A Podbean). It almost did. Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, Aline MacMahon and an early-ish Ginger Rogers performance, are out of work with very little prospects. So when there is even a hint of of someone putting on a show they jump on it, and the guys who have the money to put it on. Warner Brothers unlike other studios always put the issues of The Great Depression full display. This is why The Gold Diggers are so much more relatable. You love these women, and with casualisation of the work force, and 2020 putting on hold or just entirely smashing a lot of different ambitions, to all now just trying to get through the day and maybe feed. That the glorious show stopping Busby Berkely dance sequences that looked liked they were constructed rather than choreographed feels like is a sublime cherry on top.
7 - Certain Women, Kelly Reichardt, 2016
The general rule of a Discoveries list is that it's meant to be new to you movies, generally twenty years old. But I tend to cheat wit this. A lot. But it should be no surprise with the sublime First Cow being my favourite movie of 2020, that another Kelly Reichardt would appear on my Discovery list. Certain Women is a gorgeous movie. It almost works as an Anthology, following three different women try to about their lives. Now that I think about it, Certain Women would make an excellent paring with the above mentioned Gold Diggers of 1933. Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart and Lily Gladstone play four different women living in a small Colorado town, very simply Reichardt show us their loves, anxieties, routines and longings. All the performances are on point, all filled with tenderness and empathy. My favourite moments are Williams asking regular Reichardt player Rene Auberjonois (RIP) for stones from his yeard, or Gladstone watching Stewart eat. All these are tiny moments that resonate so strongly. Like First Cow, Certain Women looks at people living in a specific time and place, and again like First Cow, it is about the isolation - making each interaction these characters have more complicated and nuanced. As I said Certain Women is a gorgeous movie.
6 - The Psychic 1973 & New York Ripper, 1982, dir Lucio Fulci
5 - What a Way to Go, J. Lee Thompson, 1964
I had a big J Lee Thompson year. Throughout 2020 I watched: Conquer and Battle for Planet of the Apes, Happy Birthday to Me, A Cannon Trimutive of Messenger of Death and Death Wish Four & Five. And I regret nothing - I loved and like everyone for different reasons. But my favourite of these. You can hear what I had to say about it in my A Double of Triple Features Episode.
4 - Ganja & Hess, dir Bill Gunn, 1973
I love the idea that Bill Gunn took money to make a Blaxploitation Vampire movie, and delivered Ganja and Hess. A beautiful dreamy meditation on addiction and heritage. G&H is a movie that drips of sex and fantasy all in a beautifully simple manner. I watched Ganja and Hess during F This Movie's Junespoitation - a celebration of all things Exploitation - one of the best times of the year. With the first few frames my brain had to re-adjust to what I was watching. Ganja and Hess is not about exploitation, but celebrating of the bodies on screen. Both Ganja Meda and Dr Hess Green are both sex positive, in positions of power wealth, and both dealing with an addiction. In fact, both G&H make a choice about their addiction. Hess, Duane Jones - best known for Night of the Living Dead - has such a gorgeous presence. And looks amazing in a suit. With Gunn as the helm, G&H is a celebration of Black Sexuality and Beauty. That and it's an incredibly intelligent beguiling movie that is just too easy to sink into.
3 - The Adventures of Robin Hood, dir Michael Curtiz, 1938
Now we are heading into straight up Masterpieces I finally caught up with this year. Yeah, The Adventures of Robin Hood is great, amazing, incredible and any other adjective you want to throw at it. Watching Robin was like watching where movies came from, or the Rosetta Stone. It's not the striking Technicolor that MGM used as a colouring tone, instead Warner Brothers used a more animated quality to the movie over all. And it looks gorgeous; so much so that when Disney would make it's version of Robin Hood in 1973 they would use a very similar colour tone.
There is a magnetic energy to watching. The Adventures of Robin Hood. It's a movie that pulses with energy - and never stops, there's a pure joy to it. Robin Hood is a Swash and Buckle Adventure that even though as been lifted from again and again, still feels completely original. It's a movie that revels in the legend - it's bigger than life. And Warner Brothers cast appropriately a larger than life cast, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland sparkle with electricity when ever they are on screen, adding to this Basil Rathbone and the great Claude Rains both lend some significant gravitas as the villains of the piece. The Adventures of Robin is a truly magical movie - and I can see it quickly becoming a comfort movie in the future.
2 - The Third Man, dir Carol Reed, 1949
Carol Reed's The Third Man floored me. To the point I was wondering why I hadn't seen it years ago, so it could be a long standard favourite of mine. I mean holy hell! There is a way that Reed and cinematographer Robert Krasker use light and shadow, it almost feels supernatural. To the point that The Third Man feels like it is steeped in dream logic and built in an alternate reality. In fact the enigmatic character of Harry Lime, played perfectly by the enigmatic Orson Welles also feels supernatural. Lime is almost one with the shadows of a still bombed out Vienna in which he inhabits. Joseph Cotton is plunged in a world that is unfamiliar and everything is off kilter and strange. Which Reed works to brilliant and mesmerizing effect.
Harry Lime may only have small screen time, but he is all over the movie, mostly because he's constantly talked about by other characters. And not to mention Anton Karas out of step jaunty score, that feels at times is going over power the movie, yet is perfect. To borrow a term from Podcasters Brain Saur and Elric Kane; The Third Man is Pure Cinema. Every disparate element is working together to create something that can only shown on celluloid - or digital.
To show how brilliant The Third Man is. Alida Valli stalks out of the movie and without battering an eye and you can see her learning some witchcraft and begin teaching in a German ballet school. I think The Third Man and the original Suspiria would be an amazing double.
1 - Ran, dir Akira Kurosawa, 1985
Oh, okay I get it. Akira Kurosawa's Ran is the greatest movie ever made. What is what I said after I finished watching Ran for the first time this year. I've seen it maybe three times since May. Kurosawa has been a large blind spot in my film knowledge, and because he is such an important figure to the direction and history of film in general - I've been intimidated to really sink my teeth into his filmography. And the longer I've left it, the bigger the gap in my film knowledge became. I mean without Kurosawa - what would've Spaghetti Western's or Star Wars even looked like? Finally sitting down and watching a couple of Kurosawa's features actually felt like an achievement and opened a flood gate.
In 2020 I watched Rashamon (which could've easily been on this list - cause god damn it is amazing). But for me, Ran feels different, bigger far more epic - truly transcendent. Kurosawa did something with a Shakespearean adaption that I have never seen in this form. He made it something completely different - all while keeping it's inherit theatricality of it all. If you are going to adapt one of Shakespeare's greatest plays - King Lear - you need to go large, but Ran feels like a hold my beer movie in the most sublime way.
Like a lot of classic Japanese movies - Ran is mostly set outside in the wilds of Medieval Japan. Yet Kurosawa really takes Shakespeare most quoted lines - All the world is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players - to heart. Like in Rashamon - Ran is about the sky, Kurosawa's camera keeps pushing up to the heavens trying to find the invisible force that moves the characters actions and armies like they are chess pieces. And don't get me started on how everything is staged. These massive buildings that dwarf the people, that are themselves dwarfed by the landscape around them, the exaggerated Kabuki make up used to age Tatsuya Nakadai (who is more than brilliant) - the movies' King Lear. The most amazing invasion/siege sequence - that might have been put to film. I mean I could go on about how incredible this movie is. It has floored me every time I have watched it. And will probably keep flooring me.
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