Top 10 March 2020 First-Watches

So how about that March, huh?

...Oh, that bad? Well that sucks.

Anyway, let’s ignore all that and talk about movies. I've been tweeting lists every month for awhile now about the five to ten best movies I had recently seen for the first time. I figure, since I'm not currently writing much of anything else, I should make it a whole feature. So here's a run-down the cinematic joys of March for me.

Also, lately I've been getting into Theme Months. This is an exercise in forcing myself to watch more movies. By setting up themes, I organize my massive backlog and give myself a motivation to get through it, chunk by chunk. In February I did Weird SciFi to finally watch things like Stalker and Upstream Color. I have literally thousands of movies I want to see at some point, and this process makes it less overwhelming.

March’s theme was Korean Movies. Once upon a time the biggest film story was Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite sweeping the Oscars. (Which was only a few weeks ago, even if it seems like a different century now. The Oscars are like a relic of a medieval culture we've lost.) To celebrate Joon-ho’s win, I thought, I'd watch all his movies that I haven’t seen before. And in the process go watch like eight other Korean movies I've been meaning to get to. I found some real gems in there, even if, as you'll see, I'm a bit unhappy with my selections.

Anyway, here's ten movies I feel like talking about today:

Top 10 Games of 2019

Here’s everything I wanted to play in 2019 but never got around to: Sekiro, Indivisible, Disco Elysium, Bloodstained, Mario Maker 2, the Switch port of New Super Mario Bros WiiU, the smol Link’s Awakening remake, Telling Lies, A Plague’s Tale, Devotion, NeoCab, Jedi: Fallen Order, Apex Legends, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Astral Chain, Void Bastards, My Friend Pedro, Total War: Three Kingdoms, Wargroove, Persona Q2, The Dark Pictures: Man of Medan, Valfaris, and like a thousand others I’m forgetting. I only finished the first chapter of Life is Strange 2! Gah!

I bring this up only to point out how weird it is to even try to make a Top 10 List of video games. It did not take that much work to see most of the movies I wanted to see in 2019. I won't call my list from last week definitive, but it's at least vaguely comprehensive. Games, however, are an order of magnitude beyond that. Nobody has played every game. No one website has played every game. It is not only possible, it's likely that your Top 10 lists looks nothing like mine. That's assuming you even played ten games. There's so much vastness in the infinitude that is our digital play spaces, you could abandon the concept of "new releases" altogether. Gaming isn't cheap, and not every has the time. I barely the time anymore. Maybe you just played Fornite or Final Fantasy XIV all year and were satisfied. Put 5,000 hours into your second life as a Lalafell. Enjoy yourself.

What I ultimately mean here is that you can't chase the release schedule. I only came up with this list after cramming the last two months. I beat six games since December and didn't finish half the things I wanted to. The paradise of play we have found ourselves in is beyond all comprehension. If most of my list is JRPGs and puzzle games, that's just how things have to be. It's what makes me happy and keeps me functional as a unit in this capitalist system I have to live in apparently. If my list looks nothing like your list, are we even having the same conversation anymore? Should games even be considered "one industry"? I don't care about Call of Duty just like somebody doesn't care about Kingdom Hearts. Why should both of us be called "gamer" as a catch-all? I wonder.

But luckily, no games seem to be coming out in 2020. 2019 was packed to all hell with new releases. So far in 2020 all we have is a bad DBZ game and Kingdom Hearts III DLC. Everything else is delayed and delayed again. I got plenty of time to finish up Life is Strange 2 and maybe finally work up the courage to play Sekiro. I'd be fine if we just all took a year off and enjoyed ourselves. I have a really big backlog I need to work on.

Top 15 or 30 Movies of 2019

2019 was the year Disney conquered the box office to an obscene extent. The most popular movie of the year was indisputably Avengers: End Game, a world-eater that sucked in all gravity for months. My experience with that movie though was pain. I fell down the stairs on my back just before leaving to go see it. Luckily since my spine wasn’t split in half, so I had the fortune of watching in intense agony. (I’m fine, don’t worry.) Let that be your metaphor for my year at the movies. It's a theater full of fans weeping and cheering. Then I’m in the front row, grimacing and half-conscious, trying not to groan too loudly.

Avengers: End Game did not make the Top 15. It didn’t get close. Despite my injury it was decently entertaining. But it was uneven, was like three different contradictory movies at once, and the action climax looked terrible. Actually, none of Disney’s major blockbusters made it. Only one got even an Honorable Mention. I might have been too kind when I thought Star Wars Episode IX was barely passable. Frozen II was fun but hollow. I didn’t even bother to see the CG remake of Lion King. But the movie that sums up Disney for me was Spider-Man: Far from Home. It was safe, uncontroversial, and proudly unimportant. Why would anybody want to see that movie when last year's Into the Spider-Verse is better, bolder, and braver in every single way?

