The Letterboxd Show 2.24: Crew Faves of 2021
[clip of Godzilla vs. Kong plays: sounds of helicopters while Godzilla and Kong fight]
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]
SLIM Hello and welcome to Gemma are ed by a Letterboxd friend for a chat about their four favorite films. As you listen along, we’ll have links in the episode notes so there’s no excuse not to add these films to your watchlists. Today, in a tiny break from format—but not really—we are bringing some Letterboxd insiders to the table to discuss our four favorites of 2021.
GEMMA That’s right, please welcome Letterboxd’s director of social, Titane’s writer and director Julia Ducournau and almost single handedly took the Letterboxd team to victory in a Cinephile Game Night this past July. And Aaron Yap—well if you follow any of Letterboxd social media s, Aaron is the person responsible for overseeing the Mads Mikkelsen thirst and Cate Blanchett GIFs all… day… long. Hello, you two.
AARON Sorry, not sorry. [Gemma & Slim laugh]
SLIM And Mitchell, how did it feel? I mean, we played Cinephile together, you almost took the whole thing solo. What was that night like for you playing Cinephile with the Letterboxd crew?
MITCHELL It was not without stress. I will say I was definitely sweating profusely, the entire time. So it was basically a blackout. It’s nice to hear that apparently, we won. [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA I think it was also about five minutes after you’d ed the staff of Letterboxd. So, you know, it’s pretty much the only reason you got the job is so that we’ll always win Cinephile. No, no, that’s not true. Also, you made Mike Mills cry, which I just love. And the other thing I love about you two, and I’m feeling—I don’t know about you Slim, but I’m feeling a little bit out of my depth at this point—is that between the pair of you Aaron and Mitchell, I’m not sure who would win in a physical media fight. It’s fair to say that you’re both collectors.
SLIM Walk us through it, Aaron. what’s your physical collection like?
AARON It’s pretty embarrassing. I guess I’ve been collecting for—I don’t want to reveal the age part of it. But a good two decades, maybe. [Aaron laughs] So I’ve amassed a little bit over that period of time. And it’s just—I just can’t stop.
SLIM What’s your prize collection in your library?
AARON I need to get back to you. It’s like asking me what my favorite film is.
SLIM Yeah, marinate on it. What about you, Mitchell? What’s your collection like?
MITCHELL Yeah, it’s pretty intense. At the moment, I have run out of rooms on the shelving systems that I have. So I have literally just stacks and stacks just on the floor, that every day, I’m like, ‘Oh, I need to figure out how to get new shelves so that I don’t just have Blu-rays upon Blu-rays on the floor, but I just instead just keep buying more Blu-rays.
GEMMA Aaron’s just nodding in sympathy.
AARON This is the life.
MITCHELL Of course, instead of spending money on new shelves, I instead spend money on new Blu-rays to go on the floor. [Gemma laughs]
SLIM So this has been quote “a year”. And with that in mind, as Gemma said, each person on this episode is going to talk about their main fave released in 2021. And then we’ll go through quick honorable mentions. So that includes Gemma and myself by the way—bee tee dubs.
GEMMA Woohoo! [Slim laughs]
SLIM I think we all know which pick was Gemma’s. I think you probably all know which pick was mine.
GEMMA Godzilla vs. Kong—coming home, baby! [Slim & Gemma laugh] And after that segment, later in the show, we’ll talk about new to us in 2021, meaning movies that were first viewings for us, new discoveries that came out before 2021. So I’m excited to talk about all these movies. Where should we go from here, Gemma? Is it time to go in to our first fave?
GEMMA I mean, well, we’ve got two—we’ve got the two directors, who are the only female directors to have won the Palme d’Or. I think we should start with the most recent because that was a heck of a way to start award season. And I’m talking about Julia Ducournau and Titane.
[Light House by Future Islands plays]
MITCHELL So I was told that I’m not allowed to talk about Titane. [Gemma & Slim laugh]
SLIM Mental note to myself, edit this out. Edit this all out. It’s disgusting.
MITCHELL Clifford’s coming back!
GEMMA You said you wouldn’t even mention the title! [Gemma & Aaron laugh]
MITCHELL But no, you know, as is true with Clifford a lot of movies really affected me this year and in really extreme ways. And I’ll drop a couple more in the honorable mentions, but I genuinely, in all sincerity, Titane I kind of felt like was the first movie that I’ve seen where I was watching it, presented as almost like a non-binary gaze or a gender-non-conforming gaze. I think the way that Julia Ducournau kind of queers gender in the film, felt like such an alarming kind of visceral representation of how I personally see the world, as she really breaks down these ideas of what’s masculine, what’s feminine, and what those words even mean, which ultimately, they mean nothing. She just rips open kind of these boxes that we’re all placed into socially. And she presents this idea that, maybe this is all a construct, and at the end of the day, it’s all fluid. There’s so much more than what we’re led to believe, you know what I mean?
SLIM I looked up the synopsis that is pulled in and is on Letterboxd right now, listen to this synopsis for this movie: “Following a series of unexplained crimes, a former firefighter is reunited with his son who has been missing for ten years.” That is like the most—[Slim & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA What movie is that?
