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35 Best Films Watched on Mubi in 2021
29 Wednesday Dec 2021
Posted movies
in29 Wednesday Dec 2021
Posted movies
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25 Tuesday May 2021
Posted Angelina Jolie, movies, Vera Farmiga
inTags
300 miles to heaven, Angelina Jolie, aussie film, fantastic planet, film review, film reviews, friends the reunion, krisha, movie, movie review, movie reviews, movies, mubi, plan 9 from outer space, the cold day in the park, the conjuring, the conjuring 3, the conjuring the devil made me do it, those who wish me dead, Vera Farmiga, wake in fright
The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It
The second one was a love story and this is a continuation of their beautiful relationship. I also loved that straight-from-The-Exorcist shot of the priest standing in front of the house. This series will always be superior because it’s based on real people. I used to google the Warrens’ cases as a young teen and I’m so glad their cases inspired this series. Please tell me there are another 3 films I can look forward to?
8/10
Friends The Reunion
Friends was a huge part of my childhood and early teen years. I still have a giant poster hanging on the wall of my childhood bedroom I doubt I’ll ever take down. I’ve rewatched the show 10 times, and stopped myself when I wanted to start it for the 11th time back in 2010. For years the box set was my most prized possession. I know some fans wanted this to be a proper 17-years-later continuation, but I’m glad it wasn’t. I want the characters to stay happy and in their mid 30s, when life is still relatively simple.
10/10
Those Who Wish Me Dead
This felt like the last 10 years never happened and Angelina never ‘retired’ from acting. I wish she chose a better film to make her comeback with (I’m ignoring Come Away, because she had a small role there and I didn’t like the film anyway), but it still made me happy. I definitely would have liked Those Who less if it stared some random actress whose career I didn’t follow closely since late 90s. Also for smoke jumpers, they didn’t do much jumping, did they?
6.5/10
Wake in Fright
This was brutal. Can we not hunt kangaroos please? I know I say this every time I watch an Aussie film, but this made me miss Australia. Thanks Mubi, you truly never disappoint!
‘It’s the best place in Australia!’
7/10
The Cold Day in the Park
I’ve had an awful couple of days, and yet this is what I chose to watch? It’s expiring from Mubi soon.
‘She was very masculine, our English teacher. But quite…pretty. And many of the girls had crushes on her.’
6/10
Plan 9 from Outer Space
This film had a budget of only 60 000 dollars and the funny thing is, if it wasn’t a sci-fi film, we would have never noticed it. I watched Tim Burton’s biopic on ‘the worst director ever’ Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp a few years ago, but I never actually got to see Wood’s work, until now. I lasted 20 minutes, but then again I don’t have the patience for sci-fi unless it’s Jurassic Park, so I’m not the best person to rate this.
2/10
Krisha
If everything else fails, write a script slightly based on your family and cast them in it. I love that Krisha is shown as an introvert, who feels uncomfortable surrounded by a large group of people. She tells her pushing-30 son or nephew (played by the director) he needs to go to film school while he’s still young, otherwise he will become trapped in something else (the actress who plays Krisha didn’t start acting until she was 35) and that he should do it because he had a great passion for it as a kid. I can relate to all of the above. I also loved the thrilling score heard in the background through most of the film. I watched 4 films on Mubi today, and this one is my favourite.
8/10
Fantastic Planet
Let’s… torture some humans. This was on my watchlist for the longest time and I finally got to see it thanks to Mubi.
7/10
300 Miles to Heaven
I love that this is inspired by a real story. I also loved the scene with the parents telling their kids not to come back, because they knew they would have it better in Denmark than in 1980s Poland.
8/10
15 Monday Mar 2021
Posted Jane Fonda, movies
inTags
a prescription for murder, bill murray, death to 2020, disappearance at clifton hill, film review, film reviews, films, goon, Jane Fonda, john candy, movie review, movies, mubi, netflix, netflix original, operation varsity blues the college admissions scandal, our souls at night, red joan, reviews, robert redford, stripes, tartuffe
Our Souls at Night
Redford and Fonda’s 4th film together. Does The Chase count though, they barely had any scenes together. I’m a huge fan of both, so this was a real treat I’ve been saving for a stressful day for almost four years.
7/10
Disappearance at Clifton Hill
I appreciate them trying to make this horror creepy, the sound mixing certainly was spooky at times and I was invested in solving this mystery, but it just wasn’t exciting enough.
5/10
Operation Varsity Blues The College Admissions Scandal
I have been following this case closely for 2 years, and this documentary didn’t teach me anything new. Also, I’ve been a fan of Lori Loughlin since Full House and Felicity Huffman since Desperate Housewives, so 2019 was a weird year for me.
