Most anticipated movies in 2020

Before I start publishing my best and worst of 2019 lists, here's that time of year again to get excited about what's coming in next year. There's so many wonderful movies on the horizon, including several very anticipated sequels. And my top pick already feels like potential best Christmas gift ever. Here we go:

Soundtrack Wednesday - Watchmen (2019)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

(spoilers!)

I never thought that I will see something more embarrassing when it comes to ruining the franchise than 1. WB handing the keys to DC kingdom to Zack Snyder and giving him three tries to make a movie then on the third try going "oh, fuck no!" and firing him mid-making of the film 2. Dumb and Dumber wrecking Game of Thrones so bad that the early seasons are now unwatchable because you know it is all heading towards explosive diarrhea.

Enter whoever was in charge of Disney's Star Wars trilogy (do we blame just Kennedy? Surely more people were involved in making final decisions?). Because whoever made the calls here just wrecked 40+ years worth of a franchise.

Marriage Story

Marriage Story is a wonderful, wonderful movie. It's one of the year's best scripts (Parasite still is my win here) and it is truly expertly paced - it's not a short movie, but you aren't bored and even though the characters have many, many flaws you care about them enough to be curious what happens to them next.

Gal Gadot returns as Wonder Woman in stunning first trailer for Wonder Woman 1984

It's finally here! The long awaited trailer for Wonder Woman 1984 just landed online and it offers the first look at Diana using her new powers, Steve being back from the dead, Pedro Pascal's villain Maxwell Lord and Kristen Wig's Barbara Minerva. It's a gorgeous, very well made trailer that is not making it easier to wait for the movie, which is going to be released on June 5th 2020.

Visual Parallels: The Cabin in the Woods + Ready or Not

Screaming Sunday - Doctor Sleep

Rating - 71/100
Plot:  Years following the events of "The Shining," a now-adult Dan Torrance meets a young girl with similar powers as he tries to protect her from a cult known as The True Knot who prey on children with powers to remain immortal.
The heroes: Grown up Danny Torrance and a capable little girl named Abra.
The antagonists: Child murderers led by Rose the Hat, played by amazing Rebecca Ferguson.
What makes it so great? While I didn't like this movie as much as a lot of people did, this is definitely the most competently made Stephen King's adaption in 2019. In the Tall Grass was awful, Pet Semetery was dumb as hell and, while very entertaining, It: Chapter Two is a chaotic mess. But this right here is a proper movie, with decent script, character work and editing.

Joker

(spoilers!)

I wasn't going to write a review for this because 1. the last thing I want is insecure "men" who identify with the lead character writing nonsense in my comment section 2. this movie doesn't actually deserve my - or anyone's - words, but this is entirely too long for my letterboxd so here we go. Call me a c*nt, you ain't getting published, honey.

Soundtrack Wednesday - Succession

Screaming Sunday - Eli

Movie rating: 63/100
Plot:  A boy receiving treatment for his auto-immune disorder discovers that the house he's living in isn't as safe as he thought.
The heroes: Eli, a boy who may be on his way to getting cured...or murdered.
The antagonists: Ghosts? Doctors? His parents?
Best scene: The last 15 minutes, which are very surprising.
Oh-oh something's not right line: The decontamination chamber is our only way in or out.
What makes it so great? This had the advantage of me watching it directly after Wounds, another horror film that landed on Netflix last Friday. While Wounds was terrible, Eli is quite a decent horror flick with really crazy last act and I always love it when films are at its strongest just before the ending. It also has pretty great cast - Kelly Reilly and Lili Taylor are here, along with Sadie Sink who plays Max on Stranger Things. Sink plays the character here exactly the same way she plays Max, but it's cool to see her outside the show. The film is nothing tremendously unique but it is worth watching for the last few scenes alone.

Screaming Sunday - Ready or Not

Movie rating: 93/100
Plot:  A bride's wedding night takes a sinister turn when her eccentric new in-laws force her to take part in a terrifying game.
The heroes: One very unlucky but brave and capable bride.
The antagonists: Her in-laws.
Best scene: The ending.
Oh-oh something's not right line: You'll have to hide better than that.
What makes it so great? Boy, between this, Us and Parasite the rich are really getting quite the beating this year, huh? This is the most entertaining and creative horror film since The Cabin in the Woods and the most surprising horror script since Get Out. It's hilarious, twisted and so much fun. At 90 minutes run time it's a really engaging movie and Samara Weaving's Grace is a fantastic heroine - resourceful, brave, funny and relatable.

El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie

(spoilers!)