SLIM …strangest synopsis. I’ve seen this movie and that is an amazing tease for this movie. It’s just the last thing I would have thought of when kind of pitching this. So how do you pitch it, Mitchell?
MITCHELL See, that’s an interesting thing. Because when thinking about how I wanted to even start discussing it, yeah, it makes sense to start with talking about kind of the basic logline of what a movie is. But Titane, one of the really interesting things about how she totally subverts expectation is—this movie is not what you could even possibly sell it as. The marketing for it sold it as this really extreme severe body horror—it kind of is that for the first fifteen minutes—and then it becomes something else entirely with. I mean, it’s about a woman who is also kind of a serial killer and she feels disconnected from the world, but she’s running away from these crimes that she committed so that she’s not apprehended by the police. And in doing so, she takes up this opportunity to sort of camouflage herself by disguising as this boy who disappeared many years ago, this son of a firefighter. And then he accepts her. He hasn’t seen his son in so many years. So he just thinks that that’s—or at least we’re led to believe that he thinks that that actually is his child. And that’s the first 20 minutes of the movie. [Gemma & Mitchell laugh] And the directions that it goes from there are just so much beyond like you can possibly imagine what they would be because she really, she went into this idea of totally deconstructing even the idea of the three-act structure of films. So the structure of the movie itself is just as fluid as anything else. It’s completely reinventing how you think that you would watch a movie.
GEMMA I feel like out of all the movies that came out this year, Parasite-level plot twists, if it’s not a cheesy thing to say. It’s the one where you go in with a very vague notion of plot and no idea where you’re about to be taken.
AARON Yeah. The structure of Titane does that immensely well.
SLIM This was probably the most recent movie that I can think of that sent shockwaves through like my group of friends. Like “Oh, Titane, you got to see Titane, you’re not ready for Titane.” [Gemma & Mitchell laugh] And I was like, ‘Oh, god, what am I getting into here?’ Like it was almost kind of a real subtle buzz around the movie because it was one of those things where like “Now, don’t read anything, just go in, you’re not ready.” And I think that might have worked against the hype for some people because it set real like lofty expectations. Like “Titane, Titane, Titane!” And you’re like ‘Alright, shut up the eff up, I’ll go watch it.’ And that was the first movie I think I thought of this year that was like so crazy different hype that it worked for people or really didn’t work for people.
GEMMA Well Slim, I mean, given that you are the master of running in the opposite direction from hype to the point that—wait, what did you see for the first time this year? Roma? [Slim laughs] Just that small Oscar-winning—
SLIM Just wait until everyone gets to my segment of the episode, okay? No one’s ready for my segment.
AARON Slim, I haven’t seen Roma either, so. [Gemma laughs]
SLIM Thank you, Aaron. Thank you. Our bravery right now.
AARON Little confession. [Slim laughs]
GEMMA Bravery, bravery all around. So given that, have you seen Titane?
SLIM I have. I was wondering when Gemma was gonna pull her strings and ask my opinion on the movie. I did finally sit down to watch it. And the hype worked against me, I think, unfortunately. Because I started to mentally put this movie in a box, which I shouldn’t have. And when you hear so much about like body horror, Cronenberg, different-than-Cronenberg body horror. I’m like, ‘Oh my god, what is this movie?’ And you start to get an expectation of what you’re going to feel and see. But the movie, like you said Mitchell, is so different in its fluidity of a film, you can’t put it in a box. And I kind of almost wish that I had seen this maybe before my group of friends, movie-watching friends, or anyone on Letterboxd so that I just kind of went in totally blind and before the hype, kind of like, took hold of me. The hype fog, so to speak.
GEMMA So what you’re saying, Slim, is you need to be on the screener list for studios… [Slim laughs]
SLIM Julia, if you’re listening right now.
GEMMA …for people who get to see it first.
MITCHELL Yeah, just be friends with Julia Ducournau from now on, and you’ll get the first look anytime.
GEMMA Hey Mitchell, before we move on, I’m really keen to know a little bit more about your experience of getting to talk to Julia, about your experience of watching her film.
MITCHELL Yeah, I mean, that was definitely—I’ve done a handful, more than a handful of interviews this year, and that was certainly the most profound for me, being able to express not only just to talk to her about kind of the things that really specifically I keyed into with the movies about the way that it deconstructs gender and all these like social ideas, but to also just express just what it meant to me personally, as somebody who has a non-binary gender. A lot of these times, when you’re doing these interviews, you get fifteen, twenty minutes to talk to somebody and they can feel a little bit canned, but you try not to make them. But that one, it really felt like there was a kind of personal connection there, that really meant a lot to me. I was coming from a place that was really personal with the film. And I mean, we also got to talk about the homoerotic firefighter rave. [Slim & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA Oh my god. Which is the moment I wept during the movie, because I think we were in lockdown at that point. I was like, ‘I just want to be in a firehouse right now!’ [Gemma laughs]
SLIM So what about what about your honorable mentions for 2021, Mitchell? What are three films that maybe we can quick hear about before we move to Gemma’s picks?
