Unable to make any decisions over the weekend, I availed myself of the Shuffle feature on Letterboxd. Sorting my Watchlist from 315 films to the 111 I have available on streaming services I currently subscribe to, I got...
Troll (2022), a Norwegian Kaiju movie by Roar Uthaug, who did
The Wave (2016). It was just okay. If you're jonesing for a giant monster movie and have already watched the good ones - and, like me, you're still waiting for
Godzilla Minus One to hit streaming - this was better than
Godzilla: King of the Monsters but not as good as
Cloverfield. If you're into Norwegian movies, I thought this wasn't as good as Uthaug's
The Wave. It does the job, though.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) is as good as everyone said it was. The performances are of course central, but I was struck by the lack of a score or soundtrack. There are a couple of affecting pieces of music, and they're both diegetic. Adèle Haenel worked regularly up to 2019, and hasn't done anything since. Noémie Merlant has kept working, though. Mostly French stuff, it looks like, but she was in
Tar (2022) with Cate Blanchett, which I haven't seen. In particular, though, I think I'll look for more of Céline Sciamma's movies. I see that she did
Petite Maman (2021), which I already had in my Watchlist, even though I can't remember anything about it. I must've heard a good review when it came out, tossed it into the hopper, and then forgotten about it. That one's not as well-reviewed as
Portrait, but few things are. This is likely to be regarded as Sciamma's masterpiece. It was rated the 30th great film of all time in
Sight and Sound's 2022 critics poll. One might suspect there was some 'recency bias' at work there, but just eyeballing it, I'm not sure that poll skewed towards more recent films in general (if anything, the opposite might've been true).
Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) was also excellent. A little slice of American history that probably a lot of people don't know about. Excellent cast. Mainly Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, who I was already a fan of. I see it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, but not for any acting categories, which surprises me. Must've been a tough year. Jesse Plemons and Martin Sheen were the only people in the supporting cast I was already familiar with, but I thought all of them were good. I see that Dominique Fishback was in
Project Power (2020) and Dominique Thorne was in
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022) and
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018); I've seen all three of those movies, but neither actress jumped out at me the way they did here, and I didn't remember either of them while I was watching this.