6 years after the finale of Breaking Bad we got the sequel focusing on Jesse Pinkman. I was worried how it will turn out, given how perfect the last shot of Jesse in the series' finale was. A lot of people are complaining that El Camino wasn't necessary. No, it wasn't. But that didn't make it any less enjoyable.

Screaming Sunday - Crawl

Movie rating: 79/100
Plot:  Against all logic, the competitive swimmer, Haley (Kaya Scodelario), drives into the mouth of a furiously destructive Category 5 hurricane on a collision course with her hometown of Florida, to check in on her estranged father, Dave (Berry Pepper). There, in their weather-beaten house amid a rapidly sinking and alligator-infested town, Haley and her father find themselves trapped in the labyrinthine mess of their flooded crawl space, where a merciless pair of six-metre predators is silently stalking them. Now--as Haley and Dave are gasping for air in the claustrophobic basement--only their will to survive can help them stand a chance against the scaly adversaries' powerful jaws. Can they escape without getting eaten alive?
The heroes: A girl, her father and his dog.
The antagonists: Bloodthirsty alligators. And seriously, the Hargans and Pennywise have nothing on those toothy motherfuckers. They are savage.
Best scene: Honestly the whole movie is a bit over 80 minutes long and it's a series of exciting and very well done scenes.
Oh-oh something's not right line: There's two of them!

Saturday TV Special: 20 best moments in Breaking Bad

We are now only 6 days away from the follow up to one of the most acclaimed TV series of all time, Breaking Bad. I wasn't a big fan of finale, which I wrote about at length after it aired. The rewatch did make me appreciate it a bit more but it fixed none of its many problems. So for me this is like another chance to give the series the proper ending. There's the risk they will mess it up - especially since the shot of Jesse laughing as he was driving away was just so, so perfect - but to quote someone else on letterboxd - I hope Vince Gilligan won't fuck us on this.

Visual Parallels: The Witch + Midsommar

The Witch and Midsommar have a lot in common - they both came from A24, they are directed by young, promising directors and they are both led by an incredibly talented young actress - the world was introduced to Anya Taylor - Joy in The Witch and Florence Pugh's breakthrough role came in Midsommar.

My TV Alphabet

The lovely Getter over at MettelRay has made a wonderful TV alphabet and encouraged us to participate. So....let's do it.

And make as much as possible of it about Bill.

It: Chapter Two

(spoilers!)

It Chapter One premiered two years ago and was a massive success - it got positive reviews from critics, the audience fell in love with the film and it managed to become the highest grossing horror movie of all time. As entertaining as that movie was it had a lot of problems and now in Chapter Two the same problems return. But so does the fun, the emotions and of course, Pennywise.

5 best things I watched this year (so far)

It's August already (what the fuck, right?). While the Oscar season is not yet here I gotta say I don't really care about it this year since my last anticipated movie of the year premieres in 5 days and there's no way in hell Academy nominates anyone from a horror movie. Anyways, there's still 4 months till my end of the year list is completed. I'm sure there's still many interesting movies and TV series to be released this year, but it looks like a sure bet that the three movies I'm about to talk about here will be in my top 10 of 2019. And I also have to feature TV categories in my awards this year, because as you are about to read, TV is officially better than movies this year.

Against the Crowd 2019

Dell is hosting his annual Against the Crowd blogathon, so I just had to join to complain again. Here are the rules:

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

(cast spoilers!)

The audience and critics alike loved the chemistry between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in The Fast and the Furious films so much that the studio decided to green light a spin-off featuring both of them. And now it has finally arrived. I myself only started watching the series when Statham joined it and as far as dumb action movies go, they are really good. And this spin-off has the added bonus of Vin Diesel, the black hole of charisma that actually sucks out the charm of surrounding actors, being nowhere in sight.

5 reasons I'm really hyped for "It: Chapter Two"

We are now 33 days away from the release of It Chapter Two. Having just rewatched the first movie yesterday and having seen Jade the Orient scene just now, that screened last night along with the re-release of the first movie in USA (as always fuck the rest of the world, right? God bless helpful redditors who uploaded it there) I'm very excited. I'm rooting for this movie to beat the record set by the first one. It's a horror film backed by a major studio, with big budget (and you can really see that budget, the production design alone is lovely) and with a runtime of over 2 hours and 40 minutes. I want it to make so much money and I want it to be good and from the looks of it, it will be

It's time for Tarantino to go away

After suffering through Tarantino's new movie, Once Upon a Time in...Hollywood, an excruciatingly boring trainwreck with editing from hell, I wasn't going to write a review  (and neither is that post one, I only scribbled few words on letterboxd). Tarantino has some of the most rabid, misogynistic fanboys out there and the last thing I want is to have a bunch of incels in my comments section. So on that note - if you wanna call me a cunt, that isn't going to get published here, honey. Maybe it won't happen as they are currently busy harassing Shannon Lee, who was uncomfortable with the portrayal of her father. Apparently that "bitch" "didn't get it".