MITCHELL Yes, so some other ones that really did hit me a lot. Petite Maman because I know Aaron just saw it in theaters as the first movie that he saw in theaters after 100-plus days on lockdown.
AARON You know, I hadn’t read too much about it. So I thought it was just going to be a straight kind of coming-of–age film two young girls becoming friends in the woods or something like that. But the way it just kind of changed into something else was quite was emotional, and also quite—what’s the word—unexpected, I guess. Are we allowed to talk spoilers?
SLIM I have not seen it, but it is on my list.
GEMMA I haven’t seen it yet!
AARON And I don’t know how much that sort of plays into, is it a spoiler-proof film. But it definitely—I just loved the low-key nature of the way it was told and just a perfect length at 72 minutes.
SLIM Wow.
AARON In and out. It still packed a punch at the end.
MITCHELL Yeah, it’s so funny, Memoria, the most recent film from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, the kind of master of hypnotic slow cinema. And this one, his first movie is shooting outside of Thailand, he shot it in Colombia. And it takes on this really interesting kind of examination of time, and how our present is always informed by the past and the future. And not only the past and the future of ourselves, but also the people around us and like the Earth itself that we inhabit. And it’s the kind of movie—which I think all four of my favorite movies of the year do this thing that kind of makes me ruminate and really reflect on my place within the world and kind of the, I mean, the world itself, but especially my place within the world, and just who I am and how I relate to the world. And I feel like you get lucky if one movie a year can really make you feel like that and really make you change your perspective. And just think about what your perspective even is. And the fact that I had four movies this year that did that for me and that I just keep thinking about and every time they come into my head, I spend hours thinking about them again, even though I’ve already done it so many times. To have four movies in a year that do that, feels honestly kind of like a miracle. You know?
SLIM What a friggin’ year.
MITCHELL Yeah, what a year.
SLIM We have been leading up to this moment for I feel like the entire season of The Letterboxd Show, and that is Gemma talking about Jane Campion’s newest film, The Power of the Dog. 3.8 average on Letterboxd right now.
GEMMA Too low.
AARON Yeah, it’s not in the 3.9 club, which is the elite Letterboxd ratings club. [Slim & Gemma laugh] You gotta hit the 3.9.
GEMMA I think we’re gonna hit that 3.9 as more young queers come to this film.
SLIM Well, didn’t her other film that we talked about also do the slow rise over the years?
GEMMA What other film was that, Slim? [Slim laughs] We haven’t talked about any other Jane Campion films on this podcast! [Gemma laughs]
SLIM If there was a drinking game for me mentioning I haven’t seen a movie, there’s a definitely drinking game for Gemma and Jane Campion on this show. But you were waiting for this movie to come out. Tell us about The Power of the Dog and tell us about how it made it to be your fave of the year.
[music from The Power of the Dog plays]
GEMMA Yeah, so anyone listening to this podcast for any length of time will know that I’m a Campion fan, specifically have The Power of the Dog? Hmm.
SLIM Well let me read the synopsis. We have a synopsis battle, maybe that’s like a new segment. We determine if the synopsis is actually good or bad. [Gemma & Aaron laugh] But the synopsis for The Power of the Dog. And I am one of those that kind of just ignores the trailers for the most part and just kind of goes in. They referenced this movie as sort of like a thriller. Is that correct? Because I didn’t even know that. I thought it was more of like a simmering drama, potential love story or something.
GEMMA So did I until I saw it.
SLIM Oh, really? Okay. Genre spoilers.
GEMMA And I really, really am reluctant to talk about spoilers here. Because it really is—and not to hype it up beyond belief, because I also don’t think that that’s correct to do with this film. It really is—I now understand why the film has been talked about in the way it’s been talked about and why Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch) has been the focus of the marketing and why Peter, the son of Rose played by Kodi Smit-Mhee, beautifully in this, he’s stunning, has been somewhat backgrounded in the marketing. And I think that that is so important, and it kind of matches the story in and of itself. I mean, when we first meet Peter, we meet him at the top of the film and he’s making paper flowers in this very masculine kind of isolated, Montana rancher territory. So it’s clear from the get-go that he’s a sissy in a manscape. Right? And so, immediately, immediately, you’ve set up two complete masculine opposites—or so we think. It sort of goes from there, I guess. But yeah, I don’t want to say much more, but I’m happy to report that Jane’s obsession with hands remains intact and that she’s added feet and shoes, quite a lot of different pairs of shoes, to the mix. As always, there are many, many fetish objects. In Psycho. And it has possibly the best terrorism-by-banjo scene in a cinema possibly ever. I don’t know, no one started a terrorism-by-banjo list on Letterboxd yet.
[banjo scene from The Power of the Dog plays]
SLIM That’s a market opportunity.
GEMMA It feels to me like it’s the ultimate comeback for all those assholes who have always told that joke, “What’s the difference between a banjo and a ukulele?”
SLIM Aaron, have you seen this yet?
AARON Oh, yes, I did. I saw it just last week on Netflix. Did you watch it on the big screen, Gemma?
GEMMA I watched it at the Cineplex.
