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Steve McQueen: The Lost Movie (2021) – Fascinating Piece Of Forgotten Cinema

Released: 2nd January
Seen: 2nd January

In the 1960s, one of the coolest movie stars on the planet was Steve McQueen. Star of classics like The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven, he was an icon who combined his love of acting with his other passion, F1 Racing. One of the things he was most known for was that love of driving, often doing his own stunt driving in any film he was permitted to. His love of driving was so great that he pushed to make one of the biggest racing movies of all time, a film that would become one of the most legendary unfinished films in history.

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The Minimalists: Less is Now (2021) – Minimally Good

Released: 1st January
Seen: 2nd January

When I think about minimalism, I tend to think about it in conjunction with the art world. My brain instantly goes to works by the minimalists like Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, which is a 5-metre high painting of two dark blue lines with a bold red line right in the middle. Well, it turns out that minimalism is also a lifestyle movement now which basically means to have nothing in your home that you don’t have an actual use for (so bye-bye to that Funko Pop collection).

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The Top Ten Worst Films of 2020

2020 has been the dumpster fire of years. Hell, calling it a dumpster fire almost feels like a compliment, at least a dumpster fire provides warmth and gets rid of garbage. The best thing we can say about 2020 is that Parasite won best picture during it and America decided to get rid of 239 pounds of fascist (I’m sorry, that was mean… he is much fatter than 239, which I’d like to remind everyone is the number that Simpson’s writers picked in order to set up the joke “You’re the fattest thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve been on safari”). Other than that, hundreds of thousands died from a disease that no one had ever seen before and the world shut down almost completely. It’s been a genuinely awful year that we will never forget even though we all want to. 

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Best List 2020
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The Top Ten Best Films of 2020

Honestly, this year I almost didn’t make the best list. For months it felt like I would be pushing it and scraping the bottom of the barrel to force 10 titles to appear on the list, every seemingly great film has been moved to 2021 and what was left for the 2020 audience felt more like the kind of stuff that’d be filler in any other year. 2020 has been one of those years where it felt like finding the positives was impossible, we spent months inside and watched countries battle against fascism. If you were to ask what the highlights of the year were, most would probably say “Uh… Parasite won best picture” and that would end the list. 

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We Can Be Heroes (2020) – Just For One Day

Released: 25th December
Seen: 31st December

Robert Rodriguez is one of the most fascinating filmmakers of our time. Known as the one-man film crew, he’s got a reputation for doing everything on set. Not only directing and writing, we’re talking handling the editing and cinematography and score of his films, he’ll even carry the damn Steadicam if that’s what he has to do to get the job done. He’s also very well known for working with a limited budget, preferring to come up with creative solutions to his problems rather than just throw money at it. He’s the kind of director who you always look out for because no matter what he makes, you can guarantee that it’ll be interesting in some way. Well, now Netflix has decided to get this filmmaker on their payroll and let him have some fun and god I hope this is the first of many Netflix funded Rodriguez films to come because the man knows how to make a fun family film, which is the quick description of We Can Be Heroes.

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Mank (2020) – It’s His Sled!

Released: 4th December
Seen: 28th December

Mank Info

When it comes to movies and their quality, there are no real definitive answers. A film that I love is one that you may hate and vice versa… there is, of course, an exception to this statement. Namely, if you answer “What is the greatest movie of all time” with any movie other than “Citizen Kane”, you are factually inaccurate in the eyes of everyone who would bother to ask that question and will probably be stoned in the streets. 

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Palm Springs (2020) – Repetitively Sweet

Released: 17th December
Seen: 26th December

Palm Springs Info

“It’s Groundhog Day, except…” is a fairly easy way of describing most movies that feature a time loop situation, it tells everyone exactly what to expect right off the bat. For example, Happy Death Day is “It’s Groundhog Day, except there’s a killer on the loose”. Well, when it comes to describing the oddly relaxing Palm Springs, one could quite easily say “It’s Groundhog Day…. with a pool”. 

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Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) – A Blast From The Past

Released: 26th December
Seen: 26th December

Last year we were all treated to the most elaborate superhero movie ever made with Avengers: Endgame. For all intents and purposes, that movie was a landmark moment, proof that a cinematic universe could not only be a joy to watch being built but actually climax to something. Now the way things were meant to go was that the Spider-Man movie would act as a coda, then 2020 would come along and basically remove all superheroes from the roster. 

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Soul (2020) – Soulful

Released: 25th December
Seen: 25th December

Sometimes I wonder exactly what devil Pixar made a deal with in order to produce its films, because it’s getting to the point where their output is just consistently great. Even their worst film (The Good Dinosaur, I will not be taking arguments at this time) is better than what a lot of their competitors make and when they hit something out of the park it turns into one of the best films of all time. This year they already made one great film with Onward, which got shafted due to the pandemic, and were meant to release Soul in June. That pandemic made them pull Soul and then they had to rethink its release… enter Disney+, which now houses the best Pixar film of the year in Soul.

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