10 best scenes in Stranger Things 3

Recently I made list where I chose 10 best scenes in Stranger Things from season 1 and season 2. It was actually even harder to choose 10 scenes just from season 3. This is my favorite season so far and I just keep reweatching it. The wait for season 4 is already really excruciating, so let's take a look at some of the best moments again:

Pennywise returns in brand new trailer for "It: Chapter Two"!

Finally! Comic Con is happening right now in San Diego and even though WB doesn't have a panel this year, the cast of It: Chapter Two was there last night and participated in Conan O'Brien's special show. They also showed 3 scenes and a trailer, which just dropped online:

Top 5: Male characters I love the most

Because I'm bored and I'm shallow I decided to make a list today. Going through all of my crushes would be impossible so I decided to narrow things down. Today, my lovely readers who I judge only a little bit for reading this website to begin with, we are not going to focus on the actors I love. No, we are going to focus on the characters I love (that also happen to be played by the actors I love).

The Beach Bum

There are some actors who suit the part they are playing so well you cannot possibly imagine anyone else doing that. It's the case with Jeff Bridges as the Dude. Samuel. L Jackson as Jules Winnfield. Keanu Reeves as Neo. And now Matthew McConaughey's Moondog.

McConaughey, who had his career comeback a while back, had less luck in the last few years appearing in a bunch of movies that were either unsuccessful, underseen or complete box office and critical flops. Just few months ago we watched him in utterly insane Serenity, but even there you gotta admit while the film was an incomprehensible disaster McConauyghey's entertaining performance still made it a lot of fun to watch.

Midsommar

(spoilers!)

Last year Hereditary profoundly scared some and infuriated the others, but one thing cannot be denied - it definitely got people talking. Now its director, Ari Aster, is back with another nightmare and unlike Jordan Peele and his frankly embarrassing script for Us, he avoids sophomore slump. While Hereditary may be a more entertaining and accessible movie, Midsommar feels like a movie made by someone who is more sure of their skill. There were some parts of Hereditary that I felt didn't fit the movie in a natural way and took me out of it, but Midsommar doesn't have that problem. It's a more mature movie.

Saturday TV Special - Stranger Things (season 3)

Here we are! After long anticipation season 3 of Stranger Things is finally available on Netflix. I know not everyone watched it yet - the hell are you people doing having a life instead of watching it?! - so I will cover the heavy spoilers (highlight to read). Here are my thoughts on this season:

10 best scenes in Stranger Things

After rewatching the entire series last week, just in time for season 3 which arrives the day after tomorrow, I decided to comply the list of 10 best moments on the show so far. It wasn't easy as this series has so many fantastic sequences but somehow, I managed. Here we go!:

Rising Stars: Florence Pugh

Ever since watching Lady Macbeth last year I have been a huge fan of Florence Pugh. Along with Eliza Scanlen she is, for me, the most exciting and talented young actress out there - and how wonderful that they will share the screen very soon in Little Women.

Florence was born in 1996. She grew up in Oxford in a creative family, one of four children. Her dad owns a handful of restaurants in the city, her mother was a dancer and her older brother, Toby Sebastian, who is also an actor played the Dornish prince on Game of Thrones.

Screaming Sunday - Child's Play

Movie rating: 52/100
Plot: A mother gives her 13-year-old son a toy doll for his birthday, unaware of its more sinister nature.
The heroes: The kids, because it's the cool thing these days to have the children battle the horror antagonist. After all, It is the most successful horror film in history.
The antagonists: That one disgruntled employee.
Best scene: The reveal of what Chucky did to the world's crappiest boyfriend.
Oh-oh something's not right line:  Did you say Chucky?
What makes it so great? This is not a great movie but it's much better than I expected it to be after its lazy, disgusting and quite frankly hugely unprofessional marketing campaign with Chucky murdering Toy Story characters. The film is much more fun than other recent horror films - I am looking at you, Brightburn - and it is surprisingly emotional. Granted I always feel for CGI characters, but I was genuinely surprised how much I empathized with Chucky, This whole situation happened because of someone messing up his programming and all he wanted was to be a good friend. There's also plenty of humor here and the actors do a really great job - Aubrey Plaza somehow sells being somebody's mom, Gabriel Bateman is really good as Andy and Brian Tyree Henry provides a lot of comic relief.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Gareth Edwards' 2014's Godzilla was one of the most forgettable big budget movies I've seen. Nothing memorable came out of it, other than hilarious Honest Trailer highlighting Ken Watanabe's stares and the meme of Bryan Cranston saying "Godzilla, we need to cook" and shot of Godzilla going "bitch". Somehow it got good reviews and made enough money to jump start the Monsterverse.