AARON Maybe I should have done that. Yeah, I wasn’t as blown away as the general consensus seems to be but I still found a lot to ire in it. And I think I was just kind of, those expectations, that kind of hype thing, where I think I was going in expecting the whole Cumberbatch thing to be the part that was interesting or seemed interesting came really late in the film to me. So I think I just need to readjust that kind of expectation and just relax into it a bit more.
GEMMA I think a lot of people who have read the book had said that as well. I know that Bright Star the first time I saw it and went, “Huh. Well, that was, um, that was sweet. That was sad.” And then as the years have gone by, it just sits deeper and deeper and deeper in my heart.
SLIM And Mitchell, you have not seen this yet. Correct?
MITCHELL No. So I actually saw it. I knew that it was Gemma’s pick for favorite, so I watched it. I squeezed it in last night at one o’clock in the morning.
GEMMA The perfect time to watch it. [Slim laughs]
MITCHELL Yeah, for anybody who hasn’t watched it yet, don’t watch it at one o’clock in the morning. Maybe give it an afternoon viewing. [Gemma laughs] It definitely sinks in. It is very much—yeah, describing it as like a thriller or whatever is a little bit disingenuous. Because it really is, it really sinks underneath your skin. And it just has that kind of slow burn where it just unsettles you and you at first can’t even necessarily like put your finger on why it’s unsettling you and then the longer it goes on, the more you think like, ‘Oh, this is why.’ But also the unsettling thing is so much more complex than you would even think that it would be and it creates this kind of world where there’s no good people, no bad people, necessarily. Everybody’s kind of a victim of circumstance and pressure from society and everything. And I mean, I think that that’s just so wonderful. It makes sense that it comes from a novel because it’s such a novelistic movie, in a way where you watch it and then you want to go read the novel to get all the extra details and stuff. But she packs everything so well into the little over two hours there.
SLIM Gemma, can you let us know some honorable mentions for this past year that we’re still in, technically?
GEMMA I just—that we’re still in—I don’t even. It’s a funny one, because while it has been a year for cinema indeed, it’s the ones that just kind of stick with you, right? Like, this is a favorites format. I know I’m just putting it off, because I’m kind of not sure if I’m proud or embarrassed about my choices.
SLIM You and me both.
GEMMA I want to say the film from this year that I’ve seen the most often, obviously with my child, is Spencer starring Kristen Stewart. This particular case, the screening came through and I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying I watched it with other people. But this film is what popped the bubbles between me and my mum and my sister when we were having to isolate. We came together around this film. So for the first time in many months, it was the first movie I got to watch with the two most important women in my life. And on top of that, it’s just the little touches of genius like her wardrobe: she’s had an outfit selected for every single event that’s happening in this palace over these three Christmas days. And when you see the hangers hanging on the rack, it says “POW”, and you stop and you go, ‘Hang on. Oh, Princess of Wales.’ Not prisoner of war.
SLIM We just got an email from the Spencer people. They said no more screeners for Letterboxd.
GEMMA Oh, man! [Slim & Gemma laugh]
SLIM You have one more movie that you didn’t talk about for your honorable mentions before we get to Aaron. Gemma, what is it?
GEMMA You can see my notes. You know I’ve got three more. But I’m not gonna do that to you. [Gemma & Slim laugh]
SLIM Gemma has ten more movies that she wants to talk about.
GEMMA I’ve got 25 more movies—wait, isn’t this 40 favorites? [Slim laugh] I’m confused. Look, I did very quickly want to shout out the Todd Stephens film The Worst Person in the World, which is this story of the coming of age of a woman into her 30s. And also a look at people in their mid-to-late 40s. And usually those kind of coming-of-age movies around the 30-ish age, which I love. There’s something about 30, right? On your way up to, it’s terrifying and scary and you can’t imagine ever being old. And out the other side, you’re like, what was I ever worried about?
SLIM Mitchell, have you seen that yet?
MITCHELL I haven’t. I’m extremely excited for it. I love the directors movies. I love Oslo, August 31st, especially, which this is apparently kind of a thematic trilogy with his like Oslo movies. So I’m very excited to see it. And I turned 31 this year so Gemma saying that life really starts after 30, very, very encouraging. Very nice to hear. [Gemma laughs]
SLIM Life isn’t over after 30. My main mantra. We have to move on to maybe the most divisive movie released this year. Aaron’s pick.
AARON I’m sure there are fans out there that would contest that. [Slim laughs]
SLIM It’s about to get real. James Wan. 3.1 average. 320 fans. I’m talking about Malignant, Aaron.
AARON It’s a toxic relationship. [Slim & Gemma laugh] I guess one of the main reasons, I love putting horror in my top ten end-of-year lists, is just to give the genre that prominence that most—don’t be afraid of putting a horror for number one. It’s the same the same way that Oscars rarely recognize the genre. And so I love putting a horror film like Malignant is so awesome. Who’s seen it here?
SLIM I have seen it. I have seen it. Mitchell raised their hand. Gemma, have you seen this? No.
GEMMA I have not seen it.