5/10
Goon
I have been following this case closely for 2 years, and this documentary didn’t teach me anything new. Also, I’ve been a fan of Lori Loughlin since Full House and Felicity Huffman since Desperate Housewives, so 2019 was a weird year for me.
4/10
Stripes
You know I’ll watch any comedy as long as John Candy stars in it.
6/10
Tartuffe
I was not expecting for both of Murnau’s films I watched today to be this bland. I love Sunrise and Nosferatu, but this and The Haunted Castle were dissapointing.
4.5/10
Red Joan
I was considering seeing this at the cinema two years ago, and I’m glad I didn’t. This is only good enough to watch in the background while doing something else. She spends the last 15 min of the film trying to find a way to run to Australia. Can I get on a boat an move back to Australia too, please?
5/10
Hailey Dean Mysteries: A Prescription for Murder
My family loves Hallmark mysteries, so here I am. I’ve only seen one other Hailey Dean Mystery before, Death on Duty and I liked this one much more. I actually got the killer wrong, and that’s always nice.
5/10
Death to 2020
A lot of the material is not funny and some is plain stupid, but the jokes about Boris Johnson were on point, including calling him a scarecrow. Most delivered by Hugh Grant.
‘In the UK, everyday citizens celebrate the countdown to Brexit-cide and the recent installation of newly-elected Prime Ministerial scarecrow, Boris Johnson.’
‘Prime Minister and haystack Boris Johnson decides that since Britain is no longer part of Europe, it can safely ignore the warnings. He encourages those who haven’t already died to go about their business as usual, but with a greater emphasis on hygiene.’
‘The Prime Minister might have to be replaced by someone less qualified than him. Which is impossible.’
5/10
31 Thursday Dec 2020
Tags
best films, best movies, films, hbo, hbo go, letterboxd, movies, mubi, netflix, reviews, top films
I’ve watched 907 films in 2020. I’ve made this list on my letterboxd, and thought I would screenshot and paste it here. I was very much obsessed with Filmbox Arthouse and Mubi this year. A few are rewatches, but ones that I haven’t seen in 10+ years, so I’m leaving them in. Almost all of them are first time watches. Some of these were reviewed on here throughout the year, if there’s a film on this list you’d like me to review, or any film really, please let me know.
Check out my 2019 list: https://joanneholly.com/2019/12/13/200-best-films-watched-in-2019/
28 Monday Dec 2020
Posted movies
in25 Sunday Oct 2020
Posted Kate Walsh, movies
inTags
a year of the quiet sun, ammonite, coming out, enola holmes, film, film analysis, film review, film reviews, films, gay, gay usa, hatfield house, honest thief, i'm thinking of ending things, isabelle huppert, jessie buckley, Kate Walsh, lesbian, lgbt, lgbt cinema, lgbt community, lgbt film, lgbt movie, lgbtq, liam neeson, millie bobby brown, mubi, olivia cooke, pixie, polish film, the ground beneath my feet, valley of love
Ammonite
You know I’m a huge advocate for good wlw films, sadly this isn’t one of them. Both Winslet and Ronan aren’t very convincing. There’s only two or three short scenes where Kate’s character can be seen going through internal turmoil connected with hiding her sexuality, which is why I’m giving this 5/10 stars. Do yourself a favour and rewatch Disobedience instead.
5/10
Honest Thief
Kate Walsh finally getting her second break in a film with a worldwide cinema release and starring opposite Liam Neeson makes me so happy.
7/10
Pixie
Olivia Cooke has been in some awesome movies since her time on Bates Motel and this is probably the weakest one, but it’s still quite enjoyable.
6/10
A Year of The Quiet Sun
It’s sad to think that younger generations of cinema goers have forgotten about Krzysztof Zanussi. When you hear about Polish directors, only three surnames are usually mentioned, Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieslowski and Roman Polanski. I remember watching special features on my The Double Life of Veronique DVD and there Kieslowski acknowledges how much he’d learned from Zanussi. A Year of the Quiet Sun is leaving Netflix tomorrow, along with The Spiral. Go see them.
7.5/10
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
And she’s off. The US has officially acquired Jessie Buckley. We won’t be seeing her in many British productions now. She’s officially a star. Every time she repeats she’s thinking of ending things I’m taken back to my teen years. It’s a great psychological drama with beautiful, relatable monologues. Take a look at a few of them.
‘I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. IIt sticks, it lingers, it dominates. There’s not much I can do about it, trust me. It doesn’t go away. It’s there whether I like it or not. It’s there when I eat, when I go to bed. It’s there when I sleep. It’s there when I wake up. It’s always there. Always. I haven’t been thinking about it for long. The idea’s new. But it feels old at the same time. When did it start? What if this thought wasn’t conceived by me, but planted in my mind, pre-developed? Is an spoken idea unoriginal? Maybe I’ve actually known all along. Maybe this is how it was always going to end. Jake once said, “Sometimes the thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.’