That's what I'm looking for, ultimately. I want originality. I want ambition. I want a movie that can never be replicated. A unique experience. Those experiences can still be found and even if general audiences just want cookie-cutter, originality might be more plentiful than ever. Foreign films have a better chance of getting a wide release and critical interest. Anime films have a proven audience and are much easier to find. There was room in the schedule for Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to still do their things. Audiences were there. A classic parlor murder movie was one of the big hits of the fall. Netflix actually released good movies. Will one make the Top 15? Let's find out. And of course, the indie horror moment is as fruitful as ever.

2019 was a year where you could have had anything in the theaters. There was a movie for you. You don’t need to settle for what’s safe and familiar. Even if you just want a superhero movie, you could see over a dozen alternatives, from tiny movies like Fast Color to colorful spectacles like Promare. I've decided I deserve more than just the Disney slate. I wish more of you would decide to deserve more too.

Going for a Hike With Death Stranding

Death Stranding happened to come out at just the right time in the year. Here in the Northern Hemisphere this really annoying thing happens around November where it gets cold for six months. I live in a great section of New Jersey where there's a lot of beautiful parks on hills with views down to Manhattan. On a clear day you can see the new skyscrapers going up that will one day be filled with the laundered money of Russian oligarchs. Anyway, that weird climate change thing we have around Halloween ruins hiking for me. Luckily though, Death Stranding is a hiking simulator. So if I can't explore nature in the real world, I can explore simulated environments on my PS4.

This past Saturday we had the last nice day of the year, and indeed the decade. It was a decent 50 degrees with no rain. I had to take this opportunity to use my legs. There's a spot not far from my house I just discovered. Take the outer trail and pass ponds and a sheer cliff face from where humans violently tore the ridge open to build some condos. (Also, if you slip through a hole in the fence, you can find a shack covered in graffiti where teenagers do weed.) It was while I was using my physical legs I had time to think about Death Stranding and why I hadn't reviewed it yet. Because while I loved being outdoors, I found myself a bit lonely. I was missing the single best thing of Death Stranding's experience.

Your main enemy in Death Stranding is steep terrain and your main tool is your body. It's a game where you feel the weight of a massive backpack. Carrying that weight down a steep hill is not a simple task. No, it's a complex strategic balance of knowing your character, Sam Bridges' limits. How much can his back can tilt before he falls over, how high can he hop other his obstacle, and when it is actually safest to run. He can twist his back in ways that horrify me while carrying 100 kilos of weight. But he can't safely jump down anything without falling over his ass. While the real me was inching down a steep hill with my non-digital meat legs this weekend, I was making the same moves as Sam. Do I dare slip on these leaves? Do I cut left to avoid this pack of mud? Do I grab this tree to steady myself? There's a full kinesthetic simulation within Death Stranding. That's impressive enough, but the game insists on also having a story and enemies.

Frozen II: A Bad Sequel, A Great Show

*No direct spoilers are coming, but I allude to spoilers, so you were warned*

Somewhere in the middle of Frozen II there is a solo song for Kristoff, Princess Anna’s reindeer-riding boyfriend from the first movie. It is the easily worst song of the movie. Kristoff has very little to do in the middle of this sequel’s complicated pile of plotlines. So Frozen II creates tension for him so he is not completely forgotten. His problem is an irritating running gag of being unable to propose successfully to Anna due to a variety of unfunny misunderstandings. (Think Spider-Man 3.) As Anna deals with her sister’s magical crisis and her kingdom’s colonialist legacy, poor Kristoff and his Disney Ending ambitions are left behind, forgotten. So, he feels bad. And he sings.

A better version of Frozen II would build something off this conflict. The Frozen II we got took this moment to do a five-minute parody of overwrought Nineties love ballads a la Richard Marx or Bryan Adams. Think that godawful song your mom might have listened to from the soundtrack of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I think I was the only one in my audience who got the joke, and even I didn’t find it very funny. It’s a waste of time.

But the thing is, while this whole plot and this whole idea are mistakes, it isn’t a terrible song. It’d be pretty damn great on its own. Kristoff gets shafted by the complicated web of Frozen II’s many plotlines, but of course he would. Kristoff is least memorable cast member. I had to google “Frozen reindeer boyfriend” to remember his name when I was writing this review. Frozen II’s audience of little girls and late twenties men who are little girls in their hearts want to see Else be triumphant and hit high notes.

Problems and all, goddamn me if she doesn’t hit those notes and my spirit still soared. Frozen II is a movie so well-made that comparing it to 90s Direct to Video Disney sequels is downright offensive. No, it isn’t perfect and it isn’t nearly as good as the original. But there’s something powerful here. It’s a messy mixed-bag of a movie that fills me with a lot of emotions, positive and negative. But whatever those emotions are, I feel A LOT THEM.