SLIM She’s doing the ‘cut mic’ action. She doesn’t even want to mention this movie. [Gemma laughs] The trailer that I seeing—
GEMMA No, I haven’t seen it. But I’m really intrigued by Patrick Willems’ Letterboxd review that says, “This movie opens with a shot of a huge, terrifying hospital on a cliff surrounded by lots of fog. So two seconds in, you know it’s gonna rip.”
SLIM Mitchell, what are your vibes on Malignant when you saw it?
MITCHELL Yeah, I mean, I think it’s a pip. It’s so much fun. And I think, exactly what Aaron’s talking about just there, that we’re kind of in this world where horror is kind of being pushed into two different realms. You kind of get like the art-housey A24 horror movies. And then you get kind of like the more generic, whatever’s coming out, every Friday that like ‘the teenagers will go see’ kind of horror that is very boiler play kind of, but movies like Malignant.
AARON Movies from Blumhouse—
MITCHELL Yeah, I didn’t want to say it, but that was exactly what I was thinking. [Aaron laughs]
AARON Nothing against Blumhouse.
MITCHELL Yeah, it’s just a different, you know, it’s a different kind of thing. And if that’s your kind of thing, that’s cool. And some of those movies I really liked. But then there’s other ones like Old, takes this kind of like mid budget, which we don’t often see anymore, and you get to see what a virtuosic director can really do with a genre movie, which we don’t get to see a lot of anymore. And it really creates something that is so exciting to watch. And I think Aaron, being like—I was the same as Aaron, I didn’t know anything about the movie, I had no idea what even the basic synopsis was, I hadn’t seen a trailer or anything, I just saw people talking about it, so I watched it. And that’s definitely part of the fun is you get to really get invited along the ride with like, you’re watching the movie trying to figure out what the answers are. Andwhat the reveal is gonna be. And it’s just a lot of fun to really engage with the movie because it really keeps you just up and down and up and down and up and down the whole time.
GEMMA What about you, Slim? I’m gonna read you this sentence from Josh Lewis’s Letterboxd Malignant. “It’s deeply stupid in retrospect, but it’s the kind of stupid that’s actually kind of an asset when the goal is to string together a series of horror set-pieces as ambitiously literal and goofy and stylish as the ones here are.”
SLIM Yeah, I totally agree on the horror stuff. Horror is pretty much the only genre that my wife and I both watch in of movies. So I don’t tell her like, “Oh, I have to watch this French New Wave movie, you want to watch it with me?” She’ll say, you know, “Eff you.” So we did watch this opening night and I the trailers when this came out. It was kind of like, James Wan horror, potentially imaginary friend that’s real? Question mark? Murdering people? And I’m like, oh, yeah, let’s go see that. My wife did not like this at all. My bravery, I also did not like this movie. But I like James Wan movies. [Gemma gasps] Brain Damage, there are some just revolting scenes in that that are just very genre-esque. And this one almost felt like a mainstream version of it. So that’s why I just kind of didn’t gel for me. But I am so appreciative that James Wan can even just spend all this money to even make this. [Slim laughs] Like he spent this amount of money making HBO Max day-and-date movie. Like yes, let’s have more directors continue to take swings and whether or not they hit it or not, I don’t care. I just want them to do it.
GEMMA In of your other honorable mentions this year, Aaron, it’s been quite the year for folk horror, especially with I guess, Kier-La Janisse’s documentary Hellbender on your list, which I didn’t get to the screener and time when it was, was it Fantasia that you watched this at?
AARON Yeah, Fantasia. Yeah, it was my favorite film.
GEMMA But man, you wouldn’t shut up about this film when Fantasia rolled around! It was so—
AARON Yeah, Hellbender is just an almost perfect little low-budget independent gem made by a family of filmmakers. Toby Poser, Zelda Adams and I think it’s John Adams who is the father. And the mother and daughter, they play in a punk band called Hellbender as well. Just need to fact check that later. But yeah, it’s like a little folk-horror film about this girl living in the mountains and the mum’s very protective of her. She tells her that she’s got this illness, she can’t see other people. So it’s kind of like a secluded environment. But then she starts experiencing these, I guess, supernatural powers. So she’s sort of coming of age, but also just kind of starting to realize who she really is. And it’s got that sort of arc with it, like a young witch becoming, realizing the extent of what she has. But it’s told in a way that’s very, just very homespun. I didn’t know they were a family before I watched it, but you still get that sort of earthy feeling in the storytelling. There’s just a lot of scenes of Zelda and Toby just bonding and just sort of performing little magic tricks, witchy tricks. There are just kind of downtime scenes, as well as some really out-there stuff. Like the interludes of them jamming in their punk band, and also really a weird, kind of After Effects, like very low-budget, but I felt like everything kind of stitched together really nicely for what it was trying to achieve.
GEMMA And love how The Blood on Satan’s Claw. [Slim laughs]
AARON Yeah, it feels like a horror movie in ways, in the best sense where it’s a family of filmmakers that love horror, and they’ve just gone out and shot this movie. And yeah, I think it’s one of the more unique—they’ve done six films, I think, but this is definitely one of the more unique horror films I saw this year, and definitely the standout in Fantasia.
SLIM What about—well, we talked about Memoria, but what about the remaining honorable mentions for 2021?
