Most Anticipated Films of 2020

[Silga]

What films are you looking forward to in 2020?

Wasp Network (Olivier Assayas)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
Tommaso (Abel Ferrara)
Hope Gap (William Nicholson)
Guest of Honour (Atom Egoyan)
Ema (Pablo Larraín)
Bad Education (Cory Finley)
The Perfect Candidate (Haifaa Al-Mansour)
It Must Be Heaven (Elia Suleiman)
Tenet (Christopher Nolan)
Falling (Viggo Mortensen)
Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
Tre piani (Nanni Moretti)
The Gentlemen (Guy Ritchie)
No Time to Die (Cary Joji Fukunaga)
Underwater (William Eubank)
Dune (Denis Villeneuve)
The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
The Last Duel (Ridley Scott)
Ammonite (Francis Lee)
Good Morning, Midnight (George Clooney)
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)
News of the World (Paul Greengrass)
On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)
Rifkin's Festival (Woody Allen)
Let Them All Talk (Steven Soderbergh)
Tesla (Michael Almereyda)
The Truth (Hirokazu Koreeda)
Madre (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)

[Silga]

First look at Kelly Reichardt's "First Cow"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUWVT87mt8

[nrh]

-

[nrh]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDZCXPBYHY0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNCfKOquFvM

[St. Gloede]

Still working on my watchlist, and I see many items have had their years changed since I last checked (won't link it for that reason).

Beyond the still untitled PTA film, which may just as well be pushed to 2021 given how little is known about it, these are my most anticipated:

The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
Annette (Leos Carax) - FINALLY!
Pop. 1280 (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Last Letter (Shunji Iwai)
On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola)
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)
Walking to Paris (Peter Greenaway)

There's also Denis Villeneuve's Dune and Tomm Moore's Wolfwalkers, not to mention a new Haynes film (hopefully). Not at all excited about Lowery's Peter Pan, but I will let him prove me wrong.

[Roscoe]

At the moment, Roy Andersson's ABOUT ENDLESSNESS is the one I'm looking forward to. Lanthimos' take on POP. 1280 might be interesting, depending on casting.

[josiahmorgan11]

I don't know a great deal about what's coming out, so this is the stuff I'm aware of that I have an eye on.

Walking to Paris (Greenaway)
First Cow (Reichardt)
Mank (Fincher)
Jungle Cruise (Collet-Serra)
Let Them All Talk (Soderbergh)
Fast & Furious 9 (Lin)
West Side Story (Spielberg)

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Some 2020 US genre films I look forward to checking out:

Monster Hunter (Paul W.S. Anderson)
Jungle Cruise (Jaume Collet-Serra)
Godzilla vs. Kong (Adam Wingard)
The Princess Switch: Switched Again (Mike Rohl)

[liquidnature]

not 2020, but they're finally making National Treasure 3. my life is complete

[ofrene]

didn't know Tsai Ming-Liang's new film is coming..

Days : Kang lives alone in a big house, Non in a small apartment in town. They meet, and then part, their days flowing on as before.

EPcKsl5XkAAQvy8.jpg (69.25 KiB) Viewed 5051 times

[Joks Trois]

Shakespeare's Shitstorm (Kaufman)

[ralch]

The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
All the Dead Ones (Marco Dutra, Caetano Gotardo)
Ammonite (Francis Lee)
Annette (Leos Carax)
Apollo 10½ (Richard Linklater)
Bergman's Island (Mia Hansen-Love)
Bios (Miguel Sapochnik)
The Box (Lorenzo Vigas)
Chaco (Diego Mondaca)
Charlatan (Agnieszka Holland)
The Cloud in Her Room (Xinyuan Zheng Lu)
Come, I Will Take You There (Alain Guiraudie)
Cuties (Maimouna Doucouré)
Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee)
Days (Tsai Ming-liang)
Desterro (Maria Clara Escobar)
Dick Johnson Is Dead (Kirsten Johnson)
El Gato (Nancy Savoca)
Ema (Pablo Larraín)
El empleado y el patrón (Manolo Nieto)
Eureka (Lisandro Alonso)
Fever Dream (Claudia Llosa)
First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
The Glorias (Julie Taymor)
Good Morning, Midnight (George Clooney)
Hammamet (Gianni Amelio)
The Hole (Michelangelo Frammartino)
Howls Are Heard (Julio Hernández Cordón)
Lingui (Mahamat Saleh-Haroun)
Mank (David Fincher)
Max Richter's Sleep (Natalie Johns)
Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)
My Salinger Year (Philippe Falardeau)
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always (Eliza Hittman)
Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
On a Half Clear Morning (Bruno Dumont)
One Ssecond (Zhang Yimou)
Petite fleur (Santiago Mitre)
The Practice (Martín Rejtman)
The Prince of Fashion (Gus Van Sant)
Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)
Rebecca (Ben Wheatley)
Saint Narcisse (Bruce LaBruce)
Shirley (Josephine Decker)
Shulan River (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
Siberia (Abel Ferrara)
Stillwater (Tom McCarthy)
This Is Not a Burial, It's a Resurrection (Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese)
Time (Garrett Bradley)
Undine (Christian Petzold)
Where to Land (Hal Hartley)
Window Boy Would Also Like to Have a Submarine (Alex Piperno)
The Woman Who Ran (Hong Sangsoo)
Young Hunter (Marco Berger)
*Untitled (Paul Thomas Anderson)

