Went to breakfast at one of the nearby greasy spoons (which is not really a greasy spoon) this past Thursday morning with a friend who also happens to be as much of a movie buff as I am.
ELT and I hadn't seen each other in close to three years, so after quickly glancing over menus and placing orders with the waiter, we both started rambling on about the movies that had been released since our last go at playing Siskel & Ebert.
Prior to 2020, ELT and I regularly got together for a pre-Oscars breakfast, lunch, or dinner, for just such conversation, but as nearly everyone on the planet has experienced since 2020, once a routine is bankrupted it's pretty difficult to get back to it.
We grumbled in agreement that the quarantine(s) of 2020 caused a viewing disruption that we both are only now being able to overcome and recommended films to each other that were good but received little opportunity for viewing at the time (I insisted that I'm Your Woman and Sylvie's love were the hidden gems of 2020, he insisted that News of the World and Sylvie's Love were - that we both agreed on Sylvie's Love was a surprise).
Movies released in 2021 and 2022 were much easier to discuss as we both had access to most of them. We shared opinions of what popular movies we mutually liked (Alice Darling, No Time To Die (We are both big James Bond fans), Nomadland, Cyrano, Top Gun Maverick, Shang-Chi & the Legend of the 10 Rings, Dual, Licorice Pizza, The Batman, Our Friend, The Dig) and movies we mutually hated (Slumberland, Poker Face, Georgetown, Ghostbusters Afterlife, Amsterdam, Moonfall, Eternals, Mobius - a movie we both have more hate for than is probably healthy).
There were a few movies we were divided on (I loved French Dispatch, he thought it was a pretentious bore, ELT loved Dune, I'd rather gargle with bleach than watch that film again) and some gems we both liked (The Al Yankovic bio, I Care A Lot, Concrete Cowboy, The Good Nurse, Violet, Tar, Funny Pages, The Outfit)
As is usual during our discussions we also brought up movies we had seen on television that had been made long ago but were fresh discoveries for us individually that we thought were great. Westward The Women, which was made in 1951, was one I saw for the first time this year and thought was great, while ELT watched The Kremlin Letter, which was made in 1970, and thought it was great as well.
Along those same 20/20 hindsight lines we also discuss movies that were made long ago that were bad. ELT said he had watched the musical At Long Last Love, which was made in 1975, and claimed it was the worst musical ever made (it's not - Sgt Peppers, made in 1978, is). I submitted The Day Mars Invaded Earth, made in 1963 and claimed it to be as bad an attempt at science fiction as has ever been made and ELT agreed, having seen it this past year too.
Which all lead up to us making our predictions for what films we thought would do well at this years Oscars.
Side note: I've been trying to predict the best picture winner for almost forty years now and have only been correct once.
ELT's pick for best picture (of the films nominated for the award) was The Fabelmans, mine was Topgun Maverick. Neither of us had even seen the eventual winner, Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
Everything, Everywhere All At Once raked in a big haul at this year's Oscars, which means I will now have to track it down and watch it just to see why it snagged so many honors.
I just hope it's not like Out of Africa, a movie that won a boatload of Oscars in 1985 that was just another tepid fish-out-of-water caught up in an ill-fated-romance story.
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