AARON Yeah, so I was trying to pick between Wife of a Spy is, it’s probably one of the more traditional kind of classical movies where it’s not—he’s well known for horror, but this is like an old-fashioned spy drama. And it’s just beautifully made. And I think people should—this might be a nice film for people to start in of getting into his films.
GEMMA Can I just have a thirstful moment here and point out that the spy in the titular Only Yesterday, my two favorite Studio Ghibli films. Who, like, if it’s possible to love a cartoon character, his characters in both of those films are, yeah, anyway. On top of that, speaking of some of the greatest things to ever come out of Japan, shall we now move to Slim’s—[Slim laughs]
SLIM Oh boy.
GEMMA Number one of 2021. It is quite the shift, I guess you could say, in genre, cinephilia. But no judgment here.
SLIM This is a no-judgment zone. We’ve made that clear all season.
GEMMA This is a total no-judgment—no, no-judgment zone. Slim’s number one has a 2.9 average on Letterboxd. [Slim laughs] But no judgment. It has 178 fans.
SLIM That is so low! That is sickeningly low. [Gemma laughs] Listen, I represent the movie watcher that loves to sit on their floor, eating a chicken-parm sandwich from WaWa and watching Shang-Chi [and the Legend of the Ten Rings].
GEMMA ‘Son-fluenced.’ [Slim laughs]
SLIM My friends have this term when something gets so hyped, they just don’t want to see it anymore and they call it getting ‘Slimfluenced’. [Gemma laughs] Because that’s what happens if I hear someone talk about a movie for too much, I actively hate it and I never want to see it. So when I watch a movie with my son, this happened with King of the Monsters, they have to like wake up Godzilla at one point and they go underground, closer to the center of the earth. And you see Godzilla’s like, domain, his cave system. And it’s insane. It’s so cool looking. So in this one, they actually traveled to the Hollow Earth in this movie. So it’s like—
GEMMA It’s so cool!
SLIM It’s amazing. So for comic fans, it’s kind of like the Savage Land with Ka-Zar, it’s this mythical mystery forest area, where at this point it’s like a country in the Hollow Earth, where animals that you don’t think exists, do. And it’s just so well designed. It’s so cool. I want like a whole movie that takes place in this Hollow Earth. They don’t spend a ton of time in the movie.
GEMMA Yeah! I was disappointed when they came back up to Earth.
SLIM Yeah, it was too short. It was way too short in the movie.
GEMMA I didn’t know anything that had happened because I didn’t see the ones leading up to it. And unfortunately for you, Slim, the film came out before you arrived on The Letterboxd Show, so I had to helm a Junkie XL interview all by myself. [Slim laughs]
SLIM I read that interview before we did the show. It was a fantastic interview.
GEMMA Yeah, he was a lot of fun to talk to. He could talk for hours about why he loves Kong and Godzilla and why he can’t choose between them but also what they each represent in of not just their universes, but the human universe. You know, Godzilla representing Japan’s history with nuclear fallout and then deg the music for Kong to be more organic and Gojira to be sort of half-synthesized and yeah, it was cool.
SLIM Which by the way, I should say that Shin Godzilla is probably my favorite standalone Godzilla movie.
AARON Love that movie, Shin Godzilla.
GEMMA But the thing about watching Godzilla vs. Kong. It just says “Eff yeah dude!” [Slim & Gemma laugh] Could you elaborate? It was Brian Tyree Henry’s character, it was the whole conspiracy theorist. And just like watching this film, like, of course, every single film that you watch in the middle of a pandemic takes on a greater meaning, but this one in particular just felt, surely they had written it and filmed it pre-pandemic because Junkie XL (Tom Holkenborg) had done the music quite a lot beforehand. But it was just like, it was freaky. It was weird.
SLIM Yeah, it’s funny, the conspiracy stuff, I had thought about this a lot because I love The X-Files. And all those old episodes of The X-Files. And conspiracy theorists are such a huge part of that show. And they’re fun. And when [The] X-Files came back, and Chris Carter did it and like Joel McHale, I think was like this Alex Jones parody. It was such a big turn off, it’s like ‘this isn’t fun anymore’. Like, having these kinds of characters talk about conspiracy theorists. This is not my bag anymore, but for whatever reason in this I felt like it wasn’t as on the nose, a lot of the times. It was still kind of fun, ‘I can still have fun’ conspiracy theories if there is such a thing anymore. But at least that was my viewing for this time around.
GEMMA I did enjoy seeing that boy Julian Dennison from Hunt for the Wilderpeople.
SLIM Anyone else see Godzilla vs. Kong that wants to add any five-star thoughts? [Mitchell laughs]
AARON I’m a King of the Monsters enjoyer so this one was a bit maybe a level below that, the previous film. So I don’t know if you’re in the same camp.
SLIM I thought King of the Monsters was a step up above the first Godzilla one with Cranston. I didn’t love the Cranston one. Especially that wig he was wearing.
MITCHELL Yeah, I like these movies, the more that they’re—like, that first one, the 2014 King of the Monsters and now this, are embracing the fun of it, where it doesn’t have to take itself too seriously. It can have kind of the themes that are still there that have always been there with these movies, but they’re really more embracing the fun aspect of it to where it doesn’t need to be all brooding and dark and everything the entire time. And I think that definitely enhances the ability to have fun with whoever. Especially watching it with somebody like your son or something, you know, you really get to just enjoy the movie as well.
