A few years ago I took a look at all the movies on my "Most Anticipated" lists from 2012 to 2017, and evaluated how successful I was at actually picking good movies in this post, Look Back in Anticipation. It's been long enough that I think we're due for the next installment, and I think it's important to do this kind of exercise regularly to keep myself honest. I'm limiting the picks to my movie lists for now. Please note that there were no lists created for 2021 due to COVID.
"Ready Player One," "The Incredibles 2," "Solo: A Star Wars Story," "Deadpool 2,""Ocean's 8," "Crazy Rich Asians," "Bad Times At The El Royale," "First Man," "Widows," and "Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2"
"You Were Never Really Here," "The Little Stranger," "Psychokinesis," "Fahrenheit 451," "Peterloo," "The House That Jack Built," "Burning," "The Nightingale," "Suspiria," and "The Favourite."
Good grief, this was bad. I did have some of my favorite films of the year in my sights, like "You Were Never Really Here," "Widows," "Burning," and "The Favourite," but a lot of these movies were stinkers or completely disposable. The more commercial films in particular had so many disappointing sequels and spinoffs. "Suspiria," "Crazy Rich Asians" and "Ready Player One" were very imperfect, but stand out from the crowd for at least not being total misfires like Rahmin Barani's "Fahrenheit 451."
"Us," "Shazam!" "Aladdin," "Godzilla: King of the Monsters," "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," "It: Chapter Two," "Zombieland: Double Tap," "Knives Out," "Little Women," "The Irishman"
"Jojo Rabbit," "The Laundromat," "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," "La Vérité," "Untitled Noah Baumbach Project," "Guava Island," "The French Dispatch," "Harriet," "The Last Thing He Wanted," "The Personal History of David Copperfield."
The Baumbach movie is "Marriage Story." A few dud sequels aside, the mainstream movies were generally good. I even enjoyed the iffier ones like "Aladdin" and the "Godzilla" movie. The smaller movies were a mixed bag, with some real misses like Steven Soderbergh's "The Laundromat," and Hirokazu Koreeda's "La Vérité," but I'm happy that I pegged "Jojo Rabbit" and "The French Dispatch" so early. Others like "Harriet" and "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile," are underseen titles liked, and I admit I skipped "The Last Thing He Wanted" when the reviews came back universally bad.
"No Time To Die," "The Woman in the Window," "Soul," "Free Guy," "Tenet," "Bill and Ted Face the Music," "The Trial of the Chicago 7," "BiOS," "The Witches," and "Dune"
"The Eyes of Tammy Faye," The Glorias," "Annette," "Mank," "Wendy," "Nightmare Alley," "Last Night in SoHo," "I'm Thinking of Ending Things," "Kajillionaire," and "How Do You Live?"
Thanks to COVID the releases were all over the place. "How Do You Live?" was renamed "The Boy and the Heron" internationally, in 2023. "BiOS" eventually became the Apple TV+ film "Finch." Qualitywise, there weren't too many disappointments. I think Robert Zemeckis's take on "The Witches" was probably the worst, Joe Wright's "The Woman in the Window" was unintentionally hilarious, and Julie Taymor's last film to date, "The Glorias," was just kinda there. I disagreed with critics on several of these - I'm a defender of "Wendy" and didn't care much for "Mank" or "The Trial of the Chicago 7," but it felt like a good batch of movies overall with Charlie Kaufman, Guillermo Del Toro, Denis Villeneuve, and Edgar Wright all turning in good work.
"The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent," "Knives Out 2," "Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio," "The Northman," "Nope," "Tár," "The Fabelmans," "The Woman King," "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Part One)," "Killers of the Flower Moon"
"Everything Everywhere All at Once," "The Whale," "Dual," "Next Goal Wins," "White Noise," "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On," "Bones & All," "Infinity Pool," "The Son," "The Imaginary."
All the mainstream films are good! Very good, even, in the cast of "The Fablemans," "Nope," and "Glass Onion." Most of the smaller films are not good. "Everything Everywhere All at Once," had a historic run, of course, but even the better indies like "Marcel the Shell With Shoes On," "Bones & All," and "Infinity Pool," are fairly middling, while the bad ones are epic bombs. I deeply disliked "The Whale," and Florian Zeller has yet to recover from "The Son."
"Renfield," "Asteroid City," "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," "Oppenhiemer," "Barbie," "Nimona," "Maestro," "Dune Part 2," "Wonka," "The Killer."
"To Close One’s Eyes," "Nightbitch," "Poor Things," "El Conde," "Hitman," "Blitz," "Eileen," "Afire," "MMXX."
This is probably my best year yet. I didn't care much for "Nightbitch" or "Eileen," and lost track of Cristi Puiu's COVID film "MMXX," but all the other movies on both lists are good to great. I even liked "Renfield" for Nicholas Cage's Dracula. I suspect, however, that it was easier to get a sense of the good films at this point in time because there was so much tumult going on in the industry and we were getting fewer new releases. Victor Erice's "To Close One's Eyes" was titled "Close Your Eyes" for international release.
"Deadpool & Wolverine," "The Fall Guy," "IF," "Furiosa," "Beetlejuice 2," "Joker: Folie à Deux," "Wicked," "Coyote vs. Acme"
"Challengers," "Civil War," "Death of a Unicorn," "The Beast," "The Life of Chuck," "Love Me," "The End," "Nosferatu," "Late Night With the Devil," "Kinds of Kindness"
Finally, I did better with the bigger films than the smaller ones again. "Coyote vs. Acme" is coming next year, of course, but I also liked "IF" and "Joker: Folie à Deux" better than most. Those two weren't very good, but not as awful as advertised either. I didn't do too badly with the indies though - okay, "Love Me" and "Death of a Unicorn" were flops, but "Challengers" and "Kinds of Kindness" were great, and "Life of Chuck" might be an all timer.
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