[Silga]

Swimming Out Till the Sea Turns Blue (Jia Zhangke). Now that I have found out about this new doc by Jia, it's already among the most anticipated this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUU2dgPo6Ug

[Roscoe]

Still waiting for news of the new Roy Andersson ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, goddammit.

[Joks Trois]

^^It is out on dvd in Sweden next week from the same company who released Pigeon with an Andersson commentary. Unfortunately they aren't releasing it on blu otherwise I would have bought it blind.

[greennui]

I thought it was fairly slight by Andersson's standards so I can understand it not being as prioritized as his previous films.

[Joks Trois]

^^Just watched it and I disagree. I'd say it is largely free of the gimmickry and novelty of his last two films and zeroes in on actual themes that structure the episodic fragments with more coherence and resonance than any of his films since Songs. People who claim that it feels more random than his other works are clearly not paying attention.

It may lack the imaginative set pieces and 'cleverness' of Pigeon and You, generally speaking, but there is more depth to it. It is a more subtle and sophisticated film.

The digital cinematography looks less sterile this time as well.

[Roscoe]

I'm eager to see it -- any suggestions as to how I can get ahold of it?

[MrCarmady]

I'm eager to see it -- any suggestions as to how I can get ahold of it?

I'm not sure what this forum's policy is on torrenting, but it popped up on the most famous tracker for obscure film a month ago.

[pabs]

I'm guessing many new films will go straight to video or straight to streaming services this year. Right?

[MrCarmady]

What a grim thought.

[Silga]

New film by Lech Majewski, starring Josh Hartnett and John Malkovich.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e02_JDYQoQ

[therouxxx]

new Matías Piñeiro film screening virtually next week:

https://virtual.filmlinc.org/film/isabella/

[liquidnature]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWfPGIMDhNw

wut.

no idea what this is but there's a 100% chance that i'm going to watch it. where do i pre-order the criterion bluray

[wba]

Mel rules!

[pabs]

Really intrigued by this one, so I'm looking forward to seeing it at some stage. Bure mentioned having seen it already at VIFF. I've liked everything Mads Mikkelsen's done so far, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_FzLs92YFc

[cinesmith]

What films are you looking forward to in 2020?

Tre piani (Nanni Moretti)
The Woman in the Window (Joe Wright)
The Truth (Hirokazu Koreeda)

Still waiting on these.. Nearly most of the Hollywood studio releases catalogue just continues to be pushed further into the year as we wait for the vaccines to be administered.


These were made available via strreaming

Underwater (William Eubank) shot in 2017 and was terribly underwhelming compared to 'The Signal'
Good Morning, Midnight (George Clooney) now called 'Midnight Sky' really disappointing but then I don't think Clooney is much of a director
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman) As twisted as everything that Kaufman has come up with in the past.

On the Rocks (Sofia Coppola) This appears to have sort of just sunk on arrival
News of the World (Paul Greengrass) Going to see this soon. Not holding my expectations too high.

[Abe]

I realised I hadn't watched a single 2020 film when my Letterboxd Year in Review hit my inbox a few days ago. Obviously external events have impacted most on that, but thinking on it, there's not really a great deal I would have wanted to see anyway. I plan on watching Hong Sang-soo's The Woman Who Ran in the next few days before it leaves Mubi, and then I would like to catch Days, Nomadland and Saint Maud all at some point, but can't think of much else.

[St. Gloede]

I realised I hadn't watched a single 2020 film when my Letterboxd Year in Review hit my inbox a few days ago. Obviously external events have impacted most on that, but thinking on it, there's not really a great deal I would have wanted to see anyway. I plan on watching Hong Sang-soo's The Woman Who Ran in the next few days before it leaves Mubi, and then I would like to catch Days, Nomadland and Saint Maud all at some point, but can't think of much else.