GEMMA Diving into your other honorable mentions, I noticed that you did briefly have the new James Bond film No Time to Die, Daniel Craig’s last one, and now it’s gone. And I diligently watched it last night.
SLIM Oh god! [Gemma laughs]
GEMMA So I’m going to talk about it for 30 seconds. But it was just, it’s just the same thing of just accepting that there is crazy bonkers future-junk science tech in these films and it just works and the universe of these films. And I think that’s part of the joy of the multiplex, right?
SLIM Yeah.
GEMMA And it’s just the bombast. Although, on that front. I just feel like—can we talk about No Time to Die for a second? I feel like I could have watched that movie without Rami Malek’s character, without any of the bad guy stuff at all. You just remove all of that, just watch it for the relationships wrapping up. That would have been a nice Daniel Craig-starring drama for me.
SLIM Yeah, was a bit disappointed in Rami’s character in No Time to Die unfortunately.
MITCHELL Yeah, I saw it. I thought it was okay. But yeah, the character stuff was really interesting. I loved Ana de Armas in it, she’s only in it for like fifteen minutes at most.
GEMMA I know!
MITCHELL She just pops so much when she comes on screen. The two of them, her and Daniel Craig have such good chemistry together. I would have much rather watched that for—
GEMMA Two hours of that!
MITCHELL Rather than trying to bring back Christoph Waltz.
SLIM Ugh.
MITCHELL And a lot the plotty kind of elements just really didn’t work.
GEMMA Bleh.
AARON Oh god, they’re still doing that?
MITCHELL Yeah, yeah.
GEMMA Yeah, they are. And also Lashana Lynch was totally wasted in this!
MITCHELL I agree.
GEMMA I couldn’t feel the Phoebe Waller-Bridge injection into the script at all. Especially in her character. I was like, just give that woman a whole separate Double 0 and put her in her own series of movies. She just didn’t work in this world. And though I loved her, but I agree with you about Ana. That was…
SLIM I’ll quickly go through my honorable mentions. Pig, Nicolas Cage.
GEMMA Wait, do we have four hours?
SLIM We do not have four hours. We’re running at a tape as it is. tick, tick…BOOM! I watched actually this morning, my friend Danny who’s an artist said he had like a visceral emotional reaction watching it. So I watched it. And I really enjoyed it. That’s streaming on Netflix.
GEMMA Isn’t it incredible?
SLIM Yeah, had a lot of fun. Music was great.
GEMMA Yeah, I was not expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. And then all the beautiful nods, bringing Joel Grey and all those great old Broadway faces and just the story behind it. Knowing that that Jonathan is no longer with us, but that his graduation musical gets to come to the masses, thanks to Lin Manuel Miranda. Who I know is, I don’t know, problematic for some. But he’s doing the current best job that anyone is doing in bringing musicals back to the screen—not withstanding Steven Spielberg. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Thank you Steven for bringing musicals back.
AARON Are we comparing Lin Manuel Miranda with Steven Spielberg? [Slim & Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
SLIM She did that.
GEMMA No. [Gemma laughs] Let me explain!
AARON No judgment.
GEMMA I was merely mentioning it. [Mitchell laughs]
SLIM I was not expecting this episode to go there. But my final honorable mention is to stay on-brand as possible, and this kind of talks about how I was hard to choose my 2021 movies cuz I haven’t seen a lot of new 2021 movies. Most of my watches—I looked at my stats page again, and it was kind of like all non-2021 films. You know, that pie chart. It was just all covered. So Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the Snyder cut made my Top 2021 movies. I had a lot of fun with this.
GEMMA Had to make someone’s!
SLIM It might as well be me! Why not me?
MITCHELL It makes a lot of people going by the replies that we get on Twitter. [Slim & Gemma laugh]
AARON We’re gonna get retweets through the roof for this podcast. [Slim laughs]
GEMMA Oh, yeah. As long as he just mentioned it even for 30 seconds.
SLIM It was a good marketing plan for me to have this included on my list. But I was into his Superman movies on my second watch. I didn’t like Batman v Superman. I thought it was junk. I also really didn’t like the toxicity that kind of brought the Snyder Cut to existence. You know, it’s a huge part of why it exists in the first place. But I enjoyed the Snyder Cut. I put all of that aside, I watched all four hours of that. And I had a great time. I thought it was interesting and fascinating to see a director release—toxicity aside—release a four-hour cut of an original vision of one of their movies. I just think that’s so fascinating and that we got to experience that in the highest quality possible. I had a lot of fun. I thought the Flash stuff at the end was pretty emotional, in my opinion. Teared up a little bit. Not gonna lie to you.
GEMMA I’m gonna—speaking of bravery. I’m going to be brave and say the first hour was really entertaining, way more entertaining than I thought it would be. And haven’t seen the rest. [Slim laughs]
SLIM Thank you for your honesty. What about Aaron? Aaron, did you watch the Snyder Cut?
