Wonderful Life (1998) explores an interesting concept in ways you won’t expect. Released here as After Life, it follows an organization dedicated to shepherding the deceased into the next life. When you die, you get to select one memory, and only one, to remember for eternity. The viewer becomes more familiar with the spiritual bureaucracy alongside one crop of dead people, who arrive on Monday and are gone on Saturday. The rules are: each person has three days to choose a memory.
I knew almost nothing about Prospero’s Books before watching it, and that’s the way to watch it. But if you need more, it’s beautiful, visually distinct, and full of brilliant dialogue. That’s probably because it’s an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which I also knew nothing about. Prospero’s Books isn’t for everyone, but I recommend watching the first ten minutes and seeing if you enjoy it.
Nothing about Prospero’s Books should work.
I saw 89 movies in 2020. I’m watching more movies than usual, and now I’m finally on track to reduce my watchlist to zero. These are my top 5 most underrated movies I saw in 2020.
1. Joe Versus the Volcano A movie I can’t wait to watch again. Unique and with a brilliant outlook on life.
2. Tim’s Vermeer Read my review here.
3. Speed Racer I wish every movie was like Speed Racer.
I saw Synecdoche, New York again. I saw it once before in 2015 and called it my favorite movie. Starting in my early teens, my answer has been Ratatouille (most of the time) or Synecdoche (a year).
I still don’t have a better answer than those movies. I’m kind of adrift. I’m looking for something to make me feel the way I felt when I first saw Ratatouille, or when I kept coming back to it.
In March 2020, I noticed my movie watchlist had grown to an unmanageable 179 movies. I calculated that it would take over 12 days of nonstop watching to see everything. I have watched it grow and grow over the years. It wasn’t serving any purpose, so I examined what I want out of a watchlist and how I want to use it.
What is a watchlist? Some of this will sound basic, but I found that I was subconsciously making assumptions that fall apart under scrutiny.