I'm quite delayed with 2020 viewings as well, but then I never really dive into a film year it is done. Still, I have two favourites from 2020 so far:

Uppercase Print (2020, Radu Jude) and There is No Evil (2020, Mohammad Rasoulof), my reviews:

Spoiler!

Tipografic majuscul / Uppercase Print (2020, Radu Jude)



Whoever said that lines deliver flat, without any emotion - composure held - faces still - can not deliver a punch. Maybe no one ever did; as it has been proven time and again to be false. However - this is not Bresson's monologues - but the recitation of real reports and letters - at first awkwardly amusing - but shortly, increasingly disturbing.
Uppercase Prints takes, from the archives, the real story, and the real words, of a massive investigation into who wrote slogans - yes, in UPPERCASE PRINT - on walls in Bucharest in 1981. This criminal act sets forth an investigation with hundreds of informants, countless police offers staking out suspect areas - and increasingly bizarre reports - including letters from regular people and their reactions to the words/phenomenon.

The visual world Radu Jude creates here - is as if Godard's The Joy of Learning - was blown up at a larger scale - and policed into an incredible Brechtian theatre. Standing in front of walls decorated merely by a recorder, a TV, and other baseline characteristics giving a mild inference of context - lighted up with strong colours - our "characters" recite their reports, letters, notations - as the reality of life in 80s Romania becomes increasingly clear.





This is interwoven with real footage from the TV stations at the time - connecting the real reality of political suppression - and a horrifying big brother - with lighthearted fare, calls for patriotism and odd, "playful" ways to lull people into following rolls - such as a clip from a comedic segment with police issuing fines for honking. It all creates a simultaneously surreal and real underbelly that becomes stronger and stronger as the stakes get higher. 

Though based on the documentary play by the same name, it should have been clear already, but Uppercase Print truly cements Radu Jude as one of the great cinematic masters of our age. Throughout his career he has been in a conversation with history - examining the persecution of Roma people in Aferim! and exploring the rise and then essentially love of fascism with Scarred Hearts and I Don't Care if We Go Down in History as Barbarians. 

It is exciting to see just how well he commands every style he handled, from Aferim!'s epic scope, comparable to The Saragossa Manuscript - or even Samurai tale - only placed in Feudal Romania - to the restrained minimalism of Scarred Hearts - to his explosive meta film "I Don't Care ...". Uppercase Print takes these meta elements even further - creating a meta essay that both dissects, contextualizes and dramatizes real events - the outcome - and leaves you with a real feeling of utter unease. The ending scene is particularly strong, and plays further with the ideas of breaking down all walls and making it clear you are watching and interacting with a film - as well as history - and as each representation could be seen as speaking directly to you - you are an active participant.

Note: Uppercase Print could be understood to be a documentary - as it features re-enactment of real words - along with real archive footage. There are no labels on IMDb yet. This is a really interesting case of an essay that could easily be seen as leaning either way on the documentary vs. feature scale.

9-9.5/10


Sheytan vojud nadarad / There is No Evil (2020, Mohammad Rasoulof)



This may be one of the bravest denunciations of the oppressive Iranian regime - and what is accepted as the rule of law. There is No Evil leaves the vile just on the edges - and focuses on the mundanity, familiarity and intimacy of life - all amidst actions and choices of deadly and ever-lasting consequences. 

In exploring close relationships - and the choices people make, or do not make - There is No Evil places an emphasis on submission or resistance in what soon becomes clear to be a no-win situation. This connected theme is carried through 4 separate stories capturing entirely different emotional motifs - for the slow lull of every day - to gripping tension - to sneaking realization to a sombre life on the outside of society. 

I really can't say more without spoiling the film. It packs several punches - and the first encounter with the "evil" in question comes out of nowhere - and acts as a gateway into just what is in a "choice". 9/10.

Caught a few other great films too, like Air Conditioner, The Metamorphis of Birds, Red Moon Tide, Eyimofe and Emma. (which was the last film I saw at the cinema, almost 1 year ago now).

[flip]

my current top 10 for 2020 is laughably hilarious, before i watched air conditioner this week my #10 for the year was switched, the christian high school body swap bullying comedy (which is not at all good, but is more watchable than several films i've seen from 2020). now my #10 is jingle jangle. so i really want to see some better 2020 films - if anyone has any good ones and can put them in the place, i will be grateful (and thanks unholymanm for air con!).