AARON Yeah, I did. I watched it in two parts. And I couldn’t do the one sit of four hours, unfortunately. But I much preferred it to the, I guess, Joss Whedon cut? Yeah, I’m not a huge superhero person myself. But I can see why it’s resonated with you and a lot of other people.
SLIM Mitchell? Any thoughts?
MITCHELL I... [Slim laughs] I watched 30 minutes of it and fell asleep and did not go back to it. [Mitchell & Gemma laugh]
GEMMA Look, good on those fans for getting what they needed to get. But the way they got it was—
SLIM Despicable.
GEMMA Well, yeah, despicable and—
AARON It’s set a standard now
GEMMA Yeah and will always sort of possibly taint the experience of those films for anyone other than those fans. I mean, you know, it’s kind of like the Christmas hangover. You know? Kids open their presents, and then half an hour later, they’re complete assholes. [Slim & Mitchell laugh] What else do you want? What else do you want?
MITCHELL Why can’t we all just peacefully enjoy getting more Ben Affleck on this screen? Like it’s a good thing for all of us. [Gemma laughs]
SLIM Incredible shape in those reshoots. My god. So we have gone long this episode, but we do want to focus on our movies that we discovered this year that were not new in 2021. Ones that [we] maybe want to call out, that maybe people should check out. So Mitchell, why don’t we start with you? What are some rapid fire movies that were first time watches for you?
MITCHELL Yeah, so kind of my four favorites that were first time watches for me. One Red Notice or whatever is on Netflix where they just kind of put whatever stars they can get on a screen together. This is a movie where chemistry is just through the roof and you watch it—there’s a scene between the two of them where they’re on a phone call with each other. They’re not even in the same frame. But it’s the sexiest scene that I’ve seen in years just because the two of them just really ooze that sexuality and that chemistry together. So that would be my fourth one.
SLIM Mitchell mentioned 4K restoration. Gemma, did you know that there was a new restoration done of Vanilla Sky starring Tom Cruise? Just released on Blu-ray.
GEMMA Um… that’s excellent to know for you, Slim. [Mitchell laughs] Merry Christmas! Really excited for you!
SLIM What are your discoveries, Gemma, for 2021 that you want to spotlight in rapid-fire manner?
GEMMA Alright going in reverse order. Because it is Christmas season I finally got around to watching Satoshi Kon’s Jeanne Dielman. In a day and age of spoilers, I am blown away by how much I didn’t know about that movie and by how fucking brilliantly it pays off. And the fact that it only pays off if you sit through it. Oh my god, just a masterpiece.
SLIM God bless. What last a list.
AARON Okay, quick fire. First up, I just want to give a shout out to The Bigamist, which I feel like, I haven’t seen anything like it in the sort of noir cycle of the era.
GEMMA Incredible. What about you, Slim? It’s been quite an interesting year for you and I both, I think with starting up this new four favorites format of The Letterboxd Show. It’s certainly done things to my statistics that I never would have expected at the beginning of the year. What was new to you in ’21?
SLIM You already mentioned Pieces of a Woman I watched for the first time in February, I think. And I thought this was an unsettling film about human suffering, and pain, and being stuck in place. And unfortunately, I feel like this movie is kind of lost due to the male co-star’s off-screen storyline. Which kind of sucks, because—
GEMMA Yeah, Vanessa Kirby is extraordinary in it.
SLIM She’s insane.
GEMMA And she was honored in at least a couple of festivals for her work. And in a way the storyline kind of, yeah, sort of, unfortunately, but fortunately, plays into what we know about her co-star, which adds to that unsettling feeling.
SLIM Yeah, she was unbelievable in that movie. And then for the first time finally, I held this off because of aforementioned slimfluencing, but Roma this week. [Gemma laughs]
AARON I’ll do a swap with you. You watch Roma. [Slim & Gemma & Mitchell laugh]
GEMMA I mean, the year is almost over but we still have West Side Story, and you know—
MITCHELL Matrix [Resurrections]!
GEMMA Many more things. Matrix [Resurrections]! How good does that trailer look? Holy heck! So much more still to come. The year is not over as Aaron so rightly said on our Letterboxd Twitter. We wrap when the year wraps.
AARON Love you Spotify. No dig at you at all. [Mitchell & Slim laugh]
[The Letterboxd Show theme music Vampiros Dancoteque by Moniker fades in, plays alone, fades down]
GEMMA Thanks so much for listening to The Letterboxd Show and thanks to our guests Mitchell Beaupre and Aaron Yap. You can follow HQ page on Letterboxd using the links in our episode notes.
SLIM Thanks to our crew, composing dynamos, Sophie Shin for the episode transcript. And to you, for listening. The Letterboxd Show is a Tapedeck production.
GEMMA And that’s the show. You know, Slim, being able to speak freely is the lifeblood of love. From Tokyo Godfathers. [Slim laughs]
SLIM All the Tokyo Godfathers fans will be listening to the end will be like, “Oh yeah, that is”.
[clip from The Power of the Dog plays]
ROSE What is it, George?
GEORGE I just want to say, how nice it is not to be alone.
[clip from The Power of the Dog ends]