At WB.

So you knew shit will get dicey fast.

Soundtrack Wednesday - Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Dark Phoenix

Back in the early 2000's we didn't really have many good CBMs. We had stuff like Daredevil and Fantastic Four, and we never dreamed that the genre will be truly successful one day. But there were also the X-Men movies, the first two parts of which, along with Sam Raimi's Spiderman, proved that CBMs can be genuinely thrilling action adventure flicks. The franchise then evolved, delivering few stinkers in the process and changing its cast. Then in 2017, triumphantly, came the best entry in the X-Men franchise and entire comic book movie genre -  the masterful Logan. They should have just quit while they were ahead. But as always is the case with 20th Century Fox, they didn't.

Soundtrack Wednesday - The Matrix Trilogy

Screaming Sunday - Ma

Movie rating: 72 /100
Plot: A lonely woman befriends a group of teenagers and decides to let them party at her house. Just when the kids think their luck couldn't get any better, things start happening that make them question the intention of their host.
The heroes: A bunch of teenagers who just want to drink and party.
The antagonists: Ma, played flawlessly by the great Octavia Spencer.
Best scene: It's hard to choose because every single time Ma is on the screen the film is so much fun.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Strip.
What makes it so great? This is trashy, pulpy fun. The script is absolutely atrocious - at various points the teenagers are like "we are not going there anymore" and the very next scene is them partying at Ma's house - but Octavia Spencer's delicious performance makes it worth watching. While the gore is never too crazy and the teenage characters are quite bland, Juliette Lewis, Luke Evans and Allison Janney (in cameo performance) deliver pretty great work. But the movie belongs to Spencer, which is only fitting, since even though she got her Oscar years ago, this is her first leading role.

10 best moments in John Wick films

Action movies are usually looked down on. Even a franchise as successful as The Fast and the Furious is seen like a lesser movie, because it's light on plot and heavy on explosions, shootouts and car chases. But what if there was an action franchise that included the scenes of shootouts and car chases so well made, done with such creativity and visual splendor, not only you wouldn't miss the complex and intricate plot but you would be happy simply watching those action scenes for hours?

That's John Wick franchise.

John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum

5 years ago we were introduced to the deadliest Avenger of them all. John Wick, a man who has lost his wife and received a farewell gift from her - a puppy. But when that puppy is killed, in what is the most awful scene I've seen in my entire life, and John's car is stolen (let's face it - that car doesn't really matter, though) by some very bad people, John Wick will embark on the most entertaining, justified and hottest killing spree in cinematic history.

Screaming Sunday: The Perfection

Movie rating: 73/100
Plot:  When troubled musical prodigy Charlotte (Allison Williams) seeks out Elizabeth (Logan Browning), the new star pupil of her former school, the encounter sends both musicians down a sinister path with shocking consequences.
The heroes: Here's the thing with this movie - the heroes change as the film progresses....
The antagonists: ....and it's the same with the antagonists.
Best scene: The chilling, gruesome ending. I love when a horror/thriller film ends either with an earned twist or macabre ending and this one was a very cool example of the latter.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Not a line, but when you see Charlotte briefly turn into her younger self and she is screaming in the very first scene of the movie.

Soundtrack Wednesday - John Wick

Let the festivites begin in new trailer for Ari Aster's Midsommar

On the heels of releasing a gorgeous poster, A24 has graciously made sure I won't get anything done today - other than making countless gifs - by releasing a great new trailer for Midsommar.

Screaming Sunday: It: Chapter One

Movie rating - 74/100
Plot: In the summer of 1989, a group of bullied kids band together to destroy a shape-shifting monster, which disguises itself as a clown and preys on the children of Derry, their small Maine town.
The heroes: A group of adorable children.
The antagonists: An evil entity that takes many forms.
Best scene: The opening sequence.
Oh-oh something's not right line: Take it, Georgie.
What makes it so great? While the film doesn't blend the two genres too well - one being a story about kids growing up in a terrible town, the other a horror movie - it is one of the most entertaining horror films released in the last few years. The film went on to earn an incredible 700 million dollars worldwide, making it the highest grossing horror movie of all time and I have no doubt that Chapter Two, to be released in less than 4 months from now, is going to do even better than that, especially given its amazing first trailer that was released this week.

The first trailer for "It: Chapter Two" finally dropped!

Finally! After weeks of anticipation and saying "it's gotta be this one!!" about every single Warner Bros. release in hopes it will have the trailer attached to it, the trailer was finally released today.