‘Other animals live in the present. Humans cannot, so they invented hope.’
‘It’s tragic how few people possess their souls before they die. Nothing is more rare in any man, says Emerson, than an act of his own. And it’s quite true. Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. That’s an Oscar Wilde quote.’
‘Coming home is terrible whether the dogs lick your face or not; whether you have a wife or just a wife-shaped loneliness waiting for you. Coming home is terribly lonely, so that you think of the oppressive barometric pressure back where you have just come from with fondness, because everything’s worse once you’re home. You think of the vermin clinging to the grass stalks, long hours on the road, roadside assistance and ice creams, and the peculiar shapes of certain clouds and silences with longing because you did not want to return. Coming home is just awful. And the home-style silences and clouds contribute to nothing but the general malaise. Clouds, such as they are, are in fact suspect, and made from a different material than those you left behind. You yourself were cut from a different cloudy cloth, returned, remaindered, ill-met by moonlight, unhappy to be back, slack in all the wrong spots, seamy suit of clothes dishrag-ratty, worn. You return home moon-landed, foreign; the Earth’s gravitational pull an effort now redoubled, dragging your shoelaces loose and your shoulders etching deeper the stanza of worry on your forehead. You return home deepened, a parched well linked to tomorrow by a frail strand of… Anyway… You sigh into the onslaught of identical days. One might as well, at a time… Well… Anyway… You’re back. The sun goes up and down like a tired whore, the weather immobile like a broken limb while you just keep getting older. Nothing moves but the shifting tides of salt in your body. Your vision blears. You carry your weather with you, the big blue whale, a skeletal darkness. You come back with X-ray vision. Your eyes have become a hunger. You come home with your mutant gifts to a house of bone. Everything you see now, all of it: bone.’
‘It’s hard to describe people. It was so long ago, I barely remember. I mean… We never even talked, is the truth. I’m not even sure I registered him. There’s a lot of people. I was there with my girlfriend… We were celebrating our anniversary, stopped in for a drink, and then this guy kept looking at me. It’s a nuisance. The occupational hazard of… of being a female. You can’t even go for a drink. Always being looked at. He was a creeper! You know? And I remember thinking, I wish my boyfriend was here. Which is… That’s sort of sad, that being a woman, the only way a guy leaves you alone is if you’re with another guy. Like, if… like… like you’ve been claimed. Like you’re property, even then. Anyway, I can’t… I can’t remember what he looks like. Why would I? Nothing happened. Maybe it was just… I think it was just… Just one of thousands of such non-interactions in my life. It’s like asking me to describe a mosquito that bit me on an evening 40 years ago. Well, you haven’t seen anyone fitting that description, have you?’
‘Everything wants to live, Jake. Viruses are just one more example of everything. Even fake, crappy movie ideas want to live. Like, they grow in your brain, replacing real ideas. That’s what makes them dangerous.’
8/10
Enola Holmes
A few scenes were shot at Hatfield House (where The Favourite was filmed among many others), which is even prettier in person. I watched this as part of a uni social thing. We were supposed to watch The Greatest Showman, which I’ve seen, so I guess it worked out for the best? The film could have used more Helena Bonham Carter though. I still cannot believe how much Millie Bobby Brown looks like a teenage Natalie Portman. It surely helped her career.
6/10
The Ground Beneath My Feet
I loved the fact that these two successful women had to hide their relationship. If this was an American film they wouldn’t be hiding, but let’s not forget not everyone is or can be out.
7/10
Valley of Love
There are eight Isabelle Huppert films on Mubi right now and I’m ashamed to say I haven’t seen any of them, so I’m fixing that now. I’ve already missed two, just because I assumed everything they show on Mubi goes into the Mubi Library. I was proven wrong.
7/10
Gay USA
I really needed this today. At the beginning of the film one 70 yr old lady said that when she was young there were no gays and she doesn’t understand where did they all come from. A used to say the exact same hurtful thing regularly, which is why I’m still in the closet. There is another film by the same director that I also watched on Mubi called Buddies. It’s the first film about AIDS and it’s equally wonderful.
‘I can’t go on being miserable all my life, so I left my husband. I loved my husband, but I wasn’t in love with him.’
‘Ok, I’m gay, so what?’
8/10
13 Sunday Sep 2020
Tags
a private war, amazon, andrzej wajda, ava, brian de palma, buster keaton, carlito's way, chronicle of amorous accidents, drama, elizabeth moss, geena davis, holidays, horror, Jessica Chastain, kronika wypadkow milosnych, lizzy weiss, mubi, nicole kidman, patricia arquette, peter krauze, Polish, polish film, reese witherspoon, rosamund pike, the accidental tourist, the general, the lost room, this changes everything, top of the lake, top of the lake 2, top of the lake china girl, wildflower
I’m on my first holiday since February, and I’ve decided to rewatch at least one film from two of my most favourite directors, Andrzej Wajda and Brian De Palma. Keep reading to find out which films I chose to watch.
Chronicle of Amorous Accidents
My dad and I own 24 of Andrzej Wajda’s films on DVD at this point, after buying another 7 this week. My dad has been telling me about this masterpiece for years and I finally got to see it. Paulina Mlynarska left the industry after being traumatised by the nude scenes in this film she shot at just 14. That’s the difference between European and US or British cinema. How many French films feautured films with teenagers being exploited?
10/10
The General
Started off my holiday with this brilliant Buster Keaton film. I was enjoying it very much, then halfway through I got a text from my boss telling me to contact him, because he wants to throw me a leaving-do. It’s my first time abroad since February and yesterday I bought 32 DVDs for very cheap, so I think we can already class this holiday as a success?
10/10
Carlito’s Way
I’ve never noticed how much Naomi Watts and Penelope Ann Miller look alike until this film!
8/10
The Accidental Tourist
Back in the 7th grade I chose to write my book report on the book this movie was based on. I went to the bookstore and The Accidental Tourist caught my eye as it had the poster from the film on the cover. I only got this book, because I recognized Geena Davis from A League of Their Own and Thelma and Louise and I loved both of those films. It was an exceptionally boring read, and to think that most of my classmates wrote their reports on books from the Mary-Kate and Ashley book series while I committed to reading this drag. The book put me off watching the film, and It took me this long to finally reach for it, and…surprise, surprise, I hated it just as much as my younger version hated that awful book.
‘A business traveler should bring only what fits in a carry-on bag. Checking your luggage is asking for trouble. – – Add several travel size packets of detergent so you won’t fall into the hands of unfamiliar laundries. There are very few necessities in this world which do not come from travel-size packets. – – One suit is plenty, if you take along travel size packets of spot remover. The suit should be medium gray. Gray not only hides the dirt, but is handy for sudden funerals. – – Always bring a book as protection against strangers. Magazines don’t last and newspapers from elsewhere remind you, you don’t belong. But, don’t take more than one book. It is a common mistake to overestimate ones potential free time and consequently overpack. In travel, as in most of life, less is invariably more. – – And most importantly, never take along anything on your journey so valuable or dear, that it’s loss would devastate you.’
4/10
This Changes Everything
Let me get this straight, they got a male to direct a documentary about how Hollywood doesn’t want to hire female directors? Also, Geena Davis is a queen, and I’m a fan of most of these actresses and filmmakers.
‘The basis of your thinking is determined by the first images you see; whose values are important and whose stories are important, and that’s what we’re teaching little girls and little boys.’ – Reese Witherspoon
10/10
Top of The Lake: China Girl
How did Elisabeth and Nicole shoot their scenes together, seeing how Scientologist aren’t allowed to talk to ex-Scientologists? While season one was incredible, this is a mess. I watched the first 4 episodes 3 years ago when the season came out, and it took me until today to finish it I saw season one was discounted at my local DVD store for £2 and I’ve decided to buy it I didn’t like the second season and I won’t ever be rewatching it. I just bought season 1 on DVD for an equivalent of £2, and I have no need to ever rewatch the second one, so it was no brainer really.
6/10
Ava
There’s one scene in this that’s extremely uncomfortable to watch and must have been painful for Jessica to film seeing that’s how her sister died. This film stars Jessica Chastain and Geena Davis, but the script is bad and they can’t save it.
5/10
Wildflower
First film ever watched on Amazon Prime Video. That’s right, I finally caved in. Little Reese Witherspoon and young Patricia Arquette star in a film about abuse. I hate how no one wanted to get involved at first and accepted the abuse as something some people just do.
7/10
A Private War
I wish they showed us something about her childhood, why she left the US and what drove her to do this scary job.
9/10
Timbuktu
After four months of free Mubi, it’s time to decide whether to keep my subscription or to cancel my membership. Mubi has offered me an entire year 50% off and even though I know I won’t have much time to watch films starting next month, I think It’d be dumb of me not to take it. This is a fine example of why I should keep it.
7/10
The Lost Room
Expires from Amazon Prime in a few hours. I’ve never even heard of this mini series before yesterday, but I’m a huge fan of Six Feet Under and Parenthood, so obviously I had to watch it. It reminded me of Locke and Key and I’m not sorry I spent 5 hours watching it.
7/10
Zing
Suitable for ages 7 and up? Are you kidding me, this is a creepy short about death. Brilliant, but not for little children.
8/10