The current landscape of cinema could be considered quite bloated, or even mildly asinine at times. With countless unnecessary remakes, cinematic universes containing loads of filler, and mindless action and kids movies. It can be hard to scope out something truly worth investing your time in.
In a world with so many releases at a constant rate, it’s more than easy for a good or memorable movie to slip through the cracks. Here are ten movies in 2020 that are worth giving a second shot, or even a first if you missed them.
Batman & Robin
Yes, it’s Batman and Robin. Yup, THAT Batman and Robin. You’re probably thinking, “Really? That horrid movie? Wasn’t that a massive flop and so bad it was comical?” The answer is yes, but also, no. Batman and Robin doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it wears its campiness on its sleeve. The movie IS bad, but it is also exciting, funny, and visually interesting throughout.
With the current movie landscape being chock full of superhero movies, it often seems the modern hero film takes itself too seriously, holding back campiness only to replace it with what can still be considered cheesy humor and action scenes. So why not have a good time and watch something that may be written a lot worse, but is actually more interesting and stand out than the majority of modern hero movies?
Goodnight Mommy
A massively overlooked movie, Goodnight Mommy may have slipped through the cracks for most people due to its broad title, and there are multiple other films with similar names. Goodnight Mommy, however, is not really similar to any other horror movie. A horrifyingly slow burn of a movie, Goodnight Mommy doesn’t have to do much to keep you on edge throughout its entirety, and the more the viewer pays close attention, the more there is to see, and the creepier the movie becomes.
Ignoring typical tropes of one-sided or clearly good vs evil type horror movies, Goodnight Mommy will have you guessing and wondering every minute of the way, always questioning everything that came before and is still to come, making it a truly invigorating experience, especially for a horror movie.
The Big Nothing
Before Simon Pegg blew up in the United States, he did a little relatively unknown project with everybody’s favorite paleontologist himself, Ross. Well David Schwimmer really, but the pairing itself is incredible and interesting to begin with, but that alone isn’t what makes The Big Nothing so good.
A truly dark and bleak comedy, and with a real emphasis on ‘dark’, The Big Nothing takes you on a ride with near Coen brothers’ level of chaos, with one seemingly hazardous situation rapidly growing worse. With unpredictable writing, some unique performances, and peppered in dark comedy, The Big Nothing is truly worth seeing for any fans of the genre.
The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs
Speaking of the Coen brothers, their latest installment, a Netflix original movie, may actually be some of their best work yet, as well as one of the greatest movies of the entire year in general. While this Western-set anthology of a film received great reviews and some considerable attention, it never quite garnered what it deserved, and is overlooked more often than not when the Coen’s best work or Netflix’s best work comes up in the topic.
A set of tales that seemingly have no connection, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs toys with every emotion there is, performed with high tier acting, and incredible writing that sums up and pulls everything together in the end.
Digimon: The Movie
This may seem like an odd choice, and it’s likely you either forgot Digimon was ever even a thing, or maybe you were never even that aware of it, to begin with. Digimon however, was like a darker, deeper, and grittier Pokémon, that is, a kid’s show about raising monsters and fighting with them. Around the time, the Pokémon Movie gained some reputation for being a decent film, and while Digimon: The Movie did not garner anywhere near the response, it was understandable, as Pokémon was the much much larger and more popular franchise of the two.
Digimon: The Movie though, featured some fantastic animation, a gritty and well-told story, and an all-around children-suitable story that contained enough solid material to be enjoyed by an older audience as well, and this makes it possibly one of the best movies for kids based off a show that there has ever been.
Watchmen
Watchmen divided audiences when it came out. Some felt it was an amazingly close representation of the graphic novel, while others felt it was not close enough. One thing that is indisputable, however, is how amazing the film functions on its own. Visually, the movie is stunning, believable, and not too reliant on special effects or fake-looking action scenes.
Acting-wise, you have great performances across the board. Writing-wise, you have what could possibly be considered the deepest, most grounded, thoughtful, and realistic superhero movie ever made. And holding this level of realism doesn’t mean Watchmen has to hold back in any ways either, in fact, it’s also one of the grittier and more violent of the superhero movies as well.
The Great Gatsby
The most common and immediate response to The Great Gatsby movie was that it didn’t live up to the book, an argument made in just about every book-to-film adaptation that has ever been made, to be honest. But judging this movie on this merit alone is downright foolish, and the reviews for this film are criminally low.
Bringing the aesthetic and world of the book to life with amazing set pieces and visual choices, Leonardo Dicaprio steals the show and the viewer’s heart, and the movie maintains its ultimately depressing and bleak outlook with its moral messages intact. Whether you’ve read the book or not, Gatsby is worth giving a shot, and it may just bring a tear to your eye.
Inside Out
With Disney now almost controlling the entire movie market, it’s hard to remember what an actual new Disney original looks like. Even when one is released, its often overlooked or not of high enough quality to be taken that seriously, to begin with. Of every Disney movie to be released in the past decade, you could easily say Inside Out is the best of them all, yes, that’s even including the Star Wars movies and Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Inside Out, a very original concept, and an intriguing one at that: What if every base emotion was controlled by a different character in your head? It’s an idea that seems to have endless potential in theory, yet most would more than likely be highly skeptical of a children’s movie being able to explore the idea with any thoroughness at all. Inside Out, however, take these expectations, and not only meets them, but exceeds them in every way.
The Signal
There may not be a more solid horror movie to be released in the last ten years, that has virtually no reputation, and is so borderline unknown. The Signal comes off as another zombie-style movie at first glance, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Great zombie movies or zombie-style movies have actually made up a good percentage of the horror genres best, and The Signal is yet another example of that.
An action-packed and terrifying journey through mobs of insane people, essentially turning the population into a swarm of serial killers, The Signal surpasses most zombie movies even in terms of getting under your skin and is truly one of the best horror movies you probably haven’t seen.
Swiss Army Man
At the front of the list, at number one, is one of the most underrated and underappreciated movies all time. Swiss Army Man. Its no surprise Swiss Army Man would be so misunderstood either, as the movie is practically designed to throw off your sense of emotion, hide its darkest messages and points, and mascarade itself as a pure comedy adventure, when the fact is, it is easily one of the most introspective, deep, and saddest movies of the last fifteen or more years.
With underlying themes of humanity, sociability, society standards, sexuality, depression, and sanity, Swiss Army Man is only as bleak as you are willing to see it. The harder you look, the more twisted and moving the story becomes, and most viewers or this movie, or even the trailer, just couldn’t seem to wrap their head around the very concept, let alone see through the purposely rough exterior at the